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.)

32. Kirkwall — III (b)

9:30 Molloris 21

Kirkwall, Confederation of Free Cities

---

When Marian turned up to the League post in the afternoon, she'd been pulled aside and told she'd been picked for a special job — apparently, Athenril had requested her specifically for whatever it was. She'd been handed a slip of paper, told she was to show up at the address written on it around the dinner hour, she'd be given further instruction there and then. If it didn't go well tonight, she would either be taken off the assignment or she could request to be taken off herself, but if it went well it would be a regular thing, a few nights a week every other week, or however the schedule ended up working out. And it was better-paying than most of her guard jobs (even including the couple days off a week), so she should keep that in mind.

Of course, she wasn't told shit about what the assignment was. Given that the address was in the ninth canton of the first arrondisse, which she knew happened to be the green lamp quarter in hightown, she could hazard a guess.

Marian left their dortoir rather earlier than she truly needed to — mostly to make sure she would actually find the address in time, but also just because Alya being her normal friendly self made Marian feel guilty sometimes. (Nothing had happened with Gerael since that one night, but still.) Since their arrival in Kirkwall, and her drills in finding her way around the city over those first couple weeks, Marian hadn't been up to the first arrondisse very often. The home of the nobility and some of the more powerful trade guilds, there really wasn't much for common people up there. One week she'd been assigned to guard the Rose, she'd visited the Cathedral with Bethany once, but that was really it.

Mother had wanted to take the three of them up to the Lower Court to look around, point out some of the places she'd frequented when she'd lived here...in particular the Amell house. To cover Gamlen's debts the place had been sold off to 'smugglers', who Marian and Carver suspected were actually slavers — Marian was sure it still looked more or less the same from the outside, but she still thought Mother getting all nostalgic over it wasn't a great idea. That, and there was really no benefit in doing such a thing. The huge damn townhouse wasn't theirs anymore, and it likely never would be again, there was no point in checking it out.

But despite not having been up here much, it wasn't at all difficult for her to find her way to the main street of the ninth canton — the syndicate had started at the Blooming Rose, and in some ways was still centered around it, her teachers had considered it an important place to be able to find. The sun hadn't set yet, and unlike in much of the rest of the city the first arrondisse was high up enough it wasn't in the shadow of the cliffs either. The sun was low enough, though, that it was entirely hidden by the buildings to the west, throwing shadows deep and long, the west-facing sides closer to the roofs gleaming yellow, already tinged faintly orange from the approaching sunset.

The main street of the canton, most often called Shutter Row, was rather narrower than those in the rest of the arrondisse, buildings tall and blocky and packed closely together, like crates stacked in a warehouse. When Kirkwall had been a Tevinter city, this had been where the slaves serving the rulers of the city had been housed, and even a thousand years later the layout still reflected that — where most of the first arrondisse was dominated with open avenues and wide, sprawling mansions, letting far more sunlight to warm the streets than most anywhere else in the city, the streets and alleys of the ninth canton were much tighter, the tall structures to either side rising up to block out much of the sky. But the street was paved with the same white stone as the rest of the first arrondisse, smooth and unbroken, and clean, with no sign of the filth that accumulated in many of the poorer areas.

And, if Marian was being completely honest, Shutter Row was sort of pretty. The buildings lining the street had been expanded out — this would have been another wide avenue once upon a time, to give Tevinter soldiers easy access to put down potential slave rebellions — the newer construction mostly of wood, allowing wide windows and sweeping balconies, frames and railings and pillars carved with intricate, curling designs. The trim everywhere was painted green (as was required by law), but there was more color, banners and curtains hanging here and there, murals on the walls — normally not any recognizable figures, just colorful patterns, like tile mosaics done in paint. The lanterns hanging in much of the city, which Marian was convinced were magical (though she had no idea how they worked), on this street had all been altered with paper shutters or wrapped in thin, gauzy cloth, all in green, putting a faint tint on the light. This early in the evening — the tops of the buildings to the east still in the sun, turning down a gentle glow on the street — the effect wasn't obvious, but it could be seen on the western side, where the shadows were deepest, the contrasting warm and cool light, the variety of decorations all down the Row, it was vibrant and intensely colorful, unlike anything Marian had ever seen back in Ferelden, or even really elsewhere in Kirkwall.

Her knowledge of what went on inside these buildings did lesson her enjoyment of the view somewhat.

Of course, Marian pretty much immediately ran into a problem. It wasn't difficult for her to find the Blooming Rose — the red flower banners marking one section of the street made it impossible to miss — but she'd never needed to find anything else out here. She looked around for a little while at the first few fronts she came to, but she eventually had to conclude that the building numbers weren't anywhere to be seen. Maybe they were carved inside, into the original stone face of the old buildings which must still be back there somewhere, but she hardly had the time to poke around inside every single building on the Row — there were alleys zigzagging away to both sides and down the end of the Row, dortoirs for the locals and such, not to mention it'd just be awkward to go searching through brothels for something she wasn't even certain was still there. Assuming the numbering started on the main street (which it did in most cantons), she suspected the number she was looking for wasn't on the Row at all, but instead in one of the tiny back streets, and she had no idea how all that would be arranged, she didn't have that long to wander around...

"Ho there! You in the armor." She twitched, looked around to track down the voice coming from somewhere nearby — it took her a couple seconds to find it, she hadn't thought to look up at first. There was a human woman standing on a balcony over the street, leaning on her arms against the railing, dark hair cropped short and left to flutter about, wearing breeches and some kind of jerkin-looking thing over a loose-sleeved chemise, oddly enough. "Trying to find somewhere?"

"...Ah, yeah. I'm looking for number thirty-seven."

"Oh, that's back here," she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "Go down to the Carmarine — that's the one right there with the quill on the sign, see? — there's an alley just past it. Take the first left, and then it should be on your right. Got it?"

"Yeah, thanks. I would have been wandering around forever trying to find that."

The woman smirked. "No problem, love. Good luck tonight."

...Marian suspected the helpful woman was a whore and not a customer. They didn't usually dress like that, in her limited experience, but okay.

With directions from a local, it didn't take long at all until she found what she was looking for...though she had no idea what the place was. It looked like a little shop front, huddled among the blocky dortoirs along the cramped and shadowy (but clean) street, not so different from the weavers' houses and such she'd been posted at over these weeks, but she was pretty sure it wasn't, exactly. For one thing, there were normally signs outside to indicate what they were selling — often no words, especially in poorer areas, since a surprisingly large fraction of the city's population were illiterate, but some basic drawings could get the job done well enough — but this place didn't have anything of the kind. (Though she did spot the rosette of the syndicate carved into the corners of the door frame.) And while it did kind of look like a shop from what she could see through the windows (glass, surprisingly, that shit was expensive), it seemed...slightly off. Even if she couldn't quite articulate how.

Shrugging the feeling off, Marian walked through the open door, brushed the curtains just inside out of the way and stepped into the room on the other side. There were jackets and cloaks and scarves hanging on the walls, laid out in rows on a table rings and necklaces and bracelets and the like, some more modest but others shining silver and glittering with fine gemstones. But another table, weirdly, was stocked with food — just a few basic things, baskets of buns, a couple different drinks, a platter of what looked very much like maple brittle, though she assumed it must be something else. (It turned out maple trees were rare north of the Waking Sea, for some reason.) There were people around, but not very many, idly poking at one thing or another, lowly chatting. And it didn't look like there was an attendant, so this must not be a shop. Weird...

"Good, you're here early." Marian hadn't even noticed one of the elves talking near the food table was Athenril until she spoke. Athenril did have a strong accent, what Marian had learned by now to recognize as a sign of a peasant background — not the dialect from the depths of darktown, which Marian still couldn't understand at all, but common to the poorer areas of lowtown and she suspected the nearby rural shires as well — but it wasn't distinctive, Marian just hadn't been looking at her that closely before. She muttered quick with the people she'd been talking to before stalking across the little room toward Marian, with a smooth, quiet grace that still gave Marian little tingles of unease whenever she saw her.

(Athenril had been perfectly pleasant to their family so far, but Marian could never forget that this woman was very dangerous. Marian might be more dangerous personally, but she didn't have who knew how many dozens of armed men and women willing to kill for her — she knew now Athernil was one of the more powerful figures in the city, whether the official institutions recognized her as such or not.)

"Come, I want to talk to you first." The heavily-tattooed elf (those really were quite eye-catching) grabbed Marian's arm, gently but firmly pulled her into a corner, as far away from the others in the room as possible. There were cloaks hanging here, Marian was close enough now to make out that some of them were rather fine work — cloth embroidered along the inside face, would give it flashes of color as the wearer walked, fur along the hem, the fastenings gleaming, was that gold? Her voice dropping to a low mutter, Athenril started, "We haen't talked often since you started, but I get news. I hear you been doing good work, saved our people's lives more than once."

Feeling almost guilty all of a sudden (though she had no idea why), Marian gave an awkward shrug. "Just doing my job."

It seemed like she was trying to be all serious and stern, but Athenril's lips were twitching a little, trying not to smile. "Even so. At the pace ye's going, ye's debt will be paid off sooner than any thought. When that time comes, I hope ye'll think to stay with us."

Marian had absolutely no idea what to say to that. She never would have worked with the syndicate in the first place if she hadn't been obligated to, but...

Athenril nodded and moved on, clearly realizing she wasn't going to get an answer just now. "Tonight, this is a bodyguard job. You will go with Letizia on her out-meet, stay nearby, and walk her back here after. I don't expect any attack to come, but you get her back here any way you can. Even if you have to kill the mark, you do it — if Letizia protests, do it anyway. Do what you must to keep her safe, I will handle whatever comes after."

"I understand." She didn't, actually. Athenril hadn't said what this Letizia would be doing — an out-meet, apparently, but Marian didn't know what that meant, and the use of the word "mark" wasn't exactly reassuring — but she didn't really... She meant, she'd kind of been under the impression that killing people if necessary to protect whoever she was guarding was expected? Like, it was almost even the point. She didn't understand why Athenril thought this was worth being so serious about, taking her aside and everything, it was weird.

Almost as though reading her damn mind, Athenril's eyes narrowed in a mild frown. "Letizia has...gotten attention from people it is best to not be noticed by. Again, I don't expect anything to happen, but this is why I picked you for this, and why you are to be paid so well — sure it does help that you will get the pay that was split between three or four guards, but all the same." Athenril hesitated, eyes flicking away from Marian's, just for a blink. "This woman you are to follow tonight, she is important — to me, personally. I don't think anything will happen, but if it does, you are to do whatever you must to bring her back.

"Whatever you must. If it happens you must choose her life or yours, I can't demand you choose hers. If you do die for her, I will make sure, myself, that your family are cared for, for so long as they live in this city. Understood?"

...Okay, Marian was really confused now. But she didn't think Athenril would tell her shit if she just started blurting out questions, so, as weirdly serious as Athenril was being about this, there wasn't much she could say besides, "Understood."

Athenril nodded. "She'll come soon. Eat," she said, with a wave toward the table, "you won't be given supper where you're going." And then she walked off without another word, silently slipping through a back door deeper into the building. Okay, then...

It turned out, that wasn't maple brittle they had sitting out — it was obviously the same basic idea, but it didn't taste like maple syrup at all, must be made from something else. Molasses, maybe? Whatever, it was pretty good. And honestly it was probably better that it didn't taste like maple syrup, since she would rather not get too deep into nostalgia for her childhood (and brooding over Father's death and the darkspawn attack) while out in public. The buns were pretty good too, filled with gravy and...something, she didn't know — that was a thing they did in Kirkwall, she'd learned, making what was basically a proper meal that was easy for people to carry with them doing whatever during the day — and they had plenty of the things here, might as well have a few while she was waiting.

She was halfway through a second piece of the brittle when someone walked in the door Athenril had vanished through a few minutes ago. For a few seconds, Marian just stared at her like an idiot, half of her brittle held frozen partway up to her mouth. She was...

Well, she was beautiful, was what she was. She was tall for an elf, slender and graceful, her skin a light bronze-ish tone, as though tanned — though Marian suspected that was its natural color, if only because they hardly got enough sun around here — her hair a deep black, gleaming a curious silvery-blue where the light caught it. Large eyes and features sweeping and dramatic, pert lips quirked in a faint frown, smooth and perfect and unblemished. She wore a deep blue gown (the cost of just the dye for that...), embroidered with wandering, curling patterns in gold and green, the sleeves hanging loose at the elbow, the skin from there to her fingertips broken only by a few bracelets around each forearm, glinting silver and blue and green. The gown wasn't properly fastened closed, instead worn loose and belted in with an intricately-stitched green and yellow sash at the waist (an Antivan style, she'd later learn, cooler than the more restrictive Orlesian style in the summer), revealing glimpses of the long skirt and bodice beneath — the dominant color of both a bright white but with detailed embroidery done in blue and gold, the hems lined with lace. Marian suspected the design on the bits out of the bodice she could see were real gold brocade, and this was actually laced tight where the gown wasn't, the gown open such that...

Well, the pale white cloth against the warm pale brown of her skin was a...strangely pleasing contrast, Marian couldn't explain why, exactly, she knew she was staring — at the woman's chest, even, and probably not being very subtle about it — but she couldn't help it, she—

Oh shit, she was walking this way. Marian tore her eyes away, glaring down at the food table, took the couple seconds it would take the woman — Letizia, surely? — to cross the room trying to get control of herself. It wouldn't do Letizia any good if Marian was too distracted staring at her to stop some bastard from killing her or something.

"Hello, Marian." The woman hadn't actually stopped to talk, instead continuing on to a wall past her, tipped onto her toes to pull down one of the fancier cloaks. "I'm told you're going to be keeping watch over me tonight." She spoke with an upper-class Kirkwaller accent — the same one Mother still slipped into sometimes when she was being particularly formal, this was the first time Marian had heard it from an elf — though it wasn't quite right, a faint sort of rolling lilt to it. From a foreign language, she thought, maybe Nevarran or Antivan.

"Ah, yes. If you're Letizia, I mean, but then, I guess you wouldn't know my name if Athenril didn't tell you—" Marian forced herself to stop babbling before she could get going too far, distracting herself with a bite out of the brittle she'd almost forgotten she was holding. Was she blushing? Shit...

"I am Letizia, and yes, she did tell me about you." Marian caught a faint wiggle of amusement on her voice — quiet enough it could be her imagination, but she was pretty sure it wasn't. After a second, Letizia shrugging on the dark cloak, held in place by a thin gold chain stretching across her chest, she said, "She can't go out like that."

Marian was confused, jumped when Athenril spoke out of nowhere, she hadn't realized she'd come in with Letizia. "Yeah, I know." Athenril glanced back and forth between Marian and the cloaks hung up on the wall, eventually plucked one down and tossed it over toward Marian — she nearly dropped the remains of her brittle scrambling to catch it. "Put that on, cover your head."

"Ah, why do I need this?" she asked, but obeyed anyway, clenching her brittle between her teeth so she could use both arms. She hadn't bothered with Father's coat today, it was warm enough she didn't need it. Besides, it was kind of old and scraggly-looking, would probably be out of place wherever they were going, if Letizia was made up this fancy. Marian would probably seem horribly out of place in general, honestly.

"Do they not cover their heads in Ferelden?" Either Athenril had told her where she was from, or Letizia had guessed listening to her talk — she was always recognized as Fereldan as soon as she opened her mouth, apparently the accent was distinctive. "When in public, a man without a hat or a woman without a veil or a hood would be considered under-dressed. Our host will take our cloaks as soon as we walk in the door, but it would be indecent to present ourselves without them."

Now that she thought of it, she had seen a lot of hats and things around, far more than she ever had in Lothering. Mother had even picked up a veil to wrap over her hair when leaving the dortoir a few weeks after arriving in the city, and she'd never bothered back home. (It happened to be red, white, and black, which Marian was aware were Amell colors, didn't know how to feel about that.) It wasn't everyone, though...but then, she guessed the standards for propriety among the people in hightown and for the poor were probably quite different. "Oh. No, that's not how it is in Ferelden, nobody told me about that."

"You should see about finding a nice bergère. Or maybe un chapeau d'été, perhaps with eagle feathers — or maybe hawk, as a little joke. I think that could be quite charming, what do you think?"

Marian didn't know what either of those were, so she didn't have much of an opinion at all. She didn't realize Letizia hadn't even been talking to her until Athenril answered. "I think Marian haen't the gold for it, and you shint a dress you bodyguard."

"You're right, of course, it was only a thought."

They lingered for another brief moment — Athenril muttering something too quiet for Marian to hear, Letizia looked rather exasperated with whatever it was — before Letizia pulled up her hood, the hem settling right on her hairline to keep her face entirely uncovered, and they were walking out of the shop. Standing closer to her now, Marian could see Letizia had on makeup, though subtle enough she hadn't noticed at first, her lips and the edges of her eyelids darkened a little. Letizia softly took her arm, and started leading Marian off, the heels of her boots lightly clacking on the stone. After a few steps, she let out a sigh, reached over to reposition Marian's arm a little — belatedly, she recognized the pose as what a lot of the rich people did walking around the city, especially a lady with an escort of some kind.

Marian caught herself staring again, and forced herself to look away — gritting her teeth at the warmth sprouting on her face, her stomach squirming with nervousness. Damn pretty elves, that was definitely going to end up biting her in the ass at some point...

She kind of guessed it already had, with Gerael, but she hadn't found him distracting until after he'd fucked her against a wall — she forced off the memory threatening to sweep over her, it wouldn't do to get preoccupied by that just now (or ever) — so she didn't think that really counted.

(She got an odd little thrill whenever she used the phrase fucked me against a wall, even silently in her head. Which was sort of confusing, she didn't know what that was about.)

"I understand you've stood guard at brothels before, but you've never come on an out-meet. Yes? Well, then..."

As they walked along the streets — south and east into the Lower Court, a large open area just below the Keep strewn with flowering gardens, then through it further east toward the Chantry Yard — Letizia explained to her just what her job tonight would be. It didn't sound too complicated, standing around just in case someone tried to hurt her. Marian wouldn't be in the room with her, but close enough to listen out for anything suspicious sounding. If she wasn't certain it was something to really worry about, it was better to interrupt them and have to apologize for it than for something to happen to Letizia and—

"You're a whore," Marian blurted out, even as the realization hit her. And the flush on her face only grew hotter, because she'd said that out loud. "Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't mean— Uh..."

"It's all right, Marian," Letizia said, sounding just slightly amused. "I'm a courtesan, actually."

"...Is there a difference?" She'd thought that was just a fancy, Orlesian word for the same thing.

Letizia sighed, a faint sharpness of irritation slipping into her voice. "This is neither the time nor the place for me to explain to you the jargon used in the trade." That was fair, she guessed.

They didn't actually go into the Chantry Yard, instead turning north around it, toward a region of the arrondisse Marian had never been to before. Letizia continued to explain the job, that she didn't expect anything to happen, she'd been seeing this man for years — though that wasn't necessarily a guarantee, as Marian had learned with Nilda nearly a month ago. She suspected Athenril was more concerned about someone else trying to capture or kill her on the way there or the way back, which was the same impression Marian had gotten. When she asked, Letizia said Athenril had enemies who might try to use Letizia as leverage over her, and Athenril could be a little paranoid at times.

...Athenril had said Letizia was important to her personally. Marian wondered what that was about, but it didn't really seem appropriate to ask just now. Also, it kind of just wasn't her business?

Letizia wasn't worried about that, not really. Honestly, she was more concerned about Marian's "conduct while in the Count's home." Count. Because apparently the man Letizia was going to...visit, was the Count of Kenningshire.

Marian didn't know too much about how the government in Kirkwall worked, but it was her understanding that there were several counties (usually called "shires" in casual speech) — she didn't know how many, exactly, but there had to be at least a dozen — each of them enfeoffed to a count, some of whom were holdovers from before the Orlesian occupation, others pre-dating the Qunari Wars or raised after the Orlesians left. (The Amells had actually been the oldest, having been in Kirkwall since it'd been a Tevinter city.) When Kirkwall had been an Orlesian holding, there would have been an Orlesian marquis ruling the whole thing from Kirkwall, like several other regions in this area of the world — marquisat was translated as march in Alamarri, hence "Free Marches" — but when they'd split from the Empire they'd gotten rid of the title. Instead the Viscount of Kirkwall, who'd originally been a lower lord responsible for only the city itself, had been selected to rule the entire territory as a sort-of king. Which was kind of odd, because obviously a viscount was lower in rank than a count, so all the counts of the shires had higher titles than the ruler of the whole country.

Which, that was sort of on purpose? She was still new here, so she could be wrong, but she thought the Viscount was mostly a ceremonial position — the sovereign's power was far more limited than that of the Empress of Orlais, or even the King of Ferelden for that matter. He did have some power — especially within the city itself, which he also held just like the counts did the shires — but the counts had the right to check that power. Like in Ferelden, each Viscount was selected by the counts gathered in Landsmeet (though it wasn't called that), but unlike in Ferelden, certain laws and decrees needed the consent of the Landsmeet before they could be enforced. Not everything, there were areas the Viscount had the ultimate authority, and there were apparently debates about just where the line between the Viscount's and the Landsmeet's authority was, leading to a much more complicated system of laws than existed in Ferelden. It all sounded like a little too much to keep track of, honestly.

The point being, the Viscount was sort of a figurehead, serving at the pleasure of the Kirkwaller Landsmeet. The counts were the true rulers of Kirkwall.

And Marian was currently escorting a whore to the home of one of them, where she would have sex with him for coin.

She had no idea how to feel about this.

(Athenril had told her to kill the "mark" if she needed to to protect Letizia, even if Letizia herself objected, and had to choke down a slightly hysterical laugh — she was going to go out on a limb and assume the authorities would not take a count being killed on behalf of an elven whore at all well. What was the sentence for treason in Kirkwall? Hmm...)

While Marian was struggling with that thought, Letizia went on about what would be happening tonight. Apparently, someone in the Count's own household guard would be watching her the whole time — after all, "one couldn't possibly trust common folk to not go about stealing things if left unattended." (The sarcasm was very obvious.) There would normally be a few of them around but, since there was only one of her, Letizia expected there would only be one of them. He'd probably find some way to keep her occupied, a card game or something. There was a lecture about appropriate behavior in the Count's home, but it mostly boiled down to being polite and not making a nuisance of herself, Marian wasn't too concerned about it.

By this point, Marian had lost track of where they were — east of the Keep and north of the Cathedral, obviously, she could see both easily from here, but she had no idea which canton they were in anymore. It was hard to tell, with the buildings all around, but Marian thought they couldn't be too far away from the outer wall. The first arrondisse was almost level with the top of the cliffs, there were gates opening into the lands beyond (though apparently there were carefully-maintained ramps to get up or down the last couple feet), but while Marian had seen the west gate, a few minutes north of Shutter Row, she'd never been in this area of the arrondisse before. There was an east gate around here somewhere, but probably not nearby — there would be a more open market sort of area, with inns and taverns and such for travelers, and Marian didn't see any of the like here.

No, these were definitely homes for the wealthy. Large meandering structures of stone, a mix of the native black and imported white and rusty red, large glass-filled windows with intricately carved frames, large balconies open to the sky — though mostly set into or on top of the upper levels, further back, few built over the street — pillars and trim painted in bright colors, here and there designs that Marian assumed must be the heraldry of noble families. (She didn't know any of them, of course, she wasn't even certain she'd recognize the Amells'.) This street was quieter than the Lower Court, but there were a few people about here and there, gleaming silk and glittering jewelry, low conversation and occasional laughter emanating from balconies or opened windows. The place was clean, yes, but the most striking thing Marian noticed was the smell — mostly, in that there wasn't much of one. There was a vague impression of earth and green, spices and baking bread, but the stench of filth lingering in most of the rest of the city was almost entirely absent here.

Honestly, Marian didn't mind the smell too much, even in the worst areas of the city — near foundries, smiths, and tanners, maybe, that was a different and unfamiliar kind of awful, but a background of rot and piss wasn't so bad. It wasn't as though the average farm smelled like daisies either. But whenever she came up to the first arrondisse for any significant span of time, it always did strike her as odd how much it didn't smell. Too used to its presence by this point, she guessed.

Letizia walked up to one of the monstrous houses, seemingly at random. (Or at least it didn't seem distinctive to Marian.) After climbing a short set of steps up to the double-doors, Letizia's hand tightening slightly on Marian's arm as they climbed, she reached a hand up near one edge of the door frame, pulling out a delicate little chain. A bell-pull, apparently, Marian could faintly hear muffled clanging. The door was opened a few seconds later, and they were greeted by a middle-aged man, probably not the Count himself — he was relatively well-dressed, beard trimmed and hair tied back all neat, but the house-slippers, trousers, and shirt were all relatively colorless, neat but undecorated. Probably a servant of some kind, Marian didn't know how these things work.

Marian blinked — the man called Letizia Miss Geneviève.

"Serah Weyrden," Letizia said as she stepped through the door, tugging Marian along with her. "Things have been calm here since last I came to visit, yes?"

Marian twitched, tried not to give Letizia too obvious of a double-take. She'd mostly spoken with an upper-class Kirkwall accent before, with only a faint trace of something Marian couldn't identify; that, though, was an Orlesian accent, and a strong one. Also, had this Weyrden guy called her by a different name? Uh, Geneviève, was that it? Pretty sure, Marian took a second to remember it — she wished Letizia had mentioned she'd be going by a different name, Marian might easily have slipped and used her real one...

While the man took their cloaks, he and Letizia (in her inexplicable Orlesian accent) chatted on about...something to do with one of the Countess's nieces getting married? She didn't know, wasn't really listening. She was looking around, the idle chatter burbling meaninglessly in her ears, distracted by the entryway they were standing in.

It was... Well, it was slightly ridiculous. The underlying stone of the structure had been covered up with wood panels and tapestries and carpets, all in bright, rich colors, furniture lined here and there with glinting metal, the light fixture hanging from the ceiling (an oil lamp of some kind, looked like) all shining and twinkling, carved fragments of glass supported with tines of silver. Just this entryway was the size of their aître and the rooms around it (which housed a total of nine people and three children), and Marian knew at a glance that every single thing inside must cost more than every single coin she'd managed to get her hands on in her entire life put together.

She felt terribly out of place. This was just... She didn't belong here. It was a visceral, instinctive sense of wrongness, making her feel awkward, and clumsy, and just, she didn't know...

Guards appeared at the other end of the entryway only a few seconds after they'd stepped inside. They were in light armor, more decorative than functional, doing little but indicating their profession — there was nothing decorative about the swords hanging at their belts, though. Upon catching sight of the group at the door, there was a brief pause, the men mumbling between each other, and a single man ended up continuing on into the entryway, the rest retreating back where they'd come from. Letizia had called that one, then.

"Hello again, Miss Geneviève," the man said as he crossed the entryway, one hand sitting idle against the grip of his sword. Marian realized that was just something people did, but it still drew her eye anyway, watching carefully for any sign he was about to do something stupid. "I don't recognize this one," nodding at Marian. "Problem come up with your old escort?"

"Oui, something came up, ou c'est ce qu'on me dit," her voice dropping a little, sounding slightly exasperated. "This is—"

"Hawke," Marian interrupted. If Letizia wasn't going to be using her real name, Marian really shouldn't be using hers either — most people were under the impression "Hawke" was a nickname anyway (few peasants actually had surnames), so it would do.

To her credit, Letizia barely stumbled. "Yes, Hawke, that's it, I'm sorry, I have such trouble with that." It did sound a little odd in her Orlesian accent, coming out almost like oak. "C'est comme un faucon en osturienne, oui?"

Marian was pretty sure osturienne was one of the words in Orlesian for Alamarri — there were several, apparently, it was very confusing — but she wasn't sure what Letizia was asking. It also didn't matter, apparently, because the guard just nodded and said, "Only one this time?"

She gave the man a flat look. "I'm good enough she only needs one."

Raising a skeptical eyebrow at her, the man just shrugged, and they moved on.

The visit to the Count's home was, as Letizia had warned her, rather boring. Once the cloaks were squared away, they were led down a hall — clean and colorful and glittering, much like the entryway, the richness of her surroundings continuing to make her terribly uncomfortable — after a short walk coming to a door, where they were met by the Count. He was an older man, somewhere around Mother's age (or maybe even a little older than that), dressed in finely embroidered silk even when indoors, and was slightly overweight, cheeks rounded and with a bit of a paunch. He seemed friendly enough though, greeting Letizia with a courtly kiss to the back of her hand and everything. (Which was odd, was that a thing big hats normally did with whores?) The Count even said hello to Marian quick — he immediately recognized her accent, as almost everyone did, asked how she was finding Kirkwall, which, okay...

Letizia and the Count passed through the door, Marian was led through one on the opposite side of the hall into a sitting room. It was a nice enough place, she guessed, with soft upholstered chairs here and there, little side-tables that were almost offensively finely carved (and no, her reaction didn't even make sense to her), a fire gently crackling in the hearth, several bookshelves along the walls. That single guardsman was, as Letizia had forewarned her, sticking nearby — he'd slumped bonelessly into one of the chairs, picking at something he'd pulled out of a pocket, Marian didn't recognize what he was doing but didn't really care enough to ask.

She could hear Letizia and the Count's voices as low murmurs, soft enough she couldn't pick out the words but the tone was clear enough. They seemed to just be talking, for now, chatting and joking and laughing. Seemed a little silly to her to pay a whore (and surely a very expensive one, Marian understood that much) to come over just to talk, and not for a short time either — did the Count not have friends to talk to? — but it also wasn't her business. With nothing better to do, Marian wandered around the sitting room, idly poking at the bookshelves.

A lot of them were in Orlesian, turned out. She was learning now, bits and pieces from Mother's lessons, but she definitely wasn't far enough along to read it comfortably — especially since they used different letters, this was mostly nonsense to her. She found something that seemed mildly interesting before too long, an epic poem based on old Alamarri legends, the name of the poet only vaguely familiar. If only to pass the time, Marian leaned against a wall (careful not to let her armor scrape against anything), and started reading. The northern dialect was different enough from the Alamarri of southern Ferelden that she was slightly confused now and then by an odd turn of phrase or an unfamiliar word, but it wasn't so bad.

The guard gave her a few odd looks when he thought she wasn't watching. Marian had the feeling Letizia's usual escorts weren't the sort to pay the books any mind. Most of Athenril's people had probably never sat down to read one before — it wasn't like the things were particularly accessible to common folk, after all. Hell, if her parents hadn't thought to steal several during their flight from Kirkwall, Marian almost certainly wouldn't have either.

After some time — Marian had gotten through a few dozen pages — she heard Letizia and the Count move into the hallway. The guard was getting to his feet, Marian returned the book to the spot on the shelf she'd found it. By the time they got into the hallway, Letizia and the Count weren't too far away, still in sight — walking arm in arm, muttering and snickering. As they turned the corner, Letizia glanced in their direction quick (very short and subtle, the Count might not even have noticed), presumably checking to make sure Marian was following. They walked down a couple halls, up a wide, brightly-lit flight of stairs — and no, how fancy and glittery everything was hadn't stopped making Marian uncomfortable — and eventually into a room, the door clicking closed behind them, leaving Marian and the guard, his name was Tony, outside. There were a couple chairs sitting in the hall, Marian was going to go ahead and assume she was supposed to stay here.

She sank into a chair and settled in to wait, trying not to think about what was probably going on in there. In other circumstances that might have been difficult — Letizia really was very pretty, it took constant effort to not stare like an idiot — but the Count himself being extremely unappealing (to Marian, anyway) helped discourage her imagination from getting too carried away.

Of course, since her thoughts were fucking frustrating sometimes, they went right past what might be going on in there to wondering what Letizia looked like under that fancy dress, to wondering what being with a woman was like, and, Andraste have mercy, this was going to be harder than she'd thought...

Thankfully, Tony came up with something of a solution. While she was sitting, he'd slipped into one of the other rooms, a moment later he reappeared carrying a little table, slowly and gingerly, little figures balanced on top. He set it down near Marian, so she could finally see it was a chess board, a game the Qunari had brought with them from wherever their homeland was that had since slowly spread across Thedas — she'd never played before, but she was familiar with the concept, mostly from one of Mother's books. Tony pulled a chair closer to the table, straightened some of the pieces more toward the middle of their squares.

"I don't know how to play."

"That's fine," Tony said, shrugging, "I'll teach you. Need to do something to pass the time, or this will just be boring."

Not to mention seriously fucking uncomfortable — Marian doubted that door was sound proof.

She found that out for certain a few games in, when she heard what was undoubtedly a sex noise. It was muffled a bit by the door, and quiet, but still clear enough that Marian could tell what it was. Shifting in her chair with squirming discomfort, she tried to focus on the board, and definitely not what might be going on in there (or just about Letizia, because Marian hated her own brain sometimes), or on the warmth she could feel on her own face, ugh, this was awful.

It didn't help that Tony was smirking at her. "You're new to the job, aren't you."

Grumbling, "Something like that," she slipped her cleric through a line of peons, into Tony's territory. He was going to take that one, almost certainly, but that was the plan. She hesitated for a second, before asking, "You know about the syndicate?"

"Of course. The Blackthorn Co-operative, right, Geneviève has some kind of in with them."

...Actually, now that Marian was thinking about it, she had no idea whether Letizia was a proper member or not — she hadn't seen a tattoo, or one of the bracelet things, but maybe she just didn't wear it when doing this kind of thing. Or maybe she was only indirectly associated, because she knew Athenril somehow, Marian really had no idea. "Yeah, I only joined back in Cloudreach. I've been posted at brothels a few times, but this is my first time doing something like this."

Nodding, Tony moved a knight, incidentally blocking off her cleric. She'd expected him to do something like that, but not this specifically, hmm... "I've always thought that was strange, posting women guards at brothels. I should think they would be uncomfortable."

Marian shrugged. Tony was maybe forgetting that these decisions weren't made to benefit the guards — from a few looks she'd noticed and comments she'd overheard, she suspected the whores were more comfortable with women guards. (At least the women were, there were men among the whores too.) There did seem to be other women in her team more often when guarding a brothel than when doing other jobs, and she knew that Carver hadn't once been posted in one yet...though that might be because he was still rather young, she'd never asked.

The chess did work as a decent distraction from whatever was going on on the other side of the door — there was another noise now and again, but the game gave her something else to focus on — but it turned out Marian was actually pretty good at it. Maybe Tony just wasn't particularly great himself, but she suspected years and years of practicing spellcasting had done some good here. Visualizing the entire board, all the different moves the pieces could make and how that would change the layout, trying to guess how that could change a few moves ahead, all that was complicated, yes, but it wasn't that much more complicated than forming some of the more delicate spells Father had taught her. She did make a few stupid mistakes, not familiar enough with the game to know how they typically went (which threw her predictions off, and made it hard to plan her own future moves), but it wasn't so bad.

Tony did say she was doing very well for a first time player, and she even managed to beat him a few times before the end of the night, so.

At one point, Marian was startled out of their game by the sound of someone walking down the hall. She glanced up to find a woman — tall, dark hair just starting to frost at the edges from age, wearing a silk housedress in deep blacks and greens, gold glinting at her throat, a glass of wine held in a delicate grip. It only took Marian a couple seconds to guess this must be the Countess. She hadn't realized the Count's wife was in the house. That seemed kind of...reckless? She didn't know.

...And she was coming this way, while Letizia and her husband were, uh...

Without really thinking about it, Marian had sprung up to her feet — her thigh bumped the table a little, Tony scrambled to right the pieces before he could forget where they'd been. If the Countess heard something through the door, that would be, just, horribly uncomfortable at the least, Marian didn't want to stand around during that confrontation if she didn't have to, and she opened her mouth to say something to stall the woman...and completely blanked. What the hell was she supposed to say?

The Countess paused a couple feet away, giving Marian a flat, blank look. "Are they in there?" she asked, voice low and smooth, nodding at the door.

"Uh..."

One eyebrow gracefully arched, she glanced toward Tony. "Is she new?"

"It seems so, milady."

"Mm." The Countess stared at Marian for a couple more seconds, taking a slow sip of her wine. Her face was so completely expressionless, manner cold and calm, that Marian couldn't even begin to guess what she was thinking. (Safe bet it wasn't complimentary, though.) Then she turned to step up to the door, pulled it open before Marian could even think to stop her — not that she had any idea how she was supposed to do that, just out and grabbing a countess seemed like the kind of thing she should avoid. "My, my," she...purred, low and simmering, "what have we here?" The Count was saying something, but before he could get more than a couple words in his wife closed the door behind her, cutting the rest off.

Staring blankly at the door, Marian was aware her mouth was hanging open, vaguely, she was too numb with shock to pay it that much attention. She blinked.

She blinked again.

"Did she just...?"

"Yep," Tony said, flat and...something. Annoyed? exasperated?

"Are they going to...?"

"Oh yeah."

She blinked again. "...What the hell?"

"Don't ask me, Hawke, I don't know. Nobles are bloody weird."

...All right, then.

They went back to their game, but Marian had a rather more difficult time concentrating than she had before. It'd been bad enough to begin with, but with the Countess in there too now, she... She didn't know, this was fucking weird. Wasn't this fucking weird? She thought it was fucking weird...

By the time the door opened again, it must be deep into the night already — it'd been near sunset by the time they'd arrived, but that was a few hours ago at least. A lot of Marian's jobs tended to be after dark, so she wasn't tired, exactly, but wouldn't these people have somewhere to be in the morning? Anyway, Letizia stepped through the door alone, her clothes looking somewhat less orderly. Not indecent by any means, just noticeably less perfect than they'd been when Marian had first seen her. It could be her imagination, but she thought Letizia's hair was braided differently than it'd been before, it must have gotten loose and been redone.

Also, there was a reddish mark on one ear, a few on her neck. Marian was certain she wasn't imagining those.

There was a call from inside the room (in Orlesian), Letizia called back (also in Orlesian), before gently closing the door behind her. Marian thought she saw Letizia's shoulders dip in the slightest sigh before she turned to them with a smile. Maybe it was different now, or maybe Marian just hadn't noticed (too distracted by, well), but the expression suddenly seemed very, very fake.

They backtracked along the halls and down the stairs, where they met the same man who'd greeted them at the door, already carrying their cloaks. Oddly, they weren't just waved right out the door, instead led back through the hallways, Letizia chattering away in inane smalltalk with Tony and the doorman, eventually reaching a door that led out back. (Okay, then...) The doorman handed something to Letizia — Marian wasn't looking at the time so she didn't catch what it was, though she did catch the motion — and with a last round of polite goodbyes they stepped out into the night, the door closed and locked behind them.

They'd only walked a few steps down the narrow alley before Letizia stopped. "Do you have water on you?"

"Uh, ale..."

"That will do, if you please." Slightly bemused, Marian handed her the skin. Letizia took a mouthful, but didn't swallow, instead swishing it around in her mouth. (Marian grimaced — she didn't much like ale to begin with, that just seemed unpleasant.) After a few seconds, she leaned over and spit it out, the liquid spattering against the stone. She repeated the process with another, somewhat smaller mouthful, and only after spitting that out too did she actually swallow a sip. She pulled a handkerchief out of somewhere, dabbed at her chin while handing the skin back to Marian with her other hand. "Thank you."

"No problem." She probably didn't really want to know, but the curiosity was niggling at her anyway. "What was that about?"

"I despise the taste of human seed is all. It lingers." Oh, well...yeah, Marian was going to go with gross. Letizia gently touched the bruised part of her neck, a sigh slipping through her teeth, before reaching for her hood.

"Did you want me to take care of that first?"

Her eyes, seeming to glow slightly in the dark (reflecting the thin light, like a cat), flicked up to Marian, her head tilting a little. "I'm sorry?" Instead of answering out loud, Marian called a trickle of the Fade into her hand, blue-white sparks of spirit magic dancing between her fingers. "Oh!" It was hard to tell, the shadows thick in the alleys at night so far from the lamps, but Marian thought Letizia might be smiling. "I forgot all about that. Yes, that would be wonderful, thank you."

Marian still wasn't a particularly great healer, but she was more than good enough for this — after throwing everything she had at a few serious injuries, little bruises were hardly any problem at all. It was a little awkward, though. Marian did have to... Well, she didn't need to touch someone to heal them, technically, but it made it much, much easier, especially when she was trying to heal properly and not just flooding the person with magic and praying they stop being injured. Gently touching her fingers to Letizia's neck, feeling all too...squirmy and twitchy and warm, it was almost difficult to actually focus on casting.

The soft, relieved moans Letizia let out as the healing spell sifted through her bruises did not help.

Once it was over (Marian had to cast a light to make sure she'd gotten all of it), Letizia said, "Thank you, Marian, truly. I've told her to stop doing that more than once, but..." Shaking her head, she started off through the dark alley, the blue of her gown a shifting shadow in the night, only the faintest hint of the lighter colors making it through.

Marian started into motion after her — she was a bit distracted, her fingertips still warm, skin tingling. "Uh. I thought there were, I don't know, rules about that."

"Many are under the impression that, so long as they are paying for one's company, they are entitled to do as they like with it. I do have hard lines, make no mistake — there are occasions in the past when I've had to cut someone off for refusing to respect those lines. This thing in particular..." Letizia let out a thin sigh. "It isn't that I mind the act itself, so much, but I'm not comfortable with Athenril seeing the marks when I get home."

"What? Why would that...?"

Letizia slowed down a little, turned around to look up at Marian. It was impossible to make out her expression at all, too dark, Marian only knew Letizia was looking at her at all due to her faint impression of her outline and the shimmering of her eyes. "Athenril and I are together, have been for years now. Didn't she tell you?"

"...Oh. No, she didn't." Though it did explain a lot, looking back on that weird conversation they'd had earlier. Marian maybe should have guessed that...but she hadn't realized Athenril had...Marian wasn't sure what the word was...and it was sort of weird to think about, honestly. Athenril...didn't seem the type? She meant, she'd always come off to Marian as hard and cold and intimidating — she'd never said or done anything particularly threatening to Marian's family or herself, but even so — and it was just sort of hard to imagine her, well.

Except, now Marian was imagining it — not in the sense of the general idea of Athenril having someone, but, uh, a very particular part of it. Because her thing for elves would never stop being intrusive and annoying, she grit her teeth and tried to think about anything else.

Letizia muttered something under her breath — quiet enough Marian couldn't pick out all of it, but she did catch bloody paranoid — took Marian's arm again before stepping out into the street.

Which, Letizia being closer to her didn't help with her current distractedness, Marian scrambled for something to talk about. "Is that why you're with the syndicate?"

"I'm not certain I know what you mean."

That was fair, Marian wasn't really herself — she hadn't even meant to say that thing in particular, it'd just...burst out. "I mean, you seem like you...you don't need to be here." She didn't know a lot about these things, granted, but Letizia was far too refined to have the same poor, desperate background practically everyone else she'd talked to did. At the very least, she should think Letizia could support herself without the syndicate. "It seems like dealing with the syndicate is a risk you don't need to take. But since you know Athenril, I guess..."

Letizia scoffed, just a little. "Oh, mia ragazza carina, what a curious thing to say. What do you think the syndicate is, precisely?"

Marian didn't know how to answer that question. She still found the syndicate, the mix of different things they did, to be very confusing.

After a few seconds of silence, Letizia let out a sigh. "Well, this feels like something we should talk about — I wouldn't want you to go on fretting over any harmful misapprehensions concerning our project now that you've become a part of it. Do you need to be somewhere soon, or can we sit down for a while?"

Instead of continuing on toward... Well, Marian didn't think Letizia lived where she'd picked her up, but whatever that place was. They turned south instead, heading toward the great market at this end of the arrondisse. They didn't actually step into the courtyard, instead taking a side street. There were a surprising number of people lingering around, along the street what looked like...she didn't know, taverns and the like, places people could go for food and drink. (There must be more precise terms, but Marian didn't know them, they'd only had the one tavern back in Lothering.) Marian noticed they were getting a few peculiar looks, and it wasn't hard to guess why: of the couple dozen people they passed, she didn't spot a single elf.

Eventually they came to a particular place, making to go inside. There was a worker of some kind at the door, wearing surprisingly fine-looking clothing made of embroidered cotton and leather. Marian didn't understand the conversation, it was all in Orlesian, but she had the feeling the man was reluctant to let an elf inside — they were eventually let through, though only after Letizia pulled out a leather drawstring purse from somewhere to show him the coins inside, and even then he didn't seem happy about it.

Their cloaks were taken at the door — the staff here were also visibly displeased with serving an elf (even more than they were Marian, despite how less well-dressed she was), but they accepted their cloaks without complaint — and they were led further inside. The main room of the...whatever this place should be called, was wide and open, but waist-high dividers stitched around all over the floor, the occasional pillar set here or there, the gentle warm colors and the flickering fire in the open-faced lamps, the thick carpeting and upholstery dampening sound, all made it feel more compact than it truly was. Not in a constricting way, exactly, more in a cozy, welcoming sense. There was a faint tingle of spices on the air, light bouncing music trailing in from somewhere, she couldn't see the performers from here. There were little tables here and there, half of them occupied with patrons — mostly couples, she noticed, though there were a few larger groups as well.

She noted that every single one was human, and they were all very finely dressed, delicately-embroidered silk and glittering silver and gold in every direction she looked. Put together with the rich furnishings, and Marian was feeling very out of place again.

They were led to a little table in a corner, quiet and out of way — putting the elf somewhere they don't have to look at her, she thought, with such bitterness she surprised herself a little. A couple moments later, a pinch-nosed man appeared, initially addressed Marian before Letizia took over the conversation. Trying to talk to her wouldn't do any good anyway, it was all in Orlesian again. They finished with a little acknowledging nod from the man, and he walked off, disappearing out of sight through a door in the back wall.

Letizia watched him walk off, eyes narrowed in a faint expression of irritation. "Well, I suppose it could be worse. He's under the impression you're a Grey Warden, and I neglected to correct him — they should be reasonably accommodating on your behalf, at least."

Her resignation to people treating her like shit just because she was an elf had Marian choking back anger, enough she didn't trust herself to speak, just sat simmering in awkward silence.

"Well, no matter," Letizia said, brushing it off much easier than Marian was — but then, she was certainly used to it. "You asked why I support the syndicate, and that truly, at its heart, comes down to my faith." She reached down under the table — Marian couldn't see what she was doing from this angle, but probably picking at something near her waist — after a moment and a quick glance around, she set a coin down on the table. Or at least it looked like one, Marian had never seen coins made of iron before. There was a design carved into the face, above it and below it what Marian recognized as Tevene letters — which meant it was probably Orlesian...or maybe Antivan, she guessed, they used the same letters too.

The design in the middle was...almost recognizable. Of course Marian knew the All-Seeing Eye, it was a Chantry symbol, though a rare one. (It meant something to do with the presence of the Maker Himself, she'd heard, a lot of people thought it was disrespectful to use it too much.) Though, it wasn't just the Eye: the symbol also included a downward-pointing sword, probably meant to be Judex (another old symbol, this time representing justice), the Eye set over it. Marian didn't think she'd ever seen that before, though she could guess what it was supposed to mean, putting together the parts it was made from. "Uh, what is that?"

"The symbol has several names, but I doubt Accordists would recognize them. It's the sign of the Inquisition." That was a familiar name, of course, but Marian had no idea why Letizia would be carrying such a thing around. Letizia slipped the talisman back wherever she'd pulled it from, when she looked back up finally noticing the confusion on Marian's face. "I'm an Objectionist, Marian," she said, her voice lowered a little to keep it from carrying. She waited a second, then added, "You've never heard of the Objectionists?"

"No. Is that a Chantry thing? an order or something?"

Letizia let out a short sigh. "Not exactly. How much do you know of early Chantry history?"

"Uh, not a lot, to be honest..."

She sighed again, looking slightly irritated, but launched into a brief history lesson anyway. Andraste led the Exalted March against Tevinter, and was betrayed and executed; the Archon Hessarian appeased the rebellion by dividing the Imperium in half, installing Andraste's husband Maferath as governor over the semi-independent south. Maferath further divided the south into provinces overseen by his sons (save for one section granted to their elven allies, which became the Dales). A decade after Andraste's death, Hessarian revealed it was Maferath who had handed her over to their enemies as part of the deal they'd made to divide the Imperium, which led to wide-spread revolts — the warriors of the Alamarri and Ciriane had truly been loyal to Andraste, and in response to the revelation they turned on Maferath immediately. Maferath was killed by his own men, along with his sons (though their wives and children were spared), and the south quickly descended into chaos, Hessarian moving in to reassert Tevinter control over all but what was now Ferelden.

Marian had known all of that, of course, though Letizia framed events somewhat differently from the story she'd heard. For one, the Chantry taught that Hessarian's proclamation had involved forsaking the Old Gods and turning to the Maker, that in the following years he'd turned against the old temples and priests, trying to eradicate dragon worship from the Imperium — Letizia claimed there was little evidence of this, and that the Imperium had continued in their old ways until the Second Blight nearly two centuries later. She claimed Hessarian had used the intervening decade to recover from the rebellion, building up forces to reclaim the territory they had lost. His announcement of the events leading to Andraste's death had been intended to throw the south into chaos, so it could be more easily conquered. Hessarian had been playing a long game against the Exalted March, and in the end had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, restoring the Imperium's control over most of their territory so soon after their seemingly imminent collapse.

To be fair, Marian had always been skeptical of the story of Hessarian's epiphany. The way Letizia spoke of it seemed more realistic than the story she'd been told, made all the actors sound more like flawed people with their own motivations. Though Marian knew Beth would hate it.

Despite Hessarian's efforts, the Imperium collapsed in the following decades — the tribes had been empowered too much in the aftermath of the Exalted March, they didn't well tolerate being reduced to subjects again. Thedas shattered into dozens and dozens of tiny petty kingdoms led by local tribal chiefs, the Imperium quickly reduced to something not so different from its present borders (lands that had been Tevene-speaking even before their wars of conquest). Despite the fall of the Imperium, this was hardly an improvement. Tevinter might not have been the most just of rulers, but they had enforced a sort of stability over Thedas, their system at least allowing people to live in relative peace. These decades were a time of unrest and violence, wars between tribes and interlocking blood feuds between families ravaging the land, falling further and further into barbarism year by year.

It was in this mess that the Inquisition had risen. They had been early Andrastians, yes, did their best to gather and preserve as much knowledge of her teachings and the Exalted March as they could. But at least according to Letizia, faith had been a secondary concern to them — their primary concern had been to put an end to the violence, to bring law and peace again to the peoples of the former Imperium. That was, in fact, why they were called the Inquisition. Their most important practice had been something called the Inquest, which was basically a trial: locals would come to them with an accusation of some kind of wrong-doing, people with the Inquisition would investigate, interrogating the people involved and gathering what evidence they could, and it would all be presented to the local Inquisitor (a judge), who would render a verdict and sentence the guilty. The growth of the Inquisition was in part due to the attractiveness of the faith, yes, but also because their Inquest was seen to be far more just than tribal law or the whims of petty tyrants, the lands under their protection increasingly peaceful and prosperous as the years went on. In time, large swaths of Thedas came to be overseen by the Inquisition — even the elves of the Dales, if with a somewhat lighter hand, which was news to Marian — sharing power with tribal chieftains and early kings in a delicate balancing act.

Letizia was interrupted at this point when a couple servants walked up to the table. A plate was set down in front of each of them, holding what Marian was almost certain was a slice of cake of some kind. Dark and thin and soft and fragile-looking, wet enough it glistened a little in the light, Marian didn't recognize it. A second man was carrying a bottle of wine — there was a whole ritual where he opened the thing, pouring only a tiny portion into a glass for Letizia to taste before filling the glasses properly. At least, Marian assumed this was a ritual thing people just did, it sure seemed like they were following a script of some kind. (Though again, they were speaking in Orlesian, so she hardly understood a word of it.) The servants melted away again, leaving the bottle behind. Okay, then.

Plucking up an oddly flat spoon, Letizia went right back to talking. "As you are an Accordist, I doubt I need tell you much about the origin of the Chantry. Shortly after declaring himself the first Emperor of Orlais, Kordillus Drakon named one of his generals to administrate the great temple to Andraste he'd just finished building — this was the founding of what is now known as the Chantry, under Divine Justinia the First. Kordillus continued to expand his rule, converting the populace there to his interpretation of the Maker's will at the point of a sword. And perhaps he might not have had such success, if not for the Second Blight." Letizia broke off, turning to her cake.

Which, might as well try it herself, Marian guessed. She'd been hesitating, feeling oddly guilty over it — this place was very fancy-looking, she kind of doubted she could even afford just the cake (and definitely not the wine). Letizia must know that, which meant she must intend to pay, which was just kind of awkward. Oh well. The cake was very wet, when her spoon pushed into it almost seeming to weep some kind of... Well, she didn't know what that was. It didn't look like syrup, but...

The instant the first bite hit her tongue, it... Well, Marian didn't notice the taste so much, at least not consciously. There was a sudden rush of pleasant tingles, shivering through her mouth and jaw and even to her neck a little — Marian clapped her hand over her mouth a second too late, a moan had already slipped past her lips. Letizia was watching her, her eyes almost seeming to twinkle, lips curled into a sideways smirk. Feeling unaccountably embarrassed, Marian dropped her hand, shivers shooting down her spine as she chewed. The actual taste was getting through now, sweet and...a tang of what she was pretty sure was liquor and...well, she didn't know, exactly, it was completely unfamiliar to her, but fuck, it was good...

Chasing her bite of cake with a delicate sip of wine, Letizia said, an amused lilt on her voice, "I see you like it."

"Yeah, um. What is that?"

"There isn't a name for it in Alamarri, I don't think — it's Orlesian, of course. The dark colouring is chocolate. After baking, it's soaked in brandy for as long as a day and a night, and then fired to dry it out a little."

"Oh." Yeah, definitely sounded like fancy big hat shite she definitely couldn't afford. "I've never had chocolate before."

"I imagine it's not commonplace in Ferelden, no." Gently skipping over the fact that even in Kirkwall chocolate was simply too expensive for people like Marian to bother with. "There's a similar delicacy that's popular among commoners in lands stretching from Orlais to Antiva — they use a variety of fruitcakes and the like instead, exactly which differs place to place. Even that is too fine for most to indulge in too often, though it's almost expected in some places on Satinalia. I'm certain you'll see some around when the holiday comes.

"In any case, we were talking about the Objectionists." Letizia eyes tipped down, focusing on breaking her cake into bite-sized pieces while she spoke. "As you know, early in the Second Blight Kordillus broke the siege of Cumberland. At the time, Cumberland was entirely under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition — there had been a previous administration of the city, the local institutions leftover after the retreat of the Imperium's borders, but it had dissolved in favor of the Inquisition decades earlier. The local Inquisition forces allied with Kordillus to continue the war against the Blight, while the First Inquisitor left on a quest of some kind — he and his companions disappeared from Thedas, never to return. Not long later, the Nevarran Accord was signed."

The name was only vaguely familiar. "Um, that's the treaty that ended the Inquisition, right? There's something about the Chantry and the Templars too, but..."

"It did not end the Inquisition, in fact, though Accordists certainly prefer to claim it did. The terms of the Nevarran Accord only applied to the Inquisition within the borders of Orlais at the time — and its effect was less to end the institution than to integrate it. The Inquisitors continued to do their duty, though with the explicit sanction of the Chantry and in cooperation with the Empire of Orlais. In time, over centuries, they were reduced to today's Seekers of Truth — 'Inquisitor' is Tevene, 'Seeker of Truth' is from what the role was called in the local Ciriane. The Inquisition's armed men and women continued to do their work enforcing justice on behalf of their people, though in cooperation with Chantry and Imperial institutions. Over time, their role was corrupted such that they have become the modern Templar Order."

"Weren't the Templars always guards for the Circles?"

Letizia tilted her head in a way Marian had learned to read as equivalent to raising one eyebrow. "No, in fact. What would become the Circles did exist back then, but as places of learning managed by the Inquisition where mages could go to study their craft — and then leave, at their will. Mages were not forced to stay there until the Third Exalted March on Tevinter, in the Black Age. The Templars had been acting as guards over these places before then, but it was to protect the residents and the knowledge accumulated there, not to keep them imprisoned." A look on her face Marian couldn't read, she leaned forward, her voice dropping to a warm, impassioned whisper. "What is is not as it was intended to be, Marian. Our Lady did not want this — she was gifted herself, you know."

Marian had absolutely no idea what to say to that. The thought that Andraste might have been a mage had occurred to her. She was aware the Black Chantry explicitly said so — they claimed she'd been a Dreamer, in fact, those most powerful of mages, and powerful even by their measures — which the doctrine Marian was more familiar with said was heresy, but... Well, it just kind of made sense, didn't it? The story went that Andraste had met the Maker in the Fade, after all, and the ancient Alamarri had already held mages to be spiritual leaders, so following her would have just made sense to them at the time — it would even explain why they'd so favored her above Maferath, who'd supposedly commanded the warriors. The passages in the Chant that people read as anti-mage were also just kind of...dubious. They read to Marian like prohibitions against the hostile use of magic against one's neighbors, in some cases against certain kinds of magic, which was not at all the same thing.

But that was all kind of... Well, it was a lot, and sort of complicated, and also not something Marian wanted to get into just now. So she took a sip of wine instead.

Apparently realizing she wasn't getting a response to that, Letizia sat back in her chair again. "And, of course, the Nevarran Accord didn't apply to people outside the Empire at all — so no, it very much did not end the Inquisition. But in generations to come, the Chantry would go on to claim authority over the Inquisition everywhere. Those who refused to submit to the terms of the Nevarran Accord were declared heretics, and were forced to convert or die alongside so many other Andrastian sects that had once existed — before the Chantry destroyed them.

"The Objectionists, as we came to be called, do still exist, but we are very few in number, mostly found in Rivain and rural Antiva. Due to the enforcement of law by the two Kingdoms and the presence of the Chantry, we can't practise the Inquest any longer, but other traditions and beliefs still continue. We are Andrastian, of course. Our creed is similar to the Chantry's, though different in a number of ways — we have never recognised the authority of the Chantry, and so we consider every single decree of the Convocations in both Val Royeaux and Minrathous to be illegitimate, and our doctrines have diverged in noticeable ways as a result. A few Objectionist ideas have seeped into the local Chantry over generations — for example, the greater acceptance in both Kingdoms of elves and mages, and the tolerance Rivain has for non-Andrastian faiths — but for the most part we keep to ourselves, unseen and unheard. Forgotten by the rest of Thedas."

...Huh. That was interesting, she guessed. She'd known there had been various faiths inspired by the Exalted March floating around before the rise of the Chantry, but they'd all been suppressed and absorbed centuries ago. New heresies cropped up now and then, yes — the most important right now was probably the Joyous Penitants, the Templars had put down groups of them multiple times over the last couple centuries but never managed to fully eliminate them. But Marian hadn't realized any of the sects dating to the time before the Chantry were still around, that was kind of absurd when she thought about it. Though if there were to be one still alive (if barely), it made sense it was the Inquisition itself.

Marian noticed there were little smears of chocolate around the rim of her wine glass, but Letizia's still looked perfectly clean. Was there a trick to that Marian didn't know about?

"You might not be aware of this, Marian," Letizia was saying, "but I'm not merely another member of the syndicate — it was my idea." She started a little, eyes widening, the elf warmly smiling back at her. "Yes, truly. The rebellion was not my idea alone, though I was...particularly motivated. We began to plan after a..." Letizia trailed off, eyes flicking away from Marian for just a second before she started again. "I was fortunate, in that I had been trained as a courtesan from an early age, back in Antiva." So she was from Antiva, then, Marian had been wondering about the faint accent. "I was rare enough of an asset that Harlan did not wish to risk me coming to harm any more than necessary. The other women at the Rose, though, were not given the same consideration. One night, Athenril was nearly murdered by a man — she needed to be rushed to one of the Coterie's mages for healing — and Harlan didn't even see the need to ban the culprit from the Rose over it. We were already close then, so when the other began to talk of doing something about the Coterie's hold over us, I was—"

"Wait, hold up a second. Athenril was a whore?"

Letizia frowned a little. "Obviously. Did nobody tell you what this means?" she asked, pointing at her own face, near her eye.

It took Marian a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about. "Oh, you mean the tattoo that sort of looks like a crescent moon, around the corner of that eye? Um, no, they haven't. Is that what that means?"

"Legal prostitutes — that is, anyone who is working under one of the guilds — must get one, and keep it so long as they are in the trade. It does give one some protection under the law, but I'm convinced the true purpose is so that the rulers of this city can identify us by sight." While Marian contemplated that unpleasant thought, Letizia took another casual sip of wine, seemingly unbothered. "They can be removed, of course, though the procedure is somewhat painful. I used to have one, but I had it removed after we started the syndicate. Athenril has had hers far longer than I did — she got it not so long after her mother sold her to the Coterie, when she'd still been a girl." Athenril had been sold into prostitution, as a child? Shit... "She isn't in the trade any longer, of course, but she decided to keep hers for other reasons. She claims it has some use when it comes to evaluating a new contact's character."

...Yeah, Marian could see that. She had the feeling a lot of the bastards in criminal groups or whatever didn't have a whole lot of respect for whores, current or former. "Um, should you be telling me that? About Athenril, I mean. How old was she?" Marian hadn't meant to ask that, it'd just sort of come out.

"It's not a secret," Letizia said, shrugging. "She doesn't know how old she was for certain — there's no record of her birth in any of the local Chantries, so she doesn't know when she was born — but she was probably nine or ten, thereabouts."

Just, shit. Marian was so thoroughly horrified by the thought, even if she'd known what to say to that she doubted she'd have been able to find her voice.

Not that it mattered, Letizia went on without her. "As I was saying, that we should rebel against our Coterie masters was not my idea from the beginning, but organising ourselves into a syndicate in the aftermath was. To paraphrase First Inquisitor Ameridan, the land belongs to those who live on it. While the Coterie were harsh masters, yes, it is my belief that we have no need for any master at all — as Our Lady taught us, all of us are children of the Maker, all who live in this world are one family. And as we should have no masters, the work we do should belong to us, not to kings and merchants and guildmasters — as Our Lady taught us, the worth of what has been stolen from us can be known by the riches our masters hold."

Um, no, as far as Marian knew Andraste hadn't said that. Clearing her throat (trying not to think about girls been sold into prostitution at the age of nine), she managed, "I don't think I know that one?"

Letizia blinked, surprised. "Our translation of the Chant is different, but I've heard this verse enough times. All things in this world are finite; what one man gains, another has lost. What did you think that meant?"

Well, she hadn't given it that much thought, honestly. "So...you're saying the Objectionists believe all the big hats have all their shit because they stole it from common people?"

"Of course," Letizia said flatly, as though that were obvious. "Where did their gold come from? They are 'owed' a portion of what their subjects create — a fraction of the harvest, a fraction of the output from forges and tanners and carpenters and so on — and they sell these things to merchants and other lords. Or they simply make war upon another land and take what they will. No matter which it is, the riches in their possession do not belong to them. And Our Maker will give an accounting, in due time."

...Right. Marian understood now why the Chantry didn't want Objectionists wandering around.

"Since the others don't believe as I do, I couldn't argue from faith, but the idea alone is attractive enough. That we would not work for the benefit of someone else, but for our own benefit, and for each other. All of us are entitled to the proceeds of our own labours, a part to be held in common to provide for the whole. That is what the syndicate is, Marian. We work not to enrich masters above us, but ourselves alone — as too many of us were slaves before, we refuse to be slaves again.

"In some ways we live outside of the protection of the Republic, that is true, but the protection of lords has always been fickle. Give me the choice between the city guard and the League, and I will always choose my brothers and sisters under arms." Letizia tipped her head, lifting her wine glass toward Marian an inch, a subtle little salute. "You suggested before that I don't need the syndicate, and maybe that is true. But I would still need protection. I would be forced to rejoin the guild, or else hire mercenaries myself — and in either case, I would be welcoming the interference of this city's rulers into my affairs. Were I not in the syndicate, a portion of my earnings would go instead to the guild, whatever mercenaries I found to guard me, and ultimately add to the fortune of one lord or another.

"Truthfully, Marian, I'm not with the syndicate because I must be, but because I choose to be. Give me the choice between enriching the masters or enriching the common people, and I will always choose the latter."

That was... Well, Marian didn't know how to feel about it. She was having the creeping, uncomfortable feeling that Letizia might be right about a lot of that. She meant...

For the most part, the existence of lords had been irrelevant to Marian's daily life. Her assumption growing up had been that that was just normal, but she knew now that there were reasons for that. To begin with, Father had intentionally found them lands at the very edge of the Bannir, their fields running right into the unclaimed wilds of the Southron Hills — they were so far out that it was debatable whether their lands had even been in Lothering at all.

And it was Lothering. Bann Ceorlic was in something of a unique position, his father being an infamous traitor, he'd been careful to be as inoffensive as possible, even to the common people. Fereldans were said to be more unruly than the peoples of other kingdoms to begin with; it would be far too easy for someone they already had reason to dislike to push too hard and find himself with a revolt on his hands.

And then there was the Arl to think about. The Bann would post a few men in the village, but never very many, more than anything to keep an eye on things and make sure they weren't being attacked by bandits — since their lands had been well outside of the village, Marian had hardly ever seen them anyway. Sometimes a group would patrol around the border of the Bannir, but Marian never spotted any more often than a few times a year. And there was, Marian suspected, a good reason for this: in the warm months, there were always a couple men sent from South Reach by the Arl lingering around the village and the Crossroads just to the north — sometimes even accompanied by Lord Gareth, his son and the future Arl — whose only duty seemed to be to keep an eye on the Bann.

If Marian had to guess, she would say Arl Leonas didn't trust the Bann either, and wanted to make sure it was very, very clear that he was watching.

Most of the residents of the Bannir had been farmers, and the Bann's men didn't tax them at all...at least not directly, for most of them. Lothering did tax trade coming in and out, so Marian was sure she had been taxed indirectly, their duties to the Bannir accounted for in the prices she was offered, but she hadn't seen that. Also, the Bannir collected a portion of the harvest to store away in case of famine, but to ease the burden on small farmers that had only applied to the larger knights and freeholders — the Hawkes' lands had been small and isolated enough they'd never been asked to contribute.

But, as much as they'd been left to their own devices in Lothering, Marian had heard stories, rumors. She'd known that wasn't how things worked everywhere, even in Ferelden. And Ferelden was the Lothering of the rest of the world, so to speak — these things only got worse elsewhere.

And by the standards of the rest of the world, Kirkwall was...not particularly great. Lothering was a very rural place, mostly settled by modest farmers, but Kirkwall was a great city dominated by merchants and trades they simply hadn't had back home. She meant, sure, there had been a couple shops in town, a single tanner — Marian had traded skins with him sometimes — a blacksmith up at the Crossroads, but besides that they hadn't really had much. They hadn't even had a carpenter in the village — many of them had basic skill, a few better than others, they'd work together on big projects (like building a house) but do smaller things on their own. There hadn't been any weavers or spinners either, no, everyone had done that themselves...for the most part, anyway, there was some trading around between people who were better at one part of the process than another. It wasn't...concentrated the way it seemed to be in Kirkwall.

There hadn't been guilds in Lothering, at all. The blacksmith had a couple apprentices (supposedly, Marian had hardly ever gone up there), and the tannery was kept in the family. The shop-keepers might or might not be associated with people outside the village, Marian hadn't been in a position to know.

In Kirkwall, all these trades were organized into guilds — Letizia had said earlier even the whores had a guild, seriously — and that could make things complicated. The concept was still rather new to Marian, but after several weeks in the city, listening to people talk, she thought she was getting a good feeling of how these things worked. There were benefits to there being guilds around — they made standards for their craftsmanship they all followed, so their goods tended to be higher-quality than what'd been available in Lothering; they shared knowledge with each other, improving all of their work; they kept lists of skills and knowledge that were necessary, making apprenticeships clearer and easier to get through; they were given certain legal protections by the Republic, their property guarded and any interference in their trade from outsiders forbidden.

But just right there was starting to suggest at some of the downsides: the guilds existing made it pretty much impossible for someone who knew a trade but wasn't in a guild to practice their craft. If they were keeping it to themselves, that was fine, but if they tried to sell what they made (or sometimes even if they gave it to family and friends as gifts or in trade) they'd immediately run into problems. The merchant guilds, who ran practically all the legal shops in the city, had deals with the craft guilds that meant they wouldn't accept goods from anyone else to resell. It could often be hard to get into the guilds too, since they tended to only take apprentices from their families and friends, and didn't like to accept new members they didn't already know. If this guildless craftsman tried to sell their goods on their own, they might well have the city guard busting in to stop them — the Republic had given the craft guilds the right to control their trades within the city, operating outside of the guilds was actually illegal.

And that was what a lot of the things the syndicate did came down to: operating outside out of the guilds. As the guilds controlled pretty much all the trades in the city, they could charge whatever the hell they wanted, which meant a lot of even basic things were simply too expensive for many common people. And so criminal groups had sprung up to fill the obvious gap. The Carta, yes, the Coterie, yes, but also syndicates like theirs and various smaller groups, they survived by going around legitimate, guild-dominated trade, undercutting their prices. It made a big difference in the ability of the poor to survive, but it was a risk, as it was illegal.

...Most of the time — a lot of what their syndicate did was kind of in a gray area. Technically, it was illegal to sell all kinds of things outside of the guilds, but so as long as the syndicate kept things within itself, trading only between its members, that was fine. Though they would smuggle things in to trade around in the first place, that part was obviously illegal, but the tariffs were stupid and goods from the docks went straight to the merchant guilds anyway, so Marian increasingly didn't give a damn about that. Also, ironically, a lot of the business the syndicate did was with guilds, trying to screw over other guilds. For example, say a weaver demanded higher prices, a tailor might decide to get their cloth from them, trying to hold out long enough the weaver will give up and go back to their previous deal — Marian had learned by now that that kind of thing happened all the time.

Also, the League was perfectly legal. The city did have official guards, yes, but there was nothing against people hiring their own if they liked. And a lot of people didn't trust the guards, which was fair, they had every reason not to. When an official came to collect tax, they did it escorted by the city guard — nobody came out and said it, but that made it pretty damn clear what the penalty for refusing would be, didn't it? It was commonly bandied about that a lot of the tax collection was illegitimate, people with the Republic just going out into the city and extorting people for what they had, it wasn't unheard of for people to have so much taken from them they would struggle to survive for a time. And, well, the power of the guilds was also backed up by the city guard, and nobody liked the guilds.

The guard might claim that they protected the people of the city, but nobody believed that was true — they protected the property of the city's wealthy. Marian had already been told weeks ago that the guard would generally ignore people hurting or even killing whores, simply because they were whores (and poor). She'd also learned there were plenty of gangs in the poorer areas of the city — who tended to be a mixed bag, some trying to look after the people in their territory and others petty tyrants, depends which one you're looking at — but for the most part the city guard ignored them...until they did anything to people in hightown or one of the guilds, then they'd stick their noses in...which then inevitably started up bloody gang wars as they bumbled around like idiots in a delicate balance of factions they understood absolutely nothing about...

Yeah, given how completely useless (and even actively harmful) the guard were, Marian understood perfectly why people might prefer the League. And given how fucking impossible it was to make a living without getting on the wrong side of the law...she guessed she also understood why people might be attracted to the syndicate.

The thought sinking in, a creeping sense of discomfort crawled over Marian's shoulders. It just... She didn't like it. She remembered, back in one of those early years, needing to steal a few coins from a merchant passing through the village to get her family through the winter, and she'd hated it (she'd hated herself). She'd done it anyway, she hadn't had any choice — between doing something that made her feel like shit and watching her family starve, well, that wasn't a hard choice to make.

Give me the choice between enriching the masters or enriching the common people, and I will always choose the latter.

...The more Marian thought about it, that didn't sound like a hard choice to make either.

Ugh, she hated this! Why did this have to be so fucking... She didn't know, she just– she wished things were simpler here, that was all. Life in Kirkwall was so much more complicated than back home, she didn't like it.

She didn't know what this place was doing to her, that she went along with the things the syndicate did, as uncomfortable as they could make her, and... Well, as much as she hated it sometimes, what choice did she have? What she had to do here was little different than what she'd had to do that day years ago — and she would always choose her family above what was right, always. She'd promised Father, after all, while he'd burned on the pyre, and she would rather die than break that promise.

And maybe those involved in the syndicate's more criminal activities weren't just bad people, like she'd thought at first glance. Maybe they'd simply made the same choice she had, and would again, every time.

(Athenril had said she'd like Marian to consider staying on after their debt was cleared, but she was starting to wonder whether she'd have any choice in the matter. The syndicate existed in the first place for a reason, after all.)

Letting out a heavy sigh, Marian took another bite of cake — and was immediately distracted by the rush of tingling pleasure she got from it again, fuck, this shit was so good. Once she could open her mouth without making embarrassing noises, she said, "Yeah. Yeah, I think I understand."

"Good," Letizia said, smiling all warm and soft, large, bright eyes twinkling in the lamplight. "I realise you found your way to us under less than ideal circumstances, but I do hope you and your family can come to be comfortable here. I've heard nothing but good things about you so far. And, well, I hate to be so blunt about it, but there aren't many ways a woman of your gifts can remain free."

The reference to maybe being dragged to the Circle snapped Marian out of a moment of distraction, belatedly realizing she was staring at Letizia. It took far too much effort for her to tear her eyes away from the annoyingly pretty elf, glaring down at her cake — rigidly restraining the urge to fidget, trying not to notice how warm her face felt.

"Oh, dear. I'm going to get out ahead of that right now: nothing will ever happen between us. It can't be trade, because you can't afford that. It can't be love either, as Athenril wouldn't approve, even if I were inclined — you're very charming, Marian, of course, but I'm simply not interested."

And that wasn't helping, Marian's face flaring all the hotter, enough it was almost even painful. "That wasn't— I– I wasn't thinking about that."

"I didn't think you were. I only thought I would make myself clear, just in case."

The rest of the night was, just, agonizingly awkward. Marian eventually managed to stop glaring down at her cake and blushing like a– well, she didn't know, something, anyway. That Letizia seemed perfectly at ease, lightly chatting at her like nothing was wrong, somehow only made it more embarrassing. By some miracle, Marian managed to make it through the rest of the bottle of wine without making a complete idiot of herself (again) — being a little bit tipsy now was not helping.

And when they left, Letizia immediately took her arm again. Because of course.

Andraste have mercy, some damn pretty elf was going to be the death of her, she just knew it...

---

Can you believe I originally planned for there to be a third scene in this chapter? Ha...

Who wants Andrastian heresies? Well, you're in luck, 'cause I got Andrastian heresies.

One of my (many) issues with the worldbuilding in Dragon Age is how very homogenous the world seems at times. As a consequences of their lacking transportation and communications infrastructure, ideas tended to spread person to person by word of mouth, and you know how the telephone game can go. Christian heresies were very, very common in the medieval era — sometimes forming organized resistance to the Church, but more often just ideas and traditions people were taught in ignorance of the Church's opinions on the matter. (You'd be shocked how badly even particularly pious people's beliefs/behavior actually lined up with doctrine sometimes.) The proliferation of the printing press aided this somewhat, allowing people to actually read the Bible for themselves (if they happened to be able to read)...but the Protestant Reformation swiftly followed, and then you had dozens of little sects springing up all over the place like weeds, it was a mess.

And so, because I'm a nerd, I've gotta invent me some Andrastian heresies. Weee!

Yes, my understanding of what the original Inquisition was is very different from canon. Sometimes I can't help it when canon is very stupid. My altered Inquisition is partially inspired by a few particular passages in the Chant, as well as what we know of early Christian communities (though far more martial in character, given Andraste led a war). How much the Objectionists are actually direct heirs of the old Inquisition is debatable, there might well be discontinuities between then and now, but they have held on to certain old ideas the Chantry has forgotten.

The "Joyous Penitants" is a headcanon White Chantry heresy, inspired by the irl Brethren of the Free Spirit and Dulcinians. The name is something used by Chantry officials (somewhat mockingly) and not these heretics themselves — there is no one name they use, as it's less a coherent movement and more a collection of ideas floating around in the Andrastian world, some of which many don't realize are heretical. (In chapter 19, Aedan thought [the idea that the Light of the Maker was something expressed in earthly community and people's care for each other, and not something gifted by the grace of the Maker alone, was a very common heresy, so common some people didn't even realize it was heretical at all] — this just so happens to be one of the ideas associated with the Joyous Penitants, but many think it's actually a legit Chantry teaching.) Leliana isn't one of these heretics, exactly, though most of her heterodox beliefs would see her perfectly at home among them. Which, yes, is going to make things interesting when she's the Left Hand of the Divine.

Right, that's enough of my rambling. Going back to Orzammar next, woo...