Chapter 5
Leliana excused herself -- I have much to do, Cassandra, now that we have declared our intentions: I will inform Cullen and Lady Montilyet, and put the arrangements we discussed into practice. Stay here for now and I will have food sent in to you. You both look hungry -- and Kara found herself alone in front of the Seeker's steady brown gaze.
"Well," Cassandra said, and gestured to a place opposite her at the table. "You should sit. You aren't recovered yet. Even I can see that."
"I'm upright and walking." Kara slid into the indicated chair, and met Cassandra's penetrating stare with a wry glance. If I can walk, I can work. If I can work, I can fight. Experience taught hard lessons. Habit born in Tevinter had kept her standing until the human had indicated she could sit, though her muscles were tired -- she could feel that her body would take some days to recover its usual level of energy. "That's good enough for most purposes, Seeker."
Cassandra snorted. An uncomfortable silence descended between them. Kara clasped her left hand under her right in front of her on the table to keep from fidgeting. She could outwait silence, until she had cause to speak.
But her left hand glowed green now, faintly luminous. It drew the Seeker's eyes, and her lips pressed together. "Does it trouble you? The mark."
"It doesn't seem to have affected my ability to use the hand, if that's what you're asking." Kara flexed her fingers in demonstration. "It aches, a little, but no worse than a bruise. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. What is it? Where did it come from? What will it do to me?"
"We will find out."
"Is that a threat or a promise, Seeker?"
"A promise." Cassandra could look reassuring, if she tried. She had a solid presence, a sense of conviction about her. Kara found it disturbingly easy to believe her. "Even though we didn't close the Breach, you did everything we asked of you. I respect that."
"So." Kara leaned back in her chair. "What now?"
Cassandra shrugged. "We wait for food. And then I suppose I could show you around Haven, before I return to my duties. Since your mark is the only thing that can close the rifts, I suspect you and I will be working together closely over the coming days and weeks, until we figure out how to close the Breach for good."
"No questions for me? I was expected more of an interrogation, Seeker." Kara grinned to take the sharp edges from her words, but she meant it. After Leliana's visit to her cell, she had expected to be pressed more closely.
"There is hardly a point in questions, if you will not answer them." Cassandra raised an eyebrow. "Leliana told me you feared to tell her anything about yourself. Have you changed your mind?"
Being too close-mouthed will win you no friends. Kara weighed what she knew of the woman in front of her. Even in her anger and grief, the Seeker hadn't been cruel. Instead, she'd been open to the idea she might be wrong, willing to accept new information as it came to her, and not in a calculated fashion, either. It was as though she didn't know how to be otherwise: passionate and fierce but underneath it, fair. "For you?" The corner of her mouth lifted, wry. "I think I might have."
Cassandra blinked once, slow startlement, before she recovered herself enough to snort. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted. "Food," Nialla said cheerfully, shouldering her way through the heavy door with a laden tray. She inclined her head briefly in the Seeker's direction, and nodded once to Kara. "Nightingale's orders, Seeker."
The tray, it transpired, bore bread and cheese and a pottage of beans cooked with onion and carrots. Kara's mouth watered at the scent -- her body plainly hungrier than she'd given it credit for -- as Nialla laid bowls on the tabletop's scarred surface and retreated once more.
"So. Ask what you will." Kara took a mouthful of the pottage, warm and satisfyingly flavoursome on her tongue. "I don't promise I'll answer you, mind you."
Cassandra tilted her head, an oddly delicate gesture for so muscular a woman. "In that case, perhaps you should simply tell me about yourself. Though I confess I should like to know what brought a Dalish elf to the Conclave."
"That part's simple enough." And unlikely to cause Cassandra to develop more suspicions. "My Keeper asked me to. The war between mages and templars is -- or was, at least -- spreading like wildfire across the south, and Keeper Istimaethoriel wanted an observer here, to see at first hand what came of the peace talks, and what your Chantry would do about it." Kara's smile felt rueful. "Lavellan -- her, our, clan -- is more inclined to look outwards than most among the People. Thoriel understands we must live in the world that we have, not the one that we wish for. That's kept Lavellan alive and strong in the Free Marches."
"I did not know your people roamed that far north." A note of surprise in Cassandra's voice. "Clearly I'm mistaken." A pause, while she stirred her spoon in her pottage. "You said her clan, first, when you spoke of your Keeper..."
Trust the Seeker to pick up on that. Kara shrugged, deliberate. "I wasn't born to Lavellan, Seeker. They took me in a few years ago." She kept her voice light, without emphasis. "I owe them for that, because I would've probably died otherwise, but --" but they can't forget that I was a slave in Tevinter, that I submitted and lived. She shut her teeth on her bitterness. The hunters and healers of clan Lavellan saw in her a living representation of some of their worst fears, and she couldn't blame them for that. And on top of that, the oldest lore told them that living among humans had caused the elvhen to lose their immortality, and in the years Kara had dwelled with Lavellan, Istimaethoriel had sent her to deal with human markets and human merchants again and again. "But it makes me a bit of an outsider."
It was an old, lonely ache. Fortunately Cassandra only inclined her head. "I did not know the Dalish trained as warriors, either," she said. "Yet I have seen you fight. Are your skills common among your people?"
Cassandra could hardly know how much that question cut. Kara's spoon scraped the bottom of the pottage bowl. She started on the cheese, to gain time to compose herself. She'd been a hunter, before Tevinter. But the Imperium held to old customs, and older entertainments. Some of their entertainments were bloody. It had been the whim of the altus Livia Adorni that had seen her trained to the sword, and sent into private arenas to fight for the amusement and profit of Tevinter's wealthiest citizens.
Her feelings about that -- and about Adorni -- were far more complicated than simple hate.
"Not that common." The cheese had a complex, nutty taste, pale and softer than the sharp cheddar that was a Fereldan staple. Kara concentrated on the flavours, on the present, the grain of the table under her fingers and the way the light played across Cassandra's hair. She could bring herself to tell part of the truth, if not all of it. "But Lavellan needed coin, so I spent the last three fighting seasons with a mercenary company in the Marches. It gave me incentive to learn."
Cassandra gave her a sceptical stare. "I think there are things you aren't telling me."
Kara spread her hands. "I'm all of twenty-seven years old, Seeker. Hard to fit a life into a few sentences." Frustration crept into her voice. "What else do you want to know? My close kin? If I've any living, I don't know where they are. I've no close friends, nor lovers neither. I've fought for money, stolen for food, and whored to kept myself alive more than once: should I tell you the exact particulars of every occasion?" She bit her tongue. "Forgive me, Seeker. The last few days have been unnerving."
"Unnerving. Yes." Cassandra's shoulders tightened. "It is unnerving for us all." She pushed back from the table. "Come, if you are done eating. I will show you Haven, unless you wish to rest."
Rest. Kara thought of Leliana's conditions, the parole she had freely given, and shook her head. She had no desire to return to a dungeon cell so soon -- even if her confinement were to be a matter of courtesy. "I'd like to see the village." She forced a smile. "Though I sincerely hope no one throws any rocks at me this time."
That first day, Cassandra had guided her about the village, and whispers followed them -- and occasional bows, and salutes, and the murmur Herald of Andraste. Cassandra seemed alive to her discomfort, and confined herself to pointing out landmarks and individuals -- apothecary, quartermaster, stables, tavern, smithy, baths, rookery -- rather than making introductions. No rocks flew, but unease ate at Kara's gut. So many eyes, looking at her.
Two days passed, and she regained her strength. She kept to herself, though she couldn't bring herself to remain within the Chantry walls. She paced along Haven's icy lanes, trailed by Nialla or sometimes a different guard, the woman Rylen, the chill of late Frostback autumn brutal even beneath her cloak, and spoke hardly at all. She didn't see Leliana at all during those days, and Cassandra only once, in passing. Without Cassandra by her side, it was easier, in some ways -- the humans muttered knife-ear or rabbit instead of Andraste's herald, when they noticed her, unless they looked closely. Rumours swirled about the Nightingale and the Seeker and plans to close the Breach by calling on the aid of mages, templars, or even the heathen qunari from far-off Seheron.
She avoided Solas entirely. Neither Dalish nor city elf, and too knowing by half: he would recognise her as suspicious of his motives, and she didn't need to alienate him. Not, at least, until she knew more.
Brother Angry stayed away from her, though she saw him, sometimes, watching her from a distance. She couldn't decide whether to be worried or glad at his restraint.
When Nialla came with breakfast on the third morning, Kara, chafing at the lack of occupation, asked her for something useful to do.
"Useful?" Nialla quirked an eyebrow. Kara hadn't forgotten that the other elf was Leliana's agent, and her guard: careful scrutiny (and Nialla's amused confirmation) had made it plain the other woman carried a significant number of daggers about her person, and at least one garrotte. But Nialla had been kind, and respected her silences, and Kara didn't need to trust her to find her presence comforting. "The quartermaster probably needs extra hands, I guess. Or Cullen's troops -- they're putting up some defences on the lake approach. Which would you rather?"
"Quartermaster, I think," Kara said, quashing the small voice that wanted her to hide. She flexed her marked hand. No hiding from that. But if she pulled on a glove -- and gloves were necessary in the cold -- she could try.
The quartermaster was a ginger Fereldan with mismatched armour and a big voice. She gave Kara a distracted glance as she approached -- Nialla trailing her, as usual -- and pointed at a tall human, folding some blankets nearby. "If you're here to clean, Hess can get you a bucket and a broom. Anyone calls you knife-ear, come to me."
The easy equation of elf and servant so common among the shem'len would always flick Kara in raw places. But right now cleaning seemed like a much more straightforward task than thinking -- and her pride wasn't worth standing on. She nodded silently, collected the named implements, and followed Hess's direction to the infirmary.
"You know." Nialla had claimed her own implements and followed her. "I haven't had to scrub a floor since I started working for the Nightingale. I haven't missed it."
The chamber they'd been directed to had obviously served as a surgery, and hadn't been cleaned since its last patient. Blood and other fluids had pooled and dried on the wooden floorboards, where they'd been trodden over with now-dried mud. "It needs to be done, and I can do it." A half-shrug, which Kara accompanied with a mocking grin. "But I'll do it alone, if your duty means you should stand guard at a safe, clean distance."
"Don't think I'm not tempted." Nialla rolled her eyes. "Come on, then. Let's see if I've still got floor-scrubbing moves."
Kara huffed a laugh, and bent to work.
Cassandra found them as they returned the cleaning implements to the quartermaster's care, shivering as the frigid breeze froze the sweat of their labours on their clothes. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you --" Her glance took in their dishevelment "-- What have you been doing?"
"Cleaning the infirmary, Seeker." Kara grinned as Cassandra's eyes widened. "I like to be useful."
"Plainly." Cassandra glared at the quartermaster. "I do not know if you realise, Threnn, but this is the woman who can close the Breach. She is not a servant."
"Oh." The quartermaster -- Threnn -- swallowed faintly. "She's her."
"Yes," Cassandra growled, to Nialla's ill-hidden amusement. "Treat her with more respect in future." To Kara: "Come with me, if you will. We have matters to discuss in the war room."