The Legion Came to Riften, to Steal Away a Thief

by astudyinpanda

Summary:

Brynjolf thought he knew his thief protege, until Legion soldiers arrest him for aiding the emperor’s assassin. He doesn’t want to believe that these two clever women are one and the same.

Notes:

This story revolves around a non-Nord Dragonborn who doesn’t know she’s Dragonborn yet.

Chapter 1

Legion soldiers in Riften. Brynjolf had officially seen everything.

Eight skirt-wearing bastards walked right through the north gate, like they owned the city by right and not just by name. When Maul stepped out of the shadows and asked them their business, they just about put a sword through his gut, and Brynjolf, in a shadow of his own near his market stand, didn’t hear an answer. By the time they entered the market, steel swords flashing in the afternoon sun, there was a crowd of Riften citizens for Brynjolf to blend into. Everybody wanted to see what these bold Imperials did next.

The one in the best helmet looked around and cleared her throat. “Does a man named Brynjolf reside here?” she asked loudly. Brynjolf’s heart lurched in his chest. They were here for him? “Red hair, blue eyes, known associate of petty criminals?"

They’d come for him, and they knew what he looked like. He pulled his hood over his red hair and set about fading back through the crowd. If he could make it to the wooden steps beside the orphanage, he could sneak into the Ratway. They'd never find him in there.

“Never heard of him," said Sapphire, good friend that she was, drawing their attention in the opposite direction, to where she leaned against the wall of the Bee and Barb. The way her voice dripped with disgust gave the Legion soldiers pause, and brought Brynjolf a few precious steps toward the Ratway.

He almost made it. A pace away from the top step, a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. The Riften guards, who he’d thought too preoccupied with the spectacle in the market to notice him, had grown suspicious when he separated from the crowd. “He’s here,” the guard shouted to the Imperials. The grip on his shoulder tightened.

Two city guards stood within arm’s reach, and more filtered into the market from all sides, finding out what the fuss was about. The Legion soldiers drew their weapons, including two keen-eyed archers with arrows nocked, and Brynjolf’s shoulders slumped a little. He couldn’t fight his way out of this, and there were too many people watching in the bright sunlight for the invisibility potion in his pocket to do much good.

That wasn’t his only option, though. Under cover of putting his hand over an enormous yawn, he downed a glib tongue potion instead. “I can’t be the only red-haired man in all of Riften, lads and lasses.” His voice was the right combination of innocent, anxious, and affable. He caught Sapphire’s eye, elevated over the crowd by her long legs. She nodded and slipped into the Bee and Barb. She’d take the back exit and make her way to the Ragged Flagon, to tell the rest of the Thieves Guild. Brynjolf turned to the approaching soldiers. “Are you sure you’ve got the right—”

An Imperial’s fist pounded into his stomach, just below his ribs. He tried to double over on instinct, but the guard’s hand on his shoulder twisted his movement and he fell heavily to one knee. The merchant garb he’d worn for a day of selling watered-down potions and stolen goods offered no protection. “We know your name and your face,” the guard said coldly while Brynjolf’s breath whined in his throat. “And your reputation. What’s he done… officer?” Brynjolf smiled slightly. So few of the Legion entered Riften that even the city guards couldn’t recognize rank on sight.

“Brynjolf is under arrest, for aiding and hiding the assassin of Emperor Titus Mede II,” said the Imperial. So that had really happened. In Riften, it’d only been a rumor.

“Oh, you’ve definitely got the wrong man.” The potion kept Brynjolf’s voice steady while his heart beat like a rabbit’s. That was as serious a charge as they could level at him, short of killing an emperor himself. Nobody would believe that lie, at least. This centurion didn’t have to go so hard to get him out of the city for questioning. Maybe he was new to Skyrim. “I don’t like killers,” Brynjolf continued. “Assassins are worse. I don’t help them do their dirty work.”

“We’ll see about that,” said the centurion. To the soldiers at his back, he said, “Bind him.”

Two Imperials yanked Brynjolf to his feet while a third approached with a length of rough rope. Brynjolf crossed his wrists and pushed hard against the rope as it tightened, buying himself some wiggle room to use later. He kept expecting the captain of the city guard, or even the jarl’s steward, to storm out of Mistveil Keep demanding an explanation. That neither of those officials made an appearance meant that the Legion had gotten somebody’s permission to enter Riften, with the expressed purpose of arresting him. That did not bode well.

They took his dagger from his belt and a second from his boot, but missed the one on his thigh under his padded robes. The centurion gripped Brynjolf’s collar from behind and pressed a blade to the small of his back. “Move,” he ordered, and he marched Brynjolf past the murmuring crowd and out the city gates. Maul and Sapphire were nowhere in sight. Brynjolf hoped they were getting him help. This sounded like serious trouble.

When he’d said he didn’t help assassins do their work, that was the truth. Saying that he didn’t know any would’ve been a lie. Delvin had introduced him to several in the Ragged Flagon over the years. Hell, even his new protege…

Ah, damn her. She’d gotten him into this, somehow. Delvin had told him she’d been running errands for the Dark Brotherhood. Brynjolf had passed it off as a bit of side work for a sneaky foreigner making her way in the world during these hard times. But how the hell would you get tangled up in Dark Brotherhood business, without making a few kills of your own?

The sounds of a hammer striking metal and Imperial-accented voices warned him that they were approaching the local Legion camp. The centurion hadn’t let go of Brynjolf’s robe for the whole trip, short though it was. Brynjolf swallowed hard against the fabric at his throat. It would be tough to escape the camp, but not impossible. It was also the obvious location to move him to. His guildmates would find him in no time. Hell, just because he hadn’t seen one in the forest so far didn’t mean they hadn’t sent somebody to follow him. Niruin, maybe, or Vipir. Brynjolf would’ve sent Niruin.

The glib tongue potion had worn off, but talk still had its uses. “Centurion,” he began, hoping that using the man’s correct title would help his case, “You’ve got to tell me what this is about. Anyone in Riften can confirm that I’ve been there for weeks, selling my wares. The proprietor of the Bee and Barb has all my coin to prove it.”

“Tell the legate, and shut up in the meantime.” The centurion tightened his grip on Brynjolf’s collar until Brynjolf could hardly breathe, which did effectively shut him up.

Thirty-two Legion soldiers milled about the camp, double the usual number. They hadn’t been patrolling at that strength, or the Guild would’ve heard about it. All of them stopped what they were doing to glare daggers at Brynjolf as he passed. The big tent was open to let in the afternoon breeze, and the centurion shoved Brynjolf into it without preamble.

The local camp commander, Legate Fasendil, stood on the other side of a table with a map of Skyrim on it. Fasendil was a high elf, but not the magic-throwing kind. He had the muscles to show that the sword at his side had spent many long years in his hand. The legate looked Brynjolf over with cold, hard eyes. “That’s him. Good work.”

“Legate, sir, I can—” Brynjolf began, but Fasendil spoke over him. “Strip him and search him, then bring him back here.”

That was too much effort to go through for a captured merchant. Brynjolf shuddered as they marched him out of the legate’s tent and into a smaller one. They knew he was more than he appeared. And although it’d been years since Brynjolf had experienced this particular brand of Legion hospitality, he didn’t remember it being this rough. Once they had his clothes off they found the dagger at his thigh, and the lockpicks up his sleeves and in his hair.

The one that’d torn the lockpicks out of his hair used it as leverage to drag him to a corner and bend him over a barrel, where he kicked Brynjolf’s legs until they were spread wide. “Is this really necessary?” Brynjolf gripped the sides of the barrel to brace himself.

The one with the hand in Brynjolf’s hair yanked his head up and set a dagger’s blade against his neck. “Yes, thief. It is.” Probing his mouth with the same damned fingers they’d shoved up his arse wasn’t necessary by anybody’s definition, but they were in a special mood today, it seemed. Brynjolf was already wishing for a drink.

They watched him put on roughspun prisoner’s garb, and they were even generous enough to free his hands while he did it. He grabbed one of his lockpicks and hid it in his overly tight shoe before they bound his wrists again.

Back in the legate’s tent, Fasendil came around the table to glare at Brynjolf more closely while the centurion gave the rundown of Brynjolf’s equipment. “We’re still searching his clothes,” the centurion added, and Brynjolf smirked a little at that. “There are a lot of hidden pockets.”

Fasendil nodded to acknowledge the report. “So, thief,” he said to Brynjolf.

“Now, wait just a—” The centurion punched Brynjolf in his ribs this time, turning the rest of his statement into a grunt. “If you people want information, you’ll have to let me finish a sentence,” he wheezed.

“Finish it with truth, then,” said Fasendil. “We know you’re a member of the local thieves guild. We know you helped this woman establish herself in Riften.” Fasendil held a charcoal sketch in front of Brynjolf’s face.

There, in black and white, was his newest infiltrator. The likeness had her build, her hungry eyes, her lips quirked down in the scowl she got while she worked a lock open. Her hood's shadow hid everything else, and her crouched form and leather armor could’ve been anybody’s, the way it was drawn.

“I’m not sure how talking to her once or twice is helping her ‘establish,’” Brynjolf said.

Another blow, this one to his face. Brynjolf’s head rocked sideways, and he tasted blood. “She’s in your guild,” said Fasendil. “You’ve spoken to her more than twice.”

And this was why the Legion had been allowed to arrest Brynjolf, he realized. If they knew this much, they might also know that his protege had done work for Maven Blackbriar. Maven would never let herself be tied to an emperor’s assassination. Hell, Maven might even hold Brynjolf responsible for associating her with that mess.

His protege… She’d done so well for herself. Picked herself up from nothing, which was what the Legion had left her with after they’d nearly killed her. He was damned proud of her, and she wasn’t an assassin. She certainly wasn’t the caliber of murderer it’d take to kill an emperor. She should still be in Whiterun, doing the job Olfrid Battle-Born had asked for. The Empire could suck eggs.

Brynjolf spat blood onto the dirt beside the legate’s boot. “Why don’t you finish telling me what you know, then.”

“She’s betraying your guild with a guild of assassins.” Fasendil was watching for a reaction, and Brynjolf gave him one: an incredulous sneer. “It’s true. She murdered two Legion officers and made a failed attempt on the emperor’s life, a week ago. Five days ago, she crept onto his ship while it lay at anchor in Solitude. She killed three sailors before she picked one of the strongest locks in the realm, entered the emperor’s cabin, and slit his throat.” Brynjolf swallowed the bile rising in his own. He couldn’t imagine her doing that to a person. “Several small and valuable items are missing from the emperor’s cabin. She was spotted in the act of killing yet another Legion officer, and she escaped. That night, we found the Dark Brotherhood den and burned it. If she were looking for safety, she would’ve come to your guild.”

The only part of that tale that rang true to Brynjolf was the lock on the emperor’s cabin door. His protege was a genius with lockpicks. That, and the missing trinkets. She had a raven’s love for small shinies. “The Thieves Guild doesn’t kill,” Brynjolf said. “There are plenty of rich Imperial properties to plunder right here in Skyrim. There’s no need to hassle the best-guarded visitors in Tamriel. I’m telling you, you’re hunting the wrong woman.”

“I never said she did it under your guild’s orders,” Fasendil said. “She did it for the Dark Brotherhood. Now, where is she?”

“Burned, don’t you reckon? If she’s a Brotherhood assassin and you set fire to their sanctuary.” Brynjolf shrugged. “I haven’t seen her for days.” Close to two weeks, come to that. An uncomfortable coincidence. That was all. She had probably delayed herself with one of the sweet young Whiterun merchants.

Fasendil sighed. “I don’t have time for this. Centurion, send a runner ahead. The Aldmeri experts at the embassy will get the truth from him.”

Mehrunes’ great hairy arse. Brynjolf schooled his bruised face to an impassive mask. Night would fall soon, and he’d find a way out of this. He had to. Aldmeri interrogation techniques were the stuff of nightmares.

Chapter 2

Night came, and with it a bonfire so big that the Legion soldiers only needed a mammoth or two to make a giant feel at home. The soldiers threw Brynjolf to the ground in its light and made to bind him to a tree. He made a break for it, but somebody jumped on his back and took him down before his fourth step. Two hard punches to his kidneys kept him down while they made the ropes fast around his chest and arms. They left his hands bound in front of him. His tree was close enough to the fire to keep him warm, but he was far from the shadows at the edge of camp, where he hoped his guildmates were hiding.

They also set a guard beside his tree, and he had the disquieting suspicion that they were more to protect him from the other soldiers than to prevent his escape. Hate burned in the soldiers’ eyes when they looked at him, hotter than their bonfire. The bloody nationalists were taking their emperor’s death damned personally. Brynjolf didn’t have a damned thing to do with it, and they still looked eager to carve him up before the Aldmeri torturers got a turn at him.

Brynjolf twisted in his bonds, testing their strength. The rope dragged his roughspun prisoner’s garb across his skin, and he smiled a little. If he kept at it…

One of his guards kicked him in the calf. “Quit squirming, traitor.”

“Oh, you can’t mean that.” Brynjolf craned his neck to look up at the stern-faced woman in Legion uniform. “The Empire’s been a boon to all manner of trade in Skyrim. I don’t wish harm to a one of you.” Not that he’d mind some harm befalling this particular batch of Imperials, at the moment. Anything to get out of the damned ropes.

“You help a murderer, you are a murderer, I say.” The soldier straightened her back and returned to her watch, but of course, she had to add “And you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Aldmeri interrogation, followed by an execution and an unmarked grave, if he read the signs right. Damn his wayward protege. He’d expected her to make mistakes. That’s what new blood did. But getting mixed up in the biggest assassination in Tamriel was a hell of a mistake.

A night bird’s cry split the cooling air. It was a good imitation, but not good enough to fool Brynjolf. One of his guildmates was out there in the darkness beyond the bonfire. He gave a small nod, showing he’d heard the signal. They hadn’t constructed a code of bird calls the way they had with shadowmarks, an oversight he’d correct as soon as he was back in the Ragged Flagon. So the Guild knew where he was. Would they be doing something about it, or not?

As the night wore on and the call wasn’t repeated, Brynjolf grudgingly assumed the latter. There were too many soldiers in the camp, and, as he’d already pointed out today, the Thieves Guild weren’t killers. They were being smart, waiting until the group that would take him to the high elves set off. Judging by the to-and-fro carrying of supply packs and terse exchanges on the other side of the fire, the Legion would move him before morning. That was fine. The waiting was dull and Brynjolf was sitting on a tree root.

It was still another hour, reckoned by the rising moons, before the eight soldiers assigned to his transport left the area. His imposing lady guard turned out to be the decanus in charge of the merry band. Two of the bigger soldiers loosed him from his tree and lifted him to his feet. “You need to piss, tell us now,” one said. “We’re not stopping on the way.”

“I do, thanks.” Brynjolf raised his bound hands and his eyebrows in a question which amounted to ‘Untie me so I can hold my dick?’ Their scowls translated as ‘No,’ so Brynjolf allowed himself to be led to the trench they’d dug outside the camp with his hands still bound.

He scanned the forest while he did his business, and, sure enough, metal glinted in the firelight where only leaves and shadow should be. It was at shoulder level of a person crouching behind a tree trunk. His guildmates were still with him.

They put him in the center of a longer version of the prisoner transfer line he’d passed on the road so many times before. Four Legion soldiers walked in front of him, with the decanus in front. Two foot soldiers and two archers walked behind him. Beyond the watchtower, the land was dark and alive with night creatures hunting and dying. Brynjolf had never been much of a cross-country traveler, except by carriages stocked with good mead.

The Aldmeri Dominion’s Skyrim headquarters was somewhere near Solitude, about as far from Riften as a man could walk and still be in the same region. If his escort only stopped once to sleep, it’d take two days. They’d have to be in a terrible hurry to question him, to go at that pace. From their grimly set faces, he guessed they’d at least start that fast. In the shoes they’d given him, with a lockpick digging into his foot, that walk would be hell.

The weather was no help. Cold mist clung to them through the Rift and into Eastmarch. The soldiers donned thick furs to protect them, but Brynjolf’s were on his bed in the Flagon. It’d been a fine, warm afternoon. Worse, they’d barely crossed the Eastmarch border when the blisters forming on his heels began to hurt in earnest. Damn that woman. She’d owe him a year of drinks for this.

The soldiers didn’t stop to sleep. Instead they passed around a vial of something that made them swear and shake their heads like they’d downed a strong drink, but instead of slowing them it inspired them to pick up their pace. They didn’t offer Brynjolf any of it. He kept watching for chances to escape, but by the time they passed Whiterun he was almost too tired to differentiate the place from a particularly smokey mountain in the watery morning sun. His blistered feet were bleeding into his shoes. At least that eased their fit a little.

She was in Whiterun, wasn’t she? If she’d left that night, she hadn’t gone by the roads that his Legion captors had. “We drink to our youth, and to days come and gone.…” All of the soldiers around him jumped in reaction to his loudly bellowed song. His accent was different than any other he’d heard in Skyrim. If she heard him, she’d recognize him. The soldier behind him slapped the back of his head, giving him time to finish the line. “For the age of oppression is now nearly done.”

“Haven’t showed you oppression yet, traitor,” said the soldier behind him. Brynjolf braced for a blow, but the man wrapped a rag over Brynjolf’s mouth instead, pulling until the fabric slid between Brynjolf’s teeth. It tasted of oil and sweat. The soldier tied a knot that dug into Brynjolf’s scalp, and he got a shove between the shoulder blades for good measure. Thus ended his latest attempt at barding. Maybe she’d heard him, anyway.

Whether she had or she hadn’t, the snowstorm they walked into a bit before noon would’ve made him hard to find. The Legion soldiers didn’t even slow their march. Brynjolf would have, but the man behind him kept shoving him forward every few paces. The cold dulled the pain in his feet, and his bound hands had gone numb long ago, but the snow stung his face and neck, stuck in his hair, and chilled him through his clothes. When they finally flung a cloak over his shoulders he would’ve thanked them and meant it, if not for the gag.

Driving snow hid everything but the back of the soldier in front of him. With the wind in his ears and exhaustion pulling at him like iron weights, he almost missed a soft sound behind him. It wasn’t the wind moaning, that much was certain.

There was a second, louder sound, like a choked cry. The Legion soldiers sprang into motion. One pulled Brynjolf off the road, stumbling over something beneath the snow. The rest fell into formation, swearing and facing the way they’d come with weapons drawn. Brynjolf only counted six soldiers, including the one holding him. He twisted in the man’s grip, reaching for the dagger at the soldier’s belt, and got a fist to the face for his trouble. The soldiers were still watching for trouble on the road, so Brynjolf reached, more slowly this time, for the dagger.

A brief lull in the wind revealed the source of the noises, and it stopped Brynjolf as thoroughly as it had the Legion soldiers. The two archers who’d been at the end of the prisoner transfer line lay dead in the road, their blood a dark pool still filling from deep wounds in their throats.

“She's here,” an Imperial whispered.

If Brynjolf read the swiftly filling footprints in the snow correctly then the killer was long gone. They were too small to have been made by a man’s boots. He sighed. Sapphire could’ve done this. Vex too, maybe, and Niruin’s feet were smaller than any Imperial’s or Nord’s. It didn’t have to be his protege, following from Whiterun, trying to save him from a mess she caused. Fasendil had said that the emperor’s throat was cut too, but that was a common means of killing, wasn’t it?

The wind howled down from the mountains near the road, drawing a merciful curtain of snow over the scene. Brynjolf’s hand closed, finally, over the dagger hilt, and began to carefully pull it free.

The man holding Brynjolf kicked his knees out from under him. Brynjolf used the motion to pull the dagger from its sheath and fell all the way to the snow-covered dirt so that he could hide it in his pants. He tugged their drawstring tighter to keep it in place. Combined with the pick in his shoe, he’d be able to open any lock, given the opportunity. Things were looking up.

The soldier gripped Brynjolf’s hair and pulled him to his knees. He tore the gag from Brynjolf’s mouth without untying it. “Call for her,” he snarled. “Tell her to turn herself in.”

Brynjolf didn’t have any friends who came when called. “Come on out, lass,” he shouted into the storm. “The Legion wants a word with ya.”

The soldier brought the hilt of his sword down on Brynjolf’s shoulder, hard enough to hit bone and drive a hoarse cry from Brynjolf’s throat, then set the blade's edge against Brynjolf's neck. “Tell her to come here,” the soldier demanded.

“Enough.” The stern-faced decanus stepped out of the snow and sheathed her sword. “Whoever got Franc and Quintilius are gone, for now. Pull them off the road and build cairns. We’ll bury them properly on the way back.” The storm might keep the scavengers away, for a while.

The decanus raised her hand, bidding the man behind Brynjolf to stay where he was. He tightened his grip on Brynjolf’s hair as his leader disappeared into the storm again. Brynjolf didn't bother asking to get up off the cold ground. The wind had already blown snow over his whole left side.

He registered the blade slip from his throat a moment before the soldier shoved the sodden gag back into Brynjolf's mouth. The soldier tore Brynjolf’s cloak off, threw it in the snow, and growled “This is for Franc.”

Brynjolf clenched his numb hands as a bright line of pain bloomed across his back, accompanied by ripping as his tunic tore. The gag and the wind silenced his cry. “This is for Quintilius.” A second cut opened across Brynjolf’s back. “And for the emperor…”

Brynjolf tried to say “Wait” through the gag, and succeeded enough to make the soldier pause.

“Let’s move. Retreat formation, this time. Assume we’re being followed.” The decanus took in the sight of Brynjolf shivering and bleeding, but didn’t comment while she waited for the soldier to put the cloak back on him and haul him to his feet. The cuts burned, and blood froze in stiff streaks down Brynjolf’s back.

Chapter 3

The last leg of the journey was a monotonous hell of step after step on aching feet. When the Legion soldiers finally stopped before an iron gate in a stone wall, Brynjolf kept walking, right into the decanus’s back. She barely stumbled, and didn’t let it interrupt whatever she was saying to a high elf in armor that reflected the setting sun into Brynjolf’s tired eyes.

They walked on, up a short stone road that followed the curve of a foothill toward a castle. Brynjolf tilted his face toward the sun, because he feared this was the last time he’d feel it. Then he stepped into shadow, down a long flight of stairs dusted with snow, to, at last, a dimly lit cell. The decanus cut the ropes around his wrists and took the pieces with her when she left him, alone, with three high elf guards.

Living in Riften, with dark elves and wood elves all around, he’d never thought about how alien, how explicitly other, an elf’s eyes looked from his own. Faced with these three shining Aldmiri, the difference was unavoidable. He had to force himself to meet their gazes as he wearily shook the blood back into his hands and untied his gag. “Well, lads. What now?”

All three crowded into his cell, backing him toward the rear wall with drawn swords. “Kneel,” one said.

There didn’t seem much point in fighting. They could gut him, but they didn't need to. Without his armor, their gauntlets alone would serve as weapons. He knelt, and they dragged his arms up and behind him, bending his whole body back toward the wall. Some kind of manacle and bar contraption locked over his forearms, pinning him in place.

Trying to get off his knees would jam his shoulder joints. He wasn’t even sure he could dislocate them from here, if he had to. The ache in his spine and shoulders began almost at once. One of the elves pried his mouth open and poured a potion from a small white bottle down his throat. The sharp burn of the cuts in his back eased, but nothing else did.

They finally stepped away. “Someone will come to talk to you, soon,” one said. “Answer the questions asked, and you will be set free. Lie, and you will be punished.”

None of that seemed terribly likely. They had nothing to gain by letting him go, and he was too good a liar for them to tell when he was doing it. The position they'd left him in made it hard to draw breath enough to speak. “To the void with you,” Brynjolf groaned. “I’ll save you the trouble: I don’t know where to find her, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

The elves looked at each other, shrugged, and locked the cell behind them. Somewhere outside Brynjolf’s field of vision, a quill scratched parchment, and a door opened and shut. Then he was alone, with his aching muscles and strained breath. He was so damned tired, but he couldn’t move without wrenching his shoulders or driving his knees into the stone floor. Between the cold and the metal around his arms, every muscle hurt like it was tying itself in knots.

It was hard to think. Hard to imagine what he could say to save himself, or his protege, when the interrogator arrived. There had to be something, didn’t there? There was always a way out. “Hey. Jot this down,” he shouted to whoever was writing beyond the cell block’s bars. The quill paused. “I don’t. Know where. She is.” To his amusement, the scribbling resumed, for about long enough to write those words, then paused again. Somebody really was taking notes on what he said.

If he had to be awake at whatever the hell hour this was, he might as well keep this person busy. He started telling every bawdy story involving high elves that he knew, beginning with the one about the elven princess who played bard for a day, only to find that the bards of her city whored by night, and she never returned to her palace again. By the time he got to the one about the high elf at the Argonian orgy, his shoulders shook so hard that his chains rattled. He skipped the one about the assassin elf and her thieving Khajit lover. That one was too close to the mark. He forgot details in the story about the high elves and the three dead mammoths that would’ve made the ending make sense. Everything hurt too much, and he was too tired.

He didn’t get to finish the ending anyway, because a group of high elves entered the cell block and interrupted his faithful scribe with a stream of unintelligible Aldmeri questions. The scribe was a woman, it turned out, and she replied in the same tongue. The twinge of guilt at subjecting her to all of those bawdy tales faded as he recalled that she also had the key to his cell, or knew someone who did, and left him kneeling there.

The leader of the new group wore wizard's robes. As soon as one of his lackeys got the cell door open, he hit Brynjolf with some kind of spell. Magic crawled through Brynjolf’s head and down his spine, the sensation sickeningly wrong. “What the hell was that?” he snarled at the mage.

“Something to discourage you from lying. I don’t recommend testing it.” To the soldiers on either side, the mage said “Unbind him.”

Brynjolf held still as they flanked him on either side, and then the device on his arms fell away with a clank. He collapsed against the wall behind him with a groan and slowly lowered his arms. The lack of strain on his shoulders and back was such a relief it made his eyes tear up. It completely overpowered the creeping sensation of the spell on him. “Thank you for that,” he said. He might as well start out being polite. This elven prick thought he deserved the respect.

“Something simple, to begin with,” said the mage. “Are any weapons or harmful items hidden on your person?”

He’d lose the dagger in his pants no matter what he said. If he said yes, he’d put them at ease, maybe. Saying no would hurt. Saying nothing was the same as saying yes. But if he answered every question with silence, the magic wouldn’t hurt him and he couldn’t share what he knew even if he came to want to. “Your incentives are all off, you know.”

“Answer the question, or I’ll leave and you’ll be returned to your bindings.”

Ah, so that was the missing piece. He ached all over, and he had no idea how long he’d been chained up down here. It felt like hours. The best response Brynjolf could come up with was “Maybe so, maybe not.”

The mage nodded to the two elves with swords, who found the dagger, but not the lockpick. “Is this all?” The mage asked, holding up the dagger for emphasis.

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.” Brynjolf was pushing luck he wasn’t sure he had, just now.

The scratching of a quill on paper accompanied the mage's frown. “We’ll return later. I hope you’ll have more definitive answers then.”

The soldiers reached for the chain device, and Brynjolf swore. “Wait, damn you. That’s the only weapon I had on me.”

The mage raised a hand to stop the soldiers. When they backed off, Brynjolf let out a soft, relieved sigh before he could stop himself. “Let’s talk about your assassin friend. When did you last see her?”

“I don’t have any assassin friends.” Brynjolf braced himself for whatever the magic did. Nothing happened. Did that mean that his protege wasn’t an assassin, or that he didn’t believe that she was? Delvin had been an assassin and wasn’t anymore, and that didn’t trigger whatever effect the magic had.

“Naive, aren’t you,” said the mage. “Very well. This woman.” He produced the Imperials’ drawing from a sleeve of his robe. This version was in ink, but it was the same moment in his protege’s life. “When did you last see her?”

“Riften, weeks ago. I told you people, I don’t—”

“Yes, yes. Your best guess, though: Where is she now?”

“She has money to travel by carriage, but she doesn’t always.” Brynjolf spoke carefully. This was a hard answer to avoid. “She’s had time to cross Skyrim and back a dozen times. She could be in Cyrodiil by now.”

The mage raised an eyebrow. “Is that where you’re guessing she’s gone?”

She’d have no bloody reason to go to Cyrodiil. “I’m saying it’s possible.”

“I’m already aware of the possibilities. Where would you go looking for her, today?”

“Cyrodiil.” And Brynjolf grinned, because it seemed this magic was legalistic. He’d look for her in Cyrodiil because he wouldn’t find her there, and today he didn’t want to find her at all.

“Where, in Cyrodiil, would you expect to find her?”

Ah, shite. ‘Nowhere’ was the honest answer. “She’s had time to reach the Imperial City. Lots of people there. She could blend in.” If the rumors were true, it was also home to a thriving Thieves Guild.

“That’s not what I asked.” Well, it was generally unwise to assume that a wizard was stupid. “Repeat my phrasing: ‘I would expect to find her…’”

Now was the choice. Give her up for a chance at survival, or at least sleep. Say nothing, and be bound on his knees. He wasn’t ready for another round of that. Or give a wrong answer, and risk the magic.

Maybe he could convince himself of her escape to the Imperial City. The Thieves Guild there would welcome her. For all he knew, she’d been born in Cyrodiil. He met the elf’s eyes and said firmly “I would expect to find her at some dark inn in the Imperial City.”

The pain was incredible, reaching out from his spine, across his back, along his ribs, down to his toes. He screamed with it, writhed on the dirty stone floor, couldn’t draw in breath with it clutching at his chest. When lack of air began to darken his vision, the pain retreated the same way it'd come.

He rolled to his side and retched, bringing up nothing but bile. By all the Divines, that was bad. “All right,” he groaned. “So, not an inn in the Imperial City.”

“Clearly not.” The mage stared at Brynjolf while he tried to catch his breath and heaved himself back into a sitting position against the wall. The scratching quill paused. “Where, then? Same phrasing.”

Brynjolf was growing desperate. “I have no expectations, you bastard.”

Pain unfurled through his body again, because he apparently did expect to find her somewhere. For however long it lasted, he couldn’t think where. He couldn’t think of anything at all.

The pain faded, eventually. He lay where he’d curled on his side next to the soldiers' shiny boots, panting into the dirt and whimpering softly. He couldn’t have stopped the sounds if he’d tried, and he had no strength to try. He found himself wondering, seriously as all hell, where he’d start looking for her. He might start in Whiterun, or he might see if there’d been any settlements near the place where the Imperials had died in the storm. Not that his protege would let herself be seen, there, and Sapphire, the next most likely killer, could hide in the noonday sun.

His protege was a smart, capable, wary woman, and a high elf search party in Whiterun would have the whole town talking. If he told them that, they might leave him alone. Divines, what he wouldn’t give for a few moments of peace.

“I’d start looking in Whiterun,” Brynjolf growled. “I don’t fucking know if she’s there.”

“Interesting,” the mage said. “Why Whiterun?”

“Because that’s where she said she was going when she left Riften.” No pain, thank the Divines. She’d said that, or close enough to it to satisfy the magic. Shame bit into him like a skeever’s teeth, but after the elf’s magic, he hardly felt it at all.

The mage turned in a swirl of robes and the soldiers followed him out. They weren’t going to bind Brynjolf again, then. He pressed his temple to the cool stone floor. “So, you’ll let me go?” he called after the elves.

“When we find her, yes.” And if the elf had a taste of his own magic, he’d be joining Brynjolf on the floor for that lie. The mage returned to Aldmeri speech as he left the prison.

After the door shut, Brynjolf was already drifting off to sleep when the scribe spoke. “Don’t tell any more stories tonight, prisoner,” she said. “The magic will treat them as lies.”

As sleep took him, Brynjolf murmured, “Thanks, lass.”

 

Someone was shaking Brynjolf by the shoulders, and it hurt like hell. “Quit it,” he grumbled. If somebody had been sent to wake him, it must’ve been for a good reason. He forced his dry eyes open, wondering what the hell he’d had to drink the night before.

A wall made of metal bars was in front of his face, and he was lying on a stone floor, not his bed in the Ragged Flagon. He remembered, finally, where he was: the Aldmari embassy's prison, where he’d betrayed…

She crouched beside him, hands drawing back from shaking him awake. She wore red gloves he’d never seen before, but everything else from the glass dagger at her belt to the Thieves Guild hood over her eyes looked the same as they had when she’d left Riften. She smiled a bit sadly when he met her hungry eyes. “Sorry it took me so long, but I’m here now. Can you walk?”

“What, you didn’t bring us horses?” Brynjolf grinned at her, to show that his complaint was in jest. “I’d walk to the Flagon if I had to, to get away from here.” He pushed himself up the wall, and she looped one of his arms over her shoulder to bring him the rest of the way to his feet. She was a head shorter than him, though, so once he was standing her shoulders were too low to be helpful.

The cell door stood open and she led the way through. A pool of blood — Divines, so much of it — spread over the stone floor near the door to the prison. Two armored guards lay piled like firewood beside the door. The top of the scribe’s head and one outstretched arm stuck out from behind a desk, unmoving. Her hair was the color of honeyed mead, where the blood hadn’t soaked into it. He’d remember that sight until he died, he reckoned.

“Come on, Bryn,” his protege whispered. Instead of wading through the blood between them and the door, she was heading for a square door in the floor at the end of the cells.

Brynjolf turned his back on the carnage and followed her. “Are you here by yourself?”

“For now.” She’d drawn the thin steel dagger she used for lockpicking, and was patting her pockets like she was looking for something. He bent carefully to take the pick from his shoe, and she laughed aloud when he handed it to her. “Thanks. And here I thought I was rescuing you!”

“I’ve been doing this for years, lass. I know how to keep picks on me. Better wipe that off before you use it,” he added. “I bled on it.”

The glare she cast toward the dead elves by the door chilled his bones. If he’d had any doubts as to who’d killed his captors, they’d have been put to rest by the death in her eyes. Then she turned her attention to the locked door in the floor, and he could almost pretend all was well. “I’m not sure what’s under here, but Cynric says it leads outside, and the cold air coming out the seams is backing up his tale,” she said. “If we get separated, go south to the river and then head downstream until you reach the Stormcloak camp. Rune and Niruin are waiting there with a boat.” Half the Guild had been involved with his rescue. He felt himself tearing up again, and blamed exhaustion.

He managed to lower himself through the opening and into the dark, but his legs gave out when he landed. She dropped silently beside him, shutting the trap door one-handed on her way down. “Where does it hurt?” she whispered.

“Everywhere,” he admitted. “But it’s more that I haven’t eaten in days.”

Shouting and heavy footsteps above made them both glance toward the closed door. Wordlessly she pressed half a loaf of bread into his hand, then crept further into the dark. The noises from above gave him the last bit of energy he needed to cram the bread into his mouth and get moving again. He couldn’t move as quietly as he liked, but speed was more important just now.

They eased their way past spiders and trolls in the dark tunnels beneath the embassy, and eventually tumbled into a snowdrift beneath gray skies, in the open, cold air. His protege caught him shivering. “Oh, damn, I forgot.” She crouched and dug through her pack, and handed him his armor, wrapped around his guild boots. “The furs wouldn’t fit in here, but they’re waiting for you in the boat too.”

“Most beautiful words I’ve heard all day.” Brynjolf pulled the armor on over the prisoner’s garb, as an added layer to keep warm with. The useless shoes he pocketed, to burn in the first fire he came to. Strapping on his boots made him feel halfway home already. “Let’s move on.”

She nodded, and they dashed across the open space between the building and the treeline. They’d leave footprints in the fresh snow, but that couldn’t be helped. He scooped up a handful to melt in his mouth, in place of a proper drink. Once they reached the river the rocks and ice would hide their trail, and then the boat.

After they were far enough from the embassy that speech seemed safe, he had to ask. “Lass… Did you kill the emperor, like they say?”

She glanced over her shoulder, and slowed when she realized how far behind he’d fallen. “Would it change things between us if I said yes?”

He wanted to answer ‘not a bit,’ but he stopped himself. It wasn’t true, and that damned spell might still be on him.

She sighed. “I did it.”

Brynjolf shut his eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at her. He’d believed in her. He’d trusted his Guild, people who were like family, to her honor and her discretion. Well, she’d proved her discretion, hadn’t she? She could’ve been a brilliant thief. And now…

After a few minutes of numbing cold and the soft crunch of snow beneath their boots, she said, “I don’t think you’d understand why.”

“Try me anyway.”

“The Guild’s always running and hiding, just a step ahead of ruin. You’re good people, and I trust you to keep fighting Imperial law until your last breaths. It’s just not enough to protect you from all your enemies, or mine. It’s not what I came to Skyrim for.” She looked straight ahead without meeting his eyes. “The Dark Brotherhood, though… That’s real power. Enough power to kill an emperor. Enough power to stop anyone who crosses us, and make them think twice about doing it.”

“At the cost of your soul and your victims’?” Brynjolf didn’t mean for his tone to so clearly communicate his disgust, but he was too tired to be tactful.

She ducked her head and shrugged. “It’s the price. And it seems I am… Well-suited to the task.”

He thought she’d been running errands for the Brotherhood on the side. It was the Guild that’d been her backup all along.

His feet were a torment, even in his good boots. One night and a minor healing potion hadn’t even taken the edge off what he’d done to them on the road from Riften. He leaned against a tree, letting the rough bark beneath his hand ground him in this nightmare of a morning. She stopped beside him, held out her hand like she wanted to comfort him, but didn’t touch him.

He let his hair fall between them, hiding her from his sight. Delvin had been a member of the Brotherhood, once, and he’d left it behind. Perhaps, in time, so would she. After she’d tracked him down in the embassy and gotten him out of that accursed cell… “Give me time to think on this. It’s been a bad few days.”

She walked several steps away, feet almost silent even in the snow, watching for trouble while he gathered his strength. Nobody had made her come after him. Nobody had forced her to infiltrate the embassy, or to attack the soldiers on the road. She’d chosen to put herself in danger, for him.

“It will be full light soon,” she said. “It’d be best to reach the river before then.”

Brynjolf had spent too many nights watching her train, parsing facts and rumors to set up her jobs, tying off her bandages when she’d come home hurt. He could no more give up on her than she’d given up on him.

He felt around in his armor’s pockets and found a leather scrap to tie his tangled hair out of his face. “Aye lass, lead the way. I’m right behind you.”

Chapter 4: Epilogue

Brynjolf and his rescuers returned to Riften and laid low. His protege disappeared, and as the threat of dragon attacks grew, he thought of her less often, though always with regret. She’d saved him, but he couldn’t do the same for her.

A year later, leaving the Bee and Barb to Sapphire and her beau of the night, Brynjolf froze in place as a roar filled the night air. A dragon soared over Riften from the west, steam and blood falling in its wake. The wounded creature landed in an almighty crash outside the walls. This was a chance to see one of the beasts up close, while it was too dark for Brynjolf to be spotted and eaten.

Outside, the Riften guards were in an uproar, shooting arrows in all directions and shouting about the dragon taking up the whole width of the road to the city. The stable’s horses had fled. And there, beneath a massive broken wing, a familiar shadow darted in and an arc of blood shot out from the monster’s flank.

It was her. Brynjolf stood speechless in the dark beside the gate as his fearless, swift protege darted toward the creature to strike it and away as it tried to strike back. Her short sword was killing it with a thousand cuts.

Eventually the dragon — the real, actual, roaring dragon — was too worn and bloodied to lift its massive head. She leaped onto it and stabbed down, repeatedly, her whole body swinging with the effort of driving her blade through its skull. And when its carcass stilled, something else about it moved. A wind, or a current of magic, stretched from the enormous corpse to her as she jumped to the dew-laden grass. Brynjolf felt more than heard the monster’s final ghostly roar, and then, as if spent, it crumbled to dust. Its bones blocked the north road. His protege stood tall, shining in the moonlight like she’d bathed in its blood.

An assassin of dragons. Only she could’ve managed that.

Amid the Riften guards' cheers, he stepped into the torchlight. Her eyes widened when she saw his grin, and for once they didn’t look like she was missing something she needed. “Good work, lass.”

“Bryn.” She pushed through the crowd of guards toward him, and, for the fun of it, he slipped through the gates and into the city before she reached him. He blended into the shadows beneath the stone homes by the wall and was halfway over the graveyard fence when she tapped him on the shoulder, wearing black gloves he’d never seen before. She went through a hell of a lot of armor these days. “It’s not as if I don’t know the way,” she murmured.

“You smell like dead dragon.” He couldn’t help smiling, though. If she had to kill something, the damned dragons were the best possible victims. Besides, after a year of not knowing if she was dead or alive, he was glad to see her. “Wash up and come down for a drink. We’ve got catching up to do.”

He drank half a bottle of mead at his table in the Flagon, wondering if she’d disappear again. After dragging his arse out of Haafingar Hold, him tired and saddened by what she’d done with her talents, her shamed by his blatant judgment of how she’d chosen to escape poverty and powerlessness… If she’d cut him out of her life forever, he wouldn’t have blamed her. It was her murdering ways that’d put him in that thrice-cursed cell, but he’d been bad company after she’d broken him out.

Then the Ratway door opened, and she stood in the doorway, black armor draining the torchlight away. The sword at her side was new. Her dragon-killing weapon was as dark as her armor. And, if he were honest, the smile on her face was new too. When she’d been with the Guild, she’d always looked as desperate as he felt helping Mercer run it. Now she looked rightfully proud.

As she crossed the short bridge to the bar, Dirge stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and rumbled something vaguely threatening. She looked at him for a moment with an expression between incredulity and fond exasperation, and he got out of her way. Vekel, Delvin, and Tonilia called greetings to her, while Vex nodded impatiently and went back to her brooding.

“What was that about?” Brynjolf asked his — former? — protege as she settled across from him. The question was about Dirge’s comment, which she knew, as she used to, without his having to explain. Her septims clattered on the table and Vekel exchanged them for Blackbriar mead before she asked.

“A warning I’ll take to heart,” she said. “How’s the Guild doing?”

“Nothing like the old days, but not the worst times we’ve had either. We burned through Maven’s good graces after the Goldenglow job.” The lack of Maven’s protection was how he’d gotten arrested and hauled off to the Thalmor Embassy. Better not to think on that. Brynjolf took a drink to get himself together before he went on. “Cynric’s out in Markarth breaking somebody out of the Cidha Mines, and Thrynn and Sapphire had a good run on a merchant caravan the other week. Thrynn got clipped by a wagon, but he’ll be up and about in no time. We’re getting by.” He gave her a hard looking over, which she sat still for. “You look well, for someone who’s just had flames breathed over them by a bloody dragon.”

“I prefer to avoid the flames.” She smiled again, that new and proud one.

“Can someone make a Brotherhood contract on a dragon?”

There went that smile. He regretted the question even as she answered it. “No, the Brotherhood only deals with people. Jarls pay bounties for dead dragons, though. Nobody else is willing or able to do the job.”

“It’s perfect for you, then. They’d better pay a fortune for it,” Brynjolf grumbled.

She patted the new sword at her hip. “They’re very grateful. In fact, I’m a thane of Whiterun Hold for the first beast I killed, and that was with half the Whiterun guard playing dragon bait.”

Brynjolf almost spewed mead on her. “You’re a thane?” And he’d hardly taught her any of his con tricks. Damn but the lass learned fast. She could’ve been the first thane the Guild ever had.

“Yeah. So, you know, if the Guild has any trouble there, drop me a note.”

“We will.” They drank through an awkward lull in the conversation. “So, you’re alright then. And not…”

“Not doing much Brotherhood business,” she said, with less bite than she could’ve added. “Dragonslaying pays more, and political power earned through very big favors is just as potent as political power earned through fear. I’m still needed to… Interpret. But I don’t spend a lot of time in the sanctuary anymore.”

If she’d fancied men he’d have asked to kiss her. Even though she wasn’t telling the full truth of it, she was distancing herself from that evil group of murderers. Hell, she’d literally moved on to bigger and better things. “I can’t help you with the dragons, lass, though I wouldn’t put it past Thrynn when he’s healed. Please don’t ask him. I need all the help I can get here.” As he’d hoped, he got a laugh of her. “But you’ll always have a place in the Guild, or even just in the back room of the Flagon.” She could buy a night at the Bee and Barb whenever she wanted and put multiple doors between her and a pack of snoring thieves, but the bed in the cistern was about all he had to offer.

Her smile wobbled a little. “Thank you. And I know I said it before, but I’m still sorry for... what happened.”

The long, cold walk and the chains and the truth magic, aye. He finished his mead before replying, and Vekel showed up with another bottle. Brynjolf had forgotten that they had an audience trying hard to look busy in the small bar. “Very foul water under the bridge, lass. Besides, the Thalmor ought to treat their prisoners better.” He’d started using that name for the people who’d tortured him, so he could negotiate deals with high elf clients without breaking out in cold sweat. “It was never all on you.”

She glanced down at where his hand gripped the dagger hilt at his side, not as a threat but as a comfort. “All the same, I owe you. Collect whenever you like.”

“You’ll stay tonight?” Brynjolf winced at his abrupt change in subject and filled the silence fast. “Tonilia misses you something fierce. This is the fifth time she’s walked past this table, if you’re counting.”

The little fence squawked a protest lost in the rest of the bar’s laughter, and his dragonslaying protege stood to give Tonilia a hug. “Vekel, I’ve got a big payday coming in the morning,” she said. “Put everybody’s drinks on my tab.” Even Dirge cheered at that.

Brynjolf had taught her that alcohol was a fine apology among thieves. She’d first arrived in Riften too light on coin to buy her own drinks, and now here she was, a bloody dragonslayer with gold in every pocket. Whatever had come before, he couldn’t help but be proud of how she was putting his lessons to use.

Notes:

The next story in this series is rated E and "creator chose not to use archive warnings."

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Thieves in Distress