It felt like only a moment or so after the sun came up that a courier knocked on Villais' door, handing him a missive. He read it out loud while Teneira stayed naked in bed, not wanting to ever move again. All of her, mind, heart, and body, ached.
"All hands to the Alienage, searching for the murderess Teneira Tabris, suspected of the most foul slaughter of three guardsmen, Bann Braden, Bann Jonaley, and Bann Vaughan Urien. She is believed to be hiding out somewhere in the city, but sources have assured us she will not stay away from the Alienage for long. Until that time the quarter is on lockdown, no elf is to exit, or enter, without the escort of a guard."
"They do have to get to work, after all," Teneira grumbled, "The dishes don't wash themselves."
She reluctantly put her feet to the floor and began pulling on her clothes – or rather Manda's clothes.
"Don't do this, Ten," Villais pleaded with her. He went to her and held her tight about her shoulders, preventing her from pulling her shirt over her head, "We can be at the harbor in two hours, we can sign on to a ship…"
"It's either I die or the Alienage burns to the ground before the week's out," Ten said, taking him gently, her hands on either side of his face, "Do you think they'll look for me forever? And how long do you think until the good folk of the city get a mind to invest in torches and pitchforks?"
"Did they rape you?" he asked, "Is that why you're so willing to throw your life away?"
"No," she said, "And even if they had, damage to my body is just that – damage to my body. My spirit would be quite intact, I assure you. No, love, this is my final duty to my people. Now let's go before they suspect something."
It was simultaneously the longest and shortest walk of her life. Every time she said something, she thought of something else that needed to be said.
"Make sure nobody goes near Shianni," she said. Then, "Let the Reverend Mother out. Nobody's going to be there to feed her, I don't think Dad would really relish the task." She thought some more, "And make sure Soris doesn't run afoul of other guards, I imagine he'll be taking my post."
Her feet felt leaden as they walked through the city through the gates of the alienage. As they approached, a guard recognized Villais, and the great gate swung open, letting them into the district. Ten kept her eyes on the ground, but sensed a hundred shutters opening, and a hundred elves peeking out. In an instant, Soris was at her side, bruised, but in one piece. The place was crawling with guards. An older man wearing a lieutenant's epaulets approached them, looking at her quizzically.
"Found her sleeping in a gutter outside the estate," Villais said, roughly shoving Teneira towards the arl's guard, "I hear she's wanted."
"Are you Teneira Tabris?" the guard asked her, looking at her not entirely unkindly.
"Yes," she said, "And yes, I did it. I am guilty. I killed them."
"You alone?" he asked skeptically.
"Yes, me alone. I'll show you how I did it, too," she said. She kicked off one boot and showed him the second vial of poison she had stashed in there.
"Poison," one of the subordinate guards scoffed, "Typical cowardly elf."
"Yes, because it's so brave of big strong armed human men to gang-rape a five foot tall elf woman!" she retorted, spitting on the ground at his feet.
"You know what your confession means," Valendrian, who had appeared by her side along with Soris, said, "You know what you're doing, Teneira?"
"With all due respect, elder," she said, "I've always known what I'm doing." She looked at her cousin, and at her elder, and saw her father further off in the crowd, struggling to get to her, "Now, lieutenant, I'll thank you to take me to jail before I get lynched." She put her hands out before her, waiting for the manacles.
She noticed, then, for the first time, that the human man at Valendrian's hand was not a guard, but the same man who had been there the day before. He watched, silently, without judgment. She felt the irons clapped about her wrists, but somehow, felt free for the first time in her life. She was grateful they didn't have Villais march her through town to the holding cells at Fort Drakon, she didn't think either of them could bear it.
The jail was about everything you'd expect a jail to be. She was the only woman in there, meaning they had to move the Elvish men in with the human men. She sat there on a wooden plank for awhile, wondering what would happen next. There would probably be a trial, which would be a farce – elves did not serve on juries – and then a sentencing, which considering the magnitude of her crime, would certainly be death, and she could only pray that it was hanging and not something more nefarious. Her family visited her. Cyrion, and Soris, and even Shianni. Teneira reacted numbly, and found herself wishing on the second day of her confinement that they would just kill her already. This feeling doubled when on the second guard change of that day, a half-drunk Eddin Rasphander somehow found himself standing outside her cell.
"What'd you do to wind up here, Eddin Rasphander?" she asked, loudly enough that the every man in the cell besides hers could hear her, "I thought you were a sergeant."
"Shut up, prisoner," he slurred. His face was unshaven and he looked like he hadn't slept. Of course he hadn't. He thought he was calling in a favor to teach the uppity knife-eared bitch a lesson, not sending his half brother and two of his friends to their doom.
"Got more than you bargained for, didn't you," she said, "You thought you could call in your noble dogs, send them to my neighborhood, send them to kidnap me, my cousin, my bridesmaids. What did you think was going to happen, Eddin Rasphander? Did you truly think I was going to take it lying down?"
"I said," he hissed, "Shut the fuck up."
"What are you going to do, kill me?" she teased, "Are you sure you want to try? You saw what I did to your brother. Maybe I'll cut you into pieces as well. Burn your face to a crisp. Send you back to your wife and children in a burlap sack - I hear that's how they had to bring him to his pyre. In a sack."
"You're a murderous bitch, and they're going to kill you," Eddin hissed.
"Oh, they certainly are," she said, "But I'm not dead yet, and I intend to bring as many of you pathetic louts down with me. What do you say boys?" she shouted, egging on the male prisoners in the cell next to hers, "Wouldn't you like to see that? This sorry excuse for a man die with his severed balls in his mouth?! Or should I take them as a trophy, throw them to the crowd when I'm on the gallows?"
A few of the men guffawed, and one whooped, indicating he would very much like to see that.
"Hanging is too good for you," Eddin said, "They should break you on a wheel."
She laughed right in his face, "I will gladly die in agony a thousand times for one more crack at that lecher. And what of the man who sent those drunken lordlings to their deaths?" she shouted, so that all of Fort Drakon could hear, "Surely you don't think he should go unpunished, boys. What do you think should happen to this traitor? Exile? Execution? Maybe they should take the hand that wrote that poisonous letter." She mimicked an amputation, one hand on the other, "You'd have to explain that one to your children. I'm sure they'd be proud."
"I said, shut the fuck up, prisoner," he growled, turning to face her and making a grab through the bars towards her. She danced away from his grip.
"Or what, you pathetic bastard?" she countered, more to the cutpurses and murderers in the next cell than to him, "You heard me, boys. His name is Eddin Rasphander. It was he who encouraged the Bann to crash my wedding. To kidnap my friends. To rape my cousin. All because he was too incompetent to keep his post. He lives in a house by the Drakon River. It has blue shutters. You hear me? Blue shutters. And now you know when his shift is."
Eddin Rasphander was not assigned to guard the prisoners again.
On the fourth day, a human man was led to the cell across from her and locked in. Mostly the men came and went, cutpurses and brawlers, and one murderer who was quickly dispatched of. This man didn't brawl, though. His garb said that he was a bandit or something like it, the five o'clock shadow said that he was human, and the grin on his face said that he was having entirely too much fun observing the little elfin murderess through the bars.
"What're you in here for?" he asked, pushing his arms through the bars between their cells. Teneira backed up instinctively.
"You know very well who I am," she said, not looking him in the eye, "They don't send drunks and whores here, after all. This is a place for the worst of the worst. And I am the worst of the worst."
The man gasped, "You're Teneira Tabris?" he exclaimed, "That's you? Well blimey! Respect, Miss Tabris, utmost respect for you." He bowed, not altogether mockingly.
She looked at him straight this time. He wasn't particularly tall for a human man. He would have been tall but not extraordinarily so, if he had been an elf. He had black hair and looked to be in his mid twenties, though he had enough scars for a man twice that.
"Daveth," he said, "The name's Daveth. I must say I do admire you!"
"Is that treason I heard?" a voice from the men's cell came. Teneira looked behind Daveth to see a larger human standing beside him, arms akimbo, "Are you actually congratulating the bitch as murdered the son of the arl?"
"I'm paying healthy respect for a five foot tall, hundred pound elf, who killed six men twice her size and barely had a scratch on her," Daveth replied, turning to square off against the bigger man, "What does it matter to me who she killed? Those are some respectable fighting skills!"
The bigger man hauled off to punch Daveth in the face. Quick as lightning, the smaller man dipped out of the way. From somewhere, he produced a small knife, and as the lumbering giant moved to strike at him again, he'd leapt on his back and was holding the blade to his throat. "That's enough, love," he said, "Now you're going to sit your oversized arse down on that plank over there. And you and I are going to be very, very good friends from now on. Leastways for two days, then they're going to hang me and I'll be out of your hair."
"You too?" Teneira asked as Daveth released the giant. Duly chastened, he returned to sit among the other prisoners and lick his wounded pride.
"Aye," he said, "Seems ol' Davy's gotten into a bit too much trouble over the last ten years or so, they've decided I'm better off doing a little jig on the end of a rope."
"Was it worth it?" she asked.
"Decidedly not," he said.
"Do they do all executions on the same day?" she asked. If she were to just die with the other wastrels, that boded well for hanging, and not something worse. Drawing and quartering. Breaking on a wheel. Burning at the stake.
"So I heard," he said, "Say! I suppose we'll be dying by each other's sides! Isn't that romantic! Well, let me rephrase my answer, then. It was decidedly worth it, because I will get to spend my last few minutes jerking around like a fish by the neck next to a great warrior like yourself, Teneira Tabris. How does that make you feel?"
"Like I ought to have dispatched the Arl himself and gotten a grislier execution," she said, but let her voice and facial expression betray that she was joking, "And call me Ten. It's easier that way."
"Ten Tabris, I like it," he said.
"What'd you do to land in this fine establishment?" she asked.
"Cut the purse of a fine gentleman," he replied, "Such fine armor, I thought he would have had something good in there. Not to mention bragging rights for robbing such a fearsome-looking warrior. But, unfortunately, I was caught, and the guards ran me down. I knocked out three of them before they took me though, and me in me leathers, them in full plate armor!"
"What was in the purse?" she asked.
"Fat lot of nothing," he sighed, "Seems the fellow was a Grey Warden. They only look rich."
"Grey Warden?" Teneira asked, tales of the great threat that lay before their feet coming to her mind, and the semi-mystical order of warriors charged with protecting them from it, "What in the hell would a Grey Warden be doing here?"
"Maker only knows," Daveth said, "Maybe looking through the guard for someone competent enough to shine his shoes. And finest luck to him with that."
Teneira chuckled, "Well I hope he succeeds, I hear the Grey Wardens only peek their heads out of their holes when there's a blight coming. Darkspawn." She shuddered. In storybooks they looked like men who had been burned within an inch of their lives and had their jaws broken so their mouths lolled slackly open. She hadn't been scared by many stories, but the tales of darkspawn had haunted her dreams since she was a child.
She heard a key turning in the lock to the outer door that separated the jail from the guards' quarters.
"Well it ain't execution day yet," Daveth said, "Must mean new meat!" He turned to see who was coming through the door. It was the jailer, a pockmarked, sallow fellow in his mid forties. Behind him was, to Ten's surprise, was the human man who had been talking to Valendrian on her wedding day. She took another look at him, trying to figure out what his game could possibly be.
"And there he is right now," Daveth murmured through the bars, "That's the Grey Warden I was talking about!"
"Oy, you, Daveth, you're free to go," the jailer commanded, "You too, Tabris."
He unlocked both of their cells, waving the other male prisoners off with a nasty looking barbed halberd. Daveth exited his cell and stepped outside of it, behind the older man. Teneira stepped forward hesitantly, wondering what had happened, and if it was good fortune or ill that had brought this about. All this time the bearded human watched calmly, his face betraying nothing of what might be about to occur.
"My name is Duncan," he said, "I'm a Grey Warden. I've invoked the Right to Conscript on both of you. You'll be coming with me."
"Forgive me, Ser Duncan," Teneira said, keeping her eyes on the ground, "But I am a bit confused."
"I am not a Ser, Miss Tabris," Duncan said, "Knights serve kings or lords. I serve no king. I am only Duncan. And you may look me in the eye, I promise that it will not offend me."
She turned her eyes upward, looking him in the eye. He was dark of complexion, but did not have black hair, but brown. A little like herself, she thought, all almost the same color. He was a large man, but did not look dangerous. On the contrary, something about him put her remarkably at ease.
"I am a Grey Warden, one of those charged with protecting the world from the Darkspawn. The ancient treaties give us the right to conscript those whom we need from."
"And, forgive me again, Duncan," Teneira asked, "What do you need with a murderer?"
"You may have killed a man, Miss," Duncan said gently, "But you are no murderer. Murder is a killing motivated by malice. You killed out of duty to your people. Incidentally, that is exactly what the Grey Wardens are charged with doing."
"And with all respect due, Duncan," she said, "Where the hell were you when they took Shianni and I to the arl's estate? Did you allow that to happen to test my mettle?"
"I allowed nothing to happen," Duncan replied, "I had left the alienage by that time after having a short conversation with my old friend Valendrian. I asked about you. He informed me that you were about to be married."
"You must forgive me yet a third time, Duncan," Teneira said, "But I find it highly suspicious that you came to ask about me, and then found out I was to be married, and then within the day, I was taken and my husband killed."
"You poor child," Duncan said, reaching out and putting his hand on the top of her head, "I don't blame you for being suspicious. You have my deepest condolences for your husband and for what happened to your cousin, but I assure you I had nothing to do with it. Now, we must away, the road to Ostagar is long."
"Haven't you forgotten something?" Teneira asked, "I have not given my consent."
"Your consent to an order of conscription is unnecessary. A blight is coming, Miss Tabris. Your desires are utterly irrelevant. However, I feel as though you will fit in well."
She sighed, and nodded. She had been thinking, over the past two days, about her impending doom and, despite her best efforts, had not managed to entirely resign herself to it. Die on the gallows, die at the end of a darkspawn sword. It mattered not to her anymore.
Instead of the execution of Teneira the murderer and Daveth the cutpurse two days hence, the guard was mourning the death of Eddin Rasphander. It seems that, somehow, he'd been bitten by a black cattle adder while in the changing room at his guard post. How such a snake got into his spare uniform, nobody was quite sure.