It was three days journey out of the wilds. They were late, for it looked like every village that dotted the landscape had already evacuated. Abandoned packs on the roads from which peasants had fled yielded tents and bedrolls, changes of clothes, a bit of dried meat, and even a lovely ginger donkey mare, whose previous owners had not even bothered cutting her loose from the overstuffed wagon she towed before leaving her poor creature had eaten all the vegetation she could get to, considering her burden. Ten had stroked her nose, cut her loose, and named her, not particularly creatively, Jenny. The trusting creature followed them and carried their things most obligingly in exchange for handfuls of the choicest clover that Ten could find. Each of them was lost in thought for most of the time, pondering how much each of their lives had just taken a drastic turn, and talking about nothing but where to make camp and how much each of them could eat out of their meager stores and whatever fruit and game were to be found. On the fourth day, they reached the outskirts of a village, nestled between two rivers in a broad valley. It was defensible, the only way into it seeming to be quite a large and ancient bridge over the first of the two rivers. And defended it was, to Ten's dismay, by a particularly rough-looking band standing in the way.

Alistair glanced back at her. "Can I have my armor now?" he asked.

"We're in full view of the village," she said, "Let's be a little more clever. They're just desperate fools, not trained fighters."

"Good morning, good ser," one of the thugs yelled, "Didn't get the word? Lothering's full. Not more refugee rabble. Unless you can pay the toll, of course. For you… five sovereigns."

"Not bloody likely," Alistair said.

"Then I suppose you're not crossing the bridge," the highwayman said.

"Please, uh, Ser," the witch said, trying her hand at deception for what Ten imagined might have been the first time, "Take pity on my husband, for he is a simpleton, ever since the donkey kicked him in the face - that's why he looks like that - and take pity on my maid, for she is with child and she knows not which of thirty-seven lads is the father. We simply must find refuge."

Ten snickered inwardly, taking the joke in stride. The witch was getting the hang of this.

"I'm sure we could come up with some… alternative form of payment," said the leader, leering at Morrigan.

"Now, don't be rude," another of them said, "That's a married woman with a simple husband. We're not monsters."

"The serving girl certainly sounds like a good time," a third said. He walked up to Ten and forced her head up with a hand under her chin, "Give us an hour with her and you can proceed. What do you say, love?"

Ten gripped the handle of her knife, easing it out of its sheath, but stayed frozen as his hand moved brazenly to her breast.

"All right, that's enough," Morrigan said, seeing that her little joke at Ten's expense was emboldening the man now groping her. The witch closed her eyes for a moment, and from the earth they stood on, vines began to grow up around the legs of the bandits. Ten braced herself to strike out with her knife, but never got the opportunity. As though appearing from the forest itself, about a hundred eighty pounds of dog flashed before her eyes, and her assailant was on the ground with several puncture wounds in his neck.

"Bitch has a bitch!" he exclaimed, "Why you…" He tried to rise, but the Mabari hound had both massive paws on his chest. With a growl, she opened her jaws, bent down, and most of the mans' trachea came away with them.

Ten froze, instinctively looked down at the ground, not wanting to provoke the creature. Images of the guards' dogs ripping into picketers flashed through her mind.

"I… I don't think she's going to hurt you," Alistair said.

Ten ventured a glance up at the dog, who was sitting obediently before her, as though waiting for a command. It was the hound from the riverside, the day before the joining, she recognized the spots on her hindquarters. She whined a bit and looked at the four bandits imprisoned in vines, then back at Ten.

"Oh, you're asking my permission? I mean, go ahead, I guess."

Not needing any further encouragement, the hound went for the first of the bandits, taking off a hand before Morrigan, looking a little green, snapped her fingers, and the vines grew and twisted, four necks snapped, and four bodies fell.

"It was a good joke," Ten said, adjusting her breast back into place, her eyes still nervously on the dog, "But next time let's not impugn each other's chastity in public, it only encourages them."

"I'm beginning to feel entirely superfluous to this mission," Alistair said, "Ten, are you all right?"

"If I had a penny for every time some idiot grabbed my tit without asking, we'd have afforded the five sovereigns and then some," Ten sighed, "What do we do about the dog?"

"That's rather…horrible, though," Alistair said, "As for the dog, seems like she's yours now. They do that, you know. They pick a person, and that's their person. And that seems to be you."

"I would have been happy with just the donkey," said Ten, "Easier to feed. Although I suppose we won't be short on corpses."

"I'm thinking that if they had a penny every time they groped some poor woman coming through here, we might have solved our supply problem," said Morrigan, walking up to the vine-covered corpses, "It's not pretty, but needs must…"

"I never thought it would come to this," sighed Alistair, "Robbing the dead."

"You've got a pretty strange idea of what can come to what," said Ten, "Have you never been hungry before?" She stooped and unbuckled her latest victims' armor, searching his pockets. He had a pretty penny on him, all things considered.

"Of course I have, it was part of training," he said, "Fasting."

"I mean hungry, hungry. I mean hungry where you have absolutely no idea where your next meal is coming from," said Ten, "Or if it's coming. Hungry where you will whack your own brother over the head with a club if it means you get that last mouthful before he does. Hungry where you'll… do that." She pointed to where the dog had continued snacking on the arm of the now-fallen bandit, blood dripping down her jaws.

"No, I suppose I haven't."

"We're about to be surrounded by a whole lot of hungry people," said Ten, "And you, both of you, need to be prepared for what they will be willing to do to fill their bellies. Robbing a few corpses is absolutely nothing."

Morrigan, meanwhile, was making short work of the bandits. Coins, jewelry, a fine silver dagger all went into a pile on the road. "Do we want their armor?"

"No," said Ten, "Too much to carry. Coins and jewels. Here, put this on." She said, handing a gold wedding band with the initials "M.H." engraved on it to Alistair, "Pretend you're heartbroken to part with it, maybe whatever fence we can find in this shithole will take pity on you and give you a better price."

"This was someone's…" said Alistair soberly.

"It probably wasn't his," said Ten, gesturing with her head at the bandit whom it came off of.

"Ten are your ears pierced?" asked Morrigan, holding up a pair of pearl earrings.

"Yes," she said, "But just keep those in your pocket. Imagine what happens in a fight when someone gets ahold of one and pulls."

"Ugh," Morrigan grunted, fingering her own intact earlobes.

Fully stocked with others' ill-gotten gains, the trio and their newly-made animal friends made their way into the center of town. It wasn't a large town. The streets weren't even cobbled, just dust from where repeated foot traffic had torn up the turf, year after year. Twenty or thirty houses were all situated on an island in the river, farms beyond on either bank, a rather ostentatious chantry, considering the size of the place and, of course, a public house. The townsfolk were gaunt, dirty, and just desperate-looking as Ten had imagined. A sister stood outside the chantry, dishing out a watery gruel to those as were waiting. Some of the refugees sat, right there on the commons, staring into nothing. From a distance, a woman somewhere was screaming, though from fright or from madness, Ten did not know.

"I'll see about selling the jewelry," Morrigan said, "From the interaction we had earlier I doubt they'd give Ten a fair price."

"You're catching on," said Ten.

"I'll check out the chantry," said Alistair, "See what's going on in the town."

Ten nodded, "I suppose I'll sit down and give everyone the thousand yard stare, try to fit in."

"Stay out of trouble," said Morrigan.

Ten lead Jenny and the dog to an unoccupied spot in the middle of a donkey, suddenly relieved of her saddlebags, threw herself in the grass, rolled around a few times, and then settled, chomping at whatever was beneath her and making contented donkey noises. The dog, meanwhile, curled up next to the donkey, and proceeded to sleep off the feast she'd made of the dead bandits.

Ten sat herself down, her back against the donkey's flank, and took out her bottles, leather flasks and mortar and pestle. The road to Lothering had been brimming with flowering plants, useful for both good and evil purposes, and she set about crushing, chopping, and mixing. The brief return to her old trade was comforting. She'd gotten through a good few bottles, resupplying some of her nastier poisons and a couple that would speed up healing, when a dirty-faced urchin approached her. Poor kid was skin and bones, she couldn't even tell if it was a boy or a girl, as their hair had been very recently shaved. Lice, probably.

"Miss, are you a healer?" asked the kid.

"No," she said.

"But you've skills with herbs?" the kid looked down at Ten's work, the mortar and pestle, the bottles.

"I suppose I do," she said. No sense in lying about the obvious.

"Please, can you come? My mother's been laboring for two days, the midwife says she'll die if she doesn't deliver soon."

"I… actually do think I can help with that. Where's your mother?"

"The midwife's house. Next to the windmill."

"All right, kid," she said, "Stay here for a bit. Pet the donkey. It'll make you feel better. I don't know why, it just will. And here, have some… I think it's beef. I hope it's beef. It's food, anyway. You, dog, don't hurt the kid." The kid, grateful for some direction, promptly curled up next to the donkey, their head on her neck, and took a bite out of the dried meat Ten had handed them.

She packed her flasks back up, she had a few that were known to strengthen contractions, a couple of coagulants to prevent a hemorrhage and, perhaps most importantly, a sedative. She followed the child's pointing finger to a house by the great windmill. The mystery of where the screaming woman was was very quickly solved. She knocked more to announce her presence than ask permission to enter, and then walked into a room, overheated by a large fire in the corner.

"Who're you?" a tall, stout, middle-aged woman asked, standing in front of her.

"I'm, uh, an herbalist. Little skin-headed kid saw my kit and said there's a woman who needs her labor sped up."

"Ah," said the woman, "Well, I'm Heloise the midwife. This here is… well shit, I don't know her name. Wandered in after darkspawn took down her farm. Hasn't been right ever since."

"Teneira," she said, "Call me Ten. Is it true she's been laboring three days?"

"Her water broke on the road here. Usually that would speed it up," said the midwife, "If I had a healer here I'd have cut her open by now, but I don't think she'd survive that, and there's still a chance."

Ten walked up to the laboring woman. She was about Ten's age, though it was hard to tell with her face contorted. She was also sweating, thick rivulets flowing over her face. Ten felt a tingling in her spine that was both strange and familiar. "Did she fight them?"

"As best she could, with a belly like that," said Heloise, "She survived, after all. Better than we can say for her husband and other kids."

"I know how to sew her up, if it comes to that," said Ten, "But you're right, very risky at this point. Is the child alive?"

"As far as I can tell," said Heloise, "Were you a midwife as well as an herbalist?"

"Where I'm from, any woman within earshot when the screaming starts attends a birth," said Ten, "Girl too. I think I was four the first one I was in the room for. I've seen them go pretty much every way they can go."

Heloise sighed, "That's how it ought to be. Room full of women. Breathing with you."

"Could she have gotten some of the darkspawn blood, like, in her body? Through a cut, or if her mouth was open."

"I suppose she could," said Heloise, "I see you've heard of the ghouls, then."

"The what?"

"Folks as fight darkspawn and come into contact with their blood. You get too much, hair starts falling out, you lose all sense. Eventually you're a ravening beast like they are. But she wasn't, she seems to be in perfect health. Except for now…"

"Well shit," said Ten, "Poor lass. Look, I just make the stuff, you probably know what she needs." She dumped her whole kit onto a table in the corner, "I've got primrose here, raspberry, willow, deathroot - I don't think you want that - elm bark…"

"Your handwriting is shite," said the midwife, picking up a bottle and squinting at the label.

"Nobody pays me to be a scribe," Ten said resentfully, but let her take what she needed. She measured some into a spoon.

"She'll need to sit up to take anything, and she's far too weak. You'll need to support her," Heloise said, "Coax her up, support her shoulders."

Ten went up, "Missus, you need to sit up." She went to put her arm around the woman's shoulders, but all of a sudden her eyes opened, pale blue in the dark of her face.

"Don't touch me, you knife-eared bitch," the laboring woman spat.

"Fine, try and sit up on your own then," Ten countered.

"Missus, if you call her that again I am going to walk right out of here and you and your baby are going to die alone," said Heloise, crossing her arms.

"Fine," said the mother, "Let us die. Better than live through what's to come."

"And leave wee Jamie all alone in the world?" Heloise said.

"Kill her too for all I care," the mother growled, and then let out a strangulated sob as another contraction hit.

Ten lifted her from the bed and pulled so that her weight was supported by the wall behind her.

"No, stay there," said Heloise, "You know as well as I that women aren't supposed to be doing this alone. Her mother should be there, her aunties, her sisters. But right now it's just you and me."

Ten sighed, and got behind her, supporting her torso with arms under her shoulders.

"Now, Missus, concentrate on your breathing. Listen to the girl's heartbeat, and breathe with it," Heloise said, "OK, there you go. Good lass. You're going to drink this, and then you are going to start pushing like you've never pushed before."

Too chastened to say something else racist, the mother accepted the tinctures, and did as Heloise asked. It took another twenty minutes, but at the end, Ten felt something shift in the woman before her, and as her muscles tensed for a final push, and the midwife gasped. The mother went limp, collapsing against Ten.

"It's all right, miss," she said softly, her mouth against the woman's greasy dark hair, "You've done it. It's all right now." She gingerly put her hand against her cheek, "Hard part's over." She waited for her to tense again, and the afterbirth to splash out onto the bed. That came within twenty minutes, and she finally realized that there was no crying.

All that for a stillborn, she thought, Poor woman, even if she is a bigoted piece of…

In the silence of the room, she realized that there was another sound. Not crying. Just… breathing. Shallow, wet, breathing. It wasn't coming from her, nor the mother, nor the midwife.

"I guess we know where the darkspawn blood went," said Heloise, her face dark, "Pack some rags between her legs, she's not out of the woods yet."

"All right, love, I'm going to let you down now. Keep breathing," Ten scrambled out from under the woman's shoulders and laid her gently down flat on the bed. She scurried to the end of the bed, where a stack of boiled rags were waiting.. There was blood flowing, not the regular, clotty blood of birth, but something darker and more sinister. Or was it just the light? She went to her kit and got a few coagulants, tipping them over two clean rags, and packed them as tightly as she could. No… it was definitely not human blood flowing from the woman's womb. When she was satisfied that she had staunched the flow, she turned. She was reminded of the vision she had had the night of her joining, the hordes splayed out below her, and she swore she could see their image in the blue-black pulsating afterbirth. She followed the umbilical cord that attached that dark thing to the babe in the midwife's arms.

It was vaguely baby-shaped, but didn't look anything like any baby Ten had ever seen. Its eyes were open, in fact they looked lidless. It was bald, of course, but its limbs were bent. Not broken, just the joints all went the wrong ways. It did not cry, it just sort of… rasped through an open mouth with jagged yellow teeth.

"Are human babies supposed to be born with teeth?" she asked.

"No," Heloise said, looking down with trepidation at the bundle in her arms.

"Didn't think so," said Ten. The tingling in her spine had risen to a roar. She'd seen babies born before, in the alienage, that had had…. afflictions. It usually happened when the parents were related too closely. Webbed feet or mismatched features. All tragic, but nothing like this at all. Every part of her being was telling her to take her knife and plunge it into its tiny heart. The baby's eyes, black as coal, turned to her, and it was as though it looked right into her soul, "Maker's breath…"

"You should leave now. Right now," Heloise said, "Walk out of this door and forget what you seen here. And under no circumstances will you tell the Chantry."

"Wouldn't dream of it," said Ten.

"Good lass," said Heloise.

Ten nodded slowly and packed up her things.

"Wait," Heloise said, "Leave the deathroot."

Ten nodded, leaving the poisonous vial, and walked back out into a day that, somehow, was just as bright and sunny as it had been before she descended into that chamber of horrors.

She found the donkey and the dog and their things where she had left them, but the child, whose name, evidently, was Jamie and who was in fact a girl, had run off, and was chasing a few other children around a wheatfield to the south. Poor kid. Better she not know. She did, however, take a page out of the child's book, and curled up with her head on the donkey's neck. Jenny reacted by chewing her hair, and Ten did not have the heart to stop her. The dog, sensing something was wrong, trundled up and parked herself on the other side of Ten, laying her head on her hip.

Maker, you cannot possibly have meant for that to happen, she thought, Even you could not have thought of something so fucked up. Or could you? Are you just a sadistic little shit like all your favorite sons?

Ten had been there, curled up between two smelly beasts and staring out into nothing for maybe an hour, maybe two, when Morrigan found her.

"Ten, you're covered in blood," the witch said. She had several sacks under her arms, one which was definitely flour and two that might have contained vegetables of some sort or another.

Ten shook her head. What could she say, after what she had just seen? "I can't…"

"What happened?"

"It's worse than we thought," said Ten, scrambling to her feet, to the grumbling complaint of the dog who had to get out of her way,"It's… just so much worse. I don't want to talk about it. Let's just set up the tents and I'll try to get this blood off me."

Morrigan and Ten set up camp by the river, confident that even Alistair could not be too stupid to notice where they had gone. In the river, for several hours that afternoon, Ten scrubbed her skin with everything she could think of. Cloth. Rocks. Sand. Nothing could get the feel of the woman's blood off her. Or the memory of that coal-black stare.

Just after sunset, while there was still light in the sky, but it had gone a soft grayish blue, Morrigan approached the bank cautiously. "Ten, you've got to get out of there. It's getting dark."

"I'm not clean yet," Ten replied, taking another handful of silt from the river bottom and scrubbing her arms where the blood of birth had covered her. Her arms were still red, no matter what she did, "The blood won't come off."

The witch drew closer, "That's your own blood," she observed, "You've scrubbed yourself raw. That's enough." She waded in and hoisted Ten under her shoulders, dragging her out onto the grassy bank. Ten obliged, seeing for the first time that she had, indeed, just been making matters worse for how many hours, and suddenly felt the pain of a thousand tiny scratches.

"What did you see?" the witch whispered, "What could you have possibly seen that could be worse than what you've already been through?"

In a hushed tone, while she scrambled back into her clothes, she described in as much detail as she could muster what had occurred in the midwife's house. The witch barely reacted, but once Ten was decent, she took both of Ten's arms in her white hands, muttered some words under her breath, and the deep scratches that Ten had unintentionally inflicted upon herself closed, leaving nothing but perfect brown skin behind.

"There, all better. Now, are we feeling a bit saner?"

"I doubt I'll ever be sane again," sighed Ten.

"Well it certainly sounds unpleasant. But fascinating," said Morrigan, finally, "So all the.. taint, just went right to the baby? Changed it? I had no idea that that would happen. It gives a certain… insight into the nature of the Darkspawn."

"It was horrible," she said, "I've attended births before. I've seen babies that weren't… right. This wasn't that."

"What happened to the baby?" asked Morrigan.

"I imagine the midwife did what she had to," said Ten, "Told the mother it was a stillbirth. It's always a hell of a… fuck of a thing when they have to do that. But I've seen that too, this was different."

Morrigan all but dragged her up the bank to camp, where either she or Alistair had coaxed a merry fire from a pile of dry branches. The witch, who was after all a head taller than her, put her down next to Alistair, and took up her own perch, a little bit away, as she had every night before hand. With them, but not, all at once.

"What happened to her?" asked Alistair.

"Women's business," said Morrigan dismissively, "Not your place."

"What secret could possibly be so important that you keep it from half of the population?"

"Don't worry about it," Ten sighed, "It's not for you. Say, is there still whiskey in that pack? By my count there should still be two."

"Don't drink them both," Alistair said, locating the bottles and setting one in front of her. She gratefully popped the cork with her teeth and took a long swig.

"I… saw something today that I just want to forget," she said, by way of an explanation, taking another swallow.

"Keep drinking like that, you'll forget your own name," said Alistair, taking the bottle from her, "That said," he said, taking a swig, "I have a few things I'd rather forget too."

She took the bottle back and drank.

"Did he hurt you? Is that what's wrong?"

"What?"

"The bandit, earlier today. He touched you. You looked like you were about to vomit."

"There are a hundred women in this town who've had it worse," said Ten.

"I'm sorry. About him. About everyone else that's done that."

"It's not your fault," Ten said, taking another swig, hoping he hadn't noticed she was hogging the whiskey, "You're absolutely surrounded by women now. Hell, the dog and the donkey are female. You are about to get a big old lesson in all sorts of new ways people are just as monstrous as darkspawn." She set it down in front of him again.

"You really think that?" Alistair picked up the bottle, taking a swig. It was a quarter done now.

"Look, I don't know you," said Ten, "But the way you sort of amble through life, I can't imagine you've seen that much of it."

"My mother died giving birth to me and I was raised in a monastery," Alistair said.

"Aye, all right, you might have me there," she said, "At least I had my dad. And he did his best, whatever his faults." She drank. Put it back in front of him.

"I had a father, allegedly," Alistair started, "Never thought of the man as a "dad." I never knew him. Sure, I knew of him. But it was mostly just a few throwaway kids and the good brothers of the order." He drank. Passed the bottle back to her, "Duncan was the closest thing to a dad I ever had."

"I've heard things about the monasteries, not all of them nice," said Ten, "Funny priests and all that."

"Not saying it doesn't happen, but it actually wasn't all bad."

"Were they kind?"

"Mostly. There was this one, Brother Fillan," Alistair said, "He was this little fellow, barely taller than you, and he just could never keep his hands still. So he took up knitting. He made the kids these soft toys out of yarn and pine needles from the courtyard. Animals, to sleep with. He'd been there since he was a child himself, I think he understood we were all lonely."

"What was yours?"

"A mabari hound," he said, "Barely looked like one, the man was in his eighties and half blind by the time I got there. But he did his best. I called him 'Pigeon' like the messenger birds that lived up in the belfry. Saw me through a few hard nights."

"How old were you when you left?"

"Twelve, I think." he said, "We didn't really….do birthdays. The Templars sort of looked us over, saw how big we were, if we had hair under our arms, determined we were twelve or thirteen or however old they said you needed to be."

"You were just a baby," sighed Ten, frustrated with everything, "This world eats its young."

"I got out, at least," said Alistair, "Could be worse. Could be hunting apostate mages through the very bowels of the nation."

"I heard that!" Morrigan shouted from her tent, pitched twenty or thirty feet from theirs.

"Present company certainly included," he added.

"And you think it's better that you're stuck with an ax murderer as your only companion in a dwindling order whose mission is the preservation of all that is good?"

"Well all things considered, I think an ax murderer is exactly who I'd like to see me through this one," he said, "How did Daveth put it, the five foot tall woman who took down six fighting men. Seems like he was a bit scared of you."

"Poor Daveth," sighed Ten, taking a belt of whiskey, "Probably laughing at me now, wherever he is."

"To Daveth!" said Alistair, "And Duncan. Maker, I feel lost without him." He drank.

"Me too," said Ten, "To Duncan! Took me from the foot of one gallows to the foot of another, and I suppose I should thank him for that." She drank again.

"I've never had to figure things out on my own before," Alistar said, gazing into the fire, "I was always told what to do. As long as I can remember, every moment of my life was controlled by someone else. And it usually worked out for the best. It's weird, just… having to figure it out on my own."

"That's funny. I've always had to figure things out on my own," said Ten, "If my dad had had his way I'd have married at fifteen and have eight kids by now. I knew that was not for me, at least not then, so I asked around, learned a trade, moved in with my little cousin where he couldn't haunt my footsteps all day long. And it worked out pretty well. Until it didn't."

"Now there's an understatement. You have a murder ballad about you," said Alistair.

"I'll thank you not to sing it," said Ten, twisting the wedding band on her finger, "Might have been my proudest moment, but it was also… I wish I could unsee some of it. Most of it. It's… it's been a really fucked up couple of months for me. And what's sending me spiraling is that all along the way there have been moments where I made a decision that didn't even seem that important at the time, but in hindsight, those little small choices changed literally everything."

"I've never been in a position to make decisions.," said Alistair, "My life was always going to go in whatever line whoever showed up said it was going to."

"You'll learn," said Ten. Something occurred to her then, "Hey! Dog!"

The hound, who was curled up by the fire, snoring, roused with a grunt and looked at her.

"I'm going to call you Pigeon from now on," she said.

She could have sworn the dog rolled her eyes before she put her head back down and recommenced snoring.

"I really can't tell, are you making fun of me?"

"Of course not," said Ten, "Dog needs a name. It's a good name for a dog."

"I just cannot tell what to make of you," he said, "No offense."

"None taken, I don't think. There's no rule saying everyone has to like me," she said, "But speaking of being generally unpopular, I think we probably should leave this town before someone clocks us. Tomorrow morning if possible. Morrigan's terrible at this."

"What do you mean, clocks us? You talk too fast and use all this slang I don't understand. Half the time I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Realizes who we are, of course," said Ten.

"I didn't realize we were still incognito."

Ten's blood ran cold and she very nearly sobered up. "Oh no, what did you do?"

"It's not my fault, I ran into one of Arl Eamon's knights in the Chantry earlier today," said Alistair, "We've known each other for years. He recognized me. I couldn't deny it."

"We're a week's journey from Redcliffe, what was he even doing there?"

"Apparently the arl was not at Ostagar because he has been bedridden this last month. Nobody knows what's wrong with him. His wife has sent the knights out searching for some holy relic she's convinced will heal him. That's certainly harebrained, but I think it makes sense to head to Redcliffe next."

"All right, that's all well and good, but you need to tell me, did either of you utter the words 'Grey Warden' while you were in there? Scratch that. You asked about Ostagar. And you're not wearing the Teyrn's colors, so there's very few options for who you could be. Shit. How many people saw you?"

"I don't think anyone was paying attention," he protested, "There were a couple of templars, some nuns, a handful of the refugees…"

"Shit," said Ten, corking the whiskey and putting her head in her hands, "So I got my tit grabbed for nothing. All right. All right. We can salvage this, but we can't be in the same place, not here. They're looking for a man and an elf. Right now we're a man and an elf. If I get out of here, you're just a man, and I'm just an elf, and you have much more plausible deniability being at a campsite in a town with fifty refugee campsites than I do."

"Ten, you are three sheets to the wind right now. You cannot just stalk off into the night like that."

"I think you'll find that I can," she said, rising, catching herself as the whiskey threatened to knock her right back down, and stalking off into the night.