If Ten had had a penny for every time she'd woken up in a cell and immediately begun puking her guts out, she'd have four pennies, which was not a lot of money at all but still more than she would have liked. However, given that this time, it was not run of the mill drunk-tank vomiting, but definitely head-injury vomiting, she felt a little better about herself. Casting about, she realized she had no memory of this place. It was, most of all, dark. There was some light cast by a lantern on a desk outside the cell, but looking around, there were no windows. Right. Under a mountain.

"I am beginning to doubt your prowess as a warrior," Zevran's voice said from the pitch black in the corner of the cell before he came up to her reluctantly and held her hair back from her face as she emptied her stomach over a drain in the floor.

"I was never a warrior," she sighed, wiping her mouth, satisfied the last of it had come up, "I was always an opportunist. How many did we take down?"

"They just kept coming," Zevran sighed, "There was no running, it was surrender or die."

"Where'd they bring us?"

"As far as I can tell there is an entire complex back here. Hidden doors and false walls and tunnels every which way. Even if we got out of the cell I could not tell you how to get back to where we were."

"What happened to the dog?"

Pigeon's telltale bark issued from the shadows in the other corner of the cell, and she trotted up to her mistress, accepting a few scritches behind the ear before going to inspect what had come out of Teneira's stomach, and, thankfully, concludedit was not worth rolling in.

"I think the jailer felt bad for her," Zevran said, "She would not leave your side."

"Is the girl awake?" a male voice came from the darkness.

"She is," Zevran said.

"Who's that?"

"Man in the next cell," Zevran said, "Been wringing his hands over you for awhile now, says his friend died here and was worrying you'd do the same."

"Are you all right, miss?" the man in the next cell asked.

"Well I woke up, so I guess whatever damage was done isn't the deadly kind," she said, "Who're you and how'd you get here?"

"The name's Leske," he said, "And I'm here because… I put too much faith in a friend."

"Sounds familiar," Zevran grumbled, "So did she double cross you, or just have incredibly bad judgment like this one?"

"The latter," sighed Leske glumly.

"How long have you been here?"

"No idea."

"How long have we been here?"

"Same answer."

"Zev?"

"Well I am not hungry yet," Zevran answered, "But given the smell of the place I don't know if it's that it has not been that long or my body cannot even imagine stomaching food."

"Why'd they put you in here with me?"

"I think they believe I am female," he chuckled.

"Really," Ten observed, but supposed it wasn't such a strange mistake from people who had likely never laid eyes on an elf - man or woman - before.

She ran her hands through her hair, found first the bruise that had her vomiting in the corner, and then the hairpins she was looking for. The cell, which was not built for someone with her dimensions, had the lock at waist level for her. She crouched by it, and thanks to arms both longer in general but also in proportion to the rest of her compared to her dwarven counterparts, was able to get the pins into it. She fiddled with them for a few minutes, before sitting back on her heels in frustration. "I can't find the thingy," she said.

"That is not something I am accustomed to hearing a woman say," Zevran commented dryly.

"You try," she said, holding out the pins to him and backing away from the door.

He obliged, getting both arms through the bars in order to insert the tools into the lock, "You're right," he said, "This is not a normal lock, is it."

"Stupid dwarves and their stupid… smart things," sighed Ten. She stepped back and looked to see if the bars went all the way to the ceiling. They did. "I suppose the others will come looking for us eventually." Alistair is going to be incredibly annoyed with me over this.

"It pains me to say it, but that weird crush our resident chantry brat has on you may be our only reliable way out," Zevran muttered, withdrawing the pins from the lock and standing to try it from a different angle, "Though it may be doing some heavy lifting here… as far as I can tell we are very, very far underground right now."

Ten looked over at him, a little surprised and hoping he could not, in fact, read her thoughts, "Where'd that come from?"

"Oh please," he said, giving the lock a final frustrated rattle, and turning, handing her hairpins back, "You saw how he got after our little run-in with the campesinos south of town."

"Jealous?" she teased, turning the subject of the conversation away from herself.

"Coquetry doesn't suit you," Zevran admonished.

"Wait," Ten said, her eyes having further adjusted, "Are those our things, hanging against the wall there?"

"Looks like them," Zevran said.

He leaned through the bars. While the hooks on the wall where their respective packs were hanging would have been out of reach for even the longest-limbed dwarf, Zevran could reach out and easily snagged a loop on each bag, dragging them back through the bars.

She laughed to herself, sat back down on the bench and began going through her things which Zevran had been correct in observing they had not taken. Useless, useless, useless for right now, but… wait, what's this? She took the little paper packet she had found and gave it a sniff. A memory of buying an explosive vial from a peddler on the north road came to her, and then an intense bargaining session where she finally haggled a sample of the key reagent out of him. It had been in powder form, but more like sand than dust. If I could get it right into the lock mechanism and somehow get it to stay there… and I'd need a fuse in lieu of being able to apply enough sudden force to make it go off. Keep that in mind. She continued rummaging, holding one vial after another up to the light.

"So how'd you piss off the Carta?" Zevran asked the man in the next cell, "I know it was your friend... but what did she do?"

"We were foot soliders," Leske replied.

"So you worked for her. You are a soft bunch. Betrayal is a gruesome death to any organization worth its salt," Zevran scoffed.

"Well here you are in one of their cells," Leske pointed out.

"After taking out more than thirty payasos like you," Zevran countered, "How many does Jarvia have on staff, anyway?"

"Jarvia?!" Leske exclaimed, "She's… well shit. I guess there's been some changes in power. I guess it explains why nobody bothered to get rid of me yet."

"So she's the new boss, eh?" Zevran asked.

"I have no idea how long I've been here."

"Who was your friend?" Zevran asked.

In the dim light, Ten looked up from her rummaging to see Leske put his head in his hands. "Natia." He sighed out the name like it hurt him.

"What'd you do to wind up here?"

"Like you said. We were asked to do something that did not sit right with her. And she argued about it. Sold me on it eventually. Appealed to a better nature I only ever remembered when she was around."

Ten could not help but feel a pang for the man. She herself, as Jarvia had observed, was not a real crook. Not that she was running over with scruples, but her game had never been power or riches. That said, she also knew intimately some very, very real crooks. No doubt Don Cangrejo, who had always treated her avuncularly, had done a few bloodchilling things to those who had betrayed him. The first time she had heard rumors of him burying rivals and traitors alive, she had dismissed them as scurrilous, but the longer she knew the man, the more she was convinced that they held at least some truth. And he probably had asked a young foot soldier to do something that the kid didn't think was right, and no doubt a few of them met fates that Ten did not want to think about.

"And so you are here," Zevran concluded.

"Had notions, did Natia," Leske sighed, "Head hard as basalt, heart soft as limestone…

Ten tuned him out, letting him wring his hands in peace. She had located a vial of acid she'd picked up somewhere or another and begun inspecting the bars for weak spots. It wouldn't take but widening them a few more inches and she thought she might be able to squeak through… Squeak through and do what? There's got to be a key somewhere, right? Nobody makes locks without making keys... "Look, I have about a quarter ounce of explosives and a few vials of acid of moderate potency. I don't want to use the explosives unless completely necessary, there's a good chance of one of us getting hurt if I do. The acid might work if I could get it right into the lock mechanism which probably has the smallest parts, but we also might just wind up with a melted, mangled mess and still be stuck."

"Why not apply it to one of the bars directly?" Leske asked, a light turning on behind his eyes, "You're the size of my little sister's wrist, move it a few inches and you should be able to slip out."

"I'm going to guess this cell is not made of something cheap."

"Well it's not cheap," Leske said, "But it is old. You know this whole district used to be a royal palace. And this was the dungeon."

"How long ago was that?"

"I think we have established he does not have a good sense of time, manita," Zevran pointed out.

"Let's say I can do it," Ten said, "What then? There's someone with a key, and I'd probably have to fight him for it, and I'm not in very good shape right now."

"There's a jailer," said Leske, "Name's Fyorgun I think. He usually sits right there, but he hasn't been back since tossing in the two of you."

"Maybe we put enough of a dent in her forces he's been called to other duties," Zevran said.

"You sound optimistic, but let's hope that doesn't mean we've just been… forgotten about," Ten grumbled, "But there's also… Jarvia did say she was waiting to see who we are. I'm guessing killing us would actually cause a situation for her. So we could just wait."

"She said that before we slaughtered several dozen of her men," Zevran pointed out.

"Was that a bad choice?" Ten asked.

"To be fair, I had no idea she would have half the underground on her payroll either."

"Well I don't really feel like blowing a finger off," Ten said, "Let's give it some time."

The words of the guard Nazhda came back to her several times in the next… however long. Without the movement of the sun, it was difficult to know how long anything took. She slept a few times. Ate once, learning two new things: first, that they had not been forgotten and second, what slime mold was. Scratched her name into the back rock wall of the place with the same hairpin that had failed at the lock. The three of them tried playing twenty questions, but found that the cultural differences were insurmountable. They then switched two truths and a lie, which was more successful as despite growing up in three very different places, some experiences were universal to the lower classes. Eventually, this too became boring, though Ten did learn quite a bit more about the customs of the below-ground dwarves.

The fifth or sixth time she woke up, having drifted off with her head propped against Pigeon's neck to the low sound of Leske telling some boring story or another, it was to voices she had not heard in who knows how long.

"I have a theological question, Sister. Does managing to get oneself locked up in a cell by an actual criminal syndicate make one more of a crook, or less of one?"

"I don't believe the Chantry has any teachings directly on point. Either way, the only way to salvation is fervent prayer and perhaps a course of self-flagellation."

Ten opened her eyes and rolled over. She kept her face still out of habit, not wanting to make it obvious how relieved she was that someone had arrived.

"Took you long enough," she grumbled, clambering to her feet. She rubbed her eyes. As their voices indicated, Morrigan - in human form this time - and Lelianna were standing outside the cell, their faces each a little too smug.

"Maker's Breath, Ten, what happened to your face?!" Lelianna demanded. She went over and started fiddling with the lock.

All right. We haven't been here so long the bruises healed. I'm probably in the scary bit where they've gone green. So what, four days? Five?

"Couldn't keep my whore mouth shut," said Ten.

"It's not a normal locking mechanism," Lelianna said, admitting defeat, "I can't make heads or tails of it."

"Shit," Ten sighed, "I suppose it was too much to ask that it was just me being clumsy doing it backwards."

"Marvels of dwarven engineering," Lelianna said, sighing.

Morrigan rolled her eyes and put one hand on the lock. It glowed blue, and before Ten's eyes - though she was not one hundred per cent sure of what she saw given how dim it was, it was as though the mechanism aged a thousand years in the space of seconds, rusting, then wearing away to almost nothing. The door to the cell swung open easily. Pigeon was the first out, running to Morrigan to lean her head against the witch's thigh. Morrigan began petting her, then noticed the new notch in the creature's ear and whispered a few words, putting her back the way she was. She did not deign to do the same for Ten, but the damage at this point was mostly just ghastly-looking so she did not feel offended by this.

"So is it just the two of you?" asked Ten.

"No," said Lelianna, "Came here on some ... perhaps I ought to explain later. Wynne and Alistair went one way, we went another and wound up here, Sten insisted on staying at this one point where there is a view of the Deep Roads. We are to meet back there."

"How long have we been gone?" asked Zevran.

"Oh, who knows at this point. There's no day, no night, there's no rhyme or reason to how half these people conduct themselves," Morrigan said, irritably, "It took me gods know how long to get out of this… series of infernal caverns in the first place, let alone make it up to the higher levels without someone trying to hunt me and eat me."

"Were you a rat the whole time?" asked Zevran.

"Do you mean that figuratively or literally, because I know what the answer to the former is," Ten said, crossing her arms, "Leaving us there to get beaten down by a bunch of…" she thought a few unkind things and a few slurs she would never have considered uttering out loud had she not just been captive for who knew how long with nothing but slime mold for sustenance. Then she looked back at poor Leske, still in his cage, and swallowed them, "Least you can do is let that poor kid out."

"If that's the last complaint I hear from you, fine," Morrigan said. Her voice was disdainful, but all of them knew this was not the first time she had changed shape and fled a battle that might have been won had she had a little bit more mettle.

"Deal," Ten said, keeping her arms tight about herself.

Morrigan approached the next cell, this time bending and warping the metal door so it bent back on itself and hung slackly open. Leske stepped out hesitantly.

"Was that magic?" he asked, his voice a little bit awed.

"Of course," Morrigan said, brusquely, looking down at him.

"Well shit, I've never seen anything like it before," he said, "That is quite a talent, miss…"

"Not important," Morrigan said. She had realized at this point that Leske, tall for a dwarf, was at exactly the height to be eye level with her bosom, which was in its normal state of exposure. She backed up, shaking her head.

"Do you know how to get out of here?" Ten asked.

"Of course," the dwarf said, a little embarrassed, realizing that he had likely been staring without necessarily intending to.

"So we weren't just here to lend a hand at your rescue," Lelianna said, "When we parted ways, we went to the assembly. It seems there are two pretenders to the throne, a prince…"

"A prince who's mad as three nuglets in a sack and a lord slimier than a salamander's taint," Ten said, repeating what the alleged lord had told her at the deepstalker fights.

"Well yes," Lelianna said, "We were on our way out, we had sort of… split up, and each group of us was approached by a different… spokesman."

"Spokesman?"

"I don't know another word for it. It seems that news of surfacers allowed in during this time traveled quickly, and it was decided we must be important," Lelianna said, "And so… Sten and Wynne met with one, Alistair and I met with another and let's just say each of these men is willing to do pretty much anything to gain the throne. Smear campaigns that make the season in Halamshirral look like child's play. And they have each tried to enlist us."

"Well, breaking a stalemate here is one way to get our troops," Ten mused.

"And in furtherance of that, each has asked us to... deal with the notorious crime syndicate. Then Morrigan finally showed up and said that she had fled fighting between the two of you and said notorious crime syndicate, so… here we are. It seems Harrowmont believes there is evidence of Bhelen's involvement with certain criminal elements which he has sent us to seek. And apparently, Bhelen asked for some forgeries showing the same about his rival to be planted. We found these several rooms back, in a meeting room." She produced a small stack of documents from somewhere in her robes.

Ten looked them over briefly. "These cannot possibly be genuine."

"See, that is what I said," Lelianna said, "But Alistair seems to believe Harrowmont is entirely on the up and up."

"Of course he does," Zevran sighed, rolling his eyes.

"The chest was not even locked," Lelianna remarked.

"Well, Jarvia's office is right in the deepest part of these caverns," Leske offered, "I know the crossroads you mentioned, it's past that, there's a hidden door right where the tunnels split off. If you stand very still and follow the sound of water trickling you can walk right through into the next cavern. It's a hole in the tunnel, just not very well lit and easy to miss."

"Thanks," said Ten, "Zevran, are you in fighting shape?"

"Considering how we got into this mess you should hope that I am not," Zevran muttered. Their weapons, which had not been with the rest of their gear, were tossed haphazardly behind the jailer's desk, and he was strapping on his short blades. He did not make any move to fight her, though, handing her her belt, dagger, and ax in that order. She strapped them on, noting that she had to buckle the belt a notch past where she usually did. Slime mold. Ugh.

"You probably have a family to give assurances to," Ten said to Leske.

"Yes," said Leske, "I thank you for the company. And you for the assistance. I imagine Jarvia isn't coming out of this one in one piece."

"Not likely," Ten acknowledged, "But just… be careful. Where there's a void of power…"

"Got to make sure the wrong thing doesn't fill it," Leske said, nodding, "I don't know much about it, but I know people who do."

"Well, best of luck with that, I suppose," Zevran said.

They followed Leske back to the crossroads, where he took his leave. Ten could take in Sten's enormous silhouette looking into a hole in the wall. He turned when he heard them coming, appraising each of them slowly.

"Where have you been? You look like you have been beaten," he said.

"We have," Ten said.

"Are you hurt?"

"Not badly."

"Good," he said, "The other one has been more irritating than usual since you have been gone."

Zevran looked at Ten pointedly. Ten rolled her eyes and changed the subject, "Lelianna gave us a once-over on what's happened. Did you speak with the prince?"

"No," Sten said, turning his attention back to the hole in the tunnel, "We were not permitted to. However, the lords each had something to say about him. It is said that he is ruthless and utterly devoid of morals. And so he would be an excellent king."

"Better an honest enemy than a deceitful friend, eh," Ten mused.

"I do not… understand deceit, not in the way you do," Sten admitted, "On the battlefield, of course misleading your enemy is a key part of tactics, but in other relations… the need to, how did you put it, get one over on another is not something I am familiar with. It is like you treat it as a sport."

"I suppose it is, in a way," Ten said.

"And that is why you continually turn up having been beaten within an inch of your life."

"Probably," she acknowledged.

The five of them paused, hearing voices from the opposite tunnel.

"What could possibly have caused all that?" Wynne's voice was higher than usual. She sounded distressed, "I have never seen anything like it in all my years. Even in villages rife with waterborne diseases, nothing, nothing like this!"

"I'm telling you Wynne, she was a crime boss, crime bosses always have someone out for them. Probably a rival paid her cook to slip her something nasty and it made its way to the whole inner circle." Alistair sounded grim, but resigned to whatever it was they had just seen.

"And how would you know that, young man? You sound like Teneira."

"Well she's the only person from that… sphere I know and that's certainly what she would say."

"It's what she would do you mean," Wynne remarked, "Do you think the fact we've run across no trace of her or Zevran a bad or good sign?"

"She's probably taken over the place and is off making deals with lyrium smugglers."

"If anyone in this tunnel had it out for the two of you, you would be… what is the phrase… the ducks who sit at this point," Zevran called out.

Alistair and Wynne appeared from around a corner. Wynne looked much like her normal self, but Alistair looked in rougher shape than either Ten or Zev, someone having very clearly punched him in the face recently.

"Found them," Morrigan announced, "It seems our Teneira manages to get herself locked up no matter where she goes."

"It is in my nature," Ten acknowledged.

"Well it's good we came when we did," Wynne said. Her cheeks had gone pink, no doubt a little embarrassed that the subject of her backhanded comments had likely heard every single one of them, "Because it looks like every other crook in this hideout has been dead for two days. You would have wasted away."

"Smells like it too," Alistair pointed out. He and Ten made brief eye contact.

We're going to have words about this later, aren't we.

Oh we absolutely are.

"And in such an… ignominious way," Wynne sighed, "You don't want to go in there."

Ten gave a halfhearted chuckle, "I didn't think they'd be fool enough to drink a bottle left for them by someone they planned to beat senseless and lock up. Well I suppose I made your jobs easier. Was the boss among them?"

"I don't think so," Alistair said, "All the corpses were male."

"How many did you encounter coming in?" Ten asked.

"Small troop of guards at the door," Alistair said.

"Door. So you didn't come in from the amphitheatre?" Zevran asked.

"No… there was a secret door in back of one of the hovels on the square," Lelianna said, "They all carry… they called them fingerbone tokens but I suspect it's actually an animal bone or something. Anyway, you present it and they just open the door without looking who was there. If Sten hadn't gone first and hit his head on the top of the frame they wouldn't have even realized we didn't belong there until it was too late."

"I cannot fault them for constructing their homes in a way that makes sense to them," said Sten, fingering a bruise in the middle of his forehead, "But it was… embarrassing all the same."

"Well we had a companion in the cell. He's run off home, but he said the way in is hidden somewhere..." Ten paused, listened for water. It was hard for her to pin down a direction given the acoustics of the tunnel, but she found it, and moved towards it. Closer, she could see a small stream cascading down the rockface. She stepped towards it, and found herself, as Leske said she would, in a parallel tunnel, one which deadended to her left, but had brighter lights further down towards the right, "It's here."

They made their way down the tunnel, which eventually ended in the finest chamber Ten had seen since Madame Hirondelle's parlor. The stone columns, which looked to be the natural rock of the cave, had been sculpted and polished to a high sheen, and giltwork designs, no two identical, graced top and bottom. It looked to be an audience chamber, with a chair, also carved right out of the stone, set back and up. Ten remembered what Leske had said about the whole complex having been a palace at some point. But… the cushions on the throne were new, as were the braziers, as were the paintings on the walls and their gilt frames. On the chair, the woman herself was seated, now dressed in a flowing gown, and jewelry that would have ransomed a king, or at least his second son. Her face was tired. Her hair, beneath the silk veil which covered it, was lank. As Ten approached, she could see, at the bottom of the stairs, a corpse, face-down in a pool of blood and a bloody knife still clutched in one stiff hand.

"How long have you been waiting there?" asked Ten.

"Since you poisoned my men," Jarvia responded. Her voice was hoarse and defeated.

"I didn't poison them," said Ten, "I poisoned my whiskey. They decided to drink it."

"I do not like your customs," Jarvia said. She leaned over to the side, "Why… why do people always feel the need to meddle?"

"You live in a palace while children in this district starve. And they thank you for it," Ten said, gesturing around at the fine furniture, the art.

"My people are grateful," Jarvia said, "And who will look out for them now that you've killed me? The king? The lords? Some topsider with delusions of grandeur barreling in thinking she knows everything?"

"Who said I was going to kill you?" asked Ten.

"You already have." Jarvia leaned to the other side, and Ten could see that there was a wound there, blood dripping, "When chaos is sowed..." she said, and shifted, her breathing labored. Ten could see that blood from her side was flowing in a small but steady trickle down one side of her throne. I told you. Notions are dangerous..." She looked down at the corpse on the floor, "I should have known this was going to be… temporary. Honor among thieves and… all that."

Ten glanced at Wynne, who rushed up the stairs to the throne.

"Do not try your surfacer magic on me," Jarvia snarled, followed by a cough which brought up a spurt of blood from her mouth, splattering Wynne's face and truly driving her point home, "My men are dead or have turned on me. If you spare me, I will rot in the dungeons until one or the other becomes king. Harrowmont will have me hanged, Bhelen will have me drawn and quartered. So let me die with dignity."

Wynne wiped the blood from her face with the voluminous sleeve of her robe, and went back down the stairs, shaking her head.

"No looting," Ten said, turning her attention to her companions, "I want whoever comes in to find her to see what she was hoarding while families go hungry. We don't need the gold."

From the top of the stairs, Jarvia started laughing, a horrid sound as it was sometimes interrupted by the gurgle of blood from her throat, "You… arrogant, self-righteous… little… bitch… may your name be… forgotten." With that, she slumped over, convulsing slightly, her eyes turning to the ceiling. And there she stayed. Have I ever actually been cursed out with someone's dying breath before? She took a brief stock of everyone who had died right in front of her. Does Nelaros telling me I'd have an interesting life but not a long one count?

"There's an office through here!" Lelianna announced, having completely ignored the entire exchange and gone off to look for secrets. The rest followed her into a room that boasted a desk that Sten could have sat comfortably at.

Gathered around, Ten asked again, "So, what are we doing here?"

"We've got two sets of documents," Alistair said, setting them on the enormous desk, "Each of them puts one of the pretenders in bed with the same syndicate. These we found in a chest back that way. These... apparently the prince gave to Wynne and Sten, asking them to plant them."

Ten looked over both sets of documents briefly. One implicated the prince in a murder for hire, the other implicated the cousin of the lord in question in a lyrium smuggling plot. Either would be damning. However, both were very clearly written by someone with quite a lot of formal education and good, consistent penmanship. Impeccable spelling. They were even organized like official documents, with sections for the writer, recipient, and date to all be identified. "They're both forged."

"How do you know?" asked Alistair.

"Nobody keeps notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy," Ten said, looking up at him incredulously. Have you learned nothing?

"So it gets us nowhere towards breaking the stalemate," said Sten, "Which is the purpose of this ludicrous visit."

"I say let them fight each other in the arena," Morrigan said, "If they kill each other, all the better."

"Thank you, agent of chaos," Ten said, rolling her eyes at the witch, "Look, this is a task given to the four of you, not me. Make up your minds among yourselves, I have no dog in this fight." Not yet. It would be an incredible coincidence if Hanne really was the disinherited scion of House Harrowmont. Would be funnier to bring them out here in person and have a dramatic showdown on the assembly floor. Then again, Hanne might actually just be a plain old everyday surface dwarf who needed a dramatic backstory. Ten had suspected that perhaps Hanne was telling tales about their past, but had always given the benefit of the doubt.

"Here's what we do," Lelianna said. Ten snapped to attention, "We switch."

"What?"

"We switch," said Lelianna, her eyes sparkling in the half light, "Wynne and Sten take the documents Harrowmont sent myself and Alistair to retrieve, we take the documents Bhelen gave to them. We go back. We say we got there, everyone within was already dead, thanks to these two-" she gestured at Zevran and Ten "- and we say when we arrived we found these documents already planted. Then we take each others' documents back, et voila, we are each so trustworthy we have foiled your rival's dirty tricks and brought you the evidence."

"That's… actually a very good plan," said Ten, approvingly.

"We can have our audiences. Neither of the spokesmen have seen Ten, she can go to both," said Alistair, getting right on board. He picked up one set of documents and handed them to Wynne. Sten handed the other to Lelianna.

"There's door through here," Sten said, examining the far wall, "By my estimation it should leave us on the second level of the commons."

"However did you keep track?" asked Zevran.

"Oh thank the Maker," Wynne sighed, "It was such a very long walk to get here, and through such unsavory parts of town. And these two definitely need to wash." She looked down her nose at Ten and Zevran.

"And eat," Zevran said, "Slime mold. Makes Fereldan food seem appetizing."

"Oh I wouldn't go that far," Ten chuckled.

"Come on," Sten said, forcing the door open, "I would like to be able to stretch out my back. I feel as though I am shrinking."