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partystoragechest · 1 year ago

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A story of romance, drama, and politics which neither Trevelyan nor Cullen wish to be in.

Canon divergent fic in which Josephine solves the matter of post-Wicked Hearts attention by inviting four noblewomen to compete for Cullen's affections. In this chapter, Trevelyan tries to find Dagna's delivery.

(Masterpost. Beginning. Previous entry. Next entry. Words: 3,457. Rating: all audiences, except for a swear.)

Chapter 12: Unloading Baggage

Trevelyan cascaded through the bowels of Skyhold, sent with special purpose by Dagna. There was a delivery arriving this afternoon, and by the Ancestors, her order had better be there!

Trevelyan had optimistically come this way because she thought—incorrectly—that it might be quicker. Absolutely not. Beneath the main hall, Skyhold wound itself in circles, a grand labyrinth of servants’ quarters, kitchens, larders, and washrooms.

A kind laundress pointed her out of one such room, along a better-suited corridor. It was down this route that Trevelyan finally found her way into the particular kitchen that she had been promised had an external door.

She had hoped to confirm this with the staff working there—but when she wandered into the room, it was remarkably empty. All except for one elven woman, hunched over two jars.

“Excuse me,” Trevelyan said, pointing to the door across the room, “is that the way out?”

The woman looked up. She had funnily-chopped blond hair, incorrectly-laced clothes that did not look like a worker’s wear, and a grin that could only be described as wicked.

Her eyes flicked to the door, then back. “Yeah?”

“Thank you, I will—”

Maintaining eye contact, the woman picked up one of the jars—labelled ‘salt’—and poured its entire contents into the other—labelled ‘sugar’. Trevelyan blinked, mouth hanging open.

“Um…”

“You didn’t see nothing, yeah?” the woman said, a mischeivous glint in her eye.

Trevelyan smiled. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

With a cackle, the woman slipped into the shadows. It was this that made Trevelyan realise she’d seen her before—up on the mezzanine, during the gala. She was suddenly very glad she hadn’t eaten anything that night.

Regardless, she had her answer for the door. Trevelyan pushed it open, to the welcome sight of gleaming sunlight, shining down on Skyhold’s courtyard.

Specifically, the stable area, which the kitchen connected to via a small flight of stairs. Trevelyan hesitated to journey down them; their height gave a good vantage of the storeroom entrance below—and the caravan of carts encircling it.

The quietness of the kitchens was at once explained. It seemed that all hands were on deck, scurrying to and fro like industrious insects, helping to unload barrels and crates and sacks. Skyhold had many mouths to feed, and large stores to fill. Finding a small shipment for the Arcanist in the midst of this commotion was no easy task.

But Trevelyan endeavoured to find it anyway. She squeezed her way through the crowd, to arrive at the foot of one of the carts.

A human man stood atop it, well-built, no doubt from many years at this craft—for he slung boxes and barrels into waiting hands like it were an art form.

“Serah!” Trevelyan called, to catch his occupied attention. “Do you know if any of these are for the Arcanist, Dagna?”

The man slid a crate toward a servant with pinpoint accuracy, and puffed out air. “Sorry, miss, not seen that name”—he passed off another box—“and you’re not likely to find it here. Better off asking your quartermaster once all this is unloaded.”

“I suspected as much. Thank you, regardless!”

Trevelyan retreated as he prepared another sack, yet noted when she did that no one came to claim it. Though as many of Skyhold’s staff as could be spared were aiding the delivery, there were about a dozen carts, all piled high. Only so much was possible.

“Would you like me to take that?” she asked.

The man shrugged. “You’re not busy?”

“Finding that shipment, yes—and it seems the quickest way to do so is by helping things along!”

The man chuckled, and hefted the sack towards her. “Can always use more willing hands! How much you carry?”

Very little, since leaving the Circle. Trevelyan certainly hoped her old strength would still remain, but acknowledged privately that she might need a little… assistance.

A week ago she’d never have dared to cast anything in such a public setting, but her work with the Arcanist had somewhat relaxed her attitude. And so she snuck a hand behind her back, and traced a rune against her spine. The energy of the Fade found her little opening, and trickled on through.

The old strength returned, and more. Trevelyan clapped her hands around the sack, and with ease, lifted it onto her shoulders.

“Take it to the storerooms,” the man instructed her, “should be someone down there to say where to drop it.”

Simple enough task. The confluence of other servants would guide her where she needed to go. Weaving betwixt them, Trevelyan exchanged a smile with every passing face. Maker, it felt good to shed the tedium of idle nobility!

Except one of those faces, she recognised. Trevelyan dropped her sack, and turned.

“Lady Samient?” she sputtered. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be meeting the Commander?”

Lady Samient smiled. “We just parted. I saw you from afar. Lady Trevelyan, what are you doing here?”

“Oh!” Trevelyan patted her hands against her smock, to wipe off the dust. “Well, there’s a shipment I’m hoping to locate, but it doesn’t get found until the entire delivery is stored and catalogued, it seems. So, I thought I might help.”

She tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. Like it was actually common for noblewomen to randomly muck in.

But Lady Samient appeared unfazed: “Do you need help?”

She couldn’t seriously be offering..?

“No, no, it’s quite all right,” Trevelyan tried to say—but Samient was already loosening her cuffs, and rolling up her sleeves. “You needn’t trouble yourself.”

“No trouble,” said Samient, untying a leather strap from her wrist, to pull her hair into some kind of rudimentary ponytail—though cleverly without unveiling her ears. She positioned herself by the sack. “Lift on trois.”

Shaking off her bewilderment, Trevelyan accepted that she was not to win this argument, and thus, on three, did lift.

Truly, she could have carried it alone, but she did not wish to reject Lady Samient’s offer—especially as the Lady turned out to be quite the capable worker. The descent into the stores was made with ease, despite how narrow and dimly-lit the steps were. Endless, too—they journeyed far further down than Trevelyan had even for the Undercroft. How deep into its mountain plateau did Skyhold burrow?

Eventually, they reached the bottom. No sunlight here—it was a large, torch-lit hall, of which Trevelyan could barely see the other side—if not due to the distance, then due to the amount of containers already consuming the place. Skyhold was stocked floor-to-ceiling. Even the stores at the Circle hadn’t been this well-equipped.

Following directions given by waiting pantlers, they found where they were to deposit their load. Job done, they braved the lengthy climb.

“Did you do this sort of thing, at the Circle?” Samient asked, to pass the time. “You said you worked in their storerooms.”

“Not this, per se,” Trevelyan admitted. “Well, sometimes I moved things—but I was more involved with taking stock and keeping ledgers.”

“Like the quartermaster.”

“Like the quartermaster’s assistant.”

Samient chuckled. “You seem to do a trade in being an assistant.”

Trevelyan smiled. “Stick to what you know.”

Emerging onto the surface, she found herself particularly empathetic towards the reluctance of dwarves in Orzammar—what ought to be gentle sunlight burned into her retinas, glaring and harsh. Blinking it back, she turned to Lady Samient:

“Thank you for your help. I won’t intrude upon your time any further,” she said, despite Samient being the one to have offered it in the first place.

Lady Samient glanced at the carts, still plenty full. “I am not so pathetic that one measly sack would put me at rest,” she replied. “Come, allons-y.”

In a feat of industriousness that put Trevelyan to shame, Samient strode up to a cart, and awaited her next assignment. Trevelyan hurried after her.

She could not help but wonder (for the Baroness had put her in mind) what could be the reason for Lady Samient’s willingness toward such manual labour. Her sheer comfort with such a menial task, and the lack of concern over how it might reflect upon her social image, was all terribly curious.

They were the sort of traits that, perhaps—were the rumours true—might belong to a woman born of a servant; who did not have that haughtiness of high breeding that saw them think themselves better than lifting a barrel. Perhaps that was why, instead of the title that ought to be her birthright—Duchess—she went by the lesser Lady.

But Trevelyan hardly cared from who or what or where Lady Samient originated. Because, regardless of the cause, Trevelyan quite liked this side of her.

“Ey up, you’ve got a recruit!” the deliveryman called, upon their arrival. “Maker’s breath, you ought to be here every week, if you can multiply like that. Here.” He rolled a barrel towards them, and stopped it with his foot. “This do ya?”

“Thank you,” said Samient. She directed Trevelyan to, “take that end.”

Un, deux, trois—up. With scarce strain or struggle, they hauled the barrel to the stores. And the next, and the next. Indeed, they proved quite the formidable pair—a modicum of practice under their metaphorical belts meant that each subsequent task was completed faster than the last.

They were able, even, to loosen their focus, and communicate not about what steps to take or when to drop, but of people and scandal and gossip:

“Is he a mage as well?” Lady Samient asked, upon hearing of Trevelyan’s acquaintance with Dorian.

“Yes, he is,” she confirmed.

Samient hummed. “And where have I heard the name Pavus before?”

“Noble house in Tevinter,” Trevelyan said, “part of the magisterium.”

Samient’s eyebrows flicked upward. “Well, if you’re not quite interested in the Commander, you could do far worse than that.”

“Oh, no,” Trevelyan laughed, “I’m certain he’d be quite flattered, but I’m afraid he doesn’t like women.”

“Oh. How rude!”

“No, no—I mean, he likes men.”

“Oh.” Samient rolled her eyes at herself. “Of course. I see how that would be something of an obstacle.”

Trevelyan quite agreed. “Yes—call me an optimist, but I would prefer my future husband to actually want to marry me.”

Lady Samient did not, as Trevelyan had expected (and hoped), titter at this comment. Instead, her vision trailed across the courtyard, to somewhere behind Trevelyan.

Following it, the curious Trevelyan found a rather disappointing sight. No wonder Samient’s face had soured—there was a group of soldiers loitering near the carts, whispering and laughing about something they apparently found uproariously funny.

That would be innocent enough, if not for the fact their eyes kept flicking in the Ladies’ direction, accompanied by what Trevelyan could only assume were supposed to be subtle points.

“How childish,” Lady Samient scoffed.

Trevelyan rolled her eyes. “Pay them no mind—it must be a good sign! Thedas must be saved, if they have the time to be doing this.”

The remark put a smirk back on Samient’s face, and they returned to their cart—which, thanks to their labour and others’, was nearly bare.

“Are those louts even helping?” Lady Samient asked the deliverer, as he skittered a small crate towards her.

He glanced at the soldiers, and clicked his tongue. “No. Here for the show, I s’pose. Heard ‘em laughing about some ‘noble skirts’ playing pretend at being working folk.”

Lack of creativity aside, it struck Trevelyan that only she was in a skirt, and that it was a plain smock—so the insult did not quite apply.

“Don’t see any nobles ‘round here, though,” continued the deliveryman, quite obliviously, “but let ‘em play, if they are. So long as they’re doing the work, who gives a toss?”

The Ladies chuckled, exchanging a look, as the deliverer went in search of something for Trevelyan to carry.

“Go,” she told Samient, “do not be idle on my account.”

“You’re certain?”

“Of course—we do not wish to be accused of playing pretend, after all.”

Lady Samient laughed, with devious and wicked joy that Trevelyan quite shared. She dutifully parted, off to the stores once more. Trevelyan turned, to collect the sack the man had dropped for her.

A hand fell upon it. Gloved in black, and sudden enough to startle her. She looked to the arm to which it belonged—and then to the man whom that arm belonged to.

The Commander stared back at her.

(And beside him, a small platoon of sheepish-looking soldiers).

“Forgive me,” he said, releasing his grasp. “I hadn’t realised. Take it.”

There was a growling sort of undercurrent in his speech; a shortness, far more pronounced than even when he had scolded Lady Montilyet. Someone, it seemed, was in trouble.

Trevelyan smiled. “No, no,” she told him, “it’s yours.”

With a nod—again, more curt than usual—the Commander hauled up the sack, and slung it into the waiting arms of a soldier.

“We are all the Inquisition,” he lectured, “and instead of aiding our cause, you mock those who do. Save those barbs for the enemy. We work as one.”

To Trevelyan’s great satisfaction, each soldier was saddled with cargo and sent marching to the stores, with the Commander’s disapproving stare burning into their backs. She could not help but smile.

“I apologise for their conduct,” said the Commander.

Or lack thereof. Trevelyan shook her head. “Quite all right. I do not care for the opinions of those who do not know me.” Like his, for example.

“Very well.” He hesitated, as if mulling over his words. “May I ask, are you… well?”

That imperious air sloughed from him once more, and left only the tenderness of their previous meeting. In that moment, Trevelyan recalled the magic she had cast upon herself, and felt it still, quietly coursing below the surface. Yet, nothing on the Commander’s face suggested he had sensed it.

“I am fine,” she assured him. Again.

The sudden thud of an apple-crate beside them was a welcome distraction, as the deliveryman announced, “That’s the last of it.”

Though Trevelyan reached for it, the Commander took up the handles first. “Allow me,” he said.

Trevelyan would have protested—the soldiers’ mockery had not left her so fragile that she could not lift a box—but she had not the chance. For, out of the corner of her eye, she could approximate the shape of Lady Samient, observing them from afar.

“Twice in one day, Commander,” the Lady purred, strutting closer, “to what do we owe this pleasure?”

She spoke her words like honey, moved her body like silk. It was quite at odds with the plainness and practicality Trevelyan had seen of her during the last half-hour. Perhaps she had not been lying about her time with the Commander, and he responded well to such affectations.

Or perhaps not. For the Commander did not respond at all to this velvety question, muttering instead, “I should, ah, get this to the storeroom.” Entertaining not even another word from either of them, he fled.

Though Trevelyan was quite amused by this, Samient appeared rather bemused. She fixed Trevelyan with a peculiar stare, that Trevelyan almost interpreted as suspicion, until she realised that his presence, to Samient, remained a mystery.

“Well, since he shall not deign to explain himself, I shall,” Trevelyan told her. “The Commander was here to scold his soldiers. Quite furiously, too.”

Lady Samient’s mouth sank into a smile. “Ah, I see. Good. As they deserve.”

“A shame you missed it.”

“Yes, but unlike them, I was far too busy working.”

Trevelyan chuckled, and rested herself against the cart. Its bed lay bare, as did those of its brethren. For that, she felt they had quite earnt a break, yet the bustle did not cease—she noted plenty of staff still to-ing and fro-ing, fetching more barrels and crates and chests. Except—these came from the kitchens.

“You take things from Skyhold, too?” she asked the deliveryman.

He was perched on the side of the cart, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Aye,” he said. “Sometimes they have deliveries for us, but usually it’s the empty bits we take back, and fill ‘em up again.”

“How often do you come?” Lady Samient wondered.

“Every week, supposedly—but the Maker has other ideas sometimes. Got delayed this week by weather. No problem, though; I hear you’ve got stores enough to last months.”

Sounded about right to Trevelyan. Any defensible castle did, just in case the enemy ever tried to starve you out.

Lady Samient hummed. “All sounds very efficient. Do they not worry about something untoward sneaking in through these deliveries, though? Seems like you could fit a man in one of those barrels.”

She wasn’t wrong. You could certainly fit a man. Or a Trevelyan. If things ever got too dire, she might squeeze herself into one of those things, and be shipped out on the next delivery to… wherever these carts went to.

But the delivery man shrugged. “I s’pose they check’em. You’d have to ask the soldiers.”

Tsk. There went that plan.

And, as if that weren’t enough disappointment, it seemed the mere mention of soldiers summoned movement in her periphery. Their aforementioned tormentors trudged on up, out from the stores, tails between their legs. But without their Commander’s instruction, they seemed quite at a loss for what to do next.

“Such idleness,” whispered Lady Samient, apparently of the same mind as Trevelyan, “more the sort I would expect from those work-shy nobility.”

Trevelyan laughed. “How fortunate we are not—”

She stopped, on noticing nearby a maid, huffing and puffing and red in the face, attempting to roll an empty barrel towards a cart—entirely by herself. All it took was one wordless glance at Lady Samient, and the two were traipsing off in her direction.

“Do you need help?” Trevelyan asked the maid.

“Oh—yes, please! Thank you, miss,” she replied, releasing her quarry into their capable hands. Though grateful, she fixed them with a curious stare. “Sorry, but... you’re the Ladies here to see the Commander, ain’t you?”

Lady Samient raised an eyebrow. “What of it?”

“Nothing, your Ladyship! Well, you’re such an ‘elp, and—you know, there was a lot of sugar in that delivery.” The maid waited to see their faces change, but the Ladies’ expressions spoke only of confusion. “Well, we need a lot in, you see. Because the Commander—he has something of a sweet tooth, is all.”

Perhaps that was where his sudden sweetness had come from. “Good to know,” said Samient, “thank you.”

“’Course, your Ladyships.”

Armed with this newfound knowledge, they prepared to haul the barrel away—but Trevelyan hesitated. She considered herself for a moment, and whether or not she owed loyalty to the little prankster in the kitchen, or the kind woman she’d just met. It wasn’t a hard choice.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, “just before the cook uses any of that sugar—perhaps a little taste test, may be in order. Your kitchen had a rather impish visitor, earlier.”

Though the maid seemed almost bewildered for a moment, and Trevelyan worried she had misspoken, her face soon resolved into recognition, then annoyance. “Oh, that Sera!”

Trevelyan recalled the name—Dagna had mentioned it on a few occasions. From the description she’d been given and what Trevelyan had caught her doing, she safely assumed that they were one and the same.

Leaving the maid to deal with her mischief, Trevelyan seized her side of the barrel. With Lady Samient’s aid, and practised ease, they hefted it up, and paraded it past the loitering group of soldiers. One bravely asked if they needed help.

The answer was no. And a scathing look.

***

Ser Morris delivered—in the literal sense. Hours after she’d left, Trevelyan raced back to the Undercroft, an intricate little chest in her hands.

Dagna was surprised to see her: “I won’t lie, I kind of thought you just quit for the day.”

But Trevelyan was quite able to explain, and Dagna was satisfied that she had used her time with noble purpose. It did help that finally seeing her order put the Arcanist in something of a good mood.

She placed it upon a workbench, and with great reverence, opened the chest. Even Trevelyan recognised what was inside.

“New enchanting tools,” Dagna said, “straight from the finest smiths in Orzammar. With these, I can do things a little more delicately. Which means the time for theory is over—tomorrow, we enchant!”

Trevelyan grimaced.

Tomorrow she was with the Commander.

#cullen rutherford #cullen x trevelyan #commander cullen #unwanted #unwanted fic #i keep getting in my head about this fic #like theres been so little cullen so far because we were in the 'two leads seeing each other across rooms' stage #and im like idk is this boring #im writing chapters the length of my university dissertation for bag moving scenes lol #but at the end of the day you write fics for yourself first and i'm having fun #posting this is my way of actually committing to writing the whole damn thing lmaoo #edit 25/9/24: this was the real challenge. i knew when i first wrote it that one day i'd have to streamline it. today is that day

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