They'd returned to Kirkwall quite late at night- more like the uncertain time where it couldn't possibly be termed 'morning' but the Chantry and Circle timekeepers disagreed- and for the first time in a long time Anders slept deeply, untroubled by stress or duties. It was easy to tell the false dreams from the true ones, and he smiled viciously in the face of a sloth demon who tried to break him with a nightmare about chains and duties and never being free of the Wardens, and pounded it with lightning until it fled, leaving him to wake in peace.
Oh but it felt good to come out of dreaming and be blessedly alone in his own head. He felt like he could stretch again, relax, laze about in bed until midday came because no one could force him not to.
But not all his changes since Amaranthine had bene Justice, and years of healing work were nagging him to get up. Anders stayed in bed another five minutes to prove that he could before getting up, finding himself surprisingly full of energy and cheer- he felt like he had magic to burn for the first time since running to Kirkwall and he wanted to practice all the skills he'd let get rusty and the ones he'd never been good at anyway, lightning and fire and ice and earth, force, even the entropy he found so antithetical.
He wanted to spar, to test Warden stamina against Warden stamina, spell and staff against sword and shield
Unfortunately he couldn't find his clothes.
After another five minutes of searching, he gave up and left his room with his blanket wrapped around him for modesty.
"Somebody's going to be living with frozen gear if they don't bring my clothes back right now!"
"Oh, stuff it, Anders!" Nathaniel called back from somewhere down the hallway. "Nobody stole your stuff!"
"Well I don't have them!" Anders yelled at him, and tracked Nathaniel down to the formal dining room the Wardens had cleaned for use, where he was sitting next to Sigrun. Breakfast was mostly ready, and the smell of so much hot cooked food made him tear up unexpectedly. There was Fereldan cheese and egg-potato mash, familiar as easy and relatively cheap from the Vigil and Circle; but also a wheat porridge with diced meat the stirred something deep in memory- a proper Ander breakfast. And fruit, the last of summer and preserves for Kirkwall bread, morning beer and a few pitchers of iced water that had been boiled to purify it, cut vegetables crowded around their bases to keep the food fresh.
It was enough food for thirty people, not thirteen and a mabari, but Anders promptly forgot all about his clothes at the prospect of a real, filling meal. The food his patients could pay him in was meager, and enough to keep him from actually starving. The coin he got from working with Hawke and what Leandra would force him to take from the estate let him eat enough not to be too hungry and give something back, but still.
This was breakfast enough for Wardens, and it had been too long.
He grabbed some bread, stuffed some cheese and preserves in it, and shoved it into this mouth.
"Sweet temptation," he moaned, swallowing his first bite, and quickly devoured the rest. "You both had better appreciate being able to eat like this every day."
"Oh, we do," Sigrun assured him, smiling in amusement. "Alistair has your clothes. Check the foyer."
Anders had no idea why Alistair should have them, but he reluctantly walked away from the food to retrieve at least pants. If he didn't have to hold the blanket closed with one hand, he could have both free to eat, after all.
Alistair was indeed in the foyer, watching Lockhard and Kallian do sword drills against each other.
"Theron thought you'd want to go out today," he said, and threw a bundle of cloth at him. It was heavier and harder than it looked, and Anders almost dropped it. "Sort out your clinic before you left or something, and you should look like a Warden when you do it. This was the best we could do on two night's notice, though."
Anders untangled the clothes. His coat was there, washed and discreetly mended where it was wearing thin, but everything else was completely new. There was a blue shirt the Kirkwall fashion, three-quarters sleeves and two-tiered bottom hem, and heavy dark pants to go with it. The strange weight and hardness were boots, armored ones of decent leather. And wool socks; a new, wide belt; leather gloves with half the fingers uncovered and ribbing on the arms to form a sort of vanbrace-
Suspicion pricked at him, and he checked the back of his coat. Someone had carefully cut the Wardens' griffon out of white cloth and appliquéd it with small, even stitches, embroidering the details in blue thread. His coat didn't hold up to the standards of a uniform at all, but at least now it looked slightly official.
"Did I do all right?" Alistair asked. "Besides your coat nothing was fit to wear. We would have put armor together for you like we did for Zevran, but Viktory is the only other one here with mage armor."
Anders snorted.
"I like this better," he said. "Warden 'mage armor' hardly deserves the name. It's like they don't think a darkspawn will ever try to stab us with a knife or come at us with a sword, oh no-"
"I had noticed you were hiding a surprising amount of leather in that coat."
"I can't tell you how many times I was with Hawke out at the Wounded Coast or in the tunnels bellows Darktown and some half-rate rogue calling themselves an 'assassin' tried to stick a knife between my shoulder blades. It gets really tiresome."
"Hm," Alistair said thoughtfully. "Delilah Howe did the griffon, you should say 'thank you'."
"I will," Anders promised, and ducked into unused side room to get dressed. He'd forgotten how new clothes felt, and new boots. Everything fit, and he felt clean and warm. The weight of the leather panels hidden inside his coat were a comfort, and he strode back into the dining room to help destroy breakfast feeling good; and mumbled 'thank you' to Mistress Del around his porridge when she turned up for breakfast, just as he'd said.
The Commander began to address the day's business once the Wardens had started to slow down, finally approaching full. Mhequi was going to stay with Fenris and talk over the… Anders didn't catch the word, it was something incredibly foreign-sounding, but everyone else seemed to know what the Commander was talking about. Nathaniel and Sigrun were going to make the preparations to get the Howe family on a ship to Amaranthine by the next morning. Lockhard, Andreas, and Rhannur were to scout out the city for traces of Taint, and-
"I'm going to the clinic," Anders said when the Commander's attention turned to him. "I've got… things to settle."
Like the Mage Underground, but the Wardens didn't need to know about that just yet.
"Alistair and Viktory and Fen can go with you," the Commander said. "I was going to take them with me to Bartrand Tethras's estate, but you'll need them more if the Templars spot you and decide to make a fuss."
Anders hadn't known the Commander was going to look at Bartrand's estate today- he'd told the Wardens about it when they'd said they were looking for a Taint source, but surely he'd want Wardens for that job?
"Zevran won't go anywhere without me, and I'd like to get to know Sergeant Tabris better."
Kallian looked mildly panicked and tried to hid in her food.
"It's only just across the square anyhow."
That was true enough. They all finished breakfast and split up. Anders led Fen and Viktory and Alistair to the clinic, and attracted a lot of attention as they went, what the with Warden armor and Anders being seen both in better, newer clothes and out and about while not in Hawke's company. He shoved the thought of her away in irritation- he was still mad at her. He was not running away, and he could stop, and he'd stay in Amaranthine with the Wardens to prove it to her!
The clinic had a larger crowd than usual waiting outside the closed doors when they arrived, and to Anders's practiced eye and honed senses a good percentage of them weren't actually in need of his services- they were just here to see if he was, and to find out what was going on.
He found the doors already unlocked and suppressed a scowl, throwing them open wide. Usually, right after this, he'd light the lantern, but this crowd needed to be addressed. He grabbed a box that was still holding together from his camouflage trash pile and placed it just in front of the threshold, giving him the height to been seen by everyone.
"Yes, the Wardens of Ferelden are in Kirkwall," he told the crowd. "And yes, I'm going back with them. It's where I'm supposed to be- where I belong. Don't worry, I'm going to find at least one other healer to take over this place. You're not being abandoned, or forgotten about."
"I heard the Hero is here!" someone yelled from the back.
"Arl-Commander Mahariel is also in Kirkwall, yes," Anders said. "He's up in Hightown today, taking care of business. But we are ever-so-honored by the presence of another Warden of the Blight-"
"Anders I swear I will kick you off that crate!"
"-Alistair Mac Maric-"
He stuck the end of his staff down between Alistair and the box he was standing on and swept the incoming foot back. Alistair swore at him.
"-one of the Warden-Captains of Ferelden, in command at Soldier's Peak."
The crowd seemed greatly cheered by this news, and it had the added bonus of making most of the people who weren't in immediate need of his attention swarm Alistair.
"How good are you at healing?" he asked Viktory cheerfully, tossing the box back into the trash pile and leaning his staff up against one of the walls. It was time to work.
"Shit."
"Well, you can boil water and make some icepacks, then."
Maybe it was strange to be happy in this sort of environment, but he really did love his work as a healer, and with all the extra energy he felt like he had, things were progressing quickly and well. Viktory was talking about Amaranthine and the Wardens with the few refugees who dared approach her, and had found someone willing to hear about the state of mages in the Gallows. Over in the corner, he could hear Alistair telling some adults in for the children or work injuries that the Arl-Commander had spoken to the Viscount about getting them home if they wanted to come back to Ferelden, but no nothing had been decided, the Arl-Commander wasn't the one in charge of Ferelden, was he? It was up to Queen Anora and Viscount Dumar to negotiate everything, but their homeland hadn't forgotten them. Fen was sitting happily at the foot of Anders's examination table, panting contentedly at patients as they were seen and distracting the children and the adults who were particularly jumpy at magic, but would never even imagine that a mabari would be anything other than friendly so long as they weren't actively hostile.
Anders asked one of the street orphans whose cough he attended to to go up to the docks and ask Mistress Selby for 'more elfroot, if she's got any'. Shortly, a mage from the Underground he knew well turned up in the clinic, as incognito as always in layers and layers of beggar's rags and cloaks hiding any number of surprises, his staff disguised as a walking stick for sick, battered man.
"Tara," Anders greeted him, and the disguised mage slunk off to the far corner. He followed after a moment, grabbing something to drink and another box to sit on as an excuse.
"Heard you're leaving," Tara told him. "Going back to the Wardens."
"Can't escape it," Anders said. "And I don't really want to, either. My Commander turned up and asked me to come back."
"The Warden," Tara said, eyes glittering. "Lots of good things said about him."
"I need healers to take this place over, Tara. I've got leave, but these people shouldn't be left to suffer."
"You only manage here because of Hawke," the other mage reminded him. "We can't risk our own people down here."
"If they're a healer and can keep themselves from getting seriously hurt in a fight- are willing to set some time aside to fight- they can take my place with Hawke," Anders offered. "She won't pass up having a healer on call, even if it's not me. And if she tries to throw a fit about it because she's still mad at me, Aveline will remind her how useful we are and tell her to stop wasting resources."
"Do I have to remind you how many mages can actually fight, Anders?" Tara asked sternly, and Anders looked away slightly. Tara intimidated him a little bit- he was the Underground's link to the Mages' Collective in Ferelden, and he'd been an apostate all his life. He was one of the mages who could fight, but even most longtime apostates were terrible at it. They'd avoided the Templars by staying completely unassuming and looking utterly defenseless, barely ever using their magic enough but to learn how to control it. "How many of us have never had the luxury of being protected by the people you have?"
"I really don't want to just leave them here," Anders said. "They need help."
"So stay."
"I can't-"
"You can't fight the Wardens?" Tara interrupted. "Or can't stay in Kirkwall with this spiritual problem I got told about?"
Anders felt a chill go through him. He'd wondered who'd taken Ella in until she could be smuggled out of Kirkwall, and now he knew.
"The Wardens helped," he managed to say, trying not to quail under the other man's piercing look. "They- understood. I have to go back with them."
"Just as well that you're leaving," Tara told him after a moment. "Wouldn't do to have you around when that got out."
"I- I can be your contact in Amaranthine," Anders said. "I know it pretty well, and the Wardens could always use more mages, if anyone wants to try their chances. And the Commander isn't one to go around hunting people who haven't done anything wrong. I don't know what he could do if the Templars came besides conscript anyone they caught, but- there's the Dalish if they're elves, and the Chasind in the Wilds or all the little places tucked away in the Frostbacks or the edges of the Brecilian Forest or- or out in the middle of absolutely nowhere for everyone else. Or just a way into southern Orlais and into the wilderness and mountains there, half a chance at an escape route that isn't already heavily monitored. Ferelden doesn't care that much about apostates until they start causing trouble, the Circle there has always been… complacent, and it's made the Templars relaxed, relatively speaking. It's a nice, quiet country; barring that whole Fifth Blight thing."
"And when your Commander figures out what you're doing?" Tara asked. "Don't try to tell me you're not in trouble right now for deserting."
Anders shifted uncomfortably and shrugged. He really had no idea what the Commander might do if he found out that Anders had helped seed the Fereldan countryside with apostates.
"Then it's my problem, not anyone else's," he said, deflecting. "Please, Tara. If nothing else, Varric Tethras will bribe the pants off the rank-and-file Templars, or blackmail the whole Gallows. What he can't find he can make up and convince them they have actually done."
Tara snorted quietly.
"I won't promise anything more than that I'll ask around and see if anyone even wants this sodding place," he said, and rose to shuffle out.
"Thanks, Tara."
The apostate grumbled at him, and Anders got back to work.
Hawke was usually so competent that you could easily forget how little experience she really had- how young she actually was. She'd been just about twenty, when the Blight had forced her family to flee Ferelden- Carver and Bethany, just a few weeks past eighteen.
Whereas Varric was thirty-seven, and knew with the awful certainty of experience that putting off looking for a kidnap victim to look when it was less crowded was exactly the wrong thing to do. The more time you left it the less likely you were to ever see the one you'd lost again.
He could forgive her her inexperience and panic, waking up from a night spent badly sleeping to Gamlen in the front room restless and worried about his sister not turning up for her usual visit, and finding a vase of white lilies on the writing desk, delivered the afternoon before by an 'admirer'. She was intense about family, and thought she was doing the right thing. Varric knew better than to argue with someone in such a situation if it could be helped. He had other recourses.
The usual suspects had turned up nothing. A combing of the street lowlife, urchins and beggars and daytime drunkards, had turned up only slightly more- one boy who'd seen a lady from Hightown fall for an obvious and downright clumsy trick, a pickpocket faking an injury to lift a purse, except that this lady had walked off with the 'injured' man.
In the usual course of things, Varric would have run out of options at this point- but lo and behold, a friend of his had other, multi-skilled and quite competent, friends who were known for being good and civic-minded people. Heroes, even.
Anders was down at the clinic, he was unsurprised to be told. He also wasn't very surprised to hear there were Wardens with him, and the retelling of the little speech he'd given and the casual deflecting of a royal bastard gave him his first chuckle of the day.
When he turned up at the clinic, things were slow. Anders and the Wardens were taking lunch- well, the Wardens were taking lunch, and Anders was eating in bits and pieces as he looked over the last few patients that were in at the moment.
The Wardens glanced up at him when he walked in, and Varric noticed the man's- Alistair son of King Maric, how he wanted to pick the man's brains for story fodder- slight move for his sword before categorizing him as a known element. One used to fighting and enemies, he.
"Blondie," Varric said loudly, knowing that it wasn't a good idea to come up on Anders unannounced. Hawke had done it once, and ended up frozen to the wall and facing Justice. "Got a minute?"
"Let me finish."
A few more minutes wasn't going to make that much of a difference right now, Varric tried to tell himself as Anders tended to the last three people- a developing chest infection, a broken arm that needed a checkup, a throat so enflamed the woman couldn't eat or drink. Anders saw that last woman out with instructions on tea to drink, or the herbs to steep in her beer overnight if she didn't have the time or money for that, and put out the lantern and shut the doors.
"Now, I know you might still be mad at Hawke-"
"Might be?" Anders asked.
"-but we're out of options and Hawke's in no place to think straight, and if you won't do it for her, do it for Leandra."
"What did she get into? It's only been one night, and Isabela was with us."
"It's not her," Varric told him. "Leandra's gone, and there's a vase of white lilies nobody ordered on Hawke's writing desk."
Anders went very still. It had been a job years ago, but no one had forgotten the frustration of not being able to solve it, or the infuriating mystery of the noble apostate convinced of rogue blood magic.
"I thought your friends might be willing to help."
"We've got a lot of experience with missing people," Alistair said, popping into the conversation. "You'd be amazed how easily people get misplaced in Ferelden."
"This one might be blood magic," was Varric's warning.
"We're really good at those too," Alistair assured him. "Hey, Fen!"
The mabari perked up.
"You want to help find a nice old lady?"
Fen barked and raced over. Varric did not look very comfortable with a dog that could stare him in the face, and backed up a few steps.
"I know where she was the last time anyone saw her," he said. "I'll go get Hawke and the others."
"We'll meet you there," Anders said. "Where?"
"Lady Elgant's. She was on her way to see her deadbeat brother."
Anders led the way to Lowtown, trying not to fiddle with his staff in worry and impatience. Leandra was good to him, had always cared about things like if he was eating enough or if it was too cold in Darktown and told him stories about her husband and raising Bethany that gave him hope and encouragement in the times when it all seemed really useless that people could be good, that all it would take was understanding and care for mages to live freely.
Alistair and Viktory turned around when they heard the noise clatter of someone running in plate armor- Anders didn't, because he recognized the sound of Hawke.
"We brought something of hers," Aveline said, holding out a pillow cover. Fen snuffled in it for a minute and then started trotting about the road, nose to the ground, trying to find Leandra's scent. Over in the shadow of a building he took a sharp turn towards the stairs that would take them down and further in, and stopped at the top to look back and see if they were coming.
The group followed, Hawke so close that she kept almost overtaking Fen. They wound down most of Lowtown's staircases, and then a distinctive turn west just before the docks. Anders recognized it as the Foundry District. Hawke did as well, and finally rushed on ahead, set on the building where the investigation had begun.
"Does she always charge off like that?" Alistair grumbled.
Aveline sighed.
"Hawke doesn't have much use for tactical maneuvers if she can just run into the thick of things. She's always been like that. She charged darkspawn on the road from Lothering as well. More than once. Without armor."
"Don't tell Theron that, he'll try to make her a Warden. How do you usually form up?"
"We don't," Anders told him. "Hawke gets in the middle of everything, Varric is responsible and lays covering fire and takes out any archers, Merrill races up after Hawke because she thinks rock armor will make her invincible, and I'm stuck in the back trying to heal the battle-happy idiots and end up with no time or mana left to even cast a simple fireball, especially when someone inevitably tries to kill me."
"Wow," Alistair said, looking at him askance. "Okay. And I thought we were bad at battle tactics fighting the Blight. You do do things like… try to draw them through doorways, right?"
"Maybe if someone could think past a headlong charge-"
"Are we going to call her back, or let her get further into that building by herself?" Viktory asked.
Oh Andraste's flames, Hawke, Anders thought angrily at her as they all realized she'd gone in alone. Wait for everyone else for once in your life!
"Right," Alistair said. "We'd better catch up. I'm in front, Fen and the Guard-Captain flank me just behind; you-"
He pointed to Varric.
"-can you detect traps? Great, you walk with me but once we start fighting fall back, get any archers, mages, and demons, in that order. Viktory and Merrill, offensive, but Merrill you stay back unless you need to get closer to cast. Viktory knows how to do close-quarters fighting, let her get personal. Anders, you're in back unless you see a need to move up. You were with Theron, I trust you know how to handle yourself. And make sure we don't die."
He paused.
"Or make sure your Hawke doesn't die. If she likes charging in, we'll let her play Oghren."
"Oghren never needed this much healing. Oghren knew what he was doing."
"Did you see the state she's in? She's not going to listen to anyone."
Fighting alongside Hawke had mostly never gone horribly, though the general lack of direction she gave had sometimes made things more difficult and ended up causing more work for themselves, because Anders could be the only one who actually tried to work as a team. This had been frustrating, but the still hadn't realized just how much he'd missed the Commander being clear on who needed to do what until their group caught up to Hawke trying to destroy something like five shades and two rage demons all on her own. She was running around the room trying to avoid them because she couldn't afford to take any more hits, but with Alistair's directions they plowed through them in one, maybe two minutes.
Sheer numbers helped, of course, but there was a lot to be said for centralized command. Less people had gotten hurt than normal, and he'd gotten to cast a very satisfying firestorm on the shades when they'd clumped together.
Alistair had been right about Hawke, unfortunately- when Aveline tried to convince her to join the group, she just ignored her and kept pressing on. It turned into a pattern as they went from room to room. Hawke would attract everything that wanted to kill them, and then proceed to take avoidable hits while she focused on one enemy in particular as everyone else cleaned up the rest quite nicely.
And then they entered a large room that smelled strongly of blood and magic, with a little living area that was completely incongruous with its books and rugs and big painting over the fireplace with the rest of the foundry; and a mage at some long tables pushed up by one of the walls.
Hawke screamed and rushed him, which was stupid because he'd had his back to them and Anders knew that she knew that the best way to get a mage was to surprise them, and now she'd given them all away.
The mage called an impenetrable barrier around himself to keep Hawke's greatsword away, and from then on it was one of those days with a distinct overabundance of demons that was Kirkwall's signature specialty.
So many demons. Anders was sick and tired of demons.
And Hawke was still whacking away in blind rage at the barrier. No one else was paying attention to her, occupied as they were with said demons, so Anders ducked out of the fight and raced over.
"Demons!" he yelled at her, grabbing her shoulders and yanking her away. "Demons! This won't drop until he's exhausted and needs a minute, go kill demons!"
"He-"
"I'll stand here and get him when it falls, now go!"
She did go, snarling as she went and venting righteous fury on the nearest desire demon. She was going to run out energy soon if she wasn't careful, but Anders past caring because now that he was so close to the mage and Hawke was taken care of he noticed what was on the worktables.
There was a woman's body on the one he was standing closest to, looking just slightly off and after a second Anders realized that it was because it was stitched together from different people, only the head was missing and the picture over the fireplace looked somewhat like Leandra and oh Maker-
He was not going to throw up in the middle of battle. He could do that later. He had to find Leandra.
The mage had been working on something at the other table, and if the- the ragdoll body was here-
It was somewhat hard to see past the tightly-spinning energy of the barrier spell, but there was something large enough on that table-
"Leandra!" he shouted, trying to be heard over the battle behind him. "Leandra!"
The shape on the table stirred- moved, carefully, like there was an injury or maybe drugs and there wasn't any room to get past the mage-
Anders tried anyway, hoping that even an attempt to get the last piece of this Maker-damned thing the man was trying to create would make him drop the barrier, leave him vulnerable and Anders could occupy him while Leandra got away-
It succeeded in getting the barrier to drop, but was a massive miscalculation on everything else.
Any two-bit mage could consort with demons and learn blood magic. Often enough it was the two-bit mages, apostates with so little power that they'd been overlooked or had found it relatively easy to hide, who went for it when confronted by Templars.
But this mage was Circle-trained, Anders could tell, and had clearly been no weakling in the power department before going to demons.
"Hawke!" he screamed as he desperately tried to keep the blood mage off him, oh no Blight take him the other man knew life drain and its swiftly-deadly blood magic cousin, he had to back up and that only left the blood mage trying to kill him with more room to work. "Varric! Viktory! Somebody!"
He'd woken up feeling hugely energized and better than he had in years, but sheer reserves could only do so much when you were largely out-of-practice and your enemy could steal your reserves from you.
The only good thing about blood magic was that, while powerful, spells specific to it were hard to keep up for an extended period of time. The bloody, swirling mist around the man's feet disappeared, and Anders rushed in, trying to close distance. It wasn't orthodox fighting but if he managed a shot-
The mage was Circle-trained, and that meant Circle-raised, so he found his opening right away and punched the man hard in the stomach.
By the standards of someone like Alistair or Aveline or Hawke, and probably even Varric or Isabela, it was a very hard hit at all. But Anders had stopped relying totally on magic to fight once he'd been recaptured the second time, because he wasn't an idiot and while magic was his best weapon, any Templar could take it away once they got within sword distance. He had to have something else. He'd spent his third escape- one of the longer ones- in Denerim learning about hitting and kicking and street brawls. Most of it had been hands-on, seat-of-the-pants experience because hey, he was a healer, wasn't he? Why not use his own powers on himself in the name of learning new skills?
He'd never be a true brawler but the practice and the exercises for arm strength he'd learned had been absolutely worth it when the Templars had found him, silenced him, and then instead of curling up and surrendering he'd used his staff as a club to knock one Templar over completely, leaving him with a concussion, and then punched the fool who'd decided he wouldn't need a helmet against a silenced mage right in the eye.
Then the other three had gotten him, but the subsequent recaptures had always taken a little longer, because Greagoir had been careful to inform any Templars sent to look for him that he wasn't afraid of getting physical. There was something about the idea of a mage who could cause horrible death at a distance and intense physical pain in all the fiddly little things like noses and fingers and ankles with a blow of a fist or foot that really intimidated Templars. Mages weren't supposed to fight with anything but magic.
Sod that.
Anders's punch staggered the blood mage, possibly more out of shock than real force, but it was good enough. He raised his staff and jammed it against the man's chest, sending him sprawling; but the blood mage retaliated by sweeping his staff out and knocking Anders's feet from under him.
He hit his head on the floor hard, and spent a moment too long deciding whether to heal himself or not and the blood mage was looming over him, staff raised-
A crackle of weak electricity broke around his shoulders and the blood mage half-turned to see what was attacking him. Viktory grabbed his head in one hand, stabbed him in the chest with her knife with the other, and shoved him into an oncoming rage demon.
The blood mage exploded. Anders cast a hasty ice spell at that Viktory duplicated, and the weakened rage demon burned out.
Viktory picked up her staff from where she'd dropped it to cast her walking bomb spell, her smile hugely satisfied.
"I knew I could do it," she told Anders smugly as she retrieved her knife. It looked a lot like Lockhard's sword, Anders noticed- it had to be a gift from the Voshai. Circle mages were strictly conditioned against knives, and even he'd still felt uneasy and guilty and nervous enough the couple of times he'd tried to carry one to give it up. Unless Viktory was a true expert at emotional self-control, she wouldn't have thought to carry one on her own.
Anders used his own staff to lever himself off the ground and went immediately to Leandra's side, hunting for damage- bruising, slowness from being drugged, easy enough to fix. There was a line drawn in darkened paste across her throat, and he wiped it off with his sleeve before she woke up enough to notice it. The cloth roll of little surgery knives lying next to her that he was considering claiming for his own- he'd always wished for a set like that in the clinic- would be bad enough.
"Anders?" she asked woozily.
"We've got you, Leandra," he promised. "It's all right. It's over now."
Zevran prodded a decorative chest with his foot.
"It does not seem that there is much in this place," he said. "Besides rotting corpses. A disgrace to perfectly fine carpets."
The former estate of Bartrand Tethras was unimpressive, and even beyond the tedium of searching without a clear goal, Zevran was deeply bored. This was the fourth inside of a Kirkwall estate they'd seen since arriving in the city, and it looked exactly the same as all the rest. Did the architects of the Free Marches have no imagination? The corpses might actually have improved the aesthetics some.
At least they had finally discovered the treasure room, full of chests of family heirlooms, carefully packed away, and memorabilia from trips or presents too expensive or personal to simply get rid of.
"I like that there aren't corpses in here," Kallian offered, and then her voice got hesitant. "Um, Arl-Commander? Is that really-"
"Stop scavenging, Theron," Zevran said automatically, not even bothering to look. The armoire next to the decorative chest could be interesting, he decided.
"But-"
"We have money," he reminded Theron, going to work on the lock. "You are the Arl of Amaranthine."
"But there are useful things! Just lying around! It's wasteful."
"Such is civilization, amora."
The lock clicked and he pulled the amoire doors open. It proved another disappointment- dwarf-sized clothes, though in some admittedly fine fabrics. He moved on to the shelves.
There was a rustling behind him.
"Theron-"
"There's a box down here," Kallian said, and Zevran looked over his shoulder to see her pull an iron box out of the back corner of the armoire. It had gold detailing- very nice.
"It's locked."
Zevran sat down next to her and took the box. It was heavier than he'd thought it would be and the lock was more difficult than he'd expected. Perhaps this was a jewelry strongbox?
It finally opened, and it wasn't jewelry. The box was heavier than it should be because the inside coated with a thick layer of glass, and all alone sitting inside was a long shard of something red- darker in the center, blackish- vaguely dusty, glittery, but likely harder than it looked. Zevran yanked a skirt out of the closet, picking up the shard with it, and inspected its planes through the cloth. It picked up motes of sparkling red residue.
"What is it?" Kallian asked, leaning in; and he gently pushed her back.
"It is lyrium, I think."
"I didn't know it came in different colors-"
"Zevran!" Theron exclaimed, and there was such panic in it that his head whipped around to see where the danger was. "What are you- no put it back! Put that back!"
Hawke hadn't wanted to stick around now that she had her mother back and everything was dead, and Alistair was happy to see her leave. They were not battle-compatible and this got her out of the way of their search for information. The rest of her friends went with her- Varric and Merrill for emotional support and Aveline to start compiling the file on the case- so it was just him, Viktory, Anders, and Fen again, as it should have been.
They held a short sort-of funeral for the unfinished patchwork body. Alistair stumbled over the prayers and Chant verses because this was just a collection of parts, not a person; but each bit had been alive and part of a person when it had been attached in the right place-
The blood mage was much easier. Him the just burned, no attempts at prayer beforehand. Fen watched the flames burn themselves out while the humans looked around.
Alistair didn't like what they found. Most of the items were innocuous, but there was a journal filled with obsessive entries that disturbed him a lot for the insight it gave into this particular personal insanity, and the books-
The books were nothing that couldn't be found in a Circle library, and that simple normalcy was the worst part.
"You can't get these outside the Circles," Anders said, looking down at the copy of Human Anatomy and the Balance of the Mortal Body that he was holding. It was a standard healers' reference, probably something he'd used hundreds of times. "I know, I looked during one of my escape attempts, and then took them along the next time."
"You stole from the library at Kinloch Hold?" Alistair asked, impressed; but Anders glared at him. There was an old fury there.
"Escapes were one thing," he said. "But apparently stealing yourself is less important than stealing the books you need to do real, good work once you're in a position to do so. It got me a year in the solitary cells. It was that, or death. I think they were trying to make me obvious crack so they'd have an excuse to kill me anyway."
There were reasons for why Circle books had to stay in the library or in the rooms of Senior Enchanters, good ones about keeping magical knowledge away from maleficars and apostates who didn't know what they were doing. As someone who'd learned in the Circles, Anders would have known about the death penalty when he'd decided to take those books. It said a lot both about how well he'd thought he could evade the Templars and the price he was willing to pay to avoid going back to Kinloch Hold that he'd done it anyway- Alistair wondered who'd convinced Greagoir to rule contrary to established Chantry law, and how.
"These are from the Gallows," Viktory said. She had some of the books open to the flip side of the title page, where the blank paper was used as a record of where the book belonged. Sure enough, the last ink stamp in all of them was the outline of the Gallows. "Who could have-"
She stopped, lost.
"He seemed to know what he was doing," Alistair said. "Maybe he was a Senior Enchanter?"
"No," she said. "I would have recognized him. But maybe he was a transfer in, after I left- I know someone would have been sent to replace me when I was moved to the Jainen Circle. Just another Harrowed mage, but one of the Senior Enchanters would have had to- to help him."
"Do you have any idea which one could have-"
"None of them!" Viktory yelled, and the books slammed shut all at once. "This was blood magic, necromancy; and they'd all be too scared or the Templars or too invested in proving them wrong-"
"There's a note in this one," Anders said.
My dear friend,
I have obtained the books you requested. I'll leave them at our usual hiding spot. Please collect them as soon as possible. I would hate to see them in the wrong hands!
Your last letter was fascinating! You have proven me wrong, once again, by doing the impossible. I shouldn't have doubted your resolve, and I hope you will keep me apprised of further progress.
Your friend and colleague,
O
"This sound like anyone you know?" Alistair asked, and handed it to her to see.
She took it and looked at it. And then kept looking at it.
"Viktory?"
The paper was shaking.
"Warden Arend?"
She let go of it and it fluttered in the air. It hadn't reached the carpet yet when Viktory screamed in wordless anger and betrayal and threw the nearest book at the wall, then shot ice through the bed. Wood splintered and fabric tore, creating a tiny iceberg with the mangled bedframe caught inside. The other end of her staff came up, and the exposed ends of wood and cloth caught fire and burned away in an instant, creating a cloud of steam and a spreading circle of water seeping into the carpet. Anders hurriedly snatched up the books still lying there.
"That bastard!" Viktory screamed at the ice, striking it with the end of her staff. It started to fracture. "That hypocrite! Liar! TRAITOR!"
The ice shattered completely and the end of the staff landed heavily in the soaked carpet beneath, rocking forward slightly as Viktory caught her balance. There were furious tears streaming down her face.
"It was the First Enchanter," she said. "It was Orsino."
The First Enchanter?
"He said- he always said that he took that job to protect the rest of us from the Templars, from Meredith- he's exactly what they're supposed to guard against-"
"We have to take this to the Circle," Alistair said.
"You can't!" Anders protested. "This is exactly the sort of thing Meredith wants to hear- she'll use it as her excuse to do whatever she likes to the mages in the Gallows!"
Viktory whirled on him.
"He can't just get away with this!"
"It's one mage," Alistair said. "Even if it's the First Enchanter, you don't take one blood mage out on a whole Circle-"
"Meredith would!" Anders shouted at him. "She's not Greagoir! This isn't Kinloch Hold where they'll listen to you about demons and blood magic!"
"If we ignore this I'll kill Orsino myself," Viktory snarled, and if this wasn't defused right now he was going to get caught up in an arcane fight between mages.
"We'll take it to Theron," Alistair said, almost as much to keep from having to make this decision as to head off the impending fight. "Come on, back up the books and that journal and anything else that could help and let's go back."
Anders and Viktory both looked mutinous about it, but followed instructions. They silently fumed at each other the entire rambling walk back to Hightown, and Alistair spent most of it praying that no Templars would show up because there was only so far he'd be able to claim Warden immunity for outright murder, especially murder by mages.
It was an immense relief to make it past the Chantry uninterrupted and see the door to Fenris's estate.
"Hey!" he called as they walked in. "Theron! We need you!"
"Not here," Mhequi answered loudly from the foyer. She and Fenris were sitting across from each other on the floor, cross-legged, and she was lightly tracing the lines of lyrium in his skin. They glowed just under her finger and stayed for a seconds, trailing her path. Fenris's eyes were half-closed, and his expression was strangely absorbed-
"Should I, we, uh-"
"Is learning to sense magic," Mhequi said. "Delicate. Hard until much practice. Will hate less once knows how lyrium sings, smell of power."
"Okay, great. But that looks like a, uh- 'in private' face. Maybe you want a room? With a door?"
Mhequi gave him a very unimpressed look and pressed her right hand flush against Fenris's, holding them together with her left, and leaned in to whisper something to him in Tevene.
"I will," Fenris said, voice and strong and clear despite his muzzy expression. "Gladly rearrange your internal organs if you continue to make assumptions."
"Okay, okay, sorry," Alistair said. "It just looked like it might be, er, embarrassing to do with an audience."
"Only embarrassed one is you," Mhequi told him pointedly. "Fenris. Sense that?"
The elf frowned very slightly in concentration.
"Yes?" he said uncertainly. "It tastes like… hot glass?"
Mhequi's eyebrows rose.
"Glass? Hm. Smells as sea lightning to me."
Something about that description niggled Alistair's memory. The Voshai smelled magic-
"Sea lightning- like water that was boiled too fast?" he asked. "Are we talking about the Fade?"
"Good," Mhequi said. "What else?"
"Rancid oil," Fenris told her. "Blood, death. C-"
His eyes flew open and his expression twisted in disgust and bitterness as he abruptly left whatever happy place he'd reached during Mhequi's lesson. He pressed his fist to his mouth, as if it would make the tastes go away.
"What?" Mhequi asked calmly. She shifted her hand so their fingers linked, and a soft blue glow started to trail slowly up his arm.
"Coin metal," Fenris spat, and was there something behind the anger there?
"Good," she told him. "Good, ishqilija."
He scowled, but it looked more defenseive than anything else with the set of his shoulders.
"What were you doing?" he asked Alistair.
"Fighting demons, killing a blood mage, saving innocent people," Alistair told him, trying to be flippant in the face of Fenris's discomfort and put him at ease. "The usual things."
It seemed to work. Fenris either buried his own emotions very well now that he'd had a moment or was sufficiently distracted by the news of what their day had been like so far that he relaxed- well, stopped looking like he was a couple wrong words from attacking something.
"Anders and Viktory can tell you about it," Alistair said. "I really need to go get Theron."
It was nice that his friend's duty for the day had only taken him across the square. Theron could have easily assigned himself to things that would take him out into the city, and then Alistair would have had to spend the whole day finding him, or just waiting around until he came back.
"Hey Theron! Theron!"
Oh great, corpses. At least they didn't look freshly dead.
"We've kind of ended up in another situation, Theron. One of those great life-and-death moral questions that we keep running into."
No, no one in the foyer. He'd have to check the back hallways.
"Kirkwall is such a great place, isn't it? I vote we never come to the Free Marches ever again."
Wait, he smelled- lyrium?
Wrong lyrium?
Alistair picked up his pace and followed his nose to a room in the back of the house- household valuables storage. Boxes and chest and the armoire on the wall were open, proving that someone had been in here searching around.
But there were other signs too. Someone had fought here. Not for very long, and there was potentially-relieving lack of blood; but things had been knocked over and not righted, and it stank of magic behind the wrong lyrium-
There it was lying on the floor by the armoire, a short distance away from a slipped cloth streaked with its red dust, and-
Lyrium, it was lyrium, and that was most of what he could smell but either he'd begun to acclimatize to the way it pervaded Kirkwall or the feeling of demons and magic and the Fade hadn't quite gone away from the earlier fight just yet because under all that, he could sense Taint.
"Theron! Zevran! Sergeant Tabris!"
Still nothing.
"Theron!"