LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 20: In Which I Don't Know What a Canonreeve Is
As I’m leaving Vulkhel Guard the next morning, I come across an injured woman just outside town being tended by a guard.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Veiled Heritance,” she replies. “They’ve attacked Silsailen! The town is ablaze! You look like a warrior. Can you help?”
“Of course,” I say. “Where’s Silsailen?”
“It’s just down the road, north of here.” She points.
I take off down the road at a brisk jog, thinking I might want to acquire a mount of some sort at some point. And definitely not getting distracted by every plant along the way. Dammit, I just spent hours staring at plants and now all I see is plants. Plants are not important right now!
Some ways down the road, I come across two mer standing on the near side of a large stone bridge. The woman, I shortly learn, is named Elenwen, and the other is the canonreeve, whatever a canonreeve is. Who I think is her father, but I’m a little unclear on that.
“They’re wearing the uniforms of the First Auridon Marines, but no true marines would burn down our town!” Elenwen exclaims. “I can’t believe they’d be so bold! This is an outrage!”
I nod and make small noises of acknowledgment as I quickly jot down names she’s mentioning: Canonreeve Valano; Elenwen, Valano’s daughter; Teldur, canonreeve’s assistant. A canonreeve sounds like somebody important. I guess ‘reeve’ seems to mean someone who is in charge of something, but I don’t know what a ‘canon’ is that someone would be in charge of. Maybe he organizes books of lore? That must be it. How dare they assault a librarian!
I head across the bridge and into the town, cheerfully dispatching anyone that attacks me. The first person I run across who doesn’t attack me is a man hiding behind the well.
“Are you Teldur?” I ask. “Elenwen sent me to help.”
“How do I know you’re not one of the imposters?” Teldur demands.
I look down at the blood dripping from my battle axe. “I’m not sure if they’re the sort of people who would kill half a dozen of their own just to maintain a ruse, but they don’t seem particularly concerned about spilling blood.”
“Well, don’t just kill them!” Teldur says. “Put out these fires while you’re at it, too!”
“Fine trick carrying a battle axe and a bucket at the same time,” I say. “Why don’t I kill them and you follow behind me with a bucket?”
“How dare you speak to me in such a manner!”
I shrug. “Do what you will, but I’m not going to attempt to throw buckets of water at anything until people aren’t trying to set me on fire, too.”
Leaving him to continue hiding or actually help as he will, I go to cut down a few more fake marines who are threatening civilians, who run back across the bridge for Elenwen to deal with. Of course, none of them are feeling brave enough to help put out the fires, either. Where’s a frost mage when you need one, anyway? Once I’ve rescued everyone that’s cowering and calling for help, I toss a couple buckets of water onto the flames, to very little effect. Fine, the civilians can deal with this, there’s probably still people who need to die.
Back on the other side of the bridge, the injured and terrified survivors are huddled up in a warehouse. I stop and toss around a few minor healing spells; I can at least do that much, even if it’s just to ease some bruises. Elenwen informs me that a runner from the real First Auridon Marines has shown up.
“How can you tell it’s a real one this time?” I ask.
“I… well, he just seems more professional, but you’re right, I suppose I can’t be certain. Either way, he wants to talk to you. I’m sure you’re quite capable of dealing with him if he should turn out to be another impostor.”
I agree with that sentiment, and go over to introduce myself to the armored mer.
He salutes me. “Hanilan of the First Auridon Marines, at your—are you writing down my name?” He peers over my shoulder. “My name ends with A-N, not O-N.”
“Sorry, I can hardly spell my own name half the time,” I say, then realize what that makes me sound like. “… look, I’m really very good at hitting things.”
Although his face isn’t visible behind the full helmet, I can practically feel Hanilan’s dubious gaze. “Right. Well. Captain Tendil—yes, that’s with one L—and his detachment should have been here by now but I think they were ambushed by these lowlifes.”
After uttering a few more insults regarding the ancestry and sexual habits of the Veiled Heritance, he informs me that one of the civilians I rescued mentioned seeing bound captives being taken into a cellar. He really could have led with that.
I quickly return to town and locate the cellar in question, not really facing much resistance to speak of on the way. A couple stragglers showed up to gawk at the dismembered corpses of their brethren whilst being too stupid to realize whatever dismembered their brethren might still be nearby. Also half the town is still on fire, including the one above the cellar in question. Down below, dozen Altmer are tied up in the cellar amidst crates and barrels.
“Is one of you Captain Tendil?” I ask as I go to start untying them.
“That’s me,” one of them says.
After a few utterances of his own regarding the ancestry and sexual habits of the Veiled Heritance, he informs me that they had a stash of armor and weapons somewhere nearby and I should pick them up for them. Seeing as I’m the one with the battle axe and none of them look ready for doing more than punching thunderbugs in the face, I agree.
Apparently a ‘stash’ means that they stuffed their gear in a shed by the pasture, and a couple of racist bandits (‘Veiled Heritance’ is a much too dignified term for them) have discovered it and are poking around. I call upon Blinky to shove shafts of surprisingly solid light through them before introducing them to my battle axe. Now if only they’d sent someone along to help carry all this crap.
“Any luck?” asks Tendil when I return to the cellar.
I just give him a look and dump a pile of weapons and armor at his feet. “I couldn’t carry it all. Could at least one of you gear up and held me schlep this shit?”
“Right, of course,” Tendil says. “You have my gratitude.”
“Fortunately I’ve probably killed all the racist bandits in the immediately vicinity,” I say. “Unfortunately this building is still on fire and you should probably get out of here and try to put it out now.”
Tendil turns to his squad. “You heard the man. Move out!”
When we leave the cellar and get back out into town again, Elenwen runs up to me, thanking gods who probably had nothing to do with guiding her to me for finding me.
“Teldur has betrayed us!” Elenwen exclaims.
I open my journal to look up who Teldur was again. Canonreeve’s assistant. Right. As I’m checking that, Elenwen is going on about how she saw Teldur holding the canonreeve at knifepoint. She saw them heading toward the manor, which is probably locked, although if it’s her own residence why doesn’t she have a key to it? I don’t bother asking. Everyone around here is very silly.
Conveniently, there’s a smuggling tunnels on the beach, because of course the canonreeve’s manor needs a smuggling tunnel. Do librarians frequently have skooma problems? Again, I don’t bother asking. I don’t feel much need to go climbing around the cliffs, either. I might as well just go in through the front and kill as many racist bandits as I can. No sense letting them live to regroup and cause more problems later.
The manor is a large building across another bridge spanning over a picturesque waterfall that also makes me glad I didn’t bother messing around with the cliffs. It takes some rifling through pockets, but I do find a key amidst pocket change and keepsakes, all of which I keep for the sake of reselling later. The key I found works, and I head inside. There are… not as many bookshelves as I might have expected a library to have, but it does have a fair number of them and a lovely reading area. I scan the titles, seeing parts 1 of Rislav the Righteous, The Song of Pelinal, The Ruins of Kemel-Ze…
The marine Captain Tendil sent with me as backup clears his throat. “It looks like someone is behind that divider over there.”
“Right, I can come back to read later. This building at least does not appear to be on fire.”
I head over to where the marine indicated, and find Teldur, leaning against a wall and wounded. He gasps out something about how the canonreeve betrayed everyone and is a member of the Veiled Heritance. I lean down to try to heal his wounds, but they’re too much for my meager healing ability, and the mer expires still insisting I need to stop Valano and leave him be.
“Dammit,” I mutter, and sigh. “Be at peace in Aetherius, Teldur. I’ll stop him.”
I head upstairs to find Canonreeve Valano and proceed to hack the shit out of him. I would have been more concerned about Teldur lying to me if Valano hadn’t spouted some racist bandit nonsense before I vanquished him.
Not content to simply kill and be done with it, I search the building for incriminating correspondence as well. There’s a note laying on a hearth but not actually in the fire to Valano from someone signed as ‘N’, in the name of the Veiled Queen. (Amusingly telling him not to forget to burn this letter. It seems he got careless.) Before I go and run down my journal to see who I’ve encountered whose name starts with N, I find a less subtle letter from Valano to Norion, clearly unsent. Something about meeting him in Tanzelwil. Shit. I need to warn Ayrenn. I also grab Teldur’s journal (not bothering to stop to read it), and shove the incriminating notes inside, and toss the lot into my pack.
Out on a balcony, a Skyshard sits atop a fountain, apparently placed there as decoration. No further incriminating notes on the balconies. Well, I had to be thorough. I head back downstairs and find Elenwen in the entryway, flanked by a couple of marines who appear to have gathered their armor in the interim. She’s asking for news of Teldur and Valano. Shit. I just killed her father. Now I have to tell her I killed her father. Right, best that I show her the incriminating notes.
“They’re… well, they’re both dead now,” I say. “I’m sorry, but it wasn’t Teldur who was the traitor. Take a look at these messages.”
Elenwen reads over the notes, eyes widening, putting a hand over her mouth in shock. “Oh, father, why would you do this? Why would you conspire against the Queen and slaughter your own people?”
“I… can’t tell you that,” I say. “The actions of these racist bandits don’t make much sense to me. For people intent upon high elven supremacy, they’re not shy about primarily killing high elves.”
I leave her to her grief and head outside, where Captain Tendil and his marines are standing amidst the bodies of the racist bandits I’d killed. And it looks like Razum-dar has shown his fuzzy face here too, along with a couple others in leather armor who are definitely not marines.
“Raz heard of the troubles here and came to provide backup. We’ve arrived too late, as it would appear that someone with a battle axe has been quite busy.”
“They kind of annoyed me,” I say. “I still don’t understand why they did this. Isn’t slaughtering high elves kind of counterproductive to whatever it is their aim is?”
Raz shakes his head. “Whatever their reasons, this one has sent agents across Auridon to root out any further traitors in positions of power. He fears this was no isolated incident.”
“Raz,” I say, pulling out the incriminating notes again and showing them to him. “We need to warn the Queen.”
Raz reads them over, scowling, then turns to one of the others in leather armor. “Get to Tanzelwil, quickly, and let the Queen know Adviser Norion is a traitor and intends to ambush her there.”
The other gives a terse nod and runs off.
The fires have been put out and a lot of wooden roofs and furniture will need to be replaced, but fortunately most of the town was made of stone. They generously offer to let me stay the night in the manor, since it still has a roof. I decide to take them up on that so I can do some reading. One of the books even mentions me in an incident I… only vaguely remember, if at all. I have no doubt that it happened, but the details elude me.
I doze off with a copy of Rislav the Righteous in my lap. In my defense, most of it was surprisingly dry. I’m not sure how someone managed to make something that involves a beheading sound so dull.