Chapter 9: The Darkest Night of the Year
The night was as black as the Void itself, filled with a biting wind and tearing fingers of ice. Snow and sleet mixed together in the whipping gale, flowing almost sideways through the streets of the city. I was hardly dressed appropriately for the weather, stripped to a light shirt and trousers. At least I was wearing boots; my feet probably would have shattered and broken off already if I had been wearing soft shoes. My face was red from the cold even as the rest of me was boiling hot from all the running.
The blood on my hands was rapidly freezing into a hard crust as I ran through the frigid Solitude night, and the skin under it was going numb. My lungs burned with the exertion, but I could still hear the shouts of guards behind me, before me, to the sides. They were spreading out in a net, and I would soon be caught. If I were lucky, I would go into a small cell long enough for my reputation to be ruined, then face a headsman. The Brotherhood wouldn't be able to get me out of this one.
All I could think about was how disappointed Hecate was going to be when she had to stand over my corpse. Would she weep? Would Dagny?
I wasn't caught yet, though, and the chase was hardly decided. They were many, so they could outflank me, but I was skilled at avoiding pursuit and capture. If I could just stay ahead of them, I could lose them in the alleyways of the lower city around the market. I just needed a little luck.
A sudden light came out of the swirling snow ahead, blinding me for a moment as a blond-bearded Nord guard came skidding out of the side street. I came to a stumbling halt, nearly losing my footing on the ice as he opened his mouth to call for help.
Divines curse me, could I not catch a break?
I recovered from my surprise before he did and lunged forward. He tried to raise his sword defensively, but a quick twist of my hands deprived him of his weapon. I sent the sword flying off into the snow, and when his eyes tracked it, the flat of my hand caught him in the throat. Now voiceless, he doubled over and dropped his torch, the guttering flame sending shadows washing crazily through the flying snow. I didn't give him a second to recover, keeping up a brutal, punishing assault until he was unconscious.
Once he was down, I paused to listen for the sounds of pursuit. I couldn't hear anything but distant shouting over the sounds of the howling wind, so I could only assume that our altercation hadn't drawn any more attention. I seriously considered stealing his heavy fur cloak, but unlike many of my siblings in the Dark Brotherhood, I didn't believe in condemning a man to death for just doing his job. I did take his gloves, though, and quickly tucked his hands into his pants; he wouldn't lose his fingers to frostbite, and he would live as long as one of the other guards found him in the next hour or so. Nords didn't die from the cold as easily as other men.
As soon as he was arranged, which took far too long for my comfort and not nearly long enough to assuage my guilt, I took off again. The sounds of pursuit weren't getting any louder, so I breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like I was going to make it to safety after all. I frowned to think about it; after tonight, would anyplace in Solitude ever be "safe" again for me?
How did it come to this?
"You can't talk to me like that!" Erikur managed to snarl as he began to recover the tattered shreds of his courage. "Do you know who I am? I'm a thane of Solitude! Jarl Elisif personally-"
"Do you know who I am?" I interrupted. "Thanes and jarls don't mean much to people who killed an emperor." Erikur blanched in the torchlight.
"Where are my guards?" he murmured, more to himself than asking us. His eyes fixed on me, showing some of the steel that I would have expected from a man of his position—but only some. "Did you kill them already?"
"They're not my target, Thane Erikur," I returned, pulling a knife from my belt and holding it lazily in his direction. "Let's just say they won't be bothering us for the duration of our… conversation." I didn't normally use bladed weapons as my preference in the field, but they made more of an impression when intimidating or interrogating. People just weren't as afraid of maces as they were of knives—which was really a shame, since crushing force could do far worse things to a human body than cutting.
"Don't kill me!" he pleaded, all pretense of strength fleeing from him. His eyes welled up with heavy tears and I wrinkled my nose under my cowl at the sight of a grown man blubbering like a child. I heard Runa make a noise in the back of her throat, and I realized she was trying to keep from bursting out laughing at the stricken look on Erikur's face. I guess I just didn't find it as funny as much as I found it disgusting.
"Tell me, Thane Erikur," said Runa, stepping forward and pulling a blade of her own. "Do you remember the penalty for cheating the Thieves' Guild?" Erikur licked his lips and his eyes darted at me before nodding. "That's right: we call the Dark Brotherhood." She paused, running the tip of her knife under her chin as though thoughtful. "Of course, this can all stay off the books and you can keep your life…"
"What do I have to do?" Erikur begged between the tears and shudders.
"We already have the lute," she told him. "You're not getting it back, and it's off limits. Your collection can be incomplete permanently. More to the point, if it ever goes missing for any reason, we'll just assume it's you that took it."
"That's-" he started to protest, only to catch the words in his throat when I crouched down next to him and stared intently at his neck. "I'll make sure to arrange for extra security for the Bards College."
"Excellent," Runa said, sheathing her knife. "Don't ever try to cross us again, Erikur. You won't like the results. As a penalty for your little mistake, our cut is going up ten percent for the next year." He groaned again but gritted his teeth and said nothing as he nodded.
I sheathed my knife, assuming that our intimidation was essentially over. I smiled under my cowl; Runa and I were both going to get what we wanted, and no one had to die. Runa paused, looking down at him with a strange expression I could only half-read because of her mouth-concealing scarf.
"One last thing," she said. I looked at her, confused. This wasn't in the script. Before I could do anything to figure out what was going on, Runa whipped out the knife she had only recently sheathed, whipped it up between her fingers, and threw it into Erikur's leg. He gasped in a breath as he prepared to scream, and Runa quickly shoved a balled-up rag into his mouth.
I reached for Runa, but she brushed my hand aside and leaned into Erikur's face, their noses almost touching. She kept one hand pushed over the rag in his mouth while the other found the hilt of the knife that was stuck in him like a dart in a board. Blood was staining his sheets around the wound, and the older man was whimpering and faintly shrieking behind his makeshift gag.
"I made sure you're not going to bleed to death before you can pour a healing potion down your gullet to close up the wound," she hissed, "but you're damn well going to be feeling that for a few days. This little love bite is just a taste of what you'll get if we give you to the Brotherhood, Erikur." She yanked the blade from Erikur's leg and wiped his own blood off on his nightshirt. "Don't disappoint me. We were never here."
With that, she gestured to me that it was time to go. The two of us made our way back out into the house while Erikur struggled to pull himself out of bed to the cabinet where he kept his emergency stash. Before he could recover his breath enough to start screaming for help from his household, we were already vanished out into the dark, frozen Solitude night. The two of us raced through the dark alleys out of sight of guard patrols until we had reached our extraction point.
I managed to keep quiet until we got to where we had stashed our civilian gear—a hollowed out place in an wall behind a trash bin—but I couldn't keep it inside any longer once we were home free.
"What the hell was that, Runa?" I demanded angrily, pulling down my cowl.
"What was what?" she asked innocently, tugging her hood and scarf free.
"You know what I'm talking about!" I insisted. "Stabbing him in the leg wasn't part of the script."
"I improvised," she said blithely. "So what? It got the point across." She chuckled to herself after realizing that she had unintentionally made a pun. "Heh, point."
"Gods damn it, Runa," I started to say, only to be interrupted when she pushed me up against the alley wall and kissed me.
Her tongue darted into my mouth and her hands clamped down on my shoulders as she pressed her body against mine. My mouth opened, more from surprise than anything else—though I can't deny that there was something else there too. I felt a hunger in my belly like fire, pushing away the freezing cold of the night. My hands were roaming across Runa's body even as she was pulling open my armor at the collar, pulling her lips away from mine so that she could run her teeth across the skin at my neck. Her hands fell from my shoulders to start playing with my belt, tugging at the buckle insistently.
I managed to push her away before she undid my pants. She looked into my eyes, her own as hungry as I felt.
"Don't try to change the subject," I gasped out.
"You're no fun," she said with a pout, turning her back on me. She began pulling at the buckles of her armor, stripping to the waist. She pulled her clothes out of her pack and turned back toward me. I stared at her bare chest; Nords might not feel the cold like other men, but Runa apparently felt enough of it to have a visible effect. "Seriously, Aventus, you need to learn to loosen up a little bit."
"I don't consider stabbing someone in the leg 'fun,'" I said as dryly as I could muster, despite feeling like something was lodged in my throat. I managed to pry my eyes away from her chest, but looking at her eyes was hardly any better. They promised even more than her semi-nudity did.
"Maybe we can find something else you would prefer?" she suggested. Before I could answer, she pulled her shirt on and started pulling on a skirt over her leather pants. She giggled as I turned away to start pulling my own civilian outfit on. "Teasing you is almost as fun as stabbing people," she mused. "I'm looking forward to doing more of it."
I spent a minute thinking up a good retort, but by the time that I finished changing clothes and turned around, she was already gone. I wondered briefly if I was going to see her again, but I already knew the answer. Of course Runa would find me again. She was having too much fun winding me up to let it go now.
"You look chipper," Ataf commented as I came back in from my morning exercises. It was freezing cold out and the slush in the streets was turning to ice, but I wasn't about to shirk at least the semblance of an early workout.
"Do I?" I wondered aloud. Honestly, it was hard to keep the smile from my face and the bounce from my step. Going out with Runa and pushing around someone as sleazy as Erikur had made me feel like my old self. Even the surprise of him getting stabbed was barely bothering me anymore. Part of me wondered if that should worry me, but I just couldn't bring myself to care.
"Yes," he snapped, "and it's starting to annoy me." I looked over at my roommate. He was normally much more cheerful himself. This morning, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, his sheets rumpled around him with a sour expression on his face. It took a moment to remember what had happened the last time I saw him; with all of yesterday's excitement, it felt like it had been a month since I had seen him.
"Look, Ataf," I started, trying to dampen my own good cheer a bit, "I'm sorry about Aia." He looked at me with sharp surprise as I sat down on my desk chair. "I heard from Jorn."
"He's got a big mouth," Ataf muttered.
"Yeah, but it doesn't change anything. He said you asked her out?" Ataf nodded. "Was she mean about it?"
"That's the worst thing," he said, his expression sinking from annoyance to something more painful. "She's normally so nasty about everything, so I thought I could handle it if she was cruel. Instead, she was just very kind and proper and sweet. She said that she was flattered but that she didn't think of me 'that way,' and that she was just honored to be my friend." He shook his head with disgust, more at himself than her, I thought.
"Really, I'm sorry," I repeated. "You'll find someone, though."
"I don't want 'someone,'" Ataf told me forlornly as he flopped back onto his bed. "I want Aia." He half-sat back up to look at me. "No offense, Aventus, but I honestly don't think you're the best person to give me advice about relationships."
"Why not?" I asked, feeling a little hurt.
"Man, you can't even admit that you're dating that Dagny girl," he said with his first hint of real amusement. I felt myself blushing against my will, and he actually barked out a laugh at my discomfort.
"Dagny and me," I stuttered. "Well… it's complicated."
"Is there someone else?" he asked. I cursed under my breath; damn, Ataf could be observant.
"Sort of," I admitted. I had found that it was best to be as honest as I could with Ataf, if only so that he wouldn't press as hard when I needed to lie.
"Let me guess," he said, cheer creeping back into his face. "This 'sort of' girl is someone you used to know. She's someone you care about, but you're not sure how she feels about you. Dagny is safe and cute and rich—basically, everything a guy could want. But you're still not sure if you like this other girl more, because she's passionate and wild and tied up in your past. How am I doing?"
I gaped at him openly, and he did laugh this time.
"Ataf…" I said cautiously, "can you read minds?"
"Only yours, Aventus," he guffawed. "And only because you're so damned transparent." He laughed until tears leaked out of his eyes while I sat there, unable to keep from smiling along with him. If Ataf really could read my mind, I would have had to kill him long before this.
"I'm not that transparent, am I?" I asked.
"It's an old story, my friend," he replied. "My cousin Salmid had the same thing happen to him. There was a girl he was in love with and a girl that my uncle wanted him to marry, so he just courted both of them. He strung along these two poor girls for a year before he made up his mind."
"I'm not stringing along anyone," I said defensively.
"Whether you want to admit it or not," Ataf pushed on, "you're two-timing these girls. I don't know if you've slept with both of them yet, but the fact you're seeing them both without saying anything about it is emotionally dishonest."
"What do you think I should do then?" I asked, feeling my good cheer starting to drain away.
"If I were you?" he asked. I nodded, then he continued. "If I were you, I'd dump the other girl and marry Dagny. She's pretty enough, her family is rich, and she apparently cares about you. The other girl…" He paused, thinking. "Whatever you feel for her, Aventus, passion isn't enough to build a relationship on."
"We have more than that," I insisted. "We have history."
"The past isn't worth throwing away the future," Ataf retorted. I paused, thoughtful, and he went on. "Of course, you're not going to listen to me, any more than I can listen to you when you tell me to get over Aia. You can't reason with your heart, and you can't help who you love. This thing you have will run its course, no matter what advice I give you. I just hope that you come to your senses before you blow it with a girl as great as Dagny."
Ataf finally got out of bed, stretching as he grabbed a towel to head down for a morning bath. I decided that I would join him and grabbed my things too. A hot bath was exactly what I needed to clear my head. As I stripped off my sweat-soaked workout clothes, something occurred to me.
"Hey, Ataf," I called to get his attention. "What did your cousin wind up doing? Did he marry the rich girl or the passionate girl?"
"He married them both!" Ataf laughed before walking out into the hall. I stopped dead for a full minute, just too surprised to move. Did he mean both at once? Or one and then the other?
Finally, I shook my head and headed out to catch up with my roommate. I wish my problem was as easy to solve as all that, but somehow I didn't think that either Dagny or Runa would be up for it. Of course, neither Dagny nor Runa were the woman I really wanted—but it seemed harder and harder to remember that, the longer I spent away from home. Not that Hecate would ever notice me anyway…
I shook my head to clear it and headed for the bath. You couldn't help who you loved.
The rest of the week passed uneventfully. I saw Dagny only occasionally and Runa not at all. Ataf slowly seemed to cheer up from Aia's rejection, but things were still awkward between them at lunch time. All week long, the only topic that anyone seemed to care about was the upcoming winter break. During the coldest part of the year, the Bards College closed its doors for four weeks—partly to save on heating expenses, but partly to let students spend New Life Day with their families. I didn't have much to look forward to this year; I would be staying in Solitude over the break, since getting back to Dawnstar in midwinter was just too much trouble.
When I mentioned that I would be staying in the city over the holiday, my friends were incredulous.
"Seriously, Aventus?" asked Ataf. "You're not visiting your family? They're not visiting you?" His face was stricken, and my other friends looked like I had just announced that I had bone break fever and only had a week to live.
"It's not a big deal," I assured them. "No one likes traveling in winter in Skyrim."
"No one but Stormcloaks," Jorn laughed.
"I'm sure that the headmaster would let you leave early if you're worried about the snows," Illdi offered gently. I smiled at her and shook my head.
"I'll be fine," I insisted. "My family has a house here in the city. It's not like I'll be alone or anything. My mother's housecarl will be there."
"But not your family," Illdi replied.
"I'd rather be with them, of course," I said truthfully. "But I'll be fine."
Spending New Life Day with the Dark Brotherhood was one of my first really good memories. Even with how tense things had gotten last year, I would rather be back at Dawnstar Sanctuary than in Solitude. Still, I had to admit that the terrible homesickness I had felt on leaving my family behind wasn't as severe now as it was a few months ago. I was starting to get comfortable in this life—maybe a little too comfortable.
"I'd offer for you to come stay with my family over the holiday," Ataf said sheepishly, "but we're all going back to Hammerfell. One of the benefits of being part of a shipping conglomerate is that the whole clan can get together every year."
"If Aventus says he's fine, then he's fine," opined Aia. "We don't need to be showering him with offers of holiday lodging if he doesn't want them."
"You only say that because you're stuck in Solitude for the holidays too," Ataf shot back, perhaps a little more sharply than he might have done a week ago. She sniffed loudly and chose not to rise to the bait.
"Is everyone ready for the final in Professor Gemane's class?" I asked, trying to change the subject.
"We should be asking you that," retorted Jorn, still in fine form. "You're the one who's been causing the most trouble for the professor about this assignment."
"I still think it's stupid," I said, "but I've got my arrangement ready."
It had taken most of my scant spare time over the last several weeks, but I had managed to put together a new arrangement of "The Age of Oppression" for Professor Gemane's class. It used the mandolin that Hecate had given me as a gift, an instrument that wasn't used by Skyrim's bards, and I had quickened the meter to make it a little less mournful. Hopefully that would be unique enough for Gemane's standards.
"That's good to hear," Illdi smiled. I smiled back; it was hard to stay annoyed when she was around. "We're all looking forward to hearing it."
"Speak for yourself," Jorn joked. "I'm scared witless at the idea of having to perform in front of all of you."
"We perform in front of one another every day, Jorn," Aia chided.
"No," he returned. "We practice in front of one another every day. This is an actual recital, with real grades on the line. Not to mention our pride as bards in training."
"You're making too big a deal of it," I assured him.
"Easy for you to say, Mister Natural Talent," Jorn said, gesturing at me with a soup spoon for emphasis. I shrugged; Professor Six-Fingers had said that I had a natural talent for music one day in class, and Jorn and Ataf hadn't let me hear the end of it for weeks. Honestly, I had kind of hoped they had forgotten about it by now.
"It'll be fine," I insisted. "You'll do great."
The whole class was silent as I finished my recital. I looked at my classmates, then at Professor Gemane. No one moved or said anything. I put my mandolin down gently, as though making any noise would shatter the silence.
"That was…" started Ataf, then he stopped as though searching for a good word. My face flushed; had it really been that bad?
"By the gods," muttered Aia, just loud enough that I could hear her. "Even Jorn was better than that."
"Master Aretino," Professor Gemane said as the class bell rang, "I would appreciate it if you could stay after class so that we could talk."
My face was burning now and I felt shaky. Sweet Mother, it really had been that bad.
"Good luck, buddy," Ataf said, patting me on the shoulder as he headed out to join the others. They all looked somewhat worried for me as they departed.
Once they were all gone, I looked at Professor Gemane again. I wondered if I could just kill him now before he said anything. I could always claim it was an accident. He had tripped over his desk and somehow broken his neck…
"Master Aretino," he said disapprovingly, breaking me out of my pleasant fantasy, "I am somewhat disappointed in your recital performance."
"Sir, I-" I started to say, but he stopped me with a wave of his hand.
"You understand that 'The Age of Oppression' is a wartime song, yes?" he asked. "It's supposed to have a certain degree of gravitas, of weight—not sound like a barnyard tarantella."
I didn't know if I could blush any more deeply than I already was, but I would have if I could.
"I was actually worried about something like this happening," he continued, "so it's not entirely unexpected." He stroked his thin mustache thoughtfully before going on. "Are you familiar with the concept of 'perfect pitch'?" he asked.
"We discussed it briefly in Professor Six-Fingers' class," I told him. "She said it was a rare musical talent."
"I'm not sure I would call it a 'talent,' personally," he demurred. He pulled a chair over to sit across from me. "The phenomenon is better called 'absolute pitch.' It's basically the ability to discern absolute relations in musical notes without the use of tuning instruments. I suspected you might have it months ago when I noticed that you always tuned your mandolin by ear, instead of using a pitch whistle or tuning fork."
"Isn't it a good thing?" I asked, somewhat surprised at how perceptive Professor Gemane was. He had always seemed like a self-absorbed prick in class, but I guess there must be a reason he was a teacher at an institution as exclusive as the Bards College.
"Sort of," he said vaguely. "It's one of the reasons I don't like it being called 'perfect' pitch. Too many positive connotations there, you see?" I nodded, even though I didn't really. Professor Gemane liked hearing himself talk, and we could be here all day if he didn't hurry it up. "People with absolute pitch can usually reproduce music they hear almost perfectly, even if they've only heard it once or twice. They're excellent at musical notation and transcription." He paused and fixed me intently with his gaze. "But they're also usually terrible at improvisation and arrangement. The notes don't sound 'right' to them. If you let someone with perfect pitch hear a song four different ways, they can reproduce it in all four—but ask them to make up their own fifth arrangement, and all you'll get is a mess."
"Like I just did?" I asked. He nodded, and I looked down at my feet. I wasn't used to failing at things.
"You've had good marks all semester," he said, "despite some disagreements during my lectures. Low marks on this project won't actually hurt you that much." I looked back at him hopefully. "However, a deficiency in arrangement could harm you in the long run. Because of that, I'm going to assign you a tutor to help you get on track."
"A tutor?" I asked dumbly. "You mean another student?"
"One of the upperclassmen, yes," Gemane confirmed. "Starting in the next term, you'll have a senior peer helping you with this subject, since you're clearly struggling a bit. It will go hand in hand with your class in musical arrangement and composition."
"Am I so much of a failure I need special help?" I asked.
"It would be normal to assign you a senior peer anyway with your second year, just to start giving you practical experience, so consider it an early start." He looked at my expression and chuckled. "Don't look so glum, boy. You've got a useful skill, if you can start making it work for you instead of against you."
"We're going to have so much fun, Aventus!" Jordis burbled happily when I stopped by Proudspire Manor. "New Life Festival is my favorite holiday!"
"I can see that," I said sourly.
"Don't be so glum," she said. "I'll decorate the house and bring in a yule log and-" She was interrupted by the sound of the front door bell ringing. We both looked at one another with mild surprise; I wasn't expecting anyone, and as far as I knew, Jordis never had guests.
"I'll get it," I said quickly, hopping to my feet before she could protest. Talking about the holidays was only making me more annoyed about my poor performance for Professor Gemane's final exam. More than that, I found that the more I thought about not spending New Life Day with my family, the more it bothered me. Why couldn't people quit trying to cheer me up?
When I opened the door, I was surprised to see Dagny waiting for me, her hair up in a neat bun on top of her head. I stared for a moment before she laughed.
"Are you going to invite us in?" she said.
"Us?" I repeated dumbly. As soon as I said it, her father stepped into view, a broad smile on his bearded face. "Jarl Balgruuf," I said with a slight bow, trying to remember my manners. "Please come in."
"Thank you," he said as he ushered Dagny inside and followed behind her. Jordis was hot on my heels, and she quickly took their cloaks.
"I'm afraid I don't have a lot of refreshments to offer," I apologized. "I'm hardly ever here at Proudspire. In fact, Jordis and I were just discussing picking up a few provisions for the winter break, since I'm going to be in Solitude over the holidays."
"That's precisely why I asked my daughter to bring me to you," Balgruuf rumbled, sinking into a chair near the fireplace. "She mentioned that the two of you were going to go shopping together tomorrow." Actually, I would mostly be carrying Dagny's things while she shopped, but I didn't correct him. "She mentioned that your mother wouldn't be coming into the city for the winter court."
"I'm afraid not, sir," I confirmed. "It's just too difficult to travel in from… our home." I tried very hard to not let people know that my "mother" was living in Dawnstar; if the Sanctuary there was ever exposed, it might bring up uncomfortable questions.
"I understand completely," he said, nodding. He stroked his beard a moment before speaking, as though something had just occurred to him. Dagny had trained me in tells enough at this point to realize that this was all practiced; Jarl Balgruuf was too good a politician for anything else. "Since you won't be able to spend the winter holiday with your real family, I was wondering if you would care to spend it with mine."
"Sir, I couldn't," I began to object. "I wouldn't dare impose."
"It's no imposition at all," he insisted, waving one hand as though to dismiss my concerns. "Having the Dragonborn's son in my home for New Life Day would be my honor." I smiled tightly; of course he would want me over because of the symbolism. He was too good a politician for anything else. "Moreover, I know that you and my daughter have gotten quite close lately. I would like the opportunity to spend more time with the young man she's chosen to focus her efforts on."
"Well…" I demurred. I looked over my shoulder to where Jordis was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. The distraught look on her face was heartbreaking to see. I knew it all too well; it was the look of someone who knew what it was like to get ditched. She wouldn't raise a fuss, of course. Like a dog that had been kicked one too many times, she didn't even have the spirit to fight anymore.
"On one condition," I said, which made Balgruuf raise an eyebrow at me. "I'll come as long as I can bring my housecarl along. It wouldn't be proper for me to visit a jarl's home without my second along."
He smiled at that. Asking to bring Jordis along wasn't just a kindness on my part. A housecarl's duty was to protect her master's interests at home and abroad, and it was an important and honored position among the nobility of Skyrim. Bringing her along to a holiday dinner would be a sign that I considered myself a Nord culturally. I didn't really, but it didn't hurt anything.
And it would make Jordis happy.
As soon as she realized what I had asked, she started smiling broadly again, but then looked over at Jarl Balgruuf to see what he would say. When he nodded, she rushed over and immediately hugged me.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" she blubbered, burying her face in my shoulder. I looked over at Dagny awkwardly as my housecarl wept all over my shirt. She only shrugged, putting a hand in front of her mouth to stifle giggles.
"Do I get a hug?" Balgruuf asked, standing up. Jordis either didn't catch the sarcasm in his voice or didn't care, and she immediately rushed over to embrace the jarl. He staggered under her impact and chuckled as she repeated her grateful protestations. She finally stepped back and sniffed, wiping at her eyes.
"I just really like New Life Day," she finally said in a small voice.
We all laughed together then, even Jordis. It felt good.
It felt like family.
Saying goodbye to Ataf, Illdi, Aia and Jorn when the semester ended was harder than I thought it would be. Jorn and Ataf promised to bring back souvenirs when they came back to school, to everyone's amusement, and for the first time I heard that Illdi would be staying with Aia's family over the holiday. I wondered if it meant anything more than just Illdi not wanting to travel, but finally decided that it was none of my business either way.
Once they were all gone, and I had put my last possessions on a wagon bound for Proudspire, I took a few minutes to wander around the grounds before the locked the gates for the winter. Dark was coming on early, and snow was falling gently from the sky. It was sunset on the solstice, the darkest night of the year.
Solitude was a beautiful city, even in the dead of winter, and I found that I had started to become fond of the place. I realized that I hadn't just gone out sightseeing since I first arrived. Instead of walking straight back to Proudspire Manor, I let my feet carry me through the streets of the city.
As night fell and the weather worsened, I watched the torches and lanterns outside business light up, one by one. It wasn't as many as it might have been on some other day of the year. I suppose that most people wanted to get home early on such a cold, dreary night. Still, I felt more at home in the dark than most people. I saw the night patrol start their rounds, torches glittering on helms as they watched over the city. I didn't envy them their duty on a night like this; I could always just go home if it got too cold, but they didn't have the same option.
I briefly considered stopping at the Winking Skeever for a drink but kept on going. The prospect of running into Nelkir was ultimately what decided for me. I was still mad at him for the dirty trick he had pulled on me, and I wasn't ready to forgive him yet. The Skeever was one of his favorite watering holes, and even the off chance of bumping into him dampened my enthusiasm for revelry. I figured that I should probably start working myself up to it, if I was going to spend New Life Day with Balgruuf's family.
Being invited into Jarl Balgruuf's home was a real honor, and one that denying would have sent a message I didn't mean to send. Diana Dragonborn had clearly come out in favor of the Empire in the civil war, and anything I could do to bolster that connection was a positive thing as far as I was concerned. On the other hand, it wouldn't send a good message if I wound up getting into a fistfight with Jarl Balgruuf's youngest son over the dinner table on New Life Day.
My meandering and introspection was broken by a distant sound. My ears perked up, trying to listen for the sound to be repeated. I might have gone soft in the months I had been living in the capital, but I could have sworn that it was…
"Help me!" came the voice again. A woman's voice. "Please!"
I could still tell a scream for help when I heard one. Gods knew that I had caused enough of them.
I turned in the direction of the panicked shouting and took off at top speed. Part of me—the part that had been shaped by Cicero and Nazir and Meena—said that it was none of my business, that I should ignore it and not get close enough to get dragged in. The other part of me—the part that remembered Hecate calling me a good man with a good heart—pushed me ever faster toward the sound.
I ducked through alleyways and side streets, following the blood-curdling cries until they cut off suddenly. I was going to be too late, and part of me had known that from the moment I started running. I didn't stop, though. If someone was killing women in this city—in my city—then they were going to pay dearly for it.
As I came to the short, dead-end alley that I was sure was the source of the cries I reached for a weapon, only to realize that I had packed everything off in the hidden compartment of my traveling chest, since I had originally intended to just head straight back to Proudspire. I cursed myself for a stupid, rank amateur—but I didn't stop moving forward.
The weather had turned blustery while I was running, snow and freezing rain streaming from the sky. It killed my visibility, so I didn't see what I was looking for until I was almost on top of it. Up ahead, at the end of the alley, I could see a figure hunched over. Part of me hoped that it was the victim, somehow escaped from her attacker and taking a breather, but the sounds I could hear over the wind and rain killed any hopes I might have had all too quickly.
It was the sawing I heard first, the cutting of flesh and the snapping of bones. A man was hunched over a corpse in the slush, cutting through her ribs with a knife. Her head lolled on the ground, her dead eyes staring in my direction, frost already forming on her eyelashes. I was surprised to find that I could still feel horror at seeing a corpse, but it was a dull, distant thing.
More than anything else, I was critical of the killer's sloppy knife work, his obviously amateur strokes as he tried to butcher his kill. The woman looked like she had been dead when he began his grisly task, which was a small mercy. Her stomach was laid open as though she had been disemboweled with a powerful cut, possibly from a large sword. It had been sharp, whatever it was; the single strike had not just split the skin but actually cut through her intestines almost to her spine. She looked like she had fallen on her face after being killed, then flipped onto her back so her killer could…
What was he doing?
I felt my blood chill as he finished cracking her ribs and began to work inside her chest with a gloved hand. He was trying to take her heart. Human hearts were useful in a number of dark rituals—including the Black Sacrament. Whatever he was doing, I wasn't interested in letting him take his prize on top of the woman's life.
I took a runner's stance then made a dash toward him, kicking the knife from his head as he looked up. I shouted a powerful battle cry, muffled by the scarf I was wearing, then slammed my fist right into his face.
Pain shot up my arm like I had punched a steel drum, and I stumbled away from him with a cry of pain. The killer dropped back away from the woman's body, sent reeling by the power of my strike, but he quickly rolled to his feet. A surprise shot like the one I gave him should have broken his nose or jaw, but he didn't look like he was even bruised. On the other hand, I was worried that I might have broken a finger, or maybe my wrist.
The killer took a broad fighting stance, and one of his hands crept up above his shoulder as he looked up at me. His face made me take a step back. At first, I thought I was looking at a daedra of some kind before I realized that he was wearing a mask—a steel mask, carved in the semblance of a grinning, horned demon. I could see the hilt of a sword sticking up over his shoulder, a leather-covered grip above a round hilt-guard of a sort I had never seen before. Worse than that, as he reached for it, the hilt seemed to have a faint red glow.
He had an enchanted blade. That explained how someone as sloppy as he seemed to be with a knife had killed a woman with a single, unnaturally deep cut. I couldn't let him get that weapon free of its scabbard. If he did, I would be at a severe disadvantage—probably a fatal one.
I charged the demon-masked killer with a powerful shout, hoping to catch him off-guard. He surprised me by dropping low and lashing out with a side kick, catching me in the ankle. I felt my feet slip in the slush and I tumbled ass over teakettle into something warm and sticky. I realized that I had fallen into the dead woman's guts and quickly sat up, trying to get my bearings.
Rather than standing his ground and fighting, the demon-masked killer had turned tail and run. He ducked down a narrow side passage—I couldn't call it even an alley—that I hadn't seen when I came this way. I pulled myself to my feet, realizing that I was covered from head to waist in blood and gore. I started stripping off my bloody things as I ran after him, then realized that there was no way I could fit in behind him; the gap between the buildings was too narrow, and my shoulders and chest were just too broad for me to squeeze in.
I cursed under my breath and turned away, hoping to rook around the buildings and catch him on the other side before he got away. Someone was standing in the mouth of the alley by the time I got oriented. Did the demon-masked killed have an accomplice?
I realized my error when I caught sight of the torch the man was holding. He stepped forward a short way, then pulled his sword free of its scabbard as he saw me—standing over a disemboweled woman.
"Murder!" screamed the guardsman. "There's been a murder!"
That's when things got complicated.
…to be continued…