"Messeres will want to see their cabin," the bosun, Caleb, said so unctuously that Fenris was certain that Hawke or perhaps Varric or Isabela – or all three for that matter – had slipped the man a little something extra to treat their unusual passengers like dignitaries instead of whatever it was they really were.
When Caleb held the cabin door open and referred to it as "the honeymoon suite," Fenris still could not decide which of his erstwhile friends had paid extra for this treatment, but he made a silent oath to find out when he returned to Kirkwall. No one would die when he found out, but someone might wish they had.
"And messeres'," Caleb dropped his eyes to Brutal, who had stayed at Fenris' and Anders' sides from the moment Hawke and their friends had seen them up the gangplank, "dog?"
"Will be staying with us," Anders said wearily.
Caleb looked surprised, but the power of the coin he had been given obviously won out. "If you two would like some… private time, you may send it up on deck as long as it does not bite."
"He will not bite," Fenris said firmly, looking down at the mabari. "Will you?"
Brutal whined softly and dropped his head.
"He will not bite," Fenris repeated, satisfied by the dog's response.
"As you wish, messeres." Caleb ducked his head and hurried up the hallway, doubtless to get away from the strange knife-ear and his "husband." Among Hawke and his friends Fenris could almost forget that most humans regarded elves as something lesser, but he found that awareness returned to him as sharp as a blade when he was among strangers.
The Silverite Maiden was normally a merchant ship, ill-equipped for guests, particularly at such short notice. Hawke had called in old favors with Athenril on their behalf and Isabela had been his go-between to grease a few palms with Hawke's sovereigns to arrange their passage after only two more nights of sleeping in Anders' clinic.
At least after the first night they had moved two cots close together to allow them separate sleeping spaces. He discovered quickly enough that sharing a room with Anders was anything but restful; the mage's sleep was broken by nightmares and even when he made no sound, he had a tendency to thrash that jerked on the chain between them.
Fenris dourly eyed the cabin and its single bed barely wider than Anders' bed back at the clinic. They would be back to sleeping together unless they slept on the floor. Perhaps he should demand that they sleep in shifts.
"I should warn you," Anders said, looking around while Brutal chose a corner and turned several circles before settling down with his head on his paws to watch their every move.
Fenris cast a glance over his shoulder at him. "Now what?"
"I get seasick."
• • •
Anders hung over the railing and shuddered as another spasm gripped him. Fenris had no idea what the man could still vomit up when he had been at it for hours.
"It is fortunate," he noted blandly, "that Hawke does not require your assistance at sea."
Anders grunted and turned to sink to the deck, bracing himself against the rail. He was pale and sweating and apparently lacked the energy to retort. Fenris squatted in front of him and offered a water skin. The last thing he needed was for Anders to get so dehydrated that he was forced to carry the mage to their cabin.
Once again he entertained vague thoughts of simple amputation. Hawke would disapprove, but he would get over it.
Anders took the skin with a groan and squeezed out just enough water to wet his mouth.
"Can't you heal this?" Fenris asked.
"'S'not a sickness 'zactly," Anders said, and Fenris marveled that even his voice sounded nauseated. "An' I used the best herbs I had. Be worse without 'em."
"Worse?" Fenris asked incredulously.
Anders tried to nod, but the motion seemed ill-advised, making him push himself up to retch over the railing again.
"Your husband don't have sea legs, huh?" observed one of the deck hands, who had been watching Anders and Fenris since they had come up from below decks to allow Anders to vomit in the fresh air.
Husband?
Void take Varric and his "cover stories" and Hawke for supporting it, and add in Isabela for good measure just for the glee she had taken in the idea. Newlyweds indeed.
He gritted his teeth and swung his eyes up to glare at the man, saying simply, "No."
The man flinched under the glare and tried a placating tone, "It don't always stay so bad. Sometimes it gets better in a day or two." He shrugged. "Sometimes it don't."
"It'll get better," Anders said, leaving off his retching to slide back down to the deck again. "I've done it before. Maker but I hate traveling by sea."
He held out a hand for the water skin and Fenris passed it back to him, letting him rinse the taste of bile out of his mouth before taking it back.
Perhaps trying to curry favor, the deck hand offered them a smile filled with half-rotted teeth. "If you don't mind my saying, congratulations. I got a cousin who married an elf, they got a little boy now. I see them sometimes when we make port in Wycome."
Fenris and Anders exchanged a look before turning their eyes up to the deck hand again.
"And I think your wedding dress looks good on you," the man added before hurrying away to join the other hands in repairing spare sails.
Anders spared a look down at his robes and groaned. "Wedding dress?"
• • •
Sleeping arrangements were awkward with the need to have Anders on the outside to give him room to be sick in the bucket they had appropriated from a storage cubby. Brutal attempted to make things even more awkward by joining them until Fenris and Anders united to shove him out of the bunk.
"I'm a cat person," Anders told the dog. "Not a canine person of any persuasion."
Fenris assumed that was a pointed comment not just about dogs, but wolves, to which his only response could be, "Good."
Their first night on the ship was punctuated by Anders' groans when he was sick, and by his moans when he was dreaming. All in all, by the time dawn broke, Fenris was even more tired than he had been when they went to bed, and more than willing to kill the first person to say anything to annoy him, which would be Anders, without a doubt.
"Do you always thrash like that?" he asked Anders when he finally sat up, scrubbing his cheeks with his hands and pushing stray strands of blond hair out of his face.
"I don't know," Anders admitted. "Probably? I've slept alone for so long it's hard to say. It's one of the wonderful things they don't put on the Gray Warden recruiting posters. Not that there are Gray Warden recruiting posters, but if there were, they would not say, 'join the Gray Wardens, travel to foreign places, meet exotic monsters, kill them, and spend the rest of your greatly shortened life having the kind of nightmares that make you want to throw yourself in the ocean rather than face your pillow one more time.'"
He swung his feet off the bunk and smiled wryly over his shoulder at Fenris. "It might cut into the number of people willing to give up their lives to fight darkspawn, you know."
"And why did you do it?" Fenris asked, sliding over to sit beside him, taking his chestplate when Anders handed it to him without being asked. He had stripped off the armor pieces that he could and slept only in his leathers. It was anything but comfortable, but sleeping nude was not an option.
"Altruism," Anders said carelessly while he retrieved his own feathered shoulder piece. Fenris did not know if Anders would have preferred not to sleep in his robes, and he did not care. The last thing the mage needed was any encouragement for his baser needs.
"Liar."
"Because Dal invoked the Right of Conscription," Anders said, not looking at him. "Widald, that is. He got King bloody Alistair to back him up on it. He kept me out of templar hands for a little while at least, until those bastards managed to get a templar into the Wardens just to hover over me, watching every little thing I did."
He handed Fenris his shoulder armor next before leaning over to rummage a packet of herbs out of his belt where it lay beside the bunk. "Finish getting dressed. I think the herbs are going to work better today if all this talking about ancient history doesn't make me sick all over again."
• • •
It took three days for Anders to get his sea legs, but eventually he did adjust. He still turned greenish when the ship hit a particularly large swell, but Fenris saw him choke down a bowl of broth without bringing it back up again. He hoped this meant that Anders had turned a corner, because he was growing tired of the smell of vomit and the sound of retching.
On the afternoon of the third day, the ship's captain, Tamas Mustow came to join them at the railing where Anders and Fenris had been silently watching the water, each engaged in his own thoughts.
"Your husband looks better," he said to Fenris, and Fenris wondered why it was that everyone seemed to assume that he was the dominant one between them, and thus should be addressed while Anders was almost ignored.
Of course, he would be the dominant one if they were truly a couple, but that was not the point. The point was did outsiders read something in their dynamic?
"His husband feels better," Anders cut in, peevishly enough that Fenris thought his thoughts might have been following a similar path. Likely he did not agree with who would be dominant. "And he's right here."
The captain smiled placatingly. "You've been sick, messere, I didn't want to bother you, but now that you're feeling better, your friend Isabela suggested you two would want to celebrate. Something about an elven tradition of dancing? Stefan over there," he waved a hand back at a knot of deckhands who were watching them curiously, "is an excellent accordion player, and I have a few bottles of rum I have been saving for a special occasion."
At the mention of rum, Anders paled and shook his head. "Too sick for drink or dance," he said hurriedly.
Fenris moved Isabela to the top of his list of people to have words with when he returned to Kirkwall.
He summoned some of the courtesy he might have used when dealing with the Arishok – after all, the captain was master of this ship – and shook his head, though there was no way he could summon a smile. "As you can see, he is too ill. The dancing is," he groped for a word, "optional."
The captain flicked his gaze between Fenris and Anders, then back to Fenris before he nodded. "I can see you're busy enough just taking care of him. If you two feel well enough before we make port, the men never say no to a chance to celebrate."
"We will remember your courtesy," Fenris assured him. "And Isabela's for letting you know of the tradition."
"Too right," Anders muttered. "Wouldn't want to forget to give her a proper thank you."
• • •
On their fifth day at sea, they were becalmed. The wind had dropped away and the ocean around them was almost as placid as a lake. Anders seemed more himself than he had since they had left Kirkwall, and even ate a full breakfast, tucking away so much food that Fenris thought he was trying to eat five days' worth of meals at one sitting to make up for lost time.
He was concerned that the captain would see Anders' appetite and renew his offer of celebration and dance, but he and the entire crew seemed preoccupied. They spoke in low tones when they spoke at all, and Fenris saw every man watching the ocean.
They were all edgy, quick to snap at one another until the captain set them to holy-stoning the deck. The men each had a square of sandstone with a hole in the middle that they rubbed across the wooden deck, scouring away salt deposits and dirt, leaving the surface smooth and gleaming.
Anders and Fenris moved to the stern of the ship, away from the men. Anders had a blanket around his shoulders to keep warm where the scanty upper portion of his robe left him bare.
They watched the ocean in silence until Anders shifted and kicked his leg out. "Brutal," he complained, "what did I tell you about licking my leg?"
Fenris looked down to tell the mabari to back off, but Brutal was curled up against the railing, napping with his head propped on a coil of rope.
What Anders had kicked away, and which was now trying to snake up under his robe again, was a slender violet tentacle, gleaming with seawater, tiny suckers flexing and grasping.