Wazīr
“You’re not the first woman to threaten me with losing my breeches, and you won’t be the last,” Hawke says. “Now unless there’s something else, we’ll be-”
“Let me handle this, Sweet Thing,” Isabela says with a hand on Hawke’s shoulder.
The disaster of a back-alley encounter—in Adaar’s opinion—can’t be salvaged. The assassin is dead, his people are in…uncomfortable states of undress, and the elf that supposedly arranged this talks at least three words per word. As soon as the Jenny’s attention had fallen on Adaar, she’d self-consciously shuffled behind Hawke, as ineffectual as it was.
Still, when Hawke says, “Be my guest,” Isabela comes swooping into the conversation. She takes the elf aside, already saying something that the Jenny immediately snickers at.
“What’s…happening?” Adaar asks.
“Isabela obviously sees some value in this.”
Adaar waits for the capstone to that, the admittance that it’s good to humor Isabela once in a while, or that it’s easier than starting a fight over it. But the caveat never comes. Instead, they follow the increasingly animated conversation in profile, watching as it spills into what sounds like a series of humorous innuendos.
“What did you think of the Lord Seeker?”
Adaar starts. She hadn’t realized Hawke was paying attention to her, what with her gaze fixed on the negotiation.
“Everything he said was nonsensical,” she says. “Why agree to meet with us only to laugh in our face?”
“Yes. It’s strange. That among other things.” Hawke thumbs her pommel absently.
“What did you think of him? Did you know him?”
“No. Cassandra did, and she’s as perplexed as I am. He’s meant to be more level-headed than this.”
The negotiation abruptly ends, the pair of women waltzing back toward them with arms over shoulders like drunken sailors.
“Good news!” Isabela declares. “I just made us some Friends.”
“Ha!” the elf says. “Get it? Because it’s Friends like…You know!”
“Dare I ask what we’re trading for this friendship?”
It amazes Adaar how Hawke never sounds annoyed. She knows she must be, with her burning need to control every detail, and how neither Isabela nor Varric have any intention of making it easy for her either. But still, she never plays the part of the beleaguered stick-in-the-mud that Varric had promised Adaar she most certainly was.
The weeks with the Inquisition have let Adaar in on many of the goings on, bristling into an uneasy familiarity; she’s expected to show on Hawke’s elbow during meetings, and especially at public displays such as this. Yet, the dynamics of the organization continue to perplex her.
“Jenny here’s going to be joining us for all our exciting adventures.” Isabela squeezes her shoulder.
“I see.” To the elf, Hawke says, “Do you have need of directions to Haven?”
Things like that. No questioning. Despite her complaints, she completely allows Isabela to make structure-altering deals on her behalf, which is something even Adaar finds a bit ill-advised. Don’t get me wrong, I like Isabela, Adaar thinks as she watches the minutia play out over snatches. Really like her.She’s one of the few things keeping me from growing crazy. But her mindset is materialistic, not imperialistic. That sort of trust is terribly weighty. Also, if Shokrakar caught Adaar doing something like Isabela is doing, she’d be out on her ass.
The Red Jenny departs. Adaar hears her shoot another woof as she goes.
“So,” Isabela says. “What were you two girls gabbing about while Captain Isabela was off running the Inquisition?”
“We were discussing the Lord Seeker,” Hawke says, not rising to the bait. “Cassandra is pursuing some leads right now. The red lyrium conspiracy may run even higher than we originally thought.”
“You may need to accept that the whole Order might be corrupt,” Adaar points out.
“Not the whole Order.”
“Those loyal to you don’t count, Sweet Thing,” Isabela says. “Those are Inquisition templars now. They don’t even care about Andraste anymore, let alone the Order; it’s all Hawke all the time.”
The summer heat is almost entirely absent in the stone corridors of the city, where light barely reaches the alleys during the day, and night has taken away what little heat they had. Hawke’s chill has nothing on them though.
“There may still be those in Therinfal Redoubt who oppose the Lord Seeker’s views,” she says. “It’s our duty to reach out to them, rather than toss them all under heel.”
“Those in that fortress have had quite a lot of chances to switch sides, don’t you think?” Isabela asks. “If they’ve gone this long, they’re probably not coming back. We’re going to need to form a boarding party sooner or later.”
“We will wait on Cassandra’s investigation,” Hawke snaps the conversation closed like a bear trap.
If Adaar didn’t know any better, she would think that Hawke put Isabela up to all the free drinks to keep her carefully out of the way when noble visitors come ‘a calling. However, Adaar does know better now, and is starting to think that the time Varric and Isabela spend with her is because they genuinely like her. Or at least, they think her spending so much time with Solas makes her a loser and have decided to take pity.
“I’m just worried even if we sway some of the templars,” she admits over her mug, “it won’t be enough to actually suppress the Breach. There’s, what, a couple hundred left that aren’t already helping us? We already tried with those we have and it barely made a difference. I mean, look at that thing.”
The window is warped enough that the green hangs in its ripples. She can feel the distant warmth, even here. Not on her skin, but deeper, enough to know the distortion is hot and it is angry.
“It’s the plan we’ve got,” Varric shrugs. “Hawke won’t even hear about asking the rebel mages to charge the mark. Says it’s too risky.”
“Charge the mark?” Adaar asks. “That was an option?”
“Theoretically,” Varric says. “It’d also kill two birds with one stone; we don’t have the manpower to siege Therinfal, and there’s a huge pile of skilled mages just sitting in Redcliffe who just so happen to have a bone to pick with the Order.”
“Not to mention they need all the help they can get,” Isabela says wistfully.
“Ah, doesn’t matter.” Varric shakes his head. “Rivaini’s been needling Killer for weeks, and if she hasn’t budged for her she won’t budge for anyone. ”
“You only say that because you haven’t seen me work my charm,” Isabela says. Her fingers dance a silly dance. “I’ll get her fighting for mage freedom any day now.”
“I’ve seen you work your charm, Rivaini. I’ve also seen you work your magic, your skills, and your ‘mojo’. None of it's ever moved Hawke when she doesn’t want to be moved.” Varric pushes back his chair. “Speaking of moving. I drew the short straw for going to the Fallow Mire, two words next to each other that prove humans just shouldn’t be allowed to name places.”
“Been putting off packing?”
“More like I need to buy an extra three pairs of boots before I go. Let’s see how bad Seggrit fleeces me for this.”
The Singing Maiden door never quite closes from improperly laid flagstones, its heat only saved by the fire and the sheer volume of bodies. They pack in here, this one place in all the pilgrimage where one can get a decent drink, and Adaar knows enough about religion to get the irony. Crystalline dust flows in where Varric flows out, a delicate cloud of it, sparkling the doorstep but otherwise going unnoticed. The spots by the door are the least desirable real estate. Every coming and going puts a shiver under your arms, a sensation that’s almost worse than simply standing outside—you are embraced by cookfire air just long enough to be shocked by the cold when it comes in again. Adaar and Isabela are lucky on tables today, however. Theirs is close to the bar, and tall enough for an entire tavern view.
“You seem to genuinely care about this,” Adaar says. “The mage rebellion.”
“I couldn’t give a toss. The rebellion’s just a group, like the Raiders are just a group. Bunch of people who don’t enjoy being told what to do, so they found a bunch of other people who don’t enjoy being told what to do.”
“It still sounds like you care about the principle behind it.”
Isabela blows a lock of hair out of her face. “Oh fine. If you’re committed to making me sound all nobly. Everyone should be free. The mages broke away, and it bolloxed a lot of things up, even for me, but being free means making choices. They deserve to live with those choices.”
“Isabela,” Adaar says. “I’m sorry to inform you. But that is a very noble thing to think.”
She groans and puts her head in her arms. “I know. It’s all Hawke’s fault. She made me like this, all thinking I could be better than I am. But now when I’ve found something I know is right, she’s being a right bitch about it.”
“Did you…”
Adaar doesn’t know how to approach this question. It’s a disconnect, easier absorbed when she’s busy telling herself she’s still a prisoner. Unwitting. At the mercy of the Chantry and humans in general. That’s when she’s fully willing to remember that these are the people who started the mage rebellion by killing nearly every mage in an entire city.
It’s much harder to remember that when she’s traveling with them, joking with them. Sometimes Hawke will nod at her in approval, and it fills her with enough pride that she forgets who the Inquisitor truly is.
“During the Kirkwall rebellion,” she says. “Did you just…not care then?”
“I don’t know.” Isabela rubs her face. “At the time, helping the rebellion didn’t seem a real option. We wanted to keep the city from falling apart, and the slightest chance of that happening was working with Meredith and trying to mitigate the damage. At least, that’s how Hawke spun it. If you’d ever been the victim of a Hawke speech, you’d know why we got swept up in the moment.”
“But…Meredith was insane.”
Isabela rolls her eyes. “Yes we know that now. But even if we had at the time…I really don’t know. Would we have even saved more people if we’d fought with the mages? We helped some, ones who would’ve gotten themselves killed in the crossfire.”
“Personally,” Adaar says carefully, “I don’t think it’s about the numbers.”
“Maybe. Maybe you’re right. We did cock that one up. But I will tell you something.” Isabela looks at her seriously. “Even if we did, it wasn’t the Viscount’s seat or cozying up to Meredith. Hawke was trying to help. She always wants to help people, even if she goes about it in the most insufferable, whore-brained way possible.”
“Like now.”
“Like now,” Isabela agrees.
Then, the most peculiar thing happens.
The table with their mugs is scratched with sin and knife grooves, collected in the near decade it’s stood in this room, stood on this mountaintop. Self-evident statements such as ‘jerrik wus here’ and ‘your mum sucks me good and hard through my breeches’ litter its skin, but among those is the odd snippet of sentimentality: a quote from the chant, the phrase ‘I don’t want to go’. Someone has even left a flower, painstakingly carving out each of its petals over the hours of hours, days. Most common though is the simple wear and tear of cups dragged along boards, of scratches, scratches, scratches built over time like someone penning a manuscript, lines over and over again. And now, here on top of all that history, Isabela reaches forward hands that are just as scarred and weathered as the table, and takes Adaar’s in her own.
“You though. I bet you’d march us right up to that fortress, mages by your side, and not give a damn if all the world hated you for it.”
That statement deserves a response. Adaar would give one, but that would require doing more than just glancing against the implied treason in her words, that she wants Adaar in the Inquisitor’s saddle. Too busy for that, she is ensorcelled by the challenge in Isabela’s eyes, how it makes her stomach knot, makes her hands warm where the other woman is touching them. (She still has Solas’s glove. She can feel Isabela through it even so.) There is the terrible, yawning fact that Isabela wants something from her.
“You want me to go against Hawke?” Adaar says, mouth dry, because she can’t say you want me to take Hawke’s place?
“Why not? You’re the one in the best position to. The Herald of Andraste up and saying this is what we’re doing, tough knobs if you think different might be just the push she needs.”
So, just political maneuvering, not mutiny. It soothes but not by much.
“I can’t,” Adaar shakes her head. “I don’t have that kind of position. I close rifts, that’s it.”
“Aren’t you tired of being just a puppet, Poppet?” Isabela pauses. “Oh that’s a good one, I should tell Varric when he gets back.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m tired. I was tired from the moment I woke up here. Being fed up with a bunch of Chantry bullshit has no bearing on the situation.”
“Oh, hear this: aren’t you tired of being just a puppet prophet, Poppet?”
“Isabela,” Adaar pleads.
“I’m listening, Adaar. But you’re acting defeatist. I’ve been campaigning for this for weeks, and you—tall, sexy, divinely chosen you—haven't even given it a shot.” Isabela cocks her head and smiles. “Just give it a go. It’d make your darling Isabela so grateful.”
Adaar swallows. It’s difficult to look away from her face, the one so perfectly chiseled right down to the precise squaring of her nose. She squeezes the fingers that have found themselves in her palm. These hands that she’s now seen decapitate at least three things that shouldn’t—physics wise—be possible to behead. She still thinks they’re lovely.
“I want to,” she says.
“Then do.”
“If I’m going to be their Herald, then I should try to do what’s best for everyone, right?” she says, convincing herself as she goes. “Especially the mages. They’ve had the shit end of the stick for too long.”
“Strange how you say they, not we.”
“I’m Vashoth. There was never any real danger of me going to a circle. If I’d slipped up that bad that templars were after me, they’d probably just kill me instead of trying to fit me in Elim Hold.”
“True. You don’t see many horned mages among the rebels.”
“I’ll try,” Adaar says, mustering her confidence.
“There’s a good girl.”
As she strides toward Haven’s chantry, wonders if she’s being played, just in Isabela’s game rather than Hawke’s. She doesn’t think so, though. Something about the way Isabela looked at her, like she believed in her.
Plus, even if she is, Isabela’s right.
She tries to focus on the right as she walks. Purpose will keep her from losing her nerve, she’s sure of it. Even the usual gawkers as she moves through the pilgrimage must be able to tell something’s changed about her, should be able to she’s in a state not to be messed with. Throw your shoulder back. Yes, like that. One of the few benefits to being gobbled up by the ever-hungry Chantry is the new gear; the shoes especially, which treat her soles so much more nicely than the wooden-hoofed crap Shokrakar had last procured. The boots forget mud like it’s a bad dream, a useful trait when they’ve been hunting Red Templars on Ferelden’s coast. They’re warm, though she hardly notices. The cold simply won’t bother her the way it affects non-Qunari peoples. The Inquisition has given her armor along with her boots, but she’s only taken the coat, the sleeveless leather to drape over her saar. The coat, and the sash too. She likes the orange.
It occurs to her that she must look a sight: her hodgepodge of armor showing more skin than any of the bundled worshipers around her, the cords along her arms drawing unique attention to how steel they’re shaded. The Inquisition’s attempts to make her look more respectable have backfired horribly. Her unmistakably-Qunari hair and her mismatched coat fly out behind her, and she is going to see the Inquisitor.
“Herald. I do not believe we’ve been introduced.”
Her momentum pops like a soap bubble. She skids to a halt halfway through the chantry’s nave, meeting the command in that greeting with a, “Ser?”
The human with her back to the stack of books does not look pleased to be addressed as such. It’s brief, the repulsion that twangs between her eyebrows in a neat little fold, but then it is gone again, and she greets, “Enchanter Vivienne, of the Montsimmard Circle.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
Adaar remembers her arrival vaguely. So many important dignitaries file through, and only later did she find out this one is staying. Permanently, if the wall-clutched library is any indication.
She also is waiting for something, standing with those thin eyebrows raised, so Adaar says, “Uh, welcome to the Inquisition?”
“Of course, darling. I wouldn’t miss a chance to help set the world in order. Our Inquisitor holds the last of the loyal mages in her palm; how could I not join and make sure they have direction?”
“A lot of people seem to like the Inquisitor, yeah,” Adaar says. “Loyalty’s a bit and a copper, though, needs to go where there's a lot more of it.”
“Loyalty that can be bought isn’t much loyalty at all, is it?” the Grand Enchanter says with a smile.
“So you joined just to be closer to Hawke?” Adaar asks.
“To be in the company of giants, my dear. Speaking of, I would never pass up the opportunity to hear the perspective of the Herald of Andraste herself while I have her attention. What do you think of our dear Inquisitor?”
“Well, I think the category of loyal mages a shit one, to start.”
The Enchanter’s smile turns to a knife-edge grin, a smile that says she already knew that. “I haven’t the faintest what you mean.”
“First of all, I’m not her lap dog,” Adaar says, and oh, she must be drunk off self-actualization and the encouragement of a pretty woman because she’d never talk back to—she has to stop thinking of the Inquisition as her employer, it’s a dissonance that’s not doing much good for her mental state—a human otherwise. “And second, they don’t owe her loyalty. They don’t owe it to anyone. The mages out in the rebellion aren’t there due to some sort of deficit of gumption.”
“Deficit of sense, more like,” the Enchanter says, light at you please. “Deficit of morals, that they’d put their own selfish ambitions before the safety of the people of Thedas.”
“They didn’t start the war.”
“Was it a templar that killed a Grand Cleric and hundreds more innocents in Kirkwall? Was it a group of templars that called for the vote that brought the south into open rebellion? Crimes such as these are committed by the shortsighted and the paranoid, that can only see the world for how it should benefit them.”
“So we should all submit to the greater good?” Adaar spits. “Because your Chantry and your Circle don’t seem like that to me.”
“Darling, your people cut the tongues of mages they see as harmless and kill the ones they don’t; you hardly have a right to preach.”
“They do not cut their tongues, they sew their lips shut you vashedan tethgena-”
“Herald. Enough.”
Hawke is by her side. She has appeared out of candlelight to clamp on Adaar’s arm, which makes sense because Adaar can feel every blood vessel in her face. It’s humiliating that there’s pressure behind her eyes.
“I apologize on the Inquisition’s behalf, Lady Vivienne,” Hawke parlays. “It has been a very difficult few weeks. I’m sure there will be a later point where you can resume this conversation under more favorable conditions.”
“To her-?” But Adaar is already being led away, away from the Circle woman and her smug, of course Inquisitor, no offense taken.
They part waves of warmly dressed scouts and low-level clergy in a room that fills its amphitheater with whispers and muffled paper-shuffling, as though the building remembers its roots as a place of worship rather than a command center. There are Sisters delivering messages, and Mothers authoring propaganda, and if this isn’t the ideal Andraste preached, then Adaar wouldn’t know any better. Isabela often says Hawke runs a tight ship. It’s meant to be funny.
The door behind Adaar seals the candlelight down to a thin rim at its edges, privacy falling on them with a click. Hawke’s office is papered not just on the desk, but on the walls as well. Inked scrolls, in Nevarran style maybe, Adaar’s not sure, cover what was once unfinished lumber, sinking the dark little room into some clash between menial and exotic that must be ironic for someone more refined than her.
Hawke takes inventory of them, leisurely walking along the circumference as she says, “And here I thought you didn’t speak qunlat.”
“Enough to know a thethgena when I see one.”
To a monochrome mountainside steeped in mist, Hawke says, “I learned it while the Qunari were living in Kirkwall. Did you hear about that all the way over here? It was the city’s claim to fame for a while, before the chantry debacle substituted itself in everyone’s memory.”
Adaar is still short of breath, grappling with the heat in her face and the comparative coolness of Hawke’s room.
“I had a friend teach me,” Hawke continues. “I thought, if I could just understand them. If we could just speak the same language, we wouldn’t keep talking past each other. Naïve. It’s always more complicated than that.”
“I don’t need a backstory for why you don’t like Qunari,” Adaar says. “Most humans don’t need a reason, and we’re both fine to leave it at that.”
“Isabela misconstrued my opinions on the Qun,” Hawke says. “Exaggerated. Misinterpreted facts based on her own perception of the invasion, or more accurately lied simply because she doesn’t like how the whole thing went down. The Arishok had principles. I respected him. And yet I somehow ended up being his executioner instead of the people who actually hated him. I want to preface every conversation with, he was a decent man, but I don’t even know if that’s true when his decency was so alien.”
“It sounds like you didn’t try very hard at the whole speaking the same language thing.”
“On the contrary. I tried very hard,” Hawke says. “I don’t want a repeat of that.”
“Is that all you see me as? Another savage oxman to overcome?”
That's a bit unfair, maybe, but the argument with the Enchanter is still smarting. Hawke doesn’t deign it with a response.
“What could you possibly want with people like her?” Adaar gestures back into the chantry.
“What do you get out of asking questions you already know the answer to?” Hawke counters. “I suggest you use her as practice. More insidious people than lady Vivienne will try to rile you. She, at the very least, is on our side.”
Hawke is tall for a human. She must be used to looking down on people. Still, she meets Adaar’s gaze with steel, her chin tilted in high.
“We need to talk about the mage rebellion,” Adaar shoots past the order.
“What about them?” Hawke says idly, disinterestedly. She is already turning a letter on her desk toward her.
“We need their help for Therinfal.”
“Not going to happen.”
“We’ve got it all worked out,” Adaar goes on, building steam. “With their help we might be able to charge the mark-”
“I know the facts, Herald,” Hawke interrupts. “Varric’s laid out his neat little plan for me too. But we can’t logic our way out of reality where the mages won’t even treat with me.”
“Have you tried?”
“Yes,” Hawke says. Her fingers curl into a fist on the desk, but Adaar barely stops to consider what that might mean. Doesn’t notice that the feigned disinterest is doing a poor job at hiding the thing boiling beneath.
“But actually tried, not just sent some clinical treaty demanding fealty to the new Inquisition?”
“Mercenary. Drop it.”
“I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t speak with you at all,” Adaar accuses, “not when their backs to the wall and their one shot at a compromise up in a blaze. If we simply tried again with the given circumstances, surely-”
“Not a damn circumstance on Thedas is going to change their minds when I was the one who killedtheir fucking martyr.”
Adaar rears back. She’s never heard the Inquisitor shout before.
“They hate me,” Hawke spits. “I am everything they despise, Maferath come again. I was their Champion, and I failed, and now the world is falling apart and they won’t even speak to me. You and Isabela and Varric can needle me all you like, but I need to help the people who actually want my help, and try to figure out who put the hole in the sky. I don’t have time to play with those who choose to bury their heads in the sand when the world is falling to pieces.”
Adaar recovers enough to say, “If they won’t meet with you, then maybe I should be the one to speak for the Inquisition.”
“No.” Hawke picks up her quill.
“Why not?”
“Because I know how these things work and, quite frankly Herald, you do not.” She begins to write. “Try not to pick a fight with our Lady Enchanter on your way out.”
Adaar breaks the seal and slams it shut again.
Adaar’s starting to understand what Varric means by Hawke poisoning.
It’s baffling to her that the sort of vicious, blowout row they had can be so easily swept under the rug, when it should be the end to any professional relationship. Yet they are back to traipsing around Ferelden’s coast, cold wind drenching them even with sunlight peeking through the grey clouds, and Hawke is not at all bothered that they were screaming at each other merely a few days before.
“Yes,” Isabela clucks. “She does that.”
The only acknowledgement she gets is that Hawke has left the Enchanter behind.
The coast treats them like mabari that have had a run-in with a skunk, dumping buckets over their heads for having the audacity to walk around unsheltered. Adaar wipes and wipes with the heel of her palm, but try as she might, she can’t keep the water from her eyes. Hawke calls for a break a half hour from where they’re supposed to meet the mercenary band.
“We should get an umbrella and fasten it to your horns.” Isabela sits on a log and empties her boot of a comically large amount of water. “They make hats like that you know. I’m sure we could fix up one large enough to cover the whole party.”
“You’d all have to stand very close to me, I think.”
“That’s the idea, Poppet.”
“Well if you find anything at that hat shop, you let me know.”
“The one in Val Royeaux?” Isabela says. “That one was hopeless. A proper hat shop knows how to strike a balance between supple and gaudy, and the only thing Val Royeaux knows gaudy. There was this little millinery back in Kirkwall, cutest place…but…”
“Bloody Anders?” Adaar asks of Isabela’s favored sayings.
“Bloody Anders,” she agrees.
Adaar glances up the hill. Hawke is under a wilting pine tree, scraping out what might be the single dry spot on the whole ridge large enough to unfurl her map. She squints at it. She spends a lot of time on these forays squinting at the map and worrying at their next course of action like an old bone. Adaar wonders if maybe she can’t see so well without the spectacles.
“I’m surprised we trekked all this way out here to meet with a mercenary company,” she says. “The Inquisitor doesn’t seem to have a high opinion of us.”
“Because she calls you sell-out-sword behind your back?”
“Because- She calls me what?” Adaar sputters.
“Joking, Poppet,” Isabela says. “She doesn’t have the right to be giving you grief about it either way; she used to be mercenary too, back when she first came to Kirkwall.”
Adaar digests this for a moment.
“Hypocritical ass,” she concludes.
“That’s Hawke for you,” Isabela agrees. “Though don’t be too hard on her for that one. I think she regrets what she did during that time. A lot. Probably why she’s so bothered by you being one, even more so now that she’s taken you in. She always wants everyone to be the best person they can be.”
“Be careful, Isabela. That last part almost didn’t sound sarcastic.”
She meant it as a joke, but it’s less funny when Isabela frowns into the distance and doesn’t reply. Hawke is back a few moments later, telling them to move out.
The air is crisp and tastes of pine as they fight the mages the intel promised would be waiting for them there. The Chargers are good, Adaar will give them that. Far more organized than Shokrakar’s leadership style, which is more pointing at various weak points and saying, over there! Go wild! When the strange cult is dead—Hawke wiping her longsword on wet grass and Isabela poking through the dead like a magpie—it’s Adaar who approaches their leader first, the others following in her steps. She’s curious. Adaar’s never been good at judging the attractiveness of men, but the Iron Bull must be good looking by the way Isabela immediately begins whispering something low and most certainly toe-curling into Hawke’s ear, raking his form with her eyes. It says something to Hawke’s nerves, or how often she’s put through this, that she doesn’t bat an eye.
There’s no way Iron Bull doesn’t notice. But he doesn’t comment, just smirks knowingly and only chooses to address Adaar with a, “Glad you could make it.”
Hawke doesn’t step in to take the lead. Adaar wonders if it’s conciliation for their fight earlier, so she uncertainly opens the negotiation.
She is doing well, she thinks, right up until he drops the façade, and she hisses, “Spy! Arvaarad ebra kata hismass, stay away from me!”
The Ben-Hassrath hardly reacts, just raises his brow as though her backpedaling is genuinely amusing. She crashes into Hawke’s sturdy form, but doesn’t want to take her eyes off the spy, even to check where she’s going.
“Herald,” Hawke says mildly, “why don’t you take a walk?”
“A walk? But he’s-”
“A walk, Your Worship. I see they’re opening some casks, why don’t you join them? I can handle negotiations from here.”
Any care for appearances is out the window, especially when the repulsion is starting to give way to panic.
She sure as hell isn’t drinking the ale though, she isn’t a fool. Instead she paces the perimeter of the hastily erected camp, watching the Chargers toast, hugging herself and trying to chase away the jitters. How can he stand there, so calm? He shouldn’t even be here, this far from Par Vollen…
This far. This far into the continent, and the Qun will follow. He’s standing among Chantry forces, invited them here, and he isn’t even the least bit worried. The one thing the Chantry should be good for is keeping the Qun at bay. It’s a bit like pouring salt on a canker sore; hurts like hell and leaves the skin worse off, but hey, at least the sore is gone. If the human kingdoms aren’t even doing that anymore, then all Tama did coming here was flay her own hide for nothing.
The Ben-Hassrath shrugs at something Hawke says. Adaar stalks the outpost like a fearful cat.
Finally, Hawke turns, making her way to the slope where Adaar is waiting. Isabela finds the Charger closest to the casks and slings herself over a barrel, motioning to him for a cup. The Iron Bull doesn’t join either of them.
“Is…?” Adaar says. “You turned him down?”
Hawke hums in the affirmative, and keeps walking in the direction of the Inquisition camp. Adaar does a quick step to keep pace.
“I thought for sure you would…you were just going to let him…”
Images of her mother, lips pressed tight even though the wire holding them together has long since been removed, churn in Adaar’s head. When the bad months would come over her, weather too much like rain and tropics, she sometimes would be too afraid to speak for days at a time.
Hawke shakes her head. “You’re not the internationally infamous person the Inquisition is harboring, Herald. Exposing either of you to the Qunari isn’t the sort of risk we can take, monitored correspondence or no. He was upfront about it, which surprised me, but it was never an option.” She glances sideways at Adaar. “I just wanted to see what you would do.”
“You knew?” Adaar asks.
“Mm. Isabela figured it out, as soon as she saw him fighting,” Hawke says. “She’s got an amazing eye for detail.”
It wasn’t conciliation. It was…placation, Adaar realizes with outrage.
Hawke doesn’t even seem to know it. She keeps going mildly with, “It was still good to come and see about these Venatori rumors. I didn’t want to become distracted with them, but they kept bothering me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they can be dismissed so easily.”
But it follows them back to Haven like a bad odor. She stews in it, barely speaking to anyone as soon as her foot crushes down on the thin layer of snow that marks the pilgrimage’s borders, and holes herself up in the sick ward that has functioned as her room for the past two months.
They’ll never trust me, will they? she wonders as she stares at the anatomy text laid out on her desk without really seeing it. I’ll always be the knot that won’t sand down, the complication in their otherwise perfect coup d'état. I haven’t moved an inch from when I was kneeling in that dungeon.
Hawke, Leliana, Cullen—she shudders, the templar still unnerves her—they won’t let her blow her nose if they think it’ll make the Inquisition look bad. Only Isabela believes she could steer this thing, this beast that thrashes and spews the same self-propagation the Chantry is always about. She’s got the title, but now she needs…
Her nails sink into the wood. Well, she’s screwed: it’s a need now. Not just a half-hearted wish as she tries to keep her head above water, but something she’s getting dangerous ideas about. Because she’s not the only one in this Inquisition who knows the way the wind is blowing; she’s just the one person who has the chance to actually do something about it.
She packs before she has a chance to change her mind. “Well Inquisitor,” she mumbles as she slips past the templars standing watch outside camp, “you did tell me to go for a walk.”
It takes two weeks to march to Haven from Redcliffe Village.
Nearly twice as long as it took to get there, so by the time she crests the snowy ridge into the Valley of Sacred Ashes, she’s been gone long enough that a horizon of nostalgia worms its way into her disposition. She wonders how much of a tizzy Hawke’s people have worked themselves into with their dear Herald on the lam. Not too much, she supposes—she isn’t so petty as to not send word ahead when she’s arriving with an army at their doorstep.
And it truly looks an army when she casts a glance over her shoulder. The former mages of the Circle make ant lines with their hunched forms, robes and staves churning through snow here at the end of their long journey. Adaar pulls the sleeves of her own, new, robes in empathy as the wind buffets a few apprentices. There was a bit of grumbling the day after crossing the snow line, but they only have to make it a bit further.
A short trek across the valley before they all have to face the music.
Fiona steps beside her. “They don’t look very happy to see us.”
There are soldiers lined up in front of Haven’s gates. Fiona has impressive eyes for her age, as Adaar can barely see them with the sun’s glare off the snow, but she has no doubt that Hawke is waiting right up front with them. The glint is painful enough, and Adaar tries not ascribe it more than it is, not to take the vast white emptiness as a sign of blank and uncaring oblivion they’re about to face.
“Just follow my lead,” Adaar says. “I’ve done all the talking this far, might as well ride the cart straight into the creek.”
It’s amazing how far that cart has gotten her. The negotiations had gone shockingly well—despite Hawke’s claims to rejection, she’s actually rather well liked by the more conservative members of the mage rebellion. Which, ouch, but Adaar worked with what she had. With Hawke’s reputation as a firm but fair force after the Kirkwall rebellion, and Adaar’s literal divinity, it wasn’t hard to convince the mages that, yes, actually, of course I am one hundred percent sanctioned to negotiate on behalf of the Inquisition.
“It is beautiful,” Fiona says. “In its way.”
At first Adaar thinks she’s talking about the snow, but no, obviously she’s talking about the big tear into the fade itself that’s still hovering above Haven. Clouds circle around it, careful little wisps, each daring the other to touch the great maw of some emerald beast.
“Yes. It is,” Adaar says. “Some of the mages here say it feels warm to them, like sunlight even when it’s windy.”
“Interesting. And do you feel it, Herald?”
“Mostly in the curse- the um, mark that is.” Even now, it’s a buzzing reminder, going all the way up to her elbow. “Beautiful, but we’re going to have to close it even so.”
The tail end of their caravan has almost caught up. Quivering and bringing up the last of the mages they’ve been waiting for, Lysas nearly breaks down as he catches a glimpse of the welcome committee.
“There are,” he says, clutching his staff in white knuckles, “quite a few templars among the Inquisition, aren’t there.”
“Templars that are now your allies,” Adaar says. She places a hand on his shoulder, raising her voice to be heard and adds, “You have nothing to fear. Andraste is with you!”
It has the desired effect. The mages closest to the front, the ones who see what’s waiting for them, rouse themselves. Lysas just about collapses with gratitude. It’s surprising how easy that is. She understands how Hawke fell into the habit of pedaling it.
When they grace the floor of the valley, the Inquisitor greets them with a, “Your Worship. I see you have guests.”
Moment of truth. Just like before, just like at Redcliffe, she’ll fall into who she needs to be in the moment. Hawke and company are always propping her up. It’s about time she was the one pulling her own strings.
“Andraste has welcomed these mages into the fold,” Adaar booms, spreading her arms. “She herself has told me it is time for those who have been menaced and cast aside to be brought back to the flock. I have sought them out, and now I bring them to where the ashes of Our Lady once rested, so that we may all start again, a cleansing fire unto our past quarrels.”
A silence rings across the landscape with her words. A nug squeals, its voice heard miles away in the still valley. The masses on both sides hold their breath.
Then, “Our Lady’s wisdom is infinite,” Hawke says. “We will of course provide all that we can to those who have come to help us in our hour of need.”
Hawke stirs the air with a finger, and the gates open.
Adaar is intoxicated. She is giddy with the raw triumph as mages stream into Haven, getting swept along past the guards that won’t touch her, can’t dare go up against the Herald of Andraste. She catches a glimpse of Isabela grinning at her through the throngs.
But headcounts and hot meals can only last so long.
“A word, Herald,” Hawke says to her once the mingling has become so pronounced that it’s hard to tell a mage from…anyone else.
Adaar nods. There’s no point hiding from it. She braces as she takes the now familiar path through the chantry, greeting the ink screens on the walls like old friends. When she and Hawke are alone, the Inquisitor spreads her hands across her desk.
Silence drips between them like candle wax. Adaar knew what she was doing. She’s ready to face the consequences.
“Impressive,” Hawke says.
“…Come again?”
“You did what I could not,” Hawke blinks. And she’s not hiding anger, not tamping it down like Adaar had assumed at the gates. She is genuinely unperturbed. “Well done.”
“You’re not…pissed off?” Adaar waits. “Not going to have a go at me, even a little?”
“We discussed, in detail, the reasons why an alliance with the mages wouldn’t work. Clearly, those are no longer an issue.”
“But…you’re the Champion of Kirkwall. Magekiller. Hating the rebellion is your thing. The thing even I knew before I got roped into your stupid world-ending mess.”
“Do you think I have it in me to do much hating? Do you think I hate you?” Hawke asks.
“I…” Adaar bites the inside of her cheek. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. You’re…insane, I’m sure of it. Every human here is varying levels of insane.”
“I wish I had the clarity those mages do,” Hawke answers in a roundabout way. “That if their rebellion succeeds, that something better will come of it. I spend all my time trying to hold things together—my people, my city—I barely feel I can afford to hope for something better anymore.”
“Things won’t go back to the way they were, Hawke,” Adaar says, dumbfounded she has to be the one to say. “You keep trying, but it’s not working. You’re holding a world made of cheese. And not a hard cheese either, but something curdy that’s just turning to mush when you squeeze.”
Melancholy shades Hawke’s features, and just like that Adaar realizes she has to start all over again with understanding the Inquisitor.
“And, can I just say,” Adaar adds, “world was working like shit before it fell apart too.”
“Someone once told me that when only the abyss faces you,” Hawke admits grimly, “you may simply have to take the leap.”
“Don’t tell me I’m your leap of faith,” Adaar says. “I’d feel far too sorry for you if that were the case.”
Hawke doesn’t answer. She clasps Adaar’s shoulder in a warrior’s salute, elbow to her breast. “Tell me honestly, mercenary: do you believe you did the right thing?”
“No question.”
“Then, in the face of conviction, and a lack of one’s own, perhaps you did.”
She steps past, back into the nave, leaving Adaar in the study while the welcome party carries on noisily outside.