Torrin was reluctant to take Niall back to his room, but he pointed out that enough of Torrin's students had already seen him entering the classroom, so it was probably useless to try and stop it getting back to Irving that they'd been seen together. Unable to argue with that, Torrin and Niall found themselves sitting in silence in the Senior Enchanters quarters, the mood worlds away from the last time they had both been there.

"I just don't understand." Niall said at last, "What would Irving have to gain from making me out to be a maleficar?"

Guilt flashed across Torrin's face. He got up, opened his wardrobe, and retrieved a bottle of wine from the top shelf. Niall almost laughed, it seemed so unlike Torrin to keep a hidden stash of alcohol. He poured them both a glass.

"I think," he started, sitting back down, shoulder to shoulder with Niall so they were close, but he was speaking out to the room rather than having to look him in the eye, "I think it's because of Uldred."

Some part of Niall wanted to roll his eyes, to call him a paranoid old man who wanted to blame everything on the foreboding libertarian. But another part of him knew better than to underestimate the reach of Uldred's influence.

"You think Uldred told Irving to get rid of me?" That didn't make any sense either. Unless, he thought to himself, unless Uldred had regretted revealing as much to Niall as he had done, regretted showing him the litany.

Torrin shook his head.

"On the contrary," he eyed Niall somewhat accusingly, "I think Irving believes Uldred trusts you. The First Enchanter is no fool, he wouldn't have held his position for so long if he was. But Uldred has always been more than a match for him. There isn't an Enchanter in the tower that doesn't know, if it came to it, Uldred has more than enough allies, mages and templars alike, to have a good shot at overthrowing Irving."

"But Uldred doesn't want to be First Enchanter."

Torrin raised an eyebrow, as though asking how Niall could possibly know that.

"I once asked him outright if he planned on usurping Irving– and he told me he could have taken the title any time he wanted."

Torrin shook his head disapprovingly,

"I won't ask how that came up. And I won't pretend to know what, if anything, Uldred is planning. What I'm saying is, for years Irving has been paranoid about Uldred, and now he's out of the tower. I think Irving's looking to get rid of some of Uldred's allies while he's away. Jowan's gone. Last week, a couple of Uldred's former students were transferred to the White Spire, I'm sure they won't be the last to be mysteriously moved. And then there's you."

Niall drank the last of the wine in his glass and Torrin silently refilled it. He'd spent so much effort on forgetting that night he'd spent in Uldred's room and everything the man had said. Niall was sure he'd only begun to understand the half of it anyway. Loghain. He knew Uldred's plan was to ally with the Teyrn but what would that mean, what could the Teyrn even do? At best, he might … might what? Loosen the trading restrictions on enchanted jewellery they occasionally sold to nobles? Declare that mages should get an annual excursion to the docks to broaden their horizons? He hadn't given Uldred's plan much thought in large part because it was barely a plan. For all his air of cunning, Uldred was as much a caged animal as the rest of them in the tower. He had gone to plead a pointless cause, hoping to gain sympathy from a man with no real power to change anything. In all likelihood Uldred had no masterplan, all his schemes merely a way to distract himself from a reality he was so desperate not to be in. Suddenly, Niall had no idea why he'd been so intimidated by Uldred.

But the dawning realisation that Uldred was just a man didn't solve his current problem. If Irving wanted rid of him then Niall was in danger. Perhaps he'd been blind, perhaps it was Irving he should have been afraid of the whole time.

The silence stretched out between them until Torrin broke it,

"Niall, what are you going to do?"

When Niall didn't reply, Torrin continued babbling frantically, "I've been thinking about it, of course I have, and, and well you need to convince Irving that you're no ally of Uldred's. Could anyone vouch for you having Loyalist leanings? The suggestion of blood magic is surely something you could disprove. I know your research is on something of a tangentially related subject but all the more reason -,"

Niall wasn't listening. There was a part of him that wanted to scream at Torrin, staring at him with wide-eyed concern. Niall wanted to scream that he should have told him sooner. Ask what Torrin's plan was? Just ignore him forever and hope Irving would forget about the whole thing. Niall wanted to yell that by not having the guts to let him know straight away what was going on, Torrin had very nearly doomed him. If Niall had come to find him even a day later, he would have doomed him.

Every inch of Niall's body felt ice cold at the prospect of trying to escape. He felt dangerously close to vomiting all over Torrin's immaculate rug. But some instinct towards self-preservation was stopping him from collapsing into total panic because as soon as Torrin had said what he'd said, Niall knew what he needed to do. His rational mind overwrote everything else and with an eerie clarity he knew every step he would need to take if he had even the slimmest chance of surviving.

Firstly, distract Torrin.

"You're panicking." Niall said.

"Aren't you?" Torrin sputtered. "I've been a wreck for days."

"Of course I am but let's not lose sight of the fact that I'm not a blood mage. That has to count for something. And I've always been loyal to Irving, we must be able to make him see that." he hoped that sounded more convincing to Torrin than it did to him.

"No, of course, you're right. Irving is no fool, I'm sure he will see reason."

Niall felt a pang of affection for him or it might have been envy. People like Torrin, who are strict and proper, and follow the rules no matter what, have an optimism about them that stems from a naïve presumption that everyone else is as good as they are. Although in this instance, Niall thought, seeing the best in Irving would be a death sentence.

"Tomorrow night," said Niall, "after the evening Chant, you and me will go to Irving and reason with him."

The lie came out easily and the visible relief on Torrin's face made his stomach churn with guilt but it had to be done. The flip side of Torrin's propriety would mean he'd feel compelled to try and stop Niall's escape. And even if he could overlook the rule breaking, Niall knew Torrin cared about him, if Torrin didn't stop him and Niall didn't make it across the lake – there was no need for Torrin to have that on his conscience, better than he not know.

-o0o-

When he left Torrin's room at gone nightfall, Niall still felt too focused to register anything else he was feeling, except exhaustion as the prospect of another sleepless night stretched out ahead of him. He barely even registered the presence of the templars as he passed them walking through the winding corridors. Although, maybe it was just him, but the night seemed more alive than usual. He locked eyes with a woman he knew as an associate of Uldred's passing through the library in the dark. They nodded slightly, acknowledging that neither was a threat to the other.

He slipped into an empty classroom and tore a strip of parchment from the supplies. On it, he scribbled a quick message and set of as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. When he reached Anders' room, he looked at the note,

Changed my mind.

-N

He decided the meaning was clear enough, folded it back over and carefully slipped it under Anders' door.

As he made his way back to his own room, he did so slowly, taking every long-route and diversion he could think of, not quite ready to be alone with his thoughts once his own door shut behind him. For the last night, he squashed the thought. As he walked the empty halls, too aware that every room he passed he would never enter again, he only felt hollow. Anything else would have overwhelmed him, grief for what he was about to lose, fear that he might dead this time tomorrow, fear that he might not, and with that would have to live the rest of his life as a fugitive. It was all too much so, self-preservation once again prevailing, some kind of failsafe in his mind let dissociate from the weight of his situation.

As he passed the same empty classroom as before, still unguarded, another thought occurred to him. Niall slipped inside and this time hid a whole roll of parchment beneath his robes before finally returning to his room.

He laid out the parchment on his desk, pushing aside library books he would never read, and began to write. Once he started, the words tumbled out almost too quickly for his hand to keep up. He wrote his goodbyes. A letter each for the people he would be leaving behind, the people who the thought of leaving hurt of much it made him not want to try. But he knew he had to, so he wrote his goodbyes. And his apologies. And even his favourite memories of each of them, he scribbled down anecdote after anecdote, trying to cement his own legacy in their minds so that maybe, in years to come, they would remember his kindly, not as a deserter. Torrin and Leorah were too accustomed to the tower, Senior Enchanters who were well respected, as safe as any mages could be within the Circle. But Petra, Niall was less sure about her. Part of him knew that if he asked her to come with them, she would. He told himself there was no time, he and Anders had to leave tomorrow and there was no time to find her and explain everything and convince her to come. There's no time. He repeated it to himself until he began to believe it, to believe there was any other reason besides cowardice that he wasn't running to her room right now and telling her everything. Niall was willing to risk his own life, to let Anders risk his, but he not hers.

He kept writing until there was nothing left unsaid. Then, he placed each letter in an envelope, addressed them, and tried not to wonder how unlikely it was that they would ever reach their intended recipients. Irving and the templars would probably have had the contents of his room burned before any of them even had chance to find the letters.

Just before the sun came up, exhaustion overwhelmed him and, laying his head on the desk, Niall fell asleep. A moment later, a folded scrap of parchment was slipped underneath his door.