Sayma sighed, ran her hands through her hair, and plopped down into a chair next to the fire. Finally, it was finished. Everything was in the house, if not unpacked. At least she knew where to find it all. It had been a very long day and she was exhausted.
She looked over at the slight figure coming up the stairs and smiled.
“Thank you, Babette. I really appreciate it. Moving house is never easy. I’m a bit embarrassed by the amount of clutter I managed to accumulate in the Sanctuary in such a short time. You have the new girl coming tomorrow morning, yes?”
“Yes, she’ll be here as arranged. She’s quite docile. I assure you she’ll do whatever I ask her to do.”
“Such great lengths you’ll go to, Babette, making a thrall of her,” came the voice from behind her, as the dark-haired Imperial man followed her up the stairs. “You might have just as easily hired some young woman from Solitude. There’s always someone looking for work. I would have been happy to assist. I’m fairly persuasive,” he added, grinning.
Sayma chuckled. “Yes, Andante, so you keep telling us. But the last thing I need is some lovely young thing swooning loudly every time you come to town. I know it’s not easy for you but it’s important to at least attempt to blend in. It’s bad enough that you won’t wear your shrouded armor, you won’t wear your Thieves Guild armor…”
He smiled at her. “No, I won’t. I have it on good authority that I look good in blue. Don’t worry about me; I can go unseen when I need to go unseen.”
“I know you can.” Irritating man. The worst thing about his bragging was that it wasn’t bragging. Everything he claimed about himself was absolutely true. She wasn’t quite sure how he did that. It reminded her altogether too much of…
“And you have to admit it, Listener. Everyone who is anyone knows the Thieves Guild armor when they see it. Particularly the variety I have, the nasty brown armor. Maybe they wouldn’t recognize Brynjolf in his – excuse me, I mean the Guildmaster.”
Sayma frowned. “Yes, I know who you mean, and I’m familiar with the black armor. And yet you have a point, as much as I hate to admit it. It’s time to rethink ours. I’ve never liked it anyway.”
Babette smiled. “You look better in black anyway, Listener.”
Andante nodded. “The current armor is absurd. Red and black. It’s garish and even more recognizable than the Guild’s armor.”
Sayma nodded at him. As usual, he was perceptive and had a good point. I’ll get on that first thing in the morning. Maybe we all should be in all black, not just me.
Babette snorted. “At any rate, we have the new girl arriving in the morning. She’ll… do whatever I ask her to do, as our brother Andante suggested. You’ll have her here for as long as you need, which will let you come to the Sanctuary as much as you like.”
“Oh, yes,” Andante murmured, reaching for one of the sweet rolls Sayma had placed on the table with his massive sweet tooth specifically in mind. “Nobody wants to miss a moment with Cicero, I’m sure. Tell me again why you kept him alive?”
Sayma rolled her eyes. As far as anyone knew Andante had no prior experience as either a thief or an assassin and yet he was utterly brilliant at both jobs. It was the reason people put up with him at all. Still, there were times when she just wanted to throttle him. He was as bad as…
“We’ve been over this, Andante. He may be a little unsettled but he’s one of the best in the world and he knows more than most of the rest of us put together. If you can get it out of him in a form that makes sense, anyway.” Yes, I had an opportunity to kill Cicero. You might have thought I would have enjoyed doing that. But I read the journals he left behind in the old Sanctuary and… I felt sorry for him. “Besides, he takes care of that wretched corpse.”
Andante raised his eyebrow. “Wretched, is it?”
She snorted. “You heard me. Wretched. I’m honored that she speaks to me but she’s… a corpse.”
“And I’m a 300 year old vampire. Your point would be?” Babette said sweetly.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’m just tired.” Sayma smiled at the two of them. “Thank you for helping me move in. It’s a miserable job, I know, and I needed Nazir to stay behind with the recruits.”
“He’s doing well, finding them,” Babette observed. “The new ones are, well, new. Still, they show a lot of potential.”
“I understand there are still some of the old guard running around out there,” Andante said, nibbling on the sweet roll.
Sayma frowned. Yes, there had been a few of them, operatives away in Solstheim and Falskaar and across the border in Cyrodiil, and they had escaped the flames as well as Nazir’s attempts to round them up. They were still doing whatever it was that Astrid had last given them to do, refusing to recognize her authority as Listener or Nazir’s as the ranking remaining member of the Brotherhood.
“Well, not as many as there were before, as it happens. I’ve had reports of two of them being found along the road between Ivarstead and Riften just recently. Neither one of them was someone I sent out, so they must have been Astrid’s. I’ll find out eventually. The other interesting thing is that one of them was… missing pieces.”
“Really.” Andante’s eyebrows rose. “That’s intriguing. What pieces?”
“Andante,” Babette tsk’d. “Must everything be about…”
He shook his head. “I’m serious.” He looked at her and grinned. “I can be serious, on occasion, Babette.”
Sayma yawned and stretched. It had been this way ever since she had gone to meet him at the inn on Nazir’s recommendation. He was incorrigible and nothing anyone did seemed capable of changing him. As far as she knew, Brynjolf probably had just as much trouble keeping him under control as she did. It always felt odd, knowing that Andante worked for both of them and she was the only one who knew the full implications of that. She liked him, at any rate, as wild a card as he was. And he seemed to respect her. Nazir had whispered to her one day, “As far as I can tell, you’re just about the only adult thing on two legs that he hasn’t tried to sleep with. Aside from Cicero. Consider that the highest good fortune.” She’d not followed up on how he knew this to be the case.
I’m exhausted. I need to get these two out of here soon. “A thumb, if you must know. He was missing a thumb. And a great deal of blood. His throat was cut.”
“My. A thumb. Harsh.”
“Yes. It almost sounded like the man was tortured. Briefly.”
“Hmm. Interesting. We were just talking about needing to keep those skills up, the other day. Our esteemed Guildmaster had a group of us at his house. My house. THE house. I don’t know, I always think of it as his house even though I’m the one who lives there. At any rate. Shall I tell Delvin that you’re working on the issue? And to send his men to start building the… playroom?”
Sayma nodded. “Yes, do. I’ll, um, set the wheels rolling at this end, and as soon as I hear something I’ll have you get it to him. If that’s alright with you.”
Andante bowed. “You’re the Listener. I’m here to do your bidding.”
Babette sniffed. “You know, that act with the bow might have fit in nicely when I was a child. Originally. But I know you’re not as old as I am.”
“Do you?” he winked.
“Yes, I do. You’re twenty-eight if you’re a day, within a year or two, and not a bit older regardless of anything else. Now get going, foolish man. And we’ll talk the next time you’re here.”
Andante smiled at Sayma. “Yes?”
“Yes. Shoo yourself back to Riften. I’ll try to have something for you the next time you’re here.”
He nodded and swept out the door, as he always did.
“I’ll be going, as well,” Babette said, in the sweet little-girl tones that would never change no matter how many centuries she lived. “Don’t worry. This was a good decision. I don’t blame you for wanting to move.”
“Thanks, Babette,” Sayma said. “I’ll come get him in a bit. I need a moment.”
Once she had the house to herself, Sayma went to the shelf and got herself a bottle of mead, then stepped out into the frigid air of Dawnstar to look around. This was a good choice. It wasn’t fancy, but it would do. It was close to the Sanctuary, but far enough away to lend a semblance of normalcy to her life. There was a stable for Shadowmere, a goat in the back yard, and smithing equipment. In the event that I ever again have a nice big Nord to smith in my home with his shirt off.
Her face fell.
I miss him.
It was exciting, being the Listener, but there was a huge hole in her life, one she had put there on her own. It left her with a gnawing ache that wouldn’t go away, and she was constantly reminded of it these days. Today it had been particularly bad. But she had nobody to blame but herself.
She wanted that normalcy. But how could you pretend to be normal when you were an assassin and actually enjoyed killing people? The best she could hope for was this act, this veneer, going forward, so that things wouldn’t get even worse.
She reentered the house and sat by the fire. It had been a long time since she’d been there, but she could see every detail of the house in Riften in her mind. And she could remember the sound of every breath he had taken, lying there in their bed, as she’d gotten ready to leave.
His house, indeed.
My house.
Our house.
I miss him so very much.
