Chapter Text
“So tell me again why-”
“Shh.”
“Tell me again why we’re in the library.”
“Because,” Anders whispered, “Some of the books Karl had were library books. If there’s anyone who can tell us information about him, it’s the librarians. They’re notoriously nosey. I hear the old women in town complaining about them.”
It had been a few days since my calls to my family, and we’d gotten nowhere fast on the issue of my brother. Aveline was still working hard on it, now focusing on trying to find the murder weapon. She was also still locked in a battle with the knight-commander. But if anyone could hold her ground against the pressure of corruption, it was Aveline.
Anders called me up and asked me to help him follow a lead on Karl. I just hadn’t expected that lead to take us to the library.
Holding a stack of Karl’s books, I followed Anders to the circulation desk. The library was mostly empty, since it was before the elementary schools got out, so we’d have time to ask questions without interruption. The problem was, no one was behind the desk. After a little exploration, we found the librarians. One was on a ladder, setting a book on a high shelf. The other was the spotter.
I realized that I recognized the librarians at the same time Anders did. He gasped loudly, and I dragged him behind the nearest shelf, clamping a hand over his mouth.
“Isabela and Fenris both work here?” I hissed.
“I didn’t know!” Anders said, a little too loudly. “Well, I knew Isabela volunteered here, but I didn’t know he was here too. Shit.”
“Anders, I know about your history with Fenris. He told me about it.”
Anders glanced over his shoulder, his face painted with guilt. “It was the wrong thing to do. I know that now. But if we’re being honest with each other,” he sighed, “I know you’ve also been screwing him on the side.”
My heart dropped into my stomach and began boiling in the acid. It wasn’t like I’d been trying to hide it, but I’d also never told him about it personally. “I’m sorry for not telling you. But we agreed this was going to be a loose thing. And I… I like you both a lot.”
Beside us, a book snapped shut. Anders and I both jumped.
It was Isabela. Because of course it was.
“Come on, fellas. No making love in the library.” Isabela said, before using the book to push us apart. “At least not in a place so many people can see you. What is this, amateur hour?”
“We weren’t-” We began.
“I know, you were arguing. I could hear it. This is a library. Anything louder than a whisper might as well be screamed from the rafters.”
“Shit.” Anders whispered. “Does Fenris know we’re here?”
“Of course he does. You practically yelped when you saw him. I’m only here cause he asked me to make fun of you.” She stuck her head out beyond the shelves, waving. Through the stacks I could see Fenris rolling his eyes. “So what’s the deal here? Who’s mad at who, and how is the new kid involved in all this? Cause I remember when you guys worked up at the Pearl, you were best buds.”
“New kid? I’m 27.”
“Yeah, but you’re new.”
Now it was my turn to roll my eyes.
Anders cleared his throat. “Fenris doesn’t like me because I left the Pearl without him. I wanted to apologize, but he refuses to talk to me.”
“And I’m caught in the middle because, well,” I crossed my arms and leaned back, trying and failing to look nonchalant. “I’m kind of fucking them both.”
Isabela laughed out loud, loudly enough that Fenris shushed her. “Oh, now, that is rich. Move to town and immediately become the center of an edgy gay love triangle.”
Almost in unison, Anders, Fenris and I all shushed her. Most of the people I’d met in town had been surprisingly open-minded about everything, but that didn’t mean everyone would be. Gamlen was an example of that.
“Come on, guys. This room’s empty except for Merrill, and do you really think she’d give a shit?”
I hadn’t even noticed Merrill. She had the uncanny ability to be able to hide herself in plain sight, and was currently seated at a table about fifteen feet away. She waved at me. I waved back.
“Can we please just do what we came here to do?” Anders asked, his voice sounding increasingly more desperate.
Isabela cocked an eyebrow. “You mean you didn’t come here for public library sex?”
“No!”
Somehow, Isabela already knew about Karl’s disappearance, so Anders explained the importance of the books. They were a step in helping us to establish a timeline of Karl’s whereabouts before he went missing. And the information within them could help give us an idea about what Karl was researching.
Isabela took us over to the section of the library containing books on the occult and supernatural. The whole time, I could see Fenris following us, just a few rows behind. I knew he wanted to know what happened with Karl too. He’d told me that he liked Karl as a person. Perhaps they were even friends.
Flipping through a few of the books, each of them had a date due slip showing the initials KT over and over again. He’d borrowed these books repeatedly. Some more than others.
So we knew he’d returned each of those books. Some as recently as a week before he disappeared. But with the books we’d brought, we knew when they were due, but we didn’t know when he’d borrowed them. Some of the books could only be rented for two weeks, while others could be rented for a month or more. It made it impossible to make a timeline with just the return dates.
While we browsed through the books, Isabela went back behind the desk to see if they had any records of when Karl borrowed the books. That left Anders and I at the shelves, with Fenris watching us between the shelves. And Merrill, who was peering at us over a book she wasn’t reading.
“I’ll give him credit,” I said, as I jotted down some of the dates Karl had returned books by, “he was diligent about returning books to the library.”
Anders cracked open a book that looked older than Kirkwall. “He respects books. And he especially respects the library, how they provide free knowledge to all who ask.”
“He’s a good man.” Fenris had finally appeared in our aisle, leaning against the shelf but not putting weight on it. “I never could understand what he saw in you.”
“Rich, coming from you.”
“At least Karl knows the value of loyalty.”
Things were starting to get bitter fast. Stepping between the two of them, I held up my hands. “Do we really have to do this here?”
“We’ve never been able to do it anywhere else.” Anders leaned around me to glare at Fenris. “He’s spent our entire time in Kirkwall avoiding me.”
Fenris mirrored Anders. “It started when you ran away without a word.”
“I wanted to tell you but I… I couldn’t find you.”
“Take a guess as to where I was.”
Fenris tried to take a step forward, but I stopped him with my hand. “For the love of all that is holy, we are still in the library. And Merrill is right there.”
Merrill shrugged. “I’m just happy to be included. Really, I don’t care if you get into a fight. I think that’d be funny.”
“Thanks, Merrill.” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Of course. Whatever you need.”
“Can we please,” I put a hand to Anders and Fenris’s shoulders, “just give it a rest. For now. For Karl’s sake.”
Anders took a step back and held his hands up in defeat. “For Karl’s sake, without question.”
Fenris seemed to relax a little. “Fine. But as soon as we locate Karl, I will make you dig your own grave.”
“Fenris,” I warned.
Blessedly, Isabela reappeared at the end of the row, binder in tow. It contained the records of who borrowed books and when. Before getting to Karl’s records, she made sure to point out the books that Aveline borrowed, most of which were sappy romance novels. Doing some studying for the real thing, apparently.
Karl’s records were long. Longer than almost anyone else’s. Nearly all of the books he rented were about the supernatural, with a few novels smattered in-between. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to them. The books he’d rented right before his disappearance were all rented on the same day, three days before Anders had called him to check on him. That made it about a month and a half ago. Almost two.
So somewhere between the day he rented them and when Anders called him, he disappeared. That was good to know.
Now that we had a better timeline, we could work from there. Try and find out where else he’d been at that time. And maybe try and figure out what all those books had in common. But without knowing much about the occult, it wouldn’t be easy to put the pieces together.
“Oh, I’ve read that book.” The high-pitched voice of Merrill whipped us out of our investigative stupor. Apparently, she’d moved to looking over Isabela’s shoulder. “It’s very dark.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What’s it about?”
“All kinds of nasty things, but with a focus on how they connect to this area. Most of it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, since it was written by a quack, but it does have a really good section on red lyrium.”
Red lyrium? I’d heard of regular lyrium. A mineral, used almost like a steroid to give certain soldiers an advantage in battle in the middle ages. As far as I knew, we’d stopped using it because the supplies were depleted, and it’d cost too much to mine it. But I’d never heard of red lyrium.
“What does it say about this red lyrium?” Anders asked.
“That it’s lyrium that’s somehow been altered, changed to make it glow red instead of blue. It can really mess you up. There’s reports of it affecting peoples’ minds, or giving them cancers, or turning them into monsters.”
“And it’s got something to do with the area?”
“The author’s got this idea that it’s growing somewhere in the woods here. But, like I said, he’s a quack, so what does he know?”
Flipping through a few of the other books of Karl’s we brought, Merrill looked intrigued.
“Well, I haven’t read all of these. I like the ones with diagrams and illustrations best. But the ones I have read all also speak of red lyrium.”
“That must be our connection.” I said. “Thank you, Merrill. That was incredibly helpful.”
I got permission from Isabela to keep the books for a while, so we could do more research on this red lyrium business. Now that we knew what Karl was looking into, we could look into it ourselves. But if that was what made him disappear… It was a bridge we would cross when we got there.
It was funny. Looking up at my companions over the books, we felt like quite the team. All working towards similar goals. Bringing different skills to the table. I liked it. I’d never been great at making friends, so to already have so many people as acquaintances or more was a pleasant change.
And sure, we all had our share of issues. But I trusted these people. They wanted to find Karl. To find who murdered my brother. They loved this town and her people despite everything that’s happened.
I did something I’d never done before. I invited them all to dinner. Called Aveline and Varric, too.
That night, we had dinner at the Hanged Man. And, despite the circumstances that had brought us together in the first place, we were able to sit and drink coffee and laugh for a few hours.
I sat between Anders and Fenris. I knew tensions were still high between them, but I wasn’t going to allow fighting tonight. A well of emotion flooded in my chest each time I saw either of them smile. How was I supposed to choose between them? I was, against my better judgement, quite smitten by the both of them.
This couldn’t end well, of course. It just meant I’d have to enjoy it while it lasted.