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The scrap of paper was gone.

"Damn," she thought. There had been no where to conceal the gun with this outfit on. She'd left it in the briefcase. She opened the door carefully, looking for tripwires. Inside the lights were off. She always left them on. She turned the switch on now.

She saw a black shape on the couch sit up.

"Would you mind turning it back off," said a silky feminine voice and Ra'Jirra had to look twice to make sure it came from a khajiit.

"You Romanov?" she asked, but switched the light off anyway.

Two orange eyes glowed back at her from blackness.

"I am. But please, call me Ko'Manir. That other name is just what the humans call me. You could say I'm rediscovering my khajiit ancestry. As for the lights... call me paranoid. I can't go back again, you see. I've burnt my bridges. If someone catches me here I'll be executed on the spot."

Ra'Jirra crossed to the mini bar. "Something to drink, Ko'Manir? They keep a good supply here."

"Yes, please. Something warm. It's cold in here."

Her eyes adjusted to the low light quickly. Pouring a couple of drinks was no problem, but when she turned back, the black khajiit remained a dark place on the couch with two glowing eyes hovering. They blinked.

She handed a drink to the blackness. It took it with warm hands.

"Thank you. Yes, that is very good. I suppose you're wondering about my motivation?"

"Actually, I'm more curious about how you came to work for the Hammerfell Secret Service in the first place."

"It is a long story," said the darkness, the eyes closing.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I. I can't go home anymore. They'll be looking for me. Can I stay with you?"

"There's only one bed."

Slitted eyes opened in the blackness, and for the first time, white fangs accompanied them. "I think that is all we need."

Ra'Jirra downed her drink. "I... think I'll have another. You?"

The black khajiit rose and took Ra'Jirra's glass. "I'll get it."

As she crossed in front of the glass window, the moonlight shone through the sheer fabric of Ko'Manir's dress, revealing the silhouette of an impressive figure under it's gauzy folds. Ra'Jirra gulped. Obviously she'd been chaste far too long of late. If Ko'Manir was trying to seduce her, it was working too well. She looked away.

"You seem to know quite a bit about me, yet I know nothing about you. So yes, why don't you tell me your story?"

Ko'Manir returned, handing her refilled drink to Ra'Jirra.

"I was born here in Hammerfell. Not Rihad, mind you, a small northern village. My parents tried to teach me Ta'agra and keep me true to the traditions of the khajiit, but I failed them. I demanded to go to school with the other children. Perhaps I suffered some discrimination there, but what of it? I also had good, good friends there. And I was good at school too. I excelled, you might say, especially at languages. I've always been fascinated with them, you see?"

"Except not Ta'agra?"

"Pah. Ta'agra is a gutter language. We limit ourselves needlessly. It's only advantage is that our mouths form the words easily, but communication requires so much more, you see? And we are not linguistically challenged. We can speak other languages with ease. Yet we burden ourselves with that archaic language, the harsh siblants, the shrill cadence. I speak it just fine, but I choose not to. It is inherently limiting."

"You're passionate about it, I see. But go on. So you grew up here, I get it."

"I did. But my parents did not stay, and I refused to go with them. I was... am... strong willed perhaps? But you, you are the same, no?"

A black paw darkened her arm. Ra'Jirra looked at it, then back at the two glowing eyes. She felt odd. Hot. But she didn't push her away. "Some have said so. But go on. So you were left alone?"

"Oh no," said the darkness and it shifted beside her, shoulder to shoulder. "I was not alone! I had friends, and I was nearly an adult by then. But I never left school. I excelled too much to go unnoticed by the professors. Scholarly khajiits are a thing unknown here, but I showed them that we are every bit as intelligent as they, if we try. I did try. And I surpassed them all."

"So, you basically adopted Hammerfell as your home country?"

"They adopted me! Why should I not do the same? After I exceeded the backwater educators at my school, I was offered a very prestigious position at a government facility where they had me translating texts of all sorts. It was fun work, for a while. But I noticed the texts became less scholarly and more political in nature. They stopped being about history or ancient cultures, and became increasingly more stories from political publications from far and wide. I am not a stupid khajiit, Ra'Jirra. I knew what they were grooming me for. And I approved."

"A spy?"

"No. I'd call it perhaps espionage, but the publications weren't secret. At first anyway. But they became so over the years, and I found I was good at decrypting them. All languages have patterns in them, you see. If you can recognize the patterns, deciphering them becomes much easier!"

She was obviously getting into this, Ra'Jirra saw. She was passionate on the subject, and that passion was infectious. While it wasn't Ra'Jirra's own expertise, she could appreciate the other's excitement at the subject. It was another kind of investigation, and any good investigator should feel of thrill of satisfaction when the object of inquiry is achieved.

"So you began to get into decoding," Ra'Jirra suggested, but she was fascinated by the eyes and the mouth of the dark khajiit. She felt the warm paw moving gently over her thigh.

"And encoding. My superiors sent me to classes at the local university. You'd be amazed how much mathematics gets involved! I certainly was. But I stuck with it. Your dossier on me probably calls me a mid level cryptologist, does it not? But I tell you with complete sincerity that I am the best person they have in the field."

"You're also the humblest person I've ever met," Ra'Jirra said, but her hand strayed on top of Ko'Manir's and followed the long arm up.

"Oh damn. Well, it's not bragging if you can back it up, right? Sorry, I get carried away when I talk about work. Anyway, I'll get to the point. In some ways, I am just mid level, if that. They don't trust me, Ra'Jirra. I've never given them one damn reason not to, but they won't promote me. And I continue to learn. I've hit a glass ceiling, Ra'Jirra. And I know why. It's not because of my sex, it's because of my race. Well dammit, I know a place I can go where that won't be a problem!"

"Elsweyr," Ra'Jirra said, her eyes closing.

"Of course Elsweyr. And I can meet my parents again. They're retired now, down in Corinthe."

"Pretty place, Corinthe. Okay, You've convinced me. But why did you ask for me?"

"Haven't you guessed by now?" Ko'Manir said, leaning close. "Ra'Jirra... you're my hero."

Ra'Jirra felt a the soft hand slip under her dress at the shoulder. It felt unbelievably good.

"I've read a lot about you, Ra'Jirra. More than just the obvious publications too. I began to seek out all I could. You're a khajiit that has risen to prominence, if only to those few who know of such things."

"Romanov..." Ra'Jirra said huskily. She found herself wanting this more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life. And yet, something bothered her. Something seemed wrong. But she couldn't think straight, and she really didn't care.

"'Call me Ko'Manir', please," said the darkness.

"Liski... ahziss boqi" Ra'Jirra said, closing her eyes and opening her mouth. Another tongue found hers and she lay back against the couch, a warm darkness enveloping her.

"There are times, I must admit..." Ko'Manir said as she drew Ra'Jirra's dress up over her head, "...when Ta'agra works best."

And then the talking stopped. They retired to the bedroom shortly afterwards.

**********************************

"Did you get it all?" La'Dasha asked the Altmer.

He smiled back at her. "Every bit."

The device he called a 'camera' was ingenious, though magical in origin.

"We are working with our best alchemists to devise a non-magical method, but for now this is all we can do," he'd told her when he had arrived two days ago.

"Anything the lens sees will be recorded onto a scroll visibly. For longer recordings, we simply load in a longer scroll."

"And your magic is sufficient?"

"We Altmer are the last to be able to retain the required mana, but yes. My stores will be quite sufficient for your needs."

"They'd better be. We need this scroll. It will make a laughing stock of her. Why she hasn't been arrested already, I don't know."

"Be careful, La'Dasha. You know I outrank you," said the Altmer.

"Oh. Yes. Sorry. I just need to make sure this goes as planned."

The Altmer shut down the camera and moved a lever.

"It's over now. She's fallen asleep."

"Let me see!" La'Dasha demanded, and the Altmer drew a long scroll, tightly wound, from a spindle.

La'Dasha unrolled it and scanned the sequential images on it.

"Oh... Oh gods!"

"Yes, she's quite the tiger, your little khajiit."

"Wait... is that what I think it is?"

"What? Let me see..." said the Altmer, curious. "Oh yes, indeed it's just what it looks like. The dark one has proven to be surprisingly adventurous for a desk agent!"

"This is better than I'd ever dreamed," La'Dasha grinned.

"It... should suffice," the Altmer said, taking the scroll back and placing it into a tube, then sealing the tube and handing it back to La'Dasha.

"My work here is done. I'll be going. I find that outside of this hotel the environment is not to my liking. But La'Dasha."

She looked up from the tube, wondering if she should risk viewing the whole thing when she was in private. But then she'd just end up hungry. "Yes?"

"You are aware, are you not, that the Dominion has... other such scrolls?"

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't think we would risk this opportunity on an untested device, surely? But I'm happy to report that the test went flawlessly. Your scroll is on it's way back to headquarters now."

"My?... what?" Then she realized what he was saying.

"Oh yes. I don't know, but I suspect that between the two recordings, yours was perhaps a bit more... deviant shall we say? But do not trouble yourself about that. I'm sure it will only be used to entertain some of our higher ranking officials. I hope to see you again soon, La'Dasha. Goodbye."

And with that the Altmer packed up his gear and left her room - the room stationed directly below the penthouse suite in fact.

La'Dasha seethed. If they thought that recording her was going to work as blackmail, though, they were sorely mistaken.