“I hope you are here for peaceful purposes,” he said. His accent was almost gone, but she caught the traces of the old Qunari bleeding through. A deserter, then, likely from when the Qunari had occupied part of Kirkwall years back.
“As do I,” Charter said. The doorman narrowed his eyes slightly but made no move to take her weapons. The Teahouse was for the discreet, not the foolish, and it would be the height of foolishness to attend even a peaceful meeting without options if something went wrong. “I am meeting someone.” She let a little bit of Kirkwall into her voice, and the doorman hid a tiny flinch. Definitely from the city’s occupation, and the memories weren’t pleasant.
“Sage is available at the bar to assist you in finding your party,” the doorman said with a polite smile. “Have a pleasant evening.”
Charter nodded to him and stepped inside. She paused to blink in the dim light and saw a servant, a middle-aged human woman in a gown of ring velvet so dark it seemed to eat what little light there was. The woman held a tray of drinks—one black tea, one herbal, one spiced wine—and she waited for a moment to see if Charter would pass.
Charter waved her forward, still blinking. Late or not, she would not move where she could not see. The servant nodded and stepped to one of the curtained booths, drawing it back. For a moment, sound came through, and she caught voices—one dwarven, with a Carta accent, and one that sounded Rivaini.
The doorman coughed politely behind her, and Charter nodded and made her way to the bar, aware of the eyes on her back. The man behind the bar, Sage, wore the same dark outfit as the doorman. He was a dwarf, and ancient from the look of it, skin like tanned leather pulled over bones tightly enough for the tendons to stand out on his forearms. A former dagger-man, Charter guessed. He smiled at Charter’s approach, the wrinkles around his eyes folding like a collapsed Orlesian fan.
“How may we help you this evening, my dear?” he asked. His accent was Nevarran, his smile surprisingly genuine.
“I came to meet friends,” she said. “Gauche, party of five.”
“Of course. The upstairs room is reserved for you.” Sage gestured to the glasses behind him. “The others have already arrived. May I take your order?”
She’d been on the road for a week and badly wanted a glass of wine, but she wanted a warm fireplace and a woman named Tessa in her arms, too, and neither of those would be good ideas right now either. “Anderfels mint, loose leaf, if you have any.”
Sage nodded. “And do I recall correctly that it was two sugars?”
That had been ten years and several names ago. She smiled despite herself. “You do. Thank you.”
Sage gestured to the staircase, which was lit more brightly—no one coming to a secret rendezvous wanted to make a bad impression by tripping on the stairs in the dark. She nodded and headed up, her footsteps quiet as she turned at the landing, then headed up farther.
The top floor was blocked by another of the black curtains that blocked the sound, and when she pushed it aside, she saw one large room. The lamps were dim and the walls bare of both windows and any painting where a peephole might have been concealed, but a fireplace against the wall crackled merrily, and seated around the fire in comfortable overstuffed chairs were four figures.
A dwarf, early middle age, his hair and beard black as the leather he wore, his boots and gloves stitched with lyrium runes, and the thin blade at his waist gleaming in its wyvern-hide scabbard. A big cup of coffee sat mostly empty before him, and his eyes were sharp as he watched her come in. The Carta Assassin.
A slender man wearing bright silks whose iridescent hues were complemented by an opal-inlaid full-face mask done to look like dragon’s scales, with curly blond locks that hung about his shoulders. A teacup sat at the table in front of him, a few drops still left in the silver spoon resting on the saucer. The Orlesian Bard.
A pale woman in the dark robes of a Nevarran mage, frowning with evident disapproval, her staff sitting at rest by her chair but still crackling with faint magic around the amethyst crystal at the head, gripped by silver figures whose mouths hung open—in agony or ecstasy, Charter couldn’t tell. She cradled a glass of mulled wine, while a silver stirring stick twirled in the glass of its own accord. The Mortalitasi.
A figure covered head to toe in dark robes of Vyrantium samite, with a thin mesh dropping down to cover the hood. The dark robes were trimmed in a pattern Charter had never seen, twisting shapes that curled to points in places that made her eyes hurt. A cup of what looked like dark red wine sat before the figure, untouched by leather-gloved hands, but she caught a faint whiff of the ocean from his robes, and something beyond the ocean. The Executor.
They all turned to look at her as she came in. She made no effort to hide her steps—stealth might be taken as rudeness—but the sound was still muffled, and the floor felt slightly springy beneath her feet. A layer of cork under the floorboards for additional soundproofing, then.
“You’re late,” the Assassin snapped. “I’ve been stuck listening to the peacock and the death mage and … whatever he is.” He gestured at the Executor.
“She is perfectly on time,” the Mortalitasi said with a sniff.
“It is not as though you were enjoyable to talk to yourself, monsieur,” the Bard said, his Orlesian accent curling like smoke around the words.
“Enough.” The voice that came from the Executor could have been male or female, young or old. It was less a voice than the idea of a voice, rendered acceptably but no more. “We came because we possess a shared interest in the Wolf.”
“The Inquisition’s Wolf.” The Assassin smirked. “Remember, he worked with them for a year with none of them the wiser. Imagine that, overlooking the god in your midst. How’s that feel?” he asked, looking at Charter.
She allowed irritation to show with a little grimace as she sat down. Making the Carta agent feel like he had scored a point might get him to share more information of his own. “He is not a god, as he himself says. He is merely a very old, very powerful elven mage.”
“Or possiblement a very young mage,” the Bard suggested. “He could be a simple elf who stumbled onto old magic.”
“Or he could be a demon impersonating an elf,” the Mortalitasi said, sipping her wine.
“What he is does not concern us,” the Executor said, the words neutral but carrying a weight that made the wine in its cup ripple. “We across the ocean care only for his goals and means of accomplishing them.”
“According to what he told the Inquisitor,” Charter said, shifting in her seat and noting with hidden pleasure how they paused at her words, “he wishes to restore the empire of the ancient elves, and he has made it clear that doing so will cause massive destruction to our world.”
“Especially Tevinter,” the Mortalitasi said with a sneer, “since most of it is built over where the ancient elves once lived.” She looked around the room curiously. “You said that this would be a meeting of the best spies on the continent. Where are the Tevinter Siccari?”
“And the Ben-Hassrath,” the Executor added. “Do the Qunari fear to speak with us?”
“Tevinter’s intelligence network declined to answer our request,” Charter said. “As did the Ben-Hassrath.” She grimaced. “The latter is especially disappointing. They had more knowledge of Solas’s movements than anyone else.”
“They also tried to wipe out most of the southern governments in a surprise attack,” the Assassin said, “and then invaded when that failed.” He smiled tightly and took a sip of his coffee. “I’d be careful trusting anything they said.”
Charter nodded as though the Carta dwarf had said something that wasn’t obvious to everyone in the room, then let out a long breath. “Beyond that, the Inquisition knows little about what Solas intends. Much of his research involves the Veil that separates our world from the world of the spirits. He claimed to have created it, and he asked the Inquisition for help activating artifacts to strengthen the Veil. That seems a possible place to start.”
It was weak, which Charter knew. She let that weakness creep into her voice as she said it, the little hitch of someone out of their depth.
The Executor was motionless, the Orlesian merely stirred his tea, and the Mortalitasi rolled her eyes.
But the Carta Assassin bit, as she’d hoped he would.
“I’m only here because Viscount Tethras called in a few favors,” he said, smiling broadly, “but I didn’t expect to be the best-informed person in the room. You don’t even know what he wants, and I can tell you that!”
Charter sat back, clenching her teeth. The Assassin clearly enjoyed her frustration, and with a little push, he would tell her everything. “We know what he wants!” she said hotly. “He wishes to end—”
“Not his goal.” The Assassin waved that away, then paused and finished his coffee. “His target. The Carta might not be much for magic, but pay attention, and you might learn a trick or two.”
THE ASSASSIN’S TALE
So, red lyrium. At first we thought it was just a new ore of the stone—more magic per ounce, little more of a bite to it. When Bartrand went crazy after discovering red lyrium, we thought it was just, well, him going crazy. Same for Meredith when she nearly destroyed Kirkwall. The templars are always two missed meals from madness. Take it from the folks who sell them their lyrium.
Then word got around. One of our best smiths has been studying red lyrium, and she says the blasted stuff is tainted by the Blight. A few families might’ve tried to keep smuggling it after that, but we shut that down.
The Carta believes in business. Blight is bad for business.
Another thing that’s bad for business is competition, so when Viscount Tethras kept the quarantine in Kirkwall, where Meredith caused so much damage with her lyrium sword, and then turned into a blasted statue herself, the Carta approved. Anybody got ideas about sneaking in, breaking off a piece of old Merry the Mad for themselves, we showed them the error of their ways. You got it?
So when this Dalish elf comes around asking can someone get the lyrium idol out of what’s left of the statue, our first thought was to send him back to his clan with a few new tattoos carved into his face, if you know what I mean.
Plus, the idol is gone. Everyone knows Merry the Mad forged that old idol into her sword, and then the sword exploded. But the elf keeps at it. He’s learned it from a dream. Some old legend of his people says the idol is in her body, and if he gets it out, he can free his gods or something like that. Honestly, the elf gods always bored the crap out of me, no offense, Charter. At least the humans’ Maker has the good sense to sod off and leave us alone.
We’re about to kill him, not because we’re cruel, you understand, but anybody who is that determined to dig around in a statue made of lyrium needs to be put down before they get a bunch of people hurt, and then the elf pulls out a potion and says it will soften the raw lyrium and weaken its magic for a bit, so we can get to the idol inside safely. We pour a little of that potion on some lyrium for a laugh, and damned if it doesn’t work just like he says. Crazy or not, the elf knows something, and he promises us the statue’s weight in gold, plus he’ll teach us to make that potion, which is a very profitable possibility, so we decide that the safest thing for us to do is help the elf out so that he doesn’t get hurt trying to do it himself.
None of this goes to your Divine Victoria, Charter. I don’t even know how much of an Inquisition you still have these days, but this is sharing in good faith, and if I get guards banging on my door about something that wasn’t supposed to leave this room, the Carta will be very unhappy, you hear me?
Just making sure.
Anyway, we sneak into the quarantined square where Merry the Mad is keeping watch forever, climbing over the barriers they’ve set up quiet, and quick. It takes a little bribery and a little moving, quiet-like, and maybe a few of Kirkwall’s finest should’ve taken the hint and gone for a walk, but they got a bad case of scruples and had to go for a swim instead, but what matters is we got to the statue. It was creepy, I’ll tell you that. The whole square stank of magic, thick enough to raise the hair on your arms, and as we’re moving through the shadows, I’d swear on my mother’s urn I heard music in the wind, like some old song I heard as a kid but can’t quite remember. A couple of us fell over right there, shaking and whispering, but most of us keep our heads on straight, and we get to the statue.
It doesn’t really look human anymore. It doesn’t look like much of anything, other than a twisted vein of lyrium that just grew out of the ground in a weird place. Some of the lyrium is dark. Some of it’s glowing. The song in my head is getting louder, and another of my Carta brothers runs off screaming, the idiot. Me, I’m just glad the statue doesn’t look much like Meredith anymore, because digging something out of a dead woman’s chest isn’t something decent people do.
Our alchemist uses the potion on old Merry the Mad, pouring it right on her heart, just like the elf had said, and old Merry opens up like a snowman with boiling water tossed on it, and damned if it isn’t there in the middle of her chest, that little idol Bartrand brought back from the Deep Roads. It’s not much to look at—a couple hugging, too thin to be dwarves—but it’s sitting there, glowing softly like a ruby lit by the grace of the Maker himself. I’ve got the best gloves, genuine wyvern leather, and I reach in, scoop aside the raw lyrium like it was mud in a rainstorm, and pry out the idol.
It’s heavier than you’d think—lyrium’s heavier than you’d think, too, but this was heavy even for that. When I hefted it in my hand, it was like it wanted to keep moving, like it was liquid inside. I don’t know. Anyway, we get it into the chest—double shielded, safe enough that you could sleep with it under your pillow at night—and the song shuts off all at once.
We get out of the square and back to our safe house, where the elf is waiting, but that’s when trouble hits. After Kirkwall went boom, a lot of the templars went rogue. They kept buying lyrium from us, but they’re all but bandits—tell you the truth, we kept them reined in by threatening not to supply them unless they kept trouble to a minimum. At our safe house, these former templars find us. One of the guards we bribed must’ve talked, I suppose, because they knew what we had, and they wanted it. A piece of old Merry the Mad to keep for themselves.
They have us outnumbered, on account of the men we lost to that song in our heads, so we go inside to “negotiate.” The elf comes out and tries to fight, and they rough him up some, and he’s on the ground sleeping with a lump on his head in short order.
The leader of the former templars says that he wants the potion that changes lyrium, and we can’t give what we don’t have, and he’s not happy to see that the person who does know how to make that potion is lying out cold on the ground, so he ties up the elf and says that he’ll wait. He takes the chest, and not long after, another man comes by. Tevinter, by his clothes, and I heard the templars say something about “House Qintara,” and he gives them a big bag of gold and takes the idol.
Now the templars are waiting for the elf to wake up, and it’s almost morning, so some of them go to sleep while the others keep watch. Some of my boys are doing the same, and the templar leader and I are sitting there drinking coffee trying to figure out how we’re going to settle this without anybody else ending up dead.
That’s when the sleepers start twitching. All of them, all at once, backs twisted like they’re having a fit. With the templars, I’d think it’s a bad dream, but it’s happening to my boys, too, and you all know dwarves don’t dream. Whatever it is, it has them shaking and seizing, and then it all goes still, and everyone who was asleep is dead with blood pouring from their ears, and let me tell you, templars don’t like anything that looks like demons killing their boys at all, so the templar leader is up with his blade out, and I’m doing the same, because what kind of magic does he think the Carta uses, exactly, and also if it were us doing it, why would I kill my own?
That’s when arrows come through the window and leave the templ
ar pinned to the wall. Everyone who was awake was on their feet, and the arrows hit all of them except me, because I didn’t get my job by not knowing when to dive for cover. The templars are down, my boys are down, and I hear footsteps coming, so I make my way to the sleeping elf, because I figure he’s tied to this somehow, and I’d dealt with him proper and honest, so maybe, if this is his people, he’ll vouch for me.
He’s already dead, bad luck for him—a stray arrow caught him in the throat. I smear his blood by my ears, and twist up on the floor in my best imitation of a corpse.
They come in a moment later—elves, but not any elves I’ve ever seen. No crap on their face like the Dalish, and they don’t have that little hunch a city elf has, hoping you don’t notice them. They’ve got fancy armor and bows out, and they case the room like professionals. One of them says that the idol must have been moved, and his accent is your normal Ferelden, not like the Dalish, who always sound like they’re talking through a mouthful of toffee. He sees the dead elf on the ground and swears. Must’ve been embarrassed that his own arrow killed the boy he was supposed to rescue. The other one leans down by the body and says, “The Dread Wolf guide your soul to peace, brother,” and his accent does sound Dalish, only more formal, like he’s reading a poem even when he’s not, and then the elves walk out of there without another word.
So that’s what happened, my word to your Maker. The Dread Wolf wants that idol, and he’s not afraid to get his hands bloody to get it. I pity House Qintara, if he ever finds them. And I hope none of them are deep sleepers.
* * *
The Assassin sat back as the thick black curtain parted, and everyone turned to watch the servant bring in Charter’s tea. “Thank you,” she said as the woman set the cup and saucer on the table.
“Will there be anything else?” the servant asked, looking around the room.
“No, merci.”
“I’ll have another Antivan.” The Assassin held out his coffee cup, and the servant took it and left. When she was gone, the Assassin glared at the room. “Anyone else ready to share?”
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 49
