He’s been to Nevarra before, technically. Technically he’s been nearly everywhere. But the thing about traveling as a Warden is that you’re always going toward something unpleasant and meeting people who are more alarmed than pleased to see you, or else you’re underground the entire time anyway. Maybe someone will point up at the stone ceiling while cleaning darkspawn entrails off her sword and say look, it’s Nevarra City, and then it’s all necromancy jokes for the next five miles—but he’s never really been to Nevarra.
He makes the most of it now. There is practically nothing in the city Alistair can’t be found looking at, eyes narrowed in skeptical but keen interest. He’s out of uniform himself, so long as the business is unofficial—all the better to avoid making the locals nervous—but if he spots anyone in Inquisition colors, he’s quick to wave or do an eyebrow thing. Come talk to him about how weird these people are.
— THE CROOKED BONE, FOR THRANDUIL
At some point, surely, Thranduil is alone in the tavern.
And at that point, he is suddenly not alone anymore, because a large—by normal Thedosian human standards—ginger Warden is sitting across from him and giving him an appraising look that wouldn’t be misplaced if Thranduil had asked him for a job.
“You know,” he says, “I knew a man once who was a head taller than me, and his parents were normal heights, even sort of short. He said, anyway. And his brothers and sisters were normal too. Something just made him shoot up like a weed in a garden. I assumed you were a weed.”
— A DRAGON-FOCUSED BOOKSTAND, FOR NATHANIEL
The bookseller might be able to help them, if they ask, but giving away information, even information like two Wardens were asking about extra-enormous dragons, is always a risk. Best not do it unnecessarily.
Which means Alistair is now flipping through his ninth book, with five of those nine in a stack meant for books they might need to buy to read in depth.
“If these bloody things exist,” he says, as if it’s in doubt, “and you wind up making one angry and setting it loose on a city, I’m telling everyone you went rogue.”
— SOME TAVERN, FOR LOGHAIN
This feels like the sort of meeting that ought to occur somewhere dark and dingy, but it turns out there aren’t many dark and dingy taverns in Nevarra City. The best this contact of Loghain’s could manage was apparently dark and very clean.
The contact isn’t here yet. Only Alistair and Loghain. Alistair sits across from him—he’s damn well not sitting beside him—and frowns at the table for a solid thirty seconds before deigning to speak.
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
Nobody die of shock, please. Plenty of other things are definitely Loghain’s fault, and Alistair doesn’t look up from the table.
“I remember how long you looked for him.” Because he was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—two years standing next to a pyre where he’d placed every hope of having a father, all the murmurs about possibly bringing him to Denerim, waiting for any news that might mean he didn’t have to burn them after all. If didn’t come. “Everyone was sure he was dead.”
ALISTAIR
He’s been to Nevarra before, technically. Technically he’s been nearly everywhere. But the thing about traveling as a Warden is that you’re always going toward something unpleasant and meeting people who are more alarmed than pleased to see you, or else you’re underground the entire time anyway. Maybe someone will point up at the stone ceiling while cleaning darkspawn entrails off her sword and say look, it’s Nevarra City, and then it’s all necromancy jokes for the next five miles—but he’s never really been to Nevarra.
He makes the most of it now. There is practically nothing in the city Alistair can’t be found looking at, eyes narrowed in skeptical but keen interest. He’s out of uniform himself, so long as the business is unofficial—all the better to avoid making the locals nervous—but if he spots anyone in Inquisition colors, he’s quick to wave or do an eyebrow thing. Come talk to him about how weird these people are.
— THE CROOKED BONE, FOR THRANDUIL
At some point, surely, Thranduil is alone in the tavern.
And at that point, he is suddenly not alone anymore, because a large—by normal Thedosian human standards—ginger Warden is sitting across from him and giving him an appraising look that wouldn’t be misplaced if Thranduil had asked him for a job.
“You know,” he says, “I knew a man once who was a head taller than me, and his parents were normal heights, even sort of short. He said, anyway. And his brothers and sisters were normal too. Something just made him shoot up like a weed in a garden. I assumed you were a weed.”
— A DRAGON-FOCUSED BOOKSTAND, FOR NATHANIEL
The bookseller might be able to help them, if they ask, but giving away information, even information like two Wardens were asking about extra-enormous dragons, is always a risk. Best not do it unnecessarily.
Which means Alistair is now flipping through his ninth book, with five of those nine in a stack meant for books they might need to buy to read in depth.
“If these bloody things exist,” he says, as if it’s in doubt, “and you wind up making one angry and setting it loose on a city, I’m telling everyone you went rogue.”
— SOME TAVERN, FOR LOGHAIN
This feels like the sort of meeting that ought to occur somewhere dark and dingy, but it turns out there aren’t many dark and dingy taverns in Nevarra City. The best this contact of Loghain’s could manage was apparently dark and very clean.
The contact isn’t here yet. Only Alistair and Loghain. Alistair sits across from him—he’s damn well not sitting beside him—and frowns at the table for a solid thirty seconds before deigning to speak.
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
Nobody die of shock, please. Plenty of other things are definitely Loghain’s fault, and Alistair doesn’t look up from the table.
“I remember how long you looked for him.” Because he was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—two years standing next to a pyre where he’d placed every hope of having a father, all the murmurs about possibly bringing him to Denerim, waiting for any news that might mean he didn’t have to burn them after all. If didn’t come. “Everyone was sure he was dead.”