XII: Cold Blood

I was unusually weary when I dismounted at the Windhelm stables again. It had been almost an entire day since I had slept. Maybe I'd spend a few hours at Candlehearth Hall once I had given Aventus Aretino the news.

The gate guard nodded to me as he stepped out of my way. I nodded back, glad I didn't have to make a scene again to get inside the city.

I didn't want to go straight to the Aretino residence, so it was a good thing the city had such a confusing layout. I got lost but managed to act like I was casually sightseeing as I tried to figure out my way around. After a suitably long time, I found my destination. I surreptitiously picked the lock and slipped inside again while the guards weren't looking.

I crept up the steps in his house quietly in case there were guards waiting for me, but he was the only one inside, lying on the bed with a book. "Aretino," I called softly.

He hopped up excitedly. "You're back! Did you do it?"

"Yes, she's dead," I said solemnly.

"Oh, thank you!" He frowned, looking around the room thoughtfully. "Now I have to pay you, right?"

"Well, I don't…" I began.

He ignored me and ran over to a cupboard, pulling out a large fancy dish. "Here, you can have this. It's a family heirloom. It should be worth a few septims."

He pushed the dish into my hands. I turned it over a few times and tucked it under my arm. "Thanks," I said uncertainly.

"I'll go back to the orphanage in a week or two. I have a few things to deal with here first."

"Like that?" I asked, waving at the human remains still laid out on the floor.

"Yeah, I need to sneak those back into their graves tonight."

"Okay. Just… be careful," I said weakly, turning to go.

He turned his back on me then, turning his attention to a cheese wheel, so he didn't see me slip his family heirloom into the nearest dresser drawer before I went back outside.

While I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I still felt bone-tired, so I went to Candlehearth Hall and rented a room, asking them to wake me in four hours. I awoke feeling somewhat rested and wishing I could sleep longer, but I wanted to meet up with Lokir by nightfall.

As I headed out of Candlehearth Hall, I remembered how I had never checked out the Gray Quarter. I growled softly. I really wanted to be on my way, but it should only take a few minutes.

I went back the way I had gone when I first saw Sofie, continuing past where she had been sleeping, taking the path that sloped down. I soon noticed how much dirtier the street was here. The walls were dirty too. I stopped in front of the first door I came to. New Gnisis Cornerclub, it said.

I paused and smiled wistfully, remembering my parents reading me stories about Grandmother Ma'hini traveling to Gnisis and going to cornerclubs in Morrowind. Too bad Red Mountain was erupting, I mused, or maybe I could go there someday. It almost seemed like my homeland, since I really had no other.

I put those thoughts out of my head. Balmora and Vivec had been destroyed, the Nerevarine's Morrowind was gone and there was no sense pining over it. Right now, I needed to go in there and ask the Dunmer how they were faring in Windhelm.

"Excuse me!" someone called as I was reaching for the doorknob.

I jumped and turned back the way I had come, where a Nord man was approaching me. "Are you Ra'wati?" he asked.

"Yes," I said cautiously.

"I have a letter addressed to you," he said, reaching in his pack and pulling one out. He handed it to me and ran off immediately.

Must be from Lokir, I thought as I opened it.

My face probably went pale under my fur as I read the message.

We know, it said below a drawing of a black hand. No signature, nothing else.

Wasn't the black hand the symbol of the Dark Brotherhood?

I looked frantically up and down the alley, but nobody was in sight. Even the courier was gone, off to make another delivery. But I suddenly felt paranoid. Was somebody in the city spying on me? Did Ulfric know what I had done for Aventus Aretino?

I turned away from the door to the cornerclub. I had to get back to Riften, to Lokir. I didn't feel safe on my own right now.

I headed back out of Windhelm as fast as I could without looking like I was about to run, mounted my horse and took off as fast as I could make her go. I kept up a hard pace all the way back to Riften, regularly leaning down and murmuring apologies in the horse's ear and promising her large amounts of apples and carrots if she kept the pace up.

I slowed her to a walk as we approached Riften in late afternoon. I was very drowsy at this point, so it took a moment for me to notice that Lokir's horse was waiting at the stable. That meant he was back in Riften.

I quickly dropped my horse off and gave the stablehand a couple coins to tend to her and give her some apples. I trotted back to the gates, receiving no challenge from the guards this time, and headed for the Bee and Barb, hoping Lokir was taking a break from his Thieves Guild duties.

"Ra'wati!" Lokir called almost as soon as I opened the door. I jumped like a draugr had just appeared in front of me. Lokir rose from his table and ran over to me. He put his hands on my shoulders, held me at arm's length and looked me over critically. "You look like something spooked you real bad," he observed.

"Ah, well, I was afraid of going up against a dragon on my way back here. I've barely slept since the night before last." I coughed meaningfully.

He got my hint to ask me later. He gave me a two-second hug and pulled away. "Where's Lydia?"

"We found an orphan girl sleeping on the ground in Windhelm, so I had Lydia take her back to Whiterun. I told her to wait there until we returned."

"Sounds like we have a lot to catch each other up on." He turned back to the table, where I noticed a dark-haired Nord woman seated, watching us. "Will that be all, Sapphire?"

"Yes," she said, rising. "You know where to find me if you need anything."

"I heard about the dragon," Lokir said casually as he led me up the stairs and to the room he had rented. "You just can't keep a low profile, can you?"

"It was right beside the orphanage. What was I supposed to do, let the guards handle it?" I sank wearily down onto one of the beds.

He pushed the door closed and came to sit down on a chair beside me. He leaned in close, lowered his voice to a whisper, and asked, "Okay, what's really bothering you? You took out Grelod, didn't you?"

"How did you…?" I began.

"I see how concerned you are about the welfare of children, and they said she was found dead shortly after you showed up and killed the dragon."

I hesitated, then pulled the letter out of my pack. "I did it, but that's not what's bothering me. A courier brought this to me in Windhelm this morning."

He went pale when he looked at the letter. "Of all the people you've killed, why do the Dark Brotherhood care about Grelod?"

I wearily told him what had happened since we last saw each other.

"You just can't stay out of trouble on your own, can you?" he asked with a resigned laugh.

"Your presence wouldn't have changed my decision to kill her," I pointed out.

He shrugged. "I might have insisted on being the one to kill her."

"Maybe. So, what have you been up to?"

I listened drowsily as he told me about having to frame someone for theft to become a member of the Thieves Guild, after which he assured me he was going to bail the innocent Dunmer out first thing in the morning. Once he had been initiated, he had been asked to collect money owed to the Guild from local shopkeepers, then to burn three beehives on an island in the lake. He started to tell me how that quest had gone, how he had started out by trying to sneak through a sewer occupied by a hostile mage that almost killed him, then he noticed how tired I looked.

"We can finish catching up in the morning," he said, standing up. "You go ahead and rest. I don't think the Dark Brotherhood will try anything in the middle of a crowded inn."

"I hope not," I muttered as I pulled my armor off and curled up under the blankets.

Next thing I knew, I seemed to have rolled out of the bed onto the floor. And although I could hear a fire crackling nearby, it was very cold in the room. Other than that, everything was lost in a thick haze. I rolled onto my stomach and tried to push myself up, but my limbs gave out and I fell over.

"Here, drink this," I heard someone say, as if we were underwater. Someone put a flask into my hand. I obediently drank it down, and everything began to come into focus.

As my thoughts began organizing themselves, I thought about giving Lokir a stern lecture about letting the fire burn out while I was asleep. Then the haze obscuring my vision lifted, and I realized I wasn't in the inn anymore. I was in some old abandoned house, by the looks of it. The walls and roof were full of holes, allowing the freezing wind to blow in. The floor wasn't in much better shape.

"Sleep well?" someone asked snidely from in front of me. I looked over at the corner, where a woman dressed all in black was perched on top of an old bookshelf.

"What do you want? Where's Lokir?" I asked, looking around frantically. Over to my left, I saw three figures kneeling on the floor. But the drug was still hazing my vision, and I couldn't make out much about them yet.

I patted myself, taking inventory of my possessions and cursing my decision to take off my armor before I went to sleep. But I still had my pack and my weapons. Four against one and I had no armor… Well, I had faced worse odds against the Thalmor…

And only won by resorting to cannibalism, I reminded myself. Or did a Khajiit feeding on an Altmer count as cannibalism? Now was not the time to worry with that.

"Your friend's still back in Riften," she continued in the same tone. "Don't worry about him. He never saw us."

"How did you manage that?"

"We have our ways. But surely you know that's not what I brought you here to discuss."

I sighed. "This is about Grelod the Kind, isn't it?"

She laughed. "Ah, yes. You did good work with her. Killed her cleanly, didn't get caught, and saved all those poor children in the process, didn't you?"

"I only did it to save the children," I growled. "She didn't deserve to live."

"I'm not criticizing your actions. You did well on your first assassination. But… well, we have a problem."

"Aventus Aretino wanted someone to kill her, and I took care of it. You should have gotten there faster."

"That's not how this works. He performed the Black Sacrament. By doing so, he entered into a contract with us. A contract which you stole."

I fought the urge to start lashing my tail in irritation. "He paid me with a plate. Are you really that short on dinnerware? I can go back and get it for you, if you'd like."

"If we were killers for money like the old Morag Tong, that's what I'd be discussing with you. But when you make a contract with the Dark Brotherhood, you also make a contract with Sithis, lord of the Void. You stole a kill from him, so you have to repay it."

"What do I have to do to repay it?" I asked warily, gripping my sword hilt.

She laughed. "Don't worry, he doesn't want your life. He wants you to make a kill for us."

I looked over at the three kneeling figures. My vision had cleared enough that I could now tell they were all bound and wearing black hoods covering their faces. My stomach sank as I asked, "You want me to kill one of them?"

"Yes, one of them has a contract on their head. Go talk to them, figure out which one it is, and take care of it. Then I'll give you the key to the door, and we can both leave. But neither of us is leaving until one of them dies."

"What if I kill the wrong one?"

"The contract still has to be fulfilled. An innocent life won't change that. Go on, now. I'll be up here watching."

I got to my feet slowly. Whatever she had given me to drink had finally burned away whatever had been used to drug me. I felt normal again.

I looked up at her for a moment. She had the key. What if I killed her instead? But after sizing her up, I got the feeling I would lose. She didn't look like the common bandits I had been fighting. This was someone who had spent their life training to be an assassin.

If I fought her and lost, I doubted she would let any of the prisoners free. Better one of them die than all three, right?

Coward, I thought to myself as I turned to face the prisoners again. There's only one person in this room I know deserves to die, and I'm too afraid to face her.

I walked up to the first of the prisoners, an armored Nord man. "You," I said, leaning close to his face so he'd know I was addressing him. "Who are you?"

"I'm Fultheim," he said in a quavering voice. "Fultheim the Fearless, they call me. I'm a mercenary, a sellsword. That's… well, there's really not much more I can say about myself."

"Who typically hires you? Do you have any restrictions?"

"Well, I… I don't work for bandits. I help people explore old ruins and…" His voice started to break. "Oh, please, can't you just let me go? I've done nothing to you…!"

I coughed loudly, and he fell silent. "Would anyone pay the Dark Brotherhood to kill you?"

"I… I don't know… Maybe? I've killed a lot of people… Their families might want revenge… Oh, please, I don't want to die!"

I coughed again. "Just calm down. I haven't chosen you yet," I said in the gentlest tone I could muster.

I could imagine someone wanting him dead. Even bandits had families who cared for them. But I wasn't so different from him that way.

The second person was a middle-aged Nord woman. I walked over to her, leaned down and asked, "You, miss, who are you?"

"That's none of your business!" she snarled.

I winced, surprised at the venom in her voice. She didn't sound like she was a prisoner at my mercy. "Look, I'm trying to find out…"

"If you're going to kill me, just do it already!"

"Lady, I'm trying to decide which one of you I have to kill. It might be in your best interests to…"

"I don't have time to be nice," she interrupted. "If I didn't have this hood on, by Mara, I swear I'd spit in your face!"

I backed away from her. I could easily see someone getting tired of her attitude and wanting her dead. But I had to admire her spirit.

The third prisoner was a male Khajiit. I had seen so few of my people since my parents had been murdered… But I couldn't think about that now. "Who are you?" I asked him.

"I am Vasha," he said. "Obtainer of goods, taker of lives, and defiler of daughters. How is it another Khajiit has not heard of me?"

"I've stayed away from the criminal world before now," I muttered. "Would someone pay to have you killed?"

He laughed. "I can see you truly don't know who I am. Not a day goes by that an attempt is not made on my life. But if you knew who I was, you would also know that I can have my men hunt you down and butcher you in the streets like an animal."

I turned away and began pacing while I thought. It sounded like he was some kind of crime boss or bandit leader. Could someone have gotten tired of waiting for one of the assassination attempts to work and hired the Dark Brotherhood? Or would it make more sense to sit back and wait for one of the common assassins to finally succeed? Surely it was just a matter of time.

I looked over at Fultheim. He said he had killed a lot of people, and it would only take one with a sufficiently devoted family to have a contract placed on his head.

I looked at the unnamed woman. With a personality like hers, I couldn't imagine her having any friends. She would make a lot of enemies. But was it enough to make someone want her dead?

I looked at Vasha. Did any of the jarls have a bounty on his head? Would it make sense to go through with the Black Sacrament if he did? It was just a matter of time before the bounty attracted a skilled warrior…

Defiler of daughters, I thought, clenching my teeth. That didn't sound consensual. I thought back to the bandit attack on my caravan… I can't let my experiences cloud my judgment, I reminded myself.

I paced for another moment, weighing my options. If I chose wrong, I'd have to go back and kill another of them.

Finally I drew my sword and silently approached Vasha. It had to be him. If he was a bandit leader, he spent his life hurting innocent people. He was far more likely to attract a Dark Brotherhood contract than a common mercenary or mouthy woman.

And if I was wrong, well, it sounded like he deserved to die anyway.

Before I could change my mind, I raised my sword with both hands and chopped his head off.

I stood over his body panting for a moment. Why was I panting? How could I be out of breath from one swing? I shook my head, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge what was really going on.

"Well done," the assassin called. "I can see why you chose him. Someone with his lifestyle was bound to anger the wrong person, wasn't he?"

I turned to face her. "Was he the one?"

She laughed. "Oh, don't bother with that. Right or wrong doesn't matter now. What matters is I told you to kill someone, and you obeyed me."

I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. "Was there even a contract in the first place?"

She just laughed again. "Does it matter? I can see you enjoyed it."

"What are you talking about?" I snarled, feigning ignorance to the end.

"Don't pretend you don't know. I could tell the moment you made your choice. I could see it in your eyes. The anticipation, the excitement. You can talk like you don't enjoy killing, but your body gives you away."

"I… I don't…" I faltered.

"You smile right before you strike a deathblow. Did you realize that?"

I took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. There was no point in denying it anymore. "Yes, I noticed," I almost whispered, looking at the floor and letting my shoulders slump.

"That's nothing to be ashamed of. You were meant to be an assassin. I'd like to extend an invitation to you to join the Dark Brotherhood. You'll fit right in, and it pays well."

I looked back up at her. "You want me to join you, after all this? What makes you think I won't go to the guards?"

"All those poor little orphans in Riften," she said casually. "I bet you'd love to take them all in. Too bad your house in Whiterun only has room for two children, and you already took in those two little girls."

"Okay, okay," I growled, beginning to lash my tail. "You want me to join you. Where should I meet you?"

She tossed me a roll of paper with a key tucked inside. "Here's a map, and the key to this shack. When you find our hideout, the passphrase is 'Silence, my brother.' We'll be waiting for you."

"It might be a week or two," I grumbled.

She thought she had won. I'd let her believe that. I'd do what she wanted for now. I'd go to her hideout and join the Dark Brotherhood. But one day I was going to make her deeply regret what she had done to me.

She rose without another word and climbed through a hole in the roof. I lashed my tail again, realizing I could have escaped that way.

No, then what would have happened to the prisoners?

I turned back to them and approached cautiously. They had just heard me kill someone, followed by me admitting that murder excited me. They were bound to be even more terrified now.

"Don't panic," I said. "I'm going to let you two go now."

I walked up to Fultheim first. He was making a soft whimpering sound. "I'm going to take your hood off," I said gently, but he still practically screamed in terror when he felt my fingers touch his neck. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said in the same tone as I pulled the hood off his head, and I kept repeating it softly as I walked behind him, drew my dagger and cut his bonds. He tried to lunge forward, away from me, but fell on his stomach. He rolled onto his side and sat there watching me, alternately rubbing his wrists and lower legs, as I walked over to the woman.

I started to reach for her hood, then changed my mind. As soon as it came off, she'd start spitting, and my shield was back at the inn in Riften. I cut her bonds and backed away, leaving her to deal with the hood herself.

It appeared her legs had fallen asleep too. She stayed on the floor and rubbed them as I darted to the other side of the room. "You ought to be ashamed!" she shouted at me. "Kidnapping a woman from her home! I've got six kids to care for!"

"Hey, I had nothing to do with that," I said as I looked around for something to use as a spit-guard. I picked up a rectangular wooden dish from a table and held it ready. "Maybe you didn't pick up on it, but I was kidnapped, too."

I quickly introduced myself and explained about Grelod and Aventus Aretino, hoping a mother of six would be sympathetic. Thankfully, she calmed down when she heard my motives. "All right, I guess I can't blame you," she growled reluctantly.

"So you're just… You're going to let us go now?" Fultheim asked, his voice quavering.

"Yes, you're free to go," I assured him. I paused. "But I have no idea where we are. I don't hear any people out there, so I doubt we're in a town. Maybe we should stick together until we get to safety."

"Yes, you probably shouldn't be wandering around unknown territory on your own without armor," Fultheim observed.

I looked down at my clothes and sighed. "I took my armor off before I went to sleep. Now I wish I'd kept it on."

The woman cleared her throat impatiently. "I don't want to travel on my own either if I don't know where we are, but are we going to be safe around you? You're not going to attack us for fun?"

I started growling low in my throat and forced myself to stop. "Maybe I do enjoy killing. Maybe it excites me like nothing else. But that's not something I have any control over. What I do have control over are my own actions. I have never attacked anyone who didn't attack me first, or who I didn't know was involved in attacking innocent people. As long as you don't try to kill me, you're safe, and I'll fight to protect you."

"You're in complete control?" Fultheim asked, sounding like he needed to be reassured.

I decided to be honest with them. They already knew too much about me. "Yes, both as I am now and as a werewolf. I may have been more violent as a werewolf, and had urges to do things to dead bodies that I would never consider normally, but I was in complete control of who I attacked."

"You're a werewolf?" they asked simultaneously.

I shrugged. "Yes, and I'm also the Dragonborn, but I don't like making a big deal about it. Can you walk yet?"

They just stared at me for a long time, long enough that I expected them to turn me down. But then Fultheim got unsteadily to his feet. "All right, let's see where we are."

I unlocked the door and let him out first. The light that came in through the door was muted. I couldn't tell if it was late afternoon or just very overcast. Outside, we seemed to be in a marsh beside a river. What little I could make out about the landscape through the heavy fog didn't look familiar.

Fultheim was scanning the distant mountains. "I'd say we're somewhere in Hjaalmarch," he said slowly. "It's always so foggy around Morthal…" He slowly walked around the side of the dilapidated shack we had been imprisoned in. "Oh, I know where we are!" he suddenly called excitedly. "That's the Blue Palace of Solitude on that cliff way over there!"

I ran over to him and looked where he was pointing. I could just barely make out some sort of structure on a cliff up in the air, but most of it was swallowed by mist. I pulled out my map.

"We're a long way from Riften," I sighed. "Might as well go there and take a carriage back. What about you? Where do you need to go?"

"I don't really have anywhere to go," he said after a moment. "I just go where my current client needs me and sleep wherever I can find an empty bed or a safe camping spot."

"Isn't Solitude the biggest city in Skyrim? You should be able to find work there." I turned to the south. "Are there any other landmarks? I'd like to know roughly where we are on my map."

"Morthal should be a short walk south of us. Might even be closer than Solitude, but there's not much to see there," he said. He turned to face east. "Dawnstar is a long way to the east, at least a day's walk I'd guess." He looked over my shoulder at my map, then back east. "Oh, you have Ustengrav marked on your map? I believe that's it southeast of us."

I looked where he indicated. I could faintly make out a ring of stone pillars through the mist. "Ustengrav? Is that the burial tomb of Jurgen Windcaller?"

"I think so," he said, seeming confused that I knew that.

I started to lash my tail in irritation. "I was asked to retrieve an item from Jurgen Windcaller's tomb. It's sort of important." I sighed, looking back at my map. "Why does it have to be out here in the middle of nowhere? I'll have to go all the way to Riften to get Lokir and my armor now, and then come all the way back… This might take days…" I grumbled mostly to myself.

"Ah… Well…" Fultheim said cautiously, then continued in a rush, "I could come with you, and we could get the item now."

I just blinked at him, too startled to respond.

"You didn't have to let me go," he continued. "You could have killed me, or just left me tied up there. I owe you. If you'll let me repay you by helping you with your quest, I'll gladly do it."

I frowned. "Well, it would certainly save me a lot of time to clear it out while we're right beside it…" I looked him up and down. "But you're unarmed and I'm unarmored. That's a recipe for failure."

"There's usually nothing but draugr and maybe skeevers or frostbite spiders in those old tombs. We could sneak in, take out the first draugr we find, you take its armor, I take its weapons, and we could go from there. There's bound to be better stuff farther in."

"That might work…" I said thoughtfully.

"You're not just going to leave me here!" the angry woman called from the shack's doorway. "If you're going tomb-raiding, I'm coming with you!"

"Are you sure?" Fultheim asked meekly. "It's not likely to be safer down there…"

"Yes, I'm sure!" she snarled, making him cower. "I've got six kids and no husband to help me protect them, so I learned some offensive spells. I can handle a few draugr."

I thought back to the last fight in Dustman's Cairn. That had been a lot more than a few draugr. But it would be nice to have a mage by my side.

"Well, if you're sure, miss…" I said, hoping she'd remember she never told me her name.

She let out a sigh that was half snarl. "Alea Quintus."

"All right," I said, putting my map away. "Let's go fight some draugr."

SOUNDTRACK: "Somebody's Watching Me" by Raunchy (it's a remake), "Another Way Out" by Hollywood Undead, "Where is the Edge" and "It's the Fear" by Within Temptation, "Walk Away From the Sun" by Seether, "Welcome to the Family" by Avenged Sevenfold, "Pay For This" by Gemini Syndrome, "The Night" by Disturbed.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Had I originally planned to write a novelization of Skyrim's storyline, I would have had Ra'wati kill Astrid here. But I started out with the sole intention of writing an original story about the torture victims in the Dawnstar Sanctuary. Maybe it's better this way. Becoming an assassin helps with Ra'wati's downward spiral into moral ambiguity.

I wasn't originally planning on having her go after the horn just yet, but then I noticed how close Ustengrav is to the Abandoned Shack. Having her go after it now, despite being so ill-prepared, fits with her impatient and impulsive nature.