In Windhelm, reports pile up faster than the solutions.

  “Three incidents at the southern gates. Two injured in the mines. Patrols to be reorganized. And new victims of the ‘Butcher.’”

  Glancing over the parchment in his hands, Thraìn had listed the most urgent matters before Markab had even sat down. With a sweep of her hand, she pushed aside the few parchments cluttering her seat and took the new stack her captain held out to her. The two men settled around the table.

  “Let’s start with the mines.”

  The storm was finally beginning to growl. The earlier gusts had given way to long roars whistling through the windows. The hour was late, uncertain. Problems followed one another as if they had waited for her return to pile up, and the carafe of wine set between them was already beginning to empty. Markab rubbed her forehead.

  The incidents and the mining accident fell more under Jorleif’s authority than that of the Windhelm guard. Thraìn dropped the report onto a pile meant for the steward and picked up another parchment, unrolling it with a restrained sigh.

  For a moment, Markab wondered once again at what exact point she had traded her freedom and wandering for parchments and guard patrols. Her gaze lingered on the trembling flame of the candle. And as every time before, the answer came to her just as swiftly.

  “Three new victims of the Butcher,” Thraìn announced without looking up from his report. “The last one dates from yesterday night… or perhaps this morning.”

  Markab straightened slightly. Her chin left the fist that had been supporting it.

  Barely ten days earlier, the one the taverns had named the Butcher had left behind only a single victim. The crime had been atrocious; the body displayed in a street corner like refuse thrown away.

  “Three? In a week?” she rasped.

  Thraìn nodded grimly.

  Despite the neutral expression he tried to maintain, Markab could sense the anger and frustration twisting in his gut. The first victim and the two that followed had come from the Gray Quarter. The last belonged to a Nord merchant family.

  The city would not take long to explode.

  Markab sighed. As if a rebellion, a dragon, and the Thalmor were not already enough, she muttered inwardly.

  “The anger is rising…”

  “The anger is rising everywhere,” Markab cut in sharply. “They’re nothing special.”

  She ran a weary hand over her face.

  “I suppose we’re being blamed for the lack of patrols in the district?”

  “Exactly.”

  “The number of patrols has been adjusted across the whole city. They should open their eyes,” she muttered. “We can’t do more with nothing.”

  Thraìn pressed his lips together, thought for a moment, then turned slightly toward Vagn, whose quill scratched methodically over the parchment before him.

  Feeling the gaze, Vagn looked up and met his captain’s eyes. He nodded silently. Thraìn then returned his attention to Markab.

  “After the storm, we could reduce the size of the patrols while increasing their number,” he suggested. “Two guards instead of three or four. We would cover more ground… and it would give the impression our presence has been reinforced.”

  Markab considered the proposal for a moment, her gaze lost in the dark wine of her cup. Then she nodded.

  “Make sure it’s in effect as soon as the storm dies down.”

  Vagn, silent until then, straightened and handed Markab a carefully folded parchment.

  “This comes from me,” he explained. “I spoke with the priestess of Arkay today. Each time, the heart is missing.”

  A heavy silence settled in the room. Only the storm’s whistles against the walls disturbed it.

  “A werewolf?” Thraìn asked, torn between horror and disbelief.

  Markab unfolded the parchment.

  “No.”

  The answer came immediately.

  Despite his commander’s certainty, Thraìn drew no comfort from it. A werewolf would have been easier to hunt than a man capable of blending among the city’s inhabitants.

  “If a beast like that were roaming the city, there would be more damage,” Markab continued as she scanned the notes. “And the victims would be random.”

  “It looks like a ritual,” Vagn added.

  Markab reread the lines quickly before setting the parchment back on the table.

  “Which means he will strike again,” Vagn concluded, almost resigned. “Soon.”

  Markab rubbed her forehead, her gaze drifting over the lieutenant’s notes. Messy, crossed out… but precise and relevant. As always.

  Excellent work.

  And yet Vagn never seemed to take the slightest satisfaction from it. Brow furrowed, jaw tight, he looked as though he alone carried the responsibility for the murders.

  “Speak to Wuunferth about it,” she suggested. “He might recognize a signature or a pattern we’re missing. He’s a mage. Rituals are his business.”

  Vagn nodded soberly.

  “I have the impression he is growing mould in his laboratory,” she added, more to herself.

  She set the notes aside and picked up the carafe to fill two cups, then handed one to her captain. Thraìn and Vagn exchanged a brief glance. The lieutenant spoke first, as if to deliver the final blow to the meeting.

  “According to Greela, there was an argument near the docks early this morning. A merchant captain is refusing to pay his protection tax.”

  “The Guild?”

  Vagn’s silence was eloquent.

  “This will escalate,” Thraìn breathed.

  The Master of the Thieves Guild was not the sort to let anything slip by. Least of all a tax. And his way of punishing defiance had never been subtle. Fires, drownings, open intimidation. The sort of repression that made noise, that left marks and wounded behind.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  So much for the Guild’s long-standing policy of keeping its hands clean.

  Until now, she and Thraìn had managed to stall, to cover, to calm things down. To maintain the illusion that everything was under control. If a sailor wanted to play both sides with the Guild, that was his problem.

  But they were always the ones left to pick up the pieces.

  “Greela?” Thraìn asked.

  “Yes,” Vagn confirmed. “He’s the one who passed the information to me. He saw it happen.”

  Markab rose, crossed the room to a low cabinet, rummaged briefly, and pulled out a small purse which she tossed to the lieutenant.

  “Thank him. And have him keep watching… discreetly.”

  He nodded silently. His part done, Vagn saluted them and left the study, swift and fluid. He knew when to withdraw. What would be said next was no longer his concern.

  When his footsteps had faded down the corridor, Thraìn finally spoke.

  “How long are we going to let him get away with it?”

  His tone was low, but heavy. He hated this situation. Had it been his choice, he would have purged the city himself of every trace of the Guild.

  “Until he missteps,” Markab answered simply.

  Thraìn ground his teeth.

  “I know you keep the Guild relatively safe… in memory of Gallus, but-”

  The sideways glance she gave him cut him off at once. Sharp. Cold. Heavy. You’re overstepping.

  He swallowed and fell silent, retreating at once. With Markab, the Guild was slippery ground one stepped onto only when certain of one’s footing. She released the tension with a breath and softened her voice slightly.

  “It has nothing to do with that. The Guild is an underground actor of power in Skyrim. If you bring it down without a net, you allow Black-Briar to take the reins.”

  She paused. As things stood, Maven Black-Briar already held Riften in a firm grip.

  “And with her, Riften collapses into Thalmor hands. Cyrodiil lies open from the north… and the Thalmor need only walk in as if entering a tavern,” Markab concluded, swirling her cup for emphasis.

  Thraìn sighed. He had nothing to answer. She was right, as often. But he didn’t have to like it. He still had trouble believing that a city as sordid as Riften could weigh in the balance of the kingdom. Dead weight… yet very real.

  “Let’s hope the misstep doesn’t claim victims.”

  Markab did not reply.

  The situation with Mercer left her both bitter and furious.

  There had been a time when she appreciated his impulsive, provocative ambition. Qualities he wielded with a certain flair, enough to disguise what they truly concealed: bottomless greed, a muted violence.

  In those days, under the light of a flourishing and clever Guild, Markab had even found him entertaining.

  Then Gallus died, and Mercer changed.

  The responsibility of Master had locked him into a quiet, methodical, cruel paranoia. Their friendship had slowly sunk into a one-sided hatred she refused to mirror.

  For years she had convinced herself that the loss of a mentor like Gallus had shattered a fragile balance. That a man like Mercer, with no one left to contain him, could only drift.

  And now the Guild was paying the price. As were the few friends she still had within it.

  Markab poured the rest of the carafe into her captain’s cup.

  The fatigue accumulated during that week of wandering in search of survivors was turning into a heavy weariness. She had no desire to fetch another carafe several floors below.

  So be it.

  Silence settled once more, and the mournful howls of the storm filled the space like a ghost scratching against stone. It came at the worst possible moment. Their soldiers were still scattered, Shor knew where, and beyond the borders of Eastmarch the rest of Skyrim was already stirring again.

  Especially the Enemy.

  Markab had let her gaze drift into the warm reflections of candlelight on the wine’s surface when Thraìn spoke again, unable to bear the whistling wind any longer.

  “I received a report from the scouts,” he said. His tone had suddenly turned very dark.

  Markab stiffened slightly, the reflections in the wine rippling. Clearly her captain had kept one last piece of news to end this crisis meeting.

  “Justiciars purged a sanctuary near Falkreath… there are no survivors.”

  Her fingers tightened around the cup. She knew the place. A small altar carved into the cliff, hidden within the forest. A peaceful and discreet retreat, now drowned in blood.

  “They’re not even bothering with subtlety anymore,” Markab growled.

  “They have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

  And Skyrim, bound hand and foot, could not strike back without breaking the treaty and provoking open war. The desire to do so was hardly lacking.

  The adrenaline, fear, and frustration had finally faded, leaving behind the dull anxiety that had been gnawing at her for months.

  Markab ran a hand over her face.

  Since Helgen, one thought had haunted her. It slipped into her mind whenever calm returned, like an invisible cut. The doubt never left her.

  Something there had not been coincidence.

  The trap set by the Legion returned to her again and again. Swift. Flawless. The Legion had struck with almost surgical precision, as if it had anticipated every breath. An efficiency that had not been its signature in decades.

  Markab had tried to push the intuition aside, to focus on the present. Yet the more she returned to it, the sharper the outline of the event became. Two Jarls meeting near an abandoned Imperial fort was no accident. It had not been a strategic error. It had been a trap.

  And if there had been a trap, then there had been betrayal. A leak.

  With Thraìn, they had reviewed all their networks: spies in Solitude, contacts within the Legion, civilian informants scattered across Skyrim. No one had said a word. The silence had been total. Suffocating. Inexplicable.

  That silence spoke louder to her than many confessions.

  It was not merely failure. There were strange absences in the reports. As if certain areas of information had erased themselves in the shadows without a sound. She had no names, no proof. Only the feeling that a fracture was widening beneath their feet.

  Meanwhile, as Skyrim tore itself apart in internal struggles over whether to remain under a faltering Imperial authority, the Thalmor did not even need to invade.

  They merely had to wait, and let the cracks open on their own. The first fissures were already appearing.

  One last informant remained for Markab to question, but she would do it face to face. She refused to believe in his betrayal. Yet she refused equally to believe he could have been deceived so easily.

  She tried to drink. The cup was empty. She frowned slightly.

  Thraìn had risen. Standing with arms crossed, he studied the great wall map. His gaze traced invisible lines, as though he were trying to make a pattern appear that still escaped him.

  “And after all this… what will we do about the Thalmor?” he asked.

  The old question.

  The thorniest one. The one that had fueled every argument at the Palace when the rebellion had taken hold. Some wanted open war, two enemies at once. Others believed the chain that bound them had to be broken first, then the fist that choked them.

  But in truth they all knew. They could no longer rely on the Empire. A decrepit giant, unsteady, weakened. Subjugated. Collapsing beneath fur and compromises.

  And yet Thraìn still looked to her as though she carried the answers. That night, she had none.

  Markab remained silent for a moment, then finally said without humor:

  “Let’s hope a dragon burns the embassy.”

  It was, quite literally, the only plausible solution that came to her mind. To attack openly? Suicide. The Thalmor were ready and would welcome it. To act in the shadows? The Thalmor were the shadows. They would be crushed before the idea even been breathed.

  Dragons… yet another problem.

  A problem arriving at the worst possible moment. Soon they would have to protect the population from dragons as well as Justiciars, while struggling to tear themselves free from the Empire’s pitiful governance.

  Too few men for too many fronts.

  The storm’s howling gradually spread, seeping through the stone walls, settling into the corners like ancient dust.

  Thraìn eventually left with a final nod, respectful but weary. The corridor quickly swallowed the sound of his footsteps.

  Markab remained alone. The empty cup beside an unsigned report. The wood of the table had left red marks on her forearms. She studied them without moving, then slowly leaned back, her mind heavy.

  The lamp to her left flickered, the oil nearly spent.

  She glanced toward the chaise in the corner. How many days had it been since she had slept? The temptation was strong. But… no, not yet. Just a few minutes…

  She picked up one parchment, then another. Scribbled two annotations without really thinking. Her handwriting wavered slightly. The lines faded from her memory even as she wrote them.

  A heavy, subterranean fatigue settled into her neck.

  The room seemed to hold its breath. When her eyelids finally fell, there was no resistance. No dreams, no memories. Only a dense absence and time flowing slowly onward.

  Against the windows, the blizzard began its first violent gusts.

  The candle flames wavered.