With the slavers dead at his feet, Justice receded. When his other half pulled back into the shadows, the surging power drained from Anders like ale from a punctured cask. He stumbled forward and braced himself against his staff as he tried to shake off the confusion and disorientation Justice always left in his wake. Catching sight of the dead, his breath caught "No, no, no!" he whimpered in a quavering panic as he dropped to his knees. What had he done? Who had he killed? Breathlessly with self-disgust roiling nauseously in his gut, he rolled body after body over to ensure they all wore the garb of Tevinter slavers, with the exception of an elven woman who had clearly been killed by blood magic. Not by his hand, then. Thank the Maker. Sobs of relief wracked his body as he folded the arms of the one dead innocent across her body in a pose of serenity and gently closed her lashes, grateful that her killer was likely among the dead as well. He had known the young woman as agent of the resistance group known as The Friends of Red Jenny. She'd been his Darktown contact, slipping him and Hawke information regarding Templar, Carta, and Coterie activity. And now she was gone, and he wasn't even sure how to go about informing her people. He didn't even know her name.

"Sir?" a young voice said behind him, making Anders jump. He whirled to face the speaker, who flinched away from him, looking as though she wanted nothing more than to bolt. Anders' head was still clearing; he recognized the girl, but he could not quite place her. "I'm sorry to bother you, sir," she said in a small, unsteady voice. "But, my little sister… I don't know where she is."

He relaxed his guard. "Roe," he breathed, the mention of the sister bringing his memory into focus around the form of this lanky, elven, adolescent. He didn't know her well, but Marni spoke of her often. "Have you checked the…" he began, thinking to suggest she check the clinic for little Marni, but then the memories came back to him in a chilling rush: the child evading his protective grasp, attacking the slaver who held her sister, and being scoop up and carried off. Anders paled and his stomach lurched. He buried his face in his hands. "Maker, no," he whimpered. It was the sight of her in danger that had brought Justice out of the recesses of Anders' mind, making him lose control. And while Justice was occupied fighting the now-dead men, the other slavers had escaped with Marni and two others. She was gone.

"Sir?" Roe asked, her own voice reaching a point of panic at the sight of him coming apart.

Anders used his staff to push his exhausted body to his feet. Roe's brown eyes were wide and filling with tears as she no doubt intuited the worst from his own ill-concealed emotions. Little Marni had, knowingly or not, traded fates with her sister. And Anders recalled how Roe had run from the slavers without a backward glance at the sister who had saved her. Anger sparked in his blood at the memory, the injustice that Marni should suffer for her selfless bravery while her sister remained free by virtue of her cowardice. But the kinder part of him recognized that Roe was just a child, and fear was a powerful emotion that could have made even an adult run mindlessly from the danger. Of course, Marni had not run, he thought bitterly, wishing it was she he was tasked to comfort instead of Roe.

"Sir? Please, where is my sister?" Roe pressed again, her tears falling freely now.

Anders closed his eyes to find a place of calm within himself from which to speak, lest his own anger and dread further upset the girl. "I am so sorry, Roe," he began in a low voice. "The slavers… they took her. I wasn't able to stop them."

Roe let out a strangled sob, and Anders crouched to wrap her in a steadying embrace. Not that he was particularly steady at that moment either. He'd failed Marni. That clever, fiery, and brave child would be broken and sold by slavers because Anders hadn't been fast enough or strong enough, because he didn't think to lock that blighted door behind him when he left the clinic. Marni, whom he had delivered squalling into the cruel world of Darktown, whom he had cared for in sickness, whom he had taught to read and mix potions. Marni, whom he worried about whenever she was out of his sight, wondering if he'd given her enough food, if her threadbare clothes were sufficient to keep out the cold and damp, if she might be in danger. He'd often mused that if he were to have a child of his own, he would want her to be like Marni, and he'd fancied that she looked to him as a father of sorts, especially since her own father had killed her mother and took off, abandoning the two girls presumably to starve in Darktown. Anders had failed Marni, as so many others had failed her. His heart went out to Roe in that regard; they had each loved Marni, and they had each let her down. She'd deserved better

"Where… where did they take her?" Roe said between sobs.

"Most likely they are taking her to Tevinter," he said softly, knowing the news would not soothe her.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" she asked, her pitch frantic.

Anders wasn't sure. He didn't know which way they'd gone, and he was afraid that fighting them again would bring out Justice. And Justice was just as likely to kill Marni as save her. He would need someone with him to keep him grounded, someone who could do what was necessary should he lose control. "I… have some friends who might be able to help," he said grasping Roe by the shoulders. "You can wait in my clinic. Lock the door in case there are more slavers nearby." He pressed the key to his clinic into her shaking hand. "I don't know how long I'll be, but if anyone can find Marni, it's my friends."

Anders took the short-cut to Hawke's estate, through the secret cellar opening by his clinic. He had the key to this entrance for emergencies, should the Templars at last come for him and he find himself in need of a quick escape. When Anders pushed open the cellar door into Hawke's sizeable kitchen, her manservant Bodahn just about jumped out of his skin.

"Goodness!" he said, clasping his hand to his heart. "Master Anders! You took a decade off my life with that fright."

Anders didn't have time to chat. "Bodahn, I need to speak to Hawke. It's urgent."

The dwarf's mustache twitched, no doubt put off by Ander's abrupt rudeness. "She's in the parlor with Master Fenris, I believe," he said coolly as he resumed his work scrubbing a large pot.

Fenris. Of course. Anders bristled at the name. What Hawke saw in that animal Anders could never understand. But at the moment, Hawke's taste in men wasn't his primary concern. He rushed to the parlor where the pair were drinking wine. Hawke was laughing at something Fenris had said, but her smile quickly faded when she caught sight of Anders huffing and flushed in the doorway.

"Maker!" she said, putting her wine glass down and rising from her seat. "What's the matter?"

Fenris scowled in his direction, clearly perturbed that his moment with Hawke had been spoiled by Anders' sudden entrance. Good. "Let me guess: mages and Templars, mages and Templars. When is it ever anything else when you're concerned?"

Anders' face heated. Maker, he hated that man. "Actually, Fenris, today I've taken up your particular obsessions," he said bitterly. He turned to Hawke whose brow was furrowed curiously. "Tevinter slavers took three people in Darktown, including my assistant, Marni. I tried to fight them off but… there were too many. They escaped with Marni and two others while the rest of the slavers held me off."

Fenris perked up. "Marni? The elven child?" he asked, standing with a flash in his eyes and a curl in his lip that usually signaled he was thinking about crushing someone's innards.

Anders nodded. "I don't know where they might have taken her, Hawke."

Hawke turned to Fenris. "Through the sewer passages?"

"Most likely," Fenris said with dark rage pulsing in his voice. "From there they could access the docks for an escape by sea, or leave Kirkwall underground through the lyrium smuggling routes. They may have a den outside of town to keep their prizes while they gather others before returning to the Imperium."

Hawke looked to Anders. "I'll have Bodahn get word to Aveline to have her men detain any departing ships and keep an eye open at the docks and factory district. Meanwhile, we can try to head them off where the tunnels open outside of town." She put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. "We'll find her, Anders. They can't have gotten far."

Anders thanked Hawke and even gave Fenris a grudging nod of appreciation as the elf strapped on his sword with the clear intention of heading out with Anders and Hawke to find Marni. Anders remembered Fenris' uncharacteristic tenderness when Marni had asked him in wide-eyed awe if she could touch his lyrium tattoos. The elf had crouched down, taken Marni's small hand in his own, and guided her fingers gently across his markings while Hawke smiled in affectionate surprise. Marni had talked about the experience for days afterward, saying over and over that the markings were beautiful, like an angry tree, and she wanted ones just like them some day. Anders didn't have the heart to tell her the true nature of Fenris' tattoos.

Fenris snorted in response to Anders' silent thanks. "I do this as no favor to you, mage," he scoffed.

Anders smiled thinly. "Don't worry, Fenris. I never for an instant supposed that was the case."

Fenris cocked an eyebrow at Anders as Hawke rushed to give Bodahn instructions. "It is probably mages that have taken her, you know," he said, barbing Anders. "I've seen what they do to children like her. She is strong and willful. They won't be able to break her spirit; they'll most likely bleed her in some twisted ritual before they even reach the Imperium."

"Do you have a point?" Anders snapped, not appreciating Fenris' goading or the image of Marni's death that now played in his mind.

"Only that you should learn from this experience. Mages unchained will do anything to increase their power and standing, whether with slaves or blood magic. This is the cost of the world you wish to make."

Ander's clenched his jaw. As usual Fenris completely misunderstood both the intricacies of Anders' politics and the nature of power. They could argue eternally about how the politics and inequities of Tevinter related or not to the present circumstances of mages in the rest of Thedas, but now was not the time. Marni needed them.

Hawke reentered the room, and her eyes flitted between them, catching the icy mood of the room and the tense posture of both men. "Are you boys behaving yourselves?" she asked, with a smirk.

Anders sighed and made for the door. "Let's just go." His blood heated at the thought of letting Fenris have the last word, but he forced himself to bite his tongue, swallow his pride, and leave Fenris' ignorance be. For now.

The three left the city through the main gates and scouted the most likely exit from the Kirkwall tunnels that fed out to a hilly area near the wounded coast. There were tracks. Most of the footprints appeared too large to be made by dwarves, so it was likely the passage had most recently been used by slavers rather than lyrium smugglers.

"It appears they were headed toward the coast," Fenris said. "They're likely using the caves there as a den."

Hawke folded her arms and tutted. "Don't they ever learn? How many times have we cleared slavers out of the caves there?"

"Well, Hawke," Anders said, "When you don't leave any survivors, it's rather difficult for them to get word to other slavers that they ought not to use these particular caves."

"Good," said Fenris flatly. "It makes it easier to find and kill them when they only use one of three places for shelter."

"I suppose," Hawke said with a sigh. "But a little variety would be nice."

The trek to the caves took several hours. And it was well after nightfall by the time they arrived at the slavers' camp. The lower the sun sank, the tenser Anders became. Fenris' suggestion that the slavers wouldn't likely keep Marni alive long enough to reach Tevinter rang alarmingly true. She was bold, sharp-tongued, and had a temper that sparked easily and viciously. And she certainly hadn't endeared herself to her captors any when she'd attacked them. Further, she was exceptionally bad at doing what she was told and was far cleverer than he suspected the slavers would want from an ideal slave. It was entirely possible that they had taken her with the specific intention of using her for her blood rather than her labor.

When they approached the cave, Ander's felt the subtle warbling effect of the magic wards set across its entrance. He held out his arms to halt the advance of Hawke and Fenris.

"What is it?" Fenris growled.

"Wards," Hawke said, sensing the warping of the fade herself. "They must have set up camp for the night."

"All the easier to take them by surprise," Fenris said flexing his fingers into a fist.

"Just a moment," Anders said. He lifted his hands and closed his eyes to focus his senses on the barrier before him. His stomach clenched as he felt the tell-tale pulse of blood magic rippling through the ward. "They killed someone to set the wards," he said in a pained whisper.

He felt Hawke's hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure it wasn't your friend, Anders."

Her words were empty. There was no way any of them could be sure until they found Marni, alive or dead. Anders returned his attention to the wards. He could sense the pulsing threads of mana that connected each ward to the fade. One by one, he focused on each thread, and used his own magic to sever their connections to the fade, disarming the wards. Disarming blood magic felt very much like killing; as he cut the life blood that powered the spells from their source of mana like a severed vein, he could feel the force of the spells drain away, the pulse slowing and quieting as the spell faded. He couldn't help but imagine Marni's blood flowing through those spells, himself wielding the blade that silenced her heart beat. As he finished his task, he doubled over and retched dryly.

"Anders, are you all right?" Hawke asked gently.

"We will go on ahead if you can't continue," Fenris added without kindness.

Anders wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up. "I'm fine," he said firmly.

"Then let's get on with it before the slavers move on," Fenris said.

Anders nodded and led the way into the cave. When they reached the central chamber, after disarming a few more wards, they found several men and women wearing Tevinter-style garb sleeping in cots. Another man was seated near the entrance to an adjacent cavern. He was awake but his attention was focused on his hands as he filed his nails and periodically admired his work. Anders recognized him as the man Marni had stabbed, his leg elevated and bandaged.

Hawke smiled and waved her hand, summoning a stasis field around the guard. Fenris, soundlessly approached the sleeping slavers and calmly slit one of their throats. The gurgling sound of his victim's death rattle made the others stir in their sleep, but Fenris made short work of the groggy slavers. Anders made his way to where the guard sat frozen under the power of Hawke's spell. The cavern entrance the man had been tasked to guard let to a small chamber where several slaves sat bound in the dark, shuffling away from the entrance as Anders neared. He flicked his wrist to summon a heatless flame on his palm. The slaves stared up at him with wide-eyed terror. Four elves, two humans. All of them adults. No Marni.

The air rushed from Ander's lungs in a rush of dread and disappointment. He left the slaves and looked around the main chamber for bodies or another holding area. There was no sign of her.

He could barely hear Hawke's voice over the thrumming of his pulse in his ears. "What is it Anders?" she asked, still maintaining the stasis spell that held the guard immobile.

He shook his head. "She's not here. This must be the wrong group of slavers." That was a preferable possibility to the one that actually dominated his thoughts. "We'll… we'll finish here, and then search the other caverns." Hawke nodded, her brow furrowed, no doubt questioning the likelihood that Marni would be held in another cave, but she would not deny him his hope. If Anders needed to search every cave in the Free Marches, Hawke would be there with him.

Anders returned to the slave chamber and began untying the bonds of the former-slaves in a numb daze. As he worked on the last person's bonds, slowly loosening the knots at her wrists, one of the others—a human man whom Anders vaguely recognized from Darktown—spoke to him. "You're the healer, aren't you?" he asked. "'Adder' or something."

"'Anders,'" he absently corrected.

The man nodded. "I thought it was you. Recognized the ponytail and the skirt," he said, satisfied. "They had your little one, you know. The dark-skinned knife-ear with the curly hair and the sharp tongue."

Anders started, and felt blood pulse anew through his veins. Hope teetered on the edge of terror. "They had Marni? Do you know where she is now?"

The man shook his head. "Nowhere good, I expect. They dragged her out of here when she got mouthy with the guard. She and one other, a pretty young thing, a human. That was some time ago, now."

Anders' knees weakened, imagining what fate might have befallen his young charge. He leaned against the wall for support, the cool, hard stone grounding him even as the room spun.

"What do we do now, sir?" said a young man's voice behind him.

Anders closed his eyes, not wanting to deal with the care of six frightened slaves just then. "You're free," he said heavily. "You may follow us back to Kirkwall if you wish or go your own way."

The slaves began to rise from the ground, rubbing their wrists and holding one another in relief and comfort. If any of them thought to embrace Anders in a show of gratitude, his melancholic aspect must have made them think better of it. They all granted him his space and maintained the silence he kept as he searched himself for a spark of hope in the midst of the cold, dark cave. After some time, he walked slowly out of the hold into the larger cavern, bracing himself against the wall as he shuffled slowly forward.

Hawke and Fenris were both standing in front of the guard who was now tied up but no longer ensorcelled. At the sight of the man, Anders' anger burned hotly, remembering him threatening to "break" Marni after she'd planted her blade deep into the meat of his thigh. Justice pushed against Ander's thoughts, and he was tempted to let go, allow Justice to rip him apart in a mad need to balance Marni's victimization with this man's life, but Anders reminded himself that the man might have information that could help him find Marni if she still lived and give him closure if she didn't.

"I'd like to ask him some questions," Anders said softly to Hawke.

Hawke nodded. "I thought you might."

Anders stood between Hawke and Fenris, directly in front of the slaver's sneering face. "You?" the man spat. "Don't you Free Marcher's know to keep your abominations chained?"

An amused snort escaped Fenris, winning him a stern look from Hawke that encouraged him to pass his laugh off as a cough.

Anders' narrowed his eyes. "Seeing as I'm not the one who's chained, I suggest you try not to make me any angrier than I already am."

"Good advice," Hawke said with a grin. "Anders here is an absolute laugh riot compared to the other guy."

Ignoring Hawke's joke about Justice, Anders leaned in close to the slaver's face. "You took a girl from Darktown. The one who stabbed you. I want to know what happened to her."

A wicked grin slowly spread across the slaver's face. "Let's just say, she got what was coming to her."

"Hmm," Hawke said. "See, now you're playing games. You don't seem to understand the gravity of your situation. Fenris, do me a favor and show our friend how serious this is."

Fenris stepped forward, as Anders moved to the side. "Gladly," he said as he lifted a glowing hand and plunged it into the man's chest. The slaver screamed out in agony.

"Do you see now?" Hawke asked. "Very serious. Now, you have a choice: you can either die here, very painfully. Or you can come back to Kirkwall with us and spend the rest of your days in comfortable captivity if you cooperate. Now kindly answer Anders' question: what happened to the girl?"

"What do you think happened to her?" the man said, choking on blood and pain as he tried to speak through the torture Fenris was inflicting. "She wouldn't keep her mouth shut, wouldn't stop her kicking and biting. More trouble than she was worth. So we cut her open and made the best of her. Threw the body in the sea." The man laughed wetly. "I'll tell you this, though: little cunt died screaming."

A slight twitch of Fenris' lip and the elf tightened his fist. Anders quickly turned to avoid glimpsing the grisly effect. Hot flecks of blood, speckled the side of his neck as Fenris squeezed the slaver's heart into pulp. Anders hated Fenris' casual brutality, but just this once, he felt grateful that Hawke had let him off his leash. Marni was dead, but so were the people who had killed her. Justice had been served, and Anders' other-self curled up contentedly in the shadows of his mind, leaving room for grief to settle in.