They would be leaving in the morning. Dal had suggested paying the Vigil's merchants a visit if they needed supplies, which would be why Fenris was being poked by a high-strung human smith.
"I don't know what the Warden Commander expects me to do with so little time," the smith complained. Anders had introduced him as Wade, indicating the man's partner as Herren.
"Master Wade," Anders soothed in a way Fenris had never seen from him before. "Everyone knows that if there is an armorer in Thedas who can work miracles, it's you."
Except the miracle of getting them out of their fetters, which had been their first request for the smith. At least Wade had stopped trying before he damaged his tools as had Smith the smith in Kirkwall.
"It's a small thing really," Anders wheedled. "Just fix the upper part of his armor so that he can get it off and on while we're like this." He rattled the chain to make his point.
He leaned in conspiratorially. "To be honest, Master Wade, he's getting a bit ripe."
Fenris felt his lip curl in a silent snarl, particularly when Wade sniffed him.
"I've smelled worse," Wade pronounced. "But since I never could get you into some of my armor, I will do it for your partner."
Herren coughed, drawing Fenris' attention in time to see him make a paltry effort at hiding his smirk.
"I am not his partner," Fenris said icily. "I am also not his friend and it is not for his convenience that I am agreeing to this. I expect my armor to be returned to me at least as serviceable as it is now."
"Serviceable?" Wade sneered. "This is garbage!What I return to you will be nothing less than art."
Fenris had felt a twinge of trepidation when Wade cut the armor at his right shoulder, releasing his upper body fully for the first time in something like two weeks. He hated exposing himself like this to the prying eyes of strangers, but Wade had eyes for nothing but the armor. Apparently if he did not make it or could not improve upon it, it simply did not matter to the man.
He carried the leather armor away, muttering to himself about shoddy craftsmanship and men who couldn't be bothered not to get out of the way of swords instead of letting people poke holes in their armor, leaving Fenris shivering in the cold Fereldan autumn air.
Herren, surprisingly, came to his service, draping a thick woolen cloak embroidered with the Vigil's Keep emblem over his shoulders.
"I want that back in the morning or you're paying for it," he informed Fenris, disabusing him of the notion that it was simple kindness.
"I want my armor back in the morning or you will be paying for it," Fenris replied in kind. "I will not leave this keep unarmored."
"Don't you worry about that," Herren said, cocking his head to listen in on Wade's mutterings before grimacing dramatically. "You've got him talking about 'exotic materials' again. He won't sleep when he's in one of these moods."
He leaned in and dropped his voice. "For Andraste's sake, when you get your armor in the morning, if you don't like the color, just don't tell him, tell me. I'll get it taken care of. If you tell him, neither of us will sleep for a week and I just can't take that again."
"Black," Fenris said firmly. "Just ensure that it is black."
Herren rubbed his temples and sighed dramatically. "If he decides it should be fuchsia, tell him it is the most amazing fuchsia armor you have seen, then come to me and I will give you a black dye."
He looked at Fenris with an instant's naked pleading. "Please. I'll throw in the cloak for free. You don't know what he's like when he gets in one of his 'no one appreciates my art' funks. The tear stains are murder to get out of leather armor."
"He'll do it," Anders said to fill Fenris' nonplussed silence, already trying to drag him away. "We know that Wade will do his usual amazing work. Come on."
Fenris drew the cloak more tightly around himself and followed Anders back into the keep and its waiting warmth. If it had been a warmer evening, he might have fought it more, but a Fereldan autumn was chillier than much of winter in Minrathous or even Kirkwall. His armor was already cut and useless as it was, he would have to set aside his concern for it until the morning.
Oghren was waiting for them when they made it back into the throne room, Brutal trailing at their heels, the remnants of a lamb bone still clenched in his jaws.
"There you are," he called in a gravelly rumble. "Been waiting for you. Commander says we're heading down in the Deep Roads. Sigrun's gonna be jealous when she gets back." He raised his tankard. "I say we get loaded tonight, 'cause tomorrow we'll probably be dead."
"You'd say that if tomorrow we were going to have a nice long sleep and get up to be massaged by a dozen naked beauties," Anders observed.
"Well yeah," Oghren said. "If I got enough of a hangover, I might leave one or two of them able to walk when I'm done with them." Even his laugh sounded as though it should have a smell. "Nothing like a good hangover to make me hard on the darkspawn and soft on the beauties."
Anders raked a hand through his hair and shook his head. "I don't even know what I could add to that. I can't say much for the mental images it conjures, but I'm not sure I want you to hit me when I point them out."
Fenris eyed the dwarf warily. He had known some formidable dwarven warriors in his time, and they could consume prodigious amounts of alcohol, but this dwarf seemed almost as though he was constructedof prodigious amounts of alcohol.
"Eh?" Oghren asked before his bleary gaze sharpened. "Commander told me that you joined up with Justice. Izzat true?"
Beside him, Anders drew a deep breath and closed his eyes in a slow blink before nodding. "We did."
"Has he figured out how the pipes work yet? Everything flowing good and proper? The great hooded serpent's reared its ugly head?" Oghren asked, leering.
"Good night, Oghren."
For once, Fenris did not even pretend to object when Anders pulled him away.
• • •
"Not all of your old friends are angry with you," Fenris said once they were in private. Dal had given them a guest room, reasoning that the two of them would need more space than one of the warden's rooms would have allowed. It was not as large as the room they had shared back in Amaranthine, but it had a bed large enough for two men and a cat.
"Oghren's different," Anders said while he struggled with the cork in a bottle of wine he had filched on their way up to the room.
Fenris plucked the bottle out of Anders' hand and deftly removed the cork with his belt knife before taking a long swallow. Tomorrow they would go in search of a talking darkspawn to take them to another talking darkspawn from whom they would beg a favor. It was possible that one bottle would be nowhere near sufficient.
"He is a drunkard," Fenris agreed when he lowered the bottle and held it out to Anders. He was aware of the irony of the statement coupled with the wine staining his lips, but it was the least of his hypocrisies.
Anders took the bottle and conducted an internal argument that was visible in the flickers of expression that darted across his face. Finally he sighed and tipped the bottle to his lips, swallowing only once before passing the bottle back to Fenris.
"I hate the Deep Roads," Anders admitted while Fenris drank. "I hate feeling the darkspawn in my head, I hate how heavy it is down there."
"You live in Darktown," Fenris observed unsympathetically. "You obviously aren't afraid of the dark, and you and I… you aren't afraid of tight spaces either."
Anders snorted a laugh. "I rather like tight spaces."
"Don't be glib." Fenris took another swig from the bottle and held it out to Anders who eyed it longingly, shook his head no, and then grabbed it from his hand anyway. "What is so different about going into the Deep Roads, and is it going to impair you?"
Anders tipped his head back and swallowed once, twice, and looked to be trying for three times before his throat locked up. He sputtered and thrust the bottle back at Fenris.
"I'll get by." He coughed to clear his throat and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. "If I were impaired down there, I'd be long dead and you wouldn't be in this predicament, would you?"
They were seated side by side on the floor, leaning against the bed. Anders leaned his head back against the mattress to stare up at the ceiling, gathering his thoughts before he resumed speaking. His voice was hushed, tight with the fear his memories evoked.
"When you're a Gray Warden, you can sense darkspawn. It isn't like feeling sunlight on your skin or hearing someone's voice, it's like they scritch scratch around inside your mind, leaving little scratches that don't quite bleed, but you can still feel them constantly until you're far enough away. That's part of it, but I can take that on the surface."
"And what is the rest?" Fenris asked. He took another pull from the bottle and let it roll around on his tongue before he swallowed. The alcohol was starting to spread its pleasant lassitude out through his limbs, making them feel both heavy and light at the same time. If he could maintain just this pleasant floating feeling, he would happily forgo the other effects of drinking altogether.
"The rest?" Anders turned away and dragged the coverlet off the bed, arranging it over his legs and Fenris' before pulling it up to cover himself to the neck. "The rest is how dwarves build."
"You hate the Deep Roads because you hate dwarven architecture?" Fenris asked incredulously.
"Yes." Anders pulled the coverlet tighter around his throat and slid down, looking small. "They build so that you can feel the weight of the stone overhead. Humans don't build like that. Darktown doesn't feel like that. Most humans hate feeling the weight of a mountain right over their heads so we try to make things feel…" He shrugged, groping for the right description. "Walking around Darktown can be a lot like walking through a part of some keep or castle that just doesn't have windows. Going through the Deep Roads can be roomier – and don't ask me why such small people go for such big architecture, but they do – but at the same time, they seem to celebrate the fact that a whole bloody mountain might come down on their heads at any moment. They want you to feel it. Going down into the Deep Roads, I can feel the darkspawn, dark and shadowed and scratching in my head, and I can feel every single inch of stone overhead just waiting to bury me so deep that even other people's memories of me will be lost."
He shivered and turned his face away from Fenris. "I hate the Deep Roads."