XIV - Mistveil Keep

As time stretched on, Merill found herself feeling almost at home in the seedy underbelly of Riften. She grew to know all the thieves in the Cistern, friendly with most of them, and spent much of her time in the flagon or out on odd jobs. There was still a wall between her and everyone she spoke to, a wall she imagined she would never be able to breach, but she could at least offer a smile and a joke or share a drink with most of them. Nalimir was well-liked in the Guild, and by association, most of the thieves went out of their way to make Merill feel welcome. Vex only spoke to her to insult her and occasionally pick a fight, so most of the tasks she received were from Delvin Mallory.

As Nalimir and Etienne had worked together since Nalimir joined the Guild, Merill was assigned Brynjolf as a partner for jobs that required two, something which caused her great annoyance at first. She and Nalimir worked best together, and she didn’t trust Brynjolf any more than she trusted Vex. Mercer wouldn’t hear her complaints, however, so Merill grudgingly went along, finding, after the first few jobs when Brynjolf failed to turn her in to the Thalmor or leave her behind for more loot, that she could let her guard down with him, if only a fraction of what she did with Nalimir.

For some jobs, she would be the one to hide in the rafters and watch for guards that she could swiftly end with an arrow through the eye if need be; for others, she’d be the one on the ground, hiding behind crates and walls to unclick the tumblers of a safe and sweep it free before slipping out and heading to the local tavern with whoever her partner that day was. She had forgotten how much she loved the thrill of thievery, the lurking in wait for an opening to dash in, get what was needed, and clear out. She’d only what she needed to survive in Markarth, but in the guild she got better, and the others in the Cistern knew it. With every drink she had in the Ragged Flagon, she could feel Vex’s hate-filled eyes on her.

After a time, Merill began to grow used to Brynjolf’s friendly manner, and soon it was not near as much of an annoyance to her. He didn’t ask about her past life, and she, in turn, did not ask about his. They worked well together (if not as well as she worked with Nalimir), Merill skilled at climbing up to scope an area from above while Brynjolf did the footwork.

Riften wasn’t as craggy and old as the ruins that housed Markarth, but it was still full of dark corners and algae-coated walls to climb. On nights when there were no jobs to be done, she and Nalimir would climb the walls and perch high above the city, sharing a stolen bottle of mead and watching people wandering through the streets below. One of her ventures on an evening Nalimir was out on a job led her along the walls led her to Mistveil Keep, the home of Riften’s Jarl, Laila Law-Giver. The Jarl had a formidable reputation for having no patience for the Guild, but with Maven standing behind the thieves, there was little she could do to stop them. Mistveil, though, looked to be brimming with wealth that the rest of Riften lacked. Merill noticed it during a clear night, sitting up in the dark towers among the broken stones and, when she did, carefully climbed along the walls to peer in a window. Her suspicions were correct – Mistveil Keep was rich with all manner of finery, and Merill could only imagine how much it would all be worth.

“What’s our policy on the Jarl?” she asked Brynjolf a day later, when they’d returned from a job and sat at the bar in the Flagon, splitting the earnings Tonilia had counted out for them. He glanced up at her, pausing before sliding her share of coin across the bar.

“Laila Law-Giver doesn’t like us,” he said then. “She’s convinced that we aren’t a really presence. It’s just more convenient for her to ignore us.”

“And?” Merill pressed.

“And we don’t deal with her. Ignoring the Thieves Guild means that she doesn’t send her guards down here to smoke us out.”

“I wouldn’t deal with it, girl,” Vekel told her, leaning over the bar to top off her tankard. “Messing with a Jarl, that’s business we don’t want.”

“You sure about that?” Merill shot back, looking back and forth at Brynjolf and Vekel’s skeptical faces. “Hear me out,” she tried as Brynjolf shook his head and went to sliding his share of their pay into his bag. “If we show her that we exist, clear out her keep, she’ll be pissed, right? So she’ll come after us, and we’ll trap her men all down the Ratway. We know it better than they do – we can make sure they don’t get far, team up with Maven’s sellswords if we have to. When she realises she can’t win, we can put Maven in power. Law-Giver will still be the Jarl, but then Maven will really have all of Riften under her finger. Which means we will, too.”

“I don’t –” Nalimir started from beside her, and Merill realised the entire bar had grown quiet and was listening.

“Hang on,” Tonilia intercepted swiftly, joining them at the bar. “The girl’s got a point. Word would spread, and other cities would start realising how much power we have.” A crooked smile graced the Redguard’s face. “This might be our ticket out of this hole we’re in.”

“Mercer would never go for it,” Vex snapped from where she sat atop a stack of crates, digging dirt out from under her nails with an old dagger. “It’s too ambitious, too easy for us to fail.”

“Then we won’t fail,” Merill insisted. “And we won’t tell Mercer.”

“That’s a bad idea, Mer,” Nalimir murmured. “If something goes wrong and he finds out, he’ll have your throat slit in your sleep.”

“I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong,” she shot back. “I’ll clear Mistveil myself, if you lot are too scared of Mercer. Then we can take Law-Giver down from there.”

“I’ll go too,” Brynjolf said suddenly from his stool. Merill glanced over at him and their eyes locked. “We work well together, lass, and a place like Mistveil – you’ll want someone watching your back.”

“Hang on –” Nalimir started.

“I guess if anyone can get in and out of Mistveil it’s you two,” Vekel remarked from behind the bar, and the murmur of agreement was quickly broken by the loud thwack of Vex driving her dagger into the wood of one of the crates. Her eyes shone with irritation as the other thieves turned to her.

“Have you all lost your minds?” she snarled, jumping down from the crates. “You pull a stunt like this and Mercer finds out, he’ll put daggers in all your backs.”

“Vex has a point,” Nalimir added, and she looked smug.

“You think he’s going to slaughter half of his sorry guild?” Dirge snapped, and Vex fixed her withering gaze on him.

“I think he’ll do what he has to,” she responded shortly. “I don’t see why this bitch proposes a plan and it’s suddenly a great idea,” she went on, glaring darkly at Merill.

“Gods, come off it, Vex,” Tonilia interjected. “You’re just sore because you didn’t think of it first.”

“Shut your whore mouth –” Vex jerked across the bar toward Tonilia and Brynjolf leapt forward, shoving her back.

“What the hell is this?” Vex pushed away from Brynjolf as Mercer appeared in the doorway, a cloth sack over his shoulder and his face darkened by the dim light. For one tense moment, everyone stared at Vex, holding their breath. She glared around at them, her pale hair mussed and her furious eyes glimmering in the dark, then spat on the ground and jerked her dagger out of the crates.

“Fuck off,” she snarled at them, sheathing the dagger and shoving past them into the Cistern.

“Just Vex being Vex,” Delvin told Mercer, and he glared at them all a moment before crossing into the Cistern after her.

“You two should get going as soon as it gets dark,” Tonilia told them quietly as Mercer slammed the cupboard door. “He’s already suspicious.”

“Right,” Merill said, shouldering her bow as Vekel handed Brynjolf a few loot bags from under the bar. “We’ll be back before sunrise.”

“Mer,” Nalimir muttered, catching her arm as she buckled her quiver around her hips. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I’ve gotten this far and been fine, yeah?” she told him, pulling her arm free. “Come on, Nali, give me a chance.”

“It’s not about giving you a chance,” he tried again. “Mer, this is dangerous. This is really, really dangerous.”

“You’ve been saying that to me my whole life,” she shot back, her temper prickling. “I know you’re older and I know you’ve been here longer, but just let me try, all right?” Nalimir looked as if he wanted to say more, but he kept his mouth shut in a thin line as Merill and Brynjolf shouldered the loot bags and ducked through out into the city.

Riften tended to come to life at night, the streets busy with drunks stumbling from bar to bar and seedy castoffs of the guild darting along alleys. Luckily, though, none of them seemed to know how to climb, so Merill and Brynjolf were unhindered as they snuck into someone’s back garden and scaled their house to get up to the half-ruined battlements.

“Have you scouted this place out?” he asked her in a murmur as they crept along the aged walls and around cold torch sconces.

“More or less,” Merill replied, steadying herself on an old flag-post. She jumped over a gap in the wall, her gloved hands grabbing onto an outcropping and her feet coming up to steady her as she climbed up. “Coming?” she called back to Brynjolf, who gave her an annoyed grimace before making the jump. His hand slipped on the outcropping and Merill grabbed his wrist, pulling him up before he fell into the street below.

“And to think, I wanted to go in through the cellar,” he breathed. From there, it was only a short way to the Jarl’s balcony, where they’d decided they would start and work their way down. Merill went first, jumping across and throwing over a rope for Brynjolf. She picked the lock on the door easily and they crept inside. The room, to Merill’s surprise, was completely empty – the lanterns dark and the bed neatly made.

“It’s nearly midnight,” she remarked in a whisper as Brynjolf closed the door. “You’d think she’d be in here.”

“It makes our job easier that she’s not,” he murmured back, going to pick the lock on a display case under the window. “You get the vanity.” They hastily cleared out the Jarl’s room, and from there moved out into the hall, where there was a curious lack of guards. There were only a few present as Merill and Brynjolf moved through Mistveil, looting all the upper rooms of valuables, and those that were there were easy to sneak past or indispose.

“Think we’ve got enough?” Brynjolf asked after they had cleared out a seemingly pointless room whose shelves were lined with precious stones.

“Aye, but…” Merill drifted off, peering through the crack in the door. “I want to know why there’s no-one up here.”

“Why?” Brynjolf insisted. “We’ve gotten enough to prove a point, I thought that’s all we needed.”

“I don’t like this,” Merill told him, pushing back the hall door. “There’s something else going on here and I want to know what it is.” Brynjolf sighed, hoisting his loot back over his shoulder.

“Let’s make it quick, then, lass,” he said, following her out into the dim hallway. Merill led the way down the empty hallways, her eyes scanning the cracked doors they passed for any sign of life – but the keep seemed to now be completely empty. Where the hell is everyone?

After a few moments, they came to the main reception hall of the keep, a tall-ceilinged timber space with a grand oaken throne overlooking a square fire-pit, surrounded by tables that had been wiped clean – in fact, everything in the room ad been wiped clean. There wasn’t a stray quill or dagger anywhere to be seen. Even the tapestries were gone from the walls.

“Okay,” Brynjolf murmured as Merill went to the fire-pit and examined the cold embers. “I’ll admit, this is a bit strange. Normally this place is bustling, even in the middle of the night.” Merill crossed to one of the smaller storage rooms off the hall, peering in at the dark crates. She pulled a dimly-flickering lantern off the wall and went into the room, staring around – she had enough experience sneaking around Markarth to know that these old keeps and strongholds were riddled with hidden passageways. Sure enough, it didn’t take her long to find a trapdoor concealed under a dusty sack of turnips.

Merill set the lantern down, reaching for the trapdoor’s handle, and was about to yank it open with something else caught her eye – a minute thread of twine was rigged on the trapdoor, set to snap as soon as it was opened. She carefully shuffled back, her eyes following the line of thread up to the ceiling, where it went out into the main hall. Merill stepped out from the storage room, following the thread along the walls, her heart drumming faster in her chest.

“What are…?” Brynjolf started, trailing off as she circled the room.

“It’s trapped,” she said aloud, following the thread past the main doors in the keep. “Every exit.” The thread turned sharply upward, and she looked up at the ceiling and realised it was strung up with clay pots, the same kind she’d seen in Nordic barrows, designed to shatter with the first thing they hit. She glanced down at Brynjolf and saw that he had realised it at the same time as her.

“Someone’s tipped them off,” he murmured. “They know we’re here.”

“Hold this,” Merill said sharply, thrusting her loot bag at him. “I’m going to climb up and have a look.”

“Or we could just go before whatever’s in those pots crashes down on us!” he protested as Merill vaulted up on the empty sideboard and started pulling herself up the stone-and-timber walls.

“I want to know who told them we were coming,” Merill replied darkly, though she was fairly certain she already knew. There was a sudden crash from somewhere in the upper floors of the keep, and she froze in the rafters, her eyes wide.

“Merill!” Brynjolf hissed from the floor. “Let’s go!”

“Get out of sight!” she whispered back, climbing up onto a rafter and balancing there, just below the pots. Brynjolf darted into one of the storage rooms just as the door they’d come through was yanked open, Riften guards pouring in. Shit.

“I didn’t hear the trigger,” one of them was saying loudly. “They ain’t here yet.”

“The entire upper floor was empty, you idiot!” another snapped back. “They’re here!” Merill glanced up at the pots, hanging ominously on fraying rope.

“You think maybe they tripped the alarm?” one of the guards suggested as Merill began to climb up to the ceiling again, her movements slow and measured.

“Nah, she told us it would be impossible. Said nobody’s ever tripped her alarms.” Clutching onto a support of the vaulted ceiling, Merill leaned over to the nearest pot, trying to slow her anxious breathing. She carefully studied the ropes that held it in place, trying to discern the tangle along the ceiling.

“Search the hall,” the second guard commanded, and the others began to spread out. “They’re in here somewhere.” Merill glanced down and realised one of the guards was heading straight for the storage room where Brynjolf was hidden. She looked back up at the unidentifiable pots, then yanked her dagger out from her belt, let out a sharp breath, and cut the trip wire that ran along the ceiling.

Merill clung to the support as the ropes all snapped at once and the pots hurtled down, crashing and shattering on the floor below. She looked down and realised, to her horror, that a sickly greenish-gas was emanating from the pots, filling the space. The guards shouted in alarm and ran for the exit, but it seemed the trip wire had also barred the doors that led out from the chamber. Merill stared around frantically – at the very top of the ceiling, there was a small flat space where there was a closable vent for letting out wood smoke. She glanced down again, where the guards were struggling to breathe as they hammered on the doors.

“Brynjolf!” she shouted, and he burst forth from the storage room below, holding a scrap of burlap over his mouth. The guards by the door were on the ground now, a few of them clawing over each other to try to feebly rap on the door, but more of them huddled on the ground, completely still. Merill seized the rope she’d cut and strung it around a rafter, throwing it down. Brynjolf seized the end of the rope and she curled her legs firmly around the support, praying it would hold her as she used both hands to yank the rope up.

The gas was nearing the rafters as Brynjolf managed to scramble up the supports near her, releasing the rope. She jerked her head toward the vent and began to shimmy up the support, flinching every time it groaned under her weight. A sour smell reached her nose and she coughed, unable to free a hand to cover her face. Merill hastily kicked open the vent and pulled herself out, gasping in the crisp, clear night air. She stumbled slightly on the tiles, her vision tilting, and looked down again just in time to see the support splinter under Brynjolf’s weight.

Merill ducked down and managed to seize his arm just before he plummeted back into the gas-filled hall. He let out a groan of agony and Merill heard something pop, but she dragged him out all the same, pulling him up onto the roof. The sudden shift in weight made her slip, and then they were tumbling down the side of the keep, the roof tiles grating cruelly on their sides. They reached the end of the roof and for a moment fell freely before hitting icy water.

She struggled for a moment, trying to get her bearings, then gasped as she broke the surface, staring around – they’d fallen off the northern end of the keep, the side that faced Lake Honrich, and were now just north of the city. Merill saw Brynjolf a short way away, wading up onto a small island, and hurriedly swam through to join him.

“You okay?” she breathed as he spat out a mouthful of lake water.

“You pulled out my goddamn arm,” he snapped back, his voice hoarse.

“Here,” she replied, and before he cold protest, she seized his shoulder and pushed it, hard, back into place. Brynjolf let out another stifled moan and glared at her through narrowed eyes.

“You almost got us killed,” he breathed.

“But we’re fine,” she shot back.

“We lost all the loot and now the Jarl’s going to make us pay,” he snarled.

“Shouldn’t we be more concerned about the fact that someone in the Guild helped them rig those pots?” Merill hissed.

“Vex,” Brynjolf replied at once. “I’ve seen her rig traps like that a thousand times.”

“I swear to every fucking god there is I’ll wring that bitch’s neck,” Merill growled, jumping to her feet and angrily storming across the island.

“You won’t,” Brynjolf shot back. “Because then Mercer will know about this and you’ll get thrown out.”

“You think we should just let her get away with almost gassing us?” Merill replied incredulously, turning sharply to face him as he grudgingly got to his feet.

“Aye.” Merill’s eyes narrowed accusingly. “You two have been at each other’s throats since you joined, lass,” he told her. “And you said it yourself, we just about got killed because of it. Give it a damn rest.” For a brief moment, they just stared at one another, Merill’s heart pounding in her chest.

“I didn’t think you’d give up so easily,” she said finally, and Brynjolf sighed heavily.

“Let’s just go,” he murmured. “I could do with a drink.”

They returned to the Flagon, Merill still fuming. When they entered and found nearly half the Guild waiting, Merill took one look at Vex’s smug face and flew across the bar, a strangled yell bursting from her throat. Brynjolf seized her around the middle, pulling her back as Vex smirked at her.

“I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” she said, pushing off the crates she was leaning on and going over to stand before them. She looked them up and down, taking in their haggard, sopping appearances and locking eyes with Merill. “Something go wrong, toad?” she asked in a falsely sweet voice.

“You know full well what went wrong,” Merill snarled, lunging at her again, but Brynjolf held her back. “Let go of me!” she hissed, shoving him away. She fixed Vex with one more cold glare before turning sharply and heading back into the Cistern, her face hot as she felt the eyes of the other thieves on her, Nalimir’s gaze burning on the back of her head.