Chapter Text
It started small.
A vested interest in watching when the other had their back turned, both confident they wouldn't be caught, right up until chance finally had its day, eight months into working together.
In the far corner of a private suite, at a tavern called The Nug Queen, Safiya Nox turned to find a stray eyelash in a diamond-shaped mirror on the wall beside her—seeking relief when incessant rubbing hadn't helped—the other eye a little blurry from tears, but otherwise pristine enough to catch a fleeting glimpse that left her wondering. Had she imagined it?
"Have the two of you...?" said Zevran, clicking the trigger of a gaudy copper lighter. He started to smile, but Fenris was glaring, and Safiya shrugged, mouth hidden behind her hand. "No? No, nevermind." He torched the end of a pre-rolled cigarette and exchanged the lighter for an envelope with the seal already broken, tossing it to their end of he table.
"Missing person?" Fenris sat back in a lush armchair, legs spread and elbows propped as he examined the rendering of a pretty young woman. "This isn't a slave," he said, and passed it to Safiya, who read the scrawled handwriting: "Jasminit of House Iren…?"
"Magister Iren believes his daughter ran off with a 'street urchin petty criminal' and is paying handsomely to have her retrieved."
"I've never heard of House Iren," said Fenris, raking tan fingers through a mop of cirrus clouds atop his head.
"He's more like a glorified bookkeeper for some bigger name."
"You know we don't work for magisters."
"Are you sure? But the money is so good..." Zevran spotted the way this comment pulled at the tendons in Fenris's neck; shook his head and chuckled. "No, of course you don't. I know that. I want you two to look into the lyrium trader her boyfriend works for."
Safiya leaned on the edge of the table between them, studying the polished highlights of the girl's darker complexion. Her glorious, long locks spilled with a few situated over her shoulders, decorated with rings and jewels. Zevran continued talking, filling the room with cloying, hazy ropes of smoke.
"He seems to have a very poor opinion of someone I've never even heard of. Meritag Durlac is a nobody in the trade, his wealth is modest at best—enough to rent a lot with dedicated dock space at Calpurnia's Rest, but nothing that makes him a household name in Vyrantium."
"So? There's plenty of lyrium merchants here. It's Tevinter."
"Exactly! He's one of the nobodies, and yet Magister Iren had something to say about him." Zevran dragged a brass tray shaped like a lotus closer, depositing his ashes with a few gentle taps. "Like he's a dwarf of ill-repute, when to my knowledge Durlac has NO-repute."
"You think the dwarf is doing something shady enough to get the attention of magisters." Safiya left the paper on the table.
"Exactly! Information like that could be worth a lot of money in the right hands."
"Blackmail or extortion?" She folded her arms, glanced at Fenris, who flashed green eyes encased in a frown, and turned back to Zevran. "You want us to try and stop whatever he's doing?"
"I suppose that depends on what it is."
"We don't have any proof of this dwarf merchant doing something illegal," interjected Fenris. "But you want us to break into his warehouse to investigate?"
She heard the scraping of chair legs and felt the whisper of Zevran's hand between her shoulder blades before he slung his arm around her. "I have a hunch," he shrugged.
Fenris stood as well, towering over both of them.
"We're no strangers to illegal activity," she implored.
"I like proof," he replied flatly.
"Fair enough... Please tell me you have more information?"
"My sweet Safiya, you don't trust my instinct?" Zevran laid a hand on his chest. "I had a hunch about you, no?" They exchanged a grin. "I would never dream of sending you out with nothing more than a name and a wish." He kissed her hand and winked at Fenris before he laid out the complexities regarding Meritag Durlac.
After helping her murder her master and escape prosecution, both men had become her mentors, recruited in their effort against the systemic oppression of others like them. At least, that's how she understood it. Before, she'd been a weapon wielded by Kyrios. Now, she worked for herself, and could perhaps assist in freeing others (eventually, if Zevran or one of his contacts presented the opportunity) as an ex-prostitute turned rogue-assassin.
No one dared touch her unless she permitted, and she hadn't. Not for months. Zevran was always friendly, but his affection came entirely without possessiveness. ["You remind me of a very dear friend..."] He never directly propositioned her for sex, but the offer lingered, dangling like a piece of exotic fruit. He was an incorrigible flirt.
While they poured over a rudimentary map of Calpurnia's Rest spread on the table, she noticed Fenris slide his pinky finger ever so slightly to avoid hers, and wondered somewhat abruptly if it bothered him. She hoped to catch him looking again, as they were getting ready to leave, but it resulted in him catching her instead. Which would've been humiliating if his expression wasn't so damnably neutral about it.
. . .
The moons were in Full-Gibbous, as bright as they could possibly be together on a clear night, which meant long shadows and late-night deliveries. Fenris saw lights winking from merchant ships, massive carracks gliding across a smooth black mirror, as he squatted in the shadows on a cliff overlooking Durlac's lot. He wrapped long strips of cotton that were coated in a viscous film around the blackened end of a torch, pretending not to notice when Safiya finally returned from scoping the perimeter fence.
"I saw an open window on the south wall. The main building might be empty. It looks like they're just patrolling the lot." She hovered over his shoulder. When she shook her head, he felt the tickle of her hair and inhaled; a field of clover after a spring rain with just a hint of something sweet.
"Like a bunch of clucking hens."
"Mhm," he replied in monotone and tried to think of the right fruit.
"There's a bunch clumped in front of it that'll need to be drawn off."
"Mhm."
"Got any ideas for that?"
"Mhm."
"Lemme guess," she said cheekily, leaning an elbow on him just as he finished securing the last strip, "Fire?"
"Well… ?"
She smiled to herself, picking out a subtle fluctuation in his voice. "Fire?" She teased.
"It just so happens to be the best answer most of the time."
"Is it? Or do you just really like burning things?"
"Two things can be true."
The strips were coated in glycerol. A powerful substance. "For anyone who needs to start a fire that's really hard to put out," he explained further.
"Why can't they use water to put it out?" She wondered, striking a ferro rod on a separate torch to provide a steady open flame for the braided bundle.
"I don't remember exactly," he admitted, turning his torch like a spit-roast over the other. "Takes some time to light, but when it gets going, it's very hot. Something to do with the thickness, too. It'll just break into burning pieces."
"So the fire spreads." She glanced up at him with a grin so infectious he actually smiled back a little.
"Yes."
His understanding of complex things was mostly intuitive, as someone with no formal education. Safiya had been a slave too, but someone had taken the time to teach her to read when she was young, and her hunger for knowledge was insatiable besides. Sometimes the questions came endlessly, but he'd only ever known a handful of people who seemed genuinely interested in things he had to say so he didn't mind it.
"I learned about this stuff years ago in the Deep Roads," he continued. "They use it in special forges."
"Sounds like we need to take a trip down there."
"It's a dangerous place."
"Sounds like we really need to take a trip down there."
Safiya watched in silence as he stepped closer to the cliff's edge, performing silent calculations regarding distance and trajectory (another intuitive skill), sent it sailing like a comet, where it dropped neatly into a sloop ship tethered to the dock.
"Ha!" She nudged his elbow and laughed. "Nice shot."
. . .
Fenris stayed in the shadow of the warehouse, watching a few stragglers—transfixed by the hungry flames chewing at ship sails while others scrambled in the distance—then slid away, summoned by her gentle tug on a lock of hair at the base of his skull, moving in silence around to the back of the building.
. . .
"That's the second story." He surveyed the aforementioned open window on the south wall with tightly folded arms.
"It's not that high."
"There's nowhere to climb..." No crates to use. No gouges or cracks big or consistent enough that he could see to get a proper foothold on the wall.
"Here," she said, taking his shoulders, "gimme a boost."
Fenris was already bending his knees despite his skepticism. He grunted in surprise at the heft of her, earning a look of reproach. True, she may have gained a lot of muscle since they first met, but she still looked very lean. It was an easy mistake.
"You gonna hoist me up, too?"
"Just do that thing, the thing with your tattoos... The tattoo thing."
"What thing?"
Safiya paused with one hand on his neck and the other on his head, "Can't you go through walls?" Climbing with ease—as if his body was a series of wide stepping stones—to stand on his shoulders, casually picking at a callous on her palm like some kind of troupe performer.
"I'd rather not."
"Why?" Said with that bratty lilt in her voice she always got, right before she started teasing him. "That's what I would do."
"I'm sure you would."
Fenris held her ankles as he turned them toward the wall.
"You can be my look out." A smile crept on her lips, listening for the usual little sharp exhalation of annoyance before she continued: "Just make pigeon noises to alert me if—"
"No."
"Oh, fine."
. . .
Before, when he first became a crow, Zevran Arainai was much more used to being around humans. For a long time, he preferred it. Being an elf—one so charming and richly dressed—made him stand out. It made him unique, and being adored or lusted after (or both) helped him forget the paradox of a choice he didn't actually make. Since then, over time, working in the company of elves made things quite different.
It humbled him to know Fenris didn't trust him implicitly. In fact, the first time he ferreted an answer that Zevran himself hadn't thought to include while discussing a job opportunity, that stubborn brute made a point to grill him ever since. Just to be sure.
Finding Jasminit Iren was easy, because she wasn't actually missing. Her father had simply refused to look. Reputation, as the second most important currency of the land, is also a closed market. Exclusive to the very wealthy minority. No respectable magister would ever be seen in those seedy establishments of the working class. Every place like that offers the same thing the fancy places do, of course—boozing, gambling, whoring, etcetera—but the only people who claim they don't see a difference are the poor ones.
Contemptable as it were, Zevran had no real qualms about taking his money. And it ensured compensation for the unrelated risk taken by his friends on the off chance he was wrong.
Of three taverns most frequented by sailors and dock workers, all of them multi-functional for the purposes previously stated, The Windy Bells had freelance whoring rather than actual dedicated rooms upstairs. That's where Zevran overheard a pivotal detail (one that Fenris would definitely blame him for not knowing) through drunken gossip after a few rounds of Wicked Grace. Sitting with sailors employed by the Durlac, watching without watching the magister's daughter and her beau, Jasper, sitting at a different table nearby.
"He's in over his head." Said one of them, a sailor with ruddy skin and a flat-crowned cap made of black wool he kept on despite the heat of a crowd gathered for music and dancing in another corner.
"Well o'course he is!" Replied the other—older than the first, with a bulbous nose and pockmarked cheeks, and a laugh that resonated deep within his chest. He plucked an unlit cigar from between his lips to add, "He's a dwarf. Everything's o'er his head."
"You know what I mean." Flat-Cap grumbled and shuffled a pack of dirty cards, "Gettin' hisself mixed up with one of them blood mages."
"Ain't gonna last."
"You sure?"
Tension thick enough that Zevran felt the need to cut in. "Do you mean Venatori?" He flashed a snake-charming grin that, admittedly, yielded better results with the right kind of crowd. Present company shot him a severe look, at best, but it could've been worse.
"No one said nothin' like that," said Flat-Cap. "Do all Antivans like to put their nose in where it don't belong? Or is that an elf thing?"
"You must excuse me, friend." In a suave performance, Zevran snagged the delicate wrist of their waitress and pressed a coin into her palm when she delivered another round as he continued, "But you are the one who brought it up. No?"
"Gandur's just drunk." The youngest one was clean-cut, blond, wearing a blue cotton ruffle shirt, soft leather trousers, and spectacles. His book rested open in front of him on the table now, addressing everyone like a priest at a pulpit—or perhaps a captain's first mate.
Zevran contained his amusement behind a steady smile.
"Aye" Gandur peeled his cap up to scratch a thin layer of sweaty hair, pulling it snug behind two cauliflower ears. "Don't mean none by it, right, Haus?"
Both men looked like they could effortlessly fold the younger one into a pretzel; rawhide men, toughened over years of harsh exposure, doing the dirty jobs they were built for. They didn't look nervous, but their body language and subtle changes in their tone suggested otherwise.
"Nah" Haus shook his head, rolling the cigar between rough-hewn fingers, addressing his perceived superior across the table. "We crack about his height all the time," he said, and to the bronzed elf foreigner: "This heat makes every pint feel like five."
Zevran continued looking nonchalant, trained to display a strict narrative for others to read (Manos firmes del cuervo.), but he went so far as to raise his eyebrows under the spotlight of all three men. "Indeed! I hope to join you shortly." Placating. Ignorant. He raised his glass to drink. "How about another game? Hm?"
After bringing Jasminit the message about her father willing to pay good money to retrieve her, warning about the danger it imposed upon Jasper, Zevran considered what he'd learned from the sailors. It twanged a small knot in the pit of his stomach, like a worried spouse carefully turning the ring on their finger, so he left for Calpurnia's Rest to aid his friends as needed.
. . .
Safiya landed with a cat's grace, crouching on a walkway overlooking the warehouse floor, listening for signs of vacancy, one hand rested on the windowsill. Exactly the kind of spot where she imagined a certain pit-stained mercator presiding over his own little empire—a molehill compared to some exhibits of power and wealth she's seen—before retiring to the rectangle of space he called his office up there, sectioned off by a long partition wall. She wandered closer with carefully placed steps, peering into the darkness, and heard nothing. The fire outside raged on, for now, but only Fenris could wager any real guess as to how much time they had. Certainly not enough for them to find a way for him to join her.
Yet he demanded her attention by way of a short, sharp hiss (PSST!) that forced her to emerge, so they could stare at each other disapprovingly before he initiated a heated conversation via pantomime.
Sharp arms from her: WHAT? Sharp arms from him: Well? Hurry up!
Just— Safiya held out a finger as she turned to look again for any rope or rope-equivalent (there wasn't any), mindful of precious time already lost. And all they'd done so far was set a ship on fire.
He'd be pissed at first, she thought, biting her lip. But later he would thank her.
. . .
Fenris watched her wagging finger disappear, assuming she'd finally found something—partly assuming, because there was also the possibility she'd leave him and go off on her own. [You can be by look out.] He pictured her smiling as he checked the far corners of the building, growing restless around the sound of her laughing. Posing a vague challenge every time she teased him, except both of them stubbornly refused to be the first one to talk about it, so maybe it was nothing.
Nothing weighed heavy on his chest as he stared at the empty window.
. . .
Inside the warehouse, Safiya thought she spotted a pale red glow through the dirty windows on her way to pick the lock on the office door. A light that was sealed in a closed crate, barely perceptible as she stepped into the room. Had it not been so dark, she might've missed it entirely. Scarlet diffused through solid wood that reminded her of holding her hand up to a candle as a child. She thought it was the same thing as looking through a chicken egg, hoping to see what was inside, and remembered how her mother laughed when little Safiya expressed her disappointment.
It was not a good memory.
There came a buzzing in her ears as she approached the crate, and it wasn't until she stopped to look for a pry bar that she noticed a fractal floater in her vision. Ugh.. The last thing she needed was a migraine.
. . .
Nothing made him swear under his breath around the choices that were left.
Fenris stepped back several paces, judging the height of the window and checking his surroundings as he went. Smoke from the fire had gone from a plume to a wide coiling snake, reminding him of their time constraint.
Jobs where climbing was required—a surprising amount, when he thought about it, now that Zevran was involved—had been left to Safiya. One time, he watched her get a running start and take two steps up a vertical wall, strong enough to hold herself in a pinch, with just her fingers and thumbs in order to climb. It didn't seem all that difficult... He drew a couple breaths and flexed his hands, sizing up the challenge in front of him.
Why didn't she just do that in the first place?
He bolted toward the wall.
. . .
The floater increased with her level of stress, until the sight in her right eye was a useless kaleidoscope of broken shapes and pulsing scarlet, obstructing her efforts to find a seam with the tip of her dagger.
"Damnit!" Safiya rubbed sweaty palms on her trousers, as if fixing her grip would somehow also improve her depth perception.
"If I were an enemy—" Fenris grabbed her shoulders, felt her jump, and moved her aside to assist with a pair of articulated gauntlets and two good eyes— "You'd be dead."
"Oh, bite me," she grumbled. "My head hurts..."
"Wait, how'd you get up here?"
"Just watch the door."
He wrenched the lid open in one swift motion to minimize the noise, releasing a vermillion miasma of potent magical energy.
"Oof, that's bright," she said.
A wave of nausea rocked Fenris on his heels.
"What is it?" She took the lid before he dropped it, squinting at the contents—reaching in before he had the chance to tell her not to. Safiya held up a rough cut shard and replaced the lid to block the intrinsic radiance of dozens more just like it. The way he recoiled from it drew concern, so she asked again, "What is this?"
"Red lyrium." He grimaced.
Neither of them understood why it didn't seem to affect her, at least not so much that she was pale and retching.
"Could this be what Zevran was talking about?"
He nodded.
"Let's go."
"I don't like this." He exited the room first, going back the way they came, and cleared his throat to fix the bilious pitch his tone had taken. "It feels too easy."
"Durlac is an idiot," replied Safiya, staying several paces behind to try and mitigate his symptoms while masking her own, talking to distract herself as her head throbbed bad enough her teeth began to hurt. "I didn't know lyrium came in different colors." She wasn't sure it was supposed to. Red just felt wrong.
And it only got worse.
Pain ignited in her hand as she fumbled for a pocket to store it on her belt. Invisible razor wire snared her wrist, pulling her arm back to keep her from walking away, making her gasp. Fenris spun before she could get his name out, with an expression that said he knew exactly what the problem was—separate from the sound of running footsteps below them.
"Trap!"
The word need no explanation, not for a survivor such as her. Not when she could feel the origin of connection threaded to the rock itself, feet sliding across the floor as she tried to keep her grip on it, channeling all her might to let go instead. Safiya opened her hand, stubborn fingers splayed, and stumbled to keep from falling when it actually worked. "Go!" she cried.
. . .
As soon as she was free and scrambling toward him, Fenris stepped off the sill, plunging roughly twice his height to the hardpacked earth below. He tumbled sideways to avoid any serious injuries and came up light. The great sword dislodged from his back when he rolled over it. Adrenaline surged, igniting a familiar pain rooted deep in his markings. Primed for a fight, though, it appeared quiet outside for the moment. Nobody came bursting round the darkened corners of the building. Not yet.
Fenris retrieved his weapon just as Safiya charged out the window, thrusting it in the ground so he could catch her.
It's fine, he thought. They didn't need physical proof. The knowledge that Durlac had red lyrium was enough. They could leave and tell Zevran right now. He didn't even need the money if it meant she would be with him.
Except she wouldn't be.