My first attempt at Oblivion fanfiction.
Disclaimer: Everything but the main character belongs to Bethesda...though I do wish I had at least some claim to Vicente Valtieri. Kudos to Uilleand, who's story 'A Good Man' inspired this one.
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He was at the door.
Huddled in my place on the floor, I drew up my legs and rested my head on my knees. Thirty days and thirty nights had passed. I had thought myself safe. I had even started to believe that they were safe, though in my hidden heart of hearts I knew that he would simply find a different man to do the job.
He was at the door.
Thirty days and thirty nights. That meant that he must have been to Skingrad first. I spent most of my days and nights in the Sanctuary but kept a manor in Skingrad for when I needed to get away. It was beautiful. Stained glass windows, velvet tapestries, a cellar full of wine, and books. So many books. I had 'inherited' the manor after fulfilling the contract to kill everyone inside. It was at a dinner party. The table had been set with precious silverware, and I had made sure that no one would eat from it again but me.
I had done it with a sharp blade and a steady hand and a cold, cold heart. I had done it like I had been taught. The Family was proud of me, and Ocheeva presented me with a new bow, and even the great Vicente Valtieri told me that he could not have done it better, cleaner, quicker. The lie had made me blush.
Now Vicente and Ocheeva and the rest of the Family were sleeping in the Sanctuary, and he was at the door.
He must have gone to the Sanctuary first, and then to Skingrad. The Family knew that I kept a house in Skingrad, and so I had expected this. I had planned for this. That was why I was here.
I had run to my old haunt, my old, old home. Fifteen years ago I had been living like a sewer rat in a waterlogged cave under the castle in Anvil. Fifteen years ago I had been sleeping in this same bedroll, counting coppers by candlelight amid the old wooden crates and broken lanterns and the smuggler's bones. Cleaning the rust from my knife as the sea crashed against the flimsy door and flooded the inner bay of the cave, the air heavy with salt. Fifteen years ago he had found me here, when I was just a gutter rat shaking under the guilt of my first murder. Fifteen years ago, and no one knew this bitter place existed but he and I.
But now a storm was coming outside, and he was at the door.
From my place on the floor I could see his shadow against the moonlight shining through the flimsy door. I could not believe he had found it again. He had come to me in the night like a thief fifteen years ago, bearing an offer I couldn't refuse, and neither of us had been back since. When he came, I had been huddled on the same burlap sacks that I was now. I had been wearing the same ragged pants and stained linen shirt that I was wearing now. My clothes, my Brotherhood uniform, lay folded on the ground beside me. I could not bring myself to wear them. The Family had given them to me fifteen years ago, and they were as black as the Void itself.
My daggers and knives lay glinting in the candlelight, and my bow lay propped against the wall. They knew the taste of blood too well. They had forsaken it for thirty days and thirty nights, and they thirsted. My Lord Sithis thirsted. I thirsted. For fifteen years not a fortnight had passed without a contract for me to fulfill. But now thirty days and thirty nights had gone by. Twice too long. And the contract sat waiting, and Sithis thirsted, but my hidden heart of hearts quailed at the names that had been given.
This was not supposed to be.
Those should not have been the names, and the will of Sithis should not be denied, and I should not be here again, and he should not be at the door.
He knocked.
I raised my head. I rasped, "What is the color of night?"
"Sanguine, my sister."
Of course it was. Of course it was him. Who else knew this place but him?
"Enter."
The door creaked open, and Lucien Lachance stepped inside amide a swell of icy water.
He was dressed as I should have been dressed, as I had dressed for fifteen years. It was the uniform of the Family, of the entire Dark Brotherhood. Black on black on black. We were assassins, the sons and daughters of Sithis and the Night Mother, and our robes must be black as the shadows themselves, and our hoods must hide our faces from the light. Vicente Valtieri had explained this to me, so very long ago.
I wore the ragged and stained and soiled rages of my childhood and my slavery, my days as a beggar and cutpurse and whore, my days as nothing. Lucien wore the robes of my Family, the Family that thirty days and thirty nights ago he had ordered me to kill.
The Family.
The Night Mother had spoken to the Listener, and the Listener had spoken to Lucien, the Speaker. And the Listener had told the Speaker that the Family must die. And I must be the one to do it.
My bow thirsted for Ocheeva's blood, and my arrows longed to pierce the hearts and eyes and entrails of Teinaava, Antoinetta Marie, M'raaj-Dar, Gogron gro-Bolmog, Telaendril. And my dagger desired the throat of Vicente Valtieri, which must be sweet and full of blood after his three-hundred years as a Vampire, and his fifteen years as something close to my father.
And Sithis – Sithis, my Lord and my Savior – Sithis desired their souls. Sithis could never be denied. Vicente had told me this, fifteen years ago, the first day I entered the Sanctuary and called it my home.
Thirty days and thirty nights ago, I had received the contract from Lucien in his secret stronghold far from the Sanctuary. I had told him that I could not do it. Then we had spoken some more, and I told him I had changed my mind. I left the fort in silence, bearing a butterfly pattern of bruises on my throat in the shape of ten fingers and thumbs.
Lucien had gone to the Sanctuary expecting to find me standing tall and proud and heartless over Vicente's silent body, surrounded by walls painted with blood. Then he had gone to the manor in Skingrad, expecting to find me cowering amid the ghosts of my former victims, walking on imported rugs that covered the stains on the floor. And now he had found me here. Here. In a long-forgotten smuggler's cave under a crumbling castle, drenched by the salt of the sea, where I sat frozen on the floor in dread and reverence just as I had those fifteen years before.
He climbed out of the water dripping and knelt before me, and even in the flickering light from the candles I could see that his face under his hood was as cold as an assassin's could ever be.
"Sister," he said.
He called me sister, one of the Family, yet I knew I could not bring myself to call him brother.
"Sister," he said, deadly calm, "it is the will of Sithis. And you know that Sithis cannot be denied."
I did not answer.
"Sister," he went on, "you are a member of the Dark Brotherhood. We serve the will of Sithis. Sithis comes to all. It does not matter if the victim is old, or young, rich or poor, powerful or weak. It does not matter if the victim is dear to you. Sithis – "
"It does not matter," I repeated in the same voice, "if they are dear to me?"
"Why should it matter? You have been trained in calm and restraint and lack of remorse. It does not matter if the victim is dear to you."
"Vicente is a father to me."
He laughed. "Telaendril killed her own father. Did you know that? And Vicente once murdered his wife while his child watched. Ten years later, he killed the child. Father, mother, daughter, son – these mean nothing in the eyes of Sithis. I thought Vicente taught you this."
"He did. He taught me very well." I lifted one of my knives to show him, the one I'd received when I'd killed an old, old man as he read a book in his favorite chair.
"It seems he also taught you how to love."
"No one taught me that."
"Then he failed." He sighed and stood, and began to walk a circle around the cave. There was disgust in his eyes as he looked at the mold, the rust, the bits of broken junk and rubble. "Did you think to prevent it by hiding here, sister?" he said, his voice taking on a new, harsh tone. "If you do not fulfill the contract, I can do it. It matters not. The Night Mother gave your name, yes…but they will be dead. And Sithis will accept them into his embrace."
"And if I do not do it?" I said from the floor.
"You will be visited by the Wrath of Sithis, dear sister, but I do not wish this on you."
"Aah, so I am dear to you."
"You are, sister. But should Sithis desire your death…"
"And if the Night Mother had spoken my name, and asked for Ocheeva or Vicente or the others to do the killing…"
"They would do it."
"I do not believe you."
He shrugged slightly. "Such is the way of the Brotherhood."
"Lucien," I said, "they are my family."
"It matters not. You have been taught to kill without remorse. You have been taught to hide your heart and lock your emotions away. You have lived with us for fifteen years, dear sister, you know our ways. You know that it matters not if the victims beg or if they scream, if they curse you or offer you all you desire. You know that it matters not who they are. You know – "
" – That the will of Sithis cannot be denied." An anger was growing inside me that I had not felt in fifteen years, a recklessness that I thought had been destroyed long ago. "Sithis cannot be denied," I repeated, "but what if I were to do so?"
Lucien stopped pacing, the shadows thick under his hood. "You would forsake the Brotherhood."
"Yes."
"When I found you, you were nothing!" he hissed, whirling around so that he towered over me, a shape of black on black on black, his dark eyes burning under his hood. "You were a thief and a whore! You lived in this cave like a rat! And I took you out of here and we trained you to be something that only a handful of men could be! You are nothing without the Brotherhood. You owe your life to the Brotherhood, your very soul belongs to Sithis, how dare you, sister, to – "
"I am not your sister!" I leapt to my feet and glared at him with my hands curled into fists, long-forgotten anger thundering through my brain. "Not if you want me to do this! They are my family, Lucien, and I will not kill the Family, I am not your servant, I am not your sister! I am – I am – "
Wild thoughts raced through my head. I imagined taking up one my knives and stabbing Lucien right now, one last murder, the shocked expression on his face as the steel drank his blood. I imagined leaving his body to the rats and slogging to shore, bloody and shivering, stealing a horse and galloping all through the night and the day and the following night to Cheydinhal. And I would enter the gates and go through the boarded-up door of the abandoned house, down through the basement and through the black door to the Sanctuary where I had lived for fifteen years. And they would all be there, they would all be alive. The Family. My family. Ocheeva and Teinaava and M'raaj-Dar and everyone else. And I imagined that I would find Vicente, my father, and I would tell him – I would tell him I saved his life, I killed Lucien, the Speaker, I disobeyed Sithis, I saved his life –
And I imagined his face.
"Vicente, I have denied the will of Sithis, I have saved your life."
"Sister," he would say, "dear sister…how could you do such a thing?"
I imagined his fangs in my throat and his blade in my chest and my life slipping out of me in a great gush of red.
I unclenched my hands.
"I am a tool of Sithis," I whispered.
Lucien nodded, smiling. He backed away, his boots barely making a sound when they entered the water. "Walk in the shadow of death," he said.
"Walk in the shadow of death, my brother," I replied.
He left through the flimsy door. And I was left staring at the place where he had been, speechless and trembling slightly, exactly as I had done fifteen years before.
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I had killed them all.
I had taken up my bow and my blades and my Brotherhood robes and slogged to shore, shivering. I had stolen a horse and ridden all through the night and the day and the following night to Cheydinhal. The storm had broken at midnight, and by the time I reached the city lightning forked across the sky and rain fell black and cold. I had walked the streets of Cheydinhal with rain sheeting off the hood that hid my face. I had entered the boarded-up house and the black door.
"What is the color of night?"
"Sanguine, my brother."
"Welcome home."
Welcome home.
I had entered the Sanctuary at dawn and slept through the day in the bed that had been mine for fifteen years. The voices of the Family crept into my sleep and my dreams. I dreamt that Ocheeva said she was worried for me, that she missed me, and that M'raaj-Dar had a day's worth of stories to tell. I dreamt that Telaendril confessed she had never murdered her father.
Then at nightfall I had awoken, and I had killed them all.
I had planted poison on the dinner table and then crept into the training room, where I backstabbed M'raaj-Dar as he cast spells of fire and brimstone at the stuffed wooden dummies, and put an arrow between Antoinetta Marie's eyes before she could raise the alarm. She fell clumsily, her expression shocked and vapid, so unlike her usual silent grace. My heart was cold and my hand was steady. May Sithis accept you into his loving embrace.
Vicente had told me to whisper those words to the bodies of those I killed. It was one of those first things he taught me, fifteen years ago.
I left the training room to discover Gogron gro-Bolmog lying dead as if sleeping at the dinner table.
Telaendril and Teinaava were sleeping in truth. I slit their throats with a silver knife that I had received when I killed an old man as he sat reading in his favorite chair. I whispered "May Sithis accept you into his loving embrace" to their corpses. Then I turned, and saw Ocheeva standing over me, her eyes wide and horrified.
I had been careless.
"Night Mother," she whispered, backing away, "Night Mother…"
"I am sorry, Ocheeva," I said, "It is the will of Sithis."
And may Sithis accept you into his loving embrace.
Now, I pulled my knife free of her ribs and stood, resting my forehead against the wall. I breathed. I had killed them all.
All except one.
I breathed.
I am a daughter of Sithis our Dread Father, I am a tool to do his deathly biding, and the will of Sithis is as mine. I am silent as shadow and cold as the winter, my hands are steady and my heart is hidden, I have no emotion, I feel no remorse, and the will of Sithis is as mine.
I walked to the chest at the foot of my bed and pulled out a silver longsword. I buckled it onto my hip. Then I stood and stepped over Ocheeva's startled corpse, walking on silent feet to the very basement of the Sanctuary.
I gritted my teeth and pushed open the heavy wooden door.
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I was an assassin. I had been trained in the art of stealth for fifteen years. My footsteps on the floor had made no more noise than falling snow. I had opened the cumbersome door with barely a whisper of hinges, with no more noise than a dying man's sigh on a winter night.
He was waiting for me.
I stood quickly, crossing my arms to hide the act of reaching for my sword. Vicente shook his head. He put aside the book he had been reading and smiled up at me, his red eyes glowing slightly in the candlelight, and I saw that his hand was already on the hilt of his sword.
"So, I am the last, am I?"
I said nothing. I barely dared to breathe.
The Vampire sighed and stood with an unearthly grace, stretching. "Dear sister," he said, "Don't look so surprised. You receive secret orders from the Speaker and then disappear for thirty days, and when you return you do not speak. And it is oddly quiet in the Sanctuary tonight." He cocked his head at me, looking bemused. "Did you honestly think I did not know what was happening?"
"And you did not prevent it?"
He chuckled. "Of course not. The will of Sithis cannot be denied. You have done very well, sister. There was not a single scream tonight. I see that our lessons have not been in vain."
"I…"
The words could not leave my throat.
"Ah." Vicente eyed me critically. I knew that look well. It was the same look that he gave me when I returned from a contract to report that the guards had seen me or that I had been forced to dispose of a non-essential. It was the look that made the hairs stand up on my neck. He turned away from me and began to pace, hands clasped behind his back. "You have done well," he repeated, "they have now joined with our Dread Father in the loving embrace of the Void. Their souls are at peace. It seems that I am the last. After three-hundred years…"
He stopped, his eyes fixed on some point that I could not see, a smile on his gaunt and bloodless face.
The rasp as I drew my sword was terribly loud and I winced internally, a heavy weight settling somewhere in my stomach. The noise seemed to snap the Vampire out of his reverie. His eyes fixed on my face again, then dropped to my sword. He raised an eyebrow. "A virgin blade, is that not?"
I nodded.
"How interesting." He smiled, flashing fangs.
The weight in my stomach seemed to have crushed my ability to speak. The will of Sithis is as mine, I thought. Vicente was watching me expectantly.
"You are more skilled with a blade than I," I managed.
"I am."
"You will probably kill me."
"I might."
"Could you – "
"No, dear sister," he said, the apologetic smile on his face pale face slowly being replaced by a sinister grin. There was the barest noise as his sword came free of its sheathe. "I will not make this easy on you."
In utter silence the silver blade came flashing down.
I parried. And so we fought. We danced light-footed around the room, around the dresser, the bookcase, the reading chair, the granite slab he used as a bed. The Vampire had the speed of a snake and three-hundred years to hone his skill, and his blade seemed to crackle around me like lightning. I fought. My arm was numb. The noise from our swords echoed hollowly on the stone walls of the little room.
He stabbed at my side and I twisted away, but when I put my hand to my robes it came away red. The pain was not so very bad. His face was worse. I had seen Lucien with such a sadistic smile, but I had never seen it on Vicente; it chilled my blood. The red of his eyes seemed to burn me. I fought.
And then there was blood on my shoulder, and the barest line of blood on my cheek from a cut that stung like fire, and I knew that this would not last long.
He had backed me into a corner. And now his blade flashed out and did something with my wrist too fast for me to see, and my sword went flying out of my grasp to spin across the room. It hit the stone slab of his bed with a clang. His sword was coming at my throat, and I did not think. I did the only thing I could do.
I ducked.
I ducked, and I drew my silver knife, and as he stepped back to recover from his swing I stabbed. I stabbed upward, blindly, standing as I did so. I hoped only that there would be no sword to crush the back of my head, only that he would stumble backwards in shock, even as my face came level with his and I pulled on the collar of his robes to draw him closer.
I froze.
The cruel grin was gone from Vicente Valtieri's face, replaced by a blank look of shock. My hand was between us, clutching tightly around the hilt of my knife. It was slippery with blood. It jumped in time with the beating of his heart.
Vicente smiled slightly, appreciatively.
"Spill some blood for me, dear sister," he whispered.
I jerked out my knife and he fell away from me to land in a heap on the floor, his red eyes dull and empty, that smile still fixed to his blood-starved face.
The silence stretched for an age. I looked down at the knife in my hand, which was red all the way to the hilt. I breathed. The weight in the pit of my stomach was gone, and it seemed to have been replaced by a curious sense of the Void.
"May Sithis accept you into his loving embrace," I told the corpse at my feet.
I am silent as shadow and cold as the winter, my hands are steady and my heart is hidden, I have no emotion, I feel no remorse.
My side was hurting abominably, and my shoulder as well, and my cheek felt as if it were on fire. That could wait. I did the only thing I could do. I carefully stepped around Vicente's body to the chair where he had been when I entered. I sat, and began to clean my knife.
When I heard a door closing in the Sanctuary above me, I did not look up. There was only one person that it could be. I heard him moving around, checking each room, taking no care to make sure that his footsteps wouldn't be heard in the silent halls. When I heard him outside the door of the last room, I put away my knife.
Lucien leaned against the doorframe, a wide smile on his face. I stood and bowed my head out of respect. I prayed that my hands at my sides would not shake, and they did not shake. "Sister," he said, "dear sister…you have done well. I am pleased." He stepped over Vicente's body to reach me, and I looked up to see that his eyes were glittering under his hood. "Sithis is pleased."
I said nothing.
"You deserve to rest after such a contract. Meet me at Fort Farragut in a fortnight, no sooner, and I will have more work for you. And you deserve a reward, as well…a promotion. You are now a Silencer." He grinned even more broadly. "My personal assassin."
He leaned forward and planted a kiss on my forehead. It was an innocent kiss, a protective kiss, like one that a father bestows on his daughter. I smiled.
"A fortnight, then," I said hoarsely.
"Yes. Walk in the shadow of death, my sister."
"Walk in the shadow of death."
He stepped back over Vicente's body without looking down, and left the room in a swirl of black robes.
Walk in the shadow of death…I heard a door closing above me, and knew that he was gone. The Sanctuary was deathly quiet. The silence seemed to press down on me from all sides.
I breathed.
In the silence, I drank a healing potion.
I stepped carefully around Vicente's body and closed the door behind me, leaving my sword to lie on the floor by the stone slab that had been his bed. It was a virgin sword, one that had never known the taste of blood. I had never been skilled with a sword.
When I left, the torches were still burning, and the diner table was still full of food, the poison invisible. The beds were made, the locks still on the chests of gold and jewels. It might have looked as if the Family might return at any moment from various contracts around the Empire, from various jobs in far-away places, if it were not for the seven corpses scattered throughout. They lay in black-robed heaps on the cold floor.
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I had done well.
I had done it like I had been taught. They would have been proud of me.
Sitting on the steps to the abandoned house above the Sanctuary, I drew up my legs and rested my head on my knees. It continued to rain. The water lashed against windowpanes and pummeled against roofs with a terrible sound. It sheeted off the black hood that hid my face. Every so once in a while there would be a flash of white light as lightning forked across the sky, throwing the houses into stark relief against the grey of the night. I sat on the steps to the abandoned house and stared at the empty streets, unmoving, just as I had done in the cave under the castle in Anvil when Lucien had stood outside the door. That seemed so very long ago.
A city guard walked by, the torch in his hand hissing and spitting from the rain. My fingers strayed toward the my knife at my belt, but this guard was weary of rain and did not notice the blood on my robes, or the ominous black of the robes themselves. Black as the Void. Black as the realm of Sithis himself. Black on black on black.
"Hello," he said, "Why aren't you inside? No one lives here." He gestured at the vacant windows, the boarded-up door, the long and uncut grass.
"No," I agreed, "no one does."
He shrugged and continued on his way.
It rained. It thundered, it poured, and the wind howled, and the lightning shook the sky. I sat on the steps with my head on my knees, and I thought. I had done well.
I had done well.
It rained. I comforted myself with the fact that had Lucien been watching, he would not have been able to distinguish the rain from my tears.
I had done well.
Fin