Merry early Christmas! My gift to you: one chapter from each of my stories. Thanks for your interest in them!

 

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The man nodded as the bartender placed his tankard of Black-Briar mead in front of him. One of the benefits of living in Riften – the Black-Briar brand was always plentiful. It was making inroads throughout the rest of Skyrim but had a long way to go before it supplanted Honningbrew.

 

He was distracted from this thought by a woman who approached the bar and sat on the high-backed chair next to him. Long dark hair, dark complexion, golden eyes, classic Redguard beauty. Just his type. In fact…

 

“Do I know you? You look familiar.”

 

She glanced at him with a faintly surprised expression. “Yes. We have slept together a few times. You were my very first, in fact.”

 

“Was I?” He squinted, trying to place her. “When was this?”

 

“Oh, not quite two years ago. You bid for the right to take my virginity at the Vixen.”

 

Recognition snapped and he laughed. “Of course! Jasmine, right?”

 

“That was just my Vixen name. My real name is Sloan.”

 

“Ah. Well met, then, Sloan. I haven’t seen you in the Vixen in some time.”

 

“Well, I only worked for Kira as a whore for a short while. Less than a year, though it felt longer.”

 

“Really? What happened? Did you get married or something?”

 

She laughed. “No, nothing like that. Although I did get proposed to quite more often than I would ever have expected. No, I had to work in the kitchens after I murdered Grelod.”

 

The man choked on the mead he had just sipped. Sloan reached over and patted his back as he coughed. Once he had his breath back and had taken another gulp of mead, he turned back to her.

 

“That’s…quite the thing to say.”

 

She shrugged. “She had it coming. She abused those children terribly. I should know, I was one of them.”

 

“Ah.” He took a deep breath and then another drink. “Everyone wondered what happened there but the murderer was never found and then everyone stopped talking about it.”

 

“The authorities knew it was me. All the kids saw me and, of course, knew who I am. But Kira put me in the kitchens and bribed the officials to keep it all hush hush.”

 

“Interesting.” This was useful information. He now had dirt on the Matron of the Vixen, which meant he could finally get some leverage. He smiled as he took another drink. “So you’ve been in the kitchen all this time?”

 

“Well, no. I worked there for a little over a year but while I was there, they were secretly training me to be an assassin.”

 

He choked again and she patted his back again. When he had his breath back (again), he turned to her with incredulous eyes. “An assassin?”
 

“Yes. Turns out Kira is a master assassin and the Vixen is just a front for Skyrim’s most elite tong. Who knew?”

 

This news was a revelation of unprecedented magnitude. It would take some time to digest all the implications before he would know how to use it to his advantage, but he was already salivating at the ideas that were beginning to form. He struggled to keep his face from showing too much eagerness as he prompted the surprisingly talkative assassin to continue. “Kira is the leader of the Dark Brotherhood?”

 

A laugh. “Oh, no. The Dark Brotherhood turns out to be a myth. I asked the same thing. I mean, I suppose if you thought about all the tongs together as one combined force, it would be as pervasive as the Dark Brotherhood is purported to be. Not that that would ever happen, at least from the little I know. I’m pretty new, so I’m still learning the ins and outs.”

 

Another revelation. Every child had heard the stories about the Dark Brotherhood and their bizarre ritual to summon them. He shook his head to stay on track – he needed to keep her talking before she realized she was spilling more information than she meant to. “So you’re an assassin now, are you? How is that working out? Better than whoring?”

 

She pursed her lips as another faint look of something resembling surprise crossed her face. “That’s an interesting question. The whoring was a little uncomfortable at the beginning. Being naked in front of strangers, having to do sex stuff…it took a while to get over just being embarrassed. But once past that stage, it was actually pretty boring. Every man wanted the same thing - the only variation was on which part of me they wanted to do it in.

 

“But now…I’ll be honest, I’ve struggled to acclimate to this new job. I owe Kira my life. Three times over, in fact – she rescued me from the city guards when I was homeless and tried to steal someone’s purse. That’s how I started working at the Vixen in the first place. Then she bought me when I was captured by slavers. And then she saved me after I killed Grelod. So I would do anything for her, of course. But…”

 

She paused a moment as a troubled expression filtered across her face. “Now I murder people. It’s…difficult. I don’t have one of those personalities like Mishi, who just doesn’t feel anything. She is cold! I admire that about her. I wish I could turn off my emotions like that.” A sigh. “It would be easier if we could at least know why our targets have to die. Are they bad people? Do they deserve it? That’s what I try to convince myself every time – I see the target and imagine all the bad things they’ve probably done to deserve to die. I make up entire lives full of evil. This one abuses children, that one kicks puppies. That sort of thing.”

 

Another pause as she fiddled with the glass that held a drink which he couldn’t recall her drinking. The mead was beginning to hit already – the room had begun to spin a bit. A little surprising – it usually took two or three tankards to get to this point. Must have been a potent batch. Gotta hand it to Maven! Which he would, once he was able to use this new information. Kira was one of Maven’s main supports. Once she was out of the way, Maven would finally crumble. He nearly giggled at the thought.

 

“My first kill - well, first official kill after Grelod – was just a bum on the canals. A drunkard who probably hadn’t done anything to anyone for years, if ever. But it was my assignment. I’m pretty sure he was just a random person who happened to be all alone at the right time, so Gilna picked him as an easy mark to get me over the first kill hump. And I didn’t have a choice, really. We don’t get to decide whether to kill someone or not – if we’re told someone is our target, that target must die.” A small laugh. “Well, I suppose there is a choice – if I ever decided not to follow through, I would become someone else’s next target.”

 

The room and the woman had become a little blurry, but the man did his best to focus. “Really? Are you sshhhrr…” He stopped and frowned – for some reason, it was becoming hard to speak. How had he become this drunk so quickly? He took another drink to help smooth his voice. “…shor…sure th…that wud…would hap’n?”

 

“Oh, it has never been said explicitly, but it is an implicit certainty. Even the first time I saw Gilna kill someone, she straight out told me I would have been next had I panicked or balked. Once you know about all this, it’s be a part or die. So you see my struggle – I have to carry on with the killing even though I don’t really like it. It’s…much harder than I expected it would be.” She sighed and stood. “Well, this has been nice. It was really good to say all that out loud – it’s been boiling inside me for weeks. You’re a good listener.” She patted his arm. “Thank you.”

 

“No, sh…thank you.” He squinted at her, trying to make out the details of her face through the growing unfocused haze. “You…prob’ly sh…shouldn’t tell people all this….stuff. Y’know? If pe…people knew…”

 

“You’re very sweet to be concerned but I’ll be fine. No one alive outside of the Vixen knows about any of this.”

 

He frowned. “N…no. I…I do. I kn…know.”

 

He felt her hand on his arm again, a gentle pat. “Yes, but you’re not alive. I poisoned your drink when I first got here. You will be dead in about ten more seconds. I’m sorry – it’s nothing personal. You were…not horrible to me when you took my maidenhead. Or the few other times we were together.”

 

Her voice began to fade as the room darkened. He stumbled from his chair, somehow found himself on his knees. A moment later, he felt the cool sensation of the wooden floorboards against his cheek. His mind felt hazy, as if his brain had been filled with fuzz.

 

This couldn’t really be it, could it? He had plans, ambitions. He was meeting … someone … meeting … he couldn’t focus enough to remember who, but someone.

 

Her voice spoke again, but as if from a great distance. “I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for you even while I try to picture you being loathsome. Goodbye.”

 

No. He tried to fight, to move. This couldn’t be all! He stretched out a hand toward her departing heel; or thought he did. His body was numb and refused to respond. He railed against the encroaching darkness, willed himself to move, but it was like quicksand – the more he fought, the darker the world seemed to become, until all that existed was a spot of light fading into the distance. It winked out between one heartbeat and the last, and all he might have been succumbed to the silent dark.