Northbound Pilgrimage II

Chapter XXXVI - The One That Got Away With It

Author's Note:

I hope you'll all enjoy this chapter :) I've been looking forward to sharing this one for a while. It's a little detour but it aligns with the current plot time-wise. Aaand I'm not gonna spoil anything more :D

Thank you all for reading and hopefully enjoying <3

_________________________________________

He paced back and forth around the small space behind his opulent desk.

He was getting impatient. How long did it fucking take to get some information from a weak spineless traitor? He should have done the interrogation himself. That fucker would have cracked within a second and he would have spilled every little detail about that bitch and her operations.

After a few more steps, he sat down in his high-back chair instead with a frustrated huff.

He needed good news. He couldn't remember the last time when he got any. Ravyn was dead, Fronis's smuggler gang near Winterhold was decimated and Lost Knife was attacked yet again. They have persevered, but there were losses. Losses that he couldn't afford right now – not with that fucking bitch hounding his every step. At least he managed to take back Maven from her during the first attack on the bandits, but now that old bag has taken away her funding away again, all because of those fucking dragons!

At least their precious Dragonborn got what was coming to her for meddling. Not enough. He wished that Thorn had shown her what it really meant to mess with the Guild, but that fucking idiot got himself killed all too soon.

Everyone around him was incompetent. They didn't know what was at stake. They didn't know what he was keeping them safe from.

"Boss?" Niruin approached his desk tentatively. There was obvious fear in his eyes. Good, he should be afraid when he was addressing him. If Thorn wasn't around to fill that role, Mercer needed to try all the more to get back the respect that he needed from them. But... the fear had also meant something else. Niruin had bad news.

"Did you get something out of him?" Mercer growled impatiently. He didn't have Thrynn tortured for information back when he found out about his treason. No... he needed him to think that Mercer could be on his side. He needed to send that bitch a message. But no traitor would get away from him. Ever again.

Thrynn had known exactly about one safehouse... well... aside from the Honningbrew Meadery. But Mercer had known about that one for a while now as well. He'd even had the proprietor tortured, but the sap didn't know anything much useful. He did know that Karliah wasn't at the meadery much, unfortunately, and Mercer knew damn fucking well how careful she was – no plans left behind to uncover, no hints of her activities anywhere but on her person. She was infuriatingly meticulous.

In any case, since Thrynn knew about that one safehouse near Shor's Stone, Mercer made sure that he was 'imprisoned' somewhere nearby, just so that he would be taken into that house afterwards. Thrynn seemed pretty confident of this too. Orchestrating the ambush was a trivial matter after that. Mercer just wished that it had turned out differently. One thing he did get from Thrynn right away, after he had him promptly captured again, was that it was in fact Bishop who had rescued him. There was a brief moment of unbridled joy when Mercer thought about Bishop being the one caught in the ambush. Until his men never came back. He had the safehouse investigated and the reports said that everyone was dead. Everyone besides Bishop.

How did that fucker get away from them?!

Thrynn was being held and tortured at a secure location ever since. But he was surprisingly tight-lipped. It was... somewhat understandable. Thrynn actually believed Mercer. He believed all of it – that he would get to escape, that he would get to be free. What a fool he was. No one was free. Not ever. Not in this world. But Thrynn was adamant now – he knew that he was going to die. And the only reason he had to divulge any secrets was to escape the pain.