Years passed.
The girl found solace in a straggly
gang of youths a bit older than she that nearly killed her when they caught her
robbing the house they were squatting. She impressed them when she took three
of them down in a heartbeat, finishing with a knife to their leader’s neck.
They were ex-miners from Markarth’s brutal silver mines, not content with the
abuse and misery that went into the meager jobs and instead retreating to the
bridges above the city, relying on petty thievery and brawls with other street
rats to survive.
Markarth was a staggeringly vast
city, and in it, Merill gladly lost herself. There was a place for her among
the craggy rooftops and grungy streets, a place where she didn’t have to think
about Brelin burning in the cabin or a sword through Nalimir’s heart whenever
she closed her eyes. The others in the gang never asked her questions – they
all had pain in their past, and no-one wanted to talk about it.
There was a certain cruel comradery
about them, a fierce sort of pride in their petty work to survive among the
stone and silver of Markarth. Edrene was the leader, a Breton girl that was
only two years Merill’s senior but lethal with two axes. There were others, too
– a quiet Argonian boy that Merill saw strangle a guard that tried to arrest
her, an older Dunmer girl with a foul mouth that burned things and poured
poison down the waterfalls when she was bored, two mean-faced Nord twins that
were always beating one another up. They were all hard and mean, and Merill
liked it. When she spent her time being cruel, she didn’t have to think about
the guilt that twisted her heart near in half.
A few years after Merill arrived in
Markarth, a Khajiit girl joined them, Merill’s age. Her name was Kiseen, and
Merill’s interest pricked when she saw the bow over the girl’s shoulder. She
hadn’t shot once since the cabin burned, too afraid to see how badly her skill
would have depleted after she lost half her sight.
Kiseen was patient, and quicker on
her feet than Merill, and they began to spend long hours in the alleys down by
the prison mine, Merill struggling to correct her shot. Her talent had waned
after years of neglect, and the lack of an eye was a jarring correction to
make. She snatched a bow out of the fletcher’s shop the first chance she got,
and she began to spend hours down in the alleys, sometimes with Kiseen to help
and sometimes on her own, trying to keep her frustration quelled as she fired
at the hay-bales stacked at the alley’s end. Vague memories of similar
determination stirred in her sometimes, memories of Brelin teaching her to hunt
deep in the southern pine forest. When they surfaced, she pushed them down
again, the guilt too strong to bear.
Over five years after her flight
from the forest, the end of Last Seed found Merill perched atop one of the high
stone walls of Markarth, her bow in her lap and her one eye gazing out over the
craggy hills of the Reach as the sun sank down behind her. She had lost the
softness in her face and belly, and now her jaw was hard and square, every bit
of her tight with muscle. Her freckled skin was crisscrossed with scars, though
they were all dwarfed by the great thick one that cut jaggedly down the left
end of her face, through her one milky blind eye.
She hated being alone now. Being
alone meant being idle, and being idle meant old memories clawing up. But it
was the Harvest’s End festival, and the others had all slunk down to the lower
streets to see what mischief they could arouse. Merill hated the festivals –
they reminded her of Nalimir, how much he would have loved them. Edrene hadn’t
said a word when Merill had climbed out the window of the current house they
were squatting in while the others prepared to go. Merill knew they understood.
“Hungry?” Merill turned as Kiseen climbed up
beside her, brandishing a sweet roll undoubtedly nicked from the festival
below. The sounds from it were faint, this high up, but still there – lots of
laughter and talk, and distant threads of music weaving by.
“Starved,” she replied, snatching
the sweet roll and tearing off a chunk of it. The roll was stale, probably from
the baker’s back cart, but she didn’t care. To someone living off a diet of
stolen scraps wherever they were found, the roll was a feast. “Didn’t want to
stay at the party?” she asked bitterly, picking off another bit of roll with
her freckled, callused fingers. Kiseen gave Merill a searching look. She was a scrawny
Khajiit, small with a dingy brown coat and keen yellow eyes under dirt-scrubbed
fur, but Merill liked her all the same. None of the gangs in Markarth had
anything to boast about. They’d heard once that the Dunmer in their own group
was fucking a girl a few streets over, and Merill was no stranger to hasty
one-night encounters, but out on the bridges, no-one really cared.
“You see one, you see them all,”
Kiseen told her airily, scooting over on the wall to dangle her feet beside
Merill’s. They were treacherously high, high enough to die instantly if they
fell. But they wouldn’t. Neither of them ever fell.
“Heard one of the Housecarls
talking in the square yesterday,” Kiseen remarked after a time. “Said it
wouldn’t be much longer till the Stormcloaks are at this gate.”
“Why the hell would a Housecarl be
in the square?” Merill asked skeptically, casting Kiseen a sidelong glance.
“I’m telling you, that’s what they
said,” she insisted. “Sooner or later this place is going to be flying blue
banners.”
“The Stormcloaks were getting ready
to rebel years ago. They’re not gonna do it now,” Merill muttered, glaring
east, where the mountains rose jaggedly up, blocking the horizon. The setting
sun had painted the clouds a dazzling pinkish gold, but it was now fading into
an inky darkness, stars winking out from beneath the folds of sky.
“You gonna join up if they do?”
“No fucking way,” Merill shot back,
sudden venom in her voice. “They’re the whole reason the Thalmor are here in
the first place.” Kiseen didn’t respond. She knew better than to pry.
“They’re saying it’s safer in the
south,” Kiseen said finally, when the darkness had fallen fully and the city
began to light up beneath them. They kept their backs to the festival, staring
out at the quiet crags of the Reach instead. “Easier to get by. For Khajiit, at
least.”
“So you’re saying you’re leaving?”
Merill asked, picking at the remains of the sweet roll.
“This city’s just about dried up,
Merill, you know well as I do,” Kiseen told her tartly. “Sooner or later the
Jarl’s going to have to make a choice, and when he does things are going to
change around here. The guards aren’t going to look the other way anymore.”
“So we find a different city,”
Merill said simply.
“A different city in the south,” Kiseen told her, and
Merill glanced at her, one scarred eyebrow raised. “Edrene and the others,
they’re too stubborn, they’ll stay in Markarth till they die, probably with a
guard’s sword through their bellies. We’re smarter than that.”
“You been thinking about this, eh?”
Merill asked, offering her the remains of the sweet roll. Kiseen held up a paw
and Merill tossed it behind them over the wall.
“I’ve heard people talking about
Anvil – right on the western coast, huge now, bigger than Markarth, and full of
rich Imperials. And we wouldn’t have to worry about freezing in our sleep
there,” she added as a chill tugged at their sleeves. Merill turned her gaze
southward, where the mountains hid Cyrodiil from sight. She just made to turn
back to Kiseen when something struck her, hard, in the side of the head. She
lost her balance and felt herself sliding off the wall, hands grasping for a
hold. She caught the edge of the wall with one hand, clutching her bow with the
other, her feet scrabbling at the wall for a foothold.
“Renrij!” she heard Kiseen snarling as she tossed her bow over,
pulling herself back up. Her scalp was smarting where the stone had hit, but
she had long since learned not to show it. Paulus and Cleo, two mangy teenagers
from another gang, where at the other end of the wall, chucking stones.
“Go to hell,” Merill snarled,
yanking an arrow from her quiver.
“One-eye can’t even shoot
straight!” Paulus taunted. Her arrow struck him between the eyes and he tipped
over the wall, his body cracking at the bottom. Cleo screamed and made to run,
but a second arrow caught her in the back and she folded and tumbled down the
wall’s other side.
“Are you fucking stupid?” Kiseen
hissed. “In the middle of a festival?”
“They were –”
“Ja Kha-jay, Merill, they’re going to throw us in Cidhna Mine,” she
snarled, and in an instant they were off, moving lightly across the wall and
leaping to the next one as shouts echoed from below. They crossed the city with
ease, taking the rooftops and the uppermost bridges and staying off the crowded
lower streets, even as guards began to push through the crowd, yelling about a
murder.
“Don’t see why they care all of a
sudden,” Kiseen spat as they swung through the broken window into their current
squatter, dark and littered with rubbish from a skooma bounce the night before.
“They didn’t give a shit when Ravir got dumped in the river.”
“Let’s go now!” Merill said
suddenly, and Kiseen stared at her, her muddy eyes wide.
“What?”
“You said you wanted to go to
Cyrodiil,” Merill replied, excitement beginning to course through her as she
snatched up her bag from its hiding place under a loose plank on the floor.
“Let’s go now!”
“Half the city’s looking for us!”
“Which’ll make it more fun,” Merill
told her with a wink, thrusting Kiseen’s bag to her. “Let’s go!”
“I swear to every god there is, Ja,” Kiseen hissed as Merill yanked
open the door and peered down the narrow street. “If we get thrown in that mine
–”
“Shut up,” Merill shot back. “You
want to try something stupid?”
“We already are!” Kiseen was
saying, but Merill didn’t wait for an answer, instead sprinting forward and
taking a running leap over the bridge and into the waterfall, screaming with
delight as she sailed downward, curling into a ball and rolling at the shallow,
rocky bottom. Festival-goers shrieked and skirted out of the way, and Merill
shoved them aside, trusting that Kiseen was following as she shouldered her way
through the crowd, running and ducking and swinging around the people that
crowded the lower streets.
“Hold!” someone was shouting behind
her, but it only spurred her on, adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Something primal stirred deep inside her, a sort of gleeful thrill at the
danger around her. “Hold!” An arrow
flew past her, just missing her head, and struck the shoulder of a man in front
of her. Merill leapt lightly over him as he stumbled and swung her bow as she
neared the main city gates, blocked by a single guard. Her bow cracked him over
the head with a sickening crunch, and
she raced past him, into the grassy field outside the city. She chanced a
glance back – Kiseen was right behind her, and about seven guards spilling out
the gate.
“Come on!” Merill shouted, wheeling around and
making a beeline for the stables, and she lightly hopped the fence and swung
herself up onto a grazing blue roan. Merill dug her heels into the horse’s side
and it sprang at her touch, jumping the fence with ease and galloping down the
road, toward the dark mountains overhead, leaving the noise-choked city behind.
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