image [https://i.imgur.com/spj7R0e.png]

Benezia questioned me endlessly about my conversation with Lucca, no doubt sensing that I was holding something back. Eventually she tired out and we rejoined Sorvild and Abbard at a fine inn whose name escapes me.

The proprietor and staff bustled about in the common room in wrinkled white uniforms as we hung damp cloaks on pins in the the common room, and took a corner table to we feast after days of surviving on flavorless hardtack and jerky; we ordered hot sausages cooked over the central firepit until blisters grew, burst, and blackened into puckered kisses seeping juice as they were laid on pretzel buns which we dipped into a shared bowl of tangy mustard. I found little resistance when I suggested a round of beers.

After downing the sour dregs of my tankard I went upstairs, dropped off my satchel, and join Sorvild for a wash in the men's bathing chamber, towards the front of the building where four copper tubs were ingeniously heated by some enchanted device. My entire body cried out for a hot bath to soak off the layer of mildew bonding my skin to my unwashed clothes.

Now I'm told that customs vary regionally on this, and my own homeland is quite prudish about nudity, but these shared bathing areas are quite common in the heartland so I thought little of it as Sorvild stripped down to his great hairy birthday suit beside me—and if you were hoping for some scandalous commentary on his physique I am afraid I shall disappoint you for as a gentleman I guard the intimacies of a lover's trysts and gentlemen's bath with equal fervor.

I gasped involuntarily as I slid into blood warm water, the flowery smell of some bubbly soap which had been mixed into a froth atop the water rinsed off layers of horse musk grown accustomed to. I groaned with pleasure, and heard Sorvild do likewise, as the waterline hugged our shoulders. Our eyes met and we laughed at the pure ecstasy of it.

We scrubbed, grousing occasionally as men who bathe together often do about sore muscles and such until I felt the need to clear the air.

"I wanted to thank you by the way. I know Benezia and I are in some ways a burden to you and put you at risk…” I scanned the door. “But this entire trip you've always looked after us with the greatest generosity. You’ve always looked out for me. I appreciate it."

He gaped, speechless at first with the shock of a grown man receiving a compliment. "Oh it was nothing at all, that is to say I try to do what I can to give you your just due. I don't know… I don't need to know everything about your mission, but I hope you're successful."

"I'm not sure you do…"

He chuckled. "Why not? Because you're trying to make peace and I'm a mercenary? You've got a lot to learn about the mercenary's lot. What do you think we're selling?"

"Men with swords?"

"Far too simple of an assessment for an intellectual like you, Berry. We're selling an insurance plan on a subscription model. Most of war is just posturing, and we have pieces to rent at a premium."

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"But if peace comes?"

He sat up, a clamshell of soap clutched in his hand. "I'll tell you how all of this will go: the claimants are going to argue in circles, and then they will have no option but to play a game of chicken with each other—raising enough troops to hold the other at bay but never strong enough to risk a move against their opponent. A decade of this filling our company’s coffers, until one day one of the claimant’s wakes up dead. Then that faction will splinter and you'll see the Imperial throne suddenly fully in support of whoever is still standing. Kids will grow up without a clue and the whole episode will just be forgotten,” he tapped the whorl of hair on his chest. “But we’ll have gotten our work out of it.”

I told Sorvild that I hoped he was right, keeping my skepticism to myself. He certainly painted a more optimistic picture than Caius had—a tempting one.

Following that, I tried to wash in peace but he began to pester me with questions about Benezia's relationship status. Dibella forgive me, but I could only encourage him.

Sorvild left shortly after to find Abbard (who had been missing since dinner), leaving me a rare moment of sudsy solitude. I closed my eyes and sank in until hot water threatened to flood my ears until I heard the bells chiming.

A strange cadence—a sonorous gong would fall like a giant footstep and in its tread rang two rattling symbols like that of a small creature pursuing it. It began so soft as to seem something imagined, the memory of a song pressing forward, yet it grew and grew in the repetition until I realized something big was coming.

I leapt from the tub, water rolling off me and darkening the wooden floor. Throwing the window open revealed a street suddenly overrun with catfolk.

The Khajiit marched in a procession that extended beyond the curving avenue of the sloped buildings, a dizzying array of purple robed servants, golden banners, and levies holding spears aloft so that the entire column bristled like a hedgehog. Some Khajiit walked on four legs, but most on two, and they moved with the self-seriousness of an invading army. All other pedestrians seemed to have sensed the same and ducked into the nearest storefront. At their head marched a catman twice the height of man or mer — strapped to his breast massive gong he banged in time as a pair of smaller brethren followed, shaking hollowed bamboo shafts filled with some sort of metallic chimes.

They streamed by until the column swelled with a crowd of lancers on the backs of some variety of striped four-legged cat brethren the size of bears, each rider wearing a steel demon-masked helm. Between them jostled a grand palanquin whose silk tails idly pirouetted downward in the dismal weather. As the procession passed a Khajiit chevalier caught my eye as he rode up to the palanquin on a black coarser, his lion's mane of ornate curls bouncing over a gold inlaid Imperial Knight’s breastplate with each galloping step. As he pressed through the lancers towards the palanquin, a pawlike hand parted the curtains from within.

I fell back, feeling that somehow that hand was about to point to me, that it saw through wood to me at that very moment, making me feel small and exposed in my bare assedness. Wet clothes clinging to my wet skin, I ran to Benezia and my room.

She was reading Milady's Bondage on her own bed and barely looked up as I entered. She asked if I'd heard a commotion outside (it being barely audible in the rear of the building) and I said it must have been street performers. The thought of telling her one of the Manes had arrived overwhelmed me, immanentizing something I preferred to remain unreal.

I sat on my own bed, my weight farting a puff of turbid perfume from the mattress, no doubt intended to mask the stink of decay. I fiddled with my luggage as my mind rushed. Lucca was untrustworthy but now led us, and I dared not tell Benezia or risk her wrath by suggesting a new course of action, and now an army of strange Khajiit had arrived I would soon need to spy on as well. Sun filtered through a storm bathed the room a sickly shade of green as I sat and stared for what felt like an eternity.

A knock at the door, and then Abbard’s pinched beak of a face emerged. “Your dumb horse is acting up down there.”

“Spinner?”

He rolled his eyes. “Who else? Can you take a look at it?”