Chapter 4
Five humans in a stone chamber large enough to hold them and still have room for a wide table strewn with papers. Green-tinged daylight fell through one high, thick-glassed window, but yellow lamplight provided most of the illumination, supplemented by a handful of candles: it glittered orange from the gleaming armour of the two templars who stood guard at the door, and brought out reddish highlights in Cassandra Pentaghast's short dark hair where she leant on the table, beside a familiar cowled figure -- Leliana, her arms crossed, features impassive. Their body language united them in opposition to the red-robed chancellor -- Roderick, frustration evident on his features and in the tight set of his shoulders. Behind him, a wall hung with tapestries so age-darkened that their original subjects could not be made out.
Kara had a brief moment to take in the tableau. Only a moment, for as soon as he saw who entered, Roderick's expression soured to the consistency of vitriol. "Chain her! I want her prepared for travel to the capital for trial!"
The templars didn't exactly leap to do Brother Angry's bidding. Kara lifted her chin and waited. If they chained her for a trial, well. She'd expected no better.
"Disregard that." Cassandra straightened, her cool glance falling on the templars. "And leave us."
Warmth -- not quite relief -- stirred in Kara's stomach. But fear, too. Alone among humans, and she didn't know if she was herself. Her own. If the green mark was a trap.
"You walk a dangerous line, Seeker," Roderick said, and Kara hated that she agreed with him even a little.
"The Breach, Chancellor. It is stable, but it is still a threat, and I will not ignore it."
Ah. She could understand if the Seeker saw her as a tool. A useful one, not to be destroyed untimely, but a tool nonetheless. That, at least, made sense. But... "Not that I particularly want to agree with Brother Angry here" -- Kara held up her green-glowing hand, and watched Roderick flinch -- "but there's a hole in the bloody sky, Seeker, and none of us know how the blighted shit I got this thing. Not even me. Keeping me under guard is only sensible, under the circumstances."
"You truly believe that?" Leliana, voice bland, eyes all calculation.
Kara shrugged, cold inside. "It doesn't matter what I believe. You don't need to put a pretty face on it, Sister. While the Breach remains, I'm useful to you alive. When I stop being useful to you, your chancellor there will likely have his way with some mockery of a trial. Even if you accept my word for my ignorance -- even if you accept my innocence, or my parole -- this shit on my hand is strange and possibly dangerous, and based on what your colleagues told me on our way to the Temple, maybe only way to solve that fucking great problem in the sky. I won't withhold my co-operation in working to close the Breach because you decide to take precautions that I'd take, in your place." She set her jaw, watching Leliana's unchanging expression. "I accept I'm your prisoner, Left Hand. Do me the courtesy of not pretending otherwise, and I'll do you the courtesy of being a polite one."
She found herself breathing hard, her hands fisted at her sides, and clasped them together behind her back. No one could see them tremble, there. Shit, she didn't want to die. She didn't want to spend her last days -- or weeks -- as a prisoner among these Chantry folk, waiting for them to tire of her and consign her to Roderick's doubtless untender mercies. She'd only stopped waking in nightmare sweat from dreams of Tevinter in the last half-season. But it didn't matter. It couldn't be allowed to matter. She had a duty to the People, who lived in the world beneath the sky.
We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.
But she had submitted to... much, before, when the only thing she could win from it was to breathe another day. Should she do less now?
"So polite," Leliana murmured, lightly ironic. "Well, Chancellor?"
"She is still a suspect!"
"Not," Cassandra said, flat and glaring, "to me."
"Ah, Chancellor." Leliana's voice chilled Kara's bones. "Someone was behind the explosion at the Conclave. Someone Most Holy did not expect. Perhaps they died with the others. Or perhaps they have allies," a weighted syllable, "who yet live."
"You suspect me?" Roderick's affront came near a shout.
"You and many others." Quiet, casual menace.
"But not this one?" Brother Angry flapped his hand at Kara. "This --"
"I heard the voices in the Temple," Cassandra said, and her voice was tight with angry grief. "The Divine called to her for help. Chancellor --"
"So her survival, that thing on her hand, all coincidence? Andraste's holy grace, I never thought the pair of you could be naive before this!"
"Not coincidence." Cassandra's eyes were dark and clear and frighteningly certain. "Providence. The Maker sent her to us in our darkest hour."
Providence. Kara snorted. "You've changed your tune since we first met, Seeker. Now I'm innocent and sent by your Maker?"
"I was wrong about you." Cassandra's gaze met hers, steady and uncompromising. "Perhaps I am wrong still, or again. I will not, however, pretend you were not exactly what we needed, when we needed it."
"You realise I'm an elf, right? Dalish? Your Maker is no business of mine." Clever, Kara. Antagonise one of the few people who might be your ally. And don't forget she's a force of nature on the battlefield, too. She bit her tongue. She should know better. She did know better, but years in Tevinter hadn't broken her entirely of the instinct that channelled fear into fight.
"I have not forgotten. The Maker does as He wills. Whether or not you believe, I do."
Lamplight softened the hard edges of Cassandra's sharp-planed features, but nothing could have made them soft. Kara exhaled, lowering her gaze in deliberate submission. The woman had treated her better than she'd expected in their brief acquaintance, but there was no point in provoking the anger that simmered under her tightly-controlled exterior. "Forgive me, Seeker. I meant no disrespect."
Cassandra huffed. Leliana laid a gentling hand on her arm, the gesture one of long familiarity. "Providence or no," she said, her tone unreadable. "The Breach remains." Her glance rested on Kara, still with that clockmaker's look, as though she wanted to peel off Kara's skin and investigate the mechanisms beneath. "And your mark is still our only hope of closing it."
Roderick had been silent up until now, quiet -- perhaps even thoughtful -- in the wake of Cassandra's quelling faith. But Leliana's words broke his stillness. "This is not for you to decide, Leliana! You do not have the right to act for the Chantry --"
Cassandra seized a large parchment from a high shelf and spread it on the table. The sweep of her arm dislodged a heavy book, and the thud of its fall stopped Roderick's words. Her words were level, controlled, almost quiet. "You know what this is, Chancellor?"
Dense lettering in an ornate Orlesian hand covered the creamy surface, save at the very bottom. There, below a plain signature that Kara squinted to read -- Justinia V, by the Grace of the Maker Divine of His Chantry -- three seals in purple, white and gold weighted the parchment: the Chantry's sunburst; a seal akin to the sunburst-and-eye that decorated the Seeker's surcoat, but with a sword behind the eye; and a complex design that Kara supposed must be the Divine's personal seal.
Cassandra didn't give Roderick a chance to reply. "A writ from the Divine, granting us the authority to act. As of this moment, the Inquisition is reborn, by Justinia's authority and in her name." She advanced on the chancellor, and he retreated from the intensity in her gaze. "We will close the Breach, we will find those responsible, and we will restore order." Her pointing finger -- dangerously close to the chancellor's throat -- emphasised her words. "With or without your approval."
Well, shit. Kara took a step back, putting the wall at her back. The air crackled with tension, the edge of violence. But Roderick merely turned his back on Cassandra in utter dismissal. "I suspect you will live to regret this, Seeker. But I will leave you to ruin us all without my help."
The door fell shut behind him.
"Well," Leliana said, into the silence. "Today, Cassandra? You might have warned me."
Cassandra sighed and scraped her hand through her short hair. "If not now, then when?" she demanded. But there was a faint catch in her voice, as though now the moment had passed, she found herself on shaky ground.
What the blighted shit is an Inquisition? Kara held her tongue. She had no illusions that the other women had forgotten her presence, but if they were prepared to ignore her for a few moments, she was more than willing to be ignored.
"Rebuild the Inquisition of old." Leliana shook her head. "We aren't ready. It may have been Justinia's directive, Cassandra, but we have no leader, no numbers, and now, no Chantry support. We shall have much work to do to surmount these difficulties."
"But we have no choice." Leather creaking, Cassandra dropped heavily into a chair. "With the Breach... We must act now." Her glance found Kara, dark and full of faith. "With you at our side."
"Shit." Kara scrubbed her knuckles against her face. "Great. What the blighted shit is an Inquisition, anyway?"
"It preceded the Chantry." Leliana turned her wrist, an elegant gesture. "If you are truly interested in the history, Cassandra can tell you more later. Suffice to say that we" -- subtle stress on that syllable, and a sidelong look at Cassandra -- "have set ourselves apart from the Chantry -- declared, if you like, independence and claimed the right to act based upon a charter prepared by the late Divine. We have a little time before we need to worry about whether they will organise to oppose us. It will take time to find a new Divine, and the Chantry as a body will wait for her direction -- though individual parts of it will not."
"We cannot wait. That much is plain from the sky." Cassandra eyed Leliana, half-challenge, half-exasperated affection, and sighed again. "But so many grand clerics died at the Conclave... We are on our own. Perhaps forever."
"So." Kara looked at Leliana, carefully to keep her body language calm, unchallenging. "What does that mean for me?"
Leliana's eyes held the suggestion of a smile, though her lips didn't twitch. "You agree we need to take precautions. You will give us your parole, and during the day you will be free to move around Haven as long as you are accompanied either by Cassandra, myself, or one of the guards I will assign to you. At night, you will return to your current accommodations -- though we should be able to furnish them a little better. If you cooperate with us, we can treat you as an honoured guest, no? But as you have observed, your mark may be as much danger as boon. Even to you. Perhaps especially to you."
"You should know," Cassandra interjected, "while some believe you chosen, many still think you guilty." She braced her forearms on the table, fingertips touching the parchment she had spread out, and levelled another dark stare at Kara. "The Inquisition can protect you, if you are with us."
That damnably earnest tone again, as though the Seeker wanted to protect her. As though she gave a damn.
"We can also help you." Leliana flicked a significant glance at Kara's hand. "It nearly killed you once already. So you have every reason to help us, yes?"
Kara leaned back against the wall. The rough stone pressed hard against her spine, cold and immovable. As immovable as Leliana's will, she suspected. "I gave the Seeker my parole already. But I'll give it to both of you now. You have my word. I won't run, and I won't raise a hand or a weapon against you, or anyone with you -- in the service of this Inquisition. I will honour the conditions you've placed on my freedom, and I will cooperate with you fully in the attempt to fix that bloody great hole in the sky for good." She met Leliana's gaze and refused to flinch. "Does that satisfy you?"
"For now," the other woman said, mild and implacable.
"Well, it satisfies me." Cassandra rose to her feet and extended her arm to Kara. Her glance was warm. "I have faith. You can help us fix this, before it's too late."
It took a moment before Kara realised what the Seeker meant for her to do. She flushed -- unable to help it, angry and embarrassed, this was the first time one of the shem'len had offered her their hand as an equal, to seal a pledge -- and clasped the proffered forearm with more force than she'd intended. "I'll try, Seeker. Blight take me if I won't bloody well try."