image [https://i.imgur.com/oJck22g.png]

It was their voices that woke me. First the man: "Just admit it, you miffed the headlock."

Then the woman, Benezia surely, but her voice now sizzled with anger like a loogie on a skillet. "My headlock was perfect, I think he just doesn't need much blood to his brain."

"You'll never learn from your mistakes unless you admit to them. You never had this problem back in Vvardenfell, and the marks were much tougher there. Look at this guy, he probably couldn't lift anything heavier than a pen."

"Oh cram it, will you Caius?"

I blinked against a single glaring flame. A torch, but it jutted downward from its sconce on the cobblestone wall. I realized the flame dripped downward.

I blinked again in total bafflement until that rather unmistakable sensation of hanging upside down, like a lead weight pressing up (down?) on your brain, drove the obvious conclusion home. My lolling tongue ran coarse as snakeskin over chapped lips as I drew it in, and a chill damp lay on my bare thighs. The fog of my memory cleared and I realized from the massive casks that lined against the walls that I must have been in Marius' wine cellar — naked, chained about the ankles, and strung up like a prize buck.

Benezia and Caius continued sparring with one another over a barrel top-turned-table on which the contents of my bag were spilled. They hadn't taken any notice of my waking, but sat between me and the arched stone passageway which I took to be the only exit.

The sight of Benezia brought an involuntary gasp, for not only had she traded her fine gown for the oiled leather skinsuit of an assassin, but it was bound tightly over a crushingly small chest. This sting was not soon soothed, for as my mind replayed the events directly preceding my loss of consciousness — the dinner, the short tussle — it all made even less sense to me. Suddenly over the pounding drum in my head I heard out the hissing echo of slipper steps approaching. Benezia and Caius twisted to face the exit.

To my shock it was Marius who rounded the corner, still dressed in his pearly finery. He froze under the archway as he took in the scene before him.

"What happened?"

It was the faux-doorman, Caius, who answered. "The plan went a bit off track, but we'll be done with him soon enough and shipped out. You have my word."

"I should think so, you said you'd take him somewhere else and now I find my home requisitioned into an imperial prison? There's laws about that even you all are subject too! I should hope to be compensated for the cost of facilities at least—"

"Marius, you bastard!" I wailed, a warbling gargle the best my pulverized throat could manage. The effort set me swaying about on my chain like an aggrieved market ham hung on display.

Marius' arms shot up as if struck, "I'm terribly sorry dear boy, they came to me weeks ago! For what it's worth I told them you weren't a bad sort, wayward perhaps, but harmless. But they were so damn insistent. Like I told you, the political pressures at the moment are immense…"

"That's enough," shouted Caius. "Leave us to our work Marius, and take your whinging to someone with time for it. By my reckoning you've already been too well compensated by half. Begone now, you pampered poodle."

Old Marius shrank back, bowing. He threw me a final dewy eyed glance as I told him to choke on rat meat. His footsteps faded again and my captors eyed me in silence until the boom of the distant cellar door reverberated down the hall.

Their eyes burned into me as I still swung side-to-side from my earlier outburst. I became aware of a painful grip around my wrists, a clinking pair of iron manacles where a yellow silk sash had once been. A part of me still waited to wake from the nightmare.

But there was no waking this time. It was Caius who broke the silence. Wooden stool legs shrieked against the stone floor like nails on a chalkboard as he pulled up beside me. The unwigged charlatan affected a tired smile in the manner of a disappointed schoolmarm.

"Berry, my name is Caius and I want to start off by apologizing for our misunderstanding. We were warned that you're something of a sorcerer and weren't sure whether we would be safe to talk to you without those anti-magic manacles on."

It was true. I reached out with my mind and I felt nothing of the world's magical currents. Not only that but the manacles grew firebrand hot as I grappled for the ethereal, siphoning the energy and threatening the sear my skin until I stopped. Ultimately the joke was on them since I was capable of casting little more than party tricks.

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Caius gestured to Benezia and himself. "Believe it or not, we're with the good guys, and I think you're a good guy too, Berry. A good guy who might have gotten in over his head."

I tried speaking as clearly as I could with an extra gallon of blood in my brain. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Why don't you start by telling me about your recent trip to Elsweyr, Berry"

"I've never been," I answered honestly.

Benezia crossed her arms. "He told me the same story."

"I think you have, Berry."

"Well, I haven't."

"I know you have. You were there last month."

"Wrong."

"Berry—"

"I'm sorry to say that you've been misinformed."

The old man had to massage his temples, stymied by my stalwart clarity I suppose, even though I'd tried to let the fellow down as gently as I could.

Benezia jumped from her seat, jabbing a finger at me. "Come on! Let's just dump him off at the dungeons and be done with it. There are better leads to follow and the torturers can do the work for us."

"I'm a simple academic," I cried with a force that set me to swinging again, "I've broken no laws!"

"Then where have you been the last few months?"

"Here. Trapped in my apartment in the fish market!"

He gave me a dead stare as Benezia started calling me every dirty name in the book and my stomach roiled with rage, terror, and an evening's sloshing wine pushing the wrong direction up my digestive tract. Suddenly I realized I had an answer that might go down easier with him. "In my personal effects on the barrel there, you'll find my Imperial Writ to visit the Ancestor Moth Cult. It's signed and dated about eight weeks back by myself, the legate, and some general's aide. That's all the evidence you need."

They shuffled through my papers for a moment until they found it.

"Forgery," hissed Benezia. But Caius' eyes weighed me like a questionably old cut of beef he'd found in the back of the pantry. There may have been some pleading and tears shed by yours truly during his deliberation period (all calculated to gain advantage in that great game of intellectual wrestling known as persuasion to the common man, rhetoric amongst us gentlemen of letters) until ultimately something clicked in his mind and a smile creased his face.

Caius folded the writ and pocketed it. "Maybe you are telling us the truth; after all, stranger things have happened — are happening now in fact. As an act of good faith let me show you my cards first then, Berry. Have you heard of the pretender Mane who is threatening civil war in Elsweyr ?"

I confessed I had not. In fact I knew almost nothing of the Khajiit, or cat-folk as some called them, and their internal politics. I had never even seen one until arriving at the capital.

"Well the cat-folk are led by a single Mane, one of their race that is born only once in a generation. Now physically the Khajiit all come out a bit different depending on the moon or some nonsense — whether as housecats, mancats, bearcats, and so on — but the Mane is supposed to really be something else, the physical and spiritual embodiment of his people. Elsweyr is an imperial province of course, but the Mane rules it as prophet-king much as he did in ancient times, with fanatical loyalty from some quarters… The problem we face today is that there are, suddenly and inexplicably, two of them.”

I shook my head (a disorienting mistake while upside down). “So a new heir has been born too early?”

“No,” said Benezia. “There are literally two of the same Mane, both adults. Governor Lucca, who has known the Mane for decades before this occurred, has met both claimants and confirmed they're exactly the same person.”

Caius continued, “Naturally the imperial bureaucracy has tried to keep the matter hushed as we attempt to work out a peaceful resolution, but so far we have been unable to bring either party to the negotiating table. This is all at a time when the empire is least able to project its power, and after the legion garrisoned in Elsweyr was already withdrawn to the capital. Both claimants are certain of their own legitimacy and have withdrawn to opposite ends of Elsweyr to rally their supporters for a civil war."

He watched my face for a reaction and I suppose it was suitably puzzled (likely a bit purple as well). But all this talk about duplicate prophet-kings in a far off province seemed rather unrelated to my current predicament. I felt a bit called out by it all and let them know as much, I believe my exact words were ‘so what?’.

"Governor Lucca reported meeting a man named Berry Longfellow, a self proclaimed ‘Fate Binder’ in the Mane’s entourage just prior to the duplication. And one of the Manes, the one who made himself warlord of the northwestern desert, has sent out proclamations claiming to have 'mastered destiny in order to bring about his people’s spiritual renewal'. A very interesting choice of words wouldn't you say?"

I couldn't deny it looked bad. I twisted my chained arms a bit, shoulders aching as my mind raced. My first instinct was to call Marius in to vouch for me, but I realized it would be hopeless as the snake had already had ample opportunity to argue on my behalf while they had plotted my capture. The way my captors spoke I realized they were probably highly placed within the imperial administration — probably Blades.

"I'm at a loss," I admitted, "I have no defense against the accusation of a man I've never met, who claims to have seen me in a province I've never set foot in… perhaps there is a charlatan impersonating me for his own profit?

"A new low for con-men," muttered Benezia.

I allowed the blow to glance off the armor of my good graces before continuing, "I can only give you my word that I'm innocent in this matter, and offer whatever expertise I can to resolve it. Despite what your flat-chested apprentice may think of me, I'm well versed in the matters of fate which seem to be at play here — and I should add that I have never wavered in my loyalty to our often maligned emperor."

Caius smiled. "I was hoping you would say that."