All he has on him is a ring. A wedding ring, to be specific. The one he never got a chance to wear.

Yeah she's--going to hold onto that.

She slips it onto her own finger, for lack of pockets to put it in, picks up her blades and goes through the next door.

Another corridor. This place is pretty mazelike.

There's a guard at the other end, but luckily for her, he doesn't have a bow on him, just a sword and shield.

"Please get out of my way. I have had a very bad day and your employer and compatriots have made every effort to ensure that I have an even worse one, so I'm really not going to lose any sleep over it if I have to kill you, but if you don't insist on joining the 'rape and murder is okay as long as it's elves you're doing it to' party, I'd really rather not."

"I can tell you which way is out and pretend I never saw you, but I can't let you through this door," he says.

"And what happens next time Vaughan Kendells decides he wants some elf girls for a party."

He hesitates, his eyes flicking away from her for a moment to glance at the door he's guarding.

"...that might be less of a problem than you think," he says.

"And I'm supposed to trust that? I give people chances. I gave Vaughan Kendells three, back at the alienage. If you insist on fighting me I'll do my best to get you out of the way without killing you but I have had enough of the empty promises of shemlen. Do you want to know how my mother died?"

"Not particularly," he says. "Look - a girl came in here a quarter hour ago, a lady I guess, introduced herself as the Teyrna of Highever and asked to talk to the young lord. She didn't look happy. Something's about to happen to him, or has already."

"Maybe you're telling the truth," she says. "But I can't afford to take risks with my cousins' lives."

She's very fast. A pommel to the temple ought to do to knock him out with a minimum of risk to his life.

He isn't fast enough to stop her; he goes down.

She makes sure he's positioned so worst come to worst he won't suffocate on his own vomit and heads through the door.

It's yet another corridor, with indistinct voices issuing from a room halfway down it.

She stalks down the hallway and throws open the door.

"—not making this very—ah," says the human from earlier, the one who was helping Warden Duncan. "Hello again."

"How dare—" starts Lord Vaughan, turning to see who was willing to interrupt him so rudely. When he sees Acara, he falls silent and just stares in shock.

"Hello. Do you remember, back at the alienage, when I told you it wouldn't be worth it? Do you want to know how many of your guards are dead, now? Do you regret not listening to me then?"

"Vaughan Kendells is not very good at recognizing the consequences of his choices," says possibly the Teyrna of Highever.

"Bitches, both of you—"

"Really? Really? That's what seems to you like the most productive response here?"

"I mean, let's be fair, he'd have to say something really, really clever to walk out of this room alive. He might as well die as he lived: a total sack of shit."

"I have been putting, frankly, much more effort than he deserves into trying to convince him to change his ways," says Elissa, "because I really don't like murdering people for doing things that are already illegal when they could be handled by legal means instead. I definitely don't have time to stay in Denerim and get him properly charged for the multiple laws he has already broken and the ones he intended to break later, but I do happen to already be on my way to see the king to report and seek justice for a much worse crime, and I would have no trouble at all bringing immense embarrassment to the Kendells family over this, which is the sort of threat that can and does keep idiots like Lord Vaughan in line. Unfortunately, Lord Vaughan is a particularly stubborn idiot."

"Bitch," he mutters.

"In case you haven't noticed, I just went from trying to prevent you from raping anyone today to trying to save your life," she says. "You could consider being grateful, or at least not actively impeding me."

"You wouldn't really let this knife-ear kill me, would you?"

"Do you see a weapon?" she asks, spreading her empty hands. Indeed, although armoured, she appears to have left her sword outside. "All I have are words."

"You should really be less concerned with the points on my ears than the ones on my blades."

"Lord Vaughan. Please. All you have to do is look me in the eye and promise not to do anything like this again, and then sit here quietly in your room for the rest of the night."

"Oh, do I? And what if the elf bitch murders me in my sleep, what then?"

"Leave that in my hands," says Elissa.

"What are you?"

"The Teyrna of Highever, I believe I've mentioned."

"She is a shem who has entered the alienage without harassing anyone, a distinction you sadly lack."

"By the way," she says to Acara, "how would you like to join the Grey Wardens?"

"Will it get me out of hanging for killing a lot of guards and probably a lordling?"

"Yes."

"What!" exclaims Lord Vaughan.

"Again," says the self-proclaimed teyrna, "all you have to do..."

"I - I -"

She sighs. "I'm trying here, I really am."