In Riften, Ruby slips into the shadow of the Thieves Guild

  not through the North Gate

  From the North Gate stretched an endless line of carts and travelers, all slowed by the guards’ inspection. Hood pulled low, Ruby watched from the roadside. She had no papers, no coins for the entry tax, and barely enough food. For a heartbeat, she considered slipping into the back of a wagon. The thought died instantly: a guard had just rammed his spear shaft into a hay bale, dragging out a stowaway screaming in pain. The arrest triggered a surge in the crowd that sealed Ruby’s growing panic.

  Her chest tightened. Twenty yards to the next checkpoint. Pressed between backs, elbows, baskets, she felt her breath shorten. She tore herself out of the line, pushing upstream like against a river. Skirted onto the verge. Strided away fast.

  The air south of the walls wasn’t any kinder.

  Lake damp smothered the alleys, thick with the stench of fish, wet wood, rotting vegetation. Shanties thrown up against the walls formed a grimy belt, a weeping scar cinching Riften shut. As she crossed the waterlogged alleys, guard shouts and travelers’ cries still reached her… muffled, threatening, as if the whole city whispered against her. The pressure rose, insidious, almost physical. Ruby quickened her pace, then broke into a run, shoving past people she barely saw.

  Too many people. Too many walls. Too much stone.

  She couldn’t say how long she wandered like that, always twisting deeper, until she stumbled onto a gray, muddy bank. Here, the wall plunged straight into the lake. No dock, no path. Only dark water and bare stone. The only opening led into the sewers. She stared at it, lips tight.

  “Oh no,” she muttered. “Not that.”

  A beggar slumped against a stack of rotten crates called out, voice cracked.

  “Hey, girl! Where you goin’ like that? Lost, huh? Too clean to be hangin’ around here.”

  Ruby didn’t answer. She paced the bank, eyes combing the stone, nose burning from the stench. The beggar kept on muttering, mocking, curious, or maybe just glad for company. Ruby ignored him. For a moment she thought about climbing the wall, but the stone gleamed wet, slick as glass.

  The beggar hiccupped, a sound so out of place it yanked her from her thoughts. For the first time she looked straight at him, then at the wreck of shacks around them. Regret crept in, sharp and heavy. Under her clothes, Markab’s medallion pressed like lead against her throat, its weight growing with the enormity of what she’d walked into.

  The beggar twitched, gesturing weakly at nothing, muttering to himself, or to her. The slum was as miserable as he was. What was she doing in this gutter? His broken motions seemed to point at everything: walls, sky, water… and then, a tree.

  A little further off, a tree. Tall, gaunt, but alive. Its crown bent toward the rampart, one branch stretching out, not quite close enough, but nearly.

  She didn’t hesitate. Climbing was no trouble. Even tired, her body moved with the surety of years spent hunting on treacherous ground. The beggar’s cracked voice rose beneath her, half absurd blessing, half deadly curse.

  Halfway up, she chose the thickest branch, the one angled toward the wall, and stood on it. It sagged in silence beneath her weight. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a guard’s silhouette walking away, back toward the North Gate. Now or never.

  A breath. Then she leapt.

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  Her foot slipped. It wasn’t a leap, it was a fall, momentum broken, arc too low. Her fingers slammed onto the top of the wall in a jolt that knocked the air from her lungs. Her hips hit stone, arms shaking violently. She slid, clawed, scrambled for a hold. Boots scraped moss-slick parapet. A cry tore up her throat but died before leaving her lips.

  Below, the beggar shrieked, spurring her, cursing her, maybe both. Somehow she managed to hook a leg over, wedge her boot into a crack, and heave with torn arms. She rolled onto the walkway, ribs aching, palms raw and bleeding.

  A groan. Down below, the beggar still called to her.

  Footsteps on stone. The guard, drawn by the noise. Ruby pressed against a collapsed stretch of parapet, panting, hidden in shadow.

  The guard stopped above the beggar.

  “Outta here, scum. Want me to run you through?”

  The beggar flailed obscenely, then went quiet. A spit. Footsteps fading.

  Ruby waited a few more seconds, until silence fell thick as a blanket. Eyes closed, she exhaled slow, rough, painful. Then, slowly, she rose.

  She was in Riften.

  Not through the gate. But she was in.

  the docks

  Riften’s docks devoured everything.

  Ruby slipped into them, pressed on all sides by the crosscurrents of voices, crates, arms, and shouts. The piers seemed to vomit Men and Mers in whole clusters, silhouettes dripping with sweat and mist as they rushed from one gangway to the next. Wet planks groaned under boots, ropes snapped in the air, curses cracked like maneuver orders.

  Everything moved too fast. Too hard. As if the slightest pause might break some invisible balance.

  Ruby clutched her pack tight, fists clenched, palms still burning from her fall. Every brush made her flinch. She edged between bodies, watching for any gap, any glance. She felt like nothing more than another obstacle, a grain of sand jammed into a machine running at full tilt.

  The buildings oozed with lake grime. Blackened wood, swollen with damp, peeled away in slabs. The stench of fish, algae, and sweat hung thick, plastered to the skin. Faces passed without stopping. A constant, jagged murmur clung to beams and sails like a rain of ash.

  Ruby felt blurred. Invisible, and too much. Too young. Too alone.

  A man called out as she passed the shadow of a warehouse.

  “Not where you board, kid,” he grunted, without malice. “If that’s what you’re lookin’ for.”

  She froze. Instinct told her to keep walking. Slowly, she turned.

  The man, a foreman, hunched over a soaked ledger on a wobbling table, ink-stained hands, a pipe forgotten at the corner of his mouth. He studied her; no mockery, no kindness either. Just the look of someone too tired to be surprised.

  “I’m looking for work,” she said. “I was told I might find some here.”

  His eyes flicked from her boots to her brow. Chafed hands. A pack too light. A wary stare.

  “Unless you can lift more than you weigh, I got nothin’ here,” he said. “Not for shapes like you.”

  Ruby stiffened, but didn’t look away.

  “I’m looking for a man. Brynjolf.”

  That name. She let it fall like a password. An incantation. The foreman raised a brow but didn’t seem to know it.

  “Brynjolf? Never heard of him.”

  She pressed on, voice low.

  “It’s important.”

  He turned to a dockhand passing by.

  “Hey, Arvid! Brynjolf ring a bell?”

  The man hesitated; a fraction, barely a beat. But Ruby saw it. A flinch. A flicker of fear. Then he shook his head too fast, too firm.

  “No, boss. Never heard the name.”

  The foreman let it pass. He shrugged, weary.

  “Too many names, too many folk passin’ through. If it’s an alias, or someone keeps low, good luck. I ain’t a ledger.”

  The ground shifted under her. Maybe she’d been wrong. She stammered:

  “Sorry… had to try.”

  She stepped away. But his voice caught her.

  “Hey!”

  She turned back.

  “If you don’t find your Brynjolf, come back. I’ll find somethin’ for you. Not glorious, but it pays sometimes in kind. Warm food, a roof. That’s somethin’.”

  She nodded. Silent. Then melted back into the flow.

  She asked again. Once, twice. Some answered with quick shrugs, hurried silences. Others cut their tone short, or turned on their heel without a word. A mute fear seemed to slither behind every look.

  The name “Brynjolf” weighed heavy in the air. And every refusal drove the edge of despair deeper.

  Further on, the shacks thinned. Ruby walked long, until her strength faltered. She leaned against a fence devoured by moss, pulled the last scraps of dried meat from her pack. Chewed without hunger. Her fingers shook through the split leather of her gloves. The ache beneath her ribs had returned, dull and settled.

  She pushed herself up.

  One street. Another. Still nothing. Closed doors. Vanishing voices. Absent eyes.

  Then, a voice.

  “Hey, kid!”

  A laborer, out of breath. He ran toward her.

  He slowed at her side, gave her a quick look, furtive. A warning:

  “That man you’re lookin’ for… Brynjolf?” he murmured. “Try the market. Big one, center square. Always a crowd. He might be there.”

  Before she could answer, he was gone, shoulders low, eyes darting. No one seemed to have seen him. No one paid him any mind.

  Ruby stood still, stunned.

  Too many silences. Too many eyes turned away.

  She clenched her jaw.

  What had she gotten herself into?