Author Note: When I first wrote this fic, this chapter was a major turning point for me. I fear, however, that I will still be disappointed with the poor quality of it as I revisit it after five years.

Chapter 10

Roderick was gripped in the throes of a high fever when he died. His passing was not a comfortable one, and the medicine that was supposed to restore him to health burned up his insides to leave him writhing in agony during his final moments. The few loyal followers who were all that remained of the once powerful warband bowed their heads in mourning and vowed their violent revenge upon the alchemist who had promised that their leader would rise again.

Finding that their faith in their leader had been for naught, they quickly elected a new leader, a woman named Neesha. She vowed to put the warband back on the map before the year was out, to make up for the time that they had wasted following Roderick's descent into illness. They had been guarding the Redguard and his medicine cabinet day and night, and they didn't consider for even a moment that his medication could have been tampered with or replaced with poison, though they couldn't explain why it suddenly lost all of its effectiveness.

But then, they hadn't been expecting an invisible assassin to sneak into Fort Sutch.

The Argonian was halfway back to Cheydinhal before the warlord had taken his final breath. He was glad to be as far away as possible from the consequences of his actions. He felt like he probably would have fainted and blown his invisibility cover if he had been forced to watch another person die by his hand, but at least that meant that he would never become complacent about being a career assassin. At least a slow acting poison provided him with the opportunity for a clean getaway, and switching two identical bottles barely felt like a murder.

Fort Sutch was about as far from Cheydinhal that he could have ridden without leaving the province, and his paint horse was barely able to keep pace as the days rolled past. He must have been travelling for three days before he heard guards panicking about a newly opened Oblivion gate as he rode around the southern edge of Lake Rumare, and he pushed his mount harder than he ought to in order to get away without being drawn into the combat. He wondered if they would try and contact the Hero of Kvatch to save it and protect the city, but from what he had heard, nobody knew who she was or how to reach her, or even that she would show up if she was contacted.

It was Middas by the time he reached the sanctuary, and he had been travelling for the better part of seven days. He had no idea who was going to be in the sanctuary to greet him, and if he was honest with himself, he somewhat hoped to be able to curl up on his bed and avoid any interaction for a few hours before he picked up his reward.

His feet felt heavy as he trudged through the town towards the abandoned house. He had been sleeping on the ground for days and he needed to rest properly before he accepted another contract, if only to soothe his aching limbs. He dragged himself through the basement of the house to the Black Door, and gave it the password wearily, but as soon as it swung open he could tell that something about the Sanctuary was very different to how he had left it.

There was fresh blood streaked from the main hall into the training room, and something seemed to be lodged in the doors to prevent them closing fully. Turner eyed the blood and frowned, too exhausted to really question it. "That's unusual," he muttered to himself, and he started to stumble towards his bed before he actually spared a thought about what he had seen.

He frowned deeply. Initially he thought perhaps that somebody had wounded themselves while training, but he couldn't hear any sounds coming from inside and decided to investigate. One of the doors was stuck, and no matter how much of his weight he tried to put behind it, he could not get it open. Turner managed to dislodge the other door after digging his heels into the stone floor for a few tugs, and immediately he realised that the training room smelled unmistakeably of death. There were arrows lodged in the wood on the inside of the door, and he was scared to even take another step inside for fear of what he would find.

Perhaps if he just went to bed and slept, it would emerge that he was hallucinating from exhaustion. A single step inside was the difference between plausible deniability and cold, bitter truth.

But the blood was Gogron's, and he was lying face down in a pool of red. His throat had been slit from ear to ear.

Turner was instantly more alert to his surroundings. What had happened? Who could have possibly taken Gogron gro-Bolmog by surprise? An intruder, perhaps? The Argonian knew that Gogron had years of combat experience, and was never the type to just let someone sneak up on him. Even Ocheeva, a master of stealth, had been unable to enter a room without the Orc being aware of her presence.

His fears of an intruder were confirmed when he saw Telaendril slumped against a pillar, a huge gash running across her torso from shoulder to hip. She must have fought back, because her bow was clasped in her still-rigid fingers and her arrows were littered around the room, imbedded in the walls or shattered from hitting the stones. Perhaps the Cheydinhal guard had finally discovered the sanctuary and attacked, killing everyone, or perhaps the Traitor had destroyed the place after all this time? He had heard rumours about an assassin among assassins, but it had never occurred to him that it might catch up with the people he had met here. Turner had always thought them too tight-knit and too skilled to be taken by surprise like this. Besides, this was bold even for the Traitor.

He decided quickly that it was unlikely to have been the guards who had raided this place, because he would probably have been arrested on the spot if that was the case. However, an assassin among assassins concerned him, and he knew that he was no match for a talented and experienced fighter in combat, especially one skilled enough to take down these two at the same time.

Turner wondered again how Gogron gro-Bolmog could have been taken by surprise with all his years of experience. Perhaps he had known his killer well enough to disregard them as a threat? Turner hadn't known the Orc and Bosmer long enough to move past his humiliating first encounter with them, but even if he disliked them, they hadn't deserved this, to be left where they had fallen in pools of their own blood. He hated himself for prying the steel bow from Telaendril's fingers and digging the somewhat intact arrows from the door, but he hoped that if the Traitor ambushed him, he would have time to try to defend himself, despite his total lack of training with the weapon.

He prayed to the gods that he would find even one survivor.

Crossing the hall, he entered the living quarters and his heart sank. M'raaj-Dar slumped on the steps, run though from behind by a long, sharp blade. His paws were singed with poorly handled flames, but there was little blood around him as though he had been dead before he had been stabbed. Turner wondered if somewhere there existed a spell that could kill somebody before they hit the ground, and the thought of it made his stomach turn. He wasn't sure that he had ever read about such a spell, but the mere possibility was terrifying.

He pushed onwards to find Antoinetta and Teinaava slumped over at the dining table, a pot of stew filling the room with an acrid, burnt smell as unattended flames licked at the base of the cauldron. Turner couldn't work out how they had died. He knew that Antoinetta's cooking was bad, but he didn't think that she was bad enough to poison people. He pulled the pot off the heat, careful not to touch whatever was inside it. If the poison was potent enough to kill another Argonian, he certainly didn't want to come in contact with it. His race enjoyed a strong resistance to poison, and it was concerning enough to know that there existed a toxin that could be fatal to him.

Somehow, the more bodies he found, the less their deaths were affecting them. He tried to convince himself that Ocheeva and Vicente were skilled enough to survive an assassination attempt, but he was quickly losing hope for them. Whoever had killed the others clearly had the upper hand and a wide range of skills at their disposal, far wider than their fellow assassins. Would Idari have been in the Sanctuary? He didn't know. He might find her body as well, and he wasn't sure that it would bother him.

Perhaps he was destined to be an assassin after all? He was scared out of his wits, but the bodies weren't concerning him about anything other than his own life.

He nocked one of the salvaged arrows as he returned to the hall, stepping around the Khajiit's sprawled corpse as though it had always been there.

"What happened to you?" he whispered to himself. "Two assassinations and this doesn't bother you anymore?" It did, though. He could feel his heart beating out of his chest, and his mind was racing trying to make sense of what he had seen. The people who he was finding dead were the closest he had ever come to a family, and now he was stepping over their corpses? He disgusted himself. Perhaps he deserved to be killed by the Traitor for his callousness.

He found Ocheeva still sat at her table. She had been frozen, and her scales were burnt by the cold. Icicles hung down from her armour and chair, and dripped water onto the flagstones beneath her. She almost looked alive. Turner felt his heart drop looking at her. She hadn't deserved to die like this, while reading a book in the comfort of her own room. Even though she was undoubtedly a ruthless killer, Ocheeva had been lovely to the newcomer from the moment he had entered the Sanctuary, and the loss of her staggered him. Despite his lack of confidence, part of him had hoped that she would be able to survive an attack by the Traitor, a part of him that was now sobbing with anguish internally.

His tears wouldn't fall, though he felt them stinging. There was still hope. Vicente Valtieri had more experience than the rest of the Sanctuary combined. Surely he could have fought the Traitor off? Turner hoped that he was not being overly optimistic in this terrible situation. He would give anything to go back in time and never discover these grisly deaths hidden away beneath the city of Cheydinhal, and even more to be able to express the emotions that were tearing at his insides with every step.

"Please, Vicente." A familiar face. Any familiar face.

Turner felt his knees tremble beneath him as he backed out of Ocheeva's quarters. His arms were tensed, ready to fire an arrow into anybody who tried to attack him. He doubted he would kill them, but maybe he could distract them long enough to make a run for it? All he had to do was reach the surface and scream for the guards.

Doubts were creeping back into his thoughts, and he was starting to physically shake.

"Please be alive."

He tried to tread silently as he descended the stairs, but stealth was not his strong suit and his shrouded armour did little to muffle his footsteps. Even his breathing was loud enough that half of Cheydinhal could probably hear him panicking.

The Argonian pushed the door open with his knee, trying to lead with the bow in case he was ambushed. One step, two steps into Vicente's chambers. Something moved behind him and he spun around, bow drawn to fire, and then… He couldn't move.

"You..?" said a female voice. She dispelled her chameleon spell and stared at him as he stood there, paralysed. "I thought you'd already be dead by now."

"Did you kill them?" Turner's mind was racing even more now. He knew that she was a terrible, disturbed woman, but he didn't think that she would stoop to this. Was she the Traitor? Idari? Who had recruited him to the Dark Brotherhood in the first place? Had she planned this all along? Was this her revenge for interrupting her in Bruma?

He couldn't see Vicente, but he couldn't move his body for all the effort he put in. Perhaps the vampire had escaped. He truly hoped so.

"I did," the Dunmer admitted, her voice strangely devoid of emotions.

"And are you going to kill me too?"

She pushed back her hood slightly, and for the first time he was able to see her face. It looked like she had been crying, though he couldn't believe that it would have been because she had developed a conscience. "I haven't decided yet."

"Why..?"

"The Black Hand demanded it." Her words came out wooden as though she didn't really believe them. There was a long pause before she spoke again, voice on the verge of trembling. "They didn't demand you. I haven't decided."

"A contract?" This was a side of her that he had never seen before. In different circumstances, he would have believed she was acting up so that he would suffer before she slit his throat, but there was pain in her eyes and she looked a second away from breaking down.

"Yes. For all of them." She looked down at the floor behind him before looking back into his eyes as her expression hardened. "They meant nothing to me."

Turner wished he could move. Not to kill her, but to make her feel his pain. "They meant something to me."

"Why? You barely knew them."

"They were the closest thing I had to a family." He wondered if she even knew how it felt. He could barely comprehend what he had discovered in the Sanctuary, and here was their killer before him, on the tip of an arrow that he could not fire. "You wouldn't understand. I bet you had a family before. I had nobody."

Idari took a sharp intake of breath, staggering herself and stumbling into Vicente's cabinet. "Oh…" She was struggling to contain her emotions for the first time since Turner had met her. The walls that she put up around herself seemed to be falling away.

"What?"

She sank to the ground and dispelled his paralysis under her breath. The arrow clattered harmlessly into the wall, the wooden shaft splintering on impact. "I killed a vampire…"

Turner spun around. Vicente's corpse was lying on his sleeping slab, laid out to look as though he was sleeping, despite the trail of blood oozing down from his back. It seemed almost ritualistic, and he could barely comprehend why she would go to such effort to arrange his corpse when the others had been left where they fell. "So what?" he snapped at her. Fear, sadness, rage. A cacophony of emotions was buzzing inside him. "You killed everybody!"

Idari glared at him. She wiped the forming tears from her eyes and shook her head. "I wouldn't expect an idiot like you to understand."

"Then explain it to me." He pulled out a chair from Vicente's table and sat, trying to prevent his body from shaking. She still terrified him, and he half expected her to slit his throat instead of answering his questions.

She stood, drawing her Blade of Woe and tossing it in one hand. "I could kill you, you know."

"Yes, I know. But I think if you were going to, I would already be dead."

"Don't push me. I am under no obligation to tell you about my-" Her eyes wandered back to the corpse and her words died in her throat. She missed her tossed dagger and it clattered to the ground at her feet. "Brother," she whispered. Her voice was so quiet that he could barely make out what she had said.

"Your brother?" He wasn't sure if she had meant to tell him, or if she had spoken by accident in her distraction. Turner had no idea what she meant by that. Perhaps her brother was killed by a vampire? Perhaps he had been attacked by one? He couldn't tell, and he wasn't sure that she would be willing to elaborate. By her reaction, he suspected that it was more likely that her brother actually was a vampire.

Idari shook her head, picked up the fallen dagger, and stormed out of the room into the corridor. "I don't have to explain myself to you."

"You can find a cure, you know."

She stopped in her tracks and spoke without turning to face him. "No, you can't."

Turner followed her into the corridor. "Yes. I used to live in the Mages Guild, and they had dozens of books about vampires. Cures exist; you just have to look for them." He slung the bow over his shoulder. If she was going to kill him, she probably would have done by now. "Tell me about your brother. I can help."

"Why would you help me?" She spat on the ground, still refusing to look back him.

He sighed heavily. "Because you're the only family I have left." Was she family to him? Turner wasn't sure. But he was drawn to help her, even if it only meant that she was less likely to kill him. In a funny sort of way, she had saved him back in Bruma. Without her dragging him away to the Dark Brotherhood, he would either be back freezing on the streets or rotting away in the town jail for Baenlin's murder. "I want to help you. Let me help you."

"My…" She was shaking, and if she wasn't holding a knife, Turner might have tried to comfort her. "My brother is a vampire. Reron… It's my fault. He was trying to protect me, and I failed him. Killing them, it… It reminds me of him, of failing him."

"You really blame yourself?"

Idari snapped around to face him, forcing his back into the wall with mere inches between her blade and his flesh. "It was my idea. I fumbled with my blade. It was my fault."

"There are worse fates…" He didn't think she would cut him, but his heart was beating out of his chest.

"Are there?" She was angry. He could see the rage burning in her eyes. "Can't go out in daylight? Feasting on blood? It should have been me!" Idari exhaled heavily, releasing him from her grasp. "There was a vampire living in our house who vowed to never feed on Telvanni blood. We were young, stupid. We thought that knowing one vampire meant that we knew them all. We'd been training for years, fighting the creatures around Vvardenfell. I thought we were ready."

"And you weren't?"

The Dunmer shook her head solemnly. "Mother and father had forced my elder brother Sadas into the House, and they focused on him for their every waking moment. He was so much older than us, and we spent most of our childhoods together, but alone. Reron joined the Fighters Guild, and I went along with him on some of his missions. We were only teenagers, full of ourselves and our own abilities. Everything was going well until Sadas was killed. He insulted a Telvanni Master and was challenged to a duel. He lost. Reron was dragged from the Fighters Guild and forced into House Telvanni and we, stupid as we were, thought that we should go on one last adventure. We told Mother we were going to Vivec, but we went to Gnisis instead. Hunting vampires…" She sighed, pulling her hood down over her face again and sheathing her dagger. "We couldn't find the vampires. They found us one night while we were sleeping. Reron was bitten protecting me. His symptoms didn't show until after we'd got back home, and he left in the night. Didn't even say goodbye, not to me or to my parents. I found a note telling me that he was going to live with his kind, because they would be able to help him, and I didn't have the heart to show my parents. He said he would find a cure for his condition and return, but after five years I heard nothing from him, never received another letter. My mother was talking about marrying me to a Master in order to raise our family status, so I ran too. I won't be going back."

Turner thought for a long time, and the silence between them was palpable. The first thought that crossed his mind was that her brother might be dead, but he didn't have the courage to tell her. "I think I know where to start looking for a cure," he said. He tried to force himself to smile at her reassuringly, but what actually appeared on his face was little better than a grimace. "I would be more than willing to help you find information."

"I can't. I have to go to Bruma because of this stupid Oblivion Crisis…"

Bruma? The Argonian didn't know what there was for her in Bruma, much less what was there that would affect the Oblivion Crisis. "I could go. Find a cure. Meet you with it…"

Idari's eyes widened beneath her hood. "The useless pondscum thinks he can help?" she spat. She turned on her heels and started to walk away again, but stopped in her tracks before she reached the corner of the corridor, as if contemplating something.

"Are you so stubborn that you can't accept my help? You killed my family. Your kind has used mine as slaves for generations. You think I would offer to help you unless I thought that I could do something good?" He walked past her into the main hall of the Sanctuary. The blood on the ground had started to dry and the Dark Guardian was staring at it blankly. "I may be useless, but I am more than willing to help you. If you need to be in Bruma, be in Bruma. I can bring the cure to Bruma. You know I'm familiar with the city."

"And are you familiar with Cloud Ruler Temple?"

Turner did a double take. "The old Blade fortress? I know of it. Why would you go there?"

The Dunmer scoffed with laughter. "Moron hasn't even figured it out yet. Just my luck. Saddled with an idiot."

He looked at her. Why would she go to a Blades fortress? He hadn't even considered that she would be involved with such an organisation; she just wasn't the type. What did he know of the Blades? They protected the Emperor, right? They hadn't done a very good job of it recently, since he was dead, so why would Idari Mortha – a woman whose allegiance lay only with herself – decide to help them after that failure?

"I can practically see your brain working. You really are an idiot. I'm not sure I can trust you to find my brother's cure if you don't have even a lick of sense…"

Maybe… Maybe she wasn't helping the Blades through her own choice? Which would mean that maybe she was dragged into this debacle with the Emperor dying, and maybe she was there? Which would make her… "You?" he stammered. It didn't seem like something that could be true.

"I what?" Considering her emotional turmoil, she had recovered to her usual sarcastic and condescending self surprisingly quickly.

"You… You're the Hero of Kvatch?" How Turner hoped that he was wrong. The Hero of Kvatch was a good person, somebody who ran to help while others ran away in fear. Unfortunately, it made sense, and the logic was undeniable. The Hero of Kvatch was a Dunmeri woman who took great pains to hide her real identity, and the more he thought about it, the more he was certain that he was right.

Idari sniggered to herself. "Unfortunately, I am," she said as she bowed ironically. "The Emperor saw me in his dreams, and now I am stuck in this gods-forsaken province playing messenger for the Blades."

"So why did you save Kvatch? If you were so ready to leave Cyrodiil, you could have just run off instead of helping?"

"I wish. The Emperor told me to find his illegitimate son, and I tried to ignore him, I really did. I was halfway to the border with Hammerfell when I saw the smoke, and I don't know what made me go and investigate it, I really don't. I had already saved Kvatch by the time the Blades Grandmaster told me that the Emperor's bastard lived there. I don't know why I ran in, but those morons in the guard were making such a mess of things. I couldn't stand by and let that idiocy continue, could I?"

"You could have done. I would have thought that you would have stood by," Turner muttered. Perhaps she wasn't as bad a person as he had first thought her to be. "Let me help you with the Oblivion Crisis." He half expected her to run away as soon as whatever obligation she felt to helping the Blades ended, and even though he would not be a valid replacement, he was more than prepared to offer them his services in her stead.

She snorted. "I want my brother to be cured. You'd drop dead at the first sign of daedra. You are far more use to me elsewhere."

"Thank you for that vote of confidence."

Idari seemed to be considering something for a few moments. "Well, I suppose you can accompany me back to Lachance. I doubt he has contracts for you, but he explicitly said he didn't need you dead. From there, we will see if you have earned the right to help with the Oblivion Crisis or not."

Turner was surprised at her sudden change of heart, but he hadn't expected her to do anything for him that wasn't beneficial to her. "If he doesn't have a contract for me, I will follow you to Bruma. And after that, I will begin looking into your brother's cure. That way I will know where to bring the information, should I uncover any leads. Does that sound acceptable to you?"

"I don't suppose I have a choice in the matter." The Argonian wasn't sure that she had a choice in most matters at the moment.

"Do you think it will be safe for me to return to Bruma?"

"As long as you stay out of that moron Gromm's way. Black Horse Courier didn't even mention you. Tragic accident, they said. Imbeciles blamed it on Nord architecture."

He had to admit it to himself, it was a relief. He had secretly wondered what the aftermath of Baenlin's murder would have been in the town. Turner didn't realise they would have published a Black Horse Courier about the accidental death of a reclusive noble, and hadn't thought to look at the latest editions when he had been near the Imperial City. It seemed that as long as he took measures to avoid the house and probably Gromm's favourite tavern, he would have no issues going back to Bruma, though it was going to feel strange to return given the circumstances.

The Argonian was fairly sure that almost nobody would have recognised him in Bruma anyway.

Idari nodded towards the bow slung over his shoulder. "Can you even use that thing? I didn't take you for a corpse looter."

He shrugged. "I needed a weapon. I thought the Traitor…"

"Please," the Dunmer said mockingly. "The Traitor has never been bold enough to ambush an entire Sanctuary."

"Well, forgive me for feeling emotions."

"I'm surprised you even know how to use it, pondscum."

"Contrary to popular belief, I am not a total idiot."

"That remains to be seen." Idari looked at him as if deep in thought. "Stay here," she commanded as she disappeared down into the living quarters and returned for a quiver of arrows. "It's a decent bow, you should practice with it."

"I'm not going back in there." He nodded towards the training room, adamant that he would never step back in there as long as he drew breath.

The Dunmer rolled her eyes. "Fine." She rummaged through the bookshelf until she found one she deemed suitable for target practice. "Shoot it."

He frowned. It seemed almost sacrilegious to destroy books for the sake of learning a weapon, but he supposed that the alternative would be her dragging him over Gogron's corpse to practice on straw dummies. Turner drew the bow as Idari attached the book to the door of the living quarters with one of the arrows.

He missed the book, but his first shot was closer than he had expected it to be. His shots were pulling high and wide, but it didn't take long for him to get a sense for what he ought to be doing. The Dark Elf stood silently in the corner watching him until he hit it with his third arrow. "Interesting," he heard her mutter to herself before he saw a book flying at his head out of the corner of his eye and ducked. Idari rolled her eyes as he turned towards her to object. "Moron."

"Some warning would be nice…" But the Argonian saw her levitating a third book from the shelf and shot at it. He clipped the spine and sent it spinning out of her magical grasp. "I get it. You've made your point."

"No, I don't think I have." She started towards the Black Door with a shrug. "But it's a start. I think we might make a proper assassin out of you yet.

The second book hit him on the back of the head on their way out.