Chapter 8: Sanctuary

"Hold still," Babette murmured as she brought the sharp blades close to my throat. I gulped deeply, nervous about her having them so close to my skin.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" I asked, hoping my voice sounded steadier to her than it did to me.

"Don't be stupid," she snapped impatiently. "I've done this hundreds… I mean, dozens of times." I finally smiled a little at Babette's near-exaggeration. She was always doing that sort of thing—inflating numbers to sound like she had been in the Brotherhood a lot longer than me even though she looked about the same age. After the first time I called her out on it, she had started to get mad and then just giggled and called me silly.

I was so busy musing over how clever I was that I barely noticed the blades whisper together.

"See," she said, leaning close. "All done. You didn't need to be such a baby about it, Aventus."

"I wasn't being a baby," I said as I pulled the towel off my shoulders and leaned toward the nearby mirror to look at my new haircut. "The last time you cut my hair, you nicked my neck and I bled all over the place."

"Hmmm…." Babette mused. "I already apologized for that. Besides, it was your own fault for moving so much."

I looked myself over in the mirror. With my new haircut, so I could look nice for New Life Day, I looked practically respectable. I had come a long way from the long-haired and starving orphan I had been at Honorhall, and almost as far from the ragged-haired and wild street child I had turned into in Windhelm. I couldn't deny that Babette had done a good job; with my cheeks filled out after nearly three months of good meals and my hair cut at a decent length, I looked like what I had finally become—someone with a family to take care of him.

It hadn't been an easy transition, though…

After finishing my crying fit, we left that very night. Hecate bundled me up warmly and put me on her horse, a terrifying black beast with glowing red eyes she called Shadowmere. I was too numb to be afraid and the creature barely acknowledged my presence as she lifted me onto its broad back. Once she mounted up herself, she told me to hold on tight—and we rode like the wind.

The cold night air whipped past us faster than I had ever moved before, and I was struck by a sense of terrible, amazing freedom. Once that passed, I was mostly worried about the cold; even bundled up tightly, the Frostfall winds were like knives on my cheeks, pulling freezing tears from my eyes as we flew across Skyrim. We rode through the night and into the next morning, stopping only briefly to eat a bite and let me grab a short nap.

I had barely closed my eyes when Hecate shook me awake again and put me back on the horse. I had never ridden a horse before, let alone so quickly, so by the time we got to our destination I was exhausted and sore. It was evening again before we reached our destination: a secluded grove in the northern reaches somewhere. I could see the lights of a town in the distance, but the forest was quiet and deep. We dismounted and walked the horses through the damp underbrush until we finally arrived at a sunken rock pit surrounded on three sides by low, stony bluffs.

At first I thought it was a trick of the light or my imagination, but after Nazir lit a torch I could see that I had been right. At the bottom of the gully, flush into the rocks, was a door—a black door. Hecate walked boldly to the door ahead of the rest of us while the Khajit, whose name I still had not heard, took the horses away to some secluded place. As we approached it, I found my blood running cold and my pulse pounding in my ears. It sounded wrong somehow, though; the low thrum sounded like someone else's heartbeat instead of my own.

I nearly screamed when a dead, hollow voice came out of the door, asking "What is life's greatest illusion?"

"Innocence, my brother," she replied.

"Welcome… home…" it rasped before sliding open to reveal a stone stair leading into the earth. I followed my new brothers and sisters into the caverns below. Nazir lit torches and lanterns as he followed, finally illuminating an enormous chamber with stairways climbing up to an overlooking balcony. The walls were decorated with red tapestries emblazoned with the black hand of the Dark Brotherhood, and the chamber was a combination of natural stone and fitted blocks, all held up by mighty wooden beams.

I stared around in open awe. The place was spacious and impressive. A single long table took up much of the middle of the main room, with smaller tables and chairs pushed into the corners. It looked like a place built to be home to dozens; I felt as though the five of us were swallowed up by the vastness of the cavern. I turned in a slow circle, drinking it all in.

"Close your mouth or you'll start attracting flies," Nazir said as he passed me by. I closed my mouth with a snap, but when I looked at him, he winked at me before continuing on.

"We did it!" Cicero shouted happily, his voice echoing off the walls. "We did it!" He grabbed Hecate around the waist and spun her in a circle, stomping his feet rhythmically. The two of them laughed together and danced to music only they could hear, looking deeply into each other's eyes. The whole thing was ridiculous and I couldn't help but laughing aloud.

"Welcome to Sanctuary, little one," the Khajit woman said to me in her rasping voice as she took off her cloak and tossed it onto a pile of similar garb. I finally got my first good look at her; she was a calico-patterned creature with soft-looking, short fur and green eyes. "Get used to the two of them acting like fools all the time. This one," she rumbled, indicating herself with a paw, "is above such things."

"Really, Meena?" asked Nazir. He had come back into the common room carrying an armload of glass bottles, putting them down carefully on the long table. "Then I suppose you're not interested in any of the celebration wine I brought out? I don't seem to recall you being so dour when we welcomed you." Even before he finished the sentence, Meena was grabbing a cup and filling it. She sniffed disdainfully as she walked away. Nazir only chuckled.

"That one's gonna be a handful," he said, watching her tail swish as she walked away.

"Is Meena new too?" I asked. He nodded at me. "Are there any others I haven't met?"

"Just one," he said, and his face looked sad. "She'll be down in a little while, probably." I did a quick count in my head; while my math wasn't great, I was pretty sure I was adding up right this time.

"Are there only six people in Sanctuary?"

"There used to be more of us," Nazir replied, taking a swig from a cup of wine that I hadn't seen him pour for himself. "A long time ago, the Dark Brotherhood was powerful and feared throughout Tamriel. When I was a young man, I remember people speaking of the Brotherhood only in hushed whispers. Then something happened…" He drank deeply again, his face turned down from old sorrows. "Back in Cyrodiil, the heart of the Brotherhood's power, the Empire decided to purge us. We were hunted down, driven out, pushed away. Finally, only one sanctuary remained in all of Tamriel—the one in Falkreath, far south of here."

"Where are we anyway?" I asked, glancing around. "I don't really know that much of Skyrim outside of Windhelm and Riften, so I'm not sure what hold we're near."

"Dawnstar," Nazir said simply. "The Falkreath Sanctuary was betrayed too. We few survivors came north to start over. Right now, it's not just six of us in Dawnstar Sanctuary, or six of us in Skyrim." He drained his cup and put it down on the table with a thump that sounded a bit too firm. "Aventus, there are only six of us left in all of Tamriel." I gaped at the news. I had believed the Dark Brotherhood to be a much bigger, more powerful organization—not that it would have changed my mind about joining. I was just stunned at the idea of how far the mighty assassins had fallen. No wonder they lived in a cave; I mused that the other sanctuaries must have been even more impressive than this one.

Nazir stood up, patting me on the shoulder briefly, and went over to where Meena was sitting. He took the bottle with him as he went; I thought it was a kind gesture for him to reach out to a new member like that. I wasn't interested in drinking, of course… Well, maybe a little. But I figured that I was probably still too young to imbibe alcohol, even if I was old enough to cut throats. The adults were having such a good time that I was loathe to interrupt them, even though I was getting hungry and a little bored.

"Good evening, everyone," came a pleasant, sweet voice. I glanced over at the staircase to see a dark-haired Breton girl walking down from the upper level. She looked like she was my age, or maybe a year or two older. Nazir hadn't mentioned that our last member was another kid! "Did you kill well?"

"Aventus did," Hecate said, breaking free of Cicero long enough to gesture toward me. I felt my face turn red with embarrassment and pride. I smiled up at the Breton girl, who seemed shocked to see another child in the sanctuary. "Aventus, this is Babette. She's a-"

"Alchemist!" Babette interrupted excitedly. "I'm an alchemist!"

Hecate frowned at being interrupted, but I was a little impressed. Clearly, the Brotherhood would let little kids join if they were exceptional—and I suddenly realized that must apply to me too, with pleasant surprise—but to be a skilled professional at something like alchemy was quite the accomplishment even for an adult. Babette had to be really smart to be an alchemist at only a year or two older than me, and she was clearly enthusiastic about her role in the Brotherhood.

"That's right," Hecate agreed, though her face was slightly pinched as she said it. Being interrupted must have really annoyed her. "Babette knows about potions and poisons, so if you need either, I'm sure she'll help if you ask nicely."

"Oh, wow," I said with a genuine smile. She skipped down the stair and stuck out her hand in an awkward way. I shook it, though I thought she was trying a little too hard to be grown up. "I thought I would be the only kid here. I'm really glad to meet you." I leaned in to whisper to her, "The adults were getting kind of boring."

"I know how it is," she said, smiling shyly in return. She was very pale, which made her dark hair contrast sharply with her skin. I shivered a little myself, wondering if there were fireplaces in the sanctuary or if we would have to make do with bundling up.

"Do you wanna play?" I asked her impulsively. She seemed like she was trying so hard to be formal and grown up with the adults around; maybe she would relax a little if I acted more like a kid. I wanted desperately to be liked by all of my new brothers and sisters, but I felt that Babette was someone I could relate to a little better since we were so close in age.

"Sure," she said. She visibly relaxed at the offer. Maybe I was finally getting better with people. "I can show you some neat stuff about this place."

As we raced through the halls and rooms of Sanctuary, I could only feel like I had finally come home.

The morning after my arrival at Sanctuary was a big breakfast and spending time with my new family. Hecate looked like she was maybe coming down with something; a ride cross-country in the middle of Frostfall isn't good for anyone, and I could only imagine how much effort it took to protect me from the elements while she was riding. I could only admire her willingness to sacrifice for her family. I quickly ate my breakfast, and wound up getting seconds when Hecate pushed her plate away.

"Where's Babette?" I asked. Looking around the room, I could see everyone but Babette and Cicero situated at the main table in the central chamber. Nazir was walking back and forth from the nearby cooking fire to bring food to people as they straggled in. Meena had her head down on the table, so maybe she was coming down with the same thing as Hecate.

"Swallow your food before talking," Hecate chastised gently, one hand pressing a cool cloth onto her forehead. "Babette is probably sleeping. She tends to sleep during the day."

"Can I do that?" I asked, my eyes widening at the possibilities.

"Eventually," she replied agreeably enough. "Right now I want you to start training. You're going to learn how to fight and to defend yourself… and a number of other things. Once you've got the basics, I'll send you on missions with someone else as backup and then you can start making your own schedule. In time, you can decide what contracts you want and how to execute them with your own unique style."

"This is so much better than Honorhall!" I exclaimed, unable to keep my excitement to myself.

"Good morning, good morning!" came a cheery voice from behind me. Looking back, I could see the motley-clad form of Cicero, who dropped into a seat next to Hecate. I was beginning to get the impression that Hecate and Cicero were more than just partners when she crammed a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth to shut him up. When he retorted by smearing oatmeal onto her face and licking it off while she laughed, my impression crystallized into certainty. I still knew so little about my new family, so I figured it was time to start asking questions.

"Are you guys married?" I blurted out. When Hecate choked on her food and her eyes bulged out, I cursed my lack of subtlety.

"No!" she sputtered, then wiped her mouth to get rid of the oatmeal on her chin. I was a little disappointed; at the same time, I felt oddly comforted to know that my assassin wasn't married.

"So… you're not my new mom and dad?"

"Oh, gods, no!" she exclaimed. Now, I was really disappointed. Was being my mom such a burden that she would push it aside so fast?

"I thought you were adopting me," I pointed out, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. She laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and smiled again.

We are… sort of. You've been adopted into the Brotherhood, not by any one person in it. I'm your new sister, and Cicero is your new brother," she said, laying her other hand on the fool's knee.

"What about parents?" I asked.

"Well," Hecate said, taking a quick glance at Cicero, "the Night Mother is your mother now too." She paused, seeming to come to a decision. "Cicero, why don't you introduce Aventus properly to Mother?" I could hear the importance of the word when she said it.

"Yes!" the fool shouted, jumping to his feet and dancing a short jig. "Mother should meet her newest son." He leaned over to me and grabbed my hand. "She's quite nice, you know… even if she's dead." His smile was wide and wickedly cheerful as he pulled me from my seat. I know that some people might have been nervous to be taken by a mad jester into the presence of a supernatural corpse, but I was oddly indifferent at the idea. After all, it wouldn't be the first corpse I had called "mother."

Cicero led me through the halls of Sanctuary, and for a moment I could almost feel like I was holding hands with my father, walking to temple on a feast day. The illusion couldn't last, though; all too quickly we had ascended the flight of stairs to the chamber which held the Night Mother's coffin. The enormous steel sarcophagus stood on a raised platform surrounded by dozens of lit candles and bouquets of fresh flowers, flanked on either side by a tapestry bearing the black hand of the Dark Brotherhood. The lid of the coffin bore the relief of a stern woman's face above a pair of skeletal hands clasped on her breast.

"Before you meet Mother," Cicero chirped, "you must keep in mind the first tenet. Always show respect." He turned to look at me, and his face had completely transformed. No more was he the cheery-eyed fool who had smeared oatmeal on Hecate's face at breakfast. Now it was the stern, cheerless face of a priest; I had seen that same expression on the faces of the priests of Talos who sometimes railed against the empire in the streets of Windhelm. It was the face of a man who would fearlessly die for his god—or soullessly kill for her.

I nodded my understanding, and Cicero walked forward to unlatch the clasp that held the coffin shut. As the steel doors swung open, their contents in shadow, I had a moment of vertigo, like I was looking into the darkness that had haunted my dreams all the last year. Then the light reached the interior and I was looking at the desiccated husk of what might have once been a woman.

Much of the Night Mother's corpse was wrapped in cloth and secured into the coffin by numerous ropes. Her skin was like leather, dark and aged. Her face was distorted by death and the time that had passed since, but her hollow eye sockets felt somehow aware. I was struck by a sensation of presence—that I was under a judging gaze rather than standing in front of a mere object. I didn't realize that I was reaching toward her until Cicero's hand closed painfully on my wrist.

"No, no, no," Cicero clucked, his fingers grasping the tender bones tightly enough to make me gasp. "Only the Keeper can touch Mother, and only for her necessities. The boy mustn't touch." I nodded, trying to keep tears from forming in my eyes. Apparently satisfied, the Keeper released his hold on me. I gingerly rubbed my wounded wrist and winced at the sensation. Gods, how could a man who looked so thin have such a strong grip?

Once my wrist stopped stinging, I turned back to look at the Night Mother. The sight of her empty eyes reminded me of my own mother's skull as I had lifted it out of her niche in the Hall of the Dead. The Night Mother's body was so much better preserved than my own mother's had been. Was it because the Night Mother had a big family to take care of her instead of just a single, lonely child?

As I stared at that corpse I was reminded of how the dead had once been disturbing to me. They had always seemed like a reminder of how unfair life was—like every dead body was a marker saying, "No matter how good or bad this person was, they all end up the same way." Looking at the Night Mother, I now knew that wasn't true. Not every corpse was an empty shell; not everyone's quality of death was the same. The Night Mother was a promise that inequities could be resolved, that the scales could be balanced—even from beyond the grave. Struck by a sudden burst of overwhelming emotion, I suddenly dropped to my knees in front of the open coffin.

"Thank you, Night Mother," I said, my voice hoarse and thick. "Thank you for sending one of your children to me when I called. Thank you for taking me in when no one else could. Thank you for saving me." Cicero's strong, gloved hand fell onto my shoulder as lightly as a feather. It squeezed once, reassuringly. I looked up into his smiling face; he was almost beatific in the glow of the candles.

"The boy speaks from the heart," he murmured. "Our Mother can be terrible—but she can also be kind. Cicero knew that the boy would fit in fine around here." He pulled me to my feet and brushed my shoulders as though cleaning off dust only he could see. "Now the boy must go. It is time."

"Time for what?" I asked. The jester smiled his predatory smile.

"Time to see if the boy can be taught more than just proper manners." I shuddered at his tone, and with one last look at the Night Mother—did her body move, ever so slightly?—I followed him to begin the first day of my training.

After escaping from Honorhall Orphanage, spending a season on the roads of Skyrim, living on the streets of Windhelm, and becoming a starving recluse for the better part of a year, I was convinced that nothing could ever hurt me again. One day of training with the Dark Brotherhood made me realize how naïve I had been.

"Again!" Nazir barked for what seemed like the hundredth time. I raised my arms into a warding stance, holding the practice baton with a death grip as Cicero stepped toward me. Just like the previous ninety-nine times, he swept in with a quarter-speed stroke from his own baton. Mine was about the length of a short sword while his was a wooden dowel about as long as a dagger, but his greater natural reach made up the difference—and then some. I easily parried the slow strike, moving my baton in the defensive pattern Nazir had shown me. Cicero gradually sped up, and within moments I was sweating and straining to block even a third of his strikes. Whenever I missed one, he would tap me lightly on the arm or in the ribs and morbidly laugh.

"Dead!" he cried each time. "The boy is dead again! And again!"

After each round, Nazir would give me a drink of water and then switch out Cicero for Meena. The Khajit was far less gentle than the jester, and I had several narrow cuts on my arms and chest from where her claws broke the skin. When I complained about the claws, she would only reply that she was the one being treated unfairly because I had a weapon and she didn't. During one break I voiced my protest to Nazir but he was no more sympathetic.

"Aventus," he scolded, "when you leave this Sanctuary on mission, the people you meet will be far less kind than anyone you're sparring with now. Your enemies will not care about words like 'fair,' so you must be prepared to fight under the worst conditions possible." He drank a ladle of water before offering me one. "Of course, the best choice is to make the fight as unfair as possible in your favor, which is why you're also going to be training in stealth as well as weapons."

The first day was mostly just a test of my speed and strength, neither of which were anywhere close to that of my trainers. I felt slow and weak and clumsy compared to Cicero and Meena. Nazir tried to encourage me, reminding me that I had never had any sort of training before, and that both of my tutors were experienced assassins, but I grew increasingly frustrated. As the day dragged on, it seemed like I was getting slower and weaker while my teachers were just as fresh and unfazed as ever.

By the time I collapsed into bed that night, every part of me was sore and aching. The next morning, I found myself waking up after far too little sleep to the sight of Nazir shaking my shoulder. He had woken me an hour before dawn to start again, though at least he was thoughtful enough to bring food when he did it. The day progressed much as the last one had, though it also included some basic instruction in the arts of stealth from Meena.

For the next several days, my schedule largely consisted of getting up before dawn, spending the hours before lunch getting beaten on by Cicero, eating a quick meal, and then spending another four or five hours alternating between being beaten on by Cicero and Meena yelling at me when any part of my body poked out from behind an obstruction. Still, though I was sore and tired and frustrated, I was still happier than I had ever been before. I was finally learning a trade—how to kill people without getting killed first.

I missed getting to play with Babette, like I had my first night in Sanctuary, but I was far too tired for anything of the sort—even if I had seen her for more than a few minutes that first week. Generally, I would come to dinner and immediately wander off to collapse into bed. Since Babette was awake at night and I trained during the day, I might see her just long enough to exchange a few pleasant words before stumbling away to find slumber. She would always have something encouraging to say about my training before waving goodnight to me, and once she even helped me find my way back to my bed when I was too sore to walk straight. We were becoming pretty good friends despite our limited amount of interaction, and I was grateful to finally have a real friend.

The end of the first week saw my first major stumble. Until then, I think that I had been a competent enough student; Nazir praised my willingness to learn and never failed to remind me that I was still new to all this when I couldn't keep up. Still, I was used to picking up new skills quickly by observation and by trial and error, so it frustrated me that my body couldn't keep up with the maneuvers that my mind now grasped. Simply put, I wasn't in good enough shape to do the things I knew I was capable of; two years of hard living and scraping by had left me with less muscle than most boys my age, and I hadn't yet hit my growth spurt so I was still smallish.

After a week of training, Nazir deemed me confident enough with my defense work that we could graduate to real weapons. The rack of knives and swords intimidated me more than a little. I had only held a real blade once before—and I still shivered whenever I thought of how that had ended. Though Rolff had deserved death and worse for his crimes, and though I still didn't doubt the righteousness of what I had done, part of me still flinched away from remembering his death. I occasionally had nightmares of being pursued through the streets of Windhelm by gangs of vicious, dog-faced children, only to round a corner and run right into Rolff's waiting arms…

I shivered from the thought and gingerly took a long-bladed knife from the rack. Cicero joined me in the sparring circle; both of us were stripped to the waist but he was still wearing his leather gloves… and, oddly enough, his jester's cap. Did he sleep in the damned thing? We nodded respectfully to one another and began our slow dance of death. We went through the patterns several times, Cicero occasionally tapping me with the flat of his blade to show the holes in my defenses. He could have easily cut me any number of times, but his control of the blade was remarkable.

As we were working through the knife patterns for the fourth time in a row—my endurance had increased considerably in only a week of training, if not my strength or speed—Meena came bounding into the training room. She often showed up later than we did, sometimes not even appearing for breakfast. I managed to catch a look at her as she snuck up behind the intensely-focused Keeper, and I wondered what she was doing. Her face was pinched up impishly as she ducked into Cicero's blind spot and reached out to dig her fingers into his ribs.

"Coochie coochie coo!" she screamed as she tickled the Keeper's sides relentlessly. Cicero burst out laughing and dropped his knife, but I was already in the middle of a strike and couldn't pull my arm back quickly enough. The blade bit into Cicero's side just above his hip and below Meena's roaming hands, cutting a red line onto his flank. It might have been worse, except that Cicero managed to twist at the last second to minimize the impact of the blade.

With a burst of sudden speed and seriousness, he pivoted on one heel. He pushed Meena away from the oncoming blade with one hand and seized my shoulder with the other. Once again, his strength was shocking, and the way he turned his hand made my whole arm go numb. I stumbled back from the Keeper with my face twisted up in horror and shock. Cicero pressed one hand against the wound with a critical look on his face.

"Oh gods," I blurted out. "I'm so sorry!"

"The boy should be sorry," Cicero snarled. "With the kind of opening Meena gave you, poor Cicero should have had six inches of steel in his gut instead of a pretty red ribbon on his side!" Nazir came rushing past me to look at the wound on Cicero's side.

"By Sithis," he exclaimed. "Hecate's going to have kittens when she sees this."

"This one is offended by the Speaker's turn of the phrase," Meena groused from her position on the far side of the room where Cicero had pushed her. She was dusting off her thighs and swishing her tail, and judging from the state of chairs where she was standing, her landing must not have been a graceful one.

My eyes seized on the fallen dagger. As I cradled my hurt shoulder with my good hand, all I could think was that I had hurt my family. I stared at the ruby droplets on the blade, slowly collecting together and pooling on the stone. I suddenly flashed to the knife I had killed Rolff with, how the blood had looked the same, only more of it, so much more…

And then I was on my feet and running. I don't know where I was going, if I even intended to go anywhere other than "away," but when I came to my senses I was in one of the emptier corners of Sanctuary, holding onto the sides of a small table with both hands and shivering. My breath came in ragged gasps as I tried desperately to get myself under control.

"Aventus…?" I heard Babette's sleepy voice say behind me. "Is everything all right?" I turned to look at her and suddenly realized that wherever I was standing must be close to her room. She was standing in the hallway, wearing a nightgown and rubbing at her eyes sleepily. For just a moment they looked red, but by the time I had blinked the sweat out of my eyes they looked normal. I must have been still seeing things from my panic attack.

"I cut Cicero," I said in a small voice, leaning back against the table. The wood bit painfully into my bare back as I ran a hand over my face. "It was an accident." She walked over to me and laid her hand over my free one. She leaned her head on my bare shoulder, her long hair brushing over my arm.

"That's not what you're upset about, though," she said. I was chilled by how perceptive she was and shook my head as the words gummed together in my throat. "It's all right, Aventus. Everyone feels… what you're feeling about their first kill."

"I don't regret killing him, if that's what you're saying," I returned angrily. She laughed gently and patted my hand again.

"It's not guilt you're feeling, silly," she replied, "not really. You just have a lifetime of people telling you that hurting others is wrong, so you think you should feel guilty. It's just vestigial." I didn't know the word, but I understood the point. Babette was saying that my sickness over killing Rolff was just a bad reaction, like when I was sick the first time I drank mead. My mom had given me some before she died and laughed when I complained about the taste. When I asked her why anyone would drink it willingly, she could only say that it was something that grew on you.

I supposed that killing was the same way.

"I guess," I said, suddenly very aware that I was shirtless in front of Babette. She didn't seem to care, so I tried my best to not be embarrassed by it either. "I just don't like blood very much."

"That's a shame," she murmured. At my confused look, she straightened up and clarified, "It's just that we see a lot of it in this profession." She bit her lip in thought and turned to look at me. "How do you feel about maces?"

"I was a lot more comfortable when we were using training sticks…" I said, wondering where this was going.

"That can be your personal style then," she said brightly. "Just because Cicero and Meena both prefer cutting things to ribbons is no reason you can't use blunt weapons. The principles are pretty much the same, though maces take a lot more strength to use effectively." I stared at her as she went through her points, and she smiled awkwardly.

"You're lecturing," I teased, reaching out to tap her nose gently. An annoyed look crossed her face for a moment before she pulled up her hand to cover her mouth while giggling.

"I do that sometimes," she admitted. "Come on. You should get back and apologize to Nazir for running out on your training." She reached up and ran her fingers along my jaw and behind my ear. My skin tingled slightly at how cold her fingers were. "We should see about getting you a haircut before someone mistakes you for a girl." She smiled to show she was teasing, and I grinned back broadly. She squeezed my hand one last time for reassurance, and then skipped lightly back to her room.

By the time I got back to the training room, Cicero's wound had been cleaned and bandaged—and I was feeling a world better. Nazir looked at me sternly as I walked back in, but I immediately apologized and all was forgiven.

"You're going to have to get used to bloodletting," was all he would add to the matter before we got back to training—with sticks again.

In my heart, I knew he was right. Still, Babette's suggestion stuck with me. It wasn't the killing that I was afraid of, honestly; even when I had been killing rabbits for food, I had never feared taking their little lives. Thinking back, it had always been skinning and draining them that had been the problem. Using maces and hammers would neatly avoid that little problem—and my targets would be just as dead.

When we started training with real weapons again, a few days later, Nazir was happy to let me try out the Brotherhood's selection of bludgeons. The satisfying crunch of the training dummy's neck giving way from a solid blow made Nazir wince with mock sympathy and then nod approvingly.

"I think we were wasting you on blades," he admitted. "We'll go forward with a focus on maces for the time being. But you still need to keep up with the knife training. You never know when you'll need a backup weapon or have to fight with whatever you have on hand." I beamed at his approval.

From then on, I doubled my efforts. I might have a long way to go before I was ready to start taking contracts, but I was determined that I would be. I would make my new family proud. I would kill well, and often.

…to be continued…