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peopleofthedas2010-12-30 09:52 pm
aithne) wrote in peopleofthedas2010-12-30 09:52 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Imperfect Creature, perspectives five and six
Title: Imperfect Creature; or, Nine Ways of Looking at a Warden
Series: Old Roads (though you don’t have to have read OR to enjoy this one)
Rating: T
Word Count: 3300 these two chapters, about 5500 total. (These are the two longest chapters.) The last three chapters will be posted tomorrow.
Summary: Nine people. Nine encounters. Nine different ways of looking at a Grey Warden. Old Roads continuity; a bit AU.
You can read it on FF.net, or you can read the next three installments after the nice cut.
She comes into the Pearl sometimes for a drink. No more or less notable than much of their other distinguished clientele, except for the fact that she always has her dog with her, the great hulking thing that pads in her footsteps like an over-muscled shadow. But Sanga keeps an eye on her anyway; it is her job, after all.
The Warden only rarely partakes of the men and women of the Pearl; usually the women. Most of Sanga's brood are afraid of the Warden-mage, but there are a few who are not, and it is to them that the Warden returns. As the months go by, as winter turns to spring and summer, her visits grow less frequent. At one point, Sanga does not see her for two months running; there is a rumor that the Wardens are in Orzammar, trying to garner support amongst the dwarves.
(There is also a rumor that the Wardens have left for Orlais; that the Wardens travel with a Crow assassin; that the Wardens are both werewolves. This last seems almost to comfort the people who repeat it.)
When she shows up once more, she is silent as usual, ostensibly alone except for her dog. There is an elf with tattoos on his face who shadows her. He seems to be watching over her, so Sanga lets him be. He stays carefully out of the Warden's sight.
She is thin as a wraith, and Sanga can see clearly the bones in her hands when she wraps her fingers around her cup. But she is not fragile. Not in the slightest. It is as if everything unnecessary has been systematically stripped away from her, leaving her honed as a blade.
The frightened rumors that have been blowing through Denerim like a knifing wind would paint this woman a monster almost more frightening than the darkspawn. And perhaps they are right; but Sanga has observed many men and women in her day, and the Pearl has seen monsters in its time. The Black Rose drank here once, after all, and left four of the Pearl's workers dead before he vanished. The Warden-mage is a killer, perhaps a murderer, but no demon.
Not yet.
She drinks watered wine, but does not ask Sanga for the comfort of the Pearl's back rooms. She stays late, and then she leaves. The elf departs as well, nodding to Sanga on his way.
The next day, even the Pearl hears of the Landsmeet, and the bells of the Chantry ring out in a pattern that Sanga has cause to wish was not so familiar: there is a new King of Ferelden.
That night, the Warden-mage visits the Pearl once more.
In her time, Sanga has seen a vast range of pain; after all, it is the promise of distraction from pain that is the Pearl's greatest attraction. The Warden has broken her heart, Sanga would stake her life on it. Yet, she does not drink any more than usual. Instead, she grips her cup and stares into it as if it might hold answers. The elf who shadows her sits in a dark corner, and watches without watching. The Warden's dog rests its head on her leg, working ears and eyebrows as if trying to find a combination that would make his human feel better.
She sits like that far into the night. Finally, as the last clients of the evening are either escorted out or into the back, Sanga approaches her. "Can we do anything for you, sweetheart?" she asks.
"Probably not." The Warden does not move, even to look up at Sanga. "It's closing time, isn't it? I should go."
"Perhaps." Sanga waves away Ovrit, who is hovering nearby wondering if he's going to need to help kick out this small woman, and pulls up a chair across from the Warden. "You seem to have some things on your mind."
She makes a noncommittal noise. "You'd think I wouldn't even notice, what with the darkspawn heading north, about to ride to war. With everything else going on, seems like having someone I love tell me he's leaving me because I'm a mage would seem minor. And you'd think I would have expected it. I know better than to stick my hand in the fire and not expect to get burned. And I did make him King rather against his will." She takes a deep breath. "I just needed a night to think about it, before I tried to be his friend again."
Ah. The rumors about the two Wardens were true, then; given that Sanga had observed the Warden-mage's sexual proclivities, she'd had her doubts. "We are closing down the public room, but if you wanted to stay, I'm sure we could come to an arrangement."
The Warden raises the cup to her lips, and drains it to the dregs. "All of your girls are occupied, Sanga, and you'll forgive me if I'm not in the mood for men." Her eyes dart briefly towards the darkened corner where her tattooed shadow waits, just out of sight.
Sanga leans in, and puts her hand on the Warden's jaw, her thumb running over the woman's sharp chin. The other woman does not pull away, but neither does she move forward; in the lantern-lit common room, it is difficult to see if her pupils widen. "My girls may all be occupied, but I am not."
It has been a long time since Sanga has taken a client. She was once one of the girls who work places like the Pearl, girls and women who have no better prospects and nowhere else to go. When Sanga took over the Pearl, she swore to make it as good a place as she could manage.
She promised herself, as well, that she would take on only the clients she wanted to take. She has never been the prettiest whore in Denerim, or the best. But she has something else, something that brings men and women to her doorstep, asking if she will see them with hands a-tremble. Some think they love her. Others think that they come away from her bed confessed and shriven, made new once more.
Sanga has a fine ear for those who badly need what she gives. So she offers to this Warden, with a hand on her face and a questioning silence.
But the Warden draws back. There is a scent in the air like a snowy night, like a pail of frozen water; like distance. "Maybe another time, Sanga," she says, and her voice is rough as if with pain. Then she rises, and the dog lying next to her follows suit. "Stay safe." The words are clipped, as are her movements as she collects her sword and heads for the door.
The elf in the corner rises as the Warden reaches the small hallway that serves as the Pearl's entrance hall. He, too, stalks towards the door. "I will be sure that she gets back safely," he says to Sanga, his accent rendering the words as low music. "Though tonight only a fool would attack her, yes?"
She hears all that the elf does not say, that perhaps not all of the fools are out on the streets tonight, that perhaps there are good reasons for a Grey Warden to be watched over by a man who is almost certainly an assassin...but there are more bad ones, and some of them include those proverbial reasons of the heart that reason cannot compass.
He is gone, the door swinging closed behind him. "Bar the door, Ovrit," she says. "Take your post. I'll clean up in here." Her hired man nods, and goes. Sometimes, she and Ovrit and whoever is not occupied with a client will sit and have a drink after close.
Not tonight.
Sanga wipes the tables with a damp rag, sweeps the floor, checks the stores behind the bar. She snuffs most of the lanterns, turns those still lit low.
Then she sits at one of the tables, props her chin in one hand. Something is gnawing at her, some unreasonable worry. The darkspawn will not reach Denerim, they say. Still. She has plans for getting her people out and away; perhaps it is time to retire to warmer climes for a time.
She's been in the Circle Tower for three months now, and most of the mages have just left for Denerim, a group of Templars following them grimly. They left behind a couple of full enchanters, a few apprentices, most of the Templars and Tranquil, and Dagna.
And the Circle Tower is (Dagna reluctantly admits to herself) sort of terrible.
Part of it is that there's still a lot of cleaning up to be done. The large library is mostly cleared, and the apprentice dormitories, but up on the floor that has the Senior Enchanter quarters lingers a smell that Dagna associates with the few times she snuck off to Dust Town by herself—a fetid smell of rotting flesh and sewage.
And part of it is that somehow the pain and sorrow of the attack on the Circle seems to have sunk into the stone of the Tower itself. There are keening cries when the wind blows that can't be fully explained by gaps in mortar. The Shaperate says that stone once cut and shaped is no longer a part of the living Stone, but Dagna is starting to doubt that. Perhaps all stone is part of the Stone.
Stone remembers, after all.
But even though Kinloch Hold is rather awful, it's also rather wonderful. The books—! Even the apprentice stacks are a revelation, though rather a lot of those books have been defaced (one by a mage who evidently likes cats, of all things). And now that the mages are gone, there's nobody left who cares enough about Dagna to stop her from venturing into the enchanter stacks. The Templar who always seems to be on duty there sees her, she knows, but he never says anything. There are rumors about what happened to him—
Never mind that.
She starts to explore beyond the libraries, to the Senior Enchanter floor. This floor is nearly empty, except for the few Tranquil who have tasks here that they cannot seem to stop doing. When Dagna manages to adjust to the stink, it's a good place to bring her notes. There hasn't been a comprehensive survey of the literature around the study of lyrium done, ever, and Dagna intends to do one—there is so much here, and it's not organized or sorted in any way. One book refers to another, others mention mages long dead as sources to be consulted.
So she is busy, while the war rages.
"Which stack should I start looking for a book by someone named Guillarme?" she asks the Templar who is standing just below the staircase that leads to the Senior Enchanter floor. "It's called In Defense of Griffon's Fall, if that helps. Well, that's the translation, at least, it's in Orlesian."
The Templar doesn't respond for a moment. Then he says, "Why do you think I know?"
Dagna snorts. "You stand around a library all day. I'd think the books would seep in, if nothing else."
The Templar sighs, a hollow, echoey sort of sound in his helmet. "Up there, somewhere on the top two shelves. That's where most of the books in Orlesian are kept."
"See?" she crows. "I knew you'd know. Come on, hold the ladder for me."
It's funny, how so many people just do as they're told. The Templar follows her and steadies the ladder while she climbs up to pull down the book she's after. And the next day when she comes back and asks him where she can find a book called Exalt and Overwhelm, he helps her look for it.
In Denerim, the Archdemon dies.
The mages come back with stories of what happened at Fort Drakon, how they held the stairs leading into the fort from waves of shrieks and ogres and hurlocks and genlocks, and Dagna cannot help but think about how Orzammar stands against the darkspawn. The mages fought a battle, and won; the dwarves fight a war, and they are losing. Slowly, by inches, they are losing.
She knows then that someday soon, she will go home.
"Do you think she'll come back?" she asks the Templar who usually helps her in the library. His name is Cullen, and since the mages got back he has less time to help her look for books than he had. Still, sometimes he's there, and he's useful. Like right now, when she's handing down books to him from her perch on a ladder.
"Who?" he asks, taking a book from her hand and setting it atop three others on the table.
"The Grey Warden, the one who killed the Archdemon. She's a mage, you know! Do you know her? I met her in Orzammar, she's the one who arranged for me to study here." Dagna never forgets a face, especially not a face that managed to grant her the one thing she ever really wanted, her heart's desire. She can still see the mage's hollow cheeks, her dark eyes that stood out in her face like jet inlaid in limestone. "She was nice to me."
Cullen's laugh is more like a bark. Alarmed, she peers down at him. "Sorry. I've just never heard Kathil referred to as nice, before. Trouble, yes. But not nice."
"So you know her, then?" Dagna hands down the last book to the Templar and starts climbing down the ladder. The knees of her trousers are dusty.
"We aren't encouraged to get to know the mages," Cullen says. "I've seen her, but I don't know her." He has his helmet off, and his gaze is distant.
It occurs to Dagna that this is the first time that the Templar has ever lied to her. Something about him reminds her of her father, how he would grumble, Like a nug that wants to fly and spends all its time trying to grow wings when she would talk about magic, about going to the Tower to study.
She grew her wings, and they carried her here, and one day soon they will carry her back to Orzammar. She wonders if this Templar is ever going to grow his.
But she drops the topic and finishes climbing down the ladder to the floor.
She's back in Orzammar before the snow flies again on the surface. It's there that she starts getting letters sent from the Grey Warden Kathil with no way to send a message back, no address, not even a hint of where the mage might be. Dagna does not know that she is the only person to hear from the Warden for two years.
Dagna never forgets a face; not even one altered nearly beyond recognition.
Humans are still a rare sight in Orzammar. The one making her way unsteadily through the crowds in the Commons is the subject of no few stares, but she returns none of them. There is a deep scar down one side of her face, flushed an angry red, and she limps a little.
Dagna would know her anywhere.
She rushes off of the stoop where she has been visiting with her father, dodging through the crowds. "Warden! Warden? Kathil! It's me, Dagna! You're back, you came to visit! I did it, I went to the Tower and came back but I guess you knew that because you've been writing me here, and wow it's been years! Come on, then, you're going to stay with me, I have an extra bedroom. Well, it's mostly filled with books right now but we can move stuff around and I'm so glad to see you!"
The mage doesn't resist as Dagna leads her to her own little house in the Commons. There is so much Dagna wants to tell her. But Kathil looks strange, almost as if she's not wholly here, as if she's left some part of her somewhere, and all she does when Dagna tries to talk to her is close her eyes.
Dagna beds the Warden down on a cot in the spare bedroom, surrounded by stacks of books. She stays there for four days, barely stirring enough to use the jakes and stumble back to bed. Dagna can't be home all the time, there is so much to be doing right now what with the apostates that have been showing up on Orzammar's doorstep and all of them being brought to Dagna because she's the only person who knows anything at all about mages. She checks in on the Warden often, but doesn't force her awake.
After four days, the Warden seems to come back to life a little, enough to have a conversation and eat some roasted nug that Dagna brings her. She shakes her head when Dagna asks if she wants to meet the mages who are living in Orzammar.
On the fifth day, she is gone; one of her father's friends mentions that he saw the scarred human heading towards the doors into the Deep Roads. Dagna can't help her disappointed scowl. Everyone knows why Grey Wardens go into the Deep Roads alone. She's too young. She should have years still.
Then someone else says they saw her go into the shaperate, and then someone else still says they saw her in the Hall of Heroes. But Dagna doesn't know for certain whether the Warden's gone down to the deep one last time until she receives a letter from Kathil a few months later.
The letter doesn't mention her visit to Orzammar. In fact, she has picked up their correspondence exactly where she left off, except that at the end of the letter she mentions that she is living at the Tower for the moment.
Dagna sends letters to the Tower. Then to Denerim. Then, a winter passes with no word, and when Dagna hears from the Warden again, she is in Amaranthine.
It's about then that other rumors reach Dagna's ears. The human Chantry is not pleased with the fact that there are now thirty mages of various descriptions living and working in Orzammar. They are contemplating an Exalted March.
It's as if they expect to rattle their swords in Orzammar's direction and have the dwarves jump to their command. But the mages have been making themselves useful—the Deep Roads nearest Orzammar are nearly free of darkspawn now, and they're pushing towards reclaiming many of the thaigs. Dagna is still working on her comprehensive theories and natural history of lyrium, and she's discovered how to extend the amount of time that mages can spend in some of the lyrium-choked caverns in the deep before they become intoxicated.
Dagna has no fear that King Harrowmont will give over the mages. They—and she—are far too useful.
She thinks sometimes about the Warden, who blows in and out of her life like a surface storm, someone she has never gotten to know except by absence, by rumor. She wonders whatever happened to that Templar, if he ever went mad like people said he would.
Maybe some day she'll go up to the surface again, and see.
Series: Old Roads (though you don’t have to have read OR to enjoy this one)
Rating: T
Word Count: 3300 these two chapters, about 5500 total. (These are the two longest chapters.) The last three chapters will be posted tomorrow.
Summary: Nine people. Nine encounters. Nine different ways of looking at a Grey Warden. Old Roads continuity; a bit AU.
You can read it on FF.net, or you can read the next three installments after the nice cut.
five: the madam
She comes into the Pearl sometimes for a drink. No more or less notable than much of their other distinguished clientele, except for the fact that she always has her dog with her, the great hulking thing that pads in her footsteps like an over-muscled shadow. But Sanga keeps an eye on her anyway; it is her job, after all.
The Warden only rarely partakes of the men and women of the Pearl; usually the women. Most of Sanga's brood are afraid of the Warden-mage, but there are a few who are not, and it is to them that the Warden returns. As the months go by, as winter turns to spring and summer, her visits grow less frequent. At one point, Sanga does not see her for two months running; there is a rumor that the Wardens are in Orzammar, trying to garner support amongst the dwarves.
(There is also a rumor that the Wardens have left for Orlais; that the Wardens travel with a Crow assassin; that the Wardens are both werewolves. This last seems almost to comfort the people who repeat it.)
When she shows up once more, she is silent as usual, ostensibly alone except for her dog. There is an elf with tattoos on his face who shadows her. He seems to be watching over her, so Sanga lets him be. He stays carefully out of the Warden's sight.
She is thin as a wraith, and Sanga can see clearly the bones in her hands when she wraps her fingers around her cup. But she is not fragile. Not in the slightest. It is as if everything unnecessary has been systematically stripped away from her, leaving her honed as a blade.
The frightened rumors that have been blowing through Denerim like a knifing wind would paint this woman a monster almost more frightening than the darkspawn. And perhaps they are right; but Sanga has observed many men and women in her day, and the Pearl has seen monsters in its time. The Black Rose drank here once, after all, and left four of the Pearl's workers dead before he vanished. The Warden-mage is a killer, perhaps a murderer, but no demon.
Not yet.
She drinks watered wine, but does not ask Sanga for the comfort of the Pearl's back rooms. She stays late, and then she leaves. The elf departs as well, nodding to Sanga on his way.
The next day, even the Pearl hears of the Landsmeet, and the bells of the Chantry ring out in a pattern that Sanga has cause to wish was not so familiar: there is a new King of Ferelden.
That night, the Warden-mage visits the Pearl once more.
In her time, Sanga has seen a vast range of pain; after all, it is the promise of distraction from pain that is the Pearl's greatest attraction. The Warden has broken her heart, Sanga would stake her life on it. Yet, she does not drink any more than usual. Instead, she grips her cup and stares into it as if it might hold answers. The elf who shadows her sits in a dark corner, and watches without watching. The Warden's dog rests its head on her leg, working ears and eyebrows as if trying to find a combination that would make his human feel better.
She sits like that far into the night. Finally, as the last clients of the evening are either escorted out or into the back, Sanga approaches her. "Can we do anything for you, sweetheart?" she asks.
"Probably not." The Warden does not move, even to look up at Sanga. "It's closing time, isn't it? I should go."
"Perhaps." Sanga waves away Ovrit, who is hovering nearby wondering if he's going to need to help kick out this small woman, and pulls up a chair across from the Warden. "You seem to have some things on your mind."
She makes a noncommittal noise. "You'd think I wouldn't even notice, what with the darkspawn heading north, about to ride to war. With everything else going on, seems like having someone I love tell me he's leaving me because I'm a mage would seem minor. And you'd think I would have expected it. I know better than to stick my hand in the fire and not expect to get burned. And I did make him King rather against his will." She takes a deep breath. "I just needed a night to think about it, before I tried to be his friend again."
Ah. The rumors about the two Wardens were true, then; given that Sanga had observed the Warden-mage's sexual proclivities, she'd had her doubts. "We are closing down the public room, but if you wanted to stay, I'm sure we could come to an arrangement."
The Warden raises the cup to her lips, and drains it to the dregs. "All of your girls are occupied, Sanga, and you'll forgive me if I'm not in the mood for men." Her eyes dart briefly towards the darkened corner where her tattooed shadow waits, just out of sight.
Sanga leans in, and puts her hand on the Warden's jaw, her thumb running over the woman's sharp chin. The other woman does not pull away, but neither does she move forward; in the lantern-lit common room, it is difficult to see if her pupils widen. "My girls may all be occupied, but I am not."
It has been a long time since Sanga has taken a client. She was once one of the girls who work places like the Pearl, girls and women who have no better prospects and nowhere else to go. When Sanga took over the Pearl, she swore to make it as good a place as she could manage.
She promised herself, as well, that she would take on only the clients she wanted to take. She has never been the prettiest whore in Denerim, or the best. But she has something else, something that brings men and women to her doorstep, asking if she will see them with hands a-tremble. Some think they love her. Others think that they come away from her bed confessed and shriven, made new once more.
Sanga has a fine ear for those who badly need what she gives. So she offers to this Warden, with a hand on her face and a questioning silence.
But the Warden draws back. There is a scent in the air like a snowy night, like a pail of frozen water; like distance. "Maybe another time, Sanga," she says, and her voice is rough as if with pain. Then she rises, and the dog lying next to her follows suit. "Stay safe." The words are clipped, as are her movements as she collects her sword and heads for the door.
The elf in the corner rises as the Warden reaches the small hallway that serves as the Pearl's entrance hall. He, too, stalks towards the door. "I will be sure that she gets back safely," he says to Sanga, his accent rendering the words as low music. "Though tonight only a fool would attack her, yes?"
She hears all that the elf does not say, that perhaps not all of the fools are out on the streets tonight, that perhaps there are good reasons for a Grey Warden to be watched over by a man who is almost certainly an assassin...but there are more bad ones, and some of them include those proverbial reasons of the heart that reason cannot compass.
He is gone, the door swinging closed behind him. "Bar the door, Ovrit," she says. "Take your post. I'll clean up in here." Her hired man nods, and goes. Sometimes, she and Ovrit and whoever is not occupied with a client will sit and have a drink after close.
Not tonight.
Sanga wipes the tables with a damp rag, sweeps the floor, checks the stores behind the bar. She snuffs most of the lanterns, turns those still lit low.
Then she sits at one of the tables, props her chin in one hand. Something is gnawing at her, some unreasonable worry. The darkspawn will not reach Denerim, they say. Still. She has plans for getting her people out and away; perhaps it is time to retire to warmer climes for a time.
She traces designs in the wood of the table with her finger as the lamps gutter low, and considers retreat.
*****
six: the scholar
Dagna never forgets a face.
She's been in the Circle Tower for three months now, and most of the mages have just left for Denerim, a group of Templars following them grimly. They left behind a couple of full enchanters, a few apprentices, most of the Templars and Tranquil, and Dagna.
And the Circle Tower is (Dagna reluctantly admits to herself) sort of terrible.
Part of it is that there's still a lot of cleaning up to be done. The large library is mostly cleared, and the apprentice dormitories, but up on the floor that has the Senior Enchanter quarters lingers a smell that Dagna associates with the few times she snuck off to Dust Town by herself—a fetid smell of rotting flesh and sewage.
And part of it is that somehow the pain and sorrow of the attack on the Circle seems to have sunk into the stone of the Tower itself. There are keening cries when the wind blows that can't be fully explained by gaps in mortar. The Shaperate says that stone once cut and shaped is no longer a part of the living Stone, but Dagna is starting to doubt that. Perhaps all stone is part of the Stone.
Stone remembers, after all.
But even though Kinloch Hold is rather awful, it's also rather wonderful. The books—! Even the apprentice stacks are a revelation, though rather a lot of those books have been defaced (one by a mage who evidently likes cats, of all things). And now that the mages are gone, there's nobody left who cares enough about Dagna to stop her from venturing into the enchanter stacks. The Templar who always seems to be on duty there sees her, she knows, but he never says anything. There are rumors about what happened to him—
Never mind that.
She starts to explore beyond the libraries, to the Senior Enchanter floor. This floor is nearly empty, except for the few Tranquil who have tasks here that they cannot seem to stop doing. When Dagna manages to adjust to the stink, it's a good place to bring her notes. There hasn't been a comprehensive survey of the literature around the study of lyrium done, ever, and Dagna intends to do one—there is so much here, and it's not organized or sorted in any way. One book refers to another, others mention mages long dead as sources to be consulted.
So she is busy, while the war rages.
"Which stack should I start looking for a book by someone named Guillarme?" she asks the Templar who is standing just below the staircase that leads to the Senior Enchanter floor. "It's called In Defense of Griffon's Fall, if that helps. Well, that's the translation, at least, it's in Orlesian."
The Templar doesn't respond for a moment. Then he says, "Why do you think I know?"
Dagna snorts. "You stand around a library all day. I'd think the books would seep in, if nothing else."
The Templar sighs, a hollow, echoey sort of sound in his helmet. "Up there, somewhere on the top two shelves. That's where most of the books in Orlesian are kept."
"See?" she crows. "I knew you'd know. Come on, hold the ladder for me."
It's funny, how so many people just do as they're told. The Templar follows her and steadies the ladder while she climbs up to pull down the book she's after. And the next day when she comes back and asks him where she can find a book called Exalt and Overwhelm, he helps her look for it.
In Denerim, the Archdemon dies.
The mages come back with stories of what happened at Fort Drakon, how they held the stairs leading into the fort from waves of shrieks and ogres and hurlocks and genlocks, and Dagna cannot help but think about how Orzammar stands against the darkspawn. The mages fought a battle, and won; the dwarves fight a war, and they are losing. Slowly, by inches, they are losing.
She knows then that someday soon, she will go home.
"Do you think she'll come back?" she asks the Templar who usually helps her in the library. His name is Cullen, and since the mages got back he has less time to help her look for books than he had. Still, sometimes he's there, and he's useful. Like right now, when she's handing down books to him from her perch on a ladder.
"Who?" he asks, taking a book from her hand and setting it atop three others on the table.
"The Grey Warden, the one who killed the Archdemon. She's a mage, you know! Do you know her? I met her in Orzammar, she's the one who arranged for me to study here." Dagna never forgets a face, especially not a face that managed to grant her the one thing she ever really wanted, her heart's desire. She can still see the mage's hollow cheeks, her dark eyes that stood out in her face like jet inlaid in limestone. "She was nice to me."
Cullen's laugh is more like a bark. Alarmed, she peers down at him. "Sorry. I've just never heard Kathil referred to as nice, before. Trouble, yes. But not nice."
"So you know her, then?" Dagna hands down the last book to the Templar and starts climbing down the ladder. The knees of her trousers are dusty.
"We aren't encouraged to get to know the mages," Cullen says. "I've seen her, but I don't know her." He has his helmet off, and his gaze is distant.
It occurs to Dagna that this is the first time that the Templar has ever lied to her. Something about him reminds her of her father, how he would grumble, Like a nug that wants to fly and spends all its time trying to grow wings when she would talk about magic, about going to the Tower to study.
She grew her wings, and they carried her here, and one day soon they will carry her back to Orzammar. She wonders if this Templar is ever going to grow his.
But she drops the topic and finishes climbing down the ladder to the floor.
She's back in Orzammar before the snow flies again on the surface. It's there that she starts getting letters sent from the Grey Warden Kathil with no way to send a message back, no address, not even a hint of where the mage might be. Dagna does not know that she is the only person to hear from the Warden for two years.
Dagna never forgets a face; not even one altered nearly beyond recognition.
Humans are still a rare sight in Orzammar. The one making her way unsteadily through the crowds in the Commons is the subject of no few stares, but she returns none of them. There is a deep scar down one side of her face, flushed an angry red, and she limps a little.
Dagna would know her anywhere.
She rushes off of the stoop where she has been visiting with her father, dodging through the crowds. "Warden! Warden? Kathil! It's me, Dagna! You're back, you came to visit! I did it, I went to the Tower and came back but I guess you knew that because you've been writing me here, and wow it's been years! Come on, then, you're going to stay with me, I have an extra bedroom. Well, it's mostly filled with books right now but we can move stuff around and I'm so glad to see you!"
The mage doesn't resist as Dagna leads her to her own little house in the Commons. There is so much Dagna wants to tell her. But Kathil looks strange, almost as if she's not wholly here, as if she's left some part of her somewhere, and all she does when Dagna tries to talk to her is close her eyes.
Dagna beds the Warden down on a cot in the spare bedroom, surrounded by stacks of books. She stays there for four days, barely stirring enough to use the jakes and stumble back to bed. Dagna can't be home all the time, there is so much to be doing right now what with the apostates that have been showing up on Orzammar's doorstep and all of them being brought to Dagna because she's the only person who knows anything at all about mages. She checks in on the Warden often, but doesn't force her awake.
After four days, the Warden seems to come back to life a little, enough to have a conversation and eat some roasted nug that Dagna brings her. She shakes her head when Dagna asks if she wants to meet the mages who are living in Orzammar.
On the fifth day, she is gone; one of her father's friends mentions that he saw the scarred human heading towards the doors into the Deep Roads. Dagna can't help her disappointed scowl. Everyone knows why Grey Wardens go into the Deep Roads alone. She's too young. She should have years still.
Then someone else says they saw her go into the shaperate, and then someone else still says they saw her in the Hall of Heroes. But Dagna doesn't know for certain whether the Warden's gone down to the deep one last time until she receives a letter from Kathil a few months later.
The letter doesn't mention her visit to Orzammar. In fact, she has picked up their correspondence exactly where she left off, except that at the end of the letter she mentions that she is living at the Tower for the moment.
Dagna sends letters to the Tower. Then to Denerim. Then, a winter passes with no word, and when Dagna hears from the Warden again, she is in Amaranthine.
It's about then that other rumors reach Dagna's ears. The human Chantry is not pleased with the fact that there are now thirty mages of various descriptions living and working in Orzammar. They are contemplating an Exalted March.
It's as if they expect to rattle their swords in Orzammar's direction and have the dwarves jump to their command. But the mages have been making themselves useful—the Deep Roads nearest Orzammar are nearly free of darkspawn now, and they're pushing towards reclaiming many of the thaigs. Dagna is still working on her comprehensive theories and natural history of lyrium, and she's discovered how to extend the amount of time that mages can spend in some of the lyrium-choked caverns in the deep before they become intoxicated.
Dagna has no fear that King Harrowmont will give over the mages. They—and she—are far too useful.
She thinks sometimes about the Warden, who blows in and out of her life like a surface storm, someone she has never gotten to know except by absence, by rumor. She wonders whatever happened to that Templar, if he ever went mad like people said he would.
Maybe some day she'll go up to the surface again, and see.