XXVI: Fools Rush In
"You sure this is the place?" Carver questioned dubiously. They crouched in an alley across the street from Lowtown's dingiest and most desperate Chantry. Outside southern Lowtown it even had a name – the Lowest Chantry. Those inside southern Lowtown meanwhile just called it The Chantry.
"Of course I'm sure," Isabela said breezily. "He's not like to have meant any other Chantry. The rest don't usually allow bloodshed in their halls, or so I'm told."
Carver nodded, squinting in the evening light. The Chantry's walls were crumbling, while its entrance marked by rotting double doors. There were no windows – nor any signs of life, from the within or without. It's all too quiet.
"Right, so – you been here before?" Carver asked, trying to focus on battle preparation and not the woman smushed against him – it was a very narrow alley. And that perfume…
"Not quite my kind of place," Isabela smirked. "Generally, I prefer to be the object of worship – though maybe I should reconsider. I do spend quite a lot of my time on my knees."
Carver's mind drew a sudden, vivid picture of the corseted pirate kneeling before him – he shook it off as best he could, shuffling to realign his breeches. He couldn't keep his face from flaming up – nor Isabela's smirk from growing. "Might be," he answered as best he could, too flustered to even attempt to flirt. Maferath's balls, how can she keep this up? "But I was more thinking how we should do this."
The pirate scrunched her nose in though, then cocked her hip – right into him. "Well… getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but I am always up for an alley romp. We'll come on back, certainly – and you'll come on my back, won't you?"
It had been like this the whole way from the Hanged Man – Isabela refusing to answer any questions about the duel (other than where it was), all the while teasing Carver to the brink. On which he now teetered – completely unsure of whether her offer was genuine or only mocking.
"Bloody hell, woman!" he snapped, too stirred up to play her game any longer. "Is it always about sex with you?"
"No, sometimes it's about sex with other people," she responded without hesitation.
"By the bloody Maker-"
"Is what you'll say, I'm sure."
Carver grit his teeth in frustration, then jostled the pirate to the side with his shoulder. He needed whatever space he could get from her. If what little she has said is true, then we don't have time for this shite. "Right," he growled. "There anything I should know? Or are we just walking right in?"
"Well, pup, if you're so eager to rush right to business - " Isabela's tone suddenly lost all its flirtatiousness. "I told you about Hayder, or at least the bit that he wants to duel me? And that I'd like you to watch my back so that he doesn't try to pull a fast one? Well… the truth of it is that it's not as if you being here will do much of anything on that front. He may actually want a duel, daft hot-blooded antivan that he is, but the moment things don't go his way he's like to have me crossbowed from the rafters."
"What am I supposed to do about bolts from the rafters, bloody cut them out of the air?"
"That'd be quite a sight, pup," Isabela smirked. "But I'd settle for you cutting the man down first. Just keep an eye out – and gut anyone who comes for me uninvited. Hayder's only got a couple of boys with him, should be easy pickings for us. That do for your questions, or are we ready for some fun?"
Carver eyed the decrepit Chantry, considering for a moment. "'As soon as the fight doesn't go his way,' you said," he began. "What if it doesn't go your way?"
"Why then," Isabela crooned sweetly. "You'll just want to pinch yourself. Can't have you dreaming on the job, now can we?"
With that, Isabela slid past him, once again brushing her hip against his. Reddening, Carver swore under his breath and fought to control his resurgent irritation. It's all so bloody easy for her, isn't it? One flourish, a brush of the hand and she's got me right in her palm. Bloody easy.
Carver had half a mind to turn around and go back to the Hanged Man – let Isabela fight her own fight. Maybe she was a tease in all things – coin included. She could just be stringing him along.
He thought of heading back, of stepping to his seat with nothing to show for his misadventure. Varric would try to pry the tale out of him, and would get just enough to mock him no matter what Carver did or didn't say. Then he'll pass it on to Nell, to Martin – and they'll all have a right laugh that I wasted my ploughing time. That I got led on by such an obvious lie.
Isabela was halfway across the street, sashaying leisurely towards the Chantry doors. Whatever it was she thought might happen, it wasn't an immediate ambush. Sighing, Carver followed.
He put speed into his walk, reaching the doors just as she did. The street remained quiet. Isabela turned a knowing glance his way, as if she'd already shared a joke with Varric and the rest.
"Here goes nothing," she breathed, pushing open the doors. Two steps and they were through.
The Chantry seemed even smaller on the inside – it clearly consisted of only the single rectangular sanctuary, stretching before them no more than several dozen paces. Two rows of old, battered wooden pews stood in various states of disrepair down the length of the room. Dust spun in the air at their arrival, lit by shafts of daylight slipping through boarded up windows along the sides of the chamber. At the far end a raised dais loomed above a single, pitiful altar.
A man leaned against the altar – but he was not Carver's immediate concern. The fereldan's eyes darted about, up and around the chamber. One man lay sprawled in one of the battered pews halfway across the chamber – another stood immediately to Carver's right.
The one closest drew Carver's immediate focus – Carver pivoted, turning towards the man, his hand on his greatsword. For his part, the man had one hand on a cutlass strapped to his hip – and a dagger bared in his other.
"Oh, button down you two," Isabela smirked as she stalked alongside Carver. "We're here on invitation."
The man turned a thin frown to the pirate. "You were to come alone," he drawled acidly in heavily accented common.
"As was Hayder," Isabela riposted easily. "Yet here we all are. I can forgive if you can."
He turned Carver a sideways glance and Carver met the look with his own stare. The man's sun-darkened face was lined and mottled, his eyes hard.
Carver did not break eye contact – though he did note the man sprawled on the pew standing up in the corner of his eye.
The mottled man broke the stare, looking to Isabela. He seemed to consider her a moment, before he called across the room. "La furcia está aquí!"
"Then let her come," the man at the altar bellowed, in the same strange accent that the guard spoke.
Their guard grunted, sheathing his dagger. He gestured with his now free hand towards the man still leaning on the altar. The third man now stood, hands on hips, his stance slack and disinterested.
"Go on," the guard said. "Both of you."
They moved under the watchful eye of the guard, who followed them as they walked towards the altar. The man glared at Carver especially, with hardly a look at Isabela.
Isabela stopped half a dozen paces from the altar and cocked a hip. "Well. Here I am."
"Here you are," the man at the altar agreed with a sneer. He was thin and unarmored, his face darkened by unshaven stubble. Like the guard, both he and the man at the pew bore cutlasses strapped to their hips. "I must say," he continued disdainfully. "I did not expect you to come."
"Well, I'm a woman who'd like to sail Waking Sea again without the whole Armada on her tail. Though I must say, you sure put a lot of effort into insulting me wherever you go."
"I speak only the truth. You are a duplicitous harlot, and you owe Castillion much. You have but one recourse. Return the cargo you stole."
"Stole for him, you mean," Isabela countered. "It's not as if it belongs to him."
Hayder's already dour countenance darkened with further fury. The guard behind Carver shifted and Carver had to strain not to mirror him – to only half step enough to give himself the room to draw his sword.
But Hayder visibly calmed, schooling himself back to disdain. "Where is it?"
Isabela was silent for a moment. "I don't have it – yet. But if you tell him…"
"Castillion is not interested in your excuses." Hayder snapped. "And neither am I. I will only hear one answer." With a flash, he drew his cutlass. "Face me, if you are half the duelist you claim to be."
"Half and on again," Isabela grinned, drawing her daggers.
Shite. Carver's hand darted instinctively to his sword hilt, before Isabela glanced back at him. "Steady on, pup. Let's have this fair."
"Yes, leash your dog." Hayder barked. "La enfrento sola!"
"And a thumb up your arse, too!" Isabela twirled, striking at Hayder with her blades. They cut through the air with a sharp hiss. Hayder slashed forward with his cutlass, catching Isabela's forward dagger with clash. Isabela pirouetted with the impact, whirling forwards with her off dagger this time. Hayder fell back a pace, his blade turning this time to meet Isabela's off swing.
This time there was no clash of steel, no ricocheted turn or pirouette. Isabela pulled her off dagger towards herself, missing his blade entirely.
Carver barely saw her other wrist flick, didn't even process what that meant before he heard Hayder's sudden gasp. His cutlass clattered to the floor as he reached both hands to paw at the dagger blossoming from his chest.
Carver whirled to the guard beside him – the man had his hands on the hilts of his weapons, but he had turned partially away from Carver to watch the fight. The man now stood in slack-jawed shock, he looked back to Carver, his eyes wide.
The fereldan didn't give the foreigner any further time to react. Carver slammed his head into the guard's, grunting as he felt the man's scream even before he heard it. As his opponent collapsed, blood spilling from the wreckage of his nose, Carver stepped back and drew his greatsword. With one great swing, he felt the impact in the man's chest through his shoulder and throbbing head.
One. One more left.
Carver withdrew his blade in a bloody arc, turning back towards the altar. Isabela was locked in a fight with Hayder's remaining man. The man swung wildly again and again, full bodied with his cutlass, shouting all the while.
Three steps and Carver was behind him, his blade singing through the air. He took the man in the neck, cutting down and down, dragging what started as a man but ended as a corpse to the floor.
Carver tried to withdraw his blade, hit resistance at what must've been the man's spine. With a grunt and a stabilizing foot, he managed to wrest the blade from the body with a flick of blood.
There was a sudden still. After a moment, the roaring of Carver's blood pounding in his ears softened so that he heard only what sound came from the Chantry: Hayder's labored gurgling, interrupted only by an amused snort from Isabela.
She infuriatingly cocked a hip, smirking yet again at Carver over the ruins of her last opponent. "Well, you outshone my wildest expectations, pup. I half expected to have to clean you off the blade of one of these boys, and here I see you cleaning both of them off your own."
"These lot wouldn't know the arse end of a pitchfork, let alone a blade," Carver groused, suppressing a chatter of his teeth. "Didn't expect that duel to go that quick."
Isabela laughed. "Hayder always talked up a good game, but when it came down to performing? He never could quite cut it."
As if in response to his name, the antivan let forth a wet cough that quickly translated into a horrible, choking snore.
"Speaking of," Isabela said, she turned and strode to the prone man. She straddled him at the chest, and with one deft flick of her wrist, she slit his throat. He quieted after that.
Carver winced, looking away as Isabela started pawing at the new corpse.
"So," he said, struggling to suppress a shiver as the fight left him. "What's this about cargo? Who's this Castillion?"
Isabela still straddled Hayder, her practiced hands checking pockets, pouches – pulling out everything and anything she could pocket herself. "A man too big for both of us, pup," Isabela smiled toothily as she pushed herself upright, her blood-soaked fingers cradling a similarly blood-soaked coin purse. "And yes, perish the thought, a man too big for me. But never you mind, his cargo's my worry. I'll find it. It's time for your pay, isn't it?"
She tossed the coin purse lightly in her hand, feeling its weight, before she winked at Carver and tossed it his way. Carver caught it in his free hand, tossing it. It wasn't light. "Hold on," he suddenly realized, as she stepped away from him and knelt at the man he'd just about cloven in two. "Did you even have the coin before now?"
The pirate laughed as she checked the man's body, her hands moving towards his lips. She parted the corpse's lips and tsked. "You take a pirate's job, you earn a pirate's pay. What, is the purse light?" She unsheathed one of her daggers and moved it towards the corpse's mouth.
"What are you doing?!" Carver barked as she sank the blade down. Blood pooled, further soaking her hands and blade. He swore he could smell it, taste the burning copper at the tip of his tongue. Carver stepped back and almost retched, flashes of a life he wished wasn't his suddenly rising unbidden.
Dead men. Dead things, in the Wilds. The Blight will not stop. We are doomed.
"Just collecting the valuables," Isabela said without a care in the world, not even sparing a glance Carver's way as she worked the blade. "Gold's gold, whether it's molded as a sovereign or a tooth."
The blood spilled from the dead man's mouth. Carver's stomach twisted and he turned, half marching, half running out the Chantry door. He stopped outside, only shattering old memories with the crisp air of twilight and the faded light of the city.
He paused, breathed. Then he sheathed his blade, put his back to the wall beside the door and waited.
Isabela followed only a few minutes later, nimbly stepping out into the near darkness. She turned to him, and he swore he could see a glint in her eyes. "Upset stomach, then?" She asked flippantly. "Am I not quite the damsel you were hoping for?"
"Just had to settle," he grimaced in cold anger. "It smelled like death in there. Like the Blight."
She cocked her head at him. In the lengthening shadows he couldn't read her expression. After a long moment, she spoke. "Well, now that we're out here – I just wanted to say I was pleased as punch with how you handled yourself in there. Now I'm wondering, how you'll handle yourself out here?"
"More work?" He asked, unenthused. "Got more folks you need gutted today?"
She suddenly turned, moving off in the low light towards the alley they'd first crept up in. "I had something else in mind."
Carver stood a moment, as heat suddenly flooded his face. His heart pounded in his temples, the air suddenly felt so blasted cold.
In a moment he was behind her, another moment, they both were in the alley. She turned, her face covered in shadow but he swore he could just make out the glint of her eyes. Laughing eyes.
"I was thinking more of your bonus," she purred. "Are you ready to take it?"
Carver's heart thundered, he could barely think, his breath quickening.
He moved then, pushing her into the alley wall. "Yes," he growled, and kissed her. He felt her laugh echoing into the kiss, even as she returned it.
At that moment, for once, he did not mind being laughed at.