Brynjolf came running down the shore just as the posse, congratulating themselves on a job well done, made its way back toward town. He ignored them, looking up and down the shoreline. Surely he hadn’t seen what he thought he just saw. It couldn’t be possible. He had to have been hallucinating, after the spell Andante had cast on him.
There was nothing that looked familiar, no slim Imperial wearing armor with a blue wrap, no Vampire Lord with massive wings. Nothing. He ran to the shoreline, knowing what he was going to see when he got there and trying to convince himself that it wasn’t true. But there it was; a glittering, red pile of dust like the one Harkon had left behind in the cathedral at Volkihar Castle.
“NO!” Brynjolf shouted, dropping down onto his knees beside the dust. “It can’t be! It just can’t be!” Then he moaned. “No! Lad. Why?”
Brynjolf remembered the day Andante had been trying to get him to pay attention, teaching him about feeding from corpses if it was necessary. As clearly as if Andante had been standing beside him, he heard his voice saying, “there’s no coming back from that.” Brynjolf reached out and touched the still-warm ash with one finger, and then he collapsed into himself.
If anyone had been watching then, they would have seen something that only Roggi Knot-Beard had seen before. Brynjolf doubled over and sobbed, great gasping sobs, and his tears dropped down and began mixing with the dust that had been Andante and had once been Vitus Perdeti.
“Not again,” he moaned, weeping. “Not again. Please, no, not again.”
For a time he couldn’t tell where he was, which body of water whispered against the wet sands next to him, whether it was the White River or the Sea of Ghosts. For a time he didn’t know whether he was a man of twenty or forty-two winters, whether he was grieving over a still body or a pile of vampire dust. It was the same world-shattering, wracking pain he felt, the same yawning, gaping pit of despair at the edge of which he stood; and he sobbed without knowing where he was or who might be nearby.
“Oh lad. What am I going to do without you.”
What am I going to do without that look on your face when you were up to something, that smile, the excitement whenever you had something that you thought might please me. By the gods Andante I saw it every time you looked at me, you loved me so much. How am I going to live without that? Without you?
He moved some of the dust aside, carefully. Two of Andante’s rings were there; they were nothing special, but he would keep them anyway. As he reached for them the brilliant ruby set into the beautiful new ring Andante had made for him caught the light of the sun. It was the same color as the pile of ash, the color of the heart of flame; and he clutched at the ring, closed his eyes, and wailed.
His sobs began to diminish, but his pain did not. He sat beside the ash pile with his arms wrapped around his knees, and his head down, and rocked back and forth.
I can’t believe he’s gone. I can’t believe it’s happened again. Someone so very important there one moment and simply gone the next. I don’t think I ever told him how much he meant to me. I tried, often enough, but the words wouldn’t come.
Roggi kept me from dying, but Andante made me feel alive again. And now he’s gone.
After some time – how long he could not have said – Brynjolf pushed himself to his feet, thought about leaving the beach and going toward the door. Then he realized that he didn’t know the passphrase and no longer had Andante to whisper it for both of them. He sat back down on the beach, beside the pile of ash, and cried some more, rocking back and forth, in grief and frustration.
I don’t know what to do now. I just can’t take it anymore. It’s too much.
I have… a son. Dag. No, not Dag, Sayma. Can I ever forgive her for all of this?
How can I not?
How can I do it, though?
He looked at the pile of ash and wiped his eyes again. Oh yes, Andante, of course I remember. I’d still give her forever if she would only come back. I remember telling you that. But she didn’t come back. We had to find her. Of course I’m glad that she’s alive but we had to find her.
And why didn’t she tell me about the boy? All this time…
Oh lad, why did you do this.
And then it got even worse. The encounter with the vigilantes ran through his mind, and he started thinking about what he, himself had done; or rather, what he hadn’t done. He’d been stunned, both mentally and physically, by Andante’s casting of the spell and by everything else that had happened just beforehand. His body had been working hard to become human again. The men had approached Andante and…
Brynjolf cried out, a great sob of pain.
“No! I could have stopped it. I could have made them fight each other and he could have gotten away,” he said to himself. And he curled into himself yet again, rocking back and forth. It was my fault. It was my fault. I could have saved him if I’d used my Nightingale power to get them fighting each other. He could have run away. It’s just like Dynny all over again. It’s my fault.
He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his red vampire armor and sat, rocking back and forth, trying to breathe, trying to get himself back under control.
It’s all my fault.
He heard footsteps crunching on the sand behind him, then stopping. There was a gasp.
“By Ysmir. Bryn. I came out to find you because it was so long, but… What happened? Where’s Andante?” Roggi’s voice stopped, and then dropped to barely a whisper. “Oh, no. Is that…?”
Thank the gods for you, Roggi. Thank you for being here.
He cleared his throat and nodded. But he didn’t look up at Roggi because he knew that if he did, if he saw that friendly face, he would disintegrate all over again.
“I think you can see. He’s gone. He’s … gone.” His voice caught and cleared his throat again. “He, uh, cured me, Roggi,” he said, glancing up behind him and waving a hand toward the eyes that he knew were back to their native green. He felt weaker, vastly diminished, dull. He could no longer sense the powerful Vampire Lord inside him waiting only for his summons to erupt. It was all gone.
“I’m… human again. Mortal. He drew the men who wanted to kill us away from me while I was changing. And he stood in the sun. He could have quenched it again, the sun. He had the arrows. He could have given himself all the power in the world. But he threw the bow away and he just… stood in the sun.”
He couldn’t help it; a single sob escaped him and a few more tears dropped onto the sand. “My beautiful lad. He just stood here and let the sun take him so that they wouldn’t take either of us. And I might have distracted the mob so that he could escape but I was too… I didn’t even think of it. It was my fault, Roggi.”
And in spite of himself, in spite of being the leader of the Thieves Guild, a strong, hard-bitten man who had seen and endured more than his fair share of pain and suffering and who had inflicted a fair amount of it himself, Brynjolf of Riften broke down again. The shuddering gasps became full-throated sobs once more.
Roggi quietly knelt in front of Brynjolf, and gathered him up into an embrace. He wrapped both arms around him and held him close, stroking his hair with one hand. “By the gods. I’m so sorry, Brynjolf. I don’t even know what to say.” They knelt like that for a long while, Brynjolf’s sobs diminishing slowly, while Roggi murmured comforting nothings into his ears.
“It’ll be all right, my brother. We’ll take care of you, all of us. You’re not alone. It’ll be all right.”
Brynjolf clung to him. Then, finally, when the sobs had subsided to sniffles once more, Roggi released him and sat down, beside Brynjolf and beside the pile of ash. The two of them sat like that for a moment, then Roggi crossed his arms on top of his knees and rested his chin on his arms, staring at the sea quietly caressing the shore.
“I feel like it must be the end, Roggi.”
Roggi’s head snapped up, and he gazed at Brynjolf in alarm.
“What are you talking about? Don’t scare me, Brynjolf. I don’t want to hear you talking like that.”
“It’s like bookends, lad. There was Dynjyl at the beginning of my life and Andante at the end of it.”
Roggi frowned. “Who are you talking about? Who is Dynjyl?”
Brynjolf’s head sagged. Then he told Roggi about Dynjyl, stopping a few times when his emotions threatened to get the better of him. Roggi listened quietly, nodding and sighing occasionally.
“Beginning and end. And they’re both gone. I feel as if I’m being punished for both of them.”
Roggi smiled and patted him on the arm. “No, Bryn. You’re wrong.”
“What?”
“Dynjyl wasn’t the beginning of your life. You were a man grown, then. You had what, twenty winters before him? Something like that? And Andante wasn’t the end. You have another young man waiting for you to guide him, for the next part of it. You have at least another twenty years, if not many more. You’ll be a white-haired Guildmaster directing things that I shouldn’t know about until your son is grown into a man himself, while Dar and I are training up a small troop of dragon killers. Maybe Dar will even teach some of them to use Shouts. Maybe he’ll teach your son. We don’t know, Bryn. We can only do our best, and wait, and see. If they are bookends, they have room to hold a lot more volumes between them.”
Brynjolf was silent. We’re on the outside of the bookends now, Roggi. What do I put there? How are the things held up?
“Bryn. I thought my life was done, too. I truly did. You know how I was – I was trying my best to hurry up the inevitable. And I was wrong. I met Dardeh. And I am going to live a very long time for him, and for those two little girls. I’m a lot older than him, so he’s going to end up taking care of me eventually, but I’m going to be here every day that I can, just for them.”
They sat for awhile more, in silence, each of them looking out at the sea that never changed and yet was never the same.
Roggi spoke, quietly.
“Bryn, uh… do you know who he really was?”
“Just now. I knew he had remembered who he was but he wouldn’t share his name until just now. I…I can’t imagine why it didn’t dawn on me before now. I hardly know what to make of it.”
Roggi nodded. “Delvin and I just figured it out. That’s why Dar and I are here. We came to confront Sayma, to tell her we knew who she was, so that Dardeh could finally meet his sister. And then this morning we were trying to find her, to let her know who was working for her so that she could decide what to do. I didn’t know you’d be here. Don’t know why I didn’t expect it.”
He shook his head in disbelief.
“All this time, Bryn, and we had the Man in the Mask right under our noses. I should have known it. I had the damned mask. I stole it in Markarth. I watched Andante put it on and I watched his reaction. I should have known, right then, but I didn’t. Vitus Perdeti. I heard the name for years and years; everyone knew to get a message to him if there was a job nobody else could pull off. And then he disappeared, a couple of years ago, and nobody could find him. Not a soul. Nobody knew what he looked like, so nobody knew who to look for.”
“I know, Roggi. I knew all about him, too, and never even thought about it. He turned up not so very long after Vitus disappeared. All this time, I’ve been… with… a man who was so… evil doesn’t seem right. I don’t have a word for it and I don’t know what to make of it. How did I not see it?”
“Huh.” Roggi thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Well as it happens I have an opinion about that.”
Brynjolf turned his head and stared at Roggi for a moment, and then in spite of the situation, found himself chuckling. “You? With an opinion on something?” He could practically hear Andante saying “How droll.”
“Dar has told me the stories, you know? About what happened to him, fighting Alduin. While I was busy running away from everything again, hiding in Kynesgrove, thinking he was gone and getting ready to drown myself again.”
Brynjolf listened, trying to make sense of it, trying to focus on Roggi sharing what had seemed like a similar pain, but he couldn’t get past the howling, empty hole inside that was too, too familiar to the other that he’d only barely filled with something through time and a great deal of denial. And Andante’s help, at the end of it. The thought threatened to make his eyes overflow yet again. Still, he fought to follow Roggi’s words. I owe him that much.
“He went there, and fought Alduin. Killed him. And when he came back, he talked to Paarthurnax. That’s the big white dragon that is actually in charge of the Graybeards. Lives up on the Throat of the World. I’ve met him, Bryn. The time Dar took that Elder Scroll you came for up to the top and read it there. You wouldn’t believe it, standing there talking to a dragon. It’s quite something, let me tell you.”
Brynjolf was still sitting with his head hanging, staring at the pile of glittering ash, feeling numb, wondering what it would be like never to hear the irreverent voice call him “loverboy” ever again. He heard Roggi shift beside him.
“He told me this one thing that Paarthurnax said and it just has stuck with me. He said: ‘What is better: to be born good; or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?’ I know I’m trying, Bryn. There was enough evil in me for a lifetime and I’ve been fighting it for years. You may not have seen it, but I promise you… I couldn’t join the Guild when you asked me. I’d have lost all control over myself.”
He shook his head, and shrugged.
“Dar’s helping me. He says he has evil in him, as well; I’ve never seen it but I trust that he’s telling me the truth. And he works hard, all the time, to do the best things. I don’t know whether that makes us better or not, but it’s something at least.”
He paused for a moment, considering his words. “Now I don’t know enough about what Andante was like, day to day, to know if he was evil. Bad, yes. Evil? I … suspect that’s a matter of perspective. Vitus was, so they say, but Andante? It does seem to me that he did something good, at the end. If all he ever did was make you happy, Brynjolf, that was a good enough thing for me.”
He made sure that Brynjolf was looking directly at him when he spoke again. “I can’t imagine that it was your fault, Bryn. I can’t imagine that he couldn’t have gotten away, as strong a man as he was. He didn’t do a single thing that wasn’t his own decision, so far as I know, in his whole life, with the sole exception of being taken by the Thalmor. He meant to stand here and let the sun take him. I think he meant for you to go forward.”
Whenever I think I know you, my friend, you surprise me once more. You’re quite the philosopher.
“But I’m alone again, Roggi. I know you understand what that feels like.”
“No you’re not.” Roggi chuckled. “You couldn’t get to be alone if you tried. You have family now, Brynjolf. Real family. And you have the Guild – Delvin and Vex and Karliah, and … hell, Vekel and Tonilia. Even that great idiot Dirge cares about you. You’re stuck with us. You know, I can’t say that I was very fond of the idea that you spent the last little while as a vampire but you could have had my neck, if you needed it. I’d have done that for you. You’re my brother. You’re my friend, and you’re my brother, and I am the better for it.”
Brynjolf raised his head, slowly, and stared at Roggi for a long time. What a remarkable person he is.
Then a small smile crept up on Roggi’s face.
“But by Ysmir I sure am glad we won’t have to put that to the test, Bryn. I almost soiled my armor the day I found out Andante was a vampire.” Roggi’s lopsided grin had Brynjolf chuckling in spite of himself.
Brynjolf reached out and picked up a handful of the glimmering ashes and let them fall through his fingers.
“Heh.”
“What?”
“Flashy. Just like he was. No wonder he needed a mask.” Brynjolf shook his hands off and ran them down his face. “Roggi, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to talk to her. I don’t. I didn’t think I’d ever be with anyone but Andante ever again.” He shook his head. “I didn’t ever tell him. I didn’t think I needed to. It just felt like we’d always be together. Creating some havoc or other, either with the Guild or out at Volkihar. I never even told him that. I wish I had.”
“You loved him.” Roggi presented it quietly, a statement of fact rather than a question, the same way Andante had spoken of Dynjyl.
Brynjolf stopped, dumfounded, feeling as though lightning had struck him. What did he just say?
“No, I…” Brynjolf stared at Roggi, and then back at the pile of ash, and an expression of exquisite pain came over his face. “Gods.”
Leave it to Roggi to see what I didn’t. Shor’s bones. It’s been staring me in the face all this time, and… Oh, lad. Why was I so stupid?
Yet again, Brynjolf found himself with his head down; this time his hands were up around his head and a low moan escaped him, followed by even more tears. He thought of Dynjyl, and he thought of Andante; and he thought about the two of them laughing at him in the Soul Cairn and realized that, while it hadn’t ever been identical, the feelings that he’d had for Andante weren’t that far removed from those he’d had for Dynjyl. And his heart broke a little more.
“No, no no no…”
Roggi put an arm around Brynjolf’s shoulders again.
“It’s alright, Bryn. It’s alright to let go of it if you have to.”
Brynjolf nodded and spoke, just above a whisper.
“You’re… right, Roggi. I didn’t realize it. Yes. For all the wrong reasons, and in the strangest possible way.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and expelled it. “Yes I did. And now he’s gone.”
“I’ll bet he knew.”
Brynjolf shook his head. “No. What he knew was that I wanted Dag back. I… don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t know, Bryn. I don’t even know what to say to her myself. She never really left, but she’s hurt all of us with this. I told her I’d stand beside her but I don’t know how. I … will never be able to make it up to you, what I did with her, but trust me when I say that Dardeh is it, for me. There won’t ever be anyone else again.”
Brynjolf nodded.
That’s what I thought about Dag, but then there was Andante. And there’s always going to be a huge hole where he used to be. Just like Dynny. He felt the tears beginning to build in his eyes again and blinked them back, angrily. No. I am not going to fall apart again.
And then he did, anyway. He dropped his head and cried.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said finally. “I can’t seem to get hold of myself.”
“I don’t think anyone would expect you to, brother,” Roggi said quietly. “I certainly don’t.”
He reached out as if to run his hand through the pile of shimmering ash but stopped short. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, the timing of when she left and everything else.”
“And?”
“What if she wasn’t sure, Bryn? What if the baby had had blonde hair and blue eyes? It doesn’t make me proud to say that but it might have been.”
Brynjolf turned to stare at Roggi. What a remarkable thing to say.
“She was still my wife, lad. It would have been up to me to raise the child. It would have been hard, but I’ve had to do hard things before.”
Roggi smiled sadly. “I know you would have. You’re a good man, Brynjolf.”
Brynjolf snorted. “I’ve been a thief my whole life. I got involved with the lad for reasons that had nothing to do with caring about him, not really, not at first. I’ve spent this last part of my life as a vampire, Roggi. Living off other people’s blood. Good? No.”
Roggi snorted.
“And I used to torture people for Ulfric Stormcloak. Don’t try to tell me who’s good or not. The thing is, Bryn; did Dag understand that? Did she know you wouldn’t have tried to hurt her? Or me? Or the babe? Maybe she was afraid. She said she didn’t know she was pregnant, but think about what it must have felt like when she realized it? How could she return to the Guild and just wait to find out whose child she was carrying?”
Brynjolf nodded, slowly.
It’s something to think about, anyway. And if I am really honest, what would have happened? It’s not as though I never lost my temper with her before.
“I have to think about it, Roggi. And right now my head hurts. Outside,” he said, rubbing the spot where he’d landed against the stones, “and inside. It’s too much for one day.”
Roggi pushed himself up to his feet and held out a hand. “Well, come inside, then.” He peered up at the sky. “It’s getting to be midday and you’ll need something to eat, I assume.”
Brynjolf was ready to decline the offer, but his stomach suddenly growled loudly.
“Oh brother. I’m going to have to get used to this again. I guess I do need food. I surely don’t feel hungry, but…” He took Roggi’s hand and accepted the boost to stand.
He looked around, down the shore toward Dawnstar, where he could see people moving about on their daily business. It had turned into a beautiful day, and he realized as he took it in that the sun felt good on his skin, the colors seemed brighter, the air smelled fresher, and he didn’t have the urge to run for the darkest shadow he could find.
And yet, look at them all. Acting as though nothing unusual has happened just down the beach from them. But for me, my life will never be the same again.
He looked at Roggi and nodded. “Let’s go. I need to see whether Sayma has a vessel of some kind that I can borrow.” He inclined his head toward the glimmering pile of ruby-red ash near their feet. “I need to take him home.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
Roggi led him from the beach to the Black Door, and pounded on it several times. As the door creaked open, Brynjolf looked back to be certain that the ashes were still there, and then quietly stepped inside.