Dag watched Gulum-Ei scurry down the road out of Solitude. His pace, and the stiff way that he held himself and glanced to either side of the road from time to time, told her that he was nervous and wary of being followed.
And so he was. This was going to be a real test of her ability to hide, to blend into the shadows, and to move silently. She’d always been fairly good at these things, but not overly serious about perfecting them. Now it was not just some game she was playing to fool Coyle and Doran on the docks, but a necessity. It was even possible that her life depended on it, for she had no idea what she was walking into.
Gulum-Ei turned left onto the road that led toward the Solitude docks, and disappeared from Dagnell’s sight. She frowned. Before her was a pair of guards at the outer gates; beyond them the stables and the carriage driver waiting for his next fare. There was almost no possibility that she could get past all of those people without being seen. To her left, though, were the outermost reaches of the stone arch that held Solitude proper. She decided to chance that as an approach.
It was oddly easy to find a climbing route up the rocks and over the ridgeline, and once she had dropped over it the only creatures that had sightlines to her were the gulls flying overhead. She worked her way forward, toward the water, and reached a ledge that offered a full view of the area.
Solitude sat at the mouth of the great tidal basin where the Karth River met the sea, the same tidal basin that fed the enormous salt marshes of the Morthal region. Its great depth and open access to the sea made it as perfect a harbor as could be imagined, a port that made Solitude the wealthy city that it was. Dag closed her eyes and breathed deeply for just a moment. Salt air. Cold, crisp, full of the tang of fish and brine, the calls of seabirds, and the distant clang of buoy bells. Aside from the temperature, it felt like home to her. It was a poignant, dreadful mixture of delight and sorrow, but she savored it as long as she dared. Then she opened her eyes and scanned the area again.
Below her was the road that Gulum-Ei had taken; it hugged the bottom of Solitude’s supporting archway and then followed the shoreline to the north and east. Movement caught her eye. Gulum-Ei was just coming into view; she dropped as low as she could and stayed motionless while he passed beneath her. Edging forward, she watched as he turned onto the wooden ramps that led down to the wharves. Once his head dipped below her line of sight, she dropped down off her perch and skittered across the road. Just to the left of the wooden rampway was an area of rocks that looked reasonably navigable and would give her access to the docks. This kind of terrain was home to her; she’d spent her entire youth scrambling up and down rocky areas slick with sea mist. She slid down behind the largest of the boulders, trying to move only when city guards were looking the other way, and worked her way down to just above the nearest dock. Waiting as deeply huddled in the shadows as she could get, she watched until Gulum-Ei passed her, opening a small door at the left end of the dock and slipping inside the East Empire Shipping Company’s warehouse.
It was nothing if not impressive. A truly enormous pair of doors just above the waterline closed off what must be a natural waterway under Solitude. Above it was a constructed stone arch that carried Solitude’s shoreline road over the warehouse entrance. It was an ingenious design that would allow for all but the tallest shipping vessels to enter the area behind those huge doors, while keeping their contents secure.
Dag had no idea what was in there, but that was where she needed to go next.
She waited until the lone guard walking patrol had passed her, then jumped down onto the dock and made her way to the door Gulum-Ei had used. It was locked, but not a difficult lock to pick, for which she was truly grateful. It clicked open just as the guard was reaching the far end of his patrol route, and she slipped inside. There was a small entry room with a table and chair, but beyond them the space opened into the gigantic, water-filled cavern she had expected to find.
Wooden wharves and ramps, as well as shelving as tall as most houses, ran around the perimeter of the cavern in a great horseshoe shape. Most of these were piled high with goods of all kinds, or stacked with chests that held things she couldn’t see but would give an arm to look into. In several spots, natural ledges higher up had been used to place small buildings, probably an office or two, overlooking the entirety. There were, as she had expected, a number of good-sized shipping vessels docked on either side of the water. The place was full of enough wealth to keep most of Skyrim fed and clothed for years on end.
And it was crawling with guards.
Dag spotted Gulum-Ei making his way through the labyrinth of shelving units, and a guard heading toward her but still not close enough to have spotted her. She looked around for options; the first was to get into the water and hope she could swim, unnoticed, to wherever Gulum-Ei ended up. But that water was frigid, and Dag knew how well she dealt with cold. Just ahead was one of the building-height shelving sections, with a ramp placed for access to its upper levels. She bolted for that and darted up it into the shadows just before the guard turned a corner and passed beneath her perch.
There were planks laid across between shelving units here, making for a crude pathway nearly all the way around the left side of the cavern. If she was extremely careful and stayed out of the light, Dag could probably follow Gulum-Ei without encountering any guards. She hoped. Once the guard beneath her had turned back to resume his patrol route, she crept along behind and above him.
Her path led her up another ramp, to one of the natural ledges. She froze at the top of the ramp as the sound of snoring alerted her to a man sound asleep at the foot of another rack of chests and boxes. She held her breath for what felt like a lifetime, but he never so much as twitched. What a target he would make for an assassin, just lying there with no protection like that, she thought with a grin. She crept past him and along a narrow plank ledge. It ended abruptly, but she was able to drop down onto a natural outcropping and behind an overturned table.
“What was that?” came from just ahead of her, from one of the guards.
“Is anybody there?” from another, a woman this time.
Damn, she thought. They heard me. It had been a long shot, the idea that she could drop from that height without making at least some noise. Now what? She reached for her swords but thought better of it; the sound of them sliding out of the scabbards would surely give her away, no matter how carefully she did it. The only thing she could do was sit tight and try not to breathe until they gave up looking. But what about following Gulum-Ei? It didn’t matter; if she moved they were going to see her, and she was fairly sure she would then be dead.
It felt like a long, healthy lifetime before the guards stopped calling out for each other and looking for her, but at last they gave up and went back to their patrols. She stood slowly, and scanned the area for Gulum-Ei.
Inexplicably, he was still visible a good way ahead of her. She had no idea what he’d been doing while she was hiding, but she watched in amazement as he walked down a set of wooden stairs into the water and then seemed to disappear. Doesn’t matter what he was doing, she thought. I know where he went.
She was going to have to drop down onto the main level in order to get to her destination, and timing that was tricky. There was a guard on one of the boats, facing her, and another walking patrol along the stretch just beneath her. She had to wait until the guard on the boat turned to look across the water, and the patrol guard was walking away from her, to let herself down and slither behind some shelves into the shadows. Slinking around the far end of a boat and behind more racks, she finally reached the stairway down which Gulum-Ei had disappeared. Beside them were more stairs leading to a large ramp up. Dag followed the path with her eyes; it led up along the walls of the cavern and then doubled back to one of the offices she’d seen from the Warehouse’s entrance.
“Well I’m not going to get a chance to pick through this warehouse,” she thought. “But by Stendarr, I’m going to see what’s in that office.” She waited until the guards were looking the other way, then dashed up the ramp and back down the path to the office.
Once she was inside, Dag stood and released the deep breath she’d been holding. A moment to regroup was a very valuable thing indeed; and so had this side trip been. The room was full of pelts, coin purses, clothing, books, jewels, and any number of things that looked worthy of lifting. She decided to grab just the coin and the jewels; but made an exception for the East Empire Company shipping routes map lying on a table. “I’ll bet Delvin could make really good use of this,” she murmured, rolling it up and tucking it into her pack.
Making her way back down to the stairway, she slipped out of her pack and held it on her shoulder while she waded into the frigid water where Gulum-Ei had gone. There was a ramp up, closer to the cavern wall, cleverly placed so as to be inaccessible except from this spot in the water, under the main walkway. She waded around pillars until finding the base of the ramp. Just as she emerged from the water and was slipping her pack back on, she heard “You’re not supposed to be here!”
Dag ran forward, around a set of shelves. She could hear footsteps behind her. Damn, I’m going to die now, she thought. But as she rounded the corner she spotted a door. Without a clue what she was going to find behind it, she bolted through it.