By Gods Forsaken

by inwardtransience

One day, the shadows will part, and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see. (How do you do a summary for something this big? Total retelling, Mahariel!Warden, mage!Hawke, Dreamer!Trevelyan!Inquisitor, worldbuilding, too many OCs, serious plot edits, primarily F/F.)

30. The Dark Wolf — I

9:30 Eluviesta 18

Elven Quarter, Denerim, Kingdom of Ferelden

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Her face flushed, trails of sweat streaking down her neck, Seda smirked. "Don't look now, but we have an audience."

Aedan grimaced. "Yeah, I noticed. Don't mind them, keep your eyes on me. You keep trying to follow the point, but don't bother — you can tell what direction it's coming from by—"

"—your shoulders, yes, I know," Seda grumbled, sounding a little annoyed. "I'm sorry, it's just hard to not look at something coming right at me."

"It's all right, you'll get the hang of it. I got smacked more times than I can count when I was learning. Of course, I was maybe twelve."

"Shut up, Aedan, and come on again already."

Giving her a crooked smile, Aedan whipped the straight-edged wooden stick back up in place — there weren't exactly practice swords lying around they could use, he'd asked Ferdi to carve a couple for them quick out of debris from the raid. He advanced slower than he normally would, his stance and form perfectly precise, sweep upper left, upper right, turn, middle right. Seda blocked the first stroke easily enough — though she needed both hands, elves were simply too much weaker than humans — instead of blocking the second she ducked and stepped to Aedan's right, comfortably avoiding it by a few inches, started to move to jab at him before she saw the third coming in, managed to meet it in a wild parry, flinging Aedan's stick up and away.

Seda tried to take advantage of the opening, slipping forward a step to sweep lower right, but Aedan caught it with a drop guard,left foot back. Elves might be physically weak but they were damn quick — Seda turned the blocked hit straight into a sweep from upper left, then lower left, then mid right, Aedan skipping back a step as he met each one. She was fast, but while her form had been perfect for the first two strokes she grew sloppier as she went, shoulders hunching a little, steps advancing straight forward. The latter would be fine if she were human, but they'd talked about that, elves were supposed to advance in odd little zig-zagging steps. He didn't know why, exactly, assumed it had something to do with their hips being built a little different, he just knew what he'd seen. Not that elven swordsmen were common, exactly...

As weak as her stance was, Aedan easily pushed her off balance with a step parry — she scrambled back, unsteady, but even while stumbling managed to duck under a sweep from upper left and block another from middle right, damn, not bad. Parrying a sweep from lower left up and around, she darted forward a step in to stab. Aedan caught it in a spiral parry, Seda's momentum carrying her forward until the crossguards clacked into each other, he caught her shoulder with his free hand to stop her from running into him.

"That was good," Aedan said while Seda caught her breath. He forced himself to meet her eyes, trying not to be distracted by the angle he was getting down the front of her chemise from here. (Normally he might not bother, but the girls were watching, so.) "Your stance was weak again, that's why I could throw you off like that. Do you remember what I said about how you should step?"

Seda scowled. She gave their sticks a shove to the side, slipped a couple steps back. "Yeah, I remember, I just... It's too many things to think about. And, I don't really know how that's supposed to work."

Okay, that was fair, Aedan might not have explained it very well. It didn't help that he obviously hadn't learned it the elven way. "Right, let's see if I can... You know, if you look at my feet, you'll see I'm mostly turned this way." He dipped into a shallow back stance, left foot back and pointed to the side, fake sword held low in his right. "Presents a low area of attack, since most of my body is back, and good reach, and I can shuffle back and forth and turn to the sides pretty easily just by moving my back foot, see? And stepping forward," Aedan turned and stepped into a light front stance, "like this, most of my weight going forward to get more force into the strokes and shrug off counters better, see?

"Now, it doesn't really work like that with elves, for some reason — you need to know how a human is going to move, so you can counter it better, but you can't just copy it. No, I don't know why, it's just the way it is. It's kind of like..." He trailed off for a moment, wondering how the fuck he was supposed to explain this exactly. "Hold on a second, I sparred with this elf once, let's see if I can remember..."

Seda's eyes widened. "You sparred with an elf? At Highever? Are elves allowed to carry arms in Highever?"

Well, legally, yes, but they hardly ever did. "He's Antivan, a friend of Oriana's family. My brother's wife," he added when she frowned.

"Oh. I'm sorry," she said, low and soft, probably remembering that Oriana was dead.

Waving it off, "We didn't get along that well — she thought I was...well, a bit of a cad, honestly, and a terrible influence on her son." He would say he was the fun uncle, but he suspected "fun uncle" and "terrible influence" were synonymous in Oriana's book. (Honestly, he was far more broken up about Oren's murder than Oriana's.) "Fergus is going to take it hard, though. Anyway, that was a long time ago, but let's see if I can remember what he did."

He bounced on his toes for a second, thinking, before springing forward and to the left — not facing Seda, wouldn't want to run into her — taking an odd sideways stance, a couple high slashes — he couldn't remember what they'd been, exactly, just went upper left-right-left. Aedan had pushed Tullio back a step with a spiral parry, like this, and Tullio had pushed right back with a stab, which Aedan had slapped aside, so Tullio had... Aedan thought he'd moved his back foot up toward his left, tipping onto the balls of his feet while crouching a bit, and then sprung over to the side like this, landing with a few more slashes at Aedan, parrying an upper stroke like this, stepping to the side, but crossing his feet as he went, right foot sweeping back and into place like this, and Aedan had taken him oddly crossing his feet as a sign to come down on him hard, and Tullio had spun to the side out of the way, actually putting his back to Aedan for just a second, coming out of it right back into his weird sideways stance, with a middle right sweep coming in at Aedan's back, which he just barely managed to catch, and then Tullio did another springing step forward and to the side, coming down with an upper right sweep as he went, and they'd traded a few quick blows, Tullio taking another weird springing step back to the right, and then back to the left, then forward to the left, and then scrambling back from a few quick sweeps from Aedan, ducking and pattering backward in quick little steps, practically on his tip-toes, before springing to the right into another sideways stance, and...

That was it, all Aedan remembered, more or less as he remembered it. He straightened again, shrugging his shoulders. "I think I did that right — fuck me, that felt weird. Anyway, see how that worked, steps going at...triangles, sort of, pretty much always moving around. You'll never be as strong as a human man, but you can be quicker than one. And if you're taking sideways steps like this, you can kind of add the weight of you moving behind a stroke or a parry, which can make up some of the difference. Actually, Tullio did this thing where he'd do one of these triangle steps right into a parry, kept knocking me back at an angle my stance doesn't absorb very well — and once you get your opponent off-balance, it's really easy to tag them while they're flailing."

Thoughtfully frowning, a finger tapping at the grip of her fake sword, Seda nodded. "That looked really tiring."

"Swordplay is tiring. There's a good reason fights don't tend to last very long. It's not that much worse than normal, and your endurance is a lot better than it used to be."

"Yeah, well," Seda drawled, lips tilting in a smirk, "I don't know how much, uh..." She caught herself, eyes flicking to their audience.

Eireny let out a scoff, called, "We already know you're screwing!" Hylwen giggled, after a second clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle herself, her face pinking.

In other circumstances, he might have been a little annoyed, but honestly he was just pleased to see Hylwen so cheerful — she hadn't seemed quite well whenever Aedan had seen her the first couple weeks after the orphanage. He assumed Seda was probably having the same thought, given how she rolled her eyes at the girl and ignored her. "Well, that's just giving me more things to think about all at once."

"If it were easy, everyone would be able to do it. Want to play around and get a feel for it before going again?"

Seda's lips quivered — holding in an innuendo, he guessed, he hadn't meant for it to come out like that. "Sure. Wanna go see what the girls are after while I'm at it?"

Leaning a little closer to her, Aedan's voice dropped to a whisper. "You know they're just stalking me again."

She grinned. "Are you complaining about pretty elf girls following you around now?"

"Very funny."

"I am, aren't I?" Chuckling to herself — because if anyone thought Seda was funny, it was Seda — she gave him a shove on the shoulder, pushing him toward the girls. "Go on, it might be important." He seriously doubted it — Hylwen had been following him around now and then since the orphanage, she and Eireny were nearly inseparable, and Amethyne... Well, that was a whole uncomfortable mess. But sure, he could give Seda a minute, why not.

The elven quarter of Denerim was a confusing maze of alleys, the densely-packed buildings placed with little sense of purpose, creating a random web of haphazard passages stitching the quarter together. Most of them were relatively clean by the standards of the city — the elves lived in very close quarters, so took the threat of plague deadly seriously — but were uneven and switchbacking in random directions, the paving mismatched with cobbles here or dirt there, giving the very clear impression that there'd been no planning behind the layout. The central courtyard, around the big damn tree Aedan still hadn't heard an explanation for, was the largest open space in the quarter, but not the only. The second-largest was north of the tree, along the only road that ran all the way through the quarter, home to the Chantry, what had been the orphanage, the nursing house (which had been evacuated before the raid but re-occupied since), and the homes of the quarter's elders and Sisters and so forth. There were other smaller open spaces here and there, where paths happened to meet or buildings had been set at funny angles, some large enough for children to run around in but others hardly more than an intersection.

For Seda's lessons, they usually went to this one to the northeast, not far from the corner of the boundary wall. It was near an alley that exited through a little gate (left open during the day but barricaded at night) facing out toward the dockyards — this alley was one of the means by which goods were brought into the quarter, mostly legitimate trade. (Smuggling was usually done through the underground tunnels.) For one reason or another, a few pallets and crates had been left in this open space, Aedan assumed only to be held for a few days before moving to their final destination. The layout seemed to change pretty frequently, so that would make sense. They were out in the open air, so these must be goods that weren't sensitive to being rained on — the spring rains had begun, after all, though they were between showers at the moment, the sky overcast with rolling gray clouds.

Sitting on a row of crates at one edge of the open space were a familiar pair of elf girls, both maybe thirteen or fourteen — neither knew when they'd been born precisely, which could happen sometimes. Aedan had first seen both girls in the attack on the orphanage. The taller, sharp-eyed one, neat elven blue-black hair tumbling in wild kinking curls, was named Eireny, and the shorter blonde one, features softer and more strikingly feminine, was Hylwen. They'd barely been quick enough to prevent Hylwen being raped — one of the guards had had her naked against a wall, he'd already had his pants down by the time Aedan got there, just in time — and Eireny hadn't had much longer either. Hylwen had been in a kind of shock afterward, though Eireny had actually finished off one of the men assaulting her after Aedan injured him, messily tearing open his throat with a dull work knife.

Aedan hadn't met either of them before that, but he'd seen both around quite often for the last...nearly a month now? A day or two afterward, Hylwen had very awkwardly thanked him for rescuing her, in what Aedan had later realized had been a bid to take her on as a servant back in Highever as 'repayment' — said with sarcasm because he didn't need repayment for that, and getting into a high lord's household was actually a huge step up for most landless peasants. He'd gotten the impression that Eireny and Hylwen had been good friends before the attack on the orphanage but these days they were inseparable, he hardly ever saw one without the other.

Amethyne was also here, though not with the other girls, sitting with her legs hugged to her chest on top of a crate near one of the alleys out, a good ten feet away. Aedan didn't know what to do about her, and the flare of guilt practically every time he saw her didn't help. As much as he knew it wasn't his fault, rationally, at some less-rational level he couldn't help blaming himself for Iona's death. And he got the feeling Amethyne — nine years old (Aedan knew from Iona she'd been born in mid-Matrinalis of 9:20), tall for an elf girl her age, long honey-blonde hair held in a haphazard braid, as though she weren't used to doing it herself — blamed him too. He'd been the one to tell her her mother wasn't coming back and she...hadn't taken it well. There'd been a lot of yelling and crying, she'd even hit him — not that he'd minded so much, she was only a little elf girl...and some part of him felt he deserved it...but still, their first meeting hadn't gone well.

They hadn't really spoken much at all since, but Amethyne did tend to follow him around, and he had no idea why. In part just to avoid the women and other kids back at the orphanage, he thought, but he... Well, he hadn't told Amethyne that he and Iona had been sleeping together for years now — the first few times her father had even still been alive, it'd seemed tactless — but he suspected she'd put together just what he and Iona had been doing before Howe's men had started the killing. The way she'd watch him and Seda sometimes, he got the sense she was angry with him for more than just getting her mother killed. And he simply didn't know what to do with that.

(He'd had wild thoughts of returning to Highever with Seda and adopting the girls — none of that could ever happen for multiple reasons, and he didn't really wish it could either, his mind just went in odd directions sometimes.)

After a brief hesitation, Aedan swept over and sat down next to Eireny. "Hello, girls."

While Hylwen said hello, Aedan, Eireny turned to give him a look. "You're being silly, you know."

"Eiren!"

"What? He is!"

Aedan forced himself not to smile, raising an eyebrow at the girl. "Oh? And what am I being so silly about, exactly?"

"How's she supposed to learn to do it right," nodding toward Seda, "if you're trying so hard not to hit her?"

"I'm not," he protested — weakly, even to his own ears.

She gave him a flat, skeptical look, unusually canny for a girl her age. "I've seen you fight, Aedan."

Well, that was a point. "There's a big difference between a proper fight and friendly sparring."

"Uh-huh. And is this what your friendly sparring looks like with a man?"

"I have sparred with women before, you know. I can't count the times my mother kicked my ass." While Eireny scoffed — his mother was Eleanor Cousland, after all, of course she'd kicked his ass — he thought for a second. "Never one I happened to be sleeping with, though, you might have a point." It did feel weird, he'd been trying not to notice.

Frowning a little, he turned to watch Seda practicing the steps and stances he'd just shown her — not too bad, it was already a noticeable improvement over her footwork in their last spar (if a relatively small one). He wasn't going that much easier on her than his tutors had on him, and she was coming along nicely, but something in him just...revolted at the thought of hitting her. He did do it, she never got all the way through a lesson without getting tagged a few times, but he hated doing it. It was possible he'd been avoiding it more than he would with a man, or if they weren't, well. It wasn't a conscious decision, just...

Eireny was smiling, smug. "Ha. I knew it."

"A small point — if I don't go easy on her I'll lay her out right away, and she wouldn't learn anything then either, would she?"

"There's a difference between going easy on her, and going easy on her."

"Those are literally the same words, Eireny."

"Bite me, Aedan."

While he guffawed, scrambling for a response — his first instinct would be inappropriate to say to someone so much younger than him, to say the least — Hylwen came to his rescue. "I think it's sweet."

"Well, of course you do," Eireny said, all but rolling her eyes. "You're all into that sem– senteh– um..."

Hiding a smile, Aedan offered, "Sentimental?"

"Yeah, that's it — you like all that sentimental rot. Sweet or not, it won't do Seda any good if she thinks she's better than she is."

"Want to know a secret?" Aedan lowered his voice, leaning a little closer to Eireny — elves had excellent hearing, Seda was distracted but he didn't want her to catch it. Eireny gave him a look, but Hylwen leaned in around her, her feet kicking in anticipation. "She's actually better than she thinks she is. At this point, she could probably best most of the garrison, and might hold her own against most knights I've sparred with. Don't tell her — wouldn't want her to get too confident, would we?" He winked.

Hylwen giggled a little, but Eireny frowned at him, skeptical. "Really? I mean, you've only been teaching her for less than a month..."

"You'd be amazed how truly terrible a lot of the armed men in this country are. Few guardsmen or soldiers get very good training, and knights have other concerns, more often than not they don't keep their skills fresh. What they do have is better equipment — fighting one of them, Seda would have to more than match their skill, since they'd have protection and she doesn't. But she's much quicker and lighter than some sap weighed down by armor, so, it's definitely doable. She wasn't bad to begin with either, you know, she managed to take down two of Howe's men in the orphanage with only a dagger."

Hylwen tensed a little at the reference to the attack — shit, maybe he shouldn't have said that — but Eireny was giving him a narrow-eyed, thoughtful look. "So, you're saying even a month of learning this stuff can do a lot."

"If you know what you're doing, sure," Aedan said, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. "How dedicated the person is makes a big difference. That's part of why the average guardsman isn't very good — it's just a job to them, they don't have the same drive someone like Seda does."

Of course, guardsmen were trained to break up disturbances or capture single criminals, maybe break up the occasional mob. They didn't need to be excellent swordsmen, because the people they dealt with on a regular basis were extremely unlikely to be skilled themselves. Knights did get that more specialized training, but they had other concerns — managing their lands, local politics within their bannir, affairs with neighboring bannorn and their families and whatever else — so it often wasn't a priority to keep their skills up.

Even among the Kingdom's armed men, the proportion who actually knew what the fuck they were doing was surprisingly low, just due to the various pressures involved. Though Aedan wasn't surprised commoners weren't aware of this sort of thing — the myth of their social betters' martial prowess served a very obvious purpose.

"Could you teach me, then?"

Aedan blinked down at Eireny, so taken aback by the question that it took him a moment to find his voice. "Ah... I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"Well, why the hell not?" she demanded, soft elven voice not quite managing to snarl properly, glaring at him.

"I don't want to..." Sighing, he rubbed at the side of his neck, absently watching Seda but not really seeing her. He wasn't sure how to put his objection — especially since he'd started training when he'd been younger than she was now, and she certainly knew that. "It's dangerous."

She clearly didn't accept that answer, face twisting into a skeptical scowl. "I doubt you'll be hitting me any worse than Seda, even if I'm not sleeping with you."

A shocked laugh burst past his lips before he could stop himself. "Ah, yeah, you're a little young for me, but that's not what I meant. Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to be giving you the idea that... You shouldn't be fighting, Eireny."

Eireny scowled. "Maybe not, but that doesn't matter. You maybe know this, Aedan, but not all human men are like you — it doesn't matter if I shouldn't be fighting, I'm gonna need to anyway."

Turning away from her, Aedan grimaced, his hand tightening around the hilt of the fake sword — that was, unfortunately, an extremely good point. She'd already killed a man who'd been trying to abduct her (and rape her while he was at it, of course) to use her as leverage over the rebels, people she'd had practically no contact with at the time. Weeks later, they were certain they were missing three kids from the orphanage, and while Howe hadn't used his hostages against them yet he would in time. If they hadn't responded to the attack, Howe would have gotten many more hostages, and Eireny would be one of them. She'd done nothing wrong, nothing at all, and yet she'd still been targeted, she'd been forced to defend herself once already.

This probably should have occurred to him before, he'd just...never quite thought of it in these terms. That Seda would want lessons, sure — due to the small amount of training she'd gotten from the infamous Aunt Adaia, she'd felt confident joining the rebels, but her first real life-or-death fight had made her realize she was in over her head. That had made immediate, obvious sense to him. That Eireny would be scared of something like the attack on the orphanage happening again, would want to learn to defend herself, also made obvious sense.

He would like to say she didn't have to worry about it, but that would ring hollow — after all, they hadn't prevented the attack on the orphanage, any promise that she was safe would be...tactless, in that light. She had every reason to...

But the thought of, if he taught her, Eireny seeking out a fight she didn't need to be in, and getting herself killed... He would feel horrendously guilty, he knew. As much as her request was perfectly rational, no more or less than Seda's had been, it was risky, and he didn't like it.

"Oh give up, Aedan." He twitched at the sound of Seda's voice, coming from rather closer than he'd last seen her. It looked like she was taking a break — out of breath, face red and orange hair darkened with sweat, fake sword held loose at her side. "She's not going to leave us be, until you give her what she wants, and it's not going to hurt her. Might as well." Seda tossed the shaped stick into the air, flipping in a half turn, caught it by the 'blade' as it fell. Holding the grip toward Eireny, "Here you go, kid, I think I'm done for the morning."

Grinning, Eireny snatched the fake sword away from Seda and popped up to her feet. "Thanks, Seda, you're the best." She tipped up onto her toes to quick peck Seda on the cheek, then skipped out toward the middle of the open area.

"Oi, I'm the one who'll be doing the actual teaching." A little reluctantly, he stood to follow her — he wasn't happy about this, but Eireny had her reasons and Seda wasn't wrong, so, fine. On his way past, Seda stopped him with a hand on his arm. Leaning in, she gave him a soft, lingering kiss, then gently pushed him after Eireny.

(For some reason, he randomly remembered Ferdi smirkingly joking that many women find appealing men who are good with kids.)

Aedan belatedly noticed Eireny was watching him, a smug little smile on her face. Amused by that brief moment with Seda, probably. He cleared his throat. "If Seda's the best, what does that make me?"

Eireny said, lilting and teasing, "The best's boyfriend."

He huffed, trying not to look like he found that nearly as funny as he did.

They didn't get past the absolute basics that first morning, which really shouldn't be a surprise. Going over proper grip, one-handed and two, which were different in important ways — though hardly relevant, Eireny would almost certainly need both hands to fight human men anyway. This time, Aedan remembered to keep the differences in elven-optimal footwork in mind from the beginning. He corrected her stance with gentle little taps of his stick here or there, so he wouldn't have to touch her, the thought of which struck him as inappropriate in a way it hadn't with Seda...or anyone else he'd ever practiced with, for that matter. (He didn't tend to spend a lot of time around girls Eireny's age anymore — he didn't want to make her uncomfortable, but he also wasn't certain where the lines were.) Then they went over basic sweeps and blocks, the fake swords lightly clacking to show how each sweep met each block, tweaking Eireny's stance now and again when it slipped.

And that was about all they had time for. It had to be after noon by now — though it was hard to tell for certain, the clouds thick enough Aedan only had a rough guess of where the sun was — they should probably eat at some point. Aedan hadn't since yesterday evening, and he knew Seda hadn't either, she must be hungry by now. Eireny was a little disappointed her lesson ended up being so short, but perked back up when Aedan (reluctantly) promised she could find him again tomorrow and they'd keep going. Give him back that stick, though, Seda still needed it, talk to Ferdi if she wanted her own.

Surrendering the fake sword with a pout, she nonetheless skipped off cheerfully, she and Hylwen chattering as they started off toward the building the orphanage had been moved to. Aedan stopped at the opening of the alley, glancing at Amethyne. She was still seated on the same crate, had hardly moved much for half the morning, picking at the skirt of her gown (possibly so she didn't have to look at Aedan). "Are you hungry, Amethyne? You can come with us if you don't want to go back to the orphanage just yet."

Amethyne scowled for a moment, but hopped off the crate, and started walking toward Aedan and Seda, her arms firmly crossed over her chest. All right, then.

The common room in the rough apartment block he'd been put in — like many dotted around the city, seemingly an old warehouse with newer, thinner walls put up to divide private rooms — was more full than at most hours of the day. It was lunchtime, and also most of the rebels' activities went on in the evening or during the night, so many of them tended to sleep rather late. Though there wasn't actually that much going on at the moment, keeping a low profile for now so Loghain and Howe wouldn't come down hard again so soon — Aedan had suggested waiting until more of the soldiers were moved out of the city to deal with the rebellions simmering in the Arling and in Highever, as well as the darkspawn in South Reach, so they were playing it cautious right now. They still had supplies in warehouses and shops and caches belonging to smugglers and criminals they'd taken over in the initial rebellion, they mostly moved all that around after dark to reduce suspicion, and they were trying to help out the rebels still under siege in the northern city, but things were much more quiet than they'd been when Aedan had first arrived.

Which didn't mean this was over, not even close. Aedan had noticed the iron resolve setting into the rebels at the funeral a few weeks ago — at least in part inspired by Boann's homily in the form of a firey call for vengeance, he was still shocked she'd actually gone there — and it hadn't faded since, the desperation of those initial days crystalized into something calmer, but all the more dangerous for it. And it had spread in these weeks, seemingly infecting all of the quarter's residents, even reaching the people in the slums of the northern city, growing firmer seemingly every day.

If Loghain had meant to break the peasants' resolve, he'd drastically miscalculated, his actions instead driving the entire elven quarter and much of the city's poor to support the rebellion, even if only tacitly — that shit tended to happen when one murdered children.

Glancing around, he noticed Shianni and Ferdi both happened to be in at the moment. They were sitting at a table in a corner with a small group of people, leaning over the table and speaking in hushed voices, clearly discussing something important. He was mildly curious, but if it was anything he needed to know they'd tell him later.

The lunch on offer in the little kitchen area was rather lacking, even compared to when he'd first arrived. There were several stacks of flat, unleavened bread, dry and somewhat brittle, almost like a cross between a cracker and hardtack. It was called knacker, he knew, which he'd heard of but never had before these last few weeks — it was considered peasant food — this batch probably made from the Bannorn's winter rye. There was also a tub of...some kind of soft cheese, he thought? It wasn't familiar to him, but by the vaguely sour smell about it he assumed it must be made from sheep's milk. That pot right there he thought was some kind of bone broth, which would probably be terribly bland, but Aedan scooped himself up some anyway, if only to help soften his knackers a little. The beer smelled slightly odd, but it was probably just a different batch than they'd had before — no molasses anymore, Aedan would have to tolerate it plain, but by now he was mostly used to peasant small beer.

Aedan had already found a seat before Seda and Ametheyne caught up to him. Seda had been helping Amethyne with the cheese (the table was a little high for her), and had diluted the beer a bit with the broth — it wasn't strong enough to get anyone drunk, but the taste was pretty strong, Aedan already knew Amethyne didn't like it. Actually, that might be what the broth was for in the first place, he hadn't thought of that.

He had to hold in a smile at the scowl on Amethyne's face as she chewed on her knacker — he knew, kid, he knew. The cheese wasn't too bad, though...

They were only sitting for a short time when Aedan took a gulp of his beer. He froze, glaring at the mug. Sighing, he set it down, plucking up a cheesed knacker, and slipped out of his chair. "I need to talk to Shianni about something, I'll be right back."

Seda gave him a look, her head tilting in that way elves had, but didn't say anything, turned to mutter to Amethyne about something instead. Almost certainly something about him — she'd lowered her voice much further than she usually would, even standing only a few feet away Aedan couldn't understand a word. Brushing his curiosity off, he walked away.

There was a chair open at the edge of Shianni's group, next to an elven man Aedan didn't recognize, he pulled it out a few inches with a foot before flopping down. "The beer is diluted. Apple vinegar?"

A few of the people in the group shot him exasperated looks at the interruption, and— Oh shit, was that Valendrian? An elderly man, definitely at least in his sixties and possibly older, he was something like the quarter's mayor — the elves called him hahren, which he assumed must be one of those elvish words they'd held onto all this time. (Mostly kinship terms and a few things to do with personal relationships, life events, and holidays, but they didn't come up very often...or maybe they just didn't use them around Aedan.) He had a solemn, dignified sort of bearing, but had a reputation for being surprisingly canny, tended to be far more informed about what was going on in the quarter than people realized. Or so Aedan had heard, anyway, they hadn't spoken for more than a couple minutes in total.

He did know Shianni and Valendrian didn't get along. There was a story behind that, he was certain, but he had no idea what it was. So he was a little surprised to see him here, it wasn't often the two of them tolerated each other's company for long.

"We were in the middle of something, Aedan," said another elven man he didn't recognize. "If you want to complain to someone about—"

Before he could go too far, Shianni snapped, "No, it's fine. You're right, the beer's diluted with apple vinegar."

Aedan nodded — he hadn't been sure, the combination of tastes was sort of odd, but it'd seemed the most likely. "Are we running low on supplies? I know we have plenty of the vinegar, that shit's everywhere in Ferelden, but..." Not sure how to end that sentence, he just grimaced, took a bite out of his knacker. Which kind of did demonstrate the point, he guessed.

The group around the table sent each other uncomfortable glances. Valendrian was the first to speak, his voice rather low for an elf's, a little hoarse from age but still steady and sharp. "We have a few weeks left before our difficulties will truly begin, but it is coming. I don't know if anyone has told you, do you know how we normally manage goods in the quarter?"

He shook his head, roughly swallowing the still tough bite of bread so he could speak. "No, but I assumed it wasn't so different from the elven quarter in Highever. Everyone contributes to a pool held by the elders and the Chantry Mother there, they make sure all the residents have the necessities — food, clothes, fund repairs and new construction and the like. Some people make enough that they keep some of their earnings, can buy small luxuries for themselves, but I understand that's somewhat rare." It sounded very much like an Orlesian-style commune to him, complete with the local lord (the Arl of Denerim in this case) taking taxes off the top, though most of the elven population in the north pre-dated the Occupation, so the practice likely hadn't been transplanted from there.

"It is much the same here," Valendrian said, nodding. "There are two problems contributing to our supply issues. The first, the Regent still hasn't opened up the port all the way, inspections less than before but still more careful than is normally done. This means fewer goods are getting into the city, and the delays have pushed fishers north to Ostwick or south to Gwaren, both of which drive up prices."

"Hence relying on winter rye from the Bannorn."

Valendrian's head tilted a little, lips quirking. "That's not unusual for us — the winter crop is thought to be of lower quality, it's always cheaper than grain leftover from the previous year. But yes." Oops, unthinkingly flaunting his comfortable upbringing there, ha ha. "The second problem is that we're simply not bringing in as much as usual. As I'm sure you know, many of our people serve on the Hill, and during the chaos of the rebellion most weren't able to go. Some have been rehired in the weeks since, but many have not."

"I see." That did make obvious sense, when he thought about it — most of the guilds didn't welcome elves (less so in Highever than Denerim, though it was a problem there too), so they hadn't trades to fall back on. But the noble estates on the Palace Hill were kept up by a veritable army of servants. Aedan knew they weren't paid well — that was part of the reason they used mostly elves, they could get away with paying them less than they would humans — but there were enough of them that put together they could keep the quarter from starving, at least, if not much more than that. That work would ebb and flow a little with the seasons, but, "Shouldn't that be picking up again soon? The Landsmeet will need to select our next King, so all the lords and their families will be in attendance, not just their representatives. The Selection won't be until after Satinalia, over six months away, but the lords should all be arriving in the month or two before that, and I imagine there's a lot of fixing up and preparation to be done." The Kingdom's nobility would take the opportunity to show off to each other, after all, arrangements for marriages and trade deals coming out of it (as always happened in these kinds of gatherings), so he would think the servants' workload should be picking up in the near future.

"The nobles are hiring on more servants. Human servants."

...Well, shit.

Her face pinched in a worried frown, Shianni said, "We're still doing fine in the soft trades, picking up if anything." Wet-nursing and prostitution, she meant. And of course the latter was doing more business than usual, what with all the soldiers in the city, and as more noble guests started showing up that wasn't going to slow down.

He noticed an unpleasant expression flicker across Valendrian's face — Aedan didn't think it was his dislike of Shianni, he must have an objection to those occupations in particular. Not an uncommon attitude, to be honest, but it wasn't like elves had the options available to be picky about it, so unless Valendrian would rather they starve...

"It's still early — most of the estates are empty in the winter, they're usually not back until Summerday." Aedan nearly blurted out that he was very much aware of that, he'd been a seasonal resident of the city himself, but managed to hold the comment in. "But they start cleaning and the like a few weeks early, and even the people who wintered here aren't taking back the staff who couldn't make it in during the siege. And a lot were even let go after, this month, replaced with humans. It is still early, but we're starting to get worried."

And well they should be. Aedan didn't know exactly what their stockpiles looked like, he wasn't in a place to be informed about that sort of thing, but it did sound bad. He stuck around for another couple minutes, but quickly left. Walking back toward Seda (and Amethyne), he was hardly paying attention to his surroundings, turning the problem about in his head.

Their difficulties finding work probably weren't going to get better. On the one hand, that was a good thing for the rebellion — the more idle hands in the city, the easier it would be for their group to expand — but that didn't really help if they slowly starved to death. Ordinarily, Aedan would think they could hire out some of their fighters as guards for overland caravans and on vessels braving the Straits, but as good as many of them were it was a rare trader who would hire an elf for that kind of work even in the best of circumstances. (And the aftermath of an open peasant rebellion was not the best of circumstances.) They might have better luck with certain...less reputable operations, particularly the Carta, but that could go very bad, very quickly.

One option would be to leave the city, for the rebellion to relocate somewhere else — Amaranthine or Highever, the outlying bannorn of the Arling might do if they didn't want to risk travelling that far. That would help them evade the high prices due to slow-downs at the docks, but it raised other problems. It was already difficult enough for peasants (especially elves) to get by in Amaranthine; it wasn't quite as bad in Highever, but the influx of people would stress the fragile balance in the city...assuming Howe's efforts to usurp the Teyrnir hadn't done that already. The rebellion wouldn't have the connection with and support of the locals there they did here, which would just make things worse. Dispersing into the Arling might work...if the rebels had any idea how to live off the land on their own — he hadn't asked, but he was willing to bet that particular skillset wasn't exactly common around here.

...Which basically just left theft. They'd already been doing plenty of that, of course, since the earliest hours of the rebellion, but Loghain and Howe had been rather more occupied with, well, the rebellion. The initial glut of claiming the resources contained in various warehouses and shopfronts had tapered off quickly, and they'd been far more cautious about it since then. Loghain wasn't a complete idiot, it was possible he realized that the rebellion had evacuated the elven quarter before the attack — he probably didn't anticipate the rebellion's resolve to begin the fight again when the time was right, but he must know there were still partisans in the city. If their thefts reached too high of a volume, if too many people died in the process, if the nobles started bleating about the Kingdom doing something to stop it, they could easily call the garrison down on the quarter again.

Aedan remembered the pyre, the largest he'd ever seen, dozens of bodies laid out to be burned — and children, far too many children. No, he didn't want to risk that happening again, not if they could help it. And he was certain he wasn't the only one who felt the same.

They had to do something. They needed to get supplies smuggled through the port, they needed the resources to procure them, and they needed whatever illicit means they achieved that through to not be tied back to the rebels. That first point shouldn't be a problem — as close attention as Loghain was paying to the docks, there were always holes — but the second and third...

He would think about it. There had to be something they could do...

When he got back to his seat, he forced a smile onto his face, not wanting to worry Amethyne. Seda played along, but Aedan could tell she didn't buy it for a second — this woman was starting to know him far too well.

---

9:30 Eluviesta 20

South Shore, Denerim, Kingdom of Ferelden

---

Aedan stopped, staring wide-eyed at a very particular ship at dock. "You're fucking kidding me."

Highever was not a city particularly favorable to sea trade. It sat near the mouth of a river, wide and sluggish and silty, forming broad, submerged sand banks that threatened to beach the incautious sailor. The city was far enough away from the mouth that these weren't much of an impediment, but the harbor itself wasn't particularly great. Unlike the major port cities of the Waking Sea — Val Royeaux, Jader, Cumberland, Kirkwall, Amaranthine — the harbor wasn't shielded, left open to the mercy of the waves. The surges on the Sea weren't nearly as bad as the ocean proper, and the shallow water meant the worst of the waves broke before they even reached the harbor, but it was undeniable that the Highever docks were vulnerable in a way those of most trade cities weren't.

They did still get a fair bit of traffic, though. The city predated the harbor, fueled by the fertile farmland in the river valley, furs and lumber and mining in the hills. As imperfect as the harbor was, it was better to export these goods through Highever than to first bring them overland east to Amaranthine or west to Strike-over-Dane. In fact, much of the western Bannorn shipped their goods through Highever as well — they might load onto a riverboat at Strike-over-Dane, but many goods from there stopped in Highever first before braving the open sea.

Also, there was safety to consider — the harbors at Amaranthine and Ostwick might be better shielded than Highever's, but they were dangerously close to the Alamarri Straits. The lawless raiders who lived there (such as Aedan's cousins) very rarely attacked the port cities, but it wasn't unusual for them to set upon vessels once they were out of sight. Unless their destination happened to be Amaranthine or Ostwick, it was very common for ships to stop on the Waking Sea before or after braving the Straits, as though catching their breath. Kirkwall was the most common safe harbor for this, but Highever and even Kibannan (whose harbor was even worse than Highever's) saw a fair number of these stopovers too.

Ordinarily, it seemed to Aedan, that the favorable port came first and the city followed it. Highever was an unusual example where the city came first, an unfavorable port tolerated only due to the city's presence. It was one of the unique things about Highever, there were few cities like it in all the world.

Over the years, Aedan had spent a fair amount of time out in the dockyards. The trade coming through was critical to the wealth of the Teyrnir, so it was only appropriate that a Cousland should be familiar with such things, but a fair part of it was just due to his mother. As scandalous as it might be for the nobility of most other kingdoms to contemplate, Mother had been born to one of the outlaw banns of the Alamarri Straits — her father had been a raider, she had brothers and sisters who continued to ply the Straits to this day.

The family's involvement in piracy was the very thing that had brought Aedan's parents together. Most of the pirate banns, despite that they would go on to refuse to acknowledge Maric as their overlord in the aftermath, had thrown their weight behind the Rebellion against the Orlesians, harrying their navy and targeting their merchant vessels to interrupt their ability to resupply, donating a significant portion of their gains to Maric's loyalists. To help better coordinate their efforts, a small portion of the Rebellion's forces had worked directly with the raiders...led in part by Father. Mother happened to be one of the captains working with the Rebellion, as a member of the Storm Giant's pirate fleet — yes, Aedan's grandfather truly had been such a well-known pirate that he'd had a dramatic nickname and everything — so the only reason Aedan's parents had ever met in the first place was because his mother had been a literal pirate engaged in literal piracy (if in support of the Rebel Prince).

While Mother might have made a good show of being a pious, civilized noblewoman, she hadn't entirely let go of her past. She kept a sloop tied at the Couslands' private dock in the harbor — her first ship, given to her by her father when she'd been not much older than Eireny (complete with a crew and the expectation she'd begin raiding, because that side of the family was absurd), narrow and agile, meant for smuggling or intercepting the smaller merchant vessels. It was intended to carry a small crew of a dozen or so, but it could be piloted solo by a competent sailor. Mother was, of course, a competent sailor. When dealing with the business of running the Teyrnir or the company of their peers grew too trying, Mother would vanish from the Castle, set out over the water on her own — usually for no more than few hours, but sometimes she'd be gone for a couple days. At first, this would set Father's retainers into a panic, worried the Teyrna would be lost or captured or killed, but over the years they grew more and more accustomed to it. By the time Aedan was old enough to remember it'd almost become a running joke in the household that certain visitors would have Mother fleeing out to sea in short order.

After all, it wouldn't do for the Teyrna of Highever to drew her sword on a guest, or punch them in their smug, sneering faces. Just going out to drift over the water for a little while really was best for everyone involved.

Aedan had gone out with her plenty of times, ever since he'd been a small child. He would admit that he'd had a bit of a fascination with Mother's side of the family, old stories of pirates on the Storm Coast — it was yet another reason Fergus was the good son. He couldn't say he was a particularly competent sailor himself. Mother had tried to teach him, and he could help out as long as she was telling him what to do, but he knew going out on his own would be an unmitigated disaster. (Sailing was surprisingly complicated, there were far too many things to keep track of.) While he wasn't much of a sailor, he had picked up enough to identify different types of sailing vessels, their advantages and difficulties, and even recognize particular ships.

He'd been taking a walk out in the city alone, contemplating their growing difficulties keeping the elven quarter supplied, when he noticed a very particular ship moored in the harbor — unless his eyes were very much deceiving him, that was the Siren's Call.

And Aedan was suddenly having an...interesting idea.

He glanced up at the sky, made a rough estimate of the time. Right, assuming her habits hadn't changed significantly since he'd last bumped into her, he knew exactly where he should be able to find the Captain. Feeling suddenly relieved that Seda hadn't come with him, Aedan turned to the north, making straight for the Pearl.

The Pearl wasn't Aedan's favorite establishment, to the say the least. The brothel had been opened during the Occupation by an Orlesian noble — he'd forgotten which, and also didn't care — but in the aftermath had been handed over to the Bann of White River. (Funnily enough, the White River didn't pass through the Bannir named after it at all, but names could be like that sometimes.) There'd been a couple Banns since the end of the Occupation, but the operation of the Pearl hadn't significantly changed in that time — the family didn't manage it themselves, of course, that would be unseemly, they paid someone else to do it.

It was a nice place, there was no doubt about that, all but certainly the highest-class brothel in the city. It was bright and open, large enough inside it didn't feel uncomfortably enclosed (and also prevented smoke from accumulating too much), walls and floors covered in sumptuous rugs and tapestries in deep, pleasant colors. The furniture was comfortable, the food and drink were good, there were always musicians playing. The whores were, every single one, lovely and welcoming and often even witty.

They were also all in debt bondage. Aedan had come here a few times before he'd found out — incidentally, by complete chance, he hadn't actually asked — and had immediately felt disgusted with himself. Debt bondage wasn't illegal in the Arling of Denerim ( it was in Highever, though it persisted anyway), but he really felt it should be, perhaps especially in trades like prostitution. Doubly especially since many whores held in debt bondage had sold themselves into it in the first place to pay off other debts, and...

Just, it made Aedan terribly uncomfortable, he would never have patronized this place if he'd known. He made a point of only ever visiting brothels controlled by the syndicates now, and his unpleasant revelations surrounding the Pearl were a significant part of the reason why.

He was met inside the door by an older woman (not old old, maybe in her forties), a couple guards lingering to the side. Aedan noticed that they were wearing the colors of the Bann, and seemed less than entirely pleased with their post, tickled by the sight despite himself. The greeter seemed slightly uneasy about letting him in — he was armed, and after a month in the elven quarter he did look a little rough — but nodded him on anyway, with a warning that he'd be thrown out if he made trouble. The main room was a little sparse, most of the tables empty — it was early yet, business would pick up later in the evening. But there was music, a couple lutes and a crumhorn playing a light, bouncing tune, an elven woman (dressed too colorfully and provocatively to be anything but a whore) singing bright and sweet and playful, the air filled with spices from the kitchens and a hint of pipesmoke.

As he'd said, a nice place, but he couldn't help a sense of creeping unease — debt bondage was little different from slavery in his mind, and he didn't like it.

Thankfully, it didn't take long at all to spot Isabela. Aedan had met the woman a small handful of times — in Highever brothels, because of course — her appearance so stereotypically Rivaini pirate that anybody would guess what she was at a glance. She was dark-skinned, like many native Rivainis, black hair kept mostly loose, save for a couple braids decorated with colorful beads and glinting gold, held back out of her face with an intricately embroidered blue and white bandanna. She wore a thick white cotton tunic over the bodice, cut low enough to leave her throat bear and show off cleavage — Isabela was quite generously-endowed, to put it mildly — the hem falling halfway down her thighs, slit at the sides nearly to her hips. Today, she was wearing deep blue breeches, covering her legs between where the dark leather boots ended near her knees up under the tunic, but in the warm months she often didn't bother...so Aedan knew for a fact that she neglected smalls most of the time. (It was very warm in Rivain, their sense of propriety was different up there.) There was a long leather coat and a wide-brimmed hat thrown over the back of a nearby chair, cast in the black and red and gold of the Felicisima Armada — normally hats and cloaks would be taken at the door, but these were sort of like vestments of office in the Armada, Isabela wouldn't leave them out of her sight.

It wasn't just her distinctive appearance that gave her away — when Aedan spotted her, Isabela happened to be in a brawl. He was coming too late to guess what started it, and it hardly mattered anyway. One of the men in the fight — they were large and fit, probably knights or professional soldiers — already had a bloodied nose, both hands coming up to his face as he staggered away. Another made a grab for Isabela, she ducked to the side, driving her knee into his gut, doubling him over, she plucked a mug off a nearby table and clonked him over the back of the head with it, the contents spilling over him as he collapsed to the floor. Another man advanced on Isabela, she ducked under one swing at her head, then another, gracefully sashaying backwards as he pushed forward, a man coming behind her was set upon by someone appearing out of nowhere — tall and sun-bronzed and orange-haired, the same blue and white bandanna wrapped around his upper arm, that would be Casivir, Isabela's first mate — dragging him back by a hand on his shoulder and then punching him hard in the face, laying him out with a single blow.

Isabela ducked another swing, skipped a step away to kick another man, the one whose nose she'd already broken, hard between the legs (Aedan winced). The men attacking her had clearly come in a decent-sized group — Isabela and Casivir had downed...three already, and there were another five or so moving to surround them, ignoring the shouting from the whores. The man advancing on her made a grab for her, actually getting a hand on her shoulder, but she dipped and turned, breaking his grip, a jerk of her hips pushing him straight toward Casivir, who was ready for it, his elbow already lifted to meet the man's head. Still turning from her maneuver, Isabela drew her sword with a swirling flourish — short and gracefully curved, he suspected it was silverite — brandishing it with an almost casual air at the nearest of their still-standing attackers.

Yep, that was definitely Isabela.

The guards finally showed up, and after a brief discussion the attacking men were lead away, carrying or dragging their unconscious fellows. Isabela handed a couple coins to the hostess for the trouble, leaned over to pull a fallen chair back onto its feet, dragging it over to the table next to a rather flustered-looking woman, one hand covering her face. Plopping down into the chair, Isabela threw her arm around the woman's shoulders, reaching for a mug on the table.

Right, now that that was over with. Aedan walked up to the table, finally noticing the cards scattered across the table — ah, the fight must have started over an accusation of cheating. Knowing Isabela, she probably had been. "I see you're enjoying yourself, Captain."

Isabela set the mug down with a clunk, frowned up at him for a moment. "Ah, if it isn't Aedan Cousland!" she drawled, smirking. "Looks like you've had a rough go of it lately." She had a deep, rich voice, only the faintest trace of an accent, but that didn't mean the words came through perfectly clearly. There was an odd, thick slur to her speech, certain sounds clearly difficult for her to pronounce, his name coming out more Ehdin Couzhlin — a consequence of an old injury, Aedan knew. The story went, she'd been captured by a rival, and had been seconds away from having her tongue cut out (apparently just to make her shut the fuck up for once) when her crew came to the rescue. She'd shown him the scars in her mouth, so there must be some truth to it, but the story had been so dramatic and fantastic that he wasn't sure how many of the details he should believe.

At the call of his name (as badly slurred as it'd been), Aedan grimaced, glanced around the brothel — thankfully, nobody seemed to have noticed, they weren't being given any special attention. Except for the whore under Isabela's arm, anyway, her eyes had gone wide with surprise, her mouth dropping open a little. "Would you mind not shouting my name like that? It's a long story, but the guard is trying to find me at the moment."

Her eyebrows quirked, clearly curious, but she brushed it off with a roll of her eyes. "There's a warrant out for my arrest in four different kingdoms — including this one, and you don't see the guard kicking down the door, do you?" She twisted oddly in her seat, a chair across from her sliding back at a kick. "Have a seat, then, I have the feeling you got a story for me."

"Not so much a story as a request," he said, gingerly sinking down onto the chair, turning his mother's sword a little awkwardly so it didn't get in the way. "I would tell you why they want me, but I don't actually know for certain." He knew why Howe wanted him dead, obviously, but he had absolutely no idea what he'd told Loghain and his men to justify it. Well, now he could just say it was about the rebellion, but...

Isabela forced out an exaggerated sigh. "Sorry, sweetness, looks like this is going to be a business meeting. Give me and the lost lordling here a moment, won't you?" It might be Aedan's imagination, but he thought the whore was pleased to have an excuse to leave — he thought she was uncomfortable with him showing up, though he couldn't guess why. After a few quick words back and forth, Isabela handing her what looked like a half-shilling (for wasting her time, he guessed), and the two of them were alone. "Right then. I'm not going to help you take Highever back — even if I wanted to, I don't have the men for that."

"You heard, then."

"Aedan, darling, everyone heard about that." Isabela paused for a moment, taking a gulp from her mug. "The Eanraigs are pissed off something fierce over Howe betraying their sister — the Alamarri raiders are hitting anything flying Amaranthine colors, a few brave bastards even looted a warehouse at the docks."

"I see." Well, that was...good news, he guessed. He'd never really met his mother's side of the family before, he hadn't expected anything. He probably shouldn't approve of that — if nothing else, the raiders must be killing people who'd had nothing to do with it — but it wasn't like they wouldn't be raiding someone anyway, and he'd take anything that hurt Howe. "I didn't realize people knew what actually happened in Highever. The story floating around is they were—"

"—raiders in the Firth of Dane?" Isabela scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Those brutes don't have the brains to take Highever. The Armada would think twice before trying to take Highever. The docks, sure, no problem, but that Castle you got there's harder to get into than your Grand Cleric's knickers." Aedan coughed — he had not needed that mental image. Isabela smirked at him, clearly amused with herself. "Short of the accursed Qunari sailing on down here with those damn cannons of theirs, no, the only way Highever is falling is from the inside. Nobody I've talked to knows what happened, but it's not hard to guess. Rendon Howe being...Rendon Howe, not subtle."

Aedan recalled Howe had been demanding at Landsmeets that the Kingdom do something about the raiders in the Straits for...well, according to his father, ever since the end of the Rebellion. Howe had even attempted to invade the Straits once — the islands at the mouth of the Waking Sea were technically a part of his Arling, though it was doubtful Amaranthine had ever been able to enforce its authority over the perpetually lawless islanders — but had failed miserably, losing hundreds of men and most of the city's fleet.

As much as the raiders might impede trade, especially weakening Amaranthine itself, it was perhaps a good thing he'd failed, looking at the big picture. Ostwick had competing claims in the Straits, but with the raiders effectively opposing any external rule it had never truly mattered — Ostwick and Markham, alone in the Free Marches for having mostly retained their Alamarri character, were perhaps the newly-independent Kingdom's closest allies, due in no small part to their shared culture and history. Ferelden had been somewhat slow to recover in the aftermath of the Rebellion, no thanks to Orlesian and Nevarran tariffs. Aedan shuddered to think how much worse it might have been if they'd made an enemy of their northern neighbors.

Regardless, Howe had long hated the people of the Straits, with a burning passion. While the Armada wasn't associated with the Alamarri raiders, it wasn't really a surprise that that had colored Isabela's impression of him. "Yes, well, I'm not here to talk about that. This is about events in the city. You've heard about the uprising?"

"You keep saying such silly things — of course I've heard of it, everyone has." Isabela gave him another look, taking in his unshaven face, his common clothing. A crooked smile pulling at her lips, she drawled, "Aedan, darling, have you done something very naughty?"

He couldn't help smirking back at the suggestive emphasis she'd put on naughty. "I might have done. It's a long story, but—"

Isabela outright cackled, the beads and bits of metal in her hair clinking together as she shook. "Oh, my. Oh..." Forcing her breath level again, she took another gulp of whatever was in her mug, set it down again with a heavy thunk. "Aw, the baby lordling is all grown up — and joining peasant rebellions. How precious. Your grandfather would be so proud."

...Aedan wasn't sure how to feel about that. "It's about them that... Well, the elves of the city were poor to begin with, but in the aftermath of the rebellion, the nobles are refusing to hire many of them back to work in the townhouses. And the delays in the harbor are pushing up prices. We're not starving yet, but we are starting to have shortages of necessary supplies."

"And you were wondering if I could do something to help with that."

"That was my thought, yes."

"Mm." Isabela frowned at him for a moment, fingernails lightly clicking against the table. "Now, I love myself a good spot of rebellion, Aedan, you know that. But, as charming and gallant and generous as I am—" Aedan sniffed, right... "—I'm not running a Chantry, here. I can slip you supplies, sure — the Denerim authorities are amateurs, I could sneak by with their daughters and they'd never notice. And I have once, that there's a funny story. But I can't do it for free. Even if I wanted to, out of the goodness of my heart, my people would never stand for it."

He guessed he should have expected that. Not sure what he'd thought she would say different, honestly... "Unfortunately, paying you is going to be a problem. The elves aren't exactly awash in gold, as you might expect."

Giving him a flat look — trying to be serious, almost chastizing, but Aedan could see amusement curling at the edges — she said, "Well, you'll just have to do something about that, won't you?"

"The Couslands are awash in gold, yes, but that doesn't do me any good if I can't get my hands on it."

"Aedan. Darling. Sweetheart. You're the son of a high lord, and we're in Denerim." Isabela leaned forward, folding her arms on the table, one eyebrow suggestively raised. "Tell me, all those pretty houses the nobles have up on that Hill, how many have you been inside?"

Tingles sweeping down his neck, Aedan could only gape at her for a second. She couldn't possibly be suggesting... "Most of them. Not all, but most."

"Mm-hmm. And you know what's in those pretty houses. What valuables they have, and where. Where they keep their coin."

"...Yes."

"Well, then!" Isabela leaned back in her chair, smooth and languid, and shot him an evil smirk. "I think the solution is clear. If you don't have the coin to pay me...then you need to get it."

"I can't just loot the nobles' estates, Isabela."

"Why not? You know the layout, know how to get in and out without being caught. And its not like the owners can't afford to...give a donation to the cause."

Aedan was trying to glare at her, had to fight against a smirk pulling at his lips. He couldn't help it, referring to it like that just amused him — also, he was imagining how some of his more annoying peers would react to the thought of their riches being sold off to feed (mostly) elven peasants. "If I beggar them, they'll only tax it out of their subjects."

"If this were one of the Minanter kingdoms or Orlais, maybe, but Ferelden? Your countrymen are far too...unrestrained," said in a sultry drawl, "to go along with that. The lords here already tax their people as much as they can get away with. And during a Blight, no, they're not getting their taxes anyway, I think."

...That was a good point. The claims of a Fifth Blight rising had been met with much skepticism in Denerim — but that had been a year ago, Duncan sounding quite alarmist when all they saw was the smallest uptick in darkspawn attacks in the highlands. The Frostbacks were so densely stitched through by the Deep Roads, it wasn't unusual for darkspawn to show their ugly heads now and then, and there weren't that many more of them around than might be expected.

But then they'd learned of a horde in the south. A horde that had broken the army at Ostagar and spilled into the Arlings of South Reach and Redcliffe. They hadn't advanced too far, it was true, but news had reached the city that the Bannir of Lothering had been entirely overrun. There hadn't been any signs of an archdemon yet, but...

Aedan had been too distracted with the uprising, the aftermath of the raid on the elven quarter, he hadn't the attention to worry about the rumors. But now a sense of creeping unease set over him, fear clawing at his stomach. If it truly were a Blight... Compared to much of the rest of Thedas, Ferelden had gotten off relatively easy in previous Blights — before Ostagar, they hadn't fought darkspawn in significant numbers since the Second Blight way back in the Divine Age, eight hundred years ago. Twice as far back as the unification of Ferelden under Calenhad, before even the outbreak of the War of the Crowns, when what was now Ferelden had been a patchwork of tiny Alamarri, Chasind, and Avvar kingdoms. So long ago it was half lost in legend — Hafter had united the various tribes in the east against the darkspawn, becoming the first Teyrn of Denerim...but the stories also said that he'd fought werewolves and Chasind witches who fueled their vile magics in part by eating babies, so Aedan kind of doubted there was much true history in it all.

He knew how the rest of the world had been devastated by them, though — the Silent Plains, along the border between Tevinter and the Minanter Valley, and large portions of the Anderfels had been reduced to unlivable wastelands during the First Blight, and the same had happened to the southwestern provinces of Orlais during the Second. Quick intervention by hundreds of mages, meticulously cleansing the earth with fire acre by acre, was the only reason the same hadn't happened to much of the Minanter Valley in the Third and Fourth.

But there wasn't going to be a quick intervention. Ferelden was a poor country, sparsely inhabited, they didn't have the people or resources to field the armies the north had seen in the Blights — and even if they did triumph, they didn't have the mages to cleanse the land in the aftermath. Even if it were only the horde facing them, that could be catastrophic enough.

And the peoples of this land had never faced an archdemon before. They simply hadn't the strength to face an evil of such power, Aedan knew. If this truly were a Blight, if assistance didn't arrive from oversees quickly enough, Ferelden would fall. Inevitably.

So, I guess it really doesn't matter if I loot the estates on the Hill.

An odd, dark giddiness taking over him, Aedan focused on his breathing for a moment, desperately trying to remain calm. Was he really considering this? It seemed like a...big step. Yes, he'd fought with the rebels already, but one could argue (and he intended to, when the Landsmeet came) that he'd been acting in reasonable self-defense, and afterward had simply been protecting his allies — a nobleman had the right to do the former, and an obligation to do the latter. Besides, Loghain's regency was illegitimate, as was Howe's (temporary) appointment as Arl of Denerim, so it couldn't possibly be treason, could it?

But this seemed...different, somehow. This would be theft, plain and simple, with no reasonable justification out of self-preservation or personal honor. Yet, at the same time, it also seemed a lesser crime — after all, if he did it properly there should be no reason to kill anybody at all. He knew that wasn't technically true, that Fereldan law valued the property of a lord above the life of a commoner, but he'd always thought that was absurd. And with the unrest in the country, the approaching Blight, it wasn't as though he'd be doing any lasting harm to the Kingdom. Distressing whichever nobles he targeted, yes, but he suspected the long-term consequences would be minimal.

...Honestly, the thought of fucking with his peers was more entertaining than it probably should be. He clearly had far too much of his mother in him.

And no matter how...leery he was of this particular course of action, he didn't see any alternative. If they didn't find a way to get supplies into the quarter, they would starve. Not this month, maybe not the next, but it would happen, inevitably. He couldn't just sit back and watch. Boann and the Sisters, and those poor orphans, Seda and the girls...

No, Aedan couldn't let that happen. He just couldn't.

His mouth dry, feeling slightly shaky at the magnitude of what he was contemplating, Aedan forced himself to meet Isabela's eyes. "Where and when should we...make the exchange?"

Isabela grinned, amber eyes twinkling with glee.

---

9:30 Eluviesta 24

Palace Hill, Denerim, Kingdom of Ferelden

---

If Aedan had to pick the single most unpopular lord in Ferelden, it would be the Bann of Lothering.

Though, to be perfectly honest, that wasn't entirely his fault. His father had been the Bann during the Rebellion, and had become one of the most infamous characters in recent memory — Ceorlic had invited the Rebel Queen and her army to his lands, and then betrayed them, Orlesian forces already lying in wait before they arrived. Queen Moira had been in a meeting with Ceorlic and a number of other collaborationist nobles, discussing terms of support they never intended to give, when the Orlesians had attacked. To this day, it wasn't known who had killed the Rebel Queen, but it was known that Ceorlic and a number of other lords had been present, and that Ceorlic had been the leader of the cabal.

During the chaos of the attack on the camp, Maric had managed to escape into the Southron Hills by the skin of his teeth — by complete chance stumbling into Loghain, who'd been living out in the wilds with a group of outlaws at the time. The pair meeting would prove to be great fortune in retrospect, given how effective Loghain proved as a military leader over the years following, but the Rebellion had come very close to being snuffed out that day, thanks to Bann Ceorlic and his conspirators.

Maric had exacted revenge on these lords for his mother's murder in time: he'd lured them to a Chantry with an offer of a truce, and they'd all been executed, including Ceorlic. That he would do such a thing was rather shocking — the sanctuary of a Chantry was supposed to be inviolable — but Maric's ruthlessness had had its limits. After killing the treasonous lords, he'd sent word to their families that they would be spared, and even allowed to retain their titles and holdings, so long as they swore loyalty to the Crown.

The current Bann Ceorlic of Lothering was the son of the infamous one. The name he'd been given was perhaps unfortunate. While everyone knew he himself was perfectly innocent, had been far too young to have had anything to do with the murder of the Rebel Queen, that he bore his traitor father's name meant that it was impossible for people to not think of one when they spoke to the other.

Perhaps it could be overlooked if the second Ceorlic were particularly charismatic, or at least competent and useful, but to put it mildly, yeah, no such luck. Ceorlic was extremely cautious, very much aware of the fact that his family still carried the stain of his father's sins, doing his best to seem loyal, yes, but moderate and uninteresting, of no threat to anybody. He went too far in the other direction, honestly, coming off like a simpering sycophant — but an obviously insincere one, a performance of pious fidelity to keep any suspicion from falling on him and his family. It could be quite exhausting to suffer his company.

As cautious and temperate as he was, Aedan had never heard any rumors that his subjects were ill-treated...until very recently. After the fall of Ostagar, Ceorlic had abandoned the Bannir, evacuating his family and taking all his knights and soldiers with him — leaving the rest of his subjects defenseless against the darkspawn. It was unlikely he had the men to do much about the sack of the town, but according to rumor he hadn't done a thing to help evacuate the residents. Supposedly he hadn't even told people to flee, he'd just abruptly left without notice. He might not have committed any excesses against the people of his lands, that was true, but he had certainly neglected his duties to them, that wasn't debatable.

Aedan knew Ceorlic's Denerim estate well. It was one of the smaller, more modest ones — it'd once belonged to a poor rural bannir up the Frostback foothills in the Arling of West Hills, but a number of the estates had been shuffled around in the first years of Maric's rule, his loyalists rewarded and those out of favor for one reason or another punished — and it should be empty at the moment. Ceorlic and his family had all wintered back home, his representative in Denerim — his eldest son, a quiet man around Aedan's age named Rendorn, after the Rebel Queen's general and Queen Rowan's father — had been delayed in his return to the city. The word was that Ceorlic and his family were all in South Reach with Arl Leonas — supposedly, seeking aid to reclaim his lands, though Aedan didn't know what that would accomplish. After a bit of careful asking around, Seda confirmed that he hadn't yet sent a retainer to begin preparing the house ahead of their arrival for the Landsmeet, which meant there would be nobody inside.

And Aedan just so happened to know where a key to the vault was kept — he'd stumbled across it quite by accident, sneaking off with a serving girl, but that was hardly the point.

Put together, it had been quite obvious who Aedan's first victim should be.

They set out into the city early in the afternoon. It was Aedan's understanding from his family's own men that guards tended to keep a closer eye out for suspicious persons at night. After all, they naturally expected people to conduct their sneaking around and doing crimes outside daylight hours, when there would be fewer people around, the thicker shadows offering them some concealment. Which meant that, paradoxically, it was actually easier to get around without drawing too much attention to themselves during the daytime. It was expected that there'd be people about, a pair of men wearing hooded cloaks walking down the street wasn't in any way noteworthy — especially since it was drizzling again today, everyone had their hoods up — and should they got spotted it'd be much easier to lose themselves in the crowd if one, well, existed.

The estate belonging to the Bann of Lothering was toward the far southeast of the Hill but, thankfully, not so near the boundary road they had to seriously worry about being spotted climbing the wall. After exiting the subterranean tunnels into a warehouse near the docks, Aedan led them off at a casual pace — not too fast but neither too slow, nobody wanted to linger in the cool spring rain, trying to keep his pace smooth and unconcerned despite his heart pounding in his throat and the nerves crackling along his skin. Down the boundary road nearly all the way to the Dragon Gate (so called because the road beyond it led south to Dragon's Peak) they turned down a side street to the west, the paving stones noticeably tilting under their feet as they started the slow ascent up the Palace Hill. There were people about, but few, mostly guards and servants, the few nobles remaining in the city after the uprising and so far from the Landsmeet shut up indoors against the rain.

Just as they came to the alleyway they meant to take, a narrow gap between the walls isolating the nobility's estates from each other, a heavy cart pulled along by a pair of druffalo happened to be coming from ahead, wide enough it filled most of the narrow street. Aedan stepped into the alley, but lingered at the mouth, turned to watch the cart approach. As it passed he dipped into a shallow bow — complete with a little graceful, courtly flourish — the driver nodding in thanks at who he could only guess must be a nobleman for clearing the road.

Once the cart passed them by Aedan stepped back onto the street, his companion hitching slightly in surprise. A minute or two to make sure nobody was paying them any special attention, Aedan ducked into a different alley, backtracked toward their destination. He looked around the narrow gap they stood in, walled in on both sides by stone. Obviously he'd never stood in this exact spot before, but he knew the layout of the Hill very well, and the estates' walls had been built at different times and with different materials — he was almost positive they were in the right place.

He nodded at his companion. The other man — shorter and slighter than Aedan, the hood looking peculiarly heavy, held in its shape with stiff leather — hopped on his toes once, twice, then ran the couple steps to the wall, then up it, rapid little taps of his boots rising up to about Aedan's shoulder. With a last jump off the wall straight upward (something about the look of it making Aedan's head hurt, instinctively knowing this wasn't physically possible), he got his elbows over the top of the wall, heaved himself up. Laying along the wall on his stomach, he extended his arm down to Aedan.

Aedan was up the wall in seconds, his companion lifting him with casual ease. They carefully dropped themselves down on the other side, more concerned with making noise than injuring themselves — the border wall couldn't be higher than ten feet, the fall was uncomfortable but not a problem. The Bann of Lothering's Denerim estate had a modest garden, much smaller than the Kendalls', left mostly to grow wild, trees along the edges near the wall, brush and grasses allowed to grow with only minimal attempts to corral them. The previous owners had kept the space like this with purpose — some old Avvar practices had been retained by the modern people of West Hills, including a preference for praying under the open sky and surrounded with greenery — but Aedan suspected the current Bann simply didn't care enough to do much with it. The two of them carefully picked through the semi-wild garden, budding green with spring growth, holding their cloaks close to their sides to prevent them from catching.

Ah! Just as Aedan had remembered — there was a little round tower at the back of the house, an old dovecote the current owners had let lapse. (Meryd, the current Bann's wife, hated the smell.) The entire circumference was fitted with trellises, densely stitched with vines — though still thinned from the winter, plenty of room for hands and feet — the windows blocked with slatted shutters. Aedan made straight for it, quickly climbed up the side, the wooden spars of the trellis more than firm enough to hold his weight.

It didn't quite reach all the way up to the window, but that was fine. He climbed as high as he could before reaching up, getting a grip on the window frame. Pulling a borrowed work knife out of his belt, he stuck it through the gap in the middle. After a bit of fiddling around, he managed to find the crossbar, pushed it up and out of place — there was a light clatter from inside as it fell to the floor, Aedan winced. He removed the shutter panels one at a time, reaching up to gently set them down inside. Once they were both away, he slipped up into the window, climbing into the round central chamber of the dovecote, specks swirling in the air in the narrow shafts of wan light slipping past the shutters, the air stale and dusty. His companion came through a second behind him, they replaced the shutters in the window.

Aedan whipped off his hood, whispered, "So far so good."

"Yes," Ferdi agreed, pulling his own hood back over his head. He looked a little relieved to be rid of it for now — he'd modified the hood to hold it shape so he'd be less identifiable as an elf, apparently it was uncomfortable to wear. "Let's not tarry. You know where to go?"

After Aedan had explained his plan to Shianni, he'd been given permission to recruit pretty much whoever he wanted for the project. He'd asked the unusually well-educated elf, and nobody else — but then, who else would he pick? Mages were very useful.

Some weeks after having met him, Aedan had known Ferdi was from somewhere in the Free Marches — Markham, presumably, since he had attended the University there — and that he was an apostate who'd never set foot in a Circle, but he'd known little more than that. Talking to him about his plans, what magic Ferdi might know that could be useful, he'd learned quite a bit more. Apparently, Ferdi had once been Dalish, born to a clan wandering the Weyrs and the Green Dales, along the borderlands of Antiva, Ansburg, and Starkhaven. (Despite never having been properly trained, Ferdi reassured him that Dalish stories and songs warned their children about the dangers of demons — not just their mages, everyone learned the same things, which was interesting — so he wasn't at any risk of becoming an abomination or turning to blood magic.) He'd been a boy, maybe eight or so, when he'd been sent to live with another clan far to the west due to circumstances he didn't explain very well, but they hadn't made it there — the band he'd been traveling with had been set upon by human warriors in what he now suspected had been Tantervale.

Aedan had grimaced at the name. The rulers of Tantervale were very pious, had essentially made Chantry doctrine the law of the land — he didn't imagine they were particularly tolerant of Dalish within their borders. Ferdi had managed to flee, but all the others had been killed. (He hadn't seen it happen, but given this was Tantervale, he assumed in retrospect that they were all dead.) Alone, he'd decided to follow the river back east, to try to find a clan he knew about that had settled semi-permanently near Wycome. Ferdi was unsurprised to hear Aedan knew of them — the Lavellans were a large clan, and they'd peacefully lived alongside the Andrastians of Wycome for generations, their presence wasn't exactly a secret.

But Ferdi hadn't made it to Wycome either — he'd been discovered trying to steal warmer clothes as he passed through a village in Ansburg, the kind-hearted townsfolk offering him food and bringing him to the Chantry orphanage. The young Ferdi had been clever enough to hide the fact that he was a mage and that he was Dalish. He hadn't spoken any Alamarri, but he had spoken Antivan decently well, and managed to bluff his way into being passed off as an ordinary lost orphan. It was only at this point that he'd started using his current name, a clipping of an Antivan one he'd come up with at random, and he honestly wasn't even certain what his birth name had been anymore. He'd tried to slip away several times over that first year, but he kept being caught at it, and in the end had given up on making his way to the Lavellans, just settled into his new life.

After a complicated series of events they hadn't the time to explore properly, Ferdi had stumbled into being adopted by minor nobility from Markham (apparently visiting relations in Ansburg at the time). Of course, they'd been human and he an elf, but that wasn't unusual — some more liberally-minded couples would sometimes adopt more children after their own were grown, not as proper heirs but just to have children in the house again, and for that purpose it didn't matter if they were human or not. It'd been a little awkward at first, but they'd been good people. They'd hidden him from the Templars when they learned he was a mage, and had even gotten him into the University when he'd expressed an interest in studying there. After their deaths, Ferdi had decided to travel, and had ended up in Denerim's elven quarter a couple years ago now. He hadn't intended to stay at the time, only help out a little before moving on, it'd just worked out this way.

The point was, Ferdi's magical abilities were extremely limited — he hadn't gotten the thorough training mages of the Circle did, or even whatever the Dalish managed. He had learned some Dalish magic — that's apparently where he'd learned how to make himself stronger as Aedan had seen several times now — and he'd done a bit of experimenting on his own over the years, mostly little everyday practical things. If it came to an actual fight against another mage, he was all but certain he would lose, and badly.

Thankfully, it should never come to that — the little everyday practical things were exactly what Aedan wanted him for.

Through the door was a short hallway leading into the rest of the house, on the second floor. It was dark in here, lamps kept cold in the absence of any residents, still and quiet and almost eerie. Despite the lack of light, Ferdi didn't cast any — they wouldn't want anyone to spot a hint of obviously magical light from outside and shout for the Templars. Aedan pointed Ferdi toward the lord's chambers, and headed toward the lady's himself.

If he was being honest, he did feel a bit guilty about this part. Ceorlic was an ass (if a relatively inoffensive one) and a justifiable target in the eyes of most, the kids were mostly just kind of boring and unremarkable, but Meryd was nice. Not particularly entertaining, no, but there were a lot of ladies Aedan had had to deal with over the years who could be very...well, bitchy, not to put too fine a point on it. But Meryd was pleasant to be around, even if she rarely ever said anything interesting, sometimes that was enough — and when compared to most of their peers around her age, was a significant step up. In some environments, people being unfailingly warm and courteous could be remarkable in itself.

But it would be suspicious if they looted most of the valuables while leaving the lady's rooms untouched, so. Aedan made straight for her dressing room. Dropping his pack onto the chair, he flipped open the jewelry box just to make sure there was anything in there, wound a ribbon around it to hold it closed before putting it in his pack. In one drawer were a variety of hairpins, mostly silver and a couple gold, some fitted with gemstones, Aedan scooped them up and wrapped them in square of linen, stowed that away too. There was also a hairbrush he took, the handle lined with pearls, which he felt absolutely no guilt for stealing — it happened to have been a gift to Ceorlic's great-grandmother from someone in the court of Judicael I, perhaps the Emperor himself but perhaps some other Orlesian noble, Aedan didn't know and also didn't care. The thought of Orlesian riches gifted to traitors being sold to feed rebel elves tickled him.

Aedan checked the girls' rooms quick, but he'd suspected they kept what finery they owned with them, and it turned out he was correct. By that time, Ferdi was done with the mens' rooms — there was less to find in there, but Aedan knew the lay of the land better. Downstairs, he led Ferdi to a certain cabinet in the kitchen where the fine tableware was kept. The plates and bowls weren't worth stealing, and the cutlery had the family's heraldry etched into the handles, so they probably weren't great to steal as-is. However, they were fine silver — Aedan figured Ferdi could magically melt them down and form them into bars that could be sold much less conspicuously. While Ferdi packed up the cutlery, taking fistfulls of utensils and wrapping them up in linen, Aedan went to the Bann's reading room.

Bookshelves and a desk and a few chairs and an empty hearth, nothing truly worth stealing. Well, he guessed the books were relatively valuable, but not really worth the weight compared to the gold lying around. But, sitting on one of the shelves was a little wooden box. Aedan had snuck in here with a serving girl once, years ago, and in a fit of youthful recklessness had opened up the box — he'd expected to find some kind of intoxicants, but had been somewhat disappointed to see only a few slips of paper (receipts for debts, he assumed) and an oddly-shaped key, glowing just slightly from enchantment. It was very dark in here, Aedan had to slip the shutters open a crack to see what he was doing, but the key to the vault turned out to be exactly where he'd first encountered it. Perfect.

The vault was in the cellar, near where they kept the wine — some of that was probably valuable too, though not really worth the effort. Ferdi had finished with the cutlery then, he followed Aedan down, watched in anticipation as Aedan unlocked the magically-sealed hatch. (Basic security feature, since any mundane lock could be cracked, but normally people were smart enough to keep the key somewhere more secure.) Lothering wasn't a particularly wealthy bannir, relatively large but rural, mostly composed of modest farming freeholds. They did do some trade in lumber, fish, and furs, but not very much in the grand scheme of things. That, and there was the family's castle to consider, at the crossroads of the Kingsroad and the North Road just north of the town, that would be the safest place to store the greater part of their wealth.

So Aedan was understandably surprised to find several bricks of gold sitting in a row at the back of the little vault, each worth a thousand sovereigns. He snorted, picked up one of them — oof, gold was heavy shit, almost forgot — tossed it at Ferdi; still with shock, he scrambled to catch it, letting out a strained breath as he nearly dropped it. "I'd say hitting the Lothering estate first was a great idea."

"Yeah, no fooling," Ferdi muttered, staring at the gold. "Two, four, six..." He reached into the vault, delicate elven fingers shifting around a pile of smaller coins — 'smaller' being a relative term, of course, they were all gold. "There has to be ten thousand sovereigns in here, at least. That's truly not a grand fortune for a lord, I suppose, but Aedan, do you have any idea how long we can feed the quarter with this?"

He didn't know the figures himself, but he'd guess a couple years, probably. Adding in other expenses — clothing, herbs for healing especially — would cut into that quite a bit, but they could certainly make it as far as the Landsmeet with just this, he thought. "We could use materials to rebuild some of the buildings that were damaged in the raid, that will take a good chunk out of this. And as long as we're going to do this funding a rebellion with theft thing, we might as well go all the way with it." He set his pack down on the floor and pulled out some more squares of linen, started wrapping up the gold bricks. "I was thinking crossbows — those can be quite expensive you know, finicky things. But there are all kinds of things that could be useful, we should talk to the others about it. Shianni's creative, I'm sure she'll have ideas."

Ferdi grinned.

It only took a couple minutes to load up the gold. There were also a bundle of papers and a notebook — Aedan was curious what Ceorlic had decided was worth hiding away, so he took those too. Once the vault was emptied, Ferdi reached into a pocket, retrieving another of his little carved animal figurines.

There had been some discussion about how they should go about this whole theft thing, the precautions they should take. Crime was not a particularly unusual phenomenon in the city, and there had even been rashes of estate break-ins in the past — not since the Occupation, to Aedan's knowledge, but even so. Loghain would be suspicious that any unusual activity in the city might be the fault of the rebels he was already dealing with. He wouldn't pay so close attention to the elven quarter to figure out they had more supplies than they should — Aedan doubted any of the nobles had any better idea of what the conditions in the quarter were like than he had before beginning to leave there — but if evidence came up to tie the elves to a larceny spree, he would definitely use that as justification to come down hard on the quarter again. So, it was to their advantage to plant evidence that some not-so-common burglar was involved.

This figurine was a wolf, haunches raised and head dipped, jaws hanging open in a toothy grin. Rather than painting it with pretty (very elven) designs, this one had been submerged in tar and let to dry, staining it black, the material giving it a slight gleaming finish. It looked surprisingly menacing — Ferdi had carved it in such detail that Aedan could see the threat in its posture, fangs bared and tensed to spring. Damn good work, but he'd already known Ferdi was good at this shit. For whatever reason, when Aedan suggested their not-so-common burglar should leave something behind as a kind of taunt, Ferdi had immediately suggested a wolf, and so they had their signature.

It was possible Aedan had read too much poetry — this was exactly the kind of thing the classy bandits in Marcher comedies would do — but he'd thought it was funny, and Ferdi had gone along with it, so.

They closed and locked the vault door again, hefting up their packs. They were much heavier now, obviously, enough Aedan might have had difficulty getting back over the wall without Ferdi's magic — he cast the same spell he'd done during the attack on the orphanage to make the crates easier to move around, after that it was no problem at all. Aedan returned the key to its box in the reading room, because the thought of Ceorlic opening the vault to find it empty save for the wolf figurine tickled him. Instead of going out through the dovecote again, they took the kitchen door, leaving it closed but unlocked behind them — that left no visual sign something had happened, while the servants arriving ahead of the lord's return would notice shutters missing in the dovecote immediately.

Aedan had a temporary flash of guilt, worrying if Ceorlic would blame the servants for his missing things, but brushed it off. Surely he wouldn't expect his own servants to leave a little gift in the vault to taunt him.

Especially not after Aedan and Ferdi left several more here and there around the city.

When they reached the wall again, Ferdi handed his pack over to Aedan, and then magically climbed the wall again. Aedan handed him up one pack, Ferdi carefully lowering it down on the other side — he had to drop it several feet, but there was nothing fragile in these things and they were all wrapped with linen to muffle the noise, it was fine — and then the second, before Ferdi finally helped him up. They dropped back down into the alley, Aedan nearly tripping over one of the packs. Loaded up again, they wandered on down the alley, slipping back onto the street as nonchalantly as possible.

The whole walk, it was impossible for Aedan to relax. They had their hoods up again, and the packs would look completely inconspicuous from the outside, but they were carrying upwards of fifteen thousand sovereigns on them, okay — he didn't know exactly, it depended on how much the jewelry sold for, but around there sounded about right. Aedan was the son of a bloody teyrn, and even he'd never carried around this kind of wealth all at once before. Well, no, now that he thought about it, his sword was enchanted silverite and at least a few hundred years old, it might actually be worth about that much. But still, that was a lot of shit to be carrying around at once, and they had just stolen it. The whole walk down the boundary road, picking through less busy side streets toward the docks, Aedan tried not to tense whenever a guard looked in their general direction, his heart pounding in his ears...

He didn't relax until they finally reached the familiar warehouse, dropping through a trapdoor back into the underground tunnels, pulling the hatch closed behind them. In the eerie green light, blooming into existence from Ferdi's hand, Aedan turned to him with a grin. "So! That went well."

It looked like Ferdi was trying to give him a disapproving sort of frown, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it, his lips twitching with a smile. "How about we get back home before we begin to congratulate ourselves, yes? And hope your smuggler friend doesn't double-cross us." The elf started off in a seemingly random direction — Aedan was terrible at navigating the tunnels — the magical glow following him.

"Oh, don't worry about that, Isabela's going to be delighted. She does like shiny things, you see. Not to mention corrupting the innocent — this whole thing was her idea."

"Forgive me, Aedan, did you just refer to yourself as innocent?"

Aedan laughed, an edge of nervousness detectable even in the echo shivering along the tunnel. "Well, relatively speaking..."

(When they met up with Isabela to make the trade three days later she was, in fact, delighted. Though Aedan could have done without the smug teasing about his first time.)

---

Eluviesta — I just noticed there's a typo in my notes, I suspect I've accidentally been spelling it "Eluveista" in previous chapters. Not gonna bother fixing it, just saying, oops.

Bann Ceorlic of Lothering — Canonically, Ceorlic Sr/Jr are Banns of the "Southern Bannorn", but I have issues with this. For one thing, "bannorn" is clearly plural — the use for the plain in the middle of Ferelden is collective, the lands held by several banns but no arls or teyrns — so a bannir being called "Southern Bannorn" is fucking idiotic, I'm sorry. Also, for historical reasons, it makes great sense for Ceorlic Sr to have been the Bann of Lothering. Queen Moira was invited by a group of nobles to discuss them joining the Rebellion, a group that is strongly suggested to have been led/hosted by Ceorlic. And where does this meeting happen? That's right, Lothering. Him not being the Bann of Lothering makes very little sense.

It's suggested in canon that Ceorlic Jr is such a strong supporter of Loghain out of fear, because their lands border each other. This makes absolutely no sense. For one thing, Loghain is a Teyrn, which means there should be bannorn within his holdings — it would be perfectly reasonable for Loghain to be Ceorlic's overlord, so Ceorlic supporting him would make sense if he held some loyalty for that reason...but that can't possibly be the case. Neither Lothering nor the southern Bannorn are anywhere near Gwaren. Loghain and Ceorlic's lands are so very much not bordering each there that the entire Arling of South Reach is between them. Seriously, it makes no sense.

So, yeah, Ceorlic is Bann of Lothering now (which is part of the Arling of South Reach, not the Bannorn). He's still an ally of Loghain's, but for other reasons.

And so Aedan Cousland begins his life of crime. I'm sure there will be absolutely no long term political consequences to this whatsoever.