"There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse."
― Sappho
Maryden strummed a sorrowful tune.
The remaining patrons at the Herald's Rest, already mired in an alcohol-induced stupor, fell further into a reverent silence as they followed the all-too-familiar melody in their heads. Cabot, drying glasses behind the bar, was skewering her with ice cold glares.
I am here for my art, Maryden thought defiantly. If he wanted mindless entertainment, he should have hired a jester instead.
As she concluded the song, silence hung over the room. A hollow clap arose from the back, where someone felt obliged to recognize her playing. She stood silently for a solid five minutes, allowing the feelings evoked by her performance to truly sink in, grip the listeners, take root in their hearts.
During those five minutes, Cabot saw the bulk of the remaining customers pay their tabs and leave the tavern.
"Maryden!" Cabot scolded her afterwards. "This is a tavern! You are not here to sing dirges. You are here to entertain!"
"Our cultural history is entertaining!" she argued.
"Singing of blood-tainted snow in Haven is not entertaining!"
"It's red-tainted snow, not blood-tainted snow," Maryden corrected him. "The blood is merely IMPLIED," she emphasized.
"Well, I'm surprised no one has tried drowning themselves in their tankards yet."
"It's because your ale is so bad," she huffed.
"Liven it up," he warned.
She began to pack for the night, scowling crossly at the patron who, clearly intoxicated, showered her with applause when the lute accidentally slipped from her hands and toppled over the floor.
"What a performance!" he slurred, his eyes woozily wandering as he spoke. "What are you going to play for us next?"
"I'm done for tonight," she declared, hauling the case's strap over her shoulder.
"Ooh! I love that one!" he stated enthusiastically. As if buoyed by music in his head, his fingers began to float in the air. "I'm dooooone for the niiiight…" he warbled tone deafly.
A volley of cheers came from the very back of the tavern, where the mercenary Chargers sat.
"Sing it, Gabby!" someone shouted.
"You like that, eh?" he yelled back, his grin revealing several gaps among his teeth. "Here's another," he stated boldly, tottering to where Maryden ordinarily stood when performing.
She chose to ignore his antics, pulling on her gloves.
"I had a girl in Rivain," he belted out. The Chargers cheered loudly and some even pulled their chairs around. "I wish I remembered her name…"
More cheers and some laughter. Someone called out for another round. Cabot began to fill up the tankards.
Unrefined scoundrels, she thought uncharitably, whamming her shoulder into the drunk on her way out.
"She was light on her feet, and could tangle a sheet…" he croaked mischievously, goaded on by the attention being showered on him.
"Wooo, Gabby!"
Hrumph! They never cheer for me like that…but then again, their tastes cannot be taken seriously. A bunch of mercenaries, anyway. What do they know about good music? Culture?
She was a bard! A true bard! Not one of those intriguemongers who slinked around in the dark with poison-coated daggers. No! Her weapons were her lute and her voice. She was charged with an important mission: keeping history alive through her music. She had gone there to sing of the Inquisitor's deeds. So far she only really had the barbarous events from Haven…and Adamant…and Halamshiral to share.
"Maryden, can't you sing about more cheerful things?" Cabot would entreat her.
And corrupt the truth?
"I'm sorry, but I must transmit my interpretation of the facts through my poetry and my music."
I have a greater purpose, a gift—and I must be true to that calling.
It was difficult, though, to stand there, night after night, reliving the Inquisition's most challenging moments, and trying not to take it personally when people grabbed their tankards as she set up for the evening, and made their way to the tables farther away…sometimes even escaping to the second floor.
The truth isn't always pleasant, but someone has to tell it.
"Maryden…for the love of Andraste! A drinking song. Just one. Please." Cabot implored one night. "You are killing me!"
Then just go and croak already…and stop interfering.
She resumed the song she had been singing so soulfully: "Empress of Fire."
"Empress of fire,/Save us, everyone./The nation reviles,/The course is but run, and end has begun," she recited to the morose crowd.
She could empathize with the Inquisitor; she understood heroism. She knew what it was like to offer her music to everyone, without distinction, in service of a greater good.
This is all for you, you ingrates, she fumed, trying to sing over the din of conversation and laughter surrounding her.
Behind the bar, Cabot shook his head.
On one fateful evening, she was asked to play a Fereldan jig by one of the Inquisitor's companions.
"I don't know any," she admitted. "Besides, I already have a program for the evening."
"I'm sure no one will bloody care, yeah?" the drunken elf had asked, standing before her. She was a delicate thing—shorter, her hair cropped bluntly and unevenly, long sandy wisps of hair framing either side of her face.
"Come on, Sera!" a dark haired bearded man called out from a table farther back where a few patrons were playing a game of cards. "You either dance a jig or cut your losses."
"I'm not dancing until I get some music! I'm not jumping 'round looking all possessed like and stuff, " she yelled out, reaching her arm out so she could steady herself on Maryden's shoulder.
"Good luck getting her to play any requests," Cabot complained, turning back into the kitchen.
"Can't anyone else here play something?" the dark haired man asked crossly.
"Dorian, you had a fine patrician upbringing... Surely you can play an instrument," a red-haired dwarf wondered aloud to the companion sitting across from him— a tall, elegant man with a well-manicured mustache.
"I'm afraid I cannot help you there. The lute was beneath any son of House Pavus. I was instructed instead in the art of the agonizingly slow death by archicembalo," he apologized.
"That's interesting," the burly Qunari sitting next to him mused. "I would have sworn you were a master of the flute."
Some laughter erupted from the table. The mustachioed man turned to the Qunari, unfazed.
"Yes, well...I've been mastering horns as of late," he teased.
The Qunari chuckled, placing his cards face down on the table.
"Krem!" he bellowed across the tavern, startling everyone else. A young man sitting at a different table with the Chargers turned around while clasping an almost empty bottle of wine. "Where is Jasper? Tell him to get his ass over here."
Maryden watched the small commotion beside the elf, who had now simply linked her arm into hers, snuggling closer, observing everything unfurl in a contented haze. She found herself distracted by the elf's proximity, her touch, the faint scent of soap from her hair wafting up to her nose. It was lovely…even inebriating…She came to when she noticed a man saunter up to them, his gaze intent on her lute.
"Do you mind?" he asked, reaching out for it.
She was lost momentarily, unsure as to what he was referring to.
"Here you go," the elf grabbed the lute from her hands. "Make it lively," she stated.
Maryden watched in horror as someone else cradled her lute, strumming a few chords tentatively, an intent look of concentration in his eyes. Apparently satisfied, he gave her a nod and began to play in earnest. A bouncy melody sounded throughout the tavern, and both the Chargers and the card players interrupted their conversations to watch.
"Oh, shite! Everyone's waitin' for the show," Sera chortled, stumbling forward, her arm still linked to hers. "Ready?" she smiled brazenly.
"But-but-" Maryden had no time to interject or protest; before she understood what was happening, the elf had spun her around, prancing about haphazardly with her in tow. Sera stopped and clapped in the air, nearly missing her hands altogether, and bending over with bubbly laughter, switched directions, dragging Maryden down the opposite end of the tavern just as frantically. She just managed to see Cabot step back out into the bar at the commotion, and upon seeing his bard bounding across the tavern floor, he merely backed away into the kitchen once more.
The elf now was kicking up her heels and trying to tap them with the opposite hand, crashing into chairs, patrons, and her, ultimately, as she hadn't let go of her yet.
"What a rousing performance… Reenactment of a battle of sorts, isn't it?" the man named Dorian marveled.
"Ok, Buttercup…That's enough, or there really will be corpses on the ground here…" the dwarf announced, watching her twirl and bump into a table, knocking someone's tankard over. The Qunari gestured at the lute player, his hand slicing across the air in front of him sharply.
The room was plunged in dazed silence, except for the spritely elf still uttering a breathless "tra la la" out of tune. All eyes were upon them, Maryden realized in profound embarrassment.
"What?" Sera cried out, surprised to find herself anchored to the spot by a petrified Maryden. "Where'd the music go?" she asked, almost as if deeply hurt.
"It's over. Come back and sit down," the bearded man called out amusedly. "That was almost worth the coin you aren't paying me."
"I'm getting you back, you hairy tit!" she threatened, delightedly. She directed her attention back to Maryden and without any warning, gathered the bard tightly in her arms, clumsily concluding their act by attempting to dip her. At one moment, they were eye to eye, the elf's pouty lips almost touching her own.
"Don't worry—I've got this," Sera winked, an arm wrapped unsteadily around her shoulder.
Of course, they both collapsed to the ground with a great thud.
Maryden was able to return to the Herald's Rest a few days after the concussion. Cabot had braced himself for a program filled with solemn odes filled with laments. Instead, he found his bard eager to get back to work. While her selection of songs was neither better nor worse than the usual, he did notice she played with renewed enthusiasm. It wasn't until later in the evening that she finally took a break, and only when Varric burst through the door, followed by Blackwall, a couple of the Chargers, and Sera.
At the sight of the slender elf, Maryden's heart skipped a beat. She stashed her lute against the wall and pushed through the modest crowd towards her table. She timed her approach to a lull in the conversation. Sera tiredly rolled her shoulders.
"Hello!" Maryden said brightly.
Sera peered at her curiously.
"Hey!"
"How have you been?" she continued.
"Not bad. Yourself?" Sera offered, her eyes still not registering any recognition.
"I'm all better now, in case you were worried," she smiled, patting the back of her head. "You shouldn't trouble yourself over it," she reassured Sera.
Sera stared, perplexedly.
"Wasn't planning on it."
Maryden kept grinning.
"Would you like to have a drink with me later on?"
"Have we ever sat down to have one before?"
She hesitated.
"No…we haven't. But we danced together—"
"Danced? As in to music? Because I don't...Or is that shifty talk for somethin' else?" Sera's asked worriedly.
Maryden's heart sank a bit.
"We danced a jig…here…You…" She stopped and huffed. "Don't you remember?"
"No," Sera confessed.
"You were quite drunk," Varric explained helpfully, before turning back to the others.
Sera pondered the mystifying revelations.
"Was I any good?" she finally asked.
"You dropped me on my head," Maryden added wistfully.
"Sorry I missed it! Seems like it was good fun, wasn't it?"
It had been a lot of fun. She hadn't felt so carefree and excited like that in ages. At least, up until the whole concussion bit.
"Would you like to have that drink later?…" Maryden insisted.
"That's sounds like a bad idea: drinking and I don't mix…with you, apparently, that is," Sera said bluntly.
The rest of the evening progressed funereally as ever. All the songs were stark and depressing, filled with loss and angst. Cabot found himself closing the tavern early for a lack of patrons.
"A record evacuation! Congratulations! You've outdone yourself," he said sarcastically.
Maryden saw Sera enter the tavern, night after night, and slide over one of the benches with many other people: some were part of the close knit group of companions the Inquisitor often surrounded herself with—and others were people she saw around the fortress: a laundress, a scullery maid, a cook's assistant, among others. Others who were never Maryden. Sometimes Sera merely traipsed across the room towards the stairs, pulling herself up tiredly towards her room. Maryden watched her from afar, with a constant longing, her frustration taken out in the songs she strummed. It had gotten to the point that Cabot would simply toss his hands up in the air anytime he saw the elf enter the tavern.
"Aaaaand… there go any profits."
One evening she must have looked particularly forlorn when Sera breezed passed her, because even Cabot took pity and brought her a tankard of ale.
"She doesn't remember me at all…and doesn't want to get to know me," she sighed to the dwarf, taking an uncharacteristic break from all the mournful melodies she had been performing that night.
"Look, it could always be worse. Take me, for example. When you first came here, I thought your music selections were bad. But they aren't," he stated. She glanced at the tavern keeper with a hint of gratitude. "They are terrible," he muttered. She stared at him incredulously. "And I know you have the potential to make them even worse," he continued. "Because you are a determined woman. You will find a way to put tragedy into music, if you will it." He crossed his arms. "I just wish you willed yourself out of this funk." He pat her on the back. "Do what it takes, but don't let a brushoff determine the rest of your career."
"I know!" Maryden said with newly found enthusiasm. Cabot waited, interested. "I'm going to write her song! Maybe she'll take notice then!"
He groaned, scratching the back of his ear impatiently.
"I don't know why I bother!"
A full house, Maryden noticed, as she wandered to the side of the fireplace, as was her habit. Her surveying glance across the crowded room alighted on the tow-headed elf laughing boisterously with several familiar faces—all part of the Inquisitor's more intimate group. She tuned her lute as barmaids zigzagged through the crowd with large round trays balanced over their shoulders. Cabot moved spryly behind the bar, calling out for clean tankards and plunking down change before customers.
She took a deep breath and positioned her fingers over the lute's neck.
"Sera was never an agreeable girl…" she began singing in a clear voice, plucking the strings in an upbeat tempo.
Conversations dimmed briefly as people directed their attention to the bard. As she sang, she noticed heads nodding, feet tapping, fingers drumming, and all eyes upon her. By the time she reached the chorus for the last time, several listeners had lifted their drinks at her and were singing along spiritedly to the lines "She's a rogue and a thief, And she'll tempt your fate."
When she finished, applause, cheers, and whistles filled the room. Even Cabot clapped animatedly, a dishtowel flung over his shoulder.
"Again!" someone shouted!
"Encore!" another voice seconded.
It was exhilarating. One glance at Sera revealed a frozen sneer on her face. It gave her momentary pause because she had sincerely hoped the elf would have liked the song, but her expression told her otherwise.
Does it really matter? Maryden shrugged. It's not like there was much to lose there from the beginning, was there?
She caressed the strings, bowing her head repeatedly at the fanfare she was receiving.
It is unusual, she thought, smiling. I think I like this. It may be pandering to baser tastes, but it's on my terms…Somewhat…she told herself sheepishly.
As she began singing the song again to a merry, drunken accolade, feeling herself light up inside and flush proudly from all the attention she was getting, she clutched her lute with even more determination.
Muses may come and go…But we'll always have each other: my music and I.