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The snooty rich people party in Orlais had, so far, been even worse than Varric had anticipated. Not only did he have to make nice with the Orlesians and pretend to like their pretentious food, he'd had to ruin a really nice pair of boots tramping through the forest and getting spat on by a wyvern.
But if he was in a foul mood, that was nothing to Hawke's attitude. She'd finagled Sunshine out of the Gallows for the trip, which should have put her in good spirits, but she'd done little more than snap at her sister since they'd gotten into the carriage that brought them here. And the elf who had talked Hawke into coming to this monstrous party to begin with, Tallis, seemed to bring out all of Hawke's worst traits. She sniped at Tallis every chance she got, which Tallis responded to with a maddening calm that made pretty much everyone want to smack her. Or wish Hawke would.
Varric was counting the minutes until they found this jewel Tallis was hunting and could go home again.
What surprised him was that Sunshine was, too. "You think this will take much longer?" she asked him, as they were standing to the side of the party like useless statues, watching Hawke and Tallis try to charm their way inside the locked chateau.
"Which part?" Varric asked absently, frowning at Hawke's attempt at flirting with a guard. He could have done better, and he was pretty sure Hawke was more the guard's type.
"All of it. When do you think we can go back to Kirkwall?"
He frowned at her. "You want to go back to Kirkwall? Back to the Gallows?"
"Well, it's not necessarily cozy," Sunshine admitted, "but it's home, isn't it?"
"You're the first mage I've heard use that term for it. I'd have thought you'd be happy to be free."
She looked around at the party sourly. "Bowing and scraping for idiot nobles is free? Hardly. You sound like my sister."
"Hawke's got a good head on her shoulders."
"She used to. Now she mostly spits acid." With a humorless laugh, Sunshine added, "She's basically become a wyvern. And what's with this 'Champion of Kirkwall' nonsense? She sounds like she really enjoys it."
Varric had to admit she did sound like that—but he wasn't about to tell Sunshine that her sister enjoyed using the term because she was needling him with it. He wasn't opening that can of worms for all the tea in Llomerryn. He shrugged, instead, saying lightly, "I believe she thought about going with 'the only one in Kirkwall not completely insane', but that's too much of a mouthful."
Sunshine leaned toward him, whispering. "She wanted me to stay here. Can you believe it?"
He could. "She tried to smuggle you out of Kirkwall and you wouldn't go?"
"That's about the size of it. I'm doing good work in the Gallows, Varric. I can help there, make things easier for some of the others. Without me … things could be a lot worse."
Oh, these Hawkes. So much nobility you could choke on it, and yet on them it wasn't insufferable. Instead it was gallant and brave and lovely. Still … Sunshine turning down the chance to run certainly went a long way toward explaining Hawke's current mood.
As Hawke made her way across the party, she ran into one of the last people she had expected to see: Leliana. Sister Nightingale smiled at Hawke with her mouth, but there was a warning in her blue eyes. "Champion. How nice to see you again."
"Sister Leliana, is it? Of the Lothering Chantry?" No reason to mention their most recent meeting. Not in public.
"Indeed. And everyone has heard of your exploits. Kirkwall is lucky to have you."
Hawke wasn't so certain of that, but she smiled as she was expected to. "Thank you. How kind." Across the party she saw the elf Tallis approach a guard, speak to him for a moment, and then walk away with a brief shake of the head. Another dead end. Hawke itched for her sword, to just burst through the doors, fight her way to this gem, and get out of here.
"Be careful," Leliana murmured, under cover of adjusting the rose in Hawke's buttonhole. "Duke Prosper may seem ridiculous, but there is more to him than meets the eye."
"I'll keep that in mind." Hawke nodded to her and stepped back, only to find Duke Prosper just behind her.
"Ah, Champion, so nice to see you making friends. Come with me, let me show you around the party. I hope you won't find my guests too overwhelming."
She raised her eyebrows. "Clearly you haven't met my friends. All of them are crazy and most of them are killers."
He laughed, as though it was a joke. "Well, then, you will fit in most comfortably here."
They spoke to a woman and her daughters Hawke knew vaguely from Kirkwall, who sniffed audibly at her presence, as if she had just fallen off the Fereldan turnip cart. Perhaps she had been hasty in thinking she could find her sister a home among these people, she admitted to herself. Still … it would have been nice to have Bethany settled, and safe, somewhere far from Kirkwall and whatever was going to come of the growing unrest there.
The duke introduced her to Leopold, his wyvern. Hawke pretended to suffer from a sudden migraine, and the duke solicitously produced a key to the main chateau so she could lie down. From there, everything went predictably badly: She and Tallis were captured in the duke's vault in an attempt to steal a gem that Tallis admitted didn't exist. Tallis admitted to being a Qunari agent, hunting for a rogue Qunari who was planning to sell secrets to the duke. She did manage to break them out of the vault just as Varric and Bethany found them, but then somehow Hawke managed to let herself get talked into helping find this rogue Qunari instead of just chucking it all and going home, like a sensible woman would have.
And, naturally, when they found the rogue Qunari, he was in the act of handing over his secrets, which landed Hawke and her people directly in the middle of the Qunari and the duke's soldiers.
"Why is it you never take me anywhere nice?" Varric complained as he drew Bianca.
Since the reasons there were completely obvious to both of them, Hawke didn't bother to answer. She was too happy to finally be able to use her sword to get things done. She didn't know why people bothered with spycraft and playacting when slicing through your problems with cold steel was so much easier and more efficient.
At the end of the battle, Duke Prosper's pet wyvern was down, and had thrown the duke off the side of the mountaintop as he fell. Hawke dispassionately watched him fall. "Well. I believe our work here is done. Shall we return home?"
Tallis met them as they were heading for the chateau and their carriage. "Thank you, Hawke. I couldn't have done this without you."
"That's what I do: feed the sick, cure the poor, pat the hungry on the head."
Tallis frowned, and while she was frowning, Hawke walked off and left her there, promising herself she was never getting talked into solving someone else's problems again.