The Sanctuary was, as always, quiet when Sloan returned, but the quality of its quiet had changed. The low hum of routine had been replaced by something held in check, a room full of people trying very hard to act like nothing was wrong. Tusef stood near the training racks, arms crossed, staring at nothing. Veezara was visible for once, which meant he wanted to be; he sat near the map table with a cup of tea that appeared to have gone cold. The braziers burned at their usual height, the shadows pooled in their usual corners -- everything looked exactly as it should, and the effort of maintaining that appearance pressed against the air like a held breath.

Sloan walked in and stopped. Babette caught her eye from across the room and gave her a nod -- small, controlled, the kind of acknowledgment that said I see you without saying anything that might carry.

 

Sloan returned the nod then crossed to her and asked the question. "What happened?"

 

Babette's smile did not reach her eyes. "Melissa Shae is in Skyrim." She said it the way someone might say there is a wolf in the house -- flat, careful, the words chosen for minimum impact. "Kira has Naza and Lexzal in her office. The rest of us are pretending we did not hear the news."

 

Sloan kept her face still. She had had practice -- years of it, across two lifetimes -- but the name landed in her chest like a blade dropped point-first.

 

Melissa Shae. The reason for the Brotherhood’s sudden fear – and although every one of them would surely deny it was fear, there was no better word for it – become clear in an instant.

 

Delphine’s words from what seemed years but was really only four-ish months ago spilled into Sloan’s head: “What is the Jatbûfî Tong doing in Dark Brotherhood territory? My understanding was that the truce forbade that.” Melissa’s presence, if unannounced (as all signs seemed to indicate) was enough to spark a war.

 

But that wasn’t the reason that name sent a shock through Sloan – hers was a more personal trill. Melissa was the woman she had chased across the first timeline; the name she had built an identity around; the mother she had mourned and then been told was never hers. And she was here. In Skyrim.

 

She had thoughts she could not voice, questions she could not ask. None of them were Babette's to answer -- Sloan nodded once and turned away.

 

Her feet carried her through the familiar corridors without conscious direction, past the dining hall, past the armory, past the training area where Tusef's equipment hung in ordered silence. She did not know where she was going until she realized she was standing at the entrance to the Night Mother's chamber. After a pause, she shrugged away her fear of reprisal and entered.

 

The sarcophagus was open and the Night Mother’s preserved body was illuminated by a single candle placed on a ledge before her. Cicero stood before her, his motley coat hung on a peg near the door, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, one hand cupped beneath the Night Mother's breast while the other worked a damp cloth across her skin with the slow, absorbed tenderness of a man polishing something sacred. He was murmuring as he worked. Sloan caught fragments -- a low, rhythmic stream of endearments and reassurances, the kind of nonsense words people used with infants or lovers or things too precious to address in language. His bells did not ring.

 

She stepped closer and a name rose in her mind the same way the first one had -- surfacing from depths she could not see, pressing against the inside of her skull like a hand against a door.

 

She did not choose to speak it -- it spoke itself with her lips: "Naasektenti."

 

Cicero's hand stilled. He turned his head, his painted face catching the candlelight at an angle that made his grin look like a wound. "Ooh," he said, his voice carrying a note of genuine delight. "A she-devil! Someone's going to have fun with that one!"

 

He turned back to his work, resuming his gentle stroking, his murmuring picking up where it had left off as if the interruption had been nothing. Sloan stood behind him, the name settling into her chest like a stone dropped into still water. 

 

She hadn’t thought about it until Cicero said it, but now that the term “she-devil” had been spoken, it made sense – and carried a much bigger implication than she might have guessed.

 

Naasektenti.

 

Naa didn’t just mean “she,” it was one of the Nord words for whore. But a particular kind, one she was familiar with from the Vixen.

 

A naa was a professional – the highest echelon, silk dresses, the Vixen's upper floors. A naa could be invited to a noble's soiree as a companion -- not to work the room, but to be seen on someone's arm, to laugh at the right jokes and make the host look cultured. A naa had boundaries, had a madam who enforced for her, had a warm bed and hot food and clients who took baths. A naa was respected, in the way people respected anything that cost more than they could afford.

 

A pipliim was what she had been for one night in Windhelm in a dank alley behind Candlehearth Hall with a man who grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off her feet while he “negotiated” her price down to single coins. A pipliim’s clients did not look at her face; they did not care what her boundaries were because she did not have any. A pipliim was not a professional – she was garbage the city had not got around to disposing of.

 

They were both whores. But one could walk through the front door of a noble's house while the other would be chased out of the market square if she tried to sit on a bench.

 

So what did that make Naasektenti? Naa plus aasektenti, prostitute and devil stitched together, got you something that was not quite a woman and not quite a demon, something that walked the line between. A succubus, perhaps -- a Daedric entity that hunted through sex. She had never heard of a contract for something like that but, then, she had only ever had one contract from the Night Mother -- which she had failed, but no one seemed to know that -- and the Night Mother herself felt Daedric enough to make the idea less strange than it should have been.

 

She looked at the Night Mother's still face -- serene, patient, waiting -- and felt no judgment. No displeasure at the failed contract, no demand for an accounting. The silence from that direction was not hostile; it was simply waiting, as if the Night Mother had known all along that Beitild was not Sloan's path. Or perhaps the Night Mother did not account for the kills once the name had been spoken. Or perhaps that strange thread she had pulled had been Beitild’s connection to the Night Mother.

 

Sloan had no idea what the rules were. She glanced once again at Cicero, who acted as if he had forgotten anyone but the night mother existed. He had been incensed when she had been given the assignment to kill Betild, so much so that he had momentarily dropped his caricature of a persona. Sloan had expected relief or a joke or SOMEthing from him when she saw him again. Instead, it was as if that discussion had never happened.

 

She shook her head and turned away. Just like before, once the name was spoken, Sloan had a clear idea where the mark was -- this one was almost due north. She turned and walked out of the chamber, leaving Cicero to his work. She did not ask permission, did not clear it with Kira or Naza or anyone else – the Sanctuary was consumed by a crisis that had nothing to do with Sloan. The thread to the north was waiting for her and she had never been good at staying where she was not wanted. Well, unless you counted Mishi’s opinion.

 

She gathered supplies and slipped out of the loud silence of the sanctuary into the quiet silence of the night. The sky was clear and cold and the first stars were winking their way into existence. The air smelled of frost and pine and loam. It was the last day of Evening Star -- the end of the year, the threshold of something new. The thoughts she had carried on her way south came back – she didn’t have to follow this path. She was not beholden to Kira or the Night Mother. She could just leave and never come back.

 

But that wasn’t the right way to do it – it would lead to being hunted. At best, it would lead to being dragged back to answer to Kira. At worst…well, people would die. There was no need for that kind of escalation. Once things were settled and the sanctuary was back to what passed for normal, they would have that conversation. For now…

 

She rode north into the dark while the Sanctuary grew smaller and smaller behind her, until it was nothing but a shape in the freezing air, receding into a past she wished she could stop carrying.

 

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