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“What do you mean you worked for Shoin!?”
Hamid winces, ever so slightly, but the fact that Azu notices–the fact that he slipped enough for even her to notice–
“Oh, Hamid, no,” Azu whispers, even as she tries to keep a blank face. She’s posing as a bodyguard today, which means leaving her usual array of necklaces and rings at home. She wishes she had one now, just to fidget with, as she watches Hamid keep their mark entirely distracted.
Hamid gets a moment’s reprieve as the mark turns away to talk to one of his own bodyguards. He pretends to light a cigarette, winking at the waiter trying to tell him that this is a non-smoking event, sir, please.
“I told you, I’ve done some things I–let’s say, that I regret.” Behind the unlit cigarette, the barest hint of smoke escapes his mouth.
Regret might be putting it lightly, Azu thinks. She leaves her post against the wall to do a circuit of the room, under the pretense of checking in with her non-existent employer.
The party they’re infiltrating for the night will net them their mark, most of his money, all of his bloody diamonds, and their client’s revenge all in one go, but it’ll also get them a step closer to Shoin, which’ll get them a step closer to Barrett. At least, that’s how Zolf explained it.
“Hamid,” Cel says over their comms. It’s less his name than an exhalation of frustration escaping gritted teeth. “When, exactly, did you work for Shoin?”
A t-tap-tap of fake ash from an unsteady hand against an ashtray filters over the line.
“Long enough ago,” Hamid says through equally pursed lips in a smile so perfectly fake that it might as well be the cubic zirconium that Sasha’s swapping for diamonds three floors and a subbasement down, “that I didn’t think his henchmen would recognize me! I was in a–a different line of work then, alright?”
“Hamid–” Zolf says, sounding as calm as he ever is, which is also about as angry as he ever is.
Or maybe he’s just constipated. Azu has trouble reading Zolf.
“I swear, Zolf!” Hamid flicks his cigarette again, twirling out of the way of a pair of bickering dilettantes. “I would’ve told you if I thought it was relevant to the job!”
“Relevant!” Cel yells, over the frantic sounds of keys being typed and levers being pulled. Something pings in a spellcaster-y way; there’s a distinct musical tone to these sorts of things. “Got you–Hamid, I’d say that working for one of meanest people in Japan, whom may I remind you we are trying to get arrested on multiple counts of murder and at least three arsons–that we know of–”
On her way back around the room, Azu steps closer to Hamid under the guise of making space for yet another one of the waitstaff, carrying–are those gold-encrusted prawns? Dearest Aphrodite, why would anyone want gold on their seafood?
“Hamid,” she whispers, not looking directly at him. “Are you–”
“Done,” Sasha interrupts.
“No cameras for you–Hamid, I mean it, we are going to ta–” Cel pauses. “What?”
“Got all the bits we wanted from the safe while you all were talkin’.” She sounds like she always does after a successful heist; glowing, as much as Sasha could ever be said to glow, with the smugness of a safe well-cracked, like mist lit up by moonlight. “Had to use the sound-canceller spells you gimmicked up, Cel. Didn’t miss anything important, did I?”
Cel and Hamid both start talking at once, but Zolf cuts them off.
“Hamid used to work for one of our marks.” Zolf doesn’t sound angry, or surprised, as far as Azu can tell, but Hamid’s shoulders go even tenser.
“Oh,” Sasha says, accompanied by a clang as she–presumably–exits a vent. Or maybe enters one. “That’s not so bad. I used to work jobs for Barrett, way back, ‘fore I–uh. Before I got out. Had to leave a finger behind, though. And my two favorite knives”
Azu blinks.
The silence of the nonplussed sits for a bit on the comm line before Zolf cuts back in. “We’ll… talk about that later,” he says, words like pulling teeth. “Good job, everyone. Back to the van in five.”
The compliment sounds less like he’s having a root canal, but only a little. From what Hamid’s told her, this is an improvement of leaps and bounds from when the team first formed.
Azu puts her finger to her ear and frowns, like she’s receiving instructions. She nods to the other bodyguards ringing the edges of the room, shrugging in a little got to go, rich folks, what can you do. She’s been practicing; none of them stare at her in confusion, and one even nods back.
Hamid catches up to her on her way out.
“Might want to hurry up,” he says, not slowing down. There’s still an uncomfortable silence weighing on their shoulders through the comm in her ear, but Azu can hear a commotion starting in the party behind them. She’d offer to carry him–she’s done it before, some cons–but she doesn’t want to muss his suit.
“Yeah,” Sasha says from her right.
“Ah!” Azu says, but doesn’t slow down.
Sasha shoots her a grin before resecuring the bag of holding on her belt. “Security found what we left for them a little early. Definitely didn’t notice me, I’m better than that.” She pauses. “Yeah. Definitely.”
A door bursts open behind them. Incoherent yelling emerges, underscored by the tramping of feet and the rustling of spell scrolls.
One unoriginal mook even yells “get them!”
“Well,” Hamid says breathlessly, picking up the pace. “This is quickly climbing the list of my least favorite jobs.”
They make it out of the building and pile into the van, Cel shooting a glare into the backseat even as they rev the engines and peel out of the driveway.
“Nah, mate,” Sasha says, leaning against the side of the van. There’s a gorgeous pink flush to her cheeks, though Azu would give it even odds to being from the high of cracking a good safe, rather than high-tailing it out of the party afterwards. “Remember Kew Gardens? That one ended way worse. For you, I mean, not for me.”
Hamid laughs, not hysterically enough for Azu to be really worried, but there’s a high pitch in there that hurts her heart almost more than her ears.
“It still could,” he says, smiling, but his eyes are on the front seat, from where Zolf hasn’t said a word in the last five minutes.
“It still could.”