Alistair stared in stunned horror and disbelief at the sight of Arl Verus's estate. Andraste's flaming knickers, Arl Verus was in a right state as well. If his face got any redder, Alistair worried it might combust. How the man was breathing so heavily, he didn't know. With this heat, the stink of cow shit had thickened the air. Even Alistair was trying to breathe as little as possible.
"How did you get the cows up there? Where did you even get the cows from?" He asked the children in front of him.
Sometimes he wondered about these four. Evie was fifteen, Tairyn and Hirik were sixteen, and Kieran seventeen. Just a few more years, and they would be as old as he was when he joined the Wardens. Had he been this immature at their age? Actually, that was probably a yes. But he certainly hadn't been this destructive!
They all exchanged looks with each other; Kieran's was a bit more sour than the others. Kieran was the good one. The mature one. But he also loved his sister and was often dragged into the messes the other three made. Yet he never came and got him before things went too far. And for that, he was in just as much trouble as the rest.
"Please don't tell me you stole them," Alistair sighed.
Zev had spent many hours with his son and Evie both, teaching them the fine art of lock picking, pickpocketing, and the various other ways in which to steal and scam. Alistair hadn't minded Evie having the skill, having been locked up in a cell himself during the blight. Lockpicking could be a useful skill. But the rest of it, perhaps the children didn't need to know. They caused trouble enough as it was. While Zevran found the stories hilarious, he wasn't the one who had to deal with the fallout.
None of the children answered his question, which in itself was answer enough.
"What was the plan here?" Alistair asked, completely boggled by it.
What was releasing a herd of cows inside the Arls estate supposed to accomplish?
"They'd shit everywhere," Tai finally replied.
"The goal was just to make a big, disgusting mess in the Arl's house?"
"Basically."
"Why?"
"He deserved it," Tai replied.
"Why?" Alistair asked again.
He noticed the way Tai's and Hirik's eyes darted to Evie for a moment, and Alistair's heart sank.
He wasn't blind or deaf to the way Evie was spoken of amongst the upper echelons of society. He'd hoped that she was.
Despite her illegitimacy, she was his daughter. He knew they would never accept her as his heir; he had been fine with that. They had only accepted him because he was the last Theirin and had agreed to marry the Queen.
He and Anora had fulfilled their duty, providing a legitimate male heir. He'd thought that would take some of the attention away from Evie, and they would let her be. She had no desire for any kind of power or wealth. She just liked to sing and make art. He wasn't sure where her talent in it came from; neither he nor her mother were particularly creative or talented in those arenas. Nor had they expressed much of an interest. But Evie loved it, and he had provided her everything to pursue it.
Perhaps it was time to stop having her attend public functions; maybe that was how he protected her from those with crueller natures. But he was afraid she would feel... hidden. Like he was ashamed of her existence. He'd felt that way for so much of his own life; it was a pain he'd wanted to protect her from. He was proud of her and the person she was, and he loved that she existed. He never wanted her to doubt that.
"All right, first things first, tell me who you stole the cows from so I can have them returned. Then you four are going to clean every bit of mess made by them. You do realise, as angry as the Arl may be, it would be his servants who bore the brunt of your actions?"
Another look was exchanged between the four of them.
"Well, I can tell by the looks on your faces you hadn't thought that far ahead. You never do. So you are going to clean this. Then you are going to apologise to the Arl and Arlessa for the damage done to their home."
Which he was going to have to pay to repair or replace. He would have to get people to round up the cows as well and have them returned to their rightful owner.
"Set to it. I'll go and let Verus know what's going to happen."
He stalked off towards the Arl and his wife.
Kieran looked over Evie's head at Tai. "'We'll slip out easy; no one will ever know it was us.'" He mockingly imitated Tai's words.
"I admit, the plan went a bit awry," Tai said with a roll of his eyes.
"Look at the Arl's face, though," Hirik chuckled, looking to where Alistair was dealing with the man.
Tai and Evie let out a light laugh as well, and even Kieran softened slightly.
"Come on, we should get to cleaning," Evie said. "Get it over with sooner rather than later. We really should have thought that through better. He was right about the servants getting stuck with it."
"Mm," Tai conceded.
That hadn't been their intention. Truly, they hadn't considered it at all, too stuck on the mental image of the Arl and his wife surrounded by cows in an estate full of urine and shit.
-
It was a large estate, and when it was clear the four of them alone would not get the job finished before the end of the day, Alistair had sent people to help them with the task. Knowing her father, he had likely asked for volunteers and would compensate them for the filthy work. The amount of times he'd had to bail them out of trouble...
The four of them were in the Arl's bedroom, just finishing with the mess in there. Tai still looked keen to go further.
"We could slash up his artwork," Tai suggested.
"Are you daft?" Kieran asked. "Anything that gets damaged today, Father is going to have to replace."
That did at least give Tai pause. Tai had lived under Alistair's roof since he was a little boy, and his parents had gone gallivanting off with her mother to find a cure. And something to do with the Crows – Uncle Zev's former employers. They never really gave much information on that, though. Aside from the rather romantic tale of how Zevran had met Shae and been unable to assassinate her upon realising they were soulmates, they'd not been told much. But they had pieced together the Crows wanted him dead.
Alistair had treated Tai as he'd treated his own children and considered Tai his nephew in the same way Uncle Zev and Aunt Shae considered Evie their niece.
"We could smear some shit on the underside of the nightstand," Hirik suggested. "It will be faint enough they might just consider it lingering from the main event. And it will be hard to find."
"Genius, Hirik," Tai said, setting to the task.
"Do you ever think there might be a lot less trouble in our lives if you stopped pulling shit like this?" Kieran asked.
All three looked at him blankly. The thought had never crossed their minds.
-
"So, what shenanigans did the children get up to this time?" Fergus asked Alistair, pouring the other man a glass of whisky.
Alistair had become quite friendly with the man since he'd returned from the Korcari Wilds. He'd returned only to find his entire family murdered, including his young son and his soulmate. Alistair and the others had already killed Howe, of course, and Fergus took the title of Teryn of Highever, getting it back in order despite the depths of his grief. Alistair had done what he could to help and make things easier for him. He knew the pain of losing a soulmate, but he couldn't imagine the agony of losing a child. And hoped he never had to.
Alistair sighed as he dropped into his chair, accepting the glass Fergus offered.
"They stole a herd of cows and set them loose in Arl Verus's estate. They got those things through the entire estate. They were up on the walls, Fergus."
Fergus let out a deep chuckle into his glass.
"It's a little impressive," he said. "Where did they steal the cows from? How? Someone had to have noticed."
"I found their owner passed out drunk with a very expensive bottle of brandy. I suspect the children gave it to him. How they got him to drink so much so early in the day, I don't know."
"Well, points for creativity."
Alistair begrudgingly agreed. "The mess was too big for the four of them to clean in one day, so I had to send help. And I'm expecting a list of damages from the Arl."
"Did they say why they did it?"
Alistair knew sometimes there was no 'why'. One of them would get an idea, and they would all run with it. It honestly boggled the mind at times.
But this time, there did seem to be a reason. Even if it was possibly a flimsy one. Alistair didn't know what the Arl or his wife could have said to warrant a herd of cows in their home, but that didn't matter. The four of them should know better by now that there are other ways of dealing with these situations.
"I suspect the Arl had a few cruel words about Evie that one of them must have overheard," he replied softly.
Fergus nodded his understanding. He'd also heard some of the things said about the poor girl. Rather undeservedly. She had no desire for the throne or for power or influence. At times he did wonder if there was more to her than looking pretty and being obedient. At times she seemed little more than an empty doll. But then, she did get into trouble with the boys fairly often, so maybe there was more to her than he'd seen.
Most of the negative comments he'd heard had centred around her illegitimate status. People also seemed to see things that weren't there – accusing her of manipulating Alistair or attempting to seduce a wealthy noble or exerting influence over her younger brother and future king. People believed the siblings should be separated to protect young Benedict from her. The beliefs were unfounded in his opinion.
The door to Alistair's study swung open, Chancellor Eamon red in the face and looking ready to pop. Three guesses what this was about.
"Arl Verus is livid, Alistair," the older man snapped.
"I've sorted it, Eamon. He'll calm down."
"What were those four thinking?"
"They probably weren't. You know them."
"Yes. I think it's time they settled down, don't you?"
That brought a tension to the room that hadn't been there before. 'Settle down' was just code for 'marry off'.
"No. I don't," Alistair said, his voice hard.
Fergus had only heard Alistair take that tone a few times in their acquaintance, and two of those three times had been in relation to someone trying to tell him what to do with his daughter.
Alistair's children were his whole world, and it was clear he loved the other two boys like his own nephews. Eamon was pushing it, trying to arrange a marriage for Evangeline.
While Alistair loved all his children, she held his heart in the palm of her hand.