Chapter 15: Crowded House

What a difference a year makes. What a difference three months makes.

It was my second New Life Day as a member of the Dark Brotherhood, three months after my first successful mission as an assassin. In that time, I had proven myself worthy of holding a blade in the Night Mother's name, found a new friend in Garnag, and grown several more inches. I was a different person than I had been at my first New Life Day—no longer a callow, sheltered child, but a young man.

If only I could convince Hecate of it.

"By the Divines, Aventus!" she laughed as I came striding into the main room for our New Life Day dinner. "I still can't believe how tall you are. Much longer, and you'll be taller than me."

"That's only because you're so short," I retorted snappily. She snorted at me and stood up to ruffle my hair. I endured the treatment only because it was Hecate, but I couldn't help but blush from the gesture. It made me feel childish.

"Are you sure you're an Imperial and not a Nord?" Babette asked sleepily. I looked over at her to see a small smile on her heart-shaped face. I smiled back and walked over to hug her briefly. I had gotten over most of my attitude problems since being sent on contract for the first time, and the two of us had become close again, if not as close as those first few months in Sanctuary. I was still too aware that she was hiding things from me to fully trust her, but I had decided that Babette's friendship meant more to me than any secret she was hiding.

"No more than you are," I said with a sly smile, breaking the embrace. She had the good grace to look sheepish and turned away. Hecate, Nazir, Cicero and Meena all laughed at the joke; they knew the truth about Babette, even if they hadn't chosen to share it with me, and they knew that she was keeping it secret from me for reasons of her own.

The new members of the Brotherhood chuckled along, though more to be polite than anything else.

I sighed a little inwardly, scanning the group. It seemed like every time I went out on contract anymore, the Brotherhood had gained a new member or two by the time I came back. Unless someone was hiding out, it looked like we had stabilized at three in three months.

"We have a new sister for the new year!" Hecate gushed. "Isn't that exciting, Aventus?"

So four then. Wonderful.

It wasn't that I objected to new members of the Dark Brotherhood. I had been the group's second recruit after the fall of Falkreath Sanctuary, and that got me some amount of fame among the new recruits. My early worry that people would disdain me for being "just a kid" had died quickly. Knowing that Babette and I were both full members, blooded and tested, had dispelled any vocal prejudice. Kicking a few butts in sparring practice and buying the drinks at Dawnstar's single tavern had gotten rid of the rest. I could actually afford to do that sort of thing now that I was making coin from my contracts instead of giving Cicero every last septim.

My only difficulty was that four new members in three short months made for a very crowded Sanctuary. If we kept recruiting at this rate, we would have to reopen one of the old Sanctuaries—and that did worry me, since it meant that one of the existing members of the Brotherhood would be sent away to lead it as Speaker. While I had done my best to get to know the new people, the ones who had been part of the Brotherhood when I joined—plus Garnag, who had been an assassin since long before I was born—were the ones I considered my closest family.

"New blood?" rumbled Garnag from behind me. He was shaking snow off his boots as he tramped down the stairs. I saw Nazir give him a sharp look, which made him turn around and go back up to the top before taking his boots off. "Sorry, sorry," he said good-naturedly. "Just forgot with the excitement of a new sibling."

"Where is she?" I asked, looking around the main room.

The long dining table, which had seemed so empty even with all of us sitting at it a year ago, was now surrounded almost to its full length. Hecate sat at the head of the table, befitting her position as Listener, while Cicero sat at her left hand. The Fool of Hearts looked more morose than he usually did during the holidays, though he had seemed somewhat under the weather all season. I chalked it up to not getting to leave Sanctuary for a while; last year, he had nearly died from pneumonia, and I imagined that he didn't want to go through it again.

Nazir sat to Hecate's right hand, an honored position for the Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood. It was a position that mattered more now that there were more of us. It had been largely honorary before, but Nazir was a busy and important person now that there were almost a dozen assassins to coordinate for missions all over Skyrim. Babette had taken her usual place next to Nazir, saving a seat for me so that the two of us could sit together during meals.

Meena, the last remaining member of the Brotherhood, had been recruited right before me, but she was the one that I knew the least in most ways. I thought she was funny, if a little cruel and bloodthirsty, but she and I had never spent much time together. She was sitting where she usually did—next to Cicero. As I had grown cannier about people, I had started to suspect that Meena was interested in Cicero in more than just a "he's amusing" sort of sense. Of course, the jester had eyes only for Hecate, but that didn't stop the Khajiit from trying to get his attention every chance she could.

While Meena had been an oddity among my adopted siblings, she was no longer the only nonhuman member of the Dark Brotherhood. Hecate had broken the elderly orc Garnag out of prison, where he had languished over a decade since being captured during the fall of the Brotherhood back in Cyrodiil. He and Cicero had been close friends at one point; they still seemed overjoyed to see another again after so long, but I sometimes got the impression from Garnag that Cicero was not the same man as the one he used to know. Garnag and I had become surprisingly close too. He had been my backup on my first contract, and my partner on three more. He usually sat near the end of the table, content to take the spot closest to the fireplace and furthest from the babble of conversation.

The new Brotherhood members were sitting on the left side of the table, past Meena. They seemed mostly content to be relegated to sitting together as "the new blood," and it had given me good opportunities to engage all three of them in conversation since they were basically across the table from me.

The one I knew best so far was Deesei, an Argonian female. Hecate had told me that she had gotten our notice by killing a guard in Riften who had pushed her too far. She was the best tracker in the Brotherhood by far, and her hunting skills had been an invaluable way of adding fresh meat to our diets. She was also one hell of an unarmed fighter; if I'd had to bet on a brawl between Deesei and Meena, I would lay money on the Khajiit only because of how ruthless Meena was. I also liked Deesei because I felt comfortable around Argonians, and she reminded me a little of a friend who had died long ago.

I hadn't gotten to know either of the new elf recruits that well—not because I didn't like elves, but because they were nearly inseparable most of the time. Vedave Sendal was a Dunmer and Anaril Telind was an Altmer; while their two sub-races of elves were traditionally rivals, the two male mer had bonded swiftly.

I understood that they had known each other before the Brotherhood, having both been kicked out of the College of Winterhold after some "unfortunate accidents." Vedave had killed a rival during a demonstration, and Anaril had frozen a wing of the school in a solid block of ice. Between the two of them, I had decided that Anaril's accident really was one but that Vedave had just been sloppy about committing a murder. They were reserved, like most mer, but they had never been rude or snotty toward me.

"Still hiding out in the sleeping quarters, I think," Nazir rumbled. "I'll go get her. Not that I don't already have a meal to finish preparing…"

He got up with a testy look on his face. Nazir had seemed more and more irritable over the last few months, but I couldn't get him to open up about it. I had hoped that a few post-feast drinks might make him more willing to talk, but in the meantime I wanted to make things go well for the holiday.

"Don't worry about it, Nazir," I said cheerily. "I'll go find her. You just check on the roast, okay? If it's half as good as last year, these new bloods won't know what hit their taste buds." That actually got a small smile out of the old Redguard, and I was whistling to myself as I trotted off to the common room.

Sanctuary's layout is a confusing maze of tunnels, stairs, and chambers, but the common room was close to the entrance and easy to find, even if you were drunk when you came in—like Meena often was. Even with four new bodies taking up space, we had plenty of beds. I had gotten used to only sharing my living space with Garnag and Meena, though; adding extra people made it feel more crowded than it really was. Privacy was impossible in the common room, so most of the recruits only used it to store their possessions, sleep, and chat during downtime.

When Hecate had said we had a new sister, I wasn't sure what I would find in the common room. The only other women in the Brotherhood were Hecate herself, Babette, and Deesei, none of whom were exactly normal. Given the back-to-back recruitment of two elves, I was half-expecting a Bosmer to round out the group. What I saw in the common room was no Bosmer, though.

The woman sitting on the edge of one of the bunks was a slight, brown-haired slip of a girl, maybe four or five years older than me. As I stepped into the room, she looked up at me nervously, as though she were expecting a blow. Her eyes were large and brown, almost mouse-like. She gave off an appearance of delicate innocence totally unsuited for an assassin.

I was suspicious immediately.

Cicero was a fool in some ways, but he had been an excellent teacher in the arts of stealth and infiltration. One of his first lessons had been that it was good to not stand out, but that it was better to be seen and dismissed. Giving off an impression of weakness or incompetence was a valuable tool for any assassin. Despite my occasional resentment of my own youth, it had been a valuable tool in getting close to two of my targets so far. So when I laid eyes on a woman who looked more like teenaged nursemaid than a hired killer, my danger senses went off.

"Hey, we're getting ready to have dinner," I said cheerily. "You should come join us. I'm Aventus, by the way." The response was so low that I wasn't sure she had actually said anything at first. I took a few steps closer and said, "Sorry, what was that?"

"I'm Eiruki," the girl said at a volume that was barely above a whisper. Her voice squeaked slightly as she spoke, as though she were struggling to force out the words through a constricted windpipe. Had she suffered some sort of throat injury in the past? She was wearing a traveling dress with divided skirts and as she shifted uncomfortably under my gaze, she exposed a pale calf. Her posture was hunched, with her hair falling into her face, so I couldn't tell how tall she was.

"Eiruki, huh?" I asked to make sure that I was pronouncing it correctly. She nodded timidly in response. "That's a Nord name, right?" Another timid nod. I slowly walked toward her, keeping my smile steady. Whether or not it was an act, approaching an assassin for the first time was a lot like approaching a wild animal—no sudden movements, no loud noises, no threatening gestures.

"Well, Eiruki," I said, coming to a stop in front of her, "it's a pleasure to meet you. Welcome to the family." I held out a hand to her, either to shake hers or to help her up, when she suddenly jumped up off the bed and wrapped her arms around me. I thought for a second that I had made a misstep somewhere and that she was attacking me, but then I realized that she was hugging me.

I froze in total panic.

Eiruki was as tall as me, so she was short for a Nord woman. The initial impression of softness that she had given while sitting down was only reinforced now that she was holding onto me. In point of fact, I estimated that she was much softer than Hecate; she was also pressed against me much more firmly than the Listener ever had been in one of our infrequent hugs. Under her thin traveling dress were curves like none I had ever personally felt before. She was embracing me so tightly that it felt almost like she had been layered onto me. Her hair smelled like fresh mountain flowers.

Not knowing what else to do, I returned the hug awkwardly. I could feel the blood leaving my brain and rushing to other parts of my body. I was embarrassed enough that I wanted to break Eiruki's embrace, but at the same time I was having trouble thinking clearly enough to figure out exactly how to accomplish that. Eiruki laid her cheek on my shoulder and her breath tickled my neck.

"Thank you for the welcome," she whispered directly into my ear. My hair almost stood on end, and a shiver passed through me from head to toe.

"What's taking so long?" Babette complained as she walked into the common room at just that moment. "Nazir is getting ready to serve the-" She stopped cold as she saw the two of us standing together, my arms wrapped around Eiruki's back with her face upturned toward mine. Eiruki looked back at the sound of Babette's voice, a sheepish and frightened look on her face. She bit one lip nervously and pressed herself up against me more closely. Until that moment, I hadn't realized it was even possible for her to get any closer.

Babette's face underwent a subtle transformation at the sight of us. Her eyes narrowed a degree, her mouth turned down ever so slightly, and her posture stiffened. None of it alone would have been noticeable, but taken together it gave her the demeanor of an animal tensed for a fight or flight response. I had a sudden mental image of Meena hissing and raising her back fur.

"I see you're busy," she said coldly. "I'll just go back and let Nazir know you'll be a few minutes." With that, she spun on one heel, sniffed loudly, and strode out of the common room.

I started to reach for her, saying her name, but Eiruki hadn't let go of me. My feet tangled together and we toppled forward. Eiruki gasped as we fell and threw her arms wide to brace the fall. My hands unclasped from her back, and I pinwheeled them trying to stay on my feet. The two of us went into a heap on her bed, my hands slamming into the mattress on either side of her.

Somehow, we had fallen so that she was on her back with her legs splayed out, me lying directly on top of her. I had barely stopped my fall before crushing her under me, but my arms were held out so wide that my face was less than an inch from her heaving chest. I looked up toward her face; one of her hands was curled up near her chin and she was biting the knuckle of her index finger lightly, as though to stifle a scream.

I started to babble apologies, trying to shift my weight so that I could get to my feet without flopping onto her completely. She shifted too, writhing back and forth on the mattress under me in a way that was quickly derailing my efforts to stand up. I didn't know if she was trying to get away from me or just make it easier for me to stand up, but she wasn't succeeding at either of those things.

Finally, I managed to get to my feet and back away, waving my hands in front of me frantically as if to ward off her inevitably counterattack. She half-sat up on the bed, her knuckle still between her lips and bracing herself with her other hand. She slowly slid her legs closed, the cloth of her dress rustling as fabric rubbed fabric. I continued to babble, right up until she suddenly sprang off the bed and ran out of the common room.

Watching her back disappear through the open doorway leading toward the main hall, I wasn't exactly sure what had just happened or how it had spiraled so disastrously out of control. All I knew was that Babette was angry at me again, I had managed to offend Eiruki when she was just trying to be friendly, and it would be a few minutes before I could join the others for dinner.

That was just the beginning of my problems with Eiruki.

Somehow I managed to get through New Life Day. It was awkward and painful, but I managed.

By the time I had returned to the main room, Babette had moved from her previous position next to Nazir to a chair on the other end of the table near Garnag. Eiruki was sitting on my side with empty chairs on either side of her. I realized with an inward groan that she had taken the spot right next to where Babette had saved a seat for me, probably without realizing anyone was there. Given that she had two empty seats on either side of her, it looked like she was just trying to keep from being too close to anyone.

I would have just sat down next to Nazir, but Pavot had climbed up into the seat vacated by his mistress. When I tried to make nice with the nearly full-grown ice wolf, he snarled at me. I could only guess that he somehow knew that his mistress was annoyed with me and was taking it personally. I was so shocked at Pavot's behavior that I plopped down into my original seat, putting me right next to Eiruki. The Nord woman wouldn't even look at me, and when I glanced down to where Garnag was sitting, Babette was just glaring in our direction.

Cicero sat up and peered over the feast at one point to see Pavot leaning his muzzle up onto the table, his big blue wolf eyes staring at the repast. The jester started snickering and tossed a piece of meat to the ice wolf, who snapped it out of midair.

"It's like having old Arnbjorn back!" Cicero cackled, which drew frowns and glares from Nazir and Babette alike. Hecate shushed him, but the joke was in poor enough taste that it cast a pall over the head of the table. At least Nazir's cooking was all done by then so that he didn't burn anything in annoyance.

That was pretty much my New Life Day.

The one good thing that came out of it all was Hecate's gift to me. The Listener had provided me with a gift I didn't know how to use—a mandolin. She told me that it was kind of like an Imperial version of the lute that was so common among Skyrim's bards, and that she thought I might have a talent for music. I decided then and there that I would practice just as hard with the stringed instrument as I had with weapons and stealth.

The next couple of weeks saw Eiruki settling into life at Sanctuary. I did my best to avoid her without seeming too rude, but it's hard to avoid someone when you sleep in the same room and eat at the same table every day. The dead of winter was our slowest time of the year generally, so all of us were cooped up in Sanctuary for days on end with nothing to do except exercise, brag, and pursue our individual hobbies.

I spent a lot of time in the main room in front of the fire, waiting for a contract to come in and practicing the mandolin. It was very similar to a lute but had a rich soprano sound. Nazir had given me a pair of books about music for his New Life Day present; he and Hecate must have coordinated on their gifts. I had never imagined that there were so many varieties of stringed instruments, let alone the dozen variations on lutes that were used across the northern parts of the Empire. My own mandolin was an eight-stringed model with a bowl-shaped body, what my ancestors back in Cyrodiil would have called a "mandore."

Learning the intricacies of musical notation was far more difficult than learning the ins and outs of knife fighting or infiltration. I was good at learning practical skills—things that I could watch someone else do and then copy—but it was tough for me to grasp abstract learning. No one else in the Brotherhood knew anything about music besides Cicero, and his own talents ran toward lyrics and improvisation rather than notation or composition. I also didn't have the desperation that was driving me when I learned to read and write back at Honorhall. Half the time during that first couple of weeks, I felt like I was trying to read the dragon script that Hecate had books full of in her personal library.

Still, when things were going well, I could almost lose myself in the sounds. It wasn't music yet, just random notes that sometimes sounded less terrible than smashing a lute on a stone floor. There were plenty of jokes after dinner about it too.

"Ho ho ho, and hee hee hee," Cicero would cackle while capering in front of laughing assassins, "break that lute across my knee!"

It was kind of funny the first time. By the tenth, it was starting to wear on my nerves. By the twentieth, I had decided that perhaps the main room wasn't the correct venue for my forays into the performing arts. With a mocking bow, I gathered my books and mandolin, and I took off for one of the sealed rooms.

The thing about Dawnstar Sanctuary is that it's bigger than it seems. There are dozens of rooms that are unused, including a vast cavern network connected to Sanctuary by a tunnel that was normally kept blocked off by barricade. Ever since Cicero had come back from one of his explorations into the supposedly forbidden areas of the underground, though, I had been intermittently cataloguing some of the unused rooms. Babette and I would sometimes play hide-and-seek in the sealed portion of Sanctuary; it was the only game I could regularly beat her at.

Grabbing one of the lanterns from the supply closet, I pushed my way past the barrier—which was really little more than a bunch of boards laid across the tunnel opening with a sign that said "Keep out!"—and entered the dark chambers beyond. I could have just set down in the big chamber beyond the barrier, but I wanted to make sure that I was somewhere that no one would hear me.

The place was freezing cold and I rapidly found myself wishing I had brought a coat along. As I was looking around for a likely place to set up my books—though really, I would have just settled for a room that still had furniture that hadn't been completely devoured by termites—I suddenly heard what sounded like a titter of laughter from nearby. I spun and looked around, peering into the shadows and bringing up my lantern to shed light.

The shadows moved.

My hand went to my belt for the knife I always kept on my side whether I was in Sanctuary or not, only to find an empty sheath. I looked down in disbelief, and the sound of footsteps retreated away from me, deeper into the forbidden tunnels. Someone was playing games with me. I knew there was no way that any outsider could have gotten past the Black Door, so it was surely one of my siblings. A tight smile pulled at my face as I realized that it had to be Babette, pulling some sort of prank to get back at me for New Life Day.

Well, if that's the way she wanted it, I would oblige.

I put my mandolin and books gently down on a sturdy-looking table, hefted my lantern, and dashed off after the footsteps. The shadowed figure led me on a merry chase, through desolate corridors and empty chambers that echoed with the passage of years. Sometimes I heard a faint girlish giggle or distant clatter, but for the most part I never laid eyes on her at all. I could only wonder how Babette had gotten so good since the last time we played hide-and-seek.

After nearly taking a full slide down an ice-filled tunnel somewhere down in the deep catacombs, I found myself in a broad galley with icicles dangling from the ceiling and a thick drift of snow and slush covering the floor. My teeth were chattering constantly and my skin was standing out in goosebumps. I was starting to get a little annoyed at Babette for leading me on such a merry chase.

That's when I heard the screams.

Whirling around, the lantern light reflecting across the icy walls, I found myself looking up a particularly large snow drift. Near the top, where the drift spilled over the lip of the upper gallery landing, was a sprawled, cloaked figure, scrambling backwards away from a huge, hunched humanoid. My blood ran colder than even the ice and chill around me as I realized that I was looked at the three-eyed, fanged face of a troll.

Trolls were common throughout Skyrim, preferring to live up in snow-covered hills and deep underground. Hecate had told me that there had been a troll lairing in the catacombs when she had first come to Dawnstar, but she had killed it. I could only guess that either the legendary troll ability to regenerate from death was even better than she thought, or that there had been more than one of the damned things down here.

I had never seen a troll before, only heard stories. The creature was just as vicious and horrifying as I could have imagined. It would have been nearly eight feet tall if it were standing upright, covered in stinking, shaggy fur. It roared like a saber cat and tore at its own chest with its wicked-looking claws. Spittle and foam flew from its mouth when it roared. I would have been a fool to fight such a creature, even in full armor and with weapons.

So naturally, I charged it.

With a scream of my own, I ran toward the beast to distract it from its prey. It looked up at me dumbly, its own roar dying in its throat from sheer surprise. Then its three eyes opened wider still and it roared a defiant challenge in response. It stepped past its intended victim and began building up speed for a full charge at me, loping in an almost crab-like fashion with its claws hands dragging the ground.

"Run!" I screamed at the cloaked girl.

As soon as she barrel-rolled to one side, I drew back my arm and planted my feet. The troll continued to charge at me and opened its mouth to roar again. When the creature opened its mouth, I screamed again and hurled the lantern as hard as I could before throwing myself out of its line of charge. My aim was true, and the lantern flew right into the beast's open maw. It bit down in anger and frustration, crushing the lantern and cracking its oil reserve.

The troll's head burst into vibrant flame as the oil sprayed out of its mouth and nose, mixing with the exposed flame on the wick. The fire rapidly spread across its greasy fur—and I can only imagine down its throat too, judging from the gargled cries it began emitting. The troll started clawing at its burning face but only succeeded in spreading the fire to its arms.

Instead of waiting to see if the fire would kill it, I grabbed the girl's hand and took off up the ice tunnel back toward Sanctuary. Without the lantern, it became pitch black as soon as I was out of range of the flickering firelight from the flaming troll. I was pretty good at retracing my steps in darkness thanks to Meena's training, but I was doing it at speed with a partner. Fortunately, my companion was able to keep up with me. Between her uncanny ability to move in the dark at my side and her freezing hand, I was even more convinced that it was Babette.

To be honest, even in the midst of fleeing for my life from a burning, angry troll, part of me was looking forward to rubbing it in her nose that I had saved her. However, the roar behind me told me that the troll wasn't dead yet, so I decided to save it for when we got back to Sanctuary.

When the two of us got back to the top of the ice tunnel, I started to duck toward the room I had come through but the girl pulled on my hand in the other direction. Given that I was trying to work on my trust issues with Babette, I followed along. We ran headlong onto a flight of stairs that ran up to a landing. The girl let go of my hand so suddenly that I went sprawling onto the floor.

The troll came around the corner in a sprint, still on fire but not dead. It screeched thinly before catching sight of my partner at the top of the stairs. The beast came bounding up toward us at full speed, taking the stairs two at a time. I screamed at the girl to run again, but she stood her ground. I admired the courage, though I didn't think it would do either of us much good while being digested by a troll.

Just as the troll reached a point about two-thirds of the way up the stairs, the girl whipped her arm back with my knife in her grip. Her hood fell away, revealing not Babette's dark-brown tresses but Eiruki's honey-brown ones. Part of me wasn't surprised; I thought that "Babette" had seemed awfully tall as we were running together. Still, whatever surprised I lacked at the revelation was replaced by total shock when she threw the blade with such precision that it went through the soft meat of the troll's ankle, right between the bones, and completely severed its foot.

The troll stumbled, its stump already beginning to seal over, but it wasn't able to recover in time to avoid falling. It hit the ground with a bone-cracking thump, its jaw driven into the stone floor with enough force to crack its fangs and make all three of its eyes bulge slightly. One of the beast's arms reached out for Eiruki almost blindly. With a look of casual disinterest on her face, she put one booted foot on top of the arm and then reached out for a pull chain on the wall.

When she grabbed the pull chain, a half-dozen solid steel spears burst from the floor at the doorway, running floor to ceiling in a split-second. The troll was pierced through by the metal spikes in three places—two of them jutting through its wide neck and the third piercing its arm. The troll's blood sprayed onto the stone floor and it writhed back and forth trying to break free of the penetrating metal.

To my horror, the troll wrapped its free hand around one of the bars and began to push. The bar bent very slightly but no further. The troll, dumb beast that it was, kept pushing at the unyielding barrier. Finally, with a sickening tearing noise, the troll's head simply ripped free of its shoulders. The headless body toppled backward, dangling from the arm that was still pinned, as the free hand flopped and spasmed with no brain to control it. As soon as the head was free, the torn flesh around the shattered spine began to knit together. For just a moment, I thought that the troll might even grow another head, but when the skin had completely covered the neck stump, the creature simply shuddered once more and then went still.

Eiruki just watched the whole thing dispassionately, her blank look of dispassion never changing.

"Well," I said, somewhat shell-shocked. "That happened."

And then she turned and threw herself on top of me, crying. I didn't know what to do, so I patted her on the back awkwardly and held her until the tears stopped. Even after that, she continued shaking for a long time. It seemed like hours down there in the dark, but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before she finally spoke again. Her voice was so low and whispery that if her lips hadn't been at my ear I would never have heard her at all.

"I'm sorry I lost your knife," she said. "Do you hate me?"

I shook my head, at a loss for words. I didn't know how to reconcile the cold, hardened killer I had seen in Eiruki's actions when she killed the troll with the soft, warm woman laying on top of me with tears in her eyes and fear in her voice. Was it an act? Was she lying to me like Babette had always lied to me?

In the end, that's why I pushed her away.

"No, I don't hate you," I said, surprised to find that it was true. "But we need to get back to Sanctuary and let the others know this thing was down here. This wasn't the first one lurking down in these tunnels, and it might not be the last one. Let's go."

I stood up and helped her to her feet. Maybe I'm just weak, but when I led the way back to the surface, I didn't say anything about her holding my hand the whole way back.

Strangely, the idea of having to hunt horrible monsters through the depths of the catacombs beneath Sanctuary put everyone into a better mood. Nothing is worse for an assassin than boredom, and the lack of contracts and bad weather had been making everyone irritable since well before New Life Day. Hecate worried and mothered over me while everyone else was down below, hunting for trolls that might or might not exist, so I was pretty happy.

I managed to keep Hecate from yelling at Eiruki over the whole thing. Whether Eiruki was the frightened waif she seemed or the hardened killer I had seen beneath that façade, I genuinely didn't think she had meant me any harm down in the caverns. She was just trying to play a game. Maybe even to make a friend.

Though they didn't find another troll, everyone came back in a better mood and wanted to know all about what had happened. I summoned up all of my ability as a storyteller to make it sound more dramatic and less pants-wettingly terrifying than it really had been. I even managed to make Eiruki sound heroic for cutting a troll's foot off with a thrown knife by leaving out the part where it had been my knife and she stole it.

That night, after far more mead than I should have drunk and plenty of cheering and applause, I stumbled back to the common room to grab some rest. The whole place was already dark, the fire banked to bare embers that gave me barely enough light to even find my bed. After stripping off my shirt and boots, I was too exhausted to take off my pants and just climbed under the blankets, sure that I would fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I was shocked to find someone already in my bed—someone naked and warm. I froze in place and then quickly tried to back away, only to have the stranger throw an arm around my waist.

"Aventus," came Eiruki's whisper-soft voice, "not that I mind… but what are you doing in my bed?" Her voice was slurred with sleep and fragrant with mead.

"I'm not in your bed, Eiruki," I said softly, trying not to wake anyone else up. "You're in my bed."

"Am I?" she asked, nuzzling up against my bare chest. "Sorry…" Before she could say anything else, I could hear faint snores drifting up from her open mouth. She had fallen asleep pressed up to me, her arm thrown over my side. All I could do was sigh and think about how mad Babette was going to be when she saw us like this. Then I stopped and thought about it; Babette would be up tonight, probably working in her lab all night, and she would have no reason to even come into the common room before dawn.

Even knowing that, I didn't think I was going to be able to get to sleep with a naked girl pressed up against me, but sometime before dawn I simply drifted off in Eiruki's embrace. She was gone when I woke up, leaving me to wonder if it had happened at all—though the shy smile and blush she got when I came down to breakfast let me know it hadn't been a dream.

Clearly, I didn't understand women at all.

…to be continued…