We burst through the door with practiced skill: me charging ahead, shield raised, Merrill hanging back with blue eldritch light flickering around her fingers. Head up, survey the scene and assess threat -

One woman, wounded and bent with pain, half-collapsed on the floor by the desk. On the desk, a really, really large book. Three guesses which one.

"Tell me I got the right house," the woman gritted. "And that you've got some salve."

"And who the blazes are you?" I demanded.

"Captain Isabela, Siren's Call," she said, grimacing as she half-rolled over. The ship the qunari had mentioned. Naturally. Merrill kept an eye on her as I moved through our few rooms, making sure she was the only surprise. "Hayder's elf sent me here."

That brought me up short, not three feet behind her. "Hayder's - ?"

"Elf," said a too-familiar gravelly voice. Coming out of the darkness behind Merrill, Fenris got one glimmering blue arm around her; the other angled a crossbow at my chest. At this range, the bolt would go through armor like butter. I knew it, and so did he.

"You bastard," the captain spat from the floor. "It's my life to get that book to Castillion!"

"And I need it to rid myself of the attentions of a persistent and powerful Tevinter magister. Apologies, captain."

"Those qunari may attack the city if they don't get this back!" I insisted. "There's a company of them at least. It'll be a slaughter!"

"Kirkwall has a Guard, the Templar Order, and the combined might of the Gallows mages to defend itself. If you run now, you can give them enough warning. But the book is mine - the captain is in no condition to argue the point, I am immune to her magic, and I can loose this bolt before you can cross the distance between us."

"And which hand," I asked, "are you going to pick the book up with?" The question made him pause. Perhaps his initial plan hadn't involved grabbing Merrill. But that was when my partner stamped on his bare elven foot, hard.

It was the pure surprise of the thing that did it. I've no doubt that Fenris had taken much worse blows. But he wasn't expecting that one, and the point of his crossbow dipped, just slightly. And that was all the time I needed to get my shield, Wesley's old templar issue, up.

Now we were in business.

Fenris shoved Merrill away from him, making a lunge for the tome. I came flying over the desk, crashed into him, sent us both tumbling to the floor. "It's not for you, either!" Merrill said sharply, apparently to Isabela, and then a great wall of ice swept over the desk, freezing the book inside it.

I got a knee onto Fenris's wrist, the hand holding the crossbow - then cursed as his other hand came through my shield toward my face. "That's not so great a hindrance as you'd think," he snarled.

I slammed my shield forward, and was relieved when his head didn't pop through it. There was a satisfying thock, however. I rolled off the dazed elf, claimed the crossbow and did a quick search for other weapons.

Coming to my feet, I dropped my findings on the desk and looked at the two on the floor. "All right," I said. "This is what we're going to do. I'm going to take this thing back to the qunari. And then, if the details of your stories merit it, we'll help you out with your various problems. For free. In exchange for your continued cooperation this evening."

"Hello? Bleeding out here," Captain Isabela said weakly.

"No deal." Fenris rolled to his feet, hands flexing and tattoos glowing. "I can't take Danarius. Neither can you. I need that book."

"Don't be an idiot," I said, behind my shield. "I'm armed, you're not."

"So it shouldn't be difficult for you to stop me," he said. With that damned smirk. Because the sodding bastard had me figured for someone who wouldn't cut down an unarmed man.

"Stop right there!" I raised my blade, but it was a bluff - and he knew it. I could batter him around with my shield, but the longer this tome was missing, the greater the chances the qunari would get violent - and never mind the dying woman on the floor...

"She said stop." Merrill, crossbow rock-steady in her slender hands.

"You won't shoot me," he said, with far too much confidence.

"I won't?" she asked. "You played me, serah. With your smiles and your wide eyes, you made me think I was special - that there could have been something, something precious, between us."

In a night which had so far included a secret qunari army, instant fireball powder, knockout gas, and a disembodied hand trying to throttle me through my shield, this was the kicker, the strangest thing. It was Merrill talking all right, but that didn't sound like my partner at all. For half a moment, my blood chilled as I thought about spirits and demons and mages, but then I realized what it did sound like -

Hard in Hightown.

"We never even had that dinner." Fenris tried logic. I could have told him not to bother.

"I knew it, ever since the night on the docks," Merrill went on. "You knew me as an apostate then, and you never looked at me the same way again. I didn't want to believe it - silly little fool," she spat, just like one of Varric's fictional Coterie girls. "But it's all too clear now," and Maker save me, she put a finger on the trigger, "and there's just one end to it."

"Merrill?"

"Yes, Aveline?"

"I'd rather not have to explain a dead elf to the hahren."

"But he's going to cause you trouble, Aveline," she said earnestly. "If I let him go, he'll be that rotten man at the tournament who couldn't follow the rules." She lifted the crossbow a bit higher, and I saw Fenris swallow. "Besides, when I'm done, there won't be a body."

Mages are scary.

"I'll stay here," Fenris volunteered hoarsely. "Tend to the captain. I have a healing potion in my pouch."

Merrill gestured with one hand; the ice disappeared. I scooped up the tome. "What about your reservations?"

"Whether or not you can stop Danarius matters little if she kills me tonight."

"Good point!" I said, more cheerfully than I felt. I still didn't want to turn my back on this crowd. "Merrill..."

"Go, Aveline. Take it and go quickly, before anything bad happens."

So I did. I found the qunari roaming up and down the docks, tearing open warehouses and generally pillaging. I got Arishok's attention and handed off the book. When he asked how I came to have it, I said that I'd found the ship's captain, dead, in my office. He gave me a narrow look, but he had his prize. He didn't ask if I wanted a reward - we both knew the reward was him not leveling the city.

Not bad work, considering no one will ever believe we did it.

Captain Isabela slumbered, unconscious and lathered up with elfroot poultice, in my bed.
Fenris, remarkably, had remained good to his word. Merrill must've held the crossbow on him long enough for him to decide he couldn't overtake me, and that the tome was lost to him. Failing that, we were his next best option.

Which meant I'd possibly signed us up to take down a notorious Antivan slaver and a powerful Tevinter magister. Oh well. Can't have everything.

Speaking of which - I hardly had time to tell Merrill that all was well, and to congratulate her on her dramatic re-enactment of Varric's deathless prose, when she shook her head and gave me a worried look. "Aveline, I've been to Arianni's," she told me. "To see if Feynriel could, you know, help the captain?" Right, yes, because one forbidden apostate per Alienage doesn't quite meet quota, apparently. "He's missing. She said that if he hadn't come back by dawn, she was going to come and find us. It could be bad. Very bad."

But that is another story.