Chapter 2: Honorhall

My subsequent days at Honorhall Orphanage were no more pleasant than my first. Directly contrary to her nickname, Grelod had not a single ounce of kindness in her withered old frame. She slapped, punched, kicked, and pinched children who were even a second slow on carrying out her orders—and sometimes just because she felt like it. As the newest child in the hall, I received the brunt of her aggression. I think that she preferred victims with some spirit; it made her feel even more important when she hurt someone who could still feel angry about it.

The dozen other children I shared the building with were broken, terrified creatures, beaten into submission through physical violence, poor food, hard work, and cramped conditions. Grelod received a stipend from the jarl of Riften as well as from Jarl Ulfric, but where most of that money went I have no idea. She certainly wasn't prone to parting with a septim on our behalf if she didn't have to.

We ate watered-down beet soup and hard, days-old bread. Meat was something that my mother could afford for us only rarely, but Grelod's choice of fare was a hair better than starvation. It was worsened by the smells coming from the kitchen; every day, Grelod's overworked and harried assistant would spend most of her time cooking Grelod's meals, which were inevitably rich and hearty affairs. While we quietly spooned in our wretched soup and tried to soak the bitter bread in it to soften it up, she would sit at her own table at the front of the room, drinking honey-sweetened tea and eating roast chicken or marinated beef. She always had food left at the end of her meals—which she had Constance collect up and primly throw to the dogs outside.

The first night at Honorhall, I wanted to cry. That sensation only grew over the weeks that followed, and not just from the beatings or hunger. The sheer unfairness of it all galled me. My life had always been hard but I had never before been forced to sit in the presence of plenty while it was gleefully denied to me. My mother had never beaten me. A canker of real hate began to grow in my heart, and I think that if I hadn't found some release it would have eventually killed me. I even grew to hate my mother a little for leaving me alone, for leaving me in the hands of Grelod. Nightmares haunted my sleep and my days began to blur into a gray haze.

I think I might have lost my mind if it hadn't been for Constance. I certainly would have lost my life.

Constance Michel was Grelod's assistant, a young Imperial woman. Her brown hair hung down into her prematurely aging face where it served to only partially obscure a look that bespoke years of abuse and pain at Grelod's hands. I wondered sometimes if she was an orphan like us, only one who had never been adopted nor had the strength to get out from under Grelod's shadow some other way. She was meek and kind and much loved by the children. Her greatest flaw was that she would hear no ill words spoken of Grelod. The first time I tried to say something to her about the old hag, she would only respond that Grelod was old and set in her ways. The second time, she simply got up and walked out of the room while I stared after her, mouth hanging open in shock.

I didn't try a third time. I realized by then that it was a lost cause. And so I endured Grelod's torments and jibes and cruelties. Constance was a balm to most of the children, but especially to me. While most of the other children were Nords, boys and girls who had lost their parents in the recent Stormcloak Rebellion, I was an Imperial. To people back in Windhelm, that made me the enemy; Constance was like me, an outcast in a distant land. She didn't resemble my mother at all, but she had some of the same kindness, the same grace. It was enough to get me through the days.

One day, I was sweeping the hallways—one of a dozen interminable chores that Grelod insisted be done, but which could never be done well enough for her pleasure—when I noticed Grelod's study door was hanging open. In curiosity, I poked my head in; by then, I really should have known better, but the old hag hadn't yet beaten everything out of me. I still had my curiosity. Inside the room was a large desk and a pair of shelves littered with books. My hand crept out toward the dusty spines but before it could reach them, Constance's hand snared mine. I hadn't even heard her creeping up behind me. My gasp of fear became a cough as the dust from the books went up my nose and down my throat.

"What are you doing in here?" Constance finally asked me when my coughing fit passed.

"The door was open, and I was just-"

"Just nothing," she scolded; her voice barely above a whisper. "Even I'm not supposed to be in here." She started scooting us both toward the door. "If you want something to read, I can loan you one of my books."

"I can't read," I admitted. "I was wondering if the books had any pictures in them." Constance paused, her back to me.

"You really don't know how to read?" Her voice made me feel ashamed in a way that all of Grelod's beatings and mockery hadn't. My face flushed red and I began to shake. The tears welled up again, and I tried to force them away. I hadn't cried since the days after my mother died… and thinking about her suddenly tipped me over the edge. I started bawling away, tears and snot running down my face as I tried to brokenly hold it all in. Constance turned to me, her face wrenched up with real concern, and that just made me cry all the harder.

She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around me, trying to stifle my sobs. Her words of comfort were nonsense to me; I was beyond understanding them. By the time I finally was able to make some semblance of order out of the sounds she was making, I realized that she wasn't just trying to comfort me. She was trying to warn me.

"What's this troll shit?" Grelod's harsh voice came from behind me. I jerked around to face her, my cheeks and chin still smeared with tears. Constance quickly stood up and stepped away from me. However kind she was, I was alone when it came to Grelod. "Tears? What's the matter, new kid? Someone steal your sweet roll?"

"Like you would ever give us sweet rolls, you old bitch," I said without thinking. Grelod's face lit up in fury, and her curled up fist took me right in the jaw. I didn't just see stars this time—the whole world turned black, and the swirls of color and points of light were like seeing the whole night sky at once. She screamed in rage as she dropped to her knees, grabbing my collar with one hand and hitting me in the face again with the other. This time, my shirt tore all the way down the front and I could taste blood. Grelod was usually pretty careful to not mark us up, just in case a guard or city official stopped by, but this time she didn't seem to care.

If Constance hadn't stepped in, I think Grelod really would have killed me. The old woman hit me at least a couple more times, but it might have been more. I had pretty well greyed out by then. I could barely make out what Constance was saying, but it seemed panicked and horrified. Finally, Grelod stood up and stepped away from me. I half sat up, turned my head, and spat out two teeth that she had knocked loose.

"You'll be cleaning that up," she said, shaking her bloody hand as though she had been dirtied by touching me. I wanted to say something witty, but all the words seemed to have been knocked out of my head. Grelod stomped away, and Constance immediately crouched down to look at me. One of my eyes was swollen shut, my jaw hurt, and I was three teeth short; I must have swallowed the last one. I was in no condition to stand, but Constance managed to pick me up gingerly and carry me to the small, sequestered room we used as an infirmary.

"You'll have to stay in here until you heal up," she said as she tucked me into the bed. She stripped off my ripped shirt and got some water and bandages to attend to my injuries. "At least the teeth came out clean. We don't have to worry about infection from broken roots." Her voice shook and she was clearly near tears herself, but her hands were steady as she wiped away my blood and tears. Finally, she looked me right in the eyes. She seemed to come to some sort of decision; her shakes stopped and her tears vanished.

"While you're recuperating, Grelod won't be able to put you to work. I'll have to take some time out every day to make sure you're healing properly, since Grelod doesn't like dealing with… sick children." My relief must have been clear on my face because she smiled wanly. "And while you're recovering, I'll teach you how to read. It's something everyone should know. And maybe one day, when you're out of this place, it will help you."

After a little while of sitting with me in silence, Constance poured me a glass of water and left the room. I sipped at it gingerly. Constance might have come to a conclusion, but so had I. By this point, I knew that Grelod was never going to let us be adopted. She liked having her own personal cadre of slaves and whipping boys too much to ever let any of us go. I could stay here until I was sixteen, like I was supposed to, and wind up as beaten and soulless as some of the children were. Worse, I could wind up like Constance: too beaten to even know how broken I had become. Or I might open my mouth again at the wrong moment when Constance wasn't around—and Grelod really would kill me.

To the Void with that.

Sitting there in that small, cramped room, on a hard and smelly mattress, I had finally decided that I needed to run away. If I was going to survive, I had to escape.

It took me almost a month to heal from Grelod's savage beating. Honestly, I probably was healed up in only a couple of weeks, but I was happy to play the malingerer and Constance seemed content to let me. I ate up her teaching like a starving man, my mind drinking in the letters and words. I made connections between concepts quickly; even Constance seemed surprised at the rate I learned the written word. I make no claims at being a particularly clever child—honestly, in some ways I'm still pretty slow, especially when it comes to understanding people. I just have a knack for picking up practical skills quickly. And at that point, reading was a particular obsession for me.

Even when Constance wasn't making time to teach me, I was studiously poring over the books she left in my room. Sometimes the print swam and my head ached from the intensity of the studying, but it was a pale and distant pain compared to my knitting bones and the three new teeth that had started poking through my bruised gums. I could overcome pain.

On my third day in the infirmary, while my left eye was still swollen shut and it hurt too much to talk for more than a couple of minutes at a time, I was surprised to see the door open with someone besides Constance behind it. For a second, I was terrified that it was Grelod come to finish me off before I could heal, but I quickly put that thought down. The new visitor was too short to be Grelod or Constance; in fact, it was one of the other kids, a Nord girl named Runa Fair-Shield.

I recognized her, of course. Our little "family" was too small for me to not know all of the other kids by name. But we weren't particularly close. I doubt we had exchanged more than a dozen words in the time I had been at Honorhall. She glanced around the room to make sure I was alone and quickly slipped inside. She was taller than me even though I guessed we were about the same age, and her brown hair was tangled and matted. Baths were few and far between at Honorhall so we all smelled, but she seemed dirtier than usual. She was cradling a small wrapped bundle under one thin arm.

"Hey," she said after closing the door behind her, her voice barely above a whisper. She sat on the stool that Constance used when she was giving me reading lessons and put the package down on the bed next to me. It was wrapped in scrounged brown butcher paper and frayed twine. "Heard about what old Grelod did to you. You got lucky."

"I feel pretty lucky," I muttered through cracked lips, wincing at the effort. "Old bitch almost killed me." Runa put a hand up over her mouth in shock. After a moment she started to shake. At first I thought she was scared that Grelod might have overheard me talking, but I finally realized that she was stifling giggles. I smiled a gap-toothed smile at her, which just made her shake even harder. I thought it was pretty funny too, but it hurt too much to laugh.

"Seriously, though," she finally said, wiping tears out of her eyes, "you're lucky. Last kid that mouthed off to Grelod never woke up. Just went into the infirmary with a crack on her head and we never saw her again." I felt my stomach sink at the revelation. If Grelod had really been responsible for a child's death, then I had made the right decision to get clear of Honorhall—and it couldn't happen too soon.

"Did you really call her a bitch to her face?" Runa asked. I nodded my assent. "Wow. Hroar said he heard you say it. He was dusting the classroom a couple doors down. I didn't know if I should believe him or not. No one stands up to old Grelod." Her shining eyes in her dirty face made me feel increasingly uncomfortable. I hadn't done anything noble or heroic; I had just opened my dumb mouth without thinking and almost gotten killed from it. I wanted to tell her that, but just the thought of talking that much made my jaw ache.

Runa started unwrapping the package. Inside the brown paper was a loaf of bread and a couple of sausages—real sausages! My mouth started to water right away even through the pain.

"Where-?" I started to ask, before Runa shushed at me. She cocked her head to listen to the hallway. When she was satisfied that she heard no footsteps, she looked back to me.

"Samuel gets to go on shopping trips with Constance to help her carry things. Sometimes, he manages to bring back… extras." I must have been gaping at the idea of stealing, because Runa scowled at me. "What? If Grelod fed us better, we wouldn't need to steal. Anyway," she continued, beginning to break up the bread and sausages into smaller pieces with her fingers, "we all agreed that since you stood up to Grelod and lived to tell about it that you should get some of the bounty."

I started to shake at the idea of real food. It felt like it had been forever. Runa passed over a little more than half of the meager loaf and meat, torn into neat, bite-sized pieces. I picked up some of the bread and made a careful attempt at chewing it; my eyes widened at discovering that it was fresh—well, at least fresh enough that it wasn't hard as a rock. I savored the food slowly, partly because my stomach wasn't used to meat anymore and partly because eating solid food pained my mouth and neck.

"Are all the other kids in on this?" I asked, wondering if I had made a mistake by not getting to know the others better before now.

"No," Runa said, her face dark and more than a little angry. "Only a few of us know. We used to have an easier time of it, since Grelod would rotate the older kids around on outside duties. Sometimes, she would even send two of us out to help Constance. Then someone ratted us out." She shook her head at the memory. Grelod hated children to show any sign of rebellion; it must have stuck in her craw something fierce to have a little conspiracy going on under her nose.

"It's a bigger risk now," she continued, "so only a few of us are in on it. Samuel pinches stuff when he can get away from Constance at the market, and the rest of us pitch in where we can. Hroar's pretty good at slipping out without Grelod noticing, and I keep watch and run interference. We figured that we'd let you in on it. You already got the stripes, so you might as well enjoy some benefit." She popped part of a sausage into her mouth and chewed merrily. At my slight smile, she laughed. "I'm taking a risk by being here, so it's only natural I get some reward too."

"I didn't say anything," I said with a smile.

I finally felt myself relaxing a bit, and I realized that I had spent the last days in utter terror. Between the lessons and the studying I had managed to keep myself distracted, but being around Runa just made some of my tension flow away. As the fear flowed away, a new sensation flowed in to replace it: guilt. How could I be planning to escape and leave behind other children for that old monster to abuse? My face flushed with shame, which Runa must have interpreted as exhaustion because she stood up and offered to let me get back to sleep. As she started to walk out, making sure to hide the remaining butcher paper and twine in her dress, I couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore.

"I'm getting out of here," I said with what I hoped was confidence. "If you want, I can try to include you guys." Runa turned back to look at me, her eyes full of pain beyond her years.

"That would be nice, Aventus," she muttered. "But no one gets out of here. It's like Cidhna Mine." I didn't get the reference and she didn't explain it, but the implication was clear enough to me. "If you try to run, the guards will just send you right back here—and then Grelod will be even madder."

"Then I'll kill her before she kills me," I said with sudden ferocity. I don't know where it came from, but Runa turned around to look at me. She seemed caught between fear and hope.

"Grelod's a monster. You need a hero to kill a monster," she said sadly, "and we're just kids." As she walked to the door, she promised to bring me more food if she could, to help build up my strength.

After Runa was gone, I thought about my sudden threat—and I realized that I meant it. If Grelod raised her hands to me again, I would fight back. Unfortunately, I also realized that Runa was right. Grelod was an old woman but I was a little kid, and I was no match for her in strength or size. The thought of sneaking into her room and killing her in her sleep tempted me briefly, but she kept her room locked tight whenever she was in it. I guess someone must have tried what I was thinking of in the past for her to be so worried about her safety while she slept.

Even with all of the potential problems, the idea of somehow killing Grelod stayed with me. Without the old bitch in charge Constance would be free to treat everyone better, or maybe the jarl of Riften would appoint someone new. Whoever it was would have to be better than Grelod; there's no way they could be worse. It would solve so many problems.

Nonetheless, I had to focus on the immediate problems: getting better and getting out. Once I was free, I could… And that's as far as the line of thought went. I had to worry about me before worrying about anyone else, even people who I wanted to help. The next month was a vacation from Grelod, but it was also training. I ate up the knowledge and the purloined food alike to make myself stronger—strong enough to save everyone.

No matter what my intentions might have been, my ambitions would probably have been for nothing if it hadn't been for the intervention of chance—or perhaps fate.

Right after I had gotten out of the infirmary, we were scheduled for a visit from a city official. A steward or a housecarl or something. It didn't matter to me so much except that it put Grelod into a fouler mood than usual since she couldn't afford to take out her aggression on the kids until after the inspection. Everything had to be spick and span or we could expect to suffer once it was over.

On the day of the inspection I was assigned to floor-sweeping duty and happened to be near Grelod's office when she came rushing out of it with Constance hot on her heels. She didn't even spare me a glance as she stalked by; unless she was actively abusing us, children were barely more than scenery to her. I glanced the way they had come and noticed something unusual. It took me a moment to process what my eyes had picked up on: Grelod had forgotten to close her office door. She normally kept it locked when she wasn't in it, but she must have forgotten this time.

I looked down the hallway and back to the office. I made my decision and quick-walked through the open doorway. I closed it most of the way, leaving a small crack to give me warning if someone came close. I kept the broom with me; if Grelod came back early, I could claim that I was just sweeping her office and didn't know any better. I would get beaten either way, but claiming that I was trying to be useful might mitigate it. Or it might not; she could just beat me to death.

The fear of getting caught made the blood pound in my ears but it felt like I could hear everything going on in the house around me. My skin prickled with sweat. Rather than waste time creeping around slowly once the door was closed, I moved in a quick half-crouch directly to Grelod's desk. I checked every drawer for loose coins or anything valuable I could sell at the market. It held nothing but papers and a few loose hairpins. There was a large chest next to the desk but it was locked. My feeble attempt to pick the lock only left me with broken hairpins and no clue what was inside.

I was almost ready to give up when I noticed that Grelod had a pair of low bookshelves. What does a monster read? I wondered. Checking the shelf left me even more disappointed. All of the "books" except two were just carved wooden covers set up to make the shelf look full. One of the real books was a horrible-sounding text called The Pig Children, while the other one had a title that interested me more: A Kiss, Sweet Mother. I thought maybe it was a book of poems or fairy tales or something, so I opened it quickly. The first lines chilled me to the bone, and I can quote them from memory to this very day.

"So you wish to summon the Dark Brotherhood?" the text asked. "You wish to see someone dead? Pray, child. Pray, and let the Night Mother hear your plea."

Looking back and forth one last time to make sure I was alone, I took my biggest risk yet and slipped the book into the waist of my pants. I walked back into the hallway, my heart in my throat, and barely made it back to my bed before I heard Grelod pounding back through the hallways to her office. Once I was there, I sat heavily on the bed and dared to take out the book. I read it cover to cover and back again, desperately working to make sure my shaky grasp of the written word was telling me the truth.

I wanted to see someone dead. So I needed the Dark Brotherhood. It was as simple as that.

Well, not that simple. There were ingredients I needed, words to be said, and payment to be offered. Most of the ingredients were things I could get easily enough—candles, a knife, nightshade flowers. But the effigy for the prayer had to include a real human heart and bones. Where would I get that?

A thought jumped into my mind then, a terrible thought born of desperation and need. I quashed it down as fast as I could, even knowing it was the only way I could achieve my dreams. One step at a time, I told myself. The first thing I had to do was escape, and now that I knew how to eliminate Grelod from the picture, it was worth doing—immediately.

With Grelod busy and most of the other kids occupied, I quickly worked to gather up a few supplies. I stole a handful of beets from the kitchen, along with a pair of crusty loaves of bread. If I hadn't been planning on leaving that very night, I never would have been so bold. Next, I took the thin sheet from my bed and tore it in places, then tied the ends to create a crude cloth backpack. I wrapped the food in scraps from the sheet, then tucked it into the pack along with the book and my extra shirt and pants.

"You're going, aren't you?" came a voice from behind me. I spun around, ready to bolt, when I saw Runa standing there in the doorway.

"Yeah," I said, going back to my task. "Tonight." I shrugged the pack onto my back, testing its weight and sturdiness. Honestly, I didn't expect it to last long, but neither would my food. The only crucial thing was the book, as far as I was concerned.

"She'll kill you," Runa insisted.

"She'll kill me if I stay," I told her. "We both know it. I can't keep my mouth closed." I finally turned to look at her full on. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. "I'll be okay, I promise."

"What about the rest of us?" she asked. "You said you would do something. I shouldn't have expected-" Before she could get any further, I walked up to her and grabbed her shoulders. She stopped, confused.

"I'm going for help, Runa." I looked her right in the eyes and tried to sound more confident than I felt. "There are people who can help us. They're called the Dark Brotherhood. I found a book about them in Grelod's office. It says they're assassins who help people who pray hard enough." Runa gasped at the word "assassins," but I kept talking. "I promise you, I'll find the Dark Brotherhood and send them here to kill old Grelod. I promise I'll save all of you."

"I don't believe you," Runa whispered, but her eyes betrayed her. Her tears were gone and she looked at me now with something like awe. "No one ever escapes. No one ever helps."

"I'll escape," I insisted. "With your help, I'll escape. And then I'll find the Brotherhood and have them come back and save all of you from Grelod." I breathed deep, knowing this would be the hardest part. "But like I said, I'm going to need your help. Yours and Samuel's and Hroar's. I need you to show me how to get out of here, and I need someone to keep a watch for me while I get out. And if you can, I need supplies to make it back…"

"Back where?" Runa demanded, pushing out of my grasp. "If you go back to Windhelm, they'll just catch you and send you back here."

"Not before I find the Brotherhood. Even if they send me back, even if Grelod kills me, I'll find them and have them save you. I swear it."

"Don't make a promise to a Nord you can't keep," she said gravely.

"I wouldn't dream of it," I replied with a smile. She smiled back, and that's when I knew I had her. I'm not that good at understanding people, but I'm pretty good at getting them to like me. That was the first time I made a promise without knowing if I could keep it or not, but it certainly wasn't the last.

As lights-out approached, Runa got the other kid-conspirators together and explained what I was going to do to them. With Runa's endorsement, none of them seemed nearly as doubtful of me as she had been. The plan was a simple one: with Runa standing lookout Hroar would lead me to his escape route, a place where the log walls had partly separated, hidden from view by a cupboard. Samuel gave me some pointers on which market stalls were easy touches, and passed me a small collection of food and a worn kitchen knife. I thanked each of them gravely and promised again that I would send help.

The actual escape was surprisingly easy. Grelod slept deeply in a locked room and rarely checked up on us after dark. All of the doors were locked and none of the windows opened, so it was supposed to be impossible to get out without her knowing. As I pulled on my pack and got ready to push through the small opening to the outside world, Runa suddenly hugged me. "For luck," she whispered in my ear before pushing me toward the escape route.

I managed to slip through, though it was tight going and I tore my shirt on the way out. Once outside, I tossed my pack over the fence and climbed over with the assistance of a low-hanging tree branch. The cobbled stone streets of Riften pulsed with cool fog late at night from moisture drawn up from the canal. I froze for a moment, sure that I could see a guard approaching me, but a sudden cry of "Stop, thief!" from the nearby market square drew the man away from my position. I breathed a sigh of relief and quickly ran down the stairs to the canal. It was a shame that I couldn't stay to steal a few more supplies, but I was more worried about getting caught than stocking up.

The Riften canal was once a great passage for river traffic, but the silt and city sludge that had accumulated in it over the years had turned it into a sluggish, shallow cesspool. I didn't look forward to wading through it but I couldn't imagine that the gate guards would let me out traveling alone. Holding my pack over my head, I waded through the shallowest part of the canal, which still came up to my chest, to the iron grates that blocked the city from the outside. Fortunately, they were designed to keep out large river creatures and boats, not small children, so slipping between the bars was easy.

On the other side, I had to splash through more open water, terrified that someone was going to hear me and come to investigate. Finally, after what felt like forever, I managed to wade up onto shore. From the chest down, I was sodden wet and covered in blackish gunk, but I had managed what I thought would be the most difficult part of my journey. From here, I would just keep to the roads north and move off the road whenever I heard horses or wagons coming. I still had my few septims that Fanar had given me, carefully hidden away these last six months, so I could afford to spend money if I found somewhere to spend it.

In my time at Honorhall Orphanage, spring had given way to summer, so it was warm and pleasant as I walked north at night. I was filthy and scraped and damp, but in high spirits for the first time in months. Against all odds, I had survived the hell of Honorhall and now I was headed home. Everything I needed was there. My house had candles and knives, and nightshade grew wild around the city; I had seen them while out playing a few times and my mother told me to avoid them because they were poisonous.

Yes, all of those things were there, as well as the most important part of the Black Sacrament: my mother's body. As her only son, I could get access to her resting place in the Hall of the Dead. She would be my offering to the Night Mother to claim Grelod's life. She would have wanted it that way, I think—protecting me even after death.

With thoughts of sacrifice and freedom in my mind, I began the long road home.

…to be continued…