The Jarol Estate is located on the coast northwest of Anvil. Before then, though, is the old inn. A dock juts out into the water with stairs leading up almost to the door of the inn, and smugglers are carrying boxes onto and off of a small boat. (I don’t go up and ask them if they’re smugglers. There’s just something about them that screams “smuggler”, and I’ve dealt with a lot of smugglers.)


    Smuggling matter aside, the Withered Rose seems like a nice enough little inn. There don’t appear to be any patrons at the moment. Maybe most people don’t want to hang out in an inn secretly used for smuggling, though you’d think it would still attract a certain crowd. In any case, I distract the innkeeper while Ilara picks the lock on the cellar door.


    A bit of incriminating correspondence in the basement indicates that Quintus Jarol is a smarmy fetcher and attracted to underage girls. In some very pretty words, he’s basically just threatening to force the innkeeper’s daughter into an unwanted relationship.


    “This one will not feel bad about putting a knife in this fetcher,” Ilara whispers upon reading the note.


    The cellar leads into smuggling tunnels full of crates, boxes, traps, and smugglers. At the opposite end, a ladder leads up into a courtyard, conveniently out of sight behind a couple of large crates.


    I’m trying very, very carefully to keep my music quiet lest it give away me actually trying to be sneaky for once. We make it across the courtyard and break into the house.


    We search the house without finding Quintus. A note in the bedroom mentions secret chambers beneath the house, past the wine cellar, as well as an important meeting between important people down there. The count of Kvatch (Carolus), the governor of Anvil (Fortunata), and some religious leader. I… have no idea why these people are all meeting in the basement of some sketchy noble.


    Down in the cellar, I find a note mentioning how to access the secret passage, along with an admonition to burn this note and a complaint that fools often post the combinations to their secret vaults inside of pantries. The note being distinctly unburnt, we get inside easily.


    The secret vaults are massive and full of so many riches that I’m going to need help making off with all of them. Speaker Terenus only said to murder the man. He didn’t say not to rob him blind first.


    I step off into a discrete corner and pull out a communication orb. “Hey. Rocky. You awake?” I try to will my music into making sure we’re not heard. It’s worth a shot. It would be very useful if I could twist this gift into a muffle spell.


    “I am now,” Merry’s voice comes through. “Are you really insisting on using that code name?”


    “Yep,” I say. “Prepare our new looting crew. Have them dress like pirates. Don’t come through until I signal again.”


    “Dress like… I… shall see what I can do,” Merry replies.


    My daggers are named Nick and Nack, and I’m testing a new poison on everyone in here that seems inclined to try to stop us. Poisons are considerably easier to make than potions that don’t poison you, but there’s only so much testing I can do on myself.


    The acoustics down here are perfect to eavesdrop on everything the secret meeting is about. In summary, Fortunata wants people to bow to her, Carolus thinks she’s a bitch, the Primate couldn’t make it, and Quintus wants everyone get along and worry about the Dark Brotherhood. And Dark Brotherhood members are being murdered by some unknown vigilante.


    Someone has noticed the number of conscious people in this cellar has been dwindling, and warns the important people to escape. Dammit! Well, I’ll just have to beat up people faster, then. No sense in trying to sneak anymore.


    We finally make it to the bottom, an escape route leading out to the ocean, where we find Quintus Jarol standing near the water where there’s a round hatch letting in sunlight.


    “Show yourself, assassin!” Quintus exclaims. “Or are you one of those Dark Brotherhood cowards?”


    I chuckle darkly and step into the light. “This one is Vara-do! Dastardliest pirate never to sail the… what’s the name of that water out there? Never mind. Khajiit has come to claim your booty! By which I mean your treasure!”


    I’m hoping for a good fight here, considering I’ve got a handicap of weapons that are still unfamiliar to me and weak, stiff muscles from potion withdrawal. Alas, Quintus Jarol is merely a noble who fences just because that’s something fancy nobles do, and not because he truly expected to have to defend himself in a fight to the death against a professional killer. I let Ilara take the kill, as the contract is technically hers.


    I spit on his corpse. “For shame. For all that, this one may as well have let his sister sneak up and kill you without anyone ever even knowing we were here.”


    The hatch opens out onto a beach near some Ayleid ruins, near a boat Quintus failed to escape with. He won’t be needing that anymore. He really should have saved himself the trouble and hired a portal mage instead.


    I bring out the orb again. “Rocky, bring them through anytime.”


    A portal opens a ten feet in front of me, near the hatch. Merry (wearing a striped bandana across his face and a tricorne hat on his head) comes through first, followed by an Orc, two Khajiit, a High Elf, four Wood Elves, and a Goblin, all dressed in a surprisingly authentic array of pirate-themed garb that was apparently within reach on short notice. They’re my new looting crew, that have been being assembled after someone insisted that I learn to delegate my looting rather than try to pick up everything myself. And then I wound up delegating the delegation when I was too busy saving the world to follow up on that.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    This crew was handpicked by Hunt-Queen Grishka. My dear hunt-wife assured me that they were all absolutely loyal and won’t start rumors or try to steal more than their share. It’s more… diverse than I had expected. Although, some of them look a little familiar. These are all people I helped, aren’t they.


    Oh hell. Did my crazy hunt-wife assemble a group of people who owe me their lives into a super-secret spy squad while I wasn’t looking? How did she find the time to do this in between Pyandonea? (She probably delegated the day-to-day handling of Pyandonea and called it “making use of available resources, like any sensible Orc”.)


    “Meet your new looting crew,” Merry says. “You inevitably need to loot things after repeatedly hitting everyone inside.”


    “Nice to meet you,” I say. “Some of these bodies are still alive. Make sure they’re tied up before the poison wears off. The poison was a homebrew so I have no idea how long that might be so it’ll be fun to see the results.”


    I don’t say, “Stay in character, there might be witnesses,” but Merry is smart enough to figure that out for himself. To their credit, the loot crew fall into character without question and start tying up the unconscious guards who were probably only after a salary.


    Once everyone has been restrained, we start looting the place in earnest, interjecting piratical talk for the benefit of the guards who are slowly regaining consciousness and groggily being unable or unwilling to do anything about people who obviously want the place’s treasure and don’t specifically want them dead but likely won’t hesitate to kill them if they cause trouble. It’s so good having sensible opponents for once. They’re sellswords, and hence not loyal enough to be stupid about this, and considering protecting the assets of a dead man to be not worth their lives.


    The Goblin is a portal prodigy, I’m told. In that she can reliably cast a spell to open a portal to an anchor stone she has been keyed into across large distances. It’s not a versatile talent, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s even more versatile than mine, since the anchors I use aren’t portable.


    “How did you get so good at portal magic?” Ilara asks.


    “Is easy!” the Goblin (whose actual name I haven’t asked for yet) says. “Is just like stabbing! You just stab space instead of face. Same thing.”


    Either she’s having a blast pretending to be a pirate, or some Goblins really do enjoy stabbing things as much as stereotypes imply. Or both, really.


    “You sure cut up that fancy noble good,” asks Arithiel. (I’m pretty sure it’s Arithiel, but I don’t say her name here.) “Did he piss you off?”


    “Pfah, the man was scum,” I spit. “Nobles abusing their ‘lessers’, as if the Divines made them better than everyone else. It’s disgusting. If he weren’t so despicable, this one might have enjoyed simply tying him up and making him watch his fortune walk out the door.”


    Once we’re done looting the estate and I’ve given the innkeeper a tip, I step through the Goblin’s portal. It puts us out into the back of a cave that I’m told is near the beach a stroll down the beach from Dra’bul. It had previously been occupied by pirates, hence the ready availability of suitable costumes. And this was how Vara-do became captain of a loyal crew of portal pirates. How in Oblivion do these things even happen to me?


    “Welcome to Crimson Cove,” Grishka says, grinning widely.


    “You didn’t feel the need to rename it after ousting those Crimson Raiders from it?” I ask.


    “It’s a trophy,” Grishka says. “I killed them and took their name. And their stuff. And their cave.” She chuckles. “I just got back in from a hunt. How’d your support team work out? And why are they dressed like pirates?”


    “We’re pretending to be pirates to conceal being assassins,” I say. “Also because I didn’t want to have to kill everyone but assassins wouldn’t bring in a crew to loot the place top to bottom.”


    Grishka thinks about that for a moment. “Makes sense.” She looks at the valuables continuing to pour in. “Damn. Who the fuck did you kill? A king?”


    “Nah, some asshole Imperial noble,” I say.


    “Daaamn,” Grishka says. “I can’t wait to see what trophies you bring back when you do kill a king.”


    I love that she thinks me killing kings sooner or later is a foregone conclusion.


    Grishka is not concerned about me being an assassin. She doesn’t see much difference in killing Orc chiefs who were doing things I didn’t like and offing some poncy human. Any Orc who looks down on stealth or subterfuge has never tried to hunt, either. Sensible Orcs don’t charge after deer with a battle axe while screaming at the top of their lungs. Grishka has many opinions on what sensible Orcs should be like.


    I would imagine that someone who can open portals like the Goblin (Magarruk, I learn her name is) would be very useful in the merchant business, but Grishka has decided that Mags is trustworthy, can keep her mouth shut, and is willing to turn a blind eye to any stupid thing she sees. This is much more valuable than simply being able to open portals, as useful as that might be.


    “So, will the pirate act be regular, or was this a one-time thing?” asks Merry.


    “Hm,” I say. “They did a pretty good pirate show on short notice there. I’ll bet they have the talent for more, but a pirate crew seems like it would be a good common guise for looters.”


    “They’re supposed to be a support team, not just looters,” Grishka says, laughing.


    Once we’ve emptied our pockets, eaten lunch, taken a nap, whatever, Ilara and I teleport to the wayshrine outside of Anvil to report back to Speaker Terenus regarding the death of Quintus Jarol (and some others who happened to be standing nearby).


    “It is said that the Jarol Estate was sacked by pirates,” Speaker Terenus says.


    “Yes, that was us,” I say. “Were we supposed to be more subtle?”


    “He did wind up dead, so the fate of his property and employees is irrelevant,” Terenus says. “There are, after all, no wrong targets. All souls belong to Sithis, in the end. A pirate attack may well have been more subtle than a precise assassination, in being a misdirection. They were expecting the Dark Brotherhood, not a heretofore-unknown pirate gang.”


    “We pride ourselves on doing the unexpected,” I say.


    “There is payment for you in this as well, although I am certain that this is a paltry sum compared to the wealth you gained from looting the manor.” Terenus slips a coin purse into Ilara’s paw.


    He tells us the location of the closest Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, hidden in the hills north of Anvil, and a pass phrase to get inside. Fantastic. And all it took was doing something I would have been inclined to do anyway if asked by someone who wasn’t mysterious and wearing ominous black robes. (It’s the whole aesthetic, though. Style is important. This suave Imperial oozes style.)