#talzee

“Don’t break this one.”

“I won’t.” Banner scowled down at the thin, flat tablet she passed to him, holding it gingerly. It showing a map of a building; she had manipulated it earlier by swiping her fingers across it, and he hesitantly copied the movement while she bent to rummage through her bag. Instantly, the picture got bigger, until now all he saw was one black line cutting through a patch of white. Cursing under his breath, Banner tried fixing it.

By the time Talzee had finished putting together whatever contraption she’d brought with, Banner had somehow made the glass tablet display a grid full of brightly-colored shapes and some creepy-looking picture of a girl in pigtails in the corner. Sighing, Talzee took the tablet back.

“Okay, so the reason we can’t just go over the wall,” she said patiently as she made the tablet go back to the map, “is because there’s cameras everywhere. Do you remember what cameras are?”

“Yes, they scry things,” Banner said, hating being talked to like he was an idiot. Talzee said that cameras, like her tablet, were neither magical nor alive, but he was finding that hard to believe. He frowned at the thing she had made; it only vaguely resembled the Padrunni rifles that he knew from his time. Apparently, they were a lot better now in the future - Talzee said that she could kill someone with her ‘sniper rifle’ when she was still 900 meters away. She didn’t seem to want to kill someone tomorrow night, but she was still bringing a much smaller, handheld version of the thing.

She looked like she was about to launch into another explanation of the difference between cameras and scrying spells, but then stopped herself and just nodded. “So each of these - don’t touch the screen - each of these little red x’s are cameras. There’s no blind spots along the wall, but the security guards here work for local province government, so they’ve got sucky training and we could probably take them all out. I know one of the janitors that work there -”

“What’s a janitor?”

“Someone who cleans the building.” Talzee brushed a hand through her red, curly hair. “He works overnight, so I think I can bribe him into smuggling us both inside in his truck.”

Banner, hating himself with every stupid question that came out of his mouth, interrupted again to ask, “What’s a truck?”

“A bigger version of a car,” she said patiently. “The only problem is that his truck’s searched every time he goes in, so we still need to figure out how to deal with the security guards.”

Banner stared down at the tablet, rubbed the back of his neck, then said, “Just kill the cameras with your rifle and then we can go over the wall.”

Talzee buried her face in her hands and groaned. “Because then the guards will know that someone’s trying to break in.”

“But the cameras will be dead, they won’t be able to tell anyone,” Banner said. Talzee stared at him through her fingers. Banner, realizing that he had said something stupid again, bristled. “What?”

“In the sapphire?” she finally sighed, and the man nodded.

“Probably,” he said, temporizing his words with a shrug. “It’s the best lead I have, anyway. Especially since you obviously didn’t find anything.”

“And now that lady has it.” Talzee rubbed her face. “Fantastic.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure I can convince her to take it off easily enough,” the man said with a careless shrug. Talzee raised an eyebrow.

“Surely,” she said in a dry voice, rearranging the desk to make sure everything was as she found it. She hadn’t necessarily expected this to be an easy job, but it was rapidly becoming more and more difficult.

Talzee wiggled the pistol at the other would-be thief. “You should probably stay here before you get hurt.”

“There’s no chance of that.”

“You’re the one standing at gunpoint,” Talzee said, snorting. “Don’t be so cocky.”

“Love, if you were going to shoot me, you would have done it already.”

Talzee hated the confidence in his voice. “I still could,” she reminded him, but that would create a host of problems. Someone would probably hear the gunshot. That would panic security and, in turn, the guests; the party would be locked down, and there would be no chance to snag the jewel. If that was, in fact, where the Friezburg codes really were located, and this idiot wasn’t just sending her off on a red herring.

She sighed, watching time tick away on the clock mounted on the wall. “Just stay out of my way,” she advised him.

“Sooooo, no chance of sharing?”

“Definitely not.”

The man pouted. “I was here first, I call dibs,” he said with a sniff. Talzee rolled her eyes. As annoying as he was, she didn’t really want to kill him. If he kept getting in her way, though...

“Look, I don’t want to leave the party with a dead body,” the man said, echoing her thoughts. He fidgeted with his sleeve cuffs, not quite meeting her gaze. “Let’s just agree to not murder each other, and whoever gets to the sapphire first, wins.”

Talzee, though her mind was already made up, made a show of thinking it over.

“Fine,” she said after a long moment, twirling the small gun around her fingers. “But I’m keeping this.” 

“What? Come on, I need that -”

“Spoils of war.” Talzee picked up her clutch from the desk, stuffing the miniature handgun inside. It would be far too obvious once she reached the main party, but she’d need to make a stop in the bathroom to freshen up anyway. She’d find a better place to hide it there.

Once the gun was out of sight, the man started around the desk. Talzee backed up, keeping distance between them, and set her hand on the doorknob. The man stopped a few steps away, and they both eyed each other warily.

“Hear anyone?” he asked in a whisper. Talzee waited, head cocked, and her gaze fell on an umbrella stand next to the door.

“Ooooo, look at this!” she exclaimed in a loud whisper, grabbing the umbrella.

Frowning, the man gave an impatient sigh. “Are you going to let us out?”

“No, wait, no, look, this is a limited edition, hand-made Gershwin,” Talzee babbled in excitement, pulling all sorts of buzz words out of the air. THe man edged a bit closer, and with a sugary sweet smile, Talzee swung the heavy, carved wooden handle up between his legs.

“Son of a -”

Talzee closed the door behind her, grinning, and rushed off before her new rival’s curses could attract anyone else.

He still reached the ballroom before she did, but Talzee expected that. She had had to stop and fix her hair and makeup in the bathroom, and grimaced at the seam that had split along the side of her dress. It was barely an inch long, and lay against her ribs, so she just hoped that her arm would cover it for the most part, and that if anyone noticed, they’d be decent enough people not to mention it.

She spotted the man across the room, near a side table with finger sandwiches and wine. Talzee stuck to her side of the room. For the better part of an hour, the two of them pretended to ignore each other, but for the occasional glance through the swirling couples on the dance floor. He struck her as a cocky rookie, at least as far as grappling went - she had bested him while in a sheath gown. (Which she was definitely never wearing to one of these things again, current fashion trend or not. It was just too hard to fight in one.)

He did, admittedly, have one advantage that Talzee did not: he could ask their target to dance.

The only name Talzee managed to glean from the gossip was Miss Rosaria. She was a Callegan woman LeBlanc had met on his latest government trip, but none of the other guests had heard that he’d be bringing a plus one until they arrived that night, late to dinner. She was a little too light-skinned for a Callegan, Talzee thought, and tall. She lingered on the edge of a group of married women who had been quick to take Talzee under their wings, clucking over her young, unmarried state and pointing out all the handsome men, married or not. 

Their fierce backbiting was both amusing and terrifying - Talzee was absolutely shocked to hear some of their giggled stories. If she ever took another job among Erideen’s elite, she’d make sure to cultivate these women as sources. And then never leave their presence, for fear of what dangerous dirt they could dig up on her.

After an hour of watching Miss Rosaria and listening to the rumor mill, though, Talzee realized something that would blow the bastard’s advantage right out of the water.

She stood at the table with a pair of her new best friends, who were both occupied with pointing out to Talzee every available (or unavailable) man that passed by (their marriage status didn’t seem to matter). Talzee showed her disinterest quite clearly, but that only seemed to make the women more and more determined to hook her up. As the song ended, Talzee hastily glanced away when Rosaria, for the third time that evening, caught her staring.

Talzee’s companions mistook the direction of her gaze, and giggled to each other. “Oh, here he comes, Miss Calry,” Seline said, nudging Talzee. “He must have caught you staring - oh, dear. What happened to your face, dear Tolien?”

Talzee sipped her drink in a very determined fashion as her newfound rival swaggered up to them, barely giving her a glance before grinning at Seline and her friend. He lied as easily as if the scratch across his face - now covered with a small bandage - wasn’t from Talzee’s attempt to stab his eye out.

“Oh, I took a quick walk through the garden and got caught by a tree branch,” he said, leaning over to give Seline a quick peck on the cheek. “It’s always nice to see you, Lady Moriana.”

“Such a shame,” clucked Seline’s friend. Tolien - Talzee doubted that was his real name - bore with patience the fuss the older ladies made over him. Talzee ignored him and watched a young couple navigate the dance floor in a convoluted pattern. She reluctantly dragged her attention back to the group when Seline said, “Oh, dear Tolien, you absolutely must meet Miss Calry. Her uncle is a cousin to Oligarch Borza.”

“Oh, Miss Calry, is it?” Tolien offered his hand. Talzee promptly took a hors d'oeuvre off the table so that her hands were full. “Nice to finally have a name to put with that pretty face.”

Seline latched onto all the possible implications of that sentence like a buzzard on a dead horse. “Ohh,” she said eagerly, “have the two of you met?”

Talzee forced a smile. “Briefly, although we didn’t catch each other’s names.”

“No,” Tolien said, tucking his hands into his pockets, “there wasn’t quite time for proper introductions.”

Seline’s friend hmmed, smiling wickedly at the both of them. “The gardens - is that where you disappeared to earlier, Miss Calry?”

“You caught me.”

“Oh, but we should give the two of you some time to be acquainted,” Seline decided, and much to Talzee’s relief, hustled her friend away. Talzee dropped her smile like it were a nuclear bomb.

“I really regret not shooting you after all,” she informed Tolien.

He grinned, taking a glass of champagne from a passing server. “Most people do,” he said. “Making any progress, Miss Calry?”

“Are you here to brag?” Talzee returned, and noticed just the tiniest flash of frustration cross Tolien’s face. She grinned into her wine.

“It may take some time,” he admitted.

“You’ve danced with her three times.”

“Well, she seemed pretty eager to get away from her date.”

Talzee couldn’t blame her. LeBlanc was a grasping old man who was embarrassingly desperate for a sign of attention from any woman. Rosaria hadn’t sat down once since Talzee’s return to the ballroom, and was now being twirled about by a distinguished military officer. She looked just as interested in him as she had both with LeBlanc and Tolien, which was to say, not very.

“I could barely get her to say three words to me,” Tolien huffed. “She acts like she’s dancing with a lamp.”

“Maybe,” Talzee said, with barely-contained glee, “she doesn’t like bruised fruit.”

The acid glare he sent her could have melted steel. Talzee twirled the stem of her glass between her fingers and pretended that she hadn’t said a single word. “So have you come to surrender, then?”

This time, Talzee was the one to catch Rosaria looking at her over the shoulder of her current dance partner. Tolien, pouting into his champagne, didn’t notice. That lack of observance certainly explained his failure, Talzee thought.

“Hardly,” Tolien scoffed. “But I don’t see you getting any closer.”

Whirling around, Talzee produced her knife, just in time to see the bastard point a gun at her.

“21 foot rule,” she blurted out.

“What?” he said, but by then, Talzee was twisting his wrist to the side and throwing a fist at his neck. He managed to wriggle enough in her grip that her punch glanced off his collarbone instead, grabbing her other hand before she could break his wrist. The gun clattered to the floor. Instead of giving him the chance to grab for it, Talzee rammed him back into the closet.

He tripped over something, and took Talzee with him as he fell backwards. She grunted as she landed on top of him, and cursed her slim-skirted dress. It prevented her from straddling the bastard properly, and he rolled the two of them over until he was on top.

“Someone’s gonna hear us,” he hissed at Talzee. He pinned one of her arms to the ground, and used his other elbow to block her attempt at stabbing him with her knife.

“Not my fault you’re trying to rape me,” she snapped back.

“Now, that’s unfair - holy mother -”

He recoiled, hand to his cheek where Talzee had scored a shallow cut. She punched him, awkwardly, in the gut, and bucked the man off.

The two of them tumbled out of the closet. Somehow, over the ensuing scuffle, they both heard the same thing; footsteps outside on the hardwood floors of the hallway. They froze, Talzee with one knee on the man’s chest while he was trying to push her off (in a very inappropriate place), as someone said, “You hear something?”

“No.”

“Think it was from in here.” 

“LeBlanc’s room? We just passed him and his plus one.”

Someone jiggled the handle. “Locked,” they muttered.

“Could get the key from the shift boss,” the other person suggested - they were likely the mansion’s security. Talzee bit her lip and glared down at the man - this was all his fault. She would have been gone by now if he hadn’t insisted on interrupting her.

After another moment of silence, the first voice muttered, “It’s probably nothing. You go check the ballroom and see if LeBlanc’s still out there, I’ll just patrol the hall for a few more minutes.” There was the crackle of a radio, and the sound of two pairs of footsteps walking away. Talzee waited a moment longer.

Then, she forced out between her teeth, “Get your hand off my breasts.”

“No,” he said flatly. “You’ll stab me in the face again.” He currently had her knife hand trapped, and in all likelihood, was guessing the truth. They were both in an incredibly painful position, though, and Talzee blew hair out of her face.

“What are you even doing here?” she demanded.

“I’m going to assume the same thing as you,” he retorted. “Though our target’s walked right out the door.”

“I’m not here for some stupid rock.”

He narrowed his eyes at her - they were a green-hazel, and even in the middle of fighting, had the look of a sleepy cat. “If you’re looking for the Friezburg codes, then yeah, you’re here for the stupid rock.”

Talzee groaned. “What do you mean by that?”

“Let me up and I’ll tell you.”

“Do I look stupid to you?” Talzee shifted slightly, trying to pull her knife hand out of his grip. His fingers tightened around her wrist. “You started this.”

He pursed his lips. “Well, one of us needs to end it - no not by killing me,” he yelped, as she  finagled another slim knife from her dress. He stopped pushing at her chest (finally) and blocked her with his elbow. “True, all right, truce!”

“Oh, for - you can’t call truce!” Talzee hissed at him. 

“We can’t just stay here forever,” he hissed back. “Someone’s going to come in here eventually. Let me up, I won’t hurt you.”

Talzee snorted. “You weren’t hurting me in the first place,” she informed him, but slowly, slowly, leaned back. The man, with a wary look, finally let go of her wrist, and she sat back the rest of the way, still on his abdomen.

“You have to actually get off me,” he said with a nervous grin, rubbing at his face. Blood - not much - came away on his gloved fingers, and he grimaced. Talzee spotted the gun - it was somewhere under the desk, and after eyeing the man for a moment, she purposefully planted a knee in his solar plexus before rolling off and grabbing the pistol.

He swore and curled around his gut for a moment, while she stood up and frowned at her dress. She was pretty sure she had torn some seams during their fight, and she discreetly rubbed her breasts, aching both from the tight clothes and the fight.

“Now explain,” she ordered him, pointing the gun at the man as he slowly rolled to his feet. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“You first,” he retorted, eyeing the gun, and Talzee sighed in exasperation.

He had already admitted to being here for the Friezburg codes. Talzee wasn’t surprised by that; people had been after those for months now. All she needed to figure out now was how badly this guy wanted to get the codes, and if she would have to leave a body here in the room after all.

That would complicate things.

“Just - stand over there,” she decided, waving him over to a corner. She moved over to the desk, scanning the top papers again before trying the drawers.

He rolled his eyes, but did as he was told, plucking a tissue from the box on the corner of the desk and holding it to his cheek. “I told you,” he said, as Talzee continued her careful rifling through the desk. “It’s all in the sapphire. Look, the guy just left his keys on the desk, use those.”

There was precious little else to check, but Talzee was loath to admit that the strange man might be right. She grabbed the keys anyway and opened the locked drawers, but aside from a few stray papers and a bottle of rank cologne, there was nothing to find.

“In the sapphire?” she finally sighed, and the man nodded.

“Probably,” he said, temporizing his words with a shrug. “It’s the best lead I have, anyway. Especially since you obviously didn’t find anything.”