Tread Carefully
Disclaimer: Royce, Hadrian, and the Riyria Chronicles/Revelations belong to Michael J. Sullivan. I'm writing this for fun, not money.
A/N: This is a short story that will be two or three chapters long. It takes place shortly after The Crown Tower, so Royce is still very callous and Hadrian is still a rather unwilling thief.
Hadrian had only agreed to the job because Arabella insisted that the necklace was rightfully hers. According to the woman, it had been given to her by her cheating husband. When the unfaithful man ran off with another, much younger, woman, he took the expensive necklace with them.
Hadrian had heard the entire, tedious tale during their meeting. The daughter of a humble maid, she declared that true love had led the wealthy merchant to wed her. Hadrian suspected the true cause was more likely her uncommon, red hair and sparkling green eyes. They were most likely very attractive, before time dulled the hair and caused lines to form around the eyes. In addition, although as a servant she may have retained a slender form, it was clear that her marriage had increased her weight as well as her social status.
Arabella asserted that her husband's new wife, the couple's maid which Hadrian found rather ironic, dabbled in witchcraft. Hadrian found her claim of the maid slipping her husband a love potion questionable at best (it was doubtful that he was under the power of anything other than a younger, more attractive woman), but Arabella still possessed a fair amount of trinkets from her time among the wealthy and so offered a decent payment for the job.
Hadrian assured himself that stealing the necklace would cause no real harm. After all, his victims were clearly wealthy enough that the loss of one piece of jewelry would not cause them to starve. Stealing a necklace was neither chivalrous or virtuous, but he convinced himself that he was merely helping a rejected woman. He assumed that Arabella wanted the necklace returned for sentimental reasons. Perhaps it had been given to her on a special occasion or maybe she wanted it simply to remember her old lover by.
Stealing the necklace wouldn't hurt anyone.
The job had begun rather auspiciously. The day before the job, Royce had gone to scout out the house. When he returned, he recited a list of all possible entrances, as well as the movements of the couple and their various servants. Hadrian had assumed that they would be stealing the necklace at night, but Royce informed him that it would be easier to take it during the day, when the couple was out. Having no experience in thieving himself, he decided to defer to Royce's superior experience. The thief assured him that the job would be an easy one.
Sure enough entering the house had been a simple task. With the couple out of the house, only servants remained. There were quite of few of them, but all of them hurried about cleaning rather than wasting time guarding the house against intruders.
The vines crawling up the sides of the house were quite pretty, but also proved sturdy enough to support Royce and Hadrian's weight as they climbed up the outside wall of the house. The window which Royce had figured out led to the master bedroom, was opened by the thief without much effort.
Looking in, Hadrian saw that Royce was correct. The room was too large and decorative to be a guest room or the room of a family member. It had to be the master bedroom.
Royce entered the room stealthily. The window made no noise as it opened and the floor made no sound as his feet touched it. Hadrian's own entrance was less covert. He was much broader than his partner, and so his passage through the window was much less graceful. He stumbled into the room. He looked up apologetically when Royce turned an irritated glare on him.
"Check in the wardrobe." He ordered, tersely. "And will you try to be quiet."
Hadrian nodded, but Royce had already turned towards a chest on the other side of the room and didn't see it.
The wardrobe door let out a high-pitched squeak as he opened it. He glanced worriedly over his shoulder. He was certain that Royce heard the noise, but it seemed that he chose to ignore it.
Not wanting to disturb the items inside the wardrobe, he peered inside, searching for the necklace the woman had described or a box that may hold it. Unable to find anything using that method, he carefully began moving aside dressed and shoes. Everything he touched rustled under his hands despite his best efforts to remain silent. He marvelled that he couldn't even hear Royce, who was kneeling on the floor, shifting through the contents of a chest nearby.
Pushing aside a heavy cloak on the bottom of the wardrobe, he found a box. It was about the right size and covered in velvet. Inside was the necklace, exactly as Arabella had described.
"I found it." The look his partner gave him when he said those words contained more than a little irritation.
Hadrian was not a total idiot. He had not shouted the words. Perhaps he may have whispered a bit too emphatically, but not that loudly.
Before Royce could berate him again, he was interrupted by another noise. This one did not come from Hadrian.
The boy standing in the doorway could not have been more than sixteen, and it was him who they heard gasp. He was carrying an armful of scrolls. Hadrian assumed he was a scribe, who managed the merchant's accounts, or perhaps he was simply a messenger, delivering the scrolls.
He did not even attempt to fight the intruders or scare them off. Instead, he turned and ran.
Royce glanced at Hadrian, then took off after the boy. Even while running full speed, his partner still managed to make no noise.
Confident that Royce could handle the boy without his help, he worked on replacing the items he had taken out of the wardrobe, trying his best to return them to their original positions. He had just finished his task when he heard a loud crash come from outside the door.
Grabbing hold of the necklace, he quickly ran out into the hallway, one hand reaching for his sword. He knew something must have gone wrong for Royce to make such a racket. Upon reaching the hallway, he saw Royce standing at the top of a large stairway. At the bottom of the stairs was the boy, lying in a pool of blood. Hadrian's first instinct was to go see if there was anything he could do, but logic took over. People would be coming soon to investigate the noise, and they needed to get out of there.
"Let's go." Royce ordered, turning back towards the room they had left.
After a moment of hesitancy, staring at the boy's broken body, Hadrian followed Royce back into the bedroom. The two of them were out of the window just as they began hearing exclamations of surprise and dismay coming from the other side of the door.
Author's Note: Since the Riyria books have such a small fandom I would really like to encourage other authors to write their own fanfics as I would love to read them. Also, if you do have an idea for a story but really don't want to write it, you can pm me or write it in a review and I will try to make it into a story. I can't make any guarantees that it'll turn out well, but I will at least attempt it. My only requests are that any story ideas be at least slightly serious, as I'm no good at comedies or parodies, and that they are not slash or too explicit.
Please leave a review to let me know what you think. I'll try to finish and post the next chapter sometime soon. I have several more half-written Riyria stories, and I'll be working on finishing those and getting them posted as well.
Thanks for reading.