Page 35 of The Hood and his Thief

At that, Rhosyn pictured Ansel getting up before she woke and wondered if she had been in this state when he did. That thought did make her neck and chest prickle with heat, but she grit her teeth against the feeling. This situation was on him. Of course he was trying to goad her.

“Where is Ansel?” Rhosyn asked, feigning casualness as she stretched.

“Busy.”

“A man of few words,” she observed. “That bodes for a very long day of silent staring as I’m stuck tied to this bed.”

“I can untie you, but I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” Little John stood and shuffled over to the head of the bed where her bonds were anchored. She waited as it took him a surprisingly long time to untie her and grimaced. Ansel hadn’t been bluffing about her being well bound.

Finally free, Rhosyn sat and reached to grope around for her pants, still haphazardly tossed over her boots on the floor.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” she asked as she pulled on her clothes and boots.

Little John looked off at the corner as she did, clearly not wanting to openly watch her dress but unwilling to turn his back. He learned quickly.

“It’s not my job to entertain you, just make sure you don’t escape.”

“Great,” Rhosyn said cheerily, “then you can just follow as I look around.”

With that, she traipsed towards the door, finding it unlocked. Apparently, Ansel considered Little John enough of a guard given his leverage over her.

Stepping into the hallway, she picked a direction at random and began to walk the halls. John followed after like a large, lumbering shadow, but she paid him no mind, poking her head into open doorways as she passed.

As she suspected, nothing noteworthy jumped out at her. Ansel would have kept her locked in the room if there were anything potentially useful for her to find. Still, she started constructing a map of the building in her mind, making mental marks for windows that might make potential exits for when it eventually came time for her to escape.

It would also be useful to know the layout to relay to Chief Thorne when he conducted the inevitable raid, to upend this criminal operation.

Eventually, her search brought her down to the common room where she had fought and later listened to Ansel’s tale. It was sparsely populated now though, only a few figures seated at tables bent over in quiet conversation. Two of the inhabitants were familiar.

“Olivia, Paul,” she greeted, weaving through tables to where they sat.

They looked up, smiling with something that looked like relief. Perhaps they hadn’t trusted that she would keep her word and cooperate as a captive until they were out of Mr. Gower’s reach. The thought reached into Rhosyn’s chest and twisted her heart.

She avoided grappling with those thoughts by looking at the piles of brightly colored fabric strewn across the table before them.

“What’s all this?”

“Costumes,” Olivia explained brightly. “I’m doing my best to make myself useful to the circus, to help Ansel.”

Indeed, Olivia held a needle in her hand, poking at the eye with bright green thread that matched the cloth in her lap.

“You’re sewing?” Rhosyn asked. If Olivia was any good with a needle and a thread, it wasn’t due to her time in the Den. Rhosyn was only good at educating youngsters in less ladylike arts.

“I taught myself so I could pick up odd mending jobs for extra money…before the Gower’s sponsored us of course.” With the needle successfully threaded, Olivia turned to the garment in her lap, which turned out to be some sort of unitard onto which she was appliqueing a dizzying pattern of stars.

To Rhosyn’s surprise, Paul picked up the next in the pile of garments—an obscenely fluffy layered skirt—and started using a small knife to pick apart a seam near the waist.

“You too?”

“I learned to be pretty good at undoing and redoing stitches while Olivia was teaching herself,” Paul explained. Olivia shot him a look that was half annoyed, half fond at his teasing.

Rhosyn glanced around the room, a thought occurring to her. Little John had sat himself at the adjacent table, arms folded over his chest as he observed Rhosyn’s conversation. She wasn’t likely to get much investigating done with John hovering over her shoulder every waking moment. Maybe, the investigating could come to her.

“Why don’t you teach me?” Rhosyn suggested, slipping into a chair and gesturing to the gaudy assortment of textiles. “It looks like there is plenty of work to go around.”

They both blinked at her, as if she had suggested jumping off the top of the clock tower—which she had done before, although they wouldn’t know that—and not helping with some mending.

“You…want to sew?” Olivia clarified.