Talvinder must admit, even wearing a week of travel on her clothes and skin, that it feels blessedly nice to just sit in the tavern, a real bench beneath her and a tankard of ale between her hands. Granted, the ale is bitter and bland, and the bench is wildly uncomfortable, but it beats boiled river water and dirt.
The awkward aura hanging over the small group, though, she could do without. About ten minutes after she'd dragged an irritated Morrigan and a bemused Alistair down the stairs, Ranjit had reappeared, a slightly dazed look in his eyes, taking the steps down to the tavern slowly. Now the four of them sit at a table, and Tali looks between the others, unsure what to say. She doesn't want to know what happened between Ranjit and Savreen in their room, though she's fairly sure it couldn't have been that bad. At any rate, Sav will tell her later, she's sure. But that just leaves her sitting there, swirling her ale wordlessly in her cup.
"For pity's sake, are you all to be this dull?" As she speaks, Morrigan gestures with the hand holding her mug, as though she's hoping some of it will spill out and spare her from drinking.
"I don't know, Morrigan," Alistair's drawl should set Tali to worrying about a fight, but even them bickering has to be better than the awkward endless silence. "Are you to be this annoying?"
"How quaint and adorable! He knows how to repeat my own insults and change some of the words. Wherever did he learn this?" Tali doesn't want to laugh—she never wants to laugh when Morrigan and Alistair fight—but the two of them just make it so easy, and she has to hide a faint snicker in the lip of her mug. Just like that, though, the silence is broken, the tension snapped. Morrigan and Alistair continue exchanging barbs as Ranjit looks curiously at them before turning to Tali.
"Are they always—"
"Oh yes. Always."
"Does it remind you of—"
"Savreen and Fergus? All the time." Ranjit breaks out into a smile, reminiscence worn plain as day on his face, but then his expression changes ever so slightly.
"It is good," he says, looking down to his own drink of rosehip tea, "to know that Savreen—" But he is interrupted by a young woman, skin pale, tinged with the same undertones of red and pink in her hair, as she slides abruptly onto the bench beside him.
"Excuse me, but we aren't—" Talvinder begins speaking, only for the woman to smile tautly.
"I am Sister Leliana," she says, in a voice dripping with the sound of Orlesian silks and just slightly too loud. "You must be travelling through Lothering. Might I invite you to the Chantry to take the Revered Mother's blessing?" Bewildered, Morrigan and Alistair have ceased their arguing to stare at the newcomer. Meanwhile, Tali looks at Ranjit, at the reflective steel of both her kara and his, resting on the table, and tries not to laugh.
"Um—Sister Leliana, I think you have the wrong—" The young woman's posture shifts almost imperceptibly, shoulders raising ever so slightly around her ears as she leans forward. The same subtle shift flashes across her expression, and Tali sees the tight smile for what it is, a ruse, as tension flickers in Leliana's eyes.
"You are being watched," she whispers, before laughing lightly, her voice slightly too loud once more. "Nonsense!" She makes a show of it, waving off Tali's words. "The Maker accepts all in the embrace of his bosom, especially weary travelers."
"Do tell us more about the Maker's bosom," Alistair interjects, earning him an icy stare from this Sister Leliana. She reaches forward, takes Talvinder's mug of ale from her surprised hands, and just as she's about to raise it to her lips, she whispers once more, in a voice so quiet one could easily lose it in the sounds of the tavern.
"Return to your room. It is not safe." With that, she takes a short drink, punctuated by a very real grimace of distaste, and when she moves to put the mug of ale back on the table in front of Tali, Leliana spills it, splattering it all across the front of Tali's chest, neck, and face.
"What—" Spluttering, ale somehow up in her eyes and dripping down her legs at the same time, Tali shakes her head, wiping her hand across her face.
"Oh dear! How clumsy of me!" Leliana shouts, rising instantly to her feet. "You had better return to your room." Bewildered, Tali looks up at the redhead, unsure how so much has happened so damned quickly. But the steely edge to Leliana's blue eyes tells her all she needs to know, and instead of protesting any further, she stands, too.
"Perhaps I should—we should," she says. Leliana nods slightly, approvingly. But as the others stand as well, two men rise at the far end of the tavern and begin making their way over, quickly and quietly, nowhere near as nonchalant as Leliana had been, though they try to hide their movements. It makes the hair on Talvinder's arms prickle, even under the coating of drying ale, and when she catches the alarm in Leliana's eyes, she finds herself prepared for what comes next.
The taller of the two men reaches Tali in the blink of an eye, and she can just hear the soft rasp of a dagger being drawn from its sheath. Alarmed, she reaches to her side, seeking her sword by reflex before she remembers it sitting upstairs, atop her armor. All she is left with is her father's kirpan and, reluctantly, she pulls it from its sheath just in time to deflect the blade of her attacker. Alistair rises to his feet at the sound of metal on metal, his motion shoving the bench he and Tali had been sitting on backwards, clattering onto its side. There's a yell of protest from the innkeeper behind the bar, but the second man clearly doesn't care as he, too, pulls a dagger from his belt, eyes locked on Alistair.
But as Tali grapples with the man attacking her, dancing away from his blade and blocking the movement of his arms with her own, flesh thudding against flesh as her forearms meet his, she notices the Chantry sister, Leliana, moving with a cold grace and a purposeful stride. The skirts of her Chantry robe rustle almost imperceptibly, and in her hand suddenly is the glint of Antivan steel—the blade of an assassin. Talvinder can't keep her eyes off the man searching for an opening in her defenses, though, and as she parries another stab, ignoring the continued yells of the innkeeper. The noise of a second fight adds to the commotion. Somewhere, a woman gasps, and then there is the faint, gurgling noise of a man breathing his last through a severed windpipe.
Barely a moment has passed when Tali manages to grip her own assailant's arm, twist it roughly, force him to drop his dagger, and pull him back against her chest, pinning him there, the sharp prick of her father's blade at his neck. When she looks back to Leliana, Alistair, and the other attacker, she sees the man on the floor, a pool of blood seeping from the wound left by a small blade still embedded in his throat—not one of Alistair's, that much is certain. Leliana, her face plastered with an aghast expression, babbles to the furious innkeeper, spinning some sort of tale. Tali's attention, though, is drawn back to the man in her grip, struggling against the crushing pressure of her arm around his throat as he hisses words out to her, vitriol in his voice.
"What are you waiting for? Get it over with." Confused, she looks down at the top of his head, but he answers her question before she asks it. "You Grey Wardens are all killers." A few feet away, Leliana has begun to cry, and the innkeeper now comforts her, nodding sympathetically about something. Ice travels down Talvinder's spine and lodges somewhere in her belly, like a knife.
"What?"
"You killed the king. Led him into a trap, you did. Led us. You're the reason—"
"No." Tali's hand trembles slightly, anger washing over her, melting the ice into something molten and burning. "No."
"That's all you have to say for yourselves?" In her arms, the man's voice is growing louder, the volume of it resonating in his chest and making it vibrate against her skin. The innkeep looks up, distracted, and Leliana lets out a wail and grabs at him, drawing his attention back to her as she clings to an incredibly irritated looking Morrigan. "No? How can you deny it when my men are dead? Loghain says—" Her grip slips and the blade in her hand nicks the man's neck ever so slightly, forcing him to gasp and cutting off his speech.
"What does Loghain say, my good ser?" Tali notices that her voice is strangely calm, and she tightens her grip until her knuckles pop pale against the hilt of her father's kirpan.
"Y—you delayed lighting the beacon on purpose." As the would-be-assassin speaks now, his voice is less certain. A faint trickle of blood leaks down the skin of his neck and across Tali's arm, tickling through the thick curtain of hair there. "You kept Loghain from joining the king on the field. My men were massacred because of you."
"And you were in the Tower of Ishal, then? To know this truth, as you put it." The trembling in her hand is gone, and though Tali is in the tavern, she sees and smells and hears the din of Ostagar, and remembers when her hands were not her own, but the scabbed and decaying flesh of a Darkspawn, intent on killing.
"Loghain—"
"Loghain is a liar." The words escape her in a hiss, dangerous and sharp, and the man freezes. Talvinder knows she should stop. She doesn't. "That beacon was lit. As. Planned. I nearly died doing it. Would you like, ser, to see the scars?"
"I—" She ignores his stuttering speech and continues, foolish, but out of control. It flows from her now.
"And it didn't matter. The beacon didn't matter at all. Your precious Loghain made a choice."
"He—"
"Do not tell me that the Grey Wardens are killers, ser. Not when I saw them die, same as your men."
"Talvinder, what…" Alistair's voice catches her attention momentarily, and she looks up at him, realizing the others are looking at her, too. She's not alone with this man who just attempted to kill her, far from it. Suddenly disgusted, feeling ill, she releases him, shoves him away and toward the door. He almost topples over, and as she wipes the blade of her father's kirpan on her shirt, she speaks once more, suddenly struggling to maintain a steady voice.
"You may return to Loghain. Give him a message, though. Tell him that we know the truth." She pauses, and then, because she can't resist, not with the last dregs of adrenaline running through her veins, adds: "And tell him that he'll have to do better than that."
"I—yes, ser." Equal parts cowed and confused, the man claps a hand to the scrape on his neck—shallow enough, it shouldn't trouble him too much—and hurries from the tavern. Alistair approaches Tali questioningly, an eyebrow raised and a hand poised to rest on her arm, but he's interrupted as Leliana lets out another (rather theatrical) cry. The innkeeper's face is covered in an expression of distress, but he hurries behind the bar to retrieve another heavy key, pressing it into the Chantry sister's shaking grip. Still, Morrigan watches the scene with an expression between bemusement and boredom, though next to her, Ranjit is more bewildered. Leliana falls on his shoulder, and then true panic spreads across his face.
"My good sir," Alistair says to the innkeeper, "perhaps a hot bath and a jug of mead ought to be delivered to the lady's room? To help with the scare she's just had, you see."
"Q—quite right." Talvinder isn't at all sure what's just happened, nor why Leliana is still crying loudly, but returning upstairs seems like a very good idea in that moment. The innkeeper especially seems to agree as he begins to fret about the dead man on his floor. As their strange—and growing stranger—group lumbers towards the stairs, Savreen appears, hair freshly washed, clothes mostly clean, and smelling faintly of herbs.
She takes in the group, the crying woman hanging on Ranjit's shoulder, the body on the floor, the flustered innkeeper, the dazed expression on Tali's face.
And then she sighs and turns around, directly back up the stairs, shaking her head ever so slightly.
"Do you mind telling us who you actually are?" Now that Talvinder is bathed and dressed in fresh clothes, it is far harder to ignore the nature of Leliana's introduction. She crosses her arms, leaning up as close to the mantel as she dare while a small fire crackles inside the hearth, and fixes her gaze on the supposed Chantry sister, who has joined Talvinder and the others in their room. With a sigh, Leliana relents, finally, taking a seat on the only chair in the room, pulling it roughly to the center.
"I suppose it is only proper, and as you deserve."
"Thank you so much for your consideration of propriety." She ignores Morrigan, who lays splayed out on a bunk, hands crossed over her chest, where she has been spouting sarcastic lines for the past hour. Instead, Leliana wrings her hands once, twice, and it strikes Talvinder that she is far more nervous now than she was down in the tavern. Suspicion rises in her stomach like bile, and, uneasy, she turns to share a glance with Savreen. Tali's cousin, it would seem, feels the same.
"I am truly a Chantry sister, if that is the root of your question."
"A Chantry sister with a blade of Antivan steel up her garter, yes." Alistair's muttered point is true, and harder to ignore than Morrigan's, but all Leliana gives in indication that she has heard him is a slight stiffening to her shoulders.
"I came to Lothering for a respite, to heal in my faith. The past weeks have been anything but restful and healing, though, as I am sure you all must know." Tali glances at Sav once more, this time out of incredulity and bemusement. Quite the understatement. But Leliana continues. "I take confession, sometimes, to help the Revered Mother in her duties. The soldiers passing through, you see, have quite a few regrets that they desire to confess to the Maker. The two men in the tavern—the one in charge, he came for confessional rites. He felt great guilt that he had followed his commander's orders to remain in Lothering and execute any traitors—Grey Wardens specifically, he said."
Talvinder frowns here as Leliana's words sink into her mind, mingle with the would-be-assassin's.
"Because they believe we are to blame for the defeat at Ostagar?" Alistair arrives at the same conclusion just as Tali does. The response to his question is, however, unexpected. It appears to be Leliana's turn to look slightly incredulous, because as Alistair's voice trails off and his words hang in the air, Leliana's brow half furrows, one eyebrow raised, her eyes squinted in confusion. Her expression causes Alistair to look around, glancing at the others as though for support. "Was it something I said?"
"I take it you have not seen this, then?" The rustle of parchment draws Talvinder's attention back to Leliana from Alistair just as she finishes pulling a folded rectangle of paper from a pocket. She unfolds it to reveal a formal decree, written in the steady and ornate writing of the clerical sisters of the Chantry, stamped with the seal of the throne.
At the bottom of the paper, three illustrations of vaguely familiar faces gaze out at Tali. She stiffens. Alarm crosses Savreen's face, and she takes a few long steps across the room to grab the decree before looking at it closely, reading the crisscrossing, curlicued words.
"The Right and Honorable General Mac Tir hereby proclaims, in restitution for the murder of His Majesty the King, that any and all—" Sav pauses, chokes on her words, looks up with alarm at Leliana, and then continues speaking, words memorized. "That any and all Grey Wardens are to be considered traitors to the crown."
Dread falls on the room. Sav holds the parchment out for Tali, who takes it urgently, anxiously. There is more writing, and Tali's tongue almost ties itself into knots in her hurry to read it aloud.
"All citizens are hereby delegated as executors of the Throne's justice and a reward of fifty gold sovereigns is offered upon proof of death of any of the three following fugitives." At the bottom of the long paper, scraped out hastily in ink, are drawings of Tali, Sav, and Alistair, and though they're a poor likeness overall, there's enough similarity in them to make Tali's heart beat faster: the faint lines of her Mac Eanraig tattoos, like wings across her face, the deep black of her and Sav's hair, Sav's nose, her curls, the unmistakable unruliness of Alistair's hair and the faint points to his ears.
"Who all has seen this?" Alistair asks as Tali hands the paper to him, tension strangling his voice. Leliana shrugs, shakes her head.
"I cannot be sure. It was fixed to the Chantry door for nearly a day before I managed to remove it."
"We need to leave Lothering as—" As Alistair begins to speak, Savreen interrupts him, eyes slightly narrowed, brow furrowed.
"Why would you remove the decree?" She asks Leliana, arms folded across her chest as she gazes intently at the woman. "Removing a decree with the royal seal is a punishable offence. What did you have to gain? You had no real way of knowing we would come to Lothering, so you couldn't know if you were helping us or not. So why?" For a brief moment, discomfort flickers across Leliana's face—before she snuffs out the expression, replacing it with a serene and mild look.
"There were parts of the tale told to me by many soldiers in confession that did not add up. They were contradictory, confused. It seemed an affront to the Maker to allow a decree calling for the summary execution of anyone without trial, especially in such confusion, to remain on the Chantry door." Sav considers Leliana's words, suspicion still on her face. It's as likely an explanation as any, and in all honesty, Leliana does seem to Tali like the sort of person to risk imprisonment over her interpretation of the Maker's will. It's whether or not that's good that sticks in Tali's mind, making her wary of the redheaded woman sitting small in front of her.
"But how did you find us in the tavern? How would you know that we were Wardens, or that we were being followed?"
"I didn't know that you were Wardens, not for sure. I just knew that the man whose confession I had taken would kill someone, and then he began to follow the two of you—" she gestures perfunctorily at Talvinder and Alistair here, not bothering to pause— "through the market. I thought he might be mistaken, but when the other man joined him and they followed you into the tavern, I knew I had to do something." The story is a fine one, and there's no reason for Tali not to believe it. She knows that. She can see that Sav knows it, too.
But the way Leliana pulled that dagger from her robes, the way she hasn't explained it, the way she seems to carefully measure her facial expressions—there's something there that, just as Leliana had said of the soldiers retreating from Ostagar, doesn't add up.
"Well, you have our thanks," Sav says at last, still wary. Leliana nods in acknowledgement, and an awkward silence falls as Talvinder considers that they should tell Leliana to leave, but none of them seem to be able to come up with an excuse. Finally, though, Morrigan, sounding incredibly bored, sighs and speaks.
"Indeed, how illuminating this conversation has been. Alas for me though that the day grows old. What a shame 'twill be to retire from such company." Her tone says very much so that she does not think it a shame at all. But at the very least, it works, and Leliana stands, brushing nonexistent wrinkles from the faded ivory of her robes.
"I thank you for taking the time to listen to me," she says as she heads for the door, angling past Ranjit on her way out. As she reaches the door though, she pauses and turns around, back to the others.
Whatever may have been an act before, it is clear to Talvinder that the hesitation hanging over Leliana is real. The woman bites her lip, glancing briefly at each member of the party before she speaks again.
"I know you will be leaving soon. It is too dark to travel safely now. But when you leave in the morning, please take me with you." Around the room, everyone reacts with varying levels of surprise, amusement, and suspicion. Tali's eyebrows shoot up her forehead and towards her hairline while Morrigan just scoffs, shaking her head. Sav cocks her head slightly, crossing her arms as she stares at Leliana once more, and Ranjit simply looks at her with a small frown while Alistair's whole face seems bunched up in confusion.
"You want to come with us?" Alistair asks finally, as though making sure he's heard her correctly. Leliana nods. "Why?"
"Because I can help." Before giving anyone another chance to question her, Leliana slips out the door, shutting it behind her with a finality that punctuates her words. It's almost more perplexing than her introduction that afternoon in the tavern below them all, and everyone stands there in silence for a moment, registering what's just happened.
Surprising everyone, even herself, Tali speaks.
"It's not like we can afford to turn away help when we're wanted for treason." Sav's head whips around, and for a moment she stares at her cousin as though Tali's just suggested they cut their hair. But then she, too, considers it.
"Help is one thing we need, but can we afford it if she has as much to hide as it seems?" With a frown, Tali nods slowly. Sav's right, of course. And there is something Leliana is hiding, plain as day.
"We'll have to leave before dawn to avoid her; she spoke correctly that it is too dark to leave now." Ranjit's suggestion, unfortunately for Tali, who had been looking forward to sleeping past dawn in a real bed for the first time in weeks, is sensible. Even Morrigan nods, and Tali feels a petulant frown forming on her face.
"Then we should all sleep while we can," Alistair says. But he doesn't head to a bed, instead reclaiming the chair and dragging it back towards the hearth and the fire burning within, casting dim orange light across the room. "I'll keep watch for now, just to make sure we've no more old friends eager to give us a dagger in the face as a reunion gift."
The conversation ended, Tali heads to a bottom bunk, suddenly bone-tired. Her feet hang slightly off the edge of the straw mattress, something she's forgotten about since sleeping on the ground. But it's softer than dirt, even if it is scratchy, and soon she slips into a dead sleep, watching the silhouette of Alistair in front of the slowly dimming fire through the curtain of her lashes.