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"Before we go, I gotta ask you something," Malika said, in the courtyard of Duke Bastien's estate. Bull and Cass were already at the gates, chomping at the bit to go, but if they were going to follow her around and make sure she and her mark didn't get eaten by demons, they were going to wait for her.
"Yes, my dear?"
Madame de Fer traveled light. There was only one horsecart full of her luggage coming back with them to Haven: Nothing I won't miss in the mountains, I assure you, Herald. Malika had been sitting on a silk-upholstered footstool in her dressing room while she said it, which had seemed unnecessary—the silk, and Malika herself being there while Madame supervised the packing—but she'd seen enough velvet and ermine going into the trunks to make her fingers itch. As it was, she'd only pocketed a little bit of the silver, just on principle.
"That guy you killed, whoever he was"—Orlesians were universally a bunch of rude fuckers, it was something in the water here, they all blurred together after a while—"were you going to kill him anyway?"
"Of course I was," Madame said. "Regrettably, one must make an entrance."
Right, and you didn't spare a thought for the carpet you were walking over. She would just have to take care not to become the carpet. "You know what," Malika said, "I think I like you."
"Don't," Madame de Fer said, and stepped into her waiting carriage.
*
That all went about as well as could be expected. One crossbow bolt later, Malika got sick of being caged up in her private quarters, picked the lock—did Vivienne think a lock was going to keep her in? A lock was foreplay—and went off to track down Bull. Nobody was stupid enough to stop her, or speak, or do anything but get out of her way. That was good. She needed to stretch her legs, get some sunshine.
In a place like Halamshiral, Bull was guaranteed to have set up shop in the frilliest place imaginable. That narrowed it down to five courtyards out of twenty-seven or so, and she found him sitting at a white wrought-iron table, sipping chocolate from the tiniest little cup she'd ever seen.
"I like the sling, Boss," Bull said. "Heroic. Where's Her Perfection?"
Bull got even more of a thrill out of calling Vivienne 'Her Perfection' and 'Most Holy' than he ever had out of calling her 'ma'am,' but that didn't matter. "Off doing her staff exercises," Malika said, just to throw him a bone.
"In private? All by herself?"
"She's a religious figure, Bull. Don't be disgusting."
"You two, huh," he said.
She'd walked about as far as she could, and she dropped into the chair across from him. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah."
*
So the wise and powerful Madame de Fer had a problem with Malika picking the mages over the templars. That was all right. Even if Montsimmard was as nice as Madame said it was, which Malika sincerely doubted, they'd both seen templars at their worst. Cullen wasn't too bad, but Cullen was housebroken, and coming off the junk, besides. Malika could spot the twitches and the tempers from a mile away, and she was counting the seconds until he and Leliana got into an actual fistfight. Good. Let them get it out of their systems.
After the second week of Vivienne sniping at everyone over the presence of rebel mages, Malika paid her a little call.
"I can't imagine why you'd want my approval," Madame said. Her hat was very restrained today, and her heels were low. "I've already seen your regard for my opinions."
"Forget your opinions," Malika replied. "Fuck your opinions, actually. We're going down to the mages." And then, before Madame Vivienne could protest both the language and the sentiment behind it, Malika set off at a brisk walk. A Josie trick. Vivienne could follow, or she could feel stupid, and if there was anything people like her—rich, clever, vicious—had a low tolerance for, it was feeling stupid.
There wasn't any space to lock them up, Malika had explained to Grand Enchanter Fiona. There weren't enough templars to watch over them, either, so they were going to have to watch over themselves while the ambassador smoothed things over with the Queen of Ferelden. They'd arranged themselves and their tents in a rough semicircle around a perpetual fire.
A tiny elven girl, almost spherical in her layers of winter coat, toddled up to to Vivienne and seized a fistful of her brocaded robes. She'd lost her hat somewhere, and her mop of springy black curls stuck out at all angles.
"Would you look at that," Malika said.
"Oh, how charming. You've arranged a display," Vivienne said flatly. But she leaned down to pick the little girl and balance her on her hip. "I can't stand children," she told the girl, who babbled solemnly back. "Maker, is that a dog?"
A mabari came to sit at her feet. "Yup," said Malika.
Vivienne set the girl down. "This is ridiculous, and I won't be party to it. Whatever you're trying to accomplish—"
The mabari set its slobbering head on the girl's shoulder and looked balefully up at Vivienne.
"Her mother's dead." Malika shoved her hands in her pockets and looked around at the mages, who were keeping a respectful distance. "Obviously. See, here's what I don't get about Orzammar. They're not making much in the way of babies down there, but Ancestors forbid somebody's father cleaned shitters for a living, better throw that baby down in the sewers to die, or whatever."
With a disgusted sigh, Vivienne picked the kid back up. "Your point, my dear."
"My point is that you can keep sniping about me recruiting the mages and leave, or you fall in line, deal with it, and stay on," said Malika. "So I didn't get you the templars you wanted on my shopping trip—so what? We can always get people to hit things with swords."
"Fall in line," said Vivienne.
"Did I stutter?"
"No one has told me to fall in line since I was"—the kid knocked Vivienne's hat off her head and into the snow, and giggled at it—"since before I was relevant. And especially not by the errand girl."
"You're damn right: I'm the errand girl," Malika said. "And when you can shoot green light out of your ass and close a rift, you can whine all you want."
*
"It's not legal, right," Krem said, "right. You're…"
Malika clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Divine Victoria's most trusted bodyguard. Just quit while you're ahead, kid."
*
"Of course they want to be in the presence of strength," Vivienne was saying, directly over Fiona's head, "when they've had so much weak leadership in the past."
Here was the way the cookie crumbled: some of the young hotheads had gotten it into their heads that if they could just pick up some of Vivienne's knight-enchanter skills, they'd have a fighting chance against whatever else the world was going to throw their way. Vivienne had agreed to teach them, for lack of anything else to do.
Unsurprisingly, the kids got rowdy. Grand Enchanter Fiona took exception. Sure. It wasn't hard, with Vivienne.
Cullen stared blankly at the wall. Leliana hid her smile with her report, because she absolutely got off on these kinds of dramatics, even when it was not in any way inappropriate. Orlesians. Josephine coughed very politely into her hand, a warning cough, an If I'm the one who has to settle this argument I'm going to take it out of everyone's hides cough.
"Maybe Madame de Fer here needs a break from Haven," Malika said, before anything could come out of anybody's hide. "Something went down in the Fallow Mire, didn't it? Commander?"
"Why, Herald," Vivienne said. "I thought you'd never ask."
*
That went about as well as could be expected. Dwarves weren't meant for mud. A bog, some Avvars, a chapter best left out of the Inquisition's history book, on account of the famous Herald of Andraste almost dying twice, and would have actually died the third time, had Vivienne not found it in her tender heart to save her. So it wasn't quite second instinct to jump in front of whatever was coming at Vivienne, Carta-bred self-preservation instincts being what they were, but it was near enough that Malika did it anyway, and almost died for the fourth (fifth, sixth, seventh, depended on who you asked) time in Vivienne's arms.
"Surely, this isn't what you imagined doing with your life, darling," said Vivienne, once Malika had been hunted down and returned to her sickbed. Most Holy stayed at her faithful servant's bedside on a mission of compassion; Vivienne would under no circumstances let Malika refer to her privates as either Most Holy or mission of compassion, but not for lack of trying.
"Not really," Malika admitted. "I figured I'd run lyrium for about ten more years and then die in some turf war over who gets to sell what on which side of the street, or that the local Chantry was going to decide it was finally cracking down on smuggling, which always ends in a lot of dead dwarves and some Revered Mothers feeling better about themselves."
She ran passed a hand over her stump. Her arm was on the floor somewhere across the room, white gold not being suitable for putting inside someone else's body, probably. Not that Malika hadn't thought about it. This, right here, was about as close as she'd ever come to having a religious experience. Her come-to-Andraste moment.
"And then some big church in the middle of nowhere blew up," said Malika. "Saving the world isn't so bad when you've exploded."
"Ah," Vivienne said, drumming her fingers on Malika's bare stomach. "Perspective."