Link to all previous episodes: http://theskyrimblog.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=0m7tnj8g66wc2
The plan was simple: follow the Altmeri until they found the dark-cloak-guys (or vice-versa), wait until both sides were engaged in some kind of battle, and then find and snatch the amulet. All the senior Youth Corps members were tailing the six mages for this purpose. But when the Altmeri attacked the house, Lucy suddenly wished they’d had a Plan B.
One mage led the way, a shimmer of blue light surrounding his body, the look of a sleepwalker on his face. He stopped in front of an ornate house on Five Hundred Companions Way, pointed, and the others opened fire with their staffs. They weren’t subtle. In seconds, the house burst into flame, the windows blew out on the second story, and five occupants ran out into the street in a panic. There was a man, one woman, two teens and a boy—all nord, three of them on fire. The Altmeri calmly entered the house.
“Divines and Daedra!” Lucy swore loudly. The fire was already spreading to the neighboring houses, while Imperial Legion and City Guards began directing an evacuation.
“What do we do now?” asked Nils, appearing at Lucy’s side. Lucy groped for an answer. They couldn’t enter that inferno to search. Anyway, the panicked nord family clearly didn’t fit the description of the dark-cloak-guys. Lucy made up her mind.
“Help those people!” she ordered, and ran into the street. She pulled off her long coat, tackled the panicked man, and smothered the flames.
Astrid used her frost spell to put out the teenage girl. M’Dar picked up the young boy and dragged him to an open well, where Nils pulled up bucket after bucket and doused him.
Lucy tried to calm the man she had tackled. “You’re alright. The flames are out. I’m a healer. Just stay calm.” In truth, she was shaking too. The man gave her a look of disbelief, but said, “My children first.”
When Lucy’s mother, Lauren, arrived with the Guild, they found Lucy surrounded by the injured family, her troop leaders cooperating with two City Guardsmen to hold back the gawking crowd. Lucy was in a mild trance, trying to heal the blackened burns covering the body of the young boy. The boy lay on the ground, protesting weakly that he was fine, it didn’t hurt very much at all, he just needed to rest, and everyone should just leave him alone.
Lauren sat down beside her, took Lucy’s hands in hers, and added her energies to the effort, and they began to make progress.
Henri, Lucy’s father, watched them just long enough to see that his daughter was uninjured and in no immediate danger. Then he and Modryn Farys, the Guild’s doyen, pulled Swims aside. Out of earshot of the guards, Farys asked him, “What has happened here? Where have the Altmeri gone?”
Swims reported, “They went into the house—just ignored the flames.”
“Have they come out?”
“No! At least… I don’t think so. I kind of got distracted.”
The two adults looked nervously at the house. “Fire doesn’t bother me, so I’ll go in to check for secret exits,” said Farys. “You try to pick up a trail out here on the street.” He turned from Henri to Swims. “Listen here, boy. I want your friends to disappear one by one and go home before they have to talk to the Guards. You stay to help Lucy. She needs to stay just long enough to make sure these people are all right, then she must go home with her mother. That’s important. You are to help her do what needs to be done and then go home. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir,” said Swims immediately.
“Repeat it to me.”
“Help Lucy do what needs to be done, then go home.”
“Good. Don’t talk to the Guards unless you have to, and if you do, then you don’t know anything and you were just happening by.”
“Yes sir.”
Farys and Henri took off in different directions. Swims turned back to the crowd gathered around Lucy, Lauren and the injured family.
After all the burn victims had been treated, Lucy’s appetite for adventure was gone. She no longer needed to be convinced to go home. After giving false statements to the Guard, Swims, Lauren and Lucy, headed home. Because they had lied about their addresses, they left the scene headed away from the Warren. Once they were out of sight of the Guard, the ducked into an alley, found a grating, and entered the sewers—the Thieves’ Highway.
Lucy was still shaking with reaction. “It’s my fault,” she said, “that those people got hurt.”
“Yes,” agreed her mother. Lucy glanced at her in surprise.
“What?” her mother asked. “Did you expect me to comfort you? Tell you that you couldn’t have known? That’s just not true; you had plenty of warnings. You didn’t think through the consequences before you implemented your incredibly reckless plan, and someone else is paying the cost.”
Lucy hung her head.
“The only thing I can say to you to make you feel better,” her mother went on, “is that you did the right thing when you saw what had happened.”
“Thank you,” mumbled Lucy.
“For better or worse, Lucy, I’m seeing you in a new light today,” her mother added. Lucy expected her to elaborate, but Lauren left the thought hanging there, and Lucy was just as eager not to hear any more of what her mother thought of her at that moment.
They continued in silence through the tunnels, getting deeper into the network as they crossed the center of town. The sound of rushing water was deafening here, and conversation was impossible except by shouting. The flows grew stronger until they emerged onto the catwalk over the primary outflow of the sewer network. Suddenly, Swims hissed and yanked the two women back into the side tunnel.
An Altmer mage ran down the catwalk on the far side of the stream, his staff dimly lighting his way. He had not yet entirely abandoned stealth, but speed was clearly his main concern. He stopped at a ladder leading to the street, glanced up and down the tunnel, and then started to climb. Just as he lifted his feet onto the rungs, an Argonian surged up from the water, grabbed the mage by the chin, and slit his throat with a long dagger. He reached into the folds of the mage’s robes, and pulled free a golden amulet, which glinted in the last of the light from the mage’s staff. The Argonian leapt back into the water and disappeared below the surface as the body of the mage slumped against the tunnel wall. The onlookers stood frozen in shock.
Swims-in-Shadow turned to Lucy and shouted, “I can follow him, if you need me to.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Not you, Swims! You can’t!”
“There is no one else who can. Either I follow him, or he gets away,” argued Swims. “But I need you to tell me it needs to be done.”
Lucy looked to her mother for help, but Lauren shook her head. “You have your network; I have mine.”
Lucy gawked at her mother in disbelief. “What? Mother!”
“You know what’s at stake as well as I do.”
Lucy heart pounded. Swims waited expectantly. She turned to her friend and said, “Go.”
Swims dove into the water and disappeared. Lucy buried her face in her mother’s arms and sobbed.
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