A/N: As always, thank you for reading, voting, commenting, following, and adding this story to your reading lists! You all are the best!
Later, Aruna would reflect on the jarl's display with both deep gratitude and awe. The jarl put on such a convincing show of having a premonitory fit, that Aruna nearly believed it, herself. She never realized how many Thalmor were the superstitious sort, as she glanced some of them shooting each other uneasy glances as Jarl Ravencrone shouted out her "visions" in great and terrible detail. Aruna slipped behind the bar at the agitated beckoning of Malborn and followed him quickly behind a door, which he shut behind them.
"Quickly now," he hissed as he kept up a brisk pace. "This way."
They slipped through the kitchens and down a short hall, where Malborn opened a door and ushered her inside a little passageway, where a few shelves and a trunk lined the walls. "In here," he whispered. Aruna slipped in past him.
"All right, your gear is in that trunk," he said, pointing. "Get changed and head out through that door there. Most of the guards are at the party or outside, but there are still quite a few milling about inside, not to mention some of the officials still on duty. This is where I leave you. Good luck, Dragonborn."
"Thank you, Malborn," Aruna said, just before he shut the door and locked it behind her. She heard his brisk footfalls fade down the hall, and she was alone.
She changed quickly, stowing her party clothes in the trunk. Delphine's armor wasn't a perfect fit, as the other woman was taller and a little thinner than Aruna was, but it was better than nothing. She pulled on her boots and sheathed her sword, then buckled on the pouch of throwing knives so that they nestled at the small of her back. Then she took a deep breath, whispered a hasty prayer to whichever gods happened to be listening, and opened the door.
Aruna found herself looking down a hallway. At her left, was an open door, and she could hear voices coming from inside. She crept closer, listening and trying to discern how many people were there. Two guards from the sound of it, and they were discussing what they would do if a dragon attacked the Embassy.
Aruna frowned. Was it possible the guards weren't aware that the Thalmor were responsible for the dragons? She doubted it; Thalmor were prideful to a fault. If they were responsible, it was likely all of their people would know, not just the officials. She bit her lip and hoped this hadn't been a waste of time and an unnecessary risk. Unconsciously, she twisted Bishop's ring on her finger. The thought of him out there, looking for a way to come to her aid, was oddly comforting. She hoped he would be safe.
She waited until the guards moved away from the door and farther into the room before slipping inside. She hid behind a counter near the door, ducking into the quivering shadows and away from the candlelight. She peered over the top of the counter to see a set of stairs across the room. The guards continued their conversation at the foot of the stairs as a Thalmor wizard entered the room from the stairs.
Aruna ducked down and let out a silent breath. She needed to get up those stairs. She could wait down the hall and hope the room cleared out, but the longer she was there, the more she risked being caught, which was bad enough, but then it wouldn't be long before the Thalmor realized Malborn had helped her and discovered Bishop, too. She couldn't let that happen.
She risked another glance over the countertop. The wizard was busy gathering bottles and jars from a shelf on the other side of the room, while the guards remained at the foot of the stairs, still deep in conversation. Aruna saw a half-empty wine bottle sitting on the counter. She grabbed it and ducked down again. Creeping forward, she looked around the side of the counter to make sure the three Thalmor hadn't moved. Then she threw the bottle across the room, where it smashed into a corner. Startled, the wizard dropped the jars he was holding and cursed as they broke on the stone floor, their contents combining and releasing a thick acrid smoke. The guards hurried past him to see what had broken on the other side of the room, and immediately fell into coughing fits from the smoke.
As the wizard yelled for the guards to get back, Aruna vaulted over the counter and kept low as she ran for the stairs.
"What was that?" one of the guards said.
"What was what?" the other guard asked, choking on smoke.
"I thought I saw something," the first guard said.
"Will you two please open a damned window or something?" coughed the wizard. "And stop breathing this in! It'll char your lungs!"
At the top of the stairs, Aruna found herself in a long corridor. Frosted glass windows let in muted light and other than the sounds of the guards and wizard coughing downstairs, it was silent. She turned left and headed down the corridor, hoping no one would surprise her. She found the door that would lead her to the courtyard.
"This is where it gets tricky," Delphine said as she, Aruna, and Bishop bent over Delphine's map in the hidden basement room in the Sleeping Giant. "Somehow, you're going to have to sneak through the courtyard, along the walkway here, which will likely be guarded, although not heavily. You'll be heading to this building." Delphine tapped a finger on a rectangle on the map. "That's where you'll find the information we're looking for."
Aruna braced herself and opened the door. She was immediately hit by a blast of icy air. It was snowing, and the wind blew snow into her face, stinging her cheeks. She eased the door shut behind her and crouched low behind the parapets of the elevated walkway. She peered over the top and could just make out a guard on the walkway ahead. Around the corner to her left was the building she needed to get into—Elenwen's solar. If she tried to reach the building from where she was, the guard would likely see her, and she had no idea how many more guards surrounded her in the courtyard, as the swirling eddies of snow obscured visibility. She scowled and wished she had another bottle to throw, although she wasn't quite naïve enough to believe she could get away with that again.
She was just pulling one of her throwing knives from her pouch, having decided to attempt a silent kill, when an arrow zipped through the snowy air and impaled itself into a tree, right in front of the Thalmor guard. The guard immediately spun around to see where it had come from, and another arrow sailed across the courtyard, this one finding its mark in the elf's throat. The guard let out a choked cry and grasped at the arrow's shaft as he fell to his knees.
"Bishop," Aruna whispered to herself. She glanced around, but the falling snow was just too thick to see anything. She pushed on, keeping low, and headed down a short set of steps and rounded the corner of the building to come face-to-face with another Thalmor wizard.
"Fuck," she said.
"Intruder!" the elf shouted, and conjured a Frost Atronach.
"That's cheating!" Aruna cried as she dodged the giant ice daedra as it swung its massive arms at her like clubs.
She heard shouting coming from all around her as she drew her sword and rolled away from the Atronach, trying to find the best way to approach the wizard. The Atronach blocked her at every turn, coming at her relentlessly and protecting the wizard.
"To Oblivion with it," she muttered and pulled out one of her throwing knives again. She darted away from the Atronach's swinging arm, feeling the vibrations in her feet as the blow crashed into the ground to her right, and positioned herself so that she had a clear shot at the wizard. She pulled back her arm and aimed.
Thwack!
The arrow hit the wizard in the chest and he drew in a wheezing gasp as he looked down at it in disbelief. His concentration broke and the Frost Atronach collapsed into a heap of snow.
"That one was mine, ranger!" Aruna yelled into the storm.
"Behind you!"
Aruna whirled to see two more Thalmor rushing at her. One had a sword and shield and the other wielded a glass mace. She threw her knife into the throat of the Thalmor with the sword, who stumbled and fell to the ground, then Aruna ducked as the second Thalmor swung the mace at her head. She parried the guard's next swing with her sword.
"You will never leave here alive!" the Thalmor woman snarled.
"You'll never know either way." Aruna feinted left and then took advantage of the elf's momentary distraction to slash at her. The Thalmor dodged her just in time and raised her mace again.
Aruna waited until the very last second to leap back from the swinging mace and then lurched forward, burying the tip of her sword into the woman's chest. The Thalmor gasped and Aruna wrenched the mace from her hand, flinging it aside into a snowdrift.
She looked up to see a Thalmor archer, taking aim at her. An arrow sailed through the air from somewhere to Aruna's right and into the side of the archer's head. The Thalmor released his own arrow harmlessly into the sky as he toppled over. Another arrow, and Aruna could hear a scream somewhere ahead of her.
"Aruna, go!" Bishop's voice called to her from somewhere in the haze. "I'll cover you!"
"Stay safe!" she shouted back to him as she spun and ran for the building and the now unguarded door.
She entered as quietly as she could, expecting to see a small army of Thalmor waiting for her inside. Blessedly, the foyer was empty. She could hear voices, but they were coming from a room in the back. She slipped closer, eyeing the set of stairs on her right. She could hear the pretentious tones of a Thalmor official as he argued with another man. She heard the words "Etienne", "old man", and "payment", but didn't have time to eavesdrop. She frowned and tried to remember Delphine's map. Where was she supposed to go now?
Suddenly, she heard the clattering of armor coming from the second floor, and she spun around, looking for a place to hide. Behind her was a small room with another stairwell leading down to a lower floor. She darted into the room just as a Thalmor soldier entered the main room behind her.
"Sir!" the soldier addressed the Thalmor who'd been conversing with the other man. "Intruders are on the premises; I just spotted them from the windows upstairs."
"Damn it all," muttered the Thalmor official. "How many are there?"
"There must be several, sir; they've taken down a lot of the guards outside."
"Call for reinforcements," the Thalmor said sourly. "They might be here for our prisoner. I'd better get down there and see what I can get out of him. Seems he's more trouble than he's worth."
"Rulindil, about my money—" the other man began.
"Try my patience one more time, Gissur, and not only will you not be paid, I'll throw you in the dungeon as well."
Aruna listened as the three of them headed off in different directions, and gritted her teeth as the sound of footsteps grew louder, headed for the room she was in. She darted behind the desk and crouched as low as she could, not even daring to breathe. One of the Thalmor entered the room, muttering Elven curses under his breath as he swept past and headed for the stairs on the other side of the room. Aruna heard him stomp down the steps, heard the sound of a key unlocking the door, then heard the door open and slam shut. She raised her head and listened as the Thalmor locked the door behind him, then she let out a relieved breath. She stood up and nearly tripped on a large chest beside the desk. She blinked down at it for a moment, then smirked.
"Serendipity, you cheeky bitch," she said as she knelt beside the chest. Delphine had told her what to look for, passing on Malborn's description of the chest, right down to the deep scratch in the wood on the lid. How Malborn knew the grounds so well likely had a lot to do with his relationship to the other servants at the Embassy. The Thalmor were too proud to ever regard their servants as a threat, which could be their undoing someday.
One could hope.