I just really wanted to write Lucretia meeting Sazed or Kalen and I tend to gravitate towards fics that focus on Lucretia and Taako so I ended up writing Sazed. I thought about writing a continuation wherein she meets him after the Story and Song but it never happened. I might end up writing that Lucretia and Kalen fic as well.
(also, , , , I swear I'm working on that daemon fic)
Sazed threw open the door to the bar and slumped into a seat.
The bartender, by now used to his behavior, sneered and asked, "Here to drink yourself into oblivion again?"
"Shut up and give me what you got," Sazed snarled, slapping a few gold pieces on the table. The bartender snorted and turned away. "Hey!" he snapped, "I'm a paying customer!"
The woman sitting a couple stools over looked up, startled, although Sazed didn't notice her attention.
"Fat lot of good it does me," the bartender muttered.
"Excuse me?!"
The bartender shot him a flat look. "You don't pay half the time."
"I'm out of work," Sazed said defensively, a familiar bitter feeling curling in his chest. Things were supposed to be better after Glamour Springs. It'd been sacrifice for a better future. It'd been sacrifice.
But the money he'd stolen from Taako had run out after three weeks and now, three and a half months later, he still couldn't fucking find work.
The woman said suddenly, "May I have something non-alcoholic, please?"
The bartender turned to her, delighted to put off Sazed's order. "Of course."
Sazed glared at the woman. She looked like she was in her mid- to late-twenties. Her pale hair was twisted and braided at the nape of her neck, and she was thoroughly engrossed in a pamphlet that was even more neon than Taako's most hideous costumes.
She seemed to sense his attention, because she looked up and stared back. Her eyes were very blue, startlingly bright against her dark skin. "Do you need something?" she asked, voice polite and level.
"Nothing," he muttered, swiveling back around and glaring at the bar.
The bartender put her drink in front of her, and she smiled at him. "Thank you. Do you happen to know know if there are any mercenaries in the area?"
The bartender, thank gods, finally started mixing Sazed's drunk. "Yeah, there's one staying at the inn right now. He's a sorcerer, though, if you care."
The woman revealed her teeth in a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "That's fine, thank you."
"You thinking of hunting some monsters?"
"I'm something of a collector, actually." She swirled her drink, eyes dropping absentmindedly to the pamphlet again.
"Yeah?" The bartender paused, his hands stilling. "What're you collecting?"
"Can you please fucking finish my drunk," Sazed interrupted.
"Chill," the bartender said, frostily, but did as asked. As he slammed the glass down in front of Sazed, he asked the woman, "Treasure?"
She shook her head. "No, actually. I'm looking for an arcane artifact, but I'm afraid I can't be more specific than that."
The bartender shrugged, used to all sorts of strange adventurers in his bar. "Alright. Well Cam—that's the sorcerer; he's a sweetheart—is hanging out in the inn down the street."
"Thank you." She sipped her drink, but didn't move to leave.
Sazed downed his drink in a few gulps, savoring the burn in his throat. "Give me another one."
The bartender shot him an irritated look. Sazed dropped a couple more coins on the counter.
As he began mixing another drink, the bartender asked the woman, "Can you tell me why you're looking for them? Or is that private?"
"A research project," she replied, immediately, "I'm a writer."
"Oh, fancy." The bartender handed the drink off to Sazed without looking. "So you're not collecting for a fortune?"
She laughed, the sound soft and wry and touched with irony. "No. Speaking of money, do you know how much Cam charges?"
"I think a hundred gold upfront and then fifty for each month." The bartender shrugged. "I'm sure you could bargain him down."
But the woman's shoulders relaxed just slightly. "Oh, no, I can pay that."
Sazed's ears pricked up, and his eyes flashed to her. He couldn't even imagine paying that much just to get a random sorcerer to follow him around. Whoever this woman was must be plenty rich if she could say I can pay that so offhandedly.
She could probably afford to lost some of it.
Sazed took another gulp of his drink but didn't down all of it. Half of him wanted to blame his thoughts on the alcohol.
The other half was painfully aware that, no, this was really how far he'd fallen.
She probably couldn't protect herself, the dark part of his brain reasoned. Why else would she need a sorcerer to go researching?
This is a terrible idea, the not-terrible part of his brain thought.
Fuck it, the other part said.
Sazed slid from his seat. The bartender startled. "You're leaving already?"
"Fuck off," he said forcefully.
As he left, he heard the woman ask, "Who was that?"
Sazed didn't look back, slamming the door as he left. He knew Cam, knew which inn, knew which alley would be best to drag an unsuspecting woman into. There was a dark side street between the inn and the bar, and he leaned against the wall just outside it. The part of Sazed that wasn't completely done with life thought to be thankful that there was nobody else in the street.
She emerged barely ten minutes later, tucking the pamphlet into the bag slung over her shoulder. The white staff in her left hand gave him some pause, but she used it like a walking stick instead of a staff and, besides, what did he have to lose?
She didn't even notice him as she started walking towards the inn. As soon as she was near enough, Sazed split away from the wall, drawing a knife from his belt.
Her head shifted towards him, and he lunged forwards, jabbing the tip of the knife into her back. She stilled. "Turn right," he said, voice low and dangerous, "and go into the alley."
"What if I scream?" she asked, and rage burned through his heart at the nonchalance in her voice.
"Then I'll fucking knife you! Just walk."
She obligingly walked into the alley, and he would be lying if he said he wasn't unnerved by her stoic demeanor.
As soon as they were out of sight of the main street, Sazed relaxed. "Now drop your purse and scat."
"You're Sazed, right?" she asked.
"None of your business! I'm gonna stab you—"
"So you've said," she interrupted. "I don't care. Your name is Sazed, and you were part of a cooking show until the massacre at Glamour Springs. Is that correct?"
His rage gave way to fear, cold and terrible and sharp. Oh, gods, she knows.
She can't know, the other part of his brain insisted, Nobody knows.
She stepped away and turned to face him, blue eyes terrible. She was no longer holding the staff like a walking stick anymore.
Both hands wrapped around its smooth wood, and oh god she's glowing she's a fucking wizard fuck—
"I have just one question." The air hummed with the energy of an uncast spell, and Sazed had been around magic often enough to know the feeling of unfriendly energy.
His knife clattered from his hand onto the ground.
"Where is Taako?"
Sazed stared at her. "Why do you care?" There was a bitterness in his voice that he didn't even try to hide because of course this was about Taako. Everything was about Taako.
Her intensity didn't relent. "I'm not going to ask again."
Her staff flashed briefly silver, and an uncomfortable itch tickled the back of Saazed's throat. A haze seemed to fall over his vision, and he had time to think, Fuck fuck fuck, before her spell wrapped around him and dammit he didn't have the skills to throw her off.
Her voice acquired a note of command, of dignity, of steel-edged anger. "Tell me where Taako is."
Sazed instinctively wanted to rebel, to refuse, to run, but the larger part of him wanted to obey her.
Fuck, said a very, very small part of his mind.
"I don't know," his mouth said, out loud and with real words, "I left him a couple days after Glamour Springs."
Her brow furrowed. "You don't know? Who would?"
Whatever fuzziness she'd wrapped around his brain was fading, but Sazed smiled vindictively. "Nobody. He had nobody. Nobody loved him."
More than anything else he'd said thus far, his words hurt her. He saw it in the way her eyes grew wide and vulnerable and briefly very sad before they hardened, and he rejoiced. Her face shuttered over until there was nothing but calm and cool and disregard.
"That all?" he asked, cruel and powerful again in the face of her vulnerability.
Her expression turned dismissive, and he was too shocked to be angry. The way her lips turned down and her chin went up and her brows tilted together. . . . That was Taako's expression. Sazed remembered it very well, remembered seething beneath it when it was directed at him and holding it in his mind as he pocketed a bottle of arsenic.
"Who are you?" he asked, bite once again gone from his voice.
But she simply smiled, small and cold and uncaring. "That's none of your business. If you ever try to hurt another person for your own selfishness, I will kill you." She swept out of the alley like a queen in her castle, her staff at her side and her head held high.
Sazed, briefly, considered knifing her anyways.
He didn't, though.
He felt ill.
He didn't doubt her threat, just as he didn't doubt her power. He still couldn't get over the sight of Taako's expression on her face, or the careless ease with which she'd used magic.
He didn't move for what felt like a century, feet rooted to the street and body frozen and staring. The distant sound of the inn door sounded as it swung open and clicked shut.
Sazed started, shaking his head. He couldn't stay here anymore. Time to find a new town, a new beginning, a new lie.
He bent over to pick up his knife and stopped. It was warped, twisted and blunted and cracked. The tip had snapped off when he'd dropped it, and the shape only bore the faintest resemblance to a knife, like the manifestation of a child's dream, two steps to the left of reality.
Horror sank into his bones. He hadn't even seen her cast the spell.
Across the street, he thought he heard her laugh, and the sound sent fear down his spine. Intimidated, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked the other way.
disclaimer: ive never been to a bar nor ever had a sip of alcohol ever in my entire life. im so sorry
Also! The spell that Lucretia uses on Sazed is Suggestion, and she essentially Suggested that he tell her where Taako is. Because Sazed answered and thus followed her suggestion, the spell immediately ended and Sazed could say whatever he wanted because? Apparently? Zone of Truth is just a Cleric spell.