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4E 176, Markarth
Leroy should have taken the morning shift.
He should have swallowed his pride and bile, and shut himself in with the inmates, held the iron-spiked whip in his hands, and done what was asked.
He should have taken a longer patrol down the still-smoking streets, let the ashes cut off his breath, water his eyes.
Better yet, he should have never been here at all. He should have stayed in High Rock with his mother, tilling the temperate earth, scrubbing floors until he quietly died. He should have stayed where a thousand eyes did not drill the back of his skull, watching, waiting.
Too late for that.
Past the city gates, inching over the hills- a guardsman off his post was walking bait- for the soldiers and the Forsworn alike, or for bandits, or those turned bandits, unafraid of a tussle or several if it meant they could tear away the cloak within which he hid it.
Leroy fought the urge to laugh, as he pressed the child’s head against his shoulder before it started to cry. He might die here, on his first and final exploit- for a creature that mightn’t survive anyway.
So much for it all- all the oaths, all the keeping his head down, all the yesnopleasethankyousir, if the lights still glowing from the watchtowers thought him worthy prey, and an arrow to the head snuffed him out like a candle.
The evening felt an age ago, back when he thought he knew himself. A slight, quiet man, not hopeless with a sword, but not good enough to stand out or be saved. Knew his place. In the barracks, tucked beneath thin sheets at the end of his shift, pretending the scent of death didn’t make him empty his stomach by the side of his bedroll.
I’ll mind the mines, sir. He said, and tried not to flinch. He was dead meat if he didn’t prove it, if he didn’t fling himself into the mouth of a serpent and emerge unscathed. To put his feet in not one, but two crumbling boats.
He was sweating beneath his boots as his heels clicked in a salute.
And then the miner called.
Starved-thin, mousy brown hair a mop of soot, and his bloodstained fingers, two of them broken beneath the blunt edge of a pickaxe clung to a bundle of cloth at his chest, that he held out before Leroy could look away. Jean. His mind supplied, treacherously.
Jean Leveferre. He was High Rock like him, an exile. Married to a Reachwoman, he’d rubbed shoulders with the Forsworn before what’s left of them fled to the hills. After Karthwasten, that was enough to damn him to a life that was only slightly worse than what he’d eked out at the warrens.
“Kinsman.” He said.
He should have turned away then. Dangerous word, that. Made fools of men far stronger than him.
The child still reeked of the cell. Waste and damp and dirt and silver when Leroy threw another layer of his cloak over its head. Stark bloody fingerprints against its grimy rags, the only thing it’d keep of its father. He should have turned away then.
“Please,” Jean’s trembling hand reached through the bars, gripping Leroy's uniform. “It’s my daughter. She hasn’t done a thing. ” Leroy blanched. He hadn’t done a thing either, and where had that left him?
( “Over the hills,” Jean’s blue eyes were huge in the dark, huge and desperate. “There’s caravans over the Hills, they’ll take her back to High Rock, give her a chance-“)
Here, for dead, fevered and delirious enough to think there were chances.
They wouldn’t make it. Leroy felt the truth sink as an anvil does. If the child lasted the climb, by some miracle, lived the hour more it’d take him to find the road, find a passing cart of refugees that’d take on the thankless task of conveying- feeding it- what then? The embers of war still ravaged the Reach; precious few wagons dared to venture the journey. Fewer still survived it.
The child let out a quiet, miserable whine, and fell silent. It’d stopped crying after the first stretch. Leroy quickened his pace, running now, ignoring how his knees protested the wild hope that moving would keep them warm enough.
Panic sank its talons into him.
“Hush, man!” Leroy hissed, laying a hand on the hilt of his sword. “If they have my head- my relief won’t be kinder.”
“Kinsman,” Jean was weeping now, tears leaving trails through the ash and dust. He wasn’t alone in his cell. A blanket of battered bodies, praying or moaning weakly in sickness and hurt. Cracked, festering skin, a cloud of fever-breath and old sweat.
Kinsman, kinsman, kinsman. Stop.
"They’ll kill her.”
They would. They hadn’t minced words of it. With us or against us.
The guards grimly joked if they’d dashed every last living thing against these stone walls, only Thonar of the Silver-Bloods would pout, boyishly, calling it a drain of workforce. Divines, were they wrong? He’d seen what became of Braig’s little girl. Her twisted pigtails, her terrified scream Leroy needed to box his own ears to forget.
Brothers, Jean called the rebels before they’d made their stand that didn’t last past sunrise and Ulfric’s first, thundering Shout. Not his fight, not his land. Brothers, to people who’d never claimed this frail, pathetic man as their own.
Against his better judgement, against his pounding heart pleading him to leave, turn back, and leave, drink himself to a stupor, curl into his bedroll and shut his eyes and stay alive, Leroy asked, "Does the babe have a name?"
The bleached, broken road curved westwards ahead of him. The Karth shone an ominous silver, the first rays of sunrise beginning to pinken the sky. His ribs caved painfully, cold sweat dripping past his dark red hair. Leroy jostled the child in his arms, when he realized, with a dreadful jolt, that it wasn’t breathing.
She wasn’t breathing.
He sank knees down on to the rocky ledge cut towards the lip of the road. The baby girl’s lips were blue as death, cheeks dry and tearless, cold even beneath his cloak.
Had he held her wrong? Could he hold her wrong? A hundred different ways to walk a child to its death, and he hadn’t learnt a single thing about keeping one alive. Swearing, he struggled to loosen more of his furs, gripping her too hard too wrong in one arm to cradle her. He was too late. He knew it. He laid her soft weight over his knees, and her eyes stayed shut.
With one hand he fumbled for his waterskin. Water.
He’d trudged up half a mountain with her, and he hadn’t thought to feed her.
Leroy uncorked the skin, catching himself in time to not choke her, and ripped a bunch of fabric off his uniform. His wrists ached as he wrung the cloth, dripping plain water to those pale blue lips. No milk, no grain, no fire. One more. He’d killed one more.
A little, hacked-up cough.
Her sweet, small face, soft as snowdrift, the way her nose twitched as he bundled her up again. Pale, little ears, and when she moved her mouth, just so, aiming for the water, a dimple struggling against her sunken cheek.
(Did her father look down at her, as fathers do, gentle fingers through that fine brown hair, with that ageless promise he had to lose her to keep? Did he bury his face in the crook of her neck and weep, and did he, sifting through the filth of the warrens, puff his chest and declare what a beauty his girl would grow up to be?)
Her thin chest rising and falling. Short. Shallow.
Wouldn’t it have changed a better man? That wretched sound Jean made when he crumpled against the bars the moment his daughter left his arms, wouldn’t that kind of love have been enough?
Wouldn’t it have been enough to spur him to take the child and run, run again, to his death if he had to, to the ends of Nirn if he had to, join the rebels in the Hills or the kingdom past it, start a war and stop it, till the ground and tear it apart with his bare hands even if fate itself battered down his door to save one child wrestled from the wreck of a land that now lay with those it never belonged to-
Leroy’s hands only trembled, useless, useless, and the door he’d kicked open in his spirit only fanned a flame that wasn’t good enough, or brave enough for anything more than to lay her at his knee and sniffle out the only prayer he knew how to make.
“One more, Marguerite,” Leroy begged, blind to the indifferent, rising sun, squeezing the next drop of water, watching for her next strained breath. “One more.”
Beyond him, wagon wheels slowed to a crawl over the torn roads.
Behind him, the dawn’s first watch began to stir.
*
4 E 187, Bravil
The knife wasn’t a sword, a sword wasn’t a spell, but it would do. He’d tested it, well and good, on old Salvius’ goat; the goat hadn’t been for him, of course, only the scraps, boiled in hot oil. His mother’s fingers still couldn’t take oil. And he’d been too hungry to see her waste it. But the goat had died, regardless.
One neat cut across, that strangled gurgle before it went still. Cesare thought of Father, again and again and again, thought it until it branded itself inside of his eyelids, thought it until it clogged his windpipe with salt and sandpaper.
Thought it from dusk till dawn, and till dusk again, as Mama salted the scraps and laid them out to dry, her smile pale as a ghost as their neighbors called out their clucking greetings.
Skinning father as he skinned the goat, his slim arms with their death grip pried into tanned leather for the winter. Can him like they canned fish, diced meat chopped pink and dried, canned him like Salvius canned sticky-sweet fruit.
Jaro’darr’s brew, liquid courage, Salvius called it, made his stomach turn and his head spin and his feet over-light as he’d made the climb to kiss the Lucky Old Lady.
She’s got a wicked heart.
Well, so did he.
He cleaned out the old carpet that lay folded across the junkyard, pulled it over Father’s room. If he did this right, Father’s room would be his. Or Mama’s. Her bones ached in the cold, and she not even forty yet. Cesare thumbed the knife’s blunt edge, thinking again of the goat. Simple. It was simple.
One steady cut, if he kept his head and held his breath. If his nerve never ran out. One steady cut, and he’d all the night to bury him. The neighbors knew to look away. They’d looked away when the skooma wars broke, when Mama still carried her bleeding heels to the door to cry and cry for help.
Noone missed folk like Cesare. Or Father. The room would be his, and Mama would be free; no more burns on her brown skin, no more fresh welts over Cesare’s shoulder and back- he’d counted them the night before- five, ten, then fifteen, for every lash of Father’s riding crop. Were there that many bones in a man’s body? He’d break them all after Father was dead. Every last one of them.
Father only slept past midnight. He was slower then, when he trailed in from work, massaging his calves and shoulders in that way that made him look old, and sick. He hadn’t noticed the carpet, even when he gave a pleased huff when his feet hit softer ground.
It’d given Cesare pause, once, that haunted look his father wore when it was almost time to bed.
An odd weight in his chest, a cavity he imagined where love had to be. Stendarr, he prayed . Wait till I’m through with him.
Cesare’s heart echoed in his ears, disjointed, like it’d floated somewhere over his head.
It happened, sometimes.
He watched Cesare, sixteen and dark-haired, all bones and sharp angles, watched him creep like a shadow, a snake in the wilds, the knife that skinned a goat now a crescent-smile in the dark. A wicked heart. A wicked heart.
He watched like a youthful god as Cesare stood at Father’s bedside, wrists turned just so as though in a gesture of benediction. The knife was light as a feather. Life was light as a feather. He could’ve done this yesterday.
He could’ve done this at six, at the first strike to his jaw, could’ve done this at twelve, when Mama touched salve to the torn skin of his back, could’ve done this at fourteen, when he dipped his hands into dirty, poisoned water to ease the burn of molten metal. Could’ve done this with a claw’s grip to his hair that made him cut it off with gardening shears, could’ve done with his knees knocked together and tied to the bedpost and Mama crying, always crying at the doorway, could’ve done this before he found his father’s arched brows in his mirror and tried to singe it away.
He could do this tomorrow, too.
Cesare’s shadow fell over Father’s, a thicker blanket than the one around his slender shoulders. His fingers crossed the knife’s handle and dug into his own skin. He felt like a man.
The knife wasn’t a sword, a sword wasn’t a spell, but it would do. A shift of his wrist, a neat cut across, his blade against Father’s throat in a gentle bite and a steady hand, and he’d be free, he’d be free.
“Son?” It was a sleepy, disjointed snuffle, almost lost to the single, dirty sheet as his father shifted without opening his eyes. “’s that you?”
No, no, not me, not me, never me, never me. Hand around his throat, ripping the last shirt off his back, metal at the stove, Divines, please-
Father’s eyelids fluttered.
The knife dropped to the ground with a plink.
Cesare ran.
Out the door, past the rickety carriage-wheels that felt like oblivion when it ran over his bones, past a puddle of Divines-know-what, past Jaro’darr’s pitying eyes behind a cloud of skooma-smoke, past the Lucky Old Lady with her smile and her stone-cheeked blessing. In his heart, he sped past Bravil, past Leyawiin, past Anvil, past the sea, taking off like a broken-winged dragonfly into the pinkening sky till he was fog and smoke and nothing.
And then he staggered back home, shaking like a leaf in his mother’s arms.
“What’s gotten into you, boy?” She hissed, wrinkling her nose at the scent in his breath. Where had he been? Didn’t he know what Father was like when he awoke after work? Where had he been? Had he been drinking? Get the scent off before Father wakes. Where had he been? Had he eaten all day?
Freedom cackled at the back of his skull, smarting as though from the sting of a lash. Freedom spat a mouthful of blood without cradling it’s broken tooth. Freedom looked on, with dead-eyed satisfaction, as another Cesare buried his father, again, again, and again.
This one fell to his knees, to his mother’s feet like rotten fruit. “ Mama. ” He sobbed. “ Mama, I’m sorry. ”
*
4E 191, The Sea of Ghosts
One hand fisted in her own hair, the other gripping the edge of a basin so hard it cut a line into her palm, Azadeh drew an enormous breath, only for it to crack into an awful, too-loud whimper. The sound ricocheted off the walls of her- her father’s cabin, pinging off his discarded shirt, his blades hanging in neat rows, bejeweled hilts shining like his eyes did on a summer’s day, at the sight of land, at the siren of a far-off ship and the promise of a raid, at her , when she stood beside him at the stern, dark hair whipping beneath her cap, at a precise swing of her greatsword, at a calm turn of phrase.
Eyes she’d never see again.
Damn it.
The basin clattered on to the floor, spilling sea salt and grime over the wooden floorboards.
And then she was drowning again, the storm-tossed ocean propelling her head downward, her legs torn at the calves, bleeding and cramping at once, and her father, Captain Raqib of Rihad- his arms twitching lifelessly towards her saying help , saying go , saying too late , saying not like this , saying nothing it all it and it still ringing in her ears, water flooding her lungs with more grace than the splitting pain of coming up empty , seven pairs of arms around her middle and her own voice screaming his name through the thunder-
“Zadi!”
Azadeh heaved as her heart came up for air. Still empty.
“Zadi, please.” Eleeda hissed, padding across the cabin to right her against the dresser. “The sun’s up.”
Was it?
Tears were streaming down Eleeda’s face as she removed Azadeh’s grip against her own bandaged arm. She pressed a palm to Azadeh’s chest, cool scales gripping her cheek, forcing Azadeh to meet her gaze. “You can’t stay in here forever.” She said, only tightening her hold on her when Azadeh tried to tear herself away.
The anger boiling in her felt like a salve. Good. Azadeh grit her teeth, giving into it. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s not an option.”
“It is.”
Eleeda’s tail flicked anxiously over the dirty water, another tear escaping her reptilian eyes, falling onto the skin of Azadeh’s bruised knee. It burnt, more than mere liquid could, and Azadeh felt herself double over with the dawning clarity that it was real, the night was real, that the wraith-cursed storms had torn her father away from her with nothing more than his face blazing in her- his eyes shining in the pale lightning and his beard soaked from blood, on me, Zadi! He’d cried, and she’d-
She’d let him go.
Tuh’wacca, she’d let him go.
Another howl of pain lodged in Azadeh’s throat, and Eleeda cut it off, pressing a cool vial against her lips. Calm. She was speaking in Jel, words in fragmented shards, “already talking,” and “think you’re too young,” and, here dropping to a whisper that stung at Azadeh’s still-tender rage, “mutiny.”
“I don’t care.” Azadeh snapped.
“You don’t mean that.”
“This isn’t your call.”
Eleeda’s yellow-gold eyes grew stern. “It is, actually.”
A potion of Calm, and how long had it been? An hour? Two?
Azadeh snatched the vial, sent it flying at the wall. “Enough!” The bitterness scrambled her to her feet, drowning Eleeda in shadow. “Who are you to tell me what to do? He was my father! Mine !”
Then, and only then, did Eleeda flinch.
A silence followed. Eleeda fidgeted where she sat, struggling to find her words. Eleeda, whose scales were still damp and bitten from the blood-red sea she’d leapt into to pull Azadeh ashore. Eleeda, who’d taken a bite to her neck as she clawed a wraith off her father’s back. She had been barely more than a hatchling when she’d arrived on the ship at the heels of another, older Argonian, and refused to leave.
She had only laughed, then, when Azadeh play-fought her to the ground, only laughed again, over the years, when she slipped like water between Thalmor shackles, one, two, a million times, to haul Azadeh away, clinging to her side. In winters, when they had docked home, there was crushed coconut rice laced with love, lilting songs that flowed like water over pebbles. When Solitude had loomed on the horizon, Eleeda had turned away, again, and again.
Egg-brothers can find me when they must, Captain. She’d told Raqib, her hand cool and home in Azadeh’s. Every time. Ours is to be-by-our-brood.
The stirring behind her unblinking eyes was not shame, but fear . Shame slid like a stone to rest at the pit of Azadeh’s stomach. She sank down again, back against the wall. “I’m sorry.”
Eleeda shook her head, and unstoppered another vial. “Please.”
This time, Azadeh drank. The potion burnt through the swirling panic, glazing her vision and dizzying her until it simmered to a heavy, clouded melancholy. She breathed out the hysteria, feeling it form a quiet fog around her head. Her bones ached. Her wounds ached. Her father was dead.
Her father was dead, and his- her ship still moved through the Sea of Ghosts, warm and visceral as a beating heart. Nineteen years he had poured his love into Azadeh, but he had loved the Firdaus for longer. In one night, one night, they had both betrayed him.
“I couldn’t bury him, Eilan-Dai." The tears felll again, only cold and numb as stones. “It’s all he’d asked of me, and I couldn’t-“ She cut herself off, letting the alchemy cool her blood. Think. She demanded of herself. Don’t fail him again. Think.
Do not weep for your father, for he goes to join his father.
She had watched her father bury his own. Her mother’s arm wrapped around him, her voice reminding him that they’d meet where the walkabout fades to the Far Shores.
Lost beneath the sea, he would not. Her grandfather would watch for a son who would not come.
Do not weep for your mother, for she goes to join her mother.
Her mother. Merciful Tava, her mother.
Eleeda opened her mouth to argue, but said, “I’ll write to her.”
Azadeh shook her head, getting back to her feet. She leaned her forehead against the door, gathering her hair up. Eleeda was right. It won’t do to look crazed. Not now.
She slid her sword back to its hilt. An heirloom, going far, far back to the legend of Fuada Al-Watan, on whose shoulders had once rested the fate of worlds. A ship. A letter. What would she say of a descendant who cowered?
“I’ll do it. It should be me.”
The room had to be cleaned, wiped of blood and brine. She needed to pluck strands of seaweed from her hair, fix another vial of calm before this wore off. The sun stung her eyes, and she allowed it to twist knives between her ribs.
“Zadi-“
Azadeh leveled her with a look that was part reproach, part challenge.
Eleeda sighed, turning her gaze to the floor. The title rolled like a single wave upon the sands of their youth. “As you say, Captain.”
*
4E 199, Windhelm
In Eastmarch, the dusk was a sullen, foggy thing, a pale gray cloak pulled over the city’s spiked pillars and its forbidding stone arches. The evening patrol followed Faendal’s path with glowering suspicion as he descended the stairway to the Gray Quarter, his pack tucked under his arm and his head turned resolutely away. The Dunmer he asked for directions advised him to take the long route to his destination, lest he cross paths with the few Nords who’d taken to prowling these streets when the tavern threw them out.
“In the shadow, you know. We all look the same to them.”
Faendal couldn’t help but heave a sigh of relief upon his arrival, as an elderly mer opened the door to usher him in, fussing at the cold and the length of his journey.
“It wasn’t any trouble,” Faendal smiled, wiping the heel of his boot against the doorstep so he wouldn’t trail in the damp, dirty snow. “Haleneri’s been looking after the mill while I travelled. Stopping by here is the least I could do.”
Haleneri’s grandmother coughed into her faded yellow scarf, waving a withered hand in apology.
“Who’s there, Nelara?” Her husband stirred, lowering the tattered blanket he held to his chin.
“Vinthis, this young mer is Haleneri’s friend. She’d written to us, remember?”
“A bosmer, is it?” Vinthis pulled himself up from his bedroll to squint into the light. “Why, when Hale told us, we’d thought- no matter. Let me look at you.”
Twin pairs of ruby eyes searched him in the dim glare of a single lantern, as Faendal squeezed himself between the dark, water-stained walls. Sidestepping a rag thrown upon the floor to catch the melted snow leaking through the thin ceiling, Faendal found himself cross-legged upon the bunched-up sheet that had been laid out in expectation.
Any friend of Halé's learnt quickly to talk fast, and Faendal learnt this quicker than most. He knew better than not to break the silence before they asked him something he couldn’t answer. Or wonder aloud, before he could bite his tongue, how grateful he felt just then for Riverwood’s skies, for its semblance of springtime, the wind dancing through its green pines.
“Ah, this is- Halé has something for you.” Hastily, he unlatched his pack, setting out the bulk of it’s contents before them. Two woolen blankets, plain yet sturdy in the way that all Nordic weaving of any worth was, and a vial of pungent alchemy, concocted to soothe aches of the joints. “For the winter, she said. From her first cut of profits.”
That wasn’t a lie. There was, Halé insisted, a transaction involved. Of sorts.
“Oh, Vinthis, look at this!” Nelara clutched the fabric to her chest, her eyes bright and damp. “Our dear girl, and we have asked her for nothing.”
“We have never needed to, Azura bless her.” Vinthis allowed her to wrap one of blankets around his shoulders, his fingers skating thoughtfully over the fabric. “Fine weaving. Must have cost her a pretty septim.”
“She told me to assure you she could afford it.” Faendal said.
“She would, wouldn’t she?” Vinthis smiled wryly. “We have you to thank, sera, for offering her work. It is not a kindness we could repay.”
Faendal’s fervent, well-practiced assurance was cut off by Vinthis’ eyes finding Faendal’s own. His grey hair hung in a limp, disheveled curtain around his weary face.
All at once, Faendal thought of his own father, of his unlined face and his easy smile, the blessing he hastily whispered into Faendal’s ear before he saw him away from Greenheart.
Y’ffre knows. That half-defiant grip on Faendal’s arm, his mother’s lips against Faendal’s forehead. Pact or no, he knows. And so do I. My son.
Never, not once, had Faendal ever been able to lie to him . Faendal swallowed hard.
Dabbing at the corners of her eyes, Nelara rose to set a blackened tea-kettle to boil. “I am glad the work at the mill suits her so well. I had worried- well, you know how she likes to keep things to herself.”
Faendal did at that.
“She’s great company, really.” He said. “Hard-working, and uh- a sharp eye for business.”
“She has always been that way.” Nelara said fondly, leaning her hip against the counter. Even this little while of standing had winded her. “I remember how she would follow her grandfather about in the smithy. Barely up to his waist, she was, but it was as though she was giving him the orders. She would have outdone any Nord at the smelter, if only, well-“
“Would that I had been more careful.” Vinthis sighed, looking down at his hands.
“This again?” Nelara frowned. “It was not your fault.”
It was not. Faendal knew the story, of what became of Dunmer in this Hold who aspired to more than a room or three at the Quarter. Of a question of fair prices, of a warrior unhappy with it, of a few disgruntled Nords who’d sought to make a lesson learnt. It took less than a night for them to raze the smithy to dust, and less than that to shatter both of Vinthis’ wrists.
He thought of Silvenar, a story of his own, a Pact broken. Then he put it out of his mind.
Faendal spoke softly, instead. “She’s well, Grandfather. Hopeful, really, more so than she was when we met.”
“In the lumber trade, no less.” Nelara shook her head, her lips twitching.
Vinthis muttered something in Dunmeris, making Nelara laugh. She threw a glance over her shoulder at Faendal. “He says it is the Hlaalu in her. Even the blood in our veins run gold, they used to say in Balmora. Oh, those were the days.”
The sharp scent of canis root suffused the small room as she fetched the kettle in her trembling hands. Faendal rushed to steady her, and pour the tea into three rinsed metal cups.
“Ever heard of the Nerevarine, son?” The uptick of the question crackled into a cough, and Nelara rubbed at her bony chest. “We’re kin to them, if you can believe it.”
“Don’t.” Vinthis warned, his voice catching as skin does upon a scar. “It is over. Leave it be.”
The old mer’s wrists were not quite healed, Faendal noticed. They still twisted at an odd angle as he gripped the brand-new blanket at his lap, as his wife held up the steaming cup to his lips.
“Azura curse them.” For a moment, the lines on Nelara’s face webbed into something resembling her granddaughter. “They drove us away like we were vermin- their own family.”
It was gone in the next breath, melted into a smile as weak and watery as her age-spotted grey skin. “Ah, well. No point in speaking of it now. All we ask of the Three is that they keep Haleneri safe.”
A shiver ran down Faendal’s spine.
His father, bow on his back and a steady hand on Faendal’s shoulder. His mother, hanging up a haunch of venison, a song on her lips that drowned the distant crackle of fire. Their home that always smelt faintly of milk. How long, how long had it been?
Y’ffre’s mercy, but these were mer. They shouldn’t age like this, as withered dead leaves before they returned to the soil.
Faendal took a sip of his tea. A curse died at the back of his throat.
In Markarth, beneath the same sky and a starless night, a thief crouched upon a parapet, her back to the wall, her charcoal-stained fingertips bunched against the dark fabric of her hood. Her heart leapt to her mouth as the footsteps began, shouts of alarm as dwemer contraptions twitched and clanged and came to life. The Keep had awakened.
The closest ledge was more than a leap away, but a year of all this had lightened her feet. It would not kill her. A broken rib, she ventured. A twisted ankle. Bruises for days, but she could roll into the shadow, crawl her way to the alchemist’s. No. Calcelmo’s guards- she couldn’t risk a search. Hobble to the carriage instead, scrounge up the last of her coin to Winterhold.
It’d hurt.
Haleneri Selaren took a breath, and in it was the molten heat of a smelter, the sickening crunch of a hammer against a wrist. In it was a rough fist pounding against a splintering door. Two woolen blankets around two shivering frames. A stoppered vial of poultice.
In it was her grandfather’s lettering, grown spidery from the rocking boat and panic.
The manor has fallen. The manor has fallen.
Her face crumpled as magelight bathed stone in blue fire.
The manor has fallen.
“Azura guide me.” She whispered, and jumped.
*
4E 201, Winterhold
Father,
Khalbi hopes that this letter finds your tread upon warm sands.
Mother has written. Did you think she would not? This one asks you to swear, swear this instant, upon the Moons above, that you will not come this way, no matter what you may hear on the road to Skyrim. What happened at the college-
Khalbi’s dropped her quill with a gasp as her left shoulder panged with a phantom pain.
What happened at the college-
Her ears stiffened at a passing crackle.
“ Jer do, Khalbi-ko?” The only other occupant of the Arcaneum leaned back in his chair, its wooden leg scraping the cold ground.
“ Va do, J’zargo.” She snatched her letter to her chest. “Although this one would be more at ease if her writing were safe from your prying eyes.”
“J’zargo never pries.” He leaned across to flick her forehead. “He merely….observes. Improves upon the work of lesser fabulists than he.”
Khalbi swept her tail primly to the side. “It is a letter.”
“One that requires some stretch of imagination, this one thinks.” He grinned, teeth glinting in the dim light. “After all, what are the events of Labyrinthian if not-“ He caught himself at her wince, his smile faltering. “Ah. It is not a pleasant memory. This one is sorry.”
Khalbi shook her head, giving into the silence. It was easier to believe him. To fold a day and a half into spell-wisps no different from the flickering orbs of light floating overhead. A fable. A tale. Once upon a time, a Khajiit believed that answers were all she needed.
Morokei howled from behind her eyelids. Outside, the snow smothered a pile of dust that was once Arch-Mage Aren. Or Arch-Mage Aren’s robes. His secrets spilled into her spells like blackened smoke.
Khalbi folded the letter shut.
What happened at the college-
-
It brings enough worry to this one’s heart that Ri’saad takes his travels through these treacherous lands. You would laugh, and ask Khalbi to tell you which land beneath these moons remain otherwise. For bandits and beasts and prejudice, you are prepared. But Father, you have never faced a dragon. Or-
Or a priest. Or a tomb shaking with long-dead laughter. Or the snow turning to needlepoints upon her fur. Or hate, hate and guilt, sitting atop a mantle, staring back from the mirror with her own golden eyes. Or nights spent digging her claws into the wooden grain of the library table, her robes splattered with ink as she made herself think, think, think.
“So it is about the sweetheart, then?” J’zargo was here again, in the half-emptied room of her abandoned quarters. Khalbi was crouched between two tall boxes she’d meant to shift upstairs or put away. Or burn. “You fear for him, and you cannot afford to fear more?”
Her whiskers twitched. “It does not take a fabulist to know that.”
“Perhaps. But tonight, this one is no fabulist.”
“Oh?”
He muffled a yawn, and sank down across from her, holding up the papers in his own hand. “Tonight, J’zargo is a Master, offering his devoted pupil an example.”
Khalbi searched his face for a moment. He had not written home in years.
“He has begun again,” He announced, “what has long been half-finished.”
Khalbi slumped, her ears flattening against her head. “This one once thought it easy.”
It had been. The words had leapt from her during those early, wide-eyed months of her apprenticeship. She had written and written until the letters crowded at the margins; Dear Father, there are rainbows, even here, when the sun strikes against crystals of ice. Dear Father, this place sings with magic; even the fog, even the lights. Dear Father, Master Neloren tells this one she is a natural at Clairvoyance; holding his attention, Khalbi will have you know, is a feat in itself. Dear Father, today this one will tell you of her new friends. Dear Father, you must write to thank Ri’saad.
And then novelty had trudged quietly into routine, her wonder feeding the flames of her spite and ambition. Then there were too-long nights, and spells that fumbled. Mishaps that made her fur stand on end. When this is done, she’d promised, night after night, week after month after year. When this is over, when this miniscule storm has passed, and the next, and the next, she would write home with good news. Good-enough news. Dear Father, you need not worry so much.
You have never faced a dragon.
Or a victory that hollows.
“Is there so much to tell?” She broke the silence, eyeing J’zargo’s own letter. His writing ran in odd, hurried little dashes, as they did when he was younger.
“J’zargo has accomplished much that could not be contained within a page or two. They await news of it anxiously, this one knows.”
Never mind that not a runner or a raven had swooped by in all these years of his silence. Khalbi leaned softly against his shoulder.
That. She would take a dragon over that.
There are storms in this land that have proved too strong for even this one’s curiosity. Khalbi begs of you, do not venture into them. It is not fear but knowledge that compels this one’s caution. She does not say this to frighten you, but to assure you that she is no longer the foolhardy cub you bid goodbye with such pride. Khalbi would never risk harm that cannot be undone. Not even for magic’s sake. Let this thought give you peace.
She remembered J’zargo apprenticeship, the burning fire in his eyes, how his reckless ambition stood neck-to-neck with hers. How easy, how easy might it have been, with the staff of magnus shining like a beacon in the dark, if she were younger, if she were hungrier, if she had less than a caravan that called for her even, even when she did not answer.
“You are a fine Master, J’zargo.”
“Of destruction and of wayward cubs.” His eyes sparkled, overbright. “Never forget this.”
He pocketed a letter that would never be sent, and Khalbi pulled him into a fierce hug.
-
But perhaps that is Khalbi’s fear, as well.
It was late afternoon, and Colette had asked her to take a moment outside. The Hall of Elements wore the sombre tones of a Memorial. A ceremony, followed by another. Mirabelle would have laughed at the speech Khalbi had yet to spare a second glance at. As for Arch-Mage Aren-
His tired, distraction, his soft, unsettled eyes. What does guilt leave in place when it encroaches upon your heart? What does a sea allow to remain when it sinks a city?
“What are you now?” She asked, squeezing J’zargo’s hand like a lifeline. Once the great doors opened again, they would swallow her whole. They sat face to face as they did as cubs, when she had giggled over Ri’saad’s letters.
“Today,” He squeezed back. “This one is a friend. He says you are not alone, for you have not allowed J’zargo to be cut adrift amidst this snow.”
Dragged him by the wrist to meet Ri’saad’s caravan at the gates, only rolled her eyes at his teasing as she danced into Ri’saad’s waiting arms.
“What this one puts his mind to will be done.” J’zargo shifted his grip to her clenched fingers so the letter would not tear in her grasp. “And so you too will not be cut adrift. He will stay here as you write. He is not going anywhere until you have finished.”
She wept then, letting her head fall against J’zargo’s chest, her grief raking through her as blades, peeling beneath her skin, turning her inside out. Lightning trembled through her, the letter dropping to the floor as J’zargo let her cling to the hem of his sleeves. Her tears bled the ink, J’zargo’s palm cradling what was left of the letter as her claws pierced through it, two weeks of coughing up words, and it was gone, washed in the flood of her panicked, gasping breaths.
Rocking her gently in his arms, J’zargo murmurs a soothing “he knows, he knows,” as she shuddered out the terror that had thrummed through her veins since Saarthal. And with it, she felt the words singe her palm as though they would burn their shape into her fur.
What happened at the college has changed Khalbi. She does not know if it were a matter of days or of years, but this one fears there is little left of the daughter of you so love. Father, they will name this one Arch-Mage. And this one, this Khalbi who does not know herself in the mirror, feels no joy in it.
What was it that this one had longed for all along? Was it victory? Was it vengeance? She has both over those that trespassed against her, and yet all she feels is fear. She is afraid of things that were, of things that will be. Her spells bring her more apprehension than pride. She has everything you have ever dreamed for her in the pinch of her palm, and she is lost.
She wonders if you would know her as yours if you saw her. If you would take pride in a triumph where she sees none, or if you would long for the daughter you once had. She does not know what frightens her more, for this one needs you still. She would have nothing if she lost you. Not even herself.
The pale noon had gently darkened to twilight by the time she had filled a fresh parchment, stray tears escaping the corners of her eyes, dotting her neat, meticulous Ta’agra with its imprint. When the doors cracked a fraction, Brelyna’s palm was just as gentle against Khalbi’s back. “It’s nearly time.” She said.
The Arch-Mage stood on shaking legs.
Should you write back, and you must, you must, tell Khalbi you forgive her. For bidding you to heed her and begging you for sanctuary when this one gave you nothing but silence. She knows now, the fear you must have buried to send her away. Tell Khalbi you forgive her. That you will stay safe where what haunts this one’s nightmares cannot reach you. Tell her this Khalbi is no less welcome to you than the one she had to leave behind.
This one still has the winter scarf Mother and you knit for her. Winter is endless here, and it is frayed with use. Khalbi wishes to sit by the fire and thread it into something that keeps her warm again. And she cannot do this without you.
A season, Father. Wait a season more for this one’s sake.
Khalbi loves you. Of that at least, she is certain.