Why I can smile, and murder whiles I smile
And cry 'content' to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheek with artificial tears
And frame my face to all occasions.
-Henry Vi, part 3, Shakespeare
It was finally coming together. After weeks of preparations, of squirreling away costumes and props, of starting rumours in all the wrong places, of going over his lines again and again until he knew them like the lines of his very own palm, after all that and more, Leofric Tabris was ready.
Ready to scam the rich shems of Denerim for every coin they were worth.
Lowyn had complained at the expense of his disguise but his little sister had always been the miser of the twins. It was entirely essential, he explained to her calmly, to have the right lace ruffles on his doublet. No, it would not do to have second-hand, grimy old lace from the alienage haberdashery. Nor would he approve if she repurposed the lace from their mother's wedding dress, moth eaten and dusty as it was. New lace, fresh from Antiva, still smelling of the cigars it had been packed with. That was what Leofric's character required, and if he had to pay through the nose for it, by the Maker he would have.
And he had gotten it, of course. Leofric was resourceful like that. Even though his penny-pinch of a twin had refused to part with any more of their stash. She didn't understand. In this world you have to spend a little to gain a lot. She was dense as stone that one. He often joked with his friends that he had soaked up all the intellect in their mother's womb and left his sister the half-wit she was. Never within earshot of his twin though, Lowyn had her uses and stomach curdling revenge was one of them.
He stopped thinking about his sister as he stepped into the market. Riguardo Felladicci did not have siblings. And that was whose skin he wore now.
Felladicci would wrinkle his nose at the unfamiliar scents of this city. Fresh from the docks he would look up at the chantry with the distaste of a foreigner dismissing the architecture of barbarians. He would strut like a cockerel, careful of his fine leather boots in the sucking mud. Upon rounding the corner and the market coming into full view he would adjust his feathered hat, a gesture he always did when nervous, eyeing the mass of Ferelden flesh bartering and bargaining in the noon-time sun.
"Braska," he would swear in his native Antivan.
Leofric was most happy with the accent, he had worked for weeks perfecting it despite Lowyn's moaning that it was a waste of time. What did she know about his art? Not a blighted thing that was sure. She was merely book-keeping muscle, despite her claims that she did all the leg work whilst he pranced around like the world was his stage. Just goes to show how dense she truly was.
He puffed himself up, as Felladicci would, and began to speak.
Lowyn could always recognise her brother, though she doubted even their own father could today underneath all the make-up, the false warts and boot-polish darkening his 'distinguished red mop' as he liked to call it. Leofric also liked to call himself a master of disguise. What a joke! If it wasn't for her skills he would never get away with it. Though she had to admit he could walk and talk the part, act like one of those thespians who sometimes drove through town on their gaudy wagons.
As she ostensibly browsed the wares of a fruit merchant, she saw him enter the market all wrapped up in Felladicci's clothes and gestures. She shook her head, pretending she was doing so at worm-eaten cabbages but inside knowing it was for her brother and his stupid eccentricities.
This scam, this job, this trick whatever you wanted to call it, was far too small-scale to require so much preparation and she knew it. Leofric niggled at the details for no good reason. He was the distraction, she was the cut-purse, that's what it boiled down to, the true essence of the trick. Old as time itself. But not good enough for Leofric...oh no...he had to invent a character, have costumes and make-up, have theatre and glamour. Well she was thoroughly sick of it. If only she could find some way to leave him to his parlour games but he was her twin and she feared they were bound together in blood for better or worse.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began to boom in his honeyed accent. "Boys and girls. Hombres, elfos y enanos. Gather and bear witness to the extraordinary tale of The Black Fox of Orlais."
This got the market's attention, alright. Merchants and purchasers alike stopped their haggling, or packing of goods, or crying of wares, to stare. The fruit stall man, transfixed by disbelief, utterly distracted by her brother's audacity, never saw her roll a particular fine looking apple up her sleeve and shrug it carefully into her pocket.
And then Lowyn really went to work.
"Brutish shems," he hissed, hours later, over his much-cheaper-than-he'd-like-whiskey, restored again to Leofric Tabris, hunched in his favourite shadowy corner of the Gnawed Noble, waiting for Tulsan to appear.
"You got what you deserved." His usually dour sister was all grins tonight. Had his mood been less dark he'd have observed that it suited her to smile. But he was a dark thundercloud of misery and refused to give her mocking any credence.
It had taken hours to wash out the oil darkening his hair, especially in the freezing water. She refused to buy firewood for their base in the summer, miser that she was. His doublet was ruined, of course, those rotten tomatoes the fruit vendor handed out had stained the green brocade beyond repair.
Lowyn had garnered a fine haul nonetheless. No doubt smirking as she cut the purses, pilfered wallets, all the while playing the innocent maid. Enough to pay Tulsan what they owed, enough to buy him this cheap swill and her that rot-gut cider she drank, enough, if he could persuade his sister, to buy him that fetching dagger he'd been eyeing for weeks.
The thought lightened his mood somewhat. It would be good to be armed again. He'd lost his last blade in a drunken bet with Tulsan, a bet he was still reeling from today.
"Ah, the Tabris Twins," the man himself appeared at the table, or more accurately, Tulsan's protrusion of a stomach appeared over their table. An enigma, that one, moving so soundlessly with so much bulk. "Lowyn," he whispered her name in his throaty growl of a voice. "You are a delight to behold, a true gift from the Maker's, yes? Such beauty," his tiny black eyes swept his sister up and down. "I keep telling Leo to bring you to my game night..."
"I don't associate with creepy pigs, Tulsan," his sister gave the man her customary cold look.
"Oh, you do not know your brother so well then, I see," the man laughed at his own joke, patting his stomach with his sausage-like fingers, setting his many jowls to quivering.
"We have your money," Lowyn snapped, smiles all vanished. "Now take it and bugger off."
"Tut, tut, Lowyn," he tapped one of those impressive fingers on the table. "It does not suit your beauty to be so unnecessarily impolite. Elves go missing all the time, you see, it is like they vanish in a puff of smoke...poof."
"My apologies, Tulsan," Leofric butted in before Lowyn could dig them into an even deeper hole. "Sit and have a drink with us, we'll buy you one, wont we sister?"
Lowyn looked like he'd asked her to swallow a bucket of thorns. As the loan shark dragged a seat over she threw Leofric a filthy look, banged her fists on the table as she stood, but strode to the bar nonetheless.
"Now, we are alone, my sweet boy," Tulsan patted his face with one of those hands in a gesture that the fat man probably saw as fatherly. Leofric endured the stench of his perfume and the sweaty touch of his giant hand with a firmly fixed smile. "I have business that we should discuss."
Leofric's heart began to beat absurdly fast at those words. This was it. It was happening right now. How long had he waited for the loan shark to welcome him into 'the family?' It's why he suffered nights of wicked grace in his foul company. It's why he ran poor paid jobs with his wretch of a sister. To get noticed.
Slimy and greasy and horrible as he was Tulsan had connections to people Leofric only dreamt of knowing.
"I'm all ears, my good man," he somehow managed to stutter out.
"I have a friend," Tulsan smiled, his gold tooth winking in the candlelight. "Who needs some...assistance. Someone with a very particular set of skills.