Chapter 13: Close Quarters

"Oh, sweety," Hecate said as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "I'm sorry."

Normally, I would have resented being called "sweety" or treated like a child, but any physical contact with Hecate was welcome—especially after she had been gone for nearly two months. I returned the hug and did my best to ignore the sensation of her breasts pressing into my cheek. I had gotten tall enough since joining the Brotherhood that my eyes were directly at chest-level for Hecate, and it made hugging her an uncomfortable experience. Not so much at the level we were touching, but somewhere below that.

After a long moment, I broke the embrace and sat down on the chair next to her table. I needed to collect my thoughts. Hecate had been sympathetic enough, and I was more grateful for her to be home than words could say, but I was still confused about my feelings for her—and for my "sister," Babette. It was all made worse by the fact that I had been so certain about my guess as to Babette's true nature, and her laughing at me had made me feel like a complete idiot.

I had wanted to talk with Hecate as soon as she had come back the previous day, but she had been occupied by relating the results of her mission and then slept in late the next morning. It was nearly lunchtime, but we had yet to eat breakfast out of deference to her and Nazir's return. Fortunately, that gave me enough time to pour out my hurt and embarrassment to Hecate; hearing her sympathy helped a lot, even if I still thought it was the sympathy she would give to a little boy and not a man.

"I just wish I knew what was up with Babette," I lamented. "I know there's something up! Don't try to deny it!" Hecate smiled and sat down on the edge of her bed. She shook her head as if to indicate that she wouldn't tell me anything, but that she couldn't disagree with my assertion. I hung my head. "I just don't know enough to know what's going on."

"She'll tell you someday," Hecate insisted, laying a gentle hand on my knee.

"But I want to know now!" I insisted, hating how whiny I sounded to myself. I didn't like feeling like I was pouting, but I couldn't help it.

"The harsh lesson of wisdom, dear heart," she said with a faint, almost pained smile. I looked into Hecate's eyes, feeling all the anger of the last couple of months boiling to the surface like blood from a wound.

"I'm tired of being treated like a little kid." She started to open her mouth to say something, but I barreled on before she could get a chance. "I've killed people," I said quietly, "several people, in fact." I tried my best to sound brave and adult. "I think… I should get a contract soon."

Hecate bit her lip in thought and was quiet a long moment.

"Do you think you're ready?" she asked tiredly. I felt like a heel, pressing her about something so selfish when she had just gotten home from a long trip, but I had concluded that no one would give me the respect I wanted without me doing something to take it. I nodded. "Then talk to Nazir and he'll set something up for you."

"Thank you!" I cried, throwing my arms around Hecate's neck in joy. "Thank you so much!" I couldn't contain myself, jumping up and down in excitement. Hecate just patted my arm and smiled her wan smile. With a sudden impulse, I kissed her on the cheek and ran off, skipping through the halls of Sanctuary.

I was so lost in thoughts of happiness that I nearly ran smack into the old orc walking out of Nazir's office. I managed to bring myself up short, but caught my feet together and went toppling toward the stone floor. The orc's hand shot out and seized my shoulder with a speed and strength that belied his grizzled, elderly appearance. With barely an effort, he hauled me back to my feet and made an elaborate show of dusting off my shoulder.

"Easy there, young one," he rumbled through a mouthful of tusks. "No need to be in such an all-fired hurry. Not like you're on a mission right now." He smiled to show that he was jesting, and I returned an uneasy smile myself. It wasn't that nonhumans made me nervous or anything; growing up in Windhelm, I had been surrounded by Dunmer and Argonians. It was just that I didn't yet know how to feel about this new—and old—brother.

"Thanks, ah… Garnag," I said, fumbling with the name slightly. I might not be uncomfortable with nonhumans themselves, but their names always gave me trouble. More than that, I had only learned this one the day before.

Garnag had apparently been part of the Dark Brotherhood years ago, long before I was even born. He had been captured while on a mission and thrown into prison. Fortunately, they had just kept him in jail for over a decade instead of executing him right way.

It still chilled me a little to think of being left to rot in jail for longer than my whole lifetime. It was something that Nazir had always said was a possibility if I got sloppy or got caught. The Brotherhood's policy had always been to not attempt rescues for lost members; there was too much risk in losing not only the captured brother or sister, but any sibling that was sent after them too. In this one instance, though, the Night Mother had seen fit to send Hecate off to rescue a wayward child. I wondered, would she be so generous if it were me?

More than the fearsome appearance that Garnag possessed—a lifetime in the Brotherhood and over a decade in prison had left him scarred, tattooed, and one-eyed—were the fearsome truths he represented. He was the oldest member of the Brotherhood by far, and I was the youngest. I had long since given up my illusions that Babette was anything close to my age, making me the only child in the Brotherhood. Garnag had known Cicero before he was a mad jester, had been part of the order before the purges, had worshipped the Night Mother back in Cyrodiil. I was just a snot-nosed orphan from Windhelm who could barely read when he got adopted out of pity by a lonely assassin.

Next to Cicero, I felt inadequate but still capable. The jester was a mad, broken fool who elicited as much pity as envy from me. I loved him as a surrogate father and resented his closeness to Hecate. My feelings for him were complicated, to say the least.

Having just met Garnag, my feelings for him were far simpler. Next to Garnag… I felt insignificant.

"Good boy," he said heartily, slapping me on the shoulder and snapping me out of my self-loathing. "Let's get some breakfast!"

"I'm supposed to talk to Nazir…" I dithered. "About a contract. My first contract."

"Going on your first?" he asked. I nodded, and Garnag laughed. He turned me away from Nazir's office and half-dragged me toward the dining room. "A first contract is like a first woman, my boy. You're not going to be experienced enough to enjoy it as much as you should, but you're still going to love every minute of it." I blushed up to my ears at his frank talk and he laughed again.

To be honest, I had a better idea of how to kill a man than how to do… well, anything with a woman. Some of the older boys had talked about girls sometimes back in Windhelm, before my mother had died. And of course I knew that my mother had been a prostitute, though I wasn't precisely sure what that meant beyond spending time with strange men for money. I mean, I wasn't completely naïve—I knew they weren't playing chess. Still, the mysteries of sex were more foreign to me than the Red Mountain of Morrowind.

"I really need to talk to Nazir…" I pleaded, not quite willing to throw off Garnag's hand. He only kept up his steady pace away from the door.

"Don't be in such a hurry," he chastised. "Get a good breakfast in you, then go ask Nazir if you can murder someone. It's good to be enthusiastic, but it's better to have priorities!"

"Shouldn't my first priority be to take contracts?" I asked, relaxing a little.

"Your highest priority is to the Night Mother, of course," Garnag replied. "But you're no good to her if you're no good to yourself. Eat, rest, exercise—take care of the basics before anything else. Enthusiasm for your work is good, but neglecting the essentials can get you killed." He patted me on the shoulder as we reached the main room, where Meena was already sitting at the table, slumped over onto her arms as though dozing. She opened one eye at us before turning away and muttering to herself.

"Thanks for the advice, Garnag," I said, seating myself on the far end of the table from Meena. The older orc was seeming less intimidating all the time.

"Always happy to share hard-earned experience with the younger generation." He creakily sat himself down at the table opposite me. "Probably won't be the last advice you'll hear from me either, what with us sharing bunk space and all."

"What." It wasn't quite a question. I hadn't considered that Garnag would be moving into the common room. He had stayed up late the night he arrived at Sanctuary, and had already been up and moving when I woke up. I had just assumed he would be taking Cicero's room, and the jester formally moving in with Hecate. The two of them spent the night together often enough.

"Ayup," he responded, nodding pleasantly. "I wasn't about to ask the Keeper to give up his private space. Anyway, it's been too long since I've been around other people. Been in solitary most of the last decade, you know."

"Being alone is awful," I agreed. I remembered how wretched I had been living by myself in Windhelm, and I hadn't been a prisoner of anything worse than my own fears. "It's just me and Meena in the common room right now, so there's plenty of room." Meena also spent most of her nights outside Sanctuary, but I didn't feel the need to point that out. She was close enough to hear, and she might decide to be contrary and sleep at home for a week if she caught me talking about her.

"Well, if recruitment picks up like the Listener hopes it does," Garnag said around a mouthful of bread, "empty beds won't be a problem anymore."

"We're recruiting?" I asked, feeling strangely crestfallen.

"The Brotherhood can't survive with one Sanctuary and seven members," he said. "No, we've got to find more brothers and sisters—and soon."

I knew that Garnag was right, of course. Still, I felt like I had just started to become comfortable with my family as it was, and now it was going to start changing. I liked having people around—I was telling the truth when I said loneliness was awful—but I also liked having my own private space to think. The common room had basically been my room for the last nine months since Meena barely used it. Now, it sounded like it was going to fill up any time. My only experience with that sort of living arrangement had been Honorhall Orphanage, and that was a bad time of my life.

Even deeper than that was another feeling, though. Hecate had chosen me as her first recruit after becoming Listener. That made me feel special; adding more recruits might make me less special. If they were all older than me, then…

By Sithis.

I suddenly sat up in my chair, my hair standing on end. Garnag continued to expound on the importance of recruitment, ignoring my distress. I quickly pushed myself back into a normal posture and forced myself to calm down. There was plenty of time to present my idea to Hecate later, after a good meal and some training. Garnag's advice was good—deal with the basics first.

And of course, I still had to ask Nazir about my first contract. I wasn't about to forget something so important. Not even after I had just solved our recruitment problems.

My meeting with Nazir had been short, sweet and to the point. I told him that Hecate had finally given me permission to take a contract, he congratulated me, and told me that he would find something for me soon. When I expressed my disappointment at not getting something right away, he had only laughed.

"Sorry, Aventus," he said, chuckling and gesturing at his empty desk. "I wasn't able to keep track of contracts while I was away on mission, and my entire backlog is gone now. Meena was a busy little kitty these last two months. I'll get something special for you as soon as I can. A first contract should be something to remember."

The idea of going on my first contract and giving my brilliant idea to Hecate had buoyed up my spirit through the day. That evening, over dinner, I had even managed some pleasant words for Babette when she came out of her room after nightfall. She seemed surprised that I wasn't still mad at her for laughing at me, but I had never been very good at holding grudges. It just didn't feel natural to me, which is why it felt so odd to have the lingering resentment that I sometimes felt flare up at Cicero.

The jester seemed to be in one of his moods again; after having gone from a weeping, joyful mess at seeing Garnag again for the first time in years, he was somber and almost sullen at dinner. I wondered if he and Hecate had been fighting again. I was sure they wouldn't start up again so soon, not after she had been gone nearly two months, but with them it always seemed to be two extremes—intense, longing gazes, or terrible shouting matches and crying.

Garnag seemed to notice Cicero's mood as well, and kept trying to engage him over dinner. Cicero would smile briefly whenever Garnag was talking, but go right back to his introspective gazing as soon as it was done. Garnag finally turned to me as I was finishing up my last scraps of food.

"Chickpea was telling me last night that you're quite the good student," he said with a grin. I couldn't help but smile back; his nickname for Cicero was hilarious and never failed to get the jester to quirk his eye up in response. "It's been a long time, but I'd like to join you for sparring tomorrow, if that's all right with both of you." Cicero and I were both quick to agree.

"Also," he continued, "I've heard a rumor, and I was wondering if you could confirm it for me." He leaned in conspiratorially and mock-covered his mouth with one hand. "I heard that Chickpea… sings." Cicero snorted and flipped his head to make the tassels of his jester's cap dance merrily. I chuckled and stood up on my chair in a burst of sudden merriment.

"If I should spy that fair maid Nelly," I sang loudly in my best impersonation of Cicero, "I'll plunge my blade into her belly!" The assembled Brotherhood clapped and hooted, and Cicero slunk low in his chair with a blush on his cheeks. The jester actually seemed embarrassed for the first time since I'd known him, but his eyes were bright and sparkling. Hoping to keep the cheerful mood going, I continued on in that vein for several minutes, even improvising a few new lines while Babette and Garnag clapped and stomped to keep the time. The only one who didn't seem amused was Nazir, but he notoriously hated music of all kinds so I didn't take it personally.

When I hopped down off my chair and took a sweeping bow, I was surprised to hear genuine applause coming from the assembled assassins. Hecate jumped up and came over to hug me.

"Aventus, that was wonderful!" she cheered. "I didn't know you could sing!"

"I can't, not really," I demurred. "I was just imitating Cicero is all."

"Hmmph," Cicero snorted. "False modesty doesn't become you. With a little training, the boy could be a bard." Cicero smiled wickedly, and I suddenly remembered his ditty about setting bards on fire.

"I don't know about that," I said, waving my hands back and forth in front of me to ward off Cicero's penchant for human-oriented arson. Although I hadn't been there personally, I had heard enough stories about Cicero's "performance" during the Burning of King Olaf to be worried about it. I looked at Hecate, who was still beaming from my performance. "There was something I wanted to talk to you about, though. If you've got some time?" She nodded and bid good evening to everyone.

We walked together back to her room, leaving Garnag and Cicero alone in the common room, chatting about old times. Meena slunk off to Divines-knew-where, while Babette uncharacteristically took Pavot out for a nighttime stroll. Nazir walked with us for a way before turning back to his own room to work on paperwork that had gone undone while he was gone. Hecate sat on her bed and I settled into one of the chairs nearby.

"I think I've solved the recruitment problem," I began. Before Hecate could interrupt me, I pressed onward. "Garnag was telling me that you came and saved him at the Night Mother's command, and that to survive we're going to have to recruit new members. Right?" She nodded quietly.

"What's your solution?" she asked. It was a good sign; she was actually listening to my opinion instead of dismissing me immediately.

"Honorhall," I replied. She looked confused, so I continued. "We can recruit the other orphans from Honorhall."

"Aventus…" Hecate bit her lip as though she were trying to figure out how to disagree with me without hurting my feelings. "We can't adopt every child in Honorhall."

"Not every child," I agreed. "Now that Grelod is gone, a lot of those kids will get real families, and I don't want to hurt their chances at a normal life. But what about the ones who helped me escape? Samuel and Hroar and Runa?"

"Sweety, I know that you miss having friends your own age-"

"That's not it!" I interrupted. "I still like Babette, even if she won't tell me what's going on with her and she's not really a kid, and I love all of you. I just think that they would be good for us." She started shaking her head. "But why not? You took me in. Why not them?"

"You're different, Aventus," Hecate said simply. "You're special. I've always thought so. You got away when they would have just stayed there and waited for someone to save them."

"I just did what I had to." To me, it had seemed pretty straightforward at the time. It certainly hadn't seemed like anything special. "I promised them that I would get help, and I did. I wouldn't have gotten away if it wasn't for their help."

"But you were the one that did those things," she pressed. "That's heroic."

"Nazir says there isn't any such thing as heroes," I responded, "only dead fools."

"That sounds like him," she muttered.

"He also says that sometimes the glamorous job isn't the most important one," I continued. "Without good support, without a family, any assassin would be just another thug killing for money. In the field…"

"Don't talk about field conditions when you've never even been on contract," Hecate snapped.

"I would have by now if you didn't treat me like a kid all the time!" I near-shouted at her. "You say I'm special, that I'm different, but you keep holding me back! How am I any different than those other kids? They've stolen, they've lied—they just need a chance, like you gave me!"

"I gave you permission for a contract," she retorted, her voice growling enough to make the books on her table rattle. "Don't make me regret it." She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. When she looked at me again, she seemed much calmer. I was grateful for that; I had seen Hecate furious before, and it wasn't something I wanted to ever be focused on me.

"Look, Aventus… I know that I've been slow to send you out into the field, but I just didn't want things to change. You can understand that, right?" I nodded grudgingly. "While we do need to recruit, I just don't think your idea will work."

"But why?" I insisted.

"Being willing to lie and steal is a small part of what we do for the Night Mother," she explained. "Those are just effects, though—not causes. If we just had to steal and connive for a living, we'd be the Thieves Guild." She snorted derisively. I had gotten the impression before that Hecate looked down on our "sister guild," despite Nazir's repeated insistence that the Guild and the Brotherhood had old, friendly ties. "You were willing to ask someone to kill for you. As far as I'm concerned, the person who asks for that is just as responsible for the life taken as the one holding the knife. The Brotherhood just… makes it fair. Not everyone has the strength to hold a blade, so we do it for them.

"More than that," she continued, "you showed that you had the strength to hold the knife yourself. Nazir is right—we don't kill for glory. But every one of us has to be willing and able to kill if it comes down to it, and not everyone has that quality. I took a big risk by bringing you in when you hadn't already killed someone. It's not a risk I can afford to take in the future. Not with the livelihood of the whole Dark Brotherhood riding on whether or not I make a mistake."

"I suppose I understand…" I was disappointed, but she was right. I didn't feel bad about trying, though.

"I'm glad we could talk," she said with a slight smile, I stood up to go but paused to ask a question.

"You said you took a risk bringing me in," I said, looking into her deep blue eyes. I wasn't very good at reading people in general, but Hecate had a bad habit—she couldn't look into someone's eyes while she was lying to them. "Have you ever regretted it?"

"Not even once," she said, and her eyes never wavered. That was good enough for me.

I was training with Cicero and Garnag a few days later when Nazir came in to watch us. While he had started off my training regimen months before, he rarely involved himself in my daily exercises any longer. Between his own lack of exercise and his secondary role as our cook, I sometimes wondered how he avoided getting fat. I did my best to not let his presence distract me from my immediate concern, which was sparring with Garnag.

I had expected the old orc to favor hammers or axes, but he seemed to prefer one-handed blades like Cicero did, though Garnag's choice ran more toward long blades than daggers. The first time we sparred, I found out why: Garnag was a mage as well as a swordsman. The first time I had come in at his right side, hoping to exploit his blind spot, his left hand moved in a quick arcane gesture and sent a nearby rack of weapons flying at me. I barely managed to leap aside, only to find Garnag standing over me with his wooden sword at my neck. I knew better than to protest unfairness—as Nazir had long since drilled into my head, my enemies wouldn't be fair in the field, so I couldn't expect my sparring partners to be fair at home.

It was my first up-close experience with magic. Babette could do alchemy, of course, which wasn't quite the same thing. But real magic—the ability to manipulate arcane forces—was something I had never laid eyes on before. My wonder lasted most of a day before it just became another tactical consideration to overcome. Garnag wasn't as fast as me, so if I kept moving I could distract him from his aim. I didn't beat him regularly, but I still won our matches more regularly than I did against Cicero. I never beat Cicero.

When we finished our current set of exercises and ran through one more sparring bout, I threw a towel around my shoulders and walked over to where Nazir was sitting patiently. I poured a ladle of water over my head from a nearby bucket to cool down a little and sat heavily in the other chair.

"Good news for me, I hope?" I asked with a smile.

"Of a sort," Nazir responded, one of his lips quirking up in something close to a smile. "I have a contract lined up for you… but it won't be available for a month."

"A month!" I exclaimed, dropping my towel in disbelief. "Aren't there any contracts available any sooner?"

"Well, there are," he allowed, "but I think all of them are too advanced for you. I also think you'll appreciate this one more."

"All right then," I said, feeling somewhat disappointed at the wait, "why the delay?"

"The target is out of the province at the moment," he said. Now he had my interest.

"I thought that the borders were all closed, except to official Imperial traffic."

"They are," he said. "The target is a slaver with an Imperial diplomatic clearance. According to the information I've gathered, he's been taking Imperial women and children who lost their husbands and fathers in the civil war and promising to ship them back to Cyrodiil. Instead, he puts them into the holds of ships at hidden docks and sells them into slavery."

"You're right," I admitted, my voice low and deadly. "I am interested in this one. Anyone who would stoop so low deserves whatever is coming to him."

"We got the contract through one of his victims who managed to evade her captors long enough to perform the Black Sacrament," Nazir replied without commenting on my moralizing. "Normally, it would be my duty to meet with her and arrange payment."

"You want me to do it instead?" I asked.

"No, actually," Nazir replied. "She's dead." I felt my heart sink and I went pale. Suddenly the room was freezing cold. "The Night Mother gave us the petition—called her 'the Escaped Slave'—but by the time we got any more information, she'd already been recaptured and killed. If this were a normal contract, I would have let it drop. But we don't ignore the Night Mother."

He pushed the folder with the relevant information toward me. I took it with nerveless finger and began to look through the packet. The first page gave the target's name as Sullian Crito, a minor diplomat with a mercantile interest on the side. Guys like him got to avoid the border closings by virtue of having a friend or a relative somewhere important back in Cyrodiil. It looked like he supplied general goods stores throughout the province, though a lot of his wares went through Whiterun. He was out of the province at the moment on a "buying trip." I could guess what he was buying.

Nazir's folder was very thorough. It made me furious enough to want to do the contract even without a promise of payment. Still, I knew Nazir well enough to realize that he didn't have the same priorities that I did.

"Where's the Brotherhood's profit on this one?" I asked without looking up from the list of missing persons associated with Crito. It was a long list.

"Isn't serving the Night Mother profit enough?" he asked with a slight sardonic tone. I saw Cicero look our way briefly, a moue of distaste on his face for Nazir's flippancy, but it didn't seem like quite enough to push him over the edge. I think that Nazir delighted in pushing Cicero's buttons whenever possible, since the jester seemed to naturally get on the Redguard's nerves.

"For me it is," I said with total sincerity. "I also know that the Brotherhood always looks to make a profit off a contract whenever possible." I looked up from the paperwork and grudgingly added, "Plus I still owe Cicero some money." I could see the fool beam a bright smile my way and give me a quick wink; Cicero appreciated it when people paid their debts. Nazir laughed and nodded.

"You're right, of course," he admitted. "Sullian Crito is a wealthy man off the money taken from his victims, as well as his own business. I believe he's stashed a good bit of his wealth in gemstones. He takes his payment in uncut gemstones, smuggles them back to Cyrodiil for cutting and polishing, and then resells them in the Imperial markets at a significant profit." Nazir passed over an extra sheet that wasn't in the folder.

"He's on his way back from Cyrodiil now to make his last pickup before the winter settles in," he continued. "The slavers he works with leave the stones in a dead drop on a small island in the Sea of Ghosts, off the coast from Winterhold. If we take the stones now, there's a chance that the slavers will find out and tip off Crito before he arrives."

"And if we kill Crito before he arrives," I continued, seeing the train of thought, "the slavers could hear about it and take the stones before we get there." Nazir nodded.

"Since we're low on manpower right now, we can't afford to send two teams," Nazir said. "We need someone to get to the island at the same time as the merchant, kill him, and return with the stones. We'll be able to fence them through the Thieves Guild for a decent chunk of gold, minus their 'handling fee.' Though I know you'd happily do this one for the approval of the Night Mother-" This elicited a growl from Cicero, but Nazir ignored him. "You will, of course, be paid for your work. It's your first contract, after all."

"How much?" I asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"A thousand septims," Nazir replied. I whistled at the amount. It was more money than I had ever had in my whole life. "There's a bonus of that same amount if you can bring back his official travel permits and signet ring. We need them both for you to get the bonus. One's no good without the other."

"Thank you," I said. "It's perfect." Nazir stood and patted my shoulder amicably. Before he left, he paused and looked down at me.

"There is one more thing." His serious tone broke me out of my reverie. I put down the papers and looked up at him questioningly. "Garnag will be going along as your backup. Kill well and often."

I looked up at Garnag, shocked. I hadn't imagined that the old orc would be going back out into the field, but I supposed it made sense when I thought about it. My earlier awe for him had quickly bled away once we had sparred together for a few days. He was beating me in sparring pretty often, but I was quickly outpacing his ability to keep up. He was slow and half-blind. How was he going to be any good to me in the field? The folder said that Crito traveled with a single bodyguard, so I supposed that Garnag could be useful as a distraction or something…

Cicero snapped me out of my worry when he came dancing over, pulling me up out of my chair and into an impromptu jig. He laughed giddily, sweeping me back and forth in a hopping, rollicking dance.

"Wonderful!" he cried. "Wonderful! Garnag and the boy, killing together! Old meets new!"

"Yeah," I said with a bright tone I didn't feel. "Wonderful."

Garnag came over to where Cicero was spinning and pirouetting after finally letting me go. He slapped me on the back and I staggered under the suddenness of it.

"Looking forward to working with you," he grunted. "When I heard you hadn't gone on your first kill yet, I went to Nazir and volunteered to join you."

"You did?" In my heart, I had sort of hoped that Cicero would go with me. As if reading my thoughts, Garnag laughed aloud and gestured at the jester.

"Chickpea's a good assassin, but he's too anxious in the field to be good backup," he chortled. "If he's half as jumpy as he used to be, whoever you went out to kill would be dead before you even got a chance to spit at them." Garnag settled himself into the chair recently vacated by Nazir. "These old bones are settled enough that you'll have to do all the heavy lifting. It'll give you a chance to shine on your first mission while still having someone there to watch your back." He stretched, and all of his joints popped from the recent exertion of sparring. "Can't deny it would be good for me to ease back into it all too. It's been a long time since my blade tasted blood."

Garnag reached out with one huge hand, and it took me a minute to realize he was offering to shake with me. I took his hand very seriously and shook it firmly. I appreciated the gesture; it was a handshake between men.

"I hope the boy gets his bonus!" Cicero chortled gleefully. "Then he'll almost be paid off from his debt after only one mission!"

"Almost?" I asked, looking at him with dismay. "How much do I owe you anyway?"

But Cicero and Garnag only laughed in response to my question, two old friends finding shared humor in a younger brother's naivety. My ears burned, but soon enough I was laughing too. My first contract was scheduled and all was right with the world. I could afford to laugh at myself a little bit.

…to be continued…