Work Text:
9:25 Dragon
Castle Cousland, the Teyrnir of Highever, Ferelden
Cavall dropped the rabbit skin at Gwyn’s feet and stood in front of her, grinning. He crouched down, begging her to throw it again. Gwyn rolled her eyes. For such an intelligent dog, Cavall had an unaccountably simple fondness for chasing the same old hides over and over again. But she bent down, twitched it, and threw it through the bushes for him anyway. He crashed away through the brush, and Gwyn accepted they wouldn’t see any game for another half hour at least.
When her dog came back again and threw the hide at her feet once more, however, Gwyn shook her head. With one hand, she signaled for him to lie down. “We have to work now, boy,” she said. “Nan gave us a job, remember?”
Cavall sighed but crouched down behind another bush and started gnawing on the hide instead. He was still a pup, not quite a year old, but he had already grown far beyond Roget’s predictions for him during Sella’s mourning right after he’d been whelped. His brothers and sisters had developed according to expectations—sweet dogs, all, but small and a little foolish for mabari. They were stationed now at various farmholds across Highever. But Cavall had grown sleek and muscular. He was quick and curious, loyal and helpful, with a clownish sense of humor that charmed Mother and had beguiled Nan out of far more tasty tidbits than she was wont to give in general. He was Gwyn’s constant partner and companion, and useful for more than the friendship and comfort dogs always offered so unselfishly, or the extra help when she was out on the hunt. The two of them had become ambassadors of a sort for Father and Fergus as everyone had adjusted to Father as teyrn instead of teyrn-in-waiting and Fergus had come into his own. Whether Gwyn traveled with them to Highever, to Amaranthine, to Denerim, or beyond, so long as Cavall padded—or, more often, bounded—by her side, people felt better about their family. Cavall was a reminder to everyone of the strength and nobility of the Couslands, a promise for the future.
A sound in the woods caught Gwyn’s ear. She knew better than to move suddenly herself, to stiffen like a deer or come to attention like a dog on point. The slightest movement or noise could alert the game coming down to the river of her position. Gwyn noted the direction of the wind—from the west, fortunately. Whatever it was would not be likely to smell her.
Gwyn suppressed her smile. There were three deer—young bucks in a bachelor group. If they had been does, she would have had to leave them. Fawning time wasn’t for another several weeks. Aside from the cruelty of it, killing gravid does was impractical. Father didn’t permit any of their huntsmen to do it. But bucks were fair game, and if she could get one to go along with the rabbits she’d already collected from her snares and the chicken and geese they would be slaughtering tonight from the castle yard, there would be more than enough for the feasting tomorrow.
Gwyn’s bow was already strung, and she had an arrow in her boot, easier to access quickly and quietly than the other score in the quiver slung across her back. To her right, Cavall’s head was up. He had stopped gnawing at the rabbit skin. He was ready to leap into action the moment she gave the order. If her shot only wounded her mark, he would run it down and end the creature’s suffering with a single, crushing bite.
Not that Gwyn often missed her mark. She was fairly certain she could have placed in the tournament in Highever last summer if Mother had let her compete, but Mother said it would be ungracious to vie for her own father’s prize. On reflection, Gwyn had had to admit that it might have been unwise to publicly shame archers many years her senior. They might have to follow her father or brother into battle one day. Good enough just to know in her own conscience that she put game on her family’s table now as often as Father’s paid huntsmen, that the huntsmen and all the people knew it, and to know that if there ever was another war, she would be more than able to stand beside Father and Fergus or to defend their home.
Although she suspected she might be able to draw a proper longbow soon—she had grown taller than Mother last winter and thought she might grow a while yet—Gwyn preferred shooting recurve bows in the style of the Dalish. They didn’t always have as much power or range as longbows, but archers unfamiliar with the design were always surprised. Recurves were more versatile. The extra leverage the double curve provided did give the bow more power and range than mere shortbows or hunting bows; they were usable in thick brush and from horseback in a way longbows usually weren’t; and, usually firing on a flatter trajectory, it was often easier to calculate the angle of a shot.
Gwyn kept her breathing slow and steady and her muscles relaxed. Smoothly and silently, she pulled the arrow out of her boot and nocked it. She took aim at the buck closest to the river, drew back the string, and fired.
The deer brought up their heads and tails when they heard that ominous twang, looking around to identify the source of the sound. But it was too late. Gwyn’s arrow took her mark in the side, and he staggered, tripped. His companions, alarmed, turned tail and bounded away into the undergrowth.
“Cavall. Go,” Gwyn murmured to her dog. Cavall sprang forward with a bay, streaming out from the bushes where they were concealed, across the space to the buck. Gwyn stepped out from her own place and followed him.
The buck had fallen by the time she reached him. Cavall was standing over him. He was trained not to attack and spoil the cut if the deer fell.
The buck was probably only a summer or two old—an adult, but still small. His velvet antlers were still growing out for the year. He looked up at Gwyn with terrified, rolling eyes, panting. His side was growing dark. The arrow in it was buried up to the fletching, right behind his left front leg.
“You have my thanks, friend,” Gwyn murmured in a low voice, kneeling beside him and putting her hand on his heaving side. “And my apologies. Rest now, and go back to the Maker.”
In one swift, decisive movement, she drew her hunting knife and sliced it across the buck’s carotid, cutting down and away instead of upward, so the blood sprayed over the ground instead of over her. In a few seconds, the buck was still.
Gwyn retrieved her arrow. She cleaned it with water from her canteen, refilled her canteen with river water, and set about lashing the deer to carry back to Castle Cousland.
The next day, Nan shooed Gwyn out of the kitchens when she offered to help. “It’s a fine notion, my lady, but you can help best by getting ready and making your new sister ready for tonight. Off with you now!”
Off Gwyn went, Cavall at her heels. Up in her chamber, she attacked her head with the brush until her scalp ached and her hair shone with her efforts, but after that, she was obliged to let in Tabitha, the servant Mother had sent to assist with the rest of her toilette. Ordinarily, she preferred to keep the details of her dress simple enough that she didn’t require the assistance of a maid. But today wasn’t an ordinary day.
Tabitha helped her on with the various slips and undergarments that would make sure her gown hung properly, then put her gown on her—Cousland blue silk with slashed sleeves that revealed a deep gold underdress, trimmed with gold braid at the neck and under the bust, with deeper blue and gold embroidery several centimeters thick on the hem. It wasn’t even her day, but at Fergus’s wedding, the whole family had to look splendid.
Gwyn drew the line at the shoes. Tabitha wanted her to wear a heel—a dainty buttoned-and-buckled thing on an eight-centimeter platform. “Your lady mother ordered them special from Antiva for the occasion, my lady,” she coaxed. “They’re so pretty.”
“No one’s going to be looking at my shoes,” Gwyn argued. “What was the point of dropping my hems to look like a lady if I’m just going to raise them again wearing heels? Ana hemmed the gown to my old slippers. Besides, if I trip over my feet and go sprawling down the aisle, it’ll distract from Oriana and disgrace everyone. I don’t think it would make much difference if I went in my hunting boots, these skirts are so long, but—” at Tabitha’s horrified expression— “but I think my gilt supper slippers will do very well.”
Tabitha made a face. “If your lady mother asks me why you aren’t wearing your pretty new shoes—”
“Tell her I was unreasonable and impossible. She’s used to that.”
Tabitha clicked her tongue but relented, and soon Gwyn was dressed. She thanked Tabitha, squeezed her hand, and dismissed her to get dressed herself, then slipped down the hall of the family quarters, where another young lady was getting ready.
Oriana was seated at a vanity, gazing into the glass. She looked up when Gwyn came in. “Gwyn!” She was pale and nervous looking. Her fingers were trembling.
Gwyn went to her. “You look ill,” she said. “Is it so terrible to be getting married? It’s only Fergus, you know.”
Oriana tried to smile. “No—it isn’t that. Your brother is wonderful. When I came of age, and Mama and Papa began looking for a husband for me, I never thought they should find one I would like so well. So many of my friends married old men, or people with horrid tempers or outrageous habits, and here’s Fergus, and he’s young, so kind—and funny! I never thought I could marry a funny man. I like him. I truly like him. I think we may do very well together. It’s just—”
“The change,” Gwyn finished for her, understanding. “Highever is a great ways away from Antiva.”
Oriana’s eyes shone, and she blinked away two tears and clung to Gwyn’s hands. “Yes, it is,” she admitted. “And you—all of you—are so kind, and it’s so much more beautiful here than I ever expected, and I’m certain I may be happy, but—” she choked back a sob and bowed her head over Gwyn’s hands.
Cavall whined and sat down beside them, looking up at Oriana with worried eyes. She laughed through her tears and reached out a hand to scratch his head. Gwyn kissed Oriana’s forehead and hugged her around her shoulders. “You may be bringing the trade connections to this match, Oriana, but we aren’t without means or connections ourselves. The Couslands do quite a bit of traveling, you know, and Fergus in particular is fond of sea travel. I would guess that you’ll probably see your family again after the wedding, and you can write letters until they’re sick of them.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right, of course,” Oriana said, rallying. She dashed away her tears. “Look at me. I’m a mess. What will your brother think?”
Gwyn sat down beside Oriana on her bench and took up a brush. “There’s no reason he should ever know. There’s a whole hour yet to the wedding. You’ll be fine by then. You aren’t worried about—” she blushed and stammered— “about anything else, are you?”
Oriana looked over her shoulder and grinned at her—a wet, unsteady grin, but a true one. “How sweet. Are you a virgin, Lady Gwyn?”
Gwyn blushed hotter. “I’ve fifteen winters,” she answered, a little stiffly.
Oriana laughed outright then. “Old enough, if you’ve a mind to it. But Mama tells me Teyrna Eleanor is rather old-fashioned in these matters. Oh—don’t look like that, Lady Gwyn—I’ve my maidenhead still. We can none of us get away from the necessity for pure bloodlines, can we? But that’s no reason for a girl to be uncomfortable with her body or with young men before she marries. Fergus and I . . . experimented . . . after the contract was settled. I have no doubts but I’ll be pleased in that quarter. But perhaps you will not want to hear the details, as they concern your brother.”
Indeed, Gwyn felt more than slightly sorry she had even asked. “Thank you,” she muttered. She knew she was still just as red as a beet. “Hand me the hair ties?”
Oriana did, and Gwyn started weaving the other girl’s top hair into a formal basket pattern. She painted it with a scented oil as she did, interspersed with flecks of gold powder to add a shine to Oriana’s soft brown hair.
“Don’t you have a sweetheart?” Oriana wanted to know. “Have not you ever?”
Gwyn shrugged. “I don’t truly see the point,” she answered. “Nothing with anyone unsuitable can ever come to anything in the end, and we aren’t overwhelmed with the suitable ones around here on a daily basis. I could exchange letters and trinkets with a boy from the bannorn, with someone in Amaranthine or someone I met on a trip to Denerim, maybe, but those kinds of things hardly ever come to anything either. I think it’s probably better not to fall too much in love with someone I can’t have honorably. I know there are a lot of ladies who do their duties by their husbands and then find affection elsewhere, but—” she hesitated, realizing who she was speaking to and on what occasion. “That’s never been to my taste,” she finished, rather awkwardly.
Oriana’s eyes in the mirror were full of kindness and compassion. “No. Nor to mine,” she assured Gwyn, even though Gwyn hadn’t asked her. She reached up to grip Gwyn’s hand with hers. “Still, there is a whole world between the bounds of duty, prudence, and carelessness, Lady Gwyn. Leave some room in your life for joy.” She squeezed Gwyn’s hand once, then let it go. “There,” she said, as Gwyn finished tying off the last pieces of her hair. “Does it look like I’ve been crying?”
She turned to face Gwyn and smiled brightly, and Gwyn smiled back. “No,” she answered sincerely. “Do you know how pretty you are, Oriana?”
Fergus’s bride was really the best kind of beautiful, with a beauty Gwyn liked seven times better than the beauty of song and story. Oriana’s beauty didn’t show off. It wasn’t insolent or proud or mocking—just a freshness of face and a fineness of feature, paired with intelligent light eyes and framed with soft, sleek fawn hair. Her beauty never pushed anyone away; it invited a person in and made them at home.
“She looks exactly as she ought,” another voice said at the door. Gwyn turned to see Mother and Oriana’s mother, Alva Sorano, standing in the doorway. Alva came in and stooped to kiss her daughter.
“Darling, you’re perfect. You make me so proud and happy. Tell me: you are happy, yes?”
“I am content,” Oriana answered. “And I believe I will be happy.”
Alva looked down at her daughter, nodded once, and kissed her again. “Good. Good. He is a good man, my daughter. Almost a prince, and acts it too. You like each other now, no? You will love one another in time. I know it. And these people will make it easy.”
“I always wished for another daughter,” Mother said, “and I couldn’t ask for a better.”
Gwyn tried to ignore the fact that this did, in fact, sting, and added, “And I’ll be glad having a sister.”
Oriana reached for her. “I shall be glad to be your sister,” she said. “You will stay with me?”
“Right up until you leave the hall with Fergus tonight,” Gwyn promised her.
“Come,” Alva said. “I’ll fix your train on. Eleanor, you can grab the bouquet.”
Oriana and Fergus were married in the Cousland family chapel. Mother Mallol read the service over them with such an undercurrent of joy to her voice that Gwyn couldn’t help smiling just to hear it.
Fergus couldn’t help smiling either. If he didn’t love Oriana Sorano yet, Gwyn thought he must be fairly near to it. Their courtship had been a swift one. The Soranos were not strictly nobility, at least in the Fereldan sense. But Oriana’s father had a knighthood and a position of some responsibility with the head of a trading company, and Fergus’s marriage to Oriana would be of some service in Father’s ongoing efforts to build Highever back up after the Orlesian occupation. Like most noble marriages, it had been arranged for convenience rather than for love. A connection with a future Fereldan teyrn was a more than respectable match on the lady’s side as well. But neither Fergus nor Oriana had made a single complaint after they had been introduced. Fergus truly liked Oriana extremely well, and for weeks he had been talking nonstop of her. How he might make his quarters in the castle more comfortable for her, what amusements she would like, what friends he could introduce to her, what trips the two of them could take.
On the whole, everyone was delighted with the match. As Fergus and Oriana repeated their vows and exchanged rings, Gwyn saw Oriana stroke the back of Fergus’s hand with her thumb. Her parents beamed, and so did Father and Mother. Father was nearly as pleased with Oriana’s sense and gentle humor as Mother was with her ladylikeness. Oriana always wore the most fashionable dresses and smelled like an apple blossom. Her needlework was both vibrant and delicate; she sang, danced, and played the harp; and when she expressed her opinions, she expressed them with a delicacy and wit that never put her elders to shame.
And still, Gwyn loved her too. She would never match up to Mother’s ideas of what it meant to be a lady half so well as Oriana did, but still she loved Oriana. She kept her promise and stayed by Oriana all through the wedding and the wedding banquet, holding her train and her bouquet, conversing with well-wishers that approached until they could be received by Fergus, Oriana, Father, Mother, Alva, or Ser Emilio. She only tossed Cavall tidbits from the table on occasion, and with a valiant effort, refrained from yawning or fidgeting or tugging at her underdress where it twisted for the entirety of the hours-long banquet.
When Fergus and Oriana began the dancing, she did her duty and danced along, allowing no less than six noble oafs to tread on her feet. (Not that she didn’t tread on a few toes herself. She never had been much of a dancer.) She smiled at several ribald jokes of arls and banns who had had enough wine to think them funny and fielded several clumsy compliments from young arl’s and bann’s sons who hadn’t had enough wine to mean them but knew, with their mothers watching, that they should pay them anyway.
“I suppose it will be your turn soon enough, Gwyn,” Fergus teased her one moment when they were all seated down again. His cheeks were pink, and he and Oriana kept playing with one another’s fingers under the table where they didn’t think anyone could see. It would be time for them to leave the hall soon for Fergus’s quarters and their new life together.
“Spare me,” Gwyn retorted. “I think I have a while yet before I have to worry about that.”
“Really?” Oriana asked. “I had thought Teyrna Eleanor said otherwise.”
Gwyn looked at her, but Fergus was speaking again. “Come now, Gwynnie,” he laughed. “You’re a big girl now: smart, brave, decent-looking on a good day—”
Oriana slapped him playfully. “Fergus! You should be kinder to your sister. She’s lovely. You’re lovely, Gwyn,” she said reassuringly.
Gwyn rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me,” she told Oriana. “Fergus has it about right. After a hunt, I look just like him and Father, which is all right for them but unforgivable in a girl. I’m aware.”
“No!” Oriana insisted. “I swear I never have seen eyes like yours, and your skin is gorgeous. Your figure, too, is very good, or will be in another year or so—so tall and elegant. And those hunting leathers of yours show it off even better than a ball gown.” Her eyes twinkled, and Gwyn blushed again. Oriana, seeing this, pressed on. “If Fergus looked so very much like you, I don’t know that I’d be so confident we could have children.”
Fergus smiled at her and pulled her back in her chair so he could wrap his arms around her. She giggled, turned her head, and kissed his cheek. Fergus pulled her to her feet then and took her out to dance again.
“They do well together, don’t they, Pup?” Father asked, pulling his chair closer and tossing Cavall a bit of chicken. His eyes sparkled as he looked at Oriana and Fergus. “She’ll be a good wife for him, and a fine sister to you.”
“I think so,” Gwyn said. “But Oriana said something—that Mother had mentioned you might be trying to get me married?”
She looked from Father to Mother, and Mother smiled. “We have begun receiving certain overtures,” she confirmed. “Gallagher Wulff has expressed interest in you for one of his sons. You were always good friends with Berchan and Deric. A count from Tantervale has written to your father, and we have received a few other invitations less explicit from other families, seeking no engagement as of yet but obviously desirous of getting to know you better.”
Gwyn went cold all over. “I—”
“No one will force you into an engagement if you don’t wish it, Pup,” Father said quickly. “And we have no views of your actually marrying for a year or two yet.” He reached across for her hand. “I find myself reluctant to part with my child. But we must begin thinking of it, Gwyn. You’re a young woman now. Surely you eventually want a home and a family of your own.”
Gwyn’s stomach twisted. She remembered Oriana’s tears in her dressing room that morning, the ones she would never tell Fergus about. She had come so far from her family to marry Fergus. When Gwyn imagined ever going so far from Highever, she felt sick. And she remembered the other things Oriana had told her—all her friends who hadn’t been able to marry someone they liked, who were tied forever in the sight of the Maker to old men, or men with terrible tempers, men who liked men or would forever be dishonoring them with other women. There was not always a way to tell going in.
She looked back at Father. “I have a home and a family,” she said. She leaned over and kissed Father’s cheek. “Besides,” she added to Mother, “until I can find a husband as pleased with me in hunting leathers as Fergus is with Oriana in her dancing silks, I don’t think I shall wed. It would be a shame to finally be a daughter that could make my mother happy only to go and be a wife that cannot make happy my husband.”
With that, she sprang up to accept the hand of young Lord Albury of Amaranthine, escaping Mother’s injured protests. She heard Father sighing as she danced away, “You could not have hidden just how pleased you were with Oriana, could you, my love?”
“I don’t know why I should have to,” Mother retorted. “Oriana’s a lovely girl, and I’m delighted she belongs to us now. I don’t know why that girl should think I love my own daughter the less because of it. But, truly, Bryce, she could learn a thing or two from . . .”
The bustle of the wedding feast drowned out the rest of Mother’s indignation. Gwyn smiled at her partner, did her duty, and tried to forget it. When Fergus left with Oriana, she smiled at them and cheered with the rest and tried to think how happy she was for them, instead of about the letters beginning to accumulate on Father’s desk, about her long lady’s skirts hiding her little-girl shoes, and Oriana’s laughter at her blushes. She tried not to think about Mother’s all-encompassing disappointment in her and whether she ever would, ever could find a husband who wouldn’t share it.
“Come on, Cavall,” she murmured to her dog, scratching his little pointed ears. “Let’s go to bed.”