A/N - sorry ahead of time! This chapter ends rather bluntly.

When I woke up in the morning, I was still embraced my Omazirr. It took me a while, but I was able to slip out of the bag without disturbing him. I stood and stretched, the lower portion of my back giving a small crack. I walked over to where the horses were and I started to clean up our little campsite although there was next to nothing to clean.

Ten minutes later, I was sitting on the caramel horse's back, watching the area for anybody to come and attack. I had my bow in one hand and an arrow equipped to the other. Anybody trying to sneak up on me would get an arrow through the skull.

Just a little while later, there was shuffling from the sleeping bag and I saw Omazirr looking around frantically.

"I'm over here," I said.

When he turned and saw me, he was almost immediately relieved.

"How long have you been up?" he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders, the wind gently blowing. "Not long," I told him. The sun was shining which made it warmer than the day before. "About fifteen minutes."

He climbed out of the bag, rolled it up and put it back on his horse.

"You should have woken me up. We could have been gone by now." He hoisted himself up on the black horse and together we started to ride off again.

I made a mental note in my head that from now on I would call the horses Rocky and Spark. The black horse was rocky and the caramel was spark. I don't know why, but I thought they were some pretty good names for the two of them.

I felt my stomach churning as Riften came in to view. It was still a while's length away, far enough that the guards couldn't see us, but we stopped our horses and contemplated our next move.

"How do you want to approach this?" Omazirr asked, giving me a long, soft look.
"Why are you asking me?" I gave him a curious look and he chuckled.

"It's your contract, remember?"

I heaved a long sigh, "Yeah, I remember."

I rubbed my temple for a few minutes and gave him a long glance over.

"Here's what we'll do; I'll go in from the hidden passageway behind Riften that I told you about on our way here, all right?" I paused for him to reply and he nodded. "I want you to go in through the front gates. They may try to stop you because you're a Khajiit, but as long as you don't have a bounty you should be fine. Hang around for an hour or an hour and a half-"

"Why so long?" he interrupted me, his ears slightly perked.

I grimaced to myself over the thoughts I was having, "I don't know if Delvin Mallory will be there and if he is, things might get dicey."

Omazirr let out a small growl, "They better not! I'll rip his throat out if he touches you!"

I jumped, almost falling off of Spark's back. I recovered before Omazirr noticed, though, and started to wonder why he cared so much about me.

"I'll be fine," I said, reaching over to put a hand on his shoulder to relax him.

He sighed and I saw him reach into the bag on the side of Rocky. He came back with some kind of woven garment in his hands and he held it out to me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's a cowl I meant to give to you on your first day. Wear it with your hood up once you're inside Riften. It won't conceal that you're a Khajiit, but it should at least keep people from recognizing you right away."

I took it shakily and put it on over the lower portion of my face like I knew how to since I was young. I pulled my hood up over my head and hopped off the horse, giving the harness to Omazirr. "Take Spark with you."

"Spark?" he asked.

I laughed a little, "I gave them names."

"What's his name?" he referenced with his eyes to his horse.

"Rocky." We shared a final smile -though he couldn't see mine- as we departed.

Getting in to Riften wasn't the hardest part. It was actually fairly easy. The hardest part was finding my way through the Ratway into Thieves' Guild hideout even though I'd already done it once before.

Soon enough, I found myself in the Ragged Flagon and I felt like my stomach was being twisted into a tighter knot than it was before. Part of me wanted to barf but I knew I had to give off a strong look so they didn't assume I was weak.

As I walked in in my red and black Shrouded robes with the cowl covering the lower portion of my face and the hood hanging right above my eyes, I tried my best to keep my ears poked down.

There were a lot of Thieves Guild members in the room. It was a very different attitude throughout it from what it was the night I sneaked in. People were talking, laughing, joking and playing card games. They were drinking, too, but that was kind of expected, right?

My eyes quickly narrowed on Delvin and not very shockingly, his eyes were on me, too. When our eyes connected, I noticed a change in the atmosphere and, what do you know? He waved me over to him. It was not a friendly kind of gesture. It was more an, "I'm waiting" kind of look held in his body language. My palms felt a little warm and I took a small deep breath through my nose as I started to approach him. I kept my eyes calm and low, my body posture cool and relaxed and my face reassured this would all go fine.

I hoped.

Other members looked at me as I walked by and I wondered if it was all a setup for them to pounce on me and attack me.

When I reached Delvin's table, I waited to take a seat even though he kicked the chair across from him out for me.

"I need to see your leader," I told him. I spoke abruptly, plainly and calmly. He wasn't going to know that he intimidated me.

He laughed. Leaned his head back and laughed.

"Mercer is out right now. You'll have to talk to me."

"Why you?" I asked.

He sat there, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest with his chair tipped back ever so slightly.

I stood there with my arms at my sides and my hands bawled into fists inside of my sleeves that I made sure covered them.

"I'm an Elder member of the Thieves' Guild. Mercer trusts me to talk to you about this, assuming you are the Dark Brotherhood assassin who is here to uphold the contract . . ."

I sighed inward to myself and took the seat he kicked out before. He smiled after I sat eye-to-eye with him and then he nodded toward me.

"You can take the hood off, you know."

I smiled under the cowl but it wasn't a nice smile. It was one of those smiles you give that shows you don't care about what the other person has to say. "Do I have to take my cowl off, too?" I had a very small cocky accent on my tone, but he let it go with a deep exhale.

"It would be nice, please. Show me your face in a better view."

"You've seen my face before," I said rather bluntly. Several times, I wanted to add on, but I wanted to keep the chain hidden from this conversation.

"Yes, but not at a direct angle like this. In the Bee and Barb, I was looking at the side of your face, and at every other encounter, well . . . I'm taller than you and you do a fine enough job keeping your face hidden. Besides, it's nice to see the complete face of somebody I'll be working with."
I agreed with what he said. If I was going to be working with somebody, I would want to see their whole face, too.

I flipped the hood down as my lips turned into a small snarl, but I made sure it disappeared before I pulled my cowl down, too. It rested around my neck, and I saw his eyes darting over my face, taking in every detail and accent and curve.

It took him a few minutes, but he eventually gave a small chuckle, "Where's that chain, my friend?"
I let out a small laugh myself, "It's not in my possession."

"Did somebody else steal it from the poor kitty?"

I felt a growl rising at my throat but pushed it away, "I gave it to a friend of mine a while away from here." I emphasized 'gave', to make sure he understood that nobody would steal from me.
And if somebody did, I'd have it back soon enough.

He smiled as he leaned forward, the front two legs of the chair plopping onto the floor as his hands laid out on the table. "So, the Dark Brotherhood took you in, huh? Have you done them any good yet?"

"Aye," I told him. "But I didn't come here to have a chat about my work. I came to talk about the contract."

He laughed, "That's just how Dark Brotherhood members are," he sighed. "Right down to business, I see."

"Contract." I started to scowl and he gave me a questionable look. "Details," I demanded. "Now."
He held his hands up as though surrendering, "Fine, fine!" He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and slid it over the table to me.

I opened it and saw a bunch of scribbled writing that I figured out held the same words he was going to tell me.

"The man goes by the name Hendrick Raydolf. He's fifty-three and paid us for protection for six years. Now he's-"

"Paying guards to protect him?" I questioned.

Delvin shot me a weird look, questioning how I knew that. "You know about him?"

"Astrid told me as much information as she could and she said that she figured he was betraying the Thieves' Guild, hence why you called us in to exterminate him."

He nodded, "Astrid would know that." He shrugged his shoulders, "Anyways, Hendrick is heavily protected by guards and that's why we can't get to him ourselves. At first, we didn't want him dead. We wanted him alive, but now he has to be killed. We've gotten several notes from him saying that if we set foot near his property on the outskirts of Riften, he would have the Guards come to us and execute us."

"How rich is this man? Wouldn't it take a lot of money to get the guards to execute a group of people with no say from the Jarl?" I got chills up and down my arms and the back of my neck as I felt a brush of wind behind me and the sound of feet moving but I assumed it was just somebody leaving their table.

"He's very rich, Ms . . ?"

I bit my lip a little and sighed to myself yet again, "Call me Ajivha."

"Ajivha," he said. "Ajivha. Ajivha. Ajivha."

"Why are you-" I started.

"It rolls off the tongue nicely, don't you think, Mercer?"

My eyes wanted to shoot open, but instead I kept my eyes on Delvin until another man was in my view. He took a seat across from me near Delvin and he also started to pick me apart with his eyes, but he didn't hold a mad look like Delvin did.

"Indeed," he said, then turned and looked at Delvin. "Give us peace, Delvin."

Delvin hesitated, his eyes on me for several seconds before he stood up, pushing his chair back, and sprinted away.

My eyes met with the man known as Mercer and he smiled.

"So, you're the Dark Brotherhood assassin, aye? I can't say I was expecting a Khajiit, but then again if there's a Khajiit around, why not make her an assassin, aye?"

I smiled, "Aye," I replied. It was nice.

I felt like I could relax with Delvin gone.

"My name is Mercer Frey, if Delvin didn't tell you. Sorry I couldn't be here to greet you but I had a client to collect from. I'm also sorry for making Delvin be the one to talk to you and I'll talk to him later about that look he was giving you. He knows not to treat accomplices rudely."

I had to stifle a laugh, "My time here started out rudely the day he stole my chain."

Mercer's eyes suddenly held a glint of shock.

"You're . . . oh, well. So, you're the Khajiit that sneaked in here to get your chain back . . ."

I smiled, "Delvin didn't tell you that I stole the chain from him?"

Mercer returned my smile, shockingly. "He tried to, but he confessed to stealing it from you first. I'm just surprised you managed to pick our locks. You should be a thief, but I won't take you from Astrid. You have to be good if you're there."

I smiled and shrugged, "I don't mean to rush this, but I would like to have as much information as I could about this Hendrick fellow."

Mercer smiled, "Of course . . ."