The first thing I do in the morning is to deliver Hillevi’s nightshade to Wuunferth. For bringing his package an easy distance across town and handing it to him a day late, he pays me a whopping 250 septims. I’m a little stunned. What would he pay for real work? Fortunately he doesn’t seem to have any; it would probably involve testing dangerous new spells or retrieving artifacts from vampire-infested ruins.
Next, I march right over to the docks and tell Scouts-Many-Marshes that I’ll talk to Torbjorn about his unfair wages. It’s completely ridiculous that the Argonians are paid only one-tenth of what Nord workers earn for the same labor; I can’t stay in Windhelm knowing that I didn’t even try to address this. It’s certainly not the sort of thing I see myself doing on a regular basis, sticking my neck out for people, but in this case the worst I can do is fail. Torbjorn’s not going to have me arrested or anything. Is he?
I find Torbjorn in the marketplace with his wife. I feel kind of bad about bothering him when he’s in mourning, but I do it anyway. I get right to the point and tell him that he should pay the dockworkers fairly. His reply startles me: while I had no reason to doubt that Scouts-Many-Marshes has genuine grievances, I was nevertheless expecting Torbjorn to have a better response than to simply hurl crude insults at the Argonians. Despite his bluster, I manage to persuade him to increase their wages. I did it! I did something that might actually improve people’s lives in a significant way! It’s intoxicating. What else could I do to help others? Maybe I’m in the wrong profession, gathering ingredients and learning their combinations. Potions are useful, but how many of the effects are truly beneficial to ordinary, everyday people? Do they really need their Light Armor skill boosted or their fire resistance improved or their magicka damaged? Think of how much more I could benefit society if I could learn to aid the weak and oppressed, perhaps by taking up arms and--
No! I must put all such thoughts out of my head, right now. This is the way it starts! I’ll be dead in a dungeon before long unless I am lucky enough to have my adventuring career non-fatally cut short by being shot in the knee.
I pull myself together and go tell Scouts-Many-Marshes the good news. He’s delighted. In fact, he’s more than delighted. There’s an interesting new warmth in his manner when he sees me now. The next time I talk to him, he comments on my Amulet of Mara. Then, he comes right out and proposes to me: “I’d be honored to walk by your side until the trees themselves fade away, if you’d have me,” he says. I’m not entirely sure I know what that means, but it sounds terribly romantic.
I could be married! I could be the wife of a--of a lizard. I’m far too flustered to make any response, and spend some time walking hither and thither about the docks trying to clear my head. It doesn’t help, and Jade, for once, has nothing to say. A lizard. Could I ever marry a lizard?
I return to the marketplace, passing a woman named Viola Giordano on the way. She talks about all of murders that have happened recently. Wait--murders? I had thought there was only one murder, but Viola rails bitterly against the guards for doing nothing even as women are murdered “time and again.” She has nothing to say about who they were or how they were killed, only telling me as she leaves to beware of “the Butcher.” Thank the Divines I brought Jade with me; if I were traveling alone, I’d be terrified. Not that Jade offers much in the way of physical protection, but her constant presence is surely of some use in dissuading attackers. In dissuading a single murderous sicko who hopes to escape notice, at least. I hope. Could I ever marry a lizard?
My aimless wanderings take me back to Sadri’s, where even browsing my favorite shop fails to jog me out of my trance; to the White Phial, where I make a half-hearted attempt to work on my alchemy; then out the city gates, where I mount Snowberry, ride out to the nearby farms, and chat with some of the workers. The weather is getting worse by the hour, and by the time I return to Windhelm I’m riding through a blizzard. It occurs to me that the word blizzard rhymes with lizard. Could I ever marry a lizard?
At suppertime I decide that I’m so sick of venison and goat that I’m going to eat something else even if I have to purchase it pre-cooked. I buy some leek-and-potato soup from Hillevi (I have never yet seen raw leeks for sale, anywhere, so I’m actually starting to wonder whether one needs to be a member of some secret, exclusive club in order to get them), and fall into conversation with a strange, nervous Dunmer woman named Rinori Imaryn. She speaks rather disconnectedly about the loss of her family and about the undead, focusing with morbid intensity on the question of whether a vampire is still in any way the person he was before he was ... taken. The very last of the daylight fades away as she talks, leaving us shrouded in darkness and whirling snow; trapped in conversation, I cannot light my lantern, and hearing her soft, hesitant voice floating out of the emptiness while I stand rooted in place is almost surreal. She tells me how Brunwulf saved her--but only her--from the attack, and becomes so emotional that she cannot continue. When I finally manage to get my lantern lit, she is gone. Could I have been speaking all this time to a vampire? And, more importantly, could I ever marry a lizard?
Candlehearth is busy when I return. Adonato Leotelli tells me briefly about writing drama and wants to know whether I can deliver a copy of his latest book to the Bards’ College in Solitude. Pelgurt seeks desperately to hire someone to recover his family sword. I daresay I would have difficulty attending to their troubles even if they were the slightest bit interesting. Then I meet someone who shocks me back to awareness: Rongeir Ice-Eye is an elderly Nord man having trouble finding acceptance in Windhelm. His name reminds me of someone--I’ve occasionally bumped into an Orsimer woman, Shelur Ice-Eye, wandering around town. She’s a woman of few words; I’ve spoken to her in passing and hardly gotten more than a monosyllable in response. She’s also Rongeir’s wife. When I attempt to commiserate with him for the prejudice he and his wife must be suffering, he tells me that I have it wrong: the locals don’t shun him because he married an orc, but because the orc he married is his daughter.
His theory, you see, is that because Nord-Orc pairings result in children that take after the mother, his daughter is not in fact related to him; she is, in effect, an exact copy of his dead wife, and therefore there should be no objection to his marrying her. I’ve heard this general idea of inheritance in interracial pairings bandied about before (the Elder Scrolls games have, to my vague recollection, been somewhat inconsistent as to whether orcs can interbreed with other races and what the results are, though of course that inconsistency has generally manifested in the in-game books, which are in no way required to represent the “truth”), but I’ve never heard it taken to its logical extreme and used to justify marrying one’s own child. I can’t help but suggest that in spite of appearances his daughter must have inherited at least some quality of his, and he responds savagely, impugning both my ancestry and appearance in a torrent of abuse that lacks even the merit of being halfway clever. Too angry to say anything further on the subject, I turn and head down to bed.
So here I am, unable to get my head around marrying a lizard--whom I really should start referring to properly in my thoughts as an Argonian if I’m going to continue to contemplate marrying him, because “lizard” is rather insulting--and this horrible man is walking around married to his daughter and daring anyone to say anything against him. It really puts things in perspective.