Author's Note:
Thanks to those who indulged my April Fool's chapter. This one's the real update!
Loredas, 10th of Hearthfire, 4E202
The lieutenant did not say a word to her the entire ride to Whiterun. Deirdre did not mind.
She was strangely numb. All the horrible feelings inside her had come together and shriveled, leaving a tainted weariness in their wake.
It was fully dark by the time they reached Whiterun's southern entrance. The lieutenant steered his horse under the same gatehouses, up the same curving path, that Deirdre had seen earlier that day with Gerdur, Hod, and the children. At this late hour they saw only a handful of people, and the ramparts had been illuminated with torches.
The final gate was closed as they approached. The guard there had a lantern, and he raised it when the lieutenant's horse drew up next to him. The lieutenant leaned around Deirdre to put his face in its light.
"Where you headed, Imperial?" the guard asked.
"Dragonsreach dungeon."
The guard shifted his lantern toward Deirdre. He whistled low.
"That's a nice shiner you got there, lass. What happened to the other guy?"
"She's under arrest for assaulting an officer of the Legion," the lieutenant answered for her.
The guard's face scrunched. He'd clearly been joking. He seemed about to say something, thought better of it, and shook his head.
"If you say so. You're clear to go."
He waved up at another guard atop the gate, and the whole thing gave a metallic squeak before it rolled smoothly into the air.
The city was only slightly less active than it had been during the day. The lieutenant avoided the main streets, but Deirdre could still hear the noise emanating from them; the music, the voices, the constant drum of wheels and feet. Light filtered between the buildings, some of it touching even the back streets. For Whiterun, the merriment of Tournament Day had not ended.
As the lieutenant brought them closer to Dragonsreach, Deirdre remembered Frodnar's little voice.
"Is that Dragonsreach? Can we go inside?"
Hod had said no. Was it ironic that he'd turned out to be wrong?
The palace was gargantuan up close. On any other occasion, Deirdre would have been awed. The lieutenant was similarly unimpressed as he steered them away from the front entrance to the right. They followed a little road around the palace to a large, sturdy wooden door.
The lieutenant dismounted and helped her down. By this time she had a splitting headache, as bad or worse than the one she'd had when she first woke up in Helgen. Her arms hurt from being tied behind her, she'd lost most of the feeling in her hands, and her legs were weak from her awkward position in the lieutenant's saddle.
"Easy," the lieutenant said when she stumbled.
She didn't even have the energy to scoff at him.
He shouldered open the big door and guided her into a room made entirely of stone. The space was lit by a goat horn chandelier hanging from the ceiling and a rusty candelabra to their left. Next to the candelabra sat a big wooden desk with a chair behind it. A gray-haired old man in a Whiterun uniform sat there, arms crossed, with his chin on his chest and his eyes closed. To the right of the man and the desk, a rectangular entryway was closed off by a door of metal bars. Beyond that, Deirdre could see a much larger room, and the first of what were surely many jail cells, also closed off with bars.
The lieutenant took her over to the desk and slammed a fist down on top of it. The guard jerked awake, blinking at them. He looked the lieutenant up and down.
"Bad luck to rouse a man from his sleep," he grumbled.
"I take it you're the warden for tonight?"
The guard grunted. He looked at Deirdre, did a double take.
"Shor's bones, that's a face!"
"She'll be needing a cell," the lieutenant said. "If you'd be so kind as to mark your log book."
The guard muttered something under his breath that sounded insulting. He slid a thick, worn book across the desk and flipped it open, then took the quill from the inkpot to his right.
"It's still the tenth, isn't it?" he asked, already writing the date. "And the time …" He glanced toward the lieutenant.
"It's dark out. Probably after nine."
The guard wrote it down. "Arresting officer?"
The lieutenant hesitated. "Put my commanding officer. Otis Kensley, captain. Imperial Legion."
The guard paused. The tip of his quill rested against the page, bleeding a dark spot. His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Did you say Kensley?"
The lieutenant shifted uncomfortably. "He's not back in Whiterun Hold. He's just down in Riverwood for tonight on an assignment from Helgen."
"Well if he wants to arrest people in Helgen, that's Falkreath's business," the guard said, "but Riverwood is still part of Whiterun Hold, last I checked. Jarl Balgruuf doesn't like it when—"
"The Legion is authorized to make arrests in any hold we need to," the lieutenant interrupted. "Falkreath or Whiterun, it's all part of the Empire."
The guard looked at Deirdre again. "This don't smell right, Imperial."
"It's out of my hands," the lieutenant said.
The guard evidently couldn't argue with that. He grunted again, shaking his head almost identically to the way the gate guard had, and wrote Captain Kensley's name in his book.
"Reason for arrest?"
"Assaulting an Imperial officer."
The guard snorted, but diligently wrote down her crime. "And the offender's name," he requested.
The lieutenant looked at Deirdre. Last time she was a prisoner, they hadn't had her name in their book. She thought about not saying anything, staying mute, as she had in Helgen. But that hadn't worked out so well for her there, had it?
Her throat was dry, and the first attempt she made to speak came out a croak. She coughed, swallowed, tried again.
"Deirdre."
"Surname or place of birth?"
"… Riverwood."
The guard wrote it down. "All right. Let's check to make sure we have an empty cell. I ain't so stupid as to fix you up with a cellmate."
He nodded at her, as if to say he was doing her a little favor. When she thought about the possibility of having to share a cell with a stranger, a criminal, for an entire night—she supposed it was a favor.
The guard opened the first barred door, which wasn't locked, and led her and the lieutenant into the dungeon. This room was also entirely stone, a long hall with an arched ceiling, lined on both sides with cell doors directly across from each other. Between every few cells, there was a lit torch mounted to the wall. The air was stale.
They walked about halfway down the length of the room before the guard stopped. "Right, here we go." He removed a ring of keys from his belt and moved to a door on the right side of the hall, unlocking it with a click. He swung the door open and stepped back.
"It'll lock on its own once you shut it," he said.
The lieutenant nodded and the guard afforded Deirdre one final, frowning look before he shuffled back the way they'd come.
The lieutenant nudged Deirdre into the cell. It was small. There was a stool in one back corner, a bucket in the other, and a pile of straw against the wall where Deirdre supposed she'd be sleeping.
She would have been sleeping in her own bed that night, if this hadn't happened. Hod had made it for her. Like he'd made the loft above Frodnar's little corner of the house. For her.
If she'd had an ounce of energy to spare, she would have used it to cry.
She felt the lieutenant undoing the rope binding her wrists. A surge of prickling heat flowed immediately into her hands. She brought them around and massaged the marks the rope had left, watching her skin flush red.
"I'm sorry," came the abrupt words.
Deirdre paused. The lieutenant was standing behind her, unmoving.
"The captain—I can't go against him without being insubordinate. I don't agree with this."
She said nothing.
He cleared his throat. "The captain said something to you about other options, didn't he? He offered you some kind of deal? If you want my advice, you should take it."
She turned at this. The lieutenant's gaze immediately fell on the left side of her face.
Quietly, Deirdre said, "You knew why he called me into the house."
He looked away. "Captain Kensley can be vindictive. If you don't take his offer, he's going to go out of his way to make you regret it, since … you wounded him."
She felt a resurgence of hatred as she looked at him. Pathetic, she thought.
"No."
"No?"
"No."
The lieutenant took a breath and dispelled it sharply, eyes trained on the ground, brows drawn together. "Miss, I don't think you understand the position you're in. He's got you on assault. You even left a mark. The Legion takes that very seriously."
"I was defending myself."
He wouldn't look at her. "I know. I know—it's not fair. But what do you think is going to happen if the captain has you thrown into a work camp? Do you know how long someone like you would last in a place like that? Do you know what kind of men you'll have to deal with there?"
Deirdre said nothing. That hadn't occurred to her. She'd thought this jail cell would be the worst the captain could do to her. Did he really have the power to send her to a work camp?
"Please accept his offer," the lieutenant entreated. "I can't help you beyond that."
He waited several seconds to see if she would reply. She turned her back on him and stayed silent.
The lieutenant sighed. He reached for the cell door and Deirdre stepped out of the way to let him close it, separating them with the snap of a lock. She listened to his echoing footsteps retreat down the hall. Heard him go through the barred door into the warden's office. Heard the faint thud of the outer door shut.
She walked to the pile of straw and sat on it with her back against the cold wall. She wrapped her arms around her knees, closed her eyes, and let the weariness seep in past her bones.
Sundas, 11th of Hearthfire, 4E202
Vilkas followed the smell of freshly baked bread to the kitchen, and found Tilma brushing butter over some warm loaves. She saw him coming in and looked surprised.
"Someone is up earlier than usual. No hangover for you?"
Vilkas snorted. He strode past her to grab an apple from the basket on the counter. "Some of us actually do work around here. I'm not Aela."
Tilma tsked. "Work this early? After a holiday?"
He took a large bite from the apple and surveyed the kitchen for more breakfast options, speaking while chewing. "It's an easy bounty. Couple of idiot bandits parked themselves right outside the north wall. If I don't get to them first, some other mercenary will take it."
"Don't talk with your mouth full."
Vilkas swallowed his bite of apple and rolled his eyes as he moved behind her, heading for a pot that had been swung out from over the hearth.
She twisted to follow the movement. "Don't be rollin' those eyes at me, either!"
The pot was nearly cool, full of eggs resting in water.
"Are these boiled? Can I take some?"
Tilma harrumphed. "I was going to put them out with breakfast, but if you're in a rush."
He fished three of them from the pot, holding them between his fingers and shaking the water from them. He brought the apple to his mouth with the other hand and took another big bite. "I just need something to tide me over."
"What did I just say?"
He swallowed again and looked at her, the corner of his mouth pulling up. "Sorry."
She tsked again. Vilkas went to walk past her, pausing just long enough to drop a hasty peck on her wrinkled cheek.
"Be safe," she called, voice scratching as it rose to follow him. Vilkas waved his half-eaten apple at her as he left.
He scarfed down his cold, meager breakfast on his way out the front doors, and promised his unsatisfied belly he'd treat it to something better once the job was done and the Jarl's money was in his hands. Hopefully the rest of the city's so-called mercenaries were just as hungover as Aela was sure to be, and the bandits would still be where the bounty notice suggested.
The north side of Whiterun wasn't much to look at. There was no gate into the city, just a bunch of rocks and the steep side of the hill atop which Dragonsreach stood. It was too steep for the average person to climb, and even if they managed it, they'd be met with the city wall and then the backyard of Dragonsreach—where the soldiers' training grounds were.
The bandit duo had found a little niche in the rocks at the base of the hill, not quite a cave, and set up a rudimentary camp there. They were tucked in nice and cozy in the niche, their sleep safe from the first rays of the morning sun, when Vilkas came upon them. Perfect.
It took him all of five minutes to subdue and tie them up, disoriented as they were. One Nord and one Dark Elf, neither of them particularly strong or smart. The Dark Elf didn't even seem to know basic combat magic. How they'd managed to rob the handful of people they'd crossed thus far, Vilkas had no idea.
"Honestly, what were you thinking?" he said to the Nord as he pulled the knot tight on his bindings. "You should have skipped town before the Jarl caught wind of you. Did you even get a good haul?"
The bandit's head drooped mournfully. "Got some jewelry, but we ain't had time to hawk it yet."
"Shut yer mouth, Roscoe," the Dark Elf snapped. "You wanna admit to some other crimes?"
"Like I care. I'm just here for the bounty," Vilkas said.
The Nord perked up. "How much we worth?"
Vilkas hauled him from his sitting position and dragged him over to the elf, whose feet were tied to his hands. "Four hundred septims."
"That's all?"
Vilkas went about tying them together and creating a lead out of rope. "That's all. Try harder next time. It will be better for me too."
The Nord nodded, accepting the advice. The elf swore.
They followed along obediently for the most part, though the elf's eyes constantly darted around for an escape route.
"If you run, I'll have to kill you," Vilkas warned as they entered the west gate. "Don't try me."
"Don't think yer hot shit just 'cause you snuck up on us, bounty hunter," the elf snapped.
"I'm a Companion."
The elf quieted. His eyes took on a more frantic sheen.
They walked the rest of the way to Dragonsreach in silence. Vilkas took a right at the front of the palace and followed the road around to the dungeon.
When they entered the warden's office, the man at the desk was tucking into a plate of food. Vilkas recognized him as Bursio, an Imperial, and a regular for dungeon duty. He was one of the more laid-back guards, and they were on good terms. Upon seeing who'd entered his office, Bursio set down his fork and knife.
"Ah, Vilkas. That must be the bounty we put out yesterday. Fast work."
Vilkas shoved the bandits forward. "I take it the steward will have my septims?" he asked, eyeing Bursio's breakfast. Sausage and buttered bread and fried eggs.
Bursio nodded, moving his plate to the side so he could reach for the log book. Vilkas's eyes followed the plate.
"I'll write out the notice so you can collect," Bursio said. He switched his attention to the bandits. "And for you, good sirs, I'll need your information."
Vilkas tuned them out as Bursio wrote them into the book. He was thinking about what food Tilma might have prepared by the time he got back. Something hot, for sure, and bland, as was Tilma's way, but hopefully there'd be meat, and that bread she'd baked would have cooled enough to slice. Butter. He wanted lots of butter. Gravy too, if there was any.
"I'm going to finish this before it gets any colder," Bursio said, drawing his plate back toward himself. Vilkas came out of his reverie. Bursio unfastened the key ring from his belt and held it out. "You know the drill."
Vilkas grabbed the keys. He wasn't technically supposed to do this—the keys weren't supposed to leave the warden's possession. But as a Companion, and particularly as a member of the Circle, there were certain understandings between him and the city guard.
"Come on," he bid the bandits, tugging them through the door into the dungeon proper.
There was an oddly-dressed Redguard in the first cell, with a cold look in his eyes and an air about him that set Vilkas's teeth on edge. Vilkas steered the bandits away from him, taking them down the hall until he found an empty cell on the left side. He unlocked it and pushed them in, first untying the placid Nord, then the Dark Elf.
As his binds came loose, the elf gave one last rapid glance between Vilkas and the cell door. Vilkas made a show of waiting patiently, the door wide open. The elf gritted his teeth and trudged to the back of the cell, dropping onto the stool in the corner.
"Pleasure doing business with you," Vilkas said, stepping out of the cell. He swung the door shut and made sure the lock clicked.
The Nord raised a hand in farewell. "At least we can say it took a Companion to bring us in, eh?"
Vilkas chuckled. "Whatever you gotta tell yourself. Good luck with your sentencing."
Then, from behind him, Vilkas heard an incredulous, feminine voice.
"Vilkas?"
Author's Note:
I was weirdly attached to these bandits after writing them?