.

SIARI

Sanctuary

The Black Door

"This is the place," Astrid said to Siari as they stood in front of a strange black door. It seemed to lead to a cave hewn out of the rock. The black stone, if seen from the right angle, had a relief of a skull and a hand carved into it. "If you come through this door with me, there is no way back. We keep no secrets from you, nor you from us. You will be family."

Siari nodded. She'd never had a family, like Astrid had guessed an hour ago. Being part of one, even if it was a family of murderers, would be the most wonderful thing that could happen to her. The fact that they were killers rather than farmers or blacksmiths might even be an advantage. Murderers had to look out for each other, trust each other, depend on each other. For the first time in a long while, Siari's heart raced. She said nothing, but nodded and smiled. She could wish for nothing more than to finally have a family.

"Then from now on, you are our blood," Astrid said, then turned to the door.

An ethereal, sibilant voice like the smell of rot on the wind asked, "What is the music of life?"

Astrid replied with, "Silence, my brother."

The voice spoke again, but this time Siari knew it was speaking to her and not Astrid. "Welcome home."

The words made her heart quicken even more.

"Come," Astrid said. "Time to meet your new family."

They descended the roughly-hewn stairs into an antechamber, also cut out of the rock. A table was set in the middle, a map of Skyrim rolled out on it. A burly Nord with long white hair stood waiting. For some reason, he only wore tattered pants, leaving his broad, scarred chest bare… and he seemed to walk bare-footed as well. For some reason.

"So who's this veal cutlet?" the Nord rumbled, crossing his arms in front of his muscled chest. "We adopting teenagers off the street now?"

That… wasn't exactly welcoming.

"Meet my husband Arnbjorn," Astrid said motherly. "Don't worry, he's a little rough around the edges, but his heart is in the right place. We have no secrets here, so tell her Arnbjorn?"

"Ugh," the Nord grunted, rolling his eyes, then said to Siari, "Fine, if Astrid says you're family, then I suppose I have to." He paused. "I'm a werewolf. If I call you names, it's because I have trouble not seeing you as food. Will that be a problem, rack of lamb?"

After briefly having to make sense of his words, Siari shook her head.

Astrid made to introduce her. "Arnbjorn, this is…" Then she realized she'd never asked Siari's name. "…Hm. I spent a lot of time tracking you down but I never did catch your name, Sister."

Uh… yeah, that'd be a little difficult. As always when people asked her name… well, not as always, most of the time she just kept silent, but when she did feel inclined to say her name, she made a writing gesture.

"Wait… you want something to write?" Astrid asked, not understanding.

Siari nodded.

Astrid searched for a piece of parchment on the table but found nothing. So she simply turned over the Skyrim map and gave her a quill. "Here, you can write on the back of this."

Arnbjorn snorted in disapproval, but Siari took the quill and wrote her name.

"What's that? SEE-a-ree?"

Siari wagged a finger and placed it on her name, making an upward line as it went over the -i- and then the -a-.

"Oh… si-AH-ree?"

With a smile, Siari nodded enthusiastically.

Astrid's face turned to a frown though. "Now, Sister, since we have no secrets here, you don't have to be afraid to talk."

"Yeah," Arnbjorn added. "Cat got your tongue?"

She realized she shouldn't keep it a secret, so after a moment's hesitation, she opened her mouth wide. Arnbjorn stayed rather unmoved, but she saw Astrid's eyes flinch above her mask. "Damn…" she breathed. "It's… gone?"

Siari could only nod. She wasn't hiding it in her gullet, if that's what they thought.

As if it was the most normal question in the world, Arnbjorn asked, "So how do you swallow?"

Cocking her head, Siari swallowed, making sure he saw the movement in her throat. Like everyone else, of course. How else?

"Who did this to you?" Astrid asked, her eyes concerned.

Siari shrugged and shook her head. It didn't matter.

"Alright. Maybe you'll tell us in time." Astrid extended her hand toward the stairs that led deeper into the lair. "Go have a look around the Sanctuary. Get acquainted with the others. Keep no secrets from them, they'll keep none from you. You're family now, and we all trust each other. Without trust, none of us can survive."

Arnbjorn crossed his arms and rumbled, "Take some time 'til I can trust this little chicken wing. She looks so frail I'm afraid of breathing too hard at her."

"This path does not require strength or brawn, Arnbjorn. You know that," Astrid said patiently. "Now go on, Sister, explore your new home."

Oh, no. There was one thing left to do before that. Siari made a gesture of pulling a mask down, then pointed at Astrid.

With a laugh, the woman said, "Fine, I suppose you're right." And with a swift motion, she took her mask off, revealing the face of a Nord woman in her mid-thirties, good-looking but with a hard, determined face. Two long braids of brown hair with tinges of grey hung down her back. She looked a bit... anticlimactic. Somehow Siari had expected something... more spectacular. Still, when she thought of it, it was only to be expected that Astrid looked normal. Killers were normal people too. She was even glad for it, in fact. Who knows how she could have looked. "Now go on, meet with everyone else. Arnbjorn and I have... business to discuss."

Siari was only fifteen, but she knew damn well what kind of 'business' Astrid and her husband had to discuss. And she knew damn well she should leave them to it.

She descended the uneven stairs, in the flickering light of the torches along the way and wondered how it was that the torches kept burning without sucking all the air from the place. Probably a ventilation shaft somewhere. She emerged into a large cave, with a small waterfall and tiny pond in the back. A large round stained glass window was set in the far wall, torches flickering behind it, making the red-and-black skeletal hand motif in the window cast an eerie writhing shadow on the cave ground. What a strange place, yet all the morbidity of it didn't scare her in the least. For a group of assassins, it was obvious how useful it would be to have a terrifying image, and cultivating an image began at home. And after all, it was an assassin's guild. It's not like she was expecting tapestries with flower motifs and cuddly stuffed animals in every corner.

Astrid had told her to meet her new family, but there was no one there. In the left-hand corner stood an assortment of smithing gear, which Siara had no idea how to operate. Carefully, she stepped through the cave, towards the stairs leading back up into a smaller corridor at the far end. When she passed, she heard a raspy laugh from next to her, extremely closely. She jumped at the noise.

"Startle you, did I, child?"

When she looked closely, she saw there was an Argonian sitting there, almost invisible in the shadows. His scales were dark with a green shine, and he seemed to blend into the environment. Still shaky, Siari nodded.

"Someone new used the door, so we know Astrid's welcomed a new family member. My name is Veezara, and I am one of the Shadowscales, one of the last. Welcome to Astrid's little family."

Siara frowned at the nomination of it being Astrid's little family.

The Argonian had picked up on it and said, "I call it Astrid's family because despite the close bond we have, Astrid leads this Sanctuary, and her word is law."

Hm, Siari supposed the authoritarian way was one way to lead a family. And as long as it was within limits... Then again, Siari had to admit to herself that she longed to be accepted into a family, any family, and how it was led wouldn't change that. Besides, what she'd seen of Astrid so far had been motherly and a bit condescending, but accepting and much warmer than she'd expected from an assassin.

"You seem... a young lady of few words?" the Argonian observed.

Siari didn't feel like showing the inside of her mouth to everyone there, so she just shrugged and nodded, to which the Argonian reacted with a raspy chuckle. "Certainly not a bad thing in our line of work."

"This our new arrival?" a deep male voice asked. In one of the doorways stood a Redguard, dressed in dark red, with two scimitars in his belt. He had a moustache and pointed goatee and wore a turban on his head. "The new addition to our dwindling, dysfunctional little family?"

"The same," the Argonian confirmed.

"I see," the Redguard said, looking wary. "You look awfully young. At least, for someone who was just picked up off the street."

"Most assassins here in the Brotherhood," the Argonian explained, "are either trained from a very young age, or coaxed away from other guilds."

Siari nodded.

"Still," the Redguard said, "If Astrid thinks you have potential, then who am I to argue? Let's hope it's more than three days before someone runs a knife across your throat. My name is Nazir. Yours?"

Siari snatched a piece of paper and a nugget of charcoal from the smithing workbench and wrote down her name.

"Can't speak?"the Redguard asked curtly, reading the piece of paper. Siari shook her head. "Well, at least you won't be bad for the peace and quiet around here then. Come, I'll introduce you to the others."

Sure, being introduced was always nice. She followed the Redguard as he walked up the stairs set in the far wall of the atrium. They led to several small rooms hewn out of the mountain, by human hands, probably an expansion of the natural cave. One was a small central room with a table and an alchemy workbench, and around it were hewn small bedrooms. At the table sat an old man dressed in a red and black robe, and a child that looked no older than nine. She hadn't thought about it yet, but she realized now that she'd expected to have been the youngest one there.

The two were having a conversation and went on with it as Siari and the Redguard entered.

"So I was all like, 'but sir, I'm just a little girl', and he just gave me this really creepy look and said, 'I know, but I won't tell anyone if you won't'."

The old man scrunched his wrinkled face up in disgust.

The child went on, enthusiastic about her own story, "You should have seen the look on his face when he realized he wasn't getting into my dress, or anyone else's either." The giggle she made after it sounded childlike, but the way she told her story, anything but. "His neck snapped like a twig."

The old man harrumphed. "You let him off easy. I would have set fire to his feet, his fingers, and then his – "

The child flapped her hand at him. "Yeah I know, I know, you're always 'fire fire fire'."

He shrugged. "He would have deserved no less."

The child turned to Siari and her guide. "Oh, but Festus, we're being rude. We should greet our new family member."

The old man laughed hoarsely and said, "Indeed we should." In the gloomy cave room, lit only by a few torches set against the wall, the whole scene looked cosy and homely. The creepy atmosphere they'd tried to create in the atrium obviously didn't extend to the living area. "Welcome to the Brotherhood, young lady."

"The Brother- and Sisterhood," the child corrected.

The old man gave the child a weary look before continuing, "You're the one that bled that nasty old biddy in the orphanage in Riften, yes?"

Siari nodded and the Redguard introduced her. "Her name's Siari. She doesn't speak." Nice and blunt.

"Good riddance on that crone in the orphanage, I say," the old man told her.

"Oh, but", the child took over, "the job was pret-ty amateuristic. Beginner stuff if you ask me."

Siari gave a lopsided shrug. Of course it was 'beginner stuff'. It's not like she'd been trained to do it or anything.

The Argonian, who'd followed them up the stairs, seemed to agree. "We all had to start somewhere, Babette. Not everyone's had the benefit of all your years of experience."

Siari thought the Argonian was being sarcastic, but the child's reaction puzzled her. Rather than defending herself or calling the Argonian out on what Siari thought was a veiled insult, she leaned back, thought for a second and said, "No, you're right. Sometimes I forget."

"Don't worry about this old curmudgeon," the old man said, referring to the young child. "This is Babette, and my name is Festus Krex. We all have our speciality here in the Brotherhood." The child made to correct him again, but thought better of it. "Veezara here can sneak up on anyone and anything, Astrid handles all the leadership duties, Arnbjorn can pull the arms off a troll, and Babette... well, I'll let her explain."

With a smirk that was as snooty as it was adorable, the child explained, "You have no idea how easy it is to get close to people if you look like a kid. Most people are all, 'aww but she's just a child, she's totally harmless'. Even people like guards and soldiers fall for it. Because you know, who's going to suspect a little kid?"

"And underestimating Babette," the old man clarified, "is the always the first and last mistake her marks make."

Siari blinked. She didn't understand one bit of it. How could a child be so intelligent, so well-spoken? So coldly efficient? And even then, how could she possibly be an effective assassin? The minute she botched a job, it would be easy for her mark to overpower her, right?

The kid had picked up on it and she laughed. "See? You're underestimating me already too."

"Festus here is different from the rest of us," the Redguard moved the conversation along even though Siari was still wondering about the Babette girl. "He's not a big lover of blade or bow."

Oh? What then?

The old man grinned broadly and said, "You can have your bows and your poking irons. Sure, they're decent if you want to get all bloody, but I've got a far more effective weapon."

"At least he thinks so," Babette sneered.

The old man ignored her and continued, "You can be good at sticking pointy things into soft things that scream and bleed," he said, "but to use a knife, you need to get up close. And if your mark's aware there's a contract on him, you'll never be able to carry a bow anywhere near him. The weapon I have can't be seen or taken away." He paused for effect. When Siari made an inquisitive face, he continued, "They never expect a fireball from a dark doorway, or a jet of flame from behind a corner. And stabbing or shooting marks, pft, there's no spectacle in that. You really want to bring a message across, make your victim scream and flail in a big pillar of flame."

Ooh, the old man could cast spells. She'd heard of spellcasters, but never seen any in action.

"And lastly," the Redguard said, "There's Gabriella, our resident potion mixer. If you need someone poisoned, she's the one to talk to. She's working a job right now, but she'll be back in a day or two. And like I said, I'm Nazir. I handle the day-to-day affairs. Allocating contracts, finances, that sort of thing. Speaking of which, I've got a job for you right now. Get your paws wet, so to speak. This way."

"Aw, hey," the little girl protested. "We were just getting to know each other."

"Plenty of time for chit-chat later," Nazir dismissed her. "Well, one-sided chit-chat in this case."

Oh weren't we funny.

"Come on, I'll explain what needs to be done. Nothing too difficult. Who knows, you might even make it back."

It was nothing too difficult indeed, or at least that was what it looked like. She'd had a choice between three contracts, one a beggar near Ivarstead, one mine boss somewhere on the plains near Whiterun, or a miller living near Helgen, a town recently destroyed by a raging fire, supposedly caused by a dragon attack. Dragons, yeah right.

She'd chosen the beggar in Markarth, of course, since easy targets made for easy jobs. She might have been quite the overachiever when Astrid was looking, but she didn't feel the need to impress Nazir or prove her worth by taking a difficult target. A beggar was someone who couldn't defend himself and whom nobody would miss. A much better target than a miller, who could probably swing a flail pretty hard, or a mine boss, who was constantly in the company of his men and who could probably cleave the skull of any assassin who botched his job.

Beggar Narfi was his name, and he was a middle-aged Nord living in the ruins of his old family home. He'd be easily recognizable, Nazir had said. Just look for the enormous chin and side-burns wider than his shoulders. The man apparently looked like an honest-to-Nine ape. He'd lived together with his sister, but she had died or moved away, or whatever. And now someone wanted the man dead. It was a sad tale, but Siari, like the rest of the Brotherhood, wasn't supposed to sympathize. Strictly business.

She made it to Ivarstead easily enough, slogging the entire distance on foot and eating berries she found by the roadside, or simply pulling crops from the ground when she passed a farm. It was the season, so why not take advantage.

When she approached Ivarstead, she immediately noticed the ruined home a ways off. That was where Beggar Narfi would probably be found. And indeed, on a bench in front of the ruined house sat a man looking at a flower. As Siari watched, the man bent forward and picked another one, putting it between his fingers with the first. His mouth moved and an expression of pure grief came over the man's face. The description Nazir have given her had been accurate. He had a chin like an anvil and side-burns that looked like he'd glued two rabbits to his face.

Siari walked the distance to the house. She didn't intend to sneak up on him, just walk up to him and do the business.

She walked through the wild flowers and tall grass, holding her knife behind her back. There would be no reason for the man to be suspicious. The midday sun warmed her shoulders and a butterfly flitted from one flower to the other, then over Siari's head and away.

Beggar Narfi had seen her now, raising his head, the two mountain flowers still between his fingers. Siari was about to kill this man, and she'd always been told killing was a horrible thing that left people traumatized, but like with the other people she killed, she didn't feel a thing. She was doing what she was told, and that's all she needed to know.

"Hello there," the man greeted her when she came to stand in front of him. "What brings you here on such a fine day?"

Siari didn't say anything – how could she – and the man's eyes told her he realized why she was here.

"Fine," he merely said. "I have nothing to live for anyway. Just get it over with."

Siari took the knife from behind her back and thrust it forwards, between the man's ribs, next to his sternum. Cold, clean, efficient. As the man died and slumped forward, falling down in the tall grass, his fingers still held the two mountain flowers.