the trek up to the inquisitor’s chambers is a long and arduous one. there are unfinished hallways that still gape, mouth-like, out upon the freezing mountain air. there are wooden stairs that creak beneath even the slightest of weight - - - and a great many of them, too, rickety and uneven. there are a multitude heavy doors that must be heaved open and which creak on their rusted hinges when you do so. ALL OF THIS TO SAY - ESYLLT HAD KNOWN SOMEONE WAS COMING. most are not allowed to pass by the guards who stand at the very first door off of the grand hall and should those ones be felled there would likely be a great clamor from below, so esyllt had not stopped in her diligent task of sitting at her desk and staring exhausted at the several neat stacks of PAPERWORK upon it.
a request for more ELFROOT SEEDS is in her hands when that final door CREAKS open, but whoever it is must climb a final set of stairs up into her chambers proper for her to see who it is. there is no use in looking up from the paper - now back on the desk and quill in hand instead to write an approval for the funds to send for more seeds, or if that cannot be done to let her know so she might collect more next she leaves skyhold. when she looks back up it is the face of THE WARDEN hawke had brought here.
WELL - - - he is more than that. a figure of LORE in ferelden. she had heard his name murmured in ostwick as well, but it is spoken far more often here, etched in the stone bases of statues dedicated to the clutch who had stopped the last blight ; LELIANA’S FRIEND, most importantly, for anyone the spymaster trusts, esyllt does as well.
“warden,” she greets without standing as the page is shuffled to the side beside a stack of papers she has already looked over and written responses to and are ready to be sent back out to wherever they must go. the next paper in her TO DO stack is a list of names in cullen’s hand and esyllt does not want to know if it is a list of the DEAD or a list of those she must KILL. it remains in place and esyllt looks instead at alastair with a shade of a smile, “please pardon the mess, i was not expecting company.”
@theireign