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: M, for graphic violence
Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, Origins DL content, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.
Chapter Sixty: The Difference Between Vengeance and Justice
Loghain "Lightning" Tabris raced through the streets of Denerim, causing more than one City Guardsman to suspect him of crime. None of them bothered to chase him very far, however, as they quickly discovered themselves far outpaced by the speedy young elf in the ancient splintmail armor.
Inside the alienage his speed did not much abate, but he did slow down just enough to wave to people he had known all his life, who appeared as surprised - and appalled - to see him as though he were resurrected from the dead. He raced to the door of the little run-down house he'd lived in all his life, the house he now shared with wife and daughter, and burst inside with rather more enthusiasm than thought. Door-bursters, in the alienage, were rarely met with welcoming smiles.
The woman kneading bread dough at the table near the door dove under it immediately upon his entrance. He caught only a flash of red hair, and it took a moment for his confused brain to register that it was his cousin.
"…Shianni?" he asked, to verify.
"Andraste's ass. Loghain? Damn, I ought to kick your behind. You scared the living daylights out of me."
She crawled out from under the table and dusted off her shabby dress. "Sorry, Cousin. I was just so happy to be home, I kind of forgot myself," Loghain said.
She still looked angry, but then Shianni usually did. "Yeah, well try and remember yourself from now on. So, did you get tired of the army life, or did the army life get tired of you?"
"Neither. Lord General Loghain gave me an eight-day furlough, to make up for the regular weekend liberty I wasn't allowed. He's going to make me a real soldier, Shianni - and get this; my pay will be fifty silvers a month! Where's Nessiara? I can't wait to tell her the good news."
"Nessiara's in bed."
"In bed?" Loghain was instantly afraid. "Is she sick?"
"No, Stupid, she's not sick, she's - " Shianni took in his bewildered expression and some of the anger in her own was replaced with incredulity. "You mean all this time, and nobody told you? Damn, I should have known. Chicken-shit bastards. Look, Cousin - I tried to send word, I really did. Nessiara's been…hurt. Bad."
Loghain immediately pushed past his cousin to the sleeping area, behind a half-wall at the back of the single room. There he found his wife, asleep or perhaps unconscious, in bed with lumpy bandages wrapped around her face.
"It's been about a month already, so its not as bad as it looks," Shianni said quietly. "The poultice is for pain. The bastard broke the bones in her face. In her face. She gets tired out real easy, but she's going to be all right, you know? Just…maybe not quite as pretty as she used to be. Considering the price of pretty, maybe that's not such a bad thing."
Tears stung his eyes and he choked out, "Who did this to her?"
Shianni's laugh was a bitter one. "I'll give you three guesses, Cousin. By the Maker, I wish every day you'd killed that bastard years ago."
"A mistake I intend to rectify. Did he…hurt…Adaia?"
"No, thank all that's good and holy. She's with Valendrian right now, so her mother could rest. Listen, Cousin - you know I'd be the first to recommend stuffing Vaughan's head up his ass so far that he comes out his own mouth inside-out, but think of the consequences. Soris spent a whole year in a dungeon last time. This time could be even worse, and you can't expect to get lucky enough to storm the Arl's estate a again, even if you could find someone crazy enough to help you. Nessiara needs you. Adaia needs you. Just…count your blessings. Nessiara's alive, so it could have been a lot worse."
He passed an angry hand over his tightly-plaited hair. "Yeah, it could've. He could've raped and beaten my daughter, too. Next time, maybe he will. Shianni, there's not going to be a next time. Not this time."
"What are you going to do?" Shianni asked.
"I'm going to kill the bastard. Didn't I say that already?"
"But how? You don't even have a weapon, Soldier-Boy."
"I do, unless Father lied. Help me move this thing, Shianni."
He referred to a tall wardrobe, ancient and not in terribly good condition, that had for all of Shianni's recollection stood at the back of the room. She helped him trundle it aside, despite her doubts, and he knelt down and dug his fingers into a strange gouge in the floorboards. They came up with an ease that bespoke deliberation and he reached down into the cavity below and drew out a long oilskin-wrapped package. The rawhide knotted around it was ancient and brittle and broke easily. Loghain unfolded the oilskin and withdrew a gleaming ironbark dagger nearly two feet long, and wickedly sharp.
"Maker's breath, Loghain - your entire family could be thrown into gaol if the Arl's city guard found that."
"They've never found it, though, have they? It was my mother's. Something she inherited from a comrade in the Night Elves, a Dalish who was killed in some skirmish or other. I've only seen it once before, when I was very small - not long before Mother was killed, actually. She said its name was the Fang of Fen'Harel."
"It'll be called the Blade of Getting Your Ass Killed, Cousin. Please, don't do this."
"How many times does this have to happen, Shianni? You, of all people, should want this."
"Of course I want Vaughan dead, Cousin - but I don't want you dead, and I don't want the alienage to suffer for your vengeance. Loghain, they raided the orphanage. The orphanage. They used your actions as an excuse to kill little children."
"I won't let that happen this time."
"How are you going to stop it? If the Shems want to hurt us they don't mess around."
"I'll stand for what I do. I'll go to Lord Loghain and confess. I don't think he'd let anyone else pay for my crimes."
"Would you listen to yourself? Loghain is the one who sold our people to the Tevinters! And even if you're right and he does make it so that the rest of us aren't punished, that still leaves you swinging on the gallows. I know you want to protect Adaia but you can't do that if you're dead, now can you?"
Shianni's voice rose both in pitch and volume, and a stir behind them told that Nessiara awakened. Her voice was muffled, strangled by the bandages.
"Shianni? Who are you talking to?"
Loghain stowed the knife in his belt and went to kneel by the bedside. He helped her sit up with an arm around her shoulders. His silence, as he searched for something - anything - to say that would not be laughably inconsequential or otherwise inadequate, must have been unnerving, but she gave no sign of it. Indeed, her own silence, coupled with the grave, almost-emotionless expression on what was visible of her face, was unsettling in its own right.
Unable to take it any longer, Loghain reached up and, fearful of hurting her injuries, gently touched her stringy, unwashed hair. "I'm going to kill him," he said, as if in answer to a question left unasked. Nessiara merely nodded as if she'd known that beforehand, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him - just a light brush of the lips against his cheek. Then, weary, she lay back down and closed her eyes.
"Andraste's ass. We're all going to die," Shianni groaned.
A creature like Vaughan was rarely hard to track. Even someone like Loghain, who'd never been hunting once in his life, could easily pick up his trail. For whatever reason he'd been avoiding the alienage almost altogether for the last month or so, but it was well-known around town that the Arl had conceived a liking for a particular "girl" at the Pearl brothel. A man of his station could, of course, have the prostitute brought to his estate, but for whatever reason the man seemed to prefer to bring his business to the young woman's place of employment, perhaps liking the "anything goes" attitude of the place. Though many elves worked there few were well-to-do enough to be customers, but the place's proximity to the alienage meant that an elf could loiter in the area, weapon carefully concealed, without raising comment.
He didn't even have that long to wait. Within two hours, the Arl came up to the doors of the pleasure palace, forced his guard to retreat to a "respectful distance" with a torrent of verbal abuse, and went inside. Loghain went around to the back, where a tradesman's entrance was poorly watched, and slipped quietly into the brothel. He waylaid the Arl on his way to the back rooms with his inamorata and pressed the cold blade of the Fang of Fen'Harel against his throat. "Make a sound and you're dead," he said in a harsh whisper. The whore, an elf who knew how to look after herself, raised both hands to show she had no particular interest in the affair and disappeared into one of the rooms.
It was surprisingly easy to drag the frightened nobleman out the back of the whorehouse and to the alienage. Though he had several stone on Loghain in weight, and was a trained duelist, the wicked sharp blade at his throat always pressing in just barely too light to cut kept the coward's instinct for self-preservation in cooperation-mode all the way back to the Vhenadahl, where Loghain pushed him to the ground and perched himself as heavily as possible in the center of his back. He raised the blade high over his head…
"That will be enough of that, Private Tabris."
Funny just how normal unbelievable coincidence could come to seem. Had it not been for the fact that he'd found his wife in tears over the failure of her plans for the alienage, Loghain Mac Tir would never have visited the place that day - or likely ever again, preferring to leave the elves in peace without his presence and relying upon trusted agents to keep an eye upon the situation there for him. But because Arl Vaughan frustrated Elilia's hopes to save the place, and after he'd tucked her into bed after their romantic interlude, he found himself compelled to go there and check the place out for himself, to see if he could think of some way around her problem. Entering from the opposite end of the walled neighborhood from his elven namesake and the frightened captive he held, he reached the center of the community at almost the exact same moment.
"That will be enough of that, Private Tabris," he said, when he saw the elf draw back for the killing blow. The young man flinched from the command of his voice. "I said put it down, lad."
With a grimace that bespoke his frustration, Loghain Tabris dropped the blade onto the ground by the trunk of the great tree. He did not, however, remove himself from the Arl's person. Loghain, after all, hadn't told him he had to, and he was unwilling to give up his revenge just yet.
Loghain stepped closer and stopped still some few feet away, and stood with his arms crossed over his chest. "Perhaps my eyes are failing, but it looks to me very much as though you were about to murder the Arl of Denerim, soldier. Not that I don't understand the desire to do so, but there are consequences to that kind of thing, you know, and fairly severe ones. Mind telling me exactly what pushed you to attempt this expediency, young man?"
"This bastard raped and beat my wife. Maybe your kind don't consider it a crime when an elven woman gets abused."
"Easy, lad, and don't go assuming you know everything there is to know about my kind. I'd wager you aren't even fully apprised of what kind mine is. I understand you want vengeance, and I understand you want to protect your wife…and your daughter, too, if I recall correctly that you have one. I'd do the same thing in your shoes, believe me - and I have done, more than once. But I have to stop you all the same. You are correct; elves have no protection under the laws of Denerim by which they are supposed to abide. But I'm not a representative of the governance of this city. By the laws of the Crown, the abuse of an elven woman is every bit the crime as the abuse of a human woman."
"Even when committed by a nobleman?"
"Some might disagree with me, but I say so. Revenge won't solve anything, lad, and you can trust me on that. Let justice do for you what it can. It won't make what happened any better, but at least you won't have to suffer the consequences of vengeance, which I think if you'll look at the situation with a calmer head you'll realize won't affect only yourself."
Tabris hesitated, but said, "What justice will an elf find in this city, whether or not the Crown tries the case? Vaughan has too many powerful cronies."
"My wife bestowed upon me the right of High Justice when we wed," Loghain said. "I will try the case. Right here and now, in fact. Leave your prisoner with me, lad, and gather your elders and any witnesses you can find to testify. We'll have a proper trial, and if you can prove to me that Vaughan Kendalls has done everything you say he's done, I'll sentence him to the proper punishment for his crimes. It may not be quite as satisfying, in the short-term, as killing the bastard, but at least it won't come back to bite you in the ass later."