Chapter 6
When gameplay and lore contradict each other, I try to choose the one that makes more sense. For example, consider that a)by lore, Ocheeva and Teinaava have been assassins for longer than anyone else in the Sanctuary except possibly Vicente, but b)they aren't hard to kill in the game itself.
What followed was one of the busiest nights in Dree's life. Antoinetta Marie had an interesting teaching method. Dree was more than slightly startled the first time they played a "practice round" and Marie made a wicked slash at her gut. Dree jerked back with the speed she had forgotten she had, but Marie still cut a shallow groove across her exposed belly. At least she'd taken her robe off (she was training in her old trousers and her bra), so her precious new garments would not be stained.
"Are you trying to kill me?" Dree said. The cut stung. Blood seeped down over her skin. This would always be a nauseating feeling, but she wished it were not so cold.
"Of course," Antoinetta said, looking bemused at Dree's shock. "You don't fight to wound with a knife, dear Sister. You would be annihilated. Not to worry, I won't try very hard at first. Pity you don't have any armor yet. You've got to keep your arm up to block, but that just makes it all the easier for me to get at that big artery in your arm." She jabbed demonstratively, forcing Dree to dodge sideways again.
"What if you succeed?" Dree said, after another hour or so of this sort of practice. Antoinetta was sweating, but only very slightly. Dree had discovered that sweating, unlike bleeding, was part of the list of organic things vampires could not do. She had also quickly learned the annoying truth that untrained speed and strength, however supernatural, have sharp limits when opposed by skills that are honed to the level of knee-jerk reflex. Antoinetta seemed to anticipate everything she tried. Dree had to scramble just to keep from being gutted.
"In...? Oh," Antoinetta said. "If you are truly beloved of Sithis, that will be impossible. Only a very unworthy recipient of the Gift could be killed in training."
"Oh, good," Dree said. Among Antoinetta's other interesting traits seemed to be a complete inability to comprehend sarcasm. She smiled serenely and attempted to sweep Dree's feet out from under her. This being the fourth time, the tactic failed. Dree braced one foot and brought the other down on the sweeping leg with her heel propped against the ground. This should not, technically, have worked, but Dree was much stronger than a very small Bosmer had any right to be. She slashed down at Antoinetta's eye while her leg was still trapped. The woman rolled neatly backwards, freeing herself, but Dree had felt the blow connect. Besides, she could finally smell blood that wasn't hers.
"Halt," Antoinetta said. She got smoothly to her feet, reaching up to touch the cut on her cheek. She inspected the blood on her fingers. "Oh, very good," she said approvingly, and Dree saw her take a small step backwards, as if she had momentarily lost her balance. She shook her head. "Though you might look for one with a stronger poison enchantment."
"We found this on a necromancer," Dree said.
"So it is a trophy," Marie said. "The Night Mother does not frown upon such things. We must remember that the weak exist to die at our hands. Shall we continue?"
"Are you sure?" Dree said.
"Oh, yes," Marie said. "The night is young."
---
Several hours later, Dree concluded that Antoinetta was neither Imperial nor Breton. She was a demon. Nothing human or mer could possibly go on so long without pause. It was early morning, and Marie showed no sign of slacking her pace, though she was breathing heavily now. Dree had not succeeded in cutting her again. I wish it was the other way around. It's a good thing these pants were ruined anyway. She was now aware that not only her arms, but her inner legs had a large blood vessel close to the surface, and if the latter seemed very inconvenient to reach with a dagger, this was no deterrent to Antoinetta. In fact, she had explained in loving detail what she was trying to do more than once.
"Nothing for it," Antoinetta said, after a particularly unsuccessful block left Dree with a bleeding wound down her left forearm. "The floor's too slick, and we've still got to mop up before everyone else comes in." She sounded mildly disappointed, as if it had been her fixed intention to go on indefinitely. Dree looked down at the floor. It was, indeed, slick, although she gave it only a few minutes before it became tacky.
"Ugh," she said.
"I thought you liked blood," Marie said. She turned to move over to the small basin and fountain in the corner, stripping off the top half of her armor.
"Need, not like," Dree said, following her cautiously and trying not to look down at the footprints her bare feet were leaving. "You don't like bread that's fallen on the floor, do you?"
"There was a time when I would have been glad to have bread that hadn't fallen in the gutter," Marie said cheerily. She didn't sound tired at all, though she was beginning to look it. "But that was before Lucien found me."
"I know what you mean," Dree said, remembering what seemed like a distant past, but was in fact two weeks ago. "I was begging before he... Before Valtieri found me."
Marie shook her head and tsked as she began to wash her upper half in the fountain. "And here I was ready to give him as much as he liked. But he will go his own way, as we all must do in pursuit of the God's will. Come on, don't be shy. It circulates quickly."
Dree knelt awkwardly over the basin, trying to ignore the red drips as she poured water over her head with her hands. She would rather have simply stuck her head under the flow of water, but that would prevent her from keeping an eye on Antoinetta Marie, whose dagger now sat on the black stone rim of the little pool.
"Oh, don't worry," Marie said, catching one such glance. She picked up the knife, rinsed it, dried it, and sheathed it. "You're a worthy one. You've done extremely well. I don't recall that anyone else I trained has cut me on the first bout."
Dree by now knew well enough to ask, "How many of them survived that first bout?"
"Oh, about two thirds," Marie said. She dunked the lower half of her armor in the pool and shook it vigorously. The material seemed to shed water even better than oilskin. "I very nearly had Gogron - he's not quick enough for a knife fighter, really - but he's got muscle that thick over everything and I miscalculated. He's a bit bulkier than you. Also his reach is longer."
"It would be," Dree said, carefully scrubbing her bra and trying to ignore the fact that she was thirsty again. Her head was pounding.
"I had to switch to shortswords just to find a weapon he could actually hold," Marie chattered on as she splashed water onto her hair and face. "In the normal course of things I would simply have crept up behind him and stabbed him in the base of the skull, but then he wouldn't learn anything, would he?" She smiled graciously. "You go ahead and finish up here. Bled rather a lot, haven't you? Tsk. I'll mop up."
"Thanks," Dree said. She was beginning to feel a little lightheaded, not completely sure if she should be grateful, angry, or terrified. Marie probably had that effect on a lot of people. The ones she didn't kill right away, that was. Dree looked around to make sure no one else was present before she stripped down and washed everything, then put her robe on as she laid the other things out to dry on the off chance they weren't completely ruined. She felt the robe sticking to the places that hadn't clotted up all the way, especially her left forearm. I just hope Gogron was right about it not showing stains, she thought muzzily.
Dree circumvented Antoinetta, who was now humming a tune as she mopped the stone floor, and went out the door of the training room. She tried not to stagger as she made her way back into the living quarters. Everyone seemed to still be asleep, so she crawled under Gogron's bed again. After that she curled up around the dip in the mattress, tried to arrange herself so that her sorest points were not pressured, and pulled the darkness up around her like a blanket.
---
It should not be possible to have nightmares when one does not sleep like people do, but Dree was having one. Her body was made of dry dust, shattering into fragments as the breeze struck her -
"Dree?"
The vision evaporated. She opened her eyes and was looking at Gogron's square, green face, suddenly on a level with hers. He's kneeling next to the bed.
"Dree?" he said again, and she realized he probably could not see her very well in the shadow. He sounded actually worried, which was odd, because he hadn't sounded that way back in the cave.
"What time is it now?" Dree said.
"About noon," Gogron said. "I figured you were just doing like Vicente, until Antoinetta told me what she did. You want to come out of there?"
"All right," Dree said. Gogron's face vanished as he stood up. Dree crept out from under the bed and stood, running her fingers through her disarranged hair. Nothing hurt, which made no sense at all. She slid back her sleeve and looked at her forearm. A hairline scar was all that was left of the deep cut from last night. A brief survey of the parts of her she was willing to display to public (which was to say, Gogron's) view revealed that those cuts had vanished as well.
"They're all gone," Dree said.
"Bosmer heal that fast?" Gogron said.
"Not without spells, and I don't know any," Dree said.
"So it's another vampire thing," Gogron said. "Good. I ought to have warned you. I was hoping you wouldn't run into Marie's idea of training so soon."
Dree looked around and, more importantly, listened. No one seemed nearby. "Is she insane?"
Gogron scratched the top of his head with a large finger. "Now there I could only give you a meaningful answer if you thought I wasn't crazy. She mostly follows the Tenets and she always earns a bonus on a job."
"Mostly," Dree said. She sat down on the edge of the bed, reaching up to touch her own face. This time the lines she felt there were not such a shock, but she was still glad there were no mirrors in the living quarters. "You mean like, she's only broken the don't kill other assassins one five times?"
"Twice, that I know of," Gogron said. He sat down on the bed opposite. He was in full armor. The bed creaked protestingly. "She's fought the Spirit twice and won, though, which is more than anybody else has done. You break a Tenet, you get thrown out. Then the Spirit of Sithis comes looking for you. You survive, you get back in."
"So what's the Spirit of Sithis?" Dree said. Gogron shrugged.
"Marie only says it's beautiful. Which to me says I don't ever want to see it."
"I agree," Dree said fervently.
Gogron grinned, showing a set of mostly crooked teeth. Dree noticed suddenly that one of his upper canines was missing. Usually the gap would be behind a tusk, hidden from view. "So are you ready for some lunch, or what?"
"How are your wrists?"
"Fine. I heal real fast. Well, not as fast as you." He took off his gauntlets and held out the first wrist she'd bitten. The marks were indeed gone.
"No scars," Dree said.
"Nah. Not deep enough. I showed Vicente and he says you're a neat eater. For a new one."
"Oh, good," Dree said.
"Come on, then," Gogron said.
Sometimes while she was drinking, Dree's heart would twitch as if it were trying to beat, a strange flutter in her chest. It was a distraction, and consequently the only pulse she could hear was Gogron's. So it was not entirely surprising that Dree did not hear the Argonian come in, and when she glanced up from Gogron's arm and met the red slit-pupiled eyes, it startled her more than slightly. She froze for a second, tightening her grip.
"I beg your pardon," the Argonian said. He rearranged himself slightly on the bench where he sat, and was very still again. "This one did not mean to alarm you."
"Um... You wanna let go now, Dree?" Gogron said.
Dree let go hastily. She'd left little white fingermarks in his green skin, but they faded quickly. Gogron handed her his hip flask with one hand as he picked up the sticking plaster with the other. She watched the Argonian as she sipped. He watched back, leaning against the wall in his dark robe. It was hard to read an Argonian face, but he didn't seem disgusted. Great. Another one like Marie.
"This doesn't bother you, does it," she said. She wiped the corners of her mouth carefully as she sat on the edge of the bed. Dried blood on her skin never ceased to disgust her, vampire or not.
The tail that lay beside him on the bench twitched slightly. "I have been a Shadowscale from my birth, small Sister. Nothing does," he said. His voice was soft and, if anything, bemused.
"I don't know your name," said Dree. The scales of his face were patchy green and red. His jaw was bigger than Ocheeva's, but she supposed that was because he was a man.
"I apologize. I am Teinaava," he said. "Why are you drinking this swill of Gogron's?"
"That's cyrodilic brandy," Gogron objected. "Cost me fifty a bottle. On sale."
"Then you have been taken advantage of, my Brother," Teinaava said. "I can smell it from here and I assure you, that is not brandy of any kind."
"Hmph." Gogron accepted the bottle back from Dree. "You're the one who knows poisons, and I guess this is one either way."
"Poisons?" Dree said.
"Sure," Gogron said. "Ocheeva wants somebody sniped, she sends Telaendril. She wants them to suffer before they die, she sends Marie. And if she wants it to look like they had the grippe, she sends Teinaava."
"That is not entirely the case," the Argonian said.
"Eh, well," Gogron said. "Most of us do one or two things. A jack-of-all-trades is going to end up doing one thing most of the time just because the numbers work out that way. Even with a pedigree like you and Ocheeva have, Brother."
"Did you say you were a Shadowscale?" Dree said. "What's that?"
"Ah, yes, the many questions," Teinaava said. "It is good that you are not too proud to ask. I am fond of books, but on this subject the texts are few, and asking is the only way to learn."
"I don't read very well," Dree said. That's what happens when you mostly have to teach it to yourself, and you can't get books.
"There are many who never learn at all," Teinaava said. "I have known others to mistrust the writing down of things in general. It saddens me. But I did not answer your question. When one is born in the Marsh under the sign of the Shadow, we are given to the Brotherhood to raise. Those who survive are Shadowscale. Ocheeva and I grew together from the shell. I have not her administrative talents, I fear. I console myself with the knowledge that she is an impatient scholar."
"Could you lend something to Dree?" Gogron said. "If she's not reading, she ought to be. What was that one you started me on, right after I got here?"
"That was a long time ago, Brother," Teinaava said. He stood up. Watching this was an education in itself. Everyone in the Sanctuary was graceful. Teinaava moved as though he had no bones. "I think perhaps it was the Barbarian's Alphabet. I keep it for sentimental value."
"That's Shadowscale for you," Gogron said, and grinned. "Sentimental. Probably got a trophy from your first kill and everything."
The Argonian smiled back. "I am afraid so. But I was only ten years old, and I am afraid I have lost track of the fingerbone now. I will find the book for you, Sister Dree."
"Thank you," Dree said.
"I hope I can help," Teinaava said, and slid off. Dree watched him until he was out of normal sight.
"He seems very... Polite," she said.
"Sure," Gogron said. He unslung his axe and started toward the doors. "Nothing to prove. It's like that, when the scariest thing you know is you."
"And a few close friends?" Dree said.
"Yep," Gogron said. "Come on. You can practice your archery while I'm hitting the dummy."
