Vitus Perdeti was bored.
He had a contract to fulfill, and planned to do so very shortly, once he’d determined beyond any reasonable doubt that the man’s pattern of behavior was in fact as he suspected. It might even be that he would strike two nights hence, but he wanted to be utterly certain of what he was going to do before he did it.
The contract was on a wealthy man held in high esteem among certain circles in several parts of Cyrodiil. He was childless but married; and it was heavily rumored that the man was not faithful to his wife. Vitus had determined that the rumor – as such things often were – was true. Each Middas and Fredas, late in the day, the man would visit the Restful Watchman, the unsavory place that passed for a lower-class inn, and meet one of the local street walkers. It was always the same girl. He would stay with her for several hours, in one of the nasty cubicles that passed for guest rooms there. Then he would leave, and make a circuitous path through the back alleys of Bruma until he reached his home. He probably thought that he was clever, and stealthy, and unobserved in the dark of the evening when he left, but Vitus was nothing if not good at surveillance and he was fairly certain that he had the man’s schedule figured out. He just wanted to watch one more Middas night – this night – to be completely sure.
Vitus thought him a bore. As far as he could tell, the only vice the man had was this girl. Nothing else. And that, he thought, was boring. Waiting and watching the man was boring, as well, even with liberal applications of skooma to pass the time. Bruma was boring. Vitus would rather be heading south to the Imperial City, or even sneaking in to see how his hometown of Bravil fared as it continued to rebuild a decade after the wars, but instead he was sitting at a corner table at the inn, muffled in a chemically-enhanced cocoon of his own design, nursing a brandy and waiting for the right time of evening to slip out and follow the man one more time.
Rumor had it that the wife had performed the Black Sacrament, hoping that the Dark Brotherhood would respond and assassinate the man, freeing her to move on with her life. Someone certainly had gotten word to Vitus. As usual, there had been a note with only the man’s name written on it, delivered by a trusted courier, accompanied by a sizeable sack of coin. And he would be happy to oblige the woman. If nothing else, he would be able to spring her from the confinement of this sham marriage before she was forced to reproduce with this uninteresting, cheating man. Children were nasty enough little creatures as they were but children of horrid parents were worse.
His mouth curled up into a sneer just thinking that. He himself had been the prime example of that fact, not too many years before. Now he was a horrid adult. But at least he was not in any sense boring.
Technically, Vitus was Dark Brotherhood, although he’d not been in direct contact with any of the Sanctuaries or the Hand in a very long time. He had been attached to the Dark Brotherhood since he was very young, barely old enough to be considered a man and not a child. He would fulfill this contract, as he had been doing since the Listener had first brought him into the fold, and if the people who had paid for his services believed that the Brotherhood had satisfied their wishes, all the better.
I always end up doing the Night Mother’s bidding in one way or another. I wonder if the Listener would be pleased.
Bravil had been a dark place to grow up, particularly in a “family” that was nothing more than a loose but fairly long-lived association of skooma cooks and dealers trying to operate beneath the notice of the Eclipse or the Claws, the two major gangs centered there. Nobody truly knew exactly which of a number of possible dark-haired suspects Vitus’ father had been, but they told him that the most likely was a handsome, desperately evil man with cold, steely blue eyes, the one people shied away from, the one who had forced himself upon Vitus’ mother. He hadn’t lived that long after the others had found out, they told him. These people were open and free about sharing themselves with each other as the whim struck, but only by mutual agreement of both parties. Violating that unspoken rule had consequences. Vitus’ mother, once a radiant beauty herself according to all accounts, had fallen victim to the very skooma that supported her existence. She hadn’t lived to be very old, either. Vitus had only the vaguest recollection of her, a wisp or two of memory of a light voice, a gentle touch, and the fragrance of mountain flowers.
Vitus had learned early on that something he could do in order to stay fed was to use his hands, in any of a number of creative ways. His sleight of hand skills became admirable; he was frequently called on to provide a distraction while the older and more experienced men picked pockets, or placed stolen goods to frame a mark, or slit throats. As his skills grew it became clear to everyone that his own fingers were exceedingly light and that he could be counted on to clean out every pocket in a crowd if that was what was expected of him. And he used his hands in other ways, as well, as he – a pretty child and then an attractive youth — was passed from bed to bed among both the men and the women of the skooma gangs. He didn’t mind. He would be rewarded with things that made him feel good: money, or sweets, or even skooma. He did his best, no matter what he was asked to do; and he learned to enjoy those things that he did, no matter what they were. It was all the same to him, as long as he felt good in the end, for what other reason was there to do a thing?
He’d learned to kill, and because he had relied on stealth for so long even at his young age he was exceptionally good at it.
But she had seen him. One day he’d been careless and sloppy, and she had seen him, and approached him quietly, whisked him away from the scene of the crime he’d just committed and asked whether he might like to join her family and be trained to do these tasks more expertly. He’d looked up at her, the long, shimmering, flame-red hair escaping beneath the edges of her dark hood, and had been awestruck, wanting nothing more than to do whatever she asked. There had been nothing else for it but to follow her and learn what the Dark Brotherhood was all about. Smart-mouthed, overconfident and unscrupulous though he was, Vitus went forward silently, attentively, feeling somehow that he was in the presence of greatness.
She was the Listener, she told him, receiving orders for the Brotherhood directly from the Night Mother; and Vitus, in his awe, became her servant. Whatever she said, he listened to as though they were words from the gods themselves. Whatever she asked of him, he did. However she wanted him to train, he would train. Whoever she wanted him to kill was a dead person walking. And whosoever disobeyed her found himself with a sharp knife at his throat – for the Listener was to be obeyed in all things, as were the Speakers if they gave orders, of course, but most particularly the Listener.
One day long afterward he had approached her, tentatively, offering his services in other ways – because he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and wanted nothing more than to make her happy in any way he could. He knew, from experience, that he could make women happy in this way, and yet this was no mere woman. This was the Listener. It had taken every bit of courage he had to speak to her about it. And she had turned him down. Gently, gracefully, but firmly, she had turned him down, sent him out to guard her property with the others while the war between the two major skooma gangs in the city heated up. She had her close circle, her favorites; and while he did not know whether any of them shared her bed Vitus knew he was not among that group, and now knew that he never would be. Vitus had accepted her decision, because that was what one did, and because she was the Listener, and because he would do whatever she wanted. He had gathered up what he had left of his dignity, little though that had been to begin with, and had once more turned his attentions to the other men in the Brotherhood. They, at least, enjoyed him, and he enjoyed them in return.
And then things had gotten truly bad.
The city had erupted into outright war, the Eclipse and the Claws slaughtering each other on the streets, burning homes, and terrorizing the citizens of Bravil. Any of those citizens who could leave in the light of day did, and those who either could not afford to leave or who were too frail to travel cowered in their homes, hoping and praying to all the gods that they would survive another day.
Vitus and the others trying to guard the Listener’s home fought as hard as they could to protect her, but eventually even they had to retreat. And she had ordered him to leave, because he was the youngest and she wanted him – and the Brotherhood — to survive. Vitus had obeyed, as he always did, but had barely escaped Bravil to Bruma with his skin, his armor, and his weapons. Then had come the word he had dreaded hearing: the Listener had tried to protect the Night Mother’s crypt beneath the statue of the Lucky Old Lady, and had been burned to death; and both he and the Brotherhood were once again without anchor, without guidance. He had spent the better part of eleven years trying to pretend that it wasn’t true, even though he knew perfectly well that it was. He didn’t think about it every day any more, hadn’t for a very long time; but still he wanted it not to be true.
He had spent the past eleven years fulfilling contracts, in the name of the Dark Brotherhood. He was the Man in the Mask, and people both feared him and knew that he, if nobody else, would fulfill those contracts.
It was time, on this day, to worry about fulfilling his current contract. It would be at least an hour before the man would emerge from the inn, but Vitus had other things to do in the interim. He stood and made his way out to the streets, first making for the back alley where he intended to store the costume that would facilitate his escape. The barrels and crates were still there, and still stacked in the way that would allow him to escape upward to the roof for a time after the kill, to safely elude notice until he was certain the area was clear. One of the barrels would hide the quilted costume that would turn him into an average citizen leaving the area once he was ready to leave.
I’ll come store my things tomorrow. Tonight I need to make sure I know that I’m right about him.
He strolled casually through the city, making sure to keep an eye out for guards and stay out of their direct line of sight, carefully giving no hint that he was anything other than a citizen or a tourist out for a stroll. He turned to mount the steps to the next higher level of Bruma.
And then he stopped short, his mouth falling open, his eyes opening wide. His world ground to a halt. His brain began to clamor in a way he couldn’t remember it doing ever before, not in his entire life.
Ahead of him, up the stairs and just to his left, a slender woman with long, flame-red hair walked along the roadway.
He knew her. He was absolutely positive that he knew her. He couldn’t remember having ever once seen her in public without her hood, but he was utterly certain about what he was seeing now.
Listener. Is it really you?
His heart began hammering and his throat tightened.
Can it be? After all this time? Are you truly alive? Have I finally found you again?
He dropped back down the stairwell, and shifted his position just far enough that he was able to get a better look at her, and was afraid that his heart was going to stop completely. The shape of her face, the sun-drenched hair parted as it was on the left, her elegant figure, all of it said to him that this was the woman he had looked up to and missed desperately for nearly half his life. There was not a single thing in his mind that told him otherwise.
Vitus didn’t stop to consider that Alisanne Dupre, had she lived, would look considerably older than she had in 4E 188, might even have gone grey in whole or in part since then. It didn’t occur to him that he, himself, looked considerably more weathered, more hardened by a tough life in his late twenties than he had as a young man. He simply saw what he had wanted to see for so very long: the woman who had taken him in, who had believed in his abilities and trained him to be the very best at what he did, and who had been the head of the only true family he had ever known, his chosen family.
He followed her. First she went into the Cathedral of Saint Martin and took a seat in one of the front pews. He slipped up the side aisle and stood, silent, observing her and seeing nothing to change his mind about what he was seeing. The dark clothing, while it was not the armor the Listener had worn, was evocative. Her silent, thoughtful demeanor also fit with the vivid memories that ran through him at breakneck speed. And he wanted only one thing.
She must notice me. She must. Any moment now she’s going to turn and look at me. Please, Listener. Look at me.
But one didn’t simply approach the Listener. One respected the Listener, held her in the highest possible regard, showed her the greatest possible courtesy and deference, and one stayed back, out of the way, until he was noticed or addressed. That was simply the way it was. Anyone who violated those rules of behavior was dealt with, swiftly and harshly.
The beautiful woman with the long red hair didn’t acknowledge him in any way. In fact, she seemed lost in her own thoughts and didn’t notice anyone else in the cathedral, either. Once or twice he heard her sigh, deep, painful sighs that spoke to him of sadness, and he wanted nothing more than to go to her, put his arm around her, make her feel better. But it was not his place to do anything of the sort, and she had long ago made it clear that she did not welcome that kind of attention. Vitus merely stood, and stared, and waited.
She rose after a few moments, and left the chapel, and headed back toward the marketplace. He followed her, hanging well back, walking quietly behind her at an appropriate distance. Near the spot where he had first noticed her she stopped, and he could feel her fighting the urge to turn and look at him.
She knows I’m here. Of course she does. She’s known I am here since the beginning. Look at me, Listener. Please notice me. I’ve missed you so much.
She resumed her walk. He followed. In some part of his mind he knew that this was possibly the most reckless behavior he could possibly exhibit just before a job; the last thing he needed was for guards, or nobles, or the Thalmor to take notice of him. But that part of his mind was being overruled by his visceral need to speak to the Listener.
It’s going to be the way it used to be. You will give me the contracts, directly, and I won’t need to look for random couriers. And I will know that I am truly doing the Dark Brotherhood’s work, because it is coming directly from you. Perhaps we will re-establish the Sanctuary, here in Bruma. Surely there are others who will join us, who will put the Brotherhood back on the path it was meant to follow. Even if it takes years. I will do anything. Just ask.
Finally, in the back street that ran into the marketplace, he could stand it no longer. In spite of what he knew to be the appropriate behavior he called out to her. He simply needed to hear her voice again.
“Alisanne…”
She turned and glared at him.
“Listen, you. I don’t know who you are, or why you have been following me for hours now, but back off.”
“But Listener…”
The look she turned on him was as cold as any he’d ever been given in a lifetime of cold, harsh looks. There wasn’t the slightest hint of recognition, or acknowledgment, or encouragement. She was angry, and she wanted him gone. That was clear.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I think you must be crazy. My name is Alessia Previa. I’ve just lost my parents, both my parents, and I am here for their funeral. Can you not see that I am wearing mourning clothing, you dolt? I’ve got a knife, and I’m not afraid to use it on you if you lay so much as a single finger on me. Now leave me alone before I call the city guard and have you dragged away!”
She turned on her heel and stomped off toward the marketplace.
Vitus stared after her, blinking, in astonishment. A part of his mind laughed to imagine a slightly-built woman with an iron knife against a professional assassin with an arsenal of skills and weapons. Slowly – so slowly that it was almost painful – it registered, though, the fact that she was indeed wearing mourning garb, the fact that she had been quietly weeping there in the church. It registered, the fact that she was exactly who she said she was – Alessia Previa, as near perfect a copy of the way he remembered Alisanne Dupre as it was possible to achieve. Vitus stood still, and stared blankly after her.
Not the Listener. Not Alisanne.
Flames began to build in him, cold blue flames that burned in spite of being fueled only by a deep reservoir of emptiness, nothingness, and loneliness.
This cannot stand. I will not have it.
For the briefest of moments, he had held a tiny bit of hope in his heart, a tiny kernel of joy, believing that the sole person he had ever looked up to was still truly alive. Believing that he would once again have that smallest of families. That it really hadn’t been her corpse that they had pulled from the wreckage in Bravil after the flames were quenched, but rather the corpse of some other woman from Bravil who had been unfortunate enough to be in the area when the fires had started. But now it was as if the thinking, feeling part of the person known as Vitus Perdeti had disappeared, frozen solid in Bruma’s wintery air, as distant and as silent as the Void itself.
Vitus stared ahead of himself, unfocused, as he made his way back to his room at the Jerall View. He pulled his large pack out from under his bed and pulled from it his armor, lightweight and black as midnight, folded and rolled so that it fit into a large pouch. Then he slung the pouch over his shoulder and made for the marketplace once more, looking for the red haired figure of Alessia Previa.
He forgot about the man who was cheating on his wife. He forgot about checking one last time to be certain that he knew which path the man would take, who else might possibly wander into the area, and what time he could most likely assassinate the man without being seen. Those things, he forgot entirely. When the courier ran to him with yet another note and another sack of coin, he shoved both things into his pack without a look.
He forgot about everything except making sure he knew where she had gone. Oddly enough, she went through the city and back to the Jerall View Inn; she had a meal while he watched from a seat near a table on the landing just out of her direct line of sight. Perhaps she was staying there as well; perhaps he might have found her in her room, later; but he was certain that to do that would be his downfall. When she stood and left, he followed her again.
It was dark now, so he slipped into the shadows and donned his armor, the boots that muffled his footsteps and the hood that made his face disappear. And he followed her through the city.
Once, she stopped and turned her head, as though she sensed him, but only for a moment. Then she continued on her way, back through the city again. A vague notion occurred to him; she was walking around the city as a person would who had much on her mind and needed to walk it out. He had certainly done enough energy-driven pacing in his lifetime. Perhaps she was trying to walk out her grief. He wasn’t certain that he knew how a person should react to the loss of parents; he had no experience of parents, to speak of. But the thought stayed only for a moment, and then disappeared into the pool of darkness in his mind.
She passed into the street behind the cathedral, back among the carts and barrels and chests of the marketplace, deep with shadows and full of places behind which an assassin could simply disappear. She stopped for a moment, examining some of the flasks that had been left out at the alchemist’s market stall, picking one up to swirl its contents around and then setting it down again.
And then he made his move. Time seemed to slow to an almost imperceptible crawl; and his experience became a series of distinct, vivid, unique steps, his movements a dance practiced so often that its rhythms were automatic and elegant.
He crept slowly up behind her, as silent as the tomb, then stood and grabbed her forehead with his left hand. He pulled her head backward, exposing her neck, while bringing his wicked Bosmer shortblade up and in front with his right hand. Before she had a chance to draw a deep breath, much less to scream, he drew his shortblade back and across her throat with all the power his substantial muscles would provide, stepping back out of the path of the spurting blood. He sheathed his sword, rapidly, and then released his left hand and dropped her to the ground.
For just a moment, Vitus stood and stared at the body of the woman with the beautiful red hair and the horrific gash across her throat, lying on the ground at his feet. He blinked a few times, as if waking from a dream. For the first time, looking out from inside the mask with no face, he saw the reality of the person he had just killed. She truly wasn’t the Listener. Not at all. Her face was enough different that he couldn’t imagine why he had ever thought that she was. No, this was just a random redhead – exquisitely beautiful, stately, and now very much dead, but not the Listener.
He sighed, and looked around the area. Nobody was nearby. For just a moment, he considered dragging her body away behind one of the market stalls, but then he shook his head and slipped away into the shadows behind the buildings. There was no point in risking being covered with blood, being discovered by a patrolling guard, or a stray dog, or even a child wandering the streets at night. He removed his armor, tucked it into the pack and hurried back to his room at the inn. He was no longer the Man in the Mask; he was simply Vitus Perdeti.
Vitus went to the bar and purchased an entire bottle of Colovian brandy, smiling cheerfully at the innkeeper as he paid for it and joking about how thoroughly he intended to enjoy it. The bartender cautioned him that it was strong, informed him that they could make him any of several different types of hangover remedies the next morning, and waved him on his way. Then he returned to his room, downed a snifter of brandy, and followed it with one of the bottles of skooma he had tucked into the wardrobe.
He sat in a chair before the fire for the rest of the night, watching its flames dance like the highlights in Alessia Previa’s hair, occasionally tossing back a snifter of brandy or another of the small, expensive bottles. He glanced at the name on the note he’d received via courier; it was the name of a Thalmor Justiciar stationed in the far corner of Skyrim. He would look at it again later, because he was certain that he wouldn’t remember the name he’d just read under these conditions.
He wondered why he didn’t feel anything. Maybe there was something wrong with him that he couldn’t feel what he had seen other people exhibit in extreme moments. Maybe he would feel something tomorrow. The mark’s ladylove, the streetwalker, was a redhead as he recalled. He liked redheads. Perhaps he would go visit her, tomorrow, and make sure that she was thoroughly tired out before the mark’s next visit to her. Or maybe he would simply spend the next day the way he was currently spending the night. As long as he didn’t have to think about the Listener, that would be a good thing.
I will kill the man on Fredas. And then I will go to Skyrim.