A/N: Please note this chapter contains themes and references to rape and self-harm.
Thanks to Tafferling for betaing. As always, all comments are appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Part Three
Of Foxes and Moths
"All the comrades that e'er I had,
They're sorry for my going away,
All the sweethearts e'er I had,
They'd wish me one day more to stay,
But since it came unto my lot,
That I should rise and you should not,
I gently rise and with a smile,
Good night and joy be with you all."
The Parting Glass
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"I am the Stranger. That is all you need to know. That, and I am no one to be trifled with."
– The Stranger
Take a man and hold him in the palm of your hand. Fold him in half. Lengthwise, widthwise, lengthwise again. Snap his spine in two, crush his bones if you have to to. His spirit goes without saying. Ignore how he screams and howls and begs for mercy. And don't worry: you won't kill him. He's very hard to kill.
Keep folding. Lengthwise. Widthwise. Lengthwise again. With each fold you strip away a little more of his life. Another memory gone, snatched from the minds and the hearts of his friends, his lovers, his enemies. With each fold he becomes a little less real, a little less tethered to the world.
Keep folding. Lengthwise. Widthwise. Lengthwise again. Until the scrap you hold cupped in your hand can hardly be called a man.
His bones will knit back together, his wounds will heal. He never will be quite the same again, this man who screams and howls and begs for mercy, but he'll mend. More or less.
He'll live, although he might wish otherwise. He's the sort who'll cling on to life with his teeth and fingernails. Who'll bite and kick and claw out of instinct to survive, even when he's not altogether sure he wants to. He's too much of a coward to take his own life.
And in the unlikely event that he grows some balls and decides otherwise, Nocturnal won't let him. He's not the type who can go up against a Daedric Lord. She'll keep him going. She'll heal his wounds with her not-so-tender mercies. Stitch back the gashes in his wrists. Force her long slender fingers down his throat and claw out the poison in his stomach. Pinch his stopped heart back to beating, and watch from the shadows while he rouses his broken body, reaches for the bottle of brandy and weeps.
At least until the moment she decides that she's done with him. That it's time for a new champion.
Keep folding.
He is Nocturnal's chosen one. For now at least.
He'll do.
~o~O~o~
I spent the whole of 3E 423 and much of 424 drunk out of my skull and wallowing in misery and despair.
I wish to all the gods I was exaggerating, but I'm afraid I'm not. That year was a deep well of bitterness and shame, spent raiding the castle's cellar, baffling the steward who could not determine the source of the pilfering, and watching my wife from a distance. I wandered the halls of the castle like a ghost, unseen and unchallenged. It seemed a strange echo of my time in Bravil.
The time I didn't spend in the castle, I spent in an abandoned house in Anvil that belonged to the guild. There were many such houses dotted throughout Cyrodiil, safe houses in which a guilded thief could seek haven or shelter or simply a place to lay his head. This one I claimed for myself. It wasn't much, sparsely furnished with only a straw-stuffed bed and no company except for the loneliness that seemed almost a living thing.
So much time I wasted.
I trudged from day to day with my head down, half-blind with drink and misery, and each night I'd swear that the next day I would try harder to find a way out of the trap I had found myself snared in. Tomorrow I'd rescue myself.
Except I never did.
The days merged into one, until a month had passed and I had done nothing but drink and weep, and shamble after my wife, begging her to see me. To recognise me. Even just to look at me, because how could she see my face, and not remember me a little, if I was the man she claimed to love, the man she had chosen when she could have had her pick of all the eligible noblemen in Cyrodiil?
Unless perhaps she didn't love me quite so much as she had claimed.
The hours became days and the days became weeks and the weeks became months, and before I knew it, a year had passed and I had achieved nothing. Nothing except for how I'd drunk myself fat and idle, my body bloating and the ache in my fingers worsening every day. And every time I laid my head upon the pillow each night, I felt the last Fox's hand clamping around my wrist, heard his voice choked with fear and desperation as he begged me not to do it. Only now could I recognise how it had been more warning than plea.
Should I have listened?
But if I had listened I would be dead.
And still, still...
Sleep refused to come and I stirred, rising from the cold empty bed. Paced the confines of my prison like a sabre cat in a menagerie. Down the staircase to the door and back to the first floor again, until I finally conceded defeat and reached for the wine.
I should have listened. Because surely death would have been better than this half-life. I was neither one thing nor the other, a ghost caught between worlds.
There were days when the mist cleared and the despair lifted. There were brief moments where Millona seemed to notice me, where she might say a word or two to me. A greeting or a question or a request for the salt cellar. Or else a stranger might stop to ask me a question or two about my life. They never remembered anything I said, but it was something at least, a momentary connection with another soul in a world where I was otherwise shrouded from view. Those moments gave me something to cling onto in the midst of my despair.
I was a man stumbling through a labyrinth shrouded in darkness, and somewhere, if I could only find it, a fine silvery thread was waiting to guide me home.
I dreamed of it sometimes, that labyrinth. There were figures waiting in the darkness, so motionless that at first I thought them statues, until I saw the blink of eyes as desperate as my own. If I got too close they dissolved, lost to the shadows. My predecessors. They watched me with something very like hope in their eyes as if I could do a damn thing to save them. There were so many of them, the ones who'd worn the cowl before me,
The cowl. How I came to loathe that fucking thing.
I'd caught a glimpse of all the power it had to offer, the enchantments woven into every stitch and fibre – tailor-made for a thief, for one who had need of the shadows. And indeed there were times when I would sit on the floor with the cowl cradled in my lap, fighting the urge to put it on. It fascinated me and it terrified me both, and the clumsy childish stitching made it that much more frightening. When I held it, I could feel the words carved upon my heart: Shadow hide you. Could sense the faceless bastard I dreamed about watching me, waiting to claim me.
And thank the gods that I was a coward, because had I been a braver man I might have sought to destroy it.
I only ever tried once. In a fit of drunken fury I threw it into the fire. I stirred the coals and sat back to drink my wine and watch it burn, until a sudden, sickening terror struck me. As if a man like me could destroy a daedric artifact. It might be lost to me, but that didn't mean the curse would be broken, only that the cowl had been snatched from my grasp and I would never be free.
The dread that flooded me at that thought was almost enough to sober me up.
I snatched for the poker and dragged the cowl from the flames, babbling, "Oh thank the gods, thank the gods," with tears wet on my cheeks when I pulled it free. It was undamaged, without even the slightest scorch mark, and I held it close, sinking back on my haunches. The wool was warm to the touch, but the edge of my thumb brushed the lettering and found it cold as a sliver of ice.
I felt the sense of something watching me.
"I'm still not putting it on," I said aloud, and the world seemed to shiver around me. It felt like laughter.
I would die before I gave Nocturnal the satisfaction of my donning the cowl. Whatever gifts it bestowed weren't worth the price of everything that bitch had stolen from me. I had sworn a vow to Millona that I would never again be a thief. I was not that man anymore.
I would not be a thief.
So instead I became a different man, one I liked even less. One who drank the days away, and haunted his own lost life like a spirit, who stalked his wife like a shadow. And at night I'd retreat to my crumbling house to wank myself to joyless orgasms that brought more pain than pleasure, before finally tumbling into drunken fitful sleep.
I became a spectator in my own life. I should have stayed away. It hurt too much to see the trail of pain I'd left in my wake, or perhaps more accurately the lack of it. Millona barely seemed to notice I was gone. She went about her business, took over what few responsibilities I'd had without so much as breaking her stride. If she mourned my loss at all she kept it hidden where none could see it.
It was hard to know how much was stoicism and how much was genuine indifference. And when I was drunk enough and bitter enough that needling inner voice would whisper that perhaps she was simply glad to be rid of me, and who could blame her?
She was the other half of my heart, and I had been fool enough to think myself hers. You would have thought perhaps, that someone so cynical should have known better. I'd spent half my life watching her, after all.
It was Anvil that was the centre of Millona's world: then and now.
It wasn't until I was cursed that I realised it was possible to be jealous of an entire city's place in my wife's affections. I sound bitter, but I was glad at the time. It made it easier in a way, I think, that she didn't seem to be mourning my absence.
But then again I have been known to lie.
~o~O~o~
The babe was newly born, so fresh to the world it was still crimped from the womb. A spindly little thing, with dark fluff for hair and bleary unfocused eyes. It nestled in the maid servant's arms, its face creased and wrinkled like an old man's, as heedless of the women of the castle flocking around it as a lantern is of moths.
None of the women saw the watching shadow. I was a common sight in the castle in those days, as much a part of the court as a piece of furniture and spoken to about as often. I leaned on the edge of the balcony, restless and drunk, but not nearly as drunk as I wanted to be, watching my wife smile graciously as she cradled another woman's baby.
That smile stiffened when the baby turned his head inwards, rooting against the silk of her dress for a nipple. None of them saw the flash of an emotion too raw to be named in Millona's eyes. And still she laughed softly, and brushed the tips of her fingers across the baby's head.
"I think he may be hungry."
"He's always hungry," the maid said. "May I, milady?" She was already loosening her clothing, ready to take him back, and Millona handed him over. The baby nestled into his mother's arms, his dark toothless beak of a mouth craning wide like a baby bird. The nipple and a good portion of aureole vanished into his ravening maw.
"Don't it hurt?" one of the younger maids asked, with disgusted fascination on her face. She looked like she was watching someone squeezing their spots.
"It did a bit at first. Felt like he was gnawing on them. But it got better." The mother's hand brushed back the baby's hair. His hand curled around her outstretched finger.
"With my fourth little one it was agony." This came from the cook, who'd given birth to almost half a legion of children already, so many she'd lost count. "I swear she must've been half vampire by the amount of blood in my milk. I had to wean her early or I think she might actually have bitten my teats right off, beg pardon milady. Worse than childbirth."
"No one could persuade me owt's worse than childbirth," the mother said. "Even this little one, tiny as he is, split me near from stem to stern, and that healer the midwife sent for was about as much use as a colander in a thunderstorm. Worth it, mind, but..." She wriggled on her chair. "My bits are like a patchwork quilt."
The expressions of half the company – the ones that hadn't gone through labour – glazed over. The others nodded knowingly.
"He's a beautiful boy," Millona told the mother. "He looks just like you."
"Thank you, milady."
Millona rose and bid them good day. Only the cook who'd lost her share of babies herself watched her mistress leave with a look of pity before she turned back to coo over the suckling baby. I waited until Millona passed me without even a glance – not that I'd expected one, but even after a year I couldn't prevent my heart leaping in hope – and slunk after her. She moved with certainty down the staircase as if she knew exactly where she was going, and to what purpose, but when she reached the dining hall she came to a halt, as if she'd forgotten what it was she wanted.
As I came through the door behind her, she turned and looked at me. I wasn't fool enough to think she saw me, but still I murmured her name and watched her face for any sign of recognition. There was none, and still she followed me with her gaze as I moved to the fireplace where our wedding portrait had hung. After a moment she looked down, noticed the wet patch at her breast where the baby had gone questing for a nipple. She reached up to dab it with her fingers, and froze, her hand trembling. For a moment, her eyes slid closed.
What had I ever given her except heartache and pain? I may have done my best as a count, although there are many who would disagree, but the one thing she wanted, something that should have been well within my power to grant, had been denied her. Nothing but a silent nursery, an empty cradle. A cradle that would never now be filled, not unless she came to her senses and gave up on me. Enough time had passed by now that nary an eye in Cyrodiil would blink if she took a consort, and still she waited.
How long would she wait, I wondered. Until she decided I was never coming back? Or until she decided I wasn't worth waiting for? And which would come first?
She lifted her head and stared at our wedding portrait. The painter, another fine liar, had captured my likeness with rare skill: he hadn't attempted to make me look noble, but had given me a handsome rakish air, which was probably far more accurate. In the painting, my gaze rested on my wife, and hers was turned away from me, out towards Anvil's bay, the message clear. The pose had been on Lucar Umbranox's instructions, and at the time I'd laughed about it.
It didn't seem quite so funny now.
I couldn't look any more. I retreated, made my winding unsteady way to the wine cellar to steal away what was rightfully mine.
~o~O~o~
You're drunk. Go home.
I thought of the shack that was waiting for me. The fire that barely warmed me, the tumbledown walls and looming shadows, the cold uncomfortable bed. Nothing to do there but drink and masturbate and pick over the bones of my lonely day.
Go home. As if I ever could. And in any case, if I stayed at home every time I was drunk, I'd never leave the shack.
As I wandered the private corridors, I passed a guard who barely registered me, and felt a twist of anger in my chest at his incompetence. It wasn't the guard's fault really, but still... I could be anyone. Assassin. Rapist.
Thief.
I could be anyone and still he let me wander the private quarters of the castle, the damned bloody fool. Let me wander until I wound up at the door to the one place I hadn't wanted to come. It was the centre of the labyrinth in which I was ensnared, and no matter what turns I took, it seemed inevitable that I would end up here, with one hand resting on the door to Millona's private chamber and the other wrapped around the neck of a bottle of wine.
I beg you, dear reader, to understand how much it sickened me to spy on her. I longed to stop; each day I promised myself would be the last, but always, always, I was drawn back with excuses, justifications. It hurt, how much I missed her. It ached.
While she worked on correspondence in the parlour, I might sit in the window seat and read. For a few scant hours I could lie to myself, pretend that nothing had changed, that we were still man and wife, reading together in a loving, companionable silence.
The library. The parlour. The dining room.
But never her chamber. Never.
I drew a breath. Exhaled. Drew another. And then I opened the door, and went in.
I've always moved quietly. I cannot help it. It seems to be part of my nature, some instinctive terror of drawing attention to myself that I cannot shake, even when I want to be seen. The 'don't see me' plea of a frightened boy, clashing with the heartache of never being noticed. It was all I ever wanted: to be noticed and loved and cherished. To matter.
Had Nocturnal settled down to devise a crueller punishment specifically for me, she couldn't have done better than this. She'd given me the skills to become the finest thief imaginable (even if my fingers didn't work quite as well as they had used to and these days I wasn't exactly built for gambolling around on rooftops like a sure-footed mountain goat), but in doing so she'd stolen away the only life I'd ever truly wanted. Good friends and a place where I belonged, a woman that I loved and who loved me back.
And again came that lingering doubt, as I shut the door carefully, quietly, behind me, closing myself off from the warm torchlight that flooded the corridors. I lifted the bottle of wine to my lips, and took a swallow. It tasted sour now, not nearly so sweet as before. The bedroom had the still, stifled air of a room where someone slept, and the shadows were watchful and waiting.
Millona slumbered, the bedclothes mounded over her body. She wasn't naked, a relief that barely scratched the surface of my shame. Her nightdress was one of dove-grey silk. It might even had been the one she was wearing on our wedding night when I came to her and which I barely saw again, since even on the coldest nights when we'd shared a bed (which was almost always) she slept naked. We both had.
I took another gulp of wine, wondering why this should feel so much like a betrayal, when all it was was a man watching his wife sleep?
Another swallow of wine, this one so hurried the wine spilled over my lips and down my neck. It made me think of the shrine of Sanguine. Of a woman who wasn't a woman at all. Of a life I could have led where I took what I wanted and damned the consequences. And maybe it wasn't too late to take that path.
A sick feeling, a twist of rot at the heart of me.
I was her husband, after all. She wouldn't begrudge me this. It's what she would want.
Was I lying to myself? I couldn't tell any more. The lines I'd drawn in those first early days when I'd still been stupid enough to hope that this exile couldn't last grew more and more blurred every day. There were nights when I dreamed of coming here. Nights when the orgasm was just that little bit more painful, that little bit more bitter. When I gripped my cock so tightly it hurt, and dreamed of going to her room, of crawling into her bed.
I wouldn't have–
It's not that I–
Gods, I can't write the words. But whatever had happened, whatever trap I had been ensnared in, I was still her husband, and she was still my wife.
I would never have hurt her.
But perhaps if I went to her in the shrouding mantle of darkness, if I kissed her, touched and caressed her as I had so many times before, then such a thing might wake her memory in a way that mere words could not. I'd imagined it, the fantasy so vivid I could feel her body against mine, and hear the sounds she'd make, at first startled ('startled'! Gods, the lie of it sickens me), and then filled with desire, because she remembers this man in her bed, this man who kisses her lips, her neck, her breasts. Who whispers his name in her ear, over and over again until it catches. Who tells her that he's not going to hurt her even as he holds her down. Whose arousal she can feel against her leg, and she isn't afraid as she should be had he been a stranger, but instead she wants it, wants him.
Or so he tells himself, anyway, as he claims what's his by right of marriage.
Even a lie might have been enough. I knew it was madness, but still... it seemed true somehow, like the echo of a fairy tale. Perhaps something so innate to human nature – the desire of a man for a woman, a woman for a man – could be powerful enough to break a daedric curse.
After all, was there any way more guaranteed to make her notice me?
Gods, it terrifies me. I am not a man given to praying or to thanking the Divines for anything, but this one thing I thank them for: that never happened.
It was never anything more than a sickening, arousing dream I conjured in my squalid cottage, and even then, even in the midst of that dream, I saw it for the lie it was.
So I tell myself anyway.
"Godsdamn." I sank down on the bed, and buried my head in my hands. Fourteen months I'd been the Gray Fox, and a fucking useless one I'd been so far. I knew myself for a drunken fool, and I was tired, the exhaustion bone-deep. "Godsdamn, Millona, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
I wept at the side of her bed, lost for a long while in wrenching sobs, until Millona stirred, murmuring something in her sleep. I composed myself, swiping my hands across my cheeks.
There were no such things as fairy tales. I couldn't make myself invisible or turn myself into mist; I was just a thief who could use the shadows a little better than average. Creeping into my wife's bed – forcing her to acknowledge me – wouldn't break the spell either. It would only make me a monster.
It wasn't much of a vow, the one I made, sitting by her bedside, drunk out of my skull and with my cheeks stiff with drying tears. But still I made it.
I wouldn't come back here, not to her chamber. Not until she brought me herself. This was where I would draw my line.
It wasn't much. I know it wasn't much.
You need to understand this, dear reader: I do not claim to be a good man. If I have allowed you to think that, even for a moment, then I beg you to disabuse yourself of that notion. I am not a good man.
I'd spy on her. Willingly. Hungrily. I'd swallow down every moment as if I could ever quench my thirst. I couldn't deny myself that. I craved her, the sight of her, the smell of her. Those moments where all was quiet and peaceful and I could pretend just for a little while that nothing had changed, that I was still her husband and she was still my wife.
There were days when that was all that kept me going.
But not here. I would not come to her chamber again. Not unless I had a damn good reason.
"Millona..." My voice was low and grating. I had to force the words out. "I'm so sorry." The neck of the wine bottle seemed a dark eye fixed upon me, bitter and mocking. I drew a breath. "I release you from our wedding vows. It's not because I don't love you... I do. It's all I ever wanted, to be your husband, and I know how badly I've fucked things up, but–" Her hand splayed across the baby's fluff of hair. The laughing smile that didn't touch her eyes. Her fingers stained black with blood. "If you want to marry again, try for children... Well, I know Marus has a couple of bastards already. Who knows, maybe you'll have better luck with him then you ever did with me."
She'd left a book face-down on the nightstand, the pages splayed. I picked it up, closed it with quiet reverence and set it down again. In the bed Millona moved, a catch in her breathing that told me she wasn't quite asleep. I went still, and glanced at her, mouth dry.
"Damn you," she whispered.
~o~O~o~
There were good days and bad days. Days when I was so drunk I could barely see straight. And still I held true to the vow, even when I roamed the private quarters of the castle, even on the nights when I found myself outside her door again, heart pounding behind my ribs.
It wasn't much. I have broken enough vows in my life to know how easily broken they are. One day I might be weary enough, angry enough, drunk enough, and the line I'd drawn in the doorway to her room would mean as much as a line drawn in the sand waiting for the waves to wash it away. Another year or two, perhaps, and the promise of that fairytale ending could be enough to tempt me across.
More months passed and our wedding portrait was removed from the wall of the dining room, consigned to a storeroom along with the other throne, the companion to her own. It was to be replaced with a painting of Anvil Bay, of the lighthouse standing stalwart over the harbour. I watched them take it down, with my boots resting atop the edge of the table, and the brandy swirling in my glass.
"He must have been a very wicked man indeed, the count," I said as Qileel passed by me. The words had barbs; they stung. "To have deserted his wife so cruelly."
Qileel stopped. Her shoulders hunched and for a moment I thought she would ignore me as she had so many times before. Except this time she didn't. This time she turned towards me, her movements slow and deliberate, her spines flaring with anger. "If you think the count deserted his wife, sir, then you are a fool."
I blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Do not presume," she hissed, "to repeat such a slander in this castle again or I'll have you ejected."
A numbed sensation settled upon me. All my self-hating cynicism frozen as solid as the ice that marched the Sea of Ghosts to the far north. I gawped at her.
Still furious, she lowered her voice, glancing towards the door, making sure that Millona wasn't nearby. "There isn't a man alive who could persuade me he left her on purpose. I have never met anyone so utterly devoted to his wife, so don't you dare suggest otherwise."
"I won't, madam. You have my word, and I sincerely beg your pardon. Since you're so convinced, perhaps I was mistaken about the count..." I closed my eyes, my voice catching in my throat. When I spoke again, I sounded strained. "Is it your belief something happened to him?"
She hesitated, but my sincere apology had mollified her. "I fear it must have," she said, her voice low. "He was always wild, that's no secret, and my lady never quite tamed him as well as she believed. But he must be dead, or else why would he not return?"
"Perhaps he is cursed," I said. "And it may be that he has returned, yet no one recognises him." Perhaps the stupid fucker is standing right in front of you. This last I did not say, although I was sorely tempted. I knew if I said it her eyes would glaze over and this conversation would be over.
She nodded, thinking this through. "Perhaps. I pray that's true."
"You hope he's cursed?"
"Better to be cursed than to be dead," she said, "and curses can be broken. One thing I know, sir, and you would know this too if you were acquainted with the count, if he is still alive, if he is cursed, he will never stop fighting to return to his wife's side."
"Perhaps..." My voice broke in my throat. "Perhaps he's too weak."
And in a flash her anger was back. She leaned close to me, smelling of salt and the breeze that whipped in off the sea. "And if you believe that then you don't know the count at all. That man would never stop fighting. Not until he breathed his last breath and even then I'm unconvinced."
You weakling, her eyes said. You pathetic gutless worm. Lounging around, mourning your lost life and drinking your spirit away while your wife suffers. You bastard. You bastard.
Her eyes were a mirror held up to my own. The man she believed in didn't exist. The Count Corvus Umbranox she knew was only the truth framed in a particular way. Of everyone I know, only a handful had ever glimpsed the truth of what I truly was.
Weakling. Drunkard. Coward. But fuck it, I did love my wife. And since when had I ever stopped fighting?
I rose suddenly, reaching out to grip her sleeve, "You say curses can be broken."
Her nictating membranes flickered across her eyes in surprise. "I beg your pardon?"
"Curses. Can they really always be broken? Even when they come courtesy of the gods." I licked my lips. "Or the daedra?"
"I'm hardly an expert in such matters, sir." She regarded me with disgust, nostrils tightening in disgust. Perhaps the mists that shrouded me from view had cleared for a moment and she saw me for what I truly was: a drunkard with the stink of stale alcohol seeping through his pores, unshaven and bloated, and dressed in grimy clothes.
I released her, stepping away. "Forgive me, madam."
She adjusted her clothing, glancing at me uncertainly. The flash of clarity was already growing fuzzy. She'd been thinking about calling for the guards, and now I suspected she was starting to wonder why she had thought it might be necessary, only that there was something about me, something odd...
Too much to hope she might have seen something familiar.
But drunk as I was, her words stuck with me. There's always a way.
~o~O~o~
I went to Skingrad, and to one of the few people I trusted without question.
Too long had passed since I had last seen Calvus, and I was struck by how old he looked, how weary. I approached him, not as the Fox, but as a stranger, letting myself into the book shop, and closing the door carefully behind me. He looked up, and although his gaze shifted over my face with no recognition, he was too canny not to realise that my business there might not be entirely on the level.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"I hope so." I came deeper into the shop, willing him to look a little closer at my face, willing him to remember me. He didn't. "I need a little advice."
"Of course." His jaw tightened and he cast a glance over my shoulder at the closed door. "Are you looking for a particular book? Something rare perhaps, not in the usual line?"
"Not exactly. I need to know how to go about breaking a daedric curse."
"Oh." His eyes widened. "Oh. I... I see."
"Not what you were expecting?" I grinned, and something flickered in his eyes. Now he darted a sharp-eyed glance that made my heart skip. "What were you expecting, I wonder? Whether I would ask if you could obtain an uncensored copy of The Real Barenziah?"
"Something along those lines." He gave me a sharp smile. "I could, by the by."
"Oh, I'm certain, but that's not what I'm in the market for." I gestured at the chair. "May I?" He nodded, indicating I was very welcome to sit and I sank down. "As it happens, I already own a copy, and I'm in no need of another. It's the illustrated edition. And speaking of priceless volumes..." I had a bag of coin for him, which contained a not inconsiderable number of Septims, but I knew Calvus's attention and imagination would not be captured by mere coin, but by ink on paper. I laid the parcel on the table, and he raised a cautious gaze to mine.
"What's this?"
"Open it. "
He unwrapped the parcel with reverent care, his fingers no longer quite so quick, the joints stiff and swollen as he peeled back the wrappings with all the reverence of a husband undressing his wife on their wedding night. The book was an early and pristine copy of Before the Ages of Man, and he drew in a sharp breath as he read the embossed title.
"Gods. This is..." He pressed his hand over his mouth. "This is priceless, sir. Do you seek to trade?"
I shook my head. "It's yours."
"But–"
"Consider it a retainer. There's some coin as well, quite a bit of it, in fact, but I thought you'd appreciate this more." I'm not sure he even heard me. He was already captivated by the book, leafing through it with trembling fingers. I had to say his name twice before he lifted his gaze to mine.
"I beg your pardon, sir. Your business... Um... A... a daedric curse, was it?" His hand lingered on the book as if he couldn't bear to stop touching it. "May I ask the nature of this curse?"
"I'm still trying to figure that out myself. As far as I can tell, it erases whomever it affects from history. He becomes a walking shadow, a stranger even to the ones who loved him best. His very name is forgotten, stripped from the records and from memory." And as I spoke, I drew out the cowl and threw it onto the table. He jerked back, eyes widening.
"That's–"
I nodded. "The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal. Fashioned, if the rumours are true, from the cloak of that daedric bitch herself." I paused, studying the ugly thing, crumpled on the table. "Judging by the quality of the stitching it was by someone who was fuck-useless at sewing."
"I've heard the stories. I have a book–"
"Purloined Shadows?"
"That's right."
I nodded grimly. "I've read it. And any other number of books that have all been terribly fascinating, but which offer nothing of any use when it comes to breaking the curse." His fearful gaze was still fixed on the cowl. I slipped it back into my pocket. "You shouldn't be in any danger. Still... better safe than sorry."
He exhaled. "Thank you."
"Any ideas?"
"Well..." He considered, finger tapping at the table. "Oftentimes the key to breaking a curse is to fulfil whatever scenario it prevents. So if the curse were to remove a man's name from history, it may be that speaking that name would be sufficient to break the curse."
"I have spoken my name. Several times. There have been days when I've done nothing but." Days when I'd screamed my name until I was hoarse.
He gave me an apologetic glance. "Forgive me, sir, but did anyone hear you?"
"No." I sighed. "No, godsdamnit, no."
"So it's not sufficient that the name be merely spoken. It must also be heard. And, if you'll forgive me again, it may not be your name that would need to be spoken. I take it you are not the master thief spoken of in Purloined Shadows? An elf might have lived that long, but you're clearly human, and you don't appear to be a vampire..."
"I've had some near misses, but no. Still human, just barely. You think it's him? Whoever that smug, irritating, deceitful bastard is, you think it's his name that would have to be spoken?"
"If he truly is the originator of the curse it seems likely."
"Shit." I sank back in my chair, frowning. "I don't know his name."
"Well, no. If the curse was easy to break, no doubt it would have been done by now."
"So how the fuck do I go about finding out a name that's been excised from history? It's impossible."
"It certainly seems that way."
"Shit." Shitting shitting shit. I buried my face in my hands, thinking that this was it for the rest of my shadow life, watching my wife and friends from the outskirts of reality like a phantom.
"Of course," Calvus said, slowly, "there might be a way."
I dropped my hands and stared at him. "What?"
"I can think of at least one place where the name might still be written. A text that no daedric magic could affect." His gaze flicked to me. "The Elder Scrolls."
"You think his name would still be written in a scroll?"
"Oh, I'm certain of it."
"Gods, but that's..." Impossible. As impossible as naming a man whose identity had been erased from history. I thought of Qileel, of her insistence that I'd never give up fighting to return to my wife's side. "All right, let's say, by some fucking miracle, I could get hold of the scroll, how would I go about reading it? Could I read it?"
He rose to his feet abruptly, and ran his finger along the spines of the books on the shelves, searching for a particular volume. "Perhaps," he said. "There are ways of preparing one's mind, meditations and so forth..."
"Like the Moth Priests in the White Gold Tower."
"Indeed." He began to stacked books on the desk, He looked younger suddenly, his eyes bright and animated, and I felt a sharp stab of guilt for having neglected him for so long. "They have a monastery in the Jerrals as well."
"And they'd help?"
"Oh, good gods no! The Moth Priests consider the study and protection of the scrolls a sacred duty. No no no. No doubt you'd have to become one of their number."
I gave a bark of laughter. "I'm not becoming a monk!"
"You might have to," he said quietly, and I subsided, frowning, and thought for a moment.
"How many scrolls are there?"
"Oh, countless. Their number is unreckonable." His eyes were bright and shining, and for a moment, we slotted back into our habitual roles, he the master and I the apprentice. His joy was genuine and contagious and I mock-reluctantly submitted myself to a lecture I found secretly fascinating. "Don't make the mistake of thinking of them as tangible objects or as texts in the normal sense of the word. They are fragments of creation itself, from before time even began. No doubt their number is infinite."
"Infinite. Right. But we only need one."
He beamed at me. "Indeed."
"Capital. So which one?"
"Ah." His face dropped. "I'm afraid I have no idea."
I swallowed back an exclamation of frustration. Yet another obstacle slamming into place.
"There may be ways of finding out," he added. "Most likely the scroll is in the archives at the Imperial Library. It's only a matter of finding out which one. There is a book that details various Elder Scrolls and the information contained within, The Lost Histories of Tamriel. If I'm able to track down a copy..."
"You don't have one here?"
"Good gods, no. This book is vanishingly rare. It may even have been destroyed."
"Of course," I said bitterly. "Because gods forbid any part of this not be virtually impossible." He gave me a hurt little look and I shook my head. "Never mind. Do what you can. And thank you, Calvus."
As I stood, he frowned at me, as if trying to puzzle something out. I felt a shivery thrill because I knew the look in his eyes: I had seen it before in the eyes of others. From time to time something I did or said would catch in someone's mind, like a spark set to kindling.
"I'm sorry," he said, hesitantly. "Only for a moment, I thought... I almost felt as though we'd met before."
I moved around the table towards him and gripped his upper arms, urgent enough to make him draw back a little. I held him fast. "That's because we have met before. Calvus, it's me. It's Jack. From Bravil? I'm the fuck-witted idiot who got all your books burned. I'm the useless apprentice who spent more of his time chasing women than listening to you, and gods, I never thought I'd say this but I really regret that now."
He stared at me, and my hope began to grow, my heart picking up its pace.
"Calvus, please... You know who I am. I know you do. Look at me."
He blinked, and the spark had been pinched out. "I beg your pardon, sir. I must be mistaken."
"Godsdamn." I sagged, then wrapped my arms around him and pulled him into a hug. He made a startled noise in the back of his throat. "Sorry," I mumbled into his robes, and drew in a ragged breath. He felt much frailer; he'd lost a lot of weight since the last time I'd seen him, and another stab of guilt pricked at me.
He patted my back gently, murmuring something soothing under his breath until I shook myself, wiping my eyes and feeling like a fool. I cleared my throat, turning my back on him. "Let's say you do find that book and the scroll we want is in the Imperial Library... How the fuck would we go about getting hold of it?"
"Well, I've no idea," he said, and as I cast a weary glance at him he chuckled. "Perhaps we could simply steal it."
"Steal it? You're suggesting I steal an Elder fucking Scroll from the Imperial Library?" I stared at him. "That's insane."
"I know. Only a madman would try something so reckless." Something flickered across his face, a flash of something – of recognition perhaps? – there for a moment then gone. "Or perhaps," he said slowly, "a fuck-witted idiot."
"Well now." I grinned. "Since you put it like that…"
