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When he was a kitten there were no people, just cats and mice and nugs and the birds that made their homes in the crumbling masonry of the old fortress. There was the Colony and a few outliers who prowled beyond the bounds, mostly toms who weren’t smart or strong enough to keep a place. He was a big kitten, first in his litter, inky black and inquisitive. His sister was black and white, and she was even more inquisitive than he was. They wrestled and learned to hunt in the falling down outbuildings where their mother had made her nest. There were mice aplenty, and by the time his first winter came he had made his first kill. Summer born, the long winter stretched out forever, but the Colony holed up in the deep basements when the snows came, just like the mice did.
Spring came. Baby birds don’t fly well. Baby mice are dumb. The hunting was good all that long summer. He fought four fights and won one, mating with a brindled tabby with deep green eyes and a long, lean form. He didn’t have his full weight yet, but it was already obvious he’d be big and muscular. He’d be consort to a queen next summer or the one after.
And then the people came. They came in deep winter, after the first snows, tens and tens of them. Some of them smelled of hurt and blood and all of them smelled of smoke. They put tents in the courtyard and examined the outbuildings, moved things around in the hall and swept up all the broken birds’ nests and old eggshells.
He hid. He watched them at night. He came out and stalked around their fires in the lower courtyard. Their food smelled delicious. They had scraps, sometimes. Tab, the mother of his first litter, made friends with a woman who smelled like herbs and who watched over the ones who smelled like blood. “There now, Tab,” she said, letting Tab sniff her hand. “It’s a homelike thing to see you. Maybe Skyhold won’t be so bad after all.” She let Tab lick out the bottom of her stew bowl when she was finished. Tab said it was the best thing she’d ever had. Soon she was visiting the healer woman every day. The hurt people liked her too.
He stayed in the barn during the day, watching from high up on a rafter. They had horses. The horses stayed in their stalls except when someone came for them and took them out. The horses had hay, and the hay had mice.
There was a man who slept in the barn too. He slept in the loft. He was a big man with a big black beard and he moved very quietly. He didn’t talk much except in his sleep. People called him the Warden when they came and talked to him. One of them was his mate. You could tell from the smell of them when they stood together talking though they never did anything else.
One night the Warden was sleeping and it was very cold. Sister came tripping down the beam and went to sniff him. She looked up. “He’s warm,” she said with her eyes, and she curled up next to him. Her brother watched. He was inquisitive, but not quite that inquisitive.
In the morning when the Warden woke up, he saw Sister curled up beside him. “Oh,” he said. His big hand came down on her head very gently. “Ho, Puss. Where did you come from?” Sister lifted her head and yawned, stretching out one white foot and flexing her claws. “I suppose every barn needs a cat,” the Warden said.
The next night he went down and joined Sister. It was warmer to sleep on the Warden than on the beam. It was probably warmer for the Warden too.
Then the mate came to stay one night, and he ran up on the beam while they coupled in the hay and then settled down to curl against the cold like sensible people. After they were asleep he and Sister came down and joined the pile. The mate was small and she talked a lot more, but she was a perfectly acceptable person, if not as good as the Warden.
Winter turned to spring and the Warden and the mate were both gone a lot. All summer they must have been hunting somewhere, because they came home in the fall with lots of things and strange smells. The Warden wasn’t in the barn every night, but it was summer.
And then in autumn he left. The mate searched the barn calling and crying. You could tell she was crying even though there weren’t tears, because her voice had that sound and she went through the hay like she was looking for something and then she found a paper thing on the carving bench and you could probably have heard her yelling in the fortress, telling everybody what to do like a proper queen. And then she was gone too.
It was raining right on the edge of snow when they came back. Nobody called him the Warden anymore. Nobody seemed to know what to call him at all. He smelled dirty and thin and when the cats climbed into his lap and purred to show they were glad to see him, he bent his head over them and ran his hands along their backs and looked so sad that Sister head-butted him in the chin to mark his beard with her scent.
“Maybe his mate doesn’t want him anymore,” Sister said.
“He looks like he lost one too many fight.”
But then maybe the mate did, because the Warden wasn’t sleeping in the barn anymore though he came every day, even when the snow was deep. One day it was very cold and when he saw them curled in the hay where he used to sleep, the man put his hands on his hips. “It’s too cold for you, my friends,” he said. “But Josephine’s been complaining about mice in the kitchen. Come on. I’ve got a better place for you.” The Warden picked them up. Sister was light, but he was heavy. The Warden carried one in each arm across the courtyard and up the steep steps to the door at the top and opened it and let them in.
So warm! So nice! So many food smells! So many little rustlings in the storerooms! If this was what a kitchen was, it was a paradise made for cats.
“Oh good,” the man who tended the spit said. “We need a cat around here.”
Sister walked right up to him and got chicken drippings for her trouble. So that was settled. There were lots and lots of mice and people always dropped little bits of things. Sister was good at getting them to, but he was less sure of all these new people. He wanted the Warden.
One winter morning the Warden came down and got two mugs of steaming tea. He petted the cats and then he carried the mugs out. It was easy to follow him. He went out through a hall and up a set of stairs and into a room so big that you couldn’t even see the ceiling. It was full of people and noise and he ran behind a curtain and the Warden was gone. So he sat behind the curtain and watched.
There were so many people and they smelled like so many places. A red-haired dwarf was sitting at a table scratching on paper. He dropped little bits of the sausage roll he was eating because he was so absorbed in his scratching. They tasted good. He went under the table and watched from there a while.
The mate! There was the mate! She was coming down the hall and she stopped to talk to the dwarf. “Varric, have you seen Cullen?”
“He’s out with a patrol. New recruits,” the dwarf said. “Better him than me in this snow.”
“I’ll catch him later then. I need to change before I see the Orlesian ambassador. If you see Thom, will you tell him that I’ve got appointments all afternoon and won’t be able to shoot at butts, so I’ll see him at dinner?”
“Sure, Dragon Lady,” the dwarf said. “Me, I’m planning on camping here all afternoon and getting some writing done. It’s too damp to shoot anyway. It would louse up your bowstring.”
“That it would.” The mate, whose name was apparently Dragon Lady, walked off down the hall.
He followed her. Following the mate would lead to her nest. He was sure of that. He ran under a table, around a brazier, and caught her at a door at the far end of the hall. He dashed through just before she closed it behind her. He stopped on the step above her, looking around.
“Oh, it’s you!” she said. “Came in from the barn, did you? I bet I know who you’re looking for. Well, come on then.”
She went up the stairs. After a moment he followed.
And there was the nest behind a door at the top of the stairs. There was an old leather sofa and two comfy chairs by the fire, a pile of wood that smelled like mice, a big red bed with curtains and feather pillows and a dressing room with water and a drain. And all of it smelled like the Warden was here. There were his old boots under the bed. The covers smelled like him.
“I guess you’ll come and go as you please,” Dragon Lady said. “Your kind always does.” She reached down and rubbed his head, so he twined against her ankles in thanks. “You need a name. A big black fellow who looks just like his person….” She sat down on the side of the bed and he jumped up beside her. “How about Blacksmall?”
It seemed like a good name. He was certainly black. And so he went to sleep on the bed where the afternoon sun came in the upper windows.
When he woke it was dark and someone was setting a tray on the table beside the fire. The Warden and Dragon Lady were thanking the boy and sitting down to eat something that smelled wonderful. Blacksmall stretched and ambled over.
“How did you get in here?” the Warden asked, reaching down and scritching him.
“I let him in,” Dragon Lady said with a smile in her voice. “He’s your cat, isn’t he?”
“Well.”
“He is. He even has a name. Blacksmall.”
The Warden laughed so hard he dropped a piece of chicken. Then he squeezed her hand across the table. “I suppose he needs a collar then. So nobody thinks he’s a stray.”
“I’ve got some leather cord.”
“I’ll braid one after dinner.”
And so he did, and so Blacksmall wore it, though it was annoying at first. It meant he belonged to the Warden. After all, you are who you follow.