Chapter 16: Old Friends

"I just don't understand women," I complained to Nazir as the two of us rode side-by-side.

"And you never will," he replied, laughing.

Springtime was still on its way, but the weather had become warm enough to brave the long roads of Skyrim by the first week of First Seed. We were both wearing heavy cloaks in case of rain, though our hoods were thrown back as we took the roads south toward Whiterun. The sun had just started to poke its way out of the clouds for the first time in days, which I took as a good omen for our trip.

Nazir was mounted up on his grey gelding, Sirocco; I had finally put together enough septims to afford my own horse, a dappled brown mare I had named Spot. Babette had laughed about it, of course, but I was terrible with names and didn't feel like taking Hecate's advice to just call it "Number One." I sometimes got the impression that before being given Shadowmere, the black demon steed that had been a Brotherhood fixture for centuries, she'd had trouble with horses, but she would never talk about it.

Truthfully, I probably could have afforded a horse sooner, but I hated spending money. Unlike most of the Dark Brotherhood, I didn't lead an extravagant lifestyle—I didn't go out to inns to eat regularly, or drink heavily at Dawnstar's local tavern, or buy expensive clothes. My only hobby was music, and I was still learning that. I suppose that spending money instead of hoarding it just didn't come naturally to me. I still remembered all too keenly the pain of watching my coins bleed away while I struggled to make ends meet. Even now that I was making decent money taking contracts for the Brotherhood, I preferred to just stuff my money into a hole under my bed rather than spend it on things.

Still, after several weeks with nothing to do, I was happy to spend the septims on a horse just for the chance to accompany Nazir on errands. It wasn't a proper contract; we were just going to Whiterun so that Nazir could check up on some of his contacts there and arrange new ones. Now that the Brotherhood was rebuilding, we had to increase our presence in the courts and cities of the province—which meant sending the Speaker to make contact and spend money.

Nazir hadn't wanted company at first, but Hecate had insisted that he allow me to come along when she remembered that I had never been to Whiterun before. Nazir grumbled about it, but he had finally given in. I liked to think that the week we spent on the road together had changed his mind about it too. As I had learned from having Garnag along as backup on several contracts, having someone to watch your back was a comfort even outside of a mission. Two sets of hands made camp work lighter, and two pairs of eyes made trouble on the road less likely.

I had wanted to talk to Nazir about my problems since Frostfall, but it had always seemed like it wasn't a good time. Between his general irritability of late, one or the other of us being on contract, or how crowded Sanctuary had become in the last six months, it seemed like I hadn't been able to get a moment to just talk to Nazir in forever.

When I had originally come to join the Dark Brotherhood, Nazir had been the one who set my training schedule, gave me good advice about the assassin's life, taught me basic math, and all sorts of other things. Now that he was formally working as the Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood—and there was a Brotherhood that was bigger than a half-dozen social outcasts living in a hole in the ground—he was a busy man. Going on a long trip together had seemed like a perfect opportunity to have his sole attention for a little while.

I knew that I was awkward with people. In recent months, I had become far more keenly aware of just how awkward I was. It seemed like I was always making Babette angry at me somehow, or getting Eiruki near tears without realizing how. And worse, I still seemed like I was no closer to my goal of making Hecate see me as a real man, despite months of wielding a blade in the Night Mother's name.

Not that wild mammoths could have dragged that last one out of me, even to Nazir.

Unfortunately, being awkward with people still applied to someone I felt as close to as Nazir. It had taken me all week just to work around to the one topic I really wanted to bring up.

We had made small talk about my recent contracts for much of the first three days, eventually turning to general gossip about the family for the next couple. We passed a pleasant day with Nazir talking about cooking and me talking about the progression of my musical talents. It was only on the seventh day out of Sanctuary, with Whiterun only a few hours away, that I had finally worked up my nerve enough to talk about the one thing I had really wanted to talk about: women.

I couldn't deny that my feelings were a little stung by his response, but I pressed on as best I could.

"Do you understand women?" I pushed, hoping for something that wasn't one of Nazir's famous sarcastic remarks.

"Aventus," he said, taking a moment to gesture expansively at the world around us, "women are like the sea and the sky. A man can spend his whole life trying to understand them, only to find that there are still surprises in store. An ice princess can have depths of warmth and compassion that you can only glimpse, while a peaceful matron can slit throats with a smile when pushed to despair." He shook his head and laughed again. "Men are simple. It's one of the reasons I prefer to work with them. I don't like surprises."

"So…" I started, only to have Nazir interrupt.

"Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?" he said. "You're having girl troubles, right?" I nodded sheepishly. "Eiruki or Babette?"

"Both, sort of," I replied.

"Sithis grant we should all have that sort of trouble!" he laughed. He paused and looked at me critically for a moment. "Have you and Babette talked about…" He trailed off, but his meaning was clear enough.

"No," I said tensely. After a year and more in the Dark Brotherhood, I still didn't know whatever secret Babette was keeping from me. I was pretty sure she wasn't a Dwemer construct, though. I was beginning to understand that whatever her secret was, it had something to do with the fact that she was almost never awake during the day and didn't seem to be growing up like I was. I just couldn't figure it out on my own.

"That is trouble, then," he murmured. "All I can say is that you're in for some big decisions over the next few years, Aventus. But the thing to keep in mind is that no decision is final, except the one that gets you killed. As long as you stay alive to fight another day, everything else is negotiable."

I nodded, and if Nazir was going to say any more, he didn't get the chance. We both fell silent as we came around a bend in the road to see Whiterun a few miles ahead. The city sprawled across the face of a low mountain, surrounded on all sides by rolling fields, farmhouses, and roads cutting across the center of the province. I whistled a low note at seeing the city for the first time. From a distance, it was impressive as hell.

As Nazir and I walked through the great gates of Whiterun, having left our horses at the stables outside the city walls, I could only think of how disappointed Hecate would be if she saw it now.

"You'll love it there, Aventus!" she had said excitedly. Her eyes got a distant look, the kind she sometimes had when thinking about her life before the Brotherhood. "It's the finest city in Skyrim except for Solitude. Nothing like drab old Windhelm." Her descriptions of the majestic rise of Dragonsreach standing over the Wind and Plains Districts had captured my imagination.

Now, the mighty walls were cracked and scarred from the battle a year past where Ulfric Stormcloak's rebel army had seized the city in the name of their glorious revolution. There were still war-barricades set up on either side of the main road into the city, their heavy logs covered in spikes and pitch. A major Stormcloak encampment had been set up just outside the city walls, replacing the Khajiit caravans that Hecate had described with fond recollection.

How very like the Stormcloaks to turn everywhere they went into just another Windhelm.

Many of the homes in the Plains District bore the scars of the battle, and some of them were boarded up and abandoned rather than repaired. I could only guess that the Stormcloaks had run off any citizens they didn't consider "pure enough" by their standards, or that anyone who still believed in the Empire had left willingly. I could at least grant that most Stormcloaks weren't murderers; when they took a city for Jarl Ulfric, they gave all of the local jarl's court and the city's noncombatants the chance to leave rather than submit to Stormcloak rule.

"Hey!" said a Stormcloak soldier angrily as he came stalking toward us. He was pointing at Nazir. "I thought I told you that you're not allowed here. Turn around and go back the way you came."

"Excuse me?" Nazir drawled languidly, his narrowed eyes the only sign of his annoyance. "I think you must have me confused with someone else. My apprentice and I," he gestured toward me, "have only just arrived in the city."

The Stormcloak paused and removed his helmet to get a better look at Nazir. He was tall and ginger-haired, with a face full of freckles and a gap in his teeth. My heart plummeted into my boots when I recognized him as Lasskar Deep-Water, who I had last seen when he was trying to kill me at the behest of a local neighborhood bully named Haakig. I prayed to Sithis that he didn't recognize me—I had changed a lot physically since the last time he had seen me—but I had no such luck. His eyes widened as he looked at me.

"Aretino?" he asked in faint surprise.

"You recognize my apprentice?" Nazir asked, nudging me slightly with one elbow. I nodded at him and scrambled to remember the cover stories we had come up with before leaving Sanctuary. I would have to use my real name instead of the fake one that I had picked, but all of the other details could stay the same.

"It's all right, Sirann," I said to Nazir, using his most common alias. "Lasskar and I are old friends from Windhelm."

"By Talos, Aventus!" Lasskar exclaimed, patting me on one shoulder. "After you vanished, the rest of us were scared that Haakig might have killed you and dumped you in the bay." He looked up at Nazir, who quirked an eyebrow at him. Lasskar blushed to his red roots and coughed into a curled fist. "Anyway, we all realized that it had gone too far and we stopped hanging around with him after that. Me and my brother joined up with the Stormcloaks a few months later, soon as they would take us. Glad to see you don't have any hard feelings."

"None at all," I lied with a smile. Truthfully, I wasn't angry at Lasskar or Vigurl; we had been friends, of a sort, before I was sent off to Honorhall Orphanage. It was only after I left that they had started hanging out with Haakig and his crew of racist bullies. It still hurt a little, but I found that it didn't hurt nearly as much as it would have even a year before.

Knowing that I could kill him before he even knew I had a weapon in my hand went a long way toward cushioning my hurt feelings too, I had to admit.

"Where's Vigurl?" I asked pleasantly, looking around as though Lasskar's twin would come strolling up at any second.

"With the army down near Falkreath," Lasskar said, shaking his head. "At least that's where he was the last time I heard from him. Mail's been spotty with fighting up and down the hold."

"I thought that Whiterun Hold got taken a year ago?" I asked as I started walking on, deeper into the city. Like I had expected, Lasskar started walking along with me, having totally forgotten that he had been trying to keep Nazir out of the city only a few minutes ago. Nazir followed along, keeping quiet.

"We did," he spat, "but those faithless Imperials have been running attacks behind the lines. They put little camps in the wilderness outside of our patrol lines and ambush supply caravans, murder our couriers, destroy food stores, that sort of thing. It's disgusting." I didn't bring up the fact that the Stormcloaks had done the same—and worse—in Imperial-held territories. "Because of that, I don't even know if Vigurl is…"

I nodded sympathetically. "Well, if my master and I get out that way, I'll see if I can't ask about him." Lasskar's desperate smile made me feel bad for the lie, so I coughed and gestured toward Nazir. "Lasskar Deep-Water, allow me to introduce Sirann al'Maliq, master trader of Hammerfell." Nazir gave a gracious nod toward the youth, who half-bowed in return.

"Sorry about before," Lasskar said sheepishly. "We've just been having some trouble with some men from Hammerfell lately, and-"

"We all look alike to you?" Nazir asked with a vicious smile. I groaned inwardly; while Nazir's sarcasm could be hilarious back at Sanctuary, it could offend people who weren't used to it.

"Nothing like that, sir," Lasskar said, his face cherry-red with embarrassment. "It's just really hard to see in these damned helmets. All I could really make out when I saw you was your garb. It's the same sort of stuff those guys were wearing." He squinted at Nazir again. "Actually, now that I can see you clearly, I guess it was a pretty dumb mistake. Those guys were wearing blue hoods, not red ones."

Nazir froze.

"You're certain of that?" he asked intently. "They were men from Hammerfell wearing blue hoods?"

"Yeah," Lasskar said. "They've been coming into town every couple of days to ask about some woman they're looking for. It got to be enough of a hassle for travelers that Jarl Vignar gave us orders to turn them away if they tried to come back into the city. Last time they tried, I heard them say they were going to head to Rorikstead." He laughed mirthlessly. "I hope the town guard there gets as much 'enjoyment' from their presence as we did."

"Thanks, Lasskar," I said just as we reached the steps leading up to the Bannered Mare, the inn that Nazir said we would be staying at while in the city. I shook his hand and nodded to him again. "If we happen to be in Falkreath any time soon, I'll ask about Vigurl."

Once the red-haired teen was out of earshot, I turned to Nazir.

"Blue hoods?" I asked. "Why is that important?"

"Because," he said with a frown, "it means that the Alik'r are in Skyrim."

Once we were safely tucked away into our spacious room, Nazir sat down on the edge of the bed. He started to pull his hood off before giving me a strange glance and dropping his hands back into his lap.

"Who in the name of Sithis are the Alik'r?" I asked. "And why should we care?"

"The Alik'r are nomad mercenaries," Nazir replied. "They're the most deadly warriors in Hammerfell, named for the Alik'r Desert in which they live." He started walking up toward the inn, his eyes troubled and his face downcast. "I used to be one of them." He paused and looked at me with a discerning glare. "How much history do you know, Aventus?"

"None at all," I said cheerfully. Nazir sighed; he had often complained about how gleeful the rest of us were about being so uneducated.

"Well then," he growled, "suffice to say that the Alik'r are dangerous people, and that they wouldn't appreciate seeing me again." I nodded, satisfied. That seemed like as good a summary as I needed. Nazir had been one of the most insistent of the Dark Brotherhood about not talking about what your life was like before joining. I wondered now if that was because he'd had more of a life before the Brotherhood than the rest of us.

"We should start getting unpacked," I said, tossing our saddlebags onto the room's lone table. "I figure that I'll spend tomorrow going around town and talking to shopkeepers to keep our cover story going. Do you think these Allikeers-"

"Alik'r," Nazir interrupted. I honestly couldn't hear the difference.

"Do you think these people will interfere with your half of things?"

"Probably not," he admitted with a shrug. "I'm only concerned because it's unusual for them to be in Skyrim at all. It's a long way from the desert. I'm just grateful they're not looking for me."

"Lasskar said something about them looking for a woman," I pointed out. "Any idea who it might be?"

"Not really," Nazir said. "None of our business anyway."

"Well," I said, rubbing my hands together, "since it's nothing to us, no point worrying about it." I smiled broadly and got a return smile from Nazir, albeit a distant, wan smile. "So, is there anything in the budget for a nice dinner since we're actually staying at an inn for a change?" Nazir chuckled more sincerely this time.

"I swear, boy," he said as he stood up. "You'd eat the Brotherhood out of its last septim if I let you."

"I can't help that I'm a growing boy," I laughed back as the two of us started walking toward the door. "Blame your own good cooking for making me into a gourmet."

We were chuckling companionably as we walked into the hallway. If we'd been a few seconds sooner or later, we would have completely missed the barmaid who ran into Nazir headlong as she came around the corner. They both stumbled back, apologies on their lips, when they looked up at one another. Nazir took another step back, his hand dropping onto the hilt of his curved sword.

"Iman," he murmured.

The woman had bark-brown skin and short-cut black hair shot through with a few wisps of grey. She was wearing a low-cut barmaid's dress that showed off enough to demonstrate that she was still physically fit and trim despite being easily three decades older than me. Her dark eyes widened and her mouth opened as if to scream. Before she did, she took a step back and composed herself. It was an almost regal act.

"Nazir," she said calmly, even though her hands were shaking. "It's good to see you again." She looked him in the eye. "Are you here to kill me?"

"I should," he said, half-drawing his scimitar. I laid a hand on his arm, which drew an ugly look. After a long moment, he finally sheathed the blade and nodded. We both knew that our mission was only salvageable if we could shut this woman up—but quietly. Killing her in a hallway in the biggest inn in Whiterun was not that thing.

"How long have you been in Whiterun?" he asked coldly.

"A little more than three years," she said. "I came here just before the civil war started and wound up not being able to leave because of the border closing."

Nazir looked at her sharply. I knew that he had been through Whiterun a few times in the last couple of years on Brotherhood business. Had he not stayed in an inn during that whole time? I sighed; it made sense, given that Nazir was the only member of the Brotherhood as cheap as me.

"I take it you two know each other then," I said, trying to cut some of the tension.

"All too well," Nazir said without taking his eyes off the woman. "Iman here is the reason I was banished from my homeland." She flinched away from his gaze.

"By the gods, Nazir," she said, a tear trickling down her cheek. "I didn't know."

"What did you think would happen to me?" he said angrily, stepping toward her. I increased the pressure on his arm, afraid that he might still attack her out here in the open. "I helped you escape. You know what the price is for betrayal among the Alik'r. Did you really-"

A door opened further down the hallway and Nazir closed his mouth hard enough that his teeth clicked together. The Nord man who came out into the hall nodded pleasantly at all of us as he went toward the stairs. We all held our breath until he was out of sight, then let it out at the same time.

"Maybe this isn't the best place to discuss this?" I insisted, looking at each of them in turn.

"The boy is right," Iman said. "I have a room here. We can go there and discuss whether or not I die today."

She turned away from Nazir and paused for a moment. I couldn't tell if she was being brave or arrogant by turning her back to a potential killer. Nazir held back his obvious anger, though, and she began walking. We followed her through the inn to an upstairs room in a different part of the building from ours. She showed us in and closed the door behind us, making sure to throw the lock before sitting down on her bed. Nazir stayed standing, his arms crossed in anger.

I had a feeling that this was going to take a while.

There are times I hate being right.

I wound up not getting my expected hot dinner at all, instead dining on cold cheese and tough travel bread while Iman—who now apparently called herself Saadia—told her story of woe. Apparently, she used to be a noblewoman from Hammerfell when the province had fallen to the Aldmeri Dominion. I didn't understand all the politics, but her family had fallen out of favor when the Empire forswore the province to preserve the treaty with the elves. With most of her family disbanded or imprisoned, she had chosen to flee rather than be taken by the Altmer.

Ironically, the Altmer were driven out of Hammerfell a few years later, making them the only nation to ever win a war with the Dominion. Saadia couldn't go home, though. Fleeing in the first place made her a coward in the eyes of her own people. Even worse, since her family had Imperial ties, she would have been a reminder of the Empire's "betrayal" of the Redguards.

I couldn't believe it, but I was starting to feel some genuine sympathy for the Stormcloaks after hearing Saadia's story. Say what you would about the Nords, they would never have treated an ally the way that the Empire had treated Hammerfell. They had taken taxes and men for their legions for centuries, only to discard the Redguards when the fight had become too tough—and for Hammerfell to win against the Dominion anyway. It was no wonder Redguards had such a reputation as great warriors.

"I wasn't here looking for you, Nazir," she finally concluded at the end of her story. "I came here to get away from everything. The Empire's been falling apart for years since Titus Mede II took the throne. He threw our people away like so much trash!"

"Your people, you mean," Nazir retorted. "The Alik'r always held themselves separate from other Redguards." He paused, his tone softening slightly. "It seems we both wound up exiles in the end."

"Indeed," Saadia said, reaching out to lay a hand over Nazir's. "Truly, Nazir, I didn't mean for you to share in my fate. You were young. I thought they would go easy on you for helping me."

"Not young enough to not know the law of the sands," he said as he pulled his hand away from hers. He turned to me to explain. "The Alik'r are mercenaries. They have an absolute loyalty to whoever pays them, but that loyalty ends the moment that the pay stops. The rules that govern our—their—lives are called 'the law of the sands.'"

"Kind of like the Five Tenets of the Dark Brotherhood," I said before I could stop myself. Saadia looked at me curiously and Nazir frowned. "It's something I read about once," I covered as quickly as I could. Saadia was satisfied enough to not challenge it.

"My band was contracted by Saadia's family for extra hands to fight the Dominion," Nazir continued. "When the elves marched on Taneth, the capital of Hammerfell, the Alik'r were ready to fight to the death to honor their contracts."

"What my family didn't know when they decided to stay and fight," Saadia said, picking up the tale, "was that the elves had already worked out a deal with the leaders of the Alik'r. The elves took their time consolidating western Hammerfell, delaying the war effort for months while focusing their troops on Cyrodiil and Valenwood. It took long enough that the Alik'r contracts ran out."

"Then when the noble families went to renegotiate what should have been automatic renewals," Nazir said sourly, "they found that the Alik'r had already been paid off—by the Aldmeri Dominion. The elves offered them a fortune to just sit the conflict out, to not fight for either side."

"Sounds like easy money to me," I commented.

"It was easy money," Nazir admitted. "Too easy. We didn't know it at the time, but the Dominion had no intention of ever paying their side of the bargain beyond a pittance of a down payment. They thought that conquering Taneth would take the fight out of the Redguard people and let them turn their full forces on the Alik'r if they tried to raise a fuss about not getting paid." Nazir laughed bitterly. "They didn't realize how much my people loved money."

"So how did all of this get you exiled?" I asked. I figured that at this point, Nazir had just given up on not wanting to talk about things.

"It was my fault," Saadia admitted, her eyes downcast. "Nazir's band was attached to my family as estate guards. He and I were… friends." I looked between the two of them; given Nazir's own softer expression and Saadia's unwillingness to look at him, I thought they might have been more than that. Maybe I was finally starting to get better at reading people. "I asked Nazir to help me escape the Dominion's forces when they came to seize my family. I would never have gotten away if it weren't for him. It was all my fault."

"No, it wasn't," Nazir said with a sigh. "If I was old enough to know the law, I was old enough to make my own decisions." He shook his head. "Seeing you again brought back old pain, but I have a new life now. A purpose." He looked over at me and patted me on the shoulder. "A family."

"The boy is your son?" she asked, confused. "Was his mother an Imperial?"

"No, nothing like that," Nazir laughed. "I never had any children. Aventus is my…" He paused for a moment. In the end, he stayed with our cover story. "He's my apprentice. I'm a merchant now. Though around here they call me Sirann."

"After your brother?" she asked. Nazir nodded; I hadn't even known he had a brother. "How wonderful for you, Nazir," she smiled. "Much better off than me, I'm afraid." She gestured at her worn barmaid's dress. "I've been running for years, using up what remained of my family's money and selling the jewelry I was able to take with me just to survive. I hid out in Cyrodiil for a number of years, relying on old friends of my family to keep me hidden." Her face grew dark as she thought back.

"About a decade ago," she continued, "I caught wind of Alik'r warriors looking for me. My few remaining allies proved just as fair-weather as the Empire had to Hammerfell, and I fled the heartlands rather than wait for them to betray me too. They were just a step behind me for years, and I spent what was left of a fortune to throw them off the trail. I finally ran to Skyrim. My father always said that it was the furthest corner of the Empire."

"I'm afraid that you haven't run far enough then," Nazir said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused and clearly afraid. "You said you weren't of the Alik'r anymore."

"Not me," he replied with a shake of his head. "One of the Stormcloaks out near the gate said that some Redguards in robes like mine had been asking after a Redguard woman."

"By the Divines," she cursed. "I thought I was finally free of being hunted. I have nothing left. Even if the borders weren't sealed because of the war, I wouldn't have enough money to go anywhere. When I arrived in Whiterun, I was completely broke. I would have starved in the streets if not for the woman who owns this inn being kind enough to give me a job."

When she looked up at Nazir, her eyes were full of tears and her face tormented. I knew what she was going to ask before she even opened her mouth—and that Nazir would say no. She had used him and gotten him thrown out of his family, exiled from everything he had ever known. I had heard him say once that the Dark Brotherhood had given him a purpose again after hitting bottom. I couldn't imagine that he would do anything for this woman after going through so much for her once before.

"Will you help me, Nazir?" she asked, just as I thought she would. I sat back, smugly satisfied with my own cleverness, to wait for his inevitable refusal.

"Yes, Iman," he said with the most sincerity I had ever heard in the man's voice. "I'll help you."

I gaped at him, literally unable to believe what I had just heard. I pinched my own arm, just to make sure I hadn't fallen asleep while they were talking about boring politics. The pain let me know that I was awake, to my continuing horror.

"Nazir," I said through gritted teeth, "we have business to attend to." I stared at him, bulging my eyes out in a manner that I hoped conveyed the question "What in the Void do you think you're doing?"

"Naturally, you can go on about our business without me, Aventus," he said dismissively. As if that were possible. Not only did I not know any of Nazir's contacts—by name or by face—most of them were the sort of people who would slit throats rather than answer questions if someone besides the man paying them showed up.

"That's not really possible," I hissed. "Our clients will only talk to Sirann, remember?" He finally looked at me, as if realizing the last thirty years of his life had happened and that he was under an obligation to both Hecate and the Night Mother. He sighed deeply.

"I'm afraid my apprentice is correct," he said. At last, the Nazir I knew! "We really have to finish our business here before we can do anything for you. But that should only take a day or two."

I groaned and slapped myself in the forehead. It was going to be a long trip.

…to be continued…