Chapter Text
So. The enigma of Kirkwall.
Take one deep harbor, located centrally in-between Val Royeaux, Cumberland, Orzammar, and Wycome. Cumberland itself might have done well enough for a hub city, for all that it's on the Imperial Highway, but it's too far from Antiva; Ostwick's and Hercinia's harbors weren't suited for the ships of the time, and why dredge out their harbors when Kirkwall filled the requirements just as neatly?
And thus, the dread city of Emerius. Supplier of fine limestone, drakestone, jet, fool's gold, true gold, and other moderately vital materials to the Imperium at large. A short sail to Cumberland, and then directly up the road to Minrathous. Home to over a million slaves at the height of its power, or so it's said.
The islands were not originally a feature of the seascape: did you know that? The fine white limestone quarried outside of Kirkwall, from which all Hightown is built, has no match in the stone the Gallows rest on. The mages, drilling down into their prison, found—you think I'm going to say bones, don't you. The bones of slaves, mounded so high they formed new land. Yes, yes, we're talking about the magisters of old, nothing was out of bounds for them, was it. But don't be morbid. It's tedious.
I get ahead of myself. Or around myself. It is known, amongst those who care about such things, that Emerius is the most likely site for a historical intrusion into the Golden City. Any neophyte student of magic can look at a comprehensive map of Kirkwall, and see the sigils buried in the patterns of the streets. Mind you, such a representation can never truly be made, given the—shall we say—volatile nature of the city's inhabitants, and their distressingly casual attitude toward the layout of their streets. But sigils aren't an uncommon feature of even modern Tevinter city planning; the central district of any city is usually arranged in the shape of some obsolete, inert sigil for joy or prosperity. Certainly, that's the case in Kirkwall's Hightown.
But the Lowtown sigils have no match in one thousand years of the literature. It's as though... I'm reading a sentence in my own language. I see the punctuation marks, the diacritics. I can even make out a bit of the grammar, if I've really limbered up that day, but the rest of it is utterly incomprehensible—
-
"Are you going to talk all night, or are you going to buy me a drink?" Iron Bull said.
"I don't see why I can't do both," the 'Vint said, looking up from the scrap of paper on which he was doodling the mystery sigils to show Bull. "I mean to seal our deal with a nice Fereldan whiskey. Or at least the nicest The Hanged Man has to offer."
"Sure," said Bull. "As soon as you get to the point."
The Bull's Chargers, lately Fisher's Bleeders, before their swift change in management, had two weeks before a ship came to take them from Kirkwall to Val Chevin, and nothing to do but drink and wench in the meantime, much to their newly-minted lieutenant's dismay; but Cremisius would get used to that, Bull was sure. He was uptight, for a fugitive, but he was what the Chargers had needed for too long: someone who had ideas about how a mercenary company should be run, and wouldn't take any shit.
In the meantime, Bull had told the local fixer-some dwarf, not Carta—that he was looking for somebody who was looking for muscle, just to keep his hand in, build the Chargers' rep in the Free Marches. And the local fixer had a sense of humor, clearly, because he'd said, "Tiny, have I got a job for you."
Bull wasn't laughing. The 'Vint across the table from him wasn't laughing. He did, however, have a hopeful, tentative smile on his face, like he was waiting to be allowed to resume his speech. He'd called himself Negidius, as in Numerius Negidius, as in the fucker who doesn't think he owes money, which either meant he thought he was funny and that Bull wouldn't know a Tevinter legal term or two, or he wasn't good for payment on the job, or both.
"Put quite simply," Negidius said, "I need an escort into Darktown, and the sewers beneath it. The gentleman who introduced us"—who was over in the corner, playing cards with an elf and a tall redhead, casting glances over at their table to see if the two dogs he'd introduced had started humping yet—"has told me your going rate; I'm perfectly prepared to double it, if it will entice you."
Negidius had a charming smile, Bull would give him that. A little too talky Bull's his usual tastes. The little emphasis on entice was interesting. He didn't seem like a bad guy, except for the part where he carried himself like an altus: comfortable, smug, secure in the knowledge he was the most dangerous thing in most rooms, and wherever he wasn't, he would be soon.
"You're a mage," Bull said.
"A dangerous accusation to throw around in Kirkwall, especially with a war on."
"And an altus."
If he was surprised Bull had pegged him, he didn't show it. "Yes, and all of my papers from the embassy in Starkhaven are in order, Knight-Commander, please don't throw me in the brig, or however the benighted South contains mages of my caliber. Maker's reeking taint, why do you care?"
"You say you want to go into the sewers," Bull said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his hands over his belly. "You're ready to pay out the ass for it. You're willing to work with a"—not qunari, he always had to take a moment to remind himself, no cover was seamless—"Tal-Vashoth, which either means you need someone big to hide behind, or no one else will take the job. Which one is it?"
At the mention of hiding, Negidius's nostrils flared. There was a sore spot, right there. "Come outside with me," he said, and pushed up from the table.
Double his usual fee was a whole lot of money. Bull followed him, to the broad, stinking street outside the Hanged Man. Lowtown was never quiet, even at night. He'd been here once before, on standby with some other agents for an op in the mountains to the north, but he hadn't been needed; the Tallis who'd been given charge of rooting out a traitor had taken care of it (but who put a Tallis in charge of anything, he'd wondered at the time), and Bull had joined the Bleeders not long after, and hadn't returned to the Free Marches since.
Nothing had changed, except the gap in the skyline where the big Chantry used to be. Somebody was pissing in the alley at the side of the building. Somebody a few streets over was either fucking in an alleyway or getting robbed, or both, from the way the sound of it. Numerius gazed up toward Hightown, at the endless steps, at the hulking outline of the Viscount's Keep at the summit of the city. From a distance, it wasn't that much of a shithole.
"My name is Dorian Pavus." He said it like it should mean something to Bull. "I'm a... private researcher. A sort of mercenary academic, if you will. My employer du jour, after spending a great deal of money on mapping the sewers, has charged me with finding the final resting place of a certain magister. I have in my possession the journal of an adventurer, published in the Steel Age, who purports to have traveled extensively beneath Kirkwall. Only one of his journeys is of interest, however—the tomb of a Magister Herminia, who was reportedly buried with a trove of books."
"They say they find books down there sometimes."
"Most of the libraries in Emerius were burned in slave rebellions. The Tevinters saved what they could, however they could."
"So you, what, want to go down there and find them?" Bull asked.
"No, I want to be sitting naked on beach in Antiva, being fanned and fed peeled grapes by oiled servants. I've been hired to go into the sewers and retrace a madman's steps, to find a tomb that may or may not be there, and possibly die in the process. There's a difference."
So Pavus really was a mercenary. Bull snorted. "How are you going to get the books out?"
"Not books—just one. I've made some preliminary surveys of Darktown"—he turned his face to show Bull the bruise on his jaw—"but it's becoming difficult to fight bandits off and hide my magic, given the current climate of the city."
"I heard it was just as picturesque before the Chantry blew up."
"There's something to be said for charred buildings and piles of rubble, yes," said Pavus. "Not to mention the ceaseless robbery attempts, the clumsy pickpockets, and whatever those bits of rubber they sell down at the docks and expect you to believe are 'oysters' truly are."
"What you're saying is, this place is a mess, and you're going to go digging in the shit."
"Essentially."
Pavus leaned on the wall, then thought better of it, when the drunk from the alley came shambling out around the front, hiking up her trousers as she went. She paused in her tracks to stare at Bull-yeah, a big old qunari standing right out on the street, in a city that had seen two invasions from people like him-and then, like so many Kirkwallers, she decided it was none of her business and went back into the tavern.
"I get that a lot," Bull said.
"I can't imagine why," Pavus replied, glancing up and down Bull's body. Subtle, he was not. "You were right on both counts, however: I do need the largest, strongest fighter my employer's funds can buy, and no one else is willing to take this job. Do you know what the Veil is?"
Bull knew exactly what it was, but with Pavus's type, it didn't hurt to play a little dumb. "Keeps us on our side. Keeps the demons on theirs."
On cue, like Bull had jerked a string on the back of his head, Pavus rolled his eyes. "Something to that effect, yes. That the Veil is thin in Kirkwall is a well-documented phenomenon"—he'd fallen back into his textbook voice—"but the rumors of its permeability in the Undercity are mostly unsubstantiated by any reputable scholars. Whether because it's untrue, or they don't get very far before they—"
"What you're saying," Bull cut in, "is that there might be demons, but probably not."
"Essentially." Pavus blinked. "Yes. Will that be a problem?"
It abso-fucking-lutely is a problem, you crazy 'Vint bastard warred with Of course not, I can kill anything.
"There might be demons anywhere a mage is," Bull said, instead.
The money was right. He'd seen enough abominations on Seheron to know how to get rid of them. He didn't like it, but he could. Saarebas had a role in the world, and that role was as blind, mute, walking dreadnoughts (and even the walking was optional) but no matter how the Qun tried to keep them from corruption, no system was perfect.
It was thoughts like those that had gotten him sent to the mainland. Thoughts like: maybe this isn't worth it, maybe this has been wrong from the start, and please wipe my mind, send me off to break rocks in a quarry somewhere. I can't do this anymore. Let me still be of use.
But here he was. Still of use. Not Hissrad anymore, but still lying.
"Well, that's certainly—obvious," Pavus was saying. "Here I thought a Tal-Vashoth would have a more liberal view of mages."
"You thought wrong," said Bull.
"I suppose the question isn't what you think of mages"—he arched an eyebrow that might have been aristocratic and impressive, if Bull hadn't spent so much of his career as a spy burying his axe in as many smug altus faces as he could find—"but whether you'll work with one."
Hissrad had always been in favor of 'Vints dying, whether it was of him, or of their own stupidity. It wasn't even a waste of a good-looking man. There were plenty more where Pavus came from, every one of them cast from the same mold: noble nose, heavy brow, long mouth, thick, dark hair. And the Iron Bull had the time. Better than sitting with his thumbs up his ass—or someone else's thumbs up his ass, he wasn't picky—waiting for a ship, drinking at a different place every night, watching Krem struggle at keeping order.
And it was a lot of money. Fuck it.
"I'll do it. Three-quarters payment up front, for the danger," Bull said. Pavus was his favorite kind of boss: the kind who didn't know what he was getting into, money-wise. Not that Bull did, either. Krem and a little dwarven woman Bull had only spoken to twice handled all that. "The Chargers bank in Val Royeaux; the dwarf has a copy of our contracts, and he'll handle the details. Now buy me that drink, and tell me what I need to prep."
"How do I know you won't simply knife me in the back and leave me to die in a ditch?"
“It's a little late to be worrying about that, big guy," said Bull. "You're in Kirkwall."
* * *
The safest way into Darktown proper, the fixer had said, without clarifying exactly what he meant by 'safe,' was a little doorway on the Docks. From there, you went down about a hundred feet of stairs, came out into a disused sewer tunnel that you wouldn't know was disused, from the smell, and then up a mineshaft, into a rattling elevator that clanged into the walls all the way down, at which point Bull began to suspect that the dwarf had been screwing with them. Only when they stepped out into somewhere with real sunlight, rather than Pavus's veilfire or the glowing moss on the walls, did Bull exhale.
"We're somewhere beneath Hightown, I believe," Pavus said. "It would be disingenuous to call Darktown nothing but a sewer. An Undercity, in the most literal sense." He stepped off the elevator, Bull close at his shoulder. The people bustling around the shaggy collection of stalls barely looked up at the two of them, but they were strangers, and Bull could feel the crowd focus on them. "They said there was a market, but I hardly believed them," Pavus went on, removing his staff from its carrying sling one-handed. "And, look, there's the healer's clinic, down there. A different healer, since the last one—well. We all know what happened with the last one."
"Put your staff away," said Bull. "We don't want any trouble."
Pavus got a mulish look on his face as he led the way. "I'm sure trouble will manage to find us, and when it does, I'd like to be ready. I was saying, however—an Undercity. No one's gotten deep enough to study its culture and economy, but for Brother Genitivi, and I think we all know Brother Genitivi was largely full of shit. "
"Brother Genitivi. Genitivi." Bull wrinkled his nose, like he was deep in thought. Like Genitivi's works weren't translated into Qunlat, annotated to within an inch of their lives by the Ben-Hassrath, and made into mandatory reading for field agents. "The guy with the broken leg?"
"Yes, at Haven." There wasn't a map in his hands, but Pavus seemed to know where he was going. Bull marked each turn, just in case. This part of Darktown wasn't so bad, even though it stank enough to make Bull retch, if he breathed in too hard through his nose. Chaos above was good for the pockets of the people below. "If such a place exists," Pavus was saying. "Now, mind you, I can believe that he discovered the ruin of a possible site of the theorized Temple of Sacred Ashes, but no serious scholar could be expected to believe in a secret town full of mad dragon cultists." He paused at a staircase, looking both ways. "You're very knowledgeable, Iron Bull."
The way he said it—with a smile that was more reflex than truth, just a flash of jarringly white teeth—got on Bull's nerves. "I've read a few books in my life," he said. "Here and there."
Pavus went down the staircase. "The fixer called the Bull's Chargers an 'eclectic outfit.'"
That fixer talked too damn much for Bull's liking. They were a bunch of strays, was what they were. "You could say that," Bull replied.
"And how did you come to be their leader?"
"I thought we already did the interview."
"Forgive me if I want to get to know the person I've—charged—with watching my rear."
Bull shrugged. It was a shitty joke, it was an opening to flirtation, both of which he liked, neither of which he was going to give into, even if he'd gotten a pretty good view of that rear on the way down. An altus was an altus. It was a safe bet, that as soon as Pavus was done with him, he'd stab Bull in the back, or try to. With that in mind, Bull said, "I'm good at killing things."
To Bull's satisfaction, one of Pavus's boots got stuck in something that might have been mud at the bottom of the steps. "But a mercenary captain," Pavus continued, undeterred, "needs a working knowledge of tactics, stratagems, maintaining military discipline, managing money, contractual language...."
"And a big, dumb oxman like me couldn't pick any of that up?"
"That's not what I meant. There are plenty of professional, well-regarded Tal-Vashoth companies, after all. I was only wondering—"
"Quit while you're ahead," Bull said.
With a shrug, Pavus shut up, and simply led the way.
They were deeper into Darktown now, well away from the weak sunlight from the cliffside. There were fewer people down here, mostly elves, a few humans. Not the crowds of the over-Undercity, but enough to feel inhabited. It smelled cleaner, too, and along the walls, there were tents, and even little shacks, supported by the walls. It was a residential district. It felt lived-in, almost nice, for an illegal underground city full of criminals.
Some mage had set up balls of bright white-green veilfire at even intervals, which bobbed and swayed in the breeze through the tunnels. The cast of the light made every crevice in the wall stand out in sharp relief, and made everybody who looked up at them look hollow-faced and tired. The ceiling, far above the veilfire's reach, was deep in shadow. There were different levels to this corridor, three stories up and down, veering off in wildly different directions. A mine access tunnel, probably. Bodies and carts went in, who knew had gone out, or how long ago. Above them, a lone vendor was hawking her wares.
And someone was following them.
They'd had tails when they'd arrived, but they'd been curious, not threatening, and so Bull had put them out of his mind. His instincts didn't get out of bed for anything less than a company of Fog Warriors tracking his every move through the jungle. Most of the tails had peeled off at the staircase, when the pursuit would become obvious—all of them except for this one, who must have taken a different route to intercepted them down here.
"These shouldn't be able to sustain themselves," Pavus murmured, nodding up at the veilfire. "Without a mage around to constantly reinforce their connection to the Veil, they should burn themselves out within a day. But no one has used magic down here in at least a year."
"Sure," Bull said, listening for the footsteps above them. The walls of the corridor were packed earth, but the ceiling was so high that, no matter how careful whoever it was tried to be, whenever they kicked a stray pebble, it echoed through the place. Someone who didn't know what they were listening for might write it off as the tunnels crumbling, or water dripping, but Bull had been ambushed one too many times "Real interesting."
"Interesting? It's fascinating, Iron Bull. Every city, you know, creates its own local peculiarities and anomalies in the Veil, as a consequence of so many people packed into one place—"
"Shut it," Bull said, holding up a hand. Of course an altus cared more about the lights than about how the people down here managed to make it work. Where they got their water. How they got rid of waste.
"If I'm boring you," Pavus said acidly, "please, let me know."
"Veil, anomalies, people." Bull grabbed Pavus's shoulder and pulled him behind him. It wasn't easy, he noted distantly. There was some meat to him. "Got it. Fascinating." The tents and shanties had stopped about fifty feet back, leaving only a thin stream of people headed deeper into the Undercity on their business, as the corridor narrowed. Their tail stopped when Bull stopped.
And now, Bull thought, the ambush.
Six people, well-armed and nasty-looking, blocked the corridor. "Fuck's sake, I don't have time for this," someone behind Bull and Pavus muttered, and went through the ambush, shouldering through the line of thugs, muttering, "Bunch of gobshites," as she passed. They let her go.
"I'm guessing we won't be afforded the same courtesy," Pavus said, holding his hands wide. "Gentlemen, ladies, et cetera. My companion and I don't have any money, and we certainly don't have any valuables." As he spoke, Bull felt a tingling in his skin, and then a distant rushing in his ears: a barrier. The company 'archer' didn't usually put them down on Bull, or put them down at all, but he knew one when he felt one. Pavus took a step back behind Bull and to the left, well out of the radius of Bull's wind-up and swing. "I," he went on, "don't see why there needs to be any unpleasantness."
Nothing. Stony silence. The archer's hand twitched on their bow.
"Very well." Pavus sighed. "Have it your way."
And then the two thugs in the center of the line convulsed, threw their heads back, and let loose the most horrible, broken shrieks Bull had heard since Seheron, like someone had poured hot lead into their lungs. On either side of them, their comrades fell back in shock; the archer fumbled with their arrow, and Pavus cleared his throat, as if to say, Get on with it, then.
It was fast. It was easy. Sewer cutthroats didn't deal well with people who weren't immediately rattled, let alone people who rattled them right back. Bull took the archer out first—their fault, for not having the high ground. Then the first screamer, and only when she went down did the rest of them wake up and decide to give Bull a real fight.
Even with the barrier cutting him off from the sensation of knives and swords, his blood was alive and singing. They were no match for him. No one was a match for him. Whatever Pavus was doing from the rear had all of them spooked in turn, because each and every one of them flinched and looked over their shoulders in the exact moment before Bull separated them from their limbs.
And when it was over, Bull stood panting in the middle of their corpses. He turned back to look at Pavus as the barrier dropped and the blood sloughed off him. That was a shame, right there. Nothing like a big qunari covered in gore to clear the path.
"That was... egregious," Pavus said. His voice was disapproving. His face looked like he had about thirty hard-ons at once. "You could have just disarmed them."
"I did disarm them. Two of them, even." Bull looked down at his feet and did some quick math. "Three and a half." He was getting too old to be that athletic. Five years ago, he wouldn't have broken a sweat. But he felt good, clean, like some of the filth from the city above, from a year and a half of selling his strength for coin, had been purged from him.
Six bodies on the ground. None of them was small enough to be the gang's lookout. He looked out into the dim corridor they were headed down and saw nothing, only to hear a grunt and a choking noise from behind him: Pavus, sliding a knife between the lookout's ribs. Where'd a mage learn to do that so cleanly, to get the dagger right up in the heart, without any hesitation, so the attacker died instantly?
"On second thought, a bit of senseless brutality just might be the deterrent we need," Pavus said, cleaning his blade off. There was a vivid red stain across the front of his traveling cloak, and he looked down at it with a deep frown. "I don't suppose you have a handkerchief?"
Bull patted his bare chest and sides down, then checked his nipples for good measure. "Nope."
There was one thing, he thought, taking the fight apart in his head, relishing the only good action he'd had since they entered Kirkwall proper: he and Pavus fought well together. He would take a good archer at his back over a mage any day, but there was something to be said about the ice thing Pavus had done toward the end. He hadn't gotten cocky and tried to wade into the middle of things. If they just got into skirmishes and didn't say a word for each other for the rest of the trip, they'd get along great. But:
"Next time," Bull said, "could you leave a few of them not, you know..." He clutched the sides of his face and rolled his eyes back into his head. "Not that it wasn't great, big guy. It was great."
"I suppose I could," Pavus said, and, having given up on cleaning his robes, forged onward.
"Because if I didn't see that coming, they sure as shit didn't," Bull went on. "You see a guy with a staff, you think, oh, he's just going to throw a fireball at me, I'd better get my shield up. The screaming—nice touch. But it's just better if they're shitting their pants because of me."
"Duly noted." Pavus pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and, almost unconsciously, crooked his finger at a ball of veilfire. It came down from its post to hover over the page. 'We're nearly there," he said, then looked at the little light next to him, which bobbed up and down, almost puppy-like.
Pavus reached out to put his—his fucking hand on the light, into it, and the corners of his lips turned up, very slightly. "You're lonely," he said to it. "Very well, come along." He looked up at Bull. "Unless you have some objection?"
"It likes you," Bull said, swallowing. He didn't like it, not so close to him. Magic was a tool. "We'll need light."
*
They say that, deep enough below Kirkwall, demons can step through the Veil and contact mortal men. I say that's absurd.
You see, my friend: genuine tears in the Veil are rare. It can be warped, temporarily, and demons can be brought through, but a rift, an open door? Nearly impossible to create. Imagine—this is a clumsy analogy—imagine the skin of a drum, stretched tight: you slap it, and the sound reverberates through the air. The harder you hit it, the larger the sound you produce. The skin yields when you beat it, but only very slightly. Hit it enough times in the same place, it grows thinner from use: local peculiarities and anomalies, as I said. But under normal circumstances, the mere force of your hand would not be enough to cause the drum to tear. It's made of sterner stuff.
You would need a hammer to pierce it. Or a knife.
Or an explosion—
*
"Hey, here's an idea," Bull said, his voice nearly swallowed up by whatever dark, cavernous space they'd emerged into, from the tunnel. He waited for it to bounce off the ceiling and come back to him. He waited for a long time.
"Yes?" Pavus said.
"Let's not talk about demons getting through the Veil. Let's not."
"Am I frightening you?"
Fear was good. Fear would keep him sharp. Here, in the dark, with just their light bobbing long behind them, circling over their heads, anything could happen. Anything could be lurking, waiting for them. When it found them, he'd kill it, but it had to show itself, first.
They'd come to the center of what Bull had started thinking of as the neighborhood, down a blind alley, to a plain wooden hatch in the ground. Nothing remarkable. Nothing to distinguish it from the dozen other hatches and manholes they'd passed along the way. But Pavus had nodded and said, This is the place.
A short trip down a ladder, then a steep, cold walk down a tunnel, with the light—Glowball, Pavus had taken to calling it, like it was a person—illuminating their way. It was a solid mile down below the surface, by Bull's reckoning. The mine shaft they'd ended up in was wide enough Bull wasn't worried about his horns, and tall enough to accommodate him, too. It couldn't have been built with qunari in mind, but Bull wasn't complaining.
"Absolutely," Bull said. "You're not scared?"
"Iron Bull, I am scared shitless," Pavus said. "It's so—silent. I've never been anywhere this quiet. Do you know? Where it presses down at you like a hand. "
"Hence the talking."
"I would be talking either way," he said, with a nervous chuckle. "I do love the sound of my own voice."
Clearly. Above them, Glowball flickered, almost like a laugh, which wiped the smile right off Bull's face.
"Pavus," Bull said. "Is that fucking thing listening to us?"
Without looking up from his examination of the book, Pavus said, "Possibly. So far as I can tell, it's some kind of minor spirit, trapped on this side of the Veil in the form of, well. A glorified lantern. It can't communicate with us in any meaningful way, but it must have a rudimentary understanding of human speech."
"Huh. You said it shouldn't be out here at all."
"At some point, the people who oversaw these mines must have used innumerable spirits as lanterns," Pavus replied. "Hundreds of thousands, possibly. Millions-enough to create a permanent... impression, and leave some stranded on this side of the Veil, even once those who summoned them were gone. The practice wasn't uncommon in the old Imperium, but it's a bit crude, all told. One never knows what one will bring over."
"Great."
"Suppose you were deceived into bringing over a greater demon, which was subsequently content to hide as a light until such time as it could wreak real havoc—"
"You know what," Bull interrupted, "I'm good not knowing any more."
"—which is highly unusual behavior for a greater demon, I'll have you know. Pride, desire—they're rarely content to hide as lesser spirits for long. Our friend here is barely sentient," Pavus assured him. "Minor spirits are my area of expertise; if it were something sinister, I would know. Don't worry."
Bull was not reassured.
They walked on. Pavus seemed to know the way, and took the turns confidently. For a while. The first time he hesitated at a turn and consulted his book, nothing was wrong. The second time, he unfurled his entire map, and called Glowball down to give him extra light. Third and fourth times, they were on the right track. The fifth time, he was visibly frustrated, and paced back and forth along a path with four forks to it.
"You okay?" Bull asked, at last.
"The wording is vague," Pavus said. "Old Tevinter writers talked around the point for pages before getting to it. I thought I would know when I got down here, that I would feel it, but... nothing. And if we go the wrong way here, we may never make it out again."
"Two lefts, a right, two more rights, straight for three hundred feet, ignore the path on your left as you go up—"
"You remember all that?"
"We've all got talents," Bull said. "I've got a good sense of direction. Yours is sounding like you've swallowed a couple of textbooks in your life."
"If I'm boring you, I'll stop."
Bull snorted. "Nah. I don't mind. It's interesting. Besides, I bet you've swallowed bigger things and lived to tell the tale."
The succession of expressions that passed over Pavus's face went something like: delight, barely suppressed. A snort—a honk, even—of laughter. Then shock, then an eerie blankness, like nothing in the last ten seconds had happened.
On Seheron, Bull had gotten friendly with a few 'Vints, which was to say, his dick had led him across enemy lines once or twice. It happened. He'd played a lot of roles in ten years, whatever they'd needed him to be. Sometimes he was a honeypot; he was good for that kind of work, even though his superiors always edited out the "tool of the Qun" jokes in his mission reports. Once he'd met somebody he liked, and she'd happened to have cut two of his fingers off the day before. It had always been women. Tevinter men—no one had time for that. He was here to chop things up if they looked at them funny, not deal with a rich boy's hangups about getting fucked in the ass, for all that he'd looked at Bull the other night like he wanted to eat him.
"Did I get something on my face, Pavus?" Bull said, before the silence could become awkward. "No? You were picking a path."
"Second from the right," Pavus said. "Let's go in the morning, if that has any meaning down here. For now, let's make camp, shall we?"
They made a fire. They took five hour watch shifts. Bull had smuggled some sweet rolls into his pack, which he ate when Pavus wasn't looking, after the second watch. They set off in good spirits, only for them to fade when they came to a—not a dead end. A huge stone door, taller than Bull, set seamlessly into the end of the path.
"Well," Pavus said. "That's interesting. That's certainly not in the book."
"No shit," Bull said, and went for the handle.
Nothing happened.
Bull gave the handle another shake. "Never had a problem with one of these before," he said.
Pavus crossed his arms. "Doors, you mean?"
"Nah, I've run into trouble with doors plenty of times," Bull clarified. "I hear I have a way with knobs, though."
"Get out of the way, let me try," Pavus snapped, and shouldered around him, but not before Bull saw him roll his eyes, saw his mouth twist like he wanted to chuckle. So there was a sense of humor in there, underneath all the layers of—'Vint.
Pavus felt at the knob, his fingers moving up and down it with intent, then went around the edge of the door. "Magically sealed," he said, more to himself than to Bull. "This isn't wood, no matter how it looks, so don't try to chop it. I'm going to try to...."
He frowned and placed his hand in the center of the door, then shut his eyes. Something magic was clearly about to happen, so Bull took a step back, as Glowball rushed forward to illuminate the door.
It occurred to Bull that maybe they should really just turn around and backtrack to the crossroads—
Glowball went dark—
And the door lit with a burning sigil, spreading out from Pavus's hand. It looked like scrollwork, or writing, something in between, and spread out to the corners, seeped out into the wall, at which point it was swiftly sucked back into Pavus's hand, up his arm. In the absence of any other light, Bull could see the it under his skin, running in his veins like blood.
"As I thought," Pavus said, as Glowball slowly came back to itself, "my ancestor came down this way. She made this door, or had a hand in its making."
"How can you know that?" Bull asked. He didn't want the answer, not really, but Pavus looked so pleased with himself he going to tell Bull anyway.
And sure enough, Pavus said, "Blood knows blood, and they were freer with theirs, in those days." But there was a distaste in his voice that Bull hadn't expected. A 'Vint with a genuine disgust for blood magic was as rare as a three-horned qalaba; maybe Pavus had had a bad run-in.
"We could go back," said Bull. "We don't have to go in there."
"No, we don't," Pavus said, and opened the door.
They stepped out, and down, into ankle-deep water. It was perfectly odorless, and it had been perfectly still until their boots disturbed it. Pavus flicked a hand, and Glowball flew up above them, casting a weak circle of light onto the water. The only thing apart from the water was the wall of the chamber itself: smooth, well-laid brick, featureless, and curved as far as the eye could see, with a deep groove at Bull's waist height. Pavus flicked his hand again, and Glowball went higher, higher, until its light disappeared and they stood in darkness. No roof in sight. Either the path had gone downward at a grade so slight Bull hadn't noticed it, or the chamber ran the height of the cliff. No way out in sight but way the way they'd come in, which had closed behind them.
"We've seen it," Bull said. "Let's go back. See if we can pick the right path. This time."
"I suppose a qunari wouldn't have any interest in his ancestry, but I do," Pavus replied, and took a cautious step forward. "Ten minutes, and we can go back."
"Fine, big guy."
He would have felt better if they'd run into demons. You could put your axe in a demon. Big, creepy pool, crazy 'Vint walking ahead of him, running a finger through the groove in the wall, completely harmless spirit bobbing along with them like it was having the time of its life—he hadn't signed on for this, but here he was. On the other hand, there was the chance that this was completely harmless. The very slim chance, because this was Kirkwall, and even the seagulls at the docks were trying to kill you.
Pavus and his damn finger on the wall. He was humming one of the songs from the tavern the other night, from before someone had thrown a chair at the bard. If he sang, Bull bet he'd have a nice voice. The sound had nothing to bounce off, and went out into the void, which was better than silence, Bull supposed. But that wall—it was too regular to be natural. Too even. Nobody laid bricks that well.
"Interesting," Pavus said, pulling his hand away from the wall, examining it, rubbing it together with his thumb. He glanced up at the ceiling, one eyebrow raised speculatively.
"What?" Bull said. "What's interesting?"
"Nothing." Pavus shook his head, pressed his free hand to his forehead. "Nothing, just—"
Then he stopped dead in his tracks, bent at the waist, and retched. Bull lunged forward and grabbed him by the back of the collar before he could fall on his face in the water. Pavus let out a low moan, and his eyes fluttered shut, as he clenched his jaw and tried to steady himself, and this was not happening: Pavus's map was nothing but a sketch, damn near unreadable, and if Bull forgot one turn he'd be lost for days trying to make his way back to the surface.
"What's wrong?" Bull asked, giving Pavus a desperate little shake. "For fuck's sake, Pavus—"
"Nothing," Pavus replied, voice hoarse. He retched again, then coughed. "A memory. Memories. In the stone. Don't touch the bricks. Get away from the wall, get away, get me toward the center of the chamber."
Whatever was happening, Bull didn't need to be told twice. With Glowball lighting the way, he dragged Pavus away from the wall as fast as he could, until the ground stopped, suddenly, under his back foot. The water was deep; they'd been standing on the edge of a pool. The shore of a lake, even. A margin of thirty feet separated them from whatever had spooked Dorian, and he roused, now, pulled himself out of Bull's arms and took his staff from his back, propping himself up on it like a walking stick. Or holding it in front of him, like a ward.
"Blood knows blood," Pavus said. "I cut myself. Look down at the floor under our feet."
Glowball came down to the water's dark surface and moved around them in a circle, illuminating more lines in the floor. There was no way Bull was touching those, after what they'd done to Pavus. They made strange whorls as far as his eye could see, weird patterns that all his instincts demanded he look away from, and look away he did.
"We're not supposed to be here," Bull said.
The words weren't his. They came out of his mouth, but they weren't his. If something got in his head down here, at least he was down here, away from anything he might hurt. He took a deep breath, tried to call up something from the Qun, something applicable, something to calm him down, but We're not supposed to be down here filled him up.
"You're hearing it, too," Pavus murmured. "It's been in my head since I touched the wall. I didn't want to worry you, but, well. You see how well that worked out. Listen to my voice, Iron Bull. Calm down. Whatever you do, don't fall into the water."
Somewhere behind them, a cold red light illuminated the darkness. It spread, treacle-slow, through the long line in the wall, up, filling the unseen channels that ran toward the impossible roof and down into the water.
"I cut myself," Pavus repeated, summoning up a light of his own to cast in front of them. Glowball illuminated the pool's edge as they went, keeping them out of it. "An accident. The wall tasted me, and I knew what this room was for. The grooves are made for blood, you see," he went on, and he sounded rattled, really rattled, for the first time since they'd come down here. "A drop was enough to—wake it—"
"Hey," Bull said, keeping an eye on that light's spread toward them. You shouldn't be down here—was that a woman's voice?—"can we skip the exposition and get the fuck out of here?"
Pavus offered his hand. "I thought you'd never ask."
They ran, or tried, as best as they could, with their hands linked and Pavus's staff swinging everywhere, splashing water as they went. You shouldn't be down here. No. Shok ebasit hissra. Struggle was an illusion. Bull's heart pounded against his chest. He couldn't look back. If he looked back, if he looked too hard, they wouldn't make it out alive. Water had gotten inside his boots, into his socks, but that was only flesh; he was not flesh, his role was to run.
All the while, the light gained on them, running under the water, racing alongside them, almost as though it was toying with them. Iron Bull, Hissrad, Ashkaari, who had always wanted to know too damn much for his own good, turned around to look, and he could see the roof of the cavern, miles above them, the light inscribing a seven-pointed star.
He lost his balance. He tripped.
He went down with a colossal splash, face-down and useless. He must have scraped something—what it was didn't matter—the blood hit the water, and diffused. The blood met the floor beneath the water. The blood remembered:
*
Shivering men and women, humans and elves alike, lined up for hours down the path, underneath the limestone mine, past the miners' sewer tunnels. There were hundreds of them, they thought, as one mind, as one vast, suffering body. Surely, they could overpower the magister and her soldiers, if only they could act together. If only one of them had the courage in their heart to pick up a stone and throw it. To break loose from the chains they'd been struggling against for hours.
They knew what was at the end of that line, and there wasn't anything they could do about it.
The screaming had stopped hours ago.
*
"Ah," someone said, when Bull came to. "You're awake. That's heartening."