Scene VII
(It’s later in the night. Mute and Prate are sound asleep, while Sage is wide awake, staring at nothing. Blaine is in his escape mindset.)
SAGE: You should quiet down. You’re going to wake him.
BLAINE: (bitterly)He’ll wake up eventually anyway. (beat) That came out wrong. I’m sorry.
SAGE: It’s fine. Just stop making so much noise.
BLAINE: I’m sorry. (stops) I just want to get out of here.
SAGE: I know.
BLAINE: Why don’t you try to escape? Because, tomorrow…
SAGE: If I’m caught, I’ll be killed on sight.
BLAINE: So? It’s a better chance of surviving and going free than hanging. You said yourself that it’s surprisingly easy to evade the king’s men.
SAGE: I would have less time to look after Mute.
BLAINE: You might make it longer.
SAGE: He would be hoping something that was probably not possible. He’d think I was out there waiting for him, when I’d most likely be dead. And even if I were alive, how would we find each other again? And who would lead him to me? I’m not going to risk it.
BLAINE: You should try to escape.
SAGE: When?
BLAINE: Tonight!
SAGE: And how can I escape in one night? Even if I could, I would have to find a way into Mute’s cell. I wouldn’t leave him here.
BLAINE: He’d be safe here. They’re not going to hang him.
SAGE: I told you I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. For all I know, they could hang him. And I don’t want to follow false hopes, either. I don’t want to be waiting for him when he was hanged years ago.
BLAINE: You give up too easily.
(Sage doesn’t answer. He watches as Blaine starts to wiggle the lock, then catch himself just before he touches it.)
SAGE: You’ve been prying our pasts away from us.
BLAINE: I know. I’m sorry. Instinct. It’s what I was trained to do since—
SAGE: That’s not what I’m talking about.
BLAINE: (beat) There’s no way I’m going to tell you my—
SAGE: You owe us that much.
BLAINE: I don’t owe you anything. You don’t know—
SAGE: I may not be a gambler, but I know all about debt.
BLAINE: Even if I was going to tell you, which I’m not, I wouldn’t—
SAGE: Oh, you’d tell the truth. I’d make sure you’d tell the truth.
BLAINE: Will you let me finish one sentence!
SAGE: (spreads hands) Very well.
BLAINE: I’m not going to tell you my past. Nothing you do will make me.
SAGE: I could pry your past away from you. Like you did to us. I could even use the same methods.
BLAINE: You couldn’t. You have too much “honor.”
SAGE: I’ve picked up a few tricks. You forget, I’ve spent two years in a prison.
BLAINE: That’s your excuse for everything. Seems like you’re proud of it.
SAGE: Would you like me to force it out of you?
BLAINE: Find then. Okay. I’ll tell you my past. (sarcastically) I was raised in a circus, born in the lion’s cage. My childhood sweetheart was a very pretty Chinese acrobat, who was known for her balance, especially in the air. When we turned eighteen, we decided to fly the place. So my drive for escape. But she was captured and killed by the ringmaster, and I wandered the world, lost, confused, anguished, remembering how her hair smelled in the hot, circus night…until I came here and was dropped off in this place.
SAGE: That’s utterly ridiculous.
BLAINE: More believable than yours.
SAGE: There is a chance at escape.
BLAINE: (beat) Wait…what?
SAGE: Escape. It’s possible. I was working on a little project during the first month or so I spent in here.
BLAINE: Really? What is it?
SAGE: Why are you here?
BLAINE: (beat) That’s…that’s not fair…
SAGE: The trick itself isn’t fair. But the circumstances are.
BLAINE: I’ll lie. I won’t tell the truth, and you won’t know the difference.
SAGE: Believe me, I will know the difference. If you lie, I’ll lie, and no one gains anything. This is your only chance to learn a way to escape. Remember, tonight’s my last night, and the secret will die with me.
(long pause. Blaine stands distraught for a long time, trying to find a way out of this, but eventually gives up.)
BLAINE: Fine.
SAGE: Good.
(Sage leans back to listen, arms crossed, judging and weighing each word.)
BLAINE: I grew up in a tight little group, a ragtag collection of cutpurses and pickpockets and petty thieves. When I got older, though, I got bored with the small rewards. I became a big-game thief, one of those that rob kings and nobles and come back with jewels and gold and expensive clothing. I kept stepping up in rank in the group. I became…a deputy, let’s call it, and I watched over the young ones, making sure they weren’t too reckless and trying to keep them from getting caught.
SAGE: Hm.
BLAINE: You don’t believe me?
SAGE: Mute.
BLAINE: Oh. Mute. I haven’t been around people like Mute. But that’s because the younger ones were taught to keep their opinions to themselves. Unless they made a big catch or an impossible escape, their words weren’t important to us. I came in here, and suddenly, here was a little tyke who thought his ideas were valuable. I wasn’t used to that. It was also the fact that I had been caught that made me a little touchy. It was the very first time.
SAGE: The first time you were caught?
BLAINE: Yup.
SAGE: Somehow I don’t think that’s true.
BLAINE: “You don’t have to believe it, but it’s true.”
SAGE: You don’t speak like you’re from the streets.
BLAINE: Not everyone on the streets have accents like Mute’s.
SAGE: Hm. Carry on. I’m not letting you go with only that.
BLAINE: What else is there to say?
SAGE: How’d you get here?
BLAINE: No. You wanted my past, so I gave you my past.
SAGE: You’re giving up on escape that easily?
BLAINE: (beat) I hate you.
SAGE: Why are you in prison?
BLAINE: Because I got bored. When you’re that good at avoiding soldiers…
SAGE: (sarcastically) Oh, yes, that must be it. How could I have thought otherwise? You're so excellent at escaping, after all.
(Blaine glares at him, then looks away. Mute shudders again in his sleep, and Sage reaches across to comfort him.)
BLAINE: I’ve made a lot of great escapes in my time. I’m known for it. The younger ones admired me for it, the older ones respected me for it, my friends joked about it. The only person who didn’t think much of my methods was my sister.
SAGE: You had a sister?
BLAINE: Not in blood. But she was a sister. A really good thief, but very brash. That was the only reason she didn’t gain as high a rank as me. She would deliberately climb over the fence where the dogs were. She would call out to a guard from the shadows. She would purposefully make a lot of noise picking a lock. The girl couldn’t get caught, but when she left to thieve for the night, we were all worried that she wouldn’t come back.
We became siblings, partnes, companions, whatever you want to call us. We worked together. Most would think that we wouldn’t mix well, but we did. We mixed very well. I stopped rising in rank, because the others were scared that we’d trip up and get us all caught, but we didn’t care. We were great thieves and even better friends
It is true that my sister was a bit…suicidal. Her father was a duke, who drank and gambled away all the money. No noble wants to marry to a girl with no dowry. There was no gain sticking with her family, so she found a new one. But she wasn’t very accepted in our group, besides me, and she needed more than that.
When we were robbing one noble’s house, though, one dog got particularly aggressive and completely took her down. The nobleman’s soldiers caught her real quick.
(beat) I…I stayed back to help, of course. She was my sister. What sort of unfeeling…unfeeling person would leave her there to…
SAGE: You left her.
BLAINE: No. No, I fought for her as anyone would fight for a sister. But there was nothing I could do. They captured her, and I…I was able to break free.
SAGE: (nods) You left her.
BLAINE: (beat) I might have been able to help.
SAGE: You would have only succeeded in getting yourself caught. It’s an honorable thing to regret, Blaine, and a horrible weight of guilt you have to carry. But there wasn’t much you could’ve—
BLAINE: She was hanged.
(Pause. Sage looks down.)
SAGE: I’m sorry. I really am.
BLAINE: No you’re not. You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone like that. You can’t possibly know if you’re forcing Mute to go though that same thing.
SAGE: I know him better than you do. This is the best way to—
BLAINE: You have no idea what you’re going to put him through.
(pause. Mute shudders in his sleep again, and Sage goes over to comfort him.)
BLAINE: I went to watch. Well, not to watch. I was entertaining ideas of heroic rescues. I wouldn’t be able to stay away and know that she was dying, especially if there was the slightest chance I could redeem myself and save her. Idiot. Stupid. I should’ve left and gone home and…(deep breath)
She was a real sight when they led her up there. There were bites all over her body. Her face, her legs, her hands…there were tears in her clothes that were rimmed with blood. Her lip was bleeding, her eye was black, her nose was crooked. No reason to doctor up a living corpse. I can’t see her anyway else, now.
I was still thinking about running up with my knife and freeing my sister. But I was frozen. Coward. Fool.
When…when they…(deep breath) Her neck didn’t break. Strangled to death. And all I could do was watch.
(long pause. Mute shudders again.)
SAGE: I’m sorry. I really am.
BLAINE: Cruel. Putting Mute through something like that.
SAGE: He’s not going to see—
BLAINE: His imagination will be much worse than the actual thing. You know that. And he has a very, very strong imagination.
SAGE: You’re not telling me how you got here.
BLAINE: Sure. Go ahead. Change the subject and ignore him. That’ll solve all your problems.
SAGE: Stop it.
BLAINE: You’re doing this all wrong, because you don’t understand what’s going to happen.
SAGE: I understand perfectly.
BLAINE: Education can’t get you very far, Sage, especially when we’re dealing with death here. You’ve never seen a man hang, have you? You’ve never seen a man executed at all. (no answer) Mute has. I have. I can’t know Mute more than you do, but I know how he’ll react when he learns you were killed. It will break him. He will die.
SAGE: I won’t tell you how to escape unless you finish your story.
BLAINE: Fine. I’ll finish. I’ll do thy wish, “my lord.”
(matter-of-fact, trying to hide his emotions) After my sister stopped squirming, I returned home. But I was different. See, the reason I had become a thief was the simple thrill of being invisible and unseen. I liked being unknown, so that people saw my work, but not the worker. It wasn’t the same thrill of slitting a purse open or pulling off the part of a blind, crippled orphan or some other form of thievery. That’s a different type of thrill, for a different type of person.
There’s a certain…magic in the darkness. Because in the darkness, you’re nobody. You’re completely invisible. And you can choose when to reveal yourself, or if you even want to at all. There’s something about the weight of that cloak that just fits me, the way a king’s crown just fits him. And it’s comfortable. Some of the others thought that weight was stifling, but for me, it was reassuring. There’s power in that sort of darkness. Power that blinds your enemies, even if you’re just as blind as them.
Once my sister was…when she wasn’t with me to share that power, I got reckless. I didn’t care anymore. I dropped from rank really fast. The younger ones didn’t want to be around me, afraid that, if they were within two feet of me, they’d be caught. This made me even more careless. I had lost my sister. I had lost my family. I had lost my friends. I had lost my rank. I had lost respect. There nothing left but the darkness. And even that was suddenly heavy, without my sister to help lift some weight.
It didn’t take them very long to catch me. It didn’t matter anymore. I was…drunk, let’s say. I spent too much time under that heavy cloak.
I was hoping that I’d be alone down here. I’m not like you or Mute, I don’t need to hear anyone’s voice to keep sane. And I was hoping the prisons would be darker. That’s what keeps me sane, that feeling that I don’t exist. Darkness is my sanctuary, like light is Mute’s.
He can have his light and his window. I just want to be invisible.
(long pause. Mute shudders again, and Sage comforts him again. Blaine watches it sadly, then buries his head in his hands. Sage notices.)
SAGE: I’m sorry. (beat) You still want to escape?
BLAINE: (angrily) Yeah, I want to escape. Why do you think I told you all that?
SAGE: It’s not dark up there.
BLAINE: I didn’t ask to be lectured, my lord.
SAGE: Stop calling me that.
BLAINE: Just tell me how to escape and have done.
*I think you're right, Cheshire; the monologues are way too long....Perhaps I love writing and memorizing monologues way too much. XD Thanks for pointing it out to me! I'll try to shorten them up.*
I must've failed that. *sigh* I'll work on it. Thanks for your review! It really helped.