Chapter Text
“Ah, the Blooming Rose,” Anders said dryly.
"Ah, indeed," Marian said, distractedly, looking around at the raucous interior of the whorehouse, eyes skipping over the prostitutes without a pause.
"Is she going to tell me what's going on?" Anders asked Isabela, who was also looking at the prostitutes, but less professionally.
"There's an Antivian nobleman holed up here for the night," Isabela said. "He's got a little book of figures that Athenril wants back."
"So, we're to steal from a smuggler in a whorehouse. Delightful. And you needed me here..." Anders prompted.
"In case anything goes bad--the others were busy," Isabela supplied. "Hawke's gonna fast talk him, I'm going to take the little bookie, Fenris had some business and is on his way, and you're here because Hawke gets itchy without a mage to cover her back."
"Habit from having Bethany around," she added, and both of them were quiet for a moment, remembering the last time they saw Hawke's little sister, Blighted and forsworn.
The laughter was broken by a set of loud guffaws that made Anders jump and Isabela tense. Even Hawke, whose head was bent together with Madam Lusine, looked about for a moment.
"Don't look now," Isabela said tightly. "Five Templars. No, don't look. In the corner with the red curtains."
Anders heard some shuffling from behind him, and Isabela's eyes widened a bit, and shook her head slightly. "Don't look around," she muttered, low enough just for him, and Anders' body went cold.
A hand slapped heavily onto his right shoulder, heavy and gauntleted, making him grunt. Anders didn't turn his head, but Hawke ahead of him turned around, cutting off Madame Lusine. She locked eyes with Anders, and nodded imperceptibly. He forced himself to relax, and turned to look at the Templar.
It would have been better if the Templar was old, ugly or hideously scarred, but he was none of those things. Instead, he was youngish, brown haired and nice looking enough. But his brown eyes were narrowed in suspicion, and Anders winced--in his robes, modified and tattered as they were, he probably looked like the illustration in the Templar handbook under ESCAPED APOSTATE.
Justice, if you flicker right now, we die. Got that? He thought to himself, willing the swell of panic in his gut that heralded 'blue and glowing' down.
"Can I help you, Ser?" he asked sweetly. "I'm not a prostitute, by the way. Sorry. I'm sure someone else here would love to show you a good time, though."
The Templar scowled, but then set his face. "Please state your name and occupation."
Anders feigned dumb. "Me? Is something wrong?"
"You fit the description of an apostate that the Chantry has interest in," the Templar said woodenly.
"An apostate? Me?" Anders voice went a little shaky at the end, and he could almost hear Isabela wince.
The Templar looked him up and down deliberately, and Anders flushed.
"I'm just a humble...a lowly..." Anders reached, while bracing himself to cast up a burst of lightning. Hawke was going to be pissed.
"He's a dancer," Isabela said. When both Anders and the Templar looked at her incredulously, she smiled, hanging off his arm. "We both are."
"If he's a dancer, I'm the king of Ferelden," said another voice, as another Templar sidled up to the first. Anders felt Isabela's hand on his shoulder clench, and he laughed, a little desperate.
"You look nothing like him," he told the second Templar, who scowled and stepped forward."I should know," he added, "I've danced for him!"
"You danced for the king of Ferelden," the Templar asked flatly.
"Yes," Anders said. No.
The second Templar was broader and meaner looking than the first, with a scarred face and a cruel tilt to his mouth. It twisted as he shoved Anders towards the small stage set in the wall.
"Let's see it then," he said.
"Now, I don't think--" Isabela started.
"Everything all right here?" Hawke said, her voice causing everyone in the small group to look at her.
"And who's this? Your juggler?" Mean Templar said.
Hawke's eyes went flat, and Isabela said quickly, "She's our manager, asking the Madame if we can dance here a few nights. Isn't that right?"
"Right," Hawke said immediately, her lyrium-blue eyes burning into Mean Templars' face.
"And the Madame said…" Isabela prompted.
"Yes," Hawke said nonchalantly.
"So we'll go get ready!" Isabela said, one arm around Anders' waist, when a commotion at the stairwell drew everyone's eyes. An Antivan gentleman stood there, and Anders saw with a sinking heart the considering look on Hawke's face.
"So." Hawke said softly. "Anders, go get ready. Isabela, go find a musician or something. There's an old friend of mine I need to talk to," she said over her shoulder, and was gone.
Isabela gave his hip a squeeze. "Go find some appropriate clothing," she muttered, and went to go chat up a baffled looking Madame Lusine.
Anders looked after her helplessly, and was unprepared for the sharp prod he got in the back from Mean Templar.
"If you don't give us a show, perhaps you'd feel like dancing for the Knight-Commander?" the ugly bastard said menacingly.
"Corban," the other Templar--Anders' brain shied at the thought of calling him “The Nice Templar”--said warningly, and Anders sneered at them both and stalked off to the back.
"Anders," Julietta said with surprise, as he stomped into the clothing room. Scraps of costumes lay over tables, and a line of dripping garments hung on a line, probably because it was raining cats and mabaris outside.
"There are Templars outside, and they think I'm a dancer," he said sourly, stripping off his coat. "I'll swan out there in something danceworthy and hope that--” my companions are done stealing from one of your customers and can rescue me before I make a fool of myself.
"Hope for what?" Julietta said suspiciously, but Anders rolled his eyes and unhooked his pauldrons.
The brothel's laundress pursed her lips. She knew what Anders was--many of the prostitutes did, but the relief of being cured from sometimes several venereal diseases inspired great loyalty. Julietta he had helped with a difficult pregnancy, and she was not a prostitute--though when Anders asked, stupidly, why a brothel needed their own laundress, she had just given him a look.
"I have some of men's things here, nice and clean," she said, rummaging around and finding a pair of glistening, billowing, deep red trousers, of some kind of silky material. Anders took them, and after Julietta pointedly looked away, stripped and put them on, sans his ragged smallclothes, as he could tell they would show under the silk.
"Bare feet," Juliette said tonelessly. "Hair down," she added and she finally looked back.
"Maker, you're skinny," she commented.
"Good skinny, like svelte, or bad skinny, like gaunt?" he asked, and she turned up her nose and refused to answer.
"Rub this on," she said, handing him a bottle of thick liquid, and he did, as she vanished into a back room. It left his skin shimmering with a faint hint of gold. He peered at his face in the cracked mirror, and shrugged. Nothing special. But at least he'd shaved that morning.
Juliette came back in the room, and dumped and armful of things on the worktable with a thunk. "Sit," she commanded, and ran a comb through his hair once he did. Then she brought out a kohl pencil, and he groaned.
"Gotta look the part, if you want to do this" was all she said, and lined his eyes thickly, pinching some kohl and rubbing it on his lashes as well.
Then she lifted a heavy handful of shimmering gold, and Anders' jaw dropped. "The Rose is doing well," he said in awe, and she scraped the hair back from his neck and clipped the heavy collar-like necklace on. It reminded him of Isabela's.
"This is as fake as they come," she said dryly. "Take it off after a few hours or it'll turn your skin green."
The necklace was heavy, and extended far down his chest and up his throat, and rippled with his breaths.
"Earring?" she asked, and thankfully the hole hadn't closed up. She put a dark jewel in his ear.
"Bracelets too, and a belly chain..."
When she was done, Anders stood, and shivered a little. The thick bronze bracelets weighed his hands down, but he did some experimental stretches anyway. Juliette watched for a moment, then laughed.
"You know what you're doing, it looks like," she commented.
"Always," he said breezily.
Never, grumbled a Justice-like thought.
Shut up, Anders thought to himself a mite hysterically, and stepped back into the cacophony outside.