Hello there – it has not been our habit for this story, but I feel this chapter deserves an exception. The first scene of the chapter is pretty brutal, so please be warned.
Jealousy and torment consumed them all, for no dreamer
Wished to aid the others in the least measure.
Silence 1:15, 1-2
'Twas never a pleasure to deal with mages, Dane Casimir thought; always more work than normal folk, mayhaps because they thought that whatever healing magic would come their way if they survived Dane's gentle persuasion methods would fix a broken jaw or a missing tooth…He did make it a point to tell them all that it was more likely it wouldn't, but they still held on to hope longer. The longest he'd been at one of these dress wearing freaks had been little over ten days – he'd gotten what he'd wanted, in the end; he always did, but Dane still remembered the pipsqueak because he'd almost died defending some love letters of a Templar woman who wasn't even his own.
Takes all sorts, the Ferelden man thought, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms, and one can't just judge by the looks of folk.
This kid, in particular, had looked dead-easy, mage or no mage, because…well, because there was no other way to describe him other than a pretty fairy, an' his ilk normally started talking before the first punch to the gut. This one had only squealed a little, and repeated his name and title a few times, as if Dane had given a flying fuck about Tevinter names or titles. Maker knew they all somehow sounded ungodly, or plain weird, or both – half the time, he couldn't even tell whether 'twas a man or a woman's name.
He'd struggled a little in the carriage, but had not outright screamed, which Dane had found strange, for even in the wretched hive of villainy that was Minrathous, some guard might have taken note. At least being taken out of the carriage might have made this kid see an opportunity to either make some noise or make a run for it, yet it had only been then, at the sight of the Cassius' mansion, that his struggles had completely ceased, and Alexius Hadrian had grown fully silent and limp, allowing himself to be dragged through the halls and down the staircases like a sack of potatoes…and sadly, had proven to have the entire sensitivity of one, at least for the initial overtures.
He'd wept quietly like a bitch all though, yes, and he'd screamed when poked in the right places, but he'd not even asked why this was all happening to him, which, to the Ferelden mercenary, seemed like a pretty logical question to ask when one's fingernails were being pulled. He'd not begged to be let go, he'd not even made the tentative offer of a bribe, all in all, this particular interview was the strangest thing Dane had ever conducted, even more so because the subject of his attentions clearly knew more about what he was going to be asked than Dane did.
The Ferelden had still done his job according to instructions, and left no inch of his prisoner unattended, with the exception of his forearms. He'd concentrated a week of pain into one single day, and even bypassed the genuine concern over the chance that the seemingly frail young man would die in his hands – what the purse asked, the purse got, an' it was none of Dane's concern if the faggot died before the other Tevinter abomination got his answers.
Or then, it was perhaps that Cassius knew other methods than the Ferelden did, for when he had descended, truly a day later, he'd done naught but pick up a fiery poker, and bend it round his finger – in the shape of a D.
It probably stood for the first letter of whatever Tevinters called a fucking fairy in their ungodly tongue.
The horror this had conjured in the young prisoner's blue eyes had been more than the Ferelden had gotten out of him for the entire day, and he felt rather professionally insulted, for he'd liberally employed hot pokers too. In his opinions, buttocks were not necessarily that sensitive, still, pressing the newly reshaped irons to the prisoner's flesh had actually elicited a plea…Again, something, Dane had not gotten for the entire day.
'Guess where the next one goes, Altus Hadrian,' Cassius had said, and while the mercenary had thought between the buttocks might have been the logical choice, the Magister had gestured towards his captive's forehead. 'I'll apply this one myself,' Cassius had added, smiling wide. 'And I will make sure it is impossible to heal.'
The young man had broken at these words, and had been the strangeness of method and the fact that, for a moment, it had appeared functional, that had rendered Dane Casimir interested in what his employer wanted to find out. He normally never cared, for the purse's business was the purse's business, but this had been the strangest day of his life…and, somehow, his greatest satisfaction, for, as he listened to the prisoner speak, he'd reassured himself that he'd been right all along, and both mages were utterly mad.
For an hour, Dane had heard stories about elves and immortal elven gods and mirrors, and the veil, breaking it and walking into the fade, and other nonsense about killing or not killing wolves, gibberish that only the insane Tevinter mind could conjure or believe. He could not even decide which one of the two was madder – the kid who'd spent his last day being burned and flayed, or the other, who was hungrily breathing in his words…even taking the time to wipe the blonde one's lips of blood if he slurred too much.
The tale was so outlandish that Dane had listened to it to the end, not understanding much, but remembering all and truly seeing why Tevinter as a whole was going to hell in a handbasket. This, the mercenary thought, when Cassius stood, seemingly satisfied, would make a great tavern tale in Antiva, someday. Even more so because once the young one finally let his broken chin fall to his bruised chest, having finished his mad ravings, the Magister had not ordered Dane to kill him; he'd simply wished the prisoner well on his way to Quarinus, then spun around, and left.
Confused, and truly not understanding what the purse wanted him to do now, the Ferelden mercenary stood from the wall and lingered over the Altus for a few long minutes. The young man wasn't dead, but without serious care, he would be, in a few days' time. On his own, he was going nowhere – not even up two steps, thus…Dane knew of no other purse who liked to keep bodies in their cellar, but then, he'd not worked in Minrathous before, and they were all wrong in the head.
The young man did not move and did not struggle.
Still not knowing what was expected of him, Dane let loose the Altus' wrists, and watched him collapse to his knees – not unconscious, the Ferelden had noted, considering that maybe this had to do with aught else than mages, it had to do with…
The staircase to the cellar creaked with a different set of steps – Dane abruptly looked up, not even feeling angry, but assuming that his employer had just hired a chicken butcher to finish the fairy off. Which actually made sense, in a gold saving sort of way...
'Don't ya make cheap enemies,' he mumbled, addressing the young man, but only truthfully talking to himself; still the descending steps were not those of a man, for claws were scraping at the stone of the stair. For a moment, he feared that the Magister had found the cheapest way of doing away with both torturer and subject, and recover the money he found so vulgar to handle himself.
Still, instead of the demon or horror that he'd expected to see, he only saw the Mabari puppy. Where it had hidden, and how it had snuck in, Dane didn't know, but the dog came down the stairs, and looked upon the scene with its ears held back. He did not growl at Dane – the horse crop memory was still fresh.
Instead, the massive young animal curiously paced about the Altus, then, tentatively sniffed at his torn right ear; it whimpered, and pushed its still injured snout at the human's far more injured face with gentleness one could scarcely expect from such a creature. The man did not react, nor did he react when the dog got just a bit more daring and licked his cheek – he did not even wince, though. He did not shift. He did not lift his eyes from the floor.
If he'd been in this one's shoes, Dane thought, he'd have thought that his enemy, the enemy that had planned for him to be taken and tortured had decided that being eaten alive by a dog was how he would die – the Altus either did not think that, or was now mad enough to not care.
The Ferelden dog laid by the Tevinter's side, and put his head on the human's knee, looking up, then slowly, unexpectedly, the man put his hand, the hand that Dane had torn all fingernails from, on the dog's head. He could not give him even the lightest scratch, but he grasped the dog's ear between his fairy faggot dainty fingers and caressed. The dog made a noise that was neither howl nor whimper, something that laid devastatingly in between, turned on its side and place his full face in the Tevinter's hand, closing its eyes.
'Twas that truly, mages were odd.
Wordlessly, the Ferelden mercenary scoured for where he'd thrown the Altus' clothes, and stuffed him into them, broken and burnt skin and bitch tears and all – the Mabari sniffed and paced about them cautiously, not daring to approach, but not going further than a pounce away from the man Dane knew, beyond doubt, it had chosen as its master.
Fucking dogs and fucking mages, Dane thought, thinking that the place itself was insane, and the coin in his pocket was all that was keeping him well where he should have stood: grounded.
Silently, he dragged the kid he'd inflicted pain upon for a day back up silent staircases and back out dark corridors. The Mabari sought to follow, when he carried the young man outside of the mansion, but he put an end to that willfulness with a kick to the dog's snout. It remained silent, and the mansion back door silently closed behind both executioner and victim.
'Kid,' Dane said. 'I'm not a thief and ya still have your purse. Weighs like at least forty royals to me. If you do have forty royals in it, I can either kill you or take ya to wherever you were going, before this.'
The young man rose his glance to his, all pretty blue fairy eyes. Dead pretty fairy eyes; whatever had happened in the darkness of that cellar, not by Dane's hands but by Cassius' words, 'twas plain to see that this kid was a dead man walking.
'Honest and stupid offer,' the Ferelden said. 'Personally, I'd kill you and dump you – your clothes and chains and rings look like a pretty penny, too. An' frankly, it doesn't look to me like there's anywhere but death you want to go to either, kid.'
'I am four and thirty,' the Tevinter whispered. 'I am not a child...'
'We're all children before death and pain,' Dane replied. 'Can also take ya back where I got you from.'
'Above all, not that,' the mage breathed. He tried to reach for his purse but could not, so the mercenary relieved him of it, only to hold it before his eyes. 'Not that, I beg,' the Tevinter pleaded. 'To the harbour…'
'Yes, to the harbour, of course to the harbour,' Dane grunted, feeling on the verge of losing his patience. 'But, after the harbour, death or Quarinus? whatever the fuck your name is?'
The Tevinter looked indecisive, as if both words had meant the same thing to him. 'Quarinus,' he said, his voice as dead as his lowered eyes – that simplified Dane Casimir's world a whole lot. Whatever the purse wanted, the purse got.
Thus, in the breaking light of dawn, he dragged the mage to the harbour, and actually bartered him passage for Quarinus, wasting five royals from the young man's purse on the passage, then five more by stuffing the least important looking of the young man's possessions, a dusty little amulet, in the pocket of his breeches, after he dumped him in the ship's hull, among many other sacks of potatoes.
Still, Dane thought, as he watched the vessel pick up wind, he'd bargained for forty royals, and a brief exploration of the money pouch's contents revealed he'd still been left with sixty – maybe more, after he got all the stones of all the rings appraised…
'Is that enough for one night, or do you feel like earning more?'
He spun on himself, dagger in hand – fucking mages, fucking dogs and fucking elves, Dane thought, once he laid eyes upon the man who'd asked the question. The man wore a hood, but it was a knife ear, the human guessed, for the hood stood awkwardly from his skull, failing to conceal a fringe of dirty blonde hair.
'What for, rat?' he questioned, in turn; this new arrival was no mage, unless elven mages had suddenly taken to fighting with swords – dual swords at that.
Dual swords were the weapon that Dane Casimir feared least.
'Not much,' the elf replied, not coming closer. 'Just for repeating what the package you just dispatched spoke of.'
'Pfeh,' Dane scoffed. 'The Magister paid eight hundred. You'll pay a thousand, knife ear. Just because you're a knife ear.'
'Unfair,' the other easily remarked. 'You just need to speak to earn my coin.'
'Yeh, part I least like, the speaking. An' you just made it two hundred after the thousand, vermin – all I need to is shout armed elf! and you'll be mince.'
'Farewell, then,' the elf shrugged, turning to leave – whether it was mages, elves, or even fucking dogs, Dane knew this as negotiation.
'Six hundred,' he said, to the elf's turned back.
'Three,' the elf said, dryly.
'Five, or no deal,' Dane said – the elf chuckled and took one further step away, towards the darkness of an alley, and towards the place of no deals.
'Does the name Fen'Harel mean anything to you, knife ear?'
…and the Tevinter insanity must have been contagious, for the elf stopped in mid-step.
'Four, and not one royal more,' the blonde elf said.
The mercenary from Ferelden considered this, then nodded to himself, for the other's back was still turned. 'We speak here, by the bannister, in full view of all who might mince ya,' he said. 'And purse upfront.'
Unlike with the fairy mage, Dean took his time in counting the elf's coin. It was there, though, to the copper, and so, while musing on the notion that this must have been what pretty whores felt like, for scoring three spenders in one night, the mercenary repeated the Tevinters' ravings to the foolish elf. The vermin did not interrupt…not once, and once the insanity had once again been said out loud, he'd turned and left Dane to look upon the glory of sunrise upon the Nocean Sea.
This was truly a story to be told in Antiva, Dane Casimir thought. And from here, he could book passage back to his favourite city's best taverns for no more than thirty…alright, a hundred royals, he considered, given the weight in his pockets. For dealing with mages, dogs and elves, he'd earned some luxury.
It was only then, far too late, that he'd suddenly realised that the elf who'd been his latest purse had had an antivan accent. He'd frowned, but had time to do naught more; as his life gushed, crimson and plentiful from his throat, pouring over the bannister to mix with sea foam and fish guts.
He was dead before he hit the water.
'Your superior will not care much for what you are about to hear about what his fair lady is planning,' Zevran Arainai said to another elf, an odd looking one, with golden skin and golden eyes. 'In truth, he may wish to carefully ponder the many meanings of hell hath no fury, Abelas, my friend…'
'I am not your friend, Shem,' Abelas responded. 'Speak.'
Cassandra pinched the bridge of her nose, and gave Leliana a long, hard stare – she felt exhausted, and she had one further day of political talks to undergo, for a cause that, to her mind, had long been settled. There was a distinct lack of satisfaction in this knowledge, as well as a feeling of indisputable futility: for all of their hard posturing on war reparations, the Ferelden delegation would sign, because they have been sent to sign. Teagan knew it, even worse, Radonis knew it, and the Divine would much have preferred that the two sides would not waste the entirety of three days pretending otherwise.
She'd even come unpleasantly close to taking Teagan aside and explaining that while she understood Queen Anora wanted to save political face back in Ferelden as much as Radonis did here, there were far more important, true bridges to mend – the differing Chants sprang to mind – that could have been passionately discussed. War reparations was not one of them, not because they were necessarily unfair, but because awarding them would have truthfully burned more bridges than it mended.
Which, Cassandra had considered, with an inward howl as she heard Teagan passionately repeat his arguments and saw them break upon Radonis' smile as milk split on a stone, Ferelden must have understood.
Obtaining war reparations from Tevinter would lead them to ask the same of Orlais, and then, the door to the dark cellar where folk passionately argued of who had done more harm to whom, over centuries, and how much that harm was worth. Sitting at the table as pointless words washed over her, Cassandra had had a nightmarish vision of having to sit before Veldrin, in full Dalish garb, and Briala, in full Orlesian regalia, defending the Chantry from demands of reparation for the Exalted March of the Dales and for countless alienage purges, while the implacable menace of Solas' petrifying gaze stared at her from behind the two heads of the reunited Elvhen branches.
If only he'd gone that way, Cassandra had found herself thinking, her mind drifting further and further from the talks of the humans she was actually sitting with.
She did not even know whether she might have preferred it that way, which was even more distracting – her nightmarish vision might actually have been worse, because instead of having two powerful enemies, Solas might have had two very powerful, equally embittered and embattled allies…
And now, after a day of that, this.
'Please sit down, Leliana,' the Divine said; her Left Hand shook her head.
'I am not staying, Cassandra,' Leliana answered. 'I cannot let Morrigan out of my sight for too long. Maker alone knows what they are plotting.'
Divine Victoria sighed, from the bottom of her heart. 'Does it not strike you that if they were actually plotting together, Morrigan would not have told you about this second eluvian?'
'That is one tiger I do have by the tail,' the spymistress said; with a sigh of her own, she accepted Cassandra's offer of a seat. 'The other one I clearly do not, and I am starting to get the feeling that Dorian himself might be a tame looking big feline with very sharp teeth.'
'Because he's now a Magister,' Cassandra muttered, rolling her eyes and letting her shoulders slump.
'One that could make Archon or at least conciliatus1 if he gets Veldrin pregnant, or surrenders Fen'Harel to Radonis after we capture him. He is not going the pregnancy route, hence…'
'Andraste's mercy,' the Divine whispered. 'Your world is such a dark, shadow filled place, my old friend.'
'It is that way so yours does not have to be, your worship,' Leliana answered, with a sad smile.
The truthfulness of the words struck a mark deep within, along with another, irrefutable realisation - the Nightingale was dark, yes, but Veldrin Lavellan had done nothing to help her from that darkness. Where Leliana was concerned, at least, Veldrin had been an abuser among many others. Just as Justinia had, Veldrin had taken many chestnuts out of many fires with Leliana's hands, and, too concerned with her many personal twists and turns, Cassandra had done little or nothing to stop it.
They were still similar, Veldrin and Leliana, and while sometimes similarity may have bred friendship, it often caused dissonance. If Leliana was dark, maybe she sensed darkness in the elf that Cassandra did not.
'Tell me what you fear, then,' Cassandra said.
'I think Veldrin and Dorian have a plan of dealing with Fen'Harel that is not ours,' the Nightingale said, plainly.
'Neither has been anything than supportive to ours.'
'Grudgingly supportive. With apologies, Cassandra, both outplay you, and they have blatantly different goals than we do. Both are politically ambitious and mage militant – this serves Tevinter and forgotten Elvhenan in one strike. What I fear is that their ideal world is entirely mage ruled, with a north-south divide that has a segregated human Tevinter and a fully reborn Elvhenan, a vision I think Archon Radonis would not strenuously object to, and that a defeated and amenable Fen'Harel in Tevinter custody may well accept.'
'That is unthinkable and almost impossible to countenance. These are our friends, Leliana.'
'These were our friends. Dorian has always shown political tooth, that much is true,' Leliana said. 'But would you have imagined Veldrin sitting in Tevinter's senate, eight years ago? Eight years ago she was still praising the transportation benefits of aravels.'
'Eight years ago she was not yet the person who literally, single-handedly saved the world,' Cassandra sighed. 'You forget how, after Corypheus' defeat, every noble house in Southern Thaedas vied for her attentions.'
'She no longer has the Mark,' Leliana replied.
'No,' the Divine said, dryly, 'but she remains a mage of enough power to rival our Grand Enchanter and perhaps surpass her, and, as you may recall, she was never deprived of political savvy and charm – she had the Orlesian court eating out of the palm of her hand. Maker,' she whispered, 'I wish I had that skill.'
'She…they,' the spymistress corrected, 'could still not have gotten this far without Radonis' support, which is so overt that it even has Briala baffled.'
'So?' Cassandra tiredly inquired. 'Why would Radonis not support them? In a sense, he is flaunting that he has robbed our crown. The Inquisition was the jewel of Thaedas.'
'Yet when it came time to for the Inquisition to be taken down a notch, and pledge for the Chantry, Veldrin disbanded it post-haste.'
'That's because she had good reasons to think it was already corrupt, and because she is not Andrastian…Maker's breath!' the Divine said. 'Leliana, I appreciate your thoughts, but the fact that, had Vel smoked, she'd have lit her pipe with pages from the Chant has been known to us from the very beginning. It is, and always has been hard to swallow, but it's no dastardly novelty. Nor is the fact that Dorian is…eh, Dorian,' she sighed.
'I am sorry,' Cassandra said, 'but I still think that Veldrin did not scream – I am not the Herald of bloody Andraste! every time someone called her that is as much as we could ask from her on that front; she carried what to her must be a great insult with a lot of grace, not to mention patience…'
'Ask her about the second eluvian, then,' Leliana replied, biting her lower lip. 'See if she tells you, and what she tells you.'
Cassandra hid her face in her hands. 'I am not even tempted to do that,' she said. 'Not because I doubt your word, my friend, but because I am truly beginning to be scared that, great possibilities of this plan or whatever other plan going awry aside, this growing divide among us is the true danger…'
She looked up, and met Leliana's glance. 'I will not stop you from doing whatever it is you mean to do,' the Divine said, softly. 'Before that, though, I would ask you to set yourself aside and look at this situation from Vel's point of view. We have been…'
Cassandra hesitated on the choice of words.
'…unkind,' she finally spoke. 'Secretive.'
'There was no alternative to that or anything else,' Leliana briskly refuted.
'Perhaps,' the Divine nodded, 'but people are not lumps of wood. Dorian has been squarely in her corner, and Radonis is treating her with far more respect than we are. Do you not, for a single moment, consider that she might trust them more than she trusts us, because they trust her more, in turn?'
'No,' Leliana said; then, she stood and left.
1 This is a body of Magisters that are the Archon's official inner counsel. Halward Pavus was part of the previous Archon's concilliarum before the scandal caused by Dorian's amorous entanglements, ahem, forced him to resign.
Hello, hello, hopefully you have survived what happened to poor Lexi, and enjoyed seeing Zev again. And by the fact that Abelas puts in an appearance, well…
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See you next week, when all hell breaks loose...Well, depending on which side you're cheering for :)