They spent the rest of the day telling stories, laughing, walking around Riften and along the lake arm in arm. They made a stop at the meadery and spent several hours enjoying the brews. At the end of it, they sat on the porch of Honeyside, watching the sunset, and Dagnell marveled at how different her life was now than it had been on that awful day when J’hall’s wagon had been destroyed. She felt very loved, not just because Roggi had come to see her but because Brynolf had made it happen.
“Tell me about Brynjolf,” Roggi said, looking out over Lake Honrich.
She looked at him, surprised. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I want to know who is getting my best girl.” He smiled. He was serious, she decided.
“Well,” she said slowly, “how to say it. He’s infuriating,” she laughed. “And he’s got a huge ego. Half the time I want to hit him, but he’s a lot bigger than me and that wouldn’t be a good move on my part.” Roggi chuckled.
She laughed. “I wouldn’t want to take you on either, any more. You’ve been… practicing.” His arms had gotten huge. He must have been swinging that sword every day.
Roggi looked up at her, sideways, with a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I have.”
She looked at him and sighed. “Well, I don’t know what to say. He’s a thief and a con man, and really good at it. Heck, he even conned me into working with him even though I suspected what he was. That’s how I happened to be doing what I was doing when you and I went to Whiterun. He managed to corner me.” She stopped to think. What else did she know about him? Oddly little other than the experiences they’d shared in the past few months. He hadn’t really told her that much about himself or his past, truthfully. In fact, she thought, trying hard to suppress a giggle, I still don’t know whether he’s slept with the whole Guild or not. She smiled. “He’s … very strong. I saw him in some real life or death situations not too long ago. I don’t think many people could take him on and come out the other side in one piece.”
Roggi looked her in the eye. “So why are you with him then, if he’s infuriating and frightening and all that?”
She had to stop and think. How can I say it, kindly? “He … he loves me, Roggi.”
He looked away, back out over the lake and said, softly, “So do I, Dag.”
It was stunning, the way he put it. He’d never actually told her that, in those specific terms, before. Dag didn’t know what to say, how to respond. I know, she thought. I know you do, Roggi, and I love you too, but you left me, and he didn’t. Is that why you’re here, really? She sighed.
“He’s not a good man the way you are, Roggi. But the Guild is his family. He would do anything at all for those people.”
Then she grinned. “And he has a temper. And a nose that shows it. And a scar that, well, I don’t even know what that shows. Maybe I’ll find out some day but I’m not sure I even want to. I must be naturally drawn to men with short fuses. I guess you expect that with redheads, though.”
Roggi stiffened. “Redheads?”
“Yes, he’s big, and has really red hair. When I first met him I didn’t know his name, so I called him Red. He hated it. I guess he’s getting used to it now.” She snickered.
Roggi let out a breath. “That’s the man who came to see me.”
“What?”
“I don’t remember a lot of those first couple of weeks but I remember that. Bigger than me, red hair, and a big scar. It’s the sort of thing that stands out.” They fell silent for a moment, looking out over the lake.
“How strange,” Roggi said. “I like him. I do. We sort of hit it off. No, we really did hit it off; that was more fun than I’d had in… forever. And not just a warm feeling because I was swimming in mead. I got the feeling that he liked me, too. To think that I’ve actually met him already.”
Dag’s mind was running in circles of confusion. There was something missing in all this.
“I did tell him that I’d gone north to get backup when I left for Whiterun. But how would he have known to look for you, specifically? That makes no sense. Unless…”
“Unless?”
“The night you left. I ended up… well I’m not sure what all I might have said. I vaguely remember… or maybe not.”
Roggi looked at her for a moment, his mouth open in astonishment, and then laughed, a big hearty laugh, his eyes sparkling. “I can’t even picture it.”
“It wasn’t pretty.”
They sat for a few more minutes. A couple of times Roggi started to snicker, until Dag poked him in the arm.
“It’s not funny, Roggi,” she grumbled.
“Yeah, it really is,” he chuckled. “I feel better, somehow, knowing it wasn’t just me.”
“No wonder,” Dag said.
“What’s that?”
“No wonder he didn’t think it was a good idea to invite you in person. You knew him already. That’s why he sent Delvin instead.”
“I see,” Roggi said, and then paused, thinking. “Wait. So that means he’s the “boss” Delvin mentioned. He’s the one in charge of the Guild.”
“For now, yes. And you need to keep that to yourself.“
“Just for now? Is he going to quit once you make an honest man of him?”
Dag looked at Roggi, wondering, and then nodded. She owed him this much truth. “No. The old Guildmaster is gone. Dead. We had to, um, … put him down.”
We, Dag’s sarcastic inner voice laughed. That’s one way to describe it I suppose.
“Bryn was Second until now, and of course he stepped up when this all happened. They — want me to take over soon, once things have settled down, and he’ll be my Second.”
Roggi’s eyes widened. “You?” He lowered his elbows onto his knees and his forehead into his hands. A few moments went by until he spoke quietly. “I won’t lie to you, that’s really hard to take. I’m not really sure what to think. It was something just to get used to the idea that you were working with them at all.”
“I know. I’m not sure what to think, either. But I seem to be very good at this business, and they seem to trust me. And please, please don’t ever mention it to anyone, Roggi. Not because of me, that’s not important. It could be dangerous for you and I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you.”
After another long silence, Dag said “Roggi, I never thought I’d have anyone to care for again after Coyle, not until I met you. Having you here is the best gift anyone could have given me. I feel like … like someone brought a candle into a corner of the room that I thought would never have light in it again.”
She glanced at Roggi, who still hadn’t lifted his head from his hands, struggling with emotions she couldn’t see but thought she could guess. He hated thieves and bandits for the best of all possible reasons, yet this person he loved was one.
She paused. The next thing to be said was a “but…” and she didn’t want to say it, would give anything for it not to need to be said. “And then there’s Brynjolf. To me he’s…” she trailed off, words failing her again. “I didn’t realize, because I was so busy trying to prove him wrong about me, about anything, really, arrogant bastard that he is. But I just… can’t… picture being without him.”
Roggi sighed, then raised his head and reached out to take one of her hands. There was a long moment of silence that she didn’t want to interrupt; she could tell that he was searching for the right words. He smiled; it was sad, but it was a smile. Then he sighed.
“Being in love is like finding the piece of yourself that you didn’t even know was missing,” he murmured.
Dag was stunned. That’s exactly what it was.
Roggi paused for a moment, as if weighing his next words. When he did speak, it was quietly, carefully.
“I would stand beside you until the divines took us. I think you know that. I don’t quite know how that happened, but it did, from the moment you came back to Kynesgrove with my shield. I will stand with you anyway, whether you’re mine or not, if you ever need me.”
He closed his eyes tight for a moment, then opened them and looked at her.
“But we both know who it is that you need. Go plan a wedding with that thief of yours. I’ll stay over at the Bee and Barb and see what kind of trouble I can get myself into until after the ceremony.”
She looked at him, marveling at how hard it must have been for him to say so. He had changed so much since she first met him. He seemed so much stronger. Maybe this is how he’d always been, but it had been buried under the mine and the mead.
She thought for a moment. “I still don’t really understand why Brynjolf did this, bringing you here.”
Roggi smiled, sadly. “It’s easy to understand. He wants you to be sure. He loves you and he wants you to be sure.”
That observation caught Dag off guard, startled yet again by how perceptive Brynjolf really was. He truly had a gift. But the implications of that observation were enormous. Did Brynjolf really have any doubt? Did she?
Change the subject, Dag, she thought. Change the subject before we have to travel farther down this road. “Tell me about Briinda.”
“Oh.” He looked at her, surprised, thinking, and then nodded. “Well I suppose it’s only fair.”
Roggi was quiet for a long few moments, looking out over the lake. He took a drink, then set the bottle on the railing of the porch and took a deep breath.
“Well,” he began slowly, “I told you how we were Stormcloaks. Me and Briinda. A couple of true Nords fighting for our homeland. She was so strong. She was this little … spitfire.” He smiled, gently.
Then he launched into one of his stories, full of sounds and pictures, told with great care and love. Dag could almost see them, serving on guard duty at the fort on the Eastmarch side of the river near that broken-down prison that he had known in better days, skirmishing with occasional Imperial patrols, and shooting the breeze in between battles. She could picture him watching Briinda’s back when he should have been watching his own. She laughed at the mental picture of the little blonde Nord with no fear and a wicked bow dragging him all over Skyrim and south into Cyrodill, singing for him around the campfires, coaxing him into the bedroll with her even though the younger Roggi didn’t think it was proper. She imagined Roggi following along, sometimes nearly in bewilderment, particularly on the day when Briinda bounced all around him on the road, saying “Roggi! Marry me, Roggi. Come on, marry me. Be my husband. Let’s do it.”
Roggi smiled, but he looked so very sad. He leaned forward and propped his arms on his knees, looking out over the lake.
“We did it, all right,” he said softly. “She talked me into it. It wasn’t hard. We actually got married in Cyrodiil, about a year before that trip to Riften. Only Kjeld knew about it, because he’s my oldest friend and in spite of my better judgment I tell him things. After we left the Stormcloaks, I talked to the priests here, and they agreed to our little plan to stage a proper wedding with the family and friends, here in Riften. It was going to be quite the affair for a little clan from Kynesgrove. But… then we got ambushed on the road. I told you that part before. You wouldn’t have thought we had enough to be a good target, but it seems we did.”
Dag gasped. “You…were married?” That certainly shed some light on why Roggi had gotten so flustered every time someone assumed they were a couple.
Roggi’s voice got softer, his eyes far away. He nodded.
“I tried so hard to save them, Dag. I fought so hard. You know I can fight, but it just wasn’t enough. She could, too, but she didn’t have a chance; they caught her from behind. I swear to you that they wounded me so badly I really thought I was done for, or I’d have fought till I was. I watched her die. My parents, my family. My wife. All I could do in the end was pretend to be dead myself. I felt … like I had failed all of them.”
He frowned. He had the look of a man who had already cried every tear he could possibly cry over that day and was surprised that there were no more. His voice dropped yet again, quieter, darker.
“I guess I was dead for a long while after that, really. Something happened to me, Dag. I’m not sure what. I went out looking for those bandits and I made them suffer. Every one of them. I don’t even know how I was able to do what I did to them all, but let’s just say that I’m very good at inflicting pain, now. It’s… an art form, if you do it right. I told you before. They got what they deserved.” He shook his head.
The hair rose on the back of Dag’s neck. She thought back to all the enemies she’d seen Roggi kill on the road, to him breaking Rolff’s nose without a second thought, and thought yes, now I understand, and I know how that feels. I felt like that with Mercer, at the end. It was unsettling, though, to think of funny, sweet Roggi purposefully making the bandits suffer. The jokes, the stories. They were a mask to hide behind. She knew how it felt.
“I think I was crazy. I know I was crazy. And then… I’m not sure why I thought drowning myself in a mead barrel was going to help. It never does, no matter how many times I’ve tried it. All it does is postpone the pain for a little while. I still love the stuff, and I always will, but I got carried away.”
He looked sideways at her. “So, now you know all of it. You see what a good man I really am. You’re not the only one who kept secrets.”
Dag was stunned. Even with all he had told her earlier, she hadn’t imagined the true extent of what had happened to him.
“By the Eight, Roggi. That’s terrible. They killed…your wife? But why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “people in Skyrim only get married once, if they get married. Just once. I … after Nilheim, I hoped that maybe … if you didn’t know.“ He looked at her, apologetic. “That’s what I was trying to tell you that day when we got back here, and I’m sorry. I’m a selfish man. But I figured that Kjeld wouldn’t say anything. He’s always after me to get myself another woman. Gods know being married doesn’t hold him back.”
Dag was stunned, yet again.
“That’s terrible,” she said again.
“I know. I’m not very proud of myself, to be plain about it. And we won’t talk about Kjeld.”
“No, not you, you oaf,” she said, swatting at his arm. “It’s terrible that a person could be left alone and then be, well, left alone. That’s just a horrible tradition.”
She sighed. “But, Roggi. No matter how hard you try to deny it you are a good man. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t care. Don’t you see that? There are so many terrible people in this world, who have done terrible things, and they don’t even care what pain they might have inflicted on someone else. You do. You deserve to be happy. You deserve much better than me. I’m a…”
You’re a killer, the voice in her head told her.
“I’m just nothing but a stray and a thief. I’m so very sorry.”
He gazed at her for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. It’s ok. It’s been good to remember how to fight. It’s good to be able to feel things again. It’s good to have myself back again. I’ll be fine.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it, smiling.
Dag found herself nearly in tears again. Her small voice was prodding her, for once not sarcastic, just insistent. How can you give up this man? Brynjolf knows how it is, you know how it is. Brynjolf isn’t right for you. Roggi is. Don’t waste this chance. Bryn will understand. He would, too. She knew that with a certainty. In spite of their having barely acknowledged their own love Brynjolf wanted her to be certain.
Yes, being in love was like finding the piece you didn’t know was missing. But her problem, she realized in dismay as she looked at Roggi, was that there had been two pieces of her missing. One of them was waiting to marry her, and one of them was sitting here right now, radiating affection. And she loved both of them. If he hadn’t left that day, she probably would be married to him now, and she knew that with a certainty as well.
She didn’t trust this voice, never had, but it was impossible to ignore it.
She squeezed his hand back, swallowed the enormous knot in her throat, and said quietly, “I don’t want you to go, Roggi. I don’t want to be alone tonight. Stay here with me.”
He was startled. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said quietly.
“Please, Roggi. I just want to be near you. I have a spare bedroom, you can stay there.”
He was silent for several long moments, emotions flickering across his face. Sadness, longing, dismay.
“I don’t think … I could promise to just be near you,” he finally said, quietly. “You keep telling me I’m a good man, but I’m not. I’m selfish, Dag. If I stay here I’m going to do everything I possibly can to change your mind about marrying Brynjolf, and it probably won’t end well for any of us. He doesn’t deserve that. I like the man I met at the inn, even if he is a thief.”
He looked at her and smiled. “You don’t need to make things better, and I don’t want you to throw away your future for me. I’m going to go back to the inn. Don’t worry, I won’t leave before your wedding. Hear me though. I may not ever be your husband but I am your friend, and I always will be.”
He stood, leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, then walked back through the house and toward the inn. Dag watched him go, wondering how she had managed to do something so wrong and feel so little in its wake. I should feel bad about even suggesting it, Dag thought. But I don’t. She sat for a long time, thinking.
And the more she thought, the more unpleasant the thoughts became.
I’m the selfish one. I want them both.
But Roggi hated thieves and bandits. And she was the future master of the Thieves Guild.
Dag reached into the cupboard and pulled out another mead bottle, then went to the back porch and sat with it and her thoughts for a long time. Yes, she did feel bad about suggesting Roggi stay. It was a horrible thing to have considered doing to both him and Brynjolf. Because she had no doubt that if he had stayed, there was only one way things would have gone, and she wouldn’t have had the tiniest shred of guilt about it.
Well I guess they picked the right person to lead the Guild, she thought bitterly. Brynjolf cares too much about his people to do it and apparently I don’t care enough. Maybe Mercer was right, and there’s not much difference between him and me. It wasn’t her other voice speaking, for once.