Roots in Falkreath

4E 201 | Late Hearthfire | Thirty-One Days Since Arrival

Weeks passed beneath Falkreath's autumn trees.

Tsukihana healed, trained, and learned the names of the town's ordinary problems. A farmer's missing tools. Wolves near the road. A widow who needed firewood stacked before the rain. Work without glory gave shape to the days.

The clearing behind the inn became scarred by her footwork. Each morning she repeated Getsumeiryū until the chain's impact no longer lived in her muscles. Each evening she studied the frost-enchantment tome recovered from the mine, learning enough to understand how magic could be fastened to steel without mistaking the knowledge for mastery.

Runil accepted his journal with trembling hands. He read one page, closed it, and rested his palm against Tsukihana's brow.

Warm light passed through her body like morning after a long winter. Fatigue eased. Old soreness loosened.

"Arkay offers no escape from consequence," Runil said. "Only the strength to meet what remains."

The Jarl summoned her two days later.

Siddgeir lounged upon his throne with the practiced boredom of a young man accustomed to other people solving his troubles. He thanked her for clearing the mine, praised the safer road, and offered the title of Thane along with land in the hold.

Tsukihana declined both.

The court went still.

"You do not want land?" the Jarl asked.

"No."

"A title?"

"No."

"Then what do you want?"

"Information. Sword masters. The Seven Calamities."

No one in the hall knew the second name, but too many eyes shifted before the denials came. Siddgeir gave her a heavy pouch of gold and advised her to notice where conversations stopped.

She spent part of the reward on lightweight protective plates fitted beneath her traveling clothes. Lod hammered each segment thin enough to preserve movement and strong enough to turn a glancing axe.

When she collected the finished work, he asked her to keep watch for his dog, Barbas, who had disappeared on the road.

"He wanders," Lod said, "but not this long."

Tsukihana agreed.

At Grave Concoctions, she paid Zaria ten times what she owed.

Zaria counted the coins. "This is excessive."

"I promised."

"Promises are dangerous things to make around merchants."

Tsukihana asked for alchemy lessons. Zaria discovered that the ronin measured ingredients with the same care she used to measure distance in a duel. Healing draughts came first, then resistance mixtures, poisons, and methods of identifying contaminated blood.

"Annoyingly quick," Zaria said after Tsukihana brewed a stable restorative on her third attempt.

Tsukihana accepted the complaint as praise.

Inigo, Lucien, Remiel, and Kaidan remained until it became clear the Calamities were not attacking Falkreath immediately. On the morning they left, Inigo held out one paw.

"This one expects you to remain alive."

"I intend to."

"Good. Death makes reunions awkward."

Tsukihana thanked them without hiding behind formality. When their horses vanished between the trees, Falkreath felt quieter than it had before she met them.

That afternoon, a grieving family asked her to speak with a prisoner named Sinding. Their daughter was dead. The man responsible sat chained beneath the Jarl's longhouse.

They did not ask Tsukihana for revenge.

They asked for the truth.