Disclaimer: All things in this story are copyrighted to Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls series, including characters, locations, a fair amount of dialogue, and anything else I may have missed.

---

Finna kept two letters in the chest at the foot of her sleeping pallet. One was on thick, cream-coloured paper, folded carefully into thirds and sealed with a blob of red wax. It had once been impressed with the seal of a dragon, with angular wings and a slender, curving neck, but frequent openings and closings and re-readings meant that most of the wax had broken off, leaving just the lower points of the wings and the zigzag of the drake's tail. The paper was starting to curl at the edges, and there were tears at the corners along which it had been folded. It read:

For the hand of Finna Claudius,

You have been brought to my attention as an example amongst your peers of duty, piety, and scholarship. To discuss your future, I invite you to bring this letter to the Elder Council Chambers between the hours of eight and twelve, Morndas to Fredas, before the end of Evening Star. I do request that you are careful about who you share the contents of this letter with.

Regards,

G. Bellienus
Personal Secretary to the Emperor.

The strange combination of brevity and frank yet effusive praise from such an important person had stunned her.

The Emperor knows who I am! She thought with a thrill of excitement, but quashed it just as fast. Of course he doesn't know about every single one of his subjects. Even if they are examples of duty, piety, and scholarship.

She had taken the letter along to the palace, still re-reading and trying to work out the clauses.

Duty. What on earth could this be?

Piety. Observing the holidays, it must be, and visiting the temple, and volunteering at the festivals?

Scholarship? At least this makes sense; my mother's spent enough flagging down every teacher that passes through the city...

Glabrio Bellienus was an Imperial. He had dark eyes, and dark hair streaked with grey, although he looked too young for it. Although he rose from his desk to greet her, he still had to look up to meet her eyes.

"Ah, Finna Claudius." He shook her hand firmly. "Thank you for coming. Do you know why you're here?"

She shook her head, mutely.

"Well, we would like to make you an offer. You have finished your schooling, yes?" She nodded, but he had continued speaking already. "Have you any plans for a career?"

"I was, um, thinking about joining the Guard. In Leyawiin, I think, they seem to have a more relaxed attitude to women joining their ranks."

He nodded, "good, good," opened his desk, and took out a folder, which he laid on the desk in front of him. It made a thud. Finna stared – it was almost as thick as her wrist, which wasn't delicate and slender by any means – and had the words "Finna Claudius" handwritten neatly in the top right corner. He opened it to the first page, and she tried to crane her neck to see what was written on it unobtrusively. He caught her look of amazement, and smiled gently.

"Yes, we necessarily investigate candidates in quite some detail. I hope you aren't offended."

Throat too dry to speak, she shook her head.

"Good." He glanced at the first page. "Finna Claudius, eldest daughter of Nera Claudius and Grignr the Strong, no other last name recorded and current location unknown, yes?"

What followed was more-or-less an exhaustive overhaul of her entire life.

He had gone over her records in almost minute detail. Finna had been shocked by how far back they went. "Ah, this incident is particularly telling," he said, smiling indulgently, of an event that happened when she was six, "It seems that you not only broke up a fight, but healed the loser and struck the young man who had started it. Unusual sense of justice in one so young."

Finna turned bright red. "I- uh, it wasn't quite like that, I, uh, I apologised later," she finished lamely.

How could she dare to tell him that she had only taken the losers cause up with such great vigour because the bully had been teasing her about her height and gangly legs? She wondered if he had that on a note somewhere too, but he was consulting the folder again.

"It seems your mother put a lot of effort into your education."

Bellienus was good at these sorts of questions, Finna noted, leaving them as sort of neutral statements that left you unsure as how to answer them.

"Y-yes, she got me the best teachers she could. I tried not to disappoint her."

"No, you've done very well for yourself," he said.

He had asked her other vague statement-questions, about going to the temples, volunteering, if she'd been in trouble before, and she'd answered the best she could, her eyes never straying far from the gigantic folder lying on the desk.

Finally, and suddenly, he'd finished. "You have the characteristics that we look for in those we entrust most with the Empire," Glabrio Bellienus had said. "We would like you to join the Blades."

It had been the one sentence Finna had hoped to hear her entire life, and from that moment on she was in a daze.

He had given her a letter to give to the Grand Master at Weynon Priory, with instructions to send her to Cloud Ruler Temple for weapons training and to be initiated fully into the Order as an apprentice. She took it in trembling fingers, trying to stammer her thanks, but Bellienus had just smiled kindly.

"Don't let us down," he had said.

Finna wouldn't have dreamed of it.

The other letter Finna didn't read so much.

---

---

Author's note: Please, please, criticise the hell out of this. I'm trying to teach myself to write again, and it's hard without feedback.