The players of a theatre company don't perform in the dark with the curtain down, and a pantomime robbery isn't so different. It needs an audience, whose hush needs to fall. It needs people to take their positions. It needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. A proper thief gets in and out in the smallest possible window of time, but a bandit is an actor and a performing artist. A bandit wants to take his bow before he makes off with the goods. And that's just what might get him caught.
Although he gets there after the place has filled out nicely, there's something about the whole thing that feels like moving around backstage, perhaps because it is a setup for a setup and he hasn't been made aware of which props are still drying and which he can touch. In his book, that means he should touch all of them and worry about wet paint later. They are beautiful props, too, shining and sharp enough to split hairs, just as she promised. He runs his eye all along the length of the flamberge, thinking of how the parallel ripples will feel in his hands and under his tongue. If guns are the hearts of men, full of fire and dust and apt to make things go badly, blades are the teeth. As he looks from one culture's collection to another, it's clear that teeth—and sometimes his teeth in particular—were the inspiration for the original moulds. A different tooth for ripping through different kinds of flesh, and leaving a different pattern behind in the cross section.
He's vaguely star-struck, but it may be the lighting, engineered to highlight the exhibitions just so.
Trickster the first comes in costume and out of character, his hair slicked thick and dark, his sleek eyes reflecting only a tiny, polite percentage of the greed fastening down his heart. On the bridge of his long, straight nose rests a pair of square spectacles, nice and corporate and nothing that would be seen dead in a coffee house on some finger-snapping beatnik. His suit, shirt and tie are similarly well-tailored, well-matched and well-behaved. All up, the ensemble costs more than he has ever earned in his very long lifetime.
"Miss Sato!" His voice is faraway because he's halfway across the room, but then he phases through the crowd like smoke—and whether he does it literally, as a god would, or simply with that slink of his, it's hard to say. "It's been some time. You look..." How does she look in that smoking dress of hers? Edible, dynamic, deadly, like a truffle that might kill you if you regard it with any appetite. "You look well. Are you what I'm carrying off tonight?" She's certainly sharp and, in that outfit of hers, shiny enough to fit the description.