Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I've been told you know your way around the Reach, but I'd wager you're not from here, are you?" The giant bearded Nord tapped the side of his massive nose. "I can smell these things, you know. They say the Reach's got a way of sinking its roots into you and not letting go. What's your story, Breton? High Rock? "

Vera shifted on the bar stool and took a sip of ale, delaying the expected response. "Not much of a story."

The lie didn't taste all that bitter anymore. It wasn't much of a story — in no small part because the last six months were starting to blur, and what came before had bleached of all color, an old photograph in sepia from a place long gone. A past that no longer felt like hers. Some things from the early days stood out, crisp, arresting moments. Waking up on a bloody altar, stark naked and in horrible agony. Wandering, terrified, through the remains of carnage — bodies strewn on the ground, torn to shreds, not a living soul in sight. Then, later, hiding from rough looking types who roved the hills and crags (she couldn't tell at first whether they were hunters or brigands — or whether there was a difference). Hiding from wild animals who were busy evading the rough types, or, when they got lucky, busy eating them right back. Still. Keeping to the wilderness had felt like a safer choice, originally.

She had come upon the herbalist's hut after about a month of skulking around and sleeping in caves, on the verge of protein poisoning from her diet of rabbit and lean fowl. She was used to trapping rats and pigeons — and other urban fauna — so the rabbits hadn't been that much different. It was early summer when she arrived and the pickings were slim, nothing ripe yet, and the few early cases of the runs had discouraged her from experimenting with the wild edibles.

The man who lived in the ramshackle house — an old Altmer, as the tall gold-skinned bastards were called here (she'd learned to stay the fuck away from the black-robed ones quickly enough) — was half-senile with age and cloudy with a drinking habit, but he was kindly, in a rheumy, distracted, can't-remember-what-I-did-with-the-nightshade kind of way. He'd let her stay, initially as a cook, then as a helper. And then as a friend. He'd had a daughter he said — she died young, at 67. He didn't offer the details — it had been one hundred and two years ago.

Vera didn't press him about it.

It was an odd friendship — two people who had little in common except for their respective loneliness. One night, after a bottle of Alto wine shared over grilled mushrooms and roasted squash, she spilled herself to him, all the horrors, all the impossibilities of her displacement. Not the how of it, nor the why — there wasn't much she could offer by way of sense in that department — but the what that had come before. He didn't seem all that surprised. Grumbled something about the mysteries of Aetherius, but didn't offer anything like an explanation. After that, he took it upon himself to teach her some basics — the history, the geography, the politics. And some of his trade. Though his mind was slipping, and they both knew it. Lovinar didn't seem upset about it, exactly. They both knew why she was there, why he'd let her stick around. He didn't want to die alone. And he wanted to pass something on, before he went.

Once she got the hang of the flora, foraging came easily — she'd had to do this once the last of the infrastructure had collapsed, and these mountains were, oddly enough, safer than the crammed urban exoskeleton overrun with gangs and madmen she had called home. Lovinar taught her a bit of his craft, too — enough to get by, to assist him with his messes. She didn't have the patience for the finicky work of brewing, but she was good at finding stuff — learning the plants, recognizing where they'd grow. A sort of intuitive sense of which plant would work best, and which were still too young to be potent. She didn't love the work, but she didn't mind it, either. The biodiversity had dazzled her initially. Her old world had lost most of its lifeforms — the plants she knew, she knew from books. There weren’t computers widely available by then anymore, something about the collapse of rare earth mining. Once, apparently you could just snap a picture with your phone, and it’d identify the plant for you. Vera remembered phones only vaguely. Her mother had still known the world’s lushness first hand, but Vera was born into extinction.

Lovinar had tried to coax her magic to manifest — you're a sodding Breton, girl, it shouldn't be so hard — but she couldn't perform even the most basic of spells. Not even to light a fire. It made no sense to her. Lovinar kept describing what the connection to her magic should feel like — but she felt nothing. Until, one night, again after a bottle of wine she'd traded for some basic health potions with a local encampment of Redguard hunters, he brought out a purple gem and an old, ugly amulet, worn to a glossy sheen on the reverse side where the carved bone had rubbed against skin and cloth after years of use. "The enchantment is getting thin," he'd told her, putting the violet gem in her hand. It glowed and pulsed, warm against her palm. It was tiny, about the size of a wild apple, but something about it kept Vera wanting to pry it apart, to bite into it and taste what that pulsing swirl would feel like on her tongue. Lovinar noticed her gaze, and chuckled to himself, coughing on the exhale. The cold had settled into his lungs by that point, and it wasn't letting go, no matter how many tonics he brewed.

He had an altar — a small thing, made of a troll's skull, three eye sockets staring back at Vera with their amethyst inlays, an old wooden board holding the chartreuse filigree of the focal circle. The thing inside the gem in her palm wanted to burrow itself under her skin like a worm, like something that would make itself at home and lay its larvae. Part of her wanted to reach for it, to make room, to welcome it into herself. An almost motherly feeling.

"Yes," Lovinar said then. "You can feel it, can you not?"

Vera had swallowed around the tightness in her throat. Yes. Yes, she could. And what to do with it, too, even before Lovinar offered his explanation. The faint trace of the amulet's previous occupant had left a kind of structure behind it. It was almost empty — like a half-forgotten village, half-abandoned, where no one but the old people lingered. In her past life, Vera sought out places like that once she escaped the city. They offered a kind of muted, overlooked safety.

"You will take the soul into yourself, but do not, under any circumstances, let it settle. Do you understand, girl? You feel where the grooves of the enchantment are in the amulet, yes?"

Vera had nodded. That, and what it was for, too. She felt it a bit with plants as well, vague and faltering and barely there at all — Lovinar claimed that she should be able to know a plant's use even if she had never seen it before, to intuit it if she could just reach into it. Something about how plants too connected to everything else. "It'll come in time," he reassured. Vera was doubtful on that account — he was mistaking his inhuman lifespan of accumulated expertise for intuition.

But with the amulet, that elusive insight was there. A rush of images. A warm cloak on a chilly night. The crackle of a hearth fire when the wind outside howled. A cup of steaming spiced wine. The cloak was worn thin, and the fire had dwindled, and the wine had cooled.

"It's a frost enchantment," she said, muzzy with the realization of her own sudden certainty.

Lovinar had smiled his crinkly smile, pleased that he could finally give her something to take with her, into a future from which he would fade.

The frost amulet had saved her life that winter, on her way to Markarth to find an Altmer called Calcelmo. She had a letter for him from Lovinar, a request for tutelage. Calling in a final favor. Who could refuse a dying colleague's wishes?

He passed on the first day of Sun's Dawn, a peaceful fading. She held his hand until he went cold, and buried him out back, the ground hard from the frost, unyielding, as if it didn't want him yet. The icy wind smeared the tears on her cheeks.

Then, Markarth. Her first terrified night in the great stone city carved into the mountainside, with its constant rumble of water and subterranean dwemer machinery mimicking the sound of traffic — back in her early childhood, when there still was any traffic to speak of. Silver and blood and something nasty brewing under the surface. The first day, there'd been a Forsworn attack, and the guards had harassed her, an unfamiliar Breton in a city of conspiracy and plots. They confiscated everything, too, including Lovinar's letter and the little coin she had — as evidence, they'd claimed. One of them, a bald Nord with a hard glint in his pale eyes, had insinuated that she could get it all back — for the right price. She told him to kindly fuck off, and both men had laughed, confident with their own impunity and a little drunk on unchecked power. But they let her go, with nothing but the clothes on her back, but her dignity intact, at least. She learned from the jeweler in the market that Calcelmo was gone on some expedition, and wasn't expected back for another two months.

At first, she'd hid in the warrens like a feral rat, hungry — she'd been hungry all the time — but it had been oddly reassuring. In the last few years of her past life, hunger had been a constant, familiar companion.

It took her a few days to realize there were no real jobs to speak of — the smith might have liked a new apprentice, but Vera didn't know a lick about smithing. The inn was overstaffed, if anything. Lovinar had taught her to read — but her writing was still slow, the unfamiliar alphabet confusing in its repetitiveness, in the subtle nuances of its calligraphy, which she kept getting wrong. So scribe work was out.

In the end, Bothela took her in — what was one more stray Breton lugging around unchecked baggage full of heartbreak and secrets? It was better than the alternative — which boiled down to two things, really: cracking rocks or servicing the men who cracked rocks.

Vera liked the old woman's approach to the craft — her crass practicality, her sardonic wit, her cynicism. Muiri had the potion work well-in-hand, but they needed a forager — and Vera had offered, eagerly, before they'd turn her out. She brought a sack of glowing mushrooms she'd gathered in one of the abandoned mines — to show her willingness to crawl around underground and put herself in harm's way if needed. Bothela had given her a once-over. Vera knew what the old witch would see — a scrawny woman, not quite young enough to pass for a newly minted bright-eyed and bushy-tailed adventurer. A vagabond, then. A derelict, who slept in the warrens. Vera had brought her hand to her messy mop of poorly cropped black hair, self-conscious and hoping it didn't look as bad as it felt. The worn clothes on her back, and the chipped dagger at her belt probably didn't offer much reassurance either.

"I'm low on juniper, nirnroot, and bilsterwort," Bothela had said and tossed her a satchel. "You'll share the room with Muiri. Be back by sundown."

That had been a month ago. She'd settled in. Still waiting for Calcemo to return — the feeling of the soul gem in her palm wasn't letting go of her so easily.

"Still with me, lass?"

Vera eyed the Nord again. He was watching her expectantly over his ale and his plate of poached potatoes and venison roast. Middle aged, heavily tattooed — with an accent as thick as the haft of the double-handed axe strapped to his back. She took another sip to give herself something to do. "Why do you ask?" He didn’t seem like a bad sort, but it was hard to tell.

He leaned in, ale and tobacco on his breath. "I need a local guide, as I said, but I like to get to know the people I'm hiring. The old woman in the apothecary said you wouldn't mind some extra septims, but I prefer for them to be well-spent. As my associate likes to remind me, septims don't grow on trees."

Vara took another sip of ale. Yeah, right. He could pay any of the local mercs — hell, Vorstag would probably take the job. Even now, there he was, sitting on his ass on the other side of the inn, pretending not to watch the newcomer. Been at it for weeks now, grousing about how no one was hiring. No. Something about this Nord was decidedly fishy.

"Who's your associate?" Vera asked instead.

The Nord motioned with his head, and Vera followed his gaze. She hadn't noticed the man in the shadowed corner. Surprising, that, because he wasn't exactly blending in with the surroundings. His armor looked alien — like something made of an insect's carapace. Even in the heat of the tavern, he wore a type of helmet, a red cowl obscuring his features — the entire arrangement giving him the air of an oversized mantis. He must have noticed her gaze, because he inclined his head and tipped his glass — not ale, Vera noted. Kleppr's overpriced brandy, she guessed.

"There are plenty of idle hands in Markarth." Why would these two want to hire her? Something was out of place here, some undercurrent agenda she was missing. She didn't like it. "Why me?"

"I need someone who's good at finding things. Someone who knows their way around the caves and crags of this gods-forsaken dunghole." The Nord chuckled. "I'm a valley man myself, see. And I'm looking for something I... misplaced. Your current employer told me you got a knack for that sort of work." He huffed good-naturedly and fished around in his satchel until he procured a pipe. He lit up, letting the pungent smoke drift off towards the rafters. "Won't lie — I'm not looking to spend much. You lot got spoiled here with all the silver gushing from out of the city's bowels. We've been on the road for some time. My pockets ain't that deep at the moment, lass."

Bullshit. He wasn't eating frugal. And his buddy in the corner sure wasn’t drinking frugal either. "What are you looking for, then?"

He grinned into his beard, the tattoos twisting with the expression. Vera noted that his left incisor was chipped. "I'll tell you if you take the job."

She shouldn't have considered it. But the prospect of having enough cash to bribe the guards into returning her recommendation letter was too damn tempting. Calcelmo didn't exactly have a reputation for taking in strays. "If you're looking to hire a fighter, I won't do you much good."

"Not looking for a fighter. Got the best swordsman this side of Tamriel, as that lout in the corner likes to remind me." He rolled his shoulders. "And I'm no sodding milk drinker myself, if you're worried."

"I'm sure you're both lethal."

"Aye, that we are. I told you, I'm looking for someone with a good sense of the terrain." He leaned in again. "One hundred septims up front, and one hundred after we find what I'm looking for."

"Make it one hundred and fifty up front and two hundred on the other end, and we have a deal." Maybe she could just price him out. Then again, three hundred and fifty septims should be enough for "expediting the process" on getting her requisitioned "evidence" back from the city guards, so if he actually shelled out the cash... The guards wouldn't return her gold, of course, but that didn't matter as much. She just needed the letter by the time Calcelmo returned.

The Nord rumbled a guttural laugh. In the corner, his partner cocked his head to the side, watching them from behind his helmet.

"Hear that, Teldryn? She's almost as expensive as you."

Vera put down her mug of unfinished ale and fished for a coin to place on the counter. "Let's be clear here. You're buying my expertise. You're not buying anything else."

The Nord looked on in confusion, his reddish eyebrows drawing together. Then it dawned on him, and he guffawed. "If I were looking for that kind of guide, lass, I’d be huffing and puffing my way up to the Temple of Dibella. No offense — it’s not like you’re not fetching and all — but it ain’t like that. And I'll vouch for him too." He motioned with his chin. "We won't touch a hair on your head."

"Fine." It was out before she could bite it back.

He grinned again, extending his hand, large and calloused with weapon work. "I'm Undnar. What's your name, then?"

"Vera," she said. They shook on it.

Undnar straightened, raking his long mane back from his face. Both the mane and the face looked like they could use a wash. His armor, too, was covered in a thick layer of road grime. He didn’t smell too great, either.

"It's getting late. Let's meet tomorrow morning, and I'll explain the situation. I'll have your money, then."

Vera nodded. She already regretted agreeing. With any luck, Undnar would change his mind and find someone else.

"Sero, Oblivion take you, don't just lurk there like some sodding chaurus, come greet our new partner."

Undnar was loud, the sort of man who took up room like he was owed it. Vera ignored the curious stares of the other patrons. Her eyes went to Vorstag, who was getting up, unsteady on his feet from another day of drinking. Alarm prickled her spine — Vorstag could get a tad unpredictable when he felt slighted, which was most of the time when he was drunk — which was most of the time.

He stared at her with an unpleasant leer.

Vorstag wasn't the worst of them, but he wasn't great. He'd ignored Vera at first — courtesy of Muiri, who turned heads wherever she went. It suited Vera fine, and she stuck to the apprentice alchemist like a particularly clingy invisible burr whenever she had to go anywhere in the city. She liked the girl. And Muiri seemed grateful for the company, but something was eating her on the inside, something dark and unpleasant that she couldn't bring out into the light of day. She'd gotten... peculiar in the past few weeks. Secretive. Muttering something about the Night Mother, whatever that was. It got harder and harder to drag her out of the Hag's Cure.

Maybe when all this was said and done, she'd have enough coin left over for one of the long-term rooms in the inn.

Vorstag, in the meantime, was striding forth — or, rather wobbling forth unsteadily, trying to look like he was striding. Vera had lost some of her starved cat look since she arrived, her figure filling out and her skin shedding some of its malnourished roughness. Bosmer men seemed to like her for some reason — something about her features or figure either struck them as just the right kind of exotic, or as just the right kind of familiar, she couldn't tell which. There was something about social class there too — whom you approached, and whom you left well enough alone. The Nords usually didn't give her so much as a second look, but there was always the exception that confirmed the rule. Point was, right around the time Muiri got herself firmly ensconced in the apothecary with only her herbs and her muttering for company, Vorstag, damn him, had suddenly discovered Vera's existence.

Eventually, she'd need protection. You couldn't live in Markarth long-term without paying off someone to look out for you. She hadn't committed yet, even though Bothela had been dropping hints. There was a man, she'd said, someone who could yank on some threads behind the scenes. Could make some problems go away. Problems like Vorstag, or overly dutiful city guards.

She had considered taking a lover — not so much for the pleasure of it, as for the added insurance. Bored men were dangerous, and there were quite a few bored men in Markarth — those who didn't want to slave in the mines, or those who didn't have the connections to land a better job.

"Hey! Hey, Nord! I'm talking to you!" Vorstag stumbled forward, one hand braced on the back of a chair for added stability, the other going to the hilt of his sword. This wasn't going well. Vera's eyes darted to the exit, but the bar was in the way. Why'd she sit on that side? "Did I hear correctly? You're looking for a guide?” He was slurring his words. Definitely not going well. “Well, look no further. Best swordsman in the Reach, right here."

Undnar looked him over. "And if I ever find myself looking for a swordsman, I'll make sure I come right to you, friend." A warning had crept into his voice, something hard beneath the earlier conviviality. "Right now, I have other needs."

Vorstag's leer went oily. "Oh, I bet you do. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, then, but I think she overcharged you. Isn't that right, doll?"

They were drawing eyes in earnest now, the other patrons shuffling in their seats for a better look at the prospective entertainment. Vera bit her tongue, and inched closer to the exit. She didn't need this. She survived because she didn't draw attention to herself. Vorstag was a pain, but she could handle him — unless his wounded pride called for retribution in some dark alley. These two were just passing through — they would reap none of the consequences.

The chitin-wearing fellow stood up from his chair and made his way over towards them, his movements deceptively lazy. That sense of dread pulled at Vera's stomach again, but it was too late by then. It was over in seconds. Vorstag didn't react — Vera didn't think he so much as heard. Chitin Suit's hand landed on the Nord's shoulder, a friendly gesture to diffuse the tension. The oaf began to turn around — and then he collapsed onto the floor in a nerveless heap, like a tree falling. And had she been standing anywhere else, it would have been easy to miss the thumb that dug into the pressure point on the side of Vorstag's neck.

The "associate" turned to the barkeep. "Looks like your patron had a few too many drinks, serjo." The voice was a surprise. He was too short for a Nord — so Vera had expected the crisp lilt of Imperial diction. Not this sardonic raspy drawl, like smoke and chocolate. The accent, too, wasn't something she'd heard before.

Whoever this guy was, he was a trained killer. No wonder Undnar wasn't looking for a merc.

"Apologies." He didn't sound apologetic in the slightest. Instead, he stepped over Vorstag and stalked closer. And then he pulled off his helmet.

Vera choked back an instinctive scream. Fuck, it's a demon! Bluish grey skin, crimson eyes with oversized irises that swallowed most of the sclera in a gaunt face that looked like something out of a Biblical illustration.The kind that promised you fire and brimstone and bat-winged bastards with pitchforks. She blinked, trying to dislodge the apparition.

The apparition refused to be dislodged.

She'd read about Oblivion. Was this one of its denizens? No wonder he had kept his helmet on. She blinked again. The initial shock settled some. No. The fellow was an elf of some kind — the bony facial structure, the iris size, all of that fit with the typology she had begun to assimilate. But fucking hell, that coloring was rough.

His lips quirked in amusement. "Much as I'd like to flatter myself into believing that you've been struck speechless by my good looks, by your expression, I'm guessing you've never seen a Dunmer. Is that so?"

Get your shit together, you idiot. A Dunmer. She'd read about those too. Vera forced her shoulders into a shrug. "Are you from Morrowind, then?" Spectacularly inane questions aside, there was still the mess of Vorstag — no one was in a hurry to drag him to his room, either. With any luck, he wouldn't remember any of it — but since when had she been lucky?

"I was born in the city of Blacklight." Another smirk. "You should visit there, if you ever get the chance. It's spectacular."

She was still gaping, and he was enjoying it, the bastard. He extended a chitin-clad hand — the same hand that had put Vorstag out of commission. "Teldryn Sero, blade for hire. Best swordsman Undnar's money could buy." His eyes darted to his Nord employer. "I'm glad I'll finally be traveling with someone who seems... competent."

Vera's jaw tightened. She could tell a dig when she heard one. She hadn’t exactly stood up for herself back there. Nope. In fact, she was about to turn tail, and get the hell away from the entire mess. Apparently, that hadn’t left Chitin Suit with the best first impression. Still, she shook the offered hand and repressed the urge to wipe off her palm on her trousers. The texture of the armor was... unpleasant. "Until money changes hands, it's just a verbal agreement," she offered cautiously. Always leave yourself an exit.

"Quite right. Luckily, I'm not the one holding the purse strings.” Another sharp smirk. “If you know what I mean..."

What you mean, you demonic-looking putz, is that you don't think I'm worth the coin, Vera thought. And maybe the coin wasn't worth the trouble, either. There was still something off about this entire proposal.

"Oh, quit hassling the girl, Teldryn. Or have you forgotten that the guide was your idea?"

"It was, at that." He propped himself on the bar stool Vera had vacated earlier. "I hope you're as good at finding things as your employer claimed." He lifted the unfinished mug of ale Vera had abandoned and brought it to his lips. "Aside from trouble, that is."

Vera narrowed her eyes. There was something beneath the lazy sarcasm — something like a warning. Nope. Whatever this was, it wasn't worth the coin. She'd find some other way to get her letter back. But she'd be damned if she let the demonic looking merc have the last word. She turned to face him. Chitin Suit was watching her over the rim of his glass with those strange crimson eyes.

"You're in Markarth, sera. Here, if you're not careful, trouble finds you."

He cackled. Actually, legitimately, cackled. "Are you?” He motioned with his requisitioned ale.

Is she what? 

“Careful, that is?"

Fuck him. Vera shrugged, swallowing back the sudden urge to kick the bar stool from under his ass. "I'm still alive, aren't I?"

“Funny thing with that.” He took another sip. “You are… Until you aren’t.”

“Enough, Teldryn. Stop trying to scare the girl away, or you’ll be looking for someone to take us to that gods-damned cave yourself.”

Cave? Which cave? She did know those — well enough to know that there were some that you didn’t go near if you planned on ever coming out.

“Ah, don’t mind him. He’s a bellyacher. Vera, was it? We’ll meet you tomorrow, then. How about breakfast, hmm? My treat.”

She considered asking for more money, but that would have meant preemptive acquiescence to whatever this was. She hadn’t committed to anything yet. Minimally, asking Bothela how much of a fee she could expect from the guards and whether the alchemist's contacts might offer a better deal would not go remiss. If she was outpriced from the start, there was no point in rocking the boat. Something about these two gave her bad vibes.

“It’s a mining town. Breakfast is served early.”

The Nord laughed — a big, full-throated bellow. “Then we better not stay up late, eh? Night, lass.”

The Dunmer simply gestured with his ale.

“Goodnight,” Vera offered, and made for the door. Vorstag, still on the floor, was stirring awake. That was the Silver-Blood Inn for you. You could get knifed on the floor, and no one would so much as pause in their drinking. One way or another, she didn’t want to be there when he finally came to.

~~~

She hurried to the apothecary, trying to stick to the better lit parts of the city. The clank of the heavy door at her back brought relief, as it always did. She didn’t mind the constant fear so much — it too had been a habitual companion for longer than she could remember. It was more the added layer, the unease of the prospective arrangement — and the promise of the goddamn coins. She could stay with Bothela for a time, but it was pretty obvious that the eponymous owner of the Hag’s Cure wasn’t exactly looking for a second apprentice. There was an agenda there too, and Vera wasn’t sure she wanted to step into it. And while there was no guarantee that Calcelmo would take her on, even with the letter, the memory of the purple gem kept yanking at her with a craving she couldn’t quite identify.

The shop was dark and quiet. Vera walked down the stone hallway, trailing her fingertips along the wall. Where had everyone gone?

The door to the room she shared with Muiri was closed, but a small light filtered from the crack where feet had worn a groove in the stone after years of use. Markarth was old, with a depth of accumulated time with no visible bottom. She rapped her fingers against the metal and waited for a response. Nothing.

She pushed the door open.

Muiri was sprawled on the bed, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Vera’s feet carried her forward. The Breton lifted her head from the pillow, her face red and puffy and streaked with tears.

“Muiri, what is it?” It looked like the last few weeks of strangeness were finally going to come to a head, after all. Well. It had been a strange sort of night.

“I…” The other woman wiped her face with the back of her hand, and sat up. Her gaze was empty save for the horror, black and deep-rooted. “I’m pregnant. The bastard left me with child.”

Chapter Text

"Start from the beginning."

In retrospect, that had been the wrong thing to ask. The beginning stretched back for the better part of Muiri's life — starting with Windhelm, the cold stone city on the ocean, where the girl grew up with some rich family, as a sort of satellite, or chaperon, or pet companion to the two sisters. It didn't make too much sense to Vera — her understanding of nobility was based on the two works of Shakespeare she'd read. It's not that books had been few, exactly: Vera's mother had been a militant collector, and they had at least twenty five between the two of them. Four Encyclopedias, too. But after the Great Burn of '78 — she'd been seventeen, half-a-lifetime ago — one had to be packing some serious firepower to get ahold of any, since anything that was ever printed had been claimed by then. The Citadels probably had amazing libraries, but Vera was from the outskirts of Split City (formerly Toronto on her mother's maps), and it hadn't fared so well after the influx of climate migrants from the south — mostly young, mostly white, mostly male, armed to the teeth and vicious as could be. A gleeful cruelty to them — and they had numbers on their side

Vera's mother had tried to cram as much education into her only child as she could, from early on, sensing the ruin to come, no doubt. She'd done her best. But she was a cartographer — not a historian.

In any case, whatever Muiri's life with the Shatter-Shields had been, it was rosy until it wasn't. Someone had killed one of the sisters — and from there, things had gone to shit, and fast. Muiri had taken up with some bloke she met over drinks at a local tavern, and they'd gotten friendly. Vera couldn't blame her — sometimes, these kinds of comforts were all you had, and you leaned on them because there was nothing else to carry your weight.

It went on for a while. Until the poor girl finally figured out that there was an agenda. Vera could have told her that from the start — when wasn't there one? But Muiri's life had been relatively simple up until then, all things considered.

So Markarth and Bothela hadn't been a vocational choice, exactly, but a matter of picking up the pieces, trying not to slash yourself open on them in the process. Vera could relate.

Once Muiri was all out of words, they sat quietly in the dimly lit room, the low rumble of the immeasurably vast, abandoned guts of the city vibrating through the walls of the apothecary, like a great beast snoring in its sleep. Vera wondered idly if something like this would one day come to her former world — new life built on old detritus, with little inkling of what came before. Nothing but myths and mystery, stories of something that was there first, but vanished in the blink of an eye, and whose purpose was as unfathomable as it was lost. It was a comforting thought, in a way. Some things were best forgotten.

"How far along are you?" she asked, her arm around Muiri's shoulders. There was a time when Martha held her just like that, over the same damn ordeal, too. It wasn't quite the same, mind. They had found a stash of Plan-B (expired) on a college campus, cordoned off because of the radiation (their Geiger counter said it was safe enough if they didn't come too close to where the collider had been), in the Student Health Center miraculously left mostly intact because of the packs of feral dogs. Martha, still bright as starlight under the grime of their shared flight from the ruins of their home, when they finally decided, over a shared bottle of moonshine, that this just wasn't livable. Martha, before the pneumonia took her. Antibiotics hadn't worked for twenty years, so it was a death sentence most of the time, and they both knew it. The winters had gotten bad, what with the Gulf Stream not doing its thing.

Muiri sighed, rubbed her face with both hands. "It's been four months since..." She trailed off, clenched her hands over the soft curve of her belly, where the fabric of her dress hugged the skin.

"Since you came to Bothela?" Yeah. Not. Since Muiri and the asshole who got her with child fucked last, more likely, Vera guessed. That didn't mean a thing in terms of the pregnancy. Muiri could've gotten knocked up the first time they did it, for all she knew. She tightened her arm around the girl's shoulders. Muiri huffed a sigh, exhausted from the toil of nocturnal admissions. She slumped, burying her face against Vera's neck. A safe haven, however temporary.

"I had little choice." Pain mixed with anger, an old, festering boil. You have to let it drain, love. It won't serve you. "They turned me out."

Vera nodded against Muiri's hair. "Have you told Bothela?" She forced her voice into a steady beat. Practical, even. Just another hurdle to take care of. It was better than asking the obvious question — why hadn't Muiri remedied the problem earlier? The alchemy of this place was... It was sophisticated, and more than Vera's world could ever offer. Imagine the thousands of plants, every single one of them potentially useful. How did you get your mind around such richness?

"I..." Muiri straightened, smoothing her hands over her skirt. "She won't let me work with poisons if she knows I'm with child. Thank the Divines I didn't have the morning sickness, but I won't be able to hide things much longer." She paused, turning it over in her mind. "And without the poison work... That's as many as six orders out of ten. At least."

Vera hummed in agreement. Over the past month, she'd gotten a sense of how Bothela ran her business — based on the ingredients she'd been tasked with bringing back. You had your "love potions" — aphrodisiacs and stimulants, some vasodilators too, she guessed, mostly bought by the wealthier men of Markarth. Bothela liked to joke about how it gave them a bear's temper, but the joke was only a thin veneer that made the underlying truth easier to swallow. The violence of Markarth ran deep, as deep as its vessels of blood and silver.

Then you had the restoratives, but those were cheap — not because the ingredients were easy to procure, but because Bothela had an ethics, a sliding scale that made the basic potions, the stuff that cured the colds and the fevers and the bruises and scrapes, easy to purchase even if you didn't have much gold clinking in your pocket. Mining town, and all that.

And then, you had the poisons. It wasn't like the poisons you'd think — not the stuff that might kill you outright, after one sip or tainted wine. Not like in the stories. No. Poisons were subtle. Clinically induced ulcer. Clinically induced kidney dysfunction. Slow things that worked over years of subtle ingestion, drained you little by little, unobtrusively, with plenty of room for plausible deniability. A bad drinking habit. A poor diet. A habit of smoking after your meals.

Things you had to brew on the regular, for the right patron.

"It'll be over in six months, give or take." Vera tried to sound reassuring, despite the questionable guesstimate. Muiri's belly, now that she could see it, looked firmly into the 2nd trimester. "Then it'll be lactating, if you wanted to keep it, but just... you know. Don't taste the potions."

"I..." Muiri's gaze turned distant, trained on a murky future she couldn't see through. "I can't."

Why didn't you go to Bothela earlier?! Not like that was going to help now. "What if you did? Keep it, I mean?"

Muiri shook her head vehemently, and then slumped against the wall, drained and lost. "How? This is Markarth, Vee. And I haven't got the money to raise a babe, not even if I work myself to the bone. Bothela pays me what she can, but..."

Bothela's business was doing all right, but they weren't exactly rolling in gold, what with Yngvar coming by every few days to skim off the top. Unless someone took it upon themselves to overthrow the Silver-Bloods' stranglehold on the place, things weren't likely to change in the immediate future.

Fair was fair. Markarth was a shithole, as pitiless as any place she'd known — just more organized about it. But Muiri hadn't done anything to rid herself of the pregnancy, either — despite having the means. "There's more to the world than Markarth. How much would you need to start over somewhere else?"

Muiri considered. "I don't know. Right now, I can't even afford the carriage — never mind setting up in a new place." She nestled closer with an exhausted sigh. "If I'd known half the alchemy I know now when I met Alain, I wouldn't be in this mess, that's what galls me the most." She huffed a laugh, shaky, bitterly sardonic.

"If you knew half of what you know now, you'd have told this Dufont character to go jump into the Sea of Ghosts."

Muiri chuckled, a bit more heartily this time, but the bleakness returned quickly.

There was a maxim, one Vera's mother had a fondness for. Always put on your mask first. The etymology had to do with air travel, her mother had explained, though airplanes were as extinct as the elephants by the time Vera came about, but the origins of the saying didn't make it any less apt. Point was, you couldn't help someone else until you had firm ground under your own feet. But once you did, there was the other part of the expression. About helping the person in the seat next to you. Muiri was in the seat next to her, as far as Vera was concerned, but there wasn't much that could be done until she found something other than hot coals to walk on.

She sat, calculating. The resources that her pay diverted could be rerouted back to Muiri if she managed to convince Calcelmo to take her on as a helper. She could still forage for the apothecary, simply selling the ingredients if she needed the extra coin. Muiri could probably hold on to her secret for another month, two if she ended up carrying small, or low. By then, Calcelmo would be back and they could break the "happy news" to Bothela as soon as Vera found new employment. Provided the Altmer didn't just tell her to scat.

One way or another, she had to get that damn letter, and quickly.

She made the decision, then and there, with Muiri's tears soaking into the collar of her worn shirt. "We're going to figure this out. In the meantime, don't do anything rash."

Muiri nodded muzzily, the emotional exhaustion finally catching up to her. Vera got up from the bed, plucked a few stalks of frost miriam from the dwindling bushel hanging over the hearth — they'd need to restock soon — and set the kettle over the fire. "I'm going to wait up for Bothela to talk inventory. Get some sleep, all right?" She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to chase away the onset of a headache.

Muiri picked herself up from the bed with a tired groan. "Bothela is going to have my hide for this."

Vera snorted. "Are you kidding? She will grandmother you within an inch of your life once she knows, so best prepare yourself." Bothela's cynical carapace was mostly that — a defense against a world that kept trying to eat you. Beneath all the spikes and the chitin, the old woman was a softy.

"Mara preserve me, I hope you're right."

Vera watched Muiri walk out of the room, presumably to the privy. Yep. Another month, and it was definitely going to start showing.

And speaking of chitin, she had work to do if she was going to take up Undnar and his demonic-looking Dunmer sidekick on their dubious proposal.

By the time Bothela returned, Muiri had gone off to bed, and Vera had taken up the entire counter with her maps. With most of the satellites reduced to floating junk without anything to receive or interpret the data they still broadcasted, cartography had been one of Vera's most essential skills. She started mapping the Reach early on, while Lovinar was still alive. The old herbalist had supplied her with charcoal and parchment readily enough, his initial puzzlement at the contour lines Vera used to approximate elevation ceding way to a sort of grumbling curiosity, then appreciation. Once he got the hang of the representational conventions she used — his short term memory was shit, but when it came to abstract stuff, the old mer was sharp — he helped her fine-tune, correcting mistakes, filling in the blanks, adding layers of history to the topography. Vera's foraging had provided the rest.

Undnar had mentioned a cave. There were caves and caverns aplenty — the Reach was mostly limestone, a watery mess of underground erosion and man-made expansions on said erosion, of mines and karsts and dwemer tunnels reaching into the mountains' bowels. Trouble was, most of them were occupied by all sorts of unpleasantness.

"What's this, girl? Are you planning an invasion?" Vera looked up. The old woman thumped the jar of void salts she had brought on the counter and helped herself to some of the tea Vera had made, before collapsing into the carved armchair piled high with furs and cushions next to the hearth. "So? Did that nice young Nord manage to track you down?"

Vera cocked an eyebrow. "If you mean Undnar, I'm not sure that 'young' fits, and the jury’s still out on ‘nice,’ but yes, he did."

Bothela took a sip of her tea, winced, and went to rummage for moon sugar in the cupboard. How Dwemer furniture managed to look both dainty and blocky was the real mystery of the vanished race, as far as Vera was concerned.

"You all look like 'young people' to me. Get to my age, you'll see. Where's that... Ah, there. You two go through my moon sugar when I'm not looking? Good thing the Khajiit are still camped outside of town." The old woman settled back into her chair, stirring her tea with an oversized spatula. "Undnar, that was the name. Curious fellow. And his Dunmer hired hand, still as fresh off the boat as you'd please with that armor and that accent."

"Hmm." Vera knew better than to insert herself into Bothela's monologue. The old woman had a way of approaching a topic like a sabre cat approached its prey — stalking it from a great distance.

"Quite the looker, isn't he? Had Muiri all giggly like a blushing maiden."

Vera blinked. Who? Undnar? Or the demonic-looking Dunmer?

"Hmm," she said.

"So. How long will you be gone, then?"

Vera’s eyebrows drew in confusion. Had Bothela stopped by the inn on her way back to collect some gossip?

The old woman dismissed Verra's interrogative look with a wave of her spatula. "Vorstag made a spectacle of himself again, I hear. I'm glad someone finally put that good-for-nothing in his place. But you-" Bothela thrust the business end of the spatula in Vera's direction "-might want to spend a few days outside the city."

"Why?" Oh this wasn't going to be anything good. "Did something happen after I left?" Why couldn't Vorstag just get eaten by bears?

"It's not Vorstag you need to worry about, girl." Bothela lowered her voice. "I've been hearing things. About Ondolemar planning another raid, Oblivion swallow him whole. Been asking questions about anyone who's new." Her wrinkled face scrunched up in distaste, or derision — the intricate tracework of her facial tattoo obscuring the exact flavor of her expression. "I swear, that mer would crawl up his own arsehole if he thought he'd find a Talos worshiper in there."

Vera snorted, despite the sudden unease. Once Lovinar had learned about Vera's less than Nirnian origins, he had told her to always be mindful of two groups: the Thalmor, and the Vigilants of Stendar. So far, the advice had served her well. "We could send an anonymous report. 'It has come to our attention that Justiciar Ondolemar is harboring a Talos cult up his rectum.'"

Bothela's dry cackles echoed through the chamber before the old woman brandished her spatula in mock threat. "Hush, girl. There's a time for being clever, and there's a time for being smart. And the smart thing would be for you to take yourself out of the city until it all blows over. I have enough of a mess on my hands as it is, what with Muiri's bun in the oven and no husband to claim it."

Oh.

Bothela clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her head, a sarcastic twinkle in her eyes. "I'm old, child, not blind. Why do you think I hired you? Don't get me wrong, now, you turned out to be a good investment. I wasn't lying to that Nord when I said you have a knack for finding things. But this is Markarth. We watch out for our own."

Vera nodded. That much made perfect sense.

"So. That brings me back to that Nord and whatever he's looking for. How much did he offer to pay you?"

"Three hundred and fifty."

Bothela quirked a brow.

"I haggled a bit."

"High price for a guide. Whatever he's looking for, it must be worth more to him than his gold. And what do you plan on doing with all that coin once you have it?"

If I have it, Vera thought. "I want to pay off the guards and get Lovinar's letter back. Do you think it'll be enough?" She sighed, rubbing her forehead. The headache wasn't going away. She needed sleep if she was going to meet Undnar for breakfast. The night wasn't getting any younger.

"Closer to five hundred, unless you sweeten the deal. Though who knows, perhaps the Child-God will find himself in a helpful mood. They won't hand it over with a 'pretty please,' that's for sure." The alchemist paused, ruminating. "Thought about what I mentioned? Might cost you less than the guards."

Ah, yes. Bothela's mysterious contact. There it was again. "I have a feeling it'll still cost me, just not in septims. At least with coins there are no strings attached."

Bothela sighed. "There are always strings attached, child. I can offer you a roof until you don't need one, but I'd sleep better if you had more than an old woman and a pregnant girl watching over you. You're still set on badgering that old Altmer codger once he's back?"

The memory of the soul gem tugged at Vera again, a phantom warmth in her palm. "Yeah."

"He's no sweetroll, that one. Cantankerous old bat." Bothela stretched and set aside her empty cup.

Vera grinned. "I have some practice with that. You've been training me well."

"Watch that sharp tongue of yours, child, or the hagravens might get it," Bothela tutted, her bony shoulders shaking with chortles.

Vera folded her maps and stuffed them back into her knapsack. "Bothela... what did you think of Undnar? Really? Something about him feels...strange."

"You won't find three hundred and fifty septims under a rock on the road, is what I think. I'd lend you the money myself if times weren't so lean." The old woman leaned forward. "He's asking you to take him around the mountains, not for your hand in marriage. Just don't lose your head over that handsome Dunmer of his, and don't go tangling with the Forsworn."

"I think I can manage that much," Vera harrumphed. If Undnar and his buddy wanted to go poke at Forsworn encampments, they certainly didn't need her to tag along. She would be more than happy to point out the locations — preferably from the adjacent mountain range — and be on her merry way.

Bothela nodded. "I'll brew you some potions for the road. Get some rest, now. Something tells me you got a long day ahead of you.”

Chapter Text

The deep echoes of the bell that marked the end of the night-shift at the smelter reached Vera's ears through the swaddle of dreams and blankets, and she pulled the furs over her head, snuggling deeper into her warm cocoon. The smell of old ash and freshly stacked fire, of frost miriam and tundra cotton filtering through the pillowcase was homely, reassuring, a little island of safety she'd carved out for herself. Home. Temporary, yeah, but that was always the case, so you had to enjoy it while it lasted.

She counted the muffled strokes, vaguely pleased that she had at least another hour before she had to get herself ready, in time for the second bell that would drag the day-shift workers out of bed, into the tavern for a quick meal (for those able to afford it), and then back to the mines. Markarth never slept, pulsing day and night with its extractive heartbeat. It devoured its laborers like a great hungry beast, spitting out bones and broken bodies, but there was always more supply than demand, somehow — a buyer's market.

The bell struck another time and Vera froze. Oh, shit.

She hauled herself out of bed, catching the edge of the chamber pot with her heel and sloshing around its nocturnal contents. Stumbled around in mute panic, trying to pull on her clothes — tripped outright over her boots and almost went sprawling but caught herself — and then forced herself to stop. Breathe. Breathe. You're fine. Everything is fine. The old, ingrained panic of sudden flight, of mornings just like these where you thought you had found safe harbor — until the telltale crackle of approaching gunfire — receded with her breaths. That world was behind her.

Undnar wouldn't melt. He could wait for a bit while she got herself ready. And if not, then perhaps he didn't need her help all that much. If fate wanted to take the lure of coins out of her hands, then maybe that was for the best. With any luck, the Nord had already found someone else to take him traipsing around the countryside.

Still, Vera put on her traveling gear. The mismatched pieces of armor she had bought or bartered from huntsmen were aesthetically underwhelming, but they were sturdy and practical. The bow, though, was a jewel — light as a feather, supple, the yew polished to a warm creamy glow and soft as velvet to the touch. A parting gift from a Bosmer hunter she met on the road to Markarth. It was convenience and safety at first, but he'd grown sweet on her — just sweet too, in a slightly monosyllabic, taciturn kind of way, but what his tongue lacked in eloquence, it made up in other skills. He was headed somewhere out west, some village — Riverun, or Riverwood — and they traveled together for two weeks, in the worst blizzard Vera had ever seen. "You're not gonna ask me to come with you?" she'd teased, in the relative warmth of their shared tent, her hand snaking down the hard planes of his abdomen, following the trail of coarse hairs until he tensed with a groan, the bronze skin over his chest breaking out in goosebumps. He tightened his arms around her. "If I did, would you say yes?" There was a sadness to him. They both knew the answer. "I'm getting old, Vee. I want to settle down somewhere. Have a roof over my head in the winters." She laughed, rolling over him, his hands on her hips guiding her in place. "Want to tell me about your arthritis too, old man?" He had chuckled, a boyish grin in a face that wore its years without apology. "I'll show you 'arthritis'."

He had taught her to shoot, putting unnecessary mileage on his journey, little excuses for the detours. Once, a lifetime ago, Dima had shown her how to handle a sniper rifle. It wasn't the same — the bow was a hell of a lot more work — but some things carried over.

She hooked the unstrung bow to her pack, and hurried into the common room. Bothela greeted her with a curt head shake and a satchel thrust in Vera's direction. The old woman was in the middle of helping a customer — Ghorza, her apron stained with soot, and the back of her dress streaked with the sweaty work of the forge, was grousing about the "idiot apprentice." It was, as far as Vera could tell, a sort of hobby.

Vera waved at the Orsimer smith and snatched the proffered satchel from Bothela's outstretched hand: "Should last you for a week, don't get yourself killed, get me some canis root on your way back."

"Where's Muiri?"

Bothela's eyes darted from the scale she was using to weigh Ghorza's order of fire salts. "I sent her to the Khajiit. That moon sugar won't restock itself."

Perhaps she could catch Muiri on her way out of town — if Undnar and his sidekick were set on leaving the same day.

By the time Vera got to the tavern, the Silver-Blood Inn was packed to the gills — most of the miners had filed out, but at least two dozen soldier-types in Imperial armor, chipped around the edges and dirty as could be, were milling around, swinging between drunkenly bawdy and drunkenly rowdy. Vera cast her eyes about the place, catching Frabbii's gaze. Kleppr's long suffering better half motioned with her head and pantomimed an eye roll before bustling over to a group of particularly loud military men at the large table in the corner. They had started a song — Ragnar the Red, as per usual.

There was no sign of Undnar.

Oh, well. She quickly dismissed the brief twinge of disappointment at the thwarted prospect of gold, and hung on to the relief lurking beneath the other emotion. This was for the best. She could still go out into the hills for a few days — getting out of Markarth while the Thalmor were feeling particularly "vigilant" wasn't such a bad plan. She might as well get breakfast before...

One of the soldiers jostled her on his way to the bar, slurring something that might have been meant as an apology, but sorely lacked consonants to pass. Vera righted herself, looked up — and there was Chitin Suit from the previous night. The Dunmer was propping up the wall on the other side of the tavern, partially obscured by the shadows of the massive hearth. Apparently, he had been watching her for some time because he motioned with his mug the second Vera's eyes landed on him. He had foregone the anonymity of his helmet for the sake of his drink.

No Undnar, though. Vera exhaled through her nose, trying to quell the sudden flare of unease. At this point, it was a little too late to backpedal. Maybe Demon Chops would just announce that they had moved on and hired someone else — and that would be the end of it. She made her way over to the back of the tavern through the throng of bodies. Red eyes followed her progress. The Dunmer looked faintly amused — like a slaughterfish looks vaguely jovial before it tries to bite your leg off. The soldiers at the large table abandoned Ragnar the Red to his decapitation, and were hollering a new lyrical offering about bears.

"I thought you two had left already."

Demon Chops lifted an eyebrow, the sharp wings of his facial tattoo accentuating the prominent brow ridges. "And be deprived of the pleasure of your 'guidance'? No, no." He gestured with his drink — Kleppr's appalling canis root tea, judging by the smell and the steam — took a sip, and made a face. "Foul liquid." Vera felt a brief flicker of solidarity, quickly dispelled. Demon Chops’ eyes trailed over her in assessment, lingering on the bow at her back. Whatever conclusion he came to, it didn't look particularly sanguine, based on his expression. "It seems that you're still in luck, outlander. My patron is very... committed to this arrangement. He's a stubborn Nord, you'll find."

Vera narrowed her eyes. Either there was some layered subtext to his strategic pauses that she was missing spectacularly, or he just enjoyed the sound of his own gravitas. "Outlander? I'm a Breton." Give or take. "The Reach extends all the way to High Rock, you know."

He chuckled, his eyes scanning the room behind her. "I do hope you're not one of those Forseworn types — I've heard they're as wild as a pack of beasts."

Vera stepped around him to lean against the wall. This little chat had forced her to stand with her back to the rest of the tavern — and the door — and the small hairs at her nape were starting to wiggle in protest. "There's a very nice Dwemer museum if you're looking for something more civilized."

His lips quirked, but he forced his face into something approximating seriousness. "Are you offering a tour? I shudder to think how much that'll cost me."

"An arm and a leg. Those traps at the entrance are to die for." Calcelmo's pet project was a sort of a local joke in Markarth — the museum wasn't open to the public, unless the public didn't mind shedding some fingers and toes in exchange for its edification. Vera wondered what the Altmer kept in there.

Her quip earned her a throaty cackle — gravelly and surprisingly artless. "Sounds like a charming place!" He paused, sipped his tea — and winced again. "The dwarves were a clever race. I wonder what happened to them?"

Blew themselves up, most likely. Vera decided not to volunteer that particular nugget of wisdom. They watched in silence as two Nords ambled through the entrance — the larger one, red-haired and almost as wide as he was tall, looked a bit like her prospective employer. "Where is Undnar?"

"I'm certain he'll be along any moment now. When you didn't meet us in time for breakfast, I was instructed to wait-" he motioned a "ta-daa" with his hands "- and so here I am." There was a dry tartness under the humor.

"Do you always do as you're told?" Now where had that come from?

"Hmm." His eyes flicked to hers. "Under the right circumstances.” He availed himself of another sip of tea. “And for the right price."

He turned away, scanning the room. It was a dubious improvement — from this angle, the Dunmer didn't seem quite so alien, but what he lost in otherness, he made up in other unpleasant reminders. There was one particularly bad gang that had sported a similar look — the head shaved on the sides, but with a crest of spiky hair on top, something to do with a genre of music, gone extinct long before Vera’s time. The metal glinting in the Dunmer's ear set Vera's teeth on edge, her back muscles tensing in memory.

Breathe. Dima's motto for the years they'd watched out for each other, she and Martha and him, then Said and Jules. Their little family. Dima, with his glasses — more electric tape than plastic frame by that point — and his goddamn accordion and his sniper rifle. Use your eyes, not your memories, Vee. We're not our history.

Use your eyes. Vera forced to take another look, her howling ghosts quieting down. Demon Chops. She tried it for size. The nicknames had helped, early on, to domesticate the alien physiques instead of screaming herself hoarse from terror and alienation. It also helped with seeing past the similarities, to make them into people, not types. Lovinar had become Jaundiced Beanpole — to his face, too, and he had laughed himself silly when she accidentally slipped in a fit of pique over a botched potion and his vague instructions. Fae — Faendal — was Old Man, or sometimes Captain Grumpy. She was still testing one out for Muiri.

Someone must have busted the Dunmer's nose back in the day — a decent reset job, as far as Vera could tell, but it had left him with a slightly hooked nasal bridge. Sharp facial structure, check. Hooked nose, check. Red eyes, check. No horns, but she supposed that was splitting hairs at this point. Pitchforks could be acquired — even Gorza's feckless Imperial helper could probably forge one in a pinch. She stopped herself at speculating about cloven hooves and forked tails.

"Enjoying the view, outlander?" He didn't turn to look, just the corner of his mouth hitched upward.

"Do all Dunmer have facial tattoos?"

"Ah, that." He paused, ruminating. "Not all Dunmer. Why, do you... fancy one?"

Fancy one what? A facial tattoo? Or a Dunmer?

Vera quickly turned her gaze back to the rest of the tavern, trying to shake off the mild and entirely uncalled-for embarrassment. Focus, you nitwit. Where in the seven hells was Undnar?

"Ah, there you are! Finally!" Just in time with her uneasy thoughts, Undnar's massive figure materialized in the open doorway that led to the chambers. One of the maids — Vera couldn't remember her name, a young Nord woman with hair so blond it was practically white, and a figure that ensured customer loyalty much better than the inn's overpriced swill — scurried past Undnar, her clothes suspiciously rumpled and her braids suspiciously in disarray. She had a slightly dazed smile on her face. Dumbass, Vera thought. Undnar wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned wider, wagging his eyebrows in their general direction before making his way over, pushing through the drunken soldiers like a plow.

"An ale and some fried eggs, barkeep! Make them nice and runny, will ya?"

Well. Someone's had a good morning and worked up an appetite. No wonder Demon Chops had looked sour.

"About time," the Dunmer grumbled, before detaching himself from the wall. He motioned with his now empty cup. Somehow he had overcome his revulsion and finished the drink. "Go ahead. I'm right behind you."

"Good thing I was late, I guess," Vera muttered under her breath.

"Matter of perspective. Not that I wasn't enjoying the... waiting game."

Vera summarily ignored the vaguely sardonic purr at her back, and proceeded to one of the small tables in the corner — tiny thing, and therefore empty of other patrons, with only two chairs (the Dwemer ones that grew out of the floor). Undnar had plopped down on one of them, motioning with both hands in invitation.

De- Teldryn, that was the name, Vera reminded herself. Better get used to it, before she slipped and called him Demon Chops to his face. Teldryn offered a mock salute to his employer, and took up a new spot against the wall, pointing his chin at the empty chair. "Do seat. Associate."

"Not until you explain to me what it is you're looking for." She took the offered seat.

"Yes, yes, but food first. I am famished." Undnar stretched with a contented groan, all six feet eight of him, red mane sticking out in every direction. "Frabbi, Beautiful Kind Goddess of the Hearth, would you avail my friend of another order of your fine sustenance?" he bellowed, somehow managing to drown out the din of the rowdy tavern.

Even from across the room, Vera could see Frabbi's blush blooming on her cheeks. The woman waved her towel at Undnar in dismissal before disappearing in the kitchens. Kleppr, behind the bar, shot Vera a disparaging look — do you see what I have to put up with?

"Promised you breakfast, didn't I?"

Vera shrugged. "So? What-"

She didn't get a chance to finish. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Teldryn shift, suddenly on full alert. His hand went to the hilt of the curved blade at his side. "Oh, that can't be good."

Vera turned, following his gaze. No. No that was most definitely not good at all. Theirs weren't the only eyes that fastened on the three newcomers. The roar of the tavern quieted down.

The two plated Altmer marched in with pompous rigidity, clanking the whole way, but the third one, all in black, the sharp point of his hood giving him an avian and vaguely predatory look, glided in with deceptive casualness. And then his eyes fastened on Undnar and he motioned with his hand, ordering his retinue to trail after him while he made a beeline for their table, looking like he was mucking through shit the entire way.

Frabbi, two plates of eggs in hand, halted at the entrance to the kitchens, then hurried on, depositing the breakfast in front of them before quickly retreating to Kleppr's side behind the bar.

The Thalmor planted themselves by their table. "You. Nord. I have not seen you before." The Altmer's nasal timbre left very little doubt as to how he felt about "Nords" he hadn't "seen before" — or Nords more generally. "The Altmeri Dominion is here to root out all signs of Talos worship in this city. State your business in Markarth."

Undnar shoveled some eggs into his mouth and nodded with creepy enthusiasm. "Why, enjoying the sights, Justiciar! Splendid city! Great cooking! Good ale. And welcoming people!"

Vera chanced a look at the Thalmor. She'd only seen Ondolemar from afar — never in full Justiciar glory. She could have lived without the experience. She dug into her eggs, trying very hard not to imagine Ondolemar folding himself into a ouroboros in an effort to crawl up his own arsehole. Damn it, Bothela.

The Thalmor, apparently immune to Undnar's charms, squinted in suspicion. "What are you really doing here, Nord? I have received reports of a Nord openly agitating for Talos worship in the tavern yesterday evening."

Vera almost choked on her eggs. Fucking Vorstag. She'd bet half of her prospective septims that this was the lout's doing. Her eyes darted to the Dunmer, whose expression at that moment combined boredom, annoyance, and calculation. Damn it, he mouthed between pinched lips, his teeth flashing white in the shadows.

"As I said, Thalmor, I-"

"What is that amulet around your neck? Show it at once!" As if on command, Ondolemar's identical sidekicks bared their swords.

Vera looked at Undnar's neck. Sure enough, there it was, a leather cord coiling against ruddy skin, whatever pendant it carried hidden by the Nord's scaled armor. She was still vague about the nature of the conflict — or why the Thalmor got their knickers in a twist about Talos — but the historical details were the least of her worries at the moment. What did she get herself into? She should have just slept through the meeting.

Undnar heaved a theatrical sigh and relinquished his fork. "All right, all right. If I must... but you're spoiling the surprise, friend."

"I am not your friend, Nord!"

Undnar cast his eyes at Vera, and winked. And then he hooked his thumb under the cord, and let the amulet dangle free — a circle of intricately knotted copper holding a single turquoise jewel in the middle. "I admit. You've found me out, Thalmor. I'm in Markarth for more than just the fine cooking and the silver."

"An Amulet of Mara. Really."

"Why yes! Don't look so surprised! What, did you think I was wearing Talos's Axe under there?" Undnar's eyes glinted speculatively. He gave the Justiciar a thorough once-over. "Or are you interested?"

The Thalmor turned an alarming shade of orange, and sputtered — though the outrage had robbed him of all linguistic capacity.

"I jest, I jest. You Mers are too tall and too bony — like holding a damn tree. No, as you can see, I'm here to find a wife." Undnar winked conspiratorially. "And I think I just did."

The Justiciar pinched his lips and then he turned to Vera, a look of appraisal — quickly replaced by disapproval — twisting his features into a mask of mildly nauseated haughtiness. "This woman?”

The mouthful of eggs stuck in Vera's throat. She groped for the first available drink — which happened to be Undnar's ale — and gulped a swallow, the carbonation hitting her nose and triggering a sneeze. She managed to bring her elbow up to her face — just in time, too, or there would have been bits of egg on the Justiciar.

Undnar leaned to the side and enveloped Vera in a one-armed hug. "Isn't that right, my jewel?"

You demented snow troll, Vera thought, but managed a "Hmm."

"Your brutish matrimonial customs do not interest me, Nord." Apparently, Ouroboros had found his voice again — which was a good thing, because Vera had lost hers. "I am watching you. Both of you."

"You can, if you want. I’m the sharing sort.” The demented Nord wagged one massive finger in warning. “If the lady agrees. Just keep your hands to yourself."

Vera thought the Thalmor would have an apoplectic fit, right then and there, and then the guards would somehow manage to charge them with murder. What in the ever loving fuck had she gotten herself into?

The Thalmor's eyes traveled towards the wall. "And who is this Dunmer, then?" Spoken like he had just stepped into something unsavory, and was now trying to scrape it off his boot.

Please, Vera thought, trying to hold on to the last shreds of sense. Please don't tell him he's your cousin from Morrowind.

"Why, he's my future bride's bodyguard, of course. Wouldn't want someone to steal her from under me, now would I? Isn't that right, my snowberry?"

Motherfucker, Vera thought. At her back, the Dunmer was overcome by a coughing fit.

Ouroboros cocked an imperious eyebrow.

"Damn ash. Sticks with you." By the sound of it, Demon Chops was trying to cover a laugh, the bastard.

Vera took another fortifying gulp of ale. All things being equal, she might as well play along. Whatever got the Justiciar out of their hair faster. She turned to Undnar. "I will remind you that we haven't agreed to anything yet.” It came out suitably incensed. “In fact, you haven't even proposed properly. What kind of woman do you think I am, Undnar?" She cranked up the outrage — which wasn’t too far a stretch anyway — and then she turned her most winsome smile on the Justiciar. He didn't look won over one bit, so Vera returned her gaze to the blasted Nord, who had somehow managed to finish all of his eggs, and was already making forays into the leftovers of her. "Isn't that right, dearest?"

Undnar put on a show of chastised sheepishness. "Quite right, quite right. So, Justiciar, if you don't mind? I have a marriage proposal to discuss."

"Savages." Ouroboros pivoted on his heels, gesturing with a closed fist at his two goons, and the three marched out of the tavern.

Undnar tucked the amulet back under his armor and grinned his chipped smile. "So. 'Snowberry.' Now that that's done, you ready to talk business?"

Chapter Text

"So what is it that you lost?"

Undnar, now equipped with another plate of potato hash with skeever gravy and garlic bread, motioned "wait" with his fork, drained half of his second mug of ale, pointed the fork at Sero, who was still adding unnecessary structural integrity to the wall, and, finally, waved at one of the freshly vacated chairs — the arrival of the Thalmor had scattered about half of the patrons. "Grub’un, 'um shit."

Grab one, and come sit, Vera translated after staring uncomprehendingly for a few blinks. Though "grub ‘n numb shit" was a serviceable description of the general state of affairs too.

Demon Chops went off to retrieve the chair, angled it such that he could still watch the room, plonked down, one ankle over a knee, and extracted his satchel of smoking mixture. Since it was looking like they were going to be in the tavern for a while, Vera caught Frabbi's gaze and mouthed "miriam tea," then snatched a bread roll. You never know when your next meal might be, and all that.

"Well, lass, this is where I must disabuse you of your mistaken notion." Undnar passed his hand over his beard, flicking the bits of food thus collected onto the floor. "I'm not looking for something I lost. As I said, I'm looking for something I misplaced."

Vera raised an eyebrow. "Is there some fine nuance I'm missing here?" She hadn't pegged Undnar for the punctilious sort.

The Nord belched, tapping his chest to dislodge the trapped air bubble before tearing off a piece of bread to chase around the leftover gravy. "Of course, there's a difference. It's misplaced. Which means — pay attention, now, it's in the word itself — that it's missing from the place where it should be."

"And what place is that?" Perfunctory question, at that point. Vera had a pretty good idea where this was going.

"Why, in my possession, of course!"

Fucker, Vera thought, and stuffed bread into her mouth, in case she got a bit too tempted to tell the Nord what she thought of his linguistic acrobatics. She should have known this was one of those grave-robbing scenarios. What else would this Nord, with his Dunmer merc in tow, want from a local guide?

There were plenty of old barrows — two smaller ones Vera had even explored in search of gravetar for Lovinar. The Altmer had warned her that the local Nord dead were of the restless variety — the barrows, as far as she could tell, were designed to keep the dearly undeparted from running around the countryside. "Keep to the entrance areas," Lovinar had admonished, "and do not disturb the armored corpses." Then, there was the process of scraping off gravetar — black resinous gunk used, she guessed, for preserving the mummies — from the places where it accumulated: mostly in the hollows. Such as armpits, mouth, and groin area. Not particularly pleasant work.

Frabbi brought tea, and Vera leaned back in her chair, warming her hands on the mug cradled between her palms. The Nord was in no hurry to elaborate, probably waiting for her to ask for clarifications. He had moved on from stuffing his stomach to stuffing his pipe.

If they were grave robbers, then perhaps this played out in her favor, in the end. She would point out the barrows' locations — she could even take them as far as the entrance — and then they could go crawl around in the tunnels to their hearts' content, and she'd mind the camp outside. Five hundred septims, Bothela had said. Even if Undnar The Mad and Demon Chops didn't make it out, she'd still be left with almost a third of the full bribe.

Right. No skin off her back.

The itchy feeling at the base of her nape made her glance up — she had drifted off into her thoughts. The Dunmer was watching her with a mixture of amused curiosity and speculation. Likely waiting to see how she would react to his employer's semantic gymnastics. "So." She took another sip of tea. "I take it you're looking for someone to help you loot."

"Loot?" Undnar puffed up like an amorous pigeon. "I am no vulgar looter, Snowberry. Doesn't take much skill to do that. No. But first things first." He unclipped a leather purse from his belt and slammed it on the table, narrowly missing his plate. "It's all there. One hundred and fifty up front. I am a man of principles, lass. Bringing in a new partner aint's shoving coins down a wench's blouse. There are risks involved. We’ll do this right."

Vera eyed him dubiously. How did Demon Chops put up with this troll? Probably because they were cut from the same less than upstanding cloth, was how. "In my experience, shoving coins where they're not wanted is always risky business. Minimally, you'll lose the coins, with nothing to show for it but your bruised pride."

The Nord's laughter boomed through the tavern, collecting a few curious glances. "Firebrand, aren't you? I like you, Snowberry. Are you saying you don't want the money?"

"I'm saying jingling some coins in my face isn't going to make me take a deal when I don't know what I'm walking into. You still haven't explained what it is that you've 'misplaced.'"

"Fine, fine," Undnar relented. "Smart girl. Teldryn, you still have that map? Let's not keep the lady in the dark, hmm? Give it a moment, I'll explain. You can count the coins in the meantime."

Vera pointedly ignored the satchel in front of her. The drawstring had come loose, and the gold inside caught the firelight. The septims looked exceptionally clean — as if someone had spent time polishing them.

Sero blew smoke out the side of his mouth, pinched his lips over his roll-up to free up his hands, and went rummaging in his pack. He extracted a folded note — crumpled and stained with grease — and passed it to Undnar. "Anything else?" A perfect melange of derisive and deferent. No matter how much he liked coin, the merc didn't exactly seem to enjoy being ordered around. Vera glanced at the note. In addition to the other damage, it had a very suspicious brown stain along the edge. She hoped it was just dried blood. Either way, she wasn't going to touch that thing with a ten foot pole.

Undnar pushed his plate to the side and smoothed out the paper on the table between them. "And there you have it. That moment in the old sagas when our fearless adventurers pore over a mysterious map that will lead them to their destiny," he declaimed, a gleeful twinkle in his eyes. "Behold, Snowberry. The map. We were hoping you'd start by helping us make sense of it."

Vera cocked her head to one side — that didn't help — so she cocked it the other way. Not an improvement. "You call that a map?" She was genuinely curious.

"Looks like a map to me," Sero drawled. "What would you call it, outlander?"

Vera glanced at the merc. "I'd call it a doodle, but I could be swayed into amending it to scribble if you're persuasive. As a 'map' — if that's what it is — it's unusable. Though I suppose you could wipe your ass with it, in a pinch." Damn it, even in this place, there should be some standards for what passed for cartography.

"Not to your liking?" Something dark flashed under the layer of raspy sarcasm. Vera didn't think his face could do soft even if he tried it. No wonder he'd gone into hiring out his sword arm — he certainly looked the part. "Should've asked the fetcher to apply himself, I suppose." He dragged on his rollie, holding the smoke in before blowing it out in a quick hiss. "Pity I slit his throat first, then." And now, there was an unmistakable warning in his voice, lazy drawl notwithstanding.

Vera tensed. Her bow was unstrung — not that a hunting bow did you much good in a close fight — and she wouldn't reach her dagger in time, not against the merc. Undnar looked like he'd be slower, mass to velocity and all that, but the Dunmer was all coiled, compact energy.

"Sero, you keep trying to intimidate the lass, and I'll dock your pay. Now, now, Snowberry, before you bring the guards down on us.” Undnar patted the diagram. “We lifted this off a bandit. Didn't go searching for trouble, either — but, there we were walking, just minding our manners, and there they were, and... well. You can imagine the rest."

Vera breathed out, forcing the tension to drain from her muscles. Her mind had conjured up a rather different scenario. She took a sip of tea, sloshed the liquid around, focusing on the heat. We're not our history. No, Dima, love, we are our history. Something about what she said had hit a nerve with Demon Chops, and he had lashed out — or, rather, showed his teeth. She filed it away, forcing herself to look at the Dunmer, face open, serious. "Nothing wrong with killing bandits." Easy there, asshole, I'm not your enemy. "Just stop commissioning them for drawing you maps, yeah?"

She got herself a chuckle for that one — slight surprise, oversized pupils widening, then a shift, his shoulders easing. He took another drag, blew smoke to the rafters, a perfect ring drifting into a distended oval. "If you have better candidates in mind, I'm all ears."

"Point is, lass, we need you to help us decipher this less than satisfactory 'doodle,' as you said. We know it's a map, and we need to get to wherever it’s pointing." Undnar had shed his jovial dumbass act — for a moment, he looked almost grave, but then Frabbi brought him another ale, and the happy buffoon mask came back on.

Vera leaned forward, examining the lines of the drawing. Now that she was focusing on it, the sketch wasn't so nonsensical. But you couldn't draw a map if you kept yourself on the ground — your mind had to take wing. This wouldn't tell them the distance, just the vantage point of where the doodler had stood. "All right. That right here-" she tapped the squiggle vaguely reminiscent of an anvil "- could be the Zenithar shrine, and if so, then that here looks like it’s the peak east of... no, northeast of the island with the old temple."

She glanced at Undnar to see if he was following. Crickets. They really didn't know the area. All right, then. "That dotted line I'm guessing means you have to go around it, and this looks like..." Her lips went numb. "Ah, shit."

Undnar's bushy eyebrows lifted in question. "What is it, lass?"

Vera leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. Not for all the coin in Skryim, she wasn't. "That's Red Eagle Redoubt." This time, the look Undnar gave her wasn't so blank — but he hid it well, washing down the flash of recognition with more ale. Vera turned to the Dunmer. "One of the largest Forsworn camps this side of Markarth."

Demon Chops quirked an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth hitching up. "I'll remember to be suitably impressed."

"Can you take us there, girl?"

Vera forced her shoulders into a shrug. "No." Undnar and Sero exchanged a look. "I'm not going anywhere near that place. But I'll bring you close enough. And then you're on your own." Not her funeral. No skin off her back. She pulled out her own map, unfolding it over her knees since the table was stained and crowded with empty dishes. Undnar squinted at the drawing after attempting — and failing — to move his chair. "What's this, then?"

"That's a proper map."

"Looks likes doodles to me, lass, no offense — just more of them."

The Dunmer leaned forward, his eyes tracking across the paper. "What are those concentric lines?"

Vera looked up, nodding. Not a bad question. "Elevation."

"And these numbers here?" he tapped an elongated dark grey fingernail against the legend. The merc had nice hands, Vera thought suddenly. Long, strong fingers, with clearly defined joints. Pale scar across three knuckles on the left one.

She peeled her eyes away, refocusing. "That's my own notes, mostly idiosyncratic stuff. Won't be that useful to you." Sero seemed curious, though, and she didn't see any harm in elaborating. "I keep a record of how long it takes me to get places, depending on the season, and the weather."

"I see. What about the overlay right here?" The side of his hand brushed against her wrist as he reached around. "Surely, not doodles…”

Vera chuckled and tried to ignore the way her skin tingled at the brief contact. The merc ran hot — at this distance, she could feel the heat coming off him, presumably a difference in base bodily temperature, since he didn't look fevered. Some species adaptation, perhaps. "These marks are where I've spotted large predators. Square for bear, circle for sabre cat, crosses for wolves." She tapped her finger next to where he was pointing. "See. This cave here used to just have skeevers. About three months ago a she-bear moved in with two cubs. The younger one died — wolf pack got to him — so she's gone a bit touchy. So while this road here shows up on the maps you might buy in the market, it’s no good for a lone traveler."

"And what are these?"

Ah, right. That was her using her own world's alphabet. Fortunately, just the first letter, not a full word, and thus plausibly deniable.

"Just a personal cypher, for marking resources." Distract him. "Say, if I want to pick up some skeever hides-" she traced a line to a spot southwest of the bear cave "-I would go right around here. There's a farm about a mile up-river, and their garbage washes up along this shallow bend here, so the skeevers have gotten nice and fat. I'm expecting the current to change once we're over the spring melt, so they'll probably migrate in another month."

"Clever," Sero trailed, looking up from the map to meet her gaze. "I am starting to see your point about the bandit's... ehem... artwork."

Vera nodded, irrationally pleased at the praise — before stuffing the unwelcome emotions back where they came from. Then again, fuck it. This was something she was good at — if that made Demon Chops less likely to embark on his "we're mean, lean, killing machines, little girl" routine, all the better.

"See, Teldryn, I told you she'd be useful!" Undnar was beaming at her like a proud parent. "I can smell these things, I’m telling ya."

"Hold your horses." Vera held her pinky against her mark for the Forsworn encampment, and pressed her thumb to the spot where the river crooked around the cliffs. "There's a little path the rams use to get to the water on that side. The cliffs there are steep, but it's the shortest way to the redoubt if you don't want to trek all the way around to the northern part. The cliffs will give some higher ground if you want to pick them off at long range — the other side, you're both downhill and upwind from them." She looked up. "I'll take you all the way to the foot of this cliff, to where the path starts, but no further. I'll wait for a day for you two to get back. I'll have healing potions and bandages if you come back banged up. After a day, if you're still not back, I'll head back to Markarth."

"What if the Forsworn capture us, lass? Won't you sweep in to the rescue?" Undnar approximated heartbroken chagrin, not very convincingly. "What if they do unspeakable things to our remains?"

Vera blew a raspberry. The Nord guffawed, slapping his knee. "Your remains won't care one way or another. I'll make an offering to Arkay on your behalf, if you'd like." She turned to the Dunmer. "Any funerary rights I should know about? Whom should I beseech on your account, if it comes to that?"

She had meant it as a joke, but something bitter passed in the Dunmer's eyes. He stuffed it down quickly. "Won't matter a whit, outlander. Not at this stage."

Vera shrugged. "Fine with me." She opened the purse, and counted the coins. Twice. “What are we looking for, anyway?"

Undnar smiled broadly. “Why, a sword of course!”

Vera nodded. Not her problem. "Up to the foot of the cliffs. No further.”

She left her hundred and fifty septimes with Bothela before meeting the duo at the city gates.

***

Traveling with them turned out to be oddly... easy. The Nord and the Dunmer had an efficient routine, established over what Vera was guessing were months if not years of joint travel, and while they were clearly unfamiliar with the area, they didn't make stupid mistakes. She hunted but outsourced dressing the kills to Sero, who turned out better at it, frankly (Undnar didn't do shit except for tending the campfire and eating the food they cooked), and Vera was more than happy to be left to her own devices, trapping fowl and supplementing their meals with small game and whatever she could forage: mostly early greens, tender and juicy and sweet with spring sap. The summer Vera arrived had been arid, gold-dry grass and powdery dust gilting the sun-warmed summits. Even if this year proved more rainy, there would still be a period of scarcity, right around Mid Year, and then the berries would start coming in, and the mushrooms after that. Then, starchy roots, fat from the warm months of soaking up sunlight and storing it as sugar.

Undnar was his usual self on the road — no personality change there, the same loud, rude, irreverent humor: a goofy bear of a man, and as deceptively good-natured. The Dunmer, for his part, eased off his sardonic, growled half-threats after that moment in the tavern, when something had passed between them over the map. Or before that, maybe, when Vera saw his snarling for what it was, and he saw her noticing — recognition mirrored back, as if, in that moment, the languages their respective lives had left them with converged into some shared meaning. Demon Chops was abrasive — but he wasn't stupid. Or unobservant.

Either way, whatever was growing there instead wasn't comfortable — Vera made sure she never had her back turned to either of the men — but it had settled into a kind of grudging camaraderie born of tired feet and shared fires. A pinched feeling, sore and almost sweet, that tugged at some long-buried heartstring. Familiar. Like plugging herself into a well-oiled mechanism. Once upon a time, Vera had been a part of something just like it — bigger, when everyone was still alive. Split City was held together through circuits of constant migration, on a kind of rotating schedule of flight and foraging. A careful choreography of divided tasks, once there was enough of them to share the labor. A long time ago, the cities of her world had been sedentary — before ending up in Markarth, Vera couldn't have imagined it. How would you survive? Resources were always thin, but after the Citadel raided them in '89, there was barely anything left to scavenge, so you had to stay on the move.

Jules had broached the topic first, or maybe Said — the memory had grown fuzzy around the edges, like a heat mirage. Not that it mattered. They talked about heading west, going towards what had once been Lake Huron. Used to be cottage country, Jules had explained — his great-great grandparents were from those parts. Boats and farms and quaint little houses, most of them decomposing ruins, but no gangs — or, well, fewer anyway. Martha and Vera had been hesitant. Said had thrown his support behind Jules — and not just because he and Jules were lovers, either. Said, soft-eyed, with the scar across his mouth like a fishhook — the strategist of their group. Two steps ahead, just quieter about it.

Dima had been against it, categorically, but, in the end, he was outnumbered.

It was ironic, in the end, which of them ended up implementing the plan. For several years, it was just a hypothetical — something that tied their group together as much as their other bonds did. A joint cause, the imaginary of a possible future.

Vera shoved her hungry ghosts aside, turned her face to the sky, the setting sun warm on her skin. The breeze carried the tang of warm juniper and the crisp coolness of snowmelt. A lovely smell. Point was, it had been easy to fall into a rhythm with her two oddball companions.

Which was probably why she had allowed her guard to slip.

***

"No! Absolutely... No." Vera stared in horror at the pieces of armor (the term was a vast overstatement) that Undnar was carefully laying out on the grass in front of her. It had taken them about a week to get to their intended destination — largely without a hitch. She should have known something like this would happen. It had all proceeded way too smoothly. Her eyes darted to Teldryn, not that she expected to find much support from those quarters. The Dunmer was pinching the bridge of his nose with the air of someone who grasped fully the futility of trying to dissuade the mad Nord from his chosen course of action.

"I am not putting this on, Undnar. No. No no no. I mean... why?"

"What do you mean, why, lass? I thought it was obvious. We need that sword. The Forsworn have said sword in their possession. There is... How many, Teldryn?"

"Twenty six, the last time I coun-"

"Twenty six Forsworn, and three of us. Surely, you can see how that's a problem."

Vera glared at him mutely, before gesturing with both hands at the armor. "Actually, there are twenty six Forsworn and two of you — since I’m not going. And I definitely don’t see how this outfit here will solve the mathematical challenge you’re facing."

Undnar grinned like a hungry troll spotting a ram. "Way I figure it, same rules apply, lass. You don't have to come anywhere near the encampment proper. All we need is to get past the sentries — so they don't turn us into target practice before we've even set foot into the camp. Which is where you come in, Snowberry. You're going to sneak us in. Time to earn your keep, eh?"

Vera tried — and failed — not to sputter in entirely justified outrage. Undnar patted the armor on the ground. "As your prisoners."

She opened her mouth, and then closed it with an audible clack. "I." She gestured to herself, in case the referent was unclear. "Took you." She gestured at Undnar, and then, belatedly, included Demon Chops. "As prisoners."

"Forsworn women are very fierce, I hear. Savage! Feral, even. Deadly opponents in combat."

"Setting aside the fact that I am not going anywhere, I am not a Forsworn woman! They'll be able to spot the subterfuge a mile away. I don't move like them, I don't speak like them… do you seriously think they won't be able to tell?"

Undnar shrugged, not the least bit discouraged. "You're Breton. Put on the outfit, add a bit of face paint to make you look fiercer..."

"Nord, you are almost twice my size, and probably about three times my weight. And he-" She pointed an angry finger at Sero, who wasn't doing shit to stop this disaster from toddling off a cliff "-looks like he could filet me in his sleep."

Demon Chops offered her a slight bow. "I would make sure I was awake for the occasion, if that helps."

Asshole.

Undnar scratched his head, meditating on this unexpected hurdle. "You might have a point there, Snowberry. We'll have to really make sure the face paint is convincing. Teldryn'll help you with that, eh?"

The merc had the decency to groan. "I don't recall 'face painting' being part of my contract with you, Undnar."

"You hear this, Snowberry?" Undnar rubbed his beard in aggrieved contemplation. "See what I must contend with? This lout gets to muck around in mud or ash or whatever it is those Forsworn use to decorate themselves with, and then he gets to put his grubby paws all over a pretty Breton lass, but nooo, not good enough, he wants me to pay him extra for it."

"As a matter of fact," Sero interjected, "I don't recall my 'grubby paws' being included in your new associate's contract either." He turned to Vera, his red eyes glinting in the semidarkness. "If you want my advice, outlander, I suggest we both ask for more gold. We could... split it later, if you're interested."

"Divines, lo this treachery, they are uniting against me, the unconscionable scoundrels," Undnar wailed at the night sky, brandishing both hands as if to call upon them the wrath of heaven.

"Be quiet, you madman!" Vera shushed at him aggressively. "You're going to bring the Forsworn down upon us." How had she gotten herself into this mess — and this completely insane conversation? Why was she even discussing the armor? Nothing remotely like this was part of her original agreement with the Nord, though Undnar seemed to have a fondness for reinterpreting the terms of a contract in new and creative ways. Still. If these two wanted to charge a Forsworn camp all by their lonesome and become the hagravens’ playthings, that was certainly not her responsibility. She promised to wait a day — and she'd keep the promise — but anything else was not going to be her problem.

Except, of course, it didn't quite work that way in practice. Twenty fucking six to two wasn't just terrible odds, it was a suicide mission. They weren’t walking out of there. Minimally, bickering in circles was delaying the inevitable.

"If we don't make it out, lass, then I can't pay you your full amount, on account of being dead, and all that," Undnar tried, approaching the problem from the now very familiar pecuniary direction. "Ah! I've got it!" He slapped his knee in time with the new — no doubt incrementally worse — idea. "You didn't best us in fair combat! Cunning and treacherous snake that you Forsworn women are, you overcame us with your feminine wiles."

Vera blinked. "What, both?"

"Well, not at the same time!" the mad Nord amended, before turning to Sero with an inquisitive look. "Right? Or at the same time?”

The Dunmer rubbed his forehead, with the air of someone trying to ward off a migraine, and growled something about Mephala. “I don’t care how much you’re paying me, Undnar, I’m not answering that.”

“Bah.” The Nord grinned. “Spoilsport. Look, lass. If they see our hands are bound, it won’t matter — they’re not gonna ask the hows and the whys and the how comes. You just need to march us in there like you mean it, and then we’ll take care of the rest.” He squinted slyly. “I’ll raise your pay. Three hundred septims on the other end. How about it?”

“Still no.” She crossed her arms over her chest, as if that could protect her from the Nord’s unbelievable pushiness and harebrained ideas.

“Four hundred.”

Sero coughed into his fist.

“Yeah, and once the Forsworn resurrect my corpse, it can go shamble off and put that coin to good use by erecting a shrine to my stupidity! No fucking way. No, Undnar.” Vera took a deep breath. “Why don’t you two don a disguise then? Just…” She pointed her chin at the obnoxious piece of armor. “Wherever you found this set — and don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know — I’m sure you could’ve lifted another one off a male Forsworn.”

Undnar heaved a despondent sigh — the sort of sigh that was meant to demonstrate how much of a paragon of patience he was being. “Well, lass, they’re mostly Breton. No offense, but you lot are itty bitty." He demonstrated just how itty bitty Bretons were by holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, squinting at it with one eye. "Besides, that armor doesn’t cover much, if you catch my meaning. I’m just too big and he’s-” he squinted, “- too blue. Or grey. Which is it, Sero?”

“It’s irrelevant, for starters.” The Dunmer wrapped an oilcloth around the whetstone he had been using to hone his blade, and shoved the bundle into the pack at his feet. “We are wasting time. As I recall, the deal took us only as far as the bottom of the path." He pointed the business end of his blade at Vera, the dark, intricately carved metal catching the firelight. "She made good on that.”

"There is a long fissure, atop the plateau, about sixty paces south of where you'll come up. I've never used it myself, but you can see if from that cliff on the other side of the river." Vera pointed her thumb over he shoulder. "It'll give you cover until the towers."

Teldryn met her gaze, and nodded. "My thanks." A trace of a smile touched his lip, the tracework of his tattoo drawing her attention to the asymmetry of his smirk. There was a kind of spare minimalism to him, now that her eyes had gotten used to his odd, high contrast coloring — not so much arresting, anymore, as almost... peaceful. The sort of aesthetics that didn't clamor for your constant attention with being insistently pretty.

Vera dragged her gaze from the Dunmer and returned the bow she had set aside earlier in favor of trying to wave the horrid armor away back into her lap. It was already restrung, so she busied herself with rubbing tallow into the wood to keep it waterproof. Not a task that needed to be done right this moment, but it would have to be done eventually anyway.

She was drawing this out. Stupid. Just… rip off the band-aid.

Another theatrical sigh from the buffoon-in-chief. “You're really not going to help us, lass?"

"No." She looked up, trying to break through the Nord's clowning to whatever was beneath it. "Look, it's an unnecessary risk. It makes no strategic sense. Yeah, it's flashy — and marginally clever if you can pull it off, maybe, but I'm telling you, we won't pull it off. They'll know I'm not one of them the same way I'd know you two are not from the Reach even if I didn't know you from Adam."

"Who is this Adam you speak of, lass?"

Vera waved it off. "A prat, from what I hear. It's not the point — I won't improve your chances by irritating the Forsworn with costuming. Just... Either way, it's not a good idea. Can't you find another sword? There’s not, exactly, a deficit, from what I can tell."

Undnar shook his head. "Wish that we could, but no. It has to be this one. Well..." He stretched, and then placed his axe ceremoniously on the ground before him, giving the weapon a few loving pats. "Since you think we’re as good as dead, Sero and I, won't you do an old dying warrior a final favor, and at least try the outfit?”

Vera threw a pebble at his head, which Undnar dodged. “I’m not here to fulfill sordid Nord fantasies about mountain savages!”

"What about sordid Dunmer fantasies?" Will those do you better?" The Nord turned to the merc. “Want to share one of those, before we go?”

"Not for all the gold in Skyrim."

“What happened to your sense of humor, you joyless mudcrab?”

“Unless you think I can dispatch the Forsworn with barbs, I suggest we get going. It’ll be dawn soon. I’d rather not tangle with them in broad daylight.”

The demented Nord switched tactics again, drawing himself up and bristling with false outrage. “What of our other arrangement, lass? Would you abandon your future husband in his time of need? I demand deference from my bride-to-be.” He pounded his fist on his knee.

“Yeah, well, as your future widow, I suggest you take your demands and shove them, unless you want to first bequeath all your possessions to me. In written form.”

The Dunmer emitted a sound that sounded suspiciously like a choked snort. When Vera glanced his way, he was shaking his head, his hand over his eyes.

“Well.” Undnar scratched his beard in thought. “Hmm. You got a point there.”

Idiots. Vera sighed, glanced at the Dunmer, and motioned at his tobacco pouch. “Roll me one, will you?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you smoked. This might be a titch… strong.”

“I’ll survive.”

“As you wish.”

She wasn’t sure what he was using in lieu of paper — some very thin, gossamer-like material that put her in mind of dragonfly wings, but more supple. Or perhaps the gills of a mushroom. She found her gaze lingering on him when he was sealing the roll-up — a quick swipe of his tongue, efficient, then a practiced flick of his fingers as he tightened the cigarette. He caught her looking — and smirked. “Light?” Vera drew back as a tiny flame swelled between his thumb and forefinger. She lit up awkwardly, drew the smoke deep into her lungs, rolling it around her mouth before blowing it out through her nose. The mixture was smooth, a bit minty. Whatever the active ingredient was, it wasn’t nicotine — some other chemical, sharper, with a faster edge. “Any final directions from either of you?”

The Nord’s ribald mask was flaking off quickly, revealing the alarming glint of nascent battle fury. “As a matter of fact...” Vera watched him warily as he unhooked the amulet from around his neck, before tossing it in her lap. “Hold on to that until I’m back, will you? It’s meant for a very special lady. Wouldn’t want the hagravens to get the wrong idea.”

The thing was, they probably were going to die, all things considered. She ignored the sudden pang of sadness. “What about you, Dunmer? Last directives?”

His eyes drifted to the skies, and then he grinned, all sharp edges and white teeth, and crooked a finger at her. “How about a... personal question? Won’t matter if we don’t make it, will it?”

Undnar scowled, pantomiming displeasure. “Paws to yourself, sellsword. I don’t pay you for that.”

“Oh, now he worries about the terms.”

Vera scooted closer to where Demon Chops was sitting. He hadn’t been particularly interested in personal details before, which suited her perfectly fine — except that now, she was curious. He leaned down, close enough that she could feel his breath tickling her ear. He smelled like he looked — a sharp, slightly spicy scent, with a hint of mineral heat. Abrupt, but not unpleasant.

“Well?” Vera asked, suddenly acutely aware of her own skin.

“Where are you really from, outlander?” he whispered, and then he straightened and busied himself with his blade.

Vera got to her feet, turned away to look at the dark water of the river. Some large nocturnal bird flew above, briefly shading Masser’s pale glow with its wingspan. “If you come back alive, I’ll tell you,” she said to the water.

A safe bet.

She didn’t watch them leave, busying herself with tending to the fire instead.

Chapter Text

Vera maintained the campfire for only as long as it took to keep their things from accumulating too much moisture when the temperature dropped below the dew point. Cold drifted off the water, pooling at the bottom of the steep river gorge — the sun would not reach into the ravine for two, three hours after sunrise, but the inconvenience of needing to dry everything out paled against the risk of having the smoke bring unwanted visitors.

When the eastern horizon paled and the stars turned translucent, Vera kicked what remained of the burning driftwood apart, scattering the embers. If things went poorly for Undnar and Sero — especially if they went poorly early on — chances of a Forsworn scouting party to root out their base camp was high. She had chosen a spot far enough away, and inconvenient enough to access without making a ruckus, but the risk was not null. She looked up, her eyes tracing the scatter of the Mage, still bright against the shrinking darkness in the western quadrant. Perhaps she should have tried harder to dissuade them. Then again, everyone was free to choose their own ending, if they could — and most didn't get that luxury.

True enough of the Nord, but had Demon Chops really chosen this?

Was the promise of coin really worth that risk? How the hell did he balance those scales? Something irked her, an irritating little splinter of a thought, lodged at the back of her mind ever since her quip about Dunmer funeral rights — the way his mouth had twisted and his eyes had darted away at her question. Odd for a fellow who, at other times, had no problem with weaponizing eye contact. "Won't matter a whit, at this stage," he'd said.

Nords, at least, cared deeply about their afterlives — whatever Sovnegarde really was, its promise seemed to override the fear of a messy death. Were Dunmer different in this respect? Barring unnatural causes — like, say, being sacrificed in some unpleasant hagraven ritual, and then eaten, because why waste good meat — Mer had longer lifespans. Perhaps, after a while, you just got fed up with the whole thing.

Vera kicked the thought aside, and got herself busy. She was going to need sleep — a few hours would do, and she was used to finding ways to rest in relative safely without relying on a sentry. She had chosen this spot in part because of the beehive of small caves dotting the cliff side, where water erosion and winds had eaten away at the rock, forming shallow hollows — high enough above ground to keep skeevers and other wildlife from getting into food supplies, low enough that they could be accessed without climbing equipment. About fifty paces upriver along the stony beach, she discovered what she was looking for — a small cave, two meters deep, shaped like a teardrop. The rocks below provided decent handholds, and Vera hoisted herself up to the mouth of the hollow, careful not to slip on the moist stones. Inside, an old bird's nest — little more than a snarl of dry twigs and desiccated grass — was the only trace of the cave's former occupants. Vera brushed the debris aside, shouldered her pack into the opening, and climbed down. It was high enough that dragging their equipment into her new shelter would require some maneuvering, but a short craggy tree growing from a crevice above the cave would provide the lever she needed for her rope.

By the time she was done, the sky had turned a soft pink, and Masser hung pale and ghostly at the edge of the horizon. Vera settled inside the cave, her back against her pack, the pile of bedrolls cushioning her from the ground. She fidgeted with the unfinished cigarette in her fingers — she had not intended to keep the remaining blunt after her first lungful of the foreign mixture, but old habits of frugality died hard. Hoarding elevated to a philosophy of life, a shield against uncertain futures.

She sorely needed sleep, but she felt restless and strangely unmoored. Perhaps the futility of waiting was starting to grate.

Then again, perhaps the pair were going to come to their senses once they realized what they were up against, and hightail it back. Probably with a pack of Forsworn on their heels. Vera fidgeted, her hand drawn to her bow, its smooth curve reassuring against her palm. Boredom. The most underrated emotion. Boredom meant you were safe.

What did she even know about the Forsworn? Her understanding was mostly limited to observation from afar, rather than any sort of conceptual grasp of their place in the mess that was Skyrim politics. They were native Reachmen, according to Lovinar, and Breton in designation if not quite in phenotype or descent. About fifteen years before Vera's arrival, they had rebelled — and were driven back. Since then, they were known to masquerade in plain sight: your neighbor, your fellow miner, your nondescript customer that came in every Sundas to buy a health tonic (otherwise known as a cordial in every sense of the term, but Bothela's clever labels spared her clients from having to explain their more frivolous purchases to their significant others) could have a double life as a Forsworn — or so people said, a little breathless with the pleasure of suspected conspiracy. In that sense, perhaps they were Breton in the way that the largest rival gangs that tore Split City into two violent, mutually annihilating halves were sometimes described as "American." At best, ironic nostalgia — a referent for a myriad identities only united on old maps, as mythical as the giant sea dwellers of terra incognita. At worst, a way to make one's own hands feel less bloody, to shift that weight to others, with longer and prouder and better remembered traditions of past cruelties.

There was the more sinister sense, too. Whispers of warriors who cut out their own hearts to be replaced with something that was neither heart, nor human. Stories of hagravens that had bartered some of their humanity for odd powers that came with bird talons and a few other dubious trade-offs, but no wings.

Beyond that, Vera only knew the surfaces of what she had been able to glimpse from a safe distance. They wore little, but didn't seem to be bothered by the cold, either from a habit of repeated exposure or through some magical or alchemical intervention. They did not favor metalwork for weapons or armor. They had some kind of symbolic relationship with stags, and the men's headdresses often featured a complex weave of antlers and branches, like some ancient woodland spirit from the 3rd Volume of the Encyclopedias about the old religions of her dying world — before the Unworshipped showed up and swept up those who remained into their deceptively simple, impossible service.

So her grim jokes aside, the thought of what would actually happen to the Nord and the Dunmer once they failed — and Vera had no doubt that they would fail — was all the more unpleasant for its uncertainties. This would have been a good time for her imagination to draw a blank — or at least a modesty curtain over the possible scenarios — but, of course, it did no such thing.

If they were lucky, they would die quickly. But that was the thing with luck — you had it until it ran out.

She had promised to wait. A long, pointless, and potentially risky exercise — but a promise was a promise.

Eventually, she nodded off.

~~~

Vera woke up with a jolt. An odd noise had yanked her out of shallow sleep — well, that, and the crick in her neck. The sun's orange rays danced on the water, the river like molten gold.

She'd overslept. Again. Vera tightened her hand on her bow and turned her head — slowly, so as not to draw attention to herself — and almost tumbled off her pile of bedrolls.

A purple blob was gliding across the narrow strip of gravel beach — a coiling, pulsing iridescent knot of ethereal tendrils, like vapor slowly coiling on itself inside a glass flask. Vera blinked. No changes. She turned her head all the way, and, suddenly, the light dissolved, like something smudged out with a grubby thumb. In its place stood a mudcrab — a juvenile hatchling, judging by the size. Its eye stalks stretched upward, beady little eyes tracking Vera's movements. It chirped in warning and skittered backwards.

What the fuck? She turned her head, bringing the critter into her peripheral vision. The mudcrab reblobbified, its outline now hosting the violet glow once again. The shimmer was familiar — exactly like the tantalizingly glimmer of Lovinar's gem.

"Did you swallow one of those enchantment crystals, buddy?"

The mudcrab chittered menacingly.

"Oh, yeah? You’re pretty much a rat in a chitin suit, so don’t get mouthy." She twisted out of the cave, dangling her legs over the drop. She stretched her neck, the muscles screaming in protest.

The mudcrab raised its claw and brandished it in warning. Have weapon, will nip. The gesture was so similar to Undnar's earlier quip about itty bitty Bretons that Vera found herself snorting. "Not impressed, huh?" She jumped down from her perch, her fur-soled boots doing little to muffle the rattle of river pebbles beneath her feet. "Let's see if you've been keeping an odd diet." She took a step forward. "And if not, I bet you'll taste great with some wild garlic and a bit of butter."

The mudcrab inched sideways, its gray carapace catching the sun's refracted glare.

Vera stalked closer. She wouldn't need the bow — for a specimen this young, a well-placed kick to the head should do the trick. As long as she could dodge the claw — the little critters were experts at ruining a perfectly good pair of boots.

Apparently, this particular mudcrab was wisened to the cruel ways of the food chain, because it retracted its pincer and took off, lightning fast, zipping sideways along the bank, its legs clicking against the stones. After a moment of hesitation, Vera ran after it, following it upriver. The purple glow only returned if she kept the creature in her peripheral vision.

Just as she was closing in on it, the treacherous crustacean lurched sideways, disappearing behind a rocky outcrop that jutted out into the river, forcing Vera to slow down at the water's edge. She weighed the advantage of a crabmeat supper against the dubious pleasure of wading ankle-deep in the icy river. But if the little scavenger had, in fact, gobbled up one of those gems — because what else could explain its glowing tendencies — then cold feet wouldn't be such a high price to pay. Still. Keeping one's boots dry and one's feet warm was another one of those underrated life necessities. Vera eyed the rocky jut. "You might have eight legs , buddy, but see, this is where you're not taking into account the simple evolutionary fact that I have opposable thumbs."

Midway up the outcrop, Vera frowned, staring in consternation at the small fissure in the stone she was using as a handhold. She was talking to a mudcrab. It felt perfectly natural under the circumstances — who else was she supposed to talk to out here? — but something about it still irked her. A feeling like she was missing something crucial, and rather obvious.

A noise drew her attention from the irritating thought, and she clambered up the rest of the way until she reached the narrow platform at the top of the rocky spur. On the other side of the stony outcrop formation, a narrow tongue of pebbly shore extended out into the water. Her mudcrab friend was making its way across it at a deceptively leisurely pace, but Vera's earlier culinary intentions slipped away. She muttered a curse. The entire river bank was littered with swirling purple knots.

Either the local mudcrabs were experimenting with a restricted mineral diet, or something was very seriously wrong with her. Vera rubbed her eyes, but the visual distortion remained.

She folded herself into a cross-legged position, bringing the bow to her lap. A titch strong, the Dunmer had warned her when she had asked him to share his smoking mixture. What the hell had she been thinking, making that stupid request in the first place? Idiot. More importantly, was the effect something specific to mudcrabs, or was it more general? She glanced dubiously at her own hands. They seemed perfectly normal — no eerie glow.

Hopefully, whatever chemical was causing the lightshow, it wasn't permanent. She would bring the roll-up to Bothela, and see if the old woman could reverse engineer the ingredients.

Vera turned her gaze back to the chittering critters below. Something had drawn the little bastards to a spot at the edge of a shallow pool, where the current slowed and swirled. An old rowboat had been dragged part way onto the beach, but the mudcrabs didn't seem interested in that — they were all clustering a few feet away, around a dark shape bobbing in the water.

Mudcrabs were, by and large, opportunistic scavengers — which meant that the shape was most likely a dead body.

Vera straightened, fished out an arrow from the quiver at her hip, and drew her bow, aiming at the largest creature. She released the arrow — the string ringing with a satisfying twang — and the mudcrab shuddered, collapsed on its belly, and went still. Its buddies hissed and whistled — but didn't stop their meal.

"Shoo, you fuckers, I don't want your dinner. I just want the boat."

She dispatched two more mudcrabs before the rest of the throng abandoned their prey, launching themselves into the water, or skittering along the gravel towards the shelter of the cliffs. Vera climbed down.

The stench of decomposition — still faint, but unmistakable — hit her nostrils once she was a few feet away from the boat. Vera glanced at the dead body. A bloated back, covered in the reds and browns of imperial armor, swayed gently with the ebb and flow.

She approached the dinghy. Several burlap sacks lay eviscerated at the bottom of the boat, their cargo of wheat and potatoes strewn over the weather-bleached planks, but the little vessel was otherwise dry on the inside.

The mudcrabs were beginning to coalesce into an irate militia some twenty paces away, so Vera planted her palms on the hull and shoved. Her feet weren't destined to stay dry, apparently. She waded through the shallows, teeth clenched against the bracingly cold water sipping into her boots. Another shove, and the dinghy wobbled, the current rotating the bow to face downriver. She tried the rudder, a creaky but function affair, and as the current yanked the skiff forward, she hoisted herself into it, inelegantly, her boots slipping on the damp wood. She narrowly avoided pitching forward and busting her nose on the planks, but then she righted herself, and steered the craft along the shoreline to the site of their erstwhile camp. If shit hit the fan and Undnar's insane scheme brought a party of Forwsorn down on her head, she'd have a quick means of escape — as long as she managed to beach the skiff before the rapids, and scat.

~~~

Vera whiled away the remaining hours cleaning out the dinghy and checking it for leaks, collecting river clams for her dinner, and attempting, unsuccessfully, to dry out her boots in the waning sunlight until the sun dipped behind the cliffs. She weighed the risks of a campfire against the allure of having dry toes and a cooked dinner. If the Forsworn hadn't showed up by now, perhaps they weren't going to bother at all. In the end, the promise of modest creature comforts prevailed, so she made a small driftwood fire in the shelter of the cliffs. An evening wind had picked up, scattering the narrow plume of smoke over the water.

By the time Masser climbed once more above the eastern horizon, and the sky turned from lapis blue to inky black, Vera was thoroughly fed up with pointless waiting. This was it. They were't coming back. She chose to interpret the queasy, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach as hunger, rather than loss.

She used a stick to maneuver her clams and coal-baked potatoes out of the cinders — most of the potatoes from the dinghy had either rotted, or sprouted, but she found a couple that still looked (and smelled) edible. Either way, she'd eaten worse. Since her relocation to her new world, the chronic vitamin deficiencies she and everyone she knew had suffered from were beginning to right themselves. She'd been lucky, compared to others — she had managed to keep all her teeth, at least. She scarfed down her food, counting down every chew. Ten per bite. Trying to re-teach herself to eat more slowly was still a struggle.

She cast her eyes towards the cliffs above. Perhaps she could climb up there and take one final look. The Forwsworn camp was a hike, but, if nothing else, it would be an expedient way to test whether the effect of the Dunmer's smoking mixture extended to humans — as well as to gauge the distance of its efficacy. And if the camp turned out to be quiet, then that would mean that her companions were well and truly dead — or worse — and she could load up the dinghy and head out. She'd dock by Blind Cliff Cave, before the rapids, and cut across to Karthwasten — and from there, she might be able to hitch a ride back to Markarth if Ainethach was feeling generous. Besides, she should probably bring the news of Lovinar's passing — the old alchemist had supplied the little settlement with healing potions, when communication with Markarth slowed down during the winter months. The miners were probably wondering what had happened.

At least don't bullshit yourself, Vee. You just hate leaving them behind. There's no helping it now — shuould've talked them out of it when you had the chance.

Why did her saner self always sound like Martha?

Vera got to her feet, the adrenaline sharpening her senses. She looked at the sky. Masser was already dipping behind the cliffs. She had fulfilled her part of the bargain. She was free to go.

Sorry, Martha, love. Of the two of us, you were always the wiser one.

She fished out the roll-up from her pocket, pinched off the burnt end, and brought the burning tip of a stick to the flaking remainder. One fast inhalation, released quickly, and then she extinguished the blunt against the sole of her boot (still wet), stuffing it back into her pocket. Hopefully, Bothela would have some additional insights about the mixture. Either way, waste not and...

The thought scattered. The screech — high pitched, metallic, and entirely inhuman — sent her scrambling for her bow before her mind could classify the nature of the danger. She dove for the safety of the cliffs.

Boots sliding on gravel, small stones tumbling down and ricocheting off rocks. A low, mounting whump, like a bomb falling, and then a crash and the bassy whoosh of fire. Vera gritted her teeth against the sickly free-fall of rising panic. The bow felt slippery in her palm. An arrow nocked against the rising terror. She forced herself out of her shelter through sheer force of will, her body pivoting on autopilot towards the approaching ruckus.

Two lilac blobs, one bright and one faint, so close together they looked joined at the hip, were tumbling down the narrow path from the clifftop. And dotting the dark outline of the cliffs and blotting out the starlight, were at least another dozen purple blobs, pulsing in perfect harmony. Vera gulped for air suddenly in short supply. Don't think. There. One more, against Masser's tawny flank, purple, but tinged with red and rimmed with a necrotic darkness that brought bile to her throat. A perfect ball of flame coalesced in the center of the shimmering mass of tendrils, feeding off the purple glimmer as if it were kindling.

She lined the shot: an odd, uncomfortable proposition when relying only on her peripheral vision to take aim. The honing glow vanished the second she tried to look at a target head-on, leaving only darkness in its wake. She let go of the arrow. The bowstring twanged, air whistling, and then a meaty thwack followed, another inhuman screech on its tail.

"Get out of here, outlander!"

The Dunmer.

Something grazed Vera's calf — blinding white pain, then numbness — and she stumbled back, her only thought on the dinghy. Get it moving! She hobbled to the boat, tossing her bow inside. "Hurry!" she screamed over her shoulder, strident, with the metallic tang of fear on her tongue.

A serrated arrow bit into the skiff's hull, not a foot away from her hand.

""Help me get him in!"

She whipped around. Sero was barely recognizable. Blood and bruises and burns, one eye swollen shut to a narrow red slit. The Nord he was half-hauling half-supporting looked like a slab of meat.

Don't think. She grabbed Undnar's belt and helped the Dunmer heave his employer into the dinghy like a sack of potatoes. "Push!"

They shoved at the hull together. A fireball flew over their heads and skittered across the dark surface, pale steam billowing in its wake. Vera grabbed the edge of the skiff. The boat wobbled, and then the current caught it, yanking her after it, the water shockingly cold even through her armor. She bit her cheek and tried to dig in her heels. Sero tumbled into the dinghy, rocking it and knocking it sideways to the current. Vera pushed again, her breaths coming in short gasps. One more push, something grabbing her by the back of her coat, and then she was dragged into the skiff. She fell in a heap next to the unresponsive Nord.

"Can you steer us to safety?" Sero's voice sounded strained, edged with urgency.

"Keep them off us," Vera managed through chattering teeth. She crawled to the rudder, yanking it towards her. The boat righted itself, the fast current propelling it downriver. She chanced a look at the cliffs. The purple distortions had faded — she couldn't see whether they were being pursued. On the starboard side, the Dunmer's face and hands flashed into view, flame-lit — the ball of fire small at first, barely a flicker, then growing brighter and hotter, the core pulsing white. He grew it in increments, molding fire between his palms, like shaping a piece of dough, his battered features twisting with the effort. Vera winced. Holy hell, but they had done a number on him. He held the spell aloft, squinting into the darkness, and then he released it. It went flying down the gorge, the rocks illuminated in time with the missile's passage. Vera didn't check to see if it hit anything. The cliffs rushed by, the river bending around the island. She glanced behind them, trying to catch that purple glow again. At least she got the answer to her question — the effect wasn't specific to mudcrabs.

The boat rushed on, and with each passing minute, the itchy feeling between her shoulder blades receded a little, as if the target on her back grew fainter.

Maybe they would make it out of this. There would be a nasty patch of underwater boulders right around the bend, then relatively smooth sailing before the rapids. The skiff wouldn't survive those, not with three people weighing it down, not to mention their gear, but if they could just-

The Nord suddenly shot bolt-upright and bellowed an ear-curling curse. The boat lurched to the side, taking water. Vera threw herself to the other side in counterweight, trying to right the craft, but Undnar wobbled, trying to keep his balance, before collapsing in the same direction. The last thing she heard before tumbling head first into the river was Sero's hissed expletive — something about Molag Bal's hairy nether regions.

She hit the water with a painful jolt, the cold like a sudden vise of icy fire tightening around her lungs. Vera groped for the boat's edge, but her waterlogged armor dragged her back, her muscles shaking with the effort of staying afloat. Her feet tried to find purchase, but the river was too deep. The boat, now at the mercy of the current, rushed forward. Another fireball — not one of Sero's, so return fire, most likely — sank and fizzled inches away from her head. Vera screamed and went under. Her lungs seized, the thermal shock locking her muscles. She panicked, disoriented in the darkness, tried to kick to the surface, but her legs felt bound and unwieldy. Water rushed into her mouth and nose, the pain and sheer terror crowding out everything else. She kicked with all her force, breaching the surface and gulping a mouthful of air before being tugged under again. Her left shin slammed against an underwater rock, the agony momentarily overriding her panic, and then she was dragged over it, like laundry scraped over a washboard. Then open water again, with no sense of direction, of up and down.

That's it. That's how it ends. Her vision went blurry, fading at the edges, tunneling.

She must have blacked out. Awareness returned with a lurch and the sensation of her back hitting solid ground. Vera found enough energy to roll to her side and retch into the shallow water, cramps twisting her insides in long, painful spasms. When nothing else would come out, she fell back, shaking with exhaustion, shock, and hypothermia.

Above her, the Dunmer's face loomed into view. “Done?” He hoisted her up by the armpits and dragged her farther up the river bank with a labored grunt.

"Ar- mor-..." Vera rattled, "freezing...Off."

He nodded, stopped dragging, stepped over her, and busied himself with removing her gear. She tried to aid him in the process, but her fingers weren't obeying.

"Gone?" Vera managed through chattering teeth.

"Safe for the moment. Though I have no idea where we are." The Dunmer fumbled with the laces holding her trousers in place, then tried to yank at them, but the wet knots had fused tight. He growled in frustration. Something about his expression suddenly struck Vera as utterly comical — a half-forgotten memory from her younger years, of an impatient lover brought low by the intricacies of female garments. Even then, a good bra was already something you might draw your weapon over. She snorted, and then spluttered, water trickling from her nose and sending her down the path of uncontrollable laughter, despite her raw lungs. Demon Chops stared down at her in mute condemnation, wiping at the blood trickling from his broken lip — the scab was cracked, and the wound seeped. "Something amusing, outlander?"

"You look like-" hiccup "-first time you're thwarted by-" hiccup-snort "-a woman's choice of wardrobe," Vera choked out, a great howl of laughter bursting from her chest before curdling into a cough.

"Next time the day concludes with you asking me to remove your clothes, I'll strive to be better prepared," he retorted dryly, "though I might have enough magic left to burn them off you, if you'd rather."

"Bad day?" Vera managed, cold and laughter and the aftershocks of terror rattling through her in equal measure.

"Not the worst ending to it, I suppose." He met her gaze, his expression more grimace than grin. "Azura curse it, this won't budge... You're no use to us frozen, partner, so if you have any suggestions..."

"Just stop fucking around and burn the laces off!"

He cocked an eyebrow, the attempt at irony somewhat spoiled by his pained wince. "Try to hold still, then. You won't be much use to me cooked either."

A burst of heat from his hands — Vera tried not to arch her frozen body into his palms in a misguided attempt to chase the warmth. Water sizzled, vapor billowing around them in a milky cloud.

"I don't suppose you can just dry the armor?"

The Dunmer shook his head. "Not enough magic left for that." Another burst of heat — she groaned in relief as he peeled off the rest of her waterlogged leathers.

The cold night air hit the soggy fabric of her undergarments, and she shivered, the tremor settling in once again. "Campfire?" She almost bit her tongue trying to get the word out.

"I'd recommend against it."

Vera growled a monosyllabic curse, and hugged her knees to her chest. Yes, yes, he runs hot. Not a good reason to crawl into his lap. Get yourself together, you dumbass. "Is any of our equipment dry?"

"What's left of it is soaked through and through, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean, 'what's left of it?'"

Sero shrugged. Vera noticed that he had shed his armor, and the colorless linen shirt he wore looked dry. He didn’t seem to suffer from the cold, either. "When you fell overboard, it seemed wiser to retrieve you. I sent the boat to shore as best I could by jamming the rudder. I hadn't anticipated the rocks, however."

Vera tightened her arms around herself. "I don't suppose you found a bow floating around, did you?" This time, there was nothing ambiguous about her feeling of loss.

"Your weapon is by the remaining bedroll. No idea what happened to your quiver. The packs sank to the bottom, I suspect — it might be possible to recover some of our things if we wait for daylight."

"So I'm guessing there's no dry clothes." This was going to be a problem — without a fire, and with the heat loss, she was unlikely to make it to sunrise. She was still clearheaded, relatively speaking — but her body felt heavy, every movement a conscious effort.

"You could always try that Forsworn armor. I'm sure Undnar would be delighted, once he wakes up."

"Please don't tell me that thing survived." Vera tried to discern the Dunmer's expression. Judging by the little smirk, Demon Chops was pulling her leg. She bit her tongue, smothering the impulse to tell him off, but her glare must have been sufficiently irate, because he offered a slightly contrite look and motioned for her to wait. His gaze turned inward, his face pinching in concentration. A faint, bluish glow tinged with orange at the periphery rose around him in a rapid swirl. He inhaled through his teeth — a sharp intake that drew both air and magic, Vera guessed — and all that remained was the faint shimmer of hot air.

"Care to warm up?" He motioned with his hand but kept his eyes averted, trained on the river. A practical offer — the awkward intimacy would be epiphenomenal.

The voice of reason cautioning her that this was one horrible idea didn't stand a chance against the categorical imperative of survival, so Vera scooted closer — and then closer still, until her back was against the Dunmer's chest. He brought his legs up, his thighs bracketing her hips, and then he leaned forward, bringing his arms around her and clasping his hands loosely over his knees. He was going to painstaking lengths not to make more contact than strictly necessary. They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Vera tried to muffle the sigh of pleasure at the blissful warmth — mostly out of sympathy for Demon Chops' visible discomfort. Every line of his body was as tense as a drawn bow. Once her back began to dry, a ragged sigh escaped her lips, and the Dunmer went very still, his own breath hitching before he covered it with a cough.

"Did Undnar make it?" The last she saw of the Nord was his spectacular — and ill-fated — return to consciousness.

"Damaged, but alive. Not by his efforts, but who am I to judge? You'll find that my-... our employer is remarkably difficult to kill."

"Did you get the sword, at least?"

"We did, at that. I do hope it was worth it." The lazy drawl was back. "I doubt it was."

Vera wiggled closer, trying to get her legs dry now that her back was toasty. Sero grumbled an inarticulate curse. "Unless you'd like the flame cloak to incinerate you, I recommend you keep still."

She stifled a snort and allowed herself to sag against him, the exhaustion washing over her like a tide. "Oh, relax, will you?" He was practically thrumming with tension. "I've seen this countless times. It'll pass if you wait it out. You can't argue with your lizard brain, so don't waste the effort."

"I beg your pardon?" Demon Chops sounded distinctly acerbic.

Shit. And now, she had managed to offend him. So much for talking straight and making this less awkward. Something about lizards and dark elves? She'd read about it, but the effort of dredging up that particular historical tidbit felt insurmountable at the moment. She was warm — finally — and her eyelids suddenly felt full of sand. "Let me rephrase." She mulled it over. Surely, this wasn't his first rodeo either. "The arousal. Fight or flight or fuck. The three F-s. Judging by the state of your face, you narrowly survived something pretty unpleasant. Your body is going to cycle through instinctive responses, depending on what's available." She rubbed her eyes. "It passes, as I'm sure you know."

For a few seconds, she thought he'd bolt — or tumble down the denial path and make things even more awkward between them.Without armor you couldn't exactly argue with biological symptoms without sounding like a bigoted fool. But the Dunmer didn't argue. Instead, he exhaled through his teeth, his breath ruffling Vera's hair, and some of the tension drained from him. She felt him shrug. "Spoken from experience, I take it?" His usual irony was there, but also genuine curiosity.

"As I said." She stifled a yawn. "Pretty normal response. Just your body reminding you that you're still alive."

"Consider my memory suitably jolted, then. That being said..." He hesitated. "If we are to work together... I am not in the habit of mixing business and pleasure." It would have been convincing, too, if his arms around her hadn't tightened, his forearm brushing against the underside of her breasts.

Fuck. Vera's mouth went dry. The sweet, achy heat pooling in her lower belly had very little to do with the fire cloak magic, or whatever it was called. Hard to miss the not very subtle irony, considering her earlier lecture about the "naturalness" of this very response.

Or maybe it really was time to get a lover — someone not overly complicated, without the baggage of a demented Nord employer with suicidal tendencies. Preferably someone with the added benefits of lending protection against Markarth politics. A practical arrangement. Two pigeons, one stone and all that.

This, whatever it was, was not going to be practical in the slightest. "’Just business’ works for me. Partner."

Sero chuckled a little darkly, but he didn't let go. Instead, he leaned forward, his lips inches from her ear. "Warm enough yet?"

Oh, fuck. The blasted Dunmer certainly knew how to weaponize his voice when he felt like it. Vera shook her head, chuckling despite herself. "So that's how it's gonna be. Fine. Let's pretend you won this round."

"Did I?" Beneath the sarcasm, a hidden edge, like a blade tucked into the cuff of a boot.

Nope. Not practical at all. "Warm enough. Let's see where we landed."

Chapter Text

Sero allowed for the spell to wane to mildly warm, then to barely tepid, then, finally, to nothing at all. He still radiated heat — not the magical variety, just the regular difference in base body temperature — and it made Vera all the more reluctant to disentangle herself from her otherwise comfortable seating arrangement. Now that the more immediate threat of hypothermia was temporarily averted, the aftermath of her tumble in the river was beginning to catch up with her. Her ribs ached, the skin on her stomach, where she had scraped against the underwater rocks, was starting to smart, and the spot on her calf where something had hit her on the way to the dinghy throbbed like an electrical burn. An assortment of miscellaneous bruises and pulled muscles collected less memorably was also making itself known.

The Dunmer didn’t seem in any particular hurry to let go of her.

She cast a glance to the skies. Another hour to sunrise. Where were they, exactly? There was that telltale dip in the cliffs across the river, a sharp drop in the shape of a W, but lopsided on the right, which meant that they were most likely a bit north of Blind Cliff Cave. It was pure luck that they hadn’t gone over the rapids.

“Where is Undnar, by the way?” If Sero had gone fishing for her, the Nord must have been functional enough when the boat reached shore to get himself to safety.

“Sleeping it off on the bedroll, just-” he motioned with his head “-up there. He’ll be good as new, the fetcher, give it a few hours. No need to fret about your ‘betrothed.’” He shifted, settling in for the long haul. “We might as well kill time until sunrise. Not much we can do until then, anyway.”

Vera snorted. “Pragmatic, aren’t you.”

He shrugged. “Much as I wouldn’t mind watching you run around half-naked, I’d rather not keep wasting energy on the fire cloak to keep you from freezing. You won’t be very effective until I have enough magic to dry out your armor.”

Vera leaned back against him and craned her neck, trying to get a look at his expression. One red eye met her gaze — the other one had shut completely with the swelling. His earlier tension was gone, and he seemed more relaxed — perhaps not outright comfortable, but too exhausted and battered to bother with sudden movements, or with his usual vaguely threatening take on flirtation. She took inventory of his injuries. Large hematoma with severe edema over the left eye. He’ll be lucky if the cheekbone wasn’t fractured. Busted lip. Three gashes on the right side of his face that looked like claw marks, shallow, but ragged. The bottom one was oozing. A long, narrow burn over the left temple. Further down, a mottling of bruises that disappeared under the collar of his shirt. No open wounds, interestingly enough — at least none that she could see. Either he had used some of his magic to heal himself, or…

“How exactly did you manage to escape the Forsworn?” They couldn’t have possibly attacked them head-on and prevailed. Besides, the Dunmer’s injuries weren’t consistent with battle. She swallowed. Nope. Torture was more like it.

He shifted, prodded at his lower lip, made a face, and returned his hand to where it was resting before, his fingers clasped together over his knees, his arms in a loose embrace around her ribcage. “How do you think?”

“I think you tricked them, somehow. That’s how I would have gone about it, anyway — if I were stupid enough to try that kind of stunt.”

What started as a chuckle ended with a none too flattering invocation of Sheogorah’s beard as the Dunmer’s less than optimal physical state protested his amusement. “I’m beginning to see a pattern of avoiding ‘stupid stunts.’ Want to tell me where you’re really from, outlander? While we have some time on our hands...”

Vera forced herself to remain still, overriding the instinct to bolt. “My friends call me Vera. Or Vee. Either way, shorter than ‘outlander,’ saves time, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, is that what we are?” He didn’t move, but his tone reacquired its mocking edge. “Friends.”

Damn it. It really was the voice, wasn’t it? “Partners, if you prefer. Until we can get ourselves back to Markarth, I’m stuck with you two. Safety in numbers, you know how it goes.”

“If it’s safety you’re looking for, you’ve made a poor choice of associates… ‘Vee.’” He sounded it out, trying it for taste. “Or whoever you really are.”

In the myriad of possible questions, Vera decided to opt for the most obvious one — if Demon Chops kept bringing it up, the chances of him just dropping the topic in the future seemed slim to none, so damage control might as well be done now, when his defenses were lowered. “What makes you think I’m not who I say I am?”

He kept quiet for a moment, perhaps organizing his thoughts — or perhaps just relishing the drawn out silence. A fellow with a healthy enjoyment of pregnant pauses. As far as Vera was concerned, there were worse vices. “You are new to Markarth, with no allies or wealth to help keep you afloat — so much so that you agreed to take a dubious job for the promise of coin. Not that much coin, either, if we’re being truthful. From what I’ve seen of you so far, you move through the city like you do through the wilds. And you might look like a Breton to Undnar, but only because he’s stuck on size.”

Breathe. You’re fine. He’s not your enemy at the moment. Pick your battles. The lizard brain really wasn’t very receptive to arguments. “How do I move?”

He made a vague noise, something between a chortle and a “heh.” “You don’t turn your back on a room. The first thing you do when you enter a closed space is to look for the exits. You eat like Oblivion itself is about to swallow your dinner.” He punctuated his enumeration with little taps of his thumb against his wrist. “From what I’ve seen of Markarth fashion, you keep your hair too short.”

Vera snorted in irritation. “Sero, I don’t think we know each other well enough for you to complain about the length of my hair.”

Another one of those noncommittal chuckles. “I don’t recall complaining. My point is that this-” He brought his hand up, slowly, palm open — no weapons, no threat there — and rested it against the back of her head. And then he curled his fingers through the short, cropped strands, and gave a tug, firm enough to send a tingle down her spine “-couldn’t be used against you. Not unless someone got close enough. Or…” another very pointed chuckle this time as he removed his hand “... if you allowed it.”

Vera repressed a whole-body shudder. Oh, but the guy was trouble. Instead, she made herself shrug, ignoring the tingling and the memory of his hand in her hair and that just-so yank. “It’s practical. Easier to clean. Try elbowing your way through the Markarth public baths next time you’re in town.”

“Are you offering a guided tour?”

Ah, this game again. “Oh, I’m sure Undnar can wash your back when he wakes up. Or is that not part of your ‘business arrangement’?”

The Dunmer barked a laugh, dry and gravely — and then muttered an ‘ow’ followed by a few choice words — but kept cackling despite the discomfort. “It isn’t. Are you asking whether the position is open?”

Vera smirked. They’d already established the terms. From there, verbiage was fair game — and he’d been on the offensive so far, so turn about and all that. “Only if it’s a very industrial scrubbing. Wouldn’t want to mix business and pleasure, yeah? Then again, one does need a partner to get to the... hard to reach places.” She felt him shift behind her, the muscles in his forearms cording with the strain of consciously breathing through the tension. Gotcha, fucker, two can play this game. Not my first rodeo either. “Since you’re curious about Markarth customs, they do have this great thing they do with juniper oil — used to be dwarven oil until Bothela finally got folks to realize it’s toxic. If you can afford it, which I’m guessing you can, what with looting your way through the countryside — it’s....” Vera moaned, throaty and low and dark with promise, and then she bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a snort when Demon Chops hissed and scooted backwards, putting distance between them. “There’s another one that uses honey — something about the mountainous environment, I think. Sharp on the tongue at first, almost salty, but if you take it in, the sweetness hits the back of your throat... Would you rather hear about that one?”

He spat out something in Dunmeri, wiped his hands on his knees before bringing them back around, apparently utterly unwilling to concede so much as an inch. “Azura’s wisdom, woman, enough.” He swallowed audibly. His brogue got thicker when he was flustered. Good to know, for future reference. If this was going to be some kind of partnership — however temporary, and however misbegotten — she might as well learn his tells. “We’ll pretend this round goes to you, shall we?”

“I don’t think so. I won this one fair and square. We’re still talking about hair remedies, right?”

He sat in silence for a moment, and then he laughed, an unguarded, self-deprecating guffaw that made their little game feel so much less game-like. He leaned forward, his chest flush against her back, but his arms around her remained purposefully lose. “Impressive evasive tactics, while we’re on the subject.” The cloak of irony was now firmly wrapped around his words. “Will we be playing a guessing game, then? If so, I have another puzzle I’d like to… unravel. Based on your reaction to me during our first meeting, you’ve not only never seen a Dunmer — you’ve barely heard of us.”

“That’s not-”

“Yes, yes ‘filthy gray skin’ and what have you — not very inventive, if you ask me. Don’t get me wrong, Dunmer aren’t much better when it comes to…” He made a vague motion with his hand “...the ‘lesser races,’ and all that hogwash. Bitter bunch. Your look of puzzled horror, though, it wasn’t that. If you want to tell me I’m wrong, I’m all ears.” At her lack of response, he nodded against her hair, satisfied. “Thought so. Aside from that, the Thalmor, soulless bastards that they are, frighten you half to death — oh, you hide it well, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that your playing along with Undnar’s marriage proposal wasn’t entertaining to watch — but I don’t believe you’re too concerned with counting Divines and coming up short.”

Clever bastard. Vera maneuvered herself to a sideways sitting position so she could catch his expressions better. “If I tell you, will you tell me what your deal is with Undnar? I don’t think you’re just in it for the money.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

Vera nestled closer and leaned her head against his shoulder. He tensed, but let it go. “Let’s see. First.” She waved her thumb. “You stand watch, and grin and bear it while your employer entertains himself with the local help, but you don’t partake yourself. Based on how you dealt with that, it’s not the first time, either.” She unfolded her index. “Two. You don’t eat when he does. You drink, out of pocket I’m guessing, but you don’t share his meals — not even when we were traveling together. You wait for him to finish before you eat, or you take your meals elsewhere. In fact, you ate with me more often than with Undnar.” She let her remaining fingers do the listing. “Three. You weren’t exactly enthusiastic when your Nord was trying to hire me, but since you drop the cynical arsehole routine when he’s out of earshot, I’m guessing ‘greedy merc’ is more of a professional persona. Either way, you didn’t want me to take the job.” She felt the Dumner’s chest rise in a nascent protest, but she waved it away. “Don’t bullshit, Sero. I know how this game is played. Four, you took a beating. You have no open wounds. You’re bruised and scratched and burned, but it wasn’t from any skirmish.” She examined him critically. A reddish swelling on his collarbone caught her eye. “There. This one, you got more recently, and through armor, I’m guessing — probably when you were making a run for it. But these ones, are a bit older, and delivered directly.”

He said nothing. Instead, he gazed out at the river, his face shuttered behind a neutral mask. It made his injuries look all the more stark.

“What did Undnar make you do?” she pressed.

He made an odd sound at the back of his throat, somewhere between a sigh and a growl. “Nothing that he doesn’t pay me for.” Terse, with something crucial sieved out. “He pays well, if you’re wondering. Very well, in fact.”

“That’s utter bullshit.” She softened it with a chuckle and brought her hand up, her thumb brushing his lower lip, careful not to reopen the scab. He winced, but didn’t move away. “I don’t doubt he’s a man of means. Still bullshit. Let’s take this part, for example. You didn’t collect that busted lip during battle. You would have worn your helmet. No, you had your helmet off, and-” she squinted, letting her fingers trail along his lip to his swollen cheekbone, her touch feather-light. He didn’t flinch. “Yeah. I’d bet the money Undnar owes me that this isn’t from a weapon. Unarmored fist, I’d guess, or the bone would’ve been broken.”

“Expert on injuries, are you? Are you perchance a healer, as well? Because that would be useful. Undnar really found himself a little treasure, didn’t he?”

Vera frowned. Bitter rancor, plastered over sublimated rage, hidden well. An old emotion, by the sound of it. “Fuck off, Sero. I’ve been around the block enough times to know what this looks like. You sat there while those Forsworn rearranged your face. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He huffed a humorless laugh, painstakingly avoiding eye contact, but his shoulders relaxed. “‘Around the block?’ Curious turn of phrase.”

Shit. Watch your words, you fuckwit.

The Dunmer exploited the brief pause. “My turn, I believe?” He unclasped his fingers and brought his hand to her ribs, his palm shockingly hot against her skin. Vera froze like a rat caught in flood lights. Not much she could do about the goosebumps, damn it. He traced the line of her waist, slowly, as if counting every rib, and then relocated his hand to her leg, giving it an exploratory squeeze, his fingers prodding the muscles — until he found the cluster of nerve endings, high on her inner thigh, and pressed his thumb into it, a sharp jolt, just shy of painful. Vera jerked, but the Dunmer held her in place, his arm around her tight as a vise. “Shh.” His breath tickled her ear. He rubbed slow soothing circles over the pressure point — or, really, the pressure “area” might have been more accurate. Oh, bloody hell. The achy tug in her lower belly bloomed with a vengeance, spreading south. She wondered idly what expressions he wore when he fucked. “It’ll pass… if you wait it out.” It took a conscious effort not to shift to bring his hand just a little higher and to the left, and... Sodding lizard brain. “Heh.” The Dunmer chuckled, sounding pleased with his exploration, and moved his hand away. “On a Breton, the trigger point would be lower. I’d wager you’re small because food was scarce. So, back to my question. Where are you from, outlander?”

“Expert on Breton anatomy, are you?”

He shrugged. “Tricks of the trade. I do, in fact, kill people for a living, Vee. And this round goes to me, I believe.”

Oh, fucking trouble. Walking, talking trouble. “If I said ‘far away,’ would you drop it?”

“Not likely.”

“You tell me about what your deal with Undnar is, Sero, and I’ll tell you where I’m from.”

He hummed in amusement. “That wasn’t our arrangement, as I recall. Changing the terms already? No wonder Undnar took a shine to you.” An odd bitterness under the challenge, all of it flowing over a deep riverbed of resignation. “And you might as well use ‘Teldryn.’ It’s what my associates seem to prefer.”

“Fair enough. Teldryn.” She tried it for size, rolling it around. “Shorter than Demon Chops, anyway.”

“Excuse me?”

“What? It suits you.”

He rattled another one of his gravely laughs. “I see. Got one for Undnar yet?”

It was Vera’s turn to shrug. “‘Mad Nord,’ but I’m still working on it. What’s yours, for him?”

“Nothing I’d repeat in polite company.”

Vera made a rude noise. “If you’re looking for polite company, you’ve made a shitty choice of associates. Teldryn.”

“Hmm,” he mused, thoughtful. “Careful, now. A filthy mouth can invite… complications.”

Vera laughed. “As long as it comes with a nimble tongue to resolve them…”

He growled something indistinguishable, but didn’t bother shifting out of the way this time. “Let’s call this one a draw.”

Vera smirked. Oh, but you’re wound like a spring, aren’t you. “Think again.” She shifted her hips against him. The Dunmer inhaled sharply, and clasped his interlaced fingers tighter, knuckles paling to an ashen grey with the effort of holding himself still. “Curse it. Fine.”

“Don’t be a sore loser, now.”

“How about a deal. You seem to like those.” That dangerous note had crept back in, the lazy drawl forgotten. “We play to one hundred. If you lose, you tell me where you’re really from — the entire story, none of that ‘I’m just a Breton, trying to live my life’ rubbish you’ve been pulling.”

Vera looked up to gauge whether his expression matched his tone. The mask of sardonic humor was gone from him entirely. In its place, that odd, banked rage again, old as the hills. Careful, dumbass. He’s not all canned peaches and sugar cubes, stop playing with knives or you’ll end up missing a finger. She cocked an eyebrow, and aimed her voice at conciliatory. “Wanna tell me what got your underpants in a tizzy, Demon Chops?”

She managed to startle him into a reluctant “heh,” but that strange anger still lurked, right under the surface. “If you think Undnar’s leaving Markarth any time soon, I suggest you think again. He’ll stick to it like a bur to a mutt until he gets everything he came for. If he can use you, he will — and I have a feeling you’re in no position to walk away from the coin. So, I’m as stuck with you as you are with me, partner.” He inhaled then let go, something uncoiling in him until his shoulders relaxed. He rubbed at his temple, the one with the burn, and cursed softly. “You pass yourself off as a Breton, but you’re as feral as an Ashlander. So I’d rather know whether I should expect an arrow in my back, when I’m not looking.”

Vera narrowed her eyes, but then she nodded. Yeah. A knife in the back, if it didn’t kill you, never healed right. “One hundred. If you lose, you’ll tell me what the deal is with Undnar. No more garbage about ‘he pays me well.’ I want to know why you act like you’re bound into his service.”

He turned to the river, his face in stark profile against the paling skies. “Fair is fair, I suppose.”

“What happens if we don’t make it to one hundred?”

“Whoever gives in first loses all their points.” He didn’t miss a beat. Been thinking the same thing, apparently.

“That’s a bit vague. What counts as giving in?”

“Want me to draw you a picture, outlander?”

“I’ve seen your ‘map,’ Sero. I shudder to think what you might do with that sort of diagram.”

Another one of his short, gravely cackles. “Yours, on the other hand, are… precise. Want to draw me a picture instead?”

“I’ll make you a nice legend, too, in case you get confused. With arrows, and x marks the spot, and everything.”

This time, he guffawed outright. “What’s the score, so far?”

“Let’s see. You won the first one — though I conceded too fast, now that I think about it — and I got you with the second-”

“You did not.”

“Want me to tell you about honey some more?”

“Oh.” He took a breath. “That. One each.”

“You got me with the pressure point.”

“Hmm,” he hummed, apparently in appreciative memory. “I did.”

“But you lost the polite company one. Your pattern’s showing, by the way…”

He narrowed his one good eye. “Is that what you call it where you come from?”

“No. You want the technical term?” She licked her lips, deliberate about it, and stared him down. “What’s wrong, Sero? You look like you’re about ready to reset the score to zero. We’re not that far in, you’d only be losing… oh, two points?”

His hand shot up, lightning fast, before she could react. He twisted his fingers into her hair, yanking her head to the side, before pressing his lips to her ear. “If you want to taunt, then at least use ‘Teldryn,’” he growled, low and dark, “or do you need to scream it before you remember?” He let her go, and settled back with an assessing look. “Ah. I’m beginning to see a pattern too. Point’s mine. If you think I’ll play nice, think again.”

The adrenaline settled quickly, the rest took longer. Back away while you can, you won’t be winning this. Martha’s voice, of course, Martha who had held her through all the horrors. Dima, though, would’ve gotten the appeal. World’s shit, burn bright and fast. Fewer shadows that way. Vera muffled her ghostly remainders. “No holds barred, eh. Three-three.”

He inclined his head slightly, a silent acknowledgement. “Fancy that. A draw.” The sarcastic smirk was back, though not used as a shield this time. A reminder that they fenced with practice blades. Dirty tricks, yes, but no blood drawn.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Above the cliffs, the sky was turning a delicate shade of rose.

“Should have enough light soon to go fishing for our stuff. That’ll be your job, I’m not going in there any time soon. Can you dry my armor? I’ll see what I can do about scaring up some breakfast.” She stretched her limbs, wincing at the crick in her neck — it was back with dividends.

“Hold still.” The Dunmer rested his palm on her shoulder, then prodded around until he found the knotted muscle, and pressed his thumb into it. “Stretch your neck to- no, the other way. There.” He added a small pulse of magic — similar to the healing magic Lovinar had used on her in the early days, but warmer, somehow, and Vera groaned in relief as the constricted nerves released. “You know,” he trailed speculatively, “I think I’ll very much enjoy watching you lose.”

Vera lifted a shoulder in a shrug. The pain really was gone. “Don’t count your pigeons before they hatch.”

“What is it with you and pigeons?”

“That’s a story for when — or rather if — you get to one hundred.”

Chapter Text

Vera came across the nest of rock warbler eggs, eight in total (a decent haul), hidden away in a crack about five hundred paces from where they had made camp — if one could call it that — and, for lack of anything to carry them in, she lugged the whole thing back. Along the way, she found some canis root, piling it into the nest on top of the eggs, as well as a few plants of wild garlic, and more river clams. Enough to make breakfast.

She tried to ignore the cinged smell from her armor, but the blissful warmth lingering from the Dunmer’s drying spell somewhat made up for it. Her trousers were now riding low, courtesy of the ruined lacing. By some miracle of fortune, the demented Nord’s amulet had survivded Vera’s near drowning — she found it in her pocket, along with the sticky mess of Sero’s leftover blunt. The rollie wasn’t salvageable, of course. She’d have to ask him directly if she wanted to learn more about the intended effects of the mixture — that, or bum another smoke, which she wasn’t particularly eager to do.

Did he walk around the world in a permanent state of seeing purple lights, or was he using the stuff strategically? And if the glow was indeed induced by the smoking mixture, why had the effect been delayed the first time, but immediate on the second try?

Questions, questions — and considering their little arrangement, he’d probably make her trade for the answers.

She slowed down once their landing spot came into view. Ah. Undnar was awake. And not only awake, but splashing around in the river, apparently washing himself. He looked like a large, russet, frolicking bear, except more or less hairless (for a bear, anyway — for a human, he was decidedly hircute). Butt-naked, too.

What the fuck? Not an injury in sight. A criss-crossing of old scars, yes, but the Nord had looked like a well-tenderized slab of venison when Sero hauled him into the boat. And now, he was as hail as a ‘deller — not that Vera had seen many Citadel denizens in her past life, but the two occasions when she had, it was like a different species. Or like one of the Unworshipped, she thought, the tingle of queasy horror prickling her spine.

She cast her eyes around, looking for the other member of the dubious duo. She spotted the Dunmer sitting on a boulder at the edge of the water, also in a state of partial undress — no shirt, but pants on, at least — shaving, of all things. Unlike his employer, he still looked somewhat worse for wear, though his injuries had lessened. The swelling was gone, the bruise over his eye was now tinted yellow instead of the earlier purple-black. The aftereffects of the burns and the broken lip were still visible, but significantly less severe. Vera tried — and utterly failed — not to take an assessing, and entirely non-clinical glance at the rest of him. Ah, fucking hell. Right. The fellow certainly wore his risky profession gracefully, to put it mildly. The sort of lean, sparse efficiency of someone who fought for a living, and did it well. The tracework of intricate tattoos over chiseled muscles, interrupted yet somehow augmented by the pale etchings of battle scars.

The Dunmer, of course, caught her staring — red eyes crinkling in a smile that didn’t quite make it all the way down to his lips. He flipped his blade between his fingers — a perfect, nonchalant twirl, and then he tilted his head back and resumed his shaving activities — after holding up the index of his free hand, and then pointing the thumb at himself. One point, Vera translated. She stuck out her tongue at him. And immediately regretted it, since he followed up with a be my guest hand gesture, and then lifted another finger. Two points.

Bastard.

She turned away, looking for a campfire — and found none. Bastards, she amended, plopped down her haul, and started setting up a circle of stones, leaving the Nord and the merc to their grooming activities. She found her pack by a crumpled bedroll. Most of the knapsack’s contents had been laid out to dry on the stones, alongside their other salvage. Shit. Her map was ruined. She had left spares at Bothela’s, at least, but until then, she’d have to go without. Her bow was propped against a boulder — it was intact, and the fear that had coiled in the pit of her stomach lifted, unclenching. Stupid to get attached to an object — even a weapon, and, perhaps, especially a weapon, all the more so when it had been a gift exchanged after other intimacies. You will survive by this, and I will go without. In her past world, no greater declaration of care existed — and no more certain goodbye. She had carried the sniper rifle too, long after Dima was gone.

Vera dismissed the pointless maudling and busied herself with stacking the fire.

~~~

“By the Divines, is that tantalizing smell breakfast?”

Vera glanced up, and quickly returned her attention to the eggs and clam omelet. Their travel skillet had survived too. Apparently, so had all parts of the Nord’s anatomy. “Mind putting some pants on, Undnar?”

“Oh! Why, I suppose I should. But only out of respect for your delicate sensibilities, Snowberry.” The Nord lumbered off in search of clothing, and returned a few minutes later, muttering unhappily about shrinkage, but in full armor. He plopped down by the campfire. “I’m not used to standing on ceremony, see.” He turned, craning his neck. “Sero, blight you, stop pretending you can grow a proper beard, and come have some of this fine meal.”

Undnar appropriated the wooden bowl Vera handed out, and dug in with his hands, not waiting for a spoon. Vera got up, poured some canis root tea into one of their rescued mugs, and walked over to the boulder Sero was occupying. “As I recall, you have a particular fondness for this beverage.”

The Dunmer leaned back and stared, a sardonic challenge on his features. “How very... considerate. Whatever did I do to deserve such thoughtful attention? Or did you simply come by to enjoy the view, outlander?”

Vera pursed her lips, letting her eyes trail over him. “Nice knife, Sero.” She waited him out. He raised an eyebrow, his eyes glinting with a keen curiosity at whatever her next move might involve. “Looks good against your throat.”

He stilled for a moment, his strange pupils widening, and then he inclined his head, the hint of a smile quickly smothered. “Your round.” He absolutely purred it.

“I’ll set your portion of eggs aside in case you’d rather eat later,” Vera said under her breath, tallying up the point on automatic before handing him the tea.

“Ah.” Beneath the quickly recovered sarcasm, something like surprised gratitude. “My… thanks.”

She walked back briskly. After a few moments, the Dunmer trailed after, but, predictably, once at the campfire, he set his food on the ground at his feet once Vera offered it and didn’t touch it. He had donned his shirt, at least, and he settled down with his tea with an expression of grim forbearance.

“So, lass,” Undnar managed through a huge mouthful of eggs, groaning appreciatively. His eyes, a tawny yellow in the morning sun, squinted with pleasure, like a cat’s. Compared to the Dunmer’s fading, but still visible injuries, the Nord seemed almost obscenely unscathed. “Smart and resourceful young woman that you are, you must have realized that I might not have been…umm,” he swallowed some tea, draining half of his mug in one gulp despite the scalding temperature, “entirely forthcoming with my intentions regarding those Forsworn and the particular piece of property I set out to acquire.”

Vera occupied herself with shoveling her share of the omelet into her mouth, declining to respond. Based on Sero’s offered commentary earlier, Undnar changing the terms was to be expected.

“How do you feel about making, say, an extra two hundred?”

“No.”

Undnar stared in such comical befuddlement that Vera almost snorted. Instead, she swallowed the eggs and poured some tea into her salvaged wooden cup. Even Sero looked up sharply, his eyes, the exact same shade as the rising sun’s glare, narrowed in startlement.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” The Nord inquired, as if the meaning of that particular linguistic feature was entirely unknown to him.

Vera fished around in her pocket, extracted the wedding amulet, and tossed it into the Nord’s lap. “No, as in we’re done.” She took a sip of tea. Her little breakfast gathering expedition had afforded her the time to clear her head — a much needed exercise. Sobering. She should have listened to her initial instincts. Undnar had been a walking disaster from the start. If antagonizing Vorstag and drawing Ouroborus’s attention to her, and, by extension, to Bothela and Muiri wasn’t damaging enough, there was also the slippery way he spoke, his constant semantic adjustments, his insane ideas where the line between jest and coercion blurred. And whatever deal he had with Sero, it wasn’t good either.

And then there was the problem of the Dunmer himself. Bad enough that she could barely look at him without ogling — funny how one’s perception adjusted with familiarity — there was now that telltale little tightening in the pit of her stomach every time her peripheral vision caught his movements. Well, that, and the memory of his palm rubbing precariously intimate circles over her thigh, and his hand fisting in her hair, and his raspy purr in her ear, like a constant, maddening itch she couldn’t reach. Not the end of the world in and of itself — nothing that her fingers couldn’t take care of when she had some privacy, and the ‘overdue for a lover’ thing was going to need addressing at some point regardless. Preferably with someone useful, and, most importantly, reasonably safe. But the combination of intrigued and amorphously, irritably worried about whatever mess the Dunmer was in — now that was a dangerous mixture.

Never start a game you can’t win.

She’d get the rest of the coin she was owed, and that was it. She’d talk to Bothela about that mysterious contact, too, and see if the bribe could be lowered that way. And speaking of Bothela, next time the old woman found herself in the mood to dispense advice as to what not to do, Vera would keep her trap shut instead of blustering about how she “would manage.”

“Now, now, lass, let’s not get hasty.” Undnar turned on the affable bear charm, and cranked it up to one hundred. “Here, are you still hungry? Have some more eggs. More tea, yes? You have to excuse my manners, we haven’t had the pleasure of traveling with the fairer sex in a while, Sero and I, we’re a bit rusty.”

Vera waved away the offered eggs. “I don’t give a shit about your manners, Undnar. I’ll take you two to Karthwasten — it’s close, and I’m headed that way regardless. From there, we should be able to hitch a ride back to Markarth, and once we’re there, you’ll pay me what you owe me. And then you can go wherever the fuck you’re headed next, and our business will be concluded.”

The Nord’s expression went momentarily flinty, before he smoothed it out to his usual jocular, amiable facade. “Snowberry,” he trailed, somewhere between conciliatory and hurt, “why am I sensing some hostility?” He turned to Sero. “What did you do to the lass while I wasn’t looking, Teldryn?”

“Fished her out of the river after you nearly capsized us. Aside from that…” he shrugged.

“I told you, Sero, no intimidating our new associate. I am going to have to reconsider how much-”

“Leave him out of it, he didn’t do anything wrong.” Vera glared at the cup of tea in her lap, waiting for the sudden flare of anger to pass before speaking. “Want to tell me how you two managed to escape the Forsworn, and with that sword, to boot? Last night, you looked like skeever hash, Undnar. This morning, you don’t have a scratch. Sero here still looks like he had sat around patiently, while someone pummelled him with-” She was about to say “pipes,” but caught herself. Wrong analogy. “Well, you tell me. Wasn’t a weapon, or he’d be dead.”

Undnar beamed. “See, Teldryn! I told you she was sharp. Now, now, you don’t expect me to reveal all my secrets, do you, Snowberry? We haven’t even shared mead yet, let alone gotten properly drunk together, how do I know I can trust you, hmm?” He leaned forward, a sly, conspiratorial look on his features. “Or is it the sorry state of my associate’s face what has you fretting?” He turned to the Dunmer. “Hear that, sellsword? Your disreputable mug is pulling at our new partner’s heartstrings, compassionate lass that she is. Maybe next time, we’ll trade places, heh?”

The Dunmer’s expression remained inscrutable, safe for a slight hitch to his lips. “I doubt you would keep up, Nord,” he drawled. Red eyes flicked to Vera, lingering on her a few seconds too long, in open assessment. “Ah, the things we do for the right price…”

The tea went down the wrong pipe, and Vera coughed spastically. Sero lifted his drink in silent salute, and tapped his ring finger against the side of the mug. Three points.

Jerk. All the more so, because he knew perfectly well she couldn’t retaliate.

“Woe, woe and misery, what is an old warrior to do?” Undnar wailed in a shoddy facsimile of unearthly torment. “No beautiful Breton lass weeps over his broken countenance, no maidenly tears, limpid as dew, fall upon his brow in silent sorrow…”

Vera narrowed her eyes. Something about the diction, about the way he projected his voice snagged on a memory. Her first night at the Silver Blood Inn when she had any coin to spend, Ogmund had been declaiming something from the Poetic Edda.

Had Undnar been trained as an actor or a bard? It seemed increasingly likely. And then it suddenly clicked, and Vera quickly averted her gaze, hiding her expression. No, not an actor. A conman, was more like it.

“Cut it out.” She collected herself, trying to keep the treble of anxiety out of her voice. It didn’t help that she had no ground to accuse the Nord of duplicity. Technically, he had followed their arrangement to the letter. Bringing the Forsworn down upon them and almost getting her killed could easily be written off as unforeseen circumstances. Accidents happen, surely we’ll do better next time, et cetera.

“I see that I have taken the wrong approach.” Something about Undnar shifted, resettling. His face, now devoid of his humorous mask, looked grave. It was an odd expression on him, like something that had fallen out of use. He is older than he appears, Vera thought suddenly. “Can’t say I blame you, lass. You can’t buy trust with coin like a carrot from a vegetable peddler, heh? Very well.” He puffed up before exhaling, and tugged at his beard, momentarily lost in thought. “Let me begin at the beginning, then, and after that, should you wish to leave my service, I’ll drop the matter, as the Divines are my witnesses.” He rolled his shoulders, settling into the new role, solemn and pensive. “Once upon a time, there was a young man, but this tale, like most tales about young men, is not really about him, for if you wish to get to the heart of such fables-” he brought his hand to his chest and tapped his fist against the worn scales of his armor, “-you must look for the woman.”

His diction shifted — the habits of casual speech dropped, his delivery rolling out deep and smooth, with the intonations of someone used to spellbinding crowds. A bard indeed — or perhaps a born bullshitter. “The hero of our story, you must understand, was young, and thereby foolish — and like many young fools, what he lacked in wisdom, he made up in hubris. And like thousands of fools before him, he found himself besotted with a maiden far above his station, as unreachable as the sun itself, and thrice as bright. For this maiden was no ordinary girl, and had our young lad followed his parents’ advice, and settled for a comely merchant’s daughter, and fathered children with her, and led an unremarkable life of quiet contentment, he would have grown into a happy man indeed. But,” Undnar raised his finger and waved it for effect, “this young lad was as foolish as he was proud, and no matter how many lovely lasses Mara, in her benevolence, saw fit to send down his path, doe-eyed and fresh and crisp as lavender, his heart remained as cold to them as stone. Some say it was Dibella who guided his eye, for it was the Jarl’s future wife that our young man lusted after.”

Undnar paused for effect, as well as to moisten his gullet with a sip of his tea. “Have I gotten your attention yet, Snowberry?”

Vera cast a brief look at Sero. Poker face. No help there. She exhaled, squished her nascent curiosity like a cockroach, and set her jaw. “No.”

“No?!” This time the Nord didn’t just sound surprised — he was veering towards outraged.

“I’m sure it’s a great story. Real tear-jerker. I suggest you save it for the tavern.”

Undnar stared at Vera for a few heartbeats in what could only be described as horrified amazement. And then he roared with laughter, scaring a nearby flock of pine thrushes into scattered flight. “Do you hear that, Teldryn? What sort of creature have we unearthed? As lithe and beguiling as a spriggan, as resourceful as Zenithar himself, and as heartless as a Daedroth.”

“I suppose two of these descriptions are accurate enough,” Sero offered with studied indifference, but Vera caught his quick glance when the Nord occupied himself with inhaling the rest of the eggs, apparently to fortify himself against this unexpected turn of events. The Dunmer’s expression was one part irritable amusement, one part something suspiciously close to grudging respect, and one part undisguised carnal interest. At least two of the three emotions, in Vera’s estimation, hadn’t been carefully rehearsed.

“Look.” Vera set her tea aside, and interlaced her fingers in her lap. Keeping the Nord on the friendly side of the equation was wise, as long as he owed her money, anyway. And so she swallowed back the harsher words rolling around on her tongue, and forced a smile. “I am sure you have your reasons for doing what you do. Let me be straight with you as well. Whatever it is you’re after — impressing the Jarl’s wife into cuckolding her husband, or avenging her memory, or what have you — I’m sure there’s going to be an adventurer out there somewhere ready and willing to lend a hand. That isn’t me, though.” She met his curious gaze. “You picked me for three reasons, as far as I can tell. First, you heard I was suited to the task. Second, you knew I needed the money. And third, most importantly, you knew that if I went missing, there’d be no serious repercussions. No family or social relations with enough coin to send hired goons after you to avenge my good name, and so on.”

“Why, I would never-”

“I like you, Undnar, but I don’t like your methods. You’re cavalier, and you’re pushy. From what I can tell, your strategy involves flying by the seat of your pants. We simply don’t match in our approach. Whatever it is you’re after, I’m not your gal. Nothing personal.”

Now, both the Nord and the Dunmer were staring at her with matching expressions of suspicious amazement.

Undnar recovered first. “Teldryn, I think I may be in love,” he exclaimed with great, and entirely fake, pathos.

“My condolences,” Sero chuckled, but his eyes never left Vera. She ignored his interrogative stare, and looked back at the Nord.

“For no love potion is greater than merciless rejection,” Undnar amended, shaking an edifying finger.

“Well, you’ll have to get over it. I’m with you until Markarth. Then you will pay my fee, and I’ll wish you the best of luck.”

Undnar ruminated, his eyes aglow with speculation. And then another mask fell off, and all that remained was a keenly intelligent, calculating shrewdness. “Not so fast, lass. As an aside, you are quite the find. Here’s how it’s going to be.” He leaned forward. “I’ve made some inquiries about you — due diligence, you know how that goes. Rumor has it you’ve been hounding that Altmer conjurer, what’s his name. Calcelmo, was it? Well.” He stretched and cast a forlorn look at the empty skillet. And then he plucked a head of garlic, peeled it with alarming efficiency, and started popping the cloves into his mouth, one after the other, crunching through them with visible relish. Vera stared in horror. Sero prudently relocated further away, and quickly dug into his eggs, before the insatiable Nord appropriated those too. “See, Snowberry, I am what one might call a bit of a... collector. Widely known in narrow circles, and all that. About three months ago, I received a letter from a fellow out of Markarth named Calcelmo, looking for a certain Dwarven artifact. Which just so happens to be in my ownership. Bit of a collector himself, I’m given to understand. Now, as a collector, I can tell you that parting with a prized possession isn’t something that we, collectors, are eager to do, but for the right reasons… Say, to help a friend in need get an in with a reputedly difficult and ill-tempered mage… You’re a smart lass, Snowberry, you see where this is going, don’t you?”

Vera exhaled. Oh, but she was in so much shit. Because now, she had no doubt that as soon as she brushed aside the offered carrot, the stick would loom into view. Suddenly, her little game with the Dunmer acquired a whole new set of stakes. “What’s on the other side of the coin, Undnar?”

“Suspicious creature, aren’t you?”

“Realistic.”

He smiled his chipped grin, nodded at her question, and leaned forward. “Let me tell you a little secret, Snowberry, since we’re all becoming fast friends, yes? I am, what we might call, a real traditional Nord. See, the other side of the coin is that you have been consorting with what is otherwise known as a devoted follower of mighty Talos. I wonder if our Thalmor friend might find that information interesting?” He crunched through the last of the garlic. “And before you get any ideas about anonymously drafted reports, the difference is that I have the means to leverage myself out of Oblivion itself, should the need arise. But you...” He motioned with his hands and arranged his face into an approximation of commiseration. “As you said. No family and no social relations.”

Vera glanced at the Dunmer. He was carefully avoiding her gaze, staring intently into the fire, his expression grim.

“Why the long face, Snowberry? Don’t you worry one bit. As Talos is my witness, I never betray my friends — as long as they stay my friends, that is. No, I think this little arrangement will benefit all of us. I’ll help you with the Dwemer-obsessed mage and line your pockets with more gold than you can throw away on that struggling little apothecary where you’ve been hiding. Everyone wins..”

“As long as I dance to your tune,” Vera clarified, the icy crawl of terror slowly curdling into cold rage. She kept her face neutral, and her voice steady.

“Now, did you have to be so crass about it?” He squinted, the jovial jester expression firmly back on. “Wait? Do you dance, too?” He turned to Sero. “Hear that, sellsword? She really is a treasure.”

“Never could pass one up for as long as I’ve known you, yes,” the Dunmer commented acerbically, and got up. “Now that this is over with, what’s our next move?”

Chapter Text

They came up on Karthwasten in the early afternoon, in advance of a gathering rainstorm. Steely gray clouds hung low, snagging on the jagged peaks and shrouding the summits in roiling mists.

The weather matched Vera’s bleak mood. She pretended uncertainty about their route now that her map was gone to scout ahead. Bullshit, of course, she could walk the path to Karthwasten with her eyes closed — it wasn’t exactly rocket science (back when such a thing as rockets were still imaginable) — but she wanted to put some distance between herself and the other two, and give herself some space to think. The gathering fog beckoned her like a beacon.The impulse to simply veer off the path while she was out of view — a thicket of juniper trees, a copse of pines, a jagged streambed, its twists and turns offering shelter from prying eyes — promised a quick flight to safety. It would be easy — she knew the terrain, and they didn’t. She could simply lose herself in the wilderness of the Sundered Hills. She would make do, it wouldn’t be the first time: a few weeks, a month if needed — and then she would trek back to Markarth, apologize to Bothela and Muiri for not sending word, and by then, surely Undnar would have moved on.

Vera plucked a young juniper shoot from the nearby tree and crushed it between her fingers, the sharp scent soothing. Undnar’s threat to oust her to Ouroboros might have been a bluff — or, no, not a bluff. Insurance for a rainy day. But she had no doubt that the Nord would not let go so easily should she just abscond. If he couldn’t buy her compliance, how long would it take for him to start throwing his money and weight and charisma around to make her fall in line? Bothela could hold her own — but not with the liability of Muiri’s unplanned pregnancy, especially with the Silver-Bloods gobbling up most of the shop’s revenue, the corrupt family like a bloated tapeworm at the heart of the city. And if Undnar found a way to intimidate Muiri…

Just cut your losses and go. Trek to that village Fae was heading to. If he made it there, surely he’ll offer assistance, help you set up.

The idea was logical, but it didn’t sit well. Always put on your own mask first, yeah, but there was also the poor sod in the seat next to you. You were only as human as the shape those around you gave you with their expectations — with their hopes, and their cares, and their fears. Without that… Well. Case in point. Dima in the last month before the madness took hold for good, cutting them off, one at a time, like gangrenous limbs. Vera was last. And then their final meeting — last time they slept together, too, even though she knew it was the risky period of her cycle. She’d done it anyway, in a stupid, desperate bid to break through whatever warped, twisted thing the Unworshipped had done to his mind. He had been lucid then, lucid enough for hope to snag her like a fishhook. And then he left her with his old McMillan, a howling hole where her heart had been, and the risk of a little souvenir, Muiri style. Martha, half a bottle of rotgut later, had said the only crass thing Vera had ever heard from the woman — erudite, studiously polite Martha who couldn’t say ‘hell’ without embarrassment. “Oh, Vee. If the ‘salvation by fucking’ motif worked in real life, the world would be a better place indeed.”

Vera brushed aside her chronic hauntings. Point was, even if she could find an alternative to Calcelmo — surely, he wasn’t the only one who could teach her about the purple gems and drag that nagging little feeling of recognition to the surface — she had made a promise, even if not verbalized as such.

There were other things Undnar could use — and he would, she had no doubt about it. The bastard Nord might be a relative stranger to Markarth — so he had claimed, anyway — but what had he said? Widely known in narrow circles. So, he didn’t just have money — he had connections. Best case scenario, he could poison the well with Calcelmo, either out of spite or simply to cut off her options. Worst case scenario, Markarth was a place where, for the right price, people disappeared in the bowels of Cihdna, without much fuss over whether they were guilty or not. She wouldn’t last too long in the mine, and not just because of the brutal working conditions.

There was the other, more permanent option. She could probably talk Bothela into helping, once she explained the full extent of the situation. And if not, there were special formularies in the back room of the Hag’s Cure, under lock, of course — but she knew where Bothela kept the key, tucked away into an empty bottle of Cyrodilic brandy. Considering Vera had found herself on cooking duty, slipping something nasty into Undnar’s food was just a matter of having the right substance on hand. That, and not giving him cause to suspect foul play.

Which brought her to the Dunmer. Why hadn’t he just dispatched the Mad Nord in his sleep? What could possibly bind him in Undnar’s service? That he was bound in some way seemed obvious enough. She still couldn’t quite make sense of his refusal to eat at the same time as his employer, or whatever Undnar really was — initially, she’d written it off as a Dunmer cultural quirk, or perhaps some form of protest, but that didn’t seem quite right. Then there was the Forsworn mess. She ground her teeth against a vivid mental image of the merc, his hands bound, that fierce grin plastered over an impossible mixture of festering rage and hollow resignation, holding himself still as he withstood the blows. Perfectly aware that he could just burn his assailants to a crisp, or disable them in some other, no doubt lethally efficient, way. And instead, doing nothing.

Then there was the costuming gambit Undnar had proposed — a ridiculous scheme that took “stupid,” and gave it a run for its money. As if the point wasn’t to get to your goal, but to do it in a way that hollered “are you not entertained?” at some invisible audience. Everything about Undnar had that quality — that posturing for posterity, as if he was always on stage, already fancying himself the hero of some yet uncomposed saga. What kind of psychopath went through life-

Vera spun around, her hand going to her bow — before she remembered that it was useless now that her quiver was gone.

“Stay your hand, Snowberry. Just us.”

She would need to fletch more arrows, and soon — or see if someone in Karthwasten would trade her for hunting supplies.

Undnar emerged from behind the bend in the path and ambled forward, the Dunmer a few paces behind him. “I was beginning to worry that we’d lost you! But here you are, amidst the early blooms, a vision of such unsurpassed loveliness that Kynareth herself would wilt with envy...” He went on through more superlatives before huffing to a stop a few paces away. “Are we close yet? I fear that I will collapse from starvation and exhaustion, and Teldryn here has been brought low by… what was it this time, Sero? A rock in your shoe?”

“Never mind my shoes, Undnar.” The Dunmer glanced at the skies. “If we could avoid the rain, I wouldn’t complain, though.”

“Karthwasten is just behind that knoll.” Vera motioned with her chin. “Can’t you smell the smoke from the smelter?” She didn’t wait for a response, resuming her trek up to the village.

~~~

Karthwasten hadn’t changed that much since the last time Vera visited. The miners’ barracks were freshly repainted, and Ainethach had expanded the veranda, construction debris still piled high against the back wall of Karthwasten Hall. She spotted Gwynara, Ainethach’s elderly mother, shelling beans into a small basin at the large communal table. When the old woman looked up at their approach, squinting her milky eyes at the strangers, Vera waved at her through a pang of guilt-laden sadness. They were passably well acquainted, and the old Reach native had always been kind whenever Vera followed Lovinar on his supply route to the village. Gwynara had loved the old herbalist with that peculiar species of love that very old humans in Vera’s new world sometimes harbored towards very old mer — how one loves an ancient tree, or a mountain, in whose shade one played as a child, its reassuring permanence a witness to one’s life, and to the lives of one’s children and of one’s children’s children, as they grew and aged and died. An unchanging anchor in the tides of time.

She should have brought the news of his passing earlier.

“Lovinar’s little apprentice, is it?” Gwynara’s face crinkled in smiley recognition. “Come closer child, my eyes aren’t what they used to be,” the old matron creaked in her thready voice, and stood slowly from her task, using the table for leverage. Vera went up the veranda steps, leaving her two companions to stand in the dusty courtyard. For a Reach woman, Gwynara was tall and broad-boned — perhaps courtesy of some Nordic ancestry. She stooped over Vera, grasping her arms with knotted fingers. “Sight for sore eyes, aren’t you? How’s that old mer, by the by? Been a while since we’ve seen him.”

Vera shook her head, letting Gwynara read the grief in her face by way of an answer. The old woman stood motionless for a few beats, and then just nodded. “Aye. When, then?”

“Sun’s Dawn. I should have brought news sooner. I’m sorry.”

Gwynara’s gaze turned cloudy with invisible memories, trained on an inner timeline, life accumulated like thread winding around a spool. “Did you bury him proper?”

Vera nodded. “I was there until the end, and yes. By the shack. He always liked the deathbells in the back, fussed over them like they were some baby bird he’d rescued.”

The old woman chuckled. “Aye, gave me some of the bulbs when I couldn’t get mine to grow. Nothing much grows here, mind, ‘cept beans. Plenty of those. Eh.” She waved it away with a rattly sigh. “I’ll miss the mer, scatterbrain though he was. Divines know I tried to talk him into taking an apprentice, but he’d hear none of it. I’m glad Arkay saw fit to send you to him in his final year. You’ll be taking over the supply route, then?”

Vera made a noncommittal noise. “I’ll try. I’m with Bothela, out in Markarth now.”

Gwynara squinted, her close-lipped, toothless smile illuminating her face with an etching of wrinkles. “Heh! Bothela. Used to be quite the firebrand in her day. Had a whole gaggle of fool men fighting over her — like rutting rams in spring, they were. ‘Cept more thick-headed.”

Vera snorted. “I have a feeling she still does.” If Muiri’s rather ungenerous theory about the Jarl’s uncle was correct, anyway — that he sent his weekly request for his special “tonic” as a message to the Hag’s Cure’s owner. Willing, and, by your grace, able. Just say the word.

“Bet you didn’t come all this way to entertain an old woman with town gossip and sad news, did you?” Gwynara turned her head, surveying Undnar and Sero, still planted in the middle of the courtyard and fielding curious chickens — and, in Undnar’s case, showing remarkable restraint by not inserting himself into the middle of things. Sero had busied himself with rolling a cigarette. “And who might you be, eh? Come closer, young men — that’s about all I can tell about you from this distance, ‘cept one’s as grey as a mudcrab, and the other one might as well be a bear, by the size.”

Undnar stepped forward. “Greetings, honored matriarch. We are simple travelers, seeking a place to rest for the night. And to hire a carriage to take us back to Markarth.” He rubbed the back of his head, a picture of cowed respect for the elderly. “And a bit to eat, perchance? We’ll not trouble you at all, and we can pay fair.”

“You’ll want Ainethach, then. If he managed to shake off that Silver Blood busibody, that is. Ate our food for three days straight, and demanded to see Sanuarach — like some puffed-up noble wanting to tour the Blue Palace, and not the greedy little scamp with a tooth for silver that he is.” Gwynara reached for her cane and thumped her way down to the courtyard. She stopped in front of Undnar. “Now, I want no funny business on my land. I’ve seen your type, outsiders, don’t think I haven’t — nothing but trouble, the lot of you.” She turned to Vera. “Old ways still hold, child, I trust Lovinar taught you proper. You vouch for what you bring, aye?”

Vera cast a warning glance at the Nord. “I’m sure my companions will be on their best behavior while under your roof.”

“Better be.” Gwynara shook her cane at Undnar in warning. “You’re in the Reach now, boy. Watch yourself, eh? Or it’s into the soup with you.” She made chewing motions with her jaw, and, after catching the Nord’s alarmed expression, she burst into creaky cackles. “Come now, I’ll take you to my son.”

~~~

The evening brought rain, a torrent blown in slanted sheets over the village, water battering against the planks of the miners’ barracks where they took their meal. Undnar was in deep discussion with Ainethach, the two apparently fast friends. Once Gwynara retired back to Karthwasten Hall for the evening, the Nord had left his deferential, abashedly respectful persona behind, and cranked up the charm. He entertained with stories and gossip, ensnaring the miners’ attention with his yarns — outrageous shaggy dog tales about his and Sero’s misadventures that somehow managed to never reveal anything personal. He seemed relaxed, perfectly in his element. His audience asked for news from the other provinces — a cousin in Whiterun who was meant to marry but the wedding had been postponed; and was that rumor about restless giants terrorizing livestock true; and had they been to Riften recently? Had the Thieves Guild really fallen on hard times? What was the price of silver out in Solitude nowadays? Did he know anything about the Khajiit caravaners — and weren’t they due back from Markarth any day now, or were they taking the eastern route?

Sero sat a few feet behind his employer, his chair angled to watch the room, apparently simply content to nurse his ale and listen with half-an-ear. He looked lost in his own thoughts — Vera caught his gaze on her a few times, his expression pensive.

She shared her meal with Lash gra-Dushnikh, listening distractedly as the Orsimer groused about the Silver-Bloods’ efforts to buy the land from under Ainethach. “I swear, if he sells the mine, I’m quitting. I didn’t leave the stronghold to slave under some Nord’s boot.”

“Where would you go?” Vera asked.

“Dawnstar, maybe.” Lash shrugged, the fabric of her shirt bunching with the roll of her massive shoulders. “If I can get the coin for travel. Fenn’s Gulch will be drier than a draugar’s teat in a year, two at most. Ainethach keeps production low, trying to get those Silver-Bloods off his back, but they ain’t fooled.” She took a sip of her ale. “So Lovinar’s gone, huh. Lasted longer than I thought — never got this whole ‘live until a ripe old age’ business. Best end it while...” The Orc trailed off, her pale blue eyes narrowing as she glanced to the table where Undnar and Sero were still seated. “Say, what’s with that Nord you dragged in here? Shopping for a wife, by the looks of that amulet.”

Oh, shit. Vera followed the miner’s gaze. Sure enough, Undnar was leaning conspiratorially towards Ainethach, already tucking the Mara symbol back into his armor, and making a vague, but somehow significant, head gesture in Vera’s direction.

Motherfucker. She should have tossed the damn amulet into the river.

The Reachman shot her a curious glance, and answered something, matching the Nord’s quiet tone.

Vera caught Sero’s eyes on her and tried to read his expression. A flash of something — not anger, exactly. More chronic. He extracted his satchel of smoking mixture and quickly rolled a cigarette — and then another. And then the Dunmer pushed his chair back and stood, leaving the half-finished ale on the table, and strolled over to where Vera was sitting. He inclined his head, a perfunctory gesture of politeness in Lash’s direction. “May your weapons be sharp, isn’t that what they say?”

“And your prey fresh,” the miner rejoined, her gaze lingering on the blade at the merc’s hip. “I see yours is sharp already, outsider, by the looks of that sword. Don’t see ebony everyday.”

Sero’s expression went rigid, before he smoothed it out. “Apologies... for the interruption. Mind if I borrow my traveling partner for a moment?” He motioned at Vera. “Care to join me?”

Vera deliberated. A ploy to get her somewhere where they could talk? He had left her well enough alone on the road to Karthwasten, sensing her mood, perhaps. Maybe he felt guilty — she supposed that he did try to warn her, after a fashion, though he hadn’t exactly dotted the i-s.

She caught an odd look from Undnar — the Nord seemed none-too-pleased by Demon Chops’ sudden need for a smoke. Ah. So not just a ploy to get her out of earshot. She nodded and followed him outside with a “I’ll be back shortly” at Lash.

The storm still raged, the wooden porch drenched with muddy runoff. Sero leaned against the wall and flicked his fingers, sheltering the small flame against the wind. His features flashed in high contrast, all angles and deep shadows. He took a drag, and then he passed the lit cigarette to Vera.

“Will this make me see weird shit?” she asked, plucking the offered rollie.

Another flare of light illuminated a crooked smile. “Not this one.” He blew out the smoke, watching it drift into the rainy night. “I did warn you the other mixture was on the strong side...”

She took a drag. Tobacco of some kind, with a sweet, spicy finish. “You’re using it to see living things in the dark?” It was the only explanation she could come up with for the purple glow.

“Detect life, among some other… benefits,” he offered, his tone studiously casual. She felt his gaze on her in the darkness, searching — and finding — some kind of answer. Apparently, his night vision was more acute than hers. “You’ve never heard of the spell, have you? On that note, I have not seen you cast. I’d say odd, for a Breton, but since we’ve established that you aren’t one… Do you not use your magic at all, or do you choose not to do so in our presence?”

Vera frowned at his formulation. It presupposed that she did in fact have access to magic, and that he could sense it in some way — unless, of course, he was assuming that everyone did, and that a creature without it was unimaginable.

“Perhaps I don’t have any magic to begin with?”

He huffed an incredulous chuckle. “Is this some sort of game, outlander? You just said yourself that you saw the souls. If you had no magic whatsoever — which you do, as well you know, with an affinity for soul work, by the feel of it — you would’ve seen nothing. So, at the risk of repeating myself — why have you chosen not to use it? If you think Undnar and I would find the conjuration school unpalatable, you’re of a higher opinion of us than you should be.”

The souls. So that was the connection between the purple swirl and Lovinar’s “soul gem” — it was right there in the word, too. Oh, but was she ever slow. The old herbalist had cautioned her not to let the soul settle. She had assumed it to be some metaphorical turn of phrase — a poetic way to talk about the essence of the enchantment. Stupid. So that’s where it came from — some type of spiritual predation. Waste not. Use every part of the creature you kill. A motto with a harsh but reassuring ethic, and one she had tried to live by, in her broken world and then in this one. A chill crept down her spine. Was there such a thing as soul cannibalism?

Vera pointedly ignored the Dunmer’s question. “What other benefits?”

“So this is how it will be, is it?” The flare of sudden frustration crackled off him like a static charge, but he muzzled the emotional response quickly, steering it towards his usual prickly irony. “Tell me, are people so very fond of games where you come from, or is it a personal predilection?”

Redirect. “Why won’t you eat before Undnar does? Does he forbid it? Are you afraid of being poisoned?”

He stood in silence for a few moments, but when he finally answered, the bite had gone out of his voice. “Will we be trading questions until this night is over?”

Vera leaned against the wall next to the merc. She drew smoke into her lungs, exhaling it slowly. Perhaps she was imagining the heat he gave off — the chitin armor seemed to dampen the effect, either by virtue of the material itself, or as the result of a magical enhancement. “Is there something else you’d rather be trading?”

He huffed in dry amusement. “Depends... what would you consider an equitable exchange?”

Ah. Vera noted the shift in register, the way his voice dropped to a gravely drawl. It was too dark to discern his expression, but she could feel his eyes on her, almost tactile in their scrutiny. “Depends,” she parroted back. “Which game are we playing now?”

He thought about it. “Is there ever more than one?” Double edged, with velvet on one side, and steel on the other.

“It rather depends on the other players. And on the stakes.”

This time, he laughed outright, a tart note mixed in with his mirth. “Doesn’t it just? And an actual answer! After a fashion, anyway.” He paused, ruminating. “I’ll take what I can get.”

In what sense?

Vera missed a beat, the pause deafening against the patter of rain. The Dunmer chuckled quietly. “The round’s mine, I believe. Unless we’re… playing something else?”

She wondered vaguely whether the lack of visual cues made things easier, or harder. Either way, it was her move. “So did you just get me out here to flirt, Sero?”

“Hmm. Is that what we’re doing? I suppose there are worse ways to while away an evening.” He hesitated, weighing his response. “If you’d rather go back and receive congratulations on your marriage proposal, by all means, don’t let me stop you.”

Breathe. Vera forced her shoulders to unclench. The option to disappear and leave this mess behind to sort itself out, (while ignoring the potential repercussions for others), cowardly as it was, was still there. Wouldn’t be her first betrayal. Small change, in the grand scheme of things. Cut it off, before the infection sets in. It’ll only be more painful later, when the social ties grew ropy and knotted. She’d play along until Undnar paid her, and then she’d leave most of the money to Bothela and Muiri, buying off her guilt with coin, and taking only what was needed for travel.

Right now, though, they had a degree of privacy, and for all his tight-lipped quips, the Dunmer seemed in a chatty mood. It would be stupid not to exploit it. “I’m trying to work out what your employer gains by this.” She kept her tone conversational, locking the cold prickle of fear and fury behind a screen of idle curiosity. “At a guess, this isn’t the first time he pulls this sort of shit.”

The Dunmer kept himself still, so she couldn’t read his movements for the acknowledgement. After a moment, he offered it regardless. “It isn’t.”

Right. So that, at least, confirmed her theory that Undnar was some kind of con artist. All the more reason to just poison the bastard, before he could do more damage. “See, if I were the type of person whose… what do you call it? Good name? Could be used as leverage — or as ransom — I could see the advantage, but as it stands…” Vera shrugged. “I’m not that.”

“You aren’t concerned about the potential damage to your ‘virtue,’ should Undnar suddenly decide to renege on his offer?”

Maybe it was his slightly conspiratorial sarcasm, but it startled her into a laugh, the tight coil of terror-laced anger in the pit of her stomach easing a fraction. “Not that I don’t appreciate the concern, but if you’re worried about my virtue, Sero, I think you might be barking up the wrong tree.”

“Is that so?” Smoke and chocolate in his voice, so intimate it verged on obscene. Oh, but he was using the darkness to his advantage, the bastard.

The impulse to even the tally of their little game battled with the weight of his earlier admission about Undnar’s strategies. He’d chosen to give her something when he could have deflected. Vera sighed. The cigarette was beginning to burn her fingers, so she took one last drag before crushing it under her boot. “In my experience, the world’s a... messy place. So you take what you can get. There are worse ways to while away an evening.”

He took a long time to answer, but when he did, there was a tightness behind the words. “The point is yours, Hlakhes.”

Vera squinted — to no avail. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing worse than ‘Demon Chops,’ don’t worry.” He chuckled, a private sound. “What’s the score?”

“You’re winning by three points, but we’re a long way from one hundred.”

“Think you can... catch up?”

Vera smirked, letting the Dunmer read her expression even though she couldn’t discern his. “Good point. We haven’t discussed more direct methods.”

Sero exhaled a bit more audibly than usual, but caught himself. “Now now, we wouldn’t want to compromise your prospective nuptials, hmm?” He dragged on his rollie, red eyes refracting the glow from the ember.

She turned to face him, leaning her shoulder against the wall. “Are you joking? At this point, I’d ride you until you couldn’t see straight out of sheer malice over Undnar’s bullshit.”

The Dunmer choked on the smoke, coughed, and spat something that sounded like ‘chow,’ but with an added consonant at the beginning. “Nice timing,” he managed.

“I never said I’d play fair either. My round. I don’t understand why you don’t just leave — or get rid of him.” A gambit, sure, but who risks nothing, and all that. “How long has it been, anyway?”

In the dying glow of the cigarette, Vera caught the Dunmer’s eyes narrowing. “Nice try, outlander. And since you surely wouldn’t try to cheat…” He dragged out the suspense, letting it accrue heat and threat in equal measure. “I’ll just assume that you’re asking me how long it’s been since the last time I fucked.”

Bastard. Oh, but she’d set herself up for that one. Between the sudden darkness and his invisible but no less palpable gaze, the limbic brain cycled through the predictable responses, and settled, finally — and just as predictably. Then again, if he kept himself from eating, this could be relevant information. Yeah, right. “Not what I was asking, but do share, if that’s what’s on your mind.” Passable. Not great, but perhaps he wouldn’t claim the point.

“Hmm. Blunts some reactions, sharpens others.”

What?

“Your earlier question. About the smoking mixture. You asked what other benefits it has. Or have you… forgotten?” He sounded rather pleased with himself.

Well. At least one of them was keeping track of the conversation. Quit now, you dumbass. “A fount of resourcefulness, aren’t you?”

“Swords, spells…” he trailed off, a mocking edge to his voice. “And a few other... tricks up my sleeve.”

Her throat went dry. “Good pitch.”

“Works every time.” Something was a tad off about the statement, an almost melancholy note. “Don’t try it. Vee.”

“Don’t try what?”

His hand came up, settling on her shoulder and giving it a brief squeeze. A strangely companionable gesture, an odd camaraderie beneath the electric buzz between them. “Don’t try to kill him.” His thumb trailed along her neck, leaving a shiver in its trail, only a small portion of it fear. “You won’t manage it.”

Vera forced her jaw to unclench. “He doesn’t own me, S-” She bit it back, bringing her own hand up to thread her fingers through his. “Teldryn. What does he have on you?”

He swallowed and moved away, too quickly, as if burned. “It’s… not so simple.” And then he shook it off, resettling into his usual persona. “Foul weather. Shall we go back to where it’s warm, before Undnar decides we have gone missing?”

Chapter Text

Vera slept restlessly, waking up every few hours with her heart beating too fast, distant gunfire in her ears rearranging itself into the thump of a tree branch against the wall outside. The hard bench and threadbare blanket she’d borrowed certainly didn’t help matters, nor did the buzz of thoughts rattling in her head.

After she and Sero returned from their “smoke break,” Undnar had ushered them all off to bed like a concerned parent cajoling recalcitrant children. “We leave with Enmon’s carriage bright and early, so best not stay up too late chit chatting, hmm? Wouldn’t want to oversleep and make an honest man miss market day, would you, Snowberry?”

Especially since there’s no one to entertain yourself with to pass the time, Vera thought acerbically, but chose not to comment. There was Lash, of course, but if Undnar wanted to have a go at the Orc miner, Vera certainly wasn’t about to discourage him. A pick-axe to the balls might be just what the doctor ordered.

She was more than happy to leave the Nord and the Dunmer to figure out their own sleeping arrangements. She managed to sweet-talk Lash into unlocking the bathhouse for her — a squat, windowless wooden shack at the back of the barracks, pitch dark save for the brazier in the center, still glowing hot from the post-work shift. The room had a warm, earthy smell — clean sweat, pine, juniper oil, fresh cinders, strong lye soap. It wasn’t much to look at — a few benches and a firepit, two barrels of rainwater mercifully free of mosquito larvae, but for all its rusticness, it beat the Markarth public baths any day, if for no other reason than the promise of relative privacy. Not to mention that there was no back room for shady deals or the occasional murder, and the only drunken debauchery you’d see would be Ragnar and Belchimac having a few ales and arguing over who could haul more rocks.

She made quick work of washing off the river muck — there wasn’t much she could do about the armor, which still stank like a charred skeever hide — but she gave her underclothes, spare trousers, and tunic a good scrub, and set them out to dry. Then she lay back on the bench, watching the afterimage of the brazier cycle through fading colors against the darkness under the ceiling.

Privacy. A luxury few could buy, and always in short supply — stupid not to make use of it when you had it. She tried to keep her breaths quiet and her thoughts on familiar, well-trodden rails, but when her fingers found the right rhythm, it wasn’t memories of Dima that sent her over the edge, nor Fae, nor the ghostly touch of other lovers past — scattered like bitter ashes. Of course, it just had to be the fucking Dunmer, with his fist in her hair, and his hand between her thighs, and his eyes on her glowing like hot coals in the darkness — that had done the trick, and way too quickly. She bit her lip to muffle the cry, her free hand clenching the side of the bench in a death grip as she rode out the waves until she went limp and breathless, a numb, unfocused anger at her own stupidity — you’re up shit creek, you dumbass, you’re supposed to paddle, not jump into the fucking water — lacing through the aftershocks of pleasure. Limbic brain 1, reason 0. And then limbic brain 2, reason 0, but who’s counting.

Sleep — such as it was — claimed her shortly after.

It was still dark when Vera left the bathhouse, dressed, packed, and ready for the road. The storm had passed, leaving an afterthought of winter in its wake. Her breath hung in milky clouds in front of her, the grass underfoot crunching with a dusting of grey frost.

Despite the early hour, Gwynara was already up, sweeping the veranda in slow, abbreviated movements as her arthritic joints protested the task. Vera approached, left her pack on the steps, and motioned with her chin at the bag of feed by the door. “I’ll finish the sweeping if you want to go see to the chickens.”

The old woman leaned on her broom and gave Vera a once-over, her face etched with worry and disapproval. “Early up, aren’t you.” She shuffled closer and thrust the broom forward. “Aye, sweep the porch if you want to do an old woman a kindness, but methinks it’s what’s between the ears that needs a-tidying, eh? You got yourself betrothed to that Nord?”

Vera took the broom. “No.” Fucking Undnar.

Gwynara turned, stooping over the bag of chicken feed. A hopeful bawk bawk greeted her from the yard. “Not what he claims, from what I hear.”

“Then he’s mixed up about where the horse goes relative to the cart.”

Gwynara huffed something unflattering about fool men, and tossed a handful of grain at the gathering birds. “What manner of trouble are you in, child? And don’t think of lying, I might not see worth a skeever’s tail, but I know what I’m hearing. This Undnar you brought, and the Dunmer he’s dragging around, gods know they’ve got more trouble riding on their backs than Sanuarach’s got silver.”

“What makes you say that?” Maybe there was something obvious she was missing, some sort of social cue that she couldn’t see by dint of being an outsider.

More grain flew into the courtyard, to the sound of excited squawking. “Funny thing, about that amulet. Folk see Mara’s knot, and it’s all their eyes bother taking in. As if a person looking for marriage is only ever that. You ever play thimbles with a Khajiit, child?”

Vera shook her head. “I know better than to play anything with the Khajiit.”

“Smart girl, by the by, but if you had — then you’d know that it’s not the hand that does the shuffling that you need to watch.”

Vera nodded slowly. “So, a distraction tactic.”

Gwynara huffed. “As I said, I might not see well, but I hear just fine. Been asking lots of questions of my Ainethach, that Nord of yours. About the Silver Bloods, and how the mine is doing, and how long the land’s been in the family.” She tossed more grain at the squabbling birds. “Odder questions, too. About the old ways-” her voice lowered, “-and about The Mistress. Now, girl, I didn’t raise no fool — Ainethach knows when someone’s going a-fishing — or he would, if not for that amulet, and a pretty green-eyed Breton lass to lend it credibility, heh?” She turned to Vera, her milky eyes crinkling in canny amusement. “Now, I see how my son’s been looking at you ever since you showed up with Lovinar. He’s not young or strapping, but he’s smart, and he’s got a good sense for coin. Raised him kind, too. And you” - she thrust a bony finger in Vera’s direction “-might not be a flowering young maiden — I know a rocky road when I see it — but you still got many years for children, and you’ve a good head on your shoulders. Easy on the eyes, too, s’far as I can tell — which ain’t that far.” She chortled quietly.

Vera swept more debris into the cracks between the planks and snorted despite herself. “Want to borrow that Mara sigil from Undnar, while you’re at it? I don’t think I’ve ever had a marriage proposal from someone’s mother, but I guess there’s a first for everything.”

“It’d be a better life than tangling yourself up with that Nord, that’s for sure. And that Grey Skin of his-” she made a face, “-now, I don’t know what the Dark Elves with their ash-ruined homelands are like on the whole, but that one’s running at his own death like it can’t catch him fast enough.”

Vera paused in her sweeping. “Why do you say that?”

“‘Cause I’m old, lass, and I’ve seen enough kinsmen when that cursed Forsworn business worms its way into their addled heads, is why. Seen it on miners when the last of the vein goes dry. Seen it on beasts, too. You back a wolf against a cliff, and it’ll look at you just the same, with nothing but its death and yours in its eyes.”

Interesting. She wouldn’t have put it that way — but something about the merc, about that old, bone-deep resignation, buried under the layers of chitin and lazy irony, felt all too familiar. Maybe she’d not been able to recognize it because of that sense of kinship. It was a look everyone she knew in her old world had worn at one point or another. Defensive nihilism, Martha had called it once, remembering a time when something else had been imaginable. Martha, who’d been going on fifty when Vera was only approaching her early thirties, was from a generation that still remembered a time before — not the same world Vera’s mother had lived in, but close enough to it that folk still thought you could turn back the clock, somehow, that things would right themselves, that some force of order and goodness would sweep in and straighten the mess. Instead, they got gangs, and Citadels, and the Unworshipped. For Vera’s generation, hope for the future was an atrophied muscle. Vestigial. So you grew spikes and ridges, a hard, prickly second skin, and you didn’t pay it any mind like a fish doesn’t notice the water. And you took what you could get, when you could get it, because tomorrow was no more certain than your next breath.

“I’m no marriage material, Gwynara. Ainethach can do better.”

“That’s for the gods to decide, and for us mortals to ponder. Think on it, s’all I’m asking. Now, listen.” She tossed the last of the grain into the yard, and made her way to Vera, gripping the porch railing for stability. “Your Nord. You’re working a job for him, aye?”

Vera nodded.

“That man’s got gold in his pockets, sure, but the silver on his tongue, that’s not something you just find in a chest. Bard’s College, methinks. He’s no skald, but he sure likes the sound of himself talking.” One craggy hand circled Vera’s wrist, tightening with surprising force. “You mind yourself, girl. You know the Nords rule Markarth, and us Bretons wiggle under them, and that ain’t no good foundation for any sort of alliance, whether work or marriage. He might not be from the Reach, child, but don’t be fooled — a man with a tooth for power and the means to taste it never forgets the flavor.” She folded the empty sack of feed and stuffed it into her apron, a rattly sigh shaking her shoulders. “Bah. Enough lecturin’ for one morning, eh? I like you, lass. And I’d hate to have Lovinar’s spirit haunt me in my old age should something bad happen. Come, now, before the rest of ‘em wake up. I’ll feed you some breakfast.”

Vera smiled and leaned the broom against the wall. “Thank you, Gwynara. For the advice, too.”

“Don’t go all mushy, now. And it’s beans,” the old woman threatened, “so see how grateful you are in a few hours when your guts go rumbly.”

~~~

They left a little before dawn. Enmon, with Sero’s assistance, loaded the cart with ore and lumber, stacking crates of juniper berries and small woven handicrafts his wife had made — blankets and aprons and children’s socks.

The horse, broad-boned and shaggy and made for the plow, muzzled curiously at Vera’s offered apple before gobbling it up, snorting into the frigid air, and butting her hand for more treats. She patted its neck and swung her pack into the carriage. The miner’s wife and young daughter stood a few feet away. The little girl eyed her father dolefully, her eyelids still heavy with sleep. Daddy’s girl, Vera guessed. Wouldn’t miss her father’s departure even if it meant waking up too early. The child leaned into her mother, for warmth and comfort, and pouted like it was going out of business. Mena, too, had a pinched look about her — though her facial tattoos gave her a permanently mournful appearance, so the expression beneath it was hard to read.

“What should I bring you back, little lark?” Enmon asked the kid.

A vague memory of Martha’s stories floated up — they read to each other in the evenings, and Martha hoarded myths and legends and fairytales, bartering for books no one else had any use for, getting them for a fraction of the cost. “They’re coded, you know?” she had confided once, a rare smile playing in the corner of her mouth, tucked away, like a secret. “It’s mostly metaphor, or allegory, but if you unpack the symbolism…” Said, at the table, had nodded in agreement.

There had been one about a little girl asking her merchant father to bring her a special red flower. Martha had explained it — something about the symbolism of losing one’s virginity. Weird echoes of a world where such things had value. Vera got a different moral out of that story: don’t ask for things that are hard to get, for something that will put the person doing the foraging in danger. Stick to the route you know. Update your maps.

“Can you get me new brushes, daddy? Mine are all used up.”

“Aye, little artist, that I can. Go see if aunt Gwyn has anything she needs me to bring back.”

“Yes, daddy.” The girl took off towards the veranda.

Enmon jumped down from the cart, and went to whisper something into his wife’s ear. Mena half-smiled and half-glared, a light blush coloring her cheeks, and poked her husband in the ribs.

Vera turned away, to give them some privacy. Undnar was chatting with Ainethach some ten feet away, casting the occasional benevolent look at the proceedings.

He does absolutely minimal work, she thought, Gwynara’s admonition about men with a taste for power scratching under the floorboards of her mind, like mice. Instead, she found herself watching Sero lifting crates, her eyes trailing over the way the muscles in his neck stood out with the effort, the thin sheen of sweat that made his skin look almost opalescent, like polished moonstone. The soft morning light was kind to him, softening his angles and sharp edges.

He turned, caught her looking, and winked. “Sleep well, partner?”

Vera shoved the memory of using him as a mental prop for her bedtime activities as far down as it would go — which apparently wasn’t very far, because something about her expression struck him as curious, and he narrowed his eyes.

“Well enough, once the storm eased.” Yeah, you could call it that. Metaphors and what have you. “You?”

“If you ignore all that snoring…” He seemed more relaxed this morning, his eyes twinkling with humor. He passed her on his way to another crate, his shoulder brushing against hers, as if on accident. “Had half a mind to knock on your door, if we’re honest. Would’ve been nice to have some quiet.”

It was right there. Oh, but he’d practically given her the point. “Are you?”

He cocked an interrogative eyebrow as he lugged the last crate back.

“Quiet, that is.”

A flash of white teeth, something supremely cocky about his little swagger. “If necessary,” he trailed, speculative. He pushed the crate into the carriage bed, and leaned his back against the side of the cart. Enmon and Mena had gone off to talk to Gwynara, and Undnar was still debating something with Ainethach. No one was paying them much attention. “You, on the other hand, are not.”

Fucking hell. Vera narrowed her eyes. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I, now?” His lips curled in a rather knowing smile.

“Any reason you were skulking around in the rain, and listening at doors? Undnar snores like a dragon, so you should be used to it by now — so it wasn’t that. Or were you... looking for some privacy?”

He grinned, wicked and sharp, but with an abrupt sweetness to it, like a strong spiced wine. “Oh, I was.” He paused, dragging it out. “Bluffing, that is.”

Vera groaned. Bastard.

“I’ll concede you the earlier point, if you’d like. But that leaves me with at least two, if I’m not mistaken. Where are we at, Hlakhes?”

That nickname again, and again with that very private lilt, like something you tuck away for good luck. Vera crossed her arms over her chest, and cocked her head to the side, taking his measure. Even his body language was relaxed. Heh. Maybe someone else had found a little private corner to take the edge off, hmm? “Presumptuous, aren’t you? Who says you should claim the credit?”

His eyes narrowed briefly, registering something like vexed surprise. “My point,” Vera smiled sweetly.

He laughed, low and dark. And then he detached himself from the cart and stalked closer, his hand shooting out to capture hers before she could so much as squeak. He forced her fingers to uncurl, pressing his own palm flat against hers, and examining the evidence thus produced — long, strong digits, callused with sword work. Yes, yes, he’s got nice hands, focus, you nitwit.

“Next time, should you need… a hand, you know where to find me.” His eyes darted to hers, but snagged on her mouth, lingering there for a second too long. Vera exploited it immediately — a quick flick of the tongue, and a knowing wink as his pupils dilated and his breath caught on the exhale.

“Gotcha.”

“Hmm.” Low and gravely, but he dropped her hand quickly. He busied himself with rolling a smoke. “Ten-eight.”

~~~

The road to Markarth was surprisingly pleasant. Undnar and Enmon chatted about commerce, the miner all too happy to have a captive audience for his concerns over his livelihood and his family. “Got any kids, then?” he asked the Nord.

“None that I’ve been told about,” Undnar volunteered cheerfully, “but I’m hoping that’ll change, Mara willing. Fine family, you have, my friend. Beautiful wife, and a bright little girl — makes a man envious for the blessings of the Mother-Goddess.” He turned to the back of the cart, where Sero and Vera rode, perched awkwardly on top of the crates. “Isn’t that right, Snowberry?”

Vera looked up, trying to compose her face into an approximation of bored indifference. “I’m sure your travels will take you to Riften eventually, and then you could query the Goddess herself for her favor.”

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out, either.

Undnar squinted suspiciously, trying to pry beneath her expression. Vera shrugged it off, turning her eyes to the road. To pass the time, she’d been trading quiet, inoffensive sounding quips about neutral topics with the Dunmer. Such as the weather (that one had been Sero’s idea — watching clouds for a variety of obscene shapes and sexual positions, while drawing on absurdist metaphors to make it sound like something other than it was — she won that one fair and square, biting back a cackle when the Dunmer absolutely lost it at “Fearless Shieldmaiden Conquering a Squash, an Epic in Three Acts.”) When they ran out of clouds, they moved on to the merits of mining ore, to the intricacies of cave exploration, and to the techniques used for pounding different kinds of ingredients, before getting themselves embroiled in an animated debate about the merits of swords vs ranged weapons (he won himself three points with that one, to her two). The score, as far as Vera could tell, was 20 to 19 (in her favor) — mostly achieved through combining discrete non-verbal cues with double-entendre. By the time they stopped for lunch, the merc had prudently occupied himself with sharpening his blade — after placing his pack in his lap, an awkward and likely uncomfortable proposition — and looked at anything but her. He didn’t eat, either. Vera tucked away her own portion of the food into her satchel, and wandered off to a patch of canis root to dig up the plants for Bothela. When she returned, Enmon had taken the horse to the river to water it, Sero’s blade looked sharp enough to split a hair lengthwise, and Undnar was busy scarfing down the last of the food.

Once they were back in the cart, she split the bean patty Gwynara had given her for the road in half, and quickly shoved it at the Dunmer. He looked at her with an odd expression, but accepted the offering with a short bob of his head. Vera narrowed her eyes as the Dunmer bit into his share of the bean cake. The realization hit her like a brick to the head. She leaned forward, pretending to check on the ropes that secured the crates on his side of the cart, close enough to bring her lips to his ear. “Has to be given, doesn’t it? As in, formally offered. Why?”

He said nothing, his lips pressing into a hard line, but his eyes trailed her all the way back to her seat. “Eighty one to go, partner.”

“Eighty,” Vera corrected with a disapproving glare.

“What are you two counting back there?” Undnar piped up, half-turning, his red mane aflame with the rays of the afternoon sun. “I don’t pay you to gamble your money away, sellsword.”

“Oh, don’t fret, Undnar,” the Dunmer agreed, an acrimonious edge to his voice. “I never gamble with money.”

~~~

Vera had hoped that once they were in the city, Undnar would pay her right away, but of course, he did no such thing. “I’ll have your coin tomorrow morning, bright and early, Snowberry, or may Zenithar strike me dead where I stand,” the Nord exclaimed, but his attention was on the bustle of people around them, a greedy glint in his eyes. Market day populated Markarth with a hundred merchants’ stalls — bright splashes of color against the grey stones, clinging to the rocks like cliffside nests. The smell of spices and foodstuffs almost overpowered the stench from the smelters. “Take the evening off, we’ll talk business tomorrow. And do tell your other employer that I’ll be retaining your services — and don’t forget to thank her for the recommendation.” He grinned, jovial, positively twinkling with pleasure. “I’ll come fetch you, aye?”

Vera repressed the urge to flip him the bird. She’d talk to Bothela, alright, and spill the whole sordid ordeal, and then, maybe, between the two of them, they’ll come up with a solution. She said goodbye to Enmon, and searched the crowd for Sero, but the merc was nowhere in sight.

She gathered her things and elbowed her way to the apothecary, wondering idly whether Yngvar would take a bigger cut from the market day business, like he did last time. She still needed arrows — she’d drop off her stuff, and then head out to see if some of the Bosmer hunters brought their wares. A small part of her wondered if she’d see Faendal — he had mentioned he sometimes traveled to Markarth to sell his leatherwork, but that was before his intent to permanently settle in a nice, quaint village.

Vera yanked on the door handle — and found the apothecary locked. She tried again. Sometimes, the damn thing jammed — Ghorza kept promising to come by and fix it, but the smith could never seem to find the time. No luck. She knocked — and then banged with her fist — but no answer came. As she tilted her head to put her ear to the door, her eyes landed on a small notice, the piece of parchment anchored by a crooked nail driven into a crack in the rock.

“Citizens of Markarth,

By order of Justiciar Ondolemar, the Hag’s Cure is closed until investigations into illegal activities are completed. Arnleif and Sons Trading Company will fill out alchemical orders until further notice. Should you have questions or concerns, please address them to the Jarl’s steward.”

Vera tore the note from the wall, and read it again, as if it would change its content on a second read. Predictably, it didn’t.

Fucking hell. What now?

Chapter Text

Vera found Ghorza at the smithy, in the middle of lecturing Tacitus on the generally accepted shape nails were supposed to take. To hear the Orsimer say it, the boy had a knack for botching everything he touched, including the simplest projects. He was enduring the lecture with a resigned look — no longer mortified, just creaking under the weariness of his own internalized incompetence. It might have been different with another smith, but the kid didn’t seem to know when to call it quits and try his hand at something else — or apprentice with someone who didn’t live through her craft like it was woven into her every breath. Vera shoved the thought aside — not her problem. Everyone had the right to fuck up their life the way they saw fit. She caught Ghorza’s attention with a quick wave of her hand and a tilt of her head, requesting a private chat.

The smith’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded before turning to Tacitus. “Do us both a favor, boy, and go take a break. Go see if Kerah wants the leftover leather scraps, and tell her I have an order for a gold inlay on a dagger hilt I’ll be sending to her next week.”

Tacitus brightened visibly, shot a curious but rather grateful glance at Vera, and bounded off to the jeweler’s with commendable speed, up the steep stone staircase and out of view.

Ghorza leaned her elbows on the granite parapet, her eyes idly tracking the smelter workers below. They would have relative privacy — between the rumble of the river, and the pulse of the lower city’s unceasing labor, a conversation in the smithy, for all its exposed location, was a private affair. “Let me guess. You’re here about Bothela. And before you ask, no, I am not getting involved with this.”

Vera put down her pack at the foot of the parapet, stretched her aching shoulders, and leaned her hip against the low wall. She joined Ghorza in her contemplation of the scenic view, dividing her attention between the smith and the two staircases that led to the forge to keep an eye out for surprise visitors.

She hadn’t expected the Orsimer to jump into the fray — that’s not how Markarth worked. You kept your head low, and you waited for the dust to settle. Assistance was offered, of course, but it wasn’t something you carried on a platter like a stuffed pig, while the crowd rejoiced at your heroic deeds. Not how it worked for the locals, anyway. Sure, there was always the odd adventurer strolling into town, loud as could be about solving everyone’s problems in one fell swoop. But for those who lived in Markarth, help was something you traded behind closed doors, when no one was looking.

That Ghorza would preempt the potential request meant one of two things: the matter was more trivial than it looked, or — more likely — it was much more serious. One way or another, verbalizing the unspoken rules meant bad news, however you cut it.

“I’m not asking you to get involved, Ghorza.” Below them, Molosh gro-Shugurz was bellowing at one of the smelter workers, a bit perfunctorily by the looks of his body language — more a pro-forma effort at keeping his underlings suitably cowed, rather than any genuine anger. “But I wouldn’t mind knowing what happened, since I wasn’t there for it. And I need a spare key.”

Ghorza shook her head in performative befuddlement. “Still refusing to carry your own key when you venture out? Are you sure you aren’t from Riften?”

Vera shrugged. Maybe, at some point, she should put more work into concocting a credible backstory — something that would explain her habits of caution without raising undue suspicion. “It’s just sensible, Ghorza. You know how recognizable Markarth keys are — anyone looting my corpse would find a distinctive key and a bunch of alchemy ingredients. Even an idiot bandit could put two and two together, let alone any thief worth their salt.”

“With that attitude to your own death, you’d fit right in with an Orc stronghold.” The smith grumbled a resigned sigh. “Fine. I’ll hand you my locksmith spare, but if you get caught going in, this better not come back to me. And if anyone asks, I’ll say you stole it. I get enough lip from the damn Nords — it helps that Moth is the Jarl’s personal smith, but it doesn’t mean we’re untouchable.”

Vera nodded her gratitude. “If it comes to that, I’ll corroborate. Do you know what happened?”

Ghorza shrugged. “The usual, is what happened. One of Thonar’s little ‘celebrations’ went sour, some girl got hurt. Nothing new there, if it hadn’t turned out that she was a Thalmor informant — or that’s what I’m guessing, anyway. So Ondolemar put pressure on the Jarl, and the Jarl did what he always does, which is to find some third party to take the blame.”

“What does Bothela have to do with any of it?”

Ghorza shot her a mocking look. “Oh, come, now. We both know what she sells to those damned Silver-Bloods, Malakath rip them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging. Coin is coin, no matter whose purse it comes from. Thonar blamed it on his ‘tonic’ — said it had made him addled — and the Jarl agreed to an investigation.”

Vera crossed her arms over her chest and pushed the simmering anger back below the surface. Ghorza was practical — but she wasn’t coldhearted. “And when a smith sells a dagger that’s used to cut someone’s throat open, is that the smith’s fault, too? They can’t possibly think accusing Bothela is reasonable.”

The Orsimer shrugged, dismissing the analogy. “Maybe in a place where the Jarl’s not trying to sit on two thrones at once — with his bits dangling in between for any skeever to nibble — someone might even care about what’s ‘reasonable,’ and what isn’t. Sure would be nice to live in a place like that.”

Vera shuffled in place, the restless energy building up like steam in a closed container. “Have they set bail, at least?”

“The usual two hundred — which should tell you that as long as the Jarl’s steward is in charge of this business, Bothela won’t go to Cidhna. Raerek’s been barking up her tree for the better part of the last thirty years, the stubborn old fool.” The Orsimer shot Vera a narrow-eyed look. “Of course, it doesn’t help that Bothela’s nephew's cracking rocks and getting himself new skin ornaments from Uzroga’s whip for running with the Forsworn.”

Vera nodded. Bothela kept that little bit of information under wraps most of the time, but she did send the weekly charity package to the mine — nothing fancy to draw the guards’ interest, just some simple bread and cheese, and a few stamina and healing potions. It probably never made it to Odvan, but the old woman was set in her ways. “Two hundred for Bothela. And the same for Muiri, I assume?”

“Yeah. The guards sure know in what direction the wind blows. A kinless girl doesn’t fetch much coin. Not as far as bail goes, anyway.”

Vera’s tightened her fists. Goddamnit. No point in riling against Ghorza — that’s just how the world worked. If screaming at it in fury could change anything, they’d all be frolicking in flowers and rainbows by now.

“Will you spot me fifty septims, if I can scrape the rest together?” Between what Undnar had already paid her, and what he still owed, she would still come up short — but not that short. Provided, of course, that her little cache in the apothecary hadn’t been discovered and ransacked — or, pardon, “confiscated as evidence.” “You know I’m good for it.”

“I’ll think about it. And if I do — and I’m not saying I will — if anyone asks-”

“I stole it. I know.”

The Orc nodded. “Glad we’re agreed. Anyway. Steel won’t shape itself.” She reached for the keyring dangling from her hip, and she unclipped one of the massive, ornate keys before passing it to Vera in an underhanded gesture. “Won’t be long until dark. I’d wait until after the evening shift before sneaking in, if I were you.”

Vera pocketed the key and shouldered her pack. “Thanks, Ghorza.”

The smith motioned for her to wait. “One more thing. You’ve been asking about Calcelmo, as I recall. Well, he’s back — as of two days ago. Came back in a hurry, too, complaining to anyone who’d listen that some rival bookworm’s been encroaching on his research. They’re planning a dig in Nchuand-Zel — got an order for mining equipment just this morning. I bet he won’t say no to volunteers, though I’d hurry, if I were you — he’s got most of the local layabouts badgering him for a job on the expedition.”

~~~

Vera mulled it over as she made her way to the inn. Maybe she could trap two rats with one snare — if Calcelmo was hiring anyway, perhaps Lovinar’s letter wouldn’t matter. And if so, then the money could go towards the bail — she’d be back at square one, but what was the alternative? Getting her money from Undnar and ransoming her letter — and “sweetening the deal” to cover the difference? And abandoning Bothela and Muiri to whatever passed for the local justice system? Trying to have her cake and eat it too by asking Undnar for an advance on the next job — and thus cementing what would likely turn out to be the mother of all bad arrangements with gold? Not like she could extricate herself out of that entanglement in any obvious way as things stood, but still. There wasn’t an overabundance of mirrors in her new world, but she’d have to look at her own mug eventually. Making sure she didn’t have the urge to retch every time she did it seemed like good policy, as far as ethics went.

If Calcelmo was back — and if he was putting together an expedition — then that meant Vorstag and the rest of the sellsword riff raff were lining up in the Understone Keep and arguing over whose weapon was bigger. She could maybe leverage her bow — and her mapping skills — and throw in cooking and some basic alchemy to tip the scales, but without a recommendation either from Bothela or from Lovinar, the Altmer wizard would probably take one look at her, and just laugh. Even if she did get her foot in the door, everything about Dwemer ruins screamed “stay out!” — and when you didn’t, it zapped you, in case you were too dense to get the message.

That left one course of action.

~~~

The inn was hot, rowdy, and chock-full of people — merchants and hunters and an assortment of other travelers, everyone descending upon the city for market day and eager to liquefy some of their earnings. Frabbi bustled across the floor with a tray full of ales, and even Hreinn, who usually limited himself to pushing dust from one corner of the tavern to the other, had been bent to the task of serving customers.

Vera made her way to the bar, trying to see whether she could snag some secluded spot as she waited for full dark, before trying her luck at the apothecary. There was the risk of running into Undnar of course — by now, he would have likely gotten the news about the Hag’s Cure, which meant that it was not in Vera’s interest to run into the Nord. Nothing says “shameless exploitation” quite like an underling that got themselves backed into a corner.

Kleppr was apparently in a generous mood — he poured her ale tight, without too much foam — and handed her a bowl of breadsticks. “On the house. For your steady patronage.”

“They’re yesterday’s, aren’t they?” Vera chuckled, but snatched the bowl the second Kleppr’s offended moue and outstretched hand signaled the potential loss of free food. “No, no, I’ll take them — thank you kindly.”

He pursed his lips, but looked placated enough. “You can thank my venomous darling of a wife, who seems to have taken it upon herself to plump you up, tiny bird-like thing that you are.” He leaned forward. “Pointless task, if you ask me. You eat like three Nord Companions — where it all goes is anyone’s guess.”

Vera paid the barkeep — the little stash of coins in her coat’s liner pocket was starting to feel unpleasantly light — and she turned to scan the room. Her favorite quiet corner — with a good view of the entrance, and close to the kitchens (and, therefore, to the service door) — was occupied. Her brief flare of irritation was quickly replaced with cautious curiosity as she recognized the chitin suit. Sero, strangely enough, was alone — and judging by the absence of a second mug, or any kind of plate on the table, Undnar was not around either. The Dunmer was watching the room, but he wasn’t paying her any particular attention — if he had spotted her, he wasn’t advertising it.

She made her way over, avoiding elbows and shoulders in an attempt to keep her ale from spilling. The merc turned sharply in her direction when she was a few feet away, but his features did not register surprise — instead, there was a hard vertical line between his brows, and his eyes had narrowed in a combination of impatience and some other emotion that bore a suspicious resemblance to concern.

He motioned with his head, offering the seat next to him, and he pushed the spare chair with his foot to angle it towards the room in apparent anticipation of her habits. “Much as I would enjoy a drink with my favorite outlander, I suggest you don’t linger. I doubt Undnar’s ‘activities’ will… ehem…” -his cough was entirely fake- “... tie him up for too long.”

Vera took the offered chair, and pushed it back against the wall, scooting further into the shadows. She took a breadstick, and passed the rest of the bowl to Sero, her eyes afixed on a knot of hunters jostling each other by the bar. One of the backs — and the white ponytail above it — looked very familiar indeed. “I take it your boss is sowing seeds of friendship among the locals again?”

“Not… as such,” he trailed, amused irritation coloring his voice. “Well, you are the expert on local customs — you tell me: what does one visit the Temple of Dibella for?”

Vera almost spat out her ale, but caught herself. Undnar really didn’t waste any time. “Never had the… pleasure, so I’m honestly not sure. Wait…” she narrowed her eyes “... are you joking?”

Sero grinned. “Oh, I never joke. And speaking of bosses, I hear your other employer has landed in some… trouble. The locals do love their gossip.”

And, shit. If Sero knew, then so did Undnar.

With her peripheral vision, Vera caught the merc biting into a breadstick, a small groan of pleasure escaping him as he chewed.

“What do you eat when I’m not around?”

He ignored the question. “Would be better with scuttle, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“And what exactly is ‘scuttle’?”

“Vvanderfell’s local pride and joy,” he said, the gentle mockery giving his voice a sing-song quality, but underneath it, something else lurked — the brittle edges of sublimated nostalgia. “Similar to a Cyrodill soft cheese, I’m given to understand. Made from a local insect, of course, but don’t let that intimidate you. It’s fantastic.”

Vera nodded, taking another bite of her breadstick. “That’s the thing with cooking bugs, though. It’s all about the spices.” The hunter that looked like Faendal turned — and Vera released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. It wasn’t the Bosmer. It brought an odd mixture of disappointment and relief.

“An old acquaintance?” Sero’s gaze had followed hers. The lazy sarcasm was back — if there was a reaction beneath it, Vera couldn’t parse it.

“No. And they’re yesterday’s, by the way. The breadsticks.”

The merc lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not picky.”

She turned to take a look at him, now that the mystery of the familiar ponytail had been resolved in the negative. “How, exactly, do you survive? I’m guessing Undnar used to offer the food, but now he doesn’t. I want to know why. And I’m guessing you can’t buy it either, can you? What about hunting? If it has to be offered, then wouldn’t that technically count as a gift from Hircine? And why is the liquid diet fair game?”

Sero took a sip of his own ale, his red gaze raking over her in unapologetic assessment. “Any more rhetorical questions? No? My turn, then. You are competent with the bow, but it’s not your favored weapon. You stutter as you reach for it when you feel threatened — until you remember, and readjust. What did you carry, before? Was it a staff?”

Vera sighed. “Teldryn…”

His lips quirked before he turned his gaze away, back to observing the tavern. “Hmm,” he hummed, a sharp vertical line bracketing his smile.

“What?” She should have known better — this was not the time to get distracted with their little game — but best intentions, and all that.

“Something about how you trail your vowels. Curious accent. Not that I mind…”

Shit. This wasn’t where she thought he’d go — and the damn Dunmer was entirely too observant. She had hoped the differences in her pronunciation would provide a ready-made way to map her into her new world — let people make their own assumptions from there. That it didn’t was potentially an issue — then again, no one else had commented, so perhaps this was just the Dunmer’s peculiarity. Vera took a sip of ale, and forced a chuckle. “Versatile, aren’t you. Is a healthy appreciation for linguistics another one of your hidden talents?”

He glanced at her, a wicked glint in his eyes. “Oh, no. I just enjoy the way your lips wrap around it.” And then he caught her expression and chuckled quietly. “The name, that is. Another point for me, hmm?”

Bastard. He had used the bit about the accent as a distraction — but he left himself open to a counter-attack. “If you want to offer suggestions about how to best position my mouth, do let me know.”

Ha. There it was, that slight twitch to his jaw.

“As long as we're still talking about diction, of course.”

It took a second, but then it registered. Louche puns aside, she watched his throat work around a swallow.

“One for you, and… two for me,” Vera grinned.

The Dunmer shook his head, but his smile reached all the way to his eyes, and then something about his expression softened briefly, before rearranging itself back to the habitual sardonic twinkle. He almost looked wistful — like how one looks at the sea, that crisp horizon line beckoning with the promise of a land less broken, but no boat to cross the waters. Whatever it was, it caught her off guard again, snagging on something deeply buried and entirely too troubling to consider.

“Your round, hlakhes. And you really are trouble, aren’t you?”

Vera averted her eyes, letting her gaze trail over her surroundings, as if seeing them anew — she had lost time, her attention rerouted, without the obligatory remainder allocated to safety. Yeah. Trouble indeed.

“Speaking of which...” Sero munched through another breadstick, chasing it down with his ale. “Undnar will be back soon — I suggest you do not accidentally run into him.” He paused. “He was rather pleased about the apothecary, as you might imagine. Less pleased about the Altmer scholar’s return.”

The decision came at her half-formed, but the question passed her lips before she could think better of it. “What would it cost me to ask you for help, Teldryn?”

It caught him off guard, but he found his footing quickly. “Depends. Did you finally decide that you might need a hand?” He made it sound so nonchalant that Vera found herself snorting, despite the low thrumming of dread.

“Not a hand. Just your eyes, and potentially your tongue.”

Now that got Demon Chops to lose some of his air of bored insouciance. He shot her a sharp look, masking the rest of his reaction with a rather large gulp of ale. “I…” He cleared his throat. “Damn it. This is not my evening, is it? Remind me not to try my hand at gambling.”

“One point for me. But no, not that — don’t get me wrong, it sounds like a much more pleasant way to spend a few hours than what I have in mind.” Vera leaned to the side — to snatch the last breadstick, and to bring herself within whispering range. “I need to get into the apothecary. I can do it by myself, but I’d feel better if someone could run interference if I get unwanted attention from the guards. Bullshit them into looking the other way while I get through the door, that sort of thing. And give me a signal for when it’s safe to come back out.”

The merc leaned back in his chair, a speculative look on his face. “You’re right — it does sound rather less pleasant.”

And, double shit. She’d helped him escape the Forsworn — but then he had kept her from drowning, and then from freezing. They were even — no debt to leverage. “So. How much will it cost me?”

“For you?” He mulled it over, the seconds stretching. “Why, I’ll do it for free. Partner.”

Chapter Text

The night was still buzzing with activity — merchants packed up their stalls and folded their tents for travel, food vendors peddled the last of their wares with the promise of lower prices and “the best skeever tail soup outside of High Rock.” The lower city had come to life too — the day after Market Day was the only holiday the miners and smelter workers could expect during First Seed — and only because the overseers liked to nurse their hangovers. A knot of people had gathered around a fiddler — Omluag, from what Vera could see, was playing some fast, jaunty tune that had his audience clapping their hands and tapping their feet in time to the music.

They kept to the shadows, Sero falling in step next to her, silent except for the soft creaking of his armor — a strangely dry, almost scuttling sound. Vera lead them through the smithy, empty now save for a stone-drunk Degaine who, as was his habit, slept with his back propped against the warm stones of the forge. She put her finger to her lips as they stepped around the pile of rags. Degaine was a belligerent loudmouth, but he wasn’t as toothless as he looked — most of the professional beggars in Markarth had a loose affiliation with the Thieves Guild, and the ragged Breton was no exception, from what she could tell.

“Charming place,” Sero muttered as they descended the steps towards the apothecary. On their left, the entrance to Cidhna was pitch black — a great, yawning maw cut into the stone, as if the mountain itself had frozen mid-bite.

The brazier above the Hag’s Cure was unlit. In the deep shadows of the stone walls, the door glinted faintly with Masser’s reddish glow. Vera allowed herself a relieved exhalation — so far, they had encountered no guards. Perhaps this would be easier than she had anticipated.

They stopped by the old juniper tree growing in front of the shop — most of its berries had been summarily plucked, despite the city ordinance not to touch the decorative flora. Bothela’s take on the subject went along the lines of “well, I water it, don’t I?”

Vera turned to the Dunmer. “All right. Just, keep watch while I’m in there. When it’s safe to come out, pretend you’re a customer, knock three times — you won’t get a response, of course — and then make to leave. I’ll meet you at the smithy.”

Sero nodded. “Anything else?”

“If-”

She didn’t get the chance to finish. They turned at the same time towards the faint sound of approaching footsteps, the staccato rhythm of clanking metal punctuating the gait. Flickering torchlight fell on the cobblestones behind the bend in the wall.

“Ho! Is someone there?” The guard’s voice was gruff, the harsh consonants of Nordic speech slightly slurred with wine. “Come out, you dirty thief, I can hear you skulking about!”

Shit!

Vera froze, and then, with a monumental effort of will, and in advance of any coherent thought — anything to shatter the paralysis of panic — she acted on the first idea that popped into her head. She hooked her hand into the collar of the merc’s armor, apparently managing to catch him off guard, and then yanked him down to her level before pressing her lips to his, a flat non-kiss that landed askew, but would hopefully deflect the guard’s suspicions. Sero made a muffled sound of confused surprise as she shoved at him, but he caught on quickly enough, backing up against the wall. His hands came to her hips, drawing her closer. And from there, the merc decided to add verisimilitude to their little performance, because the kiss turned real enough in no time at all. Focus, you idiot, what are you doing?! Instead, Vera answered him in kind. He groaned, impatient, vaguely accusatory, and he brought one hand to the back of her head, his fingers fisting into her hair. The other hand went to her throat — neither a caress nor a threat, but something in between, sweet with its own annulment. His thumb rested against the pulse point as he coaxed her into a deeper kiss, the heat of his mouth and the faint taste of some foreign, exotic herb on his tongue drowning out everything else, even the insistent thrum of panic.

“Hey! Dibella’s glittering arse, fucking Market Day. I didn’t sign up for this... Hey! I’m talking to you! Identify yourselves at once.”

The lizard brain wasn’t inclined to listen — it was much more interested in trying to extract another frustrated groan out of the Dunmer. Vera shuddered as Sero broke the kiss with a final opportunistic nip at her lower lip. He brought his arms around her — a performance of protectiveness that had the happy side-effect of allowing Vera to tuck her face against his shoulder in a bid for anonymity disguised as embarrassment. It put her back to the guard — unpleasant, but better than the alternative. She was a familiar face — the Dunmer wasn’t.

He looked up at the guard. “Apologies, sera.” Nothing particularly apologetic about it — a bit short of breath and irritated at being interrupted, yes, but not sorry in the slightest. Hopefully, it wouldn’t gaud the guard into immediate hostility. “My associate and I got…” he cleared his throat. “Carried away.”

“I can see that plain enough,” the fellow grunted. “Doesn’t tell me who in Oblivion you are. We don’t like outsiders here in Markarth.”

“Travelers, sera. Our employer sent us to your city to see where he might best... apply his gold.”

“Hmm. You don’t look like a merchant, Grey Skin. Don’t try to fool me.”

Sero didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, we’re not merchants. You see, my patron is… a charitable soul. Likes to spend his coin on worthy causes. If you know what I mean.”

She had to give it to the Dunmer. He delivered his bullshit with an air of such unflappable confidence that Vera wondered briefly whether what he was saying was actually true, at least on some level — before the absurd mental image of Undnar championing widows, orphans, and hugging stray kittens dispelled the illusion.

The guard weighed this information, and found it a bit light. “Who’s the lass, then? I’d say Breton by the size.” Vera could almost feel the accusatory digit pointed at her back. Double shit. At least the guard was alone — probably had drawn the short straw, or owed a debt. No one liked to work when everyone else celebrated. “We got laws against solicitation, you know. Should just bring you two in, let the captain sort it out.”

Oh, of course he would have gone there. In Markarth, Breton meant local, and it meant poor. Had Sero been a Nord, the guard would have probably let it slide — wouldn’t want to interfere with a fellow’s Divines-given right to have a bit of fun on Market Day. As it stood, if there was indeed a law against “solicitation,” it was certainly applied selectively.

“As I said, serjo, she is my partner,” the Dunmer replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “There are places that a man would not be as welcome, so...” he shrugged and pivoted them around before turning to face the guard again — incidentally maneuvering Vera closer to the wall while shielding her from the Nord’s suspicious squint. She bent her head, hoping the shadows and her hood would obscure the rest. “We work as a team. Help our patron identify where to make his donations. Of course, he could simply contribute to the temple — but he likes a more… hands on approach.”

A hands-on approach indeed, when it came to the Temple of Dibella, anyway. For once, Vera almost found herself wishing for Undnar’s presence — if for no other reason than the fact that he was a Nord, and that he had money to throw at problems. Not to mention his talent for stacking heaping piles of bullshit.

The guard shuffled in place before forging on with the interrogation. “So who’s this employer of yours, then, hmm?” She could hear the “gotcha” in his voice.

The urge to bolt prickled her back. Instead, to distract herself, Vera focused her gaze on the Dunmer’s armor, tracing the pattern of seams and articulated joints. There was something about it, a low pulse, invisible grooves woven deeply into the chitin, right around where the separate plates came together. Familiar. The warm glow of a campfire on a chilly evening, but beyond the surface lattice, it changed to something else — something she couldn’t quite get at. Like Lovinar’s amulet, but much more complicated.

“Ah, serjo,” Sero trailed, with almost convincing regret. “Much as I’d like to share it, our patron prefers to remain anonymous. A well known name, as it were, I’m sure you understand how that poses risks...”

There were two types of guards in Markarth, as far as Vera could tell. A small minority who came to the profession with misguided aspirations of protecting innocents (as rare a species as idealistic guards) and with grand ambitions of stopping crime (like trying to empty the sea with a teaspoon) — and the vast majority, content to line their pockets with bribes and turn a blind eye. If she had been the praying sort, this would have been a good time to apply herself to the task. As it stood, Vera simply crossed her fingers and hoped probability would be on their side.

“Well…” the Nord harrumphed, “I suppose if you wanted to put in a good word with your employer, the city guard could sure use some new equipment. The Jarl’s coffers are a bit light, what with the damn Forsworn raids.”

“Savages,” Sero agreed with perfectly authentic distaste.

“There’s still the matter of the...uh... curfew.”

Oh, bullshit. If there was a curfew, that was news to Vera — unless, of course, you were an outsider to the city, and didn’t know any better.

“And I’m certain there is a fixed fine for breaking it.” Sero somehow managed to keep most of the bitter irony below the surface.

“Sure is. Fo- Fifty septims.”

Greedy bastard. Fifty septims would be enough to get her to four hundred and bail out both Muiri and Bothela. Fucking Markarth.

The Dunmer nodded, showed his empty palms — no weapons — before reaching into a satchel tucked against his hip. A convenient inside pocket, Vera guessed, sewn into the back of his tobacco pouch.

“I only carry thirty with me. Will that... do? One can never be too careful. I hear there are thieves about.”

She tensed. The lazy drawl was back, edged with a warning.

Both the irony and the threat were entirely lost on the guard. “And the lass? The way I see it, it’s only fair that she chip in.” He tried to peek behind Sero’s back. “Show your face, girl, let’s have a look at you.”

Oh, but she didn’t like the sound of that — or the insinuation that had crept into the corrupt guardsman’s tone — one bit. Nothing quite like a little humiliation along with your illegitimately earned gold to really put the shine on an evening well spent. That was Markarth’s finest for you. Dull as bricks, but with a cruel streak to make up for it.

“Noisy tonight, isn’t it?” Sero said suddenly, his voice dropping to a low, vaguely amused rasp. “Can hardly hear anything over that music.” His body language shifted. “I’m surprised that Markarth guards don’t patrol in pairs. Is that… customary, serjo?”

This time, Markarth’s Finest took an evaluative look at the Dunmer, made some quick calculations — and got the hint. “Uh, I suppose, since you’re new to the city, I’ll let you off with a lighter…uh… fee. As a sign of Markarth’s hospitality, and all that.” He extended his hand, and Sero placed a satchel into it, the faint clinking announcing the contents. The guard didn’t bother counting, just pocketed the cash, and took a step towards the stairs. “The Silver Blood Inn has rooms and food,” he admonished. “I’m going to finish my route, and when I’m back, I better not find you two here or I’ll bring you in for lolligaggin. Stay out of trouble in my city, Grey Skin.”

Final slur delivered, he ambled off, down the staircase and towards better lit and less lethal-looking prospective contributors to his budget.

Sero stepped away the moment the guard was out of sight. “You best go in before he brings his friends, hlakhes.”

Vera nodded. “Thank you. I’ll pay you back.”

“No need. I would have been surprised if it hadn’t ended with a bribe.” He paused. “Interesting distraction tactic, by the way. I’d appreciate a warning next time you decide to improvise.” Laughter lurked in his voice, along with an odd sort of tension. “Now, there is the matter of deducting points, hmm?”

Vera squinted, trying to discern his expression in the darkness. “Really? Because, if I remember right, the tonsil hockey wasn’t my idea, so if I lose points, so do you.”

He missed a beat. “Apologies... the what?”

Vera winced. Wrong analogy again. “I wasn’t the only one ‘improvising,’ Sero.”

“Oh, that. All part of our original arrangement.” She could hear his smirk, even if she couldn’t see it. “You did request I use my tongue, as I recall. You never specified how.”

Vera snorted. Bastard. “So, just business, eh?”

He hesitated before answering. “Unless we agree on a penalty. I’ve been on enough slippery slopes to know one when I see it.” Said lightly, but with something else behind the words — not regret, exactly, something more complicated.

Vera sighed. Picking at this particular scab might lend some answers, but it would have to wait. They had more immediate problems. “You’re right that we need to get moving.” She fished out her key. “I’ll knock from the other side when I’m ready to leave.”

He nodded before leaning against the wall and melting into the shadows. “Don’t be too long.”

Chapter Text

Lighting the torch in the hallway by feel only was no trivial proposition, but after five tries with her flint and steel, the flame sputtered to life. Vera squinted against the sudden glare and forced herself to unclench her teeth — don’t panic, keep your shit together — and then she yanked the torch out of its socket, and stalked into the apothecary, her hand on her dagger.

There was a particular feeling with no good name for it that came with the violation of the place you came to know as home. Hard to explain if you never felt it yourself. You could see it in others, clinging to their skin, that knowing. Like mud rubbed into a wound that scarred funny, streaked and patterned and never quite clean afterwards. Two types of feelings, to be exact, depending on the nature of the intrusion. The first type was the worse of the two — small things, snagging on your peripheral vision, subtle and eerie. It left you with ice in the pit of your stomach and a burn in your throat, rage and fear all tangled. A candle holder out of place. Your bed made by someone else’s hand. An open window, when it had been locked before — when you remembered, clearly, closing it. Dust and grime smudged with the print of a stranger’s boot. And the knowledge, visceral, festering in your guts the second you stepped into the tainted air of a place that was no longer your shelter, that something might be lying dormant, watching you from the shadows. Waiting.

The other one wasn’t much better, but it was cleaner. Things turned upside down and ransacked, furniture you touched everyday in the oblivion of routine broken and thus suddenly in sharp focus, as if you were seeing it for the first time, cognizant of it only through its loss. Shattered glass, and torn linens, and broken table legs, like some inhuman force had torn it all up with no care for who lived there — thrown away like it didn’t matter, like it wasn’t a place where people ate, and slept, and talked, and loved each other the best they could.

It was the second scenario the apothecary had endured, and Vera felt an abstract sort of gratitude. Bad, yeah, but it could have been worse.

She moved quickly, doing her best to ignore the smashed alchemy paraphernalia and the befouled workstation — ingredients had been emptied all around it, powders and liquids caked in clumpy chaos. The gleeful carelessness of violence directed against objects, by proxy, because you couldn’t do the same to a body with quite as much impunity, even in Markarth. Or not before that body had been reduced to nothing but a body, anyway. Which happened, of course — to prisoners and criminals and if the gold in your pocket dried up for too long. Some were closer to that line than others to begin with — if you weren’t born a Nord, or an Altmer, or with a name to support the weight of your fuck-ups and ill luck.

Vera shoved the pointless musings aside — no time. The bedroom had the air of something eviscerated and left to bleed out on the side of the road. Her mattress was gutted lengthwise, straw and tundra cotton crunching under her feet. She peeked under the bed frame. The chamber pot hadn’t been touched. She grinned in the semi-darkness, the burn in her guts stretching her lips around the edges of something feral, full of barbed wire and razor blades. Another feeling she had no good name for, only that it grew on that other sense of loss like a cyst.

So the sacking had likely been carried out by the Justiciar — because the Markarth guards wouldn’t have been so prissy about digging around in muck. Amateurs. In Vera’s old world, the toilet was the first place you searched for a hidden cache — it was the reason she had improvised with the chamber pot. To her, the water room seemed entirely too obvious. She shoved the pot aside, feeling around for the edges of the loose tile. Still in place. She used her dagger to lift it.

Her satchel of gold hadn’t been moved. She pocketed it and hurried to the back room of the shop, where Bothela kept her secrets. The bottle of Cyradill brandy lay in pieces on the stone floor next to the hearth. The key was gone. Still, she checked, just to be sure. Amateurs, but not that clueless. Bothela’s cabinet of precious books stood empty. Someone had pulled out all the shelving — looking for a hidden compartment, no doubt. She turned her back to what was left of the old woman’s private domain, before making her way over to the counter.

Maps. She needed to get her maps.

She knew what had happened the second her eyes fell on the empty shelves. Burned. All of it. She could still smell it, now that she had a target to focus on beneath the stench of broken vials — birch-bark sweet, but with an acrid underlay from the more expensive vellum. Every scrap of paper in the place — the formularies, the recipes, even the ledger. She pivoted, stalked to the hearth, prodded the pile of cold ashes with the toe of her boot — fine and fluffy and light grey, like a dove’s feathers. They’d feel almost silky if she touched them with her hand. Half a year of her life mapping the Reach. Years of Bothela’s life, of careful, loving labor — of caring and hoarding and record keeping, shoulders stooped over a squeaky pen in dim light — all lost to the flames. She swallowed the rage like bile — the howl dwindled to a hiss, still deafening in the empty shop.

Focus. Why burn it all? Had Bothela done it herself? Hiding the evidence — including the one Vera had inadvertently left behind?

No. A set-up, more likely, in the absence of more solid proof. Because nothing spelled “suspicious behavior” like an accusation against a shopkeeper scrambling to wipe all traces of their activities.

She practically ran to the exit, but she stopped herself at the door. Breathe. Dima’s voice sounding out a mantra she had internalized like a second skin on the inside of her own, the lynchpin in her collection of prosthetic instincts. Borrowed, one at a time, from those who had shared her road.

She rapped her fingers softly against the metal.

The answering knock came after a few seconds — firm, like it was owed admission. Then, nothing. Vera counted to sixty. Her mind conjured the image of the Dunmer — pacing in performative impatience in front of the apothecary, then turning away with a shrug and strolling back towards the smithy, with that efficient, sparse gait of his — like everything else about him, safe perhaps for his wry humor — no frills, minimalist, pure practicality that translated into grace, but only as a side-effect.

Once she reached the end of her count, she slunk out quietly.

The darkness hugged her like a cloak. At the entrance to the warrens, Omluag had been joined by a percussionist, the drum pulsing in a steady rhythm, bouncing off the stone walls and ricocheting upward in an overlap of echoes. A good-sized crowd had gathered. The tune they carried was slow and wistful, a plaintive, repetitive melody — the wails and sobs of the fiddle weaving around the beat, as if trying to break through its implacable systematicity. Something allegorical about that — about her predicament, about the sort of life Markarth afforded, about how worlds collided and spun back into the vastness of separation, on diverging trajectories, never to meet again. Martha would have known how to wrap the feeling in language, some precise analogy that trapped the emotions like a fly in a glass — Martha, who had always been a better shot with her words than with her battered Beretta. That’s not what had killed her, in the end, and maybe there was a moral to that too, but Vera shoved it aside and hurried towards the smithy. Sometimes, she wondered if she trailed her ghosts like a comet trailed its own melt-off.

She found Sero by the grinding wheel, more by feeling than sight — a deeper, denser, stiller shadow among others. A good position to occupy, strategically speaking — close enough to the walkway leading to the lower city. Should a guard arrive, they could bolt down and melt into the crowd of revelers. Her feet carried her forward on automatic and then she stopped, sudden unease scuttling down her spine and curdling in her stomach. This would be an extremely bad time to run into a case of mistaken identity.

“Took you long enough.” There was no bite to his tone — wry irony, a note of impatience, but only so that the burden of the underlying reassurance was easier to lift. He stepped forward, his face floating into view in the dim glimmer of the moon. His eyes shone faintly, wine-dark. “Ah.” He took one more step and brought his palms to her shoulders. “Easy. You won’t be much use in this state.”

Vera exhaled. “I’m functional. Lend me your eyes for a bit while I get my shit together.” It came out clipped, brittle around the edges and foreign to her ears, like someone flailing at the end of a short rope. She breathed again, forcing her lungs past the shallows.

He chuckled — a quiet, private sound. “You’d make a terrible merchant.”

The sharp change of topic lanced through the festering rage, and Vera looked up, trying to discern his expression. She could hear his smile lingering between the words. He had added a pulse of magic to his touch, something green and warm that tasted of summer and baked apples. A calming spell, she guessed. “Pardon?” Not her most intelligent rejoinder, but it’d do. Her head cleared, and the ghosts settled.

“Ask me for something you don’t already have.” He waited her out, expectant, amusement like a palpable warmth in the air between them.

It wrestled a bark out of her — not quite a laugh, but close enough to it to offer a handhold, and from there, she pulled herself out of her bogged thoughts the rest of the way. For once, she conceded the point gracefully. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“I haven’t yet.” Light, but with a hollow depth, like sounding out a false bottom. He’d given it out on purpose, too.

Vera filed it away — the silent debt between them swelling, the other tally they left uncounted. Her trivial kindnesses of offered food, the correct guess worth more than the accidental boon. Sero’s refusal to extract repayment. More than just the thirty septims spent on the bribe, however you cut it.

He wasn’t wearing gauntlets. She brought her hand to his, trailing her fingers along his wrist, where the dusting of coarse black hair disappeared into the cuff of his armor. He withstood the caress with a short intake of breath, held, then released. Vera bit back a smirk. “I’ll wrestle up dessert next time. Least I can do.”

He cut his laughter short, but not before it slithered across her skin, smoke and velvet. “Promises…” He made it sound filthy.

Her mouth went suddenly dry. “If you’d like.” Passable, but with a hitch — which the Dunmer noticed, of course.

Sero tallied up the point, and then he stilled in hesitation. “If only it were so… simple.” She could almost feel the shift — one step forward, one step back, in self-negation. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one dancing with invisible ghosts. It was in the way he said it — thoughtful, with regret laced through it, like some bitter medicine to clear one’s head. His hands on her shoulders tightened before falling away.

Vera shrugged, trying to ignore the sudden chill he left in his wake. More than the absent heat of his palms — their weight had anchored her, enough to forget that he was no less at the mercy of the waves than she was.

Her turn to toss a rope, then. “So, what’s your poison of choice, Teldryn? While we have the benefits of civilization. Sweet-rolls? Boiled cream treat? Those weird-” she snapped her fingers, trying to recollect the term “-I’m blanking on the name — the honey-glazed balls on a skewer?”

His sudden, raspy cackle bounced off the walls before he overrode it with a cough. “Are you trying to make me swear off sweets, hlakhes?”

“Neutralizing the competition.” She managed a passable deadpan.

He snorted before flashing her a crooked grin, a crescent of white in the darkness. “Oh, very well, have the point. But mind yourself... partner. One might become liable to steal a taste.”

Vera chuckled. “You already stole a taste. There’s still the problem of how we divvy up the points for that one.”

“I suppose I could be persuaded into a... draw. For the sake of simplifying the calculations, of course.” He motioned with his head before she had the chance to argue. “And speaking of calculations, did you retrieve what you were looking for?”

“They hadn’t found the money, so yes.” Distraction tactics aside, he was right — she had more immediate problems. Their little game had taken her mind off the rage-filled panic, enough to free up some capacity for more organized thought. Point was, it wouldn’t be enough. Even if Undnar paid the rest he owed her on time, she could only cover one bail. And if Ghorza decided to loan her the remaining fifty — she’d still owe more: in obligations and knotted social ties and future expectations of exchange, if not in coins. One way or another, the money would be gone, swallowed up by Markarth’s habits of extraction. What would remain was what always remained beneath such things — an economy of favors.

The idea struck her with the sort of dull epiphany of the idiotically obvious. She could just ask the Dunmer. See if he’d spot her the difference — allowing her to bypass Undnar, and Ghorza. They were tangled up already. What’s one more debt? If she was going to owe money either way, he was the best alternative in an array of shitty option.

“Hmm.” The Dunmer’s voice had regained its casually mocking veneer. “So it was the gold.” Beneath the shield of irony, another note — awfully close to disappointment. “I’d wondered whether perhaps you had gone back for your maps.”

That slow, wordless anger from earlier coiled in her stomach. Vera forced her jaw to unclench and kept her tone casual. “Since I figured a pocketful of ashes wouldn’t do me much good, I got what I could, yes. Regardless, I’m still fifty short on posting bail.”

Below, the wistful tune stopped abruptly, with no clapping to punctuate the end. Someone was crying quietly, the sobs traveling upward in broken echoes before conciliatory voices and gentle hushing, ale-slurred but heartfelt, drowned out the sounds of sorrow. The sudden silence swelled between them.

He shifted in the darkness, though when he finally spoke again, the Dunmer’s tone had lost some of its sarcastic glaze. “Let’s say you had the remaining fifty. Whom would you bail out first?”

It felt like a test. Or a trick question. Vera squared her shoulders. “Bothela.”

She didn’t see the cocked eyebrow, but she could swear she heard it in his response. “Curious. Indulge me, why not the Breton girl? From what I can tell, you care about her...”

“I care about them both.” Cards on the table. She supposed she owed him that much — if it helped square off the imbalance she was accruing, then she’d toss it into the pot. No point in feigning something you weren’t. “If I bail out Muiri first, I’m back to square one, with no money for the second bail, and with someone who will need…” She swallowed back the queasy feeling roiling in her throat. “Care. That I’m not suited to provide.” She left it there, in its mess of implications. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps the Jarl’s uncle oversaw it all. Perhaps he was a decent man, who gave a shit about justice. Perhaps the Thalmor were more civilized than their reputation suggested. Perhaps pigs flew and septims grew on trees like juniper berries. “If I bail out Bothela, then I have her wisdom, and her connections. She might have access to resources I don’t have. If I want both of them out as quickly as possible… It’s simple math. If I can scrape together fifty septims, I get one out right away, and then-”

“Won’t work.”

Vera froze. “What do you mean?”

He took a long time to respond. “You cannot get either of them out. I take it there was a search? And they burned the records?”

She nodded, trusting Sero to see the movement in the darkness.

“Your association with Bothela is well known in the city?”

She nodded again. By that point, Vera had a good idea of where this was going. Idiot. She should have thought of this herself — and sooner.

“Curious place, Markarth.” The Dunmer leaned back against the wall and busied himself with rolling a smoke. “Reminds me of home. If I were to guess, your employer is caught in a power skirmish between local factions — and like with the Great Houses of Morrowind, I doubt there will be much consideration for… collateral damage.” His face flared into view with the flick of his fingers, the small flame illuminating his expression — grave, tense around the eyes. He offered her the rollie, but she shook her head. “The moment you walk into that keep and declare your intent, it won’t matter a whit how much gold you carry. Even if you did succeed, you might as well paint a target on your back yourself.”

Vera crossed her arms over her chest and suppressed a shiver. “I know that. I just don’t see a better alternative.”

“There’s always an alternative. Whether it is better is a different matter.”

“No.” She shook her head again. “No way. I’m not asking Undnar. Absolutely not. I don’t...”

She didn’t finish, but the merc guessed the rest regardless. He chuckled, on the exhausted side of bitter. “Don’t want to end up like me, partner? No need to worry about that.” He inhaled, releasing the smoke with a hiss. “My patron does not retain my services through ownership, if that’s your concern. Undnar is many things. A slaver isn’t one of them.”

“He is a liar.”

“And who isn’t?” When he received no argument form her on that particular nugget of wisdom, Sero sighed quietly and rubbed his face, like wiping off cobwebs. “Think of it this way. You have a goal, and limited tools at your disposal. Why not use the one best suited for the task, if it is within your reach?”

Aha. She didn’t know whether the slip-up was intentional. Might as well ask. “What about you, Teldryn?” She used his given name deliberately, a buffer against what came next. “What sort of goal is Undnar the best tool for?”

She felt him tense, a subtle shift of shadows. “Still a bit short of one hundred, hmm? Remind me, what’s the score?”

“Depends on how we count the kiss.”

He cracked a smile. “We could itemize it, if you’d like. For now, seems to me that Undnar is the best tool for your particular predicament.”

“And what will it cost me?”

“At a guess? Nothing you won’t be willing to pay.”

She thought about it. In the collective history of assorted dumbassery, throwing someone like Undnar at something like the Thalmor and their puppets was probably not the most harebrained idea, but it certainly had its eye on the consolation prize. She’d be insane to do it. Then again, perhaps it was insane enough to work. And if it landed Undnar into trouble? Well… There were worse outcomes.

Playing it all in, either way.

Sero read her expression and gestured towards the steps. “Lead on.”

Chapter Text

The tavern was writhing with intoxicated revelers. They walked into a crowd of frenzied onlookers — a ring of shaking fists and carelessly held mugs that spilled ale onto the floorboards, sweaty shoulders and necks and the stench of alcohol fumes, smoked meat, and body odor so thick you could lean against it like a doorjamb. In the center of the circle of bodies, two fighters swayed and dripped blood from their broken lips, swollen glares exchanged when the fists didn’t quite land. Shouts and jeers twisted into a slurred cacophony of battle rage deflected onto a spectacle.

In other words, a typical night in the Silver-Blood Inn after the right amount of booze had been consumed.

In the midst of the chaos and shouts, Undnar stuck out like a slightly lopsided pillar of virtue in a den of iniquity — his enormous frame towering over even the tallest Nords, let alone the Bretons. Unlike those assembled, however, he seemed calm and remarkably poised — in his usual affable-bear-that-might-just-gut-you sort of way. He was leaning back against the bar, a mug of ale in one hand, and a half-gnawed shank of some medium-sized mammal in the other — too small for a goat leg, too large for a bird. Grease gleamed in his beard.

At Vera’s approach, he gestured with his ale, tawny eyes still trained on the two combatants. “What started it?” Vera asked, at the same time as the Dunmer behind her queried “What’s the bet?”

The Mad Nord bit into the shank with a worrying crunch — Vera wondered idly if his eating habits might explain his chipped tooth — and responded with a mouthful of fricatives. He masticated, then tried again. “Two hundred on the dark-haired Breton.”

Sero drifted to lean against the bar at Undnar’s side and gestured at Kleppr, who poured him two fingers of murky brandy, and, for some mysterious reason, did not ask for money. Curious. Kleppr wasn’t exactly known for indulging in the gift of charity.

“The blond one is faster,” the merc commented, in the tone of someone who didn’t have money in the game. He gestured at Cosnach, who, at that moment, had just landed a nasty left hook on the side of Hathrasil’s face. The smelter worker spat blood onto the floor, his mouth twisting in an uncharacteristically vicious snarl — Vera didn’t know Hathrasil well, but he’d always been courteous, if a bit harried and thereby on the laconic side of small talk — and retaliated with a series of blows to Cosnach’s ribs.

“Stick and move, you sodding milk drinker!” someone in the crowd screeched, to more hearty jeers.

Undnar’s eyes crinkled in an approximation of amusement. “And that, Teldryn, is why I make the bets, and not you.” Something odd passed between the two men, some undercurrent subtext left outside the frame. Vera kept her face neutral as Undnar turned to her. “As to your question, Snowberry, it started like it always does — some bloke rolls into a tavern to have a nice sit-down with himself and his ale, but finds his favorite seat occupied. And because — now, follow along, there’s a valuable lesson in this story — his back aches from working from sunup to sundown, and his better half wrinkles her nose at him and feigns sleep right away — if you catch my meaning — and his ears buzz with the insults hurled at him from, say, one large Orsimer fellow with a nice sharp whip, and a sharper tongue... Well, a bloke like that, after however many days of such treatment, might find his feet getting restless and his fists getting itchy and a great big thirst in his throat that no amount of ale will slake.” He took a swallow from his mug. “And from there, say this bloke finds out that this other bloke…”

He didn’t finish. The crowd roared in jubilation and swayed forward just as Hathrasil feigned a jab and lured Cosnach to open up straight into a vicious uppercut. The porter doubled over to a great many hoots and not a few insults. Someone threw a mug to the floor, clay smashing against the stone tiles with a crackling hiss. The smell of yeast and juniper meal rose to mix with the other odors of the tavern. Vera caught Kleppr’s expression — a tightened jaw, but bored resignation in his eyes. Market Day always came with more broken inventory than the usual night — he’d still have plenty of gold at the end of it to make up for a few missing mugs and wobbly chairs. Unless an all-out brawl broke up, he wasn’t going to intervene.

“You filthy hagraven’s crotch-berry, will you give up or should I keep going?!”

Vera looked around for the shortest path to the exit. This wasn’t an ordinary tavern brawl — the anger, the sheer battlerage, the way Cosnach’s eyes glinted and narrowed in his blood-smeared, swollen face, his breath snarling in his throat as he readied himself for a counter-attack. The porter’s hand shot to his belt, the dull glint of drawn steel catching the firelight. Hathrasil was bigger and wider — but he was unarmed. Still, rage rippled around him, radiating off him in thick waves, as he reached for a barstool.

She should have known this would end with knives. What the fuck did Cosnach do to get the smelter worker so riled up? Hathrasil wasn’t the trigger-happy sort.

Sero materialized at her elbow — too close even for the plausible deniability of a packed tavern. His hand curled around her upper arm and he yanked her against him, the front of his thighs pressing against her ass. Vera bit back a what the hell are you doing — before backing into him further, just in time to get out of the way of an airborne plate, thrown, she guessed, by one of the patrons in Cosnach’s camp at his counterpart on the opposite side of the betting pool.

The Dunmer’s breath brushed hot against her ear. “Unless you fancy participating in the local idea of entertainment, best hold the upcoming conversation elsewhere.” His usual sardonic purr had an edge to it — bright and sharp with tension, somewhere between annoyance and the contagion of bloodlust. Not itching for a fight, exactly, but not opposed to it either.

“No, I don’t fancy. Let’s get Undnar-” Vera turned quickly — on instinct, the itchy prickle at her nape overriding the other stimuli. Over Sero’s shoulder, she caught sight of a hulking shape detaching itself from the wall with deceptively casual purposelessness, the tanned leather armor — and the greasy mop of brown hair — resolving into the unpleasant, scruffy mug of Yngvar the Singer.

She tensed. Yngvar was bad news. Not only was he on the Silver-Bloods’ payroll and had effective immunity as far as the city guard was concerned — he also augmented his official role as enforcer and all-purpose thug with a nasty streak of racketeering. It was well-known that he skimmed off the top of his “debt collecting,” and with the Hag’s Cure closed, he had just lost a portion of his weekly revenue. Vera tried to duck her head in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice her, but it was too late by then — the bastard was looking straight at her, a deep scowl bracketing his mouth.

“Shit,” she muttered. If he decided to extract what he was owed from the only employee of the apothecary not currently behind bars, it was unlikely that anyone would notice — let alone intervene, considering the current mess. The brawl was spreading like wildfire. At least most of the fight was on the other side of the tavern, but that wouldn’t last. Kleppr had prudently retired from his position at the bar — she spotted his bald head and flimsy rat-tail bobbing along the perimeter and promptly disappearing in the kitchens. He’d wait it out with Frabbi and the kids, the heavy door bolted from the inside — and then cut his losses, and wax philosophical about “mining towns” and “letting off steam” and “what was he supposed to do, all by his lonesome, you know how things get, and what the guards are like…” And speaking of guards, if Sero and Undnar got dragged into this, once Markarth’s Finest finally showed up — an hour late and a septim short as per usual (for which shortage they’d make up in fines in no time, but who’s counting) — they would likely find the two newcomers to be convenient scapegoats.

And then the door to bailing out Bothela and Muiri would slam in her face faster than you can say “The Jarl of Markarth Licks Thalmor Boots.”

Sero had already pivoted, following Vera’s nonverbal cues to assess the new threat. Yngvar the Singer (a misnomer if ever there was one) paused, his eyes narrowing at the sudden hurdle of the unaccommodating-looking merc, but whatever he saw didn’t stop him entirely — just made his scowl deepen into outright hostility. Not a great aficionado of Dunmer mercs, apparently.

It would have gone very badly from there, for everyone involved, if not for Undnar. The Mad Bear appeared on the other side of Vera, a blinding, inappropriately jovial grin twisting the tattoos on his face into an upside-down V. He waved at Yngvar with disturbing enthusiasm. “Fair tidings to you, friend!” The greeting was affable enough on the surface, but the Nord’s tone sounded more like “do you like your head to remain where one usually finds it?”

Yngvar stopped in his tracks, quickly calculated his odds, and went the parley route. “Bloody enough for you, outsider?” he inquired, mostly focusing on Undnar and the enormous axe at the Nord’s back.

“Bloody?” Undnar’s bushy eyebrows shot half-way up his forehead. “You call this bloody? Bah!” Somehow, his voice managed to carry over the ambient cacophony. He batted at a flagon someone had launched at his head — without so much as turning to see where the projectile came from — and he sent it crashing over the bar, its contents splashing Vera’s armor before she could jump out of the way, hemmed in as she was between Sero and the Nord. At her side, the Dunmer hissed something about Boethiah’s ambiguous anatomical attributes. He used the nearby stool to deflect an incoming brawler, sending him on a tangential trajectory and away from their little island of relative civility. “I’ve seen weddings get more bloody than whatever this is,” Undnar continued, “though I’d be happy to rectify that for you, of course. But only,-” he wagged his finger for emphasis, “-if you ask politely.” And now, the threat was no longer masked at all.

“Just want a quick chat with Bothela’s little scavenger,” Yngvar placated, looking about as friendly as a freshly-woken draugr. “Can’t hear myself think in this ruckus. Won’t mind if I take her outside for a moment, will you?” His eyes flicked to Vera, lingering on the pack at her back — probably searching for the outward signs of a stash of coins.

“Splendid idea!” Undnar boomed and clapped the thug on the shoulder, making Yngvar stagger before the racketeer caught himself and adjusted his stance. Vera’s spine prickled with ice. Undnar was a bastard, but still, he wouldn’t just- “I could use some fresh air,” the Mad Bear added in performative confidence. “A nice evening walk to soothe an old warrior’s restless heart, aye? What’s your name, friend?”

Yngvar bristled. “This is Markarth business, outsider. Nothing that concerns you, and I don’t remember inviting you. Why don’t you just… enjoy the Silver-Blood Inn’s hospitality for a bit longer? Drinks are on the house until the guards show up.” He tried for chummy, but landed somewhere between annoyed and impatient. “Come have a little chat with Uncle Yngvar, lass. It won’t take long, I promise.”

Before Vera could tell Yngvar to kindly fuck off — she’d take the tavern brawl over dealing with the enforcer — Undnar nodded sagely. “That’s right! You didn’t invite me — so I thought I’d correct this oversight, and invite myself, eh? Sero, you about ready? Let’s go hear what our nice new friend has to say to our associate, hmm?” He turned to Vera. “What about you, Snowberry? See,” he threw his arms wide. “I’m minding my manners, rising above the muck of my infamy in your edifying presence, and all that. Also, you never told me you had an uncle!” He turned back to Yngvar. “I had an uncle once too, you know. Splendid fellow, funny as could be, real life of the party. Liked to put his hand in other people’s pockets — but no one’s perfect, eh? So,” he smiled, “one day, when I found his hand in my pocket, I hung him over the hearth by his own entrails. But that’s bloodkin for you, isn’t it? Sever the social ties that don’t serve you, I say.”

Yngvar took a step back. “You threatening me, outsider?” Some of his earlier leery confidence had frayed a bit.

“Threatening? As the Divines are my witnesses, I never threaten. Anyway, the story about my uncle — it had a point, aye?” He leaned forward, taking advantage of his absurdly large frame to tower over his interlocutor — still this side of jovial bear, but getting less jovial by the minute. “Lay a finger on what’s mine, friend, and you won’t regret it. If you catch my meaning.” He leaned back. “Now, I wouldn’t mind finding out more about this business with the apothecary — just when I was going to stop by and purchase more of my favorite dragon’s tongue ointment, too — keeps my skin nice and soft, goes over well with the ladies — bam, it’s closed. Now, I hear you’re well-connected. A good man to know, eh? Maybe there’s an advantage to be gained for both of us here.”

Yngvar narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but the Mad Nord flashed him a grin and patted his hip, where a fat coinpurse hung, conspicuously visible. Bait, Vera thought. He uses the money as bait. In more ways than one.

“I might know something,” the debt collector admitted finally. “Beyond what’s being fed to the sheep, anyway. If you have the coin.”

After a quick nod for Sero and Vera to follow, Undnar threw his arm over Yngvar’s shoulders and steered him towards the exit, stepping around two brawlers going at each other with chairs. “I always have the coin, friend. Let’s find a nice quiet place to chat.”

Chapter Text

After the chaos of the tavern brawl, Markarth slept in dreary silence, quiet in that hollow, desolate way that reminded Vera of home, when Split City stilled in anticipation of the next violent spasm as it sprawled, dying its slow, terribly protracted death.

They occupied a bench at the back of the inn, overlooking the mine below. Undnar had patted the seat next to him in toothy invitation, but Vera declined with a shake of her head, choosing to lean against the wall instead. Sero, on the other side of the Nordic duo, propped up the wall in matching feigned indifference.

In her estimation, it took Undnar about ten minutes to shimmy past Yngvar's defenses.

Bard's College, aren't you? A tap on the side of his nose. I can smell these things, you know. Then, reminiscing about instructors they had known. Two quick quips, about some louche scandal involving an instructors' wife, spoken in half-finished sentences — a nod of recognition, a traded smirk, two hearty guffaws. He already had him by then, clear as day, right at the end of his fish-hook, but Undnar didn't stop there — he dug further, skipping across a pantheon of shared acquaintances. He compensated for the difference in age — he was at least ten years Yngvar's senior, not the same generation of students, Vera calculated — by focusing on the permanent fixtures. The Mer. The senior teachers. He cashed in on Yngvar's rancor at his dismissal — stuffy milk drinkers, what do they know about the real world — but he never, for a second, averted his gaze from the prize. When it was all said and done, beneath all the good ol' boys talk, Undnar played on Yngvar's nostalgia with the cold ruthlessness of a born sharper.

It took him another five minutes beyond that to worm his way into the thug's confidence — from potential opponents to chummy acquaintances to, by the end of it, friends for life and swearing mutual regard. By then, Yngvar was eating out of Undnar's hand — or, at least, drinking out of his liquor flask and leaking information. He had forgotten about the prospect of payment, and the Mad Nord was in no hurry to remind him.

It wasn't just a turf war between the Jarl, the Thalmor, and the Silver-Bloods, as it turned out. It was a long, festering, covert conflict between the Silver-Bloods — or, more specifically, between the two brothers.

It didn't change the fact that Bothela and Muiri were collateral, but it clarified the stakes, at least. Made sense, in a sick sort of way. Thonar and Thongvor. A Cain and Abel scenario, where it was unclear which one was Cain.

Yngvar slurred through the explanation, shaking the liquor flask in surprised disappointment at its dwindling contents. The brothers had been at each other's throats for years, ever since Silver-Blood Senior's last directives passed over the eldest son in favor of the youngest, but the tensions were finally coming to a head. Thonar's wild temper and carelessness, his permanent assumption that he had all the impunity money could buy at his disposal made him a logical target — and a liability. Thongvor wanted the Thalmor out of the city, and for the Jarl to break ties with the Empire. His brother was unburdened by such ideological aspirations, and valued only power in its crudest, most immediate form.

Thongvor would never feed Thonar to the Thalmor: no matter how much he loathed his brother, he loathed the elves more. But he had arranged for the blame of shift to Thonar's pharmaceutical habits by implicating Bothela. It was a smart move. On the surface, it preserved the appearance of a concerned ally, a brother trying to pull strings to minimize the damage, while still upholding the law and cooperating with the authorities. But within the logic of Markarth, which operated on an intricate lattice of personal networks, it was the shortest way to make someone a persona non grata. For anyone paying attention, it discredited Thonar, because nothing tarnished one's reputation quite as much as suspicions about one's predictability, and, by extension, about one's solidity as a business partner. A man whose manhood flagged, and who resorted to desperate measures to keep it up was damaged goods by definition.

Vera cast a quick glance at Sero, over the heads of the two conversing Nords. The Dunmer's crimson gaze caught hers and held it, a warning there beneath the creases of detached humor.

How old was he, exactly? He wore his accumulated years well, like armor you had grown into, molded to the skin. Vera fought the irrational itch to trace the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes with the tips of her fingers. Her back stiffened. Fucking lizard brain, now was really not the time. Focus.

Point was, the Dunmer knew perfectly well what his employer was doing. Not his first rodeo either. Let it play out, she guessed. Don't interfere. Don't plead for your friends. Let the chips fall as they will.

A level of trust she wouldn't extend to a long-term ally, let alone whatever Undnar was, but what alternative was there? Asking outright for his help, and indebting herself to him the second the request for a favor was uttered?

Vera peeled her eyes away and stared at the night sky, velvet black, with the pinpricks of stars — like a moth-eaten blanket thrown over a window to block out the light. She drew air through her nose, focusing on the interwoven scents. The smelter smog had settled, giving way to the barest hint of spring: a gentle breeze with the promise of early blooms and new greenery. With her eyes on the sky, it was easy to imagine herself somewhere else. Markarth fell away — the thrum of barely contained violence, the political machinations, the precarious business of eking out a living. She could almost forget about Yngvar and the Mad Nord, letting their chatter dissolve in the low roar of the waterfalls.

The Dunmer's scrutiny was more difficult to shake. She could still feel his gaze on her, lingering on her skin like the memory of a touch. Then again, perhaps she was imagining it.

She could leave. Skyrim was a big place — and beyond it, the rest of her new world. Ever since Undnar had ambled into the Silver-Blood Inn and sucked her into his orbit, her fixation on Calcelmo had been progressively receding, letting go of her attention. The purple gems still beckoned, but the single-minded obsession with ingratiating herself with the Altmer seemed less and less tenable. Perhaps, it was a good thing. She had been so doggedly focused on her goal that she hadn't considered alternatives. That sort of limited thinking got you killed, if you weren't careful. She had lived most of her life by gleaning: at the edges, in the cracks, just passing through, unnoticed. This new itch to anchor herself, to strive for something was new — and it was unwelcome. To hold a thing together through sheer effort of will... it was a dangerous thing. Desire was a costly luxury — the less you drove yourself after something, the less it could drive you in return. Case in point, the Unworshipped, and their simple, impossible promise — to give you that which you scrambled after, your most secret of wishes. Or, if that failed, to free you of it, once and for all. She supposed it amounted to the same thing, from their perspective. Either way, they had always preyed on those with surplus hopefulness. Perhaps this was why she had been spared their attention.

Except, when it was all said it done, there was still the one in the seat next to you, and the thing you might become without that anchoring.

She was jolted out of her musings by the sudden realization that she had to piss — and rather badly. Going back into the inn was an unappealing prospect, so she muttered an "excuse me," and made her way down to the public outhouse, tucked away into one of the walls. Filthy thing, but better than the one by the mine. At least it wasn't warm enough for too many flies yet.

Business concluded, she returned — only to discover that Yngvar was gone. She tried to erase the expression from her face, but Undnar must have been watching her on her way over. He was still seated on the bench, somehow managing to take up most of it now that his drinking buddy had vacated it. Sero continued his fine tradition of propping up walls and looking studiously indifferent.

The Nord gave her a canny once-over. "What manner of somber musings mar your pretty brow, Snowberry? Surely, not the disheartening prospect of extracting your local associates from the clutches of the city guard, and coming up... a few septims short, hmm?"

Ah. And there it was. The indecent proposal. What would he dangle in front of her this time? The carrot, or the stick?

Vera said nothing.

Undnar stretched with obvious relish, and gestured to the bench. Vera ignored the invitation.

"Oh, don't give me that sour look, lass — or I might start wondering whether Sero here is rubbing off on you, eh?" He turned to the merc with an alarmingly carnivorous grin. "Have you been exerting your less than sanguine influence on our associate, Teldryn?"

The Dunmer's studied impassiveness was truly Shakespearean. "I never realized a sunny disposition was a requirement to remain in your employ, Undnar." His eyes flicked to Vera. "What do you say, partner? Shall we renegotiate our respective contracts?"

Vera fashioned an approximation of a jovial expression — purposefully fake. "I don't smile for coin, Sero." The Dunmer's eyes narrowed. Undnar puffed up in vindication, but before he could finish with a triumphant "Aha!," she elaborated. "But I'll do it, if it means you're forced to make pleasant small-talk with the guards. Who knows, you might even enjoy the experience."

The merc shot her a very pointed look, and nodded once at the reminder of their earlier encounter — one point in her favor, acknowledged. "And will the conversation prove... stimulating? If so, I suppose I could be persuaded," he retorted in perfect deadpan, and busied himself with rolling a smoke. Only a small vertical crease on his cheek betrayed the smothered smile.

"With the city guards? Probably not." Vera conceded.

"Exactly my point," the Dunmer nodded — likely updating the new score.

Undnar heaved theatrically. "By the Divines, again, they plot against me, not even waiting until my back is turned to plunge the dagger of treachery into my poor defenseless side. Woe, woe and misery." He uncorked his flask, and polished off the last of the liquor. "Speaking of contracts, Snowberry, surely you have a magnificent plan to bust out your friends from the gaol. Care to share it? Between good friends, and all that."

Vera crossed her arms over her chest. The exhaustion of the day was beginning to catch up with her. She still hadn't thought about where she would sleep — it was too late to get Bothela and Muiri now, the Keep would be locked up tight for the night. On a normal day, Frabbi might let her set up her bedroll in the kitchens, but not with the mess she would be cleaning after the brawl — not to mention the place would be crawling with guards. That left the warrens. She smothered a wince. "That reminds me, I believe you owe me money," she said flatly.

Undnar grinned. "That, I do! Though the prospect of paying you only to have all that gold go to the Markarth guards galls me, Snowberry."

Vera said nothing.

Undnar leaned back in demonstrative speculation. "Smart girl," he said finally. "Since I'm guessing you won't ask, I'll make you an offer instead. See, I do sorely miss that dragon tongue ointment — and a few other things besides — so I suppose that getting the old alchemist and her pretty assistant out of trouble benefits me just as much as it benefits you." His eyes fastened on Vera's face with a greedy glint. "Thing is, I too find myself in need of assistance. And since we're all good friends..." he gestured expansively... "I'm wondering if you might help me with a little problem I'm having. Fair trade, Snowberry. You can't go into the Keep and pay bail without putting yourself at risk — but I can. And neither I nor Sero can do what needs to be done — but you, on the other hand, might just be the perfect lass for the job."

Vera forced her fists to unclench. "Quid pro quo, huh?"

Undnar made an interrogative noise. "What's that, now?"

"What's the job?" Vera asked instead, without bothering to qualify the etymology.

"Well, not a job, exactly. I need you to acquire an... ornament."

Shit. "I'm not a thief, Undnar." In Markarth, getting caught stealing half-a-loaf of stale bread would earn you twenty lashes, and a day of hanging out in stocks, stripped down to your waist, there for any passerby to vent their indignation -- or amuse themselves in other ways. She didn't want to think about what would happen to her if she got caught stealing something expensive.

"Who do you take me for, Snowberry?" Undnar bristled with entirely false outrage. "I am most cognizant of your upstanding moral character. I'd never dream of tarnishing your good name with anything quite so pedestrian as vulgar thievery." He gestured to the staircase that led to the upper levels of the city. "See, earlier today, I went to pay my respects to the Goddess of Beauty in yonder temple. Catching up with old friends, that sort of thing. The old Sybil and I go way back, you see. Splendid place, by the by, a real jewel — majestic architecture, lively conversation, very welcoming priestesses, everything a cultured man could hope for." He clucked regretfully. "And that's where I find myself in a quandary, Snowberry."

Vera straightened her spine. "I am not stealing from the Temple of Dibella, Undnar. No. You're completely mad if you think you can talk me into something like this. Find another disposable goon."

Undnar grinned. "Disposable? Oh, no, lass, you are most essential. And you're not paying attention, but that's understandable, what with all your recent... preoccupations. How to save your friends; where to rest your head now that the apothecary is shut tighter than a Jarl's wife's rear; where to get enough coin to put food on your plate, let alone grease the right wheels to get yourself into the Altmer mage's good graces, hmm? Lots of cares for one young woman to mull over." He clucked sympathetically, and Vera repressed the maddening urge to sock him in the nose. "Did I say anything about stealing? No, Snowberry. What I need is a certain statue. So while I'm extracting your erstwhile employer and her lovely assistant from the gaol, you are going to march yourself up to that temple and ask if they might be willing to part with my future property."

Vera shut her eyes tightly. "This is insane, Undnar. Even for you, this is insane. What makes you think that I can talk a bunch of priestesses of Dibella into giving away a... what is it, really? A ritual object? A sacred relic? No. Just... pay me my money. I'll figure out the rest."

Undnar sighed. "It's because you think it's going to be too heavy to carry, isn't it? It's not. But since I wouldn't want you to strain anything on your way back — once you have the statue in your possession that is — I'm sending Sero in to help you. How's that?"

The Dunmer choked on his smoke. "Undnar, that's-" He never got any further, because the Mad Nord suddenly slapped his thigh and shot to his feet.

"In case you were wondering, Snowberry, I wasn’t asking. Well, look at the stars, it's getting late. I'm guessing the guards will have finished up in the inn by now." He grinned. "I'd offer you to share my room, lass, but folk might come to the wrong conclusion, eh? Not that I mind..." He turned to Sero. "And I'm not putting you up with this joyless chaurus, lest his taciturn demeanor rubs off on you some more. Isn't that right, sellsword? We wouldn't want that, would we?"

Vera tensed. That was a warning if she ever heard one. Fuck. Undnar wasn't stupid. Which meant, he probably suspected something about her little entanglement with the Dunmer — and let it slide, for the time being. Probably because it benefited him in some way.

"Oh, I wouldn't be so certain," Sero trailed, but his stance had shifted slightly to the fluid alertness of battle-readiness. Nothing overt, but it was clear enough that he had heard the challenge too — and for some reason decided to take a stand. "I'm sure I could make an exception for the occasion, and be positively radiant."

Undnar's face registered the entirely uncharacteristic expression of surprise. It didn't last long — but for a second there he seemed at a loss for words.

"I have a place to sleep, but thank you for the thought," Vera said quickly. The last thing she needed was to get caught in a crossfire between the merc and the Nord and whatever bullshit tied them together. Besides, when it was all said and done, there was no guarantee the Dunmer wouldn't use her as a chess piece, should the occasion present itself.

"Oh?" Undnar asked. "And where, pray tell will that be? You know it might not be safe to leave the city. They say there are Forsworn about."

"I'll see you in the morning." Vera turned away, shouldering her pack.

Warrens it was.

Chapter Text

The heavy door squeaked in rusty protest, and for what felt like the thirtieth time between the moment Vera left the dismal duo by the inn, and the moment she arrived into the dark alcove that sheltered the entrance to the warrens, the overwhelming certainty that she was making yet another mistake washed over her in a wave of wordless, blunted anxiety. Her mind kept conjuring the river where she almost drowned, the rushing water dragging and tumbling her with merciless, indifferent implacability in advance of any strategic decisions one might make under the circumstances. Staying afloat was all she could hope for then — and all she hoped for now. 

Staying afloat long enough to wash up somewhere safer.

There were alternatives to the warrens. She could squat in the little mining settlement on the outskirts of the city — for a few gold coins, the miner barracks might have a spare cot, or a spot on the floor by the fire. 

Or she could try her luck at the stables and track down Banning. The Breton ranger’s simple, straightforward solidity usually left her with a vaguely warm, peaceful feeling. It helped that he was good with dogs, too. The domesticated variant of the species her new world contained weren’t much to look at — all coarse, shaggy hair and overlong limbs — but they had a reputation for loyalty and an uncanny intuition for spotting shitheads. 

Banning had a friendly, undemanding ease about him whenever Vera brought the medicines Bothela made when one of his furry charges was eating twice its allocated amount, but losing body mass. The alchemist’s deworming formulas were almost as popular as her “tonics.” There might be enough social debt and goodwill there to convince the ranger to offer her a place to rest her head for the night. 

But then, there was the problem of the city gates. Even if she did manage to sneak past the guards on her way out, there was the risk of getting detained on her way back in. She had slipped into Markarth under the cover of Undnar’s boisterousness, during the chaos of Market Day — the likelihood that her luck would hold and that she would remain largely unnoticed now that things were settling down was rather low. If there was an arrest order out on her head, anyone who assisted her would get implicated by association.

That left the warrens, so here she was.

A damp, rancid, suffocating darkness engulfed her. Most of Markarth buildings featured a clever network of narrow venting ducts that ensured air circulation. The warrens didn’t.

Whatever the tunnels were used for originally, they hadn’t been meant for human habitation. The air was stale and thick with mineral dust, unwashed clothes, sick bodies, burnt tallow, spilled booze, and dry piss. Vera stilled, trying to allow her eyes — and nose — to adjust. 

Garvey, who usually manned the entrance and dispensed room keys to those he considered in dire enough straights — for a price, of course, usually extracted later, and at interest, with rather liberal adjustments for the sort of mood he found himself in — was nowhere in sight. Vera navigated her way by feel, trailing her finger along the grimy wall, until her hand met the cold metal of the door. She knocked four times, and stuffed her hands into her pockets.

The heavy darkness hemmed her in, tight and oppressive. There was no response. She knocked again, louder.

Something shifted at the back of the tunnel — a faint rustling sound. Cold sweat prickled her back, and Vera’s hand closed around the hilt of her dagger in a slippery grip. The tunnels had always given her the creeps, but something about them felt different this time, a malignant sort of watchfulness. 

Fuck this. She’d brave the city guards. With any luck…

The door swung open on a rectangle of dull firelight, and Vera shielded her eyes against the sudden glare. Garvey, in nothing but a pair of ragged trousers the color of dust, wiped sleep from his face and glared at her with the muzzy irritation of the unjustly awoken. Then, recognition replaced his initial hostility, and his expression softened, but with an undercurrent of slyness Vera didn’t like one bit. 

“Why, hello, stranger,” he trailed, his eyes raking over her in open assessment. “I had a feeling you’d be back eventually.”

“I need a key until morning,” Vera said dryly, and crossed her arms over her chest. At his leer, she added, “I can pay.”

Garvey moved aside, gesturing in mock invitation. “Step into my office, sweet.”

All things considered, it was better than staying in the dark hallway, with that awful icy scuttle of primordial dread creeping over her skin. Garvey, at least, was a known entity. 

He pointed his chin to one of the two chairs which, along with a cot, a table, and a rudimentary hearth comprised the room’s furniture. He lowered himself into the other seat. The greasy, water-warped ledger on his “desk” — two roughhewn planks thrown over a pair of simple trestles — was flipped open to a new page, so Vera had no way of estimating how many rooms might be occupied.

An unsettling feeling of déjà-vu twisted in her guts. The first time she had needed a room, Garvey had suggested she pay him in kind. She’d considered it. It was that, or promising him her bow, the only thing of value to her name at the time — and she had prudently stashed the weapon in one of the nearby caves before entering the city. She should’ve stashed the little coin she had and Lovinar’s letter, too, but she hadn’t exactly anticipated arrest. 

The self-appointed boss of the “Beggars’ Coalition” — as the ragtag collection of warren dwellers liked to refer to themselves — had a good nose for social status, but he wasn’t entirely stone-hearted. Sly and callous, yes, but not without a compassionate streak. She’d managed to bargain him down, trading Lovinar’s alchemist satchel — the leather worn to a warm, polished gleam but still sturdy, with a strong smell of juniper berries, like the old Mer himself — for a room key. And Garvey had kept his pants on, but the insinuating jokes never stopped, slowly morphing into joking insinuations until Bothela took her in, and saved her from the likely outcome of making long-term living arrangements in the warrens.

But of course, things had changed — and Garvey could likely see those changes painted all over her. The way she no longer looked so starved — still too thin, but, judging by his evaluative look, worth a lingering, speculative glance. And it wasn’t like her erstwhile gaunt appearance had discouraged him the first time around, either. 

Worse, she had just implied that she had coin — which meant she wasn’t one of “his people” anymore. In Garvey’s moral topography, this meant that she was fair game, no longer protected by whatever class solidarity might have gotten him to don kid gloves in the past. Most importantly, the former thief had his ear to the ground — always had, because beggars made for good informants. So he likely knew what had happened to Bothela, and what that spelled for Vera. 

Vulnerability, is what. The most irresistible sort, too — just a few friends and a couple of septims away from slipping through the cracks. Not there yet, but on her way down.

“You’ve come up in the world,” the rogue noted casually, tapping his quill against the rim of the chipped clay cup he used in lieu of an inkwell. “So what brings you to me now, sweet?” He traced an ornate V at the top of the page, the letter adorned with an unnecessary flourish. Then he stopped, his eyes darting to hers in expectation. 

He was going to make her dance for it. Vera swallowed back the hot flare of nascent anger. Quit flailing, you imbecile. Think!  

She leaned back in the chair, forcing her body into a relaxed pose she didn’t feel. “Cut the crap, Garvey. You heard about Bothela?”

“Gutter rat and worthless knave that I am, I do so strive to keep myself reasonably well-informed,” the rogue tutted. “Nasty business, that.” 

Vera nodded, ignoring his provocation. “And if you think Arnleif and Sons will keep selling your people health potions at a loss — like my employer did — then it doesn’t matter if you’re well-informed or not, you’re still dumber than a mudcrab.”

She could see his hackles rise in the sudden high flush over his cheekbones, but her rather blunt (if juvenile) dig had the desired effect. Garvey’s brown eyes narrowed, the slow smile falling away like peeling plaster. Beneath it was exactly what Vera had hoped to see — shrewd calculation, weighing the costs against the benefits. A quick evaluation of the system of social forces that tied him — and his flock — to Bothela, and, by extension, to Vera herself.

“I take it you’re planning to do something about it.”

Ah. Not stupid after all. Just casually greedy for petty power, and with an itch in his pants — nothing she couldn’t handle with the right sort of leverage.

“I don’t have much, but I’ll use what I have to get her out.” Not a complete lie, technically. “And if I succeed, things can get back to business as usual for you and yours.” 

He turned back to his ledger and added the local equivalent of an e next to the V, in the same overwrought scroll. “Very considerate of you. And what’s in it for me , then?”

Vera allowed herself a pregnant pause, taking a few moments to think. “I can pay you in coin, but not much.”

The crescent of yellow teeth he flashed her couldn’t be properly classified as a smile. “You know it’s not a Septim economy down here, sweet.” His eyes narrowed in amusement at his own quip. “But, I’ll take a favor , if you’re offering.” He scratched an r next to the e. “My room… or yours?” 

Vera made a face. She was pretty sure the rogue was using the prospect of sex as a bargaining chip — to force her into a higher bid. She smiled as neutrally as she could. “What’s going on with the lack of lights, Garvey? The hallway’s darker than a draugar’s asshole.” 

A muscle in his cheek twitched, but he hid it quickly. “Waste not, and what have you. Or did you think we were drowning in beeswax and silver candleholders?”

“No, but I’m guessing you’re out of tallow — either that, or Cairine is too sick to make the candles.” She leaned forward, interlacing her fingers over the table. “And how’s the heating situation? Still can’t burn anything in the back rooms, I take it — not even torches. Or did the city put in some vents while I was gone?” 

The rogue barked a short, bitter laugh. “Are we talking about the same city?”

“Must be doing wonders for the sick folk. Same shit, but now without easy access to medicines.” She smiled, aiming for unpleasant. “If I get Bothela out, you won’t have more than the usual amount of dead bodies to clean. I hear that gets... expensive. Does that help spark your altruism?”

Garvey watched her for a few beats. “Not as sweet as all that, are you?” He smiled thinly. “And here I fancied myself a good judge of character.”

Vera chuckled, letting her shoulders ease a little. “If you want sweet, go get yourself a sweetroll.”

Garvey paused over the final a . “How about that amulet around your neck, then?” He dipped his quill and wrote the letter in with a self-satisfied smirk, as crooked as a fishhook. “As a show of good faith. Until things get back to ‘business as usual.’” 

Vera’s hand went to Lovinar’s frost amulet. She untucked it from beneath her armor, her thumb tracing the grooves etched into the bone — as familiar as the scars on her own skin. The enchantment had dwindled to nothing — the amulet was little more than an ugly trinket, worn out of sentimental attachment. 

Still. It was her ugly sentimental trinket. She took a breath, then released it. “Deal. And I get it back once things settle.”

Garvey inclined his head to the side. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the maudling type.”

“Key,” Vera said, extending her hand.

~~~

She made sure she stayed close to the rogue as he made his way through the tunnels, a torch lighting their path. They went past a few of the local residents, the flickering flame snatching shapes out of the darkness — a drunken man Vera couldn’t identify, passed out on a thin straw pallet, his mouth open, lips coated in whitish spit; two children, early teens by the look of them, huddled into a narrow alcove. They tracked their passage with black-rimmed eyes, weary in a feral way Vera recognized all too well. 

At the very end of the main corridor, her attention snagged on a glint of red — russet scales layered over sinew, the musculature unmistakably reptilian. Eyelids contracted over milky brills, the tapetum lucidum reflecting the light in two dots of iridescent yellow. An Argonian male, judging by the crest of spikes on his head. Vera had gotten used to most of the other races — even the Khajiit had become persons over time. It was harder with the reptiles. She had only met a few, while traveling with Faendal — a hasty trade, and not enough interaction to break her habit of reflexively thinking of them as “it” before correcting herself. 

As she followed Garvey into a narrow corridor off the side of the main vault, the Argonian spoke. “Your bones speak in an unfamiliar tongue, stranger.”

His voice was low and deep, pleasant in an insinuating kind of way: the reassuring tranquility of a priest. Cold terror seized Vera’s muscles — there was something wrong about him, at a level she couldn’t formulate beyond the instinctive response to run . She hurried to catch up with Garvey.

The room he gave her was all the way at the end of a narrow passage that terminated in a jumble of rocks — part abandoned dig, part rockslide. Vera grit her teeth. Only one exit — all the way back through the warrens. At least, the room did have a door. 

Garvey handed her the key with a mocking bow. “Make yourself at home.” He left her a short candle stub, burnt up most of the way.

The space was small, with a low ceiling and a musty smell. Once the rogue was gone, Vera locked the door, and then used the only chair to jam it. Thus barricaded, she set up her bedroll in one of the less visibly filthy corners, and stretched out on it, fully clothed. She needed rest, badly, somewhere where the city guards wouldn’t come looking for her.

It took her a long time to drift off. 

A faint scraping of metal against metal tore her out of shallow sleep. Vera sat up, trying to blink the darkness out of her eyes. The candle had gone out. A faint phosphorescence along a crack in one of the walls — the mycelium of glowing mushrooms, she guessed — lent the only source of illumination. 

The scraping repeated, followed by quiet rattling. Someone was trying to pick the lock.

Vera’s hand went to her dagger. She crouched at the side of the door, hoping that the thief — or the assailant — was right-handed. Fear — sticky, cold, utterly abject fear — tightened her throat and roiled in her guts. 

A bright, snapping sound startled her into a twitch. The lock held. Whoever was trying to break in had just lost one of their lockpicks.

“Come out, stranger.” That same slow, deep, resonant voice. The Argonian. “Your bones sing the most intriguing of melodies.” A long pause. “I would help you hear it.”

Vera bit her cheek and said nothing. 

“Are you the same as the others? That is the question that occupies you, is it not? What wonders does your skin conceal?” The lock rattled again, but the mechanism did not budge. “Come, now. Unlock the door and we will find out together.”

She forced her breath into a slow, measured rhythm. Another snapping sound made her flinch. The lock held — and the psychopath outside lost another lockpick. 

Then, nothing. Silence stretching as vast as the void.

Eventually, at the other end of eternity, she heard a faint rustling. And then the sound of footsteps quickly retreating, just as another gait — loud, confident, and punctuated by the creaking of leather — echoed down the passageway outside her room. A fist landed against the door in three firm knocks. “Wakey, wakey, Snowberry! Couldn’t tell it in this dunghole, but we’re burning daylight!”

Vera exhaled. She straightened, her stiff muscles aching in protest. She never expected to be glad to see Undnar, but when she threw the door open, the sight of the Nord’s grinning mug — and the Dunmer’s ironic smirk at his back — brought such pure relief that the feeling was uncomfortably close to sheer joy. 

Undnar squinted at the room behind her. “Love what you’ve done with the place, lass. Very cozy. Now, if you’re quite done with mucking around in filth and declining more reasonable living arrangements, let’s see how well you clean up, hmm? Got a big day ahead of us. But first things first...” he patted his stomach “... breakfast.”

Chapter Text

Markarth greeted them with its deceptive morning beauty: a stark sunrise in shades of gold and lavender melting the delicate mists that swirled around the mountain peaks and sentinel towers. A jewel of a city, indeed — before the smelter smog choked it in its haze, and as long as you kept looking up, not down.

Undnar’s assertion that they were burning daylight had been a bit of an exaggeration. Still, Vera was more grateful for his arrival than she was able to readily express. If the psychotic Argonian had gotten to her, he would have likely taken his sweet time… disassembling — after he had ensured himself that she couldn’t scream. She might have managed to fight him off, of course — or, if she got lucky, kill him outright — but the odds weren’t that great. She shuddered, the metallic tang of leftover adrenaline coating her tongue with its bitter residue. Fuck. She should warn Garvey, at least. Whatever else he was, the Warrens boss did have the best interests of his flock in mind. At a minimum, he could stand knowing what sort of monster he had let slip into the nest.

“Bad night, hlakhes?” Sero had matched his stride to hers. Ahead of them, Undnar bounded up the stairs with an extra bounce in his step, like some shaggy, alarmingly large mountain goat.

“I’ve had better.” Vera turned her head, trying to shield her face from the glare of the rising sun — the light refracted into dull pain at the back of her eyelids. “I’ve also had worse,” she added after a short hesitation.

Not often, but there had been worse nights. The night her mother died. And then the other one, a dark, blurry smudge in her memory that she knew to leave well enough alone, when the raiders had found their hideout. Dima, pale and blood-smeared, carrying her battered body, babbling inane reassurances in a mixture of three languages like a lanky, bespectacled, deceptively innocuous Tower of Babel, because the shock had derailed whatever cognitive circuit was responsible for keeping the codeswitching orderly.

The knife wounds had scarred, but not too badly. The other stuff, she kept in a box, under lock and key.

Yeah. Not the worst night. Silver lining, and all that. It could have ended badly, and it didn’t.

She cast Demon Chops a quick glance, letting her ghosts settle in favor of the present moment. “How about yours?”

The Dunmer shot her a troubled look — two parts concern, one part amused aggravation — before his lips curled into a lopsided smirk. “I had the advantage of safety and a serviceably comfortable bed — if you can call those Dwemer stone slabs comfortable — so I suppose I have little room to complain...” He trailed off. Another glance, red and rich like a ruby under thick black lashes. His expression stirred something, and Vera wondered abstractly how much of the constant low thrum of desire, or whatever other nameless feeling drew her to him, was a correlate of his visceral difference — the Dunmer was becoming familiar, sure, but he retained that fundamental otherness, his craggy, weatherworn face unsettling any ready-made classification. Like a landscape she hadn’t mapped yet. She turned away, training her gaze on Undnar’s back, and swallowing the sudden wave of starkly uncomplicated lust. Yep. That was it. The merc tugged at her like a horizon line.

He picked up on her shift of mood all too readily. “I could have done with some extra cushioning, now that I think about it.”

Vera made a rude noise. “Welcome to Markarth, Sero. Hard beds and horrid politics — on the upside, I’m told it’s very good for your posture.”

“I never had complaints about my… posture,” Demon Chops drawled, putting a rather unambiguous emphasis on the last word. “Though I suppose one can always take lessons from the Thalmor,” he added more soberly.

The thought of Ondolemar — and of Muiri and Bothela — flared into dull, poorly sublimated anger. “Shoving the burden of your illustrious pedigree as far up your ass as it’ll go does ensure your back stays straight.”

His snort devolved into cackles, utterly inelegant. It drew a reluctant chuckle from her, along with an absurd sense of accomplishment.

He hummed in vague disagreement. “I’d wager there are better ways to be fucked than by Thalmor politics, but to each their own, hmm?”

“I don’t know, Sero. In my experience, nothing fucks you as thoroughly as your own history.”

She caught his quizzical glance. A dark, troubled shadow passed over his face before his expression resolved into a brief, knife-sharp grin. “Careful, hlakhes. Unless you meant it as a... challenge?”

It went through her like lightning, the soft purr of his question, along with the promise of it — to keep their respective hauntings at bay, however momentarily. The sudden sense of gratitude swelled in her chest, light and fizzy and heady like a bubbly wine. The banter had jolted her out of the residual terror, peeling off her ghosts and leaving her uncomfortably raw, but somehow cleaner. She shoved it all back down. Sero, at her side, snorted quietly and tallied up the point in his favor.

The ambiguity of their score was starting to nibble at her. “Ten points each.” She blurted her offer ahead of any tactics. “For last night.”

“Subtracted?” he clarified after a pause.

“Added to our respective scores.”

They walked in silence for a few moments as he thought it over. “That would put us at a draw of thirty four each.”

“Still some ways away from one hundred.”

She could have sworn he mumbled something vaguely dubious — not for long, at the rate we’re going — but it was drowned out by the low rumble of the waterfalls.

***

The square in front of the Silver-Blood Inn was littered with the previous night’s detritus. A few Breton workers were shoving garbage into burlap sacks. Hreinn, with a drab woolen vest thrown over what Vera suspected was his sleeping shirt, was pushing bits of broken glass into the gutter with a broom.

“And here we are!” Undnar announced, entirely superfluously. “Come along, lass. I’m hoping Frabbi can work her magic on you, and that you shall emerge transformed, like a butterfly from a cocoon.”

She squinted against the sunlight. “What exactly are you planning, Undnar? And where’s my money, while we’re at it?” She didn’t bother hiding her irritation.

The Mad Nord’s spectacular facial hair did nothing to hide the wide grin. “Do you know what the world’s greatest battles and most daring exploits all have in common, Snowberry?” He gestured expansively, like an actor on stage inviting the audience into an aside. “Breakfast. That’s right. Every great day starts with a hearty breakfast, to lift your spirits and bring fire to your bones.” He pushed the tavern door open with his massive shoulder. “No wars were ever won on an empty stomach.” At Vera’s skeptical look, Undnar shrugged. “Well, perhaps they were. But, then, no one enjoyed it.”

***

The inn was far from spotless, but several workers with unfamiliar faces were scrubbing the floors and bustling around with a great sense of purpose, likely fueled by the promise of gold. Even Kleppr was uncharacteristically jovial. He greeted Undnar with something close to brotherly warmth — again, Vera guessed, because the Mad Nord had greased some wheels, and deposited coins into appropriate pockets.

Where was he getting his money?

She shouldn’t have been surprised that Undnar had set things in motion long before they had arrived to take their assigned slots in his choreography. She chewed the grainy porridge Frabbi had outfitted them with, barely tasting the food, heavily seasoned thought it was with butter, goat cheese, and the green speckles of spring onions. Still, she shoveled it in dutifully. Sero, the bowl balanced in his left hand after Frabbi all but shoved the food at him, dug in without much hesitation. Vera blinked before sending more mush mouthward. She supposed that it was technically “offered food,” but there was something fundamental she was missing here, some crucial nuance. The Dunmer caught her watching and winked.

Hrokki, all milk-white skin and golden locks, and a lot more cleavage than Vera thought was practical, materialized by their table with a pot of cannis root tea, apparently pressed into serving the new honored guests. The young woman’s glance slid off Vera like water off oiled leather, snagged briefly on Sero with a little appreciative linger, and then fastened on Undnar with that mixture of mild revulsion overwritten by shrewd speculation, all poorly disguised as entirely false timidity. A look young women in Markarth reserved for older men in positions of power — typically after their relatives had pointed out the wisdom of drawing attention from the right candidate. Vera felt vaguely sorry for the gal. Hrokki was young — no older than twenty. If she had to bet, the “wise parent” had been Kleppr.

“My mother says she’d like to see you,” the young woman shot at Vera, in afterthought, and with her smile tumbling off her face after she poured Undnar’s tea. To his credit, the Nord never so much as glanced in the girl’s direction — apparently deciding that either his appetites or his perfidy simply did not stretch over that particular line in the sand. In fact, he gave off nothing beyond a markedly polite “I thank you, fair maiden,” and returned to demolishing a second — or perhaps third — bowl of porridge.

Once Hrokki was out of earshot, Vera turned to the Nord, lifting an interrogative eyebrow. “What is it that you want from me, Undnar? What exactly did you sweet-talk Frabbi into?”

Undnar leaned back with a contented belch and occupied himself with stuffing his pipe. “As I said, Snowberry, we have what one might call a mutually beneficial arrangement, you and I. You see, in my line of work, first impressions are everything. I can’t very well have you go off to meet with the Sisters unprepared.”

“I never realized looting required keeping up appearances.”

Undnar’s scratched the side of his nose. “If I wanted a looter, I’d avail myself of one, lass. Let me tell you something about collectors, seeing how you still seem to be confused about the distinction between the two occupations, hmm? You see, as a collector, you must, shall we say, adapt to your audience.”

“Like a bard?” Vera asked innocently, and shoved the last spoonful of mush into her mouth.

Undnar’s eyes narrowed briefly, but then he smiled, all chipped charm and twinkling humor, before nodding once. “Aye, lass, just like a skald gauges her audience.” He lit up his pipe and drew a lungful of fragrant smoke. Vera glanced at Sero. His face was shut tight, emotions wiped away in favor of his mercenary persona. Relaxed, but vigilant, scanning the tavern for any sign of trouble. “And just as I will aim the correct presentation at the right people this morning — to secure the release of your friends — you are going to appear before the priestesses of Dibella in a manner that might increase your chances of achieving our goal. And for that,” he pointed with his pipe, “we’re going to need to… clean you up a bit.”

Vera sipped her tea, trying not to scald herself in the process. “I can take a bath on my own, Undnar. I don’t need Frabbi’s help for that.”

He rumbled a supremely self-satisfied chuckle. “It’s going to take a bit more than a bath, Snowberry.”

***

What Undnar had meant had only become clear about half-way through the process. The confirmation came later, and Vera, stomping up the temple stairs with the merc a silent shadow at her back, swung like a pendulum between seething anger and terror.

The outfit had puzzled her originally. The simple linen dress in a nondescript faded brown that Frabbi had outfitted her with after extracting it from some old, musty chest was nothing to write an epic about. Vera had withstood the older woman’s running commentary as stoically as she could — the “sorry about the fit, honeysweet, you Bretons are so tiny,” and the “Divines preserve me, dove, who did this to your back?” and the “oh, leave that be for now, your Nord said you won’t be needing it, and really, you sure can go without it, young as you are, everythings’ holdin’ up just right, by Mara’s grace,” (in reference to the brassiere she had attempted to retain, whisked away into Frabbi’s pile of laundry, and leaving Vera wondering whether Mara was, in addition to overseeing marital bliss, also in charge of counteracting gravity).

Her hair had been washed and brushed away from her face, the juniper oil holding the errant strands under control. It had left the scar on her temple exposed and Vera had to consciously stop herself from fingering the thin keloid ridge. There was no mirror to check her appearance, but Frabbi had nodded in fussy, mildly anxious approval at the results of her labor, and ushered Vera out of the storeroom for general inspection.

Undnar took her in and clapped his hands, russet beard bristling like a bottle brush around an ear-to-ear grin. She withstood that too, purposefully rigid, refusing to slouch or take less space. There was nothing overtly revealing about the dress — a narrow collar, the hem long enough to conceal her sandaled feet, wide sleeves cuffed tight at the wrists. Not overtly revealing, sure, but also concealing very little, especially when she moved. Thoroughly, stupidly, impractical. Case in point, Sero’s eyes lingered on her face, snagged on the scar on her temple and narrowed in evaluation — then darted down, to where the fabric hugged the curves she usually kept meticulously contained — and then he turned away, a whole body movement, his teeth set so hard that the muscles in his jaw drew slanted shadows across his skin. Vera marched herself to the bar stool next to him, parked herself irritably, and ordered an ale from Kleppr, who kept giving her utterly flummoxed looks, as if Tiber Septim himself had just flown across the ceiling and shat Vera out in the middle of the tavern.

“And who will be paying?” the barkeep asked, preemptively defensive, his eyes traveling from Vera to Sero to the Demented Bear still looming behind them, no doubt with that idiotic grin still splitting his mug.

“My treat, my treat,” the Mad Nord volunteered, clinking a coin on the counter — while his other hand dropped a heavy satchel into Vera’s lap. He leaned on the bar next to her. “You can count them once we get through this, but it’s all there, every last little septim. Speaking of which, I’ve taken the liberty to arrange for a room for you.” At Vera’s glare, he lifted his hands in conciliation. “Just for the day, Snowberry, for a place to stash your belongings and change once you’re done — though I must say, you are most fetching in your humble supplicant attire.” He switched to his habitual declamatory tone. “For what Divine would turn her all-seeing gaze from such nubile modesty, from the tragic scars that mar your delicate countenance, betraying a past of hardship and horror, what Aedra — and, dare I say, Daedroth — could stay stone-hearted and limp-loined against the green limpidity of your ga-”

“Oh, spare me the bullshit, Undnar, you’re not on stage.” Vera took a huge gulp of ale and wiped the foam off with her sleeve. She took another gulp. Bastard. At least, he wasn’t mincing words — and the point of the scheme had finally dawned on her, to a ball of writhing horror churning in her belly. The Sisters of Dibella got their priestesses from somewhere. And considering just how Undnar had tweaked her appearance, and what he chose to show off, Vera was pretty sure that the gambit was her potential recruitment. She wore her past on her skin — you could read the chinks it had left easily enough, if you knew the language, and her new world knew violence just as well as her previous one had. Undnar had used that. First impressions indeed. He’d made her into a social type, his own private little Galatea, from one of those stories Martha told by stove light, about a sculptor and his statue. “Tell me exactly what you expect me to do.”

“Tough crowd,” the Mad Bear lamented over Vera’s head, trying (and failing) to catch the merc’s attention. The Dunmer kept staring at his own ale with grim finality.

“Instructions,” Vera reminded, before Sero could interject some dubious witticism and score himself some points.

“Oh, very well, but you’re a spoilsport, Snowberry. The instructions are simple. Go talk to the Sisters, tell them you have a request for the Sybill, and that Undnar sends his regards.” He leaned in, aiming his voice at a stage whisper. “The statue I want is at the back of the sanctum. I suspect you’ll be admitted easily enough. From there, the choice is yours, really. You’re a resourceful lass, see what you can procure. Not that I would ever advocate theft, you understand, but if all else fails…” He trailed off and wagged his brows.

Vera shook her head. “No. I am not stealing it.”

“Most excellent! Then I look forward to learning how you obtained it. Once it’s all done, of course. Sero here won’t be of much help in the temple, I suspect, but he’ll lend his back for the carrying. Isn’t that right, sellsword?”

The Dunmer had regained his impassible mask, safe for a telltale tightness around his eyes. “If I must,” he offered curtly. Vera frowned. He looked… unsettled. And since she wasn’t stupid enough or vain enough to think it was on account of her getup — considering he had seen her practically naked before — that left two logical conclusions. Either the operation was thoroughly doomed from the get-go, or something about the prospect of the temple set his teeth on edge.

Vera filed it away for later, and polished off her ale. She turned to the Nord. “While we’re at it, the Thalmor won’t bribe themselves. Best you go pretty yourself up too.”

The asshole bear bellowed a raucous guffaw and clapped her on the back. “You truly are a rare find, Snowberry. Aye. Let’s get this show on the road.”

***

They stopped at the heavy temple door, and Vera turned to the Dunmer, catching his residual expression — something awfully close to fear on his features — before he wiped it off with both hands.

“Want to wait for me out here? You don’t have to jump every time he says hop, you know?”

Sero shook his head “no,” his throat working around a swallow. The ball of terror in the pit of her stomach tightened. Vera tried to dispel it with levity she didn’t feel. “They’re Dibella acolytes, not vampires. What’s the worst that can happen? They’ll paw at you and make your pants feel a bit tight — I’m sure you’ve been through worse.”

His mouth twisted in a crooked smirk, but it never made it to his eyes. “If I were worried about excessive tightness in my trousers, hlakhes, I would begin by avoiding your company, if we’re being honest.”

Vera snorted. The directness was atypical — even for him. “It’s the temple itself, isn’t it? If you’ve pissed off Dibella in some past transgression, now is probably the time to come clean.”

He shot her a complicated look, but then he shook his head again. “Not that I am aware of, though it is hard to tell with the Aedra.” He exhaled, then straightened his shoulders. “Come, now. Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter Text

The door clanged shut at their back with a fractured echo. The heady scent of incense filled the nave, a heavy sweetness with the bitter undertones of nightshade drifting in tendrils of blue smoke from the brass censers. At the center of the cavernous hall, a large circular pool on a raised platform wafted white vapor into the air. Two statues on each side of the dais stretched their arms to the ceiling, their marble curves gleaming gold with the flicker of a thousand candles.

Vera hoped these weren’t the statues they were supposed to obtain. They’d need at least five people to carry one of those.

“A bit empty, isn’t it?” she asked quietly, not turning to look whether Sero had followed. She felt him shift in place, a few steps behind her, the sound of his slow exhale — as if he had been holding his breath, and only now allowed himself to release it — the only response.

She made to turn to see what was eating at him, but the sound of footsteps froze her in mid-movement. A woman emerged from behind one of the columns. Vera took her in. The priestess wore a simple brown robe — not so dissimilar from Vera’s own outfit — cinched at the waist with a crude woven rope, but the ascetic habit made her appearance more arresting, if anything. She was tall, ample in the way that Nord women often were, with years of adequate nutrition and hard physical labor, though her skin was a rich, coppery ocher that hinted at Redguard ancestry. Salt and pepper braids curled tight around her head in a crown — a practical choice, Vera guessed, to keep the long hair contained. A face as round as the moon, but with strong features — wide forehead, wide nose, wide mouth. Her eyes, a deep stormy blue, dipped down at the corners, giving the upper part of her face an oddly mournful look, in sharp contrast with her dimpled, vaguely amused smile. Not young, but not old either — a comfortable, confident mid-forties.

“I’m afraid you caught us at a bad time, child.” The priestess’s voice was throaty and sonorous, but not unkind. She stopped a few feet away, and gave Vera a once-over — a slow, knowing, very frank look. Vera repressed the impulse to fidget. The glance she spared the Dunmer was perfunctory at best, her mouth curling ever so slightly at the corners, before she returned her attention to Vera. “Well, then. Welcome. I suppose this is where I’m meant to tell you that the Sisters are communing with Dibella, and cannot be disturbed.” She paused, twinkling with humor. “Complete horseshit, of course. It’s laundry day.” At Vera’s stunned expression, the woman threw her head back and laughed, her hands on her belly, a dozen silver bracelets around her wrists jangling in time with her guffaws. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. I know our reputation well enough — nothing gets the blood boiling and the tongues wagging quite as much as the prospect of Divines-sanctioned debauchery, hmm? What’s your name, dearie?”

“Vera,” Vera said cautiously. “We were sent-”

“I know well enough who sent you, kid. I’ve been expecting something like this. I suppose I’ll have to give it to the old bastard, he does like his playthings easy on the eyes. Can’t fault a man for good taste, hmm?” She motioned with her head at Sero. “You can leave the Dunmer in here for the time being. I’ll send someone to take care of him — oh, don’t give me that look, sellsword, they won’t eat you. Unless you ask, and even then, you should be so lucky.”

“I do appreciate the clarification.” To his credit, Sero managed a fairly convincing deadpan, but Vera felt amorphously worried on his behalf regardless. Whatever they had stepped into, she was absolutely certain that there was an agenda — or multiple competing agendas, to be precise. And whoever this woman was, she simply radiated power — not magic, exactly, not as far as Vera could tell, anyway, but the sort of charismatic polish that came with being listened to, by a sizable number of people, over many years.

“How should I address you?” she asked, keeping the veneer of politeness over the treble of thrumming anxiety.

The priestess lifted her round shoulders in a shrug. “Oh, psshh. Names, names. They always want names. Gabby will do.”

“Gabby?” Vera blinked.

“Short for Gabinia, if you must know. Better than ‘Your Worship,’ anyway.” The priestess made a face like she had just bitten into a lemon. “Come along, kid. We have business to discuss.” And with that, the Sybil — because by that point Vera had absolutely no doubts about who it was they were dealing with — turned on her heels and proceeded into the bowels of the temple, without checking if either of them followed.

Vera turned, catching the Dunmer’s gaze. “Will you survive without me?” He had planted himself on a narrow bench by the entrance, still looking tense, though he had begun to relax a little. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

Sero inclined his head to the side. “Such as?” Beneath the edge of sardonic humor — and not a small dose of insinuation — something like genuine curiosity.

“Don’t, I don’t know, desecrate anything.” She grinned. “If you need a smoke after whatever the priestesses have in store for you, do step outside, yeah? We’ll probably get fined for littering otherwise, and I’m not asking Undnar to cover that fee too.”

She got the raspy laugh she had aimed for, but he cut it short. His face turned somber. “I won’t land you into more debt than you already accrued, partner. Not if I can help it.” He settled into his vigil, head resting against the wall, his legs outstretched in front of him. He watched her from under hooded eyelids. “Come find me if you need… assistance.”

She nodded before turning away. Something about the Dunmer’s last utterance had sounded… No. Not hopeful. Not pleading. It wasn’t like that. But she knew fear when she saw it — its acrid, bone-deep pulse, locked away in tight muscles and rigid shoulders, in the line of the neck, in the dance of fingers over the hilt of a weapon. It held him, the fear, just as he held it down. Her gait slowed. On impulse, before thinking better of it, she retraced her steps.

“Sero, come with me.”

He frowned. “You heard the Sybil.” He had come to the same conclusion. “I don’t believe that’s an option.”

“Oh, bollocks.” Vera shook her head, vehement. “Something’s not quite… right. And I know you know more about it than I do, and it’s making you shit bricks — no, don’t try to bullshit me, whatever your deal is, it has something to do with this temple, or the priestesses, or Dibella — I can’t quite tell. But I know anxious when I see it.”

Sero’s eyes darted away from her. “Surely, you aren’t worried about me?” Sardonic and incredulous all at once.

Vera planted herself on the bench next to him. She put her elbows on her knees and stared at the floor. Shit. She needed time to think through this, and she was missing pieces, but there was something here, some broader pattern, nagging at her like a hangnail.

“I don’t believe it is wise to make our hostess wait, hlakhes.” His tone had gentled, the dry sarcasm whittled away in favor of some other emotion she couldn’t quite identify. Sadness, or just plain old exhaustion — or something in between.

“I have a feeling she’ll keep.” She paused, formulating. This was probably not the time to push this particular lever, but then again, when was it ever? “The whole carrying the statue bit. It’s complete garbage. That’s not why Undnar sent you.” She turned. “Why did he send you here, Teldryn? Not to keep an eye on me, I don’t think — as long as Muiri and Bothela are behind bars, he’s got me dangling on a hook.” When he failed to meet her gaze, she returned to staring blankly at the tiles. She couldn’t describe the pattern if she wanted to. “No, this is a power play of some sort. And…”

The insight jerked her upright. At her side, the Dunmer reacted to the sudden movement with a quick switch to combat-ready alertness. And then he turned to her and stared incredulously. “Damn it, what is it?”

“Undnar’s punishing you, isn’t he?” She said it quickly, clipped words tumbling out, because the thought was running away from her. “No, not punishing… Testing? Reminding you of your place?” She snapped her fingers, trying to catch the thread. “It’s the same as with the food. And with banging everything that moves like he’s making a point of it. I might not be familiar with your people, Sero, but even I can tell you’ve got the looks — you could sleep your way through Markarth without much complaints, I suspect, if you put your mind to it. And here you are, at the Temple of Dibella, looking as miserable as a monk in a brothel.” She cut herself off sharply. It clicked, finally, dredging up the hollow, howling horror of another memory. Dima, in the last coils of his final spiral. She’d called it madness, as a convenient shorthand, but it wasn’t that. The fulfillment of all desires through their complete negation.

It had made him… utterly monstrous.

The Dunmer said absolutely nothing. He held his expression closed, not even the usual wry mask in place — complete poker face. His body language was less contained, though. Coiled tension, like he was ready to bolt — or strike.

“I don’t know what your deal with Undnar is, but there clearly are conditions to your arrangement.” Vera swallowed. “What’s the cost of breaking them? Let’s be straight for a second, Teldryn, I do enjoy our... explorations of arithmetic. But you said it yourself — you take what you can get. No offense, but I’d wager that under normal circumstances, you’d have bedded me in a heartbeat, especially since I’ve given you exactly zero indication that I might be opposed to the idea. And since you haven’t — or rather, since you’ve erected an elaborate ritual to minimize the chances of it happening, as the game was your initiative — I’m going to guess there’s more to it than delayed gratification.”

He hissed an expletive, clasping his fingers tight in his lap. It took him a moment to respond — no amount of staring him down seemed to speed up the process — but when he finally did, his voice hitched, seesawing in an uneven mess. “Under normal circumstances, hlakhes, I doubt I’d bother with a bed.” He leaned the back of his head against the wall and closed his eyes, only his throat bobbing with a swallow. “Nchow. At this point, I would have you against the first available wall.”

Vera swore, and shut her eyes tight. It couldn’t even legitimately pass for one of his edgy flirts — naked, unadorned, and brutally honest. It completely sidetracked her, too. The lizard brain didn’t just rear its ugly head — it bounded around like a skeever on skooma. Get your shit together, dumbass, you started this.

“Better use for your back muscles than carrying Undnar’s statue, if you ask me,” she quipped, her mouth dry. Her eyesight had turned strangely hazy, oversharp and oversaturated all at once, and her skin felt too tight, the fabric of her dress torturously irritating.

The noise he made was somewhere between a growl and a plea.

Shit.

Vera sprung to her feet, overriding the instinct to bolt through sheer force of will. Her back prickled with cold sweat, but her head cleared a bit, the adrenaline wiping away the torpor. Fuck, fuck, fuck. How had she missed this? Most of Bothela’s “tonics” involved nightshade. No wonder they were both fraying at the edges. “Sero, we need to get out of here.” A strident note had crept into her voice. Oh, but this was worse than she had thought. Surely, Undnar knew about the bloody incense. And the Sybil had promised to send Sero some company. No wonder… Was it a vow? No. He wasn’t the monastic type. Something else, then, but... “Now! Screw the rules, let’s get ourselves away from the smoke.”

He got to his feet with a wince. Vera practically ran through the hall, deeper into the temple. An airshaft above the central fountain breathed cool morning air, and she gulped it like a pearl diver emerging from watery depths. A narrow door, left ajar, partially shielded a torchlit passage, and she darted towards it, with a quick glance behind her to ensure herself that the Dunmer was following.

They emerged into a wide, airy room, lavishly but impeccably adorned. Behind the desk, the Sybil sat with a large, leather-bound tome in front of her, leafing through the pages and humming quietly to herself. She glanced at her two guests with a vaguely amused expression, and motioned to two chairs, strategically positioned on the opposite side of the massive bureau.

“So, which of you was it?” she asked.

Judging by the Dunmer’s equally puzzled look, he was as much at a loss regarding this particular conversation opener as Vera was.

The Sybil huffed a sigh. “In her infinite grace,” she announced in a well-honed voice, “Dibella fills our mortal eyes with beauty and our mortal hearts with passion…” She shut her tome with a loud thud. “... but to be honest with you, I find that nightshade works just as well, in case the Goddess needs a break from all that ‘filling.’ Parlor tricks, really, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy overhearing folk wax lyrical about their, shall we say, ‘divine inspiration.’ So.” She beamed at them, dimply, her impossibly blue eyes keenly observant in their nests of laugh wrinkles. “Which of you figured out that the smoke was making things a titch… heated, hmm?”

Sero motioned with his head in Vera’s direction. Gabinia nodded, apparently completely unsurprised. “I did notice over the years that you Dunmer were a bit more sensitive to the reagents. Different plants in your homeland, I’d wager. Sit, since you’re here.”

They sat. Gabinia pushed two cups across the desk after pouring a fragrant liquid from a silver teapot. The air filled with the scent of rose petals. At Vera’s skeptical expression, the older woman waved her hand, tinkling her bracelets in dismissal. “Just tea, dearie. Dragon tongue, lavender, evening rose. Good for digestion, but that’s all it does.” She winked and turned to the Dunmer. “And since you decided not to enjoy the temple’s hospitality, handsome, much as your greedy bastard of a patron — and I say this with due appreciation, mind — wagered that you would, I suppose we’ll strive to find you another use. So. Let’s talk about that statue.”

Vera brought the cup to her lips and blew on the liquid, buying herself time to collect her thoughts. “I’m guessing Undnar already asked you for it, and you already said no?”

“Gabby” narrowed her eyes and pursed her mouth in deliberation. “How much do you know about consecrated statues, kid?”

Vera shrugged. “Not much, to be honest.”

The Sybil nodded. “Well, they’re shiny, for one thing. Everyone likes shiny.” She waited for Vera to react to this statement.

“I’m assuming there’s more to them than their… outward appearance?”

“You could say that, yes. It’s kept in the temple’s Inner Sanctum, for another — which is off-limits to menfolk. As to the uninitiated, dearie, it is rather typical to undergo a period of servitude at the temple before you’re granted admission.” She narrowed her eyes. “So, all in all, unless you’d like to… don the cloth and join the Sisterhood, I don’t very well see how you’ll get to it. Unless, of course, you’re here to throw yourself into the Goddess’s service?” The Sybil took a little sip, rolling the liquid around her mouth before swallowing. “You have the looks for it. Whether you have the temperament is another matter, but when left with few choices, hmm?”

The tea burned her throat, and Vera blinked tears out of her eyes. “I’d rather not, if there’s another option,” she managed.

Gabinia smiled into her cup, her expression turning shrewd. “Common misconception, love,” she said, answering the silent question ahead of Vera’s ability to formulate it. “Don’t underestimate the advantages of a few strategic enchantments and a good old paralysis spell. Works like a charm, perfectly enjoyable if you’re in the mood for it, and very little labor if you have the magica.”

Vera studiously avoided looking at the Dunmer, or wondering what might have gone through his head at that particular revelation. “Did Undnar tell you what he wanted the statue for?” she asked instead.

“I’ve known Undnar for a number of years, child. Back when he still was Undnar Silver-Tongue, and I was… well, we all have a past, do we not?” She paused, her eyes trained on some invisible horizon. “Do you know what a Sybil does?”

Vera shook her head.

“A Sybil is the direct link to the Goddess. The one through whom the Divine communicates her will.”

Vera nodded cautiously. She had the distinct feeling that Gabinia was maneuvering her somewhere, as surely as Undnar did, if with a gentler touch. “And, as Sybil, can you tell whether… Dibella wants Undnar to have the statue?”

Gabinia shrugged again and finished her tea in a few quick gulps, apparently entirely undaunted by the temperature. “Oblivion take me if I know, child. But I wouldn’t mind finding out.” She lifted her eyes, pinning Vera with a gaze that had shifted from matronly to flinty in mere seconds. “So. To answer your question, yes, there is another way. A titch unorthodox, but when did the Eight ever care about the rules mortals set for themselves? You want the statue? Then you’re going to… Well. Ask the Goddess, I suppose.” She opened a drawer, rummaged around, and tossed a wrapped cloth satchel onto the desk. “In case you two came unequipped. I suppose I could leave you with the key, but what would be the fun in that? The door is at the back of the temple. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She rose from her chair, as regal as any Jarl — and not like the strange, sharp-tongued, middle-aged woman who had just tossed a pack of lockpicks at them — and maneuvered herself towards the exit. “... I have some undergarments to scrub.” At the threshold, she paused. “I suggest you two don’t dally. No one likes communing with the laundry for too long.” And with that, the Sybil sailed through the door, and out of sight.

***

As promised, they found the blasted statue at the back of the temple, in an odd chamber mostly filled with large stone slabs that looked, to Vera’s eyes, suspiciously similar to the one she had woken on, on that first, horrible night in her new world.

Sero had picked the lock, breaking only two lockpicks in the process — Vera almost jumped out of her skin each time the thin metal snapped.

No one had intercepted them.

She had absolutely no idea what to do — no plan, no inkling of any correct procedure for “asking the Goddess.” For lack of any better idea, she aimed herself at the little rug in front of the altar that supported the small likeness of Dibella, and went down on her knees. After a short hesitation, Sero knelt beside her. Above them, the countenance of the goddess gleamed golden, her face upturned in transcendent, indifferent ecstasy. As if the minor specificities of their mortal plight concerned her as much as the scuttling of ants.

Vera seethed quietly, terror and anger mixing into a toxic mess. Fucking Undnar. Fucking Sybil. And fucking Dunmer, who by his very presence was already implicating her into potential desecration. Whatever the costs of such trespassings were in this world, Vera was beginning to suspect they were very real indeed. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to go alone.

Bad enough that the Mad Bear had dangled her like some sort of divine bait — at least, they got marginally lucky when they ran into “Gabby” — or whoever the Sybil really was. Which, in retrospect, had translated into a transition from fire to the frying pan. She felt like a fly, caught between two competing spiderwebs.

Vera squinted at the statue. It didn't look like solid gold. Gilded plaster, perhaps — though she wouldn't know unless she lifted it and checked it for weight. Which would be impossible to do — it looked fused to the stone beneath.

What did Undnar want with that thing?

"What in Oblivion are we supposed to do?" she whispered, harsher than she meant it, and with more anger than was probably wise. It wasn't, technically, the merc’s fault.

Sero contemplated. He had shed his earlier anxiety in favor of his habitual sardonic nihilism, but on steroids — like the game was lost already, and he was simply going through the motions. It only stoked her fury.

"Why not simply ask for a blessing, hlakhes? Perhaps you have accrued enough regard already that you won't need to... prove the point?" His voice had quieted to a low purr.

Vera cast him a brief glance before returning her eyes to the statue. It stood there, inert and perfectly ordinary. Plaster and gilt, a stereotypical female form, easy on the eyes in a way that allowed admiration at a distance. No imperfections to catch your gaze, nothing to hold you there and make you wonder. Perfectly pleasing in its nakedness, but with no history, no chinks, no story to tell. For all its ecstaticness, it looked… bored. Idiot pillow princess in divine form.

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

He chuckled quietly. "I may not be the best man to ask, but I suggest you start with the usual formalities. 'Dibella, I beseech you...'"

She parroted it back stiffly.

"Grant me this favor so that I can uphold your glory..."

“Wouldn’t that technically make the statue mine, if the prayer works? By divine decree, and all that? How will we transfer the rights of ownership?”

He shrugged. “If this ends how I think it will end, it won’t matter a whit, Vee.”

Her name on his lips startled her out of her state of caustic rage. “Teldryn, what have we gotten ourselves into?”

His breath caught on an exhale, but he simply repeated the incantation, his tone uncharacteristically gentle.

She mimicked the words, feeling vaguely ridiculous. When he said nothing besides, she turned to see what was holding him up. The Dunmer's crimson gaze was still trained at the statue of the Aedra. "Well?" Vera prompted, her voice tight with barely contained impatience. Someone could burst into the sanctum at any moment, and then they would be… She didn’t know what they’d be. Nothing good, either way.

"This isn't going to work," Sero said tartly.

"And why not?"

The sardonic crease at the corner of his mouth didn't quite match the odd look in his eyes. "No offense, hlakhes, but I've seen farmers petition a Jarl to allocate grazing pastures for their sheep with more fire than-" he waved his hand "-whatever this was."

"Well, then you do it," Vera snapped.

He turned to survey her. "That won't lend us the desired results. You heard the Sybil — it has to be you. I’m not supposed to be in here at all. Though perhaps I could... assist." He leaned closer. "And if I do, we will count each point double the usual value, which, as I said, likely won’t matter at all, because by the end of this, I will be dead, one way or another, and you will be pressed into Dibella’s service."

Vera balled her fists until her fingernails dug painful crescents in her palms. Motherfucking hell. “Fine."

His teeth flashed white in the semi-darkness. "On the upside, we are in this together, partner. Do strive not to make it too difficult, hmm?"

Bastard. Vera shifted, settling into a cross-legged position. "Give it your best, Sero, but I make no promises."

She fixed her gaze on the loathsome statue and set her jaw — only to jump when his lips brushed against her ear. "Dibella, I beseech you..." he whispered. The Dumer's voice had dropped, the raspy drawl replaced with something intimate and dark, on some unseen edge from which one contemplated finality. "Grant me this final favor, so that I can glimpse your glory, though I am unworthy..."

His hand came to rest on her thigh, the pale scar across his knuckles stark against the muted grey-blue of his skin. She could feel the heat of his touch through the flimsy fabric of the dress.

"Is physical contact allowed?" Vera whispered through gritted teeth. Something about the statue felt different. There, just at the periphery of her awareness, an odd flicker.

"The Gods are not mind-readers." His voice held a bitter edge. "They only see what they already expect. Nor do they gamble with small change."

"What do they gamble with?" she heard herself ask.

"That... depends." His lips grazed her ear, and Vera shuddered and bit the inside of her cheek. Why did he have to smell so damn good? "They gamble with the currency they understand." His hand trailed up her leg. "We are playing for the statue, yes?"

“I think, at this point, we’re playing for survival, but details.”

He caught her earlobe between his teeth and gave it a sharp nip before drawing back. The tug in her lower belly bloomed into achy heat.

"We couldn’t have stolen it even if we wanted to."

He laughed, deep and low, the sound sending shivers down her arms. "All things being equal, that might be the only good thing about this predicament. Are you... ready?"

"Probably not," Vera bit out. "Let me get this straight, though. You're going to use me to gamble with a Divine."

She could hear his breath hitch, then ghost across her skin. "Use you?" He had smothered most of the anger, but still, a trace of it lingered between the words. The hand that wasn't busy traveling up her thigh settled at her nape before he brought it higher, curling his fingers into her hair. Vera tried — and failed — to contain a shaky sigh. "Unlike my employer, I am not in the habit of using others as playing chips.”

"Uh-huh," she managed, with almost convincing sarcasm. "Why can't you be the one to ask for the boon, then? If the Gods don’t care for rules, do you think Dibella will really give a shit whether you wandered into a room where you weren’t supposed to go?"

"Why? Simple. I do not give a single fuck about whether Undnar gets his ‘ornament.’" Laughter and anger lurked in his voice in equal measure. "If I am to damn myself yet ag-..." he stopped abruptly, holding the almost-slip behind his teeth. "If I am to risk divine disfavor, I'd rather it be for something else entirely."

"Oh, no you don't." Vera latched onto the slip like a feral dog with a rat carcass. "You were going to say 'yet again' or something like that. Yet again in what way, Sero? Which Divine's shitlist are you on?"

"If you want to settle your debt with Undnar, I recommend you focus on the task at hand." He motioned with his chin at the blasted effigy. "Won't you ask me how I'd go about it, at least?"

"Fine. Enlighten me."

His fingers curled into the fabric of her dress, and gave it a tug. "I would lift you to that altar and hitch up your skirts." The lilt of his brogue thickened with alien phonemes. "I would spread you wide in the sight of the Goddess..."

Vera shut her eyes tight against the vivid mental image of the Dunmer's hands pushing her knees as far apart as they would go, his eyes on her skin like hot coals as he deliberated what to do next.

He held the pause, waiting.

"Then what?" It came out shaky and frayed around the edges.

"Once I was done enjoying the view?" His palm circled her throat, and forced her head to the side, bringing her ear right against his lips. "Oh, I suppose I would put my tongue to good use." He chuckled as she swallowed the little whimper. "Until you slicked the altar stones beneath you and begged me to take pity. Until the only thing your mouth could shape was my name in supplication." He practically growled it. His hand dipped between her thighs — too far from where she wanted it, the taut fabric of the dress in the way. He went on, in meticulous detail, mixing blasphemy and reverence in equal proportion to paint the image. His breath came short and ragged against her ear. "I admit, hlakhes, I am so very curious what you will taste like when you come around my fingers.”

Vera growled an expletive. Through the haze of his words and her own thwarted desire, she glimpsed an odd shimmer silhouetting the statue, a gentle, silver glimmer with swirls of lilac close to the effigy’s golden skin. “It’s working,” she croaked.

Sero leaned into her neck, inhaling deeply. “Hmm. Would you like to know what I would do then, partner?”

She gritted out an inarticulate confirmation.

The Dunmer chuckled. “Feel free to ask, then.”

Asshole. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Would you begrudge me that?”

There was a strange edge to his question. Not just dirty talk, anymore, something else there.

“The prayer,” Vera managed.

“Dibella, I humbly ask you to grant me this boon, so that your likeness may light the darkness in which I err.”

She repeated the request through numb lips. The statue glowed brighter. Vera sucked in a breath and tried to release it slowly, against her maddened heartbeat, but recentering herself had distinctly negative effects on the shimmer around the effigy, dulling it to a tarnished silver. “Shit. Fine. Have it your way — what would you do then?”

He paused. “Once you went limp and silky with pleasure? I suppose my first impulse would be to turn you around, and…” He trailed off, deliberately. He held himself perfectly still, safe for a slight tremor in his hands.

“Well?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Smothered laughter mixed with that old, bone-deep anger. “Any specific preferences in how you would like me to fuck you?”

Vera kept her gaze on the effigy. “Never done it on an altar.” The words tumbled out on automatic — by that point, she was too busy trying to avoid rubbing herself against the Dunmer like a starved cat. She forced her attention on the glow. If she unfocused her eyes, she could see the purple swirls more clearly, but the statue seemed poised in expectant anticipation of what they might do next. Bitch.

“Logistically, considering the layout, either you take me from behind, or I ride you. Depends on how much you’re willing to plant your ass on cold marble.”

He laughed, a gravely sound that bounced off the stones in broken echoes. “I’d endure, if only for the sake of the view.”

“Well, aren’t you aesthetically minded,” Vera snorted. She was vaguely concerned that trading quips would impact the statue’s glimmer, but it seemed to have no discernible effect. Still, if there was anything spectacular that was meant to signal that Dibella approved the transfer of property, it hadn’t happened yet. They’d stalled.

“Fair point, considering I distinctly recall your promise to ride me until I couldn’t see straight, hlakhes. Try the prayer from the beginning.”

She did. And, against all odds, with the terror and lust and anger coursing through her veins, Vera watched the glow crest into painful luminescence, blinding white rays filling the chamber with a metallic, relentless light. She shielded her eyes, but there was nowhere to hide from it, all the shadows burned to nothing, as if, against all known laws, the light could travel around corners. But it was the purple swirls that held her, in the end, the soft pulse of the enchantment. Something was trapped within the statue. A life that had been, and was no more. A soul repurposed. She could taste it, almost, like lingering smoke, a presence that wasn’t one.

At her side, the Dunmer cursed softly. The crack reverberated through the sanctum like a gunshot. The statue careened off the altar, a clean break at the base where its feet had sunk into the mortar of its pedestal. Vera dove forward, on instinct, with utter certainty that she would not be fast enough, and that the statue would shatter on the stones. The blasted effigy hit her painfully on the hip, a bruising blow, and then she was cradling the stupid thing to her chest — it weighed nothing, a hollow thing — and they were both running, breathless, towards the exit.

The truly amazing, multitalented @Othanas sent me this little sketch of her interpretation of Vera in her Mad Max garb, and I love it to pieces.

Chapter Text

The nave seemed to stretch for miles, the entrance a distant vanishing point, as unreachable as an optical illusion. Vera pushed her legs to move faster, incense smoke choking her lungs with its cloying sweetness.

They ran through the hall, their steps beating a jumbled tattoo against the stones. If the initial shock and rush of adrenaline had made the statue feel weightless, it wasn’t so now — an awkward encumbrance in her arms. For all its curves, it was decidedly angular — an absurdist scrap of a thought that struck Vera with its grim hilarity, but if ever there was a bad time to stop and enjoy the irony…

Still, their luck held — or perhaps, not luck at all, but some extension of Dibella’s favor, a heftier weight and an untold debt that set Vera’s teeth on edge, quite beyond the bulk of the physical object which stood for it.

An alarmed cry reverberated at the back of the temple. Too late. Sero shoved the door open with his shoulder, the bright, cool, sunlit air slicing through the incense-filled murk of the nave.

And then they were free. The city had never looked so beautiful.

Vera hooked a sharp left, taking the lead and sending them deeper into the maze of staircases and balconies of Markarth’s upper levels. Nooks and crannies and secluded spots, an architecture built for overcrowding, to ensure that spaces of seclusion still existed amidst the throng of circulating bodies. Whatever the Dwemer were, their world had been populated — until it wasn’t. Perhaps this was what had kept her in Markarth, beyond the simple logistics — the kinship that came with living in the aftermath, crawling through the skeleton of something that had once been vibrant and powerful and too big for itself — and that was no more.

She missed a step, her foot landing askew. A sharp pain lanced through her ankle. Vera stumbled, one hand thrown out against the wall to catch herself, her other arm pressing the statue to her chest. Fuck. Behind her, Sero came to an abrupt stop, somehow managing not to collide with her. He spat out a curse, low and filthy and hilariously colorful — and Vera bit her cheek against the onset of hysterical laughter.

“Much as I enjoy sightseeing, is there any reason we are scurrying up this anthill of a city? I distinctly recall the inn being down, not up.” Exasperation mixed with the tension of a narrow escape, but he stepped closer, and offered his arm in support.

Vera gripped his forearm and took a tentative, hobbling step. “Over there… Up the staircase… to the right.” She motioned with her chin. She tried to catch her breath. “Unless you plan on parading around with this damn thing for everyone to ogle, I suggest we stop and get our shit together. Rather do that out of view.”

He nodded, letting her take the lead again. One more set of winding steps — cramped and claustrophobic, like running up a well-shaft — and then they found themselves on a long, narrow balcony overlooking the city. Scraps of morning mist drifted across the colonnade. The crisp damp scent of moisture clung to the ancient stones. Markarth lay below them in a shimmering golden haze.

The balcony was deserted, and Vera crouched against the inner wall. She set the statue down on the worn stones and tried to rub some comfort back into her throbbing ankle.

Sero took up a spot right across from her, his back to a column, and, after a quick inspection of their surroundings — a crumpled, dirty bedroll in a corner, empty wine bottles, bits of egg shell, discarded from someone’s breakfast — he busied himself with rolling a smoke. “Nice place you’ve got here,” he trailed. “Very… atmospheric.”

“The only poor architectural decision in the city… far as I can tell...” Vera rested the back of her head against the wall and closed her eyes, focusing on slowing down her breathing. “You’ll get... the occasional smelter worker... sneaking a drink. Teenagers pawing at each other. Most of the time, wind tunnel. Stays empty.”

Once her lungs stopped screaming for air, she opened her eyes and fixed them on the Dunmer. She didn’t become aware of her own idiotic smile until his return smirk. Something passed between them at that moment — they’d made it out, they were alive — and then he grinned fully, sharp and sweet and with just a hint of wonder. His entire face lit up with it. Vera found herself utterly unable to look away.

They stared at each other.

Demon Chops recovered first. “So, which will it be, partner? If it’s a drink you want, I’m afraid I have nothing on offer.”

It took her a moment, but then she snorted. “Sero, I’m not adding groping in public to my litany of morning misdeeds, but if you’d like, the next round’s on me, once we get ourselves back to the tavern.”

“On you, is it?” He dragged on his cigarette, his eyes never leaving hers. “Changing the terms again, I see. I suppose I could… accommodate, though I was rather looking forward to not doing all the work, for once.” Vera squinted as he tallied up another point with a self-satisfied chuckle at her expense. “Speaking of which, I believe I came out ahead in that last round. Thirty points in my favor.”

She gaped in stunned outrage before finding her words again. “Twenty at the most.”

The Dunmer unglued himself from the wall, prowled closer, and crouched in front of her, entirely disregarding any concept of personal space. “You didn’t get the Aedra’s favor all on your own merit, partner. Seems only fair.”

“I never said I did.” She squared her shoulders. “But I did drag you out of the incense, so don’t give me that shit about doing ‘all the work.’ And speaking of that, I’ve seen sacrificial cattle look more thrilled than you did, so what gives, Sero?”

His hand shot up. Vera threw out a forearm block on pure reflexes. He neutralized it, his fingers locking around her wrist and pressing it down against her hip in a steely hold. He had flicked his cigarette to the stones, and he clasped her jaw with the fingers of his free hand, tilting her face up. “I don’t much like having the dubious honor of being ‘entertained’ by the priestesses of Dibella foisted on me against my will, hlakhes.” His voice filtered out low and strained, like a cage around a sudden flare of anger, but then his grip on her gentled. “As I recall, you and I had an agreement, however.” He dragged his thumb across her mouth. “Or did you lose track of the count again?”

Patronizing jerk. Vera parted her lips — enough to stage a momentary distraction as his gaze flicked down — and then she twisted her hips and hooked her leg behind the Dunmer’s ankle, the heel of her palm shoving into his shoulder to knock him off-balance. He would have likely compensated for it under normal circumstances, but Demon Chops wasn’t expecting foul play. He toppled to the side with a startled grunt, dragging her with him to the stones, but he overestimated her weight, and the tanned hide of his coat offered a better grip than the chitin of his usual armor. Vera straddled him, her forearm lodged against his throat, though she forewent the full chokehold in favor of signaling her advantage rather than pressing it. The Dunmer stilled, his eyes on her. His pupils had gone wide and dark.

“Let’s itemize, then. Sixteen for the Inner Sanctum, at two points a statement. One point for the nave, counted at the usual rate. That brings you to seventeen. And I scored at least two points during that exchange, plus at least two while we were wrangling with the statue — and that’s being generous and assuming your dirty talk didn’t get you all riled up as well.” Vera slid her hips back. She earned herself a short, pained groan for her efforts — whether in protest or encouragement, she couldn’t tell. Likely both. Sero shifted beneath her, his own hips jerking up before he forced himself into immobility. Under her forearm, the muscles of his neck corded with strain. Her breath caught. Oh, but it would be so easy from here. It’s not like either of them needed any prep, by the feel of it. Shove his trousers down, hitch up her dress, shift the underwear out of the way, and...

Instead, Vera bent lower, bringing herself nose to nose with the Dunmer. “Should’ve taken the twenty. Turns out I rounded up.”

He watched her for a few terribly long seconds, and then he fisted his hands into her hair and yanked her closer, ignoring the pressure on his neck entirely. The initial shock of his mouth on hers — hot, hungry, bruisingly demanding — dissipated. She kissed him back with the same impatience, her thoughts falling away in a jumbled mess of “stop this, you nitwit,” her mind’s habitual self-chastising — always in her own voice rather in the softer reminders her ghosts offered — scattering into irrelevance. She ground against him in invitation, or challenge, or both. The Dunmer growled into her mouth, but didn’t disengage, only brought his hands to her hips, utterly unapologetic about dragging her lower for a better alignment. His pulse thudded against the underside of her forearm.

He had warned her he wouldn’t play fair, and he didn’t. His palms roamed over her, exploratory at first — just mapping the terrain — but he wasn’t exactly timid when it came to getting his hands full. Vera had no idea whether he was ‘enjoying the view,’ but he certainly helped himself to the topography — a growl, and a muted “fuck” escaping him as they paused for air. We fit well, she thought idly through the fog of kisses, his hands on both breasts now, his thumbs rubbing at her through the fabric until she was biting back frustrated moans at the logistics of too much clothing.

In the end, it was the statue that made her come to her senses, glimmering gold in her peripheral vision as Vera briefly opened her eyes. If there was a certain perverse irony to Dibella’s effigy offering a reminder of just how stupid and reckless they were being, Vera couldn’t dredge up much appreciation for it. She straightened, shoving her hand against the Dunmer’s mouth in a bid to ward off the temptation to kiss him again. Beneath her, Sero looked distinctly worse for wear — black, slightly oblong pupils expanded to swallow most of the irises, his coat askew, his breath against her palm escaping in short, strained bursts. His eyes were wide and watchful. She drew air into her lungs, trying to clear her head. “Much as I enjoy seeing you lose points, partner, I don’t want to get arrested for it. That statue won’t hide itself.”

He closed his eyes, shook his head from side to side, swallowed hard with an audible click — but said nothing. Nor did he try to sit up. Vera frowned. “Are you all right? Did I hurt your throat?” She retracted her hand, belatedly, and rolled off him.

He blew out a breath, swore — in Dunmeri this time — and sat up. “My throat is fine, hlakhes.” He wore a strangely dazed expression, and the tension locking his shoulders didn’t look limited to residual arousal — not all of it, anyway. Vera narrowed her eyes. She knew that look. Wore it herself, too, especially after the night with the raiders, and, later, after they lost Dima. And then there were four. Martha’s ironic coinage for it — “chronic apocalypsitis” — didn’t quite capture the specificity of the locked muscles, of hair follicles prickling with atavistic reflexes, of the copper tang at the back of your sinuses, and that feeling in the pit of your stomach of a trapdoor yawning open. The expectation of imminent catastrophe, like the smell of ozone before a thunderstorm rolled in.

Vera looked around, scanning her surroundings, her ears straining to pick up the telltale sound of footsteps. Safe for the wind howling through the arches, all was quiet. She frowned. So, not that kind of threat. That left her with her earlier hypothesis, the one slowly taking shape ever since the temple. “Teldryn, how far is going too far?” she asked, quickly, while his defenses were lowered. He couldn't eat unless the meal was offered, that much she was sure of — with some workarounds, perhaps, but by and large, he seemed to stick with it. Did the same rules apply to sex? She was still missing too many pieces. “The food one seems to have some wiggle room.”

Nothing. He had pulled on his habitual blazé mask like armor. Still, she allowed herself a chuckle. “Is there a loophole?” Then, too late, it occurred to her that if what bound him was a vow — or an oath — she couldn’t have been more offensive if she tried. She did her best to hide the wince, but he picked up on it, of course.

“You’re right about one thing, partner.” He breathed out, his eyes closing briefly as he released the tension — a meditative habit settled into the automaticity of an acquired instinct. “That statue won’t walk itself into Undnar’s possession. Let’s get going.”

~~~

They found a discarded burlap sack to hide their haul, an unpleasant reminder of just how unprepared they’d been for their “mission.” It wasn’t like her to rush half-cocked into dubious circumstances, and Vera outsourced her irritation at herself into trading half-hearted snipes with the Dunmer over who would be losing points over their last exchange, and how many. They bickered, without malice but with a great deal of gusto, all the way back to the tavern. In the end, Sero conceded five points of his most recent earnings — and only after Vera threw his own words back at him, about the first one to give in having their score reset to zero. After that, they split hairs over what “giving in” meant, earning themselves three points each during the argument, carried out quietly and in half-finished sentences as they passed a contingent of guards. By the time they reached the Silver Blood Inn, they had come to an agreement that solo stuff could not be counted since correct attribution was impossible to check. They settled on a score of fifty to forty one, with the Dunmer in the lead.

Vera excused herself the second they were through the door. Sero settled on a barstool for his usual waiting game while his employer remained at large. “And will the next round be on you, partner?”

She didn’t dignify it with a response. She marched off into the room Undnar had commandeered for her usage, grudgingly grateful for the privacy. The moment she threw the bolt closed, Vera deposited the statue, still in its sack, onto the furs piled on the bed, peeled off her dress and underwear, and padded to the wash basin by the fire. She washed off the stench of fear-earned sweat, scrubbing herself with Frabbi’s strong brown soap until her skin tingled, splashing water onto the tiles without paying the mess much mind. Once in her own clothes, still damp, though warm from the fire and comforting in their familiarity, she sat on the bed next to the accursed effigy, and extracted it from the burlap.

Against all odds, they had succeeded.

She had the statue, but only because it was in someone’s interest. Vera stared at its golden skin with absolute loathing. And now, what would prevent Undnar from returning from his errand empty handed, with shallow excuses about how “he tried” but “those pesky Thalmor” — a heaping pile of bullshit, and nothing to show for it, Muiri and Bothela still in lock-up? And then... what? Would she refuse to hand over his “property?” As if there was anything she could do to stop the Mad Nord from simply taking what he wanted, now that the relic was out of the temple, no longer shielded by layers of smoke and cultural taboos.

That incense hadn’t been a simple “parlor trick.” More than one way to trap a rat — and to stop it from getting into the food supplies.

What does he want from you, she asked silently, staring into the indifferent golden face. Predictably, the statue didn’t volunteer an answer. She set it down gently.

Don’t be naive, Vee. In her memory, Dima’s quiet baritone had lost none of its melodiousness. No, Dima, love. Never naive. Out of her depth most of the time, but with enough cynicism acquired by osmosis to make up for it. It wasn’t the statue Undnar wanted.

It was a terrible idea. Absolutely lunatic. But Vera found herself on her feet, and then walking — back into the din of the tavern’s main room, and straight towards the merc, who was still perched on his stool, sipping his ale, and listening with half-an-ear to Ogmund’s basso regale the few patrons with a particularly gory rendition of Ysgramor’s deeds.

She was just testing a theory. Nothing more. If it didn’t work — and it probably wouldn’t — then she’d let it be, and wait for Undnar, like the compliant stooge that she was.

“Sero, do you still have some of that smoking mixture left? The ‘stronger’ one?”

If the request surprised him, he didn’t show it — only a slight tightening around his eyes hinting at some internal calculus. He fished around in his satchel for his rolling paper, and topped the strip with a small pinch of powder — dark red, with a granularity that suggested a mineral base. He passed her the rollie without meeting her eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid... outlander.” A hard note had crept into his voice.

Vera ignored the moniker, turned on her heels, and went back to the room without looking back. Great advice, and all that.

It took a few drags. Then long, painful minutes of waiting. For a moment, she even allowed herself to relax. Nothing, you dumbass. You hallucinated it. And then, just like the first time, the purple swirl bloomed in her peripheral vision, a bright lilac halo around the statue’s midsection, petering out to nothing around the head and towards the base.

She couldn’t sense the nature of the enchantment in the way she had sensed the qualities of Lovinar’s amulet. Whatever this was, it hadn’t been bent into service in the same manner — it had retained, for lack of a better word, some polyphony, a hint of expanded possibilities. That sense of presence that wasn’t one was… No. Not a life. Not anymore, in any case. But it hadn’t been entirely stripped of its potential, the way whatever powered the frost enchantment had been trimmed towards a single purpose, like steel folded into a blade.

It retained… an openness.

Vera, darling, I really think we should keep it closed. Martha’s voice came through the tunnel of memory like a refracted echo. The context was different, but the urgency remained.

She sucked in a shaky breath. A tiny tweak, subtle, like tuning a scope at a great distance. It would require the smallest, quietest of efforts — far less than channeling Lovinar’s purple gem into the old, carved bone pendant. She didn’t have a focal circle, but she didn’t need it — something had been worked into the statue itself.

Perhaps the gilt was simply a distraction. Everyone likes shiny.

“Is this what you want?” she asked, sharply cognizant of the absurdity of querying a presumed deity — of beauty and passion and whatever else — in a seedy room, in a seedier tavern, in this carcass of a city, with its appetite for violent means and bloody ends. “Is this why you fell into my hands? Blink once for yes, twice for no.” Bitter laughter caught in her throat like a fishbone.

She turned away to stare at the hearth. In her peripheral vision, the statue brightened to a lovely violet shimmer. There was absolutely no way to tell whether it was a pulse — or, if it was, whether it was countable.

Don’t let the soul settle. And so, with bile on her tongue, she opened herself up, just long enough for the mental image of a door slamming shut with a heavy thud and a gust of wind that carried roses and sweet poisons on its breath.

The nausea hit her so suddenly that Vera barely made it to the chamberpot. The remains of her breakfast came up in protracted, painful spasms. She heaved, on all fours, tears streaming down her cheeks and dropping into the filth, along with a thin stream of clear bile once there was nothing left to upchuck. When the spasms ended, she collapsed on her back, shaking and exhausted beyond measure.

She watched a dun moth flutter in senseless circles around the goathorn sconce, until its trajectory brought it too close to the flames.

Its singed remains plummeted down, leaving a powdery stain on her pant leg.

You and me both, little bastard.

Chapter Text

Vera cleaned up the mess herself, emptying the chamberpot into a foul-smelling stone chute at the back of the service corridor. It was similar to one of those garbage disposal systems she had encountered during her scavenging trips through Split City, the ones you found in crumbling multi-storied tenements. Whoever had designed them had operated on some optimistic premise that there would always be a social structure in charge of maintaining their functionality. She tried to picture long-dead Dwemer engineers advocating for their bright proposal to a council of peers. The mental picture was vague, translucent and unconvincing.

She had no idea what was at the other end of the dark square hole that led down into the bowels beneath Markarth. Whatever it was, it would now have vomit added to it.

After returning to her room, Vera cleaned herself off the best she could. She rinsed her mouth a few times with a swig from a bottle of brandy she found on the end table, as much out of an urge to disinfect herself as in the hopes to wash away the taste of vomit. She wondered idly how much Undnar had shelled out for the room — it wasn’t like Kleppr to leave complimentary creature comforts. She spat the alcohol into the flames, the answering burst of fire hot on her face. The burn on her tongue sliced through the dazed stupor her manipulations with the statue had left behind, but her stomach still roiled in protest at whatever she had done. She forced herself to breathe through another bout of nausea. Eventually, the thick cobwebs that had swaddled her mind lifted a bit. Something inside her felt out of place: settling, awkwardly, with a lingering soreness she had no name for.

She gathered her stuff, strapped her bow to her pack, stuffed the statue back into its sack — it still glowed purple with no discernible change — and exited with a quick glance over her shoulder. The room looked about the same as when she’d entered it.

Vera stalled in the hallway, stepping into the shadows between two wall sconces. Sero was no longer at the bar.

She spotted them at their “usual” table — the Dunmer with his back to the wall, ankle over knee, a half-finished drink in front of him, and, inevitably, the Nord. Vera turned her head, bringing the duo into her peripheral vision. The effects of the smoking mixture were fading fast. Still, there it was. She hadn’t imagined it. And now, she couldn’t write it off to a difference in physical states: they were both perfectly hale, at least on the surface. Sero’s glow was much fainter — not as faint as it had been that night she saw them side by side, scrambling down the mountain path, the Forsworn on their heels. But, compared to Undnar’s rich, violently violet iridescence, the Dunmer’s aura (if that’s what it was) looked wan and washed out, like sunlight on a cloudy wintry day. She scanned the rest of the tavern for a baseline. She caught Kleppr’s glow, and then, in the corner, Ogmund’s. Next to the Mad Nord, everyone else’s aura paled — yet they all shone brighter than Sero.

The skald had interrupted his performance in favor of a conversation with a tall Imperial fellow. Vera’s eyes snapped to Ogmund’s interlocutor, and she briefly forgot about the glows altogether. The Imperial wore the distinctive robes of a Vigilant of Stendarr.

Well, fuck. As if fielding the Thalmor wasn’t bad enough. Lovinar’s advice — to watch out for the Vigilants, with their crusade to eradicate anything “unnatural” — floated up in her memory. Unnatural indeed. The jolt of fear — and accompanying adrenaline — washed out the remaining effects of her earlier experimentation with dubious substances. She turned her head again, but the shimmers were gone.

Vera stepped out of the shadows and made her way to the back of the tavern. Best get this over with.

“Beloved!” Undnar bellowed the second he spotted her, waving his flagon in the air, foam sloshing over the rim and landing onto the table in wet splotches. “The Divines are merciful, for they gift me with sight, so that I can behold your peerless radiance, and with hearing, so that I can bask in the melody of your words, as musical as the song of a midnight nightingale.”

Vera ignored the curious glances — some amused, some mocking, and one, from that blonde maid whose name she still couldn’t remember, downright hostile.

Undnar gestured to a third chair. “Come, come. Join us.”

Vera lowered her pack next to the chair, sat, and settled the statue onto her lap.

Undnar gesticulated in Frabbi’s direction. “Frabbi, Jewel of Markarth and Patroness of All Tired Wanderers, a mead for my friend, and some food, if you please.” He turned his gaze back to Vera, his eyes glowing amber in the firelight. A cozy, reassuring color. It would have been easier, she thought abstractly, if something about his physique reflected his inner self — but everything about the Mad Nord was deceptive, including his warm autumn coloring.

“For no finer beverage exists than mead, and we shall toast under the gaze of our heroic forebearers in Sovngarde, who drink to our deeds as we drink to theirs. Since, judging by that sack in your lap, you return to me victorious.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper. “And now, you can give me my property.”

Vera’s hands curled around the statue in an almost protective grip. Ironic, she supposed, considering the mixture of awed loathing and intrigued revulsion the blasted effigy inspired. “How did things go at the jail, Undnar?”

The Nord’s face hardened briefly — a fleeting expression, like a hawk’s shadow blotting out the sun — and then he smiled, chipped and relentlessly charming. “Do you doubt me, Snowberry?”

Vera shrugged. “I don’t doubt that you usually get what you want.”

Undnar nodded. “See, lass, the trick is to envision your goal very clearly ahead of time. And from there,” he waved his hand in the air, imitating the motion of a boat riding a wave, “it’s just a matter of keeping your eyes on the prize.”

Vera ignored the edifying advice. The tavern girl brought two plates — mushroom omelets, with slices of thick rye toast, generously slathered with herbed butter. Frabbi was busy serving the Vigilant of Stendarr, who had settled at a table in the opposite corner. Vera tried to keep her gaze from darting towards the unwelcome newcomer. “Could we have another plate? And a fork?”

“There were only two orders,” the blonde responded curtly, with a hurt look at Undnar, who was paying her no attention whatsoever. Instead, he watched Vera with affable, indulgent curiosity.

Run like hell away from him, kid, Vera thought at the maid in irritable sympathy. She shook her head, her hand landing on the girl’s wrist before she could stomp away. “No, no, just a plate and a fork.”

The maid returned with a passably clean plate, which Vera took with a quick “thank you.” She set her jaw against the sudden bubble of deafening silence that encapsulated their little table. Painstakingly, demonstratively, she divided her portion in half. And then she passed the plate with half of her breakfast to Sero.

The Dunmer took the food with an inscrutable expression, but offered no commentary.

Undnar glanced at the merc. “Generous soul, our Snowberry — isn’t she, sellsword?” Vera forced herself not to shrink back. She bit into her bread, and chewed, not tasting anything. For the briefest of moments, the Mad Nord had looked utterly terrifying. “How did you enjoy your visit to the temple, by the by? A true marvel, isn’t it?”

Sero speared a mushroom with his fork. “Curious place,” he shrugged. His voice remained carefully neutral. “I would have expected tighter security.”

If Undnar noticed the redirecting bait, he chose to ignore it. “But the priestesses, you cheerless killjoy, the priestesses! To die for, aren’t they?”

The bread stuck in Vera’s throat. She forced it down in a painful swallow. Soulless sheepfucking asshole, she thought. The eggs suddenly looked as unappetizing as a bloated corpse. She chanced a look at Sero, but, to his credit, the merc wasn’t so easily baited either.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he trailed, the slightest trace of mockery between the words. He cut into the omelet with his fork and took a bite, his eyes closing briefly in pleasure.

Undnar heaved a dramatic sigh, scratched his beard, and returned his attention to Vera. “Well, Snowberry, I’m at a loss. Solve this mystery for me, will you? I send this ungrateful tree stump of a Dunmer to the Temple of the Goddess of Beauty, on some flimsy excuse — yes, yes, stay your lovely eyes from expanding to the size of saucers, lest I drown in their beguiling green depths. I certainly didn’t doubt that you could accomplish your quest without his help, resourceful lass that you are. And what do I get? My generous gift swept aside like so many crumbs.” He approximated despondency with a sorrowful shake of his head. “I am beginning to think that my associate’s sword might be pointed in the wrong direction. What make you of this? What does your feminine wisdom suggest on this matter?”

Vera set her fork aside, carefully, so as not to stab the the accursed Nord in the eye with it. “So Muiri and Bothela are out of jail?”

Undnar’s interlaced his fingers on his stomach — the contents of his plate had somehow managed to migrate into the aforementioned stomach’s depths, though he had never stopped talking. He leaned against the back of his chair and watched her for a few beats, holding the pause. “Naturally, they’re out of jail. Snowberry…” he drawled, his eyes still fixed on her. “Never doubt that I always get what I came for. But since you’re in no mood for a friendly conversation at the moment — though who could blame you, since the fate of your associates hangs in the balance — let us return to business. If you two are quite finished with stuffing your maws, may I suggest we retire to my room, away from the prying eyes of that Vigilant in the corner you’ve been trying not to ogle during our palaver?” He leaned forward. “Tell me, lass, is it the robes?”

Vera clasped the statue tighter. “Are they back to the apothecary?”

Undnar shrugged. “Where else would they go?” He stood and, without waiting, ambled off towards the corridor that led to the more expensive, long-term quarters the Silver Blood Inn provided.

Before Vera could follow, the Dunmer’s hand closed around her wrist. “What did you do, hlakhes?” he asked quietly, his eyes slightly unfocused, as if he was trying to peer through an opaque pane of glass. Whatever he saw, it brought a puzzled frown. “Tell me you didn’t do anything stupid.”

“Don’t worry.” Vera swallowed. “If it ends up going south, I’ll tell him I stole your mixture. I won’t implicate you.”

He gave her a sharp look, his hold on her arm tightening. “That’s... not how this works, partner.” He released her wrist. “Go.” And then, after a brief hesitation, “I’ve got your back.”

~~~

The room Undnar occupied was a dazzling mess of finery and filth. An enormous bed, covered in furs, blankets, and tousled sheets loomed in the center like a dais. The cabinets and all the furniture were exclusively Dwemer — brass and bronze, not a trace of rough-hewn, rustic wood. A collection of empty bottles, crusty plates, and dirty flagons lined almost every available surface. If the Mad Nord made use of the staff to get the place clean, he clearly did so sparingly. Either that, or he was the worst tenant the Silver Blood Inn had ever seen.

Sero leaned against the wall by the entrance, after shutting the door behind them.

Undnar plonked down on the bed and patted the seat next to him. Vera stood her ground. She could still feel the itchy, curious glances boring into her back as she left the main hall — considering the Nord’s regular escapades, she didn’t want to think what sort of mental image the remaining tavern dwellers would carry into their afternoons. Still, she wasn’t coming anywhere near that bed if she could help it.

“Let’s take a look at this little beauty. Give it here, lass.”

Vera unwrapped the statue and handed it over to the Nord. Her legs felt like rubber. Too late now, should’ve thought about what you were doing when you had the chance.

Undnar took the statue with both hands, reverently. “Ah. Isn’t she something?” He heaved a long, beatific sigh. Vera watched, at once fascinated and thoroughly revolted, as the Mad Bear stroked the golden figure — tenderly, like one might stroke a timid lover, as if he was cajoling it to relax into his touch.

And then he lifted the statue over the side of the bed and smashed it against the edge of the stone slab — like breaking an egg for an omelet.

Vera’s hand flew to her mouth, but the cry still escaped. The statue shattered with a hollow crack, spraying shards of plaster and gilt across the stones. Gold dust settled on her boots. Undnar wrapped his hand around the top of the effigy, Dibella’s indifferent, ecstatic face now sporting a tracery of fine fissures, and he yanked it apart the rest of the way, tearing the top half from the bottom half with a quick, twisting crunch. He flipped what remained upside down, before tapping it a few times against his palm. And, finally, with a blinding, avaricious grin, he lifted his hand.

It cradled an oblong black crystal.

“There,” he breathed. “Do you know how rare a find this is?”

Vera swallowed bile. Her stomach did an unpleasant flip, another bout of nausea gripping her entrails in an agonizing spasm. The room fell away — in that moment, she only had eyes for the strange gem. Just like Lovinar’s soul gem, but different on some fundamental level she couldn’t quite capture — functionally the same, but morphologically distinct.

“Now tell me, lass. How did you persuade the priestesses to part with such a treasure? Surely some tantalizing ritual must have been involved?” Beneath the display of crude, carnivorous interest — entirely fake — cold, aloof calculation.

Vera hesitated only briefly. “We nicked it.” All things being equal, don’t lie — and let the inferences fall as they may.

“And here I thought you weren’t the thieving type,” Undnar tutted with mock alarm.

“What is it?” Vera asked, before the Nord could press her for more information. The voice didn’t feel like it belonged to her. The odd sense of detachment — of watching herself float away, unmoored, caught on some gentle but irrevocable current — dissipated as quickly as it came. In its wake, it left a strange sort of clarity.

What manner of collector are you, you piece of shit?

“Never seen a black soul gem before, Snowberry? Not that this is just any old black soul gem, mind, but by your expression, I’d say you’re not familiar, hmm?”

In retrospect, that single negative head shake — almost cataonic fear translating into an inadvertently offered truth — likely saved her life.

Undnar smiled kindly — an indulgent mentor letting a particularly dense pupil off the hook — before tucking the gem into a pouch at his belt. “Well, perhaps that’s for the best.” He nodded sagely, in confirmation of his own evaluation. “No need to trouble yourself with the nitty gritty, eh? Now, much as I delight in your company, I’m sure you’re eager to assure yourself that your friends are safe and sound.” He stretched and glanced around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. “By the Divines, look at this pigsty! I have some cleaning to do, don’t I? I’m afraid that my manners are still not up to par, lass, for which I, of course, profusely apologize.” He stood. “Off you go, then. I’ll be calling on you when we require your services again.”

Vera turned on her heels without another word, but the sight of the Dunmer froze her in place. Sero stood in the same spot he had occupied earlier, but he was barely recognizable. He looked like he was holding himself upright through sheer determination and stubbornness. His face had gone ash-grey, his facial tattoos, the color of old wine, painfully stark against his pallor. Only his eyes remained the same vibrant red — and they were fastened on her, some impossible, convoluted question flashing in their depths before he looked away.

Vera stared at the door. Always put your mask on first. She ordered her legs to move. One step, then another. Rinse, repeat. And then, just as she was about to pass the merc, she caught his gaze again: a brief, studiously neutral glance, but enough time to mouth a silent “I got your back.”

She hoped he’d lipread well enough.

The door behind her shut with a weighty clank.

~~~

Bothela greeted her with a gasp and a fierce embrace. Cradled in the old woman’s arms, Vera finally broke into angry sobs, stifled against the herbalist’s musty robes. They shuffled in place in the middle of the apothecary — the mess remained, though now with signs of half-hearted cleaning efforts — clutching each other, struck speechless by the accumulation of too many things still left to say.

“Later,” Bothela offered dryly, wiping her eyes with a grimey sleeve. Her white hair hung around her face, ropey with dirt and sweat. Her left cheek bore a fading, yellow bruise.

Vera’s unfocused anger threatened to morph into howling, maddened wrath. She shoved the writhing, incandescent ball as far down as she could. “How’s Muiri?”

The alchemist shook her head. “Resting.” And then, with a tightened jaw, “She lost the child. Had that Nord of yours not swept in when he did...” She shook her head, once. “Gods Old and New preserve him. And you, for sending him our way.” The old woman turned abruptly. “Help me clean this mess, will you?”

Vera said nothing. This part, she understood perfectly well. Most times, it was kinder not to pry into the messy question of costs.

Amidst the broken shards of glass she was sweeping, Vera kept seeing scattered bits of plaster and gilt.

Undnar had always meant to break the statue — that much was clear. At least now, she understood why he had outsourced the task of obtaining it to her. If the Divines were actors in the world, in ways that were both tangible and immediate, then it would mean that the statue, once bestowed as a blessing, had become her charge. Hers to care for.

Her problem.

And now, it was in pieces, its heart resting in Undnar’s pouch.

Except that “Gabby,” whoever she really was, had allowed it. And not just allowed it — facilitated it.

Vera leaned on her broom and closed her eyes. She wanted it gone, she thought suddenly, with a brief, blinding flash of that detached clarity from earlier. She wanted to be free of it. Behind her, she could hear Bothela grumble quietly as she sorted through what remained of her ingredients.

And then, somewhere inside her, the lingering mental image of the door slamming shut when she had nudged the enchantment in the gem to its full expression. And her body’s physical response to it, like it had been trying to expel a foreign poison. She had closed that open-ended, polyphonic potential, and… what? She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had released something (or someone) in the process.

Some old physics term from one of the Encyclopedias floated into awareness, in her mother’s voice. Minimal energy expenditure. It had wanted to get there, as much as an inanimate object could be thought to have desires.

Was it, in fact, inanimate?

They burned through two fat beeswax candles before the apothecary looked decent. Half-way through the second candle, Bothela grabbed Vera’s wrist and marched them both to the back room. She didn’t spare the ransacked cabinet a single glance. Under an old woven rug, unsightly and discolored with age, a trapdoor led into a narrow crawl space. Books and documents had been thrown in pel-mel, as if whoever stored them was in a hurry. Vera sucked in a breath. She recognized her maps instantly. Two of her best ones had survived.

“I’m old, girl. Not stupid.” Instead of the usual sarcasm, only world-weary sorrow.

She couldn’t bring herself to go into the room she shared with Muiri until late in the night. Cowardice is perfectly human, Vee. Said’s voice. Soft-eyed, quiet Said, who was never harsh — and never, not once, cruel — and whose disappointment left cuts that festered.

Muiri was asleep. Vera lay on the remains of her mattress without bothering to undress.

Tomorrow, she would need to find a way to fix the bed.

Sleep claimed her quickly.

Chapter Text

The night brought unexpected frosts that resolved into a snowstorm by morning. The snow came down fast and thick, mottling the sky with white static, heavy wet flakes settling on the juniper tree outside the Hag’s Cure.

Markarth stilled.

Bothela had lost about half of her alchemical-grade glass, and Vera spent the predawn hours sorting the finer shards from more pedestrian debris. She had given up on sleep long before first light, throwing herself into the monotonous work of salvaging. The onslaught of nightmares had left her wrung out and heart-sick: her darkest and her dearest memories dredged up one after the other, disordered and bleeding into each other in awful chimeras. As if someone had yanked open a private drawer to root through its contents, picking up long-buried shards of her past only to toss them helter-skelter into a messy pile. Martha might have been able to offer a technical term for what was happening to her — or, at least, a pithy description. As it stood, the closest approximation Vera could muster was trauma vomit.

She carried the crate of cullet to Kerah’s market stall — carefully, so as not to slip on the slush-covered stones.

“Endon will melt what he can, but I won’t promise a quick turn-around. I can barely get him to sit down long enough to feed him a meal, what with how much he’s been traveling.” Kerah shivered and pulled her hide cloak tighter around her shoulders, her scowl trained at the snow-grey skies. “Another lean year, if this holds.”

Vera followed her gaze. She wiped away fat snowflakes that made their way under her hood. “The farms higher up might fare well enough. Not much in bloom yet, from what I’ve seen.”

“Divines willing, you’re right.” The jeweler sighed. “Tell Bothela I’ll be by later with some stew. I doubt I’ll get much foot traffic today with this weather, though an Imperial brought three silver necklaces from me this morning. Barely opened the stall, and there she was, eager as a skeever. Said it’s for her family back in Cyrodiil. Now there’s a climate that doesn’t try to kill you.”

Vera said her goodbyes, hunched her shoulders against the damp chill, and trudged back. A courier ran past her with a garbled “Makewayjarlbusiness,” almost knocking her off the stairs. She watched with grim satisfaction as he slipped on the last step and went sprawling, narrowly missing cracking his head on Ghorza’s armor bench.

“Careful, boy.” The smith paused in her work long enough to yank the courier to his feet by the scruff, like a mama bear righting a particularly clumsy cub. “Where’s the fire?”

The young Nord rubbed his bruised elbow. “Ran two horses to the ground getting here from Solitude — King Torygg’s dead, he is.”

“What?” Ghorza lowered her hammer. “How’d he manage that?”

“Ulfric Stormcloak shouted him apart. No time, gotta bring the news to the Jarl.” He bounded off towards the Keep.

Vera slowed down at the smithy.

“Guess you can tell Bothela to expect a busy year,” the Orsimer commented dryly. “If this doesn’t end up in an all-out war, I’ll eat my hammer.”

~~~

Over the next two days, Vera fixed the mattress the best she could, sewing the torn cloth with crude but sturdy stitches. The bed retained a lump in the center she couldn’t figure out how to smooth out.

Though not technically open for business, the apothecary pulsed with a steady stream of people. Lower town banded around Bothela and Muiri in a protective ring of hushed conversations and half-finished sentences, of skirted topics and significant looks traded over an ever-rising rampart of steaming clay pots full of stew, of dark rye loaves wrapped in kitchen towels, of fresh warbler eggs and homemade goat cheese, and more baked goods than any sane person could possibly eat in a month. Two miners from Left Hand — one Breton and one Orsimer — came in with a tentative knock, dragging snow over the threshold and muttering apologies. They shuffled in the hallway, grim-faced and grimy and wet from the weather, with two enormous sacks of underground mushrooms — unsorted, gathered quickly. Bothela clasped forearms with the Orc and hugged the Breton miner — and how was her little one, and had the arm healed all right?

Ghorza dropped by for “tea” — and a very long, very quiet chat with Bothela in the backroom. Afterwards, she spent an hour installing a new lock.

Muiri remained in bed, her back to the room. Mostly, she slept. She didn’t speak. Vera brought her simple broths, as well as the teas Bothela brewed. She reverse-engineered their alchemical contents the best she could, from Bothela’s sparse explanations — first, smooth muscle stimulators, to help expel the remains of the uterine lining, then strong-smelling ferrous concoctions to ward off anemia, then simpler healing tonics, to stave off infection and fix the residual damage. Muiri kept bleeding through the padding, but it was slowing down. The bucket of ash-lye solution turned pink from the dirty sheets, was changed, turned pink again.

Rinse, repeat.

The nightmares hounded Vera, spilling into her waking hours — in sweat-soaked tunics and achy limbs and muddled thinking for the first candle of the workday. She brewed her canis root tea strong, and, by day three, added a pinch of moon sugar. It blunted the sharp edges the dreams left in their wake. Bothela kept giving her odd looks, but chose not to pry.

On the fourth day, Vera stopped by the Silver Blood Inn. She had been avoiding it — the Hag’s Cure was so full of offered food they had started giving it away, so it wasn’t like she needed to purchase her meals — but Bothela sent her for three bottles of Kleppr’s Special Reserve (used for alchemical purposes rather than human consumption, but Vera didn’t share that little tidbit of information with the barkeep).

She grit her teeth as she crossed the threshold.

There was no trace of the Nord — or the Dunmer.

“Left two days ago on some urgent business.” Kleppr wiped the pewter funnel he’d been using to pour the alcohol before plugging the last bottle with a cork. “There’s a note for you. Check with my darling snake of a wife.” He pocketed the coins Vera gave him, his eyes narrowing in a canny look. “Won’t lie — I’m sorry to lose that Nord’s patronage, but I suppose he’ll be back soon enough, what with buying Kolskeggr with Pavo Attius. Guess those Forsworn the guards have spotted around there don’t intimidate them.”

Vera swallowed her shock. “Undnar bought Kolskeggr mine?” It was one of the only gold mines in the Reach.

“Half of it, anyway. That and Vlindrel Hall.” Kleppr shrugged. “Has shares in most of the mines out in the Pale, and all through the Rift, from what I hear. Guess he’s expanding.” He rested his elbows on the counter. “Say, are you and Undnar...” He trailed off and motioned at his ring finger.

“No,” Vera said quickly. “I just did a couple of jobs for him, nothing else.”

Kleppr nodded, hiding his pleasure at acquiring fresh gossip behind a solicitous mask.

~~~

Undnar and the merc had left her not one, but two folded notes — one on thick, creamy parchment, the other on crude birch bark paper. Vera pocketed both without opening them, against the itch to read the scrappier one right then and there.

She sat in the kitchen while Frabbi kneaded dough for an order of snowberry tostattas. Some kind of official banquet at the Keep, apparently.

“So they left two days ago?” The initial overwhelming wave of relief at learning of the Mad Bear’s departure had curdled into amorphous unease. Vera didn’t dare touch the other, more complicated emotion tied to the Dunmer’s absence with a ten foot pole. “Did Undnar say when he’d be back?”

Frabbi looked at her sympathetically. “Miss him, do you? You be careful now. I’ll tell you what I always tell my Hroki — men don’t value what they can get for free.”

Vera made a noncommittal noise. “It’s not like that.”

Frabbi nodded, clearly unconvinced. “Awful business, what happened to ‘Thela and that poor sweet Windhelm girl.” The two vertical lines between the older woman’s brows deepened. She flattened the ball of dough with an oiled rolling pin, putting too much force into her task. The dough kept tearing. “Those damned elves will get their comeuppance, you mark my words.”

Vera decided against pointing out that what had been done to Muiri and Bothela was carried out by city guards — Nords, not elves. Drawing attention to the finer nuances of Markarth’s racial hierarchies wasn’t going to score her any points. “Bothela will bounce back. I’m more worried about Muiri.”

Frabbi pinched her lips. “It’s true what they say, then? She was with child?”

At Vera’s affirmative nod, offered hesitantly, Frabbi sighed. “Lost my first, then my fourth. She’s a healthy girl, all in all, she’ll recover. You lot have enough firefood to keep the place nice and hot?”

“I’ll chop more if we run out.”

Frabbi wiped sweat from her forehead, leaving a smudge of flour across her brow. “For the best, if you ask me. Markarth ain’t no city to raise a child alone.”

“She wouldn’t have been raising it alone, but… yeah.” Vera finished the last dregs of her tea. “Thanks for the chat, Frabbi.”

~~~

“Interesting times we live in, Snowberry. Storm clouds roll over Skyrim, and a man must serve his Homeland with whatever tools the Divines saw fit to gift him with.

The winds of Fate call me away to Solitude, but dry your tears and do not pine, for I will return.

And when I do, you will explain why the property you obtained for me has been tinkered with. Fortunate that it lost none of its value for my purposes, but I would be lying (and I never lie) if I said that I was not mightily intrigued by the untapped potential of our anonymous meddler.

Sero assures me that you did nothing untoward, though I am beginning to suspect the joyless sellsword is no less immune to your charms than I am. Will you have us compete for your favor, I wonder?

And speaking of favors between devoted friends, I took upon myself to arrange for that Dwemer trinket to find its way to the Altmer mage you’ve been so interested in — along with a letter singing your praises and extolling your many virtues. No need to thank me: consider it a small investment into the future of our partnership.

Faithfully yours,

U.”

Bothela snored quietly, asleep in her armchair. The hearthfire pulled dark, distorted shadows from beneath the furniture. A log cracked like a distant gunshot. Vera watched the letter bloom into an orange flower, then curl on itself, then blacken and disintegrate into cinders.

One more cup of canis root tea, one more pinch of moon sugar. She smoothed out the other note on her knees, tilting it a bit so that the words caught the firelight.

“Vee, (though ‘outlander’ fits just as well, does it not?)

Riverwood seems peaceful, from what I hear. Windhelm is a wretched place, though a ship might take you to Solstheim, if you have the coin. Don’t bother with Cyrodiil — the border is a mess, and the brandy is foul — and steer clear of the Rift if you can help it. I trust I don’t need to council you against High Rock (even that Forsworn armor won’t do you much good there.)

Despite the ash, the city of Blacklight is still spectacular.

He’ll find you eventually, but it’ll buy you some time.

Mephala cloak you, hlakhes.

Teldryn.”

Chapter Text

A city of stone and ivy, grey and rain-drenched, blazes with the revelry of an Autumn festival. Above the blue cupola on the hill, the brilliant greens and reds of a rare aurora borealis blot out the stars. She watches the skies through the latticed window. At her back, the man stirs, the bed frame creaking under his weight. What name did he give her? It’s not like her to forget those fake little offerings, for referentiality’s sake, if nothing else — though all her evening visitors slip up, eventually, spilling inadvertent truths through weakened seams. Not the first time, necessarily, nor the second — but it’s rare for her not to get repeat visits. Parlor tricks, really, but she has a few skills besides the minimum requirements.

The pile of gold under her floorboards grows, quiet and unseen, like a weed.

Mostly, she gifts them with silence — not the awkward silence of coins traded for pleasure when you don’t know your way around that kind of exchange, nor the gauche abbreviated and saccharine verbiage that her colleagues feel the need to offer. She has been at this for some time, now, and she knows better. No, the other kind of silence. You know the one; ripe with its own emptiness, with the imperative to fill it. Not her imperative, of course. Words tumble into it like gold coins — clink clink clink — though not a single one of them is stamped with a recognizable profile. This kind of silence trades in other insignia.

She wears her amulet close to the skin.

A hesitation, silence on silence, black on black. Never for too long, mind. “Please, just …” — and a name, a real name, drops into her palm like a ruby.

“Come back to bed, lass,” the man says sleepily. “Aren’t you cold?”

Her bracelets jingle quietly in time with her laughter. “Cold feet, hot hearts, isn’t that what you Nords say?”

She turns to look at the man in her bed. She knows who he is, of course — everyone knows who he is, even with the beard designed to conceal his face, even with the request to keep the room dark, even with the commoner clothes. This is Skyrim, after all, and his likeness multiplies, staring at you from every tapestry.

She wonders how many times it will take for him to trade in his name — but such emotions are brought from an arrogance she has long since buried. She doesn’t need his name — she has it already.

“What’s the matter with you, girl?”

The wooden spatula clattered to the floor and Vera jerked upright. For a few painful seconds she had absolutely no idea where she was.

Bothela’s face floated into view, the tracery of tattoos twisting with her worried scowl. “I’ve seen a few oddities in my day, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen someone fall asleep while standing. Sit, before you collapse into the pot and spoil the mixture. Let me take a look.”

Vera complied, lowering herself into Bothela’s chair. She could feel the tendrils of the dream recede back into the shadows. Two — or was it three? — nights ago, it had felt like she had finally reached the bottom. The nightmares were petering out. She had even allowed herself some cautious optimism: whatever was turning her inside out was bound to run out of shit to dredge up eventually. She hadn’t been entirely wrong, either — the thing that had settled within her after she took it upon herself to mess with Undnar’s statue appeared to be finished with its nesting.

Then, it got worse. Now that it had made room for itself, it was starting to decorate — with memories that were distinctly not her own.

Weren’t they?

She watched absently as Bothela fussed over her, moving through the steps of the obligatory choreography of care — a wrist lifted, three digits pressing into the pulse points; then fingers under her jaw, feeling for nodules; then a wrinkly, liver-spotted hand at her brow, replaced with dry, papery lips — an odd, motherly gesture, checking for fever like her own mother had done when Vera was a little girl. A thumb, stretching her lower eyelid down. Stick out your tongue, child.

The old woman tutted, her eyebrows drawing in a puzzled frown. “How long since you slept? Properly slept, that is?”

“A week, give or take.”

It would take the Mad Nord and the Dunmer at least another week to get to Solitude, even if they hired a cart, or borrowed some horses from a courier relay. However much time in the city. Blue cupola. And then another two — maybe three — weeks to get back. She had time. Time to pack. Time to say her goodbyes, unless she opted for a clean break.

Cut it off quickly. Dima’s voice, a familiar, intimate ghost, offered a semblance of anchoring. That one was hers alone.

Bothela pinched her lips. “Morning nausea? Fatigue?”

“Not pregnant.” It came out oddly detached. Wasn’t she, though? After a fashion? In a manner of speaking, another kind of host, incubating something? A parasite, perhaps.

An odd, almost motherly feeling.

“Get your wits together, girl!”

Bothela’s sharp tone jolted Vera out of her numb stupor. She lifted her eyes and flinched. She could have dealt with anger easily enough — but the fear caught her off-guard. “They’re just nightmares, Bothela. They’ll pass. They always pass.”

The alchemist gave her a long, inscrutable look. “Nay, child. Those aren’t just nightmares.” Vera watched as the old woman went rummaging through the cupboard of ingredients. “Now, you will tell me exactly what happened with that Nord.”

~~~

She couldn’t, of course, and so Vera kept the explanations to a bare minimum. Not that the temptation hadn’t been there, but she squashed it, weighing every word with the meticulousness of a gem merchant. After the visit from the priestess the night before, all thoughts of an honest confession — of coming clean and asking Bothela for much needed advice — evaporated.

Vera couldn’t quite recall the priestess’s name — Jade, was it? Ruby? No. Something else. The woman had wandered into the apothecary, smelling of myrrh and liquor, a slow, practiced smile on her lips. “My, my…” she’d crooned, her eyes traveling over Vera with languid interest — that too, thoroughly rehearsed. On a different day, the flirting might have been amusing, and potentially educational. But the priestess wasn’t there for that.

There was a particular alchemical formula — finicky and difficult to make, according to Bothela’s quick explanation — that could help you find a dead body.

None of that had been shared openly, of course, not while the Dibella acolyte was there. The priestess simply asked for the potion by name, Bothela’s eyes widened, but only briefly, and coins changed hands. Ingredients were measured, water was boiled, deathbell flowers were concentrated into sticky tar, Kleppr’s Special Reserve was used to disinfect the alembic. The priestess came back, late at night, with the scent of myrrh and fresh snow on her expensive-looking mink cloak — a donation from a wealthy “patron,” Vera thought ungenerously — and carried the potion away with one last suggestive glance at no one in particular.

Muiri no longer bled, but she still didn’t speak.

The lump in the mattress remained.

The nightmares were no longer hers.

The next morning, the old woman pressed her, no longer willing to accept non-answers.

Vera relented, after a fashion. She had touched a strange gem.

Had it been black?

Yes. Well, a dark purple, really.

~~~

The Altmer came a little after dawn — a lanky fellow with a bored yet irascible expression on his bony face. Young, by Mer standards — much younger than Lovinar had been, anyway. Bothela motioned him to where Vera was stringing the last of the glowing mushrooms onto a length of twine, to hang over the mantle to dry.

Despite the permanent scowl, his touch was surprisingly gentle — a writer’s callus on the middle finger of his left hand, his digits stained permanently with blue-black ink. The veins on his forearms stood out, green rivers against golden skin.

He went through the same routine — pulse, lymph nodes, temperature — before his copper eyes drifted out of focus.

Alien.

He sat in a crouch by the chair Bothela had maneuvered Vera into.

“Soul poisoning,” he finally said. It was the first time his tone exhibited any trace of interest. “But…” He put his hand over her sternum and spread his fingers wide, his gaze trained on the floor, as if he was listening to a melody just beyond the threshold of hearing. “Curious case of it. When did you come into contact with the enchanted object?”

Vera shrugged. Every word was worth its weight in gold, wasn’t that what Nords said? Clink clink clink. “A week?”

The Altmer raised an eyebrow. “Why aren’t you raving mad? Or dead?”

Vera shrugged again. “Stubborn.”

He laughed, surprise quickly smothered under more puzzled irritation. At his side, Bothela muttered a caustic prayer to the Old Gods — or a curse, Vera wasn’t sure.

“Tell me exactly what you did.”

Careful. “I…” The silence was choking her from the inside. “It was…” It wanted to be released. “I think…” Get your wits together, you dumbass. “It was unstable,” she said finally.

Somehow, he nodded, understanding illuminating his features with the avidity of prospective discovery. “A double enchantment? No, no, that would… Hmm. More complex...” He stood up, paced the length of the shop.

“I don’t know what it was,” Vera said honestly — the first honest answer in a long string of lies, all lined up like mushrooms slowly shriveling under the rafters.

~~~

The undercity pulsed with an echoey beat — water, anvil, unimaginable machinery. Ovelayed over its tunnels and vaults was another city, a palimpsest Vera couldn’t shake off. Merchants peddled fish and wine, a smith and a fletcher argued over the cost of steel, a bard sang a haunting tune about warriors who turned into wolves, her voice tinkling with silver and soaring, soaring and circling like the wide-winged birds that glided over the turrets and cupolas and the slanted pillars of smoke from a hundred habitations.

“What’s this?”

The other Altmer — older, with a greying beard, trimmed closely, stooped over an enchanting table with angular awkwardness, as if his robes concealed a pair of folded wings. He looked at Vera with disinterest. He’s not really here, she thought abstractly, as Aicantar — the young Altmer’s name, she’d discovered — deposited her on a stone bench, amidst a pile of books.

So this was the mythical Calcelmo. Not how she’d imagined meeting the fellow — but her single-minded obsession seemed distant, the flickering of a crumbling lighthouse on some forgotten shore. Bells ring. The ships sail in, sailors and sickness. A woman meets her at the docks. She passes her a slip of parchment — no words exchanged, only a nod, and the outline of an amulet beneath brown robes.

Vera drifted back in the middle of a heated debate.

“She’s a very interesting case, Uncle. Please, I know-”

“Do I look like I have time for playing nursemaid to soul-addled strays, boy? Bring her to the priestesses, if you’re feeling compassionate, but-” “Uncle, all I ask is for you to take a look.”

The older Altmer heaved a long-suffering sigh. “If you’re still hoping to impress those fools in Winterhold into reconsidering your publication, I am telling you, you’re better off-”

“Please, Uncle. You’ll see what I mean if you just take five minutes…”

The fingers that prodded at her were cold, and not gentle in the slightest. Vera couldn’t muster the energy to care.

“How long?” the Altmer mage asked, in the same tone one might use to ask about an unwanted pregnancy.

“A week,” Vera said. Words were pebbles you threw down a well, to see what echoed back.

His eyes narrowed. “Now now, young lady, do strive to tell the truth if you expect me to help you. Not even the best enchanters I’ve known over my many years could survive this level of soul poisoning for an entire week. A day, two at the most, with proper care, and the right alchemical dampening. When did you attempt the disenchantment? Really, now?”

His features were almost dainty, Vera thought, and oddly human. “A week,” she said again.

Has it been that long?

Time is mostly a function of language, Vera, love. Martha’s voice harnessed her into a fleeting moment of clarity. She pounced on it. “I came in contact with a black soul gem. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it…” She swallowed. Quickly, now, before it slips. “It was… There was a bit in it that wasn’t supposed to be there. I released it.”

“Who trained you, young lady?”

“Lovinar. I think you knew him. Couldn’t call it training, though. Ran out of time.”

“Ah.” A long pause. “I see.” Whatever emotion went across the Altmer’s face in that moment was too opaque to read fully. Recognition tinged with sorrow, and maybe a trace of irritation, the kind that stems from a long association rife with disagreements. “Hold still. This will not be pleasant.”

~~~

Vera came to in her own bed. She tried to turn her head, but every movement was laced with pain.

She closed her eyes and prodded tentatively at the contours of the place within herself that had been occupied by her unwelcome passenger. A breath escaped her — relief, mixed with an odd sense of loss. That part of her now stood empty, like an abandoned lot. And, like an abandoned lot, bits and pieces of her old self — memories, emotions, scraps of associations — had begun to reknit over the evacuated landscape. It would take time, but she’d regrow over it.

Bothela sat by her bedside, a cup of tea cradled in her palms. “Now that you’re up,” the alchemist said curtly, “care to explain to me what manner of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into?” She took a sip and shifted on her chair, settling in for the long haul.

Leave. Pack, and get the hell out.

“While you mull it over, let me give you the good news.” Bothela’s tone remained as dry as old bones. “Looks like you can keep your coins. That Altmer codger was most emphatic about wanting to see you once you recovered your wits. ‘Never encountered anything like it,’ was his exact phrase. And seeing how he likely saved your life…”

She trailed off, but the trenchant edge had gone out of her, replaced with the quiet wonder of a long life lived across unexpected turns in the road.

Vera propped herself up on her elbows. “Bothela?” The silence stretched between them, punctuated by the crackling of logs in the fire and Muiri’s sleepy breathing. “I need your opinion on something.”

At length, the alchemist nodded. She stood, her hands on her back as she stretched with a wince, and walked out into the main room.

When she returned, Bothela carried two steaming cups of miriam tea. Vera accepted the offered drink. The dark cube of moon sugar at the bottom lost its crystalline structure and turned translucent, melting around the edges — smoothing out like a piece of amber.

“Backroom,” Bothela ordered. “Can you walk?”

Vera nodded, and got out of bed.

Chapter Text

In the beginning, we were five.

Not the real beginning, of course — not the one that had eroded into the ephemeral textures of a mirage, the amorphous dream of an improbable world, as unlikely as this new one. Vera remembered her early childhood in the way one might remember something you read once in a book with a torn-off cover. “Once upon a time, there was a world that thought it would last.”

She didn’t tell Bothela about her mother, about the sound of traffic, growing sparser every year, as gasoline prices skyrocketed. She didn’t tell her about the shortages, about the complicated etiquette of queuing behavior as shelves emptied out, slowly, sneakily, like boiling a mudcrab. “Food rations” were still a vestigial part of her childhood vocabulary, but the term had gone flavorless from disuse — it presupposed that there was an entity that was doing the rationing, and by the time Vera came to the tumultuous threshold of her teenage years, that entity had gone by the way of the dinosaurs (and pretty much everything else).

The Earth has cycled through many phases, her mother had explained, many times, when Vera was still very small. And then, again, when she was old enough to understand. “We just happened to be well-adapted to one rather anomalous period. Very short, in the grand scheme of things…”

“Who is ‘we,’ mama?”

By the time Vera had reached adulthood, by the time Split City split, by the time the Citadel eviscerated it, she had her answer.

In the beginning, we were five.

She told what she could, trying to domesticate all the untranslatables of accelerating collapse. The public announcements from the few remaining flickering screens extolling you to wash your hands multiple times a day, and to always boil water before drinking it, delivered in that calm, reassuringly competent — utterly loathsome — male voice. It only ever meant one thing: that another antibiotic had stopped working, and that you’d be burying friends and kin in the next epidemic — if you were “lucky.”

Some memories, for all their sweetness, eluded words — that first time she and Dima were paired up to clean off the crud from their little community’s rainwater barrels — back when there still were neighborhood communities. Before the raiders, before the influenza outbreak of ‘77. A year before the Great Burn. The water delivery system had been one of the last things to go. “This fucking bochka...” It had struck Dima as thoroughly hilarious — that his grandmother’s language on his lips, percolating from some long-forgotten childhood strata, would burst forth to capture so perfectly the indignity of scrubbing slimy muck from the recesses of ribbed plastic. Then, later, with their backs propped against the still-warm, sun-bleached flank of the now clean water collector, they passed the bottle of yeasty homebrew back and forth and imagined what the woman’s life might have been like, back in the “old world.” Dima remembered her only in disjointed scraps — raspberry jam; an old striped kitchen towel; gnarled hands with a scratched up wedding band that never came off, even after the person it stood for had passed. They had watched the skies darken, the flicker of some useless satellite drifting across the heavens. “Do you think the International Space Station is still floating up there?”

The gangs were easy to explain — she skipped over the crackle of gunfire and the whistling of bullets, but the mangled corpses, the muted thrum of fear, grown habitual, the need to stay on the move — all that belonged to a plausible vocabulary. She told Bothela about the first time she shot a man — though not the second, nor the third...

Vera looked up, startled by the sudden noise. Muiri was standing in the doorway, her haggard face solemn. She went to sit by the hearth, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders for added warmth. She said nothing, but her eyes were lucid and attentive.

Vera went on. Some parts were harder to force into a semblance of sense. Like Citadel sentries, shooting you with tranquilizers, and how do they keep their damn overcraft operational, Jules had asked, flummoxed — and deeply offended — by the manpower and technology and resources required. He’d once been an engineer. Someone has been planning this for a while.

Then, the Unworshipped. Martha’s heated debates with Said in the kitchen of their shared home. Whenever they moved, the kitchen had always been the first thing they set up.

“They’re an extension of Citadel propaganda, Said. Missionaries, if you will. Anything to keep the rest of us lab rats from rebelling.”

“Inordinately efficient, for propaganda.”

“‘A new species of human for a new time’” — she had waved her cigarette in irritation —“ they’re not the first to make that claim, as I’m sure you know, though they might well be the last.”

Said, thoughtful, always thoughtful, had taken an inordinate amount of time to answer — even by his standards. The flakes of instant coffee swirled in his cup. They’d made that single jar last for six months, and Vera still remembered the clink clink clink of his spoon against the chipped ceramic.

“Assuming that they are actually human.”

Martha had scoffed. “What else would they be?”

It wasn’t that bad, really, and even after the Citadel raided them, there had been many moments of... joy. Vera couldn’t find the words to capture the nature of that feeling. Small things. A tomato plant bearing fruit and that first juicy, tangy bite as she sank her teeth into the glossy red skin. Finding an old army stockpile miraculously untouched — canned peaches, beans, soup cubes: unimaginable wealth. Martha’s stories by stovelight. Jules and Said bickering over how to best install the solar battery they had salvaged. All five of them bursting into cheers and embracing each other when the electric teakettle reached the boiling point, for the first time in years: safe water, at the press of a button. Dima’s arms around her at night, when, after years of uncomplicated friendship, they had finally fallen into bed together. Martha’s morning grumpiness whenever they ran out of foraged chicoree. Vera’s growing collection of maps, first as a necessity, then as an artform. Talking about going West, planning for a better future.

In the beginning, we were five.

The end came quickly — all in the span of a year. Dima was first.

And then we were four.

Then Jules, driven mad by Said’s slowly deteriorating heart. His insane gambit to barter with a Citadel outpost for medicines and vitamins. Vera, with Dima’s rifle already strapped to her back and blind to anything other than her own howling loss, flat-out refused to provide back-up. “This is suicide, and I’m not abetting it! They’ll take everything you’re good for — anything that they can flesh-cycle. They’ll toss what’s left for the crows!” Jules, wild-eyed, shaking his head in denial. “That’s boogeyman stories we Splitters tell ourselves, Vee. They just want the antibodies. A bit of blood, that’s all. You’ll see.”

She had watched Jules’ denim jacket retreat down the empty street, and waited for him to come to his senses — waited even after he had disappeared out of view. She’d eventually followed, but it was too late by then. She never saw him again. Then, having to explain what had happened to Said and Martha — and staring into Said’s relentlessly compassionate eyes. “Cowardice is a perfectly human emotion, Vee.” She didn’t know whether he had meant her, or Jules, or himself — or something else entirely.

Perhaps, Jules did make it. One way or another, he never returned.

And then we were three.

Finding Said’s cot empty on a bright autumn morning, along with a note. “My Sisters, my heart is full of love, and thus it breaks. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

And then we were two.

Vera and Martha, fleeing Split City, at last. Small villages. The kindness of the few who remained. Trading stories of other places.

A long-distance trader had told them Edmonton was doing pretty well — no gangs, a government of sorts, hydroponics, an effective redistribution system, and no Citadels nearby. That night, she and Martha pored over Vera’s old maps, selecting the safest route.

Long road. Cold winter. Pneumonia.

Martha, the only one she got to bury.

And then there was no longer a ‘we.’

She had kept on course, moving from one small settlement to another, relying on the generosity of strangers. Then, one night, she had lost her way, the woods dark around her. The purple lights in the distance had been the only landmark.

Then, the bite of a tranq dart in her thigh.

She had no words for what had happened next, so Vera fell silent.

“How did you find yourself here, child?” Bothela prompted, with terrible gentleness.

Vera swallowed and, at length, found some new words.

A bloody altar. Entrails and severed limbs. Head pounding as if it had been split in two, but none of the blood hers. All around her, glassy-eyed faces staring in surprised horror.

Bothela refilled her cup with tepid tea, and Vera gulped it greedily, suddenly parched.

“It would seem that a group of conjurers summoned you here.”

Vera’s laughter burst from her throat like something cracked. “Well, they got the wrong address, then.”

Bothela sat quietly, mulling it over. “How long had they been dead?”

Vera shrugged. “Not long. An hour, maybe less.”

Bothela nodded. “Sounds to me like whatever they were trying to conjure did come through, after all. Right before you did.”

They sat in silence. Muiri stirred the fire in the hearth with a poker, releasing a volley of sparks into the chimney. Slowly, Vera allowed for the unacknowledged terror of potential culpability — what if it was her who had killed them? — to slough off like an old snake skin.

“Now, girl, tell me about this Undnar.”

Chapter Text

The tea had grown cold by the time Vera finished the rest of her tale. She had no idea what time it was — only the slight shift in the temperature of the air wafting through the ventilation shaft suggested that night had fallen, bringing with it more unwelcome spring frosts.

She sanitized the story, of course, as much for her own sake as for the safety of her friends — what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them, should shit hit the fan (as it inevitably tended to). She mentioned neither the Temple of Dibella, nor her entanglement with the merc. It had been enough to hint at the Mad Nord’s threat to oust her to the Thalmor to carry across the rotten core of the entire arrangement.

If Bothela felt disappointment at her knight in shining armor’s newly revealed tarnish, she showed none of it. Instead, the old woman picked up on some of the more flagrant narrative omissions, and promptly brought them into the conversation — much to Vera’s chagrin. “What about the Dunmer?” she asked, her voice studiously matter-of-fact.

Vera shifted, stretching her limbs. “What about him?” Her body felt like it was recovering from a fever — achy joints, tight muscles, an unidentifiable malaise across the collarbones that brought with it the unpleasant awareness of gravity.

“Just trying to suss out what you’re up against, girl.” Bothela’s lips closed over the unspoken remainder, leaving her utterance oddly lopsided. Her eyes sparkled with poorly concealed amusement, despite the worry lines that bracketed her mouth.

“I haven’t lost my head over him, if that’s what you’re implying.” Vera smoothed out a wince at her own caustic tone. At Bothela’s “hmm-hmm” — delivered with such supreme skepticism it was a miracle that it didn’t simply unravel the illusory nature of reality right then and there — Vera decided that redirecting might be the better tactic.

By then, Muiri’s expression was telegraphing rather keen curiosity. Shouldn’t you be in bed, recovering, Vera thought sourly, despite the overwhelming sense of relief at the young woman’s presence. If her shitshow of a life could distract the girl from her own hauntings, then perhaps it wasn’t all wasted air.

“Look…” She pinched the bridge of her nose — another headache was slowly gathering steam somewhere behind her eyes. “I think he might be an ally — on occasion, when it suits him. But I’m not stupid enough to think that he isn’t compromised by whatever keeps him at Undnar’s side.”

“Wouldn’t be the first man whose moral compass points to gold,” Bothela nodded, “but I’m guessing there’s more to it than just coin, hmm? Let me see that letter.”

Vera extracted the slip of paper from her pocket. She couldn’t quite articulate why she had kept it on her — and not burned it, like the potentially compromising evidence of quiet dissent among the ranks that it was, as far as Undnar was concerned, anyway.

Bothela unfolded the crinkled note. Muiri stood up, trailing the blanket in her wake, and stepped closer to take a peek over the alchemist’s shoulder.

“Well, then.” Bothela glanced up from the paper, and Vera decided she didn’t like the old woman’s knowing squint one little bit. “Dubious advice, if you ask me. More so if you think there’s a chance his employer saw him scribbling it. But, at least, he had the wits to keep his cock out of his council — I’ll give him that much.”

Vera managed an irritated snort, though the relief of hearing Muiri’s quiet giggle more than made up for her annoyance at Bothela’s nosy ribbing. “What’s dubious about the advice? Even if Undnar did get wind of the message…” She stopped abruptly, swallowing the sudden jolt of fear. Sero’s letter hadn’t been sealed — nothing would have stopped the Mad Bear from sweet-talking Frabbi into letting him take a look. If so, then Riverwood was out, as was Windhelm. Especially if the Dunmer had planned for this eventuality — and the letter was in fact a hidden message as to where not to go...

One way or another, if Undnar knew about the missive, chances were he would retaliate, and Vera didn’t want to think about what this might spell for the merc. The memory of Sero’s swollen face and bloodied lip floated up readily enough — as did, through clouds of nightshade smoke, the flash of smothered fear she had glimpsed at the Temple of Dibella.

Fuck. With any luck, Undnar would limit himself to nothing more nefarious than withholding food and flouting his bedroom conquests. Asshole, sure, but pragmatic asshole — surely, he wouldn’t want to compromise an asset out of sheer spite?

In any event, Sero was right: whether the Mad Nord knew about the letter or not, he’d likely expect her to run — and if so, he’d find her eventually. How far did his tentacles extend? Not the Reach — he’d been new to the area, that was clear enough — but Kleppr had mentioned the Rift, and the Pale, and that wasn’t even counting the more prominent cities.

What had Undnar said? “Widely known in small circles.”

It wasn’t just gold that made up his wealth — it was the social network. And as with any social network worth its salt… A courier with a letter containing a request to “watch out” for someone new — say, a “Breton female, thirties, black hair, green eyes, small stature, horizontal scar across the bridge of the nose” — would move quickly: fresh horses at every relay, free room and board, effective immunity from the various factions that patrolled the roads. Even some of the bandit gangs, from what Vera had overheard in the Inn, were reluctant to rob the messengers: bandit chiefs had beloved grandmothers too — out there, somewhere, digging in the dirt of their vegetable plots, pickling white caps for the winter, waiting for rockjoint to take them...

“Poor advice, as I said,” Bothela confirmed, reading Vera’s expression. “And with that tundra-cotton-for-brains Ulfric Stormcloak killing the High King... War’s a-coming, child. The roads weren’t safe then, and they sure won’t be safe now.” She clucked in fond disapproval. “Not that I’d expect you to keep to the roads, wildling that you are.”

Vera shifted in her chair. The space between her shoulder blades, where Dima’s rifle used to hang, prickled with unease.

The fire in the hearth had turned to cinders. They were going to need more firewood. And she still hadn’t fletched new arrows, nor availed herself of a replacement quiver.

“Is it true?” Muiri asked suddenly. A light blush had crept across her cheeks. “I… I overheard Hroki mention it, when she brought the clean sheets Frabbi sent over. Undnar plans on marrying you? I saw that amulet around his neck...”

Vera made a face. “He uses it as a decoy, I think. I suppose it would’ve worked better if I actually coveted his wealth. Or if I had a reputation to worry about.”

“Mind yourself, now” Bothela tutted. “A reputation’s not an alembic — doesn’t clean as well, not even with that dragon piss Kleppr claims is brandy.”

Vera chuckled in vague self-irony. “Honestly, I’m more worried that some enterprising Vigilant might try to send me back to where I came from. With my luck, I’ll end up in Oblivion.”

Bothela’s dry cackles were a tinge tense, but not altogether uneasy — and Vera allowed herself an answering smile before continuing. “But about Undnar, it’s not the first time he’s pulled this, based on what Teldryn mentioned —”

“Oh, it’s Teldryn, is it?” Bothela pinched her lips in suppressed amusement, but her expression sobered quickly. “I admit, when that Nord bailed us out, I’d thought he might be trying to make a favorable impression on you. Should’ve known it was more complicated.” She sighed. “Nothing sorrier than an old woman’s optimism, hmm?”

Before Vera could respond, Muiri cleared her throat and fidgeted, worrying the edges of her blanket. Against the dark wool, her fingers looked too thin and too pale, the nail beds shining bluish-grey in the dim candlelight.

“When I was still in Windhelm…” She trailed off, before gathering herself up and forging on. “When I was with Alain, he made all kinds of promises. Said he wanted to marry me — that he was planning a journey to Riften to make all the arrangements, that he already had a house he was on the verge of purchasing, so that we’d have a place to start a... ” She stopped and tightened the blanket over her shoulders; a flimsy cloak against the chill of memory. When she resumed, her words were bitter as bile. “He asked me to keep it a secret — the marriage plans, the house in Riften, all the other pretty lies he told me. And I, fool that I was, did as he bid me.”

“Why?” Vera asked, more rhetorically than anything else — she had a good sense of what the answer might be.

“Because I loved him.” Muiri’s eyes were dark with the sediment of that past sentiment, almost all of it corrupted to acrid hatred. “And I suppose because I’ve always thought that the Gods abhor a braggart.”

“The Gods abhor an oathbreaker more, child,” Bothela said irritably, before turning her gaze on Vera. “Muiri’s right. Even if that Nord fears no retribution from the Mother for using her blessings in ill-faith, this is still Markarth. That manner of scheme to make a woman dance to your flute might work in Windhelm or Solitude, but here, a man’s only as good as the strength of his word — and Mara’s Knot is no Dibellan token, not something you slip into your bedmate’s pocket and hope they keep mum about it.” She paused, ruminating. “As long as you remain here, you can harness this to your advantage.” The old woman leaned forward, her eyes sparkling with uncharacteristic fierceness. ”And before you tell me that Markarth’s a cruel place — you wouldn’t want a sweet-natured dog to guard your sheep, now would you?”

~~~

“Now, you must understand that this particular device is untested, my dear, but I am reasonably sure it should work this time.” A tiny white-purple spark flickered between the mage’s index and thumb. He grumbled something unflattering about Markarth’s moisture problem — the euphemism of the era, considering they were sitting on top of an underground river — before he wiped his hand on his robes and got ready to repeat the procedure.

Vera braced herself. During previous enactments of this particular misbegotten experiment, she’d narrowly missed being blown across the cavern the two Altmer insisted on calling their “laboratory” by a shockwave from the rejiggered Dwemer apparatus that Calcelmo — whom she had privately rechristened to “Victor” in honor of the eponymous doctor from one of Martha’s favorite stories — insisted on using to “diagnose” the “exact nature” of Vera’s “most irregular soul profile.” The only reason she came out of that without broken limbs was Aicantar’s timely ward.

A week had passed since her nocturnal confessions in the apothecary. A week that brought her that much closer to Undnar’s likely return. There was still time to bolt, but it was slipping through her fingers.

It had been easy — all too easy — to let Bothela sway her into biding her time. And it hadn’t been too difficult to get the two Altmer researchers to take an interest in her. Not as an apprentice, as she had once hoped, and not as a helper or hired hand — but as a lab rat, she was apparently invaluable.

Her luck, twisted though it was, had held, and Calcelmo had failed to make the connection between Undnar’s recommendation letter and “that Breton girl with the soul anomaly” — which was how he tended to refer to her, whether Vera was within earshot or not. She had spotted the missive on the mage’s alchemy table — Undnar’s bold, broad handwriting sending a chill of recognition down her spine. She felt a bitter sort of satisfaction at the fact that the letter now sported an array of ring-shaped stains, after finding a new life as a coaster for Calcelmo’s neverending string of half-finished cups of tea. Considering how the Altmer treated most of the correspondence with no direct pertinence to his object of study, Vera wasn’t even sure he’d read it. Atop the letter, a Dwemer war axe lay, discarded and forgotten. “More dead ends,” the mage had muttered, tugging at his short beard. “Notice the craftsmanship on the hilt, nephew. Typical late Merethic era — too early for our purposes, though it might be worth including into the collection, I suppose.”

Vera was jolted out of her reverie by the asthmatic wheezing of Calcelmo’s diagnostic contraption. The mage gave her a tight smile that was probably meant to be reassuring, but only arrived at not overly concerned. “Please strive not to fidget, young lady. This is a very delicate measuring procedure, and any interference will preclude accurate results.”

“Master Calcelmo,” Vera asked in the most deferential experimental organism voice she could muster, “why does Dwemer technology incorporate soul gems? What were they used for?”

It hadn’t taken long to realize that in order to harness the Altmer’s attention, a sentence had to include a reference to the Dwemer. And, from there, it was just a matter of triangulating what she wanted to learn with what he wanted to talk about.

“Ah, yes, well...” the mage nodded distractedly before funneling a thin stream of electricity into the accursed apparatus. The contraption sputtered and belched a thin stream of steam. Calcelmo managed not to swear — though he looked sorely tempted. “Best we can tell, the morpholiths are used as rudimentary hypergonal media mimicking a short-distance transliminal connection on an enclosed loop, but only to the source of the protocol, which naturally restricts their agency to a predetermined area, with no possibility of transpontine circumpenetration, as you can imagine. It is a clever deployment of the natural properties of morpholiths, though not strictly speaking necessary. A widespread practice amongst the Dwemer in this part of Tamriel…” He looked up at Vera and heaved a resigned sigh. “Oh, never mind all that, my dear, just hold still, will you?”

Over the past week, Vera had pestered Aicantar for any book on enchantment and soul gems he was willing to part with. Her frantic, frustratingly slow reading — and ensuing sleep deprivation — brought more questions than answers, but it did have the merit of affording her a new vocabulary. Enough to approximate a rough translation for Calcelmo’s jargon. “So… the soul gem is what makes the machines follow a script?” she asked quickly, before the mage could brush her off into the muteness of test subjecthood. “Does the gem have to contain an actual soul?”

“Information, my dear. It must contain information. No sudden moves, please, and look into the light...”

The focal crystal at the center of the device emitted a blinding ray, but Vera forced herself not to squint. To distract herself, she counted, slowly — one, two, three… On previous occasions, the thing had gone on the fritz at five.

“Very good, very good, just a little bit longer… Aha!” The light flickered out abruptly, replaced with Calcelmo pleased beaming. “How very interesting. I must note this down…”

“Well?” It took a monumental effort of will not to throttle the bastard and shake him into a semblance of human rapport — futile though the attempt might be.

“What do you mean, ‘well’? It’s quite obvious, really...” Calcelmo dipped his quill into the inkwell, and dribbled black splotches across the parchment in his eagerness to write down his observation. “I had assumed this was the problem, but I wanted to verify. You, my dear, have no recognizable soul.”

He went on scribbling.

“Excuse me?” Vera said, for lack of anything more intelligent.

“I’ve always thought the soul dichotomy might have outliers, but never believed… Well! This might even make for a decent monograph — no need to waste it on those idiots in Winterhold, of course, but…” Calcelmo looked up from his notes. “Tell me, my dear… and forgive the rather delicate question, but it is most imperative that I receive an answer, in the interest of science, you understand. Do you consider yourself sentient?”

Chapter Text

Another week had slipped by — spent in more dubious experiments, which lent precious little understanding about her condition. Despite Calcelmo’s obsessive focus, he had offered no new insights on how one might manipulate the morpholiths and their contents beyond sticking them into ever more complicated Dwemer contraptions, and watching the damn things go haywire at their encounter with Vera’s particular “soul anomaly.” The more she eluded a neat, orderly explanation, the more Calcelmo dug in his heels. Her anxiety at Undnar’s inexorably approaching return was starting to pale in light of the Altmer’s ever more questionable research methods — at this rate, it was just a matter of time before another one of his “interesting malfunction, my dear, do hold still while I write this down” finally did her in.

The previous morning, Aicantar had attempted a new approach. “Why not test the Arkay hypothesis, Uncle?” he’d asked, clearly sick of having to conjure complex wards to keep Vera from ending up with her insides on the outside. “A blessing of Arkay might-”

“No, no, no. Leave the Divines out of this, nephew. I am so close to a much more elegant theory — I can just feel it — and it certainly won’t do to risk irreversibly altering a perfectly serviceable specimen...”

The remnants of the electricity burn on her forearm still smarted despite the healing tonics, and Vera had considered pointing out that the “specimen” wouldn’t stay “perfectly serviceable” for much longer.

Instead, she’d held her tongue.

That evening, after Calcelmo had retired to his quarters in the Dwemer museum, Aicantar had offered to share his dinner — with a mumbled “the least I can do,” followed by an awkward “for services rendered,” and then a few other studiously formal noises of gratitude which he stuttered through until Vera took pity and accepted the invitation.

They sat at the edge of the Dwemer pavilion at the back of the cavern, with their feet dangling over the rushing water below. They shared a modest meal of hard cheese, barley bread, and red village wine — the vintage tart and tannic, but with an underlying hint of cloudberries, like the promise of summer.

It had taken Aicantar two glasses to broach the topic. “My uncle can be somewhat...” He rubbed his forehead, where a habit of questioning his certainties had etched his brow with two vertical creases.

Vera waited him out.

“Let us be frank, I...” He took a deep breath. A tawny flush had crept across his cheekbones. “You aren’t a creature,” he blurted out, finally.

Vera let out an exhale. It wasn’t that she had expected a different kind of confession, exactly — considering her status of guinea pig, not to mention her fabricated, though no less disreputable, Breton lineage. Aicantar and Calcelmo weren’t Thalmor, but it hadn’t taken her too long to realize that Altmer racial tics about “poorer stock” ran deep. Still, the revelation that Aicantar’s discomfort wasn’t caused by misplaced infatuation brought relief — she wasn’t prepared to wade through that kind of awkward conversation.

“Aren’t we all?” She’d aimed her voice at a lightheartedness she didn’t feel. “Creatures, I mean? After a fashion, anyway?”

Aicantar gave her an odd look before deciding to interpret her statement as an attempt at humor. He huffed a reluctant chuckle. “It’s…” he cleared his throat, collecting himself, “... very gracious of you to make light of it, instead of taking offense, considering what my uncle has been putting you through. I assure you, he isn’t normally quite this...” He waved his goblet of wine by way of a rejoinder.

“Single-minded?” Vera offered.

He nodded, grasping at the extended euphemism. “You’re here because you want to learn about enchantment, correct?” He managed a smile, on firmer ground now that the embarrassing part of the conversation was behind them.

“I do. But I suppose I’ll take what I can get.”

She looked away, her gaze trailing over the dark waters below. The memory of another conversation echoed in her mind, unbidden and unwelcome — a flash of white teeth in the dark; angular features flame-lit in sharp contrast; a raspy drawl, like smoke and velvet.

Focus, you fool. She took a sip of wine, in a bid to wash away a pang of something she didn’t want to dwell on. The last thing she needed was for the Dunmer to join the rest of her ghostly retinue. He’d said his goodbyes, hadn’t he?

“It’s been a number of years since I last traveled to Falkreath,” Aicantar was saying, “but I’d wager Runil is still there, tending to that awful graveyard. He’s better known for his skill in conjuration, but he’s written a few well-respected theoretical works on enchantment in his day...” The Altmer lifted the bottle and topped off her glass with an alchemist’s precision. “He also happens to be a priest of Arkay.”

He allowed for the implication to hang in the air.

It was simple, really. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Calcelmo could not be persuaded that Vera possessed what the locals called a “black soul” — put bluntly, that she was “human” (or Mer, or Orsimer, or whoever else occupied the top of the food chain in her new world.) He had gone through a list of theories as long as her arm about where that left her — a strange species of draemora; a unique Dwemer automaton; a very sophisticated necromantic construct; a monstrous congenital anomaly — and an array of other oddities, each one more outlandish than the next, and not a single one of them allowing for full-fledged sentience. Expedient hypotheses for ethically flexible experimentation, she supposed.

Aicantar’s explanation was simpler: somehow, despite being human, Arkay’s blessing had bypassed her. No such occurrence had ever been recorded, of course — Aicantar had been painstaking in his emphasis — but from the point of view of formal logic, it was a possibility.

A priest of Arkay might be able to remedy that. They both knew that it would be going against his uncle’s wishes, so they said nothing.

Still, Vera had stuck around, fully aware that she was dragging her feet, and unable to pinpoint why. She let another few days pass — fletching arrows; bargaining with the Khajiit for maps and a new quiver; foraging for frost miriam, which seemed perpetually in short supply now that the birthing season was upon them. “Sun’s Rest babies,” Bothela had grumbled in exasperation.

And then, two days later, Banning had ambled into the apothecary to place his order of “canine stimulants.”

~~~

“Falkreath? That’ll be at least two weeks if you keep to the main thoroughfare. No telling how long if you go off-road, considering that map of yours. Them cats fleeced you, lass.” The ranger leaned on the counter next to Vera, but he aimed his easy smile at Muiri — clearly fishing for an answering sign of amusement for his efforts.

Might wanna take it slow, buddy, Vera thought in amused annoyance. It wasn’t that Banning lacked in gruff charm — but Muiri was going to need time before the ranger’s poorly concealed amorous intentions got him anywhere.

Then again, he had a point — about her knowledge of the terrain, anyway. Her own map extended as far as Dushnikh Yal, but further east, it was rudimentary — only main roads and a few settlements, a farm or two, a couple of mountain passes that should have been free of snow by spring but probably weren’t — and then, the borders of Falkreath hold, and blank space beyond them. Even the scant information she did have had been copied from the maps she had purchased from the Khajiit caravaneers (for an arm and a leg and entirely too many stamina potions, which Bothela had doled out with a great deal of grousing). No guarantee of accuracy, considering the Khajiit had stayed put, waiting out the weather.

“If I were you, I’d delay until the beginning of Second Seed before venturing out that way.” Banning’s eyes darted to Muiri again. “This time of year, it’ll be mud to the eyeballs, and spriggan pollen.”

That last bit of intel got the apprentice alchemist to look up from the assortment of bottles she was carefully labeling. “I’ve only seen spriggans once.” She shuddered, a bit demonstratively. Well, then. Perhaps not too early for courtship after all. “To be honest, they terrify me. What are they like when they pollinate?”

“Madder than a flea in Sheogorah’s beard, and vicious as can be,” Banning offered, straightening his shoulders and rolling his neck — to the desired effect, judging by Muiri’s light blush and quickly averted gaze.

“You must know the area quite well.” Vera let the unspoken request dangle — no sense in wasting an opportunity to kill two pigeons with one stone.

Banning took the bait — hook, line, and sinker. Vera quickly jotted down his explanations, adding details to her map as the ranger paraded his scouting expertise. Muiri listened with rapt attention, momentarily forgetting her task.

“Wait until these frosts ease, at least,” the ranger counseled.

Vera said nothing.

“Will you be ordering anything?” Muiri redirected. “If you’re here to visit with Bothela, she’ll be back in half-a-candle.”

Banning rubbed the back of his head. “Was hoping for a bit of a special order, to tell you the truth, but I guess it won’t make much of a difference, at this point...”

~~~

Muiri was back to mixing potions — still exhausted, but determined and radiant with a quiet, bittersweet happiness, now that she didn’t have to worry about harming the fetus with poison work.

The ranger was back. Muiri unfolded the slip of paper he had passed her. “Planning a hunt?” she asked.

Banning lowered his voice. “You could say that.”

Vera looked up from her task of sorting nirnroot. The plants were still fresh, and therefore noisy — she had to strain her ears to overhear the kennel master’s conspiratorial whisper.

“Trouble at the Temple of Dibella, if you can believe it.”

“Oh. Surely, not...” Muiri’s eyes had widened in doe-eyed surprise.

Vera watched Banning’s expression morph from uneasy to tender, but when he spoke again, his face had gone grim. “Not that I think my boys can do anything at this stage. Been too long. Still, bad omen, if you ask me.”

~~~

Bothela turned her back to the alchemy station and wiped her hands on her apron, adding another burgundy stain to the threadbare fabric before setting the basin of powdered alkanet root on the counter. She’d been oddly silent throughout the evening.

“Only time you’d give a dog a preparation containing human heart and vampire dust is if you’re looking for a body, and the trail’s gone cold.” The old woman’s face was unreadable behind the tattoos. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you now?”

Through the memory of cloying nightshade incense, a door slammed shut on a silence that traded in other insignia.

Vera shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of.”

After both Bothela and Muiri had gone to bed, she restacked the fire. She set a slow venison stew to simmer in the pot — to be ready by morning. She added fresh flowers and a gold coin to the little Zenithar shrine in the corner of the apothecary.

Then, she packed her gear.

She was on the road before first light.

Chapter Text

The sentry fires of Dushnikh Yal floated out of the milky mist right before nightfall on the second day of her journey, and Vera breathed a sigh of relief. Just a little bit more, then she could rest.

She’d kept away from the main roads, choosing instead to hike through the mountainous terrain to the east of Markarth — a more direct route, as the crow flies. The first night, she had climbed hand over hand to the top of a rocky summit, herded there by a pack of wolves, until, out of immediate reach of their fangs and with her heart beating a maddened tattoo, she braced her knee against a boulder and drew her bow, squinting into the darkness. “Know what, Demon Chops? I’d trade you five points for a hit of that look-at-the-pretty-lights mixture right about-” she let the arrow fly “-now.” Snarling, and the flat thwack of the arrow tip against stone. She nocked another arrow. This time, a canine yelp announced that her aim had been true. The other wolves decamped, cutting their losses.

Smart bastards.

She’d stayed on the narrow plateau for the night, shivering in a northern wind that kept smothering her meager campfire.

The next day brought rains, then, towards the evening, sleet. She slipped down the muddy slopes, her armor filthy and her fingers and toes aching with cold. It’d hurt worse when she finally got herself somewhere where she could thaw, but until then, the numbness carried her forward.

The Orsimer lookout greeted her with reserved hostility — which was infinitely better than an arrow through the eye, as far as Vera was concerned — but the man summoned Gharol, and, after a long, evaluating glare, the blacksmith recognized her. Vera’d only made the trip to the stronghold once before, at Bothela’s behest, to trade fire salts and smithing potions for bear tallow and sulphur. And news — the real currency of many of her local wanderings.

“You’re not quite as puny as I remember, outlander,” Gharol said from the top of the palisade.

“Been eating my greens,” Vera grumbled, drawing her cloak tighter around her shoulders and grimacing in acrimonious humor at the part of her quip that wasn’t a joke. “I’ll trade you the news of the latest ore prices for your sentries’ vigilance. And if you want to hear about kinsmen in Markarth and Karthwasten, I’ll throw that in exchange for some dry firewood.”

She wasn’t going to gain entrance, of course — but setting up her camp in the shadow of the palisade, with the Orsimer patrols keeping an eye out for intruders and beasts, would afford a night of relative safety. That is, if the Orcs themselves didn’t try anything funny.

Gharol’s lips stretched in a scowl, but she nodded. The ore prices by themselves would’ve been enough, probably — Markarth resellers liked to exploit the strongholds’ isolation to lowball the Orsimer merchants, when they could get away with it. Risky business, unless you enjoyed having a mace applied to your skull, but then again, blood and gold have always had a complementary relationship, as far as Vera could tell.

“One night, outlander. You may set up on the southern side, by the creek.”

~~~

Morning greeted her with a layer of frost on the grass, but the rising sun’s crimson rays promised warmth. Vera got back on the road after chugging down her awful concoction of canis root tea, seasoned with salt, barley flour, and rendered bear fat. Foul, but it packed a caloric punch, and if you could trick your brain into classifying it as soup, it wasn’t so bad. She didn’t want to waste time on hunting for as long as she could help it.

She’d not made a secret of where she was going — it wouldn’t take the Mad Nord too many questions to arrive at an answer, should he inquire about her whereabouts. She hoped that the gambit would work — that giving him an illusion of control would keep him from tightening the net. Still — the faster she covered the distance, the better.

The leather of her new quiver creaked pleasantly at her hip; the Khajiit craftsmanship ornamented with heat-blackened arabesques that mimicked sands swirling in desert winds. She kept an eye out for wolf and bear droppings, avoiding the beasts that had deposited them when she could, and taking refuge in trees or on cliffs when she couldn’t, to pick them off from relative safety. In early spring, the local wildlife was lean and hungry.

She cooked what she killed, and left what she couldn’t use for fellow creatures. A russet fox had taken to trailing her, skittish and scrawny, but too starved to stray far.

By the seventh day of her journey, the avian silhouettes of Nordic ruins sent her north, skirting around the spot on her map labeled “Lost Valley Redoubt.” She still recalled the Khajiit’s flattened ears. “The mountains of this cold land conceal many dangers. This one would recommend keeping to the highways.”

The caravaneer’s recommendation notwithstanding, the thoroughfare came with its own brand of unpleasantness. Putting the Forsworn encampment firmly out of view brought her too close to the main road, and Vera almost stumbled upon a group of suspicious pseudo-Imperials wearing poorly fitting armor — she dove into the underbrush at the last minute, and waited them out. They were busy arguing between themselves and paid her hasty rustling in the leaves no heed. They did spot her fox companion and sent a lazy arrow after it, as it hightailed it into the bushes. Eventually, they drifted off, in search of fatter prey. After they were gone, Vera went to retrieve the arrow from the undergrowth, whistled appreciatively at the orichalcum tip, and tucked her find into her quiver. She gave the road a wide berth after that, putting some miles on her journey — but better tired than sorry.

By the tenth day, the craggy flora gave way to statuesques conifers — straight and sharp as lances against the orange fire of a sunset that bled into the emerald glimmer of an aurora borealis. The air was rich with resin, fresh and crisp, but without the mountain chill of the Drudach. She followed the road, but at a safe distance.

The rains caught her three days later, and she trudged through waterlogged loam, adding layers of fresh mud to her already grimy armor. She hadn’t seen the fox for two days. Perhaps it had found better hunting grounds, now that they were in the woodlands.

A rag flapping in the wind above a grassy knoll marked a hunter encampment, and Vera made her way towards it, tired and wet, but not miserable enough to throw caution to the wind. She found herself a relatively dry crevice in the nearby rocks, thick with the sweet stench of namira’s rot but otherwise serviceable, and she settled into it to observe the camp before chancing its dwellers’ hospitality. Two hunters — a man and a woman, one Nord and one Redguard — seemed local, judging by the proprietary, unhurried way they moved about. The Redguard looked familiar. Another group of three — also hunters, Vera guessed, but with a rough-hewn look to them — sat beneath a leafy lean-to next to the outside fire pit. They were passing a bottle around. Laughter and song drifted on the gusts of wind.

Vera made her way towards the camp.

~~~

The Nord hunter — blond, dirty, and built like an armored safe — went by Valdr. He was quiet and cautious at first, but his keen interest in bears overrode his initial reservations — and how many had she seen on the road, and were the blackbears coming down the mountains to snatch an errant lamb or calf; he’d heard it’d been a lean year out in the Reach. Good gold for their pelts, don’t you know, especially in the Rift, if you could make the trek.

Ari, a gruff-looking Nord woman Vera identified as Valdr’s better half, said little. She played with her dagger the entire time they sat around the campfire.

The Redguard, Yaeli, who owned the shack along with her husband Arvid, mostly wanted news of Markarth. Vera’s recollection had been correct — Yaeli made the journey every other month, for market day, to sell deer velvet and scrimshaw, and to visit with Kerah, a distant cousin at some unfathomable degree of separation, but with whom she shared a tie to Skyrim, in Yaeli’s case via matrimonial choice — a fact that the Redguard bemoaned loudly, to Arvid’s longsuffering eyerolls.

Arvid, for his part, mostly groused about the new Jarl of Falkreath, and his tightening restrictions on hunting, absent under the more laissez-faire rule of his uncle. “It’s not like my poaching is hurting anyone. Siddgeir can’t very well eat every deer in the hold, the scrawny bastard.”

“Who says he eats them?” Neils interjected, with a suggestive wag of his eyebrows.

Niels — the third member of Valdr’s party — was a jovial, loud fellow with a quick grin, rusted yellow and sharp like the curve of a pickaxe. He trailed a cloud of last night’s liquor beneath the smell of tonight’s ale, but he had welcomed Vera with open arms: quite literally, as the evening went on, with a rather unapologetic once-over after she’d peeled off her coat to set it out to dry by the fire. His take on courtship was to tuck an early snowdrop behind her ear, once the two couples retired to their bedrolls, and to shove more ale her way. Vera redirected his efforts, turning his attention back to himself. She asked him about his life, about his time with Valdr, and corralled him into sharing any information about Falkreath he was willing to part with. It wasn’t particularly hard to get him talking. He’d fallen in with a group of bandits, he confessed after another swig of ale, but the highwayman life wasn’t for him — he liked the hunt, but not the competition. Aside from that, he was a fount of opinions — on Falkreath and the hostile take-over by the new Jarl, on the impending war (those damn Imperials will get what they deserve), on Lod the smith (who’d be better served if only he stopped hammering steel and hammered that pretty apprentice of his instead,) and on Runil, (damned elf bellyacher, but not a bad sort, all things being equal.)

She waited until the liquor made him sway like an aspen in the wind before tucking him into his bedroll, with a skin of boiled water within easy reach — by then, he was too sluggish and compliant to do anything besides doling out slurred compliments. Former bandit or not, Niels had been useful. He’d be even more useful if he woke up with an itch in his trousers, but with a memory of kindness to quell it — Valdr hadn’t been exactly enthusiastic when Vera had floated the idea of joining them on their way back to Falkreath, and she could use a vote in her favor.

She set out her bedroll on the other side of the campfire, her back against the weather-worn planks of the hut, and her dagger hilt beneath her palm.

In the morning, she’d broached the prospect of tagging along once more, trying to ignore Valdr’s sour scowl.

“How good are you with that bow, girl?”

Vera shrugged. “I get by.”

The hunter motioned with his chin. “See that empty wasp nest over on that tree? Let’s see what you can do.”

Vera went to retrieve her bow, trying not to look pleased. A lined shot, even at a significant distance, had never been a problem. Neither she nor the hunting bow were much good at close range, under pressure — but Valdr hadn’t asked her to perform in a skirmish.

She watched with a jolt of satisfaction as the empty husk burst in a papery cloud. She went to yank the arrow out of the tree trunk.

When she returned, Ari and Valdr exchanged a look. Niels grinned.

“How do you feel about a small detour, girl?” Valdr asked. “We’ve tracked a sow bear to a cave not a day’s journey from here. Could use someone to cover us as we take ‘er down.”

Vera weighed it. Three experienced hunters against a bear wasn’t terrible odds — especially with someone who could soften her first at range. The loamy soil was rich with mushrooms — it wouldn’t be too difficult to mix a toxin on the fly. She still had plenty of coin for getting herself settled in whatever inn Falkreath offered, but it wouldn’t last forever if the local guards had the same taste for bribes as Markarth’s Finest. Not to mention that if Undnar sent some inquiry letters, she’d likely have to shell out more gold to dissuade his potential correspondents from answering in too much detail.

“Lead on,” she nodded.

Chapter Text

The bowstring dug into Vera’s fingers as she lined the shot. Ahead, against an emerald-green grove, the shaggy brown shape of the massive she-bear shifted in the thin mist from an underground waterfall. The dull roar of water muffled the footsteps of the three hunters below.

Vera had climbed to a narrow ledge just to the left of the cavern entrance. Gnarled roots and moss-slicked rocks had provided treacherous handholds, and the sodden layer of topsoil greased into slippery mud beneath her palms, but she’d managed to hoist herself up without alerting the beast. Below, Valdr gave a signal to his two companions. Niels stalked ahead cautiously, his broad-tipped bear spear held aloft. Ari crept forward some ten paces behind him.

The she-bear raised her head, sniffing the air — if she grumbled at the strange smells, the sound didn’t carry. Valdr held up his hand and glanced back at Vera. She gave him a nod. He brought his palm down in a slashing motion. She held her breath, as much to steady the shot as to take a break from the stench: the acrid reek of the mashed caterpillars she had mixed with amonita sap until the resulting gunk turned tar-black irritated her nostrils. It wouldn’t kill the creature, but it’d disorient her, slowing her down.

She let the arrow fly.

It sank into the bear’s fatty haunch, and the beast reared up and roared — deafening, a bassy echo multiplying the sound. The hunters charged. Vera nocked another arrow and sent it after the first one.

They fell upon the bear with practiced efficiency, dodging claws and teeth, drawing blood and angry roars. The beast retreated deeper into the cave, and the hunters went after her with triumphant ululations. Vera lowered her bow, and crept forward.

Out of view, the bear roared again — oddly, short and high-pitched and unlike anything she’d ever heard. Vera hesitated before taking a few cautious steps.

Valdr yelled something, and then he was cut off by a scream — an awful sound of pain and horror that went on and on in breathless, rhythmic repetition, the kind of noise that humans only make when they are dying in bloody terror. Vera pressed herself against the wall, trying to take as little space as she could. Valdr screamed a warning, swore, and then something happened to Vera’s vision — the edges of the world melted into an acidic green swirl, her tongue and sinuses coating with the cloying scent of rotting grass. Her ears buzzed — a million bees burrowing into her mind.

With utter, abject fear she felt her legs moving her forward on their own accord.

Below, Niels ran at full throttle back towards the entrance, his eyes glassy with shock. The twisted, grotesquely flopping mess of blood and bone that remained of his right arm no longer held the spear.

Vera fought the compulsion to shoot an arrow in the hunter’s back with all her might. Her hands on the bow shook, like leaves in an autumn wind. She managed to drop to her knees, digging her fingers into the muddy soil to stop herself from moving. The bees in her mind buzzed and writhed and crawled over each other, a seething, sickening mass of alien intent.

Kill, tear, gnaw, shred... intruder.

Something rushed by below, at inhuman speed: a twisted shape, tree-like yet bipedal, vaguely female but only by approximation. Vera caught a brief glimpse of its face, if one could call it that. She shrunk back, almost dropping her bow. The being’s expression was oddly beautiful and perfectly still, at once emotionless and wrathful, like a wooden mask something else — something ancient and completely hostile to human life — had pulled on haphazardly, to wear until it could break free from its dendritic disguise and wear you instead. It snagged on a memory, the one time she’d seen the Unworshipped.

Assuming that they’re actually human.

What else would they be?

Niels didn’t even have time to scream. Blood and worse flew from the thing’s branching claws, bits of leather and viscera catching in its antler-like protrusions and hanging from them like Spanish moss, as it tore the body apart — patiently, methodically, as if it wasn’t content with death, as if only complete annihilation would suffice.

The swirling bees that had colonized her brain quieted — because, Vera guessed, the creature that had released them was otherwise occupied. It took her a second to realize that the pathetic, choked little sound was her own.

There was no escaping this. The entrance was blocked. Once that thing was done with what was left of the hunter, it would notice her.

As quietly as she could, Vera nocked another arrow, dimly noting the greenish glimmer of oricalcum. Her breath came in shallow little bursts. She hesitated. The paralysis of fear gave everything an odd, unreal quality, as if she herself was far away, watching from a great distance as her body swung wildly between flight or fight.

The creature looked up sharply, its pupilless yellow eyes agleam with golden sap. It shuddered and released a shimmering cloud of spores, or pollen — like a puffball mushroom bursting in its reproductive gambit. Layered over the stench of blood and shit, the creature’s sweet, almost floral scent twisted Vera’s stomach, and she choked and gagged, the reflex to retch momentarily overpowering everything else, even the bees in her head.

Something prodded at her, from the inside, carried by that awful, shimmering secretion. Bend, it said — though in no language Vera knew: only naked intentionality, ancient and powerful and indifferently malevolent.

Bend.

The image of her erstwhile fox companion suddenly floated up in her mind’s eye — scrawny ribs; clumpy, dull fur; dark, hungry eyes that watched cautiously from the underbrush. I am a little fox, Vera thought, with the absurd clarity of terror, I am a hungry little fox, not dangerous at all. A twitching russet muzzle. I am small and irrelevant.

The sense of alien intent slipped off, losing interest. The being turned away, its attention rerouted to a noise at the back of the cavern.

Vera forced her fingers to let go of the bowspring. It sung in the sudden, eerie silence, a strangely clear note, high and resonant. The arrow lodged itself in the creature’s left eye. It shrieked and clawed at its face, trying to yank out the foreign object. Sap pooled around the wound.

Should’ve mixed a herbicide, Vera thought in bright, hysteria-edged hilarity. She readied her bow one more time, and lined the shot. This one grazed the being’s neck, not doing much damage, but painful, by the sound it made.

And then Valdr, bloody but alive, was upon the creature. He swung his blade wide — a lumberjack chopping down a tree — and cleaved the monster’s head off its shoulders, with two messy strikes, sticky yellow-green sap spraying his arms and face. He screamed the entire time.

He looked back once. His eyes glided off Vera, haunted and unseeing. And then he ran to the exit, and she was left alone.

Chapter Text

The shivers of shock and residual terror eased slowly. Once she had regained a semblance of control over her limbs, Vera managed to coax herself into straightening from her crouch. The limbic brain remained deeply unconvinced by this strategy, and she had to fight the instinct to ball up and pretend to be very small — just a little hungry fox, nosing around at the edges — in case some other hidden predator took it upon itself to finish her off.

She spent the next minute peering into the misty verdancy of the grove, but no further horrors came charging forth.

“Ten points for the pretty lights mixture, Demon Chops.” Vera bit back the hiccupy cackle and jumped down from the ledge. “Fuck, let’s go all in. Twenty points.” If the mixture worked through walls, she was prepared to throw in an extra five on top. If she kept this up, the Dunmer would score himself a victory by walkover — not that he’d ever know about it — but that prospect seemed like the least of her worries at the moment.

Convincing the lizard brain that the creature was well and truly dead turned out easier said than done. Still, she crept towards the mangled remains, the familiar grooves of the bow’s leather grip against her palm offering a shred of reassurance. She did her very best not to look at what was left of Niels, but the stench of slaughter assaulted her nostrils whether she kept her eyes trained elsewhere or not.

Focus on the dead psychotic tree, you dumbass.

Spriggan. What else could it possibly be? She should have heeded Banning’s warning. Had the spriggan in fact been pollinating, or were they normally this vicious?

Vera edged closer and prodded at the dead thing with the toe of her boot. The bark-like skin, smeared with sap and Niels’s blood, crumbled and collapsed on itself with a dusty rustle, releasing a cloud of brownish particles. Vera jumped back before the grime could settle on her clothes — there was no telling whether the stuff was toxic. She wouldn’t have put it past the spriggan to be noxious even in death.

Her eyes were drawn to a glossy, vaguely spherical bulb — the only thing that was left intact after the remains of the spriggan had disintegrated. Vera fished out an arrow from her quiver to poke at the strange object. The sound of the arrowhead clunking against the gleaming, greenish surface was oddly resonant — like metal on ceramic.

“Whatever this is, I’m not lugging it around.” She stared at the bulb. “It’s probably poisonous, or worse.” A sickening sense of recognition made her nape prickle in renewed terror. Just like the soul gems, it had that same sense of containment, of being a host to something larger than its physical manifestation. “Absolutely not.” Unlike the soul gems, it remained quiet. Nothing reached for her, nothing tried to burrow. “Still not pocketing it,” Vera said firmly.

She used the arrow to maneuver the bulb towards herself. She wasn’t going to touch it, but surely taking a closer look wouldn’t hurt?

A rhythmic rattle at her back — like the hammering of a woodpecker echoing in the woods — froze her in place. Fear iced through her veins, and Vera turned very slowly, momentarily forgetting about the bulb.

Her face went numb with terror. Another spriggan watched her from the entrance to the lush grotto, some twenty feet away. Unlike its fallen fellow, it seemed smaller and more supple, the iridescent sap gleaming through the fissures of its bark a fresher, brighter green — and the bark itself appeared more delicate, with warm cedarwood undertones.

It stood perfectly still.

Well, that’s it, then, Vera thought, with the perfect serenity of embracing the inevitable. The entrance to the cave was about ten feet upslope. She’d seen how fast the psychotic trees moved. She wouldn’t make it. Not her preferred choice of an exit, all things being equal — she’d always thought that if she got to pick her end, she’d allow herself to get smashed drunk and fall asleep somewhere deadly cold — but at least, this would be over quickly. Painful, probably, but not for long.

The spriggan rattled again, with an odd rise in tone, as if it were asking a question. It drifted closer, then stopped, still watching. Except it wasn’t watching her. Despite the complete lack of expression, the creature’s wooden mask radiated intense focus, all of it reserved for the bulb at Vera’s feet.

Vera swallowed and picked up the object, its weight shockingly heavy in her palm.

This time, the spriggan’s rattle was edged with menace.

“Don’t know why you’d want it, but who am I to argue? Just don’t kill me, deal?” Vera swung her arm and tossed the bulb towards the spriggan. Look, I’m a very helpful little fox, I brought you a treat. Or was it cats that did that?

The creature snatched it from the ground, its huge, clawed hands cradling the bulb to its chest with absurd gentleness. And then it brought the remains of its fallen companion to its maw. Wood crunched, followed by thick slurping sounds.

“Oh, fuck,” Vera squeaked. “Cannibalistic, too.”

Slowly, while the spriggan was occupied, she ordered her legs to move her towards the exit. A twig snapped under her foot, and the creature’s head pivoted in her direction. Vera stilled and tried her best to sprout pointy ears and russet fur, and to look as pathetic as she felt. The dendritic horror gazed on in what appeared to be mildly puzzled interest before returning to its slurping.

You keep at it, buddy, bet there’s more sap in there. She forced her lungs to return to their habitual task, and took one more step backwards, then another. Her ass encountered an obstacle, and Vera chanced a quick look before returning her eyes to the spriggan. She had backed herself into a large granite boulder by the cave entrance. On the other side of it was freedom.

She whirled around and ran.

~~~

The midday air was sweet with pine sap and recent rain. Vera came to an abrupt halt — against the strong urge to keep running — and stared at the hunter slumped against a rotting log by the cave entrance. Valdr lifted his head, but his eyes remained wide and glassy with shock.

“I never even thought the things were real,” he muttered, to no one in particular.

Vera tried to dredge up some semblance of compassion in the face of confessed incompetence. Failing that, she settled on irritated sympathy for his losses. “Seemed real enough.” She blew air through her nose, letting the resentment drain. Never mind that he had fled, abandoning her to the spriggans without a second thought. She was a stranger, and he had just watched his partner and friend die. “I saw another one, a juvenile I think, based on the coloring.”

“We had the big sow cornered when they showed up. Three of them, out of nowhere,” Valdr offered, still staring off into space.

Vera swallowed bile. “There was a third?”

The hunter shook his head in disbelief or denial. “Just popped right out of that tree, and grabbed Ari…” He groaned, equal parts pain and heartbreak. “The other one went after Niels and I. The one you saw — bit greener than the others, aye? Well, it never attacked. Not sure why.”

“How badly injured are you?”

Valdr had definitely seen better days, but it could have been worse. Apart from an assortment of scratches, bruises, and at least one cracked rib, which, luckily for him, had not perforated anything vital, he had a nasty gash across his ribcage where the spriggan’s claws had torn right through the leather armor. It was shallow but wide, and it still oozed, slicking his tattered leathers red. The blood loss was probably the biggest concern — and the rib remained a liability until they could get themselves to a healer, so Vera fished around her pack for one of the healing potions she had mixed before leaving Markarth. The hunter gulped it down in one long, greedy pull. He got to his feet after that, still wincing at the pain, still more of him trapped back in that cave than walking at Vera’s side, but he offered monosyllabic directions, at least.

They got back to Hunter’s Rest by nightfall. Upon seeing their conspicuously diminished numbers and Valdr’s less than optimal physical state, Yaeli swore a thickly blasphemous streak, followed it up with a quick prayer to Kyne to smooth over any ruffled feathers of the divine variety, and ushered her fellow hunter into the cabin, presumably to help him clean and bandage the wound.

Arvid, suitably impressed by the news of spriggans, maneuvered Vera closer to the fire and thrust a bowl of stew into her palms before joining Yaeli inside.

Vera plonked down on the ground, hunching in exhaustion. She shoveled the stew into her mouth, not tasting much. She needed sleep, if she could manage it, to put some distance between herself and the hollow bleakness that had settled in the aftermath of their “hunt.”

A polite cough tore her out of her stupor.

The woman was lounging on the woodchopping block, in an incongruously regal pose despite her grimey travel clothes and the rustic choice of seating. The brown hem of a priestess’s habit poked from beneath a faded, crudely cut travel cloak. Vera raised her eyes — and gaped. Even in the shifting fire-drawn shadows, the features were unmistakable: the round dimpled cheeks, the wide mouth, the coppery skin, the improbably blue eyes tilting down at the corners.

“I’d wondered if the Goddess might arrange for our paths to cross again, dearie.” Silver bracelets jingled softly as the Sybil of Dibella — or, more accurately, the former and currently presumed dead Sybil of Dibella — brought a steaming clay cup to her lips and took a small sip.

Vera set her bowl of soup by her feet, and stared. The Sybil smiled encouragingly.

“I think you owe me an explanation,” Vera finally managed, congratulating herself on her civil tone. She wasn’t feeling particularly civil.

“Owe?” Gabinia pursed her lips. After a long, uncomfortable pause, she inclined her head in acquiescence. “I suppose that’s not entirely inaccurate. I have you to thank for my freedom, after all. Whether that freedom proves quite as rewarding as I had hoped is for the Eight to measure.” She took another sip. “I fear it is a rather long story.” She paused, considering. “Are you, by chance, headed to Falkreath?”

Vera nodded once, her curiosity getting ahead of her caution.

“Then we shall travel together,” the woman stated, with the finality of a well-known fact that brooked no discussion. “I intend to set off in the morning.” She rose to her feet. “If I have to drink this awful substance the Nords like to pass off for tea, I would rather do it in a place that’s dry, at least.”

She drew the night air into her lungs, her lips curling around a private little smile. “Kynareth’s blessings are truly wondrous, are they not? Pity they come with damp feet and your ass frozen to your bedroll, if you’re not careful.” In the darkness, her eyes twinkled with mirth. “May Dibella sweeten your dreams.”

With that, the Sybil sailed away towards the cabin.

Chapter Text

They left the next morning, as agreed.

Valdr stayed behind, shivering and muttering under a pile of wolf pelts. The fever had set during the night, and Yaeli instructed Vera to fetch Runil as soon as they arrived to Falkreath, and to return without delay. Apparently, the Priest of Arkay doubled as the town’s healer. This worked in Vera’s favor — she would volunteer to lead him back to Valdr, and, with any luck, the Altmer would have some insights for her.

Arvid escorted them to the highway, where they waited as the sun’s tawny disk climbed above the trees and washed out the pale specters of Masser and Secunda from the skies. By mid-morning, the rhythmic beat of boots against the road’s worn cobblestones heralded the arrival of a small patrol of Falkreath guards — on their rounds of the Hold, Vera guessed. Arvid greeted the leader with a terse clasping of forearms, his features mirrored back in those of the guard captain. The military man was older and almost a head taller, but he had the same nose, the same straw-colored coarse hair, though cropped shorter, the same asymmetrical eyebrows as the Nord hunter. Brothers, Vera guessed, or half-brothers.

Arvid made quick arrangements. Vera and Gabinia would be allowed to travel with the guardsmen back to Falkreath, provided the two of them did not slow down the patrol.

The pace set by the captain was indeed punishing. The men, grim-faced and dirty, their armor crusted with road grime and traces of dried blood, were curt but civil, and clearly in a hurry to return to town. Vera pieced the bits of overheard conversation together: the patrol had been sent to check on some mining operation up north, but instead of ore and septims, they’d found unexpected hostility. “The Jarl will hear of this,” the captain said to Gabinia, who had matched her gait to his, and slowly, gently, with more strategic silence than words, pulled information from him, like unraveling a skein of yarn. The captain’s voice was thick with anger, though whether it was directed at the miners or at the Jarl remained unclear.

Over the three days their journey took, Vera watched Gabinia with wary fascination. The Sybil never specified her religious affiliation, evading inquiries with indulgent laughter and well-aimed counter-questions. And before her interlocutors knew what had hit them, their innermost troubles were spilling into her palms like jewels from a gutted purse.

There was something magnetic about her, Vera mused. It was easy to see that the men found the priestess beautiful, of course, even the ones who were twenty years her juniors. But she never appeared to make use of that, at least not in any obvious way. There was no trace of coquetry or seduction in her demeanor — nothing that could possibly betray her ties to Dibella, though Vera had no doubt that Gabinia could apply her feminine wiles if the occasion called for it. But she didn’t, not once — as if such tactics bored her with their simplicity. No, the former Sybil traded in finer webs. She never gave advice unless expressly asked. Yet, by the second evening, most of the patrolmen, and even the captain, had come to seek her counsel. It was one or two at first, then a steady trickle — beards and eyes lowered, feet shuffling or idly kicking dirt, hands thrust into pockets or fiddling with armor buckles. Gabinia listened carefully to all these gruff seekers of wisdom, never interrupting once, not even when the querent was tongue-tied, or, on occasion, downright coarse.

To the man whose fear that his beautiful wife would run off with some dashing ne’er-do-well was eating him from the inside, she suggested that Mara’s love was given to mortals to help them grasp the true nature of the Divines, and that it was not appearance that guided them to the marriage knot, but this gods-given spark. “But if you wish to see that spark shine brighter, dearie, I find that not being a churlish goat in the conjugal bed, as well as helping around the house every once in a while exercises the most baneful effect on unwanted competition.”

To the man whose father’s disappointment at his failing to pursue a quiet life of commerce hung over him like a stormcloud, Gabinia offered a sly smile: it was not the mere churning of goods into gold that Zenithar favored, but, rather, it was creation he rewarded — and was not the destruction of those who would harm the defenseless the foundation upon which the possibility of all industrious production rested?

Then, there was the young guardsman who, after much mumbling and cycling between blushing and paling, confessed that he and his wife were still bereft of a child. Gabinia cocked a quizzical eyebrow at that one, pinched her lips in a valiant effort to hide her smile, and inquired: “And how, pray tell, have you been going about remedying this situation, young man?” She took him aside after that, and following a long conversation and much hand gesturing, released him back to his fellows, red to the ears but undoubtedly edified as to the correct procedure.

Vera, who kept her eyes and ears open, her hands busy, and her mouth shut, quickly faded into the shadows of collective inattention. She’d taken her knife to her hair and cropped it short again. The hedgehog cut combined with her shapeless armor, as well as the layer of grime she made a point of not washing off did an adequate job of discouraging any unprofessional interest. From a distance, she likely looked like an underfed youth who hadn’t come into his beard yet. That kind of masquerade had served her adequately in her past life — not entirely fool-proof, but then again one never counted the disasters averted, only the disasters collected. In either event, at the periphery of Gabinia’s orbit, hidden behind her carefully erected mask of dull, monosyllabic industriousness, she became someone the patrolmen accepted amongst themselves without sparing her a second look or asking unwanted questions: just a feature of the landscape, as unremarkable as a tree or a workhorse. It was the perfect social role from which to collect information while giving out none.

When they camped, Vera built shelters of fir branches, which she shared with Gabinia. In the relative privacy of their lean-to, they allowed themselves to set their respective masks aside, at least to some extent.

Vera toiled over expanding her map, squinting in the tremulous firelight. The Sybil fell into pensive reveries. She wasn’t jumping on the opportunity to share her story, which tugged at Vera’s irritable curiosity, like an itch at the back of her mind. What you didn’t know couldn’t help you survive.

“You seem pretty impartial in terms of which Divine you draw upon to dispense advice,” Vera remarked quietly one night, while they were out of earshot of the rest of their militarized escort. “For a Sybil of Dibella, anyway. Not that I have much experience with Sybils of Dibella.” She left it there, hanging between them.

Gabinia chuckled at Vera’s fishing. “Count your blessings in that regard, child. Though I am Sybil no longer, so I suppose we are both lucky.”

After that, the priestess still didn’t offer her story, though she volunteered some pithy observations about their fellow travelers. Beneath her affable matronly public persona, the Sybil’s remarks were succinct and scalpel-sharp. From these off-hand comments, Vera learned an abundance of personal details she had little use for, unless she planned to take up a new career in the extortion business.

One of the footmen, an uncharastically thin and lanky Nord named Kjorn, was a reformed petty thief who’d embarked upon a more righteous path after a disgruntled nobleman sent hired goons to beat some repentance into him. “In my experience,” Gabinia noted, “such externally applied patches to one’s virtue only last as long as the aches of the delivered lesson. Watch your coin purse with that one.”

The second in command was stuck in a loveless marriage — and no wonder, since he fancied the captain, but was too terrified to fess up and put an end to the charade. “In the battle between love and tongue-wagging neighbors, most prudent men, I find, defer to the neighbors,” Gabinia had noted dryly.

Brenna, the only woman on the patrol, had caught an acute case of piety of the daedra-smiting persuasion, but the Vigilants hadn’t been impressed, so she expanded her hatred to all unnatural creatures, which included anyone who wasn’t a Nord. “Nothing feeds a cruel streak quite like lust over Stendarr’s approval, but I suppose Jarl Ulfric will do in a pinch,” Gabinia summarized.

Occasionally, when the silence between them grew too thick, the priestess asked Vera for her own observations. “What do you make of our captain, Vera, love?”

“Vera, love.” That had been Martha’s favorite endearment for her. Vera swallowed her ghosts and looked up from her map, setting her charcoal stick aside. “Seems decent enough, for a reforming gambler.”

Gabinia looked at her with interest. “And what brought you to such an uncharitable conclusion, my dear?”

Vera shrugged. “The boots. They’re poorly made and a size too small. Also, he finds himself unnecessary tasks every time his men settle into a card game.”

The priestess nodded thoughtfully. “It would certainly explain why he would abet the Jarl of Falkreath’s less than savory business ventures — like, say, transacting with a bandit clan. A gambling debt does have a way of nibbling holes through one’s strong moral fiber.” Her cheeks dimpled. “Let us hope, for his sake, that our dear captain has a talent for darning.”

~~~

The smell of wood smoke and the barking of dogs greeted them before Falkreath came into view from behind a bend in the road. The setting sun briefly pierced the cloud cover, and the surrounding fir painted the town’s stockade with swaying blue shadows. Vera found herself staring in wonderment at the woods that hugged the settlement — taller than any forest she had ever encountered, as if entire worlds could be concealed in the dark canopy. In the distance, an occasional resonant crash and the creaking of gearwork announced the presence of a lumber mill.

A group of lumberjacks, identically broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, and overgrown with week-old beards exchanged friendly greetings with the patrol before filing through the gates and dispersing. The patrol marched off as well, presumably to the barracks, with nods of farewell and a few muttered thank yous and lingering glances thrown in Gabinia’s direction. The Sybil collected those with a beatific smile.

Vera caught sight of a young woman who hurried to greet one of the guardsmen — the blushing one Gabinia had taken aside for a private chat — and threw herself into his arms. He whirled her around, his laughter and his comrades’ playful ribbing drifting on the breeze.

At Vera’s side, Gabinia chuckled into her fist. “I’ve always enjoyed newlyweds’ uncomplicated ardor. Lady Mara’s blessings are no less sweet for their simplicity, don’t you find? Let us hope that my counsel bears fruit.”

Vera grinned. “What did you tell him?”

Gabinia’s laughter tinkled with silver. “That the joys of the marriage bed should not be modeled on the rutting of sheep, for one thing — unless, that is, one already understands the basics.”

Vera watched the Sybil curiously. For someone whose life had been spent at a temple, the woman had proved remarkably sturdy on the road — she walked fast, she fell asleep quickly wherever the journey demanded it, and she never, not once, complained in earnest. Her occasional quips about the conditions of their travels — the wet boots, the uninspiring grub, the distant growling of predators that sent the men scrambling for their weapons — were sources of an amused grousing that seemed more performative than sincere. But beneath her social persona of wise priestess, Gabinia brimmed with quiet joy.

~~~

They parted ways at the inn — a sordidly grey, mold-riddled affair of a building. Half-way up the creaking steps, the Sybil turned and surveyed Vera. “You will forgive me if I do not join you on your journey back, should you choose to escort that Runil character to the unfortunate hunter. Let us hope you make it on time, though I suppose a Priest of Arkay might be useful in either capacity.” She allowed her eyes to drift over the settlement. “I do intend to rest here for a week or so. If you don’t find an aging priestess’s company too soporific, do come find me, dearie. I’d lure you with the promise of wine and conversation, though I suppose that might convey the wrong impression.” She twinkled with humor. “I’m afraid wine puts me right to sleep.”

Vera found herself chuckling. “I’ll take the conversation. Where will you go after Falkreath?”

Gabinia shrugged. “The Rift is quite lovely this time of year. If you find yourself headed that way, perhaps we could share the road again.”

“Why the Rift?” Vera asked.

Gabinia’s face took on a conspiratorial look. “I have heard the most curious story: that there is someone there who might make… strategic alterations to one’s appearance. Have you ever fancied a fresh start, my dear?”

When Vera didn’t respond, the Sybil smiled. And then she turned around and disappeared into the tavern.

~~~

Vera wandered down the main street, fielding rude goats, and one equally rude Nord who spat something about “provincials wandering Skyrim” when he spotted her, before stomping off in an unspecified direction. She ignored the jab.

She passed a forge, where a broad-shouldered smith was engrossed in conversation with a young woman in a leather apron. Something he said made the girl throw her head back and laugh in unguarded delight. The Nord’s terse features registered surprise, and then he flushed, schooled his expression towards gruff professionalism, and returned to his work.

Lod, Vera recalled. Niels had mentioned both the smith and his apprentice — and perhaps the late hunter hadn’t been entirely inaccurate in his assessment of the pair. Then again, spring was finally in the air, so perhaps it was just the effects of the season. Vera quickly calculated the days. Her travels had taken her into the beginning of Second Seed, though you wouldn’t know it by the weather.

She left the duo to their oblivious flirting, and trudged on through sticky mud. The street led her past an apothecary with the uninviting name of “Grave Concoctions,” and Vera made a mental note to return and meet the owner. Perhaps the alchemist had an odd job or two for a forager. If nothing else, it would monetize her scouting of the terrain, which she intended to do regardless.

She walked on.

Behind a crude fence, a shirtless man, apparently undaunted by the brisk evening air, was swinging a hoe, digging furrows across a muddy field. Vera slowed down. “Excuse me? Where might I find the healer? It’s urgent.”

The shirtless worker turned, wiping sweat from his brow. Vera smoothed out an instinctive frown. He had unpleasantly pale eyes — so colorless the irises looked almost white. They reminded her of the dead eyes of beached fish.

A dark-haired kid of about eight or nine emerged from behind the wall of the nearby farmstead and took Vera’s measure, a look of shrewd curiosity on her freckled features. She held a basket of mushrooms — some of them, Vera noted, were even edible.

“There’s no healer in Falkreath, s’far as I know,” the man answered in a thick Nordic brogue. “You can try Zaria at Gra-”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. The little girl stepped closer. “Yes there is!” Her eyes darted to the worker, then back to Vera. “Don’t mind Sinding, he’s new.” She grinned. “You’ll be wanting ol’ Runil — he lives by the graveyard. That way.” She gestured with her basket.

Vera thanked the kid and proceeded in the direction indicated by the basket of mushrooms, with one final curious glance over her shoulder. Something about the pale-eyed worker made her reluctant to turn her back on him.

The girl had scampered off.

The Hall of the Dead was nothing like the sprawling crypt that Brother Verulus tended to in Markarth. The squat wooden building was long and narrow, similar in shape to the prefabs that had constituted the neighborhoods of Vera’s younger years, before the Great Burn wiped most of them away, leaving black smears of melted plastic, twisted metal, toxic cinders, and families pruned of loved ones and bereft of shelter.

Twin Arkay symbols guarded the door, the metalwork lit from beneath with fat tallow candles.

Vera knocked.

~~~

Runil was exactly as she had imagined him. A pensive, slightly melancholic Mer, older than Lovinar had been by almost two decades, with eyes clouded by cataract; but possessing the most acute sense of hearing Vera had ever encountered, he had been easy to convince to make the journey, and easier still to travel with. His helper, Kust, had loaded them with supplies, fussing over his employer like a very gloomy mother hen.

From Runil, Vera learned about the Great War between the Aldmeri Dominion and the Imperium — the old priest had fought in it, and had been rewarded for his service with a collection of wounds and regrets. The wounds had healed, the regrets lingered.

They made good time, covering the distance in two days instead of three. The Altmer seemed to need hardly any sleep, and Vera was used to pushing her body into ignoring temporary discomforts, as long as the promise of rest loomed in the foreseeable future.

“So what brought you to Falkreath, young woman?” he asked on the second night, as Vera boiled potatoes for their supper in her small travel pot. Something rustled in the leaves. The night before, she thought she had spotted “her” fox in the shadows cast by a large fallen log — but she hadn’t been sure.

“You, actually.” At his look of surprise, Vera turned towards the flames, and vented the fire, to give herself something to do while she mulled over her question. “I’d like to learn about enchanting,” she said cautiously.

Runil harrumphed. “I fear I have never been much good with enchanting work, child. Best you try your luck at the College of Winterhold, if you believe you have the aptitude. And rumor has it that a Telvanni Master Enchanter can be found on Solstheim, though the journey by sea is an arduous undertaking. Now, conjuration I could teach, though it has been some time since I’ve taken on an apprentice,” he added after a hesitation.

Vera set her jaw. She wasn’t going to touch the Conjuration School with a junk raft pole, if she could help it. There was no telling what effect it might have on her. Though learning the theory wouldn’t hurt — minimally, it would allow her to understand more clearly what “souls” were.

She changed tactics. “There’s another reason. Master Calcelmo, in Markarth, seems to think there is something wrong with my soul.” At Runil’s quizzically raised eyebrow, she elaborated. “He’s taken to calling it a ‘soul anomaly.’”

The Altmer’s wheezing laughter was swallowed by the thick evening fog. “Ah, yes. Calcelmo does have a fondness for anything unusual as I recall, though I’d wager he’s had to narrow his definition of what counts as normal over the years, if for no other reason than to keep himself entertained. Always was a bit of an inflexible lad.”

Vera suppressed the urge to snort at the description of Calcelmo as a “lad,” and forged on. “His nephew suggested I come see you. He thinks that I failed to receive Arkay’s blessing.”

Runil pondered this admission. In the woods, some nocturnal bird cried in plaintive sorrow. “That would be unusual, if it were true. Would you allow me to take a closer look?”

Vera nodded. A prickle of fear tightened her spine. They were alone, miles away from any habitation or witnesses — if one discounted the local fauna. If Runil decided, after his examination, that she posed a threat, she had no doubt that he had the means to zap her out of existence on the spot. Or summon something unpleasant to do the zapping for him.

The Altmer leaned in. A soft glimmer of magic sparkled around his fingers. He rested one hand on her brow, and one against her heart — the touch light, delicate. His palms pulsed with violet light, bringing with it a feeling of scratchy tightness across her skin.

Healing magic usually overrode this underlying current through the sheer relief it brought. As to the Dunmer’s heat spells — well. She had been too caught up in paying attention to other things to worry about any underlying texture. Calcelmo’s magic leaned so heavily on electricity that beyond the static buzz of his experiments, there wasn’t much to isolate. But this, whatever it was, was distinct.

The old Altmer withdrew his hands and hunched over himself, deep in thought. He made a puzzled sound at the back of his throat, somewhere between a hum and a sigh. “To be honest with you, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at. You certainly have a soul, though it is most unusual…”

When he failed to continue, Vera prodded. “Most unusual in what way?”

“Well, it seems to be neither black nor white, for one — absurd as that may sound. Nor does it bear any distinct shape or characteristic, though you do appear animate enough and…” he laughed, “... well. Sentient enough, though I must admit that I’ve met some beasts far more intelligent and, dare I say, more self-reflexive than certain representatives of the so called ‘higher creatures,’ so that in itself tells me little.”

Vera chuckled. “You don’t seem particularly alarmed by any of this.”

“I have lived a long life, child,” Runil shrugged, “and the more I learn of the world, the more my questions multiply. The nature of souls is unknowable by definition. Centuries of experimentation have brought us to a classification of sorts, but as with any knowledge rooted in observation, it is little more than practical approximation.” He trailed off, sinking back into his thoughts. After a while, he continued. “Consider Argonians — they believe their souls are born of the Hist, and return thither at death. It seems to have no significant implications for their standing among the races of men and mer, but does that mean their souls bear no subtle distinction?” His hands released his puzzlement into the crisp night air. “I am not equipped to pass judgement. The only thing I can say for certain is that Calcelmo’s nephew is correct — I do not sense Arkay’s presence in your essence. Only power, and even that, curiously amorphous. I may bestow Arkay’s blessing upon you, if you wish, but I do not know if it will take.”

Vera huddled over herself. It could have gone far worse. At least he wasn’t accusing her of being a daedra, or some other unpalatable critter. “Without it, can I be soul-trapped?” she asked. “For enchantment purposes?”

Runil shook his head. “I am… uncertain. Tell me, child, since you have brought up enchanting... Do you find that you have a facility for it? It is a curious skillset, often readily grasped at the basic level, but supremely difficult to master.”

“I seem to have a certain... feeling for it, yes,” Vera hedged.

Runil nodded in encouragement. His expectant yet oddly undemanding silence had the same quality as Gabinia’s — you couldn’t help but fill it. Vera found herself telling him of Lovinar’s frost amulet, though she kept mum about the statue of Dibella, and about the black crystal it had contained. She did, however, reveal that she had touched an “artifact,” and, once she had skipped across the underwater rocks and found herself on safer conversational ground, she spoke at length about the aftereffects of her “soul poisoning.”

Once the silence had been adequately filled, Runil nodded. “That does not surprise me. This amorphousness I sensed in you, it may allow you to…” He trailed off again, his long, gnarled fingers fluttering in the air, as if trying to weave meaning from invisible threads. “When one enchants, one undertakes the task of siphoning the remnants of that which animates a living being — that elusive mystical power we call a ‘soul’ — from one vessel into another. But such transference cannot happen without allowing the energies to pass through one’s own body. It is difficult, fine, and often dangerous work. And exceptionally challenging for those too firmly stamped with their own shape.”

Vera frowned. “What do you mean by ‘stamped with their own shape’?”

“Oh, I suppose it is relatively easy to manipulate the souls of smaller creatures. I hesitate to call them rudimentary, for all living beings have their own complexities. Perhaps it is simply that they are so different from ourselves: it is not so hard to repurpose them without suffering an imprint. Finer, more powerful enchantments require more powerful souls to lend them potency, and with power comes greater sentience. Take the mammoth. They may be slow, but they are remarkably intelligent creatures. They are social, they raise their young with no less loving care than any farmer, and arguably more so. Their memory is just phenomenal.” He shrugged in wonderment. “To make room for the remnants of another so like ourselves is...” He shook his head. “It is a rare and troubling ability.”

Vera shivered. The firelight drew deep shadows across the priest’s gaunt features, giving him an air of some ancient wood carving.

“I have come to believe that what makes a good enchanter is not mere skill, but some elusive quality of their own ensoulment.” Runil laughed, quiet and self-deprecating. “Divines know I never had the aptitude nor the temperament for it.”

~~~

They made it to Hunter’s Rest by the following day. Valdr hadn’t gotten any worse, but he wasn’t getting better, either. Runil decided to stay and care for the hunter, and Vera chose to return to Falkreath. Before she left, the Altmer said a prayer to Arkay over her, his eyes half-closed as he called upon his god.

Nothing discernible changed, as far as Vera was able to surmise. Runil sighed — a deep, weary sound. “I cannot say when I will return. Do let Kust know that I will seek an escort once my patient is on his way to convalescence. He tends to fuss over me, Divines bless him.” Then he reached around his neck and pulled out an amulet from beneath his worn brown robe. “I wish I had more answers for you, child. I will ponder this once I reunite with my books and my prayers. In the meantime, I’d like you to have this.”

Vera eyed the octogonal jewel. “Won’t you be needing it?”

“I suspect you will be needing it more. Come see me again, sometime. Blessing of Arkay be upon you.”

To Runil’s utter stupefaction, she embraced him briskly before getting back on the road. He smelled just like Lovinar — an earthy, botanical, papery scent. Family, or something like it. Temporary, but that was always the case.

~~~

The journey back was mercifully uneventful. Vera spotted the fox once more, confirming that it was the same creature. She had no idea whether the little bastard was following her, or if they just kept bumping into each other.

A hundred yards from the Falkreath gates, the rapid fall of footsteps behind her made her whirl around and reach for her bow.

The courier came to a panting halt, but then he squinted in assessment. His eyes lingered on the scar on the bridge of her nose, on her short hair, on her dirty armor. “D’you go by Vera, by any chance?”

“Who’s asking?” she countered.

He didn’t dignify this with a response, only fished around in an oversized satchel, thrust a crumpled note into her hands, and, with a big gulp of air, rushed on, kicking up little clouds of dust as he went. It hadn’t rained in four days — a new record for the area, as far as Vera could tell.

The thin birch bark paper bore no seal. She unfolded the note.

“Hlakhes,

Our patron has found himself some urgent business in Falkreath. In the event that your travels took you there, I suggest you find yourself a new destination on that curious map of yours. And make haste. Though I will admit, in the interest of disclosure, that I will be sorely vexed not to get a glimpse of your retreating backside — it would certainly be an improvement over these wretched woods.

-T.

(While I cannot see your glare, nor hear your irritated snort — nor enjoy the dubious pleasure of your clever repartee — I shall still count this point in my favor.)”

Vera snorted in predicted irritation, and then her eyes landed on the date. She counted backward. Fuck. Demon Chops had written his letter a week ago. If they had reached the woodlands by then, they wouldn’t be long.

She had to get moving.

Yet, by the time she ascended the steps to the Dead Man’s Drink, she was swaying with fatigue. She had limited rest to the bare minimum during her journey with Runil, matching the old Altmer’s indifferent attitude to sleep in order to get back to Valdr in time, and on her way back, the dangers of solitary travel had spurred her on, from dawn to dusk and well past it, as long as the twin moons provided enough illumination for walking.

Worse than the physical discomfort, her mind churned incessantly with the aftermath of Runil’s revelations, though what he had said had not been entirely unexpected. Of course, she wouldn’t fit into the local taxonomies of souls — why should she — but the implications swirled around her like a roiling stormcloud. Could she be, in fact, soul-trapped and repurposed into a weapon or an amulet or would the blessing Runil bestowed prevent that?

Did it mean that every enchanted weapon, armor, or trinket potentially contained innumerable shards of souls, and the lingering traces of those to whom they had belonged? Runil had spoken of “imprints.” Could she glean the sedimented histories of these past creatures from such objects, the way she had yanked and seemingly absorbed the fragment from the black crystal hidden in the statue, until Calcelmo purged her of it? And how had he done it? How had she done it? How did one avoid soul poisoning?

Her growing obsession gnawed at her like a rat in the dark. She knew perfectly well that wanting was dangerous — at best, it got you killed. At worst, it made you pliable, susceptible to the machinations of others. She had always managed well enough not to grasp for things, so why now? Why this, of all damned things?

Still, the intent to travel further in search of answers — to Winterhold, wherever that was, or further still, to this Solstheim Runil had mentioned had sunk its claws into her and wasn’t letting go, as if she was propelled by something quite outside herself.

One way or another, the more she thought about it, the more her certainty grew: the glimpses of the city of blue cupolas and soaring birds and nightly dealings with men whose likeness stared from every tapestry had belonged to Gabinia. Or to someone like her. And somehow, on some level, Undnar was tied into all of this — he’d never wanted the statue itself, that much was clear. He’d wanted the soul gem — or whatever it had contained.

Vera hesitated before the door. Setting out into the unknown while exhausted and muddled meant increasing the risk of stupid mistakes. And stupid mistakes got you killed. Surely, she could afford to stay one night at the inn, couldn’t she? She had to resupply anyway. Why not include a bath, a comfortable bed, and a hot meal that did not involve various shades of jerky or canis root tea with bear lard? She had the gold for it. She’d be on the road by first light.

And with any luck, the Sybil would still be there — and with her, some answers.

Vera opened the door, stepped into the dim warmth, and froze. Well, shit.

“Snowberry! As I live and breathe!” Undnar bellowed from his seat by the bar. “What an unexpected reunion!”

Unexpected, my ass.

Chapter Text

The tavern hall only sported a few occupants. A Nord merchant type in the far left corner was nursing an ale; a blond Breton bard was strumming a lute with bored indifference. And Undnar was still looming at the bar — a mountain of russet hair, filthy armor, and deceptive bonhomie. Vera’s eyes slid off the Mad Nord, and landed on the stool next to him. Empty. No abandoned glass or plate signaled the presence of a previous occupant. At the Nord’s feet, only one pack rested.

There is a peculiar sort of clarity that blooms over the threshold of absolute fatigue, when one’s capacity to uphold habitual patterns of thought crumbles like a castle of cards. The sudden realization was like a chain of dominoes tipping one after the other, painting a pattern heretofore unseen. Vera bit the inside of her cheek. The impulse to flee — to turn on her heel, bolt out the door, and keep running — subsided with a few steadying breaths.

It’d been right there. Resting in plain sight, right under her nose, from the very beginning.

Oh, but she’d been an idiot.

A cursory glance around the tavern corroborated her initial suspicion. Frabbi had a habit of marking occupied rooms with a lit sconce. Here, the middle-aged Imperial publican seemed to be using horseshoes hung over the door frames for the same purpose. Four rooms in total, only one rented.

“Will you be joining your friend, or should I get you a separate table?”

Vera’s eyes snapped to the blonde barmaid. Friend. Singular. “What’s the stew today?” she asked. She could practically feel Undnar’s amused scrutiny skittering up the nape of her neck. No doubt he was listening in, but there wasn’t much she could do about that.

The barmaid shrugged. “Cabbage and potatoes.” She sounded both defensive and apologetic. “If you wait a few days, there might be bear meat , but until then…”

Vera repressed a shudder at the mention of bears. “Cabbage and potatoes will do. Say…”

The barmaid cocked her head to the side. “It’s Narri, if that’s what you’re fishing for.”

“Narri,” Vera nodded. “There was a priestess who came in a few days ago. Is she still around?”

“Ah, yes.” A hint of shrewdness crept into Narri’s expression. “Seems she’s on everyone’s tongue today. A friend of yours too?”

Aha. Vera hummed in noncommittal confirmation. “We traveled together for a bit. How long ago did she leave?”

“Oh, just this morning. Won’t lie, I was a bit sad to see her go — she sure tipped well.” The tavern girl chuckled. “Had the men around here wrapped around her finger in no time — a few of the women, too, I suppose.”

“Narri, I don’t pay you to chit-chat!”

Vera glanced at the barkeep. The Imperial’s eyes were narrowed in irritation.

Narri blew air through her nose but plastered a practiced smile over her annoyance. “I’ll bring your food. Anything to drink?”

“Mirriam tea, if you have it.”

Once Narri left to fetch her order, Vera marched herself to the bar, dropped her pack at her feet, and sat next to the Mad Nord.

Undnar turned to survey her — a thorough, vaguely amused onceover that made Vera want to dump his half-finished ale over his head.

“And here I thought you’d make this awkward by running away, Snowberry. Then I’d have to explain myself to these fine people — as one undoubtedly should whenever a beautiful lass flees from you in horror. And if there is one thing I cannot abide,” he added after a moment, “it is explaining myself.”

Vera ignored him in favor of watching the innkeeper wrangle a tray of unbaked pastries into the glowing maw of a large stone oven. She allowed for the expectant silence to stretch, trying to pay the discomfort of Undnar’s gaze no heed. Once Narri brought her stew, her tea, and a slice of barley bread, she dug into her meal.

“Well?” Undnar capitulated finally, and Vera hid the jolt of grim, humorless satisfaction between bites of food.

“Well, what?” She broke the crust to sop up the left-over broth. “Well, why am I not running? Well, how do I like Falkreath? Well, how have my travels been? Which is it, Undnar?”

One russet eyebrow tilted in question, but then the Nord guffawed — a warm, hearty sound of rueful merriment. He had his timing honed to the sharpness of a blade, Vera thought absently. Perhaps it was all part of bardic training. Either way, the Mad Bear’s threatening side never came out when you expected it.

“You see, Snowberry? Without your elevating company, I slide right back into my uncouth barbarity. Though, I admit, with everything you and I have faced together, I’d rather hoped we’d be past small talk, hmm?” He wagged his eyebrows in louche suggestion.

Vera took a sip of tea. It was strong and sweetened with blackberry jam. She sighed with pleasure. “Why would I run?” she asked after a pause. “It’s not like you’re after me.”

This time, Undnar didn’t quite manage to hide his surprise, and Vera chuckled. She scanned the room. The barkeep was still occupied with the pastries, Narri was chatting with the bard, and the merchant had left. They had relative privacy, as far as discrete conversations in public went. She turned to face the Nord. “I suppose Teldryn doesn’t know, does he? Well, he might now, but not before. Not for certain, anyway.”

The briefest of frowns twisted the tattoos on the Nord’s face, but he smoothed it out quickly. He rested his elbow on the bar and propped his chin on his fist. His beard had grown over the weeks of travel, and now its bristling had reached truly spectacular proportions. Forget bottle-brushes. A bit more, and it’d be a full-fledged mop. “Do an old Nord a favor and retrace your graceful steps, lass, lest you forever leave me huffing and puffing in the dust of your lightning-quick wit.”

Vera stared down at the cup in her hands. “Have you ever hunted rats?”

She chanced a glance. There was absolutely nothing practiced about the Nord’s confusion.

“I…” He scratched his head. “Can’t say I’ve ever applied myself to the task on purpose, though I have seen my share of skeever-infested dungeons… Why do you ask?”

“They’re pretty smart. Easy to pick off when they’re out of the colony — or the nest, if you prefer — but if they’re firmly ensconced somewhere they feel safe, you have two options: lure them out, or burn them out. The first approach is tricky — as I said, they’re not stupid — and the second one is risky.” Vera smiled, not worrying if it came out friendly or hostile. “It’s on me, really. You told me yourself, but I hadn’t been paying attention at the time. How did you put it...” She rubbed her temple, trying to remember the exact phrasing. “‘Some say it was Dibella who guided his eyes…’ Something like that?”

Undnar beamed. “And here I thought you weren’t interested in that old story, lass. Ahh, pity Teldryn’s not here.” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “The cheerless killjoy has gotten it into his head that you’d rather avoid my company, you see. If only he weren’t so busy scribbling messages to you when he thought I wasn’t looking, perhaps he’d realize the truth of it, hmm?” He leaned back and stretched with a self-satisfied groan. “I knew I had intrigued you after all…”

Vera shrugged. “And you allowed it to continue because it distracts him from your real target, correct?”

Undnar said nothing. His unusual silence wasn’t the only source of dissonance. Everything about the Nord felt off — including the fact that he wasn’t, for the first time since she’d met him, stuffing his face like it was his last meal. “Why, Undnar? Let’s shelve the bullshit for a second. You’re not in Falkreath for me — it’s never been about me. You’re after Gabinia.” She brought the cup to her lips, taking a small sip. “I admit, though — I am curious. Was I the lure? Or the fire?”

The Nord watched her for a long time. As always, beneath his layered masks, the only thing remaining was an aloof, calculating intelligence. “Ah, Snowberry. You and I are not so different,” he trailed thoughtfully. “Rare is the person who does not believe themselves to be the only hero in the tale.” And then he smiled, suddenly — a wide, good natured grin, as deceptively uplifting as sunlight on a foggy day. “You, Snowberry, are a rock in my boot.”

Vera barked a surprised laugh, but she cut it short. “The kind of rock you pocket because it looks interesting once you’ve dug it out, or the kind you toss into the bushes and curse the callus it’s caused?”

Undnar recovered some of his lost humor, and when he spoke, his eyes were once again alight with his usual indulgent amusement. “Both, Snowberry. Always both.”

Vera nodded. He’d answered both of her questions at once. “That’s where you sent Sero, isn’t it? Once you realized Gabby had left, you sent him after her. And I’m guessing you stayed behind in case she looped back — or in case someone had information.”

“I stayed because you are an interesting rock in my boot, lass.” Undnar sighed in demonstrative resignation. “Since we’re being straight with each other, after a fashion, let us lay the foundation right, lest the structure remain crooked.” He leaned in. “You might be quite useful to me, and I am not in the habit of squandering the gifts the Divines scatter in my path. But you seem to have convinced yourself that I mean you harm, Snowberry, which chagrins me greatly. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I mean to help you — as long as you help me in return. ”

When he didn’t volunteer anything else, Vera leaned on the bar, and rested her cheek on her forearms. Fatigue washed over her again now that the adrenaline of dealing with the Mad Nord was starting to wear off. She wouldn’t be able to harness the mental acuity necessary to keep him on his toes for much longer. “What about Sero? Are you ‘helping’ him too?” Might as well make the most of it, while the russet bastard was in an uncharacteristically forthcoming mood. “Because if you’re about to tell me it’s just a mercenary contract, I’ve got an elixir of eternal youth to sell you.”

The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes deepened with his smile. “That, lass, is not my secret to share. Why not ask the merc yourself?”

Vera ignored Undnar’s knowing smirk. “Fine. Why are you angry with him, then?”

“Angry?” A dark shadow passed over his features, there, then gone. “Nay, Snowberry, you mistake me. It is simply that I cannot abide wastefulness any more than I can abide explaining my reasoning.” He pursed his lips and tutted in mock concern. “But look at you, you’re barely vertical! Let us reconvene tomorrow morning, after a much needed bath, and some sleep. Plenty of empty rooms in the tavern. You can even afford one on your own, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Do you always count the coins in other people’s pockets, Undnar?”

His laughter boomed, bouncing between the roof beams. “Sleep well, lass. Save both of us the trouble, and don’t sneak out during the night, hmm? Teldryn’s right. I’ll find you eventually.”

~~~

The repurposed fermentation tank sunken into the floor was big enough for at least four other people. Vera stretched, letting the water buoy her. There was no bolt on the door, but for five extra coins over the standard fee of ten septims, the barkeep promised her an hour of privacy. Money well spent, as far as she was concerned.

The bath water was hot and unexpectedly clean. She let the back of her head rest against the ledge and closed her eyes, listening to the quiet crackling of logs on the hearth. Her muscles uncoiled slowly with the pleasant ache of long-overdue relaxation.

Just don’t fall asleep and drown. That’d be a stupid way to go.

Tomorrow, she would come up with a plan, depending on how the chips fell. If Sero dragged Gabinia back, it likely wouldn’t be too hard to bolt while Undnar was distracted. He couldn’t chase two pigeons at the same time, could he? And for all his less than stellar qualities, the Mad Bear wasn’t stupid — he wouldn’t risk sending Sero after her at this stage — so he’d have to do it himself, or through other intermediaries. While his hands were full, it was more likely that he’d try to buy her allegiance instead.

In the meantime, she’d rest and gather her strength. No more idiotic blunders going forward. She’d keep to the wilderness until Riverwood. If Fae was still there, he’d likely assist her, for old times’ sake if nothing else. From there, perhaps she could buy passage to Winterhold. And then, as long as-

The door creaked open, and then slammed shut.

Shit. So much for her deal with the barkeep — apparently, five septims only bought you an illusion of privacy. Vera reached for her dagger, trying not to slosh the water around and betray her presence — not before she was armed, anyway. Better safe than sorry.

The room was too dark to get a sense of the intruder. Leather creaked, buckles clanked, and then something thudded against the floorboards. Then, a brief silence, followed by wood squeaking under a jagged and asymmetrical gait, as if whoever was moving around in the narrow passage that served as the dressing room was walking with a limp. Injured, then, or working with a handicap — either way, it gave her a small advantage, if the visitor turned out to be unfriendly.

She weighed her options. You didn’t go to Markarth baths alone or in the off-hours, not if there was a chance of running afoul of one of the Silver Bloods’ little private “parties.” But Markarth baths were not housed in an inn, and the don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude of witness non-intervention only worked because the guards were in on it. Falkreath wasn’t Markarth. Hell, even Undnar could be summoned if things went south.

She decided to take the risk of civility. “Bath’s occupied.”

Silence. And then a long-suffering sigh — and a familiar one at that. “I take it that you did not receive my letters.”

Carefully, Vera set the dagger back on the ledge, sank into the water to her chin, and crossed her arms, trying to ignore the jolt of mildly anxious irritation.

The Dunmer emerged from the shadows and limped closer. Vera choked back an anachronistic expletive, her earlier embarrassment forgotten. She settled for a low whistle. “You look like shit, Sero.” She waded to his side of the vat. In the dim light, she couldn’t assess the full extent of the damage, but what she could see was bad enough. Minimally, the arm would need stitches. If he hadn’t healed himself, it likely meant that his reserves were depleted — and he’d run out of restoratives. “Did you find some Forsworn on your way and decided to say hello?”

He sat heavily on the edge of the tub, wincing with each movement, but he huffed in amusement regardless. He looked pale, Vera noted, and more gaunt than she remembered.

“Imperials, if you must know. And I didn’t find them, they found me.” He scooped water from the tub, and rubbed the grime from his face. Both of his hands were stained rusty red.

Vera realized, rather belatedly, that he wasn’t wearing very much at all.

Don’t just sit here, ogling him, you cretin.

“Turn around,” she said briskly.

Sero cocked an eyebrow. “To what end?”

“Turn around, or I’ll come out of the tub as is, and then I’ll have to count ten points in my favor. Your arm needs to be sewn up, and you can use a health potion. Or three. I’ll go get some supplies.”

“Ten points, hmm? That would put us at fifty one each. Bit steep, but I suppose I’m in no position to bargain.” He leaned back slightly. “Oh, very well. I can live with a draw.”

Vera snorted. “Or you could turn around.”

“I could,” the Dunmer acquiesced, and did no such thing.

“Are you serious?” She shook her head in exasperation. “You’re bleeding all over the floor, Demon Chops, or haven’t you noticed?”

His chuckle devolved into a cough. Vera didn’t like the wet rattle of it one little bit.

“Stay here. Ten points in my favor.” She hoisted herself out of the bathtub and stubbornly ignored his sharp intake of breath, the quiet curse, and the thick silence that followed, as she padded to the stack of folded sheets to towel herself off. She pulled her tunic over her head and stepped into her trousers, not bothering with undergarments for the time being. “Try not to die while I’m gone.”

Stubborn idiot.

~~~

Vera fished out the strips of cloth from the pot of water she had set over the hearth and hung them out to dry. She plopped her sewing needle and catgut into the metal basin that had held the soaps, and poured the brandy on top.

The barkeep had relinquished the alcohol with even less goodwill than the clean sheet for cutting up bandages, but she capitulated after Vera brought up the unexpected “visitor.”

“I didn’t want him dragging his muck around, now did I? Narri just cleaned. Besides, he said he knew you.” The implication hung there, leaving very little doubt as to what sort of “knowing” the innkeeper was implying.

Vera had smiled, aiming for unpleasant. “I’ll have my five septims back, then.”

That had done the trick.

In her absence, the Dunmer had dragged himself to the hearth and was now leaning against the warm stones, his eyes closed, his legs outstretched in front of him. Vera crouched at his side, inspecting the gash in his right arm. It was deep, but a clean cut, at least.

“What’s wrong with the leg?”

“A sprain. I’ll wrap it before bed.”

She nodded and sloshed some brandy over her hands. “I have two health potions left. I can close this up, which will leave you with less scarring. Can you heal yourself the rest of the way?”

It took the merc several long moments to respond. “In a few hours.” His eyes cracked open. “What are you still doing here, outlander?”

“Did you find Gabinia?” Vera countered, readying the leftover brandy. “This is going to sting, by the way.” A scrap of memory brought Said’s instructions — the first time he had told her to take on the task of suturing in his stead. It had helped that it was Dima, and that the injury wasn’t serious. He’d weathered the process with such a colorful collection of multilingual curses that the hardest part about laying the stitches was trying to keep the sniggering contained.

Laughter had always been their first line of defense, Vera mused. Sometimes it was also the last.

The merc glanced at her. “I take it you have spoken to Undnar.”

She nodded before pouring the alcohol over the wound. Sero swore, then let out a slow exhale. “I did. Find her, that is.”

“Did you bring her back?” She readied the needle and set to work.

His jaw muscles tightened in pain. “The Imperials objected.”

Vera smothered a snort at his dry sarcasm and focused on her task. With his good hand, Sero appropriated the bottle of brandy and tipped it to his lips.

“What happened?”

Another long, pain-laced silence as she worked. “That accursed Sybil had walked right into a Stormcloak camp — largest one I’d ever seen.”

He hissed, and Vera muttered an apology. “Four more. Hold still, I’m almost done.”

The Dunmer nodded. “Anyway, I tracked her there, and when I was deliberating what to do next, the damned Imperials attacked. They must have mistaken me for a Stormcloak as well, I suppose.”

Vera tied off the catgut and carefully trimmed the ends with her dagger. “It’s your pasty complexion.” She fished the restoratives out of her pack, and thrust one of the bottles into his hands. “Drink.”

“And here I thought it was my undying admiration for Jarl Ulfric.” He drained the healing potion in a few long gulps. Some of the tension left him, and he slumped against the stones at his back. Red eyes found hers. “I suppose thanks are in order, though why you are still here, despite my warnings, is beyond me.”

Vera stared at him until she found some words amidst the helpless frustration. “Aside from the fact that I only just got the last one, a week from when it was sent, I suppose I just couldn’t keep away.”

The Dunmer’s usually sharp smirk was dulled with exhaustion. He drew a breath, likely to fire back something inappropriate, and then, against all odds, he just shook his head. “I’d try to lure you back into the bath, but… at this stage, I’d likely drown. No amount of points is worth that kind of death.” His lips twitched. “Would you…” he cleared his throat. “Stay a moment?” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.

Vera blinked. And then she gingerly maneuvered herself around him, until she was seated such that she could lean against his less injured side. Sero brought his arm around her, and, in a gesture that seemed painfully rusty, tucked her against him and rested his cheek against the crown of her head. He still smelled of blood and sweat, and beneath it, mineral heat.

They sat like that for some time, the silence between them tense, but not unpleasant.

“You almost died, didn’t you?” The question sounded flatter than she meant it, and she felt vaguely grateful for the illusion of matter-of-factness her own exhaustion lent her words. She could deal with the sweet tug in her lower belly — at least, it was simple. This new thing between them wasn’t.

He didn’t respond right away. And then, with lead in his voice — “there are worse outcomes than that, hlakhes.”

Chapter Text

Wakefulness returned in fits and starts, through the cobwebs of repetitive dreams stuck on a loop. The uneven distribution of warmth — her back toasty, but her arms and legs and face uncomfortably cold — nudged her towards awareness, and Vera fought it, snuggling closer to the source of heat at her back. She grumbled in annoyance. Dima always hogged the blanket, rolling himself into it like a caterpillar crafting a cocoon until she yanked back her portion of it.

She waited for the bitter smell of chicory to drift from their stove — Martha would be up before dawn, rustling around, trying not to clank the pots. Said would join her, always a lighter sleeper than the rest of them, and their quiet conversation would lull her back into shallow slumber, weaving through her dreams like a single gold thread, snaking in and out of focus.

The room remained quiet, and Vera shifted, suddenly uneasy. Something felt off — a vague, nagging sense of disjuncture where her lover’s body did not mirror her contours in seamless familiarity. Knees pressed too low against the back of her legs; the curve of her spine molded against harder stomach muscles; the arm around her midsection looped in a tighter, more demanding hold. Her mind, too fuzzy with sleep to resolve the inconsistencies, kept cycling through a rifle repair, the salvaged gas tube refusing to lock into place — just a few millimeters off, a subtle discrepancy between models, or perhaps slightly different patterns of wear. So much for the interchangeability of standardization.

No chicory drifted on the air, only the acrid smell of cold cinders and the faint scent of juniper.

She opened her eyes. Darkness met her. For a long, soul-wrenchingly terrifying moment, she had absolutely no idea where she was — or why her cot was facing the wrong way, or why her bedmate was on the right side of her, instead of her left. And not a cot either, now that she thought about it — rather, wooden planks, if the soreness in her hip and shoulder were anything to go by. Where the hell had-

“Awake, hlakhes?”

Ah.

The world came back to her.

A globe of cold blue light drifted upward to hang below dark wooden beams. Vera flipped to her other side to face her strange bedfellow — or, more accurately, her fellow floor dweller. She couldn’t recall falling asleep, let alone falling asleep in the merc’s arms.

The iridescent clot of magical energy had cast Sero’s features in sharp relief — blue skin and unlikely bone structure, a face painted in impossible hues and alien angles. Her initial queasy fascination resolved once the light drifted enough to shift the shadows into a modicum of familiarity. In retrospect, the disorientation would have been preferable. Her eyes snagged on muscles brought out in bold contrast; trailed down over the tracery of scars that marked his chest and abdomen, each healed wound with its own story, and each frustratingly silent; then meandered further down, pulled into the maze of tattoos — lower, to where the sun-faded burgundy twisted into a richer tint (fuck, but that much ink would’ve hurt), the design of stylized blades laconic yet menacing — only to come to a screeching halt at the unexpected roadblock of a waistband. Her fingers twitched with the sudden urge to undo the lacing and slide his trousers past his hip bones to see how much more of the pattern was left. At this distance, his sharp, mineral scent was so distinct it was almost a flavor on her tongue.

Vera swallowed, audibly. Fuck you too, lizard brain.

Wine-dark eyes surveyed her from beneath half-hooded lids. “I trust the point’s mine, partner? Or should I bother with formality and ask whether you’re enjoying the view?” His whisper rasped in an absurd mixture of sandpaper and silk. “And before you ask, no. Not all my compatriots have these.”

Above them, the light flicked out with a fizzy hiss, pitching them back into darkness. Vera jerked as the Dunmer’s hand traced the curve of her hip, then dipped to her waist. It rested there — no further exploratory forays — though she could feel the tension radiating off him like a heat wave. She heard him draw a breath and hold it.

Under normal circumstances, she knew exactly where this would go — the steps varied, of course, but within a predictable range. The tension would snap like a string, and he’d pull her in, then roll over her. She’d adjust, accommodating his weight, her legs locking around his hips. Or he’d lay flat on his back and bring her on top, and either way, he’d groan quietly, or maybe she would, somewhere between surprise and demand — then it’d be lips and tongues and teeth scraping in uncoordinated eagerness. A pause; a curse. Chuckling a bit breathlessly over the awkward negotiation of recent injuries. Then hands everywhere, rough on smooth on rough, where life had hardened them with a habit of survival but left secret softness to discover. It wouldn’t be enough, of course. Trying to get rid of what little clothes remained by that point. The vertigo of sliding together for the first time, jagged around the edges before repetition whittled their sharp angles away, before they worked out each other’s tells, before they learned to yield to each other...

She lay perfectly still. There was nothing “normal” about these particular circumstances. That none of this would happen was clear as day (ambient pitchblack notwithstanding), and Vera tried to swallow past the strange tightness in her throat — incrementally more bothersome than the liquid heat in her belly or the way her skin felt like something stretched taut over an electric grid.

She’d wanted confirmation, hadn’t she? And now, she had it, after a fashion. Whatever bound the Dunmer, it couldn’t be a vow — he allowed her too close for that. But what, then? Fear of retribution? And if so, from whom? Not Undnar — whatever the Mad Nord had on the merc, it didn’t seem to fit this particular pattern of restraint.

“Might you… indulge a question?”

His voice snapped her out of the unpleasant downward spiral.

“Within reason.” She hoped her wince went unnoticed, even if her acerbic tone didn’t.

There was a long pause, as if Demon Chops decided to give this particular caveat undue deliberation. In the meantime, his hand moved from her waist to rest at the small of her back, before finding its way beneath her tunic. Vera had to fight the impulse to arch her spine in encouragement. Apparently, the effort hadn’t been entirely successful — or no more successful than his attempt to stifle a chuckle. “Then I suppose I’ll strive to be reasonable. Another point in my favor, I take it?”

Jerk. She hooked her leg over his hip and hoisted herself forward to bring them flush against each other. The Dunmer drew a ragged breath, and Vera smiled into the darkness. For lack of anything better to do with her hands, she located his face by touch. And then she brought her hand to the back of his head, fisted her fingers into his hair, and pulled his head back. She wondered briefly what his throat might look like, exposed like that. Or whether he was flashing her that grin of his. Or whether he’d taste like he smelled.

Either way, there was no mistaking his response lower down.

“I’ll spare us both from asking whether that’s a point in your pocket… you can guess the rest of the joke, yeah?”

He barked an irritated laugh, but at least he had the decency not to feign disinterest at this stage.

She let go, and settled her hand under her cheek to buffer it against the hard planks. “Two-one. What’s your question?”

He shifted his hips to put some distance between them — but didn’t disengage entirely. “Who marked your back?”

Vera’s breath froze in her lungs. Of course. She’d not given his reaction to her earlier nakedness much thought: no point in overanalyzing the self-evident. And he’d seen the scars before, on that night when he’d fished her out of the river, though the worst of it had been hidden by the breast band.

“No one you’d know.” The facile glibness felt like a shoddy patching job over a memory that had set badly.

There was that rectangular pattern of vertical bars and numbers you sometimes found on ancient canned goods. Once, Vera’s mother had explained that these were used to store information about an object, to make buying and selling them easier. A barcode, it was called. She’d always felt vaguely fascinated by the unreadable assortment of lines, whenever she found something that bore such a label — like a key, with no lock to match it. The technology had been phased out long before Vera was born, but the principle remained, she supposed.

She had been loopy and numb from the dart when she came to on the metal gurney, and whatever they’d used, it hadn’t hurt. A laser, perhaps, but the restraints had kept her from looking. She remembered the woman who had performed the job vividly — dark haired, narrow-jawed, with a long nose and eyebrows tweezed to thready arcs. And, in the corner, the single, obscenely tall Unworshipped, watching in serene indifference as her back was carved. The dark haired woman had the gall to apologize — “I do hope you pardon the temporary inconvenience, this should be over shortly” — but Vera’s bitter laughter never broke the surface of the drug-induced paralysis.

The Citadel she’d been taken to after her capture was vast, based on the sprawling guts of its service tunnels and the supporting infrastructure she’d seen during her brief sojourn as the Dellers’ unwilling “guest.” To this day, she still couldn’t work out why they hadn’t just chipped her instead of the cruder, more visible brand. They certainly had the means.

“What was the intended purpose?” Sero queried after a long pause.

Vera frowned into the darkness. She could simply close the topic by reminding him of the score: a long way to one hundred, keep trying and so forth.

The tips of his fingers glided over the inscription, sending shivers down her arms. She found herself answering just to drown out the sensation. “I suppose it was to catalog me.” It came out with very little inflection, and she congratulated herself on her display of neutrality.

An uncomfortably long silence followed as he mulled this over. “May I see it again?” he asked finally.

Vera tensed. “Why? It’s gibberish, from what I can tell.” She forced the panic back down. “Or are you just trying to get me out of my clothes again?”

The Dunmer chuckled without much humor. “I wouldn’t object. But no, that’s not the reason.” She heard him draw a breath, then release it, and when he spoke, it was his turn to fake equanimity. “I thought I recognized the script.”

She didn’t get the chance to formulate a question — let alone verbalize it. The door banged open, launching them to their feet in a scramble that, on a better day, would have been comical.

Contrary to expectations, the shape that loomed in the doorway wasn’t the Mad Bear. The flickering light of the candle illuminated the fear-stricken face of the innkeeper.

“Oh, thank the Divines, you’re both still here. Quickly, now! We need all the abled-bodied warriors we can get. He’s gone feral, he has.”

Chapter Text

In the time it took them to don their armor and collect their weapons — a tense, silence-smothered rush of pure survivalist efficiency — Vera cycled through scenarios of what, exactly, might have “gone feral.” Perhaps the Jarl had a pet bear, and the captive beast finally lost it. Perhaps some local fellow with drink-fueled anger in his veins was no longer content with venting his wrath on his spouse and kids, and had gone on a wider, less socially condoned rampage. Perhaps-

The roar squeezed through the seams between the logs: impossible, like the stuff of nightmares, ragged and enraged and riddled with low notes that dipped into the sheer terror of an infrasonic hum. Vera felt every hair on her head trying to stand as straight as antennae.

Whatever had made that sound, it had certainly never been tame.

“What the fuck is that?” she croaked, her hand curled around her bow as she ran after Sero, up the creaky steps that led from the cellar that housed the baths, through a throng of ashen-faced, fear-stricken villagers, and towards the bolted tavern door.

“Hircine’s little pet, behind the inn by the sound of it.”

Before she could ask what he meant, a hand gripped Vera’s forearm. She turned, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar tear-streaked face. The woman, a dark-haired Imperial, had gone so pale she was practically grey. “Please!” Her grip on Vera’s arm tightened, and her eyes, wild and white with some unutterable fear, darted between her and the Dunmer. “My little girl… They say… they s-… Please… b- b-...” she choked on the uncontrollable stutter of shock. “Please... b- -b- bring her to me, tell her that her m- m- m- mama loves her very much, and I’m not angry that she snuck out to pick mushrooms again, just bring my Lavinia b- b- b-...”

Sero’s jaw clenched, but he nodded curtly at the woman. “We’ll do what we can, sera.” He paused, one hand on the heavy beam barring the door from the inside. He turned to Vera. “Once we are outside, find higher ground. We’ll need someone at range.”

She nodded in acknowledgement, grateful to be released from the all too familiar sinkhole of inevitable tragedy that surrounded the Imperial.

Sero turned his back to her, and Vera swallowed around the punch of vertigo at the wordless statement of trust — the unspoken “cover me.” And then he threw the door open and went through. The ebony of his drawn blade slashed a crescent of darkness out of the sun-dappled spring morning.

The air was crisp and clean. Vera squinted against the glare as her eyes scanned the porch for the easiest way up to the roof. There. Railing; corner; drainage gully. The jutting logs provided easy handholds, but her fingers slipped on the slime-slicked wood. A heel hooked at hand level, her muscles quaking with the effort of stretching her body horizontally until she could shift her hips and extend her reach to grab the thatch and pull herself the rest of the way onto the terrace awning. She got to her feet, readied her bow, and scrambled up to the ridge. And then she froze.

Below her, a trampled courtyard; mud and blood mixed in greasy maroon swirls. A ring of seven — no, eight — guards; two more down, torn to bits. She recognized the guard captain, at eleven o’clock, leaning into some unseen injury, his face a twisted mask of cold fury plastered over fear. Undnar, at three o’clock, red mane aflame, towered over the rest of the Nords, the edge of his massive steel battleaxe catching the sunlight in an arc of muted grey.

And in the epicenter of this unlikely gathering stood something her brain simply refused to process. A massive, unconvincingly bipedal thing covered in umber fur, with an elongated, vaguely lupine snout, but with unmistakably human hands — if one discounted the razor-sharp claws. It swung itself left, then right, crouching on legs that bent in grotesquely hybrid articulation — humanoid thighs and knees with obscenely elevated tarsal joints. Colorless eyes tracked the guards with predatory calculation. The scene seemed frozen, like one of those old photographs, suspended in breathless anticipation between two moments.

A fireball roared through the air and broke in a burst of molten flame and a shower of sparks against the creature’s hide. It did no discernible harm, but it shattered the fleeting stalemate. The beast howled and whipped around, sharp talons slicing an arc through the air. A guard’s throat, torn to bloody ribbons, sprayed a crimson scimitar across the monster’s chest as the man tried — and failed — to jab his sword into the creature’s kidney.

The beast pounced on the crumpled body and began to feed, tearing flesh and sinew with guttural snarls.

Vera’s hands shook, but she nocked the arrow anyway. She wouldn’t get a better shot, not with how fast it moved. She held her breath.

This had always been easier with a scope, with the illusion of disembodied closeness it provided, the small circular focus breaking the target down into constituent parts. Easy. Clear. Almost architectural. There, above the shoulder joint, just where the fur thickened into a full mane to protect the neck…

She let fly. The bowstring twanged, the fletching etching a bloody track through the sliver of scar tissue on her gloveless knuckle — in the scramble, she’d not been able to locate her gauntlets. She grit her teeth against the pain.

The arrow lodged itself in the creature’s shoulder — her shot had erred too low. The monster roared and turned, abandoning its meal.

The guards charged. Vera saw the tactical mistake — too close, you three are too close — a split second before the thing reacted. Too late, the captain saw it too, his warning scream drowned out by another thundering growl. The beast, seemingly reinvigorated by its untimely snack, plowed through its assailants, its blood-smeared muzzle wrinkled in fanged triumph. It was quick-limbed and fluid and more lethal than anything Vera could have imagined. The guards never stood a chance. It scattered bodies in every direction — like when she was small, playing “Cities” with the other neighborhood kids, launching pipes at carefully erected edifices of rusty cans and jeering in chaotic glee as the structures toppled over.

Shouts rang out at her back, from the direction of the main road. Reinforcements. Vera chanced a quick glance. More guards, Lod the Blacksmith, a few other townsfolk, some armed with actual weapons, but most bearing pitchforks and torches. One man was swinging a cart thill.

The monster howled and backed away from the gathering mob.

“Don’t let him get away!” the captain roared, rallying the remainder of his troops. “I want him alive!”

Undnar had fallen back. Sero had materialized at his side, his features distorted by a vortex of blue flame. Together, they blocked off the passage between the inn and the farmstead that led down to the cemetery.

The creature leaped towards them, sensing an opening. Undnar readied his axe. “If any of you fine folk have silver, now would be the time to make a show of it,” he yelled at the captain.

If ever there was a time to stop being a fucking clown, Vera thought acerbically. She readied another shot. There, while the beast hesitated, taking Undnar’s measure — or perhaps considering his words?

She released the bowstring, her jaw set against the flare of pain where the fletching sliced her skin again. The bolt grazed the beast’s left haunch, to little effect. How did you kill these things?

Sero gestured abruptly: a quick twist of his hand, as if plucking something from the air and crushing it in his fist. A few feet in front of him, the air thickened in a brilliant amethyst shimmer. Then it parted, a yawning rip in the fabric of things, like an eyelid lifting. Vera almost dropped her bow. The being that was belched forth — eyeless, fire-crowned, and wrought of twisted flame and lava — glided forward, leaving an incandescent trail in its wake.

The lupine monstrosity dodged another fireball, whipped its head from side to side — every bit the cornered animal now — and then it whirled around and bounded at full speed in Vera’s direction. Before she could react, it had torn through two more guards, vaulted over a low fence, crouched at the foot of the tavern wall and leaped up, its claws sinking into the thatch and scouring the wood beneath with a sickening creak as it pulled itself up.

There was no time to think. It’d be upon her in seconds. And then it’d feed, whether she was already dead or not. The arrow she had nocked flew wild. She let go of the bow, and she forced herself to slide down towards the ledge, the dagger in her hand woefully inadequate, like a child’s toy. A scream clogged her throat, her breath barely wheezing past it. Still, she stabbed the blade through the hand closest to her, desperately focusing on the parts that replicated humanoid anatomy. Don’t look at the talons.

It was like trying to drive a butter knife through mortar.

The monstrosity roared in fury, groped for her with its good hand, a vicious whoosh of air where its claws had narrowly missed skewering her calf. And then it lost its grip and plummeted down. Vera’s feet slid from under her, and she landed on her ass, hard, her heels digging into the thatch but still slipping as she skidded to the edge. She fisted her hands into the straw and clung to it for dear life, the dry blades slicing her palms as her weight and momentum dragged her downward.

Someone shouted. Lod the Blacksmith and the inhospitable blond Nord that had grumbled about Vera’s provinciality charged forward, hurling a wide fishing net. Guards and townsfolk stampeded, the dry swish of swords followed by meaty squelches. A roar of pure rage laced with pain.

By the time she rolled off the roof and landed in an awkward crouch, it was over. An older man — portly and bald and grey of beard, clad in still fine, but time-worn garments — held a long silver-pale blade to the monster’s neck. The creature, ensnared in a tangle of netting, shuddered. And then it began to morph, like something coming into the world all wrong. Fur fell away in greasy clumps. Muscles bunched and shuddered in impossible contraction. Bones cracked and broke and fused anew, and the creature wailed in the agony of its unshaping — a sound of purely human terror.

And then, beneath the net, a blond man, naked as the day he was born, shivered and whimpered in the blood-soaked mud.

Vera braced her hands against the wall and vomited the remnants of last night’s dinner onto the grass at her feet.

Chapter Text

They found what was left of the girl by the lumber mill.

Vera willed her gaze to stay on the upturned wicker basket — willow reeds, by the look of it, inexpertly woven. The spilled mushrooms were mostly white caps, too young to be properly flavorful, let alone alchemically potent. A few blisterworts — good ones, with fat sturdy stems. You had to have an eye for blisterworts, the sneaky little bastards. Still, the kid probably had been in it for the hunt, not the sustenance.

She tried to focus her eyes on the narrow radius of that fungal scatter, but they kept sliding off towards the garish red smears screaming for attention from the periphery.

“Divines help me, that whoreson’s going to pay for this,” a man in the gathered crowd of villagers behind her ground out, his Nordic brogue thick, with the clanking of steel between phonemes.

“Go back to your business,” the guard captain — Yngvid, or Yngold, something with an “Yn” at the beginning, she recalled vaguely — barked at the gawking townsfolk. “Give us some space to work here.”

After days of chilling rains, spring was unfurling — bright, warm, and indifferent. Above them, a carrion bird squawked, the caw bouncing off the cliffs. One of the guards — Vera recognized the hapless Nord whom Gabinia had instructed in the ways of the marriage bed — drew his bow and shot an arrow into the piercing blue. He hit nothing, of course. He looked haggard and ten years older, like he had just moulted out of his youth in the time it took them to follow the trail of blood.

Vera turned abruptly, and almost collided with Undnar. For a moment, she had forgotten that he had been there at all. He stood in the gentle golden sunlight of Second Seed, with a look to him she was hard-pressed to interpret: in his impressive collection of masks, this one, she guessed, usually gathered dust. Nothing so simple as sorrow or grief or the empathy of past horrors bursting to the surface in recognition from wherever one buried such things. It wasn’t even anger, exactly, not in the way the other townsfolk wore it: a powerless festering rage that arced, crackling between bodies, gathering the charge that heralded mob justice in the same way a shift in air pressure presages a thunderstorm. The Mad Nord sported an eerie expression, pinched around the eyes, like the dull ache that lingered in the wake of a chronic dislocation, making you mindful of your own thresholds. She almost wished for him to say some off-color jape to give her a target. His opacity in that moment kindled her own acrid, nameless rancor. How about it, Undnar, still pining for the blessing of Lady Mara? Because this is what it comes with, you duplicitous, horseshit spewing fuck.

“Snowberry, go see if the apothecary has calmatives in stock.” His voice was steady and completely devoid of his usual buffoonery. “If it doesn’t, help the alchemist prepare it, and mind that it’s delivered to the mother.”

She swallowed her venom before it could spill into something she’d regret later.

Undnar turned to Sero, who stood a few paces away. The Dunmer’s eyes scanned the scene without Vera’s own selective vision, his lips pressing in a grim line.

“Teldryn, with me. Best-”

“Oy! Tall one, with the axe.”

Vera turned towards the voice — in response to the commanding tone, rather than the words themselves. The guard captain’s eyes swept over Sero and narrowed, flicked over to Vera with a flash of wary recognition, then resettled on Undnar. There was something cold and evaluative to his glare, and Vera decided that whatever it was, she didn’t like it one bit.

“We’re grateful for your assistance with the…” The captain weighed what word to use. “Lawbreaker. No doubt the Jarl will want to hear about your involvement with this sorry business, so pay a visit sooner rather than later.” He paused, considering. ”And don’t wander off too far, outsiders, in case we have a few questions after we interrogate the prisoner.”

Vera tried to squish the hollow suction of sudden fear, and failed. Fuck.

Sometimes surviving was a simple thing. A reliable weapon. A crawlspace stocked full of food for the winter. Someone to watch your back from the rooftops. Most of the time, it was subtler. Like listening for freighted words and recognizing what baggage they lugged.

Outsider.

Sure, they’d helped with neutralizing whatever the fuck that thing… was. But the crowd behind them was in no hurry to disperse, and the pulse of its directionless rage — who would do such a thing to a child — was too vast, too oceanic to be satisfied with the single target of one scrawny, whimpering laborer. The form he had worn had been formidable — a nightmare come to life — but the man the guards had hauled away into the local gaol was as frail and brittle and as quick to bleed as the rest of them.

He wouldn’t be enough to quench the rage. She could see it plainly, in rigid shoulders and glassy eyes, in the way the men’s knuckles went bone-white over the makeshift weapons they still clutched. They were too many, each with a thirst for retribution that would only coil tighter when the balmy air filled with the wails of women. She could almost hear the future sound in the tense, hushed silence — the mother’s breathless sob breaking open and carrying the rest of the people of Falkreath through the predictable steps.

Martha had drilled it into them, the five stages of grief, lifted from one of her old books — a dogeared and greasy paperback, its cover mended and mended again. “Mental hygiene for the End-Times,” she’d called it. Said had laughed at her quip. Jules too had laughed, later and reluctantly, despite his dedication to fighting their collective grim humor with his relentless, painful optimism.

Dima had smiled noncommittally, as he often did when it came to navigating the rift between the world before and the world he and Vera knew. And later, under the relative intimacy of their shared blanket, he’d mused that the model was missing a step.

“How about indifference? It’s all you need: step one, step five — boom!” She had been distracted by his hand between her legs, the meaning of his words drifting away as she bit her lip and arched into his touch, chasing the building pleasure. “Martha’s just old, Vee, and Said’s getting long in the tooth too. They don’t get how it is if you’re born into it.”

That night was the first time their fucking left her feeling uncomfortably out-of-sync, like they were two paragraphs trying to reach out to each other from the opposite sides of a page. On occasion, she still wondered if she should have been better at reading the signs of things to come. Still, she’d agreed then, if for no other reason than the desire to bridge that new, unfamiliar chasm between them. But here, with second-hand grief-fueled outrage washing over her with no hope to disentangle her own feelings from those of the crowd, she wasn’t so certain that Dima’s entrenched nihilism had any claim on accuracy.

Five steps. Denial was first, soundless, like choking on cotton wool. And then anger, a spreading infection. Eventually, it’d settle, and they’d get to bargaining and the rest of it, but before that…

Before that, the rage would engulf Falkreath like wildfire. And now, with a single word, that wrath had a potential added focus.

“Aye,” Undnar said, with uncharacteristic deference. Whatever else he was, the Mad Nord was perfectly capable of reading his audience. And the audience was currently in the mood for blood.

Vera glanced at Sero, whose grim expression had sloughed off, leaving nothing but an emotionless mask, save for the eyes. He met her gaze with a brief, almost imperceptible headshake.

~~~

Though her experience of Skyrim’s ruling class was limited and mostly gleaned through Markarth’s social organization and rumor mill, Vera had yet to meet a Jarl she liked. Either way, Siddgeir wasn’t going to make that list.

They found the Jarl of Falkreath draped in a lazy sprawl across a massive throne, lounging in it like a pampered cat, and he stayed that way throughout most of the conversation, surveying the three newcomers to his Hold with an expression of poorly concealed boredom.

Vera watched him warily from Undnar’s side, vaguely grateful that her attire and appearance didn’t draw the Jarl’s attention. A pretty maid in the corner of the cavernous hall was bent over her task of straightening the rugs, and Siddgeir’s eyes kept traveling to her backside with impressive regularity.

He was young — in his late twenties or early thirties — and well-groomed. His clothes were еxpensive and meticulously tailored; the fur mantle thrown over his shoulders looked like sable; and, if she’d learned anything about precious gems from her conversations with Kerah, the enormous green beryl sparkling in the center of his circlet could feed a small village for a year. His even, chiseled features were somewhat spoiled by a capricious pout. A brief glance at the Jarl’s hands confirmed Vera’s initial impression: his palms were pale and soft, and, judging by the fussy inlay of the scabbard at his hip, the weapon was more ornamental than functional.

“Terrible tragedy, what happened.” He yawned into his fist and dragged his gaze away from the maid’s ass for the umptieth time. His pout intensified. “But I suppose that’s the trouble with werewolves — it could be just about anyone. What was it you said you were doing in my Hold?”

Vera’s mental train derailed at “werewolves” — though after the demented trees, she really shouldn’t have been surprised — and by the time she managed to wrestle her attention back to the present, she had missed Undnar’s response.

“Dangerous times to travel ‘on business’.” Siddgeir’s lips twisted in a sour smile. “I am given to understand that you were present during the beast’s capture?”

Undnar bobbed his head in acquiescence, meeting the Jarl’s appraising stare with one of his own. “We offered our assistance, same as any decent arms-bearing and able-bodied warrior would when confronted with one of Hircine’s wretched curs.”

In retrospect, it might have gone fine had the guard captain not chosen this moment to march into the longhouse. The man’s wary expression at the sight of the “outsiders” had thickened into stone-faced suspicion. He made his way to Siddgeir’s side and leaned in for a few hushed whispers, exchanged quickly and with a vehemence to his body language that prickled the back of Vera’s neck with sudden alarm. The only two words she was able to overhear were “influence” and, incongruously, something about a ring.

“If you must,” the Jarl waved at the captain, apparently granting some kind of request.

The guard captain’s eyes settled on Vera. “You there, girl. Where’s your mistress?”

“Excuse me?”

What mistress?

“The priestess. Why haven’t you left with her?”

“I…” She drew a blank. What did Gabinia have to do with any of it? Think, you idiot. “She isn’t my mistress. I met her at Hunter’s Rest a week ago.” Give or take. “We traveled together, for safety. That’s why we went with your patrol.”

“Hmm. And have you met the lawbreaker prior to today’s... incident?” The captain’s question sounded studiedly neutral — and just the right amount of friendly.

Vera hesitated. It was patently obvious that the gears had been grinding against them ever since they found the slaughtered kid — except now they were grinding in a rather odd direction. On the other side of the Mad Bear, Sero shot her a quick glance, which she interpreted as a heads-up of the “this is going south” variety. Not helpful.

Her mouth went dry, but she made herself shrug. “I asked him for directions to Runil’s house. That’s the extent of it.”

The captain turned to the Jarl again. “The priest’s still missing, by the way.”

Siddgeir made a face like he had swallowed a toad and, after a moment of reflection, returned his attention to Undnar. “Tell me, traveler, is this woman an associate of yours?”

Vera’s stomach plummeted into her heels. Somehow, for a reason she couldn’t quite work out, she’d just gotten herself implicated into whatever had happened with the “werewolf.”

For a terribly long second or two, Undnar deliberated. Vera’s breath stuck in her throat. She didn’t doubt for one moment that the demented buffoon would shove her off a cliff if it benefited him in some way.

“Indeed, she is.” His eyes narrowed, and Vera thought she saw the briefest of smirks flash beneath his beard, there, then gone. “I suppose there is no point in keeping the pretense at this stage, for I would not dream of insulting your intelligence, my Jarl, and your guard captain has already put the pieces together, I’d wager.” This time, the Mad Bear had managed to gain Siddgeir’s undivided attention — a remarkable feat, all things being equal. He heaved a dramatic sigh and rolled his shoulders. “I spoke the truth when I said that my associates and I are here on official business, but you have undoubtedly surmised that our arrival during such dire events is not entirely coincidental.” He lowered his voice to a confidential yet officious timbre. “I trust you will understand the need for discretion. My name is Undnar Silver-Tongue. I have been dispatched by our fine Queen to apprehend a most dangerous and devious criminal, a woman of ill repute and many misdeeds who has been masquerading, according to the information at my organization’s disposal, as a Priestess of Dibella. My apprentice,” he motioned with his chin at Vera, “had been tasked with trailing her from Markarth, a mission which she has unfortunately failed.” Undnar delivered a disapproving frown in her general direction before returning his attention to a rather stunned looking guard captain, and to the vaguely intrigued Siddgeir. Whatever broke the monotony of Jarly life, Vera supposed. “But,” he continued, with an indulgent sigh, “such is the folly of youth and inexperience.”

What manner of fresh bullshit is that? Vera blinked, but managed a “hmm.” And then, marginally more convincingly, “Sorry to disappoint you... boss.”

“And I presume you have some documentation to support this…” the guard captain shot a quick look at the Jarl “...claim?”

“Naturally. Now, where did I put it?” He made a show of digging around in the satchel at his belt. Vera expected anything — a petard, a flask of toxic chemicals, a white rabbit. What she didn’t expect was the tightly rolled vellum. “A writ of arrest, signed by Elisif the Fair herself.” Undnar handed the scroll to Siddgeir with a slight bow, his studiously reserved smile the epitome of professionalism, but beneath it, something else lurked — something that, to Vera, seemed awfully close to a species of anarchic glee.

“Will that do?”

Chapter Text

If they had left Falkreath then, riding the momentum of surprise, things might have gone differently. Perhaps, she could have made her case to Sero — leave now, before the townsfolk start looking for additional scapegoats — and together they could have swayed the Mad Bear into a strategic retreat with no ill-fated detours. But there simply hadn’t been time.

“I wish to speak with the prisoner, Captain. I am certain the Queen would be grateful for your assistance in this matter.” The Mad Nord’s request came quickly, with all the gravitas of officious authority.

The ripple of tightening jaw muscles beneath the guard captain’s skin drew Vera’s attention, and she quickly looked away, refocusing on the Jarl. Shit. Perhaps the smothered anger was simply a matter of thwarted hierarchy, but she doubted it — the captain didn’t strike her as petty. She supposed that in the wake of King Torygg’s murder, a woman at the helm might not be inspiring universal loyalty.

“Naturally.” Siddgeir drummed his fingers against the armrest, and considered Undnar with greedy curiosity. “I trust that word of our collaboration in your investigation will reach the ears of our fair Elisif in due course?”

“I will be sure to write a full report,” the Mad Nord agreed with studied poise.

“Come along then,” the captain bit out. “But if you interfere with my work, you’ll be joining that accursed bastard behind bars, writ or no writ.”

Outside the longhouse, the spring sun painted the town in garishly bright colors. Birds bustled and chirped in the bushes, joyous for the new warmth. To Vera, moving through the central street felt like crawling through a crumbling tenement — jaw clenched against the expectation of the floor yawning open with a single misstep, eyes trained on the shadows for any signs of movement, icy terror churning in the pit of her stomach. A mob had gathered at the entrance to the jail, and they were clamoring for swift justice. Vera didn’t have to dig too deep to imagine what that justice might entail. Guards had been dispatched to disperse the crowd, but they weren’t making much headway.

Undnar had poured himself into his new role with the fluidity of mercury, and once the three of them reached the entrance to the local barracks, with the captain bringing up the rear, gone were the buffooning bard, the slimy businessman, and the reckless grave robber — or whatever other persona Undnar saw fit to wear on any given day. What coalesced in their stead was a social type Vera knew only second-hand, from her mother’s stories about her youth, before things collapsed for good: about the tightening of power, about authoritarian governments and the secret police. One way or another, the patina of aloof, calculating intelligence that had settled over the Nord did not feel entirely fabricated — perhaps if there was a real Undnar under all the masks, this strangely silent, cold-eyed, utterly impassive man was the closest approximation. Or perhaps, Vera thought with sudden queasy horror, all of it was acting — and beneath the collection of faces, there was only a shifting, shapeless void.

Either way, it wasn’t like she had much of a choice. If Gabinia, unbeknownst to Vera, had played an indirect role in the laborer’s transformation and ensuing carnage, then dancing to Undnar’s flute was the simplest way to avoid falling into the not particularly desirable role of potential accomplice. She had no way of gauging the proportion of bullshit that had gone into the Mad Nord’s latest scheme — if it was a scheme at all. Either way, falling on Falkreath’s bad side would end her quickly, but badly.

“You two stay here,” Undnar threw over his shoulder before ascending the rough-hewn, mud-caked porch that led to the door of the barracks. “I shouldn’t be long.”

Vera glanced at the Dunmer, who was scanning their surroundings for an unobtrusive patch of wall to prop up. She followed him to the far edge of the veranda, where a wide column of intricately carved oak partially obscured them from the restless crowd. She leaned against the planks, trying to ignore the itchy feeling the mob’s attention left on her skin.

Sero, who was fiddling with a rollie, lifted an eyebrow in silent question, but Vera shook her head. Being winded by a lungful of smoke if she had to run for her life — should the crowd get bloodthirsty and find itself an alternative target — wasn’t going to do her any favors.

“We need to leave,” she said quietly. “This will get worse. If they can’t get to the culprit, they’ll start looking for someone else to vent their grief.”

He let the back of his head rest against the wall in a deceptively relaxed pose. “I doubt that Undnar will wish to linger for too long, hlakhes.” He had matched her quiet tone. “He won’t leave until he gets what he came for.” The words came out slightly distorted by the smoke, and the telltale scent of the mixture lingered in the muggy warmth. Vera wondered why the Dunmer chose to use his life-detecting formula in broad daylight, but didn’t pursue it.

“What did he come for, Teldryn?” It wasn’t that she was expecting him to answer — or to answer with the truth, in any case — but if nothing else, it gave her the chance to fish for clues. She turned her head, the better to gauge his reaction. “Was that writ forged?”

Crimson eyes met hers, and his lips twitched in a not-quite-smile. “Genuine, I suspect, though I wasn’t privy to its procurement. Which doesn’t mean that it wasn’t obtained under false pretenses.”

So her initial assumption had been correct — even if Undnar’s interest in Gabinia hadn’t been a complete surprise, the merc wasn’t fully included into his employer’s plans. “What are those great crimes Undnar accused her of? It must have been convincing if he got himself an official arrest warrant for his troubles,” she pushed.

“The usual, if your goal is a quickly issued license to detain.” Sero’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Spreading Daedric influence.”

Vera swallowed. Well, fuck. Her knowledge of the Daedra was superficial at best — they came from Oblivion, and they were, from the stories Lovinar had supplied her with, heartless bastards — but beyond that, the specificities of their presence in her new world remained rather vague. Of course, that part could be a complete fabrication. For all her eclectic theological advice, Gabinia never referenced any Daedra. Besides, so far, the Mad Nord’s pursuits seemed pedestrian enough — save, that is, for the gems.

She chased the thought down, trying to unravel the connection. A bit of a leap, but what were the chances that Undnar’s departure to Solitude, shortly after the murder of King Torrygg, had been purely coincidental? She thought back to the mirage of the city of blue cupolas her soul poisoning had left her with. It had been startlingly vivid except for the protagonist’s bedmate. The man’s face was an undefined blur, though whether an effect of conscious erasure or simply of the dim lighting, she couldn’t quite tell. Either way, if the memory had, in fact, belonged to Gabinia, then the priestesses’s past luggage included sleeping with important political figures for fun and profit — and for some other, more insidious reason that likely harkened back to the discrete notes passed from one habit-clad acolyte to another on the crowded docks of a port city.

She’d have to see if she could find a likeness of the late monarch — a portrait, perhaps — and check it against the man in the vision.

Vera’s gaze returned to the milling crowd. The guards had managed to thin the ranks a bit, sending some people home, but the most dedicated and enraged still lingered, clamoring for admission and to just “get it done.” A few of the townsfolk trailed in small clusters in the direction of the graveyard. She felt a vague pang of sorrow for Runil. Whenever he returned from playing nursemaid to Valdr, the old Mer would have an unpleasant homecoming. Her hand reached for the amulet of Arkay around her neck. Its shape beneath the cloth felt slightly wrong. It wasn’t the familiar square of Lovinar’s frost amulet — in her haste to leave Markarth, regaining it from Garvey had slipped her mind — though the trinket’s weight still offered an odd, muted sort of reassurance.

“Speaking of Daedra.” Sero’s voice was so quiet she had to strain her ears to hear it. She turned to him to check what was making him drop to a conspiratorial whisper, aside, that is, from the subject matter. A sudden jolt of fear iced its way down her spine.

She overrode it with a questionable quip. “If this is about you recruiting me into your Daedric cult, Demon Chops, I suggest you buy me dinner first.”

The Dunmer choked on the smoke, and coughed a few times, though whether to cover his discomfiture or his laughter, Vera wasn’t sure.

“My point,” she smiled sweetly. “And you really should smoke less. Nothing ruins a clever comeback quite like a sudden coughing fit.”

His short bark of amusement brought a feeling of odd, slightly restless warmth in her chest. “Is that all it would take to persuade you, hlakhes?” he inquired, his earlier humor settling into a crooked half-smile, though unease lurked in the tension around his eyes. “Dinner?”

“I never said I’d agree.” Vera returned his smirk. “I’m not the blindly worshipful type, Sero, I doubt you’d talk me into it.”

“I did, in fact, talk you into receiving an Aedran blessing.” His grin acquired a slightly wicked edge. “I don’t recall it being that challenging. But I suppose, if the occasion warranted, I’d strive to be more… persuasive.”

Arrogant jerk. Vera narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t flatter yourself too much, Sero, you’re not as skilled with your tongue as you think.”

He huffed a chuckle, but got his feet under him quickly. “Is that an empty challenge or do you fancy... a bet, outlander?”

His smoky purr sent a shiver down her arms. Vera swallowed and tried to ignore the mental image, with minimal success.

“I take it the round’s mine,” Sero commented with performative equanimity.

“Not if it’s a bluff — which it is, and we both know it. You aren’t going to act on it.” The words tumbled out ahead of her better judgement, and the sudden pang of anxiety at the troubled, complicated look he gave her made Vera wonder what had changed between them, and when. Perhaps it was their encounter in the bathhouse, and waking up in his arms. Or perhaps it had started earlier, with the letters.

“The point is mine, hlakhes, as per our rules.” He shifted, and leaned in, his warm breath tickling her ear. “Or should I try to guess where your mind went?” He returned to his task of propping up the wall. “You have a rather charming little tell when your thoughts... wander.”

The verbal trap had all the subtlety of a rampaging troll, not that it did her much good, because in the next instant, the words were out. “Which is?”

“Ask me again if you get to 100. Whereas if I do, I suppose that you will be telling me who carved your back with Daedric script.” After a pause, he added “Speaking of Daedra.”

What? The wordless shock of it numbed her lips and shot through her like an electric discharge.

“Ah. That explains...” he trailed off, his brow furrowed in thought. “From what I saw, the letters are heavily stylized.” He mulled it over, and when he spoke again, his voice had tightened with hidden anger. “And the scarring was excessive. Applied against your will, I take it?”

Vera stuffed her hands into her pockets and turned away. She didn’t owe him any admissions. But the thought of allowing the merc to assume that she’d been tagged willingly didn’t sit well, not the least because it risked her a potential ally. He had traded quips with her easily enough, but the humor hadn’t fully concealed his underlying tension at the mention of Daedra. “I wasn’t offered a choice of designs, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said dryly before meeting his eyes. “Can you read it?” She couldn’t decide whether the question was less incriminating than the one she had almost asked — what does it say — or whether it was worse.

“I could try, if you’d like.” The flash of mirth in his eyes was still tinged with unease, now layered over an additional emotion — this one, Vera thought, she recognized well enough in his widening pupils. His eyes darted down, but he returned his gaze to her face quickly. She braced herself against him claiming another point, but instead, his cheekbones darkened with a flush, and he cleared his throat — entirely unnecessarily, by the sound of it.

“Should I guess where your mind went, Sero?”

He gave her a slightly cross look. “No need.”

Just as Vera updated the score, Undnar emerged from the barracks. A discretely pleased look lurked at the edges of his officious mask: a cat that had just gotten the pigeon.

“Shall we?” he said, once he spotted them. “Best get on the road, before we overstay our welcome.”

Chapter Text

Slipping into their pre-established routine had the ease of donning well-worn slippers, and the first few days spent getting out of Falkreath Hold and its messes were surprisingly uneventful. Still, by the end of the third day of travel, with the town safely behind them, Vera dug in her heels: she would go no further unless Undnar explained what he wanted from her. Against all odds, he met her newfound mulishness with a stunning lack of resistance. In fact, the Mad Nord had sounded almost convincingly contrite. “Aye, lass, I suppose I owe you that much. I ask only that you hold your questions until Riverwood.”

She had ignored Sero’s evaluative look as she deliberated, though she could feel it lingering on her skin, like heat from a flame. “Until Riverwood, then,” she’d agreed, leaving the semantics purposefully vague. Not that she expected the Nord to keep his word — that’d be a first — but Riverwood suited her own purposes well enough, and until then, there was the relative safety of the devil you knew.

The reprieve was short-lived. On the evening of the fifth day, in the middle of a particularly charming copse of young pines, they found an upturned cart, and with it, the first grim harbinger of the coming war.

Sero spotted it first and barked a warning — “best you stay back.” Vera paid him no mind: she already saw what there was to see. The scene was no great surprise — you could swap out the actors and change the backdrop, but the essence of it remained, in this world or any other.

The sudden tightness in her throat clipped her question to a single word. “Ambush?”

The merc stood still for a few moments, scanning the surrounding forest through the prism of his smoking mixture, his eyes slightly out of focus. “Aftermath.” He turned to her. “Hlakhes, Undnar and I can take care of-”

“You think I haven’t seen this kind of shit before?”

He didn’t flinch, but his face hardened before he nodded abruptly.

Vera relaxed her stance, letting the misdirected resentment drain, but she didn’t feel compelled to apologize for the harsh tone.

Undnar caught up, his eyes narrowed in assessment of what lay ahead. “No offense, Snowberry, but Teldryn’s not wrong on this, why don’t you just-”

Vera rounded on the Nord, now that she had a better target for the cold rage roiling in her gut. “No. You two can wait here. I’ll call when it’s done.”

She didn’t wait for a reply.

The cloud of black flies lifted briefly with her passage, then resettled. The man — an Imperial, judging by the skin tone, though it was hard to tell for certain without a head to go with the rest of him — was draped over the side of the cart like forgotten laundry. The blood beneath had dried, dark as an oil-spill in the waning twilight. She passed him without a second glance. The woman, they’d simply left in the middle of the road. Vera crouched by the corpse. Rigor mortis had set in, so there wasn’t much she could do to give the body a semblance of final dignity besides pulling the blood-soaked skirt down to cover the obscenely exposed flesh.

“See about a shovel,” she called over her shoulder, her voice hoarse as a raven’s caw.

“Would be cleaner to burn them instead of having them rot,” the merc grumbled, but didn’t argue.

The horse was gone, but most of the cart’s cargo was suspiciously intact, including an old, dented spade buried under other holdsteading tools.

The Nord and the Dunmer traded turns digging. Vera walked around looking for the Imperial’s severed head, but it was nowhere to be found.

“Damn bandits are worse than the vermin that infest the ash wastes back home.” Sero wiped sweat from his brow, left a smear of dirt across his face for his troubles, and went back to his task.

Undnar didn’t comment. He had drifted back to the cart to move the bodies. Vera glanced up, just in time to see him yank a dagger from the headless male’s back. A bloodied note fell to the ground, and he bent down to retrieve it.

When he did speak, finally, the Nord’s voice lacked any identifiable inflection. “Sellsword, I’ve no quarrel with your judgement. Except it wasn’t bandits who did this.”

Sero stopped digging. “Not much of a difference, one way or another,” he bit out, before motioning with his head at the scrap of parchment in Undnar’s hands. “What does it say?”

“Come see for yourself. You too, Snowberry.”

Vera abandoned her search for the missing head and trotted back to where the other two stood.

The scrawl was crude but legible.

“Skyrim belongs to the Nords.”

“The beginning of a bloody mess, is what this is,” Undnar summarized.

They buried the bodies side by side in a shallow roadside grave.

~~~

It didn’t get worse after that — just more of the same, in various flavors, like following a trail of poisoned breadcrumbs. They came upon the ruin of a small farmstead the next morning. The structure was burned to a blackened husk, along with whoever had been inside. This time, Vera did stay out, keeping watch in the courtyard while the other two investigated. No sense in stockpiling fuel for more nightmares — there wasn’t anything to be done about it, whether she saw the carnage or not.

The light breeze carried the stench of wet cinders and rotting meat on its breath. She paced, giving the slaughtered cattle a wide berth, amorphously angry at the wastefulness of it. The soggy soil at her feet was pockmarked with horses’ hoofprints and stamped with indentations left by suspiciously identical boots.

Sero came out first, and they watched the ravaged ruin in silence, waiting for Undnar.

“Whose?” Vera asked eventually, not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things.

“Nord family, by the look of what’s left.” A hard crease bracketed the Dunmer’s mouth. “Four adults, three children.”

“More bandits?”

She had no doubt that the merc could recognize the pattern of footprints just as well as she did — you could always spot the Legion by the narrow, steel-dented instep.

Her gallows humor earned her a sardonic grimace. “In their spare time.”

~~~

Something odd had been happening to Undnar ever since they found the farmstead, some incomprehensible shuffle unfolding below the surface. That evening Vera saw the Mad Nord’s wrath for the first time: not his occasional displays of aggravations, but something else entirely. It came on him with no obvious forewarning, cataclysmic, frigid as an arctic gale. He never, not once, raised his voice. He didn’t gaud or try to pick a fight with either her or the merc. He simply sat by the campfire, a motionless, wordless mountain of a man, with savage sparks dancing in his tawny eyes. His silence was more telling than anything he could have said.

Above the pines, Masser hung rusty and fat, like a swollen tick.

Eventually, Undnar got to his feet and went to retrieve his axe. “Going to stretch my legs.”

He didn’t wait for acknowledgement, just lumbered off into the woods and melted into the darkness between the pines.

Vera looked at the sellsword for clarification, but the Dunmer simply shrugged.

“He’ll walk it off.”

“Whose side is he on?” After a brief hesitation, she amended, “Other than his own, that is?”

Sero set his honing stone aside, resheathed his blade, and helped himself to more canis root tea from the communal pot. Vera maneuvered a baked turnip from the coals, skewered it with a stick, and handed it to him. He accepted the offer of food with his customary “my thanks.” Their provisions had dwindled down to goat jerky, stale flatbread, and a sack of root vegetables they’d found in what was left of the ransacked farmstead’s winter stores. The road had taken them higher into the mountains, and the land offered scant gleanings.

He didn’t answer right away, instead occupying himself with scraping ash off his dinner. And then he chuckled, with no humor whatsoever. “Not on the winning one.”

When the merc didn’t volunteer an explanation, Vera unfolded her map and marked the location of the burned farm. She amended the legend, too — it wasn’t the first ruin she’d come across, but it was the first war ruin. Chances were, it wouldn’t be the last. She might as well standardize her short-hand for ease of future record-keeping. “If this spreads into a full-blown civil war, I doubt there will be a winning side. Not in Skyrim, anyway.”

“Nor in the Empire, for that matter.”

He didn’t expand on it, but he didn’t need to. Even without a deep knowledge of the local histories of conquest, the writing was on the wall — or had been, on Lovinar’s political map of Tamriel, to be more precise, fifty years out of date though it was. She’d studied it carefully regardless.

“The classic problem of territorial bloat. Can’t hold the edges, can’t be seen losing them? No skin off the Dominion’s back, one way or another.”

Sero reached for a log from the pile and wedged it into the flames. “They have the advantage of time. So no, no skin off their back.”

“What do you mean, ‘the advantage of time’?”

Vera looked up from her map and caught the merc watching her. They hadn’t found themselves alone together since Falkreath, and their little game had taken the back-seat, attention rerouted to the first scars of the brewing rebellion. The silence between them suddenly felt charged, crackling with words left unreleased.

The Dunmer averted his gaze with a shrug that seemed to aim for casual, but overshot. “It’s a simple game of numbers, hlakhes. Common soldiers aside since those don’t tend to live long, the Empire will rotate through at least three generals where the Dominion only needs one. Same with everything else. Mages, craftsmen, scholars…”

So that’s what he was talking about. The discrepancy in life expectancies. She never truly considered the political implications, but it was obvious, if you thought about it. Of course the Thalmor would have an advantage: three times as many years of accumulated experience per expert compared to the shorter-lived races, multiplied by a more expansive sense of history, like a greater depth of field. Perhaps this was what the Citadels had gambled on too, in the end — a radical reduction of numbers in exchange for maximizing the individual. “A new species of human for a new time,” indeed. Never mind that they cannibalized everything and everyone outside their walls to make it possible.

“Are you saying that mer will always have an advantage over the other races?” She hadn’t intended the question as confrontational, but her rancor, misplaced as it was, filtered through regardless.

He met her gaze, flint on steel. “I make no claims about superiority, if that’s what you’re waiting to hear, hlakhes. As to the difference in lifespans, it simply changes the rules of engagement.”

Vera bit the inside of her cheek, trying to keep her expression from spilling to the surface. Had she simply… misread him from the beginning? Was this the root of his reticence, his refusal to mix “business and pleasure?” Not that there weren’t other, perfectly valid reasons to avoid messy ties, but… Perhaps Martha hadn’t done her any favors with the steady diet of myths and legends and stories. She’d been chasing down the idea that the Dunmer was bound by some kind of oath, or code — all in all very romantic, and not at all practical, as far as possible explanations went. Maybe things were simpler. Simpler and crasser. Lovinar’s own impending mortality had equalized the field for her — the old herbalist had never treated her as anything less than an equal. But Calcelmo certainly had.

Maybe the merc simply didn’t want to get himself entangled with the terminally short-lived.

Vera forced her jaw to relax. “I never said anything about superiority either, Sero, I said advantage.”

He shrugged. “If you’re intent on cynicism, then yes, I suppose if viewed that way. On the other hand, the Empire has numbers at its disposal.”

“By which you mean meat.” She congratulated herself on making it sound casual. “Faster breeding, I’m guessing, and hence expendable bodies. If you can just jam the meat grinder...” She clamped her teeth, holding the words from slipping further. She was turning this into an argument, one that had nothing to do with the actual topic of war. Stupid. Stupid and juvenile and a waste of time and resources.

Once the rancor had resettled into its usual place, she rerouted. “I take it you’re not picking sides?”

He watched her over the flames. “It’s not my war, Vee.”

“And if you had to choose?”

She could feel it, the shift in him, a tightness hinting at that ancient anger, superficially sublimated. “I am not in the habit of taking Thalmor contracts, nor do I fancy doing the Empire’s bidding. Of course, if Ulfric Stormcloak gets his way, I can’t imagine it’ll take the Nords too long to have my compatriots expunged from Skyrim, with a little encouragement if one dallies too long. Does that answer your question?”

The edge of her irritation dulled into amorphous discomfort, leaving in its wake a pang of guilt. “I never asked. How old are you, Teldryn?”

He huffed a short laugh. “A titch older than you, I suspect, though who can tell with you… ‘Bretons.’”

Vera frowned at her map, as if it could offer a way of navigating the new chasm between them. Had the merc been human, she would have placed him at a comfortable early forties, or a fast-burning late thirties, perhaps. Where did that put him, in mer terms?

She took a breath, then another, until the pointless speculations shrank back to size. Wringing her hands over age differences presupposed there was some kind of hypothetical future for them — individually, let alone together. With that dubious idea safely out of the way, she simply reached for humor in a bid to shift the mood. “I’m seven thousand, three hundred, and forty three years old, I’ll have you know.”

She earned herself a throaty cackle, followed by a speculative hum. “I wouldn’t have put you a day over one hundred and fifty.”

“Mind the flattery, Demon Chops, I might just swoon.”

His eyes crinkled with a smile. “Then I suggest you narrow your swooning radius — you’re a bit too far for me to catch you at the moment.”

“I’ve seen you move, I bet you’d manage it.”

The flames danced across his features, giving his expression a tremulous, undefined quality. “Would you... risk it?”

His tone remained light, but a peculiar note had crept into the question, lurking in his ellipsis.

Vera shrugged. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one having a private conversation with herself. “You know how it is with us ‘Bretons.’ We’re itty-bitty. Worse comes to worst, it’s not a long way down.”

She did it then — a very slow, controlled sideways fall, her right arm thrown out in anticipation of having to amortize the impact, certain that he wouldn’t move, either for comical effect or to make a point, or both.

Half-way to the ground, her shoulder encountered chitin. Vera looked up. The Dunmer smirked and righted her with a hand at her back.

“Next time you plan on swooning, partner, do strive to at least make it a bit of a challenge, will you?”

Vera snorted. “Are you calling me ‘easy,’ Demon Chops?”

“Oh, quite the opposite, in fact.” His crooked smirk transmuted into a full-fledged grin, sharp and a little wicked. “I think you’re rather difficult.”

Chapter Text

“Of all the things-... where did you even-...” Vera glared at the Mad Nord, fishing for something that would adequately articulate the inarticulable. “No, never mind that. Why?”

She should’ve known it would come to something like this. Again.

The Demented Bear considered the garment he was dangling with a puzzled squint. “What’s wrong with it, Snowberry?”

“Do you want me to make you a list?”

She supposed that the flimsy slip of yellow fabric had one thing going for it — it wasn’t Forsworn armor. Aside from that, it, and the latest harebrained idea it likely went with, had remarkably little to recommend it.

“If it’ll help alay your misgiving, lass, by all means do share, but trust me, th-”

“Why do we need a disguise?” She gestured to the austere battlements jutting above the fir trees that surrounded their small camp. “Why can’t we just go in as is?”

Sero and Undnar traded a look.

“Snowberry,” the Mad Nord trailed in infuriatingly dulcet tones — the sort you used on an especially bull-headed and unreasonable child — “It’s Helgen.”

Vera bridled her irritation and squinted into the distance. Nestled against the steep, snow-crusted cliffs, an unusually tall palisade partially obscured an assortment of fortifications and thatched roofs. The toothy outline of battlements loomed, violet and foreboding, against a bloody sunrise. A squat, circular tower stood vigil over the stretch of westbound highway, presumably giving the sentries ample time to spot an approaching enemy force. She was willing to bet good money that a matching tower would be overlooking the eastbound road.

Either it was a bandit camp — perfectly placed for shaking down wayward travelers — or else, some kind of military base. The ones she had encountered in her past life had mostly been gutted, overrun by raiders, or served as the seeds from which Citadels grew like mutated fungus. The architecture of such places tended to have a predictable pattern to it, and it was easy to spot the extractive infrastructure growing outward into the surrounding towns — or what was left of them, anyway. Back when there had been anything to extract.

Whatever insights the carcass of her broken world might have offered, it didn’t explain why Helgen would make costuming a requirement, and the Dismal Duo had not seen fit to share it, though they clearly knew something she didn’t, judging by their silent exchange. She hadn’t missed the flash of concern that flicked on the Dunmer’s face before he smothered it under a performatively dismissive shrug. She was missing something — something self-evident enough that it didn’t warrant a debriefing.

Vera sideyed the slip of fabric still hanging from Undnar’s crooked finger, and crossed her arms. “Suppose I wear this — and I’m not saying I will. But suppose I did. Why would a tavern wench draw less suspicion than a hunter passing through?” She narrowed her eyes. “Because right now, I’m inclined to think that this is another one of your sordid Nord fantasies, in which case, we’re almost at Riverwood, Undnar — surely, you can hold out for another day or two until you get your hands on the real thing.”

On the other side of the campfire, Sero’s poorly smothered cackle sounded distinctly vindictive.

The Mad Bear gave a masterful impersonation of injured innocence. “Why, I would never, Snowberry.” Then he beamed, toothy and entirely unrepentant. “Much as I wouldn’t complain about resting my weary warrior’s eyes on your beguiling, though usually prudently concealed attributes, lass, it isn’t that. Have you taken a good look at us lately? We would be lucky indeed if those Imperials mistake us for simple bandits. Twitchy as they are with the rebellion picking up speed, unless you are wearing Legion colors, it’ll be straight to Helgen Keep for questioning.” His mirth abated a fraction. “Trust me, that’s not the sort of sightseeing you’d find enjoyable.”

“Doesn’t explain the tavern wench outfit.”

“The tavern wench is a civilian, Snowberry. Not a Stormcloak trying to pass itself off as a hunter.”

“I’m a Breton.” She ignored Sero’s sardonically cocked eyebrow. “Sero’s a Dunmer. If anyone should be wearing a civilian disguise, it’s you, Undnar.” She smiled and motioned with her chin at the garment. “I think you would look quite stunning in yellow.”

~~~

They had bickered half-heartedly, but in the end, Vera’s refusal prevailed, and quicker than she had anticipated. Undnar seemed uncharacteristically subdued. She wondered briefly whether the previous night’s oddly expressionless anger had now settled on a new, more definite target. You could always spot the ones whose eyes were trained on the horizon line, and something of that distant focus now lurked in the Mad Nord’s tawny eyes.

Dubious (and mercifully disregarded) disguises notwithstanding, Undnar hadn’t been entirely wrong about what awaited them behind the palisade. Helgen crawled with Legion soldiers — Imperials and Nords at a two to one ratio, Vera estimated. In addition to the soldiers, a few figures in intricately embossed steel armor marched about with an air of harried efficiency. The horsehair crests on their helmets shone bright and bloody in the morning light.

The guards at the gates ordered them towards a large building, which Vera identified as an inn. Nestled against its south wall, a squat, unapologetically utilitarian structure with a flat roof and only a rectangular opening in lieu of a door sheltered an oversized desk and an overworked-looking clerk. Despite the early hour, the queue to see the Imperial official stretched half-way to the western gates. A group of Bretons in merchant robes, a cluster of Bosmer bowmen, a dozen Nords dressed in farm clothes shifted from foot to foot, oscillating between irritable boredom and equally irritable anxiety. A small knot of Argonians — wage laborers, by the look of them — wandered away from it, released from whatever bureaucratic procedure the Imperial official had in store. They spoke quietly, trading expressions Vera couldn’t begin to interpret, beyond a general sense of stunned anger. She followed the group with her eyes, until they stopped and coalesced into a tight circle. Thin coin purses were passed around, in an effort to collectivize what little money they had left. Apparently, the clerk had collected a tithe.

She turned to Sero, and nodded in the direction of the Argonians. The Dunmer had donned his cowl and helmet, and the only sign of his return attention was an almost imperceptible shrug.

“We’re in for a fleecing,” Vera muttered, just loud enough for the merc to hear.

“Skyrim is full of bandits these days,” Sero trailed, his habitual mockery dulled with an almost philosophical world-weariness. “I suppose we will be here for some time,” he added.

The queue moved slowly. Undnar made small talk with the group of farmers ahead of them, Sero wandered off to a nearby woodchopping block and lit up, and Vera contented herself with drawing mental blueprints of the village. What she could see of Helgen was built for defense, the architecture multiplied nooks and crannies to slow down land units. Still, her back prickled with the anachronistic habit of expecting trouble from above. It was a good thing, she mused, that her new world didn’t have to fear air strikes — an aerial attack would trap the locals in bottle-necks.

~~~

The official charged with determining whether their disreputable-looking trio posed a threat to the interests of the Empire was a gaunt, jaundiced number with sunken cheeks, an overlong neck that seemed to grow forward instead of upward from a habit of hunching over important state documents, and a nervous twitch that Vera first mistook for a conspiratorial wink. “Your occupation?” he demanded when it was finally their turn. He dipped his quill into the inkpot and paused expectantly.

Undnar arranged his face into a deferential grimace. “We are but hu-”

“Did I use the plural, Nord?” The clerk’s lips pinched in thinly veiled annoyance. “Each traveler passing through Helgen,” he intoned in persnickety bureaucratese, ”is required to supply a truthful and accurate description of their occupation; a truthful and accurate account of their parentage — cognatic, I will remind you, none of this clannish patrilineal Nord nonsense, please — to the fourth antecedent and to the best of your knowledge; an anticipated travel itinerary for the subsequent fortnight, though a full month would be preferable. Furthermore,” he continued, lifting his finger to forestall the Mad Bear’s nascent objection, “you are required to provide a complete inventory of your belongings, such as any weapons; armor and clothing; alchemical formulas; written materials; enchanted objects and enchantment precursors; tools; relics; valuables; and handicrafts including, but not limited to scrimshaw, leatherwork, and jewelcraft. It goes without saying, that...”

Whatever went without saying, Vera lost it to her mounting panic. The blasted Imperial wanted information on lineage? What were the chances he would be satisfied with a claim to orphandom? Except that the only orphanage in Skyrim she’d heard about was in Riften, and she couldn’t describe it with any more precision than she could conjure “China” or “Switzerland” — or any other place lost to the erosion of her former world. Whatever those ghostly names pointed to, their referents had the fuzzy shapelessness of a half-forgotten story, circulated imperfectly and scrambled with mistakes and embellishments. Perhaps she could claim memory loss, but it was unlikely that the bureaucrat would buy that particular line of bullshit, and, besides, it risked translating into more questions from the Mad Bear and the Dunmer later.

She wrestled herself out of her spiral just in time to see Undnar produce the writ of arrest. He laid it out in front of the Imperial clerk, making sure that the embossed wax seal in the bottom left corner was clearly (if tastefully) on display.

The Imperial’s narrow face creased in a nearsighted squint as he brought his nose close to the scroll. After a good minute, he lifted his eyes and offered a profoundly skeptical “hmm.” Another few minutes dragged on in uncomfortable silence as he studied the seal. Finally, the clerk tore his nose from the page and regarded them with a sour look. “And I suppose that you will now assert that this document of questionable authenticity exempts you and your associates from the established procedure?”

Undnar grinned with idiotic enthusiasm. “Just so!”

Vera smoothed out a frown. Whatever role the Mad Bear was playing now, it was miles away from the dour officiousness he had donned in Falkreath.

“Undnar Silver-Tongue. Now, why is the name familiar...”

Vera’s heart sank. That was it, then. The Demented Bear had somehow gotten himself on the Empire’s literalt shitlist — no surprise there, considering his previous admission about his stance on Talos. His boasts about buying his way out of Oblivion notwithstanding, if it came down to detainment, they wouldn’t walk out of this — not for all Undnar’s gold, wherever he kept it, and certainly not by force, considering Helgen’s garrison.

“Is it?” the Mad Nord beamed with entirely inappropriate self-satisfaction. “Perhaps from my years as a skald, aye?”

The clerk squinted. “A bard? With a writ of arrest bearing Elisif’s official seal?”

“Personally approved by General Tullius, of course.”

“A rather... odd choice of agent for such… hmm.” The Imperial’s face scrunched up in mild distaste. “Task.”

“Well.” The Mad Nord scratched his head in ponderment. “Some things require a... delicate hand.”

Vera saw her own skepticism at Undnar’s claims to “delicacy” mirrored back on the clerk’s features, but it was superseded by another emotion — haughty antipathy fermenting into annoyed impatience. “Very well. You may proceed on your business, after paying the processing tax. One hundred septims.” He pushed a strongbox across the desk. “Please sign your name here, and here. And here.” A gnarled digit with an overlong fingernail tapped the ledger. “Good. Next. Dunmer?”

Undnar and Sero traded a look. “These two are with me, Quaestor,” the Mad Bear interjected with pointed deference.

The Imperial looked down his nose at the merc, then shifted his scrutiny to Vera. Whatever he saw left him thoroughly unimpressed.

“Given that their names do not figure in your writ, bard, I am afraid they will have to follow the usual procedure. You, Dunmer.” He flipped to the next page of his ledger and dipped his quill. “Name and occupation.”

“Teldryn Sero, blade for hire,” the merc said without missing a beat.

Undnar had drifted to Vera’s side. His chipped grin was brief, and entirely carnivorous. “Ahh, the unsung merits of tavern wenches,” he chortled under his breath.

Asshole, Vera thought, and “accidentally” stomped on his foot.

Chapter Text

“Tel- dryn,” the Imperial clerk muttered and scratched an illegible scribble in the ledger. “Se- ro. Exactly as it sounds, or yet another one of those typical Dunmeri phonetic irregularities?”

The merc inclined his head to the side. “As it sounds. Questor,” he added, with just a hint of acid.

Vera shuffled in place, trying to relieve the combination of boredom and anxiety through aimless movement. Her past recollection of bureaucrats was almost as imprecise as her recollections of phones, filtered through the fuzzy focus of childhood memories, all haptics and saturated colors and splotches of light. Standing in line, the warmth of her mother’s hand wrapped around hers, a fly buzzing lazily in a long narrow hallway, the only distinguishing feature of which was lime-green linoleum. Whoever it was that they had come to see — or the necessity behind the visit — had faded into complete obscurity.

“Occupation — mercenary,” the clerk commented as he wrote. His face had resettled into bureaucratic disinterest, but it still managed to telegraph utter disdain with a remarkable economy of expression. “Birthplace and lineage, please.”

“I was born in the city of Blacklight,” Sero supplied, but didn’t offer the subsequent sales pitch about the city’s spectacularity.

The quill squeaked. More scribbles were added to the parchment. Behind Vera, one of the Nord farmers huffed in world-weary frustration. His prayer to Akatosh clearly fell on deaf ears, because the Imperial bureaucrat showed absolutely no intention of skipping over the details or speeding up.

“Day, month, and year of birth, to the best of your knowledge.”

Sero made a strange little noise at the back of his throat, and his eyes darted to Vera — a brief flicker, redirected quickly. “11th day of Sun’s Dusk, 4E57.”

She did the mental subtraction. A titch older, indeed.

“Let us continue with the matriline. Born to….”

The Dunmer hesitated before filling the ellipsis. “Anisara Sero, daughter of Galsi LLaryal. And that’s as much as I can offer on the matter, Questor.”

“And here I thought you Dunmer took pride in your extensive knowledge of kinship lines. Sero is a commoner name, but Llaryal… hmm.” He dipped the quill again and discarded the excess pigment with small, precise taps against the side of the inkwell. “A very distant affiliate of House Sadras, as I recall, though itself a minor kinhouse, at best.”

“As you say,” the merc confirmed with pointed indifference.

The Imperial looked up. “Patriline?”

“Never had the pleasure,” Sero shrugged.

The bureaucrat’s eyes crinkled with slightly malicious enjoyment. “I recommend you elaborate on that, sera, considering the marked increase in claims to kinlessness,” he folded his index, “inexplicable memory loss,” his middle finger joined the pointer, “and the multiplication of strikingly generic names indicating either an alarming rate of consanguinity in this province, or else an utter lack of imagination.”

Fucking hell, Vera thought, swallowing past another flareup of panic. She was going to have to come up with some plausible biography, and quickly. Whose family name could she safely borrow without raising suspicion? Her eyes swept in search of Undnar, but the blasted Nord had wandered off towards the group of Argonians, and he was now ensconced in a lively conversation punctuated with expansive gestures and loud guffaws. It was hard to read the group, but a few of the laborers sported expressions that Vera interpreted as smiles. There’d be no help from those quarters — the Mad Nord had apparently decided to abandon her and the sellsword to whatever Imperial bureaucracy had in store for them.

“Do you suspect a Dunmer of being sympathetic to the Stormcloak rebellion, serjo?”

Vera returned her attention to the problem at hand. She caught the merc’s sardonic smirk, quickly smothered under a serviceable show of incredulity.

The Imperial’s expression soured. “You are, by your own admission, a sellsword, are you not? As such, whomsoever you might support on abstract ethical or political grounds bears little relevance in light of your profession. Father’s name and lineage, please.”

Another hesitation, this one a smidge longer. “Oh, I suppose there is no harm in sharing it with you.” There was an edge to his words, not a warning exactly, and not outright derision, but something in between, with an old resentment condensed in the cracks. “My father was Goren Andarys — or so I’ve been told, anyway.”

Vera felt a pang of momentary sympathy before she squashed it. Her own early memories of her father had receded from her to nothing but a handful of scraps — she’d been five when he left — and that was only thirty years ago. Of course, any comparison was an exercise in absurdity. Sero had over a century on her; a unit for measuring collective history, not the small, personal traumas of childhood losses.

“That is not…” the clerk pursed his lips, “... an entirely unknown name. Do you retain an affiliation to your progenitor’s organization?”

The merc shook his head, dismissive. “None whatsoever.”

“Curious,” was all the Imperial said on the subject, and Vera’s stomach sank. She could hear it, hidden in the way the inflection lifted at the end, then dropped abruptly into an overlong sibilant. The clerk released his quill into the inkpot and leaned back in his chair. “Step over here for a moment, sera. Yes, just to the side, so I can process your associate.” He motioned with his hand, but not at them.

Vera pivoted towards the measured rhythm of clanking metal. Two Imperial guards in full plate, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords, marched towards the checkpoint from their respective posts. Not overtly threatening yet, and still exuding stone-faced professionalism, but their purpose was clear enough.

The clerk’s attention turned to Vera. “Breton, is it? Name and occupation.”

Her mind went blank, but the words formed, on half-buried but still well-trodden rails. “Vera Morin.”

“Morin,” the clerk repeated with a look of vague puzzlement. “Interesting. Occupation?”

What was her occupation? Scavenger? Cartographer? Drifter? Vera wiped her sweaty palms on her trousers, trying to look discrete about it. Maybe she really should have heeded Undnar’s advice, ridiculous as it had sounded. Was the Mad Nord’s rather conspicuous absence a kind of punishment for disobedience? Or was it all part of some plan? The russet bastard rarely did anything without an ulterior motive behind it. “Procurer,” she said quickly.

It wasn’t the right answer, judging by the clerk’s elongating neck and rather raptorial expression. “Procurer of what, Breton? And for whom?”

She shrugged. “I’ve worked for the alchemist in Markarth, until recently. Mostly ingredients for potion-making, that sort of thing.”

“Did I use the past perfect, young woman? I am asking you what your current occupation is, not what you might have formerly applied yourself to.”

Vera forced her eyes to remain on the asshole clerk, though the temptation to steal a quick glance at the merc in search of some kind of hint, or aid — or, minimally, an acknowledgement of solidarity — was like a gravitational pull. Her peripheral vision registered the two guards at each side of him, at a polite, but unambiguous distance. What had he said that had put the bastards on high alert? Something about his father, she guessed, and whatever organization he had belonged to. Why hadn't he just lied? Still, she’d done the math — it would have been one hundred and forty three years ago.

Fucking hell. Shorter lifespans or not, it seemed that the Empire had a long memory.

It struck her, then, the simplicity of it, a potential solution right at her fingertips. Gwynara’s words echoed in her head, their flavor lost, but the meaning clear. Something about how an amulet of Mara focused one’s attention and diverted it from other explanations. She could simply play Undnar’s game right back, and she’d likely walk away from this with minimal trouble.

But then she’d be leaving Sero to Imperial mercies.

She bit her cheek, trying to force herself into a decision that didn’t serve her, like dragging her fingertips against the edge of a knife. Partners. There was always that odd little emphasis in the way he’d said the word, hidden meaning tucked into the cuff. And she’d made a promise, for better or for worse. Besides, if they were both stuck up shit creek, the likelihood of Undnar cutting his losses went down a notch, in the cost-benefit analysis grand scheme of things.

“I do odd jobs,” she said finally, with deliberate vagueness, and with her eyes averted.

“Such as?”

Of course, the paper vulture would press her about it. “Whatever my current employer pays me for.” For a split second, she wondered if she’d overdone it. She needed to aim herself at exactly where the merc had landed — not overshoot it by a mile. “You’ve seen the writ,” she added.

The clerk narrowed his eyes. “And what manner of assistance might you be offering to your patron?”

Should’ve worn the tavern wench robes. Vera made herself shrug. “I scout, mostly. Offer intel on the terrain.” Not, strictly speaking, an outright lie.

“Scout.” The squeak of the quill set her teeth on edge as her statement was penned down for posterity. “Place and date of birth.”

“9th of Second Seed…” It caught in her throat like a fishbone. She supposed she had missed her birthday, at least by local standards. It was the same twelve month calendar, and she’d memorized it, early on, while Lovinar had been busy explaining how stars were holes in the blanket thrown over the world. Then again, she’d been yanked from her captivity at the Citadel in the middle of winter, and arrived in early summer. Whenever her birthday had been, it no longer corresponded. “4E 164,” she said more firmly, doing the mental conversion.

“Mother and matriline.”

“Genevieve Morin, of…” The words fizzled. Of what? Mississauga? Or Burnt End, as she’d known it? “Of nowhere in particular.”

The clerk’s eyes narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”

“We lived on a small farm,” Vera improvised, “On the border between Skyrim and High Rock. Closest city was Jehanna,” she said, too quickly, conjuring Lovinar’s old map in her memory. She had no idea whether commiting to High Rock would prove a mistake, but for lack of better options…

“A long way from home,” the clerk noted, recording her answer.

Vera stifled the bitterly ironic bark bubbling in her throat. “You could say that.” Almost on automatic, her eyes searched for Undnar again, and found no trace of him. The Mad Bear was gone, along with the Argonians.

“Patriline?”

“My father left when I was very young. I don’t remember him well.” She felt a grim sense of amusement at the truth of it. “My mother didn’t talk about him much.”

“So many orphans,” the clerk drawled, with utter contempt. He lifted his gaze, appraised the steadily growing, grumbling queue snaking all the way to the gates, and waved his hand in dismissal. “Why don’t you join your associate, young woman. I am sure my colleague in the keep will record all subsequent information. Next!”

One of the Imperial soldiers gestured at her to step aside. Her eyes met the merc’s. Sero shook his head and mouthed something that sounded like “s’wit.”

Chapter Text

On the inside, Helgen Keep matched the fort’s exterior. Its squat, aggressively functionalist ugliness stayed consistent as they were convoyed deeper into the structure’s bowels. Two guards, then four, then a total of six, all sporting identical expressions of disinterested professionalism herded them down the stairs. A pair of soldiers on each side of them; one more leading the way; and one — a grizzled Imperial who had confiscated their weapons with a greedy glint in his eyes — brought up the rear. The others were younger, but that one had a craggy hardness to him, and the thick webbing of keloid scars under his jaw looked like someone had tried to cut his throat, but didn’t manage it. Vera didn’t like having the bastard at her back one little bit.

One set of gates followed another, each carefully secured once they were led through by their multiplying escort. Vera tried not to flinch as the locks snapped shut behind her. Her gaze swept over the walls to the beat of her thrumming panic. She searched for an opening, a hiding spot, a disused storeroom — anything that might serve her later, should an opportunity to make a run for it arise; provided she and the merc were still mobile enough after whatever awaited them. The Dunmer said nothing, simply walked apace, matching her steps, his shoulder almost brushing hers.

At the bottom of the final staircase, they passed through something like an underground barracks: a row of simple cots; barrels and well-stocked pantry shelves; a kitchen, basic but expansive, meant for many mouths. The air was gravy-thick with the smells of roasting meat, pickled cabbage, and boiled onion, and Vera’s stomach twisted with hunger and terror in equal measure. A few soldiers loitered around. She searched their faces for a reaction, an indication of what came next, even though she had a fairly good idea of what was in store for them. If they were lucky, they’d get through with a beating or two. Of course, considering the size of their convoy, luck was likely off the table. A bit of overkill for two bedraggled, road-weary, and now disarmed detainees. She very much doubted the Imperials were going through the trouble on her behalf, so that left Sero, and whatever threat they thought he posed. What sort of organization did the Dunmer’s dearly departed dad belong to, exactly?

A bronze-skinned soldier of about nineteen or twenty, with a patchy stubble that had yet to thicken into a proper beard, looked up from the cot where he sat with an expression of startled, wary curiosity. His eyes lingered on the merc, then flashed to Vera. She met his gaze, but the boy quickly looked away, though his face didn’t sour into hostility. She almost wished it had. Before he averted his eyes, what flashed across his features was a combination of shame and pity.

The shove came as a complete surprise. She stumbled forward, her back muscles tensing with the aftershock of the blow landing between her shoulder blades. Sero caught her elbow and shook his head quickly. Don’t look back.

“Keep moving, Breton,” the scarred Imperial growled behind her.

Vera did as she was ordered, and kept her eyes straight ahead.

~~~

As far as decor went, what the interrogation room lacked in subtlety, it made up in incongruity. Three cages, one suspended, and two simply tacked onto the back wall like dog pens contained four prisoners: two Argonians, one Nord mage, and a heap of rags she couldn’t identify with any accuracy. The mage in the cage lifted his head slowly and grinned at her with a feral, utterly senseless expression, his teeth flashing red, two of the bottom ones missing. The paraphernalia of rusty manacles and unpleasant-looking surgical tools was somewhat offset by the wide, well-appointed bookshelf. Vera caught the titles of a few volumes — scripture, Imperial histories, a couple of herbals — before she was shoved in front of a fellow she presumed was either the jailor, or the torturer (or both).

He was trim and middle-aged, with a neat salt and pepper beard and a discretely receding hairline, deep laugh wrinkles, and warm brown eyes. His expression had a friendly ease to it, like something a village medic might wear, a crinkly smile to match off-color jokes about the reassuringly banal vicissitudes of a predictable lifecourse. The sort of man who pinched babies on their chubby cheeks, and listened, solicitous and attentive, to his aging patients’ creaks and complaints.

“Shall we start with you, then, dear girl?” he asked, and gestured to a lonely chair in the middle of the floor. Vera noted the drainage grate beneath it, and swallowed bile. “Do take a seat,” he added.

She hesitated, her eyes darting to the side. Their guards hadn’t yet dispensed with the pretense of civility, but their meticulous professionalism was beginning to erode. The scarred one was busy unlocking the suspended cage and dragging out its contents onto the floor. Vera tried not to consider who the pile of rags had belonged to, nor what it still contained. Two Imperials remained, bracketing Sero on each side, but the rest of them drifted towards the edges of the room, the better to block the only two exits. She caught the merc’s gaze: a layered expression, bored annoyance covering sharply focused tension. He averted his eyes first.

Vera took the offered seat and summoned her ghosts, their voices buffering her against the mounting terror. For a few moments, her spectral retinue kept quiet. Then, “Keep it... plausible, Vera love,” Martha’s pensive drawl counseled, with just a hint of the Caribbean, where her roots had stretched, once upon a time, across less flooded geographies. Dima’s dry, accentless wryness took longer to conjure. “Use your eyes, Vee. That young Nord one, with the wedding band — he swallows too often. Not much into the wetwork part of it, I’m guessing. But watch out for the shithead with the scar.”

The beginning of it was much as it had been with the Imperial official at the checkpoint. The affable-looking interrogator had seated himself at a nearby table, and he went through the same series of questions, rote-smooth. Her answers were recorded in yet another ledger, thick with previous entries. She shoved the implication out of her mind. Use your eyes, Vee. The two guards by the exit that led not out, but further in, deeper into the bowels of the keep, were beginning to look bored. Good.

She allowed herself to slow down and fill in the details, keeping the fabricated story as generic as she could — something as common as it was unmemorable. No, she had no living family, they were killed in a Forsworn raid. No, no land-holdings — the farm had been burned, and she hadn’t been back for many years. Yes, she’d lived in the wilds for some time. Hunting, trading, foraging, what else was there to do? It’s not like she had the coin to purchase land, not like she knew much besides farmwork. No, not alone, an Altmer herbalist had taken it upon himself to offer her an apprenticeship of sorts, in exchange for her help. No, she had not shared his bed — she aimed her tone at the ambiguous sort of incensed that could suggest either possibility — and if she had, was this truly of any relevance to the Empire?

The interrogator looked up and smiled with calculated affability. “I meant no offense, dear girl. Let us proceed.”

They proceeded. Markarth, Bothela, Muiri, all as thin as she could make it without sounding disingenuous. She thickened the paint over her financial struggles, fitting Undnar and his gold into the center of her fictive map. Not an outright lie.

“Hmm.” The Imperial stood up and began to pace, casually circling her chair on a narrowing orbit. She caught a whiff of some kind of aromatic oil in the wake of his passage, resinous and crisp, over a hint of tanning agents and body odor. Not sweat, something more ferrous. “And what about the... Grey Skin? Anything you can tell me about him?”

Vera kept her eyes trained on her hands in her lap, against the temptation to sneak a glance at Sero. The slur had caught on the Imperial’s tongue and had rolled out with a subtle hitch, a dissonant echo of foreign prejudice. She frowned and pinched her lips, hoping the emotion (and the performance of hiding it) were readable enough. Just don’t overdo it, you idiot, you know what he’s fishing for. “I met the Dunmer at the same time as I met Undnar.”

The Imperial said nothing, letting the silence stretch. “Have you known each other for very long, then?”

More fishing. Protest too little, and the bastard might just test how friendly she and the merc had gotten, should Sero prove uncooperative and receive some “surgical” encouragement. The last thing she wanted was to find herself in a position where she could be leveraged against him, or vice versa — it would be lose-lose from there. Protest too much, and the Imperial bastard might take it as a case of unconvincing denial, and they’d be back to square one, with the same likely outcome.

“I told you, since Markarth.” She allowed a note of impatience to creep into her answer. “Which is when I accepted employment from Undnar Silver-Tongue.”

“And how long ago was that, again?”

“A couple of months, give or take.”

The interrogator nodded, and went to add a note to his ledger before returning to his circling. “Remind me, what did you say your employer had hired a mercenary for?”

She hadn’t said.

Vera made herself shrug. “I don’t get paid for sticking my nose into other people’s contractual obligations.” Her jaw tensed around a sudden, horrible fit of ironic hilarity. Surely, the Empire wasn’t interested in counting points. “If you want to ask my employer about his reasons, feel free to track him down.”

The Imperial stopped in front of her and nodded pleasantly. “In due course, in due course. You are Breton, you said?”

That too, she hadn’t said. “On my mother’s side. Don’t know much about who my father was.” Her palms tingled, the muscles around her mouth going numb and disobedient. She could sense the trap snapping shut, but not the mechanism that powered it.

“Would you hold out your hand for just a moment, my dear?” the wetworked asked, still amiable, his eyes meeting hers. There was something genuinely warm about him, and if not for the way the younger Nord guard tensed in her peripheral vision, Vera likely wouldn’t have suspected foul play. Still, she obeyed, for lack of any better alternative.

Even with the expectation of pain, the Imperial’s spell rattled through her — neither fire, nor electricity but something in between, an abrupt jolt, then a stinging, burning pain spreading up her forearm, her muscles seizing with scrambled nerve signals. She muffled most of her startled cry. Adrenaline flooded her system and beaded her hairline with cold sweat. Her vision narrowed, black spots blooming at the edges.

“Very curious,” the Imperial observed after a pause. “No Dragonskin reflex, and the damage seems…” he prodded at the red hand-shaped welt circling her wrist, and this time, Vera failed to bite back the bark of pain. Her eyes watered, but she fought the impulse to shut them and spill the tears down her cheeks.

“Is that how the Empire treats all their detainees?” she finally managed.

She heard one of the caged Argonians’ crackling laugh. “Oh, hatchling, that’s just the courtship phase.” A female, based on the pitch, Vera thought dimly through the residual pain. “Wait until that wad of chaurus glandjam brings out his toys. Not too scrupulous about where he sticks them, either.”

Vera didn’t turn to look at the source of the meaty thwack at her back, nor the ensuing hiss.

“Shut your yap, lizzard.”

She mentally tallied up a point for the Argonian: the scarred shithead’s insult was nowhere near as creative.

The interrogator summarily ignored it all. “We have a variety of protocols, my dear, all befitting the specific occasion.” His tone never deviated from that unwavering friendliness. “Let us get a closer look at you, shall we?” His gaze shifted to where Vera estimated the scarred bastard stood after he had dispensed his disciplinary measures. “Clagius, stay here, the rest of you, please escort our Dunmer guest to the holding area in the back.”

Vera chanced a glance at the merc, and saw her own panic refracted back at her in an expression of barely hidden fury.

Shit. Think. The collection of torture implements was only five paces away. She spotted something that looked like a scalpel — crude, but usable in lieu of a dagger, in a pinch. And they still hadn’t secured either her, or Sero. Then again, they had no weapons, and they were outnumbered two against seven.

“Praefect, permission to speak?”

A flicker of irritation crossed the praefect’s face before dissolving into another pleasant smile. Still, his eyes had acquired a flinty glint, and the Nord lad in Imperial armor who had spoken shifted from foot to foot, uneasy under the scrutiny. “Um, perhaps we might call Captain Flavia for this, Praefect?” His eyes quickly flicked to Vera, before he rerouted his gaze. “With due respect. On account of the prisoner being a, umm, human woman, and all.”

“Dear lad, we wouldn’t want to trouble Captain Flavia with our business. Besides, I don’t expect this will take me very long. We should all be done in time for dinner.”

“That’s what you said last time, Viranus,” the scarred jerk grumbled, but he didn’t sound all that chagrined by any prospective delays.

Vera caught the young Nord’s attention and mouthed a please, but he averted his eyes to stare at his feet. “As you say, Praefect. Permission to fetch… umm… medical supplies? For… umm… later?”

Chaurus Glandjam nodded in benign acquiescence. “No need to be tongue-tied about it, recruit. Between this rebellion and other… rumors, we cannot afford to take any chance. Yes, go fetch some bandages, and a few healing potions — there should be a few sub-standard ones left in the supply cabinet.” He turned to Sero. “My apologies for the wait, sera. We will speak in due time, won’t we?”

“Not if I cut out your tongue first, you filthy n’wah,” the merc remarked conversationally.

And then all hell broke loose.

Chapter Text

The first guard dropped to the floor with a crushed windpipe, and the rest wizened up, but not quickly enough. The merc’s palms flashed violet. The purple shimmer around his left hand clotted into a vicious crescent, a blade made of the world’s inversion, like yanking reality’s lining inside out. At Vera’s side, a molten monstrosity ripped into being with a blast of heat and sulfur. It pivoted in mid-air, tremulous and graceful like a plastic bag lantern caught on an updraft. She stumbled out of the way, the creature whooshing past her with the low roar of a funeral pyre.

Don’t just gawk, move! She made for the scalpel she’d spied earlier, and froze at the sight of the scarred Imperial. Unlike his comrades, that one wasn’t in the business of taking unnecessary risks on the Dunmer. His eyes tracked her with flat, reptilian interest. He drew his sword, unhurried, the blade leaving its sheath with a quiet swish.

And then he lunged.

There was no time to think, let alone strategize. Vera threw herself to the side, out of the way of a diagonal slash, and closer to the prisoner pens. She allowed her fear to percolate to her face. The scarred asshole leered, drinking her expression like a fine vintage. She took another step backwards. Behind her, a heavy rattling breath hitched and worked itself into a quiet keening sound, on the reverse side of human language. Her mind regurgitated a memory, vivid like paint swirled into a glass orb, one of those ancient knick-knacks Said liked to collect, from a slice of history when paper was more than last-resort kindling. All those times, after the second influenza outbreak, when she and Jules and Dima combed through deserted raider hideouts and found “survivors.” Ticktockers, Dima had called them, and the expression had stuck, Jules’s protests at its crass cynicism notwithstanding.

She added a stumble, just enough momentum to bring her within reach of the cages. More than one way to trap a rat, and all that. The Argonian was still herself. The mage was another matter.

Don’t get too close, in case it gets grabby.

The scarred Imperial bore down upon her, emboldened by her apparent fumbling. At the edges of her attention, the summoned flame floater incinerated a soldier to a blackened husk and then, abruptly, disintegrated into tendrils of purple static. She ignored the temptation to check on the Dunmer, but by the sound of it, he was still operational. One more shuffle backward, and she drew her shoulders towards her ears, softened her knees, brought her hands up as if to shield her face. Steel flashed in an upward arch. Close enough. As the sword came down, she launched herself into a side-roll, grateful for all those years Jules spent drilling them in hand-to-hand basics. She’d been a disappointing student, except when it came to getting the hell out of Dodge.

Metal clanked against metal. She was on her feet and sprinting towards the rack of torture implements when the ticktocker in the cage went critical. The Imperial howled in pain-laced rage. She hadn’t counted on magic, of course — the guards would have assured themselves that their prisoner was neutralized and unable to cast, but that still left the human factor. Vera chanced a quick glance over her shoulder. She saw it in a static flash, like a scene painted by lightning: blunt teeth sank into the flesh beneath the jaw joint in a perversion of a love-bite; fingers curled around a face, digging into fragile eye tissue; blood spattered across the stones; and the mad, white-rimmed eyes of the mage, vacant safe for the primal joy of retribution. The scarred bastard’s sword swung ineffectually, rattling against the pattern of metal squares, but the ticktocker wasn’t letting go anytime soon, now that he had his hands full.

She grabbed the scalpel — lancet? — and sprinted back. She overrode a moment of clammy-handed revulsion—the instinctive flinch, the horrified, wordless negation that had gone silent over the years of killing at range, but mostly at range. The Imperial was screaming and swinging blindly as the mad mage’s teeth worked on what remained of his ear.

She set her jaw. A quick slash, tension in her forearm as the flesh resisted the blade—different and unfamiliar and not at all like cutting through a furry throat, but with the same end-result. Her hands slicked red. A grim, bitter cackle bubbled in her belly: think of it as finishing a job someone else had already started.

The mage didn’t let go of his prey, and Vera turned away, towards the cage with the two Argonians.

“Psst, dryskin!” The female Argonian’s brilles contracted, momentarily dulling the golden irises. “If you don’t want that Dunmer of yours heeding Sithis’s call, I suggest you get us out.”

At her back, she heard Sero hiss—she couldn’t tell whether in pain or anger—and her guts twisted with hollow dread. She searched, frantic, for something that could pry open the padlock. There was a chance that the late dipshit had a key on him, but she wasn’t coming anywhere near the mage if she could help it, lest he decided to chew through her too.

“In the corner, get the axe!” the Argonian cried, her voice thrumming with sudden tension. “Hurry, before-”

There, a weapons rack. She darted towards it.

The realization that she’d lost track of the interrogator came too late. Her hand closed around the axe’s haft, and then she was airborne, the weapon clattering to the ground as the wind was knocked out of her. She struck the wall, right shoulder first. Pain shot through the joint in the queasy loosening of dislocation. She moaned a curse and scrambled to her feet—and there he was, stalking softly over stones painted in blood, his flame-gloved hands kneading fire into a projectile. His earlier studied politeness had eroded. In its place remained nothing but the black-eyed focus of an impending murder—a pleasant prospect, by the looks of him, carried out with exacting righteousness. “Pray to your gods if you have them, filth,” he heaved, all teeth and crazed bloodlust.

The scalpel was gone, knocked loose from the impact. At least, Vera mused, she hadn’t impaled herself on it—though all things being equal, that might have been preferable, considering the alternative. Death by fire had always struck her as a nasty way to go.

“I would have made it quick for you, you know.” Some of that earlier civility had crept back, now that he had her cornered. “But I no longer find myself in a particularly generous mood. I fear you and your Dunmer friend will both die rather badly.”

Her vision blurred with pain, real and anticipated. Chaurus Glandjam shimmered around the edges as he gathered his fire spell, the violet glow around him widening — as if he was sucking magic from the air itself. He pulsed, Vera thought vaguely, like everything pulses, everything except for her, with that swirling, living light. Everything except for her, and nature abhors a vacuum — one of Martha’s jokes she could never quite understand, missing some crucial cultural reference, from a time before.

Perhaps she’d see them again, once this was all over, in whatever afterlife was reserved for them. Martha’s voice, weaving tales by stove light; the quiet clinking of Said’s spoon against the chipped porcelain of an old coffee cup; Jules jerryrigging some old piece of useless tech to breathe new life into it. Perhaps Dima would be there too, if anything of him had been left after the Unworshipped ripped his mind apart.

It would be enough.

The shimmer intensified, leaking from the Imperial and spilling beyond his physical outline as the spell crested. It tugged at her with that odd maternal feeling of incorporation, a perverse sort of longing to make room for something other than oneself. Don’t let the soul settle.

When she’d done it with the statue, it had almost cost her her life.

She opened up that part of herself that seemed to stand perpetually hollow, and tugged at the shimmer. A gentle invitation.

The Imperial’s spell fizzled with a crackle, his features contorting in stunned revulsion. “You dare!” he sputtered.

His surprise bought her a few seconds, and Vera twisted, gritting her teeth through the flash of pain the movement cost her, and brought her heel to the side of his knee joint. His leg buckled, and Chaurus Glandjam howled and crumpled to the floor. She wobbled to her feet, drew her hip back, and kicked him in the temple with all her strength, once, then again, and again, her dislocated shoulder sending shocks of pain through her ribcage and into her neck.

Should’ve worn a helmet, asshole.

He twitched a few times before going still. Something pressed itself against her mind—heavy and vaguely vile and frantic with its catastrophic evanescence, prodding at her like a clumsy, overeager lover. She stumbled backwards, fighting the instinct to bat at the air.

The intrusive feeling dissipated.

The room had quieted. Vera looked up. She didn’t linger on the bodies strewn around the floor and searched instead for the familiar reddish glint of chitin.

She found the merc slumped against the back wall, motionless. Inside her, something loosened and went plummeting.

“Nice work on that son-of-a-chaurus, hatchling. Now, be a dear and get us out before more of them show up.”

Vera hesitated, torn between the urge to check whether Sero was still alive, and the prospect of reinforcements. Her eyes swept across the floor one more time, tallying up. One missing — the young Nord one. Probably ran for back-up, and if so, more guards would be here in no time, and then that would be the end of it.

She hobbled to the weapon rack.

~~~

The Argonian female went by Anum-La, the other introduced himself as Sings-in-Reeds.

The merc wasn’t dead, but on his way there by the time they got to him. The blood loss was bad enough, but it was the belly wound that had Vera muttering a thready, cracked “oh, fuck.” The blade must have gone between the chitin plates. She brought her hand to his shoulder—her touch light, unsure of how much of the blood was his, and unwilling to cause him undue pain. Sero opened his eyes.

“Can you stand up?” Her own voice sounded remote and unfamiliar.

He coughed. “Afraid not.” He rested the back of his head against the wall, but his gaze never left hers, still that same startling crimson framed by dark lashes. “Best be on your way, hlakhes. The Nord fetcher slipped away. Won’t be long before-”

“Move over, hatchling, let my friend take a look at your Dunmer.”

She obeyed, making room.

The male Argonian was small, almost delicate, and a head shorter than his female companion. When he finally spoke, he drawled his words in a strange, sing-songy accent, languid and liquid, like lake waves lapping over a pebbly shore. After a brief pause, he nodded to himself. “I can keep you from dying, softskin, but you won’t be out of murky waters until you get yourself to a proper healer or an alchemist.”

Sero’s mouth twisted in a facsimile of a smile. “I’ll take what I can get.”

The gold shimmer of the healing spell wrapped around them both. Vera fought against the impulse to grab hold of the merc’s hand as he winced and went rigid. Instead, she straightened, letting Sings-in-Reeds work, and turned to the other Argonian. “Can you reset my shoulder? I won’t be of much use until I can move my arm.”

She managed not to cry out through the yank, though her vision went white.

“I doubt you’ll be seeing your weapons again—they store the best ones upstairs—but there should be plenty of discards,” Anum-La remarked, already busy with ransacking the closest rack. Vera followed suit with a pang of sorrow. Moot point, she supposed, since she wouldn’t be drawing a bow any time soon. She could move her arm, but barely. Still, she found a hunting bow to replace hers — hazelwood, too supple for her tastes — and a quiver of arrows, nineteen in total, the worn leather splotched with brown stains. The steel dagger was still in its sheath, and she checked the blade for sharpness before fastening the knife to her belt.

One glance traded between her and the Argonian confirmed what Vera already knew. They left the rabid mage to his gnawing and keening.

The bowels of the dungeon contained more cages, and the cages contained more prisoners, in various stages of deadness. Vera brought her scarf over her nose, trying to dampen the stench of decomposition. Whoever was in charge of keeping house in the dungeon, they were either deliberately slovenly, or the area had been neglected for some other reason.

Sero, at her side, limped along, his breathing labored. He refused her help when she offered him her shoulder. “Save your strength, partner. I’m fine.”

“And I’m a strawberry tart,” Vera muttered, drawing the terror-riddled irritation to her like a shield.

He huffed in amusement, or exasperation — or plain exhaustion. The Argonians were making quick progress a dozen paces ahead of them, and she realized that they were orienting themselves by the sound of running water.

“Another promise of dessert, is it?” Beneath the usual mocking edge, the merc’s voice sounded strangely gentle.

The narrow passage opened on a vast underground hall, rimmed with more cells. A stream, wide and swollen with snowmelt, rushed beneath arched stone bridges. The stench of rot eased, dissolved in the crisp scent of water.

Vera managed a passable rendition of a smile. “Will you collect on the offer if we find our way out?”

The merc took an uncharacteristically long time to answer. “Does the offer stand if we don’t?”

“Of course.” It was right there. Almost too easy. “On account of being fucked either way…” She chanced a glance and scowled. “Damn it, Sero, stop handing out points. You’re making me nervous.”

The merc caught her elbow, and motioned with his head. Vera looked in the direction he had indicated. Once, there had been a passage leading further into the mountain’s bowels, but it was clogged by the rocky rubble of a cave-in. Behind them, she heard the faint echoes of approaching shouts.

“I doubt we’ll fend them off this time,” Sero commented dryly.

The world went still. At length, Vera made herself nod and palmed her new dagger. “Teldryn…” She trailed off, then gathered herself back up. Best get it over with. “I hate to ask this of you.” Not her most eloquent apology, but it would have to do.

His eyes searched her face, the vertical crease between his brows deepening. And then understanding dawned, and his expression went dark. “No, hlakhes. There might be a way out through the stream.”

“I can barely lift my right arm, let alone swim.” She shrugged with her good shoulder. “Sero, they’ll probably kill me outright, but in case they decide to play first...” She didn’t force a smile. Instead, she gave in to the impulse, lifting her left hand to trace the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t much to take with her, but it was something. “I’d rather have a professional do the job, and all that.”

He shook his head with a brief grief-stricken expression, quickly smothered.

She unsheathed the dagger and pressed the hilt into his palm.

“If you two are quite done being tragic up there, I suggest you get yourselves ready, dryskins.” The Argonian’s voice came from somewhere below them. It sounded distinctly annoyed. “Best swim fast, before we have more Imperials to tangle with. Hatchling, you’re smaller, you’ll go with Sings-in-Reeds. I’ll handle the Dunmer.”

Chapter Text

An old grate barred the narrow passage at the mouth of the stream, but the hinges had rusted through, and Anum-La simply pried it off and set it on a mossy boulder, careful not to leave any of the metal in the water. Through the opening, a bassy, throaty rumble presaged dark, roiling deeps.

Vera’s initial burst of bravado lasted for as long as the shallows, and winked out as soon as the current deepened, and the light vanished. In retrospect, her wordless panic of being at the mercy of the water likely made things easier for the Argonian. Fear tightened her throat, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it—it was either the Imperials, their shouts drawing ever nearer—or onward, into the waves. And right in between, that particular species of cowardice, where she died with a dagger slipped between her ribs and no way to square off the debt.

Anum-La and the merc went first.

Sings-in-Reeds tugged at Vera’s arm, gentle but urgent, snapping her out of her stupor. He turned, offering his shoulders in a bizarre rendition of a piggy-back ride, his tail tucked around his legs and out of the way to make it easier for her. “Don’t look so worried, dryskin. This water only appears fierce, but it is sweet and playful.”

Vera barked a thready laugh, but brought her arms around his neck.

“Hold tight. Tap three times when you need air.”

“Sweet and playful” would not have been her first description. She was as useless as a soggy sack of flour, and likely just as heavy and unwieldy, but at least she didn’t get in his way too much. She focused on holding her breath and keeping her mind from spinning off its axis. The water was bracingly cold, a chill that crept through armor, through skin, through muscle and sinew and straight to the bone. Her eyes ached from the effort needed to keep them open in a misguided attempt to see what was ahead, until she gave up and closed them tight. After the first few horrible moments, the dread receded a fraction, washed away by a strange, tremulous wonder. Whatever else the Argonians were, they were so very clearly aquatic, so gracefully at ease in this element. Yet another testament to her new world’s lavish richness: the sort of biodiversity that had allowed for so many sentient lifeforms to coexist, with no extinction event to wipe them out—not since the Dwemer, anyway.

Sings-in-Reeds undulated, melting with the current. Vera clung to him for dear life. A swish of his tail, a subtle change of temperature, and they would break the surface, just long enough for her to draw a greedy gulp of air and glimpse the phosphorescent filaments of glowing mushrooms. Then under they went, back into the cold flowing dark. She forced herself to focus on the immediately manageable: on the supple shift of scales beneath her hands, on the ache in her muscles as she tried to make herself an easy burden, on the mineral crispness of the watery world. Another immersion, another surfacing, gentler this time, her lungs no longer tight with the mounting panic of submersion. The scent gradually changed, losing its mineral edge and filling out with the green, slimy richness of algae and river weeds.

Time eroded, flowing to the rhythm of breaths held then released. And then, abruptly— sunlight, first through water then blinding, shockingly warm on her face. Sings-in-Reeds caught another current, a sun-drenched shallow vastness which felt, after the ice-cold underground stream, like a warm bath.

The surface of the river glinted in the sunlight. Above them, against a piercingly blue afternoon sky, black larks darted back and forth.

The Argonian slowed, then stopped, found his footing, and straightened with liquid ease. “You can let go now, dryskin.” Gentle mockery lurked at the edges of his voice, though he sounded slightly winded. Vera unclenched her arms and legs, and yelped when her feet sank into the greasy muck of the riverbed. She waded forward, her eyes fastened on the shoreline—just ten feet to go, and the lush grass had never looked greener. Once the water no longer buoyed her, she collapsed in a soggy pile in the shallows, crushed under the doubling gravity. She set all pretense at dignity aside then, and simply crawled the rest of the way.

Twenty feet from the edge of the water, beneath a rocky overhang, a campfire crackled under a makeshift spit. Vera’s stomach grumbled as her nose registered the smell of grilled fish drifting on the breeze. And then she caught sight of the Mad Nord and his Argonian retinue, and the hunger soured to queasy anger.

“Up with you, hatchling.” Anum-La’s shadow fell upon her, and Vera shivered violently with the sudden absence of sunlight. She wobbled to her feet, and scanned the riverbank for the merc, but couldn’t spot him.

The Argonian’s eyes narrowed in amusement. “Your Dunmer’s busy shedding his chitin. I recommend you follow his example, unless you’re enjoying the feeling of freezing to death.”

Vera swallowed the bitter memories, and took the advice.

~~~

By the time she managed to make it to the campfire, soggy and exhausted, the tremors of shock had set in for good. Undnar tutted at the sight of her, doing an almost convincing impersonation of a mother hen. He threw a thick woolen blanket around her shoulders. Trying to bat his hands away as he bundled her up felt like too much effort, so Vera allowed herself to be maneuvered closer to the fire. One of the Argonian laborers—a tall, broad-chested fellow with verdigris scales and spectacular horns that curved around his skull in two ramlike whorls—shoved a cup of steaming fish broth into her hands. She managed not to spill it when she brought it to her lips, and counted it as a victory.

She watched the Argonians surround Anum-La and Sings-in-Reeds in a protective circle, their excited, rapid-fire chatter quickening with raspy sibilants and strange clicks.

Undnar crouched at her side and Vera chanced a glance. Russet, bearded, with rosy cheeks and the obligatory chipped grin, he looked obscenely hale, positively glowing with good health, and equally good cheer. “Well, Snowberry,” he drawled, “how did you enjoy Helgen’s hospitality?”

Vera ignored the bait in favor of sipping the briny broth.

He leaned in. She caught a faint whiff of ale and cinders. “Worst vice is advice, lass, but may I offer a suggestion?”

“I doubt that a ‘no’ would stop you,” she shrugged, too tired to protest.

He nodded gravely, but with a telltale twinkle in his eyes, and Vera found herself momentarily blinded by a hot flash of rancor.

“Let me ask you a question, Snowberry—and no, I don’t need an answer to that one either. Was it worth it?”

She bit back the quickly forming barb. She could guess well enough what the asshole Nord was alluding to. “I doubt the tavern-wench-in-distress disguise would’ve changed the outcome, Undnar.”

He said nothing, but he didn’t need to—the seed had been planted. She found her eyes drawn to the other side of the campfire. Sero was sitting with his back propped against a boulder. Sings-in-Reeds, no worse for wear after their impromptu swim, was fussing over the merc. Another healing spell, its glow tinted copper through the flames, wrapped around the Argonian and spilled over his patient. The Dunmer’s usually colorless tunic was dyed rusty red across the abdomen, but it was the fresher, brighter stains that had Vera swallow around a queasy sort of hollowness. She had no trouble identifying the feeling for what it was.

The Mad Bear said nothing, no doubt waiting for the guilt to grow to its full expression before rubbing in the proverbial salt. By the time he spoke again, Vera couldn’t have answered if she wanted to. The feeling had clotted in her throat—a helpless resentment coiling on itself like a knot of vipers, with nowhere to drain the poison except inward.

“Funny thing, freedom,” the Nord mused. “Only sweet when it’s just your hide on the line, hmm?”

~~~

They decided to stay put for the evening, then head to Riverwood in the morning.

The mystery of Undnar’s relationship with the Argonians resolved quickly, and with predictable prosaicness: a simple matter of labor, of a mining contract offered to people with no better prospects, no coin in their pocket to carry them to a better choice, and thus agreed upon with little fuss, but on one small condition: that they’d help him look for an alternative entrance into the dungeon through one of the waterways. The verdigris Argonian who had outfitted Vera with the fish soup—Darkeethus, he’d creaked in introduction—located the spot in the cliffs where the underground stream fed into the river, but before they could stage a rescue, the rescue staged itself.

The Argonians seemed especially pleased with getting their healer back, and not a little relieved that they wouldn’t need to attempt a break-in. She wasn’t quite sure what tied the group to Anum-La: perhaps simple species solidarity, or perhaps some other arrangement. Either way, there was a warm conviviality to their chatter that left her feeling oddly atomized. She listened with half-an-ear to Darkeethus and the Mad Bear ironing out the practicalities of their agreement: the cost of travel and setting up in some place called Darkwater Crossing, the specificities of mining corundrum, the chances of hostility from the local residents at the influx of work migrants. The Nord was reassuring, bordering on unctuous.

She tuned him out.

The awareness of her own utter uselessness gnawed at her like a small, opportunistically carnivorous rodent, nibbling in the dark: a constant, low-grade irritation. Her arm was stiff and achy, the joint tender—so hunting was out for the foreseeable future. Sings-in-Reeds tended to her after he was done with Sero, but his healing spell felt shallow, more palliative than curative—a makeshift patch that wouldn’t hold. She couldn’t read the Argonian’s expression, exactly, but something about the way his crest flattened suggested embarrassment, or else apology. She didn’t press him about his craft, offering an ambiguous “much better” in the hopes of saving face for them both. One way or another, it meant that Sero’s injuries were nowhere near fixed—only delayed. Still, the spell had afforded her enough mobility to set out her armor to dry and tally up—not that there was much left for her to tally. The rainy day cache of septims she had sewn into her jacket was intact, but most of her other belongings were gone, confiscated along with her pack and weapons. Barely enough money to purchase shelter—it’d be mostly gone once she found a place to resupply—and no possessions except for the clothes on her back, her old armor, and the subpar weapons she had pilfered from the keep. She shoved aside the thought of Fae's bow, the dull anger at her lost map—she’d have to start from scratch, again—and shuffled, listless, to where Sero was still seated.

His breathing sounded ragged and labored, but he opened his eyes and cracked a smile.

Vera crouched at his side and pressed the inside of her wrist against the merc’s brow—an automatic instinct, completely useless under the circumstances. No way of telling whether he was running a fever, not without an accurate baseline. He seemed vaguely amused by her effort, but offered no commentary.

“How bad is it, Sero?” She tried to inject her voice with something more than resigned exhaustion, and failed.

He coughed, reached towards his hip, found no satchel of smoking mixture, and swore quietly before slumping back against the boulder. “Nothing a healing potion or two won’t fix.”

Vera frowned. “Are you telling me that Undnar or the Argonians have nothing to spare?”

The Dunmer’s expression remained shuttered, but he lifted a shoulder in a shrug in lieu of a response.

Vera opened her mouth, and then the implication finally hit home, and all she managed was a vaguely stunned “knucklefucking dickwaffle,” at that threshold where anger crossed its own limit and disintegrated into revulsed wonderment.

Sero chuckled at the preposterous profanity, though it cost him a wince. “Is that a...technical description?”

Vera hoisted herself up. Of course the asshole Nord wouldn’t have stopped at a lecture. And Sero wouldn’t, or couldn’t, ask. That left her with only one option.

On a better day, she might have found a way to sidestep the predictable choreography—a trap she could see plainly, but not solve without triggering the mechanism. Bothela might have been able to brew something on the go, but Vera had neither tools, nor ingredients, nor time to experiment… She smothered a fierce pang of nostalgia for Markarth, and marched herself over to where Undnar was seated, every bit the bloated spider in the center of his comfortable web of amusing tall tales and amorphous promises. She went through the motions. It didn’t ease the guilt, only layered it with the patina of subtle humiliation. Anum-La’s gaze on her remained opaque, and Vera couldn’t quite tell whether the infinitesimal shift in the Argonian’s expression was rebuke or sympathy, which she supposed boiled down to the same thing, in the end—the silent dismissal reserved for those who had to ask for things instead of wrestling the world into compliance.

The asshole Nord filled his role with his usual good-natured affability. “A healing potion, you say? Well, as it so happens, I might have one left! Is it for you?”

She didn’t dignify it with an answer, but by the time she returned to the merc, potion in tow, the i-s had been dotted regardless.

She handed over the restorative, catching the hitch of hesitation as Sero palmed the vial. A strange, complicated expression flashed across his features—not guilt, exactly, and not outright embarrassment, but something in the vicinity of both. She tried to disregard the lingering tingle when he held her gaze a smidge too long before uncorking the bottle.

“To your health... partner.” His mock toast started with an interrogative, but ended in affirmation. He tipped his head back and swallowed the contents in a few long gulps.

Vera tried to smother the echo of sympathetic relief at the sight of his body easing into painlessness. He patted the ground next to him and handed her the vial, two thirds empty. “For your shoulder,” he said. “If you don’t mind... sharing, that is,” he added.

There was absolutely nothing subtle about his laced innuendo. She conceded the point with a chuckle, plopped down, and drained the rest of the potion. The pain receded to a dull throb and she allowed herself to relax against the sun-warmed rock at her back.

They sat in silence for a time. The sun slowly dipped behind the mountain range, and Vera squinted against the glare, trying to discern whether what she first mistook for a natural formation was in fact a Nordic ruin guarding a mountain pass.

“Clever trick, that soul trap.”

She glanced at the merc, startled out of her reverie. “Pardon?” Not her most clever comeback, but as far as nonsequiturs went, this one had left her in the dust.

Sero’s face registered confusion, quickly replaced with a shallow frown. “Either you are terrible at receiving compliments, hlakhes, or…” He motioned with his hand. “Had you intended it as a distraction, or were you in fact planning to capture his soul?” A note of tension had crept between the cracks of his habitual caustic amusement.

The pieces clicked into place, to the hollow beat of sudden horror. So that’s what she had done. No wonder Chaurus Glandjam had looked so outraged before she stomped him into oblivion.

“I…” There wasn’t much she could do to hide the whole-body shiver. “... trying to survive,” she finished.

He nodded, and, to her profound relief, offered no coddling.

“How did you get the gut wound?” she asked when it was clear that he wouldn’t pursue the other subject without her acquiescence.

His wince was not devoid of humor. “I got distracted.”

He let it hang there, without further elaborations. When Vera returned his earlier nod—and matched his silence—the merc turned to her and smiled his crooked smirk, and for a second, the world fell away.

Vera forced her eyes back to the river, trying to override the flash of panic through sheer force of will. Well, shit. At least the lizard brain could be wrestled into obedience. Not so much with this, whatever it was.

Sero spared her further embarrassment. He reached for his non-existent smoking satchel again, grunted something vaguely blasphemous, and stood up with an exceedingly acerbic “My turn to ask for favors, I suppose,” before walking off in search of the Mad Bear.

Vera fetched the bowl Darkeethus had left her with, refilled it from the common pot—before Undnar could polish off the rest of the fish stew—and brought it back to what she was beginning to think of as Sero’s spot. The puzzle tumbled around in the back of her mind, another low-grade irritation she couldn’t quite bring into focus. What made tobacco different from food, or healing potions? Or similar to alcohol, for that matter? Aside from the obvious “bad habit” aspect of it?

For the rest of the evening, she focused on the manageable. She gathered reeds and grass, and made herself a nest for the night as best she could, not too far from where the Dunmer was camped out, but not too close either, lest the lizard brain decided to short-circuit again. No one tried to reclaim the blanket, so she appropriated that too. She added soap and tooth powder to her list of necessities to be reacquired.

Anum-La had drawn first sentry, Sero second. Vera got the last, pre-dawn shift. Darkeethus extinguished the fire, so as not to draw unwanted attention.

The Argonians went to sleep early, just as the sun dipped behind the cliffs and the air grew abruptly cold. Vera watched them huddle together, listening to their quiet laughter and quickly exchanged quips as they negotiated who would get to be in the middle of the pile. Undnar had lumbered off into the woods with a “nature calls” thrown over his shoulder by way of explanation.

Vera curled up in her makeshift nest. At length, with the calls of nocturnal birds in her ears, she sank into restless sleep, where things replayed with poorer outcomes in an endless, grinding shuffle. In the last one, the Imperials wore the faces of raiders, and did what raiders did, and she was yanked from the nightmare only to find the merc shaking her by the shoulder. He let go the second she sat up, before placing a wooden mug of steaming miriam tea into her hands. “Smoke?” he asked.

“The pretty lights one?” she managed, her voice coming out in an unpleasant croak.

The Dunmer shook his head. “Undnar’s foul mixture.” He busied himself with the rollie. “Two Imperial patrols so far, but they’re keeping to the thoroughfare, not wandering through the bushes. Lazy bastards,” he added, and managed to wrestle an amused snort from her. His eyes—what she could see of them in the starlight—creased in a smile.

She remembered that she had a point to win back. She took a sip of tea, deliberating. “To what do I owe all these thoughtful gestures, Demonchops?” The confused pause stretched while she took aim at the punchline. “Unless you're just trying to get into my bed?” She wagged her eyebrows for effect, and pointed her chin at the bristling mess of grass and reeds at her back.

His cackle was well worth it. “I don’t know if that merits a point, hlakhes.” He stifled a yawn and eyed the nest of reeds. “I admit that it does seem rather… snug.”

Gotcha. She grinned into her cup. “Based on your prior knowledge of Breton anatomy, or are you just boasting?”

He missed a beat, and then laughed outright before smothering it with some throat clearings.

“Be my guest,” she added sweetly, just to drive the point home. “Also, two-one in my favor.”

He hesitated before lifting his hand to brush an errant strand of hair away from her forehead. His thumb traced her cheekbone, featherlight. Vera froze. If there was a ground under her, it suddenly went missing entirely.

Oh, fuck.

“I doubt that boasting prior knowledge would do me much good in your case, Vee.” There was no warning to it, nor threat, not even the edge of a provocation—just a statement of fact tinged with the wonder of an unknown horizon. And beneath it, heat, stark and uncomplicated. “Though if you are, in fact, asking me to warm your bed for you, I suppose I can oblige.”

It went through her like lightning, and settled in the restlessness of a static charge, eased a bit by the sheer pleasure of watching him weave the double-meanings together.

“I don’t know if that merits a point either, Sero,” she said, trying to talk over the new and completely unwelcome fluttering looseness in the pit of her stomach.

“Hmm. I rather think it does.”

Vera shook off the lingering tingles—ghost touch, and ah, fucking trouble— and got to her feet. “I guess those Imperials won’t spy themselves.”

He nodded. “Wake me if you need me.” The last bit was distorted by another yawn.

She gathered her bow and quiver, and walked into the star-speckled darkness. Behind her, grass rustled as the Dunmer settled in.

~~~

The hours dragged on slowly.

Undnar returned at sunrise—Vera recognized the lumbering gait even before he made his appearance, and she weighed the pleasure of extemporaneous target practice against possible consequences.

Except that the Mad Bear was not alone. The man accompanying him was a tall, blond Nord, whose easy grin was the same brand of polished shiftiness as Undnar’s. Not in the same league, by far, but ladled from the same barrel. Vera sniffed and wrinkled her nose. The reek of poorly metabolized booze drifted on the morning breeze, mixing with the smell of river muck.

“Lower your bow, Snowberry, we’re all friends.” Undnar raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I took it upon myself to scout ahead, you see,” he announced, in a tone that clearly demanded adulation. “Riverwood should be safe. And I found us a guide!”

“Won’t you introduce us?” the other Nord opined, with a lazy smile Vera didn’t like one little bit. “Stay your hand, fair maiden, and let us be well met. I am Sven.” He offered a bow.

Behind her, the rest of the group was stirring awake. Vera lowered her weapon and scowled at this new fuckery. She wasn’t particularly surprised that Undnar’s nocturnal wanderings yielded something unpleasant.

But did it have to be another bard?

I promised a treat, but I cannot take any credit.  The absolutely amazing @resjade did a little illustration of Vera and Teldryn. Check out her other art on Tumblr, it's gorgeous.
Vera's grumpy face makes me happy 😂. 

Chapter Text

The village was smaller than she’d imagined it. The air was rich with the scent of freshly cut pine and the central street was rimmed with neat, sturdy log houses. Well-tended flower beds under every window harbored sleepy spring pollinators, abuzz in contented satiation. No guards at the entrance, no palisade, and the few locals they met on their way in greeted them with friendly smiles and open-palmed waves.

Vera felt her hackles rising. In the brilliant noonday light, against a backdrop of cloudless, piercingly blue, Riverwood’s wholesomeness struck her as an aggressive subterfuge—a sticky, honeyed trap.

“Riverwood looks… peaceful.”

She glanced at the merc at her side. Sero seemed better after the potion, though he moved slower than usual, and with a slight hitch to his gait. Vera had maneuvered herself to the back of their little procession, out of the Mad Bear’s immediate orbit and away from his new buddy’s curious glances and insufferably self-satisfied blabbering—it didn’t take too long to realize that Sven’s favorite subject started with “I” and ended with “me”— but she kept her ears open for any information the two Nords dropped as they ambled forth. After some time, the Dunmer fell back as well, whether for the sake of her company, or to keep collective attention away from his lingering injuries, she couldn’t quite tell.

“If I had to settle in Skyrim, this might be the place I’d choose.”

She huffed a noncommittal “hmm,” her thoughts turning to Fae’s remarkably similar declaration, all those months ago. What was it with her and elves wanting to settle in bucolic villages?

Ahead of them, Undnar came to a stop. The Argonians had visibly brightened the moment their group passed the gates, and they proceeded to disperse in different directions—Anum-La and Darkeethus towards the forge, where a burly, affable-looking Nord was whistling a jaunty tune in rhythm with his hammering; Sings-in-Reeds and two of the younger-looking Argonians towards the fishery on the other side of the river, straight through the water, not bothering with the bridge; and the rest of them sauntered down the main street towards what Vera, squinting at the sign gently creaking in the breeze, identified as the local tavern.

That left her with Sero and the two Nords.

“Well,” Undnar scratched his beard. “I suppose we best resupply? Sero, what’s the damage?”

The merc squinted, calculating something in his head. “About one thousand septims if we include the gear.” Vera caught the quick flicker of his side-glance before he amended, “make that one thousand five hundred.”

She decided not to point out that he’d rounded up quite liberally. Then again, there was the cost of labor lost, so perhaps the estimate wasn’t inaccurate.

Sven whistled, impressed. “Damn Imperials, lining their coffers with people’s hard-earned money.” The greedy little glint in his eyes suggested that the bard felt personally slighted by the injustice of this particular redistribution of wealth.

Undnar nodded and huffed with theatrical despondence, though he didn’t look all that heartbroken about the financial setback. “Aye, friend. Expensive misadventure.” He stroked his beard, pondering. “Say, Teldryn… While you two were visiting Helgen’s fine accommodations, you wouldn’t have happened to encounter some trace of our quarry?”

Vera managed not to gape in shocked anger, and the “you flaming sack of shit” stuck in her throat like a fishbone. She turned to the merc for help—or minimally, for a sign of solidarity—and felt vaguely vindicated when his eyes narrowed to crimson slits, before he rearranged his expression into something approximating indifference. “Not a one.”

“Ah well,” the obnoxious Bear nodded. “Worth a try. I suppose it would have been a tad too fortuitous, hmm?” He turned to Vera and beamed benignly. “I hope you like quaint little villages, Snowberry. We’re going to be stuck here until I can dispatch a courier to Whiterun and replenish our coin. In the meantime, perhaps these fine folk will have some work that will keep our bellies full, and our thirst slaked.” He stretched with a pleasurable squint like a tomcat in the sun before turning to Sven. “Tell me, my friend, is there any place in this fine settlement where my associates might acquire some basic necessities?”

Sven’s leery mug took a turn for the slightly cagey, but he nodded enthusiastically enough. “There’s the Riverwood Trader, if you don’t mind the exorbitant prices.”

Undnar chuckled into his beard and traded a weird sort of look with the other bard, some inside joke crackling between them, right under the surface. Vera decided she didn’t like it one little bit: like stepping into a puddle of machine oil in the dark.

“Fine wares?” the Mad Bear clarified in the verbal equivalent of a playful nudge.

“And in high demand.” Again, that greasy little glimmer. “Though most of the customers are… Well. Not the best sort, if you catch my drift.”

Vera chanced a quick glance at the merc to see if he caught it too, but Sero’s attention had drifted away from Undnar and his buddy. He scanned the buildings with a shallow frown—searching for something and clearly not finding it.

“No apothecary, I take it?” he asked, his tone glazed with bored mockery.

Shitty camouflage over a lingering problem, Vera thought. For whatever reason, the Dunmer kept downplaying the severity of his injury—in front of Undnar, anyway.

Sven shrugged. “Closest one’s in Whiterun, but you can mix a potion or two at the Sleeping Giant, if you’ve got the ingredients.” He shuffled from foot to foot, looking vaguely embarrassed, and shot a quick glance at Vera. “Mother used to tend to the… umm… womenfolk and such, but her health took a bad turn after those frosts last winter. Oh, and there’s that priestly healer type, too—new fella, from Skingrad. Valgus, something or other.” He sniffed in condescending distaste. “Bit of a stuffy cottonbelly, if you ask me. You might still catch him at the inn if he hasn’t left already. Either that, or he’ll be fussing over the standing stones up the road.”

Sero nodded. “My thanks.”

He left it at that. Vera caught Undnar’s hardening expression at this exchange, but the Nord smoothed it out quickly, and bobbed his head with affable enthusiasm. “Come along, Snowberry, let us take a look at the Riverwood Trader. And after that, a much-needed meal, aye?”

~~~

The store was dimly lit and smelled pleasantly of beeswax and frost mirriam. Undnar went in first, so Vera didn’t notice the shop’s occupants—the Mad Nord’s absurdly large frame had blocked most of the doorway. Even when he boomed an amused “Ho there, pardon us,” she felt nothing but vague puzzlement. Sero had wandered off in search of the healer, and she had been so focused on the thought of soap and tooth powder, tonguing the gritty layer of muck on her teeth and fantasizing about a long, hot soak—or a cold but soapy dip in the river if it came down to it—that by the time she saw the two figures springing apart in guilty embarrassment, it was too late to turn on her heels and find something better to do.

Faendal hadn’t changed too much. His hair was shorter: still in a ponytail, but now slicked back with some kind of pomade, gathered high and tight, instead of the silver mess at his nape. The memory of its softness sent a sudden, unwelcome echo into her fingertips, and she stuffed her hands into her pockets. Still, she kept staring, stuck in the tarry trap of shocked surprise. Idiot. What had she expected? That he had moved on from Riverwood? A bit too fortuitous, as the Mad Bear would have it.

He was clean shaven—the grey stubble she had teased him about was gone, and without it, his face seemed less angular and more human. She couldn’t decide whether the new look made him appear older or younger, but he moved with the same light-footed ease when he backed away from the counter where he had been leaning. He cycled through various expressions: embarrassment, wide-eyed recognition—brief, fleeting joy, quickly curdled—and then, finally, settled right at the threshold between mortification and horror.

“Vee?” he said, like something that had fallen into disuse.

The woman he had been chatting up was striking—and perfectly aware of the fact, Vera thought with a pang of corrosive, ungenerous rancor.

For once, the Mad Nord’s lust for attention had a practical use—it saved her from any further embarrassment. Undnar grinned, toothy and exuberantly pleased, rolling right over what had clearly been an interruption and straight onto the stage. “And here I feared that we would remain kinless wayward travelers, but the Divines are merciful, for they stud our path with faithful friends, old and new, and see to it that our lone discomforts do not remain unshared. Eh, Snowberry? You two know each other?” he added, and before either of them could answer, he kept right on course, turning to the Imperial woman behind the counter. “And you, lovely maiden, must be the proprietor of this fine establishment?”

The “lovely maiden” smiled, perfectly poised, and with just the right amount of twinkle. “My brother is, technically, but he is attending to some business with Gerdur. My name is Camilla Valerius. Welcome to the Riverwood Trader, travelers.”

Vera watched Fae tense up as Undnar bubbled over with more lavishly dispensed superlatives.

The relief of fading into the negative space of the Nord’s gravitational pull was short-lived. Faendal caught her gaze and motioned with his head towards the door—a surreptitious plea for a private chat. Vera inclined her head in acknowledgement.

Fuck.

Perhaps the inn would have some of the basics to sell, and considering they were stuck in the bloody hamlet until Undnar got his cash, the rest of her supply list could wait.

“We will speak soon?” Faendal’s smile remained the same, even if its beneficiary had changed. Vera turned towards the door with a quick “pleased to meet you,” and a quicker “I’ll be back in a bit,” and walked out into the sun-dappled street.

The thundering crash of timber from a nearby lumber mill sent a pair of crows perched atop the smithy’s roof into annoyed caws. Behind her, the door banged shut. Vera forced herself to turn around. “It’s good to see you.” The smile tasted odd, but she still wrote it off as a win.

The Bosmer rubbed his forehead and looked slightly pained. “And you! Of course, it’s been… ah… Bad winter, wasn’t it?”

Vera sighed. No point in making this worse than it needed to be. “Nice place,” she lied. “You like it here?”

He brightened up a bit, his shoulders easing, and he chuckled in familiar self-depreciation. “Riverwood’s agreeable enough, I suppose. For a Nord village.”

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

“Steady work at the mill, good hunting when the poachers don’t get too greedy.” He shrugged. “And…there’s a certain beauty to it.”

Vera snorted. “Yeah, I saw.” His blush had the same tawny tint. She forged on. “Got a roof over your head for the cold months, then?”

He beamed with warm, uncomplicated pride. “I do! Built a house with my own two hands. Took damn long, but it’s good to… ah. You know how it is.”

She left unspoken the innocent compliment, along with the sudden awareness of its potential double-entendre—you’d always been good with those—and nodded.

His eyes drifted to her back, and his face fell. “Did you trade the bow?”

She shook her head and swallowed the knot in her throat. “No way. We got into some trouble at Helgen...”

The Bosmer accepted the abbreviated answer solemnly, on firmer ground now that the boggy part was behind them. “I heard Helgen is getting tight around the neck, if you know what I mean.” He hesitated like he was about to ask for details, but then thought better of it. “Got some new pieces in the works, if you’d like a look. Or I could craft one for you.”

Vera winced. “I can’t pay much.”

He tried to wave away the stubborn awkwardness between them. “I’m just tinkering. You’d be doing me a favor, freeing up some space. How many bows does one elf need?” His eyes flicked over her with the briefest of lingers before he shuffled in place, with more discomfiture on the way. “Listen, Vee, I hate to ask, but are you…well?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and forced a chortle. “Village life making you soft already, Fae?”

He didn’t quite flinch at the nickname, but it was a close call. “I meant no offense. You know that. It’s just…”

He didn’t finish. Vera turned around, following his puzzled gaze.

Oh, fucking great.

There was a wordless sort of pleasure to watching the merc walk without that hitching limp. He moved down the street with his usual sparse, lithe efficiency, and the relief of it caught Vera completely off-guard. By the time she managed to rearrange her face towards an impression of neutrality, Sero had registered her expression, lifted an eyebrow, and winked before leveling with them and briefly nodding in greeting. “Apologies for... interrupting.” The sarcastic drawl was back, perfectly opaque.

“Greetings, brother! Good to see a familiar face so far from home!” Faendal’s tone was entirely too embulient.

Sero’s eyes appraised his conspecific, flicked to Vera, returned to the Bosmer, and then he grinned, sharp and irreverently amused. “Isn’t it just?” He turned to Vera. “Hungry, partner? My treat, if you’re willing to do the…haggling.”

He’d never drawn attention to their unspoken arrangement before, and Vera found herself too surprised by his carefully worded request to do anything but nod in understanding.

Faendal chose this moment to remember that he had left his new flame in mid-chat with an unfamiliar, boisterous Nord. A flash of unease crossed his features, and he pivoted back towards the door. “Ah, well, don’t let me keep you. The inn’s a bit crowded these days, best get your meal early. Come see the bows tomorrow, Vee,” he added. “Got a nice birch and horn one I think you might like. Picked up the idea from a Redguard fellow…”

She smiled. “Thanks, Fae. I’ll do that.”

~~~

They traded strictly in logistics as they walked back towards the inn, and Vera found herself easing into the now familiar choreography of practicality and shared irony. Sero sketched the Sleeping Giant for her—“very...efficient little place, for a village tavern. Have a look at the innkeeper, if you’re of a mind. Curious character.”

She summarized the shop with the same telegraphic strokes—“decent inventory, from what I could see, though I think the locals are there for the merchant’s sister, not so much the product.”

He bit back a smile and shot her a curious glance. “So that’s why the Bosmer bolted back in so quickly. A…friend of yours?”

Vera hesitated, then shrugged. “He’s a good man. I’m glad he found a place to call home.”

Sero drawled a supremely sardonic “Complicated.”

She snorted at his tone. “Pretty simple, actually. But throw Undnar into the mix, and I have a feeling we might have a duel or two yet.”

The merc whistled between his teeth. “What a charming little place, Riverwood. And speaking of charming, I recommend you talk to that healer, unless you’re planning to retrain for a different weapon.”

Vera winced and gave her shoulder an experimental roll. The tenderness lingered, but it was manageable. “Is the healer, in fact, charming?”

“More so than our latest Imperial acquaintances, in any case.”

“Setting the standards rather low these days?”

He shrugged and squinted at the mountains towering over the hamlet. Grey clouds had snagged on the summit, a curtain of high altitude snow blurring the outline of the Nordic ruin that overlooked the village. “I take what I can get.”

~~~

The healer, a trim, older Imperial in his late forties or early fifties, still handsome though worn around the edges in the way soldiers often were, was, in fact, rather pleasant: soft-spoken and abstractly wistful. They caught him on his way out of the inn, but he shouldered off his pack, examined Vera’s shoulder with a mild frown, and nodded with an authoritative “hold still.”

He didn’t charge her for the spell. Vera wished him a safe journey, and he threw a “Stars guide you” over his shoulder before setting off down the road.

For a village tavern, the inn was ridiculously overpriced, and, contrary to Faendal’s warning, rather empty. After some monosyllabic negotiation with the terse Breton innkeeper, they settled at a corner table, with two bowls of simple barley stew, a loaf of potato bread, and two ales.

Vera chewed slowly, the quaky nervousness in the pit of her stomach souring into generalized annoyance. She contemplated her harebrained idea with all the enthusiasm of poking at a questionably fresh carcass. It wasn’t an illogical solution, all things being equal. The merc had already paid for their meal, brushing off her initial protest with poorly concealed irritability, but she still caught his disparaging head shake when the innkeeper announced the prices.

She took a sip of ale, squashed the unease the best she could, and launched herself into her proposal. “How much did you manage to squirrel away?”

The merc must have been preoccupied with a similar calculus, because he didn’t miss a beat. “About forty septims.” He looked up from his stew and leaned back in his chair. “You?”

“Thirty, give or take.”

His mouth hitched upward at the corner, but he reined in the irony. “Wherever did you hide them?” He brought his ale to his lips, and drank in a few long gulps.

Vera shrugged, but didn’t break eye contact. “In the usual places. Are we trading tips, Sero, or are you hoping for a pat-down?”

He made an amused little noise and acknowledged the point with a silent toast. “Any particular reason for this... inventorization?”

She nibbled on a bread crust, buying herself a moment to think. “How long do you think it’ll take Undnar to get his money from Whiterun?”

“As long as it takes him to decide that he’s done with Riverwood.” His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“Of course not.” She bit her cheek to hide the grin, lest she tip him off. “I know I could never afford you.”

The ale went down the wrong pipe, and the merc coughed a few times before shaking his head.

“Is that a point?” Vera asked with performative sweetness.

“I suppose it is a point, though I’d wager not the point. What are you asking? Out with it, partner.”

Vera redirected her gaze to the uninspiring soup. “I’m suggesting we pool resources.”

“Ah.”

She opened her mouth to make her case, but he beat her to it. “Food and drink are simple enough. Weapons might be a tad… trickier, unless you’re in the mood to convince your Bosmer friend to craft me something as well.”

She dodged the subtle provocation. “You’re planning to take up the bow, Teldryn?”

He chuckled. “I’d rather not. Soap and some other necessities might be shared, I suppose. And we might as well combine bathtime, while we’re at it.”

Bastard. She conceded the point with a tip of her glass. “Nothing you haven’t seen before?”

The merc shrugged, completely unphased. “Sadly, not well. But I suppose I could save us the expense of lamp oil or candle wax... if that’ll sway you.”

Vera snorted and capitulated. “The alchemy supplies got me more worried. We need basic potions, and I’d rather not buy them here.”

“Agreed. And what of… lodging?”

“Well, seeing how you’ve already shared my bed…”

“Careful, hlakhes,” he purred. “Unless you’re proposing that we keep sleeping in shifts.”

She took a larger than advisable gulp of ale, but still managed a straight face. “Oh, I would make sure I stayed awake for the occasion... if that’ll sway you.”

His burst of laughter was rich and warm and utterly disarming, and Vera tried to shove the idiotic grin back where it came from before tallying up the point.

“Damn it,” he said, with only a hint of pique. “You’re on a roll. Where does that leave us?”

“Sixty one to sixty, in my favor.”

“I meant the housekeeping.”

Before she could come up with a clever reply, the door to the tavern yawned open, belching forth the inevitable Bear. “There you are,” he announced, approximating an unconvincing rendition of unjustly maligned. “Woe be upon my brow, for my associates forsake me, choosing to share nourishment in my absence while I labor tirelessly to remedy our financial hardships and replenish our meager supplies.” He commandeered a chair and plopped down.

“Any luck?” Sero asked, with no more acid than usual.

“Since when have I relied on luck, sellsword? Let us leave luck to the Jarl playing dice with his kitchen maid's snowberry week—no offense to you, Snowberry. Now chance, that’s another matter entirely. Shall we see what manner of employment we might chance upon in this loveliest of settlements?”

“Or we might head to Whiterun,” Sero noted, somewhat pro-forma.

Undnar shot him a slightly derisive look before turning to Vera with an unapologetically carnivorous grin. “What say you, Snowberry? Shall we listen to this dourest of Dunmer and drag ourselves to the closest city, braving wolves and bears and Imperial patrols, no doubt on the lookout for a lovely Breton lass and one disreputable sellsword? Or shall we depart, well-rested and ready to fight at the side of Ysgramor himself, after enjoying the countryside, the fresh air, and the company of these fine and wholesome folk? On account of our bedraggled health and weary feet, and all that?”

Vera didn’t try to hide her irritation. “Is there any reason that the Imperials won’t come looking for us here?”

Undnar beamed. “As a matter of fact, there is!” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “For the ties of bloodkin shackle us more powerfully than any other, and no Imperial patrol would brave a village where half of the locals have an uncle by marriage or a brother-in-law in the Legion, and the other half’s beloved grandmothers and favorite cousins supports Jarl Ulfric. Because that, Snowberry, would be inexpedient. Not to mention messy, and as you have discovered for yourself, the Empire prefers to keep its messy business underground.”

She nodded slowly. “And after that?”

“After that, lass, we’ll go and find our quarry, I will have my long overdue chat, and then—and pay attention, here, this is where this story concerns you most directly—I will personally see to it that your journey to Winterhold is as safe and trouble-free as two seasoned warriors can offer. That’s still your goal, isn’t it?” He turned to the Dunmer. “Isn’t that right, sellsword? For what are friends for, if not to watch your back in your direst trial?”

Vera caught the edge of an odd expression, but the merc dispelled it quickly, though the resulting poker face prickled her spine with sudden fear. Sero set his mug of ale on the table with uncharacteristic slowness. “A moment?” His eyes went to Vera. “Will you excuse us, partner?”

She combed for any further clue, any hint of the subtext rippling between the two men, but neither of them gave anything away, not even when Undnar’s face went steely, and he rose with a curt nod and gestured to the tavern door.

When they returned a few minutes later, the Mad Nord was his usual self, but when Vera glanced at Sero, she felt her face turning numb. Beneath the carefully drawn mask of blazé boredom, the merc looked like someone had scraped him out with a rusty knife.

~~~

There was no swaying the Nord away from the village, so Vera contented herself with spending the rest of the afternoon attending to the minor logistics of restoring as much of her lost gear as she could, tallying personal expenses against joint ones, mindful of the little money she and the merc agreed to communize. She tried to ignore the scratchy feeling of entrapment and the nagging sense that something had gone badly awry—like an explosion on the horizon, a brief flash of white and a distant detonation, but no immediate fallout. Easy to write off, until shit started raining down.

Everything about Riverwood grated on her—the gentle breeze carrying the sweet scent of meadow flowers and a hint of glaciers, the vibrant splashes of color under every windowsill, the rhythmic ruckus of the lumber mill. She eyed the road leading out of the village with a deep sense of longing, but the prospect of striking out alone, with few supplies, an unreliable weapon, no maps, and a chance of running afoul of a prowling Imperial patrol had minimal appeal.

By the time she returned to the inn, her mood was as foul as the rest of her, so Vera spent the requisite gold, purchased entry into the baths, and marched off to scrub herself down. On her way back out, she handed the merc the bar of plain lye soap acquired from the Riverwood Trader. The dark-haired Imperial owner had returned from his errand, and he had been as mercenary about his prices as the Breton innkeeper. Sero nodded his thanks. If he saw an opportunity to equalize their score through a well-placed quip, he either chose not to take it, or missed it entirely before disappearing in the bathing room. He took longer than was reasonable, and Vera endured Undnar’s company with as few words dispensed as possible. Not that her verbal interventions were needed; the Nord was slowly amassing a collection of social satellites, like some ponderous gas giant amasses cosmic debris.

In retrospect, she wasn’t sure when, exactly, the tavern turned from innocently animated to purposefully, methodically revelrous, nor could she tell whether this was the local way, or if something about Undnar had catalyzed the response. By evening, the liquor was flowing, the conversations edged towards the rowdy, Sven was bleating one overwrought musical offering after another, and while the ambiance was jolly, there was an undercurrent of strangeness to it, which Vera couldn’t quite place. Her eyes kept darting to one of the newcomers perched by the bar—a nondescript Breton fellow in a black robe. His only memorable feature were the spectacularly bloodshot eyes, as if sobriety was a distant memory he had long since left behind on the doorstep of some forgotten watering hole. He kept to himself, but she caught him occasionally buying drinks and dispensing them to the patrons, seemingly at random.

Undnar kept topping off her glass from the communal flagon, and Vera stuck to tiny sips, taking a malicious sort of delight in watching the Nord’s increasingly annoyed attempts at replenishing the undiminished.

She wasn’t quite sure when things went south in earnest, either. Perhaps when Camilla Valerius and her brother made their entrance, or, more likely, when Fae arrived shortly after.

It went predictably badly after that. She’d had an inkling that something like this would unfold the second it became obvious that Undnar’s appetites—or, more likely, his healthy sense of self-preservation—bypassed the Breton innkeeper. Never mind that the Imperial gal didn’t seem like the Mad Bear’s usual type: the russet bastard was clearly in the mood to make do, or perhaps, just to poke the hornets’ nest and see what came a-buzzing.

Vera watched, with a sticky sort of second-hand embarrassment, the awkward choreography of Fae’s oscillation between anger and shame as he tried to reroute his fickle flame’s attention back to himself—and failed. She watched as the brother—she couldn’t remember the merchant’s given name to save her life—seethed quietly, and then watched Undnar dance metaphorical circles around him. By the end of it, the Imperial looked about ready to give his blessings and hold the candle. Eyelashes fluttered, cheeks flushed, jokes were traded, the copper circle of Mara’s sigil made a discretely strategic appearance.

The merc, for his part, had sunken into monosyllabic abstraction, barely keeping up with his side of the banter, even when she practically dropped the points in his lap. From there, Vera finally said fuck it, and decided that one night of getting sloshed wouldn’t kill her. If nothing else, the hangover would lend a tangible target for the aimless discomfort she couldn’t shake ever since they had stepped into the accursed village. Across from her, Sero was re-rolling the same smoke for the third time.

She knocked back her ale, finally endorsing Undnar’s chevaleresque refills. The Mad Nord looked pleased—and a little vindicated.

She ignored him.

By her third drink, the bard was done with his routine, and he decided to exercise his eloquence on a decoy, aiming for the same goal as Fae was failing at, Vera guessed, only through the time-honored artifice of feigning interest elsewhere. He came to her end of the table with offerings of moonshine and slurred compliments. She scowled at his oily grin and tuned out his verbiage. He’d had enough booze sloshing in his belly that some of his verbal efforts even sounded half-way heartfelt, or, minimally, he didn’t seem entirely opposed to the potential outcome of his preening. Earnest enough, in any case, to jolt the merc out of whatever hole he had dug himself into. Sero squinted at the bard with a caustic look, appropriated the bottle, filled his mug to the brim and leaned back in his chair, ankle over knee. “What can we do for you, serjo?” he asked, cutting the bard off mid-sentence.

Vera felt vaguely heartened by that first person plural.

Sven made a few noncommittal noises and beat a hasty retreat.

She finished the dregs of her drink. It tasted suspiciously like turpentine. “Smoke?” she asked.

~~~

It wasn’t until they had stepped outside that the liquor finally caught up with her. She was perfectly lucid while they were sitting down, but here, under the brilliant scatter of innumerable stars, the world suddenly went soft and lush and entirely too luminous.

The Dunmer leaned on the railing and handed her the long-suffering rollie. The booze had seemed to relax him a little. He summoned a flame with a little flourish, and watched her light up.

Vera inhaled deep into her lungs, coughed, and passed the cigarette back. “What was that, Sero?” Her voice came out distorted with smoke. “With Undnar. You look like that guy who shows up sober at his own funeral.”

Somehow, that caught the edge of his amusement. “I wouldn’t say sober,” he trailed before drawing on the roll-up—too fast, the ember flaring bright. His smoke ring drifted to the skies. “But not nearly drunk enough. I wish they had sujamma in here.”

“Want to keep drinking, or walk it off?”

He chuckled. “Walk it off. And then keep drinking.”

They made their way down the porch and stalled, trying to decide on a direction.

The door creaked. A shaft of orange light fell on the road, and the final, unapologetically cacophonous couplet of Twenty Shield Maidens and One Talos Priest drifted on the night air, only to clash with the chorus of frogs. The amphibians, Vera decided, were winning.

The merc reacted instantly. He grabbed her hand and yanked her into the shadows at the side of the tavern.

The veranda groaned under heavy footsteps and resettled under a lighter gait. Two people. The first was Undnar, even more bearlike in his lumbering after the ample amount of ale and potato liquor. She wasn’t sure who the Mad Nord’s companion was, but judging by the softer, slightly hesitant step, it was a woman. Not the Breton innkeeper—that one moved around with the punctuated confidence of a soldier. That left the Imperial gal.

“Oh, for fuck’s s-”

“Shhh.” Sero yanked her back and pressed his palm to her mouth—not an overly demanding gag, but enough to muffle her nascent tirade. Vera squashed the impulse to bite down—more out of scientific curiosity than hostility, really—and allowed herself to be maneuvered into the deeper darkness between some kind of prickly bush, a set of barrels, and the tavern wall.

The Dunmer, she mused, couldn’t be much more sober than she was—by the time they beat their slightly wobbly retreat, there wasn’t a sober soul left in the Sleeping Giant. And yet, here he was, strategizing, while Vera’s own attention bounded along entirely unhelpfully tactical paths. For a moment, she forgot about the supreme absurdity of the entire day—the rustic love triangles with shades of hexagonal drift, the sticky awkwardness of her encounter with Fae, the Mad Nord’s ominous maneuvering. Sero’s arm was still looped around her middle, and he wasn’t in any hurry to reestablish respectable distance. Liquor or not, she felt the press of his thighs against her ass, and the muted heat of his chest against her back with excruciating clarity. Familiar, yet other—; too close, yet not nearly close enough. She tried to kick the contradictions aside, but they refused to be budged.

“What can this grizzled old bard do for you, fair lady?” Undnar’s voice boomed, polished in its delivery despite the earlier libations.

The Mad Bear’s interlocutor hesitated. “Camilla will suffice,” she said, with that perfectly honed mixture of formality and flirtation: a flawlessly deniable bait.

Vera didn’t quite manage not to roll her eyes.

“Camilla! She who serves in grace! A fine Imperial name!” Undnar exclaimed, with perfectly lascivious cheer.

At Vera’s back, the merc muffled something suspiciously close to a snort. His amusement refracted through her in the ticklish, warm contagion of shared laughter. The merc’s arm around her tightened in warning.

“A name for songs, if I may say so myself, a name to soothe and delight the ear.” Undnar paused, and Vera’s earlier hilarity dissolved, snuffed out by the sudden awareness of the slow subtle snare sliding shut. Run, she thought vaguely, the jolt of sympathy muddled by a haze of misplaced, unmerited resentment. She batted away at the echoes of belated territoriality. She’d made her choice, hadn’t she? With eyes wide open, too. Fae deserved better, but everyone was free to blunder through life however they saw fit.

Undnar continued in a pensive drawl. “A name to quiet a restless warrior’s heart and bring warmth to a hearth where children and elders alike partake in the loving labors of a patient, kind-hearted woman.” After a strategic silence that stretched for a smidge too long, he added with performative wistfulness, “but not a name for the harsh Nordic sagas that sing of heroism and valor. And thank the Divines for that, for they are merciful and discerning in their judgement.”

“There is more to life than quiet hearths and Nordic sagas,” Camilla said, mostly business now, but padded with carefully quilted entreaty. “I may require assistance with a somewhat delicate matter. I understand you are a man of certain... connections?”

Floorboards creaked, followed by a thud—Undnar had leaned against the railing, Vera guessed.

When he spoke, the haze of inebriation was gone from him entirely. He responded in the same dry business tone. “Best discussed away from rowdy inns, tedious suitors, and worried brothers, then?”

There was a long pause. Vera held her breath, waiting.

“Follow me.”

“Incoming,” Sero hissed, and before she could react, he dragged her backward, deeper into the shadows, where the dappled moonlight didn’t reach.

~~~

After the dust had settled and the beat of footsteps faded, Vera tried to make sense of what had just happened, and failed. At least she wasn’t the only one saddled with the sudden awareness of their ridiculous predicament. She shifted in the merc’s arms, trying to get her bearings. Their scramble had landed them somewhere at the back of the tavern.

“I see you’re set on that pat-down,” she mumbled against his palm, still blocking her mouth.

Sero drew a sharp breath—belated surprise, the dawning realization of where his hands had gone while he was busy maneuvering them into their hiding spot. The booze was catching up too, Vera guessed, rapidly washing away the proverbial line in the sand. She felt the rough scrape of his stubble against her cheek. “Left side, over the hip, inner lining.” His breath ghosted over her ear—a cool gust as he drew in her scent, then a burst of warmth followed by a quiet, strangled “damn it.”

She bucked against him, fully cognizant of just how stupid this was, stupid and a little mean-spirited, but then his hand found the hem of her tunic and went under, up her hip and over her belly then futher up still—shockingly hot against her skin. She shuddered, but his palm on her mouth muffled her careless expletive. He traced her lower lip with his thumb, hesitant at first, as if unsure of whether he was willing to commit to the next logical step, until she invited the intimate intrusion, unsubtle about the facsimile, or what it promised. She found herself pressed against the tavern wall, weather-worn wood against her cheek and the scent of pine mixing with that heady mineral heat of his. It didn’t take him too long to locate the sensitive spot beneath her ear, though she wouldn’t have objected to a bit more trial and error on the way. And from there, any pretense of playing fair went out the window. His kisses were rough and rushed and ragged — up her throat, along her jaw, to the corner of her lips. He shoved his hand into her hair, freeing her mouth only for a moment, until she craned her neck to meet him fully.

He didn’t claim more than she explicitly offered, and she would have offered more, never mind that they were pawing at each other behind some obnoxiously rustic tavern at the ass-end of nowhere—if not for the tension beneath the haze of liquor and the slight, almost imperceptible tremor in his fingers. If she could have seen his expression, Vera would’ve bet good money that the merc’s eyes had gone narrow, not unlike how they did right before battle—a grim bracing for impact. “What the bloody hell’s got you stalling, you stubborn bastard?!” she wanted to scream, his opaque hesitancy and her own inability to solve the puzzle tripping her irritability. She deepened the kiss, melting into it, coaxing him over the line. It wouldn’t take much. Both of his hands were under her tunic now, and he pushed her brassiere up and out of the way to cup her breasts—an excruciatingly gentle caress, then slow, teasing circles, light pinches calling forth an echoing lurch in her belly. She arched her spine, bringing herself into his palms more fully. A moan swallowed between kisses, lost in the shuffle. She reached behind her in retaliation, matching his gentleness when she stroked him through the coarse fabric of his trousers. He groaned into her mouth, shuddered and pressed closer, and Vera nipped at his lower lip, trying to contain the bright flash of amusement in the muddle of desire—what do you know, the merc really did have every reason to boast.

They came up for air, just long enough for him to turn her around. He shifted, pressing his thigh between her legs, and before she could think better of it, she rolled her hips in silent answer, the just-so pressure wrenching a frustrated little whine from her. “Teldryn…”

“Ask me.” An imperative it may have been, but it landed on the reverse side of an order: rough and dark and as ragged as his hands on her skin. The “get it over with” lurked behind it like an afterimage. She heard it regardless, in resonance with her own request for that final favor before they made their watery escape from Helgen.

The lower edge of Masser’s crescent dipped below the awning. In its dull, tawny glow, she caught sight of the Dunmer’s expression and froze. The desire she could read plainly enough, but the other emotion was there too: that mute panic of hurtling, eyes wide open, towards the edge of some impossible precipice. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe something about his conversation with Undnar, but she recognized the look well enough. Probably had worn it herself, on a few occasions, in those last few weeks with Dima when she kept trying to pull him back by his shadow. Not quite the same, not motivated by the same species of fear, but with enough overlap for her to brace herself, swallow the maddening thrum of uncomplicated need and complicated baggage, and yank them onto other rails. She laced her fingers at the back of his head, briefly savoring the springy coarseness of his hair against her palms, and brought his forehead to hers. “Not without a workaround, Demonchops.”

He stilled long enough to find a chuckle for her. Then, with obvious reluctance, he mirrored her stance. His fingers curled into her hair. He stole one more kiss—slow, sharply sweet, a little guilty. It dragged to the surface some half-buried memory, there, then gone in a flash: sneaking condensed milk candy from the forbidden jar and bolting, sticky-mouthed and giggling, into a rare sunlit morning.

They broke apart and stared at each other through the darkness, though he didn’t press the advantage of his sharper night vision. Enough moonlight filtered into their hiding spot to allow her to glean his expression—slightly dazed, but beneath it, floating into focus, a bone-deep wariness. Then, like a diver vaulting into the roiling ocean below: “No ‘workaround,’ Vee.” He paused, mulling over the rest. “Not a workable one, anyway.”

Just cough it up, damn you!

She kept the words locked behind her teeth and took hold of his hand instead, bringing it down between them, slowly, lest he spook. He tensed, and she shook her head. “Not like that. I’m not collecting, though I do distinctly recall your offering it in Karthwasten.” She drew a breath, trying to find the right formulation in the lingering haze of alcohol. “You’re far from careless, Sero, and you’re good at your job—seeing how you’re not dead yet. Distraction, managing liability, and all that. So you would’ve taken care of it anyway—just out of view.”

He cut the dry bark of laughter short. “Is that how you handle distraction, partner? Should we revise the score?”

She smiled, trusting him to see the reassurance along with the provocation. “I call your bluff and raise you a double-dare: whoever gets to the finish line first gets ten points.”

“Whoever does what?” He said it at that perfect edge of incredulity and shocked amusement. And then, after a long pause, “never thought of it as a race before. Twenty, and the loser gets half.”

Vera poked him in the ribs, to a deeply satisfying umpf. “Sweetening the deal, are you?”

He captured her hand and pinned it to the wall. “Lowering the stakes. Are there to be... rules?”

She hesitated—guessing blind, by contextual cues, like shooting into the dark. “No touching.” At his cocked eyebrow, she amended, “each other, anyway.”

“Tricky,” he drawled, raspy and sharp and oh so deliberate.

It was the sort of awkward that kept within the brackets of quiet chuckles as they negotiated the minutia. The darkness wasn’t absolute—she could make out his eyes; the curve of a cheekbone, ghostly-grey in the moonlight; the cold glint of one metal earring, high on his ear. What her eyes couldn’t see was redistributed to other senses. She stayed with her back to the wall, and he leaned in, close enough that their breaths mingled, but he never breached that final distance. She needn’t have bothered with undoing the lacing that held her pants in place—the weeks of travel had melted away the little sedentary weight Markarth had afforded her, and she could reach in just fine—but she did it anyway, mostly on Sero’s behalf. His sharp intake of breath and quiet “fuck” made the discomfort of the cold air on her skin well worth it.

She learned a few things along the way, collected haphazardly and pocketed like bits of ocean glass.

That the merc ran hotter when fully aroused.

That he liked it slow at first.

That he kept his eyes open to the very end until an involuntary spasm shut them for him.

That she had never maintained this much sustained eye-contact, and that in the absence of other stimuli, the overload of intimacy felt like some exotic intoxicant— like spinning, through scrambled coordinates, on an unlikely, elongated orbit.

That temptation was nothing if not subtle, because as he reached up to touch her face, he remembered himself and flattened his hand against the wall with a muted thud, close enough that she could lean her forehead against his forearm if she dared—just as her pleasure coiled and thrummed and harmonized in time with her fingers. She forced her face to the other side, her throat tight with contained moans, and with an odd, impossibly layered bittersweetness.

That he was unbelievably stubborn, even in this, and when her breath shortened, then stalled in anticipation, and her teeth sank into her lower lip to muffle the ragged gasps, he slowed, leaned in, bringing his lips right up to her ear, and purred “after you, hlakhes,” tipping her over the edge where any consideration of winning eroded, and the only thing left was the shape of his name in her mouth before the riptide sucked her under.

That something about this simple utterance had done the trick, as she knew it would, with an aftertaste of nightshade incense, and he followed suit with a strangled groan, trying to be considerate about where he spent himself, and not quite managing, in the end.

That close to the apex, his lips had parted on a startled half-smile—a flash of teeth in the moonlight, eyebrows drawing up, as if his own release waylaid him.

That his expression in that moment stamped itself into her memory.

Keeping quiet seemed to cost him as much as it did her. Once they were done, their carefully maintained separation turned suddenly and unutterably abominable. He opened his mouth to speak, but found no words except for “Apologies.”

“Safe now?” she asked. Before he could respond one way or another, she curled her fingers into his jacket and yanked him to her, into an embrace. He tensed, but then, slowly, brought his arms around her and tucked her close, resting his cheek against her hair.

Chapter Text

Settling into the embrace felt like soft, insidious sinking, but Vera couldn’t muster the energy or the irascibility to break the momentum. The merc’s arm around her tightened. He brought his hand to her nape, a welcome warmth against the chilly air as he felt around for knotted muscles with a practiced, absentminded efficiency. All intentions of cutting things short evaporated. She nestled closer, tucked her face into the crook of his neck, and shut her eyes, waiting for her heartbeat to ease. She wondered in passing whether his relatively quicker pulse was yet another species adaptation—faster metabolism, perhaps—or a more idiosyncratic divergence.

She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that. Eventually, Sero stirred and she let go.

A cloud smudged out the moon, and the darkness turned thick with the silence of a sleepy village, and, beyond it, the stealthy scuttling of the nighttime forest. It afforded her a modicum of privacy as she tugged her clothing back into place. Sero had taken a step back—a comfortably undemanding separation—and followed suit with his own readjustments.

“We should head inside, before we’re out of a place to sleep.” She’d aimed her tone at practical, but it landed on listless. And before the Mad Bear ambles back, she didn’t add.

In lieu of a response, he motioned for her to wait as he rummaged around in his pocket, extracting what Vera identified, mostly by the sharp smell of tallow and juniper, as an oil rag.

“Hold a moment, hlakhes.” After a short hesitation, he added, “I’m afraid I left you with a mess.”

Vera snorted, bit back the off-color joke about multipurpose rags and “weapon maintenance”—a low hanging fruit if ever there was one—and allowed the merc to wipe off the evidence of their recent activities from her hip. He went about it more fastidiously than the task required, and, at length, she took pity. “Don’t worry too much about it.”

He stopped and stepped back, with another muttered “apologies.” On instinct, she caught his free hand, by spatial memory rather than sight. “The trousers can use a wash anyway.” She succumbed to temptation and traced the calloused ridge that ran across his palm. “Besides, they’ve seen worse, as far as stains go.”

He chuckled quietly, balled up the cloth, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

Vera wrinkled her nose, trusting him to see her amused distaste. “Laundry day tomorrow, I take it?”

“Not the worst way to while away a hangover,” he drawled, unambiguously ambiguous, and this time, she laughed outright.

“Still trying to score a few points, Demonchops?”

She could practically hear his deliberation suspended in the air, but he opted not to pursue the obvious louche quip. Instead, he shifted his grip, and interlaced his fingers with hers. “Speaking of cleaning up messes, partner, I suggest we chat. Before our patron returns.”

~~~

They found the bench on the side of the tavern—a single weather-eaten plank balanced on top of two squat pine stumps, trestle-style. Sero summoned a tiny clot of magical light, pale yellow and small enough to mimic one of the overgrown torchbugs Bothela sometimes had her gather. He sat, the wood creaking under him, and occupied himself with rolling a smoke. Vera settled cross-legged on the uncomfortably narrow seat and plucked absentmindedly at the overgrown stalks of grass as she waited for the merc to tackle the proverbial elephant in the room—a russet, vaguely bear-shaped elephant, if the Dunmer’s stormy expression was anything to go by.

“Why Winterhold?” he asked.

Vera hesitated, rerouting her thoughts away from expected rails. “Why not Winterhold?”

He took his time to light up the rollie. “I take it the Altmer in Markarth lived up to his reputation?”

“With dividends.” Her snort came out more tired than amused.

“You’re headed to the College, I assume. What is it that you are hoping to learn?” His tone was even, but in the dim glow of the fake torchbug, she caught his eyes narrowing. “If it’s conjuration you’re pursuing, I… might be able to assist with the basics.”

“Careful, Vee.” Dima’s ghostly voice rang out with its customary quiet derision. “One thing to take the junkraft for a float if the itch won’t quit you, but it’s no reason to hold his hand and call him ‘teacher’ too, just because he left a cumstain on your pants.”

She held the wince back, but the sticky sense of wrongness lingered. Perhaps it was the booze, but for the first time it occurred to her that her hauntings had a cruel edge to them. Had it always been there with Dima, that cynicism curdled to vileness, or had she just outsourced her own?

“Enchanting, actually.” She blurted it out, too fast, mostly to drown out her spectral sediments. Then again, what was the harm in sharing it? Hadn’t the merc mentioned something about her affinity for “soul work?” And Undnar had put two and two together, though for whatever reason, he’d kept it to himself. “Is there something about Winterhold I should be aware of?”

His eyes creased in a not-quite-smirk. “How much do you know about Skyrim, outlander?” He trailed it, deliberate in his diction, his erstwhile moniker for her suddenly weighed down with unfamiliar ballast—like tying a rusty bolt to a length of twine and plumbing for depth in murky waters.

Vera kept her eyes on the blades of grass below and made herself shrug. “Never been that far up north.”

“Miserable place.” He shuddered, not entirely demonstratively.

“Is that where you met Undnar?” As far as fishing expeditions went, it wasn’t her subtlest, but the best defense, and all that… “I have a feeling there’s some history there.”

“Most of it at the bottom of the Sea of Ghost, but I’m sure the locals will fill the gaps for you.” He leaned back, rested his head against the wall, and closed his eyes. “I hear they dug up some rare Dwemer artifact—with a little help from your former mentor, if the wagging tongues in Solitude are to be trusted. I doubt admitting new students is high on their list of priorities.” He grimaced. “Damned spins. Should’ve finished that barley stew.”

Vera ignored his misdirection, though she didn’t begrudge it. “I take it, that's a ‘no’?”

“Nineteen points to go...” He turned to face her. The only trace of inebriation was in the way his crooked smile lit up his eyes with no remainder. “For you.”

Vera returned her attention to the grass, which had the advantage of not staring back. “So. We don’t count it?”

He didn’t bother with unnecessary clarifications. “Are you suggesting we start subtracting, as per our... original arrangement?”

She thought about it. She’d initially dangled her little secret as a bargaining chip, to trade for whatever might help her crack the Undnar puzzle, but what was her unconventional origins to the merc, when all was said and done? The deal had been unequal from the start—for her, intel on the Mad Bear, but what exactly did the Dunmer hope to gain? Nothing he could leverage unless he suddenly decided to reinvent himself as a Vigilant.

Remember, Vera, love, the only theories we ever have of each other are those we have of ourselves.

She shuddered at the stark clarity of Martha’s alto. Martha, at the stove, the day after Said left: an empty cup, an empty cot, a blanket folded in a perfect square. The morning’s crushing silence, no golden thread of quiet conversation to weave her dreams together.

It matters little whether they are correct.

She rubbed her temples. The ghosts were in fine form already. It’d be worse tomorrow, when the inevitable hangover hit.

“Well? What say you, partner?”

She turned abruptly, startled out of her hauntings. “We go on as before. You’re eleven points behind, so best step it up if you plan on catching up. Unless you’re just trying to use arithmetic as a deterrent, Demonchops?”

His return chuckle was unapologetically irritable. “You have a higher opinion of me than you should.” He sighed, recalibrating. “Do not mistake our patron’s assurances for charity, hlakhes. He will use you.” He didn’t meet her gaze, just stared straight ahead, into the darkness beyond the narrow circle cast by his pseudo-torchbug. “I suggest you make it difficult. If you can.”

~~~

The Sleeping Giant’s interior was doing its best to live up to its name, and Vera wrinkled her nose at the mixture of alcohol fumes, rendered fat, and the vinegar solution the cook had used to clean the pots. All the sconces above the private rooms were lit, and most of the benches in the common hall had been occupied by other snoring bodies. She recognized a few of the Argonians, though neither Anum-La nor Sings-in-Reeds were anywhere to be seen. Either they had left Riverwood already, or found accommodations elsewhere, she guessed.

They set up on the packed earth floor, Vera by the alchemy station, taking refuge in the familiar scent of pulverized frost mirriam, and the Dunmer on the other side of the hearth, at what she decided was meant to be a safe distance. She settled on the thin, worn-out wolf skin dispensed by the stoic innkeeper. No blanket, but she’d managed worse.

Undnar had not returned.

For once, sleep came quickly, and brought no uninvited guests.

~~~

It wasn’t the worst hangover she’d weathered, but it had its eye on the prize. She woke up before dawn, her throat raw with thirst, and that vague sense of having done something irreperably stupid twisting her stomach into a queasy knot.

Her fellow patrons were fast asleep, but the innkeeper was up, bustling about and stepping over prone bodies with the steely indifference of a seasoned general.

“Tea is two septims a pot,” the Breton intoned with a perfunctory glance at Vera. “Bath, should you need it, is ten.”

Vera nodded in equally perfunctory acknowledgement, and made for the door.

In the early morning light, beneath a leaden sky, the village looked gloomy and ruffled like a brooding hen. Vera glanced at the heavy clouds with something approximating relief. She wandered down towards the river and trailed upstream until she found a sufficiently secluded spot, sheltered between two large boulders. Across the watery expanse, white smoke drifted from the fishery, salt and cedar on a humid southern wind, but no workers around yet.

She stripped out of her clothes, set her teeth, and plunged into the icy water.

It didn’t take her long to locate the Bosmer’s cabin—after Markarth, Riverwood felt laughably tiny. Despite the early hour, she found Faendal awake and already hard at work, scouring a sabre cat pelt at the tanning rack behind his log cabin. The scent of cedar oil mixed with the sweetish stench of carrion, mild but insidiously insistent. Vera’s stomach lurched in protest.

She had stalled at the edge of the potato patch, careful not to accidentally step on the spring-fragile stalks. After her dip in the river, the hangover had dulled to a muted throb behind her left eye, but the jittery unease lingered, leaving her uncoordinated and unwieldy. She waited for the Bosmer to acknowledge her—he would have recognized her gait, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know she was there.

He looked almost as rough as she felt: craggy and worn and weary in the wan grey light of the rain-laden dawn.

“Morning,” she said finally, giving up on the silent charade.

Faendal turned from his task to take her in. His face hardened with mildly anxious disapproval, a crease, still more pronounced on the left side, bracketing his mouth. “Be straight with me, Vee.” His voice was strained, and strange. “Who’s he to you, exactly?”

Vera blinked and tried to ignore the sudden heat in her ears. The memory of the previous night’s activities had grown fuzzy around the edges, something glimpsed at the end of a long, murky tunnel, but no less there for the effort of distancing. She ordered the muscles in her shoulders to ease. Either way, a bit late for a sudden foray into territorial posturing. Fae hadn’t appeared particularly threatened by the merc’s presence at her side. Relieved, and a little wistful, and terribly awkward, but certainly not jealous.

“Who is who to me?”

His expression tightened. “The Nord, Vee.” The Bosmer straightened from his crouch and pivoted to face her. “How’d you get mixed up with someone like him?” The unspoken accusation echoed between his words.

She made herself shrug, for lack of better options. “It’s just a job, Fae.” If you can’t make it better, at least don’t make it worse. One of Said’s dictums, an ethics they had all tried to live by, in tacit solidarity. Until they didn’t. “Keeps bread on the table, you know how it goes.”

He watched her for a few long beats, the unease radiating off him in waves. “I’ve always thought you had a lot of sense about you.” His eyes searched her face. Whatever he found there, it softened him, and the tension drained from him in increments. At length, he smiled, or tried to, a familiar boyish grin newly eroded. “I’ve been known to be wrong, though, from time to time.” He belted the knife he’d been using to strip the pelt. “Come have some tea, at least.”

The canis root had been left on the fire too long, and the tea was dark and bitter, but they sweetened it with fresh honey and made do. Fae shoved breakfast at her with his eyes averted and his jaw set. Vera felt in no mood for ceremonial protests and accepted the offering with only a twinge of guilt, so he relaxed quickly enough. The winter barley porridge was coarse and granular, but it was seasoned with smoked fish and spring onion, and she wolfed it down as enthusiastically as her fussy stomach allowed, helping herself to an extra dollop of soft butter when her host offered it.

“Where it all fits is still a mystery.” His tone was affable, but without the erstwhile heat, and it settled something in her she didn’t know had been askew.

“No longer keeping to the Green Pact?” she asked to fill in the silence. He’d explained it, all those months ago, patient and oddly unsurprised at her apparent lack of elementary knowledge.

“Not if I hope to ever fit in with the local Nords. Did you see my potatoes? They’re coming in nicely…” he scrunched up his brow. “I think…”

Vera managed a smile, and met his eyes. “I’ve a feeling you’re going to need a bit more than healthy potatoes to impress that Imperial lass.” She blew on the tea, though it had grown cold. “If we’re being straight, and all that.”

“I…” It took him a few moments, but he found his footing. “I saw them last night, leaving for the woods.” A huff, more pained than amused. “Not much privacy in Riverwood, if you catch my drift. And here I thought I only had Sven to worry about.” He made a face, somewhere between exasperated and self-deprecating. “I keep telling myself, it shouldn’t be so difficult. Should it be?”

It sat between them with all its unspoken weight. Vera ignored the mild flare-up of misplaced resentment. “I don’t know, Fae.”

She had a good inkling of what would follow a second or two before the words passed his lips. To his credit, he looked almost as regretful as she felt, but it was out by then, no taking it back.

"It wasn't- It wasn't with you." He'd averted his eyes.

Vera stared at her empty cup. Just rip off the bandaid. “Moot point, isn’t it?” She left it at that and he simply nodded, acknowledging, not pleased about it, but of all the mornings, this wasn’t one where she could muster much reassurance. Still, she tried, with perfect awareness of the inadequacy of it. “If it’s any comfort, he’s just passing through.”

Faendal poked at his porridge. “Are you just passing through, Vee?”

The silence wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t awful.

At length, he sighed. “Have you had enough to eat? I want to show you the bows.”

Chapter Text

She'd tried to refuse at first, guilt vying with a base sort of greed, but the Bosmer wouldn't hear it. The bow wasn't something she could have afforded, not even when her pockets weren't so palpably empty. Vera told him as much—or tried, anyway, with a "you can sell this in Whiterun for at least...," but he cut her off, and wouldn't let her continue. "Never meant it for the market, Vee. And I ran out of horn, so I had to make it smaller than what I'd use." He thrust the bow at her, his gaze averted. "Just try it out."

There wasn't really any protest left in her after that. Dark horn and light yew, perfectly balanced, with a draw so comfortable it was as if the Bosmer had her in mind when he had crafted it. The obvious question kept tugging, right on the tip of her tongue, but she held it back, trying to preserve the little bit of dignity left between them. He switched the subject, too quickly. He talked of his work at the mill, about the Jarl's efforts to curb poaching activities, warned her off an iron mine up in the hills, purportedly overtaken by a gang of bandits. She told him a bit about Markarth, never venturing too far from the shallows.

"Speaking of alchemists, do you know of anyone who might sell me a few basic potions? I'm short on ingredients, and I hate repurposing ale bottles on the go; I can never steam them clean enough..."

Faendal narrowed his eyes. "Is the Trader all out?"

Vera sighed. No point in mentioning just how dire her finances were, unless she wanted another lecture on associating with questionable Nords who couldn't even be bothered to pay their underlings on time. Or worse, accruing more social debt—the bow was bad enough as it was. "I'll check," she lied.

"If they don't have what you need, you can try Anise—her cabin is half a mile upriver, on the far bank. She comes into town sometimes to sell skeever hide. Bit of an odd bat, if you ask me, but she might have ingredients you could use."

Fae offered to walk her to the Riverwood Trader—to "check on their stock." She took in his expression—brittle and braced, poised right at the edge between hope and resignation, like someone trying not to pick at a scab and not quite managing it. She nodded curtly. The least she could do, as far as exchanges went.

By the cow fence, under the doleful and somehow disapproving scrutiny of a large, shaggy bovid, the Bosmer stalled and shuffled in place, with an "I've been thinking..." meant to sound like he'd just had a revelation. Vera leaned against the scuffed wooden planks and supplied the expected verbal prodding.

It was a ridiculous scheme—all the more ridiculous now, considering the circumstances—and they both knew it, but the bow's press against her shoulder blades was enough incentive to keep her from pointing out the obvious. Still, she did due diligence. "I'm an outsider, Fae." On the other side of the fence, the cow lowered its head to the grass and flapped its ears in a bid to chase away the flies. "Why would Sven task me, of all people, with delivering a romantic missive? You can see how it'll look a bit suspicious. Besides..." She gestured vaguely, "shouldn't you be more worried about Undnar?"

"Not necessarily." The Bosmer’s voice had brightened, and Vera tried not to wince at the cruel optimism of it. "You said so yourself, you lot are just passing through. It's not like any oaths were exchanged... Sven, though, will still be here."

She ignored the mild sting at the way he'd said "you lot," and the casual dismissal into transitory irrelevance it came with. "If it comes from me, your Imperial gal will probably suspect I'm just trying to win you back." He flinched a little, and Vera hesitated, weighing necessary ruthlessness against harmful comfort. "Why don't you write her a real letter instead?"

His face fell, and in the wan, grey light of the storm-laden morning, he suddenly seemed much older: worn and ragged and threadbare. "I'm no good with words, Vee. You know that."

She glanced at the crinkled envelope in his hand. "Good enough to parody a bard, but not good enough to tell the woman you’re interested in how you really feel?"

She hadn't aimed to wound—only to jolt.

He set his jaw. "You're... right." For a second, Vera thought he would chuck the letter and storm off. Instead, the Bosmer resolutely handed her his missive. "So ask your Dunmer friend to do it. It's the least-" He cut himself off, but it was clear what he'd left out. It's the least you lot can do. "I doubt Camilla would think that the sellsword is trying to woo me, at least, seeing how he's got his hands occupied elsewhere. No offense," he added, without a hint of apology—only rancor, bitter as bile.

Vera stuffed the letter into her pocket. “If that’s what you want.” Not her mistakes, not her problem. She watched the ruminant lumber off towards a nearby tree to scratch its flank on the bark. “Thanks for the bow, Fae. It's beautiful.”

“Don’t mention it.” He did sound regretful then, and Vera mustered enough sympathy for a “see you” before walking away, past the shop, past the forge where the Nord smith was dumping a bucketful of water into the cooling trough, and back towards the tavern.

~~~

She found the merc at a table out back, his meager gear already packed, an air of impatient boredom about him, but no trace of a hangover.

Vera squinted in reproach. “You weren’t that drunk last night, were you?”

His mouth quirked. “Not enough to run off at the crack of dawn, anyway.” His gaze flicked to the bow at her back and he whistled between his teeth, appreciative, though perhaps not approving. “Looks like your morning excursion was... fruitful, partner. Who knew Riverwood could offer such fine craftsmanship?”

She noted the way his pitch rose in question—though whether about the bow and its implied exchange rate, or about the status of their partnership, she couldn’t tell. Vera grimaced and plopped down on the bench next to him, bracing herself for the ridiculous request. “I hope so—the partner bit, anyway—because I’m about to ask you for a favor, and I’ve a feeling you’re not going to like it.”

At his raised eyebrow, she fished around for Fae’s letter. “I was asked to deliver this. I shouldn’t be the one doing it, but you could.” She paused, and then added, “I’ll get you breakfast while I wait.”

To her complete surprise, Sero simply nodded. “Seems equitable enough.” He shifted in his seat and pushed a mug of mirriam tea in front of her. “Lukewarm, I’m afraid, but should be serviceable enough. Care to share what this is about?”

The tavern had emptied out—the only other patron was an aggressively bearded binge-drinking type slumped in the opposite corner of the main hall—but Vera still lowered her voice as she relayed Faendal’s request and the scheme that went with it. To his credit, Sero simply shook his head and eyed her with a mildly bemused expression.

“The things we do for love, hmm?” he drawled.

Vera ignored the odd lurch in the pit of her stomach, signaled her amusement with a snort, and passed him the letter. “I’ll see if they have something other than barley on the menu.”

She collected another odd look, and a vaguely sardonic “much obliged” to go with it. “Anything else we might need while I play courier?” he asked before getting up.

“Not from the shop. Faendal mentioned an old woman who might sell us some basic alchemical supplies for a bit less than a lung and a kidney if you fancy a short trip upriver. Is Undnar back?” she added, belatedly.

Sero shrugged. “Back, and very intent on leaving for Whiterun as soon as possible, though that didn’t stop him from renting the priciest room in the tavern and snoring the morning away. Lazy n’wah. In either event, I suggest we don’t dally.” His gaze on her lingered. “How far upriver?”

Vera grinned. This, at least, was familiar territory. “Still need a map, Sero, or are you looking for a detour?”

She watched him shift gears and tapped her thumb against the table to claim the point.

The merc’s eyes creased at the corners, but he maintained a straight face. “I might be able to do without a map, at this stage. Unless you’re in the mood to offer directions...”

It was in the way he said it—slow, a little raspy, and utterly frank about the subtext. She tried to disregard the flare of heat in her lower belly. He counted the point with a cheeky wink, and Vera snarled “one-one” with a great deal of ill will. Whatever shoddy barrier they had managed to maintain up until the previous night no longer held. Nothing to slow the feeling of free-fall now—an exhilarated sort of terror, all jumbled.

Gotta cut loose, Vee. Gotta cut loose, or they own you. Dima’s ghost, in the throes of his last spiral, didn’t sound derisive—only acutely desperate.

She wrenched her gaze away. For all its shabby hideousness, the elk head mounted over the bar proved helpfully uninspiring. “What’s so urgent in Whiterun, by the way? Or is Undnar just trying to skip town before the pitchforks come out?”

“He intends to return, I’m given to understand. A new—” he shot her a strangely pointed look “—business arrangement.”

Vera bit back a sour chuckle. “Is that what you call it?”

It got her another half-smile followed by a wince. “Not that kind, at least not primarily. It would seem that our patron has his sights on that Nordic ruin at the pass.”

Great, Vera didn’t say.

~~~

By the time Sero returned half an hour later, Vera had managed to sweet-talk the cook into parting with two servings of potato pancakes topped with sour cream and spring chives, and a pot of mountain flower tea, all for the somewhat reasonable price of five septims. It had involved listening to him grouse about mages, witches, magic more generally, how it didn’t sit well with Nordic culture, as well as nodding through a detailed inventorization of the Jarl’s fluctuating tax collections over the past decade.

They ate quickly, the merc practically inhaling his food with the occasional approving “hmm.” Vera finished her meal on principle even though the morning’s barley porridge still sat in her stomach like a brick.

“Best we get going,” Sero said finally, with a note of impatience as Vera chased around the remaining sourcream with the last bit of her pancake.

~~~

They crossed the bridge and set off upstream past the single, narrow fishery dock, where a handful of Argonians and a few Nords were hauling crab cages onto the creaky planks. An Argonian waved her hand, and Vera recognized one of their erstwhile companions on the road from Helgen, though she couldn’t remember the name. Discarded crab shells, bleached bone-white and brittle, cracked under their boots as they followed the river past the fishery’s detritus and onto a marshy, lush bank dotted with the prickly brown stalks of last year’s thistles.

The cabin floated into view around the bend in the river. Vera wiped sweat from her brow—the air had turned heavy and muggy—and motioned with her chin. “Let’s agree on what we need first.”

Sero nodded. “A dozen healing potions, half a dozen magica restoratives. I suppose the rest will have to wait.” He surveyed her with a canny squint. “Come to think of it, hlakhes, I’ve never seen you use a single magica draught. Surely, you can’t possibly be that frugal?”

Vera turned her attention to the cabin and approximated a shrug. “Why would I? I don’t really do magic.”

“No?” He harrumphed with barely veiled skepticism. “I never realized that ‘Bretons’ didn’t count soul work as magic. Tell me, how would you define it, then?”

Vera cocked her eyebrow. “Fishing this morning, aren’t you?”

He flashed her a lopsided grin. “Will you bite?”

“Would you like me to?” Vera asked with as much saccharine innocence she could muster.

He didn’t miss a beat. “I recommend you start with nibbles—if there are to be teeth involved.”

The rest of the way to the cabin was spent bickering over who should claim the point.

~~~

Fae’s assessment of Anise’s oddity had been an understatement. They found her by an outdoor hearth, stooped over a simmering cauldron. Pungent steam wafted into the too-still air.

The old woman straightened from her stirring and squinted at them from the shadows of her hood. Her eyes traveled from Vera to the merc, back to Vera, and then she scowled and thrust her spatula into the cauldron with a bit more enthusiasm than the task seemed to require. “First things first, weapons down, over by that chopping block, if it pleases ye.” She waved her gnarled hand at a chipped tree stump. “And don’t just stand there, come closer so I can take a look. So, which is it?”

Vera traded a glance with the Dunmer, who looked as nonplused as she felt. “Which is it…what?” she tried.

Anise adopted a teapot stance and brandished the spatula, dribbling drops of brownish sludge onto the dusty soil at her feet. “Bit late in the season for coy, aren’t you? Always the same with old Anise, two sides of the coin, flip, flip, flip, see where it lands, hmm? If you’re here to get rid of your mongrel, girl, I’ll do it, but it’ll cost you. And if it’s the other problem, then I suggest you look at the moons and do some counting before you spread ‘em, eh? Though seeing how that Dunmer trailing you is getting a bit long in the tooth, maybe the fault’s with the seed, not with the soil, hmm?”

Vera ignored Sero’s sudden, completely unconvincing coughing fit, and shook her head. “Just looking for someone to sell us some healing potions, or a few ingredients.”

The old woman’s lips pinched in irascible distaste. “Going adventurin’, are ye?” She spat into the dust. “Adventurers. Always traipsing through here on their way to Brittleshin, stomping ‘round like mammoths, clanking louder than a pile of pots after a feast day, stepping on my carrots. Healing potions I might have, but nothing else, ye hear? And it’ll cost ye, but I’d wager less than that Imperial swindler in the village would charge ye for the pleasure of gawking at his pretty sister. Not much gawking at old Anise, but best yer eyes stay starved than yer bellies, I say.” Nugget of wisdom thus delivered, the old woman released the spatula into the pot and turned towards the cabin. “Wait here, don’t go wandering ‘round. Mind Mika, she’s pollinating, and don’t go antagonizing Cort, or ye’ll be regretting it.”

The door to the cabin creaked open, then banged shut, leaving Vera and the Dunmer alone in the courtyard.

“Hags,” Sero said, in the same tone Anise had reserved for “adventurers.”

Vera scanned their surroundings, but the copse of firs stood still, only the quiet gurgle of the river and the distant, shrill trills of a pine thrush filling the silence. “Who is Cort?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.” The merc drifted towards a nearby boulder, no doubt to sit down and roll a smoke while they waited. “If I were to guess—”

He never finished. The boulder—a mossy, muted grey behemoth half-buried in the scraggly grass—trembled, stirred, chirped, and began to rise.

They scrambled backward. Vera groped for her new bow, but her hand closed on empty air. She glanced between the tree stump and the gargantuan mudcrab emerging from its torpor. It was grotesque in its enormity, and, judging by the craggy, oyster-covered carapace, absolutely ancient. Leathery eye stocks rotated asynchronously, taking their measure. It screeched—a bassy metallic sound—before pivoting to the merc. It froze for a moment, its oversized antenna swaying, tasting the air. Then it chirped again and lifted its claws. Vera stared in vague revulsion at the creature’s pale, lichen-mottled abdomen.

Fire crackled as the Dunmer gathered a flame spell.

“Wait!” Vera cried out, before he could set the oversized crustacean on fire. “If that’s Cort, then we probably shouldn’t kill it.”

“I don’t think it’s in the mood to chat, hlakhes.”

The mudcrab screeched again, stretched upward, and waved its monumental claws in odd, repetitive circles. Vera cocked her head to the side, panic giving way to incredulity, and then to an absurd sort of hilarity. “Sero, it’s not trying to attack. Though I think you might want to see if it’ll buy you a drink first.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think it’s trying to make a good impression.” She chanced a glance at the merc. “Must be your chitin armor.”

“It’s wh…” His face twisted in a mixture of disgust and alarm. “Sheogorath’s mangy beard.” He took a step backward.

An old, craggy fruit tree extended its branches along the western wall of the cabin. Vera motioned with her head. “On the count of three. One, two—”

They were half-way up the tree when she risked a look back. The crabstrosity had scuttled closer, waving its pincers energetically and belching forth a string of vexed chirps and clicks.

“I think you’ve hurt its feelings,” Vera managed, shaking with laughter and trying not to topple off her branch.

Below her, the merc snarled a “I’ll send some flowers to apologize,” and pulled his feet up, out of reach of the pincers.

The door creaked, followed by the dusty shuffle of wooden shoes. “Met Cort, have ye?”

Anise emerged into the yard, swinging a large frying pan like a mace. She strode forth, entirely undaunted by the mudcrab’s size, and brought the pan onto its carapace with a resounding clang. “Shoo, you old lech, shoo, now! No way to greet guests, is it?”

The mudcrab wheezed in protest, but, with a few more pan-shaped encouragements, slowly brought its pincers down.

“Shoo, I said!” The hag thrust the frying pan in the direction of the river.

The crustacean lumbered down the embankment, somehow managing to look both peeved and contrite. A loud splash announced its retreat into the water.

Anise squinted at the tree. “Fine ornaments you make. Climb down now, you’re scaring the bees. Got your draughts here, if you have the coin.”

~~~

“There you are!”

It wasn’t until she caught sight of Undnar’s bristling mug that Vera realized, with an odd, uncomfortable lightness in the pit of her stomach, that between setting out to procure the potions and returning to Riverwood, trading increasingly raunchy wisecracks about mudcrabs’ courting habits along the way, that her earlier bleak mood had lifted. Of course, watching Undnar’s russet shape lumber forth to intercept them at the bridge deflated the temporary bubble of levity.

Sero, who had been busy parrying her taunts with a series of unapologetically nosy provocations about Vera’s own courtship preferences—all framed as inquiries about how one might best handle amorous fauna in the future—dropped the grin and eased back into his habitual jaded mercenary persona.

If the Mad Bear had opinions about the temporary disappearance of his two underlings, he chose not to share them. Instead, he beamed in toothy enthusiasm, surveying them with an alarming twinkle in his tawny eyes. “Nothing paints one’s cheeks with a fetching rosy glow quite like a salubrious morning stroll. Isn’t that right, Snowberry?”

Vera somehow managed to contain the impulse to flip him off, despite the overwhelming temptation to see whether the rude gesture might translate.

“Are we ready to leave?” Sero drawled, tipping his head in the direction of the village. “Got everything you needed?”

Whatever lay hidden beneath the apparently innocent question, Undnar didn’t like it one little bit. His brow furrowed briefly, though he dispelled the stormy look with a good-natured guffaw. “All that is mine I carry with me, sellsword. And our return will be all the sweeter for the goodbyes we didn’t trade, for goodbyes are cheap, and oaths are costly.” He trained his attention on Vera. “Ever been to the Honningbrew Meadery, Snowberry? It’s not far, just half a day’s journey down the road.”

Vera narrowed her eyes. “Did you decide to embark on a drinking tour of Whiterun Hold?”

The Nord chortled. “Wish that I could, but duty before mead, and business before duty, as they say.” He leaned in and modulated his voice towards the conspiratorial. “I have an old acquaintance who used to frequent it, you see. Resourceful little fellow, that Arvel—one of your compatriots, sellsword, as it so happens. Met him on a Dwemer dig, oh, seven or eight years ago, but I hear he’d branched out since then.” Undnar sighed in a show of philosophical despondency. “Time, eh? No stopping it.” He stretched. “And speaking of time, no time like the present. We’re burning daylight.”

Chapter Text

They stopped at the crest of a rocky knoll. Below them, the shingled roofs of Honningbrew glowed golden in the slanted rays of the setting sun. To the northwest, the jutting fang of what Vera assumed to be Whiterun loomed grey against the orange skies, and beyond it, across the flat vastness left in the wake of some ancient glacier, a spring-green sea of rippling grasses undulated in breeze-hurried waves.

Vera shielded her eyes against the glare, her breath tight in her throat, a fizzy lightness pressing outward against her ribs in the joyous terror of an untamed horizon.

“Quite the sight, isn’t it?” Undnar turned back with a close-lipped smile, for once devoid of his usual toothy affectation. It sat on him strangely. In that moment, he was almost readable—a man, returning with pride and trepidation and just a hint of sorrow, to a place he had once called home.

Vera overrode the momentary flash of misdirected empathy and motioned with her chin. “What makes you think your contact will be in there?”

“Have you no trust in me at all, Snowberry?” Whatever wistfulness might have come over the Mad Bear was replaced by his typical leery self-satisfaction. “When have I ever led us astray?”

She bit her cheek and chose not to comment.

A few feet away, the merc was peering at the snaking thoroughfare from under his palm. “A Thalmor patrol, about a mile northeast, heading this way.”

“How many?” Undnar inquired, a peculiar sort of greed flashing beneath the affable surface.

Sero shrugged. “The usual triad.” His eyes narrowed in calculation. “They’re not escorting anyone. I recommend we proceed quickly—lest they decide to remedy this oversight.”

“Never known a Justiciar to enjoy the sweet kiss of fine Nord mead. Onward!” Undnar didn’t wait for acknowledgement.

They walked down. At the edges of the narrow path, the new spring grass was already scuffed and wilted where feet had worn a line across the knoll—a shortcut to the thoroughfare, or perhaps to the nearest bushes.

She hung back as Undnar shouldered his way into the meadery with a labored huff, pushing the intricately carved oak slab of a door inward. It creaked open on a pleasantly airy, well-lit hall, long and narrow like a train car, though nowhere nearly as picked-over. The room was well-appointed. Vera stalled at the threshold, trying to take inventory of the occupants. She felt the merc come up behind her, a similar cautious hesitation to his step, a turn of his head, left, then right, caught at the periphery of her vision.

“A tad empty,” he muttered, and Vera nodded, as much in solidarity with his tense tone as in agreement with his assessment.

The bar sported only a few patrons—a priestly type was trading comments about the weather with a military fellow of the city guard persuasion; a middle-aged couple in the far corner was busy pretending they weren’t one; and, at the opposite end of the hall, a small knot of rough-looking characters hunched over a game of cards.

The balding publican stopped wiping the counter and looked up. At the sight of Undnar, his eyes widened, then narrowed. “As I live and breathe,” he said, without a hint of surprise. “If it isn’t Undnar Silver-Tongue in the flesh. How many years has it been?” He smiled mildly, with just a hint of slyness.

The Mad Bear looked around with an approving squint. “Too many to count, but it gladdens me that Honningbrew still stands. An island of stability in the shifting currents of time, eh? And you’ve not changed a bit, Sabjorn.” His grin broadened. “Well, a bit less hair, a bit more weight around the middle, but such are the dangers of prosperity, hmm?”

Sabjorn affected affable equanimity, not particularly well. He seemed to be weighing the chances of an underhanded insult against the likelihood of genuine praise, fell somewhere in between, and motioned to the casks at his back. “What can I get you and your—“ he cast a glance at Vera and squinted at Sero, “—friends?”

“The usual for me and something milder for my associates, lest they drag their feet, beset by yet another hangover tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Teldryn?” A warning had crept into the Nord’s voice as he glanced back over his shoulder. “Maybe some nice warm milk for you and Snowberry? How does that sound?”

Sobjorn chuckled into his fist. The Dunmer’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t take the bait, only motioned in pointed indifference, tipping his head in Vera’s direction. “I’ll have whatever she’s having.”

“Mirriam tea,” Vera said quickly, before the Mad Bear could come up with another veiled provocation. “With honey, if—“

“Arvel!” Undnar bellowed joyously. Vera followed his gaze to the group of card players in the corner. One of them twitched, his shoulders bunching around his ears, and for a moment, he looked like he would bolt. She couldn’t see his face, but judging by the bluish skin color—much lighter than Sero’s, and with unlikely periwinkle undertones—the fellow was a Dunmer.

The presumed “Arvel” turned around. The shit-eating grin on his gaunt features did very little to convey general trustworthiness, but at the sight of the Mad Bear, his expression morphed to genuine surprise, and then to unlikely joy. “Why, there’s a man I’m glad to see!”

They drifted towards the knot of card players. Pleasantries about elapsed time were traded, chairs scraped against the stone floor as the others made room, and Sabjorn magnanimously brought an extra table to accommodate the expanding group.

Vera took the opportunity to examine Arvel’s companions. The one seated closest to her seemed like the scholarly type—a reedy, slightly malnourished Breton, soft around the edges, with the telltale bulge of a writer’s callus on his middle finger. He squinted nearsightedly, pushed his bangs out of his face, failed to greet Sero—though he did acknowledge his existence with a brief glance, which was more than Vera got— and mumbled some indistinct noises in Undnar’s general direction before returning to his ale.

Next to the Breton, two Nords, a man and a woman, looked to be siblings—equally broad, equally blond, pale, freckled, and wearing matching scowls.

The last member of the group—and, Vera guessed, the de-facto leader—was an Imperial woman with a dazzlingly white, languid smile and liquid grey eyes that never stopped moving. Striking, Vera thought, and perfectly comfortable with it.

“Arvel, won’t you introduce us to your friends?” The woman’s voice matched her physique—throaty, low, with an accent that smudged the hard consonants.

Arvel fumbled through the introductions, and Undnar took over, cranking up the toothy charm. The Imperial went by Leora. The Breton mumbled “Jerome” and didn’t offer a last name. The two Nords introduced themselves as Helger and Hurdig, and Vera instantly forgot which was which. She leaned back in her chair, inserting the requisite monosyllabic contribution whenever it was needed—which wasn’t often. She focused on sipping the tea Sabjorn had brought, and watched. A few times she caught Sero’s eyes on her from across the table, where he was wedged between one of the Nord siblings and the Imperial, who cast him an occasional frankly evaluative look.

She’d never seen a live peacock, though they had figured prominently in some of Martha’s more archaic tales—some obvious analogical hinge for a specific type of human behavior. If the metaphor was lost on her and Dima, the other three got it, trading the quiet communal laughter of shared cultural baggage. She didn’t know whether Dima had felt the sting of it, or the acute sense of loneliness it came with. Said, of course, had recognized it immediately, even if he didn’t say anything about it. Said, who never patronized, but couldn’t help trying to fix things—until he didn’t, because there was nothing left to fix. There had been an entire week when he and Jules had gone on an absurd scavenger hunt to find an illustration. Against all odds, they came back victorious—behold, the peacock—a water-warped print ripped from an old wall calendar. Other birds too. Vera had kept the peacock, with all its shimmering blues and greens and violets like something from a fairytale, tacking the damned thing to a new wall whenever they were forced to relocate. She wasn’t sure what it had stood for, exactly. And now she felt a small, private smile tugging at her lips, and no one but her ghosts to share it with.

Undnar was peacocking.

He bought drinks, cracked jokes, and distributed twinkling winks indiscriminately. Arvel, for his part, relaxed in mead-fueled increments, dropping some of his earlier shiftiness while the Mad Bear reminisced about their former exploits. They’d met on a dig, Vera learned, picking their way as laborers for hire through some Nordic ruin up north, until they found out their patron was a necromancer. They’d quit right there without waiting to get paid. Arvel pounded his fist on the table, punctuating this past decision with a resolute “filthy bastards, the lot.” Undnar grinned and nodded.

Vera filed it away for future use: minimally, the Mad Bear’s wealth and social status were relatively recent.

She couldn’t quite tell whether the group was rogue archaeologists or outright looters, but in the end, it boiled down to the same thing, because when Undnar finally broached the subject, several tankards of mead into it, the conviviality of whatever lifestyle they had shared was trumping all other differences. He had all of them in his pocket by then—all, except the Imperial.

“So.” The Mad Bear leaned back and belched. “How’s Bleak Falls Barrow treating you?”

Arvel twitched. The Breton scholar next to Vera broke into sudden cackles; then, under the glare of his friends, he returned to slurping his mead. The two Nords glowered.

The Imperial ring leader huffed irritably. “What makes you think we’re here for Bleak Falls?”

Undnar performed toothy goodwill, and Vera tensed. Somehow, in the months of their misalliance, she’d learned to read him. If she’d had any money to bet, she would have put it all on the “bear gearing up to fish for salmon” portion of Undnar’s repertoire.

He didn’t disappoint. “Intrepid adventurers like you,” he drawled, “should be writing your names across the walls of Labyrinthium and etching your legacy into the halls of history. But here you sit,” he leaned in, “playing Hangman’s Noose with nary a septim between you, waiting for the Divines to rescue you from your idleness.” He turned to Leora. “You’re certainly a feast for the eyes, lass, and I can see you’re competent. But you’re far from home, and Nordic barrows aren’t your run of the mill Ayleid ruins.”

The Imperial ringleader scowled. “Let’s get one thing straight, Nord. I don’t give a shite-smeared scamp’s arse whether you and Arvel are friends. You’ve an interest in the barrow? Then get in line. We were here first.”

Undnar leered right back. “Got yourself a digging permit, then?”

The Imperial narrowed her eyes.

“Didn’t think so.” He knocked back the rest of his fifth tankard of mead without any discernible effects on his sobriety. “Let me paint the picture for you, then, and you’ll no doubt offer the necessary corrections, hmm? Now, this all starts up over there in Dragonsreach,” he gestured to the door, “where the Jarl of Whiterun keeps his pet wizard. And that wizard, in addition to being as inept as he is insufferable, is sitting on the excavation rights to all the local landmarks as far as the eye can see, and as far as a bandit with a bounty on his head can run—which isn’t that far, by and large, but I’d wager far enough to include Bleak Falls. How am I doing?” When Leora failed to offer any amendments, Undnar lumbered on. “Now, getting Faerengar to part with an excavation permit is as likely as talking a Vigilant of Stendarr into a game of naked leapfrog with a roomful of draemora. Attractive young woman that you are, I assume you gave it your best, and…” he tutted sympathetically, “no permit?”

The Imperial made a face. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. Does the wizard like beards?”

Undnar grinned. “I’ll make sure to ask him if I see him. In the meantime—and follow along, now—intrepid adventurers that you are,” he shot Arvel a meaningful glance, “a simple lack of permit shouldn’t have stopped you. Sure, it might create some complications should the fine folk of Riverwood report any, shall we say, extraneous activities. But if I were a betting man—and I’m not—I’d be wagering that there’s another wrinkle.”

The two Nord siblings exchanged a look. Next to Vera, the Breton cackled again—an unpleasant, breathless sound. The Imperial crossed her arms over her chest, leaned back in her chair, and propped her foot against the edge of the table. “You’re a wordy sort, aren’t you?”

Undnar rested his chin on his knuckles and beamed affably. “Stuck,” he said. “You’ve made it in, but then you got yourself stuck. Isn’t that right? Sure, you can run around, chasing draugar and rifling through whatever isn’t too foul to pocket, but if you want the real thing, lass, you need a key.”

Leora’s affect changed in the blink of an eye. Gone was the bristling derisiveness. She leaned in, showing off a whole lot more cleavage than Vera thought was practical, as far as leather armor went, and arranged her features into an approximation of fascinated cluelessness. “A key?”

Undnar ignored the bait entirely. Instead, he belched and beamed his chipped, cheery smile. “Save it for the Jarl, lass.”

The Imperial shrugged, discarding the flirtatious veneer like an old snake skin. “You have it, then?”

It was logistics from there. Undnar never said it outright, and the crew of rogue diggers swallowed the Mad Bear’s careful hedging without batting an eye—whether because they didn’t have the context of Riverwood’s minute melodrama, or because they simply didn’t care, Vera couldn’t tell.

Lovinar had mentioned once that some of the Nordic tombs had an internal vault, activated by an artifact shaped like a “talon.” He’d huffed in distracted irritation when she had used the wrong term, calling it a “claw,” but he never explained why the difference mattered—there were deathbells to decoct, and nirnroot to clean, and rabbit stew to simmer.

Undnar didn’t insist on proper usage.

One thing, at least, became abundantly clear: Camilla had pulled the strings, and now Undnar was pretending to twitch to their choreography. It wouldn’t even be burglary, really—not when the shop owner’s sister arranged entry. Oh, the Imperial merchant might make a fuss, so best be discreet, but the job stepped on no one’s toes—the Thieves Guild would certainly not consider it skimming off their profit margins, and as far as guards went, there was always the time-honored practice of greasing the right palms.

Vera stared into her cup of honeyed tea, not tasting a thing. She thought of Faendal’s carefully constructed cabin, of its sparse, meticulous solidity. She thought of clean, warm pelts and butter-sweetened porridge—a wealth of small necessities to weather future winters. She thought of the potatoes’ sturdy stalks, fresh and green and oddly defiant in the small patch of rocky dirt, and a man who would plant them against the tenets of his culture just so that someone would share his meals. And on the other side of the metaphorical scales, a brother who used both claw and sister as adornments for his shop. Should the claw be stolen—and the resulting wealth split three ways—Camilla would still have more than whatever Riverwood could ever offer her, more than the bride price she wouldn’t see a coin of, more than the cautious calculations of one suitor, and the careless conviviality of the other. And somewhere at the fork in that murky road was Undnar and his “contacts.”

In the end, Vera couldn’t blame her.

It didn’t take them long to agree on a deal, in no small part because the Mad Bear was adamant about only wanting a single thing from the locked-up section of the barrow: some old relic no one had any use for, he’d said. After that, Leora thawed, Arvel’s eyes acquired a manic glint, and the rest of the digging crew settled into trading off-color jokes and tall tales about the different excavations they’d been on. Even the strange Breton loosened up, though he was well on his way to pissing in corners as far as drunkenness went. Eventually, he turned to Vera with an unpleasant leer of the “you’ll do” variety and asked something about mushrooms.

On the other side of the table, Sero tensed up and went stone-faced. Vera glanced at Loera and noticed the way she was leaning into the Dunmer. She reached down, pretending to adjust her boot straps. Sure enough, the Imperial had put her hand on the merc’s thigh and Vera tried to squash the sudden jolt of anger in the pit of her stomach with absolutely zero success.

It went on for the better part of the night, but eventually, the Mad Nord stood up and yawned demonstratively. Vera fielded one last bit of fungal commentary from the Breton—they’d gotten to the part where mushrooms were the external genitalia of the miscella. She blocked out the rest and looked across the table, only to catch Leora whispering something into the merc’s ear. She caught Sero’s lopsided smirk—strangely abstract, and aimed at no one in particular. She averted her gaze, not wanting to witness the outcome.

How about it, kiddo?

It seemed to come from her empty cup of tea. She shuddered with the heartbreaking familiarity of him, the profound reassurance of his mundaneness, the kind of voice that fills the silence when your shell is at its softest. As far as ghosts went, Jules was by far her rarest, guiltiest specter.

One more cup of coffee for the road?

It had always been Jules. The one to cement the decision to leave, always with a hum of some song she’d never heard, a smile traded with Said or Martha in the wake of the melody.

She came back to herself as Undnar was gesturing his goodbyes with an agreement to conduct all necessary business the following night.

Vera didn’t look back as she made her way towards the door.

The night was crisp and bright. Above, in the velvet skies, Masser and Secunda stared at each other across the heavens. She stalled, watching the two moons, silver and rust.

“Well, Snowberry.” The door banged shut with a definitive thud. “Looks like it’s just you and me left standing. Best we find a soft bed to rest our weary heads, hmm?”

She turned on her heel, another hot flash of anger slowly settling into cold calculus. She cycled through possible retorts and settled on “Why?”

Undnar’s eyebrows shot up, an utterly disingenuous expression of befuddled surprise—she could practically taste his smirk, beard or no beard. “Why what, lass?”

She took a breath and jerked her head towards the tavern. “You’re using Sero to sweeten the deal, aren’t you?” She took another breath. “That’s a shit thing to do, Undnar.”

The Mad Bear shifted, but his face pooled with shadows, his expression obscured. “Ah, Snowberry, I think you mistake me. But who could blame you,” he added, unctuously solicitous now, and Vera found her fingers itching for the smooth solidity of her bow. “Just because you’ve taken a shine to the sellsword doesn’t mean he isn’t free to do what he pleases, with whomever it pleases him with, eh?”

“Is he?” She filled her lungs and exhaled slowly, tasting the sweetness of spring on the exhale. “Free, that is.”

The Nord didn’t answer for a long time. She could feel his gaze on her, a slow, deliberate evaluation, entirely devoid of anything friendly, or warm, or even carnal, and, in fact, anything relatable—nothing but the aloof precision of slow dissection. “Maybe not. But that’s not my story to tell.” He said nothing besides.

Vera clenched her teeth and waited him out.

At length, Undnar huffed a chuckle. “Go fetch him, if you must.”

Chapter Text

Returning to the meadery felt like the social equivalent of pulling on week-old socks—no way to do it gracefully, or without jaw-clenching revulsion—but Vera hustled herself through the door, cycling through the possible scenarios of how one might navigate the unpleasant social mess they’d left behind. She could see no easy way to extricate the Dunmer from his predicament while minimizing the resulting humiliation—either hers, or his, depending on how the chips fell. She’d shelved her earlier anger well enough. Neither she nor Dima had ever bothered with jealousy, and the armature of the sentiment, if that was indeed what had caused her initial flare-up of wrath, felt alien and unwieldy: they’d both had taken other lovers, before and during, sometimes together, and sometimes separately. She hadn’t questioned it: there had never been any doubt in her mind that Dima was simply “her people,” not qualitatively different from Martha or Said or Jules. They were each other’s, all five of them, in the same way that the marshy green of her eyes was “hers,” or Martha’s bad left hip was Martha’s, or Dima’s smooth baritone was all his.

And if it had been any of them, she wouldn’t have had to strategize—a casual “ready to go?” would have sufficed, and no matter the answer, and no matter the outcome, the result would have been the same, in the end. Others had existed to them as satellites, as passing ships, as occasional fellow travelers, but the constellation of their quintet had been axiomatic and utterly self-sufficient in its enclosure.

In the end, she settled for the only thing she knew, ignoring the complicated knot of resentment in the pit of her stomach at the sight of the Imperial practically draped over the merc. She marched over, not bothering to acknowledge the curious glances. “Ready to go, partner?”

Leora cocked a sardonic eyebrow at her. “Aw, is he yours? Mind if I borrow him for a bit?”

Sero caught her gaze and held it. Vera noted that his hands had remained locked around his mug of tea, but for all his casually nihilistic slouch, the knuckles of his interlaced fingers seemed pale.

She sidestepped the bait, lifted a shoulder in a carefully calculated shrug, and stifled a yawn, a performance quickly turned genuine. “You’ll have to take that up with the boss, sweets. I just do what I’m told.”

The Imperial’s eyes narrowed. “Well, aren’t you the obedient little pup. You know, sometimes it pays to strike out on your own.” The “witness me” was left hanging.

Vera shrugged again. “You can tell that to Undnar when he’s holding the door to the tomb open for you.” She turned to the merc. “Come on, Sero, you know he’ll take it out on my hide if he’s made to wait too long.” She aimed her tone at the fatigued side of anger rather than entreaty, hoping the misdirection would hold, and, more importantly, hoping the Dunmer would have the wits and the will to play along.

To his credit, he did, even though his brow furrowed before he inclined his head with a dry “only because it’s you, partner.” He maneuvered the Imperial off him with a perfunctory “apologies” and stood up, before heading to the door.

Vera followed, not looking back.

Outside, there was no trace of Undnar. Sero didn’t seem all that surprised.

She saw no point in bringing up what had transpired in the meadery unless the merc decided to pick at it first. Instead, she cast her eyes about the nearby hills, searching for the glow of a campfire—not that the Mad Nord had ever lifted so much as a finger to make one, at least not during the times they had traveled together.

Nothing.

“No point in looking for a campsite, right?” she asked, trusting the Dunmer to know his employer’s habits well enough to map a probable course of action.

He chuckled and titled his head in the direction of the jutting silhouette of Whiterun, spectral in the moonlight, like the monstrous carcass of some long-abandoned downtown district. “Not if our patron can help it. He’ll find us when he needs us. In the meantime, I suggest we proceed towards the city.”

“Might be safer out here,” Vera said cautiously. Her urban experiences had little to recommend them, in this world or any other, and the ominous contours of Whiterun’s fortifications didn’t inspire much optimism.

“Perhaps.” Sero gave a short sigh. He seemed to hesitate before adding, “I doubt the next few days will be…restful, hlakhes.”

Vera bit her tongue, nodded in acquiescence, and set out towards the road. Think before you open your yap next time, you dumbass. In her bid to offer the merc—and herself—a safe exit and plausible deniability of the face-saving variety, she’d only been thinking one step ahead, and thus the problem was averted, but nowhere near solved. And now, if the Imperial ringleader decided to renew her advances the next time they all met, all she had to do was ask Undnar for a thumbs-up—and who was to say the russet bastard wouldn’t just grin and nod and roll out the carpet? Not even out of targeted malice, necessarily, but just because he could.

They walked side by side, only the footfall of their boots on the worn cobblestones to break the silence. They passed several well-tended, prosperous looking farmsteads. Large vegetable plots furrowed with neat rows of potatoes and cabbages gave way to sprawling fields of oats and rye, each demarcated by low stone walls.

Sero hummed tunelessly under his breath. Vera tried to parse the melody, but it eluded recognition.

“Ever been to Whiterun before?” she finally asked, once the silence between them had grown too loud.

The merc nodded once. “Briefly, and only to the lower districts. Not much of a city, from what I saw of it.” His lazy drawl lacked its usual caustic bite—more nostalgia for some other place he’d left behind than derision for the one he had stepped into. “And yourself?”

For all its apparent innocence—just holding up his end of the conversation, nothing more—his question felt carefully freighted.

Vera shrugged. “First time.” And then she added, a bit too quickly, “Undnar is from these parts, isn’t he? Does he own property in the city?”

Sero cast her an amused glance. “Among other places. And yes, I expect that’s where we’d find him.” He paused before adding, “were we to go looking, that is.”

Vera didn’t bother hiding her snort. “How about we don’t, and say we did? Think we can pool resources for a local inn?”

His teeth glinted in the moonlight, though his chuckle remained soundless. “Always happy to share, hlakhes.”

Vera narrowed her eyes, smothering the pang of irate embarrassment at the not particularly subtle provocation woven between his words. Fucker. She tried a few retorts for size, but the blasted merc had maneuvered her into what was effectively a rhetorical corner, knowingly or not. There was no clever way out of this one, not without it catalyzing into an admission of some kind or, worse, into staking out a claim. Either that, she thought with sudden, inarticulable horror, or she’d catastrophically miscalculated from the start, misreading him entirely. And now the rails had been laid and there was no deviating from the predetermined trajectory.

One more cup of coffee for the road, kiddo? Jules’ voice, crisp and clear, shaped the answer to her aimless fretting with a placid implacability that slowly resolved into the foregone conclusion of a hazy but discernible horizon.

Sero stopped suddenly and turned to face her. “All right, partner.” His hand shot out to capture her elbow before the momentum could carry her forward. “Out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“Out,” he said, “with whatever you’ve been stewing over, ever since we left that miserable excuse for a tavern.” He let go, took a few steps backward, eased his pack off his shoulders and leaned against the low farm wall at his back, clearly intent on staying planted there for as long as the conversation required it. “And while we’re on the subject—” he rummaged around for his smoking mixture, “—care to tell me why you came back for me?”

It was the strange thing about last straws. Like that game you played as a kid, stacking twigs and pebbles and old plastic caps and whatever other junk you could dig up, taking turns and talking shit at each other until the whole edifice collapsed to the groaning merriment of everyone involved. There’d been a moral to it, subtle and slow to sprout, one she’d only understood decades later. Two morals, in fact. First, that the last straw was always collective, its effect a matter of distributed accumulation. And second, whatever it was you’d managed to build, most of the time it was one hell of a mess anyway.

She shouldered off her pack and set it down next to his, mostly to buy herself time. Her breath crowded in her throat. She rolled the answer around in her mind, arranging it until the words were ordered, perfectly coherent, and poignantly lucid. And then, when it came down to it, it all imploded, and what came out was a clipped, exhausted, and irritable: “Because you’re in the seat next to me, you ass!”

His eyebrow quirked in question.

Shit. So much for thinking before opening her yap. She forged on, trying to redirect his attention from the accidental slip-up. “And because I assumed that you didn’t want to be there in the first place.” She stalled. “Was I wrong?”

He didn’t answer, and Vera tried to squash the hollow roil of panic. How far off had she been, exactly? That she had somehow missed the target was becoming abundantly clear, but how far back did the error go, and how catastrophically had she strayed off course?

“Anything else?” he asked.

Vera stilled. At worst, he would laugh in her face—gently, if she was lucky, not striking to hurt—before knocking down her absurd stack of assumption and theories and the jumble of feelings that she’d allowed to propagate unattended, like weeds. And then he’d bury the lot of it, as surely as she’d buried those who had shared her road. Call it compost, hope something grows from it come spring, and be done with it.

Fuck it. At this point, why gamble small? “Yes, in fact. There is.” She drew an unsteady breath. “How much free will do you actually have, Teldryn?”

He looked up sharply. In the light of his unfinished flame spell, his eyes gleamed lava-red—mineral and alien and magnetic.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected. A quizzical frown, maybe, or a sharp smirk and a reminder of their score — keep fishing, outlander. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been this. His hand shot out and he yanked her closer—she squeaked in surprise—before he shoved her against the wall, hard. He moved exactly as he did in battle, a fluid, ruthless blur. Then, the scrape of his stubble against her chin as his mouth found hers, no hidden question tucked into the kiss this time around, nothing but lips and teeth and tongue and the taste of him, like smoky whiskey. He cupped her ass, helping himself to a rather generous squeeze before hoisting her up. She wrapped her legs around him for stability, fought the temptation to nip at his lower lip to egg him on, and promptly lost. He groaned and ground against her with an unhurried roll of his hips, excruciatingly deliberate, the pressure of him just right before he lifted her a little higher, incidentally freeing up his hands. He jerked the hem of her tunic out of its cinch, and his fingers snaked up and under, the rough graze of calloused fingerpads over her ribs sending anticipatory shivers across her skin.

He’d forgone the helmet and the gauntlets, but the rest was encased in that damnable armor. Vera growled in frustration when her own venturing hands discovered that chitin had absolutely no give. The merc seemed to have come to the same realization because she felt the low purr of his chuckle against her palms where they rested against his throat, and from there, he shamelessly exploited his advantage.

“Unless you brought a shucker, Sero-“ There was no finishing the sentence, not with his thumb pressing into her mouth. And with his teeth nibbling at the shell of her ear and his free hand palming her breast, there was no finishing the thought, either.

She felt vaguely vindicated when he found her chest wrappings equally unyielding, his frustrated “ever practical” tinged with laughter and lust in equal measure, but he located the knot that secured the band quickly and, somehow, managed to loosen it one-handed— enough for his purposes, in any case.

“Next time…” Vera tried, but he trailed kisses along her jaw, his teeth settling over the pulse point, not painful but sharp, and, oh tongue, she arched her back, “just for once…” cool air on her skin, and fuck, his breath came hot and hitched and ragged, “… less public?”

The realization of what he was doing—or rather, why he was doing it—arrived late and hovered like an uninvited guest, only as relevant as she was willing to make it. The instant his fingers traced the scars on her back—and never mind his thumb drawing teasing circles around her nipple—she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what he was up to. Still, she let him, arching into his touch and allowing herself to savor it, subterfuge or not, just for a little while longer. It’d come crashing down in due course, no point in ushering in the inevitable.

He didn’t seem to want to rush it either. Time slowed. She mapped his predilections, the lazy licks and the urgent, needy nips, the quiet not-quite-moans when they discovered hidden resonances within the self-imposed parameters of what they allowed themselves. She found the spot, just above the jut of his clavicle, where a light press of her thumb, followed by the slow swipe of her tongue made him jerk forward and suck in a ragged breath. She gave up, in exchange, the whole-body shudder and the strangled little whimper that came with him carefully tracing the outside curve of her breast, a silent secret by which she had categorized her past lovers. She could feel his smile against the crook of her neck, his interrogative “hmm?” as he sought to confirm the effect. He didn’t stop at that particular landmark—a pinch, light at first, then firm, then, suddenly, he dipped her backward, into precarious disequilibrium atop the wall, only his hand splayed against her back and her legs locked around him keeping her from plummeting. A lurch of vertigo thrummed in time with the sweet ache at her core, and she gasped at the stark heat of his mouth on skin bared to the cold night air. Surely, that whine wasn’t hers. His name caught in her throat, until it was all she could find syllables for.

“That’s…” she squirmed and shivered as he trailed slow kisses across her breasts, “one way- oh fuck, Tel-“ and down her stomach, “…to-…damn it,” the pants would go next, she supposed ”… notansweraquestion.”

He looked up from his trajectory. “What do you think I’ve been doing, hlakhes?” he inquired, just a tinge of frustration to his words.

“Misdirecting. You’re still in full armor—doubt that’s comfortable, by the way—and we’re not exactly hidden…” she managed, trying to blink the haze out of her eyes, only now noticing that he had taken a knee. “Bluffing?”

He pushed her legs apart. “Any other guesses?”

“You’re…playing...chicken...”

“Playing what, now?” he purred. His fingers went to the lacing of her trousers. “Any other theories?”

She wouldn’t be able to do much to extract him from the armor—she was at a significant disadvantage in that regard, and he’d not been shy about making use of that—but she hadn’t forgotten his raspy “ask me” in Riverwood, and now, she wondered what would happen if she obliged his request. Not right here, but there was a copse of trees at the edge of her vision, deep shadows pooled between the trunks, where they wouldn’t be seen, no one to hear them but nocturnal birds.

The vast scatter of stars, the smell of young spring grass, the cold jagged rocks under her ass all slammed back into awareness at once. “Oh. You bastard,” Vera breathed, shuddering at the feeling of the merc’s lips grazing her hip bone. “I thought you said you didn’t gamble!”

He looked up to meet her gaze.

“You’re playing it all in, and waiting for me to ask you.” Her voice hitched, so she forged on quickly. “And if I did, as per our agreement, I’d be losing all my points. Wanna tell me what would have happened to you if that Imperial didn’t let go, hmm? Could you have left the tavern of your own volition? Did Undnar order you to stay?”

When he said nothing still, the rest of her words tumbled out, tripping over each other. “Fine. Let’s say I asked you to fuck me right now. Could you, in fact, say no?” Vera glared preemptively, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. “And don’t give me that smarmy smirk, you know exactly what I’m asking.”

Instead of answering, he got to his feet, slowly. He braced himself on the wall, his hands bracketing her hips, the sudden absence of his touch like a hollow ache. “Sod the damned game to Oblivion.” He didn’t bother smoothing the roughness out of his voice, leaving the underlying emotions bared, like a seashell worn down to its nacre. “Had whatever Daedric bastard that brought you here done so five years earlier, hlakhes…”

She felt her face go numb.

His palms came up to cup her face. “For you? I wouldn’t. If that matters.”

Chapter Text

“Namira’s putrid—” the merc spat with impressed dismay at the same time as Vera grumbled “balls,” and the innkeeper pressed her lips into a thin line before glaring at them in miffed condemnation. Vera hadn’t expected the room at the inn to come for free, but the price the strawberry-haired, broad-shouldered, amply endowed Nord publican quoted at them would’ve made even Undnar wince and clutch his purse.

“It’s the Companions’ Annual Archery Festival, outsiders. We’re full-up, so unless you have the coin for the merchant suite, there’s not much I can do for you. Save your haggling for Belethor.” She sniffed and gave Sero a narrow-eyed look. “Try the Drunken Huntsman. Elrindir usually finds a spot or two on the floor for your types.”

Vera had a pretty good idea what “types” the Nord had meant, judging by the phonetics of the tavern owner’s name, and she wondered briefly why the Dunmer had passed the Huntsman with little more than a side glance and a quickened step on their way through town. She bumped Sero’s arm with her shoulder, shook her head, and motioned to the door. Next to her at the bar, a scraggly old man in a dirty black robe fiddled with a worn amulet of indiscernible symbolic significance and sighed something about “past, present, and future” in a tone of cosmic despondency.

By the time they’d made it to Whiterun and past the city gates, where the guards had hassled them until Undnar’s name came up (they rolled out the welcome carpet after that, no further questions asked), Vera was dragging her feet, flattened by the cumulative exhaustion of travel and emotional turmoil. The merc wasn’t fairing much better. He moved with the grim, single-minded focus of someone running on fumes in a bid to reach safe harbor.

It didn’t help that whenever their eyes met now, they would snag, and then they’d get themselves well and truly stuck, barely able to look away. His pupils would widen; the memory of his hands and mouth on her would surge forth; her breath would hitch and her stomach plummet in the vertigo of abrupt acceleration; he’d wet his lips, a response made incrementally worse by the fact that he didn’t seem cognizant of it; and the lizard brain would unfurl, triumphant, like some unpleasant dinosaur waking from its presumed extinction and roaring a vindicated “I told you so.” Her residual, poorly targeted rancor at his obdurate stubbornness, and, by extension, at having dragged an admission out of him with the verbal equivalent of rusty pliers had no sobering effect whatsoever—if anything, it added oil to the fire. Perhaps the absence of affordable rooms was fate’s idea of dispensing small mercies: if they were sharing the floor with a group of other social undesirables, she could get a break from trying to talk herself out of asking him for a repeat of Riverwood to “take the edge off.”

They found themselves outside of the Bannered Mare. Uphill, the outline of a building that looked suspiciously like a capsized boat was backlit with torchlight and the glow of what Vera guessed were a couple of celebratory bonfires. Drunken jeers and the clanging of metal on wood drifted on the night breeze.

“I’m guessing the other tavern will be packed to the gills too, if the city’s festivaling.”

The merc managed a chuckle, seemed to consider something, hesitated for a moment or two, and then offered, with new caution beneath the lazy drawl: “Best take up as little room as we can, then.”

He tipped his head in her direction, but made no move to claim a point.

It mended something in her she didn’t know had frayed, and Vera narrowed her eyes, gave him a slow and very deliberate onceover—it did the lizard brain no favors, but she sidestepped its lurching—and shrugged philosophically. “In that case, seeing how we Bretons are itty bitty, I think it’s logical that I should be on top.”

In the dull torch light, his return chortle was raspy and a little wicked, and utterly disarming for the flash of surprise at its edges. “Any way you’d like it,” he purred.

Don’t go digging the ditch deeper, you idiot. “I’ll write you a list, if you want.” It was out before she could rein it in.

The merc swallowed and looked away abruptly. He started fussing with rolling a smoke, doing a rather piss-poor job of it. “Always glad to help...” he trailed after a pause, almost too quiet to hear, “... cross things out.” He sealed the rollie with a flick of his tongue.

Vera tore her eyes from his lips. It took her a second, then a few very long ones, during which she managed to convince her body not to move. “Roll me one, will you?”

Undnar’s smoking mixture was unpleasant, but it had the merit of offering a distraction.

The unfinished conversation from earlier hovered in the air between them, but by tacit agreement, they didn’t drag the rest of it into the light. As they retraced their steps, the echoes of the Dunmer’s desperately sardonic “if I am to damn myself yet again—” he had let slip during their nearly botched heist at the Temple of Dibella clattering around in her mind, Vera almost blurted out “which Daedric bastard was it for you?” She held back, even though she found herself suddenly eager not only for his hands on her skin, but also for his eyes on her scars, a new, horrible little suspicion worming itself through her like some parasitic larva, to the memory of Bothela’s backroom and the sound of her spilled confessions. It was too large, its contours too impossible, and the question left unasked caught on the back of her tongue and stuck in her throat.

In the end, she was the one to reintroduce the points, and they resettled into the habit of it, arguing over whether an opening quip should be counted in the first place. By the time they reached the entrance to the Drunken Huntsman, they had agreed on a 2-2.

Sero stalled at the threshold, casting a quick glance over his shoulder before a frown furrowed his brow. “Looks like Undnar hasn’t returned yet.”

Vera followed his gaze to a small, well-built house to the left of the smithy. It explained the mystery of the merc’s earlier dismissal of the Huntsman in favor of the Bannered Mare, at least—Undnar’s residence was right across the street. The door was adorned with a large padlock, and the windows stood dark and curtainless, no plume of smoke rising above the chimney. An overgrown garden tucked against the left side of the building spilled an impressive wealth of pungent deathbell blooms over a crooked, weather-beaten fence.

“Think he backtracked to Riverwood?”

Sero shook his head. “Went to see the Jarl’s wizard, if I were to guess.”

Vera nodded. Just like Undnar to march to the Jarl’s Keep first thing regardless of the hour, spin some questionable yarn, and avail himself of dubious paperwork he could then weaponize at his leisure. “Let’s hope the wizard likes bushy bastards.”

Sero chuckled darkly. “If the beard won’t charm him out of a digging permit, I’d wager gold might.”

~~~

As expected, the Huntsman was packed. An assortment of travelers of various stripes, a group of grizzled-looking soldiers of no discernible insignia, a gaggle of spotty-skinned youths yammering excitedly by the hearth and comparing bows, and a couple of what Vera guessed were regulars quietly drinking in corners occupied the large common room. A wiry Bosmer with flaming red hair—presumably Elrindir himself—looked up from his pour, met Sero with an expression of vague recognition, cast an incurious glance at Vera, and returned to his task with a “welcome to the Drunken Huntsman, travelers.”

As the merc looked around the tavern, his attention caught on a figure seated in the corner. Vera craned her neck for a better look.

A Dunmer woman in road-beaten dark leathers that screamed “blade for hire” was nursing her drink at a table tucked into a small alcove. She sat in the center of a circle of conspicuously empty space about the same radius as the length of the swords crossed over her back. She inclined her head at the sight of the merc, cocking a smile that was equal parts pleased surprise and disapproving skepticism.

Vera chanced a quick look at Sero to gauge his expression and decided, based on evidence thus gathered, that the woman was likely more friend than foe. Her shoulders relaxed.

The unfamiliar elf beckoned them with a jerk of her chin.

“Teldryn Sero. Of all people. It’s been a while,” she said in a throaty alto before extending her arm for a handshake. “I’ve heard Silver-Tongue is back in town, but I wasn’t expecting to see you, too. There are more contracts out there than one Nord fetcher.”

“He pays well,” Sero threw offhandedly, and pulled up an extra chair from a nearby table, angling it such that it offered a vantage point from which one could watch the tavern. He plopped it in front of Vera and met her eyes with a brief, lopsided smirk. “After you, partner.”

Vera calculated the distribution of social forces and, instead of sitting down, extended her hand towards the Dunmer mercenary with a quick “Vera Morin.”

“Jenassa,” the woman said, and clasped her forearm in a steely greeting. Her eyes narrowed, darted to the merc, then returned to Vera with a brief flicker of flinty disapproval. “What’s this new mess, Sero? She doesn’t look like one of your Nord’s typical camp-warmers. Besides, I don’t recall you playing wet nurse before.”

Sero looked like he was about to interject, but Vera decided that she’d had quite enough embarrassment for one night. “If by camp-warmer, you mean someone who bothers with maintaining a campfire for the lazy Nord bastard, I suppose I’m that, all right.” She hesitated briefly before turning to Sero. “I’ll go get food and drinks, and see about a place to sleep. Split it down the middle?” Before he could respond one way or another, she turned back to Jenassa. “Get you anything?”

As Sero fished around for his coin purse with an amused “always happy to help, serjo,” Janessa guffawed, her gaunt face crinkling with wry amusement. “Well, aren’t you two just sweet. Ale will do me fine. But ask that damned Bosmer for the reserve, not his watered-down festival piss.”

The half hour they spent in Janessa’s company was surprisingly pleasant, sharing drinks and simple bread and cheese before exhaustion claimed them. Vera watched, with a strange, pained tightness in the pit of her stomach, as Sero fielded his colleague’s questions, always careful not to let anything of his peculiar circumstances spill beyond the edges of the pecuniary-minded sell-sword persona he inhabited. Still, she found herself slowly won over by the other mercenary’s trenchant, no-nonsense humor, her calculated jadedness, and her bristly protectiveness. Her apparent dislike of Undnar didn’t hurt, either.

~~~

The back of the tavern had been converted to a makeshift sleeping area, bedrolls crammed tightly together with little space or privacy, but plenty of warmth, and the built-in security of another body at your back, sharing the same circumstances. Vera managed to snag a spot against the wall. Sero settled beside her, but once the group of young archers chose to retire, they got jostled closer, and from there, standing on ceremony seemed not only impractical, but logistically impossible.

We fit too well, she thought, groggy and already half-adrift as the merc’s arm looped around her middle and pulled her in. She snorted irritably in solidarity with his muted “damn it” when the discomfort of their insufficient proximity made maintaining the position untenable. He seemed as bleary with exhaustion as she was, but his forearm had brushed against the underside of her breasts, and it was all she could do to stop herself from reaching back and stroking him where he had hardened against the curve of her ass. He flipped to his back with a chortled, slightly breathless “fuck,” then thought better of it. They settled for something half-way, his forehead pressed against hers, their fingers twined between them.

“How do you do it, Tel?” she asked quietly, her gaze fixed on the lush, coal-black lashes shielding his eyes. She smothered the sudden urge to smooth the jagged line of his eyebrow with her thumb, trying to find the right words to complete her question, but her mind drew a useles blank, and all she managed was a hollow “five fucking years of it.”

His eyes drifted open and fixed on hers. He chuckled at the back of his throat, his hand coming up to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

“One day at a time, hlakhes.”

Eventually, the rhythm of his breath slowly deepening lulled her to sleep.

~~~

They woke early to the excited chatter of the archery contestants, who were up with the birds and ricocheting off the walls in jittery anticipation. Vera was jerked awake by a particularly loud “who are you calling ‘milkdrinker’?! Come and repeat that to my face!”

The tavern was in full swing, though the narrow windows stood dark, the mica glass throwing nothing back but warped firelight. They weren’t the last ones to stir, but the main room was already abuzz. It was a miscellaneous assortment: mostly Nords, a couple of Bretons, a small knot of Bosmer women—newcomers, by the look of them, with sharply curved bows Vera eyed in appreciative contentment at her own weapon—and the mismatched gaggle of kids from the previous night, late teens or early twenties, trading taunts and drinking early.

The scent of fried meat made her stomach grumble. Considering the state of their coin purses, they’d have enough for breakfast, but not for much else. With any luck, the Mad Bear would find himself in a paying wages sort of mood now that they’d reached the city.

Vera deliberated whether to try to extricate herself from the warm, comfortable tangle she had found herself in, or feign sleep a while longer. They’d shifted during the night, she and the merc, and now they were decidedly taking up very little space. She lifted her head from his chest and hazarded a look. His eyes were crimson slits, but he was awake, though in no apparent hurry to announce it. When she tried to move, his arms around her tightened. “Stay,” he gruffed, his voice still full of morning gravel.

Her stomach did a giddy, long-forgotten flip, but she cocked an eyebrow and craned her neck to get a better look at him. “They’re going to start tripping over us soon.”

The Dunmer opened his eyes fully . “Stay…” he sounded entirely too serious, “… as in, sit this one out, hlakhes. If you can.”

She frowned, but then his meaning percolated through the fog of accrued sleep deficit. “You mean Undar’s little expedition.”

He nodded before letting his head drop back to his bedroll, closing his eyes again. He didn’t offer any further explanations.

Vera sat up, a bit reluctantly. After a few moments, Sero followed suit.

“Why?” She shot for open-ended, but the second the question was out, the implications jostled each other, rattling like a junker with a kludged suspension. She turned to face the merc, hoping to catch him without his mask. He was keeping his gaze off her. Vera tightened her jaw, readjusted her tunic—the chest wrappings would need to be fixed, or she’d be giving the rest of the tavern an unsolicited eyeful—and brought her arms around her knees.

Might as well dot the I-s. “Is it about that Imperial crawling all over you?” Her stomach clenched, but she did her best to kick the emotion aside, staring hard at her hands to give herself something to do.

He didn’t respond.

She groped for some modicum of reassurance, fully cognizant of the flimsiness of what she could give. Dima’s ghost came to offer unexpected succor. She couldn’t recall the original context—something from the early days of their alliance, before they had become lovers, a survival strategy turned into a simple fact of life over the years. Still kids, then, on the cusp of growing up too fast. “It’s like with everything else, Demonchops.” She weighed the words for their hidden meaning, then she glanced at her bow. It was still there, strapped to her pack, though she could do with more arrows. “You don’t go in without a partner covering you from higher ground.”

His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed when the full impact of her chosen analogy reached him. “I wouldn’t—” He gave her a long, complicated look.

Vera made a face, waving his unfinished sentence away. “It’s fine, Tel. Just because I want you doesn’t mean you need to start coddling.”

His cough was about as real as a talking dog, but she did catch his mild jolt—some aborted movement, halted in its tracks and held fast. “Damn it.” He sounded equally amused, appalled, and exasperated, but his earlier glumness had receded a fraction, at least. “What am I to do with you?”

Vera looked up and grinned. “Remind me to get parchment and charcoal when we resupply.” At his cocked eyebrow, she added, “for the list.”

~~~

Breakfast brought the Wayward Bear.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding!” he boomed with a beatific grin, as if he’d just reunited with a long lost relative. He plowed through the countercurrent of bodies eager to vacate the tavern to start on the festivities. Vera looked up from her plate and shoveled the last forkful of mystery fried meat into her mouth, lest the Mad Nord decided to help himself to her food. Next to her, Sero finished the remnants of his tea in a few quick gulps. He’d inhaled his breakfast, somehow managing to finish his grub minutes before her, all under the slightly nonplussed gaze of the Bosmer publican.

“You two might wish to chew first,” Elrindir had admonished, but then his attention was rerouted to the largest gravitational object in the room.

Vera had expected Undnar to plop down on the free barstool and demand sustenance, but the Bastard Bear had other plans. He loomed, large and red and so pleased with himself he seemed to be bursting at the seams with it. “First things first—and coin always comes first, especially once duty and honor run out.” A leather satchel plonked down in front of Vera with a promising clink, narrowly missing her plate. A similar, albeit somewhat larger purse appeared in front of Sero. “For it is bequeathed to us by our predecessors that duty and honor dwindle faster, and should be hoarded most meticulously. So let it never be said that Undnar Silver-Tongue doesn’t pay his dues,” the eponymous asshole pronounced, loud enough for the whole tavern to enjoy this declaration of financial uprightness.

Sero tucked the purse away without so much as a second look, but Vera hesitated. Even with the leather cord pulled taught, the satchel bulged, fat with more wealth than she’d seen in her whole time on this side of her uprooting. “That seems like a lot,” she said, as neutrally as she could.

Undnar leaned forward and grinned. He smelled a bit strange, a dry, slightly musty scent beneath the usual wood smoke, leather, and fresh sweat. “Five hundred septims. To make up for Helgen.” When she said nothing, he wagged his brows. “More of that in your future, Snowberry, once we’re through with the barrow. Should be enough to cover your admission to the College of Magi, and then some, hmm? I hear they’re not taking new students, so best make a persuasive case.”

Vera turned on her stool. “What’s in it for you, Undnar?” She waved his display of maligned innocence away. “Yes, yes, out of the goodness of your heart, you can save it. Why are you so interested in me going to the College? What do you think you’re investing in?”

For the briefest of moments, something of his coldly calculating undercurrent flashed beneath the surface of verbose affability—there, then gone. “What does one ever invest in?” he sighed rhetorically. “The future, of course. And speaking of future successes,” he added, chipped grin now brimming with self-assurance, “we are, as of this morning, the official excavators of the mysteries of Bleak Falls Barrow. Now, if you two are quite done with your cozy meal, the road awaits. But best resupply first.” He paused, turned to the merc, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Wouldn’t do if the draugr caught us with our trousers around our ankles, eh, sell-sword?”

~~~

It was a deeply unsettled feeling, Vera thought as they went through the list of mundane preparatory chores, to move through the festive, joyful city while stuck beneath a slowly swelling cloud of dread. It left her with a chilly, restless sense of drifting irrelevance, like a mournful ghost at a feast.

Undnar radiated ebullient contentment with an edge of glee, alternating between cheerfully greeting acquaintances, dispensing lascivious winks whenever he found a suitable target, and showing suspicious largesse when they had to purchase anything.

They stopped at the forge first, where the Imperial blacksmith—one Adrienne Avenicci—clasped forearms with the Nord amiably enough, but with a tightness around her eyes and a strangely tense look at Vera. She redirected her gaze quickly. Vera recognized the expression, finding a match in herself along with a ready label—a not my problem sort of look. Whatever that had been about, the smith stayed within the brackets of meticulous civility while she re-outfitted them.

The merc availed himself of a new blade, though the smith couldn’t offer a replacement for the ebony sword he used to carry, now likely in the possession of some lucky Imperial officer. Vera watched as he picked through the inventory—unhurried, testing the swords for balance and craftsmanship with a kind of casual professionalism. She found herself staring at him with the same wordless contentment she used to feel whenever she watched Jules breathe new life and purpose into an old piece of dilapidated tech.

While Sero was busy, the Mad Bear managed to talk her into upgrading her armor. She refused point-blank at first, but, in choosing between pride and practicality, the former wasn’t known to stop sharp metal objects from poking holes in places where holes weren’t desirable, so she relented and entered the Warmaiden. Her hunting leathers were getting old, anyway, and they’d never fit all that well.

The dark-haired Nord behind the counter grumbled a terse greeting in Undnar’s direction, took one look at Vera, frowned, and then nodded as if in answer to a question she hadn’t asked. “Don’t have any ranger armor in your size, Breton. ‘Cept maybe a set I got from one of ‘em Khajiit a few years back. Haven’t found a buyer yet because it’s so sodding small. I’ll sell the lot to you, if you fit in it.”

Vera nodded cautiously, and the fellow went off to rummage in the back room.

The leather jack looked a bit scuffed, but, upon closer examination, it was light, cleverly constructed with plenty of inside pockets, and it sported an unusual lining made of smooth, tightly woven cloth she couldn’t identify. “Spider silk, if I were to guess,” the merchant supplied, noticing her frown.

The rest of the pieces were well preserved. “I’ll take it,” Vera said immediately, “if it fits.”

It did fit comfortably, and more importantly, it was flexible and eerily silent when she moved. She came back from the backroom with her purse at the ready. “How much?”

“Put your hard-earned coin away, Snowberry. My treat.”

She lost her patience then, abruptly and catastrophically, with no forewarning for the sudden icy fury flaring in the pit of her stomach. “If you want to hand out treats, Undnar, then I recommend you get a dog.” She’d managed to keep her voice steady, at least. “All that is mine I carry with me, isn’t that what they say? I’m paying for this.”

“You wound me, lass!” the buffoon pouted.

Before it could devolve into an unpleasant circular argument, the merchant intervened. Perhaps she had imagined it, but she thought she saw a glint of approval flash across his scarred face before he busied himself with a thick ledger. “Gotta check my records for what it cost me—been a few years, as I said. Undnar, go see if my wife finished that black cowl she’s been working, will you? That cat peddler never sold me a helmet to go with this.”

The Mad Bear narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying it, but plodded out of the shop regardless.

“How’s eighty septims for the set?” the Nord asked the second the door banged shut.

Vera was pretty sure he was undercharging her. “Deal. Cowl included?”

“Aye. Anything else you want to spend your coin on?”

“Arrows, steel if you got it.” She paused, calculating. “Make it sixty.”

She paid quickly, thanked the merchant, and made for the door.

“Oy! Breton…”

She glanced back. He was leaning on his counter, a deep frown etched into his brow. His eyes were not on her, but on the door. “Might want to watch your step with that bard.”

~~~

After the smithy, the Mad Bear dispatched Sero to resupply at the general goods store and insisted that she accompany him to see the Jarl’s wizard. Vera dug in her heels. She saw no reason at all not to indulge her mulish impulse, so she gave some laughable excuse about needing to see the alchemist about “personal supplies.”

Undnar looked at her dubiously. “Happy to come with. No secrets between friends, aye, Snowberry? For there is no surer way for a friendship to wilt on the vine. As they say,” he added, with peculiar emphasis.

They were within earshot of a knot of women bartering for vegetables, so Vera motioned with her head at them, pointed at herself, and thrust her finger at a bushel of fresh snowberries. She gave the Insufferable Bear a pointed, impatient look. When he blinked in consternation, she snarled “unless you already carry a stash of clean rags with you, I think I best stop by the apothecary myself, hmm?” She made it loud enough that the women heard.

“Ohhh! Ah, well.” He nodded sagely. “Indeed, a matter for Arcadia’s expertise, then,” “You go on, lass. Meet me here, right by this well, when you’re done.”

Controlling fuck.

She took her time browsing through the alchemy supplies, talking shop with the aging Imperial, and collected a set of potions for the road. She drew the familiar scents of the apothecary into her nose with aching greed, and a hollow feeling of guilt at not having written Bothela and Muiri a single letter. Another thing to do for when she availed herself of parchment. That, and getting started on a new map.

“Anything else I can get you, dear?”

Vera deliberated for a moment. “You’re from Cyrodill, right?”

The Imperial alchemist snorted in mild impatience. “What gave it away?”

With a mental thank you to Bothela for her routine grousing about disrupted supply routes, Vera squinted at the row of small vials tucked away on an unobtrusive shelf in the corner. Muiri might have been able to suggest something more subtle, but she didn’t need subtlety. And, with any luck, she wouldn’t have to use it at all. “I was wondering if you might carry an extraction of monkshood, at triple concentration.”

A small knowing smile touched Arcadia’s lips. “Ah, a student of the craft.” She bent down to rummage behind the counter, then produced a small purple bottle. “Ten drops evenly applied to the bait, adjusted for the size of the beast, of course.”

Vera nodded her thanks and parted with more coins.

In the end, she did buy clean rags, just in case, though her period had never been predictable.

~~~

She found the Bear where he said he’d be, but he wasn’t alone. Sero was propping up one of the carved wooden beams in front of the general goods store, not smoking for once on account of having donned his helmet again. Vera’s eyes caught on four unpleasantly familiar figures: the team of rogue diggers, minus Arvel.

“About time,” the Imperial ringleader said dryly, before turning to Undnar. “Arvel should be meeting us at nightfall at the pass. If your ‘underling’ is quite done with her shopping, maybe we can get going.” There was an edge to her, a sort of banked restlessness Vera couldn’t quite place.

The Mad Bear tutted in apology. “Sorry for the wait, lass, but better prepared than sorry, hmm? I believe we’re about ready to go, aye.”

“Mind showing me that permit first?”

Undnar extracted an official looking piece of vellum from the metal scroll carrier at his belt. “Be my guest, be my guest. All in order, as you see.”

Leora squinted at the writ and her features twisted in irritation. “That only has your and that sodding wizard’s name on it. This means that any proceeds from the expedition are legally your property.” She pivoted abruptly. “What kind of fool do you think I am?”

“We have a deal, lass, and I never go back on a deal,” the Nord placated. “Mind you, it also means that I am officially accountable for anything going… wrong, shall we say. Not that it would, of course, seeing how you and your team are undoubtedly most capable. But,” he raised his finger, “Divines forbid, should someone get hurt and their relatives demand reparations…” He trailed off.

That gave the Imperial pause, but she recovered quickly. “What is it that you’re after again, Nord?”

Undnar thumped his fist over his heart. “As the Divines are my witnesses, I solemnly promise that what I want from that ruin can be neither sold nor bartered,” he announced, “and that, as far as I am aware, it holds no interest to anyone other than myself. Will that allay your fretting?”

Leora considered him, the suspicion still clearly drawn in every line of her body. “And what about your Breton hireling and the sell-sword?” She glanced at the merc. “What’s with the ugly helmet, handsome? I liked you better without it.”

Undnar beckoned at the merc. “Sero, damn you, stop sulking over there like a mudcrab, and come greet our new partners! You too, Snowberry. Come along, now.”

Vera didn’t move, even as her stomach sank. The Dunmer had detached himself from the column—slowly, almost lazily—and drifted towards the group.

She caught Undnar’s gaze on her then, along with his swift shift of expression—an amused, almost good-natured gotcha, too self-assured to be malice. And then he winked before retreating under his affable buffoon persona. “Come to think of it, Snowberry…” He pretended to think. “Why don’t you stay back in Whiterun for this one? I have a house in the city—nice, if a bit small and dusty—but I don’t mind you using it. What are friends for, after all? Rest your weary feet, recover your strength. Enjoy the Bannered Mare’s cooking for a bit before you wear down to nothing, teensy Breton that you are. I’ll still pay you,” he added after a moment.

“And miss the pleasure of your fine company?” Vera fired back, shooting on instinct.

Nice and steady, Vee. Dima’s specter rang with a chaotic echo, but the vial of poison she had tucked into one of the inner pockets of her new armor still sat cool against her ribs. She didn’t doubt the smile she managed was an ugly thing, but it’d have to do. “Not for all the gold in Skyrim.”

“A moment.”

The group’s attention turned to the merc, but he stood there, placid, relaxed, and unreadable under the chitin.

“Right you are, sell-sword. Maybe our Snowberry will hear the voice of caution if it’s coming from you, eh? My pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears.” Laughter lurked beneath the Mad Nord’s words.

The Dunmer waved it away. “I wouldn’t presume. That being said, I forgot to see the wizard about a better smoking mixture than whatever rubbish you tend to use, and the alchemist doesn’t stock the right ingredients.”

Undnar raised an eyebrow. “Ah. Don’t know how you can stand that mineral stuff, but go ahead, I suppose. You’re more use to us when you can see around corners.”

The wait was as unpleasant as it was interminable. Sero returned in about a quarter of an hour and nodded curtly.

They walked towards the city gates, Vera slowly falling back behind until she was level with the merc, who had also been drifting to the tail of their little procession.

“What did you really get?” she asked under her breath, her words masked by the creak of the opening gates.

“A safeguard,” he answered, about five minutes later.

Here’s to hoping the wizard sells Imperial repellant, Vera thought acerbically as they got on the road.

Chapter Text

They didn’t bother with Riverwood and cut through the wilds, instead. The terrain hardened in increments—steep and scraggly at first, then scattered patches of snow spreading into a continuous, wind-sculpted crust laid over the barren rocks. The mountain breathed ancient ice down its flanks, freezing gusts worming their way under Vera’s hood and scraping her brow and cheeks. She trudged onward at the back, stubbornly methodical about her footing even though it meant she’d fallen behind. At this altitude, dusk protracted like something taking its time to die.

Leora set a punishing pace, and the rest of the rogue diggers seemed no less eager to get to their destination. They were clearly at home among the granite and basalt of this younger mountain range, and Vera found herself longing for the softer limestone of the Reach, for the way it felt under her soles—more generous with its friction, more accommodating to missteps and improvised teeters. She kept her eyes at her feet, letting her ears track the wolf trailing them—at a safe distance, more inquisitive than anything else, and likely not interested in taking on a large group of bipeds all by its lonesome. No immediate threat.

When she wasn’t busy watching her footing, she watched the crew, less by the words exchanged than by their body language. It wasn’t so different from watching raider camps from some debris-covered rooftop with that gliding attention paid to the mute choreography below. Except that now, there was no Jules and Dima to comfortably anchor her peripheral vision. Sero and Undnar were up front with Leora, the Nord siblings close behind them. The Breton mushroom connoisseur—Jerome—had fallen back, and Vera fully expected him to level with her the second the path plateaued a bit.

Why do you persist, Vera love?

She sighed. There wasn’t much point in not answering, not when Martha was in the picture.

Her ghosts had been in a chatty mood ever since they left Whiterun. The rhythm of boots, the creaking leather, the whistling wind, all resolved into the beats of spectral speech in between the silences. Just a cadence at first, then a few words—like someone talking quietly in another room—then a phrase, sudden in its clarity. And along with it, a memory.

Martha, out on a rare expedition. She didn’t do much of the procuring when the seasons turned and the pain got distracting, but she always made an exception for books. She’d load the Beretta then, and they’d be off, Martha and Vera and Said. Sometimes, those trips didn’t involve shooting: just charm and barter and an ability to tap into someone’s nostalgia for how things used to be. There wasn’t a “before,” exactly—more like a hazy landscape, rapidly receding. So when the guns didn’t come out, it took some nuance.

She couldn’t recall the book’s title, nor the plot, but Martha had been adamant about adding it to their collection. It was Said’s idea to introduce the “do we need it” rule. Vera balked at the cost the shady peddler had levied for the battered volume—it’d make a significant dent in their nonperishables, and she was in charge of those, so she took it personally. It was her turn to ask the question and play devil’s advocate, but she was no match for Martha—Said knew that, of course, so he let her—because it ended up with her grumbling, “what’s it about, anyway?”

About why we make the choices we make. Why do we persist?

Socratic question, but not a bad one, all things considered.

She had the gold. It wouldn’t stretch indefinitely, but it’d stretch enough to reach another hold—with any luck, somewhere the Mad Bear wouldn’t bother to look. She’d find an odd job with a local alchemist at first, until she could track down an enchanter. She’d make do in-between. Bothela would put in a good word, if it came down to it—a matter of sending a letter and maybe groveling a bit, but there were worse things.

It couldn’t be Solitude, nor the Rift—if Gabinia made it there, then the Bastard Nord would wander that way eventually. And not Winterhold, either, not now that he was so eager to foot the bill for the College. That left her with Windhelm or some smaller town with little relevance, or further out, across the border, into Cyrodiil or High Rock. Either way, a map could be purchased—subpar compared to what she could make given time and exploration, but good enough for travel by carriage, if she was willing to bite the bullet for the expense. Or, in a pinch, it could be Markarth again, and the devil you knew. Gabinia’s vanishing would have blown over by now. She’d be smarter this time and make use of Bothela’s contacts, costs be damned.

Martha’s echoes lingered. Vera shot a glance at the ill-assembled assortment ahead. Around a snowberry-dotted bend in the path, a ruin loomed, majestic, built to intimidate rather than inspire. The wolf had fallen back, likely bored with their comparatively slow and seemingly purposeless plodding.

Why do you persist?

She’d made a promise, hadn’t she? Not verbalized as such, nothing ceremonious. But it was more than she’d given Jules when she refused to provide back-up, even though she’d made her feelings clear from the start on that one with her flat-out no.

This time around, she’d committed, sounding it out. Break that, and there was no retaining one’s shape.

Why do you persist?

In the seat next to me, Okay?

...

Why do you persist?

She let out a long, slow breath, with a deflated “why did any of us?” on its wings.

After that, Martha’s phantom relented.

~~~

“Agh, no end to the little bastards!” Helger swung out with her mace and the snarling skeever went flying into a nearby column, crunching unpleasantly on impact. It fell, twitching. “Just two or three of ‘em last time we were through.”

“Running—,” Vera let fly, her shoulder sore from rapid repetition. Her arm thrummed with the bow’s vibration on release—a good balanced note, at least. Thwack, one more down. “—from something further in,” she finished.

The skeevers were a bit odd: a large, aggressive swarm, too frantic for business as usual. The cavernous hall was so ripe with them that Vera’s eyes had watered once they made it past the monumental gates. “Trying to get to the surface, but they got stuck.”

Ahead, the others were dispatching the last of the vermin. She left them to it—too much clustering for a clear shot, and they had it handled anyway. She went around to retrieve her arrows, tallying up on automatic: seven—the eighth must have wounded, but not killed outright, and the overgrown rat wandered off to die elsewhere, taking her arrow with it.

There’d be no setting up camp here unless they wanted to do a thorough clean-up, and the night wasn’t getting any younger. Arvel had been late to the rendez-vous by a good two hours, at least, though it’d felt longer, and when he finally showed, well past sunset, there’d been a discordant twitchiness to him, a forced sort of cheer, and a lot of excuses. “Sorry for the wait,” he’d mumbled under Leora’s glare. He didn’t sound sorry, just mildly rancorous and trying to hide it. He handed her a bundle wrapped in an old piece of burlap.

The soreness of accumulated exhaustion was gathering itself up at the base of her neck and slowly swelling into a headache. Vera replenished her quiver with what she could find and went to rejoin the Nord digger, where she stood glowering at her blood-stained mace.

“Hate them, I do.”

Helger shrugged her broad shoulders at Vera’s interrogative look. “There was a den by our farm, so ever since Hur and I were old enough to hold a cudgel, da’ sent us out to thin ‘em. Still managed to ruin the crops more often than not, the mangy pests.”

Vera’s answering chuckle came out a bit grim. “They’re not bad with garlic.”

Helger shot her a sour look. “Aye.” She belted her mace. “Had those kinds of winters too, ’specially once the old man kicked it.” Something like a question lurked in her tone.

It only now dawned on Vera how young Helger and Hurdig really were. They had a weather-hardened look to them, but their apparent hostility at first meeting was more baby fat than road wear: the defensive sulkiness of recently hatched adulthood.

“Plenty of summers like it as well, but who’s counting?” Vera looked ahead, to where Leora was strutting over to join the rest of the group. Arvel was wandering the perimeter, lighting torches along the walls. The Breton fellow lifted his hands towards the magelight he’d dispatched to hover below the ceiling—an oblong disk of prismatic white, much larger than the ones she’d seen Sero conjure. He snuffed it out with a twist of his wrist. Hur, Helger’s brother, was trying to get a rise out of Undnar about who had killed more rats, his taunts so loud Vera could hear the words from where she stood. The Mad Bear was indulging him with lazy goodwill, like a large cat might suffer the bouncing of an excited kitten.

Helger shifted, uneasy. “Don’t like this, is all. Like you said, something must’ve spooked ‘em.”

“How deep in did you go last time?” Vera asked.

Another shift from foot to foot. “Not as deep as Leora would have you think.”

Vera turned to face the girl and did her best to hide the mild jolt of surprise. If this was dissent in the ranks, then she’d be all ears.

“Cleared up the entrance, and a bit of the service tunnels up ahead, but soon as we came up on the spinning stones with the three guardians… Well, Leora spun us right around ‘stead of the stones, and out we marched. No point in it, she’d said. Wasn’t a hard one, s’far as puzzles go, either. Even Hur could’ve probably worked it out,” she snorted in fond impatience.

Nice and steady, Vee. She had no idea what Helger had meant by spinning stones, but that’s not what the Nord wanted to talk about anyway, so Vera nodded like she understood, and took a chance on a blind shot. “No point in wasting time and resources if your boss knew the inner part would be locked up tight.”

Helger crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, she knew, alright. ‘Cept Hur and I, we don’t get paid for knowing we can’t get in. It’s whatever you carry out yourself, and Leora and Arvel get first dibs, or sometimes Jer, when Leora’s in a strop. Hur and I, we get whatever’s left over.” She paused, her eyes tracking Arvel’s progress with the torches. “Chafes them something fierce we got strong backs, though.”

Vera chuckled and looked up at the Nord, as open-faced and steady as she could muster. Not her problem, in the grand scheme of things, but, sometimes, there was no harm in giving something for free, without bartering. She’d had Said and Martha and Jules and Dima, and before them, her mother. She could stand to share the wealth a bit. “I saw you launch those skeevers into the walls.” She cracked a grin. “You’re good. You don’t need to settle for a shit contract.”

Helger chewed on her cheek, rusty eyebrows drawn tight. “No contract, either, all just words. Some of the digger folk, they pay their workers wages, but Leora says it’s not ‘efficient.’ Makes us lazy, she says.”

Vera readjusted the strap of her pack where it bit into her shoulder, heavy with their distributed supplies. A strange arrangement, then, by any account. What was keeping the siblings with an outfit that didn’t treat them right? She snuck a glance at the rest of the group again, her sight still set for the skittering of rodents, and caught the likely answer. Hur had drawn away from Undnar, clearly bolstered by the Mad Bear’s praise. He swaggered closer to Leora, rolling his shoulders and flashing a grin at the Imperial—solid and white with a farmlife rich in dairy. There was a sweetness to him beneath the boastful preening, a kind of hopeful shyness.

Leora patted his cheek—“good boy”—and as he flushed scarlet with it, she trained her attention on Sero. Vera couldn’t read her lips for the words, but the merc tensed up briefly, then resettled, with the minutest hitch of deliberate recalibration, into lazy ease.

“He’ll grow out of it,” Vera said quietly.

Helger scoffed with all the scorn of youthful turbulence, but her words, when they came, were on target. “Not before she gets proper sick of tugging on his nose ring, he won’t. Always been a bit of a—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish. Leora’s voice rose, its echoes bouncing between the vaulted arches in strange call-backs. “All right, enough playing with skeevers, gather round, now!”

Helger muttered a “there it goes,” and drifted closer, Vera behind her.

The Imperial shot them a perfunctory look, then proceeded. “We move in formation, down to the camp we set up last time. We’ll rest there, then start fresh tomorrow. No stupid risks. Magic users, with me.That means Jer, and—” she turned to Sero “—you, handsome. Magelights first, ten feet out, it’ll be dark in there. The Nords right behind us, try not to lumber around too much or you’ll bring the draugr upon us before we’re good and ready. If I say move, you move, if I say shut up, you shut up. Arvel and the Breton—to the back, make yourselves useful and light up the torches in case we need to get out fast. And try not to mix up ‘cover’ and ‘cower,’ there’s a difference.”

Vera traded a quick glance with Helger at this rousing speech. The Nord shot her an apologetic look and walked on ahead to join Undnar and her brother, who was clearly the only one in any way pleased with this tactical arrangement.

She glanced at the Mad Bear. Undnar had nodded his acquiescence to the plan with an affable grunt and a strange twinkle, and not a word of protest.

~~~

Deeper into the hallway, the light dwindled, then vanished entirely, save for the narrow circle of Arvel’s torch. Vera’s hand tightened on her bow. The air was stale and still, musky with recent rodents, and, beneath that, paper-sweet with old dust and ancient rot gone to powder. Some thirty paces ahead, two cold flares of pallid white splashed jittery shadows across the walls.

They walked on, to the rhythm of muffled footsteps and creaking armor.

It should have been reassuring in its familiarity, this slow creeping through the dark—not so different from crawling through an abandoned office building, looking for salvage. Her body settled into it quickly enough, but her mind snagged on the social fractures of the group—which were plain to see, even without Arvel’s disgruntled muttering at her side. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by the possibility of her overhearing his grousing.

“Light the torches, she says,” he mumbled under his breath. “And who got the claw, hmm?”

They rounded a sharp bend in the tunnel, the rest of the group disappearing down a flight of stairs ahead, but Arvel fell back, fussing with a wall fixture that held a torch—relatively new, by the look of it, though it didn’t kindle on his first attempt, nor on the second.

“Sodding thing,” he snarled under his breath, “I just put them in a fortnight ago.”

Vera stalked closer, squinting in the dull light. She reached out and pinched the torch wrappings between thumb and forefinger. “It’s wet.”

“Horseshit.” The digger’s face screwed up in a derisive look. “So Leora was right, Undnar really does just keep you around for a poke, huh. Not his usual type, from what I remember, but I guess you’re portable.”

Vera ignored his oily smirk and kept her tone civil. You don’t chuck a perfectly serviceable arrow just because the fletching doesn’t go well with your boots. “If you can’t tell tallow from water, just touch it.”

After a few more tries with his torch, and then a fire spell—weak, he might as well not have bothered—Arvel did, though with a great deal of reluctance. His expression changed. “Oblivion’s puckered arshehole, what in the bloody bollocks is this about? I see no drip.”

Vera stepped back, keeping the shifty bastard in her line of sight. “Someone’s been through here recently.”

She earned herself another sneer. “Been through here, doing what? Running ‘round dumping water on the torches for the joy of it?”

She shrugged. “Maybe they like privacy.”

The flicker of magelight had vanished. No sound of footsteps reached them through the dusty dark, but she couldn’t hear any sounds of fighting, either. An unpleasant tingle brushed Vera’s nape and tightened her stomach with that instinctive certainty of being watched. The prickling adrenaline spurred her to move—to find a hiding spot, some higher ground, the shortest path to safety.

Instead, she readied her bow. No going back now. “I’ve a shit feeling about this,” she found herself muttering, not particularly caring whether it’d earn her another derisive scoff from the digger.

Arvel squinted into the yawning blackness of the tunnel ahead of them. “Should be another one around the bend, on the right side. Let’s check on it.”

He trotted ahead, Vera close on his heels. Some twenty paces deeper into the tunnel, another torch had been laid across a wide metal bowl that might have once served as a brazier, perhaps used by those who had been in charge of embalming the bodies. Or, perhaps the dearly undeparted liked to warm themselves up by a nice fire every once in a while, Vera thought with a jolt of uneasy amusement.

Arvel grabbed the wooden handle and pawed at the wrappings before chucking the useless torch aside.

“Same?” Vera asked despite the obvious answer, mostly to stifle the tightly coiling sense of dread.

“Don’t foul up your knickers yet, Breton. Probably just the melt-off from the last snowstorm. These Nordic tombs seep at the upper levels.” He peered into the darkness with a scowl. “Our old camp should be right up ahead. Bet the others are already there. Let’s go.”

They went on cautiously, their footfalls soft on the ancient stones. How far ahead had the others gone? Vera kept herself a few paces behind the digger, careful not to lose her footing on the crumbling steps, her eyes searching the depths of the tunnel for the pale glow of magelight. Nothing but darkness stared back.

Perhaps Sero really did purchase some of that smoking mixture he liked to use. If she caught up, she’d ask him to share. Unless whatever was causing that creeping prickle at the back of her neck caught up with them first.

She suddenly saw them—two glowing orbs, spaced some ten feet apart. The tunnel widened beyond the arched opening, swelling into what she guessed was a cavern. Dark shapes moved about, their features smudged with shadows, but their figures recognizable. A soft whoosh, the sound of something crackling, and then warm firelight bloomed across the floor and walls.

She watched them for a few heartbeats. There was no great sense of urgency to them at all, just the unhurried, methodical choreography of securing a room you already thought was safe.

Arvel didn’t wait, charging ahead with an irate “Ahoy! Would’ve killed you to wait up a little?”

“Where have you been?” came Leora’s equally irritated reply.

Vera looked over her shoulder into the blind dark. There was something off-kilter about it, a faint reddish tint to the blackness, though perhaps her eyes were simply compensating for the harsh glare from the magelights. The air was heavy and still, but she could have sworn she’d sensed a small movement—there, at the very back of the tunnel, a subtle displacement. The sense of being watched was almost physical now, like the press of a hand on her nape.

She hastened towards the others, swallowing past the sudden taste of bitter copper in her throat. Either it’ll eat you, or it won’t, Vee. No point in getting jumpy about it.

For once, Dima’s spectral remainder was uniquely unhelpful. Moving into the loose circle of people brought unutterable relief: the shitty social politics always made for small change when weighed against that primordial terror.

~~~

The first evening in the Nordic tomb was exactly as unpleasant as she expected, but it paled in comparison to what came after.

The cavern was tall and irregular in shape, a natural formation that seemed to have been augmented, but not radically modified. Large basalt slabs, haphazardly scattered, with no sense of motif or regularity had been carved with the stylized designs of animals. Vera’s eyes caught on three short obelisks, each nestled in its own alcove against the left-hand wall, bearing similar symbols but in greater numbers. At the back of the cavern, a rust-dusted gate barred the way forward. It didn’t take her too long to make the connection—the puzzle, if that’s what it was, seemed simple enough, but no-one was in a hurry to solve it. A balcony built atop an overhang sheltered a shelf littered with ancient embalming tools and disintegrating bandages.

The makeshift camp Arvel had mentioned was still there—five bedrolls; a simple spit settled atop a large brazier; clay jugs lidded with roughspun and twine to shield whatever liquid they contained against dust and evaporation; a dirty piss-pot bucket in a corner, fitted with a crude lid. Several bulging burlap sacks had been stashed between the obelisks, and the air was thick with the earthy smell of sprouting potatoes. It almost masked the sweetish scent of the tomb itself—ancient dust and gravetar and slow rot.

Undnar greeted her with a jovial “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Snowberry!” and Vera managed some off-hand reply, something about ghosts never being in short supply. It earned her a chuckle from the Mad Bear (a dubious achievement if ever there was one), and an amused snort from Helger.

“Nordic tombs aren’t for milk drinkers,” Hurdig announced from where he was rummaging through one of the sacks, extracting root vegetables of dubious quality for what Vera assumed was to be their evening meal. “But we won’t laugh at you if you want to turn right ‘round and go back to the surface.”

This one, at least, hadn’t been fired at her—or not entirely. The Nord kid had developed a bad case of the glares, most of them directed at Sero. Vera caught the merc in her peripheral vision and held him in her attention long enough to get a sense of how things had been going while she and Arvel were busy poking at torches. He held himself apart, or as apart as he could manage, busying himself with sharpening his blade, and though the group was settling in for the night, the Dunmer had retained his helmet.

“Just as we left it,” Leora said, a pleased little smile curling her lips as she walked the perimeter with a great deal of extra swagger. “A warm meal, some sleep…” she came level with Sero and cocked her hip, turning to face him “…for those of us who need it…” she glided on, “and we’ll be ready to tackle the rest of this damned ruin tomorrow.”

Was it just as they left it? Vera waited, holding back the discovery of the wet torches against the ingrained instinct of collective interest.

Arvel didn’t volunteer anything either. Instead he nodded, with an all too ready “of course it is.”

Circle completed, the grave-robber-in-chief turned to Vera. “Last one to arrive gets the middle shift, pup. That’d be you.”

“I’ll take the first one,” Arvel offered, before Vera could argue. The Breton mage called dibs on the third.

She bit her tongue and said nothing, eying the cavern for a spot to lay out her bedroll. The others had clustered around the makeshift fire, but Vera settled for the relative safety of the balcony against the lure of warmth.

She knew perfectly well what the middle shift was all about, aside from the unpleasantness of having to drag oneself out of deep sleep, bleary and useless and over-vigilant for it, only to lie awake later, trying to catch a few restless hours as the final sentry took over. It was the shift that spelled out the simple script of which bedrolls stood conspicuously empty, their owners occupied elsewhere.

She half-expected for Undnar to intervene then, like he had done in Markarth, the second he sensed that something more than bristling hostility might have passed between her and the merc. But the Mad Bear said nothing at all, just watched the social dance, a little smirk tucked into his beard.

Perhaps it was that silence which acted as the sealant for the gaps in her understanding, and the pieces clicked into place with cataclysmic clarity. Idiot. The memory of her first impression of the Dunmer surged forth, vivid not for the feeling it conjured, but for how it had transformed over time. She could still recollect the wordless rancor of watching that crest of spiky hair and the metal in his ears glint with the grizzly reminders of a past she’d escaped. Perhaps he’d read her clearly, then, and read her right—at the beginning, anyway. It should have worked to keep her at arm’s length, that crass intimidation he wielded like a weapon—or, perhaps, like a shield. It certainly hadn’t endeared him to her at first, not until that mask began to flake, not until her lungs filled with water, not until he fished her out of a roiling river that would have killed her. Not until she chose to counterstrike with similar tactics, funneling them into their little game. Perhaps he had wondered about it then, on the cusp of a split-second decision—whether it would have been simpler to let her drown.

He seemed to have chosen another approach with the Imperial: a bored, aloof indifference. Vera wondered if that too would backfire, at least if he was aiming for shaking off Leora’s interest rather than fueling it. Or, perhaps he’d read her right too. The Imperial grave robber struck Vera as the “run, and I’ll chase” sort.

There was another possibility, and the sheer terror of it almost overrode her earlier dread of the watchful dark. More than one way to trap a rat. Sometimes, all it came down to was the right kind of bait. Perhaps the last few months had been a calculated entrapment from the very start, subtly coordinated between the Mad Bear and the Dunmer.

One more cup of coffee for the road.

They’d always stretched the coffee for as long as they could, but Jules made concessions for a second cup to mark the occasion. A bitter gulp to sweeten the deal, he liked to joke. She could wait until her shift to pack her things.

Not a betrayal to gnaw your way out of a snare.

Breathe, Vee. She forced her thoughts to slow down to the rhythm of a careful exhale. The merc’s barely banked anger at the Temple of Dibella had been real enough, and now, one of Martha’s little phrases floated to the surface like a liferaft, lending a pithy label. Learned helplessness. Vera couldn’t recall the origins of the term—something to do with rodents, again—but the sentiment beneath it was too close to the skin for a convincing counterfeit.

Fuck. It would have been simpler, in the end, to shove him off her map and yank herself out of it all by the roots. Painful, maybe, but what wasn’t? But the rest of it snagged at her like brambles: the merc’s uneasy gratitude at her offers of food; the tense silence of his unhealed injuries after Helgen; the small gestures of care dotting the landscape between them—too tiny to identify, too constellated to ignore. That, and the way the air between them grew storm-charged whenever they got too close. Hard to fake that one.

There was the other option, tucked away against her ribs. Just a matter of taking over cooking duty. The merc wouldn’t eat unless it was given. It wasn’t why she’d gotten the poison, but it would cut the knot down the middle, once and for all. Except that Sero had warned her off the idea once before, over a rainy smoke in Karthwasten. And now that she had the means, she wondered if there was more to the warning than simple loyalty, or worry that she wouldn’t manage it.

Vera wrestled herself out of her thoughts. Below, Helger was scolding her brother for his attempts to peel potatoes with his sword. “What do you think you’re doing, you great big oaf?”

Hur grinned, lifting the long-suffering root vegetables out of his sister’s reach. “I can do it, I can do it! Undnar and I have a bet, I ain’t losing it…”

“How about I cook?” Vera piped up from her perch, with the hollow tug of free-fall in the pit of her stomach. Still, she managed a grin. “I’d rather not have fingers in my soup unless the recipe calls for them.”

Hur wailed an offended “Oy, I said I can do it,” but both Jerome and Arvel snorted.

“Good enough for me.” Helger said quickly. “You Bretons are supposed to be good at cooking, though you wouldn’t know it if you taste anything Jer makes.”

The mage sniffed. “I don’t have the right spices.”

“Got nothing to do with spices, you scrawny scamp. It’s because you put too much mushrooms in everything,” Arvel cut in, to more hearty cackles.

Vera caught Leora’s irritable squint, but before their fearless leader could put an end to the banter, Undnar inserted himself into it. “You won’t regret it, friends.” He sprawled atop his dirty bedroll with the air of a noble being fed sugared plums. “I’ve seen it myself. Our Snowberry can turn an old boot into a stew fit for a Jarl.”

“It’s true.” Vera nodded, collecting another irritated look from the Imperial. It made playing second fiddle to the Mad Bear almost worth it. “Never met a Jarl I didn’t want to feed a boot to.”

Laughter boomed through the cavern. Vera set her things aside and fished out her knife.

She never could quite stomach the collateral—that had always been Dima’s department. Perhaps that was why they’d lost him first. Her initial idea with the poison wasn’t risk-free either, but it wouldn’t stack the costs against those who hadn’t earned them.

Their provisions weren’t particularly inspired, but Vera applied herself. When the stew was ready, she ladelled it into the set of dusty wooden bowls she found stashed next to the burlap sacks. She insisted on serving everyone, starting with Leora, then Undnar, then the others.

“Eh, it’s not bad at all, Breton. Maybe you’re good for a few things, after all,” Arvel threw after her, not bothering to chew first. “Keep this up, and we might even let you stick around.”

The merc was last on her list. He gave away very little, encased in all that chitin, but his gauntleted hand lingered on her fingers as he received his food.

“Set up next to me on the balcony.” She kept her voice quiet and handed him his spoon.

“I… That could get messy.” He set the bowl aside. “Oh, and now that you’re on cooking duty, partner, do keep the ingredients simple, will you?” He paused for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was barely loud enough to hear. “I’m asking… as a favor.”

She couldn’t see his expression, but he let her read his tone—nothing fake about the anger, nor the grief beneath it, so entrenched it had long gone to seed. And, if she was being honest, another softer note under that: a longing of sorts, hopeless and perfectly aware of it.

She waited for the group’s chatter to crest. “I think there’s something else in the tunnels, Tel. Behind us, I mean.” Fuck. They were taking too long. “Please. A favor for a favor, how about it?”

He started to unravel his cowl. Seeing his face bared again brought an odd jolt, her chest growing all tight with it.

“You know you don’t have to ask, hlakhes.”

It was there, right beneath the simple words, tucked away into a false bottom.

“I do, actually.” Vera drew a breath. “Will you?”

He grinned, then—sharp and eerily bittersweet. “For you? Anything I’m able.” He settled the bowl in his lap and tucked in.

“Oy, pup!”

She wheeled around. The Imperial had donned a smile Vera didn’t like one little bit. The others were passing around a skin of ale, but their attention had rerouted, their chatter hushing in anticipation of new entertainment. Hur looked oblivious, but Helger’s open, honest face sported an expression of queasy distress. “Seeing how generous your boss has been with lending out your skills, how about throwing in dessert? What say you, Silver-Tongue? I think Arvel here isn’t quite full yet, and he got us the claw. That deserves a treat, no?”

At her back, Vera heard Sero hiss something unprintable in Dunmeri.

She got up slowly. It wasn’t even about her, really, or the merc. These things were never personal, not in her former world, not in Markarth, and not here in this rotting ruin. The currency changed, but the power plays remained the same. From there, it’d only get worse.

“I’m sure Arvel can take care of his sweet tooth himself, and if not, you seem capable enough.” Her bow was still on the balcony, and she wouldn’t do much damage with her knife should this blow up. If the Mad Bear didn’t back her up now, it would end very poorly. Still, she kept on course, mostly out of sheer stubbornness. “He got you the claw, as you said, seems only fair you’d lend him a hand. And seeing how you’re the main beneficiary of whatever we find in that tomb, I suggest you come up with ways to entertain yourselves, unless you want to shell out some gold first. Then we can negotiate, but I don’t think you’ll outbid Undnar. No offense.”

Leora clapped her hands and laughed, throaty and pretty, but with a strident edge to it. “Oh, how sweet, it’s got a wee bite!”

Against all odds, the Mad Bear piped up. “It’s getting late, Imperial.” Gone was the twinkling veneer, and when he spoke, heads turned to listen. “Far be it from me to tell you how to run your operation, but I like my associates well-rested at night and sharp-eyed in the morning.” He turned to Vera, the jovial grin not quite masking the shrewd little glint in his eyes. “I think I’ll be setting up next to you and Sero, eh Snowberry? Keep your enemies close, but your friends closer, as they say.”

~~~

She settled into her bedroll with a feeling of amorphous apprehension, then tossed and turned, finally slipping into restless sleep—only to be torn out of it by Undnar’s raucous snores. Camp had quieted down, the fire below dwindling to a pulsing incandescence that painted the walls with dull red shimmers.

That feeling of being watched returned.

Vera sat up, trying to get a better look at the entrance to the cavern over the hulking mass of the snoring Bear blocking her view.

All quiet.

She spotted Arvel stretching below with a jaw-splitting yawn. “Hey, you’re finally awake,” he muttered, eyeing the small hourglass he’d been using to keep time. “Might as well take over, I’m done. Two turns should do it, then go wake up Jer.” He didn’t wait for acknowledgement before wandering off towards the piss bucket.

Vera whiled away the hours checking over her arrows and trying not to stare at the opening of the tunnel too much. Nothing awful burst forth from it, and after the first turn of the hourglass, her nerves settled a bit. When she found herself drifting off, she went off to rummage around the shelf for something to entertain her.

Someone had left two tattered books amidst the mess of embalming paraphernalia. She chose a dog-eared volume that promised “True Tales and Tragedies from the Heroic City of Kvatch,” and she settled in to decipher the unfamiliar calligraphy by dull light. It was slow going, and not the most pleasant subject matter. The book listed the atrocities the draemora had unleashed upon Kvatch once they were vomited out of whatever an Oblivion Gate was, and what the text lacked in explanations, it made up in gory details. She was deep into a chapter about some fellow called Jiab or Jiud—she couldn’t quite make sense of the elaborate font—and the author was waxing lurid about what was found of the poor bloke’s earthly remains after the rampaging draemora were driven back when Sero’s quiet “I’d wondered what became of Saint Jiub,” made her jump and slam the book closed. She hadn’t heard him get up, let alone sneak up behind her. So much for watching the tunnel for trouble.

“I met him once, you know,” he continued after a pause.

Vera rubbed the blur from her eyes before casting the merc a curious glance. Had he forgotten that he’d given out his birth year? “You’re not that old, Sero.” Unless this was his way of letting her know he’d lied at Helgen, and that their age difference was even more precipitous. Strange thing to bring up now, in any case. “Are you?”

He shook his head. “A few years on you, hlakhes, but no. I’ll be one hundred and forty five this Sun’s Dusk. If I manage to survive that long,” he grumbled, not without humor.

“Then how exactly did you meet this Jiub character? Unless you can travel back in time, in addition to all your other finer qualities?”

“I hope you’ll be listing them off.” His answering smirk was rather cheeky, and strangely sweet. “After you’re done with your other list, that is.”

Vera made a rude noise. “Oh-no-you-don’t. I see your misdirection, and I raise you a ‘go back to how you met this fellow who’s been dead for...’” she tried to do the mental math, but the simple arithmetic proved too much. She was going to need more sleep or she’d be useless. “A while.”

He seemed to hesitate on the edge of some internal decision before nodding. “Long story, but I don’t see the harm in sharing it with you. After we get out of this damned ruin.”

“Why are you up, anyway?”

He tilted his head at the snoring mammoth.

“Bullshit. I’ve seen you sleep through his snores just fine.”

He shrugged. “Your shift is about over, is it not?”

Vera squinted suspiciously. “Are you trying to get me to snuggle, Demon Chops?”

His quiet cackle was drowned out by an especially thunderous grunt from the Mad Bear. “Are you offering?”

“Are you asking?” she fired back, trying to hold back the idiotic grin as she got to her feet.

“There are worse things to wake up to.”

The idiotic grin won.

Maybe she could deploy the stirring stick she’d used for cooking to poke the Breton mage awake, in case Arvel’s warning about his liability to go ballistic upon launch proved correct.

She scanned the room for the Breton and found him already stirring. Even better, no stick required. And then she froze, unease prickling her spine.

“Teldryn?” The words sounded hollow and far removed. She could’ve sworn something flashed red in the mouth of the tunnel. Below, the Breton had turned as well, and was now staring in the same direction. “You see better in the dark.”

A long pause.

“Something’s there.”

The merc unsheathed his blade, and Vera scrambled to her bow and quiver.

She never made it. A soundless shockwave engulfed her, and the world turned crimson. Her mind forgot itself, then, everything obliterated under an onslaught of rage and terror so complete that her knees buckled under. She fell in a heap, then scrambled forward on all fours, blind and unhearing, with only enough room for a single thought—hide. She held onto it for dear life, the only shred of herself left as the hot fury in her stomach clashed with the paralyzing panic—like turning a sock inside out, the impossible contradiction breaking upon itself and fracturing the rest. That rabid wrath tried to drag her back, to find itself a target—an itch to scratch and shred and sink clawed fingers into eyeballs until they leaked empty, to rip with her teeth, to peel back skin like stripping bark…

Someone screamed, high and shrill.

There, right between the bookshelf and the wall, small and dark, like a rabbit warren, but one she could squeeze into.

More screams, a roar that raised the hairs on her nape, stoking the horror and fanning the fury.

It was tiny and dank with rot and resin. She wedged herself as deep as she could. Her mind howled—trapped, trapped, not safe—and she held it down, giving the fear a chance to win. She’d die, probably. But she wouldn’t kill.

Her heart beat so fast it felt like it would break its way out. Vera forced herself to count. At thirty, the awful noises stopped as suddenly as they had started.

The silence that followed slowly filled with bloody moans.

Chapter Text

Aftermaths always had the same refrain. Pain, confused terror, shock, then helpless anger, all weaving together, sometimes in resonance, sometimes in countercurrent.

Vera kept her eyes shut tight and listened, so intently it felt like her entire body had been reduced to a single autonomous organ dedicated solely to hearing. Between the moans and groans she heard movement: the shuffling scrape of leather on stone, slow footsteps, the meaty thud of flesh meeting a hard surface.

She waited, but no further violence came.

The wrath inside had fizzled, though the fear lingered. Much as staying put appealed, she wasn’t going to do herself any favors if whoever had attacked them chose to finish the job. She forced herself to scoot forward before pushing off from the wall, catching herself against the shelf to wait out a sudden bout of dizziness. Her teeth chattered so fiercely it was a miracle she didn’t bite off her tongue. Verticality felt exceptionally ill-advised, but she managed to coax her feet into some semblance of forward movement, leaving the safety of her hidey-hole behind.

In retrospect, what had saved them—if one could call it that—was the magical assault’s timing. It had come at the cusp of a shift change when they were unarmed and, in the groggy confusion of recent sleep, acted on instinct rather than strategy, bare hands deployed instead of weapons. Vera had no doubt that had the attack happened at any other time, she would be staring at dead bodies, not just broken ones—if there was anything left of her to stare, that was.

She spotted the Nord and the Dunmer first, and her mind drew a momentary stupefied blank. The thought, condensed down to a single word—dead?—ricocheted around like a stray bullet in an empty silo. Sero was bending over the prone shape of his patron, and Vera couldn’t tell whether his hand on Undnar’s throat spelled out the last beats of a choke-hold, or whether the merc was querying for a pulse. His knuckles were a raw, ragged mess, his armor and face were mottled with blood-splatter, and he sported a nasty bruise blooming purple-grey on the right side of his jaw. Yet, when he turned at her movement, his expression was taut, but lucid, with no trace of panic or bloodlust—or shock, for that matter.

At the sight of her, his shoulders eased a fraction.

“Is he—“ Vera began, with a strange mixture of dread and hope, and pointed her chin at the Mad Bear.

Sero’s mouth hitched in a smirk, dry as dust, before he winced and spat blood onto the stone floor. “Alive. Not by his merit.” His eyes had narrowed slightly as he took her in, a quick once-over that started off clinical, then softened once he detected no visible injuries. “Put up a fight, the n’wah, before I knocked him out. I’ll give him that.”

“Are you all right?”

He got to his feet with a grunt, alarmed annoyance flashing across his features as he prodded his damaged jaw for loose teeth. Golden light flashed in his cupped hand before he rubbed it across his face, the gesture so absurd in its pedestrian reminders—like splashing alcohol over a fresh shave—that Vera had to stifle the tickle of hysterical laughter.

“If I say no, will you be rubbing healing salve on my scrapes and bruises?” He wasn’t looking at her when he asked, busying himself with dragging Undnar’s unresponsive form to a nearby bedroll, then rummaging through a knapsack for what Vera guessed were restoratives. Potion located and uncorked, he looked up. He caught her staring, winked, and mouthed “seventy five.”

Her bow and arrow had been shoved against the back wall. She went to retrieve them. “Will you be asking me to kiss it and make it better, while we’re at it?” At his soft grunt, she waved her thumb in the air to claim the point. “Think another attack is coming?” Bow clutched tight, she crept towards the ledge to take a look at whatever was left of the digger crew. Her eyes drifted to the mouth of the tunnel, but the lingering sense of watchful wrongness had vanished, and now, the circle of darkness stood blind and void.

If another assault was to follow, they’d be well and truly fucked. Arvel lay in a heap between the obelisks, as if something had blasted him there with brutal force, wedging him between the stones. He seemed alive, based on his feeble stirrings, but in no hurry to get to his feet, let alone counterstrike. The Breton mage was staggering around with no apparent purpose, his movements slow and jerky, as if he wasn’t sure the ground would hold his weight. A wide gash across his forehead seeped red down his cheeks. Leora lay at the foot of the stairs, an expression of stunned rage twisting her features, and Vera had the ungenerous image of a beetle stuck on its back, its legs waving ineffectually in the air as it tried to flip itself over.

There was something cagey about the Dunmer’s tone. “I doubt there will be one tonight, if I’m right about what this was. Impressive reflexes, hlakhes. Or did the spell not reach you?”

Vera turned. “What was it?”

He was busy donning his gauntlets and helmet. “Mayhem, if I were to guess.”

The label seemed sufficiently self-explanatory, so she swallowed the urge to ask for clarifications. “Why not tonight?”

Before he could answer, a harsh gasp below rerouted her attention. Helger floated into view, her mace clutched tight as her head swiveled frantically from side to side. “Hur?” The cry, hoarse yet strident and filled with barely bridled panic, bounced between the indifferent walls. “Hur! This isn’t funny!”

Vera cast her eyes around the cavern. Her stomach sank.

They were one short.

~~~

It got ugly from there, then uglier still. None of the diggers showed any signs of remembering what had happened, and no one had seen anything enter the cavern. A short, vicious debate erupted between the crew about whether to seek out their lost comrade or pack up, barricade the door behind them, and forge on. Leora, finally upright and venomous as a viper with the lingering humiliation of their recent setback, spat something derisive about cowards running home to their mamas, and blamed the victim. Arvel glared grimly and said nothing, more interested in nursing the shallow scuffs he had suffered from the stones, and the deeper gauges someone’s nails had left across his cheeks and torso. Jerome teetered on the fence between decency and bootlicking, but he was unmoored with a likely concussion, and when the Imperial rounded on him and Vera for failing their sentry duty, he fell in line and didn’t argue, busying himself with the business of healing whoever needed it. Undnar came to with an unhappy grunt, and, in an uncharacteristic show of restraint, chose to stay out of it. He traded an odd glance with Sero and nodded slowly, somewhere between acknowledgement and gratitude. When Vera shot the Mad Bear a glance, he shook his head. Don’t stick your neck out, his expression seemed to say.

By the end of it, Helger’s fury was so total she didn’t seem able to find words for it.

Vera’s heart went out to the Nord girl, but her mind was too preoccupied with trying to puzzle out the invisible threat to leave much room for grand and likely pointless gestures. Leora’s snarled dismissal notwithstanding, she had little doubt that Hurdig hadn’t run off. The Nord’s bedroll was closest to the entrance, and he had been fast asleep the last she saw him, snoring and oblivious. Something had used their confusion as a cover to sneak in and snatch the most expedient target, but it didn’t stay to confront the whole group, much like a feral dog separated from its pack might aim its teeth at a straggler, then bolt away with its prey. Except, probably not a dog. Whatever it was, it had been clever enough to douse the torches.

“I ain’t leaving without him!” Helger was screaming at Leora, well past caring about any social fallout. “You can take this whole deadra-fucked ruin and stuff it, Imperial. It might just fit!”

The Breton mage winced and looked away. Arvel watched with a surly scowl, but said nothing.

Leora paled, her lips stretching in a heinous parody of a smile, but her words were deadly calm. “No one’s stopping you, Helger. If you want to storm off after your idiot brother, suit yourself.”

Vera leaned towards the merc. “Do you have any of that pretty lights mixture of yours?” It was a long shot, but if they could see the telltale glow in the dark, perhaps there was a chance that they might discover whatever had attacked them without having to comb through every nook and cranny. Maybe they would even find Hurdig, or whatever was left of him.

Sero shook his head, but didn’t elaborate.

Vera frowned. “Then what did you buy from the wizard?”

“Nothing that’ll be particularly useful against a vampire,” he said after a short pause.

Well, fuck.

Werewolves in Falkreath, and now vampires. Vera supposed there would be dragons next. And maybe a unicorn or two, because why go small?

She swallowed another onslaught of panicked cackles. “Did you see it?”

He motioned a no. “Too busy trying to keep my head.” At her cocked eyebrow, the merc chuckled. “Attached, that is. Undnar seemed to have other plans for it.” He paused, reflecting. “There’s the choice of spell to consider. And the hunting pattern.” He shot her a quick glance before returning his attention to the crew below. “If I were to guess, it’s alone. Which bodes well for the Nord boy, I suppose—not that running around as a thrall has much merit.” He grunted in disgust. “Vampires are wretched beings.”

Below them, Helger had fallen silent. She was packing her things, her jaw clenched tight.

Undnar stood up from his bedroll, rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck with an audible crack, and lumbered towards the ledge of the balcony. “Oy, lass!”

Helger ignored him, and the Mad Bear huffed a long-suffering sigh. “Don’t be stupid.” His voice was not unkind. “With a spell like that, it’s either a necromancer, or a vampire—and a necromancer wouldn’t have risked it on a large group. And it’s hunting all by its lonesome, or we’d be dead already. Best thing we can do for your brother is to make sure he’s the only source of food. That’ll keep him breathing longer.” He motioned at the locked gate. “If I may be so bold as to make a counterproposal to your brave, albeit likely wasteful departure, here’s what I suggest. We go through, barricade the door to keep the bastard contained close to the surface. Tombs such as these tend to have an exit on the other side, and I’d wager Bleak Falls is no exception. And once we’re through, we loop back and bring plenty of fire with us to root out this bloodsucker. And rescue your brother.”

Helger stopped packing and wheeled around, her mouth opening on an objection, but Leora cut her off. “I don’t recall appointing you leader of this group, Silver-Tongue. We’ll do as I say, and I say she’s free to go. I don’t work with deserters.” She turned to Helger. “We’re done. I want you out of my sight. The rest of you, we go in now, so pack your shite. Jerome, lay a fire rune on the door once we’re through. I’ll spin the stones. Now, move!”

~~~

She wasn’t sure what decided her, in the end. Perhaps it was the flash of fear on Helger’s face, and the briefest hitch in her step as she faced the mouth of the tunnel, before setting her jaw and striding forth, her mace at the ready, the flicker of her torch pitifully fragile against the darkness. Perhaps it was the way Leora had ordered Vera to the back again, along with Arvel. She watched the Imperial’s hand curl around Sero’s arm as she leaned in to whisper something into his ear. There was an aggressive edge to her advances now, simmering anger layered over her earlier unquestioned entitlement—as if she had a point to prove. Perhaps it was the way Arvel’s eyes kept shifting to Leora’s pack (and the claw it concealed) whenever they stalled in the dank corridor, waiting for the Breton mage to weave incandescent glyphs into the stones in the wake of their passage. Perhaps it was that the mage in question was looking increasingly ill with subtle, ambiguous symptoms—shuffling stumbles, sweat dripping down his brow into slightly glazed eyes—though he was trying to hide it. Perhaps, it was that Vera’s own anger and terror had curdled into something darker, a venomous sort of spite that came after any misplaced hope for fairness, or justice, or just plain old practicality had burned itself out, leaving only malicious compliance and quiet sabotage in its ashes. Or, perhaps, when it was all said and done, it was simply that sometimes, motive was irrelevant, and the only thing that mattered was opportunity.

They moved at a painfully slow crawl, checking every crumbling dead-end for traps and treasure. Stuck at the back of their shrunken procession, Vera stalled, assuring herself that the Dunmer digger was too busy prying a ring from the knucklebone of some long-dead adventurer they found crumpled against a wall to pay her any attention. She pretended to readjust her armor and palmed the bottle of poison. The cork came out easily with a press of her thumb. The damp rotting dark masked the subtle scent of the aconite extract as she dumped out most of the vial’s contents onto the floor, replaced the cork, and hurried forward to catch up.

The next step took a bit more effort.

Another swarm of rats accosted them on a creaky spiral staircase leading deeper into the bowels of the ruin, but the rodents were few and dispatched quickly. At the bottom of the stony well, they came upon a wide chamber lined with shelves bearing moldy bandages and rust-eaten embalming tools. The braziers in the corners put up no protest when they lit them. A crude limestone slab—a dissection table, an altar, or both—stood in the center, its porous surface stained deep with murky smears.

Leora and Arvel brightened up, checking the chamber for valuables, rifling through urns, shoving the embalming paraphernalia around to look for better salvage. The Dunmer digger’s cheer evaporated quickly when his employer announced that she would be keeping anything of significant value “to divvy up later.” Undnar, for his part, seemed more interested in rummaging for breakfast in his knapsack, and Sero took the opportunity to stalk into the ill-lit corridor, sending a clot of bluish light into the darkness ahead. It met a wall and bobbed up and down before settling, the glow fracturing over the intricate lattice of vast cobwebs.

Jerome didn’t look heartened. He shuffled sluggishly, his pale face slicked with a sickly sheen. His eyes didn’t quite focus, though whether this was a symptom of magica depletion or the lingering effects of an earlier concussion, Vera couldn’t tell. Whichever it was, he took a stumbling step towards the table, then collapsed, knocking down an urn on his way down. It shattered, belching a cloud of bitter ash into the air.

Leora had the grace to let some approximation of distress twist her features into a pouty moue. She shouldered off her pack before checking on her underling.

Sometimes, the only thing that mattered was opportunity.

The others were busy clustering around the Breton mage to pay her much heed. Vera set down her knapsack next to Leora’s, crouched down, shoved the poison vial into the Imperial’s pack, and rifled through her own belongings for a healing potion before joining the circle of concerned graverobbers.

The Breton snatched the bottle of restorative Vera handed him—his third, by the looks of it—and tipped it back, draining the contents too quickly and spluttering with a swallow that went askance. “I’ll be fine, quit your fretting,” he coughed. “It’s that gods-damned Nord kid. Thick as an ox, and with the hooves to prove it. Like getting hit by an anvil.”

Vera caught Undnar’s frown before he smoothed it out. He exchanged a quick look with Sero. The Dunmer shook his head, but neither chose to elaborate.

The rest seemed to accept Jerome’s explanation without questioning. “We’ll rest here a moment while you recover your magica,” Leora announced magnanimously. “Don’t take too long, we need to keep moving.”

From there, it had boiled down to logistics. Arvel was sulking again. Vera drifted to his side and made a show of examining a ruined tome left on one of the shelfs. The ancient paper turned to dust under her touch. “What do you think is actually wrong with Jerome?” she asked under her breath.

“What do you mean?” He seemed to have warmed up to her, perhaps because of their shared omission about the torches, and whatever burden of guilt they now carried between them. Either way, he spoke in a hushed whisper, with a note of conspiracy tucked between the words.

“Sero and I, we get wages, so we’re out of the game. And I don’t think Undnar’s interested in trinkets. But for your crew, that’s two people gone already, and now, Jerome’s not looking too good.” She pretended to hesitate. “More loot for whomever makes it to the other end, I guess.”

The digger’s eyes narrowed. “As far as the Nords kids go, I say good riddance. Never really pulled their weight. And Jer will be fine. Bit puny, like all you Bretons, but he’ll get back on his feet. Always does.”

Vera shrugged and forced an uneasy chuckle. “Maybe he found some weird mushrooms and just couldn’t help himself, eh?”

Arvel’s return grimace wasn’t much of a smile—too sour for that—but his eyes had darted to the mage, still propped against the altar, still looking sallow and sweating profusely. And then he glanced at Leora’s pack again before promptly looking away.

Vera drifted away from the shelf. Undnar, Leora, and Sero were examining something at the end of the corridor.

“I personally don’t fancy the idea of venturing further in without a mage, so I can maybe spare one more healing potion.” She fished out another vial—leaving her with three more—before shouldering her knapsack. Arvel had followed her, and he now stood right by Leora’s belongings. “Give it to Jer while I take a look at these cobwebs up ahead, will you?”

She left him to it, and didn’t look back when the rustle of leather and the soft clink of a metal buckle being unfastened reached her ears. Before he found the claw, he’d find the mostly empty vial. The knowledge that monkshood was widespread in Cyrodiil, but didn’t grow in Skyrim’s harsh climate, was common enough among the hunters she’d met.

With any luck, Arvel would draw his own conclusions. She wondered briefly which route he would choose—back through the glyph-stained dark, back to the vampire threat, in hopes of reaching the surface to search for better comrades for a future attempt; or onward, skulking through shadows, racing them to whatever lay at the end of the ruin.

Or, perhaps, he would try to use the last of the poison on one of them. She hadn’t left much in the vial, but there would be enough for a single dose.

~~~

“We’ll go through in groups of three,” Leora ordered after they cleared the entrance of webbing. “Silver-Tongue and the sell-sword, you come with me. Jer, Arvel, and the Breton, at the back.” She eyed Vera before turning to Arvel. “Keep it quiet. If you bring this damned spider down on us, you won’t see a septim when we’re through with this. Are we clear? Take a good look at the cavern, plot your path, and don’t fuck this up.”

While the rest of the group surveyed the cave for the safest path to proceed, the Mad Bear abandoned his position next to the Imperial and lumbered over to Vera. “A word, Snowberry?”

She frowned at the atypical question. The Nord usually demanded attention, with a healthy dose of verbose buffoonery, but he never asked for it politely.

She followed him out of earshot.

The Bastard Bear hooked his fingers under the leather cord at his neck and pulled the Mara amulet off. It snagged on his mane before he yanked it free and shoved it at her.

Vera crossed her arms, took a step backwards, and scowled. “If you’re about to tell me that the spider is going to get the wrong idea, I suggest you save your breath and go hand that thing to Leora. Maybe she can add it to her collection.” At the Nord’s chagrined expression, she pointed her chin at the knot of copper and turquoise. “Is it even real?”

Undnar shot a brief glance at the others and shrugged. “It’s a bit more than what it seems, lass, if that’s what you’re asking,” he confided. “I have a friend at the College, you see, clever fellow, and quite talented with enchanting. I had him lay on a little extra spell—nothing that would ever offend Lady Mara, naturally, for gambling with the Divines’ favor is as thankless as it is unwise. But,” he added more quietly, “our mage companion isn’t recovering quite as quickly as one might hope, and you and I both know that while Teldryn is quite spectacular with destruction and conjuration, he isn’t much of a healer. So, Snowberry, seeing how our valiant leader has taken your steadfast presence at our side a bit, shall we say, personally… I thought you might make use of it. Think of it as an extra precaution, so that we can all get to our destination as safely as a Nordic tomb rife with danger will allow.”

“What does it do, then?” And why had he given it to her for safekeeping on that first ill-fated excursion to the Forsworn encampment?

Undnar shrugged. “Simple, really. It borrows a bit of magic from any beneficial spell cast in one’s vicinity and redirects it to the wearer.”

She frowned. “Why did you leave it behind when you went to take on those Forsworn?”

The Mad Bear beamed. “Praise the Divines, for she holds our first adventure dear to her heart and remembers every fine detail!”

“Oh, cut it out,” Vera sighed, more resigned than acerbic by that point. “Well?”

His expression veered back towards the serious. “I already told you, Snowberry. The sell-sword, for all his fine qualities, is rather indifferent at restoration. The amulet would have leached from him, thus setting us back, and I needed him on his feet quickly.” He twinkled, the mischievous spark in his eyes freshly reignited. “Of course, had you donned that armor…”

“If you’re quite done chit-chatting?” Leora’s voice was laced with irritation.

It seemed easier to pocket the amulet and not argue, though Vera refused to put it around her neck on principle.

The creature that had woven the massive cobwebs—each intersecting strand as thick as a heavy duty fishing line and so viciously adhesive that peeling it from skin left behind red angry welts that beaded with lymph—stayed out of sight as they slunk through the vast, watery grotto. Some thirty feet above, the vaulted ceiling funneled diluted daylight through a circular opening so thickly layered with spider silk it looked, from where Vera crept along the wall, like a cup fuzzy with three weeks’ worth of mold. Organic debris crunched unpleasantly under her boots as she tried to skirt around the pallid pods clustered in lumpy protrusions along the walls and floor. She’d seen plenty of spider eggs while working with Bothela—and a few frostbite spider pods a miner would bring on occasion in exchange for a modest monetary reward, some tea, and a chat—but never anything so huge.

The first trio had gone through without a hitch, and she could see their figures shifting in the shadowed hallway that led out of the web-riddled cavern. Of their own group, Jerome had gone in first, carefully inching his way along the right-hand wall. Arvel followed shortly after, leaving Vera to go in last, but she saw absolutely no point in willingly occupying the most vulnerable position. The second he stepped through the entrance, she followed, hooking a left instead of a right, and tracking along the opposite wall. A large circular grate in the center of the room splashed ripples of refracted light onto the walls of the wide well it covered. Water below, Vera guessed.

She drew level with an enormous egg sack and stopped. Out the corner of her eyes, she could see that the other two had fallen behind. She pivoted quietly, trying to keep her boots soft on the litter of desiccated shells and bone fragments.

On the other side of the cavern, the mage had come to a halt and bent his head down, his hands pressing into his thighs as if he had just run a sprint. Even from where she stood, she could see his shoulders trembling. Arvel stalled too, hissing something at the Breton’s back.

A soft clicking rattle behind Vera prickled her nape with sudden terror. She turned, painfully slowly, like moving underwater, her mouth abruptly dry as desert dust. The glutinous encasement of the egg sack at her back distorted with internal scuttling. It rippled and wobbled, previously fused sections ripping at the seams with viscous crackles.

She didn’t wait to find out what might come out of the hatching sack. She hurried ahead, eyes on the exit, the frenzied whoosh whoosh whoosh of blood in her ears temporarily drowning out the cracking noises behind her. Over the last ten meters that separated her from the safety of the corridor, she abandoned all pretense of stealth and sprinted forward. Five meters… Three meters… Her momentum carried her straight into the Mad Bear and the collision rattled her teeth before he righted her with one heavy paw on her shoulder. He might as well have been a wall, for all the cushioning he provided. “Easy there, Snowberry, no need to throttle.”

Vera wheeled out of his grasp and looked back. Jerome and Arvel had caught up, and while the mage was ash-pale and black-eyed with horror, the Dunmer digger was chuckling. “That little hatchling gave you a fright, Breton? How’d I get stuck with the jumpy ones?”

Jerome chose not to comment—he was still gasping for breath. Behind Arvel, Vera spotted a knobby spider, about the size of a medium dog, wobble out of its shell on tentative legs.

“Laugh all you want,” Jerome gasped, “but whatever laid those eggs can’t be too far. I’d rather not tangle with it.”

“Was that a pun, mage?” Arvel cackled.

Undnar grinned in toothy approval, and the relief of a potential disaster averted wrestled a reluctant snort out of Vera, as well as a new-found appreciation for the Breton mage—or, minimally, solidarity at his discomfort with overgrown arachnids.

“Enough stalling, took you long enough already,” Leora cut in, and they filed after her, Sero and Undnar close on the Imperial’s heels, Vera trailing after the mage who was still breathing like a perforated bellow.

Arvel fell behind, bringing up the rear.

Magelights floated forward through the stuffy dark, coming to rest in a small, circular room. Sero tossed a small clot of fire at the wall, and a torch spluttered to life. Vera’s eyes fastened on the purple gleam of what she guessed was a soul gem, nestled in a metal holder next to a platform piled high with what looked like rolled up carpets. Leora pocketed the gem before anyone else could object, and Vera squashed a momentary flare of visceral hatred before the realization of what the bundles of cloth really were crowded it out.

The corpses were better preserved compared to the ones she had scraped for gravetar during her time with Lovinar, perhaps on account of the high altitude, or of some subtle difference in embalming technique.

“Catacombs up ahead,” Undnar cautioned. “I recommend a strategy, lass. They tend to swarm, as I’m sure you’re well aware. And mind your footing around the traps.”

Leora looked like she was about to snarl something biting, but then she reconsidered, softening her stance, her body shifting from bristling anger to predatory fluidity. “You aren’t wrong, Nord. We do need a strategy. And to be fair, so far I’ve rather enjoyed working with you two.” She smiled her very white smile at Undnar, then at Sero—and ignored everyone else. “It’s rare to have someone at your back who makes you feel so… safe.”

Vera succumbed to temptation and shot a look at Arvel to gauge his reaction to this fresh new bullshit. The digger sucked on his teeth and spat onto the stones, a flash of irritable derision crossing his features before he bridled it.

“Seems like the perfect job for a light-footed archer, doesn’t it?” Leora’s smile acquired a malicious edge as she peered into the dark tunnel before turning to survey Vera. “That’d be you, pup. Sneak up on the draugr and take them out in their little nooks. The rest of us will mop up whatever you miss. Oh, and don’t worry, Jer will help you with some fire.”

Vera’s stomach sank. Leora was going to use her and the fraying mage as draugr fodder.

Undnar raised his finger and opened his mouth to object, but Sero beat him to it. “Not a bad idea, Imperial.” His tone gave away very little beneath the veneer of lazy sarcasm. “I’d be happy to join them. Always better to take out the restless bastards at range, I find, since they do burn rather well. Unless my employer has any objections?” he added, with a tinge of gleeful spite he didn’t bother hiding.

The Mad Bear beamed in benevolent enthusiasm. “Excellent idea, Teldryn. And though my blade’s thirst shan’t be slaked by these desiccated wretches, my arm can use some exercise. Best ready your bow, Snowberry, and there might be a bard’s tale or two in your future.”

~~~

There was something indescribably awful about the Nord undead—an insidious wrongness that Vera couldn’t capture with a simple description. The first one to come awake in the rot-sweet dark, after she’d taken out two with her bow, lining her shots with painstaking care in the treacherous glare of the magelight Jerome had sent to hover under the ceiling, momentarily froze her with inarticulable panic. Her back broke out in cold, clammy sweat and her aim faltered, sending her arrow off-target. Perhaps it was how corspe-like they were in appearance and how life-like they were in their movements. Its coming into wakefulness layered her perception with images of friends and companions stirring in their bedrolls, their limbs heavy with the lingering grogginess of sleep. It left her with the sick feeling that the draugr weren’t dead in any technical sense of the term—that they were men and women trapped in desiccated husks, in some eternal in-between, so gripped by the automaticity of routine they never noticed their own demise.

The magelight chose that moment to fizzle out. In the sudden darkness, the creature’s eyes glowed ghostly blue as it searched blindly for a target. It uttered something that might have been words once, but was now nothing but a garbled growl tearing itself out of an atrophied larynx.

Fire flared to life, and Sero’s firebolt roared through the stale air, kindling the draugr and setting its resin-soaked form aflame like a torch. It painted the crypt in crimson arabesques, the stench of burning tar so thick Vera had to fight the urge to gag. The rest of her ill-gotten team charged forward, weapons bared, but in the bloody glare of the pyre—and maybe they should really just burn their dead, she thought wildly—more specks of electric blue winked into being and constellated in the darkness ahead. There was a feeling like a thunderstorm gathering, a hiccup of silence, and then, from the blind dark, “Zuun Haal Vik!” It ground through her bones, the words turning into matter, their shockwave narrowly missing her when she lurched to the left. They hit the Breton mage. He stumbled, his arms flailing, and lost control of the electric spell he had been gathering. An errant bolt zapped Vera’s calf, and she smothered a yelp before pressing herself against the wall. Sweat stung her eyes. She bit her cheek until she tasted copper, nocked an arrow and drew, aiming for the two dots of electric blue. The shouting had come from that direction.

“Jer, light!” Leora screamed. Metal clanged against metal, against stone, squelched into flesh.

Vera held her breath and released the bowstring. One of the blue dots went dark, but it made little difference; the other one just kept on moving.

A flare of gaslight blue resolved into tawny tongues of fire, and finally she could see, by the merc’s flame cloak spell. He was ahead of the rest, slicing his way through a swarm of draugr with economic precision, not a single movement wasted. Undnar yanked his axe out of a fallen corpse before swinging it in wide arcs at those undead who had decided, based on whatever calculus they were capable of, to not tangle with the Dunmer. There was a grin on the Mad Bear’s face the likes of which Vera had never seen—so feral it bordered on transcendent.

A flicker of movement caught her attention. Another corpse was stirring in its shadowed niche on the other side of the crypt. Leora, her blades drawn, had spotted the rising draugr at the same time, shot a quick glance at it, and estimated its likely trajectory. A few feet to Vera’s right, Jerome was still trying to recover from whatever the shouting had done to him.

The Imperial turned away, stalking ahead to join Sero and the Nord.

Vera trained her bow at the corpse and drew, but her attention snagged on jagged metal, a dark outline of something spiky hugging the wall in the corridor ahead. She froze. It looked like an enormous gate, or else the hammer of an oversized mouse trap. More than one way to trap a rat. More than one way to kill it, too. She ordered herself to ignore the stirring draugr and looked for the release mechanism, her heart hammering so hard her vision pulsed with it.

She would have missed the pressure plate entirely had Sero not rekindled his fire cloak spell with a quick yank of his hand. He was awfully close to it. Worse, more corpses were spilling forward, just a matter of time before one of them stumbled over the trigger.

“Teldryn, pressure plate!” she screamed, then released her arrow at a charging draugr—female, judging by the outline—spinning her off its fatal trajectory. There was no time to check on whether they heard the warning. The other draugr extracted itself out of its nook and launched itself at Jerome with preternatural speed. The mage tried to gather a spell, but his magic didn’t seem to obey him anymore. He wobbled, landed on his ass, and scrambled backwards. Vera threw herself to the side and out of the draugr’s path, fumbling for her dagger. Her left-hand grip on the hilt was a clammy, slippery mess.

It must have had a bad hip in life, based on its asymmetrical, hitching gate, Vera thought with a twinge of abstract hysteria. She lunged, slicing at the exposed tendons at the crook of the corpse’s knee. It was like trying to cut through rope. Still, the creature’s leg buckled under it. It growled its crackling threat and swung its sword, on a reverse strike. Hot, sharp pain flared across Vera’s shoulder where the blade sliced through her armor before she could roll out of the way.

She got to her feet, but so did the draugr. There wasn’t any time to nock and draw, nor any guarantee that an arrow would stop it.

She’d always been shit with knives.

She blinked.

The draugr’s head was gone. Headless, it sank to its knees and pitched forward, landing with a rigid thud onto the stones at Vera’s feet.

“Close shave, hlakhes.”

The crypt had gone eerily quiet.

Vera couldn’t decide whether she wanted to throttle the merc or fling herself into his arms, so she did neither. “For what it’s worth, Demonchops, I’m glad you didn’t turn into wall decor.”

He cackled before taking off one gauntlet. “I appreciate the timely arrow. Listen, I don’t have much magica left, but it should be enough—” golden light pooled in his palm, “—for you.” There was a gruffness to his words, and just a hint of heat. “Come here.”

She stepped closer. His palm passed over her shoulder with more contact than the healing spell necessitated.

“Hey!” Jerome had gotten up. “Where’s Arvel?”

They searched the area while Leora’s strident orders bounced off the walls in splintered echoes. Vera found more corpses, mercifully inanimate, but no sign of the digger. Undnar unearthed a locked trunk and bashed it open, not bothering with trying to pick the lock. It lent a wealth of moldering clothing that fell apart on contact, and a few ancient coins.

But Arvel was gone.

~~~

“Why would he run now?” Leora fumed once Undnar suggested that they turn back and track down the missing Dunmer. “Not like him to bolt over a few draugr.”

Not because of the draugr, you vapid bitch. “Do you still have the claw?” Vera kept her tone as neutral as she could.

The Imperial shot her a black look. “What do you mean? Of course I have it.”

The Mad Bear adopted a very strange expression—piercingly attentive, though not entirely unamused. “Perfect time to check, before we decide which way to go, isn’t it? I wouldn’t mind another look at it, while we’re on the subject.”

“You’ll get a look at it when we get to the locked part, and not a minute before,” Leora snapped.

Undnar pantomimed retreat with a placating wave of his hands. “As you wish.”

Still, the digger’s disappearance changed the dynamic—perhaps simply by virtue of arithmetic. Undnar took over in all but name, though subtly, and without fanfare. Gone was the bluster and the petty social games. Vera was almost certain that the Mad Bear suspected the claw had gone missing along with his former associate, but he didn’t turn them around, and the puzzle of it gnawed at her, snagging more and more urgently with each inch of covered ground.

They made their way through the tunnels slowly, careful not to disturb any of the sleeping draugr. Vera found that she could move almost soundlessly in her new armor unless someone lumbered after, and she settled into old habits the second Undnar suggested she and Sero scout ahead, but without preemptive attacks this time.

After weathering the thorny dynamic of the larger team, working with the merc was so easy it was almost joyful, restless dead Nords notwithstanding. He’d send a small light down the corridor, just enough illumination for her to chart the path and map the threats, without drawing undue attention. Her gait was quieter, so he provided cover while she snuck ahead, then backtracked. The logic of the tunnels and chambers slowly resolved itself into something she could anticipate with a reasonable degree of accuracy. What she didn’t notice, the Dunmer’s keener night vision supplemented. He was much better at picking out the animate draugr from the truly dead ones, but he seemed oddly inattentive to traps, and they teased each other in hushed whispers about their respective blind spots as they crept back to rejoin the others.

The Breton mage still looked worse for wear—the same sickly pallor, and a subtle tremor in his hands he was doing his best to hide—but his magic had stabilized.

They managed to sidestep confrontation for the most part. The narrower tunnels had been dicey, but they made sure to lure the corpses that couldn’t be avoided one at a time. Leora hung back. She seemed adept enough with her daggers whenever there was no avoiding the fight, but she didn’t charge into the fray.

After the cramped hallways, the going got easier, barring a few skeevers and one very ill-tempered undead that burst out of a stone sarcophagus and hauled itself at them with strangled growls. Undnar, closest to it, issued his own, much more impressive battle bellow and cleaved the corpse in half with an upswing of his oversized axe.

After that, Vera allowed herself to relax a little. The man-made tunnels ended, giving way to a natural grotto carved into the mountain by a brisk underground stream. She drew the crisp, snowy air into her lungs until she was dizzy with it, washing away the cloying stench of decay coating her airways. The stream resolved itself into a waterfall thundering behind a narrow stone bridge. Another draugr—very much awake and pacing back and forth—went plummeting down like a meteor after Sero and Jerome sent identical fireballs at it.

Once the draugr had settled into a more permanent state of deadness, the Breton mage crouched by the stream, cupped his hands to his mouth, and drank long and deep, his throat working around greedy gulps of icy water as if he couldn’t get enough of it. Vera caught Undnar’s narrow-eyed glance before the Mad Bear proposed they stop and rest. Leora’s refusal was flat and categorical. She insisted they press on, her eyes tracking across the bridge where only one set of footprints marked the snow.

Arvel hadn’t gone through here.

Vera had half-expected him to run ahead, but it seemed that the shifty digger was more cautious than that. She was now certain that he had chosen to retrace his steps, perhaps in the hopes of making his way out through the well in the spider cave.

Another tunnel opened up at the other end of the grotto, but it was depopulated. The air was different, less heavy with rot, but thick with a bitter, fuel-like tang—tar, Vera guessed, or pitch.

They stalled in front of a strangely shaped hallway. Sero’s magelight drifted forward, throwing into relief the intricate masonry—most certainly man-made, and more delicate than the crudely carved corridors they had encountered earlier. Vera squinted into the gloom ahead. “Do you see these—“

“Slats,” the merc nodded. “In the stone.”

Undnar drew level with them, Leora and Jerome behind him. “Ah, the swinging axes. I was wondering when we’d see something like this.”

It took them about an hour to locate all the triggers in the floor tiles. Most of them were easily spotted, but a few, right in the middle of the tunnel, blended in with the nearby stones. Vera, at the back once again, her breath hitching every time she passed one of the dark slats, had to yank Jerome back by the scruff of his robes before he stepped on one of the suspicious tiles. He wheeled around. She stumbled back, narrowly missing triggering the trap. The mage’s nostrils were flared, and his face twisted into a vicious snarl before he recalled himself.

Not good.

He blinked in momentary confusion before muttering “sorry about that.”

Things went south from there, and fast. The second they stepped into the cavern, an ear-splitting crash sent Vera lurching for the cover of a nearby column. Sarcophagi cracked open, one after another, the heavy plates that sealed them launching into the air and fracturing with bursts of basalt shrapnel. One errant piece nicked Undnar’s forearm, and as the blood beaded in the gash, the Breton mage suddenly went ballistic and pounced, trying to latch onto the Nord’s arm like a rabid rat. The Mad Bear managed to side-step the gnashing teeth, swung his axe, and clocked him on the head with the haft. The mage skidded backwards and stayed there, unmoving in the iridescent slime that had pooled at the center of the room.

Vera didn’t have time to ponder whether the blow had proved fatal. Half a dozen draugr swarmed towards them, eerily silent save for the creaking of rusty armor. Her attention narrowed to the pinprick focus of surviving—draw, aim, release; nock, draw, aim...

An arrow whistled by, so close she could feel the gust of displaced air on her cheek. She ducked behind the column, her heart hammering in her ears. She heard the merc snarl something in Dunmeri, and she forced herself to nock another arrow before peeking out of her hiding spot. Draugr hemmed him in on three sides. He dodged a blow, parried, deflected another blow though it staggered him, found his footing quickly, lunged… Undnar, at the other end of the cavern, was cleaving his way through another cluster of undead. On the balcony above them, an archer, almost as sinewy as its bow, drew careful aim. Vera released her arrow. It embedded itself in the archer’s ropy thigh, but only served to draw the corpse’s attention to her, though it diverted it from Sero.

She had a split second to wonder where Leora had disappeared to when someone shoved her from behind, sending her right into the path of the archer’s arrow. The only thing that saved her was the amethyst-rimmed tear yawning open right in front of her. It belched forth a horned lava wraith. Vera stumbled out of the way as the monstrosity pivoted in a graceful arc, its heat scorching her skin, before launching itself at the draugr, trailing fire in its wake. Flames bloomed across the iridescent pool in green tendrils like the petals of some perverse flower, unfurling.

“About to blow!” Vera screamed.

Too late.

The world exploded.

She crashed into a wall, the wind knocked out of her. Black circles ate at her vision.

The tickle of a healing spell, like a faraway echo, ghosted across her skin. Her eyes cleared a bit.

No time. The world lurched and careened sideways as she tried to get to her feet. She’d lost her grip on the bow, but it hadn’t gone far. She snatched it and was nocking another arrow, on pure muscle memory, her eyes streaming with recent shock and bitter smoke when a draugr, blazing like a bonfire, bore down on her, its toothless mouth squaring black around a primal scream. Only a desiccated “eghhh” came out. She released the bowstring. The arrow went right through where the body’s nose should have been, and it lost its legs and went sprawling, momentum carrying it forward. Vera skittered out of the way, but the tumbling corpse slammed into her shin and she toppled over it, landing painfully on her hip before scrambling to her feet again.

She spotted the merc through the smoke, and her panic eased a bit. Unlike the draugr, he seemed untroubled by the dwindling fire. He made quick work of the last undead—a vicious strike, close and personal like an embrace, his sword sinking through the corpse’s chest before he yanked it out in one smooth movement.

Then, deathly silence.

Undnar was lumbering back. His beard and hair were singed, sticking out in every direction and giving him the air of a demented thistle.

Sero stretched his neck and groaned. “Damned Nords. As miserable in death as they were in life.”

“Well,” Undnar coughed. “That could have gone better. You all right there, Snowberry?” He looked around. “Where did our aspiring bloodsucker slink off to?”

“Over there,” Sero pointed with his sword.

They found Jerome huddled in a corner, sheltering behind an empty sarcophagus. The golden glow of a healing spell fizzled out as they approached.

“Stay back,” the mage barked when he spotted them. “I’m…I’m infected.”

“Now, he fesses up,” the Mad Bear harrumphed, though without much rancor. He did stop at a safe distance. “Of course you’re infected. And Arvel ran off with the claw, if I’m not mistaken—and I’m very rarely mistaken, friend.” He leaned on his axe, every bit the tired farmer after a hard day of digging up potatoes. “Where’s your boss, Breton?”

The mage shrugged. “Went up ahead, I imagine.”

The Mad Bear nodded in approval. “And got herself stuck at the locked gate, no doubt. Ah, but the Divines are as merciful as they are just. I take it you won’t be coming with?”

“Why?” Jerome wiped at the rivulet of blood trickling into his eyes. His jaw was working, as if he was tonguing his teeth, trying to be discrete about it. “You didn’t need us. Could’ve gotten that claw yourself.”

“Simple,” the Mad Bear said after a very long pause. His tone was infinitely patient, and terrifyingly kind. “If there is one thing I do not like—and I do like a great many things, do not mistake me—it is competition. Never more so,” he propped his chin on his knuckles, folded over the haft of his axe, and beamed a chipped grin, “than when it is unworthy. And now, Breton, I suggest you find yourself a priest. Before it is too late.”

Chapter Text

They found Leora crouched at the foot of a large semi-circular door, her pack at her feet, its contents strewn helter-skelter across the stone floor. Her muttering drifted down the dimly lit hall, and Vera had to apply herself to keep the malicious smirk off her face as it vied with a pang of unwelcome sympathy—the panic of checking over and over for a prized possession gone missing was all too familiar. She glanced at Undnar to ascertain his expression and found in it exactly what she had expected: a complete lack of surprise. The Mad Bear wasn’t smirking either. He wore his affable mask, though he hadn’t troubled himself with concealing what lay beneath, the undertone flickering between the seams and providing confirmation for what Vera already suspected. It was the same expression Said wore mid-game during a chess match with Jules—or sometimes Dima. Likely scenarios accounted for, possible moves all planned ahead, leaving behind the calm certainty of carefully mapped bifurcations.

“Missing something?” Undnar queried as they drew close to the Imperial.

Leora whirled around, her eyes narrowing in a suspicious glare. “Did you put him up to it, Nord?” There was something of the cornered viper to her now, on the offensive by virtue of being backed against a wall.

Vera stifled a grim chuckle at the literalness of the analogy and cast her eyes at the locked door. Some kind of mechanism involving a system of concentrically positioned carved medallions hugged a panel where three holes in the center seemed to be waiting for a key. The medallions themselves were carved in the likeness of the same animal designs she had spotted on the obelisks.

“Have Arvel steal the claw from you?” The Nord harrumphed with an almost convincing show of naive incredulity. “Now, why would I do that? Smart lass that you are, surely you can see how that wouldn’t in any way benefit me.” He rolled his shoulders. “No, Imperial, I dare say you might have done that all by yourself,” he paused with a meaningful look. “Thereby greatly inconveniencing me in the process, I might add. And if there is one thing I do not relish, lass, it is being inconvenienced.” There was no mistaking the edge in his voice—still mild, more rebuke than outright hostility, but awfully close to that line where it might turn deadly.

Leora straightened from the mess on the floor and squared her shoulders. Her hands rested on the hilts of her daggers. “Are you threatening me, Silver-Tongue?”

“Perish the thought,” the Nord intoned, now with a healthy dose of amusement. “Threatening you won’t get us past this door any faster, will it?” He crossed his arms over his massive chest and settled into an impression of contemplation. “Now lass, I suggest you think long and hard about that claw—picture it in your mind’s eye as precisely as if it were your own mother’s face—and tell me, to the best of your recollection, what the three medallions on its underside depicted.” At Leora’s glower, he raised a finger in warning. “And if your memory proves accurate, I will overlook your disastrous inability to lead this ill-fated expedition—despite my unfortunately misplaced trust in your competence—and strive to usher us to our destination. After, that is, we renegotiate the terms of our agreement.”

Leora’s face twisted with fury. “You wretched snake,” she hissed, and drew her daggers. “You set us up.”

The Mad Bear shrugged affably. “Three against one, Imperial. I recommend you apply yourself to solving this… Snowberry, what did you call it?” He beamed at Vera, toothy and triumphant. “Mathematical puzzle, was it?”

The digger’s eyes darted to Vera and her expression darkened, but she sheathed her weapons before returning her attention to the Nord. “So you’re an oath breaker to boot. I shouldn’t be surprised with you Nords. This is why your province hasn’t amounted to shit worth scraping off the Empire’s boot soles.”

Undnar clicked his tongue in a display of offended patriotism—entirely fake, judging by the way his eyes twinkled. “Now, now, I see that you’ve not been paying attention. I am many things, lass, though oath breaker isn’t one of them. What did I promise you, hmm? To shoulder the expenses should reparations be needed—and I will. That the relic I wish to procure from this ruin has no monetary equivalent—and it doesn’t. I never said that I wouldn’t help myself to other spoils, should we encounter them along our path—only that I do not require them specifically.” He heaved a sigh, appearing to think. “But I have no intention of cheating you out of your hard earned reward. All I am asking is—our original deal being null and void since you’ve lost the claw—we come to some other, mutually beneficial terms.”

To Leora’s credit, she managed to keep her cool, despite the Mad Bear’s obvious provocation. “Let me get this straight. You can open the door without the claw? All you’re missing is the pattern?”

The Mad Bear grinned, but said nothing.

“Even if you do have the means to get through, Nord, what’s to stop you or your underlings from bashing my head in the moment I give you what you want?” Leora smiled thinly. “Looks to me like we’re at a standstill after all.”

~~~

It didn’t take them long to come to a new arrangement.

The unspoken implication that Undnar didn’t already know the proper pattern of symbols required to unlock the door seemed, to Vera, as unlikely as a winged rat. She prudently chose not to comment. The Mad Nord announced that he’d only be taking enough loot to cover whatever he had promised to Camilla, and the Imperial, eyes narrowed in a greedy little squint, agreed all too quickly. Vera had little doubt that the digger would renege on the deal the second an opportunity presented itself—if Undnar didn’t beat her to it—but she couldn’t quite fathom why the Nord would keep up his end of the charade. Perhaps whatever lay behind the locked door could do with an extra meatshield.

Vera cast her eyes at the merc. The helmet didn’t give away much, but he did lift a shoulder in a half-shrug when he noticed her gaze.

Leora spun the stone circles into place, lining up three medallions—bear, moth, owl. They moved with a sonorous rumble, vomiting a cloud of mineral dust into the air. Undnar took over after that. He rummaged through his pack, extracting a worn leather kit which revealed an impressive array of lockpicks. “Long and winding are the roads we travel, and they bring us to the doorstep of friends and foes alike. Sometimes, there is little difference.” He chuckled as he inserted three oddly shaped picks into the holes in the central panel. “Picked up this little trick from an… acquaintance in Riften. Useful fellow, for a scoundrel.”

Ten minutes later, the door rumbled open, sinking slowly into the floor.

“Best we ready ourselves,” the Mad Nord advised. “Mind your footing, Snowberry. These inner chambers can be treacherous.”

Sero had taken a few steps forward then stopped, letting his patron and Leora edge forward into the vast cavern. Vera readied her bow and gave the merc a curious glance. “Can we expect more draugr?”

He nodded curtly. “Find higher ground, hlakhes. And try to stay on the perimeter.”

~~~

The merc stalked ahead, but Vera fell back and crept forward at a snail’s pace, twitching every time she came level with a sarcophagus. Most stood lidless and empty, as if whatever inhabited them had wandered off and crumbled to dust long ago. Undnar was advancing at a measured pace, and she had the distinct impression that he was deliberately letting Leora take the lead.

Ahead, an odd semi-circular structure loomed grey and foreboding in the misty rays of pallid daylight filtering through the fissures in the cavern ceiling. Vera squinted, trying to make sense of the structure’s intended function, but the only association that sprung to her mind was the backrest of some giant armchair, or else a crude amphitheater, designed to project sound.

Sero kept himself ten paces behind his patron, but his blade was drawn and fire pooled in his left hand in anticipation of trouble. Yet, the cavern yielded no enemies. No draugr nooks lining the walls, no skeevers—nothing except a volley of cantankerous bats taking off in a cloud of outraged squeaks.

She scanned the room for a good vantage point and a clearer shot at the central platform, where the strange amphitheater stood. At the foot of it, Vera spotted a stone slab shaped like one of those dissection tables she saw earlier, as well as a large coffer, suspiciously conspicuous. Unease prickled her spine. Aside from a crumbling staircase to the far left, no easily accessible look-out presented itself—no ledges along the walls, where a swift stream had made the rocks slippery with algae, no convenient erosion that might lend sturdy handholds. As if the platform, or the dais, acted as a fortification.

She hesitated for only a moment before opting for the long way around, following the slippery river boulders towards the staircase. Something about the platform set her teeth on edge. She almost lost her balance on one of the slimy stones but caught herself and sped up, leaping from rock to rock until she reached the safety of solid ground. Now, if she could just get to the top landing…

The rest happened too fast. The staccato rhythm of speeding footsteps, a blur in Vera’s peripheral vision—she whirled around—and there was Leora, sprinting up the steps that led to the platform. Undnar, a good thirty paces behind the Imperial, picked up speed with an “Oy, don’t be stupid, lass!” The digger didn’t look back. She burst onto the dais, then lunged towards the suspicious coffer.

The stone slab Vera had mistaken for an embalming table thundered open. Something stirred in the depths of the sarcophagus. A low growl issued forth and refracted from the curved wall, thickening into a clot of concentrated acoustic malice. She bounded up the steps on pure adrenaline, taking them three at a time, then spun around—nock, draw, aim—just as a sinewy hand gripped the edge of the grave.

There was something intractably different about the draugr, and not just the relative complexity of its armor. Vera stood frozen as the creature extracted itself from its resting place and stepped onto the platform. It uttered another growl, parsed and textured with discernible syllables—a string of sounds in no language she understood, but there was no doubt that it had spoken.

It moved with a focused intent none of the other undead had evinced. Leora backed away, her daggers drawn, but in no hurry to engage. Undnar’s russet head came into view. His axe was in his hands, the pale arc of muted steel catching the wan light, but he was too far. Sero was further back still.

The undead lunged towards Leora, but she danced out of the way, side-stepping a strike from the draugr’s giant sword. A hiccup of hesitation, then she spun around and sprinted towards the stairs. The creature’s horned head snapped in her direction, electric blue blazing in the shadows beneath its helmet before it gave chase. Vera only had enough time to notice the Imperial’s expression—as hard as the edge of her drawn daggers, with a focused ferocity, all of it now trained on Vera: the abstract ire at an obstacle in one’s path.

She had absolutely no doubt what would come next. She didn’t stand a chance against the grave-robber at close range. Best case scenario, she’d get shoved down the stairs, right into the draugr’s lap. Worst case, Leora would stab her first, for good measure.

She let fly.

Leora’s eyes widened in shock as the arrow lodged itself in her shoulder, piercing the leather armor. “You cunt,” she snarled.

Vera nocked another arrow.

“Fus Ro Dah!”

The words warped the air, encapsulating it, like one of those distortions shimmering over heated asphalt. The resulting cluster of energy bore down on them with catastrophic speed. Vera scrambled upward, but the edge of the shout still slammed into her shoulder, as material as a battering ram, and she spun around with a pained yelp. She managed to hang on to her bow, but she lost her balance and landed hard on her ass, her teeth clanking together and her breath jamming.

The shout caught the Imperial full tilt, blowing her clean off the stairs. She slammed into the wall of the grotto, head meeting stone with a sickening crack, then tumbled down, ragdoll-limp, before disappearing out of view. A thud—muted and final—reached Vera’s ears.

The draugr ran up the steps, terribly fast despite its hitched gait.

She let fly again, but the arrow simply bounced off the draugr’s armor. The creature growled another string of incomprehensible syllables and raised its sword. She dodged the blow, rolling out of the blade’s lethal path. Metal clanked on stone, drawing sparks. The sword rose again. She kicked out with her foot, jamming her heel into the inside of the draugr’s knee joint, and it wobbled, but didn’t deviate from its murderous intent. The sword bore down, narrowly missing her arm.

“Oy, dead one!”

The creature’s head snapped towards the sound. Vera drew a ragged breath and chanced a glance. Undnar had lumbered onto the platform, axe at the ready, his face twisted in gleeful fury.

“Come and get it!”

The undead pivoted on its heel and barreled down the stairs. Vera got to her feet, her legs still wobbly with shock. Sero had drawn up next to the Nord, a flame spell already bearing down on the draugr with the bassy rumble of coiled fire.

Vera groped for another arrow. Nothing wrong with shooting an enemy in the back. Death—or whatever passed for it—had stooped the creature’s shoulders and rounded its spine. Its gambeson left a narrow strip of discolored flesh exposed, right between the helmet and the collar. Tricky shot, but if it would only stop for a second…

It paused briefly at the foot of the stairs, as if to draw breath. Vera released the bowstring, but the draugr bent forward and rent the air with another materialized scream. Fus ro dah! Her arrow grazed its neck, but did no discernible damage.

The merc lunged into the path of the shout, ahead of Undnar. The shockwave lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing into the stone amphitheater.

Fuck.

Undnar staggered. His face split in a feral snarl—half grin, half grimace. He swung his axe, a vicious upswing the draugr met with an almost lazy parry. Steel crashed against steel, the clang fracturing in splintered refractions from the curved wall.

Vera drew again, the mute panic of her mostly empty quiver sending icy tingles down her legs.

Whatever death meant to it, the draugr had lost none of its battle reflexes. It met every strike with a parry followed by a counterstrike, and what it lacked in grace, it made up in sheer force, as if, eons ago it had traded its life for distilled lethality.

Undnar was still holding his position, but he was losing steam, each strike slower than the next.

She spotted the merc getting to his feet and stalking around the creature in a wide circle, hoping, she guessed, to draw up behind it while it was occupied with the Nord.

The draugr pivoted with a low growl and readied itself for another shout, drawing breath out of some ingrained habit. Vera bit her cheek and let fly again, aiming for the corpse’s throat. Could it still shout with a damaged larynx?

Her arrow silenced it on “Fus” — Sero dodged the weaker shockwave and jabbed his sword into the corpse’s side, driving the blade between armor plates. The draugr stumbled.

In the next instant, Undnar was upon it, but the corpse was faster. Its hand shot out, closing around the Nord’s throat, and he lifted him off the ground as if he weighed no more than a feather.

Something violet flashed in the Nord’s left hand before resolving into the cold bite of steel. Vera didn’t have the time to consider the choice of weapons, or why the Mad Bear had foregone his axe in favor of a dagger. He struck, driving the blade through the underside of the draugr’s chin and straight into whatever was left of its brain.

The bony hand lost its grip on Undnar’s throat, and the bard went sprawling.

Purple tendrils erupted around the corpse with the rumble of distant thunder. It swayed, then fell to its knees, collapsing to the floor with painful slowness—wooden, as if death had finally caught up with it.

As it did, something vacated it.

Vera felt it before she saw it, a consciousness so utterly perverse she had no words to capture it. It was nothing like the Imperial wetworker: no brief hitch of hesitation, no disoriented terror of sudden evanescence—as if the violet shimmer had traced a path for it to follow, a beacon, beckoning. And follow it did, with no chance to refuse, let alone dispel it. It snaked into her— through her mouth, into her nose, her eyes, her skin, its ancient rage so absolute nothing human remained of it. If she was screaming, she couldn’t hear it over the roar of the intruder. It drowned her out, bringing horror on its breath. Images flashed behind her eyelids, stark and bloody, of terror and fire beneath webbed wings and words that were not words at all, but will clotted into being. The thing that bore into her, unfurling its roots, wielded language in echoes of its masters, but its vileness was born of other, more recognizable appetites. It spread into her memories and found in them fertile soil, settling into the grooves her past had etched into her.

She fought it with every ounce of will she could muster, and as ineffectually as trying to turn a flash flood. Through the bloody fog of the Other, she heard the Nord’s barked order—“Stay put, sell-sword, don’t you dare interfere” —and Sero’s harsh, utterly foul curse.

Something was scorching her hip. The pain momentarily cleared her head, and, with the monumental effort required to bring awareness to her body—or to the fact that she still had one—she shoved her hand into her pocket. Her fingers closed around a metal circle. She yanked Undnar’s amulet out and hurled it away.

Don’t let the soul settle.

Too late.

There was no fighting it, not directly, as what remained of the draugr’s consciousness tried to overwrite hers with itself. The intimacy of its proximity was nothing like the quiet intrusiveness of the entity trapped in the black gem at the center of the Statue of Dibella. That one had been subtle, insidious, and, in retrospect, rather gentle.

This wasn’t. It didn’t trade, didn’t look for lacunae to fill, didn’t seek to match itself to preexisting mental landscapes. It tore, and trampled, and took, like a tiller harrowing a field to plant his crop, mindless of what grew there before.

Since she couldn’t fight it, she hid herself instead, stalling its progress, feeding it repetitive memories of endless trudging through dim hallways, the everyday minutia of salvage runs, an inexhaustible accumulation of irrelevant miscellanea.

Its mounting frustration burned like poison. Her body jerked with an agonized spasm, and Vera rolled to her side, trying not to choke on the rising vomit. Her vision went blurry, but she recognized Undnar’s boots as they came level with her face. A shadow fell as the Nord crouched over her. She tried to bat his hands away as he pushed her sweaty hair off her forehead. “I do apologize for the discomfort, Snowberry, but the Divines gift each of us with boons commensurable with our ability to withstand them, and none of us can afford to squander what we are given. Not in these times,” he added with a sigh. His tone became urgent. “If I understand correctly what Calcelmo claimed about your peculiar condition, you should be able to sift through the Deathlord’s recollections—something of it must be left, considering they aren’t dead in the typical sense of it. Now, listen closely, lass: he would have served someone else, a Dragon Priest. I need you to find out which one—get me a name—and, more importantly, where the priest might be buried. Look for a mask.” He straightened. “As soon as I have the information I need, we’ll take you to Farengar to take care of the soul pollution, and all will be well.”

Fuck you, Vera tried to say, but her mouth didn’t obey. It wanted to shape itself around the alien words of the draugr’s borrowed tongue, the ones that could annihilate through sound, but that too was beyond her ability. What came out was a choked gasp—raspy and pitiful.

“Teldryn, instead of glaring holes in my back, why don’t you try to keep her comfortable while I check what the ancients left for us.”

The boots drifted out of her field of vision.

Chapter Text

Far below, as befits their station in life, the worker ants scuttle, gnawing the stones into the shape of the temple that will honor his kind and those in whose name he wields Dovahzul, gifted to him by the Gods. He watches the minuscule figures from the height of where he stands in absence of his master, ensuring all orders are carried out to the letter. The one he serves has little interest in these daily routines, for his knowledge is a vastness of time counted in decades, not days and weeks and months. With his brethren, though he is first among them, he wields the weapons which the Venerable One dreams into form from will and metal and the finest of souls, harvested at the height of their season.

Upon successful completion of the colonnade, the one he serves has promised him the final Word, the one that will strip his would-be opponents of their paltry resistance. He is not in the habit of sullying himself with those above whom he has risen, for they are little more than beasts of burden. He prides himself on his restraint—it is what distinguishes him from his brethren, who shed their past with painful pangs. Still, he remains one word away from his becoming, and the flaxen-haired creature that serves his meals is at the height of her youth, soul ripe for reaping for his master’s marvels.

He could never abide wastefulness.

As if on cue, a thrall rings the bell that signals supper. The intent settles in his abdomen in pleasant anticipation, lurching into his loins just as pride swells in his ribcage at the prospect of his metamorphosis. Tomorrow, he will become more. A worthy cause for celebration…

Vera gritted her teeth against the invasive thought. She couldn’t feel her body, only her face, and her eyes had gone faulty—whether she kept them closed or open, she saw the same fuzzy outline of a snow-mottled stone monstrosity.

He was mangled, her intruder, patchy and hole-riddled with his eons of decomposition, and he got stuck on sickening loops like those scratched-up pieces of grooved plastic Jules liked to collect for his hand-powered spinning table. Sometimes, they even played hollow tunes. More often they just crackled. The narrow range of memories the draugr had retained churned over and over and over. It groped blindly for something of hers to consume and expand, until she had the distinct feeling that the dead bastard was trying to recycle his formative moments like some perverse prayer in a bid to recollect himself, completely unaware of his terminally flawed reduction.

“Eat shit,” she croaked, the sound of it momentarily startling her into partial awareness. She couldn’t match his violence—but the vileness, she had in spades. With a grim sort of fury, she dug deeper into her mind, into the discard pile she normally kept under lock and key. There was more minutia to feed the twisted fuck, but it was better than he deserved. Instead, she pried open the back drawer, the one where she kept the worst of it, the night of the raiders. They’d lucked out, in a way. The bastards had been former militia—whose mattered little, at that point, it wasn’t like anyone remembered who they were meant to be fighting for. Either way, they were disciplined about it, going at them for parts, but not helping themselves to anything extra. It was about blood, mostly, and other bits to be traded with the Citadels. For those less fortunate than her, and less damaged, it would have been drug-induced oblivion, then disassembly—but clean, and without added humiliation. She still remembered their doc’s sneer. She’d been subpar goods even then, barely decent enough for plasma.

There was a sick sort of satisfaction in sensing her intruder stumble over the grizzly instrumentalism of her offering, like watching a wasp in a sugar trap—a lure it thought it knew, turning into a bog. It wouldn’t be enough, of course, not when it was all said and done. He wouldn’t stop until she was gone, nothing but a container for his leftovers. It wasn’t the death she would have chosen, but when was it ever? Until then, she’d give him a run for his money.

The world jerked off-kilter. A familiar heat, a scent like sun-warmed granite, and beneath it, some sharp spice she couldn’t quite identify. She wanted to bask in it, to soothe the chill seeping into her bones.

“Hold tight, hlakhes.”

She’d known this voice once, even though she couldn’t recollect the speaker. Her Other was still dulling its teeth on the technicalities of flesh-cycling, unable, in his unutterable hubris, to connect soul theft to such baser, bloodier matters. He was making progress, slow enough that she could line up another memory for him to consume if she put her mind to it, but was there a point in protracting things outside of sheer spite?

He wakes content and sharp-eyed, the mess of the previous night long since cleaned up by those whose purpose it is to carry out such tasks. He feels unusually magnanimous in his satiation, and it occurs to him that he shares with those beneath him a similar arrangement, for he too serves his betters. Such is the nature of things. Today, the Destroyer bestows upon him the final Syllables of his ascension. What came before matters little.

A palm rested against her cheek, the heat of it offering solace in her algor. She turned her head, nestling into the warmth.

“Don’t tell me you’re intent on quitting, partner.”

Partner. Red gaze, unlikely, the color of a bloody sunrise. But whose?

“Only fifteen points away.” A pause. “You can still win this.”

A game. Their game.

“Teldryn…” The name rolled off her tongue ahead of any rational recollection. The snowy structure clogging her sight crumbled, giving way to grey basalt and a familiar face—ruby-red eyes widened in question, or perhaps in concern; sharp, craggy features; a starburst of crows feet, more pronounced on the left side as if their wearer had a habit of asymmetrical squinting. Her fingers twitched with the impulse to smooth out his frown, to run her thumb along one jagged eyebrow. He had gorgeous lips, she thought absently, in odd, belated revelation. She gathered her breath. “I don’t think I have much time.” Her words felt awkward in her throat, like something that had fallen fallow. She stalled, unable to find the sounds for the rest of it.

“Stay with me,” he said, voice thick with some emotion she couldn’t quite parse. A grey wall floated into view, etched with unreadable symbols.

Her back met cold stone as he set her down, and a sigh escaped her at the sudden absence of his arms. He’d been warm, at least.

Snow mottled her vision. No, no, no, not yet! She strained to see with her own eyes, to keep the merc in her sights for as long as she could. He was hunched over his pack, his hands trembling with the effort of a movement he didn’t seem able to complete. He swore, low and filthy, and when he turned to her, blood trickled from his nose, shockingly red against ash-blue skin. He wiped at it absently, smearing the back of his hand with it.

“You’re hurt?” she heard herself ask.

He shook his head irritably and turned to her, though he avoided her gaze. “Never mind that. Give me your hand, will you?”

It took some maneuvering to locate where the appendage in question might be, but she managed. Even that tiny effort left her utterly exhausted, her peripheral vision blurring into white static. His fingers clasped hers and he muttered a muted “fuck, but you’re icy,” his eyes darting to her face before sliding away. His nosebleed was getting worse, but he was ignoring it. He braced himself. Then, with what seemed to Vera like a monumental effort, he shoved her hand into the pack.

“At the bottom, feel for a cloth bundle.” His words sieved through clenched teeth, and he drew a sharp breath before retracting his hand as if scalded, his jaw tightening as he tipped his head back to stave off the nosebleed.

Vera tried to focus, but her intruder had almost burned through the memory and he stirred, restless, ravenous for more.

Her fingers encountered a jagged shape, slightly dulled by roughspun, but she knew what it was the instant she touched it through the fabric. She groped for it with drowning-desperation, throwing all of her remaining strength and focus into extracting the object before bringing it to her eyes. Its amethyst depths pulled at her with sudden vertigo, but she resisted.

“Can you use it?”

Another wave of nausea twisted her stomach in an agonizing cramp, but she set her teeth. Calcelmo had purged her of whatever she had unwittingly absorbed from the black gem, but she had no idea how he’d done it. Did he offload the residue into another crystal? Provided one could even execute such a maneuver on oneself, she had no inkling of the method.

Run, and it’ll chase, Vee.

Dima’s voice came through clear and close to the skin, a momentary anchor with that all-too familiar, gleeful edge that crept into him every time he was on the verge of attempting something exceptionally stupid.

She would be utterly insane to try it, but what other options were there?

She gathered her breath. “Tel…” She’d never been particularly good at goodbyes, mostly for lack of practice—her life hadn’t been too rich in opportunities for them. “If this doesn’t work, I just…”

He turned to her full-tilt and cupped her face, his fingers sticky with blood—not that it mattered. “Make sure that it does, hlakhes.” He wore a strange grimace, like he was trying to find a smile for her, and came up short. “Work, that is.”

Relief washed over her, along with a distant sadness. “I don’t know what it’ll look like.” Her voice was gone, and he had to bend low, his ear close to her lips to catch her whisper. She marveled at the oddly elegant shape of the cartilage in another belated realization. Perhaps she never made it out of that small cramped room in the bowels of the Citadel. Perhaps this was the currency the Unworshipped traded in—the illusion of another life, spun in a dazzling, fevered dream while they took away whatever they had come for.

Her visitor stirred, spotting the unbidden memory and barreling towards it as if he recognized something of himself in it.

Vera held her breath and stretched towards the soul gem—then into it—cradling the crystal against her stomach. It brought that odd, maternal feeling with it: warmth and safety and contained contentment. The snow mottling her vision gave way to the fuzzy contours of a world bristling with violet shards—the heart of a giant geode.

Settled, she beckoned at her visitor.

He is prostrate before his master, the power of the final word unfurling in his mind along with the knowledge of it, an understanding so profound it can never fit into the parameters of his baser language. In its absorption he is reshaped, and he becomes more, eager to unleash himself upon those who would stand against him. His physical body is inadequate, but it too can be refashioned to match his glory. The one he serves is set to transcend mortality itself, and for a moment, he partakes in that timeless vastness, growing ever nearer.

She poured her terror and desperation into the tethers her intruded had sunk into her like harpoons. His attention shifted and sharpened, swelling with a monstrous, prideful coveting.

Rage engulfs him, for he is nothing but a grain of sand at the mercy of the will of another. It vexes him, even as he ascends to the state of being he rightfully deserves, for his toil has been great, and the reward should be commensurate. One day his face will meld with a mask of his own, forged in the shape of the truth he brings.

“I doubt that very much, seeing how you’re dead, you half-rotted fuckweedle.” She couldn’t feel the cackle rising in her throat, but she could hear it, an awful sound, like a saw on metal. The dead bastard bristled with fury. She lured him deeper with what he craved already, taunting him with fear banked just in time and turned into derision, like yanking a rug from under unstable feet. Her intruder faltered at the apex of his recycled hubris, but the terminal flaw had been there all along. Even in death, he felt he had something to prove.

He gave chase, hungry for stabler structures than whatever shifty mess she could offer. He took so much more room than her, and it made him slow. She slithered past him, tearing herself on the edges of the crystalline trap and not caring what bits were lost, as long as most of her made it out. For a tortuous, terribly long moment, she felt stuck, wedged and welded too tightly. Panic flooded her as the Other realized what she had done and roared in echo of his borrowed power.

The shout crumbled, absorbed into the crystals. The geode world was resettling, its outline closing in around its new occupants. She’d have to shed something of herself to leave.

Let go, Vee. Dima’s voice again, not an ounce of his habitual nihilism, but as she’d known him when they were still kids, before the world had chipped him to a flint-sharp point. It’s what I would’ve done.

In the end, the choice wasn’t much of one. The sob tore through her throat, a wounded animal sound swallowed by the rumble of rushing water. Pain met her, every muscle screaming with terrible, bone-shattering cold, her teeth chattering so hard she tasted blood.

An arm at her back tilted her upright, then pulled her in, and she huddled into the warmth. There was chitin under her cheek—awful texture, all things being equal—and a flask of something that smelled like a healing potion under her nose.

“I suggest you drink, partner.”

“I don’t—“ she tried, gave up halfway, and finished haphazardly, “—something stronger?”

~~~

The potion eased the temperature deregulation, but it didn’t affect the nausea, nor the achy pain in her joints. Her eyes still blurred with white static, now confined to a patch in the upper left corner of her field of vision.

She leaned against the stone at her back, letting her gaze drift to her hands where the soul gem lay cradled. She probed, with slow, sinking terror, at her memory of Dima. She could recall him, but the relief was short-lived: he felt hollowed-out and silent, no longer hers in the way the others were.

The purple crystal pulsed quietly. Vera marveled at its size—larger and more intricate than any soul gem she’d ever gotten her hands on. Even the ones she’d spotted in Calcelmo’s laboratory were much smaller. “How did you get this?” she asked, raising her gaze to catch the merc in an admission, in case her suspicion proved correct and he decided to demure.

But he didn’t. He met her eyes—steady, with no challenge to it. “I purchased it, of course.”

She dismissed the first two questions that rose to her lips. It was obvious enough who he had bought it from. And why would he spend his coin on something so extravagant unless he’d suspected something about Undnar’s plan? Besides, he had said as much, in his own way.

She blew out a breath, the air prickly in her lungs. “How much gold do I owe you?”

She regretted the words immediately. He had recoiled slightly, something like anger flashing across his features, or else hurt, though he hid it under a mocking squint. “Since when are you so eager to square off our debts, hlakhes?”

The fight left her, along with the initial impulse to bristle in shoddy defense. “I’d offer to pay it back in points, but I don’t think you’re far enough behind to make it remotely equitable,” she said quietly, with just a trace of a smile. Part of her almost hoped he’d take her up on the offer, if only to dispel that lingering shadow on the reverse side of his sardonic mask. She couldn’t read the strain around his eyes, but she saw it plainly enough, and if offering an explanation about her origins prevented him from coming to the same conclusion as Calcelmo regarding her deficiency—or worse, from assuming that she was some Daedric thrall, if such things existed (and her new world provided little evidence to suggest that they didn’t, all things being equal)—wasn’t that a win on its own terms?

He chuckled, not entirely without mirth. “Now what would be the fun in that?”

It eased her in a way she couldn’t readily define. Then, because she couldn’t very well let it be: “What was the nosebleed about? A bit delayed for the draugr smashing you into the decor.”

He looked away and didn’t answer, suddenly intent on locating his employer. Vera followed his gaze and spotted Undnar lumbering at the very back of the cavern, making his way around the side of the platform to where she estimated Leora must have fallen.

“An unpleasant side-effect, but no lasting damage, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He still refused to look at her, and she finally recognized his expression for what it was—some species of shame, so deep-rooted it surfaced as impatience.

She reached out and twined her fingers through his until he squeezed back. The blood on his skin had dried, the grit like fine rust between them.

“Best we hide that gem, hlakhes. Before Undnar returns.”

Vera nodded and reached for the cloth left discarded on the stones. She looked for her pack and found it propped against the wall within arm’s reach. A thank you rose to her lips before she rerouted it to a “I’ll hang on to it,” her eyes resolutely fixed on the gem in her lap.

Sero inclined his head without protest, sparing her any further questions that might pry open the jumbled mess of gratitude, anxiety, and lingering physical discomfort. She had an inkling of how much the gem would have cost the merc at full price—a good portion of his latest earnings, and more money than she’d ever feel justified shelling out. She made quick work of wrapping up the crystal and tucking it away. Just in time, too, because Undnar was heading back towards them, his eyes agleam with acquisitive glee. Leora’s pack was slung over his shoulder and the draugr’s sword was now strapped to his own knapsack.

“Well, well. She awakens!” His voice boomed through the cavern, and Vera felt her hackles rising, but she kept the anger in check. When in doubt, play dead. Barring that, it was still in her best interest not to advertise that she had managed to offload the draugr’s soul.

“All in one piece, Snowberry?” the Demented Bear inquired with a solicitous squint. “How are you feeling?”

It suddenly occurred to her exactly how the damned Nord wielded the moniker, and she smothered a brief flash of anger at her own stupidity. He had named her like one might name a plow horse, or else a favorite weapon—a thing personified and cared for on account of its trusty utility.

“You’re fucking asshole, Undnar,” she said finally. Not a lie, at least. “You used me.”

He crouched and peered into her face, his eyes narrowed in some private calculation. “You don’t look too good, lass, no offense, so I’ll forgive your rudeness. We’ll get you to Faerangar as quickly as our weary feet can carry us. And to pass the time on our travels, you might tell me what you learned from our draugr friend—for there is nothing that shortens a long and arduous journey quite like a tale worth telling, hmm?”

Tread carefully, Vera, love—you and I both know men such as him do not hold your best interests in mind. Martha, at least, remained. Vera bridled the sudden pang of grief before it could percolate to her face, hoping that the bastard Nord would interpret her wince as discomfort at the draugr’s remainders rattling between her ears—or wherever such things were stored. At length, she met the bard’s tawny gaze and held it. “What is it that you want from all of this? I think you at least owe me an explanation.”

His eyebrows shot up in a pantomime of incredulity. “Oh, Snowberry, don’t sell yourself short! Modesty is the most overrated of virtues. I owe you a lot more than that. Especially,” he raised a finger to punctuate the rejoinder, “if the information you gathered proves useful. But even if it doesn’t, there is always a next time, hmm?” His grin had a few too many teeth to pass for anything other than carnivorous. “After we get you cleaned up, of course. And in exchange—and pay attention now, for I never leave a debt unpaid—I can promise that you will want for nothing for as long as you stay in my employ. Education at the College to hone your unique skillset is just the start, lass. We will go far, you and I.” His eyes misted with a dreamy sheen. “For this beautiful land that is mine is also yours now, isn’t it?”

It’s not, Vera thought, but bit it back. She raised a skeptical brow. “Is it?”

Undnar twinkled with conspiratorial chumminess. “You should know by now that I’m nothing like those narrow-minded dimwits howling to the ruckus of Jarl Ulfric’s mad barking. For he who measures his love for his country by his hatred for all others has about as much sense as mammoth cheese.”

“And what do you measure it by, Undnar?”

He leered and wagged his brows. “If we’re still speaking of love, Snowberry, then I hurry to assure you that all those who have measured mine came away content indeed, but seeing how you only have eyes for the sell-sword these days, I shan’t impose.”

She ignored Sero’s throat-clearing and glared at the Nord. “I meant your alleged patriotism—and how it seems to come with backstabbing your supposed allies.” She didn’t bother hiding her anger this time. “Where I come from, things like that would have been considered…bad form.”

“I must admit I almost envy you, Snowberry.” A dangerous little flicker glinted beneath his affable mask, there, then gone. “For wherever you hail from, you are unburdened by the weight of watching your native land disintegrate into chaos year after year, coming ever closer to losing not only your future, but also your past—or you wouldn’t have asked. ‘Bad form.’ Bah!” He chuckled. “Wish that I could afford such lofty ethics. Half of my countrymen have turned to banditry, and the other half are busy slaughtering each other while the Thalmor watch us devour ourselves from within. Look around you, lass.” His voice changed. His words came charged with a sonorous vehemence—a general rallying the troops before a hopeless battle, or, perhaps, a zealot preaching from the pyre. “Look at this marvel! Our forebears lay in these ruins, a testimony to magical prowess not even the elves could match. Surely you can understand the magnitude of their achievements? The old Dragon Cult conquered time, cheating death itself. And what do we do? Crawl around... pocketing paltry baubles.” He glared, eyes tight with carefully banked savagery. “Imagine, instead, if we could uncover their secrets, if we could recover every artifact they left and put it in the hands of good men and women, those who would not only fight for this or that Jarl, or king, or ragtag guild, but inspire and unite this land under a single mantle. Now, that, would be an achievement worthy of the old sagas, eh?” He stopped abruptly, shuttering his zeal behind his habitual facade of easy-going bonhomie.

“And what mantle would you have them fight under?”

He grinned. “Talos, of course. Who else?”

~~~

The Zealot Bear didn’t push her on the draugr after that, apparently intent on saving the conversation for the road, and Vera was all too happy at the prospect of leaving the ruin behind. Her joints creaked, her muscles ached and pulled and protested as if she had been bedridden for days, and her vision went dim the second she got to her feet. She waited it out, her head bent low until her eyes cleared. The patch of white static remained.

Undnar redistributed the loot between himself and the merc, but chose not to use her as a pack mule, on account, Vera guessed, of her other supposed cargo.

She would need to devise some way for the Demented Nord to take her to this Faerengar fellow, and then leave her with the wizard to talk in private. Most importantly, she would need to keep the soul gem under wraps, quite literally. She had no doubt whatsoever that Sero had overridden his employer’s order in giving it to her—not to mention in acquiring it in the first place. And if her budding guess about his nosebleed was correct, the disobedience had cost him, and it’d likely cost more if the bastard bard got wind of it.

With every step up the stone staircase, the aches got worse, and by the time they reached the top landing, she was so winded she was seeing stars. She wobbled, almost losing her balance. An arm snaked around her waist, offering support. Undnar, some ten paces ahead, didn’t notice her struggle and carried on.

“Easy there.” The merc’s voice was tense and strange. “What’s wrong?”

She gulped for breath, but the stale air tasted thin and unbearably depleted. “I don’t know,” she managed.

It got worse after that. Every step she took was more labored than the last, like wading through a bog. Ahead of them, at the end of a dim tunnel, a ragged opening promised waning daylight and freedom and fresh air, but Vera could barely move her feet. The merc was all but carrying her by that point.

“Undnar, slow down!” She heard his voice as if from a great distance.

“What is it?” The Bastard Bear hesitated, turned around, then lumbered back. “What’s the matter?”

Vera opened her mouth to answer, but moving her lips was too much effort.

She felt it then, the unpurged remainder of her passenger, still lurking in the shadows of whatever she called a self. It tugged her back towards the chamber, yanking on an invisible leash. She’d fucked up, somehow, somewhere. Maybe it was the gem—not big enough to contain all of the monstrosity. Or maybe once the soul was tethered to one container, it could never be fully expunged. Or, perhaps, it had been her last ditch effort to escape the geode world, trading Dima’s ghost for her freedom and leaving herself vulnerable.

“Can’t... leave,” Vera croaked. “I don’t… tied… the ruin…”

Sero’s face floated into view. She could only see clearly when looking at things directly—her peripheral vision had eroded to white static. Something close to fear flickered in the merc’s expression before he turned to his employer. “She isn’t going to make it to Whiterun like this.”

Undnar growled in incredulous frustration. “That Bantien woman must have been right, Oblivion take her. So the wretches really are dependent on the place itself to sustain them. I thought… Well, no matter. Knock her out. She should keep until we find help.”

There was a long pause during which Vera braced herself. The merc’s arms around her had tightened, but no blow came. “Don’t do this.” Then, too quietly, he added, “Please.”

“Are you trying to refuse a direct order, Teldryn?” The Mad Bear’s tone sent a creeping chill down Vera’s spine.

“No.” He sounded so very defeated. “I’m asking the trusted friend I once had. Perhaps he’s still in there…under all that destiny nonsense.”

She tried to turn her head to catch a glimpse of the Mad Bear’s face, but it was no use. The silence stretched, amplifying every ache. Finally, Undnar let out a long-suffering sigh. “Divines preserve me from besotted fools. Fine. Stay with her. I’ll see if I can find some help in the village—if not, we’ll do as I say.” When he spoke again, his voice was sharp as steel. “You owe me, sell-sword. Never forget it.”

Chapter Text

They settled on the packed earth floor beside a pedestal of sorts, which held upon it a rusty helmet and a few wilted flowers. It was a strange sort of limbo, a threshold space, neither here nor there but somewhere in between: close enough to the burial chamber to mitigate some of Vera’s symptoms, but still far enough removed from it that she could fool herself into a sense of autonomy from the tomb a little while longer. She sat, stretched her legs in front of her, and leaned her back against the cold basalt.

Sero sat beside her, though he kept his eyes trained ahead. The silence that stretched between them felt saturated, though not altogether uncomfortable.

“Thank you,” Vera said quietly, for lack of anything more apt.

He turned, and for the briefest of moments, something flashed across his face — a pained sort of pinch, like an ancient, habitual ache freshly disturbed. “No need for that, partner.” His words held a warning with a bitter finish, one she recognized quickly enough as self-recrimination. He averted his gaze again. “I should have checked that the wares the damned court mage peddled were of good quality…” He trailed off and gestured with his hand, an abrupt, abstract motion, like hacking off a past decision turned gangrenous. “As the case may be, I did not, so… no thanks required.” Whatever he felt besides, he had smothered it beneath the usual ironic drawl.

Vera opened her mouth on a gentle rebuke, then closed it promptly. There was no way to relieve the merc of his misplaced self-blame without dragging the nature of her soul pathology into the light, and, not too far down that path, the question of her origins. But was there a reason not to, at this stage?

“It’s more physical than mental, if that matters.” She started, surprised that she had blurted the errant thought out loud.

He pivoted, his eyes narrowing in assessment. “Does it?”

Vera drew a breath. “It—“ She swallowed the false start, then forged along a different, more circuitous trajectory. “What do you think are the chances of Undnar finding someone in Riverwood to do a soul cleansing—or whatever it’s called? My money’s on ‘pretty low to null,’ but I wouldn’t mind a second opinion.”

The merc didn’t answer right away. Instead, he found her hand and twined his fingers through hers. “He’s a resourceful n’wah.” His thumb drew aimless circles across her knuckles, a callused caress with none of his usual strategic deliberateness about such things. After a pause, he added, “I can make a fire, if you’d like.”

Vera stared at her knees and blinked the blur out of her eyes as surreptitiously as she could. Her vision sharpened, but the patch of white static remained. Had it grown a bit, or was it just the effect of the light? “It’s all right.” A grim sort of chuckle escaped her. “If it’s the temperature you’re reacting to, then I’ll probably keep a bit better if I’m on ice anyway.”

Sero growled something indistinguishable, detangled his hand from hers, and started fussing with the fastenings of his armor.

Vera frowned at this bizarre new development. “What, precisely, are you doing?”

“Striving to keep you from freezing while we wait.” His lips hitched into an almost smile. “The chitin gives me less control over the spell. Not so much of a concern in a fight, as you can imagine, but for finer work…”

The armor hit the floor, revealing the threadbare tunic he wore beneath, dark with recent battle sweat and rusty with old blood stains. Vera maneuvered herself into his arms with an achy little pang of deja-vu. They’d come full circle. She nestled against his chest, relishing the dry heat of the muted firecloak spell and the softness of the fabric under her cheek. Better than the chitin, anyway. He smelled as he always did, sharp and mineral, of sweat and metal and smoke, and distant rocky deserts she’d not get to see. She looked up, her breath catching at the expression on his face—a naked, hopeless hunger left bare for her before he rearranged his features, less in a bid to conceal the emotion, she thought, than out of consideration. “Any pain?” he queried, entirely too neutrally.

“Not when I don’t move. Better here,” she added after a moment. “I think the ruin sustains whatever’s left of the bastard, somehow.”

The merc made as if to speak, then thought better of it, though his arms around her tightened. He no longer seemed cautious about how much closeness he permitted himself. He threaded his fingers through her hair and, catching her cocked eyebrow, gave the gentlest of tugs. Vera choked on a chuckle. The smile she got in return tightened her throat and muddied her vision again, so she averted her eyes. “Lighten up on the tragic, Demon Chops, I’m not dead yet.” She managed passable irateness. “Just stuck. And it’s not so bad, as long as I stay right here. Could pitch a tent. I’m pretty sure we killed all the skeevers, though, so you might have to bring me food. Which,” she added, more brightly than she felt, “would only be fair.”

It got her the crooked grin she had aimed for, though it didn’t stick. Still, he offered, with a trace of his usual irony, “I can think of worse arrangements.” His voice dropped to a low purr. “Anything else?”

The silky thread he’d woven into the question made her snort. “You can always warm my bed if you find yourself with nothing better to do.”

She felt his chest rise with a breath drawn and held for a moment too long before it escaped him, the warm gust ruffling her hair. He was quiet for a long time. Then, with a resigned sort of finality, “In a better world, hlakhes, I’d like to think I could do better than that. For you.”

She tried to parse what he was saying, but he’d layered it too tightly, hidden meaning tucked into the false lining, held close to the skin. When he spoke again, it was in his usual sardonic drawl. “You could always start with that list you promised, seeing how we’re killing time.”

She stared into the tremulous, dusty gloom. She could see the fork in the uncertain road, and her heartbeat picked up ahead of the choice. Even if Undnar did stumble upon a miracle and find someone to help her, it was abundantly obvious he preferred the other plan—to knock her out and take her to his mage associate in Whiterun. Unless said miracle came looking for him instead, she doubted he’d go too far out of his way. And then she’d be at the mercy of an unknown wizard, and what guarantee was there that he wouldn’t, at the Mad Bear’s behest, craft a sturdier leash—one she couldn’t slip? Calcelmo had been bad enough, but he didn’t have any personal stakes in Undnar’s schemes—his interest in her never strayed beyond scientific curiosity.

Vera shuddered involuntarily. What was a court mage in Undnar’s pocket capable of? The concept of thralls was well-anchored in her new world’s vocabulary—the Dunmer had mentioned them in relation to vampires, and necromancers had a similarly troubling reputation. What would stop the mage from simply scooping her out like a soft-boiled egg, leaving nothing but an obedient husk for the Mad Bear to fill with more half-rotten leftovers of whatever dubious past he was trying to collect?

His own personal soul pouch.

Even with the decision behind her, her words came slowly, in cautious steps on an unknown terrain. “In a better world, Teldryn, you’d write me a list too, and we’d combine and go from there.” At her back, the merc went very still. Vera trudged on, choosing her footing carefully. “Besides, this one’s not all bad, all things being equal.” She drew a breath, held it, then let it go. “World, I mean. There are worse ones, anyway.”

He said nothing. In the tawny light of the single wall sconce on the opposite wall, ancient dust swirled. Somewhere, water drummed a broken beat, patiently gnawing a groove in the stone beneath.

“Tell me your first fifteen, hlakhes. On your list.”

She blinked. It wasn’t what she had expected. “Why fif—… Oh.” She turned to stare at him, searching for confirmation. Fifteen to go to one hundred.

He nodded once.

“That’s quite a few, now that you put it that way.”

He smirked slightly and shifted, making no attempt to conceal the reason behind his sudden discomfort, but when he spoke, his tone was quiet and strange. “I’ll add some of mine, if you’d like.”

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What happened to ‘I’ll enjoy watching you lose, outlander?’”

“Oh, I still would.” His smile sharpened but retained a hidden sweetness, like a heady brandy. “Enjoy it, that is.”

“What if they’re not all sex?” she blurted out.

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, a bit too equanimically. “Not all of mine are either, if we are being truthful.” A wicked little glimmer settled in his eyes. “But as far as hypothetical better worlds go, I’d like to think we’d just… work our way down?”

She laughed, even as her throat tightened with unspilled sorrow. “All right, that one’s on my list too. Well, it’s two, really, if you want to take turns, though we could combine if we can manage the height difference. Let’s put it in the first five. What you suggested at the temple didn’t sound half-bad either, though I can do without the whole ‘as Dibella is my witness’ bit of it. And your offer in Karthwasten might be a good place to start, too. You have…” She stalled. “I quite like your hands.” She couldn’t find it in herself to meet his gaze and wondered what the sudden heat in her cheeks was all about. Whatever game they were playing now, the uncertainty of its stakes left her with a strange feeling she couldn’t identify, hollow terror and fizzy joy, but with a sense of loss at its core, like a preemptive heartbreak.

“Am I keeping score?” he queried. “If so, four points in your favor.”

She frowned. “That’s generous, but it doesn’t add up. Why four?”

“For ‘combining.’ I’ve—” he cleared his throat “—not thought of that.”

“Always happy to expand your imagination, Demon Chops. Not in your usual wheelhouse?”

The merc cackled. His hand traveled from her nape where it had rested previously, trailing down in a slow caress that settled at her lower back. He gripped her hip and tugged her flush against him. The firecloak had dwindled, but his usual warmth remained. “I doubt my ‘imagination’ can bear much more expanding.” There was a self-deprecating wryness to his chuckle. She could feel his heart hammering beneath her cheek, fast yet steady—an easy run. “No, not outside my ‘wheelhouse,’ as you called it. I simply never made it that far.”

“Getting stuck on the way, eh?” Vera managed. Even in the muddle of her exhaustion and the mangled mess the draugr had left behind, the lizard brain reared up in all its life-affirming belligerence. “Anything in particular? Wait, don’t tell me. Was it the promise to ride you?”

“In my top five.” He was clearly trying to suppress a grin, and not quite managing. “Ten more to go, for you. Any other suggestions?”

“You’re letting me win. Why?”

His face shuttered. “Ten points, hlakhes.” He allowed for his gaze to drift, though he didn’t loosen his hold on her. After an eternity, he added, “think you can…make it happen?”

It was in the way he said it, or, rather, in the way he didn’t. Vera swallowed sudden bile and curled into him, on impulse, burying her face against his neck and bringing her knees to her chest in a bid to quell the wretched lurch in her stomach, that queasy feeling of being allowed to glimpse something fragile and soft-bellied beneath an intricate, bristling exoskeleton. “You can’t tell me, can you?” Her words came out partially muffled. “That’s what the game was for. It makes it… Speakable?”

His breath had shallowed, but he gave no other indication of having heard her.

She held the shock behind her teeth, only letting a small hiss escape. No wonder he’d set it up the way he had, harnessing the lizard brain and anchoring the rules to an unconscious bodily response. As if he needed something outside of his immediate control to bear witness. The full implication unfurled, finally, unutterable in its vileness. She made herself say it anyway. “Because it forces you into it, isn’t it? It leaves you with no choice, if only on a technicality.”

He huffed a mirthless not-quite-laugh. “In principle. It remains to be seen if it’ll work.” When she failed to look at him, he cupped her chin to tilt her face to his, his touch no longer quite so gentle. “Save your sympathy for those who earned it, hlakhes.”

She met his eyes and conjured some steel to lend him. “You’ll get no pity from me, if that’s what’s got your knickers all twisted. Especially not for being a sore loser.”

It jolted him out of whatever spiral had him tumbling and he bobbed his head by way of encouragement. “Let’s see you win, then.”

Vera allowed herself to ease back against him, trying to find a position where her aching muscles left her room to breathe more easily. If she didn’t move her eyes around too much, the patch of white wasn’t so noticeable.

There’d been a story Martha found once in an old moldy children’s book with a tattered cover. Dima had loved it immediately and unselfconsciously, with all the hopeless longing of a torn root system. Loved it, Vera thought, for those echoes of a childhood language halfway buried, as lost to him as the old woman who spoke it, though still recalled in principle, like the ghost of a flavor one misremembers. It was a simple thing, the fairytale. Martha enjoyed it for its strangeness, with the delight of the compulsive collector — you don’t see many female protagonists on a hero’s journey from this period, Vera love. This one is special. Whatever Said and Jules thought about it, they kept it to themselves, but Vera always caught them exchanging quiet looks and quieter smiles whenever Martha retold it, weathered skin creasing with shadowed dimples in the trembling stove light. As if they’d made a nest for themselves in it, a balm for the wounds they kept hidden, small secrets passing between them under the table. All four of them had loved the odd little tale each in their own way, and it had left her out, alone with the yarn’s metaphorical weirdness—an irritating puzzle with no instructions. Something about a girl whose lover is wrenched from her by magic and a misstep, so she sets off, at random, with no map or destination besides finding him and snatching him back, stone bread and iron shoes and howling grief her only cargo, all gnawed and worn to nothing, on the count to three, to mark her journey.

It’s an allegory, Vera love.

There’d be no saving the merc, not like in the story—that much was clear enough, even without the details that would explain the why of it. Besides, he’d never ask. The best she could do for him was to lose together.

“Still with me, hlakhes?” Concern had crept into his tone.

“Are we still playing that better world one?” At his nod, she drew a breath. And then the words tumbled out, rushed and strange to her ears, like a dam breaking. “In a better world, there’d be a small stove that we wouldn’t have to move every few months. It’d just stay there, where we put it, and we wouldn’t have to scavenge for fuel, or kill for it either. There’d be a chopping block and a good axe, and woods nearby, I think, with pines or firs, or something else that burns easy and warm.”

She paused for breath. He’d gone still and silent, soundless except for the rhythm of his heartbeat under her ear. She forged on.

“There would be books we wouldn’t have to trade our winter stores for, and no one to shoot you in the back for them. So, a bookshelf or two, and we wouldn’t have to decide which books we can live without, we’d just keep them all. There wouldn’t be anyone trying to take us apart for bits, or tag us like cattle, but if there is, we wouldn’t ever run out of ammo. There’d be a real kitchen table, one that doesn’t wobble, and—” she tried to hold back a grin ”—and I think you and I would end up fucking on it at least once, on a day we just don’t make it all the way to the bed. I guess there’d be a bed, now that I think of it, big enough for two and with pillows stuffed with tundra cotton, not just a rolled up jacket because I’m not getting any younger, Tel, and I hate waking up with that damn crick in my neck. Must have been nineteen or twenty—first real run-in with raiders. Got out of it better than others, even managed to take a few out myself, though that was mostly luck, I was absolute shit with the rifle back then—anyway, I took a bad spill when we were getting away, so there must be a vertebrae out of place in there somewhere. Where was I? There’d be a garden, maybe, with fat red tomatoes in the summers. Clean water, so you don’t worry too much about getting the runs as long as you boil it.” She stalled, trying to organize the mess of thoughts, but they jostled each other and tumbled around like little treasures one stuffs into a secret cache, helter-skelter, until it overflows with the chaos of undisciplined, nonsensical attachments.

“I think there’d be a bath, and I’m willing to bet good money that you and I would fuck there too, slow and lazy and all the way warm on a cold winter evening, with the wind howling outside. Something like that. Or just soak for hours, and you’d tell me about the things you’ve seen, because you got a few years on me, so there must be stories in there, and I wouldn’t mind hearing the ones you’re willing to dredge up.” She stumbled, crashing into a roadblock of unexpected embarrassment, then found her footing. “Maybe it’ll just be the two of us, and that’d be good enough for me. But I think there’d be others too, the type to have your back even if you forgot to ask. We wouldn’t have to stay there all the time, either, just long enough to have favorite spots, I think. And there’d be coffee, though I barely remember what it tastes like anyway, so I guess that’s a bit moot.”

She fell silent, the sudden wave of bone-deep weariness snuffing out the mental image she’d painted. The patch of white static flared instead, pulsing with mottled snow. “I don’t think that’s enough for ten points, technically, but it’s all I got.”

He remained absolutely motionless for a few heartbeats and then gathered her close, the embrace so fierce her bones groaned with it, and buried his face in her hair. A shuddering sigh racked through him, something dredged up from down deep, like breaking icy water. “More than enough, hlakhes.” Rough and low and a little broken. “For me.”

Vera rested her forehead on her knees. Her eyes felt horribly hot, but she blinked it away the best she could. “Then, I win.” She said it with all the defiance she could muster, for the benefit of whatever wretched being listened for such things. “What’s your deal with Undnar?”

He hesitated for a moment, as if unsure whether the words would find him. And then, he spoke.

“I came to Skyrim about ten years ago, after I broke away from the Morag Tong.”

It wasn’t a pleasant tale, but it wasn’t any uglier than the ones she carried, at least not at first. She wasn’t particularly surprised that he’d been an assassin, nor that he took a certain professional pride in it—he did it well, and he kept it clean. It was a living—until it wasn’t, one particularly nasty contract later that pushed him right over that line one draws to keep one’s own monstrosity from staring back. He defaulted on the writ and fled along with his former partner. “Drevis was a right fetcher,” he chuckled, though without excessive bitterness, “and on the competitive side, if you know the type.” But they had been in it together: same ash-grey skin, same clotted blood under their nails, same cargo of jokes and references, and equally light-footed with their newfound facelessness in a throng of other refugees. Skyrim wasn’t exactly welcoming, but it hadn’t been so bad, back then, or not as impersonal about it, anyway. They made do, with bounties and contracts and big ideas for a future they’d still been able to fill up with dreams of something better.

Undnar came about in their fourth year, a friendly Nord out of place in Windhelm’s Grey Quarter, completely undaunted by the squalor and with easy japes on his lips about Ulfric’s politics. He had a different vision for his homeland and a plan to achieve it, or so he’d said. “We didn’t give a skeever’s ass about the politics, hlakhes, that’s just how the world works— but Undnar offered quite a bit of coin, and we weren’t about to refuse.”

It got stranger after that, and uglier, but never odder than the friendship between the three men, the kind of camaraderie Vera recognized from his words all too easily and with a queasy sense of vertigo. For all their differences, they’d become each other’s people. Undnar was their employer in name, but he went out of his way to let them forget about it.

“It wasn’t a bad life, but it wasn’t quite enough for me. Would’ve kept going much as it did if we hadn’t started on side contracts, Drevis and I. Undnar got offended when he found out, but he wasn’t about to stop us. This particular one was to be Drevis’s, though he offered to do it together. I declined—and then I went right behind his back.” He stopped, letting the point sink under its gravity. “Strangest thing is, I’m not quite sure why I wanted that money so badly. There was—” he cleared his throat, but carried on, a wry smile tucked into a crease in his cheek “—someone I fancied at the time, or fancied the idea of fancying, I suppose. Anyway, a Dunmer blade for hire isn’t the most enviable of prospects, if you know what I mean. Maybe that was it.”

He didn’t go into it blindly. He did due diligence, as far as finding out who his prospective employer was—some mage at the College of Winterhold, in good standing. Besides, the job had seemed straightforward enough — a bounty on a smuggler den, with the caveat that the ringleader would be kept alive long enough to be brought in “for reckoning,” hence the extra gold. He had assumed it was some personal vendetta, as such things often were: a sister maybe, or a sweetheart, or a daughter — the mage had that sort of haunted look about him.

“I’m guessing you’d read him wrong, then?”

He shrugged once before resting his chin against her hair. “Not entirely. Though I did misread the reason.”

He kept what followed spare, and she didn’t press him for details — those were obvious enough. The raid on the den hadn’t gone too smoothly since he went in solo, keeping his partner in the dark about his whereabouts. Still, he managed well enough and brought in the leader, as agreed, though he’d damaged him a bit too much in the process.

“I figured I’d still get my gold as long as the fetcher was alive for my employer to finish him off however he saw fit. Except they hadn’t wanted him for retribution. My actual employer wasn’t the mage I’d met—that one was just a contact, one of many, if I were to wager.”

“Who was?” Vera asked, through the copper tang of sudden adrenaline.

“A fellow by the name of Malyn Varen. Madder than a rutting cliffracer, but very… polite, for a necromancer, or whatever he was, I’ll give him that. Anyway, when the n’wah I was charged with bringing in expired before they could finish what they’d planned for him, they figured I’d do just as well.”

“What did they want him for?” Her lips had gone numb with the certainty of the answer he’d give. “Or you, I guess.”

When he finally answered, his tone was terrifyingly even. “From what I gathered, they were trying to work out how to soul trap someone without killing the body, but I didn’t get the chance to ask. I won’t bore you with the fight itself — it didn’t end that well for me — but I’d like to think I gave them some trouble.”

She managed a snort. “I bet you did. And then?”

“I ended up in a place I… can’t rightly describe, except I’ve never seen anything worse, not before or since, though there wasn’t too much of me left by then to go sightseeing. You asked me where I’d met Saint Jiub, hlakhes. That was it.” He fell silent for a time, then carried on. “He’d kept himself together, give or take, so I suppose it’s possible in principle, though maybe you need to be a saint — and I’ve never been that.” He laughed, then, dry and short, but not entirely mirthless. “He didn’t realize he was dead, and didn’t take the news all that graciously.” His hand trailed down to where her scar prickled between her shoulder blades. “That writing on your back, I remember something… much like it, from there. So when I saw it on you, that night I fished you out… Well, no matter. Needless to say, I had some curiosity about your origins.”

She tried to override the fight or flight response through sheer force of will, but her teeth still rattled, and all she managed was “and then?”

“I suppose the necromancer succeeded, after a fashion, because I wasn’t quite dead yet. Anyway, there wasn’t much left to do for me. I think I might have prayed, for lack of any sounder option, to whomever might be listening.”

“And you got an answer.”

“I did, at that.”

The rest was short, his words clipped and cold, sieved to a bare minimum. There was no apology to him, and no self-pity when he told her the conditions of his freedom — that someone else would have to take his place, and that what he would get back would be truncated, the life of those he had condemned by his unwitting greed. “If I’d known that it was Azura’s Star that necromancer was befouling, I’d…” He trailed off. “Anyway, the Gods don’t tend to split hairs over our ignorance, and why should they? So, I agreed.”

“Somehow, Undnar and Drevis found me. I wasn’t of much use by then. I don’t know how he learned of the condition of my release—though I suppose when the Daedra speak, it’s never just into one ear. In any case, Undnar made the decision about who’d take my place. He told me later that Drevis had known about the nature of that contract.”

“Your partner set you up?”

Sero shrugged. “Maybe not. I didn’t get the chance to ask that either. He was foaming blood around Undnar’s dagger by the time I was coherent enough to speak.” He paused and reached for the water skin in his pack, taking a few long gulps before yanking at the lacing of his collar. “You were curious about the tattoos, as I recall. If you look closely, you might see the writing, though it’s more legible by magelight.”

She leaned in, her hand twitching with the urge to trace one of the intricate whorls over his collar bone. The script was minuscule and blended with the ink — a subtle burn, like Braille, to read with fingers.

“That’s one of them. There are… two more, a bit lower down.”

“I can’t read that. What does it say?” She wasn’t at all sure she wanted the answer.

“Ah, well.” He huffed, halfway between reluctance and embarrassment, like admitting to something mildly obscene. “The wording is… best I can tell, for this one… It’s—...” He cleared his throat, then recited, his voice flat and aloof, like commenting on something that had happened long ago to someone else. “‘Your flesh is shadow, taking nothing, never nourished. No viands may you eat, save those that are given unto thee freely, as upon an altar.’”

Vera froze. Fuck. She didn’t know what made it so awful, exactly, whether it was the formality of the odd, archaic language of the curse, or compulsion, or whatever it was that the words enunciated — or the clarity it shed on his strange eating patterns. “I guess it doesn’t say anything about drinking, so there’s a win,” she said feebly. “And the two others?”

He nodded, took a moment to collect himself, then proceeded in the same tone, his eyes resolutely fixed on the opposite wall. “‘Your flesh is hollow, feeling nothing, never warmed. No pleasure will you seek with those born under the twin moons.’” He allowed her time to parse the meaning, and as she cursed, he barked an odd, hollow laugh. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t show you that one, I’d have to take off the rest of the armor.”

Vera snorted, even though her eyes burned. The implication settled and her stomach lurched, with that most treacherous feeling. The words were out before she could squash it. “That one’s got some wiggle room, if you think about it.”

“Does it?” He had found a smile for her, judging by the voice, but no matching hopefulness. “I think the third one covers the loopholes.”

“What does it say?” She managed to make it sound neutrally curious, somehow.

“‘Your flesh is masterless, deciding nothing, never potent. No choice may you make save that to serve.’”

Silence fell between them, mute and final, like a shroud. Cumulatively, it was obvious enough what he’d been condemned to. Another specter in someone else’s ghostly retinue.

“That last one has a potential beneficiary,” Vera remarked, just to say something. She didn’t state the obvious, but there was no need. With a slow sigh, the merc rested his head against the wall at his back.

“It wasn’t always like that with Undnar. It didn’t start out that way, in any case. That took… a few years. If it matters.”

It didn’t matter a measly fucking ounce how someone started out, but before she could say it, a commotion began at the end of the corridor. The merc was on his feet at once, Vera wobbling upright shortly after, though her vision darkened with the sudden shift. Three figures loomed into view through the misty gloom, a trio so outlandish and unlikely that she forgot to draw her bow.

“The Divines are merciful, Snowberry!” Undnar boomed, his voice gathering an echo like an avalanche gathers debris. “For they have sent you succor.”

Chapter Text

Undnar emerged from the gloom with a look of carefully arranged concern on his face, but there was something just a tad off about the way he didn’t turn his back on his two companions. He seemed careful to keep them at the edge of his peripheral vision, despite his casual swagger.

The mer caught her attention first. He was Altmer, Vera guessed, or something like it — pathologically tall and cast in shades of burnished gold in the amber light of his torch, his long, angular features molded in a mask of pleasant, unassuming neutrality. He would have probably been considered attractive by local standards, with the sort of rough-hewn-yet-fine articulation that had a few of the Markarth women tittering, a little guiltily, about Ondolemar — “Thalmor bastard, but damn fine to look at, between us girls.” Probably something about “breeding,” as if such things mattered for shit, but all Vera could see was the uncanny valley of the newcomer’s not-quite-humanness. She scanned his armor, and the weapon strapped to his back. The jerkin was all black, but without the telltale insignia of the Thalmor, and he lacked the assholes’ haughty rigidity, though even without it, he moved with a banked lethality that set her teeth on edge. He was clearly a bowman, based on the longbow and the ornate quiver strapped to his hip, but he carried himself with the heavy gait of someone used to heftier weapons and bloodier slaughters. His footfalls ricocheted from the walls, harvesting rich echoes.

At her side, Sero shifted imperceptibly — not a fighting stance just yet, nothing outwardly threatening, but not exactly welcoming either. She gripped her own bow tighter, more for reassurance than anything else.

The Altmer inclined his head in a short greeting and moved to the side, thereby revealing his companion. Vera narrowed her eyes, a niggling sense of deja-vu prickling at her nape. The woman walking down the tunnel was more striking than she was beautiful — one of those faces where each individual feature seems discordant on its own, yet the whole comes together on the harmonious side of memorable. Imperial, Vera speculated, based on the stature and the olive skin— and far too soft and lush for a warrior. She relaxed a little before spotting the staff, which the woman leaned on, her asymmetrical gait punctuated by the thud of metal against the stones. A scrap of a riddle, one of Martha’s — or maybe Said’s, he’d always had a fondness for them — fleeted across her mind. What walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs at midday, and on three legs in the evening? Before she’d had the chance to ponder the solution, Dima, his grin already sharp with the serrated edge of chronic anger, had cut it down the middle. "A ‘deller, before he notices the stick up his ass."

It hadn’t been the answer, but it was apter anyway. Few of them lived long enough to need a stick to walk. But the woman making her way towards her wasn’t old — though Vera couldn’t map her age with any degree of accuracy. The fussy, understated embroidery cuffing her robes suggested wealth, and her face had the same sun-spared suppleness as Gabinia’s — a life of heady incense and shadowed comfort.

One way or another, any strange mage the Mad Bear dragged in was going to be bad news, however you cut it.

The merc shifted, taking a step forward and to the side, studiously unimposing, but clear in his intent regardless. He’d put himself between her and the newcomers.

The woman watched him for a few long moments with a strange expression she didn’t bother concealing — too even-keeled for sympathy, too adrift and aloof for pity. Abstract, but not unkind. “You’ve had a long time of it, sellsword.” Her voice was mellow and melodious, and higher than Vera had expected. “I mean your charge no harm.”

Vera glanced to the merc for cues. A moment of tensions, a quick look at the Mad Bear, Sero’s eyes narrowing over some hidden cartography — and then he inclined his head ever so slightly and stepped aside. “Care that you don’t, muthsera.”

The woman’s eyes were as startling as the rest of her — a pale chicory-blue, with wide pupils focused askance on some hidden depth. Vera found herself stumbling backward, on instinct, before she ordered her limbs into immobility, overriding the odd panic — a caged, feral feeling, familiar, but not quite hers.

Not fond of this one, are you? she thought with sudden savagery, the horror of the previous hours congealing into a pang of caustic spite at her unwanted passenger.

“Will you not sit?” the woman asked. Her tone remained courteous, but her face had hardened into opaque inscrutability. She turned to Undnar, slowly, with the same unreadable expression. “Was she forced to move?”

The Mad Bear motioned with his hands, an expansive gesture of conciliatory befuddlement. “I don’t know how much experience you have with draugr, but they don’t exactly encourage one to sit still, I’ve noticed.” Then, he added, with almost credible worry, “Far be it from me to tell you how to work your craft, priestess, but since you claimed you could help us out of this unseemly conundrum, in the interest of time and my associate’s good health, shan’t we hold off on the hows and whys of it?”

Vera watched the Bastard Nord out of the corner of her eyes, through the mottled white of the deathlord’s leftovers. There was an impatience to him, and the slightest tinge of unease in the way he’d drawn himself up to his full height.

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. There was nowhere to run, and she didn’t think she’d make it far anyway, but if this went south, at least she’d be on her feet for it. “I’ve sat long enough.”

The mage, or priestess, or whatever the fuck she was, sketched a shrug at no one in particular and turned to face Vera, her gaze calm and level. “You must always remain still while in this state — physically, mentally, emotionally. It seems you do this naturally, more or less, to have survived at all, and your vessel is inherently...” She trailed off before adding, in incomplete rejoinder, “to be thus deteriorated…”

Vera managed a bland nod. She could hear it well enough between the words — not quite the same as Calcelmo’s irritable muttering, not laden with the inquisitive itch of morbid fascination at the inexplicably pathological — but the underlying taxonomy came through clearly. It was pointless to take offense, pointless and stupid and potentially dangerous, and if not for the merc’s sudden stillness, caught at the periphery through the buzz of static, she would have shelved the emotion without it sedimenting.

“Sellsword, tell me, for how long was she forced to move after contracting the wayward soul?”

Sero hesitated, and Vera froze; the panic, all her own this time, skittered down her spine in clammy tendrils. How long did it take her to lure the draugr’s offal into the gem? Long enough for Undnar to loot the cave, at any rate. The merc would have to account for it to give an accurate estimate. How big of a margin of error did this mage need, and what would it change in the grand scheme of things? Unless, of course, she’d read her wrong, and the fissures of underhanded antagonism with the Mad Bear were nothing more than wishful thinking — the hopeful distortion of the nearly drowned, grasping at straws.

“Hard to say,” the merc intoned, a trace of his habitual irony not quite masking the tension lurking between his words. He collected himself quickly and motioned with his head at the dark corridor. “You should find what’s left of the foul thing just down the stairs, if you’re of a mind to check.”

Undnar opened his mouth to speak, but the woman held up her hand and turned to the Altmer. “Might I impose?”

To say that her companion looked reluctant was a vast understatement. His face betrayed little, but his hands balled into fists before he forced them open, on the dangerous side of relaxed. “As you command, priestess,” he said, clipped and formal and with so little inflexion that Vera wondered about what tied the two together. The woman called the shots, that much was obvious, so a bodyguard with a secret torch, perhaps. She felt a vague twinge of sympathy and cast her eyes towards the merc, for confirmation if nothing else. Sero cocked an eyebrow and offered the slightest of shrugs.

Priestess. Not a mage then, at least not by title.

She drew a breath as the Altmer melted into the murk at the end of the corridor. “What kind of priestess are you, then?”

The woman turned from her contemplation of her companion’s retreating back. “You may call me Laurel, if you find that filament pleasing. What name carries you?”

Vera hesitated before offering it.

Laurel nodded. Now that the Altmer was out of view, her gaze drifted away, refocusing slowly. “We strive for balance, as the Psijics might, though our ways are less…” she trailed off and smiled, a strange and lovely thing, fleeting as a hummingbird “… removed. In our presence, we are less bound, and thus offer facility where others won’t. Some still refer to us as Traiectus, though most prefer to think of us as Convenience. We adhere to the Consecrations of Arkay in all things.”

She didn’t understand a lick of it, but the memory of Runil stirred — a kindly face shorn of its angles by firelight, a wayward chat about the nature of souls, a hasty embrace at the far edge of divergent roads, and the reassuring weight of the amulet around her neck to show for it. He’d worn his scars like she did — most of them tucked away, a careful secret. “Do you serve Arkay, then?” Vera asked.

“Don’t we all?” Another one of those fleeting hummingbird smiles.

“Fret not, Snowberry,” Undnar piped up and drew closer, but at the priestess’s opaque glance, thought better of it. “If my understanding is correct, the fates sent you the most qualified of rescues.” He beamed, though the amiable grin never made it to his eyes. “And to find a mystic so close at hand, in yonder modest village, just as we are so desperate for help—what is this, if not a sign of the Divines’ mercy? What brought you all the way from the golden forests of the Rift—Laurel, was it? And I’m afraid I didn’t catch your associate’s name, now that I think of it, so seeing how we’re going to be fast friends, perhaps a fair exchange is in order? You’ve met Snowberry already. Teldryn, don’t just glower dourly, come introduce yourself.”

The merc didn’t move, but offered dryly, in quick rote, “Teldryn Sero, blade for hire.”

The priestess turned and inclined her head in formal acknowledgement. “Wealth beyond measure, sera.”

A flash of surprise registered on Sero’s features before he offered, with matching formality, “and to you thricefold, keno.”

The Mad Bear shifted, expectant, but the woman paid him no heed after that, busying herself with unfastening the thick fur cloak she wore draped over her shoulders. She settled herself on the stones with slow deliberateness, her movements painstakingly unhurried. It brought to mind Martha, on bad days, when the pain in her deteriorated hip made sitting a more complex gambit than usual.

Once settled, the woman brought her staff across her thighs, trailing her hands over the carved metal in abstracted familiarity. She kept her gaze trained straight ahead, not bothering to address the Mad Bear directly, but her voice had changed, draining of its earlier amiable formality. Still ceremonial, but stranger now, aloof and unsettling.

“Names follow needles like thread, Skald. Yon warrior's is no more mine to give than it is yours to wield. As you extol the Divines and all their domain, you may address me as I am known among their servants: High Priestess Shade-slip, the Prism Umbra." She paused. "Since we are to be fast friends in our mutual servitude, Lady Umbra will do."

Whether any of this meant anything to either Undnar or the merc, Vera couldn’t quite read. At the periphery of her vision, Sero’s shoulders tensed, then eased a fraction in subtle adjustment over some invisible categorization. Undnar gave no sign of recognition whatsoever, though his smile had gone a tad too flinty. “Quite right, quite right,” he nodded sagely, slithering back beneath his buffoonish persona. “And I suppose you can call me Undnar, seeing how the Gods haven’t bestowed upon me a more dazzling title. But since we’re not here to trade pleasantries, and I wouldn’t presume to detract you from your undoubtedly more pressing tasks for too long, we’ll just have to make do, won’t we?”

Vera stared at her feet. She should have known it would come to this, plainly written in the priestess’ expensive robes, in her unblemished skin and glossy hair. Another one with a tooth for power and the social means to wield it, another large gravitational object, and as anathema’s to Undnar as oil was to water. Whatever had produced this alliance, it didn’t seem like the Mad Bear was in complete control of it, and he didn’t like the fact one little bit. She’d be stupid to think that there wasn’t some hidden agenda on the other side of the equation—the priestess didn’t strike her as someone who enjoyed traipsing through caves for the sheer joy of it. If her luck held, they’d limit themselves to trying to out-peacock each other and come to a draw. Either way, Undnar would compensate for his ruffled feathers later, probably by taking it out on her or the merc, while the priestess and her Altmer sidekick would be on their merry way, reaping none of their sown harvest.

“Ah yes, that is it. Undnar Silver-Tongue.” The priestess broke the tense silence, and though her voice had reacquired its melodious pleasantness, it now held a pinch of humor. “Word of your artistry has reached us even as removed as we are, upon the border of Cyrodiil.”

“Has it, now?” If the Mad Bear heard the subtle nuance, he chose to miss it—either by omission, or by tactical decision, Vera didn’t much care which. “Ah, but a good rumor is worth its weight in gold, for bards and priests alike, and much like this most noble of metals, it happily accrues in its circulation.” He paused in his asseveration, rolled his massive shoulders, and when he spoke again, it was with his usual jovial good-naturedness. “I am a simple man at heart, priestess. A cold ale in my tankard, a warm body in my bed, a glad song in my ear, an enemy’s blood on my blade—what else could an old warrior ask for in these troubled times? I’ve no more claim on your craft than you have on the price of ebony ore, so let’s agree to be well met, and better parted. After you help my friend, here. And speaking of the prices of ore, shall we decide on the cost?”

"A fine segue," the woman nodded. "Shall we first calibrate the scales? I propose that this one's life is priceless, and as such, immeasurable in worth. Thus, we serve the Divines." She paused, watching the Mad Bear until at length, he acquiesced with a shrug. She cast a glance around the cave, her eyes taking in their travel packs, lingering on each for a few long seconds before moving on to the next. Inventory thus concluded, she returned her attention to Undnar. “As their servant, I am well aware of my place. I will be contented with any single item I choose from among that which you carry.”

Undnar narrowed his eyes before nodding slowly. “We are agreed on one thing, at least. For it is not the treasures we carry, but those we cannot lift ourselves that are worth more than any riches. Help yourself to anything of mine, if it will ensure that my associate is restored.” He turned to Vera. “For what are debts between friends if not a guarantee of future gifts, eh Snowberry?”

She couldn’t tell whether the icy pang in her stomach was rage, or panic, or both — or, perhaps, the stirring of whatever was left of her passenger. Either way, the Mad Bear’s subtext wasn’t exactly subtle. There’d be a next time, and a next time after that, and, in between, promises and bribes and blackmail, and whatever else bought her compliance.

She could feel the Dunmer’s eyes on her even though she didn’t dare check. The lure of reassurance, however empty, or of confirmation, however pointless drew her attention to him like a magnet. Or maybe it was simply that, in the end, he was in the seat next to her, and there was no changing such things. She stared at the priestess, instead, though holding the woman’s unfocused gaze was an uncomfortable proposition. She willed her to read between the lines. The only thing of significant value in her pack was the soul gem — and the mangled mess she’d left in it. If Undnar found it, she’d be up shit creek, but not as much as the merc—not if the Bastard Nord put two and two together.

Let go, Vee.

“Seeing how it’s my hide on the line, I’d like you to take from my pack, if that suits you.” She forced a smile, hoping that the woman — and, more importantly, the Mad Bear — would mistake the flush of anxiety creeping up her neck for embarrassment. “I don’t have much, and you’ll have to excuse the messy stuff at the bottom — we’ve been on the road for a while — but feel free to rummage around.”

For the briefest of moments, the priestess seemed hesitant, and her eyes darted back towards the empty hallway, where the Altmer had disappeared. Vera followed her gaze. The ascent from the crypt had protracted for her, but even with the memory of her agonized trudging, it wasn’t a far walk. The priestess seemed to be pondering this very problem, because the skin around her eyes tensed ever so slightly. She smoothed out her expression with practiced facility, hard-bought by training, Vera guessed, more than any genuine ease. Silence and dust hung thick in the narrow passage. In the cavern below, water rumbled, but no footfalls came.

She’d misread the Altmer’s earlier clunkiness for ineptitude instead of performance, and she wouldn’t have spotted him if not for the merc’s sharp movement. The lanky fellow materialized at the end of the hallway, silent as a cat. The priestess leaned forward at the sight of him, her shoulders easing, another one of her hummingbird smiles, but brighter and fuller, resolving into a quiet “Old friend, how far?”, followed by a formal inclination of her head. At this, the Altmer’s entire face lit up with a hopelessly besotted expression, though he reined it in with admirable efficiency before returning the nod and covering the distance to their ill-assembled crew.

Vera found herself biting the inside of her cheek to smother a snort of amusement, despite all her accumulated horrors. The torch, apparently, wasn’t so secret after all. She chanced a glance at Sero, who lifted his shoulder in a rather philosophical shrug, and, out of the side of his mouth, muttered something that sounded an awful lot like “professional hazard, hlakhes.”

“Two-hundred fifty paces as a Breton walks, more if counting from the word wall,” the Altmer stated, still recalibrating back towards professional formality, though his heart didn’t seem in it.

The priestess’s eyebrows knitted together, a flare of irritation which lingered in some quiet mutter — something about seawater and brine Vera didn’t quite catch. When she spoke again, more loudly this time, her tone had switched to aloof clinical professionalism. “You offered me payment, Vera; may I take that as your consent for treatment? Before you answer, please understand that it is akin to performing field surgery in an army camp. I will bring all of my skills to bear for your comfort, but the conditions are not ideal. I can offer you a sleeping draught, but it will not shield you from the dreams.”

Vera repressed a shudder. Calcelmo, too, had warned her it wouldn’t be pleasant — and it hadn’t been, though she’d lost consciousness early in the process, a small mercy against the wretched feeling of foreign fingers rifling through whatever self she had retained. A sickening sort of unspooling. There was no telling whether the sleep aid would help or harm; but one way or another, she’d likely be weak and disoriented after, with no Bothela to nurse her back to health or offer shelter. The chances of Undnar not exploiting it—and moving her around his chess board however he saw fit—were slim to none. Not really a choice, in the grand scheme of things. She felt an acute, wrenching pang of clarity at the merc’s predicament—speaking of being left with choices which weren’t ones.

“Don’t fret, Snowberry,” Undnar piped up. “Teldryn and I will make sure nothing happens to you while you recover.”

And ‘dellers hand out candy and teddy bears.

She said nothing.

“Isn’t there a Temple of Kynareth in Whiterun, Undnar?” Sero’s lazy drawl was back in dividends, but he didn’t look at his employer when he asked the question—instead, his eyes settled on the priestess. “Would you recommend it as our destination, keno? In your… professional opinion?”

"An auspicious suggestion." The woman looked at Undnar and held his gaze. "Were your friend a sheep with a stubbed toe, the ministrations of two devoted laymen would be adequate. Do not mistake that as blame, sir; goreless injuries are difficult to estimate. Ease of mind and body is paramount to salvaging her life from this preventable mess, and the disciples of Kyne are gentle and learned. They would be able to facilitate this process. I shall send word of her condition once I return to Riverwood, with recommendations for treatment.”

Undnar squinted slightly, then his face resolved into a facsimile of contentment. “Then it will be as you say, priestess.”

Either that, or you’ll be sending for a priest of Arkay, for all the good it’ll do me. Vera supposed they were too far from Falkreath to hope for it to be Runil. Instead, she braced herself, her gaze trained on the floor. “Let’s get this over with, if you don’t mind.”

A hand brushed against her knuckles and she twitched involuntarily.

“I’ve got your back… partner.”

~~~

She had little memory of the trip to Whiterun, and what came before was a mess of pain and twisted visions, impossible to sort with any accuracy, save that it had left her feeling everted and hung out to dry. In the end, she had opted against the sleeping draught—a mistake, in retrospect, and she’d clung with every shred of mulishness she could muster to the lacerated shards of awareness the priestess had tried to salvage around the devastation of her unwanted rider. He’d not gone out gently, though it would have likely been worse at the hands of someone less accomplished at whatever craft she plied—whatever else she was, the woman had been competent, and, comparatively speaking, considerate.

Only disjointed scraps and flashes surfaced, strung together with nothing to order them except the steady beat of horse hooves, the creak of a wagon wheel, and the merc’s presence at her side. Whenever she came to, he was there, never hovering or crowding, but with a skin of water to lift to her lips, and a hand at her back to support her through her spluttering swallows. Her throat was still raw with screams she didn’t remember, and her eyes ached with the sun’s harsh glare, but no white static mottled her vision. The space the draugr had occupied and consumed stood hollow now — another vacant lot, not yet overgrown, but hers to replant. What she carried of Dima was gone for good, as was the soul gem, its space filled by the reshuffled garb at the bottom of her pack. In his absence, Said’s ghost grew chattier. She couldn’t recall the poet’s name, only that he sang of love, mostly, love and wine and light, and that the verses never sounded right in her own mouth, irrevocably welded to the throaty fricatives of Said’s accented speech. “Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wild flowers will come up where you are.”

Undnar made good on the priestess’s recommendation — or was it the merc’s? — to take her to the temple. She spent her first day on a narrow cot that smelled strongly of camphor and lavender, and faintly of sick bodies, with the quiet chanting of priests interweaving with the groans of the suffering in her ears. She fluctuated between restless sleep and the haze of fever, sweat shed, then replenished by thin salty broths that cut through the persistent nausea, but only temporarily. The woman who tended to her carried herself with the brusque, harried kindness of someone who’d seen it all, and then some. It eased Vera in a way she couldn’t adequately articulate, not least because words felt like something one dredged up from great depths, and most of them slipped their hooks and sank right back.

By the third evening, the fever was gone, and she could move around enough to sit by the shallow pool at the center of the cavernous nave. A shadow fell onto the water, muting the brilliant greens and blues of the mosaic beneath. “You’re on the mend, Kynareth willing,” Danika, the chief priestess, opined, with more surprise than approval.

“Stubborn,” Vera offered by way of justification.

Danika huffed in equal parts reluctant amusement and irritation. “You’re not the only one. Your Dunmer friend’s been hounding my heels ever since they’ve brought you in, no matter how many times I tell him that no amount of hovering and glowering is going to speed things up.”

“Is he still here?” Vera asked, a bit too quickly.

The priestess measured her with a canny look, then offered a small smile. “Propping up the wall in the entrance hall, I’d wager.” She sighed. “Truth be told, we’re expecting a large influx of wounded by tomorrow, or the next day. Damn this war, and damn the fools who abet it. Stay one more night, then I’m of a mind to discharge you come morning — though I suggest bedrest for another week, at least. I’d keep you longer, but the rest is up to Kyne and time anyway.”

“Can I see my friend?”

“Aye, if you return to your cot. I’ll send him in with your soup. Might as well make himself useful.”

There was something vaguely amusing about watching the merc negotiate his way between priests and beds, a bowl of soup in one hand and an irascible scowl on his face. When he spotted her, his eyes narrowed, but his stormy expression cleared a little. Vera turned to her side and scooted a bit to make room for him to sit.

“Intimidating the healers, Demon Chops?”

He plopped down, the cot creaking beneath him. “How are you feeling?” Concern had etched a crease between his brows, and he looked like he didn’t quite know what to do with the soup in his lap.

Vera sat up. “Have you been eating?” she asked. He looked gaunter and more harried than usual, his eyes rimmed dark with lack of adequate rest. The worry sat on him askance, and it left her feeling awkward and too warm, a hollow fizziness in her stomach, fluttering like a plastic bag lantern. “I’d share whatever passes for stew here, but first, it’s foul, and, second, I’m starving. Give it here, before you spill it everywhere.”

The corner of his lips hitched in amusement. Instead of passing her the bowl, he stirred the soup, and pointed the business end of the spoon in her direction. “The priestess told me to earn my keep, I believe.”

Vera cocked an eyebrow. Still, she made a bit of a show of it, chortling as his eyes lingered on her lips.

“You do realize you’ve won, yes?” he commented caustically, retrieving the spoon, though a hidden smile had creased his cheek. “Or have you developed a taste for tormenting the unfortunate?” He sounded more entertained than annoyed.

She swallowed the mouthful of tepid, oversalted soup, along with the stupid grin threatening to break to the surface. “You started it.”

“Then I suppose I should finish it,” he sighed, in mock resignation. A wicked little glint had settled in his eyes as he lifted the spoon again. “Open up for me, hlakhes,” he purred.

Vera snorted, but complied. “We’ll scandalize the healers,” she remarked, once she was done chewing.

“Good.”

By the time the soup ran out, the flush prickling her neck and chest had very little to do with any residual fever, and everything to do with how the merc had weaponized eye contact. Vera relented first, letting her gaze unmoor from his. He didn’t count it as a point, and somehow this new absence made things worse, no longer lending an easy resolution to the uncomplicated charge between them. Whatever residual damage she still carried, apparently it wasn’t enough to discourage the lizard brain.

The temple was settling for the night, the priests abuzz with preparations. She watched idly as a small file of patients shuffled towards the exit, armed with potions and instructions about subsequent maintenance.“I think they’ll set me free tomorrow,” she offered, as neutrally as she could. “Where’s the Bastard Bard, by the way?”

Out of the corner of her eyes, she caught Sero’s sour grimace. “Away on ‘urgent business,’ or so I was told. He made arrangements for you…” He coughed through sudden discomfiture and rubbed his face, then forged on with a healthy dose of acid. “Or us, really. And yes, I know how this sounds — in fact, it’s exactly how it sounds, hlakhes, quite besides the fact that I doubt you’re fully recovered, all things considered, so you could use the rest.”

“Arran-“ Vera blinked, and then the implication dawned on her in all its perversity. “Oh fuck, Tel, you’re kidding. He’s shoving us into that house of his?” She smothered the impulse to fidget, a sudden wave of impotent rage mixing with another, completely unwelcome and inappropriate flutter in her belly—ill-gained or not, they’d have privacy, and, minimally, a place to talk away from curious ears. She could come clean, if she wanted to. And they’d have time to just… The sudden hopefulness of it left in its wake an awful sediment, vile and unsolvable. For lack of a better target, she rerouted it to spite. “Like sheep put out to pasture, heh?”

He met her glare with his usual bellicose smirk, though something else lurked beneath it, on the far edge of sorrow—starker for that familiar note of hope, irrevocably tainted. “I could bleat, if you’d like, but I think the priests are sufficiently affronted for one night. I don’t fancy being chased out of here with a broom.”

She harrumphed despite the lingering anger, and the merc’s expression softened. A sudden wave of fatigue leeched the fight out of her, and she leaned forward to rest her forehead on his shoulder. After a moment, his hand came up to her hair—a gentle caress, almost tentative.

“Not Breezehome, if it matters—but your analogy is more apt than you think.” He sounded as resigned as she felt. “His old family farmstead, or what’s left of it. Not much of a farm, at this stage, and an hour on horseback northeast.”

“Do you think he means it as an apology, or a punishment?”

The merc shrugged. “Both, I’d wager.”

She found his hand by feel, her eyes still closed. She drew in his scent in a slow inhale and held it until air ran short. The merc stilled, only his breath, shallow and forcibly rhythmic, lending a map for the decision.

She could leave.

Half-broken and barely fit for a short journey, let alone a long one into the unknown, but she could. And she could see, just around the bend of their banter, in the way he’d steeled himself, in the way his hand beneath hers lay quiescent, with no answering squeeze, where their road would end. She could almost hear him say it—a summary of the holds where the calamitous bard might not go looking right away, a tactic of avoidance and deferral stretched at perpetuity, a practical plan for surviving his machinations—always one day at a time.

Or…

“First time I saw your second moon, I about lost my dinner.” She kept her voice quiet and light, despite her racing heart, and, for the first time since her displacement, the recollection made her snort rather than shrink in residual horror. “Lovinar — the herbalist who picked me up, I’ve mentioned him, I think — used to laugh himself silly watching me gape at them, in the early days. And then he’d get pissed off. He’d quiz me about it, like a kid, you know?” She modulated her voice toward the old Altmer’s irritated warble. “’Which one’s Secunda, hmm? Apply yourself, girl, this should not be a difficult concept to master — it’s the smaller one! Small things are… well, small, yes?’”

The memory made her cackle, a bit precariously, on the edge of unspent tears. She’d not given herself the chance to mourn the old, kindly bastard — never properly, anyway. Between the chores of survival and carrying her cargo of ghosts, bereavement had always felt like an unearned luxury.

The merc remained quiet for a few long beats, and then his fingers threaded through hers, fierce and tight. She could almost feel the tremor, though he managed it well — not just at what she’d admitted, perhaps, but what it spelled out, beyond his own predicament, because his eyes had widened on some internal horizon, some private road you only walked in one direction, like the vertigo of seeing stars beyond their self-evident scatter, vast, and unreachable, and endless. “How many moons should there be, for you?” His voice had grown hoarse and ragged.

“Just one. And before you ask, we call it…” she paused, biting the inside of her cheek to stifle the strange burble of joy at the back of her throat. “’Moon.’”

He choked on a chuckle, turned to her, his lips parting on some unarticulated thought, and then he shook his head, his eyebrows drawn against whatever complicated emotion he didn’t seem to have words for.

Vera shrugged and found some innocuous crack in the floor to stare at. “It’s all I’ve got, Tel.”

~~~

She wasn’t sure how they ended up on the road that same night, but there was no stopping it, like being caught in some massive, cosmic mechanism, indifferent to the debris it collected in its passage. She wasn’t fit to travel, really, but the priestess let her go with little more than a disapproving squint, visible relief at her emptied cot, and admonitions about bedrest.

Undnar’s “arrangements” included a horse waiting for them at the stable—barrel-bellied and wide-hoofed and sluggishly good natured. It carried both their weights without much protest. At the accursed meadery, Sero urged the horse to the left, across a shallow stream, then up a gently sloping embankment dotted with tufts of tundra cotton. Somewhere past a windmill, past a small farm, past a wide plot of potatoes, ghostly grey in the moonlight, he leaned in, as if some armature within him had finally yielded to rust and time, grabbed her chin, pivoted her head, and kissed her, without preamble of forewarning. He didn’t bother aiming for chaste. She met him in kind, with lips and tongue and teeth nipping in needy goading, and the slow hyperfocus of unexplored wonder, the tension of self-imposed restraint arcing and thundering between them like a downed power line.

“Think we—” she came up for breath, but didn’t bother finding the rest of her sentence. His lips wandered along her jaw, down her throat to the crook of her neck, his fingers undoing the fastenings of her armor, inexorably and excruciatingly slow, one damned clasp at a time.

“Should make it there, first, yes.” His voice had gone to gravel, low and rushed and strained. He tightened his arm around her middle, pressing her into him, and spurred the horse on.

They rode in tense, unresolved silence. A squat farmstead, lopsided and half-sunk into the earth, loomed on the crest of a sharp hillock, but Vera couldn’t muster the focus to examine it closely. They came to a stop in a weedy courtyard. A narrow path, thready with disuse, cut through the hip-tall grass.

Sero slipped off the horse and helped her down. He made to let her go, but she clung to him, hooked her hand into the collar of his armor, and pulled him down into another kiss. He groaned and gripped her hips, jerking her flush against him. A breathy “fuck” escaped him, but the momentum hurled them through those first rushed fumblings.

“Should we—“

“You need to—“

The sentences ran out and dropped, unfinished, followed by her jerkin, already halfway unfastened. There was no slowing it by that point, and she wouldn’t even if she could — his mouth and hands on her skin; his tongue dipping into the hollow at the base of her throat sending a rush of languid fire straight to her core; the prickle of his stubble exquisitely jarring before his lips quested lower; her tunic pulled off her shoulders and pooling down, slipping past her hips. She felt idiotically glad she’d been too rushed to bother with chest wrappings before they left the temple. She groaned, back arching as his mouth, wet and deliciously hot, closed around her nipple; the sharp sweetness of his teeth grazing sensitive flesh; the slow swirls of his tongue, soothing and teasing in equal measure. His touches left a strange afterprint in their wake, the fading glow of a tactile afterimage. He lifted her off the ground, stepped over her discarded armor, and backed her into the farmhouse wall. Before she could get much further into trying to extract him from the chitin, he dropped to his knees onto the dusty earth.

She helped him with the lacing, fingers clumsy with deferred desire, until, finally, he shoved her greaves down, along with her underwear. His palms trailed up her thighs, over her hips and ass, his lips brushing her belly in a maddening tickle, but he stopped just short of where she wanted him. She managed to step on her trousers and yanked her foot out of the tangle of cloth and amor, and he gripped her leg, shifting her thigh over his shoulder. She groaned some wordless, frustrated accusation. He looked up with a sharp half-smile, but when he spoke, his voice came raw and ragged and clipped with need. “Do us both a favor, hlakhes, and ask me, so I can bloody well stop imagining the rest of it.”

“Because of the third clause?”

He nodded, turned his face into her thigh, and embarked on a perilous little trail of nips and licks, closer and closer and closer…

“Would a ‘pretty please’ do you fine?” she managed, impatience and laughter and something she couldn’t quite name tightening her throat.

He didn’t answer with words.

She knew what kind of lover he’d be from the first touch, from the first stroke of his tongue, from the way he taunted and teased and delayed until her legs shook, from the way he coaxed her slick and yielding until her pleas mixed with curses — the words all drowned in static inattention — before he finally dipped his fingers inside her. From the way he groaned, breathless, his habitual endearment for her into the soft wet sounds of her body’s response to him. From his approving “there… that’s it…” purred against her skin as the sweet heat bloomed brighter and built into a low roar, the back of her head hitting the wall in an involuntary jerk, her hands scrambling for something to hold on to. She knew it, even through the haze of mounting pleasure and locked muscles, by the way his hands and eyes and tongue skimmed her with focused greed held back, but only just; by how he answered her without waiting for the question to become a burden. He’d be the kind of lover that’d learn her by heart, given time, every tell, and moan, and sigh, and flush, and quickened heartbeat, small spilled secrets collected and kept close; learn her by rote like one memorizes a verse, not only for the pleasure of its rhymes and rhythms, but for the mastery it lends. And fuck, but she’d let him.

She didn’t bother trying to keep quiet, not that it would have done her any good. The orgasm uncoiled and burst through her like something catastrophic — electric and gong-deep all at once, a drawn-out flash of obliterating sweetness that peeled the world away and left the two of them behind, all the brighter for the pang of sorrow it dragged on its heels like a shadow.

At length, she went pliant and boneless, sagging against the wall at her back. The merc looked up with a rather self-satisfied smirk before nuzzling her belly. She squeaked in amused outrage at the prickle of his stubble, and at his rather prosaic strategy for wiping her slick off his face. He chuckled into her skin and straightened, slowly, with a few opportunistic kisses along the way, before tugging her into his arms. “Come here, partner, before you collapse.”

“Cocky bastard,” she managed, through a huff of helplessly shaky laughter. She tried to straighten out her clothes but gave up half-way. “My turn, I think, but let’s at least get inside first.”

A shadow passed over his face. “You should get—“

“Sleep, yes, it can wait a bit.” She hesitated. “I’m pretty sure I’m a solid loophole to your second clause, but if you’d rather not risk it…”

He shook his head—a curt, final movement. “With you?” His expression, or what she could see of it in the gloaming, grew dark. “I think I’d risk it even so, if it weren’t for the fact that I wouldn’t be able to square off the… debt.”

The meaning of what he was saying cut through her with the precision of a scalpel, but she steeled herself and held his gaze. “I suppose it’s not the worst way to end it, if we somehow missed the fine print. As far as picking an exit goes, anyway. Besides, I asked you for the same thing in Helgen, minus the fun part.” She stalled, formulating, but the question simply tumbled out, ugly and unadorned. “That bad, Tel?”

He stood motionless for a few beats before lifting his hand to cup her cheek, his eyes creasing at the corners. “I can think of a few bright spots, now that you mention it.” He stalled, finding his words. “Would you… risk it, with me?”

Vera forced a grin she didn’t feel—a jagged, brittle thing. “Only because it’s you, Demon Chops. And on the upside, if nothing bad happens, then we can just proceed to fuck on every last piece of furniture in this damned farmhouse. How’s that for spiting the Great Bearded Asshole? I’m pretty sure he didn’t have that particular outcome in mind when he shoved us in here.”

She caught a flash of teeth, but his laughter stayed soundless, only his shoulders shaking slightly. “Seems like a solid plan to me,” he drawled with his habitual sarcasm.

On that first night, she barely noticed anything about the farmhouse besides the musty patina of abandonment, and thus its meager secrets remained hidden for them to stumble upon in the following days. There was a bed—she registered that much—but they didn’t make it that far, not wasting time on creature comforts aside from the merc’s hasty magelight that hung suspended until, eventually, it winked out. Once the door creaked shut behind them, Vera embarked upon the nontrivial task of extracting him from his armor. He helped her along through nervous fingers and hungry kisses, and an impressive plethora of growled profanities at buckles and fastenings suddenly turned unyielding.

There’d been more of the tattoos, she found — much more, in fact, once the last of his clothes had finally come off, and hers lay discarded in careless piles somewhere along the way. The ink covered him in whorls and blades and wicked arabesques, like a second armor worn on the skin. She found the ones that bore his curse by touch more than sight, and she took a malicious pleasure in tracing them, with fingers first, then lips—like flipping off the heavens, or wherever else the monsters dwelled—soft kisses and softer bites until she got far enough down to aim for more interesting. She wasn’t sure how the merc had found himself a chair, nor what the chair looked like, nor what the floor under her knees was made of, except that it had more yield than stone. She flicked her tongue over the subtle script, following its jagged path over the jut of his hip bone, down into the shallow valley where his abdominal muscles thinned into relative vulnerability, and where the pattern disappeared in a trail of coarse hair leading south. She paused, bit back a smile, and looked up long enough to snag his gaze, fully intent on returning his earlier teasing with dividends. He had a glazed, dazed look about him, his breath shallow and fast, his hands gripping the edges of the chair so hard she was vaguely surprised the old wood didn’t splinter.

“Tell me exactly how you like it.” She made it an order in a bid to lend him the cloak of her own agency, hoping it would be enough to free him for however long it took, aside from the problem of counting moons. As long as whatever cosmic piece of shit that snagged him on its hook wouldn’t mistake her dying world’s janky, useless satellites for another celestial body.

Later, with the pale light of dawn bleeding through the slats in the single boarded window, when they lay tangled on the bed, spent and sleepy, he asked her why she’d gone about it that way. She laughed, lifting her head from his chest to catch his expression when she got to her explanation. “It’s the language of the clauses. Something, something ‘no pleasure shall you seek’ etcetera. Well, you didn’t seek it, did you? Here you were sitting, just minding your business… And then running it up against the third clause, with the imperative…” she yawned. It was similar to how Jules rigged most of the old tech to trick it into working—the simple, elegant logic of his bypasses, but she was too bleary and too damn sated to explain the analogy just then. “Anyway, always cover your bases, have someone on the rooftops to watch your back. Same principle.”

The other explanations came later, in bits and pieces, filling the picture of their respective pasts one brushstroke at a time. They spent those early days talking themselves hoarse and fucking when they ran out of words and bygone horrors. She didn’t pretty it up for him, nor paint it black. He didn’t flinch at the bleached and broken bones of her world—just listened, attentive and focused. He’d been curious about her scars, aside from the main one, which she tiptoed around and he didn’t push, waiting for her to tackle it — but the pucker of the bullet wound in her thigh, and the faded silver lacerations on her abdomen, and the rest of her relatively more modest collection compared to the merc’s own were fair game. It got them discussing rifles, and bullets, and, via the strange pattern of claw marks on his left hip, magic and odd creatures that dwelled in dank places.

But that first time, before they had the certainty of safe harbor, was tremulous and terrifying, tinted dark with the awe and horror of a leap of faith. She waited for his clipped, ragged suggestions — or admissions, perhaps, little secrets she pocketed and tucked away as he yielded them, one by one. His head fell back when she took him into her mouth, and he’d fisted his hand into her hair before forcing his fingers to gentle. She took it slow at first, approximating his predilections, now confirmed, from that time in Riverwood.

“I won’t last long that way, hlakhes.” He’d put enough wryness into it to make it a joke — or mostly, anyway.

She tried not to chuckle at his horrible humor, and failed. It’d made him jerk, a hoarse moan breaking to the surface, a hint of his rising pleasure on her tongue, sharp and salty—and after that, she wasn’t about to stop. He coaxed her up and into his lap eventually, with entreaty and half-hearted taunts, then a reminder of her promise to ride him, then finally, when all else failed, a growled “let me look at you.” She obliged him then, straddling his hips and biting her lip as she eased herself down, that first delicious ache of accommodating him released into a quiet moan. He matched her with a ragged sigh and a strangled “gods…”. They managed the awkwardness of their position with chuckles tucked into slow kisses, with small adjustments and concessions until they found a way to move together. It wasn’t how she’d imagined it for them — nothing like their barely controlled, impulsive encounters, but slow and careful and way too close to the skin to phase out into the self-absorption of chasing the finish line.

“Look at me.” His pupils had gone wide and dark, his breath escaping in short, abrupt bursts as she found her rhythm, and his.

The magelight fizzled and winked out, plunging them into pitch black.

She grasped his fingers before he could recast. Perhaps it was because her own pleasure was cusping, too sharp and too fast, with a long drop down looming on the other side of it, but the words came to her lips unbidden — a gasped admission ahead of any conscious thought. “You’re already all I see, Tel.”

He came ahead of her with a startled moan, his lips finding hers in the dark—a desperate, messy kiss—but he didn’t slow until she cried out, tumbling over her edge. When she was able to move again, she nestled against him and listened, at first with utter, abject terror, then with slow, quiet joy, to his heartbeat settling into reliable regularity.

Eventually, he shifted beneath her, though he didn’t let go. “Not much furniture in here.” She could hear the laughter lurking around the corner of his words, and she buried her face against his neck to stifle her own stupid, giddy cackle. “We might need to readjust that plan of yours.”

~~~

In retrospect, the Bastard Bear had been crafty — she had to give him that much. He left them to their own devices for an entire week, long enough for them to catch their breath, to find their rhythm, long enough for the frantic, crude edge of initial lust to hone into the finer glimmers of easy, sensual comfort. They were well matched in this respect as well—accepting the need for that slight pinch of darkness without dragging it into the limelight of negotiation. He seemed to understand it on the same basic level she did, if perhaps for a different set of reasons, and he was all too happy to oblige. They played on the brink of it, and she didn’t begrudge him her pinned wrists, or the blooms of love bites — though never anywhere that might show unless she meant them to — or the rough, cataclysmically fast trysts up against the wall, or well, or braced against the table, some benign chore abandoned mid-doing, clothes shoved out of the way just far enough to make do.

The lazy ease came to them slowly, hard-earned and born of other patterns.

Still, the days stretched like unearned gifts. Long enough to start nosing around the farmstead, first for food and water and basic necessities, then out of curiosity. They found an old fermentation vat they repurposed into a bathtub, carrying buckets from the well, half a bar of soap to share between them. It turned into a long, deliciously slow afternoon affair, wonderfully warm and not a little decadent. Vera, still feeling the lingering dizziness of the soul pollution, though most of it had faded to an unpleasant memory not to be poked at unless absolutely necessary, decided against the ritual of cropping her hair short again. She toyed with the idea of outsourcing the task to the merc, but he had grown strangely territorial about her messy strands. His disapproving squint at the suggestion made her snort through a mock scowl and a demonstrative eye-roll. “Never pegged you for the traditional type, Demon Chops.” He’d crossed the short length of the tub to her side and sidled up to her, her body responding to his proximity with an eager automaticity that left her feeling irrationally disgruntled, and vaguely amused. “I rather enjoy having a bit more grip, hlakhes, but I suppose if you absolutely must…” She didn’t have a good counterargument for what followed, so she let it be.

They’d settled into a simple routine, an easy division of labor neither of them seemed particularly concerned with giving a name to. The horse had plodded back to the Whiterun stables. They let it. There was plenty of game in the foothills, and Vera’s rummaging lent rudimentary cookware — an old copper pot, green with oxidation, but still sturdy; a set of chipped wooden bowls; a whole collection of spoons, lovingly carved by some anonymous but dedicated craftsman, with a taste for bird designs. There were other signs of the Mad Bear’s past. She kept her curiosity tightly bridled, armoring herself with all her hard-gained cynicism against these perversely quiet reminders of ordinary, simple lives. Whoever the Silver-Tongues had been — unless, of course, this was a professional moniker rather than any real family name — they’d not been wealthy, but every little bit of memorabilia had a warm, lived-in aura about it, beneath the dust and grime of disuse. Carefully carved utensils, stored in a wooden box with a well-fitted lid; a knitted blanket, moth eaten in places, but warm, with neat tassels at the edges; a large, sturdy satchel, meticulously embroidered with a pattern of flowers and leaves. “Dowry bag, if I’m not mistaken,” the merc opined when she dragged her find to the hearth to take a closer look by firelight. Vera frowned, running her fingers over the places where the pattern stopped abruptly, still waiting for the seamstress to fill it in. “It looks unfinished.”

“Perhaps the bride changed her mind.”

“Yeah. Or the groom kicked it,” she muttered. “Did Undnar have a sister?”

Sero shrugged. “He never mentioned one.”

How much did the merc actually know about his employer, beyond what the Mad Bear had allowed?

There were other things, other scattered pieces of a puzzle she was determined not to assemble, but she didn’t seem able to stop, as if the house, itself, was leading her around by the nose. A butter churn had been repurposed for something nastier—a faint ferrous smell to it, old blood crusting the bottom. Nightshade bloomed at the back of the farm, a bit upslope, obscuring three graves, overgrown and untended. An old locket hid under a loose floor board, along with a stack of what must have been letters, so old they’d turned into a bundle of compacted mold. Illegible. She hooked the locket’s broken clasp with her nail to find a coiled strand of dark blond hair tied with red thread. The merc had frowned at her discovery and fiddled with the chain. “Silver, by the weight of it. Some kind of sentimental token, maybe? I can never tell with these damned Nord trinkets.”

She huffed, arranged herself in his lap, and retrieved the locket from his fingers, squinting at the faded design. “Haven’t you been here for ten years?”

“Should that have made me an expert on Nordic courtship customs?”

Vera chortled and poked him in the ribs. “And where did this cavalier attitude to local culture get you, hmm?”

His smile was quiet, but it lit up his whole face, with no bitter residue. “You tell me...” His hands had gone a-wandering and the mystery of the locket slipped from her attention.

She knew the bubble would burst after they found the trinket, that it was just a matter of time before the trap sprung shut on them. The merc must have known it, too. They’d taken to waking each other up at night, with kisses and slow caresses and sleepy mumbles, heat rising and ebbing between them in overlapping waves, their bodies one step ahead of what they left unsaid.

The farmhouse offered a decent overlook of the surrounding hills, so when, on the eighth day, she spotted the lone figure on the other side of the overgrown meadow ambling up the narrow path, Vera felt bitter rancor, but no surprise.

She turned on her heel and went to look for the merc, but he was already there, eyes pinched to crimson slits against the indefinite glow of a hazy sunrise. “Later than I expected,” he said curtly, and left it at that.

The Mad Nord lumbered into the courtyard, rosy-cheeked and positively brimming with good health. He shouldered off a large burlap sack and plopped it down at his feet, before huffing a contented grunt. “Provisions. I figured you two must be sick of venison by now.” His eyes twinkled with humor. “Had a nice rest? Nothing like fresh air and the sturdy comforts of an ancestral hearth to lift one’s spirits and restore one’s strength.” He pointed his beard at the sack. “Teldryn, if you don’t mind, get that into the house. How about breakfast, Snowberry? And after, as our bellies fill, and our hearts soar with the joys of reunion, you and I should have that chat.”

Chapter Text

Sometimes, the best one could do was to simulate compliance.

Vera stripped the skin off the potatoes in meticulous ribbons; she stirred patiently until the carrots crisped rich and brown in the melted suet; she chopped the spring onions as fine as her old knife allowed; she beat the eggs to fine froth before pouring them in, a little bit at a time. She’d never particularly liked cooking, even though necessity had made her decent at it—it used to be Dima’s job, and the one occupation that seemed to ease him into something like peace, or else detachment. And now, peering into the copper pot she’d scrubbed to a serviceable shine, she found herself groping for him, for the low rumble of his baritone, for his chronic ire and bitter reassurances—world’s shit, burn bright and fast. Silence met her, and a pang of guilt at what felt like a double betrayal tightened her stomach. She shoved it aside, focusing on stirring the pot. Dima had been her people before they were anything else—a lone lighthouse on the choppy waters of her adolescence when things started going to shit in earnest. And now he was gone, traded for the Mad Nord’s greed for whatever the fuck he thought would fix his world, as if such things could ever be fixed. The banked rage bobbed up and down her throat, a buoy against the murky bleakness that lurked beneath.

She could feel the bard’s gaze on her back like the weight of a heavy, unwelcome hand.

Still, she went through the motions of strange, inverted hospitality. The Nord had given the farmhouse a single, flinty look, his eyes lingering on the bed, on the trunk in the corner, on the disturbed floorboard. Vera stared at the wooden bowl in front of her, at the delicately carved spoon—birch, maybe, the wood fine-grained and luminous. The single room must have smelled of them — of the frost miriam tea she’d collected and brewed, of the merc’s sword oil, of lye soap and sweet wild meadows after they tore the boards from the window. Of sex, and intimate whispers in the dark.

Undnar seemed unfazed, except for his russet brows knitting in brief puzzlement before he dispelled the frown in favor of a happy belch. Whatever conclusion he had come to, he said nothing, helping himself to more potatoes and eggs.

Sero finished his meal quickly. He’d stolen a discrete caress, thumb brushing over her wrist as she set the bowl down in front of him. It’d become a ritual between them, him thanking her for cooking, her thanking him for dealing with the bloody business of dressing the game they poached for their dinners. He’d been awkward with it at first, in that stolen stretch of fleeting, time-bound domesticity. “There’s plenty of blood on my hands, partner. What’s a bit more?” He’d armored it with his usual caustic sarcasm. Vera had countered it with a level look — not combative, exactly, but not particularly impressed with the self-loathing spiral either. “You think you’re the first broody bastard I’m cooking for, Demon Chops?” After that, he’d accepted her thanks without fuss, and dispensed his own without whatever guilt he seemed to think was his duty.

“Ah, Snowberry, I have—“ the Mad Nord masticated loudly, swallowed, and reached for the bottle of mead “—missed your delightful cooking. Makes a man yearn for the warm comforts of a family hearth, doesn’t it, sell-sword?”

The merc threw his employer a dark look, but when he spoke, it was with his usual acerbic irony. “A bit of a tenuous comparison, if you’re referring to my life back in Morrowind, Undnar.” He glanced at Vera, and his lips twitched in the smallest of smiles. “But if you’re truly intent on stirring my nostalgia, we could always discuss who might need assassinating next.”

Undnar cocked an eyebrow, but again he said nothing, simply humphing into his beard before returning to his meal. Vera dug into her food, not tasting much.

Play along. Play along, and…

And what? Make the Nord believe she hadn’t noticed the trap? Pretend that she hadn’t seen him take in all the little signs she and the merc had left scattered around — of life, however brief, lived in a breathless, intimate tangle, lost to everything but each other, of bodies and stories interweaving to a single rhythm? Short of the Accursed Bear barging in and catching them banging on the table, it couldn’t have been more obvious, for all the subtlety they had. And if the Nord had failed to ask the obvious question — about how they’d managed to get around the curse — then that simply meant he had the answer already, and perhaps had known it all along.

Known it and… bided his time.

So play along with what, and for what purpose? To eke out one more night of relative peace, another day they could spend as lovers, before returning to being puppets on whatever stage the calamitous bard was setting in motion?

I’m afraid I did you all a disservice with my passion for stories. Martha, surfacing from the deep delirium of fever, her voice shoaling on a rattly sigh. It doesn’t matter that there is no everafter, Vera, love. Another day is all any of us can ever ask for. A few hours later, her breath had left her.

The Nord huffed, tearing her out of the mire of memories. “So, Snowberry. Found the locket yet?” His tawny eyes bore into hers with not a trace of his usual buffoonery. “Aye. You have. And the graves.” He leaned in. “I think it’s time we came clean with each other, lass. What say you? In this ancestral home of mine, with memories tucked into every corner like forlorn ghosts, waiting to stand and bear witness.” He reached for her cup, then Sero’s, before flicking the dregs of their tea right onto the floorboards. He tipped the bottle of mead — three equal splashes — and pushed the cups across the table, first to the merc, then to her. Vera stilled, her spoon frozen mid-way to her mouth.

“To honest answers,” the bard declared and raised his drink. He drained it without waiting for them to join, then thudded the mug on the table with unnecessary force.

She caught the merc’s hesitation out of the corner of her eyes. He glanced at her, not so much in warning, as in question. She offered him a small shrug for it. After a moment, he tipped his mug in a perfunctory toast and took a sip, though whether he drank in earnest or faked it was impossible to tell.

Vera looked into her cup. There was always the chance that the mead had been laced with something, but it looked and smelled innocuous, swishing against the edges, gold and rich, like summer nectar.

Another honeyed trap, then. But if she could trade it against one more day? For the luxury of a goodbye?

Not enough, Martha, sweetheart. It’s never been enough.

She lifted the cup and touched her lips to the liquid.

“There,” the Nord nodded in approval. “And now that we have shared mead, we shall share words, for there is no finer solvent for secrets than a cup drunk over blood-soaked earth, or so the old Sagas say.”

“Who were they?” Vera asked, forcing herself to meet the bard’s gaze. “The ones whose blood soaked the earth here?”

Undnar leaned back in his chair and extracted his pipe and smoking pouch, packing the tobacco with leisurely meticulousness. He didn’t answer for some time, letting the silence accrue gravitas, no doubt. At length, he sighed. “Do you know what a Skald’s primary role is, Snowberry?” He looked up from his task, though his gaze remained strangely unfocused. “It is to remember. To sing the names of those whose voice no longer rings; to take their tale from hold to hold, and lips to ear to lips, until their deeds imprint themselves upon the mind, and thus live on in the retelling.”

Vera shifted. It was oratory, of course, but subtly different from anything she’d ever heard from the Clowning Bear. He was quiet and poised, the delivery rolling and rhythmic like hoofbeats on a long dusty road. “But those we sing are strangers made less strange, while our own loves remain unsung and unremembered.” He fell silent and fished for his flint and steel. The pipe crackled with his rapid puffs, and his smoke ring drifted to the rafters, distorting in the soft breeze from the window. “Once upon a time,” he began again, in an eerily familiar cadence, “there was a young man, as proud as he was foolish, and like many foolish young men before him, he thought himself the hero of a story worth telling. But this young man was neither lordling nor jarling, nor a merchant’s son with a father’s deep coffers to spend on deeper appetites, and there was nothing more remarkable about him than a lust for glory and a love of stories. He was unexceptional in every way, as were his mother and father who were simple folk, with little care beyond the rhythms of till and harvest. And if that young man had a sister, then he surely paid her little attention, for she was destined to marry a young man not so different from him and just as undistinguished, and set down roots on the same rocky plot to brood.” He stopped, and reached for the mead. “Arm yourself with patience, Snowberry, for as you can see, the hero of this tale was as full of hot air as a dwemer centurion, though what he lacked in compassion, he made up in vanity.”

“But no tale would be complete without a woman to anchor it, and so our foolish young man set his eyes upon a fair young maiden, with hair as amber as autumn honey and eyes as dark as midnight, with trenchant wit and beguiling charm, and a figure to make even the Jarl stare in slack-jawed lust. Which,” he added, in an oddly conversational aside, “he did.”

Vera frowned, then chanced a glance at the merc. Judging by his expression, he was equally nonplused, though whether by the story, or by the flash of Undnar’s sudden rancor, she couldn’t tell.

When the Mad Nord didn’t continue, she obligingly filled the silence with the expected. “So which one did the fair maiden choose, in the end?”

Undnar squinted in evaluation. “That, Snowberry, is a question with no simple answer. Perhaps she chose both, though I am inclined to think that, in the end, neither won her.”

Vera bit her lip. Play along. If being the slighted competitor made the Mad Bear feel better about his thwarted cock, correcting him on his flawed approach wouldn’t serve her. At best, it’d antagonize him into more verbiage.

“Tough,” she managed, with a shoddy facsimile of sympathy.

The Nord beamed his approval before puffing up again. “Understand, Snowberry, that this young man was not easily discouraged. If there was one talent the Divines chose to bestow upon him, it was for spinning words, but whatever innate proclivity he might have possessed, it was as rough-hewn as a boulder, and about as subtle as a rutting mammoth. But there is one path open to both lowborn and highborn, and that path leads to the Bard’s College, which is where our feckless lad, bolstered by stolen kisses and breathless oaths from his beloved, and determined to win her from the Jarl’s greedy eyes and greedier hands, set off. And if, perchance, his sweetheart made him promise that he would not make her fate more difficult for her to bear — for one does not refuse a young Jarl without suffering consequences, not when one’s father made a pledge on one’s behalf ahead of one’s will — then, surely, this young man believed that any such agreement could be revised.”

He paused to top off their mugs with more mead, drained his in one gulp, and settled into puffing on his pipe, apparently lost in thought — or, more likely, waiting for the next question. Vera glanced at the merc. He had busied himself with a roll-up, his eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was privately sieving the tale for nuggets of truth amidst the bullshit.

Vera repressed a sigh. “So what happened to the girl while the young man was off barding?”

Undnar smiled. “Of course you would be curious about the maiden, and why shouldn’t you be, Snowberry? For it is the lot we share that fastens our attention. Some say the beautiful young maiden waited for her beloved for as long the Jarl’s impatience would stretch, for she was not devoid of feminine guile. But our young bard did not set foot in his native hold for the better part of a year, busy making a name for himself so that he could earn not just her love, but also her hand. Or so he wrote her, and begged her to delay the nuptials until the early days of summer, when he would return with enough gold in his pocket, new connections among the powerful of this world, and a name to carry his weight to ransom her from her father’s promise. But by the time he made it back, the wedding bells had rung, and when they met again, it wasn’t his beloved he beheld, but the Jarl’s young wife. And still, he loved her just as fiercely, for nothing fans the fire of passion more than the allure of the forbidden, and the vexation of another man’s happiness.”

Vera nodded. The fact that the Mad Bear wasn’t bothering with making his younger self appear particularly sympathetic prickled her neck with amorphous alarm. He’d worked on this one, polished it, tumbled it around until it unfolded like a road leading downhill, accelerating towards the inevitable—three untended graves at the back of a small abandoned farm; an untilled patch of land; and a tarnished silver locket holding a strand of severed hair.

But to what end?

“Must have been satisfying to cuckold the Jarl, then,” Vera commented, pitching her voice towards an impression of Sero’s bored irony. The chances of Undnar buying into her little performance if she didn’t put up some friction were slim to none—and there would be something at the end of the tale, some bid for sympathy, some dramatic unveiling meant to explain his callous decisions. And, after that, another trap—a deal she wouldn’t be able to refuse or a proposition convincing enough to accept. And, once that failed, there’d be a threat, one that she couldn’t dodge. She cast her eyes at the merc, and caught him staring at her before he looked away, a bit too quickly.

They’d practically handed the Mad Bear the lever. Of course, he’d use it.

“Crass as always, I see,” Undnar chortled cheerfully. “Beautiful green-eyed lass that you are, far be it from me to begrudge you your vulgarity, for I see neither shield at your back, nor blade at your hip, and there is no armor greater than your enemy’s distaste. But since we are not enemies, you may retract your claws, and, in the spirit of being honest — for what other virtues remains us — yes. Yes, it was, for what is sweeter than an eager lover’s impassioned touch, if not the thrill of duping her conceited husband?”

Vera shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it.”

The Mad Bear turned to the merc and pantomimed dismay. “Not a romantic bone in her, is there, sell-sword? Is she equally impervious with you? Is there a heart beating under that beguiling—“

“If you would like a lesson in anatomy, Undnar,” Sero cut across the question with dry finality, “I suggest you visit the Hall of the Dead. The Jarl of Whiterun has three children, last I heard. Any of them bastards?”

The Mad Nord’s jovial grin hung on his face like something hammered to a wall, but then he threw his head back and guffawed, loudly, slapping his hand across his knee. Once the amusement passed, he resettled into a benign smile. “Easy there, Teldryn. I meant no insult. No need to snarl like a dog over a bone — I’m sure Snowberry wouldn’t take offense at an impartial compliment.”

Fucker. Vera swallowed bitter bile and forced her face into numb immobility. It wasn’t just a put down, it was meant to provoke — whether her or the merc, she wasn’t sure.

“Wait…” She fashioned her expression towards an approximation of uneasy surprise, there for the Mad Nord to see when he turned to her, one bushy eyebrow raised in question. “I don’t know much about Nord marriage customs…” She counted off the ellipsis, hoping the hesitation would come off as credible enough to reroute Undnar back to the story. She could practically feel the merc’s eyes on her, but she ignored it. “But that seems like a very dicey game to play, especially if one is married to a Jarl. She must have truly loved him — the young man, I mean.”

Undnar appraised her with an unpleasantly canny look, but, at length, he nodded. “Dicey game indeed.” He turned to the merc. “Since you asked, Teldryn, the youngest son looks nothing like the Jarl’s late wife. I hear he takes after his mother. Does that answer your question?”

Sero made an indefinite noise in the back of his throat — too dry for amusement, too noncommittal for confirmation. “It answers mine.”

Undnar’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Snowberry, was there another question you wished to ask?”

How about, where the fuck is this going? Instead, Vera shrugged. “What was her name? The bard’s paramour?”

The Nord reached for the bottle again. “Her name was Rivki. Rivki Sky-Touched.” He said nothing for a time, busying himself with refilling his glass and topping off their still-full ones. “The young man came back, and, as bard, he was invited to the Jarl’s court with open arms, for he had kept his liaison secret, and the Jarl had no reason to suspect competition. Thus, for some years, he and his lover knew a measure of happiness. And because this young lad was as foolish as he was besotted, he never wondered at how strange it was that his furtive meetings with his beloved were left uninterrupted, at how the fates themselves seemed to favor them, at how the Jarl was always called away at the most fortuitous of times on some unforeseen duty.” He lifted his glass and drained it in a long gulp. “But Rivki did. And consequently, on their last and final meeting, with the winds of winter whistling their dark songs, and Masser staring across the heavens at Secunda, she told him of two things: that something terrible had woven itself into the cold, hard stones of the Jarl’s palace, and that it lurked in the shadows and whispered dirty secrets and dark temptations into unwary ears. And,” Undnar paused before resuming with an unhappy grimace, “that she was with child and would have them end their affair before the young man found himself the target of a jealous husband’s wrath.”

“And did the bard abide by her wishes?”

Undnar squinted in mild disapproval. “You must think of the lad poorly indeed, Snowberry. Of course, he abided — what choice did he have? But the time to avoid consequences had come and gone. Because, unbeknownst to our young lovers, the horrid creature hiding in the shadows took pleasure in toying with mortals almost as much as it enjoyed destroying them, and it wasn’t one to relinquish the playthings caught in its webs of lies, and rumors, and deceit. And the tighter the snares coiled, the more its hunger grew.”

There was no pretense to the bard now, no carefully crafted facade of duplicitous buffoonery. What remained behind was grim solemnity tinged with decades-old rage gone to seed, and… Ice scuttled down Vera’s spine. She’d seen an almost infinite parade of expressions on the Nord’s face over the months of their association — all shuffled like playing cards in the hands of a crafty sharper. But she’d never seen fear until now.

Sero had glanced up, and he was staring at his employer with an odd, unreadable expression.

Vera swallowed. “What was it? The thing lurking?”

“Are you quite certain, Undnar?” The merc asked almost at the same time, a strange edge to his voice. “I’m not suggesting it’s impossible, but in Dragonsreach, of all places?”

The bard shrugged. “You tell me, Dunmer. Your people worship the damned thing.” He turned to Vera. “I’m not one to claim I understand the motivations of a Daedric Prince, Snowberry, not then, and not now, but if our young bard learned anything from what transpired afterwards, it is that should the Daedra put their mind to it, we mortals have no more purchase on our will than an ant stuck in honey has a chance to escape.” He motioned with his head at the merc. “I’d wager Teldryn would agree, but I’m assuming you’ve learned of that by now.” He sighed, heavy and humorless. “As I’ve said, Snowberry, that one wasn’t my secret to share. But this one is, and share it, I will, because otherwise you’ll keep glaring daggers at me and believe me to be no more salvageable than a snow troll’s shitpile.”

The incredulous snort was out before she could bite it back. “Is that what you’re after, Undnar? Salvation?”

The bard’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t scoff so readily, lass, and count your blessings that you should not be so tarnished that you’d yearn for it. What else would an old warrior seek? But not just for myself. All I do, Snowberry, I do for my homeland. As long as there is war and strife and bandits tearing the country apart, and the Thalmor trying to sever our faith like a sick butcher with a taste for pain saws off a limb to hear its victims’ screams, the Daedra will flock to the carnage and play with our fates, nevermind the horror they sow for sport.” He paused. “But hear the rest of the story before you pass your judgement, for, as you might have surmised, it does not end well.”

She nodded slowly. “The Jarl found out?”

“Aye. That, he did. Understand that our star-crossed lovers had been most careful, for they feared what might happen to the other should their secret be discovered. But whispers spread through the palace like fire through summer grasses, and soon they reached the Jarl’s ears. He would not touch the bard, not directly, for our young lad had availed himself of powerful protectors and useful connections by then—and the Jarl did not wish for a scandal in the year of the Empire’s betrayal. But though his wife bore him a child the spitting image of himself, he did not relinquish his desire to avenge his wounded pride. The White Gold Concordat had been signed, and Thalmor agents roamed the countryside. You can guess as to the conclusion, can you not?”

Vera winced despite herself. “The Jarl let it slip that the bard was a Talos worshipper.”

Undnar nodded. “Ironic, since good old Balgruuf worships Mighty Talos himself, but I suppose he forgot to mention it. The Thalmor did not find the bard, but they did discover his family’s old steading, and when he returned to his ancestral home, it was to find his parents cut down like rye at Harvestmere, and his sister…” His gaze drifted away. “She had fought bravely, though she was no warrior, and they had punished her for it.” He tipped the last of the bottle into his mug and knocked back the remnants of the mead. “And thus ends the tale, Snowberry. The bard vowed to right the wrongs he’d sown by his naivety and selfishness, and to rid his homeland of Thalmor influence and Daedric puppeteering so that his people could live in peace. But the Vigilants of Stendarr were as short-sighted in their strategy as the Stormcloak rebels were full of self-righteous pomp, and neither offered anything like a solution. And so he searched far and wide, and after years of fruitless erring, he stumbled upon a possible answer.” He stretched and leaned back, fixing his gaze on Vera. “But that, Snowberry, is a tale for another day. I came here with an offer, and now that you know the story of this house in which you sit, perhaps you will consider my proposal more favorably.”

Vera glanced at the merc. Sero’s eyes had narrowed slightly, but he kept his face neutral.

“If you want me to agree to being a draugr soul sieve, the answer is an emphatic no, Undnar, so don’t waste your breath.”

The bard had the decency to wince. “I… I was too hasty in that cave, for which I apologize. I hope you will forgive me in time. Whatever you are — and I’m pretty sure that you’re not what you appear, or Teldryn here wouldn’t keep stealing glances at you like a cat staring at a bowl of cream—“ he wagged his eyebrows and chuckled heartily at the merc’s irritated expression “—as I was saying, whatever you are, I believe you will be capable of truly incredible things, should you get proper training. Our paths align, lass, and as I promised, I’ll cover all expenses. And, in exchange for your future help, we will put right what I failed to fix a long time ago.” He turned to the merc. “I’ve wronged you as well, my friend, and no amends will undo it. Everything the Daedra touch, they corrupt with their vile influence, and I am no exception. I thought at the time I was saving you from a fate much worse, but this manner of power over another misshapes one’s will and taints one’s soul, as surely as the foul creatures that make it possible.” He looked back at Vera. “I would not trust myself around anything Daedric, Snowberry, nor do I wish to come in contact with more of the wretched beings, but if this is what it takes to free my friend — and your lover — from the Daedra’s clutches, then let us ally forces and put things right.”

He surveyed them across the stunned silence, his tawny eyes slightly clouded with drink.

Vera glanced at the Dunmer, but he was rolling another cigarette and paying the process a whole lot more attention than it required.

“Well, Snowberry? What say you?”

She held her breath. Play along. Buy time. “Give me a day or two to think about it.” At the Nord’s mildly puzzled frown, her stomach clenched with barely-suppressed fury, so adulterated with fear she couldn’t tell where one emotion ended and the other began. “Look, I’m still half-dizzy from that shit you pulled at Bleak Falls, so either way, I’m not road-ready. If you actually want this to succeed, then give me time to recover.”

Undnar hunched slightly and looked at his feet, the very image of contriteness. “Aye, I suppose that’s fair. And glad I am to see you feeling better. I will return in two days’ time, then, and we can start making our arrangements.” He lifted his head and chuckled, a bit ruefully. “I best be off if I am to be back on time — I have a banquet at Dragonsreach to attend. A bit of an awkward proposition, as you might imagine, but before I go, Snowberry, mind if I take the locket you found? I’ve been meaning to…” He trailed off.

Vera motioned at the floorboard. “I put it back in the cache.”

The Mad Bear nodded, lumbered off to the loose plank, and lifted it before extracting the trinket. “I’ll pay my respects out back, then I’ll be off. I’ll see you both in two days, and then, the road awaits!”

The door creaked shut behind him with a muted thud.

~~~

Once the Mad Nord disappeared down the grassy path, Vera braced herself and turned to the Dunmer. Judging by his expression, he’d been watching her for some time.

“Tel, I—“

“That filthy n’wah,” he said, too quietly, his face a mixture of incredulity and stunned rage. He was keeping himself eerily still, and his immobility sent a prickle of instinctive unease down her neck. The merc was always subtly in motion, even at rest.

She reached for the empty cup the Nord had left behind and plopped it down in front of him.

“Here. Throw that way, in case it bounces back.”

For a few seconds, he simply stared at her, then he gripped the mug, spun around, and hurled it at the wall. The wood shattered. The bottom separated, the disk ricocheting at a diagonal. It hit the floorboards and spun on itself before slowly wobbling to a standstill.

Vera pushed the second mug in his direction. “After this one, I’m cutting you off. We need to drink out of something. If this doesn’t do it, there’s still some wood that needs chopping.”

Sero barked a dry laugh and got up from the chair. “All better,” he drawled, with a good dose of self-irony layered over the underlying anger, then stalked to the opposite side of the room before busying himself with picking up the pieces of the shattered mug. “Breaking the Nord fetcher’s will have to do.”

Vera wandered off to the hearth and poured fresh water into the pot. The merc had rejoined her and crouched at her side by the time she was done plucking leaves from what was left of the frost miriam. He reached for a rusty poker and vented the fire, then added a fresh log to the flames.

Vera plopped down on the floor, and, after a moment, he joined her. She waited out the silence, keeping her eyes on the flames until the merc was ready to speak.

“Vee—“ He cut the rest off, a bit abruptly, like swallowing around a blade.

“I know.” She turned to face him. There had been that split second of utter terror when she had wondered whether Sero bought into the Mad Bear’s puppeteering, but then the cup went flying, and all she was left with was a mixture of relief and guilt at her niggling doubts. “Look.” She hesitated, ordering her thoughts to the shadows dancing in the hearth. “Not my first rodeo, as they used to say in my neck of the woods, though don’t ask me what a rodeo is, I’ve no idea. Something about horses, I think.”

“‘Not my first cliff racer,’” the merc supplied after a pause. “A shoddy translation, if we’re honest, since it misses the… double meaning. There’s an equivalent in Cyrodiil, from what I recall, though it’s been some time. Featuring the Arena, predictably enough.”

A smile tugged at her lips, and Vera chanced a glance. He was staring into the flames, but his shoulders had eased.

“I never asked,” he said, “though I’ve been curious. You speak flawlessly, barring your odd expressions, but you trail your vowels on occasion.” He turned to her and smiled, close lipped, almost luminous around the eyes. “Do your people speak Tamrielic?”

Vera shrugged and hugged her knees to her chest, resting her cheek against the coarse fabric of her trousers. “I grew up speaking something called English, though it’s not the only language.” She’d never given it much thought before, though the suspicion had settled early on, a small, unobtrusive seed waiting to grow into an unsightly weed. “It sounds the same to me, though your writing system is different.” She turned away, letting her gaze draw back to the hearth. “Whatever brought me here, I don’t think…” The words stalled at an impossible threshold: a scar on her back, like a barcode; the Unworshipped, an obscene shadow in the corner of a small surgical room; a gurney, all steel and sanitizing solution. “I think it’s like when you’re copying a text without quite getting the meaning. Just replicating the squiggles the best you can.” She rested her forehead against her knees, waiting for the darkness behind her eyelids to pave the path ahead. “I don’t think I came through exactly as I was, Tel. Maybe the language was part of that. It’d make more sense than assuming we share one to begin with.”

She opened her eyes but didn’t turn to face him. When he didn’t comment, they settled into precarious silence.

“Anyway, as I was saying, not my first rodeo, or cliff racer, or what have you. Point is, Undnar’s not the first asshole to pretend he suddenly saw the light under the influence of a woman’s moral compass, and he won’t be the last. He might even think he’s being sincere, in the moment, you know?” Sero raised an eyebrow, but remained silent, so she hurried over the rest. “Not that I make any claims on moral virtue, so if anything, the joke’s on him. Either way, same outcome.”

The merc’s eyes narrowed in mild rebuke. “Your ‘virtue’ shouldn’t have anything to do with it to begin with — as far as claims to reform are concerned, that is.” He cleared his throat. “You need to leave, Vee.” His words were brusque and rushed, as if shoved into the air before they could slither back into hiding.

Vera rested her forehead on her knees again and closed her eyes. She knew they’d get there eventually. They’d been on borrowed time from the beginning, but the jolt still came: a blunt, tight pain in her chest, constricting like a vise.

She felt him shift and looked up. He’d drawn closer, his hand coming up to cup her chin until she was staring into his eyes.

“I don’t want to imagine what these damn necromancers will do to you if this goes badly.” His voice had wavered slightly, but then he breathed through his teeth, and what came after was clipped, but calm. “And it will go badly, hlakhes. You heard his story. His fear of Mephala, that wasn’t fake. My patron has never, in all the years I’ve known him, tangled with the Daedra — despite the lure of power. I doubt that’s about to change on my behalf, whatever his claims about grand friendships and repentance might be.” His voice had dropped on the last part, the words stretched into a sarcastic parody of pathos.

She leaned into his touch and closed her eyes. “What does he actually want, Tel? If we can reverse engineer it…”

“No.” His grip on her chin tightened. His arm snaked around her waist, and he pulled her closer until she was straddling his lap. “He will use you, and use us against each other, and he won’t stop until there’s nothing left of you but a desiccated soul husk. And that, hlakhes, will end me as surely as it’ll end you.” Before she could register his meaning, he proceeded, with a note of dry amusement. “So you can see how that is very much against my best interests. Partner.“

She smiled down at him, despite the tightness clogging her throat. “Precisely. Partner. So if you think I’m just going to walk away and abandon you to Undnar’s bullshit, you got another think coming.” His eyes narrowed and his face hardened, but before he could launch into objections, she rushed on. “There must be someone out there who has some idea about Daedric curses. Are you sure it was Azura who… bailed you out, and not something else?”

He frowned slightly. “I… no, but it’s a logical guess. It’s who I prayed to, and I don’t see why anyone else would bother. If anything, I’m surprised I got any answer at all.”

“What is Azura’s Star, exactly?”

He hesitated. “From what I gathered, it is a soul gem of sorts, though like most Daedric artifacts, it functions according to its own rules. I suppose this is why the necromancers were tinkering with it.” He shrugged. “Beyond that, I’m no expert. But—“

She brought her finger to his lips. “Before you launch into more ‘no you can’t-s’, I think we can agree that it leaves us with two options: someone who knows about the artifact itself, or someone who is an expert on the Daedra.”

“You won’t be able to—“

“I’m no use to you if I’m under Undnar’s boot-heel, Tel, I know that. But I’m not leaving without—“

The shift was so sudden she wasn’t sure how it happened, exactly. His pupils widened and his lips parted. Her finger slipped into his mouth just as his hand slid under her tunic. The flare of heat surged through her, tangling her breath, and then she was on the floor, the floorboards creaking under their joint weight. She tried to pull his shirt over his head, gave up, and went for his belt instead.

It was messy and fast, fingers clawing at clothes until enough were shoved out of the way. He pushed her trousers down to her knees and turned her around, his hands gripping her hips a bit too tightly before he forced himself to gentle. She glanced over her shoulder, meeting his silent apology with a challenge. “I won’t break, Demon Chops. And since we’ve already established you won’t either…”

The merc seemed to understand the request without burdening her with the need to elaborate. He leaned down, his chest pressing against her back as his arms circled her, and he fitted himself inside her in a single, hard thrust. She gasped, and ground back against him, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

He was rough, with an agonized, desperate edge to him, and she met him in kind — marks on skin, left and received, to map the passage of time once their paths diverged. The other pain, the one without a map, would linger, unhealed and invisible. But she’d have this, and it would have to be enough.

Her orgasm ambushed her around the bend of some errant thought about the oddities of convergent evolution. She’d frogmarched it across the temptation to count the hours they had left, her focus swinging like a runaway pendulum between the raw immediacy of their coupling and a near future from which he’d refuse to fade, however many miles she put in between; trying all the while not to burst into tears about it, like an idiot. She’d gotten as far as the universe’s misspent largesse, or perverse cosmic gag — its doling out of unproductive attraction, heedless of either design or reason — when he yanked her head back and pressed his lips to her ear, his whispered endearments, filthy and sweet in equal measure, tumbling out on his ragged breaths. She cried out against his palm as the pleasure swept over her and dragged her into its depths — pitiless, like a stormy ocean.

~~~

The dim urgency of impending preparations tugged at her like a child worrying her mother’s skirt, but Vera couldn’t bring herself to move. They sprawled on the bed, not bothering with clothes. They had spent the rest of the morning dozing, pretending that what would come next was centuries away, beyond a hazy horizon.

The weather had turned, thick storm clouds blotting out the noonday sun, but the heat didn’t abate, only thickened with moisture. Outside, the cicadas hushed, waiting for rain.

Plenty of time remained until nightfall.

The merc had turned to his side, one arm folded under his head in lieu of a pillow. He drew senseless patterns over her stomach, trailing his knuckles across her skin, slow and lazy, the low buzz of desire flaring every time his hand traveled a little higher… a little lower…Vera tried to gather her wits, but his thumb followed the contour of her breast, scattering electric shivers in its wake. She moaned in open invitation, her thighs parting reflexively, but he didn’t move, just watched her from under half-hooded lids. A little smile had curled into the corner of his mouth, though his eyes held deep shadows.

“Either fuck me already, or help me pack,” she huffed, squirming a little as his hand trailed back down and settled between her legs. She reached for him, but the merc moved swiftly, rolling over her and pinning her wrist over her head, his thumb rubbing small circles into her palm until her fingers relaxed and curled. He cupped her breast gently, and molded his body to hers, the weight of him turning the sweet little lurches at her core into liquid, needy heat.

“Always so cool, hlakhes,” he purred, low in her ear. “Like polished marble on a summer day.”

She lifted her head to try to get at his earlobe, her free hand reaching between them, but he captured that wrist, too, and joined it with the other one. Vera narrowed her eyes and tried to keep herself from shimmying in encouragement, without much success. His chuckle reverberated through her ribcage. He met her eyes and moved his hips in an unhurried roll. She bit back a whine, converting it to an acerbic “you’re lucky I like you, Demon Chops, because you tend to run as hot as a furnace, and I’m already drenched.”

His lips lowered to her throat. “Hmm.” He licked the sensitive spot under her jaw before grazing it with his teeth, and this time, there was no holding back the whine. “I rather think you are, yes.”

“Maybe you should do something about it, then?” Her back arched as he pressed against her. “Or is there something you’d like to share about you and marble statues first?”

She earned herself a lopsided grin, but he didn’t relent. “Hmm. Trouble, the lot of them.”

She made a face at his veiled reference, halfway between amusement and distaste. Trouble, indeed, but would they even be here if not for that accursed Dibellan effigy?

His eyes raked over her in unapologetic appreciation, his gaze sharpening, lazy heat giving way to focused hunger. “But you can’t fault a fellow for enjoying the view…” He held himself aloft before shifting his grip on her wrists. Vera growled in frustrated impatience, trying to get her hands free to retaliate — with no success — then, for lack of better options, lifted her head to nip at the angle of his jaw. His breath roughened, but he kept his voice conversational. “And that’s where the resemblance ends considering all your…” he dodged her lips and lowered his own to her ear “…wriggling.” He’d brought his thigh up, spreading her wider.

Judging by the merc’s expression, his body wasn’t fully on board with his delaying tactics either. Vera wrinkled her nose, trying to smother the smile lest it betray her upcoming quip, though not the impulse to give his shoulder a gentle bite. “Is that a complaint, Demon Chops? Because if it is, I suppose a statue would circumvent your second clause.”

He barked a short, surprised laugh, and she exploited his momentary distraction to twist her pinned leg from under him. She hooked her ankles at his lower back. Sero groaned something indistinctly vexed, apparently torn between the timeless contradiction of delay and gratification, then released her wrists, and, in one smooth movement, snaked his arm around her waist, sat back on his haunches, and brought her hips up into his lap. When she tried to sit up, his hand splayed over her stomach, pinning her to the bed.

“If you’re asking me to turn you into a statue, partner, I’m afraid it’s beyond my capabilities, let alone my interests.” His thumb trailed down her belly, and Vera bit her lip in anticipation of its destination. The merc observed her with an infuriatingly knowing little smirk, though his eyes on her were soft. “There are better magic tricks, if you’re of a mind.”

She eyed him curiously. “You’ve not offered before.”

He hesitated. “I thought you might…” he cleared his throat, the glimmer of embarrassment under his chuckle quickly rerouted into a half-shrug. “I thought it might be less familiar. For you.”

She answered with an amused snort, but held his gaze. “Got it. Don’t worry, I like your baseline, Tel.” At his cocked eyebrow, she amended. “More than like. Happy now?” She settled her hands on his thighs before he could gloat. “But if it’s something you enjoy, I’m game. Just, no fire.”

He gave her a long, odd look — a flash of surprise tangled into some strange species of desire, stark, yet complex. “It’s nothing particularly fancy. I’ve always been utter rubbish at illusion, but these are… simple enough.”

“Good pitch.” She lifted up on her elbows and scooted closer, returning his earlier unapologetic ogle. “Does the self-deprecation work every time?”

He chortled, but then his hand traveled down. “You tell me…” A flicker of green, so subtle she only caught it with her peripheral vision, and then he stroked her — an unhurried roll of his thumb. A startled moan escaped as her body went rigid and pliant all at once, flooded with sharply focused pleasure, the response so overpowering and immediate her vision went white with it. “Oh…” was all she managed.

It was too easy to lose herself in it — in him — in the way he played her like a string before his own control thinned, then frayed, then broke, and his body answered hers with precarious swiftness, a slow, smooth thrust fitting them together like some impossible cosmic puzzle with an unexpectedly simple solution. He’d rolled her on top by then, but they were long past worrying about the logistics. Her pleasure built and built and built, then crested only to build again — to his rhythm, to his ragged whispers, to moans shared across kisses, to her own greedy hands trying to memorize the shape of him. His magic skittered over her skin, fleeting and frantic, no longer a demonstration, but a simple extension of what he was, when it was all said and done.

“Vee…” His lips parted on her name, shortened to its diminutive like something he only uttered sparingly lest it spooked. He came with a hoarse moan he didn’t bother holding back, his eyes flying open, fighting the involuntary spasm that would force them closed. It flashed as he tipped her over, clear and sharp, the last thing to be glimpsed before her own orgasm crested and crashed and tumbled her into its undertow.

It’s a goodbye, you nitwit. That’s why.

~~~

By the time the sun reddened and dipped towards the mountain line, Vera was forced to face the next step. At her attempted protest that they still had a day, Sero gave a short, categorical shake of his head. “Even if he does give us the time he promised, you’ll need a head-start, Vee.” He turned away, and she didn’t argue, sparing them both the misery.

They found several pieces of crumpled parchment buried deep in the merc’s knapsack — he had looked surprised at the discovery, then mildly chastised, a “I’d been meaning to give you this, but it slipped my mind,” delivered with a rueful grin. He helped her map to Windhelm and counseled her to seek passage to Solstheim from the port in search of some mage named Neloth. The merc didn’t sound particularly sanguine about whether the fellow would be willing to speak to her — let alone help — but he was an expert enchanter, and a Dunmer, so as good a place to start as any.

She teased him about the uninspired squiggles of charcoal he was leaving on her map in an effort to picture the island. She took over, guiding him through the relevant descriptions she’d need for a serviceable diagram.

The merc spent an hour getting her weapons and armor road-ready, waving her away to deal with provisions. “I’ll leave the bow and arrows to your tender care, hlakhes, but that knife is a mess, and the armor needs tallow.”

Still, they delayed, even with the careful avoidance of stray touches and casual signs of affections they’d grown into, lest they found themselves dragged under. She collected the Amulet of Arkay she’d taken to leaving on the bedside table — since it tended to get in the way of other activities — and carried it over to where the merc was crouched, scowling at the disreputable state of her bedroll.

“Windhelm is a miserable, freezing shithole, partner. See if you can find something better to keep you warm at night by the time you get to Kynesgrove, will you?”

She crouched by his side and dangled the amulet from her fingers, swallowing back the playful retort like a gulp of acid. “Take this.” She bit back another comment about him not forgetting her too quickly. “I can pick up another one, and I’ll feel better if you have Arkay in your pocket, so to speak. Have the guy with the biggest weapons watching your back, yeah?”

He froze on some untold reply, then nodded sharply and let her drop the amulet into his open palm, careful not to brush her fingers by accident. Then he got up, and stalked towards his knapsack, extracted his cowl, and returned. “Once you get to Solstheim, it’ll be ash or snowstorms — or both, if you’re particularly lucky. It’ll make you miss Windhelm.” He hesitated, then twined the fabric around her neck, like a scarf. “Strive not to lose it. I’d like it back.”

“Tel…” He had returned to fastening the buckles on her bedroll, but stilled when she spoke. Vera took a breath, then released it. “Meet me. In… let’s say six months. You pick the place. What date is it?”

He took a long time to answer, perhaps calculating, or perhaps weighing her proposal. Or both. After some time, he nodded, still not meeting her eyes. “The Bee and the Barb, in Riften. 15th of Evening Star.”

~~~

There’d been no goodbyes. She couldn’t quite remember how she left, and the first trek of her journey was a strange, quiet, eerie blur. She’d insisted that he should stay behind instead of accompanying her to the Whiterun stables — tending the fire and making sure the farmhouse still looked inhabited, in case the Mad Nord decided on a surprise return. The merc had kept himself terribly still at her request, but, at length, he nodded. “Keep hidden until you get there, don’t enter the city, take the first carriage that will drive you to Kynesgrove.”

The meadow sang with nocturnal insects. Above, over a clear, star-studded horizon, Masser hung rusty and ponderous. A light breeze had picked up, breathing flowering warmth and ruffling the fabric of her new scarf against her neck.

She walked like the ground kept falling, like she was pushing the earth away with her feet to add to the planet’s rotation. No thoughts came, and she kept it that way for as long as she could, until Said’s voice cut through the silence, soft and melodious. Cowardice is a perfectly human emotion.

Had they agreed on it, beforehand and out of earshot, in the quiet darkness of their shared, unspoken, unwavering affection, that Jules would leave on his stupid mission, and Said would stay behind? Had Said simply let him go, because it was kinder than the alternative — watching one’s lover fade in slow, perversely preventable decline? Or had they hinged their hopes on some unknown horizon? Had they promised to meet up in six month’s time, eyes closed, a finger pointed at a map at random? Had they foregone goodbyes in a last-ditch effort to be gentle?

A strange roar rose above the wind, stopping Vera in her tracks. She blinked until her vision cleared. Something had flickered against the horizon — she’d seen something, was sure of it, blur or not — like the trail of a falling missile, yet no detonation followed. She stared into the night sky, but it stood silent, star-speckled and indifferent.

At length, her feet carried her forward.

The End.

Chapter Text

Hello, lovely readers.

It's been some time, but I figured I'd post a little note here: if you're curious about what comes next for Vera, Teldryn, Undnar, and the rest of the ARFP crew, we're finally at a point when the sequel can start going up, slowly but surely. The second installment in the Errant Souls Archive is called Gathering Souls, and it's a little different from the first entry. It largely reimagines the game plot (and the DLCs) by modifying one crucial parameter—you'll see what we mean as the story unfolds. It's also a rotating POV that follows the interweaving lives of 4 main characters, including Vee and Tel. Finally, it's a collab work between my fandom partner in crime polymorphic and myself, and as such, it's quite a bit more ambitious in scale. Expect the usual misadventures, with a side of lore expansions, new and familiar characters, political intrigue, cosmological shenanigans, romance, found family, and the usual gritty (and occasionally humorous) storytelling.

You can find the first chapter here: Gathering Souls (Errant Souls Archive #2)

Happy reading!