Chapter 3
In the two days since the elf -- since Kara -- had closed the Breach, Cassandra had not had time to dwell on her mistakes. Over two hundred of Cullen's recruits had died in the fighting since the Conclave, with twice as many walking wounded and another hundred-some so badly injured they might not recover, or would be maimed if they did. Between her own body's need for sleep and the need for skilled hands to help -- with the wounded, with training, with improving the hasty fortifications thrown up around Haven -- she would have been kept busy enough. But discussions of what they should do next also occupied her time and attention, and she found it hard to restrain her frustration with Leliana's worries for the future.
Or with Roderick, for that matter.
They would declare the Inquisition. It had been Justinia's intent, and it still made the most sense. They had no leader. They would find a leader. Or make do. The Breach must be healed, the war between the templars and mages brought to an end, the Chantry reformed of the injustice that corrupted its ranks.
They would need Kara to close the rifts that Leliana's agents had reported from the lowlands. To seal the Breach more permanently. Cassandra had faith that it would be possible. In the end, justice would prevail. She held a verse from the Canticle of Exaltations before her like a shield, used it like a goad to drive herself on from her doubt.
Remember the fire. You must pass
Through it alone to be forged anew.
This was the fire. They would be forged anew. The Maker had sent them a sign, in the person of the elf. They could rise to this challenge. They could do what was needed, though the way might be hard and full of suffering. Andraste had sent them a herald.
Though Roderick and a dismayingly large proportion of the inhabitants of Haven still believed the elf had killed the Divine. Leliana told her that a maelstrom of competing rumours were already on their way down into the valleys, spurring fresh conflict.
She had been wrong about Kara. Cassandra disliked being wrong. It was like an itch under her skin. It made her second-guess herself. If she had been wrong then, what was to say she was right now?
Ugh.
And she really did not enjoy it when Roderick cornered her to harangue her about "electing a new Divine" and "transporting the prisoner to Val Royeaux for trial," which he had done twice already. She succeeded in biting her tongue and hearing him out, though only by reciting the Canticle of Trials to herself. He was a glorified clerk, but he was an influential clerk, and antagonising him would only make matters worse.
But her hold on her temper was growing very thin.
The second time Kara awoke, it was with far less exhaustion and far greater strength. She felt the difference as she surfaced to consciousness: not a slow, blurry awakening this time, but a less painful transition. Her aches were dimmer -- to judge from how different she felt, someone had used, or used more, healing magic on her as she slept.
Her left hand still throbbed. She made an experimental fist. Pain, but not like before, and it didn't change when she worked her fingers through their full range of motion, clenched them tight: no effect on the strength of her grip. Whatever strange magic had caused the mark, it didn't act like a proper wound.
Nothing she could do about that right now, though.
The city elf from before -- Kara groped after her name, heard once in the fog of exhaustion: Nuala? Nian? Nialla, that was it -- was present once again. The girl checked her over with a professional eye and handed her a mug of bone broth from a pot kept warming over the brazier. "I'll be back with proper food. And wash-water and clean clothes: I hear the Seeker wants to talk to you, and I think you'll feel better if you can face her on more level terms, aye?"
"Helpful of you." The bone broth tasted mostly of salt and grease. And delicious, which meant she really needed it. She tried not to eye Nialla with too much suspicion, but the younger elf was one of Leliana's people. There would be reasons behind her help.
Four years in Tevinter had taught her any number of lessons. The ones that left her looking for the hidden price in any offer of help hadn't even resulted in all that many visible scars. But it meant at least she was less likely to be taken unawares.
"I think you need all the help you can get," Nialla said bluntly. "Especially with Seeker Pentaghast. Drink the rest of that broth, and there's water in the skin on the hook."
The elf left through the heavy barred door. Kara heard no bolts being shot or lock tumblers falling, so maybe she wasn't quite as much a prisoner as she'd thought -- although she had caught a glimpse of torchlight reflecting from an armed guard's helm in the passage beyond. Best, then, to make no assumptions.
She drank more bone broth and filled her mug, twice, with water before she acknowledged that she was avoiding looking at her hand. Cowardice, but the mark made her shudder. It was less bright than it had been before, an uneven softly-glowing brand across her palm and part of her thumb. She thought she could see skin beneath it, now, which was disturbing and reassuring in equal measure.
It wasn't a brand like the Tevinter house-mark that had disfigured her shoulder until clan Lavellan had helped her scar it over: she had a little too much experience with healing burns, and this was nothing like it. Magic shit, shit from the Beyond. Part of her, now.
But how the fuck had it happened to her? Now that she knew it was there, the gap in her memory felt like a missing tooth, the gum still raw.
Another important question: the bald vallaslin-less not-a-Keeper. Solas. Pride. He knew something about the mark. Enough to keep it from killing her, at least. He knew something about the rifts, about the Breach. Too much, perhaps?
She'd been a slave in Tevinter, but a relatively... privileged wasn't exactly the word, all things considered, but she'd lived in the middle of a magister's household, and her tasks had kept her in close proximity with an altus. Livia Adorni -- she drew away from dwelling on the memories, trying to concentrate on the knowledge rather than the emotions tangled up with it. Kara had survived those years by paying attention.
There were elves among the mages of the Imperium: never many, and never with any official rank. An elf couldn't be an altus, after all. But that didn't mean an elf who was also a mage couldn't be a magister's right hand, or even the voice in the shadows that moved a magister as a hand moves a glove. She'd heard whispers about them, even seen an elf apprentice once. The worst kind of flat-ear, to betray everything about their own people for the chance at power and personal safety.
She might have taken that trade, if it had been offered to her. She might have come close.
The Magisterium liked its games. Some of them were ambitious beyond any sane limits, caught up in a vision of the past that they wanted to restore. This could be one of their manoeuvres, gone horribly wrong or stupidly half-cocked. It wasn't beyond reason that young men and women who half-idolised the magisters who'd attempted the Golden City, half-sneered at them for failing, might try something grandly ambitious and ridiculously dangerous, a thumb in the eye to all of the south. Solas might be a Tevinter agent, either honestly trying to fix what was broken or with his eye out for the main chance.
"Shit," Kara muttered. Paranoia, maybe. Prideful had saved her life, by all accounts. But it twisted like a worm in her gut, and now she'd entertained the thought, she knew the suspicion wouldn't leave her.
Much like the nebulous, and wrong, absolutely wrong fear that she had not escaped Tevinter, not really. That they'd done something to her there that she could not recall, in one of the days lost to a haze of pain, that she'd been made into a weapon, or a trap, to be triggered at the right moment. That this was in fact really her fault, or at least her responsibility.
Not true. Not true. It cannot be true.
Thinking too deeply about it would drive her mad. But she could not afford to trust herself, not wholly. Not when she couldn't be sure.
Nialla returned with a bowl of honey-sweetened porridge -- honey, in the Frostbacks at this season! -- a cloth and a bucket of water that was warmer than freezing, and clothing that wasn't rank and crusty with old sweat. Kara ate the porridge, stripped, and washed herself gratefully. "Answer me a question?" she said to Nialla, when the other elf leaned against the door and said nothing. "Who's actually in charge here right now?"
"Pick a hard one, why don't you?" Nialla sounded wry and a little worried. "It's all a bit confused. Sister Nightingale and the Seeker are closest, and Commander Cullen answers to them. Though Chancellor Roderick is the seniormost out of the remaining Chantry personnel, and he's trying rather hard to convince everyone else that if he's not in charge, it's only because his rightful position has been usurped."
"I'm surprised you're telling me this." Her new clothes -- a linen undertunic, a woollen overtunic in pine-leaf green, and felt-lined homespun trousers, with an appropriate breastband and socks, may Nialla have a thousand joys, clean warm socks -- were good quality. Not quite warm enough for the weather, not without several more layers, but better than she'd expected to receive.
Nialla shrugged. "It's not a secret. I'm supposed to take you to the Seeker now, actually, if you're strong enough to walk -- which it looks like you are. But if you think you're not, she'll come to you before evening. Neither she nor the Nightingale want you overdoing it."
"Huh." Someone had cleaned her own boots, but nothing would get some of the stains out of the leather. She didn't want to ask what the butcher's bill for all the excitement had been. More things for Brother Angry to blame me for. "You may as well bring me to the Seeker, then." See how far her freedom of movement extended. See if the Nightingale was testing her. Kara kept her grimace from her face. "I wouldn't want to keep her waiting."
There was a guard in the passageway outside the cell. He fell in behind Kara as Nialla led her up into the chantry proper, to where light lanced through high glass windows onto a bustle of activity. Activity that came to a halt when Kara emerged into view.
Some of the humans stared outright. Some merely slowed in what they were doing -- it looked as though the chantry hall had been turned into a makeshift infirmary for walking wounded -- and eyed her sidelong. Hope in some faces. Suspicion in just as many others. Kara didn't flinch, following Nialla through the rising susurrus of whispers.
Another passageway, this one an annexe off the main chamber, and deserted save for a pair of guards. And a set of raised voices, only slightly muffled by the heavy door at the passageway's end.
"--for all you know, she intended it this way!"
"I do not believe that."
Brother Angry, and Cassandra Pentaghast.
"Shit," Nialla said, quietly. "I didn't think the chancellor'd be here already." She flashed a glance over her shoulder at Kara, half-uncertain. "You want to hide behind a tapestry until he leaves?"
"That is not for you to decide." A marked increase in volume now, with a wavering edge. "Your duty is to serve the Chantry."
If I flinch from Brother Angry, what else will I flinch from? It's not like his desire to see me executed seems likely to just go away. "No," Kara said, over the sound of the Right Hand of the Divine declaring her intent to serve principles -- Chantry principles, whatever the blighted shit that meant. "May as well get it over with."
Nialla shrugged, as if to say, Your funeral, and hammered on the heavy wooden door.
"Maker preserve us, what is it now? Come!"
Kara steeled herself, and let Nialla show her in.