Author's note

This is a companion piece to the Hourglass, but set some time in the future of the main story, after the death of the Archdemon, and on the morning of Muirnara and Loghain's wedding. Is this a guarantee that this will be how the main story goes? Maybe. And maybe not. Maybe this is an alternative universe where it all ended much more happily. Maybe this is indeed an accurate prophecy for how the main story will go. You'll find out, sooner or later :)

Written for Josie Lange in return for a truly wonderful picture she drew for me. The request was to enlarge on something implied at the end of Chapter 21 of The Hourglass, where Muirnara remembers Loghain giving her his mother's wedding ring and saying that if they both survived he would ask her for it back so that he could give it to her again in a more formal manner, but this is a standalone piece, it is not necessary to have read The Hourglass in order to read this.

Loghain's thoughts in italics are almost certainly remembered quotes from some Ferelden text on warfare. The quote in bold italics at the end of the piece is taken directly from Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Many thanks to betas Josie Lange, Shakespira and Gene Dark :)

Loghain Mac Tir had been a soldier all his life.

A soldier develops over time what is best described as a sixth sense when approaching a new battleground, especially if the last thing he expected to find in this place is a battle being fought.

When the first thing that one sees is allied troops in full retreat with expressions on their faces that would have curdled milk, one generally approaches with extreme caution. The woman hurrying towards him he vaguely recognised as one of the Palace dressmakers. The man, with his waxed moustache and rather effeminate air, he did not recognise, but suspected this might be the Orlesian hairdresser who occasionally attended upon Queen Anora. Both appeared flustered and unhappy. And since both must have emerged from the apartments currently occupied by his wife-to-be, there being no other guest rooms on this hallway, he could only imagine that wedding preparations were not going as smoothly as one might hope when the bride is expected at the Chantry in less than three hours.

He strode towards the door and threw it open. He had clearly forgotten one of the other principles of warfare.

One of the hardest things on a battlefield is avoiding damage from your own side.

Only the reflexes honed by a lifetime of caution made him duck at the last minute, and the heavy soapstone bowl sailed past his shoulder and clattered onto the floor.

Muirnara was standing facing the door, wearing nothing but her shift, and with an expression of horror on her face that warred with the fury that was probably her expression before she threw the bowl.

"Maker's breath, Loghain, I'm sorry, I thought you were that bloody dressmaker on her way back again."

"I think I can safely say that I am not," he returned dryly, looking around the room. A very elegant, and clearly unfinished wedding dress was discarded over the foot of the bed in a crumpled heap. A litter of paints, powders, perfumes, combs and other apparatus of the hairdresser's art lay scattered over the dressing table and the floor beside it. Erlina, Anora's maid, was backed up against the far wall as if expecting the next missile to be flung in her direction.

Loghain had been a soldier all his life. Admittedly, this was unlike any battlefield he had ever had to take control of, but improvisation is over half of the art of warfare.

Secure the perimeter. Get the non combatants out of the way. Send for trained reinforcements if they are available to you.

He waved Erlina to the door. "Go and find me Leliana, Zevran and Wynne. Get them here as fast as possible. Don't let that hairdresser or the dressmaker within a hundred yards of this room, and if Queen Anora asks what is going on, lie. Convincingly. Clear?"

For the first time that he could ever remember, the Elven woman did not argue with him, but scurried away down the hall with a nod. He shut the door behind her and sat down on the bed, gesturing to Muirnara to come and sit beside him. "So, are you going to tell me what all this is about?"

That was when she started to cry.

He found a clean cloth - it probably belonged to that bloody hairdresser too, but he wasn't likely to return and claim it - and passed it to her. She sniffled something that sounded like thanks, and blew her nose in a thoroughly inelegant manner, then rested her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair. "Can I assume that since you did not intend that missile for me, that this is not because you'd rather call off the wedding at the eleventh hour?"

The look of shock on her face reassured him as to that much. "No, of course not, Loghain! It was just...Oh blessed Andraste, I'd been up since dawn with that pair of imbeciles criticising me and patronising me, and if someone hadn't carefully taken my armour and daggers this morning to the palace Armory, I would have backstabbed one of the bastards by now."

"Criticising you?" Loghain found this somewhat incomprehensible.

She snorted. "Well, that dress apparently was one that was in production for one of the ladies of the court already. Queen Anora commandeered it and sent it - with the dressmaker - to be altered to fit me, since the lady concerned is now believed to be somewhere in Kirkwall and unlikely to return to collect her order. And all morning - literally - I have listened to the woman whine that my shoulders are too muscular to wear an off-the-shoulder dress, that my collarbone scar shows at the neckline and she will have to remodel the bodice to hide it, that..." She paused. "Well, let's just say we've had endless variants on that theme. For over two hours. The dress still isn't finished, and now is never going to be. So I will just have to shock the Revered Mother by showing up to the wedding in armour."

Identify the most obvious supply problems and deal with those first. Subtleties can wait for a pause in the battle.

"Not necessarily." A tap on the door turned out to be Leliana, and he waved her in. "These were your parents' court apartments, were they not?"

"They were." She wrinkled her nose. "None of their things are still here. Howe took the apartments over and presumably cleared out anything he found in here, and then the rooms were cleared again before Anora assigned them to me."

He smiled. "Trust me, nothing in this place ever gets thrown away. You and your mother were roughly the same height and build, were you not?"

"We were. That suit of leather armour I wore when I met you at Ostagar with King Cailan was originally hers, when she passed it to me it didn't even need altering."

"Good, that's all I need to know." He beckoned Leliana over. "Where is Wynne?"

Leliana sighed. "Wynne is not actually in the palace at present, she went off to the Alienage this morning and hasn't returned. Erlina said she was going to find Zevran, I told her that he was probably in the wine cellars playing card games with the soldiers again."

"Fine, then, you get this task. Find Erlina, ask her in which storeroom Teyrna Eleanor's court dresses have been put. Bring Muirnara back a selection of them." He paused - just how did women select a wedding dress anyway? Were there unlucky colours, were there styles that one just did not wear? "Pick three or four that you think are suitable."

Sometimes one must trust to the specialised knowledge of one's troops in areas where the General's own knowledge is lacking.

Leliana, bless her, did not argue, just nodded and slipped out the door. Muirnara's look of gratitude was tinged with exhaustion. "That's one problem solved. Now, what was it that the hairdresser said that made you want to carve him a hole in his back?"

She rumpled her curls. "Oh, you should have just heard him, Loghain. My short hair is apparently hopelessly unfashionable, did I wash it with lye soap that it was in such a poor state? Had I ever heard of olive oil to improve the condition? Surely this wasn't a burnt patch? How in the name of Blessed Andraste did I expect him to work in such a situation?" Her imitation of the hairdresser's manner was perfect. "That was when I cracked and told the pair of them to get their collective arses out of my sight and not come back."

He laughed. He couldn't help it, and her look of hurt made him immediately regret it. "My love, perhaps you should have reminded him that ending the Blight has disrupted your normal routines." He ran his fingers through her curls. "He's right about the burnt patch though, you got that from that fire-wielding emissary in the Bannorn, the first night after we left Redcliffe. I was going to trim the singed hair for you before we got to Denerim, but it didn't appear to be a priority under the circumstances."

She turned her head to drop a kiss into the palm of his hand. "Loghain, my love, I can guarantee that you would have lost your temper too. Probably far sooner than I did."

"I am not arguing it. Thankfully, all that appears to be required of the bridegroom at a wedding is that one should show up clean, sober, and reasonably neatly turned out. Everyone is looking at the bride anyway."

"That isn't making me feel a lot better."

He stood up and gestured to the stool. "Right, since I would imagine that hairdresser is still in full retreat, you'd better let me even up the burnt hair, and then we'll see what Leliana can find you to wear in your hair to go with the gown. Given the stories she told us about the hairstyles in Orlais, I am sure she can come up with something."

Muirnara heaved a martyred sigh and sat down on the dressing table stool. "Not ribbons. Or feathers." She paused. "Or live birds."

"No live birds," he agreed, picking up a comb and searching through the litter on the dressing table for scissors. "Shale would never forgive you anyway."

She managed to laugh at that, and then closed her eyes as he combed her hair and carefully trimmed away the uneven, scorched ends. "Anyway," he added, tapping her shoulder to make her open her eyes and look at him, " you should have reminded him that as the Hero of Ferelden, you in all probability will be setting the fashions for Denerim for five years to come. If he'd managed to keep his mouth shut then his name as the city's leader of fashion would have been made for life."

There was another tap on the door. "Come in," he called, expecting to see Leliana, but instead Zevran sidled into the room, carrying a large bottle and a handful of goblets that he had clearly picked up from a cabinet somewhere on his way to the room.

"Cara mia," Zevran purred as he set three of the half dozen goblets in a line and eased the cork out of the dusty bottle, "you apparently have the whole servants' hall of the palace in an uproar, and the dressmaker is having hysterics in the pantry. Why on earth did you not just send for me to deal with these little annoyances for you? What is the point of having a trained assassin in your retinue if not to remove life's small problems before they become large problems?"

That at least got a genuine smile from Muirnara as she reached out to accept the cup of amber spirit that he offered her. She took a sip, and raised her eyebrows. "What is this, Zev?"

"This is Antivan brandy, and not just any Antivan brandy. This is brandy from the finest distillery in Antiva City, laid down in wood for over twenty five years before bottling. Liquid gold, and rarely exported. Your late King Cailan must have had contacts in the trade, or perhaps his father did. Anyway, I liberated this bottle from the cellar, thinking there could be no better time to open it." There was a sly smile on his face. "My advice to you though, is one glass, and one glass only. It is as seductive as a courtesan, it winds itself around your mind and heart, and would turn a lamb to a raging lion. But more than one glass, and one's judgement can be considered to be more than a little impaired. Not a choice for your wedding day."

Loghain took a swallow from his own goblet. "Advice duly noted, Zevran." He could see that Muirnara was relaxing, her shoulders had slumped and the furrow between her brows was gone.

Zevran set his own cup aside. "Now, cara mia, what can I do to keep a smile on your face? If you require me to dance the Remigold, I warn you, I should do it very poorly. I can return the hairdresser's head to you on a silver tray if that would suffice?"

By now she was laughing out loud. "I think not, Zevran. It is always possible that Queen Anora may have a use for the man's services again."

The elf pulled a face. "Assassination does have the drawback of being a very final solution to a problem. Perhaps then we shall let the man live. After all, if he was so unaware of his good fortune in being asked to minister to one of the loveliest women in this land on her wedding day, then perhaps the man is more to be pitied than blamed?"

Another knock, and the door creaked open to reveal Leliana staggering under the burden of several dresses, closely followed by Wynne bearing an armful of white flowers. Loghain blinked. "Wynne, where in the Maker's name did you find those? Andraste's Grace does not blossom in midwinter."

Wynne's smile was serene. "I went to the Alienage, where I remembered seeing a number of the plants beneath the great tree. Once I had found the plants, I...had a conversation with them. They were most obliging."

When the tide of battle unexpectedly turns in your favour, do not waste time in searching for reasons. Use it.

Wynne and Leliana had withdrawn to the far end of the bedchamber and were laying the dresses out upon the bed, discussing them animatedly. Zevran poured two more cups of brandy and sauntered over to them, presenting the goblets with a flourish and a bow, and saying something under his breath that made Leliana give a shriek of laughter and Wynne a low chuckle. For that moment attention was away from Loghain, he took Muirnara's hand and gently slid the silver ring off her finger. "In a few hours I shall put that back, and then, according to the law of the land and the Chantry's teachings, you are mine. But," and his words were a low growl in her ear as he kissed her neck, "you were already mine a long time ago. And I do not let go."

She shivered at the kiss and looked up at him, her green eyes full of love and trust. "Yours. Always."

He beckoned to Zevran. "Come, Zevran. I think now we can safely leave the ladies in control of the battlefield."

They paused at the doorway to watch Muirnara walk over to join Leliana, who was displaying a gown of sunlit yellow silk for her approval. The look in Zevran's eyes was almost wistful as the two men closed the door. "My friend, I do not think you need an Antivan elf to tell you that you are the luckiest man in Thedas this morning."

Loghain shook his head as they set off towards the main stairs. "Zevran, my friend, trust me. That indeed I do already know."

"Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.

Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.

He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain."

Sun Tzu - The Art of War - late 6th century BC