i. dirty business
-
If any had survived the destruction of her clan, they were in no position to reassure her, for all that Leliana assured Lavellan her agents were scouring the countryside - useless. No one knew how to hide like the Dalish did.
There had been two weeks where Lavellan could not breathe for all the sympathy the Inquisition felt for her. She wasn't ungrateful.
The Iron Bull took her up a mountain to watch a sunrise, and then let her punch him and scream and cry until her rage ran dry, for a short while.
Lady Josephine spoiled her with every delicacy she had in hiding.
Sera challenged her to endless archery contests, and listened, for once, to Lavellan's advice about her form.
Lavellan smiled for their efforts, and lay awake nights, and felt hollow. She had no tears to cry.
(A handful of Dalish had joined the Inquisition. She could not refuse to see them without seeming churlish, but she chafed under every shy da'len.)
And while she wallowed in her grief, the Inquisition ran as smoothly around her. Troops deployed. Agreements that only required the Herald of Andraste's signature. Reports, unread, but for Leliana's precis on the cover page. No one suggested she go out into the field, where the mark in her hand and the bow on her back might do some good. None of them looked her in the eye and said: Everyone you love is dead. You are the last of your name. What will you do next?
None of them, but Vivienne.
Vivienne's voice, like a light in the darkness: "Darling, pack your things," she said, tossing a dirty rucksack onto Lavellan's bed. Her bed. She was a hunter, all she needed was a bedroll. She'd been living like a shemlen too long, if she was worried about the state of her sheets. "You, and I, and the Iron Bull, and Cassandra, are going to the Hissing Wastes. Our people have found us a dragon, and I, for one, intend to kill it."
A Keeper needed hunters, to keep her safe. A hunter needed a Keeper, to give her purpose. Lavellan understood the Bull's Qun better, under Vivienne's hand. The natural way of things. Do eat, darling, we'll need cover fire if we're to destroy those bandits, and I can't provide it all myself, she said, out in the Wastes, and Lavellan ate. It was Vivienne who set a pace so grueling even Cassandra complained of it.
It was good. She felt calmer, at the very least, putting arrows into the eyes of the deserving, and Cassandra and the Bull did not ask questions. All the rifts she closed did not make her clan any less dead.
When they returned to Skyhold with a dragon's head in a tow, and fresh burns, Lady Josephine met them at the gate to fuss over them all for being foolish with their lives, and produced seven invitations to the Winter Palace.
"Leliana, the Commander, and I will accompany you," Lady Josephine said. "It could not be otherwise. The rest - your choice, Inquisitor."
Lavellan looked over her shoulder at her companions. "You three will do," she said, and walked past them all, through the great hall, up the stairs, to collapse in her bed.
-
Worse than the fact of her clan being gone was the not knowing how they'd died: had they fought to the last? Had they been killed in their sleep? What of the children? Had Keeper Deshanna cut their throats herself - everyone knew what happened to defenseless elven children, when left to shems - or had she smuggled them safely out of Wycome? Had there been time?
The remaining forces of Wycome did not pursue us, but fell upon Clan Lavellan in their rage. I regret to inform you that the Dalish clan was entirely destroyed.
Two cold sentences, which may as well have been black smudges on paper to Lavellan: but she had had Vivienne read to her enough to know them by heart. Without forward momentum, she fell back into dwelling on them. She kept the letter from Cullen's lieutenant in her pocket, as she played the Inquisitor restored to her right mind. If the Wastes had done their best to scour her clean, what was left?
She spent her evenings with Vivienne, learning about Orlesian politics, in preparation for meeting the Empress. Vivienne knew the Court as well as only an outsider could know it.
"Now," Vivienne said, one evening, on the balcony outside of Lavellan's rooms. "Never mind the lineages. Let's think on more practical matters. Sister Leliana's people are in position to remove the Duke of Wycome and his Venatori advisors - I believe she wishes to surprise you with the news - but Lady Josephine has discovered an Orlesian cousin with certain precarious business interests. It would be such a shame if they were to fail, and he were to take his own life in shame."
"This," Lavellan said, "is what you call the Game."
"Quite."
Lavellan went quiet. She was not thinking on it: she didn't need to. The only answer was yes. It was only a matter of making her mouth say the words. She'd worn her hair loose, in mourning, for months, and, as she stared straight ahead, out at the mountains, she felt Vivienne run her hand up her back, under her hair, to rest on the back of her neck.
Lavellan had put her arrows into the belly of a white wyvern for her. She was a hunter. It was what she did. Vivienne's lover was dead, regardless of anyone's efforts. This was all that could be between them.
"One more order of business. There is an expert on Dalish lore, in general, and eluvians, in particular, who will be attending the ball," Vivienne went on, as though they hadn't just plotted a murder together. "As Celene has a court enchanter, so does Briala have her own arcane advisor - a Dalish apostate. You'll want her in your employ, regardless of who you support for the throne."
"Does she have a name?" Lavellan asked, taking a deliberate step away from Vivienne.
"Merrill," said Vivienne. "Clanless, if you believe a word coming out of her mouth. A blood mage, if you believe the scars on her palms."
In her voice - a surprising lack of disdain. "You sound like you respect her," Lavellan said.
Merrill. Merrill. The name was familiar.
"She's..." Vivienne was never at a loss for words, and she shrugged as elegantly as she possibly could. "You'll understand when you meet her, Inquisitor."
Merrill, Lavellan remembered. Merrill, of Clan Sabrae, which was dead and buried as sure as Clan Lavellan was. Merrill, who had trafficked with a spirit of Pride. Merrill, kinslayer, companion to the Champion of Kirkwall. Merrill, who, Leliana explained to her the next day at the War Table, it was absolutely essential that she recruit as soon as possible, in order to maintain their advantage over Corypheus.
"I'll speak with her," Lavellan said, moving all their markers on the map to Halamshiral. (In a city built atop the bones of the Dalish, shemlen would bow to her.) "Nothing more."
-
ii. blood remembers
-
"Creators, what a night!" Merrill (trafficked with spirits) said, shuffling down the stairs. Her gown was green, and big - the rest of it, Lavellan was at a loss to identify. Silver jewelry. Hair that someone had put enormous effort into tidying, and which was doing its best to slide leftwards out of its updo. "I hear the Herald of Andraste has been poking around all dark corners of the palace."
When it's expensive, it's a coiffure, darling, Vivienne would correct her.
Merrill (kinslayer) didn't look like a monster. There was a flush to her cheeks, and, as Lavellan watched, she sucked the blood from a pinprick on her thumb. "For you," she said, holding out a key. "Found on a Tevinter agent. I'm sure it'll open something interesting. I'll need to see about getting rid of a body. You'd be amazed at how often you need to do that, at an Orlesian party. Not me, personally! But I do spend a fair amount of time with Briala. Please don't let the empress be killed; we'll be the first suspects. Mostly her. But if she's dead, I'm as good as dead, too."
"Andaran ati'shan," Lavellan said, rather than try to parse any of that. She took the key. It was most likely significant. "I'm told you want to work with the Inquisition."
"I'm told the Inquisition needs me." Merrill's smile was beatific. Her vallaslin were for Falon'din. (When two Dalish met, always, the dance: who are they marked for, and why? Lavellan was marked for Andruil. It wasn't a complicated choice.) "I know more about eluvians than anyone else in Thedas. Failure is a wonderful instructor. There's another expert - she traveled with me, to Serault, on Briala's behalf - I've never seen so much glass in my life - but she's disappeared. I haven't heard from her in months. I fear the worst, though I shouldn't. It does seem the wisest thing to do these days."
"Disappearing, or fearing the worst?" Lavellan felt a smile forming. She quashed it. She was only doing this for Leliana. Corypheus wanted an eluvian. Merrill (clan-killer) and Briala's people had an entire network of functional ones.
"In Kirkwall, " Merrill said, "the answer is always the worst. My clan wandered Ferelden, originally."
"Why did you leave?" Lavellan asked.
"The Blight, of course."
She was playing stupid. Lavellan couldn't stand when people played stupid. They both knew what she was after. When she seems her most empty-headed, you have the most to be concerned about, Vivienne had told her. Cut Daisy some slack, Varric had said. "Why did you leave your Kirkwall?" she asked.
"Well," said Merrill. "Briala offered me an enormous amount of money - for the alienage, you see. Three years ago, now. They wanted me to be their hahren, but a halla's weight in gold is worth more than one clanless blood mage. Will that be a problem?"
"Your dead clan, or the blood magic?"
"Both," said Merrill.
"We're prepared to match what Briala is paying you - "
"I'll work with you." Merrill sucked at her thumb again. "If we all survive tonight. I won't see Thedas burned."
-
Arrows ran out, if you were pinned down by your enemy and couldn't pull them out of corpses. It seemed wise, in times like these, to be able to pick up any weapon imaginable off a dead body and be at least proficient enough with it to keep herself alive.
"I don't like her," Lavellan said, leaning on her quarterstaff. Vivienne had the height advantage, and the advantage of decades of experience wielding something larger, heavier, and likely to be spitting fire at any given moment; Lavellan was faster. Neither of them pulled their blows.
On the journey back from Halamshiral, Lavellan had ordered Cassandra to Silence Merrill at the first sign of trouble, regardless of whether it would take Vivienne out of any subsequent fight.
Merrill, whether she was aware of this or not, immediately worked her way into the party's good graces. The Bull, who liked small, vulnerable-looking things with big eyes and easy laughs, took the kind of special shine to her that ended in the rest of the camp not getting any sleep at nights.
"Bull is an excellent judge of character," said Vivienne, mopping gently at her brow with a lace-edged handkerchief. It was reassuring, to know that she could sweat. "We all heard his investigation into her... character. He's assured you as to her trustworthiness, she's one of Varric's dear friends, and she comes with Briala's highest recommendation. What more do you need?"
"You can't say you trust her," Lavellan replied.
"No, darling. Of course I don't." Vivienne folded her handkerchief neatly and replaced it in its pocket.
It struck Lavellan that Vivienne couldn't know. That Merrill was only an upstart in her eyes, and not a monster.
-
The straggling, starving remnants of Clan Sabrae had shown up to the arlathvenn that year, ten children and eight elders crammed into one aravel, borne by horses, not halla.
What the Keepers had been able to extract from them was this: their First, gone to live in Kirkwall, had made a deal with a demon. Their Keeper had made a deal with it herself, to save her ungrateful First, and expelled the girl, to live among the shemlen. She'd fallen under the Champion of Kirkwall's protection - or become her lover - and prospered, where her clan starved. The clan had not left Sundermount for seven years, and then, when the First found out of the deception, she'd killed her Keeper. When the clan discovered the Keeper's dead body, they raised arms against her, and were killed to a man and woman.
The elders had refused to name her. She no longer deserved that privilege.
Merrill, one of the children had been induced to say.
Lavellan had no use for Varric. His weapon was as flashy and loud as he was. But he knew more of Merrill than anyone else in the world, enough to write about her in his book, whichVivienne had read it to Lavellan in installments over the long winter.
"I was there," Varric said. "It didn't go down like that at all. Daisy isn't like that. She definitely didn't prosper in Kirkwall. Nobody prospers in Kirkwall without killing a lot more people than Daisy killed over the years, which, you know, now that I think about it, she did kill a lot of people. Came with the territory."
"Somewhere between your version and their version," Lavellan said, "is the truth. Tell me your story."
"What about her version? You already hired her, your worshipfulness. I think she's already found Nightingale's birds. Who knows where she's sleeping."
"I didn't have a choice. Lady Josephine found her somewhere near the eluvian. Tell me your story, Varric."
"I never wanted her to go off to Orlais, but once she's decided to do something, you can't stop her."
"Your story."
"All right, all right. We met her at the end of a long trip up Sundermount in the rainy season - it was one of Hawke's worse ideas, but apparently she had to meet some Dalish clan camped up there - "
-
"You still don't like her," Vivienne said.
Lavellan ignored her in favor of going to the pile of books in the corner of her balcony - she'd have to make Blackwall make Vivienne a bookshelf - and pulling out the Tale of the Champion. "Read me the Merrill parts again."
Vivienne took the book. "I could teach you." She thumbed through, eyes scanning the lines, until she found what she was looking for.
"I'm too old to learn," said Lavellan.
"And yet you're not too old for Cassandra's sword-and-shield drills. Even if you learned, I would still read to you. You know that."
Even when she sounded fond, there was still a cutting edge to it. Lavellan settled at the foot of Vivienne's chaise, looking out between the stone rail at her throne. Merrill gave her a problem to solve, something to be upset by that wasn't the death of her clan. Here was one thing she knew about herself: that she fixated easily. Here was one thing she knew about Vivienne: she managed. Everything around her was managed.
Vivienne had kept her on her feet when she might have faltered, but she was no Keeper. Lavellan still relished the feel of Vivienne's hand playing in her hair, a casual affection, only to be shared in absolute privacy between the two of them. She had long stopped questioning it.
Merrill may have been First in her clan, but she was no Keeper, either. As she watched the throne, and as Vivienne read, Merrill crept across the great hall to stand on the seat, to perch on the arm with only the tips of her toes, to hop off, and go around the back, to touch the glass of the windows behind it.
-
She found Merrill sitting with her legs dangling off the battlements, with three of Leliana's ravens on the crenellation next to her, in eerie stillness.
"I took your advisors through the eluvian," she said, without looking up from her book. Of course a First would have learned to read. Lavellan felt a pang of envy. "They both had to hold Cullen's hand, when we were in there. Have you come to ask me about my clan?"
"It's the only thing we have in common."
"I killed mine with my actions," said Merrill. "You killed yours with your inaction. We're not so different."
That was a slap in the face. Lavellan turned on her heel to walk away, when Merrill said:
"Or at least that's what you're telling yourself," she added, "'if I had gone to Wycome - if I had done more. If I hadn't trusted it to someone else. If I'd found the red lyrium earlier, they would still be alive. Isn't it?"
"I didn't
"I did kill Keeper Marethari," Merrill said. "Hawke helped. No one around her seems to hold onto family members very long."
"Were you her lover?"
"She didn't agree with my working for Briala, either, but since she ran from Kirkwall, I don't think she had much of a say in the matter, do you?"
"You were her lover."
"Is that what you have the most problem with? She couldn't have gotten a child on me."
"You walked away from your clan."
"I was pushed," Merrill said, "and afterward, the poisoned the clan against me. I never asked her to take on my bargain, and if people stopped thinking they could make my decisions for me - "
Inquisitor, you mustn't go. You won't make it in time, even if you chartered the fastest ship from Jader to Wycome.
Inquisitor. Your worship. It's too dangerous. I trust my lieutenant implicitly, as should you.
Boss, come on, let's have a drink, it'll work itself out. You've had enough crap luck for one lifetime, the world won't pile more on you.
Ten arrows each, Inky! I have Friends in Wycome, I'll have a chat with them.
Whatever happens, darling, we stand with you.
"So you went with Briala," Lavellan said. "There was nothing for you in Kirkwall. The Champion was in hiding, your eluvian was dead, the alienage wanted more of you than you could give. That's where Varric's story ends. And then, two years ago, Briala stumbled into a network of eluvians, and suddenly you were more than just an agent, but the most important asset she had."
"Believe me if you choose," Merrill said. "Or don't. Enough of my story. What of yours?"
"I'm a simple hunter," Lavellan said. "Good with a bow, good for a laugh. No more or less important than anyone else in the clan, but good at hiding. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, at the conclave."
Merrill considered that, and if she drew a conclusion . "You can't read," she said.
"Hunters don't need to read. We only need to listen to the tales."
There was a strange, infuriating pity in Merrill's eyes.
"A woman and a child, asking for sanctuary, your worship," the soldier said, before Lavellan could . "No one saw them come up from the camps. They claim to know Serah Merrill."
"Oh," Merrill said, "oh, that will be Morrigan," she said, and she was up like a flash, and out the door.
-
"Vivienne," Lavellan said. "The duke's cousin?"
"What a tragedy," said Vivienne. "Stripped of their title and lands, after being on the wrong side of the civil war. They'll never recover. Now, there's a sister in Ansburg - "
"Do it."
-
iii. draw us lines
-
Her name was Morrigan. Her son's name was Kieran. She'd been one of the Hero of Ferelden's companions, like Leliana had been. Morrigan had come to the ruins of Kirkwall after the war began, in search of a blighted eluvian she'd heard tell of, and found Merrill in the alienage.
They'd taken to one another like long-lost sisters. They'd lived, studied, and raised the boy together for a year, until Briala came looking for an agent, a mage - to advise her on arcane matters, Merrill said, and conflated with ones about some elf named Fenris), someone who was not Orlesian, and with no interest in Orlesian politics, and one who was Dalish, and would advance Briala's agenda of standing for all the elves in Thedas, not only the ones in the alienages.
That was the story they chose to tell to the Inquisition. Whether it was true - it seemed likely as anything.
"Corypheus's agents have been scouring the Arbor Wilds," Morrigan said, "for elven artifacts. Clues, of some sort. I've come from there." Merrill's piece on the war table was a copper daisy. Morrigan moved it to the south of Orlais.
"We thank you for your information, Mistress Morrigan," Lady Josephine said, before anyone else could speak up - Cullen and Leliana had been sulking the entire meeting - "but we do wonder at your motives."
"There are seven people in the world with less interest in seeing an archdemon rise again than I," said Morrigan, "and two of them are in this room with us, and one of them is dead."
Merrill, who had been making fire and ice in the corner for Morrigan's boy, frowned.
"We're nowhere near ready to move on the Arbor Wilds," Cullen said. "There's the matter of Adamant - "
" - and the Wardens," Leliana added.
"But we do thank you," Josephine finished.
-
"I do think," Lavellan said, "that if I'd done more, they'd still be alive."
Wherever Lady Josephine had found for Merrill and Morrigan and their son to live, Merrill clearly spent the better of her time in the Eluvian's room. There was a workbench here – poultices, today. The air reeked of elfroot.
The surface of the Eluvian was a flat, welcoming black. One of Leliana's ravens was at Merrill's feet. Merrill ran her hand over its head. Its eyes were vividly yellow. "What brought this on?"
She stood at the door. The garden, and an escape, were one step away. She'd lost her momentum."Nothing," she said. "Carry on."
"I think I should have died with them," said Merrill. As if in response to this, the raen squawked and flew out the door over Lavellan's head. "All the time. If just one person had gotten off a lucky shot – but Hawke and Aveline and Fenris and I had been fighting together for so long, my clan didn't stand a chance. I still think about the ways we might have done it better – faster. Is that dreadful?"
"Once that part of you is awake, you can't make it sleep again."
This was no great revelation to Merrill. She nodded curtly, and went back to making her poultices.
It was her sudden silence, after so many words, that goaded Lavellan into saying, "I'm destroying him."
"The shem who did this to your clan?"
Another sign that she'd lived too long in an alienage, the slanged-off shem.
"And all his clan – his relations. I should feel bad," Lavellan continued. "I just feel – nothing."
"You have the power," Merrill replied. "Why shouldn't you?"
"And if one of the children from your clan came for you, when they were grown? Would you lie down and let them take your life? 'Here, lethallin, here's my throat for your blade'?"
"It's a question of scale. Do you think I'll talk you out of it? I couldn't."
She couldn't be provoked. "Scale," Lavellan scoffed, but her heart wasn't in it.
"Clan Alerion was fruitful in mages," Merrill said. "They even had a Second, when my magic showed itself. The Sabrae barely produced one in a generation - Marethari hadn't been born to them, either. Oh, but she was loved."
Them. Not us. "And you never were."
"There must have been a time," she said. "The eluvian changed all that. We lost two to it, and had to leave, when the Blight came. But we took the mirror with us. I wanted it. Me. I'd never wanted something so badly in my life. It was exhilirating, to want."
The Hero of Ferelden had been a Dalish elf. Mahariel. All the People knew her name, and how she'd brought honor to them, killing the archdemon. The Sabrae had spent time in south Ferelden. Twice touched by history, Merrill was.
Merrill undid the heavy wraps on her pale, pale legs, and pulled down her heavy woolen leggings. Her legs were covered in vallaslin:
Mythal, from her ankles to her toes.
Elgar'nan, winding around the backs of her calves.
Sylaise, looping around her knees, Ghilan'nain, licking at her hips. She would have done them to herself, and they were untinted, an angry, deep red. Further up would be Andruil, June. It would have been impossibly painful. Lavellan had passed out twice, from hunger and from pain, while having hers done: but she had not made a sound. She could only wonder, then, with no Keeper looking on, with no friends holding her hand - had Merrill cried doing these? Had she howled in pain? The lines were steady.
"A remembrance," Merrill said. "Tell me - what are you doing to honor your clan?"
-
Josephine and Keeper Deshanna had exchanged a number of letters, prior to Wycome; the Dalish went unseen, and were more than glad to give their information to the Inquisition. Leliana's agents had recovered, from a few well-hidden aravels outside the city, a stack of the books her clan had had in their possession since the Exalted Age. Lavellan had denied Solas the opportunity to study them; she didn't want to hear how incorrect they all were.
They had sat, useless, on Lavellan's desk, for weeks. Lavellan opened the cover of one of them, and heard a fearsome creaking from the spine. She let it fall shut, and went out of her chambers.
As always, she skirted the rotunda, nodded to Dorian, and entered Vivienne's balcony without knocking. In this world of walls and doors, she counted on the mark on her hand to keep people from complaining when she didn't knock when she had ought to.
"Teach me to read," Lavellan said, going to Vivienne's stack of books and taking the top three into her arms. Vivienne didn't stir from her chair, or turn around to look. Lavellan sat them
"Andraste, Commander and Conqueror: The Blessed Lady in the Thought of the Exalted Marches," Vivienne read, from one of the spines. "Divines of Steel, Divines in Storm: An Historical Perspective. Perhaps we might try some lighter fare, to start with."
"And to write," said Lavellan, "and to - what else is there?"
"That covers it," Vivienne said, taking the books from her and setting them on her lap. "I'll find a primer. Do fetch me a quill, we'll start on our letters."
No, Why now, darling? No, What brought this on?
"And," Lavellan said, before she went to rummage through Vivienne's things, "tell me about Bastien. And Nicoline."
"The numbers, first, I think - you've a wonderful head for them already, it's only a matter of putting them down on paper. And if you tell me about your clan," Vivienne replied, "and I'll gladly tell you about mine."