appellations

SUMMARY

They call them Adaar the Mage-Traitor. In the Winter Palace, bold Orlesian nobles whisper of Adaar the Usurper-King. And disquieted by their curved horns and towering stature, they declare them Adaar the Savage-Ox.

In remote places where the Empress’s grasp does not reach, they’re known as Adaar the Fair, the Just, the Gentle. The Captain decides he likes that better: it rolls off smoother on the tongue.

Warden Blackwall does not like it.

He thinks it corrupt.

NOTES

A study in names and titles. Who are you with it, without it?

See the end of the work for more notes.

They call them Adaar the Mage-Traitor. In the Winter Palace, bold Orlesian nobles whisper of Adaar the Usurper-King: outsider, meddler, Game-breaker. And disquieted by their curved horns and towering stature, they declare them Adaar the Savage-Ox.

In remote places where the Empress’s grasp does not reach, where the dog-lords mark their territory, they’re known as Adaar the Fair, the Just, the Gentle. The one who saved Old Crestwood, and the one who gained Keeper Hawen’s favour. The Captain decides he likes that better: it rolls off smoother on the tongue—a full pardon bestowed upon him by Inquisitor Adaar the Righteous.

Warden Blackwall does not like it.

He thinks it corrupt.

Here, in their chambers up high, frigid Skyhold air drifting past the open balcony, alone together, they are Kara. Kara the mercenary, Kara the mage, Kara the eldest, beautiful Kara, handsome Kara, Kara in their antaam-saar, rope-bound in purple and red,

(for a moment you contemplate the ropes knotted and twined serpentine around their arms, elegantly restrained—or perhaps, it is your arms contorted like so, knees bent and wholly at their mercy—)

(or perhaps another time, you think)

and he asks—despite himself, despite his hands already pulling loose the knots of their garment—and the question speaks more ungrateful than intended,

“Where is the justice in this?”

Where is the justice for

the child-killer,

the deceiver,

the deserter?

“It was never about justice,” says the Fair Inquisitor, and yet the False Warden seeks it anyway—in the calloused fingertips cradling his jaw, tipping his world backwards as they lean down and taste the tart of wine in his mouth.

They speak true: in mapping the full contour of their lips and the flat plane of their tongue, he finds nothing but the terrible, bitter truth. It was never about justice when they meted out judgements; their verdict is severe and cruel: perpetual Tranquillity gifted to the treacherous, subterranean exile commanded to the blasphemous. No peace for the wicked, as they say.

(And really, how dare they seek grace from the Inquisitor themself? How dare they think themselves above justice?)

(You do not deserve that.)

A swift death would be an ungranted mercy, and even now, he wishes it, even as his hands bury themselves into their hips, guiding thighs over his. He whittles away, slow and exacting, his fingers carving into the thick shape of their flank and loins, as brown and beautiful as stained oak—his favourite. This serves as his confession and penance in one stroke (or in two or three or a hundred or a thousand—he’d lost count, still he remains persistent; whittling takes patience and precision): their exultation and his contrition framed in arrhythmic gasps and desperate frissons; his gaze rapt, beholding their sacred bliss.

(You do not deserve this.)

They offer up his little death in turn, the only mercy they will allow, and he accepts his sentence with restrained silence. It comes easy and hasty (too hasty, he thinks, and the worry needles him), but their fingers splay on his jaw again, then to his throat, stroking as if to coax out the sound, and like a good little soldier he obeys the Inquisitor’s command and surrenders: full and deep and sonorous from his lungs. Whispers of affirmation in his ear, gooseflesh stipples on his skin.

Without reprieve, he intends to pay his debt tenfold, laying them supine on the firm bed—

“Better than hay,” you say, and they laugh, a witch bolt lancing your heart

—and he kneels, prostrates, submits to the frame of their thighs on his shoulders. Drinks them in, slow and inquisitive, the moisture cleaving to his beard, then finds his cadence from the mounting tension in their muscles. A gentle kneading thumb to their flank—“Relax,” he wants to say—and they dissolve into him, arching. Penance becomes veneration: the Herald of Andraste and their lone devotee on his pilgrimage.

(They hate that title.)

(You don’t.)

The pressure mounts as they cage around him, and this impending suffocation will be another sentence he welcomes ardently. With firm hands, always at their mercy, they grasp at his hair, fettering him in place, and then comes their judgement: yielding, relenting, forgiving. The dormant current beneath their skin awakens, snaps, crackles—stormy eyes wide open, glowing lightning-purple and rift-green—and it sends a sudden shock that raises his hackles and withers to a low, static buzz, ebbing away with their rapture.

He closes the rift between them, laying next to their lounging body, nowhere to hide.

No silverite mask for the Orlesian captain,

no griffon helm for the Grey Warden.

“So,” they say after a while, and here, in the expanse of their bed, with no witnesses to corroborate, they insist upon honesty. “Where does this leave us?”

He testifies against the skin of their throat, pulse fluttering,

“Would you accept this?

And what I used to be?

I lied about who I was, but I never lied about what I felt.”

“I know,” comes the reply, in the semblance of a strained exhale, the brush of their lips on his brow.

“And no matter what becomes of me, right now, I am just a man with his heart laid bare.”

You don’t tell them, “I leave it in your hands,”

but they hear it, hear the appeal: to wield the gavel once again—to rend him into splinters, or to forge him ablaze, anew. They laugh again, featherlight, vibrating against the top of his head. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“You asked,” you say, and you laugh with them.

He’d missed this, couldn’t fathom how he could’ve lived without this, wouldn’t dare forsake any of this again. It all seems a distant memory now (though it had only been three weeks since he fled): prison floor chafing his knees, heavy steel shackling his wrists, white-hot shame scorching his face when they arrived, they shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have known where to look, should’ve left him there—

“You’re brooding again, kadan.” Palms to his cheek, then to his dewed beard, lifting him up for a kiss. Pulls away, gazes at him: what do they see? “I told you I won’t lose you, and I meant it,” they say, “but you had been far too eager to die in that damned prison.”

He murmurs, all apologies,

(not of your guilt)

(not of your lies)

(but of breaking their heart and calling it better)

(better than dead)

(or worse)

his lips against skin—

“I will never leave your side again, my love.”

(or leave you to wake, alone)

—and his breath tickles them.

“You better not,” they say, breathless. “I can’t and I won’t let you go that easily,” and he doesn’t doubt it, doesn’t doubt their resolve, all the web of strings they would pull, to loosen or to choke.

He sieves their words and one stands out:

“‘You,’ meaning—”

“You,” they say, with unmistakable confidence, “The man you are now—not the traitor, and not the warden.”

Their final judgement, though a cloying reprieve, still leaves an acrid aftertaste: undeserved, unjust, unnecessary. The Inquisitor must not be so lenient with their soldiers; and the Herald cannot afford to think him more special than the rest. But here, enmeshed in each other, they are not the inquisitor nor the herald, and he is not anyone else but himself. Here, sequestered together, he calls them Kara Adaar (My Love, My Lady, My Lord), and they call him Thom Rainier (Darling, Kadan, Hayati)—two people hailing from the Free Marches, entangled in circumstances larger than themselves. And Thom is a man who doesn’t waste time: he kisses Kara again and again, before their dutiful appellations come knocking at their door once again.

NOTES

I wrote up a blog post dissecting this piece, read it here!

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