Author's Note: I hope all seventeen readers(at the time of the posting, thanks guys!) are enjoying the read so far, and a personal thank you to An Amber Pen for giving the story a shot, seriously, you're awesome. I'm loving this character, and can only hope everyone reading can like the adventure up to this point. There is much more to come, and it will begin tying into the main story at.. well, some point. Anywho, read on! -Foxinstrazt


Chapter 2

-The Sword of Joan-

Lyon, France

May, 2006

Landing with his weight distributed evenly in order to make the least about of noise possible, Ashlee Graves had made it into the house, the seven foot fall from the window much easier than he had anticipated. Modest would the be the word furthest from the decorations or furniture that adorned the home, as the impressive salary of a state official was put towards 15th century artifacts and heirlooms that had been passed down in the wake of the Hundred Years' War. Shaking his head as he viewed the room he was in, he raised a hand to press the small mic in his ear. "Say, why I don't I just steal all this and fence it?"

A voice crackled over the radio, still annoyed at the route he had taken to get into the house once he had found that the two men dressed inconspicuously out by the canals were in fact guards, patrolling the backside of the house every twenty minutes like clockwork. "Because Quinn is paying us more than you'd ever make before they tossed your ass in jail. Now get moving, Graves."

"Yes ma'am." Alison had a point, anyone who tried to sell this many items so close to when they had stolen them would find themselves behind bars as fast as it took one fence to accept a bribe. Working for Quinn meant that the client wanted the item before they ever moved a muscle, assuring a deal and a payment. He made his way up the stairs just to the right of the window, stopping as he saw the camera in the corner ahead of him move along it's full sweep of the room. "You've got the feedback from the cams in a loop, yeah?"

"Of course I do, everything looks good from here." She was in an apartment across the canal from the mark's house, setup with the most moderate Galeforth's money could buy in surveillance equipment. They hadn't asked for much, and they hadn't gotten much. "Locks are still showing as engaged, alarms are still deactivated, but not tripped, and the two you think are guards are still sitting out back."

"Every twenty minutes, Ali, they moved every twenty minutes while you were setting up the equipment." Keeping his voice quiet as he stalked down a hallway, he paused to check both the ways he could go, running through the floor plan again in his head to correct for the new point of entry. "If I hadn't noticed that, we'd either be waiting for them to walk off or I'd already be hauled off in cuffs." The sigh that came through his radio made him grin, loving the fact that after two years he could still annoy his friend with the simplest things.

Stepping into the room that was his destination, he stopped and glanced around. "You have got to be shitting me. Ali, there are enough swords here that I'm sure I could find two that Galeforth will want next year." Hung along the walls were blades from every era, stretching back to the khopesh of Ancient Egypt, and on the wall opposite of where he had entered were more than a dozen swords with ornate cross guards. "Anything that can identify what I am looking for?"

"Uh.. give me a second.. It's engraved with French, a blessing of some sort: 'Bless this, the blade of the Arc.'" Sighing as he look over the swords, he scanned for any variances between them, finding nothing but a different type of jewel-encrusted hilt, each more flashy and unnecessary than the last.

Near the bottom of the entire ensemble was a rather plain looking broadsword with only a single sapphire lying in it's pommel. He bent to study the length of the weapon, finding the inscription near the base of the blade. "Bénis cette, la lame de l'Arc, that sounds about right." He wrapped his hands around the grip, pulling it away from the wall and testing it's weight carefully. Unlike the others along the wall that had lost their edge in the centuries since, this one seemed as pristine as the day it would have been made, still sharp as he grazed his thumb across the keen edge.

He was torn from his fascination with the object as Ali's voice came over the radio again. "Ashlee, get out of there! The silent alarm has been tripped, though it's coming from the other end of the house." Blinking away his distraction, he slid the sword into the bag he carried in with him, careful not to pierce the side of the container. In his ear, he could hear his friend cursing as she tried to find the source of the alarm, eventually devolving into frustrated noises as her search came up empty. "There's no one else in there with you, but you need to move quickly, the police are already on their way."

Running down the heavily carpeted hallway, he swung on the corner of the banister to launch himself down the stairs, jumping up onto the handrail at the end to give himself the height he needed. Ashlee jumped to the window he had entered from, his hands catching the edge of the frame with just enough grip to pull himself up and over, out onto the balcony. The guards he had identified near the canals ran by below him, causing him to wait a few seconds before swinging down to the ground below. "Ali, can you hear me? I'm heading for the dead drop."

"What? Ashlee, just get out of there!" Shaking his head, he ran to the edge of the canal, taking the bag holding the sword and laying it along the water, held to the canal wall by an old, rusted nail. "Just go, there's still a chance-"

"Ali, the cops are just around the block. Get the sword when you can, and tell Quinn to get me cleared. Graves out." Pulling the mic from his ear, he tossed it into the water and began walking along, trying to pull off as casual an appearance as he could. The sounds of the sirens coming from almost all directions stopped him in his tracks, revealing to him that there was no way he would be walking out of this one. Without stopping to truly consider his course of action, he turned and ran back toward the house.

By the time he reached the wall, he could hear the engines of the patrol cars coming across the canal's bridge or around the street corner. Jumping to the small ledge afforded by a low window, he turned and jumped to the balcony he had originally used to enter the house. Scrambling up to the frame that was still open, he threw his weight inside the house. Landing with a huff, he dusted himself off, barely having enough time to turn and make it look like he was escaping when the guards burst in through the door, yelling in French as he held up his hands.


"Parlez-vous Français?" Ashlee looked up into the face of the man who had entered the interrogation room, raising an eyebrow and shaking his head, bringing a chuckle from the officer. Shuffling in his cuffs, he shrugged and looked away, wishing that they had put a clock in the room at some point. "English, then." The man spoke with an accent indicating they shared the same home country.

"Oh good, we speak the same language. Now we can get somewhere with this whole friendship thing." He grinned at the other man, who sat down and laid a file folder on the table, the whole thing looking pathetically empty. Leaning forward with a feigned interest, he flipped open the folder, revealing a profile page that lacked everything but a name, his name.

"The police ran your prints, and came up with nothing. So I sent them to back to Langley, and we came up with a match on school records from fifteen years ago, and that gave us a name. So I decided to make an inquiry to Interpol, and got this." Closing the folder with a hand, the man shook his head. "Now the CIA and Interpol together have two different names on an American man caught thieving from a French diplomat, when the alarm was tripped by an electronic intrusion we tracked to MSS. What am I supposed to make of that, Mr. Raines?"

Ashlee tilted his head, realizing that the quick response time on the house he had been in had nothing to do with the fact he had been there stealing a sword. "You know my name, how about you tell me yours?" The officer using the last name sounded strange, as it was something he hadn't heard directed his way in a long while, the new identity he assumed had slowly replaced it in his mind and mannerisms.

"I am Agent MacIntyre, I'm with the CIA. And you didn't answer my question." The gravity of the situation caused him to study the minute details of the man in front of him. From the black, unkempt hair to the shirt that was unbuttoned until three buttons down, it was clear that he had been working on something connected to this for days, at the very least. He had a narrow nose and a long face, and eyes that lacked a sense of warmth, their cold irises the color of the sky.

"Well, Mac, that's because I'm not sure where to start." Grinning like a fool as he shook his head, Ashlee did his best to gather the charade of a carefree attitude as his mind raced for a solution to the mess he had landed in. "Actually, no, I can start with that you got the wrong guy here. I'm just a common thief."

"You're a common thief, Mr. Raines? That's your defense?" MacIntyre sighed and leaned back in the chair, observing him with an expression that bordered between skepticism and a practiced calm, but the anger that was beginning to fester as his questions were answered with humor showed through. "A common thief that managed to get his identity wiped from multiple databases? I think not. You are a thief, but you are also in the service of the MSS, and I want to know where I can find Fang."

"Fang?" The question slipped out before he could control himself, the prospect of being held by the CIA on the suspicion of espionage making him feel like he was being backed into a corner, throwing his focus. Recovered in an split-second, he held up his hands and shook his head, still holding the smile and hoping that it was covering the fear churning up behind it. "Now Mac, you are throwing names I me I don't even understand. Fang? Never heard of him. And MSS? I don't even know what that is."

This time, the agent opposite him spoke through gritted teeth, not the best sign for his well-being in the short term, but enough that he could strain to see hope on the horizon. "The Ministry of State Security, it is the intelligence agency for the Chinese government."

Raising a genuine eyebrow on why a Chinese intelligence agent had tripped the alarm at the house he had been stealing from, Ashlee leaned back, his grin finally slipping away into something more akin to shock. "Huh." In an instant, he resumed his cheerful expression, shaking his head in the most condescending way he could. "Yeah, haven't ever heard of it before now."

MacIntyre rose quickly, each fist clenched as he did, but Ashlee held his ground and his attitude, not afraid of being smacked around if it meant getting out of this room and to a place where Quinn would actually stand a chance of getting him out. The agent took a long, deep breath to steady himself before speaking again. "Alright, Mr. Raines. You can rot in a cell until I get agency approval to transport you back to the States. We'll see what the folks at Gitmo can dig up." It was the other man's turn to smile now, as he made his way out of the room, leaving Ashlee cuffed, and starting to feel the hopelessness sink in again.


"Well buddy, today has not been my day, I can tell you that much." With his arms through the gaps of the bars, Ashlee was leaning on his cell door heavily, his eyes watching the guards that moved past with a gnawing boredom. "I mean, the plan to trick the cops into thinking I had been discovered and tried to escape? Flawless. Ali would've got me out of police custody, we had the sword, it was golden! Well..risky, but not 'Hey, now I'm suspected of spying on the country I was born in.' risky, do you know what I'm getting at here?"

He leaned back to look at his neighbor, a large man with the tanned skin of an islander. Since the hour or so that he had been placed in his cage, his attempts to converse with the other man had met a roadblock, and not because of any barrier of language. "Enough about me though, let's talk about a man like you being in a prison in the middle of France." The stoic silence of the man only served to irritate him further when he saw the tattoo that covered the other's arm, looking tribal and meaningful in a way that piqued his curiosity to a dangerous level. "Alright then, continue not speaking, it isn't unsettling at all."

Minutes passed as he went back to watching the men who patrolled the corridor, but after a long time of the only sounds being footsteps, his neighbor's voice finally sounded out amongst the rooms. "I killed two men."

The reversal of what had been unsettling upon hearing the words so calmly spoken by the other man caused Ashlee to take a step away from the neighboring cell. "You know, I almost preferred the silence." Curiosity overrode caution, as it normally did for him, and he found himself sitting down on the cot near the edge of his cage. "So, why'd you do it? You seem pretty zen for a guy who just killed a couple people."

Opening his eyes for the first time within the hour, the man met his gaze with strange blue-green eyes that matched his equally mysterious personality. "You know how a man should act after he kills, then?" Again, the other spoke with an even calmness about him, as if nothing could shatter the peaceful existence he had obtained after murdering two men.

The question took his mind back to the people he had seen killed, effectively silencing him for a long moment. "..No, no I don't. But I know that you aren't screaming about the voices in your head, so you must have had a reason." It took difficulty to meet the hard stare coming from the other, even separated as they were, as the minutes seemed to drag on.

Finally, the man looked away, closing his eyes once again. "Vengeance was the reason. They were criminals who killed my sister, so I hunted them and killed them, like the animals they were."

"And you were caught?"

"No, I was found at the scene. Here, or on the run, I will be found by the men who owned the two I killed."

Whistling at the problems that made his seem insignificant, he shook his head. "Damn, I'd help you if I could, friend." Laughing in spite of himself, Ashlee was about to lay back in his cot when a man in a guard uniform tapped on his door, holding a radio through the bars with one hand.

"Vous! Prenez cette." The man's voice was quiet, a harsh whisper of the language he barely understood, but it brought him to his feet and compelled him forward, taking the radio with an eyebrow raised.

He clicked the button, the static cutting off before he spoke into it. "..Hello?"

"This is the man who was in the house, shì ma?" The voice that came through was distinctly female, the accent placing her as an East Asian, and it wasn't a huge leap to assume she was Chinese, based on what the CIA agent out for his blood had said.

"You!" Gripping the radio hard enough that his knuckles turned white, Ashlee threw a punch into the air in anger, fury building in the tension between his muscles. "You're the one who tripped the alarm, Fang!"

"I am sorry about that, but I can offer you something more than an apology." Static returned as her voice faded, prompting him to reply with two words, each spoken like a growl.

"I'm listening."

Silence came for a few moments, and for a second he feared that his attitude had destroyed any chance of a deal. "I need the blueprints of the building you were in, and the code to get through the security firewall. Get them to me, and you walk free."

Ashlee began to pace in his cell, the worried glances down the corridor from the guard not helping him decide any quicker. He ended his movement facing the man who had been his neighbor for the past few hours, the giant islander watching him with genuine interest, breaking the serene expression he usually wore. "Fang, your plan to get me out, can it accommodate two people?"

The other man's eyes grew wider, and his features turned to disbelief as he processed what had been said. "If it has to." She was not pleased with his request, but her agreement brought the first real grin to his face since he had heard the sirens encroaching upon him.

"Then we have a deal. I'll give you the number to call my associate."


Two days had passed since Ashlee had handed back the radio, two days and only silence had met his constant internal questioning on where the deal had landed him on the game board. Stuck in a prison cell while wondering if he had become a pawn to be sacrificed or a king to be saved, he found the time dragged on when his only source of conversation was a man who was in no mood to converse, and shared no thoughts on his hopes for their daring escape.

The second day, Agent MacIntyre had shown up, looking more than pleased with himself when he announced that the transfer was going through, and that transport would be there by the next morning to carry him back to the States and face the charges against him. MacIntyre took a great deal of pleasure in insinuating how a fair trial would not be afforded to him, since he technically did not exist in the system. The walls closed in around Ashlee with every passing minute, and he soon found himself laying on the cot within his cage, preparing for the worst to happen.

It was around midnight that keys unlocking the cell door brought his attention away from the ceiling and to the door, where two guards opened the cells containing both men, beckoning and whispering away in French for them to follow. The way through the prison was straightforward enough, moving past several checkpoints, the empty offices displaying surveillance screens that were completely blacked out, concealing their passage. They were led out a service entrance, the door held open by one of the guards while the other handed Ashlee a radio.

"Thank you for your service, Mr. Graves, your associate handled everything. She is waiting for you just outside." The woman's voice came through again, and she was sounding as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders.

"And thank you, Fang. I appreciate the help."

"Our debt is settled." With that, he handed the device back to the guard, who gave him the marked evidence bags that held everything he had been carrying when he had broken into the house, a simple wallet and a set of lock picks. Nodding his thanks to the two gentlemen, he followed the large islander out through the door and jogged to the car that was idling in the street waiting for them.

Opening the door to the passenger seat, he flashed a grin at Alison before climbing in. "Did you get the sword?" The vehicle seemed to rock with the movement of the larger man settling in the back seat, and the sound of a door closing accompanied the end of the swaying.

"Got it, and it's on it's way back to Galeforth, who's your friend?" The woman looked in the rear view mirror, narrowing her eyes slightly as she studied the prisoner with a careful gaze before returning her view to the road and bringing the car into gear.

"I am Tiane, and I owe you both a debt of gratitude." Before Ashlee could respond, he continued. "The men I killed were Russian Mob. My sister had owed them money, and they would surely have killed me if I had stayed in my cell. I fear you must drop me off as soon as we are out of the city, for your own safety."

Catching the glance from his partner-in-crime, Ashlee dismissed her concerns quickly, looking back to address Tiane face to face. "I'm Ashlee Graves, this is Alison Terra. You got a plan aside from running?"

"No."

The blunt answer revealed that the man knew exactly where his chosen course would end, a plot of land six feet under. "Come with us." The sea-colored eyes met his, wide with shock, just as they had been back in the cell when he had asked Fang to get them both out. "Our employer can shield you from any efforts to find you, and I could use the muscle on my team. I can't guarantee much except that you won't be found, and you'll be paid a fair share of every job we do."

Tiane spent a long moment deciding, looking down at his hands as he ran them over one another. "It seems I have no choice. Thank you."

Chuckling as he turned back to face the front, he watched the fading lights of the city flash by as they accelerated down the road. "We're glad to have you aboard, Tiane."


"Tiane is a bit strange, don't you think, Graves?" Quinn's gaze upon him didn't cause the flinch it might have just two years ago. The man's hair was as black as a raven's feather, but some patches were beginning to lighten. They were hardly noticeable unless Ashlee focused on finding them, but every other feature was as hard and businesslike as it had been when they first met.

"He will be a great asset to the team, I think. He's odd, but he has a disregard for laws and the muscle I think we'll find useful. I can teach him everything else he needs to know about thieving. ..He's a good man, beneath everything else." He leaned back in the chair he was lounging in, reaching his arms up to stretch above his head.

"Alright, I'll make the call, he'll be safe under my protection. Same as you and Terra." The older man took a long draw of a cigar he was holding between two fingers, savoring it before blowing out smoke. "So, in the process of escaping CIA custody for being suspected of aiding a foreign agency, you aided that foreign agency? I knew you had balls, but this is a whole new level, I'd even say I'm proud of you."

"Speaking of, I need you to make sure that link they found to me is wiped away, everything about the records gone." Ashlee stood, enjoying the compliment the man had given him, but not acknowledging it on the thought of his past being dredged up by any random CIA field agent.

"Are you sure, Graves? It's the only thing left of who you were." The concern in a matter that would clearly benefit Galeforth brought a raised eyebrow, and a questioning look. "Once this is gone, there will be nothing to pull up the rest of that identity. It's why it was left in the first place."

He turned to walk towards the wide double doors of the office, laying a hand on the polished heavy oak before answering, only turning his head a slight amount to catch his employer out of the corner of his eye. "I'm sure, Lesley Raines is dead."