Crossfire (A Skyrim Fan Fiction)

Chapter 1: Voice of the Dragonborn

     I rubbed my eyes, trying to scrub the tiredness away with the palms of my hands. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work. Only sleep would help, but I'd rarely had time for that lately. "When did you say that ship was scheduled to dock in Solitude?"

"Next Morndas, or so Gulum-Ei reported."

I could feel Vex's eyes on me and I didn't have to ask to know why she was staring. I rarely forgot even small details concerning the Guild. My inability to remember something this important revealed how exhausted and stressed I really was. "We can't botch this job," I muttered mostly to myself.

"We won't. We have Cynric, Gulum-Ei, and Sapphire on it, not to mention that Glover should dock in Windhelm within the next few days. He can reroute to Solitude if those three need backup."

I knew all these things, but I needed Vex's summation of the facts to actually understand what the they meant. Even then, my exhausted mind was slow to put them together.

"Brynjolf, you need sleep," Vex said firmly and with finality. "I can handle things for eight hours or so." When I opened my mouth to argue, she bodily shoved me in the direction of the Cistern. "You're completely exhausted. I trust you with my life, but you're in no shape to make decisions right now."

She was right. She'd been right much more often than I had lately. Even so, the thought of sleeping while there was so much to do left a sour taste in the back of my throat. She'll probably knock me out if I refuse, I thought wryly, stifling a yawn. "Fine, lass."

I waited until her back was turned before I silently slipped away across the Flagon, following the shadows until I reached the entrance to the Ratway. There was one more thing I needed to do before I could rest. I had a contact to meet- a personal one, a man who owed me a favor, not the Guild. Ra'bassa would only stay in Riften until morning and he would only speak to me.

The filthy, dark, and rancid hallways, sewers, and occasional natural stone that made up the Ratways were the Thieves' Guild best deterrents to casual bandits and any other force that might wish the Guild ill. The dark, forbidding hallways hid many dangers that had claimed the lives of many, but I was so familiar with their twists and turns that I passed by the bandits, lone thieves, and even the skeevers without being detected. It comforted me that even in my current state, I could easily sneak past even the keen senses of animals.

Of course, it would have been far easier to take the hidden entrance through the Riften graveyard, but we rarely used that nowadays. It would be all too easy for some unseen Dark Brotherhood assassin to follow one of us and find the entrance, so this roundabout method had become necessary.

I didn't mind. Many people in Riften- well, all of Skyrim- referred to us as rats, filthy vermin that preyed off others. I took that as a compliment. Rats were smart, crafty, hard to catch. Just like rats, we were feared because no one knew when or where we would appear. Dark spaces like the Ratway didn't bother rats, so why should they bother us? We thrived in the dark.

Except now with the ongoing war between the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood, we were not the only ones who lurked in the shadows. The darkness was no longer as friendly as it had once been.

I emerged from the darkness of the Ratway into a new shade of black induced by the long past setting of the sun. Inhaling a deep breath, I left the familiar smell of fish and wet wood fill my senses. Many called the smell unpleasant and I wouldn't deny that I had felt the same occasionally, but right now Riften smelled like a freshly cooked meal from the Bee and Barb compared to the Ratway.