To the chagrin of nearly all involved - Morrigan truly did not understand shame - the door led to a back room of a shop on the commons, one level below the one they were staying at. Fortunately, both shopkeeper and patrons just stared in consternation as the small parade of surfacers shuffled out, past the counter, with the only noise being when Sten hit his head once again on the top of the door frame, having not stooped nearly low enough to fit through.
As they made their way back out onto the main promenade, four bells sounded.
"I think that means it's socially acceptable to retire, right?" Zevran said.
"Since when do you care about what is socially acceptable?" Lelianna asked.
"I am not eager to stand out any more than I already do," he replied, "If that is how criminals treat their own kind I do not want to discover the conditions of actual prisons here."
Privately, Ten was grateful for this as well. Bells meant time was passing, and it was being marked, and she was no longer trapped in that dark, unchanging netherworld. There was a task ahead of her, daunting but not more so than the last few. She was hungry, but she could eat, she was dirty, but she could bathe, and that was more than could be said by many others in the world.
After having accomplished both, she ventured a glance in one of the very large mirrors in her room - apparently the dwarves had found a way to make them cheaply. The bruising wasn't nearly as bad as she had feared. There were, however, far more wounds on the rest of her that she had not even registered, revealed once she had gotten into something resembling full light and washed several layers of grime and dried blood off herself. She had attributed the moderate amount of pain she'd been in for the duration of her stay in Jarvia's little guest house to the general malaise of having had her ass handed to her. And so, she bandaged what she felt should be bandaged then sat on the foot of her dwarf-sized bed - she could stretch out all the way on it, but if she pointed her toes, they would graze the footboard - examining her upper thigh where it looked like one of Jarvia's goons had stabbed her repeatedly with a small knife. The leathers had done their work of stopping most of the damage, so it hadn't bled too much, but their number and depth made her nervous. She folded up a clean kerchief, put it between her teeth, and screwing her eyes shut tightly, poured a good quarter cup of clear liquor directly into the wounds. The cloth in her mouth muffled the shriek she wanted to let loose, but apparently not well enough to prevent everyone else who was staying at that inn - meaning Wynne and Alistair - to come see what had happened. She hadn't bothered locking her door - given her previous experience with dwarven locks, was a little bit nervous about inadvertently locking herself in - and so Wynne bustled in without so much as a by your leave, pausing in the doorway to put her hands on her hips and ask her what exactly she was doing to herself.
Ten spat out her kerchief and took a couple of deep breaths, "Fuck that stings," Ten said, "Sorry, didn't mean to disturb anyone."
Behind Wynne, Alistair had also arrived, though he stayed at the threshold, ducking his head under it but keeping both hands on the top of the doorframe in case he had to dodge a flying shoe, "Maker's breath, I thought someone was slaughtering a piglet in here."
"Nope," Ten sighed, not looking up. She reached over to her nightstand where a needle and thread was soaking in another cup of antiseptic.
"Teneira you are not going to stitch yourself up. There's no point now anyway, those cuts have been brewing in whatever nasty was down there for days. And Alistair, you are not going stand there gawking at her with her skirt pulled up like that, after your little display the other night you have no right to gloat at her," Wynne snapped, whirling.
"Fine," Alistair said, "Ten, we need to chat when you're done with the sieve impersonation."
"While you still look like you went ten rounds with a stone golem?" she said.
"Wynne says I've lost healing privileges when it's not serious and additionally my own stupid fault."
"Young man, I am not calling on the power of the Fade every time you get into a brawl," Wynne scolded.
"I heard you the first time, Wynne, I am doing my penance." He left the door and shut it behind him.
"What'd he do last night?" Ten asked. She continued to sit there awkwardly as Wynne applied her own brand of healing magic, somehow simultaneously gentler and stronger than when Morrigan patched her up, and avoided the needle and thread altogether. "I assume it has something to do with the black eye."
Wynne pursed her lips. "I have seen multiple generations of young men come through the Circle - both templar and mage. I… understand why they're angry. I understand they feel helpless. I just don't understand how beating each other senseless is their favorite way to deal with it. Now stand up, I refuse to believe that's all those thugs left you with."
Ten stood obediently and let the mage inspect her for more damage.
Wynne, having absolutely no regard for privacy, pulled Ten's collar back and looked right down the back of her shift, "How'd you get that scar?" she asked, poking at one that ran the length of Ten's left shoulderblade.
"Jumped out a window and landed on my back in a haystack."
"That's not from hay."
"No, it's from the pitchfork."
"What about that one?"
"Giant man goat thing. Is anything else still bleeding?"
"No, I'm just impressed you've got any skin left."
"Well, the cluster you're poking right now is from when I had the brilliant idea to market glass jars full of live hornets as a projectile weapon and got far more interest than I was prepared for."
"You what?"
"Yes, in retrospect it was a terrible plan. I was like fifteen. Give me a break," she said.
Wynne chuckled, "When I was around that age I was trying to levitate a circle of small rocks and accidentally summoned three rage demons. And the only templar on duty, a journeyman… he was always a little bit afraid of me after that." Ten looked over at her, surprised at her tone. She looked almost wistful. Ten realized she had never heard the woman speak about her youth before. Things must have been much different. It would have been right smack dab in the middle of the occupation. She tried to imagine a younger Wynne. Taller. The same sharp brown eyes, but not hooded under cobwebs of wrinkles. Would she have had dark hair? Blond? Not a clue remained in her silvered crown today.
"How does one even…"
"I still have no idea," Wynne said. She patted Ten's shoulder, "There now, good as new."
"More or less," Ten sighed, "Aside from the indigestion I've certainly given myself, eating that much that fast."
"Yes, the food here isn't exactly…" Wynne muttered, "Well, it's different. Now, I've had quite enough excitement for today, and I give it not that long before the folks down in the tavern start getting rowdy. I suggest you bar your door before that happens."
Ten glanced over at Pigeon, who, having taken down one and one half of the nug carcasses Ten had purchased from the local butcher, then offered the other half to Morrigan by dumping it at her feet, was completely passed out in front of the hearth, snoring to raise the dead. "I think I'll be all right."
She waited for Wynne to leave, and listened for the click of the door next to her own before padding barefoot out of her room and down the hall to where Alistair was staying at the end of it. The door there was rather comically large - the handle at shoulder height for her. She imagined the foreman charged with hollowing it out having a conversation with the architect. "We need a room for the surfacers. They're shaped sort of like us, but bigger!" "How much bigger?" "Wouldn't know, better make it very big. Just in case."
She really wasn't sure what to expect from the man within. She wasn't always able to tell the difference between 'in a good mood' and 'turning everything into a joke because dying on the inside' with him. Then again she really wasn't all that good at recognizing it in herself. She took a page out of his book and just went in, closing the door behind her, though she underestimated its weight, and it made a little more noise than she had intended.
Alistair was sitting in a chair in the corner directly under a lamp - Ten had discerned that they were some sort of glowing crystal, set into a box that was mirrored on all sides, like a lighthouse. He was sitting there because he was intently reading what looked to be an accounting of the battles that had lost the dwarves the rest of their territory, complete with diagrams both of the geography of the caverns lost and the great war machines invented in their defense.
"Light reading, eh?" she asked, sitting herself on one arm of his chair and peering at the page, "You going to bring a ballista next time you feel like getting into a bar fight?"
"That's a springald," he corrected, "See, the arms go inward. Makes it more compact, more practical for the underground."
"Right," she said, "How silly of me. Are you going to bring a… that next time you feel like getting into a bar fight?"
"Well no, that sounds like a guaranteed ticket to a cell, and I certainly wouldn't want to wind up like you." He closed the book and set it on a side table.
"We know what happened to me. What did you do?" she asked.
"Standard drunk idiot stuff," he sighed, "Look, I'm not proud of it."
"You'd better tell me before someone else gets their version in first."
"I was just minding my own business in the bar room out there, there was this poor sot there crying into his cups about his missing wife, making a great blubbering scene. But clearly everyone else at the bar had heard the story before, so they were just ignoring him. He saw a stranger and decided to tell me the whole thing, so I humored him, and I have no idea what it was I said but out of nowhere he just up and knocks me off my barstool, starts wailing on me with both fists."
"You have no idea what you said, really?" Ten asked skeptically.
"Well I might have had a few myself."
"Might have?"
"You'd just taken off for several days. Again."
"I did not 'take off.' I was detained. Either way, you decided to use your two healthiest coping mechanisms and both get shitfaced and into a fight at the same time. You used to at least be able to keep them separate. Do I need to worry?"
"I didn't try to get into a fight. I promise. I told you, he threw the first punch."
"I know, but I also know you, and every so often something comes out of your mouth that might lead another to do that."
"That… might be true."
Ten sighed, "What'd you say?"
"So he's telling me the whole sob story, the long and short of it is, his wife set off a couple of years ago on an expedition to find some relic in the Deep Roads and hasn't been back. He's been pestering everyone he can get to listen to him to send a party after them, or at least to let him go in search, but, of course they don't take him seriously, the man's a drunk. I was sort of quiet, in all honesty it sounded to me like the 'expedition' was a cover for her just plain leaving him, to be honest given how he was carrying on I wouldn't be surprised if she managed to get the whole city to cover for her. I thought maybe someone ought to inform the poor fool that that's probably what happened, you know, let him move on with his life… so I sort of politely asked how sure he was that it wasn't that."
"How does one politely say, 'I'm pretty sure your wife took off with another man?'"
"Well that wasn't what did it. I did say something to that effect and he says that's ridiculous because all the men on the trip were 'trusted friends of his,' and so I go, what about the women? And… well, that did it."
"And then you got the shit kicked out of you by a four foot five cuckold."
"He got the drop on me! I'd never fought a dwarf hand to hand before. It's like his knuckles were carved right out of the rock. And he couldn't even feel it when I hit him. I had to smash two tankards against the side of his head before he calmed down. And then he felt bad and paid for my tab and the next few rounds. We were best of friends by the end of the night. Evidently that's socially acceptable here."
"Hell of a friend," she muttered. She took his face in her hands, assessing the damage with her fingertips, though inwardly she admitted if Wynne had decided it was worth letting him stew in it he was probably not all that worse for wear.
"Moral of the story is to exploit your superior reach as much as you can, because it's the only advantage you have."
"I owe my survival to always being out of reach."
Alistair, evidently, took this as a challenge and got her around the waist, scooping her down off the arm of the chair and into his lap. This had, of course, been the reaction she had hoped for with her comment. Some instincts were hard to lose, and the most important - if you want something from someone it's better if they think it's their idea - was one that had stuck with her.
"Tell me you missed me at least," he said.
"Of course I did," she said, drawing her knees up and tucking her head into the hollow between his neck and shoulder.
"They didn't feed you, did they. Your ankles are sharper than usual."
"All they had was slime mold, the boniness is somewhat self-inflicted."
"What is slime mold?"
"I have no idea but I wasn't hungry enough to eat it."
"So tell me how you managed to become persona non grata even among the other criminals?" he ran his fingers over the bruises that still adorned her hairline down the left side of her face.
"I… didn't read the room correctly," Ten said.
"You tried to give them a lecture, didn't you. What was it this time? Philosophy of good and evil? Denunciation of the Chantry… well they wouldn't care about that down here. Elf rights either."
"Class solidarity," she sighed. Well I suppose I am that predictable. "So you're not going to dress me down for making you worry this time?"
"I thought about it, but it's not exactly fair of me to expect you to be the one to reassure me when you're the one that something bad actually happened to. So, I am going to be grateful you're back in one piece and keep the rest of it to myself."
"Well it's not like you're unscathed. Neither of us are getting by on our looks for awhile."
"Well, Orzammar has one thing going for it."
"And what's that?"
"When it's dark, it is very, very dark."
For emphasis, he reached up and flipped something on the lamp. In the split second, Ten could see that it was a lid of sorts that would pivot to close off the glowing crystal inside the lamp. And close it off it did, for in that split second the room went absolutely pitch black. Not the sort of dark one got above ground, where even in the bleakest part of the night, there were stars and usually fires in the distance, not even the dark of the cell she had been in, which got some light from the tunnels outside. Even after several minutes and much blinking, there was simply nothing for her eyes to adjust to.
"Well it beats a bag over the head," she finally mused.
"What does that even mean?"
"It's what you do with someone whose face you don't want to look at but would still… you know what? Nevermind. Kind of a cruel joke now that I'm forced to explain it." She found the arm of the chair with her hand and slid cautiously off, her feet finding the stone of the floor.
"Wait, where are you going?"
"I've been sleeping on a damp stone floor with a dog for a pillow for several days," Ten said, trying to remember the dimensions of the room and where the bed - also comically large and unnecessarily tall - was situated. She found one corner of it with her shin, and cursed softly, but then continued, "So I am claiming this territory. By divine right. The Maker has decreed I own it now." It took her a couple of tries to get up there, but she managed.
"I'll cede some of the land, but I want the right to leave my boots where I please."
"I'll have my chancery staff draw up the treaty," Ten said. Is this mattress ridiculously comfortable, or is it just that I haven't slept on anything but the ground in a month? What's it stuffed with? Do they even have birds down here? Can't be straw, that'd poke out. And they don't exactly have wheatfields. Maybe some kind of moss. Or maybe… or maybe…
Ten had no idea if she'd been asleep for minutes or hours when she awoke with a start to pounding on the door. At first she froze, thinking herself back in the cell, that her injuries were worse than she'd thought and her vision had gone out. Then she remembered that she had, indeed, been rescued, and that the breath on the back of her neck belonged to a man, not a dog.
"I'd say this is incredibly rude but I have no idea what time of night it's supposed to be," Alistair muttered, "If you're going to hide, do it now."
"I really couldn't care less at this point," Ten mumbled, the panic washing away and allowing exhaustion to take up the most space again. She turned her face back to the pillow and pulled the covers over her head, hoping whoever it was would just go away. She peeked out to see a sliver of light, where the door cracked open.
"What the…" Alistair started, "Oghren, what on earth are you doing here?"
"My friend!" a husky yet jubilant voice echoed from the hallway. In the light from outside, Ten could now make out the silhouette of a broad shouldered dwarf, "Come on, you said we'd have a drink again. You can't possibly be in bed already!"
"I've actually had quite a long day and it's…"
"I thought you might say that, so I brought it to you!"
The silhouette lifted something over its head, and Ten could see the distinctive outline of an absolutely enormous jug of whiskey.
"How did you even know where to find me?"
"I've had a jar at every tavern in town many times over in my life and wound up having to sleep at them more often than not. I know where the rooms for tall folk are."
"So you were just going to go around every…"
"Well of course! Don't you remember? You promised you'd listen to my brilliant plan! Ohh… you were blacked out weren't you. That's all right, happens to me all the time, no need to be embarrassed…"
Ten sighed in irritation and sat up. Whatever, whoever's shown up here I don't feel the need to actually get up for. The door opened all the way, and someone - in all likelihood the new guest, bustled right in and opened the lid on a lamp set into the wall by the door.
"Oh!" the stranger exclaimed. In the light, he was actually around four and a half feet tall, unsteady on his feet, and boasting an angry welt down the left side of his face, as though someone had smashed a tankard or two there, "Your girl's come back. I guess that makes one of us."
"Yeah," Alistair said, "So please, can we maybe do this another time…" He had remained by the door, no doubt hoping that the dwarf would take the hint and leave. Perhaps the idea of 'hints' was not so culturally prevalent in Orzammar or, as Ten thought was more likely, this whiskey-soaked redhaired redfaced lout simply did not care. He, instead, plunked himself down in a chair at the far wall and sat his jug of whiskey on the side table, right on top of the book Alistair had been reading.
"I thought you said she was pretty," he said, sitting back and assessing Ten with redrimmed dark eyes, "She has no tits."
"Well if you're going to stand there and insult me, at least pour me a drink," Ten said, crossing her arms tighter about herself, "Asshole."
"Oh shit! Didn't realize you spoke the language!" the dwarf cackled, "There's usually cups somewhere around these rooms." He got up and started rummaging around various cabinets until he found what he sought. He filled a cup the size of a standard beer tankard about halfway up with raw rye whiskey and held it out to her. She took it, and, maintaining eye contact, took a long draft and swallowed it without blinking. "Well shit. Didn't know humans could do that."
"They can't," she said, "Well, they shouldn't. But let's not get into that. Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck are you doing here?"
"You let her talk like that?" the dwarf looked up at Alistair, who had accepted his fate and poured himself a dram.
"Oh I encourage it," he said, sitting himself on the foot of the bed.
"The name's Oghren," the dwarf said, turning back to Ten, "And I'm here because I have a brilliant plan that nobody else will listen to."
"I just spent the last several days locked up down in Dusttown," Ten said, "Patience is not one of my virtues at the moment. So out with it."
"How'd you manage that?" Oghren asked.
"Took out several large groups of Carta foot soldiers, then got hauled off but not before poisoning most of the inner circle."
"Saw the aftermath of that," Alistair said, "It was… disturbing."
"Gave em mushrooms that make you lose control of your bowels before you die," Ten said, by way of an explanation. She turned to Alistair, "Sorry about that, by the way, I didn't realize you were going to be the one discovering the scene."
"Given the other crime scenes you've arranged in the last several months I feel this one was actually a little low-effort," Alistair said.
"Everyone's a critic," Ten groused.
Oghren's eyes were a little more focused now, peering at Ten's face rather than her alleged lack of tits, "You're a sodding nutjob ain't you."
"Oh yes," she said.
"Thank the Maker, I wasn't going to say it," Alistair muttered.
"Good," the dwarf said, stroking his moustache contemplatively, "Just what I need. You see, my wife's gone missing. She went on an expedition in the Deep Roads. I've been asking to go track her down for years."
"You need permission?" Ten asked, cocking her head to one side, "Why don't you just go?"
"I don't know what you all get up to on the surface, but this is a society. We have rules," Oghren grumbled, "You see, my wife… Branka's her name, she's kind of a big deal. A paragon. And a dead paragon says whatever you want her to say. But, that has changed now."
"Why?"
"No king," said Oghren, "Nobody to put words in her mouth, or… rather, too many people trying to put words in her mouth. Now, all of a sudden, the fact that we never actually saw a body means she may be alive, somewhere, and may be found, and maybe… convinced to support one side or the other."
"So what does that have to do with us?" asked Ten.
"You're not even from here. If retainers of either the Aeducan or Harrowmont houses bring her back, whatever she says is suspect. If a neutral party does… there's no reason for her to do anything but speak her mind. There are very few neutral parties in Orzammar. And so you are valuable. If you offer to go, they will probably let you. And then you can bring me along."
"And why would we do that?" asked Alistair.
"Because we're friends!" Oghren exclaimed, "Oh, come on. She's my wife. I just want to know what happened to her. And I mopped the floor with you last night while three sheets to the wind, imagine what I can do when I'm sober."
"Imagine you being sober," Alistair muttered, taking another swig.
"You're one to talk," Ten pointed out.
"Come on. What do you say?" Oghren insisted.
"If we agree, will you fuck off?" asked Ten.
"Deal!" Oghren exclaimed, "Ask the barman for my address when you're ready to go."
"How's the barman know your address?"
"Has to have somewhere to send the goons when I forget to pay my tab," Oghren said. True to his word, he got up and made to leave.
"One more thing, though," Alistair said.
"What's that?"
"Leave the whiskey."
Oghren chuckled, grabbed the jug and left the room, one middle finger in the air. Grumbling under his breath, Alistair threw the deadbolt on the door and closed the lamp again, sending the room back into darkness. Ten tossed her empty cup on a side table and rolled over. The strange dwarf had announced that it wasn't that late, meaning she likely had not been out for that long and could certainly use more rest. We can fight about it in the morning.