A/N:Small liberties taken with layout of Benirus Manor. I personally feel you shouldn't be able to call something a manor unless it has at least three bedrooms. Besides, I've always wished for a player house with resident nonhostile ghosts.
Chapter 10
The house was empty.
"Huh," said Bhed gro-Gamghaz. He looked around cautiously at the well-furnished living room. There were rugs on the floor and a fire in the fireplace, and paintings on the walls. "Doesn't somebody live here?"
"Someone named Benirus used to," Towser said. He stood with hands on hips, surveying the place contentedly. "Used to be haunted. An adventurer came in and bought it off the owner cheap, then cleaned it all out. Including the lich in the basement. There's still an altar down there. Want to see it?"
"No, thanks," said Bhed gro-Gamghaz. "So you know this adventurer?"
"You could say that." Towser leered. "She lets me stay here when she's not around. Nobody else will come in, what with the haunting and everything, so the door's usually unlocked."
"And the fire?" Thrissi said. She was looking suspiciously at the fireplace.
"Yes. That." Towser scratched his head with a gauntleted hand. "Well, it is still sort of haunted."
"Oh, great," said Bhed gro-Gamghaz.
"Not by anything sinister," Towser said. "Just sometimes the fire lights itself, and the beds get made without anybody here to do it. Harmless. You know, excuse my mentioning it, but you seem nervous for an Orc."
Bhed shot him a look. "You would be, too," he said. Both of them looked at Thrissi. She appeared to ignore them.
"This one supposes she will retire early," Thrissi said. "It was rather a long walk from the Imperial City."
"There's a room upstairs with a nice balcony," Towser said. "Bhed, if you'd like there's a bigger bed downstairs. Nowhere near the altar, I promise."
"What about you?" Bhed said.
"There's a bedroom on this level, too," Towser said. He leered again. "And I've slept in it plenty of times. This way if Abda comes home unexpectedly, she won't see anything she hasn't seen before."
"Are you hoping this will occur, Towser?" Thrissi said.
"Luckless, I just spent nigh onto two weeks out in the wilderness seeing nothing but ghosts and bandits. I'm positively praying for it, not that Dibella's listening to me much lately. Come on. Before you turn in, we'll see if our friendly ghost has come up with anything for dinner."
It was a good dinner. By common consent, all three of them went to bed early, but Bhed didn't sleep. It was nice to lie in a bed that wasn't too short or too narrow, but it was far too soft. He'd never slept in one like it that he could remember. He kept getting the sensation that at any second the mattress would close over him and he would suffocate. Further, it wasn't really in a bedroom, though there was a desk and dresser beside it. The little group of furniture sat on a deep red rug in the corner of the stone basement. Only screens divided it from the larger room, so the red and yellow light from the runes on one wall was clearly visible.
Bhed wondered what kind of altar was behind them. This sort of speculation wasn't conducive to slumber, either. So he was still very awake when the ghost arrived.
He'd always supposed that a ghost would announce itself with an eerie moan, or drift slowly through a wall, or possibly the candle would go out (if he'd needed a candle to begin with). Consequently, he just about jumped out of his skin when a glowing blue girl shot through the canvas screen and skidded to a halt.
Bhed jerked upright, scooting backward into the headboard. The ghost folded her arms. She was what he'd once heard a mage call a fully manifested specter, not a half-bodied thing like you saw out in the caves and ruins. He could see every detail of her woolen dress and her apron and her long hair. She might be anybody's parlormaid, just into her teens. It just happened he could see right through her.
After a second, when he'd decided his heart wasn't going to stop, Bhed realized she seemed to be trying to speak. No sound came out of her mouth, but her lips were definitely moving.
"I can't hear you, sorry," he said. The ghost threw up her hands. She stamped closer, though this didn't make any sound. Then she tried again. Bhed squinted at her lips.
"The... board... Nord? You mean Towser?" The ghost jerked a thumb upward. "Right. What about him?" The misty lips moved again. "Is... flying? No, trying... to..."
He had no trouble making out the next word. None at all.
"Talos, I knew it," Bhed said, and grabbed up his hammer and ran for the stairs.
He was too slow. He burst through the door to the upstairs bedroom in time to see the body hit the floor. Bhed lowered his hammer slowly. He swore.
"Indeed," Thrissi said. The two of them stared down at Towser Shortsight, presently breathing his last. Blood bubbled from his cut throat. Thrissi squatted next to him and wiped her dagger on his shirt. He was wearing black clothes. The ebony armor would have been too bright in the dark, Bhed supposed.
There was a visible dent in the left shoulder of Thrissi's cuirass. She was still wearing her full suit of armor, with boots. "Money wasn't good enough adventuring, was it?" she said. The dying man moved his head to one side, a faint negative. His filmy blue eye followed her. "So you found another guild to join. Sorry this one is that it was you they sent, old friend. Or was that why they sent you? Was I to be your initiation?"
Towser jerked his head up slightly.
"Then this one supposes it is just as well. Too many of the others we knew would not have slept in their armor, you see. Though this one is sorry she has killed you."
If Shortsight had an answer to that, Thrissi and Bhed were destined not to hear it. Bhed stood through the awkward silence that followed. Thrissi's ears were quite flat.
"Sorry," Bhed said. "The ghost warned me, but..." He trailed off as he became aware that, while Thrissi might have slept in her armor, he himself was presently clad only in a loincloth. "I'll get dressed."
He left her kneeling beside the dead Nord and went back down to the basement. The girl ghost still stood inside the screens, in front of the bed. She watched as he tossed the warhammer onto the bed and fumbled around for his clothes.
"It's a good thing you're dead and a different species, or I'd be embarrassed," said Bhed.
The girl's shoulders shook in a silent giggle.
"You must be the friendly ghost he was talking about, right?"
She nodded. Bhed struggled into his trousers and shoes. "So were you a maid here?"
Another nod.
"What happened to you? Anything to do with that lich?"
The girl mimed coughing.
"You were sick?"
Nod. Bhed located his shirt and pulled it over his head. "Why didn't you go to the temple, then?" he said. His head emerged from the collar in time for him to see her shrug. She mouthed two syllables.
"You did," Bhed said. She nodded. "That's pretty weird. Usually they can cure anything."
Another shrug.
"Well, thanks for trying to warn me." The ghost smiled sadly, shaking her head. Then she faded back through the screen and was gone. Bhed reattached his weapons harness and went back upstairs without seeing her again.
Thrissi had not moved. She was still crouched down next to the dead Nord, staring at his face as the pool of blood spread around her boots.
"Less than two months," she said. "Less time than this one has known you, Bhed gro-Gamghaz. And two years pass, and yet still here he is. This one would have thought him among those least likely to join the Dark Brotherhood."
"Heard they look for the unlikely ones," Bhed said gently. "He had to be pretty desperate."
"This one hopes so," Thrissi said.
"I'll go see if I can find that guard," Bhed said.
"Yes," said Thrissi the Luckless. Her ears did not move.
---
From the room's balcony, a pale blue figure watched Bhed gro-Gamgaz jog up the street. The spectral parlormaid was very pale. It was unlikely anyone below could have seen her in the gathering fog and the dark. A moment later, a taller figure stepped out onto the balcony. This, too, was a ghost, but it was a much taller one than she. The maid patted the other specter's back comfortingly as he hung his hooded head.
No living ear could have heard her voice as she spoke to him, but he did. He reached up and pushed his hood back, revealing the long fall of hair that might have been blond if it had any color at all. Even now, he only had one eye.
The two ghosts watched as the Orc disappeared into the fog.