Elsewhere, Bastien's search is not exactly fruitless.
There's a trick floorboard disguised by a carpet and a nightstand, with contents so old and grimy that they were likely left behind by whoever lived here before Thiers: a hand-carved wood and ivory tobacco pipe, a gold locket in Blessed Age style with an ancient curl of hair inside, a slab of bricky clay with the impressions of two tiny feet. Someone's treasure. Bastien pockets the pipe and locket and moves the footprints to a drawer in the nightstand, where Thiers' heirs might be more likely to find and wonder about them.
Behind a painting is a vault, easy enough to crack, containing provisions for a man either paranoid or only very well-prepared in a relatable way. A change of clothes without any signs of wear, in case a man needed to disappear and didn't want anyone to be able to describe what hat and jacket he took with him, with coins and a few jewels sewn into the hems. Traveling gear and a sack of money. Bastien spends a few minutes snipping the valuables out of the jacket and sewing the hem back up, but he leaves the sack alone.
Elsewhere, less carefully hidden, are coins dropped into drawers as if tossed there in the process of trying to clean, bundled correspondence with other academics and friends, and—in the back corner of an armoire—a shimmery black silk scarf.
All decent fruit, all unlikely to be marked as missing in the neglected mess of the houe. But the fruit—the book—is not anywhere he looks, so eventually he wanders back to the library, peeking through the windows on the staircase as he goes to ensure the guardsmen are still unworried and half-asleep at their posts. His bag and pockets don't jangle when he enters; he's better at this than that.
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There's a trick floorboard disguised by a carpet and a nightstand, with contents so old and grimy that they were likely left behind by whoever lived here before Thiers: a hand-carved wood and ivory tobacco pipe, a gold locket in Blessed Age style with an ancient curl of hair inside, a slab of bricky clay with the impressions of two tiny feet. Someone's treasure. Bastien pockets the pipe and locket and moves the footprints to a drawer in the nightstand, where Thiers' heirs might be more likely to find and wonder about them.
Behind a painting is a vault, easy enough to crack, containing provisions for a man either paranoid or only very well-prepared in a relatable way. A change of clothes without any signs of wear, in case a man needed to disappear and didn't want anyone to be able to describe what hat and jacket he took with him, with coins and a few jewels sewn into the hems. Traveling gear and a sack of money. Bastien spends a few minutes snipping the valuables out of the jacket and sewing the hem back up, but he leaves the sack alone.
Elsewhere, less carefully hidden, are coins dropped into drawers as if tossed there in the process of trying to clean, bundled correspondence with other academics and friends, and—in the back corner of an armoire—a shimmery black silk scarf.
All decent fruit, all unlikely to be marked as missing in the neglected mess of the houe. But the fruit—the book—is not anywhere he looks, so eventually he wanders back to the library, peeking through the windows on the staircase as he goes to ensure the guardsmen are still unworried and half-asleep at their posts. His bag and pockets don't jangle when he enters; he's better at this than that.
"No luck," he whispers. "You?"