#vetranox

Five minutes ago, he’d been in a cell below Skyhold, awaiting the Inquisitor’s sentencing for pirating from Inquisition-allied ships. Some noble had whined to their fourth cousin once removed (or was it fifth) to “take care of” the ship pillaging their fleet, and that cousin just so happened to be Inquisitor Trevelyan.

But now Haskel Becket, unwanted bastard son and terror of the sea, was walking beside that very Inquisitor along Skyhold’s battlements. “We’re less likely to be overheard up here,” she’d said after she dismissed the guards who had brought Haskel to her. “Come with me.

“Sorry about the capture,” she said as they walked. “Our Nightingale got wind of Tevinters targeting you too, and I figured it was safer for you to be in our custody than dead at some Venatori’s hands. Here’s good.” She stopped and turned to him, folding her arms and fixing him with a steady green gaze, and Haskel had the sudden realization that for a woman, she was very tall. “What I want to know is, why were those Tevinters aiming for you? If your answer is both true and what I want to hear, I might have a job for you.”

Haskel studied her for a moment, calculating the risk. The Inquisitor couldn’t be seen to publicly piss off any high-ranker in Thedas, not even a magister. And with what he’d heard about this half-Tevinter Inquisitor…

Oh, who was he kidding. She was a Free Marcher. Talked like one, certainly. And he thought he recognized her name too. Trevelyan. They’d been another Ostwick noble family when he lived there, right?

“I was fucking up the slave trade. Attacking the ships carrying slaves, freeing ‘em, smuggling ‘em out.”

Trevelyan’s grin curved her mouth and showed her canines. “Excellent.” She turned to start walking again. “Captain Becket, I’m prepared to return your ship to you, along with your crew. You will not publicly be on the Inquisition’s payroll, but I have a friend at a bank in Orlais. He can make the payments…discreetly. I want you to go back onto the sea and continue your work, under one condition: that you will only attack Tevinter ships. Do not make my cousin Cecily come crying to me about losing profits. I didn’t even know I had a cousin Cecily until she whined to me about you.”

“Okay, so I get my ship back, keep doing what I’m doing, but this time with payment from some snot-nose in Orlais. Then what?” Haskel asked bluntly.

The Inquisitor was smiling as she led him back down the stairs to the courtyard. “Then, Captain Becket, you and I are going to change the world.”

A grin spread slowly on Haskel’s face as the idea formed solidly in his mind that, more than being a valuable friend, this bold woman could be someone he could really come to like.

feat. a sly shoutout to @dalatrasslinron‘s arthur trevelyan and a sneaky reference to the importance of being earnest