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Hawke had gone up to the Chantry, and she'd come back down with a prince. "Watch him until I come back," she'd said to Isabela and Fenris and Merrill, who had been well into the Hanged Man's finest that evening, and were feeling generous, as a whole. Merrill had been the most generous of them all, and had begun the night treating him as a particularly nervous mabari that Hawke had saddled them with.
This did not last long.
"You're a bit superfluous, don't you think?" Merrill said.
When she was drunk, she enunciated: every syllable polished until it gleamed. Superfluous. A little roll on the r. Delightful. Sebastian, who'd attached himself to Hawke--for reasons of blood debt and spreading the Chant to those who need it most, or so Isabela was given to understand--looked like he'd been slapped.
But, well. It was his first time in the Hanged Man. It was loud, it was smelly, there was a man urinating in the corner, and Isabela had stripped the varnish off of wood with things gentler than what had gone down his delicate, princely throat tonight. Merrill was not always a kind drunk, without Hawke and Varric to distract her, but they and Aveline and Anders were out slaughtering hordes of bandits, and would join them later. It was, all told, not the ideal introduction to their merry band.
Fenris was more interested in the tankard of ale currently pickling his gut and pouting over their last game of Wicked Grace than in their new, royal addition. Merrill stared Sebastian with polite interest. Circumstances were truly dire, if Isabela, of all people, had to play peacekeeper. "Kitten," she said, draping herself over Merrill and pressing a sloppy kiss to the side her neck, "if you say 'superfluous' for me again, I'll buy your drinks for the rest of the night."
Merrill only patted her cheek, but Isabela kissed her again, and felt her minute shiver. Under the table, Merrill's small hand found Isabela's thigh, and squeezed. And stayed there. Well. That answered one question Isabela hadn't yet asked about the course of her evening. "You're already buying my drinks. Or Varric is. I'm never sure."
"I'm superfluous?" Sebastian said, looking very pointedly away from the two of them.
"Oh, you say it again, too," Isabela said. "Delicious."
"I suppose your armor is very fancy, but we already have Varric to shoot things, and he's nearly as good as any of my clan," said Merrill, "and Hawke has that lovely set of armor, with the pauldron. The shiny pauldron. Fenris, it's called a pauldron, isn't it? The shoulder thing."
"Yes," Fenris said, and sounded only minimally disgusted by her existence. It was so nice, when they played well together. It gave a girl ideas. She took another sip of whatever Norah had set in front of her, and she was tremendously drunk, if she no longer felt it burn down her throat. She was tremendously drunk, if she thought Fenris would ever consent to be both naked and within arm's reach of Merrill. Still, having dreams--profoundly raunchy and specific dreams--was what kept Isabela young. Fresh. Able to keep up with the sweet young thing that had fallen into her bed, and who now rested her head on Isabela's shoulder.
"I thought so," Merrill said. "Are you good at shooting things, Sebastian?"
"I've been told I'm a creditable marksman," Sebastian said, drawing himself up to his full height, which was considerable. If he hadn't been sitting on a very low stool, and Merrill on a very high bench, he would have towered over her--not that Merrill responded to looming in any meaningful way. "None of the Revered Mothers I've served have had any complaints."
Isabela was sure there were other reasons for this. His money. His great, magnificent beak of a nose. His piercing blue eyes. As if she knew what was going through Isabela's mind, Merrill's hand slid upward, underneath Isabela's tunic. The ridged scars on her palms, her tiny, smooth, uncallused fingers, stroking circles into Isabela's skin--far more interesting than a virginal choir boy. Choir Boy. For once, she'd come up with a nickname before Varric. Excellent.
"But you're not a templar," Merrill said.
There it was, the crux of the issue. Now Fenris was paying attention.
"Ah, no," Sebastian said, and cleared his throat. "My temperament, when I was a boy, it was not deemed suitable for their ranks." He lowered his voice. "Merrill, I am loath to ask, and I don't mean to give offense, but are you an apostate? Are your friends aware? Your walking stick is very elaborate, but you haven't got a limp. I feel it's my duty to--"
"It would be such a shame if you left the city and never got the chance to buy Hawke a round," Isabela said, before he could go any further. She pulled out a dagger from the thigh sheath opposite Merrill's determined hand, and cleaned under her nails, which were short, and did not require any cleaning at all. "If you simply disappeared before she got back."
It was a buffoonish threat, and no one with an ounce of sense should have taken it seriously. Certainly, Fenris looked entertained, before he remembered to put on an appropriately menacing expression. But Sebastian, whose coin purse she could have stolen twelve times tonight, who had come through Lowtown with miraculously unscuffed boots, did not possess enough savvy to fill an elf's thimble, and shifted uncomfortably on his little barrel.
"I've seen her boil all the blood in a man's body from a hundred paces. It would be unwise," Fenris said, "to think of crossing her."
"Oh, Creators, you make me sound like the Dread Wolf himself," Merrill said. "It was twenty paces, and it was hardly all his blood, just enough to keep him off your back, you know. But you're very kind to exaggerate."
"And you're an abomination waiting to happen," Fenris said, without any heat in his voice at all.
"I'm sure you'll cut me down," she said, just as serenely.
Sebastian looked more stunned by this exchange than he did at the bar fight that had broken out behind them, or the two prostitutes hanging on the Ferelden sailor's arm (who would fleece the man for all he was worth and leave him naked in Darktown), or the old bloodstains on the floor next to their table. "You're a blood mage," he said.
He looked at Isabela, still picking her nails. He looked at Fenris, and Fenris's very large sword. He looked at Merrill, who did not seem capable of harming a gnat. Isabela watched him do the math in his head, and come up with whatever he needed to tell himself. Most likely: a gentle young mage-girl, raised wild among the Dalish, with no Circle to teach her to do right, led astray by the whisperings of demons in the Fade, fallen into the company of vile mercenaries like Hawke. "Well," he said, "I suppose magic exists to serve man."
The tips of Merrill's ears turned red. Her fingers, which had gotten up so close to the apex of Isabela's thighs, stopped their advance. "Oh," she said. "And never to rule over him. Is that how it goes?"
Fenris, who'd lost all his coin to Isabela hours ago, said, "Next round is on me," and got up from the table.
"You've heard the Chant!" Sebastian said, and sounded sincerely excited. Chuffed. A few jobs down in Darktown, and Isabela would break him of that. "It reaches the least likely of ears. 'Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children.' Do you know the next lines?"
Sober Merrill would have borne the preaching with great equanamity, and she would have deflected, as she did when Anders was unpleasant to her. Drunk Merrill smiled. She took hold of Isabela's leg under the table, right above her thigh, fingers digging hard into the leather of her boots, as if for support. Isabela knew better. Merrill did not need to be held up; she only needed an anchor, to keep her on the ground.
"I'm a nice blood mage, you see," she said. "Never a templar at my doorstep. I've only killed twenty people all this week, but they were slavers, and I was with Hawke, which everyone knows means it doesn't count--"
"My sweet, sweet thing," Isabela said, taking hold of Merrill's chin and turning her away from Sebastian. She kissed Merrill between her eyes, down the line of the vallaslin on her little nose, until some of the tension went out of her. Sebastian gawked openly, now, and did not say a word. "Perhaps we should go sleep it off, before I have to challenge the nice prince to a duel for your honor."
"Oh," Merrill said, rubbing at her nose. She went a touch cross-eyed, trying to focus on Isabela's face. "You'd do that? That's so very dear of you. But we're not really going up to your rooms to sleep, are we? It's a mite early, I think."
"No, kitten," Isabela said, running a thumb over her cheek. "We're not. If you'll excuse us, serah."
"By all means," Sebastian said.
If Merrill was pliant when Isabela led her around the two men on the floor, still thrashing at one another, it was only because she wanted to be. Her pale cheeks were flushed; her eyes were big and limpid, and utterly deceptive, to anyone who didn't know what Isabela knew. She had her arms around Isabela's waist and was plucking at Isabela's corset strings before they were halfway down the hall to Isabela's bed.
The moment the door was closed, Merrill's hands went to Isabela's hips, guiding her gently against it. Merrill stood on her toes to kiss her, gently, one hand slipping between Isabela's legs. Isabela started at the touch, like a shy virgin, and Merrill stopped immediately. She was always so tentative, so careful, at the beginning of the night.
"Did I do this?" Merrill said, pulling her hand out and examining it, rubbing her fingers together, furrowing her brow. "I suppose I did. I should take responsibility for it." She touched the tip of her tongue to her index finger. "Later."
Her hands pushed into Isabela's hair, knocking the bandana off her head and onto the floor. She felt--nice. Lovely. Slender and delicate. Merrill's tongue traced Isabela's upper lip, and she pulled her away from the door. Isabela let herself be steered, in a way that she did not simply let anyone do anything to her. She took Merrill's cold hands--they were always cold, there was not enough blood in her body to warm them--and twined their fingers together, and Merrill made a peculiar sound and broke the kiss.
"What is it?" Isabela said, nuzzling at Merrill's cheek, kissing a path over her vallaslin to her ears. She'd bedded down with sailors and whores, soldiers and ladies; she should have been stronger than being undone by a bit of fondling under the table, by a few minutes' chaste kissing. And yet, here she was. Merrill was blushing terribly.
"I think I'm going to sit down now," Merrill said, disentangling their fingers. She rubbed her palms together. Self-conscious, she was self-conscious about her scars. "And you're going to take off your clothes. Would that be all right?"
Isabela knew an order when she heard one. Merrill sat down on the low, hard cot that passed for a bed in the Hanged Man, crossing her legs and resting her chin on her hands, and Isabela undid her corset in a few short pulls at its laces. It fell to the floor. Off with her tunic. Merrill's regard was as absolute and unblinking as it always was, drinking in every moment, and it made Isabela's stomach twist with arousal. She left her boots for last. She left her jewelry on.
"Now do mine," Merrill said, standing up. Isabela knew where all the catches were in her light, battered, fiendishly well-fitted chainmail, and she had her out of it in a trice. "Good," she murmured, reaching out to trace the bruises that mottled Isabela's side. She was always so happy, so purely, unalloyedly glad, to have sex. "Good. Oh, Mythal, you're beautiful. Look at you. I must be the luckiest girl in Thedas."
"That may very well be so, kitten," Isabela said, leaning down to let Merrill put her arms on her shoulders and kiss her way across Isabela's collarbones. She could count every one of Merrill's ribs. Her magic--that mirror--ate away at her, no matter how often Isabela and Varric put food in her larder. The scars up and down her arms were mostly fresh, and Isabela took her hands again, kissed the insides of her wrists. Merrill's entire body flinched, but Isabela kept at it, working her way up to the crook of her arm and back down again, until she relaxed. There's nothing to be ashamed of, Isabela wanted to say, feeling Merrill's still-icy hand stroke the back of her neck. You're not a monster. You're doing what you think is right. You're so brave. None of these things came out. "I think I might be even luckier."
"This may be the part where you're on your knees, lethallan," Merrill said.
"Why, I thought you'd never ask," Isabela said. "My wish is your command."
"I know," Merrill said, smiling brightly. "Creators, don't I know it."