Chapter 32: The Knowledgeable Squire

Brynjolf stared into the woman's face disconcertedly, holding his breath, his mind racing furiously as he desperately tried to find a solution. There was just one woman and one assassin. Maybe he could take them on… but then again, the assassin, as he had come to know, was a vampire, and a very dangerous one despite her appearance. She was smiling at him merrily, and then her eyes turned to the horse standing some distance behind him.

"Shadowmere!" she exclaimed elatedly. "It's so good to see you again!"

So she really is one of the Dark Brotherhood, a thought crossed the thief's mind. Maybe we could talk this out. His heart, though, did not feel in the slightest at ease.

The Altmer woman shot her a quick glance out of the corner of her eye, raising a brow, but then her gaze focused on the man before her and her body loosened up ever so slightly.

"The companions of the Dragonborn?" she asked in surprise. "What are you doing here? And where in Oblivion is the Dragonborn?" Brynjolf frowned. In addition to being able to conceal her presence quite well, the elf was not in the least bothered by the fact that it was pitch dark. She recognized him very easily, and that was something to contemplate on.

"I'd like to ask the same thing," the girl seconded, still grinning, although her voice was cold, not sharing much of the thrill. Brynjolf suppressed the need to slap himself in the face for not noticing her pretense before.

"That is none of your concern," he replied coolly, his hand fumbling about his waist for the hilt of his sword, but the elf was faster. Before he could notice, an elegant dagger, made in the same ice-like material that Aislinn had used to make his armor the other day, appeared in her hand and pressed to his neck. Brynjolf blinked, condemning all illusionists to Oblivion. There was no way she could have done that without magic involved. At least not one he knew of.

"Well," she chuckled humorlessly, "believe me it is. You have very little options now… I'd say about as many as I do, and that makes it two if I'm not mistaken. Either I can get rid of you right here, or we can help each other, which, of course, would require some mutual trust."

"You know," Brynjolf said with a silent snort, "mutual trust is best achieved without a dagger against one's neck…"

But still, he added in his thoughts, they would usually try to capture me and beat the information about the lass out of me… if they didn't already have her. He shuddered at that, hoping that nothing had happened while he had not been by her side. He could not help but worry about her constantly.

"True," she returned, "so could you, please, take that hand off the dagger by your waist?"

The thief sighed but let his hand slide to his side. Immediately, the cold touch of the stalhrim blade left his skin and he took a deep breath. Shadowmere appeared by his side as he responded to the beckoning of the small vampire. Lucia kept silent, as she usually did when something was happening, watching the undead girl with her head tilted to the side. The red-haired man could not help but wonder why she was so calm about everything, not even looking wary of their new company. She was observant and usually knew when something was wrong.

"First things first," the Altmer spoke then as she turned to the vampire girl. "Do you know these people?"

"No, but you looked like you did," the girl replied. "I only know the horse. He… let's say he's affiliated with the Brotherhood. And he is the rightful companion to our Listener."

"You seem to hold him in high regard," the elf commented.

"Of course I do! Shadowmere is like the harbinger of Sithis. He has been with us since time immemorial."

"You're Babette, right?" Lucia's melodic voice rang in the air suddenly. Brynjolf jerked his head and turned to her in surprise. "Mama told me about you."

"She did?" the vampire asked, now sounding genuinely pleased. "Awesome!"

"So when you mentioned the Listener…" the elven woman cut in again, addressing Babette.

"That would be the Dragonborn indeed," the girl stated as though it was a given. The woman sighed.

"I guess I should not be surprised," she said slowly, "that the Dragonborn has friends in such places as well. But that still leaves me with the question of where she is at the moment." With that, she turned back to Brynjolf, making him feel her intense look on him. Shivers ran down his spine and he tried his best not to show it.

"I still don't know why I should tell you," he muttered. "I have no reason to trust you."

"That is true," the elf admitted. "It might be better to look for a safer place to hold a discussion over that, however. It seems I have underestimated—"

She fell silent at once, freezing in place. In an instant, Brynjolf knew why. Several pairs of footsteps were approaching them at a steady pace, some of them indicating heavy boots treading through the drifts with deep thuds, while others sounded more like soft leather shoes crunching gently in the snow. Silent sound of fabric brushing the white blanket of frost accompanied them to notify the group that someone in robes was present as well. Then, a group of three elves appeared in their sight.

"Master Talwen," one of them said quietly. "We have been looking for you…" His voice trailed off as he spotted the strange group of people accompanying the elven woman.

Talwen! Brynjolf thought in terror and his mind began racing once more. Is she the Reinya Talwen that Sinawen had mentioned before? If so, then that means she's a Squire, and if she really is one... the rest of the sentence he did not dare spell out, even in his thoughts.

"You know very well that I am busy," the woman whispered with an undertone of threat in her voice. "What makes you disrupt my business?"

"These people…" the elf stammered, "they fit the description of…"

"Of course they do!" she retorted impatiently. "They are the newest creation of mine. Don't you think I am getting pretty good at illusion magic?"

Brynjolf fought the urge to open his mouth wide in shock. What was going on here?

"But there's no Dragonborn…"

"I don't need the image of the Dragonborn to deceive her, fool. In fact, that would be quite counterproductive."

"I… I see, but… you've never seen them…"

"And that's why I am here," the little vampire interrupted suddenly and Brynjolf suppressed the need to turn his head after her. "I know them quite well." She gave an innocent smile, though it was barely discernible in the darkness of the night. The thief was convinced that the elves could see it clearly, and his second thought was that she was a better liar than most of his guild, himself included, for he always relied on those half-truths that were convincing thanks to the fact that there was a very thin line between them and reality.

"So now that we are clear on what I've been doing here, I would appreciate some privacy," the supposed Squire uttered curtly and gave a hard look to the elves. Brynjolf could literally feel her gaze, albeit not directed at him.

"You are needed at Dawnstar, Master Talwen," the elf objected hesitantly. "Lady Elenwen sent an inspector…"

The woman sighed and Brynjolf caught a hint of uneasiness that she tried to conceal. "I will head there shortly," she cut him off. "Just give me a little time. And begone, I cannot concentrate on my work with so much distraction."

The elves bowed to her slightly before backing off and turning back to the hold capital blanketed in snow. There was a silence and then the elven woman repeated the spell she had demonstrated earlier. Once again, red light shone through Brynjolf and Lucia, sparing Shadowmere and the little girl. Apparently, there was no other living being around. The thief watched the woman curiously, wondering what was about to come. Something in her behavior made him ease up, exhaling as he tried to shake off the initial shock.

"I suppose we have to make our discussion as short as possible," she whispered. "My life is on the line here, but if I die, there might be others to continue my work. No, there definitely will be. I must say that Lady Elenwen's paranoia is not baseless."

"What's going on here?" Brynjolf asked with a perplexed expression. "Who are you anyway? I was told that Reinya Talwen was a Squire…"

"Then you were well informed. Yes, I am indeed a Squire, ironically, one of Elenwen's most trusted. Yet."

"And you are betraying her?"

"Betraying? No, she is betraying us. Renadil and Timreth, those two poor souls knew it from the very beginning and stayed true to the real Altmer cause. What kind of higher race are we if we give the example of mindlessly controlling people and killing the innocent?"

"Who are Renadil and Timreth?" Brynjolf remembered that they had been mentioned in the conversation he had overheard, but the dots of this puzzle did not connect yet.

"Two brave ones who gave their lives for this girl," she nodded to Lucia, "I believe."

There was a pause as he tried to process the new information. Some things, however, remained unclear.

"Gave their lives?"

"Yes, shortly before you arrived to free the Dragonborn."

"Then we must have met one of them. She told us the way…"

"That would be Timreth. She was a dedicated one, joining the occupation force while knowing she would lose her life there sooner or later."

"I still don't understand your standpoint in this…"

"This will take a while," Reinya Talwen said with a sigh. "There is a ruin nearby, which all the elves are scared to get close to. There is no reason, of course, because the Dragonborn cleared it some time ago, but even we get superstitious. It serves to my advantage, though. You will find it southwest of here, so just go ahead and wait for me there. I have to go and take care of this inspector business before suspicions arise."

"Then I will join you if I may," Babette added eagerly. "I have a job in Dawnstar but it would certainly seem odd to arrive with Master Talwen here."

Brynjolf was not sure if the sudden company pleased him or not. The demonstration the slight girl had given previously was still vivid in his mind and the thought of having someone like her by his side certainly did not appeal to him, but she had claimed to be Aislinn's friend and Shadowmere did not appear to mind her, which had to mean something. Furthermore, even Lucia seemed fond of her. He decided to wait for the outcome of this situation, refraining from commenting on any of it. He replied with a simple nod. She smiled and took Shadowmere's reins in her hands, leading the way while the elven woman took a different route directly to Dawnstar.

"It's just around the corner," she said, her pointy teeth shining in the moonlight. "I'm Babette, by the way, even though my name was already said. So who are you?"

"Brynjolf," the thief muttered tersely as he took a few steps forward. His foot sank deep in the snow and he frowned.

"That Brynjolf?" she wondered. "Of the Thieves Guild? Of course, I should have known! Red hair, turquoise eyes… the Listener mentioned you quite a lot."

"She did?"

"Oh, don't play innocent now," Babette laughed. "She might not have realized, but we all know you've been making passes on her. Better take good care of her or you're going to answer to whole Brotherhood."

"Oh I'm sure she realized," he commented dryly. Somewhere deep inside, he felt like sulking as he remembered her promise to him. The one day that she would belong to him would have to be postponed to some unknown date since he did not even know where she currently was. He almost jumped in the air when Babette addressed him as though she was reading his thoughts.

"So where is she now?" she asked.

"I don't know," Brynjolf shook his head.

"How can you not know?!" she questioned reproachfully. "Weren't you with her the whole time? Did something happen already?"

"Mama is safe," Lucia cut in. "I can feel it."

"Really?" Babette drawled with a raised brow. "And you must be one of her daughters, right? Runa or Lucia?"

"Lucia," the girl answered with curled lips. "Nice to meet you."

"So how can you feel it?"

"I don't know," Lucia said helplessly. "Ever since uncle Brynjolf saved me and mama from that place, I could feel the dragons around… and mama too. I could sense their feelings and some of their thoughts… although it's different with mama. I can only sense her presence, but not anything else."

"Maybe it's because she's still human," Brynjolf mused, wondering how many surprises the little lass had in her sleeve yet, "but it sure must be nice to know."

Lucia did not seem to share the thief's optimism but kept silent.

"Well, there is something… weird about you," Babette snorted. "I don't really like the feel of it though."

"It seems our lil' lass repels the undead," Brynjolf uttered with a slight undertone of sarcasm, curious about the vampire's reaction. "Though that dragon said he could not even get close to her, while you obviously can."

"Strange," the undead girl replied with a shrug, choosing a neutral tone. The red-haired Nord had a feeling that she was enjoying his disappointment at that. He wondered whether she had noticed him before so she did not have a reason to be surprised that he knew what she was, but decided against asking. Instead, the four of them, Shadowmere included, continued in silence, quietly treading through the soft, crunching snow. Not too long after, upon climbing a gentle slope and taking a few turns between the rocks and trees with branches covered in shimmering frost, a massive stone tower appeared before them, its dark silhouette reminiscent of some giant limbless creature. Even in the dark, Brynjolf could see that its walls were crumbling apart, some of the stones missing from their places, but its core structure remained firm and stable. While Shadowmere remained outside and kept watch, the rest of them entered and settled on a wooden bench, watching the still cold walls that surrounded them with uneasiness.

A dim light had dawned outside when a rather slight figure appeared at the threshold, holding a torch. By her posture, Brynjolf recognized Reinya Talwen. He could now take a good look at her, his gaze sliding curiously over her small frame, with her head proudly raised and her back straight. She was not dressed in the typical Thalmor robes, but in a more convenient version with a lot of pockets and padding, belted at the waist by a strip of black cloth tied neatly at her side. Her bright eyes shone from a rather round face framed by curly locks of fiery hair, most of which was plaited in a series of braids tied together in a complicated bun at the top of her head. The tips of the braids hung loosely around it, creating an elegant veil of red strands. Her face was firm, shaped in a cautious, observant expression, and her thin lips were pressed tightly together. That was, until she spoke to the three of them.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," she said. "It seems that I gained a powerful rival among Squires. Anyway, I believe I haven't caught your names in all that chaos…"

"Brynjolf of the Thieves Guild," Brynjolf sighed in resignation, "and this is Lucia, the Dragonborn's daughter."

Lucia smiled at Brynjolf, pleased to have heard her name from him for the first time.

"Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild… the Dragonborn sure keeps herself a strange company," the Squire chuckled. "Not that I picked better, though."

Babette looked as though she wanted to say something to defend herself, but then frowned and remained silent.

"You did say something about the Thalmor betraying you," Brynjolf pointed. Reinya Talwen nodded as she set the torch in one of the holders on the walls and seated herself opposite of him.

"Yes, and you deserve to know the truth. However, I would first like to know about the Dragonborn. Is she safe?"

"Most probably, aye," he replied and wished for it to be true. His eyes slid to Lucia who was playing with a buckle on her backpack.

"You really don't trust me, do you?" she asked with a shake of her head. Her curly hair bounced around her face and she raised her hand to put it away. "Eloquent is one of the last words I would call you."

"When you've been through all that I experienced in the last two months, you'll learn not to be eloquent," he grumbled.

"All right," she sighed. "I will start and perhaps I can convince you on the way. The story is actually quite simple." She paused and took a deep breath before continuing. "We, the Altmer, are the direct descendants of Aldmer. Of course, there are more than us, but we consider ourselves the purest race." Brynjolf knit his brows at her speech, not quite ecstatic about the way it was heading. "The problem is that our people had long forgotten what our true purpose is."

"Is there even such a thing?" the thief questioned doubtfully. The Squire smirked and her eyes glistened in the flickering light of the torch.

"We are an elder race, and therefore we are destined to become your guide," she explained patiently and Brynjolf felt as though he was being lectured at school. "We are also the first wielders of magic among mortals, the masters of the arcane arts. In many ways, we are superior to you, including our senses and also lifespan. Or, to be precise, we should be. A lot of these traits had been lost, however, as our race degraded into a nation of power hungry monsters."

"You can lose your innate abilities?" the Nord wondered.

"You can, if you forget who you are. We had been created to live as one with nature, but our lust for dominance drove us to your cities. The Aldmer, and the Altmer who succeeded them, kept turning away from our cause, fighting and destroying, and forgot the way of the old eventually. It all got even worse when the Dragon War had broken out. The dragons brought new ideology with them, one where power equaled absolute truth. There were those who came to believe it, and even though most of us opposed dragons, a lot of the Mer turned out the same as them in the end. Luckily, not many were powerful enough to pose a threat. But here we are, still fighting, and now Elenwen is requesting help from our greatest enemy, Alduin himself!"

Brynjolf frowned, watching the dancing flames as though he had been hypnotized by them. He slowly pondered what he had just been told. The concept of power as absolute truth was alien to him, but it did remind him of a certain Aldmer he had recently fought.

"So maybe Andariath Torelloy was one of them as well," he muttered. The elven woman before him froze.

"I beg your pardon?" she said slowly. The thief shook his head.

"It's nothing," he waved his hand but she did not look convinced.

"You just said a name," she pressed.

"Andariath Torelloy. There's no way you'd—"

"That man!" the elf exclaimed. "So he's still around?"

"You know him?" Brynjolf asked in surprise.

"Yes." The reply sounded bitter and remorseful. "I have been here for some time now. But I thought he disappeared."

"Who is he? Apart from the guy who constantly uses us for his own benefit?"

"Oh gods… apparently, if my sources are correct, he is… he was an Aldmer nobleman. A magical prodigy, but his family was not among the most respected ones. He was opposed to the way the court worked at that time some four thousand years ago, and so he kidnapped the crown princess, although the credibility of it being a kidnapping is questionable. The said crown princess, Tricya was her name, lacked talent for magic to the extent that the court wanted to replace her with one of lower status. She was constantly bullied and cast aside, even by her own servants, and the only thing that kept them from condemning her completely was her extraordinary talent for martial arts. With a sword in her hand, she could singlehandedly defeat ten magi at once without getting a single scratch. Rumor had it that the young Andariath was obsessed with her and kept visiting her frequently. But the moment those two left, the court did the worst thing they could to them." The Squire paused, groping about her pockets. She pulled out a small bottle and took a sip, and Brynjolf, realizing that his lips were dry and so was his throat, followed her example with a flask of water. He then tried to pass it to Lucia, but noticed that the girl had fallen asleep in the meantime, just as the vampire beside her had, and the two of them were now propped against each other with their heads pressed together, their chests rising slightly with every breath. He smiled briefly before turning back to Reinya Talwen.

"And that was?" he asked curiously.

"They erased their names from the history," the elf continued with a sorrowful expression. "Both of them were disinherited, their families denying that they had ever been born. All traces of their existence were destroyed and their names were added to the national ban list. No one was allowed to ever mention them."

"Is such a thing even possible?" Brynjolf whispered incredulously.

"It is, if you live in the elven society, and it is crueler than you might think. If your name is erased, you literally cease to exist in the minds of everyone. No one talks to you, no one spares you a single look, no one gives you food or bed to sleep at, no one has the slightest mercy on you. You turn into a ghost, and if you want to leave the Summerset Isles, you have to build your own boat."

"But they managed to leave."

"Yes, they did," Reinya Talwen affirmed gravely. "She then became his right hand, the Angel of Death as they called her, for she was as cruel as she was beautiful. The few who survived her raids only remembered her beautiful long white-gold hair that she supposedly never tied up, and even then she made sure they were eliminated short after. No-one saw her and lived, and she slaughtered them by hundreds, maybe thousands. But the worst thing was that she did not just simply kill them. She collected their souls, all of them, so the two of them would live on for eternity. The ones that she did not use to prolong their lifespan were transformed into raw power. Everyone feared them… but then, when the Oblivion crisis came to an end, they suddenly disappeared and no one heard of them ever since. Until now, that is."

"I'm quite positive that Andariath Torelloy had no companion the last time we met," Brynjolf objected with a frown. "Sinawen had helped him before, and I can't bring myself to believe she was the same person as this princess you are talking about."

"No, she was definitely not," Reinya agreed. "I have not collected all the information on Sinawen yet, but as far as I know, she was a simple errand girl, born into a less influential family leading a very simple life. But… this would mean…" her eyes widened slowly as the bits and pieces connected in her mind. "Can he use the Thu'um?"

"He most definitely can," the thief uttered sourly.

"And you said he uses you for his own benefit? Can you specify that a little?"

Brynjolf, albeit a little unwillingly, stretched his limbs and started talking about how Samuel had recovered a strange dragon claw, how he and Aislinn had met Sinawen, chased Andariath Torelloy up to the Throat of the World and how he had spoken to Aislinn after she had been freed at the elven base. All that time, Reinya's gaze was fixed on the crackling flame of the torch as she processed the whole story. Brynjolf could not help but be amazed at how her face grew more serious with every word.

"So," she concluded at last, "you were told that the Dragonborn had to devour Alduin's soul to save Tamriel, is that right?"

"Aye."

"This is bad," she shook her head as if she was trying to chase away an obnoxious fly. "This is definitely bad."

"You don't say," he snorted sardonically.

"You don't understand," she said with apparent urgency in her voice. "This all makes so much sense that it terrifies me to even think about it. He is one of those who are obsessed with power. Not simply ruling, like Elenwen wants, but wielding so much power that he could literally own the world. He wants to be eternal and invincible. So far, he gained this power by devouring mortals, but he realized that this would not work forever. The only thing that would make him even more powerful, superior to all the beings on Nirn, would be devouring a dragon. The catch is, however, that only a Dragonborn can do that."

"So what is he planning to do?" Brynjolf asked, perplexed.

"Are you really this dense or do you simply refuse to believe what I am telling you?" the elf grunted. "He wants to devour the Dragonborn, of course. After she has gotten to the peak of her power. After she has faced her destiny and defeated Alduin. He believes that he will still be stronger, no matter how much power she gets from that."

Brynjolf shook his head in disbelief. He had received plenty of shocking news already, and he was slowly starting to think that he was getting used to it, but this was simply too much. It was either this woman or Andariath Torelloy, but one of them must definitely be crazy. Unless it was a bad joke from the side of Reinya Talwen. A really, really bad joke.

So… let's say I'm not too confident about this chapter but I rewrote it so many times already that I think I have to publish it.

Just a side note – Tricya is pronounced the same as Trisha, it's just a little elven spelling. :D

Also, adding to the notes from previous chapters: when I was reading some materials for our history seminar, I finally understood the difference between "unite" and "unify". Well, it's just a guess but tell me if I'm wrong. Some people interchange them as they please, but basically, you unite people into one unit (see the similarity?), a single body that acts as one. You usually unify land, like when there are lots of independent provinces and you establish a system to connect them (including economy, infrastructure and such) and one government to control them, that is called unification. Right?

Now the thing I wanted to save for the end. I apologize that I am so late in publishing this chapter. Truth be told, it's not just because I was busy with school. The main reason is probably lack of motivation caused by insufficient response to my stories, and especially this one. In the last four weeks or so, I noticed quite a lot of people reading through the whole story. I'm not blind and I can do simple math operations like addition and multiplication quite well to see that if there is three more views to every chapter, one of which is from Finland, the other from USA and the last from Canada, that three people read the story from top to bottom. That said, there have been tens of people like this recently, and none of them, not a single one, left any trace that they have been here. I mean… yeah, I can understand when they stop at the first five chapters, because maybe they tried and dropped the story after deciding they don't like it. But this? No favorite, no follow, no review, no nothing, and I find it plain rude and ungrateful. I really don't expect anyone to review every chapter, but if all the people who read the story left a single review, I'd have them at least doubled by now (and no, it doesn't mean that about half of you write reviews, it means that barely a tenth of you do and they do it frequently – so thank you, all of you who did).

"But Mirwen, professional authors don't always get feedback…"

Yes. But they get paid and I don't, so that might be their motivation. I counted the hours spent on this story, and got to 200 hours of writing only. Triple it to have it with all the thinking included and you have about 75 working days, meaning that if I did it as a full-time job, I would spend three and a half months working on it. Compared to that, what are the two minutes of your life to write a single review?

Several of my friends told me that I should write for myself and not for the lazy ungrateful *** (I'll leave the word they used to your imagination) who keep making excuses such as "someone else will do it, so why me". They were right, of course, but I'm afraid I can't quite do it. When you decide to put the story down and publish it, you expect it to be read and commented on. I can see it's being read, but I have no idea what people think of it and barely anyone to talk to about it. So I lost my drive. And when I don't have motivation, I don't really see a reason to write and my story gets crappy, and so I just don't write.

That said, I will make no promises on when the next chapter is going to be released, because it depends on my mood. It will be released for sure (unless I die or lose my eyes or hands), but the time will be when I feel like it.

Pietersielie, Twillin, dart0808: Thank you for staying loyal to the story and for always supporting me and helping me improve.

Mirwen