Chapter Text
They arrived in Whiterun around noon the next day after renting stable horses. Lucia was waiting in the house for them both as they returned. So the tension between them was covered by a child vying for her attention.
Between the fight and the wound and the hard push for home, she was exhausted, and Guilus spoke to Lucia kindly, he picked her up and called her Little Fox, even as he did his best not to look at Livvy. She thought perhaps she was being oversensitive after the silent ride toward home.
She watched as he moved through the small home. Getting smaller, she realized as Blaise ran through with a wooden sword. Neither child noticed that their father was somewhat quieter and more thoughtful than he normally was at home, though she surely did. She prepared a rabbit stew and a loaf of bread. He polished his armor and mace in preparation for the next fight. She made a restorative potion and stocked it onto a shelf for him to pack their bags for the road, and, when the moment came to go to bed, he kissed her lightly and lay down tensely beside her. Olivia felt the tension like a knife betweent them.
She slept fitfully through the night, dreaming of dragons, and was wholly unprepared for the betrayal that came in the morning.
She woke to the sound of the streets outside stirring with the dawn. She heard the distant brook that ran through the city and Lucia, below, showing Blaze all the books her father brought back on his travels insisting that they learn as much as possible.
She hears him complain, “Really? We have to study?”
“Yes,” she answered happily, “But then you get treats and Mama pays for lessons to learn to fight dragons. It’s wonderful. I even help make potions, and she says I can learn enchanting when I’m old enough!”
Livvy smiles into her pillow at the loud boasting, and realized she lay alone in the bed. Turning over and seeing his pack no longer by the dresser, she rose quickly and ran down the stairs to see Lydia sitting at the dining table looking guilty and yet smug, so very smug.
“Where the hell did he go, Lydia?” Her eyes flashed fire at the housecarl who answered calmly enough to make her near enraged. She stood and handed her a note,
“He left this. He’s meeting his contact. That’s genuinely all he told me.”
“He went to Rifton alone!” Her heart pounded in equal measures anger and fear.
She notices the children watching her with frightened expressions because she never, never lost it this way. She was the rock. She extended a hand. “Come. It’s all right. Lydia, go to the stable and prepare my horse. I’ll be there as soon as I’m ready.”
Lydia barely held back her smirk. “I’ve been ordered not to.”
“You’ve been…,” she barely contained her own reaction to that. “All right, we’ll see about this. Is my horse still there?”
Lydia had the sense to look somewhat concerned as her mistress grew evermore angry. She had a good sense of self preservation if nothing else. “Did Jenassa go with him?”
“No, miss.”
“Very well.” She pinned the woman with a stair that would freeze a heart. “Your only duty until I return is the safety of this house and these children.”
Lydia dismissed from her thoughts, she looked at both of her children. “You two are to stay within the walls for the time being. There is a good reason, I promise you.” She ruffled Blaise’s hair. “Don’t fight with Braith if you can help it.”
“Mama, are you angry at Papa?” This from the little fox. Best not to lie, she decided.
“It will pass, Lucia. He has done a foolish thing, and I intend to correct that. It will be well, Fox.”The look on her daughter’s face made her regret her reaction to his absence.
With a sigh, she patted them both solemnly and turned to the stairs. She would ride for Riften and make a few things clear to the Dragonborn. Less than an hour was all it took to don her newest leathers and the enchanted hood that hid her face from the soldiers on the road. She threw her bow on her back, along with the ice arrows she’d commissioned from the fletcher. She’d buckled on her sheath and chosen a dagger to rest opposite her sword.
Livvy bound her hair up on her head and then tromped down the stair to say goodbye to the children. “I’ll bring something good if it can be found,”
They weren’t enthusiastic about it, and she could have cursed her unguarded behavior. They didn’t need something to worry over.
The Drunken Huntsman stood empty but for Jenassa who smiled wickedly when she saw Liv dressed for the road. “He said you would come.”
“Are you coming with me, or did he threaten you?”
She smirked. “No one threatens me, sirrah. I wield my sword where I like. He does believe you will not venture the road, you know. I told him he was wrong.”
Olivia focused on her boots for a moment breathing in deeply. “All right, gear up. You can tell him I told you so in person. I’ll be at the stable.”
She heard Jenassa laughing as she stepped back out to the street. She’d prepared the horses by the time Jenassa rounded the bend.They took the road in silence until they reached the turn off. Liv looked up at the sun, noting it’s place in the sky.
“I intend to leave the road. You still in?”
“Mara save me from love,” she said. “I follow.”
Livvy urged the horse off the road and to a faster trot. Guilus was headed to the parts of Riften that no one should go into alone, and she and her husband were about to have their very first fight… with each other at any rate. One that might make him miss the Ratway when all was said and done.
There was a thief or two upon the road who were no longer there to bother the public once she and Jenassa passed. They rested the horses once and took one night's rest on the road. After that, she pushed them all to the limit to reach Riften.
The Riften stableboy smiled broadly at her as she rode up.
“Shadr, have you seen my husband?” She asked the question as she dismounted and handed him the reins. He paused beside the animal to look at her face.
“He left his horse in the dawn hours. Anything amiss?”
“Only for him, Shadr. Here’s some silver for all the animals. We may be a bit inside the city.”
He nodded at her and took the horses. “I hope it all ends well, Milady.”
She sometimes forgot that she was the wife of a thane now. She missed a step as she turned away from the boy. Olivia took the short road to the gates and one guard approached as she got closer.
He opened his mouth to start his bullshit about taxes. She pulled her hood back and let him see her face with her feelings written all over it. They had some consequence and were slowly amassing the wealth to back it up.
“Before you start, are you certain you want to charge a toll for the wife of a Thane?” She waited for the fool to speak. “I thought not. Open the damn gates or I will speak to your Thane.”
He fell over himself to open the city to her. Jenassa softly chuckled behind her, and Olivia spoke to her over her shoulder. “So glad I can amuse you.”
“You certainly do,” she laughed.
“He’s in the ratway by now,” Livvie whispered to her companion.
She nodded as they made their way down the boardwalk, boots heavy on the old boards. “Daylight matters not down there. You believe he rested and took a meal before he went down.”
Liv nodded back and took the stairway down that he’d pointed out to her on their wedding trip. “It’s here somewhere.”
Jenassa moved past her to point to the note on a door close. “A public notice not to go in the Ratway.”
The note had been there long enough to be nearly illegible, rain spattered as it was. Jenassa and Liv pulled their swords free at the same time and smiled at each other. “Shall we?”
The underbelly of Riften was damp, dank and disgusting, and peopled by the saddest citizens of the commonwealth. Lichen and mildew pressed on the walls and the shuffle of creatures in the dark was always there. They came to a roundabout where two bodies lay near a camp.
“Well, he’s been through here, I imagine. They continue into the Ratway and meet with a few more bodies as they pass. “Sweet Mara, he’ll have done the guard’s job for them.”
They came to what looked like they could have been cells at some point possibly. The entire structure was nonsensical. She suspected it had at one time been a reservoir for water reserves and perhaps meant to run sewage through the city away from the water, but it clearly hadn’t been completed or perhaps it had another purpose altogether. They heard a voice just around the corner as they neared it.
The two locked eyes as they snuck up on the occupants of the large space beneath a set of stairs.
“Thalmor,” she whispered to Jen.
“Do you have objections to killing them?”
Olivia smiles without humor. “You think we have a choice?”
The wide smile on Jenassa’s face would have been chilling on anyone, but was moreso on her delicate, beautiful face.
She loved to show off for Liv, who she considered her student. Any deference Jenassa gave to Olivia was rooted only in station and rank, and there was precious little of it that she spent on anyone.
They fought the first soldier together, however, once the others joined the battle they were separated. Olivia ending up opposite the mage. She used the ward Farengar had sold her, and he had helped her practice, even if he hadn’t taught her much. It saved her life this day.
She held off his spell long enough for Jenassa to cut him from behind and move back to her opponent gracefully as if dancing. Allowing Liv the space to cut him down for good with the move Amren had taught her, she pulled her sword free just as the last one headed her way.
She grunted with the force the mace as it hit her sword deflecting a killing blow, but she was hauled by the throat to the enemy’s face with such speed it dizzied her. “Olivia!”
Jenassa stood between them and an old ragged man who appeared ready to conjure something. “Hold! Esbern, it’s my wife.”
“Esbern,” Olivia repeated. “I’ve read about you, sir.” Glaring at her husband, she quipped. “I take it there are more Thalmor waiting around every corner.”
He clearly translated the anger in her voice as she stepped back, shaken. “Likely.”
“Hmm.”
Janassa laughed at the both of them and brightly told the Dragonborn. “I told you so. Olivia, you are correct. That is very satisfying.”
“Told you so,” Liv quipped back. She started back the way they had come.
“Olivia,” her husband called. She kept moving.
“Let’s go, Jen. I need to kill things.”
Behind her, she heard a dark chuckle from her friend and her husband’s whispered, “You are not a good influence.”
To which, Jen replied, “and you have not been a good husband, my friend. Sending that bitch with the note and telling her to ignore her mistress’ orders? You must be mad.”
There was only silence after that, until more Thalmor arrived to give her something to take her anger out on.
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