Ten did insist on carving Cillian Fain's name, home village, and date of death into a birch tree on the edge of the cliff, in case there were any extended family who wondered at his fate. But, all in all, it was simply too cold and too depressing to linger there, and so they patted the horse that had carried the last militiaman from Vanderk Hollow and sent her home. This was Ten's second time on a horse at all, and besides between her and Zev they weighed about as much as a large man, so she accepted his help back into the saddle, and they set off north. Their hoods up, in the company of a war dog, they looked like nothing more than another set of chilled Denerim citizens riding through the south gate, up through the Antivan Quarter, over the bridge and back to where they were, however temporarily, making their home. They put the horse in the stables, where Pigeon, who had decided that this particular creature, a dappled gray gelding, was her friend, accompanied him to be groomed and fed, knowing that Emril would give her a few swipes with a curry comb as a courtesy if she observed politely. As they climbed the stairs, she realized that Zev, too, was injured.

"How'd they get you?" she asked.

He chuckled and winced. With his cloak off, Ten could see that there was blood seeping out from the edges of his leather armor. "The healer at Hathenor's Pen stitched me up, but one of those bloody campesinos got a damned pitchfork into me. The armor blocked most of it, but… I hope Wynne has plenty of energy. It feels… off."

"I'm sorry I didn't notice before."

"You can barely see, manita, don't feel bad."

"I can see just fine," she protested.

"Come on, it's just one more flight."

As they approached the closed door to the guest suite, they heard shouting inside. They looked at each other.

Should we wait and listen?

Absolutely, this will be hilarious.

"You have no idea where Ten has gone!" Lelianna's voice said, her tone low but serious, "You're just going to put yourself and all of us at risk, chasing nothing. She'll be back when she's back."

"If you ask my opinion, she's probably run off to be free of your nagging for a few days," Morrigan's voice.

"I don't nag, I just inform her when she's about to do something ridiculous and stupid and get herself killed," Alistair's voice insisted, punctuated with a 'bang' that indicated he'd just slammed his fist into the table, "Which she almost always is."

"Calm down, everyone," Wynne's voice added, "This is getting us nowhere. Alistair, why exactly do you think something's happened? She has family in the area, she goes away overnight all the time. She's a grown woman."

"It's been three days," he said, "She went to a village about an hour outside the walls. vShe should have been back within the day. She has never gone missing for three days before."

"She was with Zevran, and he's gone too, if you hadn't no - you definitely have noticed, haen't you," Morrigan added, "I mean, do you think they stole away for some alone time? He's clearly been after it for months." She punctuated this observation with a snorting laugh.

Ten rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"She has a point," Lelianna said, "They've probably found an inn somewhere, they'll be back when they're sick of each other. I give it no more than a week."

"I am not even going to dignify that with a response," Alistair's voice said, louder than before, "I'm telling you, something bad happened."

Ten and Zev looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

Is it time to make a dramatic entrance?

Oh, just give it a moment.

"Young man, you need to relax," Wynne's voice said again, "She's grown. She can do what she likes."

"And what she likes is always the most ridiculous, reckless thing imaginable!" Alistair declared, "Look, you don't have to come with me, but when I find them in a ditch somewhere, I expect an apology."

Heavy footsteps went off towards the bedrooms, ostensibly Alistair going to fetch his things and run off with no more clue as to what he was doing than what Ten had told him the night after they'd limped back from Ioan's house.

Zev opened the door to the astonishment of the three women still in the common room.

"By all the gods, he was actually right about something," Morrigan said, "You look like you fought a grizzly bear over the last salmon in the river." She rose and started poking at the bruises and scabs on either side of Ten's head. "How did you manage this?"

"She threw an explosive at a group of fifteen horsemen. To be fair they were likely about to hang us from a tree," said Zevran.

"Hey, he's hurt too," Ten said.

"Yes, but at least I didn't have to be sedated so I didn't rip my stitches out," Zevran said.

"So, what, you've been convalescing somewhere… out there?" asked Wynne. She got up and started fussing over Zev, "Who put these in… wait, what is this? Is this… deer tendon? You're going to get an infection. Come on, armor off, let me get them out and I'll close this… where did this come from?"

"Finally, someone has asked me to undress," Zev said.

"You're not her type," said Lelianna dryly, "But really, hung from a tree?"

"I should have believed the rumors," sighed Ten, looking over at Lelianna. Morrigan seized her head in both hands, made her face her straight on, and channeled whatever mysterious energy she could weave into the injuries. Ten felt most of the pain leach out of her, though the bruises on each side of her head still felt swollen.

"Well you still look a mess," said Morrigan after a moment or two, satisfied that the worst of it was fixed, "But the underlying damage is healed. The bruises should fade in a few days."

"Think you can do something about the ribs?" asked Ten, "Smarts a bit."

"Which ones?"

"Left side, top two," Ten said.

"No trouble at all," Morrigan said, and laid her hand on Ten's side. Ten could feel the bones knitting together. She stretched her arms over her head, the absence of pain an ecstasy unto itself.

"Young man, what was this done with?" Wynne asked, inspecting the puncture wounds, two in his right armpit and a third on his hip which would have been uncovered if he had fallen.

"Pitchfork," he said uncomfortably.

"No doubt it wasn't cleaned between going into a pile of manure and your side," Wynne grumbled, "It's a wonder you're not burning up with fever. On the couch, I have to clean this out, you're going to get every pestilence known to man and few only known to the Maker." She shook her head, heading back to her room and returning promptly with a clean cloth and a bottle of clear antiseptic that smelled suspiciously of juniper berries.

Alistair chose this moment to come back out, his armor on but not buckled. He surveyed the impromptu medical bay that the common room had become, the bruises and abrasions covering Ten from scalp to shoulder, the deep puncture wounds on Zevran, held together with dubious-looking sutures, and sighed. "Well I suppose it feels good to be somewhat right about something, for once."

"Well where are you headed?" Ten asked nonchalantly.

"I swear to Andraste and all that is holy I am going to throw you out a window one of these days," Alistair said quietly.

"Calm down, man," Zevran said, "It is all right, we are in one piece, we will recover."

"I don't even want to talk to you right now," Alistair said, his voice still soft but with an angry edge to it, "Ten, hallway. We are going to have an argument. Actually, no. Cellar. Anywhere else someone is going to hear it and call the guard."

"Oh no, Papa and Maman are fighting again!" Lelianna said, setting both herself and Morrigan off in a fit of giggles.

"I want to live with Ten!" Morrigan announced.

"Me too!" Zev called.

"You're all making it worse," Wynne admonished.

Ten threw her hands up, grateful for the repair job as even that small motion certainly would have hurt had she not been patched up, "What do you want to argue about, Alistair? You're just going to tell me I did something stupid and so something stupid happened to me. And you know what? Fine. You're right."

Alistair opened his mouth to argue, but then realized she was agreeing with him.

"And then I'm going to tell you that yes, I am banged up, but I'm in one piece, I found out what I needed to find out, and my injuries are my own business. I am also right."

"But…"

"Then you're going to tell me how much better it would have been had you been there to save the day as though it's not just as likely you'd have been limping in all cut up as well."

"Well, maybe, but…"

"I'm not done yet. Then one of us will make a joke, the other will be distracted by it, and we'll both have a laugh and move on. So why don't we just skip to that last bit and save everyone here some time and aggravation?"

"Well you should at least get the blood off you," Alistair said finally, looking at the ground.

"That was going to be my next move," she said.

"Excuse me," said Zevran, "Before we scatter to the winds once again, I would like to set one thing straight. If Teneira and I had found an inn, she would be having much more trouble walking at the mo - ow!" He looked down in annoyance to where Wynne had yanked on one of the makeshift sutures.

"Sorry!" Wynne said, "Completely unintentional. Hold still!"

"I think you've got that the wrong way around," said Ten, and went to her room to get the rest of the blood off. A basin of the thankfully warm water did for most of it, though she was still trying to get some out of her ear when a shadow fell across the doorway. She stood up and dried her face.

"Word of advice. Don't look in any mirrors for a couple of days," Alistair said across the room.

"I don't know what you want out of me. I said it, you were right. I fucked up," she said. She wrung out the washcloth she had been using to get the blood off into the basin and pulled the plug from the bottom so it emptied presumably into some pipe that led to the city sewer system.

"Say it again."

"You were right."

"Come here. You missed a spot," he said.

She thought about fighting about it, but was entirely sick of the whole proposition, and so she obeyed, handing him the damp washcloth and letting him get behind her right ear, then under her chin. It reminded her a bit of being a kid, when her dad would sit down at the end of most summer days, cleaning and bandaging blisters, pulling out splinters, picking gravel out of scraped knees, gentle and careful not to hurt her worse. It gave her that feeling of comfort, knowing that no matter what happened, the evening meant someone would take care of her, make sure she was in top condition to go for another adventure the next day. And so, like when she was a child, she felt the compulsion to explain exactly what had happened to put her in the state in the first place.

"They had us five to one and they were mounted," said Ten.

"Stop moving," Alistair admonished, grabbing her chin to hold her still while he scrubbed at a particularly stubborn streak on the right side of her neck.

"I know you don't believe me," she said, her speech slightly garbled, "They don't say things in front of you they do when it's just elves."

"I do believe you," he said, "But if someone had told me a year ago I'd get sent into the trenches of a slow-moving race riot…" He inspected his handiwork and concluded that this was as good as it was going to get. It could have been her imagination, but he let his hand linger there a bit longer than was necessary, before loosing her and handing her back the bloodsoaked cloth, which she went to rinse out and hang by the basin,"Well, I don't know what I would have said or done," he concluded, "But it doesn't make the aftermath any less disturbing."

"Why are you being nice?" she asked suspiciously, turning back towards him, one eyebrow lowered.

"Because if I shout at you like I originally wanted to you're just going to go and do something even crazier next time just to throw it in my face that I can't stop you," he said, "Also Wynne said something about how I tend to take my anxiety out on you and it's not healthy."

"Well I suppose I should thank her for that," Ten sighed, "Look, I made a decision, it was the wrong one, I got hurt, Zev got hurt, and I got two men killed. I don't need you rubbing it in."

"Who died?" asked Alistair.

"Impromptu allies."

"You make a lot of those."

"People tend to like me."

"I can see that," Alistair said, "So who'd you manage to impress this time?"

"Well, you've surely heard what happens to the uninitiated when they get darkspawn blood in them, right?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Have you ever seen it?"

"No," he said. He handed her her washcloth back and she hung it up beside the washbasin.

"Well you deserve to hear this. Just as a grim warning of what's to come." And so she launched into the saga of Twitch, Baldy, and Rot, describing their respective conditions in great detail, how they had decided to die a hero's death defending whom they believed to be the last Grey Warden. And, finally, taking her time to get her brain and mouth around what she had witnessed earlier that day, Cillian Fain's first and only experience with flight.

"So you took him to see the ocean and as thanks he offed himself right in front of you?" said Alistair, "Well that was rude of him."

"I don't dispute any man's right to go out on his own terms," she sighed.

"But the extra trauma certainly isn't something you needed," he said, "He could have waited."

"At this point it's just another day ending in 'y,'" she said, "But, it's got me thinking, and you should probably hear about this. In however long, that's going to be the two of us."

"That's not how it works for us," he said, shaking his head, "We get the Calling, we go to the Deep Roads, we take down as many darkspawn as we can and we perish gloriously in the process. That is how this ends."

"Yeah, I've been dwelling on that quite a bit, believe it or not," she said, "And I think I'd rather die with the sun on my face. Since it's going to happen either way."

"If you jump off a cliff in front of me, you can bet I will find some creepy Tevinter necromancer to resurrect you just so tell you off for it," he said.

"Well I wouldn't do that. I'm just saying, if, however many years from now, I go missing again but this time I wash up on shore, you'll know it's not far off for you either," she said, "And you can make whatever decision you want."

"You can't… you're not supposed to do that. Anyway, it's not for decades," Alistair said, "There's no point in thinking about it now. You'll just make yourself sad. Shit, you're making me sad."

"Sorry," she said, "Anyway, you showed up here for a reason and I'm pretty sure it wasn't to do this whole mother cat routine."

"Yeah, about that. We got a pigeon from Redcliffe the other day," he said, "Eamon and Teagan are on their way here. I'm not sure what happened to the poor bird, but it was only a day or two ahead of them, by my calculations, given travel time and how short daylight is… but they're going to want a report. And Eamon is almost certainly going to bring up the… thing I don't want to talk about. We haven't made any progress on an alternative and…"

"Well I found the queen," said Ten, "That's progress."

"He won't hear of it," said Alistair, "As far as he's concerned, the queen and Teyrn Loghain are one in the same."

"And if we can turn her against them?"

"That's not going to happen."

"And how would you know? You don't even have a father, you have no idea how contentious that relationship can get."

"Would you turn on yours?"

"No, but my dad's not a monster, just a stick in the mud. If I had such a problem with those, I'd have let you get eaten by a giant man goat thing months ago."

Something had caught her attention. On the table beside the door, still littered with half empty vials, her own notes, was something that wasn't there when she had left. She tuned out whatever outraged complaint was coming out of Alistair's mouth and picked it up. It was a letter, addressed to her, written on much nicer paper than she was used to handling, thick and smooth under her hand. Gwylan must have had Avrenis drop it off. She turned it over. It was sealed with a gilded seal, imprinted with the image of two swallows, their tails crossed. She slid her thumb under the wax of the seal and unfolded it.

Ma petite,

While your little mice scurry, an interesting bird has alighted on my window. Please call on me at your convenience. She could be the key to everything.

Bisous,

A.V.

It was dated the same day she and Zev had departed for the outskirts.

"You didn't listen to anything I just said, did you," said Alistair.

"Nope," she said, "Was it important?"

"No, I was whining. What's that there?"

"The key to everything," said Ten, "But I can't go chase it down looking like this. So let's sit down, marshal what evidence we have, and I'll go figure this one out after we appease the master of the house."