Chapter Text
“Act natural,” his ferryman hushed. A command, not suggestion.
It was a smokey night, and the city ahead glowed like stars. On the wind, he heard the whole city creak and groan under pressure. The skiff shot silently through inky waters. The larger ship behind them sat moored and had dimmed all its lights. There was only the shifting of water beneath them and the buzz of insects. He steeled himself in his dark linens and shifted uncomfortably.
When they passed by the docks, the ferryman ushered his rower to hitch up the oars. The ferryman then unlocked his own and brought them the rest of the way, utterly silent but their breathing and the gentle current of water, pierced by a black-paint hull. Out of the gloom, a sphere of light appeared above a closed wooden gate, submerged into the canal and silt beneath even that. The skiff sided up to it, hidden away from sight.
A guard in a flinty bucket helm looked down at them. “You’re a little early. Who’s the new blood?”
The ferryman looked up into the light. “Don’t mind him. Already paid ‘im well.”
The guard peered up above, to narrow bridges curved atop them. “Mm. Get up close, then.”
The ferryman shifted them no more than a hand’s width away from the gate. He pushed them away from its centre, towards the guard.
“You sure you need him?”
“Canals aren’t as safe as they used to be. You should know that; what with all your boys done.”
“Aye. Not my choice.” A floating lantern carried sight of another watchman, making his rounds. The guard faked a yawn into the empty space, then turned back after the lantern faded from view. “Right, quick then. See you at the cornerclub. Same time.”
“Same time,” the ferryman replied. “Stuhn’s blessings.”
“He don’t need to know about this.”
The gate creaked open, just a sliver, and the skiff slid into the canals and the city. It was high summer, and the city of Riften reeked from it. The gate slid shut behind them and he felt subsumed into a gaping maw, a sprawl. Shades of people and vagrant eyes watched them fold into the murk and mist.
“You’re lucky I’m not charging you, lying on your behalf. He’s one of the nice ones.”
They continued on until they reached a small red lantern marked with a diamond across its tinted glass. There were no lettered signs, only a rusty old door made from iron and a small dock stretching a handful of feet into the drainage. He helped with the unloading. It was no more than a barrel’s worth, but even still, the burlap bags clinked and wheezed with each haul from the hull’s floor. The rower, a gruff man with a handsome scar across his lower lip and a bulky face, knocked on the door. Rusted metal screeched open as two wary, red eyes looked down at them.
“Sera, shanta. Bring it in.” The door swung open. Inside, a soft siren call of melody emerged into the open air. Scantily clad women and men with fat purses stood or sat around in the main area. The bartender slipped small, green bottles to a couple who escaped off into deeper rooms down a dingy hallway.
“I’m bringing you no further.” The ferryman told him. “This is our stop; we’re just runners. Go on, you got what you wanted.”
“Stuhn’s blessings.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
On his lonesome again. It had been a brutal week after crossing the Jeralls and resting in King’s Cross a few days, traversing goat trails and hinterlands before and since, scraping together the last of his coin to just survive the trek. He was down to empty air, it felt like. The month before had been much the same, and so this was his first real experience of civilization in nearly the whole of summer. He had his life’s worth in the pack slung over his shoulder, and all he carried on him, and even that was half of what he’d started with. He’d paid the runners the near-last of his economic status for passage into this city, this foetid canal. He watched rats scurry underfoot, past a gaunt and pale man with an empty cup near him. He snored, his breath shallow.
The man took off. He did not like that Riften felt like he belonged. He’d heard it was a place to disappear, a runner’s haven, and a place scarred and burned. This Riften, however, the one his very feet were submersed into, was damp and reeked of fish and filth and worse. His nose wrinkled in the must and softly rotting wood down there. A lithe black cat peered at him with golden eyes out of the fog. He felt a long way below the world, as if he’d been buried. A growing roar of people caught his attention from the errant breeze and brought his attention back to the world at present. A gentle fragrant drizzle of rain slowly fell from the sky and collected in his hair to glitter in the lamplight. He followed the sound as his linens grew taut and began to cling. He stood in front of a small place, Rijga’s Fortune, and looked past sturdy and damp wood and tinted windows to see another den. He dipped inside.
The smell of a roaring fire and heavy incense blocked out much of the stench here at the lowest part of the city, where the canals sometimes lapped at the causeways if the breeze got too strong. The man found himself a place at the bar and waited, patient, observant. He clutched his coin, resting gently inside his linen coat. He produced a few of them and set them down on the table.
“Anything,” he told the bartender.
The man eyed him and then shrugged, filling a mug of draught for him. It was cheap ale, but that was all he needed. For now. He wondered how expensive a bottle of wine would be, and then dismissed the idea from his head. He was near-penniless. He had no place to stay and would find himself sleeping in the canal soon enough if he wasn’t careful.
He looked around and saw a corner of people playing cards. In another, hushed business behind a half-wall. There was a man passed out on a table, surrounded by laughing friends, ale and other drink dripping onto him in sprays of flailed cups. He eyed some of the other patrons at the bar, all unremarkable and uninteresting. All of them carried weapons, he noted. Most looked like mercenaries or other undergrowth from the lower levels of Riften, where the refuse was thrown.
“Ne’er seen you before.” The bartender told him. Time had aged him well, a salt-and-rock beard of a well-established Nord who’d seen his share of winter. Sturdy arms washed mugs with a ragged cloth.
“Not from here,” he told him.
The bartender shook his head. “That’s easy enough to tell. You some topsider?”
“No. From out of town.”
“Right.” He served another drink, took a few more coin. “Well, don’t cause anything. We have it well enough down here. You need work, ask around. Just, watch your hands. Better the table than them, eh?”
He looked down to see the countless marks and grooves where old knives had made their mark deep into the wood. The counter had been warped from it, and even in the dim lighting he could see the other tables all treated the same. His hands began to ache a phantom pain.
“Thanks,” he said. “Any interesting places down here?”
“Sure. Depends on what you find interesting.”
He looked around, and then set down a few more coins. “Information.”
“Ah,” he scratched his chin and swept up the coin in a great hand. “If you go back a ways,” he pointed left out the door, “and then dip past that blue lantern out there, you’ll end up in Smuggler’s Run. Bit of a nighttime market. All kinds of things to be bought and sold there. Just ah,” he gestured his head towards some of the Dunmer patrons, “don’t be too rude. Perhaps you’ll get along; out of town, you both.”
The barman turned away and went back to serving patrons. He felt eyes on him, not many, but enough to be on edge. A stranger in a foreign city is an easy target. He looked it, felt it on himself. He traded in his bow for a few extra coin, and all his arrows, save one sharpened head of refined ebony he kept on him. It was a good luck charm. Sometimes. All he had was an old iron knife he’d stole away with. Everything else, his entire life, sat in a hopefully unmolested home just beyond the walls of Bruma. He wondered when he’d send a letter.
The ale refreshed his spirits, watered down bilge that it was, and he steadied himself and made it out the door. He would go to Smuggler’s Run, after he felt that opportunist eyes were not laid upon him. There was another passage not far that he went through, alleyways networking and stretching around and under the city. He passed by dens and crowded homes, communes in and of themselves harbouring all kinds, a small temple to the tribunal – not quite a rare sight, but a surprising one regardless – and a few shops, or crates he sometimes had to climb over. He kept looking behind him, above him, even as the streets above subsumed everything and all he had to navigate was gloomy lamplight and darker walls on dark passages.
He ducked into an alcove where old rotting linens and barrels and crates were arranged so the rainwater above wouldn’t drip onto them below, and stayed motionless, halting his breathing, burying himself into the pile. He waited there for a while, hearing footsteps and worrying. They chattered, indistinctly, for a minute and then walked off. Finally, when naught but flickering flames could be heard alongside the rats scuttling, he got back out and looked around. The warrens were empty, and he decided to follow back the way he came and then on to Smuggler’s Run.
It was a small bazaar, when he’d found it, reminding him of the fleece-markets of Anvil’s lower dockyards; skiffs lined up through a squalid canal with any number of goods atop it. He even saw his ferry there, though they paid him no mind but a twinkle of recognition behind hooded eyes. Two armed men stood further into the alleyway and glanced at him briefly, though resumed conversation swiftly. A woman was tying up sheaves of herbs; frost mirriam and ginseng, lady’s mantle and primrose, jazbay grapes in small masonic jugs. Another skiff nearby carried incense, burning slowly, and spices, another not much further with fish, another with dyes and textiles. Yet another carried saltrice and wheat and corn. Small as it was, he felt like he could buy anything he’d ever dreamed of, here. So long as he had the coin and tongue to haggle. He looked over the brief water and saw another taphouse, lacking a name or sign, and walked into it. Immediately he smelled a menagerie of potent scents in the air; strong Dunmeri scents, particularly. He sat down in one of the seats near the warren wall and waited.
A Dunmer girl made her way over, dressed in traditional yet muted clothes. “Sera? What can I get for you?”
He looked at her and then fished out a few more coins from his pocket. “Would you happen to know anyone who trades in gossip?”
The girl looked around and then whisked the coins away. “Besides my sister? You’ll want to try him,” she gestured to a gaunt man off in the corner, sitting alone at present. Another stood near him, arms crossed on a large chest, with what looked like traditional Dunmeri red and Nordic woad in sigils he’d never seen before.
“Thank you,” he said and waved her off. She curtseyed and sauntered off to another table.
He watched the table for a few minutes and then steeled himself and walked over. As he approached, both sets of eyes locked on him. He felt vulnerable, studied. The Dunmer in the seat stared at him with burgundy eyes that vivisectioned him.
“Let him through,” the Dunmer called to his guard. “We’re all serjos here.”
The guard shifted out of the way.
“Now,” he flexed as the young man sat down and slid over in the booth, “what can Kindly do for you?”
“Kindly?”
“That’s me. It’s a stage name.” The Dunmer smiled gold at him.
“I’m looking for- ” he choked a moment and regained his composure. “I’m looking for an old friend.”
“And who might they be?”
“Last I heard, they went by Stormshatter. They were going to Windhelm.”
He watched Kindly’s eyes, which did not fit his name, and the Dwemer clockwork ticking away behind them. “I’ve heard the name, though I can’t tell you where from. Not without something.” His hand tapped the table, twice. “First though, a drink.”
He snapped his fingers and the man felt the entire house hush a moment before the serving girl ran over. “Yes, Sera Kindly?”
“A bottle of flin, my dear. Mine’s run dry.”
“Of course, just a moment.” She rushed off as fast as her dress would allow.
“She’s a nice girl, Idrea. Anyone who’s kind to her, I pay the favour in turn. You like flin?” Kindly asked with a glimmer of white teeth, orange lantern light cascading off it.
“More of a wine man, personally.”
“Sarmat! I should have guessed. Flin’s on me, serjo. For causing no trouble here or anywhere just yet.”
The man chuckled. “I’ve caused more trouble than you think, serjo. Look at this.”
He slid over a piece of jewelry; a necklace, bound in silver and with golden filigree inlaid. A beautiful gemstone sat in its heart, a ruby, so pure it glinted like the Amulet of Kings. In Cyrodilic, working clockwise, were words inscribed, “They Of Noble Roots Grow Like Summer Trees”. The Dunmer looked it over, and then again, and felt it between his fingers.
“Here you are, sera,” Idrea set down the flin with two small glasses.
“Ah, thank the Three. Here, for your trouble,” and he slid a coin to the other side of the table; pure gold, bearing the name Septim.
She took it graciously, blushed, and bowed before running off. Kindly poured into both glasses, filling each with grace and precision. Kindly then slid the necklace out of sight.
“I’ll admit to you, that is a gift indeed. Now. Let’s get to business.” He downed all his flin in one go and poured himself more. The young man tasted his but drank slowly.
“I’ve heard the name you’re after. Not much, but whispers have come from up north. Gaining a reputation, surely, but I can’t tell you much. He’s never been here, or I’d have known about it. I can’t offer much, I’m afraid – but if he truly is your friend, then you know more than I do.” He drank his next shot of flin. “Though never think I’ve charlatan’d you for anything. When you make it down to Windhelm, as I hear of him from there, find yourself a woman by the name of Milune Giniia, and tell her the name Daynyth Hlaalu and to ‘burn ash to ebony for the long walk home’. She will listen – she’s like me, and owes me a debt. Oh, and avoid my cousin down there. He’s but a farmer, but he acts as though we’re still Third Era Dunmer. Dreadfully shameful.”
“I understand why you’ve picked a stage name, serjo. Thank you.”
Daynyth smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “Always a pleasure, sera. Now, I ask but one thing in return, if you’ll indulge. What is your stage name?”
“My stage name?” He asked.
“Of course. We are all actors, and the world is our theatre. Or we are puppets, dancing another’s tune. We all have a performance, and each one deserves a name. So, which one do you choose?”
“The Raven.”
Daynyth grinned at him. “Excellent. Should I learn more, I shall have that information in your hands faster than you can fly. As it seems, with such a great treasure given, I am in your debt. A position I rarely find myself in. Care to know anything else?”
The man thought for a moment, drank more flin, and then asked, “Where would a man like me look for work?”
The infobroker’s eyes narrowed, curious, and then he chuckled. “A man like you. A raven. I don’t have any work for you – not yet, at least. While I am always searching for watchful eyes and sharpened ears, I am not an organizer of work, I simply… encourage people to meet. If you stay here in the city a few days, we will be in touch.”
The man extended his hand. “Deal.”
Kindly shook it and grinned again. “Pleasure, then. I bid you farewell. I believe those souls behind you wish to speak with Kindly, too. Until next, serjo.”
“Until next,” the man replied. He walked out, past the crowds, and into the canal again.
The lights had dimmed and a few of the skiffs had been covered in linen, their owners off resting for the night. The man wandered until he found a bunkhouse near the waterline. It was a cheap place, a few rooms lined with beds, but the woman asked for only a few coins, leaving him with even less than he gave, and asked no questions. He sloughed off his pack and pushed it under the bed. It was rickety and made of straw, and it was hard for him to think amidst the snoring, but it was a luxury to relax into a bed for the first time in weeks.
He felt out of place, so far down, buried and forgotten. While he hadn’t been in civilization for nearly all summer, where he had been before had always left him with a sense that he’d belong. This city, this canal, this room, beds going softly necrose and rainwater symphoniously falling into a scattered array of buckets he had to be careful not to trip over, the way the air here smelled vaguely sweet like rot or addiction, this bed he found himself on that did not welcome him. He had no face here, and he’d given nearly the last of his fortune towards secrets and gossip. He sighed, and watched as a Khajiit’s ear flickered, a bed away from him. He wondered if he should even stay laying down. He already had fleas, but they were his. This place felt like one where worms and worse lived in the mold and hazy corners. Anxious sweat in the humid room made his skin crawl. Nothing sat comfortably with him in that moment, isolated, subtracted from the world, reduced to a room filled with addled eyes and vagrant minds.
Something in him threatened to snap and emotion washed over him like the water, water everywhere, flowing down from the temple, the washed streets above. Perhaps he should’ve picked Rat as a stage name, instead, though bring plague he did not, he carried ill omen if only to himself. He’d gone all this way, and he knew in his bones he’d go further. Was it an exertion worth the effort? He would not survive the weeks to come if he did not rest and relax, but right now he did neither. He tried to force himself asleep.
Footsteps echoed in the other room. There were indistinct words coming from one of them, then another in reply. They grew closer, passing by rooms. The man steeled himself, face stoic and heart brave. A helmet with darkened eyes looked in, a lantern carried in one hand. The helmet gestured behind the wall to his companion and they both looked in. They both walked in, slowly, their armoured rags rattling and clinking together, and just as the man opened his eyes again to see the commotion, a fist flew into his stomach. The air was knocked clean out of him, and he gasped, and another hit crashed into him. He tried to dodge the third, but his lack of breathe and fatigue meant all he managed was to shift in his bed. Instead of being struck in the chest, his left shoulder bore a terrible strength upon it. They threw him off the bed.
“Search him,” the helmeted one said. They rooted through the bed, the pack, and himself. They cared not for his boots and found only a handful of coins.
“Fuck, that’s it? Skittish creature like you, should’ve been loaded.”
“Leave him then. Useless. Not even worth our time.”
One of them gave him one last kick in the guts for good measure and he felt a rib strain under the pressure. They left, angrily, swiftly, knocking over a skooma bottle as they stormed past. One poor soul got shoved out of the way, tumbling over their bed and onto the ground on the other side as they marched past. The man laid against the ground, feeling dirt against his face and coughed and wheezed as everyone looked at him or tried to go back to sleep. The sound of glass shattering in a distant room echoed through the warrens.
“Sorry, friend,” the Khajiit from before said. The feline squatted to look at him, bent legs and mangy grey fur and pale, yellow eyes looked down on him. “Old lady probably tipped them off. Her eyes are going, but newcomers struggle here all the same. Always thinks they’re here to hide some ill-gained gold.”
He left swiftly, as soon as he was able to pick himself up. Walking past the entryway, the woman who’d welcomed him in for pennies now glared at him as she swept up shards of a broken bottle. You gambled and lost. Not my fault, he thought.
The man wouldn’t sleep the rest of the night, but still he’d dream. He stared up at the city above with envy, and then at the stars beyond even that, between swathes of rainy clouds, with wonder. “My dear friend,” he softly began to say to himself, the wind, the world. “I hope the stars in your sky are as captivating as mine. I miss you utterly. One day, I will see you again, upon pleasant tides and under a golden sun.”
The man felt for the knife he’d tucked in his boot hours ago, the one who’d neglected to come to his aid when needed it most. An ugly thing of iron; bent and ready to rust. For now, you’re the only friend I have. I’ll have need of you soon. I’m sure of it.