Chapter Text
Revyn Sadri -- a Dunmer merchant of modest reputation outside of the Grey Quarter -- was a scrupulous and pious member of his race, and in most things fairly orthodox. Those meeting him for the first time found him difficult to parse, for while he was well-spoken and diplomatic, he seemed ill at ease when talking to anyone longer than it took to conclude a deal or negotiate a good price. Those who had known him longer and better would usually remark that he'd mellowed with time, and attributed this to his marriage and leaving Windhelm behind.
The ranks of the Dunmer in that city were close, but a result of this closeness was how the great loss was felt more acutely: the bitterness of the refugee, the ache in the hearts of those made outlanders. It might have killed Sadri, as it had so many of his kith and kin, but then a sharp-eyed stick-thin Wood Elf of no consequence or standing began slinking into his shop with trinkets and odds and ends of surprising quality, and one day slunk into his bed, and now he was very nearly respectable and almost whole, if any Dunmer could be said to be whole after the Red Year.
No little thing to be married to the Last Dragonborn, though marriage outside of the ranks of his people was dicey, especially to a Bosmer, and especially considering the singularly-perplexing entity known as Vanthis. In the early days of their courtship -- before Sadri figured out why she kept buying kettles and used boots from him while clad in gilded armor and armed with a Daedric bow -- she had nearly caused him to grind his teeth to powder with her nonsensical suppositions and wretched grasp of exchange rates. Lately acquitted of the Valenwood, in some kind of unspecified trouble with the Thalmor and barely cognizant of Imperial mores, much less Nord traditions, even less of Dunmer sensibilities, she would talk his ear off with wordplay and speculation and half-truths while grinning in a disconcerting, slightly feral manner. Sadri often opined in the New Gnisis Cornerclub that Vanthis must've been the result of a bet made between Hircine, Sanguine, and Sheogorath that Mephala had somehow scuttled through a skooma bender.
Mephala's web was a strange one, to be sure, as Sadri eventually found his pulse quickened with anticipation rather than dread at the sound of those sharp knuckles rapping a chipper tattoo on his doorpost, unable to resist a smile at the idiot outpourings of Vanthis's perfect (if slightly fanged) mouth. His venerable ancestors must have screamed the ash loose from their tombs when he leant to kiss her over the countertop one bitter cold morning, and possibly those screams were enough to unearth Vivec City after what she'd promptly done to him on a pile of wolf skins, wooden ladles, and dogeared copies of the Charwich-Koniinge Letters (Volumes Two and Four).
These same holy and excellent forebears must have given up entirely by the time they wed at the Temple of Mara in Nord custom, and subsequently had little to say of Lucia, an orphan of Cyrodilic stock plucked from the streets of Whiterun -- more was the pity, as she clung to her adoptive father as tightly as to life itself. Despite his great and confusing love for his wife, Sadri was relieved that she did not intend to raise the child in the Valenwood tradition, and he had no interest in passing along any customs of the races of Man that claimed Skyrim. So -- being orthodox at heart, this current massive deviation from norms notwithstanding -- he had continued to venerate the Good Daedra, and to call for the intercession of the Saints, and to leave offerings for his sullen ancestors, and to sing Lucia to sleep with the old, lilting lullaby that his mother had crooned to him back in Balmora, when the world still made sense: Nerevar, Moon-And-Star . . .
And somehow this culminated in her asking Teldryn Sero if he was the Nerevarine.
His wife's tendency to acquire followers was nothing new. Vanthis had (somehow) (how) become a landowner and Thane in several Holds, and subsequently had housecarls that Revyn was forced to deal with on a regular basis, tramping about the place with their obtuse Nord manners when not following her out on her frequent mad errands. She also had some ambiguous connection to the College of Winterhold that occasionally meant students cluttering up their parlor and drinking the barrels dry. An Argonian miner with impeccable manners who nonetheless made Revyn uncomfortable infrequently passed through, a fellow Bosmer who seemed comparatively normal sometimes followed her in from Riverwood, and now and then an old priest of Mara showed up with unasked-for blessings. Towards these persons, Sadri kept a civil tongue in his head, but Teldryn Sero was his breaking point.
Back in Windhelm, the mercenary had been a fixture of the New Gnisis Cornerclub for several nonconsecutive years. Exactly why was anyone's guess, as he clearly did not regard himself as a member of the community and didn't seem to have any friends or relations among the refugees there. Revyn had suspected the perpetually-masked Dunmer might've been Morag Tong, or possibly a freelance assassin, and was more than a little unnerved by his presence. Nonetheless, that younger version of himself -- newly inherited of his father's store, and wishing to seem hospitable towards a prospective customer -- had approached his table with a smile and an introduction, as well as offering a bottle of Ambarys's least-appalling flin.
"I don't drink flin," was Teldryn Sero's response. "Especially not with sniveling Imperial lickspittles."
As a merchant whose family had Hlaalu affiliations, Sadri was acutely aware of his low standing in the homeland, but in Skyrim no one much cared -- indeed, the Grey Quarter's ranks skewed Dres and Hlaalu, and the hostility of the Nords papered over most differences. But Sero, bastard that he was, clearly didn't subscribe to any notions of pan-Dunmeri solidarity, or solidarity with much of anything for that matter, and would only ever make snide remarks and caustic conversation towards any unfortunate soul forced to share his corner table, if he bothered to talk to them at all. Ambarys seemed to tolerate him because of their shared misanthropy, until it came out that the barkeep had been a Legionnaire in his younger days, and then Sero had been merciless in his ridicule. Needless to say, the spellsword had never bothered to visit Sadri's Used Wares.
Periodically, the mercenary disappeared for months at a time, and it was hard not to wish he'd simply stay gone. He'd been absent a few years before the dragons returned -- Malthyr said he'd heard him talking about going back to Morrowind, and Sadri had largely forgotten about it all by the time he and Vanthis and their new daughter were living in Whiterun. Naturally, when Revyn's wife sent word to him that she was returning from Solstheim with a surprise, he assumed it would be a crate of prize sujamma from the homeland.
There was a crate, but Teldryn Sero had drunk more than half of it. "My, haven't you done well for yourself," he drawled, slipping a flask under the crimson cloth about his neck.
Vanthis's grasp on interpersonal relations was as tenuous as her grasp of common sense, meaning that she blithely assumed everything would work itself out for the best if enough cheese and alcohol were involved. She seemed cheerfully oblivious to the fact that her new companion from Raven Rock and her husband were not friends despite their shared history in Windhelm, and regarded Teldryn's barbed remarks and Sadri's strained rebuttals as quaint instances of Dunmer camaraderie instead of barely-disguised loathing.
"When's he going back to Solstheim?" Revyn asked several times that week, which Vanthis clearly thought was a joke.
"Oh, you," she'd finally said. "Let me get this house finished, first."
"The house is finished, dearest. What are you -- "
"No, the house in Hjaalmarch."
"The -- what?"
Thus it was that Revyn learned that she was building a manor in the wilds outside Morthal, despite having never worked with wood before. Thus he also learned that she had requisitioned Lydia to show her how to use lumber, meaning that Teldryn was being left behind in Whiterun in case those cultists showed up at again. To her credit, she probably did believe that she had told him all this already, but that was scant consolation to her husband.
It would prove to be a long and dismal month. Their new bodyguard made the city guards anxious, and somehow managed to get himself banned from the Drunken Huntsman within a week, meaning that he spent most of his evenings drinking by Revyn's fire while Lucia peeked wonderingly at him from the stairs. The spellsword derived obvious pleasure in recounting the long-hidden treachery of the Ulens of Raven Rock to the girl, forcing Revyn to explain his House's unfortunate relationship with the Empire which had seen their fortunes wither. He'd managed to make a series of subtle ripostes against House Redoran in the process, but the blows didn't seem to hit the fetcher.
"He's not Redoran, I think," Vanthis said, after the manor was complete and Sero had departed. "At least, they don't treat him like one over there. Though that might just be on account of how he's a mercenary. He did say he's from Blacklight, for what it's worth . . ."
Revyn did not trust her ability to parse the manifold subtleties of Dunmer social strata but wasn't in the mood to argue. "Whatever his affiliation, I've never cared for him. He's full of himself, and I can't trust anyone who won't show his face to his own kind."
"I've never seen it either, you know," she remarked thoughtfully. "Asked him, once or twice. Always has some clever remark. Says he's worn a helmet for most of his life and he doesn't see the point in doing otherwise."
"He must be a hideous mass of scars underneath it all."
"Probably," conceded Vanthis. "He's old, anyway; likely has skin like worn boots. Not that you'd know it from how he moves."
"Hmmph." Revyn was not particularly worried on this account -- his wife, for all her quirks, had a faithful heart, and it seemed evident to everyone but her that Sero only barely tolerated her company. "I can't say I particularly enjoyed watching that s'wit skulking about, but as long as you're happy . . ."
Vanthis cackled at that, knocking back some of the Black-Briar Reserve she'd obtained under unclear circumstances and fixed him with a fond look. "Oh, don't be sore. Lydia's my good right arm before the Jarl, but she can't move quiet to save her life -- or mine. Mages are always bleeding out or getting winded. A fast, canny sort who knows his way around a spell and a blade was just what I needed, but that's all I needed from him ." Vanthis topped off her drink again, spilling wine on the otherwise-clean tablecloths that Sadri had spent the morning laundering. "Besides, I don't know what he got up to back in your time, but near as I can tell he's more celibate than a Moth Priest. Probably on account of the aforementioned age."
"He can't be older than me," protested Revyn, who had been born middle-aged. "Surely -- "
"Said he met Saint Jiub? Puts him back a bit, doesn't it?"
"He's still saying that? Oh, what a fetcher's lie."
"What, meeting Jiub or being that old?"
"Yes."
Vanthis's assessment of the mercenary's skills wasn't wrong, and that was what grew to torment her husband the most. Far too often in the grimmer days, Revyn's beloved had limped into his store accompanied by fresh scars and a friend or sworn companion who clearly thought the world of her but also had raised their bow or shield just a little too late, gotten lost or distracted at the worst possible moment.
But as Solstheim kept finding ways of dragging Vanthis back east, it became evident that five hundred Septims really did buy one peace of mind. Bastard though Sero was, he proved his worthiness as a bodyguard again and again. He was fast, light on his feet, able to smell an ambush from a mile off, and more than capable of matching her relentless pace. He was scrupulous about fulfilling his contract and keeping her alive, even if he didn't seem to espouse any particularly deep loyalty or respond to claims of friendship. Fame or honor clearly bored him; a good fight and ample coin were sufficient.
And unfortunately, even though dragons did not darken the skies the way that they had a few years ago, there was no shortage of hateful work that Vanthis seemed to get herself pulled into back in Skyrim, which meant that Sero had largely forgone waiting for work on Solstheim and began hovering around Riverwood of all places, anticipating a courier every few weeks. And that meant putting the s'wit up whenever he rolled through Hjaalmarch, and putting up with him as well. If only Sero were willing to sheathe his tongue around him, Revyn would've been fine, but the spellsword had opinions, and no particular regard for Revyn's attempts at maintaining normalcy in the home.
For as the years passed, and Runa Fair-Shield became another daughter over whom Revyn would sing the old songs, and after Vanthis to their surprise and delight bore them a son, Sadri learned how to compensate -- just -- for the eccentricities of his wife, to be the wheel's axle and hold steady as the world whirled about them, to keep the hearth and the faith and be the voice that spoke comforting things in the night. He could all too clearly remember the wailing of his own father as their ship pulled out of port and Morrowind slowly disappeared behind clouds of ash, their house forever lost, their fortunes ruined, their tombs buried under lava. Barely a teenager, Revyn had been more terrified of this loss of composure than he was of the volcano erupting, and hope seemed dead.
But his mother had rallied, and became her family's pillar of strength. Nightly, she told them the stories of the Prophet Veloth, of the great changes and upheavals of the Chimer and Dunmer peoples, and how the memory and lore they carried within them were a living link to all Morrowind. Tribulation is in our blood, she would say, and Resadyn in our hearts. We reside in fire; our Hearth is always with us. These words were still comfort, and Revyn used them to build as safe a haven as he could for his own children.
To this end, he made sure that their homes had excellent reputations and reliable folk about them. Ghorbash Iron-Hand, if an unlikely steward, was a sober-minded sort who espoused the merits of common sense. The housecarl Valdimar was as tolerable as a Nord could be, and loved the little ones as if they were his own. The worst thing Lydia ever taught them was endurance, the best thing Derkeethus showed them was foresight, the Khajiit caravans repaid hospitality with grace, and any Dunmer relations or friends passing west through Hjaalmarch swore vows of protection and kinship to all Sadri's children -- all except Sero, in spite of Vanthis's insistence on referring to him as 'your Uncle Teldryn'.
Lucia in particular trailed behind the mercenary whenever he was following Vanthis, and despite Teldryn Sero's stated disinterest in the care or education of children, the s'wit clearly derived some kind of sadistic pleasure in filling the girl's hungry ears with stories from Morrowind that her father would have to challenge. No, Balmora was not the poorest city on Vvardenfell; no, Blacklight's streets were not paved in ebony; no, guar were not capable of doing backflips; no, Saint Vivec -- that is -- the thing about Vivec -- the story about him and Molag Bal is an allegory for -- well --
"But is Muatra a real spear, or just a made-up one?" Lucia protested. "Why are you being all spluttery about this?"
"Yes, why is your dear old Papa going so red in the face?" drawled Sero, voice fairly crackling with murderous delight. "Perhaps you ought to thump him on the back; must be choking on allegory." At which point, the otherwise-couth Revyn Sadri broke forth with such obscenities that the icon of Saint Rilms by the door fell off its hook; his punishment was remembering that Lucia was fluent in Dunmeris and would be required to unlearn many new phrases.
Another time, the mercenary dropped in with a message from Vanthis that she'd return in a few weeks, and here were some things for Sadri to sort and sell, and oh, children, we found this in a Dwemer ruin? Yes, a mechanical spider. She wanted so very badly for you to have it, for she misses you all so damn much. Told me how important it was you all had a pet. Mother's love and all that. Yes, she said your Papa wouldn't mind. Tame? Probably. And of course the children had cried when Revyn had threatened to destroy the scuttling menace with a hammer, so now there was a clanking artifact of a vanished civilization walking into walls at all hours, trying to enact esoteric maintenances upon the manor foundations and knocking over chairs. A month later, Vanthis's first words upon returning were "That thing's here? Teldryn said he was going to flog it to Calcelmo for drinking money. Dibella's tits, why did you let it in the house?"
Although nominal obeisance was made to certain members of the Imperial pantheon out of deference to their adopted homeland -- Akatosh, Kynareth and Mara had pride of place on the shrine, with some Bosmeri deities that Vanthis couldn't describe to Revyn's satisfaction ringed below -- the Good Daedra held court by the hearth, surrounded by the saints appropriate to Sadri's profession and station in life. He charged himself with his brood's religious instruction, since Vanthis's ambiguous relationship to godhood meant that she was either the world's most devout atheist or its most appalling intercessor.
Runa was his little soldier, and Nord enough that she preferred Shor and Stendarr to Boethiah; he didn't take it personally. Talen, as his son by blood, should have had a better appreciation for ancestors, but their youngest child was equally as indifferent to Aedra or Daedra as the nuances of the Green Pact. His worship was of books, and the only instruction he desired was in magic.
Lucia -- who was not his favorite, because a good father did not play favorites -- hung on his every word concerning the customs and observances of Morrowind. She had memorized his father's line of descent, and his mother's, and their ties to both the Tribunal and New Temples, and where they'd come from, and when Sadri's sister Idessa had passed through for a visit, she'd been stunned and charmed to be greeted as 'Auntie' in Dunmeris by a human child whose Balmoran accent was impeccable. And Lucia was always clamoring to help her father with the duties involved with maintaining the Waiting Door, and narrated all her comings and goings to Sadri's dead in between prayers to the Saints and hymns to Azura.
Teldryn Sero had never been impressed by the child's piety, and said as much one night when Vanthis was dead asleep and the two of them were sampling some matze brought over from Raven Rock (substandard, by Revyn's lights). "It's a farce, Sadri. She's a damned human, a twice-damned Imperial by the look of her, and here you are dumping our religion between those round ears as though it's her birthright."
Revyn's eyes narrowed to slits. "Her right by adoption and name, and I charge ancestors and Azura with her safety." He gripped his tankard so tightly that his knuckles paled. "And she calls you Uncle, though I'd claim a Khajiit as a brother before you." The Damned Contraption took this opportunity to walk into the side of the table, spilling the flask of matze.
"Oh no, denied kinship underneath the Hlaalu banner! How shall my pride survive?" A noise of disgust issued from underneath the cowl. "Was there ever so brave a man as he who raises another man's bastards?"
At which point, Revyn boiled over with curses and might well have gotten himself killed, except that the giant which had been eyeing the homestead's cow for the past few weeks decided this was the time to make its move. Valdimar raised the alarm, Sero charged outside wreathed in flame and oaths, and Sadri soothed the children back to sleep -- or tried, since children are inherently murderous, and all wanted to see their protectors in action from the vantage point the balcony afforded. Their housecarl was nothing to discount, but his ice spells did little against the brute; it was Teldryn's expertly-timed fire and vicious swordplay that ended the fight in just over a minute, dodging its massive blows, closing the gap, slashing a mighty gash through the flesh of the giant and backfilling it in blood while he cursed with the ruthless gusto of a dremora.
Runa cheered the gleam of the blade, Talen insisted he be taught combat magic right that instant, but their older sister just looked as though she'd seen a ghost. "I know who he really is," Revyn heard her whispering to them as he herded the children back downstairs.
It was only because of Lucia that any of them saw Teldryn Sero's face.
The mercenary never removed his chitin helmet, or even the goggles, and the cloth over his mouth obscured whatever underneath moved to speak or take in food and drink. It was singularly rude, as Revyn made a point of stressing to Runa when she started to do the same thing, since no less than the Dragonborn could be bothered to remove her armor (sometimes) when she sat to eat. This only made the children more eager to know what he looked like, but Sero's temperament was not geared towards humoring children -- merely entertaining them at others' expense -- so he flatly denied their requests to peek at him, and cursed them whenever they tried to catch him sleeping.
But the next evening at dinner -- family, housecarl, steward, bard, mercenary, all elbow to elbow at the long table in the dining hall, Vanthis griping about the Imperial summons that had dragged her to Solitude the previous morning -- Lucia turned to her mother's follower and said with utmost certainty, "I know why you don't take it off."
Sero, as was frequently his wont when children tried to talk to him, ignored her and poured himself more sujamma -- spilling some on Revyn's favorite tablecloth in the process -- and interjected an opinion countering Ghorbash on the likelihood of the nearby Stormcloak encampment moving any closer.
"It's so no one recognizes you," Lucia pressed. "Because they wouldn't leave you alone. They'd make you come back."
This, at least, seemed to get his attention. "I don't leave debts unpaid, whatever Mogrul says to the contrary." He slipped his cup underneath his scarf. "No outstanding warrants. And anyone calling me 'Papa' has been sorely misinformed."
"It's because you're him."
"Who," responded Sero, clearly annoyed.
Revyn began to suspect he had an obligation to steer the conversation elsewhere, but his daughter's next words outran him. "Lord Indoril Nerevar. You're the Nerevarine."
Teldryn Sero choked on his sujamma, thrashing backwards on the bench and falling sideways into Valdimar. All conversation ceased as the Dunmer writhed on the ground like an upturned beetle, wheezing and spluttering. "The -- the -- you utter child! --" He swatted the Nord's concerned hands away, kneeling on the flagstone and emitting a sound that was disconcertingly akin to giggling, if punctuated by phlegmy coughs. "Sheogorath's beard! Well, this is disgusting -- "
And without ceremony, as though there were nothing to it and never had been, Sero removed his spittle-fogged goggles and let down his scarf, wringing the sujamma out of the cloth and then taking his helmet off as it snagged on the edge. "The Nerevarine? Ah, Sadri, you missed your calling! Could have been a Dissident Priest, promulgating heresy the way you do." A single stripe of black hair, lustrous as an eagle's crest, was now visible, as were the long knife-tips of his ears, and the deep brows and high cheekbones of their race. He had no scars, no burns, barely a wrinkle - the only marks on his face a set of violet tattoos that curved back around his crimson eyes and down his cheeks in the cliff racer malar style, with a corresponding line bisecting his lips and leading to a sparse but well-groomed beard. It was all a bit anticlimactic, Revyn thought, and yet he felt dazed. Next to him, Vanthis dropped her fork.
"But you are," Lucia insisted. "Your sword, I saw it. It's Trueflame!"
"This?" Teldryn tapped the holstered weapon. "Your mother found it in a Dwemer ruin, tossed it my way. Ask her."
"You bastard," clarified Vanthis in a way that clarified nothing.
"But Trueflame was made by the Dwemer! And this is a fire sword, too! Papa, you believe me, right?" Lucia turned her desperate eyes on Revyn, who suddenly felt as though all his skills with speech would never suffice to dig him out of this pit. "Papa?"
"Dear heart, I think your . . . uncle . . . is just a bit more impressive with a weapon than you're used to seeing," Sadri said weakly, aware how Teldryn's face was smirking just as insufferably as he always suspected it would. "But there's more to the legend of the Incarnate than being good with swords. If you remember -- "
"Did you know there are graves on the moon?" drawled Sero, re-wrapping his scarf under the netch leather; Revyn saw the glint of a pendant he thought he might recognize. "Ask me how I reached Heaven by violence!" He deftly picked his helmet back up, and within seconds was re-enveloped in the chitin that seemed to be his true skin.
"You bastard," Vanthis repeated.
"That utter bastard," swore Vanthis. "Never in all our years, thick and thin -- Ius's balls, Revyn, when I had to -- when -- when it was time to go to Sovengarde, I named him a Hunt-Brother and kinsman before all the green gods in farewell, and he didn't even take his goddamned helmet off! I thought, hah, at least he'll give me that, but instead he just says 'Thanks and good luck, and will Sadri reimburse me for the horse?'"
"He doesn't look a day over a merish eighty," Revyn said weakly. "So much for that supposed great age of his; no one's that well-preserved."
"Bastard never met Jiub, unless he'd been hitting the skooma." She tossed a pillow at the wall. "Faugh! All this time, the only thing I had to do to get the fetcher's face out from under that bug leather was to make him drink with the wrong side of his throat?" That seemed to amuse her, as she began laughing. "Funny if he really was the Nerevarine, eh?"
"He isn't. It would be blasphemy of the worst order, not to mention bad taste." Revyn buried his face in his own pillow. "Azura forgive me, how I've led my darling girl astray if she thinks that . . . n'wah could be the reincarnation of Saint Nerevar the Captain."
"Maybe he is. Doesn't look a day over eighty; said it yourself."
"Yes, dearest," responded Sadri through gritted teeth. "The inference being, your idiot companion lies about his age as well as about meeting saints."
"Probably why he wasn't impressed when I went to the realm of the dead. After you've killed gods, the afterlife must seem -- "
But this line of discussion always led to nightmares of him waking in an empty bed, so Revyn interrupted with, "Love. Please. Sero's a cagey s'wit; nothing more than a talented thug who enjoys cultivating an air of underserved mystery."
"Can't recall seeing any Dunmer with those features. Affiliated with any of your Houses? Ashlander stock?"
"Dres, or I'm a horker's wife. Lucia got one thing right; he doesn't want to be recognized." Part of him wondered if he might've seen someone like Sero once, but it was a vague and indistinct suspicion. "Probably had some venerable ancestor who was notorious for their whip hand."
"Shame to hide those looks," murmured Vanthis.
"Oh, for the love of -- "
"Wonder what Sero's whip hand is like?"
"I'm sleeping in the nursery," responded Sadri, which his wife, laughing, would not allow.
The joke, as it turned out, was on Teldryn Sero, for Lucia's unshakable conviction that he must be the Incarnate spread to her younger siblings and persisted for years. At first he'd treated it as a punchline whenever he did something that amazed the children: hitting a spider with a firebolt through the mists at a thousand paces, throwing his sword through a cellar skeever without bothering to turn around, or beating Valdimar at dice. It was bleakly hysterical if one considered that an actual demigod was wandering about their house asking if anyone had seen where she'd last put down her mug. Revyn also thought it ironic that someone with as light a step as the mercenary still ended up in so terrible a trap as the imagination of children, because while Sero soon abandoned the gag, his adoring fans did not.
Runa had questions upon questions about the wars the Chimer and Dwemer waged against her blood ancestors, wanting to know how Nerevar convinced Dumac to fight with him. Talen, who was probably going to come to a bad end if his father didn't pray for the intercession of the Saints at every waking hour, wanted to know what Sero had done with Wraithguard, and could he borrow it? And Keening? And how big had the Heart of Lorkhan been, and was the metal god of Dagoth Ur really destroyed completely, or could someone maybe dig it up again? And if they did --
But the thing that seemed to irk the spellsword most was the rapt wonder that Lucia exhibited in his presence, almost like a girl in love (she wasn't that age yet, Sadri repeated to himself endlessly, not his little girl, fourteen years is still a little girl). She kept shooting him furtive looks, shadowing his footsteps, and clearly treating the mercenary's every action as though it had some secret, mystic relevance to the chain of prophecy. And so Lucia whispered and wondered aloud to her siblings and put-upon father: the Nerevarine had met Jiub, the Nerevarine couldn't age, the Nerevarine helped found Raven Rock . . .
Teldryn was not one to bear things with good humor, and as the years dragged on he had grown notably more irritated with Lucia's fascination with him. "Why did you bother, Sadri? The boy, fine: at least he's half Dunmer, even if that half is Hlaalu. But you've no business teaching that girl our stories; they weren't meant to amuse outlanders."
Revyn sneered at that. "'Outlanders'? We're the outlanders here, s'wit, whatever airs you affected when you were jammed against the walls in Windhelm with the rest of us." He returned his attention to seasoning the soup for the evening meal. "And of course she knows Velothi ways -- was I supposed to abandon the Psijic Endeavor and start swearing by Ysmir just because my girls are human?"
"Knowing your House's gift for capitulating, I'm surprised you didn't."
Sadri hit the ladle against the side of the kettle with more force than strictly necessary and shoved the Damned Contraption away from the fireplace; it had a tendency to get stuck there. "I learned the stories of the Nerevarine at my mother's breast. They comforted me when the world fell to pieces, which is every five minutes these days. We are our ancestors' tombs." He turned to fix Teldryn, or rather, Teldryn's goggles, with a severe look. "And years back, you yourself told Lucia quite a few awkward and inappropriate stories of our homeland for your own amusement, so don't you pretend you didn't help build this fire."
"If you're saying someone should put it out . . ."
It was not for lack of trying on Revyn's part. Lucia was getting too old for these fancies -- although he still preferred dealing with this phase more than the prospect of her discovering boys -- and it wasn't dignified to ascribe mythic status to an unaffiliated nobody who was probably wanted for crimes committed back East.
"But the Nerevarine was a criminal when he was sent to Seyda Neen," Lucia protested.
"Yes, but that's not -- "
"Also, Mama was a criminal," Lucia added. "And you married her."
"Well, originally yes, but -- "
"And she's the Dragonborn."
"Yes, but -- "
Things finally boiled over one day at the beginning of Spring. The rising pressure of an early storm was giving everyone headaches. Runa and Talen had -- in defiance of multiple elders' orders -- gone mucking for clams in the freezing lake, and now were both running fevers. Ghorbash was late in returning from Morthal with fresh alchemical supplies, and Vanthis was in Dawnstar at the summons of Skald the Elder. Teldryn Sero had been left behind at Windstad, having just been paid for one job and doubtless required for another once she returned from the audience.
The mercenary, never domestic at the best of times, was chafing to be off on the next excursion and clearly not in the mood to do anything besides depleting Revyn's special reserve of sujamma or stalking about the grounds. Lucia was nearly a reliable substitute for another adult when it came to helping Sadri manage the household, but unfortunately still enough of a child that her fancies couldn't be suppressed. She'd snuck off to watch Sero repairing one of his chitin gauntlets at the armorer's bench in the cellar when she should have been getting potatoes out of the bins, and came up giddy, insisting to the bard Sonir that she'd seen a ring on his bare finger. "I think it was Moon-and-Star!"
Sonir -- who Revyn paid handsomely to sing songs about everything but the Nerevarine, or better yet, not to sing -- had tried to distract the girl with a lesson in lute-playing, but Sero had emerged from the cellar in a foul temper, complaining that the gauntlet would have to be fixed on Solstheim. Lucia ignored her father's warning glances and giggled as though she knew a secret; the building storm-tension made this behavior that much more annoying. Revyn told her several times to stop picking at her lute and to go look after her siblings, but the process of getting dinner together proved unusually difficult, and thus the front hall was filled with some rather inept stringcraft and an amateur singer for far longer than it should have been. And then Lucia began singing a ballad of old Resdayn, twanging at the strings and warbling in a naïve fashion, and everything went to hell.
"That isn't your song. Stop pillaging and go outside," snapped Sero, gripping his flagon as fiercely as a swordhilt.
"It's pretty," she protested. "Papa taught it to me -- "
"Dearest -- " Revyn began, trying to marshal diminishing reserves of patience, but was promptly interrupted by the spellsword slamming his fist on the table.
"Who do you think stands to greet you behind the Waiting Door?" spat Teldryn in Dunmeris, the only time Sadri could ever recall him using their tongue with Lucia. "You waste your prayers, surely as Sadri's kin wasted theirs when Cyrodiil abandoned them three times over. Not even the shades of those Imperial lapdogs are that craven, orphan."
Lucia paled, swaying in silence before turning and running from the room, the lute clattering to the floor.
Revyn Sadri rose, blood thundering in his ears. "Teldryn Sero. Out of deference to the great aid you provide to my wife, I will not demand satisfaction for the insult you have committed in front of my ancestors' shrine. But you will apologize, and not return to this hearth without my wife present."
"Tcch." The mercenary rose sharply, grabbing the opened flask of sujamma. "Thank you for sparing me the indignity of being slapped about the face with a dishrag, merchant. When you come to your senses, you know where to find me." He brushed rudely past Valdimar, who had just come in from patrolling the grounds, and without further comment was gone.
Lucia was nearly fifteen, now, and had moved from the nursery to an alcove on the second floor. As he approached, Revyn heard stifled weeping. "Little love, don't waste your tears on the words of fetchers." He carefully maneuvered around the Damned Contraption, which was trying and failing to pick up her shoes.
"Why did you teach me all this?" Lucia glanced up from her pillow, eyes reddened in a very different way than his own. "Nerevar, Moon-And-Star . . . it's not mine, none of it, but why did you tell it all to me if it's not mine?"
Sadri sat down heavily on the chair next to her bed, remembering that long-ago night in Whiterun: a roaring as though the sky was being torn apart, townsfolk barricading the doors of the Hall of the Dead as those monstrous wings thundered outside, and a lost child -- no one's child, unlooked for and unasked for, sobbing into his tunic and clinging to him as though he were the last real thing in the world -- and his own litany against fear, whispered again and again until he was singing it as much for that child's sake as his own: Luhn-silvar, hortator, Azura'm gah'amer . . .
"It's as much yours as you are mine, my darling." He squeezed her foot. "Dragonfire forges the strongest bonds."
"I don't even know if the ancestors listen to me," she whispered, obscuring her face back under the pillow. "Why would they. He's right. I'm no one to them."
"Teldryn Sero has no hearth and no House and no tombs. You have me," and he grasped her foot that much tighter, "and I will always be listening for you at the Door, Sera."
A strangled sob escaped from her throat. "But I'll die before you do!"
Revyn Sadri had no answer for that; he never had.
Ghorbash arrived back at Windstad around the time that the rain started, and warning that the storm looked to be a bad one. Dinner was a decidedly muted affair, with sick or sullen children poking at their stew as their elders paced about the hall in various states of preparation. Vanthis was still absent, and Teldryn Sero had not returned to the manor.
Revyn awoke to the screaming of the wind, and then lay motionless in bed for some time flinching as it buffeted the house. Just as he was debating whether or not to check on the children, Lucia burst into his room, exclaiming that she had been woken up by water on her face. It was fortunate that there were enough buckets in the house, since they found several other leaks, and soon Valdimar, Ghorbash, and Sonir were frantically assisting him in his attempt to head off the damage while the youngsters cowered by the fireplace.
But just as the Damned Contraption overturned another pail and the wind reached a fever pitch, a new sound reverberated throughout the foundations of the house, shaking the timbers with its all-encompassing roar. The rain quickly slackened off, the storm abating. Moments later, the door to Windstad Manor slammed open, revealing a sodden, familiar figure cloaked in dragonscale armor -- and behind her, another clad in chitin.
"Mama's home!" exclaimed Runa.
The rest of the night was punctuated by the constant sound of dripping, the occasional resurgent gust of wind, and at least two more instances of the Voice being used to quell a downpour as Vanthis perched like a crow atop the library tower, glaring down the elements. Revyn Sadri lay with his head underneath a pillow, the other half of the bed occupied by feverish children kicking the sheets loose. Teldryn Sero helped himself to another flask of sujamma and disappeared into the cellar; it could be supposed that he, at least, slept.
The damage to Windstad Manor's roof was considerable, and with the spring storms only just beginning, repairs would have to be made as swiftly as possible. The next few days were a flurry of activity: clearing the grounds, rounding up a traumatized cow, moving the broken branches and downed logs from the ground, and starting the thankless work of cutting shingles with very little lumber. Sonir was sent to the Morthal sawmill, only to return complaining that the roads were washed out, giants and thieves were taking advantage of the chaos, and also that Jorgen had already promised what he had to the Jarl.
A stratagem emerged: housecarl, steward, Dragonborn and husband would set to work with what lumber they had, Sonir would take the horse to Solitude to place orders and recruit help, Lucia would look after the meals and her siblings, and Teldryn Sero would guard the roads for the usual fee. It was a difficult undertaking for Revyn Sadri, who had no skill with a saw and a fear of heights, and after hitting his fingers with a hammer three times in one evening he reflected that Dunmer had even less business building wooden structures than Bosmer. Vanthis, for her part, was inexplicably good at carpentry for someone who had been a devout adherent of the Green Pact until late in life, but managed to drop tools off the roof with exasperating frequency. Valdimar himself fell off several times.
Lucia rose to the challenge of managing the house, but even with Revyn's preoccupations he couldn't help but notice that the Waiting Door had not been maintained to his usual standards, and that the various annals of Morrowind that always cluttered her bedside seemed to have been quietly returned to the library, and that she answered him in Nibenese rather than Dunmeris, and did not sing. None of these changes were as pressing as the roof, but they sharpened his resolve to have a word with Vanthis in regard to her favored spellsword.
Unfortunately, Teldryn Sero was proving to be a vital component in stabilizing their homestead in the wake of the storm. Often in the middle of work, Revyn would catch the sounds of battle from the southwest area of the marshes: bellowing, explosions, hissing atronachs, mighty crashes. Yet every evening Sero would saunter back like a barn cat wanting his allotted cream, bloodied but unbeaten, sometimes tossing a giant's toe in the direction of the alchemy table. "Nothing I haven't dealt with before," he responded to Ghorbash's slightly concerned queries, pouring himself more sujamma while Lucia slunk from the room.
And that was the rub, Sadri reflected bitterly: if he told his wife of Sero's vicious words towards himself and their daughter, she would demand an apology from him, and Sero never apologized for anything. So Vanthis would likely dismiss him permanently from service, and that in turn would mean that all the nightmare things that stalked her would find it that much easier to bring her down. The mercenary's abilities were too valuable to risk losing, but while Revyn had resigned himself to suffering indignities on behalf of his wife's safety, it felt like a betrayal to expect the same of Lucia.
But after a long week of constant work and cursing, Windstad Manor was once again watertight - perhaps more so than it was before, since Vanthis's initial construction had been less informed on the placement of shingles. Everything was more or less back to normal. A celebration of sorts seemed in order, so Sadri busied himself in the kind of work he vastly preferred to home repair. He bartered for a suckling pig, broke open a cask of aged flin, and laid the best linen on a table laden with everything savory and decadent that could be made or obtained on short notice. As much as Revyn disliked cooking, he'd never been bad at it, and perhaps basked a little in the adulation of his kin and retainers as they devoured the feast (Sero said the pork was dry).
It was a fairly upbeat affair. Ghorbash and Valdimar debated what next steps of home maintenance should be undertaken, Sonir praised Solitude's robust supply chains, Vanthis did some unflattering impersonations of the Jarl of the Pale, Talen tried to jam a fork through the Damned Contraption's dynamo core, and Teldryn Sero announced that if he wasn't needed, he was heading back to Solstheim to get his armor properly overhauled. The children demanded that he stay -- except for Lucia, who Revyn observed slinking into Ghorbash's shadow, silent.
The evening deepened and stomachs grew full. As was inevitable, Vanthis stood up after her fourth or seventh cup of ale and began speechifying, eventually managing to thank all present for their contributions to the restoration of the manor while forking over generous amounts of coin as well. "And that goes for my little loves, too -- here, for keeping the house so well and being so good while we were all busy -- wait. Where's Lucia?"
Runa shrugged, wide eyes fixed on the ebony dagger that her mother had just handed her. "I think she went to bed."
"What? This early?" Vanthis shot Revyn a look of concern, which seemed somewhat misplaced in light of her questionable gifts. "You don't think she caught their fever, do you? She's seemed out-of-sorts lately."
Her husband sighed, attempting to remove the dagger from Runa's enthralled grasp. "She's . . . she's had a lot on her mind, I think. It's a hard age." It took everything he had not to glare at Teldryn Sero, who had wandered across the hall to rummage in one of the drink barrels.
"Well, we ought to see if she wants to hear stories. It's a night for stories, isn't it?" She raised her tankard -- spilling most of it on Revyn -- and gestured at their bard. "Sonir! Sing us a good one!"
"We've heard all those," moaned Valdimar. "Ghorbash, you must have a decent story from your time in the Legion?"
The old steward shook his head. "Excellent fighting, but I don't tell those tales to children before bedtime."
"I thought your folk don't believe in coddling the young," drawled Sero, ambling past with yet another of Sadri's prized flasks of sujamma.
"We don't, but I sleep in the nursery. Last thing I want is these bloodthirsty little skeevers keeping me up with questions all night."
"Well, I could always spin a tale or two," Vanthis said, spreading her arms unsteadily. "Did I ever tell you about how I met the Daedric Prince Sanguine?"
Her bard's brow furrowed, as did her husband's. "Er. Is that the one where you might have . . . married a Hagraven, my lady?"
"Could've done worse," chortled Teldryn Sero, and raised his tankard in ironic salute to a fuming Revyn. "Well. I'll do the honors, shall I?"
"I don't want to hear about that client of yours with the deathwish, again," Valdimar responded, ripping off a hunk of bread. "It gets old."
"Oh, this isn't a story any of you would have heard before," the mercenary countered, settling into the good chair by the fire. "At least, I'd be shocked if you had. A story of old Morrowind, in the days before Red Mountain erupted." He shot a warning glare at Runa and Talen, their mouths already opening. "No, the Nerevarine is not in it."
"Well, then we really should get Lucia down -- " began Vanthis, but Revyn quietly shook his head. She gave him something of a questioning look, but assented. "All right. A yarn of old Morrowind. Not one of the dirty ones, is it?"
"No. Approved safe for general consumption by the standards of the Tribunal Temple."
"So were the 36 Lessons of Vivec," protested Sadri.
"Don't know why I thought it was the Orc turning the children into milk-drinkers. Rest assured, Serjo, the worst challenge to your sensibilities in this tale will be that no one mentions the Empire." Sero propped up a leg against the Damned Contraption, which was whirring quietly on the flagstones. "And possibly some light heresy, for flavor."
"Charming," sighed Revyn, and silently apologized yet again to the relics of his ancestors ringed about the fireplace. "We really get our money's worth from you, don't we."
"Worth every Septim," replied the masked Dunmer. "'In that Age, in those days, was an Ordinator . . .'"