Seven
Ferelden 9:41 Dragon
"Please, don't hurt my family."
The Fereldan man stood in front of his wife and their two small children, cradling his burned right shoulder. The wood axe was on the floor nearby, the blade bloody. There was one Venatori soldier who wouldn't be returning north after being caught unawares in the back by the farmer as the man was raiding the henhouse for eggs.
Marinus held the head of his staff in his palm, holding the small ball of flame between his hand and the focusing gem at the top of the staff.
"Tell that to my man you killed," Marinus said to the bearded peasant as the rest of the soldiers ransacked the hovel and the livestock pens outside.
"I thought he was a thief," the farmer offered. He was, although the farmer had no way of knowing that the man rifling through his chicken coop was also a soldier. He probably didn't realize that until he put the wood axe into the man's back and cleaved through armor under the white shirt covering it.
"You should have known better," Marinus said as moved his staff, stretching the flames in his hand out as it arced between staff and fingers.
"Please, stranger, take whatever you want. Just leave my family," the farmer pleaded again.
"You don't even know who we are, do you?" Marinus asked. The farmer shook his head. Marinus bristled. "We are the Venatori. We serve the Elder One, who will march into the Black City and claim the vacant throne of the Maker to rule over this pathetic world. When that happens, Tevinter will once again put you dog lords where you belong — in chains."
"Marinus," Cassius said from behind, stepping forward to put his hand over the top of the boy's staff and block the growing flame, "that's enough."
"Get out of my way, Praeteri," Marinus growled.
Cassius narrowed his eyes as he stared down at Magister Arrentius' nephew. "You're done. Go wait outside. That's an order."
The young lord sneered, perhaps wondering whether he could get away with challenging Cassius. In the end, he scoffed and turned away, heading toward the front door. On the way out the open entryway, he pressed the ball of fire into the wall, setting the front of the house on fire as he stepped out.
Cassius pointed his hand toward the slowly burning wall and extinguished the flame with a puff of cold, leaving a frosty scorch mark. He turned back toward the young family huddled at the back of the room.
When he looked at them, he saw his own family. Poor farmers, a father and mother and small children, all bony and hungry. This Fereldan farmstead was arguably richer than his family's in livestock, although poorer in land. He had spotted the struggling crops in the field on their approach to the house.
They had little. Little in the way of defending themselves. They were powerless to stand against those higher in the social order than them. They scratched out what they could from the land, carrying forward in hope that next year would be better than this one and the last.
Sadly, once the soldiers were done pillaging their supplies, this year would likely be the worst for them.
In that respect, Fereldan was not so different from Tevinter.
The peasants here were poor too, at the mercy of the classes above them with little hope of changing their station.
At least at home, those lucky enough to be born with the gift of magic could rise to be something more overnight. In Ferelden it was the opposite — their mages were corralled and chained and a mark of shame for a family.
He had escaped the clutch of poverty in a farmer's hovel. The children huddled and scared in front of him would not be so lucky, he thought, as he turned and walked toward the door, leaving the Fereldan farmers to their pitiable situation.
Not so lucky as he had been.
Minrathous 9:41 Dragon
The blonde-haired page opened the door to the back room of Magister Tilani's quarters, ushering him inside to where Maevaris was already seated at the table, with the dinner meal already served ahead of his arrival.
"Mistress," she said to catch the magister's attention from a pamphlet she was browsing. "Cassius Terro."
The magister continued reading the sheet in her hand for a moment, ignoring them, until she lowered it and glanced over the top, sizing up Cassius as he stood in the open doorway with his hands folded behind his back, waiting.
"Cassius," she said, testing his name on her tongue, before raising her other hand and gesturing to the open chair opposite her, "please, join me."
Behind him, the curly-haired page nodded and closed the door completely, leaving him with the magister, alone. As Cassius stepped across the plush carpet spread out over the floor, he noticed there were no slaves in the room. After years of living in Magister Arrentius' estate, he had found that over time he had become desensitized to the presence of slaves so that he sometimes didn't notice them. But this wasn't a case of not being seen, as they were simply not there at all.
Magister Tilani had her attention turned back to the pamphlet as he pulled out the chair and took a seat at the table. While still reading it, she spoke through the paper, "I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I confess I'm terribly addicted to these gossip rags. Most of it is garbage, but I find that, more often than not, they stumble at least onto a kernel of truth more often than people give them credit for."
As she finished, she folded the paper and slipped in behind her back in the chair, now fully glancing across the table at him for the first time as she scanned him more directly.
Cassius took the opportunity, too, to review his dinner companion.
Maeveris' blond hair was cut short and styled particularly, her eyebrows sharply maintained and a dull red lipstick on her lips. She wore large pendant earrings with green stones in them dangling from her ears. Her shoulders were exposed in a dress of deep green that had no straps but laid tightly across her chest, adorned with small feathers of many colors. She wore several rings on her fingers as she clasped her hands over the table.
Cassius found her stance somewhat odd, or at least a bit unrefined for a magister of her station, as she rested her elbows on the edge of the table and looked over the tops of her knuckles at him.
Cassius was acutely aware of Magister Tilani's background, as almost anyone who knew her name was. She had been born a man but had never lived as one. It had been a scandal among the Magisterium in her youth and had exacted an extreme political cost on her father, who, despite the troubles he faced, had never backed down in support of her.
He had been executed by the state, Cassius knew, although he couldn't recall the exact details of why, and Maevaris had risen to succeed him.
She had not played so kindly with the rest of the Magisterium upon her arrival. Whispers around the capital suggested that she had left a considerable body count behind her since rising to her position, bodies of those who had crossed her and her family at one point or another and had paid for it in mortal retribution.
Although not particularly politically powerful, outside the cloak of intrigue she wore that acted as her shield to protect her from the more illustrious families that might seek to bloody their hands in her business, the Tilanis maintained control through their considerable financial assets reaped from strong ties to the dwarven kingdoms.
A sword forged in gold often cut sharper and better than one made of iron, anyway, so the sayings in Minrathous went.
"Dorian did say you had a certain pastoral handsomeness to you," Maevaris finally said as she completed her visual survey of him.
"Thank you, domina," Cassius said as he dipped his head slightly.
Maevaris picked up her glass of wine and sipped at it, keeping her eyes on him, before placing it back down. "He also did mention your naive deference to the Imperium's classism," she added rather pointedly.
"My apologies, Magister Tilani," Cassius offered.
"Mae," she corrected.
"Mae," he agreed, uncomfortably with the informality, with a nod.
"Better," she said as she removed the cloche from over her plate and set it aside on the cart pulled up next to the table. Cassius followed suit and removed his own, revealing a thick steak sitting pooled in its own juice and blood. It was the only thing on the plate and a large enough portion that two might eat it and both leave full.
"I've been told that it's unladylike to enjoy red meat or to enjoy it as rare as I do," she said as she applied a bit of pressure and sawed the first cube from her steak, lifting it up to observe the very hard sear on the outside and the dripping piece still red in the middle. "Then again, I find I don't conform to much of what Tevinter expects of me."
She popped the bite into her mouth and began to chew, lowering her utensils to the plate to begin cutting the next piece before swallowing the one in her mouth.
Cassius, not sure what to say, instead said nothing, picking up his knife and fork and began to eat his steak as well.
As Maevaris swallowed and as she skewered her next bite, she paused to speak again, "I assume you know everything there is to know about me, but please, I'd much rather hear about you. Tell me about your history."
"I'm simply a Praeteri," Cassius deflected. "I wouldn't want to bore you with such mundaneness."
"Cassius, if you and I are to get along, you're going to have to drop the humility," she countered. "I reject it. If I wasn't interested, I wouldn't have asked."
"My apologies, Magister Tilani," he said.
"Mae," she reminded him somewhat forcefully. "And stop apologizing."
"Yes," he said, stumbling off balance at being so pointedly interrupted, "Mae."
She smiled, popped steak into her mouth, pushed it into her cheek and said, "Better. Continue."
What was there to tell? Magisters didn't care about what Praeteri did. But if she demanded, he was bound to comply.
"I am the firstborn to farmers near Carastes. My parents till a tract of land, nothing extraordinary from most peasant contracts between their local lords. I was just before eight when my gift manifested. My father took me to the Circle in Carastes in hopes of enrolling me. I was accepted and began my training there.
"At thirteen I was accepted as a page to the Magisterium and was assigned to Magister Arrentius. Through his grace, he invited me as a guest into his household as I served him over the years. Four years ago he offered me the hand of his second daughter, Andria, which I graciously accepted. Upon returning home from the south recently, I learned that my wife is now carrying our firstborn, who we believe will arrive this winter."
"Congratulations," Maevaris offered in between bites.
"Thank you, Mag-," he stopped to catch himself. "Mae."
"Continue," she said.
He paused. "There is not much more to tell, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, as a Praeteri, I simply serve gladly at Magister Arrentius' pleasure. Nothing more."
Maevaris lowered her utensils to her plate with a soft clink and folded her hands as she chewed harshly and swallowed again, clearing her mouth. She glanced over her hands, annoyed.
"Stop apologizing for who and what you are," she said again, her voice deepening slightly with the heaviness of frustration. "You being born Praeteri has no bearing on your worth or usefulness. Do you understand that?"
Cassius instinctively folded his hands in his lap and retreated as he detected the controlled anger in her voice. Dorian Pavus had come off so, playfully clever might be the best way to describe it, in their encounter at Skyhold. Maybe he was in error to expect that the magister might be of similar mind and demeanor. Magister Tilani did have a much darker reputation to her.
He caught himself before he offered an apology to start his statement. "Your pardon, Mae, but the Imperium would disagree."
She unfolded her hands and drove her finger down into the table with a thump, rattling the dishes and silverware as she pressed into the surface.
"Tevinter is wrong," she declared, staring sternly at him, "on that, as in so many other things. Is that clear?"
"Yes," Cassius agreed with her, although he didn't agree that she was correct on the point. Pavus had clearly gone far astray from Tevinter to join and fight for the Orlesian Chantry's Inquisition, so perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised that his associate Magister Tilani might also carry the standard of a radical.
Maevaris waited for a moment, with her finger still stabbed into the table, watching him to perhaps see if his expression changed or he rolled his eyes. When he didn't, she let up and settled back into a less aggressive demeanor into her chair, picking up her knife and fork again. Before cutting the steak, she raised the point of the knife and pointed it toward him.
"Dorian warned me that they had indoctrinated you, like the rest," Maevaris said as she lowered the knife and began to cut her steak again. "But at the same time, he's a good judge of character. He has a gift, for seeing underneath the shit, for seeing people for what they truly are. I thank his father, for that, although Halward gifted him the ability quite unintentionally."
"Your pardon again, Mae," Cassius jumped in as he too cut his steak in hope of at least eating a bit before she dismissed him for the evening. He could clearly smell the strong aroma of black pepper crushed into the sear. "But Dorian Pavus had said something in the south. He claimed to believe that he and I were alike, although I must say I find that hard to believe."
Mae chewed a bloody piece of her steak for a moment and swallowed. Cassius took the opportunity to pop a bit of his own into his mouth and began the laborious task of chewing the rare red meat.
"Dorian is…" Maevaris paused, perhaps searching for the right word and finally settling on, "... different. Talented, yes. Charismatic, yes. A bit too smart for his own good, sometimes, yes. But you must understand that Dorian is the product of generations of careful breeding, of meticulous action over decades toward a goal. He has been groomed, no, not just groomed, but crafted for the long-range machinations of the Pavus family."
Maevaris placed her knife down and began to saw again. "And, at its simplest level, he disagrees."
She placed the next bite of steak on the tip of her tongue, popped it insider her mouth, began to chew and then smiled, a smile that made Cassius uncomfortable with how eerily dangerous it felt.
"He disagrees?" Cassius asked, not quite sure of her meaning.
"Yes," she said as she swallowed. "He rejects that purpose. He rejects his family's schemes. He rejects Tevinter, such as it is. He sees the path that the Imperium is on and has been on for centuries and he, like me, recognizes that it's just wrong. And, unlike most people who sit and complain and flirt with ideas but take no action, Dorian believes that we already have everything we need to start forcing that change."
Maevaris sipped her wine. "Whether Tevinter likes it or not."
"You're seeking a revolution?" Cassius asked as he placed another piece of steak in his mouth after asking the question, tasting bitter pepper on the tip of his tongue.
"I don't like that word," Maevaris scoffed. "It brings up images of burning buildings and bloody bodies. That's not my intention, unless the institutions choose to make it that way. No, I'm merely more interested in a change in thought process.
"What I'm after is no different than what the Venatori want, except, completely the opposite," Maevaris said. "While the Venatori want to pretend that Tevinter is supreme above all peoples and creatures of Thedas and that ancient magisters have some divine right to rule all creation, I rather prefer to think that power flows from the opposite direction, from the thousands of farmers, laborers and the Liberati and not the dwindling number of inbred Altus families."
Maevaris placed her knife and fork down for a moment and folded her hands, looking over her rings and knuckles at Cassius again.
"I'm a firm believer that a young Praeteri with a good head on his shoulders like you, who knows the difference between right and wrong and good and evil has much more to offer the future of Tevinter than Flavius Five-Daughters and the death throes of his lineage scrabbling to grasp whatever last trappings of power he can cling to in order to try to legitimize and validate his continuing existence in this empire at all."
Cassius was the one now placing his silverware down as he collected his thoughts, placing his napkin over his plate and his nibbled steak. For his tastes, it was too raw to even enjoy.
"I'd prefer you not speak ill of my patron, Mae," he said, pausing, then added, "Magister Arrentius is a good man, who cares deeply for his family."
"I never said he didn't," Maevaris interrupted.
"Regardless," Cassius rebounded. "He is not only my patron, but my mentor, and like a second father to me. You may see more value in me than him, but I would be remiss not to note that I am where I am today because of his kindness and generosity lifting me up.
"If you're asking me to betray Magister Arrentius, to attempt to overthrow him and others to fulfil some revolutionary ideal, then I'm sorry. I'm afraid Dorian Pavus greatly misjudged me," Cassius finished.
He had seen enough Magisters taunt Flavius with the title "Five-Daughters" and make mirth at his ill fortune for long enough. Yet in the moment, he now regretted speaking so bluntly and forcefully to another magister, especially one as powerful and connected as Maevaris Tilani. Young mages who overstepped their place often ended up buried, figuratively, if they were lucky, but in some cases quite literally too.
Cassius folded his hands in his lap and waited as Mae chewed her bloody steak and peered over her knuckles at him across the table. She studied his face again, feeling like she was peering past his eyes to the doubt welling at the edge of his mind, probing it to see what was there.
"See, now this, I like," she commented to herself. "Dorian, you never fail to surprise me."
As Cassius raised an eyebrow, but she ignored it and continued on.
"Maybe you're correct," she finally said to break the moment of silence. "I can see plainly that you are very loyal. An admirable trait, one I'm afraid I never found much cause to develop for myself. You learn quickly that trust is overvalued in a city where every Altus is constantly looking for opportunities to stab another in the back."
Maevaris returned to her utensils and her steak, sawing at the meat again as she turned her gaze toward her plate.
"You're free to go, if you choose," she announced. "As you do, there is a parcel by the door there. Inside, there are documents detailing the depth of the financial grave Flavius Five-Daughters is digging for himself and his family in order to support the Venatori. Take it with you. You may do with it what you like. Study it or dispose of it, it doesn't matter to me."
Maevaris didn't lift her eyes even as Cassius glanced over toward the door, seeing the parcel of brown paper sitting near the door. It was thick, so must have contained a stack of numerous papers, as she suggested.
"If you do choose to review them, I suspect you'll find he is much more exposed than he's led you to believe," she said, "even before the chest of gold he's having you deliver to Magister Porenni."
How did she know about that? Cassius couldn't help but feel slightly annoyed at the notion that she was, apparently, keeping tabs on him, or at least, Magister Arrentius' business.
Cassius excused himself from the table and headed for the door, stopping to pick up the hefty package of papers. "Thank you, Mae, for the invitation and the meal. It was a pleasure to dine with you."
As he reached for the door knob, Maevaris spoke up one more time.
"One last thing, Prateri," she said. "As Flavius Five-Daughters adopted son, I'm certain you're aware he's recently been speaking frequently with a cadet branch of the Ceratoris. He's trying to negotiate a new arrangement that won't solve, but can help his fiscal situation."
Maevaris dabbed her mouth with her napkin as she locked eyes with him one last time.
"I heard the price he's seeking for his first daughter's hand in marriage is rather exorbitant."
