The haunted-faced mer seemed torn between awaiting Bidrasha's mystical analysis and rushing one of the exits – and he had not removed his pack or traveling-cloak. Bidrasha elected to speak swiftly.

"He has had no poison." Bidrasha had learned from childhood that being addressed as it always made the Altmer uncomfortable. "But enchantments, yes."

He paused, swallowed, then nodded for her to elaborate.

"The ring, to ward against poison – the belt, to ward against enchantment – and the sword, that can never dull. An enchantment known to few enough, high enough, to explain the other two. But Your Highness is not harmed."

Crown Prince Shadyrn cast a fleeting, disgusted glance toward his sword-hip.

"This one sought enchantments upon the person, not the body – usually a greater now sees she was the mystic she advertised herself to be, that is all. But why has he come so far as Firsthold to find one?"

Shadyrn paused, then sighed with resignation. "This far from Alinor, I can avoid remark. Further, I understand you are the best Khajiit mystic who may be seen on short notice, and I feel I may trust a Khajiit in this."

A rare statement, this, never mind from the High Queen's line. Bidrasha admitted to herself that even the Thalmor could grant her a few advantages.

"Yet whatever you may have divined," said Shadyrn, his voice cracking, "I am deteriorating, body and mind, and there is no doubt in me but that the Queen's Council has a hand in it."

"For what cause does he say this?"

"My lady mother will no longer preside over her own council. She turns to gay talk of anything else when I broach the subject, but it's plain she would rather they decide nothing at all than that they meet – it's Arrinaro, Arranelya's brother, who has the weight now. He has won some by his post-Anguish policy notions and cowed the rest – by those same policies, it may be – but though they do not meet as a council they do not disband, nor do they press the point. They stay in the Palace. Waiting. I have seen likenesses of myself, disfigured, though I have not been able to produce them to a third party. I have heard things. Rituals, or chants at the least, though I cannot find their source. And all the while I walk weary, I grow thin, I falter..."

Bidrasha looked him levelly in the eye. "Fear may do that. No poison or magic, but ordinary fear, made constant."

"Then it is their intent to destroy me."

Bidrasha nodded sharply; she was not to be sparing here. "He could have heard so much from half the Crystal Tower lecterns. The old hierarchies must be erased, for the Aldmer stand equal in divinity. Under their own Lords and Ladies, these Thalmor are always failing to add."

Shadyrn gave a feeble laugh. "I hope that was not intended to lessen my fear? But... ha. Yes, it seems Firsthold really does harbor an obsession with Alinor's academy. Last Stand at Crystal Tower... " The image of Rynandor was daubed on scattered walls throughout the city, marked REMEMBER ME, or ALINOR HAS BANISHED REASON, or other such things. Andrathel had begun this and other such works, even admitted as much to her years ago, but by now, the imitations had come to outnumber the originals. "Does the Hold-King stand with the sentiment?"

Bidrasha had to pity the long-lived races at times. A century and a half as Crown Prince, and not even the present fear had driven him to give the succession any serious thought. "Karoodil's opinion matters little, Your Highness – rumor fails in many things, but not in this. Morgiah..."

It was likely she knew more of Morgiah's interests than the Black Queen herself did; she currently sought an anonymous means of rectifying this.

Not a week after he had called on Bidrasha, six years ago, to dazzle the Lady Arranelya's staff with her powers of illusion, Andrathel had appeared on her doorstep at the small hours of the morning, begging her not to move against the Thalmor again, saying they would have her tortured to death given the slightest chance. Bidrasha had said nothing then, only held him against her until the trembling stopped, but privately she regarded this Thalmor predilection as an excellent argument to continue striking at any further political ambitions they might entertain.

Her first task, before removing herself to Firsthold, was to set herself even with what was already known. Shasten had contact with a smuggler in Lillandrin, and Melthis in Alinor, and both were shipping and receiving tooled belts. On return to her mystic's-house, it became clear that Melthis had twigged to Bidrasha's pursuit, and had contrived to send word to Andrathel about it. But Bidrasha would not be moved, and by now Andrathel, well past simple concession, had taught her how to read the messages on the belts.

The latest, shipped from the Imperial City, read Harbors placid throughout Anguish in Anvil Sentinel Vivec and anywhere else inquired of. Priestess to research ley lines particularly at home and in the East. Personal notes welcome.

The thoughts that missive inspired never failed to send a chill to the tip of her tail.

"The Black Queen has cause and to spare against the Thalmor," she finished carefully. "But she keeps common cause with none, least of all one faltering in a higher position. This one would not cross her path."

"Whose path ought I cross, then?" said Prince Shadyrn, running his fingertips across his bowed forehead. "A moment. You have information. You are of the beast-folk. Do your connections suffice to defend me, preserve the Crown?"

More vividly than waking, Bidrasha saw Andrathel leaning on the doorway, a gentle smile on his lips, a paint-stained apron about his waist, and his eyes wide and intent, drinking her in.

Saw him die in that doorway, at the point of a Summerguard captain's sword. An assassin's dagger. The difference mattered little.

"This one will work alone in this," she said at last. "She will at the least give his position strength. An alchemist, to begin with, if not perhaps such a good one. They must not have the Palace – yet this one does not fight for politics, Your Highness. She fights for her people, and will not see them in harm's way." If a few mer stood among those whom she counted as her people, it was better that this foolhardy, necessary Prince did not know it.

Fiorana snorted at Lathenil's latest. Yes, Beridor, just dropped in for supper, wanted to know if your wife's getting any second thoughts and if you've destroyed Vvardenfell lately. If he'd laid waste to a subcontinent, or killed the greatest hero of the Anguish, would he want everyone who nodded at what he said in political debates to know about it? She could sometimes be profoundly grateful that he and his great subtlety were off across the ocean and not...

A rocky beach under a coal-red sky, strewn with the dead and dying and the wreckage of the ships that bore them. She could only save one, an elder – saved her for a dremora's mace, later that day – but the others...

Lathenil was saying the Thalmor had done this.

As a prelude to this dragging half-secession, or to inflate their own reputations, or – well, she could leave motive to those who cared. No possible motive for it would pass Stendarr's muster.

She'd visit. She'd see if she could get a good long moment in Beridor's study. He was usually good about locking it, but there was always the chance. And she'd at least pay attention to Cilandrin, if nothing else.

She helped to watch the premises of Crystal Tower. For the past few years, they had at least been quartered at a crystal tower, though the original article was still an increasingly-weathered pile of rubble outside town. The black students' robes were a good, sober touch, a token of respect for the Tower that was, even if she was learning to associate the journeyman's cowl and gold thread with an aptitude to parrot the Thalmor party line.

But her professional duties... last week, they'd called her to the annex, shown her the cells where they kept those who made trouble on campus, asked her to employ her healing... She had done so with as little hesitation as she could muster – it was, after all, vital to the cause that she was trusted.

But the screams simply wouldn't go away, and she knew she was on slippery ground with Stendarr herself. She really was obligated to balance it out in every way she could.

Lathenil knew, for once, the exact point at which he'd lost Count Matius. But he couldn't see how he might have avoided it. The Thalmor had killed his brother in Ebonheart, when they brought down the Ministry of Truth. To pretend otherwise was to give a terrible half-truth to a profoundly honorable man.

But by that point, the money had begun to give out, again. He sold parlor-magic to children – Radial Motion was a surprising favorite, and he'd managed to learn one that displace his voice, which he could easily put to real use – and tooled belts. Usually with meaningless messages, but sometimes with stray observations or laments, to keep himself fixed to the purpose. It had taken him more than a year to restore his finance that way, and he'd need to go back to trade sooner next time so he always had a good set of robes.

Now he was left with Bruma as his last contact with the Seventh Champion, before he was forced to draft yet another scheme.

At least Narina Carvain was reputedly accustomed to half-truths, and the way she was receiving this black-bearded Nord in hideous formal robes, hovering beside her throne and showering her in effervescent praise, showed she took not much offense to bald insincerity either.

Lathenil sat down at the fringe of the throne room, jotted down a few observations on the Great Sigil Museum east of town, and prepared for a long and silent wait.

At last, the Countess stood, and in genteel tones that managed nonetheless to carry to every corner of the throne room, she declared "I thank you for your company, Bjorn Stone-Fist. Alas, I am already promised in marriage."

Stone-Fist flushed, opened his mouth once or twice before speaking. "Why wasn't I-"

"Ah, you couldn't have known, it wasn't a week ago," said the Countess blithely.

"Who?" demanded Stone-Fist.

"Huon Motierre of Daggerfall."

By the glance that passed between the cleaning attendants, she had not named the lucky gentleman. But Stone-Fist did not appear to register it. "A Breton. A Breton, and..." He gestured aimlessly in the general direction of the entrance hall. "Was all your talk of union between Imperials and Nords another pretty deceit, Narina?"

"That will be all," said the guard-captain curtly from beside the throne. Bjorn Stone-Fist stalked out, as Carvain called after him, "You will have due compensation should you choose to attend the wedding!"

Well, the red-faced idiot did at least seem to deserve the treatment, which was more than he could say for most such scenes he'd witnessed.

Lathenil stepped forward. For this meeting, he had resolved to beat about all the promising bushes he could. "Before I make my proposal, I must know – who are you marrying really?"

"Erek Free-Winter," she said in a low voice, smiling in approval that he'd caught that. "They've hated one another since boys, and that lunk is swift to his sword hilt, so I thought it best to distract him with a betrayal from another quarter. Easy enough. Betrayal takes up a good many quarters in that one's mind. But what was your proposal?"

"My lady," he began, raising his voice. "For six years now, I have been away from the Summerset Isles – not by wish, by necessity – for it is my task and duty to restore the mores of the Altmer, and it has so often been delayed."

"What mores are those?" Stone-Fist was back, standing at the very edge between throne room and entrance hall with his arms crossed expansively across his chest. The guard captain at Carvain's side cocked an eyebrow; the Countess gestured him to stand down for the moment.

It was a query worth answering, for the Countess's benefit. "That all truth be defended, and that the Truths of the Wise be kept under heavy guard. That law be neither arbitrary, nor cruel to the guilty or the..."

"Those the mores of Jagar Tharn?" he challenged.

"Of Ocato," answered Lathenil.

"Of Mannimarco?"

"Galerion."

"And you know what happened to him for his efforts," said Stone-Fist derisively. Lathenil had thought certain that Nords had a high respect fordeath in battle, but he supposed he'd thought wrong. "And Mankar bloody Camoran-"

"Rynandor-"

"Who in Oblivion is that?"

It was a universal response, varying only in its politeness. But he could use it here. "The story begins with him, my lady," he said, turning back toward the throne. "With Rynandor – a general of the Summerguard – something akin to your Hero of-"

"Can't you answer my bleeding question!" snarled Stone-Fist.

"Hadn't I just... ah." Stone-Fist did not give the air of a man who wanted to be educated. "Ocato, then. Again."

"Are you bloody goldskins only of any use when another bloody goldskin is making the mess to begin with?"

"Those are the parameters you set," said Lathenil peevishly. Yet he was hard-pressed to think of an exception. No, to be fair, Camoran was half an Altmer at best and Tharn less than that, but that would be sacrificing the main point on the altar of the side argument.

"If I may beg your pardon," said Countess Carvain, a thin, sheer layer of ice over her voice, "do you mean to say you count the Potentate as a hero of the Oblivion Crisis?"

"Yes," Lathenil snapped. "He kept the Empire intact. That would qualify as heroism, under the circumstances, and if he didn't have men to spare for Bruma, it's because he didn't have enough men anywhere. He sent forces to Morrowind, and they're crying sabotage louder than that paranoid Champion of yours."

That paranoid Champion, the one he was addressing a Countess to get back on the right foot with... "Well, she's paranoid on that point, anyway," he added lamely.

"Paranoid!" shouted Stone-Fist. "She is in Windhelm as we speak, doing her level best to save those Morrowinders Ocato didn't ill-use from Argonian hordes that your Altmer with their Altmer mores surely never put up to the slaughter!"

"They are not my Altmer!" screamed Lathenil. "They are precisely the-"

"Pick and choose, will you-"

Carvain nodded to the guard captain, and in moments the both of them were forcibly dragged from the castle premises.

He waited two days for the city watch to forget the incident, before trying the north gate to Cloud Ruler Temple. They had not forgotten, but, with an amusement in their faces that cried out for Lathenil to kick them in the shins, they let him through all the same.

A large, brief puff of smoke behind him, and occasional flashes of light ahead, told that he was watched for the whole grueling trudge up the mountain. This was fair, given that this was the chief stronghold of the Blades and it hadn't been remotely secret for the best part of a decade. They must have a good deal of unwelcome guests.

He prayed to Auri-El he would find a way to exclude himself from that class.

One young Imperial greeted him stiffly, outside the gate. Lathenil assumed there were archers on the ramparts above where he could crane his neck, as well, but it was a good provisional arrangement, given they were a pack of spies.

"Name, trade, business."

"Lathenil of Sunhold. Petty merchant by trade – historian by vocation – for the soul of the Summerset Isles."

Already, the young Blade looked uncomfortable.

"I ask that you help me send a message," he tried. "Nothing more."

"We're not a messenger service," said the Blade curtly. "Not as such. For the sake of argument, what does this message entail?"

"It would go toward Dame Vienne in Bravil – no, Windhelm now. It would tell of what the embargo is keeping out, and what it's keeping in, and I don't speak of Alto wine and Welkynd Stones. I speak of knowledge. Every scrap of it. Everything the Thalmor – most of the diplomats and they've kept the rest quiet, to begin with – don't wish to be known."

"That's... what, Old Mary revivalists?"

"It's a convenient image for them. I hope Queen Ayrenn's soul isn't obliged to watch them at it. It's all down to what's convenient, all of it. If it gives them purchase, they will say it – if there is control to be had-"

"So, er, this information?" The young man was straining again not to fidget with discomfort.

"For an instance. They know of Red Mountain – after all it demonstrates that the Aedra have rejected the cursed blood of the Dunmer. They are not told..." He paused. Better not to mention his theories regarding Dawn Magic. The Grandmaster didn't have relatives on Vvardenfell, not that he knew of, and the topic never seemed to do him any favors. "They have been kept from..." He ground his teeth, resolved to admit his own guilt. "They believe, I was made to believe, that the Thalmor were the ones to seal us from Oblivion, and it's still working to their advantage. Devouring the whole foundation we rest on bit by bit. They began-"

The Blades guard raised his hand, gave a minute jerk of his fingers. The gates shuddered open.

There were two flavors of disapproval toward Cilandrin's station in life. One was that Beridor was a horrid, Nord-minded prig for keeping her out of his political life. The other was a mocking poor-dear commiseration that she fell short of those exalted echelons.

Cilandrin found it easy to ignore both, as she knew perfectly well neither was the case. She simply had never had much of an interest in politics. Every time something noteworthy came up in council, there was a wild panic about what would happen if the dice of the issue fell one way or another, and then the die fell and everyone calmed down quickly and got on with their lives, forgetting it had ever been a fuss to begin with.

Unless you took it like her brother, and scared yourself to ruin. To death; she'd had to accept that a long time ago. But even before the months of desperate searching, the sleepless nights, finally the slow, agonizing parting between the hope of his survival and the life ahead of her, politics had never been half as tempting as the joy of learning a new craft. And in either case, Beridor saw that she was content.

Though she might need to humor his interests a bit, soon. She'd hate for the child beneath her heart to grow surrounded by rumors that either the mother or the father must surely be defective.

But not so soon as this evening. Why blather about the fine points of Ayleids and bloodlines with Lord Leyaro, when Gilarnath's skimming-bought house was even finer to behold on the higher floors, and when Leyaro's girl was such a quick study, and eager to learn what she could teach? It certainly had a more direct bearing on motherhood.

"Keep your buckler before you," she exhorted, pacing about the cushioned floor. "That's what you've got it for. If you let it swing wide, you might as well not have a left arm at- oof!"

Elenwen's padded sword had gone right to her chest through the opening she'd been demonstrating. "Got you!" she yelled, elated.

"We're not sparring yet," wheezed Cilandrin.

"If it were a real fight I'd have got you," said Elenwen stubbornly.

Cilandrin shook her head fondly. "In a real fight I wouldn't be swinging my shield out like a ninny, young lady."

"Well, what if I asked you to demonstrate shield technique first?" Bright girl, but the drawback was she was always on the lookout for an easy shortcut, and never mind quibbles like sense.

"If you'd ask me and I'd listen, it wouldn't be a real fight, now would it? All right, now to the spar. En garde!"

Elenwen lost in short order, and Cilandrin hadn't really, consciously gone for the win, either.

"All right, maybe we ought to deal with footing first-"

"Milady?" said Melthis the housekeeper from the doorway, in a tentative tone.

"Yes?" said Elenwen at once.

Cilandrin, for her part, regarded milady as a ludicrous affectation with which to address a Landowner or a nine-year-old girl, but realized it probably was meant for the adult in the room. "What's the word, Melthis?"

"There's..." She was gazing down at her own fidgeting fingers. "There's rosehip cordial all over the good rug in the entrance hall, I don't know how it got there but I wondered if I could trouble you for, for assistance?"

Elenwen stared as though she'd just announced she was born on Secunda. "You're the housekeeper," she managed.

"Elenwen," said Cilandrin, in her hark-to-this-lesson-about-life voice, "it doesn't matter half as much who does something as that it gets done. Rosehip cordial is sticky stuff, not a one-person job, unless you want to toss out the rug, or get sugar-beetles. Now, Beridor and your fa are in an important talk, and the steward's out at market. That leaves the two of us, and as a born Artist and a Lord's daughter you outrank me." And would probably be woeful scrubbing a cloth in the creek in any event, she didn't add.

"But what about the training!" she cried, wounded. "If I outrank you, then that means-"

"It means I'll have to tell your fa about how you wouldn't let me save the rug, because rank means you get the responsibility, too. You've got the thrust-slash-lunge forms down pat – drilling them until I get back won't hurt."

Melthis nodded with a nervous vigor and scurried almost silently down the stairs, Cilandrin following in her wake.

She looked to the little table by the dining-hall door where the jug of cordial had been. It was still there, and it didn't look like anyone had had the merest sip... She opened her mouth to ask, only to see Melthis pressing a forefinger hard against her lips and darting her eyes toward the door.

"...outside Bruma," Leyaro was saying, "which makes it three good agents dead, four if you count the orc from the Reserve, and still you insist-"

"She is my wife," said Beridor with quiet fury, as though that sentence had everything to do with dead spies in Cyrodiil. "The mother of my child. You've commended me my perception often enough, you'd think you'd do it now."

"If she is loyal and of true Aldmeri blood, then I presume you will have no trouble broaching the matter," said Leyaro coldly.

"She's got no political loyalties, if that's what you mean. The subject bores her to tears, or she'd have been here with us long ago. But her loyalty to our family is absolute."

"Family," said Leyaro with a delicate ominousness in his voice. "I see."

"It does make it... difficult to discuss the matter frankly," Beridor admitted. "She's sure the bastard was killed years ago, in some matter involving gambling arrears. If I told her at this late stage that he was alive, and how badly he needed to die, I don't know that she'd take it too well."

It was as though the air had become solid around her.

These Thalmor loaded Rynandor the Bold into an exile's brig, Lathenil had shouted, the last time she'd seen him alive. No, just seen him, he was alive. What do you think they'd do to you if you started getting in disagreements?

And she'd answered, And how long have you been at it without getting shipped off to parts unknown, brother? Or a sanitorium?

"Not precisely auspicious credentials, Beridor. And there is her small stature to consider, as well..."

The core of his mad argument was the Thalmor were out to silence anyone who questioned them. And they aimed to refute it by killing him for saying so. Beridor aimed...

"She is of pure Altmer blood, I've seen her genealogy. And she would never betray me."

"As you would never betray her, no doubt."

"Advisedly," said Beridor curtly. "Have her watched, long as you like. If it turns out you're right, then all to the glory of the Aldmeri people and I'm not about to be party to a dilution of the blood. But you won't be. Now, were you actually going to brief me on the situation with the Queen's Council, or was that just a pretext for this round of insults to my judgment?"

"A pretext, but a real one. The balance really is growing precarious..."

Melthis looked miserable. "I'm sorry," she said in a hushed voice. "I thought it was worse, I made it worse..."

Cilandrin jerked toward the jug of cordial, on some level other than conscious thought, and gently, from a height of two inches, poured it out on the good Pellitine rug.

"We have to go now," she said, voice blank as the inside of a well. "Before I can change my mind. Before they can begin watching me."

"You'll go," she breathed, beginning to roll up the carpet. "I have to stay. Head for Lillandrin, the Empire's smuggling people from the mainland, and they'd want to hear from you. There's a shop called Uncommon Enchantment..."

Cilandrin backed toward the front door, rug aligned to block any view of her from the dining hall. "How long can you usually leave Elenwen hanging?"

Melthis winced, as the fresh air wafted upon them. "She's more patient than you'd think, but... Gods. She'll suspect me. It's not her fault she has that beast for a father-"

Cilandrin was suddenly very conscious of the life growing within her.

"-but she does, and she's... well, she's sharp."

"Would Leyaro listen to her?"

"Provisionally. Which is enough for him to... I, I know too much. It's your little brother roped me in in the first place. We're doing this together."

They were heading for the creek anyway, at least. Stale lessons of campaign logistics came to her in snatches. They'd start out heading for the sea, break off when they were out of sight and the ground was rocky, bear northward, and by the time she'd absorbed all she'd learned, really felt it, they'd be far enough inland that, with any hope, she wouldn't be tempted to turn back.