Chapter 37: Brothers of the Grey.
The pull was a dull throb behind his breastbone, a string tied to a stone sinking in dark water. It led him away from the crumbling grandeur of Hightown, down through stairs that smelled of piss and stale beer, into the warren of Lowtown’s lower depths. Here, the scars of the Qunari siege were just more graffiti on top of old decay. The taint in his blood hummed, a low-frequency chord that resonated with only one other thing in this broken city.
He found the door tucked between a boarded-up chandlery and a forge that had gone cold. A faded, paint-chipped sigil of a mortar and pestle. He didn’t knock. He pushed it open.
The clinic was a sliver of order carved out of the squalor. Sunlight, thin and grudging, fought its way through a high, grimy window, illuminating floating motes of dust and dried elfroot. Shelves bowed under the weight of jars, bottles, and bundled herbs. The air was a complex layer-cake of lavender, sweat, boiled linen, and that undeniable, iron-rich scent of old blood. A sanctuary, yes, but one built on a foundation of pain.
Anders was at a rough-hewn table, his back to the door, head bent over a ragged map of Ferelden. His shoulders were tense wires under a worn leather coat. He didn’t turn.
“I wondered when you’d come tracking,” Anders said, his voice a rasp of tired amusement. “The great Warden bloodhound. I could feel you coming a mile off. Like a bad tune you can’t get out of your head.”
Kerr let the door swing shut, shutting out the alley’s din. “You left a pretty clear trail. A flaming crater where a chantry used to be tends to stand out.”
Anders finally swiveled on his stool. The years hadn’t been kind. The handsome, cynical healer from Vigil’s Keep was still there, but etched deeper, stretched thinner. His eyes held a fractured light, a blue that sometimes seemed to flicker from within. He looked at Kerr—really looked—and a genuine, weary smile touched his lips. “Still playing king, I see. The crown doesn’t suit you. Makes you look… responsible.”
“It itches like hell,” Kerr grunted, pulling up an empty crate and sitting. The crate complained under his weight. “Got any wine that isn’t vinegar?”
Anders reached beneath the table, producing a dusty bottle and two chipped clay cups. He poured a deep red. “Pinot Noir from the Denerim market. Stole it from a merchant who was charging refugees ten silvers for a loaf of bread.” He passed a cup to Kerr. “Consider it taxed.”
They drank in silence for a moment. The wine was good, surprisingly smooth. A taste of a different world.
“Vigil’s Keep feels like a lifetime ago,” Kerr said, staring into his cup.
“It was,” Anders replied. He traced a finger on the map, over the Frostback Mountains. “After the Mother… after that business was done, things changed. Justice and I… we argued.Constantly. About purpose.About methods. He saw compromise as a flaw.A corruption. I saw his rigidity as a death sentence.” He took a long swallow. “We were both right. And both very, very wrong.”
Kerr watched him. The way he said ‘we’ was singular, final. “What happened?”
Anders met his gaze, and for a second, the flicker in his eyes wasn’t metaphorical. A cool, blue-white light pulsed faintly in the depths of his irises. “We stopped arguing. At Vigil’s Keep, in the aftermath, with the darkspawn blood and the desperation… we found a… consensus.A merger. It’s not him and me anymore, Kerr. It’s just… me. A me who sometimes hears the song of the Black City as a demand for absolute justice. A me who sees a corrupt system and thinks the only clear path is to burn it to the ground and salt the earth.”
The admission hung in the herb-scented air. It explained everything—the fanaticism, the terrifying scale of the action, the dead eyes in a living face.
“Shit, Anders,” Kerr breathed, all the political platitudes drying up in his throat.
“Indeed.”
Kerr set his cup down with a sharp click. “You can’t stay here. You need to disappear. Today. Now.”
“I have patients—”
“You have a city full of people who’ve just buried their friends and sisters and children because of that stunt,” Kerr cut in, his voice low and blunt. “I’m no chantry flag-waver, you know that. But that was a lot of dead, Anders. Not just from the blast. From the chaos that followed. The templars are shattered, the city’s headless, and every seeker and fanatic from here to Val Royeaux is going to be looking for the apostate who lit the fuse. You’re a symbol now. Symbols get nailed to walls.”
Anders didn’t flinch. He just looked exhausted. “I know.”
“So come with me.”
That got a reaction. Anders blinked.“To Ferelden? To your court? Don’t be absurd.”
“Why? You’re a gifted healer. The best I’ve ever seen. A scholar. And, unfortunately, a Grey Warden, which puts you under my jurisdiction as much as anyone’s.” Kerr leaned forward, the crate groaning. “I’m not offering a favor to a friend. I’m offering a post to a strategic asset. The royal physician is a drunkard who thinks leeches cure broken hearts. Imagine what you could do with proper resources. A real infirmary.Research. You could change things on a scale bigger than this one sorry clinic.”
“I can’t be your pet revolutionary, Kerr. Tucked away in a castle, pulling favors, whispering in the king’s ear. It’s a gilded cage. Justice… I… would choke on the compromise.”
“Who said anything about gilded?” Kerr’s tone was pragmatic, hard. “It’s a fortress. With soldiers. And laws that I help write. The Ferelden Chantry is still rebuilding from the Blight; they don’t have the spine for a fight with the crown. The templars in Denerim answer to me and Teyrn Loghain’s girl, not some crazed knight-commander. They won’t touch you. You’d have protection, a platform, and real work to do. More than patching up knife fights and rat bites down here.”
He saw the conflict in Anders’ face, the war between the man who wanted to heal and the vengeful spirit that demanded pyres. The flicker behind his eyes waxed and waned.
“I can’t,” Anders said again, but it was weaker.
“You can. You’re choosing not to.” Kerr stood up, his head nearly brushing the low ceiling. He placed a heavy gold coin on the table beside the map—not a royal sovereign, but a grey, irregular disc of leadite, stamped with a griffon. A Warden’s seal. “Think about it. That’s all I ask. I sail on the evening tide. Be at the Dawn Runner, dock seven, if you want a way out that isn’t just running to the next dark alley.”
He moved to the door, then paused, looking back at the hunched figure in the dusty sunbeam. “You’re my friend, Anders. And you’re a fucking wreck. I won’t watch a fellow Warden—a man who stood with me against the Mother—live like a petty criminal, jumping at shadows until a templar sword finally finds his back. That’s not an end. It’s a waste.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He stepped out into the reeking alley, the taint in his blood quiet now, its purpose served. Behind him, in the silence of the clinic, a single, stained finger reached out and touched the edge of the leadite coin, turning it slowly on the parchment, the griffon catching the faint, dying light.