They took the south road this time, if only for a little variety, passing through the same Hinterlands landscape, this time glowing with autumn's brilliance, through the burnt out hulks of houses, many of which had collapsed with the weight of the vines that had grown over them. They passed through the little canyon where Zevran had ambushed them, Ten making sure to point out where the rubble still covered bodies beneath that little cliff, lest he forget how soundly he had been bested there, but a few weeks before. In the fortnight it took to reach Denerim, the weather had decidedly turned, still warm by day, but the nights had them shivering and Ten reluctantly began accepting the pungent company of Pigeon in her tent to stave off the worst of it. They encountered but one fearsome whining of bagpipes far off in the hills of the Bannorn, and were able to avoid it with only a few hours delay.

They reached Denerim after nightfall on the fifteenth day, the sleep guard on duty waving them through with a show of a letter with Arl Eamon's seal on it. Ten had never been in this estate - it was, after all, usually empty, Eamon rarely coming to court. As promised, the guard at the gate let them in with a similar flash of the invitation, and his butler, Gwylan Eilvaris, came to the door in his pajamas. Gwylan, a sour-faced elf in his mid fifties, was some relation to Lydeia, Ten's aunt by marriage, and had been in the service of this estate since he was a lad, starting in the kitchens. He had never married nor kept a home in the Alienage, preferring to make his home where he worked and only visiting on holidays, meaning the comings and goings of the elves of town did not concern him, nor did lockdowns. Ten didn't blame him, after all the master of the house was rarely there, and so he would have the run of the place, though she wished he were more forthcoming with information when requested. He closed it behind them and stood at the top of the stairs, his arms crossed.

"Teneira Tabris, this has got to be the most ridiculous joke you've ever played," he announced. She caught herself before rolling her eyes. Gwylan had spent the last decades trying to lose the working-class accent, and while he mostly had succeeded, Ten found the mismatch between features and voice to be grating.

"Good to see you too, Gwylan," she said, "I assure you it is not a joke."

"Well the master of the house sent a pigeon with a message saying to let his bastard ward and some uppity knife-eared trollop he was traveling with stay for as long as they pleased," he said, "I should have known who the knife-eared trollop was. Nobody ever managed to be quite as uppity as you. Which begs the question - which one of you lot is the bastard ward?"

Alistair raised his hand tentatively.

"So who the hell are the rest of you? Actually, you know what, I don't care. Just, come in before someone spots you and it ruins the master's reputation. We've had rooms made up in the non-state guest wing."

Ten hated to think of how well-appointed the state guest wing was, given what was made available to them in the second best one, up two flights of a grand staircase with windows overlooking the Chantry yard below and the markets beyond. The rooms were not large, but there were plenty of them, and they had actual feather mattresses, fireplaces, and washbasins next to the fireplaces, great cisterns providing moderately warm water for that purpose at all times of day or night. There was also a common room with quite a large fireplace, bookshelves - which contain, to Morrigan's delight - several raunchy book series that she had not yet read.

"Don't destroy the place," Gwylan said dismissively, "The chambermaids have banked the fires for the night, they'll be up in the morning to restart them, so if any of you people prefer to sleep in the nude, this is not the place for it."

"Why are you looking at me?" Zev asked, crossing his arms.

"I know your type," Gwylan said, "Breakfast is at seven, we won't bring it up to you, you'll have to go down to the kitchens. And that down there just now is the last time you'll be coming in the main entrance. It's the side or back doors from now on, I wouldn't want to raise a scandal at a time like this."

"Why are you looking at me?" Ten asked.

"Did you not just butcher the arl's son in cold blood three months ago?" Gwylan asked.

"It wasn't in cold blood…" Ten said, "And surely you heard what happened."

"Yes," said Gwylan, "I don't care whose fault it was, it was still a scandal. I shudder to think of poor Missus Pughsbury at the arl's estate. She has been at the Chantry every morning at dawn, praying for forgiveness for whatever she has done to bring such shame on her household. We cannot have that here. The Orlesian bride was bad enough, now there's a mage child raising the dead and a troupe of filthy ne'er do wells with their boots on my clean floors."

"Well, I suppose I'm sorry you actually have to work for once," Ten said, "We'll endeavor to be quiet and out of your hair."

"You certainly will. It is far past my contractual bedtime. The Arl will be hearing of this. Coming and going like thieves in the night..."

"Well perhaps you ought to get to bed then, Gwylan, can't have you this cranky for our entire stay," Ten said.

The butler closed his eyes, took a deep breath in through his nose, and out through his mouth. "I live to serve. I live to serve." He murmured to himself as he turned and left the suite.

"Explain," Sten said, as the door to the wing clicked closed, "What are we to do in a place like this?"

"Does it snow in your homeland?" asked Ten.

"Rarely."

"So do you understand how it might be dangerous to be out on the road for the winter?"

"It is not yet winter."

"But if we were to venture either to Orzammar or try to track down the nearest band of Dalish, winter would come on before we had the opportunity to get back. We are best served by conserving our strength and resources, and taking care of some business while we are here."

"Bodric the Bear did not fear the winter," Sten grumbled. He was kicking up a fuss, to be sure, but he had already put his things in the largest of the rooms, the only one that boasted a bed large enough that he could comfortably fit himself on it. He'd also kicked his boots off. Ten, to whom it had never occurred before that there might be other physiological differences between qunari and the rest of them, tried very hard not to stare at his bare feet, which boasted long, pale toes, each with an extra joint compared to her own.

"And when I grow a great brown shaggy coat, neither will I," said Ten, "We have business in town that will take us through the first thaw."

"What sort of business?"

"I have a prank to play," Ten said, dismissively.

"And the darkspawn?"

"They don't travel well in the cold," Alistair offered, "They're from underground, they are the most dangerous when the weather is warm. They will likely retreat back to the Deep Roads until they can safely amass again."

"There is no sin in rest, my friend," Wynne said gently.

"Very well," Sten said, "A mighty warrior must take his rest as well."

"Wise man," said Wynne, "Now go on, to bed with you. The rest of you too. We have been walking ten to twelve hours per day for two weeks. Lie yourselves down."

Most of them obeyed. In fact, all of them but Ten and Wynne herself. Ten went to the common room with a sedative of her own making, a bottle of whiskey and a glass, feeling entirely too wired to get any rest herself. Wynne followed her there, evidently wanting a word.

"I heard what you were plotting in Redcliffe," the mage said. She sat herself on one end of a grand divan before the fireplace, patting the seat next to her like Ten would have done for Pigeon.

"I suspected you might have," Ten sighed, "Would you like some of this?"

"Yes," said Wynne. Obligingly, Ten located another glass - they were kept on a shelf near one of the grand bookcases - and set it in front of the mage. She poured them each a dram.

"So, are you about to lecture me on getting involved in affairs of state?" Ten asked, taking a sip from hers.

"I am not," the mage said, "I merely… I misjudged you before."

"What did you judge me as?"

"A reckless lass," Wynne admitted, sipping from her own glass, "Throwing yourself at that demon ten times your size. Provoking Ser Gregoir into throwing you in with us."

"I am that," said Ten.

"But I thought first that you must have done it because you do not value your own life. But now I see that you are more calculated."

"What do you mean by that?" Ten asked.

"You have a way of setting your goal, and you move the people around you into whatever position would achieve that goal," said Wynne, "And then make them think it was their idea. All the bluster, the impudence, the spitting in the face of authority, it's a game you play, a show you put on. You only do it when others are watching. I just wonder how much of what we know about you is genuine."

"Would you like to hear about what I do behind closed doors?"

"I don't know," said Wynne, "Would I? I have heard that occasionally you disappear alone with someone else, and they walk out singing your tune as though they composed it themselves."

"Who have you heard that from?" asked Ten, cocking her head to the side.

"Everyone," said Wynne.

"I'm persuasive," said Ten.

"Or you know too much," said the mage.

"There's no such thing as knowing too much," said Ten.

"It can be dangerous," Wynne said, "I just think sometimes you don't see that that's what you're doing. It comes so naturally to you. Just be careful that you actually are acting for the greater good."

"What do you think is best?" asked Ten, "Genuinely."

"I have been so far outside the experience of the everyday people of this land I doubt I could tell you what is best for all," said Wynne, "One of the side effects of living as long as I have is that you begin to see all sides of many things."

Ten bristled. "I'm going to say this gently, because I do not think you speak with malice, but what exactly is the upside of relegating my people to the margins of society? No offense, Wynne, but it's not like elves are liable to turn into abominations or attract demons or… any of that. There can at least be an argument, however ridiculous, made for the confinement of mages. What is the reason for the status of elves? You said yourself you have had elfin apprentices, are they less capable, more prone to violence than your human ones?"

"No," said Wynne, "But the chaos that such a sea change would cause could be disastrous,."

Ten took a sip of the whiskey. This was a rye, dwarven-style distillation that she had found buried beneath a hollowed out shack on the edges of the Bannorn, likely an abandoned smuggling hub. She let it burn her tongue for a moment before swallowing, and asked,

"Disastrous for whom?"

"I take your point."

"Tell me something, Wynne. If we had not shown up when we did, and the authorization for the Rite of Annulment had come from Denerim, would you have done nothing? Would you have held those children close to you and let the end come for all of you?"

Wynne looked at her in alarm.

"Would you?" asked Ten, "Just… sit there? Let you and all those closest to you suffocate or burn? Watch an army of templars put everyone you know to the sword and do nothing?"

"No," said Wynne, "I suppose I would have tried to escape."

"Now, let's pretend there's no escape," said Ten, "What would you do to defend them? Those kids who call you Nanna? Would you kill a templar? If it was him, or those children, and it was the only way. Don't act like it's out of the realm of possibility."

"That is an impossible question," said Wynne, "I suppose I would have to kill the templar. I have no idea what I'd do after that."

"So you understand the position I'm in," said Ten, "Impossible. I am being asked to put my neck on the line to save this country and in doing so the very people whose boots have been on my neck since I was born. You cannot expect me to not at least try to use this opportunity to improve my peoples' lot."

"And you intend to do that by wheeling, dealing, blackmail, and extortion?"

"Better than pillaging, looting, and burning. What do you think the legitimate powers of this nation do? It's already going to be a hell of a winter, what with half the crops in the nation having been burned by darkspawn or marauding moordwellers," said Ten, "The longer the instability lasts, the worse it is for those of us who are not supported by the deep coffers of the Chantry."

"Tell me something," said Wynne, "Did you have something to do with Jowan's escape?"

"What would you do with that information?"

"I'm not in a position to do anything," Wynne said, "I simply wish to know."

"What would I have done? I was being pinned to the ground by a half-crazed noblewoman," Ten said, taking a sip of her whiskey.

"Yes, and if Cullen and Teagan are to be believed, it was that kerfuffle that led them to leave him alone in the tower."

"So you believe that I conspired with a woman with whom I have fairly longstanding enmity in order to, what, save the life of a mage I've exchanged all of twenty words with?"

"I suppose it's a little silly when you say it like that."

"And tell me something, Wynne," said Ten, "Who was the man you were sitting with in the tavern? Little young for you, yes?"

Wynne chuckled, "You should see the men my age. Most are dead, and the others ought to be."

"I suppose that is one benefit of not living to see fifty," Ten said, "Not having to look around at men my age and realize they're all bald and paunchy."

"Oh… I forgot. I'm sorry."

"It's all right," she said, "Every minute I had since being thrown into the dungeons is borrowed, and I intend to use all of them to their fullest."

"And this is doing that?"

"Exchanging barbs with an accomplished senior mage while drinking pilfered whiskey while sitting pretty in a manor house I don't have to clean?" Ten said, "Sure is."

"I'll drink to that," Wynne chuckled.

"Now," said Ten, "Unless you would like to be in on the very worst part of the wheeling, dealing, blackmail and extortion, you ought to leave me to my devices."

"And what's the worst part?"

"Making lists," said Ten. For emphasis, she pulled out a blank notepad she'd pulled out of the husk of a tax collector's office and a charcoal pencil.

"You're right, I don't want to be around for that," Wynne said, "Thank you for the drink."

"Anytime," said Ten. She waved as the mage left to go to bed, and started scribbling. She knew maids in several of the great houses, though she was not sure who was still employed there, especially since the lockdown. Something to ask whoever came around to sweep and stoke the fire in the morning, she supposed. She probably would not have access to any of the higher ups, the ones who could truly pull the strings of the minor nobles who answered to them but still had votes in the assembly. But she could figure out which ones were favored advisors. And as for the rest, the rest would be up to the commoners.

Then, as to contenders. She still had not managed to make contact with her old friend Ioan. She had a tiny pipe dream that perhaps he could keep his mother's identity under wraps long enough to be crowned. But, even if that miracle were accomplished, there was the problem of his marriage to a dwarven exile whose gender was a mystery to all but the most well-paying of their clients. Though, rumor had it that Hanne themself was the disinherited scion of a powerful family in Orzammar. There had certainly been some outlandish consorts in history, but this might be a bridge too far. Also the whole… prostitute thing. Much like the elf thing, it really shouldn't have mattered, but it certainly would. But, the last time she had seen Ioan, he had complained to her that his reputation had had several of his half-siblings seek him out, and that they were all dreadful bores. Step one would have to be pinning him down. She didn't like the idea of calling on him unannounced. His life and livelihood depended on keeping his origins under wraps, something she had always respected, and having elves just show up on one's doorstep did tend to raise questions among the neighbors. Although if she had to… she could just show up with another one of his half-siblings in tow, under the guise of wanting to make that introduction.

Teneira, she admonished herself, that would be low-down, even for you.

But it would work, wouldn't it…

And it wouldn't be manipulative if you just got Alistair on board with it…

And he would go with it, wouldn't he. Poor man's desperate to belong somewhere…

She shook her head at herself, took another dram of whiskey and turned her attention back to the peers of the realm.