Iman breathed in a shaky breath and gripped the window screen. It was happening. Dark figures spilled into the garden, moonlight glinting on their beetle-like armor. Her part was done. Her time was now.
The hems of her clothes were sewn with jewels. Her journal was stitched into her bodice and her pens, stuck in her hair. Beside the door was a bag in which she'd been storing bits of food and sundries that wouldn't be missed. She adjusted the strap over her shoulder, hardly believing that it had all come together.
No one had noticed the unlikely friendship between her and the new scullery maid or heard what they really talked about in the secret nooks of the house. The theft of the gardener's key went entirely unremarked upon. Lord Suda's contact book was stolen, copied and replaced before he even realized that it had been moved. It had been devastatingly easy. All these years and freedom was only a few purloined items away.
A pair of faint groans drifted up from the garden and she knew that the house guards had been eliminated. The taste of bile rose unbidden to her throat. Her hands were trembling. For a moment, she stood there holding herself and wishing that someone else would come in to hold her.
The moment passed and she steadied herself. It was time to go.
She crept down the carpeted hall in her softest moccasins, every subtle noise from the floors of the old manor setting her teeth on edge. Inch by inch, she passed by the music room, the library, the vast closet containing her mother's sizable collection of clothes and at last, her mother's bedroom. She breathed a sigh of relief when she made it down the stairs without incident.
The entrance hall was cavernous and gloomy in the night, its oddities and art reduced to twisted shadows peering out at her from the dark walls. She stole a glance at the pillow where the Reman-era urn had once taken the place of honor and noted, with some satisfaction, that it was still empty. The war was hard on everyone, even those who could afford it.
She bit her lip as she undid the deadbolt with an audible click.
And then she was out.
The bodies of the guards lay in a heap in the lily bed, their limbs splayed unnaturally, their swords still in their sheaths, their throats...
She turned away with a shudder before looking any closer.
The door in the wall hung open, the passage beyond, a solid wall of darkness.
She touched the Thalmor emblem on her belt just to be sure it was still there. When she reached the Aldmeri camp, she was to flash it to identify herself.
And from there, covertly smuggled to Skyrim, with enough of a reward to set her up comfortably in whatever hold she could possibly choose. A tear sprang to her eye and a lump formed in her throat. The dry grass crunched under her feet as she walked and the passageway steadily grew larger in her field of vision.
When the door was before her and the darkness beyond beckoned, she stopped and took one last look at the manor behind her. It rose up into the night sky, in all its gaudy detail, its halls of unused rooms, its ostentatious flourishes made to outshine the stars themselves. It had been her world for as long as she could remember. She knew so little of what lay outside. A tingle of fear raced down her spine at the thought that perhaps there really was nothing worthwhile out there, compared to the glory within.
With a firm shake of the head, she chased the idea away and seized the doorknob, yanking it open wide enough for her to enter.
Her heart thrilled as the walls of the passage closed around her. She put her hand to the cool stones and guided herself by touch. Her reaching fingers soon found the smooth wood of the door on the other side and slowly, the door creaking on its hinges, she pushed herself out into the night air.
Crickets chirped and birds called to one another in the trees. The trees seemed impossibly big, the foliage, too large to be real, too wild to possibly be related to the pale imitations she'd seen in gardens within the walls.
A jolt of terror shot through her heart. She was outside! Farther beyond the bounds of the city than she'd ever been before. It was overwhelming, horrible, wonderful!
She could do anything, become anything. No one would tell her how to dress or what to say ever again. No one would pluck at her hair if she didn't will it or tear out bits of her eyebrows for the sake of fashion.
She was free.
She took one step forward and then another, the long grass rustling under her touch. She looked up at the sky and laughed, her voice high and clear. When was the last time she had laughed, for real and not at some joke a man with more power than her had made?
"Y-You…" a voice gurgled from the ground below her. "H-How c-could…"
She clapped her hands to her mouth to stifle the scream and fell against the trunk of a tree behind her.
A Bosmer, bloody and beaten, lay by the side of the path. One of his hands clutched at his guts. The other lay limply at his side.
Iman felt sick. The emblem on her belt caught the moonlight, glinting in the darkness.
He rose to his feet, staggering against a low hanging branch for support. On his right hand was a falconer's glove. His face was puffy and distorted, his nose, a mess of blood.
"Going to run?" he coughed, spitting blood down his chin as he advanced a step forward. "How much did t-they pay you, hmm? Less than the cost of a city, I'd wager. Was it worth it?"
His gloved hand closed around her arm. She screamed, full-force and kicked like a daedra let loose from Oblivion.
He groaned as she struck something soft and toppled to the ground, nearly taking her down with him. She snapped her arm free of his grip and took off running. For a moment, she glanced behind her at the crumpled figure, unsure if she was more afraid at the thought that he was alive or dead.
As she looked, he raised his gloved hand to the sky…
…and pointed.
With a SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEE and a rush of air, it was on her.
Talons dug at her face. Wings flapped around her ears. With a strangled cry, she tore it from her face and kicked it into the underbrush. She could feel warm blood trickling down her neck. Her face throbbed, to the beating of her pounding heart.
The moonlight caught the triumphant glint in the Bosmer's eyes before he crumpled to the ground.
She ran into the night, a sob caught in her throat, her face burning as though a pyromancer had set fire to it.
Notes:
Y'see, the real reason Taneth fell is TEENAGE ANGST.