Author's Note: The Imperial coin (septim) has what looks like Tiber Septim on one side and Akatosh in dragon form on the other.

12: A Terrible Mistake

"Miss, you must get up. You mustn't sleep here."

The voice was far away and echoed like words from the dream world. Reality was horror and fear. Reality was pain and fury. Fear and fury. Even dreaming, deep in her bones, Grelka knew that fear and fury were two sides of the same coin.

Thump, thump, thump. A dull rhythm of breathlessness and pain. The coin glittered and spun. One side, a face. A screaming face, eyes burning, mouth open wide in a rictus of mindless wrath. Thump, thump. The coin spun. And there was the dragon. Its wings beat the air with the labored tempo of a terrified heart. The dragon swooped down, snatched her up in its huge claws. And it squeezed…

"Miss, are you ill? It's not safe for you here."

…squeezed the life out of her. The dragon bent its horned head to peer more closely. Those giant alien eyes—those horns, those fangs, those frightening fangs, so close…

"Miss, you must wake up!"

Something grasped her shoulder. Shook her. It hurt. Grelka's eyes, gluey and sticky, slowly peeled open.

Eerily backlit, an alien face peered into her face. A clawed hand reached for her. Grelka shrieked. The face jerked away. And Grelka realized it was no dragon that leaned over her but an Argonian. She felt painfully, horribly sick—her head pounded, her body ached and her gut heaved an ominous warning.

And she had absolutely no idea where she was. It was dark, damp and the air had a stale moldy smell. The only light was from the small lantern the Argonian had set on the ground nearby.

"Miss, you can't stay here."

She blinked at him."Nghn." Her tongue felt like a washcloth, a stiff dirty washcloth. She tried again. "Whuh?"

The Argonian's eyes were strange and his face was expressionless. "You are in the Ratway."

"Ratway?"she mumbled. Her thoughts didn't stream like thoughts do. They clicked over, one at a time. A way for rats? There was something horribly wrong in her gut, like some living thing, twisting and roiling, trying to escape. She was in the Ratway? A rat was like a small skeever. Right. "Whuh?" she asked. Her mouth wasn't working right. No part of her was working right.

"You're in the sewers under the city," the Argonian said.

"Erk." She swallowed to keep from drooling. Whatever was coming up, was coming up now.

"Are you injured?"

Grelka crawled to her knees. Her stomach heaved. She retched a few times and finally vomited a burning nasty stream. How such foulness could come from her own body was a mystery she didn't want to solve. She got to her feet unsteadily—her back, her knees, her gut hurt—and lurched away from the stinking mess. Even her hands hurt. The Argonian recoiled several steps as well. His tail twitched.

"Miss, you should check your coin purse. I'm afraid you've been set upon and robbed."

Her thoughts clicked over a bit faster. Set upon and robbed? In the sewers? Had she been left here to die? Gods, she was in Riften, of course she'd been robbed. She frantically patted her pockets. Stendarr's mercy. Coin purse, gone. In increasing panic, she felt her neck but the chain was gone. The wedding rings were gone."Gone," she muttered. But there was something thrust down her shirt. A piece of paper.

The Argonian watched her movements carefully. Very carefully. It was only much later that she realized he may have been afraid. "You'd best report this to the guard," was all he said.

"Light?" She pointed at his lantern. He held it out to her. Crazy shadows swooped across the damp ground. Divines, she'd been lying in a wet sewer. In her armor. At least she hadn't been stripped naked.

The paper was a bill of sale. She blinked to focus her eyes, trying to make sense of the thing. A bill of sale? Had she bought something? Why couldn't she remember? What did she remember? She squinted. Divines, her head hurt. Her lips tried to sound out the words.

Sold, one horse, as described in the referenced lineage papers. Known as Frost.

"No. No, no, no." If she'd been drunk, she was now shocked sober.

"Perhaps you should sit down," the Argonian said. "You look—"

"Get me out of here," Grelka said. A cramp bent her over but she forced herself to straighten against it. A rough pant and she was able to speak again. "There's been a terrible mistake."


Babette timed her entry into Windhelm for the busy part of the morning. Her cheeks were humanly rosy, courtesy of a convenient nest of bandits, and she pulled her travel hood to shade her eyes from the sun. The guards took no notice of her. Adults rarely took much notice of children, except for those perverted adults who preyed upon them. And they only saw what they wished to see, not what was there.

At first glance Windhelm seemed unchanged since her last visit. She'd expected that, actually. Traditions were strong in Windhelm, they always had been. But as she walked the crowded streets she saw a few differences. The city guard wore Stormcloak colors. What sort of man was this Ulfric Stormcloak, that an entire army should name themselves for him? She didn't think she'd ever met him although she did vaguely recall his father, the Great Bear of Windhelm. As she walked past the smithy, the steady hammering seemed to speak out, war, war, war.

Babette didn't care for war. How wasteful and disagreeably impersonal, to spill blood over politics. Death on a large scale had no appeal. Sithis was not honored by such.

She peered through the apothecary window several minutes before entering. She waited for Nurelion, the old Altmer alchemist, to go upstairs. Stooped and ill but still alive, after all these decades. He probably wouldn't remember her, since she hadn't been here in years, but she hadn't lived through the last era by skimping on basic precautions. His assistant seemed able enough.

"My ma sent me for blisterwort and wheat," she told him in a piping voice. "My little sister has a sore throat."

"That's a good choice," he said. "Twenty septims." He looked at the coins on her open palm. "I'd be happy to mix that up for you. No charge."

While he worked, competently enough, she turned the conversation to the Aretino family.

"Sad business, that," he said. "The mother sickened last winter. Nurelion did what he could for her but she died." With a little prodding, he told her more. "Her husband worked for the East Empire Trading Company and I believe he was lost at sea. The boy was orphaned."

"No one at the company would help out with the boy?"

"The East Empire doesn't have much of a presence in Windhelm since the war," he said. "We get our supplies from local traders now."

"No one could be found to foster him here? He has a house, doesn't he?"

"Ah, yes, well, he is an Imperial child and—" The man coughed and gave her a look, one non-Nord to another. His own name, Quintus, was surely Imperial. She wondered what prejudices he faced here in Ulfric Stormcloak's city. "The steward thought it best he go to the orphanage in Riften. Here, this is ready." He gave her the potion. "Come back if your mother needs anything else."

Others in town had plenty more to say about the Aretino boy and their gossip centered on the Black Sacrament. Babette was a bit baffled. This Aretino boy spoke of this openly? And no one intervened? The general opinion seemed to be that if he was ungrateful enough to run away from the orphanage, let him starve to death in his cursed old house.

His door was locked. There were no guards around, and passersby avoided the area. She knocked. No answer but there was someone inside. She could sense him. She knocked again.

"Go away," a scared voice said.

"Open this door." She put a touch of compulsion in her voice. She heard the bolt scrape.

"Who are you?" He seemed surprised to see another child. She gave him a quick look—frightened, defiant, poorly dressed and probably hungry—and then she brushed past him. There was a faint odor of blood from upstairs. She followed the scent.

"You can't just come barging in here. This is my house, you know." He clattered up the stairs after her. She easily sidestepped his move to grab her. Nonhuman reflexes were such a boon.

"Aventus Aretino."

"You know my name? How do you know my name?"

She traced the scent to a small room at the end of the hall. "My, my, someone has been naughty."

The Black Sacrament. He had the proper book, open to the proper prayer. He had the dagger and the nightshade. The candles, the effigy, the skull. He'd actually done it! For someone his age to have harvested all the ingredients—that took enormous resolution. Many adults felt children were incapable of such focus and anger. Babette had been a child once. She knew better.

Babette wrinkled her brow. Something was wrong here.

"That's not a human heart," she said slowly. It was a cow's heart. And she was pretty sure that lump of meat was venison. And—"Chicken bones? Is this some kind of a joke?"

"Do I look like I'm laughing?" he asked. Anger had chased off his fear.

"You look like you're pouting. What in Sithis' name do you think you'll accomplish with this fake sacrament?"

"I only did it to get people's attention. And you know what? Nobody cares! Nobody cares what happens to me or what's going on in Honorhall."

"What's Honorhall?"

"The orphanage. The terrible, terrible orphanage. Why are you here? Are you going to stop me?"

"No."

"You don't care either, do you?"

"Why should I care?" Babette said. "I don't know you. What I care about is this." She gestured at the fake sacrament. "The Black Sacrament isn't a game. This isn't a toy for an attention-seeking brat. You call upon the Dark Brotherhood at your own peril."

"Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it? Are you going to tell the Dark Brotherhood?"

"I am the Dark Brotherhood."

It was a dramatic moment until the boy snickered."You're just a kid like me."

Babette let her hood fall backwards. She stepped into the light. She smiled.

"Your eyes! Your teeth!" His eyes were as round as septims. And then he gave a gap-toothed grin. "Are you a vampire? That is so awesome!"

"So," Babette said, once they'd settled around the kitchen table. She'd graciously given permission for Aventus to throw out the trappings of the false sacrament. They were starting to stink, he said. Starting? They'd been stinking for quite some time, she thought. "Tell me about this contract of yours."

"Contract?"

"Who do you want killed?"

"You have to kill Grelod the Kind!"

"Grelod the Kind? Now I know this is a joke."

"It's not! She's evil!" Aventus cried.

"Who is she?"

"She's in charge of the orphanage. Honorhall. In Riften. I hate Riften! Everyone thinks she is so nice for taking us in. She's not nice at all! The food is awful, she beats us all the time, even the little ones. And we have to work."

Babette felt her eyes start to roll back. Astrid was right, bless her black heart. Just a spoiled brat after all. "So, what, you have to make your bed? Mop the floor?"

"No! Well, yeah, we have to do that kind of stuff too. But we get sent out to places around town. Some of the little ones have to clean chimneys. They light a fire under you if you don't go up fast enough. I'm too big for that, thank Stendarr. I mostly worked out at the bee farm. I bet I've been stung a hundred times. A thousand! The farm is bad but the meadery is even worse. It's really dark and dirty down in the basement where the kegs are. The skeevers are this big!" Although they were alone, he dropped his voice. "And there's even worse things, I think. Sometimes they take kids out and they never come back. Grelod says they ran away. But she has such a look when she says it." He shuddered.

"You get paid for this work?" Aventus gave her a cynical look. "Someone gets paid," Babette said thoughtfully. "How interesting. Does that mean you don't have any coin? How are you going to pay the Brotherhood, if we accept the contract?"

"I have this family heirloom." He went to a bookcase, bent down and pulled out something hidden behind it. It was a silver platter with the East Empire Trading Company seal. Probably handed out as a service reward. There were people who collected such things, but probably not many in Stormcloak territory. Here it would be worth little more than its weight in silver. Astrid would have a fit if I took this contract, she thought. Because if someone was making a profit off an orphanage in Riften, chances were excellent that the Black-Briar family was involved.

Over the years, the Black-Briars had thrown a fair amount of business the Brotherhood's way. Babette couldn't stand any of them. They made terrible clients. They complained about how the job was done and they dickered over the price. Murder should be a sacred offering to Sithis. The Black-Briars wanted their murder wholesale. Astrid was too conciliating and Astrid was too quick to settle for coin. They might as well call themselves Astrid's Assassins, blades for hire.

Babette knew Astrid only wanted what was best for her family. The problem was that Astrid was convinced she knew exactly what that was, better than anyone. She cared nothing for the past. But Babette knew the Black-Briars. People like Maven Black-Briar also cared nothing for the past, only for their own desires. Maven had no respect for the Dark Brotherhood. To her, their sacred mission was nothing more than a means to an end.

Murder just wasn't fun anymore.

This boy may have tried to contact the Night Mother with a cow's heart but that was better than placing an order with a sack of septims. Babette held out her hand.

"We have a contract."

The boy could tell her little of Grelod's movements or routine but that didn't matter. Babette preferred to gather her own intelligence. After all, if there was one place a little girl could blend in without being noticed, surely that place was an orphanage.

"I want to come with you," Aventus said.

"To Riften? You said you hated Riften."

"I do. But I want to see it done. I want to see her dead." A beat. "I want to help."

"Think you have the stomach for murder?"

"I don't know." He leaned in closer. "I want to find out."

"You'll just get in the way."

"I won't. I won't slow you down." She raised a brow. "Well, not unless you fly or something."

She grinned. "No, I don't fly. I have a horse."

His face fell. "I don't."

She relented. "He's a big horse. Big enough for both of us."

And he would slow her down, of course. He wasn't used to riding, and he had all those human needs to eat, sleep and eliminate, and those took time. But she found she didn't mind. This contract had almost a holiday atmosphere. It was good to be off, ready to do Sithis' work, without anyone hanging over her shoulder, hovering and protective.

She was so tired of being protected. It felt good to be in charge.

"So in all this time, no one has reported Grelod? She's basically using you as slave labor, you know. That's not legal."

"The guards know! They laugh! They call her Grelod the Kind to be funny! That's what it's like in Riften."

From what she knew of Riften, Babette didn't find this shockingly difficult to believe.

"That's why I made sure everyone knew I was doing the Black Sacrament. No one in Riften cares but I thought if people in Windhelm knew that Grelod was so bad that someone wanted to kill her—well, I thought someone would look into it. The steward or someone. But they don't care either. They only care about their war. No one cares about a bunch of kids."


The Ratway was a dark, dirty maze but the Argonian led Grelka through it like he lived there. And maybe he did. For once they had emerged from the sewers to the walkway over the canal and he pointed out the stairway up to the market square, he went back into the Ratway. I hadn't even asked his name, she realized. And then a stab of suspicion—what if he was the one who robbed me? She shook her head. At least he hadn't left her there to die.

The canal smelled little better than the Ratway tunnels. Like a big open sewer, she thought, and even by moonlight the dank waters looked most uninviting. Both moons were out. How late is it, she wondered. She trudged up rickety wooden stairs and every step amplified her aches. Had she been knocked out? As bad as her head hurt, she couldn't feel any lumps or sore places.

The lights were on in the inn. The market square was empty. She saw a guard standing duty. She wondered if she should report the robbery now but the man gave her such a scowling look when she approached that she decided to go clean up first. She wondered if it was too late to get a bath. She'd pay extra, whatever they asked. Her coin purse was gone but luckily Balimund had warned her of Riften's pickpockets. Most of her coin lay hidden in her travel bag in her room.

She pushed her way into the inn and the door seemed ridiculously heavy. Inside, she got a better look at herself. How did she get so dirty? Had she been dragged through that filthy sewer? Her knuckles were inexplicably scraped up. The innkeeper was still up, thank Stendarr, washing dishes in the bar sink.

"Keerava," Grelka said thankfully. "I need—"

The Argonian whipped around. There was no expression on her face but her lips pulled back from her teeth.

"You! You can't come in here!"

Grelka turned her head to see if someone had come in behind her. "What?" But the innkeeper swung around the counter and came straight for her.

"Get out of my inn."

"What happened? What's wrong?"

"I mean it, get out now or I'll call the guard. Talen-Jei!"

"Now you hold on. I've been attacked and robbed and my things are upstairs. I've paid for my room! You can't throw me out for no reason."

"After what you've done? Oh, yes I can!"

"I haven't done anything!"

"Are you still drunk? You attacked my guests, you did a lot of damage to the place. I called the guard but you ran out before they got here."

"Drunk? No! That's impossible."

"Impossible, is it? I had a room full of witnesses! You can ask Mjoll—you attacked her like a wild beast. Or Marcurio, Bolli, Bersi Honey-Hand. They all saw what you did. Now get out."

It couldn't be true. She didn't even know these people. It couldn't be. Was the Argonian lying? She must be lying but why?

"Gods. I don't understand. I'll get my things and go."

"All your things are gone."

Grelka's eyes narrowed.

"Now you wait just a minute there. Is this another shakedown? What is it with you people in this city? I remember being in here earlier. Some man bought me a drink." What was his name? That scruffy Nord fellow. Said he had news of Mallory but then—what? It had turned out to be the wrong Mallory. Something like that. And he'd bought her a drink. The drink!

"You put something in my drink, didn't you? By the Divines! You've robbed me!"

"That's it," Keerava said. "I'm calling the guards now."

"You just do that." Grelka crossed her arms over her chest.

The wait was short and then the world went to Oblivion. The guards didn't believe her. They took that thieving lizard's word over her own and they threw her out of the inn. Told her if she went back to the Bee and Barb, they'd lock her in jail. They're all in on it, she fumed. This is a city of thieves and they're all in on it. She ran down to the stables, her heart already in her boots. Frost was gone. Her horse was gone with all his gear. A shamefaced Hofgrir told her men in Black-Briar livery had shown him the paperwork and had taken the horse away. Where, he did not know. She'd lost everything. Her horse. Her money, her clothes, her weapons. Divines! Her tools were gone, too. She'd lost everything.