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“I know you said you have an outfit to match the mud anywhere in the Empire,” Rainier says with a jovial glimmer in his eye, “but I bet you didn’t expect your excursion with the Marquis to require one.”
Vivienne rolls her eyes as she dismounts beside him. Of course, he had not kept his voice low, and the Marquis’ groomsmen heard every teasing word. They are not as well trained as servants in the heart of the Empire tend to be, and they smirk at each other as they approach to take her horse. She does not deem it worth her time to quell their good humor with a glare, and instead she levels her frown at Rainier.
Predictably, it only inspires another chuckle from him. He wears his own mantle of dirt from the day’s excursions; some is smudged on his cheekbone, highlighting its sharp, square edge above his beard.
“Nonsense,” Vivienne says, taking out a kerchief and handing it to him. As she gestures at her own face in explanation, she notices the copious amount of dirt under her own nails and swallows mild disdain. “I had heard the Marquis regularly sacrifices his dignity and reputation for good counsel, and the rumors were true. Of course, I have precious little reputation left in the Empire to squander, but dignity?”
“You’ve a wealth of it, Madame,” Rainier acknowledges wryly, handing back her soiled handkerchief now that his face is clean. “I’ve never known some measly dirt to tarnish it.”
Vivienne examines his expression with pursed lips and cannot find the barbs hidden under the compliment. Once, it would have been a mocking statement, a jab—a call to arms. But more and more often these last few months, she has found his praise to seem genuine.
That is less surprising to her than her own pleasure upon receiving it. She cannot hide the satisfied smile that creeps onto her face as she anticipates the juxtaposition of his words with the reality she is about to reveal.
“Yes, well, there was quite a bit more than dirt to contend with today,” she says. “The Marquis took me to see a rather well-read pig farmer.”
Rainier laughs. It is loud, a clap like thunder that eases into a rumble, echoing across the bridge and bouncing back to them off the walls of the Chateau; in the past, she would have been jarred by the sound just as harshly as the delicate glass windows of the Chateau are. But after so many months, after parting so bitterly not once but twice, she finds herself glad to hear the sound again.
“A pig farmer!” he exclaims. “What kind of advice could they give a Marquis, and the Empress’s own Enchanter? Did they divine the future in the slop?”
“As I said, she is surprisingly literate, and canny,” Vivienne replies. “I suspect she is high born and well-connected—or was, at the very least.”
“Ah,” Rainier says knowingly. “Took a wrong step in the Game, I s’pose? Found herself some powerful enemies, banished her to the furthest corner of the Empire?”
“Perhaps.”
She does not mention just what she learned of the pig-farmer’s past. In a hut that was layered thick in incense and magic, she was told a familiar and dangerous story in a heavy Tevinter accent—bitter, envious, nostalgic, wistful, for home and luxury and subterfuge in all the ways Vivienne would never give voice on her own.
Despite its similarities to her own, Vivienne knows it is not her story to tell. The lessons she might take from it, however, are hers and hers alone.
She is not certain yet how she feels about them.
Vivienne trails a hand across the wooden rail of the bridge as they approach the Chateau. Its shadow stretches long before it, casting the bridge and water in darkness. With the sun at its back, the thousand-colored windows seem dour and dead.
“I’m not sure what was more painful–admitting that I visited a pig farmer today, or losing to the same pig farmer in a game of Archon.”
Rainier laughs again, and the sun tips over its zenith, over the tower, and bathes them in welcome winter heat. Vivienne thinks the Chateau’s windows glimmer with the same good humor she saw in his eye, and something other than the sun warms her face.
They meet again by happenstance after supper. Vivienne had retreated to the east parlor to dig into the pig-farmer's loaned book—a hand-written account of Tevinter rule that promised to address all of Vivienne’s concerns in the wake of the Circle’s dissolution, and the quickly-developing schism between those in the Chantry who would reinstate it and those who would slacken the leash or abolish it altogether. The lived experience of a mage who suffered under the yoke of freedom in the north would be a very enlightening read. Even Vivienne can acknowledge that most Circle accounts of Tevinter carry a heavy Southern bias.
The memoir is years old, perhaps even several decades, but there is fresh ink in the margins. Such graffiti would normally make Vivienne roll her eyes, but this annoys her especially. Recent annotations in two hands critique the analyses and judgements made about the sins of Tevinter, of magic, of the wealthy and powerful. It is a debate about what lies in the heart of mankind, and what it is that causes empires to rot.
The pig farmer had not lied, exactly, about the book’s contents. The book itself is exactly as promised. And perhaps it should not surprise Vivienne that the Marquis—known as the Scholar by his people—would engage in such spirited intellectual debates about the very questions he faced in the last several years. He had seen his own revolution in Serault, faced the shadow of Her Shame, and brought the Divine’s light back to it.
The conclusion of the argument is foregone, which is what partly spoils the whole book for Vivienne: the Marquis had rejected the underpinnings of his station and smashed the jeweled mask of Serault at the feet of the Divine, vowing to feed Serault’s poor with the remnants. To free the glassblowers from their glittering prison. To remove what separated him from his people.
By all accounts, the brazen act had won the Divine’s endearment. But in hindsight, Vivienne cannot help but see later conflicts—in Orlais between Gaspard and Celene, between Celene and her nobility; and in the Circles, between the mages and templars, and between the Loyalists and the Rebels—echoed in the microcosm of Serault’s politics.
The conclusion, as it pertains to those conflicts, is far from settled. What had seemed to be an easy justification of her path forward has now turned into a slow, thorny trek through argument, rebuttal, and reply, on every point.
The door opens, and she looks up sharply with the same glower she has been aiming at the tome in her hands. Rainier stands in the doorway, intensely apologetic, but when he bows his head and makes to leave, she calls out to stop him.
“For once,” she says as he closes the door behind him, “I think I would prefer your company to that of this book.”
He raises his eyebrows as she drops it heavily onto the table beside her.
“I’ll guess, from the faint whiff I just got, that’s from your pig farmer?” he asks.
She feels her eye twitch at that. Your pig farmer
“Do not think I’m admitting defeat,” she says, gesturing at him pointedly to take the armchair across from her by the fireplace. “The material is simply better suited to the light of day.”
“Right, right,” he says sagely. He removes a pipe from his belt and begins to pack it. “Lots of things are like that, here. It’s a strange place.”
He lights a match, cups the pipe as he lights it, and in that moment, the silver in his beard glints gold. When he settles back in his chair, he finds Vivienne’s eyes on him and seems to interpret the curiosity to be about his words, and not about the surprising gentleness of his strong fingers as they shielded a dwindling flame.
“Feels like some things are just meant to be spoken about in the dark, here,” he elaborates. “I heard a Seraultine say the Twilight’s its own conversation partner. I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but on nights like this…”
As if in response, the windows rattle with a sudden burst of rain.
“The Veil is very thin here,” Vivienne says. “One imagines all sorts of things might be listening. Speaking to them is surely unwise.”
“Oh, surely, surely.”
Rainier puffs at his pipe and contemplates the fireplace for a moment; a gray wind drones within it, and Vivienne cannot help the gooseflesh that pricks at the back of her arms.
“But even so,” Rainier says suddenly, “I was meaning to ask you. I’d heard that the Divine returned the legendary mask of Serault back to the Marquis, after it had been confiscated from his abomination grandfather.”
“She did.”
“I imagine it’s worth a fortune, locked away somewhere safe, but you’d think the Marquis would commission something else to wear now that the Shame has been lifted from his name. Can’t imagine Celene would welcome him to court without one.”
Vivienne’s eyes drift, briefly, to the window. A branch from a nearby tree grazes against the glass with every gust of wind, and the tap tap tap of it feels pointed. Even if she has set the book down, its contents will continue to haunt her.
Such is the will of Serault’s Twilight.
“The Marquis did not keep the mask for himself or his family to come,” she says carefully. “He destroyed it. Something about past sins paying for a brighter future for all of Serault.”
Rainier’s eyes are wider than she expected from the hardened soldier-cum-criminal-cum-free man. “I’m surprised they haven’t written songs about that,” he wonders aloud. “It sounds like something straight from Mother Goose!” He taps his pipe thoughtfully as he stares into the fire. “Well, I’ll look at our Marquis in a different light after hearing that. Struck me as more a Scholar, the devout kind, rather than an iconoclast of any sort.”
“I know,” Vivienne agrees. “Stranger still, I think neither to be a mask of its own. When he relinquished the Mask of Serault, he rejected much more than its wealth.”
They are quiet for a while, giving the night its time to comment. The fire gutters beneath the mantle; a strange wind stirs dust in the corners of the room, coming neither from the chimney nor the window.
The movement draws their gazes, but as it lapses, they look at each other again.
“Got to admit,” Rainier says, “a place like this feels like it’s at the edge of the world. Hard to imagine a rumor or a mask or a knife in the dark is far up on anyone’s list of concerns.”
“It was the edge, for a time,” Vivienne muses. “Now, it’s forgotten on most maps in favor of the threats that lie beyond: the wild woods, the dangers of the mountain paths, neighbors at war… No,” she says, “I imagine you’re right. Strife appears to be a great equalizer.”
Their conversation lapses again, but the Twilight remains distant, as if it knows they have not truly finished speaking what’s on their minds.
Rainier breaks the silence with a sudden blustery cough, choking on smoke. He spills ash on himself, curses, and without looking up from the mess he’s made, he accepts Vivienne’s handkerchief when it is offered.
“I was meaning to ask,” he says, an echo of himself—fainter, this time, than before. “Why haven’t you gotten your mask out again? We’re not in the wilderness anymore, likely not to step onto a battlefield for a while. Courts like this seem familiar to you, my lady.”
She watches his strong hands wrapped gently in her delicate silk handkerchief; when done, he folds it neatly in a square and hands it back to her.
“They are,” she says quietly. “Yet I find myself more and more a stranger in the places I felt most at home. It hasn’t felt right to don the mask I wore for Bastien, and for Celene.”
“Time for a new design?”
Vivienne considers that, considers him. The plain way he looks at her, appraising, tactical, familiar with her now in ways no mask could hide.
“I think,” she says, speaking over the murmur of wind that drifts in under the door to the hall, “that the Marquis might have been right. The time for masks is over. The rules of the Game are being rewritten, and the face of the Empire itself is changing. If it’s time to make something new, who can hope to build it on a false foundation?”
The wind dies as she falls silent. It feels as though the whole Chateau settles in its wake, satisfied, like a cat that has stretched and found a place to rest at last. And with this realization, Vivienne feels the same.
She levels her gaze at him, plain, cutting, and bold. Blackwall, Rainier, traitor, murderer, friend... No matter what he might be called, he has never worn a mask for her. In the world outside Celene's golden walls, Rainier has survived his unmasking and found some semblance of honor in the wake. If he could do it, clumsy as he is wont to be... She is certain she has enough grace to land on her feet. And if there is any truth in the way he looks at her in return—appraising, and kind—Vivienne thinks that even if she were to stumble, he would be there to catch her.