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9:25 Dragon
Kirkwall
Varric couldn’t say he was too fond of the supposedly Great Outdoors. Some people took vacations to the coast, but he had never understood the draw. The sand got everywhere, and the seagulls weren’t discriminating about where they loosed their bowels. On a nice day with a little bit of sun, he guessed the sea could be pretty, but it always smelled like rotten seaweed and fish.
Still. The twisted inlets and convoluted paths of the Wounded Coast made for convenient rendezvous spots. For smugglers and bandits, sure, but also for getting away from Kirkwall in a hurry on perfectly legal—albeit frowned-upon—business.
Getting away from Kirkwall. Bartrand’s caravans traveled all over Thedas, but Varric had never once left the city. He’d never wanted to. From his vantage point on a low cliff overlooking the harbor, he could just see the Gallows, the ships pulling in and out of the docks. The weeping statues the Vints had built centuries ago to intimidate a city of slaves hadn’t lost any of their menace since Kirkwall became one of the beacons in the Free Marches. They still loomed over nobles and beggars alike, literal unwelcome pillars. From here, Varric imagined he could see the whole city scowling. The old girl hated just about everyone, strangers and newcomers to generations-old residents.
Maker, he loved this place. This time last year, he had never even thought about leaving. Now, it would probably be years before he saw Kirkwall again. Maybe over a decade. Dwarves had written treatises on how to hold a grudge, and keep stone records of it five different places. I hope Mother understands.
Varric had a few different plans of where to go from here. He was holding them all at once in his head. They might need to change plans any number of times before they shook the Davris and all their allies in the Merchant’s Guild. They might end up in Rivain or Tevinter or the Anderfels. Western Orlais or southwestern Ferelden. Anywhere without a strong dwarven presence or a decent infrastructure. In his purse and sewn in the various linings of his clothing, Varric had enough coin for six to nine months, depending on travel expenses and the cost of living wherever they wound up. Bianca was bringing more, along with a good kit of tools and a pony. She would be able to find work just about anywhere. He’d need them to be settled first, but once they were, he had skills he could use as a scribe, a researcher, an accountant, and more. They’d just get by, maybe, for the first year or so. After that, they’d be comfortable. And they’d be together.
Together had been harder and harder the past couple months. Bartrand had paid men to follow him more than once, and Tag and the rest of Bianca’s family and family allies had developed an irritating habit of sending thugs every time they caught Varric setting boots on the wrong streets. Bianca’s mother had been oddly insistent Bianca have a completely crammed social calendar, and Bianca swore once they’d tried to lock her in her room. Not that it did much good trying to lock a master smith up anywhere.
Well, not anymore.
Varric looked down over Kirkwall. He’d miss it, and he had a feeling it’d be a lot worse later than he thought it’d be even now. But Bianca was worth it.
There was a scuffling behind him. Boots on the sand and gravel, gloves in the long, brown coast grass. One pair of boots. Heavier than they ought to be. And no hooves. Varric climbed to his feet, pointing his crossbow toward whoever was coming up here. It wasn’t Bianca.
“Don’t shoot, Varric, you nug-humping moron. It’s me,” The words came out in a series of puffing gasps. Varric rolled his eyes but lowered his crossbow, releasing the tension on the loading lever. Bartrand did more sitting on his ass these days than he did walking or fighting. He had papers to look at, meetings to go to. Money to count. They only ran a minor profit most years, but Bartrand was always looking to expand. He’d be fine when Varric left. Probably.
“Blight take it, Varric . . . still don’t know how you haven’t put someone’s eye out with that thing,” Bartrand panted, clambering up onto the plateau at the top of the cliff at last.
“Who says I haven’t?” Varric asked pleasantly. “But don’t worry: they asked for it.” He kept his head turned toward Bartrand, but his ears were straining all around for the sounds of another pair of boots, for hoofbeats, crunching pebbles. Anything. With Bartrand here, things had just gotten complicated. He wasn’t an enemy, but Varric didn’t flatter himself that Bartrand was on his and Bianca’s side either. He didn’t think Bartrand would stop them. He hoped he’d keep his mouth shut. But he couldn’t rule out the possibility that Bartrand might head back to Kirkwall moaning to anyone who would listen about just how much of an idiot his little brother had been, and he knew Bianca wouldn’t rule it out either. With Bartrand here, she might not even show. They’d have to try again some other time, and who knew when they would next get the chance?
“Did you need something, Bartrand?” he asked. Obviously, his brother had followed him out here, or had someone else do it. Probably, he’d had someone else do it. Careless, for Varric to miss them.
Bartrand walked up to stand beside him and looked out over the city. His jaw clenched, and he shifted from foot to foot. Nervousness wasn’t like Bartand. “Maker, Bartrand, you almost look guilty. Don’t tell me you actually have a conscience in there somewhere. What’s happened? Did you let the Durgin-Helmis buy out the textile warehouse?”
Bartrand rolled his eyes. “Don’t be stupid.” He swallowed, thrust his hands in his pockets, and turned to face Varric. “Look. You’re up here for Bianca Davri. She’s not coming.”
Varric forced a laugh. “Bianca Davri! Did you try out some of that poppy brick that came in from Antiva, brother? I come up here for target practice.” He patted his crossbow stock affectionately. “Far away from everything. No one can see me screw up the angles. It makes me look better when I have to use this thing in a real fight. She’s one-of-a-kind. No one to teach me how to operate her. Bianca Davri indeed!”
Bartrand’s pale eyes were hard and narrow now. “You look at me and lie to my face,” he growled. “How much do you do that? Your own brother! Believe it or not, I’m looking out for you, Varric. Not all your little contacts are completely loyal. I’ve known about you and Bianca Davri since about three weeks after Mother first mentioned it. You know I have. I figured, as long as you two kept it on the downlow, it couldn’t do too much harm, even if the Davris hated your guts. She wouldn’t be the first highborn girl to go to her husband a little less pure than freshly fallen snow, and Bianca Davri’s smart. Or she was supposed to be. But then you went too far. When I heard that you’d actually managed to convince the girl to run away with you, I went to Tag Davri.”
Varric was incredulous. Then, he was furious. All Kirkwall went blank in the background. All he saw was red, and the next thing he knew, he had Bartrand by the jacket collar and was yelling in his face. “Bartrand! Do you know what you’ve done!?”
Bartrand clutched at his wrists. His face was red now. “I’ve saved your life, little brother!” he retorted. “Did you honestly think the Davris and the whole nug-humping, Blighted Smith’s Guild was just going to let a genius like Bianca Davri go? With her, they’re rich! They’ll own every Ancestors-curst pebble aboveground in a couple decades! But they’ll let her go independent? Be some Blighted tinker, married to an ascendant, lying, dreaming nobody who dabbles in whispers and . . . and scribbles!?”
Varric shoved Bartrand away. He was breathing too fast. He couldn’t think. If Taggert Davri knew, he needed to . . . he would have to . . .
“I have to go,” he mumbled. “Maybe there’s still time to . . .”
Bartrand interrupted angrily. “The day after you two ran off, the Davris, the entire Smith’s Guild, and every ally they have in every kalna family in Thedas would be after you. They wouldn’t do squat to Bianca. She’s their golden girl. But you? They’d flay you alive, quarter you, hang what was left from the city walls as an example, and pay off any guards that objected. You understand? They want to do that anyway, but I convinced them not to.”
Varric shook his head. “We had a plan, we could dodge them . . .”
“All of them? For years? Grow up, brother,” Bartrand snorted. “You’re a man now. Act like it. No girl’s worth all this trouble.”
“Bianca is.”
Bartrand snorted again. “Idiot. As soon as she was caught, she gave up. By now, the Davri girl’s on her way to Val Royeaux to marry a smith her family approves of. Not too young and handsome, I hear, but plenty tractable, with a bloodline he can trace back to the master smith who ran a delivery to an Orlesian duchess two hundred years ago. Views the whole thing as a business proposition, which is how the Davris have always viewed their daughter’s marriage. Which is how you should have viewed it.”
“No,” Varric protested, stepping back. “You’re lying.” Sick waves of horror and loss were crashing over him. He wanted to cry, or kill something.
Bartrand crossed his arms. “I don’t tell lies, Varric. She’s not coming. She’s gone. She’ll be married to someone else in less than five weeks.”
“No,” Varric repeated, stepping back again. “No. Bianca wouldn’t do that. They’re making her. I’ll—I’ll—” The world was tilting, spinning like crazy beneath his boots. He felt dizzy.
Bartrand stepped close to him, with that clumsy, awkward, guilty look again. He reached out a hand to clasp Varric’s shoulder. “Look, little brother, believe me. This is a good thing. Don’t blame Bianca Davri for being smarter than you. Maybe she’d rather it was you, but she knows what’s right. For her and for her family. For everyone. There are other wom—”
Varric was suddenly furious again, and he knocked Bartrand’s hand aside. “Not for me, Bartrand! It isn’t right for me, or for Bianca! And don’t tell me there are other women! Not like her. You understand me? Not like her. I love her!”
He punched Bartrand, more passion than technique, straight to the chest. His fist connected and sank in. Bartrand wasn’t wearing any armor. The meaty impact felt fantastic, and Bartrand staggered back, face twisting. But his chest was protected by his ribs and heavy muscle. He was more shocked than actually hurt.
Varric shook out his hand, swallowing. Tears threatened at the edges of his vision. Bartrand started forward, angry now, but before he could close the distance again, Varric had the crossbow on him, pointed square at that same unarmored chest, where an iron-tipped quarrel would do a lot more damage than a rogue punch.
“You did this,” he said. His voice was low and ragged. He hardly recognized it. “We could have been together. We could have been happy. But you just couldn’t butt out, could you? Oh, no. That would be bad for business, and we all know that’s the important thing. Couldn’t stand by your brother. Bartrand, you didn’t even have to do that. All you had to do was stand still. Let it happen, and then deny you knew anything about it. You could have disowned me, disinherited me, sent your own assassins to help the Davris, even. We could have handled that. I could have forgiven that.”
“Then I’m sorry I asked Tag to spare you,” Bartrand spat, hands up. “If you’d really rather die for some girl. Gonna kill me, Varric? Gonna kill your own brother? You don’t have the guts.”
Hatred, black and poisonous, rushed through Varric. He wanted to. Maker, he wanted to kill Bartrand. Who did he think he was, deciding what was best for everybody? What about Bianca, gone away from everything and everyone she knew to marry some guy who saw her as a business proposition? To spend the rest of her life like she’d spent the first twenty-two years, with her genius and talent in service to the greed of her family and the Smith’s Guild. What about him? Life without Bianca lay out in front of him, cold and bleak and empty. His hands shook on the stock of the crossbow she’d made him.
He lowered the crossbow and jabbed his finger in Bartrand’s face. “We’re done, brother,” he ground out, choking on the words. “I’m done with you.”
He turned away. His mind buzzed with desperate plans, but even as pictures of daring assaults on Orlesian caravans, tower rescues, or last-minute wedding interruptions arose, they faded and died away. If he did anything now, it would mean directly attacking Bianca’s family and their allies. He didn’t give a rat’s ass, but she would. She was too strong and too smart to be forced to do anything. If she was headed to Orlais now, she had wanted to go.
That was the worst of it.
Bartrand was saying something angry and sarcastic behind him, but Varric didn’t hear him, and he didn’t care enough to ask for clarification. He felt hollow, drained. He supposed this was what despair was like.
He staggered down the rocky coastal path down the cliff, away from the vista but back toward Kirkwall. He didn’t have to leave. It wasn’t exactly a comfort. He couldn’t go home either. He wouldn’t. Not now.
Varric walked all the way back to Kirkwall and into Lowtown without seeing any of it. Then he walked into the Hanged Man, booked a room, and ordered a drink. “Keep them coming, Corff,” he said. “I want to drink this piss until I can’t stand up straight or think.”