come home to roost
for DAKissWeek day 6 (belated): reunion. set mid-Inquisition, prior to the Arbor Wilds. leliana/zevran/warden.
There were assassins in Skyhold.
Guards were well and good, but Leliana knew how little challenge they could pose to one who was trained to avoid them—and her blindness had already cost the world Justinia; she could not fail again. It was a small thing, but vital, to survey the castle grounds throughout the day, to take flight from her rookery and slip along the rooftops, between walls, watching the places she knew to be most inviting to intruders.
The tower that housed the Inquisitor's quarters backed up to a sheer cliff face, which was the only reason Leliana had agreed to the masons' plans to postpone repairing the gaps in the outer walls: the structure was sound, Gatsi promised, and the openings were so high as to require significant time and effort to set up scaffolds and lifts, time which would have been taken away from Skyhold's defenses and roofs and other such safety hazards. The same height and inaccessibility that made them difficult to repair rendered them unappealing to potential intruders, at least in theory; anyone who wished to take advantage of the gaps would need to climb a frozen mountain face before tackling an equally inhospitable stone wall.
But there were traces of muddy snowmelt on the railings, a tiny ephemeral trail from a hole in the wall overlooking the mountains up to the stairwell—
Leliana was moving, springing off the stair rail to grab at the next landing, climbing faster than her feet could ever carry her. The Inquisitor wasn't in Skyhold, thanks be to the Maker, but there was no telling what other harm could be done by the Inquisition's enemies—and his family's rooms were just below—she could not allow it.
A shadow in the stairwell where none should be cast and her dagger was in her hand, muscles coiled to bowl over the assailant; if she could get their arms pinned under her bodyweight get a blade to their throat—but the assassin ducked under her strike, lithe as liquid night, and Leliana was already pivoting on her heel but not quick enough. Her target (small, slim, shorter than her but clearly at no disadvantage for it) pressed against her back, one hand slamming her wrist against the wall hard enough to send numbness dancing up and down her nerves, the other fisting in her hair. Their knees pressed against her own, pressure on the tendons so she couldn't hold her own weight, pinned by the assassin's hips and thighs against hers. She still had a hand free, just needed to reach, to get her second blade—
"Oh my," the assassin said, a low rumble into her hair and shaky with…laughter? "Such ferocity from such a lovely woman! Truly, you know how best to welcome me, my songbird."
Leliana slumped hard against the wall, her legs weak for an entirely different reason, and sighed, "Zevran."
Her hood had fallen at some point, and she felt the warm wash of his breath against her neck when he laughed again; he eased his weight back—not without a cheeky rock of his hips against her backside—and used his grip on her wrist to spin her under his arm like they were dancing at a fine Orlesian gala instead of in a drafty tower stairwell.
He bowed low to kiss her hand and press her knife back into her palm, hilt-first, the brown eyes she loved so fondly glittering with mirth, bits of golden hair falling loose from his dark hood. Unbearably handsome, pleasantly distracting, which was of course the point.
"You ought to come down, my love," Leliana said evenly into the dark. "I would hate for you to get splinters."
The second shadow peeled away from a beam overhead and landed lightly on the steps, slightly taller and broader but no less swift nor silent. "I used to spend my summers climbing through a whole copse of trees that had been split by mage-lightning, you know," said the shadow, who lowered her own dark hood to let her eyes and hair glint in the diffuse moonlight like fey-silver. "I challenge you to find a splinter that could best me."
"Mm, yes," Zevran crooned, straightening up from his bow. "The perils of a young heiress's education."
Eluned still moved with the poise of a princess but the silence of a predator, stalking down the stairs with a focus that set shivers up Leliana's spine. There, at the corner of her mouth, the scar that tugged at her upper lip, drawing it into a permanent coy smile, showing the barest glint of teeth before Ella angled herself to duck low and press a hard kiss unerringly to Leliana's jugular. Leliana tipped her head back to rest against the cool stone, her eyelids fluttering as she fought the reflex to close them against the scrape of teeth on her skin, the brush of lips as velvety as rose petals.
"I missed you," Eluned murmured into her skin. Zevran had shifted enough to give Ella room, but only used his new position to lean in and skim his own mouth in the soft place behind Leliana's ear.
How long had it been? Since before Kirkwall, easily. Three years of nothing but sporadic letters, all sweetness and no substance—nothing that could be used if intercepted, nothing Leliana could glean any real detail from, because the Champion of Kirkwall and her terrorist apostate had vanished into the hills with a renegade Crow and at least two Grey Wardens, and Leliana could no more betray her heart than she could betray the Most Holy. Three years of love trussed up in a blindfold.
Some horrid little knot in her heart slipped ever so slightly loose, and Leliana swallowed the urge to cry. "How are you here?" she asked, gaze turned up to the beams overhead.
Zevran tutted, pressed another kiss to her earlobe. "Business, business! You have the two most beautiful assassins in Thedas in your arms, and you ask, how did they come to be in my heavily-fortified castle? Do you not have the saying about gift hens and teeth?"
"Horses," Ella said, and slid up to nip at Leliana's mandible. "And I thank you to speak for yourself, amor. I am only paid to kill darkspawn."
Zevran's low laugh sent another shiver zinging through her spine, this time to coil in her stomach. "The rest is charity, yes."
It wasn't what she had meant at all—though the puzzle of how would certainly keep her busy—but—
Ella slipped a cool hand to the base of Leliana's skull, just enough pressure to force her gaze down: Ella's eyes were so steady, cold and sharp as steel, and they cut through Leliana just as well. "You need us, my heart," she said, with that same quiet conviction that had once commanded armies. "So we came."
—
By design an intelligence network involved a degree of anonymity, so the fact that no one in Skyhold had worked with the Nightingale's newest agents before was not a surprise. They were only truly noteworthy for the way they followed in Sister Nightingale's wake, scarves over their mouths and hair bound up in tight braids, white and gold bobbing along like a sun and moon drawn into Leliana's orbit.
(Zevran's Orlesian accent was comically terrible, and Ella sniffed every time another agent tried to address her as Jackie instead of Jackdaw, but the steady warmth that filled her breast whenever she remembered they stood at her back left Leliana in a better mood than she could remember.)
