PART IV

Zevran had not been acting himself since they left the camp, his moments of lucidity interspersed with periods of silent contemplation. It was noticeable enough that Leliana began wondering if she should try to knock some sense into him. No one would mistake the moonstruck Antivan for a member of the infamously deadly Crows tonight, or at least not to her bardic eye. It worried her.

Of course, she and the rest of the camp had long since known that their two elves were each other's tentmates. She did not know when it started, but it was a little hard to miss, what with the nighttime noises and the concurrent disappearing at every quiet moment—not to mention how Daen fidgeted around him. And the haircuts! A cute picture they painted together, to be sure, but it was far too obvious of an excuse to literally get his hands on the Warden.

But until tonight, she had assumed that the feelings between the two flowed like a river, with Daen at the source and Zevran wandering at the mouth near the sea. Daen was lovesick within a month. Zevran remained exactly the same. It was to be expected; he was a Crow, after all. And he was too handsome—as bronzed as a pirate and with the muscles and manners to match. Not to mention the daily preening, and those heavy-lidded eyes that always seemed to be watching what lay beneath your clothes. And far, far too confident—the type of lothario who would have made Jacq'm Casanouva blush with his sweet words and honeyed gaze. Leliana nearly fell for him herself in the beginning, until she realized that he was systematically working his charm on the entire group. In point of fact, the Antivan had not ended at charm—he made passes at everybody but the dog. And somehow, dear, sweet little Daen was the only one he succeeded with. Despite Morrigan's opinions, Leliana had her doubts about Alistair being the stupidest in the group. Or, at the very least, she thought she knew who was the most desperate.

Zevran was a persistent thing, too, and would not be dissuaded from pursuing the elven Warden, even after Leliana deliberately used a tree he was leaning against as target practice. He simply turned his head ever so slowly away from the arrow quivering right in front of his nose and gave her a measured look and a slow grin that made her wish she had set her mark on his head instead. The haircuts started the next day. Ah, that had been infuriating. Leliana was not above some playful flirtation from time to time, but she did not like the level Zevran took his teasing to, particularly when Daen was hanging on to his every word and crooked grin. She did not think it was her business to bother Daen over his choice in lovers like Wynne and Alistair did—love was a beautiful thing to have, while one had it—but she worried about Zevran breaking Daen's heart, so soon after Morrigan.

And yet, she had torn her gaze from Daen's face and looked up to see Zevran as pale as his complexion could allow, his eyes unsmiling and terrified as Morrigan dragged him into Wynne's tent. That, and his impatience in finding the Crows, and the strangely impulsive way he moved—her minstrel side was a-quiver with what all of that meant, even if she found it difficult to believe herself.

Oh, what am I doing? Yes, he is as bad as a nug in a sack of sweets, and he needs you to focus, Leliana. He is doing enough mooning about for the both of you tonight.

She had moved the instant she heard the ox scream. The mother elf bolted upright right in front of her, and although she put up a fight, it had been easy enough to stuff the end of her shirt into the elf's mouth and drag the smaller woman away from the campfire. Leliana kicked the children to the side to keep them from following, but the older child had turned out to be armed with a slingshot of sorts. She snatched it from the boy's hands and threw it as far as she could. The boy turned and chased after it, allowing her to concentrate on spiriting the mother into the shadows.

Marjolaine's bow sang and a body fell in the corner of her eye. Good. Keep them distracted, Zevran. She glanced up briefly, as long as she dared to with the mother writhing between her arms.

And saw Zevran grabbing the toddler and running recklessly back to the wagon.

What? Why is he bothering with the child? Maker, I hope the others don't have his back in their sights.

A rock went by his head, and she winced at the near miss. The boy had gotten his paws back on his slingshot. It was time for her to disappear before he tried to rescue his mother again.

She knocked the elf sharply on the side of her head and fell back behind a column as the body went limp. That will keep her out of the way for now, she thought, and left the elf mother tucked out of sight.

Leliana emerged just in time to see a shadow skulking by the wagon raise its hands high in the air. The fire flared in response—directly into Zevran's face. The Antivan collapsed to the ground, uncharacteristically graceless and uncontrolled, and Leliana's heart leaped into her throat.

"Zevran?" she cried. The blond head lifted weakly, hand pressed over eye. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a pair of cloaked shadows approach on silent feet, glinting steel brandished in their hands.

"Ah, merd!" she cursed, wishing she had her bow. She pulled her own daggers free and threw them without thinking twice. One met a shadow's chest with a hollow thunk and rebounded off of hidden armor; the elf still tumbled to the ground, clutching her chest and gasping for air. But the other flew straight past the second and buried itself in the side of the wagon, and her intended target rushed onward.

Luck was not with her tonight. She had missed the mage. The blade he held crackled with energy along its silver length, and she rushed forward, moving to meet him entirely on instinct.

She favored the distance from the fight that archery gave her now, but she remembered the days when she had thirsted to meet the enemy face to face, and the tricks Marjolaine had taught her then. Her hand dipped into her belt pouch and found a single square-shaped vial of magebane. The liquid practically glowed with the corrupted amounts of lyrium swirling in the mix. She uncorked the bottle with her teeth and covered the opening with her thumb, ducking and stepping into the mage's first reckless swing of his dagger with a single smooth motion.

It was a pretty trick he was using, but he was clearly no warrior. He could not keep his balance, and she used his stumble forward to tuck herself into the fold of his arm, collapsing it to bring his knife hand closer to her. When it was within reach, she enfolded his smaller hand in hers, locking his wrist and forcing his hand open by pressing her fingers into the base of his thumb. The blade fell and she whipped her head backwards, breaking his nose with a satisfying crunch.

The elf screamed and collapsed, and as his mouth opened, she caught up a handful of hair at the back of his head, wrenched his head back, and emptied the entire bottle of magebane inside, aiming for the back of his throat. His scream turned into a gurgling cry as the liquid leaked into him, and his eyes rolled to the back of his head as he breathed his last and dropped straight to the ground.

It was an unconventional use of magebane—most were trained to coat their weapons with the stuff—but magebane swallowed was even deadlier and quicker to act than magebane ingested through simple cuts alone, short of a single blow straight to the mage's heart. Surface cuts would weaken a mage enough over time to break their concentration. Outright ingestion would kill them immediately, although this was not well known outside of Val Royeaux, and such an administration was harder to implement successfully without a great deal of luck and skill. Still, it was a useful poison against mages, if extremely hard to find; Leliana could only count herself lucky that she had thought to inquire when they last visited Varathorn.

She tried to pick up the mage's dropped blade and felt her hair stand on end when she was only inches from touching it. One of the rocks wedged beneath a wagon wheel to keep it in place caught her eye instead, and she grabbed up the sizeable chunk and turned to face the mage's friend only just in time.

A silver flash arced towards her head, and Leliana barely managed to throw herself to the side before it touched her, narrowly missing the fire as she tucked and rolled aside. She felt something warm begin to drip down the side of her face and reached up to feel a cut at her temple. Gritting her teeth, she put her feet beneath her and tracked the cloaked figure as it leaped over the fire and closed in on her.

The elf was much more agile than Leliana would have expected from someone her age, and seemed to favor a fighting style that brought her closer to the ground. Without her armor, Leliana's legs were unguarded, and she danced backwards to avoid the lightning-fast jabs the elf took at her. She had not seen this style of fighting since she had left Val Royeaux. Many of the bards favored it, particularly the elven bards who concentrated their skills in covert spying—one never knew when one would get caught, after all, and a precise strike could drop a human without a single sound.

To see it being used here could only mean one thing.

« It's rare to see an Orlesian in Ferelden these days, » she said in Orlesian, and was pleased to see the woman hesitate.

« She didn't tell me you were Orlesian, too, » the woman replied, drawing back. « It pains me to have to kill one of my countrywomen, but I've taken the money already. »

« Just tell me what this is about, » Leliana said soothingly, circling slowly back towards Zevran. « Who didn't tell you that I was Orlesian? »

« The one who hired me—the woman you took. » The elf shook her head. « No, we can speak no longer. I'm sorry, but unless you're willing to leave and swear to speak of this to no one, you must die. »

« You've hurt a friend of mine. Unless you're willing to give me the antidote, I'm afraid that I can't leave. »

« Then I'm sorry. »

The elf came low and fast, and Leliana flung the rock. It hit the woman at her temple with the sound of bone and flesh crumbling in the face of its unyielding mass, and she fell to the ground in silence, completely still.

Leliana straightened and left the corpse, taking the rapier as she went by and heading for Zevran. The man's was crouched upright, his head in his hands. He looked up quickly at the sound of her approaching feet and relaxed visibly when he saw it was her.

"What happened?" he asked groggily.

"The mage," she replied succinctly. "You were a little sloppy back there."

"I was not expecting a mage," Zevran replied defensively.

She raised an eyebrow. "That is not all that I was referring to. But we must speak of that later. The last elf I fought was Orlesian. She said she was hired by the other elf—the mother."

Zevran nodded. "Where did you put her?"

Leliana turned towards the column she had secreted the mother behind. On her way there, she passed by the elderly elf's corpse. Something about the way the elf's face lay caused her to pause, and she stopped, staring down at the stiffening body with a frown.

"What is wrong?" Zevran appeared at her elbow and looked down at the woman himself. His brow furrowed. "Her face...it is a disguise."

The thrown rock had dislodged the paper-thin mask that had been artfully applied over the dead elf's entire visage. Leliana bent and peeled it away as if it was a second skin and held the slightly torn piece stretched between her hands. Beneath the artificial wrinkles, the elf was only a few years older than Leliana herself; her face bore a scar that arced from her left brow to her chin, and no doubt no one would have believed her a simple merchant with that combined with the battleworn lines of her face and the corded muscles in her neck.

"This is not like anything the Crows use."

"That is because this is not a Crow disguise," Leliana replied.

"Very observant," a high female voice said.

The pair looked up sharply. The mother elf stood before them, her eyes sharp, her fingers touching her chin. When she brought her fingers away, the entire lower half of her face seemed to fall with it, peeling away in the same manner Leliana had just removed the dead elf's face. Her skin beneath was smooth, her mouth youthful and her lips rounded, and Leliana narrowed her eyes and cast the mask she held to the ground.

The elf discarded the remaining shreds of her face with a single flick of her fingers. Beneath the mask, she looked like she was still in her teens—younger even than Daen, who looked young already. She was particularly beautiful for an elf, and looked exactly like the playthings Leliana was accustomed to seeing throughout the Orlesian court. Her skin was fashionably fair and unnatural in its flawlessness. With another swift motion, she pushed the graying bundle of brown hair from her head to reveal a full head of gossamer locks with the color and sheen of a chestnut's shell, wound into an immaculate bun. She looked at Leliana with undisguised disdain, and Leliana suddenly felt very large and awkward standing before the delicate girl's frame.

"That was quite the disguise," Leliana said slowly. "Perfectly done."

The elf smiled thinly. "Thank you." Her Orlesian origin was unmistakable, but there was also a Fereldan accent to the way she shaped her words. It was too carefully done to be anything but trained into her. Some court lords found it amusing to shape their elven pets into as close an emulation of a human noblewoman as possible, but it would be strange to find one such creature outside of Orlais. She continued. "I shall be sure to inform the Empress's artisans, sister."

And then she knew what they faced.

Not Crows.

Shadows.

Notes: Going forward, the guillemets («») indicate spoken Orlesian.

Jacq'm Cassanouva is a thinly veiled reference to Giacomo Casanova.

Zevran honestly did creep me out on my first playthrough. That's where Leliana's coming from with her description of him.

The Shadows of the Empire are discussed in a single Codex entry in DA:O. Leliana will talk about them a little more (or at least what I imagine them to be) in the next chapter. I wonder if they'll actually show up in DA3? They seem to be more of a nod towards That Other BioWare Game.

Finally, if you are interested, I've been doing work on a sequel/companion story to Beak, which I am publishing concurrently. It's called Climbing on Clouds and is told from Daen's perspective. Far from being a spoiler at how the poisoning turns out in Beak, it's sort of my own attempt at psychologically exploring the city elf caste. It's also my first attempt at writing an actual Romance (with the capital R!) and is rated M for both violence and sexual content, so do not read it if you are not M enough. Same warnings from Beak apply to Clouds, as it's still male/male. For those who are technically M enough, if the first chapter isn't to your taste, thanks for giving it a shot and no offense taken for not reading further! But otherwise, please check it out and read it alongside Beak! Feedback is always appreciated.

Long note. Sorry about that. Thank you for reading.

Until next time. -K