Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

Chapter Forty-Six: Tarquin

It took several days for Anora to straighten out how she felt about what she had learned to the point where she could face her father again. It was mostly what she'd learned about herself that bothered her; further reflection upon her own heart proved that she had harbored deep-seated prejudices she hadn't even realized existed, and it shamed her. She had thought herself of higher mind than that. Perhaps even her fears about what would happen to her if it became known that the Queen of Ferelden was quarter-blood were based mostly upon those prejudices, but the fact that at least half the Landsmeet nobles already secretly called her the Peasant Queen made it seem inadvisable to come forward with this information regardless, particularly as Alistair was known to most of those same nobles as the Bastard King. She needed to be cautious with these fools for the sake of her children's ascension. But it didn't take her all that long to decide something very important: this was a story she needed to know, and a story that needed to be preserved for history.

She knew who to speak to. Having an Orlesian Bard on staff, risky as it might be, was very useful for keeping one's ear to the ground. She called the dwarven novelist and biographer to meet secretly with her.

"Your Majesty," Varric said, a bit nervously, with a bow.

"Ser Varric Tethras. I understand you are something of a biographer."

"I…did publish a biography of Hawke. It was…fairly well-received, outside of the Chantry folk who think she's some sort of demon for helping the Kirkwall Circle."

"I read it. I thought it quite well done. You obviously care a great deal about the subject." She had read it, in fact, only the day before, so it was of course fresh in her mind.

"Hawke is a special sort of lady. She's my friend."

"And yet you don't inevitably paint her in the best light," Anora said. "Some of her actions seem very much like mistakes, as you write of them."

"Hawke is special, but she's not a goddess. She makes mistakes, from time to time. Sometimes she even looks a little bit foolish. No more so or less than any other mortal."

"You didn't have to write about her mistakes. If you cared so much about her, I would have thought you'd gloss over them."

Varric shrugged. "Hawke wouldn't want that. She's…honest. Plain-speaking. She's not afraid to show history her flaws. I respect that about her."

Anora studied him carefully for a moment, and then nodded as she reached her decision. "I want you to write a biography for me, Ser Varric."

"Er…I would of course be honored, Your Majesty, but I would have to say, I think you yourself would be the best person to write the story of your life."

"I am no writer. And it is not my life I wish preserved for posterity…although I suppose parts of it will be, incidental to the rest of history. I want you to set down the story of my father's life."

Varric's eyes opened wide. "I…wow. I would certainly love to, Your Majesty, but I'm not suicidal."

"My father will not know of it, and if he finds out I promise you my protection," Anora said, with a faint smile. "My only condition is that you may not publish this story or allow anyone to read it without my express authorization - which may not come soon, possibly not in our lifetimes. Some of the information is…sensitive, and must be handled delicately. I want the truth to be known for posterity, but I do not want it to affect the position of my children."

"I'm sure I can be discrete, Your Majesty. Particularly since I would assume trespass would be looked upon with severe Royal disfavor."

"Indeed it would. And of course your cooperation in this matter will be received with great Royal approval. I will have a contract drawn up, just to make things official. Actually getting the story out of my father may take time, but I will pass along to you what I know as I learn it. It may be rather piecemeal, but I am sure an author of your talent will be able to clean it up and make something of it."

"I look forward to the chance, Your Majesty."

"Excellent. The tone of your biography of the Champion of Kirkwall is exactly what I want for my father's biography. Though it will undoubtedly be strongly biased, given my proximity to the subject, I want it to be as honest as possible. It is what he would best appreciate, I think. My father, too, is given to plain-speaking."

Oh, for a dragon attack or a seaborne invasion to spice things up. She didn't really want something bad to happen to Denerim, but Elilia could have used a distraction. The Boar Hunt was coming up, perhaps that would be enough, but frankly she doubted it. Her brother, dear as he was to her, had evidently been convinced that he needed to give his approval to her upcoming marriage…but he did so with exactly the sort of noble-minded condescension she'd been afraid he'd adopt. At times he acted as if he believed she was in some way addled, a delicate innocent whose feelings needed to be protected. Other times he seemed to be of the opinion that she was a cunning mercenary using Loghain to get control of Gwaren. Like she really wanted it. The natives were never going to respect her while they held such high opinion of Loghain. Let him have the running of it: she would vote in the Landsmeet and perform her duty faithfully in the time-honored Cousland tradition. Gwaren was not her goal.

Loghain could have provided her with some of the distraction she needed, but he had spent a good percentage of the last few days closeted with Dworkin and his elven shadow, who was harder to put out the door than Champion, working on some classified project. At least she assumed it was classified, since he didn't talk about it. Granted, he wasn't likely to talk about anything unless pressed. She wasn't interested in the workings behind Dworkin's mad inventions, only the results, so she had no particular desire for inclusion in the project.

So she wandered a lot, no goal or destination in mind. She wandered the markets with Seanna, the taverns with Laz and Varric, the palace and grounds by herself. It snowed more, and the temperatures fell, and the gardens were now blanketed with several inches of sparkling white powder. Servants kept the paths clear, the more delicate perennials, like the Queen's roses, were carefully protected with purpose-built covers, and the excess snow from the shoveling was carefully hauled away to be piled elsewhere and not offend Royal eyes or inconvenience Royal passage.

It was there in the gardens where she saw a most unusual sight. By the height, the odd individual swinging his legs on the bench could only be a dwarf, but his build was all wrong. He was almost…gangly. Awkward. She realized with some shock that what she was looking at was a dwarven teenager.

Dwarves kept their children out of sight. The cultural reasons behind that were unknown to her, she only knew she'd never seen a dwarven child, not even the child of Ascendant surfacers. She'd never even met Oghren's daughter, though the child had been named for her. The stringy-haired young person before her was as much a surprise to find in the Royal gardens as a unicorn.

He hopped off the bench when he saw her approach. He had a pale face, quite round; the only part of him that was dwarvenly plump. His brown hair had a greasy look. And he was cursed with quite a bad case of adolescent acne to go along with numerous pockmarks like craters on his skin.

"Warden?"

"Not any longer. Were you…waiting for me?"

He nodded. "I have a letter of recommendation for you from my master, as well as a message from my mother, who sent me here."

"When did you arrive?"

"About a month ago. I was allowed to ride with some of the wagoners supplying crew and materials for the sentinel statues project."

"You've been waiting a month to see me? I've been here for more than two weeks."

He nodded again. "I was aware. I did not wish to disturb you, however, and did not know how to secure a proper introduction."

The dwarf had an odd voice; a plumy accent very much more like a Ferelden rather than the typical Orzammar dwarf, though the King's Tongue was of course derived from the dwarven trade language that was the primary tongue of the dwarven capital, once no more than the seat of surface trade. But despite the nasals, his voice was strangely flat. He sounded almost…Tranquil. Which of course made no sense whatsoever as dwarves could not be cut off from a Fade to which they had no access in the beginning.

She held out her hand for the messages he'd brought her. "What's your name?"

"Tarquin." She couldn't help but notice that he made no mention of caste or family, though of course if he had come to live on the surface he no longer had either by dwarven tradition.

She scanned the letters quickly. The one from his mother was excited, reverent, almost glowing. She wracked her memory until the name in the signature at last fell into place for her. Zerlinda, the disgraced daughter of the stiff-necked miner Ordel. So Tarquin was the casteless child she bore that Ordel had wanted left in the Deep Roads to die. She had never expected the grateful girl to make good on her promise to send her son to her service. What on earth was she to do with a teenaged dwarven miner?

The other letter offered suggestions. Evidently the lad was not a miner at all, but the apprentice of a prominent enchanter of the Smith caste. How a born-casteless child of a Mining caste woman ever managed such a feat deserved explanation, but the letters told her nothing.

"You're an enchanter. If I may ask, how did you come to be apprenticed? The impression I took from Orzammar was that upward mobility of castes was…problematic."

His bland expression changed not the slightest. "That is true. However, in the days since King Bhelen's accession the caste restrictions have loosened somewhat, particularly since the dissolution of the Assembly. My uplifting was purely accidental. When I was very small, my grandfather gave me a bit of raw lyrium ore to occupy me while he worked. I believe he desired that I would swallow it and perish. Instead, however, I crafted my first runestone. Very ineptly, but it caught the attention of a kindly-disposed enchanter who took me on as his apprentice."

Elilia sighed hopelessly. She had persuaded Ordel to take his daughter and grandson back into his home by appealing to his paternal love. The fact that it worked made her hopeful that the man would learn to apply that love to his grandson as well. It didn't sound as if he had. At least things had worked out well for Tarquin, though the thought of what could have happened to him was horrifying. The ingestion of raw lyrium was a terrible agonizing death, and dwarves were not immune to it. But still the question persisted: what exactly was she to do with a teenaged dwarf, enchanter or not?

A possibility occurred to her. Whatever Loghain was up to with Dworkin, it likely had military implications. Dworkin was a decently competent enchanter himself but his focus was not runecrafting but a more broad-spectrum lyrium function, generally resulting in explosions. Perhaps their project could benefit from a runecrafter. Sandal was older, more experienced, and a savant…but it sounded like Tarquin might be a savant as well, or certainly some sort of prodigy. And Sandal was currently runecrafting for the army, which kept him quite busy apart from intensely happy. If Loghain didn't require Tarquin's services, or his craft proved too rudimentary for their purposes, he could be put to work helping Sandal. And either position meant she would not actually be expected to somehow care for this odd adolescent dwarf.

"Your master speaks highly of your skills. He says you have completed your apprenticeship. Is it typical for enchanters to achieve mastery so young?"

"No. Runecrafting of my master's caliber usually takes decades to master. I, however, seem to possess considerable natural talent."

"Well, I think we can find work for you, if you want it, Tarquin. There's always room for a good dwarven enchanter."

He nodded again, and said in his strange emotionless voice, "Thank you. The inactivity has been tedious. I look forward to returning to work."

He was with the children in the nursery, she knew, and the nursery looked out on the rose garden courtyard. Although she didn't particularly like the gardens when they were white and barren, Anora bundled herself into her fine cloak of pale blue wool of the finest quality, threaded with 24-karat gold and lined with ermine, and strode out into the cold white world.

She stood in the middle of the path, looking up at the children's window. He would look out and see her, that was a given, and sooner rather than later; even when he appeared perfectly still he was always checking windows and doorways, defensive weak points through which surprise attacks could be launched. That, and he was just naturally restless.

She saw a flicker of movement at the window, and soon the balcony door opened and a large dog slipped out, followed by a larger man and, shortly thereafter, his ubiquitous elven shadow. She nodded to Loghain and, without the slightest concern for the sake of his bones, he vaulted the low parapet and dropped to the snowy ground ten feet below. Fortunately, either he was sublimely aware of his strength despite his age, or the Maker watches over idiots as Anora had always suspected. The thought made her smile slightly.

Chatterly, or whatever his name was, remained above, hands folded and a beatific smile on his face, but after an assessing peep over the parapet Champion leapt down beside her master. Loghain stepped toward Anora, evincing some hesitation. She wasn't terribly surprised at that. The time it had taken her to assess the situation must have given him serious doubts.

"Father."

"Hello, Anora."

"Please, walk with me."

"If you wish it."

He fell into step beside her and she slipped an arm through his, surprising him. After a moment, he covered her hand with his own. "I wasn't exactly certain you would ever speak to me again," he admitted.

"I was ashamed to face you, actually," she said. "Discovering that I secretly harbored bias against the elven race was sobering. I hope you are not too disappointed in me."

"I ought to have told you ages ago. Or perhaps I ought not to have told you at all."

"No, I am glad that I know. And I want to hear more. Everything you can tell me."

"If you're certain. Some of it is even uglier than that which I already told you, though, and I warn you: I am not the hero you persist in seeing. I have done things in the name of duty that no man can be proud of, even before the Blight. I…wish I could say otherwise."

"I understand, father. Duty isn't always easy."

"For instance, perhaps, the duty I set for you by signing that blasted marriage contract when Maric insisted? I have often wondered whether that was even the right decision to make at the time I made it, let alone in the face of what came later. But it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now I'm not exactly sure why that was."

"Cailan was good to me, father, even though he did plot to set me aside. I don't think he meant any harm to me. He was…naïve."

"I should have let you make your own decision on who - or whether - to marry. I was just…worried about you. As long as I could keep Ferelden flying free colors, I thought Cailan offered a secure future for you."

"I am still Queen. I expect that means he did."

"Security is relative, my dear. If the Orlesians should seize Ferelden, it would be your neck on the chopping block, right alongside Alistair's. In truth, I'd prefer you weren't Queen of Ferelden…though I am glad it has a strong ruler in you."

"Alistair isn't doing so bad himself."

"Thanks to you. If he had no one but Eamon to depend on, this nation would be in Celene's back pocket already."

"Do you truly think so badly of Eamon?"

"My dear…he's an ambitious man, at the very least. That some of his ambitions may be his wife's influence I am fairly certain. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that he was one of the noble bastards who encouraged Cailan to set you aside."

He watched her carefully as he said it, so Anora made certain to school her expression so as not to let him see that he was correct. In truth, though she made nice with the so-called "chancellor" who was still very much acting as Arl of Redcliffe despite having turned it over to his brother, she agreed with her father's assessment of the man and rather wished the assassination attempt, regardless of who had ordered it, had been successful. Eamon had been quick to reingratiate himself to her in the wake of the Landsmeet. He knew how to play the game, but Anora was not fooled. He was a dangerous opponent, no matter how much he pretended to be an ally. Smiling enemies were far more troublesome than those who were open with their hostility.

Despite her game face, her father seemed to see confirmation in it regardless, or perhaps he had already known the truth in some other way. He patted her hand gently and said, in a conversational tone, "I don't seem to remember whether or not it was I who set that apostate to poison the rat bastard, but I hope I did. I just wish I'd sent someone more effective."

"You don't remember?"

"My dear, there is much about those dark days I cannot recall with clarity."

"That is…strange. You often choose not to remember names, but other than that, father, your memory is faultless."

"Don't worry about it, my dear."

She drew away and faced him. "No, father, I must worry about it. There were many times during that year that I felt as if I did not know who you were at all. Now you say that you do not remember what you did and did not do. Something was wrong with you, I know it. Was it that bastard Howe? Did he use something against you?"

"Not that I'm aware of, my dear. He was prepared to, I'm sure, if I became uncooperative. I can't imagine that he held a lyrium-deprived templar with family ties to prominent nobility in his dungeons for a year for no apparent reason. Alfstanna's brother testified that my men took the blood mage from him, Anora; and I have no doubt whatsoever that Howe sent my men on a good many unauthorized missions in my name. I should have been more watchful of him."

"I wasn't referring to the possibility of extortion, father. Howe had mages in his personal retinue; it would not surprise me to learn that some of them were maleficarum."

Loghain sighed. "Don't start."

"Don't start what?"

"Don't start blaming my crimes on blood mages. I am responsible for my actions and the actions of men under my command."

She considered him shrewdly. "You had information, didn't you, on blood mages working against you? I can't believe you would withhold that from me."

"I have no information, Anora, just a pernicious tale with no true substance, obtained from a man eager to save his own skin."

"Tell me what you know. Consider it a royal command if you must."

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Very well, if you must insist: an Orlesian agent passed along a rumor that the Empress had spent quite some time installing a network of maleficarum in Denerim, gathering blood from prominent figures and working a little chaos here and there amongst the nobility. The informant claimed she had a considerable amount of my blood saved up, that she may even have sold some of it to interested foreign agents. Elilia pounced upon this news as an excuse for my actions but I don't believe it for a minute."

"Of course you don't. You don't want to believe that you could be as susceptible to mental control as the rest of us. Father, this answers every question and doubt I had during that time."

"No. It answers nothing."

"Stubborn man."

"Nagging child."

"All right, I have a question for you, and I want your honest answer. Did you know that Howe held me captive?"

"I did not know you were held against your will, no."

"What would you have done if you had?"

"I would have killed the bastard. What did you think I would do?" He took a step closer. "You told Elilia, at the time, that you were afraid to go back to the palace because you feared I would have you killed. I thought, when I heard about it, that you were playing to your audience, gaining her support. Were you truly afraid of me?"

She hesitated - not long, but long enough. He stepped back again and folded his hands behind his back. "I see. I'm sorry, my dear - I thought you would have realized that, when I said there was nothing I would not do to protect my country, there was one possible action I did not add into the equation. The idea that I would ever be in a position even to consider that option never occurred to me."

"I knew you would not hurt me, father," Anora protested. "But as I say, the man you seemed to be at the time was not the man I knew. So some part of me worried - a little - just how unpredictable you had become."

"Unpredictable, or unstable?"

"Truthfully, father…both."

He shook his head. "I would never harm you. It is true that there are few extremes to which I would not go to protect my country, but if it meant sacrificing you, my child…Ferelden will just have to burn."

She stepped up and hugged him. "I know that, Daddy. I'm sorry."

He chuckled slightly. "You haven't called me that since…well, at least since your mother died."

"I thought I had to be very grown-up from then on."

"You did an excellent job of it, my dear, but I could have wished you'd stay a little girl just a bit longer - though I fear to tell you, in my mind you're still six years old, with pigtails, and always shall be."

She laughed lightly. "I do want to say just one thing to you, father."

"What is that?"

She poked him in the chest. "If my daughter leaps from the balcony in emulation of you, you're a dead man."

He laughed. "Orana put her down for her nap already, and Duncan is busy with his pencils. Don't worry, dearest - I usually try not to be too foolish in front of the little ones."