“Slarjei are better in the desert than horses,” the man said. “How long have they been gone?”
“An hour, maybe.”
“Well, Prince Attrebus, we ought to be going, then.”
“Who are you? How do you know who I am?”
“My name is Sul.”
“Did my father send you?”
“He did not,” Sul replied.
Now that he was closer and not in constant motion, Attrebus had a better look at him. He was old, his dark skin pulled in tightly against his bones. His hair was black and gray and cropped nearly to his skull.
“Who, then?”
“My reasons are my own,” he replied. “Would you rather I hadn’t come?”
“I don’t know the answer to that yet, do I?” Attrebus said.
“I’m not here to kill you,” Sul assured him. “I’m not here to hurt you. We have a common destiny, you and I. We both seek the island that flies.”
Attrebus blinked. He felt as if the earth kept shifting beneath his feet. “You know of it?”
“I just said so.”
“And what is your concern with it?”
“I will destroy it or send it back to Oblivion. Isn’t that what you want?”
“I … yes.” What was happening?
“Then we are together, yes?” Sul said. “Now, should we go or wait around so that I have to fight the other two as well?”
“You didn’t have much trouble with these,” Attrebus noticed.
“Most men die surprised,” Sul said. “One of those two might have a surprise for me. I don’t fight anyone without a reason. I have you, and I don’t want slarjei unless we need to go south into the desert. Do we need to go south?”
“No.”
“Well, pick the direction, and let’s be off.”
Attrebus stared at him, teasing that out. Then he understood. “You don’t know where Umbriel is.”
Sul barked out something that might have been a laugh. “Umbriel. Of course. Vuhon …” He trailed off. “No, I don’t know where it is.”
“How do I know you won’t kill me as soon as I tell you?”
“Because I need you,” Sul said.
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. But I know I do.”
Attrebus considered his reply for a long moment. But really, what did he have to lose?
“East,” he said. “It’s over Black Marsh now, heading north.”
“North toward Morrowind,” Sul sighed. “Of course.”
“Does that mean something to you?”
“Nothing that matters right now. Very well. East we go, then.”
“Let me get my things,” Attrebus said.
“Hurry, then.”
Attrebus was glad Coo was in Radhasa’s haversack and not on her body. The idea of approaching her, seeing what Sul made of her, made him sick. True, she was a lying traitor, but she had been warm in the bed with him not long ago. Alive and beautiful, sweaty, enthusiastic—or so she had seemed. Of all of the women he’d been with, she was the first to be—well, dead. At least so far as he knew. It was upsetting.
Sul gathered a few things from the bodies, then led him upstream among the trees for some distance until they finally came to three horses—two roan geldings that looked as though they were from the same mother and a brown mare. One of the roans was packed up, the other two horses were saddled.
“Ride the gelding,” Sul said.
Attrebus sighed, feeling that was somehow fitting. A few moments later he was riding east with the man who had saved his life, wondering what would happen if he tried to run north, to Cyrodiil, to home.
And he had to admit that at the moment he didn’t have the courage or the confidence to find out.
SEVEN
Colin curbed the impulse to pace, but although he had walked into the room of his own free will—and there was no evidence that he couldn’t leave it—he felt caged somehow. But his mind had been spinning for two days now, and the thread it turned out was beginning to look more like a garrote.
The vanishment of Prince Attrebus wasn’t his first case—it was his third. The first had been simple enough; he’d planted spurious intelligence in the minister of war’s office and waited for it to come out somewhere. When one of their agents in a local Thalmor nest reported it, he easily backtracked the leak to a mid-level official who was apparently hemorrhaging information to a mistress who was—as it turned out—a Thalmor sympathizer. It was simple, clean. No arrests and no bodies. Once the leak was known, it was more useful to leave it in place.
His second assignment had been to discover the whereabouts of a certain sorcerer named Laeva Cuontus. He’d found her without ever knowing why he was looking for her. He didn’t know what happened to her after he reported her location, and he didn’t want to know.
When he’d been sent out with the patrol to locate Prince Attrebus, it hadn’t seemed that odd. Apparently the prince often had to be shadowed, and it didn’t require a particularly senior member of the organization to do the job of what amounted to a bit of tracking, questioning, and bribing.
But now he was in the middle of something pretty bad, and a sensation between his sternum and his pelvis told him that it hadn’t been an accident that such a junior inspector had been sent to discover such nasty business.
He didn’t have any proof of that, of course. Just that feeling, and the certainty that he was missing some piece of the puzzle. And now he was in a well-furnished room on the second floor of the ministry, which was apparently the office of no one.