Sorry to take so long to update, I've been very focused on finishing Nanowrimo, which I did. Just barely. Now just waiting to see if I get depressed.

Hope all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a good one, and are having a nice Christmas season.

Preparations

"Absolutely not." I frowned at Vivienne, appalled that she would even make such a suggestion. We were all - Leliana, Josephine, Vivienne, and I - huddled around the table in the war room, which had, for the moment, been transformed to reflect the battlefield of the ballroom, with fabric swatches and sketches of possible designs. "I would rather send him with Bull and Sera than use him that way."

Vivienne's voice was unexpectedly gentle. "We did offer him that option, my dear."

"He opted for dressing as a freed slave before I could even finish justifying the suggestion," Josephine added. "He said that he would do whatever was necessary to help your decision retain the proper degree of bite."

"When I mentioned it later," Leliana put in, "he warned me that you would be offended on his behalf, and advised me to remind you that there are few actions more inherently proud than escaping enslavement."

I sighed, but felt the corners of my lips twitching, amused by how well Solas knew me. "Oh, very well," I grumbled. "It appears I am entirely outnumbered. Go over the list again?"

"Dorian as Hessarian - and yes, he is delighted and already planning what to wear in order to strike the appropriate balance between villainy and humble repentance," Leliana told me.

"You have heard that some of the younger mages already believe he is some sort of emissary or avatar of Hessarian?" I asked her, fairly certain she would have. "This won't help."

She flicked her fingers dismissively. "The rumor isn't dangerous, at least not in its current iteration," she assured me. "My people are…managing things."

"Cullen will go as Cathaire," Josephine continued. "He was - "

"Commander of Andraste's forces, yes," I said. "I did some reading this morning to familiarize myself with the most famous of her followers and confidants. That match seems wildly appropriate."

"Just so," Josephine agreed, her voice amused. "I'm not certain we would have convinced him to participate with any other selection."

"Cathaire is set in stone, understood," I chuckled. "What about Cassandra?"

"Though not…especially enthusiastic, I have convinced her to assume the guise of the original Justinia, disciple of Andraste," Leliana said.

That made sense to me. "What is her objection?" I asked.

"Besides wearing a dress?" Leliana replied dryly. "She…believes it impolitic to invoke Justinia's name in any capacity, in light of recent events."

"Cassandra?" I asked, surprised.

"I agree with her," Josephine announced. "Leliana and Vivienne feel differently, however."

"The Inquisition was sanctioned by Divine Justinia," Leliana reminded all of us. "Whatever affront that reminder may cause, it is, quite simply, the truth."

"All right," I said slowly. "What does the affront gain us?"

"Legitimacy," Vivienne told me decisively.

"Are we lacking that?" I asked. "After closing the Breach?"

"We have a Dalish Inquisitor who is also a mage," Vivienne told me dryly. "We are always lacking legitimacy, I fear."

"Right, so then what does the reminder about Justinia gain us?" I repeated. "Are we going to spend our time and energy, not to mention our good will, constantly trying to shore up our legitimacy with these kinds of reminders?"

"It appears desperate," Josephine said, lifting her chin.

"That wasn't your objection before, Josie," Leliana told her wryly. "You said 'it does nothing to support the Inquisitor's purpose with regard to the elves.'"

"It does, however, provide a useful distraction," Vivienne maintained. "We don't wish to approach the subject of the treatment of elves within the empire too directly."

I thought that over, trying to weigh the degree of distraction I desired, but I likely wasn't sufficiently familiar with the Game to judge. Still, it didn't hurt to offer alternatives, and one had just occurred to me. "What if we reminded them of our legitimacy in a less inflammatory way?" I asked. "What if…Cassandra went as Ameridan?"

"It would get her out of a dress," Leliana allowed immediately, clearly amused.

Vivienne was slower to react. "It…isn't a bad compromise, my dear," she said after a long moment. "But if she appears dressed as Inquisitor Ameridan, you are all but announcing she is next in line to take over the Inquisition should anything befall you."

I spent a moment reflecting on that, and then shrugged. "Good. There's no one I would trust more than Cassandra to carry the Inquisition forward. She would, for one thing, give up the position in a heartbeat if she believed someone else better suited to it."

"If you endorse that inevitable reading of the gesture, I whole-heartedly support it," Josephine said. "It's subtle, and it has the benefit of keeping Cassandra's hem away from her toes where she would be certain to tear it."

"So that's your real reason for objecting to Justinia," Leliana teased her.

"It is one of my real reasons," Josephine retorted, though I could hear the smile in her voice. "For Vivienne and myself," she went on in a brisk tone, "we have been debating Andraste's childhood friend Ealisay and her daughter Ebris, though we haven't decided who should take which role."

I considered that. "Doesn't it feel strange to you that some of us are dressing up as her family members? What does that have to do with her deeds or the Inquisition?"

"Oh? I enjoyed the sense that we were circling Andraste without ever actually invoking her," Leliana told me. "It contextualizes Shartan, bolstering his importance, don't you think?"

Josephine and Vivienne both seemed to agree, and so I put it aside for the moment, unable to put words to my instinctive rejection of the plan. "Who do you intend to be?" I asked Leliana instead.

"Brona, Andraste's mother. She was from a tribe within the heartland of what is now Orlais," she explained.

My sense that this was the wrong strategy deepened. "I think…you are focusing too much on Andraste as a person," I told them slowly, trying to understand my own position on the matter. "That would be fine if we were trying to win over the Chantry or win support in a religious sense, but I'm much more interested in the political than the religious. I think we ought to focus on Andraste, and Andrastianism, as an agent of change. Her family history doesn't matter for that."

All three of them were silent for a moment. "I will go as Drakon I," Leliana announced, and the rest of us looked up at her in surprise. "Who better to bracket Cassandra's Ameridan?" she asked playfully. "Anyway, it will bolster what we have already done by choosing Henri de Lydes' portrait of Shartan: remind Orlais that it has always been central to questions of elven freedom. Where the empire goes, the rest of the south follows."

"It won't offend Celene?" I asked.

"Perhaps," my spymaster allowed. "But publicly? Why? Why would it offend her to be reminded of her illustrious ancestor? Publicly , it is most easily read as a compliment and an acknowledgment of all her family has done for the Chantry."

"Reading it as a compliment will strengthen both Gaspard and Celene, and correspondingly weaken Briala," Josephine observed. "Which is not a protest," she added quickly, "I am merely thinking through all the consequences."

"We must have someone besides Ebris, then," Vivienne said decisively.

"Havran?" I offered. "You would make a very good Havran, Vivienne. By all the accounts I have read, it took enormous strength of character and determination to secure Andraste's ashes somewhere safe from the world."

"You flatter me, my dear," she said, waving away the implied praise. "I cannot possibly compare my trials to those faced by the early Disciples. But I readily admit to admiring the man, and would be pleased to wear his mask in service to you and the Inquisition."

"That leaves Josephine as Ealisay, which seems perfectly fine to me," I told them. "What of Varric, though? Do any dwarves factor into Andraste's history?"

"Not that I know of, but it doesn't matter," Leliana said. "Varric is appearing as an artist patronized by the Inquisition, not as part of our…household, I suppose we might say, though of course the court's ideas of houses and patrons don't apply to us. We gain prestige by patronizing a popular author, but, in the eyes of the court, he is there to excite interest, not to directly participate."

"I doubt he'll be heartbroken," I said dryly.

"Now," Josephine said, consulting one of the many lists she habitually carried, "we have to run the change to Ameridan past Cassandra to ensure she has no further objections. Then I need to check her table manners and dancing, and must begin teaching you both."

My feelings on that subject must have showed on my face, because Leliana laughed. "You will be granted a certain amount of leeway as you are not Orlesian, but the more accurately you can conform to Orlesian codes of etiquette, the more it will impress the court."

"Some of the court," Vivienne corrected her. "We should be fully honest: there are those who will scorn you as a Dalish barbarian for every mistake you make, and will speak of you as a trained dog - or, more likely, a trained rabbit - on a leash every time you do something precisely as you ought. I'm sorry to say that this is simply the nature of the court and the Game, my dear."

"And the nature of Orlesian prejudice," Leliana said quietly. "It will be worse for you, as an elf, but I imagine that even our dear Madame de Fer has faced her share of that sort of prejudice. I know Josephine has, on occasion."

Hadn't I said as much to Dorian? I took a deep breath. "I…don't think I truly understand, not yet, but I will try my best to learn, and also not to react to anything said about me."

Vivienne touched my hand briefly. "I admit that I was concerned, darling, but then I saw you face down the Keeper in the Exalted Plains. You were not perfect, but you did well, and I hope that the scorn of one of your own people is of more personal consequence than the scorn of any human aristocrat. If I am right, I think you will master them all with ease, no matter what they say of you. Then their own vitriol and lack of composure will diminish them without the need for you, or for any of us, to do anything."

"Nor will you be without defenders both within our party and without," Josephine added. "Your other actions in the Exalted Plains - rescuing besieged soldiers, offering hospitality, healing, and prayers for the dying, seeking out the caches of final letters - have won you far more support than I think any of us dared to hope. Your attentions were so personal, so spontaneous in their generosity, that you caught many off guard. Those steeped in the Game are entirely unprepared for sincerity." Her only slightly blurred smile of approval warmed me.

"Let us take a small break before we begin discussing etiquette," Leliana suggested. "If you will retrieve Cassandra, Inquisitor…?"

I wasn't certain whether she was sending me to ensure I took some fresh air, or whether there were things she wanted to discuss openly with Josephine and Vivienne that she couldn't with me present. Perhaps it was both. "Gladly," I replied.

It would have been faster to send a servant, of course - I had to ask someone where Cassandra was - but I couldn't deny that I relished the walk. Here in the mountains, the spring breeze was still brisk enough to bring some color to my cheeks and banish any tiredness I might have felt following the hour or more we had spent crowded around the war table.

Cassandra had claimed the upper floor of the building otherwise inhabited by our quartermaster, and that was where I found her, bent over a table with a book and a pen. She glanced up at my footsteps on the stairs. "Writing does not come naturally to me, as I'm certain you can imagine," she told me somewhat sourly.

"Are you trying to compete with Varric now?" I teased her.

That won me at least a brief sound of grudging amusement, even if it couldn't really be called a laugh. "I haven't his talent for blather." She sighed. "Historians will one day ask what happened at Adamant fortress, in the Fade. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. It must be recorded."

I was surprised. "That's…not a bad idea. Creators only know what Varric will say about it in his inevitable book."

"Exactly," she replied. "Better to have an accurate account. Or so I thought…until I started writing." She rose abruptly and went to the railing overlooking the stairs. "I still don't know what to say about the spirit of the Divine," she confessed as I joined her. "I saw her there - heard her voice. Yet I cannot claim with certainty it was really her. The Chantry teaches us that the souls of the dead pass through the Fade, so it could have been her. Yet even so…"

"Does the Chantry teach that?" I asked, surprised. "My people say the same, only our destination is the Beyond, and we have no real stories about what it looks like. It's just said that no one returns, and eventually there is peace."

"Do you believe it was Justinia?" Cassandra asked me.

"Whatever she was, a spirit was certainly involved," I told Cassandra with confidence. "But…it wasn't just a passing spirit that took a fleeting interest in her. I don't know whether it was one that had been following her for years and knew her well enough to reflect her with detailed accuracy, or whether pieces of her were caught in the Fade when she died there, and one of those pieces came to reside with a sympathetic spirit, or whether it was something else so entirely outside of my experience that I cannot conceive of it. All I can say is that there was a spirit, and there was also something of her."

"There was something of her," Cassandra agreed, and her voice was soft, both affectionate and sad. "It held, if nothing else, her lingering will to do good - it helped us, as Justinia herself would have. But why would a spirit assume her form?"

"Spirits are drawn to people and actions that mirror their purpose," I told her. "If Justinia was one particular thing strongly enough - faith, or hope, or benevolence - a spirit with that purpose might have been moved to reflect her. What throws me is that it had an aura. Spirits… are auras, in a sense. They don't have one as separate part of them, the way people do."

Cassandra rested her head in her hands with another sigh. "What am I to say of her, then? I must interpret what we saw, yet I am no priest, no philosopher. I am a warrior."

"Hound Solas?" I suggested.

She laughed. "Then I would no doubt have to interpret his words, a task for which I am sadly unequipped."

We fell silent for a moment, long enough for me to remember why I had come searching for her, but she spoke again before I could bring up the ball: "When I realized we were physically in the Fade, I was terrified almost beyond reason. The last time such a thing happened, we created darkspawn. We created Corypheus. The world needs to know the truth this time, as clearly as I can give it. No more legends lost to the ages."

"That's a worthy goal, Cassandra," I assured her.

"I hope so." She looked at me sharply, then. "But you must have come here for something. I'm sorry, I never even paused to ask."

I smiled at her. "I'm just here to tell you that I managed to get you out of wearing a dress at Halamshiral."