Chapter Text
“She touched us.”
The stack of correspondence grows. Spite tries to bite his hand as Lucanis reaches for one more letter. This note is from Ishanna, the Vyrantium informant running the elven underground. Zara’s blood slaves have not seen their perfect-skinned master for several months, almost long enough to regain colour in their own faces.
Illario’s been lied to. Zara is in Treviso, plotting in the shadow of whoever protects her. Thank the Maker for the Houses Cantori and de Riva, because heavens only know that nobody named Dellamorte is able to effectively defend the city from the occupation now, far less flushing out the traitor. Not Illario, crawling out of his skin with the weight of the title he both desperately wanted and couldn’t bear; and not the heir apparent hiding away in the Fade from the consequences of just what he’s become.
Illario, the idiot, is in danger. Perhaps it is out of some foolish approximation of a First Talon’s pride that he doesn’t want to admit it.
Lucanis turns over the page.
“Cinnamon skin.” Spite’s yammering would be far easier to ignore if he kept a consistent volume. But in that, like in everything else, he is a chaotic nightmare: screaming one second and barely audible the next. His voice falls to a hiss now as he stalks closer to look at the parchment over Lucanis’s shoulders. “You know. That smell. Copper. Blood. Cinnamon .”
The fact that he hasn’t yet found a way to reliably block his senses away from his parasite worries Lucanis a not-insignificant amount. He’s skilled at crawling around his defences, that nightmare version of himself.
The hot chocolate Rook had unwittingly smeared on the corner of her lip had a tinge of cinnamon on it.
“ Warm, ” hisses Spite directly into his shoulder. “Like a lantern. Underwater. Want more . Want OUT!”
For a brief second, a new horror nearly chokes him. “If you ever try touching her like that—or anyone—I will put a blade through my heart myself.”
Spite recedes into a brief, blessed silence, sensing a sincere threat. Then he begins to circle the desk in ever-tighter circumferences, starting as wide as the pantry allows him and shortening the distance until he all but breathes down Lucanis’s neck again.
“I will ,” he coos maliciously. “Have cinnamon. Feather-face. Blood. Once you… sleep.”
Lucanis yanks the leash. His head explodes with fresh pain, but Spite dims at the corners of his vision, coiling darkly at the root of his gut instead.
Blood. The old traveller’s cape that Rook had worn to Treviso was soaked in it. The worst of the staining had been washed out, but the metallic scent of it lingered in a cloud of distraction. He got a faceful of it when she’d briefly pressed her shoulder to his chin and squeezed strong enough to reveal the shape of her under the rags.
Shadow Dragons have always been freer with their affections than Crows; the side effect of a far more lax training programme. He’d forgotten the tactile realities of it until it slammed into him with the whole five feet of earnest gratitude.
WANT, Spite had shrieked. WANT WANT WANT.
There are always whole new hells to be locked into, it seems. He should appreciate his current miserable ways for what they are, before a new development makes them exponentially worse.
Like a demon of Spite discovering desire and bashing him over the head with it like a particularly blunt cudgel.
You don’t have a body, he thinks in the direction of the wall. His eyelids feel like they’ve anchors attached to them; it would be the easiest thing to plunge down into oblivion, a stone chipping off the bridge to fall into the canal. You don’t want.
“I. Want. OUT!”
Lucanis winces. The weight of consciousness presses down on him as he reaches for the mug by the quill. All the hours accounted for, thanks to the coffee that he can, by now, barely taste.
His fingers don’t shake. They will not shake.
“ Cold . You. Are cold. You won’t. Come close. You won’t open it. Liar. LIAR!”
“Bothering Rook won’t do you any good.”
“LIAR! She is ice. And LIGHT. LIGHT. Frosting. Thawing. Opening . ” The chattering rapidly gains speed until it feels like his head is splitting from the impetus. “SHE MAKES. THE BIRDSONG. I CAN HEAR. THROUGH THE DOOR.”
The chair screeches as Lucanis stands abruptly. “I think it’s exercise time.”
Spite moans and laments every second of the routine, but at least the noise of him recedes into the sound of Lucanis’s own thrumming blood. An assassin’s control was the point of him. He would wrestle it back eventually.
***
She will be normal. She will be normal, a year is not that long.
“Hey, Lorelei.” Rook’s voice hitches mid-word. Over the hundreds of knickknacks that fill the Shop’s ever-cluttered counter, the Shadow Dragon fence - Lorelei, formerly of Denerim - barely looks in her direction.
“Oh, hey, Rook.”
Beside her, Neve magnanimously constraints her smirk to a mere suggestion of it.
Lorelei’s head flies back up five seconds later. “Wait. What?”
Aha. “Missed me?” Under her Treviso-made corvid mask, Rook grins like a madwoman to the rhythms of her pounding heart. Lorelei's eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets as she pops up from behind the counter and wraps Rook in a tight hug.
What follows is—a blur of hands and voices. The secret door slides open to flood her with the smell of spice and smoke: and on the other side, there’s Bren and Mouse and her entire patrol squad, and the faulty light enchantment by the bookshelf is still hissing with disrepair, nearly a year and a half and they still haven’t fixed it—
—and Dem, whose expression jumps lightning-fast from slack-jawed stupefaction to joy as he leaps towards her to rearrange her entire spine in a bear hug—is sporting a mustache now. Ridiculous. Unthinkable. She pulls its waxed tip and gets punched in the arm for it.
The bodies that press close are warm; they stink of sweat and dust and washed-out blood. The Shop’s blue dragons circle the walls in watchful guidance.
“Hey, Rook! Took you long enough! The Arlathan girls slowed you down?”
“You’ll slow down when I bust your kneecaps, Tav,” Rook says fondly and envelops the woman—the Shadows’ best Canal District spy—in an embrace strong enough they both grunt. Dem beams at them. His hand lingers at her shoulder blades; after months and months without touching anybody at all, the relief nearly staggers her.
“Alright, alright!” Lorelei says over the general noise. “Everyone back to work! Rook, d’you have something to do besides boasting about the last job?”
“You know me.” Her grin aches all the way to the bottom of her stomach; but in a clean way, like a healing wound. “Why do literally anything else?”
“You know, we were doing bets on how long until the Viper caved,” Dem says. “Everyone knew it was just a matter of time. You’d be back eventually.”
“For the record,” Neve adds from behind her, with something terribly fond in her voice that she usually reserves for Bellara, “I won.”
“Fingers on the scale, Gallus.”
“Don’t play the game, Demetrius, play the man.”
Rook barks a laugh. Her heart feels about seven sizes too big for her chest, too constrained between her ribs to reach out to all of them. “Serves you right for trying to win a betting war against Neve damned Gallus. How much d’you lose?”
“Half an aurum.” Rook whistles sharply as Dem smiles, a little proud, a little sheepish. “You owe me, Mercar. I even kept your locker for you.”
“You did?”
He grins at her shamelessly from under that ridiculous moustache. “Pawned off everything in it, but yeah, the locker’s yours.”
She punches him; like the old days, without holding back. Dem grunts and gives back as good as he got, and—she might be coming back here after months of outdoor work, but she’s still an elf to his human noble. The squeak she gives is answered with a full-bodied chorus of laughter.
Lorelei hides her own smirk in her cuff. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Back to work! Rook, find yourself a job or I’ll find it. Nice mask,” she tacks on when the remaining Shadows reluctantly let go of their excuse to loiter, sinking back into the various cluttered corners of the Shop. “Who’d you steal that from?”
“Hey! It was a gift!”
“You don’t know anybody rich enough to give you gifts like that.”
Rook grins—with just a little bit of teeth in it. “Wanna bet?”
“We do have some news about those Despair demons on the streets,” Neve cuts in, looking simultaneously fond and impatient with her little homecoming circus. “Where’s the Viper? He should know about it. There’ll be more.”
Lorelei hesitates. “Him and Tarquin—”
“Here we go,” Rook mutters. “What does the fucking Grande T want now?”
“--have gone to each other’s throats.”
She blinks. For just a second.
“Throats? But Tarquin’s so far up his ass, he wouldn’t reach. Or did he finally crawl up that far?”
Lorelei gives her a withering look that screams of many, many days keeping the lid on dozens of young Shadows at a time.
“Go see for yourself.”
They round the corner towards a closed doorway. The noises coming from behind it are audible a solid five paces ahead: and one of the voices is the Viper’s.
“What did you expect me to do?”
“To trust me, Ashur, just to goddamn trust me!”
“The Archon’s palace was raining fire on the city! Very precise fire. And between the Venatori and the darkspawn sniffing so close to the Shop—”
“And so you thought, what? The Templar's gonna be the traitor? You know, if I did turn out to be the mole, I’d’ve at least tried to make it less obvious!”
An odd sound—one that she hasn’t heard in far longer than a year—muffles into fabric. The Viper is laughing under the mask. Bitterly, but still. “Those comments do you no favours, Tarquin.”
“You have my life! I didn’t think you needed favours too!
Rook swivels her chin towards Neve. Neve shrugs with a distinct frown and pulls at the handle. “Everything okay?”
It’s one of the Shop’s ‘war rooms’, cramped little broom closets with a stash of maps and a table to pin them to, named like that in the many ways the Shadows fashioned themselves after the remnants of the Inquisition. The two men inside are maybe a foot apart, no more, but the chasm between them feels abyssal.
“Everything is fine, Neve,” the Viper responds. His mask shifts as he regards her own. “Rook. You’re here.”
“It is fine,” Tarquin snaps before she fully appreciates the devastating lash of the other man’s tone. “I’m not in the pocket of some magister, and now he knows for sure.”
“You would’ve done the same,” the Viper replies, sternly. “We need to be sure.”
“Highbloods. You just can’t help what you think of the rest of us, can you?”
Rook opens her mouth. Neve gives her a look. She closes it, words burning like acid on the inner side of her cheeks. Immediate regret flashes on Tarquin’s face as the Viper passes them by, walking off with just enough impetus not to make it storming.
Their shoulders brush. She thinks she can see a flash of clenched teeth as his mask flutters by.
“Hey!” She grabs him by the arm. Lorelei grimaces. “Did you have Tarquin investigated?”
The Viper pauses, but doesn’t turn. “I do what I must, Rook. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“How dare you? He’s an asshole, yeah. But he’s risking his life daily being here like the rest of us. He’s your goddamn right hand. If that’s how you treat him, what do you even think of the rest of us?”
In the pounding silence, she thinks Neve and Lorelei exchange glances behind her.
“We’re your people. ” Her voice doesn’t warble. It doesn’t. “We would die for you. For this city. Why don’t you just trust us to do the right thing?”
The Viper’s voice, when he finds it, is a strangled thing.
“At least Tarquin follows orders.”
He pulls his arm free. She tries to chase, but he’s too quick. “You wanted me to go against your last order! And then you punished me for it!”
That does it—the one button that gives her some reaction. The Viper turns with a swish of his cape. Suddenly he is set with a menacing aura that has childhood terror clawing at her throat. The Viper is just a wingless dragon.
“What do you think that you’re doing here? That I’m doing here? This is not a street fight, Sihu. This is a chess game. You have to play with your mind, not your heart.”
She raises her trembling chin. “Yeah? And how’s your mind and heart doing?”
He doesn’t dignify that with a response. The hard look he gives her feels weighted, like whatever is pressing on his own shoulders somehow materialises over hers, too—and forces her into the Shop’s cold stone floor.
“Whatever update you’ve got, you can give it to Tarquin. You can consider your mission from Varric a new set of orders. Don’t let anyone recognise you around here.”
The space between them widens. Something strains and tugs at her like a too-tight string. Like whatever line he’d cast on her—all of those years ago, beside a Dustbin gutter—has finally stretched to its breaking point.
“Then why’d you ever make me a Shadow?!”
“I thought you’d be a good soldier,” the Viper snaps and disappears in the far doorway.
Rook breathes out. Breathes in. Something tastes metallic in her mouth; like blood from a bitten cheek.
Neve’s hand closes around her elbow, pulling her in the opposite direction.
“Rook,” Tarquin calls from the inside of the cramped war room.
“Fuck off.”
“He hums that goddamn song.” Tarquin is not looking at her. He’s bracing his hand on the table mutilated by years’ worth of pins and maps, speaking into the air. “ The black wings, wings, wings, you’re not things, things, things. More often than anybody wants to hear. Talks about tough decisions. Like the rest of us don't make them around here every single damn day.”
He looks up and points a finger at her chest. “You're not special, Rook. Local fucking hero. Just because that Inquisition dwarf took you on doesn't make you better than the rest of us. But—These people you freed from the Nessus shipment.”
It takes her a moment to find something in her chest that isn’t another snarl. “What about them?”
“They're fine now. We found them jobs. Thought you'd wanna know.”
Rook lets Neve pull her along. The familiar reds and blues of the Shop blur in her eyes like Dock Town’s signs in the rain.
***
Neve’s flat is a high little perch huddled close to the cliff. They make their way there with little conversation. While Neve disappears in the kitchen only to return with the pot of vilest tar Rook has ever smelled, she wanders aimlessly around the piles of papers; and thinks vaguely of homes and lack thereof.
What she owns in the world can fit in a travelling pack: a bedroll, a couple of old keepsakes, and a medallion Sarinn’revas had given her on their last day together in Arlathan. They’d parted amicably, with a kiss that was gentle enough to irritate her; but she still swiped her fingers against her mouth for days on end.
Neve fills two cups and rests them on the few inches of the table not covered in crinkled broadsheets. There is a strange smell in the air; like frying oil and dust.
“Why don’t you have your own Viper drama, Neve?”
“Because I was an adult when I joined, Rook. These are my coworkers. Allies, maybe. Not family.”
“Well, if you wanted some new family,” Rook sniffs, “I’m on the market for some.”
“You’re sweet.” On the streets, Neve’s moniker had been Ice Queen. But there’s nothing icy about her as she smiles now; never entirely devoid of that sarcastic sheen, but genuine enough to make Rook’s throat close up. “We’re getting there. At least we care about the same things.”
Outside the attic window, Halos’s voice sounds through the sea-smelling air, hawking his fish indistinctly. The drizzle intensifies into rain. The moisture in the air coalesces on the rafters above and drips into the planks of the floor in uneven intervals. It’s quiet. As quiet as Minrathous ever allows, the restless creature that she is.
Rook eyes her coffee. It smells nowhere as good as the sweet drink she was served in Treviso; somehow, that makes it both better and worse.
“Neve, on caring about the same things—”
“I know,” Neve interrupts her. “It’s all good. He was never gonna be interested in me. I’d rather cut my losses early.”
“Then to the Void with him,” Rook shoots back resolutely. “If he’s stupid enough to pass on Neve Gallus, then I’m gonna shoot my shot.“ She strolls over to where Neve leans against her desk and jerks her own head up in a once-over. “Are you a detective, madam? ‘Cause we’ve got a killer on the loose. Your looks, specifically.”
Neve laughs at her—fondly. “How’d you survive this long in this city, Rook? It should’ve eaten you up years ago.”
Rook flickers her eyes to another droplet of moisture forming on the rafter. It falls in slow motion, sinking hopelessly into the already-wet spot on the planks.
“You know what? I think it did.”
Neve hums in her throat. Seagulls cry outside, circling through the strengthening rain.
“I think it ate the Viper, too. Years ago.”
“You shouldn’t let him get to you, Rook. He’s not that towering figure you think he is. A good man, sure. Kind, too. But fallible. I never understood what made him run around picking up children.”
A distant ache makes itself apparent between her ribs. “Yeah, that. At least he gave me a clear set of orders this time. So I can be a good soldier about it.”
“Save the world.” Neve savours the words. “”Cause Dad said so.”
“He’s not—” Rook jolts, then shoots her a wounded look as Neve laughs. ” Neve. ”
“Your face! Maybe he is your father.”
“Closest damn thing I’ve got to one, anyway.”
Neve pauses. A strange expression rises out of her smile, like pity and wonder at once. “Maybe this is what he’s trying to tell you, you know.”
“That he’s not my dad?” Rook laughs bitterly. “Yeah, I got that. The soldier comment got that across real nicely.”
“No. That this is your chance to get out from under his thumb. Make your own decisions. Bring the light somewhere the Shadows can’t reach.”
“I,” Rook says softly. Varric’s words echo in her mind. She breathes out, feeling the aches accumulating in her chests: the strangeness of Arlathan, the pillars falling over Solas’s platform, the horrible bruising fading out of Harding’s temple. “It’s… a lot. All of it is a lot. And all I know is this city.”
I thought you’d be a good soldier.
The strange expression lets up. “Drink your coffee.”
“What?”
“Coffee. Drink it.” Neve’s eyes are two arrows of dark obsidian as she raises her cup at her. “When the case’s too big, and you feel like you’re drowning in it, and it’s too late in the night for sleep to be worth it, you’ve got to take a moment to drink the coffee. And then decide what the next step is going to be. One step.“
“One step,” Rook echoes softly. The black tar in her cup slips down her throat in leisurely warmth. Neve smiles at her: brittle and honest.
“So what’s the one thing you wanna do next, Rook?”
She breathes out. “Did Harding ever hear back from these Wardens?”
***
Harding has, in fact, heard back from the Wardens. Anderfels unfolds underneath them in endless swathes of cold; broken up only by a shrill squawk of an impossible, living, breathing griffon. As far as what they’ve seen, the last one of his kind.
The monster hunter—Davrin—speaks to his ward harshly. But the images out of the empty griffon aerie are too fresh out of Rook’s mind to compel anyone to gentleness.
The Crossroads are dim on their way back. She thinks something stirs in the air, like a gathering cold sweat of anticipation.
***
Here—here is the Ice Queen the old folks in the Dustbin gossip about.
“Dragons?” The word rings in Rook ears horribly. The Caretaker’s boat looms in the background; Assan bucks about between them and the dock with uncomprehending joy. “ Two dragons?”
Neve flicks her staff down. “It’s attacking Dock Town. I need you to come home, Mercar. Now!”
“Please.” Lucanis’s voice is strung in as much tension as it’d been back in the Ossuary. The comparison nearly stuns her. “Treviso has no army. No defences. It's waterborne . If the Blight gets into the canals, we’ll all die.”
There's only one right choice. Only one choice that Rook, being Rook, can make. Only one choice that Sihu Mercar, a Dustbin rat before she was anything else, can unthinkingly follow like a call of her own blood.
One step.
You’ve got to play with your mind, not your heart.
I’ll wake up from this nap, and the whole world will be your Minrathous.
“Wait.” The dread creeps closer. The right thing to do—muddies. Darkens. “Wait. Let me—think about this.”
“What?!” Something like incredulous frustration disfigures Neve’s face into a frozen mask. “We don't have time for this, Rook! Get your arse to Dock Town now!”
“Wait. Please. I'm trying—-”
The warbling fear in Neve’s voice snaps. “We’re wasting time! Come on. I'll see you in Minrathous.”
“Neve!”
But her prosthetic leg is already clacking along the Caretaker’s dock, passing Assan by as he turns mid-air and squarks curiously. Ice spreads in anxious blots from where she runs. And Rook can feel the haste on her tongue, the frustration of the wait, and turns reflexively to follow—
Something brushes at her sleeve. Not a hold—but a touch of a hand trying very hard not to grasp. She nearly snarls at the obstacle, but her voice freezes up when she yanks her chin up to look Lucanis in the face.
His expression is a mask of frozen grief, too.
“Rook. Please.”
A waterborne city. Occupied. Defenceless. Without an army. Blight in the canals. With only a group of killers for hire to defend it.
Rook—Sihu Mercar—a Shadow —says, “Minrathous is my home.”
“I,’ Lucanis replies, slowly. What’s left of light in his eyes goes out as he turns. “I understand.”
His legs shuffle, too heavy to move—but only for only a second. Then he begins to run towards the opposite dock.
Rook puts a fist up to her mouth to stifle a scream building up in her throat. Minrathous. Brilliant, cutthroat Minrathous. Minrathous with its templars and blood mages. With the Shadows and Threads and dozens of district gangs for each of its terraced levels. With each altus commandeering an army of mercenaries. With the Archon’s fucking Palance raining light and fire from the sky at each individual citizen’s noted offence. Minrathous, the bloody Heart of the Imperium, horrible and beautiful and strong.
“We're with you, Rook,” Harding says quietly at her side. “Pick one place. I'll do the other. It'll be fine.”
“Fuck. Fuck.” Her chest feels like hyperventilating. Faintly, she thinks she feels the echo of the Wolf’s vindictive laughter. “Lucanis!”
The sprinting staccato far ahead of her peters out to a halt. “Yes, Rook?”
“Wait up.”
The shock on his face---gods, perhaps this will be worth it.
“Harding, go with Neve. Bellara, too. Davrin, with me. We're doing this. I am thinking about this, gods, fuck. Please work out.” She clenches her firsts until it feels like the tension of her entire body focuses on the edges of her fingernails. “Please let this work out. Please be okay. Don't make me regret this.”
Harding’s hand briefly clenches around her wrist. Her battered face almost makes Rook stop everything. “We'll be okay, Rook.”
“ Please don't make me regret this.” It’s a prayer. She has not prayed in years. But almost none of the gods are listening as she throws herself into a mad dash into the opposite direction from Neve, every step taking her further from Minrathous.