It was the weekly get-together at the Hanged Man, and Marian Hawke was trying to pretend that it wasn't weird not having Anders there. He'd shut himself away in his clinic ever since the incident with Ser Alrik and Ella the week before, and she hadn't managed to drag him out yet. He kept working himself to exhaustion, and she didn't know how to handle that. Usually Anders was the weakest to her charm and sarcasm, and during the times she couldn't make it work, Varric could get him out.
But you couldn't charm away a lack of sleep, and Varric refused to go talk to him.
"That isn't what he needs right now, Hawke," he'd said. "He's been ignoring his own problems too long to just let this go. Sometimes being a good friend means letting your friends fall flat on their asses before you help pick them up again."
She wasn't really sure she agreed, but there wasn't a lot that could be done- and in weird way, maybe this was what Anders wanted? She'd gone to find him after he'd fled form the Gallows tunnels, and he'd seemed a lot happier with the hard line she'd given him about this 'Justice' of his being a demon and not a friendly spirit than the assurance that she didn't want him to leave the city because she was going to find a way to help.
Marian couldn't imagine wanting to fall; but everyone knew Anders was a bit weird, with the 'I turn into an Abomination when I'm angry' and being a Grey Warden and his cat attachment and the whole mage justice thing and the way you never knew if he'd be upbeat and happy or gloomy and despairing until you went to see him.
Everyone else was handling Anders' absence by exchanging gossip more freely than usual.
"Hey, Hawke," Varric said. "Do you remember Mistress Del?"
Of course she did. Mistress Del was one of Lirene's friends, and they'd brought a lot of their clothes during their first years in Kirkwall from the man her husband worked for.
"I heard that brother she was always looking for found her, and that they're going back to Ferelden. Elegant said he was in service to some lord of other- she didn't recognize the shield device. Some sort of castle on a mountain?"
"Redcliffe is the only one I know like that," Marian said. "I didn't know she was from down there. Lothering was near Redcliffe. I hope she does well there."
"If her brother is in service to Arl Eamon, I'm sure she will," Aveline said. The other woman had been oddly silent and pensive so far tonight, contemplating her tankard deeply. "Good for her."
Something had better not be wrong with Donnic. Marian was not up to dealing with that again.
She was going to say something about it when Isabela decided to share her news.
"I heard there was an elf with a greatsword in Hightown."
"That's old news, Rivaini," Varric told her.
"This isn't that ghost-elf again, is it?" Marian asked, rolling her eyes. "I swear, I looked into it when the neighbors got hysterical, and there was nothing there! I walked all over Hightown that night!"
"I think it would be interesting to meet a ghost-elf," Merrill said. "I heard he has tattoos, like a Dalish! Maybe he knows stories the clans don't! Could we go looking again, Marian, oh please?"
Marian could think of other ways she rather spend the night with Merrill, now that she'd moved into the estate, but if it made her happy-
"On a warmer night?" she asked. "When I went the wind was off the harbor and it couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or hail."
"It's not Hightown's ghost," Isabela said, bringing the conversation back around. "This one had armor, too."
"So," Marian said. "Even more unlikely than a Dalish warrior ghost haunting the scared rich humans."
"Hey, it's not the most ridiculous thing I heard all week," she said. "I also heard an Antivan Crow got into the Viscount's office."
"Why would people be gossiping about a bird?" Merrill wanted to know. "Is it a very rare sort of bird? Is it dangerous?"
"Dangerous!" Varric said, amused. "They're a group of assassins, Daisy. Very high-end. If one got that far, we wouldn't have a Viscount anymore."
"I knew a Crow once," Isabela said. "He ran away. I wonder if they caught him."
"Would we even notice if the Viscount was dead?" Hawke asked sardonically.
"I like to think that I would," Varric said. "But hey, Captain- is the Viscount dead?"
Aveline blinked, and looked up from her tankard. Then she looked around Varric's private room, saw that there weren't any tavern maids in here with them, and got up to close the door.
Everyone sat up a little bit straighter. The door clicked shut and Marian wondered if the Viscount was dead.
Aveline sat back down.
"I had a Grey Warden in my office a couple of days ago," she told them. "I didn't want to say anything until you were all here. I was hoping Anders would come, but we'll have to tell him later. Anyway, he's probably the safest out of us all, right now."
That was a change. Anders was a chronically unsafe individual. It seemed like there was always someone after him.
"The safest from what?" Varric asked.
"He said there are Wardens in the city because they've detected Taint here in Kirkwall, and are looking for the source."
Everyone looked at Merrill, almost involuntarily.
She crossed her arms defensively.
"It isn't!" she insisted. "I cleansed it! I told you so!"
"But what if the demon was lying?" Varric asked her.
"What use would a spirit have for the Taint?" Merrill shot back. "And I'm not stupid! I tried to help Marethari heal Tamlen and Theron when it infected them, and I know what it feels like! I knew what the mirror felt like before I cleansed it, and it doesn't anymore! I wouldn't have brought it into Kirkwall if it did!"
"Maybe it isn't your mirror," Marian said, trying to keep the peace. "But we should check it anyway, just to make sure. We'll have to drag Anders out of his clinic, but he should know how to find, out, right? Since he's a Warden?"
"I hope it is your mirror, Merrill," Aveline said. "Not because I want you to be wrong, but because if it isn't, that means there's something else that's been corrupted by darkspawn in this city, and we don't know what is."
Sigrun led her group onto the docks under the blatant stares of everyone in the area. They were overseeing the unloading of their luggage and getting directions to the Hightown road when a pair of Templars strode towards them.
"We do not tolerate apostates in Kirkwall," one said.
"Really?" Sigrun asked. "That's not what we heard."
"I know you, Hathon Dellcreek," Victory said. "I'm with the Grey Wardens now. The Chantry allows it."
"If a mage is not under supervision-"
"I'm Warden Sigrun Kondrat," Sigrun interrupted. "Hi. I'm her commanding officer. These are Wardens Rhannur Nastasa and Andreas Kasteros."
"A Tevene!" the other Templar hissed.
Andreas smiled cooly at him and said something in Tevene in a deep voice. It was long and rolling, rhythmic-
"Stop that!" the Templar said. "Stop him!"
"He's only saying 'hello'," Sigrun said, lying cheerfully through her teeth. She'd gotten pretty good at it when Caron had still been around. "And now we're saying 'goodbye'. If your Commander really has a problem with us, they can take it up with ours."
She left quick instructions to the sailors about where the luggage needed to get to and hurried her people off to the Hightown road.
"What were you saying?" she asked Andreas, once it was clear the Templars weren't following.
"'Then did I see the world spread before me'," Andreas intoned. "'Sky-reaching mountains arrayed as a crown, kingdoms like jewels, glittering gemstones strung 'cross the earth as a necklace of pearl. "All this is yours," spake the World-Maker. "Join Me in heaven and sorrow no more'."
"Is that…" Sigrun said uncertainly, brow furrowing. "The Chant of Light? But I thought you didn't believe in that?"
"As so," Rhannur said. "Ask Falohiin: Bring us happy times. Ask Duma: Bring us power to overcome. Ask Shaimjele: Bring us home. But Chantry come, is upset. Say: 'Hear now, Andraste, daughter of Brona, spear-maid of Alamarr, to valiant hearts sing of victory waiting, yet to be claimed from the steel-bond forgers of barren Tevene-' and Chantry go. Before you finish, every time. Very rude."
He shrugged, then grinned.
"Then turn around, ask Danharqi: Keep them gone. Burn in own sacred fires."
"Oh," Sigrun said, trying not to find that funny. She'd met a couple of persistent Chantry proselytizers since coming to the surface, and sometimes you did just want to shove them in their own braziers. "Oh wow."
"You have to teach me the Chant in Tevene," Viktory said. "So I can use it the next time we meet an uppity Templar, and then I can tell him it's his own fault for not recognizing Andraste's Holy Word. I want to see their faces."
Everyone met at the alienage the next afternoon. Marian turned up late and frustrated, because Anders hadn't made any response at all to her pounding on his door, and the other people in Darktown said they hadn't seen him all morning. She'd come up here to get Varric and Isabela to see if one of them could break into his clinic.
"Oh, Marian!" Merrill exclaimed, latching onto her arm as soon as she entered. "Arianni shared an amazing story while we were waiting for you! A strange man came into the alienage last week and spoke Elvhen! Imagine, a human! And all he wanted was directions to the market. I wish I'd been here to see it, I would love to know who taught him."
"No Blondie, Hawke?" Varric asked.
"He wouldn't answer the door, not even to yell at me to go away," Marian complained. "He almost always does that! And the clinic hasn't been open all day. I need help to break in and make sure he didn't do something stupid, like run away."
"I don't want to leave that mirror here unattended to," Aveline said.
"It isn't unattended!" Merrill protested. "I pay Arianni to watch it! She does laundry in there."
"That's what I'm worried about," Aveline told her. "If it is the mirror, then Arianni could catch the Taint, and then it would get all over the alienage, wouldn't it?"
Marian sighed. She hadn't really wanted to do this, but-
"We can take it up to the estate," she said. "There are rooms no one's using and we can lock it in one of them. And then use the cellar access to get to Darktown since it comes out right by the clinic anyway."
Merrill was happy about that decision at least, and Marian and Aveline manhandled the mirror out of the squalid apartment and into the alienage square while Varric and Isabela arranged for a carter who wouldn't ask any questions. By mid-afternoon, the eluvian was safely locked up in the estate and the five of them were making their way to Darktown.
The clinic still hadn't opened when they got there. Marian tried pounding on the door again- but again, no answer.
Varric went at it with his picks. The lock opened, but they still couldn't budge the door.
Isabela put her ear to the wood and thumped it with her fist a couple of times.
"It's crossbarred," she pronounced. "I never saw brackets for it on the inside, but he does always keep these doors wide open if anyone else is around, and any unrotted broken roof beam would be sturdy enough. He could hide it in those piles of rubble he always says he'll clear out when he has some free time but never does. The Templars would need to bring a mage along to blast the doors in, and he could be long gone by the time they decided to get one and came back. I'm impressed. I didn't think he was that sneaky."
"Anders, you son of a bitch!" Marian yelled at the doors. "Open these Maker-forsaken planks of wood or I'm going to break them down!"
"But Isabela just said that the Templars would need a mage to do that," Merrill said. "Where are you going to get a mage?"
"Merrill," Aveline sighed.
"Oh. Oh- but I was going to be a Keeper! I don't know what the Chantry mages do!"
"It's a wood door, isn't it?" she asked. "Can't you make it into a tree or something?"
"It's dead," Merrill told her. "I can't make it un-dead."
"And undead tree," Varric mused. "Now that would be terrifying."
"Maker's breath, Anders!" Marian muttered to herself, thinking. She'd threatened to break the doors in, but she hadn't been serious. If Anders was still there, he'd need them. She'd just wanted to rile him up enough that he'd yell back, and then she'd know he was okay.
Aveline stepped up, and hammered on the wood with her gauntleted fist.
"Anders! Anders, open up! There are Grey Wardens in the city!"
A moment, and then they heard the dull thunk of a heavy wooden beam being dropped from the other side of the doors.
"Oh, for-" Marian said crossly under her breath. "That worked."
The left-hand door creaked open, and everyone slipped inside. Anders shut it quickly behind them, and Marian looked him over critically. He needed a bath and a shave- though he always needed a shave- and probably to eat. And he didn't look like he'd been sleeping at all, even though she knew he'd been healing until he couldn't stand any longer.
"Grey Wardens?" he asked, shoulders tense.
"He was Ander," Aveline told him. "He said there were more of them, because there's a source of Taint in Kirkwall somewhere."
He looked at Merrill.
"We moved the mirror up to the estate," Marian told him before he could make any comments about blood magic and powers you couldn't control. "You're a Grey Warden- could you tell if it had the Taint or not?"
"Any Warden could."
"Great, come on."
Anders' expression grew pained.
"Hawke-"
"Anders," she said firmly. "I mean it. You haven't left in a week. Come on."
Being forceful had never worked before- Anders was sensitive to being pushed around. She didn't like that it was working now. It was really unlike him.
Andreas sighed.
"Seven years we've been away from the holds, and I still don't understand the things these people do."
"Yeah," Rhannur replied. "At least when we were at Weisshaupt Lockhard could explain some of it. But he's not Fereldan."
"But what they do to lyrium!" Andreas exclaimed. "All of them! It's a travesty! I can't believe they haven't all killed themselves yet!"
Sigrun and Viktory looked over at him for that outburst. Neither of them knew Voshinnen.
"Are you still worried about the Templars?" Sigrun asked.
"No," Andreas answered her in Trade. "With Wardens. Chantry not chase."
Seven years he'd lived outside the holds, and foreign languages still defeated him. It was an old joke amongst the Voshai that you stopped being a baby when you learned Voshinnen, a child when you learned Tevene, and living when you learned Ander.
Having had to learn Ander, and now struggling through Trade and the very bare rudiments of Fereldan, Andreas now understood the joke. Tevene was annoying enough with the dumbing-down of cases and grammar, but Ander and Trade and Fereldan were stupidly simplified and broken into pieces. It took five words to say something he could with one in Voshinnen, and most them didn't actually mean anything. They were only there because no one south of the Wandering Hills had learned how to decline their nouns!
"And they think they know what they're doing with it," Rhannur shook his head sadly. "How can they think that memory loss and blindness and paranoia are perfectly natural reactions to using lyrium? Why didn't they give it up centuries ago? How can they not have realized they're doing it wrong?"
"Because they treat their sorcerers like crap," Andreas said. "How much better off are the Chantry knights than the Circle mages? They're all disposable. They take the mages' children and turn them into their knights if they can't do magic unaided- it's telling that they start off not caring. And look what they grow up into."
"The Captain turned out okay."
"He didn't grow up in the Chantry. He grew up with the stable dogs. They're much better at teaching how to care about other people."
"I bet they do it on purpose," Rhannur said. "Not treating the children right when they're young. If they don't learn about forming family connections and treating other people like people, mages wouldn't seem like much of anything deserving respect, with what the Chantry says about them. I wonder how the Chantry knights treat each other?"
"I'd say ask the Captain," Andreas said. "But he doesn't talk about that part of his life much, and I know he didn't enjoy it. And I bet it's more than just disrupting their socialization- mages' children are more sensitive to magic, and they're stuffing them full of unhallowed lyrium. I'm sure the mages' children make much better knights."
"Sometimes I feel a little sorrow for them," Rhannur said. "And wonder if I should tell them about the unhallowed lyrium."
"They wouldn't believe you. No one would believe us. They think they know what they're talking about and that what we know is just superstition."
"The Commander might," Rhannur disagreed. "He's very reasonable and he likes listening to people. And if we tell him we can make all that unhallowed lyrium he brought back from the Deep Roads safe to be arou- do you feel that?"
Andreas stopped in the road and tested the air. The direct road from the docks opened up into the main Chantry's courtyard, and Sigrun had led them around to the other side of the wall that formed the right side of the passageway. He could see a sort of public courtyard area with a central garden space at the end of the corridor. Behind them was city crowd noise, but no one seemed to be moving around much ahead of them.
The air was still, and laden with a familiar, surprising sensation- the smell of winter lightning on the fjords, counterpoint with the deep buzz-edged thrum of embodied lyrium. The thrum was just off somehow, the slightest bit out of tune, but Andreas didn't know how that could have happened.
"Um- hey! The Harimann estate is this one, with the stairs!" Sigrun called. He and Rhannur had started moving towards the sensation, trying to locate the source. "That's an abandoned building!"
Rhannur stopped and pointed at the derelict door.
"Find Mhequi," he said. "Say: sovellirajaa."
Inside, the mansion was a mess. It was badly-lit, with crates that hadn't been unpacked or that were broken open, and just about everything had a coating of dust or dirt. There was a trail through it on the floor, where someone regularly walked.
Andreas couldn't image a sovellirajaa living in such a place, much less so far from the holds, but that's what the thrum and his nose were telling him.
"Do you remember hearing of a sovellirajaa leaving the holds?" he asked Rhannur. "Going missing?"
The other man shook his head.
"Not in a long while."
"Hello!" Andreas called. "Hello? Honorable, your cousins beseech an audience with thee! Why are you so far from the holds? Danharqi and Duma bid us go further under Fjelmari's wings, but what of you? Does Falohiin keep you still? Do you search still for Shaimjele?"
"Andreas!" Rhannur hissed; but whether he was more outraged that Andreas would think that a sovellirajaa would be exiled or that one actually had been was unclear.
"We are far from the holds, Honorable!" Andreas continued. "Please, tell us of what the lyrium sings! Please, drive away the demons from this place!"
The mansion was mostly one floor, with more doors locked than open. The centerpiece of the building was a grand reception hall rising through both stories of the house, dominated by a split-level staircase. Andreas's voice echoed here.
"Your cousins, Honorable! Our ancestors beyond numbering were brothers and sisters in the ships of their parents, in the holds of wood in the salt water, following the lyrium song and the lightning-winter wind and beaching in the shadow of Fjelmari's wings! Please, we are all so far from home! Please!"
There was a creak on the second floor- a door.
"Half a world away they sailed, and half a world we've come again!" Rhannur begged, resolve cracking. "Afoot and ahorse and there is only salt water again, and no ships to sail on! Where is our first home! Where is Shaimjele!"
On the second-floor balcony, a figure appeared, ice-plae and thrumming the lyrium, the lines of a sovellirajaa's tattoos glowing blue.
"Who are you?" the elf demanded in Tevene. "And what are you doing in my house?"