I’m going to take the opportunity now to explain what happened in Riften, at least up to that point. I had a scar across my throat, very small mind you, by the time I went back to Jorrvaskr but things could have gone a lot worse. So now I’ll out with it, as I feel I can now break my silence – I’ve been freed of my contract and the Thieves’ Guild has expanded and left Riften now in any event, so my words will not put them at risk. Even a thief has loyalties.
I continued to do some jobs for the Thieves Guild back then, although in reality what we were really doing was acting as saboteurs and sneak-muscle for Black-Briar Meadery; Maven Black-Briar was a thoroughly nasty piece of work and whatever dark place she has managed to rest after her death I hope she fries for eternity. She wanted a monopoly on all the mead in Skyrim, and would go to any length to achieve that – if that meant removing the competition by blackmail or poison and sabotage, she’d do it, and she held the Thieves’ Guild in her fist for years – mostly due to the fact the guild was on such hard times we couldn’t stay afloat without it. The luck was drying up, and no one could quite figure why.
Delvin still insisted it was a curse of some kind – he had been working the shadows for years, and had never seen luck go so badly. Of course none of the other thieves were as superstitious, but I was learning a few things about wyrd at that point, even if I didn’t want to admit it. And I’m a pretty skilled thief, but even I had a really bad couple runs of luck which cost me a cut in my pay – a dragon coming out of the sky to torch a meadery I was trying to acquire for that hag Maven being one of the worst. Of course I got blamed for it as no one was going to believe I had killed a dragon all by myself and I wasn’t even going to try and convince anyone. But little bits and pieces like that…it was strange.
To top it off, we got word that someone was trying to damage our already tenuous reputation with Black-Briar; someone was trying to buy out the other meaderies, trying to bolster the competition. I had to do a fair bit of backtracking and detective work to figure out who it was that was causing the trouble, and got a name – Karliah. The name meant nothing to me, but when I found Brynjolf and explained what I had found, he went pale.
“I didn’t think I’d hear that name again…Karliah was one of the best thieves in the guild; she had a thing going with the former guild leader. And then, one day, she killed him and vanished.”
I stared at Brynjolf. ”What, just like that? What did she steal?”
“That’s just it, lass…nothing as far as we can tell. It’s like she just turned mad and was gone. If she’s back, it means big trouble for all of us. We need to have a word with Mercer.”
Mercer’s reaction was even worse – he went livid with rage, his hands clenched into fists. His teeth gnashed and his eyes darkened as he spat the name out with a curse. ”I should have known! I should have known she would be back to haunt us, to finish what she started! That vicious minx! Well I won’t let her take the guild down – so you’re going to come with me, Bosmer, you’re the one with the most information and I want to hear everything you know on the way.”
“On the way to where?” I asked.
“She’s going back where it began,” he grated as he strapped on his swordbelt. ”She’s going where she killed Gallus, I expect, and I happen to know where that is. Brynjolf, you keep the lid on the place, let no one in or out, hear me?”
“Aye, boss,” Bryn replied as he pulled up the cowl of his leathers and began to give orders to the gathering crowd of thieves, sending them scurrying.
“Right, Dreema,” Mercer grunted as he turned for the ladder which led up to the secret doorway into Riften, ”Let’s see if you’re as good as you boast.”
We were heading to Snow Veil Sanctum – yes, guess what? Draugr. Have I mentioned…yes, you get the idea. I had no intention of actually letting that on however as the more time I spent with Mercer, the more uneasy I became. That the man was a damn good thief was becoming very clear to me – that he was also an incredible swordsman was also apparent. But something about the conversations on our way to the crypt – about the questions he asked, about who I had told and who I had managed to get the information from, and about my experience with swords and bows…I felt like I was being sized up. He was tricky, and the Thieves Guild wasn’t the Companions; no happy family sort of thing. It was everyone for themselves, and Mercer definitely struck me as the sort of man out for himself and no one else.
“Right, here we are, I remember this place from ages ago – what, can’t you get that door open? Pfff, amateur,” he muttered as he strode forward to work at the locking mechanism on the tomb – I’ve never seen that technique before but he wasn’t about to show me how it worked, merely turning his back to me and blocking my view, then the door swung open effortlessly into the dark depths below.
“How did you that?” I asked, intrigued, but the look he gave me was anything but friendly.
“This isn’t classroom lesson time, Dunmer, we’re on a hunt. Get your head right!”
Frowning slightly as he was getting more and more abrasive the closer we got to the place, he strode in with me alongside.
Draugr. Yes, I still hated draugr – but I’ve never seen anyone fight with such grace and lethal poise as Mercer. The man was gifted with a blade – arrogant, pedantic, and yet completely able to back it up; he sliced through rows of the undead as if it was a game, and grinned with satisfaction as each fell. He had no qualm stealing from any nook and cranny in the crypt which presented itself either, and again I found myself with a doubt – he seemed a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work, and I was here in a crypt with the man. These weren’t particularly brilliant odds.
But here we were, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do other than keep going. And now we came to one of the “claw-symbol” doors. ”Ah, a puzzle door,” Mercer sneered. ”How quaint. Normally you can’t open these without a key, but there’s a trick to it, actually…”
Again, I have no idea what he did or how, but after a quick bit of faff with the stones, the whole puzzle door shuddered and then sank into the floor in a cloud of dust. Mercer ducked down and back, murmuring quietly. ”We’re close now…I’m sure she’s in here. Be on your guard, she’s fast and she’s very stealthy.”
I had over twenty years as a sneak-thief, beast blood and Dovahkiin under my belt, and I still didn’t hear that bowstring. I only just managed to turn to catch the arrow in the upper shoulder and before I could take even two steps, I was down. Down, and paralysed. I couldn’t move, could barely blink. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, so a Shout wouldn’t have worked anyway. It felt as if time itself were slowing down, and my ears felt stuffed with tundra cotton. I could see Mercer step forward through my eyelashes, and then out from above came a slight figure – a Dunmer slinging a bow over her shoulder, and speaking in a measured, mild voice.
“I knew you’d come, Mercer, back to the scene of your treachery.”
What was this? I strained my muzzy hearing to the limits as I lay limp and useless on the floor, a dawning horror seizing hold of me. So…it was Mercer who had killed Gallus, and Karliah had been trying to bring him to justice. The arrow she shot me with must have been meant for him, but now, they were going to get down to it and there was precious little I could do. As furious as I was for being double-crossed, there was nothing I could do but watch as Mercer drew his lethal blades with a vicious flair.
“Come on then, Karliah,” he sneered. ”Let’s finish it then!”
“Crossing blades with you would be a death sentence,” Karliah murmured, uncorking a bottle and raising it to her lips. ”But we will meet again…I’m not done with you yet.”
Her image shifted and just as Mercer lunged, she was gone…invisible and out of his sight in the darkness. I could still smell her due to the beast blood, but she was incredibly quick and within moments she was out of the hall.
Now I was really in trouble. Mercer was striding back toward me, and all I could do was glare at him through half-lidded eyes.
“Well,” he said, crouching down and staring into my face with a malicious smile. ”I suppose at least this has worked out then. You were right…you weren’t boasting. You were indeed pretty good; maybe too good. With you out the way I can carry on and deal with Karliah with the rest of the guild. In the meantime, I’ll tell everyone you died a hero’s death…and you’re even in a tomb, so there’s no need to worry about burying you. Just like Gallus, really.”
I struggled to move, to even just curse the man’s name as he drew his dagger and eyed the edge. He gave me a smile that haunted me for weeks, and drew its cruel length across my throat from ear to ear. Darkness took me as the man walked away, and that may have been the end of me, and the world as well – no Dovahkiin to stop the World Eater then!
But wyrd…wyrd had other plans, as ever. Perhaps that was what began to turn me back upon my path for there really was no other way that should have played out. I should have died, bled out on that crypt floor. Instead, my vision cleared, and I coughed, spat, and coughed again. My eyes were burning and my limbs ached. My throat was aflame, but I could breathe. If this was the afterlife, I was rather disappointed at all the snow in it -
“Easy, easy, don’t get up to fast.”
I staggered, sat down abruptly, then staggered up again a bit more slowly. Something was pressed into my hands and I drank, coughed, and drank again – healing potion of considerable strength pouring down my gullet and stitching tissue back together again. I squinted up at the benefactor, and blinked at dark skin and red eyes.
“There,” Karliah said quietly as she stood up once more. ”How are you feeling?”
“You shot me,” I rasped, coughing and rubbing my throat – mostly healed, for a mercy; I could talk again, albeit hoarsely.
“That poison took me a year to develop and I only had enough for one shot,” she sighed. ”Mercer used you as cover. At least the poison slowed your bloodflow enough you didn’t bleed out, but he got away.”
“Should have shot him anyway,” I grunted. I remembered that sadistic smile he had given me, and my eyes narrowed to slits. ”Well…so it’s true then? He betrayed the guild.”
“Yes, and he’s done even more than that, to be truthful, but I cannot explain more right now,” Karliah said quietly as she helped me to my feet and looked intently into my face. ”Do you want to stop Mercer?”
“Oh believe me, I certainly do; I owe him a slice or two now,” I replied, still seething internally.
“Then I need you to trust me,” Karliah said. ”I need you to take this,” she dug into her packs and brought out a rather tattered journal. ”It’s Gallus’ journal – he left some more details about Mercer and his betrayal, but the entire thing is written in code, and even I can’t decipher it.”
“So, you need someone who can break the code?” I said hoarsely. “Sounds like scholar-work.”
“Yes, exactly!” Karliah said. “Gallus had a friend in the College of Winterhold. If you can find him, he may be able to tell you where we can find a way to translate it. I’d ask you to do this for me, and I urge you not to go back to the Thieves Guild until we have enough proof to convince the Guild. Right now, they probably think you’re dead, and Mercer will have convinced them all that I am the one who did it. Besides, you’re in no shape to do much at the moment.”
It rankled, but it was probably true…in any event, I still felt like I’d been picked over by mudcrabs in a swamp, and my head pounded like the Skyforge’s anvil.
“I’m going to need some travel money,” I said. ”But I can probably pull a job or two to fill in. I’ll get this back to you when I can. I heal quickly, but I’ve got some other business to check on, and I may even be able to get some help.”
And so Karliah and I parted ways…and I had thoroughly intended on following up on the journal if the Silver Hand hadn’t made things incredibly difficult as I’ve related already. Still, once I was Harbinger, I was able to approach the Companions and ask for their help in taking down the man who had nearly ended my life. There was a fair show of hands for that job, including the last person I expected would be willing to go with me.
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