Author's Note: Currently going through some things. "Personal stuff" doesn't seem to cover it. Writing this helped. Thanks for the reviews and subscriptions. Hoping to get back into the groove of things now that I have more time on my hands.

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The Fortunate Favourite
Chapter Four: Bait and Switch


The Ratway was much as she remembered it.

Time seemed to stand still there in the darkness beneath Riften. It was an eerie feeling, and it was one that she would become very familiar with in the weeks to come, but on that first night, as she followed the light of Brynjolf's torch through the twisted maze of cramped tunnels, she could not help but feel a sense of terrible foreboding. It settled deep into her bones, and her flesh, still burning with cold, broke out into pinpricks all over again.

"Not much farther now," muttered Brynjolf, a pace or two ahead, but he did not look back.

She stayed close. She wore no armour, carried no weapon, and felt more vulnerable than she cared to admit. Ahead of her, however, Brynjolf walked on, certain that nothing – and no one – would attack them. She wished she could share in that confidence. No, it wasn't confidence, she realized, but sheer arrogance, and she was beginning to suspect that it would cause her no end of grief while she remained with him.

Still, it was preferable to the presence of some, or the company of others.

After a time, they came to a high, lonely chamber where a ramshackle drawbridge was lowered, leading a dark path to the corridor on the other side. Down below, Archer could hear the skeevers moving about in the black filth. One of them screeched as Brynjolf tossed his torch down to the lower level, a brilliant stream of light like dragonfire that burned only an instant before it hit the wet stone below. It sputtered a moment longer and then died altogether. The darkness they were left with was consuming.

They crossed the bridge together in silence. She'd not walked a pace beside him until then, always following after. Light spilled out from the next corridor, but Brynjolf stopped short. He pulled at a lever on the wall to raise the drawbridge, closing off access to the tunnels they'd just come through. The groan of the ironworks sent the skeevers running, but all too soon the echoes stopped chasing each other around the vaulted ceiling. The Ratway fell deadly silent, until a single drop of water raining from the ceiling came as loud as a hammer blow and her heartbeat was the drum to which she would march into this dark new dawn.

Her stomach churned. She wanted to go home – but Skyrim was home, this long path of ruined hopes, and the home that she wanted with all her heart no longer existed, a mother long dead and a room never hers, guardians who loved her not, a life chosen for her that she didn't even want, and so she'd run.

But now here she was, at the end of another cycle of running, of discovery and defeat, and she was so tired, so that when Brynjolf finally turned to her, he found her sagged against the wall once more, and she felt so sick and lost that the gentle smile he gave her was enough reason to hope, and try again.

And so it began – and more the fool was she.

Brynjolf braced an arm against the wall, effectively boxing her in. She'd not noticed him come so close until he was almost upon her. She glanced to his hand set there against the stone, but said nothing. His closeness did not worry her. Never mind that she could shout him off his feet if she chose – another man would have laughed to see it done, callous in his disregard for the sacred and the divine.

But he was not here, and she kept her mouth shut tight. She tried to push him from her mind. Utter futility. The sulking bear, the would-be king, he lingered like a shadow in her thoughts.

"A word of caution before we head down there, lass," Brynjolf said, chasing her shadows with his light, and that soft smile was still there in his whisper, low and smooth.

She was not eager to continue, the raised drawbridge at her back looming as a point of no return, and these words did little to assuage her conscience. "You couldn't have mentioned this while we were in the temple?" she asked. Ever indignant, ever ungrateful, little Maddie and her mouth. She frowned, and bit her lip to keep herself from saying more.

"You were right to be concerned over the familiarity of your face," he said. "Mercer's been keeping an eye open for you since your last visit."

"Mercer." It came out slowly, that unfamiliar name in her mouth, but the weight and importance Brynjolf gave to the man just by speaking his name left no question as to who he was. His master, leader of his guild of thieves. Someone she was almost certain she had not met on her last whirlwind sprint through the depths of the Ratway. "He has no quarrel with me," she said, shaking her head. "I helped to return your man, I gave him your traitor, what more could he want from me?"

Brynjolf smiled wryly, but did not deign to give reply. He backed off then with a shrug, but for a lingering moment she could still feel the warmth of him pressing in on her before all at once the cold, damp air rushed in, chilling her all over again. She sighed, and silently called herself a fool.

What more could this Mercer want? The answer was simple, though she took no pleasure in realizing it. These men were thieves. There was never an end to their wanting. Her worth lay in what the Thalmor wanted from her. She doubted it truly mattered to the guild what that was.

How wrong she'd been to presume.

"Well then, what is it you propose?"

Brynjolf gave her that grin again, the smug, knowing one that sent her stomach to fluttering. The one that made her want to check her pockets. The one she could not trust. But once again, he gave her no answer, and once again she found no joy in coming to the conclusion that she was being led blind into the lion's den. And so she balked and did not follow, and the look he gave her was curious.

"Don't you trust me, lass?"

She frowned. "Must we do this again?"

The thief cocked an eyebrow. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he seemed to be ignoring her question in favour of waiting for her answer to his own. It was just as well. For all his arrogance, it truly seemed to be honour among thieves to him, no matter his claims to the contrary. His was a dual nature, she saw now, and she wondered for a moment how keen the edge on which she balanced was, before she realized that there was really only one way to find out.

And so she went along after him and his grin, quietly now, her own lips pressed tight against every question or cry of protest that gathered on her tongue in the meantime. She was led shortly into another chamber, this one well-lit with a table at the centre, a meeting of corridors devoid of other occupants. It was into one of these corridors that Brynjolf ducked, and into which she dutifully, regretfully followed.

What she left behind in that room were her memories of another time, of facing down the Thalmor with the old man at her back, the thieves and their guild already forgotten in the wake of the true threat, her destiny, bearing down with golden blade to spill her blood there in the dark, witch blood, dragon blood – she'd stood over them, victorious, and it was only the blood of Isles that stained the stones of the Ratway that night. It had dried to rust now like so much filth, and her searching eyes could not tell one from the other.

She was so lost to thought that she walked straight into Brynjolf, who'd stopped short of opening the door that waited at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. She stepped back, recovering quickly, embarrassed. When he glanced over his shoulder at her, he was smirking again, and she felt her cheeks flare with warmth.

"That eager, lass?" he asked. She had no reply, but her flush kept on, and she hoped dearly that the flickering torchlight would mask her face and the heat within that felt as a fire. And, to her relief, if he noticed the stain in her cheeks, he did not comment nor show the slightest interest. His eyes avoided hers as he opened the door, and without so much as a warning, took her by the arm and all but shoved her through.

Archer found herself suddenly in a very familiar place. The Ragged Flagon, the beating heart beneath the city. Intrigue and rumours flowed like blood through this place, and the changing of gold between hands was as precious as water to the dying. She had been here only once – well, twice, in truth, once in the coming and once in the going – but it remained the same, the stale stench and reaching shadows, the sound of hushed voices as they carried across the cistern.

Brynjolf loomed over her, and his tight grip on her arm did not relent. "Keep your head down and your mouth shut," he advised her, his voice so low she could scarcely make out more than a steady rumble. "I'll come for you when it's clear."

And with that, he gave her another little shove toward a stone alcove, and left her alone.

With a sigh of relief that had more than a little tremble to it, Archer crept deeper into the shadows of the alcove, mindful of her every step as she picked herself out a decent spot from which to observe what went on. What she saw revealed little to her. It was what she heard that concerned her. Among the empty barrels and drifting cobwebs, she did as she had done all her life – she watched, and she learned.

Brynjolf was in no hurry. He walked slowly around the edge of the cistern, his shoulders straight and his steps assured. He walked as a man who knew his purpose and his place, now matter how lowly his betters above might consider him. He walked unburdened, without concern to the opinions of others – something she certainly did not know how to do. She, a half-blood bastard – and a girl no less – walk with her head held so high? Perish the thought.

But this man...

His was not an arrogance born of privilege but of sheer pride. There was no certainty in this world for men like him, but for that which he made for himself, and she found she could admire that, could almost envy it, and the thought unsettled her deeply.

The others in the cistern were drawn to him. He was greeted immediately, people rose from their chairs, nodded their heads, called his name – but there was one who did not call out, or nod, or acknowledge him at all. A slight figure on the gallery, hidden almost completely in shadows, hunched over what Archer eventually came to realize was a book. And it was then that she stopped watching Brynjolf, forgot him almost entirely, as she studied the hooded woman on the gallery, the one with the book and no time for the thief and his commanding presence. Above it, she seemed. Transcendent.

Madeline liked her.

She did not know how much time passed while she crouched in the darkness of that damp and dreary alcove. She did not dare even to stand and stretch her legs. It must have been past midnight when eventually the cistern began to empty, as the night's promise of intrigue beckoned them away, one by wicked one. Soon, Brynjolf was alone with only the barkeep and the lone woman with her book, and no sooner had the barkeep disappeared into a back room that Brynjolf was stepping up onto the gallery to lean over and whisper something in the woman's ear.

Her head jerked up, and she peered through the darkness into Archer's alcove, and for a moment, she felt her heart begin to race as their eyes met. Her breath caught and she froze, though she'd not been moving at all. It lasted but an instant, their locked eyes, before the woman on the gallery looked up to Brynjolf and nodded – so slight, so subtle, was it a nod? – and the thief was looking into the alcove, too, but his eyes did not find Madeline lingering in the shadows, and she could not for the life of her explain her disappointment.

He came for her then, and she stepped out to meet him. Her legs ached; she put a hand to the slimy stone to steady herself those first few steps.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

She nodded, biting her lip to keep the questions at bay.

Brynjolf chuckled. "There's no need to look so frightened, lass. You're in good hands."

"Whose hands, exactly?" she asked. She wanted to laugh but she couldn't summon the nerve.

He only smiled – truly only half a smile, wry and distant – and motioned for her to follow. Reluctantly, she did.

The Ragged Flagon was all but abandoned at this hour, thanks to Brynjolf's careful work. Voices came from somewhere that she couldn't see, quietly muffled, displaced, so she tried her best to pay them no mind. Other sounds, familiar, intimate sounds, came from elsewhere, and these she found harder to ignore. Her blush returned, as fierce as ever. When Brynjolf looked back at her, his smile was more obvious this time, a show of teeth, oh so knowing.

"Best get used to the close quarters, Maddie," he said. "A secret does not keep for long."

She only swallowed against the sudden dryness of her mouth, and said nothing, wondering all the while just how, then, he planned to keep hers.

The smell of spilled ale and smoke was less strong up on the gallery, but it was colder, darker, and the quiet was fearsome and empty. The woman, a Bosmer, Archer realized, dressed in pale robes with her hood draped just so, had put aside her book to watch her approach behind Brynjolf. The thief stood aside and nudged her forward, remaining behind to lean against a rail, his arms crossed in that casual way he had, as if everything that was to unfold would happen for the singular benefit of his own amusement.

"This is she?" asked the strange Bosmer woman, and the eyes she fixed onto Madeline were dark, deep, and deadly in their piercing.

"Aye," said Brynjolf. He did not move forward, nor offer anything else.

"I suppose I can work with her face," said the woman, staring hard at Archer whilst simultaneously disregarding her entirely. As if she were not truly there, a statue, a painting, instead of a flesh and blood girl. "After all," the stranger added haughtily, "a sculptor cannot always choose the finest clay."

Archer shook her head. "I don't understand," she said. "What is she talking about?" She gave the woman the same discourtesy, turning to speak to Brynjolf instead of to the woman herself.

The woman laughed coldly. "I assumed you had brought her to see me about her face, Brynjolf."

Archer bristled at being ignored again. "I don't –"

"Your face, fool girl," said the woman, turning her eyes once more to Madeline. "To have it sculpted into something more... artful than Nature has bestowed upon you."

She felt a telltale surge of anger rise up within her. Her face was fine, her father's eyes, her mother's mouth, the Villiers' cheekbones. "My face," she began, but Brynjolf stepped forward then, giving her a cutting look that stopped her sentence short.

"Aye," he said to the woman. "She's here as a client. Will you help her?"

The woman snorted delicately. "You know my fee, Brynjolf."

Brynjolf smile winningly. "And you know I'm good for it, Galathil."

"You," said the woman – this Galathil, "you are good for nothing."

Brynjolf grumbled with easy good nature. "See Delvin about it tomorrow, then, and tell him I sent you. No one carries that much gold on them." He laughed. "Though I suppose I wouldn't mind slipping past the fool that does in a crowded market."

Galathil sniffed, unimpressed. She stared hard at Brynjolf a long moment before her eyes flicked back to Archer, who was still standing before her, still feeling terribly out of place. "Very well," said Galathil, which was followed by a much put upon sigh. "Come here, girl."

It took all the will she could summon not to turn and walk away. The closest she came was a glance back, at her way out, but she caught sight of Brynjolf then, arms folded, eyes guarded, the smirk on his lips enough to drive her to distraction, and in that distraction, Galathil cleared her throat expectantly and all she could do was go on. After all, they had an arrangement.

The Bosmer woman was annoyed now. She reached forward with bony fingers to pinch Archer's jaw. "Well?" she asked, mouth curled in distaste, "shall I remake your face?"

All her new-found courage fled in an instant. She jerked her chin out of the woman's hand. "I beg your pardon? Remake my face?" It was only then that she understood Brynjolf's remark about hiding her in plain sight, and she was suddenly ashamed at her utter foolishness. What else had she blindly agreed to in her desire to disappear?

"Calm yourself, lass," said Brynjolf, his amusement clear. "Nothing too drastic now, just a bit of a change to throw them off the scent."

"Throw who off the scent, exactly?" Archer asked, wilfully forgetting her vow of compliance.

"Oh, whoever might pick it up," he said, and grinned. She still couldn't make herself like that grin, let alone trust it. "Now get on with it. You're costing me a fair bit of coin."

She was quiet after that. As she rightly should have been, for once Galathil began to run her fingers over her face, she knew not if she'd have been able to speak if she tried. Out of wonder, out of fear, it didn't seem to matter. Never in her life had she felt so entranced, not even beneath the onslaught of the power in words cut into stone, the rush of a soul bearing down upon her, pressing her to the earth in abject obedience, ashamed of her mortality.

This – this was different...

Never before had Madeline been touched so gently, or with such care. Her very skin of her seemed to warm beneath the delicate trace of Galathil's slender fingers along her jaw, her temples, her cheekbones, but was left with a ghostly chill its wake. Here and there a touch more firm, yet no less tender, the smudge of a thumb along childhood scars, a line of heat like a kiss of slanted sunlight, and all the while, those dark, fathomless eyes graced every inch of her face, each freckle, each pore.

Time seemed to hold its breath as Archer stood fast beneath the Bosmer's attentions. It wasn't until the elf combed her fingers through her hair that Archer's doubts returned. She watched with wide eyes as the strands of dark hair changed before her very eyes, lengthening, lightening, turning a shade of rich, autumnal red. Down past her shoulders her hair grew with just a brush of Galathil's bony fingers, and despite herself, Archer gasped and tried to jerk her head away again.

"Sit still, girl," hissed the elf, giving her newly-long hair an impatient yank. "I've almost finished."

And true to her word, she had. A few minutes later – long, agonizing, anxious minutes later – the sculptor removed her hands from Archer's jaw and folded them demurely in her lap. Her gaze was critical and unforgiving, but she soon nodded with arrogant satisfaction and looked to Brynjolf.

"What say you?"

Brynjolf moved away from the rail to stand beside Galathil. His smile as his eyes met Archer's were difficult to read. For a moment, she felt half the child, chastised and belittled, and for one foolish, frightening instant, she felt as though she might cry. She blinked hastily, and looked away.

"Oh, one final detail," said Galathil. "Close your eyes." Archer did. "Now open them." And again, she did as she was bid. She was greeted by the Bosmer's smiling face, and it was a terrible sight. "Much better. I look forward to seeing you again around this squalid, skeever-infested gutter, Madeline. If you'd simply unknot that sullen tongue of yours, I feel we might actually have an intellectual conversation."

Archer very much doubted it, but instead of saying as much, she kept her tongue neatly knotted and only nodded politely. Galithil regarded her only a moment longer before she picked up her book from where it lay beside her, chose a page at random, and went back to properly ignoring everything that went on around her. But then –

"Brynjolf," she said, and it was like a command, that single word, and without question he stepped up and went to her. Archer watched with mounting curiosity as he leaned over the elf, his face hidden from her as Galathil whispered something to him, something that Archer could not hear no matter how she strained her ears, those thin, grey lips moving with such soft precision that she felt suddenly frightened and small. And when Brynjolf straightened and glanced back at her, there was a shadow there that had not been there before, and Archer did not know what to say.

"Leave," said Galathil, waving Brynjolf away.

And with that, it was over.

When Brynjolf's hand touched upon her elbow to guide her away, Archer was not truly surprised. She allowed it, if only because she felt a little lightheaded, as if she'd been spun in circles one too many times. The Ragged Flagon seemed far too quiet now, and even the soft, sensual sounds she'd heard as she'd entered had turned to cool silence and the echoes across the water had grown deafening. She followed where she was led, off the gallery and up the steps into the dark shadows, where any one of the arched alcoves could have held a wicked secret.

But the alcoves held nothing but forgotten goods and broken furniture, coated with years of dust and death, as Archer had come to discover, and she found the neglected spaces did not make her heart leap as they once had. Brynjolf let her go in the protection of a stone column, where once they had stood to measure one another, where once she had distracted him with a heated kiss while she slipped the truth into his pockets. The memory was not a pleasant one, tainted with all that had come before and the mess that had come after, but still she remembered that kiss, the sudden courage that had sent her nerves thrumming, the smile on his lips and the clinging scent of leather, and even the simple recollection was enough to make her tremble.

If the thief noticed, or even remembered, he gave no indication. His face was impassive, his manner distant, as he turned to her. "And here we are, lass," he said quietly, and he gave a quick glance around before he added, "I want you to keep a low profile tomorrow. Do you think you can manage it?"

Old words came back to her, and she said them without thought. "Don't worry about me. I know how to lay low."

Brynjolf gave her hair – now red hair, and woefully long – a tug, and she saw a trace of a smile as he said, "Oh, I have my doubts about that."

She pursed her lips. How little he knew. She wanted to ask then about Galathil, and what she'd said in parting, but she knew better than to bother. Whatever it had been, whatever had caused him to look at her in such a way, she was not sure she wanted to know. The night had held far too many surprises already.

He put a firm hand on the small of her back, and she was led without choice around the cistern to the door of the tavern, the door that led back into the Ratway, all those dark, twisting corridors. And she thought that would be all, this silent escort and a door slammed in her face, but when he put his hand to the latch, he paused –

she made it all of five paces before she stopped, and turned, walking back to him, knowing...

"I believe this is supposed to be farewell, lass," he said, and then she –

Archer blinked, startled by the vivid flash, and when Brynjolf turned to her, his hand still on the latch, she found herself blushing as he watched her face closely. It was with weighted disappointment that she realized he must be studying what the elf had made of her, and her heart sank with the wondering. She reached up and touched her cheek, but it felt no different, and she frowned.

"A decent bit of work," he said, offering her a bit of a smile, "and well worth the coin."

She pulled away, and her frown deepened. She fought off the urge to press her fingers to the corners of her mouth, to find if her lips curled in new ways, to check for missing dimples. "I refuse to thank you for this," she said, making no effort to mask her displeasure with courtesy.

"I'll give you reasons to thank me yet, Maddie, if you'll only give me the chance."

She shook her head, regretting ever sharing her given name with him. "Please stop calling me that, I'm not –"

The look he gave her was hard, and sudden. "Aye, you are, lass, and you'd best not forget it. Archer is a wanted woman. Sweet little Maddie is no one."

Anger swelled inside of her. "So I am to be your Maddie, then?" she demanded.

Brynjolf chuckled. "You're to be our Maddie."

"I don't want this."

"We made a deal," he reminded her firmly. Before she had a chance to argue, for argue she meant to do, he held up a hand to show he wasn't done. "Come find me here tomorrow evening, and we'll see about finding some work for you do to."

"What sort of work?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.

Brynjolf smirked. "You'll find out tomorrow evening, now won't you?"

"What makes you so certain I won't leave Riften tonight?" she asked, pressing her luck now.

"Because you have nowhere else to go," he said, and it was with his abject certainty that all other arguments were chased from her head, and she found herself speechless as he finally opened the door and held it wide open for her.

As she walked out, her chin as high as she could manage in her dejected state, Brynjolf called out to her.

"Oh, and a bit of friendly advice, lass. I'd stop asking so many questions if I were you. Bad for business, you know."

And with that, the door closed behind her, and she was utterly alone.