Chapter Text
Northwatch Keep, Sun’s Dawn, 4E 177
The hammer almost slipped from Ondolemar’s grip as another gust slammed the latrine roof, driving a spray of snow through every crack. He shook the powder from his collar and dragged the hood lower. The cold clawed straight down his spine.
“Just like Irethran last week,” the guard muttered, knuckles white around the tool. “No bloody wonder he didn’t come back.”
“The pliers,” Ondolemar snapped.
The guard thrust them over, hand shaking, lips already blue, and not only from the wind. Ondolemar shoved the hammer into the man’s fist in exchange.
“At least Erandil never pinned his own thumb,” Ondolemar growled, yanking the bent nails from the next flapping board.
The soldier muttered something around the mouthful of iron; the wind and his temper swallowed the rest.
“Save the wit,” Ondolemar said through clenched teeth. Even a half-crooked nail could bite like a spur. The plank whipped in the gale like a drunkard’s laundry on a line. Ice lashed his face hard enough to sting.
Another blast rocked the latrine.
Ondolemar’s mouth thinned to a blade. He snatched the hammer back from the soldier’s numb fingers and drove the next nail home with a single, vicious stroke.
“Double watch for this, I reckon,” the soldier said, loud enough this time.
Ondolemar paused just long enough for the wind to scream like wolves at the gate. Then he set the next board straight without raising his eyes.
The look he flicked at the soldier was short. Hard.
And needed no translation.
He shoved the fortress door shut behind him; leaving the guard behind. Ondolemar tossed the hammer and pliers into a crate with a clatter, kicked snow from his boots, and pulled a torch from its sconce. Shadows slunk along the cracked stone. The air carried rum and burnt sugar.
He paused outside the kitchen, listening for his name. Nothing but drunken laughter, thick and stupid as sheep. He stepped in.
Five of them. And the prisoner on her knees in the middle.
She looked straight through him, chin high, pride sharp enough to cut through the torn shirt, the snarled hair, the fresh scratch blazing beneath one eye. When Rulindil tried to tip the bottle to her lips, she jerked away and spat full in his face.
Ondolemar had seen that kind of pride before, polished, brittle, begging to be cracked. Sooner or later it always shattered. And Rulindil had a gift for shattering things.
He pinned the Inquisitor with a stare.
“Too few friends in the torture chamber?”
The laughter died like a candle in a well.
Rulindil straightened, slowly and deliberately.
“Commander.” He turned, bottle dangling from two fingers, not drunk, just insolent. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“What exactly,” Ondolemar asked, voice flat as a drawn blade, “is happening here?”
Rulindil’s grin slid sideways, oily and sharp.
“A practical demonstration,” he said, swirling the rum in the bottle like it was evidence. “So the lads know how to keep the work going if I’m ever… unavailable after a double watch.”
Ondolemar let the silence answer first, then turned to the only one still worth listening to.
“Fingil.”
Fingil set his mug down with a clunk and stood.
“That’s the Blade Woman,” he muttered. “Brought in five days ago. We were just—”
Rulindil cut across him, voice syrupy with venom.
“Delphine’s little pet. Doesn’t seem to know what a man’s for. We’re giving her a proper education.” He tilted the bottle towards Ondolemar in mock invitation. “Care to take over? You could show us your gentler touch, save it for something other than disciplinary reports. No need for another corpse, right?”
Someone snickered.
Estormo, predictably. Sanyon right behind him.
Ondolemar lifted his gaze.
The laughter died like a throat cut.
He crossed the room in three measured strides.
“Up.”
He didn’t wait. His hand closed around her upper arm, firm, not brutal, and hauled her to her feet.
“Show’s over,” he told the room, voice quiet enough to carry to the far wall. “Back to your posts.”
Rulindil dragged his tongue across his teeth, slow and deliberate, then slammed the bottle down hard enough to rattle the mugs. His boots rang out as he stalked past. The rest followed, grumbling under their breath, low, sour mutters that slithered after him like runoff.
“…never lets us have a bit of fun…”
“…used to be dangerous, now it’s fatal…”
“…had to open his bloody mouth…”
Ondolemar’s eyes flicked to Erandil, now was not the moment to dress him down for his shoddy hammering. Instead he hauled the prisoner after him, down the worn stairs that spiralled into the guts of the keep.
Torchlight slid over sweating stone. He unlocked the cell and shoved her inside. He fumbled the third key twice, fingers still numb from the roof, before the lock gave its reluctant click. Too long to look anything like unruffled.
She watched him, steady. No fear, no defiance. Just the flat calm of someone who had already spent her last scrap of surprise.
“You’ll never find the Blades,” she said, voice hoarse but level, almost pitying. “You know why? You’re all so bloody pleased with yourselves you can’t see what’s crawling right under your noses.”
Ondolemar blinked once, slowly. Bone-tired, half-frozen, craving nothing but the dark and silence of his bed. No thoughts. No orders. Nothing.
She drifted closer to the bars, arms folded tight across her chest, shoulders drawn in like the cold had teeth.
“Where were you these past three days?” Quiet. Almost a whisper between conspirators. “You could’ve watched what they did to me. Or did you simply choose not to look?”
He breathed on his knuckles, then worked the key again. This time the lock gave with a sullen scrape. Oil. Someone should see to it. Or he would, because in the end he always did.
One last jerk of the bolt. Done.
He turned to go.
She moved, too fast for someone half-broken, fingers clamping the bars like claws. Torchlight carved brutal lines across her face. Her voice cracked wide open, raw and wet.
“I kept hoping someone would come. Like you did tonight.
But no one ever did.”
Straw rustled behind her. Mice. Of course.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. More traps. Or soon they’d be roasting the little bastards. If the next barley shipment came in green again, they might have no choice.
“Coward.”
The bars rang under her fists. The whole corridor shook with it, stone echoing her rage like the keep itself was screaming.
“You’re a coward!” Her voice cracked again, rawer now. “Not enough of a man to stop it, not enough to finish it. Go on, hide behind your pretty title.”
Her knuckles bleached white against the iron.
“Even Delphine could command men better than you. I’d wager your courage is every bit as shriveled as your conscience.”
Ondolemar’s fingertips clenched around the keyring.
“Quiet down, Alba.” The rasp came from the next cell, the Nord who’d already eaten his supper in chains before his duty. The one forever picking at his teeth with a splinter. “You’re digging your own grave.”
“I’m done being quiet.” Her laugh scraped out, short, jagged, half-mad. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
Alba’s voice splintered. “Nothing. And it’s his fault. Because he can’t handle anything. Let him kill me. At least then it would be over. But he hasn’t even got the spine for that.”
The bars rang again, a frantic iron drum that rolled through the whole fortress like a cracked bell.
“Hey, Thalmor!” She was screaming now, voice raw and wild. “Deaf? Or just missing everything else that passes for a spine?”
Ondolemar stopped.
Closed his eyes.
Swallowed once, hard.
Then he turned, very slowly, to face her.