Episode 1: Outlanders

  Chapter 2

  Daria returned home to find her mother, Helen, seated at the office, still poring over a stack of documents. Mom had spared no effort in ensuring that her base of operations befitted a legal advocate trained in the time-honored Imperial ways. Tomes and scrolls filled the polished rosewood bookshelves, and not so much as a speck of dust dared touch the flagstone floor. Candles burned in the small marble shrine to Julianos embedded onto the far wall, the god's symbol of a triangle over an open scroll recreated in a mosaic above a basin filled with scented water.

  Mom did not look up from her work. Her scribe, a young Breton woman named Marianne, smiled and nodded at Daria's entry.

  "I need to talk to my mother," Daria said quietly.

  "How important is this, Daria?" Mom replied, still not looking up so that only her auburn hair, cut short to show that she was a practical woman who only had time for work, but also carefully brushed and richly dyed to show she could afford to show off said practicality, could be seen.

  "I'm up to my ears in cases from the local merchants! Honestly, I don't know why they think Imperial law will protect them from bad local investments!"

  "Potentially very important."

  That time, Mom paid attention and looked up, her dark eyes demanding to know more. She knew the tone of voice.

  "Marianne, you can head home for the day. It's almost night, anyway," Mom said.

  Once Marianne left, Daria explained the situation. Her mother's face turned white as soon as she mentioned the Cammona Tong.

  "Quinn!" Mom shouted. "Get down here this instant!"

  Even Quinn's footsteps sounded sulky as she descended the staircase. "What's wrong?"

  "Were you at the Council Club today?" Mom demanded.

  Quinn's expression changed to one of calculating innocence. "Of course not, mother! I was studying—"

  "I'm serious!"

  She pouted. "Okay, fine! I was! But I made a really nice friend named Synda, and she wanted to show me around!"

  "I don't want you spending time with this Synda."

  "Why not?"

  "Listen to me, Quinn. There are some very bad people in Balmora, and they run the Council Club."

  "What? The only danger I was in was from that weird girl who was with Daria! She completely ruined my dress!"

  "Jane did you a favor," Daria said.

  Mom reached out and grasped Quinn's shoulders. "I need you to understand something: we are very, very far away from the emperor's light right now. Balmora is mostly a safe place, but there are dangers for people like us. I forbid you from going to strange cornerclubs."

  "But mom! This is all some prank that Daria—"

  "Daria, that goes for you as well."

  Daria blinked. "What did I do?"

  "Nothing, but restricting you both is impartial, and it's common sense. Girls your age have no business being in sketchy taverns. Maybe when you're married and established professionals, but not now!"

  Quinn drew back, eyes already filling with her on-call tears. "I hope you know you've ruined my social life!"

  She spun around on her heels and stormed up the stairs. Mom leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples.

  "Where's Dad?" Daria asked. "He should know about this too."

  "Late night for him; they're having a networking session in High Town." She sighed. "I did not think living here would be so difficult."

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  "And why can't I go to cornerclubs?" Daria asked. "It's not like Jane's going to lure me into some seedy den and rob me. Well, she won't rob me at any rate."

  "Like I said, it's not a good look. And as foreigners, we are under scrutiny. I don't want the Dunmer to think Imperial girls are a bunch of cavorting hedonists. If you absolutely must go somewhere, I'll allow you and Quinn to visit Eight Plates, so long as you have an adult chaperone."

  Daria crossed her arms. "I see. And I suppose you'd be giving me the same talk if I were your son?"

  "I don't make the rules, Daria. I just try and live by them."

  "Yes, because following rules is the best way to get them changed."

  "I'm not in the mood right now. What's important is that you keep an eye on your sister."

  Sighing, Daria nodded. "I will."

  *********

  "Maybe you've fooled Mom, but you haven't fooled me!"

  Hearing her sister's shrill voice behind her, Daria put down her copy of A Dance in Fire. She first looked out through the narrow adobe-framed window of the second-story room they shared, the stars outside a gleaming halo around the bloated red moon of Masser. Taking off her glasses, she closed her aching eyes and massaged them through the lids.

  "Quinn, I don't think you understand how serious—" she began.

  "How serious? Daria, we're here to spread Imperial culture to these barbarians—I mean, people! How am I supposed to do that if I can't make friends with the popular Dunmer? Now the future of the Empire might be doomed because of you and mom!"

  Daria put her glasses back on and pushed back from the desk. She turned around to face Quinn. They both needed to go to bed soon. Mom and Dad wouldn't want them to use up more candles.

  "Yes," Daria said. "The Empire survived the Camoran Usurper and the Simulacrum Crisis but is sure to fall apart if you fail to make enough vapid friends."

  "You don't get it, Daria. You might like being alone all the time." Quinn raised a hand to her brow and raised her eyes to the ceiling. "But I will wither and die without friendship." Her delivery was worthy of a performer's.

  "That sounds like a personal problem. Look, maybe you weren't in as much danger as Jane thought, but even Mom agreed you shouldn't be going into strange cornerclubs."

  Quinn lowered her hand and smirked. "Neither should you."

  "Damn impartiality," Daria said.

  Hopefully, Jane would be okay with spending time at a different place.

  "And you're both being so unfair to Synda! She's from a very reputable family. Who knows how many opportunities we might lose if I don't hang out with her?"

  Better losing opportunities than losing you, Daria almost said.

  "We'll survive," she said instead.

  "Maybe. But mom's right about one thing: we do need friends here. And if we don't get any, things are really going to suck."

  Quinn refused to talk after that. Daria took off her glasses again, crawled into her bed, and blew out the last candle. Darkness sometimes healed wounds—she remembered Quinn occasionally, always indirectly and circuitously, admitting fear or error in the long winter nights back in their old Charach home. Hell, occasionally Daria did.

  But only silence that night, Quinn soon breathing peacefully in her own bed on the other side of the room. Unceasing, the sounds of the city rose up to their window. Porters spoke in harsh Dunmer voices, and guar claws clicked on the paving stones. Worse than the noise was the endless sour smell, a hundred plates of insect mash letting off their stench into the night sky.

  *********

  "Hey there, kiddo!"

  Dad didn't even look up from the kitchen table as Daria walked down to the first floor, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Dad’s square-jawed visage and thick brown hair gave him the look of a Nord hero, but his guileless smile would’ve looked more fitting on the face of a ten-year-old boy. So too did his occasional bouts of petulant (though harmless) anger.

  The morning sun, incarnadined by Red Mountain's fumes, cast its blazing rays through the kitchen's slot-like windows.

  "Morning," Daria mumbled, her voice barely comprehensible even to her.

  "You know," Dad said, "at first I wasn't so sure about the stuff the Dunmer ate. Bugs are so... ewww. But then I started thinking: Jake! Bugs are pure protein, perfect for a strong and healthy man like you. So, I took the liberty of buying a fresh bug egg last night. Thought I'd surprise your mother."

  He stepped aside and gestured at the veiny egg sitting on the table, big enough to hold a medium-sized dog.

  "You're right about one thing. She will be surprised," Daria said.

  Dad paid her no heed. "This is going to make a great omelette!"

  "If that thing goes rotten, we'll never get the smell out of here. Not that I'm sure we could tell the difference," Daria said.

  "Nonsense! It'll be in our bellies way before that'll happen. So let me see... the man said to open it at the top... or was it the bottom? I'm pretty sure he said the top."

  Dad picked up the large butcher knife and eyed the egg the way a warrior might study a foe for a weak spot. He made a quick swing, and the knife embedded itself in the surface.

  "Huh, this looks like a tough one," he said.

  "Do you want me to ask the neighbors?" Daria offered. "They might actually know how to prepare this."

  "Nah, I got this. Let me try the mallet..."

  He wrenched out the knife and picked up a wooden hammer from the table. That time, he pressed the knifepoint against the surface as he would a chisel and raised the hammer for a decisive blow.

  "I don't think that's a good—" Daria started.

  Dad struck, and the knife plunged into the leathery shell. "Got it!" Dropping the hammer, he grabbed the knife handle with his right hand and cut to the side. A jet of sickly ichor sprayed out from the opening and into his face.

  "It's attacking me! Daria, get your sister out of here! Save yourselves!"

  Daria's stomach roiled once she smelled it, the stench like something you might find in an old boot buried under a butcher shop's offal heap.

  It spurted again. "Gah!" Dad shouted.

  Deciding to get breakfast on the way to school, Daria made a quick exit.

  Musical Closer -