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“you've made a liar of me, Thom Rainier.”
He paces, a tiger behind bars, gloves in one hand, light split across the planes of His face. Andraste's Hand, still sunburst-brilliant, even down here in the dark.
“that wasn't my intention.”
“intention or not—” a flash of blue, a snarl unsuppressed, “—here we are.”
here we are. the two of us, with our ghosts. the two of you, with your ghosts. the two of them, and you. you, slumped at the back of the cell, cold stone at your back, bruises at your wrists. the guards hadn't been gentle: something of a relief.
“here we are,” you agree, in your dead man's voice. “am I to be condemned by the Herald of Andraste, Himself?”
He pauses in his pacing. dog on a leash, in the hand of the Lady: for a moment, He is the one in the cell, shadow fractured on the wall.
just for a moment. His eyes meet yours — even split through the bars, it makes your skin twitch. all of you, every face turning from your Prophet, unable to lay eyes on the man you deceived for so long, for not-so-long, for these few eternal months.
His hand curls around the bar. the Anchor, flickergreen: the shadows grow sickly. were you Blackwall, beacon in the dark, bulwark against the Blight, you might find courage.
down here, in this cell, with your manacle-bruises, you are Thom Rainier, and you are afraid.
“look at me, Rainier.”
soft like the inside of a body. soft like loose earth and night air. an order you could no more refuse had it come from the Lady Herself. He awaits your obedience, and you give it with only a breath's pause. it's too much to face Him like this, curled on your haunches at the back of your cage, bloodstained at the muzzle. you unfold, step towards the bars in hesitant silence (watch yourself: is this Blackwall's courage, or yours? did Rainier ever roll his shoulders back like that?) until all that separates you from Him is iron.
the Anchor, Her brand, casting ghostlight across your face. it makes sea-ice of His eyes, salt-green and glittering. Andraste's touch, turning you both to sallow corpses.
“if you'd told me before,” He says, up against the bars like He'd carve the words on your skin if He could, “we could have dealt with this. differently.”
differently. you could have been different: could have been another man. if you'd only, if only, all those years ago: only, if only. things could have been so different.
regret is the realm of mortals: there is none in His eyes. perhaps there is none left in the world, but for you.
“would you have spared me?”
(what answer would suit you best?)
yes: I would have forgiven you, kasimir says, and he smiles at you, sad like you've broken his heart; and he turns the strangling noose of the Inquisition against the Chevaliers, and a stranger dies in your place.
no: I cannot forgive this, kasimir says, and he brings you out into the light one last time, and you drink the blood you pretended to drink, and you take the oath you pretended to have taken, and Thom Rainier dies in the deep.
“I still could,” He says. Hand on the iron, holy-green like taking an oath. He doesn't reach for you. this is no offer of absolution, no promise of peace. there will be no blessing in your future. His eyes are veiled, veilfire, viridium, and your stomach is a swallowing pit.
“what would be the cost?” a pause. you consider the words: consider the man. the Inquisition can bear any cost, if the cause is righteous: if the Herald is behind it. “if I got on my knees, here, and begged for my life?”
the Inquisition can bear any cost, if the cause is righteous. you had thought, once, that you could too.
“no.” the answer, your-answer-His-answer, plain as the Anchor on His hand. “you wouldn't. and you'd be right not to.”
speaking over and for Him, now, because what more can you do? you've made a liar of the Herald, a convict of the Chevalier: you might as well make a blasphemer of yourself. He-the-Herald looks at you, a long, slow look. the kind that makes you want to squirm out of (not-)your skin. Bull's voice: why would I try to hide from something called the Inquisition?
you'd made it so far. fooled Him, fooled Them. fooled Her, for all it was worth to you. and yet, when He turns away, when His hand drops from your bars and the room floods once more with ghostlight: is it regret, you see on His face? regret is the realm of mortals; perhaps, in your haste, you had forgotten.
He is, after all, a man.
(She was, after all, a woman.)
lips thinned, kasimir — for now, for a moment, until His Hand closes and the light is silenced once more — turns from your bars. turns from you, until all you can see is the goldshine edge of His jaw, winched tight.
He turns back.
“I could,” He says, and the softness in His voice is strained. a leash pulled taut, a noose snapping tight. “ we could. release you into Inquisition custody. deal with you ourselves.”
like gravity — like destiny — your eyes are drawn to the sword that leans against the wall. left there when He walked in: symbol or concession, you hadn't been sure at the time.
His eyes follow yours. back, obsidian-gleam reflecting the torchlight.
“execute me yourselves, you mean.”
“myself. yes.”
He doesn't look away when He says it. doesn't blink, or twist His mouth in apology: a compliment, you think, and wonder who else would consider themselves honoured by the offer. which other lives claimed by that blade went willingly.
you have to ask. even in the depths, you have to ask.
“why?”
He doesn't like being questioned: never has, for all the scant months you've known Him. dead men prove no exception. His jaw tightens, Anchorflash brilliance (Adamant, Envy, silverite-spark in the dim) and the shape of the Lady with Her hand in his—
—when the blow comes, you flinch as if it had been you. the bars ring out, once-and-silent, stonedust glittering as it falls. at the entrance, you can see Rutherford twitch.
he doesn't approach. from the corner of your eye: turns away. leaves you to your fate.
the Herald curls His hand around the bar, silencing it. His knuckles are opened and glistening.
“because—” that snarl, again, dragging Himself close to the bars like He might claw through them to you, “—those are my choices. either way, you die. I would prefer— you fought with us. lied to us. wouldn’t you?”
disjointed; broken. it takes you a moment to arrange the pieces of the sentence, the thought behind them, and in that time — in that time, He doesn't move.
He waits.
in the end, you choose (for once) honesty.
“I'll be dead either way.” pause; think about it. think about your death, and the hands to deal it. the thought is clarifying, in its imminence, in a way it hasn't been before. “the Orlesians want my blood.”
“I don't give a fuck what the Orlesians want.” a sneer, that crystalbright arrogance: His eyes never leave yours. “you lied to me.”
it might be the most frustration you've seen from Him, in your short time as attendant to the Herald. some of the cold, finally bled out. He pushes a hand through His hair, and you (made bold by your death, short-leashed, at your side at last) say:
“it's the Orlesians I wronged. Callier—”
“is dead.” spring-green light, dripping down the bars. “Callier gets no justice. you know that.”
“is that what you think?”
“I think you hanging can't appease a dead man.” He digs His nail into the iron, peels back a flake of rust. a human fidget, for a holy man. “but you'll hang, all the same.”
“for wronging him, or you?”
He sneers, lip-curl, disdain a scalpel under your skin.
“power comes with duty, Rainier. I have always held to that. this — the Inquisition, us — this is holy.”
eyes, blue steel hooks in the soft meat of you. you can't look away.
“a Calling.”
you want to look away.
“and you've subverted it. made us look like fools, or charlatans.” He licks His lips, tips His forehead against the bar. “so tell me, Rainier: which is worse?”
you'd laugh, if you could. if the strangling pressure on your lungs would allow you: you'd laugh.
“speaking as a charlatan — better to be a fool,” you say, and you don't (think you) laugh but He smiles all the same, a slow twist in His mouth to mirror the one in your gut. the blade that's been lodged there since you met Him (since you took that order and told yourself don't look back). your mouth is dry.
already a liar, and a murderer (one sin drawn out after the other, bloody and stinging, until there's nothing left on the inside—), already condemned; you may as well be honest, with these final hours of life. “but that die is cast, isn't it, Lord Trevelyan?”
the blood on His hand glitters, and the light in His eyes glitters, and you, empty-handed, hollowed-out, hold your breath.
His voice, when it comes, is killing-soft.
“do you want to die at my hand, Thom?”
hold His eyes. search for the Lady behind them, and find only Him, Him, Him.
“I want justice to be done. whether or not you believe in it.”
watch one another, you two empty men. hollow reflections in one another's eyes.
regret is the realm of mortals, and you are, both, painfully human.
kasimir turns away. His footsteps ring off the stone, Anchor held tight in one clenched fist. hear Him address cullen, voice pitched for you.
“tell Lady Montilyet the Orlesians can have him. tell her: make sure they know it's a favour.”
then He looks back at you, your Inquisitor.
“tell her we want the body. there will be a funeral.”
“I don't want a funeral. I don't deserve—”
“it's not for you—” He swallows a word at the end, leaves the sentence skinned and bleeding. “it's for the people who will miss you.”
the man you were.
the man you pretended to be.
the next time you see Him, He is alight once more. silverite, sunbright, reflecting the dawn in bloody resplendence. there is some comfort in that: whether the Lady watches you die through His eyes or not, there is something to be said for dying in the light.