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Vitus Perdeti stepped up to what he thought was the front desk and gave his name: he was Vinnus Pettellia, from just across the border southeast of Riften, headed back across the border into Bruma but not tonight; and he wanted a room. Because Vinnus has been hugging the border for hours and is dead tired and wants to relax with a nice bit of brandy and perhaps something else before hitting the road in exactly the opposite direction of what he just told you.<\/em><\/p>\n The man writing diligently in his ledgers ignored him. The woman standing just behind his shoulder stared at him as though either he had suddenly grown a second head or she was memorizing every nook and cranny of the one he already had, and that made him more than a bit uncomfortable.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s the blue. I have it on good authority that I look good in blue. I shouldn\u2019t have worn the blue, it attracts attention. <\/em>He\u2019d carefully taken off everything that resembled armor and stuffed it deep into his pack before donning the favorite thing he\u2019d ever stolen from a corpse of his making: a set of embroidered Colovian finery with a leather vest.\u00a0 It flattered him, setting off his blue eyes, hugging his slim build, and very effectively hiding the short sword he had strapped to his leg beneath it; and he loved wearing the thing, particularly if he was looking for company for an evening. \u00a0It certainly didn\u2019t look like something a Skyrim native would wear but this close to the border Imperial garb was fairly common, certainly moreso than a set of black, enchanted armor with a hood that made his features vanish as if into the Void.<\/p>\n He was not looking for company right then.\u00a0 He was still too close to the Pale Pass for his own comfort, too close to the potential pursuit from Bruma, and not close enough to the Reach to be able to fulfill his contract without a night\u2019s sleep, maybe two.\u00a0 This place had been given the amusing name of the House of Troubles. He hoped it wouldn\u2019t resemble its namesake, the four \u201cbad Daedra,\u201d too closely but it did seem like the sort of place a man of his particular temperament and occupation might find suitable.\u00a0 It was also well off the beaten track, and that made it even more attractive.<\/p>\n Come on, Vitus, hold it together.\u00a0 These people aren\u2019t in charge. Just go find the bar. They won\u2019t remember you tomorrow.\u00a0 And even if they do, you\u2019ll be long gone and they won\u2019t know the man in the mask and the black armor.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n He met the woman\u2019s eye and gestured toward the metal cage door that seemed to lead into the bar, his eyebrow raised in question, and she nodded.\u00a0 He returned the nod and slipped through into the main room.\u00a0 It seemed a normal enough establishment.\u00a0 As with every other bar he\u2019d ever been in there were a number of patrons, at least one of whom was truly drunk.\u00a0 There was a bard, a woman of some small talent but not notable.\u00a0 And there was a burly man with a shaved head and a thick beard behind the counter.<\/p>\n \u201cMight I have a brandy?\u201d Vitus asked him.\u00a0 No point in trying to disguise my voice. I sound like every other Imperial soldier on the roads in this part of Skyrim, so nobody is going to take note of me for that.<\/em>\u00a0 \u201cAnd I\u2019d also like to rent a room for the night.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course,\u201d the innkeeper said, taking Vitus\u2019 coins and pouring him a snifter of brandy.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll show you to your room.\u00a0 Right this way.\u201d\u00a0 He led the way up the stairs that emptied onto a balcony at the edge of the vaulted main space, and across that to a large room. Vitus grimaced:\u00a0 six beds in the room.\u00a0 One of them was his.\u00a0 I thought I was renting a room, not a bunk. Well, it\u2019s better than a hay pile in the rain but still, I\u2019d best be very careful.<\/em> He laughed at himself.\u00a0 What am I thinking? I\u2019m always very careful.<\/em><\/p>\n Just outside the door to the common sleeping room was a table and chairs, one of which he took. He sipped his brandy, watching a curious display of archery from a man standing just on the other side of the table but aiming at targets mounted at their eye level on the other side of the vaulted space.\u00a0 It must have been quite a feat getting those up there. What an odd place for archery practice.<\/em>\u00a0 He reached into a pocket and palmed a small bottle, then discreetly drained it behind a hand.<\/p>\n He relaxed back into his chair as the drug took effect and pondered giving the resident archer a bit of competition.\u00a0 But it would be too risky.\u00a0 How many unarmored travelers carried daedric bows? How many fewer could split a competitor\u2019s arrow down the middle while drugged?\u00a0 Enough fewer that they would remember him if he did it. And he would, if he picked up his bow.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n It was still dark when he took down the first one along the road.<\/p>\n She came running up from behind him and waved a weapon in his direction, and from the corner of his eye he thought it was the woman who had been staring at him at the House of Troubles. He turned almost without breaking stride and slid his Bosmer shortblade through her chest.\u00a0 Then he stopped to examine her body.\u00a0 She had face tattoos.\u00a0 The woman at the inn had had no war paint of any kind.<\/p>\n Well it serves her right. Run up behind a man in black in the dead of night and expect anything else? She wasn\u2019t exactly approaching me to sell flowers.<\/em><\/p>\n He hadn\u2019t felt right about staying a full night there at the House of Troubles.\u00a0 Nobody else had rented a bed in the common room, but there had been something so odd about the way the people at the front looked at him that he\u2019d decided to allow himself only a few hours of sleep, and he\u2019d left in the middle of the night with his head still fuzzy from the skooma.\u00a0 You\u2019re getting paranoid, Vitus.\u00a0 She might well have been a danger but she wasn\u2019t that woman.<\/em><\/p>\n He stopped just long enough to drag the body off the road into the bushes and then continued on his way, this time paralleling the road rather than running on it.\u00a0 It was going to slow him down, but it was safer than not.\u00a0 Not long afterward he passed a mill; there was a lone guard patrolling the bridge across the small mill stream, so he crept silently down to the water, just beneath its edge out of sight, and waded across.\u00a0 Wet feet were a small price to pay for safety, and that guard would remember a man without a face, dressed all in black.\u00a0 The cold air and the frigid water washed the remaining cobwebs out of his head.<\/p>\n The sky was just beginning to lighten as he crossed into the Reach proper, and he stood to stretch and look around him.\u00a0 Not too far to go, especially if he crossed the river and kept near, but not on, the main roadways. In the meantime, though, he was in an area that didn\u2019t lend itself to travelling overland, and he needed to get through it. He thought it was just about possible that he might make it to Markarth by evening if he moved fast, without taking much of a pause. He dropped down into the roadway and jogged ahead.<\/p>\n Not far down the road was one of the kinds of places that made him most nervous: the road cut between two steep rock faces for a short distance, and there was nowhere to go except straight ahead on it.\u00a0 Normally he would sprint through such a bottleneck and get back off the roadway as soon as he could but on this day there was a man just ahead of him.\u00a0 He kept moving; and as he came alongside he saw that the man\u2019s skin was a dusky, reddish color, distinctive of a disease that had its sufferers calling themselves the Afflicted.<\/p>\n Vitus grimaced.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t want anything to do with them.\u00a0 He intended to give this man a wide berth.\u00a0 But as he attempted to pass by the man looked at him and grunted.\u00a0 Then he said, in a sarcastic tone, \u201cAre you finished ogling the grotesque? I suppose I should be grateful that you didn\u2019t just kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n Vitus felt his irritation rising. Ogling, is it? You think I was \u2013 ogling? <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d he murmured. \u201cI\u2019m done ogling the grotesque.\u00a0 But don\u2019t celebrate quite yet.\u201d<\/p>\n He pulled his sword and whirled, slashing. The man dropped to the ground, his throat cut.<\/p>\n Vitus stared at his sword.\u00a0 \u201cDisgusting.\u201d \u00a0He looked down at the dead man and grunted.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t ogle.\u201d<\/p>\n The roadway had opened back up before him, and the river was off to his left.\u00a0 He dashed for it and washed both the sword and himself thoroughly. \u00a0He did not want to take any chances. He couldn\u2019t hear anything for the roaring of the river, and kept turning to look back up toward the roadway.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t do to be encountered here, not after that.<\/p>\n But he was in the way and he irritated me. And now he\u2019s dead.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n The river ran deep and fast here, and he was going to need to cross it at the bridge not too far ahead and down the hill. \u00a0On the other side of the bridge the road doglegged just in front of a stone shrine to one of the gods, which one he could not tell from this far away. As he trotted across the bridge and neared the shrine he saw the unmistakable shape of a bulging coin purse atop it.<\/p>\n Mine.<\/em><\/p>\n He dropped into a crouch and slunk forward, but just as he reached for the sack of septims a voice from the other side of the monument called out.<\/p>\n \u201cHey! You can\u2019t just take that!\u201d<\/p>\n Vitus\u2019 head jerked up.<\/p>\n Damn.<\/em><\/p>\n He grabbed his blade and rolled to the side of the shrine.\u00a0 A man dressed in drab leathers, likely a hunter, was just reaching for his sword as Vitus popped up beside him.<\/p>\n \u201cBet I can.\u201d<\/p>\n A moment later the man slumped back against the stones, blood pouring out of the wound across his neck.\u00a0 Vitus vaulted over the stones to grab the coin purse and run down the road as fast as he could, looking for a spot to jump up out of the roadway, into a place where he could calm his heartbeat and gather his wits.<\/p>\n You are, without a doubt, becoming the worst of all possible idiots, Vitus Perdeti.\u00a0 <\/em>He shook his head and reached up under his hood to rub his eyes.\u00a0 Damnable blurry eyes.\u00a0 What in the world is wrong with me lately?\u00a0 I am going to get myself into difficulties if I don\u2019t start paying attention to the basics. It just seems harder to focus on things these days. <\/em>He looked up and down the road and saw nobody approaching.\u00a0 I never used to need to even think about the basics, they just happened. She would be very disappointed in me, I think.<\/em><\/p>\n He rolled his head to stretch out his neck, took a deep breath and blew it out, then started trotting onward toward the west.\u00a0 Maybe \u2026 I should have another. Sometimes it seems as though I focus better when I\u2019m forced to, like that, when there\u2019s no other choice.\u00a0 Maybe\u2026\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m an idiot. I need to be able to react quickly. \u00a0Maybe I should just keep moving.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n His progress was helped by the heavy fog that hugged the river valley on this day. \u00a0He was able to blend into the shadows almost effortlessly, although he did wonder how the hawks that screamed his passage managed to see him from that high up through the fog. \u00a0He was grateful for the hawks, though. Even away from the actual river banks the rushing water was loud. More than once the hawks alerted him to other people on the road, giving him time to leap up into the rocks and hide himself. Several groups passed by \u2013 Thalmor, Imperial troops, and traders \u2013 while he rested and perched high above them. \u00a0Each time he stopped to rest, whether to avoid people or to nibble on a sweet roll and drink some water, he moved well off the road and out of sight.\u00a0 And each time he stopped his mind pestered him to have another.\u00a0 It\u2019s right there, Vitus. Go ahead and have it, Vitus. You\u2019ll feel better. You won\u2019t be so jittery. <\/em>\u00a0And he would shake his head, grit his teeth, and keep moving in spite of the tight, anxious clutch of his gut and the increasing discomfort of his jaw muscles as he ground his teeth together.<\/p>\n As the shadows were lengthening, Vitus found himself climbing out of the river, sliding up the bank into the shadows of an old Dwemer building next to a windmill. \u00a0He\u2019d never been in this particular building before. \u00a0He was cold, he was tired, and he was sick of gritting his teeth against the gnawing demand of his body.\u00a0 He decided to let himself into the building and, if he could, rest a few hours before going the rest of the way into the city of Markarth to complete his contract.\u00a0 He wanted very much to get the contract done and get out, perhaps head to Solitude where another Imperial would just disappear into the crowds.<\/p>\n He picked the lock to the house and slid inside. It seemed to be empty at the moment, but there were clear signs of occupation: the embers of a fire laid in the fireplace, a double bed, the smell of a recently roasted goat haunch and bundles of fragrant herbs hanging from nails near the ceiling.<\/p>\n You shouldn\u2019t stay here, the voice of reason in his head told him.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m tired. And I\u2019m hungry.<\/em><\/p>\n You\u2019re not hungry, you\u2019ve been eating off and on all day, the voice of reason in his head told him.<\/p>\n But\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cCan\u2019t a woman get a moment of peace?\u201d came a shrill voice, an old person\u2019s voice, just behind him.<\/p>\n Vitus whirled, snarling.<\/p>\n The woman had just enough time to stare at him as the door closed behind her.\u00a0 He saw the familiar look, the look that resulted when people looked for his eyes and saw nothing but empty darkness.\u00a0 It had to be terrifying, to expect a face and find nothing; it had to be like seeing all of your worst nightmares in one being, standing just beyond your reach and yet not nearly far enough away.<\/p>\n That was exactly why he wore the mask.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll give you peace, old woman,\u201d he growled, and flipped his sword, plunging it overhand into her chest.<\/p>\n He found himself still bent over her when he started to shake, a tremor that started from his core and moved outward.\u00a0 He tried to straighten, but he couldn\u2019t; his muscles were cramping, he was in the most exquisite pain, and he could barely breathe.\u00a0 It felt like he was going to die, and he would not have that happen.<\/p>\n I refuse.<\/em><\/p>\n He could only think of one thing to do.\u00a0 He whisked one of the small bottles out of his pocket and downed its contents, then lurched his way to the bed and laid down on it, trembling for a few moments longer until the skooma took full effect.\u00a0 And as the pain left him, as he felt his breath coming back to him, as he felt better, the implications of his situation came into focus.<\/p>\n Gods damn it.\u00a0 Has it finally happened, after all these years? Am I actually addicted to it? Is that what has been happening to me?<\/em><\/p>\n He lay there and thought about it, ran everything that had been going on for the past months over and over in his mind. The escapes had gotten more and more precarious.\u00a0 His work had gotten sloppier by bits and pieces.\u00a0 He\u2019d forgotten to do the simplest things, like just looking around before moving in for a kill. And there wasn\u2019t any other explanation for it. He was still in excellent physical condition.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t losing his mind.\u00a0 There was only one possible explanation.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what this is, isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 I am now nothing more than one of the pitiful things I saw when I was a child, trying to come up with some justification to have more every time it starts to fade away. <\/em><\/p>\n He thought about everything for a bit longer and came to a sobering conclusion.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been an addict for a long time now, haven\u2019t I.\u00a0 I just didn\u2019t want to see it. \u00a0The time between one bottle and the next has been shrinking, but I haven\u2019t been paying attention to it. And I\u2019ve never tried to hold off long enough for the shakes to get me, before this. <\/em><\/p>\n How in Oblivion have I managed to do my work in this condition?\u00a0 Is it just because I was the best, and even failing I\u2019m better than most?<\/em><\/p>\n Gods damn it.\u00a0 Gods damn me.\u00a0 Gods damn the Listener for getting caught in the middle of that mess and now I have nobody to turn to for help.\u00a0 Gods damn it. <\/em><\/p>\n By the Eight. What am I going to do now?<\/em><\/p>\n He pushed himself up to a sitting position and shook his head, then wished he hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Well. What I\u2019m going to do now is fulfill my contract.\u00a0 I can do that in my sleep.\u00a0 Then it will be soon enough to think about what\u2019s next.<\/em><\/p>\n Vitus moved the body of the old woman up onto her bed.\u00a0 As soon as someone looked at her they would be able to tell that she\u2019d been murdered, but from the door it looked as though she was napping.\u00a0 Then he slipped out of the house, across the road and down into the river bed.\u00a0 There was an outlet for the streams that ran through Markarth which, if he didn\u2019t mind crawling through a tunnel and getting wet, would let him avoid the main approach to the city and have only to evade the one or two guards patrolling before the heavy Dwemer doors.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t difficult to slip in past the guards.\u00a0 It was late, it was getting dark, and they were tired and bored.\u00a0 Once inside, he ran left, hugging the shadows alongside the mines and the smithy, and to the door of the Hall of the Dead.\u00a0 He\u2019d used this route once before, and had made sure to leave that door locked but not barred. It was simple to pick the lock and slip inside, then make his way to the far door that emptied into the vast excavations being undertaken by Calcelmo, the court wizard.\u00a0 He rubbed his eyes.\u00a0 It was too soon for him to be trying this. His head was still far too fuzzy and his vision too blurred, but at this stage he had no choice.<\/p>\n You\u2019re the best of the best, Vitus.\u00a0 You can do this. Just focus.<\/em><\/p>\n He watched the guard\u2019s patrol route and slid around the corner and out into the keep\u2019s unfinished hallway as the guard was facing away.\u00a0 There were two more guards stationed just in front of the huge arch leading to the Jarl\u2019s audience room and living chambers, but Vitus downed a brief invisibility potion and snuck past them, then to his right, to the farthest of the great staircases leading up. The Thalmor, he knew, had a chamber in the northwestern part of the keep, and at this time of the evening Ondolemar, the Justiciar who was his mark, would be there.\u00a0 It will be easy.<\/em><\/p>\n He crept up the stairs.\u00a0 The Jarl\u2019s Housecarl was sitting at a small table in the main hall, eating a meal, and so absorbed in it that he was able to sneak past her and make for the short hallway and staircase leading to the Thalmor\u2019s room.\u00a0 The door was locked, but he picked it open, silently, and then eased the door open just enough to slip inside.\u00a0 There was a Thalmor soldier staring intently at a map of Skyrim on a large table, another seated with his back to the door at a small desk to the right, and what looked like an officer, perhaps Imperial, stretched out on a bed at the far end of the room.\u00a0 And at the left side, at a large desk, sat Ondolemar.<\/p>\n Well, it will be a challenge, but I can do it.\u00a0 I\u2019ll use the bow. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Vitus reached for his bow.<\/p>\n He had done this a thousand times.\u00a0 He was an expert at sliding it into position, silently, and taking down a target before they realized he was there.<\/p>\n This time, he mistimed his movements.\u00a0 The bow scraped against the floor as he pulled it around to the front of his body.<\/p>\n And the room exploded.<\/p>\n Suddenly he was surrounded by fire.\u00a0 People were shouting, the officer\u2019s heavy armor was clanking, and the two Thalmor were snarling at him that he should behold their power, that he should bow to his betters, that he would die.\u00a0 There was a Markarth guard behind him, shooting a bow, somehow managing only to catch one arm with an arrow but that arm erupting in pain. \u00a0He thought he heard Ondolemar howling that they should take him alive, not kill him, but he wasn\u2019t certain whether he heard it or not, and between the skooma and the flames he couldn\u2019t see where he was.<\/p>\n His armor would protect him from the flames. He wouldn\u2019t burn.<\/p>\n But it was light armor, and it wouldn\u2019t protect him from the Housecarl\u2019s mace coming down onto the back of his head.<\/p>\n And the world went dark.<\/p>\n Vitus Perdeti stepped up to what he thought was the front desk and gave his name: he was Vinnus Pettellia, from just across the border southeast of Riften, headed back across the border into Bruma but not tonight; and he wanted a room. Because Vinnus has been hugging the border for hours and is dead … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/baakay.com\/FanFic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/3-1-7-2.png\")
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<\/p>\nPart I: Andante<\/a><\/div>\nPrevious<\/a> \/ Next<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"