Happy New Year!
The Best Laid Plans
How did the Iron Bull know that Solas was an apostate? Apparently the same way he knew I had trouble moving about unaided, Cassandra had rejected nineteen proposals of marriage before running off to join the Seekers, and Leliana was a redhead: he was a Qunari spy.
Which he simply admitted to me at the beginning of our contract negotiation.
I hired the Chargers anyway, and tasked them with finding the Inquisition's missing soldiers. They were to remain on the Storm Coast for a few days while Iron Bull returned to Haven with us.
Cassandra wasn't certain I had made the right decision, but after two nights of questioning Bull closely about various intrigues within some of the royal courts of Thedas, she admitted that Leliana would probably appreciate his information. "Hopefully not the only thing she appreciates - if I'm lucky," he told Cassandra with an audible grin.
"I...beg your pardon?" she half-choked.
"He has a thing for redheads," I sighed, and then dragged her off to help me practice my magic. It was another detail - his hair-color preference - that had somehow seemed relevant to him during our negotiation.
Solas was distant following his unusual display of camaraderie on the Sword Coast. Claiming he should gather herbs while we had time, he mostly left Varric - and now Iron Bull - to tell me how badly I was missing Cassandra with my spells.
Perhaps he didn't want to watch me as I failed to make any progress at all.
I dreamed of him again the night after I hired the Chargers. He was younger in this dream, my age or around it, and he had rich red-brown hair that fell in long braids to his waist. Deshanna was, incongruously, present as well. Solas was angry with her for reasons I either didn't know or couldn't remember. "And do you mean to establish her as you did me ?" he asked, gesturing toward me.
Deshanna looked at him thoughtfully, and then said in a voice not her own, "Perhaps, though there are other ways if she eventually chooses to take that step."
"Well, I am pleased that you at least mean to give her a choice in the matter," he scoffed.
The woman who looked like Deshanna then smiled a smile nothing like that my maela ever wore - cunning and edged with both rage and despair. "I always meant to give you a choice, too, until my hand was forced - and I have already apologized endlessly for the result. Her circumstances are - our relationship is different. There are few reasons to target her."
Solas's eyes fell on me. "And what do you think of this?"
I had no idea what they were speaking of, but in the dream I felt a wash of embarrassment as he gazed at me, and heard my voice say: "I think I will do whatever is necessary to serve the one who has supported and guided me." I said it quietly, with stubborn dignity, perhaps a bit intimidated by Solas but unwilling to be cowed by his disapproval.
Deshanna smiled at me fondly, though it wasn't actually Deshanna's expression of that emotion. "As though you have not equally supported and guided me, da'hallain." A wave of gratitude swept over me, so powerful that it shook the entire dream.
Solas threw his hands up, though he was less substantial than he had been a moment before. "Of course, modesty is so much easier to bring to heel than wisdom."
Not-Deshanna returned her attention to him, the softness in her expression melting away. "Modesty is wiser than pride, and your insolence is unappreciated. If you wish to stay here and speak to her of your experiences, Solas - " she spoke his name like an insult, though I was having trouble holding on to the sound of her voice now, " - I have no objections. But you will treat our relationship with the same respect you would offer any of my daughters - " Each word was softer and harder to hear than the one before it, and a surge of emotion on the word "daughters" startled me all the way awake.
It was dawn. I lay in my bedroll for a long moment, reflecting on what I had seen and heard, the emotions my dream-self had felt still stirred up inside of me.
Emotion didn't tell me what or why, though. I could make neither head nor tail of what I had seen. Usually in my dreams I was myself, but this had felt almost like inhabiting another's mind and body.
Strange, but not immediately pertinent to anything I needed to do. I put it from my mind.
The Frostbacks were growing colder as the year neared its close, and, our last night before reaching Haven, we decided to share tents for warmth. Bull, luckily, had one better suited to his role as commander of a mercenary company than any of those the Inquisition had managed to requisition, and so Solas and Varric were both able to fit within it. Cassandra and I shared one of the others. She always insisted on dividing up by sex, though I saw little point in it. Inevitably we would see each other in various states of undress, traveling together as we were - privacy, in my experience, was less about what others saw or even noticed, and much more about what they spoke of.
But I was living among humans now, and my upbringing and race already weighed down the burgeoning Inquisition, so I didn't make any of the arguments I might have. I hadn't cared before this, anyway, and only cared now because I had noticed Bull radiated warmth like a stove. That was another lesson learned early in my life, a lesson every Dalish child learned, and the subject of many sly, unspoken games. In the winter, you did whatever you could to share an aravel with someone - more than one someone, if you were lucky - who slept hot.
Cassandra was warmer than some, but I envied Solas and Varric their tent-mate. I envied them even after Varric began teasing Bull about some of what he had said over the course of the night, revealing that he spent a considerable portion of it talking in his sleep. I could sleep through someone talking; warmth was a more fundamental concern.
Bull was, predictably, unabashed by Varric's teasing, and in fact treated us to a colorful story regarding an amorous conquest that had even Solas hiding laughter with coughing fits, and managed to break down Cassandra's performance of propriety entirely. Varric and I howled, and he must have repeated "you have got to be shitting me" at least fifty times.
We arrived at Haven in time for the midday meal, which was a convenient time to introduce Bull to the other three leaders. Cullen sighed over my use of the Chargers - he had wanted them in Haven - but agreed it was better to let them find the soldiers than stay to do it myself. Leliana was, conversely, delighted: "We received reports of Wardens in the area from some of the locals. The Chargers can keep watch for signs of them as they search for the missing soldiers."
"Have we received word from Alexius?" I asked, digging into my own meal.
"Two days after you left. He wishes to meet with you. Alone," Josephine said.
"I'm sure he wishes a lot of things," I muttered around a bite of food.
"Probably that you never existed by the sound of it, Boss," Bull put in, laughing as though my existence as a thorn in the side of a Tevinter magister were the finest joke he had ever heard.
Well, given the historic animosity between their peoples - maybe it was.
"The letter was very...complimentary," Josephine said.
"So much so, that I am quite certain he means to kill you," Leliana added.
"And do we have ideas for getting in?" I asked.
"Not to put too fine a point on it: no," Cullen answered. "I suggest - "
"We know!" Leliana and Josephine groaned almost in unison.
Cullen grumbled something inaudible into his plate.
"Leave that aside for the war room," I suggested and everyone I could actually see nodded - better that the Inquisition's leaders not be seen publicly disagreeing, especially with as much heat as the argument was likely to call forth.
Instead I asked about Vivienne and our other efforts in the Hinterlands. The former had arrived safely and had somehow managed to carve out a small niche of her own within the warrens of tiny rooms within the chantry. The latter had stabilized remarkably well: the watchtowers were built; Dennet had sent the horses he promised and might be persuaded to come see to them himself; Corporal Vale had retrieved the wolf skins; and, finally, another officer had come across several caches of food and blankets left by the now-fleeing mages. Things at the Crossroads were good enough that Vale had transitioned from crisis-mode to sifting through refugees to locate places they might thrive, including places within the Inquisition. He had a small group of specialists he had collected who were being referred to - as an affectionate jest - as Vale's Irregulars.
"The only major problem remaining is that of bandits, especially along some of the main trade routes," Cullen sighed. "No doubt we will have to see to it soon, but they leave Inquisition camps alone, mainly troubling trade caravans and groups of hunters or straggling refugees."
"Might be something the Chargers can look into," Bull rumbled thoughtfully, "if they're back in time."
"I fear even with extra help, we are stretched rather thin," Cullen admitted.
"That's what happens when the world goes to shit," Bull assured him. We had all finished eating and began clearing the table. "I'll take this," the Qunari assured us as we stacked plates and utensils together. "You go on and figure out what your next move is."
We thanked him and retreated to the war room.
"We don't have the manpower to take the castle," Cullen began without preamble as soon as the door was closed. "If no one has ideas for another way in, then we should give up this nonsense and go get the templars."
"Redcliffe is in the hands of a magister, and that cannot be allowed to stand," Cassandra maintained.
"Redcliffe Castle is one of the most defensible fortresses in Ferelden," Cullen shot back. "It has repelled thousands of assaults." He looked at me. "If you go in there, you'll die - and we'll lose the only means we have of closing these rifts. I won't allow it." The final words might have been a threat or a command - but Cullen said them so quietly they sounded more like a prayer.
Leliana, however, was not impressed. "If we don't even try to meet Alexius, we lose the mages and leave a hostile foreign power on our doorstep!"
"Even if we could assault the keep," Josephine sighed, "it would be for naught. I have been considering this and asking covert questions - officially we are an Orlesian Inquisition. Marching into Ferelden would provoke a war. Our hands are tied."
"The magister - " Cassandra began to protest.
"Has outplayed us," Cullen interrupted. "At least for now. With the aid of the templars…"
"The demon impersonating the Lord Seeker is also a concern," Josephine allowed, "but finding a means of seeking an audience is...problematic. It seems disinclined to confront the Herald directly."
"What if we got help from inside Ferelden?" I asked, returning to Alexius. A demon leading the templars was certainly not ideal, but Alexius posed a more serious danger. "Where is the arl? Doesn't he want his castle back?"
"After he was displaced, Arl Teagan rode straight for Denerim to petition the Crown for help," Josephine said. "I doubt he'll want our assistance once the Fereldan army lays siege to his castle."
We all fell silent, and I thought uncomfortably of time-magic. None of the Inquisition's leaders were mages, and none seemed to understand just how urgent a problem this was. They thought in terms of enemy forces and occupations . I was concerned about the fabric of reality .
"Siege," Leliana gasped suddenly, and our attention shifted to her. "There is a secret passage into the castle," she told us. "An escape route for the family - in case of a siege or invasion."
"Not uncommon for castles," Cullen said, "but it's likely - "
"Too narrow for our troops," Leliana finished for him. "It is - but we could send agents through."
"And then what?" Cullen demanded. "Your agents fight their way through an entire castle of mages and soldiers to reach the magister?"
"No - not if we have a distraction," she replied. "Such as, perhaps, the envoy Alexius wants so badly?"
"While they're focused on Lavellan, we break the magister's defenses," he mused. "It could work," he admitted, "but it's a huge risk."
The door slammed open as he said the last words, and I jumped to face it, squinting, a spell already at my fingertips - one to warp the Veil and move whomever-it-was elsewhere, I was pleased to note a moment later.
"Fortunately, you'll have help," a rich, well-groomed voice announced.
Dorian of House Pavus. My spell died as he stopped beside me, giving me a broad wink.
Someone else - one of Cullen's soldiers or Leliana's scouts - followed him a moment later. "This man says he has information about the magister and his methods, Commander," he gulped.
There was a moment of tense silence.
"Your spies will never get past Alexius's magic without my help," Dorian told his skeptical audience. "If you're going after him, I'm coming along."
I felt rather than saw the glances exchanged amongst the four leaders. "Spells could complicate matters," Leliana allowed after a moment.
"He has offered us valuable information," Cassandra sighed, "but it could still be a ruse. I wouldn't trust him."
"I'm wounded," Dorian retorted, theatrically placing his hand over his heart.
I looked him over, weighing our interactions thus far. Nothing he had done proved he was on our side, and his charisma was so great that he was likely an excellent liar. But - there was Felix. I remembered his quiet words: there are worse things than dying, Dorian. Felix lacked his friend's charisma, and presented an open sincerity that I hoped couldn't be feigned.
"I...trust Felix's trust in him," I told the room slowly. "Take him with you. If he tries to betray you, cut and run. It will be my misjudgment, then, and the consequences will be mine to suffer."
"Not alone," Cassandra said. "Noble as that sentiment is - the mark on your hand has value even beyond your life. Send a second mage with the agents - Solas or Vivienne - who might, perhaps, be able to reach you with some sign of their success. If you don't receive it, assume they have failed and retreat as you can."
"That's a wise failsafe in any case," Dorian allowed, "if one of your mages has some minor, innocuous spell they can send through the Fade to find you. I would send a spirit - a wisp or something of that sort - if I were tasked with delivering the message, but I think binding spirits is frowned upon here in the south."
"Solas would likely have something," I pointed out. "He spends as much time as he can in the Fade."
"Talk to both of them," Leliana suggested, "and choose whichever you think is a better fit for the mission. You are in a good position to judge, after all, being a mage yourself."
"Who else?" Cassandra asked.
"I shouldn't take you," I told her. "If something happens to us, the Inquisition will need as many of its leaders as we can hope to keep alive."
"That...is a sound point," she sighed, "though I would feel better at your side."
"Not Sera - mages and magic make her nervous, so that leaves Varric for support. So: Blackwall or the Iron Bull as my heavily-armored companion?" I asked, still looking at Cassandra.
"My opinion?" she asked in return, and waited for my nod before going on. "Blackwall. If it comes to a fight, you will be very much on the defensive. His style is better suited to defense."
"All right - that's decided. If someone will let them know, I'll go speak to Vivienne and Solas immediately. How long will it take us before we're ready to leave?" I asked.
"Dawn tomorrow," Cullen said.
"We'll send a raven ahead to Alexius," Leliana added. "We need to speak of your approach, though. Moving agents through the forward camp will be easier to disguise, but less so if your party's presence draws attention to it."
"But the other route has bandits," Cullen protested.
"And you believe our Herald can't see to a few bandits?" Leliana replied.
I just sighed. As long as I was in the area, why not see to a few bandits? What could possibly go wrong?
Da'hallain: Little halla fawn