Vampire's Kiss

Disclaimer: No, I do not own Oblivion, its characters or places or ideas. Nor am I making a single Septim from this. Sniff

Author's Note Since I'm something of a professional insomniac, I already have an update to post. Written a few days ago, but I only now got around to proofreading it. I glad that the balance between past and present seems acceptable. I was worried that I might be focusing too much on Tessa's past, and not enough on what was going on in the present. Though towards the end, there will be more present than past. =)

Chapter 3

But please swear that when I return,

everything remains as it was

"Ah! Good, you're here." Tessa and Lucien had just stepped into Ungolim's house near the statue of the Lucky Old Lady in Bravil, having spent the night in a nearby Inn. Tessa glanced back over her shoulder through the still open door at the face of the woman depicted. Though it radiated with a well known aura, the face itself did not belong to the one projecting the aura. Then Lucien closed the door, blocking out the sight.

"You didn't exactly give me much choice." She answered mildly and helped herself to a seat without being invited to do so. Her opinion of Bravil had never been quite so high – it sunk even lower as she looked around the flat. Most surfaces were dust covered, or covered in clutter. In a corner, she spotted several bottles of cheap wine. Empty bottles, leading her to wonder how often the Listener over indulged. Her mind still had trouble grasping the concept that he could have risen so high.

"I was quite troubled by your return, truth be told, and did not quite know what to do with you. But I believe we might be able to put you to good use after all." Ungolim began without preamble.

"I have my orders, Listener." Tessa emphasized the title in an angry hiss, as a result it sounded not as a respectful means of address, but rather as a slander. "You need not give me any other."

"Orders? What orders?" The Bosmer's voice squeaked, making both Tessa and Lucien want to wince. The only indication of this fact was a slight tightening of the muscles around the jaw.

"Why don't you ask the Night Mother?" came the calm response. "Oh, I forgot, she does not speak to you any longer does she? Except to give you the contracts."

Dead silence followed Tessa's taunting pronouncement in which Ungolim's mouth worked to find words. "How dare you!" He finally exploded, standing up to better glare at her.

"I dare because I know." She waved the accusation away. "Know this, Ungolim, I do not respect you." Slowly, she stood, none of her lingering physical weakness apparent in her posture. "Your orders, I will not follow, unless the Night Mother herself confirms them to me."

"Preposterous. She does not speak to mere assassins." Ungolim declared snidely.

"Oh, but I am no mere assassin." Tessa whispered softly, a look of sadness crossing her features before she once again recollected herself, once again settling a blank look onto her face. With a shake of her head, she opened the door, and stepped out, walking slowly towards the statue.

Was I wrong to seek a direct confrontation already? She asked the still carved figure once she had come close enough to lay a hand onto the cold surface.

Perhaps... A chilling voice answered in her head. But I know your dislike for him. Cold as the voice was, it did more to settled her strained and frayed nerves than any words spoken to her.

~V~

Lucien watched her step up to the statue, the slumped shoulder and slow gait not escaping his notice. Then he turned his attention back to Ungolim.

"Is it true?" He asked softly of the Listener.

"Yes. She gives me no more advice. I had hoped to keep that knowledge quiet." The answer came through gritted teeth. Of all the Speakers to know of this, Lucien was the last one Ungolim wanted this knowledge available to. Since he had first noticed that the Night Mother no longer spoke to him as a favored, he had desperately attempted to hide the fact. For Speaker Lachance to know this was a minor catastrophe for him. "Does she hope to become the next Listener?" He added with a spiteful tone to hide his own discomfort.

"Perhaps" Lucien answered with a shrug, unaware of much of the lithe Breton's thoughts.

Speaking no more, he stepped through the still open door and headed to where Tessa knelt at the foot of the statue.

"Come," He urged her, "we will head back to Cheydinhal." Quietly, she nodded and stood up, still walking as one troubled.

Only once they had mounted up and were on the road heading towards the Imperial City did he speak to her, his eyes focused onto the road ahead. "How did you know?"

"Have you no dreams?" She asked in lieu of answer, ignoring a quick side glance from Lucien. She would not elaborate, but somehow she had the feeling that she would not need to. Their Unholy Matron often visited her favorites in their dreams, leaving them with the impression of a nightmare, and yet craving more of the unusual touch. The presence of the Night Mother's touch was not something she had ever been able to explain to herself. A child burning herself, learns not to place her hands back into the fire. The sensation of the Night Mother's touch was similar, and yet it was so pleasurable to feel that cold, harsh sensation, that in this case the child begged for fire to place her hands back into.

"I see." The answer was noncommittal at best. A sentiment Tessa could understand well enough. She doubted that any of the favorites would admit to the Listener that he was not the only one.

They continued on in silence for some miles.

"Was it wise to antagonize him?" Lucien interrupted the silence, still not looking at the black haired Breton.

A soft peal of laughter answered him, and he turned to look at her with impassive eyes for a moment, before focusing his eyes back towards the road. "You know," she answered somewhat sheepishly, "I asked her the same thing."

"Did she answer?" Tessa turned in her saddle to look at the face half hidden by a hood. Not a muscle moved in the cheeks. The brown eyes glinted only from the slight sunlight piercing through the cloudy cover. Here was a man who knew how to block the machination of his mind from being reflected onto his face. It was with a wry smile that Tessa answered. To admit to dreams, and to admit that a direct question to the Night Mother had been answered were two wholly unconnected issues after all.

"I have no plans to be Listener, if that is your question."

"But that is not what I asked." came the calm retort.

"But it is the question I chose to answer." This time he turned to watch her. Her brown eyes glinted from more than just the sunlight, a hint of laughter in their depth. But the features surrounding those sparkling eyes were drawn, pale, tiered looking. As much as she tried to pretend to calmness, he could see underneath the carefully prepared layer. Whether she was allowing him to see or not, was another question.

"How strained are things between you and Vicente?" He asked, changing topic, for which he could see the gratitude in her eyes. Vicente, she could speak about. The Night Mother's orders and her relationship to her, she couldn't.

"More so than we pretend." She said after a moment of consideration. "He... is... angry."

"He hides it well."

"He does. But it is there." She agreed and softly she added "and he will be angrier still once he realizes what I am to do."

"What must you do, which could anger him so?" Lucien had moved Shadowmere closer to Tessa's mount, and reached a hand out to place onto her shoulder. The sunlight breaking through the clouds and streaming through the trees at odd intervals, highlighting dispersed little clumps of mookshood or peonies, caught Tessa's attention as she sought an answer within herself. An answer which she knew she could not give him.

"I..." she attempted speaking, but in the end, she could only shakes her head. The hand upon her shoulder withdrew, leaving her to her musings as they followed the Green Road up to the Red Ring Road. Her silence persisted long past the turn off of the Blue Road, which would lead them back to Cheydinhal.

"Lucien?" She called to him softly through the darkening twilight. In another hour they would reach Cheyhinhal. In answer, he turned his head in her direction. Through the gathering gloom and his hood she could not make out his expression. "Would it comfort you to know, that my death is as certain as the rise and fall of the sun?"

"Why do you think it would comfort me?" He asked softly.

"Because, it means you will live and the Brotherhood will strive instead of crumble and fall." She answered somewhat distantly, as if her mind were on other affairs.

"Is this what will anger Vicente?"

"Perhaps, Lucien," a wry grin was illuminated by a straggling ray of sunlight as she turned to face him, before her face once again disappeared underneath the shadows of her hood, "Perhaps."

~V~

"Vee?" Tessa stood in the doorway of the vampire's office, watching the slight tightening of the muscles on his back. When she and Lucien returned to Cheydinhal, he had already been up and working behind his desk, sorting contracts and other paperwork into neat stacks. Three centuries of Unlife had given him practice at efficiency.

"mmmm?" She took his answer as invitation to make herself comfortable, which she did after closing the door. In silence she watched the uneven wavering of his quill as he jotted down a few notes, probably attempting to ignore the erratic beating of her heart while she tried to frame her question. From experience she knew that he would wait in silence until she was able to articulate her question. It did not make it easier for her.

"Have I changed so much?" She finally asked. Carefully, Vicente lowered his quill, and rested it in the inkwell near his hand. He turned his head slowly, his piercing eyes seeming to see through her to the parchment which contained the values of her soul. A slight smile pulled at the corners of his lips before he answered.

"Yes and no." Tessa opened her mouth to reply to what she knew to be her own standard answer, then snapped it shut into a somewhat rueful expression. "Is it not what you would tell me where I to ask you whether I had changed?" He continued seeing the somewhat impish look on her face.

"That's true enough." she answered after a short moment to consider her words. "But have I changed so much that it would anger you so?"

"My anger is not at you." He simply answered before turning back to his paperwork.

"Don't Vee. Not this time." Came her choked plea. Surprised at the sound of her breaking voice, he turned back to see twin tears force their way out of her eyes. He had meant to ask what, but with a sinking feeling he understood. Over the centuries of life, he had developed little means of stopping conversations which he did not wish. Of deflecting questions to which he had no answer or which he had no desire to answer. Normally, the person sitting in Tessa's seat, would wordlessly accept the dismissal.

The slight scrape of a chair was the only sound in the room as Vicente stood and walked over to where she sat huddled in her chair. She had closed her eyes, as if to block out the sight of his turned back. Once he had taken the two steps to her side, he became oddly undecided. Hesitantly, he reached a hand out to her, brushing the tear from one cheek. Then he knelt, grabbing a hold of her tightly clenched hands.

"I did not lie to you. I am not angry at you. My anger is for those who took you away for me for so long. I had always known that I would lose you – your body is but mortal, and you have refused my Dark Gift. But to lose you as I did, only to know that you might someday return..." He trailed off. All his life, he always made friends knowing he would outlive them. They would eventually die, if not in the line of work, then of old age. Long after their bodies had rotted in the earth, he would still walk, eternally alone, with only the ghostly memories to keep him company. It was why so many of his kind were mad. The knowledge of what the future held was just too devastating for a lesser mind. Until the brotherhood had taken him in and given him a reason to live, he too had been shattered.

The friendships he made now, where bound in time. For him, these were limited to the blink of an eye. It was something of a shock to him, to find one he had given up to the Void still living. He had lied to himself all these years in which he had wished her back. To have her back was more painful than the loss of her. For he knew, that he would lose her again - soon.

Her tears falling freely by now, Tessa leaned her head against his shoulder, taking the little comfort he could offer her. His hand rubbed softly over her back while she struggled to collect the scraps of her composure, shaping them back into something the world would deem as acceptable.

~V~

I stepped through the gates of Cheydinhal with a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach – as a hand clawing its way up my spine, ripping my guts with it. It wasn't a nervous sensation so much as... well... a nervous sensation... I shouldn't try to kid myself. I was damned nervous and trying not to show it.

To avoid being noticed – either positively or negatively – I had cast the strongest chameleon spell at my command before the city gates came in sight, and stepped through just as the gates opened for another traveler. It wouldn't do for the guards to stop me because I was gnawing my lip bloody in obvious anxiety.

Then I began creeping along the wall. The directions I had been given were precise enough for me to know that if I follow the city wall towards the east, I would eventually arrive at the abandoned building in question. It wasn't long until I found it. Snuggled between two other of those dollhouse-like buildings and the wall, almost out of sight from the Chapel, but not quite. The front door was as in sight as possible, and anyone attempting to open it would immediately be spotted. An assassin taking the front entrance, that somehow strikes me as being wrong. Not to mention the fact that I stood near the wall... behind the building and could see a somewhat worn looking back door. The ground around the door was weedless, as if many feet walked through here regularly. I was certain that, once I opened the door, I would not hear a single creak of the rusty hinges. The door only looked old and worn. Running my fingers over its surface, I could feel the magicka woven into the door. A faint tingle underneath my finger tips seemed to welcome me, and admonished me not to linger. Carefully, I pushed the door open, and as I had suspected, not a squeak or creak. I suspect the door would not open so easily or silently for one not of the Brotherhood.

With quiet steps, I crept through the doorway into the darkness inside the building, and dropped my spell once I'd closed the door. There was much broken furniture. Scattered broken crockery. Even a fallen beam seeming having crashed into a worm eaten bookcase and left to lie there. But a single clear path led to the basement door. This path I followed, with my painfully learned habit of stealth. I only had to imagine him sitting in one of the unbroken chairs, waiting for me to come home so he could punish me for someone else's failings. I was after all, the weakest in the family and could not so easily fight back.

Shaking my head to clear it of the thoughts, I continued onwards to the door. The basement was pitch black, and as disorganized and chaotic as the upper part of the building. And again, as above, there was a path leading through the strewn rubble towards a hole in the wall furthest away from the door. The bricks had been violently pulled out of the wall, revealing a well trampled path. The moment I stepped into the passage I again felt the tingle of magicka, similar to the one I had felt at the door. This tingle had an undercurrent of violence, and I strongly suspected that those unwelcomed would soon find themselves dead. As if to prove my point, my foot hit a skull and some bones laying in the passage way.

The door Vicente had spoken about was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a smooth black and purred with energy as if it were a live being waiting to be caressed. I did not long deny it this pleasure. The moment my fingers ghosted over its blood carved surface, a rasping voice spoke from nowhere.

"What... is the color of the night?" Then an expectant silence fell. I could feel it in the magicka surrounding me. I believe that even if I had been untrained in the arts, my Breton blood would still have felt it – leaving me with the desire to run screaming from the room. I swallowed the sensation.

"Sanguine, my brother." How odd... I did not stutter. Was it perhaps the magicka surrounding me? I'll have to ask. The door opened, cutting my musings short. I stepped through and the door closed again.

"Welcome home, sister." It rasped as it slid back into place. The blood red light from the hallway was blocked off, leaving me in the warmer light of the torches framing the room I now stood facing. It was rather large, with several doors leading off from it. In the right corner, opposite me, a fire place and several comfortable looking chairs seemed to await their occupants who had only stepped out a moment. A book still lay open on the armrest of a low sofa. A cup and open bottled stood on a little table. A dagger, seemingly having fallen unnoticed, lay in front of the blazing fire. A chess game, the pieces still in mid play, was on the largest of the several small tables. Opposite to this warm setting, was another broken down wall, allowing some of the daylight to reach down into the room as if through a grate. I didn't feel any draft, so I assumed that it was somehow magically walled off to prevent the cold air from reaching the main room.

Shyly, I stepped away from the door, jumping slightly at the sound of rattling bones. From around a column stepped a dark guardian. But it seemed to ignore me, so I left it be. Suddenly, one of the doors to my right opened up, revealing a tall Nord woman. And will tall I don't mean tall because I'm short, I mean tall even had I been an Altmer. If I didn't miss my guess, she had to be taller than even Ingvar, strongly built, but not massive. Her muscles did not bunch underneath the sleek cut of her sleeves, but rather seemed toned and svelt. Is it legal to call a Nord willowy? Because that was the overall impression I had of her.

"Ah! Sister! You've arrived. We were wondering when you would be coming. Vicente said he couldn't be sure, but suspected it would be tomorrow." I smiled at her, and even though I felt positively dwarfed next to her, she radiated a welcoming warmth which was so unusual to me. I could not help but like her.

"I c-can b-be f-fast wh-when I n-need to." I spoke a bit self-consciously. What would they think of me if I can't even speak properly? I could feel the tears begin to gather in my eyes. Damn it. I'm turning into such a weeping willow.

"Don't worry about your little handicap, Sister. We will not think less of you." I looked up at her gratefully, and angrily wiped away the tears with the sleeve of my woolen over coat. "Come on, I'll show you where you can drop your things, and then I'll introduce you to the rest of the Sanctuary. I'm Katriona, by the way. The Sanctuary Mistress. I'm in charge of making things run smoothly here, and of assigning contracts to the higher ranking members. Marina will be your mentor and in charge of giving you contracts at the beginning. You'll meet her in a minute." Katriona didn't seem to mind that I did not speak much. She more than made up for my silences, explaining things as she pulled me through the door next to the one she had come out off. It led to the sleeping quarters. The higher members, as well as our Speaker, each had individual rooms. The lower ranked members shared two dormitories, one for the men and one for the women. Katree, as she told me to call her, dragged me into the women's dormitory. Six beds, three on each side, lined the walls, and opposite the entrance door, another, smaller door led to a bathing area. Three of the beds looked used. Each had some sort of decorations which personalized the space consisting of a bed, a small chest of drawers doubling as bed-side table, and a chest at the foot of the bed. A massive double bladed war axe of ebony hung over one of the beds. A quilt in shades of red was thrown over another one. A frilly curtain surrounded the third.

"You can do what ever you like with your space, but do make sure you keep it clean." Katree told me as she pointed out my bed, right to the left after coming in. I nodded and dropped my satchel with my spare clothes and money, as well as the ingredients I had been given in Bruma, onto the bed. "Here's the key to your chest. You can safely leave any personal possession here, we won't touch them. Unless we want to face the Wrath of Sithis." This was said with a lopsided grin.

"I d-don't und-derstand wh-what t-this Wr-wrath of Sit-this is." I asked of Katree, finally being given a chance to speak.

"Nothing pleasant, I can guarantee you. Don't break the rules, and you won't ever have to face it." She laughed softly at my expression. It seemed to be a running joke to pull on the new comers. I shrugged. Perhaps I'll find someone to speak to who'll be a bit more forth coming with information. Marina? Isn't that what Katree called my Mentor. I'll asked Marina.

"Okay."

"When you have time, check your chest. It'll have a present waiting for you." She added with a warm smile, before grabbing my arm. "But come on. You must be hungry and dinner is almost finished. We take turns cooking and try to eat together as often as we can."

"As a f-fam-family." I said.

"A somewhat dysfunctional family, but we try our best." This was said with the widest grin possible, and I couldn't help but like this huge Nord woman. As quickly as she had pulled me to the dormitories, she pulled me out again, stopping at each door to point out to whom they belonged. I don't think I'll manage to keep that straight. All in all there were six doors, besides the two at the end of the corridor leading to the dormitories.

"This opposite is the men's dormitory, next to that is my room. Next comes our Speaker's room – don't bother him when he's in there if you wish to keep your throat the way it is. Unless it's an emergency. Opposite my door is Marina's room. The room at the end of the corridor, next to Vicente's room, is Kat's room. But she's rarely here. Our Speaker keeps her quite busy." The last was said with a strange glimmer in Katree's iced blue eyes, as if there was something I was missing, and which she wouldn't yet explain. "The other two rooms are empty. We each have offices in another wing of the sanctuary. But you'll be given a full tour by Marina later. Now, let's go eat."

We walked back to the common room, and into the door Katree had first appeared from. What ever I had been expecting from the Dark Brotherhood, what faced me in the Kitchen was not it.

We walked straight into what seemed to be a food fight between an irritated looking Khajiit female, an amused looking Bosmer, and what could only be the childishest Nord I had ever met... and I had recently met quite a few of them. The Nord was sitting on the floor with both legs stretched out away from her with a strange brown liquid slipping down her hair and face, dripping onto her cheerful pink robe. The wide, and silly grin and mischievous sparkle in her eyes almost made me laugh. I stifled it out of self-consciousness at my position. It wouldn't do for the newcomer to laugh first thing. Even if it was funny.

Katree walked a few paces ahead of me, and thankfully acted as shield for me. The chocolate pudding which had obviously been meant for dessert flew smack into her chest. She glanced down at her now stained black armor, and fascinated I watched as the chocolate spread slowly further and further down.

"What is the meaning of this?" She asked with a deadly quiet voice. The general movement in the room ceased, as if everyone had been frozen in place. "I leave five minutes and you turn the kitchen into the battleground of a free-for-all food fight?"

"Oi! Our new sister is here!" The Nord grinned up from the floor.

"You're changing topics Nalia."

"Whoops." I get the impression that Nalia the Nord quite likes to pull pranks. And it is quite obvious that the Khajiit had been on the receiving end this time. She looked like a cat dumped into a pond: all scraggly and wet and anything but happy. Not that I would be happy if I had fur all over my body, and it was all smeared with chocolate pudding.

"Where is Marina?" Katree asked.

"Hiding out in the dining room." Came a voice from behind the door on the other side of the kitchen. Moments later an Imperial poked her head around the door, and winced as she saw the battle field. "At least they didn't use Magork's stew. 'Cause I'm hungry."

"And they know I would kill them if they did. Wrath of Sithis be damned." A green, orcish head appeared behind Marina's. Katree was busy rubbing the bridge of her nose, as if herself wondering if it would be a serious enough reason to dare face the specter.

"New look Katree?" A voice asked from behind us, and I turned to see a Dunmer with the darkest blue skin I'd ever seen step up to us. Once he was next to me, He slung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me forward through the mess.

"Don't worry little sister... Some of us here are quite civilized."

"Oh shush up Valen." The Bosmer said with an arched eyebrow. "You're just upset that you missed the fun."

"Traitor." Valen threw his way and turned his charms back to me.

"He's just upset that I'm talking to you and not him." What have I gotten myself into?

I was quickly ushered into the dining room, and moments later Magork brought out her stew. Valen and Izza, the Khajiit, kept me company while Nalia and Rabbit, the Bosmer – that's one name I'll have to ask about – begun cleaning the kitchen. It took a moment for everyone to settle down, and as if per silent agreement, I was left alone to wait. No one pestered me. No one asked me questions. I was left in blissful silence, the chaos and commotion of the loud group washing around me like the sea around a rock. Mmm bad analogy... I'm not exactly a rock...

Once everyone was settled around, I finally dared to open my mouth and speak, stutter be damned.

"I s-seem t-to ha-ave wal-lked int-to a zoo. All th-that's m-missing is a V-Vampire." I wasn't quite sure if the dead silence which broke around me was good or not. But I very quickly realized that I hat hit the nail on the head... and straight into my coffin, so to speak.

"Why my dear... the Vampire's not missing." Vicente's voice said from behind me.

"Speaker! You're up already?"

"I heard the commotion, and heard that our newest Sister had arrived safely." I was slowly turning around to face the Speaker, only to find myself confronted with the obvious signs of Porphyric Hemophilia. The Speaker was a Vampire... and I had just made the worse comment possible. I turned back to face the table, pushed my plate of stew to the side, and allowed my face to hit the wooden surface of the dinning room table. I heard him walk up behind me, and soon found a cool hand pat me on the back.

"Don't worry... I don't consider my Sisters and Brother's as appropriate food." I sighed deeply, and raised my head again only to be faced with an array of grins going from toothy to boisterous. I have a feeling I won't live that down quite so quickly. Vicente grabbed a goblet of wine, and sat down next to me, forgoing what seemed to be his usual place at the head of the table.

"I see you've met your new Family. I was hoping on... better behavior."

"But he's given up on us you see... we're all a lost cause. We've all had one or two tight encounters too many." Valen pipped up from his corner of the table. Vicente shook his head in defeat, seeming to have, much as Katree, given up on taming the tempers and humors of the Sanctuary Mates. As long as no one was hurt, and no one outside learned of the court jester qualities of the assassins under his command, he would not do anything about it.

"Tell us Sister," Rabbit asked after a moment, "Tell us about your first kill." I swallowed hard. One sentence, I can live with. I can manage even two or three sentences in a row, stutter and everything. But this would require by far more. I don't know what's worse, stuttering my way through the entire meal, or breaking down and crying now.

As if understanding my problem, I felt a cool hand on by back. As if to tell me that I would be accepted here, no matter my handicap, but that I would have to go through this without magical help – as had been my choice. Nalia, seeing my look, gave me a rather toothy grin for a Nord.

"Don't worry little Sister. We know that between exterior and interior, there is a large difference. Rather stutter in speech than stutter in execution." I closed my eyes and bowed my head down. I wasn't going to get out of this it seems.

"I-I'll t-try." I couldn't promise more. Slowly, every word agony for me, I told them about Marianna the Cold. It took me nearly the entire meal – I was eating too in between, grateful for the short periods of silence in which I would chew my food – but eventually I stuttered out the entire story, a certain amount of fluidity coming into my words towards the end. Vicente and Katree remained silent through out the entire ordeal. Vicente's hand didn't move from my back, silent encouragement which I desperately needed. When I had finally finished, I released a long breath, hoping none would ask me questions. I wasn't ready to deal with those, or rather I wasn't ready to deal with the idea of speaking again. In the past hour, I had said more in a single moment, than in the whole of the past 15 years.

"That proves my point. Tessa might stutter, but she's anything but stuttery in her execution. A bit sloppy from lack of experience, but I don't think any of us would have managed it better on such little preparation." Nalia pitched in, forestalling any questions which might have been lingering in the others' minds.

"It just shows that the stutter isn't so much a physiological problem, as a psychological one." Izza added, in her happy kitten purr of a voice. "Were it a physiological problem, then she wouldn't never have been able to perform such spells in such a precise manner, because the ability to cast comes from the same origins as the ability to speak. It has a common root. I'm willing to assume that she didn't stutter when she was a little girl." She looked at me, as if she wanted to ask, but decided against it, seeing the look of sheer exhaustion which must have been on my face. I really was not used to speaking so much.

"It might be explained with an event in her past which blocked her tongue so to speak. Lucky us it hasn't blocked her hands." Marina seconded the opinion. It seems I had been given a test... and passed. What the test was, I don't know. What the mark needed to pass was, I knew even less. I wasn't going to ask or complain. I did pass after all.

"What about the murder which gathered the Night Mother's attention?" Magork asked, and suddenly I felt the need to be out of the room. To be anywhere but here. I might not have have had any qualms about committing the crime. I might have taken a certain amount of glee in it. But I couldn't talk about it. Not now. It took all of my concentration not to run away, and hide.

"We can leave this question to another time." Katree hurried to say, seeing what must have been a look of downright panic on my face.

~V~

"It is actually comforting to know," Tessa finished up with a glimmer in her eyes, "that not much has changed." She, Kita, Telaendril, and Teinaava were in the practice room. Kita and Teinaava were busy practicing with wooden daggers, while Telaendril and Tessa sat on a table running low along the far wall of the training area. Neither was leaning against the wall, eager to avoid the hanging collection of weapons – daggers, katanas, axes, claymores, and far more weapons than Tessa could place a name on. It had always been like this. The weapons might have changed somewhat in 53 years, but nonetheless it was as deadly looking as she remembered it. She had been speaking during the sparing match, watching as they occasionally stopped to listen. While still not fully comfortable with the returned Sister, they at least accepted her amongst themselves without interrupting what they were doing.

"We're not actually," Teinaava begun, all the while side stepping a wide sweep of Kita's weapon, "soulless killing machines." Once the wide arc of Kita's movement was over, he stepped forward and easily trapped her still moving arm, causing the wooden dagger replica to drop, easily flipping her onto her back. He placed one foot onto her throat, without exerting any pressure.

"Dead?" He asked with the Argonian equivalent of a smirk – a wide, toothfilled expression which caused shivers to run down the back, even if it was recognized as a smile.

"Not..." Kita began, grabbing the other ankle, "Until I am." and pulled. Teinaava flapped backwards, hands flailing for purchase. Kita quickly grabbed the dagger she had allowed to drop when Teinaava had countered her attack. As quickly as she could, she brought the dagger to rest against her opponent's throat.

"Good." An approving voice came from the doorway. Tessa looked up to see Vicente standing there. "But had you not wasted so much energy in a wide sweep of your weapon, he wouldn't have been able to disarm you so easily." He finished with a nod.

"At least she knows how to gutter fight." Tessa added with a soft smile, remembering her own lessons in one on one fighting – wincing only briefly as she remembered the there with associated bruises and sprained muscles and sometimes broken bones.

"True enough." Vicente nodded mildly as both the Breton and the Argonian picked themselves up off the floor mats. "I have a contract for you two, Kita and Tessa." The two women exchanged glances, blue meeting brown. With a shrug, Tessa uncurled her legs and slipped off the table.

"Two persons for one contract?" Kita asked. "Is that usual?"

"Sometimes, when the job requires specific timing which would be nearly impossible for one person alone." Vicente responded mildly as Kita walked over to the training weapon rack and placed her dagger onto it, before grabbing rag to wipe the sweat beading on her forehead.

The two Breton women followed the vampire to his office, and settled themselves comfortably. Considering Kita's status as a rookie and Tessa's own prolonged absence, it was safe for her to assume that it would be an easy enough contract.

"Your marks are Gaston Tussaud, Captain of the Pirate ship Marie Elena, and Patience Casemoor."

"From the Casemoors?" Kita asked somewhat awed.

"Ermm what am I missing?" Having been gone for 53 years, many of the names which had meanings to those around her, held none for her.

"It's only the most important Politician Family in the Imperial City. If you want to do anything in the City, you practically can't get past doing business with them." Tessa nodded at the somewhat awed explanation from the slight Breton sitting next to her.

"And what would a pirate have to do with a... politician?" She asked somewhat uncertainly.

"Politician's wife." Vicente corrected with a gleam of fangs. "It seems dearest Patience has none for her husband and sought comfort and thrill in the arms of another. She married into the Casemoor family and resents being trapped into a golden cage. How she ended up with Tussaud, we're not quite sure. But the marks should be easy enough."

"Any particulars on the targets?" Tessa asked with the professionalism of two years of active duty, before her disappearance.

"Only that the Elena Marie is due to set sails at the end of the week, but it is currently moored in the Waterfront district. Nothing on the Casemoors. You will have to scout around."

Both women rose and turned to leave. "Tessa." Vicente interrupted the black haired Breton's movement in mid motion. "A word with you?"

He waited until Tessa had settled back in her seat, and Kita had left to the dormitories.

"It's her first contract." He began without preamble, before he could continue, Tessa raised a hand to stop him.

"I'll look out for her. You know I always do." She answered softly, then rose to leave.

"Look out for yourself as well." His voice followed her out of the room quietly.