"So, how'd you do it?" Slurred Sanguine drunkenly. The group of girls around him were hanging from his every word, and his every muscled limb. "You stabbed him in the gut, didn't you? No, you slit his throat! Did you cut his head clean off his shoulders?" The ladies swooned.

"Quick and clean, Dragonborn." I clutched the paper in my hands. It took the rest of the day and all the stamina my horse had in him, but I had finally made it to Windhelm. I found Sanguine exactly where I thought I would. Candleharth Hall, the local pub.

"You ladies know I taught this one everything she knows?" Grammatically, it was a question, though it came out as a statement.

"Oh, Sanguine. You're so strong. Tell us again about that time you fought three dragons at once!" He never really minded when bodacious women called him by his name. Although, he could just be too drunk to hear them. I never could tell.

"Oh, yeah. Hey, Innocence, you were there, why don't you tell all these lovely ladies about it?"

"Actually, I don't think I was. I was just going to slip out for a bit, do you mind?"

"What, jealousy consuming you?" Asked one of the women. The one wearing entirely too much makeup and rubbing Sanguine's shoulders.

"Jealous of what, exactly?"

"Jealous that Sanguine's so much stronger than you. He's a hero, you know. You just carry the bags." I rolled my eyes. Did she honestly think her comment offended me? As if I hadn't heard that same sentence a dozen times before, just from a different set of plump, pink lips. I got up to leave.

"Unt ni wah ofaal kotin naan ahkon, dii Stahr. Nid gein fen sav hi nuz zey," I heard behind me. Try not to get into any trouble, my Innocence. No one will save you but me. Sanguine loved using dragon speak. I had learned it well, but most of the phrases I knew only had to do with me being useless. And in the current situation, I was. I wouldn't be of much assistance while Sanguine swooned a few drunken girls into his room for the night.

"Geh, Dovahkiin." Yes, Dragonborn.

I peeled open the slip of paper. Three words. Aretino Residence, Windhelm. No instructions. No hints. Just a name and a place. I had a strong feeling that jester knew that we were headed in this direction.

The building wasn't anything special, just traditional Windhelm stone. I felt the wooden door. Cold. No one was home.

Picking the lock was easy. I had lots of practice. It had taken me a while to get used to a sword and before I had gotten the hang of it, I would go out and buy daggers or bows. They are much lighter, and I enjoyed carrying them, even though I had never learned to use them. Whenever I would return home, Sanguine would scream that bows were the coward's weapon and daggers were for thieves. He would lock them in chests and I would be forced to pick the locks. But, he would always find them and lock them away again. Eventually, when my ability to pick locks grew beyond his ability to lock them, he began destroying my weapons instead. That's when he stopped allowing me to carry my own coin.

The inside of the house wasn't special, either. It was dark and looked like it hadn't been lived in for quite a while. It was almost silent; the only sound was a quiet chant seeping through the floorboards of the upper quarters. With my hand on the hilt of my sword, I snuck my way up the stairs. Sneaking was another one of my hidden talents. Sanguine would tell me not to be seen or heard, but not for combat reasons. He hated when I interrupted his dinner parties, but I still needed to eat.

The chanting grew louder, and the dim light grew brighter. I leaned around the corner. A small boy was bent over decomposing human remains. Bile raced quickly up my throat. My unarmed hand covered my mouth to keep from throwing it up.

"Sweet mother, sweet mother send your child onto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear," chanted the boy. His voice cracked around the vowels, as if he had been hunched over this body singing for hours. Sweet mother, sweet mother? Where had I heard that before?

"Please," the boy's voice broke again, "How long must I keep doing this? I keep praying, Night Mother. Why won't you answer me?" I stepped towards him and the unstable floorboards creaked under my foot. He turned quickly, the light illuminating his exhausted expression.

"Finally, my prayers have been answered!"

"Are you," I weighed my options. This boy didn't look old enough to kill a skeever, but then again, he did have a dead human corpse in front of him... "Alright?"

"It worked! I knew you'd come, I just knew it! I did the Black Sacrament over and over with the body and the... the things. And then you came! An assassin from the Dark Brotherhood!" I in took a sharp breath. The Night Mother. The Black Sacrament. The Dark Brotherhood. This must be a step up. I was about to be assassinated. I withdrew my sword, but the boy didn't even flinch.

"I'm sorry, boy, but I'm not who you think I am," I said coolly.

"Of course, you are! I prayed, and you came and now you'll accept my contract!"

"Contract?" I asked. Was this not my deathbed?

"My mother... she... she died," the boy said shakily, "I... I'm all alone now. So, they sent me to a terrible orphanage in Riften," he quivered. "Honorhall. The headmistress is an evil, cruel woman. They call her Grelod the Kind. But she's not kind. She's terrible to all of us! So, I ran away and came home. And preformed the Black Sacrament. Now you're here! And you can kill Grelod the kind!"

...

My nerves buzzed as I opened the door to Honorhall Orphanage. Cicero gave me a contract for the Dark Brotherhood. That's what he meant by a new life.

But I wasn't buying it. I wasn't going to kill some innocent, old woman just because a young boy and a fool told me too. I was just going to talk to her. Tell her about the complaints of the boy, whose name I learned was Aventus Aretino, and hopefully bring him back to a happier home. Either way, he needed to live with adults. Live ones.

I slipped out of Windhelm late that night. Sanguine didn't need me. At least not for a few days. He was off on Imperial business. And when he wasn't off on Imperial business, he sunk himself deep in lady business.

"Those who shirk their duties will get an extra beating," I hear an old, gravelly voice say. "Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Grelod," recited a choir of miserable young voices.

"And one more thing, I will hear no more talk of adoptions. None of you riff-raff is getting adopted ever. Nobody needs you," she snapped. "Nobody wants you."

I thought of the time I had spent in this very orphanage. I had waited day and night for someone to come and sweep me into their arms. The only thing that kept me hopeful were the encouragements that the mistresses provided. None of them were ever terrible like this.

"That, my darlings, is why you're here. Why you all will be here until you come of age and get thrown into the wide, horrible world." Full of people half as mean as you, I thought. "Now, what do you all say?"

"We love you, Grelod," they all said a little too fast and a little too mumbled. "Thank you for your kindness." She grabbed the nearest orphan, a girl that couldn't be over the age of seven, by the forearm.

"I can't hear you!" The little girl began to cry. Before I knew what my own body was doing, I surged forward, my blade was plunged inch by inch into the wrinkled skin of her neck. There was silence. There was the thump of her dead body. There was the clang of my sword hitting the splintering floor. Then there were the cheers of a dozen rejoice-filled children. I turned to face them, blood splayed across my high Imperialesc cheek bones.

No one could ever quite figure out what race I was. My thin lips resembled those of an Imperial while my strong, jutted chin looked as if I was all Nord. My black Imperial hair offset my Nordic blue eyes. Though my skin was typically Nordic winter white, a long day adventuring left me looking Cyrodiilic tan. I was a mutt, as Sanguine would say.

I walked shakily to the door, my sword abandoned. It took every fiber of my being to run out the Riften gates, grab my horse and ride to Windhelm as fast as I could.

I killed an innocent person. I am just like him.

...

I used the heirloom Aventus gave me for my work to buy a drink. I tried to sit alone and ignore my thoughts but should have known I wasn't safe in the tavern. Only seconds after I had let my muscles relax barged in an already drunk Dragonborn.

"My Innocence," he boomed happily, "where've you been?" He had two girls on each arm, all wearing low cut wolf pelf coats. Gifts from Sanguine no doubt.

"On business. I had some errands to run." He had already stopped listening. I looked away when he started the kiss down the neck of the red headed lass on his right. She giggled, and I took a long chug of my mead. I sighed as my vision blurred slightly around the edges. I began to talk with the bartender. She recognized Sanguine's Imperial armor and said that when she was outside chopping wood, she liked to pretend there was an Imperial soldiers head on the stump. I giggled at that.

"I've been looking for you," I turned to find a young courier smiling at me, I smiled back. "Got something I'm supposed to deliver. Your eyes only." He handed me a tattered scroll.

I unraveled the string and peeled open the parchment. My buzz disintegrated. Inside the letter was a hand print, splattered in a deep red. Blood? Two words were scribbled at the bottom.

We know.