Just A Thief

“Aria, huh?” the still grinning thief repeated, looking thoughtful. “That’s a pretty name, but I swear I’ve heard it somewhere before…”

“Maybe you’ve heard the musical terminology?” I asked him in an almost deadpan tone of voice. His never faltering cheerfulness could be just a bit disconcerting at times, and this was one of them.

“No, no! Not that. I’ve heard it as a name before, but I just can’t place it…hmm…. Oh, well,” he shrugged good naturedly after a few moments of thinking about it and then asked, “You had some questions for me, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah,” I answered, but then I fell silent. He gave me the time I needed to formulate my question, to decide just how to say it and time to actually voice it. Clearly, Zane was good at reading the mood and understanding just what he read, and he had the patience to wait when a person just needed a moment to get their thoughts in order. He simply sat quietly, not pestering me to ask him quickly but sitting there comfortably, casually, as I had come to expect in just a few short minutes of knowing him. Bright blue eyes watched me expectantly, but I was still trying to decide what question to ask.

I sighed and decided to just get the obvious question out of the way, so I said, “What is this place called? Not the castle, but the country. Or kingdom. Or empire. Whatever it is.”

The person beside me chuckled.

“That’s easy enough to answer,” he grinned at me. “You’re in the Kingdom of Shen. At least, that’s what the current king chooses to call it.”

“What’s the real name?” I asked, curiously, then added, “The one associated with the rightful king, I mean.”

“Entaumia.”

The name rolled off his tongue like some sort of exotic spice. So smooth, but also so strange a name it was difficult to wrap my mind around it.. At least Shen had sounded realistic, like something that could have been Japanese if I didn’t somehow know better. The tone of Zane’s voice when he said the true name of the kingdom, however, left little room for doubt. What he said was true, because his wistful tone told all.

“You still call it that, don’t you? You and everyone in your group,” I pondered gently. It was more of a statement than a question, but he answered anyway with a grin.

“Yeah. Entaumia just…rolls off the tongue so much better than Shen, don’t you agree?”

I laughed a little at how his words nearly fit the words I’d been thinking after he’d said it the first time, but I nodded and said, “Definitely sounds better.”

A pretty comfortable, but brief, silence fell over the two of us for a few minutes.

“Got the next question ready yet?” Zane asked me, purely out of curiosity and not out of impatience. He was just asking to ask, and maybe to break the silence.

“Now I do,” I said once I’d decided upon the next question. My voice came out sounding tentative. “Can you tell me about the…about the whole betrayal thing…?”

“Can that one wait a while?” he asked, almost apologetically, as a reply. “Our prophet and strategist, my foster father figure, can tell you the story so much better than I ever could. Especially since he was older than two at the time. Since I was the one who was only two, I can only go by what I hear about it, a lot of which isn’t always reliable information. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine!” I waved a hand dismissively, hoping to get the point across that I really didn’t mind having to wait while smiling at him. “The answer to that can wait for as long as it needs to. The next question; what in the world did you do to piss the guards off so badly?”

At this question, Zane let out another of his infectious laughs, his eyes twinkling mischievously under a curtain of black hair, and he said, “Let’s just say that I’ve been like a Benjamin to them.”

My look of puzzlement did not go unnoticed, nor did it go ignored.

“You don’t know who Benjamin was, do you?”

“Not at all,” I agreed, laughing a little as I shook my head no. “The name I know, but not in this context. So, who was he?”

“I think your expression would be like…Robin Hood?” he said, after thinking for a minute. “Is that right?”

I laughed again and said, “If you’re talking about the one who steals from the rich and gives to the needy, then you definitely have the right name. And if that’s what you’re talking about, that explains perfectly well why the guards don’t like you. Am I safe in assuming that your main targets are the belongings of the false king?”

He grinned.

“You’re exactly right,” he agreed, “but the jobs I like most are freeing the members of the old court that he’s captured…”

“You might not know the number exactly…but do you have a guess at how many of the members of the old court or even of the royal family that they have in the dungeons? And why can’t your people rescue all of them?”

I thought that I had gone too far, crossed some invisible boundary line, when my amiable companion fell into kind of a brooding sort of silence. Was it a sore spot to their rebellion, not having rescued everyone? An inability to do so? Perhaps they had even tried their best to save them all but gained no ground, unable to liberate the innocent courtiers. A thing like that would dampen anyone’s mood, to feel so utterly helpless. I felt like an absolutely terrible person fro bringing that sort of feeling to this cheerful man beside me, even if he did steal for a living.

“It…it’s not as though we haven’t tried,” Zane surprised me from my self-loathing when he spoke again, “trust me. We’ve tried so many times I’ve lost count! We’ve only managed to get three people out safely, aside from you. But it’s not for lack of trying…”
His fists were clenched on his lap, and I wanted to reach out to him but felt I didn’t know him well enough. It was then that he continued.

“We just don’t have a way to get them all up the stairs and into the nearest passage. The closest one to the dungeons that we’ve managed to clear is three floors above them. As for my—the princess, she’s kept under heavy guard. She’s been kept safe, so there’s not exactly a reason to try to get her out just yet, even though I hate leaving her there. We have to focus on rescuing the others, right? The ones who are being beaten, and starved, and even sometimes being put to death! We do our best, but we’ve still lost five good men to them…

“I do worry, though. About the princess,” the tone Zane used grew softer, the light in his blue eyes dulled. “I worry that they’ll decided they don’t need she, or the members of the old royal court, anymore. If that day comes to pass, I’m just scared we won’t be able to get to them in time. If we…if we can’t do that, I don’t know what I’d do…”

Forgoing my earlier inhibitions, thought still slightly unsure of the action I should take, I reached out to lay my hand, gently, on his shoulder. Zane tensed beneath my touch for a brief moment before he realized it was me and then relaxed. His fists loosened slightly and it was then and there that I made a decision.

“Teach me,” I said, the force of my sudden decisiveness making my mouth move almost before I processed what I had wanted to say.

“Teach you what?” an eyebrow raised questioningly and I could tell that my companion was forcing himself back into the cheerful Zane I had first met. It killed me to see a person doing that to himself, just so those around him wouldn’t worry. I didn’t call him out on it this time, but forged on.

“Teach me how to do whatever your group does,” I said firmly. “How to save people, or hide people that the king’s men have somehow targeted—I bet you do that, too!—and even how to fight. I want to help.”

He blinked rapidly about three times in genuine surprise. When he gathered his wits about him, which took only a few short seconds, he said slowly, “You’ve only just come here, and you’ve only just met me. We could help you out of the castle, even out of the country, and definitely out of harm’s way. You barely know anything about me, let alone anyone else. You don’t know us, but you’d stay here with us, and even offer your help?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged, smiling and looking down the stairs into the dimly lit passage. “For one, other than my fellow prisoners down in the dungeons, you’re the first halfway decent person I’ve had the honor to meet so far. I probably shouldn’t trust you, but that doesn’t change the fact that I do. I’m a really trusting person, surprisingly, and since you’ve given me no reason to distrust you, I don’t. And for another, I can tell you really care about those that you haven’t been able to save yet and would free them in a heartbeat if you could. That loyalty is enough for me. I’d give anything to help you save them.”

Zane stared at me for several long seconds, which turned into a few minutes, as if he was unsure of my true intentions. For a moment I thought he might have been thinking that I was lying in order to ensure my own safety.

“Besides,” I broke the silence, trying to look unconcerned, “you saved me from a questionable fate at the hands of those guards, or at the hands of their leaders, and I owe you for that. The very least I owe you is my help, if not my life.”

“If you join us,” he said slowly, calculatingly, “there would be nothing we could do to guarantee your safety. You could be caught again. Knowing you’re with us, they might choose to kill you instantly after you’re captured, or maybe they’ll issue the order to kill you on sight. Would you still be willing to help us—complete strangers—in this endeavor? No matter the cost, even if it turns out to be your life on the line?”

It was almost as if he was trying to convince me not to help.

“Where’s the thrill in a rebellion if there isn’t any risk attached?” I teased him, grinning. “Besides, I’m reasonably stealthy. Sure, I’m no expert, but I bet I could be useful somehow.”

Zane analyzed me with a calculating stare to match his earlier tone, and I could tell that he still wasn’t fully convinced that I could give myself so fully to the cause. His next statement proved my thoughts on the matter were entirely correct.

“This is a serious matter to us, Aria. I’m not sure if you understand that you’re not dreaming right now, and we can’t afford to trust someone who’ll back out on us at a critical moment. It’s life and death for us, for the rebellion. It’s more serious than I think you’re comprehending.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” I said sharply, standing and poking him angrily in the chest. “I know it’s serious. I have come to terms with the fact that I am not dreaming. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve chosen the side I will take, and I’ll take it with or without permission. Have I made myself clear to you, Zane?”

“Aria—” he began, but I cut him off.

“I won’t back out of something once I’ve dedicated myself to it. I don’t give up, Zane. Remember that and we can avoid another scene like this one.” I straightened up and looked away from him, then said, “I am not afraid of them. I’m not afraid of risking my life for a cause like this. I may not know much about it, since I am practically a stranger here, but I feel in my heart it’s a worthy cause to fight for, even to die for. I’ve lived my entire life without feeling so strongly about anything, without caring for anything in particular, except for my mother. Now I find that there’s a whole country of people who could use my help, however much I can offer, and I can’t turn my back on it now.

“I am not afraid,” I repeated, dusting my pants off. Zane sat there for a few moments longer, looking at me in stunned silence, before he started chuckling softly to himself and climbed to his feet. He dusted himself off as I had just done, then motioned for me to follow him.

“Fine. We’ll see how good you are when you’ve settled in a bit. We’ve just got to get there first.”

“What are we waiting around here fro, then? Let’s go,” I said, growing slightly impatient. Zane’s infectious grin once more crawled back across his features as he good-naturedly relented to my suggestion that we go.

“You don’t even know where we’re going,” he quipped in an attempt at his lilting, humorous tones from before.

“Then I suppose you’ll just have to come along and show me the way,” I retorted. At this, the grin that broke out was entirely real.