The Sight of the Wakeful

7 Sun's Dawn, 3E434

(The very date is uncertain. If Rynandor's more theoretical hypotheses hold, then there is a chance we are in a new dynastic era. But, in the absence of certainty, probability weighs against it.)

I once held – indeed I still hold – that only a fool dreams of living through a history worth writing about. But now that such a history is upon me, then the folly is in a failure to record it.

It will, alas, be an incomplete record. I fear the necessity of the moment trumps my debt to posterity. Should this journal fall into the wrong hands, I can jeopardize no plan that has not been realized, and I can implicate nobody but myself.

The six little marbles converged on one another – they hit one another dead center – as they ricocheted outward in perfect symmetry, Lathenil rushed to mark the maximum distance of one of the copies, only to realize as the copies vanished that they hadn't quite hit in the dead center of the table.

"What are you doing?" Fiorana was at the doorway; evidently she had grown impatient with the experiment and come up from the entrance hall.

"Toying with Mysticism," said Lathenil."I call this one Radial Motion – see, it captures the form and motion in an area about the size of my fingernail, then mirrors it sixfold."

"Useful?"

"Not in the slightest. Perhaps with tweaks – but you know how mystic spells are about being tweaked. You were at the Pavilion; you'd understand. It's a siege, almost. I need ways to amuse myself behind the barricade."

"Right," said Fiorana, pinching between her eyebrows. "How goes that project with the, er, decorative cipher?"

"It's not quite finished," said Lathenil, but not shamefully; he had at least made headway for once. "I think I have a good notion as to how we get a full message on the belts while still concealing the very existence of a message. It won't represent letters, but vowel-consonant pairs. Just the sounds. So, for instance, with T-H –" He crouched down on the floor, where he'd moved the ink and paper for the Mysticism experiment, and drew a set of four elaborate curlicues. "That's La-dhe-ni-il – though of course we won't be using our names."

"In the cipher that isn't supposed to be recognizable as a message, you mean."

"Can't be too careful."

"And if you have three consonants together at once?"

"Pretend there's a schwa sound before the ones that don't get paired."

Fiorana raised an eyebrow. "Exactly how soon do you expect us to memorize all this?"

Lathenil had expected to announce these circumstances at the meeting proper, and thus couldn't prevent himself from cringing now. "In... in three months' time. That's when we'll be able to fund the expedition. We'd better get down to the parlor; I'd rather not need to repeat myself to the others."

Before getting to his feet he pocketed the marble, noticing to his dismay that it had a chink in it.

Shasten and Melthis were engaged in a friendly-but-spirited debate about whether "The Fortunate Gambler" should be sung to showcase a bard's talents or sung so the audience could take part. (Melthis took the former side, possibly because her voice was poor even by crowd standards.) Andrathel was staring at Shasten with an intensity that would be disturbing if Lathenil didn't know he was an artist, otherwise bad with faces, and, thus, committing the smith's appearance to memory on their first meeting.

"All right," called Fiorana, "no more stalling, down to business."

Lathenil sat up on the hardest leather chair and cleared his throat. "Well, friends, we've made progress. The ship's name is the Falconbranch. A small vessel – it simply doesn't have the capacity to supply a long voyage – which essentially narrows down our field of search to the Gold Coast."

"It's not Hammerfell," said Andrathel at once. "They haven't taken exiles for decades. If you think we're ill-used by Elsweyr's exile policy, try living entirely on warm sands."

"And if the Thalmor dictated the destination," said Melthis, speaking to her fingers as she generally did when she had to volunteer a conjecture, "I don't think they'd choose Valenwood. Trying to live up to their namesake, don't you know. Every Thalmor forum I go to in Alinor these days, they're always trumping up the Bosmer role in Tamriel – as though we need trumping up!" She shook her head in disgust. "I know a few Bosmer who don't see through it, even. Point is, they want favor from those other Aldmeri people, so there's not a chance they'd be setting Rynandor loose in their midst."

"Perhaps," said Lathenil, "they didn't dictate the destination. After all, the ship they chose has a crew of old hands, very honest workmen, make it a custom to knock discipline into the reprobates of the seas one captured corsair at a time – these corsairs are humans and Khajiit, mostly. Not my first choice for a crew, if I were Fintar." (And if he never saw a bottle of liquor again after the harborside inquiries required to determine this, it would be too soon.) "They don't control everything, we have to remember. They aim for key points, but there's a paucity of actual Thalmor to cover them. Even so, Melthis is probably right. We'll need to confirm it, but in the meantime, we can operate under the assumption that it's Anvil."

"All right," said Shasten. "What about funds, have we made any progress there?"

Lathenil nodded, and took a deep breath. "I've got that in hand now, too. I'll be selling this place in three months' time – I'll be commiserating with all Sunhold about my gambling debts, maybe losing a few rounds of dice for show, and no one will be surprised when I get desperate for coin."

"This house!" said Shasten, impressed. "I take it you brought Cilandrin into the fold!"

Of course someone had to twist the knife before he plunged it. Lathenil squeezed his eyes shut, felt his fingernails digging into his palms. "No. In three months, she'll be married to Beridor. She's sailing with his family off the Alinor coast as we speak."

"Er – Beridor?" said Andrathel.

"Thalmor," said Melthis. "Not high-ranking, but steeped deep. And not much of a prize if he weren't Thalmor – arrogant twit; I've studied with him in Alinor."

"Now, now," said Fiorana. "Arrogant twittery is a Thalmor mainstay; you can't assume they'd remain arrogant twits if separated from-" Lathenil's eyes, which were burning in his sockets, met hers, and she abruptly snapped her mouth shut.

"But surely you've spoken to her!" said Shasten in shock.

"Of course I spoke to her!" snapped Lathenil.

Futile, cold, stammering efforts at persuasion, rapidly degenerating into his shouting at her retreating back whether Rynandor meant anything to her, that she would know better if she'd been at the Pavilion that night, that Beridor was a presumptive up-jump who had no idea what he was getting involved with – at best!... And she shouted back that the bronze in his cheeks only showed he couldn't be reasoned with. That she was ashamed even to mention his existence to Beridor's family (there was that blessing, at least,) and why shouldn't he be pleased with Beridor, he always encouraged her to go for the intellectuals and here's one who helps uncover magicks lost to entire ages of chroniclers, and...

Lathenil. Please don't take this the wrong way. But I just don't think you're fully recovered from the daedra yet. You're filled with so much fear. Give it time.

But he knew there would never be a time where she had confidence in the soundness of his mind again.

"I... don't believe my words helped matters."

Melthis bit her lip, then shook her head as though to dislodge the topic like a horsefly. "Plenty of progress, though, all the same. All right, intelligence, infiltration, yes. I'll go first. Aside from the forums – they think I'm flattered; they'll try and get me to do favors soon, I think – I'm spending a lot of time in the alchemy lab. You wouldn't believe the interest they have in poisons, some of them."

"Assassination," said Lathenil coldly. "Who?"

"Nobody. No, I don't know who, but it's not assassination, it's more subtle than that. Suggestibility, feeblemindedness – well, they always do talk about playing a long game. But the talk's about humans, beastmen, Dunmer – and the wine glasses of their notables are a bit far for the Thalmor to reach."

Character assassination, then. In a way that was worse. By the time they were through, they had charged Rynandor with knowingly sending soldiers to die in Oblivion, the better to shore up his own position. Even when they caught up to Rynandor, even if these new plots never came to fruition, the struggle for the truth would be far from over. No doubt Varellis and his ilk would rekindle the debate in any case – no, not in any case, only in the case of a future Summerset that brooked unorthodox opinions at all. Let the historians of tomorrow bicker and fabricate.

"Shasten?" prodded Melthis.

"Nothing to tell, but I've taken up shop with a very good enchanter," said Shasten. "If the Thalmor want weapons, staves, I'll be among the first to know. And I'll know something of their intended tactics, too."

Andrathel, satisfied Shasten was finished, bent down to his satchel and produced a roll of thick paper. With a flourish, he produced three thick sheets.

The first was a map of Tamriel, recognizable though oddly rendered by his sketchy style. There was a color gradation of the provinces, and not by boundaries. Skyrim and Cyrodiil were marked red, though they bordered. Summerset was green. Everything else lay somewhere in between, if you went by the spectrum.

The next was a list of titles – sketched from the way the list lay on the table rather than simply memorized; that was Andrathel for you – headed PROSCRIBED MATERIALS. There was plenty of what they'd consider anti-mer propaganda, and there were scattered books on Oblivion and the Dawn Era. Oddly, the Imperial Cult seemed to warrant special attention regardless of connection to either.

The last was a dungeon cell. Apparently unused, but plainly designed and equipped for torture.

"Where did you see all this?" said Melthis in a hushed voice.

"Courtesy of the Lady Arranelya's estate," said Andrathel with a rakish grin.

Fiorana frowned. "There's no way you had official access. And I don't see the unofficial option being readily available, not with the sort of money she has."

"Well," he said sheepishly, "I did have help diverting attention from the inner chambers."

"Help," said Lathenil flatly. "Bi'drasha?"

Andrathel, failing to sense the shaky ground he was walking on, only shrugged bashfully. "I don't have any better connections, do you?"

Lathenil jerked to his feet and advanced on the artist's position. "Two rules about accomplices, Andrathel. Two clear rules! They can't know you're targeting the Thalmor – and you can't involve anyone who isn't Aldmeri! Do you think this is a game? Do you honestly believe that if they caught her, they'd mess about with legal niceties? Gods' blood, you've sketched the accommodations yourself!"

Andrathel winced toward his shoes and ran a nervous hand through his inky, rough-cut hair. "They didn't. That's all I can say in my defense."

"Is that all?" demanded Fiorana. "Aren't any of us going to consider the value of what he got us? Melthis said it – it may not be a lark, but it is a game: a long game. If we shorten the game, we shorten the odds, I say."

"We'll use what we've obtained," said Lathenil shortly. "But the policy stands. We will not be compromised, and we will make no needless sacrifices. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," whispered Andrathel.

"Well!" said Shasten after a moment, in artificially conversational tones. "What about Fiorana?"

Fiorana sighed. "I've tried bringing the matter to the Psijic Order. Bloody waste of time, though. They served Artaeum during the Anguish, all right, but anything short of the end of the world, and their approach is so careful and subtle as to be insubstantial."

Melthis cleared her throat. "A lot to consider, then. But – given what we have on the main objective – I think it's about time we decided which of us goes. Should we go by who's uncovered the best intelligence, or whom we can spare, or – well, whoever goes is going to be less lucky than the rest of us, or more, if we're not lucky, or – oh, bother, it'll be a different fate than the rest of us, anyway. We'll have to consider it carefully. Unless we want to risk casting lots?"

"Please," laughed Fiorana. "There's no need for that. Think, now: which one of us is thoroughly incapable of keeping their sympathies a secret when pressed?"

Shasten cuffed Lathenil's shoulder. "Sounds like you've been drafted, mate."

Lathenil strode to the picture window, put the curtain aside a touch. He looked on the cascades of greenery, the graceful, sinuous houses of outer Sunhold, the radiant violet of a clear evening. To leave his homeland behind- sell his family holdings to strangers, and resign the only family remaining to him to Beridor's flatteries- yet if he did not, then he saw little prospect of a Summerset worth the name of homeland.

Only for a time, he vowed. He would return, and Rynandor the Bold with him. And Cilandrin would surely heed the greatest general of the Summerguard.

"I accept the task," he said. "There'll be time enough to hammer out the details. For now – Andrathel, you're nearest the wine shelf – a toast. To Rynandor's return, to the preservation of Summerset."

"Rynandor and Summerset!"

Author's Note: I'm not happy with this chapter, but it does establish plenty of key points, so up it goes whether I'm satisfied or not. Next chapter should be considerably swifter in coming, as most of it's been written already. The chapter title is a classical reference containing the word "shores" - bragging rights to anyone who can guess the rest of it.