Skyrim is the property of Bethesda Softworks. Thank you SpiritOfJazz for the glowing review! Anyone reading this who likes a more sophisticated take on romantic developments should check out her A Tale of a Nightingale (I certainly do). Speaking of thievery, Ieago and Lydia are approaching Riften, a town known to bring out the best in everyone.
The Dark Brotherhood: a family company. The famed cult of killers dedicated to Sithis. They were not necessarily evil, just devoted to death as we Companions were to fighting. They lived by a strict internal code of conduct. They applied violence in the name of profit. The only real difference between them and the Companions were our methods.
I was not going to torture our captive killer, but I had every intention of scaring the crap out of him. The man awoke in the fog-shrouded woods tied in a sitting position to a tree out of sight from the nearby road. Lydia and I had stripped him to his loincloth. I was going to keep the armor. The Dark Brotherhood's stuff is all perfectly enchanted for stealth work.
"I'm glad you're awake," I said into his ear. Lydia and I had been standing behind him out of his sight. I straitened and stepped into view. I held my wicked curved elven dagger in my hand.
"Sithis will take you. A contract has been made," the young man said. He might have been all of fifteen. About the same age I donned the jupon of Kvatch's guards. I wondered idly if I looked that young while making my oaths of fealty more than a decade ago. I probably had.
I shrugged and sat on a convenient rock in front of him. "We all die eventually. As your friends found out today. You should be wondering when you'll be joining them," I replied. "But I have uses for you." I pointed the tip of the knife at his eyes to emphasize. His gaze closely followed the brightly polished blade.
"I can't cancel the contract on you," he said. "My family will keep coming for you."
"No you fool!" I said, lazily slapping his thigh with the flat of the razor-sharp, ten-inch dagger. "At best, you're a Slayer. I know you can't cancel a contract. You can't even negotiate one. BUT," the point of the blade flashed up to his face, bare inches from his left eyeball. "You can run a message for me. You've seen the kind of killing I'm capable of. You're going to run back to your Black Hand, and you're going to tell them I want a meeting with one or more of them." The blade was along his nose. His sweat stank of fear. "If more assassins are sent after me, I'll find your precious sanctuary and break my way in. I will slay each and every one of you before I burn the Night Mother's corpse."
A lot of the stuff I just told him isn't exactly public knowledge. Elenwen's spies in Skyrim had done their work well before I stole it.
"I'm going to weaken your bonds now. My friend and I will be long gone by the time you break loose. You'll find the Argonian's robes and a horse for you by the road. The two your friends used are an apology to me. Remember: if you don't deliver my message, I will find you and leave you alive just long enough to know you failed your family."
I cut one of his lashes about half way through, mounted one of my new horses, and rode onward with Lydia.
"You really think you'll be able to talk them out of the death mark on your head?" Lydia asked me a half mile later.
"For all their fanaticism, the Dark Brotherhood is a fairly sophisticated organization," I said, sounding more confident than I felt. "They'll have an exit clause somewhere. I just hope it's not too odious."
Speaking of odious, Lydia and I reached Riften two days later. Not only was I looking for information on what exactly the Ratway consisted of, but also I needed to find a fence. All that stuff I had swiped from the embassy party needed to move.
Once again we headed to the Bee and Barb. I was hoping to find the man who wanted me to help him with a theft again. That con likely knew much about the so-called Ratway beneath the streets. The inn was crowded and we were obligated to share a table with an agreeable couple. They were a pair of adventurers who found each other out in the wilds and settled down together. They turned out to be a far more useful contact.
"I used to openly scorn the Thieves' Guild. Now they aren't even worth that much contempt," Mjoll the Lioness told us. She was cast from the same mold as Lydia, but was somewhat older with a nasty set of scars on the right side of her face. As the local vigilante she was the closest thing to an honest militia Riften had. "Now they're just a band of thugs, fighting over spare coins in the sewers. But they used to do some good here in Skyrim."
"How so? I asked.
"They didn't tolerate competition. Anywhere in Skyrim, if you pulled off a theft or ran a scam, they made sure you gave them a cut or never stole again. Violent crime was is down too. They didn't kill on the job and didn't like it when other people did either."
"It sounds like you almost respected them."
"I never thought I'd say it, but I did. They made Skyrim a safer place by regulating crime and graft. Now they can barely knock over a market stall in town without getting caught."
"What can you tell me about the Ratway?"
Mjoll's Imperial husband Aerin nearly choked on his ale. "We can tell you not to go there." he said. "The Ragged Flagon is the Thieves' Guild headquarters. That place is safe enough, but if you go beyond that your life is in your own hands."
"What makes it so dangerous?" I asked.
"Thieves' Guild wannabes mostly," Mjoll answered. "Applicants that couldn't meet Guild standards but are too stupid to move on."
Aerin nodded. "Also, the bottom-most sections are where the Jarl locks away the folks too crazy for the regular jail up at the palace. They get to roam free down there for the most part."
At that moment, two shadows were cast across our table. We looked up to see a dark-haired woman in her late sixties and a man in his forties next to her. They looked enough alike that I figured he was the woman's son. She looked like a predator: the sort of bully that uses its brain to manipulate and humiliate its targets. Her son reminded me somehow of an aggressive dog that wasn't actually good at fighting.
"I want your table," she said. Mjoll and Aerin looked tense.
"I'll be glad to make sure another group doesn't claim it when we're done." I replied.
"That's not how it works around here," her pet son snapped. "What Maven wants Maven gets."
"And who the fuck are you two?" I snapped back. The noise in the inn stopped like it had hit a brick wall.
"If I thought you could pose a challenge against my skill, I would cut you down," he boasted.
I leaned back on the side of my chair and looked over to Lydia, "May I borrow your sword Lydia?" She handed over the fine moonstone long sword. I looked up at my accoster. "Okay whelp, draw. Show me what you got."
He drew with a flourish. There was not a whisper in the room as I stood and we crossed swords. With a casual motion I used Lydia's sword to slap his blade out of his hands. I let the tip of Lydia's blade rise to his neck drove the idiot back against the wall.
"I don't care who you are; don't care who your mom is. My friends and I are having a few drinks at this table. When we're done, you may have your turn," I glanced at the fine steel blade I had swatted away, "And that's my sword now."
Two angry people walked away. Only as the inn's doors closed in conversation gradually came back to its normal level.
Aerin slapped the table and leaned forward. "Shor's bones! You just told the Black-Briar clan to fuck off! Nobody treats Maven that way."
Mjoll nodded in agreement. "We can expect her thugs to meet us as we leave."
"The town watch won't break up the fight?" Lydia asked.
Mjoll snorted, "The Black-Briars are the most well-connected family in Skyrim. She has contacts in the Dark Brotherhood, she helps pick the Thieves' Guild's targets, and Jarl Laila clutches to her skirts like a lost child. She gets what she wants. Or else."
"Is she going to try to have Ieago killed?"
"This first time will be a simple beating by some thugs led by her housecarl. After that she'll test to see if he learned his lesson. If not, then she'll have him killed."
Somehow after all the things I had experienced in the past year, I didn't feel too intimidated. We finished our drinks and stepped out.
Team, I don't think Aerin gets enough credit. Things just don't add up to the strange, doughy townie/stalker personality we get to see in game. Nobody seems willing to explain exactly why he was near enough to a dwarven ruin miles away from Riften to rescue Mjoll. Nor how he was able to single-handedly relocate her to safety and treat her necessarily severe injuries. Oh it gets better: he takes her to his place. A well-appointed two-story townhouse in a fashionable section of Riften for which he pays with no apparent job. Aerin is a tough, capable adventurer with a past shadier than a redwood grove.