Chapter 19: Promises Made to be Broken
My kiss with Eiruki haunted me, in more ways than one. As soon as she was gone, I collapsed back into my chair, unable to quite process what had happened. My emotions were a whirlwind; it felt almost like the time I nearly died from fever.
What did Eiruki want from me? The kiss hadn't been at all sisterly. How did I feel about her in return? And if she wanted something from me—whether a relationship or something purely physical—could I give it to her? I knew that my body was telling me to forget about all of the questions and doubts, to just find her again and kiss her some more, but my heart belonged to someone else.
But did it still? After everything that had happened while Hecate was gone, did I still love her? And even if I did, was my love something that even mattered? She would never see me as a grown man, and she was in love with Cicero despite his madness and violence. Or perhaps because of it.
Sitting alone in a dim room with a mandolin and burning lips, I thought back to spring.
By the time Nazir and I had returned to Sanctuary, things had picked up. Winter was always a slow season for assassinations. People just didn't seem to have the same rancor in the colder months, or maybe no one wanted to perform the Black Sacrament while they were freezing their fingers off. Either way, our business always boomed by the end of First Seed.
Brothers and sisters were being dispatched across Skyrim—and sometimes outside of it—on an almost daily basis. Life fell into a pleasant pattern: work, a few days of downtime in Sanctuary, and then back to work. Coin changed hands, dues were paid to the Brotherhood, and Sithis was praised in our deeds. It was a rare day that more than three of us were home, not counting Nazir, Hecate, and Cicero. Those three were the leadership of the Dark Brotherhood, so they went on assignment far less than the rest of us.
In the weeks Nazir and I had been gone, two new family members had been recruited: a female Bosmer named Geldii, and a male Breton called Elbent. Geldii was an interesting paradox—a wood elf that fought in heavy armor with a mighty double-bladed axe—while Elbent seemed to love money more than even most Imperials I had ever met. I didn't get a chance to know either of them very well before having to go right back out on mission with Garnag. I looked forward to learning more about them when I had the time.
I always enjoyed working with Garnag. He liked telling stories and answering questions, and I had an insatiable curiosity for the world beyond Dawnstar. I might never get to see Cyrodiil, but when Garnag talked about the White Gold Tower I could almost see it. I envied that kind of storytelling ability, the power to make images with words.
Even beyond the enjoyment of having a partner who could help us stay entertained on the long hours of travel before getting to our target, Garnag's years of experience made him an expert at providing support and backup. He usually gave me point on our contracts—the privilege of actually delivering the Night Mother's vengeance to the target—both because I needed the field experience and because his advanced age made it a little more difficult for him to engage in the physical end of our work. I didn't mind, though. Garnag's magic had saved my life more than once, and my strength and fighting skill had saved his.
This mission was nothing particularly noteworthy, sadly. While I appreciated every contract from the Night Mother as a sacred covenant of vengeance, I had learned that not all contracts were created equal. I had killed seven men and women in the Night Mother's name—including Rolff Stone-Fist—and they had run the gamut from challenging missions of holy revenge to very simple killings. Garnag and I had been sent to end the life of a woman who had murdered her husband to take his share of a business; the client was the dead husband's brother, who had been seduced into giving up his share of the business as well, only to find that the woman had loved neither of them.
It was all very sordid, but it hardly made it more difficult for two skilled assassins to kill a middle-aged businesswoman. It took longer to travel to Morthal and find her than it had to kill her and hide her body.
As we were leaving the city a few hours later, Garnag turned to me and asked, "Have you considered a signature?"
"What's that now?" I asked in return, eating an apple as we rode our horses.
"A signature," he said again. "You know, a personal way of dispatching your targets." He scratched his stubbly chin in thought. "It's like how Chickpea dresses like a jester and only uses knives. Or how Anaril freezes his targets so cold that they shatter into pieces." Garnag chuckled at the thought of someone exploding into icy shards, and I found myself smiling too. It was strange what became funny when you were a professional killer. "Lucien Lachance was one of the greatest killers of the last Era—he killed people with poisoned apples."
"I haven't given it any thought," I said with a shrug to cut off Garnag from reminiscing about long-dead killers. As much as I enjoyed history and stories, the history of the Brotherhood was one of the least interesting topics Garnag could bring up. I stopped chewing and spit out the rest of my apple; I wasn't hungry anymore. "Honestly, until you mentioned the possibility, I hadn't even considered it."
"I'm not surprised," Garnag said, nodding. "It seems like this new Brotherhood is a lot less theatrical than the old one." I quirked up an eyebrow at him and he laughed again. "It's true! Back in the old days, there were enough of us that if you wanted to stand out against the crowd—to get picked to make real coin—you didn't just have to be good at killing. You had to be flashy too."
"What was your signature?" I asked in curiosity.
"I didn't have one," he admitted. "It's one of the reasons I didn't ever get ahead very far back then." He shook his head sadly, his good humor flowing away like water. "Of course, it might also be why I lived when almost everyone else died. I wasn't high up enough to get sent on the really tough missions, or low enough to get sent out as cannon fodder when things got to their worst." His face was distant and bitter as he spoke about the past, so I quickly changed the subject.
"Do you really think I need a signature then?" I asked. "I mean, a lot of the time, we don't want people to even know we were there."
"That's true," he said. "It's always common sense when to not use it, but all the greatest assassins of the past had a personal touch for their kills. If they ever catch you in the act, it makes it tough to deny a connection to other crimes—but the great ones never get caught. Look at that Butcher fellow up in Windhelm, for example."
"Don't compare us to him," I said with a disdainful shake of my head. "He murders innocent girls and gets away with it because no one is competent enough to stop him. He's exactly the sort of person we should be hunting down, not admiring for his clever knife-work."
"Augh, moralizing. Another unpleasant habit you've picked up from the Listener. But you're young yet," Garnag chuckled. "You'll get over this whole 'innocent' and 'guilty' thing soon enough."
I knew Garnag meant the best for me, but I worried about what he said. I had joined the Dark Brotherhood because of a deep moral commitment to the idea that killing the bad people would help the good ones. If there ever came a day that I didn't care about things like innocence and guilt anymore, I'm not sure that I would still be a good assassin. I definitely wouldn't like myself very much anymore. A lot of my brothers and sisters ignored those sorts of things—and I respected their right to do so—but I genuinely believed that the Night Mother would never send one of her bloody-handed children against someone truly innocent.
No, at least in this, Garnag was dead wrong.
We rode in silence for a couple of hours until I finally realized what Garnag had been getting at when he brought it up. He had emphasized that the best killers had a signature—the very best. I wondered if Garnag had been trying to say that he thought I could be one of those great assassins. After mulling it over for a bit, I dismissed the idea from my mind. Thinking of myself as a "great assassin" was just hubris. I was just another blade in the Night Mother's service, happy in my anonymity to the outside world.
It took us most of a week to get back to Sanctuary. Though Rain's Hand had lived up to its name for much of the trip, it was sunny and bright out as we reached the road outside Dawnstar. We had both thrown off our cloaks and were enjoying the feel of the warm sun and cool breeze as we rode.
My reverie was interrupted by the sight of a dead horse by the side of the road.
I held out a hand to Garnag, indicating that we should stop and check it out. Another reason that I liked working with Garnag was that we had put together our own unique language of hand signs, making communication without noise easier than with any of my other siblings. We both dismounted and paced away from our horses, spreading out to minimize the possibility of an ambush. Garnag drew his sword, and I my flanged mace.
Once we were close enough to get a better view of the horse, my heart sank. The brown mare was Cicero's steed, Hilarity. She had clearly been dead for a couple of hours, her lips white and red with bloody foam. From the look of her, Cicero had ridden her to death. The jester's saddlebags were still on her, untouched, and the ground nearby was littered with signs of the Fool of Heart's rapid departure from the scene.
My mouth went dry at reading the tracks. He had abandoned his dead horse without even taking any of his possessions. We were only a few hours from Sanctuary by foot, so coming back later with a fresh horse to pick up his things was entirely reasonable. What worried me more was that I saw no sign of Shadowmere's passing. Where was Hecate?
"Garnag," I said, calling the elderly orc's attention away from looking for signs of trouble. "It's Cicero's horse."
"Any sign of Chickpea?" he asked, obviously worried for his old friend.
"Tracks say he walked out of here on his own power," I told him. I didn't mention that he looked like he was running as if wolves were behind him, despite no sign of pursuit. "I don't see any sign of Shadowmere or Hecate, though."
"We should split up and look for them," he ventured.
"It looks like Cicero is following the main road for now," I said as I ran back to my horse, Spot. I vaulted up into the saddle and wheeled around. "You can probably overtake him if you ride hard. I'm going to cut cross-country back to Sanctuary and see if anyone had heard from Hecate."
"Sithis guide you," Garnag blessed quickly as he started tugging Cicero's saddlebags free of poor Hilarity's corpse.
I rode through the forest at the best speed I could manage without breaking my mount's legs. Unlike Hecate and Cicero, who had racked up a body count of horses between the two of them that rivaled my number of contracts, I had no desire to have to put down a horse that had done nothing to me. Still, I sacrificed some amount of caution for speed in this case. Hecate meant more to me than any dumb beast.
Long hours exploring the woods around Sanctuary with Pavot and hunting with Deesei had left me familiar with most of the shortcuts and hidden animal paths within a few hours' walk of the Black Door. It took me less than an hour to reach Sanctuary's hidden stables on horseback. As I trotted Spot up to the moss-and-ivy covered entrance, I saw Shadowmere standing next to a tree outside the stables and breathed a sigh of relief. It still didn't answer why Hecate had come back from wherever she had gone without Cicero, but at least Shadowmere's presence meant that she had come home safely.
I quickly stabled Spot and ran through the Black Door, only to find the place in a rush of activity and conversation. Meena, Geldii, and Elbent were gathered around a table near the entry to the main hall, arguing loudly, while Eiruki sat by herself on the far side of the room.
"What's going on?" I asked Meena as I rushed over to the gathered assassins. "Where are Hecate and Cicero?"
"This one does not know where the Keeper has gone," Meena said in her usual slightly haughty tones, "but the Listener is packing to leave."
"What!" I exclaimed, not quite making it a question.
"It's true," Geldii confirmed. "She came in looking like something the cat dragged in-" She glanced over at Meena and quickly added, "No offense intended." Meena nodded.
"No, no," she said generously, "she would look worse if a cat dragged her in."
"Regardless," the wood elf continued, "she looked pretty rough. Ran off to the Night Mother's shrine, then came back a few minutes later and said she was leaving. Didn't know when she'd be back."
"Did she say where she was going?" I pressed.
"She told Nazir," Elbent piped up. "He made a good point about needing to get ahold of her if an emergency came up, but-"
I wasn't listening anymore. I turned and ran off toward Nazir's office, leaving Elbent behind to huff in annoyance, only to find it empty. I could hear low voices coming from the direction of Hecate's rooms, so I started heading that way. The voices grew in volume, not quite shouting but clearly incensed. As I reached the door, Nazir came storming out, almost knocking me over.
"You're back," he said gruffly. I nodded unnecessarily. "See if you can talk some damn sense into her then. You're the only one she ever listens to besides Cicero and the Night Mother anyway." Then he stalked off, fuming and frowning. I couldn't even enjoy the idea that Nazir thought Hecate would listen to me out of worry for what might be going on.
I knocked gently on the doorframe without walking in. The door was open and I could see Hecate tossing clothes into a leather duffel bag. She didn't fold or tuck anything, just cramming things in as she grabbed them. She was clearly preparing to leave as soon as the bag was full. She looked up from her packing, and I could see why the others had been so disturbed.
Hecate's hair was matted and tangled, as though she hadn't bathed in days. Her face was dirty and streaky, though from rain or tears I couldn't tell. There were dark circles under her eyes, so sleep was probably as distant a memory as bathing. Her clothes were fresher than the rest of her, but the filthy Brotherhood leathers tossed on the ground next to her bed indicated that they weren't the ones she had arrived in.
"Hecate," I called when she seemed to either not hear or ignore my knock. She continued to pack frantically, as though slowing down would make her reconsider what she was doing. I called her name again, louder this time, and she finally looked up at me. Her face had a haunted, ragged look to it. The pain in her eyes made me take a step back.
"Aventus?" she asked, as though she wasn't quite sure. Her hands froze, filled with odds and ends of clothing.
"Yeah," I said, starting to walk toward her, "it's me." I looked around the chaotic clutter of the bedroom. While Hecate had never been one for tidying up her living area, it was worse than usual. "What's going on? Meena and Geldii said something about you leaving."
"I have to," she said, starting to pack again, albeit more slowly. "I need to go away for a while to… to get my head together."
"Did Cicero do something?" I asked. To my shock, Hecate's face fell and she started leaking tears, her eyes scrunched together to try and hold them in. My face must have shown something of my worry because when she looked at me, she suddenly lost control and burst out crying. She buried her face in the clothes she was holding and collapsed onto the bed, bent forward at the waist. The room started vibrating from the noises she was making; as the Dragonborn, her voice could be dangerous when uncontrolled.
I walked over and sat on the bed next to her, patting her back awkwardly. I didn't think of myself as very good at consoling people, but she seemed to get herself back under control. She sat up straighter and blew her nose into the shirt she was holding. She pulled it away and looked at it, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
"Guess I'm not taking that with me," she said with a hollow laugh as she tossed the soiled garment onto the floor.
"Are you sure you should be traveling like this?" I asked with real worry. In the years I had been part of the Dark Brotherhood, I had only seen Hecate crying once before. I could feel my previous worry for Cicero turning into sour anger; on some level, I couldn't help but think that this was his fault. Whatever "this" was.
"I'll be fine," she said, wiping at her damp eyes with her sleeve. "I just have to go before Cicero gets back." She looked over at me, noting my frown, and continued. "He hasn't done anything. It's me. I'm the problem. But if I don't go before he comes home, he'll try to talk me out of going." She stood up and starting putting things in the duffel bag again. "Divines help me, he might even succeed."
"I don't really understand," I admitted, "but if you say you have to, then I guess you have to."
"The Greybeards are the only ones who can help me," she said absently as her hands moved.
"You're going to High Hrothgar?" I asked in surprise. She looked at me sharply. "Garnag mentioned them in one of his stories. He said they were a bunch of milk-drinking pacifists."
"They are pacifists," she said with a frown, "but there's nothing wrong with that." She paused and bit the tip of her thumb in thought. "Aventus, you have to promise me that you won't tell Cicero where I'm going."
"Sure," I said nonchalantly.
"No, I mean it," Hecate insisted, laying her hands on my shoulders. "I can't have him following me until I get everything under control. Until I'm less dangerous to be around."
"Hecate," I said, standing up until we were eye-to-eye, "I'll promise if you want me to. But you're an assassin. You're supposed to be dangerous."
"Not to the people I love," she said, her eyes welling up with tears again.
"I promise," I said quickly, hoping to keep her from crying. I was willing to say anything to keep her from pain. She nodded mutely and drew me in close to an embrace. We wrapped our arms around one another and stayed that way for long minutes. "I promise," I said again when she finally pulled away.
"Divines keep you, Aventus Aretino," she said as she hefted the duffel bag onto one shoulder.
"Sithis guide you, Listener," I said formally. "Kill well and often."
"I think that might be part of the problem," she whispered as she turned away.
It wasn't until she was gone that I realized that she must have meant Cicero when she was talking about "hurting the people she loved." I had never heard her say that she loved the Keeper before, not even when things were at their best. I wondered what it meant that she could say it to me when things seemed to be at their worst.
When Cicero got back with Garnag a few hours later, Hecate was already long gone. As the jester came stumbling in, looking as bone-weary as I had ever seen him, I understood what Hecate had meant by "hurting the ones she loved." His face was covered in days-old bruises, fading from blue and purple to yellow as they healed. They didn't look especially damaging, but they were extensive. Had Hecate pushed him off a cliff?
No one would look at him as he entered Sanctuary. Conversation died off into blank silence when he set foot in the main hall. His wild eyes jerked from person to person as though seeking Hecate's face among the assembled assassins, his hands hovering in front of him like crippled birds. Nazir took the initiative on approaching Cicero; I knew it had to have been quite the burden for him, since he didn't care much for the jester at the best of times, but Hecate had left him in charge. Nazir was nothing if not dutiful. I went with him in the hopes of keeping Cicero calm if things went badly.
"She's gone," Nazir said simply. "She said not to go looking for her, and that she'd be back when she was good and ready."
"But…" Cicero began, then stopped and looked at his fluttering hands. He clenched them into fists and dropped them to his sides, clearly trying to gain some semblance of control. "What will we do without the Listener?"
"We still have a backlog of contracts if you're worried about work," Nazir started.
"No, no, no, no, no!" Cicero shrieked, stomping his feet like a spoiled child. "The contracts are not what Cicero is talking about! Without the Listener, there is no Brotherhood! Who will hear Mother's voice without her?"
"We were doing just fine without a Listener for years," Nazir hissed, so low that I think Cicero and I were the only ones who could hear him.
"Led by a traitorous whore?" Cicero sneered. Nazir's hand dropped to the hilt of his scimitar, and Cicero's eyes lit up like he had just won some long-standing battle of wills. I stepped between them—probably the most dangerous place in Skyrim at that moment—and held out my hands.
"That's enough of that!" I shouted. Across the room, Geldii and Elbent suddenly seemed to remember that they had to be somewhere else. Meena continued to watch, a broad and vicious smile on her face at the idea of imminent bloodshed. "Hecate's gone. We don't know how long. And it's up to us to set a good example for the others."
"Aventus is right," came Babette's lilting voice from above. We all looked up to see the girl coming down into the main hall from her room. I hadn't realized how late it had gotten; for Babette to be up and dressed, it had to be well past sundown.
"Now she says I'm right," I muttered to myself.
"If it happened more often, I'd say it more often," she teased as she walked up to us. She looked back and forth between Cicero and Nazir, a scowl forming on her childish face. "Shame on both of you. You're grown men. Act like it."
Nazir pulled his hand away from his scimitar, and even Cicero had the good grace to look slightly abashed. I relaxed only slightly. Either of them could quick-draw faster than my eye could follow, so there was no guarantee that violence wasn't still forthcoming.
"That's better," Babette said. "Eiruki filled me in on what's happened." I looked around; sure enough, Eiruki was nowhere to be seen. I wondered what had compelled her to go speak to Babette. "With Hecate gone, the five of us are the senior members of the Brotherhood. The new recruits will look to us for guidance. If they see us fighting with one another, it will cause problems." She glared at Cicero and Nazir again, a stern expression that was somehow more terrifying on her youthful face. "You two are going to shake hands and apologize."
Both Nazir and Cicero started to protest. Babette stamped on delicate foot on the ground and crossed her arms, which shut both of them right up. More than ever, I wondered what secret this girl possessed that made her so intimidating to grown men.
"The unchild is right," Cicero muttered. He stuck out a hand toward Nazir stiffly, not looking at the Redguard.
"I didn't notice an apology in there," Nazir returned, but took Cicero's hand anyway.
"Good!" Babette said, clapping her hands together in mock cheer. "I'm going to go do damage control with the recruits who were here for your little outburst." She looked at the jester. "Keeper, I expect you to rest for a day or two before returning to your duties. Consider it a strong suggestion from your doctor." The jester nodded, seeming to droop suddenly under his own weight as his adrenaline ran out. He turned and made his way toward the private rooms.
"I could have taken him," Nazir snarled as soon as Cicero was out of earshot.
"That's not the point," Babette replied coldly. "Hecate left you in charge. Like it or not, that fool is our brother too, so you have to watch out for him like you would for me or Aventus."
Nazir shook his head and stormed off to his office. Meena slunk out of the main hall as well, leaving Babette and me alone together.
"Thanks," I said. "I was really worried that they were going to fight."
"I didn't do it for Cicero," Babette hissed. "I did it for Nazir. We've been friends a long time, and Cicero would have killed him."
"You really think so?" I asked, surprised. "I mean, Cicero really believes in the Tenets, and they say for Brotherhood members to not kill each other."
"I don't think the Tenets would stop him," she said. "I think that they would just give him a justification. He would say that Nazir had been 'disrespecting the Night Mother' or that Nazir drawing first had shown an intention to violate the Tenets." She shook her head. "Religious fanatics can always justify breaking their own rules."
"If you hate Cicero so much, then why are you always so polite to him?"
"It doesn't matter what I feel about Cicero one way or the other," Babette said simply. "Hecate is in love with the fool, so he's not going anywhere. At least not until one of them dies. I can afford to wait, though." She looked at me suddenly, like she realized she had almost given away too much.
"Who are you, Babette?" I asked. "Who are you, really?"
Her face fell slightly and she stepped toward me, laying a cold hand on my arm.
"Ask me again after Hecate comes home, okay?" she begged. I had never heard her sound so mournful before, so I only nodded my agreement. She smiled wanly and started to step away. Then she stopped and impulsively leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. As her lips lingered near my ear, she whispered, "When you do, I'll ask you something important too."
Then she skipped away, leaving me to wonder what she meant.
The next few months were wretched for everyone involved.
Cicero had been in a good place through most of the last year, but that had been slowly breaking down since just before New Life Day. With Hecate gone, it accelerated. Days would go by where none of us laid eyes on the Fool of Hearts, only dimly hearing him rant, rage, sing, or cry from his sealed room or from the Night Mother's shrine. When he did make appearances he was invariably in a foul mood, screaming at anyone for little to no reason.
It didn't help that Eiruki kept leaving little offerings at the Night Mother's shrine. Cicero seemed to think that the girl was intentionally taunting him, sneaking in to leave objects behind as a way of mocking him. He would save most of his venom for the Nord girl, shouting and screeching at her whenever their paths crossed. With Hecate gone, and Nazir in a barely-stable truce with the jester, no one was willing to check Cicero's behavior.
Babette seemed to be avoiding me. Whenever I would try to spend time with her, she was always busy or out. The only time that I could get her to be near me was when I would put on little musical performances for the Brotherhood. Even then, she would come in after I started, sit near the back, and leave before I finished.
One positive thing that came out of those long months of drifting was that I found the drive to actually become good with my mandolin. While I had been embarrassed about practicing in public before—leading to an unfortunate incident involving Eiruki and a troll—I felt that the Brotherhood needed its morale kept up now more than ever. I had spent much of the last year trying to find ways to keep Cicero from breaking down; now that I had failed at that task, even if it wasn't really my fault, I felt responsible for keeping everyone else's spirits up too.
Nazir was an adequate leader in Hecate's absence. As Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood, he had decades of experience in dealing with people, which made him good at arbitrating disputes and keeping the work flowing. Nothing was worse than a bunch of bored assassins, after all.
Still, just knowing that the Listener was absent—and not knowing when she might come back—was wearing on everyone's nerves. Nazir did his best to keep as many people out of Sanctuary at all times as possible, sending us out in pairs or threes even on the simplest of missions just to keep us busy. I must have gone on four or five contracts during that time. Whenever I got back to Sanctuary, the first thing I did was check on Cicero to see how he was doing.
"I can't stand seeing Cicero like this," I complained to Nazir after finding the fool curled up at the foot of the Night Mother's coffin. He had been asleep, his face streaked with tears. Even unconscious, he was whimpering and mouthing Hecate's name, as though his torments followed him down into the dark Void of sleep.
"I don't know," Nazir replied, cutting up a tomato for the night's repast. "I kind of prefer him like this." I looked at the Redguard sharply, then relaxed when I realized that he was being sarcastic as usual. Months of dealing with Cicero's madness, Eiruki's bizarre behavior, and Babette's isolation had left me just as jumpy and irritable as everyone else.
"I know you don't like Cicero very much," I started saying, to which Nazir snorted loudly. I glared at him and then continued, "But he's part of our family."
"Part of your family, maybe," Nazir said with bitter melancholy. "My family included Astrid and Veezara and Festus Krex and Gabriella and Arnbjorn!"
With each name, Nazir's voice became louder and louder, his knife slamming into the cutting board more firmly. On the last exclamation, the knife hit the board hard enough to splinter it and to splatter the remaining half of a tomato into pulp and ruined skin. Nazir threw the blunted knife across the room, then swept the mess of tomato and cutting board off the counter with an angry cry. I walked over and laid a hand on Nazir's arm.
"Cicero didn't kill them," I said softly. "Hecate didn't either."
"I know that!" he shouted, then repeated more calmly. "I know that. I was there."
"Then why do you blame him?" I asked.
"Everything changed when that damned fool came around," Nazir replied with a low, angry tone. "If he hadn't shown up, maybe…"
"Maybe what?" I interrupted. "Maybe Astrid wouldn't have betrayed the Brotherhood for her own selfishness?" Nazir jerked away from my hand and looked at me with betrayed eyes. "That's what happened, isn't it? Astrid sold out someone she recruited personally to keep her own power." Nazir sat down heavily in a nearby chair, looking old and weathered for the first time since I'd met him "I know it seems easier to blame Cicero. You knew Astrid and the others a long time, and Cicero was new. But you can't keep going on like this, Nazir. Hecate loves Cicero…"
"And not you?" he asked. It was my turn to be shocked. "Don't look so surprised, boy. You being in love with Hecate is the worst kept secret in Sanctuary. Hell, I think she's the only one who doesn't know." My face started burning with shame and I sat down too; my legs felt wobbly and my stomach roiled.
"She loves Cicero," I said bitterly, "and not me." I cleared my throat to get rid of the lump that was forming there before I went on. "None of that matters. We're all family now. Hecate brought us together, and without her we're falling apart."
"Why don't you go get her then?" Nazir asked. "If you think it's so important, you should do something about it."
"She wouldn't come back for me," I said simply. "You're the Speaker. You might be able to talk her into coming back."
"Not me," he said with a dark chuckle. "Even if I thought it would do any good—which I don't—she ordered me to not come after her or tell anyone where she went."
"Then why do you think I would know where to find her?" I asked, playing dumb. Nazir shot me a look that spoke volumes.
"Please don't insult my intelligence," he groused. "She's got a soft spot for you. Of course she told you where she went."
"Only by accident," I admitted. "I still don't think she'd come back for me."
"How is it that we're all so dependent on a woman who needs us so little?" Nazir mused.
"She needs us," I insisted, "just not the same way we need her." I thought about it, trying to put what I felt into words. "Hecate depends on us to be her family, and we depend on her to remind us that we are one."
"Maybe you're right," Nazir admitted grudgingly. "But there's no way to make her come home before she's ready."
"She would come back for Cicero," I said quietly. "But Hecate ordered you not to say anything, and I promised that I wouldn't." My brain churned as I tried to think of a way around these problems. Nazir stood and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
"Aventus," he said, not unkindly, "you once asked me what I thought your greatest flaw was." I nodded. "I didn't want to tell you, because I thought you should figure it out for yourself. But now I think it might just be something you have to hear from someone else."
"Why now?" I asked.
"Because it's relevant," Nazir replied. "Your problem is that you make promises too easily." I opened my mouth to respond, but he held up a hand to quiet me before continuing. "What I mean is that you feel like you're bound by your word. I know that you grew up in Windhelm, and that honor is important to the Nords you grew up with… But we're assassins, Aventus. Honor is meaningless to us. It's just a burden that will get you killed someday. Even if it doesn't, it will cause you nothing but pain."
"What are you saying, Nazir?" I asked desperately.
"I'm saying that some promises are made to be broken," he said. "The only things you should feel beholden to are the Tenets and the Night Mother herself. Beyond that, nothing is forbidden and everything is permitted." He started to walk back to the kitchen counter to clean up the mess he had made. "If you think something is important, you should be prepared to fight for it—and assassins never fight fair."
I nodded and walked out of the kitchen. I knew what I had to do.
"Hecate's coming home," I said as I walked into Babette's room. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, reading a book while Pavot was curled up at her feet. The ice wolf was no longer a cub by any stretch of the imagination, and his position next to her bed made him look like a furry footstool more than anything.
"How do you know?" she asked, tucking a bookmark into the tome to keep her place before setting it aside.
"Cicero went to bring her home," I replied, taking a place next to her on the bed. "It shouldn't be more than a week or two."
"That's still not a guarantee," she said.
"Just stop it," I said. She looked at me in surprise as I reached over and took her hand. "I've been your brother for almost two years now, almost as long as Meena's been your sister. Do you think I'm an idiot, Babette?"
"Of course not," she said immediately.
"Then why treat me like one?" I asked, letting some of the real hurt I felt show. "You hid the truth from me, then lied about it, then made fun of me when I tried to guess. I just can't take this anymore." I looked her in the eyes as I made my final push for the truth. "Just tell me what you are. Please."
She paused, seeming to hesitate about whether to agree or not. Finally, after a long moment, she nodded.
Babette concentrated, her brow furrowing in effort. Her face seemed to change in the flickering torchlight, undergoing a subtle transformation into something leaner and hungrier. Her eyes became pools of crimson, and her teeth sharpened to points as I watched. Her delicate hands were tipped with delicate claws, and her overall appearance seemed to become more powerful somehow.
"Aventus," she whispered as she drew her legs up onto the bed and turned to me, "I'm a vampire."
I stared at her, taken in by the feral power of her new appearance. The wheels in my mind turned, connecting unrelated facts together in their proper order for the first time. Gods, I was stupid. I opened my mouth to say something clever.
"Oooooohhhh," was all that came out, a long exhalation indicative of my basic idiocy. Smooth, Aventus. Real smooth.
"It's an incredible gift, Aventus," Babette whispered, leaning closer to me, "a Dark Gift." She was close enough now that I could feel her cold breath on my cheek. "It makes you faster, stronger, tougher than any human. It opens a new world of power up to you. There are downsides, yes, but after a while you don't even miss the sun. And you can live forever, unchanging and young eternally."
"Forever?" I asked. I couldn't deny that living forever sounded pretty great.
"Oh yes," she nodded. "Barring violence, you become immortal—like the dragons, or the daedra."
"How…" I trailed off, unsure if what I was going to ask was rude or not.
"How old am I?" she said with a laugh. "Over three hundred years old." I whistled a low note. "I've survived an Era, Aventus. I've seen the rise, fall, and return of the Dark Brotherhood. I'm going to outlive everyone we know, except maybe Hecate."
"It seems awfully lonely," I said.
"It can be," she admitted. "That's why I-"
"Wait," I interrupted. "What do you mean 'except maybe Hecate'?"
"Well, she's the Dragonborn," Babette said, a look of annoyance on her face. "She has the soul of a dragon, so she shares their life span. For every dragon soul she steals, she gains a portion of their longevity, keeping her young." She laughed gaily. "It won't be forever, though. Not like us."
"Us?" I asked dumbly.
"I want you to be like me," Babette said. "I want to give you the Dark Gift, to make you a vampire."
"Oh," I said.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "You should be honored. In three hundred years, I've never made this offer to anyone else. I want us to be together forever, Aventus."
My mind raced with the information she had given me. Learning her secret wasn't nearly as satisfying as I had hoped it would be, but she had told me something even better. By the time I was a grown man, Hecate would still be young and beautiful—and Cicero would be an old man. I had promised myself that I wouldn't give up on her, and for the first time ever I had real hope that I could achieve my dreams.
And all I had to do to pursue them was to crush Babette's.
"I am honored," I said, taking her hands in mine. "I understand what this means to you, sister." Her face fell at my calling her "sister," and her blood-red eyes changed back to their normal human hues. "I'm more flattered than you can imagine… but I don't want to be a child forever. I want to grow up, to become a man. I don't even really know who I am yet—and I'll never find out if I take your offer."
"Don't you like me, Aventus?" she asked, her voice small and childish.
"I love you, Babette," I replied, "as my sister, and my best friend. But there's someone else I like. I have to grow up so she can see me as a man, and not a little boy."
"Get out," Babette rasped, turning away from me.
"I'm sorry," was all I could say as I stood up and held out a hand toward her.
"GET OUT!" she screamed, turning toward me with a demonic look on her face. Her eyes burned like twin pools of fire, and all of her teeth were vicious fangs. I backed away from her as fast as I could, afraid to turn my back. Pavot trotted out with me, whining the whole way. The door slammed shut in my face without Babette ever moving from her bed. Standing in the hallway, I could hear her begin to sob.
"That could have gone better," I muttered, dropping down into a crouch to run my hand over the ice wolf's head. Pavot whimpered at my touch, and threw my arms around his furry neck, burying my face in his haunches as I started crying too.
I don't know what Cicero said to Hecate when he went to High Hrothgar. I only knew that he came back a week and a half later with our wayward Listener in tow, and that the two of them seemed more at peace together. There were celebrations aplenty and a renewed sense of family that brought us all closer together. The Brotherhood stood together once more.
I had thought that breaking my promise to Hecate would bring Cicero back to something resembling sanity as well as bringing my family back together. Overall, he seemed calmer, but his psychotic episode with Eiruki had proven that he was still dangerously unstable. Not even telling him where Hecate had gone spared me from a serious beating when I intervened on Eiruki's behalf. Even though he and Hecate were doing better together, something was still eating at the jester—and it worried me.
Babette was avoiding me, but that was to be expected. I had hurt her—deeply. I hoped that someday she could forgive me. I really did love Babette, but I couldn't imagine it just being the two of us together forever. I had struggled too hard to see myself as an adult to choose to be a child for eternity. I had hurt her by keeping a promise to myself, just like Nazir had warned me about.
As I sat in the makeshift conservatory, holding my mandolin across my lap, I wondered if Eiruki knew more than I did about not fighting fair. All of her little habits had drawn me in completely, making me concerned for her well-being and wanting to protect her. In retrospect, it seemed almost calculated. Had I been so wrapped up in my concern for Hecate that I had missed signs of Eiruki's interest in me? And even if she was interested in me, was I interested back? Especially after all I had given up to pursue my dreams of Hecate?
Sweet mother, sweet mother, I thought. What should I do?
But I wasn't the Listener, so the Night Mother held no answers. Even if I were the Listener, I doubt that she would deign to give me advice about my love life—or lack thereof. No, when it came to these things, I was on my own. Forces seemed to be pulling at me from every direction.
Soon, something had to give.
I just hoped that I could figure it all out before I lost something else that was priceless.
…to be continued…