Fic Post: Not All That Is Paid For Is Free

[momebie]

Title: Not All That Is Paid For Is Free
Rating/Warnings: PG
Original Prompt: Gentlemen Bastards - Sabetha Belacoros - any: Sabetha runs a game of her own.
Summary: There is a place for everything, and everything in its place.
Notes: Written for ladies_fest. I'm only almost a month late, but at least now barbed_whispers will stop threatening to do things to my room. Like paint pop punk singers all over it. >.> I hope it's to your liking, dear. ♥


He can see her from his perch in the bell tower. The church opposite the Musée d’Athen is a large, solid, grey stone affair. It’s the perfect place for steadying one’s soul and spying out the corruption of others. It is also, as it happens, at exactly the same height as the museum’s dazzling glass roof. The mercenary hides in the shadows and watches as the Red Thief situates herself, watching her own prey and none the wiser. Sabetha, of the Painted Players. He knows her name, but he doesn’t have a use for it. And if he catches her, then likely neither will she for much longer.

She’s smaller than thought, but that could only help her in her work. Once she settles down and is clinging to the roof he can see that she’s wearing tight black breeches and a black shirt along with a man’s doublet, which was no doubt pilfered from the wardrobe of her travelling troupe. That minor theft will be just another charge that he can run her up on with his employers. It won’t look like much compared to the paintings and jewels and artifacts she’s lifted over the year previous, but in the face of quality it never hurt to add some quantity.

Confident that she won’t move while the lights beneath her are still burning, he turns and runs down the steep wooden steps of the tower, dragging behind him his cloak, as well as the racket his boots make on the stairs. He pauses at the entrance of the church and drops a coin into the stone receptacle by the door. It never does to ignore the kindnesses of the gods. They take their pay sooner or later.

Out on the street the mercenary finds himself alone with the light from the full moon. The streets are almost always empty that late in the evening, most of the town’s people having locked themselves in doors for the fear of bad men. And the bad men, well, they have business to attend to elsewhere. Moreso on this night than any other. None of them want to be implicated in the capture or aid of the Red Thief. Politics are always such delicate business.

Across the lonely thoroughfare and into the warm, golden light of the museum’s lamps, he knocks lightly on its door. The night guard answers. Without a word, the mercenary shows him the sealed orders of the Baron and the man lets him slip inside.

“Nice, clear night,” the guard says.

“Aye, but the nights, like man’s fates, are always subject to change.”

The small vestibule of the museum is cramped with cases housing some the biggest jewels ever found in the nearby mines. Along the wall there’s a painted depiction of the way in which the jewels are located and liberated from their dark, indifferent homes. It would have been easy for the Red Thief to move in and out of that room at the high hour of the day and remove anything she wanted without causing a stir. But if it was simply jewels she was after she wouldn’t still be casing the place. There had to be something else hiding deeper in the next set of rooms, something she hadn’t been able to remove in the daylight.

“What is the quickest way to the roof?” he asks.

The guard points towards the doorway opposite them which leads to the main room of the gallery. “Through there, across to the back, and then up the stairs. There’s a skylight that can be opened and crawled through.”

The museum is a maze from the inside, but none of the walls are as high as the ceiling, which means that though he can’t readily see the pathway to the back wall, she can see everything. Movement toward the staircase would make her suspicious. “Is there any other way?”

“There’s an emergency exit ladder around the side.”

“Good,” he says, and backs out of the front room and onto the street.

The mercenary walks around to the cluttered alley that threads between the museum and the tavern on the other side. He inspects the ladder. It is made of a black, dense metal that he’d only seen a few times before. The metal was pulled from the floors of mountain caves and forged by blind men who used only blue flames to work it. It absorbed light and sound and heat and movement and created a physical dead space. His thief wouldn’t have scaled the building this way, not wanting to risk being seen, but it would be almost too convenient for him as a way to sneak up on her. From the pouch on his belt he pulls a pair of shark skin gloves to protect his skin from the greedy properties of the ladder, and then he begins to climb.

In moments he is peeking over the edge of the building’s roof, looking at the thief from behind. He climbs the last few rungs and scrambles over the edge, crouching and getting his footing on the flagstones. He removes his gloves and draws his sword, making sure that the metal scrapes against the inside of the scabbard as it comes, alerting her to his presence in case she hasn’t already noticed she isn’t alone.

He could have easily taken her by surprise, but he is a man who lives by the philosophy of sporting chances. Taking an opponent from any position but head on is cowardly. “Wonderful night for a bit of stargazing, eh?” he asks.

Now, standing a mere ten strides from her, he can see the strands of bright red hair that are sticking out from under the black cloth she has wrapped her head with. The light from below her seems to get caught in the locks. He has, rather ignorantly, always assumed that she was referred to as the Red Thief because of her methods. And maybe that is why after all, but this makes sense as well.

She remains in her place, eyes glued to the goings on in the rooms beneath her, not acceding the danger he means to her person. “The view of the stars is free to all men, is it not?” she replies.

“The stars in the sky, yes, but the stars that are mined from the ground, the ones that you seem to have your eyes on. Those are not free to anyone, and never have been.”

“That is where you are wrong, sir.” The lights below her dim and she pushes up and away from the glass, rolling herself into a sitting position, facing him. “Those particular stars should be free to the people who rightfully pulled them from the black subterranean skies.”

“Surely even those men paid for the jewels with their blood,” he says.

“Aye,” she replies, “but that is a trivial concern to one who should own such baubles, and for myself. I come only for the true heirlooms. Those things that were stolen rather than rightfully sold.”

“All art is stolen,” he says. “Whether the physical manifestation and setting ever belonged to anyone is secondary tot he fact that the very idea which originally created the thing was plucked, unceremoniously, from the stuff that makes up the world.” His eyes adjust to the new lack of light as the lamps below go out completely and he can finally focus on the shock of her white face reflected in the moonlight. “The very words you speak nightly for your patrons are stolen, are they not, Sabetha?”

She smiles. “So I’ve finally been truly found out. I had wondered how long it would take for someone to work it out. It’s not as if I have ever been coy with my identity.”

“Some men are willing to overlook the blemishes on an otherwise beautiful face.”

“And not you, sir?” She reaches into her doublet and pulls out a long bladed knife. The white metal glints in the light.

His grip tightens on his sword and he blocks his stance, preparing for an attack. “You can call me Errol,” he says. “It’s only fair that we’re both acknowledged. And I have been paid to overlook the beauty. Which is a shame, I doubt imprisonment will suit your complexion the same way the footlights do.”

“There are torches, Errol” she says. as she stands carefully, moving her feet slowly as she inches away from him. She gropes in the dark through the soft soles of her shoes and makes sure that she is sticking to the metal reinforcements that gird the ceiling. If she steps in the wrong place, she’ll go down through the glass . It won’t suit either of them if she falls to her death, which she’s sure he knows. He has been asked to bring her alive. “Even in the deepest prisons there is light.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it,” he says, raising his sword up to shoulder level and pointing the tip at her, stalking her movement with it.

She continues to back away from him. “Surely I’m not good to you with a hole my throat slit in two.”

He steps forward, his foot resting on the edge of one of the glass panes. “Your end state is not my concern,” he says, which is a lie of ommission. He has been paid to bring her back to his employers alive, her state after the exchange is between her and whichever gods she prayse to. He takes another step forward. The metal crunches against the glass panes as he tries to balance the way she is balancing.

She takes yet another step back and holds up her knife. Sabetha stops suddenly and widens her stance, lunging forward at him with the blade. She dances close to him and gets her knife caught in his cloak as he raises his arm to fend her off.

He pulls the cloak towards him, hoping to trip her and bring her back to the safety of the stone roof. Instead, she reacts by falling backwards with all the weight of her body and he cannot do anything but be pulled by her. He tries to steady himself and plants his foot firmly in front of him. He hearz the crack before he realizes that he’s made a wrong step.

“Twelve gods,” he breathes. There is a moment of silence, and then the glass roof gives way below them. He is falling. Before he can take a breath to scream he is stopped short by the hard stones of the museum’s gallery floor. When he opens his eyes he is laying on his back, breath knocked out of him, arm possibly broken, but otherwise fine. To his right, Sabetha is laid out next to one of the cases. It has been overturned in the fall, and the glass box lays on the floor in pieces. He starts to reach out and crawl toward her, but he doesn’t have time. The rest of the roof gives a loud, angry groan and then gives way. He pulls his cloak over his head, rolls onto his stomach, and waits for it all to settle.

Once the crashing rain glass gives way to lazy tinkling there are shouts and rushed footsteps. A pair of hands grasp at his shoulders and when he finally sits up the guard and the head of the museum are standing over him.

“I’m fine,” he says, and brushes their hands away. “Check the girl.”

The security guard tries to pull Sabetha up by her arm pits, but she hangs limply in his hands, offering no help. There is a cut across her forehead, which is bleeding readily down her pale face. The guard tries to leave her to stand, but her leg buckles underneath her and she cries out.

“Where do you want her?” he asks.

“She doesn’t seem to be in any state to steal anything today,” the curator says. “Take her to the Baron and let him deal with her.”

The security guard drapes her arm around his shoulder and pulls her up. He half drags and half shuffles her away. They leave through the front door and the mercenary waits until he can hear the hooves of the horses pulling them away before he takes his eyes off the door. Sure that his job is done, he brushes the glass out of his cloak and searches the destruction for his sword. The case that Sabetha had fallen onto lay broken at its base. He reaches out and picks up the card plaque.

“The Emerald Knife of Camorr,” he reads. He brushes aside the debris and picks up the blade laying by the pedestal. The curator reaches to take it from him. “Funny name,” the mercenary says. “There’s not a single emerald on--” He breaks off. The metal is white and the handle is gilded silver. Exactly like the one Sabetha had struck out at him with on the roof.

The curator holds the knife carefully in his open palms, examining it. “No, no, no,” he says. “This can’t be. This isn’t--”

The mercenary doesn’t wait to hear the end of his utterance. He scrambleds over the glass and around sharp corners as he hurtles into the front room and across it. He rams into the door and it moves, but does not open. He pushes against it with all of his weight behind his shoulder again and again until it budges open enough for him to slip through. The museum’s guard is slumped sideways across the door next to a full barrel of wine that was no doubt nicked from the alley. There is a piece of parchment pinned to his lapel. The mercenary reaches out and pulles it off, unfolding it.

The parchment reads: May the stars be free to those whom have already paid for them. He crumples up the message and drops it into the dirt. “Enjoy your freedom, young woman,” he says. “It won’t be yours for long.”