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One, two, three…one, two, three…. Alistair could do the waltz in his sleep. Which was good, since he felt rather sleepy. He’d gorged himself on this delicious Antivan cheese before the main course, and he was paying for it now.
He felt Skyhold’s first ball for the royal couple was going well. Alistair waltzed with his wife around the dance floor, stopping as the dance came to its conclusion. Anora curtsied and he bowed on the final note.
A shriek of laughter rang out. Malika Cadash and her lover, Sera, were doing a jig in double-time. The musicians glanced at each other uncertainly. The lead musician, a minstrel Malika had introduced as Maryden, played an upbeat tune to match them. The drummer, harpsichordist and flautist followed suit.
“Shall we improvise?” Alistair asked her.
“I think I’ve had enough fun.” Not the word Alistair would’ve used to describe the waltz. “I see at least six connections I need to make before the ball ends.”
“Good luck. Let me know when you need me to show up and say something stupid.” Anora was famed throughout Thedas as a canny operator, but Alistair had no such reputation. People were prone to telling a friendly, inexperienced, slightly stupid king things that they wouldn’t tell the queen.
“I will.” She nodded to him then left him on the sidelines of the dance floor.
Alistair took a moment to grab a flute of champagne and do some people watching. There was a Qunari, various mages, dwarves and elves. It was good to see such a diverse group. It reminded him of travelling with Neria. Dealing mostly with humans had slowly but surely become part of his everyday life.
There was an elven whore, Mirenne, who he’d gotten quite close to at the Pearl. She had Neria’s chestnut hair and dark brown eyes. But she was one of the few elves he knew who weren’t servants or Zevran, who dropped by Denerim now and then when he needed someplace safe to stay. I should try to change that, shouldn’t I?
Varric noticed him alone and waved him over. The circumstances of their acquaintanceship were unfortunate, but they’d continued it even after leaving the Tevinter Imperium.
Alistair made his way through the crowd only to be stopped by someone he didn’t particularly want to talk to: Grand Enchanter Fiona.
She curtsied. “King Alistair.” There was more grey in her hair and a few more wrinkles around her green eyes than when he’d last seen her. Combatting the Breach had taken its toll on everyone. His hairline had started receding. If the College of Enchanters can cure that, I’ll donate to them myself.
“Grand Enchanter,” he replied, bowing stiffly. “Congratulations on your College of Enchanters.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. We’re still deciding on where to erect the first college. It will be some time before the idea sees fruition.”
“Mm, well, so long as it’s not near Redcliffe.” Who had even invited Fiona to a banquet held for Ferelden’s king and queen, anyway? He couldn’t imagine Lady Montilyet advocating for this; by all accounts, she was considerate and sensible.
Perhaps it was the Inquisitor. Malika seemed to be an optimistic soul who assumed everyone could get along. She hasn’t quite realized how petty some nobles can be—myself included, judging by that last remark.
“I’m no more interested in returning to Redcliffe than you are in having us there,” Fiona said. She looked into his eyes. Whatever she read there made her inhale slowly, as if steeling herself. “May we speak privately, King Theirin?”
Alistair tried not to startle outwardly. What on earth did she have to say to him privately? And what had that stare meant? He cast about for some excuse. Anora was having her cheeks kissed by Lady Vivienne and didn’t appear in need of rescue. Varric was deep in conversation with a cowled dwarf. Leliana was nowhere to be found. There was no polite way to refuse.
“All right,” he said, not bothering to hide his wariness. “I know a place.”
Leliana had informed him that the one private place in Skyhold would be the ramparts outside of her office. “It’s freezing, of course—but it’s private enough for a quick conversation.” He gestured Fiona to the rotunda.
Malika had given him and Anora a tour earlier in the day, but the frescoes still captured his attention. It took effort not to gawp at them. The fresco of siding with the mages at Redcliffe elicited a sense of foreboding.
The sky is stitched; the world is saved. My biggest hardship is a potentially awkward conversation at a magnificent party. By Andraste’s pyre, I need to start looking on the bright side. Alistair couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so.
He and Fiona walked up the stairs, ascending past the library and walking into the aerie. A small shrine to Andraste blazed with lit candles. There was a lit lantern on a table by the door to the ramparts. Alistair picked up the lantern and opened the door, which Leliana had left unlocked.
A sudden blast of mountain wind made him gasp. “Hopefully, this will be a quick conversation,” he muttered before stepping outside.
He would have had a magnificent view of the mountains if it weren’t night. As it was, he saw only stars and the dim outline of a moon hidden by clouds.
“Varric has been telling some stories,” Fiona began.
“Means he’s doing his job, as far as I can tell.”
“He said you were on a quest to find your father, but the trail grew cold in Tevinter.” She swallowed, her voice raw. “Did the trail grow cold, King Theirin? Or is there more that the storyteller left out?”
Alistair leaned against the wall. “If there was, I’m curious why you think I’d tell a complete stranger.”
The Enchanter stared out at the stars for a moment. Looking back at Alistair, she said, “You have a large mole on your back, above your right shoulder blade.”
Alistair’s eyes widened. Anora would’ve taken him to task for showing his surprise so easily. Then he chuckled. “Who sold you that information? My manservant, Erik?” He really hoped it hadn’t been Mirenne. She was quite good in bed.
“No one. I remember it from when you were born.”
Well, this was an interesting turn of events. “Ah. You’re pretending to be my mother.”
“I am telling you I am. The woman Duncan claimed was your mother was a lie I asked him and Maric to concoct so you would never know me. What would I gain by pretending I was?”
“Blackmail, I assume.” The revelation that he was elf-blooded would make his rule much more difficult.
“Why would I need to blackmail you? The Inquisition is funding my dream. The College of Enchanters will have nothing to do with the politics of Thedas and the Divine. The ear of a king, even the king of Ferelden, means nothing to me when I have the ear of the Inquisitor.”
“Isn’t it good parenting to lift your children up and build their self-esteem?” Her words stung a bit, but he wasn’t about to let her know it. Her thoughts about his irrelevance matched his own—not professionally, but personally.
All countries were courting the Inquisition now, but it remained to be seen how long the Inquisition would last. Personally, though, Alistair had never felt more obsolete. The Inquisitor, a dwarven criminal, danced with an elf in front of other nobility, and the nobility were forced to accommodate them. Eleven years ago, Alistair hadn’t been brave enough to wed his elven mage lover. Neria had died facing the Archdemon, but he could have at least let the world know he cared for her.
“King Theirin. I did not tell you this to lay any claim on you.” Fiona inhaled sharply. “I gave you up when you were a baby, and as you said, we are strangers. All I want to know is what happened to your father. I loved him once.”
Alistair looked away from her to think. He was shivering. If we debate much longer, my balls are going to fall off. “When did you love him? Tell me something that makes sense.”
“In 9:2 Dragon, my fellow Grey Warden was captured by the Architect, a darkspawn—”
“The Orlesian Warden-Commander at Amaranthine gave me a report on the Architect. The monster’s gone now, thank the Maker.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard.” She continued explaining and, worryingly, it did match what he’d read and heard in his research into Maric’s disappearance. Maric had left with Duncan, the Orlesian Warden-Commander Genevieve, and a group of unnamed Wardens on an unrecorded mission, which he’d returned from unharmed. It did match the timeline of Alistair’s birth.
She doesn’t need to have a logical reason to lie to you, he reminded himself. She could be playing a sick joke. She could be trying to make herself seem more important than she is. There could be a thousand reasons she’s made up a fairy story.
They were both shivering by the time she was done, arms crossed over their chests in a desperate attempt to keep warm. He was starting to feel a bit cruel. But he still had some questions.
“You could have asked this favour of Varric. Why tell me this secret now, if not for blackmail?”
She glanced at the door behind them. “In there, it seems the start of a beautiful world. I have spoken with our soon-to-be Divine often. Despite her deeds, she’s turned toward the light. She hopes to bring about a world where having an elf parent will be no more notable than having one with brown hair or blue eyes. The Inquisitor feels the same. Being an elf caused me so much pain that, when you were born, I could never imagine you living that life. But now….
“I suppose I was inspired by them. But, selfishly, I was also tired of hiding. You look so much like Maric, you know. I barely see any of myself in you. Around the eyes, perhaps.”
Alistair chuckled bitterly. “Sorry this revelation didn’t go the way you hoped.”
“I wasn’t hoping anything. I’m no fool—your birth is still dangerous information, after all. I wanted to see what you’d do. And now I know.”
If she’d told him this before he became king…. Once, all he’d wanted in the world was a family.
He’d been so young and stupid.
If you are who you say you are, I would have loved you once, he thought sadly. Especially if I’d stayed a Warden, where title and heritage don’t matter.
But there was no use pining for a world that wasn’t. (Alistair did enough of that already, with Mirenne.) There was only this world, with a woman he had no reason to trust asking for a very personal story.
“You revealed your secret for no reason, I’m sorry to say,” he told her quietly. “The trail truly did grow cold. I thought…I don’t know, that since I was his son, I’d be able to find him where no one else could. I spent a great deal of time and coin on a stupid dream.”
Her “Oh,” was barely audible.
He opened the door and waited for her to leave first.
Fiona shook her head. “No, thank you. I think I’ll stay out here and look at the stars for a while.” Tears gleamed in her eyes.
He cleared his throat. “All right. As you say, Grand Enchanter, we are strangers….”
“Of course, complete strangers.” She turned away from him. “But I am a woman who travelled with King Maric and knew him, albeit briefly. I think he would have liked you. I daresay he would have been proud of you.”
He thought of Maric, dead in Tevinter. “Thank you.” It’s completely irrelevant, he didn’t add out of kindness. My father didn’t get to know me. My mother didn’t get to know me. What they think of me doesn’t matter to me at all.
There was no secret sadness in his breast, no ache in his heart. There hadn’t been since Neria.
Alistair had nothing else to say to Fiona, so he left. His skin was still numb from cold as he made his way down the stairs and back to the party.
He found Anora immediately, who was speaking to Uncle Teagan.
“How was your conversation with the Grand Enchanter?” she asked.
“Oh, we chatted a bit more about the Redcliffe situation. Nothing we haven’t said before, when you get right down to it.”
Anora and Teagan both knew how to read him by now. Teagan gave the tiniest of nods. Alistair would tell them about Fiona’s revelation later.
Alistair grinned at his wife. “I’m more than happy to be back at this party, dearest. Is there any cheese left?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes, the long-suffering wife to the silly dope. “We’ll track some down for you, dearest.”