A/N: song/movie "Blazing Saddles"
Chapter 16: Blazing Star
"Seriously? The first guy to be cremated here was Sadri's father-in-law, an Imperial?"
"Indeed. Legate Antony Felix. I am told it was quite a show," said Avehan. "I was still in Morrowind, so all I know is second-hand."
Curtis looked again at the cement bowl, imagining it filled with logs for a funeral pyre. "Big turnout?"
"To witness the reopening of Refugees Rest? Hundreds. Jarl Ulfric himself and members of his court attended. The Jarl, I am told, was there more to honor the Legate than to celebrate our reclaiming of this piece of land."
"I'm surprised," Curtis admitted. "This guy must have been something for Ulfric to forget that he was an officer of the Imperial Legion."
"Not just an officer. A hero," said Avehan.
"How'd people take it? I mean, the first funeral is for a non-Dunmer."
"I am told there were some protests. But then Sadri and his wife paid the majority of rebuilding costs, and he did all of the arrangements of contractors and supplies."
"Wow. That's crazy. In a good way, I mean," Curtis hastily added. "Nothing like a little excitement to make it memorable."
Avehan laughed. "Oh, it was a memorable day. I wasn't there; I was still in Morrowind. But it's easy to find people who were in attendance to tell you first-hand what they witnessed. I am told the Dragonborn arrived on her fiery skeleton horse and demanded her right to stand with the legate's children. The legate, she declared, had been unfaithful to his Dunmer wife during his convalescence, laying with one of the healers attending him. Then she unmasked, an unheard of action, and let the world see her face. A very pretty one, I am told. She and Helsette's brother strongly resembled each other, bearing testament to their shared Imperial blood, more so than Helsette, who sides more to her mother in looks."
"Holy shit." In a few moments an embarrassed grin blossomed.
"What's so funny?" Avehan asked.
"Sorry. I'm just picturing all this going down in my mind, and I keep hearing this particular ballad: "She rode a blazing saddle. She wore a shining star. Her job: to offer battle to Dragons near and far. She conquered fear, and she conquered hate. She turned our night into day. She made her blazing saddle a torch to light the way."
Avehan frowned. "Are you mocking the Dragonborn? That has the sound and face of a brave tune, but the words are a mockery."
Curtis raised eyebrows in genuine surprise. "Wow. Most people never picked up on that, hearing only the tune."
"Then they aren't listening, the fools. False heroes who ride in shining armor and on false promises and boasts. Then when real trouble slaps their ass, that's all you see of them as they run away, their burning backside. 'Shining Star' indeed."
His frown abruptly deepened to a dark scowl. "There is another lie in there. It is Helsette who wears Azura's Star. There are rumors of…" He shut up then and glared almost resentfully at Curtis.
Curtis shrugged and kept his tone light as if he didn't notice Avehan's reactions. "Won't hear it from me. Besides, that song only had real meaning when properly connected to the movie, er, play it was created for. It was a play about an innocent man almost executed and then who had to save the people who'd almost killed him."
"The Dragonborn lived in Helgen, but she was at a safe distance and watched the Dragon destroy the place. It was her half-sister Helsette who escaped the chopping block and the burning city," said Avehan blandly as if repeating a script.
"And that's the story." Curtis turned about to give the cremation bowl and Refugees Rest tower a final look. "Hey, let's head back to the inn. Children's story hour should be over by now so we can get Tirenea and all get some lunch."
At the Reclamations Chapel, the Elder had finished the story of the Prophet Velothi. Tirenea said the Elder's version downplayed the distinguishing features of the three who inspired rebellion in the dissatisfied worshipers of the Divines. It was a story neither her grandfather nor her Cousin Revyn would approve of.
Curtis asked her how her grandfather would tell it, short version, please.
By that version, the Great Ancestors were not concerned about the welfare of the dissident Aldmer but more interested in the opportunity to steal a large group of worshipers from the Divines for their own. Curtis started whistling Blazing Saddles again as he pictured the Great Ancestors as three very clever cattle rustlers. They pulled off a heist of a breeding herd of Aldmer, rebranded them Chimer, and created themselves a nation dedicated to feeding them power.
At the Refugees Rest tower, adults had lectures by Gray Quarter scholars on Nord society. Though not terribly in-depth, these were the essentials on Nord hierarchy, territory, current leaders, and general summaries of each Hold. There were tips on religious and historical subjects to be aware of and to avoid because of divisive viewpoints. There were quick lessons on Nord customs and etiquette. Information to which Holds hosted large Dunmer communities (and which Houses dominated each community). Which factions to be wary of, such as the Thalmor (danger, avoid), the Dawnguard (vampire hunters), Silver Hand (werewolf hunters, but indiscriminate of targets, bordering on banditry), and the Vigilants of Stendarr (Caution. Persecution of any daedra worshipper, the Three included). And lastly, some words on the nearby Boethiah cult. They did nothing to improve the Dunmer image in Skyrim. It was a radical cult disavowed by the Reclamations. It was tolerated by the Nords so long as its practices were confined within its own community. However, once members stepped outside, they were treated as berserk killers even by the court of the Gray Quarter.
And at the inn, newcomers could find traditional Morrowind dishes along with dishes that would introduce them to the typical proteins, grains, produce, and spices to be found in the land.
Curtis tried not to think too hard about the sausage he was eating. It was made from something that used to look like an armored caterpillar with four pincers that scraped slime from the bottom of stagnant pools of swamp water to eat all the little worms that slithered through the muck. Tirenea loved the sausage and ate it with snake blood pudding. Avehan had minced his sausage and added it to a pile of mobile fungus. Like soy sauce poured over a decapitated-at-the-table live octopus, the fungus had a chemical reaction to whatever was in the sauce it sat in. The stimulated fronds curled, giving it artificial life and mobility. They all shared the large bowl of stir-fried saltrice in the middle of the table.
He had a lot of distractions. Word had gotten out about who he was and the jobs in Winterhold, so he had people around him asking him questions about the work. It looked like the supply wagons back to Winterhold would leave in three days at the head of a caravan of hopeful workers.
Inevitably, the question came up of where and how he had learned so much of Dwemer ingenuity. The story he and Tolfdir had crafted was that his former self had gotten a hold of Dwemer machine bits and fled Solstheim with it. To him, it was just odd-shaped junk, but he'd heard there were people in Skyrim willing to trade gold for the stuff. When the ship he was on went down, well, who knew what happened? All he, Curtis, knew when he "woke" in the icy water was that his head was bleeding, he had a massive headache, and he would drown if he didn't find air. He saw gyros and glowing cores and cubes. He had to push past the lot to swim up to the air. After that, when he had time to think was when he realized that he didn't know his own name and that his mind was buzzing with visions of giant machines.
The masters at the College speculated some of those objects may have been special lexicon cubes created to teach or implant knowledge. If so, then it was meant for Dwemer minds and may cause unknowable damage to any non-Dwemer attempting to use the cubes, such as Curtis forgetting all his former life and name. There was precedent with an Argonian researcher driven partially insane when a lexicon cube had forced knowledge into her head.
As for why he used a Nord name instead of Dunmer? Curtis just shrugged and claimed it was the first thing that came to mind, and, as anyone in Winterhold will tell them, he was now only Dunmer in looks.
Avehan eventually shooed the crowd away. It was getting late, and they had to catch the last ferry of the night.
"Good crowd," said Curtis. "An engineer and a couple of architects and three accountants there. Hope they do show up for the Winterhold train."
They headed down to the ferry dock. Curtis glanced at the nearby entrance to the Yngol Barrow, remembering the quest there.
"Hold," said Avehan. Curtis froze, but not before automatically drawing Tirenea closer to protect her. She pulled out the little knife sheathed on her belt. Curtis was alarmed to see the blade burst into flames.
"Put that back. Let's not give our position away," Curtis told her. She nodded, put the knife back in its sheath but kept her hand wrapped around the hilt. Curtis did likewise with his own belt knife. The Slitter half of his mind was cursing for not having brought the Dwemer greatsword recovered from Skytemple Ruins a couple weeks ago.
Curtis started looking around. There were bound to be other people heading to the dock to the ferry. He saw the torches of others, but they were off in the distance.
Avehan's hands went up; power flared and sparked. "Mages!" he barked. Two figures in the darkness. Tirenea suddenly balled up light and threw it at them. It hit the ground and lit up the area. Curtis heard a sound behind them and saw thugs coming from the trees. They had clubs, no blades drawn. Great. Time to let Slitter have some fun.
He charged one, tackling him to the ground, and put him out with a decisive heel-of-hand strike to the jaw. He deflected the second club attack with his arm and went in for another leg tackle. Grasped and rolled to let the second attacker take the downward strike of the third club. And he added an extra temple strike before releasing his spent shield and rolling back up to face the third one. This one blocked and danced away to avoid a tackle but got a mage light globe stuck to his face courtesy of Tirenea. Curtis closed in and quickly double-punched him out.
Avehan had taken care of the mages. By the time Curtis rushed over to help him, Avehan was already recovering his thrown daggers and hand axe and was searching the bodies for clues. Good idea. Curtis rushed back to the others. They were alive but unconscious, so he'd better work quickly. Three rough-looking Nords. Low-rent thugs, he guessed. Cheap weapons and haphazard armor pieces.
"You left them alive," said Avehan. "Damn. Paperwork." He kicked one body over to face down and efficiently pulled arms around and bound the wrists with a long cord, looping it up and around the neck and back down to the wrists. Avehan tossed Curtis a length. Curtis could feel thick silk threads, like paracord, but probably stronger.
Avehan pulled up a which from around his neck and let out three blasts. In a few seconds a distant three blasts answered him.
"Find any info from the wizards? Nothing on these guys except beer money, which I've confiscated. Hope that was okay."
"Technically, no. But since I found this…" Avehan handed him a folded paper. Curtis looked. His reading had come along well enough that he could read his own description with instructions to take him to some camp south of Kynesgrove. "I think I can overlook a few missing septims."
"Huh. What are they?" he asked, nodding towards the corpses.
"Bretons. No notable items that I can see that would lead back to their employers."
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
"The three idiots were hired in Riften," said Ilya. "All they knew was that they were to capture a dark elf and do it without addling your wits. The idea was to hold you down long enough for the mages to spell you into submission."
"Works for me since it let me use my judo because I didn't bring a sword along," said Curtis. She gave him a look that had him sighing. She'd been royally pissed to hear of the attack and had used her Stormblade status to block the Nords' appeal to not be held in a dark elf prison or tried by the dark elf magistrate. Three years clearing ice and other blockages in the shit pit of the public latrines was a light sentence considering the social status of the three they'd attacked.
"They were all heading to Winterhold and only heard by chance that you were in Windhelm. Unfortunately, only the mages knew the name of their spies in Winterhold. What little we could extract from their memories were overheard conversations between the mages. It seems they might be associated with the Synod and that the Thalmor have been putting pressure on the Synod to get answers out of Winterhold College."
Curtis shrugged. "Well, I'm sure these mages were just as clueless as their muscle," he said, "in the long run, anyway. I sincerely doubt they'd had any insider secrets they took to the grave with them. And the Thalmor are way too easy to suspect and blame. I mean, no doubt they're interested in what's happening in Winterhold. But, seriously, all they have to do is like everybody else is doing — just send some people to sign up for the work crews and take a lot of notes. It's not like we make every sand mover or boatman undergo security and background checks.
"So, no. I don't believe the Thalmor wants to bring me in. I mean, if I'm delivered to them, I don't think they'll refuse. But it's easier just to let me do my thing and then pressure the Synod to pester Winterhold for info under the guise of academic exchanges. These mages sound like the kind of low-level idiots trying to pull off a heist to impress somebody so they can get in on their organization. Like, oh, like petty thieves thinking that their own little crime spree would get them an invitation and some rank in the Thieves Guild."
Ilya finally laughed. "Maybe. All right, that sounds likely. And Master Tolfdir already keeps watch on the student spies.
"But I still fear the Thalmor. They may think it's easier to learn from you by letting you run free of their control. But also kill you out of sheer pettiness if they think you're teaching anything that would challenge their belief in their superiority."
"I got that. I know you got a lot more experience than me, Ilya, and I really do respect that. The idea that I'm worth kidnapping for my brains is something I'd never thought possible. Can't let that stop me, though. You know that. Can't let the Thalmor win."
She sighed. "Of course not. So you'll stop fussing about having a bodyguard?"
"Yes, I'll stop acting like a baby about it."