The man hanging from the ceiling grinned to match their Commander.
"It's all right, Varel," she said, then, "Oof—" when the man dropped with an athletic twist that landed him right-side-up directly in the Commander's arms. They dipped with his weight, but not nearly as much as Velanna might have expected. He slung an arm around her shoulder companionably as she held him and kissed her soundly on the corner of her mouth. Velanna flinched, as much at the familiarity as the comfort with which Tabris accepted it.
"Fantastic," the cloaked man said quietly. "I see your reflexes are as quick as they ever were!"
"Zevran, what in Andraste's name are you doing here?" The man, Zevran, shushed her so that she would lower her voice once more. "And why are we whispering?"
"Highly convenient happenstance brought me to you, and I would be more than happy to explain," Zevran said, extricating himself from the Commander's arms and landing silently on the stone floor. "Later, once we have killed the Crows lurking in your throne room."
The Commander's smile faded to a hard-edged shadow. "Crows?"
"A dozen of them, by my count. Though I've reduced that number by half without their notice, so far. I did a sweep of the castle." Zevran grinned. "You're welcome!"
"I— Pardon, you're telling us there are a half-dozen Antivan Crows in the throne room?" As Nathaniel spoke, Velanna noticed that he had at some point drawn a dagger, which remained firmly in hand.
"And a half-dozen Fereldans. Presumably these are friends of yours, yes?"
"The riot," Varel said. "I feared it might be the work of the conspiracy against you, but I didn't imagine Bann Esmerelle herself would lead the charge!"
"A distraction," Tabris said. "Draw the guard outside…"
"And they move their assassins in place while we're distracted. Commander, I must apologize— such a severe oversight—"
"Time for that later," Zevran said, and drew a pair of wickedly sharp silverite blades from somewhere in his dark cloak. "A distraction of our own may be the thing, yes?"
"We come in the front, act like nothing's wrong," Tabris said.
"And I come around through the servants' entrance to flank them while their attention is on you."
"You know the castle's layout so well?" Nathaniel seemed suspicious. In this matter, Velanna agreed with him, although the Commander seemed to place her trust readily in the strange foreign elf.
"Well enough now to have killed the archers hiding in the eaves," Zevran said. His eyes raked over Nathaniel, head to toe, taking measure of him.
"Commander," Nathaniel said, bearing the gaze impassively. "Permit me to accompany this man?"
"You can trust him," Tabris said, sharing an inscrutable look with Zevran. "But yes, two to flank from behind… One on both sides of the throne room. Me in the lead, Oghren and Sigrun just behind to cover for the mages…"
"I ought to be the one to take the lead, Commander," said Seneschal Varel. "If they strike true—"
"You ought to alert Garevel," Tabris countered. "Bring reinforcements and we'll deal with them together."
"If you delay much longer, they will grow suspicious," Zevran warned. "I recommend we move swiftly."
"Go," Tabris urged Varel. "And the two of you, get into place," she said, facing Zevran and Nathaniel. Nathaniel glanced to Zevran once again, but nodded his assent without further question, the two of them slipping away down the hall on quiet feet. "Are the rest of you ready?"
"With you, Commander," said Oghren.
"Normal pace, weapons out. Eyes up for any remaining archers," said Tabris. She sighed. "Times like this, I wish I'd focused more on shieldwork."
"Lucky for you I've got barriers," Anders said. Velanna had no such spell, though her stone-shaping could be used to fashion crude armor for herself in a pinch.
"Barriers up after we enter, not before. Don't raise suspicion. Keep their attention on us."
"Shouldn't be too hard," Sigrun said, looking energized where Velanna felt only apprehension. "We're all just so pretty."
They moved into formation on command, marching into the main hall as if they had no notion of what awaited them. Velanna put all thoughts of this "conspiracy," who their new ally might be, and how he and the Commander came to be so affectionate aside and prepared herself for battle.
In the main chamber they found their guests waiting, a small cluster of humans in gleaming, gilded armor. At their head stood a woman with a lined, pinched face. To Velanna's eyes, her hair appeared unnaturally dark red, particularly for her age, and she wondered if it had been colored with dyes. Another extravagance lending to her wealth.
"Bann Esmerelle," Commander Tabris said, raising her voice for the benefit of all who awaited their arrival. "Matters must be urgent for you to come unannounced."
Esmerelle's pinched expression deepened into a sneer. "I am here about the good arl," she said, her eyes narrowing. "The good arl you killed."
"Which one do you mean? You'll have to clarify," said Tabris. Esmerelle's powdered face darkened with anger.
"Rendon was good to us. Good to me. And now his death will finally be avenged."
As she spoke, Velanna saw movement out of the corner of her eye— a crossbow, a figure in dark armor behind a pillar—then again, the shocked sound of breath punched from lungs as the would-be assassin fell under Zevran's concealed daggers. Her eyes turned to the back of the room, where she saw a glimpse of movement again. Trusting it to be Nathaniel, she hit Bann Esmerelle with a petrification spell. The woman lurched mid-motion as she attempted to draw her sword, brittle stone creeping across her skin and growing like frost out of the joints in her armor, freezing her where she stood. Velanna's gamble paid off a moment later, when an arrow lodged itself in her neck. Her skin shattered like dry clay, and she crumpled to the floor.
The battle was swift and bloody. Another Crow archer hidden in the eaves, three in the melee with blades that gleamed with poison, and three remaining humans in their finest, barely-worn armor—all fell under the Commander's two-pronged attack. It was almost comical, the way the most experienced of the assassins looked up to the eaves, sweating to find he'd find no backup from his fellows positioned there, and the way the Fereldans shouted in anger to find that they had been outmaneuvered. To his credit, Zevran was a terror on the battlefield, finding gaps in breastplates and slicing throats with deadly accuracy. He was retrieving a thrown dagger from the neck of the last fallen Crow just as Garevel and Varel returned with the promised reinforcements, who stopped and gaped uselessly at the carnage.
"Good of you to join us!" Zevran wiped his bloodied daggers on the carpet, ruined as it was already by the fight.
"Andraste's blood," Garevel cursed. "Is that Bann Esmerelle?" He approached the corpse, turning her over with the toe of his boot. The arrow jutting from her neck held her head at an odd angle, her face a frozen mask of shock, everything below it a ruinous mess.
"So ends the conspiracy," Tabris said. A shallow cut over her eye bled down her face, and she wiped at it with the back of her arm. Garevel turned back to her, grim-faced but impressed.
"She was a fool to attack you. I'll have trusted men clean this up. We can keep this quiet for a while. There's enough cause for panic already."
"Four dead nobles and twice as many Crows?" Tabris seemed unconvinced. Zevran rose to full height, coming to stand by her and removing his curved-beak hood. Beneath it he was dark-complected and pale of hair, quite similar to the Commander, though hers was paler. Were his features not so much finer and frankly prettier than Tabris', she might, at a glance, have thought them to be siblings. His eyes were darker than hers as well, a warm brown by the light of the braziers. There was no denying he was handsome.
"The Crows will send no further assassins," Zevran said. "They will already have received payment, and unless your Bann Esmerelle has a hidden benefactor, there will be no further payments forthcoming. Really, you have done me quite a favor— had I killed them without your help, and left the one who hired them alive, they might have been forced to retaliate! A win-win for us both, yes?"
"Is that why you're here?"
"I followed a few leads. One of them happened to bring me right to your doorstep." Zevran glanced at the gaggle of human soldiers currently trying to carry the corpses somewhere more discreet. "The rest of the tale I will save for when you and I are... alone." Zevran's eyebrows lifted roguishly.
Not her brother, then.
"The Bann and her followers can be cremated, Commander, their effects returned to their families," said Varel, grimacing as he watched their soldiers carrying Bann Esmerelle away. "We've proof enough of the conspiracy, and the involvement of the Crows, to alert the crown before the people can be convinced to outright revolt. The Queen will not tolerate such treachery."
"If I remember correctly, Her Majesty the Queen, long may she reign, is a master of such treachery," Zevran said quietly to Tabris, who shot him a warning look. He lifted his hands in surrender. "I mean no disrespect, of course. And I really must hand it to you Fereldans. Your nobility are so hands-on! Not content to let the help do all the work for you. I admire that rugged do-it-yourself spirit!" Zevran waved to the soldiers as they carted the corpses off. "Don't forget to fish the ones up in the eaves down. You'd notice the smell after a day or two. And the one in the Arlessa's bedroom!"
Tabris frowned. "You were in my bedroom?"
"They were in your bedroom. Waiting for you, one presumes, on the off chance you went directly there instead. I'm just a very helpful bystander who happened to climb in the window."
Tabris breathed out heavily, vexed. "You either have the best luck or the worst. I'm not sure which."
"Two sides of the same blade, my dear friend. Come, let your men handle the mess. I've worked up quite an appetite!"
After a few more words exchanged with Varel and Garevel requesting a secondary sweep of the castle, the Wardens and their new ally took an improvised meal of cold rabbit and onion pie, reserved from dinner. They gathered around a kitchen worktable with their food and cups of wine, still in their bloodied armor. Lena, the head cook, took their intrusion in stride, though she still seemed to be holding some kind of grudge against Velanna, and served her with a look that could curdle milk. Zevran, on the other hand, had charmed her quite thoroughly. Though she was likely old enough to be his mother, he flirted outrageously with her, and while she didn't take the bait, it made her laugh, round and red-cheeked, as she continually topped off his cup and slipped him extra servings. Velanna found she had begun to hate him just a little.
"Can you imagine our dear friend Oghren here in flaming circus pants? I can, and have every night since then," Zevran said, midway through some tall tale about the Commander. It seemed that she and Zevran had traveled together during the Blight, and he had no shortage of stories to tell about their adventures. Oghren, for his part, couldn't seem to stop interjecting to give his own perspective on matters.
"I'd like to see you come up with a better plan," he groused, gesturing at the elf with greasy, pie-flaked fingers.
"You have! I saved your terrible idea, did I not? And here our friend Seriah sits, alive and well, with all of her limbs intact."
"It'd take a blind fool to look at the two of us and buy that we're brothers. I mean, look at you. Scrawny little thing. Haven't even sprouted your first chin-hairs."
"Have you no understanding of 'farce'? Such performances are quite popular in Antiva."
"And they really just opened up the prison doors for you? A couple of circus performers?" Anders, who had swiped the third wine bottle directly from the shelf, refilled Zevran's cup himself to coax more of the story from him.
"Not the jail itself, though it afforded us a chance to rifle through the Colonel's desk and sneak past the ballistas."
"This is Fort Drakon," Nathaniel said. "The most heavily-guarded prison in Ferelden?"
"The very same!" Zevran laughed, raising his cup to Nathaniel with a wink. "I've broken out of a prison or two, but never in, until that day, and bless the armored fools who made it possible."
"And thank you very kindly for bringing my armor back to me," Tabris said. She seemed mostly content to sit back and allow Zevran to perform, her face lined with exhaustion and fondness in equal measure. "It was pretty drafty in there."
"And another sight I shall not soon forget... the mighty Grey Wardens in their smallclothes."
"You've seen me in less than that," she said, smirking into her cup. Velanna wished for ear plugs.
"Ah, but that was a holy moment," Zevran said. "A miracle! And I shall not sully it with lasciviousness and mockery!" This drew an outright laugh from the Commander, who smacked Zevran on the arm. "A toast, to the Hero of Ferelden and the many historical landmarks she has visited in varying states of undress!"
"To the Commander's bare ass," Oghren echoed.
"Salud!"
"Here, here!" Sigrun cheered. The group of them all knocked their cups together while Tabris wheezed, though Nathaniel seemed too embarrassed to participate.
"On the subject of your infamy, forgive me," said Zevran, "but I must know what you have done to infuriate the local nobility so. You've only been in power for, what, a month?"
"And change," Tabris said.
"You always did work so quickly. Please, I must know," he said fondly, then added in a raised whisper, "It's the ears, isn't it."
Tabris snorted. "Probably. But maybe you didn't hear her mention, ah…" She glanced at Nathaniel, then back, weighing her words. "My predecessor."
Zevran looked at her blankly for a moment before he took her meaning, realization dawning. "Ah, yes, I see. The charming Arl Howe. He leaves quite the impression, even after all this time. Though I cannot say I am grieved to see him or his followers lain to rest, I must admit I feel a certain degree of gratitude toward the man."
"Gratitude?"
"Indeed," said Zevran. "After all, while I answered to Loghain, it was Howe who first hired me!"
Across the table, Nathaniel stilled. "Rendon Howe hired you?"
Zevran's eyes slid to him, watching curiously. "Yes. It would have been around two years ago, now."
"An Antivan Crow."
"Former," Zevran corrected, "But yes, at the time I worked on behalf of the Crows. Myself and a dozen of my colleagues were contracted to kill the treacherous Grey Wardens—a contract which I broke in a most spectacular fashion! How fortunate that I could not best you," Zevran said, and smiled at the Commander brilliantly. "Though I very nearly did."
"You absolutely did not," Tabris said.
"Very nearly. If I'd twenty more Crows, perhaps I might have managed it." He lifted her knuckles to his lips with mock-courtliness. Tabris flicked him on the nose, sending him reeling back as if she had dealt him a terrible blow. She couldn't help a little nose-wrinkling smile.
Turning his attention back to Nathaniel with a dangerous glint in his eye, Zevran asked, "And what makes you so curious about my dealings with the dearly departed Arl, might I ask?"
The mood of the gathering shifted almost imperceptibly. Half a dozen eyes drifted in Nathaniel's direction, watching for his reaction. Velanna herself straightened a little, her attention volleying back and forth. Gently, but with a faint sense of warning, Tabris said Zevran's name and placed her hand over his wrist.
Despite this, Nathaniel lifted his chin a touch, and said, not with pride, but gravely, "Rendon Howe was my father."
"Oh?" Zevran's smile curled into one of rapidly growing glee. "Oh, I see. I see. Well! Andraste's great flaming bosom, that's…" Zevran wove his fingers together, elbows on the table, and he balanced his chin atop them as he beamed at Nathaniel. "That is positively delicious. The irony! The drama of it all! My dear friend," Zevran said to Tabris, "you really have outdone yourself."
"Zevran," Tabris said, though it was laced through with a warning more firm than before. Zevran swept past it easily.
"I know you enjoy your revenge, and we have had our day in more than one court, but I did not think this sort of political maneuvering to be your style," he said, then scoffed when the Commander's face darkened. "Do not lie to me. You know I can always tell when you do. Oh, but you must not think of it as revenge. You have merely taken in another one of your strays. Yes, yes, I see how it must be now. You have slain the bear, but cannot stand to see its cub starve." Zevran returned his attention to Nathaniel, and Velanna could see now that there was a cruelty laced through his mirth.
"I would hope the Commander does not see me as a charity case," Nathaniel said through his teeth. His cheeks were mottled; either with anger or embarrassment, Velanna could not say.
"Of course not," Tabris said forcefully, locking eyes with him.
"And I hope you will not take this as an insult, for none is intended," Zevran said breezily. "Our friend here is a unique sort, and so she tends to collect her own friends in unique ways. That she counts you among them at all—this makes us of a kind, and lucky we are for it, don't you agree?"
Velanna thought for a moment Nathaniel might snap at Zevran, or stand up and leave, but he just sat silent. When he spoke again, his voice was even and very nearly diplomatic.
"She once told me that some of her best friends had tried to kill her," Nathaniel said. "At last, I take her meaning."
Zevran grinned widely, and barked out a sharp laugh. "I like this one," he said, leaning towards the Commander. "You ought to keep him. Let me borrow him, though."
Velanna smothered an offended noise. Across the table, tears were leaking from the corners of Anders' eyes at the force with which he was smothering his laughter.
"Okay, enough," Tabris said, which only made Zevran laugh harder. "Maker's breath, you've gotten worse. I didn't think it was possible."
"I try so hard! Someone must keep you sharp! You are a politician now, and you dwell in a den of vipers!"
Nathaniel did not speak for the rest of the meal, which was brief for his part, as he hurried through and excused himself rather early while Zevran and Sigrun gossiped about the Dwarven King's casteless mistress. Velanna herself was exhausted from a long day of travel capped off with a riot and an assassination attempt, and she had no taste for the Commander's friend's poor sense of humor. After she had finished her meal and her wine, she eagerly slipped away to find her bed.
The many entrances to the throne room had been blocked off by guards. She assumed it was to give them time to replace the carpeting and scrub the blood from the flagstones. She bypassed it, taking the long hallway that snaked around it, considering whether it would be better to have a bath first or go straight to sleep and worry about it in the morning. Now that she'd eaten, she worried she might fall dead asleep in the tub and catch her chill, but the thought of soaking her aching bones and giving her stringy hair a deep clean was alluring indeed. Before she could decide, she came upon Seneschal Varel himself standing at the main entryway, engaged in a hushed conversation with Nathaniel. It seemed he had not gone off to stew in his anger alone in his room like she had assumed he would, though in his position, Velanna might have done exactly that.
"It's the Commander's word, not mine, but… Please discuss it with her, if you would, ser," Nathaniel said. "Bann Esmerelle was a traitor, but that is no fault of her kin. And… they were friends to me, once."
"I agree that we must handle this… delicately," said Varel. "But Garevel has a point. We cannot give the impression that we treat sedition lightly."
"And I would not ask you to."
Varel looked grim in the dim light, and he sighed. "We will discuss it. I can promise no more than that. And I'm sure that if you bring this to the Warden-Commander yourself, she will hear you fairly?"
"Yes, ser. Of course," Nathaniel said, looking cowed. It was then that he turned to find Velanna watching the two of them. Her ears burned, and she tried to smother her irritation, approaching them as if she hadn't paused at all. "Ah— good night, then, ser," Nathaniel said to Varel, then turned his attention fully to Velanna. To his credit, he seemed reluctant to address her, though he apparently could not resist inclining his head in a hesitant bow.
Velanna kept walking at her brisk pace, deciding at last that she was simply too tired to wash tonight, and heading straight for the wing where her own room was waiting for her. She neglected to protest or complain when Nathaniel walked alongside her, so tired was she.
"I see you've had enough of the Antivan as well, my— Velanna." He stopped himself, his face coloring. Something turned in Velanna's stomach. Perhaps her dinner wasn't settling well.
"I can't say I like him overmuch, no," Velanna said with a little snarl.
"Though I suppose we owe him our thanks."
"You wish to thank the man who spent all evening insulting you?"
Nathaniel huffed, a weak sound that could scarcely be called a laugh. "That's what I do, isn't it?"
"Your words, not mine," Velanna said. She snuck a sideways glance at him, the conversation she'd eavesdropped on itching at her thoughts. "That woman," she said, remembering Bann Esmerelle's petrified horror, and the way Nathaniel had shattered it without hesitation. "You knew her?"
The lines by Nathaniel's mouth deepened. "Yes," he said, a faint rasp in the quiet hall. "Not closely, though I saw her often. Meetings with my father, parties… Her son and I were friends, once, though. We used to go hunting together." His throat bobbed. "He used to chide me for my poor marksmanship."
Velanna winced.
"I wonder if he'll take her position, or if he'll be forced into obscurity as we were?" He looked exhausted, his eyes distant and dark. "Ah, well, what does it matter. It can't have done him much good either way, to have been the son of Arl Howe's mistress."
"Mistress? You mean…" Velanna thought back to the fawning way that human noblewoman had spoken of Arl Howe, how familiarly she had addressed him by name. "Oh. I— I didn't realize."
"I didn't either, until this evening, I think. There had been rumors, of course," he said. "Plenty of rumors, not just of her. I had thought most of them to be nonsense. Political maneuvering, or else my mother's bitterness clouding her perception."
"Your mother spoke of it?" While she had heard him speak many times of his father, this was the first he had mentioned his mother. It looked as if it pained him to do so.
"Indeed. And I thought it another of her attempts to turn me against him. I wondered at times if she wanted us to hate him more than she wanted us to love her." He scrubbed his hand over his face, sighing at the thought of it. "Maker, what a mess. But I owe you my thanks, all the same. Your spell allowed me to make a quick end of her, did it not?" Velanna studied him closely, trying to puzzle him out. He spoke again, grave and quiet. "Do not mistake me. She was an honorless traitor, and she died a traitor's death. Her unwavering loyalty to my father was proof enough of that."
"Before," Velanna said. "At the gate. You defended the Commander. You called your own father a butcher." The admission may have been truthful, but she knew it could not have come to him easily.
"If you intend to berate me again for going turncoat, I'd prefer you save it for the morning," Nathaniel said, without any real venom. He merely sounded tired.
"No, that isn't—" Velanna grunted, frustrated, and she avoided his eyes. "I don't mean that. I was just… surprised. I won't criticize you for…" She gestured helplessly. She had been wrong about Nathaniel, in this at least. His changing loyalties had not been born of cowardice or weakness of character, and while it annoyed her to admit it, he was no monster, as his father had been. She stopped in her tracks, pausing to gather her nerve. Nathaniel waited a pace ahead. She tried not to feel the weight of his eyes on her. "I have had to turn my back on the path others have laid out for me. I ought to have understood your reasons more clearly than I did. That's all I mean to say."
When Velanna's nerves finally settled enough to look Nathaniel in the eye again, his face had softened, though he did not smile. It seemed she had left him speechless.
"Don't read anything into it," Velanna said after a moment. "You're still a pigheaded shemlen fool."
That drew a smile from him at last, though she couldn't imagine why it would. "Yes, of course. I would be loath to forget it." With a huff, Velanna set off down the hall again. Nathaniel followed close behind, as expected.
"Whatever did you do to offend the cook?" he asked, after a moment's silence. He glanced down at her, a smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth. She grunted.
"You noticed that?"
"She called every person at that table 'my lord' or 'my lady', but she seemed barely capable of looking at you."
Velanna chewed the inside of her cheek, going back over every brief interaction she'd had with the woman. So much of it was wrapped up in her earlier misconceptions about Nathaniel himself that it made her insides squirm in embarrassment. She pushed that aside, trying to focus on what might have earned the woman's ire. "...I didn't say 'thank you'."
Nathaniel laughed, a quiet little cackle at her expense. Velanna's face burned.
"Oh yes, ha ha. Unkind, unpleasant Velanna. How uproariously funny."
"You can't allow this to continue," Nathaniel said with mock severity. "It's dangerous to anger the cook."
"I don't see what there is to do about it," Velanna said, and threw her hands up in defeat. "Clearly the woman hates me."
"And you think that could never change?"
The two of them had stopped in front of Velanna's door. Her breath caught in her throat at the way he looked down at her, patiently awaiting her counterargument, should she find one. But her voice had fled her.
Nathaniel, taking pity on her at last, gave her one last bow and retreated to his own doorway across the hall. "Good night," he said, and added quietly, "my lady."
Velanna could not find the will to protest that, either.