Day to Night

Maelie Arsenault always wakes up late in the morning. Shuffling out of bed, her hair a wild mess, she sits herself at the vanity and begins the process of making herself presentable. A few minutes after signs of life have made their way into the hall, Clover comes in with a tray of coffee and breakfast. She sets the coffee where Mae can reach and then helps wrangle her hair into a neat bun while Stacia follows in to begin setting out clothes.
 
The women chitchat about the manor, neighborhood, and shopping needs until their mistress is sufficiently dressed for Mordecai to enter and present her with a schedule of appointments. There follows sighing and pleas to reschedule a particularly insufferable appointment to another day, but the tabaxi holds firm, knowing the cascade this will create in the lady’s already full schedule. Leaving a folio on the side of the vanity, he and the others retreat to their respective duties in the household. Taking one last look at herself, the elf gathers the folio, her coat, and changes into her boots before heading downstairs to meet Jenna at the door, carriage ready to depart.
 
The first stop is the Dashwood Club for lunch appointments. Meetings with clients scheduling expeditions, business partnerships, and property acquisitions for conservation land. She handles each with her usual mix of cheerful socializing and subtle jabs. Noble clients often tried to walk over the young woman with no title, especially if Declan wasn’t present, but instead found themselves trapped by an opponent who knew the game they played better than they did. Her every word was measured for the semi-private venue’s busy lunchtime, her voice never rises or falls too much, but each statement she makes is a step ahead in the duel.
 
Maelie finishes her lunch hour with interviews of new rangers from the Naturalist’s Guild. If they were of noble birth, she’d usually have met them on an expedition as their families took that step thinking it gave them a better chance. To Mae, it simply meant she didn’t have to ask for as many references or send them out for a field test with Declan. Just as many nobles were turned down for having acted arrogantly or incompetently on a previous hunt as were hired. Her only extra requirement of the non-nobles was a field test or a reference from the Naturalist’s Guild. Both had their advantages, the noble born created better social dynamics with the clients, furthering the outfitters appeal as a social venue. On the other hand, the common born came without all those dynamics and Mae simply had to ensure they were respected and given what they needed for the job. In fact, she recognized that many of them quickly developed the social acumen to deal with nobles just as well as those who grew up in that world.
 
The next set of stops were social calls for the rest of the afternoon. Visiting friends, neighbors, or clients she wanted to maintain contact with. Sometimes a pleasant afternoon tea, sometimes an insufferable length of time that made her want to pierce her eardrums, but her expression maintained the same cheerful demeanor as lunch. Most of these appointments were voluntary to some degree after all.
This part of her afternoon would otherwise be broken up by visits to government offices for business or property paperwork, or the barrister’s guild for the same. Mordecai did his best to have all the paperwork in order so there was often little to do aside from sign.
 
And finally, dinner approached, she returned home to change into appropriate attire before going out to whatever social events she’d been invited to. Walking back into her room, Clover and Stacia had her outfit prepared while Mordecai gave her a rundown of who would be attending. Maelie enjoyed the luxurious dresses, shining jewelry, and pleasant perfumes she got to wear for the night, but most of it was still an act, there were goals to meet, specific words that needed to be said, and not said. Less and less was she able to relax at home, with dinner from her own kitchen, with her family. In either case, she kept up her cheerful and carefree smile until it was appropriate to depart for home once again.
 
Or not.
 
Once night fell, there was always the possibility of new business. A discrete note passed to her, a letter waiting with Jenna as she stepped back into the carriage, or her own off-the-books project that needed attention. In the carriage, Maelie’s smile disappeared as she changed from bright dresses to dark leathers. Exchanging the disguise of the day for the evening attire of the South Ward’s Blade, she pulled up her hood and deftly slipped out of the carriage, leaving Jenna to return the fictional Maelie Arsenault to her home.
 
Now, a new game has begun. The thief stalked through the streets, quickly finding her way through the Central Ward down to the hole in the wall of the South known as the Fox & Feather. Here, the Blade had to have another round of meetings with pickpockets, fences, smugglers, loan sharks, and her other criminal compatriots. Just like the nobles and clients, they all wanted something… only this time, Fox was unambiguously the one with the upper hand and she dealt those hands as she saw fit. Hood back, she put on a rotating array of disguises, but her expression rarely needed to be as controlled. Here, she was allowed to laugh at incredulous demands, sneer at disgusting proposals, and flash a lethal grin at those who might try to defy her. The new Blade was quickly gaining a reputation for not dealing lightly.
 
Philippe had wanted a velvet glove over the iron first and that’s what he got. She didn’t let anything fall out of the Syndicate’s hands. Contraband, gambling profits, black markets, and information, any of it that touched the South Ward she ensured the organization got their due. The fighting pits from Marlene’s era were less popular as Fox refused to entrap people into participating in the blood sport. She also rolled her eyes and dismissed most of the loan sharks asking her to send leg-breakers after poor folk. With a wave of her hand, she sent them from her table with the advice to stop loaning money to people that can’t pay it back, it’s incompetent business at best. For the most part, she wasn’t popular with Marlene’s old cadre, but the pickpockets, fences, and smugglers were quickly growing smiles as their pockets filled.
 
Sometime after last call, when Fox was done holding court for the underworld, she stepped back out into the deserted dark streets of Novandria. If she was lucky, the night was clear, and the stars were out as she scaled the nearest building to the rooftops. Then, finally, she was free.
 
For these few precious hours before dawn there would be no fake smiles. No social dynamics to maneuver through. No personalities to negotiate with. No criminals to send on a job or keep in line. She wasn’t a businesswoman, a boss, a wife, a friend, or a mother. Fox was a thief, and she went out to do what she did best. Sometimes that meant unlocking jewelry cases to snatch diamonds. Sometimes it meant unraveling the puzzle of a goldsmith’s vault. And sometimes it just meant casing a noble estate for when an opportunity presents itself another night.
 
Her body moved on its own, movements practiced year after year since she’d first fallen through the cracks and into this life, but it was her hands that had the most fun. Each click of a lock, the deft soft slide of an open window, the careful plucking of her bounties from their resting places. She imagined the feeling she got was something akin to Sareena’s need to breathe in her music. And only under Sephira’s night sky and with Steyfano’s cleverness was she free to do all this. Alone.
 
Here, there were no clients. No stuck-up nobles. No friends with conflicting morals. No commentary. No arguments. No one.
 
She occasionally ran into others doing second-story work. Burglars climbing in the window of a large home or shop. A cart being loaded behind a warehouse in the dead of night. Pickpockets lifting the wallet out of a drunk noble’s pocket as they wandered away from a seedy brothel. But none of them concerned Fox. She didn’t talk to them. She knew they weren’t here for the same reason. She knew they weren’t like her.
 
The dark of night let her indulge all the impulses she suppressed through the day. In truth, she didn’t need a business, she didn’t need high society connections, she didn’t need a house, or luxuries, or the mountain of wealth she kept spread across anonymous accounts from Novandria to Capistrello. This is what Fox needed. To be free of the expectations, the moralizing, the social conventions, the people, the friends, and the enemies. They all thought she was crazy anyway. Nobody since Kallie and Mika had understood her need to move through the night like this, seeking out the challenges and overcoming them.
 
This was something for her alone. Sareena and Victor had too many concerns. Elsinore would hopefully never find out. Even her friends that knew performed twists of logic and reason to make what she did okay. So, Fox kept it to herself now. These nights belonged to her.
 
Her feet often didn’t touch the balcony of her bedroom until the first rays of dawn broke the horizon to dispel the night. Fox let herself in, peeled off her nightly attire before stepping into a hot bath to ease her muscles. Afterwards, she crawled into her enormous bed and buried herself in blankets and pillows for the strictly minimum amount of sleep an elf required. Her aunt and uncle had given her a second lease on life and she refused to waste a second of it.