Chapter 5: The Black Hand

As Ria thundered down the road on a stolen horse, she wondered how many more surprises were in store for her.

She was used to hiccups in her assassinations- working around them was her specialty- but this was getting a little extreme. Motierre's murder had been the easiest part; she'd arrived in Whiterun a little before noon, but stayed in a room at the Drunken Huntsman until nightfall. When she approached him in his room at the Bannered Mare, weaving unnoticed through the gathering crowd, he'd handed her an satchel full of gold and jewels, some almost the size of her fist, thanking her profusely and prattling on and on. One would think that he might have shut up when Ria plunged the Blade of Woe into his chest, but to no avail; he still had some life in him, so he to flapped his gums. Politicians were like that, Ria supposed.

"Your damn contract got my friend killed, and for what?" She'd snarled, twisting the blade torturously for only the second time in her life. "Power? Riches? How much shallower can you get?"

"You betrayed me." Motierre had choked, blood coming to the corner of his mouth.

"Oh, you are a smart one." she'd replied dryly.

That had been several hours ago now; the surprising part had come- well, started- acouple hours after she locked the body in it's room and stashed the satchel near the stables.

For all her paranoia, Maven had been sparse for details about the whereabouts of her quarry. Lucian hadn't exactly been telling the truth when he said the contract was in Whiterun; Black-Briar's note had said that the target might be in Whiterun. Suffice to say, that tidbit of information endowed no confidence into Ria for this little endeavour. The rest of the note was alittle more helpful, giving a height estimate, race, and a name: Tristan Dorrien. The Bannered Mare was just barely starting to quiet down when she'd slipped once again into the door at perhaps two thirty, and she'd set to work.

Hulda had been behind the bar; she'd been a constant fixture in the place for as long as Ria could remember. The assassin hadn't fear being recognized, though; they'd only met acouple times when she was younger, and Ria had grown dramatically since then. She'd quickly asked after Dorrien ("My brother said he'd meet me here,"), and, upon learning which room he'd rented, rented her own and retired there.

Another hour or so later, when the last drunkard had stumbled from the inn and Hulda had fallen asleep on a bar stool, Ria emerged again, the Blade of Woe clutched firmly in her right hand.

She'd took the stairs up to the balcony room, easing in and seeing a man, her target, asleep on the bed. She'd shut the door silently behind her, taking a step towards the bed.
It was a creaky floorboard that had lost her the advantage, something her awoken quarry had been happy to point out, sleep still evident in his voice. He might have seemed at ease in her presence, but the falseness of that was revealed in the tenseness of his shoulders and how his eyes didn't dare to look away, even as he stood and stretched.

Ria reflected that she should have been able to put the pieces of the puzzle together sooner. Maven wanted a Breton dead, and a Breton she was going to torture had recently escaped prison. But she hadn't, and she'd rarely been more shocked in her life than when Tristan Dorrien's face was the same one that stared back at her in Solitude prison.

Ah, irony, thou art a heartless bitch. She thought now as she and her steed blew by the trail that led to Helgen.

She should've been able to kill him. He wasn't that different from her other targets; the only thing that set him apart was that he had tried to kill Black-Briar. Ria had no doubt the woman had done something to the man, and he was getting his revenge for it, and that was what had made Ria hesitate. It hadn't been that long ago when she and Jared were in his same boat, and she knew what he was seeking in his actions. Buried deep there was sympathy for this one, because she knew he probably wouldn't find what he wanted with Maven's death.

She couldn't have let him go, so in a moment of utter weakness, she gave him a chance. She knew he probably couldn't outrun her, her father's Khajiit blood in her meant few could, but she let him try. There was always the chance that he could evade her, and that she could tell Lucian to send someone else to finish it. The Listener might bench her for awhile because of it, but she wouldn't have to do the deed herself, and that was worth it.

She'd caught up with him, though. Their blades had locked near the Drunken Huntsman, an Oblivion sword on Daedric steel. Given his obvious preference for magic, she had expected him to be a poor swordsman, but she was proven wrong. He wasn't as good as Jared had been, but few were, and perhaps if the Breton wasn't recently wounded she would have found her match. But what the Breton had in magicka reserves he hadn't had in stamina, and after several minutes his blade had dispersed back into whatever Oblivion plane it'd come from.

Faced with death, he was, to Ria's displeasure, another yapper. That was starting to grind on her nerves, but she allowed him the words as her traditions dictated, though they infuriated her. For all his actions against Maven and his words to the contrary, she doubted he knew how she felt. How could he? He didn't know, yet, that after he had his revenge he would have nothing left to strive for in life; that he would have to find his own closure without relying on his retribution for it. Ria had had one thing after hers, and he was gone, and in her mind that was a feeling that Tristan Dorrien could not possibly know.

She'd been only a step away from ending the Breton when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, almost the way they did when she was being watched. Thinking the guards had heard the battle and come to the rescue, she'd turned her head to look, and found that it wasn't a guard at all. It was a… a crack, a rift, she guessed she would have called it, a split in the air perhaps fifteen yards away that was much darker than the moonlit air around it. It had grown, expanding up and out to stretch between two shadowy pillars until it was almost as big as the gates into Whiterun.

There were only two things Ria Verres had killed for in her years: revenge and survival. She had already had her justice, and the money with which she survived was not worth her life. The three demons that emerged from the gate had barely had time to let out an ear-splitting screech before she was over the nearest wall; it was nice to know that her survival instincts had remained intact throughout her recent ordeals.

Her ankle still hurt; there'd been a cluster of boulders at the base of the wall, and she'd landed badly. But it hadn't stopped her from stumbling to the stables as fast as she could, nor from grabbing the satchel full of riches and stealing a horse.

It was almost dawn now; Whiterun was hours behind her. She crested a hill, and before the forests of Falkreath Hold spread out before her, a rolling sea of green and brown. She thought of Whiterun, and wondered if it survived. After all, it had been their home, all those years ago when she and Jared were children.

As she spurred her horse forward, into the borders of Falkreath Hold, she banished the thought. Her parents and Jared and Whiterun were dead and gone, were the past; to hold too tightly to any one of those things would drag her to oblivion with them. Her future was here, with the Brotherhood. It was the only thing she had left.

To look back would do nothing but destroy her, so she kept her eyes forward as she rode for the Sanctuary and whatever fate would bring her.


"How'd Whiterun go?" Lucian asked as Ria entered his office.

Ria shrugged. "So-so. I got Motierre's payment." She swung the heavy bag off her shoulder and dumped it on Lucian's desk, and the Listener lifted the flap, examining the contents with a satisfied look.

"And Maven's contract?"

"Dead." Ria said. There's no way he couldn't be, she thought. Then, thinking he'd probably want to know, she added, "Oh, and Whiterun's probably gone."

Lucian blinked. Several times. In rapid succession.

"Gone?"

"Well, I didn't stick around when the demon army showed up, but I don't think Whiterun could've survived."

"Demon army? Describe it to me." There was no denying it this time, Lucian was definitely suppressing a dangerous smile. Ria kept a cautious eye on him as she started to talk.

"There was this, uh, this solid-black gate thing, and those demon things started coming o- what the hell are you doing?"

The Listener had risen, and closed the distance between them in seconds to pick her up and swing her around in a circle, grinning madly the whole time. When he sat her down, she shoved him, and he grinned wider and allowed himself to be moved back a step. His body seemed to bubble over with a sudden boyish energy, and he was almost bouncing with excitement. She hadn't seen him more worked up at any point before or after learning they were going to assassinate the Emperor.

"Ria, you have no idea what this means for the Brotherhood! Everythings coming together, faster than I thought, granted, but still!"

"What are you babbling about?" Ria demanded. Lucian laughed, grabbing her and spinning them both in a circle.

"We're going to be on top of the world!" he said. Ria jerked away from him and fixed him with a glare, but he was unfazed by the look of his subordinate.

"Touch me one more time and I'll cut off your damned fingers- and anything that looks like 'em. I swear, you hang around with Cicero too much." The last part was grumbled to herself, as his excitement reminded her of the Keeper, though that was to be expected with how much time the two men spent together. "Now what in Oblivion are you talking about?"

The Listener was still grinning madly at her. "Oh, that I can't say yet. I want to announce it to everyone at once. But I can tell you that the Brotherhood is going to have more power than ever before. We're going to be kings!"

Ria was no where near as excited about the prospects of power as her superior; at the minute, she was just vexed. To her, the word "king" meant, in regards to the Brotherhood, that they would have whatever power and influence that they already held, along with being able to openly, publicly, and safely use it.

The Brotherhood had always stuck to the shadows, flexing their power through vague threats and blades in the dark. To be able to be public and unsecretive would take something earth-shattering.

Lucian took a deep breathe, still smiling but appearing to calm down as he turned and started moving papers about his desk. He talked as he searched through his maps and documents, the words directed more to himself than to Ria. "This is great, amazing, but so much to do… need the Hand, and to build the army... need to consult with Mother... ah, here it is!"

The Listener pulled a creased map out from under some books, laying it on top of a relatively empty space on his desk. He motioned Ria over, and she approached warily, looking over his shoulder at the map.

"I hate to send you out again when you've just gotten back, but I need you to do something for me."

"Name it." Ria said instantly; anything to keep her occupied.

"There's a Nordic ruin here called Hag's End." Lucian said, pointing to a spot in the mountains west of Dragon's Bridge. "It used to be the Brotherhood's center of power acouple eras ago, and it still contains some of our artifacts. You have to go through Deepwood Redoubt, but you should be able to get to it."

"What am I looking for?" Ria asked.

"A gauntlet called the Black Hand. It'll be pretty deep in, and heavily guarded. You'll know it when you see it."

Ria regarded him for several moments. She had several questions, such as what made this gauntlet so important to him, and why that demon gate had him so excited, but something else caught her attention that she cared much more about.

"Heavily guarded by what?"

Any joy or excitement of Lucian's was gone; he was dead serious now. "Draugr." He said, and seeing Ria's face, added, "I know open combat was more Jared's specialty than it is yours-" Ria flinched, not used to Jared being referred to in past tense, "-but you know as well as I do that none of the others could fare as well as you."

Ria had rarely cursed her amount of training; this was one of those times. Most of her Siblings were no pushovers in battle, and they could no doubt hold their own against up to acouple adversaries, but they were not used to it. Ria and Jared had trained for it, though, something that was the only reason why she'd lasted this long in some of her hairier assassinations. Being swarmed by Draugr was not going to be pleasant, and it was going to test her only-semi-good swordsmanship, but she would- probably- survive it.

She sighed and raked a hand through her hair. "I'm going to need a bow. And a sword."

Lucian nodded. "Good. Tell Lynch that he's not to charge you, and then send in Coyle and Seba. I have a job for them in Windhelm."

Ria arched an eyebrow at him; two assassins working the same job was rare, and the assassins themselves didn't much like it.

"You have alot of explaining to do when I get back, Lucian." She said. The Listener waved her off with a 'yeah, yeah' gesture, and she rolled her eyes before going in search of her Siblings.


Ria found Lynch, the Brotherhood's resident blacksmith, working in the main cavern of the Sanctuary. The lean Nord was shirtless, to keep from overheating from the sweltering forge as he sharpened Babette's dagger; said vampire had pulled up a chair, impatiently waiting for him to finish.

"For gods' sake Lynch, put some cloths on. There are children about." Ria said, leaning against the wall and watching them. Babette stuck her tongue out at the half-Imperial assassin, making her grin.

"There, all done, ya little devil." Lynch said, slowing the grindstone to a stop and presenting the blade handle-first to Babette. The un-child said a quick thank-you and ran off with it, making Lynch shake his head and smile before he looked up at Ria. "What can I do for ya?"

"I need a bow and a sword. Lucian said it's on the house."

"'Lucian said it's on the house'." Lynch imitated before scoffing. "I'm never gonna be able to turn a profit with Lucian makin' me work outta the kindness of my heart."

"Oh, shut it. You don't pay rent or put anything towards supplies, so you can earn your keep."

"Don't snap at me, pup." Lynch warned, no real threat in his voice. "Did you have anything specific in mind?"

"Orcish bow, elven sword."

"Ah. You and Jared do prefer elven blades, don't you?"

Ria winced at the name but flicked the Blade of Woe out, twirling it easily around her fingers. "This look elvish to you?"

"Fair enough. Your things will be done by supper."

Ria nodded her thanks and sought out Coyle and Seba, whom she found in the dining room with Babette. The vampire and Coyle were deep in discussion; the pair were almost as close as Ria and Jared had been. According to the stray comments over the years, she had put together that this was because the young Redguard was some relation to Nazir, the late Speaker and Babette's close friend.

Seba, a Dunmer, was nursing a mead and reading by the room's fire. She and Ria had never really gotten along; the older assassin had thought Ria and Jared petty cutthroats that didn't deserve to be omitted into a professional guild such as the Brotherhood. Their relationship hadn't been improved by the fact that both of them were easily twice the bladesman as the archery-and-poison based dark elf.

"Coyle, Seba, Lucian has a job for you." Ria relayed from the doorway.

Both rose instantly, Seba setting her book down on the long dining table and Coyle saying a quick good-bye. Ria knew that both were sympathetic to her loss because Seba didn't look at her with the usual disdain, and because Coyle stopped as he passed her to lay a hand on her shoulder.

"We've gathered Jared's things. They're yours by all rights."

Ria nodded. "My thanks."

She glanced up the stairs that led from the dining room to the bedrooms, dread sweeping over her. She didn't want to go through Jared's things, didn't want that reminder. Babette must have noticed this, because she hopped off her chair and said, "I'll help."

She did, and that's how they occupied their time until supper. Jared didn't have much, just two crates full of possessions that the boys had set on Ria's bed. Babette pulled out items and inquired of their importance while Ria cataloged them in her assassin's log; her mother had bestowed in both her daughter and her daughter's friend the idea of keeping track of your own finances. Ria's log contained the name of her targets, the cost of supplies for the job, and the reward, and Jared's was similar.

Jared had few things that were of value to Ria; a few pieces of jewelry and miscellaneous items looted from targets took up the most of it; they would fetch a fair price, but they were nothing she particularly cared about. His diary and own assassination log she kept next to hers in her nightstand, along with a rather sizable sum of gold she'd now inherited. The only thing that really caught Ria's attention was the bone-handle dagger Babette found in a simply adorned box, it's blade perhaps ten inches long.

"What's this?" Babette asked, recognizing that it's placement in a padded box meant it held some value. Ria took it gently.

"I made this for Jared's sixteenth birthday. I'm surprised he kept it all these years."

She slipped the dagger and it's sheath on her sword belt, so that the Blade of Woe set on her right hip and the bone-handled blade on her left. It was about that time that dinner was ready, a feast laid out. Lucian toasted to the Brotherhood's future and Jared's memory, nodding to Ria during that last part, and Ria did what any Skyrim-born person would do after their best friend, their brother had died: she got cross-eyed drunk.

Babette woke her the next morning at Lucian's behest, giving her a small health potion and some willow bark for the migraine and informing her that Coyle and Seba had left for Windhelm. Ria downed them both items before gathering her things and staggering down the stairs, picking up her sword and bow from Lynch. She was in Falkreath well before noon.


Ria stumbled into the room, leaning on the wall and breathing heavily. A glance several seconds earlier had told her that the room was empty of Draugr, a relief to the wounded assassin. She swung her small knapsack from her shoulder, sliding down the wall with a grimace and pulling a roll of bandages from one of the bag's pockets. The gash across her side was bleeding steadily, and she set to work wrapping the cloth around her torso and cinching it tight.

Damn overgrown skeletons, Ria thought to herself, checking the dressing wrapped around her arm; she had tried to take out as many as she could from a distant, but acouple had made it close enough to force her to engage them with sword and dagger, and she was out of practice with the former. She was thankful she'd spent so much time sparring against a sword-wielding Jared; without it, she probably would be dead by now instead of just injured. She was also thankful for the bandits who had apparently taken up residence in Hag's End; their bodies seemed to have been dead for several years, but the absence of draugr past a certain point meant they'd cleaned them out for her.
She stood slowly and looked around. A bookshelf was to her left, a drawbridge erect to her right and a throne directly in front of her, three thick red spikes protruding from either side of it. She eased her way around the room, grimacing as pain lanced through her but ignoring it. It should be somewhere nearby; the throne signified that to her.
She went to the bookcase after several minutes, hoping to find some clue as to how to proceed. Most of the books were old and damaged, and several loose sheets of paper sat on top. She searched through them, finding a half-written letter and the details of an assassination contract. She came across another paper, detailing some kind of spell; magic was not her area of expertise- she knew nothing but a weak healing spell- but her high elf Brother, Cirion, could have use of it, so she tucked it in her assassin's log and replaced both in the backpack.

After several seconds of finding nothing, she lowered the drawbridge and continued on, moving slowly. She mounted three sets of stairs, each one making her wince. She came to a point where the hallway ended, a gate to her right and another at an angle forward and to her left. Peering into the left showed a small dead-end room, so she pulled a lever and went right.

It was only the number of traps that'd almost taken her out that let her avoid the metal spikes that shot out of the wall; she'd earlier been grazed by a swinging log and cracked a rib, having to use on of her two healing potions to mend it.

She mounted two flights of stairs, timing it to be in between the sections of the spears, and emerged into a roughly-circular room.

Now we're talking, she thought as she surveyed her surroundings. In the center of the room sat a large-diameter, half-foot-deep indentation in the floor, and straight ahead and slightly to her left was a raised platform, a square pillar halfway encircled by red spikes on the end nearest the indention. She mounted the steps and stopped, surveying the top of the pillar. A small bowl-like indentation was carved into it. Ria stared at it for several seconds, thinking.

The pillar and the indention in the floor gave her the feeling of a shrine or a ritual, and the more she thought of a ritual involving the Dark Brotherhood the more an idea was confirmed. She drew Jared's bone-handle dagger and pricked her left index finger with it, sheathing the knife and squeezing the skin around the small wound so that blood dripped into the bowl. It took many drops before a voice rang out, breathy and unsettling.

"What are the Words that Bind?" something unseen asked, and Ria instantly recognized it as a voice similar to the Black Door.

This took several minutes of thought; Lucian hadn't mentioned a riddle. Then again, it was possible he didn't know about it. She started to figure, slowly, that the person entitled to a Dark Brotherhood artifact would be the Listener. It took time to recall a specific phrase, one that Cicero had mentioned in one of his ramblings when she'd asked about the Night Mother. If she weren't as close to Lucian and Cicero as she was, she probably wouldn't know it.

Here goes nothing. "Darkness rises when silence dies."

The ground vibrated slightly as the indention in the floor split and opened up, a pillar similar to the one in front of her rising to it's center. The top opened up, revealing a gauntlet inside.

"Hail Sithis, sister." The voice said before falling silent.

Ria approached the gauntlet slowly, both to avoid agitating her wound and to be cautious. When she stood before it, she saw that it was not unlike her black-and-red shrouded glove, shaped and armored the same; the Black Hand, however, was colored ebony on every inch of leather, and dark purple jems were set into it in neat rows that ran from the back of the hand and up the forearm. Just standing close to it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She took it gently and tucked it in her knapsack.

It took little time to get out of the ruins and back on the road. The moon was high in the sky; she'd entered Deepwood Redoubt in late evening, and she'd been in there several hours. If she stole a horse and traveled as the crow flies, she could be in Falkreath again by late morning tomorrow.

Ria downed her last health potion as she walked, eager to make good time; she very much wanted to hear Lucian's explanation for all this.