It was interesting how little control the elves of the alienage had over major parts of their lives – whom they were to marry, for example, but how much freedom they had in other respects. Teneira could not even plan her own wedding, but in the shed behind her father's house, she could play with extracts and toxins to her heart's content. She could slip a potion to a desperate human woman who was on her sixth pregnancy and could barely feed the five she already had. She could share an electrifying glance with the young sergeant of the guard who walked the beat in the alienage across a crowded market. The weeks - and there were eight of them - before her wedding were like living in an odd dream. Every day the same thing happened. She stood behind her stall. Villais came by. She offered a poultice, her eyes on the ground. He asked for a kiss, his smile easy and rakish. She blushed like a proper elfin maiden, and waved him off, but when he went to the gate at the end of his shift, ready to head back to the Orlesian quarter where he still made his home, every so often she would be waiting for him, to give him the kiss he requested beyond the prying eyes of the neighbors. There would be snippets of conversation, sometimes, small pictures into the life each of them led when they were not hiding in the sentry box. Sometimes one or the other of them would get carried away, and the other would have to remove their hands and step back before clothes were shed and anything happened that they could not take back.

It wasn't a love affair, not exactly. They could not, of course, talk about it in anything but coded language and eye contact. That would mean one of them giving up the upper hand. They certainly could not discuss it with anyone else, that would mean both of them losing everything. But every so often, when she felt like it, they could pretend that they were just two ordinary young people doing what young people do.

On the day before her wedding, she was closing up shop early for the day. Most of her regular customers had already come by with their orders, and she wanted to take some time for herself. She was stacking the boxes of potions back into her wheelbarrow when Villais came by.

"A poultice, sir?" she asked, lowering her eyes.

He leaned on the counter of the stall, with no merriment in his face. "I require a meeting with the arlessa," he said.

She looked up at him in alarm for a second, and then returned to her business, speaking to the bottles, not to him, "In the room on the second floor above the general store. Tonight, after sundown. Will you have your guardsmen with you?"

"I will be alone."

"I am never alone," she replied, "Bring guards if you'd like."

"I don't anticipate this becoming too dangerous," he said, though he looked uneasy.

In the room where she had first met Eddin Rasphander, Teneira sat, puffing nervously on her pipe - this time with nothing but sweet tobacco in it - and waiting for Villais to arrive. She looked up at the portrait of her mother, hoping that it all wasn't about to bite her in the ass. Adaia looked coldly down at her through green eyes that Anoril Valstrig had painted so beautifully, offering neither advice nor comfort.

Villais arrived soon after, alone, as promised.

"Where are your people?" he asked.

"They're around," she replied, "The walls are thin. What do you have to tell me? Or was this a pretext to get me alone?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Tabris," he said brusquely, "This is serious business. Rasphander's after my head, he's after your head, and the heads of everyone that was in this room with you."

"My cousins," Teneira said, "Bloody hell… Soris is getting married tomorrow as well, I can't exactly tell him to leave town…"

"Tomorrow?" Villais asked, all of a sudden taking on the look of a cat that had been doused with a basin full of dish water, "You're getting married tomorrow?"

"Yes, tomorrow," she said, unable to meet his gaze, "What's going on?"

"I won't bore you with politics in the guardhouse," Villais said, "Smug prick was bragging all over the barracks that he had a plan to take care of you and your cousins and the whole alienage at the same time."

"But you don't know what he's planning," she said.

"It involves his half brother," Anton said, "You know, the noble one. I don't think I can protect you."

"You're not here to protect me," she said, "You're here to protect the alienage."

"I don't think this hole has a fighting chance without you," he said.

"Does he mean to kill me?" she asked.

"No, just to 'send a message,' as he put it," Villais responded, "To 'put an uppity sow in her place.' He was drunk when he said it, I don't know If it was all bluster or… or what."

Ten sighed. She was expecting something like this to happen. Of all the damned stupid times to get married, she thought. Life in the alienage was always a gamble. They had their traditions because it gave them a set of rules, things you were supposed to do when bad things happened. Funeral rites, the rites performed when a child was born, and, yes, marriage.

One of her first memories was of a body being launched over the high gate with a catapult, sprawling on the cobblestones. She didn't know the boy personally, but hung back and watched as the crowd gathered. Her father stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder, not even trying to shield her. The body was purpled with bruises, the face so swollen it nearly was unrecognizable as belonging to a person. But one did recognize him. His mother, who started screaming.

"Is she scared, dad?" asked Ten. She must have been six or seven.

"Yes, love," her father had told her, "We're all scared."

"What happened to him?"

"Looked at the arlessa in a way she didn't like," he replied. The sign that hung around the boy's neck read "poisoner," but Teneira couldn't read yet, and would not have known the word even if she had been able to.

"Will that happen to me if I leave the alienage?"

"No, love," he said, "That won't happen to you. Guard your eyes, Teneira, and guard your body. But most of all, guard your spirit. That's the one thing they can't hurt."

"Yes, dad," she replied, though she didn't really know what he was talking about.

She figured it out - both what her father had meant and what the word "poisoner" meant - when she was a teenager. Not fully developed yet, but on her way. Maybe twelve. Maybe fourteen. She'd had a six-month apprenticeship with an Antivan alchemist who operated out of the market district, and was set loose on the alienage to ply her trade. When the elfin women came to her, seeking to cast out the child of a rapist, she saw in their eyes what her father was talking about. Damaged spirits, all. Hollow eyes and cheeks, bodies deprived of rest and peace. She would give them the potion to bring on a miscarriage, a poultice to stanch the blood, and then a sedative.

"You're stronger than you think," she'd tell them, "Someday, our daughters will not have to endure this." Some nodded, thanked her and left. Some broke down sobbing. A few older women laughed at her and pointed out that she could be their daughter, and look where she was.

The first girl who cried in her arms, a girl not much older than her, who'd been raped by her employer's son, did so through swollen eyes, as when she'd told her parents what had happened, her father had called then called a strumpet and beaten her bloody. At that point, Teneira had resolved to develop her talents in other directions. Mysteriously, the son of the girl's master came down with a strange disease. He'd survived, but the infection took both of his legs. The father was easier. She and Soris, with masks over their noses and mouths to hide their identities, crept in through his window and held a knife to his throat, promising a slow death if he laid hands on his daughter again.

"Part of me understands him," Soris said, after they'd climbed down and sheathed their knives, "He doesn't have the power to protect his daughter. It angers him, and he turns that on her."

"He's a fool and a bully," Teneira surmised.

That was the path she had gone down that, maybe ten, maybe eleven years later, had her sitting pretty as the Arlessa of the Alienage. But now the time had come that she was learning the limits of her own power, sitting at her grand meeting-room table across a half-elf who passed as human, being told that her words had rubbed someone the wrong way and she should expect retaliation.

"Is there no way I can convince you to leave town?" Villais asked.

"Leave town and go where?" she asked.

"I don't know," he sighed, "One of the hamlets outside the city walls. Even leaving the alienage… you could stay with my mother. Pretend you're her new live-in maid."

"A show of weakness," she said, though she was surprised and a little flattered at his offer to protect her, "And how long do you expect me to wash your mother's underclothes until I return?"

"Until Eddin forgets about it," he said.

"He's not going to forget about it," Teneira said, "There's no way out of this one. I thank you for the warning, Sergeant Villais, but not showing up at my own wedding would put me in a worse position. The best I can do is prepare."

"How are you going to do that?" he asked, "If I may ask."

"You may not," she said, "If you're a clever boy, I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"I think you're in over your head, Ten," he said.

"I think I am too," she admitted, and saying it out loud felt as though she were putting a huge burden down. She slumped in her chair, her head in her hands, thinking furiously of what she would have to do. A dagger under her wedding dress, poisons in leather flasks in her boots. She could protect herself, but there would be consequences.

"Don't do it, Ten," Villais said, his voice suddenly gentle. He got up from his seat and approached her from behind, gingerly putting his hand on the back of her neck, "They'll destroy you. If they don't figure out a way to hang you, there are all sorts of things they could..."

"And what is that to you?" she asked, "What is that to Anton Villais?"

"It would pain me to see such a lovely bird in a cage," he said, "To never hear her sing for joy." His hand on her neck became bolder, spreading out, his fingers curling over one shoulder.

"We are all in cages," Teneira replied coldly, "If they wanted me dead, I would be dead. Why do you think your commander put you in charge of the alienage? The guards know that peace in Denerim depends on a subtle balance of power. And whatever his prejudices, the arl is not a fool."

"But his son is," Anton said.

"Besides," Ten said, "It would take more than the worst they could do to change me. Nothing that I have endured to date has changed me…"

"I would not see you suffer," he said, "I must confess that I…" He put his other hand on her shoulder. She made no move to stop him, though his touch raised goosebumps on her upper arms. She wondered to herself, briefly, if the lad from Highever would have the same effect on her. In the years since she became a woman, she had never quite experienced something like this, and she found it both interesting and frightening.

"No," she said, standing up quickly and extricating herself from his grip, "I don't want to hear it."

"Look me in the eye and tell me there's nothing between us, and I'll leave and never look your way again," he said urgently.

"And if it suited me," Teneira said, though she could not meet his eyes, "What makes you think I would not lie to you now?"

"You're not denying it," Villais said, his voice waxing urgent, "Let's run. Come away with me to Orlais. Antiva. The Free Marches, I don't care. Just…"

"I can't," she said, her voice fierce, "What must you think of me? That I would leave my home, my family, my people, all because some pretty lad who thinks he's human wants me to?"

"Of course. Your people," he said, "And for them, you must do as is expected of you. Even to your own demise, I see that now. You would rather die doing your duty than live a thousand years looking back on having betrayed it."

"And you, you would leave your mother, your brothers? The passel of bastards?" Teneira said, "I don't think that you would."

He looked away, and she understood then that he absolutely would. If she had said yes, he would have been at the docks in an hour. It felt like a wasp sting, and suddenly she could not look at him either.

"Well let's pray that you never have a duty beyond threatening guards and preventing all the maids in Denerim from poisoning their mistresses," he said.

"Or encouraging all the maids in Denerim to poison their mistresses, if it's politically expedient," Teneira countered, "I thank you for your concern, Sergeant Villais. I do hope that we will continue to have such a fine working relationship in the future."

"If there is one," he said, "For either of us."

They parted ways at the gate, and then she went home, put that part of her life away to be nothing but a warm memory to pull out on cold nights.