“Keep your voice down, will you?”
“Varric.”
“My head’s splitting…”
“It’s the law.”
“Yeah. I heard you the first time.”
Varric was only barely visible through a gap in the partition curtains, palm to his forehead and face curled up into a pained wince. With several blankets still clung around my shoulders, one hand clutching the curtain to part it and the other holding my hair out of my face, I peered from the dark curtains into his suite, struggling to find an angle where I could see the source of the other voice without her also seeing me.
“You can’t keep taking these things into your own hands.”
Varric dropped his hand to gesture in front of him, outward to her, dark eyebags making him seem paler than normal. “Look. Did someone complain?”
The responding voice had a hard edge. He was looking up, so it was a human, but it wasn’t Isabela. “Several residents saw your man hauling a body last night.”
“I meant somebody important. And how do you know he was one of mine?”
“Do you want a list, or are you just being pedantic?”
“Hmm, I don’t know, are you gonna arrest me, or is this just for theatrics?”
Arrest him? Varric said he had a friend in the Guard but I never expected her to come here. A brief silence passed, where she sighed, heavy boots thudding across the room, and one of the dining chairs scraping the floor. While her back was turned, Varric met my eye through the curtains and shrugged.
“Maker, I hate you,” she said.
“Aw. You always know just what to say.”
“This is serious.” Her voice lowered. “I know you don’t know what that word means, but if this falls back on me…”
“He was Carta.” Varric crossed his arms staunchly over his chest. “I made your job easier, so technically, you owe me.”
“I do not.”
“You didn’t have a problem getting help with the Carta before.”
“It was a different time, Varric.”
“You mean ‘cause it was Hawke doing it, and not me.”
“That’s not what I meant. You know it.”
Even when we had Hawke, the Carta was rampant, like infestations of rats, emerging at night to assassinate your neighbours or smuggle lyrium to the Gallows. Since the explosion, it’d only got worse, and now that Hawke was dead… I didn’t want to think about that.
“Come on. You don’t gotta stop being corrupt just ‘cause a few queasy nobles complained about a couple drops of blood on their prized begonias.”
“I’m not corrupt.”
“You’re a Kirkwall City Guard. Of course you’re corrupt.”
In her lack of response, she acquiesced, and there was a thud on the table.
“Why did I have to find out you were back from Donnic?” she finally asked in a low voice.
“Feeling left out?”
“You could’ve written.”
“I was busy.”
“You’re never just busy.”
“I’m helping out a friend, Red, not staying for tea.”
“You have friends?”
“Sure. Look, I can even count them on two hands.”
She sighed. “Maker. I know I’m whining. Just be careful. And stop dropping off the face of the continent.”
“Cross my heart.”
“You can forward that message on to Hawke, too.”
I flinched. Varric didn’t.
“And you think he’d listen to me?”
I couldn’t see them anymore, hidden behind the bend in the room. I curled my fingers around the curtain.
“Historically, yes.”
“Ha. I admire your optimism.”
What was he doing? Why? The suite door closed, and Varric’s sigh filled a heavy silence while I pulled aside the curtains.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked. He stared at me through fingers splayed across his face, then combed them up through his hair instead, one lone white hair catching the light. I didn’t understand. He didn’t lie but it wasn’t truthful either—it was cruel. He didn’t even falter.
“I had Norah bring down your things,” he said, ignoring my malaise and lifting a basket from the floor to the table. “You can stay in here ‘til things settle down.”
I nodded reluctantly, and curtly, and shuffled across the room to the basket with my clothes and belongings. I didn’t mind Norah, and Varric trusted her well enough, but I didn’t like the thought of a stranger rifling through my things. I dug out my pack.
“So, what’d you think of Rivaini?” His voice gained that excitable, mischievous twinge to it, and he reclined into the chair where that Guardswoman just was, still pulled out from the table.
I carefully mulled over my words. “She seems like your type,” I finally decided on.
“Nah. Too tall for me.”
Her breasts were at his precise eye-level, but I didn’t say this. “Why does she… dress like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like… like…” I mustered all my courage and strength. I’d struggled to keep my eyes off her, confused and embarrassed by her. “Like a whore.”
Varric choked on his spit like he’d just taken a big drink of beer. “Fuck,” he coughed, hand on his chest, “wasn’t expecting that from you.”
My face was warm. “I was just…”
“No, no.” He placated me with a downward hand wave. “You surprised me, that’s all, kid. Rivaini’s been turning heads since before Hawke and I even met her. Trust me, she’s just like that.”
I would never leave the house without my modesty kerchief, not unless I had forgotten it, and certainly never for attention. I couldn’t fathom it.
“So she’s not—?”
“A prostitute? No.” He folded his arms behind his head. “She’s a pirate. A damn good one, too.”
A pirate. Of course. This made sense. Regular ladies didn’t dress like that. Isabela—she was more like a siren, not built for society. Curiosity sated, I returned to digging through my pack.
“Oh,” I said.
“Hm?”
“My sketchbook.” Don’t panic. “It’s not here.”
He tried to peer into it. “Sure it’s not hiding under something?”
“No. No, it’s not here. I wouldn’t… could Norah have missed it?”
“Worth a check. Could’ve fallen down somewhere.”
I was sure I’d put it away, I always did, but who would take it? No one. I took my pack with me to my room—my old room now?—and searched the bed, the drawers, panic rising until I dropped to the floor and found it hiding just under the bedframe, open flat and face down where it’d fallen on an unfinished sketch of Lace, smudged charcoal smearing one part of her face.
I should go see her.
I had to face her eventually. It hung over the back of my mind like dark clouds. But what would I say? That it was my fault, that I was sorry? I was a dog with a tail tucked between my legs, still reeling, afraid to confront the one person I didn’t want to hurt; Varric was one thing, but Lace made me feel safe, and maybe deep down I liked to pretend I could be that for her, too. No. That was just a delusion. But that didn’t mean I should run from her.
Someone had cleaned the hallway overnight, but not much could be done to scrub the bloodstains out of unfinished and rotting wood. I stepped over the stains, so focused on avoiding them I didn’t see Isabela coming from her own quarters.
“Oh, hello.”
She looked much different in the light. Gold jewellery, dark kohl around her eyes, a smile that would’ve been endearing if she wasn’t looking at me like… I didn’t know. Something.
Another woman emerged from the same room. Isabela took her arm, kissed her on her mouth, and then sent her on her way again, blushing and giggling.
I stood, mouth agape, in silence.
Thick fog clouded my brain where the thoughts should be, all senses firing with nowhere to direct them, just a dull buzz that hurt my head, my hair prickling my neck.
Girls didn’t kiss other girls.
Why would they?
Some pleasure, maybe, fleeting and temporary, but there was no future, no marriage or children, no reality there where she could live a happy and purposeful life. Isabela expressed no reservations, much of her skin bare and her hair loose over her shoulders, watching some other woman walk away with a sway in her hips and one sultry glance over her shoulder before she disappeared into the bar, happy with what she had done—had been doing—would continue to do?—and briefly immersed in a world where she had no need of men or husbands. I wasn’t revulsed. I pitied her. It would all crash down on her, soon.
“Looking for something?” Isabela leaned up against a pillar, a dusty sunbeam from between the rafters and some loose boards in the roof illuminating part of her face and the upper half of her forearms in a golden glow.
“Certainly not you,” I said.
She laughed. “I can see why Varric dotes on you.”
“He doesn’t—” I hid myself behind my pack. Maker. I was still in my shift. “He doesn’t dote on me.”
Pushing from the wall, she sauntered past. “I’m not blind, sweet thing.”
Heat—not pleasant, but like standing too close to an open flame—burned under my skin. I wanted to dare her to say it again, see what happened when she did. I glared at Lace’s room instead. Why was this woman even here? If Varric hadn’t left to go see her, if he’d been here when he needed to be, maybe Lacve wouldn’t be hurt, in pain. Maybe.
I would never know now.
I slipped into Lace’s room hoping almost that she would be asleep and I wouldn’t have to really face her, but her eyes lit up when I stepped through the doorframe, and—wincing in pain—she scrambled to sit up, the book in her lap thudding to the floor.
Someone had come in overnight; cleaned dusted, and rearranged her room, the chest of drawers having been moved to hide a dent in the wall and pieces of a mirror swept up and discarded, its frame empty where she could stare at the wood instead of her own reflection; pale, dischevelled, shirtless, her modesty protected by swaths of bandages cinching her ribs into their proper places, and around her throat, the bruised outline of two large hands.
“I’m a mess, aren’t I?” she asked.
I picked up the book and gave it back to her. “Yes.”
“You’re a mess, too.”
“Not much has changed for me, then.”
We smiled at each other, but when mine faltered, so did hers.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. This shouldn’t have happened.”
“You’re right. It shouldn’t have. It’s my fault.”
“It’s not. You didn’t cause any of this.”
“He was here for me.” The small confession made her pause. I didn’t allow myself time to change my mind. “He got it wrong,” I said. “He was here to kill me.”
She worried at her lip. It had split and healed again, but probably still stung. After a moment, she looked up at me with resolve. “I’m glad it was me.”
“What?”
“I can defend myself. I can fight. I don’t know what you would’ve done, I don’t even wanna think about it. So I’m glad he chose me.”
I would’ve found a way, I thought. I’d done it before. Or maybe she was right, and I’d be dead in that room, and in the morning Varric would come to find me motionless and cold. The silence sat with us, while from the tavern, his laughter intermingled with Isabela’s, who must have gotten tired of waiting for me.
Lacze grazed her hand against mine then pulled away. “You’re not… really in the Guild, are you?”
I ducked my head and shut my eyes. It would’ve come down to this eventually, of course it would. I’d hoped to at least delay it until after the funeral, or until we were already going back to Skyhold, when it didn’t matter quite so much.
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you Carta? It’s okay if you are. The Inquisitor was.”
“No. No. I have nothing to do with the Carta.”
“But then why would they try to kill you?” She did grab my hand this time. I opened my eyes to stare down at them—her fingers, freckled, lightly calloused, curled around mine, which were round and dimpled. “In the river, now here? Why? What do they want?”
I’d thought it was to hurt Varric. Maybe it was at first, when they killed mother. Not anymore.
I should’ve let it happen. Let that human do what he wanted. After, he would’ve left, and I would’ve been fine. Hurt, damaged, but fine. I would’ve been fine.
No.
No, I would it again. A thousand times. I put my hands around his throat and squeezed until he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore, and I was glad. I was glad he was dead.
I didn’t want to tell Varric, he would never understand. But Lace—even if she didn’t know what it was like—she would. She could. So, I did.
I knew a human who was nice to me. He offered me coin in exchange for my silly drawings. He asked for more, and I gave it to him, and he asked for more, and I didn’t understand what it meant, but it made him happy. He told me he loved me and then called me a child in the same breath, and maybe if I wasn’t a child I could have stopped to consider what he meant.
He hurt me. I killed him for it. Now his friends wanted to kill me back. Saying it out loud to Lace’s wide, glistening eyes didn’t make me feel any better, not like it was supposed to, but… but she was here, holding my hand. That was all I wanted for now.
I didn’t know what Kirkwall’s dwarf population was. I knew it had to be more than most cities, surpassed maybe by places like Minrathous, host of the Ambassadoria and the embassy, but Tevinter was far away, and on this side of the mountains, I never knew a larger or more complicated network of surfacer families and interwebbed conflict.
We had little funeral homes scattered in corners throughout the city, hidden away from the humans who found the whole display vulgar and unnatural, much more content to burn their dead and display their ashes in pots on mantelpieces. I accompanied mother to one as a child at an age when I hardly knew what death was.
They wrapped tendrils around your throat. The air was thick, the atmosphere cold despite the hearth, and the walls tall, a pale imitation of Orzammar’s grand displays, the architecture dwarven, but never older than some ten years. Coffins, caskets, and sarcophagi lined a morbid display in one part of the home like furniture instead of vessels for the dead.
Varric made a face at one of the coffins which he quickly smoothed down when I glanced over at him. I stared, and he sighed at being caught.
“Not used to places like this,” he whispered, so not to break the quiet too much. “A couple here and there, but…”
“I understand,” I said. I did. I was so used to Chantry proceedings that veering outside of it, even though it was what mother wanted, what I wanted, made my stomach churn, just a little. “You’ve been to places like this before?”
“For Bartrand. He was more like you. Uh, traditionalist, I mean.”
“You returned your brother to the Stone?”
He shifted, uncomfortable, and dragged one finger along the edge of a coffin. “Well, you know. He was an asshole, but dignity in death and all that.” Then under his breath, “Was the least I could give him.”
“What about you?” I moved along, away from a couple which had just entered the home, wearing black. Varric followed.
“Just cremate me.”
“But what about the Stone?”
“If the capital-S ‘Stone’ exists, it’s not for me.”
“Of course it exists. We can hear it.”
“You can hear it.” He gave a pointed look. “Maker knows how.”
“Mother was a Shaper.” How I wished I could see the Shaperate, just once. “She lost her sense but I suppose I inherited it anyway.” I stopped again in front of a small sarcophagus, geometric carvings telling some old story in a band around the rim, made of limestone. I touched it with my palm, the cool rock pleasant, and comforting. “I guess I stole it from her.”
“Not sure that’s how that works.”
“How would we know?” I shrugged, patted the limestone one more time, and hummed. “This one. I like this one.”
The market in Hightown was the first to recover after the city burned to the ground. People needed normalcy, coin needed to flow, and in some ways, I was grateful to have a place which seemed nearly unchanged by the last half-decade; red awnings, busy stalls, a tall but young tree at the centre which took the place of the old one, after it burnt down. The display was not enough to distract me from my crumbling neighbourhood, the suffering alienage, many old homes still buried to their foundations in rubble, slowly cleared away over the years by volunteers after the relief efforts from Starkhaven came and left. Varric and I took a glacial pace through the crowd, out of the way of lumbering humans who never spared a thought to looking where they were damn well going.
“You’ve seen her will?” He asked, pulling me back into our conversation.
“Yes. I locked it away at home. She didn’t mention any of her family.”
“She left everything to you?” Varric hummed. “Okay. Make a copy. Bring it with you in case they wanna contest that.”
“Do you think they would?” I stopped in front of a florist, flowers in higher demand now that the seasons were changing, the stall bright with multicoloured and some invasive wildflowers. I read about those in the library, when we… still had a library.
“Dunno. Maybe. Never met them. I—” He sneezed into his sleeve. “Agh. Sorry. I helped Hawke and his mother with some will troubles back in the day. Different situation, though.”
“Hawke went to you for legal advice?”
“Did I say legal?” He sneezed again. “Shit. Sorry. Sorry. You pick the flowers, I need unpollinated air.”
I did, ushering him back over again so he could pay the commission, which he did quickly, scrunching up his face before he could sneeze into his coinpurse. I didn’t want to make him pay for all the expenses. I wanted to do it all myself, but if Varric wanted to help, not much could stop him. We walked away with an invoice and a promise of flowers delivered, arranged, and adequately preserved.
I picked white ones, not lilies, but little things from Starkhaven and other high, cold places. I had these in tea, sometimes, and in my mind, mother would be pleased that I picked something practical, instead of something pretty but useless.
“What happens if they do contest the will?” I asked.
“They hire a lawyer. We hire a better one. Don’t worry about that.”
We stopped at my home in Lowtown. I wanted to make Varric stay outside but he kept trying to peer through the windows, so reluctantly I let him follow me in. I rummaged through storage while he stood in the middle of the floor, not sure what to do with himself.
“Didn’t realise she was so,” he gestured at the trinkets, searching for a word, “hm…”
“Yes, I know.”
“Didn’t seem the type.”
She must have been much different before she had me, or she would not have mourned her old life so much. I wondered what she was like. “Did you… talk much?” I asked, temporarily pausing my foraging. “Or did you just…”
“We skipped a lot of that.”
“Right.”
I found the will where I put it. By instinct I went to hide it from Varric—I heard her screaming at me for letting him so much as sniff it—but that wouldn’t serve anyone now. I let him take it and hovered nearby while he read, wiping my palms on my kirtle and gnawing on my bottom lip.
“It looks alright?”
“Seems fine.” He looked very lawyerly like this. He only needed some spectacles. “Signatures, witnesses… you know these names?” He tapped the parchment.
“Mother’s friends.”
“Okay.” He moved to sit then apparently thought better of it. “House. Finances.” He leaned his weight on one leg. “That’s weird. Thought you said Javarel was disowned?”
“She was.”
“So, why’s she giving you her title?”
I was confused. “Because I’m her daughter. Is something wrong?”
“You’re head of your family?”
“Yes. Of this family. In this house.”
“No. Not how that works.” He turned the parchment around for me to see, but I was too far away anyway, the writing too small. He tapped it again. “Her family didn’t disown her, they just kicked her out. You’re the head of your house.”
I sat down. “You mean of this house.”
“Of the estate. She didn’t give you this house, she gave you the estate.”
I stared, unblinking, wondering if he’d gone mad, and he bent down to show the parchment to me again, like I hadn't read my own mother’s will.
“I can read, Varric. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“She can’t give away something that isn’t hers.”
“She’s not! Mother—she was never under any illusions. She lived here for longer than she ever did in Orzammar or, or Hightown combined. I’m not the head of that house! Neither was she.”
“Revered Mother seemed to think different.”
“The Revered—?” The letter. I remembered. She had called me the head of my house, but humans had no concept of dwarven politics or society or inheritance, none at all. If they did, we wouldn’t have had to bribe the Viscount. Varric never did explain that to me. “She was mistaken. It was a mistake, Varric. I belong here, not—not—” I gestured wildly, somewhere vaguely north or west, “in some big, ugly house in Hightown!”
Delicately he rolled the will up again and gave it back to me. I clutched it in both hands, tighter than I should, parchment crinkling. He was wrong. He was wrong. Didn’t matter how proper and lawyerly he looked when he was reading, or that he was quietly raising a brow at me now while I stared into nothing.
I unrolled it again.
I, Javarel Mercar of House Mercar, resident in the City of Kirkwall, being of sound mind, not acting under duress or undue influence, and fully understanding the nature and extent of all my property and of this disposition thereof, do hereby make, publish, and declare, in true faith of the Maker and Andraste Holy Bride, this document to be my Last—
I didn’t need to read this again. It wouldn’t change anything, make it hurt any less. Varric was studiously silent, though, as if to urge me on. If he really didn’t believe it, he’d spin it some way or another, but he wasn’t.
I give unto my daughter Isana—
I rolled it up. “We have it now. Let’s just go.”
“Okay.” He didn’t fight me. “Anything else you wanna get done before we head back?”
“Did you send the invitations?” The ones which, ultimately, he helped me write, hovering over my shoulder while I used his desk and one of his nice quills. “I forgot.”
“My courier’s got it handled.”
“Then… I can’t think of anything. No.” Relief, as I locked the door behind me. I took the keys with me instead of hiding them under a rock again. “I’ll finish my dress tonight.” Or in the morning. Or in the carriage ride, if I had to.
We talked some on our walk back, or rather Varric did, and I listened absently with my head in the clouds.
I wished Lace could come too.
I wanted her to. I wanted her to be there. She’d held my hand, kept me from floating away. Varric nudged me with his elbow.
“What’s on your mind?”
I sighed.
“We’ll have to leave her alone.”
“Who?”
“Harding.”
“Only for a day.”
“It’s several hours by carriage.” I looked up to the sky between slats of red cloth hung upon the buildings. “And the weather could turn.”
“Harding’s resourceful. She’ll be alright.”
“The Carta could send someone new. Or the Coterie. For double revenge.”
“Not likely. If anything, they’ll be tailing us on the road.”
“Varric.”
“I’ll protect you!”
“What, with your dumb crossbow?”
He jutted a thumb to it on his back, attached by a harness sewn into his coat. I didn’t want to think about the strain that thing put on his shoulders or his spine. “Anyone who comes even close’ll hear straight from Bianca.”
We went down a different path than normal. Maybe he wanted the scenic route. “That’s a silly name.”
“Hush, Bianca. Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Don’t talk to it!” This was the wrong way to the tavern. “Varric, you missed a turn.”
“Hm? Nah, I’m checking up on something first.”
I didn’t feel like following his impulsive whims after the several long days we’d already had. I followed him anyway, down, further into Lowtown and closer to the shore. The damage here was not as terrible, but neglect walked hand in hand with abuse, and after decades of disasters with none left able or willing to help—Lowtown suffered.
I was afraid he’d take me to Darktown, but with the sight of the vhenadahl over the horizon line of cramped architecture, I breathed. The Alienage.
I liked it here. The elves were kind. They didn’t mind dwarven strangers as much as they minded the humans, and they called me durgen’len—little stone?—when I came to sit under their tree in spring.
The Alienage was dying. A steady decay. The elves could not maintain it on their own, after so many fled with the Qunari, or died in the explosion, immediately, in battle, or from injuries after. They laughed anyway. I wished I could be as strong as they were.
Varric knocked on a far door. A loud thump, a high-pitched elvish curse, and some scrambling sounded inside before the door flung open, so fast the elf on the other side hit her own face.
She rubbed at her nose, eyes scrunched closed, hair mussed. “Fenedhis! I’m so sorry, I wasn’t expecting visitors, I promise I’m not normally so—”
“Not a good time for you, Daisy?”
Hand still on her nose, she stared, huge round and green eyes widening to the size of plates.
She threw her arms around him. Tiny, even for an elf, but still a head taller than him, and she bent down to an excessive low so her face could burrow comfortably in his shoulder.
“Don’t cry on me,” he laughed, “or you’ll make Bianca sad.” And his coat, I thought.
“I’m not crying.” She sniffled, and pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I’d never cry. That would be silly.”
“Really? ‘Cause from the top of my head…”
“Varric.” A wet chuckle. “Mythal’enaste. I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I write all the time.”
“It’s not the same!”
I could fall into her eyes, they were so big. Were those tattoos? Was she Dalish? She was so pretty. Daisy? Was that her real name, or another one of Varric’s?
I didn’t realise she was looking at me until Varric nudged my arm. “This is Isana, a friend from Skyhold. I’m helping her with some business in the city, not staying long.”
“Hello,” I managed. “An—Andaran atishan.”
“Aneth ara,” she beamed, and if she’d anything to say about my pronunciation, it didn’t show. Most elves would be glad to see someone like me trying at all. “You’re making friends, Varric? I’m so happy for you.”
“What? Why’d you’d say it like that?” He smiled, perplexed. “ ‘Course I’ve got friends.”
“Oh, well, what with being so far away from Hawke, and all. Oh! I’m such a terrible host. Come inside, I have—water?”
He shook his head and took a physical step back from the doorframe, leaving me isolated on the stair. “Actually, I—I was hoping for a favour.”
“Anything! I’ll get my boots.”
Her accent was so foreign to me. Lilted, musical. Similar to the bald elf at Skyhold, but much, much stronger. Maybe they were from the same place, but he wasn’t Dalish, right?
Varric rocked back and forth on his heels. Soon she stumbled back out the door with one boot half on and the other half laced.
“Is everything alright? No one’s died, have they?”
“No, no. Friend of mine’s got some cracked ribs, hoped you could take a look.”
A Healer. Maker, Varric, thank you. I hurried after them. “Are you a Healer?”
“Oh no, I’m terrible at it.” Oh. “It would be much better if Anders was here.”
Varric grumbled. “I wouldn’t let Blondie near her with a ten foot pole.”
“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“...I suppose not.”
The both of them together were difficult to keep up with. Daisy was quick and light on her feet and Varric kept glued to her side like a guard dog, head swivelling for danger while she marched on without a second glance for her surroundings. I tried to follow close behind. “Hawke’s husband?”
Varric waved his hand. “We don’t get along.”
“Anders—”
“Don’t, Daisy.”
“I was going to say he wrote to me. And Aveline. He wants to know if we’ve heard from Hawke, and I was going to write to you and ask…”
He walked faster. “Yeah. I’ll write to him.”
I didn’t like this. The deeper he dug this hole the more difficult it would be to climb out of. I wished I could say something, but what right did I have? So I stayed silent, several steps behind and staring at the back of his head.