Rapunzel Who: Arlessa Lelahai Kordura, a certain assassin (NPC Cutscene) Where: The estate of the Arlessa of Denerim When: 9:45, 20 Molioris Summary: Lelahai contemplates the state of her Arling.... and receives an unexpected caller. Rating: B for Lelahai is a Bitch?
Ruling Denerim was at once both easier and more difficult than Lelahai had anticipated.
Her mother's untimely death, and her very public mourning period where the Arlessa only appeared in black with her shining hair covered in a veil, had won her quite a lot of sympathy and gained her political footholds where before she had had no such thing; the longer the search for her adopted sister dragged on, however, the more she feared Azabeth might never be located, the issue of Valeré Kordura's murderer never resolved. She planned to raise the bounty yet again in the coming weeks - for the death of her mother, she must not appear stingy, must in fact seem desperate enough to empty the coffers of the Arling to bring the killer to justice - and had kindly turned down numerous offers of marriage from countless banns and arls, and even one very cheeky Nevarran merchant-prince. All were seeking to exploit her grief over her mother's death to bind her into a lifetime contract to share her power in the Arling.... and though yet they did not know it, that was one thing Lelahai would never do.
She might marry in time, if a match could ever be made to her liking, but now that Denerim was held in the palm of her hand, she would never give it away to so foolish a thing as a husband.
Affairs of the state were a complicated thing, and so often the Arlessa retreated to the highest tower of what had once been her mother's estate; it was called the Widow's Tower, on account of its view of the distant sea and its sole entrance at the bottom of the winding stone stair. She and her Royal Guard, a contingent on loan from the Queen to prevent further changes in the Arling's succession, would walk together to the bottom landing, whereupon the Arlessa would turn to address them and say, "Leave me. I wish to be alone." The Guard would then bow as one and take post around the doorway while Lelahai climbed the spiral stone stair by herself, all the way to the topmost chamber, where awaited her banks of windows, a panorama of Denerim and even some of the lands beyond, including, yes, the infamous sea.
The tower helped her to clarify her thoughts, to put vague ideas into plans of action, to remove herself from the city in order to view it from above as a bird might, detached and thoughtful. The seat of power in Ferelden was, even Lelahai could admit, not exactly a jewel in the Queen's crown. The slums, the dirty streets, the crime, the cramped conditions, the poverty and poor economy, especially in the districts away from Shatterglass, traditionally a well-off section of the city that nevertheless sat kitty-corner to Archwolf and the Alienage, two of the worst places in Denerim to be. Not a single one of these things could be addressed without the others being considered as well, and while during Valeré's rule the gaping wounds bleeding the city white had been staunched, Lelahai meant to heal them entirely, to make of her city both prosperous and beautiful.
Stepping closer to one section of windows, she slid her azure gaze to the Alienage, which was without doubt the poorest sector of her city. There were Crown-approved plans underway to begin renovations there, to widen the cramped and crazy streets and provide better housing than was currently available - and what better way to infuse fresh coin into the ailing economy than to hire the elves themselves to improve their own surroundings? Similar plans were being made in the neighboring district of Archwolf, only using the hire of what humans and dwarves were available. Segregation of the races was not a thing even Lelahai had the power to erase, but if she could not join them together under the same roof, she would join them in their mutual love of their leader.
Watching Valeré and Cailan as she had grown up had taught Lelahai a valuable lesson: if the people loved their ruler, they supported her or him with a fervor that mere gold could not provide. But in Cailan's case, love must also be tempered with wisdom, and courage, and cunning.
Lelahai intended to be adored.
So, aside from her reputation as a cunning and intelligent Arlessa, she cultivated the image of a selfless humanitarian; Lelahai poured what profit Denerim turned into the betterment of the city and its people, while keeping back only the part of that money that was hers by right, just enough to maintain her mother's estate and perhaps a smidgen more. Maintaining approval in the city was not as easy as it looked - Templars walking the streets to supplement what law there already was, crime rampant in the darkest corners of Denerim, the rising percentage of her people living in squalor - but with practice, Lelahai was growing more and more competent, and more confident in her role at court.
It was such a pity that Queen Anora had never borne a son of Cailan, she mused to herself as she went from window to window, observing the different districts of her city, the people far below that milled about like ants around their queen. If her experiments in running the Arling that was Denerim were successful, and so far they were, she would rather have liked the opportunity to become queen.
Then again, Anora had no named heir, either, and Lelahai was a better candidate than most, Maker forbid something should happen to the Queen.
But while Lelahai was ambitious, she also meant to prove herself capable enough for greater things; that girlish pipe-dream would have to wait until Denerim was not only more secure under her hand, but made better, stronger, more monetarily sound, its people happier and more likely to accept her in such a role. Merely following in Anora's footsteps would not do. Had she not, after all, borrowed heavily on her name as Cailan's widow to earn herself the sympathy of the people, back when Loghain betrayed the King? That in itself was another lesson that Lelahai meant to heed well, the example that was Loghain - ambition was all well and good, but when one got greedy, the most careful-laid plans tended to immediately go as horribly wrong as possible. Her eyes tracked to the Orlesian embassy and the statue erected outside of it, in profile to where Lelahai stood, the sharp, hawkish features tilted upwards into the sun - as though Anora prayed her father had found forgiveness in the light of the Maker.
From everything Lelahai had heard and seen of Loghain, who had been ignominiously slain at the Landsmeet when she was little more than a child, he was more likely to languish in the Fade until the ending of the world, rather than admit his wrongness in what he did allegedly for the good of Ferelden.
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," drawled a level and mirthless voice behind her, and if Lelahai had not been prepared for his appearance, she would have jumped half out of her skin. As it was, she had long ago stopped asking him (or herself) how he came to be in the uppermost chamber of the tower with a half-dozen of the Queen's guards laying in wait at the sole entrance, searching for exactly such an intrusion. He was the Unseen Shadow, the Hidden Blade, a living legend. A part of Lelahai would honestly not have been surprised had he flown up the time-smoothed stones like a bird.
Though she was certain the upper chamber had been entirely empty when she entered, the windows closed and latched, he lounged like a wanton thief-prince on one wide sill, one foot on the floor, the other leg up that his elbow could rest on his knee, dressed in charcoal-black from head to foot. His plain-handsome face was in stark profile in the sunlight, emphasizing the blackness of his hair and fresh-shaven paleness, dark eyes distant, some sobering thought stealing all the humour from his form. This was not the man she had grown up with, the laughing mentor that had taught her how to tumble out of the way of an assassin with a dagger, the man who had picked her up when her father had died and held her to his chest and told her everything was going to be alright; this was a side of him she had never seen before becoming Arlessa, that perhaps no one but her mother had ever seen. This was the man at work, efficient and cold.
The Arlessa in her appreciated his apparent lack of emotion, but the little girl she once was still was shocked to see him so sharp and so fluid, full of angles and full of grace all at the same time.
"I see you've already climbed the golden stair," Lelahai replied just as levelly, aware of her long blonde fishtail braid that trailed over one shoulder, the scars peeking out at the back of her neck, now little more than pale lines fading into her skin. The marks of her long-ago catfight with her sister did not so easily fade, but Lelahai wore them with pride instead of shame; they were proof of her initiation into a world of political maneuvering that had driven her sister to wroth violence, unable to react any other way. She toyed with the tail of her braid a moment, winding the yellow hair around the thick gold band of her station, an icy and beautiful young Arlessa to his lithe and dark assassin. What a picture they made. "Though you've hardly any need of it, dear Matthew. Shall I play the princess this day, or the witch?"
Black Matthew snorted and came down off of the sill, his weight transferred from the window to the soles of his scuffed black boots with less sound than a cat might make. He even moved differently in such a mindset, less easy grace and more like a hunting tiger, all compact muscle and deadly intent. Lelahai always had difficulty, at these rare meetings, reconciling the man before her with the one of her memories. "I am no knight, to blithely allow you to throw me from the tower to blind myself upon the thorns." The words had shifted with his professional facade as well, the soft Denerim accent disappearing, the lilting vowels replaced by clipped and precise enunciation - the better to keep from being identified. The difference was fascinating, and not a little frightening. Lelahai made mental notes to cease her underestimation of Black Matthew immediately, despite her confidence that he would be unable to kill her if circumstances demanded it. "So I suppose it must be the princess, this time."
He stopped and folded his arms across his chest, coldness and disease radiating from him like a block of ice. What had happened to have him so out of sorts? The number of things in Ferelden that could affect the assassin's mood could be numbered upon one hand. "Did you see my sister, Matthew?" she asked frankly, her delicate brows rising over her eyes. "Is that why your mood threatens to paint you the stormcrow, like how your detractors paint you?"
"No," he answered without hesitation, a hint too smoothly, as though he had expected to lie to her inquiry and found no need to. Interesting. "And even if I did, Lelahai, do you really expect me to out my own student so easily?" He scoffed, a sharp exhalation of breath from his nose. Such blunt questions never yielded much information, but she had learned that with Matthew, it was always more about what he didn't say than what he did. "I'd as soon march into Anora's court, confess to the dozens of political assassinations I've undertaken in my career, and then bare my neck at her feet."
"Is that all Azabeth is to you?" This was a question that had bothered Lelahai for years, and she shifted in place, put herself in three-quarters to him, that Matthew must bear the brunt of her too-blue gaze, intense enough to turn the most experienced courtiers into stuttering, neurotic messes. "Your student?"
The response this time was skeptic and quizzical, a black brow risen and little more. "You forget yourself, Lelahai. I practically raised you - I know you better than you know yourself, while you know relatively little of me."
"I know more of you than you believe," she said, a touch on the tart side, before schooling herself back to the swan-daughter she had perfected in the Denerim court. A lesson Matthew had aided in teaching himself: Never show emotion. Never let them know if the lances you cast land true or veer wide. She took a step and reached out, fluffing a bit of his black hair that had gone astray from where it should have hung, half-obscuring his face. "I know that you dye your hair, for example."
A bark of laughter, unexpected and sharp as shards of glass as he sidestepped away from her reach. "I'm an old man by your standards, 'lahai, and rather vain to boot. Of course I dye my hair."
"You've dyed it long before it became a necessity," she noted, watching his face carefully, how all that arrogant scorn drained away to be replaced by a poker-face worthy of the master that he was. "The stench is quite distinct, you know. You were less circumspect with it, when I was very young, and I remember it quite well. what were you hiding then, Matthew?" A delicately-timed pause as she tilted her head a few degrees to one side, lips slightly pursed, hips canted to a specific angle. "Perhaps the hair you dyed back then was red as blood. Red as Azabeth's. It would neatly explain your permanently deathly pallor - and my mother's interest in her. Perhaps when she met the scullery-maid's bastard child, she saw your face in hers, and took pains to cover it. A favor to a former lover."
That brought out the crooked smile she had known for so many years, but there was no warmth behind it, only cool calculation, his dark eyes running a thousand scenarios to their final gambits and discarding each one as he discovered their flaws. "I do love Valeré, to that I willingly own, and have for many years. I mourn her far more than you will ever know. But with that fact in the open, you forget one additional scenario, Lelahai -" and as he said this he stepped forward and into her personal space, and she forgot until she was face to face with him that while he was not exceedingly tall for a man, he had presence that a king might envy, such a powerful sense of himself that he could wield it like a weapon and inflict it upon those around him. A rarely exercised talent, while he was in her mother's employ, but one he did not scruple to use now. "Perhaps I dyed it to hide my blondeness." His smile flickered out again, like a switchblade, driving right to her heart. "We were young when we met, your mother and I, and she already married to Urien. Perhaps discipline and better judgment gave way to impulse."
Lelahai's heart was thundering in her chest, a physical sign of Matthew's charisma, and she was vexed with herself immediately, straightening her carriage, countering persuasion with her own infallible logic. She had heard the whispers, of course, but had never seriously believed them - and Matthew had always shaken them off when she asked about them, dismissed them as gossip-mongering with no basis in fact. That he countered her accusation with implications of his own said too much about her suspicions for comfort. Or perhaps Matthew was merely off-balance and sought to distract her with uncomfortable contemplations - that sounded more like him, more like the man who was always looking for that extra edge.
It raised uneasy questions, at the least. If Urien were not her father, then Lelahai had no better claim to the Arling than Azabeth did.
Not worth speculation, down that path; the only hair that might betray Matthew lay below his belt, and she held no interest whatsoever in examining its color for herself.
She looked away and stepped to the window, chin slightly lifted, face regal and disapproving. "From what I understand, you are hardly one in position to be casting doubts upon the legitimacy of my birth. But I tire of this spar, Matthew. You appeared here for a reason, I assume, not merely to bait and be baited? About your business, then. I haven't all day for cat and mouse games with an old man."
"Very well." She sensed more than heard him pace to one side, his footfalls making no sound, though his voice was an easy enough trace of his movements. "The Grey Wardens came through Denerim unannounced, and left just as swiftly."
Unexpected news, that. "Their business?"
"Ceasement of Tevinter slave trade, from what I could determine," said Matthew gruffly. "The Chantry is involved via a plainclothes Templar, though he would hardly have it known to traders or Wardens alike. It is a small-scale operation, and not one that looks to have substantial impact on the trade, but Templars can be rather.... persuasive under the correct provocation."
"They all walk like they carry their swords in their crotches," said Lelahai dismissively, waving a hand. "A plainclothes Templar is much like any other, only with less metal about his person. Have you made your presence known?"
Another scoff, which served as his answer; Matthew, Lelahai reminded herself, was very precise about walking the fine line between confirmation and plausible deniability. "The Chantry and the Wardens are unaware of each other's movements. Do you wish it otherwise?"
"Let them remain in the dark. There is little more entertaining than two forces of do-gooders bumbling into each other under lack of enlightenment." She turned and studied him critically, sweeping her 'retired' spy from head to foot. He was as inscrutable as ever, one black brow raised in tacit inquiry. "Is there anything else?"
"Nothing of import has developed. Rumours on the street." An eloquent shrug of his lean shoulders.
"You will keep me informed," she said rather absently, less a command than a statement of fact. "Your fee will be in the usual place."
A slight sneer, a mocking bow, his fist thudded to his heart in wry commentary on where his loyalties lay. Matthew was an old thief, and he never quite told her the whole, unvarnished truth, but he had once made his trade on information, and now that he was getting too old to go hopping roofs and killing politicians, he made his trade upon it once again. Coin was the ultimate motivator. "Arlessa."
He mounted the sill and prepared to scale the tower in reverse, and Lelahai stopped him with a sudden, impulsive question: "Would you ever betray me, Matthew?" It was impertinent and brazen and something more akin to what her sister might ask - he had already proven to her his mulish unwillingness to aid the law in Azabeth's apprehension - but it made him pause, straddling the window, half anchored to the tower and half hanging out over the empty air. He gave it long, heavy thought, deeply considering it, weighing the scenarios and the answers, the obfuscated truths and the hidden lies. In the end, he sided with honesty, and he stared her in the face and suddenly seemed very, very old, far older than even she knew he had to be.
"Even were you not raised under my hand like a daughter, Lelahai Kordura," he said in terribly, terribly gentle tones, "for the love of your mother, I could not."
And then he was gone, over the sill and down the side like a thrice-bedamned spider, and Lelahai was left alone in the tower with the haunting refrains of her own thoughts.