WOLSEY.
I do profess
That for Your Highness' good I ever labour'd
More than mine own, that am, have, and will be—
Though all the world should crack their duty to you,
And throw it from their soul; though perils did
Abound, as thick as thought could make 'em, and
Appear in forms more horrid,—yet my duty,
As doth a rock against the chiding flood,
Should the approach of this wild river break,
And stand unshaken yours.
—Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 2, William Shakespeare

—

part two

—

Hawke led them back the way they had come, south into the trees. They avoided the road, but she could not make him quiet in full armor and there was no time to shed it. They came upon a wide creek and Hawke turned them east, upriver; it was hard going, but the stream hid their trail and the rush of water masked their noises as they fell in the dark, righted themselves with bleeding hands, and pressed onwards.

The sun was gone by now, the sky black, and the trees blocked much of the moonlight. They halted often, listening at some sound or another, watching for the glint of steel; after perhaps an hour, Hawke gestured again, spying something, and he followed her to a small hillock beside the creek. A tall, old pine had grown there on uneven ground; time and water had worn away great chunks of earth from between the roots, leaving enough of an earthy overhang to guard against prying eyes but sufficient cavity beneath for them to hide.

Hawke crawled in first; he followed, and they sat together a moment, breathing hard. The ground was sopping wet with streamwater, rocky and uncomfortable with crooked roots at every turn, but neither moved.

He did not know how long to wait. Somehow he slept, dozing lightly and waking often; somehow, Hawke's head drooped onto her muddy knees. The moon crawled across the sky and faded.

At some point he blinked and realized the sky had grown grey. Hawke's face was buried in her arms; he drew a breath, blinked again, and found a thin line of sunrise gold between the trees. He remained where he was.

An hour after dawn, he heard bracken crunch under a heavy boot. Hawke lifted her head, eyes tired but alert, and he put a finger to his mouth.

"They didn't come this way. This is a waste of time." Murena, exhausted and angry.

More crunching, a pause on the other side of the stream. "Stop whining. Keep looking."

Hawke flinched. A voice she knew, then, and when Fenris leaned back to glance up through the networked roots, a flash of Kirkwall black. "I'm telling you there's nothing here," Murena snapped. "She's either gone downstream or one of the others has found her. We should go back."

"Shut up."

"Decimus, listen to me! Come here—"

"Be quiet. I'm trying to hear."

"Stop wasting time! Let's go back and just—what are you—"

Metal shirred against leather. Murena gave a thin, sharp gasp; something heavy thumped to the earth. There was a long silence, and then Decimus spoke again. "I can feel your blood," he said, soft and wheedling. "It calls to me, Your Highness. Come out. I know you're here."

Fenris began to draw his sword. Hawke stilled his hand, shook her head, and shut her eyes. She breathed in, slow as Merrill had the night before, and again Fenris felt that same deliberate draw of an immense, strange power. She flicked her fingers in the air; something splashed heavily downstream, as if a booted foot had stamped through the river. Decimus took two quick steps towards it; she did it again, further downstream, and when her mouth moved Fenris heard a woman's voice, as if from very far away, gasp as if she had fallen.

They waited until all sound from Decimus had faded, then moved quickly from the night's shelter. Murena lay dead beside the creek. Hawke took the knife from her stomach and wiped it clean; a quick search of the body revealed no orders, no letters, no culpable party. Fenris stood looking down at her face, her mouth open in slight surprise, and his lip curled in disgust.

Hawke wiped her hands on her muddy leggings, doing little good for either. "Captain?"

"I recommended her for her promotion," he said. It was a stupid thing to say, but he was overwhelmed with fury and his own blindness. "I knew her before she ever took up the bow."

"And Decimus dandled me on his knee when I was four," Hawke said, and reached out for him. "He'll sense me again if he comes too close. We must keep moving."

He could not swallow his anger. It simmered as they ran, east into the woods and then north again, circling away from the road and all inns along it. He was not used to failure. When he had been a tool it had not been permitted, and even when he had been given more choice over his duties he had found himself nearly as intolerant of the idea. A sword once broken could never be remade as strong; apologies would mean precious little to a dead prince. He had been charged with only one responsibility on this journey and he had failed even so. His master would have flayed him alive. Sebastian would only fear for his safety and care nothing for the failure, which was infinitely worse.

But that was only part of it. His anger swung like a pendulum towards himself, towards Murena, towards the princess Hawke again as the sun dropped in the sky. He saw again her closed eyes, felt again that draw of unseen power. His markings burned with the memory of threat.

They did not hear pursuers again—indeed, no other people at all—and when night fell they camped by a tumble of shale and blocky limestone. Here at last they could take stock. Fenris was uninjured save the scratch to his neck; Hawke had a scrape to her cheek and a glancing arrow wound to her shoulder. It had broken the skin but not badly, and a brief examination revealed it had already scabbed shut. They left it to heal on its own.

Assets: precious few. Fenris had his sword, two daggers, some leather strips he had intended to use repairing his horse's bridle, and polished white armor bright as a star in the middle of these brown woods. Hawke had the clothes on her back, her dagger, Decimus's knife. A journal smaller than her hand which she had kept in her pocket when the ambush happened, but no pen.

"I can keep us alive a few days, I think," she said, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin upon them. "If we can find something for a snare. My father was raised a farmer. He showed me some things growing up."

"A farmer," Fenris snapped, his hands clenched on his knees to avoid throttling her. "Raising wheat, trapping rabbits, and stripping the life from everything around you for your own power."

Her eyes flashed. "I don't know what you mean."

"I have seen power like this in Tevinter. My master bled me for it often." He looked away, furious and hurt. "I should have known. I will have to tell Sebastian."

"Sebastian knows," Hawke said, shoving to her feet, and he could see it was a force of great will that kept her from either shouting or pacing. As it was, her eyes gleamed in the dark. "He has known since the first days of our engagement, when I wrote to him that the witch-blood of Kirkwall ran in my father, my sister, and me. That any child we might have could wake one day and feel fire calling to her like a song." She let out a sharp breath and shoved her hair from her eyes. Blood had matted there; her hands caught on the tangle, and she gritted her teeth as she pulled it loose strand by strand.

"You mistake my requests for force," she said at last. "I can't bend anything in this world to my bidding, no matter how much I wish it sometimes. At best I can ask, and hope it's inclined to listen once in a while."

Despite the anger, he wanted to believe her. She had not, after all, cut him open at the wrist for his blood; she had not sapped his markings for their strength; she had not withered the grass around them. Danarius worked power like a whirlpool, opening a hollow space inside him and sucking everything around him into the tidal drag. "Is this…" he began, but his voice was rough and he had to try again. "Is this why they wished to kill you?"

She abandoned her hair and sank back to the ground, weariness in every motion. "I can't imagine so. I can't ask very often, and as I said, sometimes the earth doesn't answer. Fire likes me best, but what good is that? Dancing candleflames and long-lasting torches." She broke a strand of grass moodily in her fingers. "I'm afraid this was simply an old-fashioned assassination."

"You were the fire at the carriage last night. Not Merrill." He had always known Merrill to be strange, and in some ways the idea of her wielding such strength alarmed him less. But this—

She went still, then lifted her eyes to his. "Yes."

They were silent for a time. An owl hooted in a nearby tree, then took silent flight over the hill behind them. A beetle crept up, found them both useless, and began trundling back and forth along a fallen branch. At last, Hawke said, "I'm sorry about your guards. Hanley, Petra. Neville."

"And yours."

"Did you see if Lady Merrill escaped?"

"No." He saw again the boulder thrusting from the earth. "She may still be alive. Your Highness, we can't—"

"We can't go back."

They looked at each other in the dark, startled. Hawke spoke first. "We can't go back to Kirkwall. They will expect that. Kirkwall guards were in the trees; they knew the route we planned to take and when we would reach each stop. They will assume we will turn back and will be watching every inch of road from here to the mountain. There is no way into the city from here except by the Dumar Gate. We could circle the plains southwest, hope to find a fisherman's boat that would carry us far enough, and try to enter through the docks, but ships guard that port of entry like any other, and if they were willing to kill my guards to reach me here, I do not doubt they will do so from a Kirkwall ship as well."

Fenris nodded in surprised approval. "I agree. We know neither their true number nor their goals. The time it would take to circumvent the roads safely would be just as long as the journey left to Starkhaven. Longer, perhaps. The plains below the mountain would provide little cover from our enemies, and to skirt wide enough to guarantee safe passage would be to go nearly to Nevarra." He sketched a few lines in the dirt, just visible by starlight. "There is a port at Ostwick, a little over halfway from here to Starkhaven. They will not look for us there. If we can find a ship, we can sail across the Waking Sea to the South Esk Bay. The Minanter empties there; it will carry us straight to the capital."

"How long will that take?"

"On foot, avoiding the roads…" He could not meet her eyes. "Two months. Maybe longer."

She was quiet a long time, and he waited. Eventually, she said, "So be it. We should stop at the ambush site first."

"Absolutely not."

"Captain," the princess said in the way another might have said idiot. "We have no food. No water. No maps. I am not good enough with mushrooms and berries to keep from killing us both for two months or more, and while to date the earth has been—we'll say generous—with me, I would prefer very much to depend on something other than a nebulous flighty arcane power for our survival."

He blew a breath out through his teeth, but he could not argue against it. He had little foraging skill of his own, raised in the cold-shining heart of Minrathous and then penned safely within Starkhaven's walls; he could not pretend he knew their way from here aside from a vague estimation of north. "We should go early, then. Before dawn."

"Yes," she said, and leaned back on her hands to look up at the black sky. "Tell me something about Sebastian while we wait."

He followed her gaze, found a cloud a little thinner than the rest. "He knows every tree and bush in the hills outside Starkhaven. He was raised nearly wild, spending more time outside the city's walls than in them. He showed me many things when we waited to battle with Goran's militia."

"Oh? Elms and rowans and pines, and all that?"

"No. More useful things. Which berries were safe, and which would kill. How to see signs of a wild beast passing and avoid it. I remember just enough to know I cannot trust the memories." He snorted. "Even here I do not doubt he would find the straightest path to Ostwick, and collect enough food for a feast on the way."

She smiled and said nothing. They slept lightly again, and poorly, and when the world was still dark they rose and made their unsteady way northwest. It took some time to find the path; they found the stream first, and Murena's untouched body, but eventually Fenris saw the break in the woods which marked the road ahead. They travelled parallel, quiet as they could manage, and heard no sound and saw no movement in the trees.

The wreckage was as they had left it. Dead men, women, and horses were scattered over the road; Petra's body had fallen against the great oak barrier and lay there still. The carriage was a black ruin, wooden spars broken and ashy, the shattered hafts spearing up hopelessly into the air. What remained unburned of the princess's gifts had been picked clean, no gold or jewels left for them to trade; the lark's cage was a twisted heap of wire.

They sifted through the debris silently, one always watching the trees. Hawke found four pieces of silver and a simple sapphire necklace beneath the remains of her cushion, as well as a half-burned satchel which she slung over her neck. Fenris stepped through the bodies and saved rations where he could find them, packets of salted meat, dried fruit, two empty skins for water. He saw faces he recognized, others he did not; between the two of them they identified all of the carriage party except Decimus and Druvond among the corpses. Lethendralis was gone, along with Fenris's detailed maps. There was no sign of Merrill.

The last horse on the road before the fallen oak was Murena's dappled grey. It was long dead, both front legs badly broken, and flies swarmed its open mouth. Fenris searched the bags quickly and found a stack of letters tied tightly with twine; they were stained with blood and it was still too dark to read them, but he passed them to Hawke and she put them in the burned satchel for safekeeping. Then they fled north, leaving death behind them.

—

They stopped midmorning at the inn on the other side of the fallen oak, their last intended refuge before the ambush. Fenris waited with the princess nearly two hours at the edge of the woods before he was certain it was empty; only then did he allow Hawke to enter with him. The innkeeper was dead with a slit throat, as were her husband and sister, and after brief, incomplete rites they stole what food they could carry and hid Fenris's white armor below a broken floorboard. His weapons he kept, and the brown leather jerkin, and the Starkhaven cup and chain tucked into Hawke's satchel; Hawke tore her ruined riding skirt into strips and seized the innkeeper's too-large grey cloak from its peg. The rest they abandoned as dead, useless weight.

He had just taken the innkeeper's sack of pennies from her desk when Hawke called him to the window. She had the letters from Murena's horse unfolded in her hand; her eyes were wide and worried. The first few pages were maps of their two countries, priceless beyond measure; the last was a note on bloodstained parchment. Fenris was not a strong reader, but he could make out the words well enough: Your update has been received. The prince knows nothing. His pet captain has been persuaded to see reason and will stand with me when the knife falls. Take your men to Starkhaven and await my instructions. I will contact you after the wedding. And at the bottom, a looping signature: Euphemia Amell.

Fenris grimaced. It was a crude, heavy-handed approach, and Sebastian would have seen through it immediately, but of more pressing concern… "I know this handwriting."

"It isn't mine."

He curled his lip and Hawke smiled at his disgust. "It is that of Hadriana, Danarius's favored apprentice. I killed her six months ago."

"Six months? So she—this note—why did you kill her?"

"Because she tried to kill me." He briskly refolded the note and returned it to Hawke. "She came to Starkhaven on a mission of supposed trading expansion with a Tevinter envoy. She used a false name and avoided those who might recognize her. One night she came to my rooms and attempted to force me to return to her master." His mouth curved without mirth at the memory. "She failed."

"And yet she wrote this before she died."

"So this plot, whatever it is, is not some capricious whim. It has been planned for some time."

"And is designed to benefit neither Starkhaven nor Kirkwall. At least, I very much hope not." She drummed her fingers on her folded arms. "Was this note forgotten or planted, do you think?"

"Impossible to say. We can only be certain that if Hadriana is involved, then so is Danarius. And if Danarius has a hand in this, so does—"

"Tevinter. Inconvenient for them, then, that we're both still alive and—I assume—not plotting to kill Sebastian on his throne the day after I marry him. I'm no assassin, but I imagine it's difficult to frame a dead princess for attempted murder when she's not—well, not dead."

He wanted to smile and could not. All he could see was Sebastian on his white throne, tall and straight and smiling, waiting for Fenris to return—and an arrow in his heart.

"Captain," Hawke said again, and he realized she had been calling him for some time. Her voice was gentle. "We'll reach him in time. We'll warn him. It'll be all right."

"Yes," Fenris said, in hope rather than belief, but she touched his arm in reassurance. "We should move on."

She gave him a bracing nod. They locked the inn's doors behind them as they left, and Hawke buried the key in the garden beside the gate, where red roses bloomed large as saucers and their scent hung in the air, heavy and sweet.