The outer ring of refugee tents smelled like wet wool and last night’s porridge. Canvas sagged under its own weight, patched with whatever came to hand: sackcloth, prayer ribbons, someone’s good shirt torn into strips. Cookfires had died early to save fuel. The mud never dried here, just settled into different textures of misery.
Emma knelt in it anyway.
Alistair sat on a rolled blanket that had seen better months, forearm braced across his knee. The gash ran from wrist to elbow. The field stitches had pulled loose in places. Red crept outward from the edges, heat radiating under her fingers.
“Oh, that looks ominous,” he said.
“It’s infected.”
“Well, yes. That’s probably true. But it’s still alive.” He flexed his fingers, slow and deliberate, as if proving something to himself.
Emma unwound the bandage without answering. The cloth stuck. Alistair’s jaw tightened; he didn’t pull away. She eased it free and dropped it into the mud.
She’d already done everything that was allowed. Rinsed it. Packed it. Wrapped it. Waited.
Just stalling.
Her hand hovered. She could feel the mana coiled in her chest, waiting. A simple regeneration spell would close this in seconds. She knew the shape of it by heart. Pull the skin together. Burn the infection out. Leave nothing but relief and a thin pink scar.
She pulled back and reached for the water instead.
Morrigan stood three paces away, watching everything else. Hands clean. Positioned where she could see between the tents, track movement, count faces.
“How long,” Morrigan said, “do you intend to touch him without helping?”
Emma didn’t look up. “I am helping.”
Morrigan gestured, slight and dismissive, toward the camp.
Emma’s hands stilled.
Someone coughed. A child lingered in the gap between shelters, staring with the intensity of someone who knew they weren’t meant to. A woman adjusted a pack strap that didn’t need adjusting, took her time about it.
No one approached. No one left.
The attention pressed down on Emma’s shoulders. They were fugitives, now. Rumors of magic would end them.
“I have something,” Morrigan said.
Emma looked up. “Define something.”
Morrigan reached into her pack and produced a small pouch. “Here you are. Bog rowan. Marsh ash. Ground deathroot.”
“Deathroot.” Emma’s voice sharpened. “The dosing—”
“—is adequate,” Morrigan cut in. “For his size. For this wound.”
“It’s toxic.”
“’Tis a pain suppressant that will reduce the notice and attention you claim to fear.” Morrigan’s eyes flicked to Emma, then back to the perimeter.
Alistair cleared his throat. “I’m still here, you know.”
Neither of them looked at him.
“That won’t stop the infection,” Emma said.
“No,” Morrigan agreed. “But it will not be so flashy, either. You may choose which failure suits you.”
The mud squelched as Emma shifted. She hated being surrounded by so many normal people.
Alistair tried to smile. “Look, I’ve had worse. Remember the tower? The ogre? That bit where I was—”
His arm tensed without warning. The movement pulled at the wound. He went very still, took a deep breath.
Emma felt the spell rise on instinct. Just a little. Barely visible—
“If you glow,” Alistair said quietly, “we will attract trouble.”
He’d counted the same risks she had, arrived at the same grim answer.
The mana in her chest felt trapped. Like holding her breath too long.
“Fine,” she said. “Both.”
Morrigan raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll clean it properly first,” Emma said. “Then your remedy. Not instead.”
“That seems quite excessive, Warden,” Morrigan said.
“That’s the deal.”
Morrigan shrugged and tossed her the pouch.
Emma caught it. The leather was soft with use. Even sealed, the contents stung her sinuses: bitter, earthy, something chemically sharp beneath it.
“Alistair,” she said. “This will hurt.”
“Naturally,” he said, somewhere between trust and resignation.
Emma worked fast. She cleaned deeper this time, cut away tissue that had gone grey at the edges. Alistair’s breathing went sharp, uneven. He tensed, but didn’t pull away.
Morrigan handed her things without comment: clean cloth, a waterskin, a thin blade, cleaner than anything Emma had left.
By the time Emma finished, Alistair’s face had gone pale. She mixed the poultice in her palm, thick and dark, and spread it in a thin layer across the wound.
The effect was immediate. His shoulders dropped. His breath evened.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s… actually good.”
“’Tis temporary,” Morrigan said. “You will regret it when it wears off, later.”
“I’ll treasure this moment.”
Emma wrapped the arm with fresh cloth torn from a spare shirt and tied it off. She sat back on her heels.
Alistair flexed his hand. Stiff. Pain dulled. Still usable.
“Thank you,” he said. To both of them.
Emma didn’t answer. Her hands were sticky with blood and paste and mud. She wiped them on her trousers and stood. Alistair folded the blanket one-handed, cradling the injured arm. Emma took both packs before he could object.
Morrigan was already watching the tents again. A man had emerged nearby, scratching his beard, gaze sliding past them. Satisfied, perhaps, that nothing strange had happened.
Behind him, still in the tent, a woman peered over his shoulder. She looked disappointed.
Emma saw both.
“We should move,” she said.
Morrigan vanished between the tents and returned minutes later with Muffin, who had been investigating something horribly biological near the latrines. They strapped the remaining pack to the dog. Muffin wore it proudly, tail wagging.
Dane’s Refuge was less a refuge and more a holding pen. The inn smelled like wet bodies, old grease, desperation fermenting in corners. Every table crowded, every bench sagging under too much weight. Even the air felt tired.
Emma shouldered through the press near the door. Morrigan had already vanished into whatever form offered the best sightlines and the least human contact. Alistair stayed close.
“I’m not sitting,” Emma said. He nodded.
His forearm was bandaged beneath the leather bracer, hidden, still radiating heat she could feel when she brushed past him. The deathroot paste had bought them hours. Not more.
A woman near the bar was bleeding through a rag wrapped around her hand. Too loose. Already soaked. Emma’s feet moved before her brain caught up.
“Let me see that.”
The woman flinched. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” Emma pulled another clean strip of the shirt from her pack. “Hold still.”
The watching crowd shifted. Assessing. Before she thought twice, more followed. Emma unwrapped a hand presented to her.
A deep, clean gash across the palm. Fish knife, probably. Bad binding, worse judgment. She cleaned it with water and vinegar, packed it with yarrow, wrapped it tight with real tension.
“Keep it elevated. Change the bandage tomorrow.”
The woman stared at her hand like it had been returned from the dead. “Thank you.”
An older man with a fever. Willow bark tea. A child with a burn. Honey and comfrey. No glow. No magic. Just speed and competence. Emma moved through the crowd like she was disarming something, one small disaster at a time.
Alistair shadowed her, silent, his presence keeping the press from turning into a crush. People took help and melted back. Nobody mentioned Wardens or bounties or the rumors that had been circulating since Ostagar.
It was working.
Then a young mother pushed forward, infant wailing in her arms. “Please—he won’t stop crying. He’s been sick for days.”
Emma took one look and knew.
The child’s skin was gray. Breathing shallow. Too shallow. This wasn’t something yarrow could touch.
“I can’t—”
“Please.” The woman’s voice broke. “Everyone says you helped them.”
The crowd thickened. Hope spread fast and stupid, like a contagion itself. A man with a suppurating leg. A woman coughing blood into her sleeve. Hands reaching. Voices overlapping.
Too many. Too fast.
Alistair was looking elsewhere. His hand found her elbow. “Emma.”
Boots hit the floorboards, the particular cadence of soldiers. The crowd parted without being told. Refugees shrinking back against the walls.
Four soldiers. The commander had the look of someone who’d survived by listening to orders. His gaze landed on Emma and stuck.
“Well,” he said, smiling thinly. “I think we’ve been blessed.”
Alistair’s tone went light. “Uh-oh. That’s Loghain’s men.”
A younger soldier stepped forward, already reaching for his sword. “Didn’t we spend all morning asking for a woman like her? And everyone said they hadn’t seen one?”
“It seems we were lied to.” The commander’s eyes slid over the refugees pressed to the walls, already cataloguing.
A woman in Chantry robes stepped between them. Calm. Earnest. Unarmed, or so she seemed. “Gentlemen, surely there’s no need for trouble. These are only more poor souls, seeking succor.”
The commander didn’t look at her. “Move aside, Sister. You protect traitors, you die with them.”
Emma felt the situation collapse into plausible outcomes. Four soldiers. One exit. Alistair still fever-warm. Morrigan somewhere in the crowd, maybe. Refugees at risk in the melee.
“Let’s talk,” Emma bid to buy time.
“I am not a fool!” the commander snapped. “I served at Ostagar. The teyrn saved us from Warden treachery. I serve him gladly!”
Steel cleared leather.
Alistair drew at the same instant. “Enough.”
“Take the Warden,” the commander barked. “Kill the sister and anyone else in the way.”
The inn exploded.
Refugees scattered. Tables overturned. The sister moved faster than Emma expected, a knife flashing from her sleeve, burying it in a soldier’s thigh.
Alistair caught a blow on his shield, turned it, kicked a knee sideways. He was slower than he should have been. Emma saw it. So did the man facing him.
A second blade came low, under the shield. Alistair blocked too late. Steel bit his thigh. He stumbled.
The killing blow rose.
Emma didn’t think.
Magic tore out of her hands. Raw, uncontrolled. Cool light flared across Alistair’s leg, sealing flesh and blood in an instant. He surged upright and smashed his shield into the soldier’s face.
The commander circled, his smile vanished. “A mage,” he said softly. “Even better.”
Something cold and furious settled into Emma’s bones. The hiding was over. The debt these people had paid for her burned clean away.
Lightning crawled up her arms.
She released it.
The bolt hit the commander square in the chest. He collapsed, twitching, the air around him drying and crackling.
“Drop your weapons,” Emma said.
One soldier ran. The sister took him down before he reached the door.
The last two looked at each other. At the body on the floor. At Emma, still arcing with light.
They dropped their swords.
Alistair leaned on his shield, breathing hard. He was watching her now. Her stomach curdled.
“We surrender,” the commander rasped. “You’ve won.”
The sister lowered her knife. “Good. Then we can all stop fighting now.”
“I don’t want them reporting to Loghain,” Emma said.
The color drained from the commander’s face. “Please.”
The sister stepped forward, shaken. “They’ve surrendered.”
Emma looked at her. This woman in Chantry robes who’d stabbed and chased and cornered without hesitation.
“Then give them a final prayer.”
“You mean…”
Emma nodded.
The sister swallowed. Knelt. Prayed.
Alistair hesitated for half a heartbeat.
Then it was over.