Chapter Eleven
"This it, then?" asked the punter, looking over the bundled form. A body, no mistaking it. Not unless mistaking it involved money, in which case it easily became just about anything else.
A live body. Back-jointed legs saying beast, and a stray bit of mane-hair saying cat. Some slave to be smuggled, perhaps. Or a recaptured runaway who'd found that King Helseth lived very far away, while the Master remained all too near.
Not the first, nor the last. Not so long as he got paid.
The punter laughed, and lashed out with his foot, giving the unconscious khajiit a cheerful kick. The boat rocked, maybe just a fraction more than it should have. Then it steadied, held still in the water by one hand clutching the jetty. The other hand held a knife. And the knife held all of the punter's attention.
"I can handle this boat myself," said a voice, infinitely chillier than the river itself, "So. Don't do that again."
They met in the docks of Ebonheart. Trask waited for them beneath the ebony dragon's half-furled wing. Taking its mood from every ship in port, the statue seemed restless in the flickering torchlight, ready at any moment to take to the skies and fly towards its imperial home. Few fishing boats rode beside the jetty, and out on the water only one great ship still lay at anchor. To that ship. Trask had sent her messenger. The young Argonian had been surly, awoken hours before the dawn, but a coin and the promise of another had sweetened his mood considerably. He'd left cheerfully, vanishing into the dark water with barely a ripple. Now, out in the bay, Trask could see a torchlit rowboat making it's way towards her.
Beside her, the unconcious Zahn sat propped against the statue's base, a warm pressure against her leg. The boatswain's cloak still rested around his shoulders. The man had taken his pay and gone in surly silence, too intimidated to right what was, in all honesty, simple forgetfulness on her part. Well. That for being a fool, then; and she'd paid the kind of pay one became accustomed to doling out, when the transported goods happened to be unwilling. A high price for a simple job. Let him buy another cloak.
The splash of oars grew louder, and Trask strained to make out the faces of the passengers. Two people, man and woman. The man rowed stoically, while the other sat far front and leaned so far over the bow that it seemed she might fall in.
The woman's face came more into perspective more with every passing second. An oval of a face, regular in feature with large eyes shadowed by a demure black hood. A scalloped shawl hung over her shoulders, also black, and beneath that the dark green of her dress caught the light in ways which common cloth did not.
A lady, thought Trask. But when the rowboat drew level with the jetty, the woman did not behave like one. She scrambled out of the boat and raced towards the statue, shawl flapping like wings in the night.
The torches burning to either side of the plaza added color to pale cheeks, and sparks to dark eyes. Trask did not rise but instead waited impassively as the woman swept towards her and descended in a graceful arch to kneel in front of Zahn.
Gloved hands reached out to lift the bowed head, and Trask watched the woman's expression blossom from strained anticipation to joy and wonder in the space of a breath. Tearful eyes lifted to the assassin's face, and the woman lifted herself from the flagstones in the same motion. She embraced the surprised assassin, a grip indifferent to the other woman's shabby clothes and stiffening spine.
Oblivious to everything except the moment.
"Edeth." the cold voice cut through their connection like a blade severing flesh from flesh. The woman stood up, reminded of her dignity. Trask stood as well. The man stepped up behind his wife, and lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. His shadowed eyes met Trask's, opaque and unreadable.
"It's him," he stated rather than asked, although he hadn't once looked in Zahn's direction. The woman called Edeth said nothing. Possibly, she could not. Her eyes shone like stars.
For a long moment, none of them moved. Then the man held out a hand, and Trask hesitated only a moment before meeting the grip with her own gloved fingers.
"You've done us a good turn, stranger," said the man, his voice as impenetrable as his sunken eyes. "I'd like to speak with you at greater length. Will you accompany us back to our vessel?"
Trask inclined her head courteously, as though the form of a crude self-invitation hadn't been just lying just under her tongue.
"That would be my pleasure."
The world rocked restlessly, and the air resounded with the creaking of timber, a sound which shot straight through Zahn's aching head.
A wet touch came to his forehead, sending a trickle of water running down his temple and into the pillow behind his head. Felt like a benediction in purgatory. When he opened his eyes, the small kindness immediately cracked under the weight of reality.
All of Zahn's nightmares had one angel in them, and now she sat by the bed with one fine-boned hand clutching the washcloth and her thin face a tearful conduit of loving reproach. She saw his eyes open and swept down to embrace him, long brown hair fanning across his chest, wet rag a chilly touch on the back of his neck.
She said things. Some of them were coherent. How he'd frightened her, how much she'd worried; and questions which she didn't give him a chance to answer. Zahn's mind wheeled across a blank expanse of oblivion, and crashed into the very last thing he remembered.
"Do you know what "Saniel" means, cat?"
"My son," Edeth said, somewhere in that jumble of words, "my beloved sun."
Trask sat at the table, and met the man's gaze with a steady, insolent stare. He kept his spine rigid and his eyes direct, hostile as a hound challenged by an intruding rat. A military man, from the tip of his receding hairline to the soles of his scuffed boots. A man with no patience for the natives, and marginally less impatience with everyone else. The set of his mouth spoke volumes for his state of mind; pressed shut over gritted teeth. The expression of a man steeling himself for an unpleasant business.
Trask waited. She slouched in the chair, booted feet crossed and arms folded impassively across her stomach. Waiting. Finally he made a move, one which clinked pleasantly and came down on the table with the muted ring of colliding coins.
"The payment." Terse, short words. Not so loud as most military men, but sharp and cold and cutting. It sliced through the air and reached her as clearly as any bull's bellow. Trask inclined her head, and accepted the payment. The coins felt as heavy as an accusation, and she didn't quite take her eyes off of the man across from her. She broke her silence.
"You are... Zahn's father?" The man's face tensed, a ripple of tiny muscles around eyes and mouth and quiver beneath the loose skin of his neck.
"...Twice."
"Pardon?"
"One more job. Twice the pay."
Saxtus set his elbows on the table, and leaned forward, voice resolute. "Two-thousand septims, if you make Saniel disappear for good."