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Father shows them a branch. Narrow, still wearing its bark, still in a state of nature; the branch hasn't yet been stripped down to a stave. Little twigs branch off it."Tell me what you see." A branch. "What about this twig here?" It is a twig. Carver reaches to snap it off, and Bethany gives a muted yelp of alarm. The twig isn't a twig."How does it work?" Garrett wants to know. As soon as he sees the twig move, he knows: it's a trick! A trick and he wants to learn it. He wants to take the stickbug apart to find out how it works. Startlement forgotten, Bethany rebukes Garrett for willingness to hurt the little thing, and Carver says it's only a bug, and then there's squabbling until Father stops them and explains the bug. Garrett doesn't have to take it apart to learn from it. One: What you want to hide is best hidden in plain view.Two: What looks like it belongs doesn't always belong. Three: Be careful where you stick your hand. There might be something alive under it.(But he still wants to know the trick!) *** In his dream, the stickbug grows to the size of a puppy, and he takes it apart with Father's woodworking tools. It is all metal inside. It's made of triggers and wires. Its head issues an impossible demand from hanging and disjointed mandibles. "Now put me back together again," and Garrett wakes up in a cold sweat.(Does a stickbug even have mandibles? His dream has conflated it with the shape of a spider.)(Later in life, he will be practically haunted by spiders, always spiders needing to be dealt with, and Garrett will wonder what it is the Maker really wants him to learn from the insect kingdom.) *** Father has a walking stick. It's got a huge figurine of Andraste on the end, and as they walk through Lothering, he trades the occasional ribald comment with some fellow or other they pass. The chantry sister likes it best of all. She and Father bandy back and forth some holy verses about ham and eggs.The baker's little boy is sitting on the bakery stoop, and Father stops to pull a copper from behind his ear. If anyone ever says Malcolm Hawke can do magic, this kind of sleight-of-hand is what his friends will cite. If anyone ever says Malcolm Hawke carries a mage's staff, his friends will laugh and ask what kind of a mage would carry a staff with a big old statue of Andraste stuck on the end, and her tits as big as her head. He is a woodcarver and a whittler and a carpenter; his walking stick is an advertisement. He is a lively fellow, given to whimsy, full of jokes and merriment; he does little tricks to amuse children. His wife says that's how he wooed her. The kind of tricks a minstrel might do, but harmless, done for no profit or malice. Malcolm Hawke is an honest working man, a family man. If Malcolm Hawke could do magic, what would he want with the life of a woodcarver in Lothering?And so no one ever says: Malcolm Hawke is a mage. Mages wear robes, that's why people call mages "robes". Mages raven as abominations. Mages are proud men in Tevinter, foreigners, magisters who indulge in perversions and keep slaves. The things mages want are power and more power, and also to do evil. Malcolm Hawke just wants to feed his children and keep on his pretty wife's good side. (Some people say she was the model for that Andraste carving. Garrett overhears it and tells Father very solemnly, because it seemed to him they were being naughty somehow when they said it. But Father tells Mother right out, and they both laugh and laugh.) *** Garrett can make:snares. traps. yo-yos. dreamcatchers. a finger trap. the best cup of tea his mother ever tasted. a tiny wooden mabari with all the fur carved in lines. a whistle that really works. a lock pick that really works. a vegetable stew. a poison for bugs that won't hurt people, it just scratches the bug's outer armor and makes it dry out and die. a little cage for mice that catches the mouse without hurting it, so he can let the mouse out in the field. a practice sword scaled for a small boy. "There isn't anything Garrett can't make," says Carver. And Carver really likes the sword that Garrett made for him, so why is Carver frowning when he says this? *** If Malcolm Hawke were a mage, what would he want with Blight sickness?Bethany tries to heal him, though he tells her it will do no good. She nearly burns herself out trying. Carver resolves to kill every darkspawn, signs up for the army directly. "It's the buddy system, Mother," says Garrett to Leandra the night before they leave for the front. "Remember?" Two by two. Bethany will take care of Mother, Mother will take care of Bethany. Garrett will take care of Carver, Carver will take care of Garrett. This is why Garrett will go to the war, though when they sign him up, he laughs with the king's man, says he's a lover and not a fighter. Carver can be the hero of the family, the warrior. Garrett? You can call Garrett a rogue, if you must call him something.(Just don't call him late for dinner. Ha! That one will never get old.) *** He wears his father's name like an amulet through this forsaken city, and he wears his brother's memory like a millstone around his neck.This is how he survives a year of indentured servitude to smugglers. For a year, he is not Garrett at all. He is Hawke, he is his father. He does magic tricks for the others and it keeps them entertained and it saves him needing to beg off the dice games, because he has no money to spare for gambling, and this way he can laugh it off, who'd want to gamble against light-fingered Hawke? He develops a reputation for getting jobs done with a minimum of fuss. He develops a reputation for other things. He makes lots of snares and traps. He springs lots of snares and traps.He picks lots of locks. By the end of the year, he is Hawke even to himself. *** When he has to hurt people, he thinks of them as things to take apart, and the things inside of them are springs and gears of a different kind, that's all.He remembers how Father had been so afraid for Bethany, how relieved Father was when Bethany's gift proved one of fire and ice, little if any skill for healing. Healers are the ones who get caught, Father said, probably meaning the words for Mother's ears only but the cottage was a small one and Garrett a restless sleeper. Healers are the ones who get caught because they can't help but help people. It's easy to chalk up a fire to carelessness. Healing cannot be explained away. *** Hawke meets a healer.
No wonder you got caught seven times.
*** Hawke meets a pirate queen. Hawke meets an outcast elf girl. Hawke meets a runaway slave. Hawke makes friends and influences people. *** Garrett loses his sister. No.Garrett almost loses his sister. The healer saves her. Hawke falls in love.They can't be together, of course. This is not the time nor the place for a lover's idyll. The city is in perpetual turmoil. It is occupied. It is prey to gangs of robbers and cultists. It is ripe for the picking, if you ask Hawke's patron cum Svengali cum pimp, Varric Tethras, a mercenary-minded dwarf whom Hawke likes despite himself. Below ground it's a mephitic maze, above ground it's a garden littered with living snares."I would drown us in blood to keep you safe," the healer says, and Hawke thinks: Sweetheart, we're up to our necks already. *** Garrett loses his mother.The hell of it is, it's not as though he wasn't paying attention. He saw all the warning signs, or the hints thereof. He had a hundred misgivings. He knew something wasn't right and he stayed quiet about it. Because he told himself he had to be wrong. Because he told himself she deserved to be happy. Because anything he said would sound like bitterness. She couldn't be expected to stay married to a ghost forever.Hawke kills the man who killed Garrett's mother, and this is how he learns once and for all that vengeance is a lie. Vengeance is an empty promise, a cup of ashes. He takes vengeance all the same, because it is all he can have. *** The city is a snare. *** They build a statue of him at the waterfront. They call him Champion. Just because he killed yet another person to solve yet another problem. All he does is kill people. All he does is solve people's problems.In his dreams, the city demands that he put it back together. He wakes up soaked and chilled to the bone. His bed is empty. A light is burning under the door. *** They're going to make a potion out of sewage. The hell they are.His healer, his lover, says the potion will be a cure. Garrett only knows how to make poisons, and Hawke pretends he doesn't know the first thing about this. Pretends he hasn't spent the last handful of years embroiled in intrigues over a recipe for explosive powder made from sewage.Dragon droppings to sift. So many bloody spiders. Hawke rolls up his sleeves and slashes his way through. He has never been afraid to get his hands dirty. *** Hawke walks softly and carries a big stick. Literally. It is his father's walking stick. It has a huge figurine of Andraste on top, just the thing for a visit to the local chantry.In the stories, they will say he was a mage and that was his staff. In the stories, they will say he conspired with his apostate lover to bring down the Chantry, because both were mages and both aspired to break the Circle. Hawke has no problem with this. That's why he brought the staff. *** They live in a cave, like hermits. There is the occasional spider. As the Orlesian has fled Kirkwall and forfeited his assets, technically Hawke is sole owner of this mine. Technically he is living on his own private property.Technically it is part of the city.He is still working his way out. He is still picking his way free. The city is a living thing, so he's got to be careful, that's all. But for now, he is at home here, as much as a place can ever be home. There is money sewn into the linings of his cloak and coat, ready for the time they take flight. He works a coin out through a careful opening in the seam. Palms it. Pretends it came from behind Anders' ear.