Dardeh made his way down the slope into Steamscorch mine, torn between excitement and dread. He had longed to see Roggi again since he had left him behind to heal in Whiterun, but he didn’t know what sort of reception he would get after so long. All the words he’d written to Roggi were folded up in the bottom of his pack; they’d never been sent, but he couldn’t bear to throw them out. Thinking about them had helped him keep the slim grip on reality he’d retained while he struggled his way through Apocrypha, fighting Miraak and his own raging desire for supremacy over him.
Roggi was leaning against a support, talking to Dravynea the Dunmer mage, and Dardeh caught his breath. Roggi looked wonderful; stronger, somehow. He’d clearly been training.
Dravynea noticed Dardeh first, nodded in his direction and walked away. Roggi looked up and said “Can I help you?”
He doesn’t recognize me. I must look completely different.
“Hello, Roggi,” Dardeh said quietly, knowing that his voice was unmistakable.
Roggi’s eyes widened. “By Ysmir! Dardeh! I didn’t…” He stepped forward to grasp Dardeh by the shoulders and looked him over again. “It’s really you!” He pulled Dardeh into a quick hug, clapping him on the back.
Dardeh was glad Roggi couldn’t see how close he was to tears, or know how happy he was to get that hug.
Gods, Roggi, I missed you so much. You’re the reason I’m still alive. Please let me stay with you, at least for a little while.
Roggi stepped back again, scanning Dardeh’s face. It seemed to Dardeh as though he looked concerned, but then his usual jovial expression returned.
“You look, eh…”
“A little different. I know. It’s been a long time that I was away.”
“Are you back for good? How have you been? Did you just get back? What happened?” Roggi began and then laughed. “Listen to me. Come up to my house. I need to hear it all.”
Dardeh nodded. He was having a hard time mustering words, wanted to gather this man up and hold him close and knew he would never be able to do that. But at least he could spend time with him. He followed Roggi up the slope and out of the mine.
They passed Kjeld on the way.
“Quitting early today, Kjeld,” Roggi said. “Dardeh just got back from Solstheim and we need to catch up.”
Kjeld gave Dardeh the same startled once-over Roggi had, then sighed and nodded.
“Yeah, and then you’ll be off on some kind of tear again, Roggi. Well, have fun.”
Roggi laughed, then turned to Dardeh as they started down the road to his home. “Well, I don’t know what kind of tear you might take me on, but I’m certainly willing. The mine feels awfully tame after what’s been going on for the past few months.”
Dardeh nodded, but couldn’t speak.
They stepped into Roggi’s house.
“I’m guessing you could use a drink from the look on your face,” Roggi said, pulling a key out of his pocket and heading for his chest. He didn’t wait for an answer, but reached in and pulled out a bottle. Then he turned and handed it to Dardeh. His face was somber, his eyes searching.
“All right. I’ve been worrying about you all this time and you can’t imagine what Lydia’s been like. I can see it was bad. Are you all right? Time to start talking, Dar.”
Oh. So he’s been with Lydia after all. I should have expected that.
He sighed, and looked down at the bottle of mead in his hand. It was only then that he noticed Roggi didn’t have one of his own.
“You’re not going to join me?”
Roggi shook his head. “Nope. I’ve been working on staying sober since I got back from Riften.”
“Riften?”
“Yeah. Brynjolf. It’s a long story, but I’ll bet it’s not as interesting as yours and you’re going to tell me.” He grinned. “If I have to sit on you to get it out.”
Dardeh couldn’t help it; he cracked the first smile he could remember in ages, and chuckled.
“All right. I won’t make you sit on me. And I do need this,” he added, taking a long pull of his mead. “So, um,” he started, “you’ve seen Lydia?” Of course he’s seen her you fool.
“Well, not since I left Whiterun, but her letters finally caught up to me. Dar, you really shouldn’t have gone so long between messages to her. And, well,” he said, chewing on the inside of his mouth, “I would have liked knowing you were alive, too, you know?”
Wait, no? He wasn’t with her? Am I a complete idiot? Jealous of her for no reason?
“Yeah. About that. I’m really sorry. I started letters to you half a dozen times and couldn’t finish them. It was too strange there.”
“And Miraak?”
Dardeh looked Roggi in the eyes. “The Cultists won’t bother us anymore. He’s dead. But not by my hand. Not that I didn’t try.”
Roggi stared at him for a long moment, then nodded.
He recognizes this. I don’t know why, but he does.
Dardeh sat on the floor and started talking, while Roggi moved around his home, cooking, straightening, stopping to sit down beside Dardeh, then standing to move around more. The house filled with the scents of cooking fire and food, and warm tea. Dardeh told him everything he could think of: the ebony mine, the Skaal, the dragons, the Lurkers, Apocrypha, Miraak and Hermaeus Mora. And then the killer in Windhelm. Once the words began he couldn’t stop them; they just kept coming and coming. Roggi handed him food; he kept talking around mouthfuls of it, not even noticing what he was eating but distantly aware of the fact that it was good.
Roggi never said a word, but nodded and murmured “mmm-hmm” every so often.
Finally Dardeh started to run out of words.
“I dreamed about Jine again. Last night. He keeps telling me to kill the other one. I don’t know what it means.”
“Well,” Roggi said, breaking his silence at last, “it seems to me that you were supposed to go see Balgruuf about catching a dragon. Maybe that’s the other one. Maybe that’s what you need to do next.”
Dardeh nodded slowly. Roggi’s a smart man, he thought. A lot smarter than he looks on the surface. I should pay attention to him.
“All right. That seems like a good plan. Um….”
Roggi raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Will you come with me? I could, uh, use the help. After all of that I’m not so sure of myself anymore.” He stopped and shook his head. “That’s not right. I’m not sure of myself at all, anymore, Roggi. And I’m worried about the wrath of the girls once I get home,” he added, grinning.
Roggi broke into a smile that lit up the room. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Dardeh smiled back. It was more than he could have hoped for.
“So what happened in Riften?”
Roggi plopped down onto the floor beside Dardeh and sighed. “Well, it’s about Dag,” and it was his turn to talk, at great length. She had disappeared one morning after drugging her husband’s mead, leaving her wedding ring and her Thieves Guild things behind. Nobody had seen her since. Brynjolf had been well on the road to drinking himself to death when Roggi had gone to him and nursed him back to health.
“That’s why I’m not drinking, Dar. Not yet, not till I’m sure I won’t go overboard. I couldn’t stand seeing him like that. Brynjolf’s my age, a big, strong man and he was weak as a kitten when I first got there. He’s not ready for the grave yet. And neither am I,” he said, meeting Dardeh’s gaze.
Dardeh was dismayed.
“And you went to him, even though…”
“Yeah,” Roggi said quietly. “I was asked to help. It seemed like the least I could do. Bryn… he just takes things as they come, even me. Usually he does. Not this time, though, not this thing. I couldn’t walk away from that just because our situation was, um, awkward.”
I don’t know Brynjolf at all. But I want to meet him. I want to know what happened. I want to help find Dagnell. Not just for myself but for Brynjolf and for Roggi.
“So now you really can’t take me to see her,” he murmured.
Roggi sighed. “I’m sorry, Dar,” he said. “I should have taken you to Riften to meet him before. Well, we’ll go soon. Maybe Delvin will have found some information. Maybe we can help them somehow. Although Delvin has pretty much the best spies anywhere.”
“And Delvin is…”
“A name that many people know, and a person who few do,” Roggi murmured, his eyes focused on the floor, clearly deep in thought. “And someone we don’t want to cross, for any reason. I’ve met him several times. He’s a great guy. Works with Brynjolf. But he, uh…” Roggi looked up at Dardeh. “He knows people. Who know other people.”
Dardeh stared at him for a moment in confusion. Then it slowly dawned on him. Who would a member of the Thieves Guild know that would cause that kind of reaction?
“You’re talking Dark Brotherhood?”
“Yeah.” Roggi nodded. “But that’s why he might have learned something about Dag. Lots of connections. And if he gave us some leads, well… I’m a pretty good listener myself.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I’ll go to Riften with him. I should at least meet my brother-in-law.
They talked more, Roggi sharing what he’d learned of happenings in Whiterun through messages from Lydia. They were well, but the situation in Skyrim as a whole was not and she was worried.
“I don’t know, Roggi. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for me to adopt Lucia. I don’t seem to have been a very successful father so far.”
Roggi shook his head. “You’re enough of a father for her if she knows that you didn’t just disappear. That’s all she needs, Dar. She’s a tough little girl.”
Dardeh smiled at him. “All right. If you say so.”
At some point in the evening Roggi tilted his head sideways and said, “Well. I can’t help it. I have to ask.”
“What?”
“What’s all this?” He waved at Dardeh’s face and gestured toward his head.
“What?” Then it dawned on him. I look so different. “Oh that. It’s… hair.”
Roggi snorted. “Really. Yes I know it’s hair, Dar. But why?”
“It’s cold in the north part of Solstheim. Colder than Skyrim. It helped.” That’s not really why. It just reminds me, that’s all.
Roggi wasn’t buying it, that was obvious from his expression. But he didn’t press the issue further.
A long while later, Dardeh crawled under the covers next to Roggi, feeling uncomfortable about it but having been reassured that there was no need for him to pay for a bed. He gritted his teeth and stared at the ceiling and closed his eyes, certain that he wouldn’t be able to relax for being aware of Roggi next to him; but in spite of everything their combined warmth had him drifting off.
Then his eyes opened.
He found himself again at the Bannered Mare, seated on a bench next to the fire, looking as he had before Solstheim. The bard was singing off-key, there were people milling about, laughing and coughing, dishes clanking, the fire crackling, the aroma of roasting meat drifting out from the back room – all the familiar and comforting things he’d come to love about the inn.
“Hello there, Dar,” a sweet voice murmured next to him.
He looked up and smiled. Ellte was a warm and comforting presence, even though he knew she wasn’t really alive. She appeared to him as she had been before her illness; grey, but tall and strong, with a mischievous glint in her eye.
“Ma. What are you doing here? I’m dreaming again, aren’t I?”
“Yes, my sweet boy. But it doesn’t matter, let me talk to you.”
“Of course, Ma. I’m happy to see you. I’ve missed you so much.”
“You’re confused about things, aren’t you.”
Dardeh nodded. “I can’t fool you, can I?”
“I see that it’s time to tell you some things about your father.”
“He talked to me, Ma. He said you’d done well.”
She smiled. “Did he, then? What a sweet-talker that one is. Dar, you need to know something. Your father… well, he could be lovely if the urge struck him, but at heart he was a brutal man. He had no mercy in him and not very much in the way of honor. He was a killer, Dar. An assassin.”
Dardeh blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. Did he tell you to kill people?”
“Yes, and so did Jine.”
“Ah, that one has spoken to you as well. Well, my dear boy, that is all part of you. Jine was from a different time. He and his, they charmed snakes, they killed to survive. Your father… he enjoyed killing people.”
Dardeh’s mouth dropped open and a shudder ran up his spine.
“A wise man told me something, once,” she said. “He said ‘if a man kills too many, too long, he has his heart stolen by the color and smell of blood.’ That is what happened to Dadarh. His family – it’s a long line of violent men, Dar. But your father was especially so. He tried to change, he honestly did. Saban, his wife, she tried. She thought that having little Dagnell might help center him a bit. He tried hard, but in the end he was a killer and it finally caught up to him. ”
“Ma. Why? If he was so bad, why?”
She smiled. “Why do you love your big blonde Nord? I know you’re there with him. You couldn’t stay away, could you.”
Dardeh looked down at his hands and sighed. There wasn’t a reason. There never had been a reason. It had just happened.
“You saw me, Dar. I used to be a pretty thing. He was a handsome brute, just as I told you. We looked at each other and there was simply no help for it.”
Dardeh looked back up at his mother. Yes. That was who he’d seen, the lovely blonde girl who had warned him about taking a dark path. “That was you!”
“Yes, my dear boy. And that’s why I’m here. I want you to remember that you are not just your father. You’re also the fine, strong, sweet man you’ve always been, my son. Don’t forget that part of you. Don’t let your heart be taken. Perhaps…”
Dardeh smiled. “Perhaps what, Ma?”
“Perhaps you just need someone to care for.”
“You mean besides Lydia and Lucia?”
“Yes.”
He smiled at her. “I love you, Ma.”
And then she was gone.
Dardeh’s eyes fluttered open. For once, his dreams hadn’t left him shaking and afraid. He turned his head and looked at Roggi’s broad back, listened to him snoring lightly, and smiled.
At least for tonight I can pretend, can’t I.
He lay there listening to Roggi, watching the slow movement of the covers as he breathed, savored his warmth. And he relaxed, and went back to sleep.