Turning in Revolution; Chapter 3 [Anders/Bethany, Nathaniel/Bethany; PG-13]
Title: Turning in Revolution (3/?)
Author: chaineddove
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Characters: Anders/Bethany, Nathaniel/Bethany. F!Hawke/Isabela implied.
Wordcount: 2,961
Disclaimer: I do not own DAII. Believe me, I would love to, but I don't.
Authors' Notes: Anders makes an overture. The First Warden makes an assumption. Neither venture is successful. Although this fic is, overall, serious in tone, I must admit I giggled like a schoolgirl throughout the last third of this chapter. You have been warned.
Chapter 3: Close Enough to Hurt
"So I won't let you close enough to hurt me,
No, I won't ask you to just desert me,
I can't give you what you think you gave me..."
-Adele, "Turning Tables"
She is harvesting the last of the sage in the herb garden in the hour before dinner, gathering the few velvety leaves which have not yet been destroyed by frost. These last few weeks have been colder than expected, and it is doubtful that anything will survive out here much longer; they help the plants along as best they can, but although there has been talk of a greenhouse off and on, there are not hands enough to build one. The best anyone is able to do is keep the earth soft and fertile, and to anyone who can hear it, the place nearly sings with magic. It is the elves who have taught her how to do this - the Circle teaches that magic is not for such menial tasks as making carrots grow, but as it turns out, magic is for a great many things she has never guessed at, and around here, fresh vegetables are hardly menial.
She knows he is there before she sees him; she has an awareness of being watched for a few long, uncomfortable minutes before his scuffed boots come into her field of vision, stopping just short of the plot of black earth. “Someone will see,” she says, although the garden is tucked behind the old stables in such a way that few ever venture there without a purpose, and if she is honest with herself - an increasingly difficult task these days - she is here at least partly with the hope of seeing him.
She remains kneeling on the frozen ground, the small knife in her hands, but she looks up at him. His blond hair is a bright beacon in the unending gray of the landscape, but the faded cloak he is wearing goes a long way toward making him less conspicuous. “I have been fortunate, thus far,” he says flippantly. “And correct me if I am wrong, but it seems you came looking for me.” He offers it to her again, that smile which is equal parts weary and charming, and although the weariness has drawn lines on his face and lines between them that she dares not cross, she is still charmed.
“You have a very high opinion of yourself, all of a sudden,” she mutters. “I came looking for seasoning.” But she feels her face grow warm. She could say that it is only the brisk wind blowing color into her cheeks, and she knows she will, if he questions her, but they will both know this isn’t true.
He does not challenge her. The smile flickers, dims, becomes an uncertain shadow of itself. She tries not to regret its absence. “Shall I leave you to your gardening?” he asks.
A particularly strong gust of wind tries its best to tear her cloak from her shoulders. She shivers. “Not long until winter, now,” she says instead of answering him. She stands, brushing the dirt from her hands, tucking the knife into her belt.
“I would invite you in to tea,” he says wryly, “but I fear my temporary domicile is not fit for company.”
It is so ridiculous that a laugh escapes, one that is neither bitter nor cautious. “Recall that I once lived with my Uncle Gamlen,” she tells him. “We can make do.”
She ducks under the eaves and into the dim interior of the stable. It smells of dust and hay, rotting wood and a lingering tang of manure. The walls are cracked, here and there, letting in the late afternoon light and the wind. Several of the stall doors have fallen off entirely, others are hanging drunkenly on one hinge. It suits the landscape, she thinks - utterly devoid of any sign of hope. It suits him, the way he is now. And yet it does not suit him at all.
Still, it is warmer than the alternative - barely. There is a trickle of magic in the air, and she realizes he has lit a candle, one Nathaniel must have smuggled to him, for she has not thought past the immediacy of filling in his hollow cheeks. In one of the four stalls which yet retain their doors, the remaining hay has been bunched into the semblance of a pallet. He takes off his cloak and spreads it, indicating that she should sit; she sits on an overturned bucket in the corner instead. Rummaging in her pocket, she comes up with a spool of coarse thread and a needle. Angling towards the light, she snaps off a length of thread and draws it expertly through the needle’s eye.
He watches her, clearly uncertain how to react as she pulls the cloak across her lap. She is uncertain herself; her moods have not been at their most stable lately. Finding the largest of the slashes, she begins to sew. “You do not have to do that,” he protests.
“I do not like to leave things half-finished,” she replies, and continues to draw the needle through the worn wool, bringing jagged edges back into alignment, binding them with small, sure stitches. The simple task steadies her; she prefers to have something to do with her hands when she is uncomfortable.
“Is that why you came?” he queries.
She says, “Yes,” and then, “No. In a way. I don’t know.” Because the cloak is not the only unfinished thing between them, and its edges are far easier to mend than the other broken things; she prefers to begin with the only task that appears to be surmountable. He is silent, no doubt drawing his own conclusions from her words. She grapples for something to say, comes up with, “You’re in my light.”
He moves the candle closer to her, then seats himself on the straw pallet. After a moment he holds out a heel of bread to her - the remains of a loaf she left for him two days ago - and says, “It seems I’m all out of tea.”
She laughs again, but this laugh is devoid of the unexpected brightness she felt in the garden. It is impossible to be lighthearted when faced with his circumstances. “I am not hungry.”
“Suit yourself,” he tells her, and bites off a large chunk of it. It is surely dry by now, but he does not complain.
For a few moments, there is silence, and it is almost comfortable. He eats, she sews, and the single candle flickers between them, shedding its faint light. Finally, she asks him, “What will you do?”
His laugh is as bitter as hers, though his voice is almost painfully merry. “Survive,” he tells her. “Hopefully, at any rate. I’m better at it than I have any right to be.”
It is a loaded statement; she does not rise to the bait. Sitting in this stable, she remembers, too well, the moments when her life narrowed only to putting one foot in front of the other and pushing air in and out of her lungs. The rest of his life, such as it is, will be this way; she cannot offer a derisive comment when she feels so much pity.
“I told you - I don’t deserve your compassion,” he tells her, quietly. She looks up to find him watching her intently. “You have a very expressive face, Bethany.”
“Sometimes,” she murmurs, “we receive things we do not deserve.” She smoothes her hand over the cloak, now whole. In the half-light, the seam is all but invisible.
He places his hand over hers, fingers barely touching; she stills like a wary creature in the presence of a predator as he gently fingers the wool, as if testing the stitches. “Sometimes,” he says, “it seems we receive them twice.”
She does not look at him - cannot do it, for fear of what she will see, or perhaps what she will do. She thinks of another time, so long ago, his hand brushing hers in the darkness, an intake of breath, a fleeting moment of almost-intimacy, gone before it could become anything else. This is all they have shared, but in that moment, it feels like too much even as she acknowledges it is nowhere near enough. “Don’t,” she tells him sharply.
“I haven’t done anything,” he counters. The unspoken yet hovers between them, a silent promise.
“Why do I always feel like I am going in circles with you?” she whispers; she cannot find a stronger voice with which to say it, anymore than she can find the physical strength to move.
“Because you are too kindhearted to hate me, however much you should.” She does not say anything; he is not wrong. “And perhaps,” he ventures, “you feel there is something left undone.”
She shakes her head. “Hardly that. You were in love with my sister,” she accuses quietly.
“I was in… awe,” he corrects, although it seems to take him a moment to settle on the word. “As were most of those who spent more than a few hours in her company.”
She cannot deny this is true; there is certainly something awe-inspiring about the seemingly effortless way her sister bends everything around her to her will. She has always done this with an agility and grace that sets her apart; Bethany had worshipped her, Carver had resented her, and Mother had simply sighed and given in to her, but it was undeniable that everyone had noticed.
“She never saw me,” he says after a few moments, seeing that she is not willing to speak. “But you…”
“Don’t,” she says, more emphatic now. She does not rise to her feet gracefully, but she does rise; the spell, such as it is, is broken. She hears the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls, and feels gratitude for the guttering light of the candle which casts concealing shadows. “I will be missed,” she tells him abruptly.
“Yes,” he says; in the way he says it, she senses another entreaty.
“I am going,” she tells him firmly.
“I will not stop you.”
Because she almost wishes he would, she turns and goes out into the dusk and the cold, and tells herself that it is only the unexpectedly low angle of the sun that causes her to run.
She is nearly at the side kitchen door when she is waylaid by one of the senior Wardens. It is a difficulty to keep her expression neutral when she sees him; this part of the grounds is generally deserted, the safest place she can think of for a fugitive. The presence of ranking officers is the last thing any of them need. He stops when he sees her. She does not know him well, but he is old enough to have some gray in his hair, and in Weisshaupt this is something worthy of respect. She nods her head politely and tries to smile. He looks at her in a way that makes it rather difficult, and she cannot summon the energy to try harder. She wants to hold the sage leaves in front of her like a shield or an explanation, but realizes she has left them in the stable, along with her common sense. “Good evening,” she says; he is still watching her fixedly.
“The First Warden would see you,” he announces without preamble. “Now.”
***
She has worried herself into something just shy of outright panic when she is escorted into the inner chamber at the top of the fortress’ tallest tower. She stands there, almost shaking, looks at the exceptionally fine carpet spread across the stone floor, and hopes Anders can still run as fast as he did ten years ago.
“Hawke.” The word is an accusation. In her three years at Weisshaupt, she has been in this room exactly once before - upon her arrival. The First Warden, an enormous and abundantly scarred man with a thick Anders accent, looks like a thundercloud as he regards her across his desk, which is as scarred as his face. It should be surprising that this man remembers her surname when no one else ever uses it.
“Yes, sir.”
He clears his throat. “Hawke, are you… in the family way?” The thunderous anger dissolves into marked discomfort, but she is too busy being stunned by his words to really appreciate this fact.
“Am I… what, sir?” she finally manages to croak out, voice none too steady.
“You know.” He glares at her. She fights the urge to shrink back against the wall under the force of it. “Are you…. oh for Andraste’s sake… pregnant?” He spits this last word out like an epithet.
She is certain she looks somewhat comical, scarlet and wide-eyed as she must be, as she exclaims, “Maker, no! Where did you get such an idea? Sir,” she adds belatedly, remembering protocol, though he doesn’t seem to notice or care.
“Are you very certain?” he asks her, narrowing his eyes. “You have been eating quite a lot more than usual lately, and the recruits complain you are irritable and short of temper, not to mention perpetually tired. I am told,” he says as she stares at him, “that these are reliable signs.”
She mentally curses the well-meaning Cook, the recruits, Anders, and Nathaniel for good measure as the man stares at her as though she may produce a child from under her armor at any moment. “I am very certain. Sir.” She knows that she has to explain herself somehow, and certainly I have been losing sleep over a deserter, if you please, and if I appear to be eating for two it is only because he is very hungry will not do. It is a measure of the complexity of her feelings about the situation that she thinks it would certainly be less problematic if she were with child - as unlikely as such an eventuality is.
The First Warden is still watching her, and she has to say something - anything - and to her great relief, she feels tears spring to her eyes. She knows she is coming apart at the seams in front of her superior, but there is a certain liberation in it; better he believe her to be a silly girl than the alternative. Considering the only means of dismissal acceptable to the First Warden involves decapitation, she feels unwilling to share her recent treasonous activities with him; at least no one has ever been dismissed from the Wardens for being an idiot. “I have not been sleeping well, sir,” she says at last, her voice nearly a whisper. The First Warden says nothing, very loudly. She stands there, weeping, and if she is not making the best case for herself, at least her secret is safe.
After a few minutes of this, he sighs, then lets out a rather impressive string of curses. “Women,” he says, with such derision that ordinarily she would bristle. “Pull yourself together,” he adds tersely. “You are a Warden, for Andraste’s sake, not a… a silly milkmaid.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
He sighs again. “I am getting too old for this,” he announces. “You are no green recruit to need a nursemaid. I will not coddle you, is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” she repeats. She does not think she is expected to say anything else.
“Well… good.” He comes around his desk, looking her over critically. She attempts not to wilt further under his gaze. He grunts disparagingly and tells her, “I suppose you will have to do. You can travel, I hope?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods. “Good. Pack your things. King Alistair of Ferelden will be in Hossberg two weeks hence. We are to send a delegation to meet him. He has requested Nathaniel Howe specifically. I had considered sending Syrinn along, but he is not entirely well, either, and you will do well enough for politics, I suppose.” His sneer is enough to tell her what he thinks of that occupation, but her head is reeling. She has not gone more than two days distance from the compound since her arrival. The thought of a city…
“Well? No objections?” He narrows his eyes at her, clearly expecting her to raise one, just for the pleasure of denying it.
“If you think it best, no, sir,” she replies.
“I do not like politics,” he says with great distaste. “I hate court. I have few enough men to spare who know how to smile on command, and fewer still who can carry on an idle conversation about Nevarran statuary or Orlesian theatre or other similar drivel. Few of the highborn choose this calling, but you are of noble birth, and you can do some good there, since you are completely useless here in your current state.”
She thinks of telling him, I was raised on a farm, but wisely keeps her mouth shut. He does not appear to be done with his tirade.
“And Hawke,” he cautions, “whatever it is that ails you, I suggest you get control of yourself before you arrive there. And if you are-”
“I’m not-”
“If you are,” he repeats, his eyes glinting dangerously, “indeed in a… situation, a post can be found for you there until such time as it is… resolved. We do not have midwives or bassinets or Maker knows what other nonsense here in Weisshaupt. That is not going to change. I hope I have made myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he says. “You leave in the morning. You are excused.” As she turns to leave, she hears him mutter, “Better Howe than me; how some people survive the Joining…”
She is halfway down the tower stairs before she collapses against a wall in a fit of hysterical laughter; as hysteria goes, it is not far removed from her earlier tears, but it does make her feel better.
On to chapter 4!
Author: chaineddove
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Characters: Anders/Bethany, Nathaniel/Bethany. F!Hawke/Isabela implied.
Wordcount: 2,961
Disclaimer: I do not own DAII. Believe me, I would love to, but I don't.
Authors' Notes: Anders makes an overture. The First Warden makes an assumption. Neither venture is successful. Although this fic is, overall, serious in tone, I must admit I giggled like a schoolgirl throughout the last third of this chapter. You have been warned.
Chapter 3: Close Enough to Hurt
"So I won't let you close enough to hurt me,
No, I won't ask you to just desert me,
I can't give you what you think you gave me..."
-Adele, "Turning Tables"
She is harvesting the last of the sage in the herb garden in the hour before dinner, gathering the few velvety leaves which have not yet been destroyed by frost. These last few weeks have been colder than expected, and it is doubtful that anything will survive out here much longer; they help the plants along as best they can, but although there has been talk of a greenhouse off and on, there are not hands enough to build one. The best anyone is able to do is keep the earth soft and fertile, and to anyone who can hear it, the place nearly sings with magic. It is the elves who have taught her how to do this - the Circle teaches that magic is not for such menial tasks as making carrots grow, but as it turns out, magic is for a great many things she has never guessed at, and around here, fresh vegetables are hardly menial.
She knows he is there before she sees him; she has an awareness of being watched for a few long, uncomfortable minutes before his scuffed boots come into her field of vision, stopping just short of the plot of black earth. “Someone will see,” she says, although the garden is tucked behind the old stables in such a way that few ever venture there without a purpose, and if she is honest with herself - an increasingly difficult task these days - she is here at least partly with the hope of seeing him.
She remains kneeling on the frozen ground, the small knife in her hands, but she looks up at him. His blond hair is a bright beacon in the unending gray of the landscape, but the faded cloak he is wearing goes a long way toward making him less conspicuous. “I have been fortunate, thus far,” he says flippantly. “And correct me if I am wrong, but it seems you came looking for me.” He offers it to her again, that smile which is equal parts weary and charming, and although the weariness has drawn lines on his face and lines between them that she dares not cross, she is still charmed.
“You have a very high opinion of yourself, all of a sudden,” she mutters. “I came looking for seasoning.” But she feels her face grow warm. She could say that it is only the brisk wind blowing color into her cheeks, and she knows she will, if he questions her, but they will both know this isn’t true.
He does not challenge her. The smile flickers, dims, becomes an uncertain shadow of itself. She tries not to regret its absence. “Shall I leave you to your gardening?” he asks.
A particularly strong gust of wind tries its best to tear her cloak from her shoulders. She shivers. “Not long until winter, now,” she says instead of answering him. She stands, brushing the dirt from her hands, tucking the knife into her belt.
“I would invite you in to tea,” he says wryly, “but I fear my temporary domicile is not fit for company.”
It is so ridiculous that a laugh escapes, one that is neither bitter nor cautious. “Recall that I once lived with my Uncle Gamlen,” she tells him. “We can make do.”
She ducks under the eaves and into the dim interior of the stable. It smells of dust and hay, rotting wood and a lingering tang of manure. The walls are cracked, here and there, letting in the late afternoon light and the wind. Several of the stall doors have fallen off entirely, others are hanging drunkenly on one hinge. It suits the landscape, she thinks - utterly devoid of any sign of hope. It suits him, the way he is now. And yet it does not suit him at all.
Still, it is warmer than the alternative - barely. There is a trickle of magic in the air, and she realizes he has lit a candle, one Nathaniel must have smuggled to him, for she has not thought past the immediacy of filling in his hollow cheeks. In one of the four stalls which yet retain their doors, the remaining hay has been bunched into the semblance of a pallet. He takes off his cloak and spreads it, indicating that she should sit; she sits on an overturned bucket in the corner instead. Rummaging in her pocket, she comes up with a spool of coarse thread and a needle. Angling towards the light, she snaps off a length of thread and draws it expertly through the needle’s eye.
He watches her, clearly uncertain how to react as she pulls the cloak across her lap. She is uncertain herself; her moods have not been at their most stable lately. Finding the largest of the slashes, she begins to sew. “You do not have to do that,” he protests.
“I do not like to leave things half-finished,” she replies, and continues to draw the needle through the worn wool, bringing jagged edges back into alignment, binding them with small, sure stitches. The simple task steadies her; she prefers to have something to do with her hands when she is uncomfortable.
“Is that why you came?” he queries.
She says, “Yes,” and then, “No. In a way. I don’t know.” Because the cloak is not the only unfinished thing between them, and its edges are far easier to mend than the other broken things; she prefers to begin with the only task that appears to be surmountable. He is silent, no doubt drawing his own conclusions from her words. She grapples for something to say, comes up with, “You’re in my light.”
He moves the candle closer to her, then seats himself on the straw pallet. After a moment he holds out a heel of bread to her - the remains of a loaf she left for him two days ago - and says, “It seems I’m all out of tea.”
She laughs again, but this laugh is devoid of the unexpected brightness she felt in the garden. It is impossible to be lighthearted when faced with his circumstances. “I am not hungry.”
“Suit yourself,” he tells her, and bites off a large chunk of it. It is surely dry by now, but he does not complain.
For a few moments, there is silence, and it is almost comfortable. He eats, she sews, and the single candle flickers between them, shedding its faint light. Finally, she asks him, “What will you do?”
His laugh is as bitter as hers, though his voice is almost painfully merry. “Survive,” he tells her. “Hopefully, at any rate. I’m better at it than I have any right to be.”
It is a loaded statement; she does not rise to the bait. Sitting in this stable, she remembers, too well, the moments when her life narrowed only to putting one foot in front of the other and pushing air in and out of her lungs. The rest of his life, such as it is, will be this way; she cannot offer a derisive comment when she feels so much pity.
“I told you - I don’t deserve your compassion,” he tells her, quietly. She looks up to find him watching her intently. “You have a very expressive face, Bethany.”
“Sometimes,” she murmurs, “we receive things we do not deserve.” She smoothes her hand over the cloak, now whole. In the half-light, the seam is all but invisible.
He places his hand over hers, fingers barely touching; she stills like a wary creature in the presence of a predator as he gently fingers the wool, as if testing the stitches. “Sometimes,” he says, “it seems we receive them twice.”
She does not look at him - cannot do it, for fear of what she will see, or perhaps what she will do. She thinks of another time, so long ago, his hand brushing hers in the darkness, an intake of breath, a fleeting moment of almost-intimacy, gone before it could become anything else. This is all they have shared, but in that moment, it feels like too much even as she acknowledges it is nowhere near enough. “Don’t,” she tells him sharply.
“I haven’t done anything,” he counters. The unspoken yet hovers between them, a silent promise.
“Why do I always feel like I am going in circles with you?” she whispers; she cannot find a stronger voice with which to say it, anymore than she can find the physical strength to move.
“Because you are too kindhearted to hate me, however much you should.” She does not say anything; he is not wrong. “And perhaps,” he ventures, “you feel there is something left undone.”
She shakes her head. “Hardly that. You were in love with my sister,” she accuses quietly.
“I was in… awe,” he corrects, although it seems to take him a moment to settle on the word. “As were most of those who spent more than a few hours in her company.”
She cannot deny this is true; there is certainly something awe-inspiring about the seemingly effortless way her sister bends everything around her to her will. She has always done this with an agility and grace that sets her apart; Bethany had worshipped her, Carver had resented her, and Mother had simply sighed and given in to her, but it was undeniable that everyone had noticed.
“She never saw me,” he says after a few moments, seeing that she is not willing to speak. “But you…”
“Don’t,” she says, more emphatic now. She does not rise to her feet gracefully, but she does rise; the spell, such as it is, is broken. She hears the wind whistling through the cracks in the walls, and feels gratitude for the guttering light of the candle which casts concealing shadows. “I will be missed,” she tells him abruptly.
“Yes,” he says; in the way he says it, she senses another entreaty.
“I am going,” she tells him firmly.
“I will not stop you.”
Because she almost wishes he would, she turns and goes out into the dusk and the cold, and tells herself that it is only the unexpectedly low angle of the sun that causes her to run.
She is nearly at the side kitchen door when she is waylaid by one of the senior Wardens. It is a difficulty to keep her expression neutral when she sees him; this part of the grounds is generally deserted, the safest place she can think of for a fugitive. The presence of ranking officers is the last thing any of them need. He stops when he sees her. She does not know him well, but he is old enough to have some gray in his hair, and in Weisshaupt this is something worthy of respect. She nods her head politely and tries to smile. He looks at her in a way that makes it rather difficult, and she cannot summon the energy to try harder. She wants to hold the sage leaves in front of her like a shield or an explanation, but realizes she has left them in the stable, along with her common sense. “Good evening,” she says; he is still watching her fixedly.
“The First Warden would see you,” he announces without preamble. “Now.”
***
She has worried herself into something just shy of outright panic when she is escorted into the inner chamber at the top of the fortress’ tallest tower. She stands there, almost shaking, looks at the exceptionally fine carpet spread across the stone floor, and hopes Anders can still run as fast as he did ten years ago.
“Hawke.” The word is an accusation. In her three years at Weisshaupt, she has been in this room exactly once before - upon her arrival. The First Warden, an enormous and abundantly scarred man with a thick Anders accent, looks like a thundercloud as he regards her across his desk, which is as scarred as his face. It should be surprising that this man remembers her surname when no one else ever uses it.
“Yes, sir.”
He clears his throat. “Hawke, are you… in the family way?” The thunderous anger dissolves into marked discomfort, but she is too busy being stunned by his words to really appreciate this fact.
“Am I… what, sir?” she finally manages to croak out, voice none too steady.
“You know.” He glares at her. She fights the urge to shrink back against the wall under the force of it. “Are you…. oh for Andraste’s sake… pregnant?” He spits this last word out like an epithet.
She is certain she looks somewhat comical, scarlet and wide-eyed as she must be, as she exclaims, “Maker, no! Where did you get such an idea? Sir,” she adds belatedly, remembering protocol, though he doesn’t seem to notice or care.
“Are you very certain?” he asks her, narrowing his eyes. “You have been eating quite a lot more than usual lately, and the recruits complain you are irritable and short of temper, not to mention perpetually tired. I am told,” he says as she stares at him, “that these are reliable signs.”
She mentally curses the well-meaning Cook, the recruits, Anders, and Nathaniel for good measure as the man stares at her as though she may produce a child from under her armor at any moment. “I am very certain. Sir.” She knows that she has to explain herself somehow, and certainly I have been losing sleep over a deserter, if you please, and if I appear to be eating for two it is only because he is very hungry will not do. It is a measure of the complexity of her feelings about the situation that she thinks it would certainly be less problematic if she were with child - as unlikely as such an eventuality is.
The First Warden is still watching her, and she has to say something - anything - and to her great relief, she feels tears spring to her eyes. She knows she is coming apart at the seams in front of her superior, but there is a certain liberation in it; better he believe her to be a silly girl than the alternative. Considering the only means of dismissal acceptable to the First Warden involves decapitation, she feels unwilling to share her recent treasonous activities with him; at least no one has ever been dismissed from the Wardens for being an idiot. “I have not been sleeping well, sir,” she says at last, her voice nearly a whisper. The First Warden says nothing, very loudly. She stands there, weeping, and if she is not making the best case for herself, at least her secret is safe.
After a few minutes of this, he sighs, then lets out a rather impressive string of curses. “Women,” he says, with such derision that ordinarily she would bristle. “Pull yourself together,” he adds tersely. “You are a Warden, for Andraste’s sake, not a… a silly milkmaid.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
He sighs again. “I am getting too old for this,” he announces. “You are no green recruit to need a nursemaid. I will not coddle you, is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” she repeats. She does not think she is expected to say anything else.
“Well… good.” He comes around his desk, looking her over critically. She attempts not to wilt further under his gaze. He grunts disparagingly and tells her, “I suppose you will have to do. You can travel, I hope?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods. “Good. Pack your things. King Alistair of Ferelden will be in Hossberg two weeks hence. We are to send a delegation to meet him. He has requested Nathaniel Howe specifically. I had considered sending Syrinn along, but he is not entirely well, either, and you will do well enough for politics, I suppose.” His sneer is enough to tell her what he thinks of that occupation, but her head is reeling. She has not gone more than two days distance from the compound since her arrival. The thought of a city…
“Well? No objections?” He narrows his eyes at her, clearly expecting her to raise one, just for the pleasure of denying it.
“If you think it best, no, sir,” she replies.
“I do not like politics,” he says with great distaste. “I hate court. I have few enough men to spare who know how to smile on command, and fewer still who can carry on an idle conversation about Nevarran statuary or Orlesian theatre or other similar drivel. Few of the highborn choose this calling, but you are of noble birth, and you can do some good there, since you are completely useless here in your current state.”
She thinks of telling him, I was raised on a farm, but wisely keeps her mouth shut. He does not appear to be done with his tirade.
“And Hawke,” he cautions, “whatever it is that ails you, I suggest you get control of yourself before you arrive there. And if you are-”
“I’m not-”
“If you are,” he repeats, his eyes glinting dangerously, “indeed in a… situation, a post can be found for you there until such time as it is… resolved. We do not have midwives or bassinets or Maker knows what other nonsense here in Weisshaupt. That is not going to change. I hope I have made myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he says. “You leave in the morning. You are excused.” As she turns to leave, she hears him mutter, “Better Howe than me; how some people survive the Joining…”
She is halfway down the tower stairs before she collapses against a wall in a fit of hysterical laughter; as hysteria goes, it is not far removed from her earlier tears, but it does make her feel better.
On to chapter 4!