Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Thief who's not picking up what you're putting down
Euphronia is taking tea in a back room of the Fleeting Wink, straight-backed and day-corseted in an appropriately modest gown for the season and setting, when a local ruffian slides quietly into the room and leans back against the closed door, staring at her.
"Good afternoon," Euphronia says, with politesse not so much cut-glass as smashed and razor-edged and held to the throat; this is meant to be a private room. She pays a lot for it to remain that way.
"You're from the Steel Kingdom," the local ruffian says, all unbrushed hair, grubby jacket, soot-smudged face, and scandalously tight trousers.
Euphronia flatly stares. Everything about her says that's obviously the case.
"Listen," the ruffian says. "Your mob are all blah blah Great Game and fives games of chess at once about everything, right? They say you're the finest thief in the Steel Kingdom."
"That's hardly a reputation for a lady," Euphronia says.
"Sorry I don't have the manners for all the bullshitting," the ruffian says apologetically. "Only I know you're a thief, I know you're from there, and I know they say you're the best. It's just that the Steel Kingdom doesn't really do thieves, and you're a spy really, because that's what the Steel Kingdom does."
"That's hardly—"
"I'd try with the bullshitting, I really would," the ruffian says earnestly. "Only we ain't got the time. There's some posh foreign lady on the Hill been flashing some real nice sparkles around, and I broke into her gaff and lifted some bits and bobs, and she's been — weird about it, no beefed-up security, flaunting stuff more in public, if anything. Figured it was some kind of sting, but — your mob does flowers, right?"
"Flowers," Euphronia says, cold trickling down her back.
"Yeah, you know, six daisies and a crocus means I wanna bang the bum off you behind the stables bullshit. Only for spies."
"Assuming I knew anything like that," Euphronia says, cold and slow, "Why would you ask?"
"Because I've robbed this tart four times and I'm starting to think maybe she's heard that the best thief in the Steel Kingdom is in town, and didn't figure we had any local talent," the ruffian says, and shifts uneasily against the door. "Think maybe it's an excuse to get some Steel Kingdom spy in the room with a big ol' flower arrangement, right?"
"What flower arrangement," Euphronia says.
"I don't know," the horrid little local thief says, plaintive. "All I know is, the woman is literally beggin' to be robbed, and three times there was this big ol' floral thing, and the last time — right in with the jewels, three flowers, tatty little things like she snatched 'em off a hedge as she passed, like it's all she could do. Whatever she wants, I think she needs it now."
Euphronia pushes to her feet and advances. "The three flowers," she says, in a low and terrible voice, and the ruffian dips in a pocket and takes out a small paper envelope; which is cleverer and more careful than Euphronia would have credited.
Up close, she also revised her estimate of the thief's age, to barely more than a child. A girl.
Irrelevant, she chides herself, and peers into the envelope. Takes a breath, holds it, lets it out.
"I need to be where these were," she says flatly.
"I'll help you with your spy thing," the ruffian girl says. "If it wipes out the fact I stumbled into it at all, when you were supposed have your eye caught and go dipping."
Mercenary. Sharp. But the thief has caught on smartly to the fact that the situation is clandestine and deteriorating, and has immediately done her best to make it, by her estimation, right.
"We will tally up whose slate is clean or not," Euphronia says, "afterwards."
The ruffian mumbles something coarse about horses' testicles.