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Queen of Thieves. The role had only ever been filled by a woman, though plenty of men had tried. There was something to that, at least. That she was the Queen of Thieves, and no one could deny that she deserved the title. She deserved to be seen for who she’d become.
It had been strange, back in Tanner’s Folly. A strange girl, a stranger name, and a strangely unknowable past. ‘Katie Delacour’, she’d chosen; Katie of the Court. She’d fallen in love with the legend of the thief queen the moment she'd heard it, and from that moment she knew exactly who she wanted to be. Things had never felt quite right before that moment - she could never look at people and see them staring back at her without shaking. She felt trapped in that life, that town, that body. Once she listened to the story of a powerful woman, ruling an incredible place, it all suddenly became clearer.
Tanner’s Folly itself was odd all on its own. Misfortune was always a few steps away, and that misfortune made people reluctant to question the unpredictable. A tanner’s son disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and a new thief found her way into the market. She’d spent those first weeks terrified that someone would connect the events. But, soon she realised that they were more likely to believe that she’d killed the boy, than that she was once known as him. She was a thief first and foremost; if someone wanted to dig into her, they were better off prying into that than any personal matters.
Then she was Katie Pearlhead. And suddenly she felt that same tight, crushing hatred of the people who thought they could pick and choose who she was. She’d thought that people in the market giving out her name freely was bad enough - the reason she came to the market in the first place was that criminals don’t ask identifying questions - and then they thought they had the right to mock her? For being taken advantage of? The quick deaths she’d given them were merciful. She’d gladly have done so much worse.
She couldn’t deny, however, that it became an advantage. Everyone alive who knew her, knew her as Katie Delacour. An out-of-her-depth teen, who’d slipped into the Market unnoticed to find an apothecary who’d take pity on her. Katie Pearlhead sounded like an alias, and it quickly became one. She was Katie Delacour, desperate and unsure and scrabbling, but she was surrounded by the myth of Katie Pearlhead, who could kill hundreds in seconds and who stole her way to infamy. She was happy enough to keep her name to herself, because in the end it didn’t matter what it was. All that mattered was how ruthlessly she could carve herself a spot in the criminal world of G’eth.
It was easier to be a legend instead of a person when she became Queen. She kept people out, hid her face and name, and let her reputation do the dirty work. Now when she saw people staring, she didn’t shake. She stood taller, met their eyeline, and dared them to look away first. It was no surprise that they marvelled at the person she’d created herself as, all her hard work certainly wasn’t for nothing. When she was younger, she’d only thought of plants as useful for masking the smell of tanning, but she’d grown to appreciate their variety of uses. Some were helpful for her own problems, others helped her to remove the problem of other people getting in her way.
She hadn’t seriously thought of romance in years. When she was much younger, she’d looked up at romantic relationships and imagined the happiness one would bring, but things had changed since then. She’d changed. It wasn’t something simple anymore, and she’d been living so quickly that slowing down and letting someone in terrified her. Finding someone, letting them see all those twisted feelings and telling them how she’d never quite left behind that unsure girl, seemed impossible. Especially when ‘someone’ was the person who’d taken her out of that life and had given her no choice but to completely recreate herself, yet again. It may have ultimately changed her life for the better, but she’d at least liked to have had a say in it.
That was all before she really got to know him. Once she did that, she realised that Dob was the sort of person who would happily fall in love with a myth. He would happily create his own mythologised ideal to fall in love with, and now he was in a situation where the hard work of creating that myth had already been done for him. By Katie herself, ironically. Part of her was afraid that telling him would shatter that image, but it didn’t seem to. Maybe she should have realised that him clinging to that mythologised idea of her in spite of her vulnerability should have been a warning. Maybe that was why she knew she couldn’t stay with someone who loved Katie Pearlhead, Queen of Thieves, and not Katie Delacour of Tanner’s Folly.
She wanted to afford him the grace of a quiet, subtle, soothing death. Apparently the sentiment did not run both ways. It was all of the agony, humiliation, and suffering she’d been holding in all of her life, laid out for the world to see. It’s impossible to kill a myth. The only way for one to die is to have people stop talking about it, and people talk about violent, horrific deaths. He must have known, he’d fallen in love with myths before, he’d proved it that same day. She was so angry that somehow, even this idealistic version of herself wasn’t enough. No version of her ever could be enough. That was why he’d tried to kill the heart of the myth, that’s why he’d tried to kill Katie Delacour. Because no version of her was enough.
Recovery took time and patience that she didn’t have. The physical wounds healed quickly enough, and she got right back to work before she could pause to deal with the emotional side of things. She ruled as the Thief Queen, rewrote the story to show how she wasn’t tricked, she wasn’t outclassed, and she certainly didn’t get hurt. She pushed Katie Delacour, the aspirational, lovesick, desperate girl far down inside her mind, where no one could see her. She spent her days living the myth, and spent her nights tormented by the reality. She didn’t sleep much when she was younger - she often found it hard to get comfortable and quiet her mind - so she was used to staring up at the ceiling, not quite knowing who she was.
It was after one of these long nights that something seized her. She wasn’t sure why but, as she prepared for the day, she didn’t feel the urge to hide her face as she usually did. She caught herself in the mirror and - without the pearl obscuring her - she recognised herself. It had been so long, and she’d never given herself the time to get used to it. She didn’t even realise that she was sinking down, silently apologising to the little girl who’d dreamed of the life that she’d grown up to despise. A little girl who wanted to be the Thief Queen, because that way she could be herself. She could be free.
She stepped out to face the court, all of them able to see her for the first time. The room was full of people; her closest advisors and strangers to the city alike were all captivated by her. They all stared at her, and she shook, but not with discomfort. With pride.
“My subjects, my friends, my Court. I am the Queen of Thieves, Katie Delacour.”