Work Text:
How could I not?
[…]
I asked.
And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart
in a jar.
Strange tangled imp.
Wee sleekit in red brambles.
You know what it feels like to hold
a burning piece of paper, maybe even
trying to read it as the flames get close
to your fingers until all you’re holding
is a curl of ash by its white ear tip
yet the words still hover in the air?
That’s how I feel now.
“Belief in Magic” by Dean Young
----
Ismone was ten years old, which was quite old enough to be sent on her own into the forest to gather wild chokecherries. If she brought enough, her father would make chokecherry jam, and he would bake bread in the morning and all three of them would have breakfast together in silence, lost in the luxury of the tart berries and sugared sweetness. Maybe once the apples came, her father would bake a pie. He would always dry the first fruits of springtime, hanging them on strings in the kitchen. Ismone’s mother always batted at them with her hands, trying to find the teakettle. “Ghislas, these are horrible,” she grumbled, but she carefully put them back in place when she was done. On cold, cold winter nights, sometimes Ghislas would take down a string and boil them with young camphor leaves and preserved lemon, and it made the little farmhouse smell like a palace.
Sometimes Ismone’s father would call it the Summer Palace, since the nearby Dalish clan always made their way to their forest in the last gasp of spring, staying until the first breath of autumn. “Summershiral!” he insisted, taking his wife’s hands and dancing with her to the song of the whistling teakettle. He liked to pluck a simple tune on the lute while Ismone stood on her mother’s feet and she danced aimlessly, around and around in circles, holding her daughter’s hands. (Many years later, Ismone would be shocked to learn that Halamshiral was not a literal translation of Winter Palace.)
Only in the past few years had Ismone’s mother returned to her work as a mercenary, disappearing for some weeks or months at a time on a job. She was newly home now, reunited with her husband and her daughter, which was why Ismone had volunteered to gather berries for jam. Oh, to have fresh chokecherry jam on warm baked bread with her mother and father! She danced through the woods with anticipation, occasionally rubbing at the spots just above her hairline where her adult horns were beginning to grow in. The skin around them burned slightly. Her father had a wonderful remedy, a balm made of beeswax and mint. Maybe while the chokecherries boiled she would ask him to rub it into her horns, to soothe her angry skin.
She sang while she hunted for the berries, dumping handfuls into the wicker basket slung over her shoulder. Nonsense songs, tunes her father played on the lute, and even that strange throat-singing her mother did sometimes when she untangled the knots and braids in Ismone’s hair, only to put them back in a few hours later.
A twig snapped in the forest beyond Ismone. She stopped abruptly, quieting and staying very still: sometimes if she was lucky, she could crouch in the bushes and watch a whole herd of halla stalk by, their marvelous skinny legs so thin Ismone thought she might be able to snap them with her thumb and forefinger, their twisted antlers reminding her so much of her father’s horns.
She waited. No shiny white pelts, no sounds of the herd moving delicately through the undergrowth. Instead, after a moment, she heard a quiet groan.
Curious, Ismone emerged from the bushes. A moment later she stumbled at the edge of a creek, where the sun shone down in rays through an empty patch in the canopy. Across the creek - it was shallow and narrow, she could skip across it if she wanted to - there was a man laid out on the mossy ground, collapsed.
His skin was gray and wan. His clothes were caked in either dirt or blood, gone black with filth. One horn was missing completely, a great gash of blood and wet flesh, like the inside of a scab. The other was broken at its curve. When he breathed, it was like great bellows heaving in a flame, dry and wheezing.
Ismone looked at him. Then she placed her wicker basket full of berries on the ground, and she stepped into the creek.
Whoever this man was, he was still conscious. His eyes watched her as she lowered her hands into the running water, and then she stepped out of the creek, going to him. The water trickled out of her hand as she dropped down beside his face, but she did her best to funnel whatever remained into his open mouth. His lips were dry and cracking, and his mouth was full of blood. He coughed, and blood splattered on her dress.
She went back to the creek a few more times, cupping water in her hands. After a few drinks, she tossed the water onto his head, wiping at his face with the hem of her dress. Once she was done, she crouched next to him for a moment, on her heels
“I’ll be back,” she told the man, firmly. “My mama will know what to do.”
She got up, and she skipped over the creek, picking up her basket as she did so. She looked back at the man one last time, and then she turned and ran.
The man laid there in the forest, trying not to die.
----
Asaara Adaar, the Weapon in the Wind, cursed in Qunlat when she saw him. “You fool,” she hissed, as she hiked him over her shoulders, carrying him across her back. “You shouldn’t have come here. They could have followed you.”
Ghislas held Ismone tightly, following Asaara back to the farmhouse. The man was bigger than Ghislas, but then again he’d always been told he was slight for a Qunari.
(Half Qunari. Well, Asaara told him he wasn’t a Qunari at all, but Vashoth. When he pointed out, “I have horns,” she silenced him with a kiss.)
Asaara took the man into the barn, and Ghislas took Ismone into the house and stoked the stove. He gave Ismone the wooden spoon, and she mashed the chokeberries up in the pot, boiling them with water and a touch of lemon juice. Ghislas left Ismone with the pot for just a moment, fetching a bucket of water from the well and fresh rags, bringing them to his wife’s side.
“Thank you,” she murmured, as Ghislas kissed her on the forehead. “Keep Ismone out of here.” He nodded, and with one lingering look at the man, he turned and went back to the farmhouse.
There was silence as Asaara methodically cleaned his wounds. The horn was gone, the mouth was a battered mess, and his nose was broken so badly it whistled when he breathed. One knee had been crushed entirely, likely by a warhammer, and the killing blow had hit him in the shoulder, so deep Asaara was surprised it hadn’t shattered his clavicle. It was a matter of time before the wounds festered and the fevers set in. She did not know if he would survive.
When she squeezed the rags out, the water that dripped from it was scarlet. He was propped up on a bale of hay, waning in and out of consciousness. She cleaned a blade in water and soap, then lit an oil lamp and heated it over the open flame. Then she went to work at the wound in his shoulder, cutting away dirty skin and tissue, scrubbing with soap and water as she went. He wheezed and moaned as she did so. When it was finished, she got up and went into the house, where Ismone and Ghislas were straining the chokecherry mash through cheesecloth.
She found a needle and fishing line. Ismone asked, “Is the man alright?” and her mother replied, “Stay out of the barn, kadan.”
He was more or less conscious when she returned, running one hand over his head, feeling the broken horn. She said nothing to him, only dropped to her knees and pushed him back against the hay bale, threading the needle into his wound.
He hissed at the pain, which told her that he had not suffered under a reeducator’s hand. This was good. She preferred to get them out before their minds were broken.
Once she was finished, she cleaned the wound once more. “Do you have a name?” she asked, brusquely.
He shook his head, his eyes unfocused. “They called me-”
“You’ll need a name,” she interrupted. “A real name. Not a title.”
His vision swam before him. “What’s yours?” he asked. “They wouldn’t tell me any names.”
“With good reason.”
“What do I call you, Tama?”
She dug her finger into his wound, and he howled in pain.
“Not that,” she said, and then she got up, and left him alone in the barn with the pigs and the harts.
----
In the morning, Ghislas baked bread. Once his wife and daughter had their fill, he broke it into very small pieces and placed a touch of jam on each piece. When he went out to the barn, he found the man was still sleeping. Color had returned to his skin, and Ghislas saw now that there was a touch of lilac to his complexion. The gaping wound where the horn had once been had started to attract flies, so Ghislas shooed them away, but did not touch him.
He placed the plate of bread and jam on a bale of hay nearby. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should wake him. Wondering if he would live. Asaara had promised nothing, but had matter-of-factly told him she would take his body into pieces and burn the parts if he did not survive. She wanted no trail leading to their home.
Ghislas left, hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
----
It didn’t. Within a week he was on his feet, though with a steep limp, and by the next he could move his arm in complete circles with tolerable pain. Asaara debrided the horn wound, and told him there was a chance it might grow again. After all, hers still grew: she had to shave the tips of her horns constantly, so they did not start to spear into her jaw. He stayed in the barn and Ismone stayed far away from it. Her mother had very few rules: she permitted Ismone to do almost anything if she wanted, reminding her always to follow her spirit and soul and her choice. Never had she forbidden Ismone like she forbade her from entering the barn.
“Why?” asked Ismone. For some reason, this frightened her, leaving her feeling nervous and sick at night. “Is he a bad man?”
“No,” said Ghislas, quickly, “no, he’s just very ill, love.”
Asaara did not answer her questions.
By then it was harvest time. Sometimes Ghislas offered the barn to a few men from the nearby towns in return for their help with the harvest, but the Qunari could do the work of five men, easily. He and Ghislas tended to the fields while Asaara took Ismone’s hand in hers and wandered through the forest with her, foraging for mushrooms and berries and fruits. The man was not quite as big as Asaara, but he was barrel-chested and thick-necked. This was the type of Qunari that had earned the race the moniker, oxmen.
Once, as they finished the corn and the beans, Ghislas leaned against a fence post and asked, “So, how long have you been out?”
The man only glanced at him darkly, tossing corn into his sack.
“Asaara says you don’t fit her timeline,” he told him. “She says her people haven’t mentioned a defector in three years.” He paused, as if waiting for the man to speak. When he did not, Ghislas continued, “I don’t think the Qun did this to you, my friend.”
The man asked, lowly, “What do you know of the Qun, Vashoth?”
“Very little,” agreed Ghislas. “I don’t speak your language, and I don’t share your curious affinity for order, for everything in its place. Asaara thinks she’s shaken all of that off,” he added, conspiratorially, “but you can see it’s still there. It still rules her, if only because she’s determined to do the opposite of what they would have asked of her.”
The man spat onto the field. “She should have let me die, then. They want me alive.”
“Why?” asked Ghislas.
“Ebala arvaarad.”
This was a word Ghislas knew. When Asaara was pregnant with Ismone, she permitted herself to speak of fears she had long put behind her, and the fear of magic still gripped her, the fear of domination, the fear of a child saarebas with no arvaarad to tame her.
They were lucky: Ismone showed no sign of magic. But he knew what this meant, that this man had carried a chain and a whip, treating his charge like an animal.
“I’m sorry,” said Ghislas. “They made you into a terrible thing.”
The man just watched him, wary.
----
Wintertime arrived in earnest, coating the farm with a blanket of snow. Asaara permitted the man to come out from the cold and join them in the farmhouse, warmed by bear pelts and the fireplace. Ghislas boiled dried fruit and camphor leaves and lemon, and the scent filled the little home. He played songs on his lute, and a few times he offered the lute to the man, telling him where to place his fingers and which strings to strum. Ghislas and Ismone laughed with delight when he managed to strum out his first song, out of tune as it was. Asaara just watched him. Always watching.
The creek where Ismone had found him was frozen over. Sometimes at night the man went there and looked at the place where the little girl had found him, as far as he had been able to will his injured body to go. He must have covered miles, bleeding out. It was a miracle he had not died a thousand times before he made it to Asaara Adaar’s farm.
Heavy footsteps crunched in the snow behind him.
“Whose blade was it?” asked Asaara.
The man kicked with his foot, breaking some of the ice which covered the stream. He glanced back at Asaara.
“The Qun would never take your horn,” she said. “They don’t think of it. And the healers know it’s too much blood loss when cut from the quick. The Ben-Hassrath never would’ve done it, not if they were going through the trouble of reeducation. So?”
He watched her for a moment, then looked away. Up through the trees, at the starlight peeking in through the branches.
“Tal-Vashoth,” he said.
“I thought so.”
“I went looking for them.”
“Yes, I would expect so,” Asaara said, sounding almost bored. “When you leave, the first few years are just a series of throwing yourself on swords, hoping one of them will kill you.”
“I don’t want to die,” he said. “That’s why I came here.”
“You didn’t want to be killed by a Tal-Vashoth. You didn’t want to die a Tal-Vashoth.”
He turned on his heel, glaring at her. “I have no choice now,” he said, holding out his arms. “This is what I am. What I’ll be for the rest of my miserable fucking life.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” said Asaara. Her eyes, burning yellow like her daughter’s, sparked like lightning in the dark. “That’s what the Qun calls you. It need not be what you call yourself.”
She paused.
“You need a name,” she told him.
He said nothing. He looked up at the stars.
----
It was late springtime when Astra left: before the arrival of the Dalish clan, before anyone else had to see him with Asaara’s family, linking him to her if the Qun ever came looking. Ghislas gifted him with a jar of his horn balm, beeswax and mint, and a lute he’d bought for a good price in town. It was terribly out of tune, and he had replaced a broken string, but it was big enough that it might be easier in Astra’s hands. The balm was helpful: the tip of a horn had once more began to emerge from his head, though Asaara had advised him it would never grow as long as it once had. “But there are blacksmiths who work with horns,” she’d added, with a shrug. “If you’re interested. It helps with balance, if you ever have to fight.”
Astra clutched the lute. The bag around his shoulders was light, though Ghislas had insisted that he take bread and dried meat and a pound of oats. And he’d affixed one of his strings of dried fruit to Astra’s belt. “For good luck,” he’d said, with a wink.
Asaara held her arm around Ismone’s shoulders, who leaned into her mother’s hip and peered up at Astra curiously.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’ll do fine,” said Ghislas, approvingly.
“I don’t know what to say,” he told them.
“Say nothing,” grunted Asaara, whispering her fingers through her daughter’s hair. “This is what I do, Astra. This is why I left.”
He looked down at the lute in his hands, then back up at Asaara. A small, sad smile tugged at his lips. “You know,” he said, “you’ve still got a bit of Tamassran in you, boss.”
She did not return the smile, but she sounded proud when she said, “And you haven’t got any arvaarad left in you at all, kid.”
----
A few years later, Astra met a Dalish clan in the Wending Woods, and the Keeper handed him a letter. “From Adaar,” she told him.
The letter brought him to the back room of a bar full of Tal-Vashoth, with news from a Tamassran. Three more wanted out. “We may be able to help two,” said the leader, stone-faced. “We can’t do anything for the saarebas.”
It was true: no saarebas had ever left the Qun in living memory, though there were Vashoth mages, the children of Tal-Vashoth parents. Astra fell into a comfortable rhythm, taking up Asaara’s role, getting information into the Qun and getting people out of it.
Twenty years went by like this. Astra’s lute was lost when it was left behind during a hurried escape from camp, the Ben-Hassrath on his tail. But he did get the silver reconstruction for his horns, and Asaara was right: the weight helped with balance, allowing him to land more force behind a blow.
Astra was smuggling a girl across the Shining Sea when they saw it. Lighting up the sky as if it were another sun, bright green and shining. The dreadnought pursuing them fell back. Astra could hear the screaming from the ship, could imagine the other saarebas rattling their chains, feeling the Fade shift. Qunari are frightened and superstitious of magic. They regrouped in the days after the sky was torn open, which was the only reason, Astra thought, that he and his charge survived.
The girl was little more than a child. She must have been willful. He cut the stitches in her lips very carefully, but all she could say was, “Meravas. Meravas. Meravas,” and shudder violently, holding on to him.
Meravas. So shall it be.
---
He heard the rumors. The leader of the Inquisition was a Qunari, a Tal-Vashoth. One day, in a tavern near Sahrnia, he heard a name pass through someone’s lips, and almost choked on his ale.
Mera laughed and thumped him on the back. He asked again. Yes, said Mistress Poulin. Adaar. Inquisitor Adaar.
----
Skyhold was not difficult to find. There were caravans and pilgrimages through the mountains, more leaving every day. More Vashoth than Astra had ever seen in his life, Qunari with curved horns and gray skin who had never known the Qun. Mera played with some of the younger ones, and blushed when a boy told her he thought she was pretty. It was like some other world, some other life. Astra rode his hart in a daze, even as he saw the castle come into focus in the distance.
“I need to see the Inquisitor,” he said, to whomever he could when he arrived. Most of the soldiers just nodded and assigned him quarters, asked if the girl was his daughter - he said yes, because he didn’t want to be separated from her - and then moved on. Another soldier asked if he had any skills he could put to use in the Inquisition, to which he replied, “I can fight,” and, as a joke, “I play the lute.”
“I’m a mage!” offered Mera, her staff in one hand. “I can fight too!”
“No you can’t,” said Astra sternly, then he located someone who appeared to be in charge - all the soldiers were reporting to him, and he held himself like a captain, like a man who’d held command. Astra pushed his way through the crowd, past the soldiers, and insisted, “Please, I need to see the Inquisitor.”
Commander Cullen glanced up at Astra, tilting his head back to look him in the eye. “Welcome to Skyhold,” he said shortly. “I’m afraid she’s not here at the moment.”
“Where is she?”
“Crestwood, I believe. Meeting a friend of a friend.” He returned to inspecting the rosters before him. “She’ll be back soon. A day or two, maybe.” He gestured towards the gates. “You’re welcome to wait for her.”
“Is her husband here?” asked Astra.
Cullen blinked at him. “I…am not aware of any husband, no.”
“What about her daughter?”
“I can say with some confidence that she doesn’t have one of those,” Cullen said, rolling up a letter and handing it to a waiting soldier. “You must be confused. Please, sit down, have something to eat.”
So sit, he did. They seemed to be around the infirmary, and Mera peeked around, following a mage healer, peering curiously as she did her work. In the evening someone brought around bowls of soup and hunks of bread. Astra fingered the dried fruits which hung from his belt and watched the stables. A bearded man instructed some very green recruits on the proper way to wield a sword, and sighed loudly when two of them fell over during their attack on the training dummy. A crowd of Orlesians surrounded some merchant stalls, tittering over something or other.
“Astra!” said Mera excitedly, as night fell. “Fiona says she’ll show me some healing magic tomorrow!”
“That’s good, Mera,” he told her. “That’s very useful. Go find our quarters, I’ll be there soon.”
An elven woman with dark hair lingered after Mera left. “She is very powerful in the Fade,” she told him. She had an Orlesian accent. “You have your work cut out for you.”
He knew that she assumed he was the girl’s father, and meant this in the way one parent says to another, She’s a handful. But Mera was a mage, and Astra had been raised to be an arvaarad since birth. He said nothing to the woman. She went away.
He did not join Mera in their quarters. He only sat there at the gates, waiting. Dawn broke, cold and clear and shockingly blue, and a whispering susurrus grew up even in the sleepy morningtime air. Scouts rushed to the walls, and Astra saw the commander make his way down from the castle, along with a red-haired woman hooded like a Chantry sister.
She rode a hart. Her horns were curled upwards, not down towards her chin, and gilded with silver. Unconsciously Astra’s hands flickered up to his own horns, wondering if hers were artificial as well. Had she lost them? How? Or was it just decorative? The blacksmith who had done his once told him Vashoth children did this sometimes, decorating themselves the same way a human might pierce their ears or nose. Her skin was dark like stone, and she was laughing as she entered the gates. Behind her another Qunari - larger than her, far too big to be Ghislas - made a sound like a trumpet's bugle as the gates opened for her. She laughed and laughed. Her eyes were golden yellow lightning.
She dismounted, greeted her commander and spymaster. Someone offered her a tankard of wine, and she held it out to her companion, a brown-skinned human holding a staff, then shrugged and downed it herself when he declined. “-got to track down the mayor,” she was saying, heading up the steps towards the castle. “I thought he’d killed himself at first, but the villagers said they spotted him leaving in the morning. If his people aren’t ready to punish him, we should at least be able to…”
Her voice faded away in the bustle of the castle. Astra watched her go, feeling still and heavy in shock.
There was someone next to him there, a deep voice saying, “Hey, buddy?”
He looked around to see the Qunari who’d been in her party peering down at him with one eye. He was remarkably tall and his horns were remarkably large. Astra couldn’t help but admire them, wondering how he’d managed to lose an eye but keep both very large targets on his head.
“You OK?” the Qunari asked, gruffly.
He swallowed his shock. “Do you know the Inquisitor?” he asked.
The Qunari exchanged glances with the brown-skinned mage. “Guess you could say that.”
“Would you tell her that I’m here? My name is Astra. She knows me,” he said.
“Sure,” said the Qunari. People probably said this all the time, but despite himself Astra felt a pang of indignance. Why would he lie?
The Qunari and the mage followed the Inquisitor up the stairs to the castle. Astra watched them go. Behind him, he heard Mera reciting incantations, committing them to memory.
After a minute, let out a sigh through his nose - it still made a bit of a whistling sound when he did so, all these years past the break - and then he turned around. He asked the surgeon if she needed any help, and she took one look at him and said, actually, would he mind terribly helping in an amputation - he looked like he could hold a strong man down - and Astra said of course. He shed his cloak, not wanting to bloody it, and then headed towards the tent the surgeon had identified.
He was about to lift the tent flap when a shout came from the castle. The sounds of footsteps slapping against stone, taking the steps three at a time, and then Ismone Adaar flooded into the courtyard, her eyes roving, searching. She saw Fiona, then Mera, then Mera turned to look at Astra, and then-
Ismone shouted, bounding across the courtyard. She gathered him up in her arms, then held him at arm’s length, looking dazed.
“It’s you,” she said, in shock. “Look at you.” She reached up and touched his horns and said, “Look at that. Mama always said they would grow back.”
“It’s empty,” said Astra, reaching up and wiggling one of the horn caps. “Only ever grew back partway.”
They stood and stared at each other for a moment.
Astra confessed, “I didn’t know if you’d recognize me. It was a long time ago.”
“You never forget your mother saving a man’s life.”
He nudged her slightly with his elbow. “Your mother didn’t save my life, Ismone,” he said. “You did.”
She grinned at him. “I did the easy part. She was the one who kept you from dying.”
This was true enough. “Is she here?” he asked, peering around. “When I heard Adaar, I thought it must be her. Though I suppose she’d be a little too old for Inquisitorial duties at her age.”
Ismone’s smile faded off her face.
“How about your father?” he asked. “I’ve gotten a whole lot better on the lute in the past twenty years, I swear.”
The surgeon popped her head out of the tent. “Can this wait?” she demanded. “We need somebody to come hold him down, I don’t care which one of you it is.”
They held the soldier down together, both of them. He hardly moved at all, until he passed out. When it was done, Ismone went outside with Astra, and she told him what happened to her parents.
----
There was a boy in the tavern - a little white-haired thing, gave Astra the creeps. The bard played a song Astra knew, and his fingers itched for the strings. In the corner, he heard the Iron Bull telling Ismone all about Tal-Vashoth, all about Seheron, all about the wild blood, the fury, the savagery barely constrained by the bounds of the Qun.
“My mother wasn’t like that,” said Ismone, and despite himself Astra felt a bloom of pride in his chest.
The boy was there, then, all of the sudden, without warning. He leaned on the bar beside Astra. “You should play,” he said. “She misses her father’s songs.”
Later, he couldn’t remember why, but he put in a request with the quartermaster, when they could spare it, if someone might be able to pick him up a lute.
----
Every morning Astra sparred with Cassandra, mostly because she could thoroughly kick his ass, and he wanted to figure out how she did it. They talked as they sparred, mostly about her. About the Chantry, about the mage rebellion, about Red Templars, about the Seekers. He asked questions about her order, fascinated by their rules and levels, by their supremacy above mages and templars.
“Forgive me,” she said, after he brought warm mulled wine from the tavern after a day of sparring. “I have barely asked about you. You are Tal-Vashoth, like the Inquisitor?”
“Not like the Inquisitor,” he said. “She was born outside the Qun.”
There was a short silence. Cassandra asked, “You were not?”
He took a sip of wine. “No. I was - strong and certain in the Qun. I wasn’t afraid of magic.”
“Ah,” said Cassandra. “It seems that is rare among true Qunari. The Iron Bull panics at the mere sight of a spell.”
“It is. The Qun fears magic, because the Fade is beyond their control. And anything beyond their control is chaos. It threatens their order and their way of life.”
She watched him. “But you were not afraid of chaos.”
“I was not afraid,” he echoed. “I was what they call an arvaarad.”
Cassandra nodded wisely. “I have heard this word before. It is like a templar, no?”
“Almost,” he said. “We do not take lyrium, but there are - other ways to control magic.”
“Like the Seekers.”
“Ways I couldn’t even tell you, Lady Pentaghast. They did not explain the tools they handed to us.”
She watched him, her dark eyes bright and wandering. He wondered what she was looking for.
“Call me Cassandra,” she said. “Please.”
----
When they went to Caer Oswin, Cassandra requested that the Inquisitor bring Astra in the party. Mera wanted to come too, but Astra assured her it would be boring and she would be better off at Skyhold. Solas, waiting for the Inquisitor to join them so they could take their leave, watched the two of them with a small crease on his brow.
“She’s very powerful,” Solas remarked to him, once Mera was gone.
“She’s just a baby,” answered Astra, stonily. He did not care for Solas: he was unkind to the Dalish for no reason, and Astra found his sharp words to Sera amounted to cruelty far more often than the Inquisitor acknowledged. Spirits would never be as important as the person beside you in battle.
“Yes,” agreed Solas. “That is why I find it so unusual.”
Cassandra asked, “Have you ever met a Qunari mage before, Solas?”
He considered this. “I can’t say I have.”
“Then perhaps they are by nature more powerful than you know.”
Astra always took a special kind of delight in proving to Solas he didn’t know everything, and Cassandra shot him a smirk as Solas turned away.
All humor dissipated when they made it into Caer Oswin. Red Templars and demons, a barrage of them. And then all Astra could do was watch when Cassandra’s voice caught as she called, “Daniel! ”
She asked them for privacy at the end. Astra left her, watching the way she held her apprentice’s hands in her own, and prayed with him the final rites of the Chant of Light. Her sword was clean when she emerged, and her eyes were hard.
The Inquisitor struck the killing blow on Lord Seeker Lucius. He was small and empty, laying there on the courtyard path. Despite himself a part of Astra wished they could have brought him back to Skyhold for judgment, in front of everyone. But instead he died there at Caer Oswin, with no one left to mourn him.
Astra caught Cassandra as they headed back, before they left the castle.
“If you wish,” he told her, “I’ll carry Daniel back to Skyhold. We can return his body to his family.”
Cassandra looked at him with pain in her eyes, and yet softness there, gratitude. She reached her hands up and placed them on both sides of Astra’s face, and then she leaned up and kissed him, her lips brushing his, gentle and chaste. She leaned her forehead against his.
“He has no family,” she told him, her voice steady. “He had only me. And I have served him in the best way that I can. He has earned his peace.”
Solas and the Inquisitor said very little on the ride back to Skyhold. Astra stayed close to Cassandra, lingering behind them. As they made their way up into the mountains, Cassandra closed her eyes, sitting tall and steady on her horse. She tipped her chin upwards, catching the rays of the sun on her face. She breathed in the cool, clear air, the wind sweeping in from the foothills.
“I will see him again,” she said.
Astra watched her, then looked forwards once more, towards the Inquisitor’s back. He thought of a young woman he once knew. Raised within his creche. The first time she conjured sparks on her fingertips, he had laughed at the pretty colors. In time the Tamassrans swept her away. The next time he saw her, she wore a mask, and he held her leash.
----
“Willful,” they kept saying. “Too willful.” She bucked and screamed, and tore the stitches from her mouth. He activated her collar, and she screamed, on her knees, and screamed. He held her tongue as a Ben-Hassrath enforcer used the knife. She choked on her own blood, and she screamed, and her eyes glowed blue, sparks erupting from her fingertips, and he activated the collar again, and she screamed - slamming her head against the ground again and again until she bled, until her nose broke, until she cracked the tip of her horn clean off-
“Willful,” they would say, later. “Too willful.”
- she screamed, with the roar of a dragon behind her -
- he cracked the whip - he activated the collar -
- “Willful,” they said -
- the mask shattered on the ground, and she looked up at him, and her eyes were wide and full of tears - she had no tongue, her mouth was full of blood, she could not speak -
- she looked at him, she moved her lips -
- he activated the collar - he cracked the whip - she begged him -
“KILL ME,” she begged. Her mouth formed the word they used to call him. “SATAARETH! KILL ME!”
He activated the collar, and the leader of the Karataam raised his fist into the air, and a dozen saarebas reached into the chaos of the Fade, and-
He was wet with blood and bone and brain matter.
“She was willful,” the Tamassran reminded him, wiping the blood from his hands.
Her face shifts in his memory. The kind Tamassran - his mage on a leash - the girl with scars on her mouth - stitching her lips - stitching his wounds - “Willful,” they said, pityingly - “This is why you were not strong enough to kill her.”
----
He awoke drenched in sweat, slick like blood, trembling in Cassandra’s arms. “Shh,” she whispered, in the dark. “Shh. You are here. You are safe.”
----
When the Inquisitor accompanied the Iron Bull to cement an alliance with the Qun, Astra stayed at Skyhold. Ismone had not needed to ask him: he understood very well the risks of dangling a former aarvarad before the Qun, even though he was under the Inquisition’s protection. Instead he stayed with Cassandra, overseeing construction on the tower. It was to be built as a place of reflection and learning, for mages. Fiona had given her best input on the plans, and Mera played with Kieran in the courtyard, vaguely interested in the construction.
Word got back to Leliana before the Inquisitor got back to Skyhold. While sparring with Blackwall, Astra was summoned to the spymaster’s table, where she made it known that he should stay within the halls of the castle for the time being. The Qun were not happy with the Inquisition, and Leliana did not wish to push them. Mera would stay with him, at Skyhold.
The Inquisitor returned with Bull, Dorian, Solas, and the Chargers the next day. The Chargers were in good spirits, but Ismone was visibly timid, as if too nervous to speak to Bull for fear of saying the wrong thing. The Iron Bull was not cowed. He drank with his men, and sparred with them, and drank some more as if nothing had happened. Dorian joined him and the Chargers as evening faded into night, engaged in a very loud, very Vint argument with Krem about whether the wine was better in Minrathous or Vyrantium. Near the end of the night, Dorian very lightly trailed a hand across Bull’s shoulders as he left. But the Iron Bull did not follow him out, as he usually would. He just sat there and drank.
A few days later, Astra was in the courtyard working on a little wooden hart he was carving for Ismone - she spoke sometimes of the red hart her father used to take into town - when behind him, a voice said gruffly: “You’ll want to keep the little one inside for a while.”
Astra glanced around, finding the Iron Bull leaning against the railing of the courtyard, watching Mera taking a lesson from Elan with some of the other mage healers. He had a fresh bandage across his shoulder, but Astra saw how the blood underneath the gauze was dark, almost black.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Saar-qamek?”
Bull nodded. “A few assassins on the battlements. Nothing that really matters, just a few bas and poison dagger.”
Astra looked back at Mera. “You told Leliana?”
“First thing. However they got in here, she’ll plug the cracks. But in the meantime…”
It was a fair warning. But if they’d been within the walls of Skyhold and had only gone after the Iron Bull, it seemed a former arvaarad and a child saarebas weren’t as high on the Qun’s list of priorities as Astra had thought. Then again, maybe they’d gotten the picture that hunting gray ones within the Inquisitor’s inner circle was a bad idea. The Iron Bull was fair game because it was so recent - but two bas assassins? Hardly an effort at all.
“Teth-maraas,” said Astra.
In Qunlat, there is no word to approximate thank you; there is no need for gratitude or thanks in the tight order of the Qun, where things are given to you only when it is appropriate to give them. The closest approximation simply translated as, It is nothing.
“Asit tal-eb,” replied Bull, almost as if by rote. “Hey,” he added, “what did they call you? Before you left.”
Astra shook his head. “I don’t use that name anymore.”
“Looks like I won’t be using mine either. But someone oughta know, don’t you think?”
“I have a name. A real name.”
“Sure,” grunted Bull. “I’m not asking about that, though.”
There was silence for a moment. Astra glanced back at the Iron Bull, whose expression was plain.
Shortly, he said: “They called me Sataareth.”
“Hm,” said Bull. “I was Hissrad.”
“Not much of a liar,” said Astra, turning around towards him. “You’ve done nothing but tell Ismone and Leliana the truth since you got here. You never even lied to your men.”
“Right,” agreed Bull. “But they got you in one. You make a damn good guardian.”
Once more Astra turned towards Mera, who was gently coaxing a bloom of crystal grace to open. When he looked once more, the Iron Bull was gone.
---
It was Bull’s custom to train in the early mornings, at dawn; maybe this was to avoid prying eyes, maybe to politely offer up the sparring grounds to Cassandra for the rest of the day. Either way, Dorian complained about it often. At least it made it easy to figure out where he would be.
Astra did not have to explain. He picked up a wooden sword, his preferred for sparring with Cassandra, and he drummed against the side of the castle wall as he passed, alerting the Bull to his presence. Without hesitating, he dropped into a defensive stance. They were both two-handed warriors, both trained by the Qun and by the Inquisition; both used to seeing one another in battle, having taken careful note of each other’s weaknesses. It was a fair fight.
Astra feinted left, then went low. Bull anticipated and swept up, nearly disarming him entirely. Astra countered with a complicated move Cassandra had taught him; it was only useful if the attacker was larger than you, which was rare for Astra. He supposed this was his moment.
The Iron Bull parried this easily. It looked effortless, but his brow was furrowed now, concentrating.
So naturally it was at this point that Astra asked, “Has Ismone ever told you about her mother?”
Bull, to his credit, caught himself just before the question took him off balance. Astra had him on the rocks only for just a moment. “A little,” he answered, with some caution. “Former Tamassran, she said. Tried to track down some intel on her, but nothing came up. Suppose the Ariqun’s not keen to advertise that one.”
For a moment they said nothing, blocking blow after blow. “She had contacts in the Qun,” continued Astra. Even in the cold morning chill, his skin was warm with exertion. “For those of us that wanted, she could get us out. Or connect us to someone who could.”
Bull landed a blow on Astra’s side. They reset their stances. “She got to you, huh?”
“She never proselytized,” Astra told him. “Never tried to convince. Never. You had to go looking first, and you had to mean it.”
This time, moving faster now, more recklessly, Astra’s wooden blade touched Bull’s throat before he could parry. He pushed it aside. “You lost your saarebas.”
It was not a question. They reset once more. “She was willful. The collar wasn’t enough, so they stitched her lips. When she tore the stitches out, they took out her tongue.”
Bull narrowly dodged a lunge. “Let me guess. That didn’t work either.”
“They boiled her brain from the inside,” said Astra, stoically. “They popped her skull like she was a bug. I heard the crack.”
“You executed the order?” Astra shook his head. “Atta boy. They send you to the Ben-Hassrath afterwards?”
“They only held me for two days,” he told Bull. “Until they determined no further reeducation was needed. Then they handed me back to the Tamassrans to decide if I could be reassigned another saarebas.”
“And let me guess,” said Bull. By now, they were no longer sparring. Astra held onto the hilt of his weapon tightly, his knuckles gone white. “The rest is history.”
Astra did not speak for another minute. It had been twenty years since he picked at this particular scab: he had spent the last few months arguing with Bull every time it came up, defending the honor and nobility of his fellow Tal-Vashoth. He had never admitted otherwise to Mera and never planned to. Ismone had never asked for an explanation for that strange year he had spent at her family’s farm, whatever had happened which resulted in the loss of his horn. He often found himself grateful for this.
It was easiest to speak the next part in Qunlat. And the Inquisitor did not speak Qunlat, so it felt safer, somehow, like he could continue to pretend. Language was precise under the Qun: the meanings of words were clear and distinct. But some things were different. There was no word for freedom; the closest equivalent was Qun itself.
So he forced himself to say it in the common tongue.
“For three years after I left I was nothing,” he said, his eyes far away, focused on the training dummy beyond Bull’s shoulders. “Nothing. Empty. No direction, no idea. Nothing made sense, because there was no order. All my life I had been directed and pointed towards a goal. Suddenly, there was no goal. There was no purpose. Life was no longer about order, about Tamassrans and saarebas. It was only about…living.”
The Iron Bull said nothing, only watched him warily.
Astra gave a rough shrug. “Everyone was bas. I could no longer convert them, because I was no longer part of the Qun. I thought of my saarebas, about her orders. Self-destruction, if separated from her handler. Destruction of anyone who might have encountered her. That was the only thing that made sense.” He glanced up at Bull, twitching his wooden sword in his hand. “Women, and children. Once I barred the doors of a local chantry and burned it to the ground. They screamed and I felt as at peace as I ever had. This was life without the Qun: violent and horrible and useless.”
Bull grunted, “But you’re still here, eh?”
Slowly, Astra nodded. “I’m still here,” he echoed. “I followed a Tal-Vashoth encampment for weeks, tracking them. Learning their habits. I attacked during the night.” He offered Bull a tight smile. “They tore me apart.”
For what it was worth, Bull said nothing. There wasn’t even a smug smile on his face. Somehow, Astra resented that more than if he’d laughed in his face.
“So,” he said, curtly. “Maybe you’ve got a point about Tal-Vashoth. About us. Without the Qun, there’s nothing left to hold us back. Without direction, what can we do?”
“Could say the same thing about templars,” Bull pointed out. “Or Vints. The bad ones, anyway. Even Red is clinging onto the Chant for any small grip on morality she’s got left.”
“She doesn’t go around murdering children.”
“Not since she retired from life as an Orlesian bard,” Bull pointed out.
“I’m trying to tell you,” said Astra, “that you were right about me.”
“I wasn’t talking about you,” Bull said shortly. “I was talking about those fuckers in Seheron who do it because they want to. Who kill for the sheer unholy joy of it. They get hungry for blood. I’ve seen it, Sataareth.” He paused, then added, “And I’ve seen humans do it too, you know. Cullen comes from two Circles which were annihilated. The Rite of Annulment, it’s called. The same thing - everyone. Kids. As savage as anything we’ve ever done, don’t you think?”
“Tal-Vashoth-”
“Enough with the fucking Tal-Vashoth,” growled Bull, tossing his sparring sword into the grass. “Damn it, let me take it back, alright?”
Despite himself, Astra felt a wry smile tugging at his lips. “Please,” he said. “The only reason you’re saying that is because you’re one of us now.”
“Maybe so,” sniffed Bull. “Either way, that means we’re made out of the same stuff,” he blinked very pointedly, and it took Astra a moment to realize he was trying to wink, “Astra.”
Gently - well, not that gently - he cuffed Astra in the shoulder, and then he headed back to his usual spot, saying hello to Cassandra as he passed her.