Link to episodes 1-4: http://theskyrimblog.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=0m7tnj8g66wc2
“Dalos,” Lucy greeted the dunmer boy, as Nils took up a position behind him to the left and Swims-in-Shadows took a position on his right. “We’d like to talk to you about something you might have seen in your Da’s stuff. It was an amulet, with an engraving of a dragon on one side and some kind of ancient rune on the other. Sound familiar?”
Dalos was quick. He threw a shoulder into Nils, knocking him down, then took off running. Swims-in-Shadows was the first after him. Lucy paused just long enough to see Nils picking himself up, then ran after them.
No one could escape Swims in a sprint through the narrow alleys of the Warrens. He seemed to slither up the walls as he turned the sharp corners and vaulted the piled refuse. He grabbed the running dunmer boy by the shoulder and threw him against a wall. Dalos threw his legs up and shoved Swims into a stack of barrels, which collapsed with Swims on top of them.
But by then, Lucy had arrived, cutting off Dalos’ escape. He drew a dagger and slashed at her, cutting her arm. Ignoring the pain, she swung her fist into his jaw, and he dropped his dagger, staggering back. Swims grabbed Dalos’ arms and locked them behind his back. Nils picked up the dagger and made as if to lunge, but Lucy held up a hand and stopped him. He kept the dagger poised by Dalos’ eye.
Dalos cowered as Lucy loomed over him, considering what to do next. She raised her left hand, palm towards herself. Her fingertips glowed with a dull red heat, which quickened to orange, then yellow. Dalos’ whimpered.
She reached across to the bleeding cut on her right arm and brushed her fingertips down the length of it. The bleeding stopped; the glow of her fingertips faded. More closely related to Destruction magic than to her mother’s Restoration spells, Cauterize Small Wounds hurt like hell and left a scar, but it was easier to pull off in the heat of the moment. The fact that it intimidated the piss out of opponents was a handy side benefit.
“Now then Dalos,” she purred. “You took that amulet from your Da’s chest. I’m disappointed in you, but I just want to give it back. Where can I get it?”
“You can’t give it back,” Dalos moaned. “Just leave it alone and they’ll take it and go away.”
“Who will?” she demanded.
“The Dark Brotherhood!” he said in a strained whisper.
“Get real!” Lucy told him.
“I’m telling the truth, I swear! They were Southlanders, four of them, wearing dark hoods and cloaks with symbols on them. And then there was one like him,” he indicated Swims. “They were right outside our house! They said they’d kill everyone inside if I didn’t go in and get it for them. It was just a stupid amulet! Da gets them all the time.”
“Apparently, this one’s different,” Lucy said. “Your Da seemed pretty damn scared of the people who hired him to steal that amulet. I think his words were, ‘slaughter us all’. They’ve got everyone in the Guild and the Youth Corps out looking for it, and we’ve only got until tomorrow night to deliver.”
Actually, it was stretching the truth to imply that the Youth Corps had been informed directly. She’d overheard Modryn Farys, the local Thieves Guild doyen and Dalos’ Da, talking to her parents about it. No one was going to let the Youth Corps get involved in something that had Farys that spooked, so it had been necessary to take it on without telling the adults. First step: question the people that had access but whom Farys would never think to suspect, starting with his own son. It’d been just a hunch until he ran.
“The clients can’t be worse than the Dark Brotherhood! Can they?” Dalos whimpered.
She leaned in close, put a hand on the side of his head, and said, “What if the Brotherhood is working both sides, hm?” He was already shivering, though this new idea clearly made it worse. “Do you have any idea where to find the guys in the dark robes? No? No meeting place? You haven’t seen them on the street? Well, if you know what’s good for you and your family, you’ll let us know if anything crops up.”
She nodded to Swims, who let the terrorized boy go. Dalos was gone in a flash.
Swims spoke first. “If the Dark Brotherhood is behind thisss, maybe we should ssstay out of it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Nils. “This maybe is over our heads.”
“It’s not the Brotherhood,” Lucy said with certainty.
“How do you know?”
“Because they’re a myth!” she barked. “They’re a story to scare you out of trouble. ‘If you don’t do what you’re told, I’ll whisper your name to the Night Mother.’ Give me a break!”
“Prove it!” challenged Swims. Lucy was surprised. Swims was usually so steady. But she could shut them both down.
“Sorry? Did you two babies just ask me to prove that the boogie man doesn’t exist?”
Both boys examined their toes in embarrassment. Lucy knew they were still at that age when shame was far more convincing than logic. In the five years since the Thieves Guild Youth Corps had been formed, Lucy had become pretty adept at manipulation. She’d had to after she’d realized that the doyen had never really meant for the Thieves Guild Youth Corps to get off the ground. Now it was one of the most effective organizations in the city at keeping children on the streets. It gave the children of Thieves Guild members a chance to further their education and contribute to the family table. They emphasized a code of ethics, nondiscrimination and loyalty.
You’d think now that the Corps had proven itself, the doyen would have come round, but he still seemed like he was only halfway onboard, never wanting to give them any really juicy assignments. That’s why they’d jumped at this one, with or without official sanction.
“Anyway, we’ve got a description now,” she went on. “Four Southlanders and an Argonian, all wearing dark cloaks with symbols. That’s a bunch that ought to stick out, I’d think. Nils, your troops should check out the inns. Swims, your cell should stake out the gates. I’m going to go talk to a contact in the Imperial District. Meet back at the clubhouse just before dawn.”
Lucy’s contact in the Imperial District was actually the Captain of the Guard, Durz gro-Ushal. He’d never given up on his quest to save her from a life of crime. It was from him that she’d learned the cauterizing spell. It was two in the morning when she climbed in the window of his quarters. He slept soundly, but awoke violently, so she picked up his war hammer from the side of his bed, took two steps back and poked him with the blunt end to wake him up. She jumped back as he jumped up and grabbed for where the weapon should have been. “It’s me!” she said, “Just me!”
“Lucy,” he panted. “What time is it?”
“The moon just went down,” she replied, then in case he wasn’t tracking the moon’s phase, “About two in the morning.”
“I like it better when you visit during the day,” he grumbled.
“Are you sure?” she teased.
“Don’t even start,” he warned. “You’re still a crazy little orphan waif as far as I’m concerned, and you always will be. Anyway, what do you want?”
“Do you believe in the Dark Brotherhood?”
This question gave him pause. “If I say no, are you going to say something creepy, like, ‘Well, they believe in you’?”
“No,” Lucy said with a chuckle.
“If I say yes, are you going to run out and join them?”
“No, not my style,” she assured him. “Friend of mine says he saw a gang of Southlanders and an Argonian, all wearing dark cloaks and hoods. They snuck up on him and threatened his family.”
“Sounds serious. Did he report it to the Guard?”
She gave him a look that told him all he needed to know about that.
“Well I wouldn’t worry too hard. Any clown can buy himself a dark cloak and hood. What was it they wanted from your friend, anyway?”
“You have to tell me something, first,” Lucy said.
“Thought I just did.”
“Nothing I didn’t already know.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Look, what I really want to know is, have you seen any foreign clowns walking around town in dark cloaks and hoods?”
“OH! You’re looking for these guys. Sounds serious. You’re not going to knock them off, are you?”
“Like I said, not my style.”
“Then they have something you want. What’d they take?”
Lucy snapped her mouth shut.
“Ha! I’m on the right track. And since you don’t want to tell me what it was, that means it didn’t originally belong to your friend, did it?”
Lucy sighed and moved to leave. This verbal fencing match was not going her way.
But gro-Ushal surprised her again. “The item in question wouldn’t happen to be an amulet with a dragon on one side and some weird rune on the other, would it?”
She sat back down. “How did you know that?”
“It so happens there have been some clowns asking around the wrong parts of town about that particular trinket. Don’t match your description though. These guys were Altmer, straight from the Summerset Isles. Damn thing’s probably enchanted. I hate enchanted items—nothing but trouble. If I thought I could do it, I’d go on a quest to destroy every piece of enchanted jewelry on the continent.”
Altmer, she thought. Those must be the Guild’s clients. “Where can I find them?”
“Traveler’s Best Inn,” gro-Ushal told her. “If the Aldmeri Dominion is poking around my jurisdiction, I want to know about it. Let me know what you find out.”
“Sure thing,” she said. She was in no hurry to report back to him, but couldn’t see any reason not to be agreeable. “And thanks,” she added as she climbed out the window.
After he was sure she was gone, gro-Ushal went to the barracks, and woke up his intelligence coordinator. “Give me everything you got on the Dark Brotherhood.”
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