Chapter V
It was impossible to tell if Cabot was angry.
He had those permanent grumpy dwarven brows, pulled in and accentuated by dark tattoos––it was those brows that stared back at me now, as I shuffled my feet on the tile of the storeroom, and underneath them, dark scrutinising eyes that hammered into my skull. He took a breath.
“Could’ve given more notice.”
I hid my hands behind my back as if to hide my shame, and stared at the spot on the floor where I’d smashed the glass. My arms ached from scrubbing the wine stain out of my dress. Cabot’s eyes followed mine, and though I was taller, I felt… small.
He took another breath, a sharp inhale, for every time he spoke. “Tethras put in a good word for you.”
I failed to swallow the lump in my throat. Of course he did. “I regret that I didn’t live up to his praise.”
Cabot scoffed. It was the most emotion he’d expressed all week. He crossed his arms over his chest like they were the heaviest things in the world. “When’re you coming back?”
I fell silent.
His tone was flat. “You’re not coming back.”
I didn’t know.
I could. I’d thought about it. I needed Varric’s help, his contacts; Skyhold was safety, security. But it wasn’t home. Once I stepped foot on Kirkwall soil––would I be able to leave again? Would I want to?
I could rot away in my room in Lowtown, and no one would ever find me. Not even Varric.
“My mother is dead.”
Cabot shifted. “Condolences.”
“I’m going home for her funeral. And then I––” The lump grew tighter. Varric would have to drag me back kicking and screaming. Maybe he will, at the end of all this.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Cabot, in his wisdom, sighed, frowned, and finally shrugged. “I didn’t choose bartending. Now here I am. Bartending.”
I sniffed. “What?”
“Bartending.”
“I heard, but––”
“When I came to the surface,”––I snapped my mouth shut––”I didn’t know up from down. Thought about getting into merchanting. Nearly got roped into the Carta. Such is my lot.” He nodded sagely. “The Inquisition was something new. I volunteered. Didn’t know I was going to do it until I did.”
I gazed at his tattoos and wondered what they meant, if they meant anything at all. “And before then?”
He appeared, all at once, much older.
“Don’t get roped into the Carta.”
Harding brushed her fingers through the pony’s mane, her other hand stroking its neck. She smiled when she saw me, her plaited hair seeming to glow in the afternoon sun. The stables were mostly quiet, save for the horsemaster and some stablehands who affixed the ponies with their tack and saddle.
“Do you wanna feed her?”
I shuffled my feet in the hay. Varric, his head now finally free of the bandages, led out his fluffier, fatter pony by its reins, muttering something in its ear. I was taller than my pony… but only by the barest of margins.
“Will it bite me?”
“Only if you don’t do it right. Here.” She produced a small apple from her pocket, its skin the same colour as her hair, and handed it to me, the tips of her fingers grazing mine. She took my wrist into her palm, and hesitantly, I allowed her to guide me. “Keep your hand flat. Yes, like that.”
The pony’s lips tickled my hand as it lifted the apple and consumed it whole, core and all.
“See?”
“I thought it would be wetter.”
“They’re not dogs,” she giggled. “You ever ridden before?”
“I’ve seen it done.”
“So, no? That’s okay. I’ll show you how once we––oh! Hi, Bull!”
I jumped. Where moments before it was empty, the qunari now filled the doorway, his horned silhouette casting a shadow over my eyes. How could such a large thing be so quiet?!
“Hey, Harding.” His voice was low and rumbly in my brain.
Varric fed his pony and wiped his hand on his trousers. “Here to send us off, Tiny? Thought you’d be on your way to Jader by now.”
“ Yeah. I need to talk to you.”
“Well, I’m right here.”
The qunari–– Bull?–– thinned his lips into a thin, sharp line. “The Boss signed me on with you.”
My heart leapt to my throat.
Varric visibly swallowed. “Huh?”
The–– Bull ––grunted, a hard look in his eye. “Yup.”
“With us?”
“Just until you get to port.” He leaned against the doorframe, which creaked under his weight, and crossed his arms over his bare chest. Three fingers rested against his forearm, the other two missing at the knuckle. “Then I’m meeting up with my boys.”
“In Jader. Right.” Varric glared at the ground, his boots in the hay. His pony tossed its head back, pulling on its reins. “Guess she didn’t wanna, I don’t know, talk to me about it first?”
“She ever done that before?”
“...No.” He kicked the floor. “Guess I’ll need a bigger tent. Get your horse, Tiny.”
It was fine.
Everything was fine.
Maybe if I repeated that to myself enough, I would begin to believe it. As it was… I watched with a tight throat as Bull led a great beast of a draft horse from the far stall.
Everything was fine.
It was strange to watch the fortress shrink the further we descended down the mountain path. The movements of the pony beneath me were foreign, a rhythmic sway to it that made me queasy, not unlike the rocking of a boat. Harding made it look so easy, mounting, dismounting, laughing as she swayed in the saddle.
Varric, his crossbow on his back, slowed his pony to meet me at the tail end, leaving Harding and the qunari––Bull, I repeatedly reminded myself,––at the front. They talked and laughed together like old friends.
“You’ve been quiet since we left, kid.”
I sniffed. The icy mountain air burned my nostrils. “I’m always quiet.”
“Sure, but I expected some complaining by now.”
I glared at him. He dropped the reins to hold up his hands in mock surrender.
“Careful with that expression, or the wind’ll change and you’ll be stuck like that forever.”
“I’m not a child.”
“That’s right. You’re a grown adult. You know what grown adults do? They tell each other their feelings.”
This was starting to sound like the beginnings of a lecture. How rich, coming from him. “You’re annoying, and I hate you. How’s that for feelings?”
“Hurtful, but better! What’s actually bothering you, though?”
I side-eyed Bull. His horns swayed side to side with the movements of his horse. He was larger, somehow, in the daylight––grey skin, gleaming. Even in the snow he didn’t wear a shirt, so it was no wonder he got along so well with Varric––Varric, who watched and waited expectantly.
I inhaled. “I don’t want him coming with us.”
“What, Tiny?” He seemed amused. “Don’t worry about him.”
“He’s a qunari.”
“So?”
I pushed a painful breath out my nose. Four years the horned beasts spent in Kirkwall, eating our food, stealing our people, and at the end of it all… “The oxmen razed the city.”
Varric’s eyebrows shot up. He shifted in his saddle. “And what’s that got to do with Bull?”
“He’s––” So big. He was so big, and I was so very small. Funny how that seemed to keep happening to me. Bull threw back his head with boisterous laughter that echoed off the mountainsides, and Harding, so tiny and round next to him, laughed in kind.
I shook my head. “Never mind. Whatever.”
Varric hummed, brows pulled down again, hair in his eyes. The stitches above his temple were dark against the scabbed and bruised skin. Slowly he pushed his pony closer to mine so he could lower his voice.
“If it’s any consolation, he’s not happy about it. And neither am I.”
“So, why didn’t you say no? I thought you were friends with the Inquisitor.”
He made a face akin to a man who ate a lemon and was trying very hard to pretend he hadn’t. “ ‘Friends’ is a strong word. We used to be, maybe. Not so much anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Eh. Haven’t really talked much since the Approach.”
“Since Hawke?”
He looked down at his hands, at his gloves clutching the reins. Almost imperceptibly, they tightened. “Yeah.”
We fell into silence, and remained that way for the rest of the ride.
Some hours later, I winced as I massaged my legs through the layers of my dress, so stiff and aching that I could hardly move them. I stretched them out by the fire, my blanket around my shoulders, watching the flames flicker and dance as the sun set behind the mountains and the sky turned orange.
Harding sat opposite me, and I was glad to be able to focus on her, instead of Varric and Bull’s hushed whispers as they set up the tents.
“I can’t handle another week of this,” I told her. The muscles in my legs twitched, incessant and painful. Harding reached into her pack and pulled out a small box, which she passed to me over the fire.
“It’s a salve. Elfroot. Helps me after a long ride.”
“You don’t need it?”
“Don’t worry, I have plenty!”
“Thank you.”
The orange sky and red firelight reflected off her hair and in her eyes. She smiled, and before I could stop myself, I blurted––
“Can I draw you?”
She blinked and stared, somewhere between dumbstruck and confused. “Draw me?”
Maker. “The… the lighting is pretty.” Oh, Maker. I’d just resigned myself to changing my name, fleeing to Rivain, and living out the remainder of my days as a whore on the streets, when she giggled.
“No one’s ever drawn me before! Are you sure?”
Careful to shield it from her view, I lifted my sketchbook from my pack and flipped through to a completely fresh page. From the corner of my eye, Bull pulled Varric aside and pointed into the thicket of trees beyond our camp. “I need the practise.”
“Okay! How should I sit?”
Her legs were folded underneath her, her hands were in her lap. Messy, frizzy flyaways fell across her face. “Just like that is perfect.”
She watched, her eyes following my hand as it moved across the page, so still she could be mistaken for a statue. Sounds of scratching filled the silence, the charcoal against the parchment, as I created the outline and the shape of her body, round and pear-like. The face was where I struggled, but at least this time I had a subject to copy from.
“I wish I could draw,” she murmured, after some time. “My Ma could, you know? But I didn’t have time to learn.”
“It’s like pulling teeth sometimes.” I glanced briefly at her face, matching the bow of her lips to the one on the page. Her eyes still watched, wide and catlike. “I can’t see things in my head. I need something to copy.”
Her shoulders drooped slightly. “I thought everyone could do that.”
“I can’t.”
“That’s sad,” she said. I silently agreed.
The charcoal was familiar in my fingers, a habitual rhythm learned from nights by candlelight, copying the illustrations in my books. I sketched her lips, her nose, lingering on the shading for longer than I needed to. I sketched the flyaways in her hair and dotted her thousand-constellation freckles. When I was done, I leaned back, squinted, and decided it was the best thing I had ever made.
I blushed as I met her expectant gaze, suddenly warm all over, despite the snow.
“Is it finished?” She leaned forward hopefully, trying to get a peek.
“Yes.”
“So fast! Can I see?”
Phantom fingers brushed against my neck. I shivered, cradling the book in my arms like a baby. Why not let her see? She wasn’t him. I shuffled next to her, cautious around the open flame, and slowly, hesitantly, let her take it.
Her eyes raked it, top to bottom, widening slightly, her pupils large. “You drew this?” she finally whispered.
Did she not like it…? Did she hate it?! Maker, I should’ve thrown it into the flames, let it burn just like everything else!
“I know it’s messy…”
“It’s––” She stumbled over half-formed words, and finally, breathlessly, clutching the edges of the book like a lifeline, “You drew me so pretty.”
I only drew what was there. “But you are pretty.”
She blushed, her lips parting, just slightly. “You’re… you’re pretty, too!”
I went to refute her, to tell her she was wrong. I snapped my mouth shut again when Bull’s shadow fell over us. Harding craned her neck to grin at him.
“Look! She drew me!”
He moved around the campfire, settled across from us, and unstrapped his leg brace. He fumbled slightly on the buckles, struggling with his missing fingers.
“Looks good,” he rumbled.
I took back the book and shut it tight. Her shoulders slumped. “Harding. Have you ever been to the Free Marches before?”
She lifted her gaze from the closed book and shook her head. “Until the Inquisition, I’d never even left Ferelden. I’m excited! I never get to go to a city, it’s always, you know, trees and more trees and sometimes sand.”
“Mm. Kirkwall isn’t very exciting.”
Varric plopped down next to Bull, his crossbow in one hand and a cleaning cloth in the other. “I resent that. If Kirkwall wasn’t exciting, my books would never sell.”
Bull glanced up from his brace to raise an eyebrow. “Your books are bullcrap.”
“I––I thought you liked them!”
“Yeah. I do. They’re still full of shit, though. Why are you going back?”
“Uh, Merchant Guild business. Inquisitor didn’t tell you?”
“Must’ve slipped her mind. So…” His black eyes reflected the light of the campfire. He was looking at me. I chewed on my tongue. “You two related, or…?”
I tasted metal. Varric opened his mouth.
“Of course not.” I cut him off. My voice wavered, harsher and harder than intended. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Uh, the kid and I run in the same circles.”
“I’m kinda surprised,” Harding said, stoking the fire, “you two look so similar!”
I wrestled a shout of anger. Varric shoved his hands into his coat pockets as he chuckled;
“I––I mean, hey, maybe we are. Us surfacers spread like rabbits. Harding, I’m gonna check on the ponies, can you help?”
“Oh! Okay. Sure.”
His apologetic smile was not enough to quell my seething rage and would not save him from it later. Bull watched them go with one trailing eye that snapped back to meet me as soon as they were beyond reach.
I stared back. My stomach churned with the force of a thousand boiling pots.
“Merchant’s Guild, huh?” At my silence, he leaned back and sighed. “Hey. Whatever you and Varric are hiding? It’s none of my business. It will be if it becomes a problem, though.”
I stuck out my clenched jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh. It got anything to do with why we’re being followed?”
“What?” I whipped my head to stare into the trees, but found nothing except leaves and snow and scraggly stems of elfroot. The animalistic groans of far-away druffalo echoed through the valley.
“Yeah. Varric didn’t notice either.”
“But you did?”
“It’s my job .”
“What, like a spy?”
“Something like that.”
I clenched the spine of my book, tighter and tighter until my fingers ached. He didn’t waver at all. His back was hunched, his legs were stretched out across the snow, so casual that, for anyone outside looking in, they couldn’t guess anything was wrong.
“For the Inquisitor?”
A brief pause. “Sure.”
“Did she send you to spy on me?”
He didn’t raise a brow, but I felt it just the same, judgement and curiosity, as his eye jumped all across my face and body, searching for something I couldn’t guess. “There a reason I should be?”
“No,” I said, too quickly.
“Mm-hm.”
He’d already guessed about Varric and I, just on a stupid whim. What more could he find, just from looking at me? Did he care enough? Did I want to let him? “If not me, why did she send you?”
He gestured, with his horns, to the trees where the mounts were tied down. Varric and Harding had forgotten what they were supposed to be doing, lazed against the trunks.
I was breathless. “Varric?”
“Just making sure he doesn’t do anything dumb.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “The Boss is worried. That’s all.”
“Worried about what?”
“Why don’t you ask her when you get back?”
I humphed. Damned qunari. “I’m hardly important enough to get to talk to the Inquisitor.”
“No?”
“No. I’m not––there’s no––Varric is helping me. That’s all, that’s it. It’s personal, it has nothing to do with the Inquisition.
He smiled, and deep down in my gut, I feared I’d made a terrible mistake. “Okay, Isana.”
My heart raced for hours.
Every few minutes I would glance toward the forest, expecting to see a rustle in the bushes or in the leaves. I saw nothing, heard nothing, but this did not assuage me. Late at night, in my tent, I huddled under my blanket, clutched my dagger to my chest, and tried to ignore the cold seeping in.
Weather held us up, and we left the mountains a day late. The sea of snow gradually transitioned to prickly green grass, flowers, running streams of water––a luxury only momentarily enjoyed, as a storm broke us into Gherlen’s Pass.
Ceaseless heavy rain soaked our clothes, our packs, our mounts; the sky, near black with clouds, intermittently lit up with flashes of lightning far away, followed soon after by rolling thunder that made the ponies flatten their ears. On the wind there was a ringing, a subtle song. Varric’s voice struggled to cut above it.
“There shelter nearby?! A village, something?!”
“Not for miles!” Harding yelled. The trees sheltered us, but when lightning struck she jolted and scrutinised the sky like it would fall down upon us. She rode next to me, clutching the lead rope of my pony to stop it from veering.
Varric swore. His hair was undone, plastered to the back of his neck. My plaits dripped water down my back.
“We gotta find something! We can’t ride in this shit!”
Bull’s head swung side to side, searching for something off the road. The river nearby roared downstream and past it, I listened.
“There’s… there’s a cave!” I called, barely audible even in my own ears. “Just past the river!”
Varric shielded his eyes with his hand. “I don’t see it! Are you sure?!”
“If we cross, we’ll find it! Trust me!”
Bull steered his horse off the path. He didn’t have to yell to be heard. “Let’s set up camp. My everything is fucking soaked.”
The cave was hidden away under a small, mossy alcove. Rain ran off the edge of the cliff like a thousand tiny waterfalls, enclosing us in like a solid wall. Varric laid his crossbow against the wall and stripped off his soaked coat, which had done nothing to protect his shirt underneath.
“How’d you know this was here?” he asked me, quietly, voice rasping more than usual now he was no longer yelling. Harding and Bull tended to the mounts in a far corner, a dark and dry spot for them to rest in.
I considered lying. It would not be the first time. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“No?” He raised an amused brow. His fingers toyed with the buttons of his shirt, pulling at but not undoing them. He’d freeze if he left it on. “You’d be surprised, kid.”
I sat against the wall. My sketchbook was still dry, thank the Maker, and only the outermost layer of my blanket was damp.
I kept my voice soft and quiet. “I could hear it.”
A brief pause. “Pardon?”
“The Stone.” It was faint. Weaker by the year. I never even thought about it anymore; there was no point mourning something I was always destined to lose. My face burned the longer he stared at me, toying with those buttons, his expression that of dazed bewilderment; his voice was breathless.
“You’re shitting me. How?”
How did I breathe? How did I sleep? It was just something that happened. I shivered; every article of my clothing clung to me like a drunkard at a bar. Varric reached out and took my cold, clammy hands into his.
“You’re freezing. Let’s… let’s get you warm, kid.”
Everyone shed themselves of their outermost layers and laid them out to dry. I bundled myself inside my blanket and watched the weak fire, built from scavenged deadwood and twigs that were dry enough to burn.
I raked my fingers through my hair, pulling the plaits loose and detangling the knots, and hummed to myself. Harding, in her shirt and braies and not much else, shuffled up next to me.
“Pretty song,” she said.
I nodded, my eyes half-lidded. The fire crackled. “It’s a lullaby, I think.”
“Did your Ma sing it to you?”
“Oh… no. There was this older girl near where I lived as a child. She used to sing to the rest of us. There are supposed to be words…”
“You don’t know them?”
“It was in dwarven.” A small smile tugged on my lips. “I’m no good with languages.”
“Mm, I only know some words. Atrast…” She scrunched up her forehead. “Atrast…”
“Atrast vala.”
“Yes! Yes, that was it. And that’s ‘hello’, so atrast tunsha was ‘goodbye’, and… and that’s all I can remember.”
“Oh, no, that’s all of them.”
“Ha! That would make it easier, huh?”
I draped the damp, oily mess of my hair over my shoulders and dropped my hands to my lap. “My name means lyrium.”
“Really? …Were your parents miners?”
I snorted. “No. I don’t know why my mother picked it.”
“It’s pretty. I like it. Oh! Maker, I almost forgot.” From a pocket, she produced a small, folded up piece of parchment, and jumped up to her knees. “You did that really pretty drawing of me. So I wanted to try. Draw you, I mean.”
“Draw… me?”
She bit her lip. The parchment was in my hand before I could blink. Small, jagged, ripped at the edges, like from a scroll. I unfolded it.
I expected to hate what I saw.
Not her art, but my face, the face that was never really mine at all. I expected to look down and see Varric’s hard eyes staring back at me.
The woman on the parchment was round and soft. Her smile was gentle, her eyes were bright, and her hair fell over her shoulders in thick waves. She wasn’t me, how could she be?
“She’s very pretty,” I sniffled. “Aha––are you sure it’s me?”
“Of course! I know it’s not perfect, but––”
Her art, her messy, smudged sketched was not refined, nor even good, but—“I love it.”
“Well…” Harding hid her toothy, beaming smile behind her hand. “You can keep it, if you want.”
I ran my thumb along the parchment’s jagged edge. “Thank you.”
The storm died down by morning, and the river was peaceful. I bent down on the algae-stained rocks, my feet bare, uncorking my waterskin to fill it.
I liked being out here alone, with the cool air, the scent of forest and wild vegetation. The Waking Sea always smelled of salt and fish, when it didn’t smell like smoke, but this was crisp, earthy, herbal at times—and for now, until we were ready to leave, I had it all to myself. I dunked my hand into the water and watched the current split around my wrist.
Mother would’ve scolded me for lingering; get up, stupid girl, the world won’t wait for you. Maybe she was right, but she wasn’t here, and I didn’t hear anyone else calling my name.
I heard almost nothing at all.
No birds, no distant druffalo. Just the rush of water, my thoughts, my breath deep in my chest—and heavy boots on the rocks of the bank.
A hand fisted my hair and shoved me down into the racing current.