( Survival is a series of large and small compromises. It is small victories and bigger losses, and it is negotiating what you can learn to live with and what you know you couldn't. It's hoping that you're not losing too much of yourself in the negotiation; it is ugly and dirty and you do what you can within it to be someone you can still look in the mirror.

Sometimes it means working for people who wouldn't break stride to step over your corpse if you died in the doing, so you can send their money to people who deserve the world and will never get it. )

I've not, ( he admits, clearly regretting the answer; knowing that it isn't the one she wants to hear, and hardly the one he wants to be able to give. ) Merc work had been up and down Orlais for a time, now, and I came direct. Might never have got out of the house if I'd gone home, things being what they are.

( His mother being what she is - his family having lost enough sons. )

I got letters, though, if you want news.

( She might remember his mother wasn't exactly prone to limiting her interest to her immediate family, as far as alienage life went. )