It was probably the heady rush of escaping both execution and not-so-mythical dragonfire, but Rheia swore that skull was watching her recover breath.

Perched on a narrow, black altar, clean ivory surrounded by dried mountain flowers, its white grin gleaming in the torchlight, it watched with a hollow gaze. Yet, the steady stare did not raise hairs on the back of her neck any more than that of her Imperial companion—she glanced over to find him still scouting ahead—then settled on the skull again.

It was definitely the adrenaline affecting her judgment when it occurred to her that the skull's gaze was somewhat imploring.

Rheia chanced a glance back to the soldier again. He was peering out of the cave's opening. Without another thought or logical interruption, she scooped the skull off its perch and into her satchel, and joined her companion at the mouth of the cavern, eyes on the sky.

Adrenaline's effect on cognitive ability could rival skooma: the skull's name was Yorick.

"How do I get myself into these messes, Yorick?" the Breton groaned, lake-water dripping off her leathers to the grassy shore. She gripped the end of a steel-tipped arrow in her hand, the head buried in the ankle of her boot, and, incidentally, the skin and sinew of her ankle. It shot burning spikes of pain through her leg, but it was nothing to the icy fingers of the wind piercing the water on her face. Divines, she hated the cold.

The skull, tucked safely in the satchel at her side, did not reply. It never did. Though, sometimes, Rheia imagined suitable answers to her thoughts and complaints.

This time, he told her: "Shady dealings are like damnation: once you're in, you can't get out."

"Just because I ran skooma for a few months to pay for passage to Skyrim—"

"And yet, instead of going to the college like you planned, you're here trying to break into a honey farm for a guild of thieves." Little bugger always knew where to hit.

She snapped the shaft in half and pushed what remained into and out the rest of her leg, hissing through her teeth, a simple restoration spell ready at her fingertips when her vision whitened at the edges from pain. "I still want to train, but I need gold for travel, and my skills—" She tried to stifle her scream when the arrow finally came free, and pressed her hands immediately over the wound, pouring every ounce of energy she had into a warm, gentle healing spell. Her flesh prickled as it knitted back together, and a pins-and-needles sensation rushed as the blood-flow returned to normal.

Rheia made a sopping flop onto her back, grass tickling her neck as she tugged off her hood.

"Those deviant skills got you this far—it's really no wonder you're pursuing them."

Sarcastic bastard.

"What happened to your face?"

Well, she couldn't exactly say 'a skooma deal went bad, and this happened when I tried to get my money', so Rheia told the child: "Got in a fight with a Khajit. They have a sort of unfair advantage in a fistfight."

"Can I touch it?"

Just as she was imagining Yorick's laughter, there came a chuckling from the shadows. A dark elf loitered in the lee of a shop.

Rheia bent double to level her head with the girl's, and the child felt the four pale, puckered scars that crossed her lips, young blue eyes dancing with awed excitement.

"For a bit of gold, we could keep that kind of scuffle from happening again," the elf offered, amusement still playing on her lips.

"She's a mercenary," said the girl, bouncing on her heels, "and lots of fun to watch—she's so good at being quiet."

The elf inclined her head. "Stealth and shadow are my arts—for the right price, I shall make great art for you."

"Now that's the best come-on I've ever heard. Even better than the servants of Dibella."

The mercenary shrugged. "Whatever works."

"Just what is the price…?"

"Janessa." She fixed the little girl under her ruby gaze. Rheia had quite forgotten about the child: surely business would bore her. "Run along, now, Lucia."

It was a lucrative partnership. Where Rheia's skill in stealth depended upon being seen and forgotten, Janessa would disappear from even the Breton's sight, remaining completely masked in the shadows.

The dark elf quite enjoyed slinking from Rheia's shadow and reappearing in front of her whenever they grew bored during travel. She tried not to dwell on how easily Janessa could put that sword or dagger through her chest on any such occasion.

Yorick liked to remind her at camp.

"So." Janessa nodded toward where Rheia crouched just off the dusty road, mending the burned skin of her fingers. "The College of Winterhold, then."

The Breton shook her head in the affirmative. "And soon, I hope. I need to refine this—it takes too long."

"Well, the flames are impressive; watching a troll burn is always satisfying." She leaned against the trunk of a tree, smile playing on her lips.

Rheia chuckled. "When I'm not burning myself with them."

"I didn't say they were perfect."

There was a tome lying just feet away, near one of the bandit's bedrolls, the mark of healing etched into the cover.

"I wouldn't suggest it."

Damn it. Yorick! Shut up.

"They can't hear me."

Yorick.

She crept closer, slinking against the wall, tunic catching on the granite surface. There was a gurgle some way ahead—she could see Janessa's shadow play on the wall in the torchlight, a bandit's shadow sinking heavily before her.

Footsteps behind as the watch returned. But her hand was brushing the cover so close and…

Thwip.

Rheia rolled to the side, body tucked protectively around the tome as the bandit charged ahead, arrow's shaft protruding from his shoulder. "Sound the ala—"

But he didn't see Janessa melt out of the shadows, halting his axe mid-swing, her blade thrusting in a neat arc. The human's head hit the ground with a sickening, soppy thump, and rolled past the Breton's still-crouched form.

Yorick was laughing even before the dark elf turned a disapproving look their way, the sound of a half-dozen pairs of boots converging on their position.

Rheia poured over the book, propped on a stone as she tried a quick repair of her leather jerkin, tugging a large needle with a flick of her wrist. Janessa deliberately did not face her while wrapping a gash on her leg with the cleanest linen in their possession. She dripped some extra salve near the deepest edge, growling as she tied it off as tight as could be borne.

"On the bright side, next time I'll be able to heal you like I do my injuries." The mage clipped the thick thread, not removing her eyes from the tome.

"There won't be a next time, because you'll save the looting for after the bandits are dead." Janessa strapped her greave back over the bandaged calf.

"Right, right."

"You have no idea what I just said." The dark elf glared to where Rheia was bent over the pages, hands unmoving.

"Hm?"

This earned an empty bottle to the face.

There was a next time, of course, for different reasons: the pair stumbled into someone else's ambush.

Thalmor often marched prisoners across the plains to their forts in the north—for torture, it was widely known. Rheia was no friend of the Stormcloaks, but neither did she approve of the Thalmor's power; she wouldn't wish the bastards on her worst enemy. This led to cutting the bonds of men she would have otherwise turned over to Imperial officers, just to spite the Dominion.

This time, however, another pair had the same idea, and a normally clean skirmish became, in Yorick's words, a cluster-fuck.

As Janessa crept behind the last Thalmor mage, knife drawn, he dropped, burbling into the dusty road, the black shaft of an arrow protruding from his throat.

It was too late to move when the others whipped around (robes flapping dramatically on the breeze—bastards) to investigate the sound, and there was certainly no hope of explaining that she couldn't have killed him with that arrow herself.

The spells began flying. Fireballs, flames, slivers of ice that clashed and melted into the dirt of the road. A blur of motley and the glint of a knife. Rheia could hardly focus enough to keep a healing aura to minimize damage as she swung her mage, catching a Thalmor across his unarmored shoulder. The satisfying crack of bone, crackling of fire on the breeze, and—singing? Singing.

Janessa plunged her blade into the Thalmor's back even as he fumbled a healing spell to his shattered shoulder, and sank into the dampened soil.

The spray of blood, a whistle, a whir—

"KRII."

It was a tremor through the air, a whisper, a growl carried on the wind, and without comprehension, Rheia's blood ran cold with the word's meaning.

But it was not for her: the final mage collapsed, drained, onto the road, a woman standing over him, all shrouded in black and a red that might have simply been fine dye or fresh blood, an arrow clasped between her gloved fingers. Gold eyes glinted from the depths the black hood. A fool grinned behind her, trembling with the adrenaline of a fresh kill.

This was Rheia's first glimpse of the Listener to the Dark Brotherhood.

Let us say the wounded thief and her bleeding companion did not leave the best impression.