He's alone

Brynjolf and Delvin's feet echoed in the damp and slimy tunnels of the Ratway. The place was deserted. Not that any of the hangers-on would have given trouble to the second in command and third in command of the Thieves Guild anyway, but it was clear that they were being given a wide berth. Bad news gets around fast. Echoes of a disaster twenty five years gone rang in Brynjolf's ears.

He's alone

Brynjolf kicked open the door to the Flagon, sprinted across the bridge and through the door in the back closet that led to the Cistern. The Flagon was deserted as well. Abandoned mugs and jugs suggested that people had left in a hurry.

He's alone

The cluster of people near the Guildmaster's corner parted to let them through. Mercer was laid out on a mat on the floor, his face drained of colour, his eyes closed. Herluin was cutting the Guildmaster's leather jerkin off him with a small knife and hissing through his teeth at what he found under it. Mercer's trousers had already received the same treatment and a thin linen cloth was laid over his bare legs. Occasionally Herluin would look over his shoulder and bark an order at Vex who was laying out steaming cloths in a tray, soaked with some evil grey liquid which left a pungent reek in the back of the nose.

"When did he get back here?" Brynjolf skirted Herluin and stood by the desk, his eyes never leaving Mercer's face.

"Half a candlemark ago. He'd got as far as the entrance in the graveyard and collapsed. Rune carried him in here." It was Tonilia who answered, standing back in the shadows by the bookcase. She had a gold statue in her hands, a carefully crafted queen bee, and was turning it over and over in her fingers when she spoke. Brynjolf recognised it immediately, it was the one that Mena had lifted from Goldenglow. Delvin had purred when he saw it, and it had taken pride of place on the Cistern's shelves.

"Where's Mena?"

"Bryn, we've no idea. Mercer hasn't been conscious for more than a minute since he got here, and there was no sign of her."

He looked down at Mercer. "What happened to him?"

Herluin dumped the tattered remains of the leather jacket to one side, Mercer's shirt followed. "I'm still trying to work that out. He's a mass of wounds but they're almost all superficial. Several of them are infected, that's what the poultices are for." He laid one of the hot cloths on the shallow gash on Mercer's forearm. "But this pallor, and the laboured breathing - that's far more like poison of some type, and I haven't yet identified what it is."

That bitch Karliah. Poison was always her signature, no arrow ever left her quiver without something vile on it. I should never have let him and Mena go alone. I knew what she was like, that Dark Elf murderess.. Mena was too inexperienced, Mercer was too blinded by hate. I should never have let them go alone.

Brynjolf sat down on the edge of a chair. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Keep the boiling water coming. I'm trying to brew a general remedy at present to hopefully counter the poison, but it'll be another half hour yet. And get everyone out from under my feet. I can't work like this." Herluin reached for another cloth.

Brynjolf looked to left and right. "You heard the man. Vex, Tonilia, you can stay, use the cooking cauldron for the water, it's bigger. Del, get the rest of these gawpers back to the Flagon and find them something useful to do. Teach them some bad card sharping or something. I'll call if anything changes."

As the area emptied of the onlookers, Herluin laid the last of the hot cloths on Mercer's shoulder and retreated to his alchemy brazier, stirring the pot that seethed on the fire. Mercer's eyes fluttered and his lips moved for a second.

"He's done that two or three times." Tonilia set the statue carefully back on the shelf. "Keeps trying to tell us something, but we can't make out what he's saying."

Brynjolf laid a hand on Mercer's. "Mercer, can you hear me?"

"I hear you." The words were the faintest thread of sound.

He sat down beside Mercer, leaning his head towards the other man. "Take it slow. You're home, you're among friends. Whisper. What happened?"

"The bitch was there all right." Amazingly Mercer's dry lips cracked into a mirthless smile. His voice was little more than a shadow amongst shadows and every word seemed an effort that ended in pained breath. "Knew it as soon as we got there - scouted the ruins and found her horse. I killed it. If she ran from us, I wasn't going to let her get away."

His words ended in a gasp and Herluin hurried back over, clutching a small beaker which he trickled drop by drop into Mercer's mouth. Mercer swallowed it painfully and his complaint was almost the old Mercer. "Talos, that tastes foul."

"It's to help with the pain. It will work fast but it will make you drowsy." Herluin fixed Brynjolf with a stare. "You are not to let him excite himself, do you hear me? You can talk to him for a few minutes, until the other potion is ready, and then he needs to sleep."

"I hear you." Brynjolf turned back to Mercer.

Mercer was speaking again. "The ruins...stank of death. Both old death and new. She'd locked and trapped the door - I got us past that one but she'd reset every trap within the ruins, and poisoned most of them. Mena spotted more than I did - she was a good girl, you were right about her..." His words trailed off into a fit of coughing.

She was. Not she is, but she was...

Brynjolf's voice was urgent. " What happened?"

"Bone chimes." The words were little more than a whisper. "Bone chimes to wake all the Draugr. If it hadn't been for Mena I would have been hard pressed, she shot down so many before they ever got to us. But both of us were wounded and bleeding by the time we made it to the puzzle door. I don't think Karliah ever expected us to make it a quarter that far - or to know the trick to get through the door without the claw key. But we got in there and she was waiting."

He groaned. "It was like seeing Gallus die all over again. Her arrow took Mena in the shoulder and she dropped without a sound. Dead before she hit the floor. I went for Karliah and suddenly Karliah wasn't there. She spoke just once. Said that she'd be a fool to face me and that I never learned... It had to be an invisibility ring, she had no time to take a potion. And I was alone with the dead."

Brynjolf swallowed against the lump that threatened to block his throat. "You're sure Mena was dead?"

"Bryn, her heart had stopped beating, she wasn't breathing, her face was ice cold. I thought of trying to drag her body to the surface but I would never have made it, whatever poison that bitch had put on the traps was already working on me. I don't know how I made it to the surface. I don't know how I got back here." Mercer's voice was weaker. "She'll pay. By every Divine, she'll pay."

His voice was trailing off and he stopped responding to questions. Herluin bustled over, trickled a second potion between his lips and then stared at Brynjolf. "Out. All of the rest of you, out. Don't even think of trying to get him to answer you further, when I've finished with him here he'll sleep for days and anything you may have planned can wait. Vengeance can wait. All of it can."

Brynjolf was only half aware of Vex leading him away, of the door closing behind them, of the chatter in the Flagon that silenced as they walked in. Not one person spoke. Not one person asked a question. Brynjolf's face clearly told the entire story without words. Delvin pushed a glass of spirit into his hand and laid a hand awkwardly on his shoulder for a moment.

He gulped the raw spirit, feeling it burn past the blockage in his throat and set up a small fire in the ice pit that had once been his stomach. He turned away from all of them, from the grief in Delvin's eyes, the pity in Vex's, the sympathy in Tonilia's. He couldn't deal with any of it. Not now. Not tonight.

He sat down in his own alcove in the far side of the Flagon, staring at the wall. Footsteps had followed him, but he didn't look up. Then he stood up and dragged a sack down from a high cupboard and started to fill it. Shoes. Clothing. A couple of small bags out of the chest.

"Where do you think you're going, Bryn?" The voice was Tonilia's. He'd known that anyway.

"Windhelm" His voice was without emotion.

Tonilia sighed and came over to him quietly. "Just what good do you think you can do?"

He turned to look at her. "You're Redguard. You heard the story she told, the night we had our party here. You know who she was."

Tonilia nodded. "I guessed. Even before she told that story that night, I wondered. Those grey eyes - most of you thought it was because she had a Nord father. But those eyes, that pale grey with the dark ring to the iris - they're called moonlight eyes in my tongue, and they run in the Taneth royal house. Have done for hundreds of years."

"Then you know why I'm going." His voice was as level and quiet as if he was speaking of trivialities. It might have fooled some people. It didn't fool Tonilia, he could see that on her face. " We never tried to find Gallus's body all those years ago, and that was shame enough then. After what Mena did for Hammerfell - and after what she did for us in the Guild, she deserves better than to lie unburied in the ice of an ancient tomb amongst the Draugr bones. I'm going to get her body out of Snow Veil Sanctum and send her to Sovngarde in fire. If anyone ever earned their place there, she did. Then her ashes can go back to Hammerfell, if I can find those Alik'r who knew her. To mingle with the desert sand, under the Dragon Wind."

Tonilia nodded and made a strange sign with her right hand. "Desert sand we are, and desert sand we shall be, and all our lives are written on that sand." Her voice was a sad chant with the echo of ghostly drums.

Brynjolf's soft baritone finished it. "But what is written on sand under the Dragon Wind is not forgotten."

She kissed his cheek. "Shadow hide you, Bryn, and Lady's Grace go with you."

He held her for one minute and then stepped away. Slinging the sack over his back he walked quietly to the door that led out to the Ratway, and it silently closed behind him.