Chapter 10
Erasmis Marvani stood on the bow end of the Northern Maiden, clinging ashen-knuckled to some stacked cargo crates as the ship swayed and rocked over the Sea of Ghosts. His stomach swayed and rocked with it, sometimes pushing up a bit of that morning's breakfast and leaving a sour taste in his mouth. By a stroke of luck (or fate), the ship had arrived in Raven Rock as they did, to pick up some cargo to be delivered back to Windhelm. Erasmis didn't feel all that lucky now, though, with his stomach protesting every little movement. By Azura's light, he hated the sea and these Daedra-forsaken Nordic boats, built so perilously low to the water's surface and with no balustrades to speak of. He supposed building them lower to the water made them swifter, but with no barrier to keep water from swarming up over the deck, all it would take was one good storm to sink it into the sea like a rock.
Four hours, at the most. Four hours and they would reach Skyrim. Four hours and his feet would touch dry land again. If he could make the trip from Morrowind to Solstheim all those years ago, surely he could make this one.
Erasmis focused on the way ahead, at the lumpy white expanse of land that dominated the southwestern horizon, and tried not to think any further of drowning or the ever increasing queasiness in his belly. But of course trying not to think about those things made him reflect on the other thing he had been trying not to think about: the sad, disappointed look on his daughter's face that morning as he left their cave hideout to make for Skyrim.
He had at least gotten to spend some time with Seyda after being gone for three months, mindlessly laboring away at that strange temple at the center of Solstheim. The reunion had been good, joyous, needed, but still…that look on her face when he told her he would be leaving again, this time on an important mission that would change their lives. That had mattered little to the child, though; all she knew was her father was going away again, and after he had only just gotten back. Yes, he was doing it for her, to change her life for the better, but even knowing that brought him scant comfort, did nothing to ease the guilt chewing away at his insides.
He used to laugh at people who thought parenting was the hardest thing in the world to do. What was so hard about it? You feed the kid, raise her, and when she comes of age, you send her out into the world. But then Seyda came along and changed his whole understanding of it. Parenting was in no way simple. You weren't just raising a child, but creating a person, and with that responsibility came a variety of different roles you must take on. When you're the only parent, those roles were doubled. He was creator and shaper, teacher and example, awarder and discipliner, the voice of reason and conscience. He had to know when to nurture and when to show tough love, when to let her start making her own mistakes so she could learn from them. There was always, always the fear and anxiety of getting it all wrong, missing a step somewhere, failing as a parent. There was the belief that you had to get it just right for your child to survive and thrive in the world, and yet you never knew if you were getting it right or not. All you could do was hope and pray they turned out okay, that you did your job to the best of your ability.
Erasmis supposed it was inevitable, though, that all parents will at some point disappoint their children no matter their good intentions. Perhaps when Seyda was older and had children of her own, she would look back on the things he'd done and understand why he'd felt he had to do them.
Whether or not he would live to see his daughter grow up or meet his future grandchildren remained to be seen. Erasmis had no intention of dying, of course, but he was fully aware of the danger this task Hermaeus Mora had given him posed. He had expected nothing less when he bent his knee to the Deadric Lord. The Daedra commanded nothing light of their servants; how else were they meant to prove themselves worthy of their Lord's favor? Still, anything could happen, no matter his intentions.
He had recalled something Hakeem had once told him. The old Redguard duelist who had been both friend and mentor to Erasmis in his wandering youth, teaching him all of what he knew of life and his style of swordplay, was long dead now, but much of his wisdom had stayed with his pupil. The wise man hopes for the best, he'd said once, but prepares for the worst.
So Erasmis had prepared for the worst before leaving that morning, putting Amaya in charge of their Reaver band and Seyda's care. They had agreed upon this arrangement long ago in the event that something should happen to him, yet despite that, Amaya had argued against him leaving her behind, insisted that she should take part in helping him secure Seyda's future—as the child's surrogate mother, it was as much her responsibility as it was his. Amaya had tried everything in her power to change his mind, even stooping to inflict her feminine wiles on him. Sometimes those wiles were an effective weapon (and maybe sometimes he let thembe effective), but this had not been one of those times. This was too important. In the end, Amaya conceded, though not without some resentment toward him.
Nonetheless, a few hours before he had left that morning they had made love in the privacy of their bed chamber, no more than a little niche in the cave they all called home. There had been no resentment from her then, only a potent, feverish combination of love and longing and fear and desperation, as if the world was ending and here was their last and only chance to be together, to say it all in the best way, their feelings through action. For all he knew, it might well have been.
Erasmis was not alone in his task, at least. He still had Nevosi and Raven with him. The former was stretched out on some cargo crates on the starboard side of the ship, travel pack pillowing his head as he napped, and the latter was standing nearby, staring out across the ocean, black robe and black hair thrashing in the wind. In his right hand he gripped his mage's staff, five and a half feet of polished ebony, crowned with a flaming red ruby about the size of a tern's egg. Friends, who were also like brothers to him. They had been ready to step into Apocrypha with him, and now here they were ready to take on two Dragonborn with him, if it came to that.
If everything went as planned, it wouldn't need to.
The task was to bring Hermaeus Mora's vengeance down upon the two Dragonborn and the Aedra that had created them for their respective treachery and meddling, and the Daedric Lord had a specific way He wanted it done. Mora had assured him that he need not worry about the latter, however. So long as Erasmis succeeded with the other two, Mora would be revenged upon the Aedra for His meddling.
Erasmis had been savagely satisfied to learn from the Prince that one of the Dragonborn, the same bloody bastard who had been behind the mind-enslaving magic that affected him and so many others on Solstheim, was no longer in control of the power he'd once had. Mora had claimed it had gone dormant, which Erasmis supposed didn't necessarily mean gone for good, but at least the bastard was still paying some kind of price for what he'd done. And he would pay double by the end, whether his power woke up again or not. While concocting a plan for this task with his friends, Erasmis had considered that possibility and prepared a solution for it.
Still need to tread softly, though, Erasmis thought, trying to fight off another, stronger wave of nausea, his mouth filling with saliva. His skin felt clammy and tingly. Very softly.
Nothing is guaranteed, as Hakeem had often told him, but Erasmis had an advantage his foe did not: the element of surprise. They had no idea he was coming for them, had no idea who he and the others were, even. So long as that remained to be so, Erasmis and his friends would have the upper hand.
No longer able to hold it off, Erasmis bent over, hands on his knees, and threw up over the side of the boat. Four hours. Only four hours.
But he had a feeling it was going to be a long four hours.
As the sun came to rest at its late afternoon spot in the sky, glowing hazily behind a veil of cloud cover, the Northern Maiden slid into Windhelm's harbor and Erasmis nudged Nevosi awake.
"Rise and shine, you lazy sack of guar shit," he said, mostly teasing. "We're here."
And the sooner they got off this damn tub, the better. Erasmis had been on a boat only three times in his long years of life; once, when leaving Morrowind for Solstheim, a second time raiding a pirate's ship (although it had been anchored in a cove at the time, he had still managed to get sick on it), and now. He had vomited only four times on this trip, which made it the easiest voyage he'd been on so far. The sail from Morrowind had been the worst; he'd spent the entire trip hunched over the bulwark, puking his guts into the ocean to the amusement of everyone on board. Even his wife, dead for many years now, had fared better than him on that trip, and she had been pregnant with Seyda at the time.
Nevosi sat up on the crates he'd been using as a bed and dug the heels of his palms into his eyes to clear the sleep-haze from his vision. "Already?" he asked through a yawn. "I could have slept a few more hours. I could eat, too."
"Later," Erasmis told him, not wanting to even think about food right now. "We have much to do and not a lot of time to do it in. We're at least a day and a half behind our quarry, and we have no idea where they are."
"Perhaps we should start by asking after them, as we did in Raven Rock," Raven suggested, striding up to join them. He was somewhat of an imposing figure; dark-eyed, grim-faced, strong about the shoulders, and unusually tall for a Dunmer. At six feet, he had half a head over Nevosi and a few inches more over Erasmis, who was shortest among them.
"Good luck trying to get the Nords to tell us anything," Nevosi scoffed as he grabbed his quiver of arrows from where it leaned against a crate, pulling the leather carry strap over his head so it rested diagonal on his chest. He adjusted it until the case settled just behind his right shoulder and then buckled it snugly in place. "They'd sooner spit on us than talk to us, and I hear the ones in Windhelm are even less friendly. We'll find no help here."
"I wasn't speaking of the Nords," Raven said. "That mercenary at the Retching Netch claimed the woman we're pursuing is friendly with our people here in the so called 'Gray Quarter'. They will talk to us."
Erasmis nodded as he pulled thoughtfully at the hairs of his goatee. "Yes, we'll start there. If we don't have any luck, I'm fairly certain we can still get one of these Nords to give up something. The woman is a hero among her people, remember. Respected. We might be able to use that to our advantage. Portray ourselves as her former companions. If they think we've aided her before, they might be willing to aid us in return."
Nevosi's expression said he still thought it was a waste of time, but he didn't argue. "You're the boss, boss." He grabbed his ebony bow off a crate and shouldered it to keep it within easy reach.
As soon as the Northern Maiden settled at the pier and the captain deemed it okay to disembark, the trio stepped off the boat, Erasmis a little bit wobbly on his feet, and started up the pier where a city guardsman stood in the way, facing in their direction. He had the tall, hulking physique typical of most Nords and wore ringmail under quilted leather and a woven blue sash, complete with a spiked helmet that covered most of his face but for his eyes. In his left hand he carried a round, wooden shield painted with a bear's head on a field of blue. His right rested on the grip of a steel war axe.
"Hold!" the guard commanded. "What's your business here in Skyrim?"
Erasmis instinctively touched his hand to the katana hanging at his left hip. He saw the guard's eyes follow the gesture, body tensing up. "What concern is it of yours?"
Fierce blue eyes stared out from the eye-holes in the man's helmet. "You're foreigners here, and it's my job to question foreigners coming into our land through Windhelm's harbor. So I ask again: what's your business here?"
Erasmis figured he might as well try out his 'companions of the Dragonborn' theory since it was apparent this brute wasn't going to get out of their way until he got an answer. "No business. We are in pursuit of a friend. Her name is Liv, but you might know her better as the Dragonborn."
The guard's eyes blinked a few times inside his helmet. "You know the Dragonborn?"
Erasmis gave a disarming grin. "Of course. We helped her solve a few problems in Solstheim. She said she'd return the favor if we ever needed anything. Well, we're in a bit of jam, so we've come to ask for her help."
The guard grunted. "You couldn't've sent a letter?"
"Time is short, I'm afraid. I figure we can reach her long before a letter ever will."
"Hrmph." The guard's eyes dropped to Erasmis's weapon again, and completely off topic, he said: "That's an Akaviri sword. Don't see many dark elves carrying a weapon like that."
Erasmis's grin remained fixed on his face. "Ah, I'm honored you noticed! No, you do not see many of my kind wielding katana. As it happens, it was a gift." In actuality, he had taken it off a pirate captain's corpse. The man barely knew how to use it, which was how he ended up dead in the first place. Erasmis had killed him in two moves, despite his seasickness at the time. Where the pirate had even gotten the katana was a mystery never to be solved, but Erasmis found out later from using it that it could cut through any armor and absorbed its victim's health. No doubt worth a good deal of gold, not that he'd ever sell it. The katana was a light weapon but very durable, and fit his speedy, duelist style of swordplay perfectly. He had named the sword Inevitable, because, as Hakeem had often told him, every good blade deserves a good name. What better name for a blade no armor could stop, which made injury and even death almost inevitable?
"Pft," the guard scoffed. "A stick is what it is. Skinny little blade like that ain't going to do much damage. Now an axe? That's a real weapon. Small but can still take a man's head clean off in one stroke."
Erasmis shifted his weight from one foot to the other, curling his fingers around the grip of Inevitable, tight but not too tight. "A katana is skinny, yes, but it's meant to be a slashing weapon. A slash can be just as deadly as a hack or chop if you know how and where to employ it—the neck, for example. Or here."
Almost quicker than the eye could follow, Erasmis unsheathed the katana and flicked the blade up between the guard's legs. Its sharp edge rested against his unprotected inner thigh, a fatal slice if this had been a real fight. Inevitable may have been able to pierce any armor, but sometimes he didn't need it to.
The Nord jumped back in surprise, ripping his war axe loose from his belt. "Hey! What the—"
Erasmis laughed heartily and sheathed his weapon to show he meant no harm by it—not much, anyway. "There is an artery there, the second largest in the body. Once severed, that's it—the hapless victim will bleed out in less than a minute. Skinny weapons can also be more effective against some heavy armors; it can reach into creases where your axes cannot. Never underestimate a 'stick' in the hands of someone who knows how to use it."
The guard's weapon remained in his hand, as if he felt an attack was still imminent. When he spoke he sounded affronted, perhaps because Erasmis had caught him off guard and embarrassed him: "So you know how to wield your little twig. Should I be impressed?"
Erasmis shrugged on the matter. "Actually, I was wondering if you might know where the Dragonborn is. As I've mentioned, we're kind of in a hurry to find her."
The guard scoffed. "How should I know? Do I look like her keeper?"
"Then we'll be on our way."
"Fine, just stay out of trouble. Us guards'll be keeping an eye on you and your friends, little elf."
The guard went back to whatever he had been doing before he'd decided to harass them, and Erasmis made his way down the rest of the pier, Nevosi and Raven following close. He had no idea where he was going, but figured there had to be a way into the city from the harbor. They followed the main dock, passing by a pair of Argonians, a female carrying a bundle of leather scraps in her arms and a male with a perpetual scowl on his face.
"What're you looking at, elf?" he snarled at Erasmis in passing.
Erasmis stared after him, shaking his head. "My, but everyone is friendly here, aren't they?" he remarked to his friends.
"The Nords don't like anyone who isn't a Nord," Nevosi said, a grimness in his voice that was unlike him. "Our people are barely tolerated, the Argonians are treated more or less like slaves, and the Khajiit are forbidden from entering the town. It's like that across most of Skyrim, but it's particularly bad here. Kind of hard to be sociable when everybody hates you simply for being different."
"You seem to understand the situation rather well for someone who's never been here before."
"I had a fling with a Dunmer who used to live here in the Gray Quarter," Nevosi explained, then moved his hands in the figure of an hourglass. "Fantastic body, beautiful as Queen Barenziah, but had the rather annoying habit of talking too much about herself. You'd think she believed she was Queen Barenziah, the way she went on. Anyway, she told me about the time she'd spent here, staying with a relative. Or 'those few years of utter misery', as she had called them."
"Did she tell you anything helpful?" Erasmis asked.
Nevosi shrugged. "Just to avoid the Nords and not cause any trouble with them, but since you just pulled a blade on one of their guards not five minutes into our arrival, I'd say that advice is pointless now."
Erasmis flashed his teeth in a grin. "The man was clearly interested in my katana. I thought he might like a closer look."
"I seriously doubt he has eyes in his crotch, Ras."
Erasmis laughed. "A shame he had the helmet on. I would have loved to see the look on his face."
They came upon a set of snow-covered stone stairs and followed them up to a big, solid iron gate. Erasmis and Raven pushed it open and they all stepped through, finding themselves inside the town, in a deserted section. Or so it had seemed.
"Hi," a small voice greeted the three Dunmer. "You wanna buy some flowers? I picked them myself."
Erasmis turned to the owner of that voice, a little girl standing just off to the side of the gate near some barrels, a basket of assorted flowers hanging from her arm, smiling with effort through a face grimy with dirt. She had to be no more than ten, definitely Nord with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. The dress she wore was dirty and torn at the hems, her shoes little more than scraps of leather bound with frayed ties. If her clothes weren't pitiful enough, Erasmis noted how scrawny she looked, her arms too thin, her cheeks hollowed in. As a father who had watched his own child starve, he could not help but feel grief for the girl, and anger at her undeserved suffering.
"Where are your parents?" he asked.
The girl shrugged and cast her eyes downward. "They died. My ma got sick when I was little and my da was a Stormcloak. He went away to fight, and never came back."
Erasmis frowned and knelt down on one knee in front of the girl. "I'm sorry to hear that, little one. You have no other guardian to care for you?"
The girl shook her head, her filthy, tangled hair swishing around her shoulders. "But I sell flowers for food, and sometimes my friend gives me septims when I see her."
"Your friend?"
"Uh-huh." The child smiled a little easier this time. "Her name's Liv, and she's the Dragonborn!" The smile faltered. "I wish she could be my mother, but she has to fight dragons and stuff. But Ambarys is nice to me too, sometimes, even though he acts grumpy. He's a Dunmer like you, and he lets me stay at his inn sometimes and gives me a sweet roll if I help him clean the inn, but not that often because he's poor too. A lot of people in the Gray Quarter are."
Erasmis shared a look with his friends then focused on the girl again. "When was the last time you saw your friend, the Dragonborn?"
"Yesterday morning. She gave me a pouch of septims and talked to me for a while. Her and Ambarys are the only nice people. Most everyone else here just ignores me. Well, except you." The girl smiled again. "You're nice too."
Erasmis smiled back. "I try my best. Do you know where your friend went after she talked to you?"
The girl pointed down the passageway running right from the iron gate. "She went to see Ambarys at his inn. It's down there, next to Sadri's shop." She tilted her head curiously. "Are you looking for her? Do you know her too?"
"My friends and I helped her, once. Now we need her help." Erasmis straightened to his feet. "Tell me, child, why are you still out here in the cold selling flowers when you could be at the inn having a warm meal bought by your friend's kindness?"
The girl shrugged. "I'll only get a few meals with those septims, but I'll get more if I sell my flowers."
Erasmis smiled approvingly. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder and bent over to look her in the face. "You're smart for one so young. Hope for kindness, but never expect it. We must make our own way in this world."
The girl blinked at him curiously, but nodded.
Erasmis opened the flap on his travel pack and reached inside. "You helped me by answering my questions, so now I must return the favor." He brought out a small pouch of coin and set it inside her basket, careful not to crush any of her flowers.
The girl's big blue eyes glittered with grateful tears. "Thank you so much! Gods bless your kind heart!"
"What is your name, child?"
"Sophie," she answered, drawing the back of her hand across her wet eyes.
"Sophie. You can call me Ras." Erasmis reached out and playfully booped her nose with his forefinger. "Be grateful for what is given to you, Sophie, but be proud of what you have earned. This you have earned. I'm afraid I have to go now, but it was nice to meet you."
"It was nice to meet you too," Sophie called after him as he and the other two made their way down the passage the girl had indicated earlier. "Please, come back and talk to me again, Ras!"
Erasmis waved back to her as Nevosi said, teasingly: "When did you get so soft, Ras?"
"How would you like a katana up your ass, Nevosi?" he shot back, still smiling and waving to the girl.
Nevosi chortled. "Oof, touchy!"
"We have a lead now, at least," said Raven, never one to join in on the good-natured teasing between friends. "Hopefully this Ambarys can tell us more about our quarry."
Nevosi nodded, stuffing his frozen-stiff hands into the warmth of his armpits. "And the sooner we find him, the sooner we'll be warm. It's colder than a whore's heart out here."
The Gray Quarter was, not to Erasmis's surprise, a cheerless place; much of what they had seen of the town and its people so far gave a rather dismal first impression, it would have been foolish to think this quarter, where the town's Dunmer outcasts lived, would be any better. Most of the buildings were rundown, the thoroughfare was compact and cracked so bad you could see the dirt beneath the stone. The stench of waste was strong in the air, and Eramis and his friends had to skirt around frozen puddles of it on the ground. Someone had made an attempt to cheer the place up and add some kind of homey atmosphere by hanging up colorful banners in the Morrowind style around the buildings. It did scant good.
Ambarys's cornerclub was right where the girl had said it was, next door to a shop called Sadri's Used Wares. Inside, they found the place mostly empty but for three Dunmer, one sweeping the floor with a sad excuse for a broom, another having a bite to eat a table in the corner, and the last—this Ambarys, Erasmis presumed—standing behind the counter, cleaning an assortment of wooden and metal tankards.
He looked up briefly at his new customers then went back to his task. "I haven't seen you lot before. Where did you just get in from, Morrowind or Solstheim?"
"Solstheim," Erasmis replied as he walked up to the counter, Nevosi and Raven behind him. "You're Ambarys?"
"I am." Ambarys put down the cup he was cleaning and swept his hand around the room, lips twisted in a bitter smile. "Welcome to my humble establishment. You want some advice, you should keep moving. This town offers very little to our people outside of misery. You'll find a warmer welcome and better opportunity in Whiterun."
Erasmis settled down on one of the stools at the counter. "If it's so much better in Whiterun, why are you still here? Why not just move there?"
Ambarys raised his brows. "And leave behind all I've built? No, I've put too much work into this cornerclub to simply pack up and leave now. Besides, that would be giving these Nords exactly what they want." He looked closely at Erasmis. "And what is it you want? A drink? A bite to eat?"
"Information. I understand you spoke to the Dragonborn yesterday morning."
"What of it?"
"Is she by any chance still in town, and if so, where might I find her?"
Ambarys's expression became guarded, cautious. "Who exactly is asking?"
Erasmis gave him his disarming smile. "A friend. We met on Solstheim, helped her out with a problem. Now we need her help."
Ambarys scratched at his chin as he eyed Erasmis across the counter. "I see. The Dragonborn, who killed the World-Eater, needed help from three Dunmer, two of whom are dressed like common thugs?" His face crumpled into a scowl. "Do you take me for a fool?"
Erasmis frowned. "I'm starting to. A fool and a hypocrite. You judge our character by the way we look. How does that make you any different from the Nords who treat you like shit just for being a Dunmer?"
Ambarys winced as if struck. Then he sighed. "I suppose…I see your point. I was wrong to do that, my apologies. But I still find it difficult to believe that woman would require help for anything after killing Alduin. Surely there's no task that would prove more difficult than him."
"And who is to say she didn't have help in doing that?" Erasmis countered. "She does travel with her brother, after all. I know from personal experience he's not just there for company."
Ambarys scratched at his chin again. "Perhaps not. So you say you helped her. With what?"
Erasmis put on a surprised look. "You haven't heard about what happened on Solstheim? There was a man, used some kind of magic to control the minds of most of the people on the island. I'm surprised you haven't heard about it."
Ambarys shrugged. "I may have heard it mentioned once or twice. These days you hear a lot about bad things happening. Hard to keep up with all the evil and injustice in the world."
"Some of us were fortunate enough not to be affected. So we helped her to stop him. We had to. You don't just sit around and let someone else defend your home and your people for you."
Ambarys was quiet for a time, seeming to weigh Erasmis's story. At last, he said, "I'm fairly certain she's no longer in town. She mentioned something was going on in Dawnstar and intended to look into it. You might find her there."
"And where is this Dawnstar?"
"Northwest of here. Small port town. If you follow the coastline, it'll lead you right to it. On foot, it'll probably take you nine or ten hours to get there, six or seven on horseback. There's also Gort, down at the harbor. He owns a row boat. For a small fee, he'll take you to Dawnstar, but the trip will probably take as much time as if you'd walked."
"Where can I get horses?"
"The stables are outside of town from the main gate, just at the end of the bridge."
Erasmis put a pregnant pouch of septims on the counter and got up to leave. "I appreciate the information."
Ambarys looked glad for a second. "And I appreciate the gold."
When Erasmis and his friends reached the stables outside town, they found the stablemaster, a tall, golden-skinned Altmer, shoveling horse dung from an empty stall. All the stalls were empty, Erasmis noticed with some annoyance.
The Altmer looked up from his task and offered a somewhat apologetic look. "Sorry. If you've come to buy a horse, I'm afraid I sold my last two yesterday morning."
"Fabulous," Erasmis said unhappily.
Nevosi clapped him on the shoulder, grinning. "Looks like we're walking, then. Unless you want to chance whatever's left in your stomach with Gort and his row boat."
"I'd rather make love to a nix-hound."
"You can hire the carriage there," the stablemaster said, pointing to the cart sitting near the side of the road, complete with horse and carriage driver. "He'll take you anywhere you want to go in Skyrim, for a fee."
Erasmis nodded his thanks and headed over to the carriage driver, a Nord with thinning brown hair and a scar on the bridge of his nose. "We'd like to hire your carriage."
The man looked at each of them in turn, making a reluctant face, and then gave a curt nod. "Fine. Where you want to go?"
"Dawnstar."
The Nord held his hand out to Erasmis, making a fork it over gesture with his fingers. "Fifty septims. Each."
"Each?" Nevosi protested. "That's highway robbery!"
The Nord said nothing, only looked at him indifferently.
Erasmis produced the gold from his pack and gave it over without complaint. After all, once his task was complete, he would never have to worry about gold again.