"Ormarson, you ought to get home." There was unmistakable pity in Old Olav's eyes. Poor old Julius Ormarson. Damn fine farmer, once. Never the same, since his wife died. Nothing to be done for him, really.
He nursed his brandy; Olav was clearly in no mood to offer more. No good to be done.
"The Count's put in for dried rations fit to feed an army. Winter's bound to be a hard one – best get used to early closings, friend."
While the Count announcing such a thing did, indeed, bode ill for the winter, Julius was quite certain the Count did something of the kind every year. No one farmer was in a position to say so, but there were so many each year, throughout the year, from all quarters of North Nibenay, that the autumn markets might have taken up space from the south gate to the castle – if the produce was theirs to sell.
And, of course, there had been the visit from Talin.
For a brief time, that had been a good memory. He had wished to dwell upon it. Increasingly, as the years wore on, he had no choice.
Cilla had arranged to be away shoring up the sheep-gate down the road. She left with that bland smile that knew perfectly well it'd hear everything soon enough.
It was an implicit promise that Julius would find he needed to break. He did not tell her the truth until her deathbed.
"Business, not pleasure, I'm afraid," said Talin the moment he'd hung his traveling cloak and extravagant velvet hat on the pegs. "Of course if I sought pleasure it would be somewhere out of county entirely. Only the Count himself seems to know how to throw a good party, and even he doesn't seem to enjoy it. You used to count on his little girl to throw things out of joint, but she's long off to finishing school at some manor on the Bay, and she'll be a lot duller whenever she emerges, I expect.
"But that's no matter, Julius m'lad. I've come because I've heard you were a book man." He surveyed the two-room cottage, grinning brightly – there were shelves bracketed to every wall. "I gather the grocer knew what he was talking about, eh?"
"I hope it's not out of order to thank you again for saving my life?" said Julius, when Talin stopped to breathe.
"Not at all, not at all! Though at this point it's the going first impression of me, don't you know, goes without saying. Quite the pad of laurels to rest on, if I wanted to. Which, by the by, I don't. Under review for the Blades – no, don't worry," he said hastily at Julius' face, "I know you can be trusted. As you were saying, we have after all met. Haven't got clearance for their library, mind. But yours... no, it isn't bad at all. So the question's this: what do you know about the Mysterium Xarxes?"
Julius did find something familiar about the name, but he couldn't quite drum it up. Finally, he resigned himself to not remembering. "Not sure. But if it involves Xarxes, sir Talin, it sounds like a question for the Crystal Tower."
"I've got a lifetime ban from that place," said Talin with a rueful laugh. "Tore it up seven ways from Sundas looking for that bloody Staff. But it may not matter. I don't think it's got all that much to do with Xarxes, all told. Or anyway, if it does, the connection's rather... abstruse."
"What's the topic, then? I might help you there."
"Well, interesting story there, all told." (Julius wished Talin would take a seat; his feet were beginning to ache.) "Blades captain sent me to the south of Valenwood, as I suppose one does with their Bosmer agents. I fulfilled my mission, which I can't talk about, and that's all right as it's not the most exciting thing I've ever done by a long shot – but on the way back, I was caught in an ambush. Gang with conjured armor. I mean, armor. Full sets, plus the weapons, all at once. Well, it wasn't much of an ambush, really – the conjuration's even noisier than it is impressive – but I did, all the same, want to know what it was about. Particularly since they acted as though I was doing them a favor, killing them.
"So, I went through their purses and satchels. Well, one had a note saying the gang was expecting me, specifically. Another, she had a book. Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes. Or part of it; anyway, I certainly hope it was a part, but the thing was raving enough that "Part One" might as well be some fever-wracked metaphor as an actual reference to other volumes kicking about. But did you want to guess the first word?"
A knot in Julius' gut told him he would really rather not. "Tharn," he hazarded.
"I only wish." Talin's voice had taken on an entirely serious cast now; he tilted his head up to look Julius directly in the eye. "Tharn, you know... say what you will of him, he had some basic sense of self-preservation. These fellows, no. But they do use the same word he did."
Julius shut his eyes tightly.
"Dagon, yes. Sorry to open old scabs and that; wouldn't do it if it didn't seem necessary. I, well – I think they're after Valenwood, for openers. And their philosophy might be worse yet. They don't like Dagon for the edge he can give them, they like him for, I don't know, for his dashing good looks and prepossessing personality. Fanatics, the lot. It's one thing to gauge by self-interest, but who can tell what a fanatic might do?"
Julius gazed at Talin, remembering him short of breath, with his ankle nastily turned and the Staff of Chaos in his right hand. And Uriel, Uriel touching the flagstones of the White-Gold Tower as though they were the finest, most delicate porcelain.
"Let me see it, Talin," he whispered. "Let me see what you found."
"Haven't got it. And you're not a Blade, besides. But, Julius, this is my task now. Rather partial to the old jungle, you know. And rather good at what I do, if I say so myself. It'll come clear. Now then, what's that on the fire, and have you got spirits to match?"
From that point on, the visit went quite amicably. They sat with their victuals and their backs to the hearth and talked of the old palace days. Talin made allusions to recent chats with Uriel (it seemed he'd grown a rather crafty streak, since the betrayal). Julius spoke of home life with a love and a pride unaccented by the old dreads, and by the time he saw Talin to the door (which was, at least, before the elf got more than a little shamble in his walk), there was real hope hammering at his chest.
Two weeks later, Uriel's champion was dead.
He was dead, and the forces of Dagon were already on the move. Fate was not so easily to be thwarted. Uriel would fall, and his heirs. The Dragonfires would be quenched. The hordes would come.
They would come for Martin.
The boy wasn't ready for that, he was so far from ready...
And Julius could do nothing. Uriel had said so himself. He had meant it, impossibly, as a comfort. But whatever the intent, the prophet had spoken, and the harbinger had come, and there was nothing, nothing –
Except to go home to an empty house, and chop wood for the dead hearth, and read a few of the books that hadn't gone the way of the north wall when the cask of oil fell in the fire.
You'll do everything you need to, Cilla had said. She had said it with her dying breath, and she had known then what he and Martin needed to do. But, though she had many remarkable qualities, more than Julius ever deserved, the Dragon Blood was not among them. She had meant it as a reassurance only, and had no truth to back it with.
The truth, incontrovertible: He could do no good for Uriel, or for Tamriel.
Still, he told himself, there were other levels of good. In the spring, there would be onions. Refugees might need onions. If the daedra came later in the year, potatoes would be better. If the invasion waited till the next year, he might get some cabbages in. He'd salt and dry double in between. If the harvest in the coming year were as bad as the last, he wouldn't be able to pay a farmhand to help him with the cabbages, but he'd manage somehow. He would. He'd always managed, hadn't he?
And if all went the best it could, his wife would still be in her grave, and his king would still fall to Dagon's hand, and he would never see his son's face again.
He rose creakily from his seat. "Olav."
"Quickly, Ormarson."
"You wouldn't have heard any news from Valenwood?"
"No," said the barkeep brusquely. "Why would I?"
Well. It could be worse. He could have heard that Talin's fears for the province were confirmed. But then, there was nothing to say they hadn't been. Only that news of it had not yet reached Bruma.
Julius stepped out of the pub into a snowy wind, wishing he knew for certain.
Giskel shoved his hands into his opposite sleeves and rubbed his wrists vigorously. "All right," he said, as though blurting out a confession, "this is a day for functional gloves." (The elegant satin gloves he'd appropriated from his father's shop were sodden and long since wadded into his coinpurse.)
"Yes, you can almost notice that it's winter." Martin, panting under the weight of the traveling case, managed to flash Giskel a cheeky smile. To say nothing of the famed Nordic "ice veins", Giskel was no better than a Bravilian in the cold. But, in truth, this really was a decent winter's day for the Imperial City – brisk winds, numb cheeks, more snow than slush on the Talos Plaza, and the dragon statue itself peeping out from under a two-inch coat of icing. Even Steffan of the Watch (currently on duty in Elven Gardens, where Giskel lived) seemed in no mood to chat.
Fortunately, leaving tracks was not an issue for the day's activities, not in the parlor of the Tiber Septim Hotel. And the borrowed finery was going to be useful in there.
Giskel studied Martin's face, then shook his head in mock-pity. "See, we should've done this before you went and shut yourself up in the guest room with your books. That's the first proper end-of-term look I've seen from you."
The last week of study in the daedric tongues had actually been quite fruitful. Tiring, yes. In the ordinary course of study, and much moreso when he felt his wards begin to flag, and found himself forced to tangibly tear his eyes from a High Daedric text to reinforce them. He never found much sleep the night after those incidents. But he was finally sensing himself progressing.
Most of the mountain was still above his feet, to be sure. Scholar-Instructor Hayn, irritatingly meticulous as he was, did have a distinct point when it came to his frequent anecdotes about overconfident novices getting in over their heads. But when it came time to confront Vaermina, he would, at least, be equipped to converse – if not, yet, at all well.
Father's practical etiquette lessons, which still came unbidden to him with annoying frequency, would have held that he ought to spend less time in the guest room and more time ingratiating himself with Giskel's family while subtly making sure they didn't despise him, but in truth, no one much seemed to mind – least of all Giskel, who had long experience with Martin's study habits.
Of course, Giskel probably meant that no amount of productive study was appropriate for after term's end. And it wasn't as though he were precisely wrong.
"You've got the right quill?" said Giskel nervously.
"Jackdaw feather, five inches. You've got Felicia's vanishing ink?"
"No, she clean forgot about the lovely room I'm sharing with her. Yes, of course I've got the ink." He frowned. "Better hand it to you now, come to think of it." He slipped it into Martin's left pocket, now all but bounding up and down on his toes with a giddy nervousness.
Martin cleared his throat. "Before we go in, I'd put on an air. Think of the lout who visited your father's shop three days ago. You look like you're up to no good."
"So did he," said Giskel, already straightening into a more dignified posture.
"All right," laughed Martin, "but it was a sort of bad intention that's a lot more common in this establishment."
"You dare to imply that I'm common?" said Giskel with a genteel sneer.
Martin nodded, put on a stolidly obsequious expression, and took his place behind Giskel with the case.
"Welcome to the Tiber Septim Hotel," called the clerk, sounding as filled with pomp and circumstance as he might have done with sincerity when the place had opened but a week ago. "Shall I arrange you a room, sirs?"
Giskel cast an artfully disbelieving glance Martin's way. "No. I await company. For the moment, might I partake of what is offered in the salon?"
So there they sat on a chaise, sipping at Cyrodiilic brandy served by a very stiff maidservant (this much was within Giskel's price range.) Giskel prepared to pass Martin a Potion of Lightfoot should an adequate mark come to the desk – seeking a full bed, not intending to unpack until the next shift, and preferably uncommonly obnoxious if such a person could be found before the morning shift was half over. Otherwise, common obnoxiousness would need to serve.
In the meantime, they amused themselves by casting knowing and superior faces at all and sundry.
When a Redguard woman burst in in a fur-lined cloak and a foul mood, Martin thought he had his chance. But behind him –
"It's not as though I've been lax on my payments till now," said Tar-Meena of the Archives, all but chasing her at the maximum speed the dignity of them both would permit. (Martin nudged Giskel with the predetermined warning signal; Giskel turned his face away from the clerk's desk.) "I have been robbed, only yesterday, and when I say you'll need to give me time-"
Abruptly, her gaze found Martin.
There was fear in that gaze. And it wasn't like Father's mindless and reflexive fear of him, or like the trepidation with which young Associates sometimes looked at him. This fear was removed but massive, as though she'd seen a brigand's encampment just over the hill from her home.
"Please at least let me state my case once you're settled in." Her voice was considerably more strained now.
The – usurer, Martin gathered – paused a very long time before saying, "Very well – sir, I'll have a room at once." He had finally had the sense to turn away from the scene and so didn't see her face, but he could hear the both of them ascend the stairs to what the clerk had said was room twenty-two.
"We'll need to leave," muttered Martin apologetically.
"What – why? Who was that?"
"The Argonian. She..." Martin cast his mind about for something that didn't require explanations so overdue they could never be made, something that was explicable in the first place. "She recognized me from Arcane, and she knows we're not meant to be here. I think she's about to tell that Redguard the same."
Giskel slumped his head back onto the edge of the chaise, disbelieving. "I really should have known better than to make you the inconspicuous one. All right, what do I tell Felicia?"
Martin thought for a moment, then grinned. "Tell her who's not sleeping at home in Talos Plaza tonight."
Giskel matched the grin and leapt up, all thought of noble mannerisms immediately forgotten. "Then what are we waiting for?"
Martin held up a hasty finger and, before their exit, walked swiftly to the desk. "You may want someone to keep a discreet eye on room twenty-two," he said. He couldn't fathom Tar-Meena's new attitude, but he did have a fairly clear idea of what usurers might do with delinquent clients.
Giskel pointed. "That one."
"Why do you say that?" said Martin, waving a hand at the barely-snowed-over footprints by the door.
"Three smokestacks, no smoke. Looks like they left less than an hour ago, so the fires should still be puffing. But no, even the servants aren't bothering to keep the place warm – and do those tracks look like high-heeled boots to you?"
Martin whistled, duly impressed. "I will note that applying this level of thought to your studies won't actually hinder you from doing unspeakable things to your trousers with an Arcane tenure."
"No sense wasting the time before the tenure, is there?"
"Better than my mother. She had a knack like yours and squandered it entirely on getting me to help with the chores."
Giskel gave him his how-in-Oblivion-does-that-follow look.
"Bruma. It's a poor mother in those hills who doesn't have some woodcraft."
"...If you say so. So, how do you think we're getting in?"
Martin gave the premises a quick once-over and then shrugged. "Backward, and watch your step."
This was more easily managed by Giskel than by Martin (who was still burdened by Giskel's case), but Martin's shoes had flat wooden soles about the size of those belonging to the fellow who'd gone out, which made up for his fractional errors. Giskel had the honor of undoing the lock while Martin did look-out duty.
Martin thought the inside more handsome than that of the Tiber Septim, which, while equally fine, seemed entirely too vast. He knew that it was made into a ballroom for the Emperor's birthday, but the majestic furniture was a poor disguise, spaced as sparsely as it was. He gave a valet's wave to the staircase. "There's your suite, honored magister. Go get Felicia while I keep a look-out here. I'll put a cork on that windowsill if there's any trouble."
"I'd try running, if I were you."
"Immediately after. Side entrance."
As soon as Giskel was gone and the door was magically resealed, Martin made a mad dash for the larder. He hadn't eaten all morning, and an early break in lookout duty was probably better than a late one.
The larder turned out to be difficult to find, but rather well-stocked. Ham hocks, white loaves, dried mustard greens and garlic...
He frowned.
One of the garlic braids, strung over the next arch, was swaying. And there were bread crumbs by the table.
He downed the Potion of Lightfoot and inched toward the doorway.
No more obvious trails, now. But nothing opened onto this chamber but a good many empty closets, and not all of them were closed. If he were a kitchen thief hiding from pursuit, he would certainly close the door.
He crept in front of each of the closed doors and magically locked them.
"No harm meant," he called. "We're trespassers also. But it's probably best that we not cross paths for the night."
He heard a frantic rattling at the second door he'd locked. "For the night?" It was a young woman's voice. "There... there aren't any blankets in here! I might freeze before dusk!"
This operation was simply determined to unravel, wasn't it? "Then... then I'll get a fire going in the kitchen. And I'll slip you something under the door." He sorely wished he hadn't left all past door-cracking responsibility to Praneh and Giskel.
"You're an uncommon kind of trespasser, then. Thank you."
It was the work of a minute to light the ovens, and not much longer than that to find a good wool blanket to fit under the door. But she seemed uncertain that this was enough to keep her, so Martin had little choice but to stay and see to her welfare. Soon she was talking in great floods, setting to conversation as a man set to his first meal in a month.
Her name was Aldrea Waters. She came of a little farming hamlet called Aleswell. She had little in the way of fond memories; her father had been little more than a beggar, her mother had worked her ruthlessly, and the neighbors had been as much help to her as spectators at the Arena – one Argonian had actually stuck his head through the window in order to glean the latest.
When she at last grew sick of it and fled to the Imperial City to make her fortune, she'd met with little better treatment. Her first employer had wanted a burglar, her second had been a legitimate potioneer, but a tyrant who cast her back out on the street before the first week was out, and her third soon tried to make a whore of her. At that, she had decided that it was better to honestly burgle for herself than to do anything else. In fact, she was freer now than she ever had been.
(Father had said: If a woman – or a man, for that matter – has been ill-used by everyone in their life but still trusts you on sight, your best policy is to run fast as you can in the opposite direction. That was a piece of advice that had rung sharply false even then. What about common courtesy? Was such a person to be punished for placing their trust in someone who might help?)
(It shows they're very slow in learning from their mistakes, Martin. You can't be courteous in the eyes of someone like that, not for long. But none of that was any sort of excuse to let an essentially innocent woman die of exposure.)
She finally asked what Martin was doing here. After she had been so detailed and frank with him, he couldn't very well refuse a question about something so trivial. He told her of Giskel and Felicia. He told her about Arcane.
When she told of her nightmares, he responded in kind.
Before the sound of Felicia calling for him rang distantly from the entrance hall, he had told her everything.
And, through the whole talk, he had no idea that Aldrea was beautiful.
Her hair, now it was properly washed in Praneh's basin, shone like polished chestnut. Her olive face bore the sun-browning of farm life as well as he'd ever seen; her whole form was slim and delicate as an Ayleid arch. The ordinary, clean smock he'd bought her became her better than many a fine-dressed resident of Talos Plaza could hope for. The touch of her lips to the line of his jaw was the very touch of Dibella, he saw that her feelings for him were little short of worship, and if he had one lament, it was that Giskel and Praneh's houses, all the rest of midwinter, were kept too full for him to taste her further than that.
No. Martin had to concede, that wasn't really true. Aldrea inflamed him, had taken half his waking thought, had inspired daydreams to outweigh the red desert itself, but what he most wished to pursue with her was not her, but the Prince of Nightmares. Only she knew. It was far too late to tell Giskel or Praneh; he kept Trenna and Sishara and the rest at a careful distance (which, fortunately, Aldrea was quite willing to accept as the truth); but Aldrea was his one true confidant.
But the two desires had one answer. By the second week after they'd met, unable to take it any more, he persuaded Giskel to provide them the septims for a night at the King and Queen.
"I can read," said Aldrea, slumped on the velvet armchair. "But not well. Never had much of a chance, you know, in Aleswell."
Martin, cross-legged on the floor beside her, kissed her fingers; this obstacle mattered absurdly little to him at the moment. "I can always teach you."
"Mm. No need. I think I can do something for you already. I heard talk, when I was still stealing food – I think this was Temple District – something about daedra worshippers in the hills of Chorrol."
Martin went still. "No," he said flatly.
"Yes," said Aldrea, with an intensity that brooked no argument. "While you work with the... with the... with the scholar matters, I'll see if I can't see about whatever the cultists know and the scholars don't. Don't worry, I'll only watch them. It's probably not even Vaermina; these priests can barely tell one daedra from the next. And... and don't you believe in fate?"
"I haven't the faintest idea if I believe in fate," said Martin. "But I wish you would be near me."
(Did he, though, really? He would return to Arcane in a week, and if every one of his sweethearts gave up all hope of being his, he'd lose... he'd lose... he couldn't think of a way to put it that credited him. But it would be a loss, and the possibility gnawed at him.)
"Well, I do believe. Martin, you're the only good thing that's ever happened to me. That's the voice of fate, and if my fate is to be yours, I will be safe. I promise. Don't you trust my promises?"
Something about the plaintiveness of that last question made his stomach clench a it, but that hardly mattered in the grand scheme of the conversation. "I do. Yes. Of course I trust you. But, Aldrea, don't trust wholly to fate. If you must do this, do it with the utmost caution."
"I will," said Aldrea. "I mean that. And I'll write. And – and could you make me a promise in return?"
"Yes," said Martin, before thinking to ask the nature of the promise.
"Say you'll come for me. If the letters ever stop."
"I will," he said, relieved and without reserve. "I swear."
Aldrea leaned over and threw her arms around his neck. "Then seal it," she purred.
Her spates of vulnerability still discomfited him over the following week, but to his relief, she seemed no less capable of looking him in the eye than before.
"What can they be so excited about?" said Trenna, jerking her thumb toward a knot of scholars debating, with a vigor that their hushed tones only accented, by the tower's back entrance.
"At a wild guess?" said Praneh, crossing her legs on the alchemy garden wall. (She had refrained from telling any of Martin's girlfriends at Arcane that he was spoken for, but Martin had the sense that the decision was made against her better judgment.) "They're talking politics. There's this rumor the Crown Prince might not really be the heir to the Ruby Throne. Or else someone's forged documents in order to make that claim. And no, no one seems sure if it's Enman or Ebel or anyone else. It's all rather muddied and I don't know why anyone would expect it to become an issue any time soon, but all the more fodder for speculation, I suppose."
"Excellent," said Giskel. "If it's not about dead bodies or academic reforms, then any argument between them is good news for us."
"I have better news than that," said an young boy with long and oily hair, a boy Martin could swear he'd never seen before. "The flax is coming up. And not a moment too soon, either!"
Martin cast the interloper a cold stare until a flush crept up his neck and he hurriedly excused himself.
"Flax," said Trenna in disgusted tones. "Might as well ask if he's being marked by rank while he's busy advertising his magical ineptitude."
But the crinkling at her nose didn't seem to come from real disdain, and her eyes were entirely fixed on Martin as though gauging his approval.
Sishara, who had carefully sat herself at a point exactly as close to Martin as Trenna had chosen, added, "A good deal to learn about belonging, that one has."
The thought of his influence made Martin smile, which was fortunate, as he couldn't find an explanation for why the maladroit boy had irked him so, or at any rate an explanation that didn't make him sound like a high-class twit.
"Well, I had better get going," he said, hoisting himself up from the wall and shaking out the numbness in his rear.
"It goes to the library?" Sishara surmised, eyebrow cocked in amusement.
Martin raised his palms in a gesture of mock surrender.
He'd tried a time or two since the beginning of term, but only in a fruitless quest to ascertain what, exactly, Tar-Meena had been afraid of. She would not speak to him, so he guessed she must be still afraid, but he'd thought it the best gesture to leave the Archives to her.
In point of fact, he had spent most of his studies in the crannies of Master Hidja's rowhouse for months now; the Redguard was ever more remote and silent each time he came by, but as Martin's knowledge gerw, the more he was content to wait on a short answer anyway.
And, in point of fact, he wasn't going to study at all.
Aldrea had kept her oath to write – she had, to appearances, written every day – but Martin's ardor at that had long since waned. The thought of Aldrea still evoked a powerful sweetness, but somehow it had grown sharp, too, a thing to twist at his guts.
After five minutes doing nothing in the Mystic Archives, he made a casual walk to his sleeping quarters. He would need to answer her to her satisfaction.
He arrived to find Giskel sitting on his bunk, with a letter in his hand and another slit open by his side.
"Back from the library so soon," he said, not even looking up from the letter. "Now there's the surprise of surprises. How you ever fell for a girl with spelling like this..."
"Why are you reading my letters?" said Martin flatly.
Giskel's eyes flashed, not even a hint of humor in them. "Why are you dodging around like a damned skooma-eater to read them yourself?"
"Answer the question."
"What is it you think I just did?" Giskel all but slammed Aldrea's letter onto the bed. "I knew it had to do with her. I bloody well knew it, but I never-"
"That letter there isn't even hers!" snapped Martin, as much to change the subject as in outrage at the violation.
"Oh," said Giskel, with a sheepish look. "Well, see, I thought it was. Fussy handwriting above the seal, which meant Martin Ormarson's dream girl to me. But no, that's Master Hayn; he wishes you'd stop frittering away your potential putting fire runes in the latrine and start frittering it away in one of his adept-level courses."
"He knows-"
"No, he doesn't know about the fire runes; I'm paraphrasing. But I'll note his letter doesn't say anything about if you're not lying and if you really love me and what is it going to take. Even putting spelling and penmanship aside, Hayn's a better woman for you any day."
"Would you stop harping on Aldrea's writing – she was raised by destitute farmers-"
"Weren't you?" There was a bitter triumph in Giskel's face, plainly visible, yet Martin's weird empathy insisted on corroborating the sentiment. "Then what's this about beating Vaermina in the letter? That can't have anything to do with the dozen or so times you've woken up gasping in horror three feet away from me, can it?"
Martin felt himself go completely still.
"And all that time you're putting into esoteric Conjuration... I mean, did you think I wouldn't have given you a hand there, or are you so mulish... oh, well, of course you're so mulish. But of all the people to stop being mulish with, why her?"
"I'm sorry, Giskel," said Martin weakly. "It was too soon to confide in you – until one day, it was too late. It's true – my father is a farmer. But he was a battlemage before I was born – under Tharn. That's when the curse was laid." He scrubbed a hand between his eyes. "Forgive me my silence. It should never have gone on so long as it did."
Giskel cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Well, then. I suppose I could start by not reading the rest of your week's post. Here."
Seven other letters, and six of them were Aldrea's. Martin grunted in tacit acknowledgment that he'd rather not read those at the moment, and pulled the plain red seal off the seventh.
Before it fell from his numb hand.
Martin,
Julius has been found dead outside Bruma. I bid you return home at once.
Divines be with you, as they are with him.
Jauffre
