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“Why do you think that mages wear feathers all the time?” Sigrun asked Dagna.
Dagna chuckled and sipped her ale. “I’ve asked a lot of mages that question. None of them can give me a good answer.”
“So, all mages around Thedas have the same fashion sense?” Sigrun wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t seem right to me.”
Dagna looked around th e room that the Tevinter Grey Wardens called a ‘mess hall’. In truth, its level of luxury threatened to match the formal dining room in Lucius’s mansion. The long, teak wood tables were draped in white tablecloths, and bore silver candlesticks holding tall, dripping candles. Lining the north wall were bookshelves filled to the brim with tomes, most of which concerned topics that would have been of interest to the Wardens – offensive magic, protection spells, history, and intricate geographies of the Deep Roads and the Anderfels.
Dagna noticed the great lack of steel among the Tevinter Wardens. For every five willowy elves or humans bearing a staff, she saw the very rare archer, or the even more rare dwarf or human with an axe or sword strapped to his or her back.
Sigrun, with her pair of axes strapped to her back, appeared to be a complete enigma altogether.
“Not all around Thedas,” Dagna noted. “Seems like they wore a lot of fur in Ferelden. They like gold here. Gold and jingly things.” She shrugged her shoulders and grinned again. “What do I know about fashion, though? My employer has to pick out my clothes for me.”
“I hear you.” Sigrun nodded her head, though her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. “I wouldn’t know what to wear to a fancy Tevinter party unless it walked up and punched me in the nose. Good thing that they don’t invite Wardens to fancy parties.”
Dagna tapped her fingers on the small table that she and Sigrun occupied alone. She had come to the Wardens’ Spire to see Sigrun, and to discuss the Anders situation with her. She also hoped for a bit of careless conversation somewhere intertwined in that, but doubted that such a thing would be in the cards. She had invited Sigrun to stay with her in Lucius’s compound, but Sigrun wouldn’t hear of it. Already, Sigrun was on shaky ground with the Wardens for abandoning her post in Ferelden to join Anders in the Imperium. Perhaps Anders had done everything to completely sever his relationship with the Wardens, but Sigrun refused to do the same.
Dagna admired the tenacity in that gesture.
“Anders and I talk about death a lot,” said Sigrun after a moment of silence. “It’s not death that either of us are afraid of. We’ll both be dead within a few years, but we knew that day would come. It’s okay. I knew what I was getting into when I signed with the Legion. The Grey Wardens is only an extension of that. For Anders, it was being a mage, you know. He thought, ‘Live for today, because who knows if a Templar will stab you to death tomorrow.’ It’s the dying part – the suffering thing. That’s scary. It’s why I started carrying a vial of poison around with me before I left Ferelden. In case the Darkspawn wanted to turn me into a Broodmother, you know.” She offered Dagna a sad smile. “Just drink the poison, and no one would ever know. They’d all think that I was killed by the sword. Another set of dwarf bones in the Deep Roads.”
“You know what would be great?” Dagna’s expression turned rather impish. “Let me make an explosive potion for you to carry around instead of that poison. Something that will react with the juices in your stomach. If the Darkspawn take you, you swallow it, and boom! Living bomb!”
Sigrun let out a loud, barking laugh that turned the heads of some of the other Wardens in the room. “That would be great! Do it! I’ll pay you for the ingredients. How much would it cost?”
Dagna waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Lucius won’t even notice that the ingredients are missing, and if he does, I’ll tell him that I had a failed experiment. Even some of his experiments blow up from time to time. He’ll understand.”
Standing up, Sigrun took up her tankard of ale, refilled it with the contents of a pitcher, and said, “Come with me. Let’s go have some drinks on the roof.”
“Good plan.” Though the dining room was nice, being among the Grey Wardens felt weird to Dagna, as if she was intruding on their personal, private space. She had a feeling, from speaking to Seneca, Anders, and Sigrun, that the Wardens didn’t get many social visits from those outside of their order.
“Let’s take the pitcher. If you and I can’t drain it without falling over, we’re not dwarves,” added Sigrun as she made her way out of the mess hall.
Dagna laughed and did as she was told, following the older woman up a flight of stairs and out onto the spire’s roof. It was good to speak with a dwarf again, someone with a sense of humor similar to hers. Someone who didn’t seem to mind if she babbled about magical research or magitechnical engines, even if they didn’t entirely understand the specifics behind either.
It felt good to have a friend again.
Well, Lucius was her friend, but in a different way. He was a mentor and a father figure, but there was formality there. Formality that had been breached only a handful of times and always under extreme duress.
With Sigrun, there was no topic that couldn’t be discussed.
“This is all so weird,” Sigrun admitted as she perched herself on a particularly ornate portion of the overhanging roof. “I spent years in Ferelden hearing that Tevinter mages set things on fire with their eyes, and bathe in the blood of dwarf babies. When you first meet them, they seem…so normal, you know? You almost have to watch yourself. You’d get too comfortable, then find out that they have a houseful of slaves that they’re being awful to. Or that they’re bathing in their own blood at night.”
“Well, you do hang around with Anders,” Dagna pointed out. A shiver ran down her spine, and she drew a sharp breath, realizing what she had said. Would Sigrun be offended? Was it the right thing to say? After all, Anders was lying in a bed, either dying or changing into some unknown creature.
Sigrun smiled at her. “Yeah, but, you get what I mean?”
“Oh, Lucius was a blood mage when I first started working for him. Him and his wife.” Dagna held her cup in both hands as she stared out at the city skyline, her eyes moving over the rooftops, caressing them almost lovingly. “I’d been there for three or four months when Lucius’s desire demon got loose and teamed up with Lamia’s. I managed to kill Lamia’s demon by myself. But Lucius’s demon killed Lamia.” She found herself frozen, captivated by the horrible memory of all of the corpses, but even more terrible, the blood – the sheer volume of blood. It had been everywhere – on the walls, splattering the ceiling, covering the antique furniture.
Then there was the fear that still permeated the rooms that had witnessed most of the violence. Some days, Dagna felt herself drawn to the room called the Sun Parlor, where Lady Lamia had bled to death on the Antivan rug that used to lie in the center of the room. She could still smell the blood, despite the fact that Lucius and all of the servants claimed that the smell just didn’t exist. The servants burned incense and candles and scrubbed the floors with lye.
In the end, Dagna decided that there had to be a tear in the Fade there. She vowed to wait until the next time Lucius was out of town, and then she would contact the North Circle and see if the tear could be repaired. There was no other explanation for the scent of blood, or the reminder of her own palatable fears every single time that she walked into the room.
“Well, uh.” Dagna took a quick sip of her drink, as if to try to wash the memories out of her brain and down her throat. “I’m not defending them or anything. Blood magic is dangerous and out of the mage’s control from the first spell. And the whole slavery business is horrid.”
“You’ve got that right. Makes me count my blessings.” Sigrun turned her head, seeming to study Dagna for a long moment before looking away again. “I had it bad in Dust Town, but at least someone didn’t own me. I owned me.”
Dagna set down her flagon and drew her knees to her chest, hugging them as she looked back at Sigrun. Sigrun was clearly thinking of Anders still; that much was obvious to Dagna. There was no comfort in knowing that Anders was suffering. Perhaps, though, Sigrun could be feeling the sting of older memories, coupled with the seriousness of her friend’s condition.
“No one could own you if they tried, Sigrun,” Dagna said in a soft voice. “You’re one of the freest people I’ve ever known.”
The smile that spread across Sigrun’s face seemed to reflect in the cheer that rose to her eyes. “Damn right, no one does. If I want to go running straight to the ancestors, it’s my choice. But…” she trailed off, resting her own flagon among the intricately carved roof tiles. “…that was very kind of you to say.”
Silence fell between them. Something tore in Dagna’s throat, a desire to say something else that might offer Sigrun the smallest amount of comfort. Would a hug be appropriate? It was so difficult to tell what might comfort a person, and what might increase the pain.
Dagna’s fingers trembled. Then, she reached for Sigrun’s left hand, taking it into her own.
Smiling again, Sigrun sniffled, then let out a chuckle. “You’re sweet, you know that? It might get you into trouble someday. Be careful.” Despite her words, Sigrun gave Dagna’s hand a small squeeze.
“It gets me into trouble all the time,” Dagna admitted. Yet, the feeling of Sigrun’s strong, rough hand in hers confirmed that this was the right thing to do. It felt right, at least. More right than many of the things she had done in the course of her life.