The air goes quiet between them. She's thinking about libraries, about being encouraged to learn to her heart's content. How many resources were locked away in those towers, which could have helped her people? What could she have brought back, if she were allowed to leave? How much could she learn, without the need to break her back doing chores every day?

"I'd like it, if I could leave," she says quietly. "But don't you see that to submit to the Circles would be further erasure of our culture? Tevinter tried so hard to do that to us, and they almost succeeded. We can't let the tides wear us away anymore. We can't afford it. There are things they don't teach in your Circles and I wish we could all learn from each other, but it's never been possible before."