User:JohnB/Fanfiction/Scotti Marries Laila

(From the original "Scotti's Revenge" [2008].

This excerpt starts out with Scotti's unwelcome to the Vanech Building Commission. He appeals yet again to Lord Vanech to send him back to Silvenar to be the company's representative there because the long-distance work he is doing is getting nowhere. While ranting over his hardships, Scotti doesn't realize that Vanech is hatching a wicked plan of his own to be rid of this troublemaker once and for all.

The story continues as it does in the later version with Scotti realizing his commission to Silvenar is a sham. He still has a caravan ticket, but the question is what to do when he gets there. He thinks Laila, the neophyte assassin who botched the job on him, would do well to show the Dark Brotherhood what she is capable of doing by taking down bigger game, the Silvenar of Silvenar, for example. What the story fails to make clear is how this is going to absolve her as long as he is still alive. [See "The Adventures of Laila" to see how she gets around this problem. It's pretty much the same as in the later version, but here she is clearly doing it to save him from the Dark Brotherhood.]

The caravan makes a stop in Arenthia where Scotti and Laila get to know each other better over dinner. She doesn’t open up as readily as he has done to her, so he plies her with rotmeth, that potent, meat-based drink favored by the Bosmeri and shunned by everyone else. It makes you say things that are best left unsaid, like the time Scotti under its influence admitted to the representatives of rival building commissions attending the Silvenar’s banquet that he didn’t really represent the company that the Silvenar thought he was doing business with.

Spoiler alert! The following paragraph contains Leodes Jurus's fate. Google A_Dance_in_Fire,_Book_VII for the details. If you don't care, go ahead and read because it's important to understand why Scotti feels as strongly as he does.

Realizing their lives were now in danger [one messes with the Silvenar at one's peril], Scotti tried to persuade Leodes to flee Valenwood, but Leodes firmly believed they had nothing to fear. Scotti made it out of there alive, and the Vanech Building Commission won the right to process the contracts made out on their contract forms. As a gesture of good will, the Silvenar sent a large platter of "Unthrappa", a highly-favored Bosmer delicacy, to the Vanech Building Commission. Only Scotti realized what it really was when he found Leodes's earring tucked away in the meat, and it makes him violently sick. Things play out very much the way they do in the later version except that Lord Vanech isn't the object of Scotti's vendetta.

More anesthetized than she should be, Laila reveals to him the circumstances under which she was born, which has put a chip on her shoulder whenever it comes to dealing with men. But she has decided to let bygones be bygones with Scotti as a deeply affectionate side of her comes out and proves problematic for him since their traveling together as a married couple is supposed to be only for show.)

The Ingrate:

A whole month had gone by, and Scotti didn't feel established in his new position at Lord Vanech's Building Commission.  First, he had achieved nothing since his triumphal return from Valenwood, and there is no better way to take the shine out of one's image than to fail to follow up on a past success.  Second, he felt he hadn't been sufficiently rewarded for his achievement.  He would have preferred a percentage of the contract value--even 1% would have put him on easy street for the rest of his life--but all he got was a piddly bonus of 500,000 in gold.  His constant whining about it to people who'd never seen so much gold in their lives didn't win any friends in the company.  Finally, his odd behavior at the banquet was still the topic of discussion in the company cafeteria.

Scotti made his away through the cafeteria line and then set his tray of dishes on a table far enough away from a group of coworkers so as not to overhear their sniping at him.  Even so, they glanced at him and talked together in low voices.  Suddenly they all began making vomiting sounds, and the memory of the Unthrappa welled up involuntarily.  He lost his appetite.

"Bastards!" he yelled throwing the tray of dishes in their direction.

He jumped up and exited the cafeteria.  Behind him there was an explosion of laughter.

He made his way to Lord Vanech's office and entered.

"Scotti, don't you know well enough to knock before entering?!"

"Your Lordship, you have got to let me go back!" Scotti pleaded.

Vanech rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"I keep telling you again and again--the answer is no!  We need you here to process these contracts!  You made them--you help process them."

Scotti launched into another long tirade about how they could get nothing done because the local agents were dragging their feet.  If he could be in Silvenar to oversee the reconstruction work, their business would go a whole lot more smoothly.  Vanech's elbows rested on the desk, and he leaned his chin on his interlaced fingers.  His eyes followed Scotti as he paced back and forth gesticulating wildly.  Had Scotti carried himself a lot less self-importantly, he would have noticed the black hatred for him in Lord Vanech's eyes.

"I tell you what," Vanech finally said leaning back in his armchair.  "Let's try it your way.  How soon can you leave for Valenwood?"

"You...you mean you'll let me go?"

"Yeah, why not?!" Vanech said indulgently.

"Tomorrow morning?" Scotti asked tentatively.

"All right.  You'll have your letter of commission in a jiffy."

Scotti joyfully rushed home to make preparations for the journey.

The Weasel:

Scotti had checked into the Imperial caravansary to catch the early morning caravan headed for Silvenar and was presently seated in the dining room voraciously devouring his dinner, a habit he'd picked up during his adventures in Valenwood.  Suddenly a young Bosmer woman plopped down in the chair across from him.  He glared at her, but she said nothing.

"Excuse me," he said setting his eating utensils down, "do I know you?"

"Of course not," she responded cheerily.

"Well, if you're looking for business..."

"I'm not for sale!" she snapped back.

"Even so, move along," he said making a back-handed sweeping motion with his hand.

"I'm here to ask a favor."

Scotti looked her up and down.  Most Bosmeri women are very pretty and petite, but this one was sturdily built with a pleasant face--and quite forward in manner.

"I'm traveling to Silvenar alone and need someone to protect me," she continued.

"Protect you?!" Scotti chuckled.  "You look like you could take on a Khajiit--and win!"

"But I haven't been home since the war broke out," she said taking a dainty handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbing her eyes, "and I'm afraid of what could happen to me."

"All right, you can come with me," Scotti said impatiently.  "But you have to pay your own way!"

It was round about midnight when Scotti suddenly awoke to the click of the latch opening.  Someone had just picked his lock.  He reached under his pillow and grasped the handle of his silver dagger, but before he could do anything, a bowstring suddenly came down over his head and tightened around his throat.  He frantically stabbed him about him until there was a soft cry and the bowstring loosened.  He quickly lit a candle and saw the Bosmer woman slumped on the floor next to his bed.  He grabbed her by the hair and held the dagger to her throat.

"Who are you?!  Why are you here?!" he growled hoarsely.

She gave no answer.

"I have the legal right to slit your throat here and now!" he persisted, but she still wouldn't talk.

He yanked her hair so hard that she felt some of her hair pop out at the roots.

"Don't hurt me!  I'll tell you everything I know!"

"Who are you working for?"

"Does Vanech mean anything to you?"

"Vanech?!" Scotti asked, his face screwing up.

A strange feeling suddenly came over him.  He roughly pushed her away and grabbed his satchel.  He used the dagger to slit open the sealed letter of commission and found—a blank piece of paper.

"Son of a nix-hound!" he roared balling up the paper and aiming to throw it at her.  She winced and turned her face away.

Scotti suddenly felt sorry for her when he saw her grasping her bloody left forearm.

"Come, sit here on the bed," he said ripping the hem off his night shirt.

He surveyed her inquisitively as he wound the strip of cloth around her arm.  For a Bosmer, she had an unusually long, slender torso.  She was also big-boned and certainly had what it takes to be in the Dark Brotherhood.  And yet Scotti couldn't help wondering why she was so easily subdued by a middle-aged bureaucrat with no experience handling a dagger.

"Sorry I had to do that to you," he finally said, "but if I hadn't, I'd be dead now."

"No, I'm the one who should apologize.  I wanted to get it over with because I really didn't want to go into Valenwood."

"I take it you're from the Dark Brotherhood."

She nodded hesitantly.

"I understand they don't condone failure," he grinned, adding insult to injury.

She didn't respond.

"What's your name?"

"Laila."

"Ah, very pretty name!" he responded brightly.  "What's a nice girl like you doing in a job like this?"

She suppressed a laugh.

"And you, what's your name?" she smiled for the first time.

"Decumus, but everybody calls me Scotti."

"Scotti?!" she chuckled, "I like that!” Her face suddenly got serious.  "Scotti, where do we go from here?"

"We?" he asked pointedly.

"You know that I can't go back!  In fact, now they'll be coming for both of us--you because you're on the contract and me for not carrying it out.  You know what people say about strength in numbers.  I think you need me more than you'd expect."

"How would they know?” Scotti shrugged.

"Well, it's only natural that you wouldn't know this—not many people know the inner workings of the Dark Brotherhood—but we're being shadowed. If our shadow doesn't come finish the job himself, which I doubt he'll do while I am with you, he'll certainly send back word that the job was botched.”

Scotti decided that having a body guard nearby was not such a bad idea after all, so he let her take the bed and he made himself comfortable on the couch.  If he couldn't sleep, it was because of the strange turn of events that made his trip to Silvenar utterly pointless.  He pondered what to do next.

Laila let's a cat out of a bag:

The next morning their bags were loaded into the wagon, and the caravan set off for Silvenar.  In the evening they arrived in Arenthia just across the border from Cyrodiil.  Arenthia was a notorious magnet for all the riff-raff that streamed in from the war zone.  Scotti and Laila checked into a respectable inn and sat down to dinner in the dining room.

"You still haven't told me where we're going from here," Laila said suddenly.

"I was thinking about it last night, and I think I have a plan.  As you said, we can't go back, so let's continue on to Silvenar.  Have you ever been there?"

"Never."

"I think you'll like it."

"You said you have a plan."

"We can't discuss it here," he said glancing around.  "Later."

Laila was eager to know more about her new travel companion, so she plied him with questions.  He told her that the Scottii were of the lowest ranking knights, so rather than taking a government job the way most knights did, he attended the Imperial University to study architecture.  He landed a job with the Atrius Building Commission but soon found that girls from knight families preferred well-connected husbands.  The pool of available girls quickly dried up, and he was considered too good to marry a commoner, so he ended up remaining a perennial bachelor.  Had he known how dull life would be for the next thirty years, he would have gone ahead and married below his rank.  Yet the wheel of fortune had come full circle--from defeat to success to defeat again--and the story of his life was writ large on that blank piece of paper.  It also meant he was unemployed by default because he was supposed to be dead now.

"But," he said pointedly to Laila, "one thing I learned in Valenwood is that it's never too late to start over again."

Scotti was also eager to know more about his new travel companion, but she was more skittish talking about herself, so he ordered a tankard of rotmeth to loosen her tongue.  She told him she was mixed Altmer and Bosmer, an accident that happened when her Legionnaire mother was cornered alone in cellar by an Altmer battlemage, which explained Laila's unusual size and appearance.  She excelled in sports and martial arts, especially katana fencing, for which her coaches advised her to join the Dark Brotherhood.  As her initiation assignment, she was ordered to take on Scotti.  The description of him was that he was a dull-witted middle-aged clerk, so she anticipated a swift initiation into the Brotherhood.  The order also stipulated that she use a bloodless means to kill him--his silver dagger would have been no match for her Daedric katana—but she hardly expected him to be armed.  Most targets of the Dark Brotherhood don't realize until it's too late that they are targets, but she had no idea what he went through the last time he was in Valenwood.

She was already on her third tankard, and her speech was starting to get slurred.

"But it's a good thing I didn't kill you," she sighed endearingly and lay her head softly on his shoulder.

Scotti could see the other guests glancing in their direction upon overhearing this.

"Laila, please, not here!" he murmured and gently pushed her head away.

"I'm starting to like you very much, Scotti!" she cooed and let her head fall on his shoulder again. "It's good thing the Dark Brotherhood..."

He clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Darling," he said in everyone's hearing, "I think it's time we went back to the honeymoon suite."

He stood up and pulled her to her feet, but she slumped back onto the chair.  He lifted her up again, put her arm around his neck, and helped her stumble up the stairs to their room.

Why to avoid rotmeth:

"Rise and shine!" Scotti said loudly and patted Laila's face.

The morning light felt blinding as she sat up.  She squinted at herself quickly and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders.

"I went to bed like this?!" she gasped.

"You most certainly did!"

"And where were you?"

"My place was on the couch. I didn't want to be vomited on."

She got out of bed holding the blanket around herself.  Her clothing was strewn all over the floor, and her head throbbed every time she bent over to pick something up.

Scotti laughed as she retreated behind a screen with her clothing.

"You should have seen yourself last night, undressing from the door to the bed before you passed out.  I had to tuck you in."

"Don't laugh!" she called back from behind the screen.  "I never thought I would be seen undressed in front of a stranger, and I hope it never happens again!"

That "stranger" part hurt because last night she spoke very differently, but apparently it was the rotmeth speaking.  He decided it better to drop the subject.

She came back fully clothed and tossed the blanket back onto the bed.

"Have you got anything for headache?" she asked massaging her temples.

He pulled a Cure Hangover potion out of his satchel and reached it to her.  She gulped it down.

"This plan of yours..." she began.

But Scotti didn't respond.

“Scotti, this plan of yours, aren't you going to tell me?”

“You really want to know, eh?!”

She was struck by the sudden tone of voice.

"It's to kill the bloody Silvenar," Scotti continued with an intent to hurt.

Laila's head reeled and she sat down hard on the bed.

"You can't be serious!"

"We'll discuss this later.  Now get your things together so we won't miss that caravan!"

A truce had been called in order that representatives of Summerset Isle and Elsweyr could meet with the Silvenar to discuss territorial claims, so the caravan made swift progress toward Silvenar.  Even so, Laila was sullen and uncommunicative during the trip.  The distance from Arenthia to Silvenar isn't even half as far as from the Capital to Arenthia, so it was early afternoon when they arrived in Silvenar.

An uninvited guest:

They checked into an inn and went up to their room to deposit their things.  As soon as the door was closed behind them, Laila unburdened herself to Scotti.

"I'll have nothing to do with this!"

"Nothing to do with what?" he asked feigning ignorance.

"Don't play dumb with me!" she shouted.  "This 'plan' of yours, it's crazy!  Why do you want to do it?"

"It's a vendetta."

"A vendetta?!" she cried, her face screwing up.

Scotti told her all about Leodes Jurus.

"So, was he a close friend of yours?"

"After what he put me through?  Hardly."

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Put it down as delayed justice.  Leodes didn't deserve what happened to him."

Just then the door to the balcony burst open and a Dark Brotherhood assassin came running at them with his adamantium jink blade raised high to strike them.  However, suddenly he stopped as if frozen in his tracks.

"Hurry, help me get him to the balcony!" Laila shouted prying the jink blade from his grip.

"Wait!  What did you just do!"

"No time to explain!  The spell lasts only two minutes!"

They dragged him to the balcony.

"Now, pitch him over!" Laila ordered.

"You mean kill him?!"

"What did he try to do to you just now?!  Lift his feet!"

Just then the assassin came out of paralysis and began to struggle.

"Now!" Laila cried, and they heaved him over.

There was a scream as the assassin fell three floors to the alley below.

"Whew!  That was a close one!" Laila said turning to Scotti.

He stood there visibly shaking.  The memory of Reglius's plunge had come back to him.

"Scotti, are you all right?"

There was no response.  Laila waved her hand in front of his staring eyes, but there was still no response.  She took him by the arm and led him to the bed where she laid him down and covered him up.  With all this talk about his 'plan', she'd thought he was made of sterner stuff, but she had no idea what a traumatic experience Valenwood had been.  She pondered what to do now.

Scotti snaps out of it:

When Scotti came to, Laila was sitting asleep on the bed with his head on her lap.  She woke when he sat up.

"Oh, Scotti!" she cried flinging her arms around him.  "You've come back!"

"How long was I like this?" he said as if waking from a dream.

"A full week."

"A week!" he said in alarm.

"Oh, don't worry.  Adamantium jink blades are very scarce here, so I got a really good deal on it."

The memory of the assassin came back to him.

"Ah. So, what became of our friend outside?"

"The guards came and poked around a bit.  The Dark Brotherhood is known to be expert at scaling outer walls, so the fact that this guy fell seemed very unlikely to them.  They knocked on our door and asked if I'd heard or seen anything unusual, and I told them no.  The fact that this guy was also unarmed seemed even more unlikely to them.  They said they wanted to look around because he seemed to have fallen—or was pushed—off our balcony.  I invited them in, and when they saw you shaking in bed, they asked who you were.  I told them my husband was inconvenienced right now because he'd come down with the collywobbles.  They didn't want to catch it from you, so they quickly excused themselves and left."

"The collywobbles!" Scotti guffawed.  "Laila, you're brilliant!  But...but...why did you stay?  You could have disappeared into the countryside, and nobody would have been the wiser!"

"I couldn't leave you here," she said holding him close and rocking him as if he were a child.  "Besides, I can assure you that I'm now on the Dark Brotherhood's black list, and there's only one way to get off of it--the open grave.  I did a lot of thinking while you were in your trance.  You're right about Leodes Jurus.  He didn't deserve it, and neither do we, and so I'm willing to go along with your vendetta to dispense justice and help his spirit rest in peace."

Scotti took off his signet ring and slipped it onto Laila's finger.

"What are you doing?" she smiled.

"Laila, we're married in every respect except in fact, and this has to be put aright. You don't mind, do you?  The gods as my witness!" Scotti proclaimed with upraised hand, "Laila is now the bride of Decumus Scotti and from henceforth shall be known as Laila Scotti."

Laila took the dagger from under the pillow, cut off some strands of her hair and tied them around his finger.

"This will have to do for now.  Tomorrow I'll buy you a decent wedding ring.  The gods as my witness!" she then proclaimed with upraised hand, "Decumus Scotti is the husband of Laila Scotti.  May the gods preserve us from our current misfortune."

There was silence as they pondered what they'd just done.

Here they were planning a murder on what should be a joyous occasion.