CHAPTER: Picking Feathers
Liliana and Yasmin were under Leliana's tent in front of the chantry discussing the shift in command structure. "So, Cullen took that better than I thought he would," Yasmin muttered to Leliana as they left the war room. It had been almost ten hours since their vote that morning. Cullen had been called in and informed of his demotion. "I was expecting a fight…not…" Yasmin looked troubled.
"Relief?" Leliana supplied. "I knew he was suffering. I knew he'd been suffering since the Blight. But to abstain entirely from Lyrium is something I didn't think he'd be able to keep up. I believe that Ser Cauthrien explained it to him best. He will remain as her personal advisor. It's not a bad post I suppose, and his former men will still see him around, supporting Ella. This could have been far messier a transition."
"Yes," Yasmin still looked troubled.
"Yasmin? Are you alright?" Leliana asked.
"While I am absolute in my opinion appointing Ella was the right choice, I fear I may have misjudged Cullen." Yasmin shifted uncomfortably. "I don't think I was wrong in the most direct sense. He should not have been put in command. But perhaps my interactions with him were on bad days for him."
"Let it never be said the man has no redeeming qualities. Even I am envious of his hair," Leliana giggled. Yasmin chuckled along, relieving some of her stress. Leliana continued in a slightly more serious tone, "But I've also seen the man at his worst and am reminded why removing him from command was necessary. I find him arrogant, and racist towards elves in a way he'd honestly deny. It's in the little things, but he'd never turn an elf away from the Inquisition that's for sure. Solas is proof enough of that."
Leliana continued, "His stance on mages is far more damning, but nothing unsurprising from a Templar. He did after all attempt to persuade my Kallian to butcher the mages in Kinloch Hold down to the last child. He has a kind of courage in battle that would allow him to fight to the death, a courage that I fear we'll need more of. When he gives his loyalty it's absolute.
Leliana ran a gloved hand through her hair before she resumed, "I have seen very few examples of absolute evil, and Cullen could frankly have been far worse a man than he is. But he just isn't the best available option anymore. When this started, perhaps. It's why I didn't poison him once Cassandra had decided to bring him with us when we left the hell that had become Kirkwall. But with Ella at the Helm of our army, things have certainly changed for the better. Unless we are all somehow horribly wrong about her."
Yasmin nodded and said with a raised eyebrow, "So if I come across a better spymaster, you'd expect me to replace you?"
"Well," Leliana said with a grin, "If such a person exists, then I'll step down. But I wish you luck on that search. I think Empress Celene's former elven paramour Briala may be the best replacement if I fall. But you'd need to guarantee her significant positive changes for elves across Orlais, at the very least." Suddenly Leliana's humorous demeanour got very dark. The Bard's expression dropped, and Yasmin could see as plain as day that the redhead was feeling a crushing amount of guilt. Why?
"Leliana, are you alright?" Yasmin asked with a small grin. Leliana tried to shake herself out of it but Yasmin lightly tapped Leliana's cheek, preventing her from leaving this conversation. "You're usually flawless with hiding your emotions. What is different about Briala specifically?"
"It's a long story, and it's a complicated one," Leliana tried to deflect. Yasmin's eyes glowed for a moment, and Leliana realised that their skin was touching. Oh no. Leliana remembered too late about Yasmin's odd empathic powers; about her tendency to see and retain the memories of others. Leliana flinched away at how invasive Yasmin was with how she used her powers on even friends.
Yasmin recoiled and clutched the table as she gasped for breath. "The Purge of the Val Royeaux Alienage was on Justinia's order?" Yasmin's voice was a hoarse whisper. "And you. You were her messenger to the Empress Celene to coerce her into sending in her soldiers." Yasmin's wide eyes met Leliana's.
There was no mistaking the guilt in Leliana's eyes now. And with a sickening feeling, Yasmin knew what had to happen now. What she had to do. What Empathy inside her compelled her to do. But just as she reached out again to show Leliana the horrors of Val Royeaux's most recent Alienage Purge, one of her agents walked up to the tent. His boots clacking on the pebbles loudly enough in advance for Yasmin to retract the hand reaching for Leliana's face. "Sister Nightingale, a word?" he said before Yasmin turned around and revealed herself. "Herald! Forgive me for interrupting."
Yasmin gave Leliana a withering glare before turning a warmer expression to the young man. "Not at all. I was just leaving," she turned to Leliana, "Do Josephine and Cassandra know?" Leliana silently thanked Andraste for Yasmin refraining from venting their dirty laundry to the whole of Haven.
"No and yes," the spymaster replied curtly.
Yasmin smirked, "Tell our dear ambassador. I'll take my cues from her on this matter. Perhaps some time and distance will cool my head. Until later then, Sister." With that, Yasmin forced herself to leave Leliana before the compulsion to force the memories of tragedy Leliana was partly responsible for became too strong to resist. Or rather, she tried to. Not five paces away from the tent she heard the conversation taking place between Leliana and her agent.
"He was one of my best agents…you know what to do, make it painless if you can," the Spymaster said reluctantly.
"Do we have a traitor in our midst?" Yasmin asked as she found herself back in the tent.
"It would seem we do," Leliana replied, though she was very careful of the distance she maintained from Yasmin. "Do you disagree with my course of action?"
Yasmin considered, "Wouldn't it be more advantageous to take the man alive and learn his secrets? Why he betrayed you, and who he's working for now?"
"And allow him the time to compromise other agents? I think not," Leliana replied almost haughtily.
Yasmin shrugged. She didn't particularly care one way or another. The man would surely meet his death. "Wouldn't you want to sink you own knife into him instead?" Yasmin said with a mirthless grin.
Leliana paused to consider the Herald. She wasn't exactly sure what the woman was after in this situation. To her frustration, her heart was beating rather fast due to their interaction a few minutes ago that was decidedly threatening.
Though it offered a chance for the Nightingale to see what Yasmin was like as an abomination. The rogue Seeker seemed not a slave. But she was certainly obsessed or compelled with forcing people to empathize with their victims when Yasmin deemed them to have done something potentially irredeemable. Perhaps most importantly, Yasmin didn't seem to differentiate between friend and foe when she decided to employ this unnerving and traumatizing ability of hers. At this conclusion, Leliana felt shivers on the nape of her neck.
Leliana was relieved, and more than a little surprised that Yasmin had reached a compromise, or as much of one as she could allow herself to. Josephine would not be happy with her, even if she understood the political situation that led Justinia to pressure Empress Celene into such a brutal act.
The messenger, one of Charter's men, was standing there with his eyes flitting between his boss and his prophet. Yasmin noticed this while Leliana was distracted and shot the nervous man what she hoped was a disarmingly reassuring grin. She was in the middle of a crisis of conscience regarding Leliana at the moment, so she hoped her gesture of goodwill to the Bard's agent wasn't off-putting. It mostly worked.
Leliana thought about her dilemma with her traitorous agent for a few seconds where silence reigned. Her mind was a tempest; a war between her reflex for vengeance and her kinder soul preaching mercy. Perhaps she could just kill him later? That made sense as a compromise to her. Leliana looked her agent in the eye and said, "I want him alive. Make it so."
"It will be done Sister Nightingale," he saluted. He then turned and saluted the Herald before promptly speeding off to follow his mistress' orders. He thanked Andraste he was free from the dangerous tension in that tent. It had set his teeth on edge, and it was far above his pay grade to make any sort of direct inquiry about. Perhaps Charter would know what was going on between the Herald and the Nightingale.
After Leliana's agent left the tent, there was a tense silence between the two women. Yasmin was seemingly taking the Purge of the Val Royeaux Alienage almost personally, and then it hit her. Leliana viciously chastised herself internally for disremembering Yasmin's elven heritage. Not just that she was half elf, but that she had grown up with exclusively elves during her most formative years. No wonder the tall, dark woman was damn near trembling with rage.
The Nightingale looked at the Seeker and tried to pick out her elven features, if any were present in the towering woman. Yasmin's ears were round, smaller than normal actually. Her eyes were odd, heterochromatic, but that wasn't to do with her elven heritage, just her status as an abomination. At least that's what Leliana thought. The Seeker's overall proportions though were too…lithe for a full human. It was very subtle, and if the Herald hadn't brought up her parentage, Leliana wouldn't have caught it. Her proportions were mostly elf-like with her curves and elongated arms. Her dreadful strength and daunting height put most doubts about her being anything but human to bed. But to a knowing eye that was actively looking for evidence of the woman being a halfling, the evidence was there.
Leliana chided herself for thinking in purely physical terms. The Herald was raised Dalish in her most formative years. So, the horrific purging of the Val Royeaux alienage would instinctually invoke a level of horror and grief from the woman. The Herald of Andraste was half elf, and thus she felt her people's suffering. And as Leliana looked back up into those mismatched vibrant eyes, she knew what she had to do to even have a chance at regaining whatever trust and goodwill she had established with Yasmin. The Left Hand of the Divine almost retched at the instinctual terror coiling in her abdomen once she had come to her decision to submit herself to Yasmin's ghastly gift of empathy.
Leliana's breathing hitched, but she held her composure. She knew suffering. Intimately. She could bear the atrocity she helped order; she knew she could. She could not allow the inner circle to fracture so soon after being repaired by Ella Cauthrien's appointment. So, she had to bear it. Leliana let out a long breath before meeting Yasmin's questioning eyes, so much colder than they had been when Yasmin walked up to her.
"Follow me," she said curtly as she walked around the Chantry into the woods. Yasmin followed her wordlessly as the Nightingale led them to a clearing a solid ten minutes away from Haven proper. They would not be overheard or disturbed here. Leliana let out a shaky breath as she turned around to face her reckoning.
Leliana extended a trembling left hand, but her eyes were clear. "Show me, Yasmin. I'm ready." Snow had begun to fall. Light flecks of pale ice began to coat her hood and splashing across Yasmin's mane of dusky hair like ethereal freckles. The subtle hungry glow in her mismatched eyes certainly enhanced the ethereal look in Leliana's opinion. To the Bard, Yasmin's sheer presence in that moment was serene. As serene as the black widow before she strikes.
While surprised, Yasmin reached forth and clasped Leliana's hand in both of her own. "So be it."
In a rush of power, memories from the various elven victims of the Purge rushed through Leliana's mind like the flood.
Leliana started babbling as tears coursed down her face.
"No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I didn't want this. Andraste…Andraste forgive me…. please."
Yasmin's eyes dimmed back to normal as she let one final memory through their bond as the compulsion to make Leliana feel the horror she had been partially responsible for vanished.
Leliana screamed softly and collapsed boneless into Yasmin's swift arms; catching the Nightingale before she hit the cold snowy ground.
The Purge of the Alienage is mentioned during the mission at Halamshiral, and the novel explains how Empress Celene was pressured into it by the Divine who dies at the beginning of Inquisition. Justinia sent Leliana to pressure Celene into doing it, 'for the sake of stability in orlais'. Genocide isn't the answer, and that the most 'liberal' of the Divines was willing to take such a step was very revealing.
So if that was confusing, I apologize.