The journey back to Skyhold seemed to go more quickly than their travel to Halamshiral had, although Killeen judged their pace to be about the same, and her bad-tempered gelding's gait was just as jarring.
The cause, she knew, was the easing of the tension that had gnawed at them all on the way there, the relief at a successful and bloodless outcome, the knowledge of a new and powerful ally. The soldiers joked and sang as they rode, and the Inquisitor and her companions were hardly less exuberant. Varric and Dorian spent nearly eight miles competing to prove who knew the dirtiest joke – winner to be determined by acclamation by the solders — only to both retire graciously from the field when the Iron Bull produced one involving four Chantry Sisters, the Maker, and a candlestick that had Cullen red to the ears and Cole bemused. Lady Montilyet spent her ride making furious notes on everything Skyhold needed to entertain in style the Orlesian nobility who would soon be beating a path to their door until the Inquisitor, laughing, plucked her board from her grip, saying Josie, relax for five minutes, please.
Cullen, Killeen determinedly didn't notice, spent some time riding knee-to-knee with the Inquisitor, their heads together in close converse, after which Cullen wore a small, secret smile for quite some time.
Killeen looked away, and made herself grin at Varric. "I've got one," she said, pitching her voice to carry. "A traveller calls in to an inn and he sees an old man sitting all alone at one of the tables, ignored by everyone else. Being a friendly sort of fellow, he goes over to say hello. What do they call you, he asks. The old man gives him a sour look. I built the local school, he says, but do they call me Richard the school-builder? No. I cleared more than sixty acres of woodland for farming, but do they call me Richard the land-clearer? No."
She milked the old joke for all it was worth, and by the time she reached "just one nug!" to general hilarity, they were riding across the bridge and under the gates of Skyhold.
Killeen swung down, dodged her mount's usual attempt to take a piece out of her shoulder and caught Cullen's reins as he tossed them to her. She led the two horses off to the stables, willingly turning over the reins of the gelding to one of Master Dennet's boys. Knowing Cullen's keen appreciation for his own mount, Killeen took the time to strip off the stallion's tack herself and check his hooves for stones or splits and his legs for tenderness. Master Dennet himself came to take over the care of the Commander's mount then, so with a clear conscience Killeen headed for the mess hall and dinner.
Then she caught a whiff of the strong odour of horse and horse manure that had been clinging around her person since the Halamshiral stables and was reminded of Dorian's remarks about soap.
Skyhold still did not have, despite Dorian's constant complaints, a bath-house to the standards of Minrathous, with heated and chilled plunge pools, cascading waterfalls, and semi-naked attendants ready with soap, oil and towels, but they had managed to restore the plumbing to the wash-house behind the laundry, where anyone who felt a quick scrub by the washbasin in their quarters of a morning was insufficient could brave water piped directly from a mountain stream into a tin bath, and a slightly milder version of the harsh laundry carbolic. If one was on very good terms with the laundry mistress, she could sometimes be persuaded to spare a bucket of boiling water from the coppers, which in the winter went a long way toward making washing one's person merely unpleasant rather than an exercise in survival training.
At this hour of the evening, the laundry was deserted, the fires banked. Killeen had second thoughts, but in a confined space the smell did not so much say as shout HORSE and so, sighing, she lit a candle, pumped water into one of the baths and set about stripping off her armour and riding leathers.
The water was above freezing, and that was all that could be said about it. Killeen soaped and scrubbed and sluiced as quickly as she could but more thoroughly than she might have before Dorian's remarks, and so she was still standing naked in the bath trying to work up enough lather from the soap to make washing her hair more than an exercise in futility when the door to the laundry opened and the draught blew out her candle.
She swore under her breath, started to step out of the bath to find and light it in the dark, put one foot on a slick of water produced by her vigorous ablutions, lost her balance, and crashed to the stone floor, bringing the bath with her.
For a moment she was too winded and too hurt to even swear, and then managed "Andraste's freckled arse-cheeks!" in a strangled voice.
Footsteps. Cullen's voice: "Kill, is that you?"
No. No, it's not me. It's no-one at all. Go away!
Not that they hadn't seen plenty of each other, in the forced intimacy of shared facilities and cheek-by-jowl living conditions, but somehow there was a distinct difference between a comrade-in-arms slicing one's breeches from knee to hip to get a tourniquet on, and Cullen, who had or would soon be embracing the smooth, soft body of a Circle mage, seeing Killeen's scarred and lanky self grovelling in the altogether in a puddle of water.
She thumped her forehead gently on the floor. "Yes."
"Are you all right?"
"I knocked over the bath," she said, and sat up, groping for her clothes in the dark. Her hands touched sopping wet cloth and she swore again, under her breath out of deference to Cullen's sensibilities. "I'm fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." Shivering, Killeen gathered her feet under her, stood up, and trod on the soap. "Mother of —!"
The crash when she hit the over-turned bath was resounding and this time, Killeen paid no deference at all to Cullen's sensibilities.
"Because," Cullen said, and damn the bastard, I can tell he's trying not to laugh, "you don't sound all right."
"The candle blew out," Killeen said, rubbing an aching elbow.
"Shall I bring one in?"
"I'm —" But there was no reason for her to say it, not really, no reason for one soldier to suddenly discover maidenly modesty in front of another, particularly if they were friends, just good friends. "Thank you."
A flickering glow presaged his presence. Killeen studied her scraped elbow to avoid looking at him. Whether his expression held pity, revulsion, or indifference, she didn't want to see it. The light of the candle Cullen held showed her the sheet she'd appropriated to dry herself, and she grabbed it and began industriously to wring the water from it.
"I'll get you another," Cullen said, and then, eyeing her clothes: "And something to wear."
His footsteps retreated, returned, and a dry sheet dropped into her lap.
"Thanks," Killeen muttered, stood up, and began to dry herself with more haste than thoroughness.
"These are from the hamper," Cullen said, holding out a shirt and breeches, "but they seem clean enough."
Killeen took them and sniffed suspiciously. No odour, except the faintest trace of perfumed oils. "Dorian's," she said, and pulled the shirt over her head.
"How can you tell?" Cullen asked with an odd note in his voice. Killeen shrugged one bare shoulder out of the fashionably slashed doublet. "Oh."
She pulled on the breeches, far too short and wide, and finally was able to look at him. "Thanks."
"Why were you trying to bathe in the dark?"
"I had a candle." Killeen gathered up her own sopping clothes. "Until someone let in the wind. What are you doing in the laundry, anyway?"
Cullen's lips twitched up at one corner. "I smell of horse."
Killeen nodded seriously. "Unacceptable, for a Ferelden. It's got to be dog."
"Well, I'll go and roll in the kennels after, then." Unselfconsciously he pulled off his dress-shirt and hung it from one of the pegs on the wall, set the overturned bath upright and began to pump water to fill it. In the candlelight his skin gleamed, pale as cream from the wrists up, the dusting of fair hair on his arms and chest no more than a golden glow in the dimness …
Face flaming, Killeen spun around and became very busy finding her boots. "I'll, uh. Save you something at mess if service closes."
"Don't bother," Cullen said. "I grabbed something on the way through."
"Right, well, uh." Killeen said, and fled.
The night air had cooled her cheeks, if not her thoughts, by the time she reached the Great Hall. It was crowded, those who'd been at Halamshiral relaying news to those who had not, and Killeen had to pick her way through the press.
An Orlesian accent caught her ear. "But why not?" the woman was saying. "A classical union of noble names!"
"Most appropriate," her companion agreed. "Has there been an exchange?" At the woman's titter, he added: "Of gifts, of course."
Killeen stopped dead in her tracks. Noble names … Ser Rutherford and Lady Trevelyan, of course.
Other people have eyes, too.
Until that moment she had not considered what it would be like when Cullen and the Inquisitor's — mutual regard was a cowardly way to phrase it, even to herself, but it was all Killeen could manage at that moment — became common knowledge: how many gossipy conversations she would have to sit through, amiable interest on her face; how many would assume that she, as Cullen's closest colleague, would have inside information to share; how much salacious speculation she would have to hear.
How utterly unbearable it would be.
Someone jostled her, trying to get past, and Killeen came to herself with a start, fled for the stairs down to the cellars where she could take a shortcut to the kitchens and beg a meal she could take to some private corner, alone.
She secured herself a hunk of bread with a slice of roast wedged into it, and found a corner of the battlements well aside from the guards' patrols. She was just about to take her first bite when a quiet voice some little distance away said: "Hello."
Killeen turned. "Hello, Cole."
He stood from his perch on the battlement's edge and walked toward her, balancing on the narrow ledge as if he strolled across solid earth, despite the whipping wind. "Was that better?"
"Yes." Killeen took a mouthful of her dinner.
"He wants to touch more than is allowed, now they're alone together, but he doesn't, knows he'll dream of her tonight, see her instead of the demons. It's enough, it's not enough."
Killeen chewed, swallowed. "That's someone's private thoughts. We talked about privacy."
"They're not your thoughts," Cole said. "Why isn't touching allowed?"
"There's a time and place," Killeen said. She took another bite and said with her mouth full: "Bal'onies a' balls aren't 'e place or 'e 'ime."
"I didn't like the ball," Cole said.
"Me neither."
"You liked the horse, though," Cole said. "Is that private?"
"No, that's fine," Killeen said. "You would have liked the horse, too. She was beautiful."
"Strong and graceful, lean muscles running beneath the skin, heavy fall of hair on her neck."
"Mane," Killeen corrected. "On horses, it's a mane."
"Yes," said Cole. "On horses, it's a mane."
He stepped off the edge of the battlement and dropped lightly to the walkway below, took two steps and was gone.