.
SIARI
With Friends Like These...
Somewhere
It hadn't been poison, but a sleeping draught. That wasn't necessarily a good thing, Siari realized as she woke up with a pounding headache. She was in a shack somewhere, it seemed, but where, she had no idea.
"Waking up, are we?" a mocking woman's voice came from behind and above her. Siari whipped her head around to see a masked woman sitting on the skeleton of a wooden bunk bed, one leg hanging down over the side, her pose completely casual. There was something about the dark leathers she wore, they seemed to subtly distort the light around them. Whoever this was, this wasn't a first-timer like Siari had been.
Siari said nothing – how could she – and the woman introduced herself.
"My name," she said, "is Astrid. I'm certain you've never heard of me, but you've heard of the organisation I am part of." Still sitting casually on the bunk bed, she continued, "The organisation you stole from."
Siari frowned, nonplussed. She'd killed someone, not stolen. Maybe they had the wrong person?
"Oh, you didn't steal anything physical," the masked woman said with a chuckle, her eyes a cold blue above her dark leather mask. "You stole something far more precious. You see, our organisation doesn't deal in goods as such."
Siari still had no idea what she was on about.
"Our commodity is death," the masked woman said. "We are contracted to assassinate a mark, and we take those matters seriously. Recently, a young boy in Windhelm contacted us through the Dark Sacrament. Great was our surprise however, when our assassin arrived at the mark's place of residence, and found her already dead, her throat cut in an almost embarrassingly amateur fashion."
By the Nine, Siari realized. She'd killed someone marked by this woman's group. And there was only one assassins' group in Skyrim that mattered. Its name was often whispered, but none had ever seen its members, except maybe those who'd been granted a brief glance before their lives were taken. Siari's gut clenched when she realized which organisation this woman belonged to, and she quietly wished she'd been slipped a poison rather than a sleeping draught. Her heart beat hard in her chest.
"I can tell from your eyes that you've come to the realization of whom you're dealing with," the masked woman said, her voice amused. "You know the Black Hand doesn't let a kill be taken without taking one back in return."
All Siari could do was give the woman a fearful and not-understanding look. These people were going to kill her, and in a slow and painful way, but why hadn't they done so already?
"Oh not you," the woman calling herself Astrid said with a chuckle. "We didn't bring you here to kill you, then you'd be dead already. You've stolen a kill from the Dark Brotherhood. A kill is due, and a kill shall be returned. Look behind you."
Reluctantly, because she didn't trust turning her back on the masked woman, Siari looked behind her. There were three people sitting on their knees, their hands bound, each with a bag over his or her head.
"These three," Astrid said behind her, "have been captured to give you the opportunity to repay the kill you stole. One of the people in this room has a contract on their head. These three will tell you their story, and then you must determine who the mark is. And kill that person."
Siari had no idea what this was about, but she decided to listen to the captives' stories before deciding whether or not she'd play this game along.
"You, mercenary! Speak!" Astrid commanded imperiously.
"Puh… please," the first captive whimpered. "I've done nothing to you… let me go!"
"I said speak, not whimper!"
The man in soldier clothes shrank under Astrid's command, and began stammering. "I'm… I'm a mercenary. I fight when told to. I've… I've done nothing wrong."
"Ugh," Astrid grunted. "What a snivelling coward. Then again, a mercenary like him, could have made a lot of enemies. You, housewife, speak!"
The woman in the middle immediately let loose. "You bastards! How dare you abduct a hard-working homemaker! Release me now, and I promise my husband won't come back with his associates to burn this place to the ground and put your heads on spikes!"
"Spirited," the masked woman remarked. "But one can't help but wonder how many other people her husband and his 'associates' have wronged over the years. Lastly, furball!" She clicked her tongue.
The last captive, a Khajiit by the looks of him, began with a nervous chuckle, "Ah yes, you have the honour of addressing Vasha, obtainer of goods, defiler of daughters, and taker of lives. If you tell me someone wants me dead, I can only feel flattered."
"His kind of arrogance isn't admirable, it's foolish," the masked woman on the bunk bed said. "And as you've heard, he's probably made quite a few enemies with those habits of his."
Siari heard something drop down on the hay next to her, a dagger the woman had thrown down. "Now you must decide. One of the people in this room has a contract for their elimination. All you have to do is take the dagger and draw it across the throat of the mark. Or stab it between their shoulder blades, or something similarly effective." With a cynical chuckle, she added, "If you guess wrong, you can always guess again."
Siari stared at the dagger.
"A kill is due, a kill must be repaid," the woman above her said again. "Either you use your dagger, or I use mine." The threat couldn't be more clear.
She'd killed once, and it hadn't been that difficult. It wouldn't be any more difficult either. Maybe it wasn't right to kill these people, but there was no right or wrong, Siari had learned that at a very young age. There were only smart decisions and dumb decisions. 'Deserve' had nothing to do with any of it, and it didn't matter to her what these people did or did not deserve. This was kill or be killed, and she had no intention of dying.
Siari knew who really had the contract. The way the masked woman had worded her demand had made it perfectly clear. But she'd play the game as it had been requested of her.
She picked up the dagger and walked to the Khajiit, kneeling down behind him. At least the Nord and the woman had shown some emotion, whether it was fear or anger didn't matter. But this Khajiit had remained arrogant even with a bag over his head. He clearly thought she wouldn't have the guts.
"I can feel you're there," the Khajiit said. "Surely you won't be so foolish as to – "
She cut his throat, severing his jugular and carotid, and cutting through his larynx, instantly silencing him. Blood spurted from his opened throat, and he fell forward, kicking and spasming as his life sprayed out over the dirty old carpet in the middle of the shack. As they heard him gurgle, the other prisoners reacted, the Nord whimpering even louder in terror and shock, and the woman letting out a clear and unmistakable sigh of relief. It was these reactions that decided the order in which they would die.
Without hesitation, Siari stood up, walked to the next prisoner and kneeled behind her. When she felt Siari's hand over her face, pulling it backward to make her throat more accessible, the woman began sobbing and begging, but Siari didn't listen. She simply drew the blade across the housewife's throat, opening her arteries as she'd done with the Khajiit, at whose fate the woman had let out a sigh of relief, caring only that she hadn't been the one to die.
Siari let the woman fall forward as the pressure of her blood lessened, her skull falling onto the boards with a loud bonk.
"By the Nine," the Nord begged. "Please, please don't kill me! I don't have a contract on my head! I'm not the one you want, please, please!"
Sairi had heard enough. She rose and kneeled behind the Nord mercenary.
"Whoever you are," the Nord kept whimpering, "please! I'll reward you, I'll give you anything! Please just please don't – "
"… kill me." Astrid finished his sentence as Siari calmly let her blade carve its third throat. The Nord died as the others had, falling forward in a pool of his own blood.
"My, my," the masked woman said, sounding satisfied. "Three kills, aren't we the overachiever?"
Siari merely shrugged.
"So," Astrid asked. "Which one had the contract?"
Oh, please. You've given it away from the first moment. The way you worded your demands.
Siari raised her dagger and pointed it straight at Astrid.
The masked woman laughed and said, "Not bad, kid. Not bad. Interesting that you'd still kill those three, though."
There was nothing interesting about it. Astrid had expected her to kill at least one of them, regardless of who had the contract. It hadn't been about making the right choice, it had been about doing as you were told, about killing even if you didn't know why. None of those three had deserved to die, but life wasn't about deserving. They'd had to die, and so Siari had killed them. Simple. It was comforting to do as you were told. And with the right leader, the right person to follow, doing as you were told was complete freedom.
"Well," Astrid announced, lithely leaping down from the bunk bed, "you've repaid your debt, and you're free to leave."
Siari gave her a curt nod.
Her blue eyes frowning behind her mask, the woman said, "You don't talk much, do you?"
Siari shook her head.
"Well, so much the better, I suppose." She stood looking at Siari for a moment, then said, "Falkreath's visible from the top of the hill outside. If you want, travel southwest starting from Falkreath until you reach a black door. It will ask you a question: 'what is the music of life'. Tell it, 'silence, my brother', and it will open."
That might be a little difficult.
"Or come with me now?" Astrid said. "I can imagine why you'd kill the evil bitch that ran the orphanage in Riften, and if I'm right, then you've never had a family in your life. How would you like to be part of one?"
