He could see Fenris looking at him while they walked, leaving the darkspawn bodies behind as they took the only light in the darkness with them as they followed the Messenger on this fool's errand. He probably wanted to ask about his admission to Dal, and Anders did not want to speak of it. He did not want to think of it. He did not want to dwell on what was only the first of many sacrifices he had made in joining with Justice.
Especially not there with the weight of the world hanging overhead and a blackness straight out of some of Anders' worst screaming nightmares prowling the edges of the light cast by his staff and Dal's.
Nathaniel left his place at the rear of the group and exchanged a few low words with Oghren before the dwarf dropped back to take the rear guard, leaving Nathaniel at Anders' side.
Anders knew what he would say before the words left his lips. "I want to speak to Justice."
"I want a suntan," Anders said ruefully. "Can I have mine first?"
And sod him for not taking the bait. "No."
Anders cast a glance over at Fenris, but the bloody elf was looking anywhere but at him for the first time in hours. Nor was Justice any help when he wanted to speak with Nathaniel and was waiting for Anders to just give in.
"Don't you want to shout at me first? Tell me how stupid and selfish I am? Maybe try to make me feel guilty about abandoning the wardens?"
"Why should I?" Nathaniel asked. "You seem prepared to shrug off anything I might say. I want to talk to someone more rational."
Ouch.
"Fenris?"
"Do it," Fenris said. Bastard. "But do not touch me."
"That isn't a problem." And whether that was entirely true or not was a matter left for entirely different times.
"Fine," he said ungraciously to Nathaniel. "Since I'm not even worth shouting at."
"No shouting," Dal said, making it clear that he was listening to every word. "Not down here. Nathaniel may shout at you when we are back on the surface."
"I will not shout at him even there," Nathaniel said. "And I want to speak to Justice now."
Anders sighed. This probably wouldn't even be possible in Kirkwall, to just let Justice take over like opening a door, but here, surrounded by the first people Justice had known outside of the Fade, the first friends he had ever truly had, Justice was there, and he was ready and able to step through the door and into control when Anders ceded it to him.
The world receded behind a blue haze and Justice turned blazing eyes to regard his old friend. "Nathaniel."
Anders thought he would never, ever get used to someone else speaking with his mouth, moving his body. He never wanted to grow accustomed to being the silent passenger. It was too much like imprisonment.
Nathaniel nodded. "Justice. It has been a while."
"It has."
Was it a good thing to see that Justice was just as awkward with Nathaniel as he was?
Nathaniel said nothing while they walked before he suddenly asked. "You and Anders?"
"This is a rhetorical question?"
Right. Maybe more awkward.
The silence dragged until Anders thought perhaps Nathaniel had given up on talking to Justice despite his persistence, but Nathaniel disabused him of the notion and made him think that he was just gathering his thoughts.
"Why didn't you talk to me about it first?"
"It was a decision that only Anders and I could make, and we did speak of it. You told me that if I found a willing host that you would not consider me a demon. Anders was willing."
Anders wanted to frown. If he had control of their face, he would frown. Was that… guilt? From Justice?
No wonder they had so many problems.
"And how is it to have a living body?" Nathaniel asked. "Anders never seemed like he would be your type."
His type? Maker how he wanted control of the mouth to ask.
Justice picked up on Anders' desire and asked for him. "What do you mean by that?"
"Just that Anders never cared about high ideals," Nathaniel explained. "He cared about a good tumble, good food and drink, and the chance to throw fireballs at idiots."
The chance to shoot lightning at fools,Anders thought. The least Nathaniel could do would be to get his old credo right. He had repeated it often enough while deep in his cups.
"He cared about how mages are treated and how the Chantry abuses all those it is supposed to protect. He cares about seeing all men and women treated with respect instead of hounded for an accident of birth. He cares—"
Fenris interrupted him with a snort. "Is this where he gets it? Would he cease his rantings if not for this spirit?"
"I don't believe we were speaking to you," Nathaniel said icily.
Anders silently cheered. Hearing Nathaniel use that tone on Fenris helped make up for the hours back at Vigil's Keep where the two had all but excluded him from their conversation.
"He cares," Justice went on. "And I saw the injustice of his circumstances. You are a thief, yet I saw no guardsman assigned to watch over you. You were as free as a Gray Warden ever is, but Anders was penalized despite his service to the wardens. We spoke many times of the plight of mages under Chantry rule. When I offered to help him he accepted."
"Get back to the questions about having a living body," Oghren said from behind them. "Ask him if he's done any deep stalking."
"We have been into the Deep Roads," Justice said. "Near Kirkwall."
"That isn't what he meant, Justice," Nathaniel said patiently.
"Ah." Justice paused. "Innuendo. I remember."
Justice bloody well should, Anders thought. It wasn't as though they weren't subject to plenty of it back in Kirkwall between Isabela and Hawke.
"Was it worth it?" Nathaniel asked. The same question that Dal had asked Anders.
"I will make it worth it," Justice said with far more certitude than Anders had been able to summon when he had answered Dal. "Ideals are greater than individuals."
• • •
The trek through the Deep Roads was exactly as Anders remembered it. Alternately terrifying and, well, terrifying. Sometimes the terror was the immediate, claw your face out kind, which was almost a relief because it could be battered, frozen, cut, and blown up. The other kind just had to be endured because it would never go away.
He woke the first "night" they camped with Fenris' hand clamped over his mouth and a scream dying in his throat.
"Silence," Fenris hissed. "Unless you wish to call down every creature for miles."
Anders swallowed the last scream to a whimper and nodded his head before pushing Fenris' hand away.
"You can stop rubbing against my backside now," he croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Not that a cuddle after a nightmare isn't nice, but the whole mutual hatred thing ruins the effect."
Fenris snorted and rolled back to their usual back-to-back sleeping position. Anders took a deep calming breath and closed his eyes, picturing a cool, sunlit day, a breeze fluttering the feathers on his shoulders, the faint scent of grass and spring blooms on the air. Off in the tall grass he could see an orange tail like a pennant signaling the mighty stalking skills of Ser Pounce-a-lot.
"I do not hate you."
His eyes snapped open.
"What?"
He twisted to look behind him as much as their positions would allow. "Did you say something?"
Fenris shifted to pillow his head on his free arm and said nothing, breathing slowly and evenly, apparently already asleep again.
• • •
After two days' travel, the Messenger finally stopped them at a junction in the passages. It was a crossroads of sorts with a dust-filled fountain in the center. Just the sort of place experience had taught Anders to expect packs of deep stalkers, but there were no tell-tale squeaks, and while there were many tracks in the dirt, they were humanoid tracks, not those of the little lizard-like creatures.
"The wardens will wait here. The Messenger will return with the Architect if the Architect will be speaking with you."
"We'll go with you to the Architect," Dal said, but the Messenger shook its head in vehement negation.
"Many darkspawn wait between here and the Architect. There will be too much death if the Gray Wardens travel there without the Architect. Gray Wardens may die. Darkspawn will die. The Architect will be angry with all. Stay. The waiting will not be long if the Architect will see you."
"And if the Architect won't see us?" Dal demanded.
The Messenger bobbed its head and shuffled under Dal's glare before saying. "The Architect will want to see the Gray Wardens. The Architect will want to see…." Its grasp of the common tongue seemed to fail it to the point that it simply raised a clawed hand to point at Anders and Fenris. "The Architect will want to see these ones."
"Brilliant," Anders muttered. "I wonder if it will bring us flowers."
Dal frowned but nodded. "Go, but if you bring back an ambush, they will die, but you will not. Not for a very long time."
Zevran's grin was feral as he produced a slender blade from somewhere on his person and ran a thumb along its keen edge. "I shall make sure of it. One learns many things as an Antivan Crow, but I have never had a chance to expand my specialized skills to include darkspawn."
The Messenger hissed and turned away to lope down one of the tunnels away from the group.
"You owe me for this," Oghren growled at Anders. "Talking to darkspawn's against the natural order of things."
"The drinks are on me when we get out of here," Anders promised, although Maker knew that would break his budget.
• • •
The wait was just shy of interminable. They settled in a few yards down the tunnel they had traversed to arrive at the open square, choosing not to move directly out into the square to expose themselves to potential attack from any of the four tunnels that branched out from it.
Oghren and Zevran played several hands of a dwarven card game called Shards. Dal sat with them occasionally adding a comment to their conversation while his eyes constantly scanned the square for any sign of movement. Nathaniel declined joining the game, taking up their rear guard again, waiting just at the edge of the light from the mages' staves.
Walter and Brutal seemed to have worked out a system between themselves in which one of the hounds would venture out into the square to travel its full perimeter, snuffling at the tunnel entrances before returning to switch patrols with the other mabari.
Anders tried to persuade Fenris that learning to play Shards would at least pass the time, but after Fenris snapped, "No" at him, he gave up and settled back against the wall to wait.
He felt it first, the scrape of the Architect's presence, jarring him from his attempts to picture the surface in sweet, sunlit detail. Worse than a dozen emissaries, no other darkspawn felt like the Architect.
He sucked in a breath and pushed himself up to his feet, tugging on the chain to urge Fenris up with him.
"He's coming."
The others did not question, simply packed away the cards and rose to their feet, turning toward the tunnel indicated until the wardens among them could feel the darkspawn's approach.
"He's only coming with the Messenger," Anders said for Fenris' sake. "No other darkspawn."
"Do you think Utha will be with him?" Nathaniel asked Dal who shrugged.
"She looked pretty far gone in the taint when we saw her, and that was going on five years ago. She's probably long dead."
"Or she is like that dwarf, Ruck," Zevran suggested. "In which case it would be a favor to her to be dead."
"That wasn't a dwarf anymore," Oghren said. "It was just a scavenger. I don't know what you'd call that Utha."
"You didn't see her." Anders rubbed a hand over one bare arm, smoothing down the creeping chill he always felt thinking of the Architect and his silent companion. "I always wondered what made a Gray Warden go over to the darkspawn."
"What?" Fenris turned toward him, his face a picture of shock. "What Gray Warden would do that?"
"It's a long story," Anders said, catching a glare from Dal. He shot back a look that said I didn't start it!but said to Fenris, "And not one I'm really supposed to tell. Just wait and see if she's along."
The conversation trailed off, leaving the group to wait in silent anticipation. Anders wanted to talk about anything to drown out the flensing scrape of the Architect's approach.
He bit back the urge to hiss through his teeth when the Architect finally emerged into the square. The Messenger lurked back in the tunnel entrance from which the Architect had emerged with a small gray figure at his side.
He looked at Fenris, who stared openly at the Architect. After Kirkwall and its rampant demon and abomination problem the Architect wasn't that shocking, but it was still a striking and grotesque figure.
It stood taller than the average human, wearing robes that no human would ever have sewn or constructed or whatever the word was for the creation of that perverse pseudo-exoskeleton. It was gaunt and gray-skinned as most emissaries, but marred even for a darkspawn. Its face appeared eyeless with a bronze mask that seemed melded into its skin, the left side of its face pulled taut to join with a spiral that curved along the outside of its head like a nightmarish nautilus shell. Anders had stared at the Architect the last time he had seen the creature and had been at a loss to guess how much of its head was organic and how much was contrived disfigurement right down to the little ring that pierced the left corner of its mouth.
A silent dwarven woman stood at its side. Or at least it was recognizable that she had once been a dwarf. Her eyes were milky white, her skin corrupted gray with tendrils of black veining what skin was visible past her armor. Her chin-length red hair was the only thing that seemed to have escaped the taint.
"We have come," the Architect said in that cultured, calm cadence that Anders remembered too well. "At your request, Gray Warden. Your need must be great."
The creature confused Anders, troubled him. He couldn't even choose between pronouns. The Architect was an "it" in his mind when he looked at it, but a "he" when he spoke.
"My need is two-fold," Dal said. "The first is satisfied simply by seeing that you still live."
"Ah," the Architect breathed. "You will relay that information to Weisshaupt, will you not?"
Dal nodded.
"And the second?" he asked.
Dal held up a rolled up bundle of papers, moving close enough for the Architect to take them from his hand. Utha put a hand toward her sword hilt when Dal moved, but subsided at a gesture from the Architect, who took the papers from Dal and unrolled them, turning its eyeless gaze down to the pages.
It held the papers in its long-fingered, clawed hands with surprising delicacy, flipping through the pages quickly before turning its attention back up to Dal.
"I see. And what do you offer me?"
Wordlessly Dal shifted his pack and pulled the Architect's book out, holding it for the darkspawn to see.
The Architect reached for it, but Dal took a step back. "Ah ah. You get this when the shackles are off, and you can keep those papers as well."
"This is not a small thing you request," the Architect demurred. "Even for the return of what is mine and these pages. I will require… more."
Dal looked back at Anders. Dammit, for a moment there, he had thought maybe it would be as easy as a simple trade.
He sighed and stepped forward, trailing Fenris behind him. "The papers, the book, and a measure of Gray Warden blood."
The Architect shifted its head toward Anders. He could feel its scrutiny like a blade on flesh, but he stood unmoving until the Architect moved a hand in a peculiarly graceful gesture, indicating the tunnel from which it had emerged.
"I shall lead you to a place where these things can be done. I ask only that you do not attack my brethren, though you may defend yourselves if they attack."
Dal nodded. "We will abide by your terms."
"Then you may follow me." He turned away, Utha at his side, gliding back into the tunnel where the Messenger fell into step behind him.
Oghren spat as Dal led his companions into the tunnel in the Architect's wake. "Is this the worst idea or is this the worst idea?"
Dal thumped his fist down on Oghren's armor-plated shoulder. "Says the dwarf who drank a whole barrel of pickle juice on a dare."