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Chapter Text

"Maker," one of the scouts said. In the sudden silence -- broken only by the moans of the injured -- the words rang almost as loud as a shout. "She did it. She did it."

A green hole twisted in the sky, but it no longer roiled with the force of a storm. To Cassandra's Seeker-trained senses, the Veil felt weak, a thing of shreds and tatters hastily patched with mismatched thread, but it was there. The Fade no longer pressed on her awareness like sharp fingernails on a bruise, digging for blood.

"Not quite," Solas said, wearily, spitting blood from his mouth as he limped across the stony ground. "I fear it will take more power to seal the Breach completely. But I believe we have adequately proven the principle." A tilt of his head, to where Kara lay slumped, half-supported by Cassandra's arms. "We had best make sure she survives, for without her we have little hope of finishing this task."

On her knees in the dirt beside her fallen prisoner, Cassandra felt her faith settle back into place. There'd been a hollow and empty place inside her since the sky tore open, the nightmare opposite of a miracle. Losing Justinia to this disaster was a blow that she had hardly been able to reconcile with her faith in the Maker's ultimate beneficence, in the grace of Andraste's intercession. But now...

The elf's -- Kara's -- chest still rose and fell. Praise Andraste. They had -- Cassandra had -- treated the Dalish woman abominably, had accused her and threatened her and all but promised her execution, and instead of trying to plead or to bargain, the elf had lifted her chin and answered Cassandra's furious suspicion with a clear-eyed, unselfish resignation. It doesn't matter about me. I don't care if you think I did this. I'm your only suspect, I get it. And I'm an elf and a Dalish, and that's not in my favour either, is it? But right now I don't even care if you kill me for lack of anyone else to blame. In the face of that? It doesn't matter. I'll do what I can. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. However it ends. Lead and I'll follow, Right Hand.

The elf had not expected to survive. And instead of protesting, she'd looked at Cassandra with an ungrudging grin. Said It's been an honour with honest respect.

Her willing determination had killed Cassandra's ability to hold her in suspicion, leaving behind only the burn of shame. She owed the elf an apology. Not for the suspicion, that was natural enough, but for the discourtesy and lack of care that suspicion coupled with her temper had led her to.

Andraste brought you to us in our hour of need, I think, for we are still alive.

She wondered, briefly, if Leliana had come to the same conclusion. Cassandra shrugged to herself, putting the thought out of her mind -- it was a matter for later discussion -- and stood, heaving Kara's slender body up into a shoulder-carry. The elf was heavier than she expected -- or perhaps she was simply weary already. "Leliana, have we many wounded?"

The Left Hand rose from giving a mercy-stroke to one of the wounded whose spine showed through the ruin of his belly. "Only three who cannot walk. And five dead. Tailor --" a young man with Rivaini-dark skin and a thick Orlesian accent, who caught Leliana's gesture with a sharp nod "-- and his squad will carry them out. I suggest the rest of us go ahead: I want her," Leliana jerked her chin at Cassandra's burden, "somewhere safe as soon as possible." A frown. "Somewhere with a healer, but somewhere she can be carefully watched, too."

Ah. That answered Cassandra's earlier question.

Leliana's faith might run deep, but her suspicion ran deeper.

Waking up was unexpected.

Kara came back to herself by degrees, a dull blurry awakening that left her clawing her way towards consciousness like a drowning woman clawing for air. She wasn't dead. She knew that, because she hurt.

The pallet beneath her was straw, but covered in thick woollen blankets, and more wool blankets covered her body. A brazier's warmth took the dank edge off the air, but it smelled like a cell, damp stone and the faint odour of piss and dung.

So I'm still a prisoner.

Not shackled, though. It seemed she'd earned herself a slightly less rigorous confinement. She tested her range of motion as though stirring in her sleep: nothing restrained her wrists or ankles, though her ribs still ached and her shoulder throbbed with the deep pain of a healing bone-bruise, and a myriad of smaller cuts and scratches stung. Her left hand hurt like a healing burn, not the sick wrong pain of before. That was a deep relief.

She wasn't alone. Someone was humming softly, very close by.

"Ugh," Kara said. She meant to say What happened? but her tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of her mouth, and it took her far too long to peel her eyes open and fight her way to sitting up.

"You're awake!"

The torchlight and the brazier in the cell -- the same cell she'd woken in before -- revealed another elf to her now-open eyes. No vallaslin and faded livery: a city elf in someone's service, her young round face looking disarmingly harmless as she slipped from the stool she sat on to fumble with a waterskin. After a moment, she held out a full cup to Kara. "Here, you must be thirsty, you've been unconscious for over a day."

The water unstuck Kara's tongue enough for her to speak. "What happened?"

"The Breach stopped growing. They say you saved us." The girl tilted her head, her glance bright and curious but underlain with watchful caution. "It nearly killed you."

Maybe better if it had. Kara drained the cup, her stomach clenching as it realised its emptiness. The Chantry still needed someone to blame. She doubted they'd look very far for anyone else -- though she thought the Seeker might, to be fair, do her best -- when they had one of the People already in their hands. "So," she said, and tried to make her voice light. "Will there be a trial, then, or just an execution?"

"I don't know anything about that." The girl sat back on her heels. "I'd best let themselves know you're awake -- and see about getting you some proper food, since you're awake enough to take more than broth on a cloth."

But for a long moment she didn't move, watching Kara with assessing eyes, and Kara quirked her eyebrows. "You're one of her people, aren't you? Leliana's?"

"I am but a humble servant," the girl said, but there was an acknowledging irony in her tone. "I'll let themselves know you're awake. Meanwhile, try to rest."

The girl returned sooner than Kara expected, carrying a still-steaming bowl of stew and a hunk of fresh brown bread. And accompanied: Leliana entered the cell behind her, cloaked and cowled like a dangerous shadow, hands folded at her waist. Kara lifted her chin and met her eyes, cold and green in an unreadable face.

She didn't try to stand. Her muscles were weak, her body utterly weary. She'd had to lean against the wall to keep herself propped sitting up. It was all she could do to take the bowl from the girl -- she realised she didn't even know her name -- and cradle it in her lap without letting her shaky exhaustion overcome her.

"Leave us, Nialla," the human woman said, in her light Orlesian accent. "I want to speak to our Dalish friend, here, privately."

The silence stretched, after the cell door closed. Kara didn't flinch under Leliana's stare. At length, the other woman's lips twitched, faintly. "Perhaps you would care to eat, yes? You must regain your strength."

"Of course," Kara said, dryly. "I have to be healthy enough for you to put me to the question, don't I?"

"That --" Leliana shook her head, stepped a little closer. "Do you really think that?"

Kara managed a fractional shrug, fumbled the stew's spoon with her left hand. The mark on her palm looked more like a faint green scar now -- still disquieting, but its unnatural glow had become a far fainter thing than before. She succeeded in keeping her voice level. "Depends on whether or not you still think I was involved in creating the Breach, I guess. Or whether or not I'm more use to you as a scapegoat with a forced confession than otherwise, for that matter."

The stew tasted surprisingly good. Barley and thick chunks of carrot and onion swam in rich mutton broth. Now she'd made her point -- that she didn't trust Leliana, that she expected nothing in particular from her captors apart from pain -- there was no reason not to eat it. You want something from me, even if right now it's only to get more of my measure. Well, you'll have to show me at least part of your hand.

"That will not happen," Leliana said, quietly. She sighed, and squatted gracefully on her heels within an arm's reach of Kara's pallet, close enough that Kara could smell the dragonscale-and-leather scent of armour that clung to her. "Cassandra says you gave her your parole without prompting. She has very much become your partisan -- and she is not the only one, after what happened at the Breach. You stopped it, you know: though it is not yet gone, it no longer grows. What you did there saved us all, at least for now. Cassandra is more than half-convinced that the Maker sent you to us in our hour of need, and some of the soldiers are saying that it was Andraste behind you in the rift, that you are Her herald, come at her command." She made a subtle gesture with one long-fingered hand. "There are others, of course, who see things differently -- you're in this cell as much for your protection as for your confinement, since they may well attempt to take matters into their own hands. But no. I am not -- we are not -- about to torture you." A delicate pause. "But I do have questions, and it would be preferable if you were able to answer them."

Protection. Kara had been steadily working through the stew, despite her burning fatigue. Her exhaustion made parsing Leliana's words for the things the other woman didn't say difficult, but... Leliana had just told her, she thought, that the Right Hand of the Divine was on her side. For whatever good that might do her if Leliana was set against her. The Left Hand of the Divine? If there was a Right Hand, it made sense that there should be a Left. The Seeker had addressed her as an equal, and she had contradicted Brother Angry with We serve the Divine when he claimed the Seeker was supposed to serve the Chantry.  And left, for humans, was the sinister direction, the darker aspect.

A balanced pair to serve the White Divine, then, one martial and straightforward, the other... not.

Kara shook herself mentally, trying to cast off her weariness. If her surmise was true, dealing with Leliana while weak and half-addled with fatigue was a terrible idea. Probably why she's here right now. Practical. Advantage to her. "I still don't remember anything about what happened with the explosion at the Temple, you know. I can't give you answers I don't have."

"That much I will accept." Leliana cocked her head. Unsaid, beneath her words: for now. "But I do wish to know who you are, and where you come from, and what you were doing at the Conclave."

The considering light in her blue-green eyes made Kara feel... cold. And alone, and very, very vulnerable. She let herself sag, sliding sideways: she was to tired to think properly, and the bare pretence of strength would hardly fool a child, much less a woman like this one. "My name is Kara. My clan --" The gears of her mind felt rusty, but she knew where her duty lay. She was elvhen, and her first duty was to the People. Not to herself. She drew in a breath, grasping after the last of her strength, and fought for calm. "You don't need them. Whatever you say, whatever your people say about me, we both know you still need someone to blame." It took the last of her energy to met Leliana's stare. She could feel her tongue slurring in her mouth. She couldn't find the words, the common tongue twisting away from her as it hadn't in years. "Tel ma vhen. Ne banal das'sala ma vhen. Not m'people. Me.  Jus' me."

She was on her back on the blankets again, with no awareness of how she got there, Leliana's face looming over her. "Hush," the other woman said, oddly gentle, when Kara tried to struggle back up from the drowning waves of exhaustion. "Rest. I will return when you're stronger."

And that wasn't a comfort, but the darkness of unconsciousness claimed Kara again before she could hear anything else that Leliana said.

Chapter Text

Cassandra is waiting for Leliana at the top of the stairs leading to Haven's Chantry's cells. Lying in wait, Leliana amends, when she takes in Cassandra's thundercloud expression -- a thundercloud on the brink of bursting -- and unconcealed impatience.

"Cassandra."

"Well?" A growled demand.

Leliana swallows her sigh and starts down the long dim curve of the chantry nave towards their workroom. Her tread is silent on the stone, but Cassandra falls in beside her, and hers is not. "She doesn't trust us, Cassandra."

Cassandra is impatient with her caution, insistent that the elf's guilt cannot be in question -- her attitude has encouraged the soldiers and townsfolk who've taken to calling their prisoner the Herald of Andraste, as if they didn't have enough immediate problems without adding supporting blatant heresy to their number.

The Chantry in Val Royeaux will see it as heresy, at least. And if she is to uncover Justinia's true murderers, all of them, if she and Cassandra are to be able to see at least part of Justinia's vision through and end the mage-templar fighting, they cannot afford to alienate the remaining hierarchy entirely. Not yet.

A Herald of Andraste might be useful. It might be useful, but only if the elf is honest. And yes, Leliana's instincts incline her towards that conclusion -- the Dalish has a weary resignation about her, where it comes to her own fate: she seems to expect them to kill her regardless of her actual guilt -- but Leliana cannot rely on her instincts alone.

Not when the world is falling apart. Not when she has already failed so badly.

Unfortunately, no one in Haven knows anything about the elf, and if the Rivaini-dark Dalish won't answer Leliana's questions, she will have nothing but her instincts to go on.

Cassandra sniffs, and returns to the argument they've been having since before they returned to the village. "She gave me her parole. We do not need to keep her in a cell."

"I don't --" Leliana bites back a sharp response, and forces herself to project a calm she doesn't feel. "Aside from everything else," she says, levelly, "Roderick will have an apoplexy if we do not. I would prefer to have him calm until the girl recovers enough to stand unaided, at least: there are a number of sisters and brothers who share his views, and I would rather not alienate them entirely until we have to. But she doesn't trust us, Cassandra, and parole or no, I do not want her disappearing without leave. Or trying and ending up dead in the snow, for that matter. She would not answer my questions. She may be hiding something."

She's sent for Charter -- the elf was in Redcliffe at last report -- because she needs a lieutenant whose competence she trusts. There's far too much to do, far too much that needs keeping under her hand, and she feels time running away from her like sands in a glass. The more time passes, the longer Justinia's murderers have to cover their tracks. The longer they have to do something worse than the Breach, if the Breach, rather than the Conclave's murder, was their true goal.

Cassandra's snort is acid. "Perhaps I should have been the one to ask her questions, then."

"You think you would have better fortune? Nialla tells me that the second thing she asked, upon waking, was whether we meant to kill her out of hand. Then she asked me whether I would put her to the question." And the resigned look in the elf's eyes, coupled with the old scars on her skin, told Leliana the Dalish had no illusions as to what that would entail. "She fears what we will do to her, and if I cannot get her to answer my questions, then perhaps she is right to fear!" Leliana pinches the bridge of her nose to relieve the tension building in her head. She is on the edge of losing her temper, and that is never good.

Surprisingly, Cassandra doesn't return temper for temper. Instead, Cassandra regards her with something like compassion. "We need her, Leliana. You said that to me, do you remember? It is still true. And I do not believe she is guilty."

This time, Leliana does not swallow her sigh. "Very well. You speak to her, when she wakes again. Perhaps she will open up to you." And before Cassandra can smirk at her victory, she wags her finger in the other woman's face, not bothering to hide the quirk of her lips. "But since you are so well-convinced of her innocence, you may also deal with Roderick."

Cassandra takes some little while to concede.

But she does eventually.

Chapter Text

In the two days since the elf -- since Kara -- had closed the Breach, Cassandra had not had time to dwell on her mistakes. Over two hundred of Cullen's recruits had died in the fighting since the Conclave, with twice as many walking wounded and another hundred-some so badly injured they might not recover, or would be maimed if they did. Between her own body's need for sleep and the need for skilled hands to help -- with the wounded, with training, with improving the hasty fortifications thrown up around Haven -- she would have been kept busy enough. But discussions of what they should do next also occupied her time and attention, and she found it hard to restrain her frustration with Leliana's worries for the future.

Or with Roderick, for that matter.

They would declare the Inquisition. It had been Justinia's intent, and it still made the most sense. They had no leader. They would find a leader. Or make do. The Breach must be healed, the war between the templars and mages brought to an end, the Chantry reformed of the injustice that corrupted its ranks.

They would need Kara to close the rifts that Leliana's agents had reported from the lowlands. To seal the Breach more permanently. Cassandra had faith that it would be possible. In the end, justice would prevail. She held a verse from the Canticle of Exaltations before her like a shield, used it like a goad to drive herself on from her doubt.

Remember the fire. You must pass
Through it alone to be forged anew.

This was the fire. They would be forged anew. The Maker had sent them a sign, in the person of the elf. They could rise to this challenge. They could do what was needed, though the way might be hard and full of suffering. Andraste had sent them a herald.

Though Roderick and a dismayingly large proportion of the inhabitants of Haven still believed the elf had killed the Divine. Leliana told her that a maelstrom of competing rumours were already on their way down into the valleys, spurring fresh conflict.

She had been wrong about Kara. Cassandra disliked being wrong. It was like an itch under her skin. It made her second-guess herself. If she had been wrong then, what was to say she was right now?

Ugh.

And she really did not enjoy it when Roderick cornered her to harangue her about "electing a new Divine" and "transporting the prisoner to Val Royeaux for trial," which he had done twice already. She succeeded in biting her tongue and hearing him out, though only by reciting the Canticle of Trials to herself. He was a glorified clerk, but he was an influential clerk, and antagonising him would only make matters worse.

But her hold on her temper was growing very thin.

The second time Kara awoke, it was with far less exhaustion and far greater strength. She felt the difference as she surfaced to consciousness: not a slow, blurry awakening this time, but a less painful transition. Her aches were dimmer -- to judge from how different she felt, someone had used, or used more, healing magic on her as she slept.

Her left hand still throbbed. She made an experimental fist. Pain, but not like before, and it didn't change when she worked her fingers through their full range of motion, clenched them tight: no effect on the strength of her grip. Whatever strange magic had caused the mark, it didn't act like a proper wound.

Nothing she could do about that right now, though.

The city elf from before -- Kara groped after her name, heard once in the fog of exhaustion: Nuala? Nian? Nialla, that was it -- was present once again. The girl checked her over with a professional eye and handed her a mug of bone broth from a pot kept warming over the brazier. "I'll be back with proper food. And wash-water and clean clothes: I hear the Seeker wants to talk to you, and I think you'll feel better if you can face her on more level terms, aye?"

"Helpful of you." The bone broth tasted mostly of salt and grease. And delicious, which meant she really needed it. She tried not to eye Nialla with too much suspicion, but the younger elf was one of Leliana's people. There would be reasons behind her help.

Four years in Tevinter had taught her any number of lessons. The ones that left her looking for the hidden price in any offer of help hadn't even resulted in all that many visible scars. But it meant at least she was less likely to be taken unawares.

"I think you need all the help you can get," Nialla said bluntly. "Especially with Seeker Pentaghast. Drink the rest of that broth, and there's water in the skin on the hook."

The elf left through the heavy barred door. Kara heard no bolts being shot or lock tumblers falling, so maybe she wasn't quite as much a prisoner as she'd thought -- although she had caught a glimpse of torchlight reflecting from an armed guard's helm in the passage beyond. Best, then, to make no assumptions.

She drank more bone broth and filled her mug, twice, with water before she acknowledged that she was avoiding looking at her hand. Cowardice, but the mark made her shudder. It was less bright than it had been before, an uneven softly-glowing brand across her palm and part of her thumb. She thought she could see skin beneath it, now, which was disturbing and reassuring in equal measure.

It wasn't a brand like the Tevinter house-mark that had disfigured her shoulder until clan Lavellan had helped her scar it over: she had a little too much experience with healing burns, and this was nothing like it. Magic shit, shit from the Beyond. Part of her, now.

But how the fuck had it happened to her? Now that she knew it was there, the gap in her memory felt like a missing tooth, the gum still raw.

Another important question: the bald vallaslin-less not-a-Keeper. Solas. Pride. He knew something about the mark. Enough to keep it from killing her, at least. He knew something about the rifts, about the Breach. Too much, perhaps?

She'd been a slave in Tevinter, but a relatively... privileged wasn't exactly the word, all things considered, but she'd lived in the middle of a magister's household, and her tasks had kept her in close proximity with an altus. Livia Adorni  -- she drew away from dwelling on the memories, trying to concentrate on the knowledge rather than the emotions tangled up with it. Kara had survived those years by paying attention.

There were elves among the mages of the Imperium: never many, and never with any official rank. An elf couldn't be an altus, after all. But that didn't mean an elf who was also a mage couldn't be a magister's right hand, or even the voice in the shadows that moved a magister as a hand moves a glove. She'd heard whispers about them, even seen an elf apprentice once. The worst kind of flat-ear, to betray everything about their own people for the chance at power and personal safety.

She might have taken that trade, if it had been offered to her. She might have come close.

The Magisterium liked its games. Some of them were ambitious beyond any sane limits, caught up in a vision of the past that they wanted to restore. This could be one of their manoeuvres, gone horribly wrong or stupidly half-cocked. It wasn't beyond reason that young men and women who half-idolised the magisters who'd attempted the Golden City, half-sneered at them for failing, might try something grandly ambitious and ridiculously dangerous, a thumb in the eye to all of the south. Solas might be a Tevinter agent, either honestly trying to fix what was broken or with his eye out for the main chance.

"Shit," Kara muttered. Paranoia, maybe. Prideful had saved her life, by all accounts. But it twisted like a worm in her gut, and now she'd entertained the thought, she knew the suspicion wouldn't leave her.

Much like the nebulous, and wrong, absolutely wrong fear that she had not escaped Tevinter, not really. That they'd done something to her there that she could not recall, in one of the days lost to a haze of pain, that she'd been made into a weapon, or a trap, to be triggered at the right moment. That this was in fact really her fault, or at least her responsibility.

Not true. Not true. It cannot be true.

Thinking too deeply about it would drive her mad. But she could not afford to trust herself, not wholly. Not when she couldn't be sure.

Nialla returned with a bowl of honey-sweetened porridge -- honey, in the Frostbacks at this season! -- a cloth and a bucket of water that was warmer than freezing, and clothing that wasn't rank and crusty with old sweat. Kara ate the porridge, stripped, and washed herself gratefully. "Answer me a question?" she said to Nialla, when the other elf leaned against the door and said nothing. "Who's actually in charge here right now?"

"Pick a hard one, why don't you?" Nialla sounded wry and a little worried. "It's all a bit confused. Sister Nightingale and the Seeker are closest, and Commander Cullen answers to them. Though Chancellor Roderick is the seniormost out of the remaining Chantry personnel, and he's trying rather hard to convince everyone else that if he's not in charge, it's only because his rightful position has been usurped."

"I'm surprised you're telling me this." Her new clothes -- a linen undertunic, a woollen overtunic in pine-leaf green, and felt-lined homespun trousers, with an appropriate breastband and socks, may Nialla have a thousand joys, clean warm socks -- were good quality. Not quite warm enough for the weather, not without several more layers, but better than she'd expected to receive.

Nialla shrugged. "It's not a secret. I'm supposed to take you to the Seeker now, actually, if you're strong enough to walk -- which it looks like you are. But if you think you're not, she'll come to you before evening. Neither she nor the Nightingale want you overdoing it."

"Huh." Someone had cleaned her own boots, but nothing would get some of the stains out of the leather. She didn't want to ask what the butcher's bill for all the excitement had been. More things for Brother Angry to blame me for. "You may as well bring me to the Seeker, then." See how far her freedom of movement extended. See if the Nightingale was testing her. Kara kept her grimace from her face. "I wouldn't want to keep her waiting."

There was a guard in the passageway outside the cell. He fell in behind Kara as Nialla led her up into the chantry proper, to where light lanced through high glass windows onto a bustle of activity. Activity that came to a halt when Kara emerged into view.

Some of the humans stared outright. Some merely slowed in what they were doing -- it looked as though the chantry hall had been turned into a makeshift infirmary for walking wounded -- and eyed her sidelong. Hope in some faces. Suspicion in just as many others. Kara didn't flinch, following Nialla through the rising susurrus of whispers.

Another passageway, this one an annexe off the main chamber, and deserted save for a pair of guards. And a set of raised voices, only slightly muffled by the heavy door at the passageway's end.

"--for all you know, she intended it this way!"

"I do not believe that."

Brother Angry, and Cassandra Pentaghast.

"Shit," Nialla said, quietly. "I didn't think the chancellor'd be here already." She flashed a glance over her shoulder at Kara, half-uncertain. "You want to hide behind a tapestry until he leaves?"

"That is not for you to decide." A marked increase in volume now, with a wavering edge. "Your duty is to serve the Chantry."

If I flinch from Brother Angry, what else will I flinch from? It's not like his desire to see me executed seems likely to just go away. "No," Kara said, over the sound of the Right Hand of the Divine declaring her intent to serve principles -- Chantry principles, whatever the blighted shit that meant. "May as well get it over with."

Nialla shrugged, as if to say, Your funeral, and hammered on the heavy wooden door.

"Maker preserve us, what is it now? Come!"

Kara steeled herself, and let Nialla show her in.

Chapter Text

Five humans in a stone chamber large enough to hold them and still have room for a wide table strewn with papers. Green-tinged daylight fell through one high, thick-glassed window, but yellow lamplight provided most of the illumination, supplemented by a handful of candles: it glittered orange from the gleaming armour of the two templars who stood guard at the door, and brought out reddish highlights in Cassandra Pentaghast's short dark hair where she leant on the table, beside a familiar cowled figure -- Leliana, her arms crossed, features impassive. Their body language united them in opposition to the red-robed chancellor -- Roderick, frustration evident on his features and in the tight set of his shoulders. Behind him, a wall hung with tapestries so age-darkened that their original subjects could not be made out.

Kara had a brief moment to take in the tableau. Only a moment, for as soon as he saw who entered, Roderick's expression soured to the consistency of vitriol. "Chain her! I want her prepared for travel to the capital for trial!"

The templars didn't exactly leap to do Brother Angry's bidding. Kara lifted her chin and waited. If they chained her for a trial, well. She'd expected no better.

"Disregard that." Cassandra straightened, her cool glance falling on the templars. "And leave us."

Warmth -- not quite relief -- stirred in Kara's stomach. But fear, too. Alone among humans, and she didn't know if she was herself. Her own. If the green mark was a trap.

"You walk a dangerous line, Seeker," Roderick said, and Kara hated that she agreed with him even a little.

"The Breach, Chancellor. It is stable, but it is still a threat, and I will not ignore it."

Ah. She could understand if the Seeker saw her as a tool. A useful one, not to be destroyed untimely, but a tool nonetheless. That, at least, made sense. But... "Not that I particularly want to agree with Brother Angry here" -- Kara held up her green-glowing hand, and watched Roderick flinch -- "but there's a hole in the bloody sky, Seeker, and none of us know how the blighted shit I got this thing. Not even me. Keeping me under guard is only sensible, under the circumstances."

"You truly believe that?" Leliana, voice bland, eyes all calculation.

Kara shrugged, cold inside. "It doesn't matter what I believe. You don't need to put a pretty face on it, Sister. While the Breach remains, I'm useful to you alive. When I stop being useful to you, your chancellor there will likely have his way with some mockery of a trial. Even if you accept my word for my ignorance -- even if you accept my innocence, or my parole -- this shit on my hand is strange and possibly dangerous, and based on what your colleagues told me on our way to the Temple, maybe only way to solve that fucking great problem in the sky. I won't withhold my co-operation in working to close the Breach because you decide to take precautions that I'd take, in your place." She set her jaw, watching Leliana's unchanging expression. "I accept I'm your prisoner, Left Hand. Do me the courtesy of not pretending otherwise, and I'll do you the courtesy of being a polite one."

She found herself breathing hard, her hands fisted at her sides, and clasped them together behind her back. No one could see them tremble, there. Shit, she didn't want to die. She didn't want to spend her last days -- or weeks -- as a prisoner among these Chantry folk, waiting for them to tire of her and consign her to Roderick's doubtless untender mercies. She'd only stopped waking in nightmare sweat from dreams of Tevinter in the last half-season. But it didn't matter. It couldn't be allowed to matter. She had a duty to the People, who lived in the world beneath the sky.

We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.

But she had submitted to... much, before, when the only thing she could win from it was to breathe another day. Should she do less now?

"So polite," Leliana murmured, lightly ironic. "Well, Chancellor?"

"She is still a suspect!"

"Not," Cassandra said, flat and glaring, "to me."

"Ah, Chancellor." Leliana's voice chilled Kara's bones. "Someone was behind the explosion at the Conclave. Someone Most Holy did not expect. Perhaps they died with the others. Or perhaps they have allies," a weighted syllable, "who yet live."

"You suspect me?" Roderick's affront came near a shout.

"You and many others." Quiet, casual menace.

"But not this one?" Brother Angry flapped his hand at Kara. "This --"

"I heard the voices in the Temple," Cassandra said, and her voice was tight with angry grief. "The Divine called to her for help. Chancellor --"

"So her survival, that thing on her hand, all coincidence? Andraste's holy grace, I never thought the pair of you could be naive before this!"

"Not coincidence." Cassandra's eyes were dark and clear and frighteningly certain. "Providence. The Maker sent her to us in our darkest hour."

Providence. Kara snorted. "You've changed your tune since we first met, Seeker. Now I'm innocent and sent by your Maker?"

"I was wrong about you." Cassandra's gaze met hers, steady and uncompromising. "Perhaps I am wrong still, or again. I will not, however, pretend you were not exactly what we needed, when we needed it."

"You realise I'm an elf, right? Dalish? Your Maker is no business of mine." Clever, Kara. Antagonise one of the few people who might be your ally. And don't forget she's a force of nature on the battlefield, too. She bit her tongue. She should know better. She did know better, but years in Tevinter hadn't broken her entirely of the instinct that channelled fear into fight.

"I have not forgotten. The Maker does as He wills. Whether or not you believe, I do."

Lamplight softened the hard edges of Cassandra's sharp-planed features, but nothing could have made them soft. Kara exhaled, lowering her gaze in deliberate submission. The woman had treated her better than she'd expected in their brief acquaintance, but there was no point in provoking the anger that simmered under her tightly-controlled exterior. "Forgive me, Seeker. I meant no disrespect."

Cassandra huffed. Leliana laid a gentling hand on her arm, the gesture one of long familiarity. "Providence or no," she said, her tone unreadable. "The Breach remains." Her glance rested on Kara, still with that clockmaker's look, as though she wanted to peel off Kara's skin and investigate the mechanisms beneath. "And your mark is still our only hope of closing it."

Roderick had been silent up until now, quiet -- perhaps even thoughtful -- in the wake of Cassandra's quelling faith. But Leliana's words broke his stillness. "This is not for you to decide, Leliana! You do not have the right to act for the Chantry --"

Cassandra seized a large parchment from a high shelf and spread it on the table. The sweep of her arm dislodged a heavy book, and the thud of its fall stopped Roderick's words. Her words were level, controlled, almost quiet. "You know what this is, Chancellor?"

Dense lettering in an ornate Orlesian hand covered the creamy surface, save at the very bottom. There, below a plain signature that Kara squinted to read -- Justinia V, by the Grace of the Maker Divine of His Chantry -- three seals in purple, white and gold weighted the parchment: the Chantry's sunburst; a seal akin to the sunburst-and-eye that decorated the Seeker's surcoat, but with a sword behind the eye; and a complex design that Kara supposed must be the Divine's personal seal.

Cassandra didn't give Roderick a chance to reply. "A writ from the Divine, granting us the authority to act. As of this moment, the Inquisition is reborn, by Justinia's authority and in her name." She advanced on the chancellor, and he retreated from the intensity in her gaze. "We will close the Breach, we will find those responsible, and we will restore order." Her pointing finger -- dangerously close to the chancellor's throat -- emphasised her words. "With or without your approval."

Well, shit. Kara took a step back, putting the wall at her back. The air crackled with tension, the edge of violence. But Roderick merely turned his back on Cassandra in utter dismissal. "I suspect you will live to regret this, Seeker. But I will leave you to ruin us all without my help."

The door fell shut behind him.

"Well," Leliana said, into the silence. "Today, Cassandra? You might have warned me."

Cassandra sighed and scraped her hand through her short hair. "If not now, then when?" she demanded. But there was a faint catch in her voice, as though now the moment had passed, she found herself on shaky ground.

What the blighted shit is an Inquisition? Kara held her tongue. She had no illusions that the other women had forgotten her presence, but if they were prepared to ignore her for a few moments, she was more than willing to be ignored.

"Rebuild the Inquisition of old." Leliana shook her head. "We aren't ready. It may have been Justinia's directive, Cassandra, but we have no leader, no numbers, and now, no Chantry support. We shall have much work to do to surmount these difficulties."

"But we have no choice." Leather creaking, Cassandra dropped heavily into a chair. "With the Breach... We must act now." Her glance found Kara, dark and full of faith. "With you at our side."

"Shit." Kara scrubbed her knuckles against her face. "Great. What the blighted shit is an Inquisition, anyway?"

"It preceded the Chantry." Leliana turned her wrist, an elegant gesture. "If you are truly interested in the history, Cassandra can tell you more later. Suffice to say that we" -- subtle stress on that syllable, and a sidelong look at Cassandra -- "have set ourselves apart from the Chantry -- declared, if you like, independence and claimed the right to act based upon a charter prepared by the late Divine. We have a little time before we need to worry about whether they will organise to oppose us. It will take time to find a new Divine, and the Chantry as a body will wait for her direction -- though individual parts of it will not."

"We cannot wait. That much is plain from the sky." Cassandra eyed Leliana, half-challenge, half-exasperated affection, and sighed again. "But so many grand clerics died at the Conclave... We are on our own. Perhaps forever."

"So." Kara looked at Leliana, carefully to keep her body language calm, unchallenging. "What does that mean for me?"

Leliana's eyes held the suggestion of a smile, though her lips didn't twitch. "You agree we need to take precautions. You will give us your parole, and during the day you will be free to move around Haven as long as you are accompanied either by Cassandra, myself, or one of the guards I will assign to you. At night, you will return to your current accommodations -- though we should be able to furnish them a little better. If you cooperate with us, we can treat you as an honoured guest, no? But as you have observed, your mark may be as much danger as boon. Even to you. Perhaps especially to you."

"You should know," Cassandra interjected, "while some believe you chosen, many still think you guilty." She braced her forearms on the table, fingertips touching the parchment she had spread out, and levelled another dark stare at Kara. "The Inquisition can protect you, if you are with us."

That damnably earnest tone again, as though the Seeker wanted to protect her. As though she gave a damn.

"We can also help you." Leliana flicked a significant glance at Kara's hand. "It nearly killed you once already. So you have every reason to help us, yes?"

Kara leaned back against the wall. The rough stone pressed hard against her spine, cold and immovable. As immovable as Leliana's will, she suspected. "I gave the Seeker my parole already. But I'll give it to both of you now. You have my word. I won't run, and I won't raise a hand or a weapon against you, or anyone with you -- in the service of this Inquisition. I will honour the conditions you've placed on my freedom, and I will cooperate with you fully in the attempt to fix that bloody great hole in the sky for good." She met Leliana's gaze and refused to flinch. "Does that satisfy you?"

"For now," the other woman said, mild and implacable.

"Well, it satisfies me." Cassandra rose to her feet and extended her arm to Kara. Her glance was warm. "I have faith. You can help us fix this, before it's too late."

It took a moment before Kara realised what the Seeker meant for her to do. She flushed -- unable to help it, angry and embarrassed, this was the first time one of the shem'len had offered her their hand as an equal, to seal a pledge -- and clasped the proffered forearm with more force than she'd intended. "I'll try, Seeker. Blight take me if I won't bloody well try."

Chapter Text

Leliana excused herself --  I have much to do, Cassandra, now that we have declared our intentions: I will inform Cullen and Lady Montilyet, and put the arrangements we discussed into practice. Stay here for now and I will have food sent in to you. You both look hungry -- and Kara found herself alone in front of the Seeker's steady brown gaze.

"Well," Cassandra said, and gestured to a place opposite her at the table. "You should sit. You aren't recovered yet. Even I can see that."

"I'm upright and walking." Kara slid into the indicated chair, and met Cassandra's penetrating stare with a wry glance. If I can walk, I can work. If I can work, I can fight. Experience taught hard lessons. Habit born in Tevinter had kept her standing until the human had indicated she could sit, though her muscles were tired -- she could feel that her body would take some days to recover its usual level of energy. "That's good enough for most purposes, Seeker."

Cassandra snorted. An uncomfortable silence descended between them. Kara clasped her left hand under her right in front of her on the table to keep from fidgeting. She could outwait silence, until she had cause to speak.

But her left hand glowed green now, faintly luminous. It drew the Seeker's eyes, and her lips pressed together. "Does it trouble you? The mark."

"It doesn't seem to have affected my ability to use the hand, if that's what you're asking." Kara flexed her fingers in demonstration. "It aches, a little, but no worse than a bruise. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. What is it? Where did it come from? What will it do to me?"

"We will find out."

"Is that a threat or a promise, Seeker?"

"A promise." Cassandra could look reassuring, if she tried. She had a solid presence, a sense of conviction about her. Kara found it disturbingly easy to believe her. "Even though we didn't close the Breach, you did everything we asked of you. I respect that."

"So." Kara leaned back in her chair. "What now?"

Cassandra shrugged. "We wait for food. And then I suppose I could show you around Haven, before I return to my duties. Since your mark is the only thing that can close the rifts, I suspect you and I will be working together closely over the coming days and weeks, until we figure out how to close the Breach for good."

"No questions for me? I was expected more of an interrogation, Seeker." Kara grinned to take the sharp edges from her words, but she meant it. After Leliana's visit to her cell, she had expected to be pressed more closely.

"There is hardly a point in questions, if you will not answer them." Cassandra raised an eyebrow. "Leliana told me you feared to tell her anything about yourself. Have you changed your mind?"

Being too close-mouthed will win you no friends. Kara weighed what she knew of the woman in front of her. Even in her anger and grief, the Seeker hadn't been cruel. Instead, she'd been open to the idea she might be wrong, willing to accept new information as it came to her, and not in a calculated fashion, either. It was as though she didn't know how to be otherwise: passionate and fierce but underneath it, fair. "For you?" The corner of her mouth lifted, wry. "I think I might have."

Cassandra blinked once, slow startlement, before she recovered herself enough to snort. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted. "Food," Nialla said cheerfully, shouldering her way through the heavy door with a laden tray. She inclined her head briefly in the Seeker's direction, and nodded once to Kara. "Nightingale's orders, Seeker."

The tray, it transpired, bore bread and cheese and a pottage of beans cooked with onion and carrots. Kara's mouth watered at the scent -- her body plainly hungrier than she'd given it credit for -- as Nialla laid bowls on the tabletop's scarred surface and retreated once more.

"So. Ask what you will." Kara took a mouthful of the pottage, warm and satisfyingly flavoursome on her tongue. "I don't promise I'll answer you, mind you."

Cassandra tilted her head, an oddly delicate gesture for so muscular a woman. "In that case, perhaps you should simply tell me about yourself. Though I confess I should like to know what brought a Dalish elf to the Conclave."

"That part's simple enough." And unlikely to cause Cassandra to develop more suspicions. "My Keeper asked me to. The war between mages and templars is -- or was, at least -- spreading like wildfire across the south, and Keeper Istimaethoriel wanted an observer here, to see at first hand what came of the peace talks, and what your Chantry would do about it." Kara's smile felt rueful. "Lavellan -- her, our, clan -- is more inclined to look outwards than most among the People. Thoriel understands we must live in the world that we have, not the one that we wish for. That's kept Lavellan alive and strong in the Free Marches."

"I did not know your people roamed that far north." A note of surprise in Cassandra's voice. "Clearly I'm mistaken." A pause, while she stirred her spoon in her pottage. "You said her clan, first, when you spoke of your Keeper..."

Trust the Seeker to pick up on that. Kara shrugged, deliberate. "I wasn't born to Lavellan, Seeker. They took me in a few years ago." She kept her voice light, without emphasis. "I owe them for that, because I would've probably died otherwise, but --" but they can't forget that I was a slave in Tevinter, that I submitted and lived. She shut her teeth on her bitterness. The hunters and healers of clan Lavellan saw in her a living representation of some of their worst fears, and she couldn't blame them for that. And on top of that, the oldest lore told them that living among humans had caused the elvhen to lose their immortality, and in the years Kara had dwelled with Lavellan, Istimaethoriel had sent her to deal with human markets and human merchants again and again. "But it makes me a bit of an outsider."

It was an old, lonely ache. Fortunately Cassandra only inclined her head. "I did not know the Dalish trained as warriors, either," she said. "Yet I have seen you fight. Are your skills common among your people?"

Cassandra could hardly know how much that question cut. Kara's spoon scraped the bottom of the pottage bowl. She started on the cheese, to gain time to compose herself. She'd been a hunter, before Tevinter. But the Imperium held to old customs, and older entertainments. Some of their entertainments were bloody. It had been the whim of the altus Livia Adorni that had seen her trained to the sword, and sent into private arenas to fight for the amusement and profit of Tevinter's wealthiest citizens.

Her feelings about that -- and about Adorni -- were far more complicated than simple hate.

"Not that common." The cheese had a complex, nutty taste, pale and softer than the sharp cheddar that was a Fereldan staple. Kara concentrated on the flavours, on the present, the grain of the table under her fingers and the way the light played across Cassandra's hair. She could bring herself to tell part of the truth, if not all of it. "But Lavellan needed coin, so I spent the last three fighting seasons with a mercenary company in the Marches. It gave me incentive to learn."

Cassandra gave her a sceptical stare. "I think there are things you aren't telling me."

Kara spread her hands. "I'm all of twenty-seven years old, Seeker. Hard to fit a life into a few sentences." Frustration crept into her voice. "What else do you want to know? My close kin? If I've any living, I don't know where they are. I've no close friends, nor lovers neither. I've fought for money, stolen for food, and whored to kept myself alive more than once: should I tell you the exact particulars of every occasion?" She bit her tongue. "Forgive me, Seeker. The last few days have been unnerving."

"Unnerving. Yes." Cassandra's shoulders tightened. "It is unnerving for us all." She pushed back from the table. "Come, if you are done eating. I will show you Haven, unless you wish to rest."

Rest. Kara thought of Leliana's conditions, the parole she had freely given, and shook her head. She had no desire to return to a dungeon cell so soon -- even if her confinement were to be a matter of courtesy. "I'd like to see the village." She forced a smile. "Though I sincerely hope no one throws any rocks at me this time."

That first day, Cassandra had guided her about the village, and whispers followed them -- and occasional bows, and salutes, and the murmur Herald of Andraste. Cassandra seemed alive to her discomfort, and confined herself to pointing out landmarks and individuals -- apothecary, quartermaster, stables, tavern, smithy, baths, rookery -- rather than making introductions. No rocks flew, but unease ate at Kara's gut. So many eyes, looking at her.

Two days passed, and she regained her strength. She kept to herself, though she couldn't bring herself to remain within the Chantry walls. She paced along Haven's icy lanes, trailed by Nialla or sometimes a different guard, the woman Rylen, the chill of late Frostback autumn brutal even beneath her cloak, and spoke hardly at all. She didn't see Leliana at all during those days, and Cassandra only once, in passing. Without Cassandra by her side, it was easier, in some ways -- the humans muttered knife-ear or rabbit instead of Andraste's herald, when they noticed her, unless they looked closely. Rumours swirled about the Nightingale and the Seeker and plans to close the Breach by calling on the aid of mages, templars, or even the heathen qunari from far-off Seheron.

She avoided Solas entirely. Neither Dalish nor city elf, and too knowing by half: he would recognise her as suspicious of his motives, and she didn't need to alienate him. Not, at least, until she knew more.

Brother Angry stayed away from her, though she saw him, sometimes, watching her from a distance. She couldn't decide whether to be worried or glad at his restraint.

When Nialla came with breakfast on the third morning, Kara, chafing at the lack of occupation, asked her for something useful to do.

"Useful?" Nialla quirked an eyebrow. Kara hadn't forgotten that the other elf was Leliana's agent, and her guard: careful scrutiny (and Nialla's amused confirmation) had made it plain the other woman carried a significant number of daggers about her person, and at least one garrotte. But Nialla had been kind, and respected her silences, and Kara didn't need to trust her to find her presence comforting. "The quartermaster probably needs extra hands, I guess. Or Cullen's troops -- they're putting up some defences on the lake approach. Which would you rather?"

"Quartermaster, I think," Kara said, quashing the small voice that wanted her to hide. She flexed her marked hand. No hiding from that. But if she pulled on a glove -- and gloves were necessary in the cold -- she could try.

The quartermaster was a ginger Fereldan with mismatched armour and a big voice. She gave Kara a distracted glance as she approached -- Nialla trailing her, as usual -- and pointed at a tall human, folding some blankets nearby. "If you're here to clean, Hess can get you a bucket and a broom. Anyone calls you knife-ear, come to me."

The easy equation of elf and servant so common among the shem'len would always flick Kara in raw places. But right now cleaning seemed like a much more straightforward task than thinking -- and her pride wasn't worth standing on. She nodded silently, collected the named implements, and followed Hess's direction to the infirmary.

"You know." Nialla had claimed her own implements and followed her. "I haven't had to scrub a floor since I started working for the Nightingale. I haven't missed it."

The chamber they'd been directed to had obviously served as a surgery, and hadn't been cleaned since its last patient. Blood and other fluids had pooled and dried on the wooden floorboards, where they'd been trodden over with now-dried mud. "It needs to be done, and I can do it." A half-shrug, which Kara accompanied with a mocking grin. "But I'll do it alone, if your duty means you should stand guard at a safe, clean distance."

"Don't think I'm not tempted." Nialla rolled her eyes. "Come on, then. Let's see if I've still got floor-scrubbing moves."

Kara huffed a laugh, and bent to work.

Cassandra found them as they returned the cleaning implements to the quartermaster's care, shivering as the frigid breeze froze the sweat of their labours on their clothes. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you --" Her glance took in their dishevelment "-- What have you been doing?"

"Cleaning the infirmary, Seeker." Kara grinned as Cassandra's eyes widened. "I like to be useful."

"Plainly." Cassandra glared at the quartermaster. "I do not know if you realise, Threnn, but this is the woman who can close the Breach. She is not a servant."

"Oh." The quartermaster -- Threnn -- swallowed faintly. "She's her."

"Yes," Cassandra growled, to Nialla's ill-hidden amusement. "Treat her with more respect in future." To Kara: "Come with me, if you will. We have matters to discuss in the war room."