The streets of the Antivan quarter were, blessedly, laid out in something like a grid, stretching along the river, and so making it from the shadow of the slums on the hill to the orderly streets to the west was not a difficult task. The name of the neighborhood was not, as was often believed, due to the large number of expatriates, but rather the fact that it was rebuilt by an architect of that persuasion after a fire had laid it low sometime during the Orlesian occupation. The expatriates had found it later.
"I'm really not sure I follow the logic here. Is this a friend's house or something?" Alistair asked as they approached a three-story house with dark shades on all the windows.
"You could say that," said Ten, "I have friends who work here."
"I still don't follow."
"It's a brothel," said Ten.
"If this is your idea of a joke, it is not funny at all," Alistair said, crossing his arms.
"Well you're certainly uptight, but need I remind you we are flat fucking broke so we are not here for... what one traditionally visits a brothel for. Additionally, that would be extremely weird and creepy of me and while I do have my faults, I try not to be creepy. I'm just looking to chat with a friend of mine who works here. If he's not on duty, we will leave."
She knocked on the door of the Pearl, that house of ill repute in the heart of the quarter, which, much like Ten herself, had always had aspirations above its station which would likely never be truly realized. After all, actual high class escorts did not work from brothels, but from the apartments and salons purchased for them by their noble and bourgeois clientele. However, with delusions of grandeur came discretion. From the outside, one would not know what one was looking at, except for that the wrought iron railings which adorned each of the small balconies on the second and third floors featured a subtle pattern mimicking the contours of certain unmentionable parts of the anatomy. A window in the door slid open and a bouncer stuck his bald head out.
"Arlessa!" he exclaimed, "You're not dead!"
"Despite my best efforts. How's things, Dima?"
She'd known Dima Syasko for six or seven years and had watched him go from the moderately handsome young man that worked the rooms in the back to the balding neckless creature who now worked the door… and collected the bribes.
"Well, can't complain. War's good for business, after all. Lot of lonely lads."
"Why's the door locked? It's broad daylight," she said.
"Lot of lonely lads," said Dima, "Got to keep them under control. So what are you doing here? We paid our cut to the Don this month, you're surely not collecting for him. You're never looking for company, so what, just somewhere to have a drink in secret?"
"I'm actually looking for the King, is he working today?"
"He is," Dima the bouncer said, "But he's on an out call. Has been thrice a week for the last two months, fancy lad he is. No knowing when or if he'll be back, though."
"An out call!" Ten exclaimed, "Well hasn't he moved up in the world. Who is it?"
"I wouldn't know," said Dima, his eyes sparkling. He had always so loved gossip, "The appointments have been booked by a third party."
"So a servant," said Ten, "Elf?"
"Yes, but not one of yours. Foreign I think."
"So it's someone who can afford foreign help! That sounds like someone important... it's someone important, isn't it."
"I don't doubt you'll beat that information out of someone," said Dima, "But it ain't going to be me. So unless you have business in bottle or bed, I'm not letting you within swinging distance."
"Well that would be a neither on my end," said Ten, "Your drinks are too expensive anyway."
"Well, you know where we are if you change your mind. Take care, Arlessa, and get the fuck out of here before you scare off good coin."
"Good talk, Dima, I'll see you around."
"What just happened?" asked Alistair, running to catch up with her as she left the door and took off down another alley.
"I told you. I was looking for someone," said Ten, "He wasn't there. That was everyone I needed to see, suppose we should go make sure Zevran and Lelianna haven't gotten arrested?"
"I… I don't think I have it in me," said Alistair.
She looked up at him warily. "All right. Fair enough. Can you find your way back to camp?"
"Can we… can we just go sit somewhere? I need to be somewhere quiet but also not alone. Does that make sense?"
Ten nodded slowly, "All right, I think that can be arranged. Come on."
North. East. Up a staircase. Down a hill. Down an alley that ran behind a chapel in a part of the Antivan Quarter that was perpetually in the shadow of the slums. There sat a ramshackle inn built haphazardly into the cliffs above. The name on the sign changed every few years, and, on paper, so did the owners, but the same elf had worked the bar for twenty years, the name of that elf was Natharian Lin, and he had lived two doors down from Ten her entire childhood. She pushed open the door cautiously. The same fifteen or twenty drunks who seemingly had also been occupying the same tables for twenty years, their hair growing gray and the table growing decrepit, lolled about as she pushed the door open. The elf behind the bar was polishing the same, eternally filthy plank of wood, and looked up with the same worldweary gray eyes as the door creaked open.
"Well, if it isn't the Arlessa herself," Natharian sighed, looking up as a wan beam of sunlight issued from the open door and hit him square in the face, "I see you haven't gotten yourself killed."
"Not for lack of trying," Ten said, sidling up, "Good to see you too, Nath. How's shit?"
"Shit," he said, "They locked us down. I have to be escorted to and from this cesspit, it's absolutely humiliating." He blinked a few times as the door swung closed and his vision readjusted. "Wait, is that Ioan Vanalys with you?" He snapped the towel he perpetually carried over one shoulder and stepped up to Alistair, "You're actually showing your face here after last time? Unless you're about to apologize and kiss my boot, you can fuck right off."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Alistair said, backing up and glancing nervously at Ten.
"Ah. Sorry," Nath said, his gray eyes going wide, "You don't sound like him at all. Unless he's decided he's going to put on a silly accent just so he can keep drinking at this shithole, which I'm not sure anyone would do."
"What'd he do?" Ten asked.
"Accused me of watering down his drink and then threw it in my face."
"Did you water down his drink?" asked Ten.
"I water down everyone's drinks!" Nath protested.
Three of the barflies in the corner all looked up in unison.
"Not yours. You scumbags drink nothing but whiskey straight anyway," Nath sighed.
The one sitting closest to the bar, a grizzled-looking dwarven sailor with his gray hair in braids down his back lifted one middle finger in the air, and then went back to the quiet and likely quite profane conversation the three of them had been in beforehand.
"Well since I've managed to put my foot squarely in my mouth and, if you're not Ioan Vanalys, you are probably human and about to call the law on me, first one's on the house if you forget that happened," Nath said.
"He's not," said Ten, "Going to call the law. Anyway, I don't think it's actually illegal to tell a human to fuck off. At least I hope not. In any case, he's a colleague, meaning both of us are in quite a lot of trouble should the law come anywhere near here."
"Colleague, huh," Nath said, narrowing his eyes, "So is it true you lot betrayed the king?"
"No!" exclaimed Alistair.
"Like I'd give a shit if you did," Nath chuckled, "It'd probably be Ten's fault anyway."
"Most disasters are," Alistair said.
"Ah, you do know her," Nath said, "This one came out of her mother already stirring up trouble."
"Are you two related?" asked Alistair.
Nath shrugged, "Maybe. I couldn't tell you how. I think maybe our great grandmothers were cousins?"
"It's probably written down somewhere," said Ten.
"Is that normal? To have such a large family you don't even know who all of them are?"
"Oh yeah," said Ten, "There's a reason we ship people in and out when it's time to get married. There's probably fifteen lads I grew up with I wasn't related to by blood or marriage. Things tend to go… sideways when you have a small population, all kept in with each other, generation after generation."
"What rock did you find him under?" asked Nath. He rummaged below the bar and found his prize, an enormous jug of amber whiskey. Ten examined the label. Corn whiskey from Hossberg. Cheap as shit, strong as hell, and fuck your head in the morning.
"You know very well they do not know us like we know them," said Ten, swallowing her irritation, "We're starting slow, with don't say 'you people' and the definition of 'lynching.' We are learning, yes?"
"Far too quickly for my taste," Alistair said, grimly taking down the whiskey in one swallow.
"He got a pretty painful lesson today, so let's be nice," Ten admonished the barkeep.
"I don't do 'nice.'"
"What about minding your business then?" Ten asked.
"That I do do," said Nath.
Ten poured herself a dram and dipped the end of her skirt in the potent brew and used it to clean her companion's busted knuckles while he winced and cursed. Then she bandaged them, as promised, and poured him a dram, which he drank down. He poured himself another. Drank it down. No sputtering this time.
"Well you're certainly throwing them back," she asked, "I know that… none of that is what you wanted. As a learned specialist in the field of pretty fucking awful things, that was pretty fucking awful."
"Talk to me about literally anything else," he said, downing another dram, "Please."
"The man I went to that brothel to see," said Ten, "The one who's on an out call."
"What about him?"
"Well, remember how I told you a few weeks back how one of my best childhood friends I'm fairly sure is your half brother?"
"Yes?"
"Also the one that Nath here just mistook you for, so it's not just me. And, well… he works over at the Pearl."
"What, as a bartender? Bouncer?"
She took in a sharp breath and thought of how to phrase it. Settling on the most eloquent thing she could think of, she said, "No."
She watched the realization dawn over Alistair's face, and then the whole thing collapse into disgust. "Oh, thank you, Teneira, that's just the news I wanted right now, on top of everything else, your brother's a whore."
"You know, you're going to have to lose that chantry brat attitude at some point," she said, "I hate to burst your little bubble here, but right now you have a lot more in common with whores and drunks than anyone in the palace."
"I'm not a chantry br-… oh Maker's shite-ass breath, I suppose I am," he sighed, "It's just that everything out here is so… it's arse over tit. The king is supposed to be virtuous and wise, the clergy are supposed to have all the answers…"
"A family doesn't get a throne because they're virtuous. They get it because they killed everyone else or just beat them into submission. Then they sit up there and say "The Maker put me here" and the rest of us are supposed to forget all the things they did."
"When I was told about my… parentage. I don't know, I suppose I imagined an illicit love affair. Doomed romance. All that." He was rubbing his eyes as he said this, and finally wilted and put his head in his hands, "I probably sound like Morrigan and her ridiculous books, don't I."
Feeling the need, all of a sudden, Ten poured herself a dram of whiskey and took it down without tasting it. "Part of you had to know that wasn't the case."
"I could barely believe you called him a lecher. Shit. It's all… topsy fucking turvy. Nothing makes sense. Ten, do you think I'm like that?"
"Well, you've certainly heard what I do to noble lechers, so if all your limbs are intact, there's your answer. Now, this is all certainly not what you requested, which was to talk about literally anything else."
"You must be used to this."
"What, trying like hell to manage the emotional stability of people I barely know? Can't say I am."
"No, just the endless parade of horrors some people visit upon others," he said, "Why are we saving this world, anyway?"
"I ask myself the same thing daily. Doubt anyone I care about would be worse off if we just let the darkspawn burn it all down."
"You say things like that, but I don't think you mean it. I'm on to you. You're not nice, you're definitely not nice. You're prickly as a hedgehog with a pinecone up its arse, but you also… you're… always trying to fix things. Like you'll be calling someone every name in the book all the while you're saving his dog from a well with one hand and greasing the stairs in his greatest enemy's house with the other."
"Whoa whoa whoa," Ten protested, "You're dangerously close to revealing my tightest-held secret. People are going to start thinking you actually respect me."
"You really think I don't respect you?" He took the fourth - fifth? - drink down like an absolute champion, and Ten looked at him nervously. She wasn't sure if the heavy drinking had been something he'd done before he'd lost most of the friends he had in the world, or after. Or even - she had to admit - if it wasn't at least partially her fault. But all the same, this was a very bad day for him. She sighed inwardly.
"Well every time I make a call, a necessary call, one you're not prepared to make - you pick a fight with me over it. Make me look like an ass in front of everyone," she grumbled,
"I'm not trying to fight you. I'm trying to keep you alive. You just have some kind of death wish, I swear. And the worst part - the worst part is, everyone else thinks it's a grand lark. Like 'Oh isn't that hilarious, the little elf girl is walking up to the dragon and giving it the finger!' Even Wynne, and she has the most sense of all of us. And then you make me out to be the bad guy for just asking you to be a little more careful, not make me carry yet another comrade to a pyre."
"Why do you sound so resentful?"
"Because I am resentful. You go around doing the most maniacal, unhinged things, and it always seems to work. I always just wind up making everything worse. There's a reason nobody ever wanted me around. Why every fucking person I learn to rely on gets rid of me or just… dies. And there. That look on your face. You feel sorry for me. You, of all people, feel sorry for me. Because despite everything, everyone just fucking loves you. My own sister lit a candle in the Chantry for you when she thought you were going to be executed. My own damn sister loves you. Oh, but she hates me. She never even met me, but she hates me, and she met you a handful of times, and thinks the sun just shines out your arse."
"I am not sure where you got that out of our very limited interaction," said Ten. She cautiously poured herself a glass and took a sip, "Anyway, the righteous whipping you handed her husband would go a mile towards mending that bridge, if that's what you want." He is going to have one hell of a hangover, she thought. She could taste the sweetness of the corn, the oak of the barrels it had been aged in.
"But that's all I know how to do," he said, "What is it you say all the time? You can't solve every problem by hitting it. It's all I'm good for and most of the time you figure out some weird devious way to make it unnecessary."
"I mean, you could do with branching out," said Ten, "Have you considered minstrelsy?"
"Fuck off," he said, but had started chuckling.
"Knitting?"
"Maybe I'll start with embroidery. Just write rude things on everyone's clothes."
"You could make bizarre and terrifying sculptures out of scrap metal."
"With my luck I'd accidentally go through some weird ancient ritual and summon a dozen evil spirits."
"You could get really, really good at cards."
"I'm terrible at cards."
"Somehow that does not surprise me in the least."
"The other templars used to clear me out every Friday, it was truly humiliating."
"I hate to interrupt… whatever this is, but Ten, I need a favor," Nath said, sidling back down to the end of the bar where they were sitting.
"What now, Nath?" she asked.
"I've got about five minutes before whatever guard shows up to make sure I don't burn anything down on my ten minute walk home," said Nath, "I need to get my things in the back and Missus Bantree is late for her shift. Could you watch the bar while I pack up? And don't give your friend any more whiskey, he's about two drams away from breaking down crying and telling everyone in here how pointless his life is, I know the look."
"I'm right here," Alistair said.
"And are you about two more of those from breaking down crying and telling everyone how pointless your life is?"
"I genuinely had not thought about it, but I suppose it's a possibility."
"Well keep drinking and see if I'm right, then," the bartender said, raising his eyebrows, "Ten, come watch the bar."
"You're letting me loose by the till, Nath? Are you sure that's the best idea?" she asked.
"You'll lift a few coins, any of these other lowlifes will drink me out of house and home," Nath said.
"All right. Just for you," Ten said, "But I'm charging whatever he just drank as my rate for this."
"That swill's not worth a minute your time," said Nath, "Anyway it fell off the back of a wagon. If the guard shows up before I'm back, just ply him with free ale, it works most of the time."
"I do love a dirty copper," said Ten,
"Yes, I heard that rumor," Nath said, raising his eyebrows.
"Don't be an ass, Nath."
Grinning, Nath put his towel down on the bar, ducked under, and disappeared into the back. Ten sighed, sidled under the bar, and took up his post.
"So, are you cutting me off?" asked Alistair, leaning forward on the bar.
"Yep," she said, "That one's been tending bar for twenty years. I trust his judgment and I do not deal well with grown man tears, so I'm not taking the risk." To drive her point home, she took the bottle and put it under the bar where it belonged.
"What do you think the odds are that the guard recognizes you? Everyone else seems to."
"The ones who recognize me won't turn me in," said Ten.
"Why not?"
"I'm too cute for hard time," she said, "Mind your business."
"Why does absolutely everyone here know you?" Alistair asked, "And defer to you? Who are you actually?"
"I'm a sweet elfin maiden who runs a potions shop," she said, "And this will all go much more smoothly if you pretend you don't know me at all for the next twenty minutes or so."
"I don't think I do," he said, "Know you at all. Not really."
"Sure and let's keep it that way. Now just… look like you're out of it and keep your mouth shut," she said, "Please."