Translations, end. Am I going to need to to say that every time? I guess probably so.


Considerations

For six days, I did not think of her. I put away my pen and my letter, not even bothering to finish the last line. I made inquiries of the spirits, who showed me a series of events at the Grand Cathedral near enough those Tamorian had described to confirm my faith in him. I gave the boy who had shot Lisell a verbal reprimand and saw he was assigned a week of scullery duty. I executed those who had openly defied my instructions, at least the ones we managed to apprehend with relative ease. I slept, for the first time in years, largely free of nightmares.

And I did not think of what part having Lisell within my domain played in that last.

And then, the seventh morning, Tamorian came to my side looking as though he had swallowed something sour, and I knew with utter certainty that my reprieve had ended.

"What has she done now?" I asked without waiting for him to find his way to the beginning.

He looked relieved at my quick apprehension of the subject. "Fainted, as far as those at the manor can tell. The women who have been attending her entered her room this morning and found her unconscious on the floor." His eyes flashed with anger. "A foreseeable circumstance, considering she has refused food for three days. My apologies again, Fen'Harel. I did not know."

Dismissing his culpability with a gesture, I once again made my way through the eluvian to the manor. Tamorian followed.

He took the lead once we arrived. "Has she said anything?" I asked, wondering why she would refuse to eat.

"Esiel, who sits watch by her door, says she asks two things every day: to be released, and to speak to you. When she is told no one in the manor has the power to grant her requests, she turns away and says no more. No one, according to Esiel, has even seen her sleep these last days, though the water they bring her disappears."

I cursed myself for a fool. In my fear of dealing with Lisell, I had not left explicit instructions for what she should be told. I had assumed, once it was understood that she was not a prisoner, that my people would answer whatever questions they safely could. But I had never said anything about her status, and Tamorian might have failed to make it clear as well, lacking direction from me. He was not a man of much imagination.

Tamorian stopped at a door and knocked, but I waited for no answer before pushing past him and entering.

The room was not large, probably that of a child in some previous incarnation of the house, but it was located on a corner and had windows letting in light on two sides. At first I thought it had been used a storeroom, and things had simply been removed to make room for its new occupant, but that made no sense. Windowless closets were used as storerooms, not small but bright rooms overlooking - I glanced outside - what had once been the formal gardens. Still, it looked as though furnishings had been scavenged from other rooms. All the pieces were beautiful, if severely mismatched. Perhaps it was an attempt to restore some of the splendor the manor had once boasted? It seemed whoever Tamorian had assigned believed at least that the Inquisitor ought to be hosted in as much opulence as could be managed. How little they knew - I remembered her trading tents with Scout Harding the day after Harding's began leaking. "Dalish learn to sleep through anything. I've slept in trees in the middle of rainstorms," she had claimed so blithely that Harding had actually believed her.

Two women besides Lisell occupied the room. They were surprised by my entrance, naturally, but once they recognized me, both gave me little bobs and moved away from the bed where they had been standing - and then my eyes fell on the woman their forms had concealed, and I forgot they existed.

My stubborn fool of an Inquisitor lay atop the bed, eyes closed, her face nearly as pale as it had been six days before. "Lisell!" I said, perhaps more sharply than I had intended, because I remembered too clearly how cool her skin had felt beneath my fingers.

Her eyes opened and she blinked at me slowly, as though coming back from a long way away. "Solas," she greeted me calmly. "I was beginning to think I had dreamed you after all."

"And what would you have done if you had?" I demanded, fear still fueling my bad temper.

Something about my question drew a weak chuckle from her, and her head tilted in a manner I would have labelled a challenge had it not rested against a pillow. "I would have died, no doubt, as I am still doing right now."

Her words echoed in my memory: I would not have fought so hard. "Lisell," I said, my voice strained, "why are you doing this?"

Every trace of humor disappeared from her face. "How dare you ask me that." The volume of her voice was low, but there was a bitterly sharp edge to it, one honed by grief. "Our - my - friends. Dead. You tried to have me killed, too. Clumsily. When you had an agent by my side. Or did you mean to drive me here, so that you could hold me hostage?"

"It wasn't me."

She didn't believe me. What reason had she to do so? "Fen'Harel 'ma'ghilan. Fen'Harel ma halam," she quoted, her lip curled in a snarl.

"You truly were told nothing." I turned my head to glance at Tamorian, who looked concerned, worried he had failed me again. But this time, the failure was far more mine than his. "Ir abelas. It wasn't my intention. I merely…" I had no good reason, only bad ones. At this point, perhaps a bad one was superior to a lie, at least. "I merely feared what thinking of you within my reach might do to me and to my focus," I finished. "And so I made assumptions I should not have."

She remained silent, and I could not say whether the emotion earlier had tired her, or whether anger and distrust of me had stolen her will to respond.

"The would-be assassins acted in my name, yes, and many of them likely even believed they acted in my interests. But they defied my express instructions to avoid adversarial actions against the Chantry and Inquisition - and, by extension, you. I am more sorry than I can say for Cassandra's loss. Though I know I have no right to mourn her, I cannot help but do so." I tilted my head. "Still, you said friends. Has no one even given you word that Josephine has awakened, and gains strength?" This time I did glance sharply at Tamorian, who nodded slightly, indicating he had passed the news to her caregivers as instructed.

"Eliwys," Lisell said through clenched teeth. "She gave her life for mine, and you don't even remember her."

"She was my agent," I said simply, "and she understood the demands of her assignment."

"She might have been your agent first," Lisell replied with as much heat as she currently appeared capable of, "but she was my friend foremost. Don't belittle what she did by putting it down to mere duty."

In the end, did it matter? Eliwys had done what was necessary. "I...am sorry if it hurt you to learn of her divided loyalties," I told Lisell, sidestepping the need to respond directly.

Lisell gave me a look brimming with pity - apparently that emotion less taxing than outright fury. "Give me some credit, Solas. Or if not me, extend some to Leliana. I knew the moment I met her that she had to be working for someone, and odds were always that it was you. Who else, besides you, knows me well enough to send not only a brilliant clothing designer and very competent thief, but someone who can make me laugh? Leliana confirmed my suspicions when I asked if we might hire her anyway." She caught my gaze, her eyes almost feverish in their brightness. "Eliwys divided her loyalty between me and your cause - not between me and you."

I could find nothing to say to that, because it was very likely true. There were few people throughout history who had ever been loyal to me personally, and one of them lay before me on a bed hating me and threatening to die rather than remain in my power.

"This is not a prison, and I have no desire to hold you prisoner," I told her after a moment of reflection. "However, you are also not strong enough to leave here yet, and there is no one I can spare to escort you to a place of safety just now in any case." At least no one I trusted.

"I don't need an escort," she informed me, impatient. "And I am stronger than you think. Let me spend the day reacquainting myself with food, give me provisions, and I can leave tomorrow."

"And where do you intend to go?" I asked, hoping to make her see reason. "The Grand Cathedral has been emptied until it can be repaired and its security improved. Vivienne's Circle is escorting the Divine to Skyhold in the meantime, and it will neither be possible for you to catch them, nor for you to make the crossing without a mage of your own this early in the season. The passes are all still closed to regular travelers, and will be for at least a month."

"Starkhaven," Lisell said with a defiant lift of her chin. "I mean to go to Starkhaven."

"Starkhaven," I repeated, unable for one brief, happy moment to remember why the city's name made my stomach go hollow.

"It is why I let the Chantry claim I married him," she pointed out.

"You did marry him," I corrected her, striving for calm though I could hear the thunder rolling beneath my words.

Her cheeks went red with anger or embarrassment, emphasizing the pallor of the rest of her face. "A chaste marriage, which among my people would make as much sense as a square circle or dry water," she said. "And you know very well that I asked my Clan not to send even a representative. Eliwys watched me write the letters. Nothing about it is binding under Dalish law."

I looked away, not trusting myself to speak.

"Don't. Don't you dare." The fury in her voice made me look up again. She had pushed herself upright, supporting her body on her shaking arm. "You left me, Solas. I smiled through a ceremony that carries as much weight with me as a summer breeze, gained an entire platoon of trained reserves to draw from, a safe place to shelter should I need it, as I do right now, and I forced the other cities of the Marches to ally with the Inquisition - to say nothing of what it bought Leliana, who now has the authority to appoint the next ruler of Starkhaven should Sebastian and I both fall." Her voice rose. "And I never even would have considered it, had you not abandoned me like the - like - "

All at once she went white and her lashes fluttered as she reeled. I leapt to her side, steadying her before she could tumble from the bed. "Vhenan'ara, we can negotiate - and you can yell at me - once you are well again. Ava. Sathan."

Her head drooped and for a moment I thought I had won, but then a single word emerged: "No."

"Lisell - "

"Promise you will let me leave - on my timetable, not yours. Promise you will trust me to know what I can and cannot do. Otherwise - otherwise I have to assume you're acting as the enemy, and I am a hostage to be used against Leliana."

The wound she had taken rose in my mind, along with the faces of those I had already executed. Normal faces. Nothing distinguished them from the faces I spent my days looking upon at the work site, at the manor. I acknowledged a truth to myself: it was more than giving Lisell an escort of those I trusted. I did not entirely trust that no one would hunt her down if she left here alone. Not now. Not so soon after the unlooked-for betrayal of nearly losing her first to an angry mob, and then to a panicky boy with a bow.

"I...cannot make those promises," I ground out. "Lisell - I give you my word: you are not a hostage. I have not and will not make any use of your presence that benefits me while harming you or those close to you."

Contempt. "And what is it worth these days, your word?"

I was becoming desperate. "Lisell, I will not let you do this. I will - "

She gave a soft pant of laughter, and her entire body shook with it. "You'll what? Use blood magic to force me to eat? And complicate your own movement through the Veil in the process? And what if I find another way to remove myself from your power? Are you quite certain that the bars on these windows are all secure? That none of the hundreds of panes in the windows are loose? That I cannot tie a noose one-handed? Or will you live up to the stories we have handed down of Fen'Harel, and enslave me entirely?"

I glanced helplessly around the room, seeing the myriad ways she might harm herself if determined to do so, and was simultaneously recalled to the presence of others looking on as we argued. "I need privacy," I told Tamorian, fighting to keep my voice level.

He acknowledged the order with a nod, but a small frown pulled at his mouth, and he did not look at me as he gestured for the women to follow. As they passed the bed, one of them shook her head at me and made a small tutting sound.

So. Lisell had already begun charming my followers out of whatever loyalty they thought they owed me.

"You would have been better off asking for help," Lisell said a little breathlessly after the door closed. "Negotiation is...not one of your strengths."

Ignoring her words, I cupped her face in one of my hands and tilted it toward me. She blinked up at me, her eyes unfocused, and then, unexpectedly, she smiled softly. "I never thought I would see you again, you know." Her words were beginning to slur, and I knew in a few minutes I would lose her to unconsciousness again.

"What do you want?" I demanded.

The question sharpened her focus a little, at least momentarily. "My freedom."

"And you truly expect me to turn you loose in a wood, half-starved, your wounds only just healed, after my own people attacked you and nearly killed you in a cathedral built to withstand a siege?" I asked her bitterly.

A stricken look flitted across her face. "I...don't wish to be held against my will."

"Then agree with me that staying for a while is in your best interests. I-I will make other concessions, if you can think of anything you want."

Somewhere she found the energy for a bloodthirsty grin. I chose to ignore its slight wavering quality. "Intelligence? On you and your forces?"

"No," I said, taking the joke in the spirit it was meant, and softening the denial with a small smile of my own.

Her focus faded a little, and I watched her blink rapidly for several seconds, chafing against the time slipping by, stealing her life as it passed. "Letters? I...I would like to write Leliana."

I frowned. "She would not believe any message truly came from you, just as you would not believe any reply truly came from her. And - I don't entirely trust you not to devise some cipher that I fail to catch. If Leliana knew where this was, she could do a great deal of damage to the people here."

"She will know after I return," Lisell pointed out.

"The paths that lead here are not always...the same," I explained, leaving the causes intentionally vague. "But it takes time to change them, and all our agents must be given the proper keys - another reason not to let you leave yet, for I must begin preparations for the changes immediately."

She looked away unhappily, and I sensed that perhaps our chance for truce was disappearing.

"Lisell - " I said desperately, "I will give you this if there is no other way - I will take the risk and hope that your care for the people here stays your hand. The work is not done here, and getting there is not so simple as finding the way here. But I do not think there is much value for you or Leliana, and a good deal of risk for all of us."

She bit her lip, still avoiding my gaze. "There is one other thing I might want," she said in a near whisper. I waited, afraid to speak lest my words erase the ones trembling on her lips. "You," she breathed at last.

It should not have surprised me, and yet it did. I bent over her and brushed her lips with mine. "I am here now, and I will stay with you while you eat."

A small smile pulled at one side of her mouth, but did nothing to make her look less sad. "I suppose that suffices for now, but I was under the impression you wanted me to keep eating?"

"I cannot come for every meal," I told her, "but I am certain we can find some mutually-agreeable daily span of time. But it is a matter I would leave for later. For now - eat, ara avin. Please."

"Very well," she said, and held up her hand as though expecting me to put a spoon in it, even though it trembled like the legs of a newborn fawn. "That might me a problem," she said, watching her hand with rapt fascination.

"No," I said, lifting a bowl of broth from where someone had set it on a bedside table. It was cold now, but she wouldn't care and I had no intention of waiting for it to be warmed. A bit of bread was wrapped in a cloth beside it, and I picked that up, too. "Here," I said, dipping the bread and holding it to her lips. "Small bites."


Elven translations, in order of appearance:

Fen'Harel 'ma'ghilan, Fen'Harel ma halam: The Dread Wolf my guide, the Dread Wolf your end.

Ir abelas: I'm sorry.

Vhenan'ara: Heart's desire/heart's journey

Ava: Eat, imperative form

Sathan: Please

Ara avin: This one is hard to translate. It literally means "my mouth dwelling," but the implications are "you speak for me" and also "I always taste you."