Chapter Text
It was just inside the gate of the keep that they awaited the arrival of the Nevarran delegation. As always, the sky above Skyhold itself was eye-wateringly blue, and within the walls it was brisk but not frozen. Here at the gatehouse, the mountains’ bitter cold without the walls felt like an encroaching visitor.
Josephine leaned closer to Cassandra and said, ‘Thank you for finding the time.’
‘Don’t thank me yet—if they take much longer I might give up on them entirely.’ She said this with a raised eyebrow at Josephine, to indicate that she was joking, or at least mostly joking. There was much she would tolerate for the sake of Josephine Montilyet that she wouldn’t even consider for the sake of lesser mortals. Josephine gave her a bright smile in return.
The first outrider from the Nevarran delegation to Skyhold had arrived five hours ago, which meant that Cassandra Pentaghast had spent the past three hours in a state of impatient readiness and, as of an hour ago, had been wishing she could take off her ceremonial armour again and go and do something useful.
It was at this moment, just as Cassandra was mentally cataloguing the duties she could be seeing to right now were she not stood awaiting a delegation of her compatriots who could still be floundering through the snow half a mile below them, that somebody else spoke from her other side. ‘Think they got lost and fell down an ice canyon?’
Cassandra turned to regard the speaker with a cool eye. ‘Varric.’
The dwarf turned a glinting eye and a crooked smile up at her. ‘Seeker. Your countryfolk aren’t exactly the punctual type, huh?’ He stood beside her, arms folded and hip cocked, with the air of somebody with absolutely nothing better to do. He couldn’t have looked more out of place among the liveried guards and advisors in their best clothes and the general air of hopeful trepidation.
‘They are not lost,’ Josephine leaned around Cassandra to insist. ‘They should be escorted by at least a pair of our scouts by now. Remember, just because we’re used to mountaineering by now—’
Josephine was interrupted by a shout from the outer gatehouse. Cassandra started forward, to see a gate guard lean from the tower and wave their arms towards the far distant ground. Then, with a titanic iron creak, the lift chains began to move.
‘They’re here!’ Josephine said, unnecessarily, and clasped her hands together. ‘Thank the Maker.’
‘I thought you weren’t worried,’ Varric said, an instant quicker than Cassandra could.
Cassandra settled for frowning at him instead. ‘Why are you here, Varric?’
‘Can’t a guy enjoy a little pomp and ceremony from time to time?’ He winked at her. ‘Plus I really wanted to see if they’ve brought any skeletons.’
‘The idea that all Nevarrans keep skeletons around to do everything for them is a ridiculous national stereotype,’ Cassandra said.
‘So you’re telling me there’s zero chance of skeletons?’
Cassandra made a noise in her throat and turned away. Truthfully she couldn’t rule out the chance of skeletons. Orlais and Ferelden were stubbornly zealous about forbidding necromancy but out here in the wilds, with no one to see, she knew it would be helpful to have assistance whose muscles didn’t tire, whose flesh didn’t feel the cold.
‘If there are skeletons,’ Josephine began, with a glance at Cassandra, ‘we will all remain perfectly collected and professional. We will not gawp like ignorant provincials. Isn’t that right, Varric?’
‘I’m offended you even had to ask,’ Varric said, in the manner of someone not in the least offended.
Cassandra glanced back down at him. Her gaze sharpened. ‘Did you… dress up?’
Now the grin Varric turned on her was as wide as the Waking Sea. ‘You noticed! Seeker, I’m flattered.’ He tugged a red silk scarf about his neck. ‘I might not be a proper little soldier boy, but I’m capable of putting a little effort in, if the occasion demands.’
Cassandra regarded him. Varric had changed his usual casual attire for an outfit a little more spick and span. He wore a deep burgundy velvet jacket, and rich quillback leather books up to the knee. She thought she even could make out piping on his breeches. All this to see some skeletons? She would never understand the dwarf.
Varric spread his arms. ‘What’s the verdict, Seeker? Smart enough to meet your folks?’
‘They are not “my folks”,’ she said frostily. ‘I am here merely as a fellow Nevarran to extend the hand of courtesy. If there is anyone in the delegation related to me by blood I believe it will be three degrees of separation or greater.’
The great lift chains still churned. The guards chatted and exchanged quips. Josephine skimmed a scroll and murmured memos to an assistant. Varric was apparently able to wait patiently forever as long as it unsettled Cassandra. Meanwhile she occupied herself by planning the drills she would inflict upon the recruits this afternoon just as soon as she was free of diplomacy and all its concomitant nonsense.
A thunderous clank heralded the lift’s arrival at the outer gatehouse. Josephine put away her notes and the assistant faded into the background. Cassandra straightened to attention, and all the liveried guards around them did the same. Josephine nodded to Cassandra, and together the two of them stepped forward to meet their visitors.
Having gathered themselves—for the lift up the sheer mountainside to Skyhold was not for the faint of heart—the Nevarran delegation, all swaddled in furs and silks, accompanied by large, dour mountain pack goats, processed along the bridge, under the barbican, and into Skyhold.
There are things that are impossible, and then there are things which are only thought to be so, due to their extreme improbability. Almost everyone who knew Cassandra Pentaghast would have said that it was impossible to shock her into silence. Nonetheless, improbable reality asserted itself.
The man who had produced this effect in her—and had either failed to notice or was too self-possessed to show that he had—broke away from the group and strode ahead. He reached Cassandra and clasped her shoulders in his knuckly iron hands. ‘Niece,’ said Prelate Vestalus Pentaghast, leaning on the word a little too much.
As the rest of the delegation caught up with her uncle and Josephine stepped forward to greet them, Cassandra caught her breath, reasserted control over her demeanour, and said, ‘Uncle. I did not realise you would be—’
Vestalus went on, overrunning her. ‘It has been—how long has it been? Too long, by any account!’
In Cassandra’s memory, her uncle resembled nothing so much as a gristled skeleton with hairy centipede eyebrows under a shining dome of skull, complete with a matching moustache. In reality she found her memory surprisingly accurate, except that his dark brows and moustache were now iron grey.
‘And Maker’s breath, how you’ve changed!’ His resonant prelate’s voice rang across the courtyard. ‘You must be pleased. You must have feared you’d be that gawky young man forever, but look at you now. Though I still see the boy you were, but it takes family, you know—’
In that excruciating moment, Cassandra was suddenly aware of everything. The way Vestalus’ voice carried. The open ears and eyes of the rank and file guards around them. How Josephine’s head turned, attention narrowing in on Cassandra’s distress. How her own face burned like she’d been set alight.
This was a scene from a bad dream. It wasn’t a secret, that Cassandra Pentaghast had been born a boy. It had taken her until she was in her twenties to inform the world otherwise. But what hubbub and scandal there had been had died back years ago, and now most people she made the acquaintace of knew her only as herself. The idea of becoming the subject of gossip again made her shrink inside her own skin.
She’d thought she was aware of everything going on around her. But she was wrong. Because she was still somehow surprised when she heard Varric speak from next to her.
‘Prelate Pentaghast, if I’m not mistaken?’ Varric had shouldered in beside her. He was wearing an expression that could have been described as friendly, except that Cassandra knew that hard glint in his eye. ‘I’ve heard so much about you. I’d love to say it’s an honour to meet you in the flesh, but honestly I’m disappointed.’
Vestalus Pentaghast looked down at Varric. His mouth hung slightly open, but he didn’t produce a word.
Varric folded his arms. He was close enough to Cassandra he might have been forming a battle line alongside her. ‘Knowing the Lady Seeker’s unimpeachable standards of behaviour, I expected her uncle to at least have some manners. But I guess I was wrong.’
Before he could say any more, Josephine swept up beside them, and Cassandra found herself sandwiched between them. ‘Prelate Pentaghast,’ Josephine said, and the chilliness of her tone was as clear a warning bell as anything else that this meeting was rapidly sliding off the rails.
‘It is fine,’ Cassandra interrupted, too loudly. The very last thing she wanted was to make Josephine have to decide between the success of the Nevarran visit and standing up for Cassandra’s feelings. ‘I am fine.’ It was funny, though, because although she was, as she insisted, fine, she couldn’t seem to force herself to say anything else. She clasped her hands tight behind her back, straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and looked her uncle in the eye. ‘I am perfectly fine.’
There was a touch at her elbow. Cassandra looked down to see, of all people, Varric. His expression was careful, searching.
Vestalus spoke up. ‘And who, might I presume to ask, is this impudent dwarf?’ The thin venom in his voice brought Cassandra’s head around at once. ‘Surely not a suitor, of all things?’
It was meant as a jest and a dismissal, to make light of the whole idea and make the situation go away, Cassandra knew. Her face burned hotter, even as she sought the words to take Vestalus to task for addressing Varric that way—one of the Inquisition’s most loyal servants, no matter their differences—but Varric beat her to it.
‘Laugh all you like,’ he said, a hard set to his jaw that Cassandra barely recognised. ‘I see no reason I wouldn’t try my suit at the finest woman in the whole Inquisition.’
Of all of the things Varric could have said, that was what snapped her out of her paralysis and tumbled her into speech. She couldn’t just stand here and let this go on. Icily formal, she said, ‘It is a pleasure to see you as well, uncle. I hope you find Skyhold to your satisfaction. Please excuse me.’ And she turned and walked stiffly away.
Her parents had died when she was six. The day was still crystal clear in Cassandra’s mind. She and her brother Anthony been required to attend. It took place on the Via Castrum, the grand boulevard leading to the Castrum Draconis, on a chilly, clear autumn dawn. A dais had been set up for the king, that he might better see the execution from his throne, and Cassandra and Anthony were graciously allowed to stand upon it too.
What Cassandra hadn’t known, at the time, was that the executions had been going on for days. It wasn’t just the traitors, but their families too. Cassandra and Anthony, being children and Pentaghasts, were lucky.
Their parents were led out from a gaol wagon drawn up by two black horses in black livery, and made to kneel upon the cobbles beside one another, before the king’s dais. Blank-faced guards kept back the crowd. Matthias and Tigana Pentaghast didn’t look up at their king or their children, no matter how hard Cassandra stared. Anthony kept a vice grip on Cassandra’s shoulders.
When Matthias and Tigana were presented with the two tiny vials of poison—poison, of course, unlike a beheading or hanging, leaving the body perfect and intact for service post-mortem—they took them in their chained hands and, at the executioner’s cue, raised them to their lips. In that moment, they glanced at one another. Then they tossed the poison back like wine.
Their composure did not last. Cassandra stood with Anthony’s solid warmth pressing against her back as she watched their parents fall and kick and froth on the ground. His hands tightened on her shoulders. If she had tried to turn, she wouldn’t have been able to. Later, she was grateful to Anthony, for making it so she had no choice but to watch, because it meant there was nothing for her to regret.
Beside Cassandra and Anthony, silent and rigid as one already dead, had stood Vestalus. He had been a dim and distant figure to Cassandra until that day. That day, he came horribly into focus: a square and proper man with an eternally frowning face, her father’s brother, who would be replacing their parents in guardianship. He didn’t make an attempt to reassure her that day, nor any day after. He was simply there, all the close kin she and her brother had left. None of them had any choice in the matter.
Later, Cassandra found Josephine in her office. The evening was pressing in at the window and a fire crackled in the hearth. The room was warm and smelled of woodsmoke and the orange and cloves of Josephine’s tea. Cassandra went to the chair on the opposite side of the big desk and flopped into it without a word. Josephine looked up from her papers, straightened, and said, ‘I’m so sorry about earlier.’
Cassandra ran a hand through her sweaty hair. She had done exactly as she’d planned and had gone down the mountain to take out her feelings on the recruits. They had all ended their session panting and flushed and more than one recruit had had to scuttle out of Cassandra’s line of sight to discreetly throw up into the snow. She should have felt guilty for overworking them out of her own temper tantrum, but all she felt was grim satisfaction. Tomorrow, she would be kinder, she thought. Tomorrow she wouldn’t feel quite this unsettled. To Josephine, she said, ‘Did you know he would be there?’
Josephine shook her head, ringlets bouncing. ‘I had no idea. I didn’t know until I saw him, and you saw him before I did. I swear.’
Cassandra held Josephine’s dark-eyed gaze, but all she saw in it was honesty and distress.
‘He must have decided to invite himself along at the last moment,’ Josephine continued. ‘I know I asked if you would help make the delegation feel at home while they were here, but of course you should feel no obligation now given this unexpected turn of events—’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Cassandra cut her off. ‘He is my uncle, that’s all. He’s simply tactless. I am fine. I’m not made of glass.’
‘I know you’re not,’ Josephine said, softer. ‘But—how do I put this? You don’t have to—’
‘It is fine,’ Cassandra interrupted more forcefully. Josephine fell silent, her mouth slanted sideways unhappily. Cassandra realised, in quiet inner part of herself, that she should have been more tactful herself.
Into the silence came a knock at the door. Josephine lifted her voice and called, ‘Unless it’s an emergency—’
Cassandra broke in. ‘You have important business to conduct. Don’t let me get in the way.’
‘You’re never in the way,’ Josephine said, but then called, ‘Come, then!’
In the fraction of a second before the door opened, as the handle turned, a leaden certainty fell into Cassandra’s stomach that she knew exactly who was on the other side, and there was no way for her to escape this dearly unwished for encounter.
The door opened, and proved her right. Vestalus stepped through, closing it behind him. When he saw Cassandra, his face changed. ‘There you are,’ Vestalus said, at the same time as—
‘Prelate Pentaghast,’ Josephine said, stonily, while—
Cassandra said, ‘Uncle.’
They all stopped and stared at one another. Then Vestalus gathered himself up, and said, ‘I know what you’re going to say, Lady Montilyet, and I know what my niece is going to avoid saying while glowering at me like she wants to eviscerate me. Please, allow me to preempt you both.’
Josephine sat back in her chair and, with a glance at Cassandra, gestured for him to continue.
‘I am aware that my conduct earlier upon our arrival may have fallen short of the ideal. My only excuse is that our journey was very long and tiring, and I was elated to see my dear niece after many years apart, and as such I may have spoken unguardedly. I hope that you, Cassandra,’ he seemed somehow to labour over her name, ‘can be generous enough to forgive your only and aged uncle for his slip.’
From the other side of the desk, Cassandra heard Josephine take a sharp in-breath, as if she were about to speak, but she stayed silent. When Cassandra glanced at her, she saw Josephine’s lips were pressed together in a thin line, and she was looking not at Vestalus but at Cassandra.
Cassandra turned back to Vestalus and said, ‘It is already forgotten.’ She wished she could sound less painfully stiff but at least she matched her uncle’s prepared apology.
‘Good!’ Vestalus clapped his hands together and drew closer. ‘I am very pleased to find you still hold your erstwhile guardian in good esteem. So! Now I can tell you that I quite approve of your young gentleman.’
‘My…’ Cassandra trailed off, thinking hard.
‘At first, I admit, I was taken aback. I had never considered that you might choose to entertain the suit of someone so…’ Vestalus’ lip curled as he considered his words. ‘Different. But when he spoke up so boldly to take your part, I was impressed despite myself. After all, what more could an uncle wish for his charge than a young man who will face down anyone to defend her, even her own uncle?’
Throughout Vestalus’ little speech, a horrible realisation, like snow down the back of her neck, was coming over Cassandra. She said, slowly, ‘You mean Varric Tethras.’
‘Tethras, is that his family name?’ Vestalus looked thoughtful. ‘I am not familiar. I shall have to make inquiries. But, if you will permit me to say, he has made a very good first impression.’
‘Uncle, he is not—’
‘And I am very pleased to find that you are not wasting away alone here, Cassandra. Ever since—well, you know—I worried that you would be alone all your life.’ Vestalus beamed. ‘But I am gratified to be proven wrong.’
To that, Cassandra found she could think of nothing to say. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, wordlessly. And then the moment was past, and she had said nothing, and she couldn’t for the life of her think of how to mend the situation.
Before she ever left Nevarra, back when becoming a soldier was still a far away dream, she and her brother Anthony used to fight. They’d fence with wooden swords, then with blunted steel, and everything that he learned from the king’s sword master—for they were still Pentaghasts, despite the treason, and royal by blood—he passed onto her.
She was keen, but she was years behind Anthony, and on top of that she was only the second child, not the heir to her parents’ remaining estate and titles. As such, Vestalus decreed she would be more suited to studious pursuits. Anthony would need to be a man of arms, need to know how to defend himself and his own with a sword, whereas Cassandra Vestalus wanted to follow in his own footsteps.
Of course, she hadn’t been Cassandra then. She had been called something else, and all the world—including herself, for the time being—had taken her for a boy.
Cassandra had been her name for someone else.
When she was little, Cassandra had imagined a third sibling for her and Anthony: a sister. Their sister lived invisibly alongside them. When Anthony and Cassandra played, their sister played with them. When Cassandra got in trouble and was sent to bed early, her sister was there too. The child Cassandra had been had imagined she could see her, sometimes, a fierce little girl with Pentaghast dark hair and a sword of her own. In all her memories, they were twinned, merging into and out of one another in her mind’s eye.
As she got older and failed to grow out of her imaginary sibling, Cassandra worried it was a demon. But of what? Envy? Was this twisting, aching desire she felt when she thought of their sister some kind of envy? She wasn’t sure. But she had no magical aptitude to attract a demon. And she grew up, and her sister didn’t tear her life apart around her. She only followed her, always, like a sign she couldn’t interpret, like an omen.
Some time after their parents’ deaths and moving to live with their uncle, Cassandra, feeling like she might burst into pieces, stopped Anthony and asked: What if you called me Cassandra instead? In private, I mean.
She had been bright scarlet, hot, completely unable to meet his eyes. But he didn’t laugh. He only shrugged, nodded, and said: If that’s what you want.
Varric was easy to find once Cassandra turned her steeliest look, the one she knew produced satisfactory results among recruits, on the motley crew playing cards in the back of the Herald’s Rest. That led her up to the northwestern battlements.
He must have heard her coming, but he didn’t stop; only kept walking slow, looking out, until she overtook him and stood in his path.
‘I don’t need your help!’ she said, raising her voice over the sharp, snow-dusted wind blowing down from the teeth of the mountain range.
Varric raised his eyes to hers. His brow was knotted. ‘Well, hello, Seeker, fancy meeting you here. Dare I hope you came up here to enjoy the view?’
‘Don’t try to be funny,’ she said. ‘You know what I’m talking about! You leapt in with both big feet and you made the situation worse. I don’t need anyone to defend me!’
Varric passed a hand over his face. When he looked up again, it was with the weary readiness of a downed boxer getting back up for another go. He said, ‘Seeker, your uncle is an asshole.’
Cassandra sucked in a breath like a knife of cold air. ‘You— he— he’s my uncle!’ Which was less than eloquent, so she tried again. ‘If he’s an asshole, it’s up to me to say that. Not anyone else!’
‘Letting assholes be assholes just gives them permission to be bigger assholes,’ Varric said. ‘And it’s not just you who has to interact with him. I was basically doing a public service for everybody who’ll ever have to endure Prelate Pentaghast’s bullshit.’
‘You don’t know the first thing about him,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t your place—you weren’t even supposed to be there! You were only there because you wanted to see skeletons.’
Varric huffed a breath. It clouded in front of his face. ‘Y’know what, fine. You’re right, it’s none of my business. You want to let your family walk all over you, be my guest.’
‘I’m not—’ Cassandra made an irritated noise in her throat. ‘It’s easy for you to say! And why did you make that joke about me being—’ She could hardly bear to finish the sentence, ‘—the “finest woman in the Inquisition”? There’s no cause to be insulting!’
Varric, who had walked to the parapet and was gazing over it as if deciding whether throwing himself off it was worth it to end this argument, looked around at her, his face a picture of incredulity. ‘That’s what you’re taking away from that? Seriously? That I was insulting you with, what, hyperbole?’ Rather than letting Cassandra admit she didn’t know what that was, he barrelled on. ‘Forget about that, anyway—what do you mean, it’s easy for me to say? Because I have no family left, or—’ He paused, and when Cassandra didn’t correct him, his eyebrows rose. ‘That’s exactly what you meant. Wow, Seeker, that’s low.’
‘Is it?’ Cassandra spat. ‘Or is it true? You can moralise about everyone else’s families because you never have to put your morals where your mouth is.’
Varric stared at her with a look in his eyes that for some reason Cassandra found difficult to endure. At length he said, ‘Don’t let me hear you say I didn’t give you the chance to take it back. Fine, sure, I get to stay up on my high horse about your family because I don’t have one of my own any more. I’m a hypocrite.’ His tone did not encourage Cassandra to think he was truly agreeing with her. ‘But you—I don’t get it. You are… everything you are, and you can’t find it in yourself to stand up to one pompous old prelate?’
Cassandra opened her mouth to retort, and in that moment, she realised she’d made a mistake. She had forgotten completely her uncle’s false impression that she had utterly failed to quash when the opportunity presented itself. The choices before her unrolled like a forking path. One of them was to return to Vestalus and explain humiliatingly that he had been wrong, that she wasn’t in fact seeing anybody, and that he might as well consider himself correct in his first assessment that she would be alone and unwanted forever. The other…
She raised her eyes again. Varric stood in front of her, fists propped on his hips. She thought he might be grinding his teeth. She said, ‘I have a favour to ask of you.’ It came out rather strangled, but she lifted her chin.
Varric turned on her the exact sort of look she had feared he would. He said, ‘You have got to be kidding me.’
‘You know, it’s your fault I have to ask this of you, so it is really your responsibility.’ She was grateful for the cold wind; it must have made her burning cheeks look more natural.
He shook his head. ‘You’ve got some nerve, Seeker.’
‘Will you do it or not?’
‘You haven’t told me what it is yet!’
‘I need you to pretend you’re courting me.’ She ground it out between her teeth. It felt like spitting gravel.
There was a resounding silence on the battlements, filled only with the noise of the wind and the very faint quotidian sounds of the camp far, far below carried up on the wind. Varric’s mouth had fallen open. It seemed it was his turn to be unable to find the words. The silence stretched on excruciatingly, until Cassandra could bear it no longer, and snapped, ‘Fine, forget about it then—’
‘No!’ Varric interjected, and then: ‘Yes, I mean. I mean yeah. I mean, sure, I’ll do it.’ He coughed, regained a little composure. ‘Since you asked so nicely, after all.’
Cassandra let out a sharp breath. She said, ‘Very well.’
‘Don’t fall over yourself to thank me, whatever you do.’
‘Like I said, it is in fact your fault, so your responsibility.’
‘Okay, back up. I’m going to need a little context here. First off, why do you need me to pretend to be courting you? Second,’ he went on before Cassandra could answer, ‘why do you need me to pretend to be courting you?’
Cassandra made a frustrated noise and scrubbed her hands over her face. She hadn’t anticipated having to do this much explaining, or that the explaining would be so terribly awkward. In fact, she hadn’t anticipated anything—she had stormed here from Josephine’s office without thinking very much about what she was doing. She wished, now, that she’d devoted half a second to consideration. It was too late now, however. She was committed. ‘My uncle.’
‘Right. The guy who isn’t an asshole.’
She ignored the bait, with effort. ‘You made him think you were my suitor.’
Varric’s brow furrowed, then unfurrowed with realisation. ‘That’s what he meant?’
‘And then you made it worse with your “finest woman in the Inquisition” nonsense. He just came to congratulate me on finding a nice young man.’
‘Okay.’ Varric left a long pause. ‘I’m still not getting why you need me to pretend instead of just letting him down gently.’
‘Does it matter?’ Cassandra snapped. ‘You already agreed.’
Varric put up his hands in surrender. ‘All right. You win. Just how long am I supposed to keep up this ruse, anyway?’
‘Just until the delegation leaves.’ Cassandra hadn’t expected such an easy victory. She narrowed her eyes at him. He folded his arms and leaned sideways against the parapet. She said, ‘We’re going to need to establish some ground rules.’
‘Ground rules. For our fake courtship.’
‘Obviously,’ she growled. ‘Firstly, you are required to act as a gallant and gentlemanly suitor would when my uncle or any of the Nevarran delegation are present. Or when they might be present. Or in fact when they could be watching.’
‘So at all times, then.’
‘Not at all times. You are free to act as you please within your own chambers, or in private rooms.’
‘Wow, thanks.’
‘There will be no kissing.’
There was a silence. Cassandra couldn’t look at Varric, so she couldn’t see what his face was doing. She didn’t even really know why she’d said it, why it had come to mind, but now she’d begun she had to keep going as if she’d given it any thought whatsoever. ‘And no touching of an… overly familiar nature.’
‘Overly familiar,’ Varric repeated, a strange note to his voice. ‘Seeker, we’re supposed to be courting one another. You don’t usually get overly familiar with guys you’re dating?’
Cassandra caught her breath, looked away. She hadn’t had much time for romance in… well, ever, really. She’d had her eyes on other things. And she had achieved those things, and didn’t regret it a jot. It made conversations like this awkward, though. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she covered, lamely. ‘And anyway, maybe it would be different if I were courting somebody of my choice. This is merely a show for my uncle. If I were free to choose, you would not be who I would be talking to, Varric.’
Instead of looking quelled, Varric only looked—what? What was that look in the dwarf’s eyes? Whatever it was, it sat alongside a wry amusement. ‘Oh yeah? Tell me, Seeker, if you had your pick, who’d be your first choice? I’ve gotta know.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said, stiffly. ‘I shan’t let you distract me from the matter at hand. We are setting out the rules of a mutual endeavour.’
‘But, Seeker, I do so enjoy distracting you.’ A wicked grin.
‘As I said,’ Cassandra pushed ahead, ‘there will be no touching of an overly familiar nature. You may, however, hold my hand.’
‘Hey, you sure you’re okay with that level of intimacy?’ Varric’s tone was laden with sarcasm.
‘With you?’ Cassandra turned a stern look on him. ‘No. But needs must. We need not go very far to give my uncle the right idea. I’m sure he will be delighted with my apparent judiciousness and chastity.’
‘The more you talk about him, the more like a gigantic gaping asshole he seems. How about pet names?’
Now it was Cassandra’s turn to be wrong-footed. ‘What?’
‘Pet names. Nicknames for each other only we use. Y’know, darling, dear heart, that kind of thing.’
Cassandra’s shoulders had ratcheted up to her ears. ‘No. No petnames.’
‘I really think it would add to the realism of the whole thing,’ Varric said, sidling forward, ‘my little sweetroll.’
Cassandra bared her teeth. ‘I disagree.’
‘I really think it would lend verisimilitude if I were to call you, say…’
‘Don’t.’
‘Nuglet.’ Varric’s grin was as sharp as an assassin’s knife.
‘I don’t think it would,’ Cassandra forced out, ‘because if you call me such names in the presence of my uncle, I will be forced to throw you off the Inquisitor’s balcony.’
‘I don’t know, Seeker,’ Varric said, easily, ‘the more you threaten me the more I come to think it must be how you express affection.’
Cassandra turned on her heel, putting her back to Varric gratefully, and was three strides away before she realised something else. She halted. Turned, reluctantly. Varric stood there, leaning on the parapet, a quizzical expression on his face. She said, wishing it weren’t true, ‘We have to practice.’
Varric’s eyes widened, and at least Cassandra could take some solace from the fact that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t want any part of this. He said, ‘What exactly do you propose we practice?’
Cassandra crossed the distance back again and, not letting herself hesitate, stuck out her hand, palm down. Varric stared at it, and then her. Then his lips parted, his eyelids flickered, and he said, ‘Oh. Right.’
Cassandra had expected further mockery. She’d expected refusal. She hadn’t expected him to pull himself up straighter, squaring his shoulders, and lift his chin, before putting one hand behind his back and grasping her fingers with the other. She hadn’t expected him to bow formally over her hand, her cold fingers in his warm ones, and for him to touch his burning lips to the back of her knuckles—just the merest graze, so light it almost might have been her imagination if only she hadn’t been so sharply aware of the sensation.
He turned his face up to her, still bowed, still holding her hand, and instead of laughter in his dark eyes there was something honest and urgent there, despite the roguish, provocative smile his mouth wore. He said, his voice gravel, ‘Well, Seeker? How do I score?’
She cleared her throat. Then cleared it again. Then she said, ‘Very respectably. One might almost take you for a gentleman.’
Now the grin that spread over his face was unadulterated. ‘I can give an okay account of myself when pressed. And nobody presses me like you do.’
‘You’ll have to keep a straight face,’ Cassandra warned him. As would she, she thought. But she had a whole lifetime’s worth of practice at keeping her thoughts and feelings out of her countenance.
‘Trust me,’ Varric said.
I do, Cassandra almost blurted. Loath as she was to admit it, she did. Things had changed a lot since she had dragged the dwarf, if not kicking and screaming then certainly extremely reluctantly, across the Waking Sea to the Frostback Mountains, Haven, and the Conclave. They had been enemies then. Since, they’d been transformed by necessity and the improbable good will of the Inquisitor to comrades, fighting on the same side. It was impossible to spend so much time in mortal peril alongside somebody without engendering some small volume of trust for them within yourself. Trust, familiarity, and fellow feeling.
That’s what this was, Cassandra told herself. That’s what this warmth within her now had to be. Comradeship between soldiers on the same side of a war.
‘I have no choice in the matter,’ Cassandra answered.
‘You keep telling yourself that,’ Varric said. There was still something of the strange look he’d had before in his eyes. Now he looked down at where Cassandra’s hand still rested in his. He brushed his thumb across her knuckles so casually it seemed almost unconscious. Then he let go.
Cassandra took back her hand, with the ghost of Varric’s warmth still on her fingers. She closed it in her other hand.
‘I am organising a feast.’
Josephine stood, ink-spattered hands clasped before her, ever-present papers rolled and tucked under her arm. She looked like a woman who had just presented her friend with a lovely gift.
Cassandra paused in the doorway to Cullen’s chambers. Behind her, she heard Cullen rise from the chair he’d sunk into. She couldn’t look around to check how presentable he appeared—that would only seem suspicious. Ostensibly, they’d been discussing demon activity on the Storm Coast. In fact, she had been supervising him while he ate a proper meal and drank an amount of water sufficient to satisfy her. She couldn’t help but notice that he had been losing weight recently. As far as she knew, only she knew that it was due to the effects of ending his dependence on lyrium.
She tried to smooth out her face, as if she hadn’t just spent two hours watching a friend fight a pitched battle against nausea and exhaustion. ‘You… have organised a feast?’
‘For the delegation,’ Josephine prompted. ‘To celebrate a successful visit and the formalisation of our good relations.’
Cullen’s voice from behind Cassandra. ‘Is it a successful visit?’ When Cassandra turned, she saw that he looked pale but collected.
‘It will have been,’ Josephine said forcefully. ‘It shall be on the last evening of their stay here, before they leave to return home.’
Cassandra stepped out into the bright cold morning. ‘And you want me to attend.’ She was afraid she sounded unenthusiastic. It was because she was unenthusiastic, tremendously so.
‘Of course! And so shall you, Cullen, I am not forgetting you.’
‘Of course,’ Cullen echoed. He stood in the doorway, squinting against the sun. ‘I enjoy nothing more than getting dressed up like a mannequin and attending long social functions.’
‘Oh, I’m quite aware. But it is not just that.’ Josephine smiled a dimpled smile at Cassandra. ‘I’m sorry things went awry with your uncle yesterday.’
‘I heard about that,’ Cullen said.
‘You did?’ Cassandra couldn’t disguise the flat dismay in her voice.
‘Something of that nature,’ Cullen hastily amended. ‘Merely that he put his foot in his mouth. It was something and nothing, really.’
‘And yet you’ve heard of it.’
Cullen attempted an apologetic smile.
‘As a consolation,’ Josephine hurried on, ‘I wanted to give you the opportunity to help me to organise it. Really make your mark on the whole affair.’
‘As a consolation?’ Cassandra wasn’t sure how helping to organise a party was supposed to be a consolation for anything.
‘And your Nevarran knowledge will be invaluable, of course. Together we can make it very special, I am sure. I hope it will feel a little like home. Do you have time now to come and see what I have planned already? We will need to send for whatever we don’t already have in good time.’
Cullen bowed his head. ‘I’ll give you both my farewell, then. I can handle troops and supplies and battlefields but a party? Beyond my scope.’
Josephine looped her arm through Cassandra’s and turned them towards the keep.
What did home feel like? Cassandra wanted to ask. Nevarra hadn’t been home for a long time. And she wasn’t sure she had ever felt at home with her uncle Vestalus. But none of that would mean anything to Josephine. Instead she said, ‘You miss Antiva?’
Josephine shrugged, her ruffles ruffling. ‘I miss my family. I miss hearing too much about Laurien’s nightly misadventures over breakfast. I miss Antoine’s overblown fashion sense. I even miss Yvette following me from room to room chattering on and on about whatever passes through her head. And, yes, I miss Antiva. The weather, of course! The come and go of the ships. But I wouldn’t wish to be there when I could be here, now. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I think so.’ Cassandra had never longed for home, unless it was for a childhood she could never return to. She had always itched to be where the action was, where what she did mattered. Perhaps that was something of what Josephine felt, too. ‘There is nowhere in all Thedas quite like Skyhold and the Inquisition at this very moment.’
‘Precisely.’ Josephine smiled a bright smile. ‘That is what I hope your uncle and the others will see. There is something special happening here, and they have the chance to be part of it.’ She caught Cassandra’s arm before they entered the keep, just under the shadow of the building. She said, ‘Cassandra. Your uncle. You let him believe Varric was courting you. You didn’t correct him. Why?’
Cassandra took a measured breath in through her nose and let it out all in one rush before answering, lest she bite Josephine’s head off. ‘It was foolish, I know. It was only a moment’s hesitation, and then I couldn’t take it back. I just… I want him to see me doing well. Succeeding. That I’m not held back by…’
‘By what the world thought you were,’ Josephine finished, when it became clear Cassandra wouldn’t.
‘By my changing what the world thought I was,’ Cassandra amended.
‘But Cassandra,’ Josephine rushed in, ‘you are doing well. You aren’t held back. You hold one of the most important roles in all southern Thedas. You’re a companion and advisor to the Herald of Andraste! Surely he must see that?’
Cassandra shrugged. ‘I think, to Vestalus, worldly achievement pales beside the personal. He thinks I shall always be alone.’
When she looked down at Josephine, she saw Josephine’s mouth had thinned, her hands tightened on her papers. ‘Be careful,’ she said, ‘you’ll break your quill.’
‘But Cassandra,’ Josephine said, ‘you are not alone. You are loved and admired.’
Cassandra cleared her throat, to avoid having to address that. She thought Josephine was perhaps putting it a little strong. And even if she weren’t, that kind of love wasn’t what Vestalus thought valuable. ‘What’s done is done,’ she said, roughly, looking away, ‘and Varric has agreed.’
‘Agreed?’ Josephine looked puzzled for a moment before her eyes widened in realisation. ‘Oh, Cassandra, you’re not seriously going to keep this deception going?’
‘It’s too late to back out now.’
‘If you just told him—’
‘No.’ Cassandra’s no was immovable as stone. ‘Varric has agreed. We are maintaining the ruse that we are courting. I ask you do nothing to jeopardise it.’
‘But everyone will think…’ Josephine touched her fingers to her lips. ‘Who else knows?’
‘That it’s a lie?’ Cassandra counted on her fingers. ‘Me. You. Varric. None other.’
Josephine gave Cassandra the kind of look one might give someone who is stamping mercilessly on one’s toes. ‘Oh, Cassandra…’
‘You are not obliged to lie. Merely not to reveal the truth.’
‘I’m a diplomat, Cassandra—it’s not the lying I object to!’
‘Then what?’
Josephine let out a huff of breath. ‘I think this deception is unwise and unnecessary. But I am your friend. And as your friend, I promise that I will do nothing to compromise your plan. Such as it is.’
Cassandra reached out and took one of Josephine’s hands in her own, pressed it. ‘Thank you.’
‘Do not mention it.’ Josephine thought of something, and brightened. ‘And you shall have to bring him to the feast, of course, as your consort. You will both require new outfits.’
‘Of course,’ Cassandra echoed. She imagined breaking this news to Varric. She couldn’t imagine he would be any more enamoured of the idea of new outfits for a long, boring diplomatic function than she was.
Well. She didn’t have to tell him right away. She turned toward the keep. ‘Come. Let us go in. I will help you with your planning until luncheon.’
Thinking about a party for too long gave Cassandra a headache. So in the afternoon, she went down the mountain to the camp, using the steep switchbacking mountain path rather than the lift. Down at the camp, she had recruits to see to.
The Inquisition camp below Skyhold spread out from the bottom of the sheer ascent like somebody had spilled out a whole chest of toy soldiers upon the snow, a makeshift village in its own right. It wasn’t truly at the base of the mountain—up here amongst the peaks the mountains all jostled and crowded one another, and they were all still a long way above sea level—but on a plateau cradled between the mountains, on the shores of a river so cold it was half frozen even in the height of summer and so blue it rivalled the sky. There wasn’t enough room up in the fortress itself to house anything like all their forces, though if they were somehow besieged they would be able to withdraw a significant force of arms beyond Skyhold’s unbreachable walls, and the rest would retreat through mountain paths they were confident none would be able to follow. But there was slim chance of that eventuality. Their remoteness was their shield.
Remoteness, Cassandra hoped, would also shield her for the rest of the day. Though it was bitterly cold down here outside the protective walls of Skyhold and their strange ancient magic, and there was little in the way of amenities, being down here also meant that it was highly unlikely she’d bump into anybody she didn’t feel like talking to. Down here, she was the highest authority. Today, her task was to continue honing the Inquisition’s soldiers into a fighting force their enemies would dread.
She threw herself into drilling the recruits as if her life—and theirs—depended on it. It did, in the long run. In a real battle they needed to be quick, strong, resilient. It only took one mistake. All of them were only the thickness of their shield and their armour from bloody death. When the recruits—a brand new batch fresh up the mountain from Jader, a tough little crew of smalltime thugs who’d seen the way the gold was flowing and joined up—buckled, sweaty and panting, under her sword, she wheeled away and bellowed at them to return to their starting positions and begin again.
Training the sword always felt to Cassandra like balancing on the edge of a knife. On the one side, grim fatalism at the thought of battles to come. On the other, the blind satisfaction of using her body to its fullest, knowing she could rely upon it.
When she had first found an apothecary in Nevarra who could make her the distillation she needed to make her body more womanly, she had hesitated over it. All that searching and longing, and here it was in her hand at last—but what if it changed her in ways she didn’t want? What if it made her weaker, more vulnerable?
She had spent a fraught day with the bottle under her pillow, still sealed and stoppered, before that evening returning to her chamber in a rush to pull it open and dissolve three drops in her tea. She didn’t care, she decided. There was no outcome she could picture that she wouldn’t dare to gamble with. She just couldn’t bear one more day stuck in the same old flesh that wasn’t hers and never would be.
By the time she thought it might be affecting her stamina and her sword arm, there had already been enough other changes that she couldn’t give a fig. She already worked harder than anyone else—she would simply work even harder.
She came away from drilling the recruits slick with sweat despite the cold, chafing in her armour and her boots, breath making huge white clouds before her face, and still somehow dissatisfied. It wasn’t the recruits—she’d had to grudgingly admit that they’d put in the effort and showed signs of maybe not being an absolute waste of time. There was something else, like a stone in her boot, but nothing so easily found and fixed.
She threw herself down on a stool outside the officers’ tent with a whetstone, a bottle of neatfoot oil, and a rag, with which to work on her sword. When she felt the flap of the tent open beside her, she didn’t look up. She didn’t particularly feel like making conversation. The officers, all her subordinates, would rather kiss a quillback than try to force her to.
Which was why she was surprised when whoever had just exited the tent stopped beside her and waited. She looked up, face already set in the kind of expression that gave junior officers nightmares, and found a dented pewter cup being proffered. She looked up a little further, though not much, and found it wasn’t a fellow officer after all. It was Varric.
Cassandra considered knocking the cup out of his hand. She considered getting up and walking away. She considered picking him up and hurling him into a crevasse. After a brief moment’s consideration, she decided not to do any of these things, chiefly because she was sweating and parched and her muscles ached, and on balance she’d rather stay just where she was and drink whatever was in the cup, even if it meant her plan to go a whole afternoon without being bothered by pointless conversation was foiled. She took the cup from Varric’s hand with a grunt of thanks and was pleased to discover it contained sweet hot wine.
‘No, no, please, your effusive gratitude is too much for me,’ Varric said, deadpan. Cassandra ignored this. He went on. ‘Had a nice time beating the ever-loving crap out of all our shiny idealistic baby soldiers? I’m curious, are you testing them to see how many flee back down the mountain crying to their mothers, or are you just hoping to kill a few?’
‘Please,’ Cassandra couldn’t stop herself from saying, ‘as if you ever cared for the wellbeing of soldiers before.’
‘Hey, now, there are some tin can meatheads I’m very fond of, as it happens.’
Aveline, Cassandra supposed, mentally rifling Varric’s past. Cullen, maybe. Cassandra tossed back the cup of wine, held it up to Varric in wordless demand. He had brought it to her in the first place, after all. If he wanted to act as a servant…
‘Why, yes, my lady,’ Varric said, ‘of course I’ll fetch you more wine, since you asked with your usual courtesy.’ He vanished into the tent. Cassandra heard murmured voices from inside, then a bark of laughter, not Varric’s. Nobody inside that tent had better be laughing at her, she thought, bristling. Not if they knew what was good for them.
When Varric emerged, Cassandra snatched the cup from him and took a burning swallow. ‘Varric,’ she asked, ‘what are you doing here?’
He folded his arms and transferred his gaze from her into the middle distance. ‘I don’t know if you recall, Seeker, but you and I are supposed to be courting. I don’t know how you do in Nevarra but usually that involves spending time with each other.’
‘But—’ she spluttered. ‘But I’m busy!’
‘Hey, if you want to call this whole charade off—’
‘No.’ She said it abruptly. ‘No, we can’t.’
‘Then may I suggest you at least fake a smile and pretend like you enjoy my company, instead of regarding me as a little above a stone in your boot?’
Cassandra realised, with a sudden rush of clarity, that no matter their usual antipathy Varric was doing her a favour by going along with this scheme. If he was here now, she couldn’t guarantee it wasn’t to annoy her, but it was also to help her. ‘I’m grateful. For your assistance.’
‘Wow, thanks, Seeker. That almost sounded like you didn’t have to force it out between your teeth.’
She didn’t have time to think of a civil response to this before Varric held up a hand. ‘Okay, okay. No more sniping. I appreciate the thanks, really. I’d do it anyway, but I still appreciate it.’
‘Why?’ Cassandra couldn’t help but ask. ‘Why would you do it anyway? Why did you agree?’
‘You’re not trying to get me to back out now, are you? But no, seriously.’ He shrugged. ‘I know how hard family can be, that’s all. Seems to me like proving yourself to your uncle—whatever I think of him—it means a lot to you.’
That hadn’t been the answer she’d been expecting. She’d thought he’d been in it so she’d owe him, or to play a prank on her, or something like that. It took her a moment before she could reply. She recalled what she knew of Varric’s family. ‘You had a brother. He died.’
‘Correct and correct.’ His face had changed, only barely, but still noticeable. He wore the expression of someone bracing for incoming pain. ‘I told you all about it while I was tied to a chair.’
‘Yes.’ If he thought that was going to abash her, he underestimated her resolve. ‘Do you have anyone else?’
He shook his head. ‘Couple cousins. Nobody close. It was me and Bartrand, almost as long as I can remember. Just the two of us against the world. Family can be hard, when it’s like that.’ He looked up, met her eyes, and there was something dark and honest in them that she couldn’t look away from. He said, ‘Me and Bartrand. I tried so hard to ignore the distance growing between us, the difference. Then I cursed him out and tried to forget about him. I’d do anything rather than look it in the face, the fact that my only family was hurrying down the road to his own destruction. So I didn’t see it coming, what happened. But then… I sure couldn’t look away any more.’
‘Now he’s gone.’
‘Now he’s gone,’ Varric echoed wryly.
‘What’s it like,’ Cassandra said, not quite sure of what she was going to say before she said it, ‘being all alone in the world?’
Varric raised his eyebrows at her, then frowned. ‘Where’d you get the idea I’m all alone?’
‘That’s right.’ Cassandra turned away from him, back to oiling her sword. ‘You have Bianca.’
‘Hey, now,’ Varric said, amusement in his voice. ‘Don’t get jealous.’
‘I’m not jealous!’ Cassandra realised she’d raised her voice. ‘I’m not jealous,’ she said again, in a more level tone.
‘Alright.’ Varric sounded—what was that she thought she heard in his voice? It couldn’t be what she thought it was, which was uncertainty. Varric was never uncertain. ‘Anyway,’ he said, slowly, ‘I don’t have Bianca. She’s never been mine. Especially not now. I don’t know what we are to each other.’
‘You love her,’ Cassandra said, stubbornly pressing the point.
‘You wanna keep your voice down? Don’t forget our little ruse. It’d look pretty weird if I was discussing another woman with the one I’m trying to woo.’
Cassandra bent back to her sword. ‘It would.’ He hadn’t answered the question, but she didn’t care. Why would she care? ‘What about Hawke?’
Varric shifted beside her. ‘What about Hawke?’
‘You were close. She was like family to you too.’
‘And now she’s gone too, is that what you’re trying to say?’ There was a rough edge to Varric’s voice, like a nick in a sword blade. ‘“How’s it feel, Varric, to have all your family die and your best friend too? Bet that stings, right?” The hell are you looking for, Seeker?’
Cassandra stood abruptly and slipped her sword into its sheath with one fluid movement. What was she looking for? A rise? Well, she’d got it. It didn’t make her feel any better. ‘Lest you feel too aggrieved, Varric, my family are dead too. All killed in front of me, one way or another. Vestalus is all I have left. And you wonder why I want to remain on good terms with him? You can’t understand that I might not want to end up like—’ She bit off the end of that sentence.
Varric heard it anyway. ‘Like me? All alone?’ He took a challenging step towards her. ‘Anyone’d be surprised, given how hard you try to piss everyone off and push everyone away.’
Cassandra’s heart was knocking on the inside of her ribs like she wanted to hit someone. Like she had been wrongfooted somewhere, and ended up in a poor position. She only had one answer to that, all her life. When the world makes you feel wrong, stare it down until it gives. She stepped forward to meet Varric, looming over him. ‘No, Varric. Not everyone. Just you.’
Varric didn’t step back. He bent his neck to look up at her, mouth sideways, arms still folded. He’d never been scared of her, she recalled. She’d told herself that he was, he must be, because everyone was. He was just hiding it better than most. But no—Varric really wasn’t scared of her. Had never been. It made her feel—what did it make her feel? Was that anger, boiling in the pit of her stomach, or something else?
‘What are you gonna do, Seeker,’ Varric growled, ‘try and hit me again? I think that might about put paid to our little deception.’
Cassandra glanced around. Despite the respectful distance she was afforded, they weren’t alone, and people were looking their way, attention drawn by the raised voices. She pictured her and Varric as they must seem from the outside. Seeker Pentaghast, once Right Hand of the Divine, picking a fight with her suitor. What a joke.
She turned back to Varric. Her face was on fire. In a flash of inspiration, she realised: there was only one other reason Cassandra Pentaghast would be standing this close to her suitor. Doing what she did best, she saw the opening, and she lunged for it. She seized the fur collar of his coat and stooped to drag Varric into a kiss.
Varric made a startled sound, muffled against her mouth, but he didn’t try to pull away. Instead, recovering admirably quickly, his hand closed on her elbow, pulling her closer, his mouth moving against hers. He was hot, and scratchy, and he smelled of woodsmoke; and she thought she might have made a small sound in her throat, like the beginning of the word ‘ah’. She balled her other hand in the fur of his collar, because she wanted him closer—she wanted—
What was she doing?
She narrowly managed to avoid pushing Varric into the snow, but she dragged herself away with a gasp, stumbling back a step, releasing his collar. The cold felt suddenly very cold indeed. She didn’t look around to see if they had fooled the camp bystanders, but Varric’s expression was— she couldn’t put words to Varric’s expression.
She forced her hands to her sides and bowed stiffly to him. ‘Thank you for your company,’ she said, each word stiff as new brocade. ‘I will take my leave of you now.’
‘You—’ Varric worked his mouth, apparently unable to get his thoughts in the right order. ‘You—’
Without waiting to hear if Varric would eventually be able to finish what he was trying to say, Cassandra turned on her heel and walked—not ran—very quickly away.