The resemblance between Gwenaëlle and her late lady mother is mainly evident in shared mannerisms; she has never been so much the Comtesse's creature as in the way her mouth becomes a thin, tight line of repressed annoyance. Taller, blonder and a good deal more deft in the Game than Gwenaëlle, Annegret Vauquelin had been a force in the household and Halamshiral even from the sickbed to which she'd rarely left toward the end. And she would have handled this better, probably, known the most effective way to brush someone aside without appearing to have even stirred herself to do so.

Not for the first time, she wishes she'd been a better student, less volatile and more calculated. The art of the invisible set down, the smiling dismissal - she has no gift for anything that requires disguising her displeasure.

"Well, I pardon you," she says, flatly. "That matters in Skyhold do not arrange themselves to be most clear to you is hardly your fault." She is being positively charitable, for all that her disapproving look lingers on the damp place where Sabine dried her hand on her dress.