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The morning sun slants in onto the rugs in the Divine’s private receiving room—they’re new; Divine Beatrix had very different taste—and as she paces through the bars of light, Cassandra can’t quite believe what she’s hearing.
“Most Holy, you want me to bring her to Tevinter and pretend she is my …”
“Companion,” Divine Justinia finishes, “yes.”
“I will stay out of your way,” the new Left Hand says. “It should not be too arduous.” She smiles like a kitten, all blue-eyed innocence. Cassandra doesn’t see what threat she can possibly pose, which probably means she is very good.
“Well. Then. If that is what is necessary. I will bring them back. Elves and books.” She turns and bows.
The Left Hand whispers something to Justinia, who chuckles. “Excellent. I have complete faith in you both.”
The Left Hand catches up with her in the hall. “Lady Cassandra,” she says, matching her pace. There’s a lilt of Orlais, but not quite enough for a native.
She frowns and keeps walking. “Just Cassandra.”
“All right, and I am just Leliana. We need to plan our story.”
“I still do not understand why this is needed for a simple search and rescue.”
“The grand cleric of Ferelden has been working a long time to find these people. If we’re to free them without incident, I need to be underestimated and free to wander about and do as I like.” She glances at Cassandra’s set face and grins. “Don’t worry. I can be very convincing, you’ll see.”
“I was not worrying.”
“I won’t expect anything untoward from you, if that’s what you think.”
“I was not thinking—”
“Good, then! It’s settled.”
That evening after her day’s training, Cassandra is sitting on her pallet in her quarters reviewing maps of Vyrantium when the Left Hand—Leliana—lets herself in.
She glances around, taking in the bare floor and the tall window open to the sunset. “This is your room? But where do you sit?”
“Here,” Cassandra says. “Or the chair.” She does have one, currently shoved behind the door; an uncomfortable spindly thing that came with the room.
Leliana takes it, hauling it out in front of her and sitting forward.
“We need a backstory,” she begins, picking up where she left off in the hall. “I, of course, am an innocent with no knowledge of politics or intrigue. Perhaps you saved me from a dragon’s lair.” Her voice still has laughter in it. “As all Val Royeaux knows you do regularly.”
“They do not take prisoners. It would just have eaten you. And I have not seen one for years.”
“A demon, then? A witch? A cruel relative? What else?” She puts a finger to her lips, considering.
Cassandra sighs. “If it must be something, a demon.”
“And now you can’t be parted from me for a second, so you brought me along.” Leliana pauses. “Or did I beg you endlessly to take me with you, and you finally relented?”
“That one.” Cassandra still refuses to smile.
She goes on, letting her accent strengthen and clasping her hands like a fainting court lady. “I have never left the country before, and I am so very excited, yes? I have no idea what I’ll do in Vyrantium while you are busy, my darling.”
Cassandra can’t help it, at that, and she laughs out loud, setting the map down. “You are certainly nothing like the old Left Hand.”
Leliana takes it as she meant, and smiles back. “And you do have a sense of humor. I suspected as much.” She reaches for one of the maps. “It is just a test, you know. She wants to see how much you and I can work together. Beatrix did not give you enough to do, she thinks.”
It feels wrong to speak against the old Divine, Maker rest her soul, but it is true that Cassandra has felt … limited in her duties for some time now. “Most Holy Justinia has other plans, then?”
“She does, but beyond that, I know little more than you.” Leliana studies the map. “If we do well enough at this, we may both find out.”
“These Fereldan elves were traced to Vyrantium, you said.”
“Eventually. After Teyrn Loghain sold them north, they were split up and sold on several times, but Most Holy’s agents say the trail stops there. Some artifacts lost in the Kinloch Hold massacre have surfaced there, too.”
“Convenient. But what will induce Tevinters to deal with us?”
“Gold, intimidation, persuasion?” Leliana says, gesturing from Cassandra to herself. “They may know you and your reputation, but not me, not yet, anyway. So, you deal with them, and I am overlooked and free to go around them.”
It seems like a plausible start, she has to acknowledge.
Beatrix’s second Left Hand was an ancient sister who never left the Cathedral walls and never had a good word for her; having someone to plan with, and something to plan, is new.
And so they do, and Leliana stays perched in her uncomfortable chair well into the night arguing over details and flights of fancy, and she rather enjoys it.
The next afternoon, on her way back from the Divine’s public audience, Cassandra is ambushed by a strange vision in blue, all lace and ribbons and filmy things.
“Dearest,” the vision sighs from behind a fashionable mask, “I have been positively languishing in your absence.”
Cassandra takes a step back, bewildered—and this must be the reaction she wanted, because she folds over laughing and takes the mask off and it’s Leliana.
In her usual voice she says, “You should see your own expression. I borrowed the clothes from my dear friend Ambassador Montilyet.” She curtsies and the long feathers on the dress wave. Her hair is even curled. “What do you think? I may steal the shoes. What do you think of Alouette as a name? Josie’s suggestion.”
“It is very … disguising.” She tries to mentally overlay the Left Hand’s previous restrained way of dressing onto this creature of Orlesian excess. Only the eyes match up, bright and still laughing at her. She should mind that and be angry, but she isn’t.
“Then it should do nicely,” Leliana pronounces, rising. “And she has several others for me. I think there is even room in this for a knife or two.”
With swift horses, it’s three weeks up the Imperial Highway to Vyrantium. Cassandra is used to traveling alone when not with the Divine, setting her own pace.
At first Leliana protests that her delicate beloved would never ride this fast, but eventually she admits there’s no need to stay in character without an audience, and keeps up easily.
In the mornings, Cassandra rises before the sun and prays in silence as she has done every day since the Seekers taught her to. A few days in, Leliana begins to join her, at a respectful distance. On the road afterwards, sometimes she sings, and sometimes they race, and sometimes they walk and work on the plan, and it keeps being surprisingly comfortable, and she keeps not minding.
So, the first night at an inn, halfway into Nevarra, it’s a shock when Leliana wears one of the dresses and puts on Alouette’s voice and uncomfortably adoring face again. A dry run, she says, to get used to the act.
At dinner, she touches Cassandra’s arm, leans on the table giggling, and sits close enough not to be heard. “Maker, has it been that long for you?” she says under her breath after Cassandra holds herself awkwardly through the first course. “Give me your hand, at least.”
This nettles her. Leliana has no way of knowing that. “Of course,” she says, deadpan. “Seekers touch nothing but weapons and authorized copies of the Chant after age fifteen.”
Leliana’s second of surprise is gratifying before she laughs. “Still, that would explain it.”
Cassandra snorts and puts her hand out over the table. “Give me yours.”
She holds Leliana’s hand conspicuously for the rest of the meal and eats with the other. Leliana retaliates by playing with her fingers and giving her ingenuous starry-eyed looks every time the kitchen boy comes by.
“The way you change back and forth like that is most disconcerting,” Cassandra says the next time he leaves.
“I had a good teacher,” Leliana says, obliquely, and then she does it again, all of her body language softening into Alouette’s. “But what sort of demon was it you killed for me, my angel? I can hardly remember, it was so horrid.”
This launches them into a discussion of demon taxonomy that is easier ground, and Cassandra forgets her irritation, until she notices she’s relaxed into Leliana’s shoulder against hers.
That night they share a room as well, but Cassandra has her bedroll with her, and the door has a lock.
“Alouette would let you have this whole side of the bed, you know,” Leliana says, rolling over and propping her chin on her hands, “while I would offer to take the floor next time.”
“I do not mind.” Cassandra doesn’t feel up to parsing that line too closely.
“Do the Seekers also have a vow against furniture?”
She unrolls the blanket. “They have very small dormitories shared by too many children. It teaches detachment.”
“Ah, “ she says. “I grew up amid beautiful things that weren’t mine. I think I learned the opposite.”
After two more practice runs like this, every time Leliana-as-Alouette says something ridiculous meant for people to overhear, Cassandra starts countering with a line from the novel she’s reading. Fortunately, it’s sentimental enough for a good selection, and the more straightfaced she is, the closer Leliana comes to breaking into real laughter, although she never actually cracks when there’s an audience.
A few days after the third inn, they leave the Highway in Tevinter proper and ride north through wild lands toward Vyrantium. The city is hot, dry, and terraced from the estates of the altus down to the docks on the Nocen Sea, guarded by garrisoned towers and seawalls against qunari raids.
The Orlesian embassy branch is halfway between, tucked into a shabby corner of the merchant district, reflecting its relative status and purpose. It has only a skeleton staff, but they’re expecting her and have set aside rooms for as long as the Right Hand of the Divine desires. Sticking to the plan, Cassandra tries to act the way they’re expecting: self-important, fond of her titles, sweeping in with her nose in the air. It’s not as hard as the other, even though she feels insufferable.
Accordingly, the embassy officers and servants give her a wide berth and stay out of her way, which gives Leliana space to contact the agents who arrived before them. Over the following days, messages for Cassandra with various codes in the margins begin appearing, and when they go out, Alouette begs to tour certain parts of the city where they have brushes with shadowy figures of unlikely professions: Brewster, Spinner, Carter.
Her different sources all point to the same result: both the stolen books from the Ferelden Circle and the missing elves from Denerim are here and in the possession of Magister Luca Quirinus, who recently inherited his seat and his country villa in Vyrantium from his dead father.
“This Quirinus is a piece of work,” Leliana says, lying across one of the long couches in their room and reading from one of the letters with Cassandra’s name on it. “An inbred fool surrounded by other upper-class fools summering out of Minrathous. Spinner talked to his servants, and he has been throwing parties for months. Running through his father’s money like water, no doubt.”
She spends the afternoon eating grapes they bought at an extortionate price in the fruit market and composing a introduction letter to Quirinus that strikes the right tone.
“What do you think of this?”
She reads it out to Cassandra, who looks up from her novel and quotes dryly, “Your every word thrills me to the core, my jewel.”
“Well, I hope it does the same for the magister,” Leliana says. “There. Come here and sign it.”
Apparently the chance to trade a few of his father’s moldy books for the Chantry’s gold does interest Magister Quirinus, because they have an answer that evening.
“Lady Pentaghast,” Cassandra reads, “House Quirinus has never discriminated in business matters. Perhaps you and I can further discuss your suggestion at my gala tomorrow night. Do bring your lovely friend if you wish.”
Leliana chuckles. “So he has eyes here and is overproud of learning the obvious. A good sign.” She leans on the back of Cassandra’s chair. “This may be a chance to strike both targets at once. I have a thought.”
They arrive at the villa at twilight, Cassandra in her Seeker’s dress uniform and Leliana playing her role, trailing behind in the blue feathery gown and mask. The Quirinus estate is high over the sea, but the grounds are falling into disrepair; gardens overgrown, mosaics cracked underfoot.
The sounds of raucous conversation and music are already drifting from inside the villa and servants—or slaves—are darting here and there with trays.
The magister meets them with a goblet of wine in his hand and what looks like half his household guard at his back. Scale armor, not really adequate, workmanlike swords, unsure eyes. She feels some magical defenses around them, and a few heavier barriers around Quirinus himself.
“Luca Quirinus. Welcome to my family’s humble abode. Not a patch on the Minrathous residence, of course, but it’s quaint.”
Cassandra grits her teeth and reels off all of her names. “And this is Alouette Desrosiers.”
Leliana curtsies, murmurs something, and even blushes on demand, somehow.
“Charming,” Quirinus says, advancing and taking her hand to help her rise. “Follow me, won’t you? We’ll get this dreary business over with, and then perhaps show you some of the amenities of the north.” He’s trying for lazy confidence, but he backs up and lets go when Cassandra steps toward him.
His workroom—or his father’s—is underground, down a columned staircase and behind a set of double doors that Quirinus unlocks with a pass of his hand and a little surge of magic. The guards all come down with him, crowding the stairs away from her as much as they can.
Much of it looks neglected, spiderwebs on apparatus that hasn’t been used in a long time, but some magic is still active in the workroom, because Cassandra’s skin prickles all over when she steps in. Leliana scurries after her and clings to her arm, which doesn’t help.
“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” Quirinus says to her, drinking from his goblet and then waving a hand again to light the torches. They burn green. Leliana feigns a shudder, then pokes Cassandra in the side.
“I am forgetting,” she says quickly. “Alouette becomes distressed around such things. You may go back up, dearest.”
Quirinus’s smile is self-satisfied and piggish. “Naturally.” He points to a guard. “You, take her.”
She disappears up the stairs behind the guard as Quirinus begins to pull books from one of the shelves, still balancing his wine in one hand. “Are these what your enchanters are seeking, Lady Pentaghast? Careless to have lost them. I suppose I can let them go.”
Maintaining her imperious front, Cassandra examines each one, checks them against the Divine’s list, and finds the Kinloch Hold library marks. “I am told they were part of a long-term study that Her Perfection Justinia herself is particularly interested in. We are prepared to offer—” She names a figure, he counteroffers, and eventually they settle on a price that clearly makes him feel he’s put one over on her.
Quirinus orders the books to be wrapped and delivered to the embassy, and sweeps back up the stairs, still followed by his guards, looking very pleased with himself. Cassandra follows him to his steward’s office, where she signs and hands over the letters of credit from the Cathedral.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” the magister says. “And now, my other guests await me.” He pauses. “Do stay and enjoy our little gala,” he adds, holding up a finger and making lightning play around it. “Your pretty girl will not have seen its like before.”
Cassandra resists the impulse to dispel his little affectation, and just nods shortly.
She finds Leliana outdoors beside a fountain, letting a group of mages patronize her about demons. The water sparkles and glows in colors, lighting her face and her dress as she talks. A pretty effect, if a tasteless waste of power and lyrium.
Elsewhere there are floating wine fountains that recirculate through the air, instruments playing slow Tevinter dances on their own, illusionary foods with taste but no substance, and other such amusements and conveniences of magister high society. Cassandra’s senses are on edge from all the overlapping fields of magic—and the stares from mages and their companions—as she passes through the courtyard.
“My apologies,” she says and Leliana turns.
“There you are.” She takes Cassandra’s arm again. “No, please go on,” she says to the mage who was speaking. “What did the demon do next? I must know. No?”
The mage mutters something about seeing someone he needs to speak to, and he and his friends fade back.
Leliana takes an illusionary cake from a tray and tastes it. “They are all wondering if you’re here for them,” she says under her breath. “It’s most amusing.”
“Quirinus is pleased with the deal,” Cassandra says, matching her tone. “I saw his steward’s files.”
“Good. Time for the next step.” She brushes her hair back with her free hand and lets out one of Alouette’s giggles. “Of course I will bring you a drink,” she says more loudly.
Cassandra leans on the fountain and watches her flit from one wine station to the next, seemingly tasting each one to compare. At the last one, she fills two cups and then weaves back through the people dancing beside it.
“Drink only this.” She hands Cassandra one of them. “Quirinus still has all his guards with him, just inside. Things will get much more interesting for them shortly.”
The drink is flowing freely among the mages, and dreamer’s glass takes effect quite soon when dissolved in alcohol, which, as Leliana informed her when they planned this, is why it’s been recently fashionable at certain Minrathous parties.
Cassandra sips from the cup and acts captivated by what Leliana’s saying, which is mainly commentary on the other guests and her performance, until she says, “Time to go.”
They drift to one side gradually and move through the colonnade around the courtyard, skirting couples and trios taking advantage of the dark corners and benches.
Once they’re inside, Cassandra starts toward the steward’s office, down a short hall decorated with murals of sea creatures. She walks quietly, and Leliana is right behind her and then starting on the lock, when a set of loud jingling footsteps like a patrolling guard becomes audible around the corner.
“My apologies for this,” Leliana mutters, and then she’s being pulled behind a column and kissed in a whirl and a cloud of soft things, blue veils and the mask over her eyes and Alouette’s perfume, light and well chosen. Cassandra knows it’s strategic, but it’s very convincing, she has no guard for this, and the performance must have gone to her head, because she can’t find an objection either.
As the footsteps get closer, she tries to do her part and be convincing back. And maybe it’s a decent effort, because then everything shifts again and there’s a point where she realizes she isn’t kissing Alouette anymore. Leliana is stronger than she looks, far from kittenish, dexterous, good at this—and when she can think again her back is to the painted wall and her hand is tangled in red hair and feathers and she doesn’t remember if the footsteps faded or when.
“This room,” Leliana says in her true voice, a little out of breath, taking the mask off. “The contracts. Yes?”
“Right. Yes.” They’re not here for this, at all. She lets go.
“Maker. Just hold that thought for me until—” She finishes the lock, slips into the room, veils following her, her feet moving almost silently.
Cassandra stands by the door and watches the entrances and gathers herself. The mission is not kissing the Left Hand in corridors, for the Maker’s sake, however much she might now like to test that. Will everything with her always be the very last expected thing?
In a few moments she comes back out silently and passes Cassandra a roll of paper.
“You crushed my feathers,” she whispers as they walk, glancing behind her, and then laughs to herself. “As it were.”
Cassandra takes the contracts and tucks them into her sleeve. Some of the feathers do look broken. “I am—”
“Not a complaint.” Leliana tugs a veil over them. “They are Josephine’s feathers, come to think of it. I’ll manage her. To the guards.”
And they don’t talk about it again while they carry out the steps they planned on the road and back at the embassy. Moving quickly to the side door, hearing more chaotic sounds now coming from the party; crossing the side yard to the slave quarters, hidden by unkempt hedges and fences, out of sight of the villa proper; creeping up behind the two guards who drew the short straws for duty.
Cassandra seizes the first man and covers his mouth. Leliana puts him to sleep with a pinprick of another concoction. He struggles, but then his eyes close.
The second man puts up more of a fight and she has to disarm him, pulling him inside the doorway of the building and holding him down for the sleep drug. After he relaxes, she looks up and Leliana’s watching her instead of the door. She drops him and gestures toward it. Leliana shakes herself and quickly starts picking the lock.
Behind the door is a magical barrier. Cassandra concentrates, channels a little of her frustration, and it flies apart satisfyingly, splintering walls on right and left.
Elves and humans in shabby clothes are huddling behind rows of beds in the long single room on the other side.
“Who wants out of here?” Leliana says.
They stand, a few at a time. A dark-haired elf in the front approaches. “Your guards are sleeping,” Cassandra says to him. “Take their weapons. Send one or two for those still in the main house.”
“We can offer you asylum in Orlais, Ferelden, or the Free Marches,” Leliana says. “Show them,” she tells Cassandra, who produces the Divine’s seal ring.
“Meet us on the other side of the tree line,” Cassandra says. “Your masters will be occupied for some time, but I would not let them see me if I were you.”
The elf slowly grins, then makes for the door. The others follow.
Within an hour, they’re all well away, on the horses and wagons Leliana’s agents have waiting beyond the trees. The Fereldan elves have all been found, and the rest are willing to take the chance to escape Quirinus.
The magister and his friends, who must have been more distracted than she thought—dreamer’s glass induces ecstatic visions, Leliana said—mount no pursuit.
Brewster, Spinner, and Carter each take a wagon, and they ride for a night and a day, taking back roads in case of patrols from Vyrantium.
They finally make camp in an isolated canyon on the edge of the Silent Plains, where pursuit is unlikely.
Cassandra assigns the stronger ex-slaves to watch shifts, and the three agents pass out food from the wagons.
Leliana climbs out of the third wagon in her own practical clothes and sits down at the fire. “I will have to make it up to Josie for her dress,” she says. “A lost cause entirely.”
Cassandra passes her a chunk of bread and she nods a thank-you.
“And speaking of lost causes, I suspect that you and Alouette will have a tragic falling out,” she says, yawning. “Fundamental incompatibilities, alas. She is not cut out for this.” She pokes the fire and looks up from it. “Perhaps you can do better.”
Cassandra feels herself start to smile, despite her own exhaustion. Leliana waves the bread. “I believe this merits investigation. I also know there are any number of hallways and corners in Val Royeaux—”
And then it’s Cassandra’s turn again to laugh at her, and catch her hand.
Perhaps it will always be the last thing she expects, but she doesn’t think she will mind.