Coyle rested atop one of the rocky prominences on the seashore, looking down at the Ocean Saber. It had been a strenuous trek from Broken Oar Grotto, not only because it was about as far north as you could get, but also because he hadn’t wanted to be seen. It was one thing to sneak onto a vessel you’d been told to sneak onto. It was another entirely to approach the ship intending to take it by force. He’d therefore climbed up the ridge from the north side and followed the nearly-abandoned snowy road around the end of the peninsula and south. It really was abandoned, too; the only sign of life he’d seen – if you could call it that – was an old mausoleum and graveyard in a clearing just off the road. He’d considered checking it out, but even as a non-religious Redguard, dead things were really not his favorites.
It seemed almost too quiet below him. There had to be somebody with the ship; it couldn’t pilot itself. But he neither saw nor heard any motion, so he eased himself forward and down onto the dirt bank just below the rocks.
He’d just about gotten himself back down into a crouch when he saw movement. There, across the dirt pathway on the other side of the jetty, a man holding his weapon at the ready ran back and forth. If he hadn’t moved, Coyle thought, I’d never have seen him. Would have been walking right into an ambush. But I spent too much time with these reprobates to fall for that. He drew his bow and tried to line up for a shot, but the man below him was on high alert. He knew Coyle was nearby. He just didn’t know where.
A second figure emerged from near the jetty. The two men ran back and forth, the light flashing off their scimitars whenever they stopped for a moment. Coyle could hear them calling out to each other, but the sound of nearby gentle waves was enough to muffle their words. It didn’t matter what they were saying. He knew who they were – if not the actual individuals who scurried around searching for him, at least the group to which they belonged – and he knew he was going to have to kill them to get his boat.
Heh. Already thinking of her as mine. Well, why not. Every man deserves a home of his own and Bryn’s been doing right by me in terms of gold. Besides, I consider it payment way overdue.
He lobbed a couple of arrows at them, not really expecting to land a blow but hoping he might get lucky. First he overshot, sending them scurrying back to the north. Then, as they realized the arrows had to be coming from behind them, they turned back. Almost miraculously, Coyle’s next arrow made a solid hit on one of the men. Unfortunately, it didn’t take him down, and it showed him Coyle’s general position. Coyle tsk’d and scrambled backwards to put the solid stones of the shoreline between him and the pirate in Alik’r armor coming his way.
“Tell you what. You start running, so I can stab you in the back!”
Coyle snarled silently. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you bastard.
He had another arrow in position and the bowstring partially drawn when the quality of that voice told him the pirate hadn’t seen him and was again turned the other way around. He was about to ease forward for a better shot when the man called out again.
“Can’t wait to count out your coin!”
“Keep thumpin’ your chest, Haslev, that’s what you’re good at!” Coyle yelled.
There was a momentary pause in the sounds of feet rushing through grass and across sand. Then there was a chuckle.
“I’d heard you were around again, Coyle. Why not come out and talk to me like an old friend?”
Coyle grinned, even though he knew Haslev couldn’t see him. “If I could talk like a friend to you, I wouldn’t ever have gotten here. So come out and let me smash your face in.”
“I don’t know about that, buddy. You’ll be a whole lot easier to rob when you’re dead.”
Haslev’s voice was closer than it had been. Coyle grinned again. The man never had been able to walk away from a challenge, not even one issued in jest.
That’s just going to make this so much easier. You won’t hide. You’ll step right out into the open just like…
Coyle stepped around the rocks and to the right, far enough to see Haslev below him looking around. He gasped in pain when Coyle’s arrow caught him solidly, in the shoulder.
Just like that.
Haslev ran to Coyle’s right, disappearing under the lip of the stones, so Coyle eased himself that way, too. Looking down he saw a spit of land barely covered by water. That’s where Haslev headed; he’d be wet but with decent footing underneath. Coyle sent another arrow into the man’s arm, but he wasn’t a very powerful archer and the arrow seemed only to slow Haslev down a bit. Coyle tsk’d as Haslev turned back toward dry land.
OK, I guess we do this face-to-face after all.
He swapped his bow for his sabers and hopped down onto the same spit of land Haslev had been on a moment before, grimacing as his feet were instantly soaked. He had no time to spend on that, though. He accelerated toward the pirate and caught him a solid blow at the base of the skull, severing the spine and sending Haslev face down into the water, dead.
Bout time that score got settled, eh?
There were at least two more pirates to deal with. He could see the first of them to his left, holding a scimitar in one hand and a shield in the other. The second was somewhere in the heavy undergrowth and was, based on the clattering at regular intervals, an archer. Coyle tsk’d and started weaving back and forth. If he stood still, he would run the risk of an arrow to the heart or the gut, and he was having none of that.
He dashed uphill from the waterline to engage the first sailor. Once again his position, slightly lower than his target, worked to his advantage. The Redguard couldn’t see around his own shield as well as he might have liked; distracted by Coyle’s offhand saber coming at his face he wasn’t expecting the other saber to stab upwards under the shield and into his vitals.
He pulled loose his blades and swung around to sprint toward the last adversary, doing his best to dodge arrows as he went. It took a moment for him to realize that this one was in fact a woman – a Khajiit archer – and he was so startled that she slipped past him and dashed for the ship.
“Oh no you don’t,” he yelled, chasing after her, his sabers catching her at knee level as she leaped for the gangplank. She yowled as her legs gave way out from under her, and in her pain and confusion she wasn’t able to mount a defense against Coyle’s finishing blows.
There was nothing left to fight, up on deck, except for the cabin door locks that refused to yield to him. He sighed and returned to shore, checking the Khajiit and the Redguard he didn’t recognize; neither of them had a key or much of anything else, for that matter. Finally he reached Haslev, and poked his former shipmate’s body with his foot.
“Got what you deserved, you damn fool,” he muttered, leaning over to check Haslev’s pockets. There was a coin purse that he happily took to help pay for his time; there was also a parchment, folded several times.
“Let’s see what pearls of wisdom you have for me,” Coyle said, opening the document carefully.
As he read it, he started to chuckle. Apparently Haslev and his compatriots had dispatched the former captain, a woman named Tharna who hadn’t found them enough loot to satisfy their greed. They’d thought to do exactly what he planned to do himself – that is, take the Ocean Saber for their own. But there’d been a hitch or two in their plans. They’d lost the keys to the interior of the ship, and Tharna had the only other copy. And she was at the bottom of the ocean.
Coyle shook his head, laughing. That was so like Haslev, to think he was smarter than he really was. But it also explained why the ship was docked here and not on its way to some more profitable waters: they’d come ashore for a water-breathing potion. Someone had intended to swim down the anchor chain to find the dead captain’s body and the keys. “Then the Ocean Saber will finally be ours and we can make our own money with it!” Haslev had written.
“Sure, Haslev,” he murmured, taking note of the former captain’s location and putting the unsigned note back on Haslev’s corpse. It wouldn’t do to have such words on his person just in case something went really wrong with what he’d planned.
“Well,” he said to the rocks and the gulls, “let’s see if old Coyle remembers how to sail a ship.”
The coordinates on Haslev’s note had him dropping anchor in the deep, outside the ice-clad islands north of Dawnstar, far enough from anything so that nobody could possibly have seen the mutineers kill the captain and scuttle the boat to pull her down. A part of him had to stand back and admire the fact that Haslev had, in the end, come up with a plan that had worked.
Except for losing the keys.
It was a lovely day, but that water was going to be icy. He didn’t want to be wearing anything that might weigh him down. He peeled himself out of his armor, unbuckled his swords and kicked off his boots, then slipped on an old pair of pants kept in the bottom of his pack. He tucked a potion of resist frost in one of the pockets, then downed another and leapt over the side into the Sea of Ghosts.
It was hard not to shiver in spite of the potion, but he’d swum in cold waters before. After getting a sense of where the anchor had sunk he swallowed the waterbreathing potion, swam to the anchor line, and pulled himself down it. It wasn’t too long until the dinghy came into view, visible because the sunny day provided a great deal more light filtering down through the sea than he’d expected.
Sure enough, there was the captain, tied to the dinghy’s middle seat. Her murder must not have happened long before this, for her body was nearly – but not entirely – intact. He was mustering up his nerve to look in the dead woman’s clothing for keys when a glint of metal reflecting dim sunlight caught his eye. Keys – whether they were her set or the ones Haslev had dropped – rested against the side of the boat nearest the ocean floor. Coyle snatched them up and began hauling himself up the line as quickly as he could, shivering. Once aboard the ship once more he gathered up his things, unlocked the captain’s cabin, and wasted very little time in heating water in which to soak.
As soon as I’m thawed I’ll head to Dawnstar and take another look around for Sayma. And if she’s not there, I guess it’s Windhelm. Closest place to Riften. I’ll dock her there and take a carriage south.
He grinned to himself. After all this time, Haslev, the ship is mine. May you rot in peace.
Ondale Perdeti took one last tug on his new armor to make certain everything was adjusted as it should be. He’d worked on it until he was sure it would keep him warm and protected. He had then taken his old armor and shoveled it gleefully into the smelter to burn. It had been a gift from Vyctyna, but he was certain she’d understand.
Besides which, he thought as he pushed the door open and stepped out into the cold night, I am now…
He stopped, mid-thought, when he nearly ran into the side of a familiar, coal-black horse with eyes the color of blood.
“Shadowmere? How did you know where to find me?” He recognized the steed, of course, having seen it stabled next to Sayma Sendu’s house in Dawnstar. He’d always assumed it was her personal horse, not a beast belonging to…
No, not belonging to. A part of!
“You’re part of the Brotherhood as well, aren’t you?”
Shadowmere whickered and then bent his head toward the ground, pawing at the snow beneath his forelegs. Dale watched this behavior, marveling at the understanding that was beginning to dawn in his mind.
“You serve the Listener, is that it?”
Shadowmere tossed his head up and down again, snorting as if to laugh at Dale’s plodding thought processes. Dale chuckled. Not quite, he felt somewhere deep in his consciousness. You attend the Listener, so long as it seems appropriate to you. That’s it, isn’t it?
He pulled up his hooded cape as Shadowmere turned to gaze directly at him. It was as though they were speaking to each other, but in no language that either of them could articulate as words. Dale smiled, and nodded.
“Well, then. I guess it’s really official and I’m not imagining that I’m the Listener now. In that case, shall we head out to Dawnstar? I don’t mind flying, but I haven’t ridden for ages.”
He climbed onto Shadowmere’s back and they were off. It was fascinating to feel the great animal’s muscles beneath him, and awe-inspiring to realize that they were running at least as quickly as he could fly. There was also a deepening, unspoken connection between them as they ran. Dale couldn’t help but wonder whether Sayma had enjoyed the same thing. Shadowmere snorted without breaking stride. It was a silly thing to wonder. Of course they’d been connected. But they weren’t anymore.
Shadowmere pulled up as they neared the turn that would take them into Dawnstar, and instead walked calmly up to the shed outside Sayma’s house. There was no light in any window, and Dale could hear nothing moving inside; as Nazir had suggested she must have returned to her husband. Shadowmere would stay here, because there was something about a horse with demonic eyes that would set anyone in town on edge. Better to avoid that, Dale agreed.
Dale dismounted and set himself a brisk pace down the road into town. As lost in thought as he was, it seemed to take no time at all to reach the boardwalk that edged the harbor’s eastern shoreline. Once he’d left the end of that boardwalk and was ready to round the rocky corner toward the Sanctuary’s door he stopped cold and gasped, noticing something that couldn’t possibly go unnoticed.
There was a huge sailing vessel docked at the mouth of the sea. He’d never seen it before, but it dwarfed the other boats in Dawnstar’s harbor – even the Buoyant Barnacle across the way. He frowned. He hadn’t heard any sort of unusual ruckus as he passed the inn, but a ship that big would have a large crew. All the more sets of eyes watching the shoreline, all the more likelihood that someone might inadvertently reveal the Brotherhood’s headquarters.
I’m going to insist that everyone use the other entrance until this monstrosity is back on the high seas, since I can’t very well move everyone to Coldhaven.
He drew the shadows in around himself and crept as silently as he could to the Sanctuary’s entrance and then inside. It was a relief to feel the heat from the great fireplace rising up the stairs. It was even a relief to hear Cicero mumbling away to the Night Mother as usual.
“Just Dale!” Cicero exclaimed loudly. “I mean, Listener!” His voice was as loud and obsequious as usual, but his brow furrowed and he gestured to Dale to approach.
How very odd. I wonder what’s going on.
Dale nodded, but made it a point to chuckle. “Good evening, Cicero. And don’t worry; I’m not used to it yet, either.” He stepped closer to the old jester and dropped his voice to a whisper. “What is it?”
“The Keeper must speak to the Listener, at once!”
Cicero was clearly focused, and distressed. It had to be something extremely important. As he’d heard often enough, anything that could move the old Imperial out of his normal state was at least something worth paying attention to.
“I need to attend the Night Mother, Cicero,” Dale said, feeling the pressure of her presence building in his mind. “Why don’t you go down to the Listener’s – I mean Sayma’s – well, you know. The quarters downstairs. Wait for me. I won’t be long.”
Cicero nodded. “Very well, Listener,” he said loudly. “Cicero will leave you to your… Listening.” Then he turned and dramatically swept away down the hall toward the suspended bridge.
Dale watched him go, his brow furrowing in confusion. What in the world has gotten into him?
Approach me.
The dry whispering in his head commanded Dale’s attention instantly. He turned obediently and stepped a few paces closer to the ancient mummy.
Another child has prayed to their mother.
Yes?
He waited for the Night Mother to give him a loose description of the supplicant and tell him to accept their gold and learn who the target was. He would then either take care of the job himself or – and he felt a tiny shudder of excitement ripple up his spine thinking of it – assign the job to another assassin, given his new position in the order. He’d always been the one taking whatever jobs he was given, before this. Now it was within his authority to…
His thoughts ceased once he realized that the Night Mother hadn’t spoken further.
Where must I go, Mother?
You must kill… Sayma Sendu.
It was as if someone had struck him in the head with a mace. His brain rang within its bony confines, and took a moment to catch up, to fully process what the Night Mother had just said to him. He stared at her, blankly, his mouth open.
My mind is playing tricks on me. I must have misheard you, Mother. You want me to kill the Listener?
You are the Listener.
Again it took him a moment for him to fully appreciate the meaning of what she’d said to him. Oh. Yes, yes of course. Yes, he was the Listener. Sayma was not. Not anymore.
He shook his head. It couldn’t possibly mean what he thought it meant. He must have misunderstood.
How can I do such a thing, Mother? Would I not be violating the very tenets of the Brotherhood? “Never kill a Dark Brother or Dark Sister.” Tenet Five.
He heard a dry rattle, as though she was laughing at him.
Tenet One. Never dishonor the Night Mother. Tenet Two. Never betray the Dark Brotherhood or its secrets. Tenet Three. Never disobey or refuse to carry out an order from a Dark Brotherhood superior.
There was a pause before the voice in his head continued. Am I not your superior?
Well yes, he thought, stepping back from the sarcophagus, hands wide, shaking his head. Of course you are. But…
To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.
Dale shuddered at the baleful tone of the words inside his head. Killing the former Listener would be a direct and obvious violation of the fifth Tenet. It made no sense to him that the Night Mother would be ordering him to do something that would violate the very rules of the order she had founded. That could only mean one thing.
She is no longer a Dark Sister?
He hadn’t intended for the Night Mother to hear his working through the logic of the situation. Apparently she had, however, for he next heard a one-word reply.
Yes.
And, he thought, his mind racing, if she has been removed from the Brotherhood there’s a very high likelihood that she could give away its location or secrets or…
Yes.
He stared down at the floor, grappling with the enormity of the task before him. It made sense. It made a great deal of sense. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder, once more, how this had happened to him. Or, perhaps, there had been nobody else to whom it could have happened. After all, he was a vampire: inhumanly strong to begin with, his strength supplemented by the life energies of vampires who had gone before him thanks to the “heart” contraption in Coldhaven. Who better to task with one of the most egregious killings since that of the late Emperor Titus Meade II?
Yes.
He nodded slowly.
“Very well then, Mother,” he said quietly. “I will see it done.”
Of course.
Dale turned, dazed, and slowly walked away from the sarcophagus, glancing down the stairs. Nazir was there as usual, seated at the table before the great fire. Seeing him snapped Dale out of his fog and back to the other important issue at hand.
After all of this upheaval I don’t want to be the cause of our falling to the same sad end as the Falkreath sanctuary. Especially not when preventing it is as simple as speaking to Nazir.
He descended slowly, focusing on composing his features as best he could and then approaching Nazir with what he hoped was a friendly expression.
“Listener,” Nazir said, nodding.
“Good evening, Nazir. I need to ask you to share an order with all of our members.”
“An order?” Nazir knew who his superiors were, for certain, but that didn’t stop him from raising one eyebrow sarcastically.
Dale crossed his arms and chuckled. “Only because I saw the problem first. I’m sure you’ll agree with me once I’ve explained the situation.”
He described the large sailing vessel that had dropped anchor not far from the Sanctuary’s entrance and watched as Nazir’s eyes grew wide with the closest thing to a show of emotion Dale had ever seen on him. No, Nazir told him, nobody had noticed the ship; it must have just arrived that day. And yes, it would be best to use the other entrance for the foreseeable future.
“Thank you, Listener. I will indeed spread the word.” Nazir glanced up toward the Night Mother and shuddered visibly. “I’m too old to be dragging that sarcophagus out of another fire.”
“Thank you, Nazir. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a bit more business to take care of before I leave to fulfill the Night Mother’s contract.”
Nazir nodded respectfully. “Of course.”
Cicero was waiting for him, as promised, in the Listener’s chambers at the rear of the Sanctuary. He wore as serious an expression as he ever wore, and Dale approached him cautiously.
What fresh plane of Oblivion awaits me this time, I wonder?
“Listener! Thank you for coming to see faithful Cicero!” Once again Cicero’s voice was bright and cheerful enough to ensure that, had anyone walked past, they would have heard the crazy jester being his normal self. What the man’s tone of voice didn’t reveal, though, was his anxious gaze or the hand gestures for Dale to come nearer. As he had done upstairs, Cicero dropped his voice to a tone barely above a whisper.
“You can’t do it, Listener! You simply can’t!” He blinked rapidly, and then met Dale’s gaze again. “That is, you have to do it. Of course you do. Our Mother has demanded it and therefore Sithis demands it. To do otherwise would bring the wrath of Sithis down upon your head! But you simply can’t!”
It was Dale’s turn to blink. “Wait. Are you telling me that you also heard the Night Mother giving me orders? Have you finally heard her voice?”
“Oh!” Cicero said, laughing nervously. “Of course not, Listener. Only the Listener listens. The Keeper merely… keeps. But that doesn’t mean that the Keeper didn’t hear other things. Things that should not have been heard.”
Dale was getting confused, and impatient. “Cicero,” he said quietly. “Try to focus and tell me what you want. I’ll listen, for lack of a better word, but I have things to do.”
“Of course, of course!” Cicero said, nodding vigorously and taking a deep breath before continuing. “Cicero heard someone performing the Black Sacrament. Someone here, in this Sanctuary.”
Dale’s mouth once again dropped open in astonishment. “Here?”
“Yes. And Cicero was not the only one. The un-child heard as well. We weren’t eavesdropping on Nazir on purpose, I promise you, but…”
“What?” Dale hissed. “You heard Nazir performing the Black Sacrament?” Once again his brain whirled. “Why on earth would Nazir want to have someone else…?”
“It’s not her fault that she was married before she became the Listener, Listener! It’s not. It wasn’t her fault that your father brought him here to see her just before he died.”
Dale shook his head, thoroughly confused now. “My father brought … who?”
“Brynjolf. Sayma’s husband. He came with Vitus. And the others, too, the Dragonborn and his husband. It wasn’t her fault that they came inside, Listener! They were all so very upset that your father died. Nazir never liked that she was not Astrid. He never really liked her at all. Not for a moment. But the last straw was when she brought them in.”
It was too much. Dale felt as though he was watching and listening to himself from far away and on high as he spoke. “She brought non-Brotherhood people here? Through the Black Door? Actually into the Sanctuary?”
“Yes, Listener! And of course that would be a violation of our second Tenet, except that at the time the Brotherhood had abandoned the Tenets for many years because there was no Listener.” He contorted his face into something vaguely resembling a smile. “But it was a very long time ago and if not for her, Cicero would not be here at all. So Cicero can only beg. Don’t do it, Just Dale.”
Dale’s head swam. There had been too many surprises, too quickly, for him to properly understand everything that he’d heard. But then, slowly, something that had been nearly washed away in the flood of words from the man before him bubbled to the top.
“Did you say that Brynjolf is Sayma’s husband?”
Cicero nodded eagerly.
“Brynjolf of Riften? That man?”
“Yes, Listener. And he was here the day that your poor, late father Vitus died. Right outside, on the beach.” Cicero’s smile faded, and his voice took on a tone of rock-solid sanity. “I’ll never forget what it looked like. I followed one of them to the door and caught a glimpse just before he scooped what he could into an urn. A great pile of red ash.” He shook his head.
My father – died just outside on the beach? In the place where I’ve found red flecks in the sand before? Is that what I’ve felt, every time I’ve passed the spot?
He looked back at Cicero, numbly. “I can’t deny an order, Cicero. You know that.”
Cicero nodded sadly. “No. And neither can Nazir. That’s why he’s waited until now, I’m sure. The Black Sacrament was another way for him to prove his devotion.”
“She is a liability now, Cicero. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Oh yes, Listener, Cicero understands. And agrees. And could never disobey his Mother.” Then his eyes took on the overly-bright, sly expression they usually wore. “But it is not his fault that he overheard, and understood. And isn’t disobeying by telling the Listener what he knows, because he wasn’t ordered not to!” He followed up with a giggle, having clearly reached the limits of the effort to sustain something other than madness.
Dale reached up and rubbed his forehead. It was almost too much to take in. There had been one astonishment after another this day, and he needed time – and quiet, and solitude – to sort them all out. He nodded to Cicero once more.
“Thank you, Keeper,” he said formally. “What you’ve told me will be more than helpful. I’m positively astonished. But now, my friend, you should return to the Night Mother. Tell nobody what we’ve discussed this night. I have a great deal of thinking to do.”
“Discussed?” Cicero said, giggling again but giving Dale a sly wink. “Cicero hasn’t discussed anything! He was just on the prowl for a sweet roll. Or a carrot.” And with that, the crazy old jester turned and wandered away just as though he hadn’t gotten done sharing potentially life-changing information with a much younger man who had far too many burdens suddenly laid upon his shoulders.
Dale rubbed his brow once more and trudged the long way up the tower and across the bridge, before realizing that he’d just finished ordering everyone to take the other exit. He shook his head, descending the stairs once more and catching Nazir’s curious glance.
“Ship,” he said, pointing at the stained glass window. “Back way. I’m tired, Nazir. Almost forgot.”
Nazir grinned and nodded. “Get some rest.”
Dale made his way out through the frozen tunnels, emerging behind Dawnstar’s exterior wall and dashing up the road to the farmhouse where Shadowmere waited. He did need some sleep. He would use the home, even if it didn’t belong to him. It wouldn’t matter if he took several hours, or even several days. He knew where to go, for Sayma had said she was going home. And home was where Brynjolf was: in Riften.
He had almost fallen asleep when it dawned on him. Brynjolf was Qaralana’s father. Qara was half Nord, half Redguard. Sayma was a Redguard. Brynjolf and Sayma were married. There was only one, inescapable conclusion at which he could arrive.
He rose after just a short rest and gathered Shadowmere. Together they ran like the wind, south from the snow, crossing the great grasslands of Whiterun Hold in the predawn light, heading to Riften to kill Qaralana’s mother.
