Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I. Pride

It starts, as most things do for Marcurio these days, at the Bee and Barb. 

He spends most of his time between jobs at the tavern—which isn't a hell of a lot, but enough for it to qualify as his home base. He hasn't been in Skyrim long enough to really put down roots yet (has it really been six years already?), but frankly, he's not sure he could afford it even if he wanted to, the way Riften's economy has been lately. He heard Honeyside is going up for eight thousand septims, and his job pays well, but not that well. So he rents a room long-term from Keerava, and it serves him well enough. 

That's how most things in Riften serve him—not great, but well enough, just enough that it doesn't seem worth the trouble to pack up and leave, especially not with a war on and rumors of dragons in the north. Sometimes, when he has a moment to himself, the regret creeps in, and Marcurio wonders whether it wouldn't have been a better idea to shack up in Whiterun, or Markarth, or really just about anywhere other than here. But then someone brings him a job to do, and a few hundred gold (and the alcohol it buys) is usually enough to make him forget all his complaints for a while.

Argonians are somewhat less common in Skyrim than in Cyrodiil, but they pop up in Riften quite often. This, he suspects, has much to do with their reputations as being good thieves. They don't usually stick around long, though, besides the ones seeking work at the fishery, and Marcurio has never seen any of them wearing Ratway leathers—not that many people seem to be donning the thieves' attire these days. 

He supposes the same thing must be on Brynjolf's mind, when he spies the green Argonian walking into the tavern and immediately goes to ambush him with a sales pitch. Marcurio rolls his eyes and sips his drink at the scene unfolding next to the door, but doesn't interfere. He minds his business when it comes to the Thieves Guild, and so far this, too, has served him well enough, as they mostly tend to stay out of his way—though he's not entirely sure whether that's out of mutual respect, or just because they don't think he has enough septims on him to be worth the trouble. The latter is probably true, though Marcurio likes to think it's less that he doesn't have any septims, and more because he is indeed capable of causing a great deal of trouble.

Watching the conversation, the Argonian is hard to get a read on, nodding along pleasantly to Brynjolf's speech without offering much in the way of a reaction. His yellow eyes and placid smile convey little more than polite interest. They're too far away for Marcurio to make out his response—or anything that Brynjolf is saying for that matter, though it can't be anything good. Brynjolf seems pleased when he walks away, though, and Marcurio rolls his eyes again and thinks to himself Oh, brother, here goes Brynjolf, going to get some poor idiot arrested again. 

The Argonian doesn't stop to talk to anyone else, heading to the counter to grab a drink and a room key before making his way upstairs. His gaze flickers over Marcurio as he passes, assessing, but the look leaves as quickly as it comes, and he doesn't stop to introduce himself. Marcurio hears the distant sound of a door opening and closing, and supposes that this, too, serves him well enough. More likely than not, Riften's newest visitor will be gone by next evening, on the road or to the jailhouse, and it'll be like he'd never even been here in the first place. 

It turns out that Zee is unusual, in that he sticks around for more than two days. Marcurio learns his name from Keerava over breakfast. It strikes him as an odd name for an Argonian, but he's apparently got enough gold on him that the bartender isn't inclined to ask too many questions. Though it's a rare day that Brynjolf's schemes don't end in disaster for those involved, she remarks. The two of them—Brynjolf and Zee—seem to mostly avoid each other in public after their initial meeting, but Marcurio suspects this is more a matter of strategy than dislike. Still, he has to wonder about the whole thing. Who even wants to stay in Riften, anyway? 

The most likely answer, he figures, is someone who's up to no good. 

He sees Zee around town many times over the next few weeks, though they never have occasion to talk. He often spots him coming in and out of the apothecary, laden with bushels of deathbell and nirnroot, occasionally chatting up Ingun Black-Briar on the docks or flirting brazenly with Madesi in the town square. Marcurio even spies him coming out of Mistveil Keep once, which makes him raise his eyebrows—though he supposes it shouldn't be too surprising, if he's cozying up to the Black-Briars. The fact that Maven has the city in her pocket is one of the worst-kept secrets in Riften, except perhaps to the Jarl herself. 

He's still not entirely clear on what Zee is doing here—not just here in Riften, but here more generally. He'd arrived looking rather shabby, and though he seems to have found himself some more intact clothes to wear, his style of dress doesn't immediately identify him as a Skyrim native, and he's definitely not Cyrodiilic. His manner doesn't strike Marcurio as an immigrant from Black Marsh, either, though he can't say he's any particular expert on the matter. He's a smooth talker, from what Marcurio can tell based on how people respond to him. He smiles often, and pleasantly, or at least as pleasantly as an Argonian can, and there's usually an air of polite deference in the nod of his head and the set of his shoulders. 

He stays at the inn most nights, in the room next to Marcurio's, though not every night, often arriving very early the next morning, sometimes disappearing entirely for days at a time. Talen-Jei mutters under his breath about seeing him enter the Ratway a couple of times, his words laced with disapproval.

Marcurio can't argue against the obvious—that Zee is up to no good—though he can't say he personally has much to complain about. Zee is a quiet neighbor, never even seems to bring anyone back to his rooms, from what he's been able to hear. Evidently his coin is good enough for Keerava to be of like mind, and she only ever serves him with a polite smile, in spite of Talen's obvious dislike. Zee also has the good sense not to try and flirt with the innkeeper, which is good for him, because between Talen-Jei and Keerava herself, Marcurio isn't sure the guy would survive the experience. 

Zee's long-awaited introduction comes several weeks after his arrival in Riften, taking Marcurio a bit by surprise. 

Business has been slow, lately. With all the talk of dragons, nobody's particularly keen on adventuring, or indeed on being on the roads for any longer than strictly necessary. Marcurio has mostly been stuck running guard duty for goods shipments, usually for Madesi or one of the other Riften merchants, which pays poorly because nobody in Riften has much coin to spare as of late, and is also exceedingly boring.

It comes as a somewhat pleasant surprise, then, when something new comes calling. 

"I heard you were a sellsword." 

Marcurio looks up over the edge of his flagon. Zee's scales are lighter than most Argonians', a grassy green that yellows towards his throat, with darker ridges above his eyes and a mohawk of short, white spines. Marcurio notices for the first time that he has a gold ring through his left nostril, and two gold bands looped around the ridge of his left brow, the jewelry striking in the firelight and in its unusualness. He settles lightly into the chair across from Marcurio's bench, wearing his usual easy smile. "Your skills come highly recommended." 

Marcurio swishes his mouthful of mead around; he briefly considers making a sly comment about Zee finally being bothered to introduce himself, but the blatant flattery is enough to make him put down the snark. "Mercenary, yes," he replies, draining the rest of his flagon. He passes it to Talen-Jei as he walks past, shaking his head when the bartender offers to pour him another. "Though I much prefer spells to swords, all things considered." 

"Of course." Zee nods, and holds out a hand for Marcurio to shake. "I'm Zee. Apologies, I haven't had occasion to introduce myself up until now. I've been a bit busy trying to get settled in." 

His Cyrodiilic is rather formal, with a touch less of that stilted accent most Argonians speak with. Marcurio reaches out to shake, sober enough to figure he ought to leave the questions about Zee's name for later. "Marcurio. Mage-for-hire, as you already know. I assume since you're asking about my work, you're here to talk business?" 

"Indeed." Zee shakes his hand firmly. He settles back in his chair and takes a leisurely pull from the bottle of Black-Briar Mead in his left hand (the cheaper stuff, Marcurio notes, not the Reserve). "I have business up in Windhelm, and I hear the roads aren't very safe right now. It seemed wiser not to travel alone, so I asked around, and I was told to talk to you before anyone else." 

"A wise decision." Marcurio can't help but feel pleased that Zee's talk of recommendation isn't just talk. "With a master of the arcane at your side, you'll have nothing to fear from any bandits or brigands or other nasty things you might encounter on the road. My fee is five-hundred gold, though, so if that's not something you can afford to shell out for an errand, you might consider looking elsewhere for something cheaper." 

Zee smiles like the number doesn't bother him at all. "No problem at all. You get what you pay for, in my experience. Any other terms I should know about?" 

Smooth talker indeed. "The basics—no daylight robbery, no murder, no assault of undeserving civilians. Basically nothing that would get me arrested, or do anything to besmirch my reputation amongst the people of this fine city. Other than that, I can usually handle most any job you might think to throw my way. When do you need to leave?" 

"Tomorrow morning, if it's not too much trouble. It's not terribly urgent, but I'd rather get it done with as soon as possible." 

Marcurio crosses his arms and drums his fingers on his elbow, trying to look like he's carefully weighing his options, and not like he's so strapped for gold that he's willing to agree to almost anything at this point, which is closer to the truth. Zee doesn't appear interested in elaborating on whatever business he has in Windhelm, which Marcurio wagers means it probably has something to do with the Guild. That alone might normally be enough for him to decline, but… well, frankly, he needs the money.

 "Tomorrow should be doable," he says eventually, nodding wisely as if it had taken some considerable thought and planning to fit it into his busy schedule. "I take payment upfront, in case you weren't aware." 

"I'll have it ready for you tomorrow morning," Zee responds, his eyes a warm yellow, almost orange in the lamplight. Marcurio watches the shadows flicker over the sides of his face, glinting off the edges of the darker, glossy scales around his eyes. He wonders briefly if he isn't making a mistake, getting himself involved in… whatever this guy is up to. 

He brushes away the thought. If he turned down every job he found mildly objectionable, he'd be begging in the streets sooner than later.

Zee is waiting for him at the gate to Riften the next morning. 

He pays Marcurio's full rate without the need to negotiate or wheedle like he usually does with Madesi, which is nice enough on its own for him to put away most of his previous misgivings. They leave the walls just as the sun is coming up over the tops of the trees, the jagged edges of foliage haloed in glowing gold; a low fog hangs over the hills, and frosty grass crunches under their feet. Their breath clouds in the chilly air and Zee's comes out in great big puffs around his nose. 

Approaching the stables, Zee asks Marcurio if he has a horse. When he says no, Zee marches right up to the stablehand and puts a bag of gold in his hand, and in a minute he's walking back with two horses in tow—his own, a dark brown gelding that Marcurio guesses to be from Whiterun, and one of Hofgrir's speckled mares. Marcurio can't help but gawk at Zee a little as he passes him the reins. 

"This—are you sure?" he asks, boggling a little at the mare, who blinks slowly back at him. 

"Don't get too excited. We're only renting it for now," Zee says with some amusement. "But I'll cover the purchase cost if it gets lost somehow. I just thought it might be faster if we both had a mount." 

Marcurio considers pointing out that it would probably be simpler and cheaper, if not quite as fast, to go by carriage. Then he glances over at his new, albeit rented, steed, and decides it better not to look the—literal, in this case—gift horse in the mouth. 

The mare nibbles calmly at the sparse grass beneath her as Marcurio puts his foot in the stirrup and swings himself up into the saddle. Zee's dark green cloak flutters as he mounts his own horse, giving Marcurio a quick glimpse of the Ratway leathers underneath. Guild connections have their perks, he supposes. He wonders then if not taking a carriage has as much to do with a desire for privacy as anything else. 

Zee spurs his horse forward with a light tap of his heels, and they ride down the hill in the cool light of the rising sun. 

The journey to Windhelm is uneventful, and rather dull for it, if Marcurio is being honest. He guides them along the routes he knows are least likely to be waylaid by bandits, and which should keep them mostly out of the way out of roving Imperial, Stormcloak, and Thalmor patrols. They travel mostly in silence. For all that Zee is polite, he doesn't seem particularly interested in making small talk.

Some clients are just like that, in his experience, so Marcurio sits back in his saddle and tries not to seem sullen, even though he's bored to tears and too irritable to maintain his usual stream of chatter about their surroundings. It's not like there's much to talk about in this area, anyway—just birches and scrubby grass and a couple of windmills here and there. At some point he starts conjuring flames and small shards of ice in the palm of his hand, just to pass the time. No sparks—lightning magic is loud and tends to spook the horses. He'd learned that one the hard way. 

The early fall weather is warm enough that instead of stopping at Shor's Stone or Kynesgrove, they journey each day until nightfall, camping along the roadside in their bedrolls and tents. Zee seems impressed by Marcurio's ability to quickly start a campfire using magic, which tickles his ego a little more than he'd like to admit. The skies are mostly cloudless, affording a clear view of the stars to sleep under. Marcurio has to admit it's a nice view, though it doesn't quite beat the comfort of an inn. 

With the good fortune of a sky clear of snow, they make it to Windhelm in about five days, but Marcurio still can't help a sigh of relief as they step inside Candlehearth Hall, heat washing blissfully over him as he shuts the door against the wind. Even in the absence of one of Eastmarch's infamous blizzards, the temperature is close to freezing; he rubs his hands together to get the blood flowing back into his frozen fingers. Nils, the cook, is in the front room when they enter, and gives Marcurio a nod of greeting; he's been to Windhelm on business enough times to be recognized by a few of the locals. 

The innkeeper, Elda, always has a sort of sour look about her, with her arched eyebrows and narrow, pinched features, somewhat at odds with her generally friendly disposition. The look she fixes on Zee, though, as they approach the counter, is markedly unpleasant.

"Welcome to Candlehearth Hall. You know, you might consider heading over to the cornerclub over in the Grey Quarter if you're looking for something a little more… affordable," the innkeeper says haughtily. 

Marcurio frowns, but Zee just smiles blithely, as if he hadn't noticed the thinly-veiled insult. "I'm not familiar," he replies. "But I'm sure the beds here are much nicer, anyway. Are there any rooms available?" 

Elda glances briefly over at Marcurio, then purses her lips. "We got two beds down the hall, thirty-five gold a night. Food's extra, if you're looking for a bite." Marcurio frowns even more, but Zee slides the gold across the bartop without question, along with a bit extra for some bread and meat.

Elda rounds the counter to show them to the room and lets them inside without fanfare or so much as a good night. She places the tray of food down on the dresser and closes the door behind them with a sharp click. 

"She upcharged you," Marcurio remarks, settling into one of the rickety wooden chairs next to the bed. 

"I figured. It seemed expensive," Zee replies as he toes off his boots. 

"I would have said something, but you paid up before I could. She's not usually like that. Maybe it's just 'cause you're… well." Zee looks at him, and Marcurio waves his hand, uncomfortable. "You know." 

"A lizard?" 

Marcurio flushes a little. "I mean, I wouldn't—" 

Zee huffs in amusement. "It's fine. She was probably thinking it." He flops back on the bed without bothering to remove his cloak, letting out a contented sigh as he sinks down into the furs. "Oh, that is a nice bed. You know, at least I have the good fortune of not being a Dunmer, or she might not have let us stay at all." 

"Do you get that from people a lot? Here in Skyrim," Marcurio asks, looking away from Zee so he can begin to assemble his portion of bread and meat into something approaching a sandwich. 

"Hmm. Not really. Though I haven't really stayed anywhere long, besides Whiterun and Riften. I imagine it might be a different story if I stayed in, say, Markarth." 

Marcurio glances up from his food and raises an eyebrow, wondering if this might be his opportunity to wheedle out some sort of backstory. "What were you doing up in Whiterun?" 

Zee turns his head just enough to peer at him with one yellow eye, and smirks a little, like he knows exactly what Marcurio is up to; Marcurio thinks he might arch an eyebrow, if he had one. "Not much. Following up on a couple of bounty letters for the Jarl. Nothing very exciting." 

Marcurio glances over at Zee's bow and quiver, leaned up against the wall next to the bed. Bounty letters. So he can fight, and perhaps even makes a habit of it. This presents more questions than it answers; Marcurio purses his lips. "Right." 

Zee sits up only long enough so he can reach over and swipe the rest of the meat off the table, snapping most of it up in one bite. Marcurio wrinkles his nose as the Argonian flops back down with another sigh. "Best make the most of those thirty-five septims and get some sleep. Not much to be done until morning, anyway," he says. His tail dangles off the side of the bed as he turns over and tucks his cloak about him, and within seconds it looks to Marcurio as though he's asleep. 

And yet, as he puts out the lamp and makes to go to sleep himself, he can't shake the continued feeling of being observed. 

Zee is gone when Marcurio wakes up, but there's a note on the table, alongside a small leather pouch. Going out, left some money for food. Back before supper, the paper reads, written in narrow, spidery handwriting. 

He peers inside the bag, and raises his eyebrows. Definitely more than enough for food. 

He treats himself to an only slightly extravagant breakfast from Nils before pocketing the rest of the gold and heading out to the market, nibbling on a sweet roll as he goes. He can't help but be a little miffed that Zee left without telling him. Though he supposes he hasn't got much to complain about, seeing as he's being paid, not to mention Zee covering the room and board and transportation. Still, it would be nicer if they were anywhere other than Windhelm, he thinks petulantly. Even Winterhold would at least have the College to visit; he can't even practice magic here without the risk of getting hassled by the guards, damn superstitious Nords. 

He spends a while wandering around the market, but Nordic merchants' wares tend to leave a bit to be desired, and there isn't much in the way of interesting trinkets to look at. If only he were more interested in swords, he might find a way to be entertained—though privately, while he supposes the Windhelm smith's pieces are well-made enough, he's fairly sure that Balimund's are of much finer quality. One of the usual merchant stalls is empty, Marcurio notes as he passes. He thinks he recalls it being run by a high elf woman—an unusual sight in Windhelm—but he can't quite remember her name. 

After becoming thoroughly bored with the market and taking lunch back at the inn, along with an uneventful trip to Calixto's House of Curiosities (it was pretty much exactly what Marcurio had expected; there were a few interesting alchemical ingredients on display, but most of the supposed "magical artifacts" were laughably fake) it's nearly evening when he heads back to the inn. Zee hasn't shown himself all day, leaving Marcurio more than a little bit bored, and irritated, and irritated due to being bored. 

Just as he's beginning to entertain idle plans for how to enact petty revenge without completely jeopardizing his employee-patron relationship, a flash of green scales out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. He turns, and just like that, Zee is there, hovering in the shadows by the gates. He's talking to a high elf woman—the one who was missing from the market, Marcurio realizes. They're too far away for him to have any idea what they're saying, but the elf's face is wan and she stands with her shoulders hunched. 

As he watches, Zee leans over and says something to her in what Marcurio assumes to be hushed tones. Almost immediately, her posture relaxes in an expression of visible relief, though her face is still taut when she steps back and gives him a nod of acknowledgement. She then hands him something that Marcurio can't make out at this distance, which he slips discreetly into his pocket. The woman then walks away. 

Zee stays where he is for a few seconds, a look on his face like he's considering something. Then he turns his head suddenly to fix Marcurio with a yellow-eyed stare. It's hard to tell, but Marcurio thinks he sees him smirk faintly. 

Marcurio's face warms, and he scoffs out loud. He turns and heads inside without acknowledging Zee, trying to ignore the way his cheeks prickle uncomfortably. 

He buys dinner from Elda—his own coin this time—and returns to the room without waiting for Zee to catch up. His Argonian companion joins him a few minutes later, closing the door carefully behind him. 

"I paid the innkeeper for another night," Zee announces, dropping his pack down on the bed with a tired sigh and unslinging his bow. His quiver looks to be a few arrows short, Marcurio notes. "We can start heading back to Riften tomorrow morning." 

"That fast?" Marcurio says after swallowing a bite of meat pie, raising an eyebrow. He glances down at his meal for a moment, and can't help but add cheekily: "Sorry, I only got enough for me." 

Zee waves a hand dismissively. "I already ate. And yes, I should be done with everything. I might make one more quick stop at the market in the morning for supplies, but other than that, we should be ready to leave."

Marcurio hums noncommittally. Zee smiles at him in a way that's mollifying, but not quite apologetic. For some reason, this only rankles him all the more. 

The Argonian rifles through his pack for a few more seconds before heading out to the common room. Perhaps to go socialize, or flirt with the Dunmer bard upstairs, or maybe even pickpocket the other drunk patrons. Marcurio decides he doesn't care. He puts out the lamp and rolls over to go to sleep. 

He hasn't quite managed to drift off by the time Zee returns, but he pretends at it anyway. Zee steps softly inside, the light tread of his boots followed a second later by the quiet click of the door latch. For a moment Marcurio lies listening to the sound of his own breathing in the dark. The sound of Zee's breath is a barely perceptible hiss of air at the edge of his hearing. He once again finds himself with the discomfiting sense of being watched. 

Then Zee moves, the drag of his tail against the furs making a faint slithering sound as he climbs into bed. The feeling dissipates. 

They take breakfast a bit before sunrise and leave after a quick meal of cold meat and eggs—raw, in Zee's case. Marcurio tries to suppress his look of disgust as Zee crunches down on one, shell and all, but the Argonian's snort of laughter tells him he isn't quite successful. Elda is missing from her usual spot behind the counter, but Nils is around to bid them goodbye as they walk out the door. They reach the market just as the sky is beginning to lighten. The Nord woman vending produce has yet to arrive, but the high elf woman and the dark elf who runs the butcher stand are already at their stalls despite the early hour. 

Marcurio idles next to the stand with his arms crossed while Zee goes to speak to the high elf (Niranye, apparently). She's looking a bit less strained than yesterday, but Marcurio can't be bothered to pay any more attention than that, and tunes out the rest of the conversation. As his gaze wanders, he spies a small symbol carved into one of the supports of the awning—like a diamond with a few extra lines. It looks vaguely familiar, though he can't remember exactly where he's seen it before. 

When he looks away, Zee is rifling around in his pack for something, and his eyes meet Niranye's. She looks at him for a moment, then arches one eyebrow imperiously.

Marcurio scowls and looks away. 

A short distance outside the city walls, a pair of travelers coming north along the road warn them of a possible dragon sighting down by the sulfur pools. Privately, Marcurio isn't particularly inclined to take their word as any more than the paranoid hearsay of rural farmers. Zee, however, deems it wiser to play it safe than to gamble with the risk of being eaten or burnt to a crisp, and they double back to the western road that bends towards Ivarstead. 

Marcurio is less familiar with this route than the eastern road, not least because the latter often provides the opportunity to stop for a soak in the hot springs, while the former is separated from the pools by a wide stretch of river. The road takes them past an abandoned prison overlooking a waterfall, as well as a fort Marcurio doesn't remember the name of. The fort appears occupied, though evidently not by bandits, as they manage not to attract any ire just from being on the road nearby. 

They stop to water the horses at a pond around half an hour south of the fort. It's about midday, the air warming the further south they go, though the water in the pond is still frosty cold, and the horses drink from it greedily. The sight makes Marcurio feel rather thirsty himself, and he crouches beside the pool and rummages around for his waterskin. As he fills it with fresh water from the pond, the horses ambling away to nibble on a patch of short grass, he feels a tap on his shoulder. 

"Look," Zee says from somewhere above him. When Marcurio looks up, the Argonian is pointing one clawed finger at the side of the nearby hill. 

Following the line of his gesture, Marcurio spots a narrow cleft in the rock, a bit to the right of the small waterfall that feeds the pond. Zee approaches it carefully, lifting his nose slightly as if smelling the air. He stops at the entrance and peers inside, not quite sticking his head in through the opening. 

Marcurio stands, brushing the dirt off his knees before following Zee up to the cave entrance. The gap in the rock extends down into the darkness as far as he can see, expanding in breadth and height before reaching a stony corner and bending out of view.

"Looks like it keeps going," Marcurio muses, trying to tamp down on the faint tingle of excitement at the prospect of doing literally anything other than sit in a saddle for hours on end. It's a sad day that the idea of exploring a dark hole in the ground is exciting. "Think we should check it out?"

He doesn't seriously expect Zee to consider the idea, but he turns to look at Marcurio again with that expression again, like he's raising an eyebrow he doesn't have. "Should we?" he asks, and tilts his head. 

Marcurio blinks a few times as he processes the fact that the question isn't rhetorical; Zee is actually asking. "Could be treasure," he says, finding his tongue again. It's a lame justification even to his own ears. 

Zee appears to consider this for a moment.

"Sure," he says after a while. "Why not?" 

Marcurio manages to wait until Zee turns all the way around before smiling, suppressing the urge to pump his fist in victory. He lets the Argonian lead the way into the cave. 

As it turns out, they are not the first ones to discover this place.

A small trickle of water starts out of the wall of the tunnel a few meters in, running alongside their feet and widening into a babbling stream as they move further along. The noise of the water isn't quite enough to drown out the sound of voices up ahead. Zee slows his pace to nearly a crawl, bending his knees in a crouch, the noise of his movements fading to a volume almost imperceptible beneath the water's murmur. Illusion magic isn't Marcurio's greatest strength, but he knows enough to cast a quick spell to muffle his own footsteps as he follows behind. 

The presences up ahead are telegraphed by voices and firelight dancing along the walls, but the noise of the stream and the echo of the tunnel distorts the impression of where, so they're taken somewhat by surprise when they round a corner and come face-to-face with a pair of bandits standing near to a campfire. Opposing parties stare at each other for a long, silent moment, then Marcurio blasts them with lightning before they can finish drawing their weapons. The two of them crumple into a heap on the stony floor. 

Zee blinks at him owlishly for a moment, then both of them turn simultaneously and peer down the tunnel ahead. A few seconds pass, but nothing happens. Zee lets out a quiet sigh of relief. 

"Sorry," Marcurio says, not feeling particularly sorry at all. 

"It's fine," Zee whispers, not sounding like he particularly believes him. "Let's keep moving." 

A distant rumbling grows in volume as they make their way down the tunnel, torchlight intensifying along the walls, until the shaft opens abruptly into an enormous cavern with a great stone pillar at the center. Two great waterfalls pour into the lake that fills the space around the pillar, their distant rumbling now elevated to a roar. The cavern is so big that its farthest reaches are drenched in shadow, past where the torchlight can reach. Marcurio gawks unabashedly. "By the Nine," he hears himself mutter, and ahead of him he sees Zee nod just a little in agreement. 

Zee stops them just before the end of the tunnel, where a curtain of bone chimes blocks the entrance to the cavern. He holds up a hand and gestures to the pillar in the center of the lake. Squinting, Marcurio can make out the forms of two bandits, moving along the scaffolding built against the pillar. 

Zee turns to him, yellow eyes nearly glowing in the dim light. He puts one finger to his mouth, then points ahead. Quiet. Watch. He draws his bow, the sound of him nocking the arrow lost under the waterfalls' bellow. 

The arrow flies out from between the bone chimes with a whistle of wind and a faint clatter, taking the closer of the two bandits right in the throat. The man makes a strangled sound as he chokes on his own blood, then collapses. The second man who comes to investigate the commotion receives a second arrow to the eyeball, and goes tumbling over the guardrail into the lake. 

Zee grins at him, then gestures sharply with one hand as shouts begin to echo from up ahead. Now. Go. 

The chimes clatter as they rush out onto the walkway, making a dead sprint for the pillar. Marcurio hears the sound of bows drawing, and throws up a ward; a couple of arrows glance off, clattering at his feet. Stone soon turns to planks beneath his feet. Zee upends a table, spilling food and an assortment of daggers across the platform as they dive behind it for cover. The voices grow louder as reinforcements approach, footsteps pounding along a second walkway stretching across the cavern from the other side of the pillar. Marcurio takes two seconds to gather magicka between his fingers before rushing out, flinging it outward at the enemies in front of him—three of them. The first bandit takes a fireball straight to the face and goes down screaming.  The other two take a blast of ice from his left palm and topple off the edge into the lake with a cry. Marcurio sends a current of lightning into the water as they fall in, and the bandits' bodies spasm violently before going still. 

The sickening sound of bones crunching gets his attention, and Marcurio looks around just as a body finishes hitting the platform behind him, falling from the catwalks on the walls above. Zee makes short work of the remaining two by peppering them with arrows. One of them sags against the ropes securing the bridge above his head, while the other falls over the edge and into the lake, a pair of arrows sprouting from the middle of her chest. Marcurio can't help but be a little impressed.  

He looks up ahead again, but the sound of voices is gone. If there are any more enemies about, they'll be farther in. He looks back at Zee again to see the Argonian studying the corpses of the ones Marcurio had felled, his head slightly tilted. He glances back up at Marcurio when he sees him watching, then nods approvingly. 

"Nice," Zee says. 

"Back at you." 

"Might be more up ahead. Let's wait to check what they have until after we've cleared the place." 

"Sounds like a plan," Marcurio agrees, enjoying the feeling of his blood thrumming in his ears. He recasts the muffling spell which had faded off during the fight, and they keep moving. 

The cavern shrinks again as they move across the lake, narrowing to a winding network of tunnels shored up by scaffolding and steep stony paths. The walls hem the bandits into tight clusters, making them easy prey to Marcurio's chain lightning. Zee cleans up the rest with arrows—"Like fish in a barrel," he comments after they've cleared out another segment of tunnel, stepping lightly over the corpses to make his way deeper inside. 

The pathways wind around each other in a confusing knot as they continue on. "It would be easy to get lost in here," Marcurio remarks. Zee just smiles, not seeming concerned in the slightest. 

The chief and a couple of others have attempted to barricade themselves in at the end of the warren, but it matters little, and Zee sticks them full of arrows as soon as Marcurio blasts down the door. Two go down immediately from arrows, a third thrown into the wall with a spike of ice buried deep in her stomach. 

The bandit chief, easily identified by his regalia, manages to shrug off both attacks despite the arrows lodged in his shoulder and thigh. He bellows, charging toward them in a blind rage with an enormous steel claymore gripped in his huge, thick hands. Marcurio tenses, gearing up to unleash another blast, but Zee moves first, dropping his bow and drawing a dagger from his side, rushing to meet the charge. Almost before Marcurio can blink, Zee darts past the reach of the bandit's greatsword, and buries his blade deep in the man's neck. 

The greatsword clatters to the ground, followed a half-second later by the body. A fountain of blood chases the tip of the blade as Zee steps lightly out of reach; the bandit gurgles, hands grasping blindly at his throat. After a few seconds, he falls silent, eyes staring unseeing at the wall as the rest of the life drains out of him onto the stone. 

Zee pulls a scrap of cloth off a nearby table and begins to wipe the blood from his knife. Marcurio breathes heavily, feeling the tingle of alteration magic fade as his armoring spells wear off. The faint buzzing dissipates into a silence rather complete, save for the faint dripping of water in the distance. He finds himself almost disappointed that it's over, and bends to retrieve the forgotten bow off the ground. 

Zee inspects the edge of his blade before sliding it back into its sheath. He looks up as Marcurio approaches, faint surprise lighting his face as he hands over the bow. Oddly, it's the closest thing to fazed Marcurio has seen on him so far. 

"Thanks." Zee takes the bow and smiles at Marcurio like he means it. "You're good with that magic of yours. I can see why people recommend you so highly." 

"You're not so bad yourself," Marcurio responds, trying to ignore the flush of pride he feels at the words—hell, even just at the smile. "Didn't know you'd be so good with a bow. You almost didn't even seem to need my help."

"I'm full of surprises," Zee replies. His yellow eyes are bright with humor. 

I didn't think Thieves Guild members were usually so good at killing people, Marcurio refrains from saying out loud, knowing it would be pushing his luck. Instead he nods at the pair of chests in the corner of the room, and the smattering of items laid out across the tables against the back wall. "Let's see what they've got." 

The stuff on the table is mostly junk, weapons and armor in varying states of disrepair, and a couple of maps. The first chest they try is locked, but Zee pulls out a lockpick and gets to work. The sayings about nimble Argonian fingers appear to be true—he breaks a couple of picks in the process, but the lock is cracked in a matter of minutes. The space inside the chest is taken up by a few gold pieces and a nice-looking bow that Marcurio identifies as being of Dwemer make, with a matching quiver full of arrows. Zee sets the gold aside for the time being and picks up the bow, studying it admiringly in the light from the torches, before taking his old bow from his back and setting it aside on the table. "This will do better, I think," he says, and slings the new weapon over his shoulder, adding the arrows to his quiver as well. 

The second chest is quite a bit smaller, but the lock only takes Zee a single pick to open. The inside is filled nearly to the brim with gold, with a few gemstones sprinkled on top. Marcurio whistles appreciatively as Zee spreads the contents out on the table along with the rest of the gold. 

"Wonder how many people they had to rob to get all that," Marcurio remarks, adding, "Maybe I should have taken up a career as a bandit." 

Zee rolls his eyes, but does hum a little at the sentiment. He stands with his hand under his chin for a moment while he takes stock. "Madesi asked me to bring him a couple of sapphires, so I think I'll take those, if you're alright with having the amethysts and the ruby. We can split the gold halfway." 

Marcurio's eyebrows lift almost without him meaning to. "Really?" he says, unable to contain his surprise. When Zee nods, he adds, "Sharing the spoils isn't a part of my hiring fee, you know. I mean, not that I'm complaining, but I feel like I should mention…" 

"Technically the fee was only for getting to Windhelm and back. This was a detour," Zee points out. "You did half the work, so you should get half the reward. It's only fair." 

What does a thief know about fair?  Marcurio almost asks, but decides that that's solidly crossing the line from 'snark that is acceptable' into 'snark that definitely isn't'.

"I mean, sure, but I was the one who suggested we take a look," he says instead, not really sure why he's arguing, but feeling compelled to point out the obvious. 

Zee is looking at him a bit incredulously now. "If you don't want it…" 

"Oh, I absolutely do want it," he interrupts, and the teasing smile that Zee throws him makes him flush. "Just—oh, fine, give it here, give me a moment…" 

He counts out the coins (Zee points out helpfully that it would be quicker to do it in groups of five or ten, after which he makes sure to do it one by one, just to be extra annoying) and sweeps his share into his bag, along with the amethysts and the ruby. Zee scoops up the rest of the gold into his own bag, and the sapphires disappear into one of his many pockets. Marcurio wonders how many pockets that cloak of his must have, because he surely can't be fitting all of that into his stupid leather pants. Then he remembers the nature of Zee's occupation, and decides it's probably better not to think about it. 

After clearing the rest of the room to make sure there isn't anything else interesting lying about (there isn't), they retrace their previous route, checking over the bodies and a couple of other chests along the way. The bandits themselves don't have more than a couple of gold pieces between them, though one of them has a rather nice looking dagger, which Zee takes for himself after a quick look at Marcurio to confirm he doesn't want it. The rest of the gold Zee splits between them as well, about which Marcurio is decidedly pleased. It's not completely unusual for a client to divvy up the spoils, as he sometimes includes it as part of his fee for certain missions. But to offer without being asked, let alone split it fifty-fifty, is rather unheard of. Gift horses and mouths, though, Marcurio reminds himself. Besides—from what he's seen so far, Zee probably has enough money to throw around that it makes little difference to him. 

The horses are slumbering under the setting sun when they emerge from the cave. Marcurio shades his eyes with one hand as Zee goes to wake them and prepare them to ride. They're a bit reluctant, but after drinking one last time from the pond and gobbling up a bit more of the sparse grass, they're ready to go. They make their way off of the pond just as night falls, the silver light of the moons skimming the tops of the trees. 

They reach Riften in the wee hours of the morning; Zee handles the stabling of the horses and the returning of Marcurio's rented mare to Shadr. The glow of lanterns from the Bee and Barb spills out over the walkways to greet them as they head inside the gates. Marcurio feels warm despite the cold air, not even the soreness from sitting in the saddle enough to banish the feeling of satisfaction, settling warm and bone-deep over his shoulders. 

Zee stops and turns to face him a few meters from the door of the tavern. His expression is hard to read in the dark. "Thank you," he says, his voice a low rasp against the shrill of frogs and crickets in the waters beyond the docks. "I appreciated the help. I'll make sure to keep you in mind for the future." 

Marcurio smiles in spite of himself, feeling the warm glow in his chest expand just a little. A bit silly, perhaps—it's just work after all—but he has to admit, it's nice to feel appreciated. He decides, indeed before even really realizing he had been thinking about it, that perhaps he'll invite Zee to go have a drink, his treat. A gesture of goodwill to celebrate a job well done, and, hopefully, portending more jobs to come in the future. 

He doesn't get the chance, though. Zee bows his head politely in goodbye and turns, walking away before Marcurio can even get the words out. The Argonian slips between a pair of buildings and disappears, his cloak seeming almost to melt into the darkness as the shadows take him out of view. 

Marcurio stares after him for a few long moments. Then he shrugs, trying to shake off the vague feeling of foolishness beginning to creep over him. He turns and enters the tavern, thinking of buying himself a bottle of the good mead, figuring he ought to make good use of his reward. 

Chapter Text

The next few weeks in Riften are marked by an undercurrent of tension, sweeping through the city on a tide of whispers. 

The news of the fire at the Goldenglow Estate spreads first through the Barb, as most rumors in Riften tend to do, off the lips of apiary workers coming in for a drink after work. He hears secondhand from Keerava that only the hives appear to have been damaged, and that there have been rumors of arson drifting up from plankside. Anyone with half a brain knows that Maven Black-Briar's got to be involved, she remarks, though there's not much to be done about it since nobody can prove it. Even if they could, Talen-Jei mutters, the city guard's too tied up in her purse strings for it to matter. 

Something has changed, though, Marcurio senses, something more fundamental than just an apiary being set on fire, though if asked he'd be hard-pressed to put his finger on exactly what. Crime is part and parcel with living in Riften, but this feels different, somehow, like some critical part of the balance has begun to shift. Those few Thieves Guild members Marcurio is aware of seem to be on high alert. Brynjolf has been especially elusive, lately, and Sapphire is twitchy (more so than usual, that is), snapping at anyone who so much as looks at her the wrong way. 

Zee, meanwhile, is in and out of town constantly, often disappearing for days, and rarely arriving at the tavern early enough or staying long enough for Marcurio to get a word in—a fact which annoys him more than he's willing to admit. He also gets the sense that Keerava knows more about whatever's going on than she's telling, though he knows better than to go wheedling the bartender with questions. 

He fills the time with smaller jobs that take him no further than Ivarstead. A couple of weeks ago, a shipment of goods from Balimund had disappeared on the way to Windhelm without trace, along with the guards hired to accompany it. A profound disquiet had settled over Riften after that—there still haven't been any reported dragon sightings south of the sulfur pools, but even Marcurio, skeptical though he is, is starting to get the feeling that it's only a matter of time. The carriage drivers have been refusing to take passengers as of late, and travel to and from the other holds has slowed to a trickle. 

It surprises him a bit, then, when Zee reemerges again after a couple of weeks, and requests his help for a trip to Whiterun. 

Marcurio, even more so than before, finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place: the desire not to get eaten by a dragon, versus the unfortunate reality that if he can't scrape together enough gold, his stomach will soon enough start eating itself. 

Faced with a choice between a dragon, though, or living life on the streets as a beggar… well. The dragon feels like a no-brainer. 

They stay well clear of the springs on their way north. Marcurio initially suggests cutting through the mountains, but Zee shuts that idea down almost as soon as it leaves his mouth. "The first dragon sighting was at Helgen. We should stay as far away from there as possible," he says. A dark look settles over his features as he speaks, so profoundly out of character that Marcurio wonders if he even realizes he's doing it. He waits on it for a moment, but Zee doesn't elaborate further. 

They take the long way around, stopping over in Ivarstead on the fifth day, even though they arrive well before nightfall, and setting out early the next morning. Traveling in tense silence, at as fast a pace as their horses can maintain for an extended period, they look for whatever shelter they can when forced to camp along the road, and by some stroke of luck they make it to Whiterun by nightfall on the ninth day. 

Zee, as it turns out, owns a house in Whiterun, which Marcurio is only made aware of when Zee leads him straight to it instead of to the inn further along the street. The house is a quaint little cottage, wood with a stonework foundation, just up the road from the smith; when Marcurio gives him a wide-eyed look, Zee tells him a little sheepishly that it's called "Breezehome". Upon closer inspection, the building is quite small and drafty, and Marcurio can understand a little better how Zee would be able to afford it, not to mention how it got its name. Still, he can't help but look at it a bit admiringly as Zee fits the key into the lock and pushes the door open, imagining briefly what it might be like to have a house of his own. 

A fire is already lit in the stone pit at the center of the room when they step inside. As Zee gestures for him to enter, an armored Nord woman stands up from a chair in the common area. 

Immediately, Marcurio's head is spinning with questions. A wife? A lover? How is it that he never once mentioned being in a relationship? Or could she be a servant? But how rich is he that he can afford that? And if that was the case, couldn't he afford a bigger house? Is a servant even necessary in a house this size? And what kind of servant walks around in a full set of plate armor, anyhow?! 

The woman turns to Zee and greets him with a short half-bow. "My Thane. It's good to see you again."

Marcurio's eyebrows shoot up nearly past his hairline. He looks sharply at Zee, whose gaze darts to meet his as he closes the door behind them. Marcurio gets a brief glimpse of a pink, forked tongue flickering out between sharp teeth; if he had to say, he might say that Zee looks embarrassed. 

" Thane? " Marcurio asks after a pregnant pause. 

"It's a long story." Zee casts a pointed look at the Nord over Marcurio's shoulder. Marcurio glances quickly back-and-forth between them. The woman purses her lips, but says nothing. Neither one of them seems interested in elaborating on whatever that's supposed to mean. 

"It's mostly a ceremonial title, anyway," Zee continues as though nothing had happened. He gestures airily to the Nord woman. "This is Lydia, my housecarl. Right now, she's mostly just in charge of making sure the house doesn't blow away while I'm gone. Lydia, this is Marcurio. I hired him for extra safety while traveling between the holds. He'll be staying the night." 

Lydia dips her head politely at Marcurio. "Pleasure to meet you," she says, her gaze flickering over his face inscrutably, like she's evaluating him for any sign of a threat. He thinks he might see a glimmer of disdain in her eyes at the knowledge that Marcurio is a mercenary, but it's there-and-gone too quickly for him to be sure. Whatever the case, she doesn't seem to find anything else to her imminent displeasure, and she steps neatly out of the way as Zee leads him further into the house. 

He shows Marcurio the rooms, such as they are—the downstairs consists of a combined kitchen, sitting and dining area, and Lydia's room off to the side, the door to which is closed. The only things upstairs are the bedroom and a small chest of drawers on the landing outside, a dusty shield and pair of crossed swords mounted on the wall above as decoration. 

Marcurio raises an eyebrow again at the realization that there's only one bed, and glances at Zee. The Argonian smirks knowingly, a gesture that makes the bottom of Marcurio's eyelid twitch. "You don't need to look at me like that, relax. I've got some things I need to deal with, so I won't be staying the night. You'll have the bed to yourself."

Marcurio thinks privately that it might be nearly as awkward to spend the night alone in the house with Zee's housecarl as it would be for the two of them to share a bed. It seems to him that Lydia feels the same way, as he catches her looking sullen when he glances down to the bottom of the stairs. She notices him watching, though, and her face quickly smooths over into indifference. 

Zee doesn't give either of them a space between breaths to complain. Almost as soon as he's done explaining where all the food and stuff is located, he's making his way down the stairs, hopping the last few steps and landing lightly on the floor below, tail curling up slightly to avoid clipping the edge of the stair. He gives Lydia a solid clap on the shoulder as he passes her on his way to the door, and for a moment the long-suffering look on her face is so pronounced that Marcurio almost laughs. Almost. 

The door closing is followed a few seconds later by the sound of the key in the lock. He and Lydia both look at the door for several long seconds, then at each other for several more. Marcurio can't quite keep the scowl off his face at the indignity of being ditched a second time. 

"Right. Well. Whatever. I'm going to bed. Goodnight," he says, annoyance creeping into his voice even though he knows, logically, that none of this is Lydia's fault. Lydia, for her part, doesn't react, nodding stoically as he turns and retreats into the bedroom. A second later, he hears the floorboards creak as she presumably goes to retake her place next to the fire. 

He can't resist letting the bedroom doors close behind him a little harder than necessary—an expression of petty annoyance against whatever gods might be listening that thought it would be funny to put him in this stupid situation (though, really, he knows he only has himself to blame for accepting the job in the first place). 

At the very least, Zee seems to have a taste for the finer things, Marcurio notes, not even bothering to strip off his dusty robes before collapsing on top of the covers. It is a rather nice bed. 

Lydia is already up when he wakes the next morning. Marcurio comes downstairs to find her sitting once more next to the now-empty fire pit, holding a cup of what smells like tea. Her platemail has been removed for the moment, though her sword and carven steel shield are leaned up against the chair next to her. She looks up at Marcurio as the stairs creak to signal his approach, nodding once in what just barely passes for a greeting. 

"He's not here," she says, reading the question on his face before he can ask it. "He stopped in early this morning and left again right after. He told me to tell you that you're free to go wherever, but he'll be back looking for you by midafternoon." 

"Figures," Marcurio mutters, half under his breath. Lydia either doesn't hear him or doesn't care. He eyes her a little suspiciously. "Any idea where he's gotten off to or what he's doing?" 

"How the Thane chooses to spend his free time is none of my business," Lydia responds tersely, and takes a pointed sip of her tea. Marcurio isn't sure whether her irritation is directed more at him or at their mutual employer. He glances over at a pair of daggers mounted on a rack by the door, and wonders how much she knows. He decides it's probably better not to ask. 

He grumbles a bit to himself as he strides across the room and exits the cottage, feeling Lydia's eyes on the back of his neck all the way out the door. 

He fucks around in Whiterun for most of the day, which should be more entertaining than the last job considering that it's not in Windhelm, but somehow leaves him in an even more dour mood than before. The merchants in Whiterun seem to be feeling the strain of the war as well, all nearly as desperate to sell him something as the merchants in Riften. Even the town alchemist makes a valiant attempt to convince Marcurio that he's been afflicted by a particularly virulent case of ataxia. 

The Cloud District in the upper tiers of Whiterun isn't much better. The Gildergreen is looking rather withered these days, though admittedly his memories of the last time he saw it are a bit hazy. A couple of the Nords around town give him nasty looks on account of his obvious mage attire, and Marcurio imagines conjuring ice underneath them while their backs are turned, just to teach them a lesson. The most pleasant interaction he has all day is with a little orphan girl who sleeps on a wooden bench outside the Temple of Kynareth, and even that only sours his mood further, though by no fault of hers. 

He drags his feet returning to the cottage, some petty part of him hoping he might keep Zee waiting, another part of him vaguely curious if the Argonian will leave without him if he takes too long. This ends up being for nothing, as Zee isn't back yet when he arrives, and Lydia indicates that he has yet to return. He busies himself by lying back on the bed, conjuring icicles on the ceiling, and then challenging himself to melt them without setting the entire house on fire. 

Zee returns well into the evening, a scant while before sunset. He looks harried, and vaguely annoyed. Bits of mud and what looks like hay are stuck to his pants and the ends of his cloak.

"Right," he says as soon as he spots Marcurio, whom he had just interrupted in the middle of rifling around in the pantry. "We should head out now—or as soon as you're packed, anyway. We can hit Ivarstead in three days if we hurry. I'd like to try and reach Riften within the week, if at all possible."  

Marcurio presses his lips into a thin line at the idea of riding horse all through the night. Lydia seems to have objections of her own, pausing in sharpening to her sword to fix Zee with a sharp frown. "My Thane, I'm not sure if—" 

"We're going," Zee says shortly, cutting her off. He glances quickly over at Marcurio. "Well, I am, at the very least. If you won't go, Marcurio, I'll go on ahead alone, so you'll need to figure out a plan for yourself. I'm sorry, but I don't want to tarry. I have something to do in Riften that can't wait." 

Lydia's frown has deepened into a glower at being interrupted. "At least allow me to accompany you, then, my Thane. The roads aren't safe right now, least of all at night. I think it would be safer as three." 

"I don't want you riding back to Whiterun all by yourself. We'll be safe enough as two. You just stay here and don't worry." 

This statement does little to mollify her, and the room lapses into stony silence as the Thane and his housecarl engage in a staring contest over the embers crackling in the firepit. At length, Marcurio coughs and announces, "I'll go get my things," retreating upstairs to grab his bag, which is mostly already packed anyway. There will be time to be annoyed later; Lydia is glaring hard enough to burn the whole house down, and Marcurio is suddenly very eager to get out of here before that metaphor becomes a reality. 

He half-jogs back down the stairs to the common room, breaking the staring contest with his arrival. As soon as he reaches the bottom, Zee turns and opens the door for them to leave. 

The weight of Lyria's disapproval chases him far beyond the walls of the city, long after the lights of Honningbrew Meadery have faded into the distance. 

The journey back to Riften is even tenser than the trip out. Zee's mood is almost as black as Marcurio's, if not worse, his mouth set into a harsh, taut line in contrast to his usual easy grin. He's unusually twitchy, his head always turning at the slightest movement, and this time he suffers no detours. 

They reach Ivarstead in the early morning three days later, stopping only long enough to let the horses recover before setting out once more. The brief sleep Marcurio gets at the inn is restless and fitful. By contrast, Zee lays unnaturally still in his bed across the room, and somehow Marcurio knows that he mustn't be getting any sleep, either. He catches sight of Zee's yellow eyes a couple of times in the blackness, wide open and staring at the door, though for once he doesn't seem to notice Marcurio watching. 

They leave at sunrise, and arrive in Riften shortly after nightfall, exhausted and desperately sore from a week of travel. Zee barely speaks to him as they enter the city, slipping away before Marcurio can get a word in edgewise—nothing to talk about, he supposes bitterly, now his fee is already paid. Zee doesn't offer any reason for his demeanor, and Marcurio doesn't ask. Some stones, he knows, are better left unturned. 

He looks over his shoulder just once as he walks into the Barb, eyes chasing after the tip of Zee's tail and the flutter of his dark cloak. But the shadows cast by the light of the moons disguise the path of his retreat into the alleys of Riften.

Chapter Text

Zee disappears for three days—Marcurio counts them—before reappearing and asking for his help once again. 

This time, Marcurio is of a mind to refuse, but Zee seems to read the reluctance in his face without him having to speak. "I'll pay double," he says before Marcurio has a chance to argue. 

Marcurio chokes on his cheap mead. He searches Zee's face for signs of a joke, but his expression is one hundred percent serious.

"You sure you can afford that much?" Marcurio manages in between coughs. In response, the Argonian reaches into his cloak and produces a cloth bag. Its contents clink heavily as he deposits it into the palm of Marcurio's hand. Marcurio doesn't have to count it to know that it's far more than his usual rate. 

It's not even really a question, after that. There are very few things he wouldn't do for a thousand septims. 

They're going to Solitude, Zee explains to him once he's done quietly freaking out about the gold. They take a couple of days to prepare beforehand, gathering supplies and meeting once in the Barb to chart out a route. On top of the already steep fee, Zee rents Marcurio a horse again, and they leave the city two mornings later, under the cover of a light drizzle that blankets the surroundings of the Rift in a soft sheet of gray. 

They stop to sleep in Ivarstead, Whiterun, and Rorikstead on their way north; at this point neither one of them is willing to take the risk of camping outdoors, stopping only at inns or when they happen upon an empty cave or hunter's lodge. They exchange the longer times on the road for more days spent resting at settlements. Zee vanishes for the night again when they stop over in Breezehome, and this time Marcurio suspects it has more to do with the bed situation than it does with business. Lydia seems rather conflicted about the whole situation, torn between being glad to see Zee in one piece and being irked that he's back on the road again so soon. It's hard to tell what sort of opinion, exactly, she holds about Marcurio, but he prefers to think he's growing on her, if a bit like some sort of troublesome weed. 

Zee's gelding, though as hardy a horse as Marcurio has ever seen, begins to tire as they near the border of Whiterun hold, and they make the decision to stable the horses over in Dragon Bridge and take the rest of the journey to Solitude on foot. All told, it takes them nearly four weeks in total to reach Skyrim's capital, by which point Marcurio is sore in places he didn't even know he had. The fact that they manage to make it all the way without any sight of bandits or roaming war parties is nothing short of a miracle. 

What's even more miraculous, though, is the welcome sight of the bathhouses at the Winking Skeever in Solitude— private bathhouses, with fresh, hot water and soaps that fill the air with their herb and floral scents. Zee offers to pay for the whole thing without being asked, and Marcurio doesn't make even a perfunctory attempt to argue.

He blesses all the gods he can think of as he sinks into the steaming hot water, feeling weeks worth of dirt and grime lifting away from his skin like a great weight. Gods, it's been so long since he last made it to Solitude, he had almost forgotten what it felt like to take a real, hot bath. Cleanliness, it turns out, is a hot commodity in a place like Skyrim. 

He's practically glowing by the time he makes it back to the room at the inn, having scrubbed his skin raw and pink. Zee is looking rather better, too, and  Marcurio could almost laugh at the difference; his scales are almost startlingly green and glossy after being scrubbed of their layers of accumulated filth, and he's even got himself a clean change of clothes—though his traveling cloak, tossed over the back of a nearby chair, is still caked with dust. 

Zee looks up and smiles briefly at Marcurio when he enters, fiddling with the fletching on one of his arrows. The bath seems to have rinsed some of the tension away along with the dirt. His face has returned to its usual state of polite contentment, his shoulders loose and relaxed. He looks good like this, some part of Marcurio thinks distantly—then quickly brushes that notion away before he can give it any further consideration. 

"Leaving on business soon, I expect?" Marcurio asks, flopping down on his bed with a sigh, the bedframe creaking under his weight.

Zee sets the arrow back in his quiver and rubs his eyes. "Gods, no," he groans. "I need a break. And a drink, for that matter. Have one with me?" 

"Oh, I would like nothing more than a drink," Marcurio agrees heartily, finding himself faintly relieved that he's not going to be unceremoniously abandoned quite yet. With great effort punctuated by a groan, he pushes himself off the bed again, and heads for the door, Zee's footsteps following close behind. And just because his bath has left him feeling amicable, when they reach the bottom of the stairs heading towards the common room, he adds: "And don't worry about me, I can afford to pay for my own. You've certainly made sure of that." 

Zee doesn't argue with him. Marcurio wonders if he must be close to reaching the bottom of his expansive pockets by now. If he is, he doesn't show it; he orders a sizeable meal for himself made up mostly of meat, with a couple of sweet pastries to top it off. Marcurio really can't blame him, and his own order of food ends up looking somewhat similar—he feels like he could eat his own rented horse. It's also nice to be able to drink something that isn't mead or ale for once, and he can't bring himself to feel more than a tiny bit guilty over splurging on a bottle of a Surilie Brothers' Vintage. 

Between eating and drinking, there's little space to talk. Marcurio is grateful for it, not sure he would know what to say if he tried. Though Zee's mood is much improved, a faint aura of detachment still clings to him that Marcurio is unable to place. Multiple times throughout dinner, he catches the Argonian staring off into a distant corner of the tavern with his face creased into a slight frown. Often it seems like he's looking for something, but when Marcurio follows the line of his gaze he can never quite tell what he's looking at. 

They retire to their rooms early, just as one of the local College bards arrives and the tavern is filling with patrons in the mood for some late-night revelry. Zee says little, either throughout dinner or thereafter, though he gives Marcurio a proper smile for the first time in a while as they make their way back up to the room. Something in Marcurio… twitches, almost, as he meets his eyes, a sensation so odd and difficult to describe that for a moment he wonders if Zee had cast some sort of spell on him.

But then Zee turns away and bids him goodnight as he climbs into bed, and the moment is gone. Marcurio stands there stupidly for a few more seconds, eventually getting into bed without saying anything at all. 

As he falls asleep, he imagines a pair of yellow eyes, peering out at him from the darkness behind his eyelids. 

The next morning, Marcurio is so stiff that he can barely get out of bed. His legs feel like somebody had frozen them with magic, melted them, froze them again, and then took to removing them from the ice by smashing at them with several large hammers. He barely manages to drag himself to the bathroom before crumpling back on the covers in a dramatic swoon, lamenting his terrible fate. 

Zee, the bastard, is already dressed and on his feet with hardly any indication of pain or discomfort, and seems terribly amused by the whole thing. Marcurio kicks up the melodrama a notch just to piss him off. He expects Zee to roll his eyes and walk away when Marcurio mournfully declares that he will "surely wither away here in this bed, as my legs are far too crippled for me to make the journey down to find sustenance." Instead, Zee just snorts. 

"Alright, your royal and most pitiful highness." Zee looks down on him with eyes glimmering with amusement. "Wait here, and I'll find you some breakfast so you don't die alone and destitute in your bed of sorrows." 

It's phrased like a joke, so Marcurio is surprised when Zee actually does return with a tray laden with more than enough food for two. Contrary to his previous assumption, Marcurio notices a slight limp in the Argonian's step after coming up the stairs, and he hates to admit that it does make him feel just the tiniest bit bad for his dramatics. He decides to make it up to Zee by refraining from milking his discomfort any further, and by using magic to heal a claw on his right hand, which had broken while resaddling the horses back in Rorikstead. 

"I really need to have you teach me how to do that sometime," Zee muses, peering down at his hand in mild fascination as the skin grows back over the nail bed, the beginnings of a new nail slowly beginning to take shape. Marcurio smirks and raises an eyebrow without looking up from his work. 

"Nobody ever taught you how to cast a basic healing spell?" he asks, releasing the magic once a thin layer of keratin has finished hardening over the delicate skin. Zee pulls his hand away and flexes his fingers as he examines Marcurio's handiwork. He shrugs. 

"Thanks. I don't know. I guess I just never bothered to learn." 

"Hmph. Well, seeing as it doesn't look like I'll be doing much of anything else today, I could teach you. Provided you haven't got any urgent business that needs attending to," Marcurio says, picking at his own nails for a moment before he glances up at Zee for a reaction. 

Zee appears to hesitate briefly, but then gives one of his easy smiles. "Sure. That would be great." 

They spend most of the rest of the day in the room, Marcurio teaching Zee how to heal the blisters and scrapes on his hands and arms and legs, bathing the room in the orange glow of restoration magic. 

A combination of rest and restoration magic finds Marcurio feeling much better on their second day in Solitude. His legs are still stiff at the knees, but most of the blisters and callouses on his palms and heels have resolved into quickly fading scars, and he's regained enough mobility to spend most of the day out of bed. Zee's limp seems to be gone, as well, and they spend most of the day exploring the market. 

After the previous two days of spending, Zee has tightened his purse strings by a considerable degree, steering well clear of the clothing store and the many stalls selling treats and trinkets and baubles of all kinds and colors, sticking mostly to those that carry equipment and supplies that will be useful for the journey back.

 "A thousand septims is a lot of money, even for me," he says, when Marcurio comments on his sudden frugality. 

Marcurio can't help the smirk that creeps across his face in response, and replies, with no small amount of cheek: "That's unfortunate. Speaking of which, though, I've recently come into a sum of roundabout, oh, one thousand septims or so. So I think I will be doing a bit of shopping for myself, if you don't mind." 

He jingles the bag of coins teasingly. Zee laughs, and waves him off to go look at the bookstore whose sign he's been eyeing for a while. 

By the third day, Marcurio can't quite use his soreness as an excuse to not do anything. His limbs and joints have mostly recovered from their ordeal on the road, aided by his own magic, as well as Zee's. He'd proven to be a surprisingly quick study at restoration magic, of which Marcurio took blatant advantage to heal some of his own aches and pains—though his ill-fated attempts to teach the Argonian some simple alteration spells had resulted in most of the contents of their lunch getting launched across the room, leaving him quite dismayed, although Zee found it hilarious. 

There isn't much to do, though, besides shop, which at this point he's already done quite enough of. He does make a principled attempt at readying supplies for the journey back to Riften (the very thought of which fills him with dread; he wonders if he could possibly convince Zee to go by carriage), but before long he's whiling away the hours perusing one of the books he'd picked up at the shops the day before. 

Whatever business Zee has in Solitude, he doesn't seem in much of a rush to get started, either. He spends most of the morning and early afternoon poring over a map, eyes narrowed in thought, occasionally pausing from nibbling on the end of his quill to write something down. From this angle, Marcurio can see that it's a map of Solitude, on which Zee has drawn a couple of diagrams and scribbled an assortment of notes in his narrow handwriting. He doesn't manage to make out much more than that, as Zee quickly notices him watching, and tilts the map away from him while giving Marcurio an unimpressed look. Marcurio just rolls his eyes and goes back to his book. 

At around three in the afternoon, Zee leaves the room and doesn't return for a while. An hour passes, and Marcurio begins to think that Zee has disappeared without telling him again , and is trying to decide whether he cares enough to be indignant or not. He still hasn't quite decided by the time Zee saunters back into the room half an hour later, looking very pleased with himself and holding a bottle of spiced wine in each hand. 

"Didn't you say something about cutting back on your spending?" Marcurio asks, eyeballing the bottles of wine, which Zee is currently flaunting like he's gone and won himself a great prize.

Zee looks up at him and grins, eyes half lidded in an expression Marcurio doesn't think he's seen on his face before, but which he can only describe as mischievous. "Old lady down the road gave it to me in exchange for a favor. Catch. "

"Oh, you shouldn't have," Marcurio drawls as Zee tosses him one of the bottles, unable to entirely keep the delight from creeping into his voice. He whistles admiringly as he inspects the label. "Quite the expensive favor. You'll have to introduce me sometime." 

"Nope. You'll put me out of work," Zee replies, popping the cork on his bottle with his teeth while Marcurio looks around for a cup. He cuts himself off with a noise of disgust as Zee upends the bottle and takes a swig straight from it. The Argonian wipes the excess wine from his face and snickers. "Priss." 

"Shut up," Marcurio scoffs, and uses a telekinesis spell to uncork his own wine and fling the cork directly into Zee's face. 

An hour and three quarters of a bottle of wine later (the whole bottle, in Zee's case) finds them both quite drunk, lying back and staring at the ceiling while Marcurio explains the mechanics of conjuring creatures from the planes of Oblivion. Badly, because he's never been very good at conjuration. 

"So flame atronachs are Daedra?"

"Lesser Daedra, yes." 

"And frost atronachs?" 

"All atronachs are Daedra." 

"Okay. What other kinds of Daedra are there?" 

"Well, there's um… Daedroth. They're kind of like big evil crocodiles. Like you, but slightly uglier." 

"Oh, ha ha." Zee tosses a pillow at him, which Marcurio blocks absentmindedly with a ward. It falls to the floor on top of the evidence of Zee's past four attempts. 

"Oh, and they breathe fire," Marcurio adds. "Knew I was forgetting something." 

"Oh, what? Damn, I wish I could do that." 

"I do think that might put a dent in the whole 'stealth archer' thing, though." 

Zee laughs. "Well, yeah, maybe. I feel like being able to breathe fire would make the need for stealth rather irrelevant, though." 

"Maybe. You would definitely still be taking people by surprise, in a manner of speaking." 

Zee chuckles at this for a while longer before eventually falling silent. 

After a moment of contemplation, Marcurio says: "So, I have to ask. Is Zee, you know, a nickname, or an alias or something? Because, you know, I don't know a lot about Jel or anything, but it's not like any Argonian name I've ever heard, and I'm pretty sure it's not Cyrodilic, either." 

He glances over to see that Zee has tilted his head to look at Marcurio more squarely. His mouth is quirked in amusement, his eyes slightly hazy with drink, dark pupils wide. "You know, I was wondering how long it was going to take you to ask about that." 

"Well." Marcurio blushes. "I mean, is it? A nickname?" 

"Yes. It's a nickname."

"Okay. But, um, did you… you know, did someone start calling you that and it stuck, or like, did you pick it yourself? Because one of those things is a nickname, but one of those things, is like… well, you know, it's not really a nickname if you pick it yourself." 

Zee eyes squint shut as he laughs. "I didn't realize you had such strong opinions on linguistics." 

"I don't." 

"Well, for the record, I did pick it myself. So…" 

"So more of an alias, then." 

"Sure." 

"Hmm." 

Marcurio pauses again, mind spinning with several questions he could ask, all of which he knows probably won't get him an answer. Eventually, he asks, "Any chance you'll tell me what it's an alias for?"

Zee laughs again, low and raspy in the back of his throat. "Sorry, land-strider," he says teasingly. "That would kind of defeat the point of having an alias." 

"Eh. Worth a shot." Marcurio shrugs as much as he can while lying down and turns his gaze back up to stare at the ceiling. 

He feels Zee's eyes linger on the side of his face for a moment longer before he looks away. 

Zee is gone the next morning, again with a note: Gone out. Work. Be back soon. -Z. He's skewered the paper to the door with the tip of an arrow, which Marcurio assumes must be his idea of a joke. He's a bit too hungover to appreciate the humor, unfortunately. After so many years in Skyrim, he'd neglected the crucially important fact that Imperials were most certainly not built to drink wine by the bottle, something that might be a regular Tirdas afternoon activity for the average Nord eleven-year-old. 

He's experienced Zee's disappearing act enough times by now that he's not overly surprised by this latest entry in his long list of lizardly antics. He pulls the arrow out of the door with a sigh and resigns himself to a day of reading and wandering around Solitude—and a trip to the alchemist for some hangover cure. 

What is unexpected is the commotion erupting down at the docks while he's on his way back from said alchemist. It's hard to tell what's going on from his position in the main square, but he hears a horn blow in the distance, somewhere in the towers above Castle Dour, and a few minutes later a couple of guards go running past him towards the docks. All things considered, it gives Marcurio a very bad feeling.

He throws back the hangover potion in one go (the taste is vile, and it takes all of his willpower not to throw it right back up onto the paving stones) before immediately heading back to the inn to make sure that all of his things are packed and ready to go. Just in case. 

His suspicions are soon confirmed to be well-founded. Just as he's stuffing the last of his newly purchased books into his bag, Zee bursts in the door and all but slams it shut, leaning back up against it and taking a few great, heaving breaths. Marcurio turns to look at him in disbelief. Zee stares back with huge eyes, slit pupils flickering to the bags and back to Marc. 

"Oh, great. You're already packed," Zee says, still sounding a bit winded. His cloak is somehow both damp and scorched at the ends, and one of his pieces of gold jewelry is missing. "So, we need to leave. Like, right now." 

There's a tenuous balance to strike between getting out of the city as quickly as possible and not moving so fast as to make the guards suspicious. The commotion has increased in the square when they emerge from the inn, clusters of confused people forming as everyone tries to figure out what's going on, while groups of city and Imperial guards alternate between running down to the docks and attempting to control the increasingly anxious population. Even in the cold mountain air, Marcurio is sweating inside of his robes. He tries to look as un-suspicious as possible as he follows the tip of Zee's tail weaving through the crowds ahead of him towards the gates. 

The guards barely seem to look at them as they exit the gates, though it's hard to tell under those stupid helmets they wear. Zee's posture is unnaturally rigid, spine taut as a bowstring as Marcurio catches up to him, striding up alongside him so that they're walking shoulder-to-shoulder.

"What the hell did you do ?" Marcurio hisses under his breath, trying to discreetly angle his head away from the guards in the vain hope that it will make him slightly more difficult to identify later. "I've never seen Skyrim city guards move so fast for anything in my life." 

"I didn't do anything," Zee mutters, speeding up his pace slightly, and Marcurio is forced to lengthen his stride to match. "Well, I didn't mean to, at least. There may have been some… complications ." 

Marcurio scowls at the side of the Argonian's head, half-jogging now as they speedwalk past the stables and towards the main road away from the city. "Compli—?! Was I not clear about the whole 'not doing anything that could get me arrested' part of my terms? Because whatever the fuck you did, it—" 

"It wouldn't be tied back to you, anyway," Zee snaps, glowering at Marcurio out of the corner of one yellow eye. His teeth are slightly bared in an expression of frustration, or maybe nerves. "Let's just get to Dragon Bridge and get the horses. The guards don't have anything to put out a bounty on, and we'll be well out of the way of any trouble once we get there." 

He jogs ahead before Marcurio can reply. Marcurio grinds his teeth, muttering a few choice insults under his breath before hurrying to follow him south away from Solitude. 

Zee maintains his frenetic pace nearly all the way to Dragon Bridge. By the time they get there, Marcurio is out of breath and drenched in sweat, back aching under the weight of his pack, though Zee seems mostly unfazed by the exertion, which just pisses Marcurio off all the more. The innkeeper they had paid to watch over the horses for a few days is a bit bewildered at the speed with which they retrieve their mounts and ride away; Zee practically throws a few extra coins at her as they ride out. 

Though Zee had said they should be well out of the way of trouble by now, he's no less tense as they ride away from the town and the bridge. The sun is slowly beginning its downward descent towards evening behind them, highlighting the stiffness of his posture and shining through a few new holes burnt into the ends of his cape.

Marcurio stares daggers at the back of his head as the Argonian rides ahead. There are a thousand things he wants to say, but none of them quite seem sufficient, not least of all because he has no idea what Zee actually did , and therefore no idea what he should actually be mad at him about. He could ask, sure, and what a load of good that would probably do, considering how forthcoming he's been thus far. 

It's that part that nettles him the most—the being jerked around on the end of a chain, yet kept always at arms' length, Zee never having the decency to let him in on what's going on or what he's getting himself into. A part of him knows that it's half his own fault, that he keeps going along with it though he knows better, knows that it's Guild business, knows that he's entrenching himself deeper and deeper and that soon he's going to be so tangled up in it that he won't be able to get himself out again. The rest of him is too proud to care. 

There are reasons, he reflects later, for those unspoken rules about keeping personal feelings separate from one's work. Mired in their own bad tempers as they are, neither one of them notices the bandits until they're practically on top of them. 

Not that being taken by surprise seems to matter much for Zee. He's already in action by the time Marcurio even processes what's going on, swinging out of the saddle in a blur of green scales and dark fabric. The sudden explosion of movement spooks the horses, and it's all Marcurio can do to stay in the saddle as his own horse rears, while Zee's gelding darts off into the undergrowth, whinnying wildly. He swears, white-knuckling the reins as he tries to get his mount under control. 

The bandits stay clear of the panicking animal and draw in around Zee, apparently deeming him the more vulnerable target now that he's dismounted. It soon becomes clear that they have spectacularly misjudged the situation. The Argonian is a whirlwind of blades, a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other—momentarily, as in a fluid motion he uses the former to cut down a woman in front of him and then deftly throws the latter into the throat of a man preparing to shoot him with a longbow. By the time the bandits have realized their mistake, half of them are dead or dying on the ground, including any and all capable of attacking at range. By that point, it's much too late. 

By the time Marcurio manages to calm his horse enough to get down from the saddle without being thrown, there are only two men left standing, warbling like birds as they flee down the road with their tails between their legs (somewhat literally, as one of them happens to be a Khajiit). Zee doesn't seem inclined to let them leave, dropping his sword to the dirt and drawing two more daggers to throw. He catches one of the men in the back of the neck with his first throw, but the other goes wide, the blade lodging in the trunk of a tree several meters south of his target. 

Marcurio isn't usually one to chase down an opponent who's fleeing. But these are bandits, who have also had the terrible misfortune of picking a fight with him while he's angry—and besides, a job is a job, and Zee's expectations here are implicit. He flicks a spike of ice from his fingertips and watches with grim satisfaction as it finds its home between the other man's shoulder blades. 

The movement finally stills as the bandit falls. Marcurio's horse snorts nervously, stamping in the dirt at the side of the road, his ears back, but he doesn't run; the danger seems to have passed. Zee only gives Marcurio a brief glance—doesn't even say thanks, Marcurio notes with no small amount of resentment—before he goes to check over the bodies. 

At first Marcurio assumes he's looking for valuables, and stands back to watch with some distaste. But then a couple of coins get spilled from a belt pouch and go rolling off down the road, and Zee doesn't even pause to look up. Marcurio frowns. "What are you doing?" 

Zee's pace is almost frantic, an intense look on his face as he continues to rifle through pockets and bags and any other parts of clothing he deems important. "Looking." 

"For?" 

"Orders." Zee shrugs jerkily. "A note, a bounty letter, something. Anything that might indicate why we were attacked." 

Marcurio stares at him as he flips a dead woman over and begins rifling through her pockets.

"...They're bandits," he says slowly. When Zee doesn't respond, he insists, "Zee, they're bandits. They'll attack anyone they think might have a few septims on them. What, you really think somebody put a hit out on you?" 

"I don't know. Maybe," Zee replies tersely. He stands, apparently not finding anything on the dead woman's corpse, and moves down the road to check the bodies of the men who had been running away. Marcurio follows, shoulders tense, his heart still hammering in his chest even though the fight is now long over. The nearby birds are slowly beginning to chirp again. 

"You know, if somebody's trying to kill you, I would strongly request that you not keep it a secret, considering the circumstances," Marcurio says as Zee crouches down to inspect the last body. He fights to keep his voice level, to keep a hold on the last shreds of his dignity, even as he feels the indignance of the last few months bubbling up in the cauldron inside of him and threatening to spill over.

He tamps it down, squashing it stubbornly under the leather heel of a mental boot. He's a professional, damn it, he has a reputation to uphold, he can't go freaking out on a client. No matter how badly he wants to, no matter that it's someone so— so—he just can't, not even on someone with so much gall as the lizard in front of him. 

Zee must sense it, though, or at least some part of it. He finally takes a moment to look up at Marcurio, really look at him, like he's just properly noticing him for the first time in a while. A shadow of something passes over his face, just for an instant. Marcurio would like to believe that it's guilt, but it feels like wishful thinking, and he's never been much for that kind of magic. 

"If I knew, I would tell you," Zee says quietly. His eyes are still fixed on Marcurio's face, but Marcurio can't read anything in them. 

I don't believe you, Marcurio thinks, biting his tongue against the reply. 

Eventually, Zee gives up his searching with a tired sigh. "Nothing." He sounds resigned. You were right, he doesn't say, and Marcurio isn't stupid enough to hope that he's thinking it. His knees are caked with grime from scrabbling around in the dirt, and there's a nasty scratch on his forehead, a thin river of blood slowly drying to the left side of his face. He doesn't seem to notice, and Marcurio certainly isn't about to offer to heal it for him. "We'll double back and take the route through Morthal, just to be safe."

Marcurio wants to say that the last place he wants to spend the night is Morthal, least of all in present company. Instead he holds his tongue, and imagines he can shoot lightning out of his eyes as Zee passes, disappearing into the undergrowth in pursuit of his horse. 

The forgotten septims languish on the ground by the bodies, and Marcurio's pride won't let him bend and retrieve them from the dirt. 

It takes about two full days to reach Morthal, not counting the half day spent camped in a cave on the roadside—hard to call it resting, as neither one of them gets much sleep. They do their best to steer clear of the marshes proper, but the ground is swampy even farther inland, and there are several stretches over which they have to guide the horses on foot. By the time they reach the city, Marcurio is drenched in mud up to his knees, and Zee has clipped the ends of his cape up to his shoulders to keep it out of the muck. It makes him look ridiculous, and Marcurio relishes that fact a bit, but it's poor comfort from being sodden, freezing, and hungry. Even less so when it eventually begins to snow, dusting his hair and eyelashes with ice and freezing his damp clothes against his skin. 

The Moorside Inn in Morthal is a rickety little building, but it's far better shelter than nothing; the snow has kicked up to a steady downfall by the time they arrive. The front room is cozy enough, lined with benches and tables along the walls, with a large fire pit at the center, though unsurprisingly it's mostly empty when they come in. While Zee deals with the woman at the counter, Marcurio goes to warm himself, taking the opportunity away from prying eyes to surreptitiously push magic up beneath his skin to speed up the process. He winces as his nerve endings prickle back to life with a brief, needle-like intensity, suppressing an audible sigh of relief when the sensation finally settles, magicka carrying warmth through the stiff joints of his fingers and wrists. 

The sharpness of Zee's voice across the room jerks him out of his reverie—startling, if only because he's hardly ever heard Zee take a tone like that with anyone. ( Except for me, a tiny voice in the back of his head supplies helpfully, and a tad peevishly). The fire pit is too far away from the counter for him to make out exactly what's being said, but the innkeeper looks contrite, and Zee has an unhappy expression on his face when he finally returns. 

"They only have one bed available," Zee says tiredly, scrubbing at his face with a clawed hand. "You can take it. I'll get my bedroll and sleep on the floor."

Marcurio isn't sure whether it's the exhaustion addling his brain or general pettiness that compels him to argue. "No, no. It's colder than Oblivion out here, even indoors. We should share. You'll have no luck sleeping on the floor, in this weather." 

"I'm not sure—" 

"You're Argonian, " Marcurio insists, rather like a man in a hole with a shovel who hasn't figured out the trick of how to just stop digging already. "You'll be an icicle by morning—a lizard-shaped icicle, with another icicle where your tail should be. And I'm sure as hell not sleeping on the floor." Then, when Zee looks unconvinced: "We're both adults here, right? I think we can handle sharing a bed for one night." 

Zee opens his mouth, then closes it again. At length, he sighs. "Fine. Whatever you say."

Marcurio hates him for it, just a little. 

That night finds Marcurio huddled under the covers with the hard edge of Zee's spine pressed up against his, thoroughly regretting all of his life choices. At the very least, the bed is large enough to hold them both, and laden with more than enough furs to keep out the cold. The snow continues to fall steadily outside, the glare of moonlight on the ice softened to a faint white glow by the threadbare curtains.

Zee faces the doorway, his tail an unfamiliar bulk pressed against the backs of Marcurio's legs. The sound of his breathing is almost imperceptible, but through the press of his shoulder blades against Marcurio's, he can faintly feel the beat of Zee's heart—it beats a bit slower than typical for a man or a mer, he notices. Perhaps only forty or fifty beats in a minute, if he were to count them. 

"Zee," Marcurio grits out, as much to distract himself from the flush rising to his face as anything else. "Go the fuck to sleep." 

"You first," Zee says, his words hissing slightly with the lowered register of his voice. 

"Your spines are poking me in the back." 

"Sorry." 

Zee shifts what few centimeters he can manage without falling off the bed, and the feeling of his heartbeat against Marcurio's back fades. Marcurio screws his eyes shut and pulls the covers tighter about him.

"Whatever. Just go to sleep," he repeats around a yawn. He drifts off before he can hear whether or not Zee replies.

Chapter Text

They've only been on the road for a few hours when they hear the dragon. 

The sound of its roar is little more than a distant shriek on the wind; if they were a bit farther north, Marcurio could have mistaken it for air moving through the mountains. But they're in the flatlands. The horses stop when they hear it, their necks straightening, their ears pinned stiffly back; their nervous nickering is nearly lost under the rustling of the breeze in the coarse tundra grass. Before Marcurio can question what he's heard, a second, louder roar echoes from over the hills to the south, and his blood runs cold. 

Zee is rigid in his saddle up ahead, his grip tight around the reins. "Shit," he says. 

"Gods," Marcurio breathes. He peeks warily over his shoulder, afraid that just by looking he might somehow summon the creature to their location. Between the low-hanging fog and the overcast sky, he can't make out any winged shapes, rapidly approaching or otherwise. "How far away is that?" 

"Not far enough." 

"Nine have mercy." Marcurio looks only briefly to the sky as he utters the words, afraid of what he might see there. He's not usually a religious man, but right now a prayer feels appropriate. Another distant rumbling sound reaches his ears—he's not sure whether it's a roar or something else, something worse. Zee lets out a long, drawn out hiss. 

"We can take cover in the hills to the north," he says. "Let's go. Now."

He spurs his horse in the direction of the distant mountains. Marcurio follows without comment. 

The horses are no less eager to get out of the path of danger than their riders; they make for the edge of the mountains at full tilt, as fast as their muscular legs will carry them. A few more roars echo from behind them, but with the wind in his ears Marcurio can't tell whether they're getting closer or farther away. They slow only once the grassy knolls have stretched into large, jagged outcroppings all around them, too rocky for the horses to traverse at speed. 

Without a word, Zee hops from the saddle, and Marcurio follows his lead as he guides them around the side of a large hummock to take shelter. They clutch the reins tightly to keep their nervous mounts from bolting; both horse and rider are panting with exertion by the time they finally stop, crouched between two large boulders to wait. Marcurio smothers the noise of his breathing as best he can with the sleeve of his robe, unsure of how good a dragon's hearing might be, and unwilling to find out. 

They wait there for what might be an hour. The distant roars stop for several minutes, then start again, though fainter this time. The sounds continue periodically, getting progressively quieter until they finally fade into the distance. After a tense period of waiting in silence, Zee chances a look outside their makeshift shelter, handing Marcurio the reins while he peers up at the sky. 

"Nothing," he says after several fraught seconds. He turns back around with a sigh, pressing his back against the side of the boulder and sliding down until he hits the ground, resting his elbows atop his knees. "I think we're in the clear." 

Marcurio lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "I hope to gods you're right," he says, trying for good humor, but his voice wobbles too much to be successful. "That was far too close for comfort." 

"Mm," Zee hums. His yellow eyes are dull and exhausted-looking—and something else. Hunted. 

It's the first time, Marcurio thinks, that he has ever seen the Argonian really look frightened.  

They make early camp right in the shelter of the boulders, to be safe, for once in perfect agreement over their unspoken desire to stay out of the open. Zee is nervous about smoke attracting unwanted attention, so they light no campfire, though there's scarcely enough room to tie the horses and lay out their bedrolls anyway. They eat in silence, a cold meal of cheese and dried meat and fruit. After that, they alternate laying down and taking watch in shifts—though once again, neither one of them gets much rest. 

It's approaching twilight when the first snowflake falls, cold and wet on the tip of Marcurio's nose. He looks up at the sky, at the grey cast of clouds blocking out the light of the stars and moon, and sends up another quick prayer to the gods. Please, not now. 

Evidently, though, the gods are not in good humor today. The downfall soon thickens to a deluge, covering the frozen tundra in a thick blanket of white, a foreboding silence falling over everything. They pin up the skins of their tents between the boulders as a makeshift barrier against the elements, but it's of little use. Zee curses loudly as a well-placed gust of wind puts out his belated attempt at a fire, knocking down one of the skins and blowing a large drift of powdery white snow into the camp. 

"We can't stay here." Marcurio takes it upon himself to state the obvious. He curses under his breath as he stands, dusting powder off his clothes, using a small burst of fire magic to melt the snow in a circle around himself. "We'll freeze." 

Zee's face is grim as he also stands, pocketing his flint and steel and beginning to gather up the rest of the supplies. "Let's go look around. Maybe there's a cave nearby we can hide in." 

They venture out into the blizzard on foot, their horses trailing reluctantly behind on the ends of their leads. By the time they make it even a few yards from their camp, the snow is falling in thick sheets around them, the visibility so poor that Marcurio can barely make out his hand in the gloom if he holds his arm out straight. For once he finds himself in the lead, using fire to clear a path ahead where he can and conjuring a magelight to help them see in the lengthening darkness, though it shows them little besides snow, snow, and more snow. He finds himself wishing, not for the first time, that he were a little more adept at illusion magic; a minor clairvoyance spell would come in great handy right about now. 

At the very least, he thinks, that dragon probably won't be able to see them in all this snow. Though being eaten would probably be preferable to slowly freezing to death, as it's starting to seem like they will. 

When they do finally find shelter, it's so dark and the snow so thick that Marcurio nearly trips right over it—it's only Zee's quick hand on the back of his robes that keeps him from falling down into the pit that opens up suddenly in front of him. He stumbles back onto solid ground, squinting into the shadows, lifting his magelight higher to try and make out the details of whatever it is they've stumbled upon. 

As his eyes adjust, the vision resolves into a large bowl of stone, dipping down into the ground in front of them like a great earthen maw. A set of steps spirals down along the far wall, leading down to a set of wrought-iron doors set directly into the rock. Marcurio laughs aloud. He can feel Zee at his shoulder, also squinting into the dark in front of him. 

"A cave?" the Argonian asks. 

"Better," Marcurio says. "A tomb." 

Zee doesn't say anything, though Marcurio gets the feeling he's wondering why a tomb would be in any way preferable to a cave. Marcurio is too elated, and too freezing, to be bothered explaining it to him. He waves him on, picking his way over to the staircase on the other side. The crunch of footsteps in the snow signals Zee following close behind. 

It would be a challenge enough to get the horses down the steps without them being icy—as it is, the beasts hardly seem excited about the whole prospect. It takes several minutes of soothing and cajoling for Zee to get them down the stairs and into the pit. In the meantime, Marcurio works on the doors, which are unlocked but frozen shut. He presses his palms against the metal, ignoring the cold, and concentrates, drawing destruction magic up into his hands, until the ice melts away beneath his fingertips. He grins to himself, then grabs hold of one of the handles—now warm and buzzing slightly with lingering magicka—and heaves. The door sticks for a moment, then gives, pushing the accumulated snowdrifts to the side as it drags open with a rusty creak. 

Marcurio turns to see both Zee and the horses looking at him curiously. The beasts' ears twitch nervously, their rider peering over Marcurio's shoulder and into the darkness of the tomb before looking back at him. "Well," Marcurio says, unable to help sounding rather pleased with himself about the whole thing. "What are we waiting for? It'll be warmer in there than it is out here." 

Zee looks at him for a moment, then nods. "Lead the way." 

The horses hesitate briefly, but at the promise of shelter and relief from the cold and damp they eventually allow themselves to be ushered inside. The tomb opens into a long, narrow hall, with stairs that slope gently downward, deeper underground. The room is lit by braziers tucked into alcoves along the walls; as they pick their way down the stony steps, carefully guiding the horses through the narrow passage, Zee looks around curiously. 

"You said this was a tomb," Zee says, glancing at an alcove to the left as they pass. There's a chair at the back of it, carved out of the stone itself and trimmed with iron, upon which are scattered the bones of a long-decayed human skeleton. "Does somebody actively tend this place?" 

"No." Marcurio shakes his head, feeling a small glimmer of enthusiasm at the opportunity to show off his knowledge. "Not one as old as this, not anymore. Nords are generally suspicious of magic, but the ancient priests made use of enchantments to keep the torches lit within their burial places. Old Nordic superstitions about the dark—there used to be a pervasive belief that leaving the dead unattended in the darkness invites necromantic forces or evil spirits to take hold. It's all nonsense, of course, that's obviously not how necromancy works, but, you know…" 

Zee hums with interest, though Marcurio isn't entirely sure whether he's actually interested or is just being polite. "You know a lot about these kinds of ruins?"

"Of course," Marcurio replies, and can't help but puff out his chest a little. "I spend a lot of time in them, in my line of work." 

Zee glances at him, looking faintly surprised. "Yeah?" 

"Of course. Treasure hunting, and the like." 

Zee's gaze lingers on him for a moment longer before he goes back to examining his surroundings. The tunnel opens up into a wider chamber lit by a single large brazier, its ceiling shored up by thick stone columns. Four exits lead off the chamber in different directions—by Marcurio's estimation, northeast, north, northwest, and southwest. The horses whuff, their tails flicking in a way that says they're a bit nervous about being belowground. Zee takes the reins and goes to tie them, though it hardly seems necessary—the four doors are too small for a horse to fit through, and neither animal seems particularly inclined to go back into the tunnel at the present moment. 

When Zee returns to Marcurio, he's standing over a pile of decayed remains in the corner of the room—new enough to still have visible clothes and hair, though old enough that the smell of decomposition has settled to a vague, musty odor. Zee wrinkles his snout with distaste, but Marcurio has encountered enough corpses in his life to be unfazed, flipping idly through the tattered pages of an old book he found on the ground nearby. As he reads, the Argonian leans in to peer over his shoulder. "Anything interesting?"  

"Maybe," Marcurio murmurs, trying not to twitch as the Argonian's breath tickles the side of his neck. "Looks like an adventurer's journal. Seems we're not the first ones to check this place out." 

"That's worrying," Zee says, not sounding very worried at all. He nudges the rotted corpse with one foot. "One does have to wonder what happened to our predecessor." 

"Most likely had a nasty run-in with the undead. Nordic ruins tend to be crawling with them. They're like pests." 

"Really? Why?" 

"A question for the ages. There are a few different theories among scholars, though most seem to agree that it's something to do with the magic of the Dragon Cult. It's not entirely clear what the purpose would be…" he trails off, frowning as he turns another page. "Hmm." 

"Is that a good 'hmm'?" 

"This journal references the tomb of Kvenel the Tongue. An ancient Nord hero of considerable fame, if memory serves. I knew he was buried around this part of Skyrim, though I didn't know we had gone so far east…" He flips another page and chews on his lip. "Prominent individuals in Nord history tend to be buried in tombs like these along with their riches and most prized possessions. In Kvenel's case, that would include the weapons he used in battle, Eduj and Okin, which are famous enough in their own right." Those would surely fetch a considerable sum, he almost adds, but stops himself—they're only here to get out of the cold, and considering what happened to the last guy who came here, it seems unlikely that Zee will think it's a good idea to go poking around. 

Zee, though, looks interested. He motions to Marcurio to hand him the book, and he does, with some reluctance. The Argonian peers down at the pages for a closer look. For the first time since they left Solitude, his yellow eyes are bright, alight with something like curiosity. "Famous ancient relics. So—treasure?" 

Marcurio clears his throat. "In a manner of speaking. And an amount of gold and jewels to go with them. Not to mention the belongings of whoever else is buried with him." 

Zee looks at him, then, out of the corner of one eye—that expression again, the raised eyebrow without an eyebrow. "You wanna take a look?" 

It's better fortune than he could have hoped for, and frankly, after the day he's had, Marcurio thinks he's earned a lucky break. 

He casts a few glyphs as an extra precaution before they leave the horses in the antechamber to explore the tomb's many passages. The northern passage is blocked by a set of locked iron doors—the main burial cairn, presumably—and they go off down the others in search of the keys. Zee, acknowledging Marcurio's superior knowledge of Nord ruins, allows him to lead the way. Marcurio, of course, spends as much time as is appropriate prattling on about their history and culture—which isn't very much time, given Zee's considerably quieter approach to exploration and combat. 

Once, as he's talking, he turns his head and catches Zee looking at him with something like fond amusement. An embarrassed heat rises to his face, and by some incredible feat of will he manages to quiet down for a little bit after that. Zee seems to have little to say about the matter either way, and Marcurio finds himself wishing not for the first time that it was easier to get a read on what the Argonian is thinking. Even for beastfolk, his facial expressions can be rather impossible to decipher. 

Marcurio's comments about undead prove to be well-founded. The first passage they take leads them into a burial hall, a wide stone room with alcoves housing mummified bodies in varying conditions of decay. Of these, several come to life as soon as they enter the room, rising from their beds with rattling groans and a sound like crackling parchment. They're a bit of a pain to fight without magic, as Zee soon discovers—stab wounds and arrows tend to be more effective against a living target than a corpse. 

Of course, that's why it's such a good thing for Zee that Marcurio is here, and he's not about to let him forget it. The shambling mummified corpses fall away like so many straw dummies beneath waves of fire and lightning. Despite being dead, though, they've still got rather a lot of that Nord fighting spirit left in them. Zee yelps and leaps aside when one of the draugr casts a fire spell at him, singing the end of his tail. 

"Shit!" he exclaims. "Why is a corpse even able to use magic?!" 

"Another question that has vexed scholars of the arcane for generations," Marcurio calls back, before blasting the thing with a ball of fire that sears the leathery skin from its bones. They clear the room of the remaining danger, and after a quick look around for anything useful or valuable (which amounts to little more than a few gold pieces; clearly this room housed the riffraff), they continue on. 

The tunnel switchbacks and winds around itself several times before ending abruptly in a set of iron doors, which Zee somehow manages to delicately pry open with little more noise than a soft creak. There are only a few sleeping draugr inside, including one slumped in the throne at the opposite end of the room. Zee makes to slip inside before Marcurio puts out a hand to stop him. 

"Pressure plates," he whispers, pointing. Zee's gaze follows the line of his finger to a set of flat iron disks scattered about the floor of the room. "The ancient Nords had a thing for booby traps." 

"To keep people out, or to keep the dead in?" Zee wonders aloud. 

"Both?" Marcurio shrugs. Zee grins at him like he's just said something funny. 

They rush in, spells blazing—that is to say, Marcurio rushes in with spells blazing, while Zee uses the distraction to slink unseen along the wall, picking off the draugr along the edges before they can finish rising from their coffins. Amidst the commotion, the draugr on the throne begins to rise, and Marcurio slings a blast of lightning at him. The draugr moves faster than it seems like it should be able to, though, and flicks out a hand. The cast ward sends the magicka spinning harmlessly off to one side, putting a crack in the stone wall. 

The draugr straightens with the creaking of old skin and bone, glowing blue eyes like chips of ice staring out from above the scraggly gray remnants of a long beard. Zee, finished with the draugr in the coffins, charges the dais on which the throne sits, daggers in both hands. The draugr turns to look at him, then, but instead of raising the rusted old battleaxe clutched in its bony hands, it draws back its shoulders, opens its mouth full of ancient, decayed teeth, and shouts: 

FUS ROH 

Zee shouts in surprise as a wave of force visibly ripples the air in front of him, sending him toppling back down the steps of the dais. He lands awkwardly on his back, and the draugr advances. Marcurio shouts a warning as the axe comes down, but Zee is ready, and rolls to the side. The blade hits the stone where his head was just a split-second earlier with a sharp clang. 

"What in Oblivion—?!" Zee rolls backwards, stumbling to his feet to face the draugr as it drags its axe back in with the rough grind of steel on stone. 

"Dragon language!" Marcurio calls out, sending another blast of magic at the draugr to get its attention. There's no ward this time, and the spike of ice carves out a sizeable chunk of the dessicated flesh beneath its ribcage, though it hardly seems to mind the damage. "Some ancient followers of the Dragon Cult knew how to Shout."

"You could have warned me!" Zee says, looking rattled. Marcurio doesn't have time to wonder about it—the draugr fixes its bright gaze on him and charges once more. 

It's a furious dance of spells and knives before the draugr finally goes down—Zee manages to lure it over one of the spike traps, impaling it straight through its eye on the sharp metal rod, holding it in place so that Zee can behead it. The key they sought is mounted on a plaque on the back wall, directly above the throne. A ceremonial axe, finely crafted, though clearly only a replica of the real Okin. If he concentrates, Marcurio can feel a faint buzz of magicka on it—the enchantment that connects it to the locking mechanism of the main burial cairn. 

He explains this to Zee, who peers down at the axe consideringly. "For a people who aren't fond of magic, their ancient ruins sure do seem to have a lot of magic," he remarks. 

"Alas, cultural attitudes have shifted significantly since the days of the Dragon Cult. Perhaps for the better—the dragon priests and their ilk weren't very nice. Though you could probably guess that much from the way they attack anyone that comes in here." He grins at Zee rakishly. "If it makes you nervous, take comfort in the knowledge that I am here."

Zee snorts and rolls his eyes. "My hero." 

The route to the other key is much the same, littered with spike traps and patrolled by shambling corpses, though this one takes them up onto an elevated walkway that is better suited to Zee's particular set of skills. He picks off most of the draugr one by one with his bow, with arrows to the eyes and spine to make sure they stay down, and grins cheekily at Marcurio before he goes to retrieve them. Marcurio rolls his eyes, but can't find it in himself to act seriously irritated. The tension that had lingered between them since Solitude and the inn at Morthal seems to have mostly dissipated.

It's also hard to stay mad at Zee when he gives Marcurio first pick of the spoils whenever they encounter a loaded urn or chest—though perhaps that's on purpose. Marcurio does catch him looking a little bit sheepish a couple of times when he thinks Marcurio isn't looking. 

They retrieve the replica sword after a fight with another Shouting draugr. Zee manages to avoid being thrown this time, now that he knows what to look out for, though Marcurio almost gets his skull caved in when the force of the shout launches a metal pot and set of embalming tools directly at his head. Zee laughs at him as he uses the distraction to cut off the thing's head from behind. Bastard. 

Zee lets him do the honors of unlocking the doors to the cairn. The ceremonial weapons slot into place in the door with a satisfying click—the locking mechanism hums to life, a buzz of magicka that sets Marcurio's hairs on end, and the doors swing open on their own. He fights down the urge to smile like an excited child, and instead saunters forward with practiced nonchalance, but he thinks he hears Zee chuckle quietly as he follows behind. 

They find the main burial chamber at the end of a narrow, winding tunnel: a wide stone cave with a low ceiling from which streamers of lichen dangle motionless in the still air. Dim moonlight streams in through a hole in the roof somewhere above them. The place is either enchanted to keep out the weather, or the blizzard has stopped. 

The throne at the back of the room is occupied, but not by a draugr. As they enter the room, the ghostly form of Kvenel the Tongue rises from his throne, and points his spectral axe in their direction, uttering what Marcurio can only assume is a threat in the ancient Nord language. Zee glances over his shoulder at Marcurio. 

"...You think regular weapons will work against a ghost?" he asks uncertainly. 

Marcurio shrugs. "Maybe not. I suppose we'll find out in a moment." 

Perhaps Nord ghosts are made of more solid stuff than Cyrodilic ones, though, because Zee's weapons seem to work well enough, if only slightly less effectively than normal—though his blades do tend to phase through an arm or a leg at inopportune moments. Combined with Marcurio's magic, though, it's really no contest. Chain lightning and a couple of thrown daggers takes care of the draugr who rise from their coffins at the edges of the room to harry them. Within minutes, the ghost of Kvenel the Tongue stumbles and falls to one knee, right before Marcurio hits him with a blast of lightning that reduces him to little more than a pile of ectoplasm on the floor, and sends his spectral weapons spinning off across the chamber. The weapons hit the wall, and then the floor, with a semi-solid clatter. Then, as Marcurio watches, they solidify, ghostly outlines hardening into Nordic steel. The crackle of lightning fades from the air. 

Marveling only a bit at the display, he goes to retrieve Okin and Eduj from their place against the wall. Liberated from their spectral owner, the weapons are now clearly formed out of honed steel, sharpened to a wicked edge and inlaid with finely carved runework. What's more, they're enchanted, their worn metal surfaces glimmering faintly with a magical sheen. Marcurio swings the sword experimentally, and crows with satisfaction as the motion traces a faint arc of frost magic through the air, tiny flakes of ice glimmering in midair before falling and fading away. 

He turns back to where Zee is, ready to celebrate the find—only to find that the Argonian is no longer standing there. Marcurio looks around wildly before a noise off to the west captures his attention. He frowns, taking only a moment to tuck the sword into one of the loops on his belt, before heading off down the side passage to investigate. 

He finds Zee in a chamber off to the side of the main room. This room is narrower, but with a high, vaulted ceiling; there are more burial urns and chests scattered about, but the Argonian doesn't seem to pay them any mind, instead staring at the wall of dragonscript on the opposite wall with a tight frown. One of his daggers is still held down by his side, his fingers worrying the handle absentmindedly. He almost seems to be mouthing something under his breath as his eyes trace the alien script. In Jel, maybe, because Marcurio can't make out any words he recognizes. 

He looks at the wall, though there's nothing particularly extraordinary about it—a great stone slab covered in dragonscript, with a large bas-relief carving of a dragon above, looking down on the writing. Marcurio thinks of the roaring they had heard earlier, and shudders. He doubts the carving even comes close to doing the real thing justice. 

"What is it?" Zee asks suddenly, reaching out to touch the stone, almost as if in a trance. Most of the script is faded to the point of unreadability, weathered away by time; his touch lingers over one of the spots that remains mostly unfaded. His fingers trace the edges of the runes with a kind of reverence, the tips of his claws just barely scraping the stone. 

Marcurio blinks rapidly at the uncomfortable realization that he's staring, though Zee doesn't seem to notice. "The—uh, the wall? Oh, um, well, the ancient Nords used to build these at the burial sites of figures significant to the Dragon Cult. They're basically epitaphs. Usually they contain proverbs, or sometimes fragments of legends or poetry. The writing is dragonscript." 

Zee eyes the wall with curiosity—and something like trepidation. "Can you read any of it?" 

Marcurio barks out a startled laugh. "Me? No— gods, no. That's old magic. Learning the dragon language takes years of practice and careful study, and even then it can't be spoken by just anybody. The Greybeards—an order of monks, I don't know if you'd know about them—dedicate their entire lives to the practice. Though there are legends that say—" he coughs. "Well, according to some stories, the Dragonborn— thought to be those of Tiber Septim's lineage—are born with some sort of innate understanding of the language. Dragon blood, as they say. But obviously they're all dead, now, and regardless I'm not even sure there's that much historical evidence to support the idea, so…" 

He trails off. He's not sure Zee is even listening to what he's saying, still frowning at the wall. His face darkens considerably, Marcurio notices, at the mention of the Dragonborn. Apart from that, though, he gives no outward signs of recognition. 

"Right," the Argonian says eventually. "Well, I guess that's not very helpful, then. Let's go look at what else there is in here." 

He's still twirling the dagger in one hand as he walks away, the gesture slightly too erratic to look casual. 

The tomb has plenty of gold to go around, as Marcurio had predicted, along with a varying assortment of jewels, gems, and enchanted weapons of lesser quality than the ones they had come for. They split the remaining treasure more evenly, Marcurio remembering the size of the fee that had brought him here in the first place. Zee insists that Marcurio hold onto Kvenel's sword and axe, remarking that he'll probably have a better idea of what to do with them. Marcurio pictures the prized weapons falling into the hands of some Thieves' Guild fence, and immediately agrees. Admittedly, he's not too good with swords or axes, though he can make do with a dagger—but he also can't deny the sense of swagger it gives him to have a fine magical weapon belted at his waist, and another on his back. 

Zee's mood is subdued when they return to the antechamber, though lacking the wire-tension from the previous couple of days. The horses are less amicable, apparently none too pleased about being left alone in a stone chamber underground for an extended period. Zee goes up the tunnel to check the weather, but reports that the blizzard outside is still going. They move their bedrolls and other things to the little chamber off the southwest passage from the antechamber so they can sleep in a room not containing any annoyed horses or dead bodies. 

Besides being on a stone floor, it's the best sleep Marcurio has gotten in days. He wakes late, feeling relaxed and refreshed, if a bit sore from the previous day's antics (a small cut on his upper arm still stings where he hadn't been bothered to finish healing it). The snow is still falling lightly when they check outside. Marcurio wonders if they shouldn't spend another day hiding out in the tomb, just to be safe, but Zee decides they should keep going. 

"I've got something I need to deal with back in Riften," he says—though privately, Marcurio thinks he doesn't sound too excited about the whole prospect.

Chapter Text

They reach the settlement at Darkwater Crossing within four days, barely, the moons just ghosting the tops of the trees when they arrive. There are a couple of Stormcloak guards minding the camp who look them over a little suspiciously (Zee especially), but eventually they let them in without a fight. The miners themselves are more friendly, directing them to a space where they can set up their bedrolls for the night, and Zee even manages to exchange a couple of coins for two bowls of hot soup. 

They're far enough south by this point to be out of the way of the snowstorm, but the weather this time of year is still bitter cold, enough to freeze the nearby streams and creeks to a near standstill. Even with the guards keeping the campfire going, the chill forces them to sleep close together for warmth, though thankfully not quite as close as they had at the inn at Morthal. 

Despite this, Marcurio finds himself awake in the middle of the night, woken by the distinct sound of chattering teeth in the bedroll next to him. 

"Sorry," Zee says when he notices that Marcurio is awake, curling his tail further around himself in an apparently futile attempt to keep warm. His light cloak and Guild leathers, which usually let him melt into the darkness so effectively, suddenly seem remarkably poor attire for the occasion. "I'm just—it's cold. I'll try to keep quiet." 

He sounds so miserable, clenching his jaw to stem the clattering as he hisses out the words, that Marcurio takes pity on him. "Oh, come on, move over here, then. I might be able to help." 

Zee eyes him curiously, but does as he says. Marcurio shifts so that he's laying close up against Zee's back, though not quite touching it. Carefully, he pushes his hands up under Zee's cape and lays them against his back through his clothes. This would be easier if he could touch his skin directly, but he's not about to go sticking his hands up under Zee's shirt without warning. He shakes his head furtively to clear it and concentrates on bringing magicka to his fingertips—not a lot, just enough to warm up the leather, and heat through it. Zee twitches underneath his fingers with a soft, surprised gasp. 

"Oh—?! That's—ohhhhhh." The Argonian relaxes with a drawn-out sigh. "Oh, that's nice." 

"Careful with that," Marcurio mutters, thankful that Zee can't see the way he flushes scarlet. "You'll give the miners the wrong idea." 

Zee laughs, a raspy sound under his breath. "An Imperial and an Argonian, right under Stormcloak noses. How scandalous." Marcurio feels himself blush deeper and doesn't reply, concentrating on maintaining the spell. After a pause, Zee adds, "I didn't even know you could do that with magic."

"It takes quite a bit of control to do it without lighting things on fire," Marcurio admits. If this admission makes Zee nervous at all, he doesn't show it. If anything, he only pushes further back into Marcurio's hands as he dares to amp up the heat a little. His shivering dies down as his body temperature rises. 

"You mentioned once that you were an apprentice wizard. Is it normal for an apprentice to have such good control?"

"Um… no, not usually. I mean, I was an apprentice when I first came to Skyrim, but I suppose I've picked up quite a few new tricks since then. I haven't been back to Cyrodiil to sit any exams, so… I don't know. I can't very well claim a certification I don't have." 

"I see. Well, for what it's worth, you seem worthy of a better title to me. Though that probably doesn't mean much, coming from me." 

"No, I—thank you," Marcurio mumbles, a bit embarrassed at how easily Zee is able to flatter him. Belatedly, he realizes that his magic is flagging, and returns to concentrating. Zee's shoulders press back against his hands as he shrugs. 

"It's the truth." Then, after a pause: "And thank you. For helping." 

Marcurio can't think of anything to say, so he doesn't say anything at all. 

After several more minutes, Zee's breathing evens out, and Marcurio gets the sense that the Argonian is finally asleep. Satisfied that he'll be warm enough to stay that way for at least a few more hours, Marcurio releases the spell, letting out a quiet sigh of relief as the tug on his magicka dissipates. 

He settles back into his bedroll, tucking the furs more tightly around him. His eyes flicker open, lingering on the dark shape of Zee's sleeping form a few inches in front of him. 

He finds himself counting the scales on Zee's exposed tail until he falls asleep. 

A mer arrives at the camp the next morning at breakfast. It's early, and cold for it, frost still clinging to the tufts of dry grass that sprout from the dirt and gravel. Zee had traded a couple more coins for bowls of porridge, which they share with the others by the campfire. It's simple fare, but Marcurio scarfs it down anyway, appreciating it greatly simply for the fact that it's warm. 

The Stormcloaks greet the dark elf with familiar nods as he comes up the road and into the camp. As he approaches the campfire, the little girl, Hrefna, begins to rise from her seat, a hopeful look in her wide eyes. Annekke, the woman who owns the small cabin nearby, looks tense. 

"Did you find Derkeethus?" Hrefna asks, bouncing from toe to toe as the Dunmer pauses by the fire and accepts a bowl of porridge offered by Annekke. He mutters a quick thanks, downing a quick couple of bites before swallowing and wiping the back of his mouth with one hand.

"I'm afraid not, my dear," the elf answers, his voice slightly raspy with cold. "There were… complications." He glances at Annekke, his lips pressing into a thin line, and doesn't say more. 

Tormir, seated nearby, notices the exchange, and sets her bowl of porridge on her lap, turning to her daughter with a sharp look. "Hrefna, why don't you head down to the mine and see that the handcarts are ready for the day?" she says, in a tone that is less a request than an order. 

"But mum—" Hrefna begins to protest.

" Now, Hrefna. Don't make me ask you again" 

Hrefna makes a shrill noise of disgust, but does as she's told. The adults' eyes follow her retreat until she finally disappears through the entrance of the mine. 

When she's gone, Annekke fixes the dark elf with a worried look. "Sondas, what's happened?" she asks, just quietly enough that Hrefna won't be able to hear even if she tries to eavesdrop. 

The dark elf—Sondas—has a dour expression on his face as he takes another bite of porridge. "I found Derkeethus' coin pouch on the ground by the falls," he says, in between mouthfuls. "Near the water. It looks as though he might have gone swimming, but I saw no other sign of him besides, in the water or out of it." 

"If he came upon a bear, or perhaps even a couple of bandits…" Annekke frowns, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. Sondas shakes his head before she can finish voicing her thoughts. 

"Worse than that, I fear. I saw signs of Falmer, totems and things, just outside the Pass," the elf says grimly. Tormir sucks in a sharp breath; Marcurio feels his own eyebrows raise. "I fear he might have been taken." 

Annekke's face is pale. "So close by…"

"Falmer are nasty creatures," Marcurio pipes up. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Zee glance at him as he speaks. "They'll be sure to cause more trouble sooner or later, if left to their own devices." 

"We can send for a detachment from Windhelm," one of the guards speaks up in a thick Northern accent. "Though it will take several days to reach here, and that's hoping Ulfric can spare the men immediately. By that time…" 

He trails off, though there's little need to finish the sentence. There's little enough chance of Derkeethus still being alive before waiting several days for help to arrive. By the time Ulfric's men get here, what little hope remains will be summarily extinguished. 

Zee and Marcurio exchange a glance. 

"I suppose we could go investigate the cave, look for any sign of Derkeethus," Zee says slowly. All eyes turn to him as he speaks. "I won't admit to having much experience with Falmer, so I can't promise we'll be able to clear the place out entirely, but we might at least be able to get in, confirm whether he lives or dies, and get out with our hides still intact." 

"That's suicide," Tormir objects. Annekke and the guard are looking at them consideringly; Annekke eyes the enchanted sword still belted to Marcurio's side. 

"You do have that adventurous look about you," Annekke muses. "If you think you could handle it, I'd be glad to hear any news of him that you can find. Though I hope you understand I haven't got the septims on hand to pay you for it." 

"That's alright. You've been more than hospitable since we arrived. It seems the least we can do," Zee replies. 

"Your funeral," the Stormcloak says with a shrug. "I'll let Ulfric know that you went out to help. You make it out with your skins, you'll have a good word in with the Jarl if and when you decide to visit Windhelm again." 

"Much appreciated." Zee quickly scoops up the rest of his porridge and stands, setting the bowl aside. Annekke is looking at him appreciatively, though Tormir and Sondas regard him with a mix of skepticism and curiosity. "Best get going now, then. Derkeethus, if he still lives, isn't getting any younger." 

With the horses, it's a few hours' walk east to reach the Pass, the sun high in the sky by the time they make it to the falls, and to the set of iron doors nestled into the hillside. Judging by the bone totems lodged in the soft mud around the entrance, Sondas' claim of a Falmer presence holds weight. The doors are locked, and Zee drops into a crouch to begin work on the locks. Marcurio watches him work over his shoulder, absently following the delicate and incomprehensible movements of fingers with his eyes. 

"I hope I haven't volunteered you for something objectionable," Zee says without looking up from his task, an apology in his voice. 

Marcurio shrugs. "You are technically still employing me, you know. The fee's been paid, I'll do as I'm asked. Though I'll point out that there's not much chance of finding Derkeethus in there alive. The Falmer aren't known to be particularly benevolent captors."

"We can go back to the camp, if you'd like. I'll tell them we couldn't find anything." 

"That's not necessary. I can't claim to have much experience with Falmer, either, but as long as we don't try anything stupid, I don't see it being too risky. Besides, there might be treasure." 

Zee laughs. "That there might be." The lock clicks, and the door opens. Zee draws his bow from his back and turns to face Marcurio. "They're blind, so I imagine their hearing will be abnormally sharp. Can you cast that enchantment again? The one that makes your footsteps quieter?" 

"Yes, but only on myself." 

"I'll manage the old-fashioned way." Zee grins. "Let's go rescue ourselves a lizard." 

They find the lizard in question at the bottom of a drainage shaft—alive, as unlikely as that seems. Marcurio spots him by chance through a grate, pacing restlessly in a few inches of water. After a bit of searching, Zee finds a lever that opens up a secret passage down to the bottom of the shaft, and they make their way to the door and pick the lock. The miner is wan and thin from not eating in days, and adorned with an odd assortment of jewelry, apparently pulled from a chest discarded at the bottom of the shaft. Strange time to play dress-up, but starvation and captivity do strange things to one's mind, Marcurio supposes. 

"Derkeethus, I presume?" Zee asks, sweeping into the room with his cape held up to keep it out of the muck. The other Argonian nods, his pupils narrowed to tiny, panicked slits. 

"Did the others from the Crossing send you?" he asks in an accented Argonian rasp. 

Zee nods. "Something like that." 

"Thank the gods. I should have known better than to swim all the way over to the falls. Can you get us out of here?" 

"I expect so. Stay by Marcurio, he can shield you from any stray arrows or magic that come your way." Zee gestures to Marcurio for emphasis; he nods politely at Derkeethus, who nods back shakily. "I'll try to take out as many as I can without being detected. Can you use that bow?" 

Derkeethus nods, fist clenching around the hunting bow he had drawn from his back. "Well enough." 

"Good. Though try to avoid fighting unless you've already been spotted. Now let's move." 

Zee guides them through the winding tunnels and raised pathways with subtle, almost militaristic precision. The sound of chaurus chittering behind them dissuades them from going back the way they had come, and instead they elect to take the path leading towards what they hope is a back entrance. Derkeethus is quiet enough, though unsteady on his feet after so many days at the bottom of that shaft with nothing to eat. Decent with the bow, though between him and Zee it's really no contest. Marcurio can't help but resent being made to babysit a little—though he's forced to admit, watching Zee take out most of the Falmer in their way before they can even react to his presence, that it was a strategically sound decision. Perhaps he would be willing and able to think more rationally about it if his boots weren't filled with water for the third time in the past week. The squelching with every step does start to get on one's nerves after a point. 

He had mostly been joking about treasure before, but even with low expectations the pickings really are rather abysmal. The Falmer use odd, twisted armors and weapons of chitin shaped for their stooped, sticklike figures that are hardly worth taking. Chaurus eggs do make for a useful and rather rare alchemical ingredient, though, and he stops to collect a few of them, resolutely ignoring the way Derkeethus shifts anxiously from foot to foot every time he dithers for too long. 

The final chamber is cut through by a rushing underground stream, so thick with bioluminescent fungus and algae that the water seems to glow a bright blue. Through the glowing haze of the mist thrown up by the river's flow, Marcurio almost misses the pair of iron doors on the opposite end of the chamber. Derkeethus points them out, shouting to be heard over the din of the falls—which, of course, immediately alerts the two nearby Falmer to their presence, much to Marcurio's chagrin. 

Having had quite enough of all this cave business already, Marcurio knocks both Falmer into the water with an exploding fireball and uses lightning to fry them, along with several unfortunate small fish. He turns, and with a sweeping gesture, motions a chastened Derkeethus and a very amused Zee towards the exit. "After you." 

Zee gives him an exaggerated curtsy with his cape and proceeds for the doors. Derkeethus follows, his tongue flicking sheepishly out of his mouth as he passes. 

They make it back to the Crossing just before sundown, to the great amazement of the guards, and of Tormir, who nearly drops her cooking into the fire when they arrive with Derkeethus in tow. Hrefna's eyes sparkle as she leaps up from her seat by the fire, abandoning the doll she had been playing with so she can fling herself into Derkeethus' arms. The miner laughs, swinging the girl around and clutching her in a tight hug. The others approach, including Sondas, who doesn't seem to know what else to do with himself but clap his friend on the shoulder with both hands, eyes wide in frank disbelief. 

"You're alive," Annekke says, relief evident in every line on her face. "We weren't sure… we were so worried. Thank the gods, you're alive." 

"I wouldn't have been, without their help," Derkeethus admits, nodding to Zee and then Marcurio in turn. "You were both quite amazing. You have my deepest gratitude, friends."

"It was no trouble," Marcurio replies, and puffs out his chest only a little. Zee just smiles and dips his head politely. Derkeethus grins at them toothily, then turns to watch as Tormir attempts to pry her daughter off of him with little success. 

Though they have nothing to otherwise compensate them for their help, the miners of Darkwater Crossing insist that they stay the night to celebrate. Seeing that it's getting quite late, Zee agrees. Annekke and Verner break out the good ale—which, being Nord ale, is just passable, though Marcurio isn't about to turn up his nose at a free drink. 

Within a couple of hours, the whole settlement (that is, ten people: the six miners and two guards, plus Zee and Marcurio themselves) is gathered about the campfire, thoroughly drunk and singing campfire songs about dark caves and monsters and heroes of old. Marcurio watches with amazement as Sondas even pulls a worn old flute out of a bag and begins to play, and Verner goes back to his cottage and returns with a lute, from which he blows off a layer of dust before joining the impromptu duet. 

As the jovial notes of an old Nord drinking song suffuse the camp, Annekke laughs and jumps to her feet. She grabs Tormir by the hands, who protests only briefly as Annekke pulls her into the steps of a lively dance. Hrefna cries out excitedly, and grabs Derkeethus by the hand, who obliges her with a soft grin. Within moments half the settlement is up and dancing around the fire. Marcurio and Zee watch from the sidelines, clapping and singing along with the guards to the beat of Sondas' and Verner's playing and singing. Marcurio has been in Skyrim for years now, much of which he has spent in taverns, and the words to many of the songs are familiar to him by now. Zee is less sure of the lyrics, but takes his cues from the others to hum along. 

After a short while, Tormir extricates herself from Annekke and collapses back in her seat, red-faced but grinning broadly, while Hrefna peels away from Derkeethus to take her place. Derkeethus, now without a partner, looks round until his eyes settle on Zee. He grins broadly, and holds out a hand. 

Zee looks surprised for a moment—then his face melts into a warm smile. He pauses only a moment to shuck off his cloak before he takes the proffered hand, and joins Derkeethus to dance. 

Marcurio finds himself in a sort of trance as all of this unfolds before him. The firelight glittering off of Zee's yellow eyes, the way his tail moves along with his legs, always held carefully out of the way of his shuffling feet. His smile, the way his jaw moves when he speaks to Derkeethus, the way he doesn't quite know the steps and Derkeethus has to guide him. The other Argonian's hand holding his, occasionally touching his waist or shoulder to reposition him when needed. Something settles low in Marcurio's stomach, an emotion he's not quite sure of, warm and unfamiliar. His face prickles with discomfort, and he takes another swig of ale, deciding to attribute it, along with the fuzzy feeling in his head, to having had too much to drink. 

Glancing across the fire, he catches Annekke's gaze briefly, bright with exertion as she takes a moment to rest from her dancing. Her eyes lock with his, and she smiles. She then looks over at Zee, who has collapsed back in his seat next to Marcurio and is laughing at something Derkeethus had just said, and nods, still grinning. Marcurio isn't quite sure what to make of the gesture. 

As the night wears on and the song and drink continues—and after, once they've curled up to bed in their tents in the wee hours of the morning, Marcurio's bedroll drawn close to Zee's once again to preserve heat—it occurs to him, staring at the ridge of spines on the back of Zee's head, that this has all gone rather far for a contract. 

As the fuzzy hold of a drunk sleep overtakes him, he can't find it in himself to care. 

They make off for Riften in the early morning, unable to justify dallying any longer—though not before the miners have loaded them up with enough food to let them eat comfortably for days. The day dawns bright and warmer than the past few, and even the horses seem in a good mood when they set out on the road to Riften. Zee keeps humming one of the campfire songs from last night under his breath as they ride. If Marcurio were still hungover, it would be severely annoying, but Sondas had presented him that morning with a mug of his secret hangover cure, and it had done the job more thoroughly than he could have expected. When asked about the ingredients, Sondas had just put his fingers to his lips and given him a secretive smile. "Secret family recipe," he had said, and wouldn't tell any more about it. 

As they ride, and Zee's humming lapses into a comfortable silence, Marcurio watches him from behind, distracted by the way the dapples of light through the trees land on the surface of his cloak. 

"The adventuring life suits you," he finds himself saying abruptly. Zee looks up in surprise, craning his neck to peer at Marcurio over his shoulder. 

"You think so?" he asks, his face splitting into a smile—warm, much like that look he had spared for Derkeethus last night. Marcurio feels a flicker of something like satisfaction, and tries not to think about why. 

"You've certainly got the skills for it. And the balls. Uh, metaphorically speaking, that is." 

Zee throws back his head and laughs. "Well, the life of an adventurer suits you quite well, yourself. I can see why you've decided to make a living off of it." 

"You could make a good living out of it too, if you wanted," Marcurio replies, because it's true.

Zee's mouth quirks into another grin.  "Maybe." Then a thought seems to pass behind his eyes like a shadow, and his smile dims. "Maybe." 

Zee turns in his saddle to face the road. As he passes beneath the shadow of a tree, the dapples of light disappear from his cloak, like a cloud drifting over the sun. 

He doesn't say anything else for a while. 

Chapter Text

Their return to Riften is like clockwork. Marcurio retreats to the Bee and Barb for an ale and a hot meal, and Zee disappears so entirely that Marcurio begins to wonder if he's finally gone and skipped town. And like always, Marcurio is the fool for thinking it might be anything different. 

That is, until it is different, and he isn't. 

...Well. Okay. Not true. He’s definitely still a fool. Quite a big one, all things considered. 

The Arcane University isn't exactly known for teaching good life skills. 

He's woken in the night by three short knocks on the door to his room, and opens it to find yellow eyes staring out at him from the darkened hallway. 

"I need your help," Zee says without preamble. His pupils are tiny slits despite the dim light, and he speaks in a low voice. "Can we talk inside?" 

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Marcurio asks, his voice as biting as he can make it. Zee stares at him, almost pleading, and eventually the only thing Marcurio can make himself do is step aside to let him in. 

They both know, on some level, that if he was going to refuse, he would have done so already. 

Zee scans the room warily as Marcurio closes the door behind him, glancing at the wardrobe, the space under the bed. Finding nothing, he turns back to Marcurio. He looks thinner than the last time Marcurio had seen him, he notes with what is definitely not concern. His eyes seem deeper set in the hollows of his face, lantern lights shining out of dark tunnels. 

"What do you want?" Marcurio asks, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice—at Zee, at himself. Zee is silent for a moment. Marcurio waits as long as his patience will allow, then sighs. "Zee, I'm going to need you to give me something if you want me to play along." 

"I think someone is trying to kill me," Zee says in a rush. Like saying the words is dangerous, like speaking it aloud will manifest it into reality.

Marcurio considers this statement for a moment. Then he asks the pertinent question: "Who?" 

"I don't know." Zee scowls at the floor. "Someone in the Guild, maybe. But it could also be someone on the outside. I don't know. If I did, maybe I could do something about it myself. There are too many variables. I know a trap when I see one; I just don't know who's setting it." 

Marcurio almost flinches. It's the first time he's heard Zee—or anyone in the Guild itself—reference the Thieves Guild openly, without analogy or euphemism. The very idea of it feels wrong, sour on the back of his tongue.  

"This is serious," he says, more of a statement then a question. Zee nods tightly. 

"I'm sorry. I wouldn't ask if—there isn't anyone else I can ask. You're the only one I thought would be safe to tell." He looks at Marcurio again, and smiles feebly. "We're all liars by trade, you understand." 

"I do." Marcurio crosses his arms, the cool night air suddenly striking him as rather chilly. "Tell me what it is you want from me." 

Zee doesn't answer for a moment. After a pregnant pause, he says carefully, "I don't have the money to pay you. Not right now. I can have it ready for you later, hopefully as soon as this is done, but after that…"

"Don't worry about payment. I'll do whatever you need me to do. If I can." 

 Zee's eyes snap to him, and he immediately opens his mouth to protest. Marcurio raises a hand to cut him off. "You say you're in danger. I believe you. I'm offering to help you here, so let me. Take my word for it when I say I don't offer this lightly." Then, carefully, after a lengthy pause: "I'd like to think that we're friends, Zee, after everything." 

It feels like too much, almost. But the way Zee looks at him, with something almost like hope in those lantern-yellow eyes, tells him it isn't. 

"Thank you," Zee says in a near whisper. Marcurio exhales quietly.

"Don't thank me yet, I haven't done anything. Now tell me what you need me to do." 

He leaves Riften under the cover of darkness, making use of the same muffling spell as he had in the caves, though it's probably overkill. He slips out the back gate, where travelers seldom come up and down the road, and the sentries frequently take the opportunity to nap away from prying eyes. Once outside, he loops around, sticking close to the bushes and the city wall until he emerges by the front gates, just out of sight of the watchtower. 

The speckled mare from that first trip to Windhelm is waiting for him by the stables, already saddled and equipped with a tight assortment of gear. Shadr is asleep in one of the hay piles; Marcurio leads his horse away by the reins to avoid waking him, pulling up the hood of his traveling cloak to disguise the back of his head as he moves down the road, away from the guards. 

Once they're past the guard tower further down the road, he mounts his horse, and spurs her to a steady trot. The map Zee gave him seems almost to itch, a lead weight tucked into the pocket of his robes against his breastbone. He hardly even has to take it out to look at it, the routes practically burned into his eyes from nearly two straight days of studying it nonstop. He marks the location of Snow Veil Sanctum in his mind, traces the winding roads up past Windhelm and into the snowy hills southeast of Winterhold. 

It takes five miserable days of travel to reach the Sanctum, cold and exhausted, hardly stopping, taking short rests in caves or ruins where he can find them. It's been months—years, maybe—since he's traveled Skyrim by himself like this. The silence is oppressive, yet fragile; he constantly finds himself waiting for it to be broken by the twang of a bandit's bowstring, or worse, by a dragon's roar on the wind. He nearly shouts in relief when he crests the hill and sees the shape of the ruin rising out of the snow nearby. 

He chooses a copse of firs downwind of the Sanctum, just close enough to keep the shape of the ruin in sight. He secures his horse some ways away, in a separate spot, before setting up his tent and bedroll; no campfire. He’s not sneaky enough to risk any more than that. 

("I'll arrive a day or two after you do. When I do, keep out of sight. If my companion knows you’re there, it will complicate things," Zee had told him.)

Making one last pass around the Sanctum to erase his tracks, he passes by a campsite—a single bedroll, the remains of a burned-out fire, and a dead horse. Not Zee's, he observes, tamping down on the momentary spike of fear. He gives the area a wide berth, scanning the ground carefully for any concealed traps or glyphs, but finding none. 

A day and a half of frigid camping later, Zee arrives, just as he'd said. Marcurio can hardly make him out, dark clothes under dim moonlight, but he recognizes the way he holds his tail behind him, just out of the snow. There's another man with him, both of them on foot. As they approach the Sanctum, Zee lights a torch, and Marcurio nearly starts when he recognizes the grizzled older man with him. 

Mercer Frey, one of the richer inhabitants of dryside Riften. He owns a big wooden house close to the Eastern wall, though from all that anyone can tell, he doesn't seem to spend much time there. Marcurio hadn't suspected that he would have ties with the Thieves Guild—but, after considering it for a moment, he supposes it isn't too surprising. It takes a certain kind of person to make it big in the Rift.  

The two cloaked figures pause by the remnants of the burned out camp, conversing in low voices over the body of the dead horse. They're much too far away for Marcurio to make out any words. Eventually, Zee nods, and they make their way to the entrance to the sanctum. The doors seem to be shut; Mercer crouches down and does something to the lock, and soon enough, the entrance swings open, an ominous black hole in the earth in front of them. 

Mercer enters first. Behind him, Zee lingers for a moment in the doorway, casting a surreptitious glance over his shoulder. His yellow eyes sweep the surrounding area, skating deliberately past the stand of trees where Marcurio is waiting. Then he turns, and the great iron doors creak shut behind him. 

Marcurio takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. The sigh fogs in the frigid air. His shoulders are tense, his hands twitchy, itching. 

("I want you to wait outside for me," Zee had explained, that night in Marcurio's room. "Wait for us to come out, then wait a while longer after that, before you start making your way back. I’ll meet up with you in Ivarstead. If I don't come out, or you don't see either one of us after a few hours…" he had trailed off. 

"I'll go in after you," Marcurio had said. But Zee had shaken his head. 

"No."  

"Zee—" 

"No. I can't ask you to do that, and even if I could, I wouldn't want to . " Zee had said, meeting his eyes grimly. "Just… if that happens—and I'm not saying it will, but if it does—just try and get back to Riften quickly, and let Brynjolf know, alright? Or Sapphire. Just let them know something happened. They'll send someone after me, maybe. Or not. But at least somebody will know.") 

He hadn't liked it. But Zee had left him no room to argue, and made him promise. If he’s not good for his word, he's not good for much of anything. 

So he waits. 

It's a tense couple of hours. The moons trace their slow arc across the sky, and Marcurio sits out in the freezing cold, casting small spells to keep the frostbite from his fingers. He pulls an hourglass from his satchel and sets it in the snow in front of him to watch the time pass. One hour slips by, then another, the grains of sand an oddly dissonant symbol of warm weather against the winter chill. 

By the fifth hour, he’s resigned himself to the risk of lighting a fire, lest his toes freeze off—and is almost immediately forced to extinguish it as the doors to the Sanctum swing open with a squeal of rusty hinges. There’s a flicker of shadow as the ragged, solitary form of Mercer Frey emerges from the ruin and takes off into the trees with nary a backwards glance, the iron doors yawning open and silent behind him. Moments later, the muted thumping of hoofbeats echoes out from the wood and fades off into the distance.  

A vague, detached sense of dismay creeps over him as he watches the ruin for any other sign. The iron doors sit ajar, silent and unyielding, but Zee doesn’t emerge. The hourglass finishes its hour, the last grains of sand tumbling down the pile before coming to rest at the bottom, and Marcurio knows it’s been too long. Far too long. 

He’s on his feet and making a break for the Sanctum, layered in enough armoring enchantments to withstand being dipped headfirst into Balimund’s forge, when he spots more movement. He freezes, caught in the open, too far from any tree or rock to go for shelter. All he can do is stand still and hope it’ll be enough to keep him from being seen (probably a lost cause; the bright orange robes aren't exactly working in his favor). The person emerging from the door doesn’t seem to notice him, though—a bulky figure moving slowly and awkwardly, struggling under its own weight. Two figures, Marcurio realizes when they step out into the moonlight: one hunched with the other draped listlessly over its back. 

The figure carrying the other makes their way towards the abandoned campsite—and as they do, Marcurio catches the faint glint of moonlight on scales, and the shape of a long tail dragging in the snow behind. 

The rush of thoughts— he’s here, he’s unconscious, he might be dead, someone has him— is enough to stun him momentarily, long enough for the figures to disappear over the crest of the hill. The tip of Zee’s tail fleeing from his field of view snaps him out of it; he lunges into action, starting for the hill, cursing as his legs stick in the snowdrifts as he struggles to keep up. 

He finds the figure back at the abandoned campsite, Zee’s limp form laid out nearby on the bedroll. The stranger is alert, Marcurio's approach ill-concealed with all his blustering and swearing. With no fire in the pit, their appearance is hard to make out, but the glint of red eyes in the darkness is distinctly Dunmeri, and the shape suggests a woman. She’s got a knife in her hand, and looks warily at Marcurio, at the lightning crackling in his palms, not yet unleashed. Her gaze flickers, briefly, to the unmoving Argonian. Neither one of them moves or speaks for a second; Marcurio hardly dares to breathe. 

“Who are you?” the woman finally asks. Her voice is husky, with a thick accent Marcurio can't place. 

“You first.”  

“I mean you no harm.” 

“Talk is cheap," Marcurio replies shortly. He tries, as much as he can, not to let his gaze drag over to Zee, not to check his chest for any sign of movement, the rise and fall of breath. The woman seems to sense his thoughts, though, or maybe he’s just not as subtle as he’d hoped. Her eyes flick over to Zee again. 

“You with him?” 

“He’s my client.” Not the whole truth, but it seems like the safest thing to say at the moment. 

The light from the sparks is enough for Marcurio to read a contemplative expression on the woman’s face. “Suspicious enough to bring backup, was he? Although it seems it hasn’t done him much good. Still, not bad. Smart. No wonder Mercer wanted to get rid of him. He’s not dead,” she adds quickly, with a glance at Marcurio’s face. “Yet. He’ll need treatment, though, you want him to stay that way. He’s injured, and poisoned to boot.” 

“And I suppose you were going to fix him up?” 

“Maybe.” The woman shrugs. “I can’t profess to be much of a healer. If you claim access to the restoration arts, though…” She nods at his hands—his magic—for emphasis. 

Marcurio doesn’t answer for a moment, shifting from one foot to another uneasily. The woman frowns. She appears to think for a second, then flips the dagger in her hand to hold it by the blade before tossing it forward into the snow. She then pulls two more from her belt and does the same thing, as well as unstrapping the bow and quiver from her back. “Will that much convince you to trust me?” 

Marcurio looks at the knives and the bow for a moment, then narrows his eyes suspiciously. “All of them?” 

The woman gives him a flat stare, which he returns with a glower of equal or greater intensity. She sighs, then pulls a knife out of each boot and tosses them aside. Then, when she sees that Marcurio is still scowling, she produces another from the small of her back. She drops it and throws up her hands with faint exasperation. “Satisfied?” 

He decides that he is, though he’s pretty sure that still isn’t all the weapons she’s got on her. He lets the lightning die from his hands and darts to Zee’s side, supposing the fact that she doesn’t try to stick him the moment he’s in range is a point in her favor. 

On his knees beside the bedroll, he’s close enough to tell now that she wasn’t lying, and that Zee is breathing—though shallowly, raggedly. Between the night and his dark clothes, it’s hard to tell what’s wrong with him; a hastily-cast magelight illuminates a sheen of blood, soaking the clothing around a deep stab wound in his middle. Marcurio mutters a quick oath and begins to work. 

The woman is largely silent as he works. After a couple of minutes, he hears the click of flint and steel nearby, and soon a fire kindles to life in the pit, warming and illuminating the camp as his magelight dies. Sweat drips down Marcurio’s brow despite the cold as he pumps magicka into the wound. It's crude, raw power over technique, but Marcurio is far from a master restorationist, and for an injury like this it will have to do. The whole of his focus centers at his fingertips as he works magicka into the flesh, forcing nerves and muscle fibers to knit themselves back together. 

Mercifully, the wound doesn’t seem to be bleeding heavily, despite the depth—the blood comes out slow, almost syrupy. “A paralytic agent,” the woman explains when he remarks on it. She speaks little besides, but all the while Marcurio can feel her watching him as he works, crouched just outside of his periphery. 

Eventually he finishes the healing, flopping back against the snow with a sharp exhale. Not for long; the wound he could close with magic, but a potion will have to do for the poison. He retrieves the flask from his bag (another reason to add to his extensive list of reasons why it never hurts to be prepared) and tips Zee’s head up to administer it, rubbing his throat to make him swallow. Slowly, the odd rigidity seems to fade from his muscles, and his shallow breathing deepens. When Marcurio lays him back against the bedroll and tucks up the furs, he looks to see the woman still looking—first at Zee, then at him, an unreadable look on her face. 

“You going to tell me who you are yet?” Marcurio asks grumpily, pulling a magicka potion from his bag and taking a hasty swig—it strikes him as unwise to be out of juice around her, even if she’s proven herself trustworthy so far. 

The woman tilts her head and contemplates him for a few moments before answering. “Karliah,” she says. Then: “I take it you’re not Thieves Guild, so I don’t suppose that name means much to you.”

“You’re from the Guild?” It seems a stupid question, given her attire (in the firelight he can now make out the familiar cut and color of Guild leathers, though rather old and worn), but he gets the feeling that there’s more to the story there. 

Karliah purses her lips. “Was. Not anymore.” 

“I don’t recognize you from Riften.” 

“I haven’t lived there in many years. I come around occasionally, keep an eye on things.” 

She doesn’t seem interested in elaborating on any of this. Marcurio flexes his fingers, tense, adrenaline still humming just beneath his skin. He wonders if he ought to press, if he might threaten her for the information, or if that would be unwise with Zee here as a potential hostage, vulnerable and unconscious. 

Then, as if sensing the thought, Zee stirs and makes an indistinct noise, and Marcurio immediately forgets what he was thinking about and all but leaps to his side. 

“Oh,” the Argonian groans, and gives a dry cough—then groans again, clutching at his abdomen. “Oh, what the fuck.” 

"Don't try to sit up," Marcurio snaps, more sharply than he means to, not half as sharply as Zee deserves. "Zee, I swear on Arkay I will fucking kill you if you try to sit up."

"Marc?" Zee opens his eyes. His bleary gaze drifts about before finally focusing in on Marcurio's face, his wide black pupils haloed in yellow. "Am I dead? Why are you here? Shit, are we dead?"

"No. You're the one who told me to come here, stupid." 

"I seem to recall asking you to stay outside."

"We are outside." 

"Hm. So we are. And I'm not dead? I suppose the pounding headache might have tipped me off."

"Be thankful that you're no worse for wear," Karliah chimes in. "Your friend is quite the talented magician, you know. I can see why you brought him along."

Zee's head snaps around at the sound of the Dunmer's voice—apparently too quickly, as the motion makes him wince. He doesn't immediately go for his knife, which Marcurio decides to count as a good sign. He does try to sit up, though, in spite of Marcurio's profanity-laden objections. He makes a vain attempt at pinning Zee down by the shoulders before reluctantly acquiescing and helping him to sit up in a way that won't immediately ruin all of Marcurio's hard work.

"So," Zee says, grimacing as he touches a hand to his side, checking for blood and looking faintly impressed when he finds none. "I take it I missed something while I was unconscious?"

"Not really," Marcurio replies with a sullen look at Karliah. The woman shrugs.

"'S Guild business," she says, as if that should be enough explanation. It probably should be. Would be, if Marcurio had done the smart thing and refused to go along with this hare-brained scheme in the first place. 

Marcurio and Zee exchange a glance. Zee looks at Karliah expectantly. 

Karliah glances between the two of them, eyes stopping on Marcurio. She sighs. "Well, I suppose you are tangled up in this too, now, like it or not." She rises from her awkward crouch to flop down against a nearby stump. "Not much good in being discreet at this point, I think. Let's see, where should I start?"

Marcurio isn't sure he likes the sound of that.

Chapter Text

He doesn't mean to fall asleep, but he does—even the artificial boost of an elixir can't quite fix the deep ache in his joints, every last scrap of natural energy drained away by the difficult healing. Zee is out almost as soon as his head hits the bedroll, and Marcurio isn't sure whether he should count that as a point in Karliah's favor, or as merely another symptom of exhaustion.

Regardless, he makes a perfunctory attempt to keep watch on Karliah, just in case, but ends up drifting off despite his best efforts. The last thing he remembers seeing before his eyes fall shut is the Dunmer's hunched form next to the fire, staring into the flames with an empty, unreadable gaze. 

Karliah is already up when they wake. She's set a pot of what looks like soup over the remaining coals, steaming faintly in the cold, and her bags are already packed and ready in a small pile nearby. Marcurio wonders if she had slept at all—judging by the circles under her eyes, a startling dark purple against her already dusky skin, he somewhat doubts it. Zee is still dozing beneath several layers of furs, but he stirs in response to Marcurio's movement, their bedrolls pressed close together once more in the cold. 

Apart from Zee's muttered thanks upon being handed a bowl of soup, they take breakfast in silence—Marcurio still isn't sure enough of Karliah to feel inclined towards politeness, though for her part she doesn't seem to mind. She eats quickly, almost mechanically, and gets up to leave before the two of them are done eating. Her mood seems darker than the night before, but whatever thoughts are flickering behind her eyes, she doesn't speak them aloud. 

"I've some arrangements to make, now my original plan's gone awry," she informs them, which Marcurio supposes is a nicer way of saying that he and Zee have thrown a rather significant wrench in the entire operation. She grunts as she hoists her pack up onto her shoulders. "As long as you two are able to hold up your end, though, perhaps we can salvage something of this." 

She gives each of them a solemn nod, her eyes lingering on Zee for a moment longer than Marcurio. Then she sets off, a dark blob shrinking slowly against the snowy hills before eventually turning and disappearing amidst the pines. 

Zee watches her go with a slightly faraway look on his face; his hand rests absently over the spot in his cloak where he had stowed Gallus' journal. "We should get going," he says eventually, wincing as he stands. 

They had found Zee's horse dead the previous night, its throat slit by Mercer as he fled the scene. Marcurio lashes both sets of saddlebags to his own mount while Zee takes a quick inventory of their remaining supplies (Zee had briefly tried to help with the bags, at which point Marcurio had threatened to paralyze him again, and that had been the end of that). Even then, Marcurio keeps a careful eye on Zee as he helps him up into the saddle. Though mostly healed, his movements are less fluid than normal, the end of his tail drooping slightly, dragging briefly in the snow. Marcurio imagines him limp and unresponsive on the bedroll, and swallows, before hoisting himself up on the saddle in front of him. 

They ride off in silence. Zee rides with his arms wrapped loosely about Marcurio's midsection, still slightly too weak to stay upright in the saddle by himself; Marcurio imagines he can feel the press of scales through his robes, though in reality he's wearing too many layers. A light snow begins to fall as they descend the hill towards the road. With luck, it will be enough to cover their tracks. Almost subconsciously, Marcurio pushes magicka up to the surface of his skin to warm himself. Zee leans into it ever so slightly. 

"I'm sorry," Zee murmurs eventually, close enough for his breath to gust warm against the back of Marcurio's neck. His accent is slightly thicker than normal, his voice slurred with an exhaustion that seems more than just physical. "I didn't mean to get you mixed up in all of this." 

Marcurio twists halfway around in the saddle so he can look Zee straight in the eye when he raises a disbelieving eyebrow. Zee grimaces. "Well, okay, I meant to this time. But before that, I mean." He looks away, and Marcurio thinks the look on his reptilian features might be shame. "I was careless."

"Yeah, well. I should have known better than to take you up on the job in the first place," Marcurio admits, facing forward again in the saddle. "This is on me as well." 

"You don't have to do this, you know. This is my mess. I should be the one to clean it up." 

Marcurio snorts. "What, you want me to go back to Riften and act like nothing happened? Mercer'll probably stab me the moment my back is turned."

"He doesn't know you were here. He has no reason to come after you." 

"He knows that we've worked together before. He might decide I'm a loose end that needs tying." Marcurio shrugs, trying to seem nonchalant about it, like the thought of being targeted by a knife-wielding maniac doesn't bother him in the slightest. "Besides, the College of Winterhold doesn't just let in any old riffraff. You're going to need a real mage's help if you want to have any hope of getting in."

"Marc."

Marcurio swivels to look at him again, wondering if he had actually managed to bother Zee for once with his semi-ironic displays of egomania. Zee just has an odd look on his face, though; Marcurio thinks he might bite his lip if he had one. 

"Yeah?" 

"Remember what you said, back at the inn? About us being friends?" 

"...Yeah, I remember."  

"Did you mean that, or were you just saying that to get me to calm down?" 

There's something so plaintive, almost childish in his tone, that makes Marcurio's eyes widen in surprise. Zee's gaze is the point of a knife, earnest and golden. Marcurio hears himself scoff, heat rising to his cheeks as he turns quickly back to face front. "I don't make a habit of saying things I don't mean." 

A pause. "Well, for what it's worth, I think of you as a friend, too. If that means anything coming from me." 

It does, Marcurio thinks, but doesn't say. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. 

Around his waist, Zee's arms squeeze a little tighter.

Chapter Text

There is a reason, Marcurio reflects, that he doesn't often take the opportunity to visit the College, despite it being relatively close by. Namely, the fact that Winterhold is colder than Molag Bal's asshole, and about as barren. 

On the way to Winterhold, he teaches Zee what few spells he has both the patience and the energy for—which isn't many, particularly while camped alongside mountain roads in less-than-ideal conditions. The Argonian proves himself fairly useless at conjuration (he only barely manages to summon a feeble-looking squirrel, which upon fully solidifying immediately attempts to bite him), and Marcurio isn't fool enough to think that having him try destruction magic is likely to end well (unfortunately; an extra source of heat would be a godsend in this weather). He is, at least, a remarkably quick study at illusion magic, able to pick up and competently cast a muffling charm after only about an hour's work (Marcurio chooses to attribute this at least in part to his own extraordinary teaching abilities). It's not a terribly flashy spell, though, so they spend a few more hours training until Zee can summon an acceptable magelight without upending the entire camp. It seems to take every ounce of his concentration to maintain, but Marcurio supposes it will have to do. 

The sky is darkening when they arrive at Winterhold, though it's somewhat hard to tell the difference under the perpetual canopy of clouds and snow. The bridge up to the College is looking rather worse for wear, and though Marcurio has been here a couple of times and knows full well that it's shored up by enchantments, it's still hard not to feel a bit unsettled by the narrow stretch of cracked stone overlooking the cliffs. Even Zee seems a little wary of the rickety bridge; over the past few days, he seems to have mostly recovered his catlike balance, but he still crosses the walkway with his hands held slightly away from his sides, making him look a bit like a bird about to take flight. Marcurio stops himself before he can think of it as cute. 

The Altmer girl who meets them under the arch barely spares a glance for Marcurio's expertly cast fireball before waving him on. She eyes Zee's magelight a bit more skeptically, and perhaps it's a good thing that he's got scales, so she can't see him sweating; the way he has to squint his eyes in concentration just to maintain the spell without accidentally flinging himself off the bridge is telltale enough. She can't seem to find any specific problem with it, though, and reluctantly waves him past. 

As they enter the courtyard, Marcurio turns to Zee and raises both eyebrows expectantly. "Point." 

"Taken." 

"Thought so." 

Taking directions from a ditzy Breton girl, and narrowly avoiding the Master Wizard's extensive lecture and tour of the grounds by the tip of Zee's sharp tongue (he really is a disturbingly excellent liar), they eventually find Enthir in the Hall of the Elements. Enthir is somehow simultaneously both the opposite of and exactly the kind of person Marcurio was expecting—a short, brown-haired Bosmer who peers at them disdainfully over the edge of his book, much like a person who has just noticed something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of his boot. He mostly ignores Marcurio while he gives Zee a once-over, appearing to take note of the Guild leathers underneath his cloak. The Bosmer raises an eyebrow. 

"This had better be good," Enthir drawls, sounding unimpressed. 

Marcurio looks at Zee—an "are we really one-hundred percent sure we need to talk to this guy?" sort of look—but Zee ignores him. Instead, he wordlessly pulls out the journal and holds it out to Enthir. Enthir wrinkles his nose and looks down at the journal for a moment. 

"Well, shit," he says succinctly. The elf closes his book, looking at Zee, then at Marcurio, then at Zee again. "Why don't we find someplace else we can talk?"

"You're kidding, right?" 

Marcurio's eyes follow Enthir as he paces the tavern cellar—the "someplace else" he had arranged for them to talk. Marcurio has absolutely no idea how the elf managed to come up with this particular arrangement with the innkeeper, and frankly, he doesn't want to know. 

The Bosmer stops next to an alchemy table laid out with various expensive-looking alchemical tools and ingredients to give Marcurio a withering glare. "I assure you, I am the very picture of sincerity." 

Marcurio peers critically down his nose at the journal, laid open-face on a table nearby. From here, the writing looks like incomprehensible chicken scratch. "What kind of pretentious idiot writes down all of his incriminating evidence in Falmer text?" 

"Marc." Zee gives him an admonishing look. 

"Sorry." Marcurio makes a half-hearted attempt to look chastised that Enthir doesn't seem to buy for a second. He narrows his eyes at Marcurio as if he would like nothing more than to start a wizard duel right here in this basement (and really, Marcurio would like to see him try). The exchange doesn't escape Zee's notice; he sighs. 

"So," Zee says, shifting surreptitiously in between the two of them while casting another pointed look at Marcurio. "Can you translate it?" 

"I'm afraid not. I'm a bit out of my depth here, as I expect most people would be— which, I might add, is probably the whole point, given the need for secrecy in such matters. The Dwemer researcher, Calcelmo, might have something, if you can get ahold of his materials…" Enthir bites his lip and glances at Zee. "Though that would have to be down in Markarth, where his lab is."

Zee grimaces. "Are you sure there isn't anywhere else we can get what we need?" 

"Unlikely." 

Zee sighs again. "Marcurio—"

"Nope!" Enthir and Zee both look over at Marcurio as he throws up his hands and looks to the ceiling for patience. "Don't even say it. I'm coming. Sunk cost fallacy. To Markarth we go." 

"You really don't have to—" 

"Nuh-uh, yes I do. You're stuck with me whether you like it or not—and if not, I'll use a sticking spell to make it so it doesn't matter." 

Of course, there's no such thing as a sticking spell, but Zee has no way of knowing that, and he eyes Marcurio's hands warily when he wiggles his fingers. Enthir just looks vaguely irritated. 

"Will it help if I point out that it's going to be dangerous, and probably illegal?" Zee tries.

"Not even a little bit," Marcurio answers.

Zee looks like he's trying to suppress a smile as he looks away. "Well, you get what you pay for, I suppose." 

Marcurio scoffs. "Please. Consider this a gift. You couldn't afford this level of service."

"I hope Karliah knows what she's doing," Enthir mutters under his breath.

Chapter Text

They cut through the mountains on the way to Markarth—which turns out to be a gods-damned mistake, as they're set upon almost immediately by ice wolves. Not Marcurio's fault, of course. They had both agreed to take this route in an effort to save time, and Marcurio hadn't known any better because he's never actually been through these mountains before. Unfortunately it's only now, with hot, slavering breath at his back and teeth snapping at his heels, that it finally occurs to him why he hardly ever sees travellers take this particular road out of Winterhold. 

The problematic thing about ice wolves, you see, is that they tend to be much bigger, and meaner, and scarier than normal wolves—much like how Nords tend to be much bigger and meaner and scarier than most of the other peoples of Tamriel. They are also capable of shrugging off a fireball or two, which is absolutely a crime against nature in Marcurio's opinion, and he can't help but wonder if Hircine had a hand in it somehow. 

So they run from the wolves, which is an ordeal enough with the snow on the ground alone, not to mention the continuous sleeting downfall that renders magical and physical projectiles nearly useless. Then, of course, they encounter the troll—which is actually convenient at first, because it scares away the wolves. But then the wolves are gone, and the troll no longer has any wolves to chase, so it starts chasing them, which is less convenient. 

Frost trolls also tend to be much bigger and meaner and scarier than the other trolls of Skyrim. So that's slightly problematic as well. 

The one nice thing about trolls, at least, is that the ratio of long arms and broad torso to their rather stubby little legs does not lend itself to running particularly fast. Their physique does make them a bit better suited to plowing through multiple feet of snow, though, and Marcurio has to torch them a path to keep them out of reach of the thing's massive claws. In spite of the unforgiving landscape, Zee is still surprisingly nimble, and a part of Marcurio thinks he could probably walk on top of the snowpack and leave Marcurio behind if he really wanted to. He doesn't, though, instead diligently trudging along behind with occasional glances over his shoulder. Marcurio is too busy casting like his life depends on it to give this fact much consideration. 

They only stop running when they round a shelf of rock and Marcurio trips, faceplanting into the snow (Zee doesn't laugh at him, but perhaps only because he can't spare the breath). He swears loudly, face flushed with a mixture of exertion, cold, and pants-shitting terror, spluttering as he fights to extricate himself from the snowdrift he's now half-submerged in. When he wipes the snow out of his eyelashes, he finds that Zee has stopped to stare out at the slope behind them, the tip of his tail curled up slightly. Gradually, Marcurio realizes that he can no longer hear the snorting and thumping of the troll running close behind them. 

"I think we lost it," Zee says in between harsh, panting breaths. 

The roar of the dragon drowns out whatever he was going to say next, the earsplitting shriek dulled only slightly by the snow. The timing would be hilarious, Marcurio thinks, if not for what it is.

"Oh, shit."

"Tunnel," Marcurio wheezes, thrusting an arm out vaguely in what he hopes is the right direction. "South."

 Zee looks down at him with his pupils shrunk to tiny, panicked slits. Before Marcurio can get enough breath back to say anything else, the Argonian grabs him by the arm and begins half-dragging him down the mountain. 

It's the most terrified Marcurio has ever been in his entire life, and it's not particularly close. Zee is yanking his shoulder practically out of its socket as he hauls him along. Marcurio's magicka reserves are in tatters, every muscle in his body burning with strain, his head light and his vision fuzzing black around the edges. It's all he can do to stay upright as they struggle blindly through the snow. That is to say, Zee does most of the struggling, and Marcurio mostly just focuses on keeping his legs from buckling underneath him. He can only assume that the dragon isn't on top of them yet, or they'd probably be dead already, but when it roars again it's close enough to make his teeth rattle in his skull. 

A mistake, he thinks to himself as Zee struggles to pull him up over a rocky hillock, his breathing harsh in Marcurio's ear. This was a gods-damned mistake. 

He's not sure how much time they spend wading through the endless deluge of white powder. Minutes, hours, years—he's barely conscious of anything except Zee's hands gripping his arm and the roars getting closer and closer, vibrating in every single one of his bones, all the way down to his frozen toes. It's only when Zee tackles him forward and they crumple into a heap on an abrupt stretch of exposed stone that he finally comes back to himself—enough to see the shape of the dragon swoop just above their heads, little more than a vague, dark shape in the blizzard, and disappear behind the roof of the tunnel overhead. The force of its passing creates a gust of wind that tugs at his clothes and hair and scatters loose stones on the ground nearby. 

Through all of this, the only thought that Marcurio can manage to piece together, apart from a blinding sense of fear, is Holy shit, that thing is fucking huge. 

It occurs to him that he should get up and hide, but it's hard to move in his current condition, doubly so with Zee on top of him. The Argonian's hands are clenched in the front of Marcurio's robes, and he's shaking—whether from cold, adrenaline, or pure panic, Marcurio isn't sure. He can't see Zee's face from his angle, his breath coming out in ragged gasps against the side of Marcurio's neck. 

Another roar blasts from overhead, and Zee flinches. The roof of the tunnel (which is little more than a thin shelf of stone stretching over the pass) trembles, sending a rain of pebbles and fine bits of dust down on top of them. Marcurio's feet are cold, his legs still sticking halfway out into the snow; the mental image of being dragged out by his boots spurs him into action. He heaves, muscles screaming in protest as he grabs Zee about the shoulders and scrambles backwards, shuffling until he can sit up and brace himself against the wall of the tunnel. Zee tenses at first, but after a few seconds he cooperates, shifting his weight off of Marcurio and pressing himself back against the wall alongside him. 

They wait like that for several agonizing minutes, unable to do much other than lean against the rock and pant raggedly. There's a small shrine to Arkay against the opposite wall, adorned with an assortment of offerings, a wreath of snowberries, some old bones, and a magically-sustained lantern (Marcurio supposes that was how Zee managed to spot the entrance in the gloom). The rock shelf above them creaks and shudders, and there's a sound like knives on stone that must be the creature's claws as it turns about, searching for a way to get to them. Marcurio sends up a quick, silent prayer to Arkay, wondering a little hysterically if the shrine might amplify his cry for help (though the small part of his brain that's still working rationally tells him that's not really how it works).

After what feels like an eternity, the creature lets out another massive roar, and with a great gust and a sound like leather being snapped taut, it takes flight. The tunnel shudders violently, sending one of the bones tumbling off the shrine, and for a terrifying moment Marcurio thinks the whole thing might be about to collapse on top of them. The rock holds fast, though. Clouds of snow are buffeted into the tunnel by the dragon's wings as it ascends higher and higher. 

After a few moments, another roar rings out farther above them—and another one a few minutes after that. Marcurio imagines the dragon circling above like a vulture, waiting for one of them to dare to poke their head out of shelter. He shudders. Next to him, Zee lets out a shaky breath. His knees are tucked up to his chest, his tail wrapped around his ankles. Marcurio stuffs his hands under his armpits, suddenly acutely aware of the bitter chill. In the absence of magic, his fingers feel like they might fall off. 

"Well," he says, his voice shaking badly. "Maybe the troll will fight it." 

Zee starts laughing hysterically. 

"I wonder who would win." Marcurio soldiers on, clenching his teeth and pulling his own knees up against his chest. "What do you think? Troll, or dragon?" 

"Probably the dragon," Zee wheezes out in between convulsive fits of laughter. "It's a lot bigger." 

"Well, yeah, and Maul is a lot bigger than me, but I like to think you'd trust me to beat that meathead in a fight." 

"Sure, but Maul doesn't have metal skin and teeth the size of longswords." 

"Thank the divines for that. Can you imagine? He's hard enough to look at as it is." This sends Zee into another fit of giggles. 

"Honestly, it might be an improvement," he eventually gets out, curled up against his laughter almost as if it pains him. Marcurio allows himself a wobbly grin.

"Hey, I'm supposed to be the bitingly sarcastic member of this partnership." 

"Ha ha. Sorry." 

Another roar drifts down from above, and they both quiet and look up at the ceiling. Marcurio swallows as the noise sends another sprinkle of dust raining down on top of them. 

"You know what I would pay to see, though?" he says after a few seconds pass without the roof caving in. "A giant fighting a dragon. Now that would be a spectacle." 

"Hmm… you know, make it two giants and I might think about starting a betting pool," says Zee, not taking his eyes off of the stone. 

It's a ridiculous line of conversation, and not even particularly funny. But it's enough to have something, anything, to distract them from being freezing and in pain and scared out of their wits. And, of course, the fact that there's a dragon circling overhead ready to to kill them as soon as it gets the chance. 

Eventually Zee musters the courage to scurry over to the shrine and grab the lantern and bring it back over. Its warmth is faint but welcome. They crowd around it with their palms extended to soak up as much heat as possible from the magical flame, whittling away the minutes by expounding upon the logistics of their increasingly improbable dragon fight betting pool. Above them, the dragon continues its agitated pinwheeling through the sky. At one point, it lands on the roof again, and there's a sequence of violent scraping noises accompanied by what Marcurio interprets as frustrated growling. Eventually, the creature seems to give up, and takes off again to continue its overhead circling. Marcurio keeps his eyes trained resolutely on the lantern as the flapping of its wings grows fainter and fainter, its roars occasionally drowned out by the howling wind. He tries to ignore the trembling of his limbs, focusing instead on the flickering of the candle flame, the sound of Zee's steady breathing across from him. 

"I guess this makes us even," he blurts out without thinking. He keeps his eyes on the lantern, though he can see Zee looking at him out of the corner of his eye. "I heal you from getting stabbed, you save my ass from a dragon. Seems fair to me." 

Zee doesn't answer for several moments. Marcurio chances a look up at him. The Argonian is frowning sharply, his expression lying somewhere in the realm between incredulous and upset. 

"You really are…" Zee begins to say, before trailing off. He looks a little bit lost, for a moment, before looking down at the lantern once more. 

Part of Marcurio wants to ask him to finish his sentence. The other part of him isn't sure he wants to know what he was going to say. 

The dragon's cries echo distantly in the sky overhead.

The roars fade out over a period of hours. Not entirely, but enough that Marcurio theorizes the dragon may have retreated to some distant perch, higher up on the slopes. They decide to risk it and make a break down the mountain. Their supplies are dwindling, and besides, this blizzard won't last forever. Neither of them fancies their odds of escaping a dragon out in the clear.

Almost immediately after they scramble their way out of the tunnel (an impressive snowdrift had built up in front of the entrance, which they had to dig out by hand; Marcurio's magicka reserves are still painfully low from his earlier exertion) another roar comes from on high—far away, but loud enough to startle Marcurio almost clean out of his boots. He promptly trips and rolls about halfway down the mountain, Zee shouting in surprise as he chases after him.

He eventually tumbles to a halt on a small plateau, lying on his back and gasping for air, as one does when one falls down a mountain and gets the wind knocked out of him. Zee scrambles to a halt next to his prone form, looking down on him with obvious concern. As soon as he sees the look on Marcurio's face, though, he starts to laugh, hard, so hard that soon he's doubled over with his arms around his middle. Marcurio thinks to tell him off, that he ought to be quieter if he doesn't want to bring the dragon down on top of them again, but his face is hot and he finds that he can't formulate the proper words to chastise him in the manner he so clearly deserves. 

He settles for pulling Zee down into the snow when he reaches out a hand to help him up. This only makes him laugh all the harder.

Chapter Text

By some miracle, they make it to Markarth in one piece, in spite of the three camps of Forsworn they run into on the way, all of whom seem intent on tearing them into tiny little pieces. The average Forsworn, it turns out, is quite a bit smarter than the average Skyrim bandit, and twice as crazy, which is not a great combination. Nursing his various scrapes and bruises, Marcurio makes a note for the future to try not to piss them off again if he can help it. 

The guards at the front gate of the city nearly bar them from entering at all, looking Zee up and down with curled lips and a level of disdain that would make Ulfric Stormcloak blush. It occurs to Marcurio that probably the only reason Markarth tolerates all the Orcs hanging around is because of their skill at smithing; evidently, in the eyes of the guards, Argonians have no such redeeming qualities. Zee, though, once again proves himself to be an exceptionally skilled liar, spinning up a tale about Forsworn and the Black-Briars and the silver trade that Marcurio can't quite follow. His story proves convincing enough for the guards to let them through, albeit begrudgingly. 

It's interesting, Marcurio thinks, the way Zee does it. Never quite saying anything untrue, instead feeding you a litany of vaguenesses and half-truths, a breadcrumb trail that lets you find your way to the conclusion yourself—but always, always the one he wants you to reach. It occurs to him to wonder how many of his own conclusions are the ones Zee wanted him to reach, and if so, how well they line up with reality. He wonders if it might be better not to know.

Well. Look at how well that's worked out so far.

"You know, you're way too good at that," he says, following a few steps behind Zee as he maneuvers through the city's narrow streets. "It's kind of creepy." 

"It's my job," replies Zee, throwing him an insouciant grin over his shoulder. Marcurio bites his tongue against a reply. 

They (mostly Zee) receive no shortage of stares on their way to the Keep, ranging in attitude from hostile to curious, though Zee treats them all with equal levels of indifference. In contrast to the gate guards, the guards at the entrance to the Jarl's fortress are more measured, or else just can't be bothered to heckle them, and they make it inside without much of an ordeal. This strikes Marcurio as asinine, and he says so to Zee under his breath. "Far be it from me to tell a hold guard how to do his job," Zee answers, and Marcurio has to stifle his laughter as they pass by another pair of guards on the inside.  

The Calcelmo they're looking for turns out to be a bad-tempered old Altmer wizard, of a sort Marcurio has little regard for: a scholar who cares little for anything besides his own work, and certainly not for anyone who might come around actually trying to make practical use of it. In other words, a mer with his head so far up his own ass that he can't tell day from night. Zee seems to have some inkling that this is what Marcurio is thinking, because he spends the whole conversation looking faintly amused (just as well that Calcelmo can't see much past the end of his own nose). 

Calcelmo is initially reluctant to let them examine his findings ("I'm working on putting together a Falmer translation guide, you see. Novel work, highly confidential"), but it turns out that not even an ego like his is immune to a bribe—especially not a bribe that appeals directly to his singular fascination. Marcurio feels his eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline as Zee takes his dwarven bow and arrows off his back and slides them across the table towards Calcelmo. The old mer looks down his nose at them greedily, and it's clear by the way his eyes glitter that he's already sunk. From there it takes little more than a bit of well-placed ego stroking before Zee is slipping Calcelmo's hastily written letter of admission into his pocket. 

"Yes, well, I suppose that should be sufficient," Calcelmo mumbles distractedly, already searching around for a lens through which he can examine the proffered weapons more closely. "Just as long as you keep out of the laboratory. I must insist that my unpublished materials remain off-limits." 

Marcurio and Zee exchange a glance.

"Of course," Zee says, and that lie is so obvious that Marcurio nearly laughs out loud. Calcelmo doesn't seem to notice. By the Nine, Marcurio thinks. We ought to steal all your things just to teach you a lesson. 

As they leave the dig site, Zee grins at Marcurio, twirling the bit of parchment in between his fingers. 

"Are you sure that was a good idea?" Marcurio asks under his breath, surreptitiously eyeing a nearby guard as they pass. "I mean, don't you kind of need those?"

"With luck, we get out of here without me ever having to use them," Zee replies breezily. 

"...You're going to steal them back on the way out of here, aren't you." 

"Oh, absolutely."  

The Dwemer museum—which in Marcurio's opinion is really more a hoarder's stash of knickknacks than an exhibition of historic and cultural value—is manned by a handful of bored Keep guards who look like they'd rather be doing just about anything else. One of them is ostensibly supposed to be guarding the door to the laboratory, but he spends too much time pacing about the room and rolling his head back to stare vacantly at the ceiling to be doing a very good job of it. Still, Zee's good, but he's not a miracle worker; even making significant allowances for Zee's bag of bullshit tricks, Marcurio fails to see how he's going to manage this one without calling the entire city guard down on their heads. 

As they stand side-by-side, pretending to look at a display case containing one of many different types of Dwemer something-or-other (some sort of steam system control lever… maybe. Most of the written statements accompanying each item are written in Calcelmo's incomprehensible chicken scratch), Zee leans in next to Marcurio's ear and mutters: "Distract them. I'll go pick the lock." 

Marcurio tries not to whip his head around too violently when he looks at him. "What?! I—the— why can't you do it?! You're the one who's supposed to be good at lying!"

"Yeah, but I'm also the one who's good at sneaking, and you're a whole lot better at running your mouth than you are at picking a lock." 

"You fucking… oh, fine. Give me a minute." 

They pretend to look at a few more items together, then gradually drift apart as Zee makes his way towards the back of the room. Unsure exactly what he can do to get the guards' attention, Marcurio decides to draw upon his extensive academic knowledge, as he is often wont to do in stressful and challenging situations. He begins chattering about the artifacts, (occasionally making things up when he's not sure what an object is or when Calcelmo's writing is too hard to read) in a bid to engage the guards in conversation.

He realizes his mistake quickly, though: namely, that these guards are stupid meatheads who don't know the first thing about the metaphysics of automatism, and that they are all far more interested in giving his Argonian companion the hairy eyeball than they are in participating in an academic discussion. 

Patience wearing thin, he casts his eyes desperately around the room for something he can use. His gaze eventually makes it to a table along the far wall, where he spots what looks like an inactive dwarven sphere. Next to it on the table are laid out a couple of small soul gems, along with a piece of paper presumably explaining the powering mechanism. Okay. New plan. 

While the guards are still busy watching Zee suspiciously as he idles in front of a display of Dwemer hardware, Marcurio discreetly edges his way to the side of the room. Once his back is to them, he picks up one of the soul gems. He glances once over his shoulder to make sure their attention is elsewhere, then coughs loudly to disguise the sound of the soul gem clicking into place as he inserts it into the machine. 

For a moment, nothing happens. Just as Marcurio lets out a silent curse, though, the sphere begins to emit a mechanical whirring noise, and the cogs inside start to turn. Panels open up on the top of the sphere as the machine unfolds itself; Marcurio begins to back away. Behind him, he hears one of the guards give a cry of alarm. "Hey, what—?!" 

The sphere—not so spherical anymore—raises its mechanical head, taking in the presence of Marcurio, the guards, and Zee, who in just that brief moment of distraction has managed to maneuver all the way to the back of the room. Then, in typical fashion, it immediately begins shooting everything in sight. 

The room erupts into chaos as crossbow bolts fly, knocking down metal struts and vases and pieces of machinery and taking one of the guards in the arm, the remaining guards shouting as they dive for cover. Zee manages to escape the thing's notice for the moment, crouched in a dark huddle of cloak by the lab door while he works on the lock. Marcurio plays the part of the frightened and helpless apprentice wizard, shrieking and ducking for cover and holding his hands up over his head (while conveniently managing to deflect every shot that might actually pose a danger with a well-placed ward). 

After a couple of minutes, over the guards' yelling and clanging and the sphere's whirring and also clanging, he faintly hears the lab door creak open, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Zee slip out of the room. He kicks up his antics just a little for good measure, using a discreet alteration spell to fling a couple more items across the room (and pegging one of the guards in the head with a bit of scrap just because it's funny). He then returns to shrieking and hiding underneath one of the tables, making a mental note to hold this whole debacle over Zee's head for the rest of his life. 

Defeating the Dwemer sphere ends up taking much longer than he'd thought—which is good, because Zee also ends up taking much longer than he'd thought (though it doesn't inspire much confidence in the city guard). The Argonian still isn't back by the time the thing goes down. and the guards gather around it, talking in perplexed tones as they examine the bent and dented remains of the automaton and its shattered soul gem. Marcurio tries not to look around too anxiously, afraid that if he does it might bring the guards' attention to the fact that Zee has been missing for the past fifteen minutes.You damn stupid lizard, where in Oblivion are you? 

As if on cue, the door to the laboratory squeaks open, and Zee emerges at a quick pace. Though he doesn't look at either Marcurio or the guards, his eyes fixed resolutely on the exit, he hooks his fingers into the collar of Marcurio's robe as he passes. Marcurio gags in surprise.

"Okay, we're leaving!" Zee says in an almost sing-songy sort of voice. "Thanks everybody for your help, time for us to get going." 

"Zee, what—?!" Marcurio wrenches his robes out of Zee's grasp, but takes the cue to follow him towards the door. 

The guards stare at them in befuddlement for a moment before one of them seems to remember what his job is. "Hey, wait! When did you—you're not supposed to be back there! Hold on a second—!" 

Zee turns on his heel when he reaches the door, saluting the guards as they frantically scramble to retrieve their weapons. "A pleasure, gentlemen." Marcurio grabs him by the cape and yanks him out the door. 

They burst into the hallway with a clamor and break immediately into a full sprint. The door guards are unprepared for their sudden exit, turning this way and that in confusion as they try to discern the source of the threat. Zee starts laughing when the museum guards barrel through the door in their wake, a cacophony of shouts echoing down the hallway behind them as they round a corner and disappear from view. 

They dash madly from the Keep, surprising the front guards as well, and hurry down the steps into the city. As they run, a horn begins to keen angrily overhead, echoing chaotically through the city's many crevices and stairways. By the time the Keep has raised the alarm, though, the two of them are already most of the way to the city gates; they make it out and are scrambling down the hill before the gate guards can collect themselves enough to get the great doors closed. 

"So much for going back for the bow," Zee remarks as they sprint down the path into the countryside, ducking under an arrow that flies at him from behind. 

"If we get caught, and I have to spend the rest of my life mining silver in Cidna mine to make trinkets for rich old ladies, I am going to fucking kill you," Marcurio gasps out between breaths. Zee laughs breathlessly. 

They make their way to the stables, where the couple of guards manning the post fortunately still don't seem to know what's happening. Marcurio pulls his horse unceremoniously from her stall and scrambles up into the saddle, ignoring the nearby guard's angry shouting—then watches in dismay as Zee grabs someone's nearby horse and swings up onto it as well, ignoring the frantic waving of the stablehand as he spurs it and gallops away. He groans, throwing up a ward around him and his horse to deflect a stray arrow before spurring on down the road after him.

"Zee," he says, once he's caught up and they're far enough away for him to be heard over the faint shouts of the pursuing guardsman. "I'm starting to get the feeling that you are terrible at your job." 

"This is a bit above my normal pay-grade!" Zee replies, tugging on the reins to slow his mount as he begins guiding them down the slopes ahead. 

Marcurio pulls his horse up short, staring after Zee for a long moment before bellowing: "You are literally filthy rich, you gods-damned bald-faced fucking liar!" 

Zee cackles all the way down the side of the mountain. 

Chapter Text

The signpost at the crossroads is an old, splintered, wind-eroded stick of pine that looks like it might have been struck by lightning once, if not twice. The letters on the flags are so worn and faded as to be mostly illegible. Not that they're terribly necessary, anyway—in this part of Skyrim, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that north leads to Windhelm, and south leads to Riften. Zee stares up at the faint writing with a frown, and though he doesn't have brows to furrow, Marcurio is once again struck by the sense that he would if he did.

"Marc," Zee begins to say. 

"Fuck you. Don't even say it." 

"I haven't even—" 

"I already what you're going to say. Don't. There is no fucking way you're going to sit there with a straight face and tell me to run along home to Riften. You're out of your mind." 

Zee wheels his horse around to meet Marcurio's stubborn gaze face-on. He at least has the good grace to look guilty, but it's poor comfort. 

"After that stunt you pulled in Markarth, I feel like you owe me that much," Marcurio says, and feels pathetic for the fact that it comes out sounding almost hurt.

"I owe you more than I have to give," Zee replies frankly, and though it might just be lip service, there's a ring of truth to it—hollow though the sentiment feels. "But I still have one more favor to ask you, if you'll hear it." 

"What more could you possibly want from me?" 

"Give Brynjolf a message. Tell him I'm not dead. Don't tell him about Mercer yet, but let him know to keep an eye out around the Guild in the meantime. That'll be enough to set things in motion, I think." 

Marcurio scoffs. "So, what, you want me to play courier for you now?" 

"No." Zee's expression tightens. "I want to ask you to come with me. I do. But I have to do this next part alone. It… this is personal." 

"Have to?" 

"You aren't Guild," Zee says quietly. He spreads his hands imploringly, as if that should explain everything. Marcurio feels his expression harden. 

"No," he says icily. "I'm not." 

The silence stretches thin between them, until even the horses seem to feel it; Marcurio's mare stamps her hoof and snorts almost awkwardly. Zee's eyes linger on him for another long moment before he seems to deflate, the bravado he had clung to since Markarth leaking away under Marcurio's withering stare. He looks almost sad—but that's stupid, because there bloody well isn't anything to be sad about. 

"Just—" Marcurio blurts, as Zee is beginning to wheel his horse away up the road north. Zee pauses, turning back to him. Marcurio searches for what to say, the right words to let Zee know just how much of an asshole he really is. Eventually his shoulders just sag in defeat. "Try not to get yourself killed, alright?" 

Zee stares at him, wide-eyed, for a long moment. Then he smiles. "I promise." And as if that should be enough, he turns, and begins making his way up the hill. 

And for some impossible reason, it is. 

It takes about two and a half weeks of travel to make it back to Riften. Marcurio is becoming rather sick of the journey. 

He fully intends to return to Riften in a rancorous mood, but four straight days on horseback in miserable, rainy weather drains away any energy he has left to spend on being angry. On anything, really. His first night back at the Barb, he buys the strongest alcohol Keerava has on hand (a white spirit that smells like paint thinner and strips the hair from the insides of his nostrils) and doesn't give even a passing thought to what Zee had asked him to do. He contemplates little else that night beyond the insides of his eyelids. 

Unfortunately, the liquor's not quite tasty enough to justify the splitting headache it gives him the next morning. Oh, to have another bottle of that spiced wine from Solitude. He really should just stick to mead. 

Only once he's finally up and ambulatory, having downed enough hangover cure to treat a cave troll, does he remember his promise to Zee—and it occurs to him that it was a terrible promise. Marcurio may not be Guild, but he likes to think he has a pretty good impression of the townsfolk that hang around the Bee and Barb. And if there's one thing he knows, it's that there's no way Brynjolf will keep his mouth shut about this to the rest of the Guild. He'll probably go blab straight to Mercer the moment Marcurio tells him anything—no reason not to, after all, if Marcurio is to avoid implicating Frey as instructed. 

This complicates things somewhat. Guild members aren't exactly easy to come by, for obvious reasons, and Brynjolf is certainly the most approachable of the ones he knows. Sapphire is as likely to gut him as she is to listen to a single word that comes out of his mouth. The others he doesn't have enough of a read on to gauge the risk. That leaves him with exactly one option. One which, frankly, he isn't very excited about. 

At least she's probably less likely than Sapphire to stab him before hearing him out. Though the margin is admittedly slim. 

Vex of the Thieves Guild is definitely not the easiest person to track down, but even a Guild member needs to bathe occasionally (one that doesn't stink, at least… which rules out most of the men, and probably all of the Nord ones). With a bit of trial and error, and flagrant misuse of a muffling charm, he manages to catch her late one morning on her way back from the lake. She's dressed down in a normal shirt and pants, but Marcurio catches a flash of black leather in her bag before she cinches it closed. She doesn't look happy to see him. 

"I need to talk to you," he says quickly, hopefully before she can get any ideas about stabbing him. He eyeballs the dagger strapped to her side warily; her fingers play over the hilt in an idle but decidedly threatening manner. 

"If you're flirting with me, sellsword, I will cut your balls off," Vex says succinctly. Marcurio purses his lips, but has to admit the sentiment isn't entirely unwarranted. 

"It's a message from Zee," he explains, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. All she does is narrow her eyes at him. "Is there somewhere private we can talk?"  

Vex's expression darkens, and her fingers pause in their motions momentarily. She looks around briefly, then says: "Here is private enough. People don't usually bother me here at this time of day." Besides you is implied. "That said, Zee's supposed to be rotting underground in a Nordic tomb right about now. So how is it you've got a message from him?" 

"Right. Well, for starters, he's not dead. Whoever told you that is mistaken." 

"And you know this how?" Vex somehow manages to raise an eyebrow without breaking her scowl. She begins playing with the handle of her dagger again. 

"Because I saw him," Marcurio huffs, already beginning to lose his patience. "He was hurt, I helped heal him. The wound he took was pretty bad, so I'm not surprised there are rumors going around, but they aren't true. That was part of what he sent me to tell you." 

"He sent you to talk to me? Not Brynjolf?" She doesn't sound convinced. 

"In truth, he told me to talk to Brynjolf, but I thought it would be a better idea to go to you instead," Marcurio admits. "There's, er... a certain level of discretion required that made me think he wasn't the best person to tell." 

Vex crosses her arms with a hmph, but she doesn't argue with that. "Fine. So, what, Zee wanted you to come tell me he's alive. That's all?"  

"He's on his way back, but he wants you to keep an eye out around the Guild in the meantime for anything suspicious." The corner of Vex's mouth twitches in displeasure at the direct mention of the Guild, but she says nothing. "What exactly that means is up to you, I guess. He also asked that you keep quiet about the fact that he's alive for the time being." 

Vex frowns at that. "He say why?" 

"Can't say." 

The woman furrows her brow and doesn't say anything for a few seconds. If Marcurio had to guess, he would say that she looks worried, staring off into the middle distance and scuffing the dirt with the toe of her boot. After a while she looks back up at him, her expression smoothing back over into neutral displeasure. "Okay. Anything else?" 

"Not much. Be discreet, I guess. You know how he is." 

Vex snorts; it seems that on this, they are in agreement. She eyes him up for a bit longer, just long enough that he has to fight not to squirm, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Eventually she turns and spits into the dirt, uncrossing her arms and gathering the strap of her satchel higher up on her shoulder. 

"If I find out you're lying to me, I'm still gonna cut your balls off," she says, eyeing him with dislike, but also with what Marcurio hopes is reluctant acceptance. With that, she brushes past him and retreats up the path back to Riften. Marcurio gives her a wide berth as she passes. 

I hope that was wise, he thinks, keeping his eyes firmly at head level until Vex finally disappears among the leaves. 

Zee returns to Riften about four weeks later. Nobody actually sees him come back, per se, but one night there's a pretty significant break-in at Mercer Frey's house, and Marcurio would have to be pretty stupid to think it's not related. One of the off-duty guards at the tavern swears up-and-down that he had seen a mercenary get thrown out a third-story window. Rumors abound, but nobody seems to be able to put a finger on exactly what happened. Such bold action from the Guild is unusual, and many find it to be a worrying sign.

The next morning, Marcurio sneaks his way onto the scene of the crime (flagrant misuse of muffling spell, part two). Any bodies and large debris have been cleaned up and carted away by the guard by this point (leave that to Maven; she's undoubtedly been scrambling to minimize the bad publicity), but there's still a faint bloodstain on the cobbles beneath one of the upper-story windows, and small shards of glass scattered all around the yard. Marcurio treads carefully as he makes his way around the back. 

It's looking like there will be nothing interesting in the backyard either, until Marcurio spies it out of the corner of his eye: a single arrow, sticking out of a post near the back door. He draws closer to examine it. It's not one Marcurio has ever seen Zee carry before, crafted out of a fine, dark wood, with a black leathery material for the fletching. The barbed point is buried deep in the beam; the wood around it is faintly stretched and splintered, as if someone, perhaps a guard, had attempted to wrench it out before eventually giving up. 

There's no note attached, no other sign or indication, but in that moment Marcurio is hit by the absolute certainty that Zee had left it there on purpose—a sign meant for him and him alone. Cheeky fucking bastard. He laughs aloud—then is immediately forced to flee when the sound causes the single remaining guard attending the crime scene to come investigate. 

He toasts Zee silently later at the Bee and Barb. A tribute to a frankly incredible degree of impudence. 

Vex corners him one evening in an alley behind the Barb, much to his surprise and apprehension. For a moment, Marcurio is on edge, wondering if she came to make good on her threat, irrespective of the fact that he had indeed told her the truth. She doesn't immediately go for her knife, though, instead just crossing her arms and looking him up and down critically from where she stands at the mouth of the alley. Marcurio begins to mentally calculate his chances of making it out if he runs. The odds are not particularly good. 

"You were right," Vex says eventually. She sighs, shaking her head. "That fucker. Getting some mercenary involved in Guild business. Can't imagine what he was thinking." 

"I'll have you know, I am much more than just some mercenary," Marcurio replies haughtily. "And, you know, all things being equal, it was betrayal within the Guild that almost did him in."

Vex's mouth presses into a thin line. A moment later, though, she nods, appearing to concede the point.

"Just don't get any ideas," she says, jabbing a finger at him accusingly. Marcurio rolls his eyes.

"I'm full of ideas. One of those being that I'd prefer to stay as far away from you people and your business as possible. Don't worry about me; I'm an honest man. Mostly. I have to be good for my word, or else I'd be out of a job." 

Vex snorts. "Yeah, good luck with that." Then she adds with a smirk: "You know how he is."

She claps him on the shoulder as she walks past him out of the alley, a gesture that nearly makes him jump out of his skin. He hears her snickering as she rounds a corner out of sight.

Chapter Text

It's the middle of the night when Zee darkens his doorstep again—approximately three months, nine days, and sixteen hours since Marcurio had last seen him, give or take. Not that he's counting, or anything. 

Marcurio almost doesn't see him standing there om the dark, wrapped in the blackest cloak he's ever seen, with only the glint of gold jewelry and eyes to indicate his presence. He looks different. The same, but different. The way he moves is different, like he's not really walking on the ground so much as he is balancing on some invisible surface laid right over the top of it. Under his cloak Marcurio catches a glimpse of dark leather armor, of a make he doesn't recognize. The jewelry he had lost during the scuffle in Solitude has been replaced, and the ring in his nostril has been joined by a second, this one in silver. 

"Hey," Zee says. He stands awkwardly in the doorway, and—gods, his pupils look darker, Marcurio thinks, as if that makes any goddamn sense. 

"Hi," he says, for once completely out of things to say, and steps aside to let him in. 

Zee shuffles awkwardly on the threshold as Marcurio pulls the door shut behind him. Without the light from the torches downstairs, the room is dark apart from a few sparse shafts of moonlight, and he seems almost to melt into the shadows that fill the corners of the room. Marcurio absently lights a lamp on a nearby table with a quick spell; as he does, the firelight glints off the metal clasp of Zee's cloak. Marcurio feels a prickle of unease up the back of his neck as he recognizes the emblem of Nocturnal. 

"I kept my promise," Zee says, seeming a little uncomfortable with the way Marcurio is looking at him. The tip of his tail clicks against the door as it twitches awkwardly. 

"That armor is Daedric," Marcurio says absently, his mind not even really registering Zee's statement. 

Zee sighs. "I made a deal." 

"With a Daedra?" Marcurio's eyes snap up to his face.

"I never said it was a good deal." 

The silence hangs heavy and thick over their heads. The ends of Zee's cloak seem to flicker in and out of reality, melding with the shadows around his feet. Marcurio crosses his arms against a chill that has nothing to do with the weather.

"...There are worse Princes to deal with," he concedes eventually. Still, he gnaws on the end of his thumbnail and continues to stare at the clasp. The emblem unsettles him, pulling his gaze in, as if the dark moon at its center might try to swallow him whole. 

It takes him several moments to realize that Zee is looking at him expectantly. "...What?" 

"I'm sorry." 

Marcurio frowns, dropping his hands to his pockets and trying to recover some semblance of nonchalance (though he knows Zee will probably see right through his bullshit). "What are you sorry for?" he replies coolly anyway. 

Zee gives him a look somewhere halfway between a smile and a grimace. "Too many things to count." 

The flame flickers unsteadily from the table; the silence drags on for so long that the light eventually begins to dim. As Marcurio goes to find more oil, he hears the clinking of many coins, and turns just as Zee sets a heavy bag of gold on the table next to him. He raises an eyebrow at it, then at Zee. "What for?" 

"Everything. Snow Veil Sanctum, and after. Along with another fees' worth." Zee shrugs, rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly, his tail curling around the backs of his legs. Marcurio purses his lips. 

"Another job?" 

"Not exactly." 

Marcurio forgets the oil and crosses his arms again, waiting for an explanation. Zee takes a moment to meet his eyes. The yellow of his irises shines in the reflected lantern light, bright as ever against the dark voids of his pupils. 

"Dungeon-delving," Zee says quietly. "It… I want you to come with me, if you want. It would be…" He takes a deep breath. "I'd like it, if you were there." 

Marcurio stares at him. "Where?" he asks, remembering himself. His voice snags on the words like a loose thread, and he clears his throat stubbornly. 

"Here. Anywhere. We could just… I don't know. We could go anywhere." Zee fumbles with something in his pocket. The crinkling sounds like folded paper. "I have some rumors written down we could follow up on. But, if there's anything else you have in mind, we can go there first. You know Skyrim the best."

It's earnest. Disgustingly so. And completely unbelievable. Marcurio stares at him, and gets only a wide yellow stare in response. Fucking bastard. 

At length, he picks up the bag of gold from the table. The coins inside clink tantalizingly against his palm as he passes it back and forth between his hands, feeling its heft. He sniffs, and looks up, pressing the bag firmly against Zee's chest. "Keep your money." Then, after a sufficiently dramatic pause, he adds: "If you promise to go halfsies again." 

Zee's eyes widen, first in dismay, then in faint relief. He breaks into a big, toothy grin, that should look ridiculous—and does, just a little bit. He laughs. "You drive a hard bargain, sellsword. But I accept your terms." 

Marcurio tries not to smile too hard, but from the way he can feel the grin pulling at his cheeks, he's not sure he succeeds. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Don't push your luck." 

"When have I ever?"

End Part I

Chapter Text

II. The Fall

Zee tells him that they'll need to stop by his house for supplies before they leave Riften. This raises several questions, the most pressing of them being: "When the hell did you buy a house?" Marcurio pesters him all the way down the street to the housing district, but Zee just grins at him and proceeds to blithely ignore his relentless questioning. 

It's only when they're nearing the edge of the northern district, and Zee comes to a stop right in front of the door to Honeyside, that the pieces finally click into place. 

"No fucking way." 

"I presume you heard that Honeyside was recently purchased?" Zee says casually, producing a key from somewhere in the folds of his cloak (evidently, the Nightingale armor is no less pocketful than his Guild leathers). 

"Of course I did. You're not serious, are you?" 

"I'm always serious," Zee snickers. The key fits into the lock with a sharp click. 

Marcurio shakes his head in wonder as Zee pushes on the handle, and the door swings open with an inviting creak. He cranes his head to look around as he follows the Argonian inside. The space opens into a warmly lit room with a hearth set across from a table and chairs. Strings of herbs and garlic dangle from the rafters, and the room is illuminated by a soft combination of hearth and torchlight. 

"I take it this means you're filthy goddamn rich again?" he says with faint amazement, turning in a slow circle to take it all in: the rows of spices lining a shelf on the wall, the massive elk's head overlooking the fireplace. 

"Mercer was holding on to a fair bit of gold in that mansion of his," Zee says, looking rather pleased with himself. "And of course it all had to be confiscated by the city guard after his disappearance, what with his Guild relations coming to light." 

Marcurio snorts, about to reply when he's interrupted by the sound of a door closing in another room. As he turns to look, a red-haired woman emerges around the doorframe. She looks familiar, but only vaguely; Marcurio thinks he might have seen her at the Barb once or twice. She doesn't even look at Marcurio before giving Zee a stiff half-bow. 

"Greetings, Thane," she says—or rather, bellows.. Her voice is brash and loud enough to make Marcurio jump. "Is there anything I can help you with?" 

"My housecarl, Iona," Zee says by way of explanation. "Iona, this is my friend, Marcurio." 

Iona gives him a polite nod; her gaze strikes him as a bit less penetrating than Lydia's, and he thanks the divines for that, because when Zee gestures at him he feels his cheeks turn quite pink. Zee doesn't seem to notice. "We're not staying, I'm afraid. I just wanted to stop by and pick up a few things. Would you mind fetching me my potions kit from downstairs?" 

"Of course, Thane." Iona gives a dip of her head that Marcurio can only really describe as soldierly. She wheels around and disappears around the doorframe again, and a moment later Marcurio hears her footsteps descending to the floor below. Zee turns and begins rummaging through the cabinets, pulling out various odds and ends and storing them away in his bag and in his many pockets. 

"Thane in two holds, now?" Marcurio crosses his arms as he watches Zee rifle around in a cabinet for something to wrap up some dried meat with. Honestly, he's not even surprised at this point.

"Maven's idea, actually." Zee makes a face as he reemerges. "I don't care much for it, truthfully—a bit too public-facing. But she thought it would be a good idea to have more of 'her people' in positions of influence, so she pulled a few strings." 

"I see." 

Marcurio frowns, glancing after Iona, trying to figure out how to formulate the question he wants to ask, but not knowing how. Zee notices him watching and huffs slightly, seeming amused. "She's one of Maven's," he explains, pulling out a sack of apples with a soft aha, tucking one into his pocket before stuffing the rest into his pack. 

"Oh. Really? Then she knows about your, um… all that business with the Guild?" 

"As much as she needs to. She's not Guild herself." Zee shrugs and gives him a meaningful look. "She mostly keeps her nose out of any Guild business, but she'll cover for me if it's needed. Can you pass me that bowl?" 

Marcurio hands him a small wooden bowl and some cutlery from the table, chewing the inside of his cheek while Zee continues to pack. Iona soon returns from downstairs, nodding again at Marcurio when she sees him looking. She does have a certain shrewd look about her, he notices. beneath her rather obtuse air. Iona hands Zee a small leather bag, its contents clinking slightly as he takes it from her hands with a muttered thanks. 

"Dabbling in alchemy?" Marcurio asks, leaning up against the wall and studying the shape of a malachite sword hanging on a plaque over the fire. He's already content with his own collection of supplies, and more than content to let Zee do his own packing.

"A little. Karliah is a good poisoner, so I've picked up a few tricks from her. Though I think I prefer the utility of the restorative potions a bit more. Residual trauma from getting stabbed, perhaps."

Marcurio can't decide whether to snort or wince. He settles on a snort. "How is Karliah doing?" 

"Alright. Now that we've got the business with Mercer sorted out, she's able to come and go from the Guild hideout as she pleases, though she still spends most of her time over at the Nightingale Hall."

"...I can't say I'm too pleased with her for getting you roped in with Nocturnal," Marcurio admits, tugging at one of the strands of herbs dangling near his head. He glances over at where Iona was standing, but she'd retreated into the other room at some point in the past couple of minutes, and doesn't appear to be listening. 

Zee shrugs again, but it looks more resigned than nonchalant. "Had to be done," he says simply. 

Marcurio frowns, but his eyes catch the slump of Zee's shoulders, and for once he can't find it in him to argue. 

"So what happens now?" he asks instead.

"With the Guild?" Zee grunts as he hefts his pack up over his shoulders, testing its weight. Apparently satisfied, he begins fiddling with the straps. "I don't know. Hopefully things can go back to the way they were, before Mercer got a big head and fucked everything up for everyone. I'd like it if we could cultivate a more symbiotic relationship with the city, and the rest of Skyrim, instead of just leeching off of it." 

"How noble." 

"The rich make far better targets than the poor, if that makes you feel any better. And things are more sustainable that way." Zee frowns. "I just hope I can get them to see it that way. I don't want things to be how they were under Mercer." 

"Think they'll listen to you?" 

"They'll have to, in theory. In practice might be another story." 

It takes a moment for Marcurio to process the meaning of that remark. He raises his eyebrows. "No shit? You're running the place now?" 

Zee's eyes widen a little, like he's just said something he wasn't supposed to. He grins at Marcurio sheepishly. "I'm not exactly supposed to divulge our leadership structure to outsiders, so you didn't hear it from me." 

"Humph. Suppose it serves them right, seeing as they just about got you killed." 

"I'm guessing you don't approve?" 

"It's not really any of my business." 

"Still, you…" Zee turns to face him fully. His face is creased into a frown. He looks disconcerted, like something about the statement is bothering him. Marcurio feels a prickle of impatience.  

"What?" 

Whatever it was, Zee doesn't finish the thought. He turns too-quickly towards the door. "Never mind. I think that's everything. If there are any supplies you want to take, feel free to grab them on your way out." 

"Hm…" Marcurio taps his chin thoughtfully. "How about the key?" 

Zee laughs. "Except that." 

"Worth a shot."

Chapter Text

They don't set out for any place in particular. Zee has little more than a vague inkling of a plan and a map: a sprawling illustration of the province on heavy parchment, peppered with small ink marks—caves, ruins, tombs, fortresses. He hands it over to Marcurio on request so he can add notes of his own, marking down locations and rumors he had heard from Keerava or clients or other patrons at the Barb. They camp in the shadow of an old watchtower and spend most of the night poring over the map, deciding which locations they should prioritize first. Zee listens to Marcurio's rambling with intense focus and writes down notes with a quill, filling the margins with annotations in his thin handwriting.

"We could go anywhere," Zee says again later as they stand on the crest of a hill, looking out at the endless sea of birches, the distant cloud of steam hanging over the sulfur pools. 

"North, then," Marcurio replies. 

"It's all north from here." 

"Yep." 

Zee laughs. "Alright. North it is." 

So they go north. 

They stop frequently in Windhelm, because in spite of all its flaws, it's a decent place to unload their loot. The dark elf who runs the pawn shop down in the Grey Quarter doesn't ask too many questions about the treasure they bring in--and moreover, Marcurio soon learns that the high elf, Niranye, is a Guild fence (which, in hindsight, probably should have been obvious). She's usually more than willing to buy anything Zee (or Marcurio, after a bit of cajoling) sends her way without bothering about where it came from—although not without sparing a disdainful eyebrow for Marcurio when he deigns to come by on his own. 

The little symbol on her stand is a Shadowmark, Zee tells him later when he thinks to ask about it. "They're used by Guild members to communicate information about locations," he explains. "I'm surprised you noticed. They've fallen out of fashion lately. A lot of Guild members don't even recognize them these days."

Marcurio sniffs and lifts his nose in the air. "Well, of course I noticed. One of us has to be the brains of this operation." 

"Ouch," Zee says, but his eyes glimmer with amusement.

They spend most of their nights in Windhelm at Candlehearth Hall—partly because the guards get antsy if they hang around the Grey Quarter for too long, and partly because the proprietor of the Cornerclub doesn't seem to like Zee very much. Elda, on the other hand, seems to finally be taking a liking to Zee—or at least a begrudging tolerance. She only slightly overcharges him for rent these days, which Zee seems to regard as an acceptable improvement. Marcurio isn't as satisfied. 

"Don't you get tired of the way they treat you?" he asks one night when he's just a little too drunk, sprawled out on his bed with a bottle of mead hanging loosely from one hand. 

Zee shrugs. He sits in one of the rickety wooden chairs by the bed, his own bottle of mead dangling between his legs as he fiddles with the cork. "Of course it bothers me. It's just not worth the trouble of getting upset about it."

"Isn't it?" Marcurio frowns, rolling over to look at Zee and sloshing mead all over the front of his robes in the process. "Damn it—I mean, from where I'm standing, it seems like they're determined to dislike you no matter what you do. Why even bother?" 

Zee gives him a look that's faintly exasperated. "Marc, if I got angry at every person who's ever called me a lizard, I wouldn't have any money and I'd never get anything done. There's a big difference between rude remarks and being frozen out entirely." 

"...'S not fair," Marcurio mutters sulkily, feeling a little bit foolish. Zee smiles ironically. 

"Sure it isn't. But that's how it is." 

Marcurio grumbles, but is too drunk come up with a substantive reply. He sets his mostly empty bottle down and rests his chin on his arms, staring at the side of Zee's head, who replaces the cork on his own drink after one last swig. When Zee notices him watching, he tilts his head in that way that means what? Marcurio has gotten quite good, he muses tipsily, at reading the meanings of these little gestures. 

"Still. You could probably get away with being rude to people more often. Gods know you're good at it when you want to be."

"I save all of my pent-up anger especially for you," Zee says breezily, and leans over to pat Marcurio on the shoulder. Marcurio takes a swipe at him and misses spectacularly. 

"Ass." 

"Only to you, darling." Zee replies, eyes glinting with humor. Marcurio feels his cheeks turn pink, and he buries his face in his arms. 

"Whatever. I'm going to sleep." 

Zee at least has the good grace to stifle his laughter when he goes to blow out the lamp. 

They don't exactly mean for the weeks to turn into months, but they do. Marcurio can't exactly say that he minds. 

Skyrim's great expanse of sweeping tundras and jutting mountains is pockmarked with curiosities. Crumbling shells of ancient castles, unassuming cracks in hillsides that open into vast caverns, ancient Nordic burial sites that haven't seen a living soul in more than a century. It doesn't take much effort to find one thing or another—often they just follow the meandering curves of the road until it leads them somewhere interesting. They spend almost as much time underground as they do above, trawling for treasure and relics. 

The routine of exploring is almost startling in its familiarity, the way they move with and around each other as natural as breathing—yet at the same time, it's intangibly different from before. Zee doesn't so much sneak these days as he does pass through the air like smoke, little more than a flutter of cloak in the shadows unless Marcurio is really looking for him. Any lesser mercenary might struggle to keep up. 

Of course, Marcurio is no lesser mercenary, and he keeps up just fine, thank you very much. 

Besides his newfound powers of concealment (which Marcurio attributes partially to the fancy new armor—he had deigned to cast a few identifying spells on it while Zee was sleeping, and the stuff is saturated with so many concealed enchantments that he nearly blinded himself looking straight at it), Zee has developed an uncanny sense for where things are that Marcurio is pretty sure he didn't have before. He'll whip around a corner to take a hidden ambusher by surprise, tiptoe around a pressure plate in near-perfect blackness, stab a sleeping draugr that Marcurio hadn't even been able to tell was "alive". Marcurio almost wonders if he's been practicing illusion magic (though he's quite certain he never taught Zee any aura-revealing spells, and the notion of him learning from someone else rankles him too much to consider). The problem with this theory being: he never actually sees him cast anything. And in any case, the only spell Marcurio knows of that can reveal undead auras is surely too advanced for even him to have mastered in such a short time. 

When he finally asks Zee about it, he looks uncomfortable. 

"It's Daedric magic, I guess," he says, fiddling with the handle of his bow. It's Karliah's old bow—smooth, dark wood that prickles faintly with frost magic if Marcurio focuses on it. "I'm not… really sure how to explain it. It's not really something I do on purpose. More of a feeling I get, if that makes sense." 

Marcurio tries to think of any magic he knows of that matches that description, but draws a blank. "Well, I guess that makes sense," he says eventually, vaguely annoyed at his own ineptitude. "Luck is Nocturnal's domain, sort of, so I guess if an uncanny sense lets you avoid obstacles you wouldn't ordinarily be able to, that's sort of like being lucky…?"  

He trails off, because none of that actually makes any sense at all. Zee grimaces. "Right. Let's keep going." 

He turns and moves off down the tunnel ahead, his steps nearly inaudible even on the hard stone. Marcurio stares after him. 

Do you regret it? a part of him wants to ask, though he feels like he already knows the answer. Does it weigh on you? 

It doesn't seem like the right thing to say.

It occurs to Marcurio on several occasions that, for a thief, Zee doesn't appear to steal very often. 

It only occurs to him later that this is probably because he's very good at it. 

Once they've been on the road for a while, it becomes apparent: Zee has very sticky fingers. It's hard not to notice, for instance, that whenever they visit a merchant, Zee is always pulling out a trinket or piece of jewelry that Marcurio is quite certain he doesn't remember picking up from a dungeon or some fool bandit.

He can't help but wonder if it's just that he's gotten better at noticing, or if Zee has just stopped trying to hide it from him. He's not sure which explanation he prefers. 

On one particular crisp spring day spent wandering the streets of Solitude, they happen to pass by a noblewoman wearing an assortment of fine silver jewelry. A few minutes later, Marcurio notices Zee twirling a suspiciously familiar necklace around his finger, and does a double-take. 

"You—what?! How did you do—what the fuck?" he splutters, flabbergasted. 

Zee flips the necklace up into the air and catches it before tilting his head at Marcurio innocently. "Hm? Do what?" 

Marcurio looks at Zee, then at the necklace, then at Zee again, then turns to stare resolutely ahead. "Nothing. I saw absolutely nothing." 

Zee chuckles, and claps him on the back. "Good lad." Marcurio imagines he hears the fine silver chain tinkle faintly as it disappears into one of his many pockets. 

The first time they venture into a Dwemer ruin, Marcurio is practically lightheaded with giddiness. 

"Not to give that crank Calcelmo too much credit, but he was right about one thing: the Dwemer fostered a truly fascinating society and culture. And I fear their scholarship has yet to be matched," he says, trying to play it cool as he pores over the items scattered atop an old workbench. He twists one of the dials on an ancient metal gyro, and feels a childish rush of excitement as the pieces inside start to spin with a thin mechanical whir. 

"They were certainly fine metalworkers," Zee muses. Marcurio turns to see him holding a dynamo core up to one of the steam lamps, watching the light shine through the red gem at the center. "Even after centuries left rotting underground, a lot of this would probably still sell for a fair price." 

"Wh— you can't just go around selling precious ancient artifacts!" Marcurio protests, clutching the gyro protectively to his chest and giving Zee his most offended glare. "If anything, we should be bringing these back to the Arcane University in Cyrodiil for study!" 

Zee looks amused, resting the core on the workbench so he can place a hand on his hip. "If it would make you feel better, we can take half of it up to the College and then sell the rest," he says gently, as if placating a small child. 

"Only half?" 

"Two thirds, minus whatever I think would look nice on my mantelpiece." 

"Those quacks up at the College wouldn't know real scholarship if it hit them on the head," Marcurio grumbles, but stuffs the gyro in his pocket anyway. 

The elevators scattered around the facility take them down further into the earth, far enough that Marcurio's ears pop from the pressure (Zee doesn't seem to notice; something about Argonians being better adapted to high-pressure environments, and also not having ears. Bastard). Soon after, he makes the unfortunate mistake of casting a lightning spell too close to a centurion's docking bay, and they take off running down a maze of corridors to avoid getting crushed to death or impaled by a bolt from its massive crossbow. 

"You know, I ran into one of these things when Mercer was going after the Eyes of Falmer," Zee says breathlessly as they round a corner, narrowly avoiding a blast of scalding steam shot from the center of the centurion's chassis. 

"How did you deal with it?" Marcurio gasps out, flinging an ice spell at the floor behind them in the hopes that it will slow the centurion down.

"I didn't." Zee gives him a pointed look. Marcurio makes a rude gesture as they switchback down yet another hallway. A crossbow bolt hits the spot where he was standing just a moment earlier. 

They eventually lose the centurion by ducking into a room and hiding among a warren of steam pipes and valve releases. Unfortunately, said room is also full of Dwemer spiders. It's a much preferable option to the centurion, though. And it is admittedly rather satisfying to send the wretched things flying across the room.

"You know, I would find the Dwemers' mechanical guardians fascinating if they didn't try to kill everything on sight," Marcurio pants once the spiders have been reduced to little more than mangled husks. He yanks the soul gem out of one, feeling for the characteristic buzz of energy within before slipping it into his pocket. "The powering mechanism is really quite nifty. I wonder if they could be repurposed." 

"Maybe we could take one with us to tinker with. You're probably smart enough to figure it out," Zee remarks casually. 

Marcurio scoffs, and turns to say something sarcastic in reply, but finds Zee looking at him so earnestly that the words die in his throat. He feels his face turn red. Zee's grin widens.

"Something I said?" Zee asks innocently. 

"Fuck you," Marcurio blusters, and lobs a soul gem at Zee's head. He doesn't bother to follow its trajectory, and predictably he hears Zee catch it out of midair as he turns away. He pulls the soul gem out of the next spider with such force that it takes most of the casing along with it. 

Spring bleeds into summer, and the mountain flowers bloom explosively in the relative warmth. Not that it makes much of a difference, as they spend most of it roaming the tundra, trawling for barrows. By the time they make it back among the rolling hills and valleys, the bitter chill of autumn is already nipping at their heels. 

The threat of dragons is everpresent, and they camp underground as much as possible, and make use of any aboveground shelter they can find otherwise. The remains of old forts and roadside towers protect them from being spotted from the skies—though notably, not from the elements. 

As the weather grows colder and the nights grow longer, it becomes routine to put their tents together and huddle their bedrolls close for warmth. More often than not, Marcurio ends up lying behind Zee with his hands pressed against his back, warming them both with a spell until they fall asleep. It starts because he can't stand the sound of Zee's teeth chattering all night, but at some point it becomes a habit that he does without thinking. Zee tries to wave him off a few times at first, apparently embarrassed about the trouble, but Marcurio insists he doesn't mind, and finds that it's true. 

"You really have to teach me how to do that sometime," Zee murmurs sleepily one night while Marcurio pushes warmth into his upper back, carefully avoiding pressing on a still-healing wound under his shoulder from a recent run-in with some bandits.

"Considering what happened when I tried to teach you the beginner-level destruction spells, I think that's more likely to end with you setting my robes on fire than with either one of us getting any significant sleep." 

"True enough," Zee concedes with a yawn. They had both needed to replace their tents after the fireball incident. 

A thin layer of late autumn snow covers the tents and the backs of the horses when Marcurio awakes. He notices with a faint flutter of embarrassment that he had pulled closer to Zee in his sleep, and ended up with his arms wrapped most of the way around his middle. He works to disentangle himself carefully, noting that the thick fabric of Zee's cape had protected him from getting stabbed by any wayward spines. Another point for Daedric armor, I suppose, he thinks with a yawn and a stretch. 

Zee stirs a few moments later, sitting up sleepily as Marcurio is attempting to start a fire with some pieces of damp wood. He tilts his head up and stretches his jaws in an enormous yawn. Marcurio finds himself following the line of his grassy yellow throat with his eyes, briefly mesmerized by the rows of long, sharp teeth. 

A moment later, he realizes that Zee is looking at him expectantly. "Something on my face?" 

"You have… very impressive teeth," Marcurio says, a bit stupidly. 

Zee's face breaks into a big, silly grin that perfectly exposes the aforementioned teeth. "Thanks? I think." 

Marcurio excuses the warmth in his face as being from the fire, which has finally come to life under his careful ministrations (and a flame spell). "Right. Well. Don't let it get to your head." 

"I am nothing if not infinitely humble." 

In the plains just outside Whiterun, they encounter a strange little man in a jester's costume next to a broken down cart. The man, whose name is apparently Cicero (though this takes them a while to figure out, as he tends to speak in the third person, as if in a poor and vaguely offensive imitation of a Khajiit), had apparently been on his way to Falkreath when his cart broke down--though why anyone would go there willingly, Marcurio thinks, is anyone's guess. He seems relatively harmless, all things considered, but Marcurio would personally much rather ignore him and leave the whole thing alone. Zee seems sympathetic to the story about burying his mother, though, and leaves Marcurio to keep an eye on things while he goes up the road to talk to a farmer about getting the wagon wheel repaired.

Marcurio thinks he would probably be more sympathetic, too, if not for the fact that Cicero keeps trying to talk to the coffin. 

"Oh, mother, fret not! Cicero will bring you home soon!" the jester coos with his lips practically pressed against the coffin, kicking his legs in midair as he dangles them over the edge of the cart. Marcurio grimaces to himself and wills Zee to walk a little faster. 

Zee returns an agonizing half-hour later with the farmer, whom Zee has apparently guilt-tripped into fixing the wheel (though he doesn't seem terribly happy about it, for which Marcurio can hardly blame him). Cicero actually jumps in the air and shouts "yippee!" when the job is finished, and then presses a bag filled with so much gold into Zee's hand that it makes both Marcurio and the farmer raise their eyebrows. Cicero wheels his wagon away before there's any chance to question him about it, though (and, notably, without leaving anything for the farmer himself). Zee ends up handing most of the money over to the farmer before they head off down the road once more. 

As the sound of Cicero's cheery and utterly nonsensical singing fades off into the distance, Marcurio stares at the back of Zee's head, bobbing slowly with the horse's movement. Then a thought strikes him like lightning, and he blurts, "You know, you're actually a nice person." 

That, admittedly, wasn't exactly the way he had meant for it to come out. Zee turns in his saddle to look at him with apparent confusion. 

"...I like to think I'm always nice," he says carefully, like he's not quite sure whether he should be offended and is choosing to withhold judgement until Marcurio explains himself.

"Yeah, but I mean you're actually nice. Like you're genuinely a good person, beyond that fake nice veneer you put on just to please people."

That doesn't come out quite right either. Marcurio is again struck by the feeling of being a man standing at the bottom of a hole with a shovel in his hand. Zee frowns at him, and opens his mouth as if to argue, but Marcurio shakes his head insistently, overcome by the sudden urgent need to make him understand.

"It's like… yeah, you're nice, but you're always nice in exactly the way people want or need you to be at a given moment. You're nice as far as it serves people's purposes, and… and in doing so really serves your purposes, right? So they all know a different version of you, but you keep them all at arms' length, never letting them know anything about yourself that's actually real." Then, aware that he's rambling but unable to make himself stop: "Why do you do that? It seems like the real you isn't so bad, when you let him out." 

The proper response to this, Marcurio thinks, should be anger. Zee should be angry, or at the very least offended. Instead, he just looks rattled.

It doesn't last long, After a few uncomfortable seconds, his face smooths over into something even Marcurio finds difficult to interpret.

"Maybe the real me is just nice," Zee says coolly. 

They make the rest of the journey up to Whiterun in chilly silence. 

They spend the next few weeks lazing around Whiterun, having grown quite a bit richer over the last several months, and having also grown quite sick of the stench of decay. Lydia is busy up in the Cloud District doing some work for the Jarl for the time being, and they have Breezehome mostly to themselves. Still, they spend a lot of their leisure time at the tavern up the road; although Zee seems mostly content to forget the conversation they had had on the road (and Marcurio isn't exactly sure how to feel about that), the mood between them is still a little too awkward to want to drink at home themselves. 

Argonians don't pass through Whiterun often—Marcurio supposes that has something to do with the distinct lack of large bodies of water. This, as it turns out, makes Zee somewhat exotic in the eyes of the women of Whiterun. The fact that he's Thane probably also has something to do with it. Regardless, one thing is for certain: between the Nords, the Imperials, and the occasional Breton, the women at the Bannered Mare are all over Zee when he comes in for a drink. It's rather perplexing to watch, then, when he engages all of them in little more than polite conversation, and never once returns any of their advances. 

In typical form, Marcurio brings it up one night when he's rather drunk. 

"Do you ever think about humoring one of them?" he asks as he watches a Nord waitress cross the room with an exaggerated swaying of her hips, batting her eyelashes unsubtly in Zee's direction. When Zee turns to look at him, he clarifies: "Take one to bed, you know. Go for a roll in the hay. Or are you not interested in… you know, humans?" 

Zee cocks his head at him in that particular way of his, looking a bit bemused. "Well no, I'm not really interested," he says, taking a careful sip of the ale from his flagon (it's somewhat difficult to do with a snout, apparently). "But that's because I'm not interested in women, not because I'm not interested in humans." 

Marcurio feels his eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. "What? Really?" 

"Honestly, I thought it was rather obvious." 

In retrospect, Marcurio realizes he can only really remember seeing Zee flirt with men—all of the interactions with women he can call to mind range from polite to friendly.

"Hm," he says. Then, because he can't think of anything else to say, he takes a long drag of ale from his flagon. Zee is still looking at him oddly, so he feels the need to blurt: "Well, personally, I've never felt the need to restrict myself to just one half of the population. Seems such a waste." 

Zee smirks, then, although Marcurio's not quite sure what's funny.

"Well, then, maybe you can be the one so chivalrous as to show one or two these fine ladies a good time," he suggests, and flags down the bartender for another ale. He eyes Marcurio coyly over the edge of his flagon as it's passed back to him. "They haven't only had eyes for me, after all." 

Marcurio feels himself blush behind his flagon. He sets it down too hard on the bartop and sits up a little straighter. "Well, maybe I will." 

And, in fact, he does, taking it as something of a challenge. The pretty Nord waitress seems a little disappointed when he remarks on Zee's lack of interest, but as it turns out she is perfectly receptive to his own advances. It's been a while, having been on the road with Zee for so long—but Marcurio's reputation as a ladykiller wasn't built in seven months, and it will take longer than that to die. 

As he follows the Nord girl upstairs to one of the inn's rooms, he chances a glance back down to the bar. Zee is trading rumors with the bartender, still sipping on his ale, but he catches Marcurio's eye as he goes up the stairs, and gives him a nod and a wink. Strangely, Marcurio finds himself thinking back to their conversation on the road again. He wonders, briefly, what version of Zee he's getting, and whether it's any closer to the real Zee than anyone else's. 

Some part of him hopes, selfishly, that it is. 

Chapter Text

They don't encounter any more dragons, which feels terribly unlikely. Marcurio finds himself constantly waiting for their luck to run out. While the original sightings seemed to have cropped up at random, all over Skyrim, now it seems like most of them have consolidated around the mountains, and they've mostly been showing up in predictable locations. It's quiet, even, and sometimes Marcurio dares to hope that the worst of it is over. Blessings of Nocturnal be upon us, he thinks to himself on more than one occasion, though he doesn't ever dare to say it out loud. 

They leave Whiterun with stomachs full of food and a bag full of new rumors. At this point, their map is marked up to the point of near-uselessness, so they buy a new one from Belethor and begin anew. Dawnstar, Winterhold, Morthal. The points are scattered all around the map, farther away and farther between. Much of the information they have comes from old legends or vague hearsay.

"We could go anywhere," Marcurio says one day as they clutch wooden mugs of tea under a soft morning snow. Zee just nods, staring out over the distant horizon. Anywhere at all. 

It's odd, he sometimes reflects, that dragons can return—dragons—and yet somehow everything eventually gets back to a point where things are "normal", even though they're not. The dragons are back, and yet the weather still turns colder as the days wear on, and the people still hunker down in their houses with their stores of food for the winter until the frost yields to new growth in the spring. The dragons are back, and still they wander the roads of Skyrim, because there is still money to be made, still secrets waiting to be uncovered. The dragons are back, yet day by day this seems less like a proclamation of doom than just one more arbitrary fact of reality. 

And then, of course, it all goes to shit.

Chapter Text

He had lost his horse back in the hills southeast of Morthal. An embarrassing mistake, admittedly. There was a giant camp, and he had made a bet with Zee, and by the time he had realized they were too close, it was much too late to do anything about it; he could only watch in dismay as the poor creature got knocked nearly into orbit by the swing of a massive club. The whole thing was rather traumatic, and he had made sure to get suitably wasted later that night in tribute to the slain beast. Zee drank with him, and even joined him in a toast to the animal, upon whom he had tearfully bestowed the posthumous moniker of "Brynnleigh". (He strongly suspected that Zee thought it was a totally ridiculous name, but the Argonian was polite enough to conceal his giggling behind his bottle of mead). 

All that to say, they have to share Zee's horse on the way back down to Riften, which is why he rides on the back of the saddle with his arms slung loosely around Zee's waist, and for no other reason than that. 

It's there that the trouble starts, down in the birch forest. They ride slow, ostensibly to take it easy on the horse under its extra load, but really mostly to enjoy the relatively sunny weather, which is leaning on the side of unseasonably warm for a Skyrim winter (which, truthfully, isn't very warm at all). Zee has his nose stretched up towards the sky, his hood pulled down so he can soak up every last ray of sunlight that comes his way. A picture pops into Marcurio's mind of a tiny lizard in an equally tiny black cloak, stretched out on a flat rock in the sun, and he starts to laugh.

"What?" Zee turns halfway in the saddle, then elbows him when he continues to laugh. "What? Is something funny?" 

"Yeah," Marcurio says, half out of breath. "Yeah, funny lookin'."  Zee elbows him again, and he only giggles harder. Zee sighs and shakes his head as he turns back around, but the tip of his tail twitches in poorly-disguised amusement. 

Tears in his eyes and stomach aching with laughter, he doesn't realize it at first when the horse begins to slow. It's only when they judder to a complete halt that Marcurio realizes that Zee's back is stiff against him, and he looks up. Zee is staring off at something to their left; Marcurio's eyes are still a little too blurry to make out his expression, and he scrubs at them vigorously. It's then that he notices how quiet everything is, even for winter. Far too quiet.

"What?" he begins to ask, but the word dies in his throat almost as soon as it forms. With so many practically identical trees, it's hard to miss the great scar of black the width of a small town, scorching through the woods all along the east side of the road. "Woah. Shit." 

Zee doesn't say anything. His pupils are tiny slits as they trace the river of scorched earth and foliage up the road. Looking closely, Marcurio thinks he can see the sooty bones of some unfortunate animal poking up from behind a burnt bush. He swallows, his mouth suddenly dry. 

"Maybe there's one roosting over in the mountains?" he says uncertainly, turning his gaze to the line of distant peaks in the east. Zee still doesn't say anything; they both know this is too far south to be within a normal hunting radius of the mountains. 

Much too far. 

"Let's pick up the pace," Zee says eventually, his voice low and hoarse. Marcurio nods, although Zee can't see him. Zee spurs the horse forward. 

They continue towards Riften at a decent clip. Zee's mare pants under the exertion of their quickened pace, but she soldiers on despite the strain. Marcurio's arms are no longer around Zee's middle, instead tense by his sides, ready to cast at a moment's notice. Zee's bow lays across his lap; he twiddles an arrow nervously between two fingers. 

They crest another hill, and that's when they see the smoke. Marcurio's stomach drops. 

"Fuck," Zee hisses. 

"Is that over Riften?" 

"Yes." Zee's voice is strained. "Fuck." 

"Zee." 

Zee doesn't answer for a moment. 

"Zee. We need to start running. Now." 

A roar carries faintly on the wind. Zee jabs his heels into the horse's sides. She lurches into a run. 

Riften is on fire. 

The watchtower looks like it was probably hit first. The top of it has been knocked clean off, like a child having a tantrum with a a block tower; the roof lies upside-down on the other side of the road. Marcurio spies two bodies as they pass, one half-buried in the rubble. The smell of burning flesh indicates the presence of more inside the smoldering ruins. 

The gate has escaped destruction, but only barely. The entire section of wall to the left of the city's entrance has collapsed—more bodies. Zee leaps from his horse as they make it within sight of the stables, Marcurio following close behind. He doesn't stop to see where the horse goes, but he hears her retreat somewhere beyond what's left of the stables; there are no living horses in sight. 

The space around the front gate is chaos. One of the doors is half-crushed under the weight of the collapsed wall, but some guard or enterprising civilian has propped the other one open with a piece of debris. The jagged mouth of the city vomits a writhing stream of people, half of them covered in soot and many in blood, most of them shouting and screaming at the tops of their lungs. A couple of harried-looking guards are trying to maintain some semblance of order, but are failing miserably—as he watches, Marcurio sees at least two people stumble and fall, promptly disappearing beneath the mass of trampling feet. 

Zee darts his hand into the crowd and pulls someone out from the throng. It takes Marcurio a moment to recognize Sapphire under the layer of ash she's caked in, coated in grey from her boots to the top of her head. 

"I need a status update," Zee says sharply. Sapphire stares at him blankly for a moment. He shakes her once, hard. "Sapphire." 

Sapphire starts as if snapped from a trance. Her tone is clipped: "Most of the Guild is already underground. Brynjolf had us evacuate some of the civilians down into the Ratway—the orphanage, I think, and a couple of the Jarl's people. Vipir's dead. Tunnel entrance caved in on him. I haven't been able to find Thrynn." 

"Maven?" 

Sapphire jabs a thumb over her shoulder. Marcurio spies the Black-Briar matriarch amidst the congregation, accompanied by Maul, who is armed and shoving people out of the way with the handle of his battleaxe. Maven's hair is sooty and she holds a handkerchief over her mouth, but she otherwise looks no worse for wear. "Delvin was leading the other Black-Briars down to the Vaults, last I checked." 

"What about the dragon?" 

Sapphire's face is white underneath the soot. She opens her mouth to respond, but is cut off by the sound of a familiar voice screaming, "Talen-Jei!"

Mjoll the Lioness stumbles through the gate with a thrashing Keerava slung over her shoulder, screaming her head off. Her tail thrashes in Mjoll's face; she kicks and punches to get away, but the Nord woman's arms hold fast as she hauls her bodily away from the city. The ferrety little squire of Mjoll's, whose name Marcurio can never be bothered to remember, hurries alongside the two of them with a harried look about him, his long coat singed at the edges. 

"Put me down! Talen-Jei!" Keerava's eyes are wild, her head swinging to and fro like a panicked animal. Her movements stall for just a moment as her shell-shocked gaze finally lands on Marcurio and Zee—then she continues thrashing and screaming with renewed vigor. "Put me down, I said! Gods damn you! Talen-Jei is still in there!" 

Marcurio snaps his head up and locks eyes with Zee. In his periphery, Sapphire is still staring at them, wide-eyed and with her mouth half-open, like she's waiting for instructions. 

"I'm going in there," Zee announces, and turns for the gate. 

"Boss—" Sapphire begins to protest. 

"Zee—" Marcurio says at the same time. 

But Zee is already gone, slipping in among the crowds of people and disappearing beyond the gate. 

Marcurio swears, but dives in after him anyway. 

Sapphire doesn't follow them, but to Marcurio, shouldering his way against the current of people and back into the burning city, this fact feels inconsequential. The only thing on his mind is catching up to Zee. 

The stream of people widens into a great mass as he emerges back onto the city streets, and Marcurio has to press himself flat against the wall to avoid their desperate crush against the gate. Half of the main walkway has collapsed into the canals below, and the crowd spills out into the side roads. Marcurio picks a back alley and runs, layering on every armoring spell he can think of as he sprints for the Barb. He thinks he might catch a fleeting glimpse of tail turning a corner ahead of him, but he isn't entirely sure until the block of houses suddenly ends and he nearly slams headlong into Zee's back. The Argonian is stock-still in the middle of the street, starkly silhouetted against the wall of flames in front of him. 

The Barb is little more than a burning pile of rubble at this point. The top floor has collapsed in on itself, and the ground floor is well on its way, completely engulfed in flames. The clouds have closed over their heads at some point in the preceding hours, and it looks like it'll rain, but not soon enough—not nearly soon enough. 

"Cover me," shouts Zee, nearly inaudible over the roar of the fire, and makes a beeline for what remains of the entrance. 

"This is insane!" Marcurio protests, but he's already casting frost spells over Zee's shoulder before the words leave his mouth. He manages to make a sizeable dent in the flames around the door, enough for Zee to duck inside the building without his cloak catching on fire. The flames close quickly behind him, though, and Marcurio is left coughing and spluttering when a wave of smoke belches from the door, rolling over him in a sickly black wave. 

He redoubles his efforts, frosting every inch of wood he can reach, but it's not enough. He had lost sight of Zee the moment he went inside, and what can realistically only be about thirty seconds drags out to what feels like half an hour as he pours magicka from his fingertips, straining to see with burning eyes in the smog. "Zee!" he tries to shout, but the smoke sears his throat and he coughs, magic failing as he doubles over and hacks bile out onto the planks. Zee, you son of a bitch, if you die in there, I'm going to take up necromancy and resurrect you just so I can fucking kill you a second time. 

As if in answer, the crumbling remains of the door crack and splinter, shattering as Zee bursts out into the open with a limp form draped over his shoulders. His dark armor is rendered lighter by the thick layer of ash that coats it. Marcurio instinctively flings out another frost spell to clear the air around them, and as the smoke scatters, he can make out of the silhouette of Talen-Jei draped over Zee's back. Marcurio can't tell if he's alive, and he doesn't want to. 

"The gate," Zee rasps, voice harsh and gravelly from the smoke. "Go!" 

They sprint back for the gates, slowing briefly so that Marcurio can turn and retch over the side of the walkway. The crowd at the north end of the city is slowly beginning to thin out; someone has managed to force open the other side of the gate, and the last of the stragglers are funneling out onto the road. 

As they run towards the crowd, a head of red hair breaks away from the panicked crowd and begins bobbing towards them. As they draw closer, Iona comes into focus through the haze of dust, frazzled but apparently uninjured, and armed to the teeth. "My Thane!" she shouts, her brash voice carrying easily over the din. She glances only briefly at Marcurio and Talen-Jei's limp body before focusing intently on Zee's face. "Sapphire told me you went back in, so I came looking for you. Are you hurt?" 

"No, not me. Take him." Zee shoves Talen-Jei into Iona's arms before she can reply. Her eyes widen, but she accepts the unexpected burden with little more than a grunt, hauling Talen-Jei up onto her back. Zee pulls his bow, already strung, from his back, and nocks an arrow. "Where's the dragon?" 

"It was in the city center, near the Keep, last time I checked," Iona says, looking worried. "Thane, listen—" 

"I'm going back in." 

"Zee—" 

Zee turns and leaves before either of them can answer. Marcurio and Iona exchange a glance. Iona shrugs: What can you do? 

"Try and make sure he doesn't get himself killed, yeah?" the housecarl says. Then she turns and makes her way for the city entrance, taking Talen-Jei with her. 

Marcurio almost laughs aloud at the thought of how fiercely Lydia would disapprove if she were here. Then he turns and runs after his foolish employer. 

The plaza is eerily silent when he arrives, but this fact is anything but reassuring. The streets in the central district are littered with bodies, growing more and more numerous as Marcurio nears the Keep, until he's practically tripping over corpses and pieces of corpses as he runs through the streets. Most of the main stairways down to plankside have collapsed, along with the platforms attached to them, forcing him to take roundabout paths between buildings or jump over gaps where he can. In the alley above Beggar's Row, he nearly steps on what remains of Snilf the beggar, lying face-down in a pool of his own blood, and has to fight the urge to be sick where he stands. He continues forward. 

A thin haze of smoke hangs over the plaza when he emerges. Most of the merchant stalls have been knocked over like so many bundles of sticks; pieces of produce from Marise's stall are scattered haphazardly across the cobbles. Squinting, Marcurio can make out a few guards stationed in various positions around the plaza. Most of them keep their weapons trained on the Keep, which looms empty and silent out of the gloom. Marcurio feels a stone of dread forming in the pit of his stomach. 

He finally spots Zee crouched behind a section of the half-wall that surrounds the plaza, and sprints forward to join him. Two guards huddle nearby behind the same section of wall; on closer inspection, one of them is limp and unresponsive, with a severe dent in his helmet. Zee spares Marcurio a glance, his eyes like round yellow lamps in the haze. 

Where? Marcurio mouths, even though he's already pretty sure he knows. Zee raises a finger and points it, trembling almost imperceptibly, at the Keep. There. 

A low growl seems to rumble the very earth around them. Zee's head snaps around, his nostrils flaring. 

Seeing a dragon flying distantly in the sky above, Marcurio thinks, is one thing. The up-close reality is so much worse. His breath lodges hard in his throat as the very foundation of the Keep creaks and shudders, and a great sinewy form emerges from behind it and onto the roof. Its scales, shining bloody in places in the light from a few scattered torches, scrape against the shingles in a terrible cacophony of grinding. Chunks of wood chip off of the Keep's roof and tumble down into the yard below. 

"By the Nine," Marcurio breathes, not sure if he means it as a prayer or a curse. 

The dragon growls, then, and looks directly at them—and at Zee. It's reptilian eyes burn with something that Marcurio first thinks to describe as hatred, except that isn't quite right. It strikes him as something much more potent than that, much more ancient. 

The dragon roars, and the whole square shakes with the fury of it. Then it lifts its wings and takes off. 

Marcurio moves back with a cry, but quickly realizes that Zee isn't following—he's still as a statue, his gaze still locked on the dragon's as it rears up over them, the guards screaming and scrambling from the loom of its shadow. "Zee, gods damn it—!" Marcurio grabs him frantically by the arm and yanks, shoving him down behind the shattered wreckage of the well. The dragon bellows, and rains down a gout of flame right on top of them.

He ducks and covers his head, the heat scorching the pile of bricks in front of him, flames missing the top of his head by mere inches. Wind buffets them as the dragon shrieks again, its wings flapping as it propels itself higher into the air. The guards are in disarray, shouting frantically and firing arrows haphazardly into the sky. They all fall short of the dragon as it begins wheeling in a lazy circle above the plaza. 

"Zee—" Marcurio begins to curse for the umpteenth time that day, but a burst of movement makes him forget whatever he was about to say. The string of the bow twangs sharply as Zee looses three arrows in rapid succession. Two of them go wide, but the third hits its mark, tearing through the thin fibers at the ends of the dragon's wing when it swoops past. The dragon roars, in pain and what is now certainly anger, propelling itself higher into the sky. 

What follows is complete chaos. 

Marcurio snaps into action, pelting the dragon with spells as fast as Zee and the guards can fire arrows. Most of them go wide, and the rest glance off of its scales like nothing more than pebbles. At some point, Zee runs out of arrows; he pulls a new quiver off the charred corpse of a city guard and keeps on shooting. His earlier stillness is gone, replaced by a frenetic energy that reduces him to a veritable blur of movement. 

"Aim for its wings!" Zee shouts as he fires off another arrow, which goes sailing past the dragon to lodge itself in a roof somewhere. 

"Easy for you to say!" Marcurio replies through gritted teeth, launching a frustrated spike of ice wildly into the air. 

He gets lucky, though—the shot hits, tearing through one of the delicate sheets of skin on the dragon's left wing. The creature lurches in midair, screaming its rage. It tears out of its circle and swoops down over the houses to the west, releasing gusts of flame as it goes. 

"After it!" Marcurio shouts, along with half of the remaining guards. Zee is already running. 

Marcurio follows, lungs burning from exertion, only able to keep up with Zee by virtue of him stopping every few seconds to fire more arrows, or scoop more off the ground from one of the many corpses scattered about. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the dragon doesn't retreat, but doubles back as it approaches the edge of the city, swooping back and forth over the buildings in an erratic pattern, spewing fire at everything in reach. Zee pauses a moment, cocking his head in consideration, and then in a series of impressive vaults, launches himself on top of the awning of a small shop, and then up onto the balcony of the house next door. 

"What in Oblivion are you doing?!" yells Marcurio, stopping in the street below the balcony, because he's athletic for a mage, but not that athletic. 

"Getting a better vantage!" Zee calls over his shoulder, already hauling himself up onto the roof. Marcurio lets out a string of every colorful insult he knows, and sprints off down the nearest side-street. 

The dragon leads them on a wildly zig-zagging path through the city, reemerging next to the meadery. Zee vaults across the rooftops in an outrageous display of acrobatics, firing shots as he goes. Marcurio follows as close as he can, slinging spells with abandon. In that time, several arrows and a few spells find their mark, tearing through those enormous leathery wings, occasionally lodging in the chinks between scales. By the time they emerge into the wide open street in front of the Black-Briar Meadery, the dragon is beginning to look much like an overgrown pincushion. 

It's a fireball that does it—Marcurio flings out his hand, winces as it sears through his magicka reserves. The shot hits true, in the dragon's right wing, close to its shoulder. It shrieks as the magic scorches a hole right through leathery skin and continues to burn, eating away at its flesh. The sound of its rage is so loud that Marcurio stops to cover his ears, pain lancing through his head. The beast's wings flap furiously, now trying to get away in earnest, but it's too little, too late. The dragon's body lists uncooperatively to the side, rapidly losing control as it careens towards the ground.

Only then does Marcurio realize what is about to happen, and so does Zee—but by then it is far too late to do anything about it. Zee stumbles backwards just as the dragon crashes down on roof of the Black-Briar Meadery, just a few feet away from where he's standing. 

"Zee!" Marcurio cries, unable to do much more than stand and watch in horror as the impact knocks Zee off his feet, nearly sending him flying off the edge. He catches himself just in time and hauls himself back up onto the roof with great effort, his arms trembling with exhaustion. At the same time, the dragon shakes its head and pushes itself into a standing position, fixing its bloody gaze on Zee. It narrows its eyes and lets out a tremendous, rumbling snarl. 

Zee doesn't look back, just shoves himself to his feet and starts to run. The dragon—much larger, and much faster—pursues, the roof cracking and crumbling under its feet. Marcurio, abruptly paralyzed from his head to his toes, can only watch, hardly able to hear anything over the ringing in his ears. 

Several things happen in rapid succession. 

First, Zee nears the end of the roof—but not quickly enough, not nearly. The dragon catches up. 

Second, a sound echoes in the air, cutting cleanly through the ringing his head. Words that Marcurio doesn't recognize, with the volume of a shout but the texture of a whisper—a quality that will only come to make sense to him much later. 

Third, the dragon's jaws close around Zee—and pass right through him. 

Fourth, Zee goes crashing through the roof of the meadery. 

Marcurio stares, gobsmacked, as Zee disappears from view—not eaten, somehow, but dead, surely. Amidst his many other racing thoughts (how, what, why, what the fuck), he faintly wonders if he should use a spell to look for Zee's aura, to check if he's still alive—ridiculous, not like he has the magicka left to do that anyway—but he finds that he can't. He finds that he can't do much of anything, in fact, except stare mutely as the dragon throws its head back and roars its frustration to the heavens. 

Then it turns, and fixes its gaze on a new target. 

Oh. Shit. 

Marcurio turns and runs. 

He ducks into the alley just as the dragon crashes into the entrance, bellowing in frustration as the sturdy stone foundations of the nicer houses hamper its pursuit. It's short-lived; a moment later, Marcurio hears the eaves trembling above him as the dragon clambers up onto the rooftops and continues its chase. He doesn't dare turn back to check how close behind it is, and continues to run like his life depends on it, because it does. 

He ducks and dives through alleys and side-streets, trying to lose it, but to no avail—that fireball had not gone any way towards making him any new reptilian friends, and the creature's singular focus at this point seems to be in rendering him into tiny little Marcurio-shaped pieces. Thoughts tumble through his head like items dropped down a staircase—the Barb, dragon, tired, roof, Zee, dead, chasing, dead, dead. He wheels around a corner into an intersection without thinking—too open. The dragon drops heavily to the ground behind him. Gasping for breath, Marcurio wheels around, feeble lightning crackling between his raised palms as he readies himself for a certain and terrible demise. 

Then there's a flash of silver over his shoulder, and a wet thunk. The dragon lets out something approaching a yelp (if a yelp could also be terrifying) and begins shaking its head furiously—amidst all the movement, Marcurio can just make out the hilt of a dagger sticking out of the soft flesh around its nostril. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of blonde hair in the mouth of an alley. Vex. 

"Run, lad!" Brynjolf's voice echoes from somewhere over his head. The dragon is beginning to recover itself. Marcurio sucks all of the air he can manage into his aching lungs and does just that. 

The dragon roars as it pursues him through the shabbier houses of the poorer areas of dryside. Planks and shingles go flying as the creature simply shoulders its way through many of the buildings, apparently unconcerned with further injuries to its wings or to the rest of its body, destroying with abandon in its furious quest to catch Marcurio and rend him limb from limb. Exhaustion threatens to rip him from consciousness, his vision blackening at the edges—only pure fear and adrenaline keeps him on his feet. Occasionally he gets a glimpse of red or blonde hair just at the edge of his periphery, flitting over a rooftop or past him in an alleyway, but never for long. A couple more daggers fly out of the darkness, but they all glance harmlessly off the dragon's armored scales, and it pays them no mind. 

"Lead it to the plaza!" Brynjolf's voice calls again from above. Marcurio turns to look this time, but he can't see the man anywhere on the rooftops above him. Which is a shame, because he would really like to give him a look to express just how terrible he thinks that idea is, since he doesn't have enough breath at the moment to say it out loud. 

Unfortunately, he hasn't got any better ideas, either. He sends a brief prayer to Nocturnal asking for a favor in Zee's memory. Then he heads for the plaza. 

He makes it, but only barely. His knees give out right when he reaches the well, and he collapses, gasping for air, scrabbling for a hold on the ruined bricks just to keep himself upright. Dread settles its terrible, heavy weight over his shoulders, and he turns around slowly, not sure if he even wants to see what's behind him. 

The dragon clambers down from the rooftops, slithering to a halt at the very edge of the plaza. Its claws stretch forward, its enormous, tattered wings cresting the brick half-wall. It moves slowly, almost leisurely—like it knows that the chase is over, that there's nowhere left for Marcurio to run, even if he wanted to. The only thing he could manage at this point is hiding behind the well, and honestly, he's not even sure he could make it that far. This is it, Marcurio thinks. This is how I die. Of all the stupid things. 

Behind the dragon, its long, scaly tail twitches, curling up and over its back, in almost a mocking imitation of Zee's. Marcurio isn't sure whether he wants to laugh or cry. Fucking lizard. Fucking bastard. 

The dragon advances. 

Then, a sharp cry comes from somewhere to his left, and several more things happen in quick succession. 

First, Marcurio watches in disbelief as one very scorched and very angry Mjoll the Lioness erupts out of a nearby side-street and charges, bellowing, straight at the dragon in the center of the plaza. 

Second, a shape emerges on a nearby rooftop, little more than a dark blob at the edge of Marcurio's vision. 

Third, Mjoll buries her sword in the side of the dragon's neck. 

Fourth, the sword gets stuck. The dragon swings its head to one side, and then the other, and sends Mjoll flying through the side of a nearby building. 

Fifth, in the brief moment of distraction, the dark shape leaps from the rooftop—and Zee lands right on the dragon's head, burying his knife in its eyeball. 

Sixth, the dragon screams. Loudly. Marcurio takes his hands off the ruined well to cover his ears, and nearly falls on his face in the process.

The dragon is going crazy, thrashing its head wildly this way and that, smashing walls and windows with its wings and tail. Zee dangles like a ragdoll from the dagger embedded deep within its eye, but by some incredible feat of strength, or by the grace of Nocturnal, or maybe just by the sheer force of his audacity, he manages to hang on. The dragon opens its mouth to scream again...

...and Zee drops one hand from the dagger, hanging from it by one arm while he uses the other to draw the sword from his belt. He plants his feet on the edge of the dragon's open maw, and with a vicious swing he drives the sword into the roof of the dragon's mouth. 

Marcurio covers his ears in anticipation of another scream, but it never comes. The dragon gives a big, shuddering jerk, stiffening like a hound on a scent. Then it collapses, all at once, like a great big sack of bones. 

Zee releases his grip on the dagger and sword and drops to the ground. His knees buckle on impact, and he stumbles backwards. Marcurio lurches forward, unsure what he plans to do but feeling like he should do something. He ends up colliding with Zee's back, and they tumble to the ground in a heap. In front of them, the dragon gives another violent shudder, and then stills, crumpled on the ground. Dead. 

For a few long, surreal seconds, the plaza is utterly still and quiet. Bodies of guards litter the area—the rest lie dead elsewhere in the city or have scattered to the winds. 

Slowly, Vex's pale face emerges from the shadows of an alleyway. Brynjolf follows a moment later. He looks around, then runs off in the direction where Mjoll had disappeared. 

"Is it dead?" Vex asks, eyeing the dragon's body from several feet away, her knives still drawn. 

Marcurio stares at the body over Zee's shoulder. Zee, meanwhile, is shuffling around in front of him, trying to stand up; his sword arm is gushing blood, though, and he keeps slipping in the puddle beginning to form underneath him. Marcurio has half a mind to tell him to stop, but can't, his eyes still fixed on the corpse of the dragon. 

The body is starting to disintegrate. 

It's slow at first—so slow he thinks he's imagining it, then all at once. Its skin seems to dry out and shrivel, then crack, like a lizard shedding skin, with fine lines of light appearing in the seams between the scales. Then, suddenly, there is a great rush of wind, and the light pours forth from it like a broken dam. The light flows out and hits Zee directly in the chest--and then, just like that, it's gone. 

And the body of the dragon is nothing more than a pile of bones on the cobbles. 

Zee stumbles backward and collapses on the ground in front of Marcurio again. 

Vex's face is very pale. "Boss," she says slowly. "What the fuck." 

Movement off to Marcurio's left. Brynjolf emerges from the wreckage of what was once a house, dragging a bloody and unconscious Mjoll. He blanches at the sight of the bones. "What—" 

Zee doesn't say anything. His back is pressed against Marcurio's chest; he can feel Zee trembling violently against him, clutching the wound in his arm to staunch the bleeding. Vex looks at Marcurio with a strange expression on her face, almost imploring. Marcurio realizes, with a jolt, that she's waiting for him to offer some sort of explanation--one that he doesn't have. 

Brynjolf seems to realize the reality of the situation a few moments before Vex does. 

"You should leave, lad."

Zee's gaze flicks up to meet Brynjolf's, but he doesn't otherwise react. The elder thief swallows thickly and glances around, but the courtyard is still empty. "Get out of town for a while, maybe, until all of this blows over, and things… go back to normal. I'll… I'll come up with something to tell the others." 

Vex is still staring hard at Marcurio. Her gaze feels accusing, almost. Reproachful. 

Almost in a trance, Marcurio feels himself reach for the pouch at his belt, and with great effort he manages to unclasp it with his shaky fingers. He pulls out one of the small flasks inside, uncorks it, and swallows its contents. The energy flows through him immediately, hot and artificial, but steadying. He struggles to his feet, grabbing Zee under the arms and pulling him up with him. Zee complies almost bonelessly, a puppet with cut strings. He's staring down at the pile of bones, lying stark white against the soot-stained cobbles of the plaza. 

"Go on, lad," Brynjolf says quietly, and nudges one of the bones, almost experimentally, with the toe of his boot. 

Zee nods, once, dazedly. Marcurio grabs him by the elbow of his good arm and leads him down the ruined street.

Chapter Text

They split up in front of the burned-out husk of the Pawned Prawn. Zee heads back to Honeyside, which remains mostly in one piece, to gather up a few things, while Marcurio goes to salvage through what remains of the Barb to see if any of his belongings are still intact. The rain had started while they were limping their way back to the northern housing district—most of the fires had burned themselves out by that point, and what's left of the Barb now is little more than charred rubble. A couple of guards and Ratway dwellers alike can be seen beginning to sift through the remains, but other than that, the city is mostly deserted. 

It's just as well that Marcurio kept very few of his possessions in the Barb. Almost nothing salvageable remains. He finds Okin lodged in a wooden beam in the ruins of the old bar. Eduj, wherever it is, is likely buried beneath the still-smoldering embers. Marcurio can't find it in himself to go dig it out. 

Honeyside has a back door that opens outside the city walls, and they meet up there. Iona has yet to return. Zee shows up with a haphazardly stuffed pack full of a random-seeming assortment of objects, his injured arm crudely bandaged and dressed with some foul-smelling poultice. Marcurio can't find it in himself to critique his packing, either. At least his quiver is full again, and he's replaced his sword and dagger with the malachite sword from above the mantelpiece. They make their way up to the northern road in silence. 

The stables are completely destroyed. Only two horses remain that Marcurio can see—one dead in the road, and the other in two pieces, one of which is on the roof. Zee's mare is nowhere to be found, dead or run off, along with most of their travelling supplies. They don't have time to look for her without risking being spotted by too many people, so they don't. It all seems strangely inconsequential at the moment, anyway. 

He doesn't stop to wonder why he's even going with Zee, and Zee doesn't stop to ask. 

They trudge along for as long as they can manage, until they reach that scarred patch of birch that had stopped them in their tracks only hours earlier—though now it feels like days. Zee stops when he sees it and just stares blankly at the burned-out trees. The blackened earth looks even blacker now, dampened by the rain.

Marcurio stops a few paces behind. Every muscle in his body throbs with pain and exhaustion; he downs another flask from his belt pouch, knowing he's going to feel like shit later if he doesn't get some actual rest, but not caring, unable to stomach the thought of anything but the continuation of their mindless exertion. 

"It's my fault," Zee says abruptly, still looking at the scorched trees. There's a sort of dazed look on his face. His yellow eyes appear almost fuzzy in the misty air. "It probably came here because of me." 

"You didn't know," Marcurio says. 

Zee doesn't say anything. Marcurio gets an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Zee, tell me you didn't know." 

Zee still doesn't say anything. 

"Zee." 

"There was a dragon at Whiterun."

A pause. Zee's voice is like a bottomless, empty pit. "I helped kill it. I wasn't the one who landed the killing blow, but I was there when it died." 

"You—" 

"Its soul went... into me. A few people saw. One of them was the Jarl's bodyguard. That was part of why he made me Thane."

Zee says it all flatly, his tone colorless, like these are all just simple facts, like the bottom of the world hasn't just fallen out from underneath them. 

"Zee, what the fuck."

"All of it was hearsay, though, and it wasn't like there was any living precedent for anyone to go off of. So I worked the rumor mill for a while, and pretty soon that was all anyone thought it was—just a rumor. I ignored the Greybeards' summons. After a while I almost managed to convince myself that it was a fluke. But the rumors never went away entirely. So I came to Riften. To start over." 

"And now half the city is burned down!" Marcurio explodes. 

"I know." 

Marcurio stares at him in disbelief, but Zee won't meet his eyes. 

How many times are we going to do this? he wants to shout. He wants to grab him by the collar and shake him. He wants to wring his neck. How long are you going to lie to me? How many people are going to have to die, how many times are you going to almost get me killed, before you stop lying to me? 

"We're going to fix this," he says instead, the words dragging out of him in a harsh rasp. "You're going to fix this. You are going to march up to High Hrothgar if I have to drag your sorry ass up there myself, and you are going to talk to those Greybeards and get them to tell you how to fix this." 

Zee nods shakily, though he doesn't say anything, just fiddles with the string of his bow. He looks resigned. Underneath that, he looks afraid. 

Fucking bastard.