Ten awoke the next morning in her childhood bedroom, her arms around a soft toy now only vaguely shaped like a wolf. She chuckled and rose, groaning. You'd think I'd be used to waking up with everything hurting by now. She saw, when she went to wash, that the lightning that he magister had hit her with had manifested in a long, fractal scar, starting on the right side of her neck and branching out down her side, across her right breast and down her torso, and all the way down the outside of her left leg. Wonder if that's permanent. She dressed, finding some of her clothes in the bureau against the wall. Being in armor so long the day before had left her chafed, and with the lighting burns, the idea of strapping it back on was not appealing.

She went out into the kitchen, where her father was dishing out a stiff millet porridge, fragrant with garlic, into two bowls and tea into two mugs.

"Ah, you're awake!" he exclaimed, "Sit down. How are you feeling?"

"Like I ran into a Tevinter magister and let him unload four or fives spells into me," sighed Ten. She sat down at the table, wincing.

"Tell me that's not how you fight all of your battles," he said, setting a bowl and mug in front of her.

"It's not, usually there's a three hundred pound Qunari to do it for me," she said.

"Good," he said.

"So how about you tell me how in the hell you got so good with a longbow?" asked Ten, "The king's yeomen take years of training to even be able to draw reliably."

"Things were different where I grew up," said Cyrion, "We were allowed weapons. Encouraged to have them, even. Things weren't as… contentious as they are here."

"Then why'd you come here?" asked Ten.

Cyrion sat at the table across from his daughter and gazed into his mug of tea. "I've left a few things out," he said, "These long years. I suppose I thought I was protecting you. That if you didn't know, it wouldn't hurt you. But, the long and short of it is, I was… never technically freed."

Ten looked up sharply, her spoon halfway to her mouth.

"I was the property of one Ambrosius Kerularios. He's probably dead by now, but I'm sure I've been inherited. He owned both my mother and my father, after all. When I was… oh, maybe four or five, they bought freedom for Cedrin, Soris's dad, and he left the Imperium with me on his back. He was probably eleven or twelve at the time."

"How'd he manage that?" asked Ten.

"I was very small," Cyrion said, "They didn't keep track of the babies like they did the grown elves, so many of us died before turning ten, after all. Everyone just figured I'd been freed as well, and off we went to the Marches. Cedrin learned the farrier's trade, and I… well I suppose I ran the streets like you used to. And one day, the fletcher's boy showed up with an old test bow his father had replaced. We took turns shooting at bottles in an alleyway. Nobody told me it was supposed to be hard. So I just did it. I was good enough at it. He just gave me the bow. I still have it, in fact. Had to hide it from the guards, of course."

"So you just… became an absolute crackshot, shooting at bottles in a back alley in Kirkwall?"

"I don't know how else to put it," he said.

"Is that why you came to Ferelden? Was Kirkwall too close? Were they looking for you?"

"Not me specifically I don't think, but a few of the escapees in the Alienage started disappearing, and Cedrin thought it might be wise to move on. Ferelden was a brand new nation with a barely functioning government and no treaties that would require them to send me back, and far enough away that the slave-hunters would not bother looking," said Cyrion, "So when it came time for Cedrin to marry, your aunt Lydeia was an appealing match. He came here, and I came with him."

"How old were you?"

"Thirteen," he said, "I'll never forget, stepping off of the boat, right where we were last night. I found a bit of poetry in the idea of being sent back where I came from from the very pier where I arrived thirty-five years before."

Ten put a bit of pickled turnip in her porridge and took a bite, savoring the brine mingling with the garlic and millet.

"I was not always as you know me," he said, "If you and I had been teenagers at the same time no doubt we've both have gotten into the trouble you did. Having children changes you. I hear some fathers talk about the first time holding their babies and the overwhelming love they felt, like nothing they had ever experienced before. But for me, holding you… what I felt was fear. I had a girl. The Maker had just charged me with an impossible task. Protecting a little elf girl."

"So that's why you wrapped me in gauze and started trying to hitch me to a man I could merely tolerate when I was fifteen?" she asked, "Because you were sick of the job? Thought you could hand it over to some unsuspecting lad?"

"No, my girl. I thought that you ought to have children to teach you that same fear I felt. That I feel. That same caution. That it would make you stop putting yourself in danger. I thought that that would keep you safe. And instead I've made an enemy of some poor goldsmith from Highever."

Ten chuckled, "I actually went there, about a month and a half ago. Pay my respects."

"Did you," Cyrion said, looking at her oddly.

"Master Kirianis left a few things out about his boy much like you left a few things out about me," said Ten, "Strangely I think they rather made us well-suited for each other. Not that it really matters now, but you weren't entirely wrong."

"Well there's a first," he said, "Did you just admit I might have been right about something?"

"They say," Ten said, "That when you're seventeen, your father is the biggest idiot you've ever met. But when you're twenty-one, you're amazed at how much he's learned in four years. I suppose I'm a late bloomer."

Cyrion sighed, ran his hand through his hair, which was, in the broad light of day, markedly grayer than the last time she had seen him. "I had never actually seen you in action before last night. The way you command a room. How people listen to you instinctively. That's a quality I've never had."

"Well there's another first," Ten said, "Did you just say I did a good job with something?'

"I really wish it hadn't left you with burns over half your body, but… yes."

"They'll heal. I think. Either way, I'll take it."

"So tell me," he said, "Now that we are decidedly just two grown people who respect one another, talking about grown people things… I'm not going to judge you, but what happened with the guardsman?"

"Anton?" Ten sighed, "I hate to disappoint you for the thousandth time in my life, but I had no good reason for that. I suppose it was a final act of rebellion after I resigned myself to marriage."

"He's a halfbreed," said Cyrion, accusingly, "With a human mother. Who denied his heritage."

"Some of the most upstanding folk in this neighborhood are halfbreeds."

"It's different," said Cyrion, "A halfbreed born of an elf woman, she didn't have any choice in the matter. But when an elfin man chooses to betray his kind…"

"Dad, it's a lot more complicated than that, and you know it. There are plenty of reasons not to trust Anton Villais, but please, move on from this one. You sound like one of them."

Cyrion sighed, "Very well, let me rephrase that. He, knowing full well who he was, chose to become a lawman. Chose to… involve himself with a well-connected and dare I say well-loved member of the community."

"We had a business relationship," said Ten, "Just like I had with Sergeant Canty before him."

"Yes, until Kitheril Canty's heart just happened to stop," Cyrion said, "You weren't involved with him, were you?"

"Ew, of course not," said Ten.

"See what I mean? You could have had a perfectly functioning working relationship with Villais. But that wasn't enough for him, was it. And I have to wonder why."

"He couldn't just have thought I was cute?" Ten asked.

"Oh, Teneira. Of course I think you are the most beautiful girl in all the land, but if all he wanted was an elfin sweetheart, there are plenty of other girls in this neighborhood…"

"Well damn, Dad, tell me how you really feel," Ten said, chuckling, but the old man had a point.

"...who aren't liable to kill a man in his sleep the minute he does something they don't like," he concluded, "I'm just saying. Why you? Don't you think that's strange?"

She looked at him. I have not given this man enough credit. "Well when you put it that way, I suppose it is. But we both just watched him break a magister's neck with his own chains. I think that buys him some benefit of the doubt."

"Well I also doubt he thought he'd be clocked. He never learned to be careful," said Cyrion, "What do you think we should do with him?"

"I don't think he has many choices at this point," said Ten, "He stays here, one of us. Or he leaves the city. He has family in the Orlesian quarter, I imagine they can arrange it."

"I don't like his chances here with us," Cyrion said, "Not everyone's as open-minded as you are."

"I suppose I could make an honest man of him. Everyone here knows not to mess with what's mine," she said. She caught her father's eye, the dismay on his face. He knows the rules. You get to choose your second spouse. He can't say shit, can he. She let the joke go on for another moment just so he could get good and uncomfortable, and only then started laughing. "The look on your face!"

"Oh thank the Maker," he sighed, "I can never tell when you're joking. You may be my spit and image but you got your mother's deadpan."

"You know I'm going to have to leave for a bit as well," she said, "You're not going to believe this, but somehow I've gotten tangled up in the matter of succession. It's absolutely ridiculous. You would not believe some of the things people who've never been hungry care about."

"I think I would," said Cyrion, "And it's probably not terribly wise for you to stay too long anyway," Once they figure out what happened here, they'll know it was you, and there are no Grey Wardens left to save you from the gallows this time."

"Well, there's one, but he'd probably let me get all the way to the scaffold just so he could have a laugh."

"I don't think I approve of the company you're keeping," said Cyrion.

"I certainly don't approve of the company I'm keeping," Ten said, "Except for the circle mage. She's all right. You'd like her. As for the rest of them..."

"So you have a three hundred pound Qunari, a circle mage, a Grey Warden with a terrible sense of humor…"

"A radical nun, a witch of the wild, and an Antivan assassin with a stupid haircut," said Ten.

"Are you pulling my leg right now?"

"I wish I were," said Ten.

"One day, when this is done, we can have them all over for tea," he said, "But in the meantime, you've got to go deliver that guardsman to his family. I think you should also, perhaps, have a conversation with him about exactly what happened to bring him to this point. I'll bet you anything it's not a simple story."

She nodded.

"Villais was at Cedrin's earlier with the others from the ship, getting those manacles removed," he said, "He might still be there."

"All right," she said, "I'll see you on the other side of this one. Don't burn the place down."

"Oh my girl, I'm not who you have to worry about."

She packed her things, embraced her father, and walked out into the bright sunlight. She took off for her uncle's forge, but was intercepted by both of her cousins coming down the ramp from her war room above her dad's woodworking shop.

"Oh there you are," Shianni said, "We were just coming to get you. Villais wants to see you, we put him in the war room."

"You left him in the war room with all my secrets?"

"Well he knows about the whole Tevinter elf-selling plot already, that's most of the paperwork we have in there. Everything else is locked up at home," said Shianni, "In a chest, where the cats can't piss on it, don't worry."

"He was being real cryptic," Soris observed, "He won't talk to anyone but you."

Ten sighed, shook her head, and walked up the ramp to where she had schemed every scheme.

He was sitting at her table. In the light of day, he was in terrible shape. He'd lost maybe twenty pounds, and he was already of slight frame. His nose had been broken recently, and his eyes were still blackened. Worst of all, someone - probably the Tevinters - had branded him on both cheeks and the burns were a livid red with sparks of blue magic embedded deep within them. She hadn't seen them in the dark of didn't know what the rune meant, but casting back to the ship's manifest, she imagined it had something to do with not letting him get away with pretending to be human anymore.

"Maker's breath Anton, what did they do to you?" she said, sitting down next to him.

"Who, the guards, or the Tevinters?"

"Start from the beginning," she said. She dumped her satchel of potions out on the table and started mixing.

"The Tevinters started poking around a month ago," said Anton, "I was asked to escort them in. I thought it was just academic at first, but they started… making lists. Talking to people. Being a little too interested. I made the mistake of asking too many questions, I guess. One night I was walking home, and someone threw a blanket over me and maybe three or four of them kicked the shit out of me, knocked me out cold. Next thing I know I'm bandaged up in here, I can't leave, and someone fucking…" he unbuttoned his shirt. Just as Shianni said, there were halfway healed scars that spelled out 'halfbreed' across his chest. "Be honest with me, Teneira, did your people do this?"

"Absolutely not!" Ten exclaimed, "Shianni said it was on you when they threw you over the wall."

He looked at her suspiciously, but nodded, and buttoned his shirt back up. "And if that wasn't enough, the Tevinters came for me next. I was first. Nobody knew me, nobody would miss me. Put me in a cage, then chained me up in the hold of that ship. I didn't even know there was an order to quarantine until they threw that fishwife in there with me. Then they gave me these," he said, gesturing to the livid burns on each cheek, "I could have hidden these scars," he said, putting his hand on his chest, "But these…I've got some hard choices ahead of me."

"Does it hurt?"

"Take a poker from the fire and drive it into your own face, tell me if it hurts," he said bitterly.

"Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news," she said, satisfied with the paste she'd created, "But this is going to sting. It'll make the scars less pronounced, though. Unless you're into them."

"Wouldn't be the worst you've hurt me," he said as she dipped her little finger into the paste and started applying it to the burns. He flinched, but didn't make a sound. She bandaged them, and gave him a draught for the pain, which he swallowed down.

"Really, Anton," she said, finally, "Don't be dramatic."

"You've never walked the woman you love to her execution," he said.

"Neither have you, actually," said Ten, "Unless there's someone you haven't told me about and you just have a thing for murderesses."

"Alas, the other murderesses never gave me the time of day," he sighed, "I suppose there's still no getting you to jump a ship with me."

"So I'm curious about that, Anton," said Ten, "Why is it still all about running away with you? If anything, this is the first time there could be anything between us that wasn't somewhat illegal or at least highly frowned upon. You are now, publicly, as much of an elf as about a quarter of the Alienage. I'm neither married nor betrothed to another, the price on my head is purely political, and even if it weren't, it's no longer your job to haul me in. It's almost like it's you that has something to run away from. Perhaps… something that has been there all along."

He stared at her silently for a long moment. One or twice, he opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself, and then finally heaved a great sigh. "Well I suppose there's no sense in playing this game any longer. I'm about done with it. With all of it," said Anton.

"Please. Enlighten me."

"I joined the guard in the first place, got myself assigned to the Alienage," Anton said, "Because my mother told me to."

"And who, exactly, is your mother? Besides the overbearing shrew who was rattling your windows the last time we spoke?"

"Well she is certainly that. But her name is Albertine Villais. Known in certain circles - your circles in fact - as Madame Hirondelle."

Ten concentrated on not reacting. The legend herself. The iron fist in the velvet glove with the whole quarter in its grasp. The deposed queen of the courtesans of Val Royeaux, exiled to the provinces these last twenty years. Well, I suppose that answers the question of how one brother becomes a hooker and the other a copper. No doubt all her boys go exactly where she tells them to.

"So you were sent to spy on me," asked Ten, "Why? She's never involved herself in my territory, nor I in hers. I've never even met the woman. Unless you count that time in your courtyard…"

"It's her way," said Anton, "She is Orlesian, after all. She prefers to play games. And I… I am but a pawn."

"As am I, apparently," said Ten.

"Not at all. You're a much more valuable piece than I am," he said, "According to her."

"And yet I was captured," said Ten, "On your watch, no less."

"Well that's the thing about queens," said Anton, "Sometimes they get captured, but a queen is the one piece on the board that can come back. You push a pawn all the way to the far end of the board, voila. The queen has returned, but the pawn is no more. And so you have, and so I am."

"Well, queen or not, I admit I feel a little bit foolish right now," said Ten, "Did your mother tell you to seduce me as well?"

He looked away.

"Of course she did. It's the only thing she knows how to do, after all," Ten said, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks. Andraste's left tit, how could I have been such an idiot?

"It… it was her idea. But that wasn't all of it. Believe me, Ten, the minute I saw you standing at your stall in that dress with the flowers on it, your hair up in that blue kerchief… I have never wanted anything in my life before or since as much as I wanted you."

She sighed, "There was a time when I'd have been flattered by that. But you were, in fact, spying on me."

"I was. I was. And it broke my heart. I knew it could never be, not here, not with you being who you are, my mother being who she is. But if we'd left, we could have just been… normal. Worried about nothing but each other."

"Oh, so you loved me, but only because you were hoping I would change literally everything about myself," she said, "This city is in my blood, and my blood is in this city. There's no separating us. So explain to me, exactly, how I have been the one to hurt you."

"Oh, was marrying another man not enough? Though I suppose that never truly bothered me."

"You really thought I was going to let that continue after I got married? How very Orlesian of you."

"That's not… that's not it. I have grieved for you. Not once. Twice. Twice I lit a candle in the Chantry, did my penance for the part I played in it, only to have you pop right out of the street again. I haven't been the same, Ten. Don't think I'll ever be. And now…" he gestured at the bandaged burns, "My life as I knew it is over. Because I put myself on the line for the people you love."

"Your life as you knew it was premised on a lie," she said, "And the people I love should by rights be the people you love too. But you think you're better than them. Than us."

"It's a lie you'd have told if you could have gotten away with it."

"That's just not true. I have always been proud of who I am," she said, "And I don't appreciate being a piece in your mother's games. Or yours."

"Of course you don't, you prefer playing the game yourself," he said, "Imagine what it's like to actually be one of the pawns. My mother on the one hand, you on the other, each of you plucking at me, asking for things, threatening things… getting far away from you both, in a strange way, may be the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"Don't even try to turn this back on me, Villais," she said, "I wasn't using you."

"Weren't you?" he said, "Oh, I know you wanted me. I know you might have even thought you loved me. It was dreadfully romantic, wasn't it, I certainly got in over my head… but really, at the end of the day, I was your eyes in the guardhouse, someone to whisper your needs to and to jump whenever you asked, another tool the Arlessa would use to get what she wanted."

"What I wanted?" she exclaimed, "All I have ever wanted is..."

"The safety of your people. I know," he said, "I know. You only say it three times a day. Maybe, if we had run, gone away from all of this, things could have been different. But you'd never do that. You're just… one with the cause. You couldn't even bring yourself to go to bed with me until you were resigned to your own death. And don't get me wrong, I loved you, Ten. If it was just between me and your husband, I could have lived with that. But you are just not capable of loving a person, are you. Not me, not him, nobody. You can't love anything but the fight."

Ten felt like she'd been slapped. Shame, then hurt, and then anger. "How easy it would have been to just sink that ship with you still on it."

"Oh, but you'd never do that. Not when your people were on it, too. You didn't give a fuck about me. You never have. I was a pretty distraction from your one true love. Your people. And I am not one of your people."

"Well I suppose you're not, if that's how you feel. And what, exactly, have you told your mother about me? I know very well what you spilled to your whore brother."

"Leave Airon out of this. I imagine he risked quite a lot to get in touch with you. And I never told my mother anything that could have hurt you," he said, "She didn't want to hurt you."

"I imagine you didn't want to hurt me either," said Ten, "But here we are."

He looked at her, "Really."

"I could have gotten everything I needed out of you and more without so much as holding your hand or batting my eyelashes. The knowledge of your parentage alone had you in my pocket," she said,"Like I've said… the rest of it? It was always separate. And to think, I actually let myself look forward to a day when all of this would be over and I could worry about nothing but you."

He closed his eyes and sighed, realizing she had a point, "So I'm… I'm the prick here, aren't I?"

"You said it, not me," she said.

"It's probably time I take a page out of my father's book, flee to the Dalish, figure out what… what any of this means. I don't see that I have any other options."

"If you think the Dalish like halfbreeds any more than anyone else, I have some bad news for you," Ten said, "But you're right, if you think you're too good to live in Denerim as one of us, you can't live here at all. And, well, the Dalish do have a reputation for helping stubborn lads pull their heads out of their asses."

"I deserved that," he sighed.

"So, let's get you back to the bosom of your mother. If she is who you say she is, she'll manage to smuggle you anywhere you need to go without too much trouble. Another bit of cargo to ship overseas."

"Ten," he said, taking her hand, "Don't get me wrong. You are an admirable woman. And I do admire you. But loving you has cost me far too much."

"I never asked you to do that," she said, snatching her hand back, "That's on you."

"I suppose it is," he said, "And always has been."

"No sense in dragging this out any further. Let's get you back where you belong. Can you climb? Nothing crazy, two ladders and a swing over the wall."

"I think I can do that," he said. She helped him to his feet, and headed for the door.

"Well now we'll be even," she said, "I get to march you through the streets of Denerim looking an absolute fright."

"I suppose it's fitting," he said, "After all, you did finally give me that poultice."