image [https://i.imgur.com/r7k3wDM.png]

It was a three day journey through spitting rain until we reached Ayagozi Pass. I spent those days hunched over poor Spinner with the muffled patter of raindrops playing on my hood as the mountains loomed ever larger and came alive with red clay rock formations and mottled yellow grass that broke the tree lines. Eventually we reached the town where we were to meet Governor Lucca and I was surprised to see no tidy imperial encampment, and instead a sprawling shantytown that ran up the hillside to a distant sandstone fortress that commanded the road through which all custom to and from the central plains of the desert passed.

The clouds broke as we rode into town and the midday sun summoned from the muddy earth an ungodly heat. The passing folk were human and Khajiit for the most part as our horses slopped through muddy streets beneath wooden buildings that sagged under decades of rot and bristled with paint chips like the bark exotic trees.

“This is your last chance,” said Benezia, “to come clean on your backstory before Lucca sees you again.”

“There’s nothing to confess,” I responded, although my confidence was shaken despite my honesty.

A pair of half naked children chased each other across the street and between Sorvild and myself. Spinner bucked with shock, pain jolting up my spine as I barely caught myself and smacked back into the saddle, and she kicked a hoof out where one boy's head had just been—surely capable of decapitating the child had contact been made—I called out in alarm only for the wretched urchin to turn and call me an 'egg sucker' before vanishing down an alley. I patted down Spinner’s mane, more to soothe myself than anything, as we pressed on.

The expected peace summit grounds were a gardened enclave, once a gated imperial merchant’s estate, but now repurposed and patrolled by a dozen legionnaires. There was no sign of any Mane delegation at all.

Benezia instructed Sorvild and Abbard to take the horses and secure lodging. Abbard raised an eyebrow at this since she had pretended to defer to the senior mercenary until that point, but they complied regardless. Afterwards she gave Lucca’s gate guards some callsign and we were escorted in through a statued garden, up some creaking stairs (the air even more stifling indoors), before I was told to wait outside an office door with a guard while Benezia addressed the governor alone.

It was like standing outside the Grand Wizard’s office back in school. When I was finally called in, my face was slick with sweat.

Lucca was a sloping lump of a man, stooped under a thick golden chain of his office and bearing three pendulous rungs of chin swinging as he gaped at me from behind his desk. Benezia stood nearer to me and watched his face intensely.

I stepped onto the middle of his rug. “Ah, hello.”

Silence. Then his lips wormed about, white flecks in the corners before he spoke in a deep baritone. “I do not recognize this man.”

Benezia balked. “Really?”

“Of course. He has, perhaps, a passing resemblance… a certain vapidity of countenance, my dear. But no, this man is most certainly not the same Berry Longfellow I knew.”

Benezia turned to me, still shaking her head. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Berry. The mirror, the bounty hunters… I was certain.”

"These things can happen,” I said, and maybe they do.

Lucca clapped his meaty hands. “Well what’s important is that you’re both here when I’m in desperate need of agents who can gather intelligence on the two delegations once they arrive — troop counts, materiel placement, key leaders, all that sort of thing. We need to be ready for what comes next, after this charade of a peace talk.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“You don’t expect the negotiations to succeed?” asked Benezia.

“My dear, peace talks never succeed. Peace is only ever surrendered. However, most of my legions are still occupied at the capital since they were recalled due to the unrest, so I’m fairly constrained in my options for now. This is all purely in preparation for the invasion to reestablish order.”

I looked about. “You both really don’t mind me being here for this?”

A smile creased Lucca’s face. “My boy, you can hear everything. After all, you may be essential in it. We could actually leverage this misunderstanding, that others may mistake you for the wizard Berry Longfellow may give us more optionality to… well I will need to come up with a plan, but the potential is there. But henceforth you are no prisoner, in fact,” he wagged a hand between Benezia and myself. “Unbind him right away.”

I held out my hands as she fished the key from her pocket, pushing it to some deeper level within the anti-magic cuffs hole until a deep clunk rang out and they split down their middle. I rubbed the unfamiliar skin of my wrists.

We spent a few moments discussing our role as his agents. We were to maintain our disguise as mercenaries for the time being, lay low in town until he had an opportunity to meet each delegation and learn their general posture as well as what reaction my appearance as the “infamous Berry Longfellow” might create. He prepared us for the courtly procedure as well; we were instructed that the northwestern Mane was only to be referred to as 'Your Perfection' due to some revolutionary ideology he had adopted, whereas the southern Mane still bore the traditional title of 'Your Holiness'. The more intricate spycraft talk went clear over my head, but I nodded along anyway and prayed that Benezia could keep it all together since I was only supposed to assist her for the time being.

Lucca did most of the talking, and never asked for our opinions, although Benezia dared to interject a few times to which he merely nodded before pushing ahead. In the end he clapped his hands again and ordered us to get some rest before the delegations arrived.

As we turned to leave Lucca called out to me. “Dear boy, would you mind staying a moment longer? As you’re a bit of an unknown quantity I would like to get to know you a bit more — but you may leave Agent Benezia.”

Benezia knitted her brow. “I’ll meet you outside, Berry.”

She drew the door shut, leaving us absolutely alone. The governor's eyes lingered silently on mine as he waited for her footsteps to fade, his face a frozen mask. Finally one of the guards tapped on the outer door as some kind of signal.

The shadow’s on Lucca’s face shifted as he reclined. “Alright, so what’s really going on Berry?”

“Huh?”

“Last I heard you were holed up in Dune with the northern Mane, and suddenly you show up on my doorstep in the custody of the Blades?”

“But you said you didn’t recognize me?”

He raised the pitch of his voice mockingly. “But you said nya nya nya—don’t be daft—I lied. Have you gotten stupid?”

“I don’t think I have.”

"Well you don’t seem any smarter. Were you able to test the mirror at all? If I ever needed its power, it’s now.”

“I don’t have the Miser’s Mirror.”

He let out a long breath before rising and leaning over the desk like an overfed leopard preparing to pounce. “Bullshit. You did something with it, I know you. You made all these big promises and then go off into the desert, and then all of this just happens? A pretender Mane pops out your ass and suddenly half of my court doesn’t even remember ever meeting you? I’ve been rather gracious with you for old time’s sake, but I expect some answers. Now.”

My heart was as stone in my chest. “You’re wrong, I’ve never even been this far south before, let alone to Elsweyr. I swear, I’ve never seen you in my life!”

"Impossible. I know you.” He straightened, seeming to lose faith in his own words. “Or perhaps the emperor’s minions fried your brain, I’ve heard of them doing such things. Regardless, you’re back with me now, and working for me again, understand? Don’t forget that and remember that shackles or no, I only need to snap my finger to put you back in the wretched pit I found you in all those years ago, or sell you off to some eastern Khajiit bounty hunters for an easy profit. You live by my grace alone.”

I wiped my forehead, my fingers clumsy and hot. None of this made any sense. His claims, the bounty hunters, everyone’s mind did not match my own memory, or that of Marius who had known me to live in the north in the same period all of this had occurred in Elswyr. I shook my head. “Y-you have my full support. That’s all I can do.”

“Good. And not a word to your handler either, she’s a loyalist like all of the Blades. Unprepared for the future of the empire. Just be ready for my summons.”