Chapter 1
"Maker," one of the scouts said. In the sudden silence -- broken only by the moans of the injured -- the words rang almost as loud as a shout. "She did it. She did it."
A green hole twisted in the sky, but it no longer roiled with the force of a storm. To Cassandra's Seeker-trained senses, the Veil felt weak, a thing of shreds and tatters hastily patched with mismatched thread, but it was there. The Fade no longer pressed on her awareness like sharp fingernails on a bruise, digging for blood.
"Not quite," Solas said, wearily, spitting blood from his mouth as he limped across the stony ground. "I fear it will take more power to seal the Breach completely. But I believe we have adequately proven the principle." A tilt of his head, to where Kara lay slumped, half-supported by Cassandra's arms. "We had best make sure she survives, for without her we have little hope of finishing this task."
On her knees in the dirt beside her fallen prisoner, Cassandra felt her faith settle back into place. There'd been a hollow and empty place inside her since the sky tore open, the nightmare opposite of a miracle. Losing Justinia to this disaster was a blow that she had hardly been able to reconcile with her faith in the Maker's ultimate beneficence, in the grace of Andraste's intercession. But now...
The elf's -- Kara's -- chest still rose and fell. Praise Andraste. They had -- Cassandra had -- treated the Dalish woman abominably, had accused her and threatened her and all but promised her execution, and instead of trying to plead or to bargain, the elf had lifted her chin and answered Cassandra's furious suspicion with a clear-eyed, unselfish resignation. It doesn't matter about me. I don't care if you think I did this. I'm your only suspect, I get it. And I'm an elf and a Dalish, and that's not in my favour either, is it? But right now I don't even care if you kill me for lack of anyone else to blame. In the face of that? It doesn't matter. I'll do what I can. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. However it ends. Lead and I'll follow, Right Hand.
The elf had not expected to survive. And instead of protesting, she'd looked at Cassandra with an ungrudging grin. Said It's been an honour with honest respect.
Her willing determination had killed Cassandra's ability to hold her in suspicion, leaving behind only the burn of shame. She owed the elf an apology. Not for the suspicion, that was natural enough, but for the discourtesy and lack of care that suspicion coupled with her temper had led her to.
Andraste brought you to us in our hour of need, I think, for we are still alive.
She wondered, briefly, if Leliana had come to the same conclusion. Cassandra shrugged to herself, putting the thought out of her mind -- it was a matter for later discussion -- and stood, heaving Kara's slender body up into a shoulder-carry. The elf was heavier than she expected -- or perhaps she was simply weary already. "Leliana, have we many wounded?"
The Left Hand rose from giving a mercy-stroke to one of the wounded whose spine showed through the ruin of his belly. "Only three who cannot walk. And five dead. Tailor --" a young man with Rivaini-dark skin and a thick Orlesian accent, who caught Leliana's gesture with a sharp nod "-- and his squad will carry them out. I suggest the rest of us go ahead: I want her," Leliana jerked her chin at Cassandra's burden, "somewhere safe as soon as possible." A frown. "Somewhere with a healer, but somewhere she can be carefully watched, too."
Ah. That answered Cassandra's earlier question.
Leliana's faith might run deep, but her suspicion ran deeper.
Waking up was unexpected.
Kara came back to herself by degrees, a dull blurry awakening that left her clawing her way towards consciousness like a drowning woman clawing for air. She wasn't dead. She knew that, because she hurt.
The pallet beneath her was straw, but covered in thick woollen blankets, and more wool blankets covered her body. A brazier's warmth took the dank edge off the air, but it smelled like a cell, damp stone and the faint odour of piss and dung.
So I'm still a prisoner.
Not shackled, though. It seemed she'd earned herself a slightly less rigorous confinement. She tested her range of motion as though stirring in her sleep: nothing restrained her wrists or ankles, though her ribs still ached and her shoulder throbbed with the deep pain of a healing bone-bruise, and a myriad of smaller cuts and scratches stung. Her left hand hurt like a healing burn, not the sick wrong pain of before. That was a deep relief.
She wasn't alone. Someone was humming softly, very close by.
"Ugh," Kara said. She meant to say What happened? but her tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of her mouth, and it took her far too long to peel her eyes open and fight her way to sitting up.
"You're awake!"
The torchlight and the brazier in the cell -- the same cell she'd woken in before -- revealed another elf to her now-open eyes. No vallaslin and faded livery: a city elf in someone's service, her young round face looking disarmingly harmless as she slipped from the stool she sat on to fumble with a waterskin. After a moment, she held out a full cup to Kara. "Here, you must be thirsty, you've been unconscious for over a day."
The water unstuck Kara's tongue enough for her to speak. "What happened?"
"The Breach stopped growing. They say you saved us." The girl tilted her head, her glance bright and curious but underlain with watchful caution. "It nearly killed you."
Maybe better if it had. Kara drained the cup, her stomach clenching as it realised its emptiness. The Chantry still needed someone to blame. She doubted they'd look very far for anyone else -- though she thought the Seeker might, to be fair, do her best -- when they had one of the People already in their hands. "So," she said, and tried to make her voice light. "Will there be a trial, then, or just an execution?"
"I don't know anything about that." The girl sat back on her heels. "I'd best let themselves know you're awake -- and see about getting you some proper food, since you're awake enough to take more than broth on a cloth."
But for a long moment she didn't move, watching Kara with assessing eyes, and Kara quirked her eyebrows. "You're one of her people, aren't you? Leliana's?"
"I am but a humble servant," the girl said, but there was an acknowledging irony in her tone. "I'll let themselves know you're awake. Meanwhile, try to rest."
The girl returned sooner than Kara expected, carrying a still-steaming bowl of stew and a hunk of fresh brown bread. And accompanied: Leliana entered the cell behind her, cloaked and cowled like a dangerous shadow, hands folded at her waist. Kara lifted her chin and met her eyes, cold and green in an unreadable face.
She didn't try to stand. Her muscles were weak, her body utterly weary. She'd had to lean against the wall to keep herself propped sitting up. It was all she could do to take the bowl from the girl -- she realised she didn't even know her name -- and cradle it in her lap without letting her shaky exhaustion overcome her.
"Leave us, Nialla," the human woman said, in her light Orlesian accent. "I want to speak to our Dalish friend, here, privately."
The silence stretched, after the cell door closed. Kara didn't flinch under Leliana's stare. At length, the other woman's lips twitched, faintly. "Perhaps you would care to eat, yes? You must regain your strength."
"Of course," Kara said, dryly. "I have to be healthy enough for you to put me to the question, don't I?"
"That --" Leliana shook her head, stepped a little closer. "Do you really think that?"
Kara managed a fractional shrug, fumbled the stew's spoon with her left hand. The mark on her palm looked more like a faint green scar now -- still disquieting, but its unnatural glow had become a far fainter thing than before. She succeeded in keeping her voice level. "Depends on whether or not you still think I was involved in creating the Breach, I guess. Or whether or not I'm more use to you as a scapegoat with a forced confession than otherwise, for that matter."
The stew tasted surprisingly good. Barley and thick chunks of carrot and onion swam in rich mutton broth. Now she'd made her point -- that she didn't trust Leliana, that she expected nothing in particular from her captors apart from pain -- there was no reason not to eat it. You want something from me, even if right now it's only to get more of my measure. Well, you'll have to show me at least part of your hand.
"That will not happen," Leliana said, quietly. She sighed, and squatted gracefully on her heels within an arm's reach of Kara's pallet, close enough that Kara could smell the dragonscale-and-leather scent of armour that clung to her. "Cassandra says you gave her your parole without prompting. She has very much become your partisan -- and she is not the only one, after what happened at the Breach. You stopped it, you know: though it is not yet gone, it no longer grows. What you did there saved us all, at least for now. Cassandra is more than half-convinced that the Maker sent you to us in our hour of need, and some of the soldiers are saying that it was Andraste behind you in the rift, that you are Her herald, come at her command." She made a subtle gesture with one long-fingered hand. "There are others, of course, who see things differently -- you're in this cell as much for your protection as for your confinement, since they may well attempt to take matters into their own hands. But no. I am not -- we are not -- about to torture you." A delicate pause. "But I do have questions, and it would be preferable if you were able to answer them."
Protection. Kara had been steadily working through the stew, despite her burning fatigue. Her exhaustion made parsing Leliana's words for the things the other woman didn't say difficult, but... Leliana had just told her, she thought, that the Right Hand of the Divine was on her side. For whatever good that might do her if Leliana was set against her. The Left Hand of the Divine? If there was a Right Hand, it made sense that there should be a Left. The Seeker had addressed her as an equal, and she had contradicted Brother Angry with We serve the Divine when he claimed the Seeker was supposed to serve the Chantry. And left, for humans, was the sinister direction, the darker aspect.
A balanced pair to serve the White Divine, then, one martial and straightforward, the other... not.
Kara shook herself mentally, trying to cast off her weariness. If her surmise was true, dealing with Leliana while weak and half-addled with fatigue was a terrible idea. Probably why she's here right now. Practical. Advantage to her. "I still don't remember anything about what happened with the explosion at the Temple, you know. I can't give you answers I don't have."
"That much I will accept." Leliana cocked her head. Unsaid, beneath her words: for now. "But I do wish to know who you are, and where you come from, and what you were doing at the Conclave."
The considering light in her blue-green eyes made Kara feel... cold. And alone, and very, very vulnerable. She let herself sag, sliding sideways: she was to tired to think properly, and the bare pretence of strength would hardly fool a child, much less a woman like this one. "My name is Kara. My clan --" The gears of her mind felt rusty, but she knew where her duty lay. She was elvhen, and her first duty was to the People. Not to herself. She drew in a breath, grasping after the last of her strength, and fought for calm. "You don't need them. Whatever you say, whatever your people say about me, we both know you still need someone to blame." It took the last of her energy to met Leliana's stare. She could feel her tongue slurring in her mouth. She couldn't find the words, the common tongue twisting away from her as it hadn't in years. "Tel mavhen. Ne banal das'sala ma vhen. Not m'people. Me. Jus' me."
She was on her back on the blankets again, with no awareness of how she got there, Leliana's face looming over her. "Hush," the other woman said, oddly gentle, when Kara tried to struggle back up from the drowning waves of exhaustion. "Rest. I will return when you're stronger."
And that wasn't a comfort, but the darkness of unconsciousness claimed Kara again before she could hear anything else that Leliana said.