Defeated by the dragon cultists and faced with certain death, our heroes avoided a crispy fate at the last moment when Finn's Genuine Replica Sigil of Zazikel was mistaken as the pendant of a high-ranking magister of the cult. Finn played along to save their lives, telling the elves that they should "return" to the Dalish of the Tirashan next, bearing a message from the cult to stop their interference both in the great forest and here in Val Royeaux. Then he dispatched a cultist to escort them out of the sewers. Pierre leads the way with his torch...

Pierre led them in silence back through the sewer. They retraced their steps only to the first junction, where he turned into a side-channel. And then another, and another. If his goal was to keep the intruders from finding their way back to the cult sanctuary from this exit, he was succeeding, Ariane admitted to herself.

A pile of beslimed crates were stacked up under a grate set in the ceiling. Setting the torch into a bracket the cult had surely placed there, Pierre clambered up first and jostled something to get the grate loose. After peering up into the street, he slid it carefully up and pulled himself out of the tunnel. The two Dalish followed.

As soon as they were out of the hole, Pierre was slipping back in, setting the grate back into place behind him. He whispered something dire in Orlesian before disappearing into the gloom. The faint glow of the torch soon diminished further, and they were alone in the streets of Val Royeaux.

It was probably a crime, Ariane thought as they oriented themselves on the great towers of the Grand Cathedral, for elves to be out after dark. But no chevaliers were unlucky enough to spot the pair of them as they made their way back to the dingy inn.

The mabari was waiting for them outside in the street. His initial happy bark turned to a puzzled whine. "I know, I know," Ariane told him as Vashti regarded the front door, locked for the night. "We misplaced Finn. We'll go get him."

She jumped at the sound of splintering wood; Vashti had smashed the door open in rather than picking the lock. "Vashti? What - " But her companion just went on inside, staggering slightly now, Ariane saw. They turned down the hall as the innkeeper appeared, a wooden club in hand. He shouted something in Orlesian and brandished it.

Stiff-legged, the dog stalked between them, ears back and growling ominously. The innkeeper halted, taking in the thick, powerful neck and wide jaws. He brandished the club again, making a few threatening swings, trying to scare the dog away. Dog barked positively savagely, the challenge of a war beast who had fought everything from armored knights to werewolves to ogres to the Archdemon itself. A pasty man in his nightshirt with a stick was nothing.

The pasty man knew it, too. Making one last threat - Ariane caught the word for 'money' - he retreated as the two elves slipped into their room.

"Vashti, why did you - "

"Too tired, can't focus." Vashti sat down heavily as soon as she was in the door. "How is your arm?"

"It's stopped bleeding; needs cleaned and wrapped. You?"

"Water, please, and soap, bandages and poultices," she said, stripping off her befouled armor. "It... hurts."

Ariane grabbed a canvas bucket from their gear and hurried to the nearest well outside. It obviously couldn't be that bad, right, because she'd walked this far? ...but it was bad enough for Vashti to actually admit to pain and ask for help. I wish Finn were here...

Finn was not there, but his pack was. By the time Ariane returned, Vashti had its orderly contents spread out on the floor and was pressing a gash in her thigh with a folded mass of linen. "Ma serranas," she said as Ariane placed the dripping bucket next to her. She'd already lit several lanterns for light.

"Wash, stitch, poultice, bandage, right?" Ariane confirmed the right order of their field treatments. "Let's see how bad it is."

"Ma serranas, but I will do it."

"Look, I already know you're as tough as dwarven shoeleather," Ariane replied, a little peeved. She reached for some clean rags to use to wash the wound. "You don't have to keep proving it over and over."

"I said that I will do it," the hunter repeated. "Please. Just... give me the rags."

"And are you going to stitch it yourself? Don't be ridiculous." Ariane soaked the rags, turned - and was brought up short by the other elf's hand on her breastbone. "What is your prob- "

"Poison. It's poison. Stay away."

"You're poisoned!" Ariane's eyes widened with shock. "Mythal's shield, you should have said! Oh... um... what... what do we do for..."

"Not the wound. The blood. Is poison." Vashti's voice was strained with a pain that did not come from her wounds. "Stay away." She removed her hand and took the wet rags from Ariane's unresisting grip.

"How... that doesn't make sense. How can blood be poisonous?"

"Get different water, clean water for your arm." Vashti ignored the question. "Talk when we're done bleeding."

Ariane looked at the dog, who whined and waggled his stub tail earnestly. Uneasily, she got up to fetch a bowl and dipped a measure of water from the bucket before Vashti could re-soak the rags in it. She shucked off the filthy rat-catcher's costume and washed her own wounds in silence. She was smoothing elfroot poultice over them when a sudden hiss of breath (and an anxious whine) told her Vashti had started suturing herself. "Are you sure I can't - "

"Stop asking. Please," Vashti grunted. So Ariane did. Seeking to busy herself, she cleaned Vashti's armor instead, taking the same precautions she would if they'd been fighting spiders or shrieks that left venomous residue where they struck. The Grey Warden did not object.

At length, Warden and armor were cleaned and patched passably well. Seated on the pallet, Vashti leaned tiredly against the wall, one arm resting on the dog's broad back. White bandages were bright against her dark skin, covering wounds on torso, both arms and the one leg. Ariane spread wet things out to dry and tried to repack Finn's kit, thinking that the Warden would explain when she was ready.

Or maybe she's hoping I'll drop it,Ariane thought as long minutes went by. Looking critically at a bottle of some reagent, she said, "Finn said something, in Cadash Thaig, about Grey Warden blood being different."

"Yes. It's... tainted. I'm tainted," she added, very quietly, looking down at the dog as she scratched his neck.

Ariane frowned and looked at her. "Tainted? What do you mean by that?"

"Tainted!" Vashti repeated it, angrily, shamefully, head coming up from the wall. Almost as fast, the fight went out of her, and she leaned back again. "Darkspawn taint, Ariane," she clarified sullenly. "We are joined to them; it is how we sense them; it draws us to them as we die. Tainted."

Ariane fought down a reflexive wave of revulsion; by the sudden rigidity in the Warden, she was not entirely successful. "Vashti... all right, I didn't... know that about Grey Wardens. But come on. I've been splashed with straight darkspawn ichor more times than I care to think about and I'm fine. I could have helped you just now."

"No." The other elf shook her head and stared dully at a blank wall. "It's... I thought I'd found a cure. Something that would push it back. Contain it. That's what the note said. But that's... not what it did. It pushed it back, concentrated it, made it into a weapon. Poison. In my blood. Of my blood. It was a... bad mistake. Another bad mistake."

"This is why you didn't return to your clan? Why you dwelt apart in the Asha'belannar's home?" Ariane asked quietly. Vashti, face still turned to the wall, nodded. Her arm slipped around the dog's neck, hugging him fitfully. "...Why didn't you tell me?"

"Grey Warden secret. Shame. Na inan, your eyes."

"My... what?"

"Eyes. Abelas, abelas, lethallan..." The proud head dipped, eyes shut tight, and Ariane could see tears glinting in the lantern light.

For the space of three breaths, Ariane was too stunned to do anything but try to marshal her thoughts and reactions into some semblance of order. Are her tears tainted, too? was not a helpful question; Does Finn know? wasn't really important at the moment. But the dog likes herwas neither helpful nor relevant.

"Vashti..." Impulsively, Ariane got up and moved, sitting down on Vashti's other side. The Warden turned her head the other way, toward the dog. "Vashti, it's all right."

"Din." No, denial.

"You made a sacrifice to become a Grey Warden, so you could fight the Archdemon and save all of us. You should not be ashamed of that."

"I am..." She choked it off, holding back a sob. "I am unclean. You..."

"I suppose by the standards of our ancestors, I am as well," Ariane said, trying to shrug. "Tainted by the shemlen and doomed to die young, right? Impure in the body. But the spirit... you know that you have done more to reconnect us with our ancestors than any Keeper living? A new homeland, Creators protect it, artifacts from our past, even the lost lore of the arcane warriors. You're bringing our people home. Isn't that what it is to be Dalish?"

She turned back suddenly, dark eyes damp above tear-stained cheeks, searching Ariane's face. "You... mean that."

Ariane nodded. "Of course I do."

"I see it here," Vashti lightly pressed two fingers to one of Ariane's temples, "and here," again, on the other side. "I see hope here, same hope I saw when we met. Hope for me."

The stranger who claimed to have killed the Asha'belannar and befriended her daughter offered to help reclaim the book. "Ma serannas, friend," Ariane said. "You may have no clan, but you are Dalish still." And the cold, dark storm clouds that were in the stranger's eyes parted as if blown by a great wind, and the warmth of the sun was in them again.

Ariane gave a small smile she hoped was more encouraging than nervous. She wasn't sure what to make of such open emotion in the usually taciturn Warden. "Well... good? I'm... I'm glad of that."

There was another long moment of silence. Ariane grew increasingly aware of the fingertips still clinging to her face. Surely, in another second, she'll pat the dog again and then we can get back to -

It was the very shortest dance. Vashti's face dipped forward very slightly, tilting unmistakeably; Ariane's pulled back reflexively, out from under Vashti's hands.

Almost smoothly, she continued the motion into a turning away and rising from the pallet. "We should get some rest, and you're much worse off," she said. "You take the pallet, I'll take the floor."

"Ma nuvenin," Vashti replied behind her. There was a peculiar hesitation, as if she might be about to add something, but she merely sighed. "And... ma serranas, Ariane. For everything."

"Of course, lethallan."

And there they left it.

Alas for our heroes, but their lives don't permit the luxury of much introspection. The time is swiftly coming when they'll need to leave Val Royeaux to go after Finn, and to do that, there's first the matter of a little Theft!