The innkeeper, still deferent to the spectre of the mysterious Sister Leliana, led the two Wardens and the witch to their chamber. The rooms were clustered around the upper part of the tavern; plainly clad yet serviceable, and each one occupied. Those few refugees who had managed to seize coin before their flight had purchased their place beneath a roof, behind the safety of the town wall while their penniless brethren remained in misery under canvas, beyond the barricade.
Each room they passed was shut; though snatches of muffled conversation crept through the gap between door and floorboard. A husband and wife argued in frenzied whispers, while a low sobbing keened from a neighbouring room. The corners of Flora's mouth turned down at such audible misery. She looked at Alistair's broad back as he advanced before her, then at the hapless shrug of the innkeeper.
"These are hard times," the man said, defensively. "At least them in here's got a roof over their heads. Could be worse."
Flora recalled the damp and weary knots of refugees huddled on the mud outside the town; smudges of fire barely providing enough warmth to heat the palms. The younger children had still possessed the strength to chase each other around, squealing and half-manic; their older siblings stared at the hollow eyes of their parents and drew close to them for comfort. She shivered, winding her fingers in the damp grey wool of her cloak.
"Here. I'll have a bath sent up, if you're wantin' one."
The innkeeper produced an iron key from the depths of his tunic, swinging open the door at the end of the corridor. The chamber within was bathed in a soft ale-gold glow from the hearth; a fire had already been laid in anticipation of guests. It contained a large bed, a couch upholstered in faded red and a wooden chest for storage; shutters were drawn across the window to block out the moonlight. Rough wooden beams ran the length of the white-plastered ceiling, and the floorboards sat uneven on their joists.
Morrigan let out an unimpressed huff under her breath, her lip curling.
"Thank you," said Alistair hastily before any snide remark could emerge from the witch's throat. "And… thank this Sister Leliana… whoever she might be?"
The innkeeper did not rise to the bait. Leaving the iron key on the chest, he reversed through the doorway; pulling the door into the frame in his wake.
"My first night under a tavern roof," Morrigan observed, stalking across the weary floorboards. "I am not overly impressed. Still, 'tis better than sleeping in ruins and haystacks, I suppose. If either of you wake me before dawn, I shall be deeply unamused."
Her body rippled as she spoke, the arcane blurring the contour of skin and flesh. Her form shrunk in on itself, twisting as it reforged anew; a lithe black cat sprang up onto the velvet couch and curled itself in an angry little fist. Alistair gave an involuntary shudder, dropping his pack onto the bed. It had taken him over a month to grow used to Flora's mending, which now seemed laughably tame in comparison to Morrigan's strange, wild sorcery.
"If only the Templars at the monastery could see me now," he observed wryly, naming the sanctum in Bournshire where he had spent almost a decade. "Sharing a room with two mages. They'd probably excommunicate me."
Alistair waited for Flora to ask what excommunicate meant. Aware of her own ignorance, she usually sought any opportunity to expand her vocabulary; but she was still preoccupied with the refugees huddled on the cold dirt outside. Brow furrowed, she let her pack slither to the floorboards, resting her weight on her sound knee.
"Flora?"
"Did you hear them coughing?"
He was now checking the contents of their packs, spreading the damp blankets and bedrolls before the hearth to dry out .
"Who?"
"The people outside." She waved a hand towards the shuttered window, as though the refugees were pressing their desperate palms against the glass. "There's frostcough in their camp, I heard it. It'll be everywhere by morning, it spreads so quick."
Compassion gave a voiceless murmur of agreement; their presence like a bottomless pool in the base of her skull.
Alistair's shoulder rose and fell in a helpless shrug. One of the bedrolls was giving off an odour of mildew; he hoped that the smoking hearth might fumigate it.
"If the Darkspawn keep spreading over the south, there'll be a lot more sick refugees, Flo. We have to keep focused on… on what we have to do."
He sighed inwardly: gather armies from across Ferelden, depose Loghain and defeat the Archdemon. The more he thought about it, the more impossible their task seemed.
Fortunately at that moment both young Wardens were distracted by the arrival of the bathtub; heaved into the chamber by two panting servants and placed before the hearth.
Flora and Alistair took it in turns to bathe, one using the water while the other sat on the floor and faced the window. At her insistence, he had the first use; she preferred her water cool. While he tried to fit his long limbs inside the tarnished copper tub, they exchanged theories about their mysterious benefactor.
"So she's a priestess?" said Flora to the window, less familiar with the structure of the Chantry. The floorboards were warped with age and wear: she could see the gleam of the tavern's fireplace between them. "The innkeeper said she was a 'sister'."
"Maybe," Alistair replied, water streaming between his shoulders in rivulets as he stood up. "She could be a lay-sister. Don't you think he sounded afraid of her? Throw me the blanket."
"Mm." Flora withdrew her finger from where she had been experimentally prodding the gap in the floorboards. When she hurled the blanket blindly over her shoulder, he had to lunge forward to stop it from sailing into the hearth. "He did sound scared. I wonder why?"
Neither of them could come up with any plausible explanation. After Flora had dunked herself perfunctorily in the water - grimly aware that her hair would take most of the night to dry - the two junior recruits then had to decide what to do about the bed. They eyed it in wary silence as though it might suddenly explode like Qunari gatlock.
"Well, you have to have it," Alistair said eventually, scratching the day's stubble on his jaw. "Obviously."
Flora did not think it was obvious at all. She perched herself gingerly on the edge of the lumpen mattress, then immediately pulled a face.
"I can't sleep on this!"
"What's wrong with it?"
"It's too comfortable," she replied; used to bedrolls and hard Circle bunks. "It hurts my back."
"It hurts your back because it's comfortable?"
"Mm. You have it."
"I can't sleep on a bed while a girl sleeps on the floor," retorted Alistair indignantly. "It's… it's not right."
In response Flora leaned her rump against the edge of the mattress, using her body weight to shove it backwards. The mattress slumped off the bed at Alistair's feet, leaving the baseboard of the bedframe bare.
"There," she said, triumphant. "Sorted."
Morrigan still had her face pressed into her black-furred flank; either asleep or wilfully ignoring her surroundings in the manner unique to cats. Alistair set himself the task of bolstering the fire with enough fuel to last until morning, while Flora padded around, her wet hair falling beyond her waist, pinching out the candles. The noise from the tavern below had grown subdued; the remaining patrons stumbling out into the unwelcoming damp clutch of evening. A few bars of moonlight slid through the shutters, striping the baseboard of the bed with silver.
As the Chantry bell tolled to mark the day's final prayers, Alistair settled down on the mattress before the hearth; his sister-warden curled up on the naked slats of the bed, wrapped in blankets like an onion. Flora had also rejected the pillow, preferring to nestle her face in her arms as she lay belly-down.
"I slept on the floor in Herring," she informed Alistair, her voice sliding down to where he lay. "My dad says it builds character."
"Hm," replied Alistair, tucking his hands behind his head and gazing up at the beams running across the ceiling. "Did he, now."
"Mm."
Flora turned her cheek sideways against her forearm, watching the slow writhe of flame in the hearth. She had once gone through a phase of sleeping with her face turned away from the fireplace. After she had arrived at the Circle - where her limitations in magic had been so brutally pointed out to her - glimpsing fire effortlessly sprung from wood seemed a strange sort of mockery: this, you cannot do. Three nights spent moping in the Fade and her general spirit had ordered her to stop sulking; ever-obedient, she had done so.
Alistair had built a good fire in the hearth - the kindling arranged in a neat grid, with larger logs placed on top. The wind snatched the smoke up the chimney, dark streaks of ash smeared along the white plaster like spilled ink. Around them, the bones of the building gave a sigh as they settled; it was an old structure and nothing sat quite in place any more.
"Did you hear the dwarves talking earlier?" Flora asked the fire-streaked shadow, her mind still too preoccupied with the plight of the refugees to sleep.
"Hm?"
"They said that a star had fallen into the Tolimar Pass," she said sleepily, twisting a skein of damp hair around her finger. "They were going to look for it. Mine it for ore."
Alistair let out a snort, finally leaving the poker alone and settling back on the mattress.
"Stars don't fall out of the sky. If they did, the constellations would keep changing."
Flora acknowledged the logic of his point, watching the tip of her finger turn white. As it began to throb she freed it, half-wishing that she had dried her hair before retiring for the night. The shadows in the room shifted with the fire; the chest looked like a man crouching in the corner. The cat-Morrigan twitched the end of her tail as though chasing something in her dreams.
"Flora?"
She turned her face towards where Alistair lay before the hearth. The size of his body was not built for standard mattresses; the lumpen pallet seemed like child's bedding beneath his sprawling frame. The profile of the face was traced in gold by the fire behind him: the strong nose jutting above the stern, strong line of the jaw.
"Mm?"
Alistair hesitated before speaking, and when the words emerged, they were low and remorseful.
"I - I wanted to say that I'm sorry."
She was from Herring and they did not waste air on platitudes; she let him speak without interruption.
"Sorry for the way I've acted over the past week," her brother-warden continued. "I've been selfish. I was upset about Ostagar, and about what Lo-Loghain- " he floundered for a moment, "about what Mac Tir did. And I've been grieving for Duncan too, I suppose. I know I ought to feel sad but I just feel so - so angry. At everything. It's just not… it's not fair. We shouldn't have to deal with this, not on our own. We're only junior recruits."
Aware that he was rambling, he trailed off miserably. Flora was quiet for a moment, watching her nail beds gleam silvery gold in the darkness.
"You don't need to be sorry," she said, softly. "You haven't been selfish. And you have a good reason to be angry. I understand it."
Alistair looked up at the bed, where his sister-warden lay huddled on her belly; her damp hair trailing down beside the blanket.
"Are you angry, then?" he asked, curious. "About what happened at Ostagar? You don't show it."
Flora turned her face to the side; he saw the pale, pointed chin settle in the crook of her elbow. She took his question seriously, giving it due consideration.
"Yes, but I'm saving it up," she replied, eventually. "Until it's useful. Being angry won't do nothing to help us at the moment. We have things to do."
It was a typical northern response: practical and dispassionate, yet strangely comforting in the circumstances.
"You're right," he said, almost wonderingly. "There's no point in being angry now, when he - Mac Tir - won't even know about it."
"Mm." She was still looking at him, her gaze grey and luminous in the shadow.
Alistair folded his fingers across his abdomen and returned his stare to the ceiling, pensive. A log split in the fire with a sound like a dead branch breaking, sending a flurry of sparks up the chimney. Somewhere outside, an owl called a strident query into the darkness.
"You know," Flora said eventually, her voice small. "I'm sad about Duncan too."
He turned his head but was not swift enough to catch her eyes; she was now looking at the ceiling, her face veiled by shadow.
AN: Short-ish chapter tonight because firstly I've had such a busy week! Spending lots of time with the husband and our gorgeous baby, making memories as a little family :D and secondly, the next bit is when Flo goes to visit the refugees and I didn't want that to share chapter space with this bit!
Anyway, I'm pleased to announce that after my 8 month hiatus from writing during a difficult pregnancy, I'm fully back into it as a hobby - I'm having so much fun reworking this story! :D such a nice piece of escapism from being a new mum :)
