It was the scent of incense that caught Alistair's attention. Some burning resin below the Vigil crept up the stairwell. The smell grew stronger the deeper into the keep he went.

Alistair had been seeking out the armory. He was as surprised as anyone to see Master Wade up in the courtyard, smelting away. His armor was being cleaned by and eager young page named Gwen, and it would be sent off to Wade for repair before his party left for Nevarra. Repairing his mail, however, would be time consuming. There was plenty more mail, Gwen informed him, down in the armory.

The armory that he was having trouble finding long before he was distracted by that frankincense.

Where was he now, anyhow? Storage? A crypt or a catacomb? He paused in a hallway when he was finally able to pick up muffled voices.

"…asked me. Nothing more than a Templar." That was Anders.

"Do you think he is being unfair?" asked another, deeper yet creaking voice.

"Unjust, you mean? When it comes to this mage? Absolutely. Hold still."

"I meant with the Warden Commander."

"Her demotion? I'm a bit biased there. She doesn't seem to want to talk about the specifics. If I had to guess, I'd say it was all over the Architect."

"The Architect should have been slain. Monstrous abomination. Had I been there-"

"You weren't. I said hold still."

"Lady Cousland," the deep voice said, "wishes you to join her on this journey?"

Anders sighed heavily and was silent for awhile longer. "I'm not going. I refused. Fat lot of good that did. Hunting down a crazy blood mage."

"Travelling so far when there is injustice here. A waste."

"Fighting the darkspawn… everything the Wardens stand for is a damn waste now. There, is that better?"

The other man was silent. Alistair crept down the hall towards the conversation, pressing his ear to a door. "Not really," the other man said at last.

There was a clang that made Alistair jump, someone throwing something metal to the ground. "Maker, I don't know what other options we have here," Anders said, voice filled with frustration. "There's only so much I can do in the way of… preservation."

Alistair blinked. The elusive Justice. That's who he was talking to. The living corpse. Alistair had been at the Vigil for three days now, and never saw him. Now he knew why. He was hiding down here. Eech, the incense. It was to cover up the smell of his rot, wasn't it?

"Hang on, let me-" Anders' voice was right outside the door now, and Alistair barely had time to jump back before it swung open. The mage wore an initial expression of surprise that changed quickly into suspicion. "Ah."

"I was… looking for the armory?" Alistair offered. "Sorry, I didn't mean to… stand out here and listen in on every word. Honest." He looked past Anders to the man sitting on a collection of boxes on the other side of the smoky room.

Justice was a corpse, simply put. He sat on the far side of the room, pulling a simple linen shirt on over his head. His skin was shriveled and sagging off his bones. His eyes were sunken and milky, and his nose and mouth were stained with something black that had been recently wiped away. A rupture in the man's throat had been stitched closed again. Alistair managed to hold in a gurgle of disgust, but from the dead man's wry smile, he knew he wore his horror on his face. "You're Alistair," it said.

He felt a bit dizzy from the sight, and the mix of strong aromas. He'd seen dead bodies before, of course, in various stages of decay. But this one was watching and smiling at him. And it seemed strangely familiar. He cleared his throat, "Yeah. Yes. And you… you're Justice."

"I am," said Justice. He nodded to Anders, who let out a heavy sigh, then stepped aside to let Alistair in. "Well met. Did you know this body before?"

Alistair paused, "They said he was-... that is, you were-… or are, maybe? How does that work? Anyhow, they said that this body belonged to a Grey Warden."

"Yes. His name was Kristoff."

"Kristoff?" Alistair took a step back and studied the corpse more closely. "Maker. Yes. Casually. I mean." He coughed again at the smell. "We met once."

"What was he like?" Justice's brows quirked and he leaned forward slightly.

"Kristoff?" Alistair paused, thinking back. Kristoff appeared at the Grey Wardens barracks, back when everyone was preparing to head to Ostagar. Duncan had talked to him, and Alistair was too far away to catch any of the conversation. But by the next morning, both Duncan and Kristoff were gone, and the Wardens began the march south. When Duncan rejoined the Wardens several days later with Elissa Cousland, Kristoff was not with him. "He… was quiet. Stoic. I don't think I heard more than three words out of him. But, you know… he'd… this is so bizarre. He'd never say much, but he always struck me as the man who was listening. Paying more attention than anyone else in the room." His head shook, "Do you remember... being him?"

"Little glimpses of a life at the edge of my vision," the corpse murmured. "Like flickering light from a candle cast upon a wall."

"How did he die?"

"Felled by darkspawn." Anders plucked another block of scented resin from a leather bag on the table, and flung it into a small metal burner. "You won't get used to the smell, believe me. Stand a bit closer to this." He closed the top again, and then crossed his arms. "We were just working on ways to slow the decay. Been reading up on the Nevarrans and their tombs, how they preserve dead bodies. We're a few months too late to do much in that regard."

Justice leaned back again, "There are always other ways."

Alistair stepped back, closer to the burner. "So… you're a dead body with a spirit in it. Has that ever happened?"

"Not that we've been able to find," Anders murmured. "Different from using magic to reanimate corpses, of course."

"I had a friend," Alistair said, looking to Anders, "who had a spirit inside her. At least, she thought she did. And she was very much alive."

Justice's eyes opened, focusing on the warrior. "Go on."

"Well, I suppose it was the opposite of an abomination. Wynne told me she was near death when a spirit of Faith came to her and saved her. And it continued to live on inside her. Always made me a bit squeamish, truth be told."

"Wynne?" Anders straightened. "We met her. At the Chantry in Amaranthine. She… seemed normal."

"Don't let that fool you, she's a wily old woman," Alistair grinned, then shrugged. "I don't know. All you ever hear about is demons, not spirits, possessing mages and all the harm they can cause. To have a spirit with her, helping her, augmenting her power. I guess I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know?"

"It never did?" Anders asked.

"Hasn't yet, to my knowledge." He looked back at Justice, then at Anders, "She's a healer as well."

"Ah, well then, she is definitely not normal," Anders said with a crooked grin, gathering a collection of medical supplies from atop another box. A scalpel, needle and thread, a pair of tweezers, all were slid into a leather pouch.

"You know, when I first met you, I would have never pegged you for the healing type," Alistair said with a slight smile as he crossed his arms and studied the man.

"No?"

"No. They've always struck me as… sweet. Kind and motherly. Which Wynn sort of is, to an extent." He scratched his chin in thought. "Why did you choose the healing magics?"

Anders paused in putting his things away. He rolled up the leather pouch and stuffed it into his pocket. "Suppose healing chose me."

"His mother," Justice murmured, his cataract eyes on the mage.

"Right," Anders sighed. "She was a sickly sort. Always used to pray to the Maker for good health, and I of course got into the habit of praying for her health as well." He forced a smile onto his face, adopting a light, carefree tone, "But anyhow, one day, I was about seven, and there were these bigger boys picking on this kitten. Throwing rocks at it, beating it with a stick. The poor thing escaped and I ran after it. Pulled her out from under a cart and started to soothe her, stroking her fur." He looked down at his hands, petting an imaginary cat. "She was so small. Trembling in my hands. So badly hurt. And as I was stroking her, her wounds just… went away. As if I wiped them off her."

"You didn't know it was magic at the time," Justice said in his low, soft voice.

"How could I? I was just a kid, I thought it was the Maker. So I tuck this kitten under my arm, go running home to my mum, tell her what happened, and I tell her I can do the same for her. My mum." Anders chuckled humorlessly and shook his head. "Well, she knew exactly what that meant. She knew that I would eventually be found out and be taken away. So she wasted no time in telling the neighborhood, so that I could heal as many people as I could before the Templars came and took me away."

"She didn't hide you?" Alistair asked.

"What would be the point of that?" Anders met the man's gaze. "They'd find me. They always find you. And hiding it wouldn't help anyone. So she has me heal everyone that asks for healing, delaying herself. Putting everyone else first. Always had an excuse as to why she didn't need it. At the end of the day, I'd always say, 'can I heal you now?' And she'd say 'no, you've got to rest up for tomorrow.'" He lifted a shoulder. "Two weeks of this before the Templars got me. Pulled me out of my mother's arms to drag me off to the Circle."

"Maker."

"To do that to an innocent child," Justice growled. "Pray that I am never introduced to a Templar. Justice demands they pay for what they've done to mages."

Anders slid Justice a look, and then gave Alistair a crooked smile. "Good thing you never took your vows, eh? This would have been a lot more awkward."

"What happened to your mother?"

"I don't know. Dead by now, I'm sure." The mage let out a long exhale. "When I'm feeling especially depressed, I sometimes think she put off her healing because she knew I'd be gone forever. She didn't want to carry on without her only son." His lips twisted up in a grimace, and he shrugged again, turning his attention to stoking the coals in the bottom chamber of the incense burner.

There was an uncomfortable silence under the heavy weight of the incense. Justice spoke at last, lifting his rotten head, "The armory is a floor above this one."

"Right," Alistair said, straightening. "Right, that's where I was going. I didn't mean to interrupt. Justice, so nice to finally meet you. Carry on, gentlemen." He retreated back into the hallway and sucked in deep breaths of cleaner air.

Alistair let out a "bleaugh," shaking himself a bit. Gross. He really was a corpse. A polite corpse. How much longer could that thing last? And how did Paien not find out about it yet? He rubbed at his nose to get the smell out of his nostrils, and took to the stairwell again, headed up.

Truthfully, Alistair wasn't sure if he liked Paien. He'd asked Elissa that morning for her impression of the new Commander, and she simply pursed her lips and shook her head.

"Oh, come on!" he had said to her. "Since when do I have to twist your arm to get your opinion?"

She sucked in a breath and turned to look at him, plaiting her long brown curls into a braid over her soft, bare shoulder. "I'm trying very hard to see a likeable side of him, and he's making it very difficult."

Had she been distant lately, or was that his imagination? With the business of taking care of the Vigil and the nobles and everything else, he'd scarcely gotten any alone time with Elissa at all. Sure, he was a bit sore at her over recruiting a Howe and a corpse, and for siding with a darkspawn, but he never stayed terribly sore for long.

Alistair still suspected Paien of knowing far more about the Architect than he let on. And if that was the case, he had no problem keeping mum about Justice.