Chapter Text
The first time he’d seen her, she was wearing some type of leather armor. Something like what the rangers wore. Her armor looked poor, well worn and repaired. When she passed him in the market selling whatever he’d been flogging that day and he addressed her, she turned to look at him out from under her hood. She wore a mask that covered her mouth and nose, but her eyes were incredible. They were a shade of dark red he’d never seen.
She looked at him, puzzled, before her expression changed beneath her hood and she turned away from him. He stared after her, schooling his expression away from surprise as he considered what he thought he had just seen.
Was that a wink?
That night, as he sat in the Bee and Barb sipping at a tankard of mead and watching Riften unwind, Talen-Jei approached and set a large tankard down on his table. He frowned.
"What’s this?" He asked the scowling barkeep.
"Velvet LaChance; from the lady." He replied shortly. Brynjolf frowned.
"Lady?" He asked. The scaled head of the barkeep indicated a table in the corner. The leather clad figure from earlier in the day toasted him with her tankard. This time she did wink, and he returned the gesture with a return toast before he took an experimental sip of the drink. Talen-jei was an artist with the flavours of booze and herbs, and he’d forgotten that. By the time he’d swallowed the first sip and had decided to go join her at her table, she was nowhere to be seen. But he HAD seen her wink at him this time.
Off to his side he heard a soft chuckle.
"Dunmer got your tongue Bryn?" Sapphire asked. When she didn’t receive an answer, she chuckled again. "She’s almost as good as you." Licking the foam off his top lip, his eyes fixed on the door that shed apparently exited threw, he responded quietly.
"Unlikely."
He didn’t think of her much over the time after that. He had a guild to support, and Skyrim had enough of it’s own events to help brush the idea of one masked wanderer from his thoughts. Rumors of dragons had been circling for the better part of a year, but a messenger from Whiterun had confirmed that one had been seen, fought and slain. He also brought news of a legend, the Dragonborn. This was apparently the only way said dragon had been defeated in the first place. Riften was seized by something far more local and interesting than dragons in the plains.
Grelod the Kind, who was not the first with a misleading name, had been murdered in her orphanage. The hag was a terror to the orphans she attended, and her death was highly suspicious. Guards entertained themselves by suggesting to anyone they’d seen in the city prior to the death that whoever they were harassing was the potential killer, but other than the gossip no one was sorry to see the old hag go.
When he did see the lady that had been periodically on his mind again, it was on the edge of an exciting week. The skooma suppliers to Riften had been extinguished. While that was thoroughly intriguing in itself, he found his attention arrested by the sight of a figure in leather armor making the rounds of the market with gifts? He saw her approach Brand Shei with a book, Mjoll with a sword that she almost started weeping over. Then they approached Madesi with… was that a mammoth tusk?!
Brynjolf rolled his eyes as he tried to gather interest in whatever he was flogging that day again, while subtly discerning as much as he could about this do-gooder. They carried themselves easily, making little noise in how they moved. Then a horde of orphans passed by and he lost sight of the figure.
Huh. Being able to disappear in plain sight is always a valuable ability for those in his line of work; he attempted to find the figure again, finally spotting them again on their way past him.
"Never done an honest day’s work for all the gold your carrying, eh lass?" He asked, hazarding a guess at the gender of the figure as the armor covered all the usual indicators of gender. They turned to look at him and he noticed the eyes at once, and the deep dark red that looked into his forest green eyes and held them. He knew at once this was the same one as before, still wearing a mask over nose and mouth, but the armor was different. He couldn’t see her hair, and inside the hood it was dark save the eyes.
"You would know this how?" Her voice was soft, and he almost had to lean in to hear her.
"All about sizing up your mark Lass. How they dress, how they move, it’s a dead giveaway, and wealth of any sort is entirely my business. Maybe you’d like a taste?" As his eyes got used to the level of light within her hood, he’d been able to make out the dark skin of a Dunmer, and he noted that her eyebrows were white as snow as they shot up her forehead.
"Maybe I want a taste of more than just wealth." She said slowly, dragging her eyes down his form before slyly returning his gaze.
That look was dangerous, and he felt the blood rush elsewhere as his mouth went dry. He returned the smirk that he was sure was hidden under the mask with one of his own.
"Help me with my errand and it could be arranged." He responded in a low voice. He explained what he wanted, and she left to blend in with the crowd as he turned his flair onto those in the market, causing the distraction that she needed. His flair for the dramatic aside, he couldn’t get that look out of his head. Perhaps something to consider later, but for now he had an audience to wrangle.
It didn’t even take her long to break Madesi’s lockbox under the stall. He wasn’t even finished gathering attention by the time he saw her red hooded figure stride in between the listening crowd. He began his spiel on his Falmerblood Elixer, trying not to think of how her eyes had appraised every part of him. It was interesting to see what it felt like from the other side, as he was quite fond of using that look on potential conquests. His speech barely faltered as he addressed the crowd, but he could feel the weight of her gaze on his skin. It wasn’t until he turned in the direction of Brand-Shei that he saw her in the odd armor leaning against the side of the stall and far away from her mark that he determined she was finished. Finished, and the plan had gone off without a hitch so far.
He let himself hope, and finished his pitch. Shutting it down with enough time to watch the guards come by and demand that Brand-Shei empty his pockets. They found Madesi’s ring, just as they were supposed to. When Brynjolf turned to where he’d last seen the lass, she was gone. He resisted the urge to turn and look, thinking that she’d make herself known soon enough. Once the crowd had wandered back to business as usual, he heard her speak from behind him.
“I was promised payment.” He turned, and let her see the smirk as he handed her a few potions that she pocketed without a word.
“Looks like I picked the right person for the job.”
“You doubted?” he shrugged.
“The way things have been going around here, it’s a relief that there wasn’t a hitch in picking you, or in the plan.”
“Ah, so it’s not me you doubted, it’s your luck.” He raised an eyebrow at her, watching as her eyes sparkled under the hood.
“Cocky aren’t you.”
“Sometimes.” Her manner shifted, and he couldn’t put his finger on how, might have been in the way that her eyes narrowed in the darkness of the hood she wore. “Explain your situation, and the relief.”
“My organization’s been having a run of bad luck, but I suppose that’s just how it goes. Never mind that, you did the job and you did it well. Best of all, there’s more where that came from… if you think you can handle it.” He let the offer hang in the air, watching the figure.
“I can handle it.” He suppressed a smile at that.
“All right then, let’s put that to the test. The group I represent has its home in the Ratway beneath Riften, a tavern called the Ragged Flagon. Get there in one piece and we’ll see if you’ve really got what it takes.”
“See you there.” She strode away from him, and he watched her go. The look she’d given him earlier was still on his mind, but her manner had changed to one of business. He wondered what she looked like under the hood, and why she wore a mask. He’d heard of the assassins of the Dark Brotherhood wearing masks, but he’d never seen that armor before. It looked like something from Hammerfell, or that had been influenced by Hammerfell type styles. Shaking his head, he hurried off to the entrance to the Cistern.
Climbing down the ladder, he felt the atmosphere of the Guild envelop him. The sound of water and arrows that Niruin was punching into training dummies was familiar and soothing. He made his way to his bed and swiftly changed into his armor and out of the damn getup he used to be a stall owner when he was topside. Shaking his shoulders, he felt the leather settle onto his skin and gave a small nod. The soft hums of the intrinsic enchantments bound to the leather were as familiar to him as the ever present running water of the cistern. He headed for the Flagon and ordered a pint from Vekel. Sitting down at the table with Delvin, he took a sip of the mead Vekel had given him and began to tell him about his new prospect.