Chapter 10: The Metric of Torture

"Scalpel. Pincers. Tongs. Barbed fork. Razor."

The litany went on and on. I had never imagined there were so many tools designed by human beings to hurt one another. I paid close attention, focusing my mind to retain as much as possible as Nazir named each device in turn. The Listener was here to personally supervise my training, so I couldn't risk being anything less than perfect.

"Sharpened spoon. Corkscrew. Steel skewer. Thumbscrews. Finger trap."

The whole thing was made more difficult by the begging and pleading of the woman chained to the wall nearby, but I was set and determined to not let anything ruin my training. I tuned her out the same way I would tune out any extraneous noise while I was listening to Nazir during our regular lessons. Even with only six of us living here, Sanctuary was never really quiet. Between Meena's antics and Cicero's attempts at music and poetry—most of it morbid—the caverns often echoed with noise of one sort or another.

"All right then," Nazir said, interrupting my focused attention. "That's everything. Do you understand how all of them work?"

"Yes," I replied confidently. My eyes flickered to Hecate, our Listener, briefly. Her face was still and stony, and I could read nothing in her icy blue eyes. I had hoped for some sign of approval since I had been advancing through my other lessons so rapidly, but on this day she was as silent as the Night Mother herself.

"What is the purpose of every object on this table?" Nazir asked me.

"To inflict pain," I responded easily. I was confused when Nazir shook his head.

"No, that's wrong," he rumbled. "Inflicting pain is the means to an end, not the end itself." He smiled grimly and threw a look at the woman on the wall sharp enough to shut her up. "Sometimes it can be a pleasant diversion for an assassin but when someone is in this room, it's not the goal."

"Then what is the goal?" I asked, trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible before the screaming began. "What are the tools for?"

"The purpose of these objects is to obtain truth."

"I thought that information obtained under duress was unreliable," I replied, parroting Nazir's lessons from the last several months.

"It's not their truth we're looking for, Aventus," he smirked. "It's yours."

To my surprise, Hecate had kept her promise to take me sledding after New Life Day, as much as she could manage.

As it turned out while I had been planning to sneak out, Cicero hadn't come back from the group's journey into Dawnstar at all. He had been out most of the night alone, picking flowers to make up for something he had said to Hecate while they were gathering information in the city. So much had happened on New Life Day that I wasn't really part of that it was hard to keep track of it all. The best I could figure, someone had stolen Hecate's identity from before her joining the Brotherhood, and Cicero had managed to make some lame joke about it that irked her enough he hadn't wanted to come back to Sanctuary.

I had managed to dodge getting sick on my jaunt through the snowy, drizzling wilderness around Dawnstar. Cicero hadn't been so lucky. By the time he came home he had nearly frozen to death from stumbling around outside in normal clothes, and he was desperately sick by the next morning. Even I had the good sense to wear a fur mantle over my Brotherhood outfit when I had gone out. I had wondered occasionally if Cicero actually had something wrong with him, and his trip into the killing cold for a few handfuls of flowers seemed to prove it to me.

When Hecate and I went out sledding over the hills around Sanctuary, I could tell right away that she was distracted. Her smiles were brittle from worry and her eyes kept flicking back toward the Black Door no matter how far away we wandered. After a couple of hours of playing in the early-morning snow, I offered to let her go back to take care of Cicero.

"Really?" she asked me, clearly torn between wanting to keep her promise and worrying about the jester.

"Go on back," I told her. "I'll get Meena to help me hunt some rabbits. She likes how they scream." I hefted up the wooden plank we had been using as a sled and hefted it over my shoulder. My practice with the mace had started to build my strength significantly, and I could swear that I was getting taller. I hoped that my show of maturity and strength would leave an impression on the Listener. My heart fell when she reached out and ruffled my hair with one gloved hand.

"You're a good kid," she said with a bright smile.

As I watched her go, I felt a sick sensation in my stomach. I didn't have enough experience with people to recognize it. I only knew that part of me was angry that her smile wasn't for me, but for the pneumonia-stricken fool laying sick back at home. And I resented being called a kid. I might be the youngest one in Sanctuary—except for maybe Babette, and I didn't know either of our ages for certain enough to debate it—but I was a member of the Dark Brotherhood too, by Sithis! I had killed a man and everything.

A man I still sometimes had nightmares about killing.

A man whose death had been so messy that I still preferred blunt weapons to sharp ones.

I shuddered through my furs at the memory of killing Rolff Stone-Fist. He had deserved it, there was no doubt about that on any level—yet somehow I still couldn't shake the memory of watching him gurgle up his last breath through bloody lips, of his sticky gore covering my hands and splattering up into my eyes…

Maybe that was why I couldn't get Hecate to show me the kind of approval I wanted. She was the leader of the Dark Brotherhood after all—the living voice of our Unholy Matron. Was it any wonder she had attached herself to a gleeful killer like Cicero? He might be a motley-wearing fool, but at least he didn't get faint at the sight of blood. Walking through the snow, crunching the rime of ice under my feet as I looked half-heartedly for Meena, I wondered how I could get the kind of approval from Hecate I longed for. More than that, I started to wonder for the first time exactly what kind of approval that was.

Vague meanderings and half-understood fantasies of myself as a great assassin floated through my mind until I finally gave up my search and went back to Sanctuary. Being alone was something I had gotten used to after my mother died, but living for even a couple of months with a family again had killed my taste for it. Better to be around people, even if they weren't paying attention to me directly.

It was time.

"Measure twice, cut once," Cicero intoned as he handed me the heated shears. "It's as useful an adage for torturers as it is for seamstresses." He grinned broadly and chuckled darkly in the back of his throat. Our occasional visits to the room before today had always been while it was empty, the better to familiarize me with the tools of the trade. I had known for months that Cicero was to be my trainer for this, but it still galled me.

In the four months since the Keeper had gotten disastrously sick, I had felt myself growing cooler toward him. He was a great assassin, yes—but he was also demanding, and loud, and frightening. It had given me a little thrill to help Hecate cheat the fool at cards for her birthday back in Sun's Dawn, but even that had turned into a farce with Cicero's help. My "help" had been used by the fool to ultimately beat the Listener and finagle a debt out of her. It hadn't been so bad at first—maybe a little embarrassing—but when Babette talked to me about it later, I realized how badly I had been used by Cicero in his gambit to one-up Hecate and it had turned galling.

A lot had happened since then, including the refurbishing of our long-disused torture chamber. When I first came to Dawnstar the room had simply been standing empty, coated in dust and holding nothing more than a few boxes. Now, after a few trips to Riften by Nazir to arrange for supplies from the Thieves Guild, the place was far fuller. The old, rusty wall manacles had been replaced and firmly fastened. An iron maiden sat in one corner while the other housed a stretching rack. Whips, pokers, daggers, other implements had been carefully categorized and organized for easy reference by Nazir's personal system—a system he had spent weeks teaching me.

It also held an old woman—my intended subject.

While Cicero had checked the tools himself—he seemed elated to finally be given the chance to test them out—Hecate had retreated to the far side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the ground with her back against the stone wall. In a rare gesture of affection, she had asked me to sit with her. I was almost shocked when she had patted her knee and had me curl up on her lap the same way she had done after I killed Rolff Stone-Fist.

"Don't you think I'm getting too big to sit on your lap?" I half joked. Truthfully, I was getting too big to sit on anyone's lap. In four months, I had grown another three inches and gone through two more Dark Brotherhood outfits. I had always been big for my age, so I had rapidly outsized Babette and I was worried about hurting Hecate if I sat on her. The other side of that was that I desperate wanted to sit on Hecate's lap and just curl up like when I was smaller. But Cicero being in the room while I did it made me feel uncomfortable in a way I couldn't begin to name.

She simply patted her thigh and I accommodated her. Hecate didn't talk very much when we were together; I got the impression that she didn't have a lot to say to a "kid," which made me even more eager to grow up. Even with another three inches of height, I was still shorter and thinner than our Listener. We sat there like mother and son while Cicero hummed happily over the implements and the old woman chained to the wall continued to beg and plead with him.

Despite Hecate's insistence that we were all brothers and sisters before the Night Mother, I still privately continued to think of her as my adopted mother from time to time. The Night Mother was our Unholy Matron but she was a distant and elderly relation. I imagined her as being more like a grandmother, the elder of a family who guided us and watched over us. Hecate was the voice of that elder, and Babette and I were the younger generation. I wanted to think of Cicero as a crazy uncle more than my adoptive father, but it was difficult to make that distinction given his and Hecate's obvious relationship.

When Nazir had told me that I would begin the next phase of my training a few months before, I hadn't been exactly eager about the idea, but his stern guidance had made it clear that it wouldn't be optional. The first time we visited the torture chamber, Hecate had come along. And the second. And every time after that. As the chamber filled with the implements of pain I had grown more eager to make our semi-weekly visits, knowing that Hecate would be waiting there for us.

Now that it was Mid Year I was even more eager to show off what I had learned. My eagerness had dampened somewhat when we arrived at the torture chamber to find Cicero waiting for us. Nazir had departed quickly to take care of other business, and I had spent almost an hour just curled up with Hecate talking about nothing in particular when Cicero finally spoke to me.

"Is Aventus ready?" he called without looking up from the knife he was holding.

"Yes," I said, leaning forward. I hoped that I looked more confident about plying the torturer's trade than I felt. I was still somewhat queasy about the idea of all the blood that would surely come out of our victim. I was less concerned about the woman herself. After all, the Brotherhood would never harm a truly innocent person; ours was a holy calling and I still had no doubt about the righteousness of what we did.

It didn't hurt that the old crone they had picked looked a lot like Grelod the Kind. She had the same thin, pinched features, the same cruel face, the same cold eyes. The fact that she was pleading for her sorry hide played false to my eyes. I didn't believe for a minute her protestations of innocence—the very fact that she had been picked to be here was proof that she was guilty of something.

Cicero smiled cheerfully before turning to his victim. "Hello, hello!" he chirped. "You're going to be our test subject today. Lucky you!" His glee was disconcerting but I supposed that it was good for someone to love his work. I couldn't imagine how terrible it must be for most people to drudge through their lives without any happiness for their occupation. Even if I resented Cicero a little bit, I couldn't help but admire his work ethic.

"Please, this is about my husband's money, isn't it?" the woman gasped, terrified before even suffering a single cut. "I'll tell you where I hid it from the tax collectors. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

I was right. Tax evasion wasn't a serious crime, certainly—but it was something. And where there was one corrupt act, surely another was buried deeper.

"No, no, no!" Cicero scolded, clicking his tongue in frustration. "You spoke much too soon. You were supposed to wait and let Cicero show the boy what to do. Now what can Cicero do? Humph! I suppose showing where to cut for the most amount of time with the least bleeding will have to suffice. Lesson plan change, sorry." His playful grin was not the least bit apologetic. I didn't think he was really sorry at all.

"Come close, child." My resentment flared up again at being called a child, so I looked to Hecate before obeying immediately. "How can Aventus learn from so far away?" he insisted, seemingly annoyed at my hesitation. "Most of the training is in the holding of the blade anyway. Cicero will stab and slice and cut. Then it will be Aventus' turn. Generous Cicero will not be greedy and not share."

Part of me hoped that Hecate would say no. I was still squeamish about cutting implements, and I didn't like working so close to Cicero while he held knives. Who knew if he still held a grudge about my cheating during mage poker? The fact that Hecate had asked me to do it wouldn't be relevant to the madman; she could do no wrong in his eyes. When she nodded her approval at me, I knew that there was no getting out of it. Since it couldn't be avoided, the only thing to do then was to do it well enough that she would be proud of me. I would win her approval by outdoing the jester at his own cruel tasks, the way any good assassin would do.

"Did you bring a blade?" he asked, and I nodded. "Good, good. Now watch."

Then the cutting began.

One of the biggest advantages of living in the Dawnstar Sanctuary was being next to the ocean. In all but the coldest month of the year the water was clear enough to go fishing, either from shore or by wading out to one of the large rocks near the shore. Now that it was late spring, my contribution to Nazir's nightly repasts had increased significantly. It gave me a real sense of pride to contribute to the well-being of the Sanctuary, even if I hadn't yet been allowed to take my first contract. Nazir had started talking about a "new phase" to my training, and I hoped that it would be the last phase before actually getting to start taking contracts.

Fishing was the closest thing I had to a hobby. My first couple of months in Sanctuary had been too busy with basic training and getting settled in to worry about it; there had been a period where training lasted from the time I got up to the time I gulped down a few bites of dinner and immediately collapsed into bed afterward. Now that I was competent with the basics of weapons and infiltration, I had a bit more free time. After Babette got up in the evenings, we would spend time playing together or her listening to me talk about my training while she worked on her potions and poisons, but that still left hours of the day where I was left to my own devices. The solution had come to me one night while Nazir was complaining about the cost of fish from Dawnstar's market.

"It's criminal what these people charge for a bushel of salted fish!" he had railed while carting in the week's groceries. "And I say that as a man who once drowned a widow in her own bathtub!"

"Why complain about a few septims?" Hecate chuckled, plucking a red apple off the top of a barrel and biting into it with a hearty crunch. "It's not like the Brotherhood isn't making money these days."

"That's not the point," he grunted sourly. "Damn Nords think they can gouge me because I'm a Redguard living outside of town. I can't wait until the Empire crushes those racist bastards and…" He trailed off, looking up at Hecate guiltily. Her face was turned into a frown, but she didn't say anything; she just turned and walked out of the room, dropping the rest of the uneaten apple into a waste bin as she went.

"Never talk about politics with friends," Nazir sighed. I had been sitting in the main room when he came in, and I trotted over to help him bring in the supplies. Ever since the revelation of the existence of a false Dragonborn a few months before, Hecate had been sensitive to any talk about the civil war. Most of the time we remembered to not talk about it in front of her, but there were occasional slip-ups that left her in a bitter mood for hours on end.

"Why don't we just fish for our own food?" I asked as we were putting things away in the kitchen.

"Do I look like a fisherman?" Nazir asked in return. "The only thing I know about the sea is that I spent two months on a boat once. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life, up there with almost being castrated by an angry hagraven." I always wondered how many of Nazir's stories were made up for humor, but it was considered impolite in the Dark Brotherhood to ask about a sibling's past. "I'm willing to eat fish, but the idea of actually trying to wrestle my food from its native habitat doesn't appeal to me at all."

"Cicero's trip to Dawnstar was unpleasant too," the jester said as he wandered into the kitchen and began rifling through the half-unpacked food. He made no offer to help, simply sorting through things and pushing them around, occasionally muttering about carrots and sweetrolls. When he saw that nothing of the sort was in the offing he finally continued, "Sick, sick, sick of the rocking, tossing, rolling, throwing upon the gray waves! It was horrible! Horrible!"

"Weren't you coming to Skyrim from Cheydinhal?" Nazir asked, sweeping some of the food out of Cicero's reach. "Wouldn't it have been easier for you to come overland through the Pale Pass?"

"Ah!" Cicero cried, plucking a carrot from my hands with the deftness of a swooping hawk. "Just what poor Cicero was looking for!" He shoved the carrot into his mouth before flipping over onto his hands and walking out of the kitchen upside-down, chewing on the carrot the whole way.

"Damn fool…" Nazir muttered darkly. "Hope he chokes on that carrot." I got the impression that Nazir didn't like Cicero very much. While I'd had my own grievances with the jester lately, I still admired him as a servant of the Night Mother and thought he was wonderfully funny on his good days. Nazir never seemed to even smirk at Cicero's antics.

"I could bring in fish," I piped up, trying to move the conversation away from Cicero and back to food. Nazir always seemed happier when talking about food, and he was a good cook. I sometimes wondered why he wasn't fat with as much time as he spent in the kitchen. "I used to go fishing for my meals almost every day when I lived in Windhelm. Fishing for six people isn't much different than fishing for one. It just takes longer." I thought about it for a moment. "Honestly, the boats down at the docks scared away the fish a lot of the time, so I don't think it would even take that much longer since the water is calmer up here."

"Hmmm," Nazir pondered. "As long as it wouldn't interfere with your training, I suppose we could see…"

"It won't!" I insisted. I hadn't realized how much I had missed fishing until Nazir brought it up. I had always had a sense of real peace while I was holding a line and sitting on the docks. Life was better in Dawnstar than it had been in Windhelm—or, Divines forbid, in Riften—but I had been full of nervous energy for weeks without any idea of what to do with it.

After that, I had gone out to fish almost every evening after training. Relaxing in the cool air had turned into lounging shirtless in the early spring sun. Every night I would come back with a brace of fish for Nazir; sometimes he would cook them right away, while other times he would salt them or smoke them for later use, but they never went to waste. Meena particularly enjoyed getting the opportunity to eat fresh fish as often as possible. The Khajiit lived up to her cat-like appearance in both adoring fish and hating water.

The praise that Nazir received for dinner might not have been directed at me personally—but I felt pride for helping nonetheless. It also reinforced Nazir's occasional lesson that the glorious task isn't always the most important one. Sometimes acting as a sibling's backup on a difficult contract is just as important as delivering the final blow. It was something I had a hard time remembering during training, so getting to feel the joy of contributing without being in the spotlight was a pleasant experience.

As a reward for my help, Nazir even built me a small rowboat so I could go further out and get better catches for the Sanctuary. He didn't let me go out unsupervised; even in the calm seas north of Dawnstar he didn't feel comfortable letting me take a boat out alone. Still, he spent most of his time on the shore while I manipulated the small craft in the soft afternoon tides. The one time Nazir had to go out on contract himself, Cicero had come out with me to keep watch at Hecate's request; his resulting seasickness when he tried to accompany me out on my little boat gave me a small bit of petty joy.

The best times were the few times that Hecate had come out on the water with me. The first couple of times, weeks apart, had been trying for her. She didn't understand that fish were scared off by noise, and her usual quiet withdrawal apparently turned into nervous chattiness when away from solid land. I wondered more than once if I could really be the only member of the Dark Brotherhood who didn't mind boats. After a while, Hecate started bringing books to read while I fished and it seemed to make her happier to accompany me.

When we were out, Hecate preferred to dress lightly to soak up the sun and work on her tan so she rarely wore more than short leggings and a strip of cloth across her chest. Having lived most of my life in Windhelm, surrounded by Nords, the idea of darkening in the sun was a strange concept to me; most Nords were pale folk, and Windhelm spent most of the year under clouds. I enjoyed the feeling of the sun on my bare chest, but I wasn't intentionally trying to darken my skin. I found myself staring at Hecate a lot as we sat in amicable silence, fascinated by the way her color incrementally changed from a light tone to something more bronzed. Despite the cool weather in the north of Skyrim, sitting in the direct sun could still get quite warm, so I was often entranced by the sweat rivulets moving in slow, lazy arcs across her skin.

Sometime in the late spring we had been out for most of an afternoon when a sudden spring wind blew up out of the east. The boat rocked suddenly and I cursed as I tried to use my weight to right the small vessel before it could tip over. Hecate tilted with the rocking of the boat, losing her book and diving to one side to grab it before it went into the water. She managed to catch the spine with the tips of her fingers and sent it spinning through the air toward me, where I had enough presence of mind to grab for it. It bounced off my hands and wound up laying on one of the boards between my legs. Hecate started to stand up to come for the book when I waved her back down.

"Don't stand up!" I nearly shouted. "The way the waves are pushing us right now, we could capsize."

"What should I do then?" she asked, seeing that I was too busy struggling with the oars to hand her book back. I wasn't used to being asked my opinion about anything so I just shrugged.

Hecate's face turned down for a moment, and then she carefully shifted her weight forward to stay in the center of the boat while scooting forward. The boat pitched again and the book slid halfway off the board. Before it could fall all the way off and wind up in the several inches of water accumulated in the bottom of the rowboat, Hecate gracefully tilted forward from her sitting position so that she was on her knees, her hands planted to either side of me to keep her balance.

Our different heights, combined with the awkward position, meant that her breasts were—for just a moment—pushed directly into my face. Suddenly, I was having even more trouble keeping the boat righted as all the blood seemed to flow out of my head. I felt dizzy and lightheaded as I breathed in her scent and felt her sweat painting my cheek.

"Dammit," she cursed, oblivious to my discomfort. "Sorry. Let me just…" She adjusted her posture so that she was holding herself up with one hand while the other sought the book. Her breasts lifted out of my face just long enough for the back of her seeking hand to brush against my crotch before finding the book. If I had felt dizzy before, the painful tightness I was now feeling below the waist was even more discomfiting. She didn't seem to notice at all, thankfully; she was too busy trying to adjust herself back into a sitting position without losing her balance or overturning the rowboat. Somehow I managed to get the boat back to the sandy shore without tossing us both into the sea.

As I sat there, leaning forward onto my haunches in an attempt to make the painful sensation go away, Cicero came running up. He pranced around in the surf nervously, stooping to help Hecate get out of the rowboat.

"Are you all right, Listener?" he asked, his voice a high, worried tone. "Loyal Cicero was ready to leap into the waves to save you if the boat overturned!"

"Capsized," I correctly absently. Neither of them paid any attention to me, which was probably for the best.

"I'm fine," Hecate insisted, pushing Cicero back to a less intrusive distance. "Aventus kept the boat under control just fine. We were never in any danger." She looked over at me and smiled graciously. I stayed bent double, breathing heavily. It wasn't completely an act; bringing the boat in safely had been hard work, and I honestly didn't think I would have been able to manage it a few months before. The training I had been doing for Nazir had really made me stronger.

When I looked over at Cicero, I saw a flash of something ugly cross his face. Was he mad at me for almost hurting Hecate? I couldn't help but believe it was something else, like he knew what was happening to me at the moment and disapproved. Hecate came over and leaned down to give me a brief peck on the cheek, and the painful tightness surged again before becoming something warmer and more pleasant. By the time I managed to sort it out, the two of them had wandered off together.

I flopped back and sprawled in the boat, listening to the surf coming in and smelling the salt air. I wasn't sure what had just happened, though I had a few theories based on things I had heard from other kids back in Windhelm and now recognized it as a sign of getting older. Before they had started palling around with Haakig, Lasskar and Vigurl Deep-Water had sometimes spoken fondly about "growing a horker tusk" as a sign of becoming a teenager. I wasn't sure how old I was, but I supposed this officially made me not a child anymore.

Beyond any vague metaphor by the Deep-Water brothers, though, I wasn't sure what to do about it. There had been some pleasant moments in the process but being alone afterward stung more than catching a cold wave in the face. I felt a bitter melancholy that I was growing up but the one person I really wanted to notice that fact was ignorant of it. Worse than ignorant—she was actively choosing someone who spent most of his time acting like a child.

Hecate had saved my soul and given me closure. She had taken me in and given me a new family and a new purpose. My favorite moments were the ones I could spend with her. But sometimes being around her at all was a kind of torture.

Two hours after the lesson had begun, it ended abruptly with the old woman breathing her last.

I had paid close attention through the intervening time, watching where Cicero cut and listening to his running narration about the proper way to perform an incision. Despite my initial nausea at the sight of blood and flayed flesh, it had become almost fascinating to listen to his clinical analysis of the ways in which skin and veins could be manipulated to produce certain effects. Sometimes he would perform a deep cut and barely elicit any reaction at all from the prisoner, while at other times he could make a shallow cut—barely a scratch—and pull forth ragged, terrible screams.

The prisoner babbled while we worked, screaming out all of her secrets—real and invented. She claimed that vengeance would befall us from her relatives if she died, that she could pay us an emperor's ransom for freeing her, that she had mouths to feed and people to care for. She spat curses, shouted libel, and wept prayers to the Divines. In the end, she was reduced to occasional weak mutters, tears leaking from her old eyes as blood leaked from her many wounds.

About halfway through my attempt at making a saw incision along her ribs, she coughed feebly once and then just stopped. I paused, a frown of concentration on my face. I looked up at her, noticing that her eyes were peacefully closed in death. Rolff's eyes had been open, staring hatred at me until someone had cut him free from his bindings and dragged his carcass away. This old woman—whose name I didn't even know—looked like she was just sleeping. Had Grelod looked so peaceful when she died?

"Is that it then?" I asked Cicero. "Did I kill her?"

"No," he chuckled, "you simply hurt her a great deal. I'm afraid that she died the second she was chosen for this." He smiled wistfully and put down his own knife before gently taking mine from my nerveless fingers. "That's the way it should be, you know—the way it used to be. When someone draws the eye of the Dark Brotherhood, they're already dead. The hand that holds the knife is just an extension of that fact. No one escapes the Brotherhood."

I paused for a moment, the nausea suddenly flowing away from me like the tide in the wake of Cicero's words. He was right, of course. No matter what personal grudge I might have over Cicero's attitude and behavior, he was still the closest to the Night Mother of any of us. He had been serving her longer than I had been alive; even without hearing her voice, he knew her will better than I could ever hope. His certitude and righteousness inspired me.

"Thank you for the lesson, Keeper," I said gravely. "I hope to benefit from your experience again in the future." I wondered if I should say anything else, but I stopped up short when I saw how bloody my hands and clothes were. The blood didn't seem to bother me as much now. It was just a warm, red fluid, and not so different between humans and animals.

"Go on," he laughed, reaching out to ruffle my hair like a proud father. "Clean up. Get ready for dinner." I expected to see his gloves coated in gore when he pulled his hand away from my head, but as far as I could tell the only part of Cicero that had seen any spatter from our lesson was a few drops on his face. I turned and walked out, wondering how he managed to keep himself so clean while we were doing such messy work. Rather than wait for the next time and risk forgetting, I decided to go back and ask him then.

Though I hadn't been gone for more than a minute, by the time I got back to the torture chamber, Hecate was in tears. She was still sitting on the ground, but Cicero was kneeling over her, her balled up fists pounding lightly on his chest as he struggled to hold her by the shoulders. He said something I couldn't quite make out and she dropped her hands, leaning her tear-streaked face onto his chest and bawling loudly. His hands snaked around to her back as he drew her closer, obviously trying to comfort her.

What in Sithis' name had he done this time?

My stomach boiled with anger at the jester for spoiling my revelation. I was so sure that Hecate would be proud of me for learning my lessons well, but once again it was Cicero sending her into tears or fury before coming back and trying to undo what he had done. And she kept letting him! What hold did the jester have over Hecate that she would stay with him after so many pains? I simply couldn't understand it.

Watching the two of them hold one another in the torture chamber, a dead woman hanging on the far wall, I could only think that it felt like the opposite of what I felt in the boat. Instead of my blood draining from my head into other parts of my body it felt like it was all just draining out of me, leaving me weak and cold. I still admired Cicero in a lot of ways, but all I could think was that if it were me holding Hecate, she wouldn't be so upset in the first place.

It couldn't be, though. She was at least twenty years older than me, and Cicero was even older than her. The two of them were similar in age, like I was with Babette, and that meant a lot to adults. Even if I became a great assassin, it couldn't happen fast enough. I couldn't grow up quickly enough for Hecate to care for me the way she cared for Cicero. By the time I was a grown man, she would be an old woman—which mattered less to me than it surely would to her. I would never be anything more than a child to my Listener.

I ran from the torture chamber, unseen by the two assassins. I bumped into Babette as I stumbled to my room, almost literally knocking her down. I flopped onto my bed face down and struggled to hold in the bitter tears of disappointment. I didn't realize that Babette had followed me in until I felt her weight settle next to me on the narrow bed. After a moment's hesitation, she laid her cold hand on the back of my head, silently offering me comfort even though she had no way of knowing what was wrong.

As I laid there, Babette stroking my hair and blood soaking unnoticed into my mattress from where I had failed to wash up, I contemplated the nature of pain. How strange it was to think that another person's happiness could have the same measure as my terrible torture. That was my truth, it seemed, whatever Nazir might have meant otherwise. I never did cry that night, despite the cutting pain in my heart.

The day after I tortured a woman to death, Nazir told me that I had passed my lesson. Soon, I would be going on my first contract. It was a bitter success, but I took his commendation gracefully and with thanks.

"Did you ever understand what I meant?" he asked before I left to do more training with Meena.

"No," I admitted honestly. He shook his head, seemingly disappointed. "What was I supposed to learn?"

"When a man commits to violence," Nazir said, sitting down to look me in the eye, "it doesn't take any specific quality of spirit. Every man wants to live, so every man is willing to kill to preserve his own life. Any man who loves is willing to kill to protect what he loves." I thought of Hecate and silently nodded. "Killing without those drives takes a special kind of person. Hecate brought you here because she hoped you were that kind of person. I didn't agree with her…" At my shocked expression, Nazir quickly continued, "…at first."

"Why not?" I asked, feeling defensive.

"You killed Rolff Stone-Fist out of desperation," he said bluntly. "I just wasn't sure if it was the right kind of desperation. Hecate has a soft spot for you that I've never seen her have for anyone else but that damned jester." My heart surged when he said that but if my face betrayed it, Nazir gave no sign. "She can sometimes let her emotions blind her to practical concerns… but it's led us right in the past where being more 'logical' got people hurt. Even killed."

I nodded. Hecate had told me enough about what happened at Falkreath to know that Nazir was talking around the burning of the old Sanctuary again. He coughed into his fist and continued after a long pause.

"I don't think you have the stomach for torture, Aventus," he said. "But you've got the stubbornness to do it anyway, and to do it well. That's the sort of person you are: You never give up. I just think it's a damn shame that I had to tell you. A man should always be aware of his greatest virtue as well as his worst vice." He stood up to leave. Before he walked out, once I had properly taken a moment to digest him calling me a man, I called out.

"At least I already know my worst flaw," I laughed. "I don't think ahead far enough. Gotten me into trouble more than once." Nazir only laughed.

"That's not it, kid," he snorted. "Not by a long shot."

"What's my worst vice then?" I asked, genuinely confused. He paused but didn't turn around.

"That's not for me to say," he rumbled. "You'll have to find that one out on your own."

Once he was gone, I thought about what Nazir had said to me. I decided that he was right: I wasn't the sort of person to just give up in the face of hardship. I had survived my mother's death, Honorhall Orphanage, a season on the road, and a year alone. I could endure anything. I might be a quick study, but my real virtue had always been my ability to persevere despite the odds and the pain. My heart felt light again for the first time in days.

I decided then that I would take Nazir's words to heart. I wouldn't be disappointed or frustrated with the obstacles that seemed to be in my way, because I had already endured worse and overcome. Hecate might not see me as a man now, but she would eventually. All I had to do was persevere. It was amazing to me how pain could turn into pride with just a change in perspective. Such was the measuring stick of torture, I supposed—the way that the worst pain could transform into the greatest motivation.

Pain was just nature's way of motivating us, I decided. And torture was our way of motivating others—not an end, like Cicero and Meena seemed to believe, but just a means to it. The more pain we endured or inflicted, the greater the end result had to be in order to justify it. I was happy with that equation. In the end, it said that pain meant something, and I was happier when things had meaning.

…to be continued…