Seeking a place to camp away from the main road, the Wardens came upon a fishing shack by the river after a day's march toward Vigil's Keep. They had kept the same pace that had tested Velanna's endurance underground, but somehow being back on the surface made the walk very nearly pleasant. It would have been more so had it not been for the sweat and grime that clung to her, an odor and general aura of discomfort that sapped her willpower. To see shelter and running water and the promise of food all in one place could have made her cry with relief.
Only Sigrun seemed unaffected by the journey, her undampened enthusiasm for every new sight propelling her along with the lightness of an airborne soap bubble. At one point, in a digression about the sky and whether or not it was truly endless, Sigrun had questioned Commander Tabris about birds for at least an hour, until the Commander threw her hands in the air with a laugh, apologized, and said that she had told her literally every individual thing she knew about birds. Then Oghren made a comment about bushtits, and the whole conversation went even further sideways.
They looked around the fishing shack for signs of an owner, but the place appeared to have been untouched for weeks. Tools and nets had been left behind, and after a few minutes' investigation, Tabris gave into her exhaustion and said, "Right of conscription. I don't know if that's how it works, but I'm conscripting the damn fishing nets, if they don't like it they can send a petition."
Velanna was not much of a hand at fishing. Her mother had taught her the fundamentals of hunting, and of foraging, but she never had much cause to learn the trick to catching a fish. Anders apparently knew a fair amount from his own childhood, though he protested that he had been twelve years old when they took him to the Circle and had not fished since that day, and to therefore take his advice with a grain of salt. Together, they managed to set a net in place in the river before they began the difficult work of cleaning a week of filth from their bodies.
They dug a pit and dragged a basin of water to the shore for the purpose of cleaning away the darkspawn blood without tainting the arling's drinking water. Once they were clean enough to consider bathing safe, they split off into two groups. Sigrun, Velanna, and Tabris went to the water first, stripping down and eagerly submerging themselves in the slow-flowing water. The riverbed was muddy and slick, the water cold enough that it would make Velanna's teeth chatter if she lingered too long, but it still felt unbelievably good to finally wash all the grease and grit from her hair. She could only get her underclothes so clean, but a few minutes with a bar of plain soap was better than nothing, even if at the end she would have to put them back on wet and let them dry along with the rest of her.
"Can I borrow that?" Velanna glanced over to see Sigrun holding her hand out.
She had been a little surprised to find that while more than just Sigrun's face was tattooed, as far as she could tell none of her other tattoos had any connection to the ceremonial ones on her face, unless there was some Legion of the Dead tradition involving large-breasted women she was unaware of. (That one was on the back of her furry calf, and quite crude, compared to the finer work on her face. At least she chose a better artist for the one people had to look at every time they spoke to her.) Though she was stouter, like the Commander she was sturdily built, with hairline scars from enemy blades criss-crossing over her forearms.
Velanna handed her the soap, trying not to look too blatantly. Sigrun, however, had no such reservations.
"You're even skinnier than I thought," she said in amazement, scrubbing away at the stains in her clothes. "I heard elves could get pretty skinny, but they really weren't kidding!"
"Please, by all means, comment on every aspect of my appearance," Velanna said, wringing her undershirt out violently enough that she was in danger of tearing a seam.
"Shit, I did it again," Sigrun said sheepishly. "Sorry. I think I owe you payback now. Okay. You can ask me whatever kinda question you want about me, or dwarves, if you want."
Velanna scoffed, dismissing it as a foolish idea. However, as the quiet dragged on, Velanna couldn't help but remember something that had been nagging at her.
"...Is it true that dwarves are born as rocks?"
A few feet up the river bank, Tabris barely restrained a snort. Next to her, Sigrun's face contorted.
"'Born as rocks'?"
Velanna's face burned hot. "I knew it," she hissed. "That slimy, foul-breathed toadstool! 'Pink rocks are girls, gray ones are boys.' Ugh, and I almost believed him!"
"Who? Oghren?" Sigrun's cheeks gew round with glee. "You believed Oghren?"
Velanna growled, wringing as much water out of her clothes as she could and yanking them back on before she wrapped a blanket around herself and stomped back to their camp. Yes, of course it seemed an obviously foolish idea now, but it wasn't as though she'd had the opportunity to converse with many dwarves before Oghren!
While the men took their turn down at the river, Velanna sat by the fire they'd built and gave her armor a good, hard, therapeutic scrubbing. The padded jacket was a loss, but the mail tabard could be salvaged, and her boots were caked with gore. Travelers they'd passed on the road had been startled by their haggard appearance. Maybe once their armor had been seen to, they would not look halfway to being darkspawn themselves.
Less than an hour later, Anders came tromping up from the river, hair damp and loose about his ears and his blanket draped around his neck like a cape, with a net that bulged with perhaps a dozen small trout clenched in his fist. A very pleasant surprise indeed, and Anders looked like the cat who'd caught the canary. Tabris volunteered to gut and clean them, a task Velanna was all too happy to let her handle.
"Are you sure you don't need assistance, Commander?" Nathaniel had returned, just as waterlogged as Anders, though somehow his state of undress shocked her more. If she had thought the hair on his chin dark and thick, she need only have looked at him now to correct her assumptions. It was everywhere, spanning his broad chest and all down his belly, slicked to his skin from his dip in the river. She would think all humans so hairy if she didn't have Anders right there for comparison. So it was just Nathaniel then. How very bizarre. She couldn't imagine what that could possibly feel like. Would it be coarse and thick like a bear, or softer and finer like halla fur?
She stopped herself staring before she could think any other disgusting thoughts. That tabard could stand to be scrubbed again. She might have missed a spot.
The conversation was quiet but lively around the fire that night, and roasted fish was a welcome addition to the plain rations they had relied on in the Deep Roads. They set their clothes out to dry as they ate, bundled into their blankets or sitting close to the warmth of the fire. Oghren was a little too well acquainted with his spirits, which wasn't unusual, but Sigrun seemed to know how to handle his brand of inappropriateness well, which she plainly informed the rest of them was born of experience with drunks and scoundrels, one of the most prominent being her uncle back in Dust Town. Sigrun also reportedly had four little nieces and nephews, the oldest of which had loved nothing more than to hide her boots in increasingly unlikely places.
"I had a terrible reputation for lateness, and it was all because of that little brat," she groused, but she was still grinning. "Ancestors, it's been years. She's probably grown by now."
Nathaniel smiled softly. The firelight was kind to his complexion, making him appear warm and soft-edged. Anders had taken the opportunity to shave, and was now as clean-cheeked as before, but Nathaniel had not yet troubled himself with the task of reining in his week-old beard.
"My little sister can pretend to be as sweet as she likes, but Delilah was once the terror of Vigil's Keep," he said. "When we were children, she put beetles in my blankets. She would laugh to hear me shriek."
"Seranni liked to put sap in my hair," Velanna said. She had done it once when Velanna was five and Seranni was three, and again when Velanna was eight, right when she had finally managed to grow back the hair her father had sheared away while she wailed and cried. Seranni had been too young to know better the first time, but she had certainly done it on purpose the second time. "She also pushed me into an icy river. Twice."
Nathaniel winced sympathetically. "Ouch!"
Twice was an exaggeration— Seranni had pushed her in, realized the trouble she had caused, attempted to get her back out, and failed, dropping Velanna right back into the frigid water. Velanna had been sick for a week… but Seranni had also shamefacedly brought Velanna hot tea every time she so much as had a sniffle for years afterward.
"Yes," Velanna hummed thoughtfully. "Why did I want to rescue her again?" She glanced up to find Nathaniel watching her, that same soft expression she had spotted earlier crinkling around his eyes. Velanna pursed her lips against an answering smile. When Tabris launched into an engaging tale about the time her little cousin, aged four, had snuck away during the alienage's Satinalia gathering and eaten her weight in cake before anyone could catch her, Velanna was relieved she had an excuse to look away.
Sigrun volunteered for first watch, too keyed up about her first night on the surface to sleep. Velanna, exhausted to her bones, was sure she'd fall asleep as soon as her head touched ground, but Nathaniel had apparently elected to stay up as well. She could hear them on the edge of the camp, Nathaniel's soft murmurs and Sigrun's exclamations. Velanna strained to hear them.
"...why it's called 'the Oak'. See how that line of stars forms a branch?"
"Not really, no. Just looks like the sky has freckles to me."
Velanna frowned, rolling over to see Nathaniel and Sigrun craning their heads back while Nathaniel gestured to the sky. She had never heard of a constellation called 'the Oak'. Was he talking about Vir Tanadhal?
"Look over there, just above the treeline. They call it 'the White Wolf'. See the bright one and draw a line out behind it… That's the eye, and the tail."
Sigrun laughed. "How am I supposed to tell? I've never seen a wolf!"
Velanna groaned, dragging herself away from her bedroll. She couldn't stand to listen to this anymore.
"It's not just any wolf," she grumbled, "It's Fen'Harel."
Nathaniel looked up in surprise at her approach, his eyes sliding down and quickly back up to avoid the half-clothed sight of her. She sat on Sigrun's other side, wrapping her arms around her knees and pulling them to her chest, to spare them both what she was sure was an unpleasantly bony sight.
"Fenna-what?" Sigrun asked, gleefully settling in for a story.
"Fen'Harel," Velanna said. "The Trickster. The Dread Wolf. Betrayer of the Creators. See how he faces away from the moon?" It had grown rounder since they had been underground, its light stronger. "He comes out at night to escape the sun, but even its reflection holds enough power to drive him away."
She could see Sigrun trying to make sense of the unfamiliar concepts. Velanna sighed and told the tale she had been told herself countless times, of the war between the Creators and the Forgotten Ones, and how the Dread Wolf had tricked them all and locked them away in their prisons. How, when the humans arrived, with war and disease and short lifespans, the elves, without the Creators to protect them, quickened and began to die as the humans did.
Nathaniel, who had previously been listening quietly, interrupted to say, "You believe that your ancestors used to be immortal." It wasn't a question, his affect flat and already challenging. Velanna bristled.
"I don't 'believe' it," she said. "It's true."
"How do you know?"
Velanna shut her eyes wearily. "Why would the elders lie?"
Nathaniel's eyebrows rose a fraction. "Why indeed?"
Velanna wanted to reach over Sigrun's head and choke him. But she was tired, and it was too nice a night to let it be spoiled by some contrarian shemlen fool. She listened for a while to Sigrun chattering about how Falon'Din's owl looked to her like a curried nug hand-pie she'd had once, then bid them a brusque good night.
She woke the next morning with fifteen rebuttals on the tip of her tongue.
She dressed in her battle-torn armor and packed her travel gear with the subtlety of a charging boar, arguing with a fictional Nathaniel in her head as she planned what she might say. How the elders' knowledge had been carried since the fall of the Tevinter Imperium, the same as the humans' precious Chant. How it was the only history they had left, since the Imperium had wrecked it all, before the followers of Andraste had abandoned their icon's legacy and destroyed the rest. How it was rare, but entirely possible, even now, to find the places the ancient elves had gone to their eternal sleep in, buried in elven ruins humans dared not enter for fear of the guardian beasts. I could show you, she said to him in her mind, while his imaginary self looked appropriately cowed, but the Varterral might kill you before you could take a step inside.
What came out, after she had spent an hour on the road looking at him, getting angry all over again, and trying to work up the nerve to say so, was, "So you don't believe the elves were immortal."
Nathaniel, who had been looking at her as well, likely wondering why she looked on the verge of apoplexy before he'd even spoken that morning, frowned. "When did I say that?"
Did he forget, or was he just being dense? "You asked me if I believed that my ancestors were once immortal."
"And where in that question was it implied that I believed otherwise?"
Velanna's arguments sputtered and died in her throat. Here she had been ready for one conversation, prepared all the variables, and now he was taking them down a completely separate path. "Then you do believe the elves were immortal."
Nathaniel glanced at her, then away, his face betraying nothing. "I didn't say that either."
She was going to strangle him. She was going to drop her pack and her staff and just wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze. "You…" She was seething. She couldn't think around him. Why was he like this? "...are… exasperating!"
Velanna quickened her pace enough that she would not have to see his face any longer. Her thoughts were loud and angry, rattling around in her head like a stone in a jug and giving her a headache. It took her a while to notice the Commander was humming something under her breath. It almost startled Velanna when her head snapped up and the humming ceased.
"Uthenera!" Tabris exclaimed. Velanna felt that she had missed a step somewhere.
"Pardon?"
"Uthenera, that's… That's what it was called right? The long sleep? I haven't thought about it in a while," said Tabris, who fell back a pace or two to match Velanna. She began to hum again, mumbling a word here and there as she could remember them in her rough voice. "Hahren na… ba ba-da-dum ba dah…"
Velanna could hardly believe her ears. She didn't think the flat-ears had any knowledge at all of such things. Perhaps the words had been passed down among the city folk as well… Of course, it seemed just as likely not, as Tabris could only remember one out of every five.
"We traveled to an elven ruin during the Blight," the Commander said, giving up on the song. "Though there was evidence they coexisted with the humans of the time. There was a burial chamber there… Angry spirits had claimed the place, it was the site of some ancient battle. But that was where I first heard of it, and a Dalish storyteller explained the history to me. The elves who never aged, but grew weary of life... It was a human bard who taught me the song, though."
Now, this Velanna could not tolerate. "Impossible."
Tabris, dreadfully, showed no sign that she was teasing. "She told me she learned it from an elven servant when she was a child in Orlais. Unfortunately I don't have a scrap of her musical talent."
"So, is it true, then?" Nathaniel interjected. Velanna glared back, but Tabris merely turned to him and raised her eyebrows.
"What did you think 'shemlen' meant?"
He frowned. Apparently he had never considered it. "I— well, I assumed it was rude."
"It means 'quick children'," Velanna said. "For the curse of your short lives, which you saw fit to inflict on us."
Anders let out a sharp laugh. "And here I thought you were calling us something profane like... 'bastard' or 'arsehole'."
"'Human' can be plenty profane all on its own," Tabris said. "But if it comforts you, I can start calling you an asshole instead."
Anders flashed a sarcastic smile at her while Tabris pointedly ignored it.
Velanna watched her for a while, her thoughts racing. She had visited a real elven burial chamber… Velanna had heard of such things, of course, and in the clan's travels they had encountered what few remnants of their ancestors remained to be found, but she had never had the opportunity to witness an ancient elven tomb that remained intact. After a while, Tabris, seeming to sense Velanna's eyes on her, turned and said, "Did you ever meet Keeper Zathrian?"
There was a grim thought. "Yes," Velanna said. "A few years past. Arlathvhen is one of the few times the different clans cross paths." Tabris looked at her questioningly. This sort of ignorance from a flat-ear Velanna was accustomed to. "Every ten years, the clans convene in a location chosen at the previous meeting. Arlathvhen is the meeting."
"Did you hear of his passing?" Tabris seemed reticent to speak, as if the news of his death might hurt Velanna. She needn't have troubled herself. How irritating, to be spoken to so gently of a man who had meant little to her, and who had been foolish enough to be destroyed by his own hubris.
"Yes, I'm afraid the story has become infamous. Almost as infamous as his successor." Ilshae had very few kind words to spare for the jumped-up flat-eared girl who now called herself Keeper Lanaya. Opinions were divided among the clan, and while Velanna had to admit she didn't think much of the ability of an outsider taking a position of leadership, she was almost more irritated that Lanaya had managed it despite being younger than Velanna by several years. If Ilshae had not cast her out, she still couldn't have expected to succeed her at least until she had cleared her third decade.
"Zathrian's final resting place is in the tomb I spoke of. His clan seemed to think it fitting."
Velanna scoffed. "Fitting that a prideful fool should rest among the honored dead?"
"He was prideful," Tabris said. "He realized it in the end, and chose to repair what he could, though it cost him his life."
"If you mean to say," Velanna said, her ears burning, "that I ought to look to him as an example…"
"I think you're already doing the work," Tabris said. "You made a choice that would benefit other people more than it benefits you. Every day you stay, you make it again." She smiled faintly, a little tug at the corner of her lip. Yes, Velanna remembered their conversation about choice very clearly. "All I mean to say is that if we ever find ourselves in the Brecilian forest, and you want to… pay your respects? I would be honored to escort you."
She didn't know how to feel. The opportunity was impossible to ignore. She would have given nearly anything to have been there when the ruin was uncovered, to have delved into its secrets alongside the Commander, to have been privileged enough to experience that taste of her history firsthand.
On the other hand, a small, ugly, loud little part of her knew she didn't deserve it. That while Tabris had spoken of Zathrian to give her hope for redemption, all she saw there was the deserved conclusion of a quest for vengeance: death. Tabris did not know the extent of her crime. Zathrian had sacrificed the lives he had been entrusted with, and so had Velanna. Neither of them deserved any honor for that.
She glanced at Sigrun. Maybe the truth became easier to swallow if you made jokes about it, but Velanna hadn't the knack for it.
Vigil's Keep came into view quite near the end of their second day on the road, an untidy sprawl of wood and stone that was beginning to become familiar to her. She could see that the stonemasons had been at work reconstructing the main walls surrounding the compound. As they drew close to the main gate, however, it became clear that something was amiss. A crowd had amassed around the gates, which had been shut against all travelers, and the closer they walked, the louder the sounds of angry shouting became. Some in the crowd held swords, others cudgels, though none appeared to be soldiers, and soon Velanna realized that every last one of them was a human.
From atop the guard towers, soldiers had crossbows trained on the rabble. Squinting, she could see Garevel, the Captain of the Guard, shouting down at them.
"Calm yourselves, or we will fire upon you! The Warden-Commander is in the field protecting you lot as we speak!"
"If that knife-eared bitch won't do her job proper, get someone who will," someone in the crowd bellowed.
Velanna was already drawing mana to her fingertips. The Commander's firm grip on her wrist stopped her, though her eyes were fixed on the crowd.
Garevel spotted them at last and froze, hoping not to draw the attention of the rioters, but it was too late for that. Tabris put on her hardest expression and strode with purpose right towards them. Velanna kept her grip tight on her staff.
"There she is," came the cry, and, "The Warden!" The noise of their protests grew to a raucous din.
"For what reason do you harass our soldiers?" The Commander's voice rose above the crowd, a firm bark that startled the humans despite their anger.
"Get the Wardens out of the Vigil," shouted a red-faced man clutching a battered sword and shield.
"No more foreign powers on Fereldan soil! We suffered enough under the Orlesians, and if the Wardens think their putting some cast-off from an alienage in charge will distract us from the truth, they're fooling themselves!" If she weren't sneering so, Velanna might have thought that was her attempt to sound reasonable.
"She's more than a cast-off, she's a criminal! The Wardens don't care who they recruit as long as they're killers! She's a murderer!"
Murderer, they began to chant, murderer, murderer. Next to her, she saw something in the Commander's stance change.
"Please, listen," came another voice, and Velanna turned in shock to see that Nathaniel had stepped to the front, putting himself between Tabris and the mob. "The Commander is as Fereldan as you or I, and she has put her life on the line in your defense more times than any of us could count!"
The mood of the crowd shifted noticeably when someone among them looked at Nathaniel with recognition. He grit his teeth.
"He looks like—"
"I thought they executed—"
"Isn't that—"
"Yes, I am Arl Howe's firstborn son," Nathaniel said. "You knew my father as a tyrant and a traitor to the crown. They—" The admission seemed to pain him. "They called him the Butcher of Denerim. Would you really have preferred his rule to that of the Hero of Ferelden?"
Some of the rioters quieted, their faces drawn in confusion, while others were further incensed.
"You want to talk about butchery, talk about what happened to Vaughan Kendells! Spit on your disgrace of a father, you motherless turncoat, I still remember him." The man in the forefront of the mob stepped toward Nathaniel, shield in front, taunting him, trying to force him to take a step back. Nathaniel looked as though he might strike the man.
"Vaughan Kendells? Rendon Howe took the arling of Denerim by force—"
"Aye, took it after the elves were done with it," the man spat. "My brother lives in Denerim. He was there. He remembers the purge. Said a gang of elves rampaged through, killed the Arl's son and half his men. That's what happens when you arm a knife-ear. That's what'll happen if our blessed Arlessa gets her way. And the Wardens, they like that just fine. After all, she's one of them who—"
Tabris shoved her way between him and Nathaniel, sending them both in opposite directions. Before he could react, she had grabbed him by the hair and drawn his head down with a sharp yank, bashing his jaw into the edge of his own wooden shield. When he recoiled, blood gushed from his mouth. She lifted her boot and kicked the shield, sending him sprawling to the ground. The crowd parted around him, leaping backwards to let him fall. Tabris drew her blades, scanning the crowd with eyes narrowed and full of disgust.
"You will all leave. Now."
The man on the ground groaned, trying to push his way up. Tabris stepped on his shield, pressing down, letting him yowl through the pain. The crowd had gone nearly silent, paralyzed in shock.
"Now, before I change my mind! Human heads roll as easily as darkspawn!"
A crossbow bolt from the guard tower whistled through the air, landing harmlessly, a foot away from one of the mob. He yelped, and the crowd reacted nearly as one, scattering to all sides. The Commander lifted her boot, stepping away from the man who clutched his belly and moaned in the dirt.
"Happy to let elves suffer and die for you," Tabris growled, watching him try to right himself in disgust. "Less happy when they live through it. Fucking coward. Run home." She spat on the ground by his feet. "Think whatever you like about me, but I'm not going anywhere." Without another word, she signaled the guard to open the gate, which began to rise with a decisive clanking of its chains, and stepped over him, marching into the courtyard and leaving him in the road.
Velanna glared down at him as they passed. She had rarely seen the Commander so merciless outside of outright battle, though in Velanna's opinion, it had been a mercy to let the man keep his life. If he tried to retaliate, retribution would be swift, but why allow him the chance?
Nathaniel, too, warranted a second look, though his back was to her now, his shoulders drawn and tense. To publicly denounce his own father in such a way… His following Tabris was one thing. A bold proclamation of his loyalty was something else entirely.
"Commander, I—" Captain Garevel came tearing around the corner, having descended from the guard tower. Seneschal Varel was barrelling down the path leading away from the castle as well. "I don't know how you managed that. Do you want that man taken into custody?"
The Commander's face was lined and weary. "Let him run. If he comes back looking for a fight, he's got a death wish."
"If you're certain," Garevel said, though he did not look convinced.
"Thank the Maker you've arrived," said Varel, looking harried. "Before this mess began, some nobles were awaiting an audience with you."
The Commander's eyes slid shut. Somehow she aged a year in a moment. "Of course they were."
"Shall I inform them that you've arrived?" He looked across the haggard group, lingering on the shortest of them, in her Legionnaire armor. Sigrun grinned up at him pleasantly.
"I don't suppose they'd wait a day?" Varel looked on the verge of protesting before Tabris amended, "Yes, I'll see them right away, and then I have more important business. For at least a day. Maybe a week."
"A clear docket, as you say. I will... do my best," Varel said, bowing briskly. "Let me escort you to the throne room."
"Welcome to Vigil's Keep, girl," said Oghren, clapping Sigrun on the back. She was taking in the sights of the courtyard curiously, watching the human guards pass by, muttering about the disturbance.
"Is it always this… exciting?"
"No, the Commander's just so charming, she brings it out in people," said Anders.
"Commander," Nathaniel said, touching the Commander's shoulder with the caution of a hunter approaching a wounded predator. She looked up at him, face ashen.
"Later," Tabris said. "I promise you, we will talk later, but… not here." She wiped a gloved hand over her face. "Sigrun, come inside and let the others show you around for now. We'll handle the rest when I'm finished."
It wasn't that Velanna didn't care to find out what exactly had just transpired, but she was wearier than she'd been in years. She was desperate to just... soak her tired bones in a tub for the rest of the evening, digesting the day, the week, the month she'd had, and maybe fall asleep there as well. Unfortunately, the first step towards that end would be relieving herself of her gear and finding a change of clothes, so into the Keep she trudged alongside the others. To Velanna's shame, she was actually glad to be back. She hated human castles, felt closed in and out of place and lost, but after being trapped in a crumbling maze of an underground dwarven city for so long, it was a welcome respite that promised hot food and the relative safety of a room with a locked door.
The concept of safety became more relative by the moment when a man dropped from the ceiling.
He was hanging from his feet from one of the braziers in the hall, upside-down, his head a meter above eye level with the Commander. He was dressed in leather, all dark greens and blacks, and his hood drew forward in a birdlike slope. The Commander jolted back an inch, her hand instinctively going for her sheathed weapons, but she froze in place before she, or Seneschal Varel, who looked on the verge of a heart attack, could strike. The man dangling from the ceiling grinned, lifting a finger to his mouth to shush them.
"So glad you could come to the party, my dear!" the man said, under his breath but with jovial charm. Velanna could not immediately place his accent. Looking more closely, she could see that he was an elf with curving black tattoos framing his face, limited in design but very much like the Commander's poor imitation vallaslin. The Commander's face broke open in a startled smile.
"Zevran?"