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Chapter Text

9:25 Dragon

Kirkwall

i.

If the Kirkwall guard knew about this place, their good captain would be frothing at the mouth, Varric thought. Right now, he could see a rotgut distillery, making the kind of swill that would turn a man blind—after turning him violent and crazy. He could see about thirty guys trading bets on a pair of fighting brontos. Every time they crashed together, roaring and snarling, there was a tremor. It was a wonder they couldn’t feel it in the city above. And in the front of the cavern, there were a few knife-scarred, water-stained, rickety old tables, piled high with fake IDs and unstamped Orlesian silks, Orzammar steel, and Antivan poisons for sale. All of this in plain view. He didn’t even have to turn all the way around.

The dwarven carta was one of those Kirkwall facts of life that everybody tried to ignore. Competing with the Coterie for the honors of being the lowest scum and selling the largest variety of illegal goods and services in the city, they provided more than half the assassins and bodyguards to the great families of the Merchant’s Guild, and Varric guessed about a quarter of the Templars in Kirkwall would go crazy if their lyrium trade shut down.

Their current hideout was one of the many caverns and warrens in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Darktown. They’d probably move to another one in another few weeks, but for now, carta banners hung from the walls and the cavern roof right next to the bat roosts, and the whole cave smelled like liquor and pipe smoke instead of bat droppings.

I hate it underground.

Most real dwarves got twitchy without a roof. But Varric was a Stone-forgotten heathen surfacer. Stone walls and roofs and the smell of dirt just made him claustrophobic.

The carta didn’t like him here. Without a brand, leather armor, or a set of brass knuckles, he smelled too much like the Merchant’s Guild, and for all the business the carta did with the bastards in the Guild, the Guild were a bit too likely to make them fall guys too. It wasn’t usual procedure for upright Kirkwall citizens to walk right into carta headquarters. As Varric did it, more than a couple of the gamblers turned around, the distillers stopped working, and several of the guards bristled and put hands to steel.

Varric held his hands up above his head to show his honorable intentions. Not that he was unarmed. That would just be idiotic. His daggers were in crossbody sheaths across his back, easy to access and easy to see.

A black-bearded guy with an Orzammar duster brand and a brass ring through his nose swaggered up then. Probably Fiddler. He matched the description of the guy everyone said ran the Kirkwall carta branch these days. He was straight from Orzammar, a hardened killer and an experienced criminal. “You got business here, salroka?” he grunted.

“I might have,” Varric answered easily, extending his right hand. After a moment, Fiddler took it. “Varric Tethras. My brother’s Bartrand Tethras, head of our family’s enterprises in Kirkwall.”

Fiddler grunted again. “I heard of you,” he said. “Smooth-talking, clever little bastard with a better network than the Blighted Coterie, if a curst sight weirder. What do you want?”

“We need protection for our regular caravan to Nevarra,” Varric answered. “Getting to be too many bandits and slavers up that way for business. Freelance mercenaries aren’t reliable. They’ll always sell you out to anyone who can pay better.”

Fiddler snorted and bared his teeth, revealing three that had been replaced with iron in an otherwise yellow-brown smile. “And you’re so sure we won’t, are you?”

Varric shrugged. “I always heard the carta had appreciation for good business, had people who recognized that long-term associates pay better in the long run than a quick bribe. Ask anyone you like: Bartrand always pays his bills on time. But we can offer you a little more than a paycheck every time our caravan makes the run.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I know some people,” Varric said. “Fishermen. Now, I know good provisions go a lot further toward keeping an organization happy than just about anything else, and I imagine you people get tired of having nug steak and mushroom stir-fry for dinner. If you’re interested in a little variety, we could help with that. Get you a discount.”

“Is that right?”

Varric waited. There were times to talk and times to shut up. Sometimes shutting up was the better option. He had made a more than decent offer. If Fiddler accepted, his people would have a regular job and his organization would have a regular source of revenue, plus access to a source of cheap provisions. And, if he was smart, Fiddler could get more out of Varric’s offer than that. The carta was always looking for ways to expand their smuggling operations, and Varric’s fishermen friends had boats. But that was none of his business.

Fiddler sucked on his bottom lip, then thrust out his dirty hand again. Varric shook it, trying not to think about just where that hand had been. “We have a caravan leaving the Merchant’s Guild next Tuesday down the Pikepoint Road,” he said. “I’ll tell our people to expect your escort there at sunrise. You or your negotiator can come by the Hanged Man later and meet my friends. I’ll have the contracts ready before sundown tomorrow.”

“Done,” Fiddler agreed. “You can buy us a drink while we mull it over. For now, just you enjoy our hospitality, Varric Tethras.” He jerked his head at the table that seemed to be serving as a bar, and the white-bearded, one-eyed old dwarf behind it, who grinned toothlessly at Varric when he saw him look over. “Drink your fill on us,” Fiddler told him. “Bet on a bronto. Have a good time. We’ll talk tomorrow in your court.”

Varric bowed, and Fiddler went about his own business. He had things to do. The carta dwarves, who had been watching Varric ever since he had walked into the joint, promptly lost interest—or seemed to. He had gotten permission from the boss to hang around. Everything was fine, and Varric didn’t need to be killed and thrown down a deeper shithole than this just yet.

The gambling started up again, the distillers started back to work, and everyone off-duty started smoking and talking just like he’d never come in, turning their backs as they did. Of course, they weren’t really half as oblivious as they looked. If any of them smelled a further business opportunity—or a different kind of opportunity—they’d be all over him in a second. Varric would bet more than he’d bet on either of the fighting brontos that a few of them would follow him when he left in any case—some on Fiddler’s orders, and some with their own motivations.

The best thing he could do right now would be to have that drink. Not a few, not enough to get drunk. That’d be as stupid as going away without having anything. But one or two, enough to put on the show that he trusted these people. The show mattered, even if no one in the place bought it. Satisfied pride all around.

And anyway, he had other business.

Bartrand would be happy enough for the escorts for the Nevarran caravan. They’d been hit by bandits a couple times too many. Lost some good people, and, what was worse in Bartrand’s eyes, lost the merchandise. But honestly, Varric thought they had some bigger fish to fry—pun intended.

There was a counterfeiter in Kirkwall.

About seven weeks ago, the first few families in the Merchant’s Guild had reported counterfeit coins coming into their operations. Then Varric had heard from the shopkeepers. As far as anyone could tell, the bastard was working in silver, which was probably the worst thing they could have done. Coppers were chump change, and gold coin was the domain of the rich and fabulous, but most goods worth anything were priced in silver. The counterfeits so far had all been Orlesian crowns, which was one break. Stores and exchanges had already started to mitigate the damage by forbidding transactions in Orlesian coin. But seeing as about a third of the coin circulating in Kirkwall was Orlesian, the measure could only go so far.

There hadn’t been a panic. Yet. But if too many fake silvers got into circulation, prices would inflate to ridiculous, impossible levels as businesses rushed to recoup their losses. Poor families would be unable to buy basic necessities. A third of the coin used in Kirkwall would become useless, with anyone who still had it unable to trade it away at the exchanges for the Fereldan, Tevene, Guilder, or Marcher silvers used at other businesses in Kirkwall. Businesses used to dealing in crowns would crumble, and the ones that used other coin would be glutted. In the end, if whoever was running the counterfeit business wasn’t stopped, a lot of people would starve, a lot of people would riot, and a lot of people would die.

The Kirkwall guard would be on the case soon, if they weren’t already. They could probably crack it in a month or so. But by then, a lot of the damage would already be done, and anyway, if the guard cracked the case, there would probably also be a crackdown on a lot of the more profitable, relatively harmless crime in the city. Varric guessed he wasn’t the only one affiliated with the Merchant’s Guild doing a little investigation into the matter. The difference was the others didn’t have his contacts.

A couple of informants in Lowtown—back-alley pickpockets and the like—had told him they’d heard the bastards shitting in the coin system might have carta ties, so here he was. Of course, the carta itself wouldn’t be running the ring. They were smarter than that. Counterfeit coin was murder on everyone—sometimes literally—and if Fiddler or anyone else higher up in the carta actually knew who was running the ring, they’d probably be the first to off the sons of bitches responsible. But there were a lot of lowlifes that ran in or around the carta. They hatched their own ambitions and ran their own scams all the time, and it was impossible for Fiddler or anyone else to keep track of them all.

But if Varric’s information was good—and it was always good—someone, somewhere here would know something.

There were a few ways to get information. Paying for it almost always worked, but someone who was willing to talk with you for coin was always willing to talk to the next person too. They were like hookers that way. Befriending gossips could be profitable, but the quality of the information you got was always questionable. Befriending people who liked to show how powerful they were by sharing secrets they were in on was a better bet, but they weren’t as easy to befriend as the gossips.

Varric got his information just about every way it was possible to get it, but one of his favorite tactics was to chat up the people everyone else ignored. The elderly, the drunks, the beggars, the lower-level priests, and the eccentrics. You had to do a little more filtering that way, but people like that almost always saw or heard something worthwhile. The trick was figuring out just what. But that was fun too.

Varric had his man in a second scan of the room. In the dining area by the bar, there was a guy sitting by himself at a barrel pulling double duty as a table. He was up to his elbows in blueprints. His hair was sticking up in about twelve different directions; he had inkstains on his fingers, across his nose and cleanshaven upper lip; and he was muttering to himself. The guys around him were ignoring him like they were pretending to ignore Varric, and when they managed to look the guy’s way, mostly by accident, they laughed or called an insult or two his way.

Bingo. We’ve got us a misunderstood genius. Or a crackpot.

Same difference, really.

Varric got his drink from the one-eyed bartender, Durga. “Get me another while you’re at it, friend,” he said, sliding a few coppers across the table. “And tell me what you know about that guy there.” He nodded at Blueprints, and Durga grinned.

“That’s Gerav,” Durga told him, spitting off to the side of the bar. “Weird little son of a bitch, en’t he? Wouldn’t think to look at him, but he’s probably old Fiddler’s best artificer. The traps and cave-clearin’ cocktails he can put together could make a grown man cry with the beauty of it. Or cry for a few other reasons. Only he’s cracked. Downright obsessed with complexification and curst fool gadgets that’ll never work. Been worse than usual, late. Lucky if we can get a half dozen rock-busters out of him a week nowadays.”

He shoved a couple of chipped and stained old tankards over the table at Varric. Varric didn’t flinch at them. He brought his own mugs to the Hanged Man these days, but before he’d caught on to that trick, he’d drunk out of worse than this. He flipped Durga another two coppers, picked up the tankards, and walked across the carta’s little café to Gerav.

Gerav blinked up at him with dark gray eyes, ringed with a thin line of black around the iris. He licked his lips and ran his fingers through brown hair already a little greasy. Of course, that just made it stick up worse than ever. “What? What do you want?” he asked.

Gerav was probably a few years older than Varric. Not much, though. Still pretty young to be the best artificer in Fiddler’s branch of the carta.

“Nothing,” Varric lied, taking an empty seat. “You look like you could use a break, that’s all. The name’s Varric. Varric Tethras. Have a pint. My treat.”

Gerav grunted and downed half the ale in one plug. “Thanks. Curse the Ancestors, that’s good. You don’t realize your throat’s so dusty until you’ve about choked on it.”

“You seem a bit preoccupied,” Varric observed.

Gerav looked down at the blueprints, made a disgusted noise, and sent them scattering in a single sweep of his arm. “It’s all nugshit,” he complained. “I’ve looked at this nugshit until I’m seeing spots sideways, and I can’t break through! Never mind it. Who are you? What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you before.”

They went through the ritual small talk of an early acquaintance. Gerav was the grandson of a casteless thug infidel desperate enough to leave Orzammar some fifty years back. Gerav’s mother had tried to play it straight, working in a shop in Wycome, but she had fallen for some smooth-talking carta grifter. All three of them had died ugly deaths steeped in poverty and crime, and Gerav had grown up criminal. It was the same old story, and Varric was able to fill in the blanks between what sparse details Gerav’s talk gave him. If Clan Tethras had had less coin when his father had been chucked out of Orzammar, it might very well have been his own family story.

Gerav had done better for himself than your run-of-the-mill, everyday carta thug. Ever since he’d been a kid, he’d had a knack for traps and machines, and, over the years, his bosses had noticed. It’d put him out of the way of a lot of the more deadly carta operations, and in the way of a bit more coin than usual. Hadn’t earned him a lot of respect, but then, brains and skill weren’t the kind of thing a lot of dwarves in the carta tended to respect. Anyway, like Durga had said, Gerav was weird. A bit manic and obsessive, with a few off-putting habits. He tapped the table in multiples of three with his middle finger all the time they were talking. He blinked too much. Rubbed the handle on his tankard of ale with his thumb—also in patterns of three. Every time he set something down, he had to set it down three times. He gathered up his scattered blueprints before too long, and when he reorganized them, he had to put them in order of size, date, and ink color before he would say another word to Varric.

The guy didn’t have a lot to say about the side jobs of the various members of Fiddler’s organization. But the conversation wasn’t a total loss. They never were, really. People were always bound to say something useful sooner or later, even if they didn’t know it or have the first clue how Varric could use it. Talking with the artificer, Varric picked up on a couple of affairs going on—in the carta and in the Merchant’s Guild—though poor, innocent Gerav probably didn’t have any idea of exactly what it was that he’d seen and heard. Varric also got a better idea than he’d got yet of just how involved the carta really was in spats against the Coterie.

And two drinks and a lunch into the conversation, he got something even better than that. Those blueprints Gerav kept cursing over were fascinating.

Gerav was trying to build a repeating crossbow. He told Varric all about it in less than an hour. “Single best advantage in a fight is the ability to kill or incapacitate the enemy at a distance,” he explained. “You can do it with bombs, cocktail grenades. But they’re expensive. Too easy to blow up yourself by mistake, and limited to how far one man can throw. Or launch—that could be an idea—a handheld or artillery-level grenade launcher . . .” He licked his lips, ran a hand through his hair, and went silent. Tap, tap, tap . . . tap, tap, tap, went his finger on the table, at a faster tempo than the one he’d used so far. He pulled a quill out of a stained shirt pocket and eyed the ragged end, looked down and saw that earlier he’d tossed his inkpot with his blueprints.

“You don’t happen to have any ink, do you, Varric?” he asked.

Varric smiled. “As a matter of fact, I do. Never leave home without it.” He produced a corked pot of it from one of the pouches he kept on his belt and offered it to Gerav.

“Thanks,” Gerav said. He looked down again, licked his lips again, and then folded over the corner of one of his blueprints and scratched out a few notes in a hand that was nearly illegible. He tapped the paper three times, then handed Varric the quill instead of the ink pot.

“Thank you,” Varric replied, hiding a smile.

“What was I talking about?” Gerav wanted to know.

“Distance killing,” Varric told him.

Gerav nodded. Three times. Blinked several times in succession. “Right,” he agreed. “Company of archers or a couple of well-placed sharpshooters is the best way to wipe out a rival gang in a fight. But bows are awkward. Hard to fit in cramped tunnels and slow to reload. You get a few knives or clubs that can run and dodge, bye-bye archers. Crossbow’s better; smaller, easier to get into tight or hidden spaces, with more of a kick. I’ve designed a few models you can disassemble and conceal. Problem with crossbows is that they’re even slower to reload than bows are. Heavier draw weight, usually. But if you could automate them?”

He drew in a breath and shook his head, gray eyes shining. “If you designed a mechanical, self-reloading, repeating crossbow, you could have it all. Power, speed, and precision. You could kill anyone before they had the chance to close the distance! It would be a complete and total game-changer.”

Varric could see the possibilities. A repeating crossbow, self-reloading to cut down the time between shots. It certainly would be a game-changer, if Gerav could make it work. “I never liked knife-fighting much,” he admitted. “It’s dangerous and messy. The blood just gets everywhere. I could like a repeating crossbow.”

Gerav scoffed bitterly. “You and half the thinking, fighting world. But I can’t get a prototype to work! They’re too clunky. Too fragile. Or the force of the shot sends the calibration to the Void. I know it could work! I know it!” He made a disgusted noise. “Here, take a look!”

He pulled a crossbow out of a canvas sack at his feet and handed it to Varric. Varric, surprised, buckled a little at the force of the hand-off. Then his hands wrapped around the stock.

Most crossbows were pretty straightforward. You had your bow—usually composite for strength, your stock, your loading lever, and your trigger. This thing had a mounted quiver. It had a built-in bayonet for close-quarter combat. It had a labeled sight. It was trimmed with brass pins and fittings for durability, and the wood was sanded and polished to a shine.

That crossbow was the single most beautiful piece of worthless junk Varric had ever seen in his life. He was in love.

“So, what’s the problem here?” he asked Gerav, eyeing the mechanisms and the thick string, lovingly waxed to perfection.

“With Model Fourteen?” Gerav asked. “The new lever design cocks up the calibration whenever it pulls a new bolt from the magazine. I finally managed to get a lever that pulls bolts from the magazine in a single movement. Doesn’t break the string doing it either. But it’s useless. The first shot goes off like a dream. The second fires, all right, but at a completely different angle. Accuracy’s miserable, and within a few bolts, the Blighted thing still jams! Might as well be using a regular crossbow, or nothing!”

“I don’t know,” Varric said thoughtfully. “If you’ve got it actually reloading itself . . . Gerav, tell me, how much would you want for this thing?”

“Didn’t you just hear me say she’s useless?” Gerav asked. “I can’t get it. I’ve tried. Fourteenth prototype, and that’s not counting the designs I’ve scrapped on paper. By the Ancestors, why do you want her?”

Varric shrugged. “I have a collection of weird and unique curios,” he lied. “I consider them works of art. Besides, you’ll still have the blueprints. All those prototypes. You can start fresh. Maybe you’ll have that breakthrough.”

Gerav looked thoughtful. “Maybe. Maybe. Maybe I’ve gotten too attached to this design to think of a better way. It’s the closest I’ve come to a real repeating crossbow. But it could be I’ve been doing it all wrong.”

“Could be,” Varric agreed. “So, what do you say? Two gold for old Model Fourteen?”

Gerav smiled. “You aren’t a bargainer, Varric. I’d let her go for seventy-five silver.”

Varric grinned back. “You aren’t a bargainer, to tell me that.” Still, he opened his purse and fished out the two sovereigns. Better to pay in gold than silver these days. He hadn’t checked his coin today. And if he was right about old Model Fourteen, even two sovereigns was an absolute steal.

Chapter Text

ii.

“What dust-snorting lunatic thought this up?” Taggert Davri demanded, turning over Model Fourteen in his soot-stained fingers, each the approximate width of a sausage and attached to a hand like a spade. Everything about Taggert Davri gave an impression of overwhelming strength, but those thick, meaty fingers were as delicate as those of the most expert seamstress. His sneer was less delicate.

Taggert Davri was a kalna smith. He and all his family would be casteless and worse in Orzammar now, from his wizened old father down to his youngest infant niece. But because their criminal ancestor had been honored members of the Smith caste before his exile, naturally, the whole lot of them maintained as much self-importance as if they were all members of the blessed House Branka.

Still, it wasn’t just Bartrand and the other stuck-up traditionalists in the Merchant’s Guild who thought the Davris were the best smiths in Kirkwall. They had more business than you could shake a stick at, and probably more coin than most of the human noble families in the city five generations older. You could see it, too, in the gold rings worked into old Tag’s bushy brown beard, the gold-inlaid ancestral tablets up on the walls of the shop, and the ultramarine Orlesian silk dress his eldest daughter, Bianca, was wearing—machine-dyed, cut, and pieced, if Varric was any judge, but hand-embroidered.

“I don’t think he snorted dust,” Varric mused. “Probably wasn’t in thrall to a blood mage either, though I won’t rule out his being a lunatic. But if you could make it work—”

“Impossible,” Davri grunted. “The reloading mechanism would always interfere with the essential functions of the weapon. Atlatl’s your best bet for a quick-loading, tight-quarters range weapon, even if it isn’t as fancy. If you don’t have the skill for it, best stick to a good steel knife. I hope you didn’t spend a lot of coin on this piece of garbage.”

“Reloading mechanism?” the daughter chimed in, looking up from the book she was reading in the corner of the shop. “Isn’t that a crossbow?”

Davri scowled, displeased at the interruption. But as his daughter walked over, silk dress swishing, he did answer. “Not hardly, though it wants to be. Varric Tethras paid some con good coin for this fool contraption. Repeating crossbow, indeed!”

Bianca Davri took the crossbow from her father without asking so much as a by-your-leave from him or from Varric. Varric raised an eyebrow and hid a smile. “Huh,” she said. A thoughtful look crossed her face, and she looked sideways from Varric to her father, tracing the lines of the magazine, the direction of the lever, and the pins holding everything in place. Her fingers were a lot smaller than her father’s, Varric saw, but they were calloused for all that—with an archer’s callouses, as well as the callouses of a woman who worked, and unpolished nails cut short. His other brow came up. The Orlesian silk dress was a lie.

Tag seized the weapon back from his daughter, scowling blacker than ever. “Get back upstairs, girl,” he told his daughter. “Your mother will be calling on the Adelms in half an hour, and you aren’t to make her wait on you. I suppose I can still consult with a customer without you.”

Bianca’s mouth twitched. She lowered her eyes, but she picked her book up off the counter where she had set it down and walked out as ordered anyway. As she walked away, Varric caught sight of the cover of her book and realized it wasn’t a book at all. It was a leather-bound loose-leaf journal.

“Look,” Taggert told him, turning back around. “I can’t make this fool thing work like whatever moron you bought it from said it could. But I’ll tell you what I will do: I’ll strip these idiotic mechanisms off it, refit it with a standard lever, and rework the whole weapon custom.” He turned it over in his hands again. “The bow itself isn’t bad,” he admitted grudgingly. “That’s quality work on the wood and the string, and I don’t know but that that bayonet isn’t a decent innovation. Sight’s smart too; I fit something similar on my own crossbows. You know the crossbow? Always heard tell you were a knife man before.”

“Sweet Andraste, I try never to be in a fight if I can possibly help it,” Varric disclaimed, “and Bartrand will tell you all day how awful I am when suddenly there’s no choice. I was hoping I’d found a way to kill people as far away from the actual action as I could get, without having to learn things like aim and wind direction like actual bowmen and slingers.” He sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope for.”

He caught Taggert’s eye, expecting to see either workmanlike disgust at his laziness or a glimmer of amusement. He got neither. Taggert Davri might as well have turned to the stone all his kind swore they’d come from. His beard was bristling worse than ever. It really almost crackled with outrage. He’d put Model Fourteen down on the counter and crossed his huge, muscly arms over his apron.

“Your grandfather was a noble of Orzammar, boy, descended directly from a Paragon,” he said finally, and Varric realized all at once where he’d gone wrong. “He would weep if he heard you swear by that human nonsense. Don’t you have any respect for your ancestry? For your heritage? For your family name?”

Varric barely managed to keep from rolling his eyes. “I was under the impression my honored father ruined that for our whole house, actually. And anyway, I think the Chantry calls swearing by Andraste blasphemy or something. I don’t think my noble grandfather would care if he heard me blaspheme against human nonsense, even if he could hear his stone-forgotten descendant. What do you want for the job on the crossbow?”

Davri’s lip curled under his beard. “Four gold twenty,” he grunted.

“That’s more than twice what I bought it for,” Varric argued.

“You bought a worthless hunk of junk,” Taggert Davri retorted. “What you paid for it is your business. I’ll turn it into a one-of-a-kind, gorgeous, functional deadly weapon, and stripping it of all this crap’ll be harder than building you a crossbow from scratch. Work like that doesn’t come cheap, Varric Tethras.”

“And you’d do it for three sovereigns less if I hadn’t name-dropped Andraste just now,” Varric countered angrily.

“That’s my business,” Davri said. “I determine who I sell my family’s services to. No one else. Should be a novelty job, and your brother’s a returning customer, with respect for tradition, so I’m willing to deal with you. But you’ll pay what I say you will.”

Varric was on the verge of catching Model Fourteen up and stalking off when he thought better of it. My family’s services, Tag said. Varric had a sudden hunch. The Davri smithy had been operating out of Kirkwall for almost twenty years, but the past four years or so, they’d come out with some interesting designs—some of them almost as crazy as Gerav’s repeating crossbow. He remembered Bianca Davri’s leather notebook, that thoughtful little Huh, the flash of interest in her eyes.

So— “Two gold eighty,” he said. “I’d say two flat, but I want that custom refit. I can be reasonable.”

“Three eighty,” Tag returned, spitting on the ground behind the counter. “It’s not like your family can’t afford it.”

“Three fifteen,” Varric said. Taggert stared at him for a long moment, his dark blue eyes cold.

“Fine,” he agreed. “But don’t expect it priority.”

“I would never dream of crowding your valuable time,” Varric told him. He extended his hand to shake, but Taggert Davri just grunted and turned away.

“Then get lost. I’ll send word when I’ve got it.”

Chapter Text

iii.

Cera “The Sapphire” had tightened her corset so tight that it was a wonder she could bend over to show off what it did to her bosom. She probably thought the sachet of perfume she’d put down in there somewhere was a nice touch, but the odor didn’t mesh well with the stink of the Hanged Man. Stela Karrok leaned up against the wall, watching the Sapphire’s effort with laughing eyes.

Unlike a lot of the whores at the Blooming Rose who married or retired out to other less exciting work, Mistress Karrok didn’t try to pretend she’d never been a lady of the night. She still occasionally popped in to talk to Madame Lusine or some of her old coworkers, even if she didn’t take custom these days—and, of course, now she was married to a fairly respectable middle-aged hosier, nights she did pop in she got propositioned more than she’d used to.

There wasn’t another dwarven whore at the Rose right now, so this girl Cera, probably no more than sixteen years old, had latched onto Stela as a mentor. Stela thought she was just adorable. Unfortunately, that meant Varric had to deal with the Sapphire’s standard newbie stabs at breaking the celibacy streak most of the whores at the Blooming Rose still assumed he was keeping up. He hadn’t bothered to tell them otherwise. It would hurt their feelings when he came in the Rose if they knew that nowadays, he occasionally went around with the odd nice Lowtown or sailor girl. He didn’t mind the ragging. Kept him sharp. And the Blooming Rose still had some of the best mince pie and gossip in Kirkwall.

But it was a little much, Varric thought, to have to put up with one of the girls at the Rose having a go at him in his own Lowtown tavern. At least today. Still, he was a big boy. He could handle it. He wasn’t about to cut Stela dead, and anyway, the Sapphire usually was worth a laugh.

But she was bending all over his papers, wrinkling his records of when and where the fake Orlesian crowns had been reported and in what concentrations. “You look so anxious, lovey,” she cooed. “This is a tavern. You’re meant to be relaxing. Take a break, darling. Buy a poor working girl a drink. I swear I can make it worth your while.” She fluttered her lash extensions at him. Her eyes really looked more like dirty puddles after a rainstorm than they did like sapphires.

“Really? Are you any good at diamondback?” Varric asked absently. He reached out to tug a letter from a barge runner out from underneath Cera’s assets. She pouted at him. “You know, you want to watch that,” he said idly, indicating her gaping décolletage. “Even the cats in Lowtown are a little on the shiftless and lazy side. I heard of a case over at the Dancing Porpoise where a rat ran right down a lady’s dress. Got stuck in her corset. Absolutely panicked! I’m not saying it happened at the Hanged Man, mind, but I’m also not saying I haven’t seen the droppings in the corners.”

Cera straightened, flushing, hands on her hips. Stela couldn’t quite stifle her giggle, and the younger girl, feeling betrayed, glared over at her friend.

“I’m not interrupting, am I?” another woman asked.

Varric turned to see Bianca Davri standing a few feet away, a heavy canvas sack slung over her shoulder. Not under obligation to visit with important families with her mother, she was dressed a little different—sensible, considering she’d come, apparently alone, to a Lowtown tavern. She wore a short, gray woolen cloak over a long-cut blue jerkin, a white linen shirt, and heavy-duty black trousers and boots. It worked a lot better for her than the fancy silk dress did, but she’d made one concession to elegance in her jewelry, with tasteful and obviously expensive pearl earrings visible beneath the brown hair cut unfashionably short over her ears.

Varric wasn’t exactly disappointed to see her again. He’d seen Bianca Davri for a grand total of two minutes before, but what he had seen had been intriguing. “Not at all,” he told her. “Do you have something for me?”

“I do,” she confirmed. She looked around, and her lips twitched. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

“The bloodstains and vomit give it character,” Varric said cheerfully.

“Mm. And the Merchant’s Guild almost never has a presence here,” Bianca said shrewdly, with another twist of her mouth. “It would be beneath them.” Varric decided he liked her.

She nodded at Cera and Stela. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” Stela was smiling, but Cera was still bristling with embarrassment and—now—with resentment at the interruption.

Varric repressed another smile, wondering what this kalna princess would think of the company he kept. “Sure. Miss Davri, this is a good friend of mine, Mistress Stela Karrok, and her friend, Cera. People call Cera ‘the Sapphire.’ Stela, Sapphire, this is Bianca Davri, daughter of Taggert Davri, of the Hightown Davris.”

Of course, any dwarf in Kirkwall knew those names. Stela flushed, and Cera’s lip curled. Both dropped into little curtsies. Bianca Davri just waved her hand. “Call me Bianca,” she told them all. “I don’t like to intrude, but I told my father I’d deliver Varric’s job myself as soon as possible, and they told me this was the best place to find him.”

“They told you right,” Varric said. “Let’s see her.”

Bianca grinned and walked up to the table and set down her sack. She opened it up and carefully drew out poor old Gerav’s Model Fourteen—but Model Fourteen like Varric had never seen her.

“That . . . doesn’t look like the everyday, garden-variety crossbow your father said he’d refit for me,” he managed after a moment. The loading lever had been refitted to the top of the weapon. It stuck out at an angle so that the user could work it with the left hand, moving it across the bow in a single movement, and attached to various parts of the mechanism with manipulatable pins, set flush to the stock.

Turning the crossbow over in his hands, Varric realized the pins allowed for recalibration of tension, angle, and trajectory. Gerav’s magazine had changed too. Partially embedded into the stock now, it had been redesigned to work mostly by gravity, with only a couple little latches, easily releasable by the main loading lever, keeping new bolts from falling into place. The whole design was elegant, genius, just a little bit crazy—Gerav’s scheme, perfected.

“This . . . is an actual reloading, rapid-fire mechanical crossbow, isn’t it?” he asked Bianca, awed.

She was just about glowing with satisfaction. “Just about. You’ll want to test it out for yourself, and tell us how it works over time. When—when my father took some more time to look over the schema, he got a few ideas. Of course, whoever sold it to you didn’t have a clue what he was doing. He was just . . . shooting in the dark.”

“Nice,” Varric told her, speaking of the pun.

“Thanks. The concept wasn’t unworkable,” Bianca continued. “Just unworkable the way he wanted to do it. He probably didn’t have the mechanical knowledge or the equipment to finish the thing the way it needed to be. Tell me—tell us how it works over time, in different conditions,” she urged again. “It’s a solid idea. Could be a real moneymaker for my father.”

“For your father,” Varric repeated, looking hard at her. “Right.” Of course, as a kalna princess, Bianca Davri’s mind and hands belonged to her father up to and until she got married. Then they’d honor and enrich her husband. Dwarven women in Orzammar occasionally got a break. If they were really exceptional, they could get made Paragons and found their own noble houses, like Branka. Then they didn’t have to answer to anybody. But by and large, Orzammar, and surface kalna as a result, had some pretty shitty ideas about how to treat women. The Chantry they all called human nonsense had better traditions.

Bianca met his eyes, and her mouth quirked again. She wasn’t trying too hard to fool him for all her talk about her father. He thought she’d probably be all right.

“Look at it,” Stela said, staring. “It’s like a real machine.”

Bianca shrugged. “It is a real machine,” she answered. “Pretty complex one too.”

Cera wrinkled her nose. “If you want to go around killing people. I think all that’s dreadful and boring,” she said. “There are better ways for people to work things out in my opinion.”

Varric tilted his head. “If you have to kill someone dead, you might as well kill them with style,” he told Cera, without looking away from Bianca. “Your father’s going to try and upsell me for all this, isn’t he? He was set to bleed me dry when this was just a refit to standard crossbow design.”

“Tell you what,” Bianca said. “Since you might actually end up bled dry making use of an experimental design and can contribute field research on the prototype, we’ll call it even.”

“Generous of you.”

Cera frowned. “You won’t actually end up bled dry, though, will you, lovey? Do you fight for the Guild? Does he fight for the Guild?” she asked Stela in a lower voice, as if Varric wasn’t still standing right there.

“Cera, how about I get you that drink?” Stela said, neatly avoiding the subject entirely. “Come to the bar with me to order it. They call our girls sluts and slatterns. Let me tell you: it’s nothing to the waitresses in this place. You have to order from the bar or go home!”

The Sapphire pouted again, but Stela raised her eyebrows, and Cera gave up and followed her away to the bar. Varric mouthed a “Thanks” to Stela from behind the girl’s back. She winked.

Bianca Davri sat down at Varric’s table just as easily as she had taken his crossbow from her father the first day he had seen her, and asking as much permission. “‘Our girls,’” she quoted. “Don’t tell me I wasn’t interrupting. Strange place for a date, Varric Tethras.”

Varric shook his head, feigning sorrow. “Bianca Davri! Don’t be jealous. What would your good father say? Stela’s an old friend, and she’s married and respectable now. Mostly. Do you blame her? Complete and total respectability is about the most boring thing I can think of. Some people might call her a little loose in her companionship. Some people might say the same thing about me.”

“Mmm,” Bianca hummed. Her eyes really were like sapphires, Varric thought. Bright and intelligent and observant. And blue. Really, really blue. “I guess they might say a lot about you. My father definitely did after you left the other day.”

Varric snorted. “I’ll bet he did. Drop one casual ‘Sweet Andraste,’ and some people are ready to chisel your name out of the Shaperate records all over again.”

Bianca smiled. “And, of course, that’s not important at all to you. They’re going to remember your name in other places. You’re the same Varric Tethras who’s written those serials Selwyn’s Print Shop and Bookstore keeps printing pamphlets of up in Hightown, right?”

“You’ve read them?” Varric asked. He was overcome by a sudden desire to jump out the dirty window in the tavern kitchen. “I’ve had a couple serials published, yeah. They probably aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”

“I don’t know,” Bianca mused. “I wouldn’t tear them up for kindling. Some people like that sort of thing.”

That was interesting. “Some people?” Varric challenged her. “Like you?”

Bianca just smiled again and said nothing. “Is that what’s going on here?” she asked, looking at the papers on the table. “The start of another great Kirkwaller novel?”

She had plucked up some of the sheets before Varric could stop her. The woman had no respect for boundaries. She scanned the page, then picked up another. She frowned. “These are records on the counterfeit going around Kirkwall right now,” she said. “Do you know something?”

Varric shifted so he had better access to his knives—the crossbow being inconveniently situated halfway across the table, and seeing as he hadn’t had the time to learn how to work it anyway. But he held Bianca Davri’s eyes. “I don’t know as much as I like,” he said, slowly and evenly.

Bianca’s eyes were narrowed. That was when Stela and the Sapphire came back over, drinks in hand. Stela had actually gotten two more tankards of ale than she’d gone for, and now she slid them in front of Varric and Bianca. “Know as much about what?” Stela asked, looking from one to the other of them. “What’s going on here?” She plucked the paper from Bianca’s hand, and Bianca didn’t put up a resistance. She scanned it as Bianca had done, and her lips pressed together. “What are you up to now, Varric?” She looked back to Bianca. “It isn’t what you think, miss. Varric Tethras is a lot of things, but he’s not idiot enough to get up to this crap, or fool enough to leave evidence out in the open for any girl in Kirkwall to pick up if he was. He is, however,” she added, “exactly fool enough to see a problem in Kirkwall for him and his friends and set out to work it all out himself.” She reached out and twisted Varric’s ear.

“Ow! Ow!” Varric complained. “Now is that really necessary?”

“Tethras, one of these days, you’re going to get yourself killed,” Stela rebuked him. “Not but I’m saying these reckless morons don’t need to go down.”

The Sapphire stamped her slipper-clad foot. “What are you all on about? Tell me!”

“Never you mind, Cera,” Stela told her friend. The more people talking about the counterfeit, the worse the problem would get. She knew that. “It’s time you were heading back to the Rose. Madam Lusine will miss you, and you don’t want to be accused of turning tricks without giving the Rose its cut.”

Never mind that was exactly what she had been trying to do.

The Sapphire pouted. “But we haven’t finished our drinks yet, and I want to know what’s happening. Stela! You’re too mean!”

“That’s right, I am,” said the heartless Stela. “And this mean, dried-out, old married thing is going to keep you in bed and board for the winter. Come on.”

Cera made a frustrated noise but gave in. She knew Stela was right. Lusine wasn’t a bad sort, but she was a good businesswoman. She tolerated her people having a few friends outside the Rose, going on a few visits, and Stela had a bit more credit with her than most because she’d used to work the Blooming Rose herself. But there had to be a line somewhere, or the madam would never know what her girls got up to all over the city—or what they caught while they were at it. Varric had heard of more than one particularly ambitious whore being turned out on their ass for their troubles.

“Clean it up,” Stela advised him as she left the Hanged Man, the Sapphire in tow.

“The papers or the problem?” Varric asked her innocently.

She made a rude gesture at him, and he chuckled. “Ancestors’ blessings, miss,” Stela added to Bianca. “Take care of Varric, now.” She winked, and Bianca laughed.

“I’ll do my best,” she called back, as the door of the Hanged Man shut on Stela and the Sapphire.

She was still shuffling through all his papers. “Could you not do that?” Varric asked her. “Can’t a man do his business on a tavern table in peace?”

“No,” Bianca Davri said shortly. “You’ve got a lot here,” she said presently, sounding surprised. “Your friend was right, wasn’t she? You’re working this yourself.” She considered for a moment, tapping her fingers on the table. “Better someone like you than the city guard,” she conceded after a moment. “They’re so slow, they’re near useless, and whenever they solve a problem, they usually create three more in the solving. But these frauds—” she said with emphasis, avoiding the word counterfeiters even briefly in a public setting— “are getting to be a pain in the ass.”

“Father, Grandfather, and my uncles started checking all our silver last week,” she said then, looking across at Varric. “Yours was all good. You’d already checked it?”

“For a few weeks now,” Varric confirmed. “As far as I can tell, the fakes started coming in near two months ago.”

“That’s what it says here,” Bianca agreed, perusing the papers again. “Here. All your earliest records of counterfeit transactions happened down at the fish markets, grocers, and equipment shops down on the east side of the docks, by the waterfront. Sloppy. Any distributor who knew what they were doing would hand the fakes out all over Kirkwall. You don’t happen to have any of the fakes on you, do you?”

Varric stared. Bianca Davri had seen in two minutes what he’d missed seeing after days of looking at those papers back, front, and sideways. He reached into the pocket in his purse where he was keeping the fakes he found—to keep them out of distribution and for sampling purposes. He flipped Bianca one of the crowns, and she caught it single-handed. She reached inside her cloak and pulled out a small lens, fitted it to her eye, and examined the coin closely. “I’m pretty sure whoever made this is using silver mined just down the Wounded Coast. I’d have to run a few more tests to be certain, but I’ve seen it before in certain tools we use for fancy work and weapon embellishments. Do you know of any vacant mines up that way? Shipments gone missing?”

Varric recalled some Guilder-affiliated miners complaining about just that about two months back. He could place their operation on a map and draw a line between it to the markets Bianca had mentioned. A line that fell on a coastal road riddled with just the kind of cavern hideouts bandits, smugglers, and counterfeiters just loved to conduct their various shady businesses out of.

“You’ve got a lead,” Bianca said, watching him carefully. “You’re welcome.”

Varric smiled at her. “Far be it from me not to give credit where credit’s due, my lady. My thanks. I think I just might have an opportunity coming up to test my new crossbow.”

“Not alone you don’t,” Bianca told him. “No clues here as to how many crooks are in this ring or how they might be armed. If I run a few tests on the coin, I might be able to prove to the guard just where these people are getting their silver. If it’s illegally obtained, you’ll have enough to go to the guard. If you want.”

“And if I don’t?” Varric asked her.

“I go with you,” Bianca answered.

Varric raised an eyebrow at her. “You?” In all honesty, he wasn’t exactly opposed to the idea of spending more time with Bianca Davri, and he could see those archer’s callouses on her hands now even better than he had that first day. He wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be as good at killing things as she apparently was at making them or solving mysteries. So, sue him. He wanted her to sell him on it a bit more.

“You could tag a few of your brother’s guards. I’d loan you a few of my father’s. But the more people who know about this, the more likely it is these bastards get wind of it and run or someone screws up the bust. I know how to handle myself, and I can meet you midmorning tomorrow by the Hatchers Street Dock to set out from there. Guessing you know where to go from there.”

Varric couldn’t keep from grinning any longer. “I might,” he admitted. “I owe it to you that I know that much though. It’s a date then.”

Bianca’s mouth quirked up again. Varric was getting to love the way it looked when it did that. “You really know how to treat a woman. Bloodstained floorboards and piss for ale on a first date and vigilante justice on the second.”

“You set the mood, my lady,” Varric told her. “Bringing deadly weapons instead of a nice bouquet. I can’t help it if it gave me ideas.”

“Oh, I’m going to like you,” Bianca announced. She rose abruptly and rolled her shoulders back, took another pull at her ale and grimaced. “But next time, I think I’ll go for drinks instead of deadly weapons or flowers.”

“The taste grows on you,” Varric said.

“Like cave fungus. See you tomorrow, Varric.”

“Can’t wait.”

She left, and Varric watched her walk away, shaking his head. Of course, she had a point. They had no idea how many counterfeiters they’d find when they found out just where these bastards had been hiding. There were probably half a dozen ways this scheme of theirs could go really wrong, really quick tomorrow.

Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to care much. This whole thing had been a ride since he’d sat down beside a lunatic artificer in the carta hideout, and it would make a blighted good story someday. He could feel it.

A counterfeit ring, a one-of-a-kind crossbow, a kalna princess, and scoundrel of an ascendant no-account. No shit, there we were . . .

Chapter Text

iv.

“This isn’t exactly how I was hoping this would go,” Varric gasped, rolling a barrel underneath the closet door as a sort of makeshift barricade. The second one of the ten thugs outside thought to get an axe, their timer would tick down from a few minutes to about a minute and a half. He was exhausted. Bianca was bleeding from glancing blows to her shoulder and right arm—nothing that would kill her, exactly, but enough to keep her from shooting well. Which would probably end up getting them killed.

“And what exactly were you hoping for?” Bianca snapped.

“I don’t know,” Varric admitted. “Find the evil lair, stake it out, run in and smash all the counterfeit equipment, then lie in wait, jump the bastards, knock them out, and tie them up with enough evidence for even my lord the guard captain. Didn’t count on the lookout. Or there being ten and all of them being home. Or this thing jamming the first run out and having to rely only on my knife skills.” He slammed the heel of his hand into the stock of his new crossbow. The thugs outside were catcalling, jeering ungodly things at them through the door. It was better than if they were quiet, coming up with some kind of plan, but it still made him just a little crazy. He didn’t see a way out of this one.

“Oh, give it here,” Bianca ordered him, snatching it away. “Did you even try to calibrate it before you started pulling on the trigger?” Her fingers danced over the pins and screws of the crossbow. Blood trickled down her wrist, and she impatiently wiped it away. She jerked the loading lever twice, removed a bolt from the bow, and replaced it in the magazine. “Here,” she said, gesturing to the different pins on the weapon. “This is angle, this is trajectory, and the scope already told you where to aim. Remember to work the loading lever and cocking ring together every time before firing, or you’ll be firing a bow full of nothing, and your string could break. But only once, or you’ll get another jam and screw up the calibration. Sweet Ancestors, we should have got the guard. At least these bastards aren’t likely to set fire to the place.”

Varric took the crossbow back from her. “I knew it,” he said. “You did this, not your father.”

“That’s what you’ve decided to focus on right now?” Bianca replied. “Of course, I did. Anything with any imagination the forge turns out these days is my design. Not that it’s appropriate for me to take the credit for it. You want to stop staring and test out this design for us?”

“Think I should?” Varric asked, hoisting the crossbow in his arms experimentally.

“I don’t see any other way we’re getting out of this mess,” Bianca told him.

Varric shrugged. “You’re right about that. Take the daggers. They’re easier to use wounded. Theoretically.”

“All we have is theory just now.”

“Right. Here goes,” Varric said. He cocked the crossbow, kicked the barrel aside, flung open the door, sighted, and fired.

The first guy was dead before the rest of them knew what had happened. The others shouted, raising weapons they had let fall. Apparently, they had decided to just watch the closet until the stupid idiots that had come charging into their base starved or came out. But they hadn’t expected Varric and Bianca to come out quite so soon.

Varric pulled the loading lever, recocked the crossbow in half a second. He could aim her with his arm and shoulder, easy as pie. He fired again. A shout of angry indignation turned into a gurgle.

Varric worked the lever, loaded, fired—twice in quick succession for two guys right next to one another. One went down with a bolt in the chest, the other with a bolt in his brain. Varric took a breath and tried not to think about the blood. There were still six guys, and three had crossed the length of the makeshift hideout to close range. Bianca was behind him, one of his daggers in either hand, dodging and thrusting. Varric slid out his weapon’s bayonet attachment and threw his entire weight behind a blow.

He felt the sickening slide of blade in flesh, always so much easier than it seemed like it should be. He kicked out and caught a dwarf in the chest, worked the lever on the crossbow, aimed, and fired.

In another spate of lightning reactions, showers of blood, and broken bones, it was done, and Varric and Bianca were standing, panting, over the bodies of full ten humans and dwarves with rusty swords and daggers. Across the cavern sat three whole crates of silver pilfered from the nearby Eddic mine, next to a counterfeit coin press sitting as innocently as any an inanimate object ever sat. Varric made a note to take a look at the plates on the thing as soon as he got his breath back and recovered from his usual wave of nausea after a bout of particularly nasty violence. If none of the corpses had designed them, this case wasn’t closed just yet.

“Maker’s breath.” He shook his head. “Maker’s breath, Davri. This is . . .” waving the crossbow, “. . . this is something else.”

“I’d call that a successful field test,” Bianca said.

“Here.” Varric slapped the safety on Bianca’s crossbow and slung it across his back. Then he pulled a couple of rolls of linen and a flask of whiskey out of his belt pouches. He dressed Bianca Davri’s wounds in silence. She didn’t do much more than wince and hiss through her teeth as he tied whiskey-soaked bandages tight around her shoulder and arm. It would do her until she could get to an apothecary.

Both his old daggers were red to the hilt, and there was enemy blood all over her hands and sleeves, but in the end, he was pretty sure only three of the counterfeiters had wound up dying of stab wounds.

“Who rigged up the prototype for her?” Bianca asked finally, nodding wearily at the crossbow.

“This crazy artificer in the carta,” Varric answered. “He makes bombs and grenades and traps for Fiddler, but he’s been obsessed with a repeating crossbow for months, far as I can tell. Never could make one work, though. This one was his fourteenth go at it.”

Bianca made a face, and Varric knew just where her head was at. “Look, I’m not saying that wasn’t awesome—” he started.

“It was awesome,” Bianca agreed emphatically. “Just . . . horrible. If a street gang or an invading army had about ten of those things—”

“If a street gang boss or evil overlord ever figures out you designed one that works,” Varric added. Bianca shivered. Her eyes were wide.

“I didn’t think about it when I was working,” she said quietly. “It was a great problem, is all. I got lost in the art, in the work of it, and I never imagined . . .” she gulped.

“Should we axe it?” Varric asked. “For sure we’re not taking it back to the carta.”

“I’m not making another one either,” Bianca agreed. “That guy you bought the original from probably can’t make another one work.”

“Probably,” Varric repeated. “I just love hanging the future of war as we know it on a ‘probably.’ Let’s get out of here. I can have someone leave an anonymous tip for the Kirkwall guard about what happened here so they can tie the case up in a big, shiny bow.”

“They’ll issue a call for all the fakes in circulation. What do you think these bastards wanted? Money? Or do you think they were trying to hurt Kirkwall’s economy?”

“Hurt Kirkwall’s economy, you hurt the economy of every Free city in the Marches and beyond,” Varric said. “It’s a major port. Coin here goes everywhere in Thedas. But since they were using a fake Orlesian stamp, it could have been an attack on the Empire. Or got up by some idiots from Orlais. We’ll probably never know now. Shit, this is not the way this was supposed to go.”

“Way it went, though,” Bianca said practically. “Anyway, we’re alive. I’ll probably be just fine in a couple of weeks, we’ve saved Kirkwall and the Kirkwall guard a mess of trouble, and I’ve made another genius invention. Not a bad day’s work.”

“We’re keeping the genius invention then?” Varric asked again, waving the crossbow at her. “Really might be a better option to axe it.”

He and Bianca looked down at old Prototype Fourteen. Bianca had turned it into a work of art, a bona fide killing machine far and away beyond anything else in Thedas. She was as terrifying as she was beautiful. Unquestionably, both Bianca Davri and Thedas at large would be a safer, saner place if they destroyed her, and Varric could see Bianca knew it. She was having a little war in her head right now between ego and practicality. And the ego won out in the end.

“You keep it,” she told him. And before he could protest at her generosity, she grinned. “You paid for it, didn’t you? Twice. And you’re worse than useless with these.” She flashed his knives at him, wiped them clean on the tunic of a nearby corpse, thrust them both into her own belt, and shouldered her bow again. Then she turned on her heel and left.

“Shit, I have got to stop watching that woman leave the room,” Varric said to no one in particular.

Chapter Text

v.

“Are you going out again tonight, darling?”

Varric looked up and across the supper table at Mother. “It’s unlike you to wonder about your boy’s whereabouts, Mother,” he said. “I feel so loved and looked after.”

Mother made a face at him. “Hush, you. Where you learned such impertinence, I’m sure I don’t know. I ought to have raised you better.”

“Hardly the worst condemnation of your parenting,” Varric said. “After all, you raised Bartrand too.”

Bartrand scowled and addressed himself to his roast lambchop, but Mother couldn’t help smiling. “To return to the point, dear, you’re a man grown, and I’m sure I haven’t been better able to track you than anyone else since you were six years old. I’m just thankful you haven’t been arrested or murdered yet—”

“Not for want of trying,” Bartrand grunted into his ale.

“You wound me!” Varric cried. “I’m very careful! Getting thrown in the viscount’s dungeons would just ruin my meeting schedule.”

“Yes, but about those meetings, dear,” Mother persisted. “You wouldn’t be headed for one tonight in the direction of a certain Hightown smithy, would you?”

Varric paused. “I might be. Why? Need any shopping done?”

“I’ve just noticed, dear, that it seems you’ve been doing a great deal of shopping at the smithy recently.” Mother said pointedly.

Bartrand frowned. “Hey, Varric, you aren’t up to more of your freaks, are you? If you’re dipping into the family or business accounts to order trash for more nug-humping experiments—”

“That’s not what I mean, dear,” Mother told him.

“Good,” Bartrand grunted, satisfied. “I don’t approve of that weird crossbow contraption he’s had rigged up somewhere. Plain laziness, far as I’m concerned. Like to snap its string in his face and take out an eye one of these days, and shoot him in the foot into the bargain. He can stick to his reading and his writing and his alchemical concoctions for fighting dirty when he’s got to, and it’ll be just fine and more than enough.”

“Thank you, Bartrand,” Varric sighed. Bartrand grunted and took another chug of ale.

“If I thought it was just a bit of experimentation, that’d be one thing,” Mother murmured, lowering her eyes to her own plate. “And Ancestors know I want to see my boys settled down with nice girls, but . . .”

“Girl?” Bartrand demanded. His gray eyes snapped up to Varric’s, narrowed and suspicious. “You aren’t dicking around with one of the Davri girls? Sweet Ancestors, Varric, you’ve done some stupid things, but you ought to have better sense than that!”

Varric had stopped paying attention to Bartrand years ago. But for some reason, he was annoyed. “What do you take me for, Bartrand? You think I’d dare act with anything but the noblest intentions toward Bianca Davri? She’s a new friend, Mother. That’s all. I like her. She’s helped me out with a couple little problems about town, and she’s good company. I haven’t heard it’s illegal for Bianca Davri to have friends, whatever nonsense they make her do when it comes to her work.”

“Just be careful it is just friendship, darling,” Mother warned. “Bianca Davri—she is the very apple of her parents’ eyes, of the eyes of all her clan, and I don’t doubt her bride price and bridal contract will furnish retirement for all of them. If I had known you had been seeing Bianca . . .” she trailed off. “She has a reputation for being a lovely girl. Pretty, full of life, and the number-one reason the Davri smithy’s begun pulling in literal fortunes the past five years or so. And maybe they don’t mind her having friends. But they will mind anything—or anyone—they think might pose a threat to her prospects.”

Varric looked from Mother to Bartrand and laughed in both their faces. “Ah, you two are too much. I can’t keep a straight face! Please. I am so far from being a threat to Bianca’s prospects that it’s got to be the greatest joke in Thedas you think I could be. I’m sure that’s the last thing on old Tag Davri’s mind.” He got up from the table, walked around, bent down, and kissed Mother’s cheek. “We’re just friends, and you worry too much,” he told her, pitching his words to Bartrand too, who was still eyeing him suspiciously.

“If you’re sure, dear,” Mother said.

Varric whistled on his way through the streets, keeping an eye to the dark corners and the shadows. The pristine streets and alleys of Hightown never seemed like they could hold anything really dangerous, but some of the worst thieves and murderers in Kirkwall worked the place, especially after dark. It wasn’t dark just yet, though. There were a good two hours before the sun went down tonight.

The fire in the Davri forge was cold. The shop had closed up for the day. But there were lamps on in Taggert’s house behind it, and Varric sauntered up to the door easily enough and knocked.

Taggert opened the door after a while, but he didn’t invite Varric in the way he had done in the past, however grudgingly he’d done it. Instead, he stepped outside and shut the door behind him. He folded his arms and glared. “So. You got business then? If you have, come back in regular hours. If not, I think you should run along.”

“I was wondering if I could talk with Bianca,” Varric said.

“We—all of us—think you’ve done quite enough of that, Tethras. I’ve indulged the girl’s ridiculous infatuation with you so far, but it’s time past she started thinking about what she owes her family and her caste. People are starting to talk.”

“People talk all the time,” Varric pointed out. “That doesn’t mean there’s anything to it.”

“You can spare me all your clever-clever words, boy. Truth told, I don’t care if there is or not. I’ve had enough. You aren’t the sort of man I want spending time with Bianca. Man! You’re more than half human, for all your parents were allegedly both nobles of Orzammar.” He sneered on ‘allegedly.’ Varric forced a smile.

“And Mother’s so nice about your family,” he observed.

“I guess I can do without the niceness of the widow of an outcast and a criminal, and my daughter can do without her bastard ascendant son. In thirty years, your descendants will have forgot they were ever dwarves. That won’t be Bianca’s story. Understand?”

“Perfectly,” Varric said, bowing. “Then I’ll bid you goodnight, sir.”

Taggert grunted, turned around, walked back into his house, and slammed the door.

For a moment, Varric was too angry to speak. Insulting Mother like that, when she’d never done anything but marry the wrong man. He supposed that was what old Tag thought he was keeping Bianca from, but the old war axe had no right! As if his daughter weren’t ten times smarter, ten times the smith, and ten times the person that he was.

“Fuck off,” if you please, like Bianca isn’t more than capable of making her own mind.

And Mother talking bride-prices like Bianca was something to be bought.

I guess we can see one another if we want to, Taggert. Mother. At least, until Bianca tells me she wants me to get lost or gets lost herself, I can’t see any reason in the world to stop.

Varric stalked around to the alley. He fished a charcoal stub, a scrap of paper, and some twine out of his pockets, scribbled something down on the paper, and fastened it to the next bolt off of Bianca’s crossbow. Then he adjusted the calibration, took aim, and fired.

The bolt hit with a deadened thud just where he’d aimed it—square in the window molding beneath Bianca’s window, on the outside where the hole wouldn’t be visible to her mother or anyone else looking. There were a few holes just like it on the sill already. Although this was the first time Taggert Davri had actually told him to get lost in as many words, Varric and Bianca had picked up that her family wasn’t too crazy about him hanging around, and they’d decided it was probably a good idea if they didn’t know just how often he came anyway.

Varric walked away from the Davri house and shop, down the streets of Kirkwall a little ways away. He stopped by a certain lantern in an alley off Marblemanse Road—or some street that should be called Marblemanse Road, anyway—and leaned up against a cornerstone to wait.

He heard one set of steps before Bianca came along—a human footpad who thought he was being sneaky. A bolt from Bianca’s crossbow a couple centimeters from the guy’s foot just about had him crapping his pants, and he decided to slink off and look for an easier target.

Then Bianca was there, her face glowing like another moon in the falling dusk in the middle of her gray woolen hood, and she grinned at him and slipped her hand in his and apologized for her father being an idiot.

“So. Where are we going?” she asked.

Varric grinned back at her. She still thought he was worth coming out to see. And really, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?