Chapter 31: Next order of business
The air in Orzammar’s council chamber was cool and still, carrying the scent of deep stone and a faint, sharp tang of lyrium from the runes etched into the black marble walls. Anora sat at the head of the long table, a stack of reports before her, the weight of the unborn heir a constant, grounding pressure. Kerr paced, his bulk making the space feel smaller, the torches guttering in his wake.
“It’s not poverty,” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in the stone. He stopped and placed both hands flat on the table, leaning over a scroll map of Denerim. “Anyone can be poor. This is… engineered. It’s the rich pissing on the poor and calling the stain a preservation of culture.”
Anora looked up, her expression unreadable. “Explain.”
“The Alienage.” He jabbed a thick finger at the map, at the walled-off section near the city’s docks. “They call it a community. It’s a pen. A quarantine. The walls aren’t to keep them safe, they’re to keep the ‘good’ people of Denerim from having to look at the squalor they created. They live in rotting wood tenements that would be condemned for livestock, pay exorbitant ‘wardship’ fees to human landlords who never repair a leaking roof, and their only crime is a thousand-year-old grudge nobody alive today even started. It’s not a culture, it’s a crime scene. And I’m done being polite about it.”
He pushed the map toward her and straightened, rolling the tension from his shoulders. “I want to tear the gates off their hinges. Literally. I want to dissolve the legal fiction of the Alienage entirely. The land gets re-plotted. The shacks get demolished. And in their place, we build proper stone homes. With foundations. With drainage.”
Anora’s eyes, sharp as polished steel, scanned the proposal he’d drafted. It was blunt, legally thorough, and financially brutal on the current landlords. Her lips quirked. “Stone lodgings. Expensive. Our coffers are still groaning from the war, and now the Orlesian integration.”
“Which is why we don’t pay for it,” Kerr said, a flash of his old mischief breaking through. “Orzammar does.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Think about it. We’ve got a kingdom of the world’s best stonemasons and engineers right under our feet, literally. They need surface trade, legitimacy, lyrium contracts. We need durable, quick, and impressive construction. I draft the contracts, the Deshyrs bid on them. They get paid in sovereigns and political capital. We get a city rebuilt without lifting a hammer. The elves get homes that won’t collapse in a stiff wind. Everyone wins.”
“Except the landlords,” Anora said, a cold satisfaction in her tone.
“Especially the landlords.” Kerr’s smile was all teeth. “They lose their predatory income and get to watch the people they exploited get better housing than their own. It’s a public lesson.”
Anora was silent for a long moment, her fingers tracing the lines of the proposal. She thought of the boy in the Brecilian forest, of the hollow fear in his eyes traded for the quiet safety of the Dalish. She thought of her own children, safe in their castle beds. Then she thought of walls within walls, of systems of misery maintained for convenience. She nodded, once, decisive. “Call the advisors. The Arl of Denerim, the Bann of whatever that district is, and our own stewards. Now.”
The chamber filled with the rustle of velvet and the scent of nervous sweat. The advisors sat, confusion on their faces. The Arl of Denerim, a man whose flesh seemed to be slowly consuming his fine clothing, looked particularly uneasy.
Anora let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable. Then she gestured to Kerr. “The king has a policy announcement.”
Kerr didn’t stand. He remained leaning against the mantelpiece, a pillar of looming, casual authority. “We’re ending the Alienages. Starting with Denerim. The walls come down. The tenements come down. New housing, stone, designed by Orzammar engineers, will be built in their place. The elves living there will be granted full Fereldan citizenship, with all the rights and obligations therein. The ‘wardship’ system is abolished. Effective immediately.”
The Arl of Denerim, Bann Byrrell, sputtered. “Your Majesty, you can’t— the logistics, the unrest, the property rights—“
“Do you know a woman named Kallian Tabris?” Kerr’s voice cut through the man’s protest, quiet and deadly.
The question landed like a stone in a pond. The Arl blinked. “I… the name is… elven, is it not?”
“It is.” Kerr pushed off the mantle and began to walk slowly around the table. “City elf. Denerim Alienage. She was kidnapped on her wedding day by your predecessor, Arl Urien Kendells. His men took her, and her cousin Shianni. They were to be used for the Arl’s… entertainment.” The word dripped with venom. “Shianni was abused. Kallian fought her way out. Killed every man who stood between her and the door. She found Urien’s son, Vaughan, in the act. She cut his worthless head off and carried it with her to the palace gates to make her report.”
The chamber was frozen. A steward’s quill hovered above parchment, dripping ink.
“The Grey Wardens conscripted her shortly after. Saved her from the noose. So tell me, Bann Byrrell,” Kerr said, stopping behind the man’s chair, his hands resting on its high back. “When you talk of ‘property rights’ and ‘logistics,’ are you talking about the rights of men like Urien Kendells? The logistics of efficiently delivering elven women to noble rapists? Is that the culture you’re so keen to preserve behind those walls?”
The Bann had gone the color of sour milk. “Your Majesty, those… those were the actions of a depraved individual, not the system itself—“
“The system allowed it.” Kerr’s words echoed off the stone. He didn’t shout. “The system says they are less than people, locked away out of sight so you can pretend their suffering isn’t yours to answer for. Well, I’m answering for it. The gates come down. The houses go up. The contracts go to Orzammar. This happens.”
A steward, a timid man named Linly, found his voice. “The cost, Your Majesty, the treasury— perhaps a phased approach, starting with—“
“At what point,” Kerr interrupted, his voice dropping back to a conversational calm that was somehow more terrifying, “did I frame this as a request?”
He looked at each face in turn. “I am not asking for your counsel on whether this should be done. I am telling you what will be done. If I hear one pissant moan about the treasury, I’m going to start taking a closer look at every penny that comes from this court to your homes and I doubt either of us will like what I find. Do the right thing here, gentlemen. You don’t have a choice.”
He returned to his place beside Anora. The silence returned, thicker now, definitive. Anora leaned forward, her hands resting on the arms of her chair, her presence a cool counterpoint to Kerr’s fire.
“Bann Byrrell,” she said, her voice cutting the quiet like glass. “You will assemble the current landlords and inform them of the royal seizure of the Alienage lands for public works. They will be compensated at the assessed land value, minus a… recalculation of backdated wardship fees owed to the Crown for its oversight failure. I’m sure our accountants will find the math enlightening.”
She turned to the stunned stewards. “Draw up the contracts for Orzammar. Standard rates, plus a completion bonus for every month ahead of schedule. And draft the citizenship proclamations. We’ll announce it in Denerim ourselves, once the first gate is down.”
The meeting ended not with a dismissal, but with a gradual, defeated exodus of men who had just seen the world they knew dismantled with a few words. When the door thudded shut, the echo hanging in the air, Anora let out a long, slow breath.
She looked up at Kerr, who was staring at the map of Denerim, his jaw set. “Kallian Tabris,” she said softly. “You never mentioned her.”
The tension slid from Kerr’s shoulders as he turned from the map. “She didn’t like being talked about,” he said, a faint, respectful smile touching his lips. “Felt like tempting fate. But she moved like… shadow given purpose. You’ve never seen anything that fast. She’d flow around a greatsword swing from a Hurlock Alpha like it was standing still. Two daggers, just plink plink plink in the gaps of its armor, and down it’d go. Saw her scale an ogre’s back once, used its own horn as a handhold to drive a blade into its brain.”
He shook his head, the memory clear in his eyes. “It wasn’t just skill. It was a kind of anger, refined. She saved my life twice in the Deep Roads. Never said a word about it afterward.” He walked back to the table, his voice softening. “Preferred life in the shadows. Last I heard, she’s with Leliana in Val Royeaux. Probably teaching Orlesian chevaliers how to pick their own locks without noticing her.”
Anora listened, her political mind filing the details away—the ferocity, the loyalty, the value of such a person being owed a debt by the king. But her heart heard something else. She saw the boy in the forest again, and saw Kallian, another soul the world had tried to break against its walls. Kerr’s crusade wasn’t just policy anymore; it was personal, a mosaic of every injustice he couldn’t stop as a younger man.
“So you’re tearing down walls for her,” Anora stated quietly, not a question.
“For her. For the boy we left with the Dalish. For the next one,” Kerr said, his gaze dropping to her swollen abdomen. “I don’t want our kid reading a history where we saw a cage and called it a neighborhood.”
He watched her process it, the strategic implications warring with the simpler, human truth. A flicker of pain crossed her features, a hand going instinctively to her side. The baby kicked, a strong, rolling motion that made her breath hitch.
“Enough stone and politics for one day,” Kerr murmured. He moved around the table, the formidable bulk of him suddenly gentle. He extended a hand, calloused and scarred, palm up. “Come on. The advisors can sweat a while longer. Let’s go steal our children back from a dread mage.”
A faint, tired smile broke through her regal composure. “Aenerin will protest that he was educating them.”
“Probably teaching them to turn their stuffed toys into abominations,” Kerr grunted, but his eyes were warm.
She placed her hand in his, letting the solid strength of him pull her to her feet. They left the chill of the council chamber, the weighty silence giving way to the broader, lived-in echoes of the palace corridors. Their footsteps were unhurried, a private truce from the world of documents and decrees.
The palace gardens were a riot of defiant color against the grey stone, a concession Anora had insisted upon. The afternoon sun was warm here, smelling of damp soil and blooming roses. They found Aenerin near a bubbling fountain, cross-legged on the grass.
Bryce and Eleanor, just past two years old, were not with him. They were a dozen feet away, shrieking with laughter as a pair of translucent, shimmering arcane hounds—creations of softly pulsing blue light—bounded and tumbled for them. The dogs would fetch a soft ball, phase through a bench, and nuzzle the children’s hands with cold, gentle magic.
Aenerin looked up as they approached. “Before you ask, they are perfectly safe. The constructs are sustained by my will and have no teeth. They are learning about non-corporeal forms and kinetic energy transfer.”
“They’re learning that magic is more fun than napping,” Anora said, lowering herself carefully onto a stone bench with Kerr’s help.
Kerr just smirked, watching his son chase a spectral tail. “You’re a terrible nanny, you know that?”
“I am a magnificent nanny,” Aenerin corrected, flicking his wrist. One of the hounds leaped straight up into the air, did three perfect, glowing somersaults, and dissolved into a shower of harmless sparks that made Eleanor clap her hands. “See? Moral education through wonder.”
Bryce noticed his parents then and charged over, tiny legs pumping. He crashed into Kerr’s shins with a giggle. “Doggy gone!”
Kerr scooped him up, settling the boy against his hip with effortless ease. “The doggy went back to the Fade, buddy. It’s time for a snack that isn’t made of light.” He looked over at Anora, who had Eleanor in her lap now, the girl’s small head resting against the curve of her belly. “See? Normal family. No trembling nobles. No blood on the floor.”
Anora leaned her head against his arm, her fingers stroking Eleanor’s fine hair. She watched Aenerin dispel the other hound with a whisper, the garden returning to the sounds of bees and water. The reforms would be messy. There would be backlash, petitions, likely an assassination attempt or two. But here, in this sun-dappled moment, with the weight of her daughter in her lap and her son’s laughter in her ears, the path ahead felt simple, and true. It was worth every wall she’d ever have to break.