Chapter Text
Leliana gave Cassandra a nod before turning towards one of her agents to give them orders. With the Left Hand of the Divine’s attention elsewhere, Cassandra turned back towards the Chantry where she’d spent the past several hours interrogating Varric Tethras. Her hope that he would have pointed them to wear Hawke was so they could ask for the Champion’s help at the Conclave had been dashed, but she had learned that the situation that had lead up to the actions of the mage Anders and the destruction of the Kirkwall Chantry were far more complicated than she’d originally been lead to believe.
She’d already spoken to the former Knight Captain Cullen of the Templars and offered him a position at the Conclave. For the moment the former Templar thought he would be primarily in charge of security forces at the Conclave. He didn’t know that the Divine had other plans in place should the negotiations at the Conclave fail. Not an Exalted March, thankfully, Cassandra knew from Leliana that an Exalted March was exactly what the Champion had wished to avoid in Kirkwall, but something else that would grant them the authority to help restore peace to southern Thedas. If that secondary plan became a reality, Cullen’s experience in fighting and commanding forces would be sorely needed.
The storyteller currently remained in the Chantry, under the watchful eye of Cassandra and Leliana’s forces. He’d insisted he’d told her all he could, but Cassandra suspected there was still more he hadn’t told her.
No matter. His knowledge was needed at the Conclave. Divine Justinia would better know what to do with the dwarf’s information once she’d heard his tale. With that in mind, Cassandra strode back into the Chantry, waving off the two guards that currently kept the storyteller in the room where she’d left him. The next step was to tell him to gather his things so that they could travel across the Waking Sea to Haven and the Conclave that awaited them there.
Varric Tethras lounged in the chair he’d been forced into hours ago, appearing for all the world like he was taking this in stride and ease, though his mind was roiling. He was frustrated. The Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast had spent hours interrogating him, insisting on getting the whole story about what had happened at Kirkwall out of him. She’d had some rather wild assumptions and ideas that he’d managed to disabuse her of at least. She didn’t think Hawke had deliberately set out to try and destroy the Chantry or ignite the war between mages and templars that had been raging since Blondie had blown up the Chantry here in Kirkwall.
He just wondered what the Seeker intended to do with him now that she’d gotten the real story out of him. He knew she still wanted Hawke, though perhaps more for help than to interrogate now.
That was one piece of information he would never part with. His dearest friend had already been through so much over the past ten years, and then had suffered the consequences of Blondie’s actions.
Hawke deserved to be left alone.
The dwarf glanced up as the doors to the interrogation room swung open and the Seeker stalked in. For just a moment it reminded him of Hawke, the way that he’d walked into a room with complete confidence, covered in metal armor and ready to take on anything.
He wanted to hate the Seeker for chasing after Hawke, but he had to admire her confidence and sheer determination. If he hadn’t been her prisoner, he might consider using her as inspiration for a character in one of his books.
“Well Seeker?” he asked in a casual tone.
“You will come with me to Haven,” she informed him imperiously. “To tell your story to the Divine. You’ve cleared up a number of my misconceptions, but there’s still more that you haven’t told me. Perhaps you’ll be willing to tell it to Divine Justinia.”
Varric swore under his breath. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly,” Cassandra replied with a tilt of her head. “You have the evening to pack your things. We leave at first light with Cullen.”
Huh, she’d convinced Curly to follow her? Varric turned that over in his mind. That was interesting. He remembered Cullen’s shock when Meredith had openly displayed her madness, and the way the Templar had turned on his former Knight Commander.
Varric remembered how Cullen had let Hawke and his friends leave Kirkwall without contest.
“And do you trust me to go and get my things from the Hanged Man on my own?” Varric lifted a golden brow.
Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “Someone will accompany you to help you carry your things if necessary,” she decided.
At least, Varric supposed, she hadn’t clapped him in chains, but there was no doubt in his mind that he was still her prisoner.
“Fine, Seeker,” he sighed. “Let's get this over with.” Varric started towards the door, certain that the Seeker would assign one of the two guards to follow him back to the Hanged Man to pack.
The morning found him on a ship with Cassandra Pentaghast and Cullen Rutherford, heading across the sea towards Hawke’s original homeland. When Varric had inquired about Nightingale, he’d been informed that Leliana was on her way to Antiva to fetch a friend and bring them back to the Conclave in Haven.
He knew about the Conclave, of course, he had his own information network that, while not as good as that of the Left Hand of the Divine, gave him a good idea of what was going on in Thedas.
Anders hadn’t been wrong about the fact that increasing tension between Mages and Templars had been a powderkeg, like Qunari gaatlock, just waiting for something to set it off. Anders’ destruction of the Chantry and Meredith’s actions afterwards had been just the spark necessary to set the entire thing off, leading to an uprising among the mages across southern Thedas and sending the whole of it into complete chaos.
Varric supposed something would have eventually set it off, but he still questioned Anders’ actions, and just how much of the current destruction could have been avoided if his friend had chosen a different path. He knew the mage was still alive, somewhere, hiding away from hundreds of angry people, mage, templar, and otherwise, who wanted his blood, and worse.
“So you’re taking me to Haven to tell my story?” Varric asked Cassandra conversationally as they rode in the hold of the ship. She was reading through a number of notes that Leliana had handed her before they’d parted in Kirkwall.
“The Divine will better know what to do with your information about the events in Kirkwall, and if there’s any way that we can use that information to help broker peace between the Mages and the Templars,” Cassandra told him as she looked up from her notes.
Varric looked mildly surprised. “You think peace is possible? Something more than just locking all the mages up again?”
Cassandra’s mouth creased into a frown as she spoke. “I cannot approve of what many of the mages have done, nor can I entirely blame them. There were injustices in many of the Circles, crimes against mages by the Templars that should have been addressed before it got this bad.”
She sighed, looking tired then. “There were arguments among the Seekers about what we should do,” she told him. “I felt we should step in and investigate the actions of the Templars, but the Lord Seeker disagreed.”
Varric narrowed his eyes as he considered this. Perhaps, he thought, the Seeker wasn’t as unreasonable as he’d first thought. “So you what, broke away from the Seekers?”
“I turned my attention to my duties as the Right Hand of Divine Justinia,” she replied. “She believes there is a chance for negotiation between the mages and the Templars, to change things and to find a way forward.”
Varric let out a long breath. “I hope you are right, Seeker, because things are a mess right now.”
“We can only hope.” Cassandra sighed again before returning her attention to the notes from Leliana. Varric turned back to his own journal, turning the Seeker’s revelations over in his mind.