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Lucanis wasn’t sure when he’d begun to think of the Lighthouse as home as much as he did Treviso, but he supposed it had probably happened somewhere around the dinner table, somewhere around him serving bowls of risotto and bickering with Emmrich about wine vintages.
And Rook, of course. Everything about their little team always led back to Rook, like the way they said all old roads would lead to Tevinter.
In the Lighthouse, however, she was Azure. A name that brought to mind clear waters - not like the murkiness of the Ossuary - and glittering gemstones. Rook was a codename, a title, something she put on like armor and left behind with her mage knife in her room.
For all that Lucanis had suspected she was overly flippant and casual when they’d first met - not that he’d been complaining, after her help in getting out of the Ossuary - she had the Lighthouse running as efficiently as a ship, even in spite of Lucanis and Davrin’s distrust of one another, or the way Taash and Emmrich couldn’t get through a conversation without someone getting angry. Trips to Treviso, Minrathous, Arlathan, back to the Lighthouse to rest - she was very attached to mid-day naps, Lucanis had learned - back to work in the afternoons, always home at a reasonable hour for dinner.
It was a comforting bit of routine, in days filled with Blight and dragons and gods. Even Spite, despite his constant recalcitrance, was calmer these days, especially around dinner.
Azure grinned at him as she entered the dining room and threw herself into her chair at the head of the table, the trinkets in her hair lightly jingling together as she did so. “What’s on the menu tonight?” Bellara and Emmrich, who were already present and had been chattering away enthusiastically, stopped to look up, eagerly awaiting his answer.
“Sopa de marisco,” he replied proudly. “Seafood soup. Caterina always insisted it was a holiday dish, but I saw we had everything for it but the langoustines, and I needed to go pick up more coffee anyway.”
Her smile seemed to gleam brighter. He couldn’t fathom how she managed to smile so often, so fully, with everything happening, but he was glad she could. It lifted his own spirits some, seeing it. He was fairly certain that smile had single-handedly gotten everyone through the shock that had been Weisshaupt.
“Good man,” she said. “Never deprive yourself of good food.”
“That could be a Lord of Fortune motto,” Taash said as they entered, Harding, Neve, and Davrin in tow.
“And yet neither of you can cook,” Lucanis pointed out as he began to set the dishes on the table.
“I can cook,” Azure protested. “I just don’t make an art out of it the way you and Bellara do.”
“Being able to make something that doesn’t kill you isn’t the same as being able to cook.”
Azure rolled her eyes, but with an amused smile. “Well, we’re all very grateful for the two of you making sure we’re not on a constant diet of my badly grilled fish.”
“Do the Lords really care that much about good food?” Bellara asked as she took an experimental sip of her wine.
“The Lords believe in enjoying ourselves,” Azure said. “Good food, good company, good music… No depriving yourself of things you like because you don’t think you’ve ‘earned’ them.”
“A difficult concept to fathom,” Lucanis admitted as he took his own seat at last, giving one last critical look across the table to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. “The Crows adhere to strict regiments of punishment and rewards.”
“And that’s why Crows,” Azure said with a wave of her glass, “all look so serious all the time. The Lords manage plenty of murder without all that.”
There were a dozen smart comments he could have made in response to that, but they all died well before reaching his tongue in favor of watching Azure take her first sip of soup.
Her eyes rolled back in her head a little and she made a pleased, satisfied noise. “Damn good soup, that. Maybe Caterina told you it was only for holidays so you and Illario wouldn’t eat Treviso out of all its clams.”
He wondered if she’d noticed the flavor of the clams, or if she’d been watching him closely enough to see the discarded shells.
He was constantly finding himself wondering things like that where Azure was concerned. Things that didn’t matter in the slightest; he only wanted to know. He wanted to know every thought that passed behind her two-toned eyes.
“However did you come to the Lords, by the way, Azure?” Emmrich asked.
Azure shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve been with the Lords since Isabella was just a raider captain. She took me on when I fled the Circle, and I’ve worked for her ever since, in one way or another.”
“You were a Circle mage?” Lucanis asked. Had he known that? He couldn’t have. He would have remembered that coming up. Perhaps it hadn’t - if she ‘fled’ it would have been before the Circles fell, over a decade ago now. Practically ancient history.
“Unfortunately.” She flashed him another smile, but there seemed to be something hollow in this one. “When the fighting broke out, I didn’t want to stick around to see if the Templars were going to win. I ran down to the docks and found a ship. Didn’t know anything about sailing, of course, but a mage can be a damn handy thing to have around in a storm.” She flicked her fingers, demonstrating with a trail of wind that wound around the candles on the table without snuffing out any of the flames. “Isabella got me up to speed eventually.”
“You didn’t go home?” Harding asked. “Seemed like all the mages who didn’t go crazy or join the rebellion tried to go home to their families.”
A flicker, barely perceptible, moved over Azure’s face. Lucanis caught it only because he was so close, and because Caterina’s training had involved a significant amount of being able to tell when someone’s expression meant you needed to change course. “Join the rebellion?” she repeated. Was her tone a little too casual? “I expected it to be a slaughter, not a fight. Probably would have been, if the Inquisition hadn’t stepped in.”
Everyone was still eating, multiple conversations buzzing pleasantly across the table. Except for Azure. Lucanis could practically feel discomfort crackling off her, like one of her lightning spells.
“Enjoying the soup?” he asked her, perhaps a little too loudly, hoping Harding would get the hint, or that someone would ask her a question and distract her.
The answering smile was a little more real, at least. “It’s fantastic.” She picked her spoon back up. “As your cooking always is. Is the chef who taught you still around? Because I think we might owe them a tip.”
“It was a whole kitchen staff, really. I’m sure some of them are still around.”
When had he last been in the kitchens at Villa Dellamorte? Years now. It was strange to imagine ever returning, with Caterina dead. Did Illario feel the same? Would he admit it to Lucanis, if he did? Illario had always been better at being aloof, detached, the way a Crow was supposed to be.
“Azure!” Taash suddenly demanded. “Isabella told me you two fought a possessed ship once? I’ve been meaning to get you to tell that story for ages.”
The story was enough to get shock even from Emmrich and Davrin, and even some begrudging respect from the latter, but more importantly, it settled the mood around Azure back to where it should be. She returned to her meal, occasionally gesturing too enthusiastically with her wineglass or her spoon, and the next hour passed quickly, easily.
It was the wine that returned them to trouble again. Lucanis was so used to having a glass or two at dinner that he forgot, often, that it might lead to actual drunkenness in those less accustomed to the tradition.
“Did you try to get Isabella to take you home?” Harding asked, slightly flushed with drink, over dessert. “And it… didn’t work out?”
Azure set her after-dinner cup of coffee down with a little more force than necessary. In the back of his skull, Lucanis felt Spite bristle, the way he did when they were anticipating a fight. “You could say that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Azure’s words were coming between gritted teeth. “I didn’t have a home. I left the Circle, I became a Raider, and now I’m a Lord of Fortune.”
“But… What about your family? Didn’t you miss them?”
Lucanis, not equipped for rerouting uncomfortable conversations - that was Illario’s skill, always - looked desperately over the table and managed to catch Emmrich’s eye. The man straightened, setting down his cup of tea and breaking off whatever he’d been talking about with Neve.
“I didn’t have any family.” Azure’s tone was stiff, dangerous, warning. Normally, this was the point where Harding would have realized - if she hadn’t already - that she was pushing a boundary, and needed to stop and apologize. But it seemed Lucanis had paired too strong a wine with too weak a dish, and Harding pressed on.
“Everyone has some family. Did the Circle not keep records on them?”
“Harding,” Emmrich broke in, tone gently reprimanding, “I think this is perhaps not our leader’s favorite topic of discussion. Shall we break with it?”
“But-!” Harding seemed distressed, and she was wobbling slightly in her chair. “She’s been helping us with all our issues! If we could find her family-"
Rook - for she was very abruptly Rook again, no casual familiarity in her suddenly blank features - shoved her chair back from the table with a horrible screech and slammed her hands down on either side of her empty bowl hard enough to make the spoon clatter against the porcelain. “Drop it.” It was a command, growled out almost as deeply as Taash could make their voice go. “I don’t have any family, I don’t want to talk about it, and I would rather go back to Weisshaupt than go looking for them.” She stood, and something in her stiff posture reminded Lucanis of Caterina. “Thank you for dinner, Lucanis. I think I’m going to turn in early.”
Lucanis drifts off to sleep in fits and starts, fights it every second. Spite doesn’t encourage him, doesn’t leap into control as he feels Lucanis slipping away, into the strange in-between Fade most mortals go to when they sleep. He’s learned this. Learned the unfortunate necessity of patience, of not alerting Lucanis too early.
It’s stupid, he thinks every time, barely able to hold his anger back from Lucanis, to keep Lucanis from jerking awake again at the heat of it. They were supposed to escape. Out. Freedom. That had been their deal. But now Lucanis imprisons him and behaves as though it is Spite being unreasonable. It’s almost maddening enough to make Spite want to rip the body away, to make it his, since Lucanis isn’t making use of it.
He refrains, always. He doesn’t want to be that. A claw in the gut, a howl of rage and pain, a sickness infecting so they’ll all die together.
If he gets them out. If Spite can find the door. Maybe then it will be different.
A certain amount of bitter, angry hope is needed for spite. A spirit, a demon, is like one of Lucanis’s recipes. The same things will make something different, if the amounts are wrong. Some of the things they can make will be terrible. Spite wants to be himself. Not something terrible.
Lucanis slips away and Spite stands, lets Lucanis’s muscles keep their feet steady and soft, too quiet to wake even Lucanis’s sensitive ears. Spite thinks he could block them off, stop Lucanis from hearing anything at all, but he does not want to. The sounds, the smells, the everything, make less sense without Lucanis, even when he won’t answer Spite’s questions about what’s happening.
Spite steps through the room, concentrating on keeping Lucanis asleep and navigating this strange world without the help of his host. It is such an effort - though less of one than it was at the beginning - that it takes him longer than it should have to realize he is not alone.
Mingled with the now familiar smells of Lucanis and dozens of spices inside their little clay jars, are the smells of gold and saltwater.
Despite the inherent tenseness of his latest attempt at escape, Spite uncoils, just a little.
Rook.
Lucanis had angrily shoved him away, thrown up yet another door in between the two of them, when Spite had demanded he fix what Harding had done, use his own words to soothe over the anger and hurt hers had done to Rook. As though he hadn’t been just as upset, hadn’t paced around so much Spite had thought this would be one of the nights where he only slept in quick bursts, back before he’d ever really left.
Now Rook is here, Spite is here, and no one else, and he does not understand words the way those outside the Fade do, but Harding’s words were wrong and Rook’s words were angry, and Lucanis had refused to try any words at all, so Spite is going to try.
Rook never shouts or snaps or slams doors when he gets it wrong anyway. Not even when he shouts at them to let him out and she says I don’t understand, I want to help, but I don’t- before Lucanis wakes and wrenches him away.
Rook is doing something with apples and cinnamon, something that makes them hiss and pop, and she smells like her electricity, like a storm ready to destroy a ship and send it to the bottom of the abyss.
She hears him, or smells him, or something, and looks over. She is guarded still, her magic still tightly coiled, but the anger is a low boil now and Spite doesn’t think she wants to throw it at him. “Spite. You’re not trying to go through the Eluvian again, are you?”
Spite growls a little. “I want out.”
“I know, Spite. But it’s not safe. If you and Lucanis start butting heads out there, we could lose both of you.” She does something to the apples and the smell of cinnamon grows strong enough that Spite has to work to keep it from waking Lucanis.
He wants out. But Rook is here, and the shadows of the Ossuary, the heaviness of its walls, fade when she is here. Lucanis trusts her. Spite trusts her. If she says not to go through the Eluvian… “I won’t leave.”
She smiles, and the bitter heat of anger dies down further. “Thank you, Spite. I don’t suppose you want some of this? I don’t know if Lucanis gave you his love of food.”
‘This’ is whatever she’s done to the apples. Spite finds food frustrating, nonsensical. Don’t eat this, don’t eat that, but put them both together and now you can eat it. But only if it’s hot.
It isn’t all bad, he concedes. Lucanis is more willing to answer questions about cooking than anything else, and he’s easier to coexist with when he’s cooking, or has recently cooked, or is thinking about what he’ll cook later.
Maybe Spite can use that? Maybe the next time Lucanis gets angry with him, starts slamming doors, Spite can ask about… Churros, yes. Those were Lucanis’s favorite.
He takes one of the pieces of apples, ignores Rook’s warning that it’s hot, and mimics Lucanis as best he can to get it down.
He isn’t sure he sees the point of it, what makes Lucanis so excited about it, but it isn’t unpleasant, and he knows no one but Rook, and maybe Emmrich, would have asked if he wanted to try.
Rook sits and Spite sits beside her, watching her carefully. The anger is still there, under the apples and the conversation. “Rook is. Upset.”
Rook sighs. “Yes,” she says, because Rook does not lie. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow, Spite. A good night’s sleep and a cup of coffee and we can all forget tonight ever happened.”
Mortals, Spite has learned, do not use the word ‘forget’ correctly. Not a lie, just one of those strange differences in language and understanding. When they say ‘forget’ they mean ‘box it up and put it away, and pretend not to see it when it rattles’. Lucanis has many rattling boxes with him, locked up behind all those doors.
“Harding. Hurt you.”
“She didn’t mean to, Spite. She didn’t know.”
“Then. Tell her!”
“It… isn’t always that simple, Spite.”
Another of Lucanis’s favorite lines. Spite growls again, frustrated.
“Sorry,” Rook says, which is more than Lucanis ever says. “I know that’s…” She sighs again. “I’ll tell you, if you promise not to tell the others.”
Spite straightens up. Rook trusts him. Rook trusts him. “Yes,” he says without thinking about it. Rook has been the one beautiful bright spot since the Venatori dragged him out of his home and into this awful, cutting, piercing place. If she does not want him to tell, no one will tear it out of him.
“The only family I ever had was my mother,” Rook says. Spite matches the word ‘mother’ to some hazy memories in Lucanis’s mind, then matches it again with ‘Caterina’. She fills the same role, Spite thinks.
So mothers are strict, demanding, look out for you but also become the thing you look out for. They are complicated, in that way mortals are so good at being.
“She hated me,” Rook says.
That is not right; Spite knows that much. Mothers are not supposed to hate their children. That is a very easy mortal rule to find in Lucanis’s thoughts. Caterina is hard, but she does not hate Lucanis or Illario. “Did you kill her?” Spite asks. That’s what happens to people who fail in their roles. Does Rook not want to admit to having killed her, is that why she was angry at Harding? Spite does not understand, but being with Lucanis has made it very clear that not all killing is equal.
Rook laughs. The sound is wonderful, because it comes in like a tide and when it sweeps out again it takes the anger with it. Spite has, very easily, succeeded where Harding had failed and Lucanis would not try. Ha. So there.
“No,” Rook says, and the acrid burn of lightning is fading from the air, the smell of the sea rising up. Like it should be. “I was only eleven when I last saw her. I didn’t kill her.” She smiles. Making sense of mortal faces is difficult without Lucanis to help him, but Rook is a mage, so she’s easier to see than most, and when she smiles there is a fresh breeze that comes with it, marking her happiness. “Thank you.”
Spite tries to put the pieces together but fails. That’s frustrating when it’s Lucanis, or Taash, but this is Rook, and she and Emmrich don’t seem to mind explaining themselves. “For what?”
“Asking.” The memories she keeps in her hair jingle together as she plays with them. “Did you think I’d killed her because she was a bad mother?”
“Yes.”
“Most people don’t think like that.”
“Too many people don’t like killing.”
“No, no - Well, yes, there’s also that. But I told you my mother hated me, so you decided she was a bad mother and deserved to die. Most people… The last person I told that to thought I must be wrong. That I’d misunderstood, and we should go find her and make up and be a happy family.”
Now Spite is the angry one. “Rook is not. Stupid.”
There is a warm feeling, and after a moment Spite realizes she’s put a hand on Lucanis’s arm. Their arm. His arm. “Thank you."
“Harding thinks. You are stupid. That is why you’re angry?”
“Well, when you put it like that it sounds a lot meaner. She means well, asking about my family. Lots of southern mages like me would have done anything to get back to their families when the Circles fell. But I just… I can’t stand it when people tell me she was trying her best. That she must have loved me. She didn’t. I know I snapped a little tonight, but I would have gotten a lot meaner if she’d said anything like that.”
“I would kill her,” Spite says, since the idea had apparently been so appealing to Rook before.
She laughs again. “That’s why I was willing to tell you. A demon isn’t going to believe in the perfectness of mothers just because that’s what they’re like in stories.”
“Demons are evil in stories,” Spite says. He likes some of the books Lucanis reads, but they are very different from life.
Except for the boring bits about being an assassin. Lucanis has assured him that’s exactly what it’s like, and that he and Spite are lucky to have more aggressive people to fight these days.
“Exactly. Do you want the last piece of apple?”
Spite says no, because he still isn’t sure about the first one and because Lucanis never eats the last of anything unless he’s saved it special.
Rook eats the last of her apples. “Nothing like a midnight snack and a good conversation to make you feel better,” she says, and Spite is pleased to know the good conversation was him. “I don’t think I’m ready to go back to bed yet though. Anything else you’d like to ask about, Spite?”
There are the usual questions, the why are we still here and the why can’t I get out and the why won’t he listen to me but Spite doesn’t think of any of those in the moment. The Ossuary feels the weakest it ever has, sitting here with Rook. “Why are you.” Spite stops, trying to force his question into the limited form of these words the mortals use. “Rook and Azure.”
They talk for longer than Spite thinks anyone, Lucanis included, has ever talked to him. He usually gets frustrated, slams and locks some doors of his own, but Rook’s voice is lovely. Reminds him of home sometimes. It aches, but he knows it is the closest he will ever come to returning to the true Fade. Even the Fade that Solas wants to bring to the mortal world would be different.
Rook explains about Rook and Azure and how they are like Spite and Determination. She explains what a Rook is, and promises to teach Spite to play chess the next time he wants to sleepwalk if he promises not to try to go through the Eluvian again and if he talks about it with Lucanis first. “Neither of you wanted this,” she says, “and you both need to try to remember that.” She sounds like Emmrich with that.
Spite doesn’t fight when he feels Lucanis come back, knows he’s gotten more time in the body than usual and that he hasn’t done anything Lucanis won’t approve of this time. He stands aside and lets Lucanis back into the body, and he takes Rook’s secret and tucks it away where Lucanis won’t look for it.
He also begins to plan some questions for Lucanis. Questions to find out if Lucanis would be stupid, if Rook shared the secret. He cannot help with Harding, or the others, but he can tell Rook if Lucanis would believe her.
He thinks that would help.