Alas, the weather did betray them, and the next week brought yet another storm, likely the last of the season, but which would delay their departure further. Ten kept the strange information regarding the keeper Zathrian to herself, and either Zevran did as well or simply forgot about it while they all bustled about, tying up loose ends in town. It was a bit of a comfort to be able to leave her home for the third time, in a better state than it had been. The fact that the ones she worried most about were not currently looking down the road at more senseless violence - at least not from their neighbors - did help quite a bit. She was putting the last of the things she intended to leave in her chest of secrets back at her old flat into a box to be sent there when Avrenis showed up in Ten's room one afternoon, acting both contrite and a little conspiratorial. Ten looked up from where she was sorting papers into trash and useful, and the chambermaid thrust a scrap of paper into Ten's hand.

"I don't have any more information, I'm afraid," she said, "You can have some of your money back."

Ten looked down at the note. Edric Parret. A last name, that's a start. Shianni Parret just doesn't have that ring, does it though. The name of a coastal village, one which Ten vaguely remembered passing through on the way to Highever, "No, this is fine, actually. Keep the money."

"And, Ten, I admit I'm a little chagrined about my behavior that morning. I'd feel awful if you left and got yourself killed this time and you still thought poorly of me over it, so I am sorry."

"Why?" asked Ten, "You thought you were protecting me."

"Well… I didn't know the boy was… you know," Reni said, waving her hand in a gesture that usually indicated 'in the middle' or 'more or less.' It took Ten a moment, but when she realized what the chambermaid was referring to she stepped quickly to the door and shut it firmly.

"Where did you hear that?" she demanded.

"It was going around the palace staff that Maric's bastard who showed up at the Landsmeet had been hiding that his mother was an elf this entire time."

"Where'd they hear that?"

"One of the palace guards, guess he went drinking with one of the boys from Fort Drakon and he said that one of Teyrn Loghain's last words was calling him out to his face, and he didn't deny it. Didn't even react."

"Shit," sighed Ten, "Well I suppose it's as good a time as any to leave town. Maybe by the time we return a new juicy rumor will have breached the dam."

"So it's true," Avrenis said, her eyes widening.

"I don't know for certain and neither does he," Ten said. Yes I do. She glanced at a box under her desk that she would have a courier take for safekeeping at Shianni's house. Well, Reni, I suppose you've earned some gossip, "But, between you and me, I strongly suspect it is."

"And to think we came that close to getting one of ours in that chair. Though that would have had to be the coverup of the century," Avrenis said, chuckling ruefully.

Ten tried not to smile, thinking on who would be taking the throne - Maker willing - in twenty or so years. Sorry, you have not earned anything that would lead to my own head winding up on a pike. And my broken limbs threaded through a giant wheel. And my guts being pulled out slowly in front of a booing crowd.

"Well, imagine how that would have turned out," she said, "I doubt Teyrn Loghain, if what he was saying is true, wouldn't have made such a claim just out of pettiness, and what a mess that would have been." She paused, "So… um, how much to keep your silence on this?"

"Why?" Reni asked, "If he's going to be out there playing the big hero, don't we deserve to have the nation know that he's one of ours?"

"I'm one of ours!" Ten protested, "In fact, I'm actually one of ours. From the Alienage. Not some fancy foreign… whatever. Isn't that enough?"

"Of course you are, but you know full well who's going to get all the credit if the two of you manage to beat this thing."

She's right, too. "I'll just have to die gloriously. That usually circumvents the whole subtle preference for men thing," Ten sighed, "But please, you know full well how dangerous it is to out someone like that."

"Oh I doubt the lynch mobs would dare go after someone so well-connected."

"They got a lieutenant with the city guard."

"Who, according to the rumor mill, was also one of your lovers. Maybe you're the problem," Reni observed pettily.

"Right," Ten sighed. I am never getting away from that, am I. "So, how much for your silence?"

"My silence you may have out of respect for your mother, and for what I imagine you're about to do to the man who killed her," the chambermaid said, "Now I'd better get going before Gwylan docks my pay." Ten stood aside and let her pass, looking again at the paper with her quarry's name on it. She tucked it into her pocket, and continued putting things away, and packing one box of secrets to stash back in the Alienage.

"Hey, do you know why that maid was staring at me?"

She looked up to see that Alistair had come in, without knocking of course, and was looking under her bed.

"She's completely ignored me until today but I just saw her in the hallway and she was sort of looking at me and… I want to say giggling but I don't think that's a thing middle aged women do."

"Oh they do," Ten said, "What are you doing down there?"

He reappeared, several socks in varying states of cleanliness in one hand, "I was wondering where all of them went. You have a tendency to kick my boots under the bed…"

"Because you leave them where I will trip over them if I don't," she pointed out.

"Where am I supposed to leave boots? That's where they go!"

"In your own damn room," Ten sighed, "Well at least now I know where the mysterious stench was coming from. I thought something died in the walls. Morrigan might have a point about men…"

"Having spent most of my life in the company of a great many of them, it is a mystery to me how you lot put up with us long enough to keep the population steady."

"Well, we do until we don't," Ten said. She held up a small glass vial to the sun streaming in the window, trying to figure out what it was from its color and viscosity. She frowned, popped it open and gave it a whiff, still unsure. She tilted it towards Alistair, "Does this smell like almonds to you?"

"Absolutely not, you put that away right now, Tabris," he said, backing away, holding up an armload of dirty socks as a shield from whatever nefarious substance she was pushing at him.

"Oh you're no fun," she groused, but replaced the stopper and put it in her pack, "And…well, the maid was staring at you because apparently those two guards from the top of Fort Drakon overheard what Loghain said to you before the whole… decapitation thing and they've been spreading it around. It might be a good idea to stay away from the highborn set until we leave town."

"I really hate it when people talk about me," he sighed. He dumped the offending socks into a sack he had likely brought for that purpose, "Over something so ridiculous as well."

"Look, something else scandalous will happen soon and everyone will forget about it." Ten sat down at her desk and started going through the stack of papers that had accumulated there over the past several months. Most of it was trash at this point, but some of it might prove useful, for her cousins if not herself. She tipped a stack of useless missives into the bin under the desk, and put another stack into a box bound for her war room in the Alienage, "Just… maybe don't go getting into it with any knights for the next few days."

"Right," he sighed, "Well there go my weekend plans."

"You know, dealing with your problems in a more constructive manner is always an option."

"Says the woman who channels all her frustrations into creating new forms of toxic death."

"Still haven't made anything that rivals that pile of socks you just picked up."

"I'm glad I can give you something to aspire to. What are you doing, anyway?"

"Putting my secrets away for when I need them again," she said. She frowned at one pilfered love letter from a bann to his Orlesian mistress that just happened to contain far too much information about the finances of a large construction project planned for Highever.

"I suppose it was too much to hope that you'd actually gone straight." He had come up behind her and leaned over her to see what she was doing.

"I never said I was going straight, it's just right now it's in our best interests to act like I have. Yours especially," she said, folding the letter and putting it in the box.

"How long are you going to hold that over my head?"

"Why, as long as you have it."

"I walked into that one didn't I."

"Like you own the place. You know, like you did just now on your quest for dirty laundry. Like you have been for more than a month at this point… I'm not quite sure when I lost sovereignty in my own chamber," Ten pointed out. They hadn't really discussed it since that morning in Ioan's apartment, and she was fairly sure if she told Alistair to fuck off and spend a few nights on his own he would do so with minimal complaint until invited back, but whenever she thought about saying that, she realized she did not particularly want him to. Nobody else seemed to have noticed, as wrapped up as they were in their own affairs, or perhaps they did and were simply minding their business.

"Hey, this land is mine by right of conquest," Alistair protested. He rested his chin on top of her head, "I'll be annexing territory in your tent as well, I hope you know that." He was evidently no longer interested in the document, but in the fact that laces on her bodice had come halfway undone, something she had not corrected as she had been planning to be alone in her chamber.

"Are you now," she mused, feeling heat rise to her face, "You'll have to fight the dog." She put the two letters at the top of her pile into the box, making a show of not reacting to his hands running down her upper arms, though they were raising goosebumps in their wake.

"You're right. Can she be bribed?"

She was truly fighting with herself at this point as his hands moved down to her ribcage. Ugh. What have you gotten yourself into, Tabris? Some man can just walk in whenever he pleases and drive you to distraction just by putting his hands on you? "Can you afford it? Bacon's scarce this time of year."

"I mean if you've ceded it already, I like to think of myself as a superior occupying force."

She considered rising and giving him what he was clearly after, when suddenly, he froze. "Wait. What is that?"

She looked down at the document in front of her. Whoops.

"That has my name on it."

Shit. "It does."

"I can't read the rest of it. What language is that?"

"You said you didn't want to know, so… just forget about it, all right? I'm sorry I shouldn't have had that out. I was a little distracted, all right? You really need to stop doing that…"

"No, Ten, what is it?"

She sighed. She handed him the letter, then turned back to her work, hoping he would drop the subject.

"Ten, I can't read this," he admitted, "What is it? How long have you had it?"

She sighed and rose, taking the letter back from him and putting it in the box, then turned to face him. "The night after the execution. You'd gone to try to jostle answers out of the master of the house, meaning he wasn't in his office."

"You rifled through his desk?"

"I think we established long ago that's a thing I do when left to my own devices," Ten said. She had the feeling she had just been caught doing something she shouldn't have been, though on its face it was really just run of the mill prying on her end. She felt her voice pick up in both pace and pitch anyway, "I just took everything I could find that looked at least ten years old and written in Orlesian. Gwylan and I were pretty shitcanned by this point, and it's like my fourth language - half of what I took was just bullshit correspondence with people who are probably dead right now. But those…"

"Who's Gwy- wait… the butler? So let me get this straight, you got drunk with the butler, got him to let you into Arl Eamon's office so you could go through his desk, and you found…"

She was aware how fast she was talking, the floodgates having opened. "Yes, that's what I'm telling you. A handful of letters from a mage with the Orlesian circle asking after you. I think her name's Fiona. Your ma, I mean. It just lines up far too well."

"Are you fucking with me right now?" His hands were back on her shoulders, this time gripping her too tightly. She knew intellectually that he was not going to hurt her - and probably couldn't if he tried - but the small voice at the base of her skull was telling her to prepare to fight, run, or diffuse the situation. How many times have you argued with this man, and now he's scaring you?

"I promise I am not fucking with you." She instinctively made herself small, dropped her eyes, and softened her voice.

It had the desired effect, and he also lowered his tone. "Are you telling me this to make me feel better?" His grip on her shoulders loosened, but he did not let her go.

"I don't think this is making you feel better. Look, like I said, it's my fourth language, I'm probably missing a whole bunch of subtext. Give them to Lelianna if you want a better translation," Ten said.

"I don't want her involved. I don't trust her.".

"Really. Why?"

"Well she's obviously not really clergy, and if she's faking that then… Nevermind that now. You, though." His voice became accusatory again, and she shrank, "You kept those for how long?"

"I offered to find out," she said, her voice monotone and her eyes on the floor between them, "You said you didn't want to know. I respected that."

"But you're supposed to know when… I'm… lying." The decrescendo of Alistair's voice said he knew as the words came out exactly how ridiculous they sounded, "It's not you I'm actually angry with, is it."

"Do you really need to be angry with anyone?" She looked up hesitantly.

"Well I just found out that the only person who's been honest with me this entire time was my greatest enemy. And apparently, I have had a living parent out there, who just… never bothered. Not even the woman who made me wanted me around." He loosed her shoulders finally, clasping his hands behind his head, "Which doesn't really make a lad feel wonderful to find out."

Ah shit. He's got a point. At least my ma had the decency to murdered like a normal criminal. Though it would be a great joke if it turned out she faked her own death and has been living in exile these last twenty years. Probably to get away from Dad's cooking.

"That's not it and you know it. She couldn't have raised you. I'm sure she wanted to," Ten pointed out, "Mages aren't supposed to have children. The templars would have taken you either way."

"Of course I know that," he sighed. His voice dropped off, as though he were speaking mostly to himself, "Of all the awful things that Chantry has you do..."

Ten's blood ran cold. Alistair had said before that he didn't even talk about the things he'd done while with the Chantry. And he mostly hadn't, aside from something about locking up certain heretics on accusations of blood magic and the time he had referred vaguely to torturing confessions of apostasy out of others. He just realized he's been on both ends of this brutal equation, didn't he. Of course it would have to happen. There was no way circle mages just simply never made the children they weren't supposed to have. That was just the nature of people, especially those locked in with each other, year after year. And where did they go? Of course, every so often, the templars would have to pry babies from their sobbing mothers' breasts. Perhaps send them to family if they were lucky, but more likely they just put them in Chantry-run orphan homes and used them to swell their own ranks. I hope they wait until they're on solid food. They probably don't. Sadistic freaks they are, they probably just cut the cord and walk away. Suppose it makes it make sense that he's let pretty much every disgusting thing I've done slide…but… ugh. She suppressed a shudder, kept her voice even.

"Think about it, though," she said, "The very fact that you wound up at Redcliffe Castle had to be the result of someone trying to do the best they could for you. Probably your mother. And I hate to say it, but your father probably had a hand in it as well. In any other circumstance, she wouldn't even know who to write to ask after you, wouldn't even have known where you were. Would you have preferred to have gone straight from womb to Chantry?"

There was a long silence. "No. I don't think so. But… surely she had family…"

Ten scoffed. "Oh, so you could have been sent to some alienage somewhere in the ass-end of Orlais? You would have grown up like I did, except it would have actually been worse for you. You don't look like us. So you'd have gotten all the poverty and oppression but none of the community. You think some aunty would have been just thrilled to be handed the shem-looking child of a sister she probably hadn't even seen since she was a child herself? Like here, you figure out a way to feed this kid who's going to look just like everyone who's ever treated you like shit. How do you think that would have gone?"

"But it's just…" his voice trailed off and the pain on his face broke Ten's heart a little bit. "It's not right that that's how it is," Alistair concluded, "Everyone involved made the best choice they could and it still turned out like this."

She'd been watching him have revelations like this for months at this point, but something in his tone indicated that this one had truly hit home. She reached out, gave his hand a squeeze. "This is what I've been trying to tell you this entire time."

"I never said you were wrong. It's just personal now, isn't it."

"So, can I sign you up for barricade duty?" Ten asked brightly, dropping his hand and rubbing hers together briskly. Turn it back into a joke, that's the only way you don't go insane. "Noose tying workshop? The committee for deciding who among aristocracy and clergy gets dragged through the streets behind four stampeding horses and who just gets hung from lampposts?"

This got a halfhearted laugh, which had been her goal. He got her around the shoulders again, this time affectionately, and drew her against him, leaning into the top of her head. "I think I'm about ready to leave town. Everything's just too complicated here. Things were much simpler back on the road."

"Well," she said, "Do I have some good news for you."