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Blackwall couldn't get far enough fast enough from the main hall of Skyhold to suit him. He marched straight down the stairs, ignoring all the familiar faces he passed. He didn't want to see them, didn't want to know which ones were frowning and which smiling, if any were. He proceeded down the second set of stairs, making his way back to the familiar territory of the barn.

Inside, everything was just as he had left it. Dust had gathered on the nearly complete gryphon rocking horse he'd been carving, his tools there as if he had put them down yesterday and not … however long it had been. Two weeks, he thought. He hadn't been counting.

Without thinking about it, he picked up a cloth and began wiping the dust off the gryphon. But something was off. The longer he stood there at the workbench, the more certain he was that he wasn't alone.

Turning, he saw her standing there. The one person who hadn't been in the keep for his judgment, he realized. "Are you here to kill me?"

Spymaster Leliana stepped forward from the shadows. "No. I think we both know what a mistake that would be for the Inquisition."

"Then what? Run me out of Skyhold on a rail?"

"Not that, either. The Inquisitor wants you here; that is what she will get."

"And I have no say in this?"

Leliana looked at the cloth in his hand pointedly, and he hastily dropped it on the table behind him. He took her meaning, however. If he had meant to run away, why had his first impulse been to pick up—at least with the gryphon—where he had left off? Blackwall suspected Leliana knew the answer to that as well as he did. It was likely why she was here.

"So what do you want?" he asked her.

"Only this: She will ask you to join her again, to fight at her side."

"And you want to ensure that I'll go?"

"On the contrary. I want to tell you that you must not."

A cold chill worked its way down his back. Was Leliana going behind Bridget's back to sabotage the Inquisition?

Leliana's blue eyes looked at him keenly. "This bothers you. You think she needs you there to protect her, to keep her from harm. And that is exactly why you must not go. Since you have left, Bridget has learned to stand on her own, to defend herself. If you come back and there you are with your sword and shield, her protector, she will lean on you again. She will lose much of the strength she has earned." She stepped closer to him, her voice becoming more urgent. "Someday when she faces Corypheus, as she must, we will naturally provide her as much support as we can—but the Anchor says that in the end, it will be the two of them. She must have the strength, the courage, and the confidence in herself to fight him. And to win. Do not rob her of that—no matter how much she might want you to."

Blackwall was startled, but as he thought it over, she made a great deal of sense. Bridget would never hide behind Cassandra or the Iron Bull the way she would behind him, because she trusted him that much more. He thought of her there on the dais, looking into his heart, pronouncing her judgment, and cold anger filled him all over again. "What makes you think I'd agree to go anyway?"

Leliana smiled. "You would agree. Eventually. Now … perhaps you will not."

He wondered, watching her, if an accident of some kind might befall him if he didn't follow her directives. He wouldn't put it past her. Oh, nothing fatal. But a broken leg, a concussion … anything to keep him from the field. "I'm not going anywhere," he told her with finality. "I am to atone as the man I am, whatever that means. I will do it right here where everyone can see I follow my orders to the letter." He curled his lip. Thom Rainier would have curled his lip, and so now Blackwall did as well. They two were one man, now, or so he was told. He might as well act like it.

But the Spymaster's smile only widened. "I thought you would see reason."

And she was gone, back to her aerie high above Skyhold where she saw much more than he had imagined she might.

Blackwall's second visitor was there and gone while he was up in the loft shaking the dust off his blankets. He came downstairs to find the plate of cookies on his work table. When he bit into one, it crumbled tastelessly on his tongue, the raisin embedded in it hard enough to crack a tooth if he wasn't careful. Sera.

Much as he was determined not to care about any of these people—or their leader—he couldn't help but smile at the young elf's gesture.

His third visitor was the one he'd been expecting. Bridget stood in the doorway of the barn and everything seemed brighter. He wanted to go to her, to kiss her and hold her close and never let her go … and he couldn't. Not ever. Thom Rainier didn't deserve her. He never had. And he wasn't Blackwall anymore—Rainier was all that was left. Bridget had seen to that, and in that moment, she had ended everything that had been between them.

"What do you want?" he asked her. "It seems like you've said your piece."

She swallowed, and he could see in her eyes that he had hurt her. To hide how much he hated himself, he told himself he was glad, that she deserved it.

"I came to tell you that we'll be leaving day after tomorrow. I wanted to give you some time to get your bearings before we get back at it."

"We, Inquisitor?"

"Yes. We. You are still part of the Inquisition."

He shook his head. "You can force me to stay, but you can't force me to go. I won't be accompanying you out of Skyhold." He gestured at the barn around him. "This is where I will serve my sentence."

"You're supposed to atone, not wallow in self-pity," she snapped.

"Pity you didn't think of that when you were making your wise decision."

They looked at each other there in the barn. He couldn't tell if she had been expecting a loving reunion or not, and he told himself he took pleasure in dashing whatever hopes she might have had.

Bridget was the first to look away, sighing. Her shoulders slumped. "Fine. Have it your way. If you won't accompany me, however, you will be expected to make yourself useful. I won't have you holing yourself up in the barn and sulking."

That was certainly what Captain Thom Rainier would have done, sit here and sulk, drink a lot of wine, and tell himself that everyone else had wronged him. Blackwall had to admit there was a temptation there, to surrender himelf to his basest impulses and simply let go of the man he had tried to be for so long. But Bridget wasn't going to let him, and he wasn't sure if he was grateful to her for that or if he despised her endless optimism and her determined belief in him. He wondered what task she would set for him. Muck out the horse stalls? Take a turn with Cullen's soldiers? Chop wood for the fireplaces?

"You'll work in the kitchens. In the scullery. You'll do exactly as the cooks tell you. If you don't, I'll hear of it … and you won't like the consequences." Her shoulders had straightened, her posture firm and strong as she delivered his sentence. He could see what Leliana had meant in saying that Bridget had learned confidence since he'd been gone.

But the kitchens? What did he know about kitchens?

"You aren't afraid I'll poison the soup?"

She laughed at that. "You haven't met the cooks. They'll keep you too busy to do anything but fall asleep on your feet."

Without waiting for his response, she turned and walked away. Watching her go, he felt a longing, a wish that he could reach out and tell her he understood, tell her he still loved her … but the situation was what it had always been. He was a murderer, and nothing would ever change that. He would have to get used to it.

Walking away from Blackwall—Thom Rainier—Bridget made sure her back was straight and her stride even. The last thing she was about to do was let anyone know how his coldness and his anger, the iciness in the blue eyes that used to look on her so gently, hurt her. Or how close she was to vomiting into a puddle right here in the middle of Skyhold. Clearly, coming to a decision on Blackwall—Rainier's fate had not settled her stomach in the least.

What had she expected? she asked herself. That she would walk into the barn and he would pledge his undying love and it would be just like it had been before? If that was possible, he wouldn't have left her the way he had in the first place.

She hoped he tripped in a puddle of grease and burned off half his beard and ended up smelling like rotten vegetables, she thought with what she freely admitted was childish pique. What she had been thinking assigning him to the scullery, she didn't know. She only hoped that the cooks would understand.

It took a moment before she was able to force herself up the main stairs of the keep, ready to face whoever would be in there. It had cleared out relatively fast after she finished pronouncing her judgment, and no one had stayed around to discuss her decision and how they felt about it, which she appreciated. Still … sooner or later they would feel the need to let her know what they thought, and she wasn't ready. Maybe she would never be ready.

Inside, once her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, she saw Varric in deep conversation with another dwarf. They didn't look like they wanted company, so she was going to pass them by, but he waved her over.

As she came closer to them, Bridget realized to her surprise that the other dwarf was female. The dwarf spoke up before Varric had the chance to introduce them. "You're the Inquisitor, right? Bianca Davri, at your service."

Bridget wouldn't really have needed to know the woman's name to know who she was—the way Varric couldn't keep his eyes off her was enough. "Welcome to Skyhold, Bianca. What brings you all the way up here? Varric's magnetic personality?"

To her surprise, Varric didn't respond with one of his trademark breezy brush-offs. Instead, he was dead serious. "Bianca thinks she has a lead on where Corypheus got his red lyrium."

"The sight of Bartrand's Folly, the thaig Varric and his brother found, has been leaked," Bianca explained. "There's a Deep Roads entrance crawling with strange humans carting out red lyrium by the handful."

"Is there only one entrance? Can we seal it off?" If they could cut off Corypheus from his red lyrium, that could change everything.

Bianca nodded. "There should be. Navigating the Deep Roads isn't like the surface. There are no accurate maps of the whole system, and there are cave-ins, darkspawn, lava floods … If you find a route that gets where you're going, you don't deviate. Trying to find another way could be deadly."

"Do we know who gave away the thaig's location?"

Varric looked uncomfortable. "There were a few people who knew. Hirelings from the expedition. A couple close friends."

"How they found out isn't important," Bianca said decisively. "What matters is that we know where they are now."

Bridget wasn't sure she agreed, but it wasn't worth arguing about. Time enough to figure out who had leaked the location when the supply was cut off. "Thank you for the information, Bianca. We'll need to deal with this quickly."

Varric nodded. "I couldn't agree more."

"I'll keep an eye on their operation until you can get there," Bianca offered.

"Bianca … Be careful."

"I always am." She smiled at Varric, but that didn't seem to reassure him any.

He gathered his thoughts with an obvious effort. "Sunflower, the Seeker was looking for you."

"Did she say why?"

"No, but if she was asking me about you, it must have been important."

Bridget smiled. "Thanks. I'll go find her."

"Oh, hey, Sunflower?"

"Yes, Varric?"

"For what it's worth … I think you did the right thing."

"Thank you, Varric. That … means a lot."

He smiled, although it faded again when he glanced at Bianca.

Bridget left them there, wondering if she would ever get the whole story.

She found Cassandra in her usual spot above the blacksmiths' shop, bent over the book she had found at the fortress. Cassandra looked up as she approached and sighed.

"Are you all right?" Bridget asked. "You look drained."

"I should be asking you the same thing. That was … not easy, what you did today."

Bridget nodded. "It was harder than I imagined it would be." She glanced out the window toward the barn. "Not likely to get easier, either."

"Someday it will," Cassandra said with sympathy.

"I hope so." She took the seat across from Cassandra. "Tell me about the book."

Smoothing her hand across the cover, Cassandra said, "I always thought the Rite of Tranquility was a necessary evil."

"Is that what the book is about? The Rite?" Bridget fought to keep her disapproval of the practice from showing on her face.

"Yes. As you know, the discovery that the Rite of Tranquility could be reversed is what finally began the Mage Rebellion. The shock of its discovery, in addition to what had happened in Kirkwall …" Cassandra looked down at the book under her hands. "But it appears we have always known how to reverse it."

"You mean the rebellion could have been prevented." The nausea was rising in her again. All those mages, lost. And for nothing.

"Perhaps … but I think we both know it had been a long time coming. For many reasons. Still—it is worse than that. We created the Rite of Tranquility." She took a deep breath. "I told you once about my vigil, the months I spent emptying myself of all emotion. I was made Tranquil, and I did not even know it. Then the vigil summoned a spirit of faith to touch my mind, which broke Tranquility and gave me my abilities."

Bridget gasped, shocked by the revelation. "That—sounds irresponsible. And dangerous."

Cassandra nodded. "And they told no one." She swallowed, her face twisting. Bridget had never seen her so upset. "I had thought to restore the Order, after what Lord Seeker Lucius did to it. But now … I am not certain it deserves to be rebuilt. We harbored secrets and let them fester. We acted to survive, but not to serve. That is not the Maker's work."

"Then what is?"

"There is no way to be certain. That is why we must seek it out. Perhaps we lost our way because we stopped looking."

"I can't tell you what to do, Cassandra."

"No. I know you can't. But I appreciate you listening. I know it is not an easy topic for a mage to hear about."

"It isn't … but it's important to you, and you are important to me." She reached for Cassandra's hands. "Whatever I can do to help you move forward from this, you know I will."

"I do know. And I thank you." Cassandra's grey eyes studied Bridget's face. "You do not look well, my friend. This has taken more of a toll on you than you have admitted to, which is not a surprise."

"It's not just that." It was on the tip of Bridget's tongue to mention the nausea, which had been going on for weeks now.

Nausea. For weeks. Hastily she counted backward. In all the turmoil of Blackwall going missing, she hadn't even noticed that she had also missed her monthlies. Holy Maker. She was pregnant.