Of course, you had to be clever enough to invent plausible details without hesitating, agile enough to redirect attention from weak points, cool-headed enough to remain composed – but the ability to inhabit a story, to embody a story, was essential. You had to feel the emotions as your own, welling up inside your chest; you had to recall the memories with color, scent, and sound. A good lie had to be as familiar to you as the truth.
Not every lie had to be good, and even fewer had to be perfect – but for Ilya, this one did.
“What is this about?” Cullen asked, resting his weight against the heels of his palms as he leaned against the war table.
Ilya took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “There are some things you should know. About me, about… my history. I didn’t tell you before, because… well, I still wasn’t sure you wouldn’t hang me.” He allowed a hint of a smile as he glanced towards Cassandra, then swept his eyes across the other three. “I’m telling you now because I trust you.” Technically, that was also a lie, but that one was beside the point.
“Enough preamble,” Cassandra retorted, folding her arms over her chest with a frown. “What is it you mean to say?”
“Firstly –” Ilya allowed another pause, another short sigh. He hadn’t said the words aloud in years. “My father is Lord Edvard Trevelyan, cousin of Bann Trevelyan of Ostwick. I am a bastard, and the eldest of his children.”
He let that sit for a moment. With the level of scrutiny he was under as the so-called Herald, a coherent explanation for his skills was imperative. His technique as an equestrian and swordsman, his command of a half-dozen languages, his ease among the aristocracy of Thedas – all would call his identity as a common mercenary into question, and he could not afford to let those questions remain unanswered.
“I see.” Josephine spoke first, after a long pause. “Lord Edvard Trevelyan has two legitimate heirs, if I am not mistaken.”
As Ilya had hoped, she had grasped his implication immediately. “Correct.”
“You were never acknowledged?” asked Leliana.
“No, and I would prefer to keep it that way.”
Josephine looked thoughtful. “Noble relations, even loose ones, might grant you more legitimacy in the eyes of some of Thedas’ nobility…”
“Or make us look like pretenders, grasping for any influence we can find,” Leliana interjected.
“But if Lord Trevelyan were forced to acknowledge him as a son –” Josephine began.
Ilya cut her off. “It would give me a plausible claim to being his heir, and make me a threat to the security of his legitimate daughters.” He folded his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair. “Lord Trevelyan has been kind to me, and I don’t intend to repay that kindness by bringing controversy and battles over inheritances to his doorstep. As for a lifetime of pretending to be more than glorified gentry due to who my father happens to have as a cousin, I am perfectly content to leave that to my half-sisters.”
“Whatever you do, please do not repeat that outside this room,” murmured Josephine. “I understand your concerns, but perhaps a rumor of a connection…” She sighed, waving a hand as if to dismiss the troublesome thought for now. “We will need to explore our options further. Rest assured we will discuss any decision with you before taking action.”
“Thank you,” Ilya replied, inclining his head towards her.
“If you were never acknowledged, how is it that you received such a thorough education?” So Leliana had already had her doubts. He was grateful that she had at least voiced them now, so he had the opportunity, with any luck, to appropriately direct her inquiries. “You are better studied than quite a few young nobles of my acquaintance.”
“Only when it came to the subjects I was interested in,” Ilya demurred, with a slightly sheepish smile. “I grew up on Lord Trevelyan’s country estate in Ostfeld, in the heartlands west of Ostwick. He provided me with tutors, and there was little else to do besides reading, riding, and begging anyone who could wield a sword to teach me. I seldom saw him, let alone spoke to him, so your guess as to his reasons for indulging me are as good as mine.”
He doubted that had satisfied Leliana’s curiosity, but her agents should find no shortage of elders in Ostfeld who would swear they had known him as a child. No expense had been spared in establishing his cover story. She seemed content to accept it for now, at least.
There was a pause, before Cassandra spoke once more, with a touch of wariness. “Before, you said ‘firstly’.”
Ah. The truth was, of course, the difficult part.
“Secondly,” Ilya began slowly, with another cautious glance across their faces, “I was not at the Conclave by chance. I was there as an observer for the Carta.”
Their reaction was much as he’d expected: a painful pause, and then an uproar.
“What?” Cassandra’s volume rose sharply.
“Maker’s breath,” Cullen all but spat, shoving himself up from the war table to stand upright. “You should have led with that.”
“Damn you, Snow, you lied to me!” Already on her feet, Cassandra was on him in a moment. She stopped short of taking him by the collar this time, at least for now, but loomed over him with nearly as much menace as when he had been in chains. “No one of importance, you said!”
“That was true,” he pointed out, his voice steady and quiet, but he was quickly drowned out.
“Do not play games,” she growled. “All this time —”
“The Carta are scum, preying on the vulnerable –” Cullen interjected, his own voice rising.
“— you sat here and let us believe you were nothing but —”
“— and cutting every throat they think will make them –”
“— an innocent bystander! And we trusted you! You —”
“— a copper. Do you even know how many templars’ lives —”
“— should have told us before now!”
“— they’ve ruined with their smuggled lyrium? You —”
“Enough!” Josephine now raised her voice, her chair scraping loudly against the floorboards as she abruptly stood. “Andraste’s grace, get a hold of yourselves. Half the village will have heard your shouting.”
Both Cassandra and Cullen fell silent, glowering at him. In his seat, Ilya remained unmoved, except to glance warily between the two of them.
“As I said,” he began, his own words soft and measured, “I didn’t tell you sooner because I feared you would think me guilty of the explosion by extension. Should I have announced it while you had me in chains?”
“You have had plenty of opportunities to say something since then,” Cassandra shot back, her voice tight and roiling with anger.
“Did I?” Ilya asked more sharply, as he lifted his chin to meet her venomous glare evenly. “At what point could I be certain that you wouldn’t change your mind about my innocence? That you wouldn’t react with blind anger and do something reckless?” Just how close she’d come to laying hands on him moments ago was proof enough that he had been right to be concerned.
Cassandra’s jaw tightened, perhaps realizing that herself, but she did not reply. He looked to Cullen, and sighed quietly. “For what it’s worth, I agree with you.” That was mostly true, at least. “Joining the Carta was a mistake, but one not easily undone. If I just walked away, it would be with a bounty on my head.”
Cullen scoffed. “And that justifies whatever crimes you’ve abetted?”
“I didn’t say that. I made the choice to remain, and whatever blood I’ve shed in so doing is on my own hands.” Ilya allowed his voice to grow softer still. He held Cullen’s gaze, but arranged his expression carefully – he mustn’t seem hostile or defensive, if his contrition was to be believable. “That doesn’t mean it was done gladly. I’ve been looking for a way out for some time.”
That was, again, the better part of the truth. Ilya had been unhappy within the Carta for years, but with nowhere else to go and no convenient means to get there, it had just been easier to stay. Months had turned into years spent idling in a dead end alley, bored by the work and frustrated with their methods.
“I had hoped that the Conclave might provide an opportunity to disappear, and start over here in the south.” He resisted the urge to smile at the obvious irony of how events had unfolded, as Cassandra’s temper had scarcely begun to cool, but he thought he noticed a slight curve to Leliana’s mouth. “I won’t pretend I’m not glad to have a second chance – if,” he went on, glancing between each of their faces, “you’ll allow me one.”
For a few moments, there was silence.
“This could prove useful,” Leliana said, with almost comical composure.
“Be serious, Leliana,” Cassandra snapped, briefly turning her glare away from Ilya.
“I am serious. He is hardly a common thug, no?” Leliana raised her eyebrows. “Whatever his skills may be, we can make use of them. What was it that you did for the Carta, Snow?”
“I was a fixer. A problem solver, and I don’t mean that as a euphemism.” It was best to be frank here, regardless of the unflattering portrait it painted; trying to be coy about the details would only make him look worse. “Ferreting out competitors’ informants and recruiting our own, obtaining blackmail material, untangling knots in our supply chains, investigating missing shipments in the Deep Roads... My job was to be pointed at a problem and to make it go away. I did kill for them, sometimes, but I wasn’t an assassin or a knee-breaker.” It would have been terribly uneconomical for them to have him breaking knees; his pay rate had been quite high.
“See?” Leliana said lightly. “Very useful. Perhaps we should have been recruiting from the Carta to begin with.” The note of levity in her voice seemed to rankle both Cassandra and Cullen, but neither rose to the bait.
Ilya once again had to refrain from a smile. “You wouldn’t have much luck, I’m afraid. I was the best they had.” He sighed. “They’ll come asking after me once they learn I’ve survived.”
“Will they pose a problem?” asked Josephine.
“If they want trouble, I’m inclined to give it to them,” Cullen retorted bitterly.
“No, no, no –” She waved a hand at him. “We cannot afford to antagonize an entire crime syndicate. Particularly not when we could make use of their lyrium connections.”
“You can’t be –”
“I am perfectly serious, Commander. We must secure a source of lyrium independent of the Chantry or the Circles, if we mean to extend a serious offer of alliance to any remaining Templars.
“To answer your question,” Ilya offered, “I should be able to convince them to back off.” He lifted his gloved left hand in demonstration. “This makes a fairly compelling point, anyway, and I don’t think they’ll be inclined to argue once they’ve gotten a look at the Breach from up close. And no,” he added, with another glance across the room, “you need not worry about any split loyalties. If I had somehow survived the blast without the mark, I’d be here begging the Inquisition to take me anyway.”
The silence that fell over the group was tense, but he sensed that the battle was over. Cullen had folded his arms and turned away, and Cassandra had fallen back several steps to continue glaring at him from where she now leaned against the wall.
Ilya ‘Snow’ was, for better or worse, the only indispensable member of the Inquisition, and they all knew it; it wasn’t as if they could just string him up or throw him out. Still, they could have arrested him again, or started threatening another trial, so enduring their anger and suspicion for the indefinite future was a perfectly acceptable outcome so far as he was concerned.
“How does a human noble’s son end up in the Carta, anyway?” Cullen asked, his outrage having settled into something more sullen. “Even a bastard.”
Ilya considered the question for a moment. “The same way anyone does, I suppose. One of their men saw that I had talent and thought they could make use of me, and I was fool enough to accept their offer. Not fool enough to tell them who my father was, thank the Maker.”
Cassandra’s eyes on him were like a lead weight, and her tone was much the same. Her own anger had not softened, only cooled. “Choose your words carefully, Snow. If you lie to me again, you will regret it.” She waited, watching his face as she allowed time for the threat to sink in. “Is there anything else we should know?”
Ilya met her gaze, his own eyes quiet and calm. No doubt she meant it; she might even be right. It made no difference, really.
He shook his head.
“No.”