Chapter VII
Murky green water crashed beneath my feet and against the pillars that held up the docks. I peered through the cracks between the planks, watched the sea foam curl with the waves and beckon to me like little fingers.
Cool skin grazed against mine, and I inhaled a rush of crisp sea air. “Isana?” Harding murmured, “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said. The pier bustled with merchants, passengers, seamen and dockworkers. Bells and birds filled the gaps between the shouts and the steady murmur of early morning commute. “I’m fine.”
The boat captain, a dark-haired, bearded ‘Havener appraised Varric with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m not taking passengers.”
“Right!” Varric snapped his fingers, “So I heard! But I can pay, name your price.”
“I haul cargo, not dwarves.”
“Sure. I get it. But, us Marchers, we gotta stick together, right? Help us out.”
The Captain pushed past us, his broad shadow shielding us from the sun. I stumbled into a crate to jump out of his way, and Harding pulled me back up again. He didn’t pay a passing glance.
“You and your family will have to find passage elsewhere.”
“My family?” Confusion then realisation passed over Varric’s features. A sinking sensation settled in my gut as he pursued the Captain across the pier. “Fine! You seem like an honest guy, so I’ll be honest with you. It’s urgent. My––” he flexed his fingers against his sides and inhaled, “––my girls, their mother, she’s sick. Shit, the healer said she might not make it through the spring, so you understand why I…”
Buzzing. The ocean waves. Varric’s hands waving as he talked, the Captain’s chin jutting out as he listened; his gaze passed over us, then Varric, then the coinpurse clutched in Varric’s fist. The best lies were the ones that were true.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, the Captain was gone and Varric gesticulated with his fist a celebratory hurrah.
“Tough nut to crack, but a good guilt trip usually works if you got the coin to back it up. We’re damned lucky though. He’s leaving in an hour.”
A liar. A bullshitter. No one who knew him would believe him anyway, and anyone who didn’t wouldn’t care. Harding didn’t react––it was a lie, after all, because that was what he did, and what reason would she have to believe otherwise?
And yet. And yet.
“Your ‘girls’?” Harding teased. “Maybe that works for you and Isana, but I look nothing like you!”
“Ha! As if a human could tell the difference.”
This game of pretense––the proverbial tip-toeing––Ancestors, I was so tired. It would have been easier had she not come, or better yet, if I had just made the damned journey alone. If that meant drowning in that river, then…
I slumped against a crate and tucked my chin to my chest.
“There a stable nearby?” Varric looked around. “Figure we should leave the ponies behind, pick ‘em up again on the way back.”
“I saw one. I’ll run ahead and ask.”
“Yeah. Go ahead. We’ll get the ponies.”
Alone with me on the pier, Varric gnawed on his bottom lip. He didn’t fetch the ponies. He didn’t move at all. Several times he began to speak, and then faltered, until he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Listen…”
I kicked the air with my feet.
“Listen,” he said. “At least we got passage now. Yeah?”
“Is that your idea of an apology?”
He glared out at the sea. Somewhere over all that water was Kirkwall, hunched and waiting, but that wasn’t what he was searching for as he scanned the horizon.
“I don’t get it.”
“Would you like step-by-step instructions?”
“No, I meant,” he gestured to me, then to himself, then at the air in a wide motion that gave up halfway through. “I don’t get it. Why is this bad?”
“What?”
“You know what.” His arms fell back to his sides. “The hell are you so afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Ashamed, then. Shit, I––I know I’m rough to look at, but that’s not my fault.”
I stepped back onto a plank that creaked beneath me. I struggled to wrangle my expression before it could betray me. “You think that’s what this is about?”
“Maker’s breath, you know what I meant.”
“I’m going to find Harding.”
“Isana––”
“I’ll see you at the stables.”
When we returned to the pier, Bull and his mercenary company were there, too. Even surrounded by dockworkers and crates, his silhouette was unmistakable in the sun, and when he saw us, he turned into the shade.
“Here to see us off, Tiny?” Varric’s jovial tone didn’t match his expression.
“Nah. We got our own work to do down here. You heading out?”
“Eh, soon. Still waiting on the Captain, and… hoping he doesn’t leave us behind.” He seemed less confident than before.
“Let me know when you’re about to leave. Need to talk to you before you go.”
“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”
He pushed past Bull to where the mercenaries––a varied group in size, shape, and race––inspected a tower of crates with red, painted signets. A dwarf lifted and tilted small chests, boxes, things no larger than his head. Varric watched him with a feigned interest, an excuse to ignore Bull’s lingering gaze on the back of his head.
A human man joined Bull from his right, careful to be in his line of sight. I recognised him from The Herald’s Rest; shorter up close, only a head taller than Harding. He addressed her and ignored me.
“How was the trip? Heard there was some trouble.”
“Oh, you know,” Harding shrugged, “we’re here now, right?”
He nodded, then grinned up at Bull, who was too distracted by his mercenaries to bother returning it. “Almost thought the Chief wasn’t going to show. Won’t tell us why the Inquisitor sent him off with Varric.”
“That’s between me and her, Krem.”
“Whatever you say, Chief. Anyway. Good to see you. Nice reprieve from looking after these idiots.” He gestured behind him to the bustling group. Varric bent down to thumb at a dilapidated crate.
“What are you doing?” Harding asked, squinting up with the sun in her eyes.
“Right now? Looking for contraband. There’s rumours of smugglers operating just outside the border. Chantry Sister thought she saw something funny, so now the Spymaster has us fishing out Venatori.” He looked down at a line of closeby fish traps, then back at us. “Literally.”
“Maker. Venatori, out here? Why?”
“Don’t know. We’re trying to find out. And maybe kill a few cultists too. You’re going to Kirkwall, right? Shame I can’t tag along. Always wanted to see it.”
Content in being ignored, I snuck away to watch the mercenaries and the crates. They opened them with knives, swords, axes––shook the small boxes next to their ears, and stacked sorted crates into a separate pile. It seemed like mostly sugar, wheat, fish in barrels to be carted inland. I liked to watch and draw the fisherman in Kirkwall, but rarely had the patience to try it myself.
“You’re in the way.” a gruff, gravelly voice rumbled near my ear. A dwarf; moustached, hooded, his raised eyebrow judging my loitering. I imagined this was Rocky. He reminded me of Cabot. I missed Cabot.
“I was just watching.”
“Well. Watch over there.”
I stepped to the side. He’d a chest in his hands, decorated in little red sparkling gems; a small thing, and familiar, but I couldn’t place how.
“What are you looking for?” I asked him, as he bent down to inspect its lock. “Specifically.”
“Contraband.”
“Specifically, I said.”
“Illegal shit. Who are you?”
“I’m with Varric.”
He squinted up at me, and the aggression melted away. “Oh. Alright. I’m looking for artefacts. Not the typical run of the mill enchanted quill, but, you know, the big exploding types. Or lyrium. Or exploding lyrium.”
“Lots to do with explosives, then.”
“It’s my speciality.”
He dragged a finger over the edge of the chest, then lifted the dangling lock to squint into the keyhole. Whatever he saw there, he didn’t like, and grumbled various curses under his breath.
“I catch your name?” He lifted the chest and rested it on a crate. He worked deftly to pick the lock, one ear to the chest, the other facing me.
“You didn’t.”
“Mysterious. I respect that. I’ll call you Red.”
I blinked. “What? Why?”
“You prefer Carrot?”
“No! That’s awful! You’re worse than Varric.”
He smiled under his moustache. It didn’t last long. Something clicked, he cursed loudly, and withdrew his lockpicks. They were old, weathered, and he stared at them for a long moment, then discarded them into a pocket.
“Fuck it.” He took out a dull-edged dagger, but instead of using the blade, he angled the hilt and battered it, repeatedly, against the lock until it broke open and clattered to the pier with a metallic clunk. “Not supposed to do that. Don’t tell the Chief.”
I peered at the chest from over his shoulder, my hands folded over my stomach. With tense knuckles he gripped the lid, and with some force, straining, and brute strength, forced it open.
“Ow! Fuck!” Rocky withdrew a bleeding finger and sucked on it. “Stupid thing!”
Inside were red crystals, the same that decorate the edges, as though to advertise its insides. The sun reflected in their glimmering sharp edges and turned its warmth onto my skin.
A headache formed in the base of my temples, and my ears rang with sudden tinnitus, a long, sad note that I felt deep in the recesses of my skull.
He blinked, blinked again, shook his head, then slammed the lid shut with a snap. “Looks fine.”
“Whoever owns those must be very rich.” My throat dry, I uncorked and sipped from my waterskin.
“These ones are going down South. Pro’lly some noble woman in some fancy estate somewhere.”
“You may have to replace the lock…”
He grumbled under his breath and hauled it to the steadily growing pile. From a distance, Varric watched him go with arms stiffly at his sides. I rubbed at my forehead with the palm of my hand.
He approached me with a slight hesitance. “You good?”
“Headache.”
“Water?”
I took another sip.
He nodded. “Good. Just spotted the Captain, so… you ready to go?”
Was I? I wasn’t sure. Three days from now, I would be in Kirkwall again, those towering buildings looming over me, the smell of the harbour beneath the smog.
Mother’s house, my home. Empty.
“Are you?” I asked instead.
He hesitated. I wasn’t expecting that, somehow, but maybe I should have.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”
The Captain’s eye followed us with passing interest as we boarded in a steady line. Varric jumped on last, still sour-faced, but less than he was just moments ago when Bull pulled him to the side and bent down to mutter close to his ear.
An apology, maybe. I meant to ask, but something stopped me, so instead I kept my mouth shut. Varric glanced up at the Captain towering over us.
“Just you, huh? No crew or anything?”
“That’s none of your concern, dwarf.”
“You know, you remind me of this other guy I knew.” Varric turned away, then in a muttered aside to Harding, “He was just as boring.”
I stared out over the pier, at Bull and his mercenaries, and at Rocky, pale-faced and nursing his finger. As Jader faded slowly into the distance, a knot tightened in my throat, and did not loosen.
“Hope you don’t get seasick, Varric,” Harding teased, when the Captain was beyond earshot, and Jader was barely a silhouette.
“Me? Nah. Us coastals don’t get seasick. Right? Isana?”
I didn’t reply. He cleared his throat.
“Anyway. I’ll check with the Captain ‘n see where we’re sleeping.”
The book in my hands was old and worn, stained with coffee and faded with age. Many pages were dog-eared, some loose-leafed from being torn from the binding, whether by accident or on purpose, I wasn’t sure. I turned it gently in my hands, cautious to keep it all together, and with heavy eyes, stared at Varric’s portrait.
I remembered when The Tale was published, barely nineteen and taking the long winding path around the rubble in Lowtown. If one quarter of the city loved it, the other three knew no bounds for their seething hatred, and my mother included. But for her, it wasn’t because of Hawke, it was because of him.
His face, and his eyes, on every corner market stall.
(With one finger jutted at the dwarven ladies in his portrait, she spat with teeth bared, “How much do you think he paid those whores?”
I had no answer for her, so I stayed silent.)
I lifted the cover slowly. Inside it a woman’s name was scrawled in spindly, haphazard letters. Whomever owned the book, she was long gone now, and even if I could return it to her, I doubted she left it behind without good reason. I closed it again, just as a knock came on the door, and I hid it under my pack.
Varric poked his head into the room. Three hammocks all swayed against each other, with barely enough room left for an old, empty chest of drawers. A small round window allowed in a modicum of sunlight, and centred on the ceiling, there was a stray, flickering lantern.
“I’ve slept in worse. I guess.”
The ship rocked and creaked beneath our feet. On the floor, I was small and pitiful. Varric stood over me like the largest thing in the world.
“Hey,” he said.
I pulled my blanket up to my chin. It didn’t help to shield me from the chill of the lower deck. “Hello.”
He rapped his fingers against the doorframe. “Harding and I are gonna play some Wicked Grace. If you’re interested.”
“I don’t gamble.”
“Right. So you’ve said.”
He lingered in the doorway with clearly more to say. I opened my sketchbook in hopes he would leave me alone.
He didn’t.
“You don’t have to play,” he said. “You can just sit and talk. Have a drink?”
“I just want some quiet.”
“We can be quiet.”
“Harding can, maybe…”
Varric dropped his hand from the doorframe. With nothing to do with it now, he cradled it in his other one.
“Kid––”
“I told you not to call me that.”
He shut the door behind him. The still air was stuffy, salty on the tongue. Varric made to one of the hammocks and slumped into itlike a swing from a tree, then dragged his hand over his face.
“I don’t know what you’ve been through,” he said, “I know I can’t fix that shit, but I wanna make up for it. I’m trying to.”
I glared at the floor, the black nails in the wood planks, one of them sticking out on an angle. “You had your chance.”
“I didn’t know.” He swallowed loudly. “I’m a liar ‘n a fraud, I get it. But I swear to the damn Maker, I had no––”
“Stop bullshitting me!” I snapped my sketchbook shut with a harsh clap. “She wrote for years, you abandoned her!”
“There weren’t any letters!”
I hurled my book at his head. It missed by inches and slammed into the wall behind, then clattered to the ground on a scribbled-out page. He stared at it, his eyes wide, one hand still protecting his head.
He stood and stepped over it. “You can yell and scream about it all you want. Doesn’t change shit.”
“Fuck you.”
“I would’ve helped.” He breathed in and out with a waver. “Whatever you needed.”
“Leave me alone!”
The door slammed behind him. The ship rocked back and forth. The lantern swayed and cast long, dark shadows against the walls, my own a blur as I wrenched The Tale from beneath my pack, scrambled to my feet, unclasped the little round window and shoved it open. Freezing winds hit my face, then my hand as I shoved it through.
The book dangled above the water. The wind threatened to tear it from my iron grip. Half a minute passed, then half a minute more––I stared at it; the book, my hand, my pale white knuckles; the sky above me with darkened clouds, and the heaving waves below that crashed against the hull.
His eyes stared back at me.
Always there, always gleaming. In the books, in the mirrors, in the dark of mother’s eyes and in the reflection of her blood in the street. Look at him, girl. Look at the wretched coward you came from and watch him run.
Words flickered in my vision as pages flapped in the wind, violently back and forth. Half-formed sentences, the beginnings and endings of long paragraphs, his words immortalised on parchment and bound in leather. The loose pages ripped free and flew into the wind.
Mother’s face flashed into my mind, the shape of her lips that sneered, the teeth underneath that glinted in the fire like a mabari, her eyes shining with fear, rage, and abandonment; his book, slowly kindling the flame.
I imagined myself lit by the same fire, with the same teeth, and the same eyes––and with a stuttering breath, wrenched my arm back inside again.
The wind beat against the window. The hinges creaked and whined. I clutched the book to my chest, against my heart, and with my fingers splayed against its cover, pushed a breath through my teeth.
I had huddled up inside my hammock by the time Varric and Harding returned. It was too early to be tired, too late for the dinner I hadn’t eaten, and suspected neither had they.
They weren’t drunk, but I did smell alcohol.
“Remind me next time, Harding, that betting against you is hopeless.”
She giggled softly. “I try to warn you, and you never listen.”
“I gotta win back my dignity somehow.” Footsteps crept close to my hammock, then stopped; Varric’s shadow cast over my eyelids. “She asleep?” he murmured.
“Think so. I hope she feels better tomorrow.”
A brief pause. The shadow bent down, sighed, and plucked something from the floor. My sketchbook. “Yeah, yeah, me too. Hey, uh… question.”
“Mm?”
He whispered now, and his voice grew distant again. “That blanket she has. You recognise the patterns at all? You mentioned your mother makes ‘em…”
“Well, yeah, it’s dwarven, right? Why?”
“Ah. Nothing. Just curious.”
My blanket? Dwarven patterns? That couldn’t be right. It was Hawke’s. What did Varric care, anyway?
There was a comfortable quiet as they dressed to their nightclothes, then,
“Varric…”
“Yeah?”
“I’m kinda worried about her.”
“She’s tough. And stubborn. She’ll be fine.”
There was a rustle of fabric and a quick breath. “Varric…”
“...Yeah?”
“Please don’t take this wrong.”
The floorboards creaked with a few heavy steps. “There something up?”
“No, no, just…” Harding hesitated. “She’s real young. You know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And it seems, maybe… like there’s something going on?”
A pause. “What d’you mean?”
“You and Isana.”
I dug my face further beneath my blanket, the fabric and the warmth barely a shield from the coldness that settled, suddenly, over the room.
Varric’s heavy breaths filled the silence, which he broke with small hesitation. “The hell are you saying?”
A boot squeaked against the floor. “Don’t be mad.”
Varric’s voice was pained and rasped, like a blade had been taken to the insides of his throat. “You think I’m––what? Taking advantage of her?”
“No! Maker. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“You think I would––”
“No.” A breath. “But––”
“Andraste’s fucking ass.”
“I’m sorry.”
I hardly dared to breathe. Three heavy thuds thumped against the floor, then a lighter one, of a forehead hitting the wall and staying there.
Varric mumbled against the wood. “Shit.”
“I know you’re not hurting her. That’s not what I’m saying. But you’re both so secretive, and I don’t know. I assumed. I’m sorry.”
He made a disgusted, gargled noise in the back of his throat. “We’re not… a ‘thing’.”
“Okay.”
“I’m helping her. I’m protecting her. She’s––”
He didn’t tell her. For one long, horrific moment, I feared that he would. Instead, the sentence trailed away, and his boots slid against the wood as he faced her again.
“Varric?” she urged.
He exhaled. “Think I’m ready to lie down.”
“Mm… right. Yes, me too.”
They changed and retired, in silence, to the rocking hammocks beside me, and with my clenching fist held against my throat, a million thoughts in my head all coalesced at once into, I have to fix this.
It began to rain sometime in the night. I woke to the light battering of droplets against the window, and a small puddle of blood in my chemise. I lay there for a moment, rocking in silence, my eyes half-lidded. The pains hadn’t started yet, but they would soon.
Harding stirred when I stood from the hammock.
“ ‘Sana?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Do you know where there’s a, a washbasin?”
“There’s prob’ly one somewhere.”
Somewhere wasn’t quite good enough. I whispered in case Varric was awake, but curled up as he was, his fists tucked under his chin, I doubted it.
“I’m bleeding.”
Suddenly more awake, she climbed out of her hammock. “You have rags?”
“Yes, but…”
“I’ll help you look.”
The ship was a winding mess of corridors, small rooms, cupboards. It wasn’t large, but it was cramped, and most corners turned led to a deadend of empty crates.
“I lost track of time,” I sniffled, “I completely forgot, and now my clothes––”
“We can wash it. Don’t worry.”
Harding shoved through a heavy door and stumbled into a jungle of crates and chests. I turned to go, but stopped. A chest glinted in my periphery.
“I recognise that. From the docks.”
She followed my finger. “Looks like a lyrium chest. Huh.”
“Is it? The other one was more decorated.”
“Was it?”
“Mm-hm, it had these little––”
“What are you doing?”
I yelped. Harding spun on her heel. The Captain breathed down on me, his knee grazing my chemise with how close he stood, and I had to crane my neck to meet his dark eyes. When did he get there? Why didn’t I hear him?
I choked on the air. Words refused to leave my tongue. Harding pulled me back by my sleeve and I stumbled into her.
“We got lost,” she said, “is there a washbasin? A tub?”
The Captain’s breath smelled of beer and brine. He pointed with his thumb to his left, down the hall. “That way.”
“Great! Thanks! Isana. Let’s go.”
I made no effort to fight her as she dragged me away, and we left the Captain with the crates, swaying on his spot.