25 First Seed, Fredas, 4E202
When he was a child, Uncle Alvor had told him that when a Nord got a name, it was as though the entire Mundus reacted, and everybody who knew him would know, just by instinct, what that name was. It seemed crazy to him as he'd grown up, just an old superstition that had been passed down for generations. As he'd learned a little more about magic and the power of names, a part of him wondered again if it could be true. Nobody he'd known had gotten a new name since he knew them, but even so, he figured he might not be able to tell, anyway.
When one of the men in camp got his attention by calling Hearthfire, well, Hadvar figured that those stories were as true as water being wet.
Fortunately, Rikke was kind enough to give them all leave until further notice, giving him time to figure out what to do with this new information away from the teasing of the rest of his team. They had all split up when they heard the news, leaving Hadvar and Peryn alone to travel back into Riften.
"I've spent too much time in this damn city," Peryn said when they passed through the gates. "What I wouldn't give for someplace that doesn't run on corruption."
They decided to drop into the Bee and Barb for a drink before moving to another place that Peryn owned that he hadn't heard about before. This place was called Honeyside, and it was apparently as typically Riften as Breezehome was typically Whiterun.
Peryn shrugged when Hadvar asked about it. "When you want to give somebody a Thaneship, but owning property is a requirement, you offer the property at a discounted rate," he said. "I'd rather not bother with any of it, honestly, but I suppose it comes with the territory. It's still more money than I can just spend without second thought."
They were leaving the Bee when somebody bumped into them, then glared back and moved toward the bar. Hadvar and Peryn shoot each other a look, immediately checking their pockets to make sure everything that should be there was. Nothing seemed to be missing, but Hadvar pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.
"Come on," Peryn said, eying it. "Let's get somewhere out of the way and read this."
They went to Honeyside, since it was near the tavern and as private a place as could be found in Riften. Hadvar thought it was a nice little house, with the small little porch over the river out back and the garden out front. It was a little smaller than Breezehome, and in a city that obviously wasn't nearly as nice as Whiterun, but he liked it either way.
"Iona," Peryn called out, as they walked in the door. "Come up and meet someone."
A woman's voice came from downstairs. "Give me a minute, by Talos!" followed by a loud bang and an impressive amount of swearing, before a surprising small Nord woman emerged from the ladder in the corner.
"What in Oblivion do you want?" she asked.
"Iona, this is Hadvar," Peryn said. "Hadvar, Iona, Housecarl in charge of Honeyside."
"And keeping your ass out of trouble," Iona added.
"You're one of many people with that job," Peryn said. "He's another one."
"Oh?" Iona cocked her head, looking surprisingly like a dog. "Well, then, we like him, don't we? Won't stop me from kicking his ass to Oblivion if he fucks up and gets you killed."
"I'm pretty sure that won't be necessary," Peryn said, unable to contain an eye roll. "He'd probably run himself through before you even got the chance."
Hadvar scowled. "I wouldn't need to run myself through, because you're not dying on my watch for the next sixty years," he said.
Iona laughed. "I do like this one!" she said, walking around to clap Hadvar on the back. "He's got the right idea!"
Hadvar glanced over at Peryn, who just shrugged. "I still haven't quite gotten used to her myself," he said.
28 First Seed, Morndas, 4E202
Lydia wasn't sure how she felt about living alone at Breezehome. Sure, it was better than just about anywhere she'd lived before, but she felt a little bit lonely, even with going over to Jorvaskrr to see the twins. She couldn't help but feel a little bit like she wasn't doing her job as a Housecarl with Peryn constantly being somewhere else with someone else. He might be a force of nature with the literal soul of a dragon, but he was still her responsibility.
Lydia sighed and grabbed a knife. The vegetables weren't going to chop themselves, and she still needed to eat. She'd only gotten through a few potatoes when there was a knock at the front door. Of course, just when she'd finally gotten something going, somebody needed her. She wondered briefly where they were last week, when she'd been so bored she nearly went to Dragonsreach to visit her brother. That, fortunately, was only temporary insanity.
She opened the door to find Vilkas standing awkwardly on the front step. "Good morning," he said.
"Good morning. What do you need?" Lydia asked. It was very strange for the twins to come down to Breezehome, especially since she was up at the mead hall nearly every other day. It was also strange for them not to be together, seeing as everybody thought of them as a unit.
"The old man was getting worried about you. It's been a few days since you've dropped by," he said. "We wanted to make sure that everything was alright."
"My life has been wonderfully boring for the last little bit," Lydia said. "I'm practically my own housewife, haven't you noticed?"
Vilkas raised an eyebrow. "The whole Hold knows how sarcastic you are, but that's strong, even for you," he said. "What's going on?"
Lydia sighed. "I don't know, I guess I'm feeling a little bit left behind here. I'm a Housecarl who plays at being a Companion because her Thane is out doing stuff far more impressive than she ever gets involved in. It's hard to feel like I'm doing my job if my biggest worries are about cleaning up my house."
"Do you want me to try to pretend to be my brother about this or do you want my actual thoughts?" Vilkas asked. Lydia snorted out a small laugh.
"I'll take you as yourself. I can always just talk to Farkas later," she said.
"Learn something new," he said. "Go bother Farengar up at Dragonsreach to teach you some magic, or get Avenicci to teach you some smithing."
Lydia gave him a look. "I don't think my brother wants me to bother him when he's doing his 'experiments'," she said. "And Avenicci has other things to deal with besides somebody who can't be an apprentice wanting lessons."
"Those are excuses," Vilkas said. "Look, if you feel like you haven't been able to be useful, which is what I'm hearing here, I say make yourself useful. You're a friend of the Dragonborn, who's probably going to get involved in some pretty impressive things, and he's going to need your help eventually, so you should be making sure that you're best able to help when that time comes. If you've been keeping up with your normal training, which you have, the next step is to get another skill."
Lydia leaned back against the doorframe. "I don't really know if it'll be any good," she said, "But gods know it'll be better than standing around here all day."
"Good," Vilkas said. "I think it'll be good for you. I do recommend your brother, though. You'll probably feel more useful if you're learning how to kill things in a different way than if you're learning how to tan a hide."
1 Rain's Hand, Middas, 4E202
Peryn dropped the journal on the bar with a sign and leaned over it. Wilhelm glanced over from where he was standing over a pot and brightened up.
"Back from the barrow? Hopefully, that means good news," he said.
"It means that bastard ghost won't be bothering you anymore," Peryn said. "He left this behind, though."
"Let me see that!" Wilhelm said, reaching for the journal. He flipped through a couple of the pages, muttering to himself, the groaned. "I can't believe this. It was all just a fabrication of this Wyndelius character?"
"He certainly didn't look especially ghost-like after he was dead," Peryn said. "And I found a couple of the potions that he was talking about."
"I can't believe we were so stupid," Wilhelm said. "Well, least I can do is give you something for taking care of him. Here," he reached behind the bar and pulled out a small leather pouch, "If you won't accept it as a payment, consider it a gift. I found it in the barrow a couple of years back."
Peryn reached into the pouch and pulled out a golden claw, tipped with sapphires. He recognized it immediately; it was just like the one in Korvanjund.
"Thank you," he said, replacing the claw. "This is actually very helpful."
"I'm glad," Wilhelm said. "It's just collecting dust back here. Better for it to be of some use to somebody than sit around waiting for the world to end."
Peryn thanked him again before making his way over to the table where Hadvar was waiting with two plates of food and two drinks. "My hero," he said, sitting down on the bench.
"Can't believe I'm doing anything nice for you after you dragged me into one of those old burial ruins," Hadvar said. "You know I hate those."
Peryn ducked his head. "I know," he said. "I got a little caught up in the idea of a ghost story."
"I know," Hadvar said. "And I could always have told you I wasn't going if it bothered me that much. I'm still not happy about it though."
"Does that mean you'll go back?" Peryn asked with a smirk, holding up the pouch with the Sapphire Claw. "I've got the key to the puzzle door right here."
Hadvar pulled a face. "Fine," he said. "But only because it's you. And you're making it up to me later."
Peryn grinned. "Whatever you say," he said.
3 Rain's Hand, Fredas, 4E202
"Did you finish the book?" Farengar asked, not looking up from the book on his desk that he was writing in.
"Yes," Lydia said. "Finished it last night. I didn't have time to try anything new though."
"Not a problem," Farengar said. "We'll take care of that this morning.
"Are you going to keep working the whole time?" Lydia asked, leaning on his desk. Farengar tensed up slightly, and she grinned. She knew he hated that.
"Of course not," he said, making another note and then finally looking up from his work. "Somebody has to keep an eye on you and make sure that you don't set this whole place on fire."
Lydia raised an eyebrow. "I thought my magic was supposed to be weak without practice?" she said. "That sounds like the opposite of burning down Dragonsreach to me."
"It should be," Farengar said. "That doesn't mean that things haven't gone wrong before. Come on," he said, standing. "We're not doing this here."
He herded her down into the basement of Dragonsreach, to a small alcove surrounded by shelves filled with bottles of wine.
"Some of these look pretty old," Lydia said. "I'm surprised we haven't drunken any of these."
Farengar shrugged. "You know the Jarl," he said. "Mead's tradition and all that. He probably drinks something from down here about once a month. Never at any kind of event either. Probably afraid that would ruin his reputation."
"Is that why you've set up a second office down here?" Lydia asked. "You wanted someplace where you'd be left alone most of the time?"
"Some things need their quiet," Farengar said mildly. "Like what we're going to do. The Elves have very elaborate rituals to introduce their children to their magic, and they start the same way we're going to." He gestured to two chairs in the corner. "Sit."
Lydia did as she was told, waiting a moment for her brother to adjust something on a small corner of the shelves he'd taken over for himself before he sat down as well.
"So, what are we going to do?" he asked, looking at Lydia expectantly.
"Aren't you supposed to be the teacher?" she asked.
Farengar gave her a look. "The idea behind loaning you that book was so you'd actually understand what we're doing and why we're doing it," he said. "I know for a fact that the answer was in there."
Lydia huffed. "We're going to, well, meditate is as good of a word as I know. Something about me connecting with the magicka."
Farengar nodded. "Right. Your pool of magicka hasn't been used before, so it will take some effort to call it to the surface. I don't have to anymore, since I use magic often enough, and your Thane probably hasn't had to do something like this in years."
"So, what exactly am I supposed to be doing?" Lydia asked. "The book was pretty vague on the process."
"Basically, you're trying to figure out how to talk to your magicka reserves," Farengar said. "Doesn't really matter how, as long as you find something that works for you. You'll know what's working when it does."
Lydia snorted and closed her eyes, feeling rather silly as she did so. She sat there for a moment, considering how she was going to approach talking to a reserve of pure magical energy that was apparently inside her. She wondered briefly if she could just ask nicely, but decided that everything she ever knew about magic was that it would never be so nice as to just show up and make the process—oh. Hello. Of course her luck would be to have magic that was just as much of a sarcastic asshole as she could be sometimes.
"It feels weird," she said, almost feeling the magic hum in agreement.
Farengar raised an eyebrow. "That was very fast," he said.
Lydia shrugged. "What can I say?" she said "I never can turn down a chance to be a jerk either."
8 Rain's Hand, Middas, 4E202
Peryn had not been moping around Riften since Hadvar left, thank you very much. He had merely been taking the time to give himself a proper vacation and work on improving his magic. The fact that this required being cooped up in the basement of Honeyside for hours at a time had absolutely nothing to do with it.
He'd finally gotten to the point where he could summon a Frost Atronach with little problems, though he was disappointed to learn that he couldn't have both it and the Flame Atronach handy at the same time. Peryn supposed that this was the kind of thing he would have learned had he stayed in High Rock, but those were the downsides of being a self-trained magic user.
Still, Peryn wasn't expecting to be bothered for a little while until he saw a piece of paper that he didn't recognize sicking out from underneath a wardrobe just inside the door. He was a little surprised that he'd noticed it because of how little wasn't hidden beneath the wood. He idly turned it over in his hand, looking for any kind of identifying mark. There was none, of course, it was just ordinary paper, but there was something about it that set Peryn's teeth on edge.
Peryn sighed and moved over to the table. If he was going to have to deal with this nonsense, he was at the very least going to do it sitting down, by the Nine. When he sat, he opened the letter, as that's what it turned out to be. Hardly a letter, really, a note saying "come back to the Bee and Barb later tonight."
That didn't make a lick of sense to him. It wasn't that he didn't know where the Bee and Barb was; it was rather hard to miss, being right there by the city gate and all. The thing that didn't make sense was that he hadn't been there in a decent while. Peryn thought for a moment. The last time he'd been by was with Hadvar, probably the day before they left for Ivarsted. But maybe it wasn't his.
On that thought, he turned so that he was facing toward the stairs. "Hey, Iona!" he shouted. "Get up here!"
"What if I'm busy?" she called back, but Peryn could tell that the voice was getting closer as she spoke, so she was at least coming to see what he wanted.
"There's no such thing as too busy for me," he said sweetly. "Everyone loves me, remember?"
"Asshole," Iona said, making her way to the top of the stairs. "You see how well that attitude works when you've got a blade against your throat."
"If that ever happens," Peryn said, suddenly serious, "then several people have royally screwed up. Including myself."
"And me," Iona said, shrugging as she made her way to the table. "I wouldn't worry too much, Dragon Boy. I'm pretty sure there's a good number of people who realize that your death would put a damper on things for a while."
"I'd rather not just be alive because I can kill dragons," Peryn said, glaring down at the space between them. "If that's all I'm good for, then I should have died a long time ago."
"Good thing there's a bunch of us who like you for other reasons, too, then," Iona said. "And don't you let Hadvar hear you talking like that, neither. He'll kick both of our asses if he hears I got you thinking that way."
There was silence for a moment. "So, what was so important?" Iona asked.
Peryn nodded toward the paper on the table. "Found this a couple minutes ago. Do you recognize it?"
Iona leaned over the paper and shook her head. "Nope," she said. "Never seen this before in my life. Are we going?"
"What do you mean 'are we going?" Peryn asked.
"They want a meeting," Iona said. "And clearly it has something to do with you. So, are we going to meet them, or aren't we?"
The Bee and Barb was always busy at night because of all the dockworkers coming up for a drink after a hard day unloading cargo and working on the ships. Peryn never liked being around at those times, since the bar became so crowded that it was impossible to hold a conversation without yelling. He always left busy places like that with a pounding headache that had nothing at all to do with alcohol, which struck him as a terrible irony.
Still, Iona had been right when she said that there was no better time to see if whoever it was who'd written that note was still around to meet them. It didn't help that they didn't know when it was written. It was hidden almost too well and could have been there for days, for all Peryn knew.
He didn't recognize any of the people who were moving around the floor. Even Mjoll and Aerin, who usually came by at night, were nowhere to be seen. It struck Peryn again just how different his life was from what felt like everybody else in Skyrim. They had jobs, routines, people they saw every day, and he had...a couple of people whose entire purpose in life was to stop him from dying, which was very useful because his hobbies including fighting previously immortal flying lizards.
"You should go buy me mead," Iona said. Peryn raised an eyebrow. "You know," she said, shrugging, "Make it seem like we're here doing normal people things instead of waiting for the person who decided that cryptic notes hidden under our furniture was the best way to get in contact with us."
"You just want a free drink," Peryn grumbled as he stood up from the table. She was right, in any case, so he went and bought a couple of bottles of Black-Briar despite feeling dirty about giving those sleazebags money, even if it was indirectly.
"Here," he said, thrusting one toward Iona. "Do your part to help the good upstanding crime syndicates run the city."
"Thanks," she said brightly, taking the bottle. Peryn rolled his eyes.
"Always here to help," he said.
"As you should be," Iona said. "Now, do you have any idea who we might be looking for?"
"If I knew that," Peryn said, "We wouldn't need to be doing this. And they probably would have just come to the door if they didn't mind us knowing who they were beforehand."
"So we wait," Iona said. "Well, I guess there's nothing too bad about sitting around drinking while we wait for whoever needs to see us that badly."
"Really, Delphine, I'm almost certain that nobody will see your face and know immediately that you're the last Blade in existence," Peryn said, slumping down into a chair back in Honeyside.
"I didn't survive this long by not being careful," she said, giving Peryn a glare. It wasn't as intimidating as she probably thought it was. He'd gotten worse travelling with the Khajit caravans.
"No, you survived this long by hiding out in a small town in the middle of nowhere and not being worth the trouble to find and kill," he said. "You're in a bigger city now but I really don't think that you've suddenly shot up the Thalmor's kill list."
Delphine grimaced. "I didn't need to go up. I always was near the top," she said. "If you don't believe me, you should take a look at this."
She tossed a small leather book onto the table. Peryn picked it up and examined it. In all honesty, there was no reason to do so. It was a completely ordinary notebook, though that probably made sense if there was something important inside. He flipped it open and glanced down at the first page.
"Thalmor Dossier: Esbern," he read. "How in Oblivion did you get your hands on this?"
"Nobody outside the Thalmor likes the Thalmor," Delphine said. "There are many servants who work at that embassy who were victims of Thalmor crimes at one point or another. And I always was good at running spy rings."
Peryn glanced back down at the book. Esbern, once a loremaster of the Blades, was now considered the biggest and most important fugitive whom the Thalmor wanted to capture. According to their information, he was now hiding somewhere in Riften.
"You don't need to read the rest," Delphine said, noticing Peryn about to turn the page. "It's all about the information they have that led them to the conclusions on the first page. Suffice to say that I think they're right about Esbern being in the city, and it's important that we get to him first."
Peryn glanced up at her. "You've been here for how long, exactly?" he asked.
"A little under three weeks," she answered. "And I've been stonewalled basically anywhere I go. If he's here, and I think he is, then he's done a damned good job of making sure that nobody knows about it."
"That's not what I'm getting at," Peryn said. "If this is so important, why the subtlety? I may not be the best at picking up on these kinds of things, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be shouting your name if you come up to me and say we need to talk later."
"Because I'm in danger just being here," she said. "And your help isn't necessary, even if it will be useful. It was riskier to make sure I got your attention than to make sure that I was able to stay here unnoticed. I've seen Justicars hanging around, as close as they'll let themselves get to a dirty Nord city."
"I still don't get it," Peryn said. "But that's not the important thing now. Where have you been asking around?"
"Anywhere I can without being too obvious," she said. "The market, mostly, as well as the Bee and Barb. Nobody has seen anybody matching his description. Nobody's even tried to get me to bribe them for information. It's as though he's vanished into thin air."
"There's only one place where that could happen," Iona said. "If you know he's here, but nobody's seen him, then he's down in the Ratway. Thieves' Guild runs the show down there, probably been paid good coin to make sure that nothing gets near him." She shook her head. "Your man's pretty paranoid if he's down there."
"As it seems he should be," Peryn said. "But that means we have to figure out how to get down there. I doubt the Thieves' Guild is going to appreciate us bringing the Thalmor to their doorstep."
"Enough of them still remember the Great War," Iona said. "I know a couple of people, everybody here does, even if they don't have anything to do with the Guild themselves. I'll see if one of them can be persuaded to help me get one over on the damn elves."
Peryn smiled up at Delphine. "See?" he said. "This is why you come to me right away. I know people."