#paperandpaws

…Justiciar Avcaina?

Aendir’s pulled his nose up from the leather-bound book, and he glanced at her. “Hmm? Oh,” a devious smile graced the left half of his face, “why I do believe it is.” 

The book closed with a clap before he held the book out to her. “It was sitting out. It seems I mistook it for my journal.” 

Ceridwen was a beautiful genius.

It had been many a long year since he had engaged the thrill of espionage. He had struck a gold mine with Ceridwen; in spite of her nervous disposition, she possessed a curious talent for underhanded forgery. Without her, he would venture to suppose, they would not have been able to pull this charade together, and certainly not with such efficiency.

Baelan would never see it coming.

It was with this certainty in mind that Arveldis prepared his patrol. With Baelan predictably eager to apprehend the fugitive Justiciar Aldir on alleged orders from their supervisor, they would need to move quickly. While Baelan believed himself to be the only patrol supervisor assigned to Falkreath hold for this quarter, Arveldis counted on him letting his guard down. The greatest risk in this mission, aside, perhaps, from using Lhaeben as bait, was that its success hinged on Arveldis’s patrol locating Baelan’s contraband. Reports of a Falkreath skooma operation did provide some modicum of confidence for this, but nevertheless, he was nervous.

Arveldis found it difficult to sleep during their travels. He spent his time watching the auroras shimmer between Masser and Secunda, consoling himself with the idea that Lhaeben was awake and witnessing the same sight. Hopefully, they would watch it together when this was all over.

The night they reached Falkreath, the patrol continued at Arveldis’s behest. Pressed for time as they were, he could not afford his fellows the rest. Fortunately, the four found themselves in agreeable spirits, and made decent time. Arveldis had not been through Falkreath before, however, and had to deal with thicker forestation than he had realized. They reached Arveldis’s coordinates behind schedule, but it was not without success. Near dawn, they stumbled upon the mother lode.

North of Brittleshin Pass, they surrounded a suspicious campsite after Arveldis’s eagle eye “luckily” spotted one of their Solitude company’s organizers of internal affairs, and pointed out that there should not have been another patrol in Falkreath Hold. Quicky, Arveldis carried out its seizure. To his delight, they did not resist, and Arveldis ordered his second to search for evidence of disorderly conduct. It had almost gone according to plan, if not for one significant detail.

“Where is Baelan?” He smacked the back of his hand against the papers he had been delivered, bearing Baelan’s signature. “He is responsible for this atrocity. I want him apprehended.”

"He took half the company ‘roud to Brittleshin. Said he had business there." 

Arveldis gnashed his teeth, and turned his gaze southwest.

[Once in the relative safety of his sleeping quarters and aided by a Muffle spell, Arveldis turns to face Ceridwen.]

Ah…

Well, I had intended to do the contacting. However, it seems someone has gone ahead of me.

Winter was always the worst season in Eastmarch but then again, when you live at the very edge of Eastmarch, every season is the worst.  It was near the coast, but it certainly wasn’t a balmy Summerset shoreline or Daggerfall beach.  The wind was bitter and cold, the snow thick on the ground, and it took a certain kind of person to make the wilds -for anything in Eastmarch away from Windhelm was wild- their home.  You had to be either very determined or very eccentric.  Thankfully, Neht was both.

There was frost and snow just a jump away, but around where Neht’s tower stood was a broad, circular swathe of green grass, a few flowers -alchemy reagents, incidentally- beginning to poke through as if it were the start of spring.  Then there was, of course, the tower itself, a behemoth of a tree heavy with fruit and flowers, a stark contrast to the rest of the hold and, in fact, most of Skyrim.  Neither the grass nor the tree had been easy to raise in the winter's chill, but the wizard-priest who dwelt in the little patch of spring had all the time in the world to explore his pet botany projects.

Said wizard was currently sitting on the front step of the old hunting lodge he worked out of with a box full of seed packets in his lap as he sorted through them all, inspecting the contents of each packet.  Occasionally, he'd open one, frown, and toss the seeds aside into a nearby bucket.  Not thrilling work, no, but the life of a Telvanni wizard was 80% tedium and 10% flashy displays of magic.  The other 10% was mostly devoted to backstabbing, house politics, the occasional bout of kidnapping, and excellent dinner parties.

As Neht sorted through the seeds he was going to use in his next experiment, a snow-and-cream colored cat patrolled the edges of the mer-made meadow.  Cat wasn't quite the right word.  Alfiq was correct, but as far as Jo'rabi was concerned, what the wizard didn't know couldn't hurt him.  Alas, there were no rival mages to spy on, no Khajiiti caravans in the distance, not even a good rat to chase.  As usual, things around Tel Persi were terribly, horribly dull.