Disclaimer: Dragon Age is the intellectual property of EA and Bioware.
Author note: So, I'm back to writing after my huge breakdown. All reviews are welcome, if you have critiques I'd prefer them to be constructive and I'll try to respond to them all. Special thanks to my author friends who are supporting me – John Landry and dragonmactir. Love you both.
Chapter One – Antiva City, Dragon 9:28
Light filtered slow and warm through the red thread edged mesh drapes of the ladies drawing room, casting muted, intricate shadows of the embellishments over the ladies therein. The elder, Lady Sophia Cadaval, methodically tatting lace in a tufted, velveteen chair, and the younger, Lady Gwendolyn Cousland, leaning at her easel, absorbed in catching the correct hues of her noble patron's face. Gwendolyn regarded the canvas, tilting her head back and squinting. "Your chin was lower last time. Could you?" She said, dabbing her brush into a murky tan. Sophia craned her head down a fraction until she heard a satisfied tut from the younger lady. "Perfect. Thank you."
The portrait itself was seventy hours of painstaking, tiny brushes of oily paint in nigh indiscernibly different shades, smudged into one another to mimic the shadows, the rouge of the older woman's cheeks, the wrinkles that mapped her years, and the knobby, liver-spotted joints of wizened hands. They both agreed that art should portray the beauty in flaws, and so none of them would be forgotten. Not the whiskery hairs that grew from the mole on her jaw, nor the way her silvery hair rebelled at the bun it was styled in. By lunch, it was finally done. The Lady Sophia stood shakily and walked with a cane to view it.
Her face broke into a toothy grin. "Magnífico, mi bonita." She raised a silken handkerchief up, patting away fat tears that welled in the creases about her eyes. With great care she took Gwendolyn's paint flecked hands in hers. "Oh it is so wonderful. Thank you. You have been such a treasure these five years, and now I can keep a little treasure with me always."
"It was the least I might do, Lady Sophia. For hosting me, being my patron, and of course, mothering my brother's wife." She gently slipped her hands away. "It will take a while to dry before we frame it of course."
"Please stay to see it hung." She said, eyes pleading upwards at the taller woman.
"I couldn't. I need to sail back to Ferelden while the seas are fair enough to get me back in time." Gwendolyn pulled her smock neatly off, laying it over her arm. "It will be my first official salon season since–"
"He could never have been a good enough husband for you, mi bonita, not if the rumours are true." Sophia said, lifting her chin proudly. "Your mother will help you find a good match, and the Campana Finishing School never fails to ensure well rounded ladies versed in all feminine arts and knowledge."
Gwendolyn smiled, "But of course, there is more to life than a choice between knowing salad forks, being a scholar, or handling a sword – why should we disregard such useful tools, a full arsenal is the best kind." Both ladies shared a conspiratorial smile with the other. It was not weakness to be feminine, one could sew, paint, read, look beautiful – it did not hinder your ability to thrust a dagger where it was useful nor did it disable your wit. Why force yourself to look down on your fellow women for femininity, fighting against it only reinforced that you believed there something shameful in being a woman. Besides, men did enough fighting and posturing that allies were found between daughters more oft than sons seeking glory or vengeance.
Lady Sophia chuckled throatily, shaking her head. "If your younger self could have seen you now."
"I would have sneered at the dress and wondered why a Cousland would willingly choose not to be seen in armour." Gwendolyn tucked a loose wedge of sunkissed blonde hair behind an ear, wetting dry lips. "But the Spitfire of Highever is a person I shall always be, clothing cannot change who you are."
They were interrupted by an elven servant knocking at the door and informing them that lunch had been laid out. The two ladies went to neaten up and returned back to the sunny drawing room in the afternoon well fed, Lady Sophia returning to her lace and Gwendolyn to a book she'd been neglecting ever since she'd started the portrait.
She was thinking, as she read. It hadn't felt like five years. Being occupied in study for history, politics, etiquette, each had filled her days until they seemed to blur together. She could speak, read, and write in three languages, besides her mother tongue, quite sufficiently now, though at Campana it was considered unorthodox for one of those languages to be Dwarven. And of course arts had been a great, consuming passion. Sculpture was still not one of her preferred mediums, but oil and watercolour excited her and allowed long rainy days to suddenly take on magnificent beauty. Her first painting she'd framed was a watercolour of rain in the lake adjoining the Cadaval estate. The hem of her dress soaked as high as her waist even under the shelter of a canvas awning to stand there and capture it. She'd sent it back home and received much praise for it, even in subsequent letters that arrived she would hear of visiting nobles or dignitaries who admired it.
Practical knowledge was attained in every spare moment. Lady Sophie was a supporter of even noble ladies knowing how to cook, how to set a broken leg or clean a wound, which herbs could be used to soothe pains, or indeed, were poisons used to inflict pain and death. Many an evening was spent in intense practice with a six-stringed viol tucked between her knees, a bow held underhand and neck craned as she laboured to produce the nasal notes that could accompany the Lady Sophia on the harpsichord. It was a mans instrument in Antiva, though childhood practice in Ferelden lead Gwendolyn to think of it as more neuter as court musicians were both male and female.
To say the time was ill-spent would have been a great disservice to everything now held inside her head. Not an idle moment where boredom reigned existed here in Antiva. Gwendolyn was grateful for it all, being exposed to life outside Ferelden expanded her point of view beyond her native country. As a younger girl, she'd dreaded leaving, and was still homesick, but part of her would regret not being able to stay in the gem of a city and continue studying.
Gwendolyn wiped away an errant tear she hadn't even noticed until then that was rolling down her cheek and turned her full attention back to her book.
A month prior
Gwendolyn sat with the hot peaty fire to her back, eyes trained down the long fretted neck of her viol. She drew the bow across the strings with a sharp hiss, ending the duet. Finally, she looked up, cheeks flush and hair curling with sweat around her ears, and smiled triumphantly. Lady Sophia stood from her cushioned seat at the harpsichord, bowing as politely as she was able despite the stiffness of her joints.
Scanning the room, Gwendolyn's eyes were drawn to a face that hadn't been there before, a man not in the garb of the nobility but rough seafaring boots and breeches. By some show of blending in, he'd smoothed down his hair. Lady Sophia parted the assorted merchant princes and their families that had gathered this night with practiced ease, making her way to him with her chin held high.
He spoke a soft, gravelly Antivan, thrusting out a letter into her hands before hastily bowing. The exchange was so noticeable, everyone assembled so quiet a pin might be heard dropping. But confusion reigned with a susurration buzzing into the stuffy room. As soon as he'd been noticed, the man left and all eyes turned to the Lady Sophia. "¿Una carta de su amante, mi dama?" A son from one of the numerous merchant families smirked, receiving a swift knock on the back of his head from his father that toppled his velvet feathered hat. He scowled backwards, then hung his head.
Lady Sophia laughed merrily, turning the letter over. "For mi pequeñita, a family seal."
Gwendolyn's stomach lurched, the colour draining from her face. Though, she remained poised as she took it, turning the letter over in her hands and cracking the hard wax seal with her thumbs.
With a furtive glance at the nosey nobility that had perceptibly drawn in around her, breaths held to hear the news, she withdrew back to the music stool and sat before unfolding the vellum.
She could have been alone in the room if not for the odd crackling of the fire in the hearth and lungs straining to keep their breaths quiet. Gwendolyn frowned. "Well, what of it?" A noble by the name of Adorno said, his lips drawn together and brow furrowed.
"Give the girl a moment, Adorno, she looks upset." A woman half a head taller than him shushed. She looked at him coolly down her nose. "If you wish to share with us to put an end to what already will be gossip forming in their petty minds?"
Gwendolyn snorted, a ghostly smile playing about her lips. "I suppose I should. A betrothal I had planned since my first year of age has been revoked by the father of my former intended. My parents ask I return to Ferelden." She cleared her throat and sighed. "It doesn't give an explanation as to why."
"You were intended for that doglord... Wear, or Watt, or something Fereldan like that. Seems you've been done a favour." The same boy who'd jested at Lady Sophia piped up, ducking this time when his father went to hit his head. Instead, a knee jolted up and the boy jumped.
Lady Sophia sidled up and put a surprisingly strong arm around her shoulders. "No man, let alone this boy Howe I heard you tell me about was going to be good enough for you. His father was likely intimidated when he realised what a poor match had been made! How when you met this sopping brat again you'd call the betrothal off, and rather than face the indignity of refusal, revoked instead!"
A chorus of chortles and restrained laughter broke the tension. Gwendolyn sucked her lips in, nodding. "I've not done a damn thing to warrant this. So yes. I agree. How about we play The Ballad Of Madrigal's Fall in C minor? Clear the air a bit."
But even as the evening shifted away from the letter that arrived and her skin sweat in the hot room under her damask dress; even as her fingers and forethoughts were preoccupied in the viol, in the back of her mind she panicked.
Her life had been set out. She was to follow the course already in motion since her infancy. She'd sequestered the time in Antiva to fully come into herself, let music and art consume her, and her mind be sharpened for duty before she took her new mantle of a wife.
And the sudden alteration of that scared Gwendolyn. There was some comfort in being given time to adjust. It was like having a safety rope detach as you climbed a cliff face.