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HELPFUL TIPS
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HELPFUL TIPS
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>When posting prompts, always remember to add kinks you're both looking for and wanting to avoid in a potential fill.
>When filling, please remember to add your story tags: characters, relationship types, kinks, series and universe (ie: skyrim)
>Our character limit here at LJ is 4300.
>If you have any other questions about posting, visit the HOW TO KINK MEME THREAD, under the Page Summary on your left.
The Low Way In 4.1
Date: 2014-01-21 05:11 am (UTC)Note: The reason Jarl Balgruuf is never referred to by name in this bit is because Hekivah doesn't remember his name.)
(added tags: char:lydia)
Hekivah made her way down to the great hall of Dragonsreach. She peered out of the doorway, looking right to the jarl on his throne. Irileth was standing beside him, and turned to meet Hekivah’s gaze, nodding. Hekivah turned away and walked towards the door, stepping quietly and clinging to the shadows at the side of the hall, doing her best to remain unobtrusive. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Irileth lean over to murmur something to the jarl.
She was halfway to the door when the jarl’s voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Thane Hekivah!”
She froze, then turned and walked reluctantly back to stand on the steps before the jarl’s throne.
Hekivah dimly remembered reporting to him, after her panicked flight from Helgen. The woman at Riverwood- the sister of that rebel she had escaped with, Ralof- had pressed the task of going to Whiterun to report to the jarl upon her, and she’d been so bewildered she had actually done it.
If only she had had the sense to put as much distance between herself and Whiterun hold as possible, escape to some far corner of Skyrim, where neither Imperials nor her old colleagues would ever find her, and… and…
She caught herself. There would be no more schemes.
It did no good to think of that. Here she was.
“Yes, my jarl?” she said mechanically. Even in her muddled state, old instincts had catalogued the information necessary for her survival. She wasn’t precisely sure of what a jarl was, beyond the obvious fact he was the lord of this area of Skyrim, nor what the significance of the title he had given her was, but quickly picking up on the etiquette of the situation had always been useful in her line of work.
She could feel the jarl’s gaze on her, and met his gaze warily, appraising him as he was her. This jarl lacked the lavish ornamentation of the nobles she had known, though his circlet and the quality of his clothes marked his status. He was not a young man, but he lacked the softness that was natural in the older Highrock nobility. Their minds may have been sharpened on intrigue, but their bodies were left to waste more often then not. In Skyrim, things were done differently. The sword was used more in politics then words, she recalled her spymaster saying. Not a place for people like her; her colleagues were seldom sent there.
“It is customary that a Thane be appointed a housecarl,” the jarl was saying. She forced her attention back to his words. “In light of the Greybeard’s summons, I thought it unnecessary to assign you a housecarl, as you would be leaving Whiterun, and my forces are stretched thing enough as it is.” He glowered down at her. “However, I have been persuaded otherwise.” His eyes flickered up to Irileth’s, so quickly that Hekivah nearly missed it.
The jarl beckoned a woman who had been standing at the edge of the dais. Hekivah had taken her for one of Whiterun’s guards at first glance, but when she stepped closer to the jarl’s throne Hekivah realized the woman was wearing unmarked steel armor, and no helm.
Her observational skills had eroded atrociously.
“Yes, my thane?” the woman said. Her tone was carefully neutral, but she was eyeing Hekivah with mild distaste.
“Thane Hekivah, this is Lydia. She will be your personal housecarl,” the jarl said.
Hekivah blinked, and almost shook her head. She didn’t want this woman’s help. She didn’t know what a housecarl was. She forced herself to smile and nod.
“T-Thank you, my jarl,” she said. He nodded and waved a hand at her.
“Now, if you will excuse me, I have a city to keep.”
Duly dismissed, she turned and escaped from Dragonsreach.
The Low Way In 4.2
Date: 2014-01-21 05:12 am (UTC)She glanced back at the housecarl. Lydia’s expression was set into a careful neutral, the default of servants of any kind. The sort of expression Hekivah had found useful dozens of times, and the sort she hated to be directed towards her. She had never had servants, and she had never wanted them. They were too canny, too good at hiding their emotions.
“Lydia,” she said, stopping under the withered branches of the tree dominating the center of Whiterun. “You needn’t follow me around, or take any notice of me. I don’t need a… housecarl.”
Lydia eyed her dubiously, then shook her head. “I am sworn to your service,” she said. “You may order me to do as you will,” the words were ground out between clenched teeth. “But you cannot dismiss me altogether.”
Lydia could not be dissuaded from this point, not with words, bribe, or even threats. That last point was understandable- one scrawny, sickly Dunmer against a Nord woman with the physique of a well-honed sword- it would hardly be a fight at all.
Anger flared in her, the creature that lurked inside her stirring. Once, she would have posed as more than a threat to this naïve young warrior. In Highrock, she would only have had to whisper and flash the insignia of her spymaster to make all but the most foolhardy leave her to her business.
She shoved the thought away and made her way back towards the Bannered Mare. Without glancing back, she knew Lydia was following.
The Bannered Mare was nearly empty, aside from a few cityfolk still lingering over their breakfasts. Hekivah muttered a few curt words to the innkeeper, and, tossing a few of the coins that remained from the amount the jarl had awarded her with when she killed the dragon, she bought wine and two loaves of bread.
Retreating into a smoky corner of the inn, she sat at a table and uncorked one of the wine bottles. When Lydia took the chair opposite from her, she pushed one of the loaves of bread over to her. If this woman was going to insist on playing her shadow, she might as well earn some of her good grace.
Lydia took the offering hesitantly. Hekivah could feel the housecarl’s eyes upon her as she drank, but she ignored the woman’s unvoiced questions.
Only once she was a good way through the bottle did she speak. “Tell me then, what is a housecarl?”
Lydia blinked, then considered the question for a moment. “A housecarl is a warrior sworn to the service of a jarl or thane,” she said. “As your housecarl, I am sworn to defend you and all you own with my life.”
Nords. They were far too keen on the idea of undying loyalty. She shook her head in disgust.
“It’s a great honor, to be named Thane,” Lydia said sharply. “Any Nord could tell you.”
Hekivah glanced up, meeting the housecarl’s affronted look. “As you have most likely surmised, I am not a Nord,” she said carelessly. The wine was beginning to go to her- even after months of wallowing, alcohol still went to her head quickly. Before fleeing from Daggerfall, she had drunk little more than watered wine. She laughed bitterly. “I’ve never been one for throwing myself before a sword, or believing in the glory of a good death.” Those were the sentiments that were repeated ceaselessly in Skyrim- by Azura, what drove these folk to throw their lives away so eagerly? “Sacrifice may make for good songs, but a corpse can’t benefit from any of that.”
Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the Dragonborn,” she said, a note of accusation creeping into her voice. “You may not be a Nord in blood, but you’ve got the heart of one of us.”
The statement threw Hekivah for a moment. She blinked over at Lydia, unsure of how to respond. “That’s… a rather odd presumption. There’s never been a cowardly Dragonborn, not in any of your tales?”
It was Lydia’s turn to laugh. “No,” she said. “No dragon is cowardly.”
Hekivah shrugged. “A cowardly Dragonborn makes for a poor legend,” she said. “The poor bastards like me just never made it into the stories.”