Chapter 38: Justice or Mercy
The salt-spray tasted like vindication and regret. Anders stood at the stern rail of the Dragon’s Embrace, a hunched, dark figure against the violent bruise-purple of the storm-chased sky. Kirkwall was a jagged silhouette of nightmares and memory, receding into the mist and the white-capped tumult of the Waking Sea. He hadn’t said much since he’d stepped onto the gangplank at the last possible moment, a single worn pack over his shoulder, his face turned away from the small group seeing them off.
Hawke had been there. A firm, wordless clasp of Kerr’s forearm, a look that carried the weight of a decade of shared shit. Isabela had blown a kiss, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. Varric had just shaken his head, a gesture that said good luck, you’ll need it, don’t fuck it up. They were his friends. Anders’s too, once. It was a messy, painful severance. Necessary, but it left a raw edge.
Kerr moved to the rail beside him, the deck heaving beneath his boots. The wind ripped at his cloak. “They’ll be alright. Lands, titles, Varric’s scandalous storytelling… they’ll turn that city inside out. In a good way.”
Anders didn’t look at him. “I left them to clean up the rubble. My rubble.”
“They’re choosing to build with it. That’s on them.” Kerr gripped the wet wood, leaning into the ship’s roll. “You made your choice. Now you have to live with it. Which brings me to the next unpleasant bit.”
That got Anders’s attention. He turned his head, his eyes guarded.
“Your passenger,” Kerr said, his voice low, almost lost in the whip-crack of the sails. “Justice. He’s along for the ride, I get that. You’re a package deal now. But in my court, under my protection, he will need to be…curbed.”
A flicker of that cold blue light danced in Anders’s gaze, a brief surge before it was banked. “You think it’s that simple?”
“I think we fought beside him at Vigil’s Keep. I swung a blade next to a spirit of the Fade and called him comrade. I know he respects duty. And chain of command. He and I, we understand each other.” Kerr shifted, facing Anders fully. “My presence quiets him, doesn’t it? The Warden taint… it’s a rhythm he recognizes. A purpose that isn’t just annihilation.”
Anders was silent for a long moment, the wind howling around them. Finally, he gave a short, sharp nod. “It… helps. Like a steady beat in a chaotic song. He listens. To you.”
“Good. Then he’ll listen to this.” Kerr’s tone left no room for debate. It was the voice of the Teryn’s son, the Warden-Commander, the King’s right hand. “The Circle of Magi, as it stands, is done in Ferelden. In practice, if not yet on some musty Chantry scroll. It’s a prison that breeds the very desperation it fears. We’re dismantling it.”
Anders stared, the first real spark of something besides weary defeat in his face. Shock. Hunger.
“But,” Kerr continued, holding up a hand, “we are not setting a torch to the whole idea of safety. You of all people know why. I saw what uncontrolled magic can do at Kinloch Hold. You lived it with Karl. The citizens of Ferelden have a right to sleep without fearing a neighbor’s nightmares will literally set their house on fire.”
“So you’ll just rebrand the prison? Call it a school and post nicer guards?”
“No.” The word was final. “The Templar Order will be severed from the Chantry. Completely. It becomes a separate school, a military order dedicated to one thing only: the combat of maleficarum. True abominations. Blood mages who prey on the unwilling. Their mandate is protection, not custody. They will have no authority over a mage who hasn’t broken the one law we will have: do no harm.”
He let that sink in, watching the calculations spin behind Anders’s eyes.
“And the mages?” Anders asked, his voice tight.
“Will need instruction. Guidance. A path toward shouldering the burden of their gift without it crushing them or everyone around them.” Kerr leaned in closer, the words meant for him alone against the roar of the sea. “I need someone to design that path. To build that school. Not a Circle. A… Collegium. Where the first lesson isn’t about fear, but control. Where the final exam isn’t a Harrowing in some dark chamber, but a demonstration of mastery over one’s own power. Where apprentices who can’t find their balance have mentors, not jailers.”
Anders laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “And you want me? The abomination? The terrorist? To be the headmaster?”
“I want the man who healed an entire refugee camp with nothing but elfroot and stubbornness. The scholar who knows every weakness in the Circle’s design because he lived them. The healer who, even with a spirit of vengeance screaming in his head, still gets up every day to stitch up the wounded.” Kerr’s gaze was unflinching. “Yes. I want you. To head the project. To build something that doesn’t exist yet. Something better.”
The ship plunged into a deep trough, sending a wall of cold spray over them. Anders swayed, gripping the rail, his knuckles white. The conflict in him was a physical thing—the set of his jaw, the tremor in his hands, the brief, shuddering glow that pulsed from his chest and died just as quickly.
“Justice…” Anders began, hesitating.
“Justice wants a world where mages aren’t made into monsters by the system meant to contain them,” Kerr stated firmly. “This is how we build that world. Brick by brick. Law by law. It’s not a grand gesture. It’s hard, ugly, tedious work. It’s committees and funding and dealing with noble assholes who’d rather see every mage Tranquil. It’s compromise. But it’s a compromise that moves the damn needle.”
He put a massive hand on Anders’s rain-soaked shoulder. “Help me move it. Help me build the thing you wished you’d had. Be the First Enchanter of something that doesn’t suck.”
Anders looked from Kerr’s hand to his face, then back towards the vanished shore of Kirkwall, where his past lay in ruins. When he looked back, his eyes were clear, only his own. The blue was just blue. Tired, haunted, but present.
“Alright,” he said, the word barely audible. Then, stronger, laced with a familiar, weary irony. “But I’m not wearing robes.”