FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This morning, as every morning, I awoke before sunrise. I got up, dressed in my usual white linen shirt and dark trousers, and reached for my blades. A well-balanced steel dagger that was tucked between the mattress and the bed frame, within reach when I slept. I tucked it into an inconspicuous scabbard attached to my belt behind my back, just above the base of my tail. Several throwing knives, sheathed in a leather belt that I wore over my shirt. I left my two sabers in my chest, as I wouldn't have been able to disguise them easily, and I had no intention of getting into a fight. Then I grabbed a large brown cloak and put it on. I had punched holes in the hood so that my horns would pierce through the fabric, and it covered my face neatly. Satisfied that I wouldn't arouse suspicion, I left my room.

The building was in bad shape, like most of the houses on the waterfront, and my room was no better. Water leaked through the roof when it rained, and I had to regularly empty the chamber pot I'd placed under the leak so it wouldn't overflow and ruin the wooden floor any more than it already had. There was mould on the walls, which seemed to come back no matter how often I scrubbed it off. And for what I was spending on rent, I could have a much bigger and better room within the city walls. But the price wasn't about the room, it was about discretion. The building, like many others in the district, belonged to the Thieves' Guild, a respected organisation, and most importantly, one that knew not to ask questions and not to answer them. I left the house and made my way down to the harbour.

Early morning is my favourite time of day. Drunkards are sleeping off their hangovers, and obnoxious solicitors of all kinds are not yet out. Tavern owners clean the results of their customers' excesses from the white stones of Imperial City before closing their doors. The sea takes on a golden colour with the first rays of the day, and when the weather is calm, mist rises from the water, giving the bay an almost otherworldly appearance. The ships berthed at the docks slowly rock back and forth, their bellies filled to the brim with exotic fruits, textiles, and assorted goods from all over Tamriel. Despite the early hour, the docks were crowded with sailors and merchants, busy loading and unloading ships and counting crates. I bought a few fish from a Bosmer fisherman and sat on a barrel at the corner of a wall, eating them slowly as I watched the busy crowd. A Dunmer approached me, looking angry. Apparently he was supposed to deliver the barrel I was sitting on, and told me to move. I gave him a scowl and showed him my teeth as I slowly chewed on the fish. He left in a hurry without another word. The ship moored at the jetty closest to me was about to leave. It was a large three-masted boat, with a dark brown hull in pristine condition. On the sides of the stern, golden letters proudly proclaimed the name of the ship: 'Masser's Light'. The captain, a distinguished looking Altmer, shouted orders to the shore crew from the quarterdeck. Quickly, the last line holding the ship to the land was brought aboard, and the crew lowered the sails. The ship accelerated slowly, and as soon as it cleared the jetty, it turned south, towards the Niben River and a new adventure from there. I couldn't help but feel a little jealous of this crew. The freedom of the open sea called to me. I considered working on one when I first arrived in Cyrodil, but it was obvious that this life was not for me. I hate travelling by ship, I'm prone to seasickness, I'm uncomfortable in confined spaces, and I don't like being ordered around by arrogant elves puffed up by their own importance, which turns out to be the most common type of ship captain. Besides, I have my own skills that have nothing to do with sailing. Just as I finished the last of the fish, a young boy approached me. He was an Imperial, dressed in rags and too thin for his age. One of the many orphans who roam the streets of the capital.

"Are you a Stands-In-Storms?

-What do you want, child?

-Someone asked me to give you this.

He handed me a sealed note. I broke the wax seal and opened it. There was nothing written on it except a symbol. The imprint of a black hand. I cursed. Holding the note in my left hand, I set it on fire with a small flame that I summoned with my right hand.

"How long have you been searching for me?

-About two hours."

I cursed again. I got up from the barrel and gave the boy a septim. Then I ran towards the city, not looking back to the sea. No rest for the wicked, I suppose. But it is not a good idea to keep the Dark Brotherhood waiting, especially when they are your employer. My name is Stands-In-Storms, and I'm a Shadowscale.

-

Despite my haste, it took me some time to reach the Cliff Racer, a small bar in the Market District. It was a respectable establishment of limited size, sandwiched between an armourer and a bookstore, where most of the merchants of the area gathered at the end of the day to waste their hard-earned profits on alcohol. At the back was a small patio where the owner, an overweight Dunmer, allowed customers to go if they gave him a generous tip. I entered the bar and, without a word, the elf pointed to the door leading to the patio as soon as he saw me. I walked straight towards it without giving him another look. Arnault was sitting at a table in the courtyard. He was positioned with a wall at his back and facing the only entrance, as I knew he would. I noticed that the courtyard was empty, except for him. He smiled when he saw me and waved to the empty chair in front of him, across the table. I approached and sat down. He greeted me, asked me how I was, and acted as if the banalities I answered were of the utmost importance to him. We chatted for a while, only stopping when the tense-looking owner brought us two glasses and a bottle of wine. As the Dunmer poured the liquid, I saw his hand tremble a little. When he finished, he promptly retreated. As frightened as he was, I was sure he would prevent anyone from entering his courtyard until our business was concluded.

Arnault asked me what I had been up to lately. The answer was "not much", as he knew it would be. I lived discreetly, staying away from the social events, festivals and brothels that were the typical pastimes of the citizens of this fine city. And anyway, a Saxhleel is rarely accepted in such places, unless he is obviously wealthy, which I'm far from being. He laughed and told stories of his younger days in the capital, a touch of nostalgia in his voice. His many sweethearts, the lavish banquets, the balls with the aristocracy. It gave him an aura of tenderness, but it was only a cover. Arnault was a Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood, a master assassin. He was an Imperial in his seventies, with a friendly face, bright green eyes and a small, well-groomed beard. Although he had retired from the field some time ago and was showing his age, he was probably still a very dangerous individual. When I first arrived in Imperial City, he was the first member of the Brotherhood to make contact with me. He told me a lot about the city and the useful people to know, most of them in the Thieves' Guild, who in turn taught me about the various tunnels, sewers, and other useful places and escape routes. He has been my handler ever since. He was known in the upper circles of the city as a generous man, and could sometimes be seen handing out coins to crowds of beggars, or donating to local charities. It was all an act to keep up appearances, of course. A man who appears to be kind and compassionate, but who can kill in the blink of an eye, is far more intimidating than any soldier with a sword.

After talking for some time about his love affairs in the noble world, he turned to politics, specifically the situation in Morrowind, where he assured me, with a twinkle in his eye, that he had spent many happy years in his youth. He lamented the events of the Red Year and how this beautiful land and it's people had suffered. This line of conversation was far from innocent, and we both knew it. He was well aware of my troubled past in Morrowind, and the hatred of Dunmers that I had developed as a result. This conversation was designed to make me feel uncomfortable, and he succeeded. It was probably my punishment for keeping him waiting, a subtle threat on his part. Eventually, though, he got down to business.

"I have news for you, Stands.

-I'm listening.

-Today you will earn some money.

-I'm glad to hear that.

-Well, what can I say, I love making people happy. The job is simple. Anonymous client, single target, slightly above standard rate, tonight.

-I'll take it. What is the job?

-Your client is attending a fancy dress party at Senator Corelius' house in the Arboretum district tonight at ten. Beautiful mansion, right in front of the statue of Stendarr. High walls, a few guards... I was there for a ball, some years ago. I don't know your client's identity, but he'll be wearing a mask representing a fox. He'll be alone. You are to strike as soon as he leaves the party. You won't have to wait long, he'll be there for two hours.

-Any special instructions?

-Yes. Blades only.

-No bow?

-No bow. The client was adamant on this point, hence the small bonus on the reward. Besides, I wouldn't trust a one-eyed lizard to hit a target at night".

I had lost my left eye to a wound some years ago. It never affected my accuracy, and Arnault knew that, but I knew better than to question an order from him.

"Fine. Any surprises in store?

-No, just a routine job. You go in, you spot the client, you wait for him to come out and you get to work.

-It will be done."

He refilled our glasses and smiled at me.

"Good."

-

On my way back to my room, I made a detour through the Arboretum district to get a better feel for the area during the day. This was a fashionable part of the city, full of luxurious taverns and extravagant palaces owned by rich merchants and politicians at the Emperor's court. It was early afternoon and the streets were busy. This allowed me to blend in with the crowd and scout out the locations of my future work unnoticed. The building was exactly as Arnault had described it. It was a classic imperial mansion, with high walls of white stone, surrounded by a large fenced garden of clipped green shrubs and flowers of many bright colours. The massive iron portal was guarded by two mean-looking Nords in light leather armour, carrying a spear and a sword. I looked at the statue of Stendarr that stood opposite the portal. It had a massive plinth completely surrounded by thick bushes. I couldn't help but grin at the irony of the situation: it seemed that the God of Justice was working in my favour tonight, as his statue provided me with a perfectly satisfactory hiding place. The road ran right past the statue, just a few metres away. No matter where the target came from, he would be forced to walk right beside me to get to the portal. In the dark, it wouldn't be difficult to sneak out without being seen, I'd just have to come out of the bushes as the target left the mansion, walk up to him and quickly stab him through the heart.

I moved with the crowd again before the guards noticed me snooping around, and did a full tour of the mansion. At the back of the building was a small, narrow passageway that was unguarded and, crucially, had no secondary door. This meant that my client would have to come in and out through the main door, which made my job a lot easier. To top it all off, the location offered a huge choice of escape routes. There was an entrance to the sewers down the road past the statue where I could easily lose any pursuers. And if I couldn't reach it, I could go down the street on the other side, which eventually led to the Arena district, where I would confuse my opponents by leading them through a maze of narrow streets filled with dead ends and dark hiding places. Satisfied with my observations, I left the district and made my way back to my room in the Waterfront district. The further you got from the centre of the Imperial City, the less civilised it looked. The crowds grew thicker and less colourful, and the number of guards dwindled. The houses went from luxurious white marble bricks to cheaper granite halfway up the outer walls, and then to wooden houses when you got to the areas around the gates of the city. As I reached the gate to the Waterfront District, a guard leaning against a wall stepped into my path. He reeked of alcohol and was clearly not too concerned with military discipline. He wasn't shaved, his armour was dirty, and the hilt of his sheathed sword was rusted, which didn't bode well for the rest of the blade. As was the case with the outer city guards these days, this was a street thug who had been given a sword by the authorities and told to "uphold the law", but who was never really told what the law was.

"Where are you going, Lizard?

-To the harbour, sir.

-And what will you do there?

-The same as everyone else, work.

-What do you do?

-Fishing.

-Right. Where is your fishing rod?

-I don't need one, I can swim faster than the fish and breathe under water. I just dive in and catch them with my hands."

He looked at me as if I had just told him I was the Emperor.

"So you are a magician?

-No.

-Then how do you do it?

-I am Argonian."

The blank stare he gave me would have been at home on a cow. I continued matter-of-factly.

"We can breathe under water and we swim extremely fast.

-Sounds like witchcraft to me. I can't have you threatening the good people of this town with your spells."

I knew he couldn't tell, humans being unable to interpret Saxhleel body language, but I was beginning to grow tired of his antics. With a sigh, I reached for my purse and gave him a few coins, something he was far more interested in than the safety of the city's inhabitants. He smiled and stepped aside, bowing and waving theatrically towards the street beyond the door.

"This way, my lord. Enjoy your fishing."

I walked past him without looking back. Had this encounter taken place at night, I would have smashed his teeths in rather than give him a single coin. But in broad daylight, with the crowd around, I'd have to find a way to lure him to a more secluded spot, and it just wasn't worth the effort. I arrived at the house where I had my room. It was at the end of a dark and narrow street. The façade was in desperate need of a new coat of paint, but it was still holding together, somewhat. The ground around the building had shifted a little over the years, causing the walls to shift slightly. As a result, everything inside creaked and the door had to be kicked in to open. Thieves didn't make very good landlords. I entered my room and hung my cloak on a hook on the wall. Then I laid out my weapons on a table, along with a bottle of oil, a cloth and a whetstone. I then set about the task of maintaining my blades. Tonight's job might seem easy, but that didn't mean I wouldn't take it seriously. That meant sharpening my daggers, even though I always kept them in pristine condition. It was more reflex than necessity at this point, a familiar, comforting task that I performed with an almost religious zeal. I unpacked the stone and carefully ran the edge of the blade over it while running a little water over the whole thing, in a precise motion that I had done so many times before that I could have done it blindfolded. I had many blades to do, which gave me plenty of time to think.

It had been several weeks since my last job, and it hadn't paid much. The quality of my contracts had been appalling since I arrived in the city five years ago. They paid poorly and were not very challenging, as the commoners, beggars and small merchants rarely had an army of bodyguards and difficult houses to infiltrate. Every now and then I'd get a low level rising politician or a slightly richer merchant, which was more difficult and required preparation and skill. But more often than not, the only jobs I got were from nobodies who wanted to take out other nobodies. These jobs were quick and easy and could be done by any beggar with a knife, in short, boring. But I had to do them, no matter how trivial. Arnault never spoke of it, but I suspected that the Listener was dead, or that we had lost contact with the other sanctuaries altogether. That would explain why we were only getting our contracts by word of mouth or from people who knew Arnault as a "problem solver". The Imperial City Sanctuary had been discovered and destroyed long before I arrived, and since then it had been considered safer to conduct our business in secret meetings like the one I had with Arnault than to have the entire Brotherhood in one place, or even to meet. That's what Arnault told me when we met, and I knew better than to question him. As a result, I had no idea how many assassins were currently working for the Brotherhood in the Imperial City, let alone Cyrodil. I had mixed feelings about this arrangement. The Brotherhood was supposed to act like a family, as their name suggested. By isolating us in this way, I feared it would destroy any sense of belonging to that family, effectively erasing the Brotherhood's identity. But I suppose it was the price we had to pay to ensure the survival of our organisation.

When I had finished with my blades, I put them back in their sheaths and left them on the table. Then I went to my chest, put my sharpening tools back in and took out a large package that was stored in a cloth bag. I undid the knot that closed the sack, took out my dark leather armour and laid it on my bed. It was the standard Dark Brotherhood armour, except that I had sewn extra slots for throwing knives into the chest. I spent the next few minutes checking it out. The metal buckles were all well adjusted so that they didn't make any noise when I moved around, and the leather was in good condition, showing no signs of cracking or discolouration. I filled the various pockets with my usual workload, consisting of various poisons and their antidotes, a few smoke bombs, potions for health and stamina, and one that would shield me from fire, as that was the most common spell people tended to throw at me. Not that I was planning on getting into a fight, if all went well I would get away undetected, but better safe than sorry. I then filled the empty sheaths on the chest of my armour with my throwing knives. They were well balanced and could be used as daggers if needed. When I was finished, I placed the armour on a chair, ready to be worn.

The sun was still relatively high in the sky when I looked out the window. I undressed, walked over to a basin and mirror I had in a corner of the room, and splashed some water on my face. The cold water felt refreshing on my scales, washing away the dirt and dust of the city. I looked up at the reflection in the mirror before me. The young, carefree Saxhleel from the Tribal Deep Marsh that I once was was long gone. My dark blue scales were covered in scars of various sizes, ranging from small cuts on my forearms caused by various animals while I held them down during a hunt, to a large slash across my chest from a Redguard swordsman who gave me quite a fight, to the brand in the shape of a Dunmeris letter on my right breast. But whatever damage I had suffered on the front, it was all dwarfed by the many flagellation scars that ran on my back. I never counted them, nor did I feel the need to. I remembered receiving them all too well, and I didn't need the exact number to know that the answer was 'too many'. I felt a sudden tiredness, as if a great weight had suddenly fallen on my body and mind. Without drying myself, I made my way to the bed, and after putting my dagger in it's usual hiding place within reach, I lay down on the mattress. It took long minutes to stare at the rotting wooden ceiling, but eventually I fell asleep.