Chapter 21: Display
The Great Hall of Denerim roared.
It was a living, breathing beast of sound and smell—the thunder of laughter, the clatter of trenchers, the rich scent of roasted aurochs and spilled ale soaking into the rushes. Tapestries depicting past victories rippled in the heat thrown off by two massive hearths. At the high table, Kerr felt the noise like a physical pressure, a welcome chaos after the quiet intensity of the royal apartments.
Below, his old life and his new one swirled together. Oghren was already arm-wrestling a Bann’s son into the pudding, Felsi shaking her head beside him while their boy tried to steal a whole roasted pheasant. Leliana’s laughter chimed above the din as she demonstrated an Orlesian dance step to a red-faced guardsman. Wynne, serene as ever, watched the chaos with a grandmother’s fondness, a goblet of mulled wine untouched before her. And Shale, a mountain of polished stone and disdain, stood watch by a pillar, a line of awed children daring each other to touch her foot.
The centerpieces, drowsing in the arms of a pair of dedicated nursemaids nearby, were the twin spires of calm in the storm: Bryce and Elissa, four months old, oblivious to the celebration in their honor.
Kerr wove through the crowd, clasping forearms, accepting back-slaps that would fell a druffalo. He found Sten first. The Qunari stood apart, as always, a pillar of stillness observing the Ferelden frenzy. His gaze was fixed on the twins.
“They are small,” Sten stated as Kerr approached.
“They were smaller,” Kerr said, accepting a tankard from a passing servant. “They’re growing like weeds.”
“Weeds do not have purpose. These will.” Sten’s amber eyes shifted from the children to Kerr. “They will be great. It is the only logical outcome, given their parentage.” He said it with the same tone he might use to observe that the sky was grey.
Kerr blinked, then grinned. Behind him, he heard Anora’s soft, indrawn breath. He turned to see her standing a step away, a silver cup in her hand. Her eyes, sharp and dry all evening, shimmered with a sudden, unshed film. She gave Sten a slow, deep nod of acknowledgment, the rarest of her smiles touching her lips before she turned to greet Arl Eamon.
The gang descended on the children next. Zevran produced two tiny, exquisitely crafted Antivan leather booties from within his vest. “For when they learn to crawl away from tedious lessons,” he winked. Oghren, uncharacteristically gentle, offered a small, smooth runestone. “For luck. Or teething. Whatever.” Leliana sang a verse of an old Orlesian lullaby, her voice softening the raucous noise around them.
Shale approached last. The golem’s massive stone form knelt with surprising grace beside the nursemaids. One granite finger, carefully controlled, stroked the downy head of Elissa, who grasped at it with a chubby fist. “It has been centuries,” Shale’s voice rasped, the usual ire absent, replaced by a hollow wonder, “since I remembered what it was to be a mother. They are… sufficiently not-squishy.”
Anora, standing beside Kerr, reached out and laid a hand on Shale’s crystalline shoulder. No words were exchanged. None were needed.
Across the hall, seated at a table of honor laden with gold plate and Orlesian delicacies, Emperor Florian de Chalons applauded politely. His smile was a masterpiece of the porcelain court, all tight, impeccable curves. But his eyes, darting between the joyful reunions and the main doors, held the keen, nervous energy of a man waiting for a shoe to drop. He had heard nothing from his agents in Montfort since the masque. Silence, in his experience, was rarely good.
Later, as the feast hit its ale-soaked stride, Sten quietly moved to Kerr’s side. “There is a matter. In Kirkwall.”
Kerr tore his gaze from where Anora was expertly fielding three Banns at once. “Kirkwall?”
“The Beresaad. A contingent remains. They have… lingered. Beyond the scope of their original purpose.” Sten’s voice was low. “We do not yet know why they have redirected. But they would not still be there if they did not have a reason worth killing for to do so.”
Kerr absorbed this, the merry noise of the hall fading to a dull buzz in his ears. A persistent Qunari presence in the Free Marches was a spark near a powder keg. “I would be eager to discover what has caused their redirection,” he said, his voice casual but his eyes hard.
Sten nodded once. The exchange was over.
As the evening wore on and the servants began clearing the main courses, Anora caught Kerr’s eye. A subtle tilt of her head. It was time.
She did not stand or call for silence. She simply set her goblet down with a precise click that echoed, amplified by the sudden attention of those nearby. The hall quieted in a slow wave, from the high table outward.
Kerr rose. His height alone commanded the room. “Your Majesty,” he began, addressing Emperor Florian with a wolfish smile. “Friends. You’ve honored us with your presence for this happy occasion. A celebration of new life, of the future.” He paused, letting his gaze sweep the room. “It makes a man think about gratitude. About how we repay those who… shape our destinies.”
Anora stood beside him, a statue of calm composure. “For instance,” she continued, her voice clear as cutting glass, “how does one repay those who bring you out of the darkness? Who teach you the ways of the world?” She smiled, and it held no warmth at all. “Who show you the very meaning of… civility?”
A door at the side of the hall, used by servants, banged open. Two of Kerr’s personal guards entered, not with a dish, but hauling a rough wooden wagon. On it, bound and gagged, were three men in filthy, once-fine clothing. Their eyes bulged with terror above the gags.
A murmur of confusion rippled through the hall. Emperor Florian’s perfect smile froze, then tightened at the edges.
Kerr stepped down from the dais, his movements loose and easy. He walked to the wagon as his guards stepped away. One of the prisoners began to weep. Kerr ignored him, addressing the crowd, his voice conversational. “These men made an attempt on my life. At the tourney last summer. Bad form, really.” He leaned casually against the wagon. “Then, they had the audacity to claim Orlais put them up to it.” He reached into a pouch at his belt, pulled out a single gold coin, and held it aloft. It caught the firelight. The Orlesian heraldic seal was clear on its face. “Even went so far as to be paid in Orlesian gold for the deed.”
The silence in the hall was absolute now, brittle.
Kerr flicked the coin. It spun through the air, a bright, treacherous arc, and landed with a ping on the stone flags at Emperor Florian’s table. The sound was obscenely loud.
“This,” Kerr said, the lightness gone from his voice, replaced by a cold, flat iron, “would not stand.”
He turned to the wagon. One of his guards handed him his war hammer. It was a brutal, simple thing of darkened steel and wrapped leather. He hefted it, the muscles in his shoulders and back coiling. The prisoners shook, their muffled pleas the only sound.
Kerr took a two-handed stance, the hammer lifting high for a devastating, downward swing that would pulp bone and wood alike.
“Your Majesty!” The voice was sharp, strained. Emperor Florian had risen, his face pale. “Surely… such a spectacle is excessive. Unnecessary on a night of celebration.”
Kerr stopped. The hammer halted at the apex of its arc. He looked from the trembling men to the Emperor, his head tilted. He held the pose for a long, heart-stopping moment, a statue of impending violence.
Then, slowly, he lowered the hammer. He looked at Anora. She gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Excessive,” Kerr repeated, as if considering the word. He turned back to his guards. “The Emperor shows mercy. We are nothing if not civilised guests.” He pointed the head of the hammer toward the high, vaulted rafters of the Great Hall. “Hang them.”
The guards moved with swift efficiency. Nooses, already prepared, were pulled from the wagon. The gagged screams intensified as the men were dragged upright, ropes fixed around their necks, the other ends thrown over the thick wooden beams above. A team of soldiers hauled on the lines.
The three figures jerked, then rose, feet pedalling futilely in the air. They swung, slowly, like macabre pendulums above the silent feast tables.
Kerr dropped his hammer head to the floor with a definitive thud. He looked directly at Emperor Florian, whose face was now as white as the imported Orlesian lace on his table. “A gift,” Kerr said, his voice once again pleasant. “To remind us all of the price of… poor judgement.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. It was broken only by the faint creak of rope and the distant, rhythmic tap of a heel against wood from above. The festive hum was gone, replaced by a frozen tableau of shock. Then, the hall erupted in a low, urgent buzz of voices.
Kerr did not look at the hanging men again. He handed his hammer to a guard without a word, the iron head streaked with soot from the hearth. His gaze, calm and unwavering, remained on Emperor Florian. The Orlesian’s knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of the table, but his expression had already reassembled itself into a careful, diplomatic blankness.
With a casualness that was more threatening than any glare, Kerr walked to the high table. He dragged a heavy oak chair from an empty spot, the legs scraping loudly on the flagstones, and placed it right next to Florian. He sat, the frame of the chair groaning under his weight. He leaned in, his voice a confidential murmur that nonetheless carried to those nearest.
“A wild tale they spun, before the end,” Kerr said, his tone almost conversational. He picked a piece of imaginary lint from Florian’s ornate silken sleeve. “Tried to buy their lives with nonsense. Something about invoking ‘Emperor by proxy’ in the event of your… unfortunate demise. Said it gives the right to the crown’s treasury to the acting Grand Duke in Val Royeaux until a new emperor is crowned.” He shook his head, a faint, cold smile on his lips. “Desperate men will say anything.”
Florian’s mask slipped. It wasn’t a dramatic crack, but a sudden, minute draining of the blood from his face, leaving his carefully powdered skin a sickly grey. His eyes, the only part of him not obscured by the thick, fashionable brown beard and ornate half-mask, flickered towards the still-swiving bodies, then back to Kerr. The polished courtier vanished. “You can stop,” he hissed, the words meant only for Kerr’s ear.
Kerr turned. He moved slowly, deliberately, until their faces were inches apart. Florian could see the faint scar through Kerr’s eyebrow, the cool, unblinking assessment in his eyes, which betrayed no anger, no heat, no emotion at all. “You may stop,” Kerr corrected, his voice a low, stone-grinding promise. “Ferelden will never be Orlais again. Look around you. We have never been stronger than we are now.”
He leaned back slightly, just enough to gesture with an open hand toward Anora, who stood watching from the dais, a statue of perfect, unmoved sovereignty. “And we have never had a ruler more capable than we do.”
“You display a crude braggadocio,” Florian whispered, his Orlesian accent thickening with strain.
“No,” Kerr said, the word flat and final. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “I am not boasting about myself. I am stating a fact about my wife.The Queen. She is the ruler.” He tapped his own chest with a blunt finger.“Me? I’m the killer the war left you with.”
He shifted then, and when he spoke again, the words were in flawless, picture-perfect Orlesian, each syllable a polished dagger. The surrounding nobles who understood it stiffened. “A war unlike any generations to come will ever see made me such. If you think your silks and your customs protect you from the same savage reality all mortal beings must abide by, well…” He let the sentence hang, his eyes locked on Florian’s. He finally offered a small, tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That will have been the second biggest mistake of your life.”
He stood up, the chair screeching again. He gave Florian a slow, deliberate nod, then turned his back on the Emperor of Orlais.
The walk back to the high table felt longer. The stunned silence began to fray into a hundred whispered conversations. He ignored them all. His focus was on Anora. He saw the minuscle, approving tilt of her chin, the steel in her gaze that mirrored his own. He saw Zevran, who gave him a slow, impressed blink. He saw Sten, who offered a single, grave nod.
He finally reached the twins. The nursemaids were pale, but held the babies close. Bryce was fussing, stirred by the strange energy in the room. Elissa slept on, oblivious. Kerr reached out, his large, calloused hand—the same hand that had just condemned men to a very public death—gently brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. His touch was feather-light.
He then turned, his arm finding Anora’s waist, pulling her into the solid, unshakeable strength of his side. He looked out over his hall, over his friends, his people, the evidence of his warning still twisting slowly in the air above them.
“Now,” he said, his voice carrying without shouting, clean and clear. “Where were we? I believe someone promised a toast to my children’s health.”
The hall remained frozen for another heartbeat, then two. Then, as if Kerr had thrown a switch, the noise rushed back in—louder, more frantic, a release of collective tension that sounded like a dam breaking. Servants scurried with renewed vigor. Musicians struck up a lively reel. The hanging men were cut down and dragged away, the matter already becoming a story, a spectacle, a footnote to the night’s true purpose.
The party carried on until late. The shock of the execution melted into the warm haze of ale and forced merriment, though the Orlesian delegation’s corner of the hall remained a pocket of stiff, silent discomfort. Emperor Florian did not stay much longer. His exit was a study in preserved dignity, a slow, measured withdrawal with his retinue trailing behind him like mournful ghosts. The Emperor of Val Royeux, a younger man with sharp eyes that missed nothing, followed soon after, his expression unreadable.
As the last of the significant guests departed and the hall began to truly empty, Anora finally allowed the iron in her spine to soften a fraction. The nursemaids approached, the twins now fussing in earnest, overwhelmed by the long night. Shale’s crystalline voice cut through the fatigue. “The small, squishy ones require movement. I do not sleep. I will ensure they are pacified and that the midwives are not disturbed.”
Anora, her eyes shadowed with exhaustion, simply nodded. “Thank you, Shale.”
The golem took the handles of the large, wheeled bassinet with surprising care. As a servant guided it towards the royal apartments, Shale walked behind, her stone feet clicking on the flagstones. Then, a low, resonant hum began to emanate from her, shaping itself into a slow, melodic tune. The notes were deep and strange, woven with a grief and a love so ancient it felt geological. It was a dwarven lullaby from a time before the Deep Roads fell.The effect was immediate. Bryce’s whimpering ceased. Elissa’s tense little body went limp. They were asleep before the carriage turned the first corner, their breaths falling into the deep, rhythmic pattern of the womb. Kerr, watching them go from the doorway, felt a genuine, uncomplicated smile touch his lips for the first time in hours. It was a fleeting peace, stark against the cold purpose settling in his gut.
It was the dead of night. The city of Denerim slept under a blanket of stars and silence, the earlier revelry now just a memory in the stones. The palace courtyard was empty, lit by guttering torches that painted the puddles from an earlier rain in shades of liquid gold and black. Kerr stood in the shadow of the gatehouse, the chill air sharp in his lungs. Sten emerged from the darkness to his left, a larger shadow. Zevran materialized on his right, polishing a thin blade against his sleeve.
“Their men are enjoying the hospitality of The Pearl,” Zevran said, his voice a soft purr. “A generous line of credit can make even the most loyal guards forget their posts for a few hours. The Emperors travel light tonight.”
Down the main causeway, two ornate Orlesian carriages waited, their drivers stiff and bored. The doors to the palace opened. Emperor Florian and the Emperor of Val Royeux—a cousin, his name was Marcel—descended the steps together, speaking in low, urgent tones. Their words stopped when they saw Kerr waiting.
“King Kerr,” Florian said, his voice tight. “A final farewell?”
“A final piece of advice,” Kerr said, stepping into the torchlight. He looked at Florian, his expression open, almost friendly. “You need to be careful, patronizing the upper floors of Antivan brothels. The structures can be… unsound. Especially for a man of your stature.”
Florian’s brow furrowed, the confusion cutting through his veneer of irritation. “I do not take your meaning.”
“You will.”
Zevran moved. It was less a step and more a drift of smoke. He was behind Marcel in an instant, a hand clamped over the Val Royeux emperor’s mouth, a small vial emptied against his nose. Marcel’s eyes widened, then fluttered shut. His body went limp, caught and lowered gently to the wet cobblestones by Sten’s immense arms.
Florian had time for a half-turn, a startled intake of breath. Then Kerr was on him. There was no dramatic wind-up, no roar of anger. It was a clinical motion, terrifying in its efficiency. One large hand clamped over Florian’s jaw from behind, fingers digging into the hinge, the other securing the back of his head. A sharp, brutal twist. The crack was a dry, sickening snap, like a green branch breaking underfoot.
Florian’s body convulsed once, then went utterly still. His confused expression was frozen on his face. Sten caught the corpse before it could hit the ground, hoisting it effortlessly as if it were a sack of grain. He carried it to the nearest carriage, opened the door, and laid the dead Emperor neatly on the plush velvet seat.
Zevran was already dragging the unconscious Marcel towards the other carriage. “And for our sleeping friend?” he asked, his tone conversational.
Kerr looked at the body of Florian de Chalons, propped up in the shadowed interior like a macabre passenger. “Take him to Antiva City. The House of Seven Silks. Drop him from the highest balcony into the central courtyard.” He wiped his hand on his thigh. “Make sure the most humiliating thing you can think of is shoved up his ass first. I want the story to be unforgettable.”
Zevran’s teeth flashed in the dark. “A poetic touch. And the message for the one who wakes up?”
Kerr turned his gaze to the unconscious Marcel, soon to be the sole Emperor of Orlais. “He gets to find his cousin’s body. He gets to hear how and where it was discovered. He gets to put the pieces together.” Kerr’s voice was low, final. “He’ll have a perfect understanding of how things are going to be moving forward.”
Sten closed the carriage door on Florian. Zevran heaved Marcel into the other coach, slapping the side to signal the driver. The two carriages rolled into the night, one carrying death, the other a terrible, waking lesson.
Kerr stood alone in the courtyard, listening to the receding clatter of hooves. The smell of rain, torch smoke, and a faint, coppery tang hung in the air. He breathed it in. From the highest window of the palace, a single light still burned in the royal chamber. He turned and walked back inside, the heavy door shutting behind him with a soft, definitive thud.