amiablecrow

Chapter 1: Posted 2024-12-04 to Ao3

It was the contract of a lifetime, and I was furious.

Morning sunlight streamed in through the lattice windows of Viago’s office, illuminating the bookshelves and grotesque displays alike with dappled light, giving the effect of a ship adrift at sea. The captain of the ship—and of my life, in all honesty—was the man who had gained my loyalty, and who I had helped to install in the seat of Fifth Talon. Viago sat behind a fine mahogany desk, his elbows resting on the obsidian desk pad. He scowled at me from behind his threaded-together fingers.

It was late in our nocturnal daytime, and it had been a long night. I was exhausted, and I knew I wasn't imagining the signs in Viago as well. Still, duty doesn't keep to business hours. Whether I felt adrift was irrelevant.

“As usual, you are being unreasonable,” Viago said in a sharp teacher’s voice. “If you would think ahead, this wouldn't be an issue. As it is—”

“You think I need a minder?” I stopped my pacing and rounded on him. “As usual, I completed the job. I can complete the new one!”

Viago stood up at his desk, smacking his hands against the obsidian. 

“You sank an entire shipment of pearls! The Sixth Talon will not let our House survive this unscathed,” he said, looking at me directly. “Whether or not the contents can be recovered.”

“Fine. They will not let me survive this unscathed,” I said, parroting back the underlying meaning as I had been taught. I stood up straighter, clasping my hands behind my back like a real Crow, and attempted to lock my emotions behind a seething waterfall. “The contract is a trap."

“A promising start,” he said, looking pointedly at the contract on his desk. 

His tone was more patronizing than the words themselves. I wanted to grab one of the delicate glass instruments from Viago’s desk and dash it on the floor, but I was not a fledgling. More to the point, there were more contact poisons on Viago’s desk than I was willing to try my luck with, even wearing gloves. Instead, I stepped obediently up to where the contract was laid out, reading its words more closely.

“First,” I said, “This contract takes me to Minrathous, when House de Riva is already stretched thin.”

“Correct,” he said, scowling. “There are few resources I can provide you with directly once you leave our shores.”

“What would usually be available?” I asked.

“Contacts, primarily,” he said. “Informants. Weapons. Arcane items. For larger jobs, local currency. And I do mean more than could be smuggled on your person.”

Without that, I'd be operating at a disadvantage. “The second trap,” I continued, scanning the details, “Will be tied to the timing of the death. The target must be killed publicly, specifically during the parade on Summerday. It specifies a number of witnesses that must be present.”

“Which means…” 

“They know when I'll be there,” I said, starting to see the shape of it as my mouth twisted unhappily. “If the guards were to catch me after, or if I was killed by a mercenary of some kind—” I counted any Crow agent on an unofficial job in this category, “Then the Crows can still mark this contract complete.”

Viago closed his eyes and breathed carefully through his nose, although I doubted that my careful words were the immediate cause of his ire. It was a mark of trust, regardless.

“Say you operate without access to our Tevinter networks,” he began. “You pack, quickly. Everything you own of value, you bring with you. Board the first ship leaving once you get down to the docks. What happens?”

“I haven't operated outside the country before,” I said, looking at him. “I don't know what the exchange rates are, so I'm underequipped. I don't have informants, so I'm relying entirely on my own eyes and ears to find the target. I’m unfamiliar with the area, so I'll need to trust someone, but my judgement will become more suspect as the weeks wear on.”

Viago opened his eyes and met mine. “You’d carry out the job…”

“And I'd find the third trap in a convenient ally's open arms.”

“No student of mine is an idiot,” said Viago, like it was an unshakable fact. “Nero will learn that, but I see no reason to hasten his education. In the meantime—I appear to have overlooked an element of yours.”

I sighed dramatically, still somewhat frustrated to have not received the fight I was after. “Very well, Viago,” I said, placing the back of one hand dramatically over my brow. “I can't believe that I overlooked—in turn—that you always have my best interests at heart. Your superior wisdom supersedes all. I will, of course, accept your wizened ally as my temporary mentor and only friend on this contract!”

“He is also very serious,” Viago said with dry amusement. Very, very dry amusement. “Save your opera-worthy performance, you ridiculous magpie.”

The poison master pulled a key from his neck and unlocked a drawer under his desk, setting a combination as he went. I could hear the clicking. He pulled out two unadorned leather satchels, each the size of my closed fist. 

“Your contact will find you at L’Alba Blanca, in the Landfall district. He looks like what you'd expect of an Antivan aristocrat. Tell him ‘One can only serve as well as they were taught.’” Viago set the first satchel in front of me, its black leather adorned with burgundy thread. “This is his payment for getting you back to me in one piece.”

I noted the blood red of the embellishment. “Are you threatening him?”

Apparently not considering that worthy of a response, he set the second satchel next to it. This one was a nondescript brown with violet thread. “These are a gift for you. A mix of what I think might be helpful. You'll recognize them.”

As Viago locked the cabinet, I had a moment to imagine how embarrassing it would be to reach Minrathous and succumb to familiar poisons because I forgot the difference between belladonna and milk thistle. I shook the thought aside.

“Viago,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Don't make me regret it,” he said. “I won't allow the Sixth Talon to use you as some sort of blood sacrifice, but you owe me.” 

But he came around to the front of his desk and clapped me on the shoulder with his gloved hand. Tiredly, I realized I'd have to wash my shirt in a neutralizing solution rather than allow anything to touch it. Viago was usually hands-on in his lessons, so to speak.

Uncharacteristically, he hesitated.

“Viago?” I prompted.

“The man I'm sending you to is… dangerous. He's agreed to the job, and you can consider him an ally,” said Viago, impossibly sounding as though he was second guessing himself. “But I need more time to determine whether he’s a friend to the reforms Teia and I are introducing. Your report will be useful, but I want you to give him a wide berth as soon as your homecoming ship docks in Treviso.”

“‘One can only serve’,” I muse. “Then he is to be master of the house, and a master assassin with a pupil. It sounds like he'll be a harsh master, then?"

“Like many of us, he was taught by harsh masters. Hence my own threat in turn,” Viago said with a vicious little smirk as he held my eye. He turned serious quickly. “I must be honest with you: I have very little hold over him. But he will keep you alive.”

I broke the gaze first, thinking about my elven ears and what I knew of Tevinter. “I’ll be ready for the training of a Crow,” I said, resigned, “And I’ll expect it from a teacher who is used to being served.”

After one last sweep of the contract’s contents, I rolled up the parchment and tied it with one of the ribbons I kept in a pocket. 

 “I think I'd like to break some things now,” I said, aiming for flippant and pretending not to be proud of how steady my voice was, “If it's all the same to you, Viago.”

“Fortunately, we’re due a very loud, public argument. These ones have never been in contact with a poison,” he said, pointing to three sets of intricate glasswork on his desk, and then gave a mocking nod, almost like the sweep of a bow. “The works are flawed and likely to explode when heated. You'd be doing me a favour.”

I spent the next half turn screaming every secret insult that had come into my head over the last few hours. What he shouted back at me was nothing I hadn't heard before. I then smashed his little instruments into so much sand.

Dashing the glass against the wall, onto the floor, and underneath my own boots had exhausted the anger I had earlier attempted to quench. By the time I got to my flat, I wished I could summon some of that flame back. Or at least some coffee. Unfortunately, I had little time to collect myself, for all that I could have used at least a short nap.

Tearing through my single room flat, I dearly wished that I'd been able to ask Teia what I was walking into. I removed the contaminated shirt and tossed it away, thinking about how she would have briefed me on the specific threats I might face as an elf in Tevinter. Her descriptions tended toward the graphic, for better or for worse, but would always be less vaguely terrifying than Viago’s. And more accurate besides. Worrying at my lower lip, I ferreted my most treasured possessions out of their hiding places and threw them on my cot.

Teia couldn't tell me about my new mentor. If she could, she would describe the whole social dance in a way I'd understand: how he treated those above and below him, and who he brought to his bed. Except Teia was laying a false trail for me, pulling strings to make it look like I was leaving on a ship that day. Meanwhile, she and Viago had a contract here in Treviso, tonight. There was nothing more that the two Talons could do to help me.

Pulling back the sheet that covered my cot, I found a scribe’s backpack in place of my pillow. A set of clothing was laid out over the thin straw mattress: linen underclothes and a light wool tunic with a silk collar. A leather jerkin had been placed under the mattress. I spent too long fussing with unfamiliar buckles and belts, undressing and putting on clothing in an unfamiliar, bleached-out colour palette. As I pulled my leather crow wings on for the last time, I tucked as many of my weapons and personal treasures onto my person as I could carry. Finally, I packed the rest into the canvas knapsack I’d owned for years, along with my usual travelling clothes. Even my boots were new, though they were also worn enough that the leather was unlikely to pinch.

Slinging both packs low on my arm, I left my little home and picked the lock to a neighbour’s room across the hall. It had a window just barely large enough for a youth or small elf to fit through. The window had been left open for me.

I don't know why it was so hard to leave the stupid canvas knapsack on the shipping crate my neighbour was using as a table and leave it there. I left my old boots on the floor. Someone fitting my description would pick it up in a turn and leave Treviso by ship, completing the illusion. Losing most of the things I owned was better than dying, right?

Stupid. I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and centered myself on my training. I was a Crow. A few possessions would always be worth the price of completing a contract.

Notes:

Notes from the translator, Enchanter Alan Adams:

This work has been translated into Trade from the original Antivan. I've attempted to preserve the meaning wherever possible, but audiences should remember that what we call “Antivan” outside of the country is actually three distinct languages. Treviso, as a center of trade, has a tendency to combine them in ways that an outsider might find baffling. Oral and written traditions in the city are known to borrow words and expressions from multiple languages, including Orlesian, Tevene, and—of course—Trade.

While I believe this novel is important to the overall understanding of how Treviso views its god-killing heroes, it is also highly fictionalized. Romantic speculation aside, there is no real proof that the “Demon of Vyrantium” and the person who would later take the name of “Rook” ever met before the events of the Last Blight.

ARTICLES AND PRONOUNS: Where many other writings would use letter substitutions to avoid the use of gendered articles (une) or pronouns (elle, distinct from the binary el/ella), this work is notable for shifting the gendered language around the protagonist based on the scene. Much scholarly discourse exists around such an iconoclastic portrayal of a hero of Thedas, although said discourse is best absorbed in the original Antivan.

THE TALONS: As the First through Eighth Talons of the Antivan Crows have been known to refer to themselves in Trade as such (when their missives are made public), I have chosen to translate the titles for clarity.

SIXTH TALON: Rumour held that Bolivar Nero was the Sixth Talon near this point in time. As this couldn’t be confirmed by documents released after the Last Blight, most unofficial writings of the time used a fictional name when referring to the Sixth Talon. This work stands out for implicating the Nero family at all.