Twenty-One
Asariel, 9:34 Dragon
Fiora winced as his fingers touched the large, purple bruise that ringed her left eye and cheek.
"What did you do this time?" Cassius asked.
"You wouldn't believe me if I said I didn't do anything, Terro?" Fiora asked as she steadied and Cassius began to push the healing magic around her bruised socket.
"No," he said with a smirk. "Because I know you."
Fiora chuckled to herself and then winced as the movement made the muscles in her face scrunch, which flared the pain in her bruise. "I maybe was doing some night swimming."
Cassius scowled. "By yourself?"
"Maybe with some of the other slaves."
"And let me guess, maybe without your clothes on?" Cassius asked.
Fiora smirked again, not bothered this time as her bruise was nearly gone as he healed her. "Maybe. That's what the overseer says happened."
"And is that what actually happened?"
"It was dark out. That could have been any elf slave out there," Fiora said, admitting no guilt.
"And I suppose the overseer's club just happened to connect with the side of your head accidentally while you weren't out in the water last night?" Cassius said.
"Maybe," Fiora said with a snort and that devilish smirk again as Cassius removed his fingers from her face where her eye now looked perfectly normal as it had before she once again earned the overseer's wrath. "Thanks, Terro."
Fiora pressed her fingers around her eye and over her shaved-bald scalp, testing the healed flesh and apparently finding it all better. She stood up out of the chair and rolled her shoulders, stretched her neck from side to side, and then yawned widely. If the overseer were here, he'd probably beat her again for her casual demeanor in the presence of her master. Slaves were expected to be nearly invisible, only making themselves known when they were needed.
Fiora disagreed with that notion and paid the price for her misbehavior constantly. Cassius was partly to blame as he didn't reinforce the overseer's discipline and gave his slave much more leeway than he should have. She had been his slave for three years now, but, at three years older than him, he had always seen her as a peer more than property.
She had, admittedly, been meeker and more scared when they first brought her to Asariel, but over time she strayed more and more as Cassius continued to provide her additional leash, so to speak. Within two years, she had learned that she could get away with quite a bit more than the other household slaves, as long as the overseer didn't catch wind of it.
That wasn't how slavery was supposed to work in Tevinter, but Cassius had not only never owned a slave, he had never been around slaves growing up. His family was far too poor to have ever been able to afford even the least productive slave and the few that toiled within the Circle at Carastes were kept out of sight and far away from the apprentices. It wasn't until the first summer he came to Asariel on the Water with Magister Arrentius in 9:30 that he had an up close interaction with a slave.
Flavius had purchased Fiora for him the following year, as a sign of his continuing appreciation for the service Cassius provided him and his house. It had been an awkward transition, as he didn't know exactly what she was supposed to do. He was used to looking after himself and it felt odd to have someone else to take care of his chores or wait on him. Instead, he had treated Fiora more like a friend. Not only had he never interacted with slaves before, he had never really interacted with elves either, so he had been curious to know about her life before she sold herself into servitude and why, although she never would tell him what happened.
She had a family, once. Her mother and father were both free elves, albeit desperately poor. The alienage she grew up in was squalid and disease ridden and her parents worked merciless jobs. Both her parents were employed at the docks, where the shippers needed as much cheap labor as they could get. Her mother spent her days gutting and cutting fish, while her father had a backbreaking job unloading cargo basically all day and all night. She rarely saw her father when she was young, except for brief glimpses very early in the morning if she woke up early enough before he made his way off to his job.
He had eventually sailed with the Imperial army to Seheron as a dockworker, to help load and unload supplies and troops and manage ships at the port on the contested island. The job was less harsh than his in Minrathous and the pay was better.
And then, he never returned. Whether he was killed, abducted by the Qunari or simply ran away, they never knew. He was an elf laborer, worth even less attention to the important people in Tevinter than slaves, who were valuable.
Her mother tried, Fiora said, but she couldn't even scratch out the meager means to survive in the alienage. As she fell deeper and deeper into debt, and as she worked more and more to try to earn what she needed, she eventually fell ill, got sicker and sicker, and died coughing and coughing until her lungs fully filled with fluid and death came to claim her.
That's where Fiora's stories always stopped. She was fourteen years old when her mother died, but Magister Arrentius didn't purchase her at the market until she was seventeen. She never told Cassius what happened during that three-year gap, where she had lived, what she had done, what ultimately led to her choosing to sell herself into slavery and why she had begged them to purchase her and take her away from Minrathous before something terrible happened to her.
Maybe there was no greater threat, maybe it had simply been a ploy to sell herself more quickly to the first owner who looked like he might treat her well. But somehow, deep down, Cassius knew that something awful had happened to her, so terrible that she never wanted to think of it again. Free people didn't sell themselves into servitude just because they could. It was the last effort of someone with no other option for survival.
"Cassius, I–" Valerie was saying as she bounded into the room and then stopped short as she noticed Cassius and his slave. "Oh, hello Fiora."
"My lady," Fiora said respectfully and bowed her head, quickly stepping backward until she ran into the wall, tucked her arms behind her back and stood straight against the wall, trying her best to disappear as she had been trained to do. Cassius watched as she lifted her head and stared blankly straight ahead, slipping inward into her own mind while the magister's first daughter was there.
When Fiora pressed against the wall, Valerie turned her head back to him and pretended the slave wasn't there, as she was trained to do for someone of her station. "I'm ready to go, if you're ready."
Valerie wanted to go riding today and, with her father's permission, they were going to ride along the river as far as they could make it before the sun started to set. Flavius had been clear that they were to be home before the slaves lit the lamps in the house after dusk. She had promised, although Cassius suspected they would almost certainly arrive home after dark and her father would admonish her for once again stretching the limits of his trust. Cassius would likely spend much of his time urging her to turn back, only for her to demand they press on a little farther and a little farther until there was no hope of making it home on time. He had resigned himself to that fact, although he couldn't say he would be disappointed with the opportunity to spend the entire day with her.
"Fiora," Cassius said. "Go to the stables and have them ready our horses. We'll be down shortly."
"Yes, Terr–" she stopped herself before addressing him casually in front of Valerie and corrected herself.
"Yes, domine, as you command."
Minrathous, 9:42 Dragon
The slave market stank of mold.
It had rained several days earlier in the week and the boxy, tight quarter at the back of the market drained poorly. There was always standing water along the lanes and that led to all kinds of mold and moss and lichens that crept along the stones and up the side of buildings. Cassius tried to ignore the stink as he marched along the street with a chained procession following him.
Flavius, along with his wife, his second daughter and his granddaughter, had also come to Minrathous with twenty slaves in tow to sell at market. He also brought with him several land deeds to mortgage at the moneylenders or – worse, if they didn't want to let him borrow against them – the Carta. Magister Porenni and the other Venatori leaders were completely disinterested in chasing relics out in the western desert of Orlais, but Flavius was fervently certain that there was some long lost but immensely powerful dwarven weapon buried there. As such, he had been funding the expedition to the Hissing Wastes – the men, money and supplies needed for the brutal excavation – basically out of his own pocket for months now.
Magister Gallus was leading the effort on the ground and Flavius had stayed connected with other scholars, miners and soldiers who had been sent there to uncover the secrets of the only known topside dwarven thaig. With the failure of the other Venatori initiatives in Orlais and with the wheels in motion on their incursion into Nevarra at hand, Flavius was committed to divert every possible resource toward his quest.
The twenty slaves he led into the market constituted most of the household staff at the manor. Cassius recognized the stableworkers, the cooks, the cleaning staff, and the personal slaves assigned to each of his daughters as well as his wife. The field slaves were not being sold as they prepared for the coming spring planting, but he had left instructions with his overseers to press them as hard as they could, to plant every acre and tend every possible piece of soil. When they weren't working the fields, they would be reassigned to literally any other task that could result in a profit, whether it was chopping wood, cutting stone or breeding new slaves.
As Cassius led the train of slaves through the crowded, narrow, loud, stinking streets of the market, he felt ill not just from the squalor but from the anxiety of knowing that Flavius was now squeezing as hard as he could to wring whatever gold he could out of his name and his holdings. He was placing all of his hope, gambling everything on a barren waste in the south. If it turned up nothing, House Arrentius would be buried by its seemingly infinite expanses of sand.
"I hate it here," Fiora complained next to him, her hand sitting on the hilt of her saber and not moving. Her eyes darted around nervously, stopping to size up every person within her field of vision, taking note of everyone as she walked rigidly next to him. She never turned around to look at the caravan of Arrentius slaves behind her, their hands bound and chained together in a series one after another as they moved through the street like one long, jingling, slithering snake.
Cassius didn't say anything, but quickened his pace as best he could, squeezing between people as the lane narrowed, choked by buyers, sellers and their inventory that flooded off the curb and into the lane of travel. The city guardsmen seemed disinterested in pushing them back into their stalls, likely with pockets filled with bribes to look the other way on whatever might happen that or any other day.
"Spare a coin?" a beggar cried out as he lurched from the ground toward Cassius. He was an old elf, missing most of his teeth and one of his feet. His hands pawed at Cassius, making him wonder if the man was blind too.
Before he could answer, Fiora stepped in front and grabbed the old man by the filthy collar of his ragged shirt and pushed him backward, nearly lifting the starving man off his feet. "Get back, you filthy rat." Her other hand was still on her saber as she pushed the beggar back, then shoved him to the ground.
"That wasn't necessary," Cassius chided, surprised by her sudden aggression, as she fell back into step next to him.
"It was, Terro," she said as her eyes continued to dart around, her tongue sizzling with disgust. "Let one urchin put his paws on you and the rest will swarm like roaches. Trust me."
The way she lowered her voice, he could tell that she spoke from experience, so he let the issue drop. She stepped back out in front of their column, cutting a path through the crowd. They were almost to Flavius' preferred seller, a grizzled old dwarf named Dorgan, but who everyone called Eight Fingers because the Carta had taken his thumbs some twenty years past. He never had the best stock of slaves and his sources were somewhat questionable, but he offered decent prices with relatively few questions. Flavius had done considerable business with him over the years, so even despite his seedy reputation, he was trustworthy and fair whenever an Arrentius showed up at this stall.
As the street widened out into a plaza, Fiora cut left and he followed until they came to the row of cages lining the street and a young elf boy crying out to the crowd, trying to draw in customers. Cassius ignored the kid and walked through the improvised gate made by the slave cages. Each one of the cages, maybe six by six feet, were packed with four elves each, huddled together with barely enough room to move. They were thin, thinner than even elves should be, and tired looking. If they didn't sell soon, Eight Fingers would have to feed them, and that cut into his profit line.
"Terro," Eight Fingers said as he turned his head and coughed hard, holding a thumbless fist to his lips as he hacked violently and then spit a clump to the street that was part green phlegm, part red blood and part white spit. "Fucking Flavius Five-Daughters can't even hobble his fat fucking ass out here anymore to do business with an old friend?"
"Sorry Fingy," Cassius said, nodding his head in greeting. "My lord is tied up with other business."
"Business," Eight Fingers snorted, spitting again out of the corner of his mouth. His brown and gray beard was bushy and disheveled as he ran his fingers through it like a comb. His eyes were bloodshot and Cassius wondered if he was back on the dwarf dust after kicking the habit, starting again and stopping again when he blacked out in the middle of the day and almost suffocated in the middle of the market. "What kind of business? Eating a fucking pie?"
Cassius ignored the gibe. Fiora might have chuckled if she wasn't so on edge. She was corralling the train of slaves forward, but her eyes were still everywhere else except on what she was doing.
"I'm here to sell," Cassius said. "Twenty. And judging by what you've got in stock, this might help you actually make a sale."
Eight Fingers held up both his middle fingers, both adorned with gaudy, oversized gold rings, and smiled. His gums were bloody, suggesting that he was back on the dust and that his sinuses were bleeding into the back of his throat. "The Carta may have taken my thumbs, but they still left me these fuckers. And fuck you, Terro. Business has been fucking terrible out here. Regular folk don't have any fucking money any more and the fucking stuck-up magisters now only ever want premium shit or exotic this or unusual that. You know I had one ask me if I had any fucking Qunari? He wanted one as a pet. What the fuck is wrong with people?"
As he finished his small rant, the dwarf rocked three times in his chair to build up the momentum to toss himself from the seat to the ground, where he landed on his stubby legs a little shakily. His slaves might have been starving to death, but Eight Fingers didn't look like he had missed too many meals since Cassius last saw him. He waddled past, his potbelly out in front of him, and took a look at the slaves, stroking his beard as he walked around, sizing up each of them. He grabbed the hands on one and flipped them over, looking at the palms.
"Soft hands," Eight Fingers said. "Household workers?"
"Cooks, cleaners, stableboys," Cassius said. "No hard labor."
"They read?"
"No," Cassius said. "The kitchen women cook from memory."
"I'd get more if they could read," Eight Fingers complained.
"If they could read, Magister Arrentius wouldn't be selling them," Cassius said. "You could always teach them."
"Fuck you, Terro," Eight Fingers responded without missing a beat, flashing his favorite gold-ringed finger. "How old are these women?"
"The older ones are past childbearing," Cassius said as the dwarf looked at the middle-aged slaves.
"I'd get more if they could breed," Eight Fingers complained.
"You could probably get more too if they knew how to dance a three step," Cassius quipped.
"Again, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, fuuuuuck you, Terro," he said, waving his middle fingers around in a swirling pattern. He browsed a bit more, coughed, spit, and nodded his satisfaction. "You got their papers?"
"All right here," Cassius said, producing the documents, all rolled together and tied into a tube. "You'll be giving Magister Arrentius a good price, right?"
"I'm losing my fucking ass out here, Terro," Eight Fingers complained a third time. "Market minus twenty."
"Ten percent," Cassius said, pulling the roll of papers back as Eight Fingers reached up to grab them. The dwarf looked annoyed, having it pulled out of his reach like siblings playing keep away with their toys.
"You tryin' to run me out of business, Terro? You can take these lot and shove 'em up Flavius' fat ass for ten."
"Fifteen, then," Cassius haggled.
"Fifteen," Eight Fingers agreed, extending his hand for the papers again. He always settled on a fifteen percent fee, but he always made them go through the dance of securing it. Cassius handed him the papers.
Eight Fingers motioned over his shoulders to one of his workers to come out and take his new acquisitions into custody as he untied the roll and started leafing through them, licking his fingers as he checked over the documents.
"Let's get out of here," Fiora said, coming to Cassius' side as the slaves started moving, sensing their transaction was complete.
"This all of them?" Eight Fingers asked as he kept reading the documents, not looking up. "Or you got more for delivery?"
Cassius took a deep breath and reached inside his robe, pulling out one more title. "Actually, I've got one more for you."
As he withdrew the document from inside his coat, he caught Fiora's eye, his slave completely focused on him as he handed the paper over to the slave seller. Her lip quivered as she looked into his eyes as the dwarf took the document.
"Alright, what do you we got?" Eight Fingers said as he looked over the sheet. "Oh… Fuck. You sure about this?"
"Terro?" Fiora spoke, almost too quiet to be heard.
Flavius had given Cassius his task, to take and sell every slave they could afford to lose. The Hissing Waste expedition was at a critical juncture, and he needed every coin he could get. He was liquidating nearly his entire stock of slaves, sacrificing almost every convenience and service his household staff afforded him and his family. The Venatori cause was foundering, and without the willingness to do whatever must be done, he was convinced they would fail.
He had put all his faith in the cause, and faith required sacrifice.
And Flavius had ordered that Cassius make a sacrifice too, for the family, for their future.
Cassius had thought to plead with his lord, to beg him to reconsider. Cassius had some meager savings of his own, and he'd be more than happy to forfeit it if it meant not having to do what his lord asked of him. But Cassius knew that he couldn't, that it would only shame him to try. His lord commanded him and he was bound to obey.
"I'm sorry, Fiora," Cassius said.
His throat tightened as the words left his tongue. Before he could even blink again, he felt tears rolling down both of his cheeks. He turned his head away, in a vain hope that she wouldn't see.
She was a slave, and no citizen of Tevinter, much less a mage of the Circle, shed tears over the fate of a slave. But Fiora had been with him for more than a decade. She was, technically, his property, but she had always been more than that to him. She had been at his side for that decade, and even closer since his marriage after he freed her from the charge of the overseers at the manor and took her more directly into his service and under his supervision. She had served him faithfully and loyally ever since the day Flavius purchased her as a gift for him. In four more years, her contract would have been fulfilled as she would have become Liberati.
Now, she would be sold once again, to Maker only knew who.
Cassius was startled by the touch of a finger on his cheek, as Fiora wiped her thumb through the streak of wet that the tear had left on his face.
"You know, Terro, I had always joked about whether you'd cry some day when I was gone," Fiora said as she turned his head, forcing him to look her in the face. She smiled a sad smile, even as her eyes were glassed with their own tears that she was holding back better than he was. "Never thought you'd actually do it, though. Then again, never thought I'd be going out like this."
Fiora unstrapped her belt that held her saber, the weapon that had been her pride and the source of her neverending fantasy of one day becoming a pirate. She handed the swordbelt to him, knowing she couldn't take it with her where she was headed.
"Take good care of it, yeah?" Fiora asked.
Cassius nodded as he accepted her sword, unable to find his ability to speak. Fiora took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, closing her eyes for a second, perhaps coming to terms with her sudden ill change of fate. He wondered if she thought of turning on her heel and trying to run for it. If she did, he knew he wouldn't chase her. But he also knew that she stood little chance of escaping for long. She could run, but lone slaves always drew questions and the punishment for runaways was severe enough that few tried and those that did regretted it when they were eventually caught and returned to their masters.
"We'll meet again someday, Terro," Fiora promised as she accepted what was to come.
"I know we will," Cassius said, rubbing his eyes as best he could, although more tears rolled out to replace the ones he wiped away. "Try to stay out of trouble."
For what it was worth, that made Fiora smile. "You know I won't, because you know me."
That made more tears roll out of his eyes as he nodded, thinking of every time those words had crossed his lips.
"Yeah, I know you," he agreed.
Cassius didn't remember exactly how he found his way back from the slave market.
He had walked, but he didn't remember a single thing about the trip back. He didn't remember seeing anyone. He didn't remember what route he had walked. He couldn't recall whether it was day or night, whether it was warm or cold, whether it was sunny or raining. As his hand touched the doorknob, he came back into his body for the first time since he backpedaled away from the slave market, watching as Eight Fingers led Fiora off the street to processing. When she disappeared from his sight, his eyes, his mind, his body went empty and blank. He wandered back through the city, but had no recollection of it.
He shut the door of the rented room at the inn where the Arrentius family was staying behind him and fell back against the closed door, letting his feet slide out from under his body until he was sitting on the floor. His hands flopped heavily in his lap and his chin dropped down against his chest. The swordbelt and saber clattered to the floor as his hands went limp and he lost his grip on it. He stared in the direction of his legs but saw nothing, his mind now occupied with memory.
"Hello?" came the voice from the other room, followed by footsteps and then a surprised, "Oh."
The footsteps drew closer until a figure appeared in front of him, kneeling at his side.
"Cassius?"
He glanced up from his lap, to see his wife at his side. Andria's ice blue eyes were filled with worry as she reached out a hand, placing her delicate, porcelain fingers atop his hand.
"I… I did as your father asked," he said, his words weak and hollow. There were no more tears left in him, but he could remember the gentle pressure of Fiora's thumb on his cheek. He felt ill.
Andria leaned forward, resting her body against his chest, wrapping her arms around him as he sat propped lifelessly against the door. She squeezed him as she shuffled along the floor until she could embrace him as best as possible.
"I'm so sorry," his wife said as she lowered her head down over his heart. He wondered if it sounded different, damaged, as it beat in his chest.
Cassius felt the weight of her body but couldn't say he felt her embrace at all. Everything felt empty and numb. His eyes picked up the shadow of his wife's shimmering black hair, but he didn't see it.
"We're heading home tomorrow," Cassius said, remembering now that before he was sent to the slave market to sell House Arrentius' slaves, and his slave, that he was being banished from the capital, from the Venatori's inner circle and from his lord's immediate service. Everything seemed to be crumbling around him, as he stood there, powerless as a cyclone whipped around him, tearing it all apart.
"I heard," Andria said as she cuddled against him, doing her best to console him, squeezing him tightly, perhaps in a vain attempt to resuscitate him and return feeling to the shell of his body. "But father wants us all to have dinner together tonight before we go."
Cassius blinked, the hazy, indistinctness of the room coming a little sharper and into focus.
"When?"
"About an hour from now," Andria answered.
He nodded absently. "Can you stay here with me, just for a while?"
Andria squeezed him again and scooted along the floor, inching up his body until she was able to reach his face and gently kissed his cheek. She rested her head back on his shoulder. Cassius could feel his arms moving on their own, as they wrapped around his wife, seeking the comfort she offered.
"I'll stay as long as you need me," she said as she closed her eyes as if she prepared to doze in the security of his arms. "I love you, Cassius."
Cassius exhaled. Knowing that, somehow, made it a little better.
"I love you, too."
