Haizea Inon

More 750 Words. Very rough.

***

That bitch stole my name. Haizea Inon. I can tell you've heard of her. Of course you have. Everyone in this gods-forsaken country has heard of Haizea Inon, the girl mage, scourge of Duke Ochoa, fighter for the people.

Bitch.

When it was my name it was just Haizea Inon. No pretentious titles, no fame, no ballads or stories, no whispered, hopeful rumors. That suited me just fine.

I met the bitch three years ago in a pub called The Marksman. It's far away from here, in the capital. Have you been? Good-- don't bother, Arriol isn't worth the journey. The Marksman was like the rest of that hole, filthy and dank and depressing.

She was sitting at my table. Our table. I told her to move. Ander Bakar, my partner, told me I was being mean to the "poor lass." She did look poor, hair falling out of her braid, dirt on her clothes and smudging her cheeks. She looked lost. I noticed, since my job means I have to notice things, but I didn't like the way Ander said "poor lass," and so we bickered.

At some point I said his name, and he said mine, and there was a gasp. We'd nearly forgotten about her. She looked from me to him and back to me again. "You're Haizea Inon?" she asked.

No one knew my full name. Not even Ander. My family name was my secret, and I hid it to hide my past. My given name I kept close to me as well. In my line of work it doesn't do to be well-known. A famous thief is a thief hanging with a noose around her neck.

If I had been the murdering type I'd have lured her to a back alley and slit her throat. Don't look at me like that. I said "if." I didn't murder. It made things messy, and I'd seen how it complicated jobs.

'Course, the girl didn't know that. So I pulled out my knife, and in that dim corner of The Marksman I held its sharp edge to where her heartbeat fluttered at her throat. Oh, I've wished many nights since then that I'd cut it.

"Never say that name again," I said. Very threatening it was. Her face was pale and she shook on her seat. And Ander took her side, eyes wide.

She was half his age! Ander and I had a past, and yet he sided with this little chit. I left her cowering in the corner and walked out. He was slow to follow, which should have warned me. The bitch already had him.

The day earlier we'd acquired an amulet. Magic, of course. Powerful, too. I wasn't interested in what it could do, though, only how much gold it could get me in the next fiefdom over. Ander wanted to stay longer in Arriol. He said we could use the amulet ourselves, do something about that silly Duke of theirs. It was his home fiefdom, and he had a sentimentality about it.

I'd been considering it. Sooner or later he would get bored, I thought. We could move on to new jobs, and things would stay like they had always been. But now. Now someone knew my name. I didn't know how, but I wanted the hell out of town.

She followed us. I was walking briskly, Ander trailing behind. "We're leaving," I said. He asked what about the Duke, and then she appeared at his elbow.

"You can't leave! You have to fight the Duke!" she said.

Who was she to tell me what I should do? Bitch. Anyway, long story short, I left that night, and Ander stayed with her. It was doomed to failure, and I figured he'd get what he deserved. Figured they both would.

You going to drink that? Thanks. God, this stuff tastes like shit. Barkeep! Where the hell is he...

Anyway, I left. Good riddance, right? But then I heard rumors. People were talking about me. Haizea Inon. There were wanted posters with my name on it. Not my face, though. Her face.

Do you know what it feels like to have your name stolen? I could have been her. I would have stayed.

***

I'm not really sure about this piece. It started off well, or at least different, which I like. Different is good. It loses something in the middle. Ah well.

It's a weird experiment based on a time travel fantasy I wrote a while back. A girl named Maia goes back in time only to find she has to fulfill the role of her hero, Haizea Inon. In the short story there was no original Haizea Inon, but here I started playing around with an idea--that Haizea Inon is a thief who would never have done the things Maia knew her hero to do, and Maia is forced to take her place in history.

So, yeah. Messed around with second person a bit, and trying to inject bitterness into things, as well as unreliable narrator (Haizea would never have stayed.) It didn't go in the same direction as it did when I was writing it in my head, but oh well~