In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Epilogue, Part 2)

This post is 4,300 words long, so buckle up.

The air in Hlaalu’s fabulous Vivec Canton stank of suits and money, both freshly laundered. I recognized it instantly. For the skin of a moment, I remembered all of the good times I’d had in places like this; for about a minute and a half, I remembered all of the really, really awful ones. My resolve was not flapped. I stepped through a set of familiar doors, brushing past the gawking bureaucrats to Crassius’s lobby.

A woman was standing on call there—a receptionist? With Crassius, you could never be sure. To be on the safe side, I approached her and said, “Hello, I’m here to—“

She’d glanced up from her notebook, taken one look at me, and choked off a scream.

“Oh,” I said quickly, raising my hands. “I know. The expulsion, right? Hey, look, that was all just a wacky misunderstanding—“

“Dark Brotherhood!” she whispered, pushing herself backwards against the wall. “If you take another step, I’ll scream for the guards!”

“What? Oh, the uniform. Right. Yeah, funny story—one of ‘em came into my room at night to try to kill me, but I managed to skewer him and strip the still-warm armor from his bloodied—well, not funny ha-ha, but like…”

“Do you expect me to believe that? Why would you don the ceremonial armor of the most feared and hated assassin’s cabal in the realm?”

“Slightly thicker than my bug suit.”

“What?”

“Plus, chicks dig the goggles. Look, I just need to–”

The receptionist slowly drew herself away from the wall, muscles stiffening, spine straightening. Her expression grew tough and cold, and I remembered then that Hlaalu employees are required to put in a certain amount of combat hours before they’re ever handed a pen. This woman had been through whatever I had been through—perhaps worse. When she spoke, the fear was purged from her voice.

“Listen to me, you lying, treacherous snake. Perhaps you thought we would fear you, but we do not. Hlaalu officials are not so easily cowed. I don’t know why you have come here, but whatever sinister deeds you were planning, forget it. If you don’t turn around and leave this instant, I will call the guards on you, and you will spend the last instants of your worthless life surrounded, on your knees, and screaming. Do you understand me?”

“Look, I just want to see Crassius—“

“Down the stairs, first door on your right, he should be in right now. I’ll cancel his appointments for the next hour.” She swept smoothly back into her chair.

“Thanks,” I said, pushing open the stairwell door.

“Tell him Lovecrumpet sent you.”

I came upon Crassius’ door and hesitated. On the one hand, I couldn’t bring myself to knock—what was I here for, after all?—but barging in on his office without knocking seemed tantamount to committing sanicide. Then I realized that there was nothing he could be doing right now that he would stop doing if he though somebody would see him, so I sucked down my reservations and opened the door.

His office was unlit and pitch-dark, which was exactly what I did not want. Anything could be happening inside this room; it fell to me to decide whether to leave it illuminate it, and possibly confirm the worst, or to leave it be, and, consequentially, forever assume the worst. It was an agonizing decision, but I took a chance and pulled out a torch.

I regretted it. I regretted everything. It was almost miraculous how quickly I went from righteous revenge-mode to gripped with terrible, terrible remorse at the life choices that had led to this moment. I felt nauseous. I felt filthy. I felt like I needed to scrub at my brain with steel wool until this memory sloughed off completely, in addition to the portions of my brain that would allow me to ever process such a sight again.

Crassius was sitting at his desk. Thankfully, his hands—and little else—were visible. They were also clutching a doll about the size of an open palm, a small brownish ragdoll with a homemade cloth shirt on.

That was odd, but it wasn’t until I looked closer that the true horror set in. What I had thought was a misshapen head made of wood or tin was actually a helmet of some kind—a helmet shaped like a clamshell.

It was me. It was what I was wearing when I first came to work for him. That shirt, that helmet, even—where were the pants? Oh my god, where were the pants?

Crassius shifted, and he began to straighten. He glanced about.

“What? I don’t have any appointments for a bit, sugar plum, so back that cute ass-assin gear out of my office until—“

He froze. He sniffed once, then twice, then licked the air—I swear to god, he licked it as if he were a snake. He licked it, and then he sucked on his own tongue, eyes glancing ceilingward like a wine snob pinpointing a vintage.

“Let’s see, that’s…aha, I knew I recognized you! Come in! Cahmel, baby, how’s my favorite pariah?”

I edged into the office, but I was still staring at the doll. Crassius looked down at it and gave what could only be transcribed as a leering grin.

“An immortal record of your beauty, dumpling. I make ‘em for all of my employees. I’ve got a whole wall of them at home—sometimes, when I’m all alone, I like to—“

“Why isn’t it wearing pants?”

“What? Oh, don’t be so modest, muffin. I just hadn’t pulled on his new greaves yet.”

Slowly, I allowed my stomach to unclench. “I guess I should just be glad it’s not anatomically correct.”

“Hm? Oh, it is.” He held it up. “See, I left a thread loose between its—“

And that’s when I stabbed him in the kidney.

…

Odrinarn looked exactly how I’d left it.  Old, wind-worn, more than a little filthy, and undisturbed by intelligent life since the last time I’d been there. I figured the Hlaalu agents would probably still be waiting inside.

It was a little painful how right I was.

There they were, exercising diverse disciplines of Standing Around—from the foreign to the domestic, from the exotic to the pragmatic. One of them was knitting a suit of yarnmail—their third or fourth, from the looks of it. Another two were playing Guess the Species of Unpleasant Insect. And right by the door, arms folded, expression hotter than Crassisu’s pants, was Remasa Othril herself.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? You had a job to do, asshole! What do you think Hlaalu’s paying you for?”

“Well, actually, they’re—“

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, leaving us twisting in the wind here! Do you think the world starts and stops at your convenience?”

I needed to see where this was going. “I did nearly get killed last time.”

“So? Yes, it was dangerous, but sacrifices have to be made sometimes! You know that necromancer still has my sister? By hiding like a coward, you’ve endangered her life tremendously! I’m hardly able to sleep most nights, knowing that she’s held captive by a dangerous lunatic less than a mile away!”

“Say, Remasa, you any good with that?” I asked brightly.

“With what?”
“Your sword. The one you, and this is bound strictly within the confines of theory, kill undead with.”

She glanced down at, recoiling as if surprised to find it there. “Oh, this thing? I’m okay, I guess. It doesn’t matter!”

“You sure? Think about it. We could both go down, cover each others’ backs, deal with the necromancer or whatever, and save your sister together. Anyone?”

The other mercenaries shook their heads; Remasa stamped her foot. “Listen, this operation is your job now, not mine. You’re the one who stands to make a profit. If I’m not drawing a salary, I’m not going to so much as draw my sword, not even to save my own flesh and blood.”

“You know what? That’s cool with me.”

“So are you going to finish the job, or wh—“

…

“Appelles Matius?”

He turned to me, mithril plates groaning loudly as he shifted his weight. “What is it?”

“I heard you were the one to talk to about Dark Brotherhood attacks. Is that right?”

He rolled his eyes, sighing heavily. “Yes, I suppose so. What was the incident in question?”

“A man in Dark Brotherhood armor was recently spotted murdering a stupid bureaucrat in garish, overrated armor.”

“You don’t say. Well, I don’t know how you came upon this information ,but waaaiiit a minute!” He snapped his fingers, fixing me with a hard glare that caused me to take a step backwards. “I’m a stupid bureaucrat in garish, overrated armor! And you’re wearing Dark Brotherhood armor!”

“Uh—“

“That’s a tremendous coincidence! Really, really staggering!”

“I…suppose?” I really wasn’t prepared for this.

“Indeed it is! Definitely something somebody should look into. You, for example.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You’re the one who brought it to my attention, you sort it out.  I’d look into it myself, but I’m a little busy right now.”

“Really?”

He fixed me with a stern glare. “Do you know how hard it is to scratch your ass while wearing this stuff?”

“Yeah, I can…what?”

“It’s worth it, though.” He rapped the breastplate with a mailed glove. “Solid as a rock. No blade I know of can penetrate it. Everything from the neck down is a veritable fortress.”

“Neck down, huh? Ever think of buying a helmet?”

“Funny you should mention that. I didn’t order one with this suit, but I’ve been looking into one recently—I think I’ve got the head for one, you know? Yeah, I might place an order.”

“Think you can acquire one in the next three seconds?”

“Probably not.”
“Me neither.”

…

I pulled the blanket around myself as the silt strider lurched back to Balmora, step by freakishly elongated step. My brain was in a strange place—I was thinking clearly, but I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly. Everything made sense, but I knew that it didn’t.

It was the revenges so far. I hadn’t realized until this week just how much frustration and rage I’d had pent up inside me—this whole goddamned island has pissed me off beyond the point of lucidly expressing it. Oh, my annoyance had slipped through a few times—twice, maybe, and both of those times ended with criminal charges and/or expulsion. All of that frustration, and so little in the way of catharsis, had left me squirrely and bitter even when things appeared to be going well. The murders had all been a blur so far, but they’d been a nice, warm, fuzzy blur. Each one had set my soul at peace a little more, and now I was about to wrap up.

Next stop, Cosades. I was looking forward to him more than any of the others, even more than…Wait, crap, did I do Gaenor? I must have. I was over in Ebonheart, and that’s where you get transportation to Gaenor’s twisted little courtyard. No way I could have forgotten. Blearily, I glanced down at my string of trophies.

Yep, there’s a Wood Elf ear. I must have done him. I’m not sure how, but I must have. Why didn’t I remember it?

The silt strider came to a swaying, unsteady halt. I swung off of it, grasping for my train of thought.

Cosades. I was looking forward to doing that bastard. I don’t know if he’s responsible for my being here, or if he’s just my boss, or my warden, or my guardian angel—it didn’t matter. He was behind something that had to do with me getting deported here instead of being released into Cyrodiil. Hell, I wasn’t even from Cyrodiil, that’s just where I was done up for smuggling jerky into Bravil. What kind of legal acrobatics did they need to do to get me slung over here?

That was something I’d never really considered before. Why me? Why did they single me out of the crowd, why did they transfer me from jail to jail until I ended up in Morrowind, of all places? That couldn’t have been cheap. And then asking me to report to a spymaster? Why had I never thought this through before?

I walked through the streets, tightening my grip on my sword hilt. Before the violence went down, we would have a little chat, him and I. I was due more than revenge, it seemed. I was due answers.

I cut down the alleyway, past the guild halls and the weaponsmith, then turned into the sprawling, garbage-strewn court. Then, silently as a wraith, I ascended the staircase. Then I turned left, went down that staircase, and cut past the weaponsmith again. Then I backtracked, buzzed three or four houses, looked up on the hill, turned around, headed for the back of town…
Crap, where was this guy’s house again?

After fifteen minutes, and asking for directions in the South Wall Cornerclub, I found myself on Cosades’ doorstep. I steadied myself, raised one enchanted boot, and brought it down as hard as I could against the lock.

The door swung open.

Cosades stood inside. His back was turned to me; he did not turn about, even as the harsh clang of ruptured iron echoed throughout the room. He merely stood, silent, passive, hands at his sides.

“Hello, Cosades,” I said, entering. “It’s been a while. Months, at least. How have you been keeping?”

He didn’t respond.

“You know, I’ve been thinking a little about how you brought me out here. A little about how you seem to have gone out of your way to make life harder for me.”

There was continued silence. I raised my voice, pacing just inside his room.

“It’s sad, really. You take a man who’s down on his luck, get him shipped to a foreign country full of xenophobes, and turn him loose. He’ll never succeed, of course. He’ll never fit in, or have a home, or amount to anything besides a vagrant. Well, okay, maybe somebody could have—although seriously, what could an Outlander possibly achieve in Morrowind? But you knew I never would.”

Silence.

“There was no mission, was there? You were just trying to make my life harder, that’s it. You just like to watch suffering. You just like to drag some pathetic xeno into a hostile country and watch his little saga unfold. Is that it?”

“Yes,” he said.

His voice struck me. It was as soft as a child’s blanket, and it sounded…off. Strange. Wrong.

“That’s exactly it,” he continued. “I hate you, Cahmel. You are weak, you are vain, you are selfish, you are prideful, and you are, above all, a flea that plays at being a giant. I hate you more than I hate anyone else. And your suffering and degradation has brought me great amusement.”

I blinked hard. I really wasn’t expecting him to agree with me this quickly.

“I’m only sorry that it has to end now,” he finished.

“I should say it does.” I drew my blade with a silky hiss—he didn’t flinch. “I think, ‘flea’ though I may be, I can handle one shirtless old man. You’re about to die, Cosades.”

“Oh, am I?” I could almost hear his smile. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah? And why not?”

“Well, for one thing, because you failed to do the job last time.”

He turned around, degree by degree, as I watched—paralyzed, suddenly, by a flush of dread I couldn’t explain. I saw his worn, weathered face, eyes cast into shadow, lips curled into a sinister smile. He reached up, rubbing his temples thoughtfully—then grasped his ears savagely and tore.

His face split like an overripe grape, and beneath it was another.

It was the feral face of Gaenor.

“No,” I murmured. “You’re dead. You’re dead.”

“You don’t sound so sure. Did that trophy on your belt fool you? And even should you set that aside, well, even one of your meager intelligence can see that I am not dead. Not alive, perhaps, but not dead.”

“Why…” I asked, my voice beginning to fail. “How…”

“You’re still wondering what this is all about, aren’t you? And I thought you understood. I thought you had finally grasped why I’ve been tormenting you. I suppose that is too much to ask. I’ll help you, then. Let us start…from the beginning.”

He grinned. “Think clearly, Cahmel. Think of the smuggling mission, the one that you ran before you were…‘arrested.’”

The details played in my mind—the harsh glare of torches, the thundering of hoofbeats, the sound of panicking men and horses.

“I don’t understand.”

His grin widened further than should have been possible. “Do you remember…the bowman?”

I did—a bowman on a hill. His face was stern and illuminated by fire. He could see me…

“Do you remember—“ He barked this. “The arrow!”

The arrow plunged through the night, turning slowly through the torchlight…

“Do you remember—THE PAIN?”

A pain spreading across my torso…

“Do you remember—YOUR DEATH, CAHMEL? Do you remember bleeding out in the grass like a wounded dog?” He threw back his head and howled with laughter. Reality began to swim. My vision grew bleary with nausea and disorientation, and I groped about, searching for something solid—all I found was immaterial. The only sensation I could hold onto was his laughter, a laugh that scraped against my senses like a saw against a demon’s violin.

“You sinned, Cahmel, and for your sins…you belong to me!”

I felt weights—hands grasping at my shoulders, at my collar, at my hair, at my arms. I tired to look up, but could only loll my head, trying in vain to fight the forces that lifted and dragged me away. I saw ordinator helmets in the darkness, red-eyed and leering, dragging me away on my knees. I focused, and thought I caught glints of Imperial silver. Then blackness swallowed me–

I woke up and threw up in that order, and so seamlessly that there was hardly an appreciable transition between the two. It was kind of impressive, in a weird way, and in that moment of barely-lucid confusion I found myself wishing someone had been there to see it.

Someone was. There were three imperial guards sitting in chairs around me, exactly far enough away that if something like what just happened, happened, they would happen to be at a safe distance. One of them cleared his throat, then called out, “Can we get a janitor in here? Crazy drunk guy threw up.” He sniffed. “I’m pretty sure your vomit is fermented.”

I pulled myself into a shaky sitting position. Once my eyes were staring vaguely in a forward direction, I figured out where I was—a holding cell. Fort Moonmoth, probably. Or was that the other one? Which was the one near Balmora? One of the Moths, I think.

I’m not sure why my headache didn’t kick in until then, but it did, and there’s no cute metaphor that can adequately summarize it so I’m not even going to take a crack at it. I groaned expansively.

“Yeah,” said the same guard. “You were stumbling outside of Balmora. We followed you for a half-mile or so. Nunicus won the betting pool on how far you’d get before you fell on your face, by the way.”

And then it came rushing back—the memories, much like last night’s food and beverage, were too unsavory to contain for long. I’d just finished writing the Murder Registry 5, I’d sketched out a few vague ideas of where to flog Saryoni’s Sermons for the 50,000, I thought I’d have a few drinks to ensure that the operation started on a good foot—I’d had a few more, talked to a few people about my experiences, shared some intimate secrets, cried a little, drank some more—and the whole thing, as best as I remember, got a bit away from me. And at some point, I’d apparently decided the best way to begin the operation would be to set out from Balmora and start heading…well, start heading, anyway.

And then I’d passed out, and dreamed of…geez. Whatever that bastard at the South Wall Corner Club was selling, it was either of the greatest quality or the worst chemical concoction ever deemed drinkable. Possibly the two states were identical. Although, now that I think of it, some of those cocktails did get a bit on the glowy side. I seem to recall him claiming he needed to use some ad hoc ingredients as substitutes for the bug parts I wouldn’t tolerate…mushrooms? Yeah, some of those were mushroom-like.
I realized that the guards were staring at me—almost like they were waiting for something.  And then, a dark thought occurred.

“Did…I wasn’t holding, like, a…list?”

They glanced at each other. “Uh…you did have a piece of paper, actually. I meant to bring that up.”

I held my breath.

“See, you were holding onto it as if it were important to you, and when I tried to take it away, well, you got very…protective. So I did manage to acquite it…” He held it up. “It’s a list of some kind. Perhaps it’s because you were drunk, but you’ve got some of the most illegibile handwriting I’ve ever seen.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“This is completely unreadable. To me, this looks like, “Have a squirrel with blue spade, quack(?) the dorking Mitchell, murder Appelles Matius, turtledove snacker.” He tossed it to me. “You can have it back, I suppose.”

I snatched it from midair, then quickly shoved it into my shirt. “Oh, yeah, shopping list. I’m out of squirrel spades. So…uh, thank you gentlemen for taking me in.”

“Not a problem,” said the guard.

“I guess…oh! Of course. I did serve my time for the drunkenness, right?”

“Oh, that’s just 12 hours. Consider that one square.”

I ran a hand through my hair, then—in spite of my situation, in spite of my headache—I cracked an honest smile. You had to laugh, you really did, because at the end of the day, this was almost a win. This was, in fact, as close to a win as I was ever going to get. It’s something of an analogy for my whole situation—at the end of the day, you may be in pain, you may be embarrassed as hell, and you may be sick to death, but you’re not in jail and nobody’s trying to kill you and you’ve still got both legs. It wasn’t a glamorous existence, but it worked. I guess I might as well get used to it. As soon as I got out of here, the list was going straight into the trash. I grinned wider, and the guards grinned with me.

“Thanks again,” I said, and I meant it. “Will that be all?”

Still smiling, one of the guards lifted up the Saryoni’s Sermons.

Shit.

EPILOGUE:

Well, I had my legs, I guess. Prison was looking like a certainty, and as soon as the Temple heard that somebody’d killed the guardian of the Sermons and stolen it, they’d probably want me dead and deep-fried. I think I took all of that pretty well, but that may be because I’d already vomited everything up.

The Imperial guards weren’t unkind to me. They really didn’t care about the book, and they suspected their bosses didn’t either, but they had to return it to the Temple and they had to have somebody to take the blame for stealing it. Bottom line was, I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

That one guard explained it to me later, once I’d gotten my head straight and been shown to a proper cell. They were going to swing it so that I only got life, he said. Execution was unlikely—the Imperials would see to that, if only so that the Temple didn’t get things all its own way. I think this marks the first occasion in which I’ve actually appreciated politics.

And to be honest, life in prison isn’t so bad either. I wasn’t ready for the outside, that much was clear. In Vvardenfel, you have to be one of two things: you either have to be a native, in which case you get a free ride, or you have to be a god amongst men, in which case you can claw your way up by your fingernails and probably still fail. Anything else and you end up like me—well, I guess there’s room to not be in prison, but you end up a failure is the idea. Frankly, the advantage of prison is that there wouldn’t be any high expectations placed on me.

“How are the prisons here?” I asked. “Like, do you ever end up doing warden duty?”

He shook his head. “No, no.”

“Oh. Do you at least know if I’ll get my own bed?”

“No, I mean, you’re not going to prison here. The whole idea is that we try you here and then ship you. If we lock you away here, you won’t last ten minutes.”

“I might last eight. Do you have many wood elf vagrants?”

“No, the problem is that you stole an important religious text. An outlander AND a blasphemer? Trust me, that’s not a winning combination, even in prison. No, things have probably already been worked out behind the scenes. Once the verdict comes in, we’re shipping you back to Cyrodiil, where you’ll be doing life up in the Imperial Prison.”

“Foregone conclusion, huh?”

“We’ve got a cell all picked out for you. First on the left, directly by the staircase.”

I shrugged. Eh. Imperial prison, Morrowind prison—it didn’t matter to me. As long as they don’t expect me to be the hero of the realm, I think I’m going to be alright.

The End?