Reverse-Cowgirl Diplomacy

As luck had it, the same gambit which had kept her out of the king's presence during the years it had taken her to blossom into womanhood had also kept her out of the company of most of the nobility except on a very infrequent basis. As a result, she'd never had the opportunity to attend any functions hosted by Arl Urien, whom gossip had it was desperately seeking a bride for his wild son, Bann Vaughn.

Which meant that Elissa was unfamiliar with the Arl of Denerim's estate. However, her lack of familiarity with the estate didn't seem to matter as they made their way through the corridors. It was almost as though she could feel Howe's venomous presence drawing her toward him like a lodestone. She carried what seemed to be a large sack of laundry, but within were her bow and daggers, and also the Cousland family sword. Ostensibly they were here to rescue Anora, but she would not leave without fulfilling her oath to her father.

Before this day was over, either Rendon Howe would be dead, or she would.

Shale, Sten, Oghren and Wynne had been left behind at Arl Eamon's estate, for there had simply been no way to disguise the first three, and there hadn't been enough disguises for Wynne to come along as well.

The rest of her companions wore Howe's livery. Unfortunately there had been no possible way Elissa could disguise herself in such a manner, and so instead she was dressed in peasant garb.

Zevran pawed at her, keeping up the illusion that their off-duty company of Howe's hired guards was looking for a secluded spot to sport with a pregnant laundry maid. Morrigan and Leliana kept their faceguards down to maintain the illusion. Alistair gritted his teeth and kept his silence, and Elissa feared that his attitude would raise questions with anyone who decided to pay attention. Under her breath she snapped at him to play along, and he responded by grabbing her backside crudely and pushing her along ahead of him.

"Better," she muttered, rubbing her bruised buttock.

He rarely said anything to her since that night he had come to her inn room and then left her so cruelly. Eamon seemed only too satisfied with their falling out, which only made it harder to bear. Still, Elissa forced herself to think upon the political equation with cold detachment, and it made Eamon's plotting easier to bear, for on most matters she actually agreed with him. And so she nodded and pretended it wasn't destroying her to talk about marrying Alistair off to another woman.

They nearly made it to the dungeons before their deception was discovered. Once they were done dispatching the guardsman who had seen through their disguises, Elissa dropped her laundry sack and stripped off her rough peasant's gown. She wore her Dalish leather beneath and extracted from the sack the improved chainmail girdle she'd had Master Wade fashion for her once she had reached Denerim. Zevran and Leliana helped her belt it beneath her bosom and belly, and to secure the buckles that secured it across her back.

While the others stripped off the Howe armor, Elissa sheathed her daggers at her shoulders and slung the unfamiliar weight of the longsword over her back. Her bow she carried on her shoulder, and by the time she was armed, Alistair and the others were ready. She let out a piercing whistle and her mabari, who had been mingling with the other hounds in the kennels, came at a bound.

They set out in search of Howe.

Something about the knowledge that it was now Howe they sought, rather than Anora, wrought a change in Alistair. Of all their party, he understood best her need to avenge herself on Rendon Howe. He'd vowed to be by her side when she took that vengeance, and clearly he wasn't going to let their quarrel stand in the way of fulfilling that promise.

The knowledge that he was still sincere in holding to that oath sent a surge of love so exquisitely painful through her that Elissa thought she might weep. With the Landsmeet looming so near, she desperately wished she could call back what she said that day in the meadow, if only to claim for herself a few more days of happiness with Alistair before duty and necessity took him away from her.

She couldn't think about that now. Not with Howe so close.

Of all the things she might have expected to find in Howe's dungeon, a fellow Grey Warden was not on the list.

Nor, for that matter, was her brother.

She located him after she freed Bann Sighard's son. She didn't recognize him at first, a bloody, huddled, naked mass of a man in a filthy cell. She approached the curled-up form, certain from the odor that the man must already be dead, but then he turned his swollen face toward her and her scream echoed through the dungeon.

Beneath the bedraggled beard and bruises, it was unmistakably Fergus.

"Oh, sweet Andraste! Fergus!" she gasped, weeping as she clutched him to her.

"Elissa!" he sobbed, his arms weakly attempting to encircle her. "Dear Maker, I thought you were dead!"

She gave an hysterical laugh, wiping away her tears. "I could say the same!" she cried, her voice catching. "Can you walk? We need to get you out of here."

"Precisely how do you plan to do that with Howe's guards still all around the estate?" Morrigan asked calmly.

"Maker's ass, that's a good point. We can't very well go traipsing out of here with an abused prisoner without raising eyebrows, and we still have to deal with Howe and his mages and get the queen out." Elissa sighed. "We can't leave him here. Who knows if we'll be able to make it back to retrieve him? We have to get him on his feet, take him with us. Do what you can for him, Morrigan."

"Very well." The witch knelt beside Fergus. "‘Twill not be much. I've learned a great deal observing Wynne, but my talents do not lie with healing."

"Understood," Elissa said grimly.

The worst of Fergus's wounds began to knit as Morrigan channelled healing energy into his body. His broken bones straightened, and the bruises and swelling began to diminish. Soon he was on his feet again, weak and unsteady, but mobile and able to hold a sword.

Morrigan appeared drained by the time she had finished, but they had little time to wait for her to recover her energy. Elissa retrieved a lyrium potion from her pack and Morrigan uncorked it and drank it. After a moment, some of Morrigan's color returned and she gave a brusque nod that they should proceed.

"Here," Elissa said, passing the Cousland sword to Fergus. He stared at it in wonder. "I retrieved it from the treasury before I fled Highever. I swore an oath to Mother and Father that Howe would die upon it."

"I'll be more than happy to help you keep that oath," Fergus said, grabbing a shield from the corpse of a dead guard. "Howe told me you had died the night Highever fell; I didn't know until just now that he had lied. Is it too much to hope that Oriana and Oren made it out as well?"

"I'm sorry, Fergus," Elissa said, blinking away tears. "Howe's men got to them first. Mother and Father made it as far as the servant's exit in the larder, but Father was wounded and despite my protests, Mother remained behind to delay pursuit and cover my retreat. How did you come to be here? I thought you were lost at Ostagar!"

A guardsman spotted them and let out a cry of alarm, but he was quickly and permanently silenced, and when it was done, Fergus responded, "I was injured, and spent some months among the Chasind recovering. But they were forced to migrate north ahead of the Darkspawn invasion, and as they traveled, I began hearing more rumors about what had happened at Highever. When I was well enough, I left the Chasind and returned to Highever to investigate, and Howe's men took me there."

"And now I have the other Cousland brat here in my dungeon as well," a self-satisfied voice sneered from behind them, and they whirled to see Howe come around a corner. Two mages flanked him, and behind them were two more guards. "The little spitfire. I'd accuse you of still playing the man, but well," he gave an unpleasant laugh, gesturing at her belly, "clearly you found time to act like a woman at some point. But then, I know better than anyone that a Cousland's best skill is spreading her legs. With your whore of a mother, how could there be any doubt?"

"Oh, come, Howe," Elissa said, affecting a bored tone. "Your petty jealousies are showing. Just because Mother wanted nothing to do with you...."

"You think you father was the only nobleman who frequented the brothel where he found that bitch?" Howe snarled. "That he took her out of there and raised her up to be Teyrna of Highever should have made the Couslands a laughingstock. But instead, he pimped her out so skillfully that he and his mongrel brood prospered beyond all belief, while I sank in obscurity. But now look at where we are. The Couslands are known across the realm as traitors, Orlesian-sympathizing conspirators. And now I have everything I ever dreamed. Even both of Bryce Cousland's whoring children for my stable."

"As I understand it, you couldn't get much use from a whore even if you had your hands on one," Elissa scoffed.

"Ask your brother how true that is," Howe retorted. "Mages, slut, are capable of wondrous feats. Especially those not restricted by the mandates of the Circle. I've had your brave, strong brother on his hands and knees, bleeding and sobbing for mercy, just like my men had his bitch of a wife before she died. Just like I'll have you."

"You think you can remind me of the way your men brutalized Oriana and just walk away unscathed?" Elissa asked incredulously. "Tell me, was she raped with a sword because your pathetic thugs can't stand to attention any better than you can without a mage's help?"

Fergus gasped in horror, and Elissa glanced over to see him grip the Cousland sword in rage. More for his benefit than Howe's, she continued recklessly, "I swore to my father that the last thing you'd feel was the Cousland sword raping you, but I think I'll let my brother have the honor of fulfilling that vow."

"Oh, is this where I'm supposed to mourn the monster I've created?" Howe jeered. "Or shall I show you how it's done? Shall I tell you about your mother's last moments? How she groveled at my feet, how I slit her throat while she sucked my prick? The last thing your father ever saw was my spunk on her bloody face."

"Oh, Howe," Elissa sighed with a bitter smile. "Your wit truly is as limp as your cock, if you think that would convince me. Whatever her origins, my mother never groveled a day in her life and it would take a far better man that you to change that. And I'm no monster. Merely a woman of my word. You will die here, today."

"And there it is," Howe said softly, almost lovingly. "That look with which every Cousland has ever denied me the glory and respect that is my due. Bryce would be proud. But it only fuels my hunger to see you broken and at my mercy before you die."

Howe charged them with a scream of rage and his guards quickly joined the fray. It was easy to forget, wizened and corrupt as he was, that Howe was a veteran of the Orlesian occupation and a skilled fighter. But he was old, and her company much more skilled than his cheaply-trained guards. Elissa's arrow took one of the mages in the chest and he went down with a scream. Morrigan froze the other while Zevran spun a whirling dance of death in the midst of the guards and Leliana's bowstring twanged.

The second mage shattered when Alistair's shield slammed against him. One of the guards fell with blood fountaining from his throat, coating her mabari. Leliana's arrow blossomed from the throat of the other guard, and then there was only Howe, falling back before Fergus and Alistair's combined rage, until they had him on his knees beside one of the blood-streaked tables where his torturers had worked.

"Bend him over the table," she instructed Zevran and Alistair. Zevran looked maliciously gleeful and Alistair grim and determined.

"Are you sure this is the way you want to take your revenge?" he asked, pinning Howe by the shoulders to the table.

"What are you saying?" she asked, her voice cold and distant. She heard Howe's yells and struggles as though as though across a great chasm, rather than a mere foot away.

"You told him you're no monster. Don't become one for his sake."

"She doesn't need to," Fergus stated hollowly, "because I already have."

Howe's scream was inhuman as Fergus thrust the Cousland sword into him. Elissa had thought he would die quickly, but instead he shrieked and thrashed and retched. Nauseated, Elissa shuddered and drew her dagger quickly across his throat mid-wail. Howe gurgled a final time and then he was still.

The stunned silence that followed was punctuated by Fergus's soft sobs. Elissa drew him into her arms and held him as she would a child, sinking to her knees with him, rocking him with his head upon her breast as she murmured comforting words of love and assurance.

"This is all very touching," Morrigan said impatiently, "but we must move on."

"It would behoove you someday to develop something resembling a feeling," Elissa snapped at her, but Fergus cut her off.

"No, pup, she's right," he said, wiping his eyes. "We need to get out of here."

This time it was he who aided Elissa to her feet, and as she rose, his hands touched her belly. "You'll need to tell me how all this came about," he said with the first twinkle of humor she'd seen in his eyes since they'd discovered him. Somewhere beneath the pain and bitterness, her gregarious brother still lingered. "You look like you could whelp any day, pup!"

"I've a few weeks more," Elissa answered dryly, "though only a few. I shall tell you all about it when we get back to Arl Eamon's estate. And once you're well again and the Landsmeet has been dealt with, we'll turn our attention to clearing Howe's scum out of the our estate here in Denerim and go home."

She would never know what drew her eyes to Alistair at that moment, but when her gaze locked with his, he looked stricken. He didn't need to speak to tell her that her home could be with him in the palace if only she dared to fight for it.

Fergus saw the silent exchange and looked questioningly at Elissa for a moment before extending his hand to Alistair. "Fergus Cousland," he introduced himself. "And you are—?"

"Alistair," he replied. "A Grey Warden, like your sister."

"A Grey Warden?" Fergus asked wonderingly. "Really, pup?"

"A very great deal has happened, Fergus," she said softly. "But this is Alistair Theirin, King Maric's illegitimate son. We're going to topple 'Regent' Loghain."

"Thank the Maker," Fergus muttered. "Howe bragged enough to give me the distinct impression that Loghain was behind his assault on Highever."

Elissa nodded. "I had assumed as much. All that talk about the Couslands being Orlesian conspirators was straight out of Loghain's paranoid delusions. Father was the only nobleman in Ferelden equal to Loghain's rank and thus a threat to his schemes. Howe didn't care about the politics, he just needed the excuse and someone more powerful than he to shield him from the repercussions."

"So if you don't mind my asking," Alistair inquired as they began to make their way out of the dungeons, setting free the remaining prisoners as they went, "what exactly were your parents doing on those trips to Orlais?"

Fergus and Elissa shared a glance, and Elissa's lips twitched into a smile. "Being the connoisseurs of pleasure that they were, Father and Mother had an extensive collection of exotic objets d'amour crafted by some of the finest artisans in Orlais. It was one of their few extravagances. They occasionally traveled to commission new pieces from Orlesian goldsmiths and jewelers, as well as to serve as diplomatic envoys on behalf of the king."

Alistair blushed. "I might have known," he murmured, shaking his head.

Since she had deliberately kept away from the royal court, Elissa had never come to be very familiar with the queen. She had expected her first glimpse of Anora in years to be fraught with hostility and antagonism. This was, after all, the woman whose husband and crown Elissa had plotted to steal. But unless her father had told her his suspicions about Elissa, Anora was unaware of all that, and so she was merely grateful for their efforts to rescue her. At least, Elissa assumed there lurked gratitude under that cold, condescending exterior.

"You’re the Warden everyone is talking about?" she asked in some astonishment, taking in Elissa’s belly.

"Yes, Your Majesty." Elissa, unable to curtsy, gave her a deferential bow. After all, it wouldn’t do to antagonize someone upon whose goodwill they might end up relying.

Something bitter crossed Anora’s face as she beheld Elissa’s obvious good health. “I simply must have a word with my midwives about this,” she muttered.

Anora had disguised herself in armor to pass Howe's guards unmolested, but no sooner had they retrieved her and begun to make their way out of the estate then they found themselves confronted by a large company of troops in armor bearing Loghain's device. When Elissa attempted to explain they were rescuing the queen, Anora and her maidservant were nowhere to be found. She cursed Eamon for a fool for believing this had not been a trap from the very beginning.

The knight who lead the company was a woman Elissa recognized from Ostagar, Ser Cauthrien. Elissa attempted to reason with her, but there was no hope. There were simply too many of them; well-armed and well-trained, unlike Howe's hired goons. Fergus was still injured and needed Wynne's care. They could accomplish nothing by fighting other than to die now.

Bleakly, Elissa and Alistair surrendered.