Chapter Text
Needs must. Straight back, chin up. Keep your courage on your shoulders.
Kirjava Mercar played the words over and over in her head. Her courage led her to getting kicked out of Minrathous, shamed by the Shadow Dragons, and now the god of lies stuck in her head.
Needs must, Penthesilea Malacoda said every time she noticed Kirjava did not want to do something. Mistress Pen, her technical owner but she never seemed like one compared to others who owned elven slaves in Tevinter.
To others, she was the Lady Malacoda. Retired opera singer, current teacher to young hopefuls. Enough to keep herself living in measured luxury. She purchased Kirjava from a family friend when she was four, just young enough to remember Ventus, her first home. She recalled little else, and Pen forbade her from reading the paperwork she came with.
From then on, Kirjava was her shadow. Any other slaves in the household were always indentured servants, Pen’s way of showing generosity. If someone wanted to fund their child’s lessons and introduction into the close knit society of the operatic community in Minrathous, half a year under Mistress Pen was nothing.
These other adults in the house were tasked with teaching Kirjava how to be at her best. They taught her to read, cook, and enough numbers to manage a household. When her magic manifested itself by age eight, Pen actually hired someone to give her private lessons. They were strictly limited to barriers, basic theory on the fade (I simply will not be pleased with you if a demon tricks you in your sleep, girl, Pen always tutted at her), and healing magic to ease Pen’s way into her eighties.
That was her life. Wake early to prepare breakfast for her mistress, run errands for her mistress, attend her lessons to keep her mistress in good health, make lunch and dinner and serve and serve and serve. Every day was the same, every night ended hearing Mistress Pen complain of whatever failure her student was while Kirjava settled the elderly woman’s aches and pains with practice ease.
Everything was always the same. Everyone in the Arts District where Kirjava called home knew she belonged to the Lady Malacoda. Other elven slaves of the good homes taught her about her heritage, Dalish tales, stories of far flung lands and alienages. A few with vallaslin gave her tricks to hone her magic into more deadly things when eyes weren’t on them. Other owners would sometimes inquire of Malacoda of her plans for Kirjava in the future.
So helpful, so useful, Kirjava would hear their praise.
And mine, Lady Malacoda would reply in a teasing tone.
Kirjava belonged to Mistress Pen, until she didn’t. The pair had been through much. When the sky split open and rifts appeared all across the world, Kirjava killed her first man to protect her mistress. She kept off a demon with her meagre combat magic until a templar came to their rescue. Mistress Pen even made her soup once when she was sickly and told her exactly how to live her life in every situation. No boys, no fanciful dreams. Good work, keep your head down and chin up.
Mistress Pen died in her sleep, and Kirjava cried when she saw how peaceful she looked in death. She now felt in a state of limbo. The executor of Penthesilea Malacoda’s will ordered Kirjava to keep the house in order while he worked to distribute everything. On the third day of this strange inbetween, she was ordered to pack her things and head to an address on the other side of the city.
“I have never been there before, ser.” She told him.
“I heard you were a smart girl, find it. And keep your paperwork in hand, your ownership is being transferred to someone specific, no slave markets for you.” He said.
What were her things, she wondered? In the end, she settled for a week’s worth of clothes that could fit into one bag (folded nicely, everything always had to be nice) and held her papers in her arms. She did not look at who Mistress Pen gave her to, nor did she look at the information she knew was in there. The name of the household who owned her parents, her old address in Ventus. She knew her mother’s surname was Mercar, one of the few things that belonged to her.
You have your father’s disposition, but your mother’s looks, Mistress Pen once told her after far too many glasses of wine. She wondered at the time what that meant.
What shocked her most that day was when she found the address. It was a district where templars seemed to live, and the apartment door she knocked on was nice enough but nowhere near the casual opulence of the Art District. She trusted Mistress Pen would not give her away to just anyone.
“What?” A bearded man with long black hair tied half up in a knot answered. He was brusque, taller than her by quite a bit, and looked to be in his thirties.
“I am Kirjava Mercar, ser. The Lady Penthesilea Malacoda’s estate willed me to you.” She said, having practiced the words on the hours-long walk on the way here.
The man said nothing, staring at her dumbstruck. In response, she held out the papers.
He snatched them in an instant and swore under his breath as he read them over. He looked both ways in the hallway behind her before grabbing her by the elbow and pulling her into the apartment.
“I do not own slaves.” He said.
Kirjava was utterly puzzled. “But my papers-” She began, trying to choose her words carefully.
“Are shit.” He cut her off. He was still close, then suddenly realizing the firm grip he still had on her released her before sighing.
“How old are you?” He asked.
“Fourteen.” She replied.
He seemed to be studying her. Kirjava remembered what she was always told, and kept her posture straight but her gaze averted.
“One last twist of the knife, and you’re a mage too?” He said with a dry laugh, tossing the papers aside with such carelessness Kirjava bit the inside of her cheek to keep the emotions off of her face.
“Yes, ser.”
“No ser nonsense, Kiri,” He sighed again. “My name is Tarquin.”
That very night he took her to some warehouse so far into a district that dizzied her mind when she tried to keep track of the route in her head. A dozen shady figures were there, in the reds and blues favored by the organization.
Blood magic? Are they Venatori? She thought to herself, for the first time in her life suddenly afraid in a way that turned her body ice cold.
“Who’s this, Tarquin?” A man asked, his face veiled
“My ward, Viper, and the latest member of the Shadow Dragons.”
Tarquin certainly was not a member of the Venatori, and Kirjava very quickly found herself learning how to see the world in a different way. Tarquin was very different from Mistress Pen. He only ever answered to Tarquin and only ever called her Kiri. The Shadow Dragons took to her much the same way the other elven slaves of her childhood did.
Except for them, it was slowly unravelling the natural instinct of service. It was confusing, at first. Tarquin never ordered her to do anything, he explicitly kept her from doing anything Mistress Pen had her doing.
“Go out with the other Shadow Dragons your age, but don’t miss your lessons or you’ll only disappoint yourself.” Tarquin advised her.
“You aren’t a slave anymore, you don’t need to serve me.” Her combat tutor said when she tried to fix a plate of food for her after Kirjava learned to summon lightning for the first time.
If she shifted violently in the direction of no freedom to too much freedom, Tarquin only offered her advice on how to best manage herself as a person now. His only hard rule was found out when she learned just how much fun she could have with boys her own age. Tarquin found the first boy sneaking out of his apartment not long after Kiri’s seventeenth birthday which led to an extraordinarily awkward conversation about how you have to be safe. The second boy was met with a frown, and the third (her favorite, Elek, who she kept on for years) was kicked out and banned from the apartment forever.
“No more boys.” Tarquin fumed, after a delicious shouting match they had while tossing Elek’s clothes out the window after kicking the teenager out half naked into the night. Kirjava found out she liked arguing, talking back, asking questions, and Tarquin encouraged her to do so until he was on the other end of it. She got much better about sneaking around after that, after all, if she didn’t want to take all of his advice she didn’t need to.
You don’t need to do anything was the mantra of those around her. Kirjava learned to take that to heart. We free slaves from all kinds of chains, even the ones you can’t see, the Viper once told her. The years she spent as a Shadow Dragon were decidedly the best of her life, compared to the decade under Mistress Pen which confused her heart and her head and the days of mystery surrounding her birth.
If only Tarquin and Mistress Pen could see her now, in the middle of somewhere in the Fade (the Fade was not supposed to have somewheres) somehow in charge of stopping two blighted mages of incalculable power.
The time will pass anyway, Mistress Pen’s oft-repeated words surfaced in her thoughts.
She was always correct about that. And the time called for Rook, not Kiri or Kirjava or Mercar, to find a magekiller.