Chapter II
Halls of Stone
The bright copper curls of the little girl shone in the sun as she skipped away. It was a warm Sundas in the east of High Rock, already far past noon. As one of her friends counted down the girl darted away to the barn, certain that she wouldn't be found there. She was very good at playing hide-and-seek and usually won. Bits and pieces of hay clung to her white cotton dress and tickled her legs, smelling sweetly in the languid heat of the day. The girl stood still for a moment, breathing in deeply as she took in the scent. She pushed her hair behind her ears and frowned as she picked up a different smell that lay under that of the hay, something heavy and dark and sickly. The girl moved deeper into the barn and squinted in the dark as she clambered over the bales and letting out a squeal of surprise when she stumbled over something. She crouched down at it and at a closer look she saw it was pale and long and had five slender fingers at the end, around one of which was a thin golden ring set with a garnet. She recognized it instantly: her mothers wedding band. Tears of fear dribbled down her cheeks as she saw the maggots crawling out of the rotten, necrotic flesh. Then the hand moved, curling into a fist and the attached body pushed itself up from the floor, its throat ripped out by large fangs and pulled the now screaming girl into an embrace.
While the child's screams still ringed in her ears, Bricca woke up in silence and gasped for breath as she tried to remember where exactly she was. She sat up, pushing her blankets back as the haze of the dream faded away and the contours of the Sanctuary became clearer. Babette, with whom she shared the room, wasn't here tonight and she remembered that the girl was out on a contract. She groaned and peered at the crack in the roof. Outside the sky was still dark, untouched yet by rosy-fingered Azura. If she had to guess, she would say it was about three or four in the morning. Bricca swung her legs over the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes, trying to forget her dream. It didn't work; it never did. The quaint little manor seemed to loom far away in the distance. The dream had been a memory, just an ordinary day when she had been a child three hundred years ago. At least she was used to it by now. Bricca hauled herself off the straw mattress and stretched out. Each time she went to sleep, lively, twisted nightmares would wake her up within hours. She never slept anymore, unless she needed to heal. Yesterday had been such a day, with a contract gone awry. She'd ended up on the pointy end of her target's blade, a messy affair. In the end she'd jumped at him and pierced his neck with her teeth, drinking his blood until he was dead. She had underestimated the man, thought that just because he lived close to her home she could take him out easily. Instead, she had limped back in shame to the Dark Brotherhood's hideout to get some rest.
At least the wound had healed. There was nothing left on her left thigh as a reminder of the dagger that had cleaved half through it, the pale flesh smooth as usual, save for some old battle marks. She smiled approvingly and reached for a change of fresh clothes. The loose pants and wide tunic so popular in Skyrim were simple and effective, easy to get around in, nothing like the posh stitched doublets that were so very fashionable in High Rock. Glancing at the mirror, she put her hair in a bun to keep it away from her face, the dark, red tinted eyes of her own reflection peering back at her through the cheap glass: an average looking copper-haired woman of around thirty who would hardly get a second look. She picked up the various knives laying on the side-table and hid them in various folds and pockets. They were easy for her to reach but invisible from the outside. It was almost completely dark in the silent Sanctuary when she left her room, save for the vague glow that came from Arnbjorn's smithy. Once in the kitchen, Bricca poked up the fire carefully, filling a kettle with water and adding some ground coffee beans and sugar to it. Nazir had brought the beans with him when he had visited Hammerfell recently. They were used to make a strong, bitter drink that was barely known throughout the Empire, but the Redguards were fond of it. Although she was unable to feel the highly acclaimed invigorating effect of the coffee she had grown fond of the taste and smell. It was strong, a change from the normal food that always tasted bland to her. After the coffee had boiled she poured the hot liquid in a thick, earthenware cup and decided to return to her bed and wait until morning. As she passed the half-round stone wall in the middle of the Sanctuary she halted, sensing something: a faint heartbeat, a dark silhouette hiding in the shadows.
“Can't sleep either?” she asked. The silhouette moved quietly, a dimly glowing red eye looking at her from the dark. It belonged to a Dark Elf that was sitting against the wall, overshadowed by the stone and hidden from sight.
“Never.” The elf chuckled darkly. “How is your leg?”
“Good.” Bricca sipped the coffee. “It's hard to notice you hiding around here.”
“I didn't want to be seen”, the elf replied, grinning at her. Bricca was never sure if Veryn was mocking her or not, as the heavy scarring on his face made it hard to read his expressions. His right eye was blind and cataracted, opaque and off-white in colour. The skin around it was badly scarred, red and cracked, with raised white lines that branched out like ferns, or lightning, across his cheek and temple until they became thin and nearly invisible. More scars ran across his jaw and lips, pulling the corner of his mouth up as if he was smirking. The left side of his face had scars as well, fainter and less pronounced, and his nose seemed to have been broken at least once. Astrid had introduced him as the Dragonborn when he joined them nearly a year ago and Bricca had been wondering since why a hero like that would decide to stay with the Dark Brotherhood. At least he made for interesting conversations at night, when they were the only ones awake.
Bricca smiled back at him. “Are you hiding from someone in particular?”
He gave a faint snort as an answer and jerked his chin towards the iron coffin that stood near the pool. "Cicero. That bloody jester seems to have trouble understanding that I don't care to answer his annoying questions."
Bricca grunted in response. Cicero was a newcomer to the Sanctuary as well. He had come from Cyrodiil only a few weeks ago, from Cheydinhal, and had already stirred up quite the commotion. With him he had taken the body of the Night Mother Herself, one of the most sacred relics the Dark Brotherhood knew. Like Bricca, he followed and respected the Old Ways, but unlike her, Cicero was a raving lunatic. Already she had come to despise the jester's puffy face, fat lips and the pathetic, whiny voice that bubbled up from between them. Like a pig in a feeding through, he had been burrowing himself into everyone's origins and had been grubbing around in their past, breaking one of the most important unwritten rules of the Sanctuary: know when to shut up. Even those few members who were relatively open about their lives were still hiding most of who they were and what they had done. But the worst thing about Cicero wasn't the horrible intonation of his voice or his despicable curiosity: it was his tendency to cling to people. The very moment he had found out she still followed the Five Tenets and honoured the Night Mother he had lashed himself to her as if he were a petulant child, vying for her attention every free moment.
"I could talk to him if you want," she offered, already dreading the prospect of spending more than a few minutes in Cicero's presence. "He usually seems to listen to me."
Veryn shrugged. "I'll be fine."
Bricca watched how he conjured a ball of pure light, a soft yellow in colour. With a slight gesture of his hands he sent it hovering in the air above him so it illuminated the crumbled wall he was sitting against. It was made of a dark stone, with deep grooves forming an old script, as if a giant claw had carved them into the wall ages ago: a remnant of a time long past. The Sanctuary was built in an ancient Nordic ruin and currently housed ten assassins and one pet spider. Bricca estimated that half of the place was actually habitable. The rest of it consisted of half collapsed rooms and corridors that were too dangerous to explore. It was a nice representation of the state the whole Dark Brotherhood was in, she thought as she sat down opposite the elf and sipped her coffee. The words of old Festus Krex rang painfully true when he described them as nothing more than a group of ordinary cut-throats.
"When did you want to leave for Markarth to do those contracts? I don't like travelling alone much,” Veryn said.
She raised the cup as an answer. "Once I've finished my coffee."
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
The quaint and sleepy town of Falkreath lay about an hours walk south-east of the Sanctuary. It didn't look much different from any other village or hamlet one could find in Skyrim, although it was quite a bit larger than most of them. Still, it didn't yet deserve to be called a city. The town housed the seat of the Jarl of Falkreath Hold, and was in one thing quite unusual: everyone was obsessed with death. Once the site of many battles, a graveyard had formed where the dead were buried, growing ever larger until it had become the largest graveyard in the country. More than half of the walled town consisted of headstones, tended to by the local priests of Arkay, and many of the buildings were named after the dead too: Corpselight Farm and Dead Mans Drink among the most cheerful of them. Even outside the walls the graves spread and in some directions you could walk for hours along the buried remains. Veryn and Bricca made their way to the stables over the small dirt roads, overgrown with moss and grass, their hoods pulled up to shield themselves against the perpetually drizzling rain. It rarely was dry around Falkreath and on the rare occasions it didn't rain it was foggy or at the very least clouded, lending the place a gloomy atmosphere where nobody really seemed to bother about the occasional assassin visiting the farmers market once a week. This early in the morning there was hardly anyone out and about. The high priest of Arkay, an ancient looking High Elf, was sitting on a carved wooden bench just outside the chapel, resting his hands on his walking cane. He appeared to be staring off into the distance, but when they passed him he raised his hand in blessing.
The road to Markarth was long and rough, becoming increasingly craggier and wild the further they came west. They rode during the day, staying at night in the various little inns along the road. The Reach, the large hold that Markarth was the capital city of, was a treacherous place that teemed with Forsworn and bandits and during the night the roads were simply not safe enough to travel. Bricca despised travelling during the day, but they didn't have much choice. She kept her hood up against the sun, catching odd glances from passing farmers and tradesmen, but at least the bright light didn't bother her that much. They rode mostly in silence, occasionally chatting but mostly minding their own thoughts. Once or twice they had to dismount, the road too badly maintained to ride well and barred by rock slides. A few groups of Imperial Legionnaires busied themselves by clearing the way again, but in general they were too busy fighting the Stormcloaks to regularly keep up the roads. Bricca found herself wondering about the contract she would be picking up in Markarth. She'd have to find a girl named Muiri that was supposed to work at one of the alchemist's shops and ask her who she wanted dead. Once more it was a reminder of the sorry state of the Brotherhood: no Listener, no Black Hand and no Tenets.
Bricca had first joined the Dark Brotherhood roughly two hundred and fifty years ago, climbing up the ranks until she had served as silencer along Aedoric Junius, one of the Champions of Cyrodiil, part of the inner circle of the last Septim Emperor. Jauffre, Baurus, Mazoga... all names of the dead now, forgotten by time moving forward. After the crisis, those first years of the Fourth Era had been the glory days of the assassin's guild, a golden era during which nobles across all of Tamriel whispered their name in fear and awe. But then Aedoric had left, disappeared without a trace and had never come back, and within a year the Night Mother spoke to another. Bricca too had left the Dark Brotherhood in the years after that, joining a coven of feral vampires instead. She had stayed there for about forty years, a time of which she barely had any memories, and then the Great War broke out in 175. The coven scattered to the four winds and she travelled Tamriel, following whispered rumours and stray tidings about the Dark Brotherhood, fulfilling the Black Sacrament Sithis knew how many times. In the end she had found them: the last Sanctuary to still exist. That was five years ago, and now it was in the middle of Frostfall of the year 196 of the Fourth Era; and the corpse of the Night Mother had returned to Her children.
There were but a few farms around Markarth, the mountainous terrain not well suited for agriculture. The road skirted around a peak and then the city rose up in the distance: an impressive amount of Dwarven buildings carved out of the mountainside with gleaming metal roofs, their bronze colour catching the setting sun. Thousands of years ago, Markarth had been built by the Dwarves and when they had died out, humans had slowly taken it over. Initially they herded their goats between the grand stone buildings, scavenging the occasional bowl or vase they found. But every winter, when snowstorms ravaged their huts, more and more people moved in, sustaining themselves by trade and craftsmanship. Large mines sprawled under the city, rich in silver, exploited for generations by the same old families.
"Did you know there is an entire city hidden under this one?" Veryn asked as they neared the stables. Bricca shook her head.
"I didn't. There's one of those old ruins underneath?"
"Multiple of them. The local court wizard has been digging there for the last decades, uncovering and excavating all sorts of interesting and not so interesting artefacts."
"You know him?"
He nodded. "Calcelmo? He's the foremost scholar of Dwemer research. All the standard handbooks are of his hand. Not a bad man for an Altmer, if a little eccentric."
The main gate into Markarth was guarded heavily, more so than Bricca had initially expected. The Dark Elf passed the guards without trouble, but when she passed the heavy bronze gates one of the soldiers beckoned her over.
"Please show us your face, ma'am," he said, his own face obscured by a full helmet. Bricca complied, throwing back her hood. She squinted against the sun and waited while the guard scrutinized her Breton features closely. When he was convinced she was not a threat he motioned for her to move along. They ended up at the Silver-Blood Inn, a somewhat dingy tavern with watered down drinks but clean rooms and decent food. The locals were curt, not exactly unfriendly but clearly distrusting of everyone that came from outside the city. They didn't like strangers much and when Bricca asked around about Muiri the answer, if she even got one, was always 'no'. They had no idea where the girl worked, who she was or they were simply lying about it.
The next day she went out into the city, leaving Veryn to fulfil his own contract, and carefully navigated the countless stairs and cliffs while seeking out every store that remotely resembled an alchemist's one. In one of them, a sleazy old man tried to palm off a bone amulet on her, assuring it was imbued with true Reach Magic and in another the owner was selling skooma under the counter. She had the feeling she was wasting her time when she entered the Hag's Cure, but once she inside she could see this was the home of a reputable apothecary. The shop was one of the most curious she had ever seen. It was part living room, with a hearth and some chairs, part shop, with a counter stowed full of things, and part workroom. Fine glass bottles, filled with all sorts of wicked concoctions, were exposed on the counter and there were baskets with assorted ingredients. Wooden racks covered nearly every empty part of the wall, stocked full of dried herbs and flowers. Large bundles of mushrooms, garlic and more plants hung upside down from hooks in the ceiling beams. The resulting scent that hung in the store was a peculiar mixture of sweet and earthly aromas with the musty smell of old books thrown in. The owner of the shop was engaged in conversation with an older Nord that apparently had a problem with his wife and wished for a potion to resolve his withered ambitions. The owner was quite a sight to behold too, with ancient wrinkled skin and claw-like fingers. Her face was heavily tattooed with black lines spread out like the web of a spider and her glinting dark brown eyes were hidden underneath heavy lids.
"Nothing a bit of Reach magic can't cure," she said to the other customer, grinning eerily. The woman could easily pass for a hedge witch, someone practising a form of magic that was usually passed over from mother to daughter, often rooted firmly in superstition and folk traditions. The Reach had a large amount of such customs, still practised by the Forsworn and native Reachmen that were strongly attuned with nature. Some stories even told about people replacing their own heart to become immortal and about witches that could shift their form to that of a bird at will. Bricca usually dismissed such stories as mere myths and folk tales, used only to scare and entertain children. Then again, she had initially held dragons to be legends as well, save for Martin who had turned into an avatar of Akatosh, and these days the destructive winged killers ruled over the air in Skyrim.
"Can I help you with something?"
A demure looking girl, still in her twenties, was looking at Bricca expectantly.
"I am looking for someone named Muiri," Bricca said. The girl smiled and blushed.
"That's me."
Bricca smiled back at her, hoping to set the girl at ease. "Can I speak to you in private for a moment?"
She saw Muiri's eyes dart off to the alchemist and then she nodded, leading Bricca to a closed off side room. There were even more ingredients stored there. A simple bed was pushed against the wall next to a cabinet filled with empty glass bottles and vials.
"What did you come for?" Muiri asked, uncertainty crossing her face.
"Your prayers have been answered," Bricca responded.
"My pray- oh!" Confusion rapidly made place for a look of disbelief on Muiri's face. "You're from the Dark Brotherhood!" she whispered. "The Black Sacrament – it actually worked? Divines, I can't believe -"
"I wouldn't invoke them while discussing business like this," Bricca warned. Muiri paled slightly. "Who is it you wish to see dead?"
Muiri narrowed her eyes and scowled in the distance. "My former fiancé. His name is Alain Dufont. I didn't know it at first, but he turned out to be the leader of a group of bandits. He – he seduced me and everything was fine at first, but then he used me to rob the Shattershields in Windhelm. They're old friends of mine and I was visiting them because their daughter Friga had been murdered. Alain used me to get close to them and once he had taken what he wanted he dropped me like a piece of garbage, while my friends blame me and think I'm some kind of... monster." Tears sprang in Muiri's eyes, but Bricca couldn't say if they came from grief or anger. "Alain Dufont took my life, so now I'm taking his. He's holed up in some Dwarven ruin near Windhelm. It's called Raldbthar."
Bricca nodded. "That is understandable. Is that everything you need from us?"
Muiri hesitated for a bit, her voice soft when she talked again. "There is more. I – Could you kill someone else as well?"
"If you pay for it, of course I can."
"The Shattershields... I was like a daughter to Tova and a sister to Nilsine and Friga, but they didn't understand that I was used. They refuse to believe my innocence! If Nilsine dies too, maybe Tova will realize what she has lost. Maybe she'll see that I was just as much of a daughter to her as the others."
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Once she went outside people were yelling and shouting. Panicked masses ran over the narrow stairways towards the Temple of Dibella in the centre of the city, elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to reach safety. Bricca frowned, having half a mind to get back inside the apothecary again, but curiosity about what was going on won over. She clambered on a nearby rock, elevating herself above the crowd. The situation could turn sour any moment: just one foot that slipped too far over the edge of the narrow stairs and someone would fall to their death. Behind the crowd ran city guards, trying to fight off a group of scrawny men in fur kilts. They wielded bone spears and strange antlered helmets and their naked chests were adorned with black ink and blue paint. Flocks of dark birds fought next to them, crows and ravens that dove from the sky and harassed the crowd and guards with their beaks and claws.
"The Reach belongs to the Forsworn!" one of them called out as he stabbed a guard through the throat. "The day of glory has arrived!”
"Drive 'em back into the mine!" another guard yelled moments before his head was swept half off his shoulders, hanging on thick, bloodied tendrils of neck.
The carnage seemed to confine itself to the Forsworn and the City Guard, leaving the citizens to run away in fear. Bricca watched the battle shift deeper into the heart of the city as the Forsworn fought their way towards the city gate. Then a dreadful scream echoed past the Dwarven buildings. A man had lost his balance and now dangled from the edge, clinging on to it with his fingertips for dear life. No such luck befell him, for the crowd trampled his hands. He fell down the cliff in a graceful motion, landing in the river far below where his lifeless body washed against the rocky edge. Only when the peace had returned to the city somewhat did Bricca move back to the Silver-Blood inn. The Forsworn outbreak was obviously the talk of the evening. She picked up all sorts of little details while passing the groups of citizens that huddled together, still shaken to the core. Veryn had already reached the inn before her, she saw when she looked through the taproom. He sat in a corner and watched his surroundings warily, keeping away from the local miners that were spending their hard-earned wages on drinking cheap ale and filling their stomachs with greasy sausages.
"What are you drinking?" Bricca asked when she sat down at his table, peering curiously at the small glass filled with a brown liquor.
"They call it genever. It's a local spirit flavoured with juniper berries, a nice change from the usual mead, ale and cider." He slowly spun the glass around. "It's not bad. Did you succeed in finding your contact?"
She nodded. "I did. I had to visit pretty much every shop that had something to do with alchemy before I ran into her. Got all the details I need now though. She wants me to go to Windhelm. It's going to take weeks before I'm finished there."
Veryn grimaced in response. "That's the other side of the country. Good luck with that. Windhelm has never been my favourite city. The local Nords there do not look favourable on my kin." He downed the remains of his drink in one go. "They lack the Forsworn though and there's too much damn Thalmor in this city too. I'll be glad when I'm out." His eye flashed over to the door nervously. "I'm sure you picked up something about the little stunt the Forsworn pulled today?"
"I got, in fact, caught up in the middle of it," Bricca answered, declining the barmaid's question if she wanted something to drink or eat. "Which is why I arrived here only after dark."
Veryn watched the maid walk away, waiting until she was out of earshot. "They broke out of Cidhna Mine where they were kept as slaves. As you probably noticed, it caused quite the stir in the city." The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. "Causing my target to accidentally fall down was the easiest kill I've ever done."
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