Book One: Prelude to a Dance - Ch. 3 Glimpses

[nightsfury]

Characters: Fenris/Hawke(m)
Length: ~2,300
Rating: Everyone

Sometimes when you think you're ending one story, you're actually starting another. Even if you don't realize it at the time.

 

 

Fenris jerked awake, the dream-memory of searing pain that wound around his left calf following him into the waking world. His nails dug into his palms and he forced himself to breathe slowly, each breath measured. In the dusty dimness of an abandoned shack in Lowtown near dockside pale morning sun leaked in from under the eaves and spread across a badly patched ceiling as he willed pain away.

When the agony faded from flesh, though not from memory, he lay back and stared at the cracked ceiling. He remembered nothing from the time before these cursed markings had been carved into his skin. Not his name. Not his age. Not where he’d been born. Not if he had a brother or a sister. Nothing. But he remembered the pain. Every precise and burning cut made by a narrow-bladed dagger with a silver hilt wrought as twining serpents with blood-red rubies set in for the eyes. Six days Danarius had carved his flesh. One limb per day, then his chest, and finally, his back. Six days his flesh had burned while the magister chanted his vile spells and poured specially prepared lyrium potions into the bloody cuts, sealing in power. Sealing away everything Fenris once had been.

With a curse, he rolled to his feet. No answers hid in the dusty shadows.

It took only a few moments to roll up his blanket and stash it in his pack with his gauntlets, and then pull on his cuirass. He tucked his purse, now two dozen sovereigns heavier thanks to several trips through the Hightown markets these past few weeks, inside his armor. Ghost fingers had gathered the gold from fine leather purses. In the busy market, distracted by the call of the vendors, the nobles never noticed a silent elf gliding by them. One trick every slave learned quickly and early was the art of being as unobtrusive as possible in a master’s presence. Avoiding attention kept you alive. Drawing it courted death. The irony that he had decided to reverse that hard-learned lesson wasn’t lost on him.

He checked the street through a crack in the door. Mostly dockworkers on their way home from night shift or on their way for the day one. When the stream of people thinned out to an occasional straggler, Fenris slipped out of the shack, then headed north where the fishing boats were berthed.

Even this early in the morning, dockside vendors sold grilled fish. Two skewers and a stale biscuit only cost a few bits. The vendor kept glancing at the lyrium lines that swirled over the backs of his hands, but wisely asked no questions.

 In a narrow alley between two warehouses, Fenris washed his breakfast down with water he’d drawn from a public well, and considered his options. There weren’t many. Mostly waiting and watching.

He brushed stray crumbs off his cuirass, slung his leather water bottle over his shoulder, and glided out of the alley. He turned his back on the weeping giants and made his way through the warehouse district adjacent to the docks. There was a kind of poetic irony in making his stand in a city founded on and for slavery, he supposed.

He started at the sound of a harsh voice yelling in Arcanum. Pivoting, his sword already partly drawn, he saw only a ship captain berating a pair of dockworkers struggling with a plain, heavy chest. Fenris eased his sword back into its sheath, and glided away in the direction of the Hanged Man. No matter the time of day or night, the place seemed the best source of gossip and rumor in Kirkwall. And with luck, he might pick up some shreds of information about when the next band of Tevinter slave hunters would arrive.

 A guard on patrol passed Fenris, then like every other in the last few weeks, stared a moment at the lyrium markings on his throat that curved up his chin before moving past. Well, he was certainly being noticed…by many, judging by the darting, sideways glances tossed his way as he strode down the street. Good. Let them come. He was ready.

###

 “You sold my children into servitude, and now you want me to pay rent?” Leandra’s indignant voice sounded through the cracked bedroom door.

Hawke winced, rolled onto his stomach on the narrow top bunk, and pulled his pillow over his head.

“It wasn’t that bad, Mother,” he muttered into the dingy sheets. Slipping the washer woman around the corner a silver or two on top of the six bits she charged for a basket helped ensure the bed linens, decent quality despite their dismal color, weren’t ‘lost.’

“Well, maybe something towards food,” Gamlen said. Danal could just see him shifting his feet, looking down at his scuffed boots, while his hands twisted around one another.

Makers balls, uncle, did you gamble the rent money away…again? And it’s not like I don’t contribute, he thought as he dragged the pillow off, then sat up and swung over the side of the bunk, landing lightly.

 Life with Uncle Gamlen had a certain…stimulating quality to it. Mostly because he and mother went after each other at every opportunity, it seemed. When they weren’t rehashing the arguments over the wasted fortune and the will, they dredged up things that had happened when they were children. It didn’t help that their sniping reminded Danal too much of how he and Carver used to go at it. No one could dig a dagger under your skin like family. No one else knew where the really sensitive spots were.

He sighed and pulled on his pants and shirt. As their voices moved away from the door, their words became muffled. Then Mother’s voice rang out.

“They should be nobility.”

“I’m a bloody farmer’s son,” Danal muttered, jerking on his boots after retrieving his socks. I really need to get out of here before they find a way to drag me into this argument. I hope Bethany is away from this.  Of all of them, she was closest to Mother, and his sister really hated being put in the middle. So did Danal. But where he usually managed to deflect their attention with sarcasm, Bethany tried to play peacemaker, which only made things worse.

Cracking the door open, he peered out. Mother hovered near the fireplace, while Uncle steamed on the opposite side of the room. Bethany was nowhere to be seen. Well, he wasn’t going to be able to sneak out, but the odds seemed to be in his favor for avoiding being dragged into their arguments.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door and sauntered out, slipping past mother’s back, his eyes focused on the door. He’d almost made it when her voice snagged him back.

“Where are you going, dear?”

He pivoted, his fingers curled around the door handle. “Just out for a bit. Thought I might try to look up some work.”

“Hang out in that bloody tavern, you mean,” Gamlen muttered.

Like I’ve never seen you there, Uncle. “Varric said he might have some information on jobs.”

Leandra folded her arms, frowning. “Not more bandits, I hope. I do worry about you two.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky, and it will just be smuggling caviar.” Oh, Maker’s balls, I shouldn’t have said that. Now she’ll bring up working for Athenril again. But she didn’t, just looked away. For a moment, from the way the light seeping in from the windows near the ceiling fell across her face, she looked…old. Tired. These past years had been hard on her, losing Carver, then coming back as a refugee to a place that had once been her home.

“I’ll be fine, Mother,” Danal said gently. She turned, and her head lifted a little higher, some of the gleam he always associated with her returning to her eyes. He motioned towards the door. “Do you know where Bethany went?”

“To the market. She needed some thread, and to get her scissors sharpened.”

Danal glanced at his uncle, scowling at his shoes. “I’ll…see about something for dinner on my way home.”

Gamlen’s scowl only deepened. Don’t say it, Uncle. Please, don’t say it. But his uncle just shook his head and muttered, too low for Danal to make out the words. Not that he needed to hear them. They’d had more than one row about his ‘wasting money on a fool’s dream of finding riches in the Deep Roads.’ As if gambling was a reliable way of bringing in coin. Mother carefully avoided any mention of the expedition.

Leaving awkward silence behind him, Danal slipped out the door, closing it gently. Maker, this was getting old. He tugged at his shirt, then headed for the Hanged Man.

Varric was out Norah informed him when he stepped inside. No, she didn’t know when the dwarf would be returning.

Danal decided to wander down to the nearby market and see if he could find Bethany. He didn’t. Maybe she had wandered somewhere else, or returned home. He lounged against a wall, watching as people poked through that Antivan merchant’s goods. Maybe he should go dockside. See what the fishmongers were selling. This time of day, the best of the catch would be mostly gone, but he should be able to snag some good deals from sellers who didn’t want fish rotting in their stalls.

He found some sea-bass for a good price, a bit mangled from being ripped out of a net, but fresh and plump. Danal paid the fishmonger the extra two bits to have them gutted and scaled, then he dropped them off at home, together with some day-old bread, and green seaweed. ‘Poor-man’s salad’ they called it in Lowtown. But dressed up with a bit of olive oil and red vinegar, a sprinkle of sesame seeds, he’d become quite fond of it. Since Bethany still hadn’t come home, he decided to wander over to the Hanged Man. Maybe Varric had returned by now.

“Hawke, over here,” the dwarf called out from a corner table, a foaming pitcher in front of him. Anders lounged in the chair on the left, eyeing a plate of fried summer squash and mushrooms.

Danal pulled out the chair on Varric’s right, turned it around, then straddled it. He waved a hand at the pitcher, grinning at Anders. “Getting an early start?”

“Late start, more like. Was up all night with a woman in labor.” He reached for his mug, smudged circles under his eyes. “Breech birth. The mother’s all right, but the baby…” His hand tightened on his mug. “Didn’t make it. Strangled cord.”

“Oh…I’m…sorry.” Maker’s great freezing balls, that was so helpful, Hawke.

Anders grimaced, then sucked down the rest of his ale in one long pull. “I’d say you get used to things like that in Darktown, but you don’t. At least…I don’t.” He stared into his mug. “I don’t know, maybe it’s better than dying later of starvation, or cholera, or dysentery, or…” He sighed and leaned back. “If they put half or even a quarter of the effort into keeping the well’s down there from getting contaminated that they put into hunting apostates…” He shook his head, and Varric poured him another ale, then one for Danal.

“Have either of you seen Bethany?” Danal said, picking up his mug.

Anders nodded. “She came by the clinic for a healing lesson and to lend a hand. I left her mixing elfroot potions. I’ll see she gets home safe.”

 Something in the way he said that made Danal take a closer look at him. A half-smile, and that tentative, hopeful look in a man’s eye when he found someone who’d caught his fancy. Oh, Maker, was the apostate sweet on his sister? Danal suppressed a sigh and pretended to study the foam on his drink. Damn, why couldn’t things ever be simple?

He’d ask her about it later, maybe after dinner, when Mother and Uncle Gamlen had turned in for the night. A life on the run was a hard one. Still, Bethany was old enough to know her own mind about her heart. Immersed in those thoughts, he listened with only half-an-ear as Varric and Anders drifted into a conversation about the rumors floating through Darktown.

“Any more dead Tevinter slavers show up?” Anders asked, pulling Hawke out of his reverie.

Varric shook his head. “But more slavers arrived this morning, along with another squad of Tevinter bounty hunters.”

“Someone wants someone really bad. And not in the fun way.”

Anders groaned. “Maker, Hawke, that’s terrible…even for you.”

Danal shrugged, then sipped his ale. Talk drifted off the topic of slavers and onto some rumors Varric had heard, but no solid leads to any jobs. Having the dwarf to recommend him had certainly helped, but after paying the rest of the group, and putting money toward rent and food, not to mention repairs for armor and weapons, there wasn’t much left to put aside to buy a share in Bartrand’s expedition.  You’ll have the money in no time might have been a tad optimistic.

Danal’s hand slipped to the hilt of one of his daggers, a matched set. He’d probably paid more than he should have for them, but stinting on gear was a bad idea when your life depended on it. Why can’t life ever be simple? He smiled. And where’s the fun in that, Hawke?

From the corner of his eye, a flash of snow white hair and a lithe male body caught his attention. What the-? But by the time Danal turned in his chair, the owner of both had disappeared up the stairs. He puzzled over it a moment, then shrugged and returned to his ale.