Zevran crouched atop the tiled rooftop, his weight perfectly balanced, eyes scanning the alleyway below where soft torchlight spilled through a cracked door. The air was thick with the scent of damp stone and distant cooking fires. Treviso never quite slept, and tonight was no exception. He adjusted the black leather of his gloves, feeling the reassuring weight of a dagger pressed against the small of his back.
To his left, barely visible in the shadows, Evie was already in position. She moved like poured ink, graceful, smooth, and utterly silent. Her hood was up, braid coiled and pinned flat, eyes catching the light in quick glints as she assessed the guard pacing the narrow walkway.
Slightly below him, Tai clung to the opposite wall like a cat. Zevran hadn't expected his son to move like that. Quick, sure-footed, entirely in control of his weight. It gave him a small, reluctant swell of pride and no small amount of dread. They were both good. Very good. It wasn't luck that had kept them alive.
The target tonight was simple: retrieve the coded ledger hidden in a small safehouse behind a cobbler's shopfront. A soft job by any measure: one guard inside, two on the street, none expecting trouble. The real reason Zevran was here was to watch them work. He needed to see if their precision was genuine or born from chaotic chance.
Evie whistled. Barely audible, no louder than a breeze through leaves. Tai's hand moved, counting down from three. On one, he dropped lightly to the ground and vanished into the shadows near the door. Zevran blinked and he was just… gone. Shadows ate him whole. A few heartbeats later, the guard stiffened, made a confused sound, and then crumpled as Evie struck from behind. Her chokehold precise.
They dragged the man inside without a sound and restrained him.
Zevran followed, landing on the ground with the grace of long practice. The door closed behind them with a soft click. He entered the space to find they had already taken out the man charged with protecting the ledger; like the guard from outside, he was bound and unconscious.
Inside, the space was spartan. A cot. A desk. A small safe tucked into the back wall behind a false panel. Tai was already there, crouched with a pry bar, while Evie searched the desk for traps or hidden notes.
"Impressive," Zevran murmured, stepping lightly around the unconscious man. "You didn't even scuff your boots, mi sol."
Evie smirked at him. "I like these boots."
"You know," Tai grunted as he tugged the panel free, "it's kind of depressing how easy this was."
"Yes," Zevran said, crouching beside him, "well, don't get cocky. There's always a second guard."
"He's snoring," Evie reported, peeking through a curtain into the side room. "He looks so peaceful."
They had the ledger in hand moments later. Zevran turned it over, coded, of course. He slipped it into a satchel, but his eyes lingered on the unconscious man on the floor.
And that was when it started.
Tai nudged Evie and gestured to the man's boots. "They're shined."
Evie raised an eyebrow. "Suspiciously."
Zevran watched, baffled, as she pulled a small charcoal stick from her sleeve and crouched beside the man.
"Don't-" he began.
She drew a moustache on him.
Tai stifled a laugh.
Zevran sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Truly, you two are the chaos Alistair fears."
"Should we…" Tai held up the man's cloak, inspecting it. "Add flour?"
"We don't have flour," Evie whispered.
Zevran stepped forward. "Allow me." He adjusted the moustache slightly, deepening the curve. "There. A little more flourish."
They looked at him in shock.
"What? If you're going to commit, at least do it with style." He glanced at the man's sleeping face. "Though I suspect this will complicate his evening."
Evie giggled.
The sound was light, joyous. Tai muffled his laughter in his sleeve. It was stupid. Pointless. And yet… Zevran found himself smiling, just a little.
"Let's see how much we can get away with before the other guard wakes," Tai suggested.
Then they turned their attention to the room. Zevran watched; it was impressive how much destruction they could cause so silently.
When they turned their attention to the man again, continuing to draw on him, Zevran stood between them, watching their deft little fingers work. Evie braiding his hair and Tai drawing on his face. All while giggling under their breath.
Then the man twitched. His eyes blinked open. Zevran, without hesitation, stuffed a sock into his mouth to muffle his sounds. The man thrashed.
"Time to go," Zevran whispered, sweeping toward the window.
They were gone seconds later, darting across the rooftops, their laughter barely contained, trailing after them like the night wind.
-
The scene smelled of ink, oil, and humiliation.
When Caterina stepped into the room, her boots stuck slightly to the floor - some strange, glossy mixture of spilled ink and what appeared to be... egg? No, not egg. Something worse. Something sour and powdered and - "Maker's breath," she muttered, stepping cleanly over a scrawled caricature of a crow with too-large eyes and exaggerated breasts.
The man who had been tasked with protecting the place was standing stiffly near the wall, arms crossed, jaw clenched so tight his cheekbones looked sculpted from stone. Someone had managed to wipe off most of the drawings from his face, but a faint moustache lingered like a shadow of shame. His hair remained tightly braided with ribbon. Illario snorted quietly at the sight.
The second man, the guard who had supposedly been watching the door, stood beside him, ashen-faced, sweating, practically vibrating with guilt.
"They... they knocked out Marcio," the guard stammered, gesturing to the man beside him. "Tied them up. I didn't wake up. I- I swear- I didn't-"
"No one's accusing you of collusion," Caterina said smoothly, eyes already raking the room. The disarray was surgical. Books rearranged into illogical patterns. Diagrams sketched on the ceiling in ink, impossible to reach without standing on something.
"And yet you slept through this," Teia said flatly, eyeing the faint ink footprints leading across the desk. "All of this."
"They were giggling. Delighted giggling," the defaced man muttered through gritted teeth.
"Three of them, we think," said Marcio, trying and failing to maintain his dignity while still wearing faint remnants of ink on his neck. "Moved like shadows. One of them whispered, 'Time to go' just as I was coming to. Antivan accent."
Lucanis crossed to the desk, finding it swept clean. "Ledger?"
"Gone," Teia answered, already checking her notes.
"Again," Viago sighed.
"They're still being precise," Lucanis muttered, running a gloved hand across the edge of the desk. "They know exactly what they're doing. And then... they do this." He gestured to the walls, the ink, the insultingly cheery cartoon scrawled over the safe with the words 'Too bad, so sad.'
Illario crouched beside a grotesque drawing of what might've once been a crow, now reimagined with an exaggerated rear end and a tiny hat. "So let's review. They broke in, restrained two guards, stole a highly sensitive ledger, avoided detection, and then... vandalised everything while giggling like schoolchildren."
"Three shadows. No real identifiers. No trace left," Teia said. "Except laughter."
"They took everything they needed, did it cleanly. Then decided to cause mayhem. An afterthought," Caterina muttered.
"An intentional afterthought," Viago corrected. "Look at this. It's not random. The symmetry on the ink drawings alone - this took time. Focus."
"And all silently enough not to wake him," Lucanis added, nodding toward the miserable, sweating guard.
"They're bold," Caterina said. "Too bold."
"Or stupid," Teia offered.
"Or just..." Illario tilted his head toward the faint remaining scrawl on the wall: a crude heart with a smiley face, "...really, really entertained."
Lucanis was quiet a moment longer, studying the layout, the absurdity. Then he said grimly, "It's devolving."
"They're still efficient," Teia said, checking her notes. "But this...this is...they have more skill than sense."
"They're getting careless. Next time, they'll slip," Caterina said.
"I don't think they care," Viago said quietly.
No one answered. The giggling echoed in their minds, mocking and warm and maddeningly free.