This isn't her job

Hel's vanilla perfume curled around her like a sleepy cat as the young woman was pushed down into the seat opposite her. She sat unflinchingly in her white, prim cloak laced shut down to her stomach, despite the other woman's apparent suffering. Between them stood a humble wooden table. Torches lit the stone walls, and the feeling of time's meaninglessness was as suffocating as the musty air. How many years had this woman lost here due to her stubbornness? The scroll she clutched with dainty white hands had this information. For a moment, she closed her eyes in a way that made her look as if she were praying to the Maker. Actually, she was recalling the image of the scroll, settling her eyes on the number that curled with chantry cursive. Quite some time. Her eyes opened fiercly.

"Mari," she said lacing the word's loveliness with ice.

"I've been told quite a bit about you. I've heard your name many times in passing. Perhaps too many times. And I'm not someone you want hearing about your... misgivings," she emphasized. Patronizing glinting flicks of mica speckled the hard rockiness of her words. Her eyes roved the woman now, judgements seeping in. Hypothesis.  She paused to read the woman's expressions, greedily lapping them up. She had heard about the mage, the daughter of a powerful apostate. When she had first seen the lady, a glimpse across a crowded room of officials, 'stuck pig,' she had thought and nothing more. But little cracks in this first impression began to form over time, and now, here she was - begged to scare Maricara Caddel straight - not her job, but she was curious. Her gaze scritched all over the woman with light claws. 

"Do you know why you shouldn't want them getting back to me?" she asked, tilting her head angelically to the side.

Maricara was having yet another bout of solitary in Starhaven’s illustrious Circle. It wasn’t the first time she’d ended up here and it wasn’t even the first time she’d ended up here for something she hadn’t even done. She’d become a scapegoat quite quickly for her fellow mages being a foreigner that made it to her teen years outside of the Chantry’s influence. The title of malificar followed her around every step she took in this forsaken place. Whispered after her like a part of her own heartbeat. A word that wasn’t used in her home-country, except by those playing the role to prevent the ruse they’d painted for the Chantry from peeling up.

Malificar. Blood Mage. Abomination.

They weren’t wrong. She was all of those things if she took their definitions as utter truths as they did, however Mari rejected their belief in the inherent evil in those acts. Of course, she kept them to herself and didn’t do them in public here. All magic was neutral, blood or otherwise. People were evil. And she wasn’t evil.

Her shoulder blades burned and stung from the whipping she’d received for whatever she’d been blamed for. Blood was actively soaking through the rough fabric of the robes they had her in. Her wrists were raw from rubbing against the cuffs that kept them tight against one another so it would be harder to cast magic. She was surprised they hadn’t gagged her or sewn her mouth shut like they did mages in Par Vollen.

Andrastians thought they were so much more civilized than those outside their precious religion when really they were just better at hiding their depravity.

She could smell the vanilla scent of the other woman and see the sharp features and clean cut lines. She knew she must have looked practically feral across the put together blonde in front of her. As the templar spoke Mari kept her face completely stoic, head slightly tilted. The honeyed threats dripping from her mouth not getting lost past her.

By your own organizations rules you cannot rip my magic and my person from me as I passed your little test, which means the only thing you could do is kill me and I do not fear death. I only request you do not burn my body. I would like to be returned home to be buried by our customs.

Helena leans back, taking in the fire that sits across from her. Five fingers press upon her pale cheek as she listens to the heated words. In her eyes reflect the hagrid woman, like an animal growling. Helena's eyes narrow.

Don't be rediculous. You know you are worth more alive. But your behavior... We have expectations, Mari. That you will follow the ways of the Maker. Rivain - it is a presumptuous nation. Sucking the magic away like pigs on any little dalliance.

What would be the reaction to such a wordchoice?

So- your behavior, Mari. I have been asked to make some assurances. This is not a test. You were reported. You were seen, in fact. How you got out of that tower is beyond me, but I know you are a capable little demon, she finishes, a crazy smile toying at her lips. This woman has been reported sucking a couple of stable horses dry in the twilight. And there were three other beasts found before this. It needs to stop. But was it really her? Mari was a good prisoner. She said her prayers. Still.

Helena holds the little white scroll between her fingers, small enough to tie to a bird's leg. Where were you last night? she asks, watching the tiger eyes.

Maricara spit when this templar, this woman of the cloth, brought up her precious Maker. It wasn’t that they didn’t worship the Maker in Rivain, they did, he just wasn’t the pretentious pig intent on control that he was here in the Free Marches. He didn’t clamp down on their power, their magic, their abilities, like this Maker and his Bride did. Her Maker, her Andraste, saw magic as a gift given to them to use to make the world better not as fetters to a chain for the Chantry to hold and yank them too and from. She was not to be tamed or domesticated. She was wild like the magic that ran through her veins. Keep my homeland within your lips and not without it.

Who reported me? One of the other mages? One of your templars who like to push us in dark corners in the dark of night to whispered threats and promises? Your source must be of the utmost trustworthiness to take them on their word so immediately.

There was nothing in her that could cause her to care anymore. Nothing in her that could make her want to cooperate. She was worth more alive? Then they could keep her alive, but she would give them nothing but her contempt and they could choke on it for as much as she cared.

She leaned back in the chair, trying to hide the way it hurt from the shredded nature of her back. Mari was already bleeding. It would be so easy to use that blood to her advantage. So easy to choke the woman in front of her on her own blood, but it would play into her hand and she wasn’t prepared to do that. Not yet.

Asleep in my bed.

At this moment, a deep measure of Helena's subconscious mind moved. It was the Spirit of Learning that had so long ago possessed her that it had fixed itself imperceptivity to her most animalistic and simple parts of her stringent mind. It was a part of her no less than the reptilian brain is at the core of the human brain. The spirit stirred, and she leaned closer, her heart beating ever so slightly faster at the thrill in the prisoner's mystery. She didn't realize her devilish smile had softened as she stared unflinchingly at the Rivaini. It was as if her eagerness were pushing aside her mercilessness.

Is that so?

Helena furiously studied the woman's face.

You are watched? She was not. Maricara, you are a remarkable woman. You have fooled at least half of this circle into thinking you are one of the good ones. She gestured absently to their general space. Maybe I have it wrong and you are one of those rare good ones. But, I don't think you are. I know where you come from. I know exactly where you come from. She let the comment sit, a reference to Mari's family, the more active of the rebel groups. I know we are your enemy, and all the lovely prayers to the Maker aren't going to change that. No, I think this is a long game. I think this has been a very long game. Hel's eyes dragged on Mari's face, searching for an honest crack of weakness.

She paused, deliberating on what to say next. The spirit thrummed inside her.

Now, what was the last bit of magic you used? Can you remember?

She rolled her eyes, ‘good ones’. What was that even supposed to mean? Subservient? Toothless? Groveling for just a morsel from their Chantry masters? Maricara would rather see the hangman’s noose than see herself on her knees for this woman or any of those that wore the Chantry uniform. She licked her dry cracked lips, tasting the bitter salty taste of her own blood as they split again. One drop. One drop and she could make this Seeker kneel at her feet.

If weakness was what the other woman was looking for she wouldn’t find it in Mari’s face. Not today. All the woman would get from Mari was pure and utter contempt and hatred, It seems like you already know who I am and what I am doing here. Why question me? Hm? You have your mind made up. I have nothing more to give you. Kill me, release me, or leave me alone. Contrary to your utterances I have no desire to play games.

Her hands twitched, trying to get some blood flow to her fingers. The shackles around her wrists were painfully and uncomfortably tight. The demon that lurked within her preened at her insolence. He’d never given her his name but that was fine she knew he was rage manifested in defiance and that was all she needed to know.

I put out my lamp by my bedside last night before I was so rudely ripped from my sleep this morning. she answered, and it was the truth to a point. And saying she’d been asleep in her bed was also the truth. But being in her bed did not mean she was fully in the tower. She could wander how she pleased as she slept. Something she’d been careful to keep from her captors.

Helena did not shift. She stared with the stillness of a hunter, only her eyes moving with minute flicks across Mari's eyes, her mouth, her wrists. The other woman's words gave little of her away to Helena, but the twitch of her cuffed hands betrayed a secret and strange aggression. The rough angles and harsh movements her fingers made, so like the lewd somatic components of rural, wild magicspinners, stood out. It was a depraved tell. The rebelliousness in her words refused to relinquish her dignity, of course.

I'm sorry if I have made an assumption. It is a reasonable assumption given what has been reported to me: farm animals killed, their bodies bloodless. Her voice softened, letting it cover the seed she was planting. It was not taken quite seriously enough until the bodies became human. So we have a Blood Mage in our midst. And you have something that I would call a motive. Hel leaned forward trying to make up her mind. It's okay if you cannot control the urges, but if you get these violences off your chest, we can help you control your magic, she offered, her gaze a dominating press. The stringent templar doubted such was possible with blood magic, but a little twist of the lie made many break their truth at a hope for mercy.

Mari couldn’t stop the roll of her eyes. Dead farm animals, dead farmers. Blame the wild witch of Rivain? Right? The easy target. The easy scapegoat. Mari wasn’t stupid enough to leave victims behind. Blood magic was as easy to wield with the life that ran through her own veins as it was with someone else’s. More preferable really as she knew how her blood ran and what it could do.

And not that this woman would know but Mari was more a healer than anything. When you worked with blood you could feel corruption in it, know how it moved through the body, know how to clot it. That mixed with the healing her mother had taught her Mari was quite good at stitching people back together.

She was also good at leaving anyone who dared get in her way a bloodless husk, but that wasn’t what they were talking about here.

Plenty of animals and creatures out there that can leave something bloodless, Templar. Plenty of power-hungry people who would do things they otherwise wouldn’t have when they know there is a scapegoat to take the blame. You’ve built a problem of your own making by looking under the wrong bed for the monster. I want nothing but to go home. Would I have returned so easily to my bed if I managed to leave this place?

She stretched her fingers a bit and gasped in pain as her wrist seized in the cuff, causing her to curs in her native tongue and draw the offending limb towards her chest.

Well, then, let's rule you out proper, shall we, Helena replied with icy indifference.

Really, she felt like she lost her edge against the other, and a sour taste had crept into her mood for it. Still, she had one last, final trump to play. She stood from her chair, and walked past Mari to the door, tucking the little scroll into her pocket for safe-keeping. She did not bother to hide what she said to the Templar officer waiting by the door.

It warrants further assurances. Have her delivered by sundown, she ordered, signing the parchment slips of her evaluation and agreement to take responsibility for Mari as her ward. I'll get to the bottom of this, she muttered to herself more lowly, shooting the mage one last look rife with suspicion before strutting out. She had preparations to make.