Iman lazily spun her last septim on the bar. It winked in the firelight, glimmering with liquid light until slowly, it stopped spinning and fell clattering to the old weathered wood. She lifted her tankard to her lips and downed the last of her ale in one swig.
She knew it had been a bad deal the moment that elf had walked in the door. There was something in his swagger that gave it away, in the moments when his confidence wavered, when he did not have an immediate answer for every question. But there she was, signing it all away anyway. Every last bit of her fortune - gone into the pockets of cut-rate swindlers.
It was a foolish thing to do and yet...
It felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
She swore that she was breathing easier now. Colors looked brighter, drink tasted sweeter, food had more savor. Her joy of being rid of the burden of blood money far outweighed her fear of what she was going to do next.
Despite the guilt that had grown within her as the years had passed her by, it had been a good run. Her life since her departure from Hammerfell had been everything she could have asked for - tumultuous love affairs, grand tours of every far-flung hold, a taste of every delicacy the province had to offer, a short-lived smuggling ring with its share of excitement, a clandestine evening spent in the Blue Palace as she pretended to be who she was not.
She felt overfull, as though she'd gorged on a banquet and needed nothing so much as a long nap to relieve the pressure built up inside her. She wondered if there was such a thing as contentment for one like her. There was no telling without trying.
She lowered her empty tankard below the bar and waited, watching the harried innkeeper from the corner of her eye.
She had been observing her all night in her mad dash from table to table, in one instant, food and drink balanced on her shoulders, in the next, a mop or a wet rag in her hand. She ran her inn like a tightly-wound ship, alone and proud of it for all these years. But age was catching up to her, though she had yet to realize it.
Iman watched and waited. When the moment was right and her target's attention elsewhere, she let the tankard slip from her fingers.
The innkeeper's foot came crashing down on it. Her mouth forming a perfect O, she staggered backwards, the tray of drink she held listing dangerously to the side.
Iman jumped into action, catching the tray and steadying her the moment before she would have fallen.
"Hey." she said, letting her go. "Are you all right?"
The woman looked at her, white-faced and then slowly, nodded.
"I'm looking for a job. You wouldn't happen to have an opening, would you?"
The right side of her face curled into a smile. Something crashed in the far back corner of the inn and the innkeeper's face snapped towards the sound.
"Here." she gasped, shoving the tray into Iman's hands. "Take this to the table by the door. We'll talk terms after dinner is over."
Before she could say anything else, she was running for the broom propped up behind the bar and fighting her way through the growing crowd. She heard someone scream a battle cry and the sound of a fist connecting with flesh.
There was a pit of nervousness growing in her stomach. She relaxed her shoulders and took a deep breath. This was what she wanted. This was what she planned for.
Penance to atone for what she had done.
She smiled, hefted the tray onto her shoulder and walked to where she was told to go.