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.)

22. Kirkwall — I

9:30 Eluveista 3

The Gallows, Kirkwall, Confederation of Free Cities

---

The crossing was absolutely miserable.

They'd landed in Amaranthine early in the morning after three days at sea. Amaranthine was one of the oldest cities in Ferelden, and more impressive than Denerim in its own way. The city proper was somewhat removed from the water, the sprawling dockyards surrounded by smiths and tanners and craftsmen and whatever else, twisted streets housing hundreds of people. The docks and the surrounding buildings were hugged against the harbor by tall grayish stone walls — even extending into the water on both sides in the form of iron fences, any attacking army would need to take the gates or scale the walls — forcing the residents to build up rather than out, stone buildings stretching up three storeys, four, five, six. In places they seemed to lean against the walls, which looked like a bad idea, Marian couldn't imagine that was stable...

The city proper was a couple hundred yards away from the wall, perched atop a nearby hill, itself hidden by walls. From the shore, it was obvious that the walls protecting the harbor and the city were connected, a long line of stone joining the two. Marian assumed it was so defenders could move back and forth if they were under siege, supplies coming in from the sea moving into the city. That did seem like a lot of work, though, couldn't they have just built the city on the shore?

Though, the walls didn't actually mark the edge of the city — much shorter buildings were huddled against the base, sprawling out in a twisting, seemingly random mess. It was hard to tell at a distance, but Marian thought these buildings were much smaller, simple and flimsy and packed closely together, probably the homes of people who couldn't afford to live inside the walls. They looked sort of miserable, actually, much worse than the outer areas of Gwaren.

They were stuck in Amaranthine for nearly a week, but Marian didn't see much of the city itself. There were a surprising number of refugees here attempting to flee across the sea, much more than she'd expected — the darkspawn couldn't have advanced so far yet, and it was early for the Contest to start driving people from their homes. The Arl's men were posted at the gates of the city, questioning anyone attempting to enter, barring all who didn't have legitimate business inside. Which excluded all the refugees, naturally. Out on the water, Marian had caught a glimpse of spires stretching into the sky glinting bronze, which must be the famous Cathedral of Our Lady Redeemer, and a hulking, blunt stone structure she assumed was the keep. She saw no more of the city proper than that.

Bethany had been very disappointed they weren't able to visit the Cathedral, but unfortunately there'd been nothing Marian had been able to do about that.

Thankfully, it hadn't been difficult to find someone willing to ferry them to Kirkwall. Refugees had already been flooding the city, and a few enterprising sailors had already started making extra money bringing them across the Waking Sea. They were even bringing them all primarily to Kirkwall — Ostwick was closer, but Marian suspected from the tidbits she'd overheard that the authorities there had turned the first batch of refugees away. The fare they were charging was ridiculous, easily five times what they'd paid to get this far. Unfortunately, after a day or two poking around, Marian had decided they weren't going to get better than that. She'd managed to argue their captain down to three half-shillings, but still, her coin stash wasn't looking like nearly as much of a cushion as it had only a few days earlier.

It didn't help that they hadn't been able to leave right away — all the ferries were already out, and there were so many people trying to flee, they'd have to wait their turn. They hadn't needed to pay for a place to sleep in the meanwhile, that would have drained them of coin very quickly, instead put up with dozens of other people all crammed into an empty warehouse that smelled unpleasantly of sheep, fish, and shit. (Unpleasant, but better than going completely broke.) Of course, they'd still needed to pay for food and drink, bits gradually dribbling away here and there. Aveline had been help there, paying for a few of their meals without being asked, but Marian still ended up skipping a couple, just to stretch out their limited wealth as far as possible.

Carver had tried to do it too, but Marian had bought and handed him food over his protests. She knew it took time to recover even from magically-healed wounds, that people needed to eat more than usual to replace whatever blood and flesh they might have lost, so Carver could stop trying to be so dignified and stoic about his noble self-sacrifice and eat his dinner like a good boy.

(He'd grumbled about it a little, but he'd given up very quickly — she knew she was right about the healing, must be hungry.)

And Aveline had been a great help in more than one way. She'd decided she would be coming with them to Kirkwall — the king she'd served was dead, and going back to Denerim would only get her killed to no benefit — and had participated in Marian's talks with the local sailors. See, she was still wearing the King's colors — Marian didn't know for certain, but she suspected at least some of the men she'd talked to would have been far less accommodating if she hadn't had a Kingsman looming over her shoulder. Gave her a sense of legitimacy she couldn't possibly have on her own, and an intimidation factor she couldn't manage without shooting magic around, which would certainly end badly...

Anyway, possibly thanks to Aveline, they'd quickly had passage to Kirkwall arranged, and had even been moved up the line a bit. Marian had later learned there was a crowd of refugees waiting outside the walls, the people in the warehouse were actually at the front of the line — without Aveline, they might have ended up being stuck in Amaranthine for an extra week or two. As irritating as it had been to be stuck in the smelly, crowded warehouse, her stash of coins slowly whittled away, it could have been much worse.

They did have valuables to sell to keep them going, but Marian was glad they hadn't been forced to do it there — opportunistic merchants had been circling the refugees, like vultures, they would have gotten ripped off.

The crossing to Kirkwall had been even worse than the trip to Amaranthine. The boat they were on was kind of a piece of shit, for one thing. It was an awkward, lumbering, boxy thing, perhaps the least graceful-looking boat she'd seen yet. There was a sort of cabin-looking thing on top, where she assumed the crew and such slept, but the refugees had been crammed into a large space below-decks. The ceiling was somewhat low, high enough Marian could walk comfortably but Carver kept ducking his head, stretching from one side of the boat to the other, maybe three-quarters of the length front to back, save for a few pillars here and there the space completely open, with no dividing walls of any kind.

Marian was pretty sure this boat was meant to transport livestock. They weren't in any place to be picky, but still, that was irritating.

Even while they'd still been in the calmer waters of the harbor, it'd already been miserable. The place reeked, terribly. They weren't the first batch of refugees to be taken across, and they clearly hadn't put much effort into cleaning it up — body odor and piss and sick all mixed together, it was vile. The space wasn't enclosed, large sections of the ceiling made into a lattice instead of solid wood, wind and sunlight streaming into the hold. But it wasn't enough, not nearly enough, Marian could barely breathe from the oppressive weight of the stench.

And it only got worse. When they came out into the open sea, the floor started rocking with the waves. The motion wasn't as dramatic as the boat they'd taken to Amaranthine, the blunt, boxy shape of the boat not rolling to match the waves as easily, but it was still more than enough for Marian to be struck with terrible sea-sickness all over again. They were crammed in here so tightly with all these other poor sons of bitches there was hardly room to lie down, Marian ended up half propped against the wall, half leaning against Mother. She kept idly playing with Marian's hair, which didn't make the nausea better, exactly, but at least it was a distraction.

There was, of course, absolutely no privacy at all. That wasn't so bad for the most part, since it wasn't like they were doing anything they'd really want privacy for anyway...until it came to relieving themselves, anyway — that was a problem. A big problem. There were a few pots and stuff around, which were then passed up to the crew to be emptied, but they were pretty filthy to begin with (which of course only got worse), and there weren't very many of them. By the time the sky started to darken, the stink in here had only gotten worse, it was starting to get seriously disgusting.

And then, shortly after nightfall, they were hit by a storm. The waves rose even higher, because of course they did, making her nausea even worse, and the rain fell straight through the patchy ceiling to drench the refugees, because of course it did. At one point, they hit a wave badly while someone just so happened to be handing up a used pot — he dropped it, because of course he did, and the thing shattered against the floor with the obvious disgusting results, because of fucking course it did.

Marian threw up for the first time right around then. It wouldn't be the last.

Suffice to say, it was one of the most absolutely miserable experiences of her entire life. Enough that, nearing the end of the second day, she was almost starting to wish they'd died against the darkspawn. She didn't really mean that, but ugh...

They couldn't see anything down here, with solid walls to every side, above them only blue sky alternating with roiling clouds. So the first hint Marian got that they were nearing Kirkwall — on the fourth day, maybe? she'd lost count — was when the constant rocking of the floor eased, the sea finally calming. There was a bit of shuffling around and chattering, people standing up and moving around, but Marian was still trying not to be sick, she wasn't paying that much attention.

"Oh," Mother muttered, her voice low and thin, "the Twins."

"What?" Marian forced herself to sit up a little, opening her eyes, blinking against the shafts of sunlight slashing into the hold. Bethany was sitting right next to her, leaning against Carver, much like Marian was Mother, Carver's arm loosely wrapped around her — Bethany still looked a little sick, but other than that they seemed fine...

"No, up there," she said, pointing overhead. Marian turned to look, and then froze, gaping.

Overhead toward the right, looming high above them through the slats of the ceiling, was perhaps the largest object Marian had ever seen — it was no doubt even larger than Flemeth as a dragon, larger than the whole bloody Chantry back at Lothering. It was a statue of a man, cast in bronze, gleaming bright in the sun, around numerous little nicks and dings and dents scattered all over the surface tarnishing greenish. It was hard to pick out too many details through the gaps in the ceiling, but Marian was pretty sure the man — and it was a man, he was naked, the sculpture, um, very detailed — was weeping, his shoulders hunched over somewhat, both hands covering his face. There was something at the base of his neck, hard to tell from here, an absurdly thick chain hanging down, down, and down out of sight.

Carver let out a scoff. "Kirkwallers sure know how to make people feel welcome, don't they?"

Mother shifted in place a little bit, but she didn't say anything.

The enormous, unpleasant statue slowly drifted by, eventually vanishing behind them. Soon they passed into shadow, as though clouds had passed over the sun. Overhead, Marian could make out black cliff faces, both in front and to her back (the ship's right and left), sheer rock stretching hundreds of feet into the air, the face carved in patterns and shapes she couldn't make out from here. Far above in front of her she made out the lines of walls and a tower, a fortress sitting right on the corner of the cliffs, overlooking both the sea and the canal into the city — Marian assumed there'd be one behind her too, but she couldn't see it from this angle.

The rocking of the boat ceased entirely. She heard a heavy pounding from above in a slow, steady rhythm, joined with the noisy shouting and groaning of a dozen men. As she couldn't see a damn thing, it took her a moment to realize what was happening: rowing, the crew was rowing, the cliffs must cut off the wind. For long minutes, as the boat was slowly pushed forward, all Marian could see were the opposing faces of black stone overhead, seeming to lean in toward each other, as though threatening to enclose the canal entirely.

Eventually, she had no idea how long, the walls pulled away, and soon all Marian could see was blue sky streaked with clouds. The rowing continued for a while longer, sometimes slowing, the tempo changing as the men were given new instructions. The crowd packed in around her shifted with impatience, the stench seeming to grow even worse by the minute with the wind no longer drawing some of it away. It took some time, but finally there was more shouting from overhead, clattering of oars being pulled up, a few beats, and then a heavy clunk as the boat gently hit something heavy, coming to a complete halt. They'd landed.

Marian let out a long sigh — if she ever had to get on a boat again it'd be too fucking soon...

It took them much longer to disembark than she would like. After a bit of shouting back and forth with whoever was on the docks, a part of the ceiling was unlatched and folded back, half of the front wall kicked down. The only way in and out from the hold was up the angled floor at one end and then down the ramp they'd just put down — the boat was obviously meant to move livestock, this was one of the more obvious reasons why. The exit was rather wide, so several people could disembark all at once, but there were a lot of people in here. Marian and her family were somewhere in the middle, they'd have to wait their turn.

As they slowly trickled toward the exit, Marian felt...something. She wasn't sure how to describe it. It felt almost...tingly, like lightning on the air, but it wasn't a feeling coming from outside, against her skin. Instead, it was something that seemed to rise from inside, a sharp but subtle energy seeming to seep into her blood. It was... Well, it felt sort of good, honestly — it was exciting, almost, a gleeful thrill at the edge of her awareness, making her feel just a little less miserable, lighter and quicker, more...more. Not a lot, just a little.

Marian shared a glance with Bethany, and knew immediately by the look on her face that she felt it too. It wasn't something she'd ever felt before, but even so, after a moment of thought she was pretty sure she knew what it was.

The Veil was thin here.

Finally coming up to the ramp, Mother jolted to a stop. Aveline, who'd been giving her a hand up the incline, turned to look back, but Mother wasn't looking at her, her eyes fixed up and forward. "Oh no..."

"Mother?" Carver pushed his way closer, his hand coming to her arm. "What's wrong?"

"This is the Gallows." Mother turned back to look at Marian and Bethany, just behind — they'd both drifted toward the back of their group, distracted by the odd feeling on the air. Her eyes had gone wide, her face pale, her breath thin. She was afraid. "The Circle, we're landing at the Circle."

...Oh. That was just their shit luck, wasn't it?

"We'll be okay, Mother. Keep going," Marian insisted, giving her shoulder a gentle push. She hesitated for a moment, but eventually turned, leading the way up with Carver and Aveline. As they followed, Marian wrapped her arm up with Bethany's, leaned close to her ear. "Make yourself small."

Bethany nodded, took in a slow breath. The tingling warmth of her magic against Marian's skin swiftly guttered out, so completely Marian couldn't even feel it at all anymore.

"Good." Marian concentrated for a second, pulling her own magic in, tamping it down — a technique Father had taught her ages ago, to hide her power from Templars and demons. It was a calculated risk, as it would take an extra second or two to cast a spell if she really needed to, but that wouldn't be a problem if they were never discovered in the first place. "It's okay if you slip a little, but make sure you hold it whenever a Templar is nearby." There was enough magic on the air here that they probably wouldn't notice anything at a distance, but if they were standing right next to them... Marian didn't know how well Templars could sense magic, but she wasn't risking it.

"I'll try. If we're going to be stuck here for a while, I don't know how long I can..."

"It's okay, Beth, just do it as much as you can. And whatever you do, do not cast anything. None at all."

Bethany nodded, the motion a little unsteady, obviously nervous. Giving her arm a reassuring squeeze, Marian pushed through toward the others' backs, finally stepping out of the hold.

Oh, Andraste's grace, fresh air! Marian hardly took in her surroundings at all for the first several seconds, focusing on taking one gulping breath after another, trying to wash away the foulness seeming to cling to her throat. Fuck, that had been awful, never again, never, never again...

They were standing in the shadow of a great fortress. Made out of the same black stone as the cliffs behind them, walls stretched high overhead — twelve, fifteen feet? at least? Marian couldn't see much from here, this close to them the walls blocked all but the highest tops of the buildings. There were three separate towers, looking peculiarly square — Marian wasn't an expert, but most of the towers she'd seen so far had been round — the tops crowned with little jagged zig-zagging designs. The one in the middle was both much wider and rather taller than the other two, all of them made of the same black stone as the walls, an occasional patch here and there done in an off-white granite, giving them all a peculiarly marbled appearance. Both the towers and the walls were accented here and there with sculptures and ornamentation, in places tarnished blue-ish green but in others gleaming bronze, almost eye-watering where it caught the sun, the structure thrown into a disorienting contrast of light and shadow.

Huge, and hard, and blocky, inorganic and inhospitable — yeah, Marian wasn't surprised this was the Circle.

The walls weren't set right up on the shore, leaving a narrow beach of glittering black sand, a walkway set right up against the base of the wall, simple wooden piers stretching out from it. Their boat hadn't docked at one of the piers, instead gently run aground against the sand — or not quite, the beach was so narrow it looked like the front had hit the stone walkway before the sand had actually stopped it. Weirdly, the walkway itself, a few columns here and there holding up a simple wooden roof providing shade, wasn't made out of the same black rock as everything else, instead more of that off-white stone and another variety a creamy pinkish-red. The white was the same color as the patches had been done in, the red must have been taken from a different source.

Stepping out onto the walkway, Marian noticed the black stone of the wall was unmarred, no sign of erosion or wear, as smooth and perfect as when it'd been carved. The white and red bricks, on the other hand, had worn down some, sharp corners and edges crumbled away. The black stone must be the original Tevinter work, still holding the original Tevinter enchantments, the modern additions and repairs not up to their absurd standards.

Many of the people leaving the boat were streaming toward the gate to the right, but most were spreading out across the walkway and the beach in both directions, plunging into the water — apparently, they felt so filthy from the trip they wanted to wash off immediately. That sounded like a great idea to her, so she turned off to the right and jumped off the walkway down into the sand, her boots scritching noisily against the gritty black grains. (Not entirely black, she could see now, little flecks of white and red and green peeking out here and there.) Following Carver, Mother, and Aveline down toward the water, she made to let go of Bethany's arm, but her sister was still clinging to her — either from nervousness or trying to keep her balance on the sand, Marian couldn't tell — so she just let her hold on.

Marian had swum in the river back home, and in the lake once on a trip with Father north, but she'd never even seen the ocean before their arrival at Gwaren. She'd heard before that sea water had salt and stuff in it, but had never been sure entirely what that meant — she hadn't realized she'd be able to smell it on the air, a sharp, tangy mix of scents she didn't have the words to describe, so very different from the freshwater she was used to. Growing up, she'd found the idea that people couldn't drink water from the sea very peculiar — it was water, wasn't it? the river emptied into it and everything, and that was drinkable... — but after actually getting a whiff of it she knew instinctively that drinking that shit would be a bad idea.

Still, she'd never gotten this close to the water before — unless she counted spray from waves crashing against the sides of boats, which she really didn't. That weird smell of the sea was an almost physical presence around her. It wasn't unpleasant, exactly, it didn't smell bad — especially not compared to what they'd been dealing with the last week or so — it was just...odd. The weird black sand was surprisingly slippery when wet, though Marian could only tell watching the others, Mother nearly falling, one arm caught by Carver and the other Aveline, Bethany clinging even harder than she had a second ago. Her boots must be gripping the sand better — thanks again to Duncan, she guessed.

The water was colder than the air, but not by very much, just enough it was noticeable. Once Marian was up to her waist, she started rubbing against her legs, scooping some up to splash over her chest and arms. She took off her father's coat to get at everything better (handing her pack to Bethany for a moment), washing the coat itself while she was at it — ugh, there was a something unpleasant caked on somewhere toward the bottom, Marian leaned over to grab a handful of sand to scrub at it with. (Carefully, she didn't want to damage the leather.) That would do. Thankfully her clothes weren't absorbent, the others (except Aveline) would probably end up having to replace everything. Once she had everything else, Bethany offered to help her rinse out her hair, Marian carefully sank to her knees and—

Ah, Andraste's tits, that was cold! Fuck...

They all waded back to shore, Marian feeling at least passably clean for the first time in what felt like forever. A little cold, though, they all were — Mother was even shivering, but unfortunately Marian couldn't warm her up right on the Templars' doorstep. And there were several Templars about, flanking the gates leading into the fortress, so. Not just Templars, there were also men in plain armor in gray and rusty-orange dotted here and there in the little square courtyard right outside the gate, a row of them blocking off the docks there. A couple boats had docked, workers waiting to carry in loads of supplies, currently prevented from doing their work by the crowd of refugees yelling at the armored men.

"Who are those men?" Aveline asked Mother, nodding at the commotion. They hadn't yet returned to the walkway, stalled on the beach while Bethany and Mother tried to ring out their hair.

Mother whipped her sodden hair back, turning to follow Aveline's gaze. "Oh, those are the colors of the army. I think they must be city guard, they wear the same uniform."

Aveline nodded. "If you want to linger here a moment, I'll go up and see what's going on."

"Sure," Marian chirped. "Thanks, Aveline."

The knight nodded again, turned and scrunched away across the sand. She hopped up onto the walkway and started pushing herself through the crowd, Marian quickly lost sight of her. Marian plopped down to a seat — if they moved Aveline might never be able to find them again — spreading her jacket across the sand to hopefully dry it out.

Carver flopped down onto his back nearby, his head nearly hitting her knee, let out a long, heavy sigh. "We made it. I almost can't believe it, everything that went wrong..."

"Yeah, I know." Bethany sat down next to him, her legs spread out across the sand — one hand started idly playing with Carver's hair, automatically, she hardly even seemed to realize she was doing it. "I was sure those darkspawn were going to kill us, and Amaranthine was awful. But here we are, in Kirkwall, just like we said."

Herself, Marian hadn't been discouraged about the shit at Gwaren or even Amaranthine, but yeah, running from the darkspawn in the southern hills she'd thought they were fucked too, for a moment there. Forcing her voice light and sarcastic, "I think I might be offended. When in your lives have I ever not come through for our family? And here you are doubting me, honestly..."

Carver just huffed, but Bethany turned to her with a wry little smile. "Mari, even you can't stop a Blight single-handedly or fly us all across the sea."

Well. That was true.

Silence lingered for a moment, a little awkwardly — between them, at least, the crowd back on the walkway and by the gates were really damn noisy. While they all sat wordlessly, probably thinking about their narrow escape from Lothering and the unpleasant trip from there, Marian looked around. There wasn't much to see from here, the city must be behind them, hidden by the walls. Across the water — the surface much smoother than the harbors of Gwaren or Amaranthine, shivering with ripples but hardly any waves at all — were the cliffs separating the city from the sea, high and sheer and solid black, streaked now and then with pinkish-brown or green. From this side, it was obvious the cliffside had been carved and tunneled into — the face was far too smooth, couldn't be natural, Marian caught tiny, barely noticeable hints of windows, in more than one place halls with the outside wall completely knocked out, along the edge pillars hair-thin from this distance. These little signs were mostly concentrated close to the water level, but they stretched from the canal ahead to the right, both sides all the way around to where the walls cut off line of sight.

This harbor here wasn't huge by any means, even the little inlet off the lake north of Lothering was much larger, but if they had things built into the cliff all the way around... How many people lived here? She'd known Kirkwall was big, but...

Looking off to the right, she noticed some of the crew of the boat that'd brought them here were carrying people out to shore. It took her a while to figure what was going on: dead bodies, refugees had died during the crossing.

Marian shivered.

"You know," Mother said, her voice light, breathy, "I've never been here before."

"Oh?"

Gazing up behind Marian, looking up at the peaks of the towers visible over the wall, she shook her head. "Your father told me about it, but... I've seen it before, of course. It's on an island in the middle of the harbor, it's visible from nearly anywhere in the city. But I've never been here."

"Then I'm glad we could share in this wonderful experience together."

Bethany smacked him on the shoulder. "Oh, be nice, Carver."

He let out a little huff, Marian could practically feel him rolling his eyes. "You know I didn't mean anything by it, Mom, I'm just saying."

As much as Carver was being a bit of an ass, Marian couldn't really blame him for it — she didn't want to be here either.

They waited what felt like quite a while, the crowd gradually shrinking as the refugees were shuffled along. Not onto boats — and they would need a boat to get to the city, Mother had just said they were on an island — but through the gate into the fortress. Marian didn't know what that was about. Maybe they were going to go through their things before they let them through, to make sure they didn't have any contraband or anything? It really wouldn't surprise her if the Templars were just that paranoid.

Finally, Aveline came stomping back down the walkway, her orange hair almost glowing in the sun, hopping down to the beach with a harsh scraping of sand against her boots — more gracefully than Marian really thought a person should be able to move in armor that heavy, but she guessed that was Aveline for you. Marian immediately knew something was wrong: the knight's brow had lowered in a glare, tension in her shoulders. Her voice hard and sharp, she said, "They're not letting anyone into the city."

Sand scattered as Carver pushed himself upright, all of the Hawks gaped up at Aveline for a second. Marian found her voice first. "What, you mean not at all?"

Grimacing with clear frustration, she shook her head. "The Templars are doing interviews, sorting out anyone who has 'legitimate business' in the city. Everyone else is going to be shipped out as soon as transportation can be arranged."

"Where to?"

"Highever, Jader, Cumberland — I got the impression they weren't certain yet."

Well, Highever wouldn't do them any good, they'd just gotten out of Ferelden. And Jader was on the border, they were sitting right on the path the horde would take after finishing with their homeland — the darkspawn wouldn't cross water, they'd have to go through the entirety of Orlais and southern Nevarra to get to Kirkwall. Cumberland was in southern Nevarra, so was probably the safest of the three...except they didn't know anybody in Cumberland.

"Did you tell them we have family here?" asked Mother, an edge of exhaustion on her voice. Marian guessed she really wanted to be done with traveling. "I'm uncertain how happy my family will be to see me, but we are nobility here."

"Yes, ma'am, I did." Aveline called Mother ma'am more than half the time, it was honestly kind of adorable. "I was pointed toward a sergeant inside who is responsible for handling our sort of request for the day. We should go in to meet with him."

Inside the gates was a wide stone staircase — the top wasn't very high up, maybe only four or five feet. In the middle of the stairs was a flat ramp with some kind of track in it, Marian couldn't tell what that was for at a glance. When the floor leveled off, they found themselves in an open hallway extending deeper into the fortress, buildings off to either side. This was mostly original construction — there were occasional repairs along the walls, especially along the rim of the roofs, the floor a patchwork of glassy black tiles and gray and red brick — which was fucking obvious from the mural set along both walls, definitely a Tevinter style.

She thought of it as a mural, but it wasn't really, not painted but sculpted, shining orange-gold Tevinter bronze all the way down, the figures depicted almost life-sized. The backdrop — behind the figures, done in a somewhat darker metal — was mostly innocuous, with a lot of fanning rays, symbols and letters she couldn't read. (Old Tevinter stuff, she assumed, their alphabet was different and Marian didn't know any glyph magic.) One larger symbol, black stone embossed with red gold, was repeated over and over, on both sides of the hall every several feet: after squinting at it a bit, Marian finally picked out a triangular head at the top, wings spread to left and right, a twining, serpentine tail underneath. A dragon, maybe? The body and tail looked a little too snake-lake, the bands making up the wings almost more like a bird, but Marian couldn't figure what else that was supposed to be.

And, of course, the figures themselves were...well, appalling. Mostly humans and elves, but a few dwarves too, backs stooped and feet dragging, a few weeping or in pain, the sculpting detailed enough to pick out twisted looks of agony on their faces. Chains around ankles or wrists or necks, naked — slaves, obviously, being taken into captivity back in the city's Tevinter days. There weren't only slaves, also men in what was probably supposed to be simple leather-and-scale armor — in the old Tevinter style, so no trousers, instead high boots with almost skirt-like armored panels protecting the upper legs — some manhandling the naked figures, others cracking whips at their backs. In one place, a trio of spear-wielding soldiers had run through one of the slaves, carvings in the backdrop making it look like lightning bolts were shooting from his hands — slavers overpowering a captured mage, it looked like.

It was somewhat horrifying, honestly, the refugees passing through — the same path countless slaves had once walked — somber and quiet, as though feeling the weight of the centuries of suffering that had been inflicted here. Bethany had huddled up close to Carver, watching the statuary as it passed with wide-eyed, disgusted fascination. Mother had averted her eyes entirely, staring at the tiles before her feet, following right behind Aveline so she didn't have to look up at all.

Marian examined the bronzework, frowning to herself — why the hell was this shit still here?

She knew Kirkwall had been liberated by a slave rebellion, nearly a thousand years ago. Not Andraste's rebellion, no, the city was intensely fortified and had been host to the largest concentration of soldiers outside of the Imperial heartland, they'd wisely gone around the city. The rebellion that finally freed Kirkwall happened over a century later, the mostly Alamarri slaves of the city revolting against their Tevene rulers, a bloodbath sweeping through the whole city until all the slavers and soldiers and magisters were dead, hanged or burned or gutted or ripped to pieces. (Marian's Amell ancestors had obviously survived somehow, but the book she'd read hadn't said.) Reading about it had been kind of unsettling, honestly, it'd been one of the bloodier events in human history.

And those former slaves would hardly want to keep this kind of...art around after they took over the city.

And then in the Black Age, Orlais had conquered Kirkwall, held it for about a century — and they wouldn't want momuments to the Tevinter slave trade around any more than the city's previous leaders. And then Kirkwall had been conquered by the Qunari in the Steel Age...and then again in the Storm Age. If anyone was going to get rid of any remaining sign of the Tevinter magisters it was the fucking Qunari. And yet, here they still were.

There must be some serious enchantments on this shit. The bronze had to be nearly fifteen hundred years old, and while there were dents and scratches here and there, the occasional greening patch, it otherwise looked untouched by all those many years. It was slightly ridiculous that so many people over the centuries hadn't been able to get rid of them, she guessed Tevinter spellwork could be stubborn like that.

Eventually, they came to a large open courtyard. The buildings here were taller than by the walls, though still small enough she hadn't been able to see them from the shore, their upper floors held up with thick, intricately carved columns — on the front face of every column was another statue, looked to be a replica of the enormous one over the sea. There were more depictions of slaves being captured and abused, but there were also several that looked very much like hawks, perched on the stone with their wings folded to their sides, staring down into the courtyard. Which was kind of weird, Marian hadn't realized hawks were really a Tevinter thing.

But they could be a Kirkwall thing — maybe those odd symbols from before were supposed to be a bird.

Directly ahead was the largest of the towers, wider than the courtyard and stretching far overhead, another set of stairs leading up to the gate. Like before, there was an island in the middle of the stairs, but instead of a ramp here there was a high platform running straight out from maybe halfway up, separated from the drop down to the courtyard by a tarnished and rusted handrail — a place the slavers could look down on and address their captured victims, she assumed. There were halls splitting off to the left and right, presumably leading toward the other towers, though she couldn't see anything from here.

The courtyard was packed with people milling about, more than there'd been on the boat, hundreds of them. Some were huddled behind the pillars in the shade, others just laid out in the middle of the ground, their belongings clutched nearby, the chatter filling the air melding into a meaningless wall of sound. Men, women, and children, humans, dwarves, and elves, all mixed up and sometimes pressed shoulder-to-shoulder.

They looked miserable, honestly. Marian hoped they wouldn't be stuck here for very long.

It wasn't difficult to find Sergeant Ewald — there was a line of men in the same gray and orange armor standing at the base of the stairs, swarmed by a small crowd of refugees. Surrounded as he was with people giving him one sob story or another, begging to be let into the city, it took upwards of half an hour to get up to him, all the while constantly jostled back and forth by the crowd crushing in from all sides. It was bad enough only a couple minutes in Marian suggested Bethany and Mother go wait by that pillar over there, they'd catch up later.

Finally, they made it up to Ewald, with the people pushing at her back Marian had to dig in her feet and lean hard back to stop herself from stumbling right into him. The Sergeant spoke before any of them could get started, his voice gruff and frustrated, probably sick of saying the same shit over and over. "No, I can't get you passage into the city, Kirkwall is closed to all further refugees at this time. Ships will arrive to transport you somewhere willing to take you in — Cumberland, I think, maybe Jader. No, I can't tell you when they'll arrive, you'll just have to wait."

"Please, ser," Marian said, raising her voice over the chatter of the crowd, "we're not asking you to make an exception for us. We just need to get a message to our uncle in the city."

Ewald sighed, his tired eyes turning up to the sky for a second. "You have no idea how many times I've heard that today, everybody has an uncle or a cousin or an old friend of his stepmother's. We simply don't have time to chase down all these claims — most of them are just made up. Send a letter before you arrive next time, so we can arrange things with any relations you might have in the city."

Carver let out a harsh scoff, Marian barely managed to hold back a roll of her eyes — the mail was notoriously unreliable, at least for commoners. If they'd tried to send something from Lothering to Kirkwall chances were it would have been lost at some point between here and there. An edge of irritation on his voice, Carver said, "Our mother's family are nobility in this country. The Amells, ring a bell? Our uncle is Gamlen Amell."

"Gamlen?" Ewald had twitched with surprise at the name, his eyebrows rising a little. "I do know Gamlen Amell. His father may have been a count once, but Gamlen is a weasel who hasn't two coppers to rub together — and if he had, he'd gamble them away first off. I doubt he can do a thing to get you lot out of here, but I can get word to him you're here, for all the good it'll do you."

For a couple seconds, Marian and Carver could only gape at the Sergeant. She'd been told...well, she couldn't remember when she'd first been told, she'd practically always known that her grandfather was Kirkwaller nobility, Count Aristide Amell of Langleighshire. As old as he should be he was almost certainly dead, so Gamlen should be the Count of Langleighshire now...right?

"What about Comte Guillaume de Launcet?" Aveline asked, the Orlesian falling from her lips easy and natural-sounding — which did make sense, Aveline was technically Orlesian. "Or, I believe he should be the Comte now. Their mother was betrothed to him once upon a time, he'd be able to vouch for her, if nothing else."

Marian blinked — Mom had been betrothed to someone else when she'd run away to Ferelden with Father? Huh. She somehow hadn't known that. Carver looked just as blindsided as she felt, so...

"I've heard of Count William Lancet," Ewald said, stressing the Alamarri pronunciation of the name just slightly, "of course, but I'm hardly in a position to walk up to a count and interrogate him about lapsed betrothals from decades ago. I can get a message to Gamlen, but that's really all I can do for you. Now please, move along so I can deal with the rest of your countrymen's complaints."

There was something about his tone that irked Marian, but she really couldn't blame him that much — she'd probably be just as frustrated in his position. So they sidled to the side along the line of guardsmen — Marian hooking Carver's elbow when he didn't move right away, intending to stay and keep arguing — after a couple uncomfortable minutes pushing through the press of bodies finally escaped from the crowd.

Carver threw off her arm, his lips curled into a scowl. "Now what?" he snarled, turning to glare over at the unhelpful Sergeant.

"Now," Marian said, sighing, "we wait."

---

9:30 Eluveista 5

The Gallows, Kirkwall, Confederation of Free Cities

---

It wasn't until their second morning in the Gallows that Marian's uncle finally showed up.

Their time in the Gallows was little different than those days they'd been stuck in that warehouse in Amaranthine. They had nothing to do but linger and wait for the hours to achingly pass, finding whatever they could to entertain themselves — there wasn't anything, really, so they spent much of the time very bored. (She could definitely tell Carver was getting antsy.) The need to eat gradually shaved away at the money Marian had saved up over the course of years, but this time rather quicker, the food they were selling to the refugees more expensive than that available back in Amaranthine. At this rate, they could stay here for a few weeks at least, especially if some of them started skipping more meals to stretch it out, but their coin wouldn't last forever.

There was a merchant in the main courtyard buying things off people, but Marian wouldn't even consider dealing with him — she'd overheard too many people arguing with him about the pittance he'd given them for their valuables, so. Their money would just have to last.

In some ways, it was better than Amaranthine. They weren't in an enclosed space, so the smell of too many bodies in too small a space for too long wasn't trapped around them. There was hardly any wind at all, the cliffs in the way, but still, it was something. Once the refugees had spread out a bit, into the other two courtyards to the left and right and the corridors between the buildings, there was much more room, enough for the Hawkes to claim a little spot of floor at least somewhat removed from everyone else, giving them an illusion of privacy. And it was an illusion, they weren't that far apart, but still, it was something. The smell wasn't nearly as bad, considering the Gallows would obviously have been set up to deal with holding a large number of people, and there were Tranquil keeping the place clean, so waste didn't just accumulate.

In other ways, it was worse. For one thing, there were fucking Tranquil here — Marian hadn't ever seen one before, and they were seriously fucking creepy. It didn't help that, whenever she caught sight of one... Well. At Marian's age, having been an apostate her entire life, if the Templars caught her they probably wouldn't take her into the Circle. They would just kill her, or make her Tranquil. So it was unnerving, whenever one came close, she couldn't look away, fear tingling cold up her spine.

Also, the space they were staying in not having a roof was a mixed blessing. It'd rained twice so far, once in the middle of the first night and again the next afternoon — and it was spring, so the rain was cold. The spot her family had found for themselves was in a corridor attached to the right-side courtyard, the buildings to either side joined on the third floor, completely blocking out the sky. Even so, it was wet and cold — tiny rivers of water coursing through the gaps between the floor tiles, mist hanging thick on the air even in here — they huddled close together to share warmth, furs dug out of their packs. Marian wasn't convinced it actually helped much.

And, of course, the Templars. The reason Marian had decided to settle them in the right-side courtyard was because they were thin on the ground here: the island's Chantry was down this corridor, living space for the Mothers and Sisters attached to the Circle, apartments and workshops mostly worked by Tranquil and a few older mages (Enchanters?). Which meant Tranquil passed by here more often than they might elsewhere, but that was better than lingering around Templars all the time. Bethany couldn't keep herself small all the time — it took constant attention, if only a little, and she didn't have the practice Marian did — and even the smallest slip might alert the Templars to the presence of a mage somewhere nearby. She wasn't sure how noticeable it would be, as thin as the Veil was here, but putting some distance between them reduced the risk of discovery as much as Marian could manage.

Also? Bethany and Marian couldn't keep the trick up while sleeping — that problem hadn't occurred to her until the sky started darkening the first evening. It wasn't as much of a danger as while they were awake — obviously a mage had less of a magical presence while sleeping, since their magic was mostly in the Fade at the time — but the occasional unconscious outburst did happen, and if it happened at a bad time... They'd taken to sleeping in shifts, at least one of their group awake at all times, so they could wake up Marian and Bethany if a Templar came anywhere nearby. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was the best they could do.

She'd hardly slept at all. She'd tried, but she was too nervous about the Templars all around, she hadn't managed more than a couple blinks here and there. Bethany wasn't doing that much better.

Marian was pretty sure Mother was coming down with something. It was hardly noticeable so early, but she seemed a little feverish. She must have picked up something during the crossing. And there was nothing Marian could do about it — they obviously weren't selling remedies here (or at least not at any price she could afford), and even the small amount of magic needed to tamp down a fever was more than she wanted to risk at the moment. It wasn't bad yet, but...

Suffice to say, Marian would do pretty much anything to get them the fuck out of here at this point. And it was a good thing she was so desperate, because if she weren't she might not have taken the opportunity that presented itself.

Her uncle was...not what Marian had expected. She'd been told some about him growing up — Gamlen used to help Mother sneak out to meet with Father, so he'd come up. (Mother had said that, in retrospect, she suspected Gamlen had hoped they'd be caught and Mother would be disciplined by their parents somehow, but she was still grateful.) Mother had never really described him physically, instead saying only that he looked much like their father, and while he could be rather gruff at times, with a bad gambling habit that had led to developing acquaintanceships with some unsavory characters, he was a good man at his core, a loyal son and a loving brother, even if he wasn't very good at expressing it.

One of the Tranquil tracked them down in mid-morning, telling them that a Gamlen Amell was at the docks looking for them. They scooped up all their things, Carver slinging Mother's pack over a shoulder, and followed the Tranquil — a slight elf woman, unnervingly still and silent — off toward the gate. The docks were much emptier than they'd been before, the piers absent of any boats packed with refugees. There were a handful of boats in various sizes tied down, marked with symbols of the Chantry and the Templars, but they weren't in use at the moment, just waiting there.

So it wasn't difficult at all to find Gamlen. Stood fidgeting in the little square outside the gate was a tall man — a half-head over Carver, looked like — in rather threadbare canvass and linen, leather boots and jacket scuffed and patched. He appeared somewhat older than Mother, wrinkles stitched across his forehead and dark hair noticeably frosting, his jaw darkened with uneven stubble. His arms were crossed, posture impatient and frustrated, brow furrowed.

He looked tired and old and...well, poor. He was supposed to be a count, Marian still didn't know what was up with that.

He loosened a bit when he spotted them, looked up — blue eyes, like Mother and the twins. (Marian had gotten Father's green.) Mother's pace hitched for a second, then darted the last few steps with a call of his name, throwing herself at him, Gamlen barely opened his arms to catch her in time.

Marian bit her lip to keep herself from laughing. Gamlen just looked so...surprised, eyes wide and mouth hanging open a little, frozen in place with Mother's arms wrapped around him. Then, slowly, he hugged her back, looking strangely awkward and uncertain. Eventually, after a few seconds of the hug going on, Gamlen visibly relaxed, one hand coming up to cup the back of Mother's head, holding her closer to his chest. They were muttering back and forth, but Marian was too far away to pick out the words.

And she didn't creep closer to figure it out — she and the twins hung back, giving the two of them a moment.

After some moments, Mother pulled away, wiped at her eyes for a second before waving them forward. Once they were close enough, her voice wavering a little, Mother said, "Children, this is my elder brother Gamlen; these are Marian, our eldest, and Carver and Bethany."

A few hellos and nice to meet yous went around. Once that was out of the way, Gamlen said to the twins, low and gruff, "You two look like Amells." Then he turned to Marian, an odd look crossing his face. "You look like your father." There was a subtle tone on his voice, barely there, but enough to tell Marian what he was really thinking: Are you a mage too?

"Gamlen," Mother hissed, "not here." She threw a pointed look toward the gate into the fortress — guarded, of course, by a few Templars.

Letting out a harsh sigh, Gamlen's eyes tipped up to the sky for a second, untangling his arm from Mother's. His northern accent giving his drawl a sort of rolling rhythm, "I wish you wouldn't have put this on me, Leandra."

"What do you mean?" There was a softness on Mother's voice that made Marian flinch, worried and exhausted.

"You just ran off with that paramour of yours and were never heard from again — I figured you were Fereldan for life. And now you show up out of the blue with your—" Gamlen broke off, his eyes flicking between Marian and the Templars. Again, it was obvious what he wasn't saying: with your apostate child.

Marian forced herself not to react to his frustration. It was quite understandable, honestly, she couldn't imagine being forced to choose between his sister and the Templars was at all a pleasant position to be in. Carver had less self-control than Marian — he scowled, and shifted to stand closer to Bethany, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword. Hopefully Gamlen wouldn't recognize the implication of Carver being defensive of Bethany at the moment, two apostates would probably be worse than one...

"I don't— We lost everything, Gamlen. Darkspawn overran Lothering, and—"

"Darkspawn?!" Gamlen blurted out, his face pinking a little. "They attacked in numbers enough to destroy an entire village?"

"And all the farms around it," Marian said, forcing her voice flat and calm. "There's a Blight rising in the south."

The flush that had been rising in Gamlen's face immediately disappeared, going abruptly pale. "A Blight. You know that for certain."

"The Grey Wardens seemed certain."

"Andraste have..." Gamlen trailed off, turned to take a few unsteady steps away, his back to them. His hands coming up to the back of his neck, his head tilted up a little to stare up at the sky, he took a few long, slow breaths. After he'd gathered himself, he turned back around. The discomfort and uncertainty on his face had gone, hard and solemn — finally taking his sister's family being forced to flee their home by the Blight seriously, she guessed. "I'm sorry, Leandra, I really am, but I'm...not certain how much I can do."

"What are you talking about?" Carver said, slightly harsher than necessary. (He hadn't stopped hovering protectively over Beth yet.)

"Well, I don't exactly have the sway with the Templars just now to demand they let you out. And even if I could, I don't have anywhere for you to go."

"But..." Mother blinked at him for a second, her eyes flicking down over his clothing — apparently noticing just now he certainly wasn't dressed like a fancy nobleman. "I... What of our home in Hightown, the Langleigh manor?"

Flat, short, "Gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"It's gone, okay," he growled, his voice going sharper, angry, "it's all gone! The lands, the properties, the titles, they're gone."

Marian grimaced — she had sort of figured as much, from what Ewald had said earlier, but... Getting to Kirkwall was supposed to be the hard part, things should be better now...

Mother could only gape at Gamlen for a couple seconds, but finally managed, "How? What happened?"

For a moment Gamlen only glowered. Not at Mother, his gaze not quite focused no her, glaring off at nothing in particular. "You remember what happened with Damion."

Mother winced. "Yes, I remember." Marian knew Damion was one of Mother's cousins, but she had no idea what they were talking about. Nothing good, by the sound of it.

"Uncle Fausten drained the family of gold trying to bribe Damion free — for all the good that did him. And, like a bloody idiot, he borrowed from the Council of Five."

"Who...?"

His lips tilting in a grimace, Gamlen said, "A mercenary group, with connections to...certain illicit activities, shall we say." Slavers, he meant, Marian's great-uncle had borrowed gold from slavers. Yeah, she was going to go ahead and agree with Gamlen that that was a fucking stupid thing to do. "And then after what happened to Revka—"

"What happened to Revka?"

Gamlen sighed, eyes flicking up to the sky again. "She married that Antivan chap, you know, Eustorgio?"

"Yes, that was some years before I left. They had children, I recall — the first was Solana, and then Verena, and, ah..."

"...Colin, Aristide, and Leandre." Mother let out a little gasp at the nephew she hadn't even known she had being named after her, one hand coming up to cover her mouth, Gamlen's eyes narrowed slightly but he continued on. "A decade ago, the Templars came to take the children — they were mages."

"Oh, no," Mother gasped. "Solana? I always thought..."

"All five, Leandra, they were all mages."

While Mother jumped with surprise, Marian shared glances with Beth and Carver, the latter a little irritated and the former bemused. Apparently, she and Beth got it from both sides of the family. That wasn't really that much of a surprise, she guessed — the family had been from Tevinter originally, and supposedly there'd been multiple Amell mages in the resistance against the Qunari occupation — but she didn't... Just, Maker, all five, poor Revka...

"I don't know what happened, exactly, but there was an altercation — by the end of the day, the children were gone, and Eustorgio was dead. Revka took her own life within a year or two."

Tears welling in Mother's eyes, "Maker, Revka..."

"The Templars fined the family for resisting and for the damage to their armor, the tyrannical bloody bastards," Gamlen growled, glaring up at the Templars by the gates. Yeah, that was fucked up, but Marian couldn't help feeling a little relieved — it sounded very unlikely Gamlen would turn in Beth and Marian as apostates. "On top of the other fines that still hadn't been paid, and the loans we had outstanding...

"I tried, Leandra, but the family was so deeply in the hole at that point I'm not sure it was possible to get out of it. Our properties were seized by the Chancellory to pay our debts, and we were stripped of all our titles. There's nothing left, Leandra."

Nobody really seemed to have any idea what to say in response. Mother was standing there with her hand over her mouth, eyes wet — still over what had happened to her cousin Revka, Marian assumed. (She'd mentioned Revka in stories about home before, Marian had known she existed, but she didn't really have the same reaction to tragedy affecting people she'd never met and now never would.) Gamlen was avoiding her gaze, his arms folded stiff over his chest, looking very uncomfortable, glaring moodily up at the fortress wall. Bethany seemed torn between moving to comfort Mom and glaring suspiciously at Gamlen — Marian didn't know what that was about, she'd have to ask later.

After a couple uncomfortable glances at Beth and Mother, Carver turned to Marian. Face stern and hard, voice low and stiff, "So what the hell do we do now?"

Well, Marian didn't know, honestly. She'd kind of been depending on their mother's family to put them up for at least a little bit. Even if they didn't want Mother around after she'd run out on them, or the children she'd had with the man she'd run out with, she'd assumed the Amells wouldn't kick them out on the street, if only because the rest of the nobility would gossip about it. (She knew from Mother's stories the ruling families of Kirkwall worried about that kind of thing.) Even if they could get into the city, without the support of the Amells finding some way to support themselves was going to be a lot more difficult. Especially since any work available would be entirely new to them, since she doubted there was much farm work to be done in the city, and they wouldn't have anywhere to sleep...

And she had no doubt they could get to the city — it would be risky, but she was sure it was dark in this bay in the night, they could swim to the city if they really had to. It might be difficult for Mother, but once they were some distance out she or Beth could help her with magic, it was doable. Of course, they'd have to leave behind some of their things, those which were either too heavy or would be damaged in water. They'd have to sell them to that merchant inside, and Marian was certain they would get ripped off, but they wouldn't have any other options. And it would be a risk, trying to cross like that, they might be caught, but it was better than just sitting here and getting shipped off to Jader or Cumberland — where they knew absolutely nobody, so would end up with the same dilemma they were faced with here, with the additional difficulty of not speaking the language.

Well, Mother spoke Orlesian, but that really wouldn't help that much if they were going to find work...

They would have to swim to shore and...try to figure something out, Marian didn't know. She didn't know what the next step was, or even what the options would be — she'd never even been in a city before, she didn't know how this shit worked — so she really had no idea what she could say to Carver in answer to that question. The chasm stretching out beneath her, Marian couldn't gather the breath to speak, staring back at Carver, and...

(She'd managed to get her family out of Ferelden, but it wouldn't do them any fucking good if they all starved in Kirkwall anyway.)

She jumped when Gamlen's gruff voice broke the silence — distracted by her own building despondency, she'd almost forgotten he was even there. "You're going to wait here while I figure something out. I'm not going to just—" Gamlen cut off, glancing away from them, one hand coming up to rub at the side of his neck. "I don't have the authority to order them to let you out, and I don't have the gold to bribe anyone. But we're still family, no matter what's happened in all these years, and I don't intend to simply leave you here. I haven't the power to do anything about this myself, but I do know people. I'll see if I can...arrange something."

Mother was hugging Gamlen again, and the twins had shuffled closer together, but Marian wasn't really paying attention to that. Even with such a weak promise, the possibility that she wouldn't have to figure this out herself had her able to breathe again, the sudden absence of the despair pushing down on her making her dizzy. She took a moment just to calm herself a little bit, slowly taking one breath after another.

That was...good, yes. She wasn't sure she trusted Gamlen entirely — Beth was a better judge of character than Marian, and she hadn't missed that suspicious look a moment ago — but he certainly knew Kirkwall better than Marian did, so. It would do for now.

(Besides, if Gamlen did try to stab them in the back, they had two mages — Marian was pretty sure they could fight their way out of anything he could try to trick them into.)

After a little bit, Mother and Gamlen had separated again, Gamlen looking peculiarly uncomfortable. He'd looked off the last time Mother had hugged him too, hmm. "Right, yes." He cleared his throat, his feet shifting against the brick. "Nobody who can get you out of the Gallows is going to do it without them getting anything in return — you're going to have to work to pay off the bribe."

Mother let out a little gasp. "I don't know, Gamlen, debt bondage is..."

"Yes, I know. But the thing about debt bondage is that the conditions the bondsman experiences are almost entirely at the discretion of the creditor — the particulars are going to vary creditor to creditor, depending on the work they're engaged in and the creditor's preferences. What I can do is go to people I know are fair. I can't promise the work won't be hard, because it very well might be, but I know people who won't work you to be the bone or exploit you needlessly. That's a better deal than you'll be able to manage on your own, especially if you end up in Nevarra or Orlais."

And wasn't that the truth — Nevarra and Orlais had a history of sweeping up refugees on their lands and forcing them into serfdom. Marian would die before she let her family be reduced to that. By the grimace crossing his face, Carver was having a similar thought. "Hard work isn't a problem," he said, something pointed in his tone Marian couldn't quite read.

Gamlen nodded. "For people who grew up on a farm, I'd imagine it isn't — you're not likely to find much labour in Kirkwall heavier than that. To get in with the best... It'd help if I had any ideas about...what kind of skills you have, so I can attract the interest of the right people."

...Was he asking about magic? She wasn't sure she wanted to admit that, especially with the Circle right over there...

"I doubt you do much farming at all here," Carver drawled, eyes scanning over the cliff walls in the near distance. "Beth is a pretty decent weaver, and both Marian and I can fight — we did well enough for ourselves against darkspawn with the King's army at Ostagar. Other than that..."

"That's not what he meant." Beth gave Marian a significant look, silently asking what they should do.

But Marian had already been thinking about it, had an answer ready. "If you're asking whether any of us...inherited our father's talents, it's just me." Steadily meeting Gamlen's gaze, Marian resisted any impulse to glance in Bethany's direction. If she could help it, nobody here would ever find out Bethany was a mage at all — Marian would carry that risk herself, and if she were discovered hope the Templars believed she was the only one in the family.

Gamlen twitched, just a little, his eye widening, but otherwise his reaction to learning he was standing only a couple feet from a mage was rather small. But then, he'd probably already guessed. With a slight edge of amusement, he said, slowly and delicately, "I meant to ask whether any of you can read. People from rural villages often can't."

"Oh." Well, now Marian felt like an idiot. And here he'd been trying to be delicate about it and everything. "All three of us can read — Father insisted on it." For Marian, anyway, so she could read the books he'd stolen from the Circle, Beth and Carver had still been pretty young when he'd died but she'd just carried it on. Getting Carver to go to his lessons with the Sisters in the village instead of doing something 'useful' to help — when he'd still been small enough he wasn't that much help anyway — had been a pain sometimes, but...

"All right, then," Gamlen said, smirking a little. "I know a few good people who might be willing to come to an arrangement. I can't tell you how long it'll take — I might be back this evening, it might take a couple days. I'll come back when I figure something out, or if the situation changes."

Mother gave her brother another hug, Gamlen letting out a good-natured sort of huff. A stiff shake of Carver's hand — she could tell Carver was gripping harder than necessary by the set of his shoulders, Gamlen even grimaced a little — and Gamlen started back toward the docks to leave. As he passed by her, Marian muttered, "Thank you, Gamlen."

Marian wouldn't say she was happy about the situation, exactly. She didn't like the thought of her family ending up in debt bondage — even in Ferelden, she'd heard some awful stories over the years. But, she couldn't imagine most people had the means to abuse mage bondsmen, so, at the very least, if things went badly Marian would be able to do something about it, or at least attempt to. And she didn't like that Gamlen was picking the person they'd be dealing with, that Marian wouldn't be able to talk to them first...not that Marian would know who to go to, or even what to ask them to tell whether they intended to exploit her family, honestly. So, while she was uncomfortable with trusting that to her uncle she'd never met before, she really couldn't do it herself anyway.

And also, there was a point that, judging by the expressions on her family's faces, only Marian had noticed: the "good people" Gamlen was going to talk to about getting them out were almost certainly criminals. Who else would be willing to bribe the city guard to get refugees out of the Templars' fortress? Given what he'd hinted at earlier, Marian doubted Gamlen would do any business with slavers — and if he did, Marian would kill them rather than work with them — but she knew from stories that there were all kinds in the major cities. Smugglers and syndicates and gangs and who knew what else, Marian didn't know enough about crime to guess at what all criminals might get up to — obviously, that sort of thing didn't really exist in Lothering. If that was the only way to...

Marian had stolen before. There were a few times she didn't think really counted, bits and bobs here and there sitting out that nobody would really miss, but at least once definitely did. The harvest had been light that year, and Marian hadn't been certain they would make it. After the thaw, some traders had been passing through Lothering, returning to Redcliffe after their winter in the east, and Marian had just... It had been easy. All she'd needed to do was watch them until she figured out where they were keeping their gold, then approach close enough to reach forward with magic, wait until nobody was looking, pluck a few coins out and float them over to her. Simple.

She'd hated it. She'd felt terrible over the whole thing for what'd seemed like weeks, so intensely she'd felt sick, enough she'd had trouble eating — though she hadn't actually minded skipping a couple meals, things had been tight at the time and the twins had still been little. Mother had even noticed, asked her if she was feeling alright. She'd been worried, Marian realized now, that she'd inherited Mom's melancholic episodes, that she was just feeling awful for no reason. Marian had made up some excuse, she never had told anyone what actually happened...

But she would do it again. Put in the same situation, do something like that or risk watching her family starve, it wasn't even really a choice, she would do it again. It wasn't even necessarily the theft itself that had bothered her so much as... Well, she'd failed. With Father gone, it'd been her job to keep everything going right, and she hadn't been able to do it, if something happened to any of them and she hadn't taken care of them like she was meant to, she...

So, it didn't really bother her that Gamlen would probably be getting them in with criminals. She didn't like it, but if it was what she needed to do to take care of Mother and the twins, well, it was what it was — she'd promised Father, standing next to his pyre as he'd burned, that she would look after them for him, she would do whatever she needed to, anything. She might not be happy about it, but she'd do it.

But, anything Gamlen would come up with would almost certainly be better than being stuck in Jader or Cumberland, so.

An awkward sort of wince crossed Gamlen's face — probably realizing trading his sister's family into debt bondage wasn't a great thing to be doing, but it wasn't like they had a whole lot of other options. Roughly clapping a hand on her shoulder, he said, "Don't mention it, girl. No really," he muttered, leaning closer, "don't mention it." His eyes flicked over toward the gates, the Templars standing guard there. He squeezed her shoulder a little, and then he was off, stomping stiff-shouldered toward a tiny little ferry waiting at the dock.

Marian didn't realize she was smirking until she felt her lips twitching.

፠

Gamlen returned late in the evening, the city already cast into shadow.

The sun hadn't actually set yet. It was hard to tell for certain, but by the shade of blue peeking through the streaks of clouds here and there, Marian was guessing it was still maybe an hour or so before sunset. The cliffs surrounding Kirkwall were tall enough the sun had vanished beneath them in the late afternoon, casting them into a sort of false dusk. It wasn't quite as dark as actual twilight, the sky overhead still bright, but the shadows were deep enough the air had noticeably cooled, colors slightly washed out.

Mother said this was normal, though the effect was less noticeable the higher up in the city you went. Marian didn't know what she thought about it — something about this felt almost creepy, unnatural — but she guessed she would get used to it eventually.

This afternoon in the Gallows wasn't meaningfully different than the last. They sat around, avoiding the Templars as much as possible, and tried to find something to do to stave off boredom as they waited. Carver spent much of it sitting with a nearby group of men and women around Marian's age, playing some kind of dice game. (Which game Marian couldn't say, she didn't think she even knew the rules to any.) She'd been momentarily concerned, but they weren't gambling with anything, since Carver's new friends didn't have anything to gamble with anyway — they were from a village in the hills outside of Amaranthine, and they'd been driven from their homes much like Marian's family.

Though not by darkspawn, and listening in Marian finally figured out what the hell all the refugees in Amaranthine had been fleeing from. Some time ago, Castle Highever had been taken by bandits, and all of the Couslands (save the eldest son, Fergus, who she'd met briefly at Ostagar) had been killed — Marian was immediately skeptical, and the group agreed. Most thought the Couslands had actually been killed by another noble in one of their crazy back-stabbing gambits they sometimes got up to. (That sort of thing was more common in Orlais, Marian knew, but it did still happen here.) In fact, they assumed it'd been the Arl of Amaranthine — Marian knew that one, Rendon Howe, a hero of the Rebellion — since the dust had hardly settled before he'd claimed the Teyrnir for himself. Many of the banns sworn to the Couslands had refused to accept that, and even a few of the banns in Howe's own Arling had turned against him, probably assuming he'd killed his liege-lord.

It was still early, but fighting was already breaking out, especially in the hills along the border of the Arling and in Highever itself — people were already being forced out of their homes, or fleeing in anticipation of a Contest for the Teyrnir developing. Some had gone south into the Bannorn or toward Denerim, but many were fleeing across the sea instead. One of the women in this group said they'd gone this way specifically to avoid the Arl's army at the Vigil (a castle town on the Highway halfway from Amaranthine to Denerim), since apparently there were already stories of mistreatment of refugees by Howe's men filtering around.

...So, not only had the King been betrayed by Loghain, which would inevitably lead to a Contest for the Crown, but a similar thing had happened in Highever, the man who might have been the most obvious candidate to rally the Landsmeet behind him and challenge Loghain dead before it began, the Kingdom's largest Teyrnir erupting into a Contest of their own...even while a Blight struck from out of the south. Yeah, Ferelden was so fucked...

Carver had found something to occupy himself with, and Bethany had pulled one of their books out of a pack, but Marian found herself drifting directionless. And distracted — it was like a song at the edge of hearing, the softest touch at the back of her neck, something which kept stealing her attention but then when she tried to focus on it couldn't identify what the hell it was in the first place. Nothing obvious, nothing firm, just a general feeling of... It was colder than it should be, the air seeming to press down, like a weighted blanket shrouded over her, making it just that slight bit harder to breathe — not truly restricting, but also enough she couldn't not notice it — an almost painful, electric tension, not rising from inside, but...

It took Marian at least a couple hours to figure out what she was feeling: a demon was shadowing her from across the Veil. No surprise it'd taken her so long, she hadn't ever felt something like this while she was awake before. The Veil must be too thin here, the demon could feel her and she could feel it, but the contact was so weak and the Templars so near, she didn't know what the hell she could possibly do to try to get rid of it. Besides go to sleep and confront it in her dreams, but that thought was terrifying — she'd never felt a demon through the Veil before, who knew what the fuck that thing was, she was certain she'd be too scared to fall asleep.

Marian very, very much didn't want to be here anymore, to put it mildly.

As uneventful as things were for the Hawkes, Aveline had been surprisingly busy. There had been some kind of confrontation overnight, Marian wasn't sure what, she'd been asleep at the time. Supposedly, Aveline had assisted the city guard in dealing with it, and the sergeant on duty at the time had been impressed with her. While the Hawkes had been meeting with Gamlen, Aveline had been invited inside to speak over lunch with the head of the city guard and someone from some noble family or another (Marian had forgotten his name almost immediately). After talking about her experience with the Kingsmen in Ferelden for a bit, she'd been offered passage into Kirkwall if she would join the city guard — she'd be starting as a sergeant too, since using her as a common guardsman would be a waste. Aveline had said she needed to speak with the people she'd travelled with first, she'd get back to them.

Marian had told her she was insane — of course she should take the job, what the hell was wrong with her? She realized Aveline was just trying to be considerate, not abandoning them here — she'd even asked if the Hawkes could be brought in as part of the deal, but once she'd admitted they weren't family and hadn't even known each other for more than a couple weeks that had been shot down quick — but that was no reason not to take an opportunity like that if it came up. Besides, they were already working on getting themselves out of here too, and their arrangement might or might not include Aveline, so really, she wasn't abandoning them, just take it already, you stupidly noble twit.

Aveline had just huffed at her, smirking a little, and said goodbye to Mom and Beth before leaving. That had been a while ago now, she was probably in the city already.

And here Marian was still waiting. Leaning against the wall near where Mother was napping — Marian had rolled up Father's jacket and tucked it under her head — keeping an eye on the twins, Bethany still reading and Carver chatting with the northerners, trying to ignore the electric chill of the demon's presence. And she tried to keep her head, not let herself become too frustrated with her own despondency and frustration.

How long was this supposed to take? Hadn't he said something about coming back this evening? Or maybe a couple days, but she'd hoped he'd find someone agreeable almost right away — what crime lord wouldn't want a mage working for them...

Thankfully, they didn't end up waiting nearly as long this time — the sky above had just started to flush with the approach of true dusk, Marian considering parting with more of their limited coin for some food, when a man in the white and orange armor of the city guard walked into their covered hall, Gamlen following close behind him. "I see them," Gamlen said, stopping the guardsman with a hand on his elbow. "Thank you, son, I can see myself out." The guardsman gave Gamlen a languid, friendly sort of smile, turned around and walked off.

Marian was already on her feet by the time Gamlen reached them, Carver making his way over from his new friends. "Did you find someone?"

"Someone who isn't a complete bastard, I hope," Carver grumbled, his voice cast low, probably having noticed Mother was asleep.

Gamlen shot Carver an irritated sort of look, but forcefully covered it with a thin smile. "They're hardly the kindest people in the world, but they'll treat you fairly, at least. Many of their own people have been through debt bondage or even slavery at one point or another in their lives, so they are far more sympathetic than most in their line of work."

"Oh." Carver was clearly taken aback, frozen blinking at him for a moment. "Well, alright, then. What is that line of work, exactly?"

"It would be better if you talk to them about that — I'm only familiar with some of their activities, and I can't predict what they'll have you doing." Gamlen glanced down at Mother, still sleeping. "Should we wake her up, or will only a couple of you meet with them?"

Marian shook her head. "Just me and Carver." She hunched down a little to mutter to Bethany, "Keep an eye on Mom, tell her what we're doing if she wakes up. If something goes wrong, we'll track you down after you leave here." It would be tedious, but Marian didn't doubt she could find her sister if she really needed to — it just required magic, so Beth would need to be away from the Templars first.

Bethany glanced between the three of them for a moment, slowly nodding. "Good luck. Don't agree to take on a debt without knowing what all the terms are."

"Yeah, and who taught you that?" Marian ruffled Beth's hair, ignored her (quiet) squawk of protest. Straightening again, she nodded at Gamlen. "Let's go."

Gamlen lead them clear across the Gallows, somewhere on the opposite side of the central courtyard. There was a maze of little hallways there zigzagging across a collection of smaller buildings, some joined overhead to enclose the passage like on their side, others open to the sky, in a couple places rows of bushes, dotted with little blossoms in red and white and a pale lavender — healing herbs, Marian belatedly noticed, embrium and elfroot and vandal aria. With all the people packed everywhere, it was kind of pain to get where they were going, weaving tightly between groups of people, occasionally forced to step over legs or bags, a couple times small children. Picking through them so slowly, the sky started to properly color as they walked, orange and red streaking overhead, clouds seeming to burn.

Eventually, they came to a narrow hallway against the outer wall — a storage space of some kind, by the look of it, tucked away beneath overhangs sacks of grain and crates and barrels, a couple handcarts here and there to move it all. This hallway was empty of refugees, presumably the Templars didn't want the Fereldans poking about their supplies. But there were people lingering half-visible in the shadows, three, four...five, faces hidden with hoods and figures by cloaks, Marian couldn't make much out. That one was almost certainly a dwarf, those two were two tall to be anything but human men, but beyond that.

"Go on." Gamlen had stopped at the corner into the hall, nodding Marian and Carver forward. "I'll wait back here."

"You're not talking to them with us?" Marian had been under the impression he knew these people...

A grimace crossing his face, Gamlen sucked a breath in through his teeth, glancing between the two of them and the indistinct figures ahead. "I don't know if..." He cleared his throat. "I don't imagine it will do you much good to have me along for this conversation. To be perfectly honest, I owe the Thorns money — if you work out, Athenril is willing to write off some of it."

"Well, I'm glad there's something in it for you."

Gamlen shot Carver another uncomfortable glance. "It's not like that, I would have gone to the Thorns even if I had nothing to gain from it. I'm simply saying, since they're not happy with me right now it might not be to your advantage to have me standing there when you meet them."

Before Carver could say anything — and he was going to, his glare deepening and shoulders rising with breath — Marian blurted out, "That sounds like a good idea. Come on, Carver, let's go." Carver deflated a little and followed after her, though not without giving Gamlen another surly glare.

Partway down the passage, the shadowy figures still some yard away, Carver leaned close over her shoulder. "Is it just me," he whispered, "or is Uncle Gamlen not what you expected?"

She snorted. "Yeah, you could say that."

They were still a few steps off when the figures moved — or some of them, anyway, one was sitting on a crate under the overhang, hidden in the shadows, a second leaning against a pillar nearby. But three shifted to meet them, anyway, the one obvious dwarf and two large men, the men looming over the dwarf's shoulders. "Oly deh," the dwarf grumbled in a low, grinding voice, throwing back his hood.

Marian froze, mostly in confusion (had that even been Alamarri?), and at least in part from surprise. She'd seen dwarves before, on any number of occasions, but the people she'd seen with tattoos on their face were literally just Lýna, though they definitely couldn't be mistaken as the same thing. Lýna's had been extremely detailed, twisting vines with leaves and flowers, in realistic colors — Marian suspected they'd been created with magic — and this man's were much simpler, formed of blocky, angular shapes, all cast in plain black. There was a shape on his cheek, the top line just under his right eye, that looked sort of like the rune B (this one had a slight blue-ish tint to it, the rest more plain black), then an angle across his brow with little notches sticking down — the way a couple sticked down further, over the inside corners of his eyes, like canines, the jaws of an animal, maybe? There was another thing that seemed to have been added later, a pair of kinking lines framing his cheeks, these with more notches but longer and thinner, coming to a point instead of a squarish edge, sticking out of both sides of the lines instead of just one. The man had obviously shaved his cheeks to display these ones, but not completely, thick dark hair hiding his lip and his chin, little braids worked into it here and there.

It was only after she'd stared blinking at him for a couple seconds, taking in the strange tattoos, that she belatedly realized he'd said hold it there. That was a hell of an accent, but okay.

The man was speaking again, in his harsh, grinding, dwarven voice, but Marian understood not a single word, his weird, drawling accent too incomprehensible for her to follow. He probably hadn't been speaking long enough to complete a full sentence before, from one of the figures still hidden in the shadows, came a call of, "Das anoof, scunny. Seen days klin anow."

Marian frowned — uh, that first bit might be that's enough, but she had no idea about the rest. The dwarf obviously understood it, though, let out a huff, with a last suspicious glare up at Marian and Carver sidled off to the side. The figure sitting on one of the crates hopped off, glided out from the overhang to take the dwarf's place, reaching up to pull back their hood as they went.

This one was an elven woman. A hand shorter than Marian, which actually made her rather tall for an elf, she was pale-skinned (though not so pale as Lýna, darkened a little like Bethany in the summer), with short tawny-red hair, left unstyled in an asymmetrical halo around her head. Her face was also tattooed, what looked like a crescent moon curled around the corner of her left eye, along her cheeks and across her brow the same kinked lines the dwarf had, with the same alternating notches, on her right cheek a...rosette, maybe? It was hard to tell, these tattoos only seemed to use straight lines and hard angles, but Marian thought it was supposed to be a flower, or maybe a star.

The tattoos were so weird and new and eye-catching, she was taken by surprise when the woman met her eyes — a dark green, flat and cold — and Marian abruptly noticed she was really very pretty. It was kind of hard to tell at first glance, with the tattoos obscuring the lines of her face somewhat, but looking a little closer, she...

Marian forced out the smallest sigh — of course the criminal they were trying to get to help them off this damn island had to be another pretty elf. This conversation was going to be difficult enough without Marian being unnecessarily distracted.

The elf glanced between Marian and Carver for a few seconds, cutting a slice out of a vaguely apple-looking fruit with a knife. (A fresh fruit, which was weird, it was far too early in the year for that.) After a brief examination — eyes bouncing over their faces, flicking down to take in their armor and weapons — she drawled in a low, smooth voice, "Pathun en de lemmin, days slum wha goes hah to shop me, kenny." The woman stopped, clearly expecting some kind of response from them.

But that had been completely incomprehensible — Marian glanced at Carver quick, from the baffled look on his face he had no better idea than she did. The woman seemed to realize that, rolling her eyes as she popped a slice of the fruit in her mouth. She tossed the remainder of the fruit to the dwarf, who caught it so smoothly he must have been expecting it, wiped the knife off on her sleeve before sliding it home on her belt somewhere.

When she spoke again, it was with an obvious Marcher accent. There was a little bit more of a drawl to it than Gamlen's accent, with a bouncing, rising cadence, and some of the vowels were a little weird, but it was perfectly understandable. "Sorry about that, I forgot southerners don't know Brouse. I said sorry for the trick, there are people out there who'd go this far just to get a shot at me. I don't much trust ye's uncle there, honestly."

Carver scoffed. "I can't say I blame you for that."

The woman shot him a crooked smile, and then turned back to Marian, apparently marking her as the one in charge. Carver was standing a step behind her shoulder, so she guessed that was a reasonable conclusion to come to. (Though, Marian was pretty sure Carver was just staying out of the way so she could blast them with magic if need be.) "My name is Athenril, I run a group of like-minded people helping each other get by in the city." That was quite a way to say criminal syndicate, but okay. "I'm told ye need help to get in. On a normal day, I wouldn't think much on it, but this isn't a normal day. There been...troubles in Kirkwall lately, and the Commander worries letting in boatloads of Fereldan refugees will make it worse. Smuggling you out of here will be doable, but it'll cost a pretty penny. And it'll be risky — the Commander doesn't put up with corruption, get caught and we're all dead. Ye don't know me, but I don't risk me people they lives for no good cause.

"So." Athenril casually folded her arms over her stomach, ticked up an eyebrow — or made the motion, anyway, elves didn't actually have eyebrows. "Talk me into it."

That was...not quite what Marian had expected. She shared a quick glance with Carver, giving herself a second to figure out what to say. "Well, we'll work to pay you back, obviously," she said, partially just to stall.

"You can pay back coin; you can't pay back blood." ...True. She couldn't help wondering whether Athenril actually cared about her people's lives, or whether she was just claiming she did because she didn't want to risk pissing off the Templars. She sounded sincere enough, but... "Will it just be the two of ye?"

"And our mother and sister."

"They won't be working for you, though," Carver added, "just us two."

Athenril glanced at him, her head tilting just slightly, a crooked smile pulling at her lips. "If you say so. Just means it'll be harder to pay off." Her eyes flicked down again, trailing along their armor, lingering over the sword hanging from Carver's hip, the daggers at Marian's. "That kit ye're carrying weren't cheap, yours more than his. You know how to use it?"

Carver answered before Marian could, a little bit of boasting bluster to his voice. "We've both killed dozens of darkspawn single-handedly, first with the King's army at Ostagar and then more alone fleeing north."

"Mm-hmm." Athenril didn't look like she disbelieved it, exactly, but it was pretty obvious she thought Carver was exaggerating at least a little. Which was maybe slightly irritating, because he wasn't, really. "Ye're not like to find no darkspawn here. Not in the city, anyway, some are spotted out in the hills now and then. And speaking of darkspawn, if I take you on I'm not goin'a have the Wardens on my arse, am I?"

"What do you mean?" Marian really couldn't see how any arrangement between them could possibly have anything to do with the Wardens.

The elf narrowed her eyes at her, her voice dropping a little. "Don't play dumb with me, girl — that's silverite you're wearing, and it'd bet gold the blades are silverite too. None but Wardens give common folk that much silverite. The sentence for desertion is death. I take you on, I'm already tweaking the Templars, I don't want no trouble with the Wardens on top."

"Oh, I'm not—" She sighed, her eyes turning up to the sky. This was...kind of hard to explain, actually. "I was working with the Wardens at Ostagar, but I never joined. We got separated in the fighting at Ostagar, I really don't know what happened to them, but I didn't desert."

"And that's what the Wardens will tell me if I ask?" she drawled, eyes skeptically narrowing.

"If you can find any of them, sure — the Kirkwall Wardens can't tell you shit, I never met any from the Marches." Well, that wasn't strictly true — a couple of Duncan's people were from Antiva — but they were all probably dead anyway.

Athenril hummed, stared at Marian for a long moment. It was somewhat uncomfortable, honestly, and not just because she was distractingly pretty if Marian let herself notice — there was also just something vaguely intimidating about her (the tattoos, the way she held herself, smooth and confident, not to mention the thugs hanging around), the hard, cold staring really didn't help. Finally, she let out a breath, Athenril's gaze softened somewhat, Marian felt a little tension lift out of her. "Ye're fighters, then. Unless either ye have any other skills, that's what ye'll be doing. Security, mostly, protecting places or shipments or people — we have our own sites, and those of people we work with, and some of the gangs like hitting shipments going in and out of the city, legit and not. But we don't take blood-money, and starting open fights with the gangs or cartels is foolish."

Marian wasn't sure what she meant by blood-money — like, contract murder, maybe? — but she thought that was probably a good thing. Protecting people from gangs and shit sounded fine, actually...ignoring for the moment that Athenril's people were a gang, she was trying not to think about that. "Sure, that's alright."

"Can either ye read?"

"Both of us."

It might be her imagination, but she thought Athenril seemed just a little surprised. "Good, that makes things easier. I expect ye've gotten a bit of training at least, which puts ye head up on most of the poor lads throwing theyselves into it. But I've got a hundred fighters, and I'm not sure I want to risk this much just to get two more. Unless there's something ye're not telling me."

...Had Gamlen not told her about Marian being a mage? She kind of got the feeling he hadn't, which she honestly hadn't expected. But if that wasn't what she was referring to, maybe hinting for Marian to prove it, she really couldn't guess what she was asking for. Other skills, she said, but Marian had no idea what kind of skills she meant. Apparently Athenril wasn't particularly interested in having more people who could fight...and the more Marian thought about it, that was kind of interesting. What kind of criminal group wouldn't want more muscle? She didn't know what to think about that, but she didn't know shit about this kind of thing, so maybe it didn't really mean anything.

But, if Athenril was thinking other things they could do that would make her money, Marian didn't really know what they had. Marian had done pretty well managing the farm, all things considered, but she kind of doubted that was a very valuable skill-set in a place like Kirkwall. Maybe outside of the city proper, she guessed — Kirkwall was a whole country, they had farmland and such elsewhere in their holdings — but it didn't seem likely that'd be of any use to Athenril. Marian and Carver were passable with carpentry, but they were hardly professionals, there must be hundreds better in the city...or maybe there weren't — there weren't a lot of trees around, were there? All of them were decent with cloth-work, the twins more than Mother and Marian, but, again, they were hardly tailors or weavers or whatever. And, of course, they could all read, but that was hardly special, was it?

There was really only one thing Marian could think of to set them apart. She glanced around quick, confirming there weren't any Templars in sight, turned to give Carver a questioningly raised eyebrow. He grimaced, gritting his teeth, one hand finding the hilt of his sword seemingly on instinct — he clearly wasn't happy with the idea, but he nodded.

Marian took a couple steps closer to Athenril, putting herself within arm's reach. The second she started moving the others responded, she heard a faint slithering of blades drawn from well-oiled sheaths. Athenril hardly reacted, staring up at her flat and unblinking — the pair of large men had started to move up, but Athenril raised an open hand next to her shoulder, they stopped immediately. Which was good, honestly Marian hadn't even considered moving closer might be taken as a threat.

Leaning over the shorter woman, Marian brought one hand halfway up, hidden between them from either end of the hallway. As thin as the Veil was here, it took hardly any thought at all to open herself to it. In a blink, a shimmering aura of fadelight had appeared around her hand, dim but unmistakable, the familiar eerie green traced with flickers of yellow and blue. "I can think of one other skill."

Athenril's eyes widened a bit at the magic hardly a foot from her face...and that was it. Just how little she reacted was rather surprising, Marian had half-expected shocked twitching or yelling or...something, anyway, she didn't know. Instead Athenril just stared down at the unnaturally steady glow for a moment, then looked back up at Marian. Her head tilting to the side, her lips curling in a wry smile and fadelight glimmering in her eyes, she took Marian's hand with both of hers — touching Marian's hand despite the fadelight, clearly not afraid of the magic — gently pushed it down. Marian released the spell even as Athenril drawled, voice wavering slightly with amusement, "I was asking if ye know a trade, you know."

Marian folded her hands behind her back, lifted her shoulders in a shrug, her eyes sliding off to the side. "I know, I just, er... Well, we're only farmers."

"That's a trade," she said, smile widening into a smirk. "Besides, farmers are a hard-working lot, and know a little about much — they're more useful than you maybe think. Ye'll do." Athenril turned to the side, said something Marian couldn't follow at all to the fourth man, the one Marian hadn't gotten a good look at. His hood shifted in a nod, and he darted off, disappearing into the shadows in seconds. "Go get ye's family, and come back here. We leave just after nightfall."

፠

They did, in fact, leave just after nightfall.

Slipping out of the fortress was surprisingly easy — Marian wondered whether Athenril had smuggled people out of here before. (It would explain why the magic had hardly even surprised her.) Once they'd returned with Mom and Beth, they were led down the hall, after a couple turns stepping into a building set against the outside wall. This was a storeroom, creates and barrels stacked up throughout, they traipsed down the middle to a stairwell, climbed up — two floors, Marian was pretty sure — coming out into a hallway. They went down this one for a couple minutes, taking more turns seemingly at random, occasionally passing people as they went — mostly women in plain, cheap clothing, probably servants. Their group were given curious, sometimes wary glances, but nobody acknowledge them, they went on without any interruption.

They must have stepped into another building, because the materials were different here — that first had been wood and the imported grayish stone, but this was made of the same black as the cliffs. There was another staircase, this one curling up in a tight spiral, which made it rather more difficult for Marian to guess how far they were climbing. They stepped out into a sitting room — modest and lived in, a couple shelves with papers and whatnot, a table with jugs and a platter of finger-food, a few rough, worn chairs — a Templar in full armor rising from one of the chairs. For a second Marian thought they were caught, but the Templar just nodded, led them through one of the doors. A narrow hall brought them to another room, this one with several tall, narrow windows showing nothing but water, the cliffs in the distance. The light hadn't faded entirely, so Marian could make out enough through the windows to see they were in one of the towers along the walls, overlooking the shore.

Waiting here was a second Templar and an elven man, the latter with the same kinked-line-and-notches tattoos on his face, must be the fifth of their group. While Athenril and one of the Templars talked — the timing of the shift-change and the angles other posts would be watching, sounded like — the other Templar walked toward one of the windows, stooped to grab a handle attached to a wooden section of the flooring. With a grunting heave, he lifted the section up and dragged it off, revealing there was a hole in the floor. So they could shoot down at people trying to climb the tower, she guessed, but she really couldn't say for sure — she'd never been in a bloody castle before.

She stepped closer to the hole, leaned over a little to peer down, and snorted to herself — crates and planks had been stacked up against the wall, making a rough scaffold people could climb in and out of the tower on. Apparently the Circle had a smuggling problem.

The two human men in their group went down first, followed by Carver. It did look like a bit of a drop to the top of the scaffold, so Marian took Mother's bag and gave her a hand down, Carver below half-catching her and lowering to the rickety floor, Mother's bag passed down to Carver, Bethany went next, and then Marian, then the elves, and finally the dwarf.

As high as that first step was, the dwarf was forced to jump down — the scaffold shook from the impact, sending him staggering, hissing what Marian was pretty sure were curses under his breath. Luckily the rest of them were already on the shore by then.

A pair of sizeable rowboats were lying in the sand near the water, but they didn't move for them immediately. Athenril explained that they would cast off just before the shift change, which would be right around full dark. They sat in the rough, black sand, backs against the smooth stone of the wall, looking across the water, silent but for the occasional pass of a whisper.

Mother wondered aloud at one point whether this was the same way Father had snuck out of the Circle. Athenril claimed there were multiple smuggling routes out of the Gallows, so it was possible but not guaranteed — she didn't react to learning that their father had been a mage here, but she'd hardly reacted to Marian being a mage either, so.

Finally, stars started to peek out of the blackened sky, the hole in the floor above covered again, casting them into shadow, and they leapt into movement. It wasn't difficult to get the boats back into the water, they were light enough one of the human men shoved at each until only the back end was still in the sand. They climbed in one at a time, four people in one boat and five in the other — Mother and Bethany with the elves, Carver and Marian with the dwarf — the little thing shifting unsettlingly under her feet as she stepped on, she less sat down and more fell on her ass. It was rather small in here, with the addition of their packs there was hardly room for them all. And it only got worse when the human men in the rear shoved them the rest of the way into the water, throwing themselves into the back — Marian got sprayed with thin rivulets of seawater, but she was pretty sure Carver had been kicked in the shoulder.

They coasted for a moment, the little boats rocking side to side — the water level much too close to the rim for Marian's comfort — the men trying to slip the paddles out from underneath the passengers and their packs. They finally managed it, and they started moving, paddles cutting through the water smooth and quiet, slowly pushing them forward.

And the word there was slowly — there must be more weight than the rowers were used to. It was hard to tell, sitting out on the smooth, unbroken water, but Marian had the feeling they were practically moving at a crawl. And it wasn't because they were going easy, after only a couple minutes the work was already beginning to take its toll, the men groaning with each stroke, their breaths thicker and heavier.

Occasionally they would pause, coasting for a moment as the rowers caught their breath and stretched their arms. The city was afire in the night, lamplight sparkling in the cliffs. Marian hadn't gotten a clear look at the city yet, and while she couldn't actually see much in the way of detail she could at least see where it was now — across the water to the right was a concentration of hundreds of little lights, tinted yellow through red, in a couple places even an unnatural blue, arranged in three thick clumps, one at the shore and one at the top and one about in the middle, a wide band down the center connecting them. The clumps were different sizes, and weren't even at the edges, the limits of the dense area stretching further out in some areas than others. After a while looking, Marian eventually realized there were horizontal lines as well, strings of denser light stretching left and right through the central band and the blobs, some of these reaching out far beyond the edge of the blobs until they finally vanished into shadows. Occasionally more lights peeked out of the cliffs, islands of life removed from the rest, glimmering in the night like stars in the sky.

Marian couldn't make out much, the actual shapes of the buildings obscured by distance. But all the lights were kind of pretty anyway.

It was slow going, but over time the implacable black cliff face slowly stretched higher and higher overhead. Marian made out a glimmer of light at the waterline, at first faint and tiny in the distance but gradually growing larger, slowly more and more every second, until she finally saw it was an opening in the cliffs, maybe a couple feet across, narrow enough the boats would have to go in one at a time. But a few minutes later she realized the scale of the cliffs had thrown her off — it was a tiny little harbor set into the wall, more like twenty to thirty feet across. Then men back-paddled a little as they neared, cutting their speed down a little, and they slowly slipped into the hollow, stone blocking off the sky overhead, little nudges at the water adjusting their course.

The boat Marian was on scraped against another tied up in the little harbor, then thudded to a sudden halt. The men in front tied the boats to little posts on the shore and the rest of them climbed off — which was not easy, since there wasn't anything actually holding the boats in place. Marian had thought they'd rocked a lot before, but apparently the sand had stopped them from moving too much, and there was no sand here, just blocky stone a few inches above the waterline. Each step made the boat roll under her, her stomach lurching, her heart jumping into her throat when she nearly fell over as Carver shifted his weight.

Right, this wasn't happening. Marian grabbed Carver's pack and flew to the shore instead — some of the men squawked a little, not expecting the more dramatic display of magic, but Athenril and one of the human men just laughed at her. She stood on a rough walkway, everything around the same black stone as the cliffs — this little harbor was just carved out bit by bit, she suspected — lamps hanging here and there glowing with a constant, red-orange light — the light was too uniform, without any hint of flickering, Marian suspected magic — a few door-sized exits here and there leading deeper into the cliffs, the arches filled with shadows. There was nobody around, but it wasn't quite properly quiet, conversation filtering through one of the arches from nearby, a dozen conversations too mixed and muffled to make out.

Mother was having as much trouble getting off the boat as Marian was, she ended up just plucking her out and gently placing her down on the floor. It looked like being lifted off her feet with magic had shaken Mother a little — she took a moment just standing there breathing, her eyes squeezed shut — but it was better than overbalancing and falling in the water.

The walk to wherever they were going easily took as long as the boat ride, and there wasn't a whole lot to see for any of it. There was one hallway after another after another, all in the black stone of the cliffs, an occasional lamp casting their surroundings in more detail, revealing half-rotted trash or a discarded vessel of clay or glass here or there, hints of green glimmering in the stone. But mostly it was dark and quiet, the loudest sound the tromp of boots over stone.

Twice during the walk they came into open areas, like underground courtyards — space carved out from the cliffs around great pillars, some areas of the floor sectioned off into recogniseable spaces, a market here and what she suspected was a tavern there, stairs leading to multiple levels of doors along the sides, what could only be homes for... Well, even in the smaller one there were more doors than she could easily count, there had to be hundreds of people living here. The floor wasn't even across the whole area, higher here and lower there, they had to take multiple staircases, circling a massive pillar covered in rough, colorful drawings, to get to their exit.

The second one was significantly larger, easily three or four times the size of the first. Not just around the edge, there were also homes carved into the sides of places where the floor was higher, entered from a lower part, more on the floor constructed from wood brought in from somewhere, others even inside the pillars, several levels high, accessed by twisting stairs reaching halfway to the distant ceiling. (Some of the pillars were very large, as wide as the Chantry back home, Marian assumed the residents knew what they were doing and weren't risking bringing the cliff down on their heads.) Large sections of the wall on one side were open to the outside, revealing the city glittering in the darkness far to one side, the black star-speckled sky above, the water below moodily flickering with reflected light. They were quite high up, the waterline was a good...she didn't know, thirty or forty feet down? She hadn't realised they'd climbed that many stairs already.

There was even a Chantry in the larger open area, though a rather modest one, identifiable only by the colors of the murals on and around it, the red-and-gold sunburst painted over the double-high door, the Templar sitting outside chatting with a couple locals. Marian suspected there must be an attached orphanage, which she'd heard wasn't unusual in cities — next to the Chantry was a little enclosed courtyard complete with garden (and how had they managed that down here?), a couple elven women in the robes of a Sister telling stories to a clump of children in old, threadbare clothes.

Because there were people around in these open areas, though not very impressive-looking. Marian knew immediately the people here were very poor — their clothing plain and stained and worn from age, some showing obvious signs of not having eaten enough for too long, a gleam of desperation in far too many eyes. None approached, though, giving the group of intimidating-looking criminals a wide berth.

After they left that larger open area, there wasn't much to see — just more walking, and many, many stairs. On and on and up and up, long enough even Marian was starting to get a little out of breath. Where the hell were they going, exactly? She knew the city was big, but surely if they kept going much longer they'd come out the other side eventually...

Marian noticed Mother was struggling, cast a couple spells quick to lighten her weight and strengthen her limbs. She immediately let out a sigh of relief, the next few steps coming noticeably easier, her breath quickly slowing to something much more manageable. Enough that after a moment she asked, "Where are we going? We can't be far from the upper levels by now."

There was some muttering from the men, but it was in that weird local dialect again, Marian didn't understand a word. "We're going to where I keep the books," Athenril answered, sounding not the slightest bit winded, "so we can put our agreement on paper. It's in hightown, we're almost there."

"Hightown? Where in hightown?"

"The ninth canton of the first arrondisse."

Mother's step hitched — Marian didn't have to be able to see her face to know she was surprised. "I grew up in the first arrondissement, but I don't think I've ever been to the ninth canton. I don't think I've ever even heard tell of it."

This time, there were a few chuckles from their escorts, a couple muttered comments resulting in more laughter. Athenril wasn't looking back at them, but by her tone of voice Marian knew she was smirking. "Well, you were a young lady, weren't you? No surprise people didn't talk to you about Shutter Row."

...Marian tried not to take Mother never having heard of a place so close to where she'd lived as a bad sign.

They passed through more halls and yet more stairs until, finally, they stepped out into the open air. Though there wasn't a whole lot to see, at first — they were in a shadowed corner, surrounded on two sides by walls and a third by rows of crates and barrels. Their escorts weaved their way through the stacks of stuff, eventually coming out into a tiny little courtyard, made out of the same imported grayish stone from before. They were at the top of a twenty-foot wide staircase leading down — or Marian assumed, she was too far away to make out the stairs themselves — but there wasn't actually a lot to see. There were a couple tiers of buildings down there, the city not sloping gradually down but in steps, the shapes of the buildings obscured in the night and half-illuminated with lamps and fires, throwing crazy shadows, but the solid black stone of the cliffs loomed out of the darkness not so far away. Though they weren't nearly as high here — actually, Marian thought her head might be over the top of the cliffs, just obviously the buildings all the way the hell down there weren't that tall.

There were plenty of people about, humans and dwarfs cracking open crates or loading up carts to wheel things away. A few called out to or waved at their group, and while a couple of Athenril's people responded they didn't slow. A short walk brought them to a little alley — a tiny gap between two tall stone buildings, hardly wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Above the conversation behind them Marian started to make out the chatter of distant voices, and music, strings and flutes and a high tinkling she assumed must be an instrument she wasn't familiar with, a whiff of food on the air, spicy and sweet. Coming up on some kind of tavern, maybe? Or several, probably, the little snippets of music she caught didn't sound like they were from the same song.

Before long they stepped out into a much wider street. Marian's first thought was that it was very, very green — there were banners criss-crossing over their heads between the buildings, green, the trim of doors and windows and the railings of balconies two or three levels up, many of those were green, curtains hung in windows or doorways, green. Lanterns were scattered about, keeping the area bright enough to see easily, with translucent shutters (paper?) or wrapped in thin, gauzy cloth, these coverings also green, giving the light filling the street an odd tint, the gray stone looking faintly greenish. There were people about, but not many, and unlike the people they'd seen in Kirkwall so far most of them were finely dressed, intricately embroidered cloth with a sheen to it Marian knew must be silk (she'd hardly ever even seen the stuff before), gold and silver glinting here and there. They seemed weirdly cheerful, Marian thought, chatting and laughing, sauntering one place to another, some of them rather unsteady on their feet — were they drunk?

Mother stopped at the mouth of the alley, the instant she saw the street — ahead of her, Marian hadn't noticed until Bethany asked her what was wrong. There was a weird look on her face, crooked and uncertain, Marian didn't know how to read that. She glanced back at Bethany, sharply shook her head and started moving again.

Their group split up in the middle of the street, the dwarf, the elf, and one of the human men peeling off in different directions. Athenril and the remaining human man led them on, crossing the street and heading for the door into one of the buildings. There was a large sign hanging overhead a few feet to either side of the door, illuminated by lanterns — no text, just the image of a reddish-pink flower. The longer Marian looked at it, the more she thought there was something weird about the way that flower had been drawn, but she couldn't put her finger on it. The remaining man pulled the green curtains in the doorway (elaborated with beads and little bits of glittering glass) out of the way, stood aside to let the rest of them through one at a time.

There was a little drawing to the side of the door, not particularly large and obvious, Marian might not have noticed if she weren't waiting her turn: a little rosette, surrounded by a ring of thorns. Thorns, that was it, the tattoos with the kinking lines and alternating notches were supposed to be thorns. It'd taken her forever to realize that, it really wasn't very easy to tell. Marian was hardly an expert on criminal organizations in the cities, but she assumed that had to be a gang thing?

Through the door was a little entryway, which might be literally the finest room Marian had ever been in. This building was made out of more imported grayish stone, but she could hardly see any of it, rugs covering the floors and tapestries and paintings on the walls. There were a few lamps here and there, hung from posts fixed to the walls gleaming gold — probably not actually gold, but bronze carefully mixed and polished to appear gold — formed into twisting vines, even showing a few little metal flower buds.

There were people in the little room, clumped together around a table in a corner with a deck of cards. There were five of them, four women and one man, and while none of them were wearing anything recognizable as armor they were all armed, swords and daggers, even a couple crossbows left leaning against the wall. They must be door guards of some kind.

Marian noticed they all had more of those kinking, notched tattoos — yeah, that was definitely a gang thing.

Through the door straight ahead was the main room of a tavern. It was larger and far fancier than the one in Lothering, the only one Marian had ever been to, but it was still familiar enough to be recognizable. Tables scattered around, bottles and casks stashed behind a counter over there, a few people in a corner toward the back with a mix of instruments filling air with a bouncing, jaunty tune. (Marian didn't know it off-hand, but then she didn't know that much music anyway.) A mix of smells obviously identifiable as food cooking wafted out from a door to the right, workers bringing patrons mugs or plates or whatever, and...

...sitting with them, and... Huh, that was weird. Also, was it just Marian, or did they seem weirdly under-dressed? Not so much that it'd be weird to be seen at home like this, but in public, well, she hadn't realized the standards of decency were so different in—

It finally clicked when she noticed just how, uh, friendly one of the patrons was being with a serving girl. This wasn't a tavern. It was a brothel.

"No."

Marian had abruptly stopped, only a few steps in from the door, and she wasn't the only one either, her family petering to a halt around her. Mother seemed unsurprised — not pleased, but not surprised either (had she figured out where they were going earlier?) — but Bethany looked almost horrified, wide eyes bouncing around the room almost dizzyingly quickly, seeming to cringe away. Carver had sidled up to Beth, looming protectively over her shoulder, giving the nearest patron a threatening glare. (Despite the anger crawling up her throat, Marian still felt a smile twitch at her lips — Carver was just adorable sometimes.)

Athenril eventually noticed they'd stopped. She did pause, but she didn't turn all the way toward them, shooting a frown over her shoulder. Then, once she'd taken in their reaction, she rolled her eyes — Marian felt her teeth clench, her breath burning in her lungs, scrambled to try to calm down, keep herself from getting too angry, fists clenched tight enough her hands ached. (Normally she'd just release it, but she couldn't do that right now, there might be Templars too nearby.) With a clear tone of exasperation, Athenril drawled, "Oh, calm ye down, ye won't be working here. My books are downstairs." She turned and sauntered off again, then lingered a moment at the counter, drawn into conversation with a woman there.

Before leading them on further. Into a brothel.

And that was what it was — Marian had never been in one before, but she could still tell. The patrons and the workers were easily distinguishable by their dress, the former mostly in relatively expensive clothing, finely-embroidered silk and the like, the latter rather...indecent. Some in loose shifts, the cloth so thin and flimsy it was practically see-through — that woman, sauntering back to a table from the bar, was wearing one that really was, the tiny shorts underneath obviously the only other thing she was wearing — the men (and there were men, somewhat to her surprise) hardly bothered with shirts — Marian caught herself staring at a nearby elven man with a vest left hanging open, visible lines of muscle crossing his abdomen (yep, she definitely found elven men distractingly pretty too, she's suspected as much, but, good to know?) — a lot of people wearing what she recognized as northern dress, Antivan and Rivaini and Tevene, either gowns that hung loose — short enough they showed far too much leg, hemlines drooping down scandalously front and back, most completely sleeveless — or weird wrap-around things, or these odd separated outfits she vaguely recognized from one of Dad's history books — the top a skin-tight shirt wrapping in a band around the back and a second behind the neck, leaving most of their backs and all of their arms completely uncovered, and even cutting off at the ribs, a wide span of bare skin before the skirts started, hanging from a band around the hips a whole bunch of thin strips, none of them hardly reaching the knees, shifting with each step, thighs flicking in and out of sight, when sitting the sides of their legs visible practically all the way up to the hip — much of it colorful, dyed in bright contrasting shades, glittering in the firelight, beads and the like stitched into things here and there...

(Marian couldn't help wondering how they weren't cold, but then, it was rather warm in here...)

And it wasn't a normal tavern, no, the workers were far too...uh, friendly with the patrons for that. Sitting far too close, practically hip-to-hip, or sometimes actually sitting on the patrons, the chatter in the room was mixed with purring whispers and giggles, hands lingering on hips or thighs, in a couple cases outright kissing — Marian noticed, a woman sitting in a man's lap, his face buried in her neck, the woman shifting to— And over there, one pair was moving, the whore leading a man by the hand over to a nearby set of stairs, no need to guess what they were about to get up to...

Looking around the obvious brothel, her family standing around her, Athenril — the woman Marian had just indebted them too, who'd bribed the Templars for them and smuggled them out, who could simply report Marian to the Templars if they didn't pay her back — leading them further into the building, Marian was struck with a black, sinking dread.

She had the feeling she'd made a terrible mistake.

---

Woo, finally done. Wooooo...

The last scene was originally going to go on for a while, including the Hawkes' negotiations with Athenril, but I decided that wasn't really necessary, and this chapter was getting long enough anyway. I've altered and developed Athenril and her smuggler gang significantly, for a variety of reasons — one was to incorporate the Blooming Rose into Marian's life in a much less gratuitous, exploitative sort of way, and another important one was designing a different way to introduce Varric. The details will be more deeply explored in the next chapter, I think it's fun stuff.

Oh, also, it's called a red light district in canon, but there's one very serious problem with that: the color red is associated with the Chantry. Yeah, no. I switched it to green instead, which actually does have some horrifying history behind it, but I don't know if that'll ever actually come up in text.

Anyway, right, one more (probably shorter) chapter with Marian in Kirkwall and then it's back to the Wardens. Woo? Woo.