Eamon calls them into the main hall after breakfast. Teagan and Isolde stand at his side, and they both look immeasurably better than they did the day before. Marian is sure she does, too. None of them had been at their best yesterday. Eamon watches them gravely from the little dais before the fireplace. He commands the room with only the force of his personality. Is it that this place is his, bred into his bones and blood for who knows how many generations? Or is he simply that used to being the focus of attention, the most powerful person in any room? "The situation is most troubling."
"There is no telling what Loghain will do once he learns of your recovery, brother," Teagan says, clearly concerned.
Eamon sighs. "Loghain instigates a civil war even though the darkspawn are on our very doorstep. Long I have known him. He is a sensible man, one who never desired power."
"I was there when he announced he was taking control of the throne, Eamon. He is mad with ambition, I tell you."
As a bann, Teagan holds a vote in the Landsmeet. As a Guerrin, he's not without influence in his own right. And yet Loghain hadn't spared the slightest effort toward ameliorating Teagan's obvious concerns. Instead, he'd hired assassins.
"Mad indeed," Eamon agrees. "Mad enough to kill Cailan, to attempt to kill myself and destroy my lands." He almost looks like he's mourning, of all things.
Though... it makes sense, once Marian gives it a little more thought. He and Loghain fought in the rebellion together. They were friends, and also friends with Maric. This must feel like a personal betrayal. Eamon closes his eyes, taking a steadying breath before opening his eyes again; Marian's pinned by them, by the grave determination that says he'll make this right, by hook or by crook. "Whatever happened to him, Loghain must be stopped. What's more, we can scarce afford to fight this war to its bitter end."
"Lothering is overrun," Marian says, pushing down the familiar pain she feels at the thought. Her family is safe. There's no other option. "The horde is spilling into the plains as we speak. We have to act as soon as possible."
The soft, fertile heart of Ferelden is as unprepared for an attack as a frightened rabbit. The damage the darkspawn are doing right now is incalculable, irreversible. All those people... And not just the people, either; the very land itself is blighted, too. There are places where no animals will roam, no plants will grow, where the water tastes of disease and rot, and those places can always, always be traced back to a Blight.
Beside her, Alistair shifts on his feet. Does he feel the way she does, that they're being derelict in their duties?
Eamon examines her with new interest. "Indeed, we have no time to wage a campaign against him. Someone must surrender if Ferelden is to have any chance at fighting the darkspawn."
"Him, then," Marian says. She glances at Alistair and he nods at her, so firmly in agreement that it steadies her. He always does. "It's to be him."
"I agree. Loghain will pay for his heinous crimes."
Marian wishes she could be so certain, so sure as Eamon sounds. But even though she's doubtful, Eamon's words carry the weight of a proclamation and they ease something inside of her. It's such a relief to have the burden off her shoulders for a moment, to have someone else making the decisions.
"Our armies must be reserved for the darkspawn, not for each other. I will spread word of Loghain's treachery, both here and against the king, but it will be but a claim made without proof. Those claims will give Loghain's allies pause, but we must combine it with a challenge Loghain cannot ignore." He pauses infinitesimally, something she wouldn't have even noticed except that Teagan turns his head a little before he catches himself. What's going on here? "We need someone with a stronger claim to the throne than Loghain's daughter, Queen Anora."
Teagan glances sharply at Eamon. "Are you referring to Alistair, brother? Are you certain?"
Alistair has a claim on the throne. Oh, Maker, she'd all but forgotten. He's just Alistair to her; it doesn't matter to her who his father was. But he's a Theirin, the only one left of the blood, and many will be swayed by that alone.
Eamon could probably do it, she realizes with a distant panic she doesn't understand. He could probably set Alistair on the throne with nothing more than proof of Alistair's parentage and his own support. She looks at Alistair just as he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. He hadn't sounded all that enthusiastic about being a prince that day on the cliff... and just now he looks ready to flee at the slightest provocation.
Marian presses her shoulder against his for a moment. He looks down at her, and after a heart-breaking second, the panic in his eyes begins to subside. She looks back at Eamon, who is watching them with a mild interest that doesn't fool her. She'd given something away with her action, something that she isn't sure they wanted Eamon to know.
"I would not propose such a thing if we had an alternative," Eamon says, thoughtful eyes moving between Alistair and Marian. "But the unthinkable has occurred."
"You intend to put Alistair on the throne," Marian says, her throat tight.
Eamon sighs, passing a hand over his face. "Teagan and I have a claim through marriage, but we would seem opportunists, no better than Loghain. Alistair's claim is by blood."
If Eamon thinks that his guiding hand can't be seen behind Alistair's entire life, then maybe he's not as recovered as Wynne thought.
"And what about me?" Alistair snaps. "Does anyone care what I want?"
Marian wants to answer that, but she can't express herself as she'd prefer in front of Eamon. She cares, though. She cares very much. And if Alistair doesn't want this, then she'll find a way around it – no matter what Eamon thinks should happen.
Eamon bends a stern look on Alistair. "You have a responsibility, Alistair. Without you, Loghain wins. I would have to support him, for the sake of Ferelden. Is that what you want?"
"I... but I... " Marian can practically see Alistair wilting. His annoyance melts out of his shoulders, the stiff lines of his face softening like a chastened schoolboy. His voice is low. "No, my lord."
Marian's not comfortable with this at all. Can't Eamon see that Alistair only agreed to please him? Why can't he see what she sees? Alistair hides his dismay poorly, so poorly that Marian can only conclude that Eamon isn't looking – or that he doesn't care. "I see only one way to proceed. I will call for the Landsmeet, a gathering of all of Ferelden's nobility in the city of Denerim. There, Ferelden can decide who shall rule, one way or another. Then the business of fighting our true foe can begin." He looks at Marian. "What say you to that, Warden? I do not wish to proceed without your blessing."
Marian swallows. What can she say? She doesn't have another idea. There is no other plan she can make, no other way to pry Ferelden from Loghain's hand – and they need Ferelden's armies. But she won't throw Alistair to the wolves, either, at least without making sure that it's what he really wants.
So. How to answer him as vaguely as possible?
"I agree that a Landsmeet seems to be our best option," she says carefully. Nothing about Alistair, nothing yet. Eamon notices her omission – of course he does – but it doesn't seem to faze him. If he knows what she's up to, either it doesn't upset him or he's certain that he'll prevail in the end. Probably both.
It won't be easy to pit herself against Eamon Guerrin in the political arena, but as she glances up at Alistair's face, still dismayed, she knows the attempt is worth it.
"Very well." Eamon sighs, sounding disheartened. The world is very different to him than it was when he fell ill, and Marian imagines it's not for the better. "I will send out the word." He's silent for another moment. "It will take some time to recall my forces and organize our allies," he says thoughtfully. "I would prefer to wait until that is done before calling the Landsmeet."
"And we have other allies to pursue," Marian says, glancing at Alistair.
Eamon nods. "We will need all the allies we can get if we are to defeat the darkspawn horde."
He dismisses them then. Marian bites her tongue – she hates being made to feel like a schoolgirl – and follows Alistair from the hall. He lingers outside of the door, like he's not sure where he wants to go. Marian seizes the opportunity and pulls him to the right, leading him outside into the courtyard and underneath the huge, old tree that dominates the whole yard. There she lets him go and waits for him to look at her, to say something. Instead he looks up at the brilliant blue sky that burns patterns of light and shadow onto his face through the branches of the tree. He sighs, a slow breath and a heavy exhale that tell her more about how he's feeling than he probably wants her to know.
"Alistair." She touches his sleeve. "Talk to me. Please."
He's silent a moment longer, but Marian thinks it's only the silence of looking for the right words. "I just wish... "
After another minute, she realizes that he's not going to finish, that he can't say it out loud. "You wish that someone would ask you what you want?" she guesses, probing blindly for where it hurts. Alistair nods, but he'd hesitated just a little too long; she hadn't gotten it quite right, then. "You wish Eamon would ask you what you want."
Oh, Alistair.
His emotions are written all over his face; he's struggling between the idea that his feelings are a betrayal of someone he loves, someone he looks up to, and his very real resentment over the way he's being treated. "If he'd just ask," he says, bursting from him like a torrent. "I understand that this has to happen. I hate the idea of it, but I'll do my duty." He closes his eyes then, like the sun is too bright for him, but it's too late; she'd seen the way his eyes shine brighter than they did before. She can't hold herself back anymore. She moves closer, touches his arm in sympathy. She's familiar with the way he must be feeling. It may help to talk out their problems, but it doesn't feel very good while they're doing it.
"I don't even care that he'd have to disregard me," Alistair says sadly. "I just wish he'd ask."
"I'm gathering you don't want to do this."
Alistair laughs, hollow and bitter. "What gave you that idea?"
Marian shrugs, trailing her fingers down Alistair's arm until she takes his hand in hers and turns it over to look at his palm. She likes his hands. "Then we'll find another way," she says, looking up into his eyes. "We have some time, some breathing space in which to think. There's got to be something."
His eyes soften. "Thank you," he says, and draws her in for a long, sweet kiss that leaves her smiling.
A long while later, Marian goes back up to her room where Cú is still sleeping. I swear he likes that bed more than he likes me... She whistles and he wakes, cocking his head at her. "Want to go see Sandal?" He leaps off the bed and wags his tail furiously, making her laugh.
They'd collected a lot of valuable things off of the bodies of the dead. Marian hates the plunder, but they have to feed themselves somehow when they're not being subsidized by a friendly and grateful arl. Marian has a few things, but Alistair and Sten have more, and she collects all of it before borrowing one of the guards to help her take it down to the village, where Bodahn is waiting for them. Cú and Sandal play some sort of game that involves a lot of barking and laughter while Marian and Bodahn haggle; normally Alistair would be doing this, given that he's got a talent for it and experience where she has none, but she trusts Bodahn not to cheat her too outrageously.
"We're leaving for Orzammar in a week," Marian tells him in the end. "And we used too much of our supplies on the road; I'd be grateful if you could arrange to have them replaced at the castle."
Bodahn's hands slow on the sovereigns he's counting out, but they don't stop. "Orzammar?" he says thoughtfully. "I wasn't expecting that."
Marian frowns. "It's not a problem, is it?"
"Not..." Bodahn carefully squares a stack of five sovereigns and sighs. "Orzammar isn't going to be welcoming us home anytime soon, my boy and I. We're surfacers."
He stops, like that should mean something to her. Actually... Something teases at the furthest corners of her mind, something she'd read so long ago that it's only a memory of a memory. She can't get it to come any closer, though. The confusion must shine on her face, because Bodahn takes a deep breath and explains Orzammar, its society and structure, the rigid caste system that governs their lives and the reason he'd been expelled from it.
She doesn't have to think about how she feels about his confession – she doesn't care. Dead men don't care about their possessions. He'd been foolish, true, but that was his business and not hers. This is only a concern because – "Do you mean to say that you can't even enter Orzammar?"
Bodahn nods. "We're dead to them, so to speak. We're only fit for dirt and the sky. We'd weaken the Stone, you see." He shrugs, making two more stacks without even watching his hands. "It's a funny place, Orzammar. It's nothing like human cities."
He draws her pictures with his stories: the city in the deep carved out of stone, the flowing lava that illuminate it, the cavern roof that's only barely visible overhead. At the same time, he tells her more than she thinks he meant to. The dwarves are a society that's quickly ossifying itself into annihilation. She can't judge what their culture does to survive the never-ending, ever-present threat of darkspawn pressing up from below, but she doesn't think she'd want to live there.
"I could use anything you can tell us about the people we may be dealing with, Bodahn," Marian says regretfully. She wishes she didn't need to ask him – she doesn't want to remind him of a place he must miss – but he's her best source of information, even if it's slightly out of date. At least she'll be able to trust that it's not skewed.
At least he doesn't seem to mind.
Bodahn remembers quite a bit of gossip, things that were new to him when he left and are probably old news now – King Aeducan's mission to reconnect with the lost city of Kal Sharok, the name of his latest mistress, the ebbs and flows of the subtle, contentious, and never-ending maneuvering between the Houses for precedence. He tells her about the Shaperate, the keepers of the memories, and the iron hold they have on tradition and society. From there he winds on through the more prominent houses in his own merchant caste and the names of some of the more influential members of other houses, including three Proving champions, two bar owners, and King Aeducan's personal armorsmith.
It's thirsty work. She buys Bodahn a pint when he runs dry, but the stories seem to go on forever, Orzammar without end. It's deep in the evening when he starts to repeat himself; she makes her excuses and takes it slow on the way back to the castle, turning over what she's learned and fitting in the few things she'd already known from her books. Cú seems content to keep her slow pace, trotting off now and again to smell something beside the path.
Marian hopes that this trip to Orzammar won't be as interesting as the rest of their journey might suggest – but she knows it's probably a forlorn hope.