Chapter Text
Baz blasts through a bricked-up wall and sprints into the tunnels beyond.
Everything is a maze down here: old basements and wine-cellars intersecting with new parking garages and ancient catacombs. It's a good place to hide. It's an excellent place to become hopelessly lost.
Baz has little interest in doing either.
Instead, this is--
This is the result of too much wine. Too much tedious company. Too much boredom.
(This is running because he knows he will be chased).
This is a terrible idea.
- - -
A very few minutes earlier Baz was conducting business.
This business involved conversing (or attempting to converse) with a man who did not think that Baz ought to exist. The man eased his cognitive dissonance by speaking to air, looking at air, and generally behaving as though he were negotiating with a completely invisible entity.
Baz believed that there might be more pleasant ways to spend an evening.
Self-immolation, for instance.
The very exclusive bar was closed. The very expensive bottle of wine was not. Baz poured what he fervently hoped would be the last glass.
“Since we've agreed,” he began. His hand was already reaching for the parcel in his breast pocket.
That was when the windows imploded.
- - -
Baz hears footsteps behind him and also--
Off to his left?
He wonders which of the lieutenants Snow has brought with him tonight.
He veers sideways and dives into a narrow service tunnel. It opens into a maintenance area and, on the far side, a stairwell leading up.
Here is as good a place as any.
Baz spins on his heel just as Simon Snow careens around the corner. He takes aim.
“Have a nice trip!”
See you next fall.
- - -
After the windows shattered Baz had already tipped the table and cast a 'Can't touch this' before his unsociable associate had time to react.
When that reaction finally came it was depressingly predictable. Baz turned to find a furious face and, more to the point, the tip of a wand wavering a few inches from his nose.
“Treachery!” hissed monsieur 'I-Don't-Acknowledge-Abombinations.'
At least he was looking at Baz now. Glaring. Glowering, even.
Baz sighed.
“Possibly,” he said wearily, “but it isn't mine.”
He was wracking his brains for the most probable culprit when a very distinctive scent answered his most immediate questions. Simon Snow smelled like a forest fire.
There was no mistaking it.
(Except, possibly, for an actual forest fire).
(But this was a downtown street without any forests happening anywhere nearby).
(So).
The windows hadn't been Snow's personal spellwork-- Baz knew what that magic felt like-- but a quick glance around the upturned table revealed a very familiar silhouette climbing the stairs. Glass fragments crunched under heavily booted feet.
They only had a few seconds.
Despite being slightly distracted by reactions which he knew Fiona and also most other people would not consider appropriate to the situation, Baz thought quickly.
“Spell yourself away,” he said, thrusting the parcel into the buyer's pocket, “I'll distract him.”
As an afterthought he added, “You can send the payment later.”
Or else.
He did not need to say it. The old families had their Understandings. Sentiments like “or else we will destroy your professional reputation and also hire a goblin gang to burn down every business premise you own” were conveyed in glances, not words. That made it much easier to maintain a polite day-to-day discourse.
Baz sprang to his feet without waiting for a response. He pulled a translucent key out of his jacket pocket and held it up. It glistened enticingly, sparkling as if were made out of the finest silver-tinted glass.
Because it was.
Made out of silver-tinted glass, anyway.
Baz couldn't actually attest to the quality of said glass, but it certainly looked good.
“Looking for this?” he called.
And then he ran.
- - -
Baz's spell is almost perfect. It would have been perfect if one of Snow's interminable lieutenants wasn't right behind his general and far too quick with a counter-spell.
“Bounce back,” the boy says. His timing is irritatingly perfect. He manages to make it sound more like a languid suggestion than an urgent defense.
Simon, damn him, sticks the landing with minimal assistance.
There was a time when Baz-- younger and less adept at psychological self-dissection-- had hoped that if he humiliated Snow often enough in front of his followers that they would abandon him and. What? That version of Baz hadn't worked out what he wanted or expected to happen next.
That was then.
This version of Baz is older, wiser, and infinitely more resigned to everything that won't happen.
Still.
Baz tsks. “Careless. You realize I could have killed you? You made yourself a perfect target. How are you still alive?”
“You couldn't have gotten both of us,” says the bounce-back boy. He's a bit taller than Simon and looks like a kpop star who'd chosen to cosplay as a genderbent Elphaba. Very green. His voice is pleasant and his tone is offensively mild.
Kendrik.
Baz dislikes all of Snow's lieutenants without exception, but Kendrick is the worst of them. He forgets himself enough to glare.
Kendrik winks.
“The key,” Simon snarls, “Now.” He's entirely ignored their exchange. His eyes are riveted on Baz.
Baz cheers up a little.
“What key? Ooooh. This key?” He starts to hold it out. Simon steps towards him and reaches for it. He should know better by now.
Baz holds the key over his head, dangling it just out of Simon's reach. Simon tries to punch him in the gut. Baz was expecting it. He catches Simon's wrist before the blow can land.
“Fisticuffs?" He snorts. "Barbarian." He lets the key fall.
To his credit, Simon manages to catch it with his off-hand.
To his debit, Simon clutches the key so hard that it immediately snaps.
Baz savors his confusion for a moment. And then for another. One more?
“It's called a decoy, Snow,” he says, when Simon's minute facial twitches settle into blank incomprehension, “I would gloat, but, honestly? I'm embarrassed for you. You should have seen that coming.”
Baz releases Simon's wrist. Simon drops the key. It breaks into several more pieces. Simon steps on them. “Where is the real one?”
“Gone,” says Baz.
Simon's just looking at him now. Angry. Confused. He seems at a loss, like a dog who'd failed to startle a rabbit into motion and now doesn't know how to chase something which isn't running.
His hair is less of an unkempt disaster these days. Someone has trimmed the copper curls into order and given him an undercut.
Who? Baz wonders. Which one of them has Simon trusted with scissors at the back of his neck, so close to the vulnerability of open eyes and an unguarded jugular?
Probably Kendrik.
Fucking Kendrik.
Simon's eyes are, in fact, straying in the goblin's direction like a bad actor turning to his teleprompter.
Baz steps closer. They're practically touching. He smirks. “Poor Snow,” he coos, voice dripping with insincere sympathy, “A thief and a thug and you're still not even good at it.”
That does it.
Simon does not look at Kendrik.
Simon grabs the collar of Baz's shirt and yanks it tight. Baz lets him. Simon's lips twist, the expression beginning as a mirror of Baz's sneer and ending in something with far more teeth. Snarling. Smiling. Hungry and hateful.
“Maybe I'll just steal you,” he growls.
Baz bites back a laugh. He sighs instead.
“What. Again?”