The fiddler played, the elves of the alienage drank moonshine, and Teneira allowed herself to calm down for a moment while she danced, twirling her silk dress around her, flashing the knife at her thigh. Her small shows of power only went to cement her place in the Alienage. She saw a few knowing glances as the partygoers saw the flash of steel as she stepped and wove and swished her skirts. She didn't touch the beer or moonshine available, though, knowing that something was coming and that she had better be sober to meet it.
As the sun went down over the buildings to the west, the music stopped all of a sudden. Coming through the alienage like a shadow moving over the land, three familiar shapes arrived.
"A kiss from the bride!" roared Bann Vaughan, "I want a kiss from the bride!" Shianni had raised a goose egg on the back of his head, and his speech was slurred from the drug that Teneira had stuck him with. After it made you sleep, it made you act as though you'd had a few too many. As he approached her, tossing Nelaros out of the way like he was a bag of flour, she smelled the whiskey on his breath.
"And you, ginger!" he shouted, grabbing Shianni by one thin arm, "We have unfinished business!"
A hush fell over the crowd.
"Leave those women alone!" called a familiar voice. Anton Villais, flanked by Kennit, who had evidently risen from his nap and called in his supervisor for the absolute nonsense which was sure to ensure, and Jochrim who had just gone ahead and thrown his armor over his civvies, approached, "I am charged with the peace in this quarter, and you are most definitely disturbing it, arl's son or not!"
"Piss off, you Orlesian piece of shit!" he growled, striking out with his arm and knocking Villais nearly over, "The guard serves at the pleasure of my father!"
"And if your father knew you were here harassing these women?" Villais countered. He wiped a streak of blood from his mouth where Vaughan had split his lip.
"Mind your eyes, guardsman," warned one of Vaughan's friends, the one he'd called Braden, "You know as well as we that the Arl is the rule of law."
Villais' hands went for his halberd, but Kennit put his hand on his arm. After fifty winters in the alienage, the old man knew when even a guardsman could do nothing to stop a crime.
"Take me, then," Teneira said boldly, "Leave these other women alone. We both know I'm the one you're after."
"And why would I give you what you want, whore?" Vaughan said, "No, I think not. Two elvish bitches is better than one, and five is better than two! You're going to want to come with us."
Teneira did something uncharacteristic at that point, and she lost her temper. How dare he? She leaned back and spat in his face. It ran down his nose, he began to laugh, and she knew she had made a fatal error. She braced herself as he hauled off and punched in square in the jaw. She saw, for a brief moment, stars dance before her eyes. She fell back and felt her head crack on the cobblestones. Her vision went blurry around the edges and a vision of a dragon flew through the stars before the world went black.
"Maker keep us. Maker preserve us. Maker keep us. Maker preserve us."
The words woke her up. Her head buzzed. She fingered her jaw, which was swollen and probably a questionable shade of purple. She also seemed to have a goose egg to match Vaughan's rapidly rising on the back of her head. Her hands flew to her sides. She still had her needles, and her knife, and in her boots the vials of poison she'd kept for this purpose. She looked around, taking stock of her situation.
"Where is Shianni?" she asked, her voice a rough croak.
Valora came into her field of vision and cradled her head against her arm. Brida, a friend of Soris's who had been at the wedding, was there too, and she tore a patch from her skirt to wipe the blood from Teneira's mouth. Nola, Soris's cousin on his mother's side, was kneeling in the corner, on her knees.
"Maker keep us. Maker preserve us. Maker keep us. Maker preserve us."
"Where is Shianni?" she asked again.
"They took her," Valora said, her tinkling Highever accent laden with sorrow, "Oh, Ten, if everything they say about you is true, then you have something up your sleeve, you must have some way to save us."
Teneira sat up straight, which sent the world spinning. "Yes," she said, "Yes I have something up my sleeve." She took the knife from where it was strapped to her leg and found the vial of poison in her boot. She opened it gingerly with her hands – she dared not uncork it with her teeth. Deftly, she coated the blade of the little knife.
"With all respect due, cousin," Valora said, fingering the wedding band on her finger, "Do you plan to kill them all with a paring knife?"
"I plan to try," Teneira growled. She considered for a moment. The poison would take down the first man she stabbed, but it would be weakened with the second blow. If Vaughan had Shianni, she would make him pay. She tucked the blade back into its little scabbard and waited.
"Maker keep us. Maker preserve us. Maker keep us. Maker preserve us." Nola's voice was desperate, the tears running down her chin.
"Did they hurt her?" Teneira asked.
"Not yet," Brida said, her dark eyes wide and scared, "They said… they said that they'd come back for us when they were done with the redheaded bitch who knocked Vaughan out."
"Maker be good," Valora sighed.
Teneira got up. There were two doors to the room. The first was barred from the other side. The second had a lock too rusty to pick. She began kicking it, trying to get it open. When she succeeded, she was horrified to find that it opened only onto a broom closet.
"Are you going to beat them all to death with a mop handle?" Valora called.
"If you don't have any brilliant ideas of your own, I suggest you shut the fuck up," Teneira snapped, feeling desperate.
"Maker keep us. Maker preserve us. Maker keep us. Maker preserve us."
"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm a little on edge. They'll come for us eventually. I'm going to wait behind this door, the next time someone comes in, I'll get him from behind. Try to stay alive, I'll do what I can."
It seemed like an eternity that she stood, back against the wall, the hinges on the door to her left. Finally, the deadbolt creaked open, and in walked three guards.
"Maker keep us. Maker preserve us. Maker keep us. Maker preserve us."
"This bitch's whining's been keeping me up," the first said, nudging Nola with his boot, "Shut the fuck up!" Before Teneira could leap upon him, he had drawn steel and struck Nola in the breast. She gurgled blood, and fell, dead, on the floor.
"No!" shrieked Teneira, and leapt. The knife went into the first guard at the weak spot where his breastplate met his greaves.
"That was a bad move," he said, turning to look at her as she pulled the blade free, "If you're going to attack one of us, you'd better kill us on the first blow, not give us flesh wounds that only make us ang-"
He stopped cold. His face began to go purple as his tongue swelled and protruded from between his lips. "Aungh!" he wheezed between his lips as the venom of the Reverend Mother, that black snake, closed his throat and blackened his face. He fell over, face first, on the floor.
"Who's next?" Teneira demanded, "Who else wants to fuck with me?"
The other two guards stared at their fallen brother, and then looked back up at her, and then behind her.
"Here!" she heard the cry. She turned in time to see Soris, covered in blood and wielding an ax she knew he used to split logs into boards at the warehouse where he worked. He tossed her a proper dagger, well weighted, and she caught it by the hilt. In a fluid movement, she'd seized the poison flask from the ground and uncorked it with her thumb. She coated the blade clumsily as the other two guards came at her. She threw the half-full vial at the first of them. The viscous venom flew out and hit him in the forehead, and he screamed in pain as it entered his eyes and mouth. The second one Soris beheaded. The ax had, evidently, had some sharpening.
"Get out of here!" she shouted to Valora and Brida. Not needing to be told twice, they scurried out.
"Ask the kitchen boy, he'll show you the back passage out of here!" Soris called after them.
"Where's Shianni?" he asked.
"Vaughan has her," Teneira replied, the thought making her sick to her stomach.
"Then we'll gut him like a fish," Soris said.
"I like the way you think," she said, "Where's my husband?"
"He's holding off three guards in the hallway," he replied.
"Well let's go help him then!" she cried.
They tumbled out of the door to the store room where they had been kept and ran down the hall first to the left, then to the right. They found their way upstairs and into the main hall. Night had fallen while Teneira was out, and the castle was nearly empty. Except, of course, for the guard and Nelaros, fencing up and down the long hall, the sound of steel on steel echoing off the walls. She stood there, helplessly, watching the fight. Stepping in now would only make things worse.
Unless, of course, they could not get any worse. Nelaros's blue eyes fell on her as she entered the room, and the guard took the opening, stabbing him through his unarmored chest. He fell back, the blade still in him, and the guard turned to see what had distracted him. He didn't have much time before Teneira's dagger flashed in the air. She would not kill him with poison. This would be an honorable kill. She slashed his throat nearly to the bone, and he fell back, his nearly severed head flapping as he hit the ground.
Nelaros was still alive, but would not be for long. She knelt by his side, feeling every inch of steel in his breast.
"Well this is a mess," he said, watching his life's blood pour from him and spread out on the stones around him, "You weren't…" he stopped a moment to take a breath, "You weren't kidding, Ten. You're a dangerous woman to know."
"If it makes you feel better, I'll be making up for this one for the rest of my life," she said.
"You'll have an interesting life," he said, "Don't know if I have much hope for it to be a long one."
"Didn't need you to tell me that one, love. Is the pain terrible?"
"Do me a favor," he wheezed, "As my wife. Take this blade from my chest."
"You'll die."
"I'm going to die either way," he said, "I'd rather not do it with shemlen steel in my body."
She smoothed the pale hair from his forehead.
"I'm sorry we didn't know each other better," she said, "I think I could have loved you."
"And I you," he replied, "Please, just, when you have a chance… write to my father. Tell him what became of me. Tell him I didn't die on my knees. I did what was right."
"I promise," she said, feeling sick with guilt, thinking of her father-in-law, probably sleeping peacefully in Highever, not knowing he had sent his eldest son to his death.
She seized the blade by its hilt. It was a fine weapon, much nicer than the one she held. She braced herself against the bloody floor and pulled it free. Following it was a great gush of blood, and within a minute, her husband lay dead in her arms.
"Well shit," she sighed, "Wife and widow, all in six hours. Think I've got some sort of record for that."
"We'll make them pay, Ten," Soris said.
"I don't think I'm coming back from this, Soris," she said, shutting her husband's eyes with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, seeing the ring he had given her but a few hours before, too caked with blood to shimmer in the torchlight.
"Ser?" she heard a woman's voice say. She turned to see a maid, an elf, standing in the doorway, seeing what the commotion was about. She looked in horror at the volume of blood that covered the floor, probably thinking how much time it would take to clean it up. Ten recognized her, the daughter of a shopkeeper. She wracked her brain for her name.
"Teneira Tabris?" the maid said in disbelief.
Teneira nodded, holding her breath, trying to think of her name.
"It's me, Manda," the maid said, "You helped me, when I started working here three months ago."
She remembered her all of a sudden. A worldweary woman in her nineteenth year, she had come for a preventative. She knew of her new master's appetites, and wanted to guard against having to end a pregnancy. Teneira had given her something that would prevent conception, and some of the tea that would make a man impotent. Manda had cried silently for fear at what was to happen to her, but she had an ailing brother and could not support the family without the arl's generous wages.
"What happened?" Manda asked, drawing close, not wanting to touch the bloodsoaked bride.
"They killed my husband," Teneira said, pointing to Nelaros, "And they took my cousin."
Manda did an odd thing then, and began stripping off her clothes.
"Wash yourself in the basin over there," she said, pointing to the room where she'd come from. It looked to be the scullery, "Hurry!"
Numbly, Teneira obeyed, stripping off her ruined wedding dress and scrubbing the blood from her skin. After two buckets from the great stone cistern, she was clean, if shaken.
"You too!" Manda shouted to Soris, "The kitchen boy keeps a change of clothes in that cupboard over there. Put them on." Soris did as well, stripping down and washing the blood from himself.
Scrubbed clean of her enemy's blood, Teneira took the kitchen maid's clothes and put them on, pulling the simple shift over her head and tying the apron about her waist. She tied her hair back and put Manda's kerchief over it. Similarly disguised, Soris joined her. There was room under the apron for her to hand both his ax and her blade from her belt. Neither would show too obviously if she were careful when she walked.
"Make them pay," Manda ordered. She took the wedding dress and put it in the basin, pouring water from the cistern over it, "I'll get a change from the quarters when I get a chance. Now, go! Make them all pay for what they've done to us!"
Meekly, a new scullery maid and kitchen boy snuck down the hallway of the great castle. The guards ignored them as they crept up a spiral staircase and up to the main floor. She heard the carousing all the way from the top of the stairs. Scanning the room, she saw no guards. Quietly, they made it to the end of the hall. Soris threw himself against the great oaken door once, twice, and it flew open.
The first thing she saw was Shianni on the floor, covering her head. Then, she saw the Bann, and his friends. They then saw her, and the four of them stood at détente, staring at each other.
"So I killed three… five of your guards," she offered, "Ruined the floor in your main hall, too. I doubt their blood will ever come out of the stones."
"You've really got a pair, don't you, arlessa," Vaughan sneered.
"By the end of tonight, I'll have yours too," she replied.
"Look," he said, "I don't doubt you're lying to me right now, there's no way a woman your size brought down five of my father's finest. But I'm having such a splendid night. I'd hate to ruin it. How about forty sovereigns, and you walk out of this, it'll be like nothing ever happened."
"Shianni walks free too," Ten asked, gripping the hilt of the stolen dagger.
"You wouldn't deprive a young boy of his toys, would you? We'll return her in the morning. We'll try not to use her too hard," he said, "Any more than we already have."
Ten's world crumbled then. She could see the stones of the castle buckle and bend, the void open up below her, and she felt herself fall in. She lived again her very first memory, sitting in the front room of her aunt's house when the midwife brought her a bundle. "This is Shianni," the midwife had said, "She doesn't have a big sister. So you will be her big sister, and you will protect her." Four year old Ten had looked down in awe at the gingerhaired newborn she held in her own chubby baby arms. And she had promised with all the solemnity a toddler could call forth. And now, twenty years later, she had broken that promise. Nothing she had ever done in the intervening years mattered. She had failed in the very first duty she had ever taken on.
"I am going to end your line," said Ten softly, "You will sire no sons. You will be nothing more than a gruesome footnote to a story about your betters."
"Now, that I would like to see," Vaughan said, "Boys!"
"They can try," said Ten, looking up, "Your fate is sealed."
The two young lords that had accompanied him looked at each other nervously. "I don't know about this, Vaughan," one of them said, "Maybe we should give them what they want."
"Cowards!" scoffed Vaughan, "Give them an inch, they'll take a mile."
The first lord tried to leave the room, not meeting her eyes. She reached out in a flash of steel and caught him in the shoulder with her dagger. He drew his own blade, and tried to fight her. He was talented, feinting and parrying, but she'd injured his sword arm, and he was clumsy with his off hand. She got him to the ground and stood there, her boot on his windpipe, until he had breathed his last.
The second approached her, too horrified at what had just happened to his friend to stop it. He was unarmed, and his pants were undone, and he was barefoot.
"I'm sorry, missus," he said, "It was just a bit of fun."
She didn't look at him. She kept her eyes on Shianni. He thought he was going to walk away from this one. This belief made him slow, and she slipped her blade into his soft belly, thrusting it up behind his ribcage and into his heart, without him even making a sound. His blood sprayed in an arc, splattering across her face. She did not flinch.
"The bards will sing of how you suffered," said Ten again, looking at Vaughan again.
Shianni had taken advantage of the distraction, sprung to her feet and grabbed a torch from the sconce on the wall. She thrust it into the bann's face while he screamed and tried to shove her off him. She would not be stopped though, acting with a strength that was not hers alone. He reached out blindly, his face like raw meat, seeking to choke her. Ten dropped her dagger, and seized Soris's ax with both hands. She started with his legs.
When he finally died, it was from blood loss as it spurted from where both arms and feet had been severed, and instead of doing him the grace of planting the ax in his skull, she just watched, and smiled, as first he grew too weak to scream, his face went gray and he breathed his last.
"Are they all dead?" Shianni asked, wiping her attacker's blood from her eyes.
"As many as I saw," she said, looking at the absolute mess she had made of the bann, admiring her handiwork.
"Come on, Shianni," said Soris, "Let's get out of here before the alarm is raised. Manda knows the back ways out." He took her by the shoulders and guided her from the room. From the way Shianni walked, they must have used her roughly indeed, Teneira observed.
Teneira paused, her eyes never leaving the havoc she'd wrecked. She'd never killed a man like that before. She had done grievous injury, to be sure. Kneecaps, mostly, but she'd taken a finger or two when a finger was owed. But never before had the rage seized her hand so hard to actually make her kill someone who was not about to kill her. She let her blades fall to the ground, and followed her cousins down the dark staircase to the servant's quarters, and then to the alley behind the estate, and out into the city. She did not want to be back at the alienage, at least not yet. She had unfinished business before they hung her.
Instead, she took a left when she got to the markets. That was the thing about Denerim. A blood-covered women provoked absolutely no reaction from the sots and whores that walked the streets at that time of night. They had their own business to attend to, no time to worry about anyone else's. She went to a door in the Orlesian quarter, and knocked.
"Ten!" Villais exclaimed, seeing her standing, bruised and bloodied in the middle of the night, on his doorstep, "What happened to you?" His long, dark hair was disheveled, and he wore what were clearly his pajamas.
"Sergeant, I need to report a crime," she said, her voice monotone, "There's been multiple murders. I'm here to turn myself in."
"What?" he demanded. He stepped back and let her into his house. It was small, but well furnished and comfortable-looking.
"You heard what I said," Teneira said, "I killed Bann Vaughan and two of his loutish friends. Vaughan wasn't even armed. He wasn't even wearing pants."
"What did they do to you?"
"Doesn't matter," she said, "There's only one way out of this one. This was Rasphander's revenge. He means to see me executed and you disgraced. He'll get his way with the first part, no matter what. But if you're the copper that catches me, you'll keep your post. You'll stay on guarding the Alienage." When I'm not there, she didn't say.
He was silent, his green eyes sorrowful. He knew she was right. Whatever she'd done, she would hang. If she was lucky. There were all manner of torturous execution methods waiting for her if she was not.
"Come in," he said, "I'll do as you ask, but not until the morning. I won't parade you before the city looking like that."
She hung her head and went in further. Silently, he fetched her a basin of water. She sat on a bench in his living room, and he gently wiped the blood and sweat from her face and hands with a rag. He paused as he reached the gold ring on the third finger of her left hand.
"They killed him," she said, "I'm a widow, now."
"I'm so sorry, Ten," he said.
"I barely knew him," she said, "But he tried to save me. Died doing it." She waved him off, and did the rest of the scrubbing herself while he kept his back modestly turned, handing her a towel and a shirt that covered her to her knees when she was done.
"What I wanted to say, last night," he said, after she joined him on a bench before the fire to dry off, "Was that…"
"I know what you wanted to say last night," she said, "And don't think I don't… none of this was about me."
He leaned in and kissed her then, a gentle, exploratory kiss that she could have broken off at any time.
Fuck it, she thought, My life is over. What duty do I have any more? Why not do one thing Teneira wants to do, and not what's best for the elves of Denerim? She leaned in, let him kiss her more deeply, the warmth of his mouth sending tingles all over her aching body. She wound her arms around his neck pulling him down on her on the bench. He stroked her neck, her shoulders, tugging her hair lightly. He lifted her gently and took her back into his bedroom, putting her on his bed and pushing her - well, his - shirt above her thigh.
She stroked his head as he took her underclothes from her and explored her with his mouth. She moaned and shivered, too tired do anything but let him do what he would. In a few moments she was arching her back and moaning his name to the ceiling, her hand tangled in his dark hair.
"We don't have to…" he said, making his way back up to her face.
"Yes we do," she said, "It's my last night in this world, after all."
He chuckled, "As you wish, my lady."
It's funny, she thought as she unbuttoned his shirt and he unbuckled his pants, I don't think I've ever done this in a bed before. She smiled at this thought, and kissed him deeply. There, on the Teneira's last night, they made love until dawn.