Work Text:
9:25 Dragon
The Denerim Alienage, Denerim, Ferelden
CYRION
The sun had already dipped below the horizon as Cyrion Tabris trudged home from work. The chill autumn wind sliced through his jacket, its wool lining worn thin after too many winters. Shianni contributed almost all her meager wage to the household funds, but he made her keep some of it back for a dowry, and all her help couldn’t compensate for the loss of Adaia’s coin, and Tirrian, as of yet, was too young to do more than odd jobs. Cyrion had spent all this years’ clothing budget on his girls. Both of them were still growing, so he comforted his shivers thinking of the pair of them running around warm.
The world was black and dismal these days, but those girls were a light in the darkness. Cyrion still mourned his sister, for Shianni’s sake as well as his own, but honestly, he didn’t know what he or Tirrian would have done this past year if his niece hadn’t come to live with them when her own parents died. She was as much sister to Tirri now as cousin, and she was growing into a sturdy, reliable, hardworking girl. Stalwart and sure. And Tirrian was as brave as her mother, and as pretty a girl as ever grew up in the alienage.
Sometimes it hurt him, that her prettiness was so different from her mother’s. Other times, when the light fell on her golden hair just right or certain expressions crossed her face, he didn’t know how he could bear it if she looked more like Adaia. At all times, he took pride in her strength and compassion. Despite her own grief, she’d given as much of herself as ever to her cousins and neighbors this year. While he and Shianni went to work, so did she. She’d taken up all the sewing and cooking at home without a word of complaint, and most of the cleaning as well. And if their clothes hadn’t been as well-patched or turned out as usual at first or their food occasionally came out burnt, well, he and Shianni appreciated her efforts anyway, and she was improving too. She also did find time to do odd jobs, every now and then. Combed the rocky beaches just outside the city for crabs, swept the steps of busy mothers in the alienage, looked after younger children. She was a child still, but she was trying her best to be a woman, because he and Shianni needed her.
The streets of the alienage were never truly deserted at night. Most of the elves here worked dawn to dusk—on the docks, in the fisheries and canneries and mills, as shop assistants across town, waiters and waitresses and cooks in the public houses, and maid and manservants in the noble houses. For most of them, the only time they had to spend with their friends and families was after dark. Often, the sounds in the alienage after the sun set, ringing through thin walls and narrow streets, were happy ones—friends and families eating and joking and debating together, parents telling young ones bedtime stories, husbands and wives loving one another.
Occasionally, the sounds were not so happy. People shouting and arguing, lamenting injustice or anxious over how to make ends meet. Taking out the hardness of the world on the people they ought to be making it easier for. Fighting because the children didn’t have enough—food or love—and were acting out because of it. And sometimes, actually fighting in the streets—stealing from their neighbors out of desperation or meanness or jumping some daring, foolish shem who had decided to try a shortcut.
Cyrion tried to put a stop to any violence when he heard it. When elves fought among themselves, it spurred rivalries and gangs, bitterness and hurt. The streets grew dangerous for everyone, and the likelihood the humans would take notice increased. He’d seen a purge when he was just a boy. He didn’t want to see another.
So, when Cyrion heard the sound of actual steel ringing through the evening streets, he stopped up short. Then he went and knocked on a few doors. When he had Elder Valendrian, Nodric Ellins, Alarith, and another good man visiting the shopkeeper from down by the waterfront, the five of them went to investigate. When they made it to the little alley behind Alarith’s store, one of the few places in the alienage lit by street lantern, Cyrion wished he’d gone alone.
It was Tomald, with Soris and Tirrian, and they weren’t fighting. At least, not really. There was no violence being done. Instead, the children were sparring. Tirrian and Soris each had one of Adaia’s knives. They were holding them like swords, and indeed, they were about the size of swords for the youngsters, and Tomald, once so careful about weapons in the alienage, was advising them.
“That’s right, Soris,” Tirrian was saying. “Watch your feet now! Keep moving!” She swished the knife through the air toward the boy’s undefended shoulder.
Panic flooded Cyrion. “Tirrian!” he shouted.
His daughter spun like a dancer to face him, already lowering the knife, a puzzled expression on her face. “Dad,” she said. “What is it?”
“I think you should probably tell me that,” Cyrion said. His voice shook at what he’d just seen. But Soris, stupid boy, didn’t even look frightened. “You were swinging a knife at your cousin!”
He saw Tirrian roll her eyes at him in the lamplight. “Just the flat,” she said, demonstrating how she had turned the blade with her wrist for him. “And if he had his guard up like we told him, he’d be safe from that too. Soris, you know I didn’t mean for you to actually watch your feet,” she told her cousin.
“Tomald, what is this?” Cyrion asked his brother.
“Whatever it is, I see it is a family affair, and no business for the rest of us,” Valendrian said. “Gentlemen?” He turned to the others, and they nodded.
“Good form, Tirri,” Alarith told Tirrian as he moved to leave. Tirrian smiled at him.
“Alarith,” Valendrian rebuked him. His eyes flashed to Cyrion’s in the lamplight. “You’ll take care of it?” he asked.
“I’ll do what I can, Valendrian,” Cyrion told the elder. The others left, and Cyrion folded his arms over his chest. “Tomald, explain yourself.”
“I shouldn’t think I have to, brother,” Tomald said. “It’s time and past Soris learned to defend himself, and now Adaia’s gone, Tirrian needs someone to practice with. My boy’s not that much bigger than she is. He’s a good opponent, and they’re careful children. I’d stake my word on it they never practice with steel unless I’m supervising.”
“They shouldn’t practice with steel at all!” Cyrion retorted. “Those weapons are sharp, and forbidden to elves besides in the city limits! Tirrian, how did you get them?” He thought he’d locked Adaia’s knives up after her funeral. He’d been worried even then that this would happen.
“Mum taught me to pick a lock when I was six,” Tirrian said unashamedly. “Too handy, if you forget a key or lock yourself in somewhere. And Mum didn’t have these to let them rust away in a chest. They’re for protection, and I think we ought to be protected, whatever the law says. It doesn’t stop violence in the alienage. Just makes it easier for the humans to bully us whenever they want. Kill us whenever they want.”
“She’s right, Cyrion,” Tomald said. “You think Adaia would have been killed that day if she’d had a bow in her hands instead of just these little things?”
“If she hadn’t had illegal weapons at all, would that human guard ever have pointed a crossbow at her, Tomald?” Cyrion countered. His eyes ached. He turned away. “She made herself a target. Once upon a time, you agreed with me! Yet now you want our children to be just as reckless!”
“Uncle Cyrion, isn’t it reckless to go unarmed when they could kill us, and no one even cares?” Soris asked.
The boy’s words pierced Cyrion to the heart. He choked. No guard had ever come to the alienage after Adaia’s death. No apology had been sent. Tirri had seen her mother’s murderer on the guard rotation again three weeks later.
Tomald was watching him keenly. “We need to arm ourselves, brother. We need to be ready. I thought the worst humans would ever do unprovoked was throw us into prison. But they’ll kill us, with as much sentiment as if they were putting down a rabid dog. I won’t have them killing my son.”
“I won’t have my nephew killing himself,” Cyrion answered quietly. “And certainly not with my wife’s weapon. Soris, give me the knife.”
Soris looked at his father, and Tomald nodded. Soris handed Cyrion the knife, hilt first. Tomald was a carpenter. He could give his son plenty of other weapons if he chose. Cyrion hoped he wouldn’t, but after this, he doubted Tomald would have so much sense.
“Come on, Tirrian. It’s late. We need to go home.”
Tirrian glanced back at her uncle and cousin and gave Soris a quick hug. “Good night, Uncle Tomald. Good night, Soris.”
“Good night, Tirri. I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Tomald.
“Bye,” Soris whispered.
Tirrian followed him home in silence. Shianni wouldn’t be back from her shift tonight for another hour yet. Tirri filled the soup pot with water from the river and began making supper for them all, also in silence. She usually chattered and sang away, even if the cheerfulness had been forced this past year, and the difference was noticeable. Cyrion had one of Adaia’s two knives in his hands, but she still wore the other defiantly in her belt.
“Tirrian,” he started. Then he lapsed into silence, sinking down to sit in the chair by the hearth. He stared into the flames his daughter had rekindled from their bed of embers. “Tirri—I couldn’t bear to lose you. You must understand—these skills your mother taught you, they were useful to her, outside the city, in the life she led before she came to the alienage. They saved her life on more than one occasion. She couldn’t forget it, and she was proud of her skills, and—and so was I. But here—they were poison, Tirri. Because she was always ready for a fight, she was always looking for a fight, and I always suspected . . . I always knew she would find one she couldn’t win someday. I don’t want that for you or for either of your cousins.”
Tirrian pulled the bread pan out of the ashes of the hearth with a jerk. For a long time, she didn’t say anything. She pushed a hank of hair behind her ear, then extended her hand for the bread knife. Cyrion plucked it out of the bucket atop the mantle containing their handful of utensils and handed it over.
Tirrian began sawing at the ashy crust of the bread. “Dad, you weren’t there that day,” she said finally.
“I know that—”
Tirrian cut him off. “There would have always been a fight. Or whatever it is you call it when a complete boor keeps bothering someone else’s unwilling wife, with her child right there watching. When Mum and I put a stop to that, that guard would have beaten me. Just for fun. Or power. Whatever. Just because he was a bastard shem.”
“Tirrian!” Cyrion protested, upset by his daughter’s language, and worse, by the depth of the hatred he could see there in her small face.
Her amber eyes flicked up to his. “He was!” she told him. “All the niceness and meekness in the world won’t change it, and I’m not going to bother with it because it’s proper. Guardsman Cam is a bastard and a bully, and he was going to hurt someone that day no matter what we did. But Mum stopped him, and Trici and Kelley and I went home safe, even though she didn’t. That was worth something.” She lifted her chin in challenge, daring him to disagree with her. A single tear welled up beneath her right eye, and she set the bread knife down on the pan and the pan aside on their small table to wait for the soup. She picked up the soup spoon and began stirring their supper. She sniffed.
Tirri almost never cried. Cyrion could count the times she’d cried since Adaia’s death on a single hand. He knew what might have happened to Mistress Ilmann if Adaia hadn’t intervened that fateful day, and when he thought of his daughter bloodied and beaten by some brutish human guard, he grew so angry he could hardly speak. But when he weighed either of those against Adaia’s death?
“Not her life, Tirri,” he said heavily. “I don’t deny that there may be times we elves should fight, or that we should stick up for each other. Your mother was a hero. But she was a foolish one. Don’t you be foolish too.”
“I’d rather be a fool who fights than just lay down and take whatever the shems want to do to us!” Tirrian cried. “I’d rather be daughter to a dead mother who refused to let friends, family, and neighbors be abused than a live, coward father who thinks it’s wise!” She choked on her tears then as they came rushing out in a flood, and Cyrion rose, wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her hard.
She beat at his shoulder with her fist, still holding the soup spoon. “Coward . . . coward . . . coward,” she sobbed. “Just let me fight! I have to fight them! It’s not fair!”
Cyrion kissed his girl’s bright hair. Tears fell down his own nose now. “It’s not,” he told his daughter. “It’s not fair. I’m sorry.”
Tirrian screamed into his shirt. “Blight take them all!”