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For a long second, Tarquin’s eyes don’t register what he’s seeing. Nobody uses the small shrine to the Maker, not since Ashur set it up in a room off their main safehouse, too small to be practical for anything else. Tarquin is only here because Mae stashes his special tea behind the altar when she can’t give it to him in person.
But someone is kneeling there, and it takes a long moment for Tarquin to recognize Ashur without the cape, the hat, without the… without the mask. As Tarquin stands there, staring, Ashur turns to face him.
He’s never seen Ashur’s face before.
Oh, he’s glimpsed him as the Divine a few times, but always veiled to shield his sacred visage from the eyes of the unworthy.
Ashur looks… like a person. Sharp-jawed and long-nosed and attractive, as any carefully bred altus tends to be. His hair, Tarquin notes absently, is all close-cut like it is on the sides. He’s out of his armor too, dressed down in clothes that would be casual if they weren’t so obviously expensive.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he blurts out before he can help himself. “Anyone could have walked in!”
“But it was you,” Ashur says, his lips quirking up in a small smile, and Tarquin is dumbstruck again at the realization that he can see that. “I recognized your footsteps.”
And that’s… that’s something, but Tarquin is not going to deal with that right now, because Ashur is sitting there in plain sight and he is… what, praying?
“I didn’t figure you for the religious sort, not really,” he blurts out, before he can help himself.
“You didn’t?” Ashur asks, raising a brow, and fuck, now Tarquin just feels stupid.
“Well, I figured it was all sort of for show, you know?” he babbles, flushing and wishing he was the one to wear a mask. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to take it off in the middle of the safehouse.
“It’s not for show,” Ashur says quietly, looking away.
“If you believe, why do you do… all this?” Tarquin prods, even though he knows he shouldn’t. He gestures around them. “The Chantry is pretty clear that slavery is the lot of sinners and nonbelievers, and every slave deserves what they get. No accidents of birth here.”
“I don’t believe in the Chantry,” Ashur says, still quiet. “I believe in the Maker. Do you want the full lecture?”
Fuck, no.
“Fuck no,” Tarquin says out loud, because he’s heard this debate before, thanks just the same. Pavus and Ashur like to get into it when they get bored, which is usually his cue to excuse himself as quickly as possible.
Ashur only smiles at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Isn’t it, I dunno, heresy or something, for the Divine not to believe in the sanctity of the Chantry or whatever you want to call it?” Tarquin asks.
Ashur shrugs, and turns lowered eyes back to the altarpiece. It’s a southern one, too much emphasis on Andraste Benevolent and not enough flames and penance.
“Isn’t it heresy to believe the Maker loves his children unequally?” Ashur asks quietly, a rhetorical question if there ever was one. Tarquin didn’t believe when he was younger, and he sure as fuck doesn’t now.
The light in the front room flickers, one of Ashur’s little tricks to let anyone inside know someone is activating the magic to enter. Ashur sighs and pulls his mask back around his face, tucks his head back into his hat, wraps his cloak around his shoulders, and stands.
“That’ll be Tullus with the family who were about to be split on Magister Valen’s estates. I promised I’d meet them in person, because one of them has information on Valen the Lucerni can use in the Magisterium.”
“No rest for the weary,” Tarquin says absently, still chewing on what Ashur said before. He’s been told his whole life he was lesser, that because he was an ungifted soporatus he was somehow inherently inferior. That Ashur, a man born to be among the most powerful in Tevinter, believes otherwise…
Ashur squeezes his shoulder as he brushes past Tarquin to get the door for their new guests.
“Paperwork at the Canal District safehouse later?” Ashur asks. “We won’t want to disturb the family staying here.”
“Sure,” Tarquin answers without thinking. “We really should get something bigger than this, you know.”
“We should,” Ashur says, a smile in his voice. “Are you volunteering to find a place?”
That brings Tarquin back to himself.
“Fuck no!” he hisses, and Ashur only laughs as he slips through the door.