Chapter 4: A Kiss, Sweet Mother

I spent two terrible days on the streets of Windhelm before I managed to get into my own house. It rained and sleeted for almost every hour of those two days, which I mostly spent sitting on top of a pair of barrels under an arch in an alleyway, trying desperately to stay dry and warm. When it let up a little, I would wander down to the docks with my line and hooks to catch fish, cooking them with bits of broken wood and rags that I fished out of trash bins. Those bins also provided me with a few bits of thin wire and pins that I could bend into makeshift lockpicks.

At night, I would crouch in front of my front door, working with the shabby picks in a vain effort to get the lock open. Every time I saw an approaching lantern, I would drop everything and scurry into a nearby alley to wait for it to pass. I must have broken nearly a dozen pieces of rusty metal trying to pick the lock before finally getting it to catch and turn on the second night. It was with exhausted elation that I finally walked back inside my house.

Everything was as I had left it, if dustier. My mother's bed had been stripped of its mattress and bedclothes, which I imagine they had done to avoid any possibility of her sickness spreading. Seeing the empty frame struck me with a sudden sense of melancholy, and I found myself kneeling by the bed as I had done so often while my mother had been in her last days. Tears welled up in my eyes but I refused to let them fall. I choked back the bitterness and anger, feeling them burning in my stomach and flushing my face. Without thinking about it, my lips started moving.

"Sweet mother, sweet mother," I whispered softly. As I knelt next to my mother's deathbed I wondered if I could go through with it. Could I really… do what needed to be done? Even then, I didn't want to think of it directly. It was a sacrilege… Or was it sacred? The thoughts raced around in my head as the words spilled off my lips, those same two words over and over again until they became meaningless. I became dimly aware that the room was spinning around me—and then I collapsed.

I vaguely recalled dreams of falling through an endless void, falling and falling forever. Faces sometimes loomed up out of the darkness, and voices called my name or taunted me. I remember dreaming of my hands around Grelod's neck while she laughed at me. I dreamed of my mother laying in her bed and cradling me gently—but she was a withered corpse instead of a living woman.

When I awakened I was stiff and sore and too hot. I had slept through the night and much of the next day, and I recognized that I was very sick. Months on the road had worn down my body and mind, and spending two solid days in the rain and cold had finally pushed me over the edge from simple exhaustion to actual illness. I dragged wood from the bin to the fireplace and got a fire going to warm up the frigid chambers, then pulled every blanket I could find out of the cabinets. I dragged the mattress from my bed's frame to the floor in front of the fireplace and threw the blankets over it. By the time I finished, I was shaking and weak.

Even though I felt like I was on fire already, I knew that I would soon be freezing when the fever ran its course. I ate the last of the dried food from my backpack and curled up on top of the blankets to rest. When the shivers woke me, I crawled under the blankets; when the fever came back, I crawled out from under them to let the waning fire dry the sweat from my skin. That night, I crept out long enough to bring in water from a nearby rain barrel and slaked my thirst. Then I slept through another day.

When the fever finally broke for real, I crawled out of bed and made my way to my mother's mirror, her most prized possession, and looked at myself. I barely recognized myself in it. With my shirt off, I almost looked like a corpse myself; I had no fat left on my body, and I could see my ribs through the skin. My hair was too long, but lank and limp. I was going to have to cut it if I was going to be able to go out in public during the day; adults could wear their hair as long as they wanted but young boys with long hair were rare enough to be memorable.

I didn't want to be memorable. I wanted to blend in, to be forgotten. It was the only way I would avoid getting sent back to Honorhall, the only way I could accomplish what I had set out to do.

The next day, I started the journey from sick orphan back to respectable city kid. I found my mother's shears and chopped off as much of my hair as I could; it would draw less attention to have a short, bad haircut than long, uncut hair. I changed from my orphanage rags—which were pretty well beyond salvation at that point—into my own clothes from the closet. I couldn't help but notice how tight they were getting and made a mental note to spend some of my dwindling septims on new clothes. If I bought clothes that were a couple of sizes too big, it would be a long time before I outgrew them and I could tuck in a shirt or roll up the pants to make them seem the right size. After how many times I had been surprised on my journey, I promised myself that I would be better about thinking ahead.

It was a good promise, albeit one quickly broken.

Once I was cleaned and trimmed, I left the house—during the day for the first time since I got back. I was prepared to bolt and run if anyone seemed surprised or even looked at me too long, but Windhelm was a busy city and no one even glanced my way. My only goal that first day was to make my way to the market and pick up food. I would have preferred to go fishing and conserve my funds, but I was still too weak to hold a line. I bought fresh vegetables and a few cuts of meat. None of the vendors recognized me, and one even commented on what a sweet boy I was to run errands on a gloomy day.

After my success at the market I finally started to relax. I spent a week just resting and recovering from my ordeal. When I felt up to it, I went fishing. When I didn't, I bought food—with a careful eye to how few coins were left in my emergency funds. I sometimes played with the neighborhood children, boys and girls who were younger than I had known before I left and who didn't know me. And I read the book.

The pages had become puffy with moisture and the cover was soft in places, but the book had survived the trip. I went over the ritual over and over again. It was clear what was required, and what I had to do. The end of the book, parts I hadn't really been able to read before, were becoming clearer to me now as well. The ritual would call an assassin, but I would still have to make a payment of some kind to them. That was worrisome.

Except for a few scant septims, I was broke. The only things in the house that were worth anything were my mother's mirror and an old silver dinner plate that my mother had once told me was a family heirloom. I remembered that she had fretted about selling it when things were so desperate that last winter, but since it was still in its hiding place in the bottom of the kitchen cabinet, I could only guess that she had finally decided to keep it. As I fished it out and unwrapped it, my eyes blurred with angry tears. If she had sold the stupid thing, she might not have had to work in the winter—she might still be alive. Was a plate worth my mother's life?

If not my mother's life, was it worth Grelod's?

I rewrapped the plate and put it back in its hiding place. The time had come at last to make my decision. I could hide out in my house for the next five years, fishing and scrounging to stay alive until I was legally old enough to own my home and take a real job. I could learn a trade or join the army after that, if the Stormcloak Rebellion was finally put down. Or I could carry through with my promise to Runa and the others—taint my soul, like the priests of the Divines talked about when they preached in the streets.

As I gathered my clothes and dressed for the day, I realized that I had already made my decision long ago. The moment that I found the book and kept it for myself instead of returning it, I had already decided what I was going to do. Now it was just a matter of living up to my decision.

It was time.

The rain and drizzle of my first days back in Windhelm had finally settled into the late autumn flurries and snowstorms common to the city. I made a mental note to start scavenging firewood at night once I was done with my tasks. For now, though, I had to count on one random factor to make my plan work—that the priestess of Arkay from the Hall of the Dead wouldn't remember a single little boy after almost a year.

I wandered through the streets, which were still bustling even in the cold and snow, until I came to the sunken stairs that led into the Hall of the Dead. For some reason, it was Nord tradition to keep people buried tombs, rather than burning them or burying them in the ground as my mother said Imperials preferred. Honestly, I didn't see the point of either way—dead was dead, and rituals for the body were just ways of appeasing the survivors. Still… the dead bothered me. They were a reminder of my mother, a reminder of the unfairness of life.

Putting all that aside, I pushed my way through the heavy doors into the Hall of the Dead. The priestess was in the entry chamber, speaking to a bereaved-looking older couple. The man was stern and grim-faced, while his wife was trembling and holding on to her husband's arm like she could collapse at any moment. From where I had come in, I could only hear bits and pieces of their conversation.

"…a terrible thing…" the priestess murmured, glancing over as I closed the door behind me. "…so young… all the arrangements…" She waved at me to go on in to the crypts without giving me another look. I was so surprised that I nearly froze in place before recovering and walking on. As I moved past them, I wondered what tragedy might have brought the couple here today and if anyone could ever make it right.

More than that, though, I started to think that all of my worry and fear about getting caught had been for nothing. Ever since I had been back in Windhelm, not a single adult had looked at me twice. I kept my head down and went about my business quietly—and that's what adults wanted from children. As I descended into the chilly depths beneath the city, my way lit by guttering torches, I began to realize the potential in being beneath the notice of other people. It wasn't just about staying out of Honorhall anymore; now, I was actually thinking about what could be possible if I kept my wits about me.

I was so deep in my thoughts that I almost missed the turn to go to my mother's resting place. It was a small niche cut into the stone walls of the catacombs, a tomb for a pauper. She was wrapped in a linen shroud that mercifully concealed her desiccated features. Lining the wall of the niche behind her were small jars that I knew would hold her internal organs, which had to be removed before embalming. She would lay here, her flesh turning to dry paper and stretching tight across her bones, until the niche was needed for some other penniless soul. Then the priests would remove the body, place her skeleton into a sealed urn, and move it to some forgotten corner of the Hall of the Dead.

Of course, that would never happen now. Not if I succeeded at my goal.

I hadn't expected to see any offerings—I hadn't been able to make one on my short visit the year before, and we had no other family—but I was shocked to see dried flowers laid across her breast. They were far from fresh, but the fact that someone had cared enough to leave them touched me. I wondered briefly if it might have been Angrenor, but I decided it didn't matter.

I quickly pulled my backpack from under my coat and pulled out the knife concealed in the bottom of it. I had to work quickly. The priestess being distracted by more bereaved petitioners was a useful coincidence, but the odds of anyone coming to this part of the catacombs were low at the best of times. Few people enjoyed being among the dead, and even Nords who honored their ancestors did so only occasionally.

Moving with precision, I cut away the linen covering my mother's corpse. I expected to feel something when the cloth fell away to reveal the brown, dried flesh, but the truth is that I could not make any sort of mental connection between this leathery object and my vital, beautiful mother. No, my mother was gone—what lay before me was only a husk, empty of anything that might make it real to me. That feeling of disconnection was aided by how thoroughly the last year had stripped her of flesh. Only a few scraps still clung to her skull, along with some brittle strands of hair. Most of the body was just a skeleton. Which was precisely what I needed.

Once the linens had been cut free I folded them up into a wad and stuffed them into another niche, hiding them behind another corpse's burial urns. Then I pulled the skeleton apart, folding it where I could to make it fit neatly into my backpack. Finally, I moved all of the urns from my mother's niche to other niches, not adding more than one to any given set. When I got to the last urn, the one I needed, I carefully settled it into the backpack and sealed the top down with twine. Then I closed the whole thing up and tested its weight. The urn was the heaviest thing; my mother had never been a large woman, and her skeleton weighed next to nothing.

With my new burden on my back, I retraced my steps up through the tombs and to the temple above. The priestess was still speaking with the couple, though now they were all sitting down at benches on the far side of the chamber and the woman was weeping openly. Her husband was shaking now, tears silently rolling down his cheeks. The priestess was holding the woman's hands clasped between her own and had her head down in prayer. Making a run across the chamber was briefly tempting, but I put the idea out of my head and forced myself to walk across slowly; only criminals ran.

My slow but confident stride cleared the room in only seconds, but it felt like forever. At any point, any of the three adults could have looked up and asked where I was going with a backpack full to bursting. They might think I was a thief, come to rob the tombs of their offerings, but if they pulled the backpack open what they found would be much worse. Fortunately, all of them were too engrossed with whatever sorrow was playing out to notice me.

As I emerged into the streets and breathed a sigh of relief, I couldn't help but wonder about the people I had seen. They were much older than me, but they seemed just as broken up by whatever had brought them to the Hall of the Dead. Did losing someone ever get any easier, or was every loss just as painful as mine? The thought that chilled me to the bone was wondering if everyone who died had someone mourn for them like that. Would someone weep for Grelod when her heart stopped? Was it right to inflict my pain on another?

In my heart of hearts, I already knew the answer. No one would mourn for Grelod, like no one would mourn for a rabid wolf that had to be put down to protect a shepherd's flock. Killing her would save other lives, and would redeem the suffering felt by others. I felt in my bones a basic truth—that killing one person could solve so many problems. I wondered at the possibilities.

When I got back to the house, I immediately went to the room where my mother's bed had been. Once I had been strong enough to move the frame, I had dragged it into the main room and broken it apart for firewood. That left a large open area for me to do my work in. Bit by bit, I pulled the skeleton out of my backpack, laying it down in an approximation of the original shape. I used my knife to scrape off as much of the remaining flesh as I could and put it next to the dry ribs. I laid out the flowers and arranged the candles in a circle around the effigy.

Lastly, I pulled out the burial urn and steeled my nerve; this would be the hardest part. I untied the twine holding the lid down and tried to pull off the top to no avail. It turned out that it had been sealed in wax, which I had to chisel away with my knife. Once it was open, a foul smell wafted out. I could only guess that it was the smell of the embalming fluid that they had steeped my mother's heart in after they had cut it out of her chest. I felt bile surge up into my throat as I dipped my hands into the murky fluid, and I fought to keep myself from vomiting. My hands finally clasped around what they sought.

Without looking too closely at the grisly organ, I placed it carefully inside the rib cage of the effigy. Then I lit the candles one by one. In their flickering ghost-light I said the words.

"Sweet mother, sweet mother,

Send your child unto me,

For the sins of the unworthy

Must be baptized in blood and fear."

And I waited.

And I waited.

And still I waited.

When no assassin came after the first day, I was slightly disappointed. Still, I told myself that it would take them some time to send someone to me. The book hadn't said how long it would take, and I supposed that they must be pretty busy. I contented myself with the idea that the assassin would come within the week. At most.

After a week had passed with no sign of the assassin, I told myself that it would be no more than a month. Moreover, since the Black Sacrament was crucial to the whole thing, I had to keep saying it as often as possible. That way, the Dark Brotherhood would know that I was serious—that my prayer was heartfelt and real. I left the effigy where it lay and ignored the smell. I procured more candles and made sure that the area was lit day and night. When the Dark Brotherhood finally came, I wanted them to see how serious I was about my petition.

The fact that no assassin had come didn't make me any less sure that it would happen. Indeed, the lack of physical proof only made my faith grow even stronger. An organization as powerful as the Dark Brotherhood must have dozens of contracts to fulfill at any one time. They would get to me in due course. Grelod would die. The other children would be free. I just had to keep the faith.

The Black Sacrament began to fill my every waking thought. I would whisper it to myself out loud even when I was doing other things. I would say it over my meal like a blessing-prayer. I would say it out loud before I left the house, and right after I came home. Eventually, I came to resent the time I spent away from the house catching fish or otherwise finding food. Every minute I was out of the house was a minute that the Brotherhood could have arrived. Would the assassin wait for me if I wasn't there? Could he even find me if I stopped saying the prayer? Such questions haunted me.

The Black Sacrament consumed my thoughts, but most of my days were empty of anything to do. As I had settled into life in Windhelm and relaxed my guard, I found that I could interact with other children without drawing too much attention from their guardians. I had even played with the local kids a couple of times while I was recovering from my trip. The loneliness of the road had changed me in some basic way, something fundamental in the way I looked at other people. While I wanted to be around people from time to time, I functioned fine on my own for the most part.

Now, even as I was afraid to go out of sight of my house, I found myself strangely hungry for company. Most of them were younger than me; the older kids knew me, and I hadn't had any real friends among them, so I thought it was safer to spend my time with the younger ones. We played tag and hide-and-seek and hoops, all games I could play in the streets without leaving sight of my house.

One clear winter day, only Grimvar Cruel-Sea had come out to play because of the cold. I liked Grimvar well enough, and he always had marbles to play with, lovely round glass spheres that caught the light. More than that, he was always outdoors, rain or shine, so whenever I needed to be around someone, he was there. We were in the courtyard near my house that day, shooting marbles on a patch of ice, when a shadow fell across us.

"What's that you were saying, boy?" came the gravelly voice of a Dunmer woman. I looked up into her red eyes and realized that I must have been muttering the prayer to myself as I lined up a shot. I tried to shake my head and murmured that I hadn't said anything when Grimvar piped up.

"He says that a lot, Idessa," Grimvar said, trying to be helpful. "Aventus lost his mom last year, and he prays for her a lot. 'Sweet mother, sweet mother,' all the time." Idessa's face hardened the slightest degree, but it was enough for Grimvar to realize that something was wrong. Idessa stiffly held out her hand to him and he took it, quickly scooping up his marbles as he stood up.

"Sorry, Aventus," he said around a sheepish smile as the woman pulled him up. "I'll see you later."

"You'll do no such thing!" the Dunmer hissed, shooting me a nasty look over her shoulder as she dragged Grimvar away. "I want you to stay away from that boy from now on!"

"Awww, Idessa…" Grimvar whined. The sound trailed off as the two of them walked away, leaving me sitting alone on the cold ground. It was the last time I played with him. From then on, whenever I ventured outside to see if other kids were around, Idessa was always near Grimvar's side—and that put her near the other kids. It was a rare day after that I could even go outside without happening to run into her and her baleful red glare.

Honestly, I didn't blame her. I knew that some Nords hated the Dunmer, and had even pushed them into the worst part of the city to live away from "decent" folk. As an Imperial, I had felt the same sting from hard words and slurs, so I knew what it was like to be despised just because of your race. More than that, I couldn't be angry at Idessa for having seen me for what I really was. I played with the other children out of occasional loneliness, but I wasn't really one of them. Even then I could feel my difference. She saw under the mask and responded to what she had seen there. I was curious how she knew about the Black Sacrament more than mad about losing access to my playmates.

And still I waited.

By midwinter, I was becoming desperate in more ways than one. My throat was raw from saying the Black Sacrament over and over. When the snow was at its worst, I had trouble getting out of the house; some days, the ice was too thick at the docks to even go fishing. I was out of septims and out of options. I was surviving on food scavenged from trash bin at night and my fire was stoked from furniture I had been breaking up piece by piece.

"Sweet mother, sweet mother," I sobbed on a cold winter's night like many that had come before. "Why isn't it working?" I finally cried in frustration. I stared at my mother's skeleton, her bare jawbone seeming to laugh at me and her withered heart staining the wood under it. As the tears built and my own heart came close to bursting, that's when I heard my savior speak for the first time.

"What's going on here?" she asked from behind me.

I spun around and stared up into her face. She was dark-haired and beautiful, not what I had expected from an assassin at all. When I thought about the Dark Brotherhood as people, I thought they would be hard-looking, dangerous men festooned with knives and scars. This woman was… delicate, almost. Her eyes were piercing and blue, and she was wearing a brown dress with fancy embroidery on the hem. If I hadn't known why she had come, I would have mistaken her for just another high-society lady out for a night on the town. Clearly, the Brotherhood knew how to conceal themselves well. I could feel the tears of relief streaming hot down my dirty cheeks.

"Oh, you came!" I exclaimed, my voice quavering. Was it just relief I felt? Or was it the hunger and exhaustion catching up with me. "I knew if I did it enough that you would come." I tried to stand up to go to her, but stumbled and found her suddenly next to me, holding me up in arms that were surprisingly strong. The knife dropped out of my hand and narrowly missed impaling my foot. She guided me to the kitchen table and pulled a wrapped half-loaf out of her large satchel. I found myself tearing into it almost immediately when she pressed it into my hands.

"Why don't you tell me what's going on?" she asked kindly.

"My mother died," I blurted out. The tears were drying up now, but another one leaked out against my will as I said the words I had waited so long to say. "I don't know what happened to my pa. He went to the war and didn't come back. They sent me to the orphanage in Riften. The other kids were nice, but Grelod the Kind…" I shuddered at the memory of that old hag. She passed me a wedge of cheese that I tore into as well before continuing around a mouthful of food.

"Grelod isn't kind. Not at all. She beat us and told us no one loves us and how we'll always be alone. So I ran away and came home. I found a book that told how to do the Black Sacrament, how to call the Dark Brotherhood." The words were just tumbling out of me; I had wanted to be calm and adult in front of the assassin, but I couldn't seem to find my balance. "Please," I begged, "you have to kill Grelod the Kind."

"Sweety," she said with a narrow smile, "I'm not an assassin." Was this part of the process? Did she have to deny who she really was to test me?

"But you came! I did the sacrament and you came!" I insisted. "Please, Grelod is a terrible person. She's a monster!" The woman was just shaking her head slowly. What was I doing wrong? I couldn't lose this chance, not after I had given up so much… I finally realized what I had missed and continued, "I can pay you. I have a reward. I wouldn't expect you to do it for free." At that, she finally agreed. I knew that payment would be crucial!

"I'll see what I can do," she said humbly. "But in return I want you to take better care of yourself. Get more to eat." She wasn't just a magical assassin from the Dark Brotherhood—she was kind too! I blinked and looked away from her.

"I don't have much coin," I lied. In truth, I didn't have any.

"Why don't we look around the house and see what we can find?" she suggested. I didn't know what good it would do; I had ransacked the entire house looking for something to pay her with months ago. Still, it would be good form to go along with her. Anything she found she would probably keep, but for Grelod's death anything was a small price. She looked through the kitchen cabinets and asked me to check the front room.

As I listlessly rifled through the cabinets and drawers, one of them got stuck and wouldn't move. I was sure that I had checked all of these before… hadn't I? After a few moments of pushing and pulling, I finally got the drawer to pull the rest of the way out, revealing a fat leather pouch that clinked when it came free. I stared at it for a minute in shock, unable to believe what I was seeing. Finally, I pulled it open—and a shocked cry escaped my lips. There had to be a hundred septims in it! Where had this much money come from? How had I missed it?

In the end, I could only come to one conclusion: my mother had managed to save up some money that she had never told me about, money that she wouldn't touch to save her own life. Even at the end, she must not have believed that her sickness was that bad. She believed that she was going to get better. She hadn't abandoned me at all. This money was proof of that. No one saved this kind of money if it could be used to save their lives instead. She meant what she had said about getting better and making our lives better. She had just died before she could do those things…

It took me a long time to compose myself enough to tuck the pouch into my pocket and go back to face the assassin again. All of the bitterness and pain I felt was gone at last. Things were going to be okay again, I could feel it. The woman stayed a little while longer before promising that she would come back to check on me soon. My heart surged with joy at the idea that it wouldn't take long before Grelod met her just end.

As she stepped out into the cold winter night, I waved goodbye to my savior. She had never told me her name, and I hadn't asked. As an assassin, I assumed she would have given me a false name anyway. Even if I only ever saw her once more I would be grateful. The knowledge that my mother truly loved me had given me comfort, and the certainty that Grelod's fate was near at hand filled me with new hope. For the first time in over a year, I slept a truly peaceful sleep.

An assassin saved my soul when I was a child. If that had been the end of it, I still would have counted it as the most important moment of my life. Little did I know at the time that it was only the beginning.

…to be continued…