Homecoming
You watch from the battlements until the progression is out of sight, sulking the same way you had when Solas and Cole left for Crestwood. This time, however, there’s no Iron Bull to come harass you and snap you out of your depressed fugue, so you have to pull yourself out of it.
It’s too early to head into the rotunda just yet, but you don’t feel like eating breakfast. You wind up just sort of vaguely walking around the battlements for lack of anything better to do. It’s cold as the Void up there, but you’re pretty well bundled up. It won’t be enough to keep you from being chilled as the weather continues its slow descent into winter, but for now, you’re comfortable enough. But you’re not the only one walking the battlements that morning. You’re so unlucky that you’re almost not surprised when you see Commander Rutherford gazing out over the mountains… or when he immediately turns and spots you before you can hightail it.
“Ah, ‘Just Emma,’” he says cheerfully, and you approach, a forced smile on your lips. At least you know that after years of practice, it looks natural. “Out for a morning stroll, or do you have another early-morning delivery?”
“Just out for a walk before work, Commander,” you reply politely. Hopefully he won’t keep you long.
“I’m glad we happened into each other,” he begins, and you groan internally. What is it now? Another chess game? Does he want your opinion on something that your opinion really doesn’t matter on? “We were interrupted, before…”
“By a goat, as I recall,” you say, squinting out over the mountains. “With our luck, this time it will be a horse thrown at the walls. Whatever happened to the people responsible, anyway? I’ve been so busy that I haven’t really been listening to the rumor mills.”
“It was an Avvar chieftain, the father of the man the Inquisitor tangled with in the Fallow Mire,” the Commander explains. “Apparently it’s their tradition to smack our holdings with goat’s blood.”
“So they threw goats over the chasm,” you say, rubbing your forehead. “That’s… creative. Did you run them off?”
“We captured the chieftain. The Inquisitor had us give the tribe all the weapons we could share and ‘exiled them’ to Tevinter.”
You stare blankly for a moment, blinking… and then, despite yourself, begin to laugh. “You’re kidding me. Was this the Inquisitor’s idea?”
“It was,” the Commander replies, chuckling a bit as well. “It will be more trouble than it’s worth, but I can appreciate the humor. In any case, I wanted to ask you a few more questions about your trip to Val Royeaux.”
Well, you suppose it could be worse. This could have been about the present. “Yes, ser?”
“The people you traveled with on the way there, the soldiers. What did you think of them?”
The question is so bizarre that your confusion has to show on your face for a brief moment. What you… thought of them? “They were… all perfectly respectful,” you begin slowly, hunting for what the Commander is looking for. Is he worried about the problem of racism in the ranks?
“How well did they perform their jobs? Did anything of particular note stand out to you?”
Why in the Maker’s name is he asking you this? He should be asking Solas… or has he already? Is he simply looking for corroboration? “If this is about Baptiste’s death, I do believe they did the best they could. The arrow took us all off guard; I believe Baptiste was struck first out of simple bad luck. We were the closest to the road at the time of attack… dumb luck that it was him and not I,” you add ruefully.
“Did anything about any of them stand out? How did the one in command do with the attack and sudden death?” he insists. You’re still not quite sure what he’s looking for, but you answer to the best… well, okay, not to the best of your ability, but to what you want to appear as the best of your ability.
“The youngest, Kelsie, was a little shaken after the battle… fair enough, so was I. She recovered well with the support of her fellow soldiers and seemed fine by the time I met up with them for the return journey. Elaine and Emilio handled themselves well.” You could add that Emilio obviously has experience fighting with mages, but not only would it be odd for you to notice that, it’s probably something you should keep to yourself. “As for Garrick, he reacted quickly and was ready to make the necessary changes to the mission to account for Baptiste’s loss. He was originally planning to send Solas and I back to the safety of Skyhold, likely with a more heavily armed caravan, and continue their own mission. Solas and I were the ones to insist we continue on and attempt to finish the job in Val Royeaux.”
The Commander is nodding thoughtfully, which is slightly unnerving. “The bandits themselves, did anything stand out to you about them?”
At this point, you’re just assuming he’s asking everyone. He’d better be asking everyone. If this idiot is counting on you to have some insight onto the bandits that trained soldiers don’t… “Nothing you probably haven’t already heard,” you reply, eyeing him warily. “The second group was significantly better armed than the first… They may have already successfully taken out many travelers. They seemingly passed up an armed merchant’s caravan from Orzammar that had come from that direction. True, that caravan had double our guards, but their cargo was far more valuable than ours… I can’t guess as to why they chose to attack us and not the others. It could be the size of our party, or they had some way of detecting magical wards on the dwarven caravan.” You scowl, unable to help yourself. “That a bandit group of that sheer size was operating on the Imperial Highway for any period of time is a testament to the sorry state of Orlais right now.”
The Commander nods, somberly. He begins to walk, and gestures for you to follow him. Grand. “The civil war in Orlais could not have come at a worse time,” he says with a sigh as the two of you walk in a slow, measured pace along the battlements.
“It never ceases to amaze me how men will take advantage of disaster to further their own ends,” you agree sourly. You’ve not been alive so long, and yet you’ve seen it over and over and over. Hell, you’ve even taken advantage of chaos to suit your ends a few times yourself… although you certainly never held the power to make any sort of difference one way or another. Taking advantage of the Templars absence to steal from them was hardly on the same scale as staging a coup.
“It never ends, apparently. That is why it’s so important that we…”
Somehow, the two of you end up talking. And talking. And talking some more. The conversation meanders as much as your walking does. It starts with the civil war, travels through the perilous waters of the mage/Templar conflict—not a conversation you’re comfortable having with a Templar, ex- or no—and continues on to Skyhold, it’s defenses, and the betterment thereof. It’s at that point in the conversation that you find yourself in the Commander’s office, both of you leaning over his desk as he shows you outlines for improvements he’s planning.
You’re making a few suggestions; this isn’t something you have much experience with… Skyhold really is your first fortress after all, but you’re explaining some quick-but-sturdy “overnight” walls that you learned in Seheron… or, that you learned in Seheron as far as he knows. There are, after all, some rather large gaps in the fortress’s walls that have yet to be repaired fully. Never know when those might need to be plugged up in a hurry.
It isn’t until the two of you are interrupted by an agent coming in with a report that you realize what in the Maker’s name you’re doing. How did you go from a walk on the battlements to him showing you plans on his desk? You have actual work to do! And also, you shouldn’t be talking to the Commander, damnit! You take advantage of the agent’s arrival to quickly apologize and take your leave… but you don’t miss the sour glare the Commander levels at the unfortunate agent.
Trouble, trouble.
You need to get to work anyway, though. You just won’t mention to Solas where you were… or that you’d skipped breakfast two days in a row.
There’s no missive for you today, and the art for the book is essentially done. Now for the “fun” part… writing. Just… writing. Writing, and writing, and writing some more. Writing with a flourish. Writing evenly, with rulers and soft lines in pencil that get gently erased afterwards to present the illusion of perfection. It’s actually extremely soothing… some people might find it tedious, but you get to read as you write, each word perfectly preserved on paper and in your mind. You have a good memory, but this process turns every book you’ve ever written to solid stone, a memory to return to and pluck through even if the tome itself is lost.
Still, this will be a good one. You’re looking forward to having your own copy, and you’re quite confident this draconologist will be enamored with your work. This tome will be… well, not one-of-a-kind—you intend for there to be three, at minimum—but still. Unique and glorious.
Solas enchanted your wrist before you even started to work, so it all goes ridiculously smoothly. You once had your focus compared to that of a Tranquil—something they meant as a compliment and severely disturbed you to hear. But today, you can almost see it… particularly when you sit back to stretch and look at the pile of completed pages, ready to be bound or to be flourished further if you so feel.
Yeah. You destroyed work this morning. It’s a good feeling. But the candle you use to help you keep time is informing you that you’re perilously close to being late with Solas’s lunch. He’s not said anything… perhaps he wanted to allow you to work, or maybe he’s too caught up in his own efforts. He’s been—as far as you can tell—practicing runecraft by drawing them out with ink, not mana. An interesting technique you’d like to try yourself, given how rarely you get any time alone with your mana. But how to translate the ability to draw the runes by hand with— You’re getting sidetracked again. Lunch.
Still, it’s a shame you can’t get him to show you.
…Lunch.
It’s never that easy, though. You talk a bit to Celia while you prepare your meal and Solas’s—in between moments spent eyeballing Kelsie’s “sister, ”because you’re nosy and don’t know when to mind your own business. You’re starting to think you’ll get back to work in record time when Servis stops you on the way back to the stairs. Because of course he does. Your hands are full of two lunches, but yes, certainly you don’t look extremely busy or anything. You can totally stop to chat.
“I believe you forgot something in the book you fetched for me,” Servis says, holding a soft, decorative snakeskin bookmark between two fingers. “Unless it came with the tome, which seems unlikely.”
“I didn’t forget it; I left it on purpose. Have you never received a gift before, Servis?” you ask dryly.
The man blinks, and for a moment you think perhaps he hasn’t. But that’s absurd, gift giving isn’t a thing in Tevinter culture like it is in some others.
“Why?” he asks simply, and the honest bewilderment on his face is kind of refreshing. You see suspicion there as well… Though you can’t really blame him. You’d be suspicious if he got you a gift.
“I got many of them for many people in Val Royeaux. I saw it while I was shopping, and for some reason the idea of a scaly creature that sneaks around on its stomach reminded me of you,” you reply dryly.
“Har har,” he says. “But—”
“If that’s all you wanted to know, ser, I do have a delivery to make,” you say pointedly, nodding down at the tray full of food.
“Wait—” he says as you begin to sidestep around him.
“Nope!” you reply cheerfully. “Try again later.”
You hear him let out a sound of frustration, between a snort and a displeased grunt. You can’t stop the slight smile that spreads on your lips as you walk. Tevinters. So easy to baffle, and it never does get old.
You do take a bit of time to relax and unwind at lunch, after a morning of frantic work. The pile of finished pages soothes you. More than most scribes would complete in a full day, completed in half of one thanks to Solas’s enchantment and your considerable talent. Solas seems to note the way you’re radiating smugness.
“You certainly seem pleased with yourself today,” he comments idly as the two of you munch away at your respective lunches. You don’t always speak at length over your meals, but today he’s looked up from the book he’s been reading all morning to engage you. His notebook of drawn runes lays sprawled open on the far corner of the desk.
“I am. Exceedingly,” you reply matter-of-factly. “I’ve already completed the work of two lesser scribes in only the first half of the day. That enchantment of yours takes my pace from ‘fast’ to ‘neck-breaking.’ I adore it.”
“Athim las enaste,1” he says dryly, and you laugh even while a pleasurable chill runs up your spine from the sound of Elven on his tongue.
“Emma tel’isala athim,2” you reply as brattily as you can manage. When his eyebrows rise, you double down. “Ma solas him sulevin.3” He snorts, and you grin at your little victory.
“Him,” he corrects, and your smile fades a bit as you realize it’s quite possible he was laughing at your poor pronunciation and not your affectation of arrogance. Ah well. A laugh is still a laugh, even if it’s at your expense. “You just pronounced ‘athim’ correctly, but you fail at ‘him’?” he says, chuckling again.
You flush slightly, glaring down at your cheese. “I said ‘athim’ correctly because you just said it,” you mutter sourly. “I thought it was ‘ath-im’ before…” You can blame the Dalish for this one, at least; you learned that word from them, damnit. Not that you’d admit that to Solas. He’d just say what you already know: that’s what you get for learning from Dalish. But you don’t turn up your nose at knowledge, even from the Dalish. You just have to sort of… screen for creative interpretation.
“You say you learned primarily from books and scrolls… what books and scrolls?” Solas asks. “The ancient elves aren’t well known for leaving a great deal behind.”
“They left more than people think!” you protest. “You just… have to know how to look for it,” you add with a sigh. “Most modern historians mistake Halamshiral-era ruins for Elvhenan-era ruins. And, true, most of what even I have is Halamshiral-era. But if you know that, you can sort of cross reference it with other records. The Dalish copy Halamshiral, Halamshiral copied Elvhenan. But Ancient Tevinter, they copied Elvhenan even more directly, and they kept records. I speak Ancient Tevene, and by comparing Elvhen writings with Ancient Tevene ones, I can see similarities in the languages. Not in the words themselves, but in the terminology they use.”
To your surprise, Solas is… listening. He seems engaged, even. Curious, but about what you’re actually saying. For once, you don’t get the feeling he’s prying for personal information. He… does he actually want to hear your techniques?
“Do you have actual Elvhen tomes, then?”
“A few. Most of them, I had. I lost a great deal when my house burned down,” you say with a scowl. “Although ‘tomes’ is probably a misnomer; none of them are really that complete—or large. Thankfully, most of the more valuable pieces I had already passed on to collectors with more secure vaults, after producing my own copies. The only ones in my house were copies or ones I was in the process of copying.”
“But where did you get them?” Solas insists. “Such tomes are extremely rare, often in states of extreme disrepair…”
“Anywhere I could,” you say with a sigh. “What do you want me to say? I don’t think I got any two pieces the exact same way. I borrowed, I stole, I hunted, I dug. I had friends and sources that would bring things to my attention. I made it my business to know, and when I had the money, I paid people to brave dangers I could not to bring me back scant scraps of paper or tracings of writings on an ancient temple wall.”
You lean back on the stool, balancing idly on your tailbone while gazing upwards, thinking. The crows overhead remind you that you’re never going to be alone enough to talk to Solas honestly, never going to be safe enough to tell him the roots of your education in ancient Elven.
“In truth, a lot of pieces I got from private collections. People often did not know the value of what they had, or misidentified Elvhen pieces as Halamshiral-era due to where they were found. Of course, for every one Elvhen piece I found, there were probably dozens of Halamshiral pieces… and those were not at all common. It’s always been something of a needle-in-a-haystack search,” you admit. “But by cross-referencing all available sources… by comparing Tevinter records with Orlesian records with Dalish legends with ancient murals and field journals… by refusing to throw out even the smallest clue… I managed.”
You twist your hands together anxiously, pull your bottom lip into your mouth and bite down, then lower your gaze back to Solas. “Didn’t I?”
You had been more sure before you met him. A damn Somniari, something strolling straight out of legend with more knowledge than you and an air of casual expertise. Someone who could probably get answers from ancient spirits so deep in the Fade that you could never dream of running into them.
“What you’ve done is…” Solas pauses, and your breath stills in your chest. “Remarkable, given your resources.” You let out your breath. It’s hardly unmitigated praise, but it’s something. “So you learned from the Dalish, as well?”
Damnit. He would pick up on that.
You frown. “I… didn’t discount anything. The Dalish’s oral tradition isn’t considered history in the academic sense, and it’s often overly embellished, or has unrelated morals shoved in. But I’d be an idiot not to take it into account when studying Elvhen culture. We have so little, and they have more than most anyone. I can’t afford to throw anything out just because I find the sources irritating and condescending.”
“That is a very reasonable outlook,” Solas replies.
“And that is a very neutral response,” you say dryly. Solas merely smiles, ever so slightly.
Frustrating.
“Well, that’s my life story,” you say, and he snorts. “So why not tell me what that’s all about?” You point at the notebook of runes.
“This?” he says, blinking with surprise. “I don’t think you would und…” But then he pauses, before grabbing the notebook and pulling it over. “I am studying the difference between the runes I am used to and those used by modern Orlesian Circle mages such as Madame de Fer. I noticed a stark difference while we were traveling together.”
“And the runes you’re used to are…?” you ask, pulling the notebook closer to yourself to glance at the runes. They look alien to you in ink, somewhat similar to diagrams you’ve seen but… not quite. Solas is, you suspect, using some form of shorthand you’re unfamiliar with.
“I am self-taught,” Solas replies in a wondrous display of not actually answering the question. You’re slightly distracted trying to understand the runes, however. You run a finger over the page, as if you could send your magic tracing into it the way you would a real, magical rune in order to learn its secrets.
“I feel like I’ve seen this shorthand before,” you murmur to yourself. “You say you’re self-taught, but surely you learned your techniques somewhere. From books, like I… learned Elven.” You squint at the book, then flip it so that you can look at it right side up, frowning. “I once translated a book of runes from ancient Tevinter. They were… similar, but not… Not this sort of rune. I can’t…”
Your lunch lies forgotten as you run soft, inkstained fingertips along the curves and bumps of the rune. There’s something here, just beyond what you can see, and it’s frustrating. It’s that quiet in the room as you examine the book, all else pushed from your mind, that allows you to hear what you hear. It comes from just outside the door, a shouted announcement you might have missed under different circumstances.
“The Chargers have returned!”
You slam the book down, standing so fast that you knock the stool over in your haste. It clatters loudly to the stone floor, breaking the spell of silence that had fallen over the room. You stare apologetically at Solas, eyes wide, almost asking for permission.
“Go on, then,” he says, and you bolt out the door, notebook forgotten on the desk. Down the steps, into the courtyard, just as fast as you can, nearly knocking people over in your haste. You catapult across the courtyard and to the gates, where you already see a pair of familiar horns sticking a head above the crowd. You shove your way through, ignoring loud complaints and a few swears. The fuss is enough to have Iron Bull and a few others looking over at you, and when you break through the crowd with a curse of your own, Bull swoops you up, hands around your waist.
You shriek a bit as your feet leave the ground, but are too shocked to struggle. Bull hoists you up like a parent might do to a small child, and once again you’re in a bit of awe about how light you seem to him.
“You beat us back to Skyhold!” he says as he sets you back down. You stand dazed for a moment as he ruffles your hair, knocking it loose of your bun.
“I… yes,” you say, shaking your head in an attempt to dislodge his hand. It only serves to muss your hair further. “I got back a few days ago. I wasn’t sure when you’d be back.”
“Oy! Da’nan4!” comes a cheerful voice.
“Dalish!” you say excitedly, and she and Skinner both pop out from around Iron Bull. “Skinner! That jacket of yours saved my ass, you know.”
“Good. That was the point,” she replies matter-of-factly as Dalish joins in messing up your hair… despite the fact you’re a good four inches taller than her.
“How was Val Royeaux?” Dalish asks
“Shitty and Orlesian,” you reply, glancing around them. “Where’s Krem?”
Dalish immediately falls silent, and you go stiff. All three of them are looking down and to the side, not meeting your eyes.
“…Bull?” you say, suddenly moving around him to try and look at the rest of the group. That’s when you notice that a lot of the Chargers are sporting fresh injuries, and there are medics carting a few of them off towards the healing tent… including some on stretchers. The color begins to drain from your face. “Bull?” you ask again, panic rising into your voice. “Where’s Krem?”