Chapter 26: Scurrying the rats
The silence of the nursery was a world away. Here, in the Council Chambers, the air was thick with the smell of beeswax, old vellum, and cold ambition. Sunlight cut through the high, narrow windows, illuminating dust motes dancing above the colossal map of Ferelden spread across the central oak table. Pinned upon it were small, colored wax seals—red for loyalty, gold for uncertain, and three stark black pins clustered in the southern Bannorn.
Anora traced a fingertip over one black pin. “Bann Alfric,” she said, her voice cool and clear in the vaulted space. “His son was one of the boys in my father’s…care. Yet he voted with us at the Landsmeet. A pragmatic switch, or a deeper game?”
Beside her, Kerr leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning in protest. He’d swapped the nursery’s soft tunic for a severe grey doublet, the Warden-Commander’s griffon pinned at his shoulder. “Pragmatism born of fear. He saw which way the wind blew after Loghain’s head hit the floor. Doesn’t mean he likes the breeze.”
A shadow detached itself from the archway leading to the private anteroom. Ignacio moved with a silent, fluid grace that still seemed out of place amidst Ferelden’s straightforward hustle. The Antivan spy, now their Spymaster, laid a leather folio on the table beside the map. His smile was a knife-slash. “He does not. His correspondence, retrieved from a courier who suffered a regrettable riding accident near the West Hill, is quite illuminating. He believes the ‘feral dog-lords’ will inevitably tear each other apart. He positions himself as the sane, Orlesian-cultured alternative for when the…chaos subsides.”
“Charming,” Kerr muttered.
“Where’s Zevran?” Anora asked, not looking up from the folio.
“Pollinating the more delicate flowers of your court, Your Majesty,” Ignacio said smoothly. “A comely lady-in-waiting to a certain Bann’s wife has loose lips after a certain…application of charm. The information is consistent. The allegiance is not to Empress Celene herself, but to the idea of Orlais. To fashion, to commerce, to a perceived superiority that our dear Banns Alfric, Perth, and Mersey find intoxicating. They are not traitors in the classic sense. They are…aspirational.”
Kerr scoffed. “They aspire to be boot-licks.”
“Precisely. And a boot-lick,” Anora said, finally looking up, her eyes sharp, “is very difficult to convict of treason. Their money flows to Orlesian merchants, not chevalier captains. Their sons study at the University of Orlais, not war camps. They host salons praising Orlesian wine and mocking our ale. It is a cultural rot, not a military plot.”
“Then we treat it like rot,” Kerr said, leaning forward, his elbows on the table. “We cut it out. Not with a cleaver. With a scalpel.”
Ignacio’s eyes glittered. “My thoughts exactly. A public purge would only martyr them, turn them into symbols of ‘tyrannical’ Ferelden resentment. We must be surgeons. We remove the infection, and the body—the kingdom—must heal so seamlessly it never knows it was sick.”
He flipped open the folio. “We begin with the sons. Second and third sons, mostly. The ones with ambition but no direct inheritance. They are being groomed as perfect little Orlesian agents, placed in key financial and social positions.” He tapped a page. “We offer them a…redirected path. A great honor.”
Kerr caught on instantly. “Conscription. But not as punishment. As prestigious appointment.”
“Exactly. The younger son of Bann Perth has a head for numbers and a taste for fine uniforms. We invite him, with great fanfare, to join the royal treasury guard. A position of immense trust, close to the crown.” Ignacio’s smile widened. “It is, of course, a desk in a windowless room where he will count nails for the army, under the watch of a devoted veteran. His correspondence will be monitored. His access, curated. He will be an honored prisoner.”
Anora nodded, a spark of cold approval in her gaze. “And Bann Mersey’s brother, the one with the violent temper and the dubious dueling accolades. He fancies himself a warrior.”
“The Templar Order is always seeking strong, devoted men,” Kerr finished, the idea taking shape. “We recommend him highly to Knight-Commander Greagoir. The strictures of the Order will keep him isolated, his movements controlled. His zeal can be directed at demons, not Orlesian fashions.”
“It must seem their own idea, or the natural flow of reward,” Anora stressed. “A personal letter from you, Kerr, praising their qualities. An invitation they cannot refuse without insulting the crown. They enter our custody smiling.”
Ignacio produced another sheet. “Simultaneously, we attack the wealth. The Hewitt method proved effective.” He referred to a minor noble house whose illicit lyrium trade had been “discovered” by happenstance, leading to swift confiscation and social ruin. “Bann Alfric’s fortune is rooted in the timber trade. His contracts with Orlesian shipbuilders in Jader are exceptionally favorable…to Orlais. A series of misfortunes can be arranged. A fire in a primary mill. The sudden, aggressive poaching of his best lumberjacks by a rival—a rival we quietly subsidize. Most elegantly, the loss of a shipment.”
Kerr raised an eyebrow. “Pirates?”
“The Waking Sea is notoriously treacherous. A vessel bearing his most valuable summer-cut oak, destined for an Orlesian port, could find itself…waylaid. The cargo sold discretely in Antiva or the Free Marches. The profit funneled back to your coffers, naturally. Alfric’s Orlesian partners will demand compensation he cannot provide. His credibility, and his liquidity, evaporates.”
The plan unfolded, layer by surgical layer. They would orchestrate public scandals—a lord’s fondness for rigged gambling uncovered at the wrong moment, a hidden addiction to rashvine tea “leaked” by a disgruntled servant. They would strategically fund and arm rival, loyalist banns to economically squeeze the target regions. It was a symphony of subtle sabotage.
“The goal is not to make them disappear,” Anora summarized, her voice a low hum of power. “It is to make them irrelevant. To hollow them out so completely that when we finally move for public censure or land seizure, their own neighbors will shrug and nod. They will be seen as failed, corrupt, and foolish—not as persecuted patriots.”
The chamber door swung open silently. Zevran Arainai slipped in, smelling of rosewater and intrigue. He gave a flourishing, utterly insincere bow. “My apologies for the delay. The lady’s chatter was as extensive as it was…enlightening. It seems Bann Perth’s wife is terribly upset about the impending appointment of her son to the treasury. She called it a ‘brutish posting.’ She was much more forthcoming once she’d…vented her frustrations.”
He dropped a small, perfumed note onto the map, right over the black pin marking Perth’s lands. “She confirms the son is carrying on a correspondence with an Orlesian comptress. Love letters, full of dull financial metaphors and treasonous comparisons of our beloved Ferelden to a ‘quaint, muddy backwater.’ The usual.”
Kerr let out a short, sharp laugh. “Perfect. We intercept the next one. Let it ‘accidentally’ fall into the hands of a popular satirical broadsheet in Denerim. Let him be a laughingstock before he’s even a prisoner.”
Anora stood, pressing her palms flat on the oak. The dragon and griffon sigils above her seemed to shift in the angled light. “Then we begin. Ignacio, you’ll draft the initial commendations for the sons. Make them glow. Zevran, coordinate with your…contacts in the ports. The Windward , Alfric’s ship, leaves Amaranthine in a fortnight. It should not arrive.”
She turned to Kerr. “And you, my love, will host a hunt. Invite Alfric, Perth, and Mersey. Praise their loyalty. Speak of the future. Make them feel secure, admired, and utterly blind.”
Kerr met her gaze, the mischievous glint in his eye now honed to a cold, sharp edge. He gave a slow, deliberate nod. “A hunt it is. We’ll run the foxes to ground, and they’ll thank us for the privilege.” He stood, his frame towering, his shadow falling across the black pins on the map. “Let’s get to work.”
“Let’s get to work.”
The hunt was a masterpiece of political theater. Kerr rode at the head of the party, a king playing the genial host amidst the damp green of the Hinterlands. Banns Alfric, Perth, and Mersey preened in their new-fangled Orlesian hunting silks, their laughs too loud, their bows overly ornate. They were flush with the perceived honor of his personal invitation.
Kerr watched them, a smile plastered on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. He played his part perfectly. He clapped Alfric on the shoulder, praised Perth’s son’s “sharp mind” for the treasury post, and listened with apparent fascination to Mersey’s tedious story of a boar hunt in the Dales. All the while, his own veteran hunters, men and women who moved through the woods like ghosts, were driving the game—a magnificent, pre-cornered stag—directly toward the unprepared lords.
The stag, confused and panicked, burst from a thicket not twenty paces from Bann Mersey’s nervous gelding. The horse shied, Mersey fumbled his shot, and the arrow whistled harmlessly into the dirt. In the same moment, Kerr’s own arrow, loosed with practiced ease, took the beast cleanly through the heart.
“A fine shot, Your Majesty!” Alfric cried, his voice tinged with relief. “You saved us from a nasty spill.”
“Just keeping the field clear for my guests,” Kerr said, his tone warm. He dismounted, his knees popping, and knelt by the fallen stag. “A true prize. The antlers will look splendid in the hall at Highever, don’t you think? A reminder of today’s… fruitful cooperation.” He looked up at the three Banns, his green eyes holding a glint that could have been camaraderie or a predator’s satisfaction. They only saw the former.
While Kerr hosted his hunt, Ignacio’s network hummed. The finely penned commendations for the noble sons were dispatched, received with thrilled, greedy anticipation. Zevran’s “friends” in the city印刷局 ensured a particularly juicy, anonymously-sent love letter from Bann Perth’s son found its way not to his Orlesian comptress, but to the desk of a notoriously vicious satirical pamphleteer.
The poem comparing Ferelden’s rugged charm to “a drunkard’s stained jerkin” was in circulation within three days. By week’s end, the young man was a laughingstock in the taverns, his proud appointment to the treasury now viewed as a pitiful exile. His father’s political capital bled out with every chuckled recitation.
The Windward left port on schedule, its hold heavy with Alfric’s finest, straight-grained oak. Off the coast of Apostate’s Wake, the weather turned suspiciously, unnaturally foul. A squall appeared from a clear sky, forcing the ship toward a treacherous cluster of sea stacks. Awaiting it there was not rocks, but the Siren’s Call, its captain a dark-haired woman with a sharp smile and eyes that missed nothing.
Isabela took the ship without losing a single crewman, her boarding action a swift, clinical ballet of non-lethal takedowns and very convincing blade-point negotiations. The oak was hers, per the contract funneled through a complex web of Antivan financiers. She also took the ship’s log and the captain’s private correspondence, which included detailed notes on Alfric’s increasingly desperate pleas for extended credit from his Orlesian partners. The Windward limped into port a fortnight later, its crew telling tales of a phantom storm and cursed cargo, its hold empty. Alfric’s financial ruin was now a mathematical certainty, not a threat.
They reconvened in the same Council Chambers weeks later, the map transformed. The three black pins were gone. In their place were simple, unmarked green ones. The political infection had been excised.
Ignacio slid a final report across the polished oak. “Perth’s son is currently auditing the kingdom’s expenditure on spoons. He attempted to write a plea to his comptress, but it was intercepted by his new supervisor—a dwarf with no patience for poetry or treason. The son now spends his evenings copying ledgers in triplicate.”
Zevran, idly polishing a dagger, added, “Mersey’s brother took his zeal to the Templars in Starkhaven. Last I heard, he attempted to critique the Knight-Commander’s ‘uninspired’ chantry decor. He is currently scrubbing the latrines with a toothbrush. A holy toothbrush, one assumes.”
“And Alfric?” Anora asked, her voice calm.
“Bankrupt,” Kerr said, leaning against the table. The hunt’s genial mask was gone, replaced by a cold, satisfied fatigue. “His creditors from Orlais have called in his debts. He’s defaulting on his taxes to the crown. We can seize his lands for delinquency next month. It will look like fiscal accountability, not political reprisal. His neighbors are already distancing themselves, calling him a poor manager.”
Anora surveyed the map, the clean field of green and gold. A serene, quiet victory. The rot was cut out, the body politic healing without a visible scar. The only sound was the crackle of the fireplace and the distant, muted clamor of the palace beyond.
She let out a long, slow breath, the tension of the past weeks finally draining from her shoulders. She placed a hand flat on the map, over the heart of Ferelden. Then she turned to Kerr.
“There’s one more piece of intelligence,” she said, her tone shifting, becoming private, almost hesitant. It was a tone he rarely heard from her.
He looked at her, alert. “What is it?”
A small, unreadable smile touched her lips. She glanced at Ignacio and Zevran. “Gentlemen, would you give us the room? This is a… royal matter.”
Understanding flashed in Ignacio’s eyes. He bowed swiftly, ushering a curious Zevran out with him. The heavy oak door closed with a solid thud, sealing them in the quiet, sun-warmed chamber.
Kerr pushed off from the table, taking a step toward her. “Anora? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she said, and her smile grew more certain, touching her eyes. She reached out and took his large, calloused hand in both of hers. She guided his palm away from the map on the table, away from the kingdoms and the plots, and placed it gently, firmly, against the soft wool of her dress, low on her abdomen.
He froze. His eyes, a moment ago sharp with strategic calculus, went wide, then soft. He searched her face, his breath catching.
“The twins will need a spare,” she said quietly, her voice thick with an emotion she seldom let surface. “It seems… our strategy sessions have borne unexpected fruit.”
For a long moment, he just stood there, his hand spread over her stomach, his enormous frame perfectly still. The world of pins and plots dissolved. Then he sank to one knee before her, not in fealty, but in awe, his forehead coming to rest against hers right there amidst the scattered reports of ruined men and salvaged kingdoms. He didn’t speak. He just knelt, his shoulders beginning to shake with a silent, overwhelming relief.