"Delbar the Fleet," said Arranelya, smiling openly in these private quarters. "Dead at the hands of a Khajiit – who happens to be handmaiden to the sole heir to the throne. Justice will not be deferred long!"
Arrinaro shook his head mildly. "Actually, it is to our advantage that we do defer."
Elya ran a horrified hand across her face; there never seemed to be a moment where she entirely ceased to be an orator. "The refuse of Elsweyr, allied to the very throne of the Isles, show hands stained with the noblest Aldmeri blood. How, then, can you counsel patience?"
"Patience?" Arrinaro had to laugh. "A year's patience, at most. Time enough for a truly thorough investigation; time in which my agents can freely observe our Crown Prince, and be sure we know every resource at his disposal. And – I spoke with Emissary-General Fintar only this morning – by the time we accuse him, the mainland agencies indicate we can be sure that his most dangerous possible weapon will no longer be a concern."
Arranelya fell silent. No doubt this was in part because she knew her brother's hand in the matter. After all she had done to lay groundwork for a Third Dominion, she had no call to feel outclassed, but she was born to competition – and perhaps that was why she had done so much to begin with. But Arrinaro had no doubt that the chief emotion striking his sister dumb was sheer awe at the proposition.
For Prince Shadyrn's greatest possible defense against the accusation, should he slip the net, was to appeal to a higher court. To appeal to the Empire of Man.
Within the year, there would be no higher court.
"Very well." She nodded thoughtfully. "We do not know what manner of beast could have murdered Delbar the Fleet. But you may rest assured that the Crystal Tower shall be diligent in the search – and we have the highest hopes that all who love our land as he did shall offer us their support."
She took a deep breath, then laughed giddily. "Thank you, Aro, for warning me of the need to write an elegy for Uriel's pet elf. That will require a sight more finesse."
Ocato's hand sliced the air impatiently before Lathenil had got his first sentence out. "Never mind how it began. Apprise me of the situation as it is now, before we waste the day in outdated information."
(The two guards left in the Castle Cheydinhal chamber, the tall bore with the greatsword and a tough-looking Breton woman, caught one another's eyes as though sharing a funny reminiscence.)
Lathenil, thrown, cleared his throat a few times to properly rearrange his thoughts. "Well. The Thalmor – you do know of them?"
"This era? Very little," said Ocato shortly. "That is why I am asking you."
Lathenil took one last deep breath. "A subtle and treacherous lot. They believe that man has no right to stand beside mer. Some believe that men, and beastmen, are not fit to exist at all. They wish to tear themselves from the Empire. They wish to destroy the Empire – I have seen a map, I know not its precise significance, but it represents all Tamriel, and it was drawn with some tactical aim in mind. Even now they are subverting the rightful rule of the Hold-Kings, one by one. My sources claim they have overcome Sunhold in all but name – it does not matter, Potentate. The houses stood, but the people – forgive me. The present situation. They have lately..." Lathenil cast his gaze down from Ocato's face. "They have lately done the same to Firsthold. Morgiah was the sole strength of the city, and she left in the night."
He glanced up. Ocato's lips were pursed in a pronounced agitation, but he did not, at least, seem to have taken a great blow from the news. Lathenil plunged on.
"Alinor... Alinor stands on the edge of a knife, the Crown and the Council both in the Palace, staring at one another with their hands to their hilts – yes. I had better mention. The Queen's Council is dominated by the Thalmor, who drafted the embargo. The Elder Council representatives, likewise – but then you no doubt surmised that, Phynaster be praised you don't believe a word they say..."
He took a deep breath.
"Yes. Names. I had better give you names. They might mean something to you, these Lords and Ladies – the titles are of course Ayleid. If they would only dispense with the pretense to succeeding the Dominion entirely! But names. The Sage Arranelya, a silver-tongued deceiver, beloved by the people. Her brother Arrinaro, head of the Queen's Council, who devised the Blood-Iron Provision and the New Crystal Tower Charter. The Artist Leyaro, one of Arranelya's supposed Circle – you must know about that matter, I have heard you can give direct witness against it, but – outdated information. We will speak of it later. Soon, I beg. Leyaro enforces the Thalmor from within; he has tortured subversives in the ranks to death, or else to... compliance. Fintar, another of the Circle, Grand Emissary of Summerset, the voice behind the embargo that has deafened us and shuttered us up..."
He felt his face twist into a wry and feeble smile. His voice, when it came forth, sounded faint and desperate as though he were dying of thirst:
"Rynandor. Do you know of Rynandor the Bold?"
Ocato looked severe now, even scornful. "You can't be suggesting he has any voluntary part in this business, can you?"
Tears leaked from under Lathenil's eyelids, purgative as the cool spring rain, and his smile lost all irony. "You know him. You know him." He nodded tremblingly. "Murdered, at Fintar's behest."
Ocato's voice was grave. "Fintar was my commanding officer in Blue Strait. In all likelihood, without his intelligence we would never have won Auridon from the Bosmer – and that's no small token."
That had the bitter taste of truth to it. In the Tharn years, the Green Pact was enforced not only on the Bosmer, but on everyone – the Altmer and the men included. Those who obeyed were doomed to a hideous, slow starvation; those who were caught in disobedience met the same fate in prison.
And so the birth-city of the Potentate had been delivered by Lord Fintar.
This, then, was the point of fracture. The unforgivable offense he never failed to make, and he would shortly be turned away. What recourse now? Perhaps he ought to find a way to return to Summerset. He would likely be no more use there; he might well meet his swift end; but what endeavor had he not now tried, so far from home? If he could only look on Summerset again...
"Yet I can't doubt you for a moment," Ocato went on.
Lathenil went still in amazement.
"He openly hoped the Empire would collapse about its own ears. He purely despised Men. Had I not appealed to Rynandor over his head about that prisoner we found in the stone schoolhouse – well, I don't know what would have become of him."
Unless Lathenil was badly muddying together his history of the Simulacrum – and, given the context of the remark, he hardly supposed he was – it had been the last months of the usurpation, and the prisoner in question had been a son of Uriel Septim.
He could not find himself surprised enough for outrage. Or was it that he was too taken aback already? The Potentate of Tamriel was accepting his claims, claims whose truth had been summarily rejected all across Cyrodiil. Had come to him in order to hear them.
"Arranelya, of course, sits in the Chamber of the Wise. Only an ignoramus would fail to know that. Now, I fear, it is necessary to digress. Even with a powerful confederate in the Chamber, I cannot fathom how Fintar can have arranged this murder and lived, never mind become a provincial Grand Emissary. Elaborate."
"The Blood-Iron Provision," said Lathenil grimly. "A measure written against the Mythic Dawn after the Anguish, or so it was claimed. But they're making no pretense of that now. Any dissenter vocal enough to 'endanger the peace' is shut out of sight, put up for show trial, never seen again. And Rynandor was the first. You have to understand: he was given charge of Crystal-Like-Law, when it fell. Fintar was assigned there also – securing the interior, I think, while Rynandor had the walls. Both survived. Few enough did. So when it came time to denounce him... But now you must know the lie that Rynandor-"
"One moment," said Ocato, again slicing the sentence in half with his hand. "The words bandied about at inns are third-hand rot on their face, and I needn't tell you how informative the emissaries of Alinor have been. So. Explain what you mean when you say the Crystal Tower 'fell.'"
Lathenil dimly felt his knees collide with the flagstones.
"Deceivers," he muttered to no one. "Deceivers! Phynaster curse you, curse you..."
He felt hands prodding him. Ringing slightly to his left, the voice of the Imperial bore: "He's got a sword. Concealed under his vest."
"He would have used it by now, if he had meant to." The female guard. "He is not ill; he is certainly not acting in cold blood. I think he is simply – upset. In accord with his repute. And as for the sword itself... we've all seen how he feels about assassins."
Light laughter from the big Imperial at this, echoing about his left ear like the distant surf.
"Fell, Potentate," croaked Lathenil after a moment. "The Tower fell. Cast to the ground, before my eyes. You know – you know what the daedra can do. The refugees inside... Sunhold died that day, died and the Thalmor filled the empty husk like a swarm of ants and why would they not have you know..."
After a moment, he raised his head. "No, I think I have the answer. They would not give you reason to suspect that Summerset needed the Empire. They tell of our fragility at home: it gives them power. In Cyrodiil, our strength: it gives them power. If ever there were words for the Thalmor..."
But when he registered Ocato's stricken countenance, he knew that any further words would have to wait.
The agent at the far end of the vessel was sitting a bit too tensely, kept Serranur and the corpse beside him a bit too fixed in his peripheral vision. And he was silent. The silence or the tension would either one be forgivable, but together...
"I smell an ambush," said Serranur coldly, his finger pointed toward the offender. "We had better begin again."
They were three hours into the exercise, which could take as many as five. But none of his mer permitted themselves a groan.
Serranur, First Agent in Colovia, was not in a mood to be crossed. It was fortunate indeed that such moods had a rousing effect on the effort his mer put in, for nothing else could possibly cheer him.
This exhaustive, rote preparation went against his grain. He preferred to encourage flexibility, and allow incompetents to face the natural consequences of their incompetence. Tactical gifts grew best in their natural habitat. But here, there was no room for error.
North Nibenay's most promising asset had brought to their attention a grave oversight. South Nibenay, ever the blame-dodgers, had bowed out of the better half of the work. That left Colovia as the linchpin: the arena where Agents would wager the unborn life of the whole Dominion.
The Thalmor did not, often, wager, unless the gamble were between one advantage and another. And Serranur did not look forward to presiding over a gamble of this magnitude. Not for his own sake: whatever the Circle could do to him would be nothing compared to the failure he would have wrought already.
But by the grace of the Aedra, the next excercise (five and a half hours, just to be sure) went off without a hitch. The most worrisome point, Serranur's signal, which was to be watched for throughout and answered at the precise instant it was given, had not once been failed in a fortnight.
"Keep drilling, in my absence," he said, once they had disposed of the body (maimed perfectly, but now unusable for a repeat exercise). "Midshipmen, be equipped to act from every angle. Cerran –" a competent and promising young agent, with too few existing accomplishments to hope of usurping the Agency itself – "be prepared to take my role in this mission, if necessary. I have an appointment in Anvil."
He hoped the mer of the Flowing Bowl would prove cooperative, of course. But an asset was an asset, no matter how it was acquired.
The old Argonian laid down his ascetic pack and propped his head against the palace wall, plainly still bone-weary from his journey to the City. "You do realize the profound danger of speaking so plainly of the matter, to anyone not already-"
"Yes, yes, I know now," said Ocato impatiently. "If I did that, never mind the Chamber of the Wise, we'd never have a moment's peace again for all the lunatics who'd crawl out of the woodwork."
"Yet even now, you do not seem to hold the core-truth, the blood-truth," said the Argonian with a faint, maddening smile.
"No, I expect not. I assure you your tutelage has been the most irritating string of roundabout waffle I have ever chosen to endure. But at least you had an excuse, and now you'll forgive me if I summon you to put that tutelage to some practical use."
"Then if I am not to share my knowledge, what am I to do in this eventuality, that advisors from all the eight corners – a reference to the physical-political Tamriel, of course, not to the fabric of –"
"There! You're doing it again, and not for cause, either. What if you had to tell me we had a horde of dremora bearing down on us at this moment? How many clarifications on the history and dimensions of Oblivion would you get through before you got to take cover or come with me if you want to live?"
"Ah. Er." At least one, then. Happy that the fade-scaled old pillar-percher actually realized this was a problem. "Well... what would you wish me to do?"
"Sit in a chair," answered Ocato. "Confer legitimacy to the proceedings. Artaeum is, technically speaking, a part of the Summerset Isles, and a Council seat retained by the skin of your teeth is no less a Council seat. There's one bureaucratic delay to be glad of, at least."
7 Rain's Hand, 4E10
I think I must write nothing substantive of my doings for some time. But what I am not writing promises hope beyond anything since first I came to Anvil.
To preserve the habit of this record, I turn then to matters of common knowledge.
It seems Morgiah, Queen of Firsthold, has deserted her people not for any just or forgivable cause, but to make a personal suit for the Ruby Throne. In this endeavor she is supported by the Seventh Champion – an unprecedented token, it seems. She is supported by the Potentate, of course; the real statement from that quarter is when he chooses to withdraw. She is not, however, supported by her own native province, which has had its fill of House Hlaalu, and this is discouraging enough to the Inner Council that Tamriel remains without an Emperor. Nonetheless it is the closest the Elder Council ever has come to agreement on the point, and so she holds out for final agreement from the comfort of a Cheydinhal manor.
I hardly need add that the councillors of her adopted province, of Summerset, have a hand and a vested interest in this state of affairs.
She must know perfectly well what befalls Firsthold in her absence. No one has ever named Morgiah lackwit. But they have doubted her good faith as a ruler, and justly so.
The Imperial pantheon is still strange to me, even after near a decade among its devotees, but I believe Talos is the appropriate deity to entreat on matters of Imperial rule, and I shall do so. It must not be the Black Queen.
Corran gazed out onto Green Emperor Way in that deceptively unfocused way that had behind it a good deal of thought indeed. "As it stands, we'll be trapped here indefinitely. The political situation either needs to get better – so one of us can be spared – or it needs to get worse, so that someone else would actually want the post. A Blade, perhaps."
Dela playfully punched his shoulder. "Oh, I don't think you want things quite that bad. An order hidebound enough to declare its own obsolescence isn't lightly brought to its senses."
"Now, now, let's not have absolutes," said Corran airily, turning his face toward her. "They serve the good of all the Empire now, don't you know. By which they of course mean their private notion of what's good for the Empire..."
"Would you prefer they used someone else's notion? I've got a list of Councillors they might consult. Jean Renard... Lucrece Donitia... Eurian Vorius..."
Corran threw up his hands in a mock beg for mercy. "All right, all right."
"I'm still a bit relieved the Blades aren't following the Champion's lead, though." Dela looked out over Corran's shoulder, over the same tombstones, not really seeing them. "I don't imagine we'd be a match for them, if it came to it." She sighed. "You're right. This is Blades' work, left to hapless watchmen. But all the same... trapped? I thought you did enjoy it."
"Enjoy is a bit much. It's important, it pays well, I do decently enough at it. Do I think the Potentate is a barrel of fun to be with? Not especially. And as long as retirement is out of reach... well." He grinned sheepishly. "You know."
It took as much trust to be allowed to resign from Ocato's guard as to enlist. Marriage between guards was out of the question. Romantic entanglements between guards and the general public, moreso yet. But if Corran managed to get leave with honors...
"Just mind you don't let another morning headache give you a black mark. What is the ideal drink arrangement for fooling around on the docks with Gellius and the rest, anyway?"
"Argonian bloodwine," said Corran at once, grinning rogueishly. "Straight from the oaken cask, preferably."
Dela muggingly clapped her hands over her mouth, more genuinely horrified than she cared to let on that Corran was spending the nights of Fredas swimming between the hulls of every trade vessel in Tamriel. "Gellius is a bad apple for your barrel, isn't he?"
Corran laughed. "Dela, if anything, Waterfront carousing shows he's really come up in the world."
They tell me to name no names, not even my own. They say all the facts are known to you. So you must know what they want, and if it's wor
They wish you to know I am not being treated well. My left thumb is already ruined. I will die by inches here if you don't cooperate. And I don't care what they want, I don't want to die here. Maybe I'm a coward after all, but I don't want to die. Not like this.
Wayfarer at White-Gold. Conferring at highest level. Situation most auspicious but keep to work. Waterfront address still usable.
"Well." Shasten rubbed his chin over the lesser draftsman's desk in Uncommon Enchantment. "Between that and the Blades, we can't say Lathenil isn't picking up his end."
"Your little conspiracy actually said that?" Cilandrin cleared her throat, realizing her tones stood in danger of waking Faralda in the little corner bed. Even now she did not suffer rude awakenings gladly, and her inevitable wails would wake old Weldor downstairs.
Weldor made it the core of his being to have no part in politics; more, he had been led to believe that Cilandrin – Alda – was the mother of Shasten's child, and that the relation between the two was best described as frosty. (This, to freeze the possibility of a real and perilous romance in the bud. It had worked well.)
Softer, she continued: "He's a good many things – impulsive, unstable, absolutely incapable of shutting up – but no one ever accused him of shiftlessness. Though... I had imagined the first three would keep him well out of the White-Gold Tower. Does he mean Ocato himself? He must, mustn't he, he scarcely gets the time of day from anyone not of the Isles... and they do say Chancellor Ocato's not exactly even-tempered himself."
"Keep to work, he says: don't stand around gobsmacked just because things are looking up. Easy enough for us." The humans of Lillandril's countryside knew that the junior enchanter sold his weapons at a bargain, but even they seemed not to have caught on that humans were getting a special discount. "Fiorana, now... I wonder that she hasn't found a good excuse to stand around already."
Shasten maintained his cover here because it wasn't in his nature to fill every void with talk. That certainly wouldn't go over at the Crystal Tower – the New Crystal Tower; people were ceasing to qualify the title, but Cilandrin was of Sunhold and had no excuse to do the same.
But no, she couldn't do what Fiorana did either. It was one thing to lie with words; it was another to deceive by action.
And then there had been Kellorn's latest relay from Alinor. Fiorana had sent word that Beridor was alive and employed at the Tower – alive for a generous definition of the term, she had written. I may never understand what you saw in him, but we can be certain: it's gone now.
"When the Empire comes," said Cilandrin quietly, "when the Thalmor are routed... I hope they let me kill Leyaro myself."
Shasten was probably aghast that such a sweet girl would harbor such fantasies. Kellorn had been. She paid him no mind, but moved to the corner, and began to stroke the hair from Faralda's face. Perhaps, she mused, like a harpist playing a favorite refrain, there was something to the fringe idea that Khajiit were really a form of mer; even at rest, the girl's skinniness was decidedly kittenish.
"I'm glad you won't remember any of this," she said, looking into those closed, softly-fluttering eyes. "Of course that'll make it difficult to appreciate your Uncle Lathenil for his efforts – you'll see he's an all-around difficult-"
A crash sounded from the storefront. Faralda began to scream.
"Master Weldor!" barked a voice. "You are to be brought to Alinor's magistrate immediately!
Cilandrin looked around wildly for the rope ladder, to find Shasten was already securing it to the windowsill. She began to tie Faralda into a sling – she was getting so tall, she could only hope the material would suffice –
"What – what for? Why all the way to Alinor?" Weldor's voice was thick with sleep.
"Your shop has been tied to a number of deadly defects in staves. These staves were in the hands of Summerguard-"
"Ha! Not Summerguard, then, and not Alinor or magistrates either. Necromancers. Shasten! Down here!"
"Everyone on premises is to be held for investigation-"
Shasten swallowed and moved toward the stairs, heaviest hammer in hand. "I'll hold them off at least," he said quickly. "If Weldor and I survive we'll be marked – so if Fiorana ever needs to run, it'll be a full set – you go to Andrathel. No connection there."
Cilandrin met his eye, suspended over the windowsill. "Thank you. For everything."
Faralda had already forgotten about being awakened and was – almost as vocally – excited to be getting such a ride.
"Quiet, love, please be quiet..."
For the first time, Faralda actually listened. They descended, the battle unabated, no one freed up to investigate the sound of a small girl. She walked almost naturally – perfectly naturally, for a young mother this time of night who didn't think to bring her sword. She could still hear Shasten's voice when the struggle receded from earshot.
Her last stolen glance at Uncommon Enchantments showed more armed mer rushing to the scene. Gut twisting, she walked on toward Andrathel's cabin.
It cannot, then, have been revenge. But as I think on it, it need not have been revenge. The enemies of the Aldmer are, after all, deceitful beyond bounds; one can hardly expect such deceit to stop at the threshold of their own belief.
And yet – what if I had heard Lord Fintar's dying words? I can answer that in a trice: I would likely ignore them, claim them for my own on the slim chance that they marked a sure path, and hope I might be chosen as his successor on my own merit.
If it were Arranelya, I would heed her, I am sure. She claims from all of us a debt that cannot be paid for centuries, and most accounts say, at any rate, that her inspiration is much more powerful when viewed from afar.
So I claim. Yet even now, as I bring into fruition the Lady-Sage's deepest desires, how often do I actually think of her?
Can I vest the future of the Agency in the notion that my subordinates would carry out my own last wishes?
What do I aim by asking such questions? Do I purpose to raise our standards to the level of the debased races?
No matter. The effort was never for Fintar and the louts at the Agency; it was for eternity itself, for all true children of Aldmeris, to whom the ambitious cowards in my company are but foam-flecks on a vast, pure sea. And if ever my effort were crowned, it is now.
That said, my words have now made it necessary that I destroy this journal. But I may safely trust the memory of last night's triumphs to stay with me, long outlasting any misgivings.
Morrowind came first, of course. Morrowind had come first for half a decade. Ocato had been confident, though, that he would soon secure enough of a lull in their struggles that Summerset might at last be seen to. Then, on the evening of Loredas, he would visit Lathenil's Waterfront lodging.
But Ocato had not come.
Soaked in the night's rain, his audience robe stifling him at the shoulders, Lathenil had still managed to rush his way to the middle of the Palace's second floor before the Imperial Watch stopped him.
"I need to see Ocato," he panted through the sticking pain in his chest. "At once."
"Yeah, you and everyone," said a particularly big and imposing guard.
"Just – tell me that he's up there, will you? He was to meet me around dusk – the Waterfront – send me to the prison if you must, but I can bear witness, if... if he's not... if something..." He filled his lungs for one desperate last ditch. "Ocato! Potentate, please answer-"
A sound cuff on the shoulder promptly silenced him.
An Altmer guardswoman came running down the hall, a profoundly bemused expression on her face. "He... he actually says to let him in." She surveyed him. "Oh. You're the missed appointment?" Lathenil belatedly recognized her as one of Ocato's personal detail.
He took a moment to assess the situation and shakily said, "Escort me to the doors, then. I will not pass through them until I hear his voice for myself."
"And leave half the palace unmanned?" demanded the big guard.
"An escort of three will do."
"And Ocato says let him in..." muttered another watchman disbelievingly.
The Altmer nodded with a wry expression. "First a councillor-in-name-only who can't say a plain sentence to save his life, now an Altmer who goes into paranoid hysterics at the first sign of anything to do with the Altmer... I wonder if he doesn't collect eccentric advisors for his own amusement."
In the end it was Ocato's voice at the door: slurred and unnaturally loud, as though he'd been drinking. "Yes, I forgot you – circumstances being ever so political – why don't you come hear just what I have to contend with."
The three guards (including the Altmer, due to Lathenil's laxity of speech) glanced at one another.
"That was an actual invitation!" Ocato snapped.
Ocato's study was filled with high-backed chairs almost as austere as those of the Council Table. They were cushioned in the Imperial black and red, surrounded by black and red curtains (no doubt for the convenience of the guards). In fact, there seemed not a scrap of material in the room in any other color, but for a charcoal sketch above the hearth, which portrayed a few Summerguard soldiers at a military encampment.
Ocato sat in one of these chairs – not the one adjoined to the monolithic black desk – and tossed a tumbler of some liquor down his throat. Lathenil frowned. It was well-known that the Potentate dined only with his hood up, but...
Ocato noticed where he was looking. "The original Councillor's Hood, yes," he said, waving a hand toward his shoulders where it lay. "Thwarts the effect of any poison known to the alchemists of the Empire. Did you really imagine it would let me get drunk?"
"What's happened, then?" Lathenil continued to stand, not feeling quite comfortable sitting before the Potentate.
"Morrowind. Morrowind. Always Morrowind. They wouldn't accept reinforcements – one fort's enough for what's left of the province, they say, and if there are any more we might as well just fill the rest of the Dunmer with arrows with the same result for Blacklight. Oh, and not rations either. It's giant insect derivatives or nothing, and greater Tamriel hasn't got many to spare. They've built new scrib mines at the outer blast radius, and that'll sustain them in two years or so, but in the meantime most of the Great Houses would rather the commoners starve than eat bread. But they still need to fight the Argonian incursions, and the Council in the end sent the Great Houses a shipment of powerful staves: very effective in the short term, you understand."
"You're – you're arming one province against another?"
"These incursions aren't Black Marsh dictate, but the work of independent militias. But all the same, yes, it has more or less gotten to that pass. You wouldn't believe how a crisis can sneak up on you. But as for their use of the staves, they didn't bother fighting the Argonians. Why would they? No, they chose to rid Blacklight of what was left of House Hlaalu."
"A message to Morgiah," said Lathenil grimly. He had been wondering how this was going to come back to Summerset.
"A message to the Empire." Ocato lolled his head back, grimacing. "Showing they hold us in contempt. Much more important than defending their borders. That's the rub, that's the one thing you never quite understand until you've had a good long career in politics: the powerful don't look after their own interests. They're too powerful to think they need to. They're madmen to a one, Lathenil. Don't think me an exception, either: were I looking after my interests, I would have resigned decades ago."
Almost plaintively, he added: "I only wish Ebel were here."
"Ah... Prince Ebel? I've heard nothing of what might have suited him for Emperor-"
"A fine illustration!" roared Ocato. "The whole Empire expects my every utterance to represent some – some affair of state!" He nodded, gloomily. "Don't get me wrong – you're a very loyal... very loyal subject. And I don't need to pry your main objective out of you with a clamp, better still. But Ebel... in all these decades, Ebel is the only one who ever thought of me as a friend." He snorted. "And if I hadn't saved his life back in 399, I would never have gotten into this fix."
"On the other hand," said Lathenil with some hesitation, "you did save his life."
Ocato laughed, rather disjointedly. "There is that." He shook his head. "Now – I can see it in your face – don't spoil the moment by telling me I'd be a fine Emperor or any of that."
Indeed that was precisely what Lathenil had been about to say.
"I'm no Emperor. I'm a juggler, Lathenil. I juggle provinces and functionaries, I use all my talent to keep them from hitting one another or falling to earth. Grandest, longest act in history, but the balls are dipping closer and closer to the ground. Maybe I won't drop them this time; it's seemed worse before. But there will come the day that I will. The Empire needs a true leader, and even the worst of the claimants to the throne fits the bill better than I." He gave another sorrowful half-smile. "Well, perhaps not, if we count the Council of the First Year..."
Ocato raised his head. "Sit down, for pity's sake! Drink with me! No more words of consequence for the evening. I absolutely forbid it."
He sat. From Ocato's own hand, he took the crystal tumbler of Cyrodiilic brandy, the first drink he had not personally overseen in seven years. Through the night, they spoke of little memories and old refrains. They spoke of home.