For someone as well known-of as she, very little is known about her. The first time I saw her walking through the streets of Cheydinhal I wasn't impressed. She was slight, even for a Bosmer, with eyes so large they made her look far younger than she really was, and hair too short to be feminine. In her leathers, she looked just like any other wood elf stuck in a city. Out of place, awkward, and about two seconds from vaulting the city wall and fleeing into the gloom of the forests and the ruins. I found out later she had just been set loose from the Imperial Prison by the escaping late Emperor. No one seems to remember what she'd been arrested for, and as far as I know she never tells those who ask. Most Bosmers would have grabbed their bow and gone straight back to thieving, but she decided to run off and save Kvatch from the first Oblivion gate instead. I learned of her deeds through tavern gossip long before I saw her again and made the connection between the silk-clad warrior in front of me and the thief I had seen mere months before.
Caleigh is what she tells everyone to call her, but I have a feeling that is no more her name than Lucien Lachance is truly mine. At first I thought she might be a reformed murderer, but none of the signs are there. We've had members of the Brotherhood try to stop and lead a normal life, but they are rarely successful, even if we do let them live. The call to spill blood is too strong for our kind. But despite that, she's also not what common society would call “good,” even though much of what she has done is truly great. People say she has closed Oblivion gates outside of every town and city in the land, but I myself have seen her robbing people blind in the wee hours of the morning when the city was sleeping, safe in the knowledge that the Hero of Kvatch had come through once more. And while I know the Nine are weak, forgiving, the ease of her pilgrimage to become one of their Knights suggested to me that she had never taken a innocent life. In the end I decided that she was not, had never been, a killer. She was merely a wild one, an opportunist. But even then I could see that if something could bring her to our way of life she would be a tribute to the Night Mother herself. And so I waited in the shadows and kept listening at the inns so that when she was in town, I would be there to watch her and guide her if she were to fall from grace.
It didn't surprise me to hear that she was such an indispensable friend to Martin Septim, our short-lived martyr of an Emperor. Before his death, she was his lapdog. He remained safe in his Temple in the mountains, and she ran about the countryside doing his bidding on a unicorn, an honest-to-Sithis unicorn. I know the Bosmer have a way with animals, but even this one proved too much for her. The stablehands outside Cheydinhal both loved and hated her—loved her for her generous compensation for keeping the beast locked up against its will, and hated her for the sheer amount of work it took to keep a unicorn captive. After Martin died, she let it go and stole her horses when she needed to go from one city to another. Eventually, she disappeared from the city entirely, and I lost word of her for months. At the time it surprised me how much I cared.
I broke into her home in Cheydinhal one night out of curiosity and found all her belongings and books covered in dust. She had the sort of library only a person handy with a lock-pick could amass, and her walls and shelves were covered with mementos of whom I must assume were fallen comrades. There was far too much Blade gear there for it to be much else. I shut the door behind me, convinced she had likely moved on for good. In all honesty, I had almost forgotten her entirely when she stumbled back into the city covered in a thin film of road-dust. Every item she carried reeked of strong enchantment, and the material of her armor was something I'd never seen in the land before.
I wasn't sure at the time where she'd gone to, but it was obvious from the outset that she came back different. I'm still not sure if it was her failure to keep Martin alive that broke her, or if something got to her in her travels, but the Caleigh I stumbled upon in the Cheydinhal Dunmer bar, The Newlands Lodge, two months ago was not the Hero of Kvatch or the thief I'd seen skulking down the streets initially. At first she shut herself in her house and refused to have contact with anyone in the city. She was also conspicuously absent at Chapel. When she did leave her house, she was dressed quite finely, but she never went anywhere except the tavern. Caleigh was, slowly but surely, drowning herself in West Weald wine. Such a waste.
I think she would have carried on that way indefinitely if the City Watch hadn't started extorting citizens. The Dunmer don't know when to keep their lips sealed, I've always said, and soon the bar was rife with gossip. Elves being thrown out of their homes. Shop earnings garnished. Caleigh listened, and I watched her back grow stiff and her countenance grim, but she did not act. If Martin were alive, she would have stopped the problems before they reached the breaking point. And if she had acted, Aldos Othran would not have died so pointlessly. I've lived with a love of the glory within death for decades now, and even with my knowledge of its nuances I could find no beauty in his demise. A grieving drunkard, cut down without warning by a worthless guardsman who did not care enough to put effort into his work? It made my stomach turn, but I was not surprised. Caleigh heard the news, however, and for the first time since she returned from her travels her green eyes seemed alive again. Not with the good-natured interest I was used to seeing within them, but with a uncontrolled hatred that made her truly beautiful to me. She downed the last of her drink, clutched her sword, and slipped out of the bar unnoticed. Since no one even realized I was in the room, it was not difficult for me to follow her. Then again, it would not have been difficult for me to guess where she was going--Ulrich Leland, the Guard Captain responsible for the entire mess, was not what I would call a difficult man to find.
It took her less time to break into the barracks than I was expecting, even though I had seen her at work before. The first thing she did before slipping through the door was remove her shoes. Her dress must have had a substantial stealth enchant on it, because the instant she began sneaking to Ulrich's room I almost lost her. That one brief moment when I thought she had actually gotten away from me still sends a thrill through me when I think of it. As drunk as she was, and as soft as a two months of uselessness had made her, she was still a wonder to behold. She had clearly had practice, training even. She's never told me, but I would not be surprised to find she was a ranking member of the Thieves' Guild.
Ulrich was not there, but she settled in with a practiced patience and waited until his return. I have no idea how long it took because I was too busy studying how perfectly still she kept herself in the shadows by his bureau. As soon as his door was shut she fell upon him in a silent fury, dagger gleaming in the faint candlelight of his bedside table. He was dead before the blade pierced the flesh of his throat for the second time. The third time. Once she had finally sated herself his corpse was barely recognizable and her face was splattered with his blood. She stood in his quarters, panting, for several moments before collecting herself, looking down at her dress, and sighing in annoyance.
That was the moment I knew we had her. I had just seen her murder a man in cold blood, unfairly and without warning, and someone as used to the craft as I could tell the flush in her cheeks betrayed enjoyment, not shock, at what she had just done. The blade in her hand was red to the hilt and dripping and her face was laced with splatters of his blood, but her first concern was that she had ruined her dress. She was going to turn out to be a very tidy assassin if I played my part in the next few hours of her life properly.
After making use of Ulrich's mirror to get the worst of the blood off, she sneaked off back home and burned her dress in her fireplace without fanfare. I thought for a moment that she might be feeling a stab of remorse, but the look in her eyes as she watched the fabric ignite suggested older, far more bitter memories were associated with it. While the thin layers of the dress went up in smoke, she cleaned her weapon. Once the entire garment had turned to ash, she ate half a sweetroll and then went to bed to sleep off the rest of the wine coursing through her system.
As I always do before I decide to approach someone new, I watched how she slept. A worried killer will twitch, whimper, whine. Weakness will be etched into the slightest movement of his eyes under their lids, in the way he breathes. She had none of that, but slept on peacefully, face relaxed and unlined, breathing steady, chest rising and falling with the quiet rhythm of one who has not had an unusual day. One hour passed, then two, and still no nightmares occurred. When I woke her from her slumber and watched her take the same dagger that had just ended Ulrich's life into her hand, I could not help but smile.
"You sleep rather soundly for a murderer," I told her. “That's good. You'll need a clear conscience for what I'm about to propose.”
Normally the accused sputter denials at me, white-faced with terror, but she did not respond at all.
I invited her to join the Dark Brotherhood and told her of a contract I thought might be appropriate for her initiation. She remained absolutely silent for the entirety of the conversation, but her hand tightened around her dagger and for one glorious moment I thought she might attack me. I hadn't had a decent fight in years, and the hair on the back of my neck was telling me Caleigh might actually be a good enough fighter to prove a challenge. But her blade never unsheathed, nor did she turn the new weapon I bestowed upon her back on me, and I left her with a sense of bitter disappointment.
The contract I had given her was all wrong, I was sure, but it was all that was available at the time. Rufio was not obviously bad enough for her to be compelled to end his life. He looked too weak, and would react in terror instead of aggression if she confronted him while he was awake. Which she was sure to do, being who she was. I'd fumbled it, hoping that her sanguine acceptance of Ulrich's death meant this was nothing new to her, but her stony silence made me wonder if I was wrong. I told her if she made no move on Rufio I would never contact her again, and as I left was once more surprised to realize how much I would miss shadowing her. But I am a man of my word, as frustrating a trait as that may be.
My plan was to go home to Fort Farragut and return my focus to the administration of the Guild, but something made me decide to travel to the Inn of Ill Omen and take a room instead on the off-chance I had come to her at the right time. I was not worried about her recognizing me—outside of my Robe of the Hand, I am a very unassuming man. If I sit in the shadows of a tavern and quietly sip at my beer, neither she nor Rufio nor any Imperial Soldier to come in for a break will even notice I am there. I enjoy fading into the background, and was prepared to wait for two weeks if need be, just to make sure she wasn't coming after all. I would find out even if she completed the contract while I was not there, but I wanted to be. I wanted to see if and how she did it. I wanted to watch her fall completely.
Every time the door to that accursed inn opened something in my stomach stirred restlessly, but six full days went by before the person entering turned out to actually be her. Hair wild as always, cheeks flushed from a breakneck ride. She told me later the Guard had realized who killed Ulrich, forcing her to flee Cheydinhal on a stolen Legion horse. However, she has not yet realized I am the one who tipped off the Guard. And so she fled to the Inn of Ill Omen as I was hoping she would, bursting through the door at top speed in a blue gown, so comely that even the filthy old Nord innkeeper stood up straight and tried to preen. Those huge, wide eyes flicked about the room appraisingly, resting on me for an instant before I was dismissed. I was so glad to see her I had forgotten she wasn't supposed to recognize me. I'd thought I was too old to feel slighted.
“I'd like a room, please,” she murmured to the innkeeper.
“Plenty of rooms available,” he replied, much too loudly. I doubt he'd seen a woman of her caliber in years. “No one staying here these days except Ol' Rufio.”
She gave him a polite smile, which he took for encouragement to ramble. By the time she freed herself from his company, he'd given her all the information she needed to find him. Not that it was that hard. I'll never understand why so many people think moving into a basement room counts as going into hiding.
And then we had sex. >:D
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