Dagnell walked into Honeyside with a heavy heart. This was going to be one of the hardest nights of her life. She knew that she would get through it, but she dreaded everything that was about to happen. She took a huge breath. Put it out of your mind, Dag, she told herself. Enough time to deal with it later.
————-
The familiar sound of hammer on metal caught her attention and she smiled, walking down the stairs and peering into the smithing area. He was dressed in roughspun pants and a tunic with a smith’s apron over it, pounding away at what looked like it might eventually become a dagger. It was looking better than some of his earliest attempts, which had ended up as misshapen lumps of steel, ripe for the re-smelting. “Some day,” he had told her, “I’m going to carry a dagger I made myself, not just one I sharpened up.”
“Hi Red,” she said, grinning. “That’s looking good. You may make that apprentice-level smith some day after all.”
He plunged it into the water, stood, and wiped his sleeve across his brow, making a face at her. “I got a few pointers from Balimund. Had to pay him for the privilege, but it looks like it’s helping.”
“Of course you had to pay him,” she said. “He’s no fool and he knows we have it to spare.”
“Come here, wench,” he said, laying his hammer down and gathering her in to his chest. It never ceased to amaze Dag how his kisses managed to stir her to her core, even after so many of them. “I missed you,” he said, once they peeled themselves apart.
“I was only just over at the Cistern,” she told him with a smile. “My goodness but you’re insatiable.”
He smiled his best wicked smile. “I’m still making up for lost time, lass.”
She squirmed out of his grasp and tugged on his apron. “The rabble seem to be behaving themselves. Delvin said he was running out of people to handle all the fishing jobs, though.”
“I’ll talk to him in the morning, then,” Brynjolf said, reaching up to untie the apron and then folding it and stowing it in the nearby chest. “I may have just the person.” He peeled himself out of the tunic and tossed it on the floor. Dag fought to contain a grin. Bryn bare-chested was a sight she never tired of seeing.
“Oh yeah?” She started unbuckling her leathers. Time for something lighter and cooler. Plus it was fun to tease him by taking them off in front of him. The spark that always lit in his eyes – well, that was something she would treasure for the rest of her days.
“Mmm. He’s interesting. Met him a few weeks ago, and I’ve been keeping an eye on him. Imperial boy, I can’t tell how old. He’s got some nimble fingers on him, that one; I saw him lifting a jewel right out of Madesi’s pocket and Madesi never so much as twitched. And then he turned around and sold it to Madesi, cheeky as can be, just like he’d had it in his own pocket for years.”
Dag smiled. “He’s better than most of us, then. You should bring him in.”
“You’ll enjoy looking at him, too,” Brynjolf chuckled. “He’s a handsome thing.”
“Oh?” Dag poked at Brynjolf’s chest, but smiling. “As nice as Thrynn?”
“Quiet, wife,” he said, leaning over to give her another kiss that had her weak-kneed. “Now come with me,” he said, taking her by the hand and pulling toward the door. “I need to get clean and you need to get out of that hot leather.”
Dag pretended to resist. It was such a good game, and it never got old.
Brynjolf grinned, swooped her up in his arms and strode toward the tub. “You’re a bad girl, Dag,” he said. “You deserve a spanking.”
“Oooh. Promise?”
—————–
In the time since Mercer Frey had met his cold end in Bronze Water Cave, Dagnell and Brynjolf had become very wealthy indeed. Honeyside was even better-appointed than it had been when Dag had moved in; the strongbox and the safe in their bedroom were stuffed with jewelry and gemstones, and more cash than they knew what to do with. The chests in the Guild’s vault were bulging again, Delvin and Vex had the day-to-day business well in hand, and Karliah came in to visit every so often – and to turn over bags brimming with septims. When she wafted into the room in her Nightingale armor the newer members would stare in awe; Dag always smiled, imagining what they would think of Brynjolf in his, or if they knew their two Guildmasters were the other two Nightingales.
Vekel could barely keep up with the business in the Flagon and was still begging Tonilia to marry him. He had his head together with Delvin more days than not, planning shipments of gods knew what from Morrowind and Cyrodiil, half the time resulting in chewings-out from Vex over some miscommunication or other. Vipir was still trying to convince everyone that he’d once bedded four women in one night, and then turning around to flirt with Sapphire and getting angry when she turned him down. That always made Dag laugh. He truly had no clue about women. Niruin was busy trying to avoid his “idiot brother,” who apparently was a courier of some stripe; Dag could never get the whole story out of him other than to gather that the brother was in Skyrim and Niruin wasn’t happy about it. Brynjolf, as usual, had been sweet-talking new recruits and keeping Maven and everyone else happy, a job at which he excelled. And Thrynn- well, Thrynn hovered.
One day, not long after they’d been married, they’d been looking over some documents, standing behind the Guildmaster’s desk. Brynjolf had simply grabbed her and kissed her, completely by surprise and much to her delight, the kind of kiss that could easily lead a couple to get carried away.
She heard a disgusted sound from over her shoulder.
“Find a room, you two,” Thrynn snorted, walking away. “You make it hard for a guy to focus.”
Brynjolf laughed. “You looked good enough to eat, lass,” he whispered in Dag’s ear. “I couldn’t help myself.” Then he nodded toward Thrynn. “I told you. There was a reason I thought it was him and not me.”
He called out. “Why not focus on making us some coin then, lad? It’s out there, not down here.”
Dag giggled. “You’re terrible.”
Brynjolf gave her a big evil smile. “Yes I most surely am.”
“I swear to you I had no idea, Red. You shouldn’t tease him like that,” she told him, grinning.
It had been like that, in the Cistern, since they were married. It felt to Dag like the family that Brynjolf had always said it was, and even though the first few weeks had been filled with tension and uncertainty as they recovered from Mercer Frey, they had all pulled together and gotten the Guild back on its feet.
Dag had spent a long while doing jobs for Delvin and Vex that took her all over Skyrim and put her in contact with sources of influence in all the major cities. Delvin could disappear better than anyone she’d ever known, and she’d trained with him in the arts of stealth until she was almost that good herself. She had been a little surprised at first, but not terribly so, to learn that everyone, everywhere – or so it seemed to her – knew Delvin and deferred to his wishes almost without thought. He should have been the natural choice to lead the Guild, since Brynjolf didn’t want it; in fact, he should have been the choice over Mercer, as well. Many of the orders Bryn handed out were things Delvin had subtly planted in his mind. She wasn’t sure Brynjolf had noticed; he hadn’t noticed Mercer’s manipulations, either. Guild members were his blind spot. Maybe he knew that about himself; if so, that meant he was even wiser than he seemed, to have declined its leadership. He was a con man of the highest order, and that was what he wanted to do.
But it hadn’t been Delvin who had been chosen, it had been Dag. Bryn had insisted, and so had Karliah, and the others had agreed. In spite of how good he was at it – and he was a natural-born leader in spite of his determination that he wasn’t — he had wanted out of his job as soon as possible and he wanted Dag to take it. It hadn’t taken too long before he’d held a little ceremony to hand over the Amulet of Articulation and send her to Tonilia for a beautiful set of black leather armor that surpassed anything she’d ever worn into battle before. She took over as Guildmaster, with Brynjolf as her Second, and quietly leaned on Delvin and Vex for extra guidance.
In truth, it wasn’t hard for her. Her position as Thane in Riften gave her access to the Jarl, and to Maven Black-Briar, and to inside information that helped them keep ahead of the authorities and everyone else. She made very few decisions completely on her own and preferred it that way. Privately, she would have loved to remove Maven from the mix, but she hadn’t figured out how that could happen. She didn’t like being connected to a side in the civil war; and Maven was a staunch Imperial supporter, probably because they were good for business.
Dag had made them clean up the Guild a little. She and Brynjolf lived at Honeyside, in comfort, enjoying their ever-increasing wealth; there was no reason the rest of the Guild had to live in squalor just because Brynjolf was paranoid about spending its money. It would never be anything but damp and dark but at least it didn’t have to be filthy. There were new banners, sporting the old Guild crest, and she had insisted that the bedding in the Cistern be laundered if it was in decent shape or replaced if it wasn’t. Karliah had backed her up on this, changing out some of the old cots for real beds, setting up a nice screen at the end of Dag’s bed there so that it had some privacy. Dag almost never slept there, but she had to admit that it was a nice touch. Karliah had also installed a small shrine to Nocturnal in a quiet corner; Dag noticed more than a few members stopping there from time to time to pay their respects.
There were shops in the alcoves outside the Flagon, opened by industrious and slightly shady merchants who could feel the change in the air. Dag was beginning to believe Delvin’s tales of the Guild once having been as busy as the Imperial City.
Hadn’t they all griped about the clean-up. But they were proud of their home now, even if they would never admit it to her face. It was a work in progress, but it was home. They were family, some of them actual family, now, but all of them chosen family.
She had no doubts that the Guild was on its feet, solid, and would maintain its standing no matter what happened.
It should have been perfect.
Most of the time it seemed nearly perfect, even when vague reports of dragon attacks filtered in via the city guards. The reports usually included stories of a Redguard man who could kill the beasts with his voice. She laughed at those, and wished she and Roggi had had a chance to watch Dardeh kill one of those dragons.
It should have been perfect.
But it wasn’t.