As the evening approached the numbers inside seemed to grow and more and more men and women of all races began to finish their shifts or duties of the day and slink into their favourite watering holes. Meals began to be served as the fifth hour tolled across the city from the dozens of chapels and churches across the isle but not for a moment did the City grow quiet. Every hour of every single day life continued. Temples filled for sermons, theatres filled with patrons and held shows, and bloodthirsty roars echoed from the Area District as fights, tournaments, jousts and duels were played out, sometimes resulting with the death of one or more involved. Taverns continued their trade of all hours of the evening and as night fell the darker aspects of entertainment came out to ply their trades. Women of the night, catamites, escorts and dealers of skooma and other narcotics would appear in the gathering shadows and no matter how much effort the Watch went to they would never be able to remove all such individuals and groups.
My thoughts were broken by the portly form of Luther sliding a pair of copper pieces across the surface of the bar with a meaty hand.
“Ere’s your change.” He growled, staring at me for just long enough that I was forced to look at him for a moment.
For the second that our eyes met he frowned and darted his eyes in the direction of the door and not for a second did a single muscle move or his expression change. I hadn’t ordered or paid for a drink in over an hour and knew a message when I saw it, turning my head slightly and looking across to the entrance and seeing the handful of individuals making their way in for the night.
There was nothing about any of them that were of the slightest interest, each no different from the two dozen others that were already frequenting the dining hall and the rest of the boarding house. Mumbling some half-hearted form of response, I dragged the pair of coins over to myself, pocketing them in one of the few pouches that I still had attached to my belt and looking over the new arrivals for any traces of familiarity.
For a second my eyes alighted on the young looking Redguard, skin a dark bronze and looking no different from the dozens of other labourers that filled the city. In a second I recognised him even despite the fact that the last time I had seen him was fully dressed in his Akaviri splint mail armour and drenched in the blood of the Emperor’s assassins. Baurus looked far younger than I thought and as he made his way through the crowded dining room there was no hint of the man that was one of the few chosen to defend the Emperor.
Seemingly at random he seated himself at the bar, dragging up a stool beside me and motioning to Luther and one of the various alcoholic drinks arrayed in casks and barrels along the wall. A handful of coins appeared, and vanished into Luther’s hand before a flagon slid in front of him as though conjured.
Baurus nodded his thanks, taking a mouthful of the potent mixture frothing in his cup and seemed to talk without even moving his lips.
“I’m going to get up in a minute and walk out the back.” He said, his voice travelling no further than my ears as he simply seemed to go about relaxing at the bar. “That guy in the corner wearing the brown shirt and leather boots who came in after I did will follow me. I want you to follow him…”
I swung around on my stool, looking about the room quickly and picking out the man that Baurus had spoken of. The short, grey haired Breton seemed to be intently staring at Baurus with a nervous energy that his attempts to appear relaxed did little to dissipate. To any of those in the room it appeared as though I had simply turned to see where Viconia was and upon gaining her attention motioned to my drink with a silent query of whether she wanted something herself. For a second she looked confused, head tilting slightly, eyes glancing at Baurus at my side before her yellow eyes widened at the realisation. She caught on quickly, shrugging and waving off the question in favour of continuing her dice game against the others surrounding the table where a small pile of gold and silver coins continued to grow on her side.
Turning back around I raised my own flagon and drained a sizable amount of the remainder, before making a show of wiping my chin clear of dregs on the back of my gloved hand. “Ready when you are.” I breathed, placing the mostly empty flagon back on the bar.
Baurus’ voice was a whisper that no one other than me could hear in the room. I still couldn’t see any hint of his lips moving. “Good. Wait for him to follow me. I want to see what he’ll do.”
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He knocked back the rest of his own drink in a single, well-practiced motion, sliding the flagon and its foamy remnants across the bar and standing with all the appearance of needing to relieve himself. There was no trace of the man that I had seen in the catacombs and nothing that revealed that the young Redguard moving away from the bar was a highly trained swordsman and spy. He moved almost clumsily, tripping slightly on a raised stone in the floor before disappearing through a door leading to the Boarding House’s basement.
The Breton moved with almost a comical haste, rising as soon as Baurus had dropped out of sight and almost elbowing his way through the press in the room between him and the door. I watched from the corner of my eye as he moved, waiting for him to walk behind me before pushing my mostly empty flagon across the bar and catching a knowing look in Luther’s eye as I did so.
Viconia too watched our disappearance with hooded eyes, staying at her seat after I gestured to her to wait where she was. I somehow knew that if things got out of hand that she would have my back and in a place where a barroom brawl was almost guaranteed I knew that I could rely on her. Quickly but carefully I made my way to the door they had disappeared through, glancing about to see if anyone had noticed the strange goings-on before slipping through into the darkness of a stairwell.
The smell of musty damp and leaking casks and barrels of alcohol immediately hit me as soon as I crossed the threshold, the several short flights of stairs lit at every corner by a closed oil lantern where they angled away to the left. The cellar of the Boarding house was where the numerous reserves of food and alcohol were kept and where the drainage and pipes from the upper levels connected together as they fed into the sewers and tunnels beneath the city. It was cold and dark and I immediately found myself sensing trouble.
It was less than a dozen metres long but much wider, filled with rows and rows of bottle racks, stacked wine casks, and barrels of salted meats, beers, meads and other various varieties of alcohol. Of Baurus there was no sign, he somehow managing to disappear into the room with greater effectiveness than with a spell of invisibility and this was a fact that the suddenly very anxious Breton was uncomfortably aware of.
I made no sound as I stepped down from the last step and onto the cellar’s stone floor despite wearing more than thirty kilograms of armour and chainmail. My vampiric nature and the fortnight of practice moving and sneaking in my equipment at Cloud Ruler allowed me to almost materialise within the room behind the frantic Breton spy. His head snapped back to face me with an all-too-guilty expression, giving me the uncomfortable image of a deer facing down an onrushing wolf and staring at me in utter shock.
His mouth hung open for a second, realising that he was not only found out but trapped in the cellar with my armoured form between him and escape. For a moment he almost appeared to consider running or attempting to make it past me before his panic truly set in and he began to whisper short sharp syllables that felt like daggers being dragged across my flesh.
Exploding into action at the first sounds I rushed forward the few short paces between us as his daedric armour began to materialise around him with every crawling word. For a second he almost appeared to look triumphant as the familiar snarling mask consumed his face with its otherworldly appearance and an obsidian bladed dagger began to form in his hand. As he choked out the last of the conjuring spell my plated boot lashed out into his chest with a crack of broken ribs and a shattered sternum. He flopped onto his back, spreadeagled and his incantation being brutally cut away mid-breath by shards of bone piercing his lungs. Trying desperately one more time to summon his daedric arms and armour or something even worse he tried to force the words from his throat, concentrating on the magicka even as I caved in his face with my heel.
With his nose jammed through his brain the spell failed, armour fading and dissolving away like all those others Viconia and I had faced. The bloody and ruined form of the would-be assassin was left looking extremely mortal and frail in death.
Baurus appeared from between a pair of shelves containing rows of wine bottles, looking over my handiwork with some distaste at the way I had taken care of his would-be assassin. “Overkill is something you believe in, is it?” he remarked as he saw the ruin of the man’s features.
“I’m fairly certain that if they’re dead, they can’t complain about it.” I replied bitterly. “Besides, I’m not one for playing fair with daedra worshippers.”
“That you are not.” He strode over to me and shook my hand with gratitude. “I am glad to see you but you seem to have a knack of catching me at a bad time.”
“Nothing I can do about that.”
“I know, but you can help me do something about this.” He motioned to the fresh corpse even as he knelt over it and began patting down pockets and sleeves. “I don’t think Luther will appreciate having to clean this up.”
Motioning to the far end of the cellar he began dragging the body by the armpits. “There’s a grate down there that drops down into the sewers. Luther uses it to dispose of any meat that’s gone bad so it’s perfect for getting rid of this fellow.”
Between the two of us we managed to manhandle the corpse and stuff it down the chute into the darkness beneath the city. Rats and other creatures that I didn’t particularly want to think about would not take long in disposing of the body and there would be little evidence of the man’s fate. Even if the corpse was found in the bowels of the Imperial city, it wouldn’t be the only one down there and especially wouldn’t be the first murder of the day.
