By the end of a very long day, Sophia was quite tired, and more than a little disappointed.
She walked with Nostariel and Ashton through Hightown, the two women accompanying the guardsman back to the barracks before they parted. The day had seen Sophia setting out on her own at first, at the behest of a merchant named Hubert, a man she had performed a service for some years ago, an incident involving a mine, and quite memorably, a fairly large dragon. The day's efforts hadn't been quite so remarkable, even if Sophia had hoped they might.
Hubert had requested Sophia's aid in uncovering the culprit behind attacks on his caravans between the Bone Pit and Kirkwall itself, and looked to Sophia for aid, since she had freely offered her services before for the sake of his miners. The day became interesting when a leak was found within those miners, one of them coming forward and confessing that he was leaking information about the time and routes of shipments. After shielding the worker from Hubert's outrage, and his desire to leave his body in a ditch on the coast, Sophia learned the the miner thought he was giving information to the Coterie.
He also had the time and location for the next attack. Rather than foolishly go alone, Sophia went quickly to Ashton, the nearest available ally, as she had to hurry. Nostariel simply happened to be on hand as well, and the three of them hurried out to the site, to find the supplies already hit. The culprits were still there, however, and a fight was forced upon them. It ended in blood, the last of the enemies escaping instead of being caught, the ones who did fight unfortunately suffering fatal wounds. Regardless, they didn't appear to be Coterie. They were too careless, too slow, and none had any identifying marks. A splinter faction, possibly, or an upstart gang. Maker knew there were enough in Kirkwall already.
None of the three had been injured enough to warrant care, so they instead returned to Hightown. Once inside the Keep again, Sophia stopped, tapping Ashton on the elbow with her knuckles. "Thanks again for the help, Ash. Thought we might have caught a break. How's that little project of ours coming, with the Gallows?" She imagined securing the release of a man who tried to assassinate the Viscount was no simple task.
"Slowly, like that's a surprise," Ashton said, shaking his head. The current captain was an older guardsman, and much more cautious than his predecessor-- and for good reason, seeing how Aatrox's tenure was cut short by some anonymous blades. Ashton believed the man was only trying to survive with his throat intact until he could safely retire. "The captain doesn't want to upset the Coterie and paint a target on his back, which I can't exactly blame him for... And let's not forget the little wrinkle that he's also an attempted assassin. That tends to stall things." He laughed dryly before shaking his head. He was trying, but that's all he really could do.
Nostariel, who had been caught up on all the goings-on regarding Jamie Arren and Dairren Quinn, pursed her lips at Ashâs response. No fault of his, of course, but she could definitely sympathize with how much Sophia wanted to resolve the matter. She couldnât imagine how it felt, to have thought of a person as your parent for your whole life, to have loved and been loved by them, and then to discover that, not only might they not be your birth parent, but they may have done something truly cruel to the person who was. That was the part that would be difficult, she thought. Family wasnât just about blood, after all. Nostarielâs opinion was that it was love more than anything that made a family, but those connections of lineage did seem to have a weight of their own all the same. However probable Quinnâs claim was or wasnât, it was bound to be disconcerting until the facts were discovered.
Whatever was true, it was clearly bound up in the events of Sophiaâs party. She wondered what else it might influence in the future. âYou know who would know?â Recalling the party had given her an idea. âYour mother. You said she kept journals, didnât she? Surely theyâre around somewhere.â It was a bit of a long shot, maybe, but the chance for some independent evidence was one worth taking, maybe.
"They might be," Sophia said, admittedly caught a little off guard by the prospect of digging through her mother's things. Nor did she expect those journals to be among her mother's things, but her father's. He had guarded them closely, and that meant not leaving them to sit in a closet somewhere, keeping a silent vigil over darkness and holding memories inside. Not all that long ago Sophia would have been uncomfortable with the idea of exploring her father's territory, but now...
She had the best of friends with her, and her desire to get the right sort of answers, and closure, was able to overcome any misgivings she might have had about the idea. "We could look around for a bit. Care to join us, Ash?"
Ashton turned toward the direction of the barracks and shrugged. "Sure, anything to skip out on writing up a report." Out of everything he enjoyed about being a guard, the paperwork was most certainly not one of them. Anything he could find as an excuse to postpone doing it was well worth it. That, and a little bit of digging into their little Sophia's history enticed him, he had to admit.
She led the way up the familiar path to the private quarters for the Viscount and his family, though the steps felt unusual, a little like a dream. She hadn't once come back here since leaving for Lowtown. People were going to see this, inevitably, and speak of it. It hardly mattered to Sophia, though. Her course was fairly set, no matter how much she might want it to be different.
Her father's office was where they started. With no Viscount taking up the post after his death, the place had been left almost undisturbed. Even the servants seemed to have been allowed to lighten up in the work load, as a fine layer of dust covered most objects exposed to air in the room. Sophia took up searching the desk, feeling like she was standing inside of a ghost, picking up objects that she imagined her father leaving here for her just so before the Qunari dragged him out to take his head off.
"I've never heard either of you talk about your own parents much," she said, opening an unmarked book and skimming the first few pages. "Did you live with yours for long before being taken to the Circle, Nostariel?"
Nostariel examined the bookshelves in the office, running her fingers along the spines carefully. Most of them were not books in the conventional sense, more like collections of official documentation. She brought up a little dust with her fingertips and rubbed her thumb absently against it. âHonestly, I don't know.â She kept her eyes moving over the spines, but few of them bore much labelingâshe might have to take them down and flip through before she had any idea of what they were. âI donât remember anything before the Circle. I mean, they have to have been elves, of course, but I donât know where from. Apparently I was brought there quite youngâI slept with the staff before I discovered I had magic.â Her eyebrows furrowed slightly; taking down one of the books, she paged through it carefully.
âI guess they must have known, whomever they were. It makes me think they were probably mages themselves.â Sheâd made up a thousand stories about them over the years, of course, everything from forbidden lovers to apostates whoâd wanted a safe and comfortable life for their child that they could not provide to even sometimes proud Dalish, and she stolen from them. It could have been anything, from the mundane to the outlandish, and it wouldnât have made much difference, she supposed.
It wasnât even impossible that at least one of them had been in the Circle with her all along, or that she was the child of a Circle mage elsewhere. They were usually taken from their parents, if it happened that way. That honestly seemed most likely. There were a few other children in the Circle like that, but they usually at least knew who their parents were. Some were allowed to write letters, though the Templars red them first.
Sophia wondered what that might be like, to not know anything at all about her parents, other than what could be reasonably speculated. Maybe Nostariel was even better off for it, less compelled to follow the same paths. Difficult for a mage, obviously, but she'd undoubtedly had figures within the Circles to perform the task of raising her probably better than many children had from their own parents. Perhaps that was better than thinking she knew her parents, only to find out as an adult that she might have been deceived for her entire life.
"And what about you, Ashton? Parents back in Ferelden somewhere?" He definitely didn't talk about it a great deal, but he wasn't a Kirkwall native. Sophia shut the book she was flipping through, before trying a few of the drawers beneath the desk. One of these was locked tightly shut. Her pulse quickened a bit, as she thought she may have found something worthwhile.
"And you wouldn't happen to know how to pick a lock, would you?" It wasn't like it was breaking and entering or anything. This was still her home, after all, at least until the nobility decided they wanted to give it to someone else.
Ashton turned away from the bookshelf he was investigating and saw the lock Sophia was dealing with. "As a matter of fact, I would happen," He said, plucking the dagger he kept in his boot. He crossed the room to where Sophia was and noted the lock she was talking about. "Just don't tell the other guards, they tend to frown on stuff like that." Once upon a time, Ashton the guardsman was Ashton the smuggler, and all good smugglers knew how to pick a lock. Though it was perhaps best that the guard didn't know about that section of his life. He held the dagger like he would a quill and slipped the tip into the lock and began to feel around for the tumblers.
"Somewhere, though I couldn't tell you where. The illustrious Bann Atlas Riviera was my father, Lady Kendra my mother. Don't know what either of them looks like nor do I especially care. There was very private incident involving my mother walking in on my father, a couple of the housemaids, a manservant, and a small animal that led to a very public debacle. From what I understood, it tore the Bannorn apart, and left my parents destitute." Ashton laughed at this before he paused picking the lock and looking over to Nostariel, "Did I tell you about the small animal?" He said before returning to the lock, a silly grin plastered to his face.
âUhm⊠no. No, you did not.â Nostariel was quite sure she would prefer if he continued to omit this information.
"They didn't raise me, thank the Maker. I was given to my aunt on my father's side, Abigail. Auntie Abby, I used to call her. My grandparents disowned her when she married a commoner, a hunter by the name of Harlan Jerall. They... Couldn't have children of their own, so they raised me like one of theirs. Uncle Harlan was a hard man to please and stiff, but he taught me everything I know and tried his damnedest to make sure I didn't end up like my father. I'd like to think he did alright." There was a click then, and Ashton withdrew the dagger and slipped it back into the sheath in his boot. With his job done, he took a step back, but still lingered over Sophia's shoulder, curious as to what he'd just unlocked.
It was probably times like this that earned Ferelden people the moniker of doglords, said with the most negative connotation possible. Of course, they seemed to wear it with pride instead. They certainly did love their hounds. "I'd say he did quite fine, myself," she mused, taking hold of the desk drawer and pulling it slowly open.
Inside, she found a number of personal effects, and about half of them had belonged to her mother. Much of it wasn't all that important; a bracelet, a letter opener, an elaborately plumed black feather quill, three different ink jars, and no journals. It seemed like there was a spot for one, however. A blank space in the drawer where it didn't seem to make sense to just leave it empty. Maybe it was the shift in the dust that caught Sophia's eye. She set two fingers down upon the spot.
"There's... nothing here. There should be something here, shouldn't there?" A hint of frustration crept into her tone. That her friends should be at peace with their lineage, that they could be left to focus on other, more important matters, while she was stuck trying to unravel a mystery she'd never known existed until recently.
A soft, light blue ribbon caught Sophia's eye, and she slipped a finger through it, pulling from the drawer a necklace, a clear white pearl set in the center of a small silver floral pattern. She wrapped the ribbon around her hand several times, pulling it closer and holding it up to the light from the window. It gleamed at her, but offered no answers.
"I wish I could talk to her. Just once."
âI know how that feels.â That much, at least, they had in common. Nostariel had long ago accepted that she would never know from whence she had come, but that didnât stop her from wondering, occasionally. Who they had been. What they had been like. Maybe it was better not to know though. Working her way through the rest of the books produced nothing of interest, and she sighed, dusting off her hands and shaking her head to indicate her lack of success. âI donât suppose thereâs anywhere else you might like to look? Or shall we go see what outrageous stories Varric is telling today instead? At least they probably wonât be about us.â It might be a âdrinks at the Hanged Manâ sort of night, after the first part of their day, though Nostariel herself still didnât partake. She could at least be there for a friend, if Sophia were so inclined.
"I doubt that. Think he'd pass up the chance to tell a story while we're sitting right there? Man knows how to play his audience." Though he spoke, he still looked into the opened drawer. There was a spot for a journal, yet no journal. Just some ink and a quill. There was something off, though Ashton couldn't quite place his finger on it. "Here," Ashton said, gently nudging Sophia so he could get a better look, "Let me see."
Ashton gingerly fingered through the contents of the desk, examining the jars and running a finger through the dust, brushing up against the quill's plume. he hesitated for a moment, staring it before shaking his head. "No... You don't.." He murmured, plucking the quill up and examining it in the light. "You don't think...?" He turned it around, knocking off a sheath of dust and noted how the tip was flawless, as if it never been used before. Ashton closed his eyes and sighed deeply, "The sly bastard..." He said, shaking his head, "I don't think we were the first ones to get into this drawer," He said, holding the quill out for Sophia to see.
"This man's going to drive me into drinking again."
Sophia had to stare blankly at it for a moment before she understood that it was some kind of message left behind by Dairren, or an associate of his if not the man himself. So there was a journal to be found... but it was likely in the same place that he was. Which made it hardly helpful. She sighed tiredly, looking at the necklace cradled in her hands for a moment before she carefully slid it into a pocket.
"Hanged Man it is." She normally grew annoyed at the constant noise from the place, but tonight it would be lovely to just have something else to fill her head with.
She walked with Nostariel and Ashton through Hightown, the two women accompanying the guardsman back to the barracks before they parted. The day had seen Sophia setting out on her own at first, at the behest of a merchant named Hubert, a man she had performed a service for some years ago, an incident involving a mine, and quite memorably, a fairly large dragon. The day's efforts hadn't been quite so remarkable, even if Sophia had hoped they might.
Hubert had requested Sophia's aid in uncovering the culprit behind attacks on his caravans between the Bone Pit and Kirkwall itself, and looked to Sophia for aid, since she had freely offered her services before for the sake of his miners. The day became interesting when a leak was found within those miners, one of them coming forward and confessing that he was leaking information about the time and routes of shipments. After shielding the worker from Hubert's outrage, and his desire to leave his body in a ditch on the coast, Sophia learned the the miner thought he was giving information to the Coterie.
He also had the time and location for the next attack. Rather than foolishly go alone, Sophia went quickly to Ashton, the nearest available ally, as she had to hurry. Nostariel simply happened to be on hand as well, and the three of them hurried out to the site, to find the supplies already hit. The culprits were still there, however, and a fight was forced upon them. It ended in blood, the last of the enemies escaping instead of being caught, the ones who did fight unfortunately suffering fatal wounds. Regardless, they didn't appear to be Coterie. They were too careless, too slow, and none had any identifying marks. A splinter faction, possibly, or an upstart gang. Maker knew there were enough in Kirkwall already.
None of the three had been injured enough to warrant care, so they instead returned to Hightown. Once inside the Keep again, Sophia stopped, tapping Ashton on the elbow with her knuckles. "Thanks again for the help, Ash. Thought we might have caught a break. How's that little project of ours coming, with the Gallows?" She imagined securing the release of a man who tried to assassinate the Viscount was no simple task.
"Slowly, like that's a surprise," Ashton said, shaking his head. The current captain was an older guardsman, and much more cautious than his predecessor-- and for good reason, seeing how Aatrox's tenure was cut short by some anonymous blades. Ashton believed the man was only trying to survive with his throat intact until he could safely retire. "The captain doesn't want to upset the Coterie and paint a target on his back, which I can't exactly blame him for... And let's not forget the little wrinkle that he's also an attempted assassin. That tends to stall things." He laughed dryly before shaking his head. He was trying, but that's all he really could do.
Nostariel, who had been caught up on all the goings-on regarding Jamie Arren and Dairren Quinn, pursed her lips at Ashâs response. No fault of his, of course, but she could definitely sympathize with how much Sophia wanted to resolve the matter. She couldnât imagine how it felt, to have thought of a person as your parent for your whole life, to have loved and been loved by them, and then to discover that, not only might they not be your birth parent, but they may have done something truly cruel to the person who was. That was the part that would be difficult, she thought. Family wasnât just about blood, after all. Nostarielâs opinion was that it was love more than anything that made a family, but those connections of lineage did seem to have a weight of their own all the same. However probable Quinnâs claim was or wasnât, it was bound to be disconcerting until the facts were discovered.
Whatever was true, it was clearly bound up in the events of Sophiaâs party. She wondered what else it might influence in the future. âYou know who would know?â Recalling the party had given her an idea. âYour mother. You said she kept journals, didnât she? Surely theyâre around somewhere.â It was a bit of a long shot, maybe, but the chance for some independent evidence was one worth taking, maybe.
"They might be," Sophia said, admittedly caught a little off guard by the prospect of digging through her mother's things. Nor did she expect those journals to be among her mother's things, but her father's. He had guarded them closely, and that meant not leaving them to sit in a closet somewhere, keeping a silent vigil over darkness and holding memories inside. Not all that long ago Sophia would have been uncomfortable with the idea of exploring her father's territory, but now...
She had the best of friends with her, and her desire to get the right sort of answers, and closure, was able to overcome any misgivings she might have had about the idea. "We could look around for a bit. Care to join us, Ash?"
Ashton turned toward the direction of the barracks and shrugged. "Sure, anything to skip out on writing up a report." Out of everything he enjoyed about being a guard, the paperwork was most certainly not one of them. Anything he could find as an excuse to postpone doing it was well worth it. That, and a little bit of digging into their little Sophia's history enticed him, he had to admit.
She led the way up the familiar path to the private quarters for the Viscount and his family, though the steps felt unusual, a little like a dream. She hadn't once come back here since leaving for Lowtown. People were going to see this, inevitably, and speak of it. It hardly mattered to Sophia, though. Her course was fairly set, no matter how much she might want it to be different.
Her father's office was where they started. With no Viscount taking up the post after his death, the place had been left almost undisturbed. Even the servants seemed to have been allowed to lighten up in the work load, as a fine layer of dust covered most objects exposed to air in the room. Sophia took up searching the desk, feeling like she was standing inside of a ghost, picking up objects that she imagined her father leaving here for her just so before the Qunari dragged him out to take his head off.
"I've never heard either of you talk about your own parents much," she said, opening an unmarked book and skimming the first few pages. "Did you live with yours for long before being taken to the Circle, Nostariel?"
Nostariel examined the bookshelves in the office, running her fingers along the spines carefully. Most of them were not books in the conventional sense, more like collections of official documentation. She brought up a little dust with her fingertips and rubbed her thumb absently against it. âHonestly, I don't know.â She kept her eyes moving over the spines, but few of them bore much labelingâshe might have to take them down and flip through before she had any idea of what they were. âI donât remember anything before the Circle. I mean, they have to have been elves, of course, but I donât know where from. Apparently I was brought there quite youngâI slept with the staff before I discovered I had magic.â Her eyebrows furrowed slightly; taking down one of the books, she paged through it carefully.
âI guess they must have known, whomever they were. It makes me think they were probably mages themselves.â Sheâd made up a thousand stories about them over the years, of course, everything from forbidden lovers to apostates whoâd wanted a safe and comfortable life for their child that they could not provide to even sometimes proud Dalish, and she stolen from them. It could have been anything, from the mundane to the outlandish, and it wouldnât have made much difference, she supposed.
It wasnât even impossible that at least one of them had been in the Circle with her all along, or that she was the child of a Circle mage elsewhere. They were usually taken from their parents, if it happened that way. That honestly seemed most likely. There were a few other children in the Circle like that, but they usually at least knew who their parents were. Some were allowed to write letters, though the Templars red them first.
Sophia wondered what that might be like, to not know anything at all about her parents, other than what could be reasonably speculated. Maybe Nostariel was even better off for it, less compelled to follow the same paths. Difficult for a mage, obviously, but she'd undoubtedly had figures within the Circles to perform the task of raising her probably better than many children had from their own parents. Perhaps that was better than thinking she knew her parents, only to find out as an adult that she might have been deceived for her entire life.
"And what about you, Ashton? Parents back in Ferelden somewhere?" He definitely didn't talk about it a great deal, but he wasn't a Kirkwall native. Sophia shut the book she was flipping through, before trying a few of the drawers beneath the desk. One of these was locked tightly shut. Her pulse quickened a bit, as she thought she may have found something worthwhile.
"And you wouldn't happen to know how to pick a lock, would you?" It wasn't like it was breaking and entering or anything. This was still her home, after all, at least until the nobility decided they wanted to give it to someone else.
Ashton turned away from the bookshelf he was investigating and saw the lock Sophia was dealing with. "As a matter of fact, I would happen," He said, plucking the dagger he kept in his boot. He crossed the room to where Sophia was and noted the lock she was talking about. "Just don't tell the other guards, they tend to frown on stuff like that." Once upon a time, Ashton the guardsman was Ashton the smuggler, and all good smugglers knew how to pick a lock. Though it was perhaps best that the guard didn't know about that section of his life. He held the dagger like he would a quill and slipped the tip into the lock and began to feel around for the tumblers.
"Somewhere, though I couldn't tell you where. The illustrious Bann Atlas Riviera was my father, Lady Kendra my mother. Don't know what either of them looks like nor do I especially care. There was very private incident involving my mother walking in on my father, a couple of the housemaids, a manservant, and a small animal that led to a very public debacle. From what I understood, it tore the Bannorn apart, and left my parents destitute." Ashton laughed at this before he paused picking the lock and looking over to Nostariel, "Did I tell you about the small animal?" He said before returning to the lock, a silly grin plastered to his face.
âUhm⊠no. No, you did not.â Nostariel was quite sure she would prefer if he continued to omit this information.
"They didn't raise me, thank the Maker. I was given to my aunt on my father's side, Abigail. Auntie Abby, I used to call her. My grandparents disowned her when she married a commoner, a hunter by the name of Harlan Jerall. They... Couldn't have children of their own, so they raised me like one of theirs. Uncle Harlan was a hard man to please and stiff, but he taught me everything I know and tried his damnedest to make sure I didn't end up like my father. I'd like to think he did alright." There was a click then, and Ashton withdrew the dagger and slipped it back into the sheath in his boot. With his job done, he took a step back, but still lingered over Sophia's shoulder, curious as to what he'd just unlocked.
It was probably times like this that earned Ferelden people the moniker of doglords, said with the most negative connotation possible. Of course, they seemed to wear it with pride instead. They certainly did love their hounds. "I'd say he did quite fine, myself," she mused, taking hold of the desk drawer and pulling it slowly open.
Inside, she found a number of personal effects, and about half of them had belonged to her mother. Much of it wasn't all that important; a bracelet, a letter opener, an elaborately plumed black feather quill, three different ink jars, and no journals. It seemed like there was a spot for one, however. A blank space in the drawer where it didn't seem to make sense to just leave it empty. Maybe it was the shift in the dust that caught Sophia's eye. She set two fingers down upon the spot.
"There's... nothing here. There should be something here, shouldn't there?" A hint of frustration crept into her tone. That her friends should be at peace with their lineage, that they could be left to focus on other, more important matters, while she was stuck trying to unravel a mystery she'd never known existed until recently.
A soft, light blue ribbon caught Sophia's eye, and she slipped a finger through it, pulling from the drawer a necklace, a clear white pearl set in the center of a small silver floral pattern. She wrapped the ribbon around her hand several times, pulling it closer and holding it up to the light from the window. It gleamed at her, but offered no answers.
"I wish I could talk to her. Just once."
âI know how that feels.â That much, at least, they had in common. Nostariel had long ago accepted that she would never know from whence she had come, but that didnât stop her from wondering, occasionally. Who they had been. What they had been like. Maybe it was better not to know though. Working her way through the rest of the books produced nothing of interest, and she sighed, dusting off her hands and shaking her head to indicate her lack of success. âI donât suppose thereâs anywhere else you might like to look? Or shall we go see what outrageous stories Varric is telling today instead? At least they probably wonât be about us.â It might be a âdrinks at the Hanged Manâ sort of night, after the first part of their day, though Nostariel herself still didnât partake. She could at least be there for a friend, if Sophia were so inclined.
"I doubt that. Think he'd pass up the chance to tell a story while we're sitting right there? Man knows how to play his audience." Though he spoke, he still looked into the opened drawer. There was a spot for a journal, yet no journal. Just some ink and a quill. There was something off, though Ashton couldn't quite place his finger on it. "Here," Ashton said, gently nudging Sophia so he could get a better look, "Let me see."
Ashton gingerly fingered through the contents of the desk, examining the jars and running a finger through the dust, brushing up against the quill's plume. he hesitated for a moment, staring it before shaking his head. "No... You don't.." He murmured, plucking the quill up and examining it in the light. "You don't think...?" He turned it around, knocking off a sheath of dust and noted how the tip was flawless, as if it never been used before. Ashton closed his eyes and sighed deeply, "The sly bastard..." He said, shaking his head, "I don't think we were the first ones to get into this drawer," He said, holding the quill out for Sophia to see.
"This man's going to drive me into drinking again."
Sophia had to stare blankly at it for a moment before she understood that it was some kind of message left behind by Dairren, or an associate of his if not the man himself. So there was a journal to be found... but it was likely in the same place that he was. Which made it hardly helpful. She sighed tiredly, looking at the necklace cradled in her hands for a moment before she carefully slid it into a pocket.
"Hanged Man it is." She normally grew annoyed at the constant noise from the place, but tonight it would be lovely to just have something else to fill her head with.