image [https://i.imgur.com/fbfIPnE.png]
One day, His Perfection led his entire court into the wastes on a great hunt. All the gentlemen (or what passed for such in Elsweyr) rode out from the palace in a grand parade to the Crawling Gate: nobles and chieftains on horse and camel as often as kinsmen sabretooth, with Ro’kash's hooded Lion Head Priests trailing us like a grim shadow.
Spinner seemed grateful for the exercise though, and tramped along proudly, joyously spinning in her dear little way as I hurried her up and down the column so I could visit with the various members of the court. We had both put on a healthy bit of fat since our arrival, and retracing our steps in reverse seemed to wipe away the humiliation of our piteous arrival.
A desert wind whistled through the crags and valleys, and blew in our faces not entirely unpleasantly as it alleviated the heat even as it threw stray bits of hot sand into my eyes and hair. After a several hour-long trek we saw our destination, an oasis known as Droshasha's Well that sprang up like a solitary green pimple amidst the desolate red plain.
The catmen dismounted and spread out and take positions behind rocks and crags just beyond the creeping green of the grassline. Even at a distance I could smell wetness upon the air — green air — a bold musk to my desert hardened nostrils. My brother, a trio of court wizards, and myself all joined hands in an empowerment ritual and after some chanting brought into being a decently large muffle charm over the nearby treeline of palms and shoulder height grass. Our task completed, one of the wizards waved on the hunters. The insanity began.
The sounds were indescribable. Awful squawking, muffled, warped, and smeared to deeper octaves by our magical charm as Khajiit prowled like alley cats with sacks in hand, before leaping with inhuman agility to capture some poor bird or another.
Berry and I watched, seated on a rocky outcropping, and the Mane himself joined us with a glint in his eyes. "Is it not a beautiful thing to see-uh? A people returning to their traditions."
Wincing against another torrent of squawks, I had voice agreement.
He continued. "You know as a kitten I used to be quite the bird catcher myself. Not good form to be seen doing it now-uh, too great a risk I could fumble the catch and jinx myself for a fortnight-uh."
"Precisely," chimed my brother, "but their droppings from the Cage of Wyrd Waste will give us just the surplus fortuitousness we need to win over the Bosmer delegation."
The fortuitousness of bird feces was one of those topics on which my brother and I disagreed (the point of disagreement lying in the correlation between fallen bird waste per square mile and personal income level being causative or correlative) but I kept my peace on the topic. Instead I cleared my throat and shifted to my more pressing concern. “Your Perfection, with the delegation arriving so soon I have been meaning to inquire regarding your intent with them. I know the relationship between the forest elves and catfolk have been strained since the Five Year War, so I'm sure it was a challenging decision to invite them."
The Mane flashed a fanged smile. "A deep challenge, but necessary-uh as we need every possible ally to completely overpower the pretender. But I want to make one thing crystal clear-uh — I want the prince and his guard to join our expeditionary army personally. You can make him any promise in the world to make that happen. I don't give a tick bite how many soldiers he can muster. I just need him-uh."
I met my master's eyes. "They may want land in exchange…"
"Then promise it. Whether they can prosecute for it will be a battle for another day, a day when I will back on my predestined seat of power-uh. Besides, war can be an unpredictable place. Who is to say who will survive that unbridled rip-tide-uh of destiny? In fact we may be able to steer fate to support a certain… lust for revenge from the prince’s nation. A noble prince falling in battle is quite the call to arms, is it not-uh?"
His smile crept back, and in the distance the first hunters began to return bearing living prey. Some carried thrashing sacks over a shoulder while the more experienced hunters held twisting birds by their feet, sometimes bearing three in each hand with the little talons pinched uselessly between furred fingers.
* * *
Habit is such a curious thing. Quiet as chamois run over river stone, unbreakable as a chevalier’s cuirass. We define habit as something we do, a quantifiable action, yet often describe others as mere manifestations of their habits — for instance I will occasionally drink, imbibing alcohol for a myriad of reasons which in my own mind I am intimately familiar with, but the other man, whom I only see in reference to his actions, I observe and describe to you as ‘a drunk’.
This is a special cruelty we perform upon others as we grapple to understand them through these shallow manifestations, and at other times accept only through the summarized observations of others. It is a very rare person who can ever intuit beyond such things and understand another’s deeper nature, for it requires both a specific character (aligned in some ways with the target persona) and dedicated time.
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All of this is to say I had — under a great deal of stress from Benezia pressuring me to procure assassins while also feeling deeply devoted to my deviator brother and the Mane who had so generously patronized me, but who sought total revolution of Elsweyr — taken to drinking more than I ever had since leaving the Imperial City. Often a sip of wine in the morning just to steady my hands, and a snifter of something with lunch to keep them that way. This is just one more proviso for you to retain in mind while considering the subsequent pages of this completely voluntary testimonial.
But I had been as good as my word to Benezia in that I had tried to establish contact with the Lunar Priests, but after several incredibly awkward conversations with noble leaders I had suspected were disaffected, I was forced to come up with a new tactic — a trap.
It was well known that the Lunar Priests were somehow accessing our courier packages despite heightened security measures, so I decided I would raise my flag as it were, with a message that would get their attention (and possibly get me beheaded. I addressed the letter to Benezia’s hovel, and it simply gave a meeting location and said: “It’s time to assassinate my master.”
I’d given Benezia no additional forewarning or context for this meeting.
I selected a premier clothier’s emporium as the meeting point, reasoning it would provide the public visibility that might stay their hands from murdering me on sight if they did attend or spy on our meeting, yet also have enough privacy that we might parlay in confidence. And though it terrified me to do so, I traveled alone for obvious reasons.
It was a grand establishment with a high vaulted ceiling, the cavernous interior drenched with sunlight from banks of high windows. The space within was partitioned by stretched accordions of foldable privacy panels into many honeycomb-like cells between massive rows of cabinets from which waterfalls of fabric poured out — sheer sapphire, citrus orange, violet, red, and patterned with all the diamonds, waves, and checks you could imagine. The stink of the street ebbed away as I found my place within it, down down a cascading hall of uncut cloth. Sans the dry air there was a bathhouse atmosphere to the place as unintelligible feminine chatter bubbled over the changing room partitions, yet I saw no one.
The meeting place was an empty fitting room; a round sandstone pedestal sat before a pair of ornate mirrors that were tall as doors and bound together on brass hinges. I winced, hardly recognized the man cast in duplicate before me. His beard obscured half a face that was darkened by an intense foreign sun, body bronzed and wiry. He was not an unhandsome man, but there was something feral about him.
A small clerk catgirl appeared behind me. “The Fate Weaver honors us with its presence! What does it require?”
“A few racks of robes for me to try, I may have a few friends join shortly as well so I would appreciate no further interruptions.”
“Of course, fateful one…”
"Also do we need to have the mirrors in my face the whole time?"
She told me they were necessary for most fittings but that she could call two young men in to disassemble them if they displeased me. On further contemplation I assured her it wouldn't be an issue. The girl rolled in a rack of fabric and loose robes before departing with more gratitude that I would honor her establishment. I stewed in a mounting panic, wishing I had brought a bottle of something to sip with me as I wondered who would arrive.
Finally my heart leapt when a knock rattled the partition, a faux door frame from which hung a cloth. Before I could speak the curtain was cast back and Benezia bustled in.
“You were followed here,” she said. “You really need to be more careful.”
“By who?”
“It looked like a man in a robe, but there was something wrong with his face… pale and lipless, twisted. Any idea who or what it is?”
“The creature from the wastes. It has to be. Akatosh save me, I’d rather hoped I’d shaken it.”
She rolled her shoulders. “Well I can protect you from it. But from your message it seems like you have news for me about the Mane? You’re ready to strike yourself?”
“Perhaps. My initial attempts to find those allies you mentioned have not worked out but,” I looked about before waving her closer. I’m hoping to lure them here right this very minute.”
She shook her head in confusion and I explained my scheme, that the Lunar Priests were most likely reading my mail, but while doing so caught a whiff of her — quite innocently of course, all in the typical sort of breathing patterns — and noticed a blended spice, oddly intimate and of rosewater. It was intoxicating, and yet very much not Benezia.
I stepped back. “Who are you?”
She pretended to laugh. “What?”
“Your smell…” her eyes I noticed also sat wider and larger somehow. “Who are you?”
She smiled again, flashing teeth suddenly as sharp as arrowtips peeking between her plump lips. "Oh it’s clever, we’ve watched it enough to know it’s clever… but perhaps it’s a bit too clever for its own good.” It crept back towards the doorframe as she continued: “Does it actually intend to betray the Mane?”
“I see his insanity just as you do. But I don’t want to harm him necessarily — I just wanted to bring you here, somewhere neutral. I want to do what’s best for everyone. Maybe that means that, but I’m looking at other options.”
“What other options?” Her voice faltered, losing Benezia’s huskiness in favor of a sultry throatiness.
“Perhaps I can speak to him about tolerating your people, make the logical case… and moderate him in other ways.”
She nodded, eyes suddenly golden. “If it can, it will have made a great many friends. We will watch, but it must act soon. We have no care or wish to be bound to either of the Manes, merely to preserve the true old ways, the one true understanding of Jone and Jode, and the ja-Kha'jay.”
“And what if I can’t? Could we still negotiate?”
“Some divides can only be answered with blood. It has until the end of Jode’s waning. Either you strike him down or swear to give us the opportunity to do so ourselves.”
And before I could respond she was out the door.
I ran after, sighting her around a few corners overhung with fabric before bursting into the street. I saw her in the distance — as Benezia — enter a crowd of pedestrians before flashing into a Khajiit woman bent over with age, and then blinking between another Berry Longfellow wearing silver armor, a tradeswoman, and a dozen faces besides. Each appearance a perfect living replica down to the last stitch of fabric. Strangely not a single person around it seemed to notice, going about their daily business without a care in the world as the radical transformations flipped fast as the pages of a book.
I ran back to the palace. As the guards waved me in I looked back to the city to see a hooded figure watching me from an alleyway just beyond the palace parade grounds.