And so they joined in secret, telling none

Who were not of the temples of their designs.

And in Minrathous, in the heart of the Archon a sliver of fear grew,

Stabbing like a wound. Though he knew not why.

Silence 1:17

'Your grace,' Veldrin Pavus greeted, half looking over her shoulder.

The Archon sat by her side, not knowing whether he felt as if he felt as a half defeated Imperium facing an enemy, or simply as a man half defeated, seeking an ally.

Together, they looked upon the dance of the flames in the fireplace reflected in small mirror, for a still, silent moment. One of his grey cats ascended Veldrin Pavus' shoulder, scratching her on his way up, but rubbing his nose against her cheek once he had arrived; the elf laughed, ignoring the pain, and gathered the cat who was not brave enough to jump, but was rubbing herself on her shins, in her lap.

'There you go, da'len,' she said, caressing the less brave cat's ears. 'Not all first steps have to be leaps.'

The creature looked up at her with questioning, green eyes, then settled and curled, beginning to purr; Radonis tiredly smiled.

'They like you,' the human noted.

'They are merely inquisitive of whether I like them, your grace,' Veldrin answered.

The male cat leapt from her shoulders to his master's shoulders, and Radonis collected him into his arms with practiced swiftness. 'It is said,' the Archon spoke, slowly, 'that animals can sense the good in people. It is also said,' he followed, in bitter irony, 'that your people have a superior connection to the natural world.'

'I constantly have to refrain from making flowers bloom with my song,' Veldrin answered, with a subdued chuckle. 'I hate to make humans feel inferior. Your grace,' she said, 'I know that you are keeping me from Cassius, and if my gratitude to you could be placed in words, I would speak them without restraint.'

'If I thought that such words might bring me to fully trust you, I would insist upon them,' the man said, measuring her through the corner of his eyes; she was no beauty to his standards, but she was easy to look at. The patterns on her face actually enhanced her, for they brought balance to an otherwise too rounded face…

'Your…' he began, discretely pointing to his own cheek, knowing there was a word for her markings, but that he'd never bothered learning it or remembering it. 'I am led to understand they have a meaning?'

'Vallaslin is the word,' she answered. 'As for their meaning,' Veldrin followed, in a sigh, 'it varies by who you ask. Myself and…We had to agree to disagree on the matter.' She said, not needing to speak any names. 'Yes, Magister Cassius is correct in what he has warned you of. My intimacy with the enemy's methods is not a result of lore studies. You grace already knew that, however.'

'The entire continent knows it, Magistra Pavus,' Radonis replied, managing a smile. 'I find it distasteful,' he sincerely added, staring into the fire, and knowing, beyond doubt, that she had misconstrued his words; her fade imprint was so strong that he could actually feel it growing cold. 'I find it distasteful for such things to be constantly brought up,' the Archon clarified. 'Those who do insist upon commenting on them forget that affection has caused many a war, but ended as many – they also forget that lovers may turn into bitter enemies, over delicate nuances that would leave people who are not dedicated to each other indifferent. Such as, say, the significance of a tattoo.'

Veldrin nodded.

'It is not that that causes my mistrust,' the man followed. 'Nor is it the shape of your ears; ironically, if I could catch you with a lie, I would be far more at ease.'

'That is a predicament we share, I think, your grace,' the elf said; Radonis bitterly chuckled.

'Perhaps so,' he agreed. 'Yet the consequences of our shared predicament might be very far from equal.'

'We only have one world to lose, your grace,' Veldrin replied with admirable calm. 'And we all can only die once. Though,' she added, smiling wryly, 'what immediately precedes death might count a little.'

'Indeed. For you and me both,' Radonis sighed. 'I do not mean to threaten you,' he followed, drawing a deep breath. 'I have committed two grave mistakes, one stemming from the other, for I did not believe this mage is as powerful as you had described until tonight; I simply thought of the political opportunity his specter presented. I thus outplayed my hand and half sabotaged your plans.'

She gently shook her head, distractedly caressing the cat in her lap. 'The eluvian was a small part of it, your grace, and the one we can still remedy. It is the veil manipulation that has me worried; very few knew of it, and none of those who knew would speak of it thoughtlessly. Unless he guessed it by my presence here…Someone, in our immediate circle of trust has made a mistake, and all are people I would trust with my life.'

'Myself included?' the man asked, arching an eyebrow.

'I do not need to trust you with my life,' the elf answered, again, with a smile. 'You already have it.'

'Oh,' the Archon laughed, 'I'd heard that you do well in Publicanium, but now I see that I should have come watch - I can also tell why Marquise Briala does not hold you overly dear; you are a player, and you did not waste your entire life learning to play their grand jeu.'

'In truth,' Veldrin shrugged, 'I don't think of myself as a player. I am simply naturally polite, but guarded, and I scarcely think either quality should take a lifetime to master; seems a bit of a waste of formative years. Besides,' she added, 'as your grace noted, honesty is a great perceived threat: we assume all people lie. The more honest the person, the more confused those around them become – like a liar caught with too many fibs, the honest person goes against our natural assumptions and we fear them as much as we fear the inveterate deceiver. One serves in keeping people cautious and off balance as well as the other.'

'What books did you read under those winged ships of yours?' Radonis asked, finding that he was now smiling in earnest. 'Half the Magisterium would have a stroke to hear you speak thus.'

'My Tevene is not perfect, but it is hardly that bad,' the woman giggled, gracefully accepting the compliment. 'My Qunlat, however, is cringe inducing; forget the diphthongs, I can never manage those barked out consonants of theirs.'

'You are not what I imagined,' he said.

'I have heard this before,' Veldrin replied, with a strange, sorrowful undertone.

'Your people are not what any of us could or even would imagine,' the Archon said, his voice trailing away to thought.

'I doubt it would change much if you did, your grace,' she softly made response; there was no edge to the words, which made them all the more poignant.

He fell silent, for a brief moment, knowing she was right, but hating to admit it to even himself – elves, he thought, had been about him his entire life, to be seen and not heard, ever present, ever useful. The dimensions of his personal reliance, of the Imperium's reliance on them had never really sprung to his conscious mind, and now, that it had been laid bare before him, he understood, with painful clarity, that such addiction to an unknown…nation, Radonis belatedly admitted to himself, had been a gaping hole in the Imperium's armour that had gone unnoticed for centuries.

Further…

Further, he thought, allowing his mind to drift…

'Perhaps you are right,' Radonis said, blankly; he sighed. 'I valued Flavius, my…'

'Your secretary, your grace,' the woman nodded, glancing at him questioningly. 'I've known him for as long as I've known you.'

Of course she had, the man realised; to her, he would not have been an invisible implement, or something akin to an animated side table, as he had been to the vast majority of those who passed through his study.

'He was a mage,' Radonis followed. 'I valued him greatly, never mistreated him, and trusted him far more than I trusted any of my Altus. He has travelled outside of the Imperium, under my orders, many times, and I never had a single twinge of doubt that he would betray me or not return…I never freed him,' the human said, shaking his head, 'and now I wonder why.'

He said the words, a lie she could thankfully not catch – he knew precisely why he'd not freed Flavius, and it was precisely because he'd been so greatly valued…So unlike the rest. If freed, he would have left his former master, and the Imperium, probably forged a life for himself elsewhere.

Maybe in Rivain. Flavius had loved Rivain; he'd even had the daring to bring his master an ironic gift from there, a delicate, hand carved bone ash tray, and an equally beautiful, thin pipe. Radonis had these in his study at home, in a locked drawer, not because he was ashamed to accept a gift from his slave, but simply because he had officially renounced the devil's weed twenty years before, and his wife held him to that sacrament more than to the vows of their marriage.

Flavius still indulged, from time to time – on bad days and long nights, the Archon of Tevinter let him smoke in the office, too, not daring to break his promise, but simply taking in the smoke through his nose, in memory of the discarded pleasure. They'd started smoking together when they were both sixteen; they'd been caught, of course, for they had borrowed more of his father's tobacco than was wise. Radonis had been given a stern talking to for fraternising with the servants. Flavius had been flogged.

Radonis had not let go of a man whose absence he now poignantly felt because he'd known however generous or kind he was, no matter in how much regard he held him, any sense of equality or kinship was a one sided, comfortable lie, conjured only in the human's mind. And thus, he'd done what all men wish to do, in their heart of hearts: held a dear and trusted friend tethered to themselves because he could.

'It is a blow,' he forced himself to follow, 'that Gladius remains while Flavius has gone. He was a mage, he could have resisted, but he didn't. I never let myself imagine he hated…Do you hate us?' he asked; it was too brutally phrased, yet there was no other way of asking, or shaking himself free of the drift; still if the woman who sat beside him lied, when she softly shook her head, she was a consummate actress, for he fully believed her.

'I find it hard to single out a you that I should hate,' she responded, slowly. 'I have met good humans and bad humans; city elves who were brutes, and city elves who were kind; Dalish clans who lived so far away from the real world that were a danger to themselves and all around them, Elvhen or not – honest Orlesians, polite Fereldens…You mention Marquise Briala, but I have as much in common with her as you do with the Pirate Queen of Antiva – I am not ashamed to admit that I am far fonder of Cassandra, who represents an institution I loathe, than of Briala who is, to me, loathsome all by herself. There is no you, just as there is no us.'

He thoughtfully gazed at her. 'That is well said. Difficult to accept.'

'I do not blame Tevinter for the fall of Elvhenan more than I would blame a wolf for setting upon a deer injured by another hunter's trap,' Veldrin replied. 'It is cruel and bloody, but it is the way of the world, and it is at least honest.'

'Is it not the same now, however?' Radonis asked, narrowing his eyes. 'The parts of wolf and deer have changed, yet…'

She coldly laughed. 'Not even remotely, your grace. In terms of a hunter's path, what Solas is doing is hunting a bear by poisoning a river full of fish. It is unhinged and wasteful, a type of action that most Dalish would like to attribute to humans alone. He cannot free the people by imposing his will on them, and he cannot uplift them by robbing them of the little spirit they still have…The spirit he denied us all of in the first place.'

'There is a staggering hypocrisy in that,' she said, no longer smiling, 'akin to the hypocrisy of Denerim willingly expulsing their elves to Tevinter thirty years ago, in the wake of their plague, but still turning their noses at slavery.'

'I don't think money officially exchanged hands on that occasion,' Radonis noted; it was academic, and he knew it.

'No, of course not – they gave them to you for free, as they were worthless,' the elf replied, meeting his glance with an unwise frown. He found it reassuring that the mask did slip in ire. 'I am not your enemy, your grace,' Veldrin ended, looking away.

The Archon breathed in, deeply. 'I do not feel as if were, no, but I cannot let myself feel you are a friend, either,' he said, tiredly leaning back in his chair.

'A false friend would assure you that they are one. I'll merely tell your grace what you already know: friendship is fickle, common goals are not.'

'How true,' he humourlessly snickered. 'And it is true that you are not a player of the Orlesian game; you're simply frightfully good at deception, in your honesty. You do make mistakes, however,' he warned, with some warmth.

'Your grace?' she queried.

'Friendship is fickle, common goals are not, you say,' Radonis replied, biting his lower lip in amusement. 'You are using me to hide from Fen'Harel, but you are also using me to hide from your former allies in the south. I think that Sister Nightingale has cooled towards you, but the Divine bears you impressive affection, and you are deceiving her as well. And so, if you can turn your back on life-long friends and allies, I can only guess that you no longer share a goal.'

'We've merely stopped sharing a path,' Veldrin cautiously said, and to his eyes, she was a woman negotiating her way along a very narrow ledge. 'They'd not approve of mine, and theirs is compromised.'

He nodded and shrugged. 'I did not think a tenth of what you said of this mage was true; the little we know about the Dalish mostly centers on their gift for embellishing the past, and…' the man exhaled, causing the cat in his arms to bristle in alarm. 'with the eluvian, I simply thought to warn both you and Dorian not to attempt deceit, while reminding you that I am truly in your corner…And then, it takes something like this eve to make us all see how small the stage we are playing on is. Play no more,' he said, once more meeting her glance. 'I truly do not wish to threaten you, Magistra Pavus – it is why we are, here, speaking, and why I have not handed you to Cassius, who is itching to get the truth from you in other ways. This will earn me no friends.'

'I know, your grace,' the elf replied. 'I am deeply grateful.'

'I do not wish you to be grateful, or polite. I wish you to tell me the truth of your path.' Radonis said, thinking of a report he'd willfully buried under piles of others – for a heartbeat, he felt her coming to the verge of doing just that, and slipping off the narrow ledge she was walking. She told the truth, without slipping.

'I shall need your grace to promise me immunity,' Veldrin said, at the end of a long moment of silence. Radonis frowned, for the first time feeling truly confused.

'The charges against you are a sham, Veldrin Pavus,' he said. 'We jointly agreed upon them; either we win, and that is revealed, or you die, in which case there is nothing to pardon.'

'That is not what I am asking your grace to pardon,' the woman slowly replied, making him feel as if she needed his hand to stay on her ledge.

'Go on,' he cautiously said, then listened, in attention, amazement, awe, and finally, awed amusement, to a plan so grim, outlandish and practical, one so out of tune with everything he had ever imagined a southern mage - and an elf, at that – would countenance, it could only have been the true one; he laughed, at the end, for he could not contain himself, not even though the woman before him was only now truly frightened of him, precisely when she should not have been.

'Manaveris Dracona1,' he said, shaking his head, 'You are asking the Archon of Tevinter to a prioripardon you for using blood magic against a man who is about to destroy the Imperium in one week? While Magisters who hold the tails of my robe use it casually, on innocent people, just to be able to carry the tails of my robe?'

'I was led to believe that…' Veldrin whispered, her voice fearful; the cat in her arms had awoken at the woman's tension, and she glanced at him in reproach, through eyes that had the same shape as the elf's, a different colour, yet were still disproportionately large for the features they were set on.

'That I should set the weakling Templars on you at the first mention of this, yes. Who led you to believe that, pray tell?' Radonis laughed, pressing his index to his forehead. 'Gentle, intellectually arrogant Dorian, and righteous, politically cautious Tilani, I expect – of course; one is so powerful because of the very system of lineage he seeks to eschew that he never needed blood magic, and the other has spent so much of himself having to appear beyond reproach because he perceives his mere existence is reproachful, that he can't chance setting one foot off the fine line he walks. Such…neutral sources you pick for insight to my mind, Magistra Pavus. I am disappointed, in you and in them. Both. Tell them that, when you meet them on Seheron.'

'Your grace, if not for me, then for Dorian and Mae there must be pardon; they both opposed the ritual I intend, and I fully hope they will survive it,' she said, lowering her glance.

'I've no intention of using this against you, or them,' the man responded, shaking his head.

'But Magister Cassius might,' Veldrin said, again more bravely than he'd expected.

'Cassius will have a say in this when he does something that I find marginally useful,' Radonis replied, in a colder and more revealing tone than he might have liked. 'You'll have your pardon, if it sets your mind at ease, and I shan't make your work any harder; in fact, if I were a decade younger and the nation was not crumbling around me, I would personally join you. As is,' he followed, sweeping the cat off his knees, to stand and walk to his bookcase, 'I have things that you might find more immediately useful than a pardon. Marginally,' he ended, with a wide grin.

He pulled on the wooden imitation of a book, causing the case to move aside, screeching from all of its hinges; displeased by being summarily dismissed, his cat sought to follow inside the room that had just opened, yet a mere glance at what it contained caused it to curl and hiss, all its hairs standing up. The sight of the crimson glowing somnaborium caused Veldrin, who had rushed to his side in turn, to cover her lips with both hands.

'Your grace,' she breathed, 'I…'

'I hope you are suitably contrite,' Radonis said, strolling to the object's side, and passing his hand over its surface, causing it to flare.

'This is dangerous, your grace; if we fail to control it, and bring it into Solas' presence…' Veldrin whispered; the man simply shook his head.

'This is not a focus orb,' he said. 'It is merely a Glory Age Tevinter reconstruction, and I am assured it has but a fraction of the functionality. It is nonetheless similar to what Aurelian Titus used in his ritual…Come closer, it will not spontaneously leap into your hand and rip the sky asunder,' Radonis chuckled, watching her approach and shyly pass her fingers over the iron sphere's surface in turn.

The flares she caused blinded him for a moment, so he lifted his hand to shield his eyes, and watched her circle it, in fascination.

'I never knew that Aurelian Titus' work…' the elf questioningly began.

'The stage on which we all dance is truly small, Veldrin Pavus,' the Archon said, leaning against the frame of the hidden doorway. 'I did not know what Aurelian Titus was doing until just now, that you have explained it…The man was a mediocre mage, had no lineage, no personal wealth, and yet he obtained a Magisterial seat and attained conciliatus in two short years. The former Archon favoured him, unexplainably, which, as you might suspect, was not particularly to my liking.'

'Of course not, your grace,' Veldrin smiled; Radonis smiled in return, then shrugged lightly.

'For a time, his unusual ascent seemed unstoppable, so, I gathered unusual means of my own – he disappeared before I needed to employ them.' He simply stated.

She looked over her shoulder, with the sincerely disappointed glance of a young child. 'So you do not know how to use this, either,' she said; he bit his lower lip in thought.

'Not for the purpose for which it was intended, no,' Radonis said. 'In theory,' he explained, 'the somnaboriae should enhance a somniari's control over their power, but I am not a dreamer myself. It has not been sitting here gathering dust for a decade, though – I've used it as focus multiple times, and yes,' he chuckled, watching her eyes light up, 'I have the channeling diagrams, and you are welcome to them…The second thing I would gift you with is alas, not as convenient.' Radonis said, stealing his own sense of warmth.

'Nor,' he followed, looking into her eyes, 'will these weapons be something you would lightly use on one of your own. Come,' he said, extending his arm to invite her back before the fire place; he closed the secret door behind him with too slow gestures, and hesitated before sitting down. Still, he could not afford to waste time, thus…

It was his turn to navigate a narrow ledge, and watch her pale at each word, not – as a human might have – at hearing of things that still lingered from the time before the very first Blight. Not as a mage might have, in shame of what their powers had wrought, no, though perhaps both those tales might have been fearsome enough.

When Veldrin's eyes clouded with sorrow, he knew she was not thinking of those past histories, and he had the sensation that by telling her of the weapons the first followers of Old Gods had used against the last of her people he'd caused Arlathan to burn again, before her eyes; he took no satisfaction in her pain. He simply recounted facts, because facts were louder than feelings, and questions, and doubts.

Louder than the question whether if he had let his friend go, he might still have had him.

'Whether you believe me or not,' he sincerely said, at the end of his account, 'I am sorry to cause you hurt by recounting all this…'

'It was a war,' the woman whispered. 'We had our weapons; you had…yours.'

Radonis bit his lower lip, and nodded. 'I will accept those words as the only statement an uneasy ally can offer at a time like this, and I am grateful for your restraint and logic, though they must cost you dearly. The truth, as we both see it, is that no one on Thaedas has faced the likes of Fen'Harel since the fall of Arlathan. Perhaps by then, the Elvhen Empire was a shadow of its former self already, and your magic was already weakened…'

'Still,' Veldrin slowly said, 'it would be the closest shadow of what we are about to face here, and if so…Yet, your grace,' she whispered, 'the Old Gods are dead; their priesthood vanquished, their dragons, gone, their rituals lost, their relics scattered…'

The Archon shrugged. 'The latter parts are true, of course; I would not venture a guess on the former. You tell me that the essence of Urthemiel, at least, survived the slaying of the Archdemon in the Ferelden blight. We cannot know about the others, and even I would not venture to think that far – to you, I can light heartedly confess that I am no Andrastian either.'

He stood, to walk towards the window and gaze outside. 'I am not even a theist, in any sense of the word,' he whispered, mostly to himself. 'If this…pseudo-god of yours were not so determined to uproot the world, there would be none more joyous than I to see the Chantry on its knees…No disrespect intended for your friend, the Southern Divine, she is a remarkable woman, in her way, but…'

Radonis breathed in and out, deeply. 'What I do believe in is magic, Magistra Pavus, thus the continued existence of the Old Gods…even their origin, or whether they were actual Gods in the first place, concerns me in no way; it is perhaps more awe-inspiring to call and orb The Eye of Dumat, or wield a sword that bears the name of Dumat's Spine, then to call these things simple, mage created and mage enchanted items…and that, Magistra Pavus, works in our favour. These relics will function regardless of whether Dumat ever existed. They functioned against the mages of Arlathan then, and they might still do so now. If they can be acquired.'

'If they can even be found,' the woman said.

He turned about, and looked her in the eyes. 'No,' he sighed, 'the finding part is easy; we know where most of them lie, either hidden, or as guarded dangerous relics, or, simply as book stoppers on the shelves of some unsuspecting Nevarran merchant with a questionable taste in art. As you can probably imagine, once the Imperial Chantry was established, the priesthood of the new and only God were no less predatory than the old clergymen, nor were the Old Gods' temples spared pillage and vandalism. Hessarian…Hessarian could do little to stop this; whether his conversion was sincere or not equally bears little relevance.'

'His political position,' Veldrin reasoned, 'with an occupying army at the gates of Minrathous, and with a frightened Magisterium, suddenly robbed of their faiths, on his back, allowed him for little room to manouver.'

'And so he chose the most immediate enemy, hoping the Magisterium would understand that the barbarian horde would not so easily scatter,' Radonis nodded, 'and that there was little the crushed Imperium could do but half surrender. This does not mean he prevented priests and acolytes from salvaging what holy objects they could, or did not track those stolen; most will, of course, have been lost to the ages, but some records of others exist, and are in my possession. The Grey Wardens hold some, the Southern Circles, others, the Chantry even more, yet…My hands are tied,' he earnestly ended. 'I am in no position to be caught red-handed sending agents all over Thaedas now, when I am once again, all but crushed…I cannot antagonise the Chantry…In other words, I can tell you, with some certainty, where these objects might be, yet I cannot move a finger in helping you retrieve them, without risking all my already fragile political ties.'

'Nor,' he concluded, lowering his glance, 'can I underestimate your distaste at having the weapons that caused the fall of your people once again used against one who would restore them.'

'It is a harsh proposition, your grace,' the elf said, softly. 'I…'

'Veldrin,' the Archon said, gently but sternly, 'I understand your hesitation, but if you cannot, do this, I have no choice but risk finding these on my own then saddling you with Cassius, who will have no reservations in using them. Weigh this, Magistra Pavus, weigh it well – you've shared your intentions and now I have shared mine; I would rather not force your hand, and I have a myriad of ways of doing so.'

'I would prefer not to employ them,' he followed, 'because no matter how detached you would like to appear, killing a man you once loved cannot be easy. I like you,' Radonis earnestly said. 'It is enough that he must die. Don't let him die at the hands of a man who would take great pleasure in it.'

She looked away and swallowed dry; the female cat jumped back on her knees, finding its courage. The elf found hers too, and nodded.

'Tell Dorian of all this,' she said. Radonis expected she would bury her face in her hands, but the elf merely picked up the cat who'd found her courage, and held it tightly to her chest. The cat did not squirm or scrape to make herself free, and Radonis once more turned away to gaze outside the window, a man and an Imperium half defeated, but still fighting.

He had not smoked in twenty years. He knew he'd smoke tonight.

1 Long live the dragons. I think that Radonis is just too polite to say Vishante Kaffas in front of a lady.

Oh, Solas is in trouble here :) Sadly, he has enemies who are polite and generally nice people, and enemies of his enemies who are not his friends, as we are about to find out on Wednesday.

Thank you for reading!