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SIARI
Left Hand Black
Sanctuary
"Siari Siari Siari!" Babette chirped, running into the common room. "You should see this!"
Siari raised an eyebrow, her spoon of porridge suspended in mid-air.
"Come on, seriously, you gotta see this."
Plopping her spoon back into the rapidly cooling porridge, Siari grinned and rolled her eyes. Fine. It was probably something completely stupid, but fine, she'd indulge the little tyke who claimed to be much older than she actually was. She rose and chewed the last of her porridge, swaying her head as she always did when she ate. It was the only way to move food around in your mouth when you didn't have a tongue.
She came into the atrium, Babette stupidly grinning at her. "Get a load of this guy," she whispered. "Says he's got the Night Mother with him."
The Night Mother? The ancient, terrible spirit who spoke to the Brotherhood the words of Sithis himself? Or herself, Siari figured. Surely this guy had to be a fraud. She looked down and saw the cart there, a big pink-purplish sarcophagus (or at least, that's how it looked in the red light of the atrium) on top of it. The thing looked damn creepy, decorated with ridges on the front, and set with an ugly headpiece shaped like an evil face with a crest on its head. If this really was the Night Mother, she didn't exactly choose the most comfortable dwelling.
"The sarcophagus isn't the craziest part," Babette whispered, sounding clearly amused. "Wait until you see the guy who drove the cart."
They heard voices coming from Astrid's office. One was the calm, compelling voice of the leader of their family, and the other, a man's voice, sounded nasal and musical, in the way a goat giving labour could be considered musical.
"Here they come here they come."
"But lady Astrid, poor Cicero has travelled so far, pulled the resting place of our beautiful mother across Skyrim so she may rest her head in your Sanctuary!"
They walked into view, and Siari was unable to keep her face from pulling into an incredulous open-mouthed mug. The man conversing with Astrid was the most ridiculous individual she'd ever seen. She'd never seen a real court jester – because she'd obviously never been at a real court – but she'd seen depictions of them, and this man looked just like one. He was small, hunched and had an ugly, sharp face. He'd apparently applied make-up, his skin more pale than was natural, with red blush highlighting his cheeks and a bright red lip stick turning his mouth into a thin, pointed sneer. A cap with bells made the image complete. And this guy was taking care of the Night Mother? Tch, pull the other one.
"Yes, yes," Astrid said, her tone telling that she shared Siari's sentiment. "You've told me that ten times already. But you have to understand we can't just blindly believe every harlequin who trundles a coffin in here."
"Ohhh, but Cicero does not lie," the jester whined. "You wound Cicero, lady Astrid. The Night Mother seeks a new Listener. Will you turn her away?"
"I'd never turn away the Night Mother. But I need to know this is really her and not some casket looted from a tomb and hauled in here by a madcap off the streets."
"A madcap Cicero may be," the jester whined in his nasal voice, "but Cicero did not 'loot a casket' from a tomb. As her Keeper, Cicero takes care of our glorious Mother."
Arnbjorn had followed the two, and it was clear he was ready (and probably eager) to tear the harlequin in half if he got an excuse to.
"Festus," Astrid called out. "Festus!" When there was no answer, she looked up at Babette and Siari and said, "You two, instead of eavesdropping, go fetch Festus."
Siari nodded and went off with Babette, who said, "He's probably in the pantry again, stealing food."
And indeed, the old firebug sat in the kitchen, enjoying his latest prize of cinnamon pie stolen from the larder.
"Festus," Babette said, "Astrid needs you in the Atrium."
"Mmph," Festus nodded, his mouth full. He swallowed, and then, through a half-mouth full of pie, mumbled, "Be right there."
"I think she meant now," Babette insisted.
"Fine fine," Festus complied, powdered sugar puffing from his mouth. "Let's go."
"I'll ignore the cream on your shirt," Astrid said, "and pretend I don't know you've been at the cinnamon pie again."
Festus gave a sheepish grin.
"I need you to scry this sarcophagus. Check for strong magic." Her eyes went to the coffin, then back to Festus. With a slightly unsure face, she said, "Do not be too invasive." Hm, looked like Astrid wanted to play it safe, just in case. Siari supposed she didn't become the head of the family by taking irresponsible risks. And in this case, the risk of offending the Night Mother was irresponsible indeed.
Festus nodded. "I shall slyly, spryly scry by thy crypt."
He closed his eyes and frowned. Then frowned deeper. He stood like that for a few moments, before he was knocked back by an invisible force, staggering backwards with a loud "Oof!
In alarm, Siari took his shoulder to steady him, and Astrid did the same on the other side.
"Don't get a heart attack just yet, you old coot," Babette sneered.
"You're one... to talk... old fossil," Festus grunted back. "Some powerful... magic emanating from this sarcophagus indeed," he breathed at Astrid. "No, not powerful... ancient. Just what did you make me scry?"
Astrid went pale and stammered, "This... this uh..."
"Cicero believes you used the word 'madcap off the streets'," the small jester gloated. By Mephala, this wretch had been for real? Siari felt her mouth go dry.
"He... claims to have brought the Night Mother here."
Festus' eyes went wide. "You made me scry the Night Mother? Astrid, have you lost your mind?"
"I... didn't think – "
"Glorious and beautiful dark mother," Festus supplicated, his hands together, "Forgive your humble servant for his transgression, wrought from loyalty for you and your chosen. I knew not what I – "
"Yes, alright," Astrid cut him off.
Even Babette seemed awed, the usually snooty and temerarious brat looking at the sarcophagus in unconcealed reverence. Just to be sure, Siari mustered up an apology in her brain and hoped it would reach the entity in the sarcophagus.
"Our undying loyalty to you, our Mother," Festus went on, his head bowed. "Forgive me for my misguided – "
Astrid's eyes flashed. "That's enough. I told you to scry the sarcophagus, this is my responsibility. I'll answer to the Night Mother, you answer to me."
The jester's gave Astrid a hateful look, his eyes filled with venom, but she didn't notice.
"Forgive us, Mother, we only acted to serve," she said curtly. "Get Nazir and Gabrielle, then provide our glorious Mother with a suitable place in the Sanctuary. Babette, see that Cicero's needs are provided for. As our Mother's Keeper, he should want for nothing."
"Yes, Astrid," Babette said meekly. "If you would follow me, Keeper?" Siari had never seen her so polite and formal. It didn't suit a child her age. And with Festus constantly calling her an old fossil, Siari began to wonder if there wasn't really more to this child than met the eye.
"Not you," Astrid said to Siari when she made to leave with Festus. "With all this commotion," she said with a weary smile, "one would almost forget we have work to do. I've got a job for you. It's a bit different from what we're used to. Come on, I'll fill you in."
Siari couldn't deny that she was glad to be sent on a job, because there would be tensions here soon, with the Night Mother arriving, and tensions were never good for keeping a family together. And she needed this family.
Two men, she detected, a distance above her. Talking to a third man. She was sitting quietly in a juniper bush, listening and gathering information about the place she'd be infiltrating. The three had been talking for a while, and that made her suspect they'd be talking for a while still.
It was evening, she'd made sure to wait until then, and she'd seen very little activity. It seemed the place was running on a skeleton crew at the moment. So much the better. She's only seen one person leave the building, a sour-faced female emptying the dish tub. The mark was inside though, had to be. If her information was correct, and Astrid had assured her it was.
Astrid had also assured her that it was extremely important to leave the paper and make sure the blame for what she was about to do was put firmly at the doorstep of the contractor – at that contractor's explicit request – and not the middle-man that was the Brotherhood. She'd hinted that there might be some... 'blowback'... from what she was about to do, and the Brotherhood had to stay out of it. Siari agreed. Blowback was bad.
The three men were still talking on the plateau above her. Now was the time. Siari stalked to the building, clearing the distance between the juniper bush and the doors without a sound. Carefully, she pushed the door open, just a little bit.
"It's alright, go to bed."
"Can't. They've got me scrubbing the – "
"I'll take care of it. Go on, sleep, you can barely stand."
"Yeah. I guess you're waiting for me to say thank you for your magnanimousness now?"
"Hey, listen. I'm not trying to be patronizing or condescending, alright? I can simply see you're dead tired and I'm offering to help out. That's all."
Silence. "Then um... thanks, I guess."
"I should thank you, you've been working without a break for the entire day."
"That's what you get when you're the only one."
"I know. You won't have to wait long anymore either, I'm sure."
"Yeah. Sure. Night."
"Good night."
Good. One of them was going to bed, the other was staying up scrubbing something Siari didn't give two shits about. She heard footsteps go down to the lower level, then a door open, and the footsteps were gone. Her target would be in the lower level too. She might have to get rid of that one as well. Might be safer.
She stuck her head inside and saw a female wearing a green tunic standing with her back to her, scrubbing the wooden tables. These people sure made an awful mess for being so few in number. She pulled her mask over her mouth and nose and crept past behind the scrubbing woman and tiptoed down the stairs, her enchanted armour muffling all noise. It would be the first room she saw, directly opposite the stairs. She barred the door behind her so no one could follow her and knelt before the door, taking out her lockpicks. She wasn't as good as someone from the Guild, but she could open a lock or two, and these things were ridiculously easy.
"Someone out there?"
Damnit, that voice came from the other room, it had been the other woman she'd heard talking before. This one was going to interfere. So much the worse for her.
Siari shifted position and went to stand next to the door. It'd be best if she could quietly eliminate this one and stash the body somewhere, give her more time to do what she'd come for.
The minute the woman stuck her head out the door, Siari used the grapple Nazir had taught her and hooked her arm around the woman's neck, turning her around so she stood behind her, then dragged her back inside before she realized what happened.
When she was a few steps inside, the woman overcame her surprise and began struggling. Siari had her in a good grip, but her victim was surprisingly strong. When she inhaled to scream, Siari stuck her knife in the side of her throat, feeling the muscles and tendons rip and snap as the blade went in, and then she pulled forward, tearing the knife through her larynx, severing her jugular and carotid, and making it impossible for her to scream.
In her night clothes, the woman gurgled, kicked and thrashed, blood spurting from her throat, but Siari held on, and she could feel her victim's strength waning as she bled out, soaking her top and loincloth with red. Siari felt the woman die, felt the body shake in her grip, all the hopes and dreams this person still had bleeding out of her, her young life spurting from her opened throat. Siari closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling of absolute power that came with taking everything away from another person, feeling the warm body against hers, shaking and convulsing in its death throes. She'd taken everything this woman had, and everything she was ever going to have. This woman had trained, had prepared, had hoped, had dreamed, all of it, to some end only known to her, and now Siari had taken it all away. She'd ended a life, not that of a captive with no hope as she had in the hut with Astrid, not that of an old beggar who merely existed instead of lived, like she'd done on her first job, not that of a worthless bandit thug who had been moments away from being knifed in the back by his associates, but that of a young, alive and healthy person, with things to look forward to, things to prepare for, things to aspire to, and now it was all gone, and Siari revelled in the power.
The woman stopped flailing and clawing, the arms going limp, though her bare feet still feebly kicked, and the rush was over. Siari dumped the dying body on the bed. Its open mouth made a few gasps without drawing air, like a fish out of the water, and one foot moved a few more times, then it lay still, eyes staring at the ceiling. Its smooth, slightly tanned skin was slick with red blood that pooled into the depressions between her well-defined muscles. Muscles all trained and developed for a purpose Siari had now taken from her.
She breathed a quiet sigh of relief. This one had almost made her entire contract go sour. And for it, she'd ended up dying half-naked and covered in her own blood. Siari briefly closed her eyes and thanked the woman for fulfilling her purpose, dying to give Siari her rush.
Then, it was back to business. She wiped the soles of her boots on the bed spread and sneaked back out. On to the mark.
Quietly, she closed the door to the dead-woman's room and crept back to the room next to it, opposite the door she'd barred. This time no one interrupted her, and the lock clicked open, somewhat louder than she'd wanted.
She heard the creaking of a chair in the next room, and boots thudding on the floor. Damn it, he'd heard! How in Oblivion had he heard? Fuck! He'd come through this door, grab his axe, and split Siari in two. Thinking fast, Siari leapt up against the wall, and up again, making her boots and gloves latch on, so she ended suspended upside down on the ceiling.
The man that passed under her had long white hair and a full, white beard, from what she could see. This was the mark alright. All she had to do was wait for the right moment to drop down. When the man put a book back onto a shelf, Siari realized he hadn't heard the lock click at all, but he'd simply come into the antechamber by coincidence. Good. Siari preferred it when her mark was unaware of her presence. She preferred easy kills that didn't put her at risk.
The man took another book, then froze, still looking at the bookcase. He hadn't seen her, couldn't have.
"Come to kill me, have you, little spider?"
Siari felt a rush of warmth go through her.
"I warn you," the man said, still without looking up, "Don't wait until I can reach for my mace, because I show no mercy to assassins."
Siari didn't need a second warning, dropping down from the ceiling and landing on the man's back, drawing the knife Astrid had given her especially for the occasion. Feeling her upper lip pull back behind her mask, she hooked her legs around his waist and her arm around his throat, lifting the knife with the other hand.
The man fought back, smacking his back against the wall, flattening Siari's ribcage and smashing the wind from her, reducing her downward stab to a worthless arm flop. The mark roared, and whirled around, crushing Siari between himself and the other wall, and again her knife failed to come down. Another roar, and the man barrelled backwards, through the door to his bedchamber, and whirled around, trying to throw her off. Her legs lost their grip on the mark's waist, and before she knew what happened, an arm reached for her, grabbing her armour between the shoulder blades and lifting her off his back with strength so overwhelming, her elbow hold just let go, her arm pulled away like a reed.
She felt herself being swung through the air, and she came down on the hardwood floor, every bone in her body exploding in pain.
She looked up, and couldn't believe what she saw. The white-haired man stood spread-legged and adopted a hunched position, his arms by his sides and his hands balled into fists. Siari felt her mouth fall open and her breath stall in her throat. The man was... somehow... gaining mass, his muscles growing, so quickly they split the legs of his trousers and burst through the sleeves of his tunic. His face elongated, and his teeth slowly turned to wicked-looking fangs. Coarse hair was even sprouting from his body.
This was a... this was a...
When the shape-shifting thing raised its leg to step toward her, Siari, without thinking and in a panic, threw the dagger straight at it, not even stopping to consider that the puny dagger wouldn't do anything even resembling damage to this monster.
And yet, when the dagger hit, embedding itself into the creature's shoulder, it let out a sharp cry. It brought its other hand up to the injured shoulder, clawing at the dagger and after a few snatches, getting it out and letting the weapon clatter to the floor. Siari crawled backward, but stopped when she saw what was happening.
It seemed paralyzed, somehow, and as it growled and staggered backward, the transformation it was going through seemed to reverse. Galvanized by the monster's reaction to the dagger throw, Siari sprang back into action, snatching up the dagger and leaping to her feet. She rolled under a clumsy, desperate blow of the beast that had almost fully turned back into a man, and launched herself at his back, again latching onto it. The beast tried to crush her against the wall again, smashing Siari through the door of a cupboard, but this time her knife found true, stabbing her target behind the collarbone, the dagger sinking into the strong, hard trapezium muscle. Her enemy howled in pain, and Siari stabbed again, in the same place.
The thing tried desperately to shake her off, but Siari clung on, bringing the dagger down again and again, stabbing the thing in the back, neck and back of the head, blood spraying onto her mask and the exposed part of her face. She brought the knife down and down and down again, as the man-beast she had latched onto wailed, thrashed and bucked, trying to throw her off in a blind panic.
Eventually, her mark went to its knees and Siari let go, as if dismounting a kneeling horse. The man with the white hair died on his knees, and fell forward, his face bonking into the hardwood floor.
Siari stood looking at the body for a moment, breathing hard as she wiped the blood spatters from her face. She hoped that whatever this man had wasn't contagious. If it even was an illness.
Wait, but hadn't Arnbjorn said...
Yes he had! He'd said he was a werewolf. Siari had taken it for a stupid joke, until she'd established that Arnbjorn wasn't the type to make jokes, and then she'd simply considered it a boast to impress people. But maybe it was actually true. Maybe there really were werewolves. If that was the case, then Arnbjorn would be able to tell her more. If he didn't just tear her arms off for the fun of it.
And Astrid... had she known about the mark? That he was, apparently, a werewolf? Surely Astrid wouldn't have sent her there knowing what she really had to kill. Siari hoped so. It was not something you did to a family member.
But first, she had to get out of here, and fulfil the last part of her contract. The blowback-preventer. Stepping over the dead body of the Companions leader, she fished the folded-up note from her breast pocket: the stylized silver hand logo she had to nail to the door with her knife.
Back outside, she closed the door to the mark's room and held the note against it, lifting the dagger to nail it into the wall.
"Njada? What's all this racket? What have y – "
Oblivion damn it, this cellar had two entrances, it would seem. The one she'd barred and then another one at the end of the corridor. And there, at the foot of those stairs, stood a woman in a green tunic. The one who'd been scrubbing. She must have heard the noise.
"Stop... stop right there!" the woman shouted nervously, but Siari had no intention of stopping. And certainly no intention of getting caught.
When the woman saw the knife in Siari's hand and the blood on her armour, her eyes went wide and she cried in alarm, "Ah... ah... assassin!"
She reached for the shortsword at her belt, and Siari realized there was no way out but through. With a back-handed throw, she made the bloodied knife sail through the air, as Nazir had taught her, and by a combination of training and luck, the knife found its target, embedding itself square in the young woman's chest. She let out a loud "AH!" and staggered backward, then her knees buckled and she went to the ground.
The door behind Siari shook in its jamb as weight was thrown against it, but the bar held. Damn it! More pesky bastards complicating things. She had to finish this and get out. Leave no witnesses.
She sprinted down the corridor towards the fallen woman, and when she reached her, she leapt in the air as high as she could, then came down, her legs uncoiling like a spring, coming down as hard as she could on the hilt of the dagger, her boots impacting the knife even further into her victim's chest, and her weight, light but coming down hard, crushing the ribcage beneath it. Her eyes briefly locked with those of the fallen woman, who let out a loud "AORGH!" as the knife was driven even deeper into her and the fractured ribs ruptured the organs beneath it. The eyes were pleading, asking her why, and again Siari felt a brief rush of power go through her.
"It's barred from the other side!" A woman's voice shouted. "Go around!"
But they'd be too late. Siari was already bolting up the stairs, and as she heard boots pound on the stairs on the far side of the mead hall, she quickly slipped out of the building, and knowing she'd be spotted if she ran for the gates, she hid, lowering herself into the water that flowed through a circular canal dug around a gorgeous blossoming tree. She tucked herself away under the bridge, enduring the cold of the water. Thankfully, the leather armour was water-tight as long as she didn't submerge her head.
Two people came out, a man and a woman, the man with shoulder-length gray hair, and the woman wearing blue war paint across her face. If she'd run, these people would have caught her, especially the woman, and from the looks of them, their armour and weapons, they probably wouldn't go down as easily as those two other girls had, but instead chop Siari into bloody chunks. She watched the two run down into the city centre, torches in hand. Good. They'd find nothing there and give up. And that would be when Siari could just walk on out.
She'd done the job right, the mark was dead, and even though the paper had been left on the floor rather than nailed to the wall, the contractor's message would be crystal clear. In the cold water, Siari took a moment to bask in her pride, knowing that there was no way this would never come back on her.