User:JohnB/Fanfiction/Scotti's Revenge 1

Laila

A CHANGE OF SCENERY:

About half a year had passed since Scotti’s return to the capitol. Of course, the Atrius Building Commission immediately moved to impound the bundle of contracts that Scotti had brought back from Silvenar. The Vanech Building Commission countered that the Imperial company had already released Scotti from employment, meaning he was a free agent when he used Vanech’s stationery to draw up the contracts. The matter was brought before the emperor, who surprisingly ruled in favor of the Vanech company.

Thus released from any obligation to his former employer, Scotti began to play the star employee at Vanech, which actually had as little use for him as his former employer did but felt obligated to keep him on for appearance’s sake. Scotti sensed this almost as soon as Vanech won the suit.

He was immediately put in charge of processing the mountain of contracts that he'd made. Negotiating contracts was easy; the hard part was procuring all the nuts and bolts. Orders had to go out to companies all over Tamriel because not everything was produced in Cyrodiil. If a supplier had gone out of business, an alternate had to be found. And larger projects had specifications that looked like bound volumes of Encyclopedia Tamrielica. He begged for an assistant or two but was told, "You made the contracts; you process them!" It was sheer madness—but maybe the idea was to make clear to him that he was free leave on his own at any time. The pride of the House of Scotti wasn't going to let him do that.

On the personal level, hardly a day went by without people suddenly speaking in hushed tones when he entered a room. He could feel their side glances at him in the cafeteria as they whispered and chuckled together. They were all familiar with the poor sod, named Reglius, who’d allegedly tossed his satchel full of their contracts to Scotti before falling to his death (honestly, he did—read the story yourself), and everybody vouched that Scotti would have had to pry the satchel from Reglius’s cold, dead fingers. Somehow Scotti learned that the going nickname for him was “Son of M’aiq the Liar”.

Worse yet, work on procuring and sending construction materials to Silvenar went at a mudcrab’s pace with numerous messages coming in from Silvenar complaining that materials that had been sent many moons ago never arrived. Now, don’t forget that the freight carts have to slog through a Valenwood war zone, and the enemy is in just as much need of building materials. And then cost overruns happen all the time—that’s all part of the profit motive: finalizing a contract is only half the business; the other half is overcharging for the delays. However, being at heart an architect rather than a businessman, Scotti saw what was going on and was horrified that all his work was coming to nought. Something had to be done about this. But what he really needed was a change of environment where people didn’t know him, mock him, or accuse him.

He stepped up to the Lord Vanech’s door. He almost knocked but then thought, “But what if he says no?” He took a deep breath, rapped on the door, and entered without being bidden.

Lord Vanech looked up startled. Then he mumbled, “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

“Your Lordship, we need to discuss the Silvenar contracts.”

“Why?!” Vanech blurted as he tossed his quill pen aside, thinking Scotti was now about to try and scotch everything.

Scotti suddenly felt less certain whether what he was doing was the right thing. He groaned inside and then began pacing back and forth scratching his head and trying to find the right words. Everything came out disjointed about the complaints and the cost overruns and how nothing was getting done.

Vanech was coming to regret having fought with Atrius over the contracts Scotti had returned with. What originally looked like a bonanza was more like a quagmire. If Valenwood was serious about rebuilding, it would help greatly if it ceased hostilities with its neighbors. The first successful rebuilding project, which was in Falinesti, was very soon burned to the ground a second time when the Altmeri from Summerset overran the area yet again.

And then there was Scotti. What does one do with such a worthless specimen of humanity? Keeping him on the payroll was like sitting on the painful carbuncle on Vanech's behind. If only he could have that carbuncle surgically removed!

Vanech leaned back in his armchair.

“All right, I’ve heard enough,” he finally said to Scotti, “so tell me, what do you propose we do?”

“We need a point man in Silvenar. I'm just the right man because I’ve been there and actually negotiated with the Silvenar himself. I'm ready to set out tomorrow, if-if that's agreeable with your Lordship.”

Vanech thought for a moment.

“I tell you what,” he responded, "let's have it your way."

"Huh?"

“Seriously! Go home and start packing. Be back here this afternoon to pick up some gold and your letter of appointment.”

Scotti exulted over how the boss was so easily persuaded as he rushed home and threw a few things into a tote bag. He knew from experience that the road to Silvenar was treacherous, so the less he carried with him the better. Then having received a sealed envelope, a letter of credit, and a hefty purse from the comptroller, he made his way to the caravansary to spend the night and get on the first caravan out.

THE UNWELCOME GUEST:

Scotti had no idea to what extent the company would honor it’s letter of credit. The gold itself was enough to last a good long time. Given that all the roads through Valenwood were swarming with either highwaymen or rampaging soldiers or both, he decided the occasion called for a hefty “last supper”. It was also doubtful whether his next meal was going to be roasted Khajiit or tree bark and grass. He sat himself down and ordered the best of everything in the caravansary restaurant.

Suddenly a rather tall, attractive woman plopped into the chair across the table from him. He continued chewing as he looked vacantly at her and then swallowed hard.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“Of course not, but you soon will,” she answered cheerily.

There was an awkward silence.

“Uh, you shouldn’t be here,“ he finally said, “the ‘ladies’ congregate at the saloon district on the other side of town.”

“Are you calling me a streetwalker?!” she snarled.

Heads turned because such words were never uttered in decent establishments such as this.

“Ssshhh! Well, what am I supposed to think when you suddenly enter my space uninvited ?!” he asked keeping his voice low. “Look, if it’s alms you want, I can give you a few drakes, but please for the love of Talos and all his saints, be on your way and leave me alone.”

Her face softened.

“How much have you got?”

Scotti’s blood ran cold. He shouldn’t have ordered the best of everything. You only live once—but still.

“As I said, I can give you a few drakes...”

“I understand you’re going to Silvenar.”

“Wait..., where did you hear that?”

The girl winced as she thought, “Ouch, shouldn’t have said that!”

“Well...” she fumbled for words, “these caravans do go to Silvenar...”

“...and every caravansary along the way,” Scotti added. “So tell me, where are you going?”

“To Silvenar,” she answered. “I...I just thought that if, you know, if you and I could pretend to be a couple, I would stand a better chance of maintaining my virtue along the way.”

This had to be the strangest favor anybody had ever asked of him.

“Why?”

“Something that happened to my mom. She’s a Bosmer.”

“A tall Bosmer—yeah, right,” Scotti chuckled dryly.

“The man I call ‘father’ was an Altmer battle-mage who cornered her alone in a storage room and created me.”

Ah, that’s where the tall willowy form and skin like old ivory came from!

“I see. You have a ticket? (Uh-huh.) Your own money? (Uh-huh.) All set to go? (Uh-huh.) Leaving tomorrow? (Uh-huh.)”

Something still didn’t seem quite right about all this.

“The benefit to you is quite understandable,” he finally said, “but what’s in it for me?”

“A good laugh and a tall tale? (Uh-uh.) Companionship? (Uh-uh.) Protection? (Now you’re talking. How?)”

She glanced about and then undid her gown to show him the sheathed Daedric tanto hanging from a cord around her neck. He quickly motioned to her to cover it up again.

“Any more questions?” she said blankly.

STAYING ALIVE:

Scotti was a poor sleeper whenever he was in a room not his own, on a bed not his own, and using a pillow not his own. He would drift in and out of sleep, wake with an involuntary jump, or mentally analyze something totally innocuous, like how does one square a circle? Some time after midnight, he got the feeling that last night’s supper didn’t agree with him, and he was about to get up to go to the loo when he heard a distinct click in the lock. He reached under the pillow to grasp the hilt of a glass dagger he kept there, then slid under the bed and waited.

From the hallway light that came from under the door, he could see a silhouette of two bare feet creeping silently toward his bed. They stopped. The intruder seemed to be surveying the situation and wondering what to do with an empty bed.

"Now or never!" Scotti thought, and lying sideways raised the dagger above his head then brought it down with a swift slash across the right ankle.

There was a shriek of pain, and the person fell crumpled onto the floor. Scotti scrambled out from under the bed and lit a lantern. He found the girl hunched on the floor with blood running from her ankle.

He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face toward his.

“What’s the meaning of this?!” he hissed.

“Can't you see I’m hurt?” she said through clenched teeth while grasping her ankle. Blood was starting to well up between her fingers.

“I’ll hurt you some more if you don’t tell me who sent you.”

She shook her head. He grasped her hair harder and could feel some of the roots popping out.

“Stop! Please! Somebody called Vanech...”

Did he hear right? He shoved her roughly away.

“Why?”

“I’m never told why. A person can get rubbed out for any number of reasons. Why should this Vanech send the Dark Brotherhood after you?”

“No way! He even advanced several thousand drakes to cover my expenses!”

“Yeah, right! That gold was actually meant for me. My prepayment.”

Scotti’s eyes popped wide open when the thought hit him. He grabbed for his bag and rummaged for the letter of appointment. He tore open the envelope and pulled out a...blank sheet of paper.

“That son of a nix hound!” he roared balling up the paper and pitching it at her face.

She turned away afraid he might give her a black eye as well.

“I’m sorry,” he said regaining his composure. “You were only doing your job. Here let me see your leg. Hmm, not so deep. Now brace yourself because this is going to sting a bit.”

He used the glass dagger to cut a strip of cloth from the hem of his nightshirt. Then he sprinkled a few drops of Cyrodiilic brandy onto the gash, and she kept repeating to herself through clenched teeth, "Be strong! Be strong!" He wound the cloth strip around her ankle firmly to stop the bleeding. For a Dark Brother (or Sister) to be injured during a job was most unusual, so this wound came as a tremendous surprise to her.

“You’re very kind," she panted. "I’m the one who should be sorry. I was about to snuff you out and didn’t even know or care why.”

He noticed a bowstring still tangled in her hand. He took it from her and held it out the ends at arm’s length.

“Well, I'll be danged!" he mused. "I’ve never heard of anyone dying because one of these. What were you going to do?"

"String you up from a rafter."

"With this?"

“No, with a rope, but first I had to strangle you. It was my idea. The Brotherhood had set a graduation project for me, in which I was not to spill blood but to make the job look self-inflicted.”

“Really?!” Scotti chuckled in amusement. “You were going to heft my dead weight up to one of these rafters?!”

“It will astound you what a woman is capable of doing,” she answered dryly, “when she’s trained to kill.”

An icy shower seemed to hit Scotti.

“So what’s it going to be? String me up? Or play at being Mr. and Mrs. Smith all the way to Silvenar?”

“Failure at the Brotherhood means instant dismissal,” she mumbled glancing down. “I was doing so well as an apprentice. They said, ‘Oh, don't worry! This guy will be a push-over.’ Yeah, right!” she said as if responding to them after finding out otherwise. She looked at him and wiped away a few tears, “But you, Mr. Smith, are one of a kind!”

“Scotti. Decumus Scotti,” he said holding out his hand.

“Laila. Just call me Laila,” she responded as they shook hands.

A CHANGE IN PLANS:

Scotti was pleased to have a guest in his room. Laila slept on the bed while he bulged over the edge of the sofa, but he slept as if released from a thousand demons.

When he woke, Laila was behind a screen changing into clothes she’d retrieved from her own room.

“Good morning, Mrs. Smith!” Scotti said cheerfully and stretched his arms and legs.

“Oh please, Mrs. Scotti, if you don’t mind,” she responded playfully.

“Ah, Laila Scotti—what a pretty name! And so shall it be!”

He removed the bandage from her ankle and surveyed the situation.

"Can you walk?"

"Slowly. It hurts."

He made a new bandage and wound it around her foot and ankle to make it look as if it was a sprain.

They boarded the coach to Arenthia just across the border in Valenwood. Arenthia was close enough to the frontier that hostile forces didn’t dare even appear to encroach on Cyrodiilic territory, so Arenthia was spared the horrors of war. But like every border town, it was a hodge-podge of races and nationalities looking either to exploit or be exploited, for better or for worse.

They arrived in Arenthia around sundown. Laila had never traveled this far, and what she saw horrified her: the destitution and misery of refugees from the war zone.

“Decumus,” she said, “I never imagined humanity laid so low as I see here now.”

“Laila,” he responded somberly, “keep in mind, this is the good part of Valenwood.”

She looked at him thinking he might be joking. No, it was no joke.

They let the caravan continue on its way into the heart of darkness called Valenwood and stayed in Arenthia to consider their options. There was no commission for him to take up in Silvenar; in fact, he was supposed to be dead now, so using the letter of credit was out of the question as well. Laila had no particular reason to be in Silvenar. There were supposed to be maternal relatives there, but if she were to go calling on any of them, it's certain the door would be slammed in her face.

Being mixed was bad enough, but being a mixed Altmer/Bosmer made it worse.

Intermarriage between the races was frowned upon, even if it was “accidental”, because each race had its inborn attributes that could get mixed up. For example, the arrogant Altmeri were supposed to be the noblest and most civilized of the elves while the tree-hugging Bosmeri were the least civilized and thus not averse to cannibalism. So what does one make of an Altmer/Bosmer? Being a “barracks baby” certainly ruled out nobility in Laila, and the only trees she ever saw were those growing in the city. As far as she was concerned, the attributes of one canceled out the attributes of the other, like adding +1 and -1.

Arenthia did have one very attractive feature—a promenade where the locals enjoyed walking in the evening. Decumus and Laila sat on a park bench watching the sunset paint the clouds gold, orange, and pink. With the air turning cooler, Laila bundled up in a shawl and snuggled close to Scotti.

“Decumus.”

“Hmm?”

“Was there ever another woman in your life?”

“My mother, a sister who married into an aristocratic family.”

“No, I mean a ‘special’ woman.”

He shook his head.

“No. The Scottis are an aristocratic family as well, but so low in rank that one step lower and we’d be commoners. Technically, I'm an Esquire. The cushy civil service jobs weren’t open to me because I didn’t have the connections. So I studied in the Department of Architecture at the Imperial University, received a parchment to prove it, and while all my classmates moved on to high-level civil engineering positions, I was hired to push a pencil at the Atrius Building Commission. There was no lack of suitable girls out there, but they all wanted upward mobility, so I was left empty-handed until you came along. I was perfectly contented with the single life, but when I’m with you, I feel very differently." He gave her a smooch on the forehead. "And you, were there any ‘special’ men?”

“No. When I came of age, my mother wanted me to follow her footsteps into the legion, but I turned her down. I couldn’t bear all the guys leering at me as my body started gaining some shape, and I never entered a storage room without another female with me. A friend suggested I join the Dark Brotherhood and make use of my fighting skills. I thought I could forego male companionship altogether, but when I'm with you, I feel very differently.”

Scotti removed the gold signet ring from his left little finger and slipped it onto her left ring finger.

“I want you to have this,” he said, “to commemorate our engagement. However, I’m sure you’re aware that a human generation is maybe a tenth as long as yours, so we will have to say good-bye before you’re ready for it.”

She smiled as she gazed on the family crest that would soon be hers as well.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear.

They decided to wait until their situation was more settled. Tamrielic law made no provisions for marriage. For want of a Shrine of Dibella, a simple oath to love and to hold till death do them part was deemed quite sufficient. Only marriage among blood relatives was taboo.

There was twilight in the western sky as they slowly made their way back to their hotel.

THE INTRUDER:

One thing that Laila didn’t take into consideration is that nobody survives the Brotherhood. You can’t just walk away from them. They will track you down and make sure the skills you learned from them will not be shared with the Morag Tong, or anybody else for that matter.

That evening, a black-suited figure suddenly appeared on their balcony, and ran toward her to cut her down. But she quickly produced something like a pipette and blew it at him causing him to freeze like a statue.

“What did you just do?!” Decumus shouted amazed.

“I used a blowgun. It works for two minutes, so we’ve got to get rid of this guy before he becomes un-paralyzed!”

It really was like moving a heavy statue, but as soon as they got him to the balcony, he recovered and started to struggle.

“Push him over!” Laila shouted.

He wouldn’t budge and was trying to fight with his back to the balcony railing.

“Grab his feet!” Laila shouted to Decumus.

Decumus bent down, grabbed his ankles, and pitched him over the railing. There was a scream as the assassin fell from the fourth floor and hit the rocks below with a sickening thud.

“So much for such riff-raff!” Laila said blandly and returned to their room.

But Decumus stayed as if riveted to the railing.

“Decumus?”

No response.

She approached and found him staring in a catatonic state.

“Decumus, are you all right?” she asked frightened.

She didn’t know that he had seen Reglius fall to his death during his first foray into Valenwood, so all of this was very mysterious to her.

She led him to the bed and tucked him in.

After about a week he suddenly came to. Laila was nodding off in a chair next to the bed. Decumus had no recollection as to what had happened, and all of this was very strange to him.

“Laila?” he asked shaking her arm. She woke.

“Decumus! You’re back! Oh, thank the gods!” she exclaimed hugging him.

“What happened?”

She told him of his mental breakdown after witnessing the assassin fall to his death, and how she’d been using the money he’d brought to keep them housed and fed in this hostelry.

“Did the authorities look into this?” he asked with trepidation.

“Yes, they did. They invited themselves in, and when they saw you in bed and asked about you, I told them my husband was inconvenienced because he was afflicted with the collywobbles. They immediately excused themselves and were gone from here.

"I imagine the Brotherhood put this down as a botched vendetta on a botched vendetta. I doubt they'll dispatch any more of their best people to harry us.”

“Laila, you’re a genius!” Decumus exulted.

“So what happens now?”

Decumus spoke as if recalling something from a dream he'd just awakened from.

“I have some unfinished business with Lord Vanech. I’ll give you enough of our gold to live on after having crossed over to Ebonheart. I’ll meet you there when I’m finished.”

LATE FOR THE APPOINTMENT:

Laila had been waiting for weeks, sitting on the steps overlooking the Ebonheart docks. Every day ships would come in disgorging passengers, but she got so accustomed not to finding Decumus among them that she just stared languidly at the coming and going.

“I hope he didn’t do something stupid and land in jail,” she thought.

“Lai~la!” a voice sang out in front of her.

She sat bolt upright and listened intently.

“Lai~la!”

“There it is again! Decumus, is that you?”

She was bowled backward when he suddenly appeared right in front of her like magic. His hair was nearly shoulder length, and he’d grown a scruffy beard, so he looked more like a Nord than an Imperial.

“B’vec, Decumus! You nearly made me wet myself!”

He was nearly doubled over in laughter. “Sorry, my love! I just couldn’t resist!”

“Where’ve you been, you palooka?!” she cried jumping into his arms and holding him tight.

“I had to make a detour to Seyda Neen, on the prisoner transport ship.”

“Oh, gods! You’re not in trouble, are you?”

“Not yet anyway. It was the only ship I could stow away on without arousing suspicion. All the gold I had was spent, so it was the only way to make the crossing.”

“But what happened?”

SCOTTI'S REVENGE 2

This part is a flashback to what Scotti did in the Imperial City during Laila’s absence. He also formulates a plan B in the event things don’t work out with Laila, and they’re bound not to, given the gravity of his crime.

THE FIRST REVENGE:

At this point, dear reader, it is best to back up and watch Scotti’s movements in Arenthia after Laila left for Vvardenfell. To hear Scotti tell it would not be as interesting as actually watching it happen.

Scotti made his way to the black market to do some rather costly wheeling-and-dealing. He first needed a “Thief Ring” enchanted with constant-effect 100% Chameleon. Then he needed a flask of highly volatile pyroil tar, a substance so inflammable that it requires official permission to purchase and use. He then spent the last of his gold on a ticket back to the Capitol.

In the mean time, Lord Vanech learned that the Silvenar of Silvenar had threatened to invalidate all the contracts if he continued to drag his feet in honoring his side of the deal, so he felt obliged to set up a task force of clerks to process the contracts in a more timely fashion.

Lord Vanech was in his office signing the paperwork when suddenly there was a sound like a clap of thunder and the windows shook. The clerks, their faces blackened and the hair singed off their heads, ran into his office.

“Your Lordship! The contracts! All burned to ashes!”

“Sound the alarm!” Vanech called out.

More employees came in.

“Your Lordship! The building is going fast! We have to get out of here!”

They stood outside helplessly as a column of fire and smoke shot skyward from the roof and flames shot out of the windows.

Vanech ran to the local chapter of the Dark Brotherhood.

“What is the status on Decumus Scotti?!” he demanded to know.

The task giver cleared his throat and mopped his brow as he was forced to admit that the assassination was a failure.

“AND YOU LET HIM GO?!” he bellowed. “If I can’t get satisfaction, then return my money!”

For good measure, Vanech then went to the police to report the arson. Scotti was now a marked man as he underwent yet another hand-to-mouth existence trudging northward overland to the sea. The Thief Ring helped immensely as it rendered him totally invisible to sleep where he pleased and wander the roads totally undetected.

ANOTHER UNWELCOME GUEST:

The young woman entered and surveyed the well-furnished dining room of the Census and Excise office in Seyda Neen, and her eye immediately fell on the iron dagger stuck upright in the table. She approached and pulled it from the table. She waited because she was no longer sure if he was still there.

“Come on, show yourself!” she demanded. “I know you’re in here.”

Scotti suddenly appeared seated at the dining table helping himself to somebody’s lunch. He was unkempt and wore ill-fitting clothing that looked as if it might have been stolen.

“Can you pass me the bread?” he asked pointing to the basket on the bench.

She glared at him.

“...please?” he added.

She picked up the basket and dropped it angrily on the table.

"Thank you."

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Do you mind if we talk later?” he asked as he tore off a chunk of bread and piled crab meat onto it. “They were feeding you, but they weren’t feeding me.”

She sat down across from him at the table with the dagger pointed in his direction.

“Oh, and could you put that down?” he added. “I’ve got a wife waiting for me in Ebonheart, so I have no intention of harming you in any way.”

“Oh, so you’ve got a wife!” she chuckled sardonically.

“Well, sort of,” he continued and poured himself a drink. “We just haven’t consummated it yet.”

“Oh, is that so!” she said in mock surprise. “So you wanted to get cozy with another girl before you tie the knot, eh?”

“Listen, can I explain myself later? There’s somebody at the other end waiting for your papers.”

He slipped the Thief Ring back on, and she found herself seemingly alone again.

She presented her papers to Sellus Gravius and received a packet and some gold to live on for a few days.

YUMIYA DE AKAVIR:

“See that lighthouse over there?” he whispered as they exited the Census and Excise office, “Let’s go there.”

She sat down on edge of the entrance ramp in front of the lighthouse, and soon he was visibly sitting next to her.

“I’m really sorry for keeping you unwanted company the way I did, but it was the only way I could cross the sea as a stow-away. You were an easy choice first because you’re so petite with ample space at the foot of your bunk for me to curl up in, and second because you brought up the end of the line of prisoners, so there was nobody behind me. And though I shared your bunk, never once did I lay a hand on you. Am I correct?”

She nodded grudgingly.

“Then who are you?” she asked.

“I don’t want to give out any details because I’m going to be in some very hot water before too long, and the less you know about me the better. My name is Decumus Scotti, Esquire.”

“Oh! A gentleman!”

“I’m sorry you hadn’t noticed before.”

“Well, your constant bodiless presence was extremely annoying. And I could hardly sleep with your tossing and turning.”

”Well, your feet are by no means festooned with roses, you know.”

She laughed heartily.

“Sorry about that, but prisoners aren’t supposed to enjoy warm baths.”

She noticed he was looking at her very intently, and it was starting to make her feel uncomfortable.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked.

“Uh, forgive me. I’ve just never seen a woman like you before. And your hair is so black and glossy, like obsidian. Where are you from?"

“I'm asked that a lot around here. Have you ever heard of Akavir?”

“My mother gave me the book Mysterious Akavir for my tenth birthday, I still remember the lurid descriptions of 'Snow Hell' full of demons, the 'Snake Palace' full of serpent people, the 'Thousand Monkey Isles' full of monkey people, the 'Tiger-Dragon's Empire'. I admit now that it didn't make a whole lot of sense with these creatures either eating or being eaten. But when you're ten years old, the question becomes urgent: 'Who knows what the Akaviri think of Tamriel, but ask yourself: why have they tried to invade it three times or more?'"

“Anti-Akaviri propaganda, if you ask me," she answered dryly, "designed to scare a ten-year-old into eating his broccoli. We Nakan people are a vast diaspora spread very thinly over the inhabited world. We are often mistaken for Bosmer. Just look at the ears, people!”

She pulled her thick black hair aside for him to see they were indeed round. Scotti was truly amazed.

“Yumiya,” she said holding out her hand.

“Oh, thank you!” he said shaking her hand.

“That’s my name, Yumiya.”

He guffawed. “Oh, I thought you were saying, ‘You! Me! Yeah!’”

She laughed loudly and biffed him playfully on the shoulder.

“Princess Yumiya de Akavir to be more precise. Actually, Yumiya in our language means ‘Bow and Arrow’, so I suppose you can guess what I excel in.”

“So, do I have to say ‘Your Excellency’?”

“Oh, please don’t. Let’s not stand on ceremony. I’m just a regular girl who was never raised in a palace with servants. The princess business is a long-standing power struggle among my people, which is partly why I’m here. I don’t want to trouble you with all the details. Suffice it to say that I still have a big axe to grind for certain pretenders to my father's throne. At some point, I need to get even with them.”

“If there’s any way I can help, please let me know.”

“It’s very kind of you. Listen, I’m supposed to meet some guy, what’s his name?” She looked at the names on the sealed packet that was handed to her by Sellus Gravius and read them out loud. “’To Caius Cosades, from Uriel Septim.’ Who’s he?”

Scotti grabbed the packet from her hands and stared at it wide-eyed.

“Ye gods! Uriel Septim?! The Emperor of Tamriel?!”

“Oh, THAT Uriel Septim!” she chuckled.

“It looks as if they’ve got big plans for you.”

She took back the packet.

"I’m not supposed to let this out of my sight until I’ve given it to Cosades in Balmora. Where is that, by the way?”

“You see that big bug-like creature over there?” Scotti asked pointing at the creature with the plaintive, trumpet-like call. “That’s called a silt-strider and is the main form of transportation in these parts. Mount the platform and tell the driver your destination is Balmora.”

“Will do. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in Vvardenfell, but it’s good to know I’m not all alone. I hope I can count on you as a friend, and you can certainly count on me. If you ever do need help, go to Balmora and wait for me. I’m sure I’ll be based there and will be coming and going.”

“Thank you, Yumiya,” as he stood up to see her off. “Be careful, and good luck!” But then he added, worried that he might never see her again, “Uh, do you mind greatly if I had a parting kiss?”

“All right, but hands behind you and eyes closed.”

He put his hands behind him, leaned forward, and puckered. She gave him a quick buss on the cheek and waved "Toodles!" as she turned to go. He couldn't help laughing at her cheekiness as he watched her sashay away. He hoped to the gods it would not be for the last time.

Once she got to know him, she was amiable with a refreshing devil-may-care outlook on life. If he didn’t have Laila waiting for him, he would have certainly offered to accompany Yumiya. But he had to cool his ardor because it was still too early for her to realize how useful a fighting partner would be to her. He decided it best to keep quiet about her to Laila.

YUMIYA IN SOLSTEIM

(Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t done the Patchwork Airship quest, stop reading here!

If you’re curious anyway, this is the above quest put into story form but with critical details left out so as not to give too much away. If you’ve never heard of the quest, it’s because you never spoke to the wussy-looking fellow outside the Guild of Mages in Ald’ruhn. The quest is rather small and seems more trouble than it’s worth. All that’s required is to find a certain amulet in a certain barrow in Solsteim and find information on some missing persons. It brings a generous monetary reward, but if done incorrectly, it can seriously impact the quest to become the Chieftain of Thirsk. Comparatively speaking, the Chieftain of Thirsk quest gives a far greater advantage, so save your game before you try to enter the barrow.)

In Ald'ruhn:

Not long after Yumiya de Akavir was commissioned by Caius Cosades to launch the quest against Dagoth Ur, she scouted out areas around the Red Mountain to become better acquainted with the lay of the land. One thing she discovered, and this was very useful to know, was that if you stand on the silt strider platform in Ald’ruhn, equip a constant-effect levitation amulet (cf. Laurana's Amulet of Levitation), and aim right above the Ald’ruhn temple, your flight course makes a bee-line up the foyada to the Ghostfence.

Then having overflown the fence and keeping a level course around the mountain, you come right to the Odrosal doorstep, where Dagoth Odros keeps the Keening shortsword. It was too soon for Yumiya to act on this, but it was useful to know because, if you come through the Ghostgate, as I’m sure many people do, finding the various Dwemer ruins on the Red Mountain can be quite a challenge.

However, this story is not about the main quest. It is actually about a very insignificant quest that takes us all the way to Solsteim, a place where nobody goes unless they really have to.

Yumiya was also doing step-’n-fetchit jobs for the Guild of Mages in Ald’ruhn. This was a turgid “To Do” list that Yumiya would have otherwise shunned but for the Daedric dagger, called Souldrinker, that comes as a reward for one of the quests. On a number of occasions, she had tried casting the Soultrap spell and then striking with her weapon only to have the beast die after the spell had already worn off. This was rather annoying, given that a lot of her income came from the filled soul gems she sold to Creeper.

For the most part, she used the Guild teleportation to get around, but one day she didn't have far to go so we walked instead. She was approaching the Guild on foot when she noticed an elegantly-dressed gentleman standing off to the side. He was watching her as she approached, and she gauged the look that he was giving her. The look a man gives a woman can be measured on a sliding scale ranging from Bookworm to Neanderthal. This gentleman, if he can indeed be called one, was more of the Neanderthal sort, so she looked away pretending to be unaware of his presence as she approached the guild.

“Uh, excuse me,” Louis Beauchamp finally said to her, “are you by any chance a courier with news about an...an airship?”

This suddenly broke her resolve to ignore him.

“A what?!” she asked turning to him.

“I take it, then, that you aren’t the courier,” he responded downcast. But she could tell he was still side-glancing at the shape of her body all the way down to her feet.

“Hello! I’m up here!” she answered pointing to her eyes.

“Oh, excuse me!” he chuckled reddening.

Getting Roped In:

“What the hell were you talking about just now?”

Satisfied that he’d piqued her interest, he went on to explain.

“I put together a ship from various Dwemer machinery parts, and using powerful levitation spells got it to fly. I then hired a crew of adventurers and paid them well to fly to Hrothmund’s Barrow in Solsteim. The rocks are shaped like the wolf that killed Hrothmund, and the Barrow is the Eye of the Wolf. This can only be recognized from the air because on the ground it looks like just a bunch of rocks.”

Yumiya laughed out loud.

“You know, you should find a healer; you sound quite feverish.”

“I...I know this sounds crazy,” he continued timidly, “but you see, this Hrothmund was particularly ugly—I mean troll-ugly—but he was famous as a ladies’ man because he owned the ‘Amulet of Infectious Charm’. My crew flew off in the airship to fetch it for me, but there’s been no word from them. They’ve failed me, but I really must have that amulet!”

“Why? You don’t look like a troll to me.”

This was the first time a woman ever said anything even half-way decent to him, and he looked mystified.

“But take a woman’s advice,” she added so as not to sound too encouraging. “Shave the mustache and lower lip whiskers. Maybe then you’ll have better luck with the ladies.”

She opened the door to enter the guild.

“Wait! How does $ptm 2,000 sound to you?”

Yumiya shut the guild door again. That’s a lot of money. How many soul gems has she got to fill to make that much?

“Are you making me an offer?” she asked narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

“I certainly am.”

“To do what?”

“To go to Solsteim, bring back tidings of what happened to my ship, and above all bring me the Amulet of Infectious Charm. What do you say?”

“Hey, I’m all yours!”

“Great!” he said opening his arms to embrace her. She shoved him away.

“Figuratively speaking, Buster!”

The Quest:

After some preparation, she boarded the silt strider to Khuul and transferred to the longboat to Frostmoth. She had to endure several days of living off the land and fending off all the beasts that were so alien to her. The most annoying were the Rieklings (especially the mounted ones), the Spriggans, and the Tusked Bristlebacks, in that order, but she soon realized it was better to save her energy and make wide detours around them whenever she could. The Berzerkers, witches, and reavers were fewer and farther between, so they were easier to avoid. But on the whole, what with the blizzards that blew all too often, this world was totally new to Yumiya, and the shock of it all was more than she could bear. She often ducked into a cave to get some respite from the blowing snow and enemy attacks, but rather than bemoan her lot for having taken this job—$ptm 2000 was definitely not enough—she saw it instead as the school of hard knocks that was preparing her to face Dagoth Ur.

There was a blizzard going at full blast when she finally arrived at Hrothmund’s Bane, the stones arranged to make a picture of a wolf’s head. She used her levitation amulet to confirm it, and she was surprised how closely it resembled what Beauchamp had described. She said the password to enter the barrow, and fought the draugrs and skeletons to get to the stone pedestal where the amulet was placed almost as an afterthought because something else much more important was there, but not accessible at the moment.

The airship had to be nearby if it had made it this far, but the blowing snow was blinding. Not wishing to prolong this any further, she decided not to wait for a change in weather but set out toward the south, the direction in which the ship should have come. It was fruitless wandering, more to avoid the Rieklings than to find the ship. The sun was not far from the horizon. Out here in the wilderness was a very bad place to be at this time of day, so she decided to start building an igloo of packed snow and gathered pine branches to carpet the floor. (Note: There is a great scene in the Akira Kurosawa movie Dersu Uzala [1975] in which Dersu, sensing a blizzard about to blow on the tundra at sundown, urges the Russian engineer to help gather enough rushes to make a crude hut so as not to freeze to death.) As the sun dipped below the horizon, she crawled inside and stopped up the entrance with snow. In the dark, she pulled out a hunk of cheese and some bread and took a few bites out of each to still her hunger.

“Tomorrow when it’s not blowing,” she said to herself, “I’ll shoot me a Bristleback!”

The interior of the igloo was surprisingly warm, if a mite wet, so she slept like death warmed over. In the morning, she had to fight her way out of the snow that had buried her igloo. She had stuck a tall reed through the roof to avoid suffocation during the night. When she came out, the forest was sparkling in the sunshine, and the sky was a beautiful sapphire-blue.

She stood up and stretched out of the fetal position she’d been sleeping in. And what was that over there? A bit further to the south there was a repetitive movement in the distance. What could that possibly be? She gathered up her belongings and set out again.

The closer she got, the more she recognized the outline of a ship partially buried in snow. The movement was a fly-wheel of a Dwemer engine that was still chugging away as if unaware that it was going nowhere. Passing a large boulder, she came upon the frozen body of Captain Roberto Jodoin lying on a mattress with his head near the dying embers of a fire and a still-burning torch stuck in the snow near his feet. There was a jug of Mazte and a book lying near him. She picked up the book and furtively began paging through it as if he could wake at any moment.

It was the captain’s log. It was full of excerpts testifying to the deteriorating condition of the airship:

Excerpt 1: The “airship seems sturdy enough...”

Excerpt 4: “This monster is barely holding together.”

Excerpt 9: “I must also note that the going is slower than I'd like.”

Excerpt 11: “Beauchamp's contraption is coming apart at the seams...”

Last excerpt: “Most of the crew were killed instantly when the airship went down.”

Yumiya couldn’t stifle a tear at the thought of the futility of what they were doing—and to what purpose? She put the book in her tote bag to take back with her.

She surveyed the rest of the crash site. Manolos Virith lay on the ground between the captain and the ship. Francois Marquardt lay on deck. Yumiya contemplated whether to bury the dead, but there were three bodies and only so much daylight. Piling stones was way beyond her strength at the moment. She decided it better to leave them and return to civilization as soon as possible.

Back to Beauchamp:

Louis Beauchamp was still waiting outside the Guild of Mages in Ald’ruhn as Yumiya approached.

“That was quick. I hope you didn’t give up too soon,” he told her, much to her chagrin.

“No, I brought what you asked for.”

“Really?! Splendid! So let’s have them.”

She pulled the book and the amulet out of her tote bag and handed them over, upon which she received a sack of $ptm 2,000 from him.

“Well, now let’s see how this amulet works.”

He activated the amulet and threw his arms around her. She kneed him in the groin so forcefully that he fell doubled over onto the ground going, "K-k-k-k-k-k-k!"

“That was for Captain Roberto Jodoin, Manolos Virith, and Francois Marquardt!” she snarled.

A Redoran guard ran up to her demanding 40 drakes or go to jail. She counted out the coins from the sack, tossed them on the ground, and entered the Mage Guild.

Meeting her Maker:

She descended the double stairway to the lower lobby and saw a stranger sitting at one of the tables puffing a Turk-head Meerschaum pipe and writing on a notepad. She approached warily because she’d never saw him before, but she had a strange premonition that there had to be a very close relationship with him.

He was about average height and big-boned, which gave him a massive appearance. He had white hair flowing past his shoulders, a large nose, and blue eyes. He had a grandfatherly way about him, but he really didn’t look his age. He smiled readily and laughed loudly. They don’t have Kris Kringle in Vvardenfell, but if they did, this would be the one.

“Hello,” she said, “mind if I sit down?”

“Ah, Yumiya! Please do!”

She got in the chair very slowly wondering if sitting elsewhere might be a better idea.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever met,” she said uncertainly.

“No, as a matter of fact, we haven’t. I, your maker, came here to have a chat with you. Actually, you’re the only person here who can see and hear me. All these others have nothing to do with me, so they’re staring at you because they think you just asked the table for permission to sit down.”

Yumiya glanced around, and one by one the others looked away as if minding their own business.

“How awkward!” she said looking uncomfortable.

“Oh, don’t mind them. I never much cared for those conniving busy-bodies. Anyway, I came to answer any question that might weigh heavily on your mind. You’ve been given a heavy responsibility, and I want to ease the mental burden as much as I can.”

She thought for a moment.

“Why am I me?”

“Well, somebody had to be you. I designed Laila Scotti to be a much more complicated personality, so I modeled you after a spunky dental assistant I know. Sorry you got cropped to S size, but Decumus needed to curl up at the foot of your bunk.”

“Can I trust him?”

“Why do you ask?”

“It was annoying that he was sharing my bunk because he tossed and turned as much as I did. But one darling thing he did was keep my feet warm. All I had was the clothes on my back and a thin blanket, so it was like an unspoken deal, ‘Keep quiet about my being here, and I’ll help you get some shut-eye.’ He didn’t have a blanket at all, but after we disboarded, I treated him rather shabbily, especially after he told me he was married.”

“Well, he didn’t lie to you.”

“No, but it’s the principle involved.”

“I’d advise you to watch the situation. It's his Mrs. who's going to compound his trouble in a way that can scarcely be believed. You see, he has one debilitating flaw: the expressions 'live-and-learn' and 'forgive-and-forget' don't exist in his vocabulary, and her pay-back will be an assayer's furnace that burns off his foolish pride. Then he’s going to need a friend in you. Where I come from, we have a moving picture named Casablanca in which it is said of Rick, 'He's as honest at the day is long.' The same can be said of Decumus.”

“But can I trust myself?”

“In what way?”

“Am I really the rightful heir to the throne of Akavir.”

“Maybe you are; maybe you aren’t.”

“What if I’m not?”

“Would it make any difference?”

“I guess not. The problem is everybody I know has a background. I know a few basic facts about myself, but it's as if my entire life starts in the Imperial prison. I have no idea how I got there.”

“Sorry, the fault is all mine. Your previous life draws a blank with me as well. I advise you to start creating your life here and now.”

“Am I strong enough to beat Dagoth Ur?”

“I have no doubt that you have all it takes to complete the quest successfully." He pulled out a gold pocket watch and glanced at it. "Well, I’ve got to head on back and add these notes to the story,” he said knocking his pipe against the heel of his boot.

“Wait! Just one more question: will I ever see you again?”

He looked at her a bit sadly.

“I’m afraid not, Yumiya. You are really like a daughter to me, so I wish I could stay here, but I can't. I will always look out for you and will see to it that no harm comes to you. And maybe this will help.”

He fumbled around in his fishing-vest pockets for a constant-effect “Fortify Luck” ring and slipped it onto her left ring-finger. It was set with a sparkling green peridot, his own birthstone.

"A bit of luck of the Irish," he jested.

"Excuse me?"

"N-nothing."

She smiled as she gazed at the pretty stone.

“Thank you,” she said softly and kissed him on the cheek.

He vanished, but this encounter galvanized her to live her life here and now.

SCOTTI'S REVENGE 3

As might be expected, Laila doesn’t take well to what Scotti has done. And as it turns out, she soon formulates her own plan B and carries it out.

WHAT TO DO NOW:

Scotti told of the burning of the Vanech Building Company as a high adventure, but Laila heard it as a horrific crime. Is this the same Scotti she’d been walking on clouds with in Arenthia?

”We need to do things a little differently,” he told her, not realizing what an understatement that was. “I’ve been thinking how we should to manage our affairs. I’m going to change my name to Reiner Fuchs and start talking with a Nord accent, except when I come into contact with genuine Nords. I should become an adventurer, take up the axe, and hire myself out to one of the big houses because there’s plenty of gold to be made.

“And now, dear lady, I think it’s high time we head over to the Six Fishes inn, order room-service, and celebrate our honeymoon.”

“Uh, I think not, Decumus. You’ve just turned my whole life upside down. I’m going to need time to get used to this new situation.”

THE ESCAPE:

Reiner Fuchs (aka Decumus Scotti) became so adept at passing himself off as a Nord that even genuine Nords were taken in. He wasn’t as good with they axe as he thought he was, so the great houses had no need for him. Reiner and Laila wandered to the small unassuming village of Vos in the far northeast to establish a general store. There was an urgent need among the farmers for a cheaper alternative to the shopping arcade in Tel Vos. They also wanted to be as far away from nosy Imperial detectives as they could possibly get.

Unfortunately for both of them, there never was a honeymoon, and they now lived together as two single people. What prevented her from leaving Reiner was the misapprehension that by having stayed with him as long as she did she was now an accomplice to his crime. It was easy to prove that she was in Ebonheart when the crime was committed, but it was impossible to prove she had no prior knowledge of it.

“A double-whammy,” she thought to herself, “married to a felon and can’t even have a child.” Even if elves and humans could procreate, she wouldn’t want a child whose father could end up doing time in the ebony mines.

One day she noticed a group of farmers gathered around a signboard that had just been set up inside the village gate. She slipped on the ring and approached undetected. To her great dismay, it was a wanted poster for the arsonist Decumus Scotti. Fortunately, the likeness on the poster was how he looked when the crime was committed.

Laila hurried back to the general store. Decumus was sitting behind the counter with a book in hand slowly rocking back and forth on the back legs of the chair. By now he sported two braids that were past shoulder-length, and his beard was cut to a hand breadth. All he lacked was a facial tattoo, and he wasn’t about to get one should he ever want to change back to being an Imperial.

“Decumus,” Laila said in a low voice, “we’ve got to get out of here!”

“Why?!” he asked screwing up his brow.

Laila took the ring from around her neck.

“Here, put this on and look at the signboard outside!”

“WHY?!”

“Just go look, for crying out loud!”

Laila paced back and forth. It seemed to be taking forever for him to come back.

“This is serious!” he blurted coming back in. He grabbed the CLOSED sign and hung it outside on the door.

“No, don’t do that!” Laila remonstrated and brought the sign back in. “Whatever we do, let’s not call any attention to ourselves. Let’s calm down and think this over.”

Decumus remembered all the times customers asked him where he learned to read, and his undisguised answer was, "In school like everybody else," to which the rejoinder was, "Do Nords go to school?" He laughed it off as all a joke, but now it wasn't funny at all.

They decided their best bet was to take a ship from Sadrith Mora to Dagon Fel, transfer to the Khuul ship, and from there cross over to Solstheim. What would happen after that was a great big question mark.

WRECKED:

They sat on crates on the deck of a longboat hissing over the open water of the Sea of Ghosts towards Dagon Fel. For fast water transportation, nothing can beat a longboat as the large square sail picks up even the lightest breeze that propels it forward. However, one severe drawback is that no shipwright has yet thought of a way to furl a sail by lashing it to the yardarms or at least lowering the yardarms when the wind reaches gale force during a blight storm. The best a pilot can hope for is to weave among the rocks and pray that one of them won’t be the death of his boat—or of the passengers and himself. This is why the rocks along the coasts of Vvardenfell are littered with wrecked ships.

The Breton pilot, descended from the ancient sea mariners who came to Vvardenfell many ages ago, glanced behind him at the dark horizon.

“That doesn’t look good,” he grumbled.

Laila grasped Reiner’s hand and held it hard.

“Can we put into port somewhere?” Reiner inquired.

“Beyond that horizon is all cliffs,” the pilot explained waving his arm to the right, “and all that over there is rocks, some visible, some not,” he said waving to the left. “If worse comes to worse, you can take the empty crates you’re sitting on and jump ship. Let’s pray that it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, I’ll let you know the best time for it.”

“And what about you?”

“Maybe I’ll come through. Maybe I won’t.”

There was a boom of thunder in the distance, and Laila stiffened.

“What if we get separated?” she asked Scotti.

“You might want to tie yourselves together at the ankle,” the pilot suggested pointing at a length of rope nearby.

Reiner quickly tied it to Laila’s ankle and then to his own, making double certain it would neither slip off or come undone. Huge drops of rain fell on the deck as the boat gradually picked up speed. Making their way among some of the rocks was like threading a needle. A larger island swept toward them from the distance. There was no getting around this one.

“Ready!”

Reiner and Laila moved the crates to the gunwale and propped them up ready to push and jump.

“Steady! GO!”

They both went overboard, but it took a while for the heavy crates to bob up to the surface. Neither of the two had learned to swim, but they knew from instinct not to gasp for air while below water. When they came up, the rain was pouring down so hard it was difficult to tell if they were still below water or above it. There was a deafening crunch of timbers splitting on rock, and they realized the longboat was no more.

They struggled to find out how to make forward movement in the water while clinging to the crates and eventually found a foot hold as they neared the island. They trudged painfully onto the rain-swept beach as they pulled the crates up after them.

There was nothing and nobody. Decumus untied the rope and told Laila to stay there. He drew his glass dagger and went to see if there were any bandit caves on the island.

He returned shortly and found Laila looking worn out and forlorn.

"It's quite safe here."

“I could have told you that," she answered sarcastically. "The rocks aren't high enough for a tunnel entrance. How is the longboat?”

“Lying like a heap of matchsticks just over that ridge.”

“And the pilot?”

“I didn’t get close enough, but it looks as if the force of the collision threw him against the rocks beyond. Maybe we should go bury him."

A strange look came over Laila's face.

"Laila. ...Laila!"

"WHAT?!"

"Maybe we should go bury the pilot."

"Well, thank you for bringing a shovel!"

(What had gotten into her?)

"I was thinking more in the line of piling stones on top of him," he responded.

"Save your strength. Tomorrow is another day," she said coldly and turned away.

Together they searched and finally found a place where the surf had carved a shallow cave in the rock. It was good to get out of the rain, but they were entirely soaked. For some strange reason, she insisted on sleeping in her own little niche with a section of sail cloth pulled over her head like a blanket.

Reiner felt too uneasy to sleep as he watched the sailcloth in its niche. He would have liked to cuddle her and find out what was on her mind, but deep down inside he already knew what was on her mind. They wouldn’t be in this fix if he hadn’t acted so selfishly. Why didn’t she leave him to his fate when they were in Vos?

He decided it best to let her be. If you ask a man “What’s bugging you?”, he can do one of two things: if he trusts you, he’ll tell you exactly what’s bugging him; if he doesn’t trust you, he’ll give some cockamamie reply. A woman is a different sort of creature all together. She’ll say nothing is bugging her, but her actions will speak louder than words.

LAILA’S REVENGE:

Laila was awakened by the sound of pounding and splitting. She came out of the cave under the most beautiful azure sky she’d ever seen. Decumus was laboring over a dead mudcrab almost as big as a table. He was cracking it open every which way he could find and digging out the raw meat.

“B’vec, Reiner! How do you propose we eat this?!”

“As is,” he answered matter of factly, “as you can see we have little in the way of firewood and no cooking utensils. Anyway, I understand this is how they eat it in Akavir."

"Since when have you been interested in Akavir?"

"Uh, well, I'm not," he shrugged, "but if it's good enough for the Akaviris, it's good enough for me."

“Yeccch!”

“Suit yourself. I for one don’t want to starve on this rock.”

He sat down and started balling up crab meat and popping it into his mouth.

“Mmmm! Those Akaviris are spot on! Come on, Laila, it’s not going to kill you, and there’s enough here to feed a squadron of guards!”

“Later,” she said and wandered off.

Of course, raw mudcrab meat can’t be eaten later, so he picked up the heap of leftovers and heaved it into the water. What happened next astonished Reiner beyond measure. Schools of slaughterfish swam from all directions, and there was a feeding frenzy. Reiner picked up  a tree branch and clubbed as many as he could, slit them open to scoop out the guts, then laid them open in the sun to dry. Before long, they had enough fish to last them a week.

“Whatever became of Laila?” he finally wondered.

He finally found her near the wrecked longboat. She was hunched over the corpse. He tiptoed closer to see what she was doing. She had picked ferns and a few stunted wildflowers and was singing an Elfen lullaby as she arranged them around the pilot’s head. Reiner feared that she might have lost her sanity.

“Dear Mr. Pilot,” she said sitting upright again, “may this death offering speed you on to wherever your people go when their life is gone. And there look down in favor on your former passenger, whose life you generously helped save, and grant me yet one more small request. I want you to bear the guilt of the man who owns this ring.”

She removed the Scotti signet ring from her finger and placed it on one of the stiffened fingers.

“LAILA! What is this?! Necromancy?!” he shouted.

“Don’t startle me like that!” she admonished harshly. “I want you to leave this island!” she suddenly demanded. “I want you to leave, now!”

“But, Laila! I’m sorry!”

“Reiner, go! Now!”

Too stunned to know what else to do, he obeyed. She watched impassively as he used ropes from the rigging to lash planks together to make a crude raft. It seemed suitably seaworthy as he got on board. Then he used a pole to shove off into the current to go wherever it might take him.

“Ebonheart steps!” he shouted to her. “New Years day! I’ll see you there! I love you!”

Laila waived, but she couldn't find it in her to respond.

"To have and to hold till death do us part," she thought. "Good bye—and good riddance!"

SPLENDID (?) ISOLATION:

For the first time in a very long time, Laila felt as if a great weight had been thrown off her. She pulled off her ragged shirt, skirt, and undergarments and threw everything into the sea, stretched her bare limbs, and screamed in utter joy at her new-found freedom.

The dried slaughterfish that Reiner had prepared for her tasted foul, but when you’re hungry, you gag it down the best you can. There was still some rainwater in the indentations in the rock, so she got down on her hands and knees sucking up as much as she could find. Thirst wasn’t driving her mad, but it would if it didn’t rain again soon. She really should have spent more time in the shade instead of sunning her body to rid it of tiny creepy-crawly things that were causing her to itch all over.

Laila wasn't one to be scared of the dark, but there was something frightfully uncanny about being stuck on a lonely rock in the middle of the sea as the sun began to sink toward the horizon. The mind can start doing strange things, as in the story of the archer who woke at night, raised his crossbow, and shot himself in the foot: the two glowing eyes he thought he saw in the dark were really light glinting off his toe nails.

The ferns and wild flowers that still made a circle where the pilot’s head were now quite dry, so she gathered them up, found two dry sticks, and began rubbing the sticks together very fast until smoke began to appear. She blew on the smoking part until it began to glow in the twilight. She applied some dried foliage, and before long she had a happy little camp fire. There wasn’t much in the way of foliage and sticks on the island, but there was enough to keep a fire going until somebody saw the smoke and rescued her. She gathered as much tinder as she could and kept feeding the fire all night long.

THE JIG IS UP:

Fortunately for Reiner, it didn’t take long for him to be rescued from his rickety raft. As the current carried him along, he came to notice the outline of a galleon on the misty horizon. It had to be at anchor because the raft continued to drift closer. He tried using a board to propel himself until he was within shouting distance.

“Ahoy!” he yelled.

At first there was no sign of anyone on board.

“Ahoy!”

Some men finally appeared on deck.

“I request permission to board!”

A rope ladder was thrown over the side, and Reiner grabbed it pulling himself up from the raft, which glided languidly away from under his feet.

Once on deck, he found himself surrounded by a group of sun-tanned, battle-hardened Bretons. They led him to the cabin of Captain Raymond Rashotte, who cut a dashing figure in his sky-blue frock coat and white knee-breeches. He approached Reiner and cocked his head a bit as if there was some recognition. Then, strangely, grasping his braids with the left hand and his beard with the right hand, he examined Reiner’s face, turning it this way and that, as it would appear without them. He then released his grasp and stepped back.

“Well, well, Misieur Decumus Scotti, welcome to my ship,” he said wiping his hands on a towel, and Reiner winced, not so much at being called by his real name as hearing it pronounced “Decumue Scottee”.

The cabin door had just opened and closed quietly, and a young man suddenly appeared among the crew.

“Begging your pardon, Captain.” Reiner responded in a folksy way. “But my name is Reiner Fuchs.”

“Misieur, you needn’t play this game with me. I have seen your poster, and it mentioned a rather large bounty on your head.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Reiner said putting on a well-practiced deadpan expression.

"Ah, so misieur is of no use to us." He turned to the crew, "What say you? Do we need a faux-Nord consuming your victuals?"

"NO!" they stamped in unison. Reiner's blood froze.

"Well, what shall we do with this faux-Nord?"

"Slaughterfish! Slaughterfish! Slaughterfish!" they shouted stamping with each word.

"Throw him overboard!" the captain said snapping his fingers.

A number of men grabbed him by the arms.

"WAIT!" Reiner shouted. "I am Decumus Scotti," he admitted in a quieter voice.

“Put him in the brig,” the captain ordered.

Several days passed and Reiner—well, let’s go back to using his real name—and Decumus was actually well treated. Several days passed, and suddenly there was a commotion on the ship.

“All hands on deck!” came the command from the first mate.

Decumus couldn’t see what was going on, but an East Empire freight ship had come into sight, and the “Jolly Roger” flag was hoisted and cutlasses distributed among the crew.

The young man who’d entered the cabin during the captain’s interview suddenly appeared at the barred door of Decumus’s cell.

“Decumus Scotti, you are a person of interest to the Blades. Take this,” he handed him one of two scrolls of Almsivi Intervention. “At the count of three, we both activate. One, two, three!”

They found themselves in the courtyard of the Gnisis temple.

“Follow me!” he ordered, and the two headed for the silt strider.

Decumus eventually found himself in the tap room of the Corner Club where Caius Cosades and Yumiya were discussing important business. The spy reported where he'd found Scotti and how he sprung him out. Cosades dropped a pouch of gold coins into the young man’s hand, and the spy hurried out to make out a report on Captain Rashotte’s activities.

“Master Scotti,” Cosades addressed him. “Oh, you needn’t worry about using your real name. We are literally and figuratively underground here. It was Yumiya who brought you to my attention.” Yumiya smiled at Decumus but let Cosades do the talking. “After I commissioned her to undertake a very difficult quest for us, she requested that we track you down and get you out of trouble—from the brig of a pirate ship, no less. Yumiya, how did you know about this?”

Yumiya didn't want to tell of the mystical conversation with her maker, in which he warned her that Laila was going to make things extremely difficult for Scotti. She didn't know about his capture, but she didn't mind taking credit for her prescience.

“Uh, let's just say my sixth sense.”

“Well, anyway, I promised a reward to my informers and spies to be the first to bring you to safety. Let’s go over to my place near here and discuss this matter in private. You’re free to go now, Yumiya.”

“Thank you so much, Master Cosades. I’ll see you later at the Eight Plates, Decumus.”

“Oh-ho! So Decumus, it is!” Cosades said with a chuckle.

LAILA'S RESCUE:

Somebody touched Laila's shoulder and shook her gently.

She woke and was startled to see a helmeted face looking down at her in the morning light. She drew her Daedric tanto.

“Whoa! Hold on, miss! We’re here to help you!” said the Imperial captain of the guard.

There were three guards crouching over her. All she had on was a sail cloth that she was wearing like a poncho tied at the waist with some rope. She had a vision of her abused body being dumped into the sea as food for the slaughterfish, and the world would be none the wiser.

“Mrs. Laila Scotti, if you will, and I know how to use this!” she declared jumping up and flashing the tanto at them. “Touch me again and you're all dead meat!”

"Are you thirsty?" the captain asked reaching a water jug to her.

She dropped the tanto and grabbed the jug with both hands. The cool water couldn't go into her throat fast enough as it dribbled down her chin.

“Hey, you’d better not rehydrate too quickly!” he said tapping the jug for her to stop gulping.

"Ah, thank you!” she coughed from some water that went down the wrong way. “You are a life-saver!" she smiled as she handed the jug back to him.

"Here," he said eagerly pouring water into her cupped hands so she could wash the salty grime off her face and make herself more presentable. He offered his own handkerchief for her to dry her face.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“No, I’m with my husband.”

The three guards glanced around and saw nothing.

“You say you’re with your husband. Decumus Scotti, I presume. Where is he?”

“Beyond that ridge.”

They readied their swords in case of a fight as they climbed over the ridge with Laila following them.

“Where?” the captain said a bit more sharply as they looked down on the boat remains.

“Over there,” she said pointing to the rocks just beyond as if he were playing hide-and-seek with them.

The guards couldn’t tell if this was a trap or a joke. They proceeded forward cautiously, their hands on the hilts of their broadswords. They made it past the wreckage, and still nothing happened. But the stench of a corpse soon informed them that this was no joke. They put cloths up to their faces as they approached.

The captain knelt down on one knee and inspected the body. He turned to the others and made a thumbs-up sign. The others nodded joyfully. He bent down, removed the signet ring, and put it in his pocket. They began to walk away.

“Wait!” Laila yelled at them.

They froze where they stood.

“Are you going to leave my husband unburied? May he haunt your dreams till the day you die!”

“Bury him,” the captain said with a waive of his hand, and the others set to work using whatever they could dig with.

Laila followed the captain back to where they had landed. He took out a log book and recorded the date and time of day and wrote the following:

“Subject Decumus Scotti found several days dead after shipwreck on island in Sea of Ghosts. Positive identification through Scotti signet ring.”

He clapped the book shut.

“Uh, Captain, does his death absolve me?”

“Excuse me, absolve you from what?”

“My complicity in his crime.”

“Mrs. Scotti, it is a well-established fact that you were in Ebonheart when the crime was committed. If you had helped him escape, we would have a case against you, but seeing you were merely living with him… Well, there’s no law against living with a husband no matter how bad he is.”

“Yes, but he did drop me a big hint that he had ‘unfinished business’ with Vanech.”

“Well, what did you know, and when did you know it?”

“When we met up afterward, he told me everything, how he doused pyroil tar on the contracts at the Vanech Building Commission and poured a line of pyroil tar like a long fuse going out the door of the room. Then he lit the fuse and bolted out of there. Then KABOOM!”

The captain looked stunned.

“Are you willing to make a deposition? This would go a long way in understanding exactly what happened and how.”

“I would be happy to,” Laila responded, “on the condition that it will help close his case, and I can move on with my life.” The captain gave his reassurances and offered to let her stay with his mother in the capitol during the hearing.

SCOTTI'S REVENGE 4

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER:

The New Year holiday came and went. Laila had returned to Vos to liquidate the general store, and it was with an acute bitterness that she sorted through all the knick-knacks and keepsakes that had accumulated over the years. She kept the ring on her finger after it was returned to her so that any man who was on the make in the taverns would know she was somehow connected to the "Vanech Fiasco", as it came to be called, and was best to steer clear of.

What embittered her most was that Scotti wouldn't let bygones be bygones and leave Cyrodiil with her. Their life on the lam was anything but pleasant. They may have been comfortably settled in Vos, but they were really in hiding. And now that he was officially dead, there was a cloture to the whole affair, and she could breathe easily again. At the same time she didn't know what she would do if she ever ran into him, whatever he called himself now. In what exquisite way could she get him down on his knees and beg forgiveness?

She took up work as an adventurer, specifically a tomb raider. She arrived in Gnisis after having cleaned out the Ogrim torture chamber and a vampire lair in that vicinity, and she had two gunny sacks full of loot to sell off at the shopping booths outside the temple. She dropped them on the table of an Imperial arms dealer, and he totted up the value on an abacus.

"Some of this stuff is way beyond my means," he said.

"I'll just take it with me," she said nonchalantly. "I won't quibble over the rest because there's a lot more where it came from." She laid her hand on the gunny sack to lift it off the table, and his eye spotted the ring on her finger.

He paid out the gold slowly hoping she would finally look up at him, but without his braids and beard, she drew a total blank. She finally turned to go.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but may I inquire about that ring?" he finally said.

She stiffened, turned, and looked him straight in the eye. If he still had his braids and scruffy beard, she would have recognized him immediately. She removed the ring and slapped it down on the table with enough force to make the chitin daggers bounce.

"Take what is yours, Decumus Scotti, and go to hell where you belong!"

"What did she call you?" the Dunmer manning the table to his right asked as they watched her swagger away with the gunny sack.

"Oh, n-nothing," Decumus flustered. "Listen, can you watch my table for a moment? I'll be right back."

Laila was up on the silt strider platform waiting her turn for a ride when she saw whoever he was approaching.

"Just let him come! I'll shove my heel into his snoot and..."

But instead of mounting the platform steps, he went to the river and threw something. She couldn't see what it was, but it had to be the ring. He began walking back to his table without looking up at her.

Laila was shaken. The idea to put the ring on the dead pilot was a stroke of ingenuity to throw off the authorities, but she also robbed him of his identity, and now he was wandering the earth as only the gods knew who. She was still Laila, but who was he? An insatiable curiosity overcame her. She dropped the gunny sack of loot and rushed back down the stairs.

He was about half-way to the temple when she caught up with him.

"Excuse me," she called from behind, "I would like very much to know your name."

"My name is Asinus Aureus*," he said turning to her.

[*i.e. "Golden Donkey". The name was probably conferred by Caius Cosades.]

"Asinus, I'm very pleased to meet you. Do you live here in Gnisis?"

"I'm in one of those caves up on the hillside," he said pointing to the hill beyond the temple. “But if you’re thinking of coming back now, your presence isn’t welcome. Couldn't you have waited for me to get out of prison instead of turning me into a...a...walking dead?"

Laila had no intention of coming back, and a negative invitation like that showed he was open to counter-suggestions, like can we still be friends? But there was nothing to go back to.

"Has it been hard?" she asked.

"Living as someone else?" He shook his head as they continued walking. "No, I already got a lot of practice living as a Nord. The only thing I cannot do is go back to being Decumus Scotti when it’s convenient. I had an ordeal in which I was captured and about to be turned in to the authorities, but my friend helped engineer my rescue by the Blades.

”This friend has really come up in the world since we last met.  I presented my case to Caius Cosade and asked him if it were at all possible for him to pull strings and grease a few palms to establish a new identity for me. Cosades’s operational budget is somewhat limited, so this friend paid out several thousand drakes from her own pocket.”

“Her?” Laila asked looking at him as if there was a big green bugger on his nose.

“Oops!” Asinus thought, “Out of the bag!”

“Uh, yeah,” he responded.

“Is this by any chance that ‘friend’ you met on the transport ship?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Laila hauled off and boxed him on the shoulder with her powerful sword-arm.

“OW! What was that for?”

“Two-timing!”

“Laila, we’ve gone our separate ways!”

“This goes back to when we were still together!”

“I never touched her!”

“But kept quiet about her none the less!”

Asinus became sullen. To think that something like this would make her jealous even though her body had been off-limits to him the whole time they were together.

“Well, go on.”

“I had come into Vvardenfell using the Thief Ring, so money was paid out to various people to keep quiet about my boarding the prisoner transport ship from a rowboat in mid-sea. Everybody at the Census Office had greasy fingers and so cooperated to the fullest. No questions were asked, and I was out of there in no time.

“Yumiya—that’s her name—then told me a Dunmer woman here in Gnisis was looking to sell her arms and weapons stand and go into retirement. Yumiya lent me even more money to buy the concession. I was ready to say no because I was already so deeply indebted to her. I said I would join a great house, but she strongly recommended I keep my independence and do only odd jobs for the great houses. So here I am, free to come and go as I please.

“By the way, whatever became of that Thief Ring?"

"I have no idea," she answered instinctively feeling her neck. "I wonder if it came off when we plunged into the sea."

"I should have kept it. I had more need of it, and it cost me a fortune. Anyway, Vvardenfell is the ideal place for con men and impostors because it seems nobody here is really who they give themselves out to be, so nobody bothers to do background checks. And what about you, the widow of the idiot who torched the Vanech Building Commission?"

"Well, that's where your ring came in handy, holding at bay all the 'wolves in sheep's clothing' trying to pick up a one-night-stand. I saw you throw the ring into the river and was sorry, not for me but for you. It's just as well because I don't think I need it any more. I can hold my own."

ACCUSATIONS FLY:

When they arrived at his table, he turned to her.

"Laila, after all that's happened between us, can you forgive me?"

He wasn’t on his knees, but this is precisely what she was waiting for. She glanced at the Dunmer standing at his table watching them intently.

“Let's go inside the temple and talk.”

They found a bench inside where they could sit down.

“To answer your question, my answer would have to be, Yes and No. Many men think a woman’s body is little more than a personal plaything, but you never did. You never forced yourself on me, and this is where I still think of you as one of a kind and still hold a deep and sincere appreciation of you.”

“So why were you never able to get intimate with me?” he asked bitterly.

“Get intimate?!” she laughed sardonically. “Cleanliness is very important to women—we are affected by filth in ways that men aren’t. And this is where you failed. You always took it for granted that I would continually shrug off what you did to Vanech, as if it was some kind of ‘man thing’ that a woman must learn to live with. And then you could help yourself to my body as if I owed it to you as your wife. Come on, get real!"

"Wait, stop right there! Who was it who crept into my room to strangle me?!"

"You know that was before I got to know you. Wasn't it enough that I loved you as I did?! Then after your little caper, wasn't it enough that I followed you to the end of Vvardenfell?!

"To be quite blunt, Asinus, I really wanted to kill Decumus, and I finally did, hoping it would rid my heart of his pestilent disregard for me as a feeling person. But it failed to do that. I really should have been more careful when I entered your room that first night, and none of this would have happened. You would have gone down in the books as a death by suicide, and I would have gone on killing people for a living. But I’m glad things turned out as they did because this experience taught me a lot about myself, the joy of being a woman, not a victim, and living my own life as I see fit, not as another sees fit!

“And for that reason alone, Asinus, I want to continue to come and go as I please. Yes, I can forgive Asinus Aureus. No, I can't forgive Decumus Scotti. You would do well to settle down with your friend. I imagine she’s very pretty, won’t outlive you by a century, and can procreate.”

She could see from the wistful look on his face that he couldn’t agree with her more. She was sorry that she didn't meet any one of those criteria (she was handsome, to say the least) and that her emotional leverage over him had just been squandered. But the last thing she wanted was for him to be happy with his friend. She had to slam him to make sure of it.

”So, tell me, what would this friend want from a 'dead man'? What is she paying such a high premium for? Or is it just an oversize gift for your oversize ego? Or maybe it is her tentacles wrapping around to squeeze you like an overripe persimmon!” she said balling her fist in front of his face. “Considering how much she’s paid you, she has every right to get intimate with you whenever she wants!” Laila knew he had an explosive temper, but he didn’t respond as expected.

“Laila, at the time you put my ring on the pilot, did you feel you were helping me or hindering me?”

Laila suddenly looked confused.

“Now you say," he continued, "it was figuratively to kill me, but isn’t that only an afterthought? Were you in fact trying to help me escape? This explanation you just gave me is only an emotional buffer to help you justify to yourself what you did to me.

“And the finger you put the ring on, was it this one?” he asked holding up the ring finger, “Or this one?” He held up the little finger.

The vacant look in her eyes showed she was trying to remember.

“Did the ring go only half way onto the finger, or all the way to the hand?”

“Why are you asking such stupid questions?!” she suddenly blurted.

“Merely playing the devil’s advocate,” he answered smirking mischievously. “So, let’s imagine you were standing before a judge, how would you defend yourself? You can’t because Decumus Scotti is still very much alive. You and everybody else say he is dead, but in this case, death is a curable ailment, wouldn’t you say?”

Laila’s lower lip began to tremble as her breathing got deeper and faster.

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“I wouldn’t dare what? Rob you of your freedom to come and go as you please?”

“You’d go to prison, too.”

“Hey, I'll do anything to be Decumus Scotti again!"

Laila stood up and turned to leave quickly.

“Go ahead and run!” Asinus called after her, “They’ll be coming for you!”

== CAIUS'S FATE ==

Caius Cosades has been recalled to the capitol, but the Morrowind game is silent on what transgression prompted this. His skooma dependence may be assumed, but hasn’t the empire known of this all along? He had to have done something extraordinarily wrong to deserve this ouster, and this story tries to imagine what that was.

SOME EXPLAINING TO DO:

Caius Cosades appeared suitably dressed, not shirtless, before Emperor Uriel Septim. He put his fist on his chest, dropped onto one knee, and bowed his head in the customary show of obeisance to the emperor. The emperor bade him rise and approach the desk on which was piled a heap of papers and scrolls. The expression on the emperor's face was stern, and Cosades knew he had a lot of explaining to do.

"Caius," the emperor spoke, "can you guess what these papers are?"

"I would venture to guess, your Majesty, that my presence here means that, whatever they are, they involve myself and that they cast a rather unfavorable light on me."

The emperor looked genuinely pained. Cosades moved as if to fall at the emperor's feet and beg for mercy, but the emperor raised a hand for him to back off. Cosades was one of extremely few capable men he could truly depend on, but...

"Caius, what I have to say now is more as a disappointed father to an errant son. We have known of your, uh, habit for some time now, and as long as you were able to produce good results as head of the Blades, we were willing to overlook this, uh, weakness. However, there comes a time when a recreational drug can have a deleterious effect on a man's judgment, and yours is no exception.

"As you know, corruption is rampant in our realm, but nowhere is it so bad as in the province of Vvardenfell, your area of responsibility. We have been trying to root out corruption, but in Vvardenfell especially we are stymied every step of the way by bad roads, bad communications, and bad people.

"We have received a petition from a legally dead arsonist named Decumus Scotti,” he said picking up a parchment, “in which he has offered to surrender to us and pay his debt to society in return for having his death expunged from the public record, and in return for others being called to account for their misdeeds. He was selective in who he wanted punished, but justice is blind to good as well as bad intentions when it comes to the laws being trampled on.

"And these papers contain the results of the investigation into his case. I am sorry to say that I must look upon his petition favorably as his is the most astonishing miscarriage of justice in the annals of the empire. We are also sorry that there are no good guys here, not Scotti (who committed the arson), not his woman Laila (who engineered his legal death), not Lord Vanech (who'd sent her to kill him), not Yumiya (who bankrolled the charade), and certainly not you (who did a lot of the wheeling and dealing). We have been discretely convicting or extracting bounties from all those involved either directly or indirectly. And now we must bring it to a conclusion with a statement from you."

WHAT TO DO WITH CAIUS:

The emperor rang a small bell on his desk and called for a notary to come into his presence with a quill and parchment. Cosades's head throbbed. He hadn't had a toot from a skooma pipe since handing over the operation of the Blades to Yumiya and leaving post-haste for the capitol.

"Your Majesty, I freely acknowledge that I am culpable, but..."

"Silence. The notary is on his way. When he is present, you may confess to your heart's content."

"B-but if Your Majesty would only permit, I would like to know the present status of the quest against Dagoth Ur, for I would not want my indiscretion to have any impact on it," Cosades gulped as his stomach churned.

"Don’t be a fool—of course it won't!" the emperor chuckled sardonically. "Yumiya has already been questioned and found only to have been acting as Scotti’s financial backer. She has paid her bounty, and we have pardoned her so as not to cause any further inconvenience to the quest—and also on the condition that she pursue Dagoth Ur in a more timely manner. Those Hlaalu seem to have turned her head with a lavish stronghold on the Odai Plateau, which we have threatened to confiscate if Dagoth Ur isn't destroyed within a year."

"And the others?"

The emperor picked up a memo from the desk and summarized its contents.

"Lord Vanech has been compensated for the loss of his company—but also heavily fined as the instigator of this whole fiasco. He’s the only one who broke even, but not because he’s a lord. He’s now under a ten-year probation for having dealt with the Dark Brotherhood at all. Any honorable noble or aristocrat with a grudge should take it to an arena and settle it with the weapon of his choice.

"Decumus Scotti has been reinstated as head of the House of Scotti. An Argonian diver retrieved his signet ring from the river, and it has been returned to him. However, he has been convicted of arson and sentenced to two years of hard labor in the ebony mine near Caldera. The sentence was reduced for his having surrendered his person to us and for the time he already suffered as a non-person.

"Laila was convicted of tampering with evidence, perjury, and obstruction of justice and sentenced to six years of hard labor at the women's penal colony near Raven Rock in Solsteim.”

As the emperor spoke, a notary entered, bowed, and sat at the desk on which he meticulously arranged his quills and parchments.

"And the question now," the emperor said pausing to let Cosades digest all of this, "is what to do with you. Keep in mind that you have served us very well, and we will be mild with you, on the condition that you tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So let’s start from the beginning."

When Cosades was on fire to confess everything, it would have been so easy, but now that he really had to explain himself, he realized how excruciatingly difficult it was going to be.

CAIUS'S TESTIMONY:

“Well,” he began by coughing and clearing his throat, “several years after Yumiya had been enlisted in the Blades, she came to me with a very abnormal request on behalf of a friend of hers, a certain Nord who called himself Reiner Fuchs but was really Decumus Scotti, who she wanted tracked down and brought to safety.

“However, as an aside and before I continue,” he said to the notary, “I would like to speak in Yumiya’s defense on how slowly she has been pursuing the Dagoth Ur quest. As she is such a petite woman, I encouraged her to take as much time as she needed to build up her strength and skills, and she has done remarkably well, for which reason I saw no need to deny her request on behalf of her friend.”

“We understand,” the emperor responded, “go on.”

“And when I first met with Mr. Scotti, I suggested we petition the emperor. He answered that he’d rather not since that entailed being tried and convicted of a felony he'd committed. I was afraid I was being sold a pig in a poke, so I took Yumiya aside to find out how much she really knew. She answered that all she could say for certain was that he was guilty but not of murder. Having encountered him as he was stowing away on the prisoner transport ship and later getting to know him, it reinforced her strong belief that even good people can do stupid things.

“My first and foremost concern was not to do anything that would alter Yumiya’s resolve to pursue the Dagoth Ur quest. I tried to weasel out by saying my operating expenses wouldn’t cover the amount of bribery this would entail, but she said she had so much gold socked away that I was free to use as much of it as I deemed fit. When you know you have so much gold at your disposal, your first impulse is to throw caution to the wind. But then that idiot botched everything when he ran into his woman in Gnisis and got into a shouting match...”

“You’re getting off track here, Caius,” the emperor said testily. “Don’t try to justify your own stupidity by calling the kettle black.”

“Right, I beg your Majesty’s pardon,” Cosades said calming himself down. “Where was I?”

“Yumiya’s largess.”

“Yes, so I headed over to Seyda Neen and talked everybody into my plan for smuggling a person into Vvardenfell. I distributed sacks of gold to everybody involved.”

“Can you say how much gold was expended in this endeavor?” the emperor inquired.

“I didn’t keep accounts because I didn’t want to leave a paper trail, and Yumiya was agreeable to that arrangement. All together, I would estimate a good 500,000 drakes were distributed.”

The emperor whistled through his teeth in astonishment.

“Where did she acquire so much gold?!”

“An enterprising individual can do remarkably well in Vvardenfell. The Hlaalu are generous, and there are enough rare weapons and armor scattered everywhere to equip an army. Some are so valuable that one item can clean out a rich dealer’s cash box.

“Anyway, I also instructed the captain of the prisoner transport ship and all the guards to look the other way when a person came on board during the night. It was timed when there were no moons and the wind and sea were calm to make an approach of a rowboat to the ship very easy. He clambered up the side of the ship, and that was the last I saw of him until he came to visit me in Balmora to thank me personally for the efforts I’d made on his behalf.”

“And this,” Cosades said concluding his testimony, “is how the Scotti case was handled by me, and I hereby swear that I have not left out any details or misconstrued any of the facts.”

THE EMPEROR'S JUDGMENT:

The notary reached the quill to Cosades to write his signature on the designated line. After the signing, a dab of hot wax was poured onto the parchment, and Cosades pressed his signet ring into it until it hardened.

The emperor, wearing green-glass spectacles that he never used in public, was silent as he went over the notes he had made of Cosades’s testimony.

“We are happy to say,” he finally spoke, “that this corroborates everything told to us by Scotti and Yumiya. But there is one point that is still unclear,” he said gesturing a “one” with his forefinger. “Why did you do it?”

Cosades shifted uneasily in his chair. “Now comes the really hard part,” he thought and dredged his mind to come up with a first cause for everything that happened.

“If your Majesty will allow me to think out loud, it would greatly help me because I never considered why I was doing these things. I don’t want to blame Yumiya for having put the idea into my head; however, I must add that the suggestion did come from her, and I deemed it the most reasonable thing to do. I also don’t want to blame the skooma either because I wasn’t high when I made this decision.”

“Well, let us put it into the context of your making a decision that were better left handled by us. We tend to, uh, frown on people doing things that inevitably blow up in our face the way this one has.”

Cosades thought for a moment.

“Well, when one considers the finality of death, how when a person crosses that threshold there is no turning back. Here was this man who legally crossed that threshold but is still living and breathing as we are. How does one bring him back if not by subterfuge?”

“S-s-subterfuge! Are you mad?! We are the emperor!” He said rapping the desk with his forefinger. “We can do whatever we want! If we say a man lives, he lives! Do you doubt this?”

Cosades thought, “Oh, crap! I’ve cooked my goose!”

The emperor calmed himself down and removed his spectacles.

“Caius, we also value candor above all else. You didn’t mince words or dance around the question but rapped that bung into the hole where it belonged. But what you did was foolish beyond words. You failed to communicate this case to us for our consideration. You arrogated an authority that was ours alone. You broke we can’t count how many laws that try to prevent this sort of thing from happening. In short, what you’ve done is tantamount to treason, and we are sure you have seen enough public executions to know what we do with traitors. But we’re going to let you off because we’ve got other plans for you.”

The notary reached the quill and parchment to the emperor, who signed it and pressed the imperial seal into the hot wax. The Scotti case was now officially closed. The notary bowed and exited with the writing utensils and signed confession. The emperor then slid his chair closer to Cosades and dispensed with the imperial “we” as he spoke from the heart.

“Now listen, the hetman in Ald Velothi is up for promotion in the civil service. He is serious, resourceful, and incorruptible, and I want to create a new post of Comptroller for the Province of Vvardenfell. All movement of goods and gold will be subject to his, and my, approval, and his bark and my bite will put Duke Dren and his cronies in a more subservient place. But I need your cooperation because we can’t leave the hetmanship vacant for too long.

“I want you to proceed as soon as you can to Ald Velothi and continue where he is leaving off. There, you will be surrounded by nature and a more rustic people who mind their own business and don’t get involved in the ways of the world. You will be able to recover your health, breathing in the salt sea air and viewing the rugged coastline. You might even buy an easel and water colors and take up painting.

“I admit being hetman of Ald Velothi is not a very demanding position, but somebody has got to do it. I hope that after three years your health and state of mind will have become more robust, and then you will be useful to me again.”

When the emperor said he would be mild with him, Cosades didn’t know what to think, but now he was overwhelmed. What he’d forgotten was that the emperor’s mercy and generosity were very well earned.

WHO THE HELL IS YUMIYA?

“And Yumiya?” Cosades asked.

The emperor’s elbow seemed to slide off the desk when he heard that. Why should Cosades care about this slip of a girl, who the emperor himself had appointed as candidate for Nerevarene, only Azuras knowing for what reason?

“I say throw her under the silt strider.”

“May I ask why?”

“Caius, your own intelligence has found that the Nerevarene is of uncertain parentage, but this young lady is certainly a princess-of-the-blood of the House of Akavir,” the emperor shrugged nonchalantly.

Cosades’s expression changed to that of consternation.

“If your Majesty will allow me to contradict, the direct line of the kings of Akavir died out centuries ago. Subsequent inquiries I made in the Akaviri community have found that this young lady is extremely delusional. She thinks but cannot prove that she is the daughter of self-styled King Nobunaga III, who was himself a pretender to the throne of Akavir.

“And even if she was his daughter, nobody knows who her mother was. It is said there were about a dozen concubines in the Nobunaga household, so any one of them could be her mother. She can show you a jasper amulet she says her mother gave her, but it could have come from any pawn shop.

“However, the Akaviri have a strong belief that such a ‘cracked’ personality has something of the divine embedded in it — some kind of superhuman ability. Left to itself, it can do awesome things from the sheer energy of will placed there by the divine. I have no doubt that this ‘slip of a girl’, as your Majesty calls her, can carry the day when she comes face-to-face with Dagoth Ur.

“Let’s make a deal, your Majesty. If your Majesty throws her under the silt strider, your Majesty may as well hang me with my own entrails. Place no time restrictions on Yumiya, and I’m your Majesty’s hetman.”

“Done,” the emperor responded, but Cosades could see he didn’t like being checkmated in this game. Of course the emperor had no intention of hanging him with his own entrails. Cosades was tired and a bit disoriented from the lack of skooma. Ald Velothi was going to be a good change of pace for him.

AN UNEXPECTED LETTER:

It was the end of the work day, and Decumus was dog-tired. He entered the washroom with other prisoners getting off the shift and looked in the wash basin with a layer of ice that had to be broken before he could wash off all the grime. He smiled as he remembered Yumiya telling him, what seemed like ages ago, that prisoners aren't supposed to enjoy hot baths. He broke the ice and gingerly dipped his face cloth into the frigid water. A quick wiping up of his face and body was quite sufficient because tomorrow he'll become just as dirty.

If anything, the prison was humane in that it worked the prisoners in shifts, fed them a generous helping of porridge and bread, and provided clean face cloths every morning to wrap up over their faces to filter out the ebony dust. Without this protection, the dust worked like micro-razors that sliced up the lungs. Ebony is malleable after smelting and can be shaped into awesomely hard armor and weapons, but the raw stuff is brittle and can smash into smithereens if not dug out correctly.

Decumus was making his way to the mess hall when a jailer handed him an envelope. It was the first letter he'd ever received, and he wanted to read it right then and there (it had already been opened), but he decided to contain his excitement until he was in the privacy of his own bunk.

Finally the time came to take a closer look, and he was thrilled that the sender was Yumiya:

"Dearest Decumus,

"I’m writing first of all to express my deepest regret that you were sent to your present location, second to offer you encouragement, and third to hold out hope for the future. I hope this letter finds you well and cooperating with the authorities there. Having myself experienced prison, I know that hopelessness can bring on all manner of illnesses and that all resistance is useless. I also know from experience that this letter isn’t strictly between me and you, so I’ll dispense with details.

"I’m sorry I never apologized for the way I treated you in the excise office in Seyda Neen. I’m sure you’re aware a girl has to be careful meeting a stranger for the first time. Our second meeting over dinner at the Eight Plates was fantastic! We should do that again some time. Please be careful not to do anything to prolong your time there. I really hope I can see you again, touch you, and feel your arms around me.

"Now there I go fantasizing again! You know, it's lonely being singled out the way I have been. Am I not entitled to think and feel as any other woman? I was advised to be there as a friend to you when you most need it. I would think you should be there as a friend when I most need it. Together we can comfort and be comforted, love and be loved.

"How am I doing? Well, the Temple is all up in arms because they STILL don’t believe a little twerp like me can or should be the one who will rescue Vardenfell from You-Know-Who, so I have to go down there to meet The-Big-Kahoona himself because he’s got something—don’t know what it is yet—that I need in order to beat You-Know-Who. If he had this thing all along, why did I have to slog through all those silly quests for the Big Houses and the Ashkhans? Hoop-jumping, pure and simple.

"I’ve been thinking about you a lot since your trial. I could see your pain at hearing Laila put a self-righteous spin on all her actions that got both of you into so much trouble, and I can only say you should let bygones be bygones because she ultimately hurt herself more than she hurt you. There's really no need for you to 'get even'.

"At the same time, I want you to know that the vacancy she left in your heart needn’t remain forever. I’m not good at expressing myself to men because I’ve never tried to take advantage of one. What can I say? Just this. Please remember me, and to help you, I drew my picture on the back of this paper while looking in a mirror. Please don’t cringe: I know it’s crude—like me! Ha-ha-ha!

"Yours always, XOXOX!

"Yumiya"

Decumus turned the letter over and smiled at the crude drawing. It was a beautiful likeness...because she drew it just for him. He carefully folded the letter and put it in a safe place where nobody in the prison dormitory would find it.

POSTSCRIPT:

Two years have gone by. Cosades is still painting the rugged seacoast and recovering from his skooma dependence. Ald Velothi became Yumiya's home base for consultations with the former head of the Blades. Having no experience leading such a far-flung organization, she was in constant need of advice. Cosades also asked for oral progress reports to ensure that she stayed focused on destroying the Sixth House and Dagoth Ur.

Laila is still helping build the new town of Raven Rock. The captain of the guards who found her was aghast to learn at the trial that the evidence he found was planted there. He also couldn’t explain why Laila and the presumed corpse of Decumus Scotti were accounted for, but not the pilot. He was summarily expelled from the guards for his sloppy investigation.

That didn't prevent him from moving to Solstheim and taking up residence in Raven Rock to be close to the woman he rescued. It was great solace to her whenever he came to visit with gifts of fresh underwear, edible food, and books. She could tell from the day they met that he liked her, and it was comforting to know he was now still looking out for her. She apologized for the trouble she put him through by planting the ring on the pilot's corpse to help her ex-husband escape. He responded that he would never want her to do the same for him, and he promised he would never put her into a situation that called for such desparate means.

Decumus Scotti, Esquire, was now free to walk out of the ebony mine a free man. As he climbed the stairs to the foyada, his heart jumped when he saw the lone figure with glossy black hair standing at the top of the stairs.

At first he looked stupidly at Yumiya, then overcome with emotion, he threw his arms around her and squeezed her little body to himself. Then they walked hand-in-hand back to Caldera where she had a room at Shenk's Shovel.