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No one was particularly talkative on the way to Ferelden the next day. Dorian worried about the meeting with his family's retainer, Varric worried about the red lyrium, Bridget worried about the baby—and the Iron Bull kept his own counsel, as usual.
They arrived in Redcliffe mid-morning of the second day. The Iron Bull and Varric discreetly withdrew into the background, letting Bridget and Dorian approach the inn by themselves.
Inside, Bridget went to the bartender. "I understand you have a representative of the Pavus family staying here?"
He looked at her, and then at Dorian. Tevinters were not particularly welcome in Redcliffe at the moment, given what had happened all too recently, and so Bridget wasn't surprised at the sneer on the man's face as he pointed up the stairs.
Bridget hung back and let Dorian knock on the door, but she kept a hand on her staff, just in case.
A man who looked very much like an older version of Dorian opened the door.
"Father?"
"Dorian." There was great relief in the man's tone.
"What are you doing here?"
Dorian's father looked past him to Bridget. "I assume you are the Inquisitor. I do apologize for the deception. I never meant for you to become involved."
"Of course not," Dorian spat bitterly. "Magister Pavus couldn't come to Skyhold and be seen with the dread Inquisitor. What would people think? So what is this, exactly, Father? Ambush? Kidnapping? Warm family reunion?"
"Must we discuss it in the hall? Come in, Dorian."
"No, thank you. I'm quite comfortable out here."
"You went through all of this to get Dorian here—he's standing in front of you," Bridget said. "Just talk to him."
"Yes, Father, talk to me. Let me hear how mystified you are by my anger." Dorian turned to Bridget. "Do you know what he did? As you know, I prefer the company of men. My father disapproves. Who I am gets in the way of his dream of distilling the perfect mage. Perfect body, perfect mind—the perfect leader. His fucking legacy."
Magister Pavus winced. "Dorian."
"Is this all about who you sleep with?" Bridget asked.
"No. That's not all," Dorian snapped. He took a step toward his father, spitting the next words at him. "He taught me to hate blood magic. 'The resort of the weak mind.' His words. But when his son's happiness got in the way of his plans, he wasted no time stooping to that resort." He turned to Bridget and she could see the pain hidden in his eyes behind the anger. "He tried to—to change me." His voice broke on the words.
"I only wanted what was best for you!" his father protested.
"You wanted the best for you, you mean!"
Bridget hated to see her friend this unhappy. If they walked away, if he didn't deal with this today, he would never be past it. This would always be festering in him. "Don't leave it like this, Dorian."
Dorian looked at her, about to protest, then gave a short, sharp nod before turning to his father. "Tell me why you came."
"If I knew what I had tried to do would drive you to the Inquisition—"
"You didn't. I joined the Inquisition because it's the right thing to do. Once I had a father who would have known that."
Dorian began walking away, pushing past Bridget. His father's voice followed him down the hall. "Once I had a son who trusted me. A trust I betrayed. I only wanted to—talk to you. Hear your voice again. Ask you to forgive me. Please, Dorian, give me a chance."
Bridget put a hand on Dorian's arm, looking up into his eyes. He closed them, in pain or in prayer, possibly both, and nodded again. "Go on. I'll be all right. Give me … a little while."
"We have some time before we have to meet Varric's contact. Don't hurry this."
"Thank you." He turned from her and went into his father's room, shutting the door behind him.
Bridget waited with Varric and the Iron Bull, spending Inquisition money in Redcliffe's shops, fidgeting a bit in her worry that somehow she had pushed Dorian into exactly the trap he had been afraid of. It was a relief when he joined them.
"How did it go?" She searched his face, which looked the same. Possibly his grey eyes were a bit less shadowed, but it was hard to tell.
"I'm all right. We can … can we talk about this later?"
"Of course." She looked at Varric. "Are you ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be."
They found the Deep Roads entrance and proceeded inside cautiously. "If we run into darkspawn, we should be careful, boss," the Iron Bull said. "Don't get any of their blood on you, and whatever you do, don't swallow any. Best if in combat, you cover your mouth and nose."
"Got it. Thank you, Bull." She only just stopped her hand from going automatically to her stomach.
"Finally!" said a voice behind them. "I was beginning to think you weren't coming."
They turned to see the dwarf Bianca coming toward them from the shadows.
"We're pretty close to on time," Varric protested.
"By Varric time, maybe." She nudged him teasingly. "Look, these idiots are carrying red lyrium out of here in unprotected containers, so we need to shut this down fast."
"Unbelievable," Varric muttered. "I wish I'd never seen this stuff. Never heard of it."
"If you hadn't, we wouldn't know anything about what's going on," Bridget told him. "If we stop this, it's because of you."
"Thanks, Sunflower."
Bianca glanced at Bridget, her eyes hostile. So, she didn't like Varric using nicknames for other women? Bridget wondered where Bianca had been all this time.
They ran into trouble almost immediately—dwarves, and then darkspawn. Bridget hung back even further than usual while fighting the darkspawn, barely daring to breathe while the fighting went on. Fortunately, the Iron Bull seemed to enjoy fighting darkspawn as much as he enjoyed fighting anything else, and he didn't mind being the entire front line. Bianca helped a little, but not as much as Bridget would have expected.
After one skirmish with a group of dwarves, Varric came back to Bridget, vainly trying to brush blood off his coat. "We may be too close to the surface for these to count as 'Deep Roads'—but have I mentioned I hate the Deep Roads?"
"Once or twice."
"Skulking around in caves, shooting guys—is this your day-to-day?" Bianca asked.
"I usually try to avoid the caves," he told her.
"You know, that letter you sent me about the red lyrium is the first I'd heard from you since the Chantry explosion."
He raised his eyebrows. "Don't tell me you were worried about me."
"Seriously, if you'd died in that mess, I'd have come back to Kirkwall and dug you up just to kick your ass."
"You know," Bridget put in, "Varric's a closet Andrastean. What if he'd been burnt in a pyre?"
Again, that faintly hostile look. Bianca shrugged. "Then I'd have kicked his ashes." She looked at Varric. "How long are you going to be in Orlais, do you think?"
"As long as this weird shit is going on, at least. Why?"
"You'll have to stop by before Bogdan gets back, see my new workshop."
Varric frowned. "You know your family will kill me if I stop by, right?"
"They wouldn't kill you." Her tone made it clear that anything up to that was quite likely.
"You always say that—and they always send assassins."
They had come to a massive set of doors, with what looked like a very complicated locking mechanism. Bianca stepped toward it, touched it in a few places, and the doors swung open. She turned to Varric with pride, while Bridget felt the prickles of a new suspicion.
"You must have been here often if you've taken the time to renovate," Dorian observed.
"I don't know if Varric's told you, but the Merchant's Guild is cutthroat. Literally. I built the doors to keep rivals from following me down here and arranging 'accidents'."
Bridget looked to Varric for confirmation, but he was busy peering through the doors, looking as though he hadn't heard the conversation. He led the way inside the chamber, his light footsteps echoing in the silence that had fallen since the last darkspawn fight.
At the back of the chamber, Bianca dug a key out of her pocket, locking closed another set of doors with a similarly complex lock. "There we are. They won't be able to use this entrance again."
No. After all this, it was as simple as Bianca locking a door? And she had needed them for this?
"Bianca." Varric's tone, hurt and betrayed, said he had come to the same conclusion. "Why am I here?"
"I couldn't get through the darkspawn and the Carta on my own."
"Andraste's ass, Bianca! You're the leak?"
"When I got the location, I went and had a look for myself. I found the red lyrium, and I … studied it."
"Of course you did." Dorian shook his head in disbelief. "Because why not?"
"The more you know, the better off you are," Bianca snapped.
Varric raised his hands in the air, shaking them in frustration. "You know what it does to people!"
"I was doing you a favor. You want to know how this stuff works just as much as I do!"
"I wanted a lid on it, Bianca, not to have it out there in the world killing people!"
"But don't you want to know what I found out?" There was a feverish light in her eyes. Whatever else she was, Bianca was serious about her hunger for knowledge, which didn't make her any less frightening as far as Bridget was concerned. "Red lyrium has the Blight. Do you know what that means?"
"It's creepy shit?" the Iron Bull put in.
"It's alive!"
"Yeah. Creepy. Like I said."
Bianca ignored him, looking intently at Varric. "I couldn't get any further on my own, so I tracked down a Grey Warden mage. Blight and magical expertise all in one. I found this guy, Larius. He seemed really interested in helping with my research. So I gave him a key."
"Larius?"
"You know who that is, Varric?" Bridget asked.
"He was the Grey Warden we met in Corypheus's prison. And he definitely wasn't a mage before. Sunflower, what if that was the way Corypheus didn't die? If he left there somehow riding in Larius's body?"
"That would answer some questions—and raise several others." A chill filled her. What if Corypheus couldn't be killed?
"I didn't realize anything was wrong until you said you'd found red lyrium in Haven," Bianca explained. "So I came here, and, well …"
"You had to know we would figure this out," Varric said, pain evident in his voice.
"I had to help make it right."
"You couldn't have known what would happen." Bridget told her.
"Maferath's balls, she couldn't!" Varric argued. "I told her exactly how bad this shit was. I told her to keep away from it!"
"I know I screwed up, but we did fix it! It's as right as we could make it. Please, Varric."
"This isn't one of your machines—you can't just replace a part and make everything right!"
"I had to try. I can't just wallow in my mistakes forever, kicking myself, telling stories of what I should have done." The two dwarves were nose to nose now, years of hurt and longing in every line of their bodies.
"As if I would tell stories about my own mistakes."
"No, you hide those away and brood over them."
"Get a room already." The Iron Bull slung his blade over his shoulder. "Boss, you about ready to get out of here?"
It was Varric who answered him, backing slowly away from Bianca. "Yeah, we've done all we can here. Bianca, you'd better get home before someone misses you."
She stumbled a few steps after him before stopping. "Varric …"
He paused in the doorway. Without turning, he waved a hand above his head. "Don't worry about it."
Bianca looked up at Bridget. "Get him killed and I'll feed you your own eyeballs, Inquisitor."
A lot of sharp words hovered on Bridget's tongue, but she decided to keep them all to herself. Without a word, she turned and followed Varric.
The trip back to Skyhold was as silent as the trip out had been.
The kitchens were hot and smelly and filthy, and Rainier threw himself into the work with gusto. The cook was foul-tempered, kicking the poor elves that worked with her. She clearly wished she felt comfortable kicking Rainier, and he wasn't sure he would have minded if she had. This was more interesting than sitting in prison, at least.
He couldn't help noticing several cats hunting mice in the corners. He had tripped over a few of them. And then a pile of herbs appeared on a chair that had been pushed against the wall. The cats swarmed it, and seemed to go a little crazy—and to the astonishment of everyone in the kitchen, the cook stopped what she was doing to laugh heartily at their antics.
Rainier picked up a barrel of flour that wasn't needed any longer today and hauled it to a storage room, nearly falling over it in surprise when Cole suddenly appeared next to him. Rainier had never particularly understood the boy, but he knew Bridget liked him. He put two and two together. "You put out the herbs for the cats."
"And the cheese for the mice," Cole agreed.
"So the cook laughs at the cats instead of kicking the scullery maids."
"Yes." Cole looked at Rainier seriously. "The others are angry. They wanted Blackwall, not Rainier."
"And here I thought I was just imagining all the frowning faces. Would you care to tear into me as well, now that you know?"
Cole frowned in confusion. "No."
"You, who heal the helpless—you're not angry about what I was hiding?"
"You were never hidden from me. 'Mockingbird, mockingbird,'" he whispered. "Too many voices in the carriage. Maker, they're young."
Rainier turned away, not wanting to see the images the boy was evoking.
"'If I tell my men to stop, they'll know it was all a lie. Cold, trapped, heart hammering like axes on a carriage door.'"
"Stop," Rainier said painfully. "Please stop. You can't heal this."
"You will understand. Your heart will open, and you will feel."
"I feel already," Rainier protested, but there was no one there. No one but the ghosts that had been his constant companions all these years. Picking up the barrel of salted fish he had been bidden to bring back, he let the strain of hard work fill his mind instead, knowing hopelessly that the distraction wouldn't last long.