Chapter Text
When I first read about the newest Warden recruit, Duncan’s letter made her sound terrifying. She had taken down a dozen men single-handedly, he said, fought through a wound that should have stopped her in her tracks, and then marched another five miles before even telling him about it. All of this he only wrote to explain why his arrival would be delayed as he refused to push her too hard traveling, but the circumstances of that not being mentioned at all almost made it sound scarier. Daveth, of course, was a cutpurse—what in the world would this woman be, if she had a story like that?
So when I first met her, I didn’t even make the connection. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly at my best—the revered mother had seen to that by sending me to round up a mage for her, and then the mage had too by being just as insufferable about it as she had wanted him to be. I’m still not sure if that was meant to be more of an inconvenience for him or for me. Maybe two birds with one stone, as they say, annoying the unwanted bastard that had the audacity to leave the templars and making the mage know he’s being constantly watched all at the same time.
And all right, so I got a little snippier than I should have, but it was all in good fun. Unfortunately, most of the mages that had come to the front lines didn’t really seem to have brought a sense of humor with them. The girl did, though—that’s all I marked her for at first, so different from what I had expected by Duncan’s description. When I turned to her with a sarcastic observation, she shot a sarcastic reply right back, raising one eyebrow at me and smirking. And it was right around then that I realized I had no idea who in the world I was talking to.
When I asked her if she was a mage too, she gave a bark of laughter and asked if that would make my day worse, which of course right away told me she wasn’t, or there was no way she would have been trading jokes with an almost templar. Exactly how all the mages found out I nearly was one I’ve never figured out, but surely there must have been some secret bulletin with my face attached, they all learned to glare at me so quickly. The only other alternative, then, was the new recruit, strange as that sounded after the much more imposing version of her I had conjured in my head from Duncan’s letter.
“Nalissa,” she finally offered when I failed to remember her name. She definitely wasn’t what I had expected, considering Duncan’s caution to watch my tongue around her that had convinced me she would be a muscly ball of rage and the fact that the only other woman I’ve met in the Wardens is Stella, a grim middle-aged healer with roughly seven and a half remaining fingers. It was that last one, the general lack of reference for any women in the Wardens, that I picked to explain my confusion, and that one eyebrow only rose higher.
“Oh, you want more women in the Grey Wardens, do you?” Nalissa asked in a carefully light tone that made me suddenly wonder whether she might punch me if she didn’t like my answer. When I stammered sufficiently over a response though, she laughed and shook her head. “I was kidding. Mostly. Believe me, I’ve heard all the jokes about women and swords.”
And because that definitely sounded like it could go only two different ways, neither of which seemed a very safe direction, I immediately changed the subject to darkspawn. She looked interested as I described them, which was a bit of a relief, really. I still hadn’t forgotten the look on Jory’s face when I’d told him what they were like. At least she didn’t look like she might vomit.
So we set off back through the camp, trying to make small talk on the way. But I’m pretty bad at that, and since I had just told her about my upbringing in the Chantry to explain her question about the mage, I made the grand decision to ask about where she was from as I fumbled for a change of subject. There was a moment’s pause before she replied that she was from Highever, and of course I remained completely oblivious to the fact that she was telling me something I already knew and that might mean she didn’t want to talk about it.
“Duncan’s from Highever too, you know,” I offered. “Did you know him?”
“Not until he came recruiting,” she said slowly. “I didn’t really get to leave the castle much except for patrols, unless I sneaked my way out or we were traveling to Denerim or the bannorn.”
That threw me off a little. “The castle? Did you work for the teyrn?”
Nalissa tried to smile, and finally I saw the sadness in it. “No, I can’t say my father generally let me do a lot of work.”
“Your father? What do you…” I looked at her again, and this time I saw it. The pale skin, the long raven hair carefully brushed and tied back from her face even after who knew how long traveling to get here, the way she carried herself like she was already used to being looked to for orders—how had I missed that she was bred from nobility? “You’re Teyrn Cousland’s daughter,” I realized aloud. I had completely misinterpreted the reason I had been told to watch my tongue.
She broke eye contact and looked away, seeming to inspect the studs in the leather of her gauntlets. “Yes, well, that doesn’t matter much anymore, does it? I’ll be a Grey Warden now, nothing more.”
I sensed I should probably let it drop but as usual, curiosity got the better of me. “Did you not want to be a Warden?”
Somehow that just made her smile turn sadder, which she tried to cover up with a very forced laugh. “No, I did. I’m the youngest and the I’m the daughter, as you so aptly mentioned, so it sounded like a much better idea than being left at home to manage the castle while Father rode into a fight with my brother. I’ve been a better fighter than Fergus since I was twelve, not that that mattered to anyone. They still left me to wait with the servants, too far away to help if they needed an extra blade. Mother could have defended the city, but it was far more important I stay behind anyway to keep people in line and listen to her trying to convince me to marry Arl So-and-So’s son and give her more grandchildren.”
“But you miss it,” I said, probably unnecessarily.
Nalissa nodded slowly, and for a moment I thought that all the answer I would get until she murmured, “More than I knew I could miss anything.”
Great job, Alistair. Way to try and make the pretty girl cry.
She didn’t though, just flexed her shoulders as if to shift something off her back and went on, “I shouldn’t. I would have gone mad dealing with freeholders arguing over borders and water rights for their fields and every other petty concern they could come up with while there was a fight to be had and I couldn’t be in it. Wondering if anyone but the darkspawn were going to come home at all.”
“I wish the darkspawn would just give up and go home,” I said hopefully. “But if you’re a teyrn’s daughter, you should try ordering them to. ‘Get out of my country or else!’”
Nalissa shot me a half smile over one shoulder. “Somehow I feel like if that would have worked, someone would have tried it by now. Though I’m not sure if the king would do it even if he thought it would. He’s entirely too eager for some overly romanticized notion of battle. Do you think he realizes how many of his own men that could cost?”
Cailan wasn’t exactly my favorite subject, so I dithered a little around an answer. “Probably not, but he means well,” I finally said, and she just sighed.
“No, that much I know,” she said in return. “But Cailan of all people ought to have a better idea what fighting actually costs. I get the feeling his father only ever told him the good war stories, or maybe those are just the only ones he wants to remember. You have to balance out every siege of Denerim harbor with a battle of White River, my father would say.”
Eager for a subject change, I latched onto that and asked, “Your father fought at White River?”
“And my mother commanded the armada at Denerim,” Nalissa said with a nod, and for some reason, her jaw set at the declaration.
“The Sea Wolf!” I recognized, pulling the moniker from some half forgotten memory of a story or a book. “Didn’t she sink at least a dozen Orlesian ships in the war?”
“In the battle for Denerim alone,” Nalissa corrected with a sad sort of smile. “She was fifteen when she brought down her first one, much earlier in the war. The last time we went to Orlais, she ran into the son of one of their admirals at a party. He tried to challenge her to a duel and she eviscerated him—with words, that is, not a sword. She always preferred a mace anyway, but I don’t doubt she could have taken him down. A frightening woman when angry, my mother.”
“Remind me to not to make you angry then,” I joked, and then eyed the daggers on her back curiously. “No mace for you, though?”
“Maker, no. Heavy weapons make me feel too slow. I prefer to be adaptable.” She chuckled and added, “Mother hated it. Said as much as I liked to bandy about sharp words, I’d need a shield for when someone decided to hurl something besides insults back.”
“I take it you disagreed,” I said, again somewhat unnecessarily.
Nalissa raised an eyebrow at me, then spun suddenly on her heel. By the time I had turned too, she was standing with her left arm extended, and I followed her gaze to a throwing knife embedded hilt-deep in a post some twenty yards away, right in the center of a flyer announcing a prayer vigil before the battle.
“Andraste’s arse, what was that for?!” demanded the quartermaster, poking his head up from behind a table a few feet away that he had taken cover behind.
“Apologies, just proving a point,” she said with a toothy grin, retrieving her knife and stowing it away in a pouch at her belt before turning to give me a wink. “No one has time to hurl anything if I’m faster than they are.”
For some indecipherable reason, I could feel heat rising in my face as she looked at me. “N-no, I suppose not,” I managed to say as her smile turned smug. “I think I see why Duncan recruited you.”
Quite unexpectedly, that made her smile slip, and she brushed past me without looking back as she said quietly, “No, you really don’t.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but then we reached Duncan’s fire and I was too busy being embarrassed that my mentor had already found out about my conversation with the mage to try to figure it out.