Chapter Text
Cleaning up the Storm Coast felt like such a simple thing, compared to the trials they had all faced lately. The templars at Therinfal, the mages at Redcliffe—somehow dealing with them had been a bigger challenge than even pocketfuls of darkspawn could provide.
Yes, there was still that fear of catching Blight. Their resident Grey Warden had been extremely clear on the dangers of that, and it was for this that he was always insisting he take the lead when they fought. But as long as they took them slowly, using the rocky cliffs and valleys to their advantage, it wasn't so perilous. There were usually only a few that attacked at a time.
Once the sun was heavy in the sky they retreated to their encampment, all in the inner circle agreeing to head back to Haven tomorrow. As she usually did Lavellan volunteered to go hunting in the hills, and in a few hours everyone was eating bowls of the stew made out of the August Ram she’d slaughtered.
Varric, Solas, Blackwall, Lavellan, Cole, Lucas, and Dorian—a more sizable number than usual, but in the beginning they’d figured with darkspawn it was better to be safe. While they ate, they were initially scattered to different corners of the camp, but it didn’t take Varric long to start gathering them to sit around the evening fire and play a "friendly" game of Wicked Grace.
He wrangled in Blackwall and Dorian easily enough, but the other three were a bit trickier. Solas was already meditating (or he was pretending to, at least, to keep from being included in a social activity) while Lavellan only politely declined his offer of company as she sat a fair distance away from the fire, tending to her equipment. "No, no, I’m perfectly happy here finishing up my work. But, thank you Varric," she’d smiled at him. "I appreciate the offer."
"Oh if you’re sure, Worrywart," he’d acquiesced with a bow, perhaps a little too ostentatiously.
Before he could turn away from her, she’d caught him back with her call. "Do you think—do you think you could invite Lucas to a game? Just to give him something else to do, more people to sit around?" And when Varric gave her a curious look, she admitted, a little more strained, "He’s… wasting a lot of food… right now."
He raised an eyebrow at her, before pulling a grimace. "I don’t know if that’s the best idea. I mean, for one thing, I don’t think the kid knows how to play."
"So tell him how to play, he’ll pick it up," Lavellan countered. "Please?"
Varric put a hand to his heart in some pantomime of sincerity "Aww, but I’d feel bad about taking money from a kid."
She furrowed her brows. "You could just not have him play for money."
"...I’ll think of something," Varric said, waving a hand dismissively as he finally walked off.
Lucas he found sitting by the coast at the edge of camp, tearing plums to shreds with a sharp stick.
It was a methodical thing. Almost ritualistic, Varric might have said. Lucas would hold a plum aloft and insert the pointed tip into the fruit’s flesh at random, stabbing slowly until the end burst out the other side; he would repeat this process multiple times before tossing the plum aside as ruined. By the time Varric approached him, their juice had turned his fingers red and sticky.
"I’m in the middle of something," he’d mumbled when asked to join the game.
"Listen Lucky, you can torture those plums all night and they’re not gonna give up any of their secrets," he said. Then, as Lucas paused mid-stab of another plum, his cheeks darkening with embarrassment, Varric just shook his head. "Besides, I’m offering you the chance to learn how to gamble. Don’t the kids like that these days?
There was a small light in his eyes to hear him put it that way, but there was still a smidgen of hesitation. A suspicion that couldn’t be properly defined. So Varric gave it one more shot, waving him over. "Come on kiddo, it’s cold out here."
Lucas was not so attached to his solitude that he would refuse again; he did, at least, wash his hands off in the tumbling surf before joining the others, leaving behind his stick where it, and the sticky mess of plums, would eventually be washed into the ocean.
The fire was hot, but not unpleasantly so when Lucas sat down; he plopped down on an empty log, a decent distance from the others while he played with a final, unspoilt fruit in his hands.
"Ah, so you’re inviting Lucas along as well. I’m surprised you were able to find him," said Dorian, giving him a sidelong glance. "With the lad’s penchant for traipsing off by himself, I rather expected we would find him in the stomach of some darkspawn." He only chuckled when this resulted in Lucas sticking his tongue out at him.
"Only one I can’t find is our resident spooky ghost kid," Varric was saying as he sat back down. "But, eh, maybe he’s around. Not sure he’d get the idea behind playing cards anyway."
Lucas didn't speak; he just gave a quick look about the campsite like he rather hoped Cole would not materialize, chewing on the inside of his cheek. After his first encounter with Cole, there hadn’t been very many more. At least, not that he could tell.
Varric called to him from across the fire as he got his deck of cards in-hand, shuffling like an expert. "Alright, the name of this game is Wicked Grace. Ever heard of it? Ever played it?"
"Yes. No."
"Better keep your coin purse handy."
Only half guessing that Varric was joking, Lucas blinked and dug out his purse of silvers, a small portion of the "allowance" Cassandra agreed to give him in exchange for his work helping the Inquisition. Not that the money was worth much to him at the moment, with Flissa and Seggrit both refusing to let him buy any of their wares and there being precious little else to spend the money on.
Accepting his cards clumsily, Lucas didn’t speak as Varric started dealing, five to each player. "Now in this game we have four suits," the dwarf began. "Serpents, Songs, Angels, and Knights. The trick to winning is to get the best hand; matching suits and themes give you a better hand, but Songs and Angels are also higher cards than Serpents and Knights ...."
He went on for a minute or so, explaining the rules; all the while, Lucas pressed his lips together and listened intently, concentrating like this game he had to be cajoled into was the most important thing going on tonight. "Umm…"
Varric seemed to take note of his serious expression and he smirked, leaning forward as he finished up. "But the fun part of all of that is that in this game, you get to cheat. "
The boy’s eyes lit up. "Cheat?"
Warden Blackwall frowned into his beard at the sight. "You sure this is the right activity for a child to take part in?"
"Oh, but why not? This could be good for the lad," Dorian spoke up, fanning his cards through his fingers to inspect. "If he’s going to insist on going around telling everyone he’s the son of the most holy woman in all Thedas, he has to learn how to bluff, hasn’t he?"
Lucas spotted the gesture and also tried to fan his cards, though he inched them apart in his hands delicately, lest he drop them. "Bluffing is just lying, isn’t it?" he asked, voice quiet in the crackling of the fire. "I can lie."
"No, no, no," Varric cut in. "Telling a lie is one thing. Anyone with half a brain can make someone believe something that isn’t true. I mean—look at me, for instance." He spread his arms, indicating the whole of himself. "But bluffing—that’s about getting someone to believe in you. Not as easy. I mean, even some adults can’t do it."
Lucas sat back contemplatively at that, idly shuffling his cards.
"Now, let’s take an example from my own experience," Varric began as they commenced the game. "Back in the day, Hawke and I were trying to track down this half-elf mage named Feynriel, right? Nice kid, got captured by Tevinters while trying to skip town."
Blackwall took a sip from his waterskin. "Oh look Dorian, this story has something for you in it, too."
"I—and what exactly does that mean?" Dorian snapped, throwing a scowl his way.
But Varric kept going, leaving the two men only able to speak in scathing looks. "So Hawke and I track these people out to the Wounded Coast, and the bastard’s got a knife to Feynriel’s throat, says he’ll kill him if we don’t back off."
From his side of the campfire, Lucas curled up tighter, his cards momentarily forgotten. "What’d you do?"
"Oh, you know. Hawke sent a throwing knife into his throat, killing him instantly." Then a moment later, Varric laughed. "No, we bluffed. We told him that Feynriel was a bigger deal than he was, that we were bigger deals than we were. We had to make that man believe that if he touched a hair on that boy’s head, he wouldn’t go one step farther without choking on his own teeth."
"And that worked?"
Varric nodded. "Amazingly, yes," as he gave a returning glance to his cards, he added, "…Of course, then Hawke killed him anyway, which was… a gamble. But he was a slaver, so, no loss there."
It was an exciting story, but Lucas put his head in his hand, frowning at the dwarf. "But what did you do to make him believe you? How did you sell it?"
"Three things, Lucky," said Varric. He even held up three fingers to demonstrate, counting off as he went. "Interesting, specific details. Feynriel’s the bastard son of an elf and some merchant? No, he’s the beloved bastard son of the Viscount of Kirkwall himself, and his elven mistress. It’s juicy, who wouldn’t want to believe that?" Two fingers now. "But when you’re giving details, you have to limit them. If you rattle off too much, people will catch on that you rehearsed that shit beforehand. One or two things, then only give more if they press you."
The boy narrowed his eyes. "Okay."
"But third, and most important—whatever you say, you have to sound like you believe it. The more confident you sound, the more of your bullshit people will swallow." He paused and looked down at his cards, before adding, "And speaking of bullshit, I’ll fold this round."
Ah, right. The cards. Lucas had already forgotten which ones were good and which were bad. "I try to sound confident," he said, though it came out weakly. "But I stutter sometimes."
"It helps to not be completely dishonest," Dorian spoke up, raising an eyebrow. "Telling a partial truth is easier than a complete lie, after all. Even in Varric’s example, in the end this Hawke fellow had more than enough manpower to back up their threats, didn’t he?"
"Hawke can be a bit of a one-man army," Varric agreed with a low chuckle. "Though he was still a little green in those days."
Dorian gestured to him. "See? Partial truth. …I think I’ll call." He sat back, musing, "Bluffing is somewhat common on Tevinter, as well. If you don’t want every enemy of your family under the sun to duel you on a daily basis, that is."
"... So, for example," Lucas began after a few moments of silence, taking a tentative bite of the plum in his free hand. "If someone asks me about Andraste being my mother, I could just… talk about my own mother instead?"
"Something like that, certainly. As long as you aren’t too obvious about it." And then suddenly Dorian laughed. "Why, Warden Blackwall, you look positively disgusted by us!"
It was true; the Grey Warden was scowling down into the fire, stoking the embers with a few dry sticks. At being called out, he harrumphed into his beard. "I’m not too keen on the idea of teaching little children to lie," he rumbled. "Much less teaching them how to lie about something like this. "
Dorian stroked one end of his mustache. "Ah, yes, I forgot. We have a goody-two-shoes Grey Warden who I’m sure has never lied a single day in his life." While Blackwall pursed his lips at that, he went on to say with a laugh, "Come now, it’s a life skill he’s got to employ sometime. It’s for a good cause!"
"Is it?"
"Yes," Lucas mumbled into his plum, pulling his knees up to his chest. Blackwall gave a start at hearing the sound of his voice. "I don’t want the templars and people in Haven to hurt me if they find out I’m not what everyone says I am."
Everyone around the campfire fell silent, save for the one uncomfortable cough that Dorian made.
"... Lucky , no one’s gonna let that happen anyway," Varric said after a moment, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Child of Andraste or not, you’re the one that’s been sealing rifts. And you’re the one that’s gonna fix that Breach when we get back to Haven. Everyone loves you back there!"
"Mhm," Lucas said as he swallowed, but he didn’t look as if he were listening to Varric. His eyes were on only Blackwall.
In the second round of awkward silence the Grey Warden put his chin on his fist, contemplating him. "It’s not that you shouldn’t look after yourself, it’s just—look, you ju-… you just…" His words trailed off, eyes uncertain as they fixed on some point in the middle of the low fire. Finally he said at length, sounding haggard, "Just… pick your battles, kid. Better to let people believe what they want, and not to lie unless you have to."
"Okay." Lucas straightened, stretching out his legs, and he spat a plum pit into the fire. "I’m going to practice in this game, then."
"Well, it doesn’t work as well if you announce that…"
The game went in earnest after that. There was much less arguing each round, but plenty of bluffing—from Lucas, or otherwise.
Unfortunately, as this was his first time playing, all the attempts to cheat in the world didn’t save Lucas against veteran players like Varric or Dorian. As the evening wore on, he lost more and more of his pocket change—no matter how Blackwall tried to let him win.
But the boy didn’t fret over it. As he suspected, by the end of the game, Varric let him take it all back.
At least, most of it. There was, he claimed, an "instructor’s fee".