If Vehk moves an inch to the left, Kaushu will move on from Nerevar's company in two years to start her own strider caravan, only for her premiere strider to catch ill with nerve-rot in ten years and infect the rest, leaving her without a single dram and forcing her to go back to the tribe in shame. However, she will fall in love with a gallant young Urshilaku warrior and be wed in due time. Together, they will rear many children. One day, Kaushu will tell her smallest daughter of the time she spent traveling with the canvasari of a future Indoril lord. Inspired by the stories, the daughter will go on to serve House Indoril and become one of the first Ordinators.

If Vehk moves an inch to the right, Kaushu will stay with the canvasari for twenty more years, long after Nerevar himself has moved on from traveling with his caravan and, rich from his efforts, has married the High Alma of the Indorils, the queen of storms. After his departure from the minutiae of everyday canvasari life, he will name her captain in his stead. Kaushu will lead the silt striders well and will turn a steady profit for both herself and Nerevar. She'll never return to the Urshilaku but will instead formally join Indoril itself, rising far despite her background. She'll live a long and eventful life and, having developed a keen sense of business, will bring great fortune to the House. Long after her death, one of her descendants will run away with a Dres girl and together they will sire a great hero for the people who aren't Chimer but are also Chimer at the same time.

It is sometimes hard to decide the fate of the universe. He is only one person –but he also knows that he's two people or will be two people, even if he doesn't understand how or why or when yet- and a scruffy, perpetually ravenous daggerlad of twenty-two shouldn't have to bear the burden of deciding what to make of all the signs and sigils and threads that prevent him from having anything approximating a normal life. You shouldn't have to see the things he has to when you're still trying to fight off the old skooma-thirst.

Left. Right. Vehk is a sharp knife that severs threads with nothing but the sheerness of his presence. He can feel the choices digging into his skin, trying to pull him into one direction or the next. He shuts his eyes to block out the sigils and digs his fingernails into his palms until he can't feel the tug for all the pain. He listens to the sounds of the camp.

The Ayleid is cooking dinner. The oil hisses as he drops handfuls of tiny crabs into the pan before he goes to tend chop hackle-lo to throw in the stir-pot. One of strider queens is in season and has been calling out for a mate for the last hour. Several of the strongest guards are shouting and banging shields to frighten off a lone wild male. The traveling season is still early and they have too many deliveries to make to afford losing a queen to the brood-dens.

Nerevar is sparring with one of the new recruits if the sound of chitin against bonemold is any indication. Vehk's own passenger wasp beats its wings and chatters whenever anyone walks too near. Someone notices the look on his face and wraps a rough blanket around his shoulders.

Someone calls his name. Unimportant. He doesn't answer and eventually they stop trying to capture his attention. He is consumed with the sounds of the present, not the call of a thousand maybe-futures and certainly not with anyone else.

When he opens his eyes again, the sun has dipped down low in the sky and the night's chill is starting to permeate the air, so he pulls the blanket over his head like a cloak. He probably looks ridiculous to anyone who might be paying attention right now, but Vehk has seen into their hearts and knows what they think of them, even though he doesn't know the fine details behind the feelings. They think he is ridiculous. Very well, he will let them think that. He learned a long, long time ago that sometimes it's easier to put his construct-face on and let them think that he's as strange and unapproachable as the tunnel dweller's curiosities.

Vehk knows a lot more about Dwemeri automatons than he wants any of these Chimer to know.

This area of the camp is empty at the moment. The Ayleid must have ventured back to where they're storing the rest of the food to gather something for the cooking pot and the others are tending to the beasts or on duty watching for packs of raiders and wild bull striders. The circle of tents blocks their view of him.

Kaushu is nowhere in sight. He hopes that one day she'll understand why he made this choice for her. He gets up and walks in a perfectly straight line to the cooking fire, stepping neither an inch to the left or to the right. He's traveled with Nerevar for over five years now and he still can't get over the fact that they all eat so much and so well on a daily basis. There's a giant pot of saltrice going and a pan full of some unknown meat in a thick brown sauce. It's not done yet, but he still fishes a cube of it out of the hot pan to taste, burning his tongue in the process. Guar, he concludes after he steals another chunk. Then there are the scrib-rolls. The Ayleid might be an outlander and a n'wah, but he knows how to make rolls that melt in your mouth and jelly that's savory with just the right hint of sourness.

His eyes, however, are on the basket full of still-warm crab, the first hatchlings of the season. Vehk is not sentimental. He has cut all ties to the past and has made of his name an emotionless sigil. Who he was before Nerevar's assassin and spy, before the daggerlad in the Mourning Hold is irrelevant.

But damn it all, the Ayleid cooks soft-crab fry just like his mother did before she went silent as stone.

There's more food here than anyone needs. A handful or two of crab will not go amiss and he can add it to his secret cache of food. It'll keep for awhile yet as long as he wraps it up and puts it next to the ice-powder he picked up when he was doing reconnaissance in Skyrim. The first handful goes up his sleeve and into the hidden pocket without a problem. He's reaching for the second when suddenly there's a hand on his shoulder and he knows he's been caught. No point running. No point slitting throats. Even though he grows soft and unwary when he travels with the canvasari, he wants to stay as long as he can if it means staying close to Nerevar.

He lets the crabs fall back into the basket, all except one that he hides in his fist. It's Kaushu. She has always been more watchful than most of the guards that travel in Nerevar's company. Vehk suddenly regrets the life he has chosen for her.

"Little scribs that dip into the worker's food get eaten by the kwama queen."

No running. No stabbing. That limits his options somewhat. Tying yourself to another complicates life so very much. Misdirection then. Vehk puts on his construct-face so that she won't see the thoughts blowing under his metal-made-face and says the first lie that isn't a lie that comes to mind.

"I have become pregnant," says Vehk.

That does the trick. He relishes the look on her face and takes solace in the knowledge that she'll never remember stolen crabs now.

"Please tell no one. I must keep this secret until I know what I will do. I have told no one else of this. Please."

"What the others have said about you, that you are marked by Mephala, then that is all true?"

It has painted on my brow with hands dipped in black and pried open the closed eyelid so that the inner fire may burn brighter by breathing in the good air and the bad air with no distinction between the two, forever destroying hope of closing it again. It has made me ambiguous and thrice-faced. It cut me away from my mother six times and bound me to her again before the time of knives and sound. It is an old thing and I will eat it to become it.

"Yes. What they say about how I am formed below is true, but I thought that I was too knotted up inside for…for this."

His voice crackles convincingly. Kaushu kills raiders and bandits on a near-daily basis with her cudgel and sword, and so is made as tough as leather, but she wraps her arms around him and cradles his head against her bosom as if he is made of fine limeware.

There is a part of him that says that it would be the proper thing to be sorry that he has deceived her in such a gross manner, but Vehk has always lived by ensuring that his deeds are enshrouded in secrecy and half-truth. He hopes that she isn't flattening the crabs up his sleeve.

And it isn't as if it is a lie. Vehk is pregnant.

Or rather, another Vehk is pregnant or will be pregnant or has always been pregnant. He still doesn't know. Fragments of truth of the other Vehk's tales pierce his brain and it is up to him to try and decipher their meaning so that he can properly steer Nerevar to his death. He thinks the other Vehk is trying to help him but it's hard enough to interpret the fire signs without thoughts from another maybe-life demanding his attention.

"The one that sired this on you, has he at least the decency to offer you marriage into his bloodline? Do you want me to kill him if he hasn't for the insult?"

Vehk would chatter an insult like a common vagabond, but he is wearing his construct-face and constructs do not do but what is expected of them. He needs no one to spill blood owed to him but himself. He makes his living by the dagger, gutting those who look at him and his treasures wrongly. He would slit the mouth from ear to ear of one who fathered children on him regardless if he held affection for them, for Vehk has no patience for those who would tie him down to domesticity using his own body.

Vehk will never need to. He is pregnant but he has also always been rendered sterile by his dual-state and his bloodline will die with him.

"Kill? You jump to violent thought too fast. I will not marry for this. And because you will ask, no. His eyes and his touch belong to the High Alma and no one else. He is like father and mother to me and that is why we travel together. I left behind my old ones. He saved me."

Much of that is a lie. Nerevar saved him from nothing and Vehk is glad, for he has had enough of such condescension from the rich who would give him a pittance to assuage their guilt and then move on. Nerevar is no parent to him and he is glad, for he has moved beyond that. He is not his boss, for Vehk does as he pleases. He is not his lover and that is why Vehk loves him. There are no words to describe what Nerevar is to Vehk or what Vehk is to Nerevar.

Co-conspirators comes close.

"Good. Forgive me. It is just…you are close and you are pretty and you are wanton and you are young most of all. Men are foolish creatures and they always want something fresh and new before moving on to the next. I am glad it is not so with him and he is not foolish. You are grown, but you are much too young to raise a child."

"I know. I do not know what I will do yet, but thank you for letting me tell you this. Please, you must tell no one. Please."

It's a good lie that isn't a lie. He'll have to think of an out for this.

—-

When Vehk-not-yet-Vehk was still a child –how short that lasted- the fire came in little bursts of candlelight. It used to be that he could only see the signs if he pushed his hands against his eyes until the fire floated before him bright as the sun. The signs never stop burning him now. He can almost ignore it if he looks away, closes his eyes, but he can't live his life with all three eyes closed. They think he's strange enough already without him shielding his vision constantly. He doesn't care that they think he's strange. He cares that they notice him too much.

Vehk has decided to put an appearance in at dinner even though most of the others disgust him. They waste more food at a single meal than he used to eat in a whole day. Vehk rarely forgives and he doesn't forgive wasting food most of all.

When he eats, he eats everything. He scoops handfuls of rice into his mouth with his fingers and sops up guar-grease with rolls that he shoves into his mouth whole. He crunches handfuls of tiny crabs between his teeth and drowns them with watered down shein –after all, he's pregnant- and brown sauce drunk straight from the dipping bowl.

Vehk could take his meals as dainty as any weeping, wailing Altmer if he wanted. He could.

Something buzzes behind his ear and before he can turn around, a beetle the color of ink and magic lands on the collar of his shirt and crawls with its many legs towards his fear sign. It makes a noise and soaks up his radiant energies.

Eating is over for now. It's all gone anyway. Vehk never wastes food and he never takes longer than is strictly necessary to eat.

Stray Dag-beetles are always a good premonition and he can always use a good premonition for a change. They absorb sunlight through their shells and hum of old magic that can only otherwise be found in high and dangerous places. They eat the tar that seeps out from other people's thoughts and chokes him with its toxicity.

Vehk approves of cleaning symbiosis. The beetle can stay. He's just returned from weeks spent in alleys and strange beds, and the tar is clinging to him so thick that he thinks this time it's going to solidify, become a new skin of hate and disdain and self-righteous pity.

The others are still eating, gathered around the cooking fire. Nerevar is nowhere to be seen, probably in his tent. Good. Vehk doesn't like him to spend too much time around these graspers, not when he's so close -and yet decades, perhaps centuries away still- to realizing what he's been pushing him towards since the day the two happened across each other. The situation is delicate now. If Vehk moves wrongly, the gossamer connecting Nerevar to his death will unravel and then he'll never discover why he is to kill him. Any stray movements by him or others could ruin it all in an instance.

The beetle crawls up his neck, explores the edge of his ear, clings to his earring like a dangling jewel.

He can hear them talking. Perhaps they think that he's stupid and can't understand them. Perhaps they just don't care. Kaushu has proven true to her word so far, for though he catches the usual whispers about him, none of them concern the daughter growing in his womb.

Daughters? Perhaps it's more than one. Perhaps it is three, one for each eye, but he doesn't know how he would feed them all. He knows the other Vehk is or will be gravid with someone's get, but he hasn't worked out the details, why and how and who.

Nerevar? No. The sigils and his other self have not indicated yet whether or not there will come a day when he welcomes him between his thighs, but he knows that neither he nor anyone else will ever bear Nerevar's children. There is Sil. If Nerevar is an enigma, Sotha Sil is a mystery to be unraveled. He is interesting in his own way and Vehk would have him if he would only look up from his experiments, but no, his gaze is firmly fixed only on things of metal and glass. There is Alandro, perhaps likeliest of them all. He has known his body in all its ways and Alandro tried to follow his example. Vehk wouldn't mind him fathering children on him if it meant that he could slit his throat.

Even though he's still sticky with tar besides the best efforts of the beetle, a vision manages to pierce the layer of murk. His robotic face, normally so absolute, slips as he lets out a noise like strangulation.

His womb is full of modular warriors and carapaces and the foundation of dead cities.

What is he to make of this revelation? It puts all that he has seen from the other place into a new context and even the brightness of the fire cannot cast enough light to render the situation clearer, only blinding him further with its indiscriminate intensity. What poured its essence into him that he gives birth to abstract thought processes? If his children defy logical explanation, how can he hope to gore their father through his heart?

The others notice his lack of composure. His ears only pick up murmuring but he can see into the core of their being to look at their passing sentiments. He sees them as a string of words that that flows in and out of each until it forms a woven river of thought-fragments and sensation. This one sees Vehk and his thoughts make a sigil that means "imp-scamp-whore." This one is thinking about scars and skin and the shape of his eyes. Another thinks of the curve of his hips and thrusting into ill-defined damp places. There is one who thinks of him as a poor pet that should be held close and this infuriates him most of all.

If the caravan guard thinks of him as nothing but a dumb animal that can't fend for itself, he should expect behavior fitting of that. Vehk stares across the fire and smoke until he locks eyes with the false thinker. He smiles in a way that hints at many things wordlessly –but aren't all his smiles like that?- and when the other's man attention is quite rapt on him, he overrides the Dag-beetles will and forces it to crawl into his mouth. He bites it in two and lets the still twitching bottom half fall to the ground. The look of discomfit on the caravan guard's face is almost as delicious as the dying beetle.

Let them think of him as nothing but an animal if they want to, but they must never forget that he is an unbroken, untamed predator that consumes those who would help him and those who would harm him alike.

—

The privacy of Nerevar's tent draws out secrets that Vehk hides from others. Some secrets are kept for safety's sake and some are kept for secrecy's sake, but he keeps some things hidden for the sake of the face-masks he's constructed to envelop himself. Irritation at his body's state, for instance, is something that he cannot allow outside the confines of the tent and the temple of himself, for in the outside place, if he is not all at once in love with all of himself, he will be consumed by the world.

He spits out a chain of curses that becomes a chant as he binds himself in the spider-woven strips of cloth. It's an old habit, a comforting habit, although it brings him aches and pain. When he was still lived in the village of the netchimen and did not yet realize that he was magical in his split state, he started binding himself in rags and fabric scraps in hopes that it would kill his femininity ere it spread even more and further drive the others from him. He has grown into himself now, has become lover and beloved of himself, but the act still quells his nerves when they burn with electric intensity. This recent revelation has them on fire.

Nerevar is a lord –will be a lord- but like Vehk, he has learned how to walk without making a sound. That does not mean that he does not go undetected. The fire within the will-be-Hortator is a brilliant whirlwind of potential. As Vehk guides him closer and closer to his death, he shines all the brighter.

"Are we bound by the symbolism that we create for ourselves?"

Vehk does not turn around. He does not need to. Vehk is not the only riddle wrapped in words that wears a mask shaped like his face. The captain cannot be read visually if he does not will it to be so.

"The weepers in the old place, perhaps, but as for me, I am the sole writer of my words and do what I will with them. I only allow myself to be bound by my own hand. What forces us into introspection? I can ask questions too, my Grace."

"Why do you assume that force was necessary to guide me into my current state?"

"It is necessary in mine. Act or be acted upon. There is little choice in the matter. Think on yourself or wait until you are forced to think on yourself. Why do you ask me questions when you know the answer I will give?"

Nerevar sits down beside him on the rug, mimics his position unconsciously or perhaps Vehk is mimicking how Nerevar moves. After a certain point, it no longer matters who is copying who, only that they both move like this.

"You have read the writing upon my hands and looked deep into my fire-signs. If I am to become Hortator, I must also become abstract. Others too know the secrets behind this. Tell me, what is the nature of a marriage of abstraction?"

"The nature of abstraction is to hide vital details in simplicity. The nature of marriage is primarily illicit trade made openly acceptable. The nature of the High Alma is that she's a snake wearing a golden face. Again, why do you ask me questions when you know the answer I will give? To marry her is to be bitten by her fangs and hope you enjoy what she injects into you."

"You do not want this marriage of mine."

"You are not the only one who will marry in the abstract. Your Sotha mage is wedded to mystery. You shield is wedded to what he thinks he sees. I am wedded to my male and female self. And as for you, Nerevar Mora, serjo, you will take the hand of the High Alma and be wedded to the queen of storms and orphans. She is beautiful and cruel. To marry her is to be at her mercy. To marry anyone is to be at their mercy. I have been wedded many times over and know this."

Vehk glances at the mirror that rests against a trunk. Nerevar guards the intensity of his heart signs well –the only other he has seen that does it with such skill is Vehk himself- but there is a color like despair leeching out of him. In the haze of the mirror, dusty from travel and worn with age, the two of them can hardly be told apart at all.

He reaches out for a hand marked by the ghartoki and takes it in his own. Nerevar does not flinch away from his hand as he did when first they met, but gives no outward acknowledgement that anything at all has occurred. He glistens with new colors that Vehk does not recognize. Nerevar's feelings are not like those of other people's.

"I have come back to your camp with whispers. I have come back to your camp with other things too. Kaushu could tell you about that. I suspect she will. I may have erred in revealing certain truths forged in my fire."

"There are no mistakes when you are made of premeditation. Whisper your error that isn't or do not. There is no choice except that which is your own."

Vehk laughs, though he doesn't know why. He can interpret the intention behind that later. For now, he leans in close to Nerevar until his lips brush up against the shell of his ear. He could kiss him if he wanted. He could do anything if he wanted. But for now, he doesn't.

"It would appear that I have become pregnant," are the words that Vehk says to his will-be-Hortator before he has another paroxysm of laughter takes him. It chokes out his next words before they can be born, steals his breath away as he devolves into hysterical gasps for air punctuated by something that is certainly not tears.

For his part, Nerevar seems vaguely concerned, though in his fit of delirium, Vehk can't tell if it is because of what he has just admitted or because it is so obvious right now how hard of a time he is having breathing. The captain pulls him into his lap like one does to comfort a crying child, strokes his ears in the way that soothes most mer, but his efforts only increase the oracle's feverish hilarity. Were it any other, he would take offense.

If only nosy Kaushu could see them now! She might keep one secret, but this, this would be told to the ruffians around the campfire for certain.

"Is this why you have done this?"

One of Nerevar's hands rests against the spidercloth binding his chest.

"You know the answer I will give and still you ask. My femininity is used against me and so sometimes I must kill it. Sometimes I must kill my masculinity as well. There is no harm in that. We all kill our spouses eventually. You say that I have the nature of Mephala. It is male and female in equal proportions, but your Sotha Sil has taught me how to measure out my own calculations and I say that I can exist in whatever percentage suits me."

"I will ask for answers I don't know. You will not answer them if that is your choice. How has this happened?"

"I do not know yet. Not the usual way, of that I'm sure."

"Who has fathered this on you?"

"I do not know yet either. Not a person at all, of that I'm sure too."

"What are you pregnant with?"

"Bad ideas. Claws. Monsters."

"How do you know you are pregnant?"

"I have seen it in dreams and the third eye's fire. I can feel them writhing around in my womb as they eat each other. It hurts. What shall I do with them after I birth them?"

"Vehk, why do you ask questions when you know what answer I will give? Kill them. Are they not your bad ideas?"

Nerevar is a son of Boethiah after all. Good. He worships at the altar of Azura most of all and Vehk worries that it clouds his nature, but he too understands the importance of his sword. He relaxes into his embrace, buries his face against his shoulder. Vehk did well for himself when he read the caravan guard's hands.

"When the time comes for me to bear these ideas, I will. Until then, your caravan guard, that Kaushu, thinks that I'm growing fat with a baby inside me. It is not my fault that others do not understand the symbolic and think only of the physical."

"And why, Vehk, did you tell her that you were pregnant?"

"…"

"Vehk."

"Sometimes it becomes necessary to distract others with truths they can't understand."

"Vehk."

"She caught me doing something at an inopportune time. Diversion was required. No harm was done, you need not worry. All is well."

"Did she catch you-"

"Yes. I am made of alleys still, Nerevar. Look at me. My body is made of bone. I see no point in letting them punish me for acting in accordance to my nature and my hunger while they grow complacent and have never been hungry in their life. Distract them and everything works out well for all."

"If you say that you are pregnant over a minor thing-"

"Shh, your Grace, say no more. I only say such things with consideration given to severity beforehand. Are we not going to the Mourning Hold soon? Will you not have her hand soon? Will it not be long now before we are distant from these people? Yes. Then I will say what I will. Let me be pregnant for a few days more because I do not think I will ever be pregnant again. I will think of an explanation for my lack of birth later."

"You are nothing if not yourself, Vehk."

"And you are everything except yourself, Nerevar Mora. But let us speak of other things now. I've returned with information from our enemy and…"