Chapter Text
Everything Fenris had said about the Tevinter Imperium was true.
Anders' eyes scanned the scene below him. The party had been in full swing for hours, with people drifting in and out of the far entrance somewhere to his right. Or was it his left? He was confused as to which way his head pointed. Each side of this forum boasted the same elaborate archways, of a scale for giants.
Back in the tower, Anders used to wonder if the Tevinters built their enormous buildings to better accommodate pride abominations.
The servant who had bound him, who chattered as each turn of the rope went on, told him that he should be so happy. Other slaves were placed in much more uncomfortable ways, hands grabbing their ankles behind them and suspended, or contorted into dancing positions and held there with rope, hair brushed through with water so that the fibrous length would hold.
The ropes specialist was not a slave. He was born a free Tevinter tradesman, and so he knew nothing of what made a slave happy.
His arms bound to the bar of a cross and his body along its length, decorated in black feathers attached to needles embedded in his skin, Anders surmised that he was supposed to represent the flight of birds or something similar. Freedom for mages, probably, since he was in Tevinter after all. His old self might have appreciated the irony.
He was nude, but clothed in ropes and enchantments; bound, and a symbol of freedom; a human, and yet no more important than a piece of decorative furniture. How the magisters loved the paradoxical nature of their very existence.
A nation of free mages who kept slaves.
Distantly, he heard his master's laugh ringing out through the din. Anders' pupils moved behind slitted lids, focusing on a hand in the crowd holding a silver goblet, dark green chalcedony ring with its blood red flecks resting firmly on his middle finger, almost black in the glow of the lanterns.
He followed the movement, the exaggerated way his master spoke with his hands, distracting his viewer with sweeping gestures away from his eyes which never smiled.
A shadow obscured his view, too close, impossible unless the figure floated on air.
Then he was right in front of Anders, Dark eyes set in an angelic face, ebony black hair pulled back with a tie, bare shoulders of an alabaster white covered in strands of pearls. Florian removed the gag from Anders' mouth, hanging the lantern that was attached to the bit on his own forearm.
He wiped at Anders' chin with a cloth, and when it was placed over his lips he could smell the syrupy scent of winter wine, but he did not open his mouth until the youth pushed at his lips with the napkin urging him to take it in.
It was soaked through with the same wine they served in the banquet, enough to moisten his tongue and banish the dry cotton feeling that permeated his mouth.
"Do not be alarmed. Don't look up," he said, removing the cloth. Anders' tongue darted out after it, seeking the little bit of moisture, and Florian shook his head minutely, a barely perceptible motion, certainly not viewable from the floor. "Your master requested that your gag be removed. He finds the sight of it distasteful. It would be best if you can keep quiet, so as not to force him to use it again. Do you understand?"
Anders tried to nod, but his hair was tucked half under the bar behind his head. He opened his mouth slightly, instead, as Florian touched up his lower lip with golden gloss. It tickled, though the sable hair against his skin felt nice and he panted softly.
As Florian used a tiny brush to touch up Anders' hair, little wispy strands that escaped from the tie, he leaned closer to one ear and whispered, clenching his teeth to keep his words from being read at a distance. "Your friends are in the city. It won't be long now."
He had forgotten what it was like to have friends, outside of Mira and Florian. Anders whispered back, "Mira?"
"You can't take her," Florian moved to the other side, painting his earlobes in gold after brushing his hair back. "We don't have the resources to free both of you."
"Then I'll stay," there was once a time when he would have left a friend behind, as he had when he was still in Ferelden - a world away, two worlds away counting Kirkwall - and he was selfish, as the young could be often selfish. Mira was more helpless than himself; scarred and mute. If he escaped, they would blame her.
Her blood would become a part of the ritual used to hunt him down in the end.
"It's not your choice," Florian hissed. "She wants to stay."
Words from another lifetime ago drifted to the forefront of his mind, from an old rival whose words he never truly believed, spoken to a hysterical slave.
You just didn't know any better.
The idea of rebellion in him had been beaten down over so long that he could barely remember why he wanted to leave, or how a life of being fugitives was preferable to this. He was in no danger of being sacrificed; his master loved him, told him so everyday. On the rare occasion, he was even allowed to use his creation magic. What slave could ask for more?
Florian stared at his eyes that peeked out beneath a fringe of gilded lashes, and it seemed to distress him that Anders never once raised them to look at him.
"I told them that it may be too late for you, but they didn't want to listen," he sighed, dabbing Anders' brow with the napkin. Louder, he said, "please remember to be quiet."
Then he left, a soft scratching sound from below alerting Anders of a stool scraping across the floor.
Anders kept his mouth slightly open, as was proper for a slave. He did not speak, instead allowing the hubbub of the crowd below him to wash over his senses, taking comfort in its company, picking out the voice of his master in the crowd hoping to hear mention of his own name.
No other voices matter, not the laughter of the young mageling by his master's elbow, or the couple kissing below him as though the world did not exist save them. The sound of sex drifted throughout the room from its periphery, where the line of body slaves waited in their swings.
There were men and women bound with their calves to the sides of circular swings and crude ladders, others like himself who were chosen for their beauty, most of them elves. Each of them was spread wide in a spiderweb of rope, so that anyone could walk up and take them if they pleased. The air was scented with musk and fresh seed, like fresh greenery in the spring of Ferelden.
There was never spring here, just an unending summer ranging between hot and scorching.
Examining the thought with horrid fascination as from a great distance, Anders realized that he wished he was one of those slaves. They were being useful slaves, with masters that took pleasure in their suffering or rapture, while he was deemed too defiant this evening to serve as anything more than a decoration.
"That one is mine, the black-winged raven."
Anders nearly snapped his head sideways at the mention of himself, but his bondage was so tight that he had no leeway at all, and he was thankful for the lack of choice; for if he had the choice to turn his head and he did, then he would have disobeyed again.
"The black feathers are pretty," the girl next to him said. She looked no older than sixteen, if that. She must have been ambitious, to be invited to a party such as this. "A bit ominous though, no? And white feathers would have matched his hair better."
"Are you disagreeing with my choice for his attire?" His master said.
The girl backpedaled immediately, "I meant no disrespect, magister."
At this his master laughed. Anders almost smiled, he so loved that laugh, the fearless abandon of it, pure exhilaration. His master did not smile very well, but he had a beautiful laugh.
"Oh, it is no disrespect to me, enchanter. You would not be the first to criticize; an old friend once said his black feathers reminded her of a 'crow in the middle of anting,'" He took a sip of the sweet wine, lifting it to toast his slave, bright brown eyes sparkling with mirth.
"But I didn't do this for me. He always did love those feathers."