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No one ever paid attention to the dray that took the waste from the midden heaps of public spaces. It made Latula want to laugh as she clung to the underside with her current employer and a fellow professional thief. Well, Roxy was a fellow hired hand. Latula might take things, but generally she gave them back unless it was something like people. In a just world, as far as Latula had been able to figure out, people could only be given back to themselves, and so that was what she did.

As the oxen drew to a pause, she actually saw a pair of approaching shadows against torch light that could only be feet suddenly angle themselves around the wagon, and she bet the guard was pointedly ignoring it. Besides, who would want to get into the theological library of Minrathos, attached as it was to the cathedral and the Circle Tower, after hours?

Well, obviously, their group did, and if she was the guard captain she would have cuffed the lazy slobs for not checking properly. Not that the Imperium tended to hire half-grown Tal-Vashoth as guard captains for sacred sites of public importance, particularly non-citizens. The consideration that she was a woman was almost insignificant in comparison.

The oxen continued on, thumping over cobbles, then the massive flags of a courtyard, and the beasts kept on, lumbering over to an angle. Kitchens, definitely. And then the midden. Something wet plopped on Latula's sleeve, to join several other stains that didn't bear thinking about. Her laundry day was going to be awful as usual.

What light came from guttering sconces changed to deep purple shadows and Latula felt a tug on her trouser leg. She dropped, and came up rolling behind a pair of crates. Nobody, not even the oxen, noticed the sudden absence of the three shadows from under the cart, Latula's the most solid and biggest of the three. They waited quietly as the driver continued on. Latula took the chance to survey the building. She hadn't been outside of the capital city's slums before. Seeing the towering spires stabbing into the night sky from close up was quite amazing in its own way.

Her employer let out a soft hiss, rubbing at hands that no doubt had lost all of their circulation. Latula had to resist the urge to elbow her into silence. Nepeta was, after all, her employer, or at least the representative of her employer—not that this fact had stopped Latula from elbowing others in the past on smuggling operations—and the apprentice of an elf who Latula owed one too many favors to—still not much of a consideration, considering that this job would balance at least two of the favors—and was, as far as Latula could guess, about as professionally a rogue as the traveling elves were allowed to be. That was what stopped Latula's instinct. Of the three women here, Latula would be the last person to know when everything was all clear, and the most likely to make a betraying noise.

Nepeta breathed in, her nose wrinkling a bit, and then took the bespelled mace from her back. Latula remembered the way Meulin's eyes had twinkled while handing it over, and the way Nepeta had fought down giggles. She flipped it on its point, and drew an impressively even circle around the three of them, and tapped the ground quickly. A fog enshrouded the three.

“Alright. We're invisible to any magical wards, in the general radius of this mace,” Nepeta breathed. “That leaves me and Roxy with the non-magical ones.”

“We have to exit over the south roof at the third bell, and no later,” Latula reminded the pair. “Our getaway is going to be with the cart that delivers fresh food for the monks, and it comes to the kitchens early before feast days.”

She had insisted that they work this heist in the wee hours of the morning before the Feast of Immaculate Immolation. Minrathos was already bursting at the seams with pilgrims and visitors, and holding up a cart leaving the gates on a feast day would be near impossible. No matter how powerful, no one wanted to be singly answerable to over five thousand visitors to the city, much less the six thousand of those who would have been drinking their pious merriment before they even reached the gates.

Also, if they were caught beforehand, well, as long as no one looked at her ears too closely, they wouldn't be the first set of fools who had chosen to try to break into holy places on a drunken dare. If Roxy was to be believed, she had done so to this very library nearly six years ago, thanks to the influences of one of those burning drinks from Rivain that cleared your sinuses by making your eyes water. But they wouldn't be caught.

“Can you be a monk and live in the middle of a city?” Roxy mused. “I thought there had to be, whassis, hemorrhage, hah, hermitage.”

“Well, with the reputation of the Black Divine,” Nepeta snickered, “it might just be hemorrhage. Hsst, guard.”

They ducked, and soon enough even Latula could hear the crunch of boots on gravel. They waited. The glow of a lantern swung past in peripheral vision. That was the interesting thing about shadows: people rarely looked into every single one, if they saw torchlight nearby, and the wall sconces, though flickering in the wind off the sea, were ablaze.

It felt as though half a bell went past before Roxy straightened up and whirled out her grapnel. They had hired her because she supposedly knew which of the many gargoyles and stone flourishes sticking out from the sides of the complex were real, and which were merely placed so that they would fall when a thief was half way up. Roxy went up first, grinning at both of them that if she broke any bones falling she would be quick to heal them. Lucky humans. Nepeta swarmed up after her, leaving Latula to show off a little, and pull herself up hand over hand.

They balanced for a second on a low roof over the kitchens. Bakers would be coming in soon to start up the ovens. Third bell. Their footsteps on parts of the roof not directly supported by beams would ring like bells to anyone below. Good thing they were headed for the library, where absolutely no one would be at this time of the morning.

Roxy led them carefully over the slippery round terracotta tiles. It was like moving through a veritable forest of spikes and gargoyles, the end result of thousands of years worth of experience with Tevinter's bitter rainy winters. They scaled another story and a half. Chapel roof, Latula thought. Sturdier. If the chapel in the Via Kirkus was any indication the supporting structure under their feet now would be a ribcage of stone. Still, she hoped no one felt really in the need for prayer right now.

Now the high shiny windows of the library rose on their horizon. Meulin had wistfully mentioned that it was five galleries high when telling Latula exactly how she was going to call in some of her favors. Latula had a hard time figuring out why anyone would need that much space for books, particularly when her suggestion that maybe the guard practiced in there had been laughed at. Magisters were strange folk, when they weren't being awful.

Roxy grabbed the mace from Nepeta, standing on a lip of stone that should not, in Latula's wildest dreams, have been able to hold her. Balancing delicately in front of the tall multi-paned windows, Roxy fiddled with the latch and her lock picks, while her accomplices waited on the dangling rope. With a soft click, Roxy was inside. They followed.

The window opened on a long reading desk and a carpeted expanse of floor. Nepeta landed like a feather, and Laula knew she could either jump down and clear the desk, or lower herself carefully to the floor. Sighing, she dropped slowly to the desk, keeping her weight suspended on her arms until the last possible moment. She still made some noise. Drat all thieves for making it look so easy.

In the dim light provided by stars and a gentle glow from the mace, though Latula had not seen that when Nepeta was activating their protection, the three waited, listening. No sounds emerged, and Roxy went to the balcony railing at last, looking down on a massive drop into darkness.

“Okay,” she said softly, rubbing her hands together. “So, where are these Dalish treasures?”

“Third floor gallery, according to Meulin,” Nepeta said, coiling the climbing rope back around her arm. She walked over to elbow the human conspiratorially. “You do know that these aren't going to be gold and jewels, right? It's a book of prophesy, a folio of letters, and some dead philosopher's rantings in ten volumes. We're talking heavy bits of paper.”

“Psssht, that's totes cool,” Roxy walked down their gallery toward the dim staircase. “Latulz, can you grab any random books on the way down? Just want a few to look like it was crazy random happenstance that the thief took those, then saw the treasures and thought 'hey money.' It's better if they think that this was a normal human theft and not a bunch of Dalish revolutionaries, you know? We can fence them in the city after sweet Nepeta takes her trove. That way no one'll even suspect they've gone out of the Imperium.”

“You've got the twistiest mind this side of a lawspeaker,” Latula grinned, reaching into the dark and taking something that felt almost too cold in her hand. “But I like the style, Rox girl. Ooh, Weather and Phenomena of Weishaupt, an Analysis of Dwemor Frost Runes.”

“That mean anything to you, Nepy?”

“Sounds as though some poor scholar went around freezing his nuts off on high mountain passes for fun,” Nepeta answered, taking the book from Latula, and putting it into her knapsack. “But also sounds magicky, so, if you see anything else magicky—”

They managed to get a complete set of two different saints' letters, Herbology of the Kokari Wilds, and something that Latula didn't like the feel of when she passed it over, before they were finally on that second floor gallery. Latula spent her time wiping her hands on her trousers, while Roxy flitted here and there, giggling as she found something new.

“Ooh, I like this one! It feels all tingly. The, hmm hold the mace up a bit, please Roxy?” Nepeta said, peering at the pale book in her hand. “The Beneficent Spirits, Meditations on the Fade, shoot, that means it's all about demons, doesn't it?”

“It'll make a stunning match for that one I grabbed earlier all about trapping and controlling the greater spirits in flesh vessels,” Latula commented darkly. Magisters, never satisfied until they had finally been done in by their own machinations with the natural order of things.

“Well, that should be the last of it, if we want room for what we actually came here for,” the pale book went into the knapsack.

“Found your collection, I think,” Roxy murmured, moving the mace closer to—Latula felt her jaw drop—a box made entirely of glass. There was a card pasted to the inside, which Roxy peered at. “'Artifacts of the Ancient Dales, special collection.' Wow. How did they—that's so much glass! Can you imagine how expensive it must have been to make?”

“Well, let's get it open. Hopefully these aren't the kind of treasures that fall to dust at a breath of air. I mean Meulin said they're not, but she's also the person who sighs dreamily when people tell the tale of the moon and the river,” Nepeta rubbed her hands together, sizing up the contents of the case, and beginning to shift around the books she already carried.

Latula eyed the thickest book in the display. It was stamped with one of those confusing circular text motifs that shone faintly silver. The Dalish letters that she couldn't read were supposed to make a pattern, according to Meulin. If that pattern was supposed to be trees springing from iron shackles, well, maybe Latula was getting better at Dalish tattoo stylings recognition. “What's the story of the moon and the river?”

“Oh, it's all about some river out there that falls in love with the moon, but they can never meet because, well, the moon. I prefer human starcrossed lover stories. At least the spirits actually get up and make an effort, rather than pining. I mean, seriously, the river continues to flow, and the moon hangs high in the sky, and I ask you, what's the point, if you're not going to throw your entire self into love? At least the river could, I don't know, dry up or something.”

“I don't know,” Roxy said, where she was jimmying with the case. “I think it sounds just about right. Like not pining at all, really? The river gets to go along on its totes fabulous way, even while carrying the reflection in its heart or something—”

“How'd you know that?”

“Well, it's p obvious on the drama scale, am I right? Like, there's y'know, layers and ironies, and all the stuff I can only look at and go: 'hey, whatevs, man,' if the river just goes on, happy that it got to see the moon.”

“Huh,” Latula turned around guiltily. Her only real purpose there was to be a guard. She should, well, guard, while Roxy took care of this.

Nepeta did not sound impressed. “Well, yeah, if it's meant to be a moral lesson, well, good to go, bully for it. But it's supposed to be one of the great Dalish romances. I think we need to invest more of ourselves in comedies. Happy weddings at the end and all that!”

Something moved by the stairs. It wasn't anything that Latula could identify. Just a shadow that looked more solid than the other shadows. And a piece of air that was slightly lighter blue than the rest. Balancing carefully on her feet, Latula prowled forward. As she stepped between lush carpet and wood, there was a creaking groan from the floor. Suddenly the stairs were full of a scuffling noise. Latula whistled shrilly, and dashed forward, pulling up her scabbarded sword.

Whoever had been spying on them was not a guard, because even though she pursued the dark shadow as it pelted down the stairs, it didn't cry out or raise an alarm. At the bottom it suddenly dodged left, and then a bright white magebolt zagged in from the right to hit Latula in the chest and leave a patch of skin the size of a fist numb. She whirled right, hearing her target come to a scuffling halt on one side, but they had friends somewhere in the dark.

Always deal with the mages first. She might be an outcast, but her early training came to the fore in all kinds of trouble. A mage was less likely to be able to fight physically, but you couldn't trust that they were operating under their own influence.

A second mage shot glowed in the darkness ahead of her. Latula sprang.

She loved working in Tevinter. Magisters thought they ruled the world. They thought that the world feared them. They thought warriors were cautious. They never expected a head on charge. This one was just a bit of black shadow she thought looked jettier than it's bluer companions, but it hesitated, mage bolt flickering.

“Oh no, you don't!”

The yell came from behind, and Latula felt the force blast knock into her, sending her careening too far, and stumbling into the wood right next to the mage who had brought out the big fight. Her pommel thudded into the hem of a thick robe, and not the forehead she had been aiming for. Light from above illuminated her hand and the hilt of her sword. Don't look up, you'll ruin your night vision, and mageshot to the eyes probably isn't going to be great.

Her hand, sheathed sword and all, swung out, thudding into the back of the mage's knees. They stumbled, falling, but rolled onto their back with a skill unexpected for a mage, possibly it was an instinct, the same instinct that made them lash out a foot and kick her in the stomach. A good move on someone only wearing studded armor, but lesser humans had split knuckles on her abs. The mage didn't even gasp, though it must have felt like a brick wall. The mage just kept kicking, trying to knock her off balance as she crawled toward them, feeling around in the dull spots hovering over the shadows for the foot that kept crashing into her.

The accomplice, however, was more than making up for it. “Get away from him! I thaid—”

Something small dove in among them, and Latula got an elbow in her eye, and someone headbutted her chin. She grabbed a flailing arm that went past her face and rolled away, taking the struggling person with her as she finally managed to pull herself upright with the aid of a bookcase.

“Thhit thhit thhit,” that was the sound of utter rabbit terror, being spat around rabbit teeth. It also sounded like young rabbit terror, which at least meant that her first instinct not to unleash deadly force had been correct, but it also complicated the fight.

And it was rabbit terror with better night vision than her, because a fluffy head suddenly snapped up against her chest. “Fuck! No, don't—Kurloz get out of here! I can get out mythelf!”

There was a chill radiating from the irregular sound of moving cloth and breathing. The world felt thin, as though one good breath could rip it away. Latula felt her stomach drop. Sometimes her teachers had been absolutely right, and there were reasons to cut out a child's eyes and tongue.

Something on the stairs snarled, and then Nepeta launched herself, pale mace in hand, on the mage, smacking him in the back. The world reasserted its realness. The silent fighter crumpled once more in folds of cloth, just as the mage in Latula's arms yelled, letting loose another force blast, knocking Latula back into the handy bookcase and making Nepeta stumble.

There was scuttling, and then light flared, drifting up from the robed mage fighting to get to his hands and knees. Far off, Latula realized that she could hear shouting. “Guards have heard us!” she yelled across to Nepeta, who had fetched up against a reading table.

In the pale blue light, Latula could now assess the situation. The situation was two boys, one in the robes of a scion of some important house, the other the small rabbit who had fought so uselessly. The small mage was hauling up his companion. More important, they were both between Latula and Nepeta and the stairs. The only advantage was that she could see a vaguely human shape she thought was Roxy by the south window. Another distant shout suggested that the guards weren't too distant any more.

At the sound the small mage froze, and somehow managed to look sicker under a blue light that was washing everything in plague pale tones. The one who attacked first and asked questions later was bleeding from his mouth and, great bees in the meadow, did that one have stitches where lips should have been?! He leaned in towards his small defender, like children sharing secrets during a holiday, forehead to forehead.

Latula sidled closer to Nepeta. “They're just kids.”

“So are we.”

True. But they were shrimpy enough that Latula was pretty certain if she charged, they'd both scatter. A door slammed somewhere, echoing through the library. She could hear running feet. She grabbed Nepeta's hand. The silenced mage boy snapped his head up in a truly amazing feat of motion for the curls of his hair.

It was like a sudden fog descended as Latula exploded forward, Nepeta keeping pace with her. Shouts and echos rattled through her ears, but they were a long way off, drifting in through wool, and the world was pulsing strangely. The silent mage boy shoved his friend towards her and it was like those pattern dances, part of a perfect rhythm where Nepeta grabbed the boy as they ran past and all three flew up the stairs. Behind them, there a papery whud and crinkle filled the air, but they were racing now, racing for the window, Nepeta transferring the mage to her other hand, and passing him on to Latula as she let go of the chain entirely and leaped for the window.

Latula scrambled onto the desk, ignoring the warning creak, and the thuds on the floor below, to pull Mituna up beside her. The shock was wearing off and he was beginning to struggle, but a hissed “do you want to be caught?” had him hauling himself over the windowsill.

At a third crash Latula risked just one look. In the light blue stage of the first floor the other mage was striding away from a toppled bookcase. A door burst open, and guards burst through, one among their number throwing a light spell ahead of them. The yellow glow revealed enough for Latula to see the stitched up face clearly as the shadows raced away up the stairs. He was smiling. As he held out his hands fire leaped from his fingers, and Latula thought she saw a wink just before he turned to meet the guards.

She hauled herself through the window. Roxy pulled the window to with the aid of some string on the latch, and then guided Latula, skidding down the roof to one of the water channels where the other two were cowering. Latula could feel heat coming up through her boots as they rested in the lee of a chimney. Damn. The bread ovens were going, now. They would lose their opportunity to get out of there fast.

The expression on the robed mage boy had been the kind worn when a person finally got to do something they had always wanted to do. She thought back to the destruction of the massive shelves and the sudden gouts of fire.

“South kitchens,” Latula hissed, hoping that the fire bell wouldn't ring. If the chaos on the ground floor turned into too much damage everyone's morning routines would be disrupted. Mage fire would go out if the magic supplying it was taken away, and frankly the strange mage, given how poorly he had done in the dark against someone who had only been trying to knock him out, probably wouldn't last long against the guards.

His friend shivered, despite the warmth radiating from the roof tiles. “Oh fuck fuck fuck,” he moaned quietly looking at the other three helplessly. “I've got to get back.”

Nepeta gave him a bright smile. “I don't think so. C'mon, every city boy has always wanted to join the Dalish, right?”

Roxy and Latula stared at her, but the mage boy's large eyes were darting nervously around the roof, and Latula began to put some of that together. She had trouble telling elves from humans even now, but those eyes were larger than most, and the hair that shaded them could easily be covering ears. But his wrists were thin and the bones had dug into her palm, and the clothing was not standard Tevinter magister attire, unlike his friend. “You're a slave, aren't you? You'll be missed as soon as someone needs their fire stoked or whatever.” Damn.

The boy glared up at her. “I have a name!”

“Yeah, Mituna. I know, little man,” suddenly Latula's head hurt, and she thought about that foggy wooly feeling that had accompanied their escape. Why had they taken him with them?

Everyone was giving her funny looks, she breathed out, and grinned. Don't show anything less than total readiness, and roll with the punches. “Roof above the kitchens. The vegetable man has a nice canvas roof to keep stuff from wilting, and he's used to helping me get away.”

“We—But, I have to go back!” Mituna exclaimed wildly, making Roxy lunge to clamp her hand around his mouth.

Nepeta smiled again. In the growing light Latula could see the strain at its edges. “Okay, look, not to be nasty, but I know what the Magisters do to elves when getting questioned about being in strange places at strange times, and it's really not nice. We really can't afford you to say anything about us while that's happening, so I'm going to give you two choices that involve staying alive. Either we knock you out and we'll carry you, or you come along with us willingly.”

The blaze eyed fury that the little elf turned on her was shocking, and Latula readied her sword, but Roxy shook her head. “Cool it. We'll get out of this, and then we'll return you to wherever.”

Mituna's bitter statement to that remark was muffled by Roxy's palm, but he nodded sullenly. Roxy picked their path over the shingles, patting the gargoyles as they passed. They waited breathless over another chimney above the south kitchen, but finally Latula heard the creaking jingle and clop of a cart.

Compared to the tension of waiting, the drop to the roof of the cart was easy. Getting Mituna to hang on to the hand and footholds every good getaway vehicle should have nailed to the bottom was a different matter. He was not built for that kind of physical exercise, and even while the cart was at a rest he kept dropping too low. The seven minute drive to the alley Latula and Roxy had chosen for their drop off point was going to be difficult. Latula tried to angle her leg so that it braced Mituna's boney shoulders, and Nepeta had an arm cushioning the back of his neck, sharing the far handhold. Roxy dropped down from her arrangement.

“No good,” she whispered from the cobbles. “I think it's time to be the mysterious messenger.”

She rolled out from under the wagon and came up, running toward the kitchen. “Mr. Carter, sir, Mr. Carter! It's Lily from the Via Serherus, sir. I've got a message from your daughter! She says,” and then Roxy's voice petered out to be lost in the regular hubbub of the kitchen. When she returned, Latula thought that the carter's boots were making almost as rapid time as Roxy. Some people were useful contacts to have.

“And she's very sick,” Roxy whispered loudly enough for half the yard to hear.

The fire bell began to peal as they reached the back gate. The horse came to a halt, and the carter detained a passing guardsman asking in the most casual manner what was going on. Latula could feel even more tension running through Mituna's body than hanging onto a cart would warrant.

“Oh, it's nothing really. A lamp spilled in the library or something,” the guard lowered his voice conspiratorially. “At least, that's what they're telling us. I heard a mate of mine saying it was that funny boy, you know the one who took a vow of silence and then sewed himself up to be sure of it? Church of Andraste, eh? Well, they say they pulled him out of the library. I mean, they don't tell us nothing, but I know I saw some of the guards dragging someone out all wrapped up in a hood.”

The glee with which this tale was related suggested both too many early morning gate duties due to a less than respectful manner, and the general cheerful contempt that the non-magisters of Minrathos felt for their social betters. If Mituna hadn't been practically vibrating in some kind of emotional turmoil Latula would have congratulated herself on having the right mannerisms for her adopted city. Instead, Latula concentrated on keeping her leg from slipping, the burn of her muscles, and her strong and creeping feeling that Mituna wanted to save his stitched up friend from whatever talking to he was going to get for setting fire to a library.

The cart rumbled out of the gate. With every lurching turn Mituna swayed and groaned slightly. Could people get carriage sick from the underside of a cart? Majorly uncool. She had never been gladder when the cart slowed, and Roxy's boots hit the mud of the street. All three let go of the dray, and scrambled from underneath it, Roxy waving cheerfully to the carter who tipped his hat, and then carried on.

“We owe him,” Latula said, hauling Mituna up.

Nepeta stare at both critically, and then hefted her knapsack, and led the gang into the shadows of the alley. “We're going to have to change our plans a bit. Your friend Mituna there practically screams escaped elf, and have you ever tried dealing with someone who doesn't want to leave?”

“Hey! I'm right here. You thhould thpeak to me.”

“Well, okay, do you want to leave?”

That struck the kid dumb. He rocked back and forth, feeling at the wrist that had spent most of the morning being used as a means of pulling him along from one point to another. “Yeth,” the voice sounded very small. “But I can't leave that turnip brain. They're going to kill him.”

“Sorry little dude,” Roxy looked around at the fading shadows. People were already beginning to wake, and the city looked ready to careen into a feast day. “You can tell us all about it, but we can't actually do anything.”

“'Sides, he's human and a mage,” Latula pointed out. “His daddy's sure to—”

“Thure to what? Thew up his eyeth ath well!?” Mituna rounded on her, giving Latula reason to wipe spittle from her cheek. “You thaw hith mouth, I know you did, and he jutht put himthelf under the direct control of the perthon who did that to him to get me out of the library!”

“But the guard said—” Roxy began.

“Thaid what everyone thinkth happened, becauthe no one wantth to talk about it!” Mituna bit his lip. “I'm thure I know who actually did it. You don't want to believe it either! You want to think everything ith nithe and fatherth don't do that.”

His voice echoed oddly over the buildings. Latula began steering him down the alley. “Oh, I could probably believe it. But let's get you into a cloak or something. And get you some food. It's a feast day, remember?”

“What?” The little elf stared at her non-plused. She could feel Nepeta's stare eating into the back of her neck.

“We've also got to do something about any tracking spell you might have on you.”

“We're sailing up the river terrible doom and horrible death if he's got a phylactery,” Roxy still seemed to be processing the shouted accusation.

“I don't. Not like a Thircle Mage or anything,” Mituna muttered.

“I thought you were learning on the sly,” Roxy said casually. Latula tried not to let her training dictate her response to that, which was mostly chills down her spine. Roxy was keeping her tone light and unobtrusive. She knew how to keep her voice part of a background hum. “They still gotta have something to track you. Even the most unimportant char boy has got to be kept in line. That kind of rot. Ugh. Magisters, y'know?”

“You've got no idea,” Mituna agreed fervently. His head swung from side to side, and looked over his shoulder. “It'th weird. I thought I'd be more afraid,” he said to no one in particular.

Nepeta seemed to have something on her mind, but she was willing enough to chatter happily. “Well, if things go our way no one will really care you're missing. Busy day, people get misplaced all the time on feast days.”

“You don't know the Archon,” Mituna shrugged, philosophically resigned. “He will care. He'th thtill hunting down a pirate who raided his trade veththelth yearth ago. Like, back before he killed all hith brotherth to get full inheritanthe type yearth ago. I mean, pirateth don't have a full life expectanthy, tho thhe'th probably dead, and he'th thtill got a be in hith bonnet about killing her himthelf. Luckily, he'th kind of thupid and probably won't notithe that I'm gone for a while. Unlethth Cronuth complainth, but he'th been leaving me alone rethently.”

Ah, one of those abitious archons well versed in practicing the most charming of noble imperial customs. Latula wondered vaguely which archon it was. She hoped it wasn't the one who represented her ward in Minrathos. She wanted, when this little excursion was over, to be able to come back to her spot in the city and continue her more normal mercenary work. Having an archon's representative knocking at your door was not the way to make friends in either her legal or extra legal lines of work, and it was amazing what kind of inconveniences could be made to happen even if nothing could outright connect her to a missing elf. After all, she suspected that the library fire would be blamed for the missing Dalish relics, and the whole of it would be pinned on Mituna's turnip head friend. After that, the only missing part of the dawn's event that people would know would be missing would be Mituna himself.

They made their way to their inn. The final cart of their escapade was parked in the stables there, with the cheapest nag that Meulin had been able to find them taking up an expensive stall, but they wouldn't be able to leave until later on in the afternoon. Anyone in town on business would stay for at least the morning's feast day celebrations, and if they weren't staying the night would leave as close to the time the gates closed as possible. The glut of fellow carters would be their cover, and if anyone asked why the bed of the cart was so thick, well, they were carpenters carrying away milled boards to places far and wide. Boards were heavy. A wagon needed to be built solidly.

“I'll check on the poor dear's feed,” Nepeta said, eying the stables and hefting her knapsack.

Roxy swung her arm around Mituna's shoulders, and began to sashay toward the inn door. “And I'll check on this poor dear's feed. He's your sister's dear friend after all, trying his luck in the big city,” she snorted. “Can you be an apprentice woodworker for a few bells? We're trying to convince you to leave the shem life and return—”

“Roxy!” Nepeta glared. “You're a shemelin. Why on earth are you saying it like that?”

Roxy stuck out her tongue. “I'm just coming up with a story. It's a good thing the pubmisstress doesn't mind Dalish, but she definitely expects certain behavior out of them, and you know it. Now c'mon, cutie. You get to have my vaaaaaaast experience with wood working whispered in your ear while we try on cloaks.”

“Let's just get ourselves ready,” Latula pushed Nepeta toward the stables.

She ended up lifting most of the boards out of the bed of the wagon, while Nepeta fussed with the secret compartment, and stowed the books. She stared long and hard at the inky space between the false bottom and the wagon's actual bed.

“It's not going to get big enough to fit Mituna even if you glower, Alley Cat,” Latula pointed out, pulling up the gate. “He's small enough that we can sort of tuck him in under where the boards slant up at an angle to get over the gate, throw a blanket over him, stack the boards on top carefully, and call him our tools, if anyone asks.”

“And what if you decide we've got another body to hide?” Nepeta's voice was soft. “You got that look on you, as soon as that boy mentioned his friend—This isn't Seheron. If his tongue was cut out, it wasn't because he's a mage—”

“Nepeta, have I ever told you how completely skewed some of your priorities are, girl?” Latula said softly, beginning to replace the sawn up boards. “Just because something ain't right doesn't mean that it isn't grounded in some pretty stern logic. But it also doesn't mean that some people would be the kind to do that to their kids anyway. There's no law here. No order. Just people, bending and perverting things as they need, and I am down with that, because it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: corruption. It doesn't mean I have to stand by, though, when I hear people are using the cover of that corruption to be cruel.”

She stopped, kneading her forehead. This wasn't what she meant to say. She was three steps from certain, and it was three very small steps, that the mage boy from the library had been the kind that consorted with the spirits of the fade and tried to leak himself into other people's heads. In any conversation the answer to that was 'let him die.' If she was good and conscientious she would sneak back to ensure that he did.

Latula wasn't good. She hadn't been good by any definition of the word since she was thirteen. Good was the world of order, where rightness was the same thing as law, and she had chosen justice instead, because she couldn't hold the ideas she had been given and not recognize the contradiction of their arguments.

“Tulz?”

“I'm okay. You're right. It would be a very bad idea to try to drag another person into this mess. We'll probably get the kid out, and that's already enough of an unknown factor.”

“Sis'll figure something out,” Nepeta's faith in Meulin at times worried Latula.

She always wanted to say 'She's not even a season older than I am, and has six years less sense than a dozy kitten. Just because your heart is big, it doesn't make you reliable.' What she ended up saying was, “Yeah, but this is the girl who thinks it'd be feasible to rip down the walls of every Tevinter city, declare everyone free, and somehow everything would be sunshine and rainbows and not a long hard slog in the mud.”

“A start is as good as any one can hope for,” Nepeta clapped her on the back. “Anyway, Mituna hasn't tried to scuttle any plans yet, so here's to plans staying unscuttled!”

“And here's to you and me not screwing them up,” the last of the boards clicked into place. “It's funny, I still can't imagine why you'd need five floors to hold all those books. I mean, even the meanest reader couldn't possibly read half that in their lifetime. But this stuff? Words and thoughts and lost ethics? I can get behind getting it all back into the right hands.”

“I, eh,” Nepeta shrugged. “It's just a piece of something we lost, but I guess I can't get all riled up about regaining the canon the way Meulin and Kankri do. Ideas always come around again, don't they? And sure, it stinks that we have to remake them anew, particularly when we know the broken version used to be so big and beautiful but, it's like the moon and the river. Eventually you have to move on, and create something new.”

“How's the river creating something new? I thought the whole point of the story was that it was all in love with the image it carried on forever. Or are you changing the tale on me, story spinner girl?”

“Pssht, rivers make stuff all the time,” Nepeta elbowed Latula playfully. “They flow in mills and make flour. They flow past rocks and cut new patterns into them. They give plants new life in the spring. There's nothing the river can't make new, given time. This is why you need to be out traveling, and seeing the sights of the world with us, L-girl. Not stuck inside this smelly city.”

“Tell your sis she's getting less subtle in her offers,” Latula laughed. “And I got my reasons for not parking in with your sis' terrible idea of a caravan. You all took me and the little witch in when we were desperate, which was grand, but I've got to make my own way in the world. Gotta find the balance, and not mess up your own quest of getting your caravan back up to real snuff. She doesn't need to give the others more reasons to declare her shem, and a Tal-Vashoth smuggler is reason enough.”

“Latula, don't you start,” Nepeta glared, but submitted to the rambunctious hair fluffling Latula subjected her to.

They walked leisurely back to the inn's common room. Despite the fact that the fifth bell and the official start to any work day had not rung, the room was already comfortably at capacity. Wine was being drunk with the same enthusiasm people normally reserved for ale. Roxy had managed to take up a whole two benches, with Mituna squeezed in a corner furthest from the door and any windows. Latula grinned, knowing the grand expansive gestures were sure to happen. Roxy was good at becoming the center of attention when people needed attention directed away from someone else.

“Holla! Got you a red, and Tulz barley water,” Roxy said as they slid into their seats. “So how's it shaking cats and kittens? Are we going to enjoy this feast day or are we going to enjoy it?”

“All Hells kind of enjoyment,” Latula said raising her glass.

Mituna, now swathed in the dark blue cloak Roxy had been wearing on their jaunt and the high neck of one of Nepeta's dark green respectable merchant disguises blinked at her. “Are your eyeth red?”

Latula nodded.

“You're not human?!”

Latula stared blank face across the table until Roxy burst into laughter, causing Latula to join in. “Ha! A point for the little man. And now you'll tell me I can't be an elf, either.”

“Well, um, your earth are, uh, pointy, I guethth—”

Roxy leaned over, tear in the corners of her eyes. “Pfft, no. Wrongo. So wrongo you wouldn't believe. Latula here's a, whatchamacallit. A gray thingy.”

“Well, yeah, she's gray-ithh? But—”

“I'm Tal-Vashoth,” Latula held out a hand. “But most of the time I like to let people make their own guesses. Pleased to meet you.”

Mituna shook it uncertainly. “What'th a Tal-Vath-thing?”

“Qunari,” Latula shrugged. “I'm not a follower, though. Have got papers to prove it signed by assistant clerical types to the Black Divine himself.”

“I heard the qunari had hornth and white hair, though.”

“I play a mean bugle,” Latula assured the elf, who was beginning to look nervously around, as though assistant clerics would pop out of the floorboards now that they had been mentioned. “But not all of us have horns. And I dye my hair. I'm vain.”

“Also, it's hard to sneak anywhere if you're wearing a beacon on your head that draws all the light in darkness,” Roxy said knowledgeably. Her hair was currently displaying the muddy red humans in Rivain, as Roxy had vouchsafed, believed was all the rage this season. “Anyway, speaking of sneaking, have we got anywhere to stash the lad?”

“I told you, I can't leave without Kurloz.”

“You can, you just don't want to,” Latula pointed out.

Something like steel entered the soft features opposite Latula. It was a bit of shock to realize, given that Mituna looked like dandelion gone to seed, and his life seemed to have been confined to limited circles, he had the eyes of someone who had certainty that could cut through stone and cement. “He'th my friend.”

“He's a Tevinter mage and let's not mess about, he chose a destructive way out of a bad situation,” it was important to keep her voice companionable. She wasn't anywhere near as good as Roxy, but no one would listen in too hard.

“Look, speaking as the only member of the crew who didn't have him hurling mageshot at them,” Roxy picked up her thread without any prompting, “Getting you back to the Dalish relos is going to be difficult. I can't imagine what a second uninvited passenger—”

“I'm all he'th got,” Mintuna looked nearly as surprised as the rest of them as he said this. “Look, it'th wrong. I'm not thaying I'm going to reincarnate ath Andrathte and save everyone from the Maker'th dithinteretht, but thomething really horrible happened to him before I met him. I won't jutht run off and leave it to happen again. And it will. It'th like the future ith all there and nothing good or right can happen if I don't do thomething.”

Roxy slumped over the table. “Points for not shouting at least. Nepy? It's your show. I'm all for your final say.”

Nepeta bit her lip again. “Look, we need to leave. I'm sorry for you. I want everything to work out, but we don't even know anything about anything.”

Latula drank her barley water. Wrong. That was what she had felt as soon as she had seen this Kurloz. Wrong. But had the wrongness come from him, or was it because of what had happened to him? And there were times when you couldn't stand by. All these mages had needed protection, and none of their community had taken on the role they should.

Wrongness didn't get countered by rightness. She knew who she was, and once you knew that, you could find justice.

“We've got until the afternoon. I'll get you word of your friend,” Latula said slowly. “If he's in actual straits, I might even rescue him. You, however, will be in the wagon, and going, whatever happens. If I'm not back by sunset, you all are leaving this fair city, got it?”

“I—” Mituna's nose was wrinkling with his disagreement.

Latula just grinned. “No back chat little man. I made my decision, and I'll knock you down if you try to countermand it.”

Roxy grimaced, and then turned to Nepeta. “It's a decent thingy. Compromise. But, you knwoooo,” she trailed off sheepishly, and then knocked back her wine. “I don't like something that might put my friends in danger of arrest. Right? Tulz, you're not exacltee the citizen of the guards' dreams.”

“Oh c'mon, my stunning bod has got to have figured in at least seven different war time fantasies,” Latula grinned. “Probably bashing their heads in.”

“What I'm sayin' is I don't want you to go in alone,” Roxy scowled in determination.

Nepeta nodded. “This is a bad idea, Latula. Meulin wouldn't look me in the face if I get you arrested.”

“You would be getting me arrested. And Rox, girl, I'm better off alone. I've got your maps of the grounds. I'll be a servant or something. On a feast day with an attached chapel? There'll be loads of people wandering around.”

“Loads of peppel wandering around who'll be quicker on the uptake about your not being the most likely follower of the Imperial Chantry,” Roxy continued doggedly. “If we're going to do this thing, I oughtta be the one—”

“No,” Latula crossed her arms. She hadn't fully made up her mind on the question of wrongness, but she knew who she was and what she was. Roxy did not, and she could not be the person who would make up their mind about what to do with this mage who set fire to things and looked to Latula like a practitioner of anathemas.

“House guards wear clothes pretty much all over,” Nepeta said slowly. “You could be someone who's wandering around on their break. Some guard from the provinces looking for an interesting place to bunk off while the family is taking services? If we can get ahold of the right kind of helmet, you could say,” but her ability to create stories for people let her down at this point.

“I could say 'where should I not go, because you've got the son of an important magister hidden there?'” Latula asked.

“You got a choithe between dungeonth and hith room in the Thircle Tower, I reckon,” Mituna shrugged. “With a featht day thelebrathionth, there'th not many platheth to hide thomeone you don't want otherth to thee. Monkth and Thircle Mageth have important guethtth to thee them on dayth like thith. Buthinethth hath to happen. The Houthe Makara can't have ugly bitth of itth prethiouth thecret box get revealed to the public, if anyone chootheth to go to the thity ethtate,” Mituna looked surprised at the sour beer bitterness that laced each word. “Thorry,” his head went down. “Thorry. Never got to talk about any of thith before.”

“And it's been going on for years,” Latula nodded. She remembered what that was like. It was too bad Meulin wasn't here. Meulin could listen, and make you feel wonderful as all the words came out. She had laughed when Latula had first complimented her on this, and said that it was years of not listening that taught her to change, whatever that meant.

“Still, dungeons, or,” Roxy began, then shook her head. “Go looking for the student quarters first. Then the dungeons. It's easier to be a guard interested in how everyone is getting on down in the dungeons. Tell 'em the kitchens said they'd get fresh feast day cakes if there's anyone down there. And upstairs, just say you're looking for a place to take a quick nap after arriving in the city at dawn.”

“I wish I had your talent with this,” Latula sighed admiringly. Roxy and Nepeta both could invent stories that would have you believing that your own hands actually belonged to someone else. She could only parrot their suggestions and hope people would take them at face value. Still, it had worked the last time she needed to slip past gate guards. “I'll find the armor. You get one of my tunics pulled into looking House official, right?”

“Absolutely,” Nepeta nodded.

Roxy cleared her throat. “I'm going to do a bit more scouting. See you before the midday bell, all right?”

Latula should have known better, but getting a half way decent helmet for her head size could be difficult, and she didn't argue. She did curse when she showed up back at the inn to find only Nepeta sewing up what might have been curtains around a hefty coil of rope and lock picks. She arranged it over the redone tunic on the bed to look like a shoulder wrap of some house that apparently had the colors of dull teal, bright red, and a sort of off-wheat cream, thanks to the curtains. There was no sign of Roxy.

“Leave it,” Nepeta said tersely, as she tugged the tunic and buckled on a newly decorated breastplate. “We'll get her out of there, hell or high water. You know she's good at disappearing, but either Jaspers or I can always find her!”

Mituna fidgeted nervously. Latula shot him a quelling look. “You need to be worming your way onto a cart about now. Nepeta, I'll see you on the Highroad at the the corner of Peddler's Market by no later than the ninth bell. If I'm not there, me and Roxy are going to get out of the city some other way, and meet up with Meulin. You've got more important things to worry about than me.”

“I know. Sis is counting on us,” Nepeta hugged Latula quickly, and then handed her the helmet.

The walk though the city as a guardsman was too sweaty. The streets were full of carousers, now that the afternoon was beginning. Services at the chantrys would be going until dark and beyond, but only the devoted without lives would stay for all of them, particularly when free roasts were set up on almost every street corner to compliment the free bread, and the incredibly not free wine and ale. The press of people and the laughter would have been enjoyable under any other circumstance, but Latula was having to consider the speed Nepeta could make even with a cart, and the thousands of looming possible futures for Roxy.

The gates to the cathedral which they had to sneak through that morning were flung wide open. Citizens hurried in and out. Latula loitered by a hot nuts vendor until the doors of the cathedral began disgorging those faithful who had gone through the full cycle of the chant. In the milling crowd she slipped closer and closer to the Circle Tower's side door where the servants would come in and out. She hoped that she wouldn't meet any of the tranquil. They upset her more than Kurloz' mouth and feeling of wrongness held captive in those stitches.

“Lachaius!” someone shouted, grabbing her arm and holding on tightly. She looked down into Roxy's smiling face, surprised to see her in an apron, and soapy water running down lye reddened hands. “I thought I knew you. C'mon, Ma Bustle isn't giving me too much time away from the washing up.”

Latula allowed Roxy to lead her into a shadowed corner without protest, aside from a slightly muffled “Roxy? You were supposed—”

“I know, I know, I screwed up a bit. They'll let me out of here at sunset,” Roxy hissed, pressing up close and trying to whisper into Latula's helmet. Or look as if she were whispering. “You're my beau, all the way in from the countryside and I was trying to get work in the big city.”

“Oh, I'll sweep you off your feet and away from this mess,” Latula promised. “C'mon, let's go—”

“I thought you had a mage to find,” Roxy reminded her. “I wasn't able to get much, you know. The big eyed pumpkin act isn't good for getting out family secrets, or explaining how you know names and unusual faces, you know.”

Latula was usually immune to Roxy's slips of the tongue, but the image of a big eyed pumpkin was haunting her. “Surely you meant bumpkin.”

“That, too,” Roxy flapped her hands. “Listen, this is important. If he's anywhere alive in the tower, it's not in the dungeon. Recalcitrant students have to clean out the dungeons on feast days as punishment detail. Also, apparently there's an Orlesian wyvern locked down there for experimentation right now, and that means if anyone else is down there on the wrong side of the bars, they've been made into a snack.”

“Well that could be a bad break for Mituna,” Latula grumbled. “I don't suppose you know which room I have to check.”

“Jilliana!” someone yelled. Roxy turned her head and waved frantically.

“Look,” Latula took a hold of her arm. “I've ordered Nepeta to start moving toward the gate by the ninth bell. You've got to meet her at the Highroad and Peddler's Market by then.”

“You've giving them a full bell to go one street length through the gates?” Roxy laughed.

“You haven't seen the crowds my love, my dear heart, my lady of romance,” Latula grinned. “I'd better be off.”

“I'll tell anyone who asks you're looking for private spots for canoodling. You've got no idea how much the kitchen staff here hate most of the mage students. They'll gladly help you find the most inconvenient spots for anyone in the tower who wants privacy,” Roxy winked. “It's a hard life for a wizard in this day and age.”

Latula took one last look at the crowded yard and then schlepped through the door . She was getting too big, she knew, even to pass as a human man. Stealth was not going to do her any favors, but if she tried to move like the gangling way guards just past their hiring did, all joints and muscles at cross purposes, no one generally questioned the fact that she was filling out the wrong shape. Boys filled out the wrong shapes all the time when they were middling around between child and man.

There was practically no one in the tower. A few guards were playing dice in what looked to Latula like a supply room, watched over indifferently by a woman with a sunburst on her forehead. They waved and invited her over, the greedy sound of people who see an easy target for fleecing high in their voices. Latula backed away, mumbling protests about it having been a long night getting to Minrathos with the Mistress. She couldn't look away from the Tranquil, the clear direction of her helmeted head turned out to be in her favor.

The guards laughed. “She is a little creep, isn't she? Well, find yourself a corner elsewhere, boy. There's beds upstairs no one will be using, but, well, you know what these weirdies will do to your dreams.”

There were more gales of laughter. Latula went up the stairs. The next two floors were class rooms, as far as she could see. A few mages, spotty pale things, were reading or throwing fireballs at each other, but they ignored her, and she ignored them, trotting a bit as though she had a mission and purpose. One the fourth floor beds stretched away, all empty and neat, trunks beside them. A man in the robes of a chantry priest was at the base of Andraste's central statue in the room, praying.

“Who are you?”

Latula tried to remember the name Roxy had given her. “Lachaius sir,” this man had the look of a guardian of an area if ever Latula had seen one. He would not be ammenable to a stranger looking for a place to sleep up here. The world of chaos and storms, what was she supposed to say?

“I've,” why would a strange soldier be here? Nepeta swam to mind, grinning over a haul liberated from a large estate outside the city. 'Oh, I just prrrretended I was there to deliver a message,' “got a letter for,” what had Mituna named as his friend's house? Shit, and she had to wing the proper titles, too. Please say this man was one of those single minded people who while having complete control over the domain he had been granted, never bothered with anything outside it, “Head of House Makara. Um. I was told it would be best not to trouble him on the feast day but the Lady said just delivering a letter while he was away should be all right—”

The dormitory manager actually gave her a startling look of pity. “His room's on the top floor. Your house picked a bad day for it, but he should be at services right now.”

“We don't come to the city often,” it wasn't much conversation, but she wondered if she could get anything more out of him. “But, I'd been told the Makara suite was lower down.”

“No! That's the, ah, wrong person. The head of the house resides on floor six. All the mage suites are up there. Floor five is for the older students.”

Thank you, Mr. Cleric. That had been more information that she could have reasonably hoped for. She saluted, and it was a proper guard salute. “Thanks for the warning. I'll let you get back to your prayers, Father.”

“Yes, good, good.”

Latula trotted up the stairs, and then looked very carefully at the top for any signs of anyone. It was a spiraling corridor with doors on each side at such closely spaced intervals that Latula suspected the rooms they contained were not spacious. Student quarters. Privacy and privilege, but still, you were a student here. Further down there seemed to be an opening in the center of the tower. Knowing the habits of magisters, and the fact that these were the children of powerful houses, it was likely that it was some kind of common room where spotty sons sat and contemplated their rise to power. A place where friends were made and discarded.

House Makara must be powerful, and yet Mituna had clung to the fact that he was Kurloz's friend. An elven slave friends with a Magister? Even with magic, elves generally ended up as pieces in the games of power played between the Archons, the Imperial Chantry, and the Circle Towers. The young mages practicing and play acting here would take Mituna apart, even if he turned out to be powerful. Especially because he was powerful, and not the accepted shape for power.

Latula felt a headache growing. Part of her wanted to be running back down that staircase and getting Mituna out of the city, now. Part of her remembered the shock in Mituna's face when he had declared that this Kurloz of his had no one else. She was missing something, and the rotten city she was learning to care for would keep whatever she was missing a secret in its labyrinthine ways.

She walked down the hallway, surprised that most doors were open. At the entry to the gibbous oblong of a common room, Latula saw a massage tacked to the wall. “WARNING, Students are to leave their rooms for the duration of the feast day. A Templar search for contraband is to be conducted. Expect to sleep in the under years' dormitory tonight. Gather in the under courtyard at the eleventh bell to receive further instruction.”

Hmm, that might be quite the problem. But no sounds reached Latula through her helmet, and she had the distinct feeling that she was alone in this part of the tower.

At the tenth room around the outer portion of the tower she found the first closed door. She tried to look further down the corridor. Afternoon sunlight was streaming through the four doorways she could see before the corridor curved out of sight.

She knocked, cautiously. Something rattled on the other side, but no one spoke, which probably meant no Templar search was happening inside.

She tried the handle. Very much locked. She felt in the curtain shoulder wrap. There was the rope, and yes, here at the bottom was Nepeta's lockpick set. Latula knelt. It was a student accommodation after all, getting in and out of these doors couldn't be too hard, or the students would have found a way around it.

Please don't let this lock pick break, she thought nervously. But before the metal hook could even touch the keyhole, the door handle glowed red hot, and then icy blue. Latula heard a click, and after a moment of heavy breathing, where she had to calm her racing heart and return the lockpicks, she gingerly tried the door. It swung open easily to reveal a sunny, if small, student's room.

The room was neat, not because the person who lived there was a neat person, but because there wasn't much to be un-neat. It had the neatness of an ascetic hermit's cell rather than the neatness of someone who lovingly dusts everything three times a week. There was a dresser, with paint pots and sticks of chalk and a glowing blue bottle of what could only be lyrium in some form or other. Small dried up sticks of herbs had been stuck into a vase, as though to lend a hint of domesticity.

Right next to the vase was a small statue that could absolutely not be an altar because there was no god that she knew of in Thedas that carried knitting needles and serpents. Plenty of the false gods in Thedas communed with snakes in one way or another, but knitting needles were not the symbol of any god, even the sappier ones of fertility, motherhood, and house protection that Latula had been warned about during her training.

There was a bed. Crumpled black robes with all of the style of a half dead crow peeked from under its shadows. On the bed, which was unmade, boy lay in slightly better black robes. His eyes were closed, allowing Latula to see that while some of the paint pots might be for marking magic circles and runes on things, at least one of them was filled with kohl, which he had painted on his eyelids in the style of some Antivan Princes.

Unlike the Antivan princes (though maybe not, Latula had heard stories), he was chained to the wall by one bare foot. She suspected that this was the foot that had kicked at her so viciously this morning, because the top of it had mottled into a deep black purple color. She felt her mouth harden as she looked at that dull iron bracket. Someone had installed that in this room. She hadn't seen shackles in any of the others on her way past. A mason would have had to come. The affable cleric downstairs, who knew everything about the living arrangements of the tower, had to know it was here. And here this piece of iron mongery was, locking a boy who burned down libraries for his friend in this sunny little room.

She was sure she was looking at the same person, despite having last seen him in odd light and shadow, because there couldn't be two mage students of his age with stitched up mouths. She would have heard, certainly, if the circle tower had suddenly gone in for the trends of Par Vollen. People would have talked.

She closed the door behind her, and at the click, the stitches spread into a pleased smile, the painted eyes snapped open, and he sat up on the bed. Latula took her helmet off, and put it on the dresser. She nodded in the direction of the bracket on the wall. “That's not a standard piece of furniture for these rooms, is it?”

The chain clinked as the young man tucked his legs up under himself. He shook his head.

Latula tried to keep the frown from her face. Just ask yes or no questions. It's just like with Feferi. “Do you know who you are?”

There was a moment of shock, and then something lit in those dark eyes ringed in black. The smile stretched higher, and now she saw it crinkling the bottoms of his eyelids. That was part of the wrong to him. He smiled with his mouth, like any magister on guard against the world and on guard against true feeling.

Then his eyes locked with hers. She could feel it sleeting towards her, the worst decision he was ever about to make in his life, cutting through the dreamlands like a shark through water.

The greatest teacher she had known had taken her into bright golden meadows in the autumn to show her bees swarming. That was the Qun. One multifaceted mind, thousands of bodies making a single whole, and a soul that held it all together. To be part of something greater, you had to know everything about your individual self.

And now she was remembering something that her teacher hadn't told her, but Latula had realized. A person who knew themselves could make a swarm. And it was the natural instinct to make a swarm. Sometimes if a person had nothing else, they would force a swarm to form, and that was the kind way of putting it. A person who knew themselves could make a swarm form around them, many bodies, many minds, and a single flawed soul that was not the greater contribution of the parts of the swarm, but the selfish end of desire.

Kurloz nodded, and in the flash of his eyes without words, Latula knew she could feel the shape of his thoughts, driven with the kind of will that could send straw through brick in a breath of wind.

She slammed him against a wall by the throat.

“Don't you dare try to touch my mind, mage boy.”

Eye contact was deadly with mages. When she had been thirteen she had been asked to preside over her first holy task as Ben-Hassrath: putting out the eyes of a child witch who had been trying to teach herself how to heal from a tome left on Seheron by a Tevinter Mage.

Latula, however, knew exactly who she was. She stared down at a mage who showed no anger, no fear, but from the wideness of his eyes was very surprised. She was still Latula Pyrope, Tal-Vashoth, Ben-Hassrath, and he was still a mage who had not yet chosen, though he almost had, to violate the one rule she had held dear. Blood mages cannot be allowed to touch any sentient minds. There shall be no corruption of self.

“Now,” Latula growled. “Do you know who I am?”

The surprise on the expressive face slid into calculation, the eyes crinkling again. He shook his head, very slowly.

“I kept the sacred laws,” for a year, but it had been an instructive year. “I was trained to believe your kind, Saarebas, were the purest expression of the spiritual struggle, and the deadliest enemy to everything I held dear. Mostly, I have seen that mages are just people, who like gloriously mundane things, and just want to live their lives like me. Mostly. But there are exceptions, and I think you are an exception, mage boy. You could be the embodiment of spiritual struggle. You could be the deadliest enemy. I think you've slipped off balance, but, I have to ask, has the scale tipped?”

Kurloz's hand, a spidery looking thing, slowly raised itself to his curled hairline, pulling it back far enough to expose a patterned slash of lyrium blue. Theatrically he swiped a fingernail through it, breaking the rune with bare skin. He studied her, the hand dropping, slim dextrous fingers brushing past her wrist. His gaze was steady, and she was reminded of Mituna, who in a certain light had eyes that had already seen too much.

“Mages need guidance, so they don't fall,” Latula smiled humorlessly. “It is the duty of the avaarad. Do you want to leave this place?”

He nodded, expression settling into suspicion, eyebrows drawn together.

“Good,” Latula let go of his throat, and grabbed her lockpicks. “Your leg, please.”

She frowned, looking at the manacle. There had to be a keyhole somewhere.

An exasperated breath escaped Kurloz's long Tevinter nose. He motioned with his hands for the picks. Students getting out when they weren't supposed to. Latula rolled her eyes, but handed them over, watching the long limbs curl into a small ball as he bent to fiddle with the metal around his ankle.

She tore out the climbing rope, and went to the window, hoping the view was of a nearby slanting roof. Oh dear. That was a full drop to the courtyard, with all the milling people. The complex maze of spikes and turrets from that morning had to be at least, she craned her head, calculating, three rooms down. If she was remembering the layout properly, there was a privy roof just in back of the Ladies' Chapel. And there was a woodshed with a low roof to the north overlooking the herb gardens. If they timed things right, they could be down and out of there without anyone seeing them.

She looked at the clothes on the floor. She had never seen a magister with a taste for unrelieved black that it would rival an Imperial guard uniform. Wasn't the point of belonging to a good Altus family that you could dress as sumptuously as you desired? And it was a feast day. Every color under the sun was on jeweled display for Andraste's sake.

“I don't suppose you're hiding a fashionable cowl that will hide that mouth of yours while we're trying to blend in with the crowd?”

Kurloz bent upside down to survey the underside of his bed. Eventually he pulled out a huge silk scarf in black relieved by swirling patterns in a deep purple that was so dark it could have been blue or black. Latula was unimpressed. “Of course, Mituna's friend turns out to be the one escape artist who insists on funerial formality in his clothes. Well, wrap it around your neck, and we'll try to keep too many people from looking at you. I need to scout the location of our getaway. Whatever you don't have packed is going to be left here when I get back. And see if you can lock the door behind you.”

She paused, her hand on the door, and looked back over her shoulder. “Once you step over this threshold, I'm going to consider you my saarebas. If you fall, Kurloz Makara, I will take up the name Avaarad, to fix the balance between you and the world. Do you understand?”

Kurloz nodded, his smile growing lazy, as he watched her walk out of his room.

Latula did not wonder if she had made the right decision. She had seen him chained to a wall, obviously in the knowledge of people who were supposed to be looking out for his well being. He had strayed horribly close to total wrongness, and she probably couldn't trust him not to go wading into that abyssal pool if he thought she was distracted. But everyone needed the chance to choose, without a looming shadow pushing them into darkness, and without the darkness blotted out by light, so that the person would never know what a shadow looked like. Latula always made the just decision.

When she returned, satisfied that the floor was empty and she had found the window that overlooked the closest roof, she found Kurloz with a small bundle that turned out to be several robes wrapped around whatever mysterious contents of the dresser he had chosen to take. The small statue was where he had left it, with the herbs in a vase. He was regarding it, his face a mask.

“What is that?”

He started, and then beckoned her nearer. Up close Latula was surprised to see a sweep of horns, but they grew forward in artistic curves. Not a Qunari, then. It almost looked like old Tevinter depictions of dragons, human faces with inhuman attributes. The base of the statue did bear a single rune, an older variant that took Latula time to parse. 'Silence.'

She glanced at the stitched up mouth. “Oddly appropriate.”

From under his arm, Kurloz pulled a square slate and fished in his little bundle, coming up with some chalk. He wrote 'I like a good joke.' He was grinning almost impishly when he left the room.

He stopped grinning when he saw the rope she had set for them to get down to the nearest roof. Latula almost couldn't watch as he slithered his way down, going just a little too fast for safety. He was going to have such blisters by the end of the day, she could tell. If Kurloz wanted to live as a fugitive, he was going to have to toughen up, fast.

The sun had barely dipped in the sky, it seemed, as they waited in the lee of a chimney for a time when servants weren't running across the yard in front of the woodshed. Someone yelled out that it was time for the Grand Processional, and Latula grabbed the spidery fingers and took a running start. Leap. Thud! Kurloz glared furiously at her trying to hop up and down and rub his bare feet after he staggered into the landing.

Latula, with the helmet back on, suspected that he still knew the total lack of sympathy in her expression. She lead him among the throng toward the front court yard, draped all over him, and hoping that from a distance her costume loaned color to his.

They slipped and slid with the press of people gathered to see the movement of Andraste's shrine to the grand plaza. Latula knew how to move with crowds. No matter how packed, she was big enough to find space, and with the jostling and shoving everyone though everyone else was jockeying for the best view, and they'd ignore someone who opened up space for them, if it gave them advantage.

Kurloz's lack of shoes was a problem. He was limping before they were half way to the Highroad. Latula paused in the doorway of a closed storefront. “You've never been out of this city in your life, have you?”

Kurloz grimaced, and walked his fingers in a circle, before lifting them above his head in a straight line.

“You've never left the tower? Wow, a total noob. Well, where we're going, there's a lot of walking. But also cobblers. Think about the prospect of shoes no one is going to throw away to keep you from wandering, and the fact that we're not far now.”

Roxy found them before they reached the caravan. She popped out of a crowd of pilgrims like a cork from a bottle. “Tulz, that was fast! And I've even got a plan to deal with your new,” she glanced at Kurloz who was now wincing with every step, “friend. Heat stroke! He'll be our apprentice and lie down in the back, and if the guard shows any interest we'll ask them for water, because our boy's new to the big city and half dead from the summer sun, and that's why we've got to leave right now.”

Kurloz managed to stop his very clear internal catalog of injuries the streets were inflicting upon him to stare at Roxy in admiration. His scarf was beginning to slip from its important perch under his nose, and Latula tugged it tiredly back up to hide the stitches.

“Good. Right. C'mon. If we're at this much longer I'm going to have to carry this turnip head, and then people will stare.”

Kurloz gave her a look and then made a gesture.

“Wow. Rude,” Roxy and Latula chorused.

When they reached the wagon, Mituna was sitting on the driver's box with Nepeta, as she tried to explain to him why story playing was one, a fine Dalish tradition, and two, why he should get into it, and three, why he should really get into it. Her favorite character to play was Aveline because wow, what a cool person. Mituna could be the Dalish captain who had competed to best her to prove that he was worthy of her love.

“Of course, then the humans ruined it—Latula! Ah, and,” there was a distinct pause filled with 'wow, our lives have just gotten complicated,' “Mr. Sets Fire to Libraries.”

“You utter lother,” Mituna jumped down, and rushed Kurloz as he tried to lean nonchalantly on the lumber. The nonchalance was ruined by the fact Kurloz was trying to keep both feet off the ground. “I'm impreththed, you've managed to bring pitiful to new and undithcovered heightth of thadnethth. You dethided to runaway without thhoeth? Talk about romantic idiothy.”

Kurloz repeated the gesture from earlier.

“Rude,” Mituna chortled, before offering a hand. “C'mon, into the cart, you can thtop danthing.”

Kurloz only managed to get into the back when Latula lifted him over the gate. He weighed enough, but Mituna still felt more substantial when she helped him in. Latula reviewed the options. “Yo, Kurloz, of the two of you, you're going to be the one recognized on sight. You crawl under the the wood there. Mituna, you've got heat stroke and have to keep a damp cloth pressed to your face and forehead.”

“Got it,” he hesitated a beat, and then added “Tulz.”

That was definitely worthy of a hi-five. As Mituna tried to shake feeling back into his arm, Latula went around to the front, and climbed up next to Nepeta. “Let's get out of here.”

As the cool morning fog off the sea lifted from the rocky earth of the road the next morning, a little lumber cart rested off the Imperial Highway, amid an array of arravels. Truely last night Nepeta had parked the cart, unhitched the horse, and they had a lonely dinner together. Now the Dalish camp had sprung around them like shoots of new plants in the spring.

Latula came awake to the smell of something meaty frying pleasantly. Nepeta, who had been curled up on one side of her was now just a patch of air. She rolled out of the bed they had made under the wagon. Roxy was gone, but the two boys were still wrapped up tight. Latula sighed, but ducked under the wagon once more to tuck the blanket around Mituna's thin shoulders so he wouldn't miss her heat too much.

With that, she stretched, and wandered in the direction of the excited yells that could only be Nepeta and Meulin reuniting. The two elves were stretched out on the thin grass, tossing pebbles back and forth by a frying pan on a tripod over a fire.

Meulin looked up at the crunch of Latula's shoes. “Hello! Nepeta was just telling me about Mituna! This is so exciting! Even self-taught, with a strong Keeper to guide him, he could become anything! I'll get the word out, we'll find someone to teach him!”

Latula thought about Kurloz who even now was sleeping so that there would be no way for Mituna to roll away from the cart without waking him. She wasn't sure if that was loyalty or possessiveness talking. They'd been giggling together around the campfire last night, or at least Mituna had been giggling and Kurloz was shaking so much there had been tears, but every so often, she had seen a wary glint in Mituna's eyes. One day, when everything was settled, she was going to have to have a long talk with the elf about his friend and the value of trust.

“Yeah. Hey, not to rain on your parade, but have you gotten a good look at his Imperial brother? For now, they're a matched set, and no aravel needs the trouble that a runaway Tevinter heir and a Tal-Vashoth can bring down on their heads.”

Meulin blinked. “Wait, does that mean you're—”

“They are Saarebas. Someone needs to be standing by, ready to behead them. Particularly Kurloz. He's an Imperium mage with all the bloody trimmings, if not the whole training, and I'd guess a shaky sense of ethics. I brought some trouble down on your caravan.”

“We have no problem with either of them,” Meulin said stoutly.

Latula sighed, and looked at Nepeta, who flicked a blade of grass at her. “You never have any problems with anyone, Meulin. But do you think you could train Mituna until you found someone who would take on the job, and the possible unwelcome addition to their aravel fully?”

“I,” Meulin broke off and looked at Nepeta. “I don't even know—Latula I'm only Keeper because I was the loudest after those bandits killed everyone else. Because I was stupid and thirteen and thought that I could take charge of a bunch of scared kids. I haven't even been able to arrange for my vallaslin. I'm muddling through my training, and I only made Nepeta my apprentice so if something happens to me, she'll know how to lead everyone back to another caravan, and they can take over. I need a Keeper to train under. Bringing an actual magic apprentice—”

Nepeta cleared her throat. “Hey, this is all beyond me, I mean, the magic stuff, but, well, we kind of know that Mituna's been trying to teach himself on his own. So, he could pretty easily get eaten by something out there beyond the Veil, right?”

Meulin scowled seriously. “No. No one is stupid enough to go talking to the spirits of the Fade. Everyone knows the stories. Untrained he may be, but—”

“Not humans, Meu,” Nepeta's eyebrows creased. “Trust me, I was reading about it last night. We even found a book that talked about some of the spirits being beneficent, and another book that was all about trapping them for use in spells. Human magic is pretty darn awful. And that's what Mituna has been learning.”

“Hmm. I'll need to look at those. So—he might get seen by a demon in his dreams? Shoot. I thought he was advanced enough to at least protect himself from that.”

Latula rubbed her forehead. What a mess they were all in. “Look, are you all going to be heading south?”

“I had hoped to swing around the northern coast and get up into the mountains before the snow fell,” Meulin bit her lip. “Why?”

“Because I don't know how to train a human mage, or how to keep them on a path that isn't going to ruin. I need to find a Templar. Imperial Templars? Not worth spit, and lyrium addled to boot. I've got to go south and learn what I can without anyone finding out about the hide the apostate game I'm playing.”

They were all quiet, soaking in the new day's sunshine as the fog burned away. Latula didn't hear the Roxy's approach until an arm draped over her shoulders.

“Hey, Tulz? Nepy? Meuy? So, say a girl thought to be getting a wash done of all the different clothes and things and get us sorted before we moved on. Say when she was sorting out stuff she found a little compassy thing with blood in it?”

Meulin started up. “A phylactery?! But the only people who make them in a compass shape are intending to track down—”

Latula held out a hand, and Roxy plopped the small brass and glass construction into it. “Let me guess. You found it while you were shaking out a bunch of boring black mage robes.”

It glinted red in the light. A small part of Latula thought that it was convenient that Kurloz had been able to get his phylactery. Almost as though he had known that in a few days he he would be attacking people in the dark, thrusting a too devoted friend amid strangers, burning a library after them and then accepting an offer to leave the well respected prison. But no. No. No one could have known that Nepeta, Latula, and Roxy were going to rob the library that night.

She put it in her pocket thoughtfully, and then asked, as though to clear the air: “So, how's Feferi doing?”

Meulin smiled wide. “Oh, you wouldn't believe how wonderful she is. Everyone's saying she'll be a great healer in a few years. It's another good reason to go south. I left her with the Dolora caravan, thinking we'd be getting to close to Qunari areas for it to be safe for her.”

“We're generally a tough people,” Latula grinned, laying back in Roxy's hug. “But I can see that. A blind saarebas running around, no matter what her strength would be noticed.”

“Y'know, I've heard a lot about this Tal-Vashoth gal you exiled yourself over,” Roxy said thoughtfully. “I'd like to come along, if that's alright with everyone.”

“The more the merrier!” Meulin was grinning as though she was a cat with a whold barn full of cream. “We can always use more people like you.”

“Kankri will complain about how wrong it is to buy into the human assumption that the Dalish steal to survive,” Latula grinned, thinking of the only person who had ever looked at her and declared in a glance that she could be so much better. She had missed his certainty and throbbing bright belief in changing the world while living amid Minrathos' spires and squalor.

“Well, I can't do everything based on what Kankri would like,” Meulin lay back. “He made me Keeper, he has to abide by it.”

“Let's go south,” Nepeta said lazily, rolling over to look at the sky. “A rainy Rivain winter wouldn't be the worst thing. Maybe we'll see dragons.”

“Maybe we'll be lunch,” Roxy joked. “But please, let's just have breakfast, first.”

It was definitely the life, Latula thought, as the artery of Minrathos that was the Imperial Highway began to fade out of sight when the aravels slowly creaked into motion. Good friends all around, potentially terrible enemies at her side, and the city she'd grown to love for its black rot, squalor and corruption disappearing. In the days ahead she would meet up with her past, and then there was a future with this Dalish clan that took in odds and ends like two young Tal-Vashoth, scoundrels like Roxy, and even the sadly under prepared Kurloz, who was sitting in the back of the aravel with his blisters and writing something on his slate that made Mituna chortle. For now, she supposed, she was Latula Pyrope, and that was all for the best.