User:Starshard/though she be but little, she is fierce

Author's Note: This work does not completely conform to established Skyrim canon and in fact some character traits conform closer to fanon. Timelines of some events have been altered from canon. Later portions of this work may contain mature, NSFW subject matter; this will be noted per chapter where applicable.

The reader can find more information on Iris here. This work can also be read on Archive of Our Own here.

Chapter 1: One More Prisoner

A crisp breeze rustles through the birch trees of the Rift as the Imperial caravan trundles over the bridge. The prisoners it carries know nothing of its destination, and the soldiers that drive it aren’t telling. They’d left the little settlement one prisoner richer; the small guard force stationed there had hauled a common horse thief into a wagon with two blond, well-muscled men. One of them had been gagged and wore a heavy fur cloak, the other a thick leather and chainmail cuirass draped with rich blue fabric. None of the three men had said a word to each other. They didn’t have to.

Ralof watches the town disappear behind them, the ancestral barrow slipping away behind the topography and out of sight. It’s been difficult to keep track of time and place since the ambush, but that town has to be Ivarstead. The Throat of the World looms large to the right of the wagons. West? So the convoy is heading south.

For what must be the hundredth time, he wonders where they’re being taken.

The wagons stop at the end of the paved road, which travels to the left and right ahead of them. There’s nothing of interest here. Surely this isn’t their final stop. The captain of their caravan is already walking ahead into the wilderness, alone on some mission or task none of them are privy to.

“Did you hear that?” the horse thief asks suddenly. He’d seemed a little on edge from the moment the Imperials tossed him in the wagon.

“Are you going soft, horse thief?” Ralof asks in return. “I don’t hear anything except the wind in the trees.”

“Wait! There is it again!” Ralof sighs, entertains the notion that maybe there is something out there – and from deep in the woods, he hears the panicked whinny of a spooked horse.

“There might be someone’s camp out there. They scared their horse, that’s all.”

Across from the thief, Ulfric Stormcloak has his gaze trained in the direction of the sound. If he could speak freely, Ralof has a feeling he would have some piece of advice, or tactical information to share. Instead his voice is tripped up by the gag. It’s no better than muffled mumbles, but Ralof thinks he knows what’s being said.

“Imperials.”

The three men watch from their confinement as the captain of the guard begins to return. He has a soldier with him – Ulfric was right about the Imperial detachment, then – and a redheaded girl, stumbling along, being dragged by the soldier. Her physical build is about that of a teenager, the impression of her as small and perhaps frail only aided by the hooded black cloak billowing behind and around her.

“Toss her in with the Jarl,” the captain says, returning to his post.

The soldier approaches their wagon with the girl, whose impending imprisonment almost whips her into a panic. “No – please - “ Her voice is soft but pitched with fear. Ralof notices the hair at the back of her head is short and choppy, in the manner of someone who had to cut it themselves without benefit of a looking-glass. Had she cut her own hair off to try and escape?

“All right, in you go,” the soldier says. “The more you fight, the worse this gets for you,” he adds as she digs her heels into the soft ground, bracing herself against the back of the wagon in an attempt to delay the inevitable.

“No – no, let go of me!” Her voice rises, more firm and defiant. The three men in the wagon watch with varying degrees of dismay and disgust as the Imperial soldier lifts the girl off the ground – her feet lashing back and forth, trying to kick him in his well-armored shins – and tosses her into the wagon. She hardly has time to scream. As her head hits the far wall with a solid thud, her eyes roll back until Ralof can see their whites and then settle closed. Her small body goes still in the bottom of the wagon, out cold.

Ralof looks her over as the wagons move down the road to the right and the soldier leaves for his detachment in the woods. Her hands have already been bound at the wrists, just like the rest of the prisoners. There’s a fair amount of blood drying on her freckled face, especially above her upper lip. If he had to guess, the Imperials broke her nose. She seems otherwise unharmed. The mining clothes she wears are muddy, the cloak pooling around her like a shadow. He can’t imagine what trouble she could cause to end up in a prisoner caravan.

“I wonder what she did,” the horse thief says.

“Maybe we’ll never know.”

The most Ulfric can offer is a muffled growl. Ralof is sure the sentiment is directed towards the Imperials.

The girl wakes in the bottom of a wagon.

The day is bright, and the sun through her closed eyelids adds to the throbbing ache at the back of her head. Opening them is no good. The glare sends stabbing pains through her skull, and she groans and scrunches them shut again. It’s all she can do to focus on the scraps of information she has – three men with her in the wagon, all with their hands lashed together. A snowy, tree-lined road down a hill, sheer rocky outcroppings on all sides.

Her head hurts.

She reaches to feel at the spot that's the worst, and finds her hands bound together, too.

It’s then that she starts to panic.

Every quick, ragged breath sends little sparks of pain through her face. Where is she? Who are these men with her? Why is she tied up? Most of all, why can’t she remember how she got here? There’s a single vague memory of a big wooden gate and a cobbled road, and then nothing. She struggles into a sitting position, up against the wall.

“It’s good to see you awake,” one of the men says. “That was a nasty knock on the head you took.”

She opens her eyes slower this time. The man who had spoken is muscular, wearing a cuirass of gleaming silver chainmail and rich blue fabric, a single thin braid in his golden hair. Are the four of them prisoners? What did she do? She stays focused on him in an attempt to assuage her rising panic. The air is crisp here; she tries to steady her breath.

“You crossed the border from Cyrodiil, right? No, don’t try to talk,” the man adds, “I’m certain the Imperials broke your nose.” So that’s why her face is hurting. She nods instead. “They scooped you up after they ambushed us. You and this horse thief.” He turns his head to indicate the dark-haired man to his left, hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes making him look gaunt and exhausted.

“Damn you Stormcloaks,” the dark-haired horse thief says, “The Empire was nice and lazy in Skyrim before you came along.”

“The true sons of Skyrim have always been here,” the blond man replies, with some venom. “All we needed was a leader.”

The girl isn’t following. Stormcloaks? Sons of Skyrim? ‘Imperials’ she recognizes; they’re the Emperor’s military. This is an Imperial prisoner caravan? What did she do?

“You!” the horse thief says, “You and me – we shouldn’t be here. It’s the Stormcloaks the Empire wants. We have nothing to do with it. Right?”

“Go easy on her, horse thief. Look at her. She doesn’t understand.” The blond man’s voice softens with pity. “I’m sorry,” he says to the girl, “You can’t go back to Cyrodiil now.”

The gaunt-faced horse thief looks at her with pity, too, for a moment. She doesn’t understand why.

Her gaze is drawn to the third man in the wagon. His face is smeared with dirt, hair a darker blond and a gag wrapped around his jaw, but amidst that dirt his eyes are fierce and alive. His cloak looks heavy and warm, rough around the edges like it came straight off a wolf’s back. Every inch of him exudes authority and power.

(There’s something intriguing about him. Why is he gagged, and not the others? Is his mere voice a threat?)

“What’s wrong with him, huh?” the horse thief asks, and the blond man rounds on him, snaps,

“There’s nothing wrong with him. The Imperial dogs are scared of Ulfric Stormcloak, that’s all. Afraid he’ll take his place as the true High King.”

“Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm?” The horse thief’s voice wobbles with surprise, and then cowardice. “If they’ve captured your leader,” he asks, “Then where are they taking us?”

“I don’t know where we’re going,” the blond man responds, “But Sovngarde awaits.”

Sovngarde. The four of them are being sent to die.

The girl watches the road slide away underneath and behind the wagon with a detached sort of regret. The sky is clear and blue this morning. The road cuts through a coniferous forest, needles deep and lively green against that sky. If this is all she gets to see of Skyrim, she might as well appreciate the view.

“What village are you from, horse thief?”

“Why do you care?”

“A Nord’s last thoughts should be of home,” the blond man says, almost gentle.

(Is she Nord? She can’t even remember that about herself.)

“Rorikstead,” the horse thief responds, after a moment’s hesitation.

The wagon is close to the bottom of the slope, she can feel it. Her companions lapse into silence as a voice behind her shouts about a headsman and the wagon wheels rumble underneath them. At a fork in the road up ahead (or rather, behind) is a signpost, and the girl stares at it, grasping at what little it can tell her. Two of the signs point up the hill and away while the one between them points in the direction of their travel: ‘Riften – Helgen – Ivarstead’.

None of this is familiar. Her heart sinks.

They pass through the gate, into a town. She has to guess this is Helgen. At some distance off the main road are two figures on horses, facing each other. “Thalmor agents,” the blond man mutters, with contempt. “I bet they had something to do with this.” The gates creak shut behind them. Their fates are all but sealed. “Funny, when I was young, Imperial walls and towers made me feel so safe.”

The girl watches a banner with the Imperial insignia flutter in the breeze, listens to a father usher his young son into the house and a stern woman order the wagons to a halt. “Let’s go,” the blond man says, “We shouldn’t keep the gods waiting.” As he helps her stand and stumble forward, the girl becomes aware that something is wrong about herself. Besides the throbbing in her face, nothing is broken or sore. She’s slender but not unnaturally so. Her clothes haven't been torn; this cloak is her own.

She’s filled with a deep sadness when she realizes her hair has been cut. The weight of it against her back is missing.

“No, wait! We’re not rebels!” Clambering out of the wagon ahead of her, the gaunt-faced horse thief twists around to face the blond man, voice stricken with panic. “You’ve got to tell them, please! We weren’t with you! This is all a mistake!” Ahead of them, a woman leans on the railing of her front porch, watching the proceedings. Soldiers in Imperial red supervise small groups of other prisoners, all dressed in uniforms of the same leather and rich blue.

“Step towards the block when we call your name. One at a time!” barks the stern woman, wearing armor that shines in the sun. Next to her is a man with parchment and quill.

He starts reading names.

“Ulfric Stormcloak. Jarl of Windhelm.”

The girl is certain that if Ulfric were not gagged and bound, he would rather go down fighting. Instead he walks past the stern woman with a murderous snarl in his eyes.

The man with the parchment calls the blond man that had been kind to her next, and then men and women from the other wagons. The girl watches them walk obediently – although not happily - to a small clearing next to a squat tower. When he calls the gaunt-faced thief, the man runs down the road through town. He doesn’t get very far before the stern woman shouts, “Archers!” and he’s skewered with arrows like a pincushion where he stands, crumpling to the cobbled ground.

“You. Step forward,” says the man with the parchment and quill. “Who are you?”

The girl walks up to him, legs shaky, and tests out her voice.

“Iris.”

Chapter 2: The End Is Nigh

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The man with the parchment beckons her closer with his quill, and Iris shuffles up a step or two to be scrutinized. He's taller than her - although so far, everyone around her has been - with nary a buckle out of place on his uniform. "Breton," he finally says, "Fleeing court intrigue in Daggerfall, no doubt." He looks down at his parchment again, a crease forming between his brows as he searches for her name.

Had she been? The place name is vaguely familiar. Maybe she is Breton. How can she have known what Sovngarde was, then? Isn't that only a Nordic belief? Is the soldier mistaken?

"Captain," the soldier says, worried, "What should we do? she's not on the list."

"Forget the list," the stern woman in the gleaming armor says, "She goes to the block."

"By your orders. I'm sorry," the soldier says to Iris, "We'll make sure your remains are returned to High Rock."

Fear and dismay root her to the spot; another soldier has to come forward to drag her towards the clearing by the wrists. "No, wait - I'm not - " Talking spikes the pain in her face up from a dull throb. Better to keep her mouth shut. The soldier with the parchment is watching her get taken away, that stupid damnable pity writ large on his face, and she stares at him for as long as she can before he disappears behind the crowd of soldiers in Imperial red and prisoners in blue. She bumps into a man with fiery red hair, and steadies. "Sorry," she mumbles. He gives her a look that says it couldn't be helped.

"Ulfric Stormcloak," a high-pitched, nasal, somewhat grating voice says. Iris peers around the red-haired man in the blue uniform to see a familiar figure. It's General Tullius. When did he get assigned to Skyrim? "I've heard some here in Helgen calling you a hero. But a hero doesn't use a power like the voice to murder his king and usurp his throne." Jarl Ulfric murdered a king? In light of that, Iris isn't surprised the Empire wants his head.

Ulfric snarls at the general, all defiant fire to the last. Tullius gives him a similar expression fo distaste. "You started this war, plunged Skyrim into chaos, and now the Empire is going to put you down, and restore the peace."

Iris knows little of Skyrim. She's sure she didn't even know the province had a king. Yet for some reason she wants to give Ulfric the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the king was wretched and tyrannical and deserved it. Maybe Jarl Ulfric's cause is a good one. (What even is a jarl, anyway?) As she's considering this, a distant sound echoes through the air like a great beast calling to its prey. "What was that?" one of the Imperial soldiers asks.

"It's nothing," Tullius replies, voice clipped and terse. "Carry on." He stalks across the clearing towards the squat tower, while the stern captain instructs a woman in mustard-seed yellow robes to give the prisoners their last rites. A priestess. Next to the priestess is a man that can only be the headsman. In front of him is the chopping block.

"As we commend your souls to Aetherius," the priestess says, hands outstretched, palms raised in religious fervor, "Blessings of the Eight Divines be upon you, for you are the salt and earth of Nirn, our beloved - "

Eight? That's not right.

The red-haired man next to Iris seems to agree. "For the love of Talos, shut up and let's get this over with." He moves forward to kneel at the block of his own accord. "I haven't got all morning."

Through the pained fog in her head and her face, a big piece of memory returns. Talos is the Ninth Divine, the man who rose to godhood. His worship is outlawed in the Empire. That's why the priestess only called upon the Eight. Just as she thinks she's beginning to parse Jarl Ulfric's cause, there's the sound of a heavy gourd being chopped in two.

Except it's not a gourd.

The headsman stands at attention again, and there's fresh blood on his axe. The red-haired prisoner's body has bveen parted from hsi head, which lies on the dirt under the block. More blood flows from the stump of his neck, staining the wood cherry-juice red. Iris wants not to look. She can't look away. The captain is already pushing the prisoner's body over on its side with her foot, to clear the way for the next unlucky soul. Other men and women are shouting, cursing each other.

“Next, the Breton in the cloak!” the captain shouts, cutting through the din. It takes Iris a moment to realize that means her.

The air is rent with another of those calls, and Iris looks up, distracted from her fate. Mountains and tall pines fill the horizon, but one stands taller than the rest. It seems both incredibly far away and very close. Its peak scrapes the clouds, and even from this distance Iris can see snow there. The mountain seems to beckon her, to call her name. She thinks the call of the beast came from its slopes.

“There it is again,” the same Imperial soldier says.

“I said, next prisoner!”

So Iris walks up to the block, acceptance of mortality leaden in her heart, and kneels. She does not look at the red-headed prisoner’s body cooling next to her. She does not look at his head on the ground in front of her. She especially does not look at the headsman’s axe, blade coated with another man’s blood. The headsman raises that axe, and there’s the disgusting feeling of something warm dripping onto the back of her head –

From over the hill on the horizon next to the squat tower comes a roar, the roar of a creature that craves domination. “What in Oblivion is that?” General Tullius shouts, and a great black winged beast lands on the tower with an earth-shaking thud. The headsman stumbles and falls, and someone is shouting that it’s a dragon, and then the thing opens its mouth with a shriek that bends the very air to its bidding. Clouds coalesce behind it, sky the ashy grey of a dying campfire, and lumps of rock begin falling to the ground, walloping the buildings of Helgen. Iris stares at the dragon and it stares back, menacing red eyes boring into her, and she’s struck by the thought that it knows her, it's come for her.

Then it opens its mouth again. The force of its voice hits her like a full-body punch and she falls over, away from the block, face against the hay-strewn ground. General Tullius is shouting for the Imperial soldiers to kill it, to keep people away from it, and Iris knows instinctively that this monster cannot, will not die. It will not stop until it has her, and until the town is razed down to the dirt.

A flaming stone tumbles past her, and someone is wrenching her to her feet, their large hand around her upper arm. “Come on! The gods won’t give us another chance!” It’s Ralof, the man who was kind to her in the prisoner wagon.

They run.

There’s another tower up ahead, and Ralof does not let go of her arm until they’re safely inside. (Although can anywhere really be safe, when dragon is in town and the sky is raining chunks of rock instead of water?) A couple more of the prisoners in blue are slumped on the floor here, hands pressed to burns or wounds in their torsos. They must have gotten hit by rocks. Iris can’t bear to look at them. She slips around behind Ralof, tucks herself behind the prominent doorframe, as wide as her entire body.

“Jarl Ulfric! Thank Talos you’re in one piece. What is that thing? Are the old legends true?”

And then a new voice, deep and smooth and commanding.

“Legends don’t burn down villages. We need to move, now.”

“Up the stairs, let’s go!” Iris doesn’t need Ralof’s urging to run. She’s a little clumsy with her hands still lashed together, but she’s fleet of foot. She reaches the landing ahead of anyone else, slipping and staggering back as the black dragon’s head punches through the wall of the tower like it’s wet parchment. She screams as it breathes a jet of fire through the hole, thanking the gods that Ralof is right behind her. The flames don't stick to the stone floor, guttering out fast.

“See the inn down there?” Ralof points to the next building, a flaming hole in its roof. “Jump down and keep going. We’ll follow you when we can.”

From this high up, Iris has a clear view of this part of town being decimated. Small fires burn everywhere; most structures are crumbling or have holes through their walls. The height and the destruction make her queasy, give her pause. What if she jumps into a fire? What if there’s nothing solid to land on down there? Plumes of black smoke obscure the view. She takes a few uneasy steps back from this makeshift window.

“This is no time to be afraid of heights, girl,” Jarl Ulfric says. Iris gets no warning before there’s forceful hands at her waist. Her cloak billows like the black dragon’s wings as she’s thrown –

Somehow, she knows how to land, tucking herself into a ball and letting her body roll with the momentum. The floor is solid underneath her, the second floor of the inn mostly untouched. The cloak is tangled about her legs, but she’s in one piece. She’d avoided rolling through a fire up here by mere inches. Part of the roof to her left is gone; she runs for a jagged hole in the floorboards and drops, wincing as her weight lands a little awkwardly on one ankle. She pauses in a doorframe to catch her breath, peering around the post. A couple of the Imperial soldiers are huddled behind the ruins of what might have been a house with a little boy.

“Still alive, prisoner?”

One of them is the soldier who’d said she was Breton and sent her to the block. He’s spotted her.

“Keep close to me if you want to stay that way.” She doesn’t want to. As the black dragon lifts into the air, circles like some great carrion-eater, she understands she has no choice.

They run down the main road, over a scorched bridge and into a narrow alley. Adrenaline rushes in Iris’ veins as the soldier shoves her back against the wall – the dragon’s wings drape right over their heads, so close she can see the vicious gleam of its claws. It’s gone again, and they’re running around tight corners, through a burned-out husk of a house, down the road where archers are shooting at the dragon from atop a stone arch. The arrows seem not to harm it at all. “Hadvar! Into the keep, soldier, we’re leaving!” General Tullius shouts from a distance. Everything is a blur of fire and arrows and blood and bodies sprawled on the ground and falling chunks of stone. Is this normal for soldiers to face?

Iris’ toes catch on a jutting cobblestone, sure step faltering, and she’s sprawling forward on the ground, catching her fall with the heels of her hands. It’s Ralof that helps her up, not Hadvar. “Thanks,” she says.

“Anytime. Come on, let’s get into the keep. There’ll be weapons there, at least. Maybe even a better way out.”

Chapter 3: Out Of The Frying Pan

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It's quiet and still in Helgen Keep. Beyond the entryway alcove is a large round room, taxidermied heads of wildlife mounted high on the wall, next to a heavy banner bearing the Imperial seal. Another man in blue lies slumped on the ground, limbs askew and body limp. "We'll meet again in Sovngarde, brother," Ralof says, solemn. Then he turns to Iris, a little ways behind him. "I think we're the only ones who made it. We should count ourselves lucky."

He beckons, and Iris shuffles forward (closer to the dead man, whom she does not look at) so Ralof can cut her wrists free. His hands are big and rough, deft with the dagger that bites through the rope. There's red marks left behind underneath; she wonders how long her own hands have been bound. The heels of her hands are stinging, scraped up raw. "You could have stuck with Hadvar," he says, non-judgemental. "Why didn't you?"

"You were nice to me. I wasn't supposed to be here. He still sent me to die." Ralof nods.

"That's the Imperial army for you." He sighs, and looks down at the dead man in blue. "You might as well take his gear. No doubt we'll need to fight our way out of here."

Iris' fingers tremble as she works the clasps on the dead man's cuirass. It's too large for her, but it will have to do in a pinch. She secures it over her own clothing as best she can, pulls her cloak back on over the whole affair. There's a belt-loop for a weapon handle; she winces as she takes the hatches out of his stiffening hand.

There's gated doorways on either side of the round room. One is metal, and locked, while the other is little better than a wooden portcullis. Beyond is a long, empty hallway, still air carrying the distant sound of voices and booted footsteps. Iris' hand closes around a strap on Ralof's cuirass, tugs him around the side of the doorway and out of sight as the stern captain and an Imperial soldier appear at the end of that hallway.

Ralof was right - they do have to fight their way out. Rather, Ralof fights their way out, taking on both the captain and the soldier with his own pair of hatchets. Iris makes an attempt to help him, but her failing nerves handicap her. The hatchet feels incredibly wrong in her hand. She has no feel for its heft or how to swing it.

"Not much of a fighter, are you?" Ralof asks, a little out of breath, once the two Imperials are taken care of. Iris can only shake her head and shrug, voice locked up tight in her throat. "It's alright. I've got your back." He rifles through the Imperial captain's pockets, and comes up with a key. "I bet this opens that other gate. Come on, let's get out of here before the dragon brings the whole tower down on our heads."

They head down through the keep, surrounded by cold stone and the rich smell of dirt, down spiral staircases and tightly turning passages. Ralof holds off a couple more soldiers in a storeroom while Iris lets her fingers do the walking, scavenging shelves and barrels for potion bottles and food. (Much to her disappointment, there's no forgotten septims hiding in the cupboard.) Farther along, he passes her a little bundle of metal sticks. "I'm no good at picking locks. Do you think you can get that cage open? It would be good to have the septims later."

Maybe she was a thief by trade, before she ended up in Helgen, because the lock is no chore to open. It might almost be called comically easy. Her fingers move with a mind of their own, twirling one of the picks in the guts of the lock to find its sweet spot and levering the mechanism against itself with a letter opener. Only three pins, she thinks. There's septims and a spellbook on the ground, more coins spilling out of a dead man's pocket. She scoops up the lot, swipes another book with a black cover on an end table and stuffs everything she's carrying into an abandoned knapsack while she catches up to Ralof. "Sticky fingers, eh?" he remarks.

Iris just smiles.

Distant roars and bangs sound from far above as they pass through more rooms and hallways lined with cells and cages. A hole in the wall breaks through into rough-hewn underground tunnels, the elevated braziers at regular intervals belying the continuation of the keep. There's more Imperial soldiers, in a room where stone bridges and platforms cross an underground stream. Iris draws a looted sword (she can't say it feels better to wield than the hatchet; the shield Ralof gave her makes her feel a lot safer) but what she's really interested in are the archers. They take potshots at Ralof from across the room. She wants those arrows.

She can keep them off his back. She can do that much.

They have swords, too.

The force of their blows bash against her shield and she screams, but she figures out she can push back and kick them in the legs and then it gets easier. She gets one of them good in the face with the edge of the shield, slashes through the leather at his sword arm. He can't draw the bow now, forced to swing at her with his off hand, clumsy. Good. She takes the bow and quiver off him once Ralof puts him on the floor.

The dank mineral smell of groundwater fills the cool air around Iris and Ralof as they follow another swift stream through the tunnels, picking their way over slimy, slippery rocks. Where the stream dead-ends, a dry side passage leads into another cavern. Ahead of her, Ralof gasps as something hits him with a wet splat. Iris draws her new longbow as spiders as big as a man descend from the ceiling and scuttle across the floor. The flexible wood and the smooth arrow shafts feel good in her hands as she picks off one spider from the doorway, then a second.

"I hate those things," Ralof says, by way of thanks. "Too many eyes." He watches from a distance as Iris kneels near one, presses gingerly on its fangs to drip venom into a vial she'd found in the pocket of her armor. "Be careful with that stuff." Her fingertips tingle with a feeling like being frostbitten; she rubs them in the dirt before catching up. (Leaving traces on her clothes is no good. She'd be running the risk of Divines-only-know-what contacting it later.)

"You're a good shot," Ralof adds, almost proud, as they make their way down a slope, loose rocks tumbling with each cautious step. "We might make a Stormcloak out of you yet."

"Thanks." She wonders how she hadn't made the connection that the prisoners in blue were the Stormcloaks. She has so many questions. Now isn't the time to ask them.

The caverns under Helgen Keep stretch on. The little rushing stream they'd had to wet their feet in makes a reappearance, cascading down through what had previously looked to be a solid wall. There's plenty of dry ground here. The stream runs under and past their feet in a ditch which Ralof crosses in a single long stride and Iris has to make a little leaping hop over. Wooden detritus litters the cave floor to their right, shards of crate slats scattered like divining tools. Ahead of the scraps are large bones. Ralof squats down to examine one. It hasn't been picked completely clean. "Came from some animal," he says. Iris holds out a hand to shush him, eyes up and ahead. Over the hollow sound of the wind and the bubbling of the stream comes a snorting, snuffling noise. It's the sighing of some beast at rest. It doesn't sound big enough to be the black dragon, or angry enough to be a troll. Ralof stands as quietly as he can, and together they creep past the snoring cave bear some distance away.

Stealth seems to come to Iris a good deal better than Ralof. He winces when a step crunches a bit too loud in the dirt, has to focus to make each one light and slow. He watches Iris stop to judge where best to place her feet amidst a cluster of large stones, and follows in her footsteps. It's not much longer before they're around the bend and out of sight. At the end of a twisting, sloping tunnel is daylight, pouring in through a gap in the stones, and cool relief washes over both of them as they scramble through it and into the sunshine.

After the dimness of the caverns, the noontime sun reflecting off the snow is almost blinding. They must be high up in the foothills.

Pine needles shower the ground and the two of them with snow as Ralof motions Iris down behind an outcropping of rock. The great black dragon is circling wider and wider overhead. They watch as he rides the air currents, flaps his wings and leans on them to fly over the mountains and out of sight. "Looks like he's gone for good," Ralof says. "We'd better keep moving. The Imperials are going to catch our trail soon enough."

For the first time since she awoke, Iris feels directionless. Events out of her control have ceased. She can go wherever and do whatever she wants, and she doesn't know a thing about Skyrim. She'd be hopelessly lost in no time. "Where do we go?" she manages to ask.

"Riverwood should be just up the road. My sister runs the mill. I'm sure she wouldn't mind having a few unexpected visitors."

Chapter 4: The Lumber Mill

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The day is warm and full of opportunity as Iris heads down the road towards Riverwood with Ralof. She's glad to be rid of the tension and regret that had settled into her bones. Instead she feels only curious appreciation. "Is all of Skyrim like this?" she asks.

"Like what?"

"Pine trees. Hills. Snow." She spreads her hands out, attempting to contain the majesty of the landscape with a gesture.

"Not all of it. But to her people, it's all beautiful." Ralof smiles down at her - and it is truly down. He's about the same height as his Stormcloak comrades, as Jarl Ulfric, as even most of the Imperial soldiers. The top of her head barely reaches his shoulder. She hadn't noticed before, in the hectic rush of escape.

"What else is there?"

And so it is that Iris first becomes acquainted with the vast diverse geography of Skyrim. Ralof tells her about each of its holds as they walk a twisting dirt path that joins up with the cobbled road - the stinking swamps of Hjaalmarch, the wide-open plains of Whiterun, the autumnal birch forests of the Rift. He explains the concept of jarls, names and describes each one, save for Ulfric of Windhelm. "You should visit the palace, once you've got your feet under you. If anyone will know what that dragon showing up means, it's Ulfric Stormcloak."

"What's - what's the voice?"

Ralof's expression darkens somewhat with anger. He's not mad at her. The context in which she heard the term is quite enough to be mad at. "When Kynareth created the Nords at the Throat of the World, she left a little bit of wind-magic in all of us." It's an oversimplification one might tell a child, or a foreigner. "If you channel that magic just right, you can speak in the old language of the dragons and do very powerful things. It takes a lot of training. Almost any Nord can use that magic if they want, but it takes someone very special to learn more than the basics. Jarl Ulfric studied the Way of the Voice for almost a decade."

"What's the Throat of the World?" Ralof's stride is long; Iris is struggling a little to keep up, although he's making an effort to match her pace. The longbow and shield feel good on her back, feel like safety. The Imperial sword in its scabbard and her quiver of arrows wobble against her thighs with every step. She's happy to let Ralof do the brunt of the talking. Not only is her face still throbbing, it feels most natural to stay reserved.

"It's the tallest mountain in all of Tamriel. The Greybeards live in a monastery right below the summit. If someone wants to learn the Way of the Voice, that's where they go."

"Do you think they'd teach me, if I wanted to learn?"

They walk on, with the landscape spread out to their left, all sunshine and hills covered with conifers, and Ralof says, "I don't know. You're Breton, aren't you?"

Iris thinks about this for a while, whether she feels Breton or not. She's still thinking about it when Ralof stops on the road, pointing out a row of triangular arches high up on a hill. "See that, up there? That's Bleak Falls Barrow. It's the ruins of an old, old Nord tomb. There's dozens of others like it all over Skyrim. I never understood why our family decided to live in the shadow of a place like that." He stares at the barrow for a moment longer, thoughts far away.

Iris stares, too. The view of the barrow from between the trees is foreboding. The mountain peak it juts out from is dark, coated in snow, even in such nice weather as this. (Perhaps too nice to wear a black cloak, but in this wide new world, it's the only familiar thing she can cling to.) "Coming?" Ralof calls, from down the path, and she runs to catch up.

The barrow isn't much to look at, but what it represents is far more important - freedom, knowledge, and best of all, opportunity, a goal. Iris understands that she is - or at least, is perceived to be - fragile, has little skill with bladed weapons, probably needs protection like a child. She still wants to go up to the barrow in the dead of night and explore its passages. Maybe there's some hidden treasure, a nugget of gold to reward her diligence. The immorality of raiding what is, by all accounts, an ancient family tomb is lost on her.

Down the hill, three conical stones sit on a platform overlooking a sparkling lake, and Ralof stops again to wait for her. "There's thirteen stones like this all around Skyrim," he says. "They have some kind of connection to Aetherius. These three are the Guardian Stones."

The Guardians - Warrior, Thief, and Mage - the major constellations of Tamriel. A stone somewhere in Skyrim for each Guardian's charge. "Go on," Ralof says softly, "Have a look," and he nudges her shoulder with his elbow, watches her walk up to the Guardian Stones.

The stone platform is laced with tree roots, and Iris has to watch her step as she approaches the three stones. They're taller than even Ralof. Two wide rings of metal encircle them at about the top third of their height, above and below a wide bore clear through which itself has a decorative metal ring encircling it. Both metal and stone are covered in swirling, meandering etched patterns. All three are the same, save for the constellation carved into the front. A warrior with armor and axe and shield, a bearded magician with a staff surrounded by swirling magical currents, a cloaked and running thief clutching a coinpurse.

The Thief is calling to her, beckoning to her with its figure in motion and its purse full of septims. She reaches towards it, cautious, and pauses.

"Do they... do something. If you touch them?"

"I hear they can give you powers," Ralof says. "Help you get better at fighting, let you turn invisible. Things like that."

So instead of the Thief, Iris lays her hand on the Mage stone.

She gasps as something sizzles through her muscles, something hot and powerful bursting under her skin. It trickles down her arms like rivulets of water, pools and heats in her fingertips, and she snatches her hand away like she's touched hot coals. Slowly, the etchings in the stone begin to glow, a bright bluish-white that traces the Mage constellation over top of the wizard. The swirled etchings at the top of the cone are glowing, too. A sphere of that bright energy collects in the stone's bore, shooting a narrow beam of light into the blue sky. She watches the light twinkle and shimmer for a minute or two until it dies away. Something is pleased with her choice, beyond.

"Mage, eh? Well, to each their own." Ralof's voice is quiet behind her, even a little dismissive. "Come on. We're almost to Riverwood."

The road ahead snakes down the hill on hairpin turns. A river flows downhill alongside them, cascading and splashing over too-large stones that attempt to stand in its way. A pack of wolves howl from up the hill to their right, barely audible over the rushing current. They're too far away to pose any great harm.

"Was that supposed to be an insult?"

"Ah - well, Nords are suspicious of magic at best." Ralof looks at her sidelong, as if to confirm his own opinion is thrown in with the majority. "Healers are all well and good, but don't go around raising the dead or you'll be losing some trust. Especially with the Stormcloaks."

(Does she even know magic? Aside from picking locks, she has no idea where her own talents lie.)

A mossy stone wall with a covered walkway atop it denotes the border of a town, nestled alongside the banks of the rushing river and surrounded by pines. There's a sign for a blacksmith up ahead, its unseen proprietor bending hot metal to their whims; an old woman attempts to tell her son about a dragon. "It was as big as the mountain, and as black as night! It flew right over the barrow!"

"Mother, dragons haven't been seen for hundreds of years."

A water wheel churns away, powering the blade of a lumber mill that splits logs with a series of deafening cracks. In the adjoining side yard, a blonde woman in a green dress is chopping firewood with easy efficiency. "Gerdur!" Ralof says, and the blonde woman nearly drops her hatchet in surprise.

"Ralof! Mara's mercy, it's good to see you."

Iris hangs back near a towering pile of firewood as the two of them embrace in a relieved hug. Gerdur is thinner than her brother, hair the deep gold of fresh-minted septims. Over the noise of the lumber mill, Iris can't hear the conversation. The way Gerdur is looking over her brother as if he might be hurt, she can guess it has something to do with their escape.

"Who's this?" Gerdur asks, looking around Ralof. "She's a little... young for a Stormcloak, isn't she?"

Iris averts her gaze, kicks at the ground with the toe of her boot. "She's no Stormcloak," Ralof answers for her. "Maybe some day down the road. Is there somewhere quieter we can talk?"

The side yard continues past one end of the mill, where the massive split logs pile themselves haphazardly on the ground. There's several huge tree stumps here, and Ralof collapses down onto one in a way that suggests immense weariness on his feet. Iris sits much more tentatively, drawing the cloak around herself as if she could disappear into it.

"Uncle Ralof!" A little blond boy, dog at his heels, runs up to them with childish eagerness. Ralof smiles, ruffles the boy's hair, trying not to let his exhaustion show. "Can I see your axe? How many Imperials have you killed? Do you really know Ulfric Stormcloak?"

(Is it normal for children in Skyrim to be so blunt about murder?)

"I'll tell you later, Frodnar," Ralof says, still trying to take the child in stride. "Right now your mother and I need to talk."

"Hey! Girl!" Frodnar says, all enthusiasm with nothing to temper it. "Are you a Stormcloak, too? Are you one of Uncle Ralof's friends? Why's your face all bloody?"

"Hush. Not right now," Gerdur cuts in. "Can you come find us if you see any Imperial soldiers coming up the south road?"

"Aw, but I wanna stay and talk with Uncle Ralof."

"It wouldn't be any fun if the soldiers sneak up on him, right?" Iris offers, and the child brightens up with determination.

"Oh, right! Don't worry, Uncle Ralof, I'll make sure they don't get you!" and he runs off, dog barking the whole way.

"What's going on?" A man joins them from the mill, which has fallen silent, hair pulled back in a horsetail. "You two look pretty done in."

"I can't remember when I last slept," Ralof says, weariness returning to him all at once. "Where do I even start?"

His sister and the man who could be their husband listen with disbelief as Ralof spins the tale of an ambush two days prior in Darkwater Crossing, the stop in Helgen for execution, the appearance of the black dragon.

"You don't mean a real, live..."

"I can hardly believe it myself, and I was there. We'd be dead if not for him."

"And what about her?" Gerdur turns to Iris, who's hardly been listening. The river forks here, one side running past the mill and under the water wheel, while the other separates the four of them from a sheer rocky hill. A waterfall flows down it, sparkling in the light. She could watch it for hours.

"What about me?"

"Ralof said you're not a Stormcloak. How did you get tangled up in this, wearing Stormcloak armor?"

"I - I don't know."

The silence is deafening. Iris wants to shrivel up on the spot, the way she's being stared at. "I woke up in a wagon. I don't - " She struggles to articulate the complete depth of empty memory with words, the vast chasm where something should be. "I remember - a gate? And a road, and snow."

"She wasn't part of the ambush," Ralof supplies gently. "We picked her up later, at the Imperial camp in the Rift. Her nose had been broken already." He pauses here for a second, voice softening even farther, addressing Iris directly. "You tried to fight back. One of the Imperials threw you in the wagon and knocked you out."

"The bastards," Gerdur spits.

So that's why it's been a little hard to focus. She's surprised her head doesn't hurt fit to burst by now.

"I'd hate to put Hod and Frodnar in danger, but... maybe we can lay up here for a while, wait for this to blow over."

"The two of you are welcome to stay here as long as you need. Let me worry about the Imperials. Any friend of Ralof's is a friend of mine," she tells Iris, with a reassuring smile.

Late in the afternoon finds Iris sitting by the hearth in Gerdur and Hod's little home, letting Gerdur patiently comb the tangles out of her hair. She'd bathed in the invigorating chill of the river, scrubbed the dried blood off her face while Gerdur took a horsehair brush to her muddy clothes.

"You know, you really do look Breton, but your hair is so thick, like a Nord's." Gerdur frowns as the teeth of the comb catch in a knot, picking at it until it comes loose. "Nice and red, too. Like autumn."

"Is it?"

"When's the last time you had a look at yourself?" Gerdur asks, her manner indicating curious concern. "Do you remember anything else, besides the gate to Pale Pass?" she prods, when there's no answer. "Anything about where you came from, or where you were going?"

Iris shakes her head, slowly, thoughtfully, drops of water trickling down the headrest of her chair. "Um... no." Whatever destination she'd had in mind when she crossed the border is similarly lost in the vast chasm of missing memory. "East, somewhere?" That feels right. She tries to focus on that in hopes of attaching it to something more definitive. The comb pulls again in her hair and she winces, disturbing whatever might have been like ripples on a clear pond.

"Mama, do other Bretons have a lot of freckles, too?" Frodnar reaches up to poke her cheek. His finger is cold and clammy, like it's been in fish guts, or mud.

"I don't know. Delphine doesn't have any. Neither does Belethor. But you can't assume anything from two people."

"Who are they?" Iris asks.

"Delphine's the innkeeper at the Sleeping Giant down the road - Frodnar, stop that - and Belethor has a shop in Whiterun."

There's a strange, comfortable sort of intimacy having her hair combed in front of the fire. Like family. Ralof and Hod are murmuring in the background about the trade route to Riften being cut off and the possible effect on supply lines, Gerdur is taking a scissors to her hair and tutting about how "someone did an awful job cutting this, such a shame", and Frodnar is trying to get her to talk about the dragon. She wonders if her own family was like this.

She wonders if they're going to miss her, wherever they are.

"Something wrong, love?"

Gerdur folds her arms over herself under her bosom. The sun's starting to go down over the hills, and the breeze blowing over the river's surface is a cold one. She draws closer to her husband as he shakes out a match, takes a slow puff off his olivewood pipe. The tobacco is imported; whether this batch came from High Rock or Cyrodiil hardly matters. What matters is that Hod's pipe is packed with the last of it, and there's no knowing when Lucan will come by more, or if Hod will have the coin when it does. Gerdur reaches for the pipe and takes a puff of the pale, fragrant smoke for herself.

"It's that girl Ralof brought with him. Iris."

"Aye? What about her?"

"It's not just that she doesn't remember how she got to Skyrim. The poor thing doesn't know why she's here." Gerdur leans into her husband's side, head against his shoulder as he puts an arm around her.

"Did she tell you where she's from?"

Gerdur shakes her head, solemn. "It sounds like everything is gone."

"Everything?" Hod becomes solemn, too. The two of them stand there in silence, leaning against the wall of her home, sharing a pipe, until Hod speaks up again.

"What about her age? Even Ralof thinks she could hardly be older than sixteen."

"Eighteen at the youngest," Gerdur counters. "About as old as Camilla, I'd say."

"There's no taking her in, then."

"No. She's the wandering type."

"Do you think she'd be willing to go up to Whiterun for us? There's not near enough guards here, with a dragon about."

"Maybe. I'll see what she thinks in the morning."

Ralof has already gone to bed when Gerdur and Hod come back inside. Stump looks up at them from under the table, wagging tail smacking against a chair leg. The fire is still going in the hearth, the redheaded Breton girl still in her chair in front of it. There's a book with a black cover on the floor by her feet, as if it had slipped out of her lap. The sight is so poignant it makes Gerdur stop still, hand at her aching heart.

"I think she's asleep," Frodnar whispers from the dining room table. It's an exaggeration of a whisper, a little too loud to be surreptitious to anyone except sleepers. "Don't worry, I made sure she ate something first, cause you always tell me not to go to bed without eating." He smiles with pride.

"That a boy," Hod whispers back, ruffling his son's hair. "Why don't you go play outside with Stump and Dorthe?"

Frodnar leaves to find his friend, and asleep by the hearth, Iris dreams of fire, hazy shifting dreams of power and greed and destruction. The wheel of time turns upon the Last Dragonborn - and so too does it turn upon two men in the east, each very different from the other, both hoping their luck will begin to change.

Chapter 5: The Journal

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Author's Note: This chapter contains excerpts from The Book of the Dragonborn and Line and Lure.

It's the small hours of the morning when Iris wakes in an unfamiliar place for the second time.

For a moment, panic grips her heart, before she realizes she's safe. She's in someone's house this time. There's furs over her lap to keep her war. The house around her is rustic, a longhouse made of stones and heavy wooden beams. Layers upon layers of thatch make up the ceiling. A massive fish with a hooked jaw is prominently displayed on a plaque over the hearth. Chunks of firewood are stacked in an iron kettle; bunches of herbs hang from the eaves over a table piled with produce and bread and cheese and some extinguished candles. She'd fallen asleep in a chair, in the indistinct pool of light cast by the hearth, unfed and burnt down to cinders. Between her own feet and the foot of the hearth is a hardback book, sprawled open like it had fallen. Was she reading this last night?

- evidence that Reman Cyrodiil was descended from Alessia, although there are many legends that would make it so, most of them dating from the time of Reman and likely attempts to legitimize his rule. We know that the Blades, usually thought of as the Emperor's bodyguards, originated in Akaviri crusaders who -

Maybe this will be more interesting when she's more awake.

The sun isn't up yet outside. Nothing stirs except thin branches swaying in the barest breeze, and Iris wandering down the road through Riverwood.

Tucked away next to Gerdur and Hod's is the Bosmer's house. She'd seen him carrying a pile of firewood off to the blacksmith yesterday, bow still strapped to his back, quiver crammed with steel-tipped arrows. And here is the blacksmith's itself, occupying the side porch of his house. The fuel in the forge is still red-hot. Ingots are stacked neatly under a bench, ripe for the taking if she chose to, with no one around.

The knapsack she'd taken from the keep is full of all kinds of useful things. She hadn't looked through it properly before. A dagger, another handful of lockpicks, extra potion bottles, a roll of leather, and best of all two parcels of food wrapped in brown paper. The base is starting to wear a touch thin, but there's plenty of life - and space - in it yet.

Across the way is the Riverwood Trader. They probably aren't open. She could break in, and no one would be the wiser. She's running light on septims. They might not have a strongbox, way out in the woods like this.

Much to her dismay and surprise, the door is unlocked.

"Well, one of us has to do something!"

A dark-haired woman in a brown dress is lighting candles stuffed into goat horns around the room, arguing with a man behind the counter. Neither of them have noticed her. Their accents are familiar, more even-toned. Imperials, Iris decides.

"I said no! No adventures, no theatrics, no thief-chasing!"

"What are you going to do about it, then, huh?"

"We are done talking about this." The woman glares at the man as she shakes out her last match, sits sulking at the table by the fireplace. The door hinge squeaks at the last second, and the man turns to Iris, grasping the knob behind her back. "Oh, a customer. Sorry you had to hear that."

Iris walks up to the counter, lets him tell her the story of the shop's ransacking by thieves and the stealing of the Valerius siblings' prized golden dragon claw, and promptly decides she'll come back later.

On the riverbank next to the bridge out of town is a bait box, and a fishing rod. It is customary in Skyrim, a journal propped up against the box says, to leave fishing supplies by waters where the fish are plentiful. Might as well save her coin and keep this fishing rod, then. The rest of it expounds on technique, location, the time of day when certain fish might be caught. None of it holds her interest. She puts it to one side, scoops out a bait fish from the box to skewer on the hook.

Either she's not good at fishing, or the fish aren't biting this morning. She spends about an hour on the bank, watching the sun rise over the hill and trying (and failing) to remember anything she can. All she catches are a young salmon and a sickly purple fish that's far too small to eat. She wraps them both up in more brown paper from the bait box and stands, shuffles down the bank.

Her reflection in the water's surface, broken and reassembled and broken again, seems too young and yet too world-weary. How old is she? Where might features like hers fit in? She has the rich hair and high cheekbones of all the Nords around her, but her eyes are too big, her face too round. It might be wholly unremarkable without the freckles. Not an inch of skin is devoid of them. Her eyes are greenish-brown, nearly gold at the right angle, the kind of eyes a naive young farm boy might think are exotic. Gerdur's efforts on her hair hadn't been for nothing; deep red locks have been neatly trimmed into one thick layer brushing her shoulders. How long had they been, before her capture? Down to her bosom? Her elbows? Had someone taken a knife to a fastidious braid, tossed her handiwork into the mud? She tucks an errant section behind her ear, and wonders. There are innumerable things to wonder, but one thing she does know for certain. There was somewhere she meant to go, before Helgen, and she intends to remember it.

Lastly, we come to the question of the true meaning of being Dragonborn. The connection with dragons is so obvious that it has almost been forgotten - in these days when dragons are a distant memory, we forget that in the early days being Dragonborn meant having 'the dragon blood'. Some scholars believe that was meant quite literally, although the exact significance is not know. The Nords tell tales of Dragonborn heroes who were great dragonslayers, able to steal the power of the dragons they killed. Indeed, it is well known that the Akaviri sought out and killed many dragons during their invasion, and there is some evidence that this continued after they became Reman Cyrodiil's Dragonguard (again, the connection to dragons) - the direct predecessor to the Blades of today.

"Hey. You okay?"

Iris flinches hard when someone touches her knee. The other woman doesn't so much as recoil. She's middle-aged, with the same rounded face, blonde flyaway hairs backlit by the inn's fire pit. Her eyes are piercing, intensely bluish-grey, the color of the sky before a storm blows in. When she does take her hand away, the sensation of the touch remains like a ghost.

"Y - yeah. Why?"

"You looked awfully lonely, that's all." The woman stands from a crouch, picks up the broom leaning against the table. "We don't get many visitors. Ends up being my business to keep track of 'em." She starts taking the broom to the flagstones near Iris' feet with a harsh dry whisking sound. "I've got a room free, if you're staying the night. Wouldn't want you sleeping out in the woods or something."

Iris shakes her head. This must be Delphine, the Breton innkeeper. "I have somewhere."

"Suit yourself." She gives Iris a shrewd look. "You eaten breakfast yet?" The way she asks, it really feels like she already knows the answer. Iris shakes her head again and Delphine puts down her broom, leaves and returns with a warm chunk of bread and a cold bottle of ale. "On the house, okay?" she says with a smile.

"Oh. Thanks."

"No problem. You're still getting your feet under you, and supplies don't come cheap these days. I'm not here to swindle the naive."

Iris wants to ask how she knew such a thing, but Delphine is already walking away.

The blacksmith's starting his day when she re-emerges, and is kind enough to give her some coin for a spare longbow, although he won't take the sword. "Keep it. You can't always rely on a bow out there. What you really need is a camp, and maybe a new backpack." He stops briefly to write her up a materials list - mostly firewood and leather - and sends her on her way. "I'm a mite busy right now - " and sparks fly off the grinding-wheel as he speaks, axe-blade held fast against it. "I can help you put all that together if you come back later."

Her next stop is the Riverwood Trader, where the prices on the catalog make her wince. "It's the war," Lucan complains, "Makes everything harder to come by. Especially good quality weapons. We're lucky we have our own blacksmith." There's only four backpacks in stock, all of which make the coin in her pocket seem paltry by comparison.

"Alvor said he could help me make one," Iris says, tapping the entry for one with her forefinger, and Lucan nods.

"Sure, sure. Except you need corundum, for the buckles and whatnot, and that doesn't come cheap. If he doesn't have any, you're out of luck."

Alvor hadn't had any, so Iris heads back to Gerdur's house, yawning. Hod isn't home. In the expansive side yard, Gerdur is supervising her son milking the family cow, streams of milk spurting rhythmically against the side of a metal bucket. "There you are! Wait here a moment, okay? I have something for you."

Food and shelter are one thing. Iris is very grateful for that, in a province and a culture she's still familiarizing herself with. The leather-bound journal Gerdur gives her goes beyond those basics. Its cover is embossed with a mighty eagle, wings spread, feet reaching for its prey. The pages are crisp and stiff when she fans through them. At the top of each one is a date: '7th Sun's Dawn', '18th Midyear', '12th Heartfire'. "I bought this from the traveling Khajiit merchants a long time ago, but it's just sat in the drawer ever since. I thought it might help your memory."

"Oh," Iris says, "Thank you." She holds the journal in both hands, and is touched. It's the first new thing she's come to own that's fully hers. She sits down in the grass, in the warm morning sun, to reflect on her new acquisition.

Owning things is nice. It's a reminder that she can belong here. Anyone can belong here, if they want to. She could wander to her heart's content across the landscape, learn magic, fight crime, or settle down anywhere she pleases. The world is her oyster. She still wants to know what came before, to remember what she's forgotten, but that doesn't mean any of it will have any bearing on her choices to come. She can choose to do whatever she wants. Owning things is nice, and seeing the world is nice, and people's kindnesses are nice.

Iris suspects owning things she didn't come by honestly will be nicer still.

TO DO

Speak to High Priestess Danica at the temple of Kynareth in Whiterun

Speak to Jarl Balgruuf the Greater on behalf of Riverwood

"What's Jarl Balgruuf like?"

Iris' new hawk-feather quill works furiously over the page for the 18th of Last Seed in the beam of light shining over Gerdur and Hod's dining-table.

"He's a good warrior, and devoted to Whiterun Hold. I hear he and Jarl Ulfric have been rivals since they were children." The corners of Gerdur's mouth pinch together with apprehension. "He's not known for his patience, and neither is his housecarl. The more direct you are, the better." She fiddles with the band of her wedding ring for a few moments, twirling it back and forth on her finger. "I don't mean to be disrespectful - he's ruled the hold well for years - but he seems in over his head, with the war. He's been trying to stay neutral, but it can't last. I'm afraid someone will force his hand, and he'll make the wrong choice."

Iris says nothing. They both understand what a Stormcloak loyalist means when they speak of the wrong choice. The quill scribbles some more, keeping up well with Gerdur as she speaks - impatient, Ulfric's rival, neutral on the war. (After a moment's contemplation, she crosses out the word war and writes rebellion instead.)

"Even so, it's hard to believe he would choose Elisif over Ulfric."

"Elisif, the Jarl of Haafingar?"

"Aye. She married High King Torygg just before Ulfric killed him. I don't have anything against her. It's not her fault Torygg was paid for by the Empire, and she seems like a sweet woman. But she's only a puppet. The Empire supports her claim to be High Queen of Skyrim." There's no hate or even dislike in Gerdur's tone. It's perfectly level, totally neutral. "The Moot won't meet to choose another High King - or Queen - until the war is over. Ulfric is the rightful High King, and he'll make sure a Jarl is all Elisif will ever be." Iris' big eyes take in every word she says with the utmost seriousness. Professional, even.

"What's the way to Whiterun from here?"

"Ah, right, I almost forgot." Gerdur crosses the room to a chest of drawers and returns with a long roll of parchment, a bit tattered around the edges. "You'd do well to have a map, if you intend to do much traveling." She unfurls it on the table with a quick flick. Thick red lines mark out the approximate boundaries of each hold, their capitals indicated by crests - a triskel for Morthal, the head of a bear for Windhelm, crossed daggers for Riften. 'Province of Skyrim', the map declares in the bottom left corner, '4E 182, Nataly Dravarol, cartographer'.

(And here's a curiosity. Gerdur had bought the journal from wandering merchants, presumably ones that only cross Skyrim. The embossed eagle on its cover matches none of the crests on this map.)

Iris' gaze wanders to Riften's crest. Ralof had said she'd been picked up in the Rift. Did she mean to go to Riften? What could she have wanted to go there for? Pale Pass straddles Cyrodiil's border with Falkreath Hold. The map gives little to no sense of scale. She could have been on the road from Cyrodiil for hours, or days. "Pass the Sleeping Giant and cross the bridge out of town," Gerdur is saying, finger tracing the road out of Riverwood on the map, and Iris snaps her attention back. "The north road follows the river to Whiterun. You'll see Dragonsreach on its hill as you reach the falls."

"Alvor said he could help me make camp supplies." Iris' quill works again - north road from Riverwood.

"Did he now? That would be a good thing to have. You won't need it for this. Even if you leave in the afternoon, you'll reach Whiterun before dark." Gerdur pauses a moment, releases the map, which spools itself shut. "You don't need to go right away, you know."

"Mm-hm." Iris nods.

They both know she will.

Chapter 6: Message to Whiterun

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Over at the lumber mill, Faendal watches Iris split firewood. The task comes to the millworkers a fair bit easier; Iris' motions are slower, jerkier. He stops her now and then to gently adjust her stance or her grip on the axe until those motions become fluid. "See, you don't need help. If you can draw a bow, you can swing a hatchet."

"Now, these things aren't very durable," Alvor warns her, while they wait for solid animal fat and precious beeswax to liquefy in a pot over the forge. "You can only really set them up once, so save it for when you're way out in the wilderness. Understood?" He looks over at her trying to saw the firewood into planks. She's too short to do it properly. "No, let me - don't hurt yourself. Here, you deal with the leather."

"Heading out already?" Hod asks, while Gerdur dusts her hands clean on her apron, opens and closes drawers and folds things up in brown paper. The box of camp supplies on its rudimentary sledge sits by the front door, extra firewood piled inside. Stump leans up against Iris' legs, asking for headpats; Ralof writes a letter to give to the next courier to pass through town, addressed to Jarl Ulfric of Windhelm. "You be safe out there. See if you can't get that cuirass nipped in a little at Warmaiden's."

"Warmaiden's?"

"The blacksmith in Whiterun," Gerdur responds. "Adrianne works the forge, and her husband Ulfberth runs the shop. If you ask me, she's biased to the Empire - "

"How could she not be? Isn't she Imperial?" Hod interjects. Gerdur ignores him.

" - but she does good work, and she'll usually do leather alterations for free. Here."

Iris eyes the offered parcel. "You don't have to - ..."

"It's not much. Some herbs from the pantry, that dress you borrowed. I couldn't let you go off to hold court with a Jarl underdressed for the occasion."

"Speaking of Jarls," Ralof says, "Gave any thought to whether you'll see Ulfric?"

"Not yet," Iris says.

"You should. He and Galmar are true Nords, tough and hard-headed. They'll take anyone as fierce as they are." He looks up from his writing and smiles at her. "I think you've got what it takes."

Iris strongly hesitates to agree.

It's a bit past four in the afternoon when she waves goodbye to Gerdur and Hod and Ralof, Alvor the blacksmith and even Delphine, sweeping the porch of the Sleeping Giant, and leaves the sleepy village behind for the big city.

Iris takes a moment coming down the hill from Riverwood to absorb the sounds of the woods - tranquil birdsong, distant howling of wolves, occasional rustling of foliage in a summer breeze. Over a bank ahead is a hill jutting up from the plains, perfectly framed between the pines. There's something odd about it. She tries to make out any details through the slight afternoon haze, and realizes it's a building. One single, massive building. Funny spur-like things jut out from the tiered roof.

There's another howl, closer, from up the hill to her left. It's a lone wolf, separated from its pack. It hasn't seen her. Her mouth is dry from nerves as she nocks an arrow, desperately trying to keep it that way. Something causes it to turn - a shift in the wind, maybe - and she's silently praying it still hasn't seen her up until the moment it begins to snarl and she knows it has.

She doesn't want to hurt it.

The arrow is already loose. It sticks in the wolf's flank and it makes a piteous whine, and limps away.

It would have tried to eat her, she rationalizes, trembling. She didn't want to hurt it but it would have tried to eat her. Alvor had told her wolves are savage things in Skyrim, unafraid to chase down any traveler, no matter how well-armored. Wolves are okay to not give mercy to.

This line of thought does little to calm her nerves.

Dappled, lengthening shadows of the forest give way to the open, hilly plains, grass crisping and browning among the wild heather. To her right, the falls rush down and down and down, before mellowing out and passing under a bridge on their way to the far-off sea. It's not especially hot out, what with the setting sun painting the sky in pastel pink and orange, but the air is sticky like treacle. By the time she reaches the pair of buildings on the outskirts of Whiterun, she's broken into a light sweat.

Iris can't believe her luck when the establishment turns out to be a meadery. It's cool and dark, a welcome respite from the heat. There's no one in the taproom. She takes the opportunity to peruse the contents of a shelf by the door where books are stacked haphazardly atop each other, copies of The Firsthold Revolt and The Real Barenziah - Book the Fourth, Gods and Worship and Vernaccus and Bourlor and The Great War. She might do well to brush up on history. A concise account of the Great War between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion, the front flyleaf proclaims, by Legate Justianus Quintius - an incredibly Imperial name if ever she's heard one. A door at the other end of the room clicks open as she finishes fitting the book into her knapsack, and she affects her best innocent just-passing-through expression as she walks up to the bar.

The proprietor - a middle-aged man, balding and slightly unpleasant - introduces himself as Sabjorn. He has the kindness (or perhaps it's only business sense) to offer her a taster of mead in a little wooden cup. "Honningbrew Meadery uses only the finest honey," he says with what might be pride, "not that sludge you'll find at Goldenglow Estate." The mead tastes vaguely of lavender. It's fine. She's not paying much attention to quality and is frankly too thirsty to care. "My goodness, dear, you look exhausted," Sabjorn says, trying to affect concern but landing closer to condescension. "Please, take all the time you need to catch your breath." (And to drink his mead, she assumes. She has more important things to do, and better places to slake her thirst.) "Are you headed to Whiterun?" She nods, a little weakly. "Don't worry. The Bannered Mare always seems to have a room available for travelers."

She thinks there's an insult in there somewhere. She hopes that doesn't mean The Bannered Mare is subpar. Maybe Sabjorn just has higher standards. This late in the day she's taking whatever she can get.

The road to Whiterun passes by several farms, some with men and women out working the fields to make use of the last shreds of daylight. As Iris passes one, an object goes flying end-over-end over the fence, almost tumbling into the road. It's a massive crude club, no better than a large rock affixed to the end of a tree branch. A trio of people are visible through the fence, well-armored, weapons in hand, standing over a huge figure in the middle of the field. Its collapse has crushed some crops; it seems like they're talking about how best to get it out without doing more damage. Iris doesn't stop to watch. She doesn't know who these people are, but she doesn't need or want to. All three seem more than capable of cutting her entire body in half, and she's not sticking around to find out if they would care to try.

At the heavy stone gate to the city, a pair of blazing braziers illuminate two massive banners in white and goldenrod-yellow, bearing the goats-head crest of Whiterun. Rasping Khajiiti voices rise from a camp outside the walls, just as a column of pale smoke rises from their cookpot. The fortifications don't stop at one gate. The road twists and turns up the contours of a small hill, flanked by multiple guard towers and their torch-carrying patrols. By the time she crosses a lowered drawbridge, Iris is beginning to feel very small, and very watched.

"Halt!" A guard shouts, from a closed and barred pair of gates ahead.

Iris halts.

The guard approaches her with his torch. A helm covers his face; there's a scabbard at his hip. The long length of fabric draped over his cuirass is the same shade of goldenrod yellow as the city's banner. (It's incredibly similar to the uniform worn by the prisoners at Helgen, save for the color.) "Do you have official business in Whiterun? Gates are closed to tourists, with a dragon about?"

The guard isn't especially intimidating - he certainly seems capable, if she tries anything out of line - but Iris feels intimidated anyway. "I - " she stammers. The guard is waiting patiently for a reply. She did have an answer, right? "I - I came from Riverwood."

"Yes? What about Riverwood?"

"It's - they need help, from the Jarl."

"And you were sent to audience with him?" She nods. "Jarl Balgruuf stops holding court at sundown. You'd better go in and get a room for the night. The Bannered Mare's at the end of the road."

"Thank you, sir," Iris says. To her own ears, it sounds incredibly shy. She really thought she had more confidence than this.

The guard escorts her up to the gate, lifts the huge bar with ease and watches her put what feels like her entire body weight against it until it opens enough for her to slip through. "Good luck," he says, just before the gate closes with a wobbling bang.

There's a flock of crows in front of the Bannered Mare. Quite a large flock, in fact. Some of them perch on the edge of the well, a few are sitting brazenly on the counter of a market stall, a few more on the signpost (one even bends to peck at it, sending it swinging), and several sitting on the front steps. There are so many on the steps they're blocking the way. Iris flaps her hands at them, as one does with birds. "Shoo." Nothing happens. One of the crows ruffles up a little bit, settling. She thinks it's indignant. When she tries to walk up the steps anyway, one of them pecks at her ankle. "Ow! Go away."

One of the crows on the market stall squawks, and several of its fellows begin to raucously join in as the birds on the steps push their bodies against Iris' legs. "What? What do you want?" Stupid crows. They're shoving her towards the stall, making an immense ruffling-feathers sound, and she has no choice but to go where they want or get tripped.

The counter of the market stall is covered in glass-topped display cases, each full of different bits of jewelry - necklaces, lockets, rings. As Iris approaches the stall, one of the crows looks up. She feels a little ripple of unease when its beady eye meets hers, and it extends something clasped in its beak, something shiny and silver. Tentatively, she holds out a hand. The crow drops this something into it -

And there's a cacophony of wingbeats as all the crows take flight out of the market at once.

They just wanted to give her something?

She looks down at what was dropped into her palm, mystified. It's a small silver ring, with a droplet of raw garnet set into it. It fits perfectly on her forefinger.

It's a strange encounter, to say the least. As she walks up the steps to the Bannered Mare, she can't help feeling like the crows chose her for something, some future purpose. Aren't crows an omen? Or maybe that's ravens.

The Bannered Mare is to the Sleeping Giant a few miles away what ravens are to crows. To the untrained or unscrupulous eye, their purposes in life are indistinguishable. To the discerning eye, it's clear which one is in higher societal esteem. Where the Sleeping Giant was rustic and peaceful, the Bannered Mare is fantastically full of energy and noise and light. The taproom smells spicy and savory and sweet, bubbling stew and roasting meat and hot sugar. The sound of a lute rises over the ambient chatter of people crowded around the firepit, commoners and a pair of barmaids and two older men in armor having an animated discussion.

"...could do with more of your wife's steel, instead of those pathetic excuses for swords."

"She's got her hands full as it is. She told me Idolaf stopped by for an order this afternoon, wouldn't take no for an answer."

Thirty-one precious septims later and Iris is holed up in a narrow loft bedroom, doing her best to tune out the (blessedly muffled) sounds of the tavern below. After the quiet of the nighttime streets and the wilderness, the sensory stimuli of civilization had been nearly overwhelming. The crush of sounds had become more disorienting and exhausting the longer she stood there and spoke to the woman behind the bar. The simple tasks of asking for a room for the night and something to eat had turned difficult; she'd had to be prompted to speak and then to repeat herself as her voice had been thin and shy. Being in this room feels like hiding. Nine cities in Skyrim - she'll probably spend most of her time in at least one - and she can't handle a tavern at night. She closes her eyes and curls into herself, slumped up against the wall at the head of the bed. She was hoping to get some reading in, but that's an impossibility when she doesn't even know how she'll manage to eat anything.

Maybe closing her eyes for a little while will help.

19th Last Seed, 4E 201

Iris wakes some amount of time later, shivering from a cold sweat, strands of hair stuck to her damp cheek. Her dreams had been something sent from Oblivion. The black dragon from Helgen had been in them, speaking to her in a tongue she could and yet could not understand, as if she were hearing the harsh syllables and their Tamrielic equivalents simultaneously. She doesn't remember what he'd said, thank the gods, only that there'd been hateful recognition in those red eyes while he towered over her as a wolf observing an ant. Even his head had been as tall as her twice over.

She sighs and stirs, uncurling her stiff, protesting limbs. Everything is quiet, but she still feels uneasy, as if anticipating a threat she rationally knows won't come. There's tension coiled along her shoulders and ribs; her neck crackles when she rolls it from one side to the other. She winces at the twinge in her back when she leans forward, away from the wall. The motion shifts the cuirass around her body and she winces again. Falling asleep in it has really made her notice how poorly it fits. It's not light out, the little window set into the angled wall over the bed tells her that much, so she'll have to remember to deal with it later. Adrianne will do it for free, if I'm nice.

She can't see herself threatening violence to a blacksmith. Whether she has to pay for the alterations or not, she needs more septims. A lot more septims. Half the coin in her pocket had gone to this room and a little food (which she hadn't eaten). Nice big city like Whiterun at night, there's bound to be plenty of places where she can find those septims.

There's a small looking-glass in a wooden frame on the bedside table. She divests herself of the armor and leaves it aside on the floor, kneels in front of the mirror and tries to do something with her hair. Thanks to Gerdur's efforts the other day and having slept sitting up, it's no longer a rat's nest, but it is a little wild and damp. Plaits feel most natural. Maybe she did have one that got cut off. It's too short to do a long one now - she'll have to wait a long time for that to grow back - so she settles for two small ones over the crown of her head and lashes them together in the back with a lockpick that was really no better than a thick bit of wire. It won't do to have hair drifting into her face while she's breaking and entering.

She deliberates over her backpack while she devours a cylindrical little pastry, dense and lightly sweet, and downs a third of a bottle of ale in one go. (She's still terribly thirsty from yesterday; her mouth is dry and her throat clicks when she swallows.) There's only so much she can fit in her pockets. On the other hand, taking anything other than septims could be a problem. She'd need someone to fence it -

Wait, how does she know that?

She has the instincts of a thief but no memory of actually being one. First it was the locked cage in Helgen Keep, then the hypothetical strongbox at the Riverwood Trader, now it's the potential obstacle of not having a fence.

Coin only, Iris decides, unless I find something I can't leave without.

It's time to test out those instincts.

Chapter 7: Caught Red-Handed

(back to top)

She starts by casing houses.

The market stalls might be easy pickings if there wasn't a guard patrol watching, and the shops no doubt have locks she doesn't have patience for right now, if they have back doors at all. Behind the two shops on the left are a pair of small houses that look too impoverished to bother with. Beyond them is the blacksmith. She's not stupid enough to try robbing a blacksmith - at least she doesn't think she is - and nothing here looks affluent enough for her taste. It looks like this whole road is just lined with merchants. The only other house here that could be worth a try is not only next to the blacksmith, but has a single door on the main road; it would be far too obvious if she tried to break in.

Well, that's not helpful at all.

She could try going up. There's another level of streets above this one. She hadn't thought about it, back when she was more concerned about having a bed than how much of a dent it would put in her pocket to get one. That was... last night? She can't be sure how long she slept.

For fuck's sake, all the houses up here look the same.

On the other hand, she's positive these ones have back doors. They come from money for sure. Just at the head of the stairs, a path runs behind them off to the right, close to the wall, and she decides to stick to that. (There's at least a better chance the guards don't patrol back here.) It curves around past a nice big house with a small side yard and a cow, door cast in heavy shadow and flanked by carved dragons-head totems. That'll be perfect to come back to later - provided that shadow holds.

The path meets another up a head in a four-way cross. A ring of stones encloses a little flower garden in the center: tall stalks covered in periwinkle or bright red or purple blooms, a small shrub with red berries nestled among its leaves, a low dense coat of tiny yellow flowers. "This garden made possible through the patronage of House Battle-Born", a little plaque set into one of the stones reads. Made possible by House Battle-Born, huh? If they can pay for a flower garden in the middle of the road, they can spare some septims to line her pocket.

Her gaze moves up to the house with the audacity to have a patio and a side yard on its plot. Does she think House Battle-Born is vain enough to put the garden they paid for within a stone's throw of where they sleep at night?

...Yeah, probably.

One would think a pillar of the community like House Battle-Born would have a nice, sturdy lock on their front door.

They don't.

The main room isn't much bigger than the taproom at the Bannered Mare, but it feels larger than that, high ceiling exposing all the rafters. Four wooden pillars with bands of carved and painted knotwork box the firepit in; the chairs across from it and the cooking spit closer to the door are empty. There's a door at the far end of the room, another on either side, and she thinks there's a fourth on a loft landing. She'll have to be careful.

The fire's pretty dead. That works in her favor. There's enough light left for someone with keen eyes to spot a thief by, but the corners are the most shadowy. She can find coin by touch well enough if she has to. Every muscle simmers with adrenaline at the prospect of robbing the Battle-Borns right under their noses. Her footsteps are slow as she passes up the shelves in the corner (just gleaming cups and piles of books), her touch light as she eases open a drawer and probes the back corners. On the other side of the firepit is a dining-table, swept clean of all but the candelabra. The firelight is even weaker over here. The sideboard is full of almost exclusively tableware, again. For Talos' sake, do these people have any stray coin? Her fingers brush along the spines of more books and she can't resist, slipping one off the shelf and into the waistband of her pants. The shirt is large enough to cover it without a conspicuous outline. (The shirt is too large, but the pants fit fine. She wonders in the back of her mind how that happened.)

Next to the door is a long low chest, and she breathes a sigh of relief as she opens it, slowly, so the hinges don't squeak. Finally. There's a smattering of coins and a gemstone, a nice one. She could get a good chunk of money for that, once she finds the right buyer, make back what she's spent so far and more. It all goes in her pocket and she's out the door, breathing fresh air that smells like ferns and morning dew.

Good. That felt good. Keep it basic, routine, easy. She leans against the house, contemplates her options while she chews on a sticky-sweet lump of soft dough on a stick she'd plucked out of a bowl. Good enough for breakfast.

The building next door doesn't look like a house, with four wrought-iron braziers framing a descending staircase and smoking up into the grey sky. The one next to that doesn't either. It's too wide and squat, with rows of small arched openings and wooden lattices over the windows in place of glass. There's copious amounts of lavender and cotton planted around it. Is this the temple to Kynareth? She can pay a visit to them later, once her daily quota of thievery's been sorted.

The world is starting to wake up, and she'll have to make a more concerted effort to appear inconspicuous. A woman with short blond hair leaves House Battle-Born, bound for the city gate; a Redguard mercenary type passes her in the street. Instead of heading for the house with the dragons-head totems, she goes back to the Bannered Mare, purposefully taking her time about it. Once she's safely closed in her room, she pulls that book out of her clothes. Ancestors and the Dunmer, the title proclaims. tHat could be an interesting read.

Instead of reading it, she sits on the floor for a little while, just holding it and drinking more ale. Each building in Whiterun has a plot that's a little too big, a little too exposed, a little too much possibility of being seen. House Battle-Born was easy enough in the thin barely-morning light, but what about when full morning comes? And it's going to come soon. She doesn't have enough coin to hang around Whiterun for days on end, robbing one house at a time.

She could sell that sword to the blacksmith. She didn't want to keep it anyway. She's been collecting bits of plants here and there; maybe the apothecary shop would take them, or some of her extra firewood. No, all that feels like a waste of skill and time.

What she wants, deep down, is to belong somewhere. Anyone can belong here. She just has to find her niche, right?

So she should go back to that other house she cased this morning. Right? That's what she'd rather be doing with her day. Damn the risk. She'll make it work. No risk, no reward.

Tiled roofs gleam goldenrod-yellow in the bright sun, marketplace starting to wake up with the rest of the city. Shoppers drift in and out while vendors advertise silver jewelry and produce and skillful weavework. (She's briefly relieved she left the garnet ring in her backpack; the crows probably took it from that very jeweler.) Iris ignores them all, walks past the apothecary and the general store and heads straight for the blacksmith. At her forge, Adrianne has Iris put on her cuirass to observe the fit, tightens straps and draws marks with tailor's chalk until she's satisfied. "I can have it done by this evening, if that works for you," she offers, swiping at the back of her sweaty forehead with her sleeve.

"Mm-hm."

"Perfect. I'll leave it with my husband in the shop."

"Um... how - how much?"

Adrianne waves her off. "Don't be silly. I'm not going to charge you for a job this simple."

"O - okay. Thank you."

It felt like being shy helped that time. She's still feeling out her own personality, how she sounds around other people. So far, she's quiet, reserved, not the taking-charge type, letting the other person do all the talking. Maybe she's manipulative, and she used to use it to get away with all kinds of things. Maybe there's no deep meaning to it, and she's just shy. Either way, she's back in her element as she crouches in the shadow behind the house with the dragons-head totems and the cow. Eyes on the lock, ears on the street, she's just about to twist the lock open with all the confidence of a seasoned cat burglar when -

"And what on Nirn do you think you're doing?"

Oh, shit.

Rune shifts a little, trying to relieve some of the pins and needles settling into his foot. It's not like it's comfortable up here. At least he's got a good view. Today's his twentieth birthday, and he's spending it sitting up in an old aspen tree, working. Brynjolf had promised him drinks when he gets back to the Guild - whenever that will be - and not mead, either, some of the good stuff. (He has to guess this job to do with Goldenglow Estate is pretty important, has multiple stages or something, if he's getting drinks and not coin straight away.) Thrynn and Sapphire had nabbed a caravan coming up from Cheydinhal last week, fleeced the driver for all the coin he had and then let him go, but not before making off with a crate of fancy bottles. Vekel had gotten to them first, took a few with a gleam in his eye before letting Tonilia and Vex have at the rest.

"What are these?"

"These - " Vekel had told him, stacking the bottles behind the bar and nudging Rune away when he tried to sneakily take a bottle of ale, " - are flin. Very, very good find."

"What's flin?"

"Cyrodiilic whiskey. Expensive Cyrodiilic whiskey. Special occasions only. So don't ask for any," Vekel had added, sternly. "I'm not wasting it on a lightweight."

Rune had had to consider his lightweight status in that moment. He considers it again now, while the tree bark scratches up the back of his leathers and his foot is doing its absolute best to go numb. He'd never seen his da or his da's friends get plastered drunk. Brynjolf and Delvin seem to have an incredible tolerance - or at least, he's never seen them drunk either, even on the nights when they sit out on the deck, muttering to each other, table piled with empty bottles, so he has to assume they do. Meanwhile one bottle of Black-Briar Reserve and a stiff breeze, and he's done for. His da had told him a long time ago that alcohol tolerance depended partly on how your body decided to fill itself out, so yeah, it's no wonder he's a lightweight. Rune's somewhat scrawny still, and quick on his feet (he can shoot okay, but he prefers swords). Compared to him, Brynjolf and Delvin are built like brick shithouses.

Anyway, Brynjolf had promised him drinks, no matter how it went, just for being such a good sport about it, and if by offering the good stuff he meant the flin that's bad news because Rune will probably be down for the count after a single glass. Doesn't matter. It's his birthday. He deserves it. For this shit, he deserves it.

He reaches for the bag wedged tight between the branches, takes a long swig out of the bottle of ale, and pulls out the battered spyglass.

Not for the first time since arriving in Skyrim, Iris is stumbling along behind someone as they drag her by the wrist. If she remembered the first time, it might have given her deja vu.

"Where - "

"Jorrvaskr," the redheaded woman who'd caught her says, and then doesn't elaborate. She yanks Iris' wrist to speed up, almost tipping her off-balance and straight onto her face.

Even at such an early hour, the woman looks fearsome. Three streaks of blue paint run down her face like claw marks. Her outfit with its skintight leather and massive, fur-trimmed pauldrons and hip plates could only generously be called armor. A bow and quiver of arrows are slung over one shoulder like she just came back from a hunting trip, and her grip is tight as wrist irons. What had really been freaky was the thread of yellow in her pale eyes, something animalistic and fierce and old. After seeing that, Iris had been fine with letting herself get dragged away.

They walk past the pretentious little flower barden, around the side of the temple, and down into a park ringed by wooden latticework pillars. A huge dead tree appears to be the centerpiece, with benches and braziers and flowers arrayed around its foot; a decorative moat of sorts surrounds the park, its source-water making its way down beside a long, polished stone staircase. Iris has to crane her head to see the top, and catches a glance of the massive building at the peak of the hill before she's whisked away. It could only be the Jarl's palace.

But that's not where she's being taken.

"Come on," the redheaded warrior woman says, "You'll get time to gawk later. Provided Vignar doeesn't throw you in the dungeons, that is," she mutters.

Over a bridge spanning the moat and up a flight of stairs is a building that could scarcely be called a building in the traditional sense. It looks more like an overturned boat. The wear on the wood and the stonework foundation indicates it's been here for a very, very long time, possibly too long a span of time for minds to fathom. Decorative knotwork covers the stakes holding it to the ground. Above those stakes, a long, long row of shields cover the side of the structure over the door (whether port or starboard is impossible to say - artistic renditions of dragons rising from both ends make it hard to discern which end was bow and which was stern). At the top of the stairs, two more dragons-head totems flank a wooden lintel arch. Their carving-work is a bit cruder, lending them more ferocity, like inanimate guard dogs.

Things go from bad to worse when they pass under the arch, close enough to the right-hand pillar that Iris spots something carved into it. It's a crude little symbol, designed by someone to be carved quickly, perhaps in under a minute - an upside-down triangle, a line straight down through the center, a circle around the bottom point.

A wave of anxiety creeps up from Iris' gut, settles a lump in her throat she can't dislodge. She knows that symbol. She doesn't know how she knows it, of course, but she knows what it means.

That simple little carving is a signal for danger.