Reverse-Cowgirl Diplomacy

Elissa did not invite Zevran into her tent again until they were on their way back down the mountain with the the pouch of precious ashes tucked into her pack, and the nights they spent together thereafter grew more infrequent. Instead, she spent a great deal of time alone, thinking on what had passed in that mountaintop temple.

The question the Guardian had posed to her kept echoing through her mind.

In order to seduce the father of your child, you pretended to be someone you are not. You would have lived a lie to achieve your goal. Do you believe you would have been happy, married to him?

She had felt the eyes of her companions upon her, particularly Alistair, whose curiosity about the father of her babe remained undiminished. Despite his more active courtship efforts, she had yet to find a way to tell him about the scheme she and her parents had concocted to have Cailan annul his marriage to Anora and make Elissa his queen.

Sighing, she had met the Guardian's eyes. No, I do not believe I would have been happy. The goal of having him was one born of youthful vanity and ambition. I have always prided myself on my honesty, and the half-truths were bitter on my tongue when I told them. I assumed that with time I would be able bring him to accept me as I truly am, but it's very possible that I would only have brought myself to disgrace.

Elissa hadn't known until the moment she spoke those words to the Guardian how foolish her ambition for the throne had been. Her parents had considered the goal a worthy one in terms of the promotion of their family interests, but she had only been interested in her own glory. She had thought to spend her days in idle luxury and decadent sensuality, taking her pick of the handsomest and most eligible noblemen Ferelden had to offer.

She had not considered what her responsibilities as queen might have been. Had she attained her crown while she had been so childish and vain, she would certainly have glutted herself on pleasure and ignored her obligations entirely. Coupled with Cailan's lack of interest in statecraft, it would have been a disastrous match.

Now she understood, now when it was too late. Now she understood duty and responsibility, understood how to set her vanity and sensual urgings aside to attend to greater matters.

It was a bittersweet lesson, and as she contemplated who she had been and who she was becoming, her nights in Zevran's arms came to have the feeling of a farewell.

She was met by an overjoyed Teagan at Redcliffe as she crossed the bridge to the castle bearing the ashes, but she scarcely had a chance to greet him before Arl Eamon awoke and then it was back to politics, namely how to bring down Loghain. Elissa noted with derision that Eamon was much more interested in who sat upon the throne than in defeating the Blight; indeed, the Blight seemed only a convenient excuse to justify his political maneuvering.

She spent the night in Teagan's bed and that, too, felt like a farewell.

The following day, they departed Redcliffe Castle to head east into the Brecilian Forest in the hopes of finding the Dalish elves. In terms of distance, it should have been more efficient to travel first to Orzammar, but spring was not yet fully upon them and the danger of storms in the mountains was still very real. It would be fatally foolish to travel that deep into the Frostback Mountains until well after the spring thaws.

With financial resources once again becoming scarce, before heading into the Brecilian Forest they journeyed once more across the Bannorn, completing some jobs they had found on the Chantry board and with the Blackstone Irregulars—even a particular assignment from Master Ignacio charging them to deal with some Qunari mercenaries. It was as they were crossing Bann Loren's lands that fate chose to remind Elissa once more of Cailan.

She recognized Elric Maraigne immediately. He had been one of Cailan's trusted bodyguards. Indeed, he had been on watch outside Cailan's tent the night that Cailan had first bedded her, one of the guards instructed to allow her unrestricted access to the king, night or day. He had been a friend and confidant of the king, and so she had made a point to get to know him as well. Without a doubt, if any one survivor of the slaughter at Ostagar knew what had passed between Cailan and herself, it was this man.

Unfortunately, she arrived too late to save him. By the time her company had dispatched Bann Loren's soldiers, Maraigne was dying of his wounds.

"You," he gasped, blood flecking his lips, as he recognized her. "My Lady Cousland!"

"Shh, Ser Elric," she murmured soothingly, kneeling at his head. "Do not stir yourself. I am naught but a Grey Warden now. Wynne, is there aught you can do for him?"

"No, I'm afraid not," the mage said apologetically. "His wounds are too severe. The best we can do is make him comfortable."

"A Grey Warden...." Maraigne whispered. "Please, I must tell you...."

The tale he told and the request that followed made her blood run cold.

Go back to Ostagar.

Go back to the place where she'd lost her chance at being a carefree girl for just a while longer, where so much hope had been lost, where so many memories had been born in such a short span of time. Go back to where so many people had died in vain and left her and Alistair alone to battle the Blight.

Duncan. Daveth.

Cailan.

She didn't want to do it. Didn't want to return to that place and see the wreckage left behind. And yet....

Maric's sword. Cailan's armor. It was Alistair's birthright. It was her own child's birthright. How could she not attempt to retrieve them? How could she not attempt to find the remains of her king, the man she had intended to marry, the father of her child, and see them disposed of properly?

She'd never had the chance to do so with her parents. For all she knew, they still lay rotting in the larder of Highever Castle while Howe's swine desecrated the place.

She met Alistair's anxious eyes across Maraigne's dying body and nodded grimly.

"Of course we'll go."


*****

It was as hellish as she could have imagined, seeing those ruins again, covered with darkspawn refuse and an ice-crusted layer of the winter's last great snow. It seemed there was no part of Ostagar that had not embedded itself in her memory in those few short days she had been there.

The skeleton of Cailan's sumptuous pavilion wherein she had surrendered her maidenhood in a gamble for the crown.

The charred remnants of the huge fire by which Duncan had made his camp, the fire which had glowed brightly through the canvas of his tent as the desire which had been brewing between them since the moment she saw him at Highever finally met its fulfillment.

The shattered temple where she'd first met Alistair and found herself charmed by his wit, where she'd watched Daveth and Ser Jory die before she raised the chalice to her own lips.

The Tower of Ishal, where Cailan had deliberately sent his half-brother and the woman he'd hoped to marry to keep them out of the coming battle, knowing—even if he chose not to admit it—that he would likely fall.

Finding Cailan's papers proved an easy enough matter. The key was exactly where Maraigne had said it would be, and within the chest she had spied many times in Cailan's tent was the king's correspondence. Elissa glanced through them briefly and her breath caught in a startled gasp before she had an opportunity to contain the sound. Alistair looked at her curiously, but she shook her head. "It's nothing," she muttered. "These... these could prove useful later."

Recovering Cailan's armor was somewhat more difficult, but still straightforward enough. It was when they found his body that her stomach lurched and she quickly had to rush to the edge of the parapet to vomit into the canyon.

When the spasms had passed, she staggered over to the scaffolding upon which his desecrated corpse was hung and began ripping frantically at the twine binding him there. His skin was cold and stiff and dry from the winter's freezing winds. Scavenging birds had pecked at his face until all that was recognizable was his glorious golden hair.

"Help me, Alistair!" she snarled, drawing her dagger to hack away at the bindings when they proved so difficult her fingers began to tear and bleed. "We must build him a pyre!"

"We will," he said calmingly, her brow etched with consternation at her reaction. He caught her hand that held the dagger, stopping her efforts. "But first we have to get what we came for. I promise you, we won't leave him like this, but if we build a pyre now, it's going to draw every darkspawn in this place to us. You know that."

Meeting his eyes, Elissa drew a deep, shuddering breath and nodded. Alistair turned to Cailan's corpse and gravely repeated the promise, speaking words of respect she'd never heard him use before when referring to his half-brother.

When she returned, it was with Duncan's dagger in her hand. She sent most of the party ahead to find a safe location to make camp for the night while she and Alistair and Wynne worked. The others hadn't been there. They didn't understand what had been lost that night in Ostagar. They owed no loyalty to Cailan as their king.

With implacable persistence, she cut Cailan's corpse down from the obscene display while Alistair hauled large fallen beams and logs to build the pyre, and Wynne gathered smaller pieces of wood for the kindling. Once the pyre was built, Alistair lifted Cailan's nude body atop it and stepped back. Without looking to him to see if he wanted to do the honors, Elissa took up a torch and set it to the kindling.

She watched as the greedy flames began to crackle, devouring the smaller twigs and branches and licking at the larger pieces. Heat from the fire began to spread across her skin, so hot that she knew she ought to step back, but she could not move, could not blink as the first flames touched Cailan's ravaged, dessicated skin.

It was then she felt the flutter, the first quickening of her babe within her womb. She gasped and her hand flew to her belly, and after a moment the tiny sensation came again, so slight she might have thought it was merely a muscle twitch if she hadn't known....

The smoke burned her eyes, and tears began to pour down her cheeks. She sobbed, in sorrow and in joy both, as she watched the flames consume the father of her child.

She didn't know how much time had passed when she finally looked away from the fire, but the sky was beginning to darken. They would need to join the others in camp, and quickly. Wynne, she realized belatedly, had already left. She looked over to Alistair to tell him they should go, but she found his eyes riveted on her, or more specifically, to the hand that still rested over her abdomen. He stared for a long moment, and then he met her gaze.

His jaw hardened and he walked away quickly, leaving her behind.

She felt too weary and overwrought for a confrontation, and yet she followed him after a moment. She could see the glow of the campfire in the distance when she finally grabbed his arm and pulled him around to face her.

"Is it your intent to discuss this in the middle of camp, then?" she demanded. "Or would you rather not get it done with here?"

Alistair released a sigh so impatient and explosive it startled her. "Maker's breath, where to begin?" he asked disbelievingly. "You're carrying my brother's child!"

"Yes," she answered, much more sedately than she actually felt with her heart stuttering in her chest so.

"And it didn't occur to you that maybe I should know about this?"

"Of course it did!" Elissa snapped. "When do you think I should have told you? Back in Redcliffe, when you thought I was a degenerate whore? Or maybe after you confessed your relationship to Cailan? Tell me, what would you have assumed had I told you then?"

"Probably exactly what I'm assuming now, which is that you're far more interested in the throne than in me," Alistair sneered.

"Precisely. So, when would have been a good time to reveal this to you?"

"How about before you let me believe you had feelings for me?"

Elissa shook her head in denial. "No! I will not accept that charge. If you care to recall, I stopped making advances toward you before you told me King Maric was your father. Since then, the only one who has done any pursuing has been you."

"You weren't exactly running away," he observed.

"Of course I wasn't." Elissa's shoulders slumped with weariness. "I was attracted to you almost from the first, and after what happened in the Circle Tower, after what you did there for me...." to her disgust, tears filled her eyes once more and she dashed them away impatiently. "I never pretended with you, Alistair. Not ever."

"But you pretended with Cailan."

"Yes. I pretended. I may have been a virgin when I went to his bed, but I was far from innocent. I made him believe that I was reluctant, that he seduced me rather than the other way around."

"You said he was going to marry you."

"He was, or so he told me," she answered. "Anora was childless after over five years of marriage. There was concern for the continuation of the dynasty after Ferelden fought so hard to restore the Theirin line to the throne. He vowed to set her aside and marry me in the hopes that he might get an heir. It was a convenient solution to the political pressure that was mounting, both over the matter of an heir and also Anora's common blood."

"And that's the scheme Duncan knew all about?" he asked incredulously.

Elissa sighed. "Yes. Duncan wasn't going to take the chance of the Grey Wardens being exiled again. As far as he was concerned, the closer the ties between the Grey Wardens and the throne, the better our position would be to recruit support against the Blight."

"But if he knew Cailan was after an heir, why would he make you a Grey Warden?" Alistair asked. "I don't know if he told you this or not, but it's extremely rare for Grey Wardens to have children."

That brought Elissa up short. "No. He never told me any such thing," she said, stunned. "Oh, Maker! How quickly the game might have unraveled had I turned out to be barren!"

Indeed, the possibilities were chilling. "Ah, well, I suppose he assumed that problem would be dealt with at a later time. His immediate and pressing concern was the Blight. It wouldn't matter if I was set aside later, or if the Wardens fell out of favor down the road, so long as he had the aid he needed immediately," she sighed. "But Duncan erred, too. He was too conciliatory, too willing to placate Cailan. And now they're both dead and the schemes I had once carefully concocted no longer really matter."

"Why didn't you mention any of this when Arl Eamon started talking of putting me on the throne?"

"Because the moment I put my child up as a rival to your claim to the throne, I become Arl Eamon's enemy, and we aren't going to get far against Loghain or the Blight without him," she explained.

"Why would he—?"

"Because you are the key to his rise to power." When Alistair would have protested, she cut him off. "No, you must listen to me. He may be fond of you, but beyond all else he is one of Ferelden's highest noblemen. If he can, he'll put you on the throne and position himself as your closest advisor and try to rule Ferelden through you. Whether or not you choose to allow this is up to you. But I drank Fereldan politics in at my mother's breast, Alistair. I understand how this game is played. Believe me when I say Eamon wants power and he will use you to get it."

Alistair gave a frustrated yell, kicking a chunk of ice across the rocky landscape. "Agh! Blasted politics give me a headache! How do you people do this? How do you think this way? All this... scheming and maneuvering?"

Elissa shook her head ruefully. "Maker only knows. Sometimes I think we must all be mad to play the game, much less relish it the way we do. But you are now one of 'us people' however deplorable you may find the idea. You need to begin to understand these things, or they will destroy you.

"Eamon doesn't know me, doesn't know if he can control me," she continued as Alistair absorbed her words. "If he thought he could, I am sure he would back putting my child on the throne—since his claim is actually stronger than yours by right of blood—likely with Eamon himself as sole regent, or at least head of the regency council. My child is, after all, his grand-nephew. But since Eamon doesn't know whether or not I'll permit such a thing, instead I would be a rival to be subdued. At best, he'll stint in the aid he gives us. At worst, he'll seek to discredit me politically, or perhaps even do me or my child harm. I can't take that risk, not with the Blight spreading every day."

"So what does that mean?" Alistair asked. "That you don't intend to reveal to anyone who fathered your child?"

"I don't know," she answered simply. "If I were the girl I had been when I set out to position myself as Cailan's queen, I'd assert my child's claim and attempt to make myself regent. But I can't do that, because it will only prolong the civil war and lead to the deaths of more of the soldiers we need to fight the Blight. You said Duncan told you the Wardens do what they must. Well, so will I. Our first priority is stopping the Blight. In order to do that, we need Arl Eamon's support to end this civil war of Loghain's. If getting his support means denying my child his or her birthright, then that is what I must do. It won't matter who sits on Ferelden's throne if there is no country left to rule."

"Then you're no longer interested in a crown?" he asked wonderingly.

"I wouldn't say that," she answered with a cheeky smile. "I am, after all, a Cousland. A Fereldan noblewoman, born and bred. Striving for greater power and influence is what I do. But I'm not the fanciful child I once was. The allure of the throne is considerably less than it used to be, now that I see the cost of achieving it."

Alistair fell thoughtfully silent, turning away to continue his walk toward camp. His pace was slower, now, allowing her to fall into step beside him. Before they crossed the circle of tents, he stopped again.

"What did you mean when you said it was up to me whether or not I allow Arl Eamon to rule Ferelden through me?" he asked with a troubled frown.

"I meant exactly what I said. If we defeat Loghain, Alistair, there's a good chance you're going to be king. You may not want it, but it's still there. You need to decide if you intend to be more than merely Eamon's mouthpiece."

"I see." He bowed his head, looking down for a long moment. "Back in Denerim, you told me I needed to look out for myself more than I do. I suppose this is the sort of thing you meant?"

"This is precisely the sort of thing I meant," she said gravely.

He lifted his eyes to hers, straightening his shoulders. "I'm beginning to think you were right. All my life, my decisions have been made for me. Go to the monastery, become a templar... Maker's breath, I even had to be conscripted to become a Grey Warden. I need to stop letting everyone else make my decisions for me. I need to take a stand and think about myself for a change, or I'm never going to be happy."

"Oh, dear," she said, giving an tragic sigh of grief. "Well, there goes my diabolical scheme to make you my sexual slave and rule Ferelden in your stead."

"Hey, now!" he protested. "You never told me there was a downside!"

"Alas, too late now," she said mournfully. "Once you go down that road to self-determination, there's no going back."

"Well then," Alistair's voice dropped to low, devastatingly sexy murmur. "Maybe I'll just have to make you my slave instead."

The pang of longing was so intense it nearly doubled her over; not merely physical arousal, but of her love for him, her desire to be held by him after the emotional extremes of the day.

"Don't do that," she said, suddenly serious.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't say something like that unless you mean it."

"Who says I don't?" he insisted, drawing closer. So close, so damned close she couldn't breathe, so close all she needed to do was stretch upward a little bit and she'd feel his lips upon hers. "Maybe it's time we stop tiptoeing around this."

"No," she shook her head, feeling another wave of tears threatening. "Not tonight. I'm in love with you, Alistair. I want you more than I think I've ever wanted anything or anyone. But you need to decide whether or not you're absolutely certain I'm not more interested in your claim to the throne than I am in you. And you need to think about what's going to happen if you do wind up on the throne. An association with me—degenerate whore that I am—may not be in the interests of your rule."

Alistair's mouth opened and closed repeatedly as several protestations made their way to his lips only to be swallowed back down. Finally, he gave a grim nod. "You're right. As usual."

Taking her hand in his, he bent and bestowed a courtly kiss to her knuckles. He looked at her once, his eyes hungrily devouring her, and then he shook himself and walked away.

Elissa stood there, swaying with desire and a much more intense emotional yearning.

"So," Zevran's voice came out of the darkness behind her. "You and Alistair have nearly brought your foreplay to its conclusion, yes?"

Drawing a deep, calming breath, she raised her eyes to his. "Yes."

He nodded slowly, as though satisfied. "Ah, that is no doubt for the best," he said. He, too, drew near, laying his hand along the side of her face and bestowed upon her lips an almost chaste kiss. "Good luck, my sweet Warden."

She turned into his hand, kissing his palm. "Thank you, Zevran. For everything."

He nodded once more, and then he, too, walked away. After a long moment, she turned and began setting up her tent, where she retired alone.