Hopefully Benevenuta is more sober than Alistair is literate, or he'll have to be concerned about the frequency of her early day drinking. But he raises his hands in surrender and looks back at the shelf, which—yes. It's probably not in the same state in which he found it.
"I don't think there's any helping me," he says, because he cannot tell even a Northern mage that he's digging after blood magic. There's a degree of utilitarian tolerance for it among Wardens; their Joining is blood magic, their elaborate talking-darkspawn-magister prisons are locked with it. But people don't want to hear those parts of the stories. Mostly they want to hear the parts with griffons.
He steps back toward the shelf, half-turned to keep her at a conversational angle while he plucks one off the shelf.
"This one was—here?"
He slots it into approximately the correct place, but not the correct place. This may be intentional.
no subject
"I don't think there's any helping me," he says, because he cannot tell even a Northern mage that he's digging after blood magic. There's a degree of utilitarian tolerance for it among Wardens; their Joining is blood magic, their elaborate talking-darkspawn-magister prisons are locked with it. But people don't want to hear those parts of the stories. Mostly they want to hear the parts with griffons.
He steps back toward the shelf, half-turned to keep her at a conversational angle while he plucks one off the shelf.
"This one was—here?"
He slots it into approximately the correct place, but not the correct place. This may be intentional.