Chapter Thirteen
Leon sat straight at the bar, because this wasn't the sort of bar that encouraged anything so comfortable as an elbows-on-the-counter slouch.
As recently as yesterday he'd frequented a place like that, watching, listening, asking questions now and again. But there'd been no sign of her, and no word. More, there had been no word on Grief. No sightings of his late thugs, either, where before they'd moved brazenly through any town they came to, swaggering boldly with weapons on their hips and insults on their tongues. Well-paid and given to revelry, rough but talkative, once provided with the right social lubricants. Gone. Simply vanished.
But She... perhapse she'd died in the cave? A nuisance, if it were true. And also soul-deep relief. Because if she were alive, if she'd caught onto him, if she-
Across the bar, another parton looked up from his drink and looked past Leon's shoulder, to where the door had just opened to admit a shaft of sunlight. Leon turned half around to follow the glance, and his breath caught in his throat. Coming towards him, her hair unbraided, cleaned, and held back from her face by a fine clasp, and with her form complimented by a close-fitting, high-necked shadoweave gown, she was not at all as she had been.
She was instead what he'd expected when he came looking for her, the image of everything she stood for.
He still hadn't recovered by the time she reached him, sliding onto the stool beside his and planting her elbows firmly on the table. -Slouching. Then, and only then, did he believe it.
"Ark." he said. "Tsaria Ark."
"So sure of me?" Trask leaned in close, too close, an ostentatious breach of decorum which caught a dark look from the man beside them.
"I wasn't," Lion acknowledged. He kept his face still, tried to breathe normally, but the smile on her lips said that she saw all, knew all; that she could hear his frantic heartbeat. "Now I am."
"Fine feathers." The assassin's lips quirked. "The greatest tools in an illusionists arsenal require no magic. -And no amount of magic will save a fool who doesn't acknowledge that."
"Your grandfather's words, m'sera."
The smile never wavered, and the eyes grew no colder- they'd been arctic to begin.
"I learn from my predecessors. I learn, also, from their mistakes." She reached out, gloved fingers curling delicately around the stem of his wine glass. She brought the half-full cup to her lips.
A clean glass this time, and quite a fine beverage. Much more befitting to a man who didn't know how to look or act as anything other than he was.
"Grief made a mistake, Lion." the glass came down with a sharp clink, which won a second scowl from their nearest patron. Lion watched the movement, watched the fingers, and thought of poison, of the many varieties and the many, many different painful deaths they might induce.
"I... may have made a moral miscalculation."
Trask shook her head. "Neither of us deal in morality, my friend. Say rather- an intellectual error. I hope it may be your last."
A polite phrase became rather ominous, when the means to making it prophesy lay well within this woman's capability. A dead man could do no wrong.
"I... shall certainly strive for better relations in future."
"Future... yes. Possibly."
Lion clenched his hands into loose fists, willing them not to shake.
"Your brother's orders, m'sera. None of mine." He hated the edge of cowardice in his voice, but he hated the idea of excruciating death much, much more.
"Ah. My dear, sweet, parricidal thug of a brother." She rested her chin on the palm of her hand, staring at nothing. Thinking. Lion could sense the wheels spinning behind that enigmatic face, forming conclusions and deciding his fate. "Such a good, political mind- yes, he'd know who's bed to crawl into. Helseth has no love of the Ark's heritage either. A united front against the Morag Tong would be the least of it."
The Morag Tong, the guild of assassins, the organization which provided balance in a world of corruption and power. No one stood beyond their reach, not even an emperor. Not even Helseth, although he clearly meant to try. And succeed? Trask's gloved fingertips soothed thoughtfully over the polished countertop.
And why should Helseth fight one of the greatest crime syndicates in Vvardenfell, when he could use it, instead? Not as it was now, perhaps, but between them, Ark and Helseth would corrupt the system, break it. Old names would die, new ones would step in. Grief, fallen from favor with the fall of slavery, had been a convenient loss to all sides. A favor to the Camonna Tong crime syndicate, not an injury. And why risk a better neck, with an Ark at hand?
-And the Ark, herself, already marked for death.
"He wouldn't have used me," she said. "He never told you to."
Her brother's sister knew her kin far better than Leon had hoped she would.
"No." Truth did not come readily to Lion, but he'd never, not once in his life, lied to an Ark. Trask's brother had shown him what happened to those who did."That- was my idea."
Trask nodded. "My brother wanted me dead. He and Helseth wanted favor with the Camonna Tong. The Camonna Tong, convienently, had a man who wanted killing." She tapped her fingers on the bar counter, a steady rhythm.
"And what luck- in looking for me, you found out about my grudge against Grief. I imagine it all became very simple after that. An credible excuse, a reward- your reward, I think. The one my brother paid you in advance to kill me."
"I would be glad to-"
"Your ring."
"What?" Lion blinked, looking completely lost.
Trask smiled patiently. "I'll have the ring, as payment for Grief's death." Lion's face must have betrayed him, because the assassin laughed.
"-Not very refined of me? But you learn to think differently here. Practically. You'll learn soon enough." Lion only nodded. He removed the ring, and handed it over without demur. Doubtless such a... 'practical' and well-adapted woman would know where to get its worth.
"Now." The ring vanished.
"Now what?" Lion had been doing well up till now, but his voice shook slightly. She'd said that word with such finality. Their conversation drew to an end. And his life...?
"Now, Leon- a drink to your health." His glass, now containing barely a sip of wine, nudged his numb fingers.
"M'sera." Leon met her gaze, so familiar, like her face. Ark stared at him. What did it matter, which face, brother, or sister? He closed his trembling hand around the glass, pulled it to his lips, and drank. A single drop ran down his quivering chin. Trask caught it, delicately. He watched her carry the drop to her lips, and taste...
His stomach burned. Poison, or self-suggestion?
The assassin stood.
"I am not angry." she lay a coin on the counter, paying for his the way which had had paid for hers, down in the filthy corner-club. A much smaller coin that time, for all she'd drunk nearly twice as much. "I'd always meant to kill him. I was biding my time. You were convenient for me, Leon. Besides..." She leaned her hip against the counter, "I found something interesting."
She leaned down, and spoke directly in his ear. Too close, too intimate. They received irritated stares from around the bar, and especially from the man closest to them.
"Tell my brother I'm dead," she murmured. "I shan't contradict you. As proof-" something rattled down beside the coin. "I look forward to future business, Lion."
And then, in ten short strides, Lion was left alone. Alone, and alive. Lion looked down at the counter, and recognized the ring she'd laid there The ruby was long gone, but he recognized the make. A family crest; a pretty trinket, the like of which every Ark carried. He picked it up, but didn't have time to examine it further before a sudden disturbance sprung up two chairs away. The disapproving patrician reared back, spasming horribly. His glass tumbled to the floor.
A stroke, the physicians would say, later. Unexpected, but not unheard of. An unpleasant experience, not good for an old man's health, but he'd live.
Natural causes. Just a stroke.
Zahn breathed the smoky subterranean air and let his fingers do whatever they wanted, chasing the sound up and down the sitar's strings and catching them again in bright chords and bird-song strokes. Certainly a fine instrument, much finer than the surroundings. He wondered how the proprietor , a man named Bacola Closcius, had come by something like this. Family heirloom, maybe?
"It's perfect," he told the Bacola, when the merchant stopped by to ask. "How much?"
The man smiled. "A discount if you play a while, Khajiit."
Truthfully, Zahn had already been playing for quite some time. Trask had left him alone, said she needed to settle some business in town. Said it might take an hour or so. But he obliged anyway.
Despite his resolution to grow talons like those of Senche-Raht, he'd filed his grown-out claws to bluntness in order to avoid scratching the sitar's body or damaging the strings.
Saxtus disregarded music. Said it was a luxury, a thing for women to play at when times were easy. But sometimes he still hummed the old legionary tunes under his breath, and not the imperious marches either, but the light-hearted ribaldry that passed for entertainment among fighting men.
And Zahn had also heard, once, from the servant who'd become his caretaker and maid during the times when Edeth couldn't be- heard it from her when she was very drunk- about a young murderess khajiit who faced the gallows with a lullaby on her lips. So maybe music wasn't just there when people had easy lives and nothing better to do. Maybe it meant something.
Zahn lost himself in the sound, and didn't even notice when Trask returned. The elf stood for a time leaned up against up the bar, cradling a full mug and just—watching. Cat had a way about him. It was a tolerant crowd here, Khajiits were regulars in this den, but he could have gotten by in any setting. A quiet type, a listener and not a talker, except with his ready smile and agile hands, which were quick and skillful across the instrument's strings.
The sitar was perfect; she'd finish what Zahn had started in bartering the price down to something fair. And she wouldn't ask where the proprietor had gotten it, either. A family heirloom? Well, yes, [i]somebody's[/i] family heirloom, definately.
Trask finally stepped forward, and waved a little to gain Zahn's attention. Zahn looked, blankly. Then he looked a little a harder. Trask reached up and swept a handful of cropped hair away from her face, behind an ear, and grinned in spite of herself. Her entire head felt too light. The cheap red tunic and guar-hide breaches would take some getting used to as well, after the worn familiarity of her old black coat.
She watched Zahn finally get it.
He'd have to change a bit as well, but not so much. After all, other races tended to have ridiculous amounts of difficulty simply telling one Khajiit from the next.
A fortnight later, a dunmer highwayman came back to his senses with a unmerciful headache and his nose filled with the stench of his own vomit.
It took his shattered recollections a moment to reform, and when they did his groaned out loud and looked down at his thoroughly ruined wardrobe.
The two had looked easy enough, just a khajiit brat and a short-haired woman, both dressed as commoners and carrying instrument cases. Good money in instruments, good easy money when they went around on the backs of simple-minded bards.
Or so he'd thought. And he'd thought; better him then some truly criminal type who'd kill them for the clothes on their backs, let alone such prizes as they carried in plain view. At least he'd ask politely, and give them the choice of just handing the things over without a blow being exchanged.
Looking out for them, he was- saving their lives.
Or so he'd thought.
Last time he'd ever target a minstrel.
The End
Endnote: A curious bit of trivia.
After the Tribunal fell, the religion was in ruins. But the priests weren't ready to give up quite yet. They turned to the different saints for their salvation, and added a few more to the pantheon to bolster their way of life. Amid the sudden additions is one "St. Arc," a possibly fictitious person who supposedly wanders the roads in the guise of a commoner, but is actually the patron saint of minstrels and musicians everywhere. St. Arc even has her own shrine, set up alongside a Grazeland road just east of Red Mountain.
P.S. Not really. Don't go looking for it.