The Goodman farm had been deserted since the Blight. The land had been worked by the village, and in fact they were getting ready to put it to the plow again. The house, which was out of town by about half a mile, had been empty for ten years, but attempts had been made to keep the roof and windows sound, and there was some furniture within. The Thornwells went out with Matthias and Amalia the next day to take a look. After pacing the land and going over the house carefully, Rose declared the farm acceptable, a price was set, money exchanged hands and the Thornwells officially became citizens of Honnleath, with a voice on the Council.

Amalia almost felt sorry for Leto in the days that followed. The Thornwells had arrived at what was one of the busiest times of the year, spring planting. Leto was immediately drafted to help, which he did willingly, though it was obvious he'd never been exposed to anything agricultural in his life. At the same time, he and Rose had a good-sized house to put in order and he was adamant that his wife, whom Mistress Tirsden said was rather old to be having a first baby, not do any heavy lifting or stretching. The midwife agreed with him, and it was decided that the Thornwells would hire Amalia to help with the cleaning and refurbishing.

This was more than agreeable to Amalia. The money aside, never having been beyond the bounds of Honnleath, she was hungry for news of the outside world. So it was beyond pleasant to coax stories of Kirkwall out of Mistress Thornwell as the two of them scrubbed and dusted and painted.

Rose Thornwell spoke of the luxuries and beauties of High Town and the squalid vibrancy of Lowtown with the authority of one who'd lived in both places. She touched only briefly upon Darktown's filth and despair, which led Amalia to believe that her worst memories were couched there. She remembered what Rose had said about her mother dying.

"We're so far away from everything," Amalia said one day, as they were washing windows in the second bedroom. "Nothing ever happens in Honnleath. We've really not heard much about what happened in Kirkwall, but there are so many contradictions in even the stories we've heard. Some people blame the mages, others blame the templars. You were there. What do you think about what happened?"

Rose set her rag upon the sill, wiping her hands upon her apron. "That Elthina was to blame," she said without hesitation.

"Elthina? Wasn't she the Grand Cleric? The one that was killed? How could she be to blame? The talk is that they're going to beatify her, as a martyr to the faith."

"That figures. And it's appropriate, in a way. Certainly, she was too damned saintly to do her job."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Knight-Commander Meredith worked for her! At any point in time after the Qunari attack, Elthina could have reined Meredith in. But no, she let Meredith keep the nobles from electing a successor to Dumar for years, in defiance of Chantry law. She let her keep oppressing the mages, allowing her templars to abuse and Tranquil Harrowed mages, also in defiance of Chantry law. She spent a lot of time chatting the First Enchanter and Meredith up, but she didn't actively do anything to fix matters, and she could have done so, had she just been more forceful and assertive. Elthina was also directly responsible for the Qunari attack on Kirkwall."

"What?"

There was a grim look on Rose Thornwell's face, that changed it utterly, into something almost pitiless.

"If you're a commander, then you're responsible for keeping your people under control, not to mention knowing what they're doing in your name. There was a sister named Petrice, who was doing her damnedest to stir up unrest in the populace against the Qunari. Elthina was oblivious what was going on. Petrice was using her seal. Viscount Dumar's son, Seamus, was a Qunari sympathizer. Eventually, he actually left to join them, become viddathari, as they call it, a convert to the Qun. Which meant that he was under the Arishok's protection. Petrice, who was a Mother by then, lured him to the Chantry with a fake letter from his father and had him murdered by her zealots."

"A Mother did that? In the Chantry?" Amalia was astonished. There was no Chantry in Honnleath for obvious reasons; nonetheless, that went outside everything she'd ever heard about how clergy were supposed to behave.

"She did indeed. Which was the final straw for the Qunari. The Arishok considered it a murder of one of his own people, for that's how they regard viddathari, whatever their race. I can't say I care much for the Qun, but I appreciate the Qunari for that at least. There were a lot of elves defecting and joining the Qunari in Kirkwall, because they got equality and respect from them." Rose's face softened to its customary, amiable expression. She took up her rag again, and started cleaning once more.

"Did Master Thornwell convert?" Amalia asked daringly.

Mistress Thornwell smiled, as she tended to do whenever her husband was mentioned. "Leto? No. But he speaks Qunari. Learned it in Tevinter. And he knows quite a bit about the Qun."

"In any event," she continued, "it was that murder that made the Arishok decide that it was his role to bring order to Kirkwall. Its festering chaos finally offended him too greatly to be ignored. Which was why he attacked."

"How do you know all of this?"

The former whore chuckled knowingly. "Pillow talk, Amalia. Pillow talk. Everyone of any importance came into the Rose eventually. It was the best place to hear the news."

Amalia blushed, and returned to her work.

When the kitchen garden was dug and planted at the back of the house and the house itself clean and re-furbished, Amalia's lessons in Primal and Elemental began. And her opinion of Mistress Rose, which initially had been one of awe-struck admiration for her worldliness and beauty, changed.

Rose Thornwell was a slave driver, a taskmaster, a tyrant of epic proportions. Unable to currently cast magic herself, she was nonetheless capable of giving clear instructions, and she expected them to be followed to the letter. Amalia found herself casting spells over and over, as quickly as her mana would recharge, to the point that she felt, for the first time, the bone-deep ache all over her body that indicated she'd overtaxed her magical ability.

"Again."

"Mistress Thornwell…"

"Again, Amalia. And keep shooting as fast as you can, until I tell you to stop."

Amalia lifted the staff that Rose had gifted her, one that was so much better than her makeshift one, and fired at the innocuous pile of rocks that had set up in the small field behind the house. That field had been left to lie fallow this year, and had been recently mowed. Amalia was beginning to hate the place.

"Faster, Amalia." Mistress Thornwell was sitting at her ease in a chair beneath a tree. "I know exactly how long it takes for mana to recharge. You should be able to do staff blasts non-stop."

"But it hurts!"

"Of course it hurts. Magic is like a muscle-you have to strain it to the utmost to get it to grow."

And then there were the sticks. Oh, how Amalia loathed the sticks! They had bits of shingle with numbers painted on them attached, and were scattered all over the field. Rose would call the numbers and Amalia was expected to target the ones she called, in the order she called, as fast as she could, some of them directly behind her or off to the side. Leto and Rose were continuously making more sticks, since Amalia went through so many of them.

"This is battlemage stuff," she'd declared accusingly to Rose, who'd merely shrugged.

"Of course it is. It's how my father taught me and he was a battlemage. But it's good for control, regardless, and all mages need control. And a mage who has already set a hayrick and Mistress Tirsden's curtains on fire by accident," -Amalia's father had been more than unfair about telling tales of Amalia's lapses, to her way of thinking- "needs it more than most."

For two hours a day, Amalia did her exercises under Mistress Rose's iron direction. The first week, she hated it. The second, she merely endured. By the third, she could feel the difference beginning to manifest itself, the increase in her strength and control, and by the end of the month, she was Rose Thornwell's obedient disciple.

"Amalia," Rose said at the next Council meeting, which was in the old windmill as usual, "One through Nine, in no particular order." She was indicating the five lamp chandelier in the library as well as the four sconces scattered around the room. When Amalia stood in one place and lit them all with tiny, neat, controlled gouts of flame so quickly it almost seemed they flared into life all at once, her father beamed with pride and the other Council members actually applauded.

Leto Thornwell was a bit of an enigma. Quiet where his wife was outgoing, he lacked the usual servile air a lot of elves had. His silence was almost intimidating-until you caught him making one of his pithy observations under his breath in that beautiful, low voice of his. Then you realized that he actually had a sense of humor.

And he was certainly devoted to his wife, and she to him. When they were in a room together, scarce a minute went by when their eyes did not seek each other out, exchanging wordless communication in a way that spoke of years together.

Leto had very strange tattoos, white ones on his chin and neck and hands that descended and ascended into his shirt. Amalia was curious. He seemed very shy about them, and never took his shirt off, even when working in the fields on the hottest day. She couldn't bring herself to ask him about them, but she did ask Rose one day, when they'd done with their lessons and were drinking tea cooled by Amalia's improving ice spell under Rose's favorite tree.

"Leto was a slave in Tevinter, a bodyguard," Rose answered, her eyes hooded. "Don't mention them to him, please, Amalia. They were done as decoration-it was a fashion at the time-to make him look more frightening. They remind him of a time when he was considered an object rather than a person, so of course he prefers to keep them hidden."

Amalia was astonished. "Leto was a slave? However did he escape?"

"That's another sensitive subject, which I'd also prefer you not bring up to him. By going through a lot of trials and pain. He doesn't like to talk about it even with me." Her face bloomed bright with what Amalia had come to know as the Leto-smile. "He's an extraordinary man."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

Rose's mouth twisted wryly. "Of course you did. You were curious. And that's all right. But I do hope you won't mention what I've told you to anyone else. When you tell people, they only see the slave after that, and that's not fair to Leto. He's trying to make a new life here, after all."

"I shan't tell anyone."

"Thank you, Amalia."

Amalia's lessons usually took place an hour after lunch. But one day, Mistress Shadwell had baked a pie with the earliest of the new apples for Rose and asked her to take it over with her. So she started over a bit early.

Approaching the house, she heard voices in back, near the kitchen garden, so she started around and peered through the lattice fence that kept the deer out.

Rose and Leto were there by the well. Leto had obviously come in from harvesting the fields for lunch. His shirt was off, and Rose was sponging him off with well water from a bucket.

The tattoos did, in fact, twine all over his upper body and arms in delicate, twining tendrils, startling contrast to skin that, despite his care in keeping it covered, was a dark, golden brown. Leto, Amalia noted with stunned approval, was absolutely beautiful, with wiry, ripped muscle flowing under the skin.

And Rose, her hair done back in a kerchief and cheeks reddened by heat and the late summer sun, seemed to appreciate him greatly. Her hand trailed the sopping rag very deliberately over shoulders and chest and face. Leto's head was tipped back, his eyes half closed and an unguarded smile the like of which Amalia had not yet seen was on his face. It transformed him.

"You undo me," he said in that lovely, dark voice of his. Amalia felt heat beginning to grow between her legs.

"Do I?" said Rose a bit breathlessly. "How unfortunate! When what I was intending was to do you!" Her head dipped and the tip of her sunburned nose traced the line of one of the neck tattoos. Leto groaned, and the heat within Amalia intensified.

The elf's hands slid about Rose's expanding waist. Was she licking the markings now? Somewhat shocked and confounded, Amalia took the pie and fled.

"You're late," Rose chided, when Amalia could finally bring herself to come back over. She handed the pie to her teacher.

"Actually, I came over earlier, to bring the pie. With compliments, from Mistress Shadwell. But you were…occupied."

"Oh. I see." Rose was amused, but worldly creature that she was, not embarrassed in the least. "I'm sorry about that, Amalia." She took the pie back into the kitchen, and Amalia followed her. "Would you care for a slice? Mistress Shadwell's pies are always so good."

"She said it was a thank-you for that tonic you made her."

"How kind of her. I shall have to do up another bottle."

"Yes, I'd like a piece." So Rose took down plates and forks and a knife to cut the pie.

"There's a jug of fresh milk in the well, if you'd care to fetch it." Amalia went out the back door to do so, blushing a bit as the sight of the well triggered the memory. Drawing the jug up, she took it back in side. Rose had already cut the pie and had set mugs out.

"You pour, and frost both the mugs a little. Just enough to cool things down." Amalia managed to do so, Rose poured the milk, and they sat down to their mid-afternoon treat.

"I hadn't thought about it before, but there's really no one here for you in Honnleath, is there?" Rose asked. "No one close to your age, really, except for Berk, and I've not noticed that you fancy him particularly. Everyone else is too old or too young."

"No, there isn't anybody. It worries Father a bit."

"You're what, twenty-one?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever think about a home and family?"

"Oh, yes. But I don't see how it will happen, unless I go somewhere else to find a husband. And that's so risky."

"I hope you do find someone then, since you wish it. My sister…she lived as chaste as a Chantry sister. She always felt her magic was a curse, and did not want to pass it on to another generation."

"What happened to her?"

"Bethany died as we were fleeing Lothering. We left it too late, and were almost overwhelmed by the darkspawn. An ogre crushed her."

"I'm very sorry."

"As am I. I miss her every day. She was my best friend, as well as my sister." Rose stared blankly down at her plate for a moment.

"You don't seem to mind passing your gift on."

Amalia's teacher snorted. "Such as it is. No, I don't. The Maker made mages just as he made the rest of the world. We're not a curse and not a mistake. The world just needs to grow up and learn to deal with us. And I don't mean by imprisoning us in Circles." She levered herself to her feet with some difficulty because of her growing belly. "Excuse me for a moment." Amalia could hear her moving in the front of the house. From the sound of things, she crossed into the bedroom. There was silence for a few moments, then Rose came back. She was carrying a beautifully carved staff, engraved with magical sigils.

"Here. This was Bethany's staff. You're strong enough to carry it now."

"Rose, I can't take this! This is something of your sister's! You should keep it for your child!"

"I have other staffs I can give my baby-provided it even turns out to be a mage. I think Bethany would really like you to have this. You remind me of her a lot."

Knowing further protest would be rude, Amalia took the staff. The sense of rightness that thrummed through her when she laid hands upon it was startling. Rose seemed to sense this, and smiled a bit sadly.

"It's a good fit. I thought it might be. Here, we'll finish the pie and then do some fine-control exercises to tune you into it." Amalia groaned-she hated fine control exercises! Rose smiled her Evil Schoolmistress smile, and they were back to business as usual.