Guarded Love (COMPLETED)

Headache

His headache was growing exponential, the throbbing assisted by the chattering voices of people panicking after they realized they were fine but suckered onto an ample excuse to draw attention. Their illustrious Orlesian ambassador was enjoying a faint across the floor. After she folded to the ground, most Fereldens walked over her, hustling into the courtyard in pursuit of his bodyguard and the assassin. Seeing as how no one seemed to care about Cherie hitting the floor, she seemed intent to wait there until someone did. It was the strangest stalemate to have a grown woman laying upon the stones like a petulant toddler with no endgame in sight. Alistair wished he could stay and watch but there were a dozen other problems to solve.

"Ghaleb," he jerked his head to the Spymaster who kept prodding at the arrow shaft embedded into the table and watching it quiver.

Those watery grey eyes wandered over to Alistair's left ear before he slid out of the evacuated room. "Sire?"

"Tell me you know something, anything. A clue, an idea?"

Ghaleb spoke in his jagged breath, words crammed together with pauses inserted sometimes between syllables. "Perrin's wearing three pairs of smallclothes, Chancellor Eamon has taken up with a distinguished Mother without his wife's knowledge, and the Madam Ambassador is trying to slide a handkerchief out of her bodice without anyone seeing."

At that Alistair spun on his heel, catching only a shiver from Cherie's fingers as they froze before she resumed her dead faint. Growling, he whipped back to Ghaleb, "About the damn assassination attempt that just happened."

"Oh...no."

"Don't you think you should...?" he rolled his hands through the air waiting for the man to catch on when a voice called out through the antechamber.

"Milord, the assassin has been stopped," the tell tale timbre of Cade shouted from below. Alistair scurried to the railing and peered down off the landing to watch his Commander of the guards stopped upon the muddy carpets, his beefy arms thrust back. But what drew Alistair's eye was the woman that ran without thought for herself through the window and leaped off a roof in pursuit of a criminal. Her head hung low, the eyes skirting the ground, but she seemed no worse for the wear. Thank the Maker, he sighed, then tried to shake it off.

"What is the state of him?" Alistair shouted out to his Commander. "Hopefully awake enough to answer a few rather pertinent questions. His favorite color? His opinion on mixing plaids with stripes? Thoughts on this sudden trend of Orlesians wearing cheese instead of eating it? Oh, and if there's time why he and his ilk are suddenly trying to kill me."

"I," Cade paused a moment, those sunken in eyes darting over to the elven woman staggering to the side. "He is dead, Sire."

Alistair's head snapped back and a groan reverberated up through his bones. "Of blighted course he is. You know, alive would have been preferable. Unless you know a good mortalitassi that can get a few answers from a corpse we're back up that creek without a paddle or the ability to swim."

"Milord, I..." Cade began before Reiss interrupted.

"It is my fault, Ser," she said lifting her weary head and staring at him. Alistair was struck by bruises dotting her wan face and he finally noticed she was clinging tight to her arm.

"Are you alright?" he asked, stepping down the stairs to her. The pack of lost diplomats followed on his heels like homeless hamsters with nothing better to do. Only Cherie remained where she fell, her fingers drumming against the floor.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Alistair walked towards Reiss, when Cade intercepted him. "The Corporal here engaged with the assassin but he overpowered her. I had no choice but to finish him off before he killed her."