Chapter Text
There were, in Saadrah’s opinion, far too many shadows in Minrathous.
It was easy enough to assume why, at first glance, just by looking at the towering architecture of the city. Spires upon spires, towers thick as trees, bridges and balconies and buttresses weaving together in the angular threads of an architectural spider’s web as the buildings seemed to climb on each other’s shoulders to fight for dominance, winning by crushing older structures beneath stone and steel bootheels.
Very apt, she thought, eyeing a prominent statue of some gilded magister crowning a fountain. She didn’t miss the raised relief along the basin’s lowest edge that depicted chained slaves in neat rows, nearly unseen beneath the magister’s feet. Someone had recently chipped away at the chains holding a few figures down. The scrapes were bright and fresh against the old weather-worn stone.
But no, the corners where the sunlight failed to reach weren’t the only place shadows pooled in Tevinter’s capital, just the most obvious.
She pulled her hood closer about her face—a necessity, she’d quickly learned not even hours off of the ship that had carried her from Vyrantium—grateful that the odd angles of the headdresses many ’Vints wore made her obviously-hidden horns much less obvious. Just another weirdly-shaped hat. Nothing to see here. No wandering Vashoth far from home, with only three gold and a handful of weapons to her name.
Home.
She laughed ruefully as she ducked to the side, out of the way of a cart trundling down the road loaded with casks and creaking like old bones.
Home was...gone. Run off at her insistence while she drew away the Ben-Hassrath who hunted them, and she had no idea how to find them again. Maybe contact through the Valo-kas, if she could figure out where they were now with the hole in the sky sealed up again.
If she even wanted to try talking to them.
She bit her lip and shook the bitterness off. They couldn’t have known. No one could have. It should have been a blessing that some survived, rather than injustice that some...that Adaar....
“Watch where you’re going, stulte!”
Saadrah snapped back to herself and apologized to the human she’d nearly bumped into, a portly man with an over-waxed mustache and very fine robes draped and pinned with serpent and dragon motifs. A thin young man in much plainer clothing followed behind, holding several parcels, his posture hunched in a way that Saadrah recognized from watching street children her whole life. Cowed. Trying not to be seen. A fine chain hung at his neck, but when he turned, Saadrah couldn’t see any closures, and it looked too small to pull over his head.
“Ugh,” the portly man huffed. “Foreigners.” He snapped his fingers, and the younger man scurried after him like a whipped dog as he stomped away.
Saadrah felt like she’d eaten something greasy and rancid, with the sour taste that lingered on her tongue.
Slave.
Not a single other person in the busy Hightown market spared even a glance at him, like it was normal. Commonplace. Acceptable.
And she couldn’t do anything about it. Not in broad daylight, at least, where city guards stood watch at the corners and the shadows gathered thickest beneath the feet of overdressed highborns who saw people as chattel.
She committed both men’s faces to memory just in case—though she had little hope she would see either of them again—and continued on her path through twisting streets and the crowding shade of even higher towers.
By nightfall of her first day, she’d been yelled at five more times simply for existing in someone else’s vicinity, nearly run down by a magister’s carriage as it rattled far too fast through the Garden Quarter, accosted once by guards who accused her of something-something-liberati-and-illegal-possession—she’d had to run when she was unable to present paperwork stating her free and foreign status, and only years of hide-and-seek with her brother and other children allowed her to give them the slip—and turned out of four taverns and away from seven more open-air food vendors before she finally found someone willing to sell her overpriced fried fish. It tasted of metal and disappointment, but it was all she could get for her rumbling stomach. And through it all, she’d worked her way inward and downward, away from the gilt palaces and beautiful gardens and impressively wide streets and into the tight-woven spaces where “lesser” people lived.
More dangerous overall, sure, but probably safer for a Vashoth.
As evidenced by the more variety she saw in the faces around her. Where Hightown had been predominantly human—certainly all-human as far as those obviously in charge went—with scattered clusters of elven servants and laborers and slaves, away from the wealthy streets the balance between the two was more even, and every now and then, she spotted dwarves and even the occasional Vashoth—or possibly Tal-Vashoth, but she wasn’t about to be rude and ask.
She spent her last coin on a bitter, oversteeped cup of tea, threatened a would-be thug with a brief flash of blade and her best imitation of her mother’s impassive glare, and finally found a clear space under a bridge where she could tuck herself into an alcove and out of sight from the street below for the night.
As she listened to the wind whistle through the trestles of the bridge, she let the shadows collect around her, and recited Qunari prayers for the lost until sleep took her.