Work Text:
Contrary to popular belief thieves rarely go about their business at night. The gods had given twenty-four hours to a day and, even though the Thieves' Guild did not openly align itself to any deity, they found it prudent to honor every hour that was given. Stealing was a business after all, and they had a lot of mouths to feed.
Thus it was bright day-light (as far as “bright” could be applied to the skies above the Imperial City which housed thousands of people and, therefore, their cooking fires and forges) as Rona strolled down the cobbled streets of the Talos Plaza District. It was a busy day around her; merchants and farmers alike pushed along the major thoroughfares, eager to reach the Market District or one of the smaller markets in the residential areas of the city, while city-dwellers wove carelessly through the throng, forcing cart-drivers to brake abruptly or wildly swerve around them in order to prevent accidents and got cursed to Oblivion in return. Rona decided that it was time to leave the hubbub in favor for quieter streets when she saw a watchman step up to the latest hold-up and break up an argument that had started to grow out of hand. She knew, the place she was looking for would be in back-alleys rather than the main avenues but she needed the chance to search for it without running the risk of just being carted over.
Contrary to popular opinion again, thieves did not hate the guard. Not per se, and not indiscriminately. They were doing their jobs, just like the Guild, and if things were running smoothly, if the Guard was sticking to the rules, the Thieves' Guild had little reason to begrudge them the execution of the odd free-lancer to provide the illusion of safety for the citizenry. The Guild liked things running smoothly, they liked sticking to the rules – that way you could plan ahead and make sure everyone had enough to get by.
But now Hieronymus Lex had thrown a wrench into it all. Again.
She glanced left and right at the sooty facades around her as she strolled around the district and crossed over when she spotted a Guild-sign further up the road. It was on a wall next to the heavily barred door of a house and scrawled in among the graffiti the neighborhood's lovely urchins had left behind. Munching down the last of an apple she had not had in her possession when starting her walk, Rona used the time to admire the more adventurous designs on Orc anatomy and Wood Elf mating habits before she would knock.
“Excuse me, citizen” a heavy voice sounded behind her before a shadow fell on the wall in front of her. Rona turned around and looked about half a foot up into the face of the guard.
“Yes?”
He whipped out the same pamphlet she had seen half a dozen times already this day. “Have you seen this man?” he asked ponderously. “Do you know where he hides?”
Rona made a show to study the woodcut on the pamphlet, all the while noticing how the few people dotting the street around them seemed to vanish into doorways and backyards without a trace. The guard however, young and impressionable as he appeared to be, did not.
“Isn't that the Gray Fox you guards're always going on about? What's he done this time?”
Not the reaction the man had expected if his half second of hesitation was any indication. “I'm not a liberty to discuss that with you. Now answer the question!” he recovered and tried for an intimidation growl. It was just his luck that Rona had faced off against so much worse in her time.
“How should I know?” she asked back with feigned exasperation. “He's wearing a mask! D'you see many people with masks?”
The guard actually turned the picture around to look at it. Rona had to bite the inside of her cheek.
“So you've not seen the Gray Fox, or heard someone talk about him?”
“No, I've not seen anyone runnin' around in that mask, confessin' they're the Gray Fox”, Rona answered, not bothering to hide her mirth this time. “Doesn't sound like the actions of a sane man to me – maybe ask some Sheogorath worshipers ...?”
He narrowed his eyes at her and she felt the early thrills of danger. “The Imperial Legion will not suffer cheek from anyone, ma'am” he barked and his hand twitched towards his sword. “Are you being cheeky?”
Another bite to her inner lip; a reminder to herself that she had a role to play. “No, 'm not” she answered, mixing appeasement and aggravation in her tone as she channeled her inner Mother-of-Five. “Ye're just followin' orders, I know”, she reached out and swiftly patted him on his iron-clad arm, letting her gift flow and hoping for the best, “but it's gettin' bothersome. Six times I've been asked already, jus' comin' up Green Emperor Way.”
He stepped out of her reach and shook his head but her spell seemed to have penetrated his mind just enough to confuse his opinion of her. At least his tone was marginally friendlier when he said: “Just as well, ma'am. Let us know if you hear anything about the Gray Fox.” He gave her a curt nod before turning away – and stopped. Rona's heart skipped a beat.
“Where do you live, by the way? I can't remember having ever seen you around here, ma'am” he said.
She went through half a dozen possible answers in her head. “Elven Gardens. 'm a maid with the Sintavs”, she answered, settling for a family known city-wide for their quarrels with the Atius-clan – and occasionally the guard. That and the sheer size of that family should have curbed any urge to actually check up on her words.
Not with this one, however.
“Then what are you doing here?” he asked sharply, once again suspicious. “This is not a … very respectable neighborhood.”
“Is it?” Rona asked back, pouring as much surprise into her words as she dared. “'m just on my way home from my half-day off and nipped along here 'cause have you seen the hold-up in the plaza? And then jus' happened upon this wall 'ere.” She gestured vaguely at the graffito-covered house. “Haven't seen this one before.”
He made the mistake to take a closer look. And recoiled in horror.
“Wha–“ Too flustered to continue with his question, he took another step back and looked half-accusingly at her.
“Whatever rings your bell, I guess.” Rona shrugged in exaggerated nonchalance, then she huffed. “I'll need goin' or I'll be in trouble with the Mistress ...” She left the sentence hanging, and he caught on, gladly seizing the chance to return to known waters of human interaction.
“Of course, citizen. You may return to your duties.” He turned on his heels and, with a parting half-glare at the wall, marched down to the next house, where a charwoman had just stepped out of the door to empty a bucket of waste water into the gutter. Rona waited until the woman started to berate the Legionnaire for disrupting her work before she walked away in the other direction and once the yelling had reached a pitch that was sure to draw every eye to the other end of the street, she nestled into a doorway and slipped a small, insignificant looking pewter-ring onto her finger. The charm on it took hold immediately and Rona saw the ripple of the chameleon-spell slide over her form. She let out the breath she had been holding.
It took but a moment to tip-toe back to the safe house, huddle into the doorway's shadow and rap a secret knock on the door. The door opened instantly and Rona slipped through the barely wide enough crack.
“Could you not rile the guard up in front of my house? Please?” Dynari Amnis hissed at her as soon as she had closed and bolted the door. “They're suspecting enough already.”
“Sorry”, Rona said, feeling sheepish. She had forgotten again, for a moment, that this was not a game.
“'s alright”, Dynari groused. She walked further into the room and gestured at her to follow. “We all love poking fun at the guard, I guess”, the Imperial added, still half-mad.
“What happened?”
They had entered a tiny kitchen that was little more than a curtained-off nook from the main room-slash-entrance-hall. A Wood Elf was sitting at a rickety table there, chopping carrots with a knife. Rona recognized Methredhel, the young mer who had run the trial to enter the Thieves Guild with her – and lost – but had nevertheless risen to the position of Armand Christophe's right hand in an astonishingly short period of time.
“The rookie had nothing better to do than poke fun at the guard in front of my house!”, Dynaris explained and flopped down on the other chair at the table. “Would've been a nice catch for Lex: Three members of the guild in one fell swoop, and two of them being the ones running the show in town right now.”
Methredhel looked up in alarm but relaxed an instant later. She put down her knife, though, and fixed Rona with an inquisitive stare.
“I couldn't just make a run for it when he came up to me, now, couldn't I?” Rona justified herself. Methredhel smirked and shrugged her shoulder in half-hearted assent, while Dynaris was still in a huff.
“Why don't you just fill the newbie in”, she opened and pushed herself out of the chair. “It's your idea anyway.” With that Dynaris walked to the back of the room and clattered down the stone steps to the cellar. A second later they heard the dull thud of a door falling shut and a shadowy form, looking very much like Dynaris, walked past outside the window.
“What--?”
“She's just off to Sigrun next door, I guess”, Methredhel cut in. “Unwinding.” The Wood Elf gave her a saucy grin but grew serious again. “For real, though, if a guard talks to you, you go 'Yes.' and 'No.' and 'Thank you.' You don't wanna leave any impression on them, you don't want to become a face they recognize.” The elf's age-less brown eyes focused on Rona, giving the impression that Methredhel could read her secrets like an open book. “But you thrive at the head of a crowd, don't you?”
Rona found herself unable to answer. Even though Methredhel's words had mostly been teasing, the Imperial couldn't conjure up a single quip to distract from the situation and steer the conversation towards less embarrassing ground. Instead, she chose to play over her discomfort by stepping around the table and sitting down on Dynaris' vacated chair.
“Right”, Methredhel said. “The job.” She reached under the table and pulled a sealed letter from a sack of potatoes. Smoothing out the crinkles and brushing away some flakes of dry earth, she explained: “So. Lex invaded the Waterfront. Again. He's placed Armand under house arrest – again – and has arrested a handful of our slower people. The rest … well.” She didn't need to extrapolate. While searching for Methredhel's whereabouts, Rona had never seen the mud-flooded dirt paths of the Waterfront District crawling with so many guards, and with so few of the slum's regular denizens.
“Most of us are in hiding”, the elf continued, “but with Lex practically camping out in the Waterfront we can't operate like usual. And you know – or maybe you don't – how the poor in this City rely on hand-outs from the Guild. They've always been under the Guild's protection, have always been a part of us. But there's only so long a hungry mouth can stay silent when a meal is only a word away. So, here's the plan how we get Lex to lift his siege:”, she leaned forward and a manic gleam bled into her eyes, “Stealing!”
Rona might have spat some into Methredhel's face as she exploded with laughter but the elf didn't seem to mind. She just wiped a hand down her cheek and grinned even wider.
“That's the reaction I was looking for. If no-one expects it, we can just go on a rampage!”
Rona prided herself of having a quick and unconventional mind. It had helped her getting to where she was today and creative thinking had more than once saved her life, but she still could not quite follow the mad Bosmer in front of her.
“Look.” Methredhel took pity on her. “Lex thinks, he has us tied down at the Waterfront just because we can't show our faces there. But we're still here, and – more important – we're where Lex isn't. And where the guards aren't.”
The septim dropped.
“He thinks, he has us looked in at the Waterfront”, Rona said, and Methredhel continued: “But he has locked himself out of the whole city.”
“In a sense”, Rona pointed out because, technically, Hieronymus Lex could still come and go as he pleased and because she was just that kind of person. Methredhel didn't seem to mind.
“We're planning several high profile thefts”, she continued. “There are a lot of rich people in this city and they have a lot of shiny trinkets the Guild has had an eye on forever. With the guards thinned out, it'll be much easier to get our hands on them.”
“But”, and here Rona's thoughts returned to the original snag of the plan, “aren't those rich and powerful people going to be livid about the whole thing?” And to her horror the Bosmer just shrugged her shoulders.
“Sure.” Methredhel angled for her knapsack and rummaged around in it. Her next words were muffled. “But Lex'll be the scapegoat. He's the one who pulled all the guards away.”
“But it's going to give him ammunition for his vendetta! It'll be the proof he needs!”
“What proof?” Methredhel shot back and resurfaced with a sealed note in hand. “That the Thieves' Guild exists? That's not news! We've played it easy, so far, took only the bare minimum with a little on the side, but we've never targeted the rich and powerful; the people who Lex has to answer to ... This time we'll show 'em what it looks like when we mean business.”
Rona wished she had a drink – or several – to chug down until her outlook on this whole plan was a rosy as Methredhel's seem to be. She grabbed one of the beers Dynaris had standing on the table, popping the cap.
“And what am I doing?”, she asked after a long swig.
“Here.” Methredhel pushed the note over. “You're stealing from the Mages. Arcane University, to be precise. It's Hrormir's Icestaff we're after – quite powerful, and the Grey Fox wants to have a look at it, I've heard. It's recently been removed from the holding cells under the University and now it's supposed to be in the Archmage's Tower.”
Some beer went down the wrong way and Rona nearly coughed her lungs out. Methredhel waited until she stopped hacking, all the while gingerly patting her on the back.
“Right”, the Imperial wheezed and asked herself what she had done to deserve this.
“You know where it is?” the Bosmer asked and when Rona nodded, she grinned and started pushing her towards the door. “Good! Just grab it, stuff that note where the Archmage'll find it, bedside-table or whatever, and come back here as soon as possible.”
A moment later, Rona found herself outside on the cobbled street again.
An hour later, she sauntered through the heavy, iron-studded gates of the Arcane University. None of the Legion Battlemages who normally guarded the entrance or patrolled the grounds were around. It appeared that Lex's zeal really knew no bounds and Rona idly asked herself, if he had been so bold as to require men even from the Palace Guard.
She casually climbed up the stairs leading to the center-building of the whole University complex – the Archmage's Tower, as it was called, since it traditionally housed the head of the Mages' Guild in Cyrodiil – and entered the lobby. As the only space open to the public it was usually crowded with onlookers gawking at the foreign and intricate inlays in the Tower's stonework, hedge-mages trying to bamboozle their way into the University proper, and the odd member of the teaching staff. As Rona cast her eyes around, she could spot Raminus Polus near the entrance to the Orrery. The Imperial mage was not looking happy as he bodily escorted a woman with whispy-looking hair out of the Orrery and the lobby. She wore a dress made out of leaves. Dried-up, crumbling and falling-down-to-the-ground leaves.
Rona bit her lip to stifle a laugh ...
... which escalated into full-blown guffaws as she stepped onto the transportation pad leading up into the Council chambers and used the pad there to enter the Archmage's chambers.
Her chambers.
And there it was: Hrormir's Icestaff stood innocently enough in one of the staff-racks lining the walls of the Archmage's study. Rona had taken over nearly a year ago, but she had had little time and patience to go through the various studies Hannibal Traven had left unfinished before his suicide. She idly plucked the little card hanging on the staff and read the minutely penned inscription.
Hrormir's Icestaff, ref.: --> Song of Hrormir
alleg. used in battle by H. against Daed. Noct.
Destr.: Frost (main)
Illus.: Light (main), Chameleon (minor)
Sure enough, there was a copy of “Song of Hrormir” on the desk nearby but she was more concerned with the staff itself - its uniquely icy-white sheen to be precise, which made it nigh impossible to just walk out of the Tower with the thing in plain view. Compared to the other staves on the rack, most of all her own that had helped slay Mannimarco, it practically screamed for attention.
Rona felt another laugh bubble up in her chest, this one containing a streak of hysteria. “I can't believe I have to steal something from my own chambers. Just to keep my secret”, she mumbled in disbelief while shrugging into a discarded robe and pulling the hood up. She still wore her ragged clothes underneath, and her mud-caked (calling the debris encountered in the Imperial City's gutters 'mud' was a bold-faced lie but the truth didn't bear thinking about) canvas shoes were not covered at all by the fine linen garment. But with the right stance and the right tone of voice, Rona knew that no-one would even notice them. Stepping back onto the teleportation pad, she was down in the hall in a blink of an eye, where Raminus had resorted to bring in some Novices to do the Legion Battlemages' job of keeping the visitors in check and things running smoothly.
“Raminus!”, she bellowed while stepping down from the pad. One snap of her fingers had the lobby illuminated by a searingly bright light. She made a point of ignoring people wincing and shielding her eyes as she strode across the room to her Rang-Raminus, who had been on his way to Council member and eventually Archmage before Traven had singlehandedly destroyed years of hard work and diplomacy by making Rona his successor in a cloak-and-dagger-move that would've made his Breton ancestors proud.
Rona had still not deigned to call for a new Council.
“What's the ruckus here, Raminus? I'm in the middle of a thing!”
She saw Bothiel turn away but not soon enough to prevent Rona reading “Sleeping most likely.” on the Bosmer's lips. Her gaze followed the mage as she vanished into the Orrery, her mind blanking out Raminus' attempts at explaining before she interrupted him: “I don't care. Get the rabble out of my Tower!”
She turned and stalked back to the pad, this time ignoring the tittering resentment springing up around her. With a final “I will not be disturbed!” she snapped her fingers again, plunging the lobby into comparative darkness and vanished up the pad.
She cocked her head in the Council chambers, listening to the angry and concerned voices drifting up through the thick stone-work as people scrambled for the exit as their vision was temporarily blinded. Then she rushed upstairs, yanking the robes off, grabbing the staff and cast the strongest Chameleon-spell on herself she could muster. Her looking-glass showed nothing but slight ripples where she stood, ripples that became even less noticeable as she slipped her index-finger through the cheap pewter-ring that always resided in her pockets.
There was still pandemonium down in the lobby, though some Apprentice quick on the uptake had conjured up a weak ball of fire and balanced it on her fingertip. The doors to the lobby were wide open and Rona shoved and jostled her way towards the exit, considerably adding to the confusion around her. The courtyard was still devoid of any guards and so was the city itself.
She kept her Chameleon-spell going as she made her way back to Dynaris' house to deliver the staff.
She kept it running as she plodded back to the Arcane University, resuming her role as Archmage and venting her encroaching exhaustion on Raminus (who really did not deserve what she put him through, but appearances had to be kept up), flinging the gloating note from the Grey Fox into his face. She made – and instantly forgot – a mental note to reward the mage in some way for the stress she was putting him through as she saw his face drain of all color, as he read about the theft that had taken place.
As soon as she was alone again, she vanished behind the spell again as she visited the Waterfront to spy on Hieronymus Lex for her report to Methredhel (Raminus' note to Lex was astoundingly civil, in an ice-cold and deadly way).
She nearly sobbed as she pulled out her last resources to cast Chameleon again as she hefted Hrormir's Icestaff on her back to deliver it to Ontus Vanin's house (Thank the divines he was living in Talos Plaza and she did not have to lug the staff through half the city – again!), not caring if anyone saw her vanish behind a spell that was decidedly too advanced for the role of a low-life cut-purse she was putting on for the Guild.
The last of the spell flickered out when the University's heavy gates clanked shut behind her. Pale light from the East heralded a new morning and Rona realized with a bone-deep wariness that she had been awake for nearly thirty hours.
“What am I doing with my life?”, she groaned as she staggered down the stone-steps into the courtyard.
“Dunno, and while you're at it you can answer this as well: What d'you think you're doing here?”
She looked up, coming face to face with two Legion Battlemages. One of them had his hand on his sword, the other had a half-formed spell in his palm.
Ah ...
“Drop the spell, thief”, the one with the sword ordered and Rona's exhausted body just followed through. The ring slipped from her finger, she became visible and the look on the guards' face went from apprehensive to downright disgusted.
“Now, even the canal-rats think they can just wander in and help themselves!”, the one with the spell snarled. “Lex's really gone too far this time.”
“You're coming with us”, the one with the sword said. And: “Spare it!”, as Rona opened her mouth to protest. “Walking in here as if you own the place? Making enough noise to wake the dead? Weak-ass illusion-spell? And looking as if a sewer-rat spat you out? Never even heard of blending in, ey? If it wasn't so damn disrespectful, I'd piss my pants laughing at the dumbest thief ever.”
“The Captain'll want to hear about that”, the other said and clapping his hand on her shoulder, proceeded to march her back out.
She got a month in the slammer: One week for breaking and entering with malicious intent (technically, she hadn't been entering yet but they did find her Chameleon-ring and even her last lockpick) and three weeks for indecent behavior (apparently, gripping the front of a guard's uniform and shake them while yelling bloody murder counted as that). She was thankful when she woke up the next day. Balancing her leg on the other and pillowing her head on her crossed arms, she was actually thankful that none of her mages had been around when she had been arrested. Sure, they could have cleared up the misunderstanding with the guards but her get-up would have been very hard to explain away. She wanted Rona to be as far removed from Rosentia Nones as possible.
So, with a smug grin, she turned to her side and prepared to catch up on some sleep in the next few days and once she felt bored enough, she guessed, she would just walk out. There was no place on Mundus that a determined mage wielding Unlock and Chameleon couldn't get into – or out of.