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“Why is there a dead person in my study?”
There was quietness in the room instead of an answer. Celene kept her eyes firmly fixed on the mangled body draping over her desk, though there was an impetuous impulse to roll them with distinct fondness. When silence reigned still, she ventured again.
“Allow me rephrase: who killed the dead noble in my study?”
It was, of course, a rhetorical question of sorts. There were three people with access to her study; herself, Fleur and Morrigan. Celene, ruthless arrangements aside, had not personally practised this specific skill set of hers in some time. Fleur would have informed her immediately. That left Morrigan, no matter how unlikely it was.
The dark-haired witch, dressed in a flattering red velvet and dark taffeta dress, remained quiet at Celene’s question.
Of course, besides the keys on their persons, there was another way to enter the locked study. But collecting Halla statues to slot into precise and weighted shelves was not exactly an intuitive process. Celene knew of only one person who knew the combinations of the rooms as well as she did, and her former spymaster would not divulge the palace’s secrets so carelessly.
Especially not with the intent to attack such a low-hanging noble.
Yannis Allard was rather inconsequential in all things; not overly rich, not overly intelligent, and certainly not overly powerful. He was, however, a bit of a braggart due to his, supposedly, handsome looks. Celene herself was rather… immune to them, but she guessed that if one were to look at him objectively, there was something there.
Though, perhaps, not today.
The mangled body was rather grotesque, she observed coolly. The man’s golden locks were caked in blood, dripping unto the floor due to his head hanging over the back of her desk. The pretty grey eyes were unmistakably wide with fear, his last moments likely spent in agony. His full lips were open in disbelief, although it was perhaps the sliced, hanging jaw that made it look so. What killed him, however, were the gaping slashes across his main arteries; one deep in his groin followed by another to the armpit and a final blow to his carotid in the neck.
The slashes had been executed carelessly and quickly, with no regard to the blood spray that would ensue. Her bookshelves were sprinkled red, not to mention the river of blood that drenched her now ruined desk. Even the ceiling was dotted with bloodstains. The very air smelled metallic. It would take weeks to get the blood off the marble.
It appeared not to be the work of a professional but of someone knowledgeable enough to know where to hit. How curious.
“Morrigan?” she prodded the Witch again.
As the only other person in the room, she should have known when Celene asked a question in that particular tone, it demanded an answer.
“I am bereft of answers, your majesty,” the witch sounded sincere, yellow eyes calmly drifting over the scene, “but you can see that the body, twisted as it may be, does not appear to have been done in by magic.”
“Perhaps not.”
She conceded to nothing and Morrigan noticed it well, the yellow eyes narrowing with a mild accusation that would have caused nearly anyone else to be on the receiving end of a stinging rebuke from the empress.
“You know of my skills with any type of blade, Celene, ‘tis not nearly enough to do this.” The witch’s skill was rather abysmal, Celene privately agreed, but one need not have skill to do something like this. “Aside that, I would have rid myself of the body.”
That was a much better defence.
“Hm.” Celene hummed, somewhat satisfied, and walked further into the room, taking care for her dress not to come in contact with the blood on the floor.
The Witch leaned against the doorway, the clink of skirt hitting the golden adornments of the door carelessly.“You think someone has found the Halla statues?”
“If it was not you..." she let the phrase hang in the air.
“‘Twas not,” Morrigan insisted, this time her heeled boots making a racket across the floor.
Celene kept her gritted teeth to herself.“Then we have to consider such a possibility.” The empress took a step closer to the body and observed the twisted way the body was displayed and, at the second deeper glance, it evoked something in her. “Strangely enough, this reminds me of a performance a couple of years back; ‘Twisted Dance’.”
“A performance?”
“Yes,” Celene affirmed, observing the perfect line slashed across the noble’s throat with a private hum. She had been wrong; this was no amateur.“About five, perhaps six, years ago, there was a performance at the Imperial Palace. The artist, encased in a transparent cube-like structure, daringly twisted his body in a dance so impossible that I thought, several times over, that he had to be dead. As he twisted further, he applied a rather intriguing technique by orchestrating to ostentatiously break his own body, mangling it and spraying blood across the stage constructed for him. He was fine, ultimately, and had somehow used magic to show his piece. It was meant as an allegory for the pressures of society, of one twisting himself to fit the mould built for each of us.”
She sneaked a look at Morrigan with a smile she did not try to disguise. The Witch did not look the slightest bit intrigued, the poor creature, but made sure to listen to her even as she might be spewing nonsense. She rather liked that about the witch; the way she never let anything pass beyond her keen eyes or attentive ears, always looking for an advantage or for a cheap piece of gossip she could weaponize. Celene's eyes returned to the body for a second, breaking the enchantment that sometimes came over her, before continuing.
“Of course, the nobility was not truly able to look past the spectacle and focused on the bloody mess he left behind. There was shock, some faints, even something of a riot for a short couple of hours. It, naturally, became all the rage for a few months.”
Briala had loved the piece, having watched the salon from a balcony with some other servants, and they had talked of the artist's brilliance for hours afterwards.
Morrigan, despite quite the keen intellect and interest for the more golden things in life, was bound to be less fond.
There, a lovely sneer on the witch’s face. “Orlesians.”
Celene chuckled quietly, finally stepping away from the body. Unsurprisingly, Morrigan despised much of Orlesian life with the high melodrama, vain nobles and the impossibly complicated and twisting Game they all played. Yet, there was no denying that the Witch was something of a natural at their little games; with her mysterious effect, stinging rebukes ready to go, and an innate sense of self that drove Orlesians mad trying to figure out the twisting paths of what they were sure was a mask Morrigan put on. Her prickly advisor only needed some directions towards the right nobles to excel at court.
Celene was rather… ‘enamoured’ was too strong a word when the part of her heart she dedicated to such sentimentally was perpetually occupied by her former lover. (Her heart, as always, squeezed in chest momentarily at the thought of her, but Celene pushed her firmly out of her head.) ‘Enchanted’, perhaps, was an apt word for her fascination with Morrigan.
“Actually, it was a Nevarran artist," she corrected, fondly, "quite talented, too.”
“Hm,” Morrigan eyed the scene a final time. “What are you going to do?”
“About Yannis? Nothing.” Celene stepped away from the room, closing it behind her, Morrigan following behind leisurely. “Until we find out more, there is not much I can do. I will have Couteau clean the study and disseminate some information about him that will favour one of my allies. He has some connections to Gaspard, but not overly so. Still, I can destroy his house and elevate one of mine.”
They stepped into the main corridors of the palace; one side filling with mirrors and the other filling with windows showing the expansive gardens of the winter palace and the rolling hills beyond it. Further ways south, Celene knew rested the city of Halamshiral, and even months after that damned rebellion, her heart still ached whenever her eyes would to turn towards it.
Morrigan broke the companionable silence.
“I shall not be going to your fête tonight, Celene,” the witch warned, her face twisting slightly as they enjoyed the casual walk through the palace’s sunset lit corridors, “I will be with Kieran. I have not seen him since I arrived.”
Morrigan’s son was, truthfully, a delight during this bleak time. Celene had met the boy during one of Morrigan’s absences when Kieran had attempted to transform into a crow without his mother present, causing a misstep from the boy, and it had led him to seek the empress out as the one who could find his mother and help him. The boy had spent three miserable days hiding in her chambers for fear someone would find him in the painful and incriminating state of mid-transformation he was on, and they had… bonded. Ever since, whenever Morrigan was away, she made sure to spend some time with the boy, whose company she had come to enjoy.
“Of course,” she conceded easily. She turned slightly to smirk a little at her sorceress, “Give the boy my love, and tell him I will eagerly await your departure so we can enjoy each other’s company again without your motherly interference.”
The witch scoffed, and Celene privately preened at the obvious restraint she was making to not glare at her. “You will spoil him.”
“He should be spoiled,” she argued, “a little, at least. He is a child in a dangerous environment. He should be able to have a little enjoyment, no?”
Morrigan’s eyes, usually as blank as an empty page, were shining brightly at that. She could never truly hide her love for her son. It was… endearing. “Yes. I suppose so.” It took only a few more steps before asked, coyly, “Have you admitted defeat when it comes to Kieran’s father?”
Ever since she had found out, Celene had been trying to guess who Kieran’s father was, making a game out of it. She had invented wild tales, using her training as a bard to even put them into poem-like structures if only to annoy Morrigan. By her calculations, the boy was born one year-ish after the Fifth Blight, and after spending time with the boy his parentage became clear, but she had allowed Morrigan the secret.
Still, she did not enjoy being poked unless she specifically asked for it.
“It is King Alistair of Ferelden, correct?”
Morrigan did not stop or stare wide-eyed at Celene. She was far too prideful for that. But she did curse, and her teeth ground together with barely restrained anger. She was rather beautiful like that, in all her wild glory.
“How did you know?”
“I have met the man, you realise? Kieran has his laughter, although luckily not the propensity to laugh at his own jokes.”
Morrigan sighed as they rounded the corner. They were almost at the entrance of the ballroom, and their conversation turned vaguer, pronouns replaced names, and Empress Celene slowly made her appearance.
“He is who he is.”
“Ah, but Morrigan, him? Truly? I confess myself… disappointed.”
They both greeted Lord Gratien with a nod, and Celene accepted a smile from Solange and a disguised wink from Cyril with a slight turn of her head. Fleur and Colombe approached her sides while Coteau was already travelling towards the mess in her study.
“It is a long story,” Morrigan argued, with what Celene knew to be a slightly reluctant edge to it.
“You can tell your tale for us later tonight,” she said, making sure to flash Morrigan a grin.
She delighted in the way some nobles openly gaped at her, whispers started almost immediately. She enjoyed playing with dangerous things, and right now, there was no one in her court more dangerous than Morrigan. She delighted in scandalising the nobles and turning them around by the end of the night. It was how she did some of her best work.
The witch rolled her eyes. “Fine. After, I shall go to your chambers. I have some things to share from my travels.”
Celene pushed her shoulders to relax even as her spine straightened to steel; the picture perfection of calm. “Perfect, Morrigan. We look forward to it.”
And just like that, Empress Celene entered the ballroom with casual grace, her smile firmly in place as she greeted the same familiar faces.
Morrigan would never admit it, but she did enjoy these brief respites with the empress. The woman was intelligent, argumentative but willing to listen, eager to learn that which she did not understand. Morrigan had found that if more people displayed such willingness, a strong enough will to admit that wished to learn more and the implicit admitance of ignorance, then maybe the world would be a different place. Compounding her findings, Kieran happened to like her as well, as he’d told her again tonight just before she put him to sleep. Celene was kind and lent him all the books he could ever want, she taught him how to speak Orlesian and how to disguise himself in plain sight, and, more importantly perhaps, how to break into the kitchen to steal a sweet treat.
Privately, Morrigan suspected that Keiran's affection was more because Celene was far more indulgent with him than Morrigan was. But she was tasked with going away more and more often, part of her was glad that the empress kept a close eye on him nonetheless.
Morrigan rounded the corner of where the empress was spending her nights at the Winter Palace - which was far away from the royal wing, at the moment, due to countless assassination attempts - and approached the high, heavy doors of the hall that led to the empress's apartments. Celene was expecting her and there was no one at the door impeding her way, and she entered the room with a quiet knock.
She did not expect the sight that awaited her.
First, she spotted a tray with a bottle of wine, as was customary for their talks, a vintage that likely would cost more money than Morrigan had ever seen in her life before coming to Orlais. Then, she noticed the other two women in the room; Celene standing in a more casual dress and a young, lithe elven maiden, her wrist firmly in Celene’s hand.
The girl had sun-kissed skin, an obvious tan compared to both herself and Celene. Her eyes were big and dark, almost like a chestnut, freckles dotted all across her face. And her curls were the colour of cinnamon, filtering to a light red due to the candles. She bore a striking resemblance to the empress’ former spymaster - former lover, as far too many people suspected of the pair - and if not for the obvious younger age, Morrigan would have thought the girl was Briala.
“Come, Morrigan, sit” the empress called, and the girl trembled in her grip.
Morrigan entered the room and quietly sat on the surprisingly comfortable beige sofa, looking over at the empress and the petite elf.
The empress' hand was still tight around the girl’s wrist. “What is your name?”
“Selene,” the girl answered, voice wobbling, “with an ‘S’.”
“Selene with an ‘S’,” the empress doled out the name, the sibilant quality of her voice making the girl tremble. The empress gentled her voice as she took notice of it, “How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
Morrigan watched as a flicker of something - regret, guilt, anger, maybe a combination of all? - passed through Celene’s eyes and the empress quickly let go of the elven girl’s wrist.
“I see,” she sounded tired, “tell me then, why did you kill Yannis?”
The girl’s eyes were wide. “H-How did you know?”
“Your hands are rough from dagger work, there is a splinter of blood in your necklace, you noticed the halla statuette in my table with an air of fearful recognition, and when I asked if you ever saw one you panicked far too quickly. Not to mention, I have not seen you before today, Selene.”
Celene was far too observant for the girl to fool.
“I-I was cleaning around the study, your majesty, when Lord Allard approached me. At first, we were just talking and he was nice, but he started-” Morrigan clenched her teeth as the girl almost started to sob, “He started to-” the girl would not continue.
Celene softened further, practically mellowing to the floor, and offered the girl a glass of whatever wine was in the tray the girl had brought over. “Here, drink.” The girl took the glass but did not drink, and Morrigan almost snorted at the blatantness of it all. Celene surely noticed as well, but merely continued to question the girl. “I understand your meaning, please jump ahead, if you wish.”
The girl nodded, eyes a little vacant and turned downward. “Yes. I knew about the halla, a s-servant girl told me, so I said to him I knew a place where he could--... I got the door open and we went in and-... And you know the rest.”
It was a bad cover story. That last part, at least. Morrigan had no doubt of the girl’s word about the lord’s intentions, but there were specifically no halla statues around Celene’s study. It would have taken too long to fetch some… Unless the girl already had them in her possession.Still, the story reminded her so very much of Tabris.
Kallian Tabris had been a catastrophe in the making; violent and righteously angry at the world with only Zevran able to match or stay her hand, but she eventually managed to unite a broken country. Morrigan had… loved her, intensely, a realization that came much later in life.The newly-minted Grey Warden had approached her in the beginning and much to her detriment, Morrigan had refused her as… gently... as she had been able, which was not much at the time. But they managed to stay friends. Now, with the benefit of insight and a few years out in the world outside of her Wilds, she knew that she had been in love. More, perhaps, than she would ever be again.
Celene, to the world’s eternal irony, was not unlike Kallian. There was less anger, certainly, but she was as opinionated as the Warden, as willing to argue with Morrigan, as fierce (even if infinitely more subtle) to prop up Morrigan to allow her plans to come to fruition. Both were willing to dirty their hands to see the future they envisioned come to pass, both were stubborn to the point of madness, and both were nearly uncompromising in their goals. Yet, there was a gentleness too, with both being equally selective with the recipients. However, Kallian being far more active in her pursuits while Celene was more scholarly.
Celene, deliberate in her dealings while Kallian, instinctually forged ahead.
Celene, pale and arrogant and Kallian, dark and audacious.
They would hate each other immensely, and if they ever met Morrigan would have to amusedly watch as they exchanged abrasive insults and subtle barbs at each other.
Still, for as much as they resembled each other in Morrigan’s mind, she was not as infatuated with the empress, per se, but ‘intrigued’ would be a good place to start. It was bound to go nowhere, even if it developed further (unlikely as it was), Celene was far too stuck in her own past and Morrigan would not tie herself to another powerful woman that could consume her whole. Besides, there was no telling where this war would end up; perhaps Celene ended up on top, but perhaps, she didn't. And Morrigan would be left to mourn a lover while fled whoever won this little spat; Gaspard would not enjoy her unfettered freedom.
“You may go, Selene,” the empress said and Morrigan barely stopped a frown from showing, “and be sure to be at your post tomorrow.”
There was a sigh of relief from the servant girl. “Yes, your radiance.”
The girl bowed in deference, though her eyes were almost glaring holes into the empress, and left the room, leaving only Celene and Morrigan in the enormity of Celene’s chambers. A few tense moments passed, Celene still staring after the little elf that vacated the room.
“It was a ruse, Morrigan.”
Obviously. “How so?”
Celene took the tray the girl had brought and turned towards the large windowed doors that led to the balcony where Celene liked to spend the summer nights enjoying the warm breeze and the smell of the nearby hills seeping into their long conversations. The empress carelessly threw the tray over the balcony, and Morrigan heard the quiet rage behind Celene’s gesture as the service hit the floor below.
Well, then.
“She is one of Briala’s agents,” she said, quietly, “the nobleman was a warning.”
“The girl implied-”
“I know,” Celene said, and Morrigan spotted a down-turned smile before she slipped into one of the chairs on the balcony. With a sigh, the empress's slender fingers rose to pinch at the bridge of her nose in an uncharacteristically expressive manner.“I know, and I am sure that Yannis did try, the brute that he was. But Briala would not have sent the girl without training and the body was displayed far too amateurish and was far too grotesque for one Briala’s agents. It was deliberately laid like that.”
Morrigan followed behind her and sat in one of the white stone chairs across from the empress, the surprisingly comfortable chair comprised some of the little furniture of the balcony. The rest was a table, that had often been filled with little trinkets or books that piqued their shared interests, and if not cleaned regularly stained with several of their wine glasses. The rest was mostly vases and plants spanning the majority of the large balcony and which blended beautifully into the verdant landscape beyond the palace.
“In a panic, one could do such a thing,” she tried to offer another alternative even knowing that, whenever Celene was like this, it was futile.
“The line across his neck was perfect, Morrigan, an exemplary attack by all standards.” The empress shook her head, eyes drifting towards the horizon as if searching for something, or someone. “We are all trained to handle such things and that girl, whatever her name actually is, has been trained well. ”
Morrigan would not argue with that statement; she knew well how Celene kept calm under assassination attempts and forceful attempts at getting her hand. Part of Morrigan had been impressed with the way Celene shifted the conversation, how she so understood the ways of the humans and etiquette that sometimes still eluded Morrigan. But - as a small voice of nightingale sometimes reminded her - Orlesian etiquette was hardly the same as everywhere else.
“The way she looked at you…" Morrigan thought of the glare and the near disrespect of the elven girl's stare. "Is it wise to keep her around?”
“She is from Halamshiral. You may not recognize the subtleties of the accent, but I do. I have likely killed some of her family.” More the reason to kick her out of the palace, in Morrigan’s opinion, yet Celene merely chuckled darkly. “However, keeping her around is no more life-threatening than being at court; poison can come from working hands as well as jewelled ones.” The empress sighed. “Keeping her around will, additionally, allow me to have direct contact with Briala if I ever need to.”
That was a far more likely explanation.
“‘Twas a warning, then.”
“Is it not obvious?”
“‘We are coming for you’,” Morrigan ventured a guess.
“No, that has been very much implied for months now with the obviously poisoned food, the cold baths, and the almost blatant disrespect. This is a far more ominous sign, my dear sorceress; ‘You cannot hide’, for I know all your unscrupulous moves, ‘I am everywhere’, even in your most sacred space,’Do not underestimate me’, do so at your own peril. ‘We will twist no further, for we have broken away from the constraints of your so imposed society’.” Celene grinned and her blue eyes seemed almost to sparkle in the moonlight. “This is the fight of my life.”
Morrigan eyed her, somewhat torn between amusement and bemusement. “And you are content?”
“Oh, my dear Morrigan...” The grin grew larger, almost maniac in nature, and Kallian would have, in some way, resembled her very much. “I am positively breathless to see the twists and turns of this bloodied dance of ours.”