Lusius ducked his head belowdecks. The air was warmer here, smelling strongly of tar and faintly of gravy. Gaea was no doubt enjoying whatever the quartermaster had concocted for dinner. He knew he ought to join her. He never viewed her as particularly good company, but at this point, that hardly mattered. He knew few others on board. If he left himself to his natural devices, that frail bond would certainly wither away. He would rue it when such a connection would proved needed, sometime in a future.

It was a slightly mercenary way to view the world, but it was at least a practical one after his melancholic ruminations. Indeed, he had nearly pulled himself out of his own head and into reality as he turned a corner, and suddenly found himself four steps away from passing Tonas Telvanni.

For a second, their eyes met. He could see the tiny muscles of her face pressed into sudden work: brows lifting involuntarily in surprise, lips firmly pursed in slipshod attempt to conceal a burgeoning expression. Lusius was taken too off guard to focus on his own response. This ought to have been entirely expected, of course. She was the shipmaster, and there was no way to routinely avoid her. And yet he felt like a lost boy all the same when they encountered one another these days. He didn't know what to do when they met.

It hadn't always been like this. But perhaps it was always destined to be. Their romance was always fated to be constrained by circumstance. Lusius was a legionnaire, Tonas a sailor. Any affection between the two, properly respected, could only last for the duration of the soldiers' passage. That was the unstated rule that both understood, at least at the start. They drew towards each other all the same.

It was pleasant affair, almost innocent. They spoke together, initially from an innocuous bout of smalltalk, which somehow went on for an hour and a half. They discussed trade, the winds, and Morrowind. It was an oasis of conversation in a desert of drunk soldiers and drunker sailors. But that intellectual refuge swiftly changed, becoming something less driven by the mind and more by the heart. He would let his gaze linger on her a half-second longer than he used to. She would remind herself to play with her hair. He would offer to help with stowing the cargo. She would graciously accept. He told her of his childhood, and of the family half a continent away. She called him Saenus.

Then, one evening, they would lay on the deck together, hands intertwined, watching the midnight sky. Lusius pretended that he still knew his constellations. Tonas pretended that she found it all interesting. Their teeth knocked into each others' on their first kiss.

But then Tonas took it a step farther, and everything changed.

She hadn't even thought through everything when she made the proposition, for even half-formed it seemed so self evident it didn't need any reinforcement. You could desert, she told him. The only things this far north were stone, wind and regrets. Why die here for the empire's sake? He could stow away, deep in the bottom of her hold. Imsin would never find him. She would probably never even care. Then, they could sail off together, taking the route east 'round the Grazelands to Vos. Settle down there, on a pleasanter edge of the world, far from the eyes of Cyrodiil. He could find work guarding caravan routes by day, and return to their adobe home at dusk. They'd eat wickwheat bread and grilled sailfin each night as they'd watch the sun set over the mountains. It would be a simple life. But it would be a life nevertheless—something he would never, ever find in the Sea of Ghosts.

His rejection was swift and categorical. Tonas was stunned by how cold his words were. He was shocked with how decisive he had been. A life with Tonas would've been better by degree than what he was heading towards: a mediocre brigade, his stalled career, and the dead waters. In the end, all he had was his word. He hadn't thought he valued it highly, but as Tonas silently turned from him with a suddenly trembling lip, he knew that as surely as the ship propelled him forward, he could not diverge from the course he was on.

All of that roaring back to him, as his brown eyes met her red eyes. Perhaps she thought of it all, too. But then, she deliberately changed her gaze to look forward at some invisible target. She had walked past him. Gone.

Both knew affection still lingered within them. But now the unstated rule, always present, had firmly changed. It was forbidden for them to speak of this, to even acknowledge the bond that not one week ago had been so strong that she was hoping to become his bride. That love could only exist in a strange half state, existing but denied, like an inkblot bleeding through the page of a hastily closed journal.

Why could neither speak what they both knew was true? Was it mere social pressure that led them to deny them this connection, even out here in the forgotten sea? Or had her lie already become the truth? Lusius would never know. The path lay only forward, away from Tonas and the extinguished possibility of a life that he harbored still in his heart. Instead, it was oriented towards the crags of the north, caressed only by the clash of waves and kissed only by salt.

Spymaster -

Where to begin with this?

Tonas Telvanni is a uniquely frustrating subject to research. No surviving registers, manifests or ledgers mention her, but it's quite probable that they were destroyed during the Red Year. She wouldn't be the first figure in the story who is difficult to trace, but the surname Telvanni complicates everything considerably. As you might guess, 'Telvanni' is one of the most overindexed terms in the entire archive, and for all we know a poorly documented 'Telvanni' reference could correspond to Tonas and not the Great House. Had we a larger budget we could probably do another pass through the restricted sections, but we do not, so we cannot.

But let's put aside Tonas' historicity. The equally strange question is why is she even here? Why does Townway go to the trouble of adding a section for this woman and linger in such treacly sentimentalism? For a moment, our genre writer lost track of his own genre. It's a very strange fit with the rest of the story in many ways that were this not confirmed to be serialized, I would have assumed this was either an extremely early or an extremely late addition.

But there are many theories. After a small amount of footwork, I think the cause of this is more or less clear. Two months before the publish date of this chapter, Townway had a very public break with his lover, the Redguard acrobat A'Corda, causing an emotional breakdown that hadn't been fully resolved as he worked on the story. Thus, he self-indulgently added this section to vicariously tell his own story through the eyes of Saenus Lusius. This kind of therapeutic projection isn't unheard of in Townway's works, although it's typically not so blatant. But then again, unusually broken hearts can lead to unusually blunt prose.

Or so I believe. But the rest of the team does not agree, and since this is a matter of analysis rather than research, I would remiss if I didn't pass along these divisions.

Agent G argues that this chapter is some sort of thematic choice. Namely, this is serving to develop a sense of isolation and regret through the abortive romance, themes that will be returned to in increasingly serious ways later into the text. I find that dubious. Townway's pedestrian work rarely finds any thematic coherence more sophisticated than a faerie tale. And while this chapter could be hamhanded enough to be an attempt at that, were that the case, I would expect similar grasping elsewhere in the earlier chapters. Had Agent G spent more time actually reviewing our historical documents rather than flipping through bargain bin literature, perhaps we'd have a better grasp on the actual background of the work.

And I'm sure Agent X has already broken protocol to send you his analysis. In the off chance he hasn't, I will take an attempt to condense it as follows: The chapter can only be understood as divine wordplay. 'Tonas' represents 'TOVIT' while 'Saenus' represents 'SAH-NUS'. Understanding that, Lusius' rejection of Tonas is interpreted as a subconscious declaration of 'I AM'' against a Telvanni's intrinsic, Padomaic declaration of 'SHALL YOU BE?'. This is the first of many rejections, leading eventually to the Greatest Rejection. Townway has already tipped his hand of everything's final resolution through the use of a forbidden metaphor—etc, etc, etc.

It goes on for several pages. Odds are you've read it already. Perhaps he used enough exclamation marks to convince you. But it certainly didn't convince me. I understand that resources are scarce, but could we at least have one more agent assigned who isn't going to view this project as a way to indulge their niche interests? Or at the very least, one who understands how an archive works? Honestly, I'll go mad as Agent X if I read one more improperly formatted date.

I remain your servant,

L. Cosades, 22 Last Seed, 4e 83.