SANCTUM AND HEALING (7/?)
anonymous
November 26 2011, 22:06:08 UTC
Joints were tricky like that-just as tricky as not-kidnappers-and when Anders heard the ball crack, thumb pressed stiffly into Hawke’s other palm, the urge to heal it flared like a warning signal on the eve of battle, just before enemy forces crested a keep’s dwarven walls.
But sympathy for an unknown-who might as well have been an enemy-was a hard and narrow feeling to maintain, and Anders had no reason to nurture it into something broader or better defined. The man before him said he wasn’t a kidnapper, which meant he was either something more or less sinister: a Warden fanatic, a revolutionary, or an Imperium slaver.
Hawke didn’t look like the last, and there wasn’t much use for slaves in the mountains, anyway. If this had been about slavery, they’d be on a boat bound for Tevinter already, Anders vomiting onto his fellows in the galley, chained wrist to wrist and sweating with fever.
Here, the slim mountain winds howled outside Hawke’s tent, billowing the canvas inward. Anders’s skin was hot, yes, but with uncertainty rather than with communicable diseases.
Still, the luck Anders caught and kept for himself ended up being a double-edged weapon, sharpened on both sides, impossible to catch without personal injury-a sacrifice of one piece of gratitude for another, equally potent gripe. He was happy not to be manacled and unarmed, stuck between two angry city elves, rocked by waves in a sudden squall, heading toward auction-but he wasn’t happy to be lost in a mountain range, chilly beneath robes meant for warmer weather, quick winds creeping in under the tent and rifling the feathers at his shoulders.
‘Hungry?’ Hawke asked, tossing his cloak over the back of a homely chair-hand-made by the looks of it, and too small for the garment that currently obscured it, much less for the man it belonged to. ‘I know I am. Traveling on the open road always piques my appetite.’
‘And it makes you cranky,’ Anders added, still standing, between a narrow desk and its collection of maps and scrolls, letters and seals and red sealing wax. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Hawke picked up a few mapping instruments and set them down again, stiff hands roving over an assortment of unfamiliar tools, an empty plate and scuffed goblet. ‘Keran,’ Anders added, only a little guilty about betraying the man, kind and handsome as he was. Despite that, he was a part of all this, complicit in the crime Anders still didn’t understand, and one good turn always deserved another. ‘Keran told me that. I’m not a blood mage or a mind-reader, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘What are you, then?’ Hawke asked, eyes suddenly sharp and keen, picking up light reflected from those harmless metal bits and bobs on his desk. He braced his hands on the edges and leaned forward and Anders was as intimidated as he was annoyed-not just by the piercing gaze, which didn’t let up for an instant, not even mitigated by the occasional blink, but by the presumption, the randomness, the possibility that all this hadn’t happened for good reason. There was his luck again, knocking at the door-or ducking under the tent-flap-and Hawke was looking to him for answers, instead of the other way around. It was so unfair-but what wasn’t, these days? ‘Where did you come from? Why are you here?’
‘If you mean that in the cosmic sense, I can’t say I know yet,’ Anders replied, realizing he’d stepped backward only after his bootheel dug into a soft throw-rug, right beside a tidy bedroll. ‘But if you mean in the other, more specific sense, I should probably remind you that I’m here because you kidnapped me.’
‘We’re not kidnappers,’ Hawke reminded him. ‘We’re the opposite, in fact.’
‘This doesn’t feel like the opposite of a kidnapping,’ Anders said. ‘It feels like the opposite of the opposite of that.’
‘No.’ Hawke’s fingers dug into the desk; Anders saw, even from a distance, there were other such score-marks in the wood, from pens that dug too deeply, or hands that clutched too hard. ‘I told you; it’s the opposite.’
‘The opposite of the opposite of the opposite?’ Anders asked.
‘Ah,’ Hawke said. ‘I see it now. You are a demon.’
But sympathy for an unknown-who might as well have been an enemy-was a hard and narrow feeling to maintain, and Anders had no reason to nurture it into something broader or better defined. The man before him said he wasn’t a kidnapper, which meant he was either something more or less sinister: a Warden fanatic, a revolutionary, or an Imperium slaver.
Hawke didn’t look like the last, and there wasn’t much use for slaves in the mountains, anyway. If this had been about slavery, they’d be on a boat bound for Tevinter already, Anders vomiting onto his fellows in the galley, chained wrist to wrist and sweating with fever.
Here, the slim mountain winds howled outside Hawke’s tent, billowing the canvas inward. Anders’s skin was hot, yes, but with uncertainty rather than with communicable diseases.
Still, the luck Anders caught and kept for himself ended up being a double-edged weapon, sharpened on both sides, impossible to catch without personal injury-a sacrifice of one piece of gratitude for another, equally potent gripe. He was happy not to be manacled and unarmed, stuck between two angry city elves, rocked by waves in a sudden squall, heading toward auction-but he wasn’t happy to be lost in a mountain range, chilly beneath robes meant for warmer weather, quick winds creeping in under the tent and rifling the feathers at his shoulders.
‘Hungry?’ Hawke asked, tossing his cloak over the back of a homely chair-hand-made by the looks of it, and too small for the garment that currently obscured it, much less for the man it belonged to. ‘I know I am. Traveling on the open road always piques my appetite.’
‘And it makes you cranky,’ Anders added, still standing, between a narrow desk and its collection of maps and scrolls, letters and seals and red sealing wax. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Hawke picked up a few mapping instruments and set them down again, stiff hands roving over an assortment of unfamiliar tools, an empty plate and scuffed goblet. ‘Keran,’ Anders added, only a little guilty about betraying the man, kind and handsome as he was. Despite that, he was a part of all this, complicit in the crime Anders still didn’t understand, and one good turn always deserved another. ‘Keran told me that. I’m not a blood mage or a mind-reader, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘What are you, then?’ Hawke asked, eyes suddenly sharp and keen, picking up light reflected from those harmless metal bits and bobs on his desk. He braced his hands on the edges and leaned forward and Anders was as intimidated as he was annoyed-not just by the piercing gaze, which didn’t let up for an instant, not even mitigated by the occasional blink, but by the presumption, the randomness, the possibility that all this hadn’t happened for good reason. There was his luck again, knocking at the door-or ducking under the tent-flap-and Hawke was looking to him for answers, instead of the other way around. It was so unfair-but what wasn’t, these days? ‘Where did you come from? Why are you here?’
‘If you mean that in the cosmic sense, I can’t say I know yet,’ Anders replied, realizing he’d stepped backward only after his bootheel dug into a soft throw-rug, right beside a tidy bedroll. ‘But if you mean in the other, more specific sense, I should probably remind you that I’m here because you kidnapped me.’
‘We’re not kidnappers,’ Hawke reminded him. ‘We’re the opposite, in fact.’
‘This doesn’t feel like the opposite of a kidnapping,’ Anders said. ‘It feels like the opposite of the opposite of that.’
‘No.’ Hawke’s fingers dug into the desk; Anders saw, even from a distance, there were other such score-marks in the wood, from pens that dug too deeply, or hands that clutched too hard. ‘I told you; it’s the opposite.’
‘The opposite of the opposite of the opposite?’ Anders asked.
‘Ah,’ Hawke said. ‘I see it now. You are a demon.’
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