AU Fic: For Want of a Warden, Part 5
I originally intended this chapter contain all of the adventures in Lothering, but I found that having it as more of an introduction was better (and shorter). There should be more actual action in the next chapter, and Leliana!
Title: For Want of a Warden
Pairing: Eventually, probably Alistair/Cousland (Avelle)
Rating: Rated E for everyone, T for teen at worst.
Summary: When Castle Highever comes under attack by Howe’s men, the younger Cousland flees without the aid of Duncan. Alistair, Morrigan and Avelle arrive in Lothering and can’t take a step in town without running into trouble.
5 - Surviving
They were criminals that much the three of them knew. They were also blocking the entrance to Lothering, which was annoying. It didn’t take much to convince them that fighting a Grey Warden and his companions, one with sharp pointy blades and another crackling with magic and general meanness, wasn’t a good idea. Morrigan said it was their own fault for picking a fight with them and they’d best teach them a lesson. Alistair looked to Avelle, trying to gauge her opinion on her expression alone. Her eyes drifted down the road, not concentrating on the criminals in front of them. He sighed.
“We should turn you all in to the local authorities,” Alistair announced, trying his best to sound authoritative.
The leader got a panicked look in his eyes and waved his hands back and forth frantically to ward the Grey Warden off. “No, you can’t! With how things are in Lothering, the only authority left is the templars and they’ll kill us!”
“What would you take from me?” Avelle asked. Everyone was surprised by this sudden interjection and turned to look at her.
The leader scratched the back of his neck. “Your money, miss. That’s what we tend to take, y’know, being what we are.”
Her expression was unreadable, and this bothered Alistair more than a little bit. This was a bad situation, but women with blank looks? Much, much worse. They could destroy you with a sentence or one withering look, and that was if they were feeling charitable.
“I have no coin. Would you have taken my life then?”
The leader shrugged. “Look, just take the money we stole. It’s in the chest back there! So…are we good?”
Avelle’s eyebrows knitted and her expression was thoughtful for a second before she looked to Alistair, her face blank again. “Kill them. Or let the templars do it. Either way justice is done.”
Alistair cleared his throat. Yes, templars were a bit of the gung-ho kind. When they dealt with mages it was kill first and sort it out later. That was part of why it hadn’t worked for him. Both Morrigan and Avelle seemed to advocate the killing option, while the latter just wasn’t particular whom it was that did it. There was little doubt that if the templars truly were the only authority left that they would decide a lethal kind of punishment…
Still, was it his place to sentence men to death when they wanted to return what they had taken and go free?
They had probably killed those that didn’t surrender their coin, though. Where is the justice for those people?
“I suppose we should just take you into town and hand you over to whoever is in charge,” Alistair said, not quite ready to take the bandit’s word that the templars were all that was left.
The leader’s eyes widened and he reached for his sword. “Ooooh no! We are not going to deal with the templars! We would rather die here!”
And that fight had been quick and not much of a match. Between Morrigan’s arcane knowledge, Avelle’s swift blades and Alistair’s shield and swordplay the bandits hadn’t stood a chance. He didn’t trust Morrigan as far as he could throw her (he pouted when he contemplated just how far he could throw the witch and if it was far, did that mean he trusted her with his life?) but the woman knew her offensive spells, that much was obvious.
The moment the bandits let out their last breath Avelle walked around the overturned cart in front of them and began rummaging through the chests lying behind it. She pulled a coin purse from within one of the chests and stuffed it into her pack, and once finished with that task went to picking through the dead bandits’ pockets.
Alistair cringed. They were criminals, probably murderers, but there was something morbid and-what was the word?-disrespectful of going through their pockets before their bodies had even cooled.
Morrigan made a derisive snort. “Don’t tell me our Grey Warden finds such scavenging distasteful.”
“We did just end their lives. It only seems right to, I don’t know, give them a few minutes before taking their false teeth,” he replied, finding his tone slip into sardonic.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I am sure they would lend you the same courtesy were the rolls reversed. Perhaps they would even count the exact minutes away to be sure.”
Avelle stood up, stuffing the last of the bandits’ portable possessions in her pack. She looked almost remorseful and something tugged in Alistair’s heart. “We…I…don’t have anything. If it’s going to be a long journey, we need whatever we can get.”
Alistair sighed. The thought had occurred to him the night before and their moneyless state was about to smack them right in the face. It would be too much to hope for Morrigan to have coin she’d be willing to spend on their behalf. And neither he nor Avelle seemed to have anything more than what was on their persons. The need for tents, rations, salves and poultices were tantamount. It was of the utmost importance that they had what they needed to continue their journey. Sometimes they’d have to get what they needed from places that were…less than savory.
He had nothing to say to that, even with his misgivings. Alistair turned and took in the view of Lothering. From the top of the stone ramp he could see almost all the way across the small hamlet. A refugee camp was directly in front of them, tattered and dirty looking tents set up around small bonfires. Skinny game roasted on the fires, crates were stacked without much care to the side, and lines of laundry waved in an errant breeze. Several children played a chasing game while others stuck by their mothers, looking sad and wary. Beyond that was the clear path into the town, an armored figure in the distance standing in the middle, while beyond that was a familiar Chantry building. That sight caused an unpleasant twinge in Alistair’s gut, his mind automatically going back to his templar training years. Overhead the sun managed to shine a hazy reddish orange in the middle of a pink sky similar to the one he had seen in the Wilds.
“Ah, Lothering. Pretty as a painting,” he said, holding his arms out as if to display the entire town to the two women.
Morrigan lifted one of her eyebrows and smirked. That was lovely. What were going to come next were probably some more thinly veiled insults. Or she might do away with the veil all together and just hurl the insults bare. “Starting a conversation all by yourself? My, my. So you have decided to come back to the land of the living. Falling on your sword in grief was too much to handle, was it?”
Yes, right on cue. Alistair was sure that wasn’t a veiled insult. At best it was wearing a pretty thin nightgown. He started walking down the ramp towards the refugee camp, waving Morrigan off. “Is my being upset that hard to understand? What would you do if your mother died?”
“Before or after I stopped laughing?”
She couldn’t have meant that. She just…no. That would be…
“Right. Very creepy. Forget I asked.”
From the top of the stone road of the Imperial Highway, Avelle looked down at them. There was a small something in her hand, but she put in one of the pouches of her belt before Alistair got even a decent look at it. “Where are we going from here?”
“Somewhere we can use one of the Grey Warden treaties, I imagine,” said Morrigan, crossing her arms.
Alistair shrugged. “There’s Redcliffe, of course, but there’s also Orzammar in the FrostbackMountains…or the mages in the CircleTower. And last I heard there was a band of Dalish elves moving through the BrecilianForest.”
Avelle raised her eyebrows and stared at him. It felt uncomfortable being stared at that way (Alistair tried to convince himself that it was only because it was so unexpected and nothing to do with her being a woman and a pretty woman and he had to stop thinking that right now), and after a few seconds he realized that Morrigan was staring at him too. She wasn’t smirking, but there was an expectant look on her face. That was it. They both were expecting something from him, and that’s where they lost him.
“What?” he asked.
“Well, which one are we going to first?” asked Avelle.
“We could go to Redcliffe, but really we could go to one of the others first. I really don’t want to argue about it.”
Morrigan smiled and spoke as if she were speaking to a very small child and it made Alistair want to use pointy words at her. That would show her. “You are the Grey Warden here, Alistair. We are here to aid your efforts to raise an army. Surely you weren’t expecting her to make your decisions for you.” Her smile broke into a nasty grin. “Though, I suppose you are the type who could use such help. You are aware of which boot goes on which foot, yes?”
He frowned and threw Morrigan the most pointed stare he could manage. “We’ll head to Redcliffe first, then. Work our way around as we need to.” Alistair then gave her a sarcastic smile. “You know, when you turn just right the resemblance between you and your mother is simply uncanny. It’s the nose, I think.”
Morrigan’s smugness snapped and she grabbed at her nose with both hands and a panicked look on her face. “I-I I do not look like Mother!”
Beside her, Avelle sighed.
“I give it about a year at the most before you’ll be the spitting image.” Alistair grinned. “Oh, yes. Wait…is that…a grey hair?”
Morrigan looked ready to engage in a man-to-toad spell, her gold eyes gleaming with anger.
Avelle smirked. “Do you think we could insult each other and walk at the same time?”
He couldn’t help but laugh. Just knowing that Morrigan had some trigger, some sort of place where she reacted like a human…he found it comforting. He wouldn’t be defenseless against her from now on. No ser.
Survival of the fittest was what Morrigan had called it. Avelle thought it more akin to unabashed greed. There was no doubt that most people would have been doing the same in the irate merchant’s place, that the two young women could agree on. It didn’t excuse his behavior, didn’t make it right, and didn’t make Avelle feel any more charitable towards him. Alistair stood between the greedy man and the self-righteous Chantry sister, trying to broker a compromise between them while puzzled townsfolk stood nearby. Self-righteous perhaps was harsh. It was just…since the attack on home Avelle found she was short on faith, in people and the Maker. One flash of her nephew’s small body was enough to make her scowl and question any sort of benevolent mystical creator.
The merchant started yelling, responding to some smart comment Alistair had just made. Avelle found herself edging closer to his wares and was surprised when everyone was too preoccupied by the noise to even take notice of her. When the Chantry sister started yelling back, Avelle looked down at the small lockbox in front of her and then up at the crowd. The cart of goods in front of her blocked most of her from their eyes, and before she had consciously thought about it she felt her fingers fiddling with her lockpick, feeling the clicking and slight movements from the inside of the lock.
What was she doing? Scavenging from dead criminals was one thing-a slightly disturbing thing-but stealing from a merchant? His greed didn’t give her permission to do this. Though part of Avelle’s mind immediately shot back that it did. He sold back to desperate people at twice what his goods were worth. Let him consider this his contribution to the war effort against the Blight.
A soft pop sounded and without looking she fumbled through the lockbox, pulling out a few small bags of coin and shutting it again. In front of her the merchant threw his hands up and then pointed one at Alistair.
Avelle frowned. She had done it and would not put the money back, but felt some measure of shame as she watched the young man try to please everyone.
“You have quite a liberal view of the word scavenge,” a smooth voice said behind her. Avelle looked over her shoulder and saw Morrigan eyeing her with an impassive stare. The witch was observant and silent in approach. That unnerving feeling Flemeth gave Avelle almost radiated off of her daughter. No wonder Alistair had joked about them looking familiar.
“Let’s call it survival,” Avelle replied. She leaned closer to the witch and whispered, “And if not me, it would have been someone else, right?”
Morrigan arched one her eyebrows but said nothing. Her eyes seemed to be studying Avelle, and again there was that sense of unease that washed over her. This was wrong, stealing was wrong, but so was what the merchant was doing.
Father would have done something. Convinced him his greed would be everyone’s undoing and customers that were satisfied were more apt to return.
Fat lot of good return business would be during a Blight.
If not this man, it would be another man. And another. How many would they encounter on this journey, more concerned with gold and riches at the expense of others, at the expense of their country and ultimately their lives? They all reminded her of Howe. Her jaw clenched unconsciously.
“Don’t I have the right to make a living?! Who are you to come in and side with this bleeding heart sister?” the merchant’s face was beet red and his expression livid.
Morrigan and Avelle strolled over to join Alistair, who was beginning to look at a loss for words. The young witch crossed her arms (a move that Avelle was beginning to recognize as commonplace with her) and tapped her foot softly on the ground.
Alistair let out a loud frustrated breath, turning to them. “Back me up here. You don’t think it’s right to profit off of desperation, right?”
Avelle looked past him to the merchant. “Charge what the items are worth. You’ll still make your money. No need to bleed the people of coin before the darkspawn bleed them literally.”
The merchant narrowed his eyes at her, his expression no less livid but now mixed with annoyance. “Fine! But you two-” He leveled a finger at her, shook it and then poked the front of Alistair’s splintmail chest plate. “-you’ll pay in full.”
At least the Chantry sister was happy enough. She thanked the both of them before walking back over to the Chantry building. Alistair smiled nervously at the disgruntled merchant before ushering his companions over a few paces away. Out of earshot, his smile dropped and his eyebrows knitted with worry.
“We need supplies and it sounds like he’s the only one in town with enough, but…I don’t think he’s going to accept kind words or drawn pictures in lieu of payment.”
Reaching into her pack, Avelle pulled out one of the small pouches she had just procured and threw it into Alistair’s surprised hands. “This should help.”
“W-where did you-? Was this what the bandits had?”
“Yes. At least it’ll be put to good use,” Avelle replied.
A look of discomfort remained on his face, though his hands closed around the pouch of coins. Although it didn’t show in her expression, Avelle felt very much the same. Every justification, even her anger, didn’t wash that feeling away. It was an unpleasant churning in her stomach. Having it reflected back to her in the face of this earnest young man amplified it times two.
“Well…I guess I’ll just go get us some essentials then,” Alistair said slowly.
When he suggested they also seek out some news for what they missed while out in the Wilds, Avelle offered she and Morrigan meet him in the pub once he was done. Everyone and their mother knew that if there was a place to check first when it came to rumors and gossip, it was the pub. Even she knew that and she grew up a sheltered noble in a large castle full of friends, family and servants.
Pubs were also notorious for being riotous and reeking of stale mead. Truth be told, Avelle didn’t feel that made it any less appealing at the moment.
A mug of mead, even stale, would be welcome.
Title: For Want of a Warden
Pairing: Eventually, probably Alistair/Cousland (Avelle)
Rating: Rated E for everyone, T for teen at worst.
Summary: When Castle Highever comes under attack by Howe’s men, the younger Cousland flees without the aid of Duncan. Alistair, Morrigan and Avelle arrive in Lothering and can’t take a step in town without running into trouble.
5 - Surviving
They were criminals that much the three of them knew. They were also blocking the entrance to Lothering, which was annoying. It didn’t take much to convince them that fighting a Grey Warden and his companions, one with sharp pointy blades and another crackling with magic and general meanness, wasn’t a good idea. Morrigan said it was their own fault for picking a fight with them and they’d best teach them a lesson. Alistair looked to Avelle, trying to gauge her opinion on her expression alone. Her eyes drifted down the road, not concentrating on the criminals in front of them. He sighed.
“We should turn you all in to the local authorities,” Alistair announced, trying his best to sound authoritative.
The leader got a panicked look in his eyes and waved his hands back and forth frantically to ward the Grey Warden off. “No, you can’t! With how things are in Lothering, the only authority left is the templars and they’ll kill us!”
“What would you take from me?” Avelle asked. Everyone was surprised by this sudden interjection and turned to look at her.
The leader scratched the back of his neck. “Your money, miss. That’s what we tend to take, y’know, being what we are.”
Her expression was unreadable, and this bothered Alistair more than a little bit. This was a bad situation, but women with blank looks? Much, much worse. They could destroy you with a sentence or one withering look, and that was if they were feeling charitable.
“I have no coin. Would you have taken my life then?”
The leader shrugged. “Look, just take the money we stole. It’s in the chest back there! So…are we good?”
Avelle’s eyebrows knitted and her expression was thoughtful for a second before she looked to Alistair, her face blank again. “Kill them. Or let the templars do it. Either way justice is done.”
Alistair cleared his throat. Yes, templars were a bit of the gung-ho kind. When they dealt with mages it was kill first and sort it out later. That was part of why it hadn’t worked for him. Both Morrigan and Avelle seemed to advocate the killing option, while the latter just wasn’t particular whom it was that did it. There was little doubt that if the templars truly were the only authority left that they would decide a lethal kind of punishment…
Still, was it his place to sentence men to death when they wanted to return what they had taken and go free?
They had probably killed those that didn’t surrender their coin, though. Where is the justice for those people?
“I suppose we should just take you into town and hand you over to whoever is in charge,” Alistair said, not quite ready to take the bandit’s word that the templars were all that was left.
The leader’s eyes widened and he reached for his sword. “Ooooh no! We are not going to deal with the templars! We would rather die here!”
And that fight had been quick and not much of a match. Between Morrigan’s arcane knowledge, Avelle’s swift blades and Alistair’s shield and swordplay the bandits hadn’t stood a chance. He didn’t trust Morrigan as far as he could throw her (he pouted when he contemplated just how far he could throw the witch and if it was far, did that mean he trusted her with his life?) but the woman knew her offensive spells, that much was obvious.
The moment the bandits let out their last breath Avelle walked around the overturned cart in front of them and began rummaging through the chests lying behind it. She pulled a coin purse from within one of the chests and stuffed it into her pack, and once finished with that task went to picking through the dead bandits’ pockets.
Alistair cringed. They were criminals, probably murderers, but there was something morbid and-what was the word?-disrespectful of going through their pockets before their bodies had even cooled.
Morrigan made a derisive snort. “Don’t tell me our Grey Warden finds such scavenging distasteful.”
“We did just end their lives. It only seems right to, I don’t know, give them a few minutes before taking their false teeth,” he replied, finding his tone slip into sardonic.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I am sure they would lend you the same courtesy were the rolls reversed. Perhaps they would even count the exact minutes away to be sure.”
Avelle stood up, stuffing the last of the bandits’ portable possessions in her pack. She looked almost remorseful and something tugged in Alistair’s heart. “We…I…don’t have anything. If it’s going to be a long journey, we need whatever we can get.”
Alistair sighed. The thought had occurred to him the night before and their moneyless state was about to smack them right in the face. It would be too much to hope for Morrigan to have coin she’d be willing to spend on their behalf. And neither he nor Avelle seemed to have anything more than what was on their persons. The need for tents, rations, salves and poultices were tantamount. It was of the utmost importance that they had what they needed to continue their journey. Sometimes they’d have to get what they needed from places that were…less than savory.
He had nothing to say to that, even with his misgivings. Alistair turned and took in the view of Lothering. From the top of the stone ramp he could see almost all the way across the small hamlet. A refugee camp was directly in front of them, tattered and dirty looking tents set up around small bonfires. Skinny game roasted on the fires, crates were stacked without much care to the side, and lines of laundry waved in an errant breeze. Several children played a chasing game while others stuck by their mothers, looking sad and wary. Beyond that was the clear path into the town, an armored figure in the distance standing in the middle, while beyond that was a familiar Chantry building. That sight caused an unpleasant twinge in Alistair’s gut, his mind automatically going back to his templar training years. Overhead the sun managed to shine a hazy reddish orange in the middle of a pink sky similar to the one he had seen in the Wilds.
“Ah, Lothering. Pretty as a painting,” he said, holding his arms out as if to display the entire town to the two women.
Morrigan lifted one of her eyebrows and smirked. That was lovely. What were going to come next were probably some more thinly veiled insults. Or she might do away with the veil all together and just hurl the insults bare. “Starting a conversation all by yourself? My, my. So you have decided to come back to the land of the living. Falling on your sword in grief was too much to handle, was it?”
Yes, right on cue. Alistair was sure that wasn’t a veiled insult. At best it was wearing a pretty thin nightgown. He started walking down the ramp towards the refugee camp, waving Morrigan off. “Is my being upset that hard to understand? What would you do if your mother died?”
“Before or after I stopped laughing?”
She couldn’t have meant that. She just…no. That would be…
“Right. Very creepy. Forget I asked.”
From the top of the stone road of the Imperial Highway, Avelle looked down at them. There was a small something in her hand, but she put in one of the pouches of her belt before Alistair got even a decent look at it. “Where are we going from here?”
“Somewhere we can use one of the Grey Warden treaties, I imagine,” said Morrigan, crossing her arms.
Alistair shrugged. “There’s Redcliffe, of course, but there’s also Orzammar in the FrostbackMountains…or the mages in the CircleTower. And last I heard there was a band of Dalish elves moving through the BrecilianForest.”
Avelle raised her eyebrows and stared at him. It felt uncomfortable being stared at that way (Alistair tried to convince himself that it was only because it was so unexpected and nothing to do with her being a woman and a pretty woman and he had to stop thinking that right now), and after a few seconds he realized that Morrigan was staring at him too. She wasn’t smirking, but there was an expectant look on her face. That was it. They both were expecting something from him, and that’s where they lost him.
“What?” he asked.
“Well, which one are we going to first?” asked Avelle.
“We could go to Redcliffe, but really we could go to one of the others first. I really don’t want to argue about it.”
Morrigan smiled and spoke as if she were speaking to a very small child and it made Alistair want to use pointy words at her. That would show her. “You are the Grey Warden here, Alistair. We are here to aid your efforts to raise an army. Surely you weren’t expecting her to make your decisions for you.” Her smile broke into a nasty grin. “Though, I suppose you are the type who could use such help. You are aware of which boot goes on which foot, yes?”
He frowned and threw Morrigan the most pointed stare he could manage. “We’ll head to Redcliffe first, then. Work our way around as we need to.” Alistair then gave her a sarcastic smile. “You know, when you turn just right the resemblance between you and your mother is simply uncanny. It’s the nose, I think.”
Morrigan’s smugness snapped and she grabbed at her nose with both hands and a panicked look on her face. “I-I I do not look like Mother!”
Beside her, Avelle sighed.
“I give it about a year at the most before you’ll be the spitting image.” Alistair grinned. “Oh, yes. Wait…is that…a grey hair?”
Morrigan looked ready to engage in a man-to-toad spell, her gold eyes gleaming with anger.
Avelle smirked. “Do you think we could insult each other and walk at the same time?”
He couldn’t help but laugh. Just knowing that Morrigan had some trigger, some sort of place where she reacted like a human…he found it comforting. He wouldn’t be defenseless against her from now on. No ser.
Survival of the fittest was what Morrigan had called it. Avelle thought it more akin to unabashed greed. There was no doubt that most people would have been doing the same in the irate merchant’s place, that the two young women could agree on. It didn’t excuse his behavior, didn’t make it right, and didn’t make Avelle feel any more charitable towards him. Alistair stood between the greedy man and the self-righteous Chantry sister, trying to broker a compromise between them while puzzled townsfolk stood nearby. Self-righteous perhaps was harsh. It was just…since the attack on home Avelle found she was short on faith, in people and the Maker. One flash of her nephew’s small body was enough to make her scowl and question any sort of benevolent mystical creator.
The merchant started yelling, responding to some smart comment Alistair had just made. Avelle found herself edging closer to his wares and was surprised when everyone was too preoccupied by the noise to even take notice of her. When the Chantry sister started yelling back, Avelle looked down at the small lockbox in front of her and then up at the crowd. The cart of goods in front of her blocked most of her from their eyes, and before she had consciously thought about it she felt her fingers fiddling with her lockpick, feeling the clicking and slight movements from the inside of the lock.
What was she doing? Scavenging from dead criminals was one thing-a slightly disturbing thing-but stealing from a merchant? His greed didn’t give her permission to do this. Though part of Avelle’s mind immediately shot back that it did. He sold back to desperate people at twice what his goods were worth. Let him consider this his contribution to the war effort against the Blight.
A soft pop sounded and without looking she fumbled through the lockbox, pulling out a few small bags of coin and shutting it again. In front of her the merchant threw his hands up and then pointed one at Alistair.
Avelle frowned. She had done it and would not put the money back, but felt some measure of shame as she watched the young man try to please everyone.
“You have quite a liberal view of the word scavenge,” a smooth voice said behind her. Avelle looked over her shoulder and saw Morrigan eyeing her with an impassive stare. The witch was observant and silent in approach. That unnerving feeling Flemeth gave Avelle almost radiated off of her daughter. No wonder Alistair had joked about them looking familiar.
“Let’s call it survival,” Avelle replied. She leaned closer to the witch and whispered, “And if not me, it would have been someone else, right?”
Morrigan arched one her eyebrows but said nothing. Her eyes seemed to be studying Avelle, and again there was that sense of unease that washed over her. This was wrong, stealing was wrong, but so was what the merchant was doing.
Father would have done something. Convinced him his greed would be everyone’s undoing and customers that were satisfied were more apt to return.
Fat lot of good return business would be during a Blight.
If not this man, it would be another man. And another. How many would they encounter on this journey, more concerned with gold and riches at the expense of others, at the expense of their country and ultimately their lives? They all reminded her of Howe. Her jaw clenched unconsciously.
“Don’t I have the right to make a living?! Who are you to come in and side with this bleeding heart sister?” the merchant’s face was beet red and his expression livid.
Morrigan and Avelle strolled over to join Alistair, who was beginning to look at a loss for words. The young witch crossed her arms (a move that Avelle was beginning to recognize as commonplace with her) and tapped her foot softly on the ground.
Alistair let out a loud frustrated breath, turning to them. “Back me up here. You don’t think it’s right to profit off of desperation, right?”
Avelle looked past him to the merchant. “Charge what the items are worth. You’ll still make your money. No need to bleed the people of coin before the darkspawn bleed them literally.”
The merchant narrowed his eyes at her, his expression no less livid but now mixed with annoyance. “Fine! But you two-” He leveled a finger at her, shook it and then poked the front of Alistair’s splintmail chest plate. “-you’ll pay in full.”
At least the Chantry sister was happy enough. She thanked the both of them before walking back over to the Chantry building. Alistair smiled nervously at the disgruntled merchant before ushering his companions over a few paces away. Out of earshot, his smile dropped and his eyebrows knitted with worry.
“We need supplies and it sounds like he’s the only one in town with enough, but…I don’t think he’s going to accept kind words or drawn pictures in lieu of payment.”
Reaching into her pack, Avelle pulled out one of the small pouches she had just procured and threw it into Alistair’s surprised hands. “This should help.”
“W-where did you-? Was this what the bandits had?”
“Yes. At least it’ll be put to good use,” Avelle replied.
A look of discomfort remained on his face, though his hands closed around the pouch of coins. Although it didn’t show in her expression, Avelle felt very much the same. Every justification, even her anger, didn’t wash that feeling away. It was an unpleasant churning in her stomach. Having it reflected back to her in the face of this earnest young man amplified it times two.
“Well…I guess I’ll just go get us some essentials then,” Alistair said slowly.
When he suggested they also seek out some news for what they missed while out in the Wilds, Avelle offered she and Morrigan meet him in the pub once he was done. Everyone and their mother knew that if there was a place to check first when it came to rumors and gossip, it was the pub. Even she knew that and she grew up a sheltered noble in a large castle full of friends, family and servants.
Pubs were also notorious for being riotous and reeking of stale mead. Truth be told, Avelle didn’t feel that made it any less appealing at the moment.
A mug of mead, even stale, would be welcome.