The Republic of Thieves #1

Chapter ONE


THINGS GET WORSE

1

WEAK SUNLIGHT AGAINST his eyelids drew him out of sleep. The brightness intruded, grew, made him blink groggily. A window was open, letting in mild afternoon air and a freshwater smell. Not Camorr. Sound of waves lapping against a sand beach. Not Camorr at all.

He was tangled in his sheets again, lightheaded. The roof of his mouth felt like sun-dried leather. Chapped lips peeled apart as he croaked, “What are you …”

“Shhhh. I didn’t mean to wake you. The room needed some air.” A dark blur on the left, more or less Jean’s height. The floor creaked as the shape moved about. Soft rustle of fabric, snap of a coin purse, clink of metal. Locke pushed himself up on his elbows, prepared for the dizziness. It came on punctually.

“I was dreaming about her,” he muttered. “The times that we … when we first met.”

“Her?”

“Her. You know.”

“Ah. The canonical her.” Jean knelt beside the bed and held out a cup of water, which Locke took in his shaking left hand and sipped at gratefully. The world was slowly coming into focus.

“So vivid,” said Locke. “Thought I could touch her. Tell her … how sorry I am.”

“That’s the best you can manage? Dreaming of a woman like that, and all you can think to do with your time is apologize?”

“Hardly under my control—”

“They’re your dreams. Take the reins.”

“I was just a little boy, for the gods’ sakes.”

“If she pops up again move it forward ten or fifteen years. I want to see some blushing and stammering next time you wake up.”

“Going somewhere?”

“Out for a bit. Making my rounds.”

“Jean, there’s no point. Quit torturing yourself.”

“Finished?” Jean took the empty cup from him.

“Not nearly. I—”

“Won’t be gone long.” Jean set the cup on the table and gave the lapels of his coat a perfunctory brushing as he moved to the door. “Get some more rest.”

“You don’t bloody listen to reason, do you?”

“You know what they say about imitation and flattery.”

The door slid shut and Jean was gone, out into the streets of Lashain.

2

LASHAIN WAS famous as a city where anything could be bought and anything could be left behind. By the grace of the regio, the city’s highest and thinnest order of nobility (where a title that could be traced back more than two generations qualified one for the old guard), just about anyone with cash in hand and enough of a pulse to maintain semiconsciousness could have their blood transmuted to a reasonable facsimile of blue.

From every corner of the Therin world they came—merchants and criminals, mercenary captains and pirates, gamblers and adventurers and exiles. As commoners they entered the chrysalis of a countinghouse, shed vast quantities of precious metal, and as newborn peers of Lashain they emerged into daylight. The regio minted demibarons, barons, viscounts, counts, and even the occasional marquis, with styles largely of their own invention. Honors were taken from a list and cost extra; “Defender of the Twelvefold Faith” was quite popular. There were also half a dozen meaningless orders of knighthood that looked marvelous on a coat lapel.

Because of the novelty of this purchased respectability to those who brokered it for themselves, Lashain was the most violently manners-conscious city Jean Tannen had ever visited. Lacking centuries of aristocratic descent to assure them of their worth, the neophytes of Lashain overcompensated with ceremony. Their rules of precedence were like alchemical formulae, and dinner parties killed more of them each year than fevers and accidents combined. It seemed that little could be more thrilling for those who’d just bought their family names than to risk them (not to mention their mortal flesh) over minor insults.

The record, as far as Jean had heard, was three days from counting-house to dueling green to funeral cart. The regio, of course, offered no refunds to relations of the deceased.

As a result of this nonsense, it was difficult for those without titles, regardless of the color of their coin, to gain ready access to the city’s best physikers. They were made such status symbols by their noble clients that they rarely had to scamper after gold from other sources.

The taste of autumn was in the cool wind blowing off the Amathel, the Lake of Jewels—the freshwater sea that rolled to the horizon north of Lashain. Jean was conservatively dressed by local standards, in a brown velvet frock coat and silks worth no more than, say, three months’ wages for an average tradesman. This marked him instantly as someone’s man and suited his current task. No gentleman of consequence did his own waiting at a physiker’s garden gate.

Scholar Erkemar Zodesti was regarded as the finest physiker in Lashain, a prodigy with the bone saw and the alchemist’s crucible. He’d also shown complete disinterest, for three days straight, in Jean’s requests for a consultation.

Today Jean once again approached the iron-barred gate at the rear of Zodesti’s garden, from behind which an elderly servant peered at him with reptilian insolence. In Jean’s outstretched hand was a parchment envelope and a square of white card, just like the three days previous. Jean was getting testy.

The servant reached between the bars without a word and took everything Jean offered. The envelope, containing the customary gratuity of (far too many) silver coins, vanished into the servant’s coat. The old man read or pretended to read the white card, raised his eyebrows at Jean, and walked away.

The card said exactly what it always did—Contempla va cora frata eminenza. “Consider the request of an eminent friend,” in the Throne Therin that was the polite affectation for this sort of gesture. Rather than giving an aristocrat’s name, this message meant that someone powerful wished to pay anonymously to have someone else examined. This was a common means of bringing wealth to bear on the problem of, say, a pregnant mistress, without directly compromising the identity of anyone important.

Jean passed the long minutes of his wait by examining the physiker’s house. It was a good solid place, about the size of a smaller Alcegrante mansion back in Camorr. Newer, though, and done up in a mock Tal Verrar style that labored to proclaim the importance of its inhabitants. The roof was tiled with slats of volcanic glass, and the windows bordered with decorative carvings that would have better suited a temple.

From the heart of the garden itself, closed off from view by a ten-foot stone wall, Jean could hear the sounds of a lively party. Clinking glasses, shrieks of laughter, and behind it all the hum of a nine-stringed viol and a few other instruments.

“I regret to inform your master that the scholar is presently unable to accommodate his request for a consultation.” The servant reappeared behind the iron gate with empty hands. The envelope, a token of earnestness, was of course gone. Whether into the hands of Zodesti or this servant, Jean couldn’t say.

“Perhaps you might tell me when it would be more convenient for the scholar to receive my master’s request,” said Jean, “the middle of the afternoon for half a week now being obviously unsuitable.”

“I couldn’t say.” The servant yawned. “The scholar is consumed with work.”

“With work.” Jean fumed as the sound of applause drifted from the garden party. “Indeed. My master has a case which requires the greatest possible skill and discretion—”

“Your master could rely upon the scholar’s discretion at all times,” said the servant. “Unfortunately, his skill is urgently required elsewhere at the moment.”

“Gods damn you, man!” Jean’s self-control evaporated. “This is important!”

“I will not be spoken to in a vulgar fashion. Good day.”

Jean considered reaching through the iron bars and seizing the old man by the throat, but that would have been counter-productive. He wore no fighting leathers under his finery, and his decorative shoes would be worse than bare feet in a scuffle. Despite the pair of hatchets tucked away under his coat, he wasn’t equipped to storm even a garden party by choice.

“The scholar risks giving offense to a citizen of considerable importance,” growled Jean.

“The scholar is giving offense, you simple fellow.” The old man chuckled. “I tell you plainly, he has little interest in the sort of business arranged in this fashion. I don’t believe a single citizen of quality is so unfamiliar with the scholar that they need fear to be received by the front door.”

“I’ll call again tomorrow,” said Jean, straining to keep his composure. “Perhaps I might name a sum that will penetrate even your master’s indifference.”

“You are to be commended for your persistence, if not for your perception. Tomorrow you must do as your master bids. For now, I have already said good day.”

“Good day,” growled Jean. “May the gods cherish the house wherein such kindness dwells.” He bowed stiffly and left.

There was nothing else to be done at the moment, in this gods-damned city where even throwing envelopes of coins was no guarantee of attracting attention to a problem.

As he stomped back to his hired carriage, Jean cursed Maxilan Stragos for the thousandth time. The bastard had lied about so much. Why, in the end, had the damned poison been the one thing he’d chosen to tell the truth about?

3

HOME FOR the time being was a rented suite in the Villa Suvela, an unadorned but scrupulously clean rooming house favored by travelers who came to Lashain to take the waters of the Amathel. Those waters were said to cure rheumatism, though Jean had yet to see a bather emerge leaping and dancing. The rooming house overlooked a black sand beach on the city’s northeast shore, and the other lodgers kept to themselves.

“The bastard,” said Jean as he threw open the door to the suite’s inner apartment. “The motherless Lashani reptile. The greedy son of a piss-bucket and a bad fart.”

“My keen grasp of subtle nuance tells me you may be frustrated,” said Locke. He was sitting up, and he looked fully awake.

“We’ve been snobbed off again,” said Jean, frowning. Despite the fresh air from the window the inner apartment still smelled of old sweat and fresh blood. “Zodesti won’t come. Not today, at least.”

“To hell with him then, Jean.”

“He’s the only physiker of repute I haven’t got to yet. Some of the others were difficult, but he’s being impossible.”

“I’ve been pinched and bled by every gods-damned lunatic in this city who ever shoved a bolus down a throat,” said Locke. “One more hardly signifies.”

“He’s the best.” Jean flung his coat over a chair, set his hatchets down, and removed a bottle of blue wine from a cabinet. “An alchemical expert. A real smirking rat-f*cker, too.”

“It’s all for the good, then,” said Locke. “What would the neighbors say if I consulted a man who screws rodents?”

“We need his opinion.”

“I’m tired of being a medical curiosity,” said Locke. “If he won’t come, he won’t come.”

“I’ll call again tomorrow.” Jean poured two half-glasses of wine and watered them until they were a pleasant afternoon-sky color. “I’ll have the self-important prick here one way or another.”

“What would you do, break his fingers if he won’t consult? Might make things ticklish for me. Especially if he wants to cut something off.”

“He might find a solution.”

“Oh, for the gods’ sake.” Locke’s frustrated sigh turned into a cough. “There is no solution.”

“Trust me. Tomorrow is going to be one of my unusually persuasive days.”

“As I see it, it’s cost us only a few pieces of gold to discover how unfashionable we are. Most social failures incur far greater expense, I should think.”

“Somewhere out there,” said Jean, “must be an illness that makes its sufferers meek, mild, and agreeable. I’ll find it someday, and see that you get the worst possible case.”

“I’m sure I was born immune. Speaking of agreeable, will that wine be arriving in my hands any time this year?”

Locke had seemed alert enough, but his voice was slurring, and weaker than it had been even the day before. Jean approached the bed uneasily, wineglasses held out like a peace offering to some unfamiliar and potentially dangerous creature.

Locke had been in this condition before, too thin and too pale, with weeks of beard on his cheeks. Only this time there was no obvious wound to tend, no cuts to bandage. Just Maxilan Stragos’ insidious legacy doing its silent work. Locke’s sheets were spotted with blood and with the dark stains of fever-sweat. His eyes gleamed in bruised sockets.

Jean pored over a pile of medical texts each night, and still he didn’t have adequate words for what was happening to Locke. He was being unknit from the inside; his veins and sinews were coming apart. Blood seeped out of him as though by some demonic whim. One hour he might cough it up, the next it would come from his eyes or nose.

“Gods damn it,” Jean whispered as Locke reached for the wineglass. Locke’s left hand was red with blood, as though his fingers had been dipped in it. “What’s this?”

“Nothing unusual,” Locke chuckled. “It started up while you were gone … from under my nails. Here, I can hold the glass with my other one—”

“Were you trying to hide it from me? Who else changes your gods-damned sheets?”

Jean set the glasses down and moved to the table beneath the window, which held stacks of linen towels, a water jug and a washing bowl. The bowl’s water was rusty with old blood.

“It doesn’t hurt, Jean,” muttered Locke.

Ignoring him, Jean picked up the bowl. The window overlooked the villa’s interior courtyard, which was fortunately deserted. Jean heaved the old bloody water out the window, refilled the bowl from the jug, and dipped a linen cloth into it.

“Hand,” said Jean. Locke sulkily complied, and Jean molded the wet cloth around his fingers. It turned pink. “Keep it elevated for a while.”

“I know it looks bad, but it’s really not that much blood.”

“You’ve little left to lose!”

“I’m also in want of wine.”

Jean fetched their glasses again and carefully placed one in Locke’s right hand. Locke’s shakes didn’t seem too bad for the moment, which was pleasing. He’d had difficulty holding things lately.

“A toast,” said Locke. “To alchemists. May they all be stricken with the screaming fire-shits.” He sipped his wine. “Or strangled in bed. Whatever’s most convenient. I’m not picky.”

At his next sip, he coughed, and a ruby-colored droplet spiraled down into his wine, leaving a purplish tail as it dissolved.

“Gods,” said Jean. He gulped the rest of his own wine and set the glass aside. “I’m going out to fetch Malcor.”

“Jean, I don’t need another damned dog-leech at the moment. He’s been here six or seven times already. Why—”

“Something might have changed. Something might be different.” Jean grabbed his coat. “Maybe he can help the bleeding. Maybe he’ll finally find some clue—”

“There is no clue, Jean. There’s no antidote that’s going to spring from Malcor or Kepira or Zodesti or any boil-lancing fraud in this whole tedious shitsack of a city.”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“Dammit, Jean, save the money!” Locke coughed again, and nearly dropped his wine. “It’s only common sense, you brick-skulled tub! You obstinate—”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“ … obstinate, uh, something … something … biting and witty and thoroughly convincing! Hey, if you leave now, you’ll miss me being thoroughly convincing! Damn it.”

Whatever Locke might have said next, Jean closed the door on it. The sky outside was now banded in twilight colors, orange at the horizons giving way to silver and then purple in the deep bowl of the heavens. Purple like the color of blood dissolving in blue wine.

A low gray wall sliding in to the north, from out of the Amathel, seemed to promise an oncoming storm. That suited Jean just fine.

4

SIX WEEKS had passed since they’d left the little port of Vel Virazzo in a forty-foot yacht, fresh from a series of more or less total disasters that had left them with a fraction of the vast sum they’d hoped to recoup for two years invested in a complex scheme.

As he walked out into the streets of Lashain, Jean ran his fingers over a lock of curly dark hair, tightly bound with leather cords. This he always kept in a coat pocket or tucked into his belt. Of all the things he’d lost recently, the money was the least of his concerns.

Locke and Jean had discussed sailing east, back toward Tamalek and Espara … back toward Camorr. But most of the world they’d known there was swept away, and most of their old friends were dead. Instead they’d gone west. North and west.

Following the coast, straining their lubberly skills to the utmost, they had skirted Tal Verrar, swept past the blackened remains of once-luxurious Salon Corbeau, and discussed making far north for Balinel, in the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. Both of them spoke Vadran well enough to do just about anything while they sought some new criminal opportunity.

They left the sea and headed inland, up the wide River Cavendria, which was Eldren-tamed and fit for oceangoing vessels. The Cavendria flowed west from the Amathel, Lake of Jewels, the inland sea that separated the ancient sister-cities of Karthain and Lashain. Locke and Jean had once hoped to buy their way into the ranks of Lashain’s nobility. Their revised plan had merely been to weigh their boat down with stores for the voyage up to Balinel.

Locke’s symptoms revealed themselves the day they entered the Cavendria estuary.

At first it had been nothing more than bouts of dizziness and blurred vision, but as the days passed and they slowly tacked against the current, he began bleeding from his nose and mouth. By the time they reached Lashain, he could no longer laugh away or hide his increasing weakness. Instead of taking on stores, they’d rented rooms, and against Locke’s protests Jean began to spend nearly every coin they had in pursuit of comforts and cures.

From Lashain’s underworld, which was tolerably colorful if nowhere near the size of Camorr’s, he’d consulted every poisoner and black alchemist he could bribe. All had shaken their heads and expressed professional admiration for what had been done to Locke; the substance in question was beyond their power to counteract. Locke had been made to drink a hundred different purgatives, teas, and elixirs, each seemingly more vile and expensive than the last, each ultimately useless.

After that, Jean had dressed well and started calling on accredited physikers. Locke was explained away as a “confidential servant” of someone wealthy, which could have meant anything from secret lover to private assassin. The physikers too had expressed regret and fascination in equal measure. Most had refused to attempt cures, instead offering palliatives to ease Locke’s pain. Jean fully grasped the meaning of this, but paid no heed to their pessimism. He simply showed each to the door, paid their exorbitant fees, and went after the next physiker on his list.

The money hadn’t lasted. After a few days, Jean had sold their boat (along with the resident cat, essential for good luck at sea), and was happy to get half of what they’d paid for it.

Now even those funds were running thin, and Erkemar Zodesti was just about the only physiker in Lashain who had yet to tell Jean that Locke’s condition was hopeless.

5

“NO NEW symptoms,” said Malcor, a round old man with a gray beard that curled out from his chin like an oncoming thunderhead. Malcor was a dog-leech, a street physiker with no formal training or license, but of all his kind available in Lashain he was the most frequently sober. “Merely a new expression of familiar symptoms. Take heart.”

“Not likely,” said Locke. “But thanks for the hand job.”

Malcor had poulticed the tips of Locke’s fingers with a mixture of corn meal and honey, then tied dry linen bandages around the fingers, turning Locke’s left hand into a padded lump of uselessness.

“Heh. Well, the gods love a man who laughs at hardship.”

“Hardship is boring as all hell. Gotta find laughs if you can’t stay drunk,” said Locke.

“So the bleeding is nothing new? Nothing worse than before?” asked Jean.

“A new inconvenience, yes.” Malcor hesitated, then shrugged. “As for the total loss to his body’s sanguine humors … I can’t say. A close examination of his water could, perhaps—”

“You want a bowl full of piss,” said Locke, “you can uncork your private reserve. I’ve given quite enough since I came here.”

“Well then.” Malcor’s knees creaked like rusty hinges as he stood up. “If I won’t scry your piss, I won’t scry your piss. I can, however, leave you with a pill that should bring you excellent relief for twelve to twenty-four hours, and perhaps encourage your depleted humors to rekindle—”

“Splendid,” said Locke. “Will it be the one composed primarily of chalk, this time? Or the one made of sugar? I’d prefer sugar.”

“Look … I say, look here!” Malcor’s seamy old face grew red. “I might not have Collegium robes, but when I go to the gods they’ll know that I gave an honest damn about lending ease to my patients!”

“Peace, old man.” Locke coughed and rubbed his eyes with his unbandaged hand. “I know you mean the best. But spare me your placebo.”

“Have your friend remove your bandages in a few hours,” said Malcor testily, shrugging back into a worn frock coat that was spattered with dark stains. “If you drink, drink sparingly. Water your wine.”

“Rest assured my friend here waters my wine like a virgin princess’ nervous chaperone.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jean, as he showed Malcor outside. “He’s difficult when he’s ill.”

“He’s got two or three days,” said the old man.

“You can’t be—”

“Yes, I can. The bleeding is worse. His enervation is more pronounced. His humors are terminally imbalanced, and I’m certain an examination of his water would show blood. I tried to hearten him, but your friend is obviously undeceived.”

“But—”

“As should you be.”

“There must be someone who can do something!”

“The gods.”

“If I could convince Zodesti—”

“Zodesti?” Malcor laughed. “What a waste of a gift in that one. Zodesti treats only two ailments, wealth and prominence. He’ll never condescend to do so much as take your friend’s pulse.”

“So you’ve no other clues? No other suggestions?”

“Summon priests. While he’s still lucid.” Jean scowled, and the aged dog-leech took him gently by the shoulders. “I can’t name the poison that’s killing your friend. But the one that’s killing you is called hope.”

“Thank you for your time,” growled Jean. He shook several silver coins out of his purse. “If I should have further need of these marvelous insights—”

“A single duvesta will be quite adequate,” said Malcor. “And despite your mood now, know that I’ll come whenever you require. Your friend’s discomfort is more likely to wax than wane before the end.”

The sun was gone, and the roofs and towers of the city were coming alive with specks of fire against the deepening night. As he watched Malcor vanish down the street, Jean wanted more than anything to have someone to hit.

6

“FAIR DAY to you,” said Jean, approaching the garden gate again. It was the second hour of the afternoon, the next day, and the sky overhead was a boiling mess of gray. The rain had yet to fall, but it was coming, certain and soon. “I’m here for my usual petition.”

“How completely unexpected,” said the old man behind the iron bars.

“Is it a convenient time?” From inside the garden, Jean could hear laughter again, along with a series of echoing smacks, as though something were being thrown against a stone wall. “Or is the scholar consumed—”

“By work. Stranger, has the conversation we had yesterday fled your memory?”

“I must beg you, sir.” Jean put as much passionate sincerity as he could into his voice. “A good man lies dying, in desperate need of aid. Did your master not take oath as a physiker of the Collegium?”

“His oaths are no business of yours. And many good men lie dying, in desperate want of aid, in Lashain and Karthain and every other place in the world. Do you see the scholar saddling his horse to seek them out?”

“Please.” Jean shook a fresh envelope, jingling the coins within. “At least carry the message, for the love of all the gods.”

Wearing half a scowl and half a smirk, the servant reached through the bars. Jean dropped the envelope, seized the man by the collar, and slammed him hard against the gate. An instant later Jean flourished a knife in his free hand.

It was a push-dagger, the sort wielded with a thrusting fist rather than a fencer’s grip. The blade seated against Jean’s knuckles was half a foot long and curved like an animal’s claw.

“There’s only one use for a knife like this,” whispered Jean. “You see it? You try to call out or pull away, and you’ll be wearing your belly-fat for an apron. Open the gate.”

“You’ll die for this,” hissed the servant. “They’ll skin you and boil you in salt water.”

“And what a consolation that will be for you, eh?” Jean prodded him in the stomach with his knife. “Open the gate or I’ll take the keys from your corpse.”

With a shaking hand, the old man opened the gate. Jean threw it aside, grabbed the servant again, and turned him around. The knife was now at the small of the man’s back.

“Take me to your master. Stay composed. Tell him that an important case has come up and that he will want to hear my offer.”

“The scholar is in the garden. But you’re mad .… He has friends in the highest places … urk!”

Jean poked him again with the blade, urging him forward.

“Of course,” said Jean. “But do you have any friends closer than my knife?”

At the heart of the garden, a short, solid man of about thirty-five was sharing a hearty laugh with a woman who had yet to see twenty. Both of them wore light breeches, silk shirts, and padded leather gloves. That explained the rhythmic noise from before. They’d been using a cleared section of stone wall for pursava, the “partner chase,” an aristocratic cousin of handball.

“Sir, madam, a thousand pardons,” said the servant at another poke from Jean. Jean stood half a pace behind the man, where neither Zodesti nor his guest could see the true means of his entry into the garden. “A very urgent matter, sir.”

“Urgent?” Zodesti had a mop of black curls, now slick with sweat, and the remains of an upper-class Verrari accent. “Who does this fellow come to speak for?”

“An eminent friend,” said Jean. “In the usual fashion. It would not be appropriate to discuss these matters in front of your young—”

“By the gods, I’ll say what’s appropriate or not in my own garden! This fellow has some cheek, Loran. You know my preferences. This had better be in earnest.”

“Dire earnest, sir.”

“Let him leave his particulars. If I find them suitable he may call again after dinner.”

“Now would be better,” said Jean, “for everyone.”

“Who in all the hells do you think you are? Shit on your dire earnest! Loran, throw this—”

“Refusal noted and cordially declined.” Jean shoved Loran to the turf. Half a second later he was upon Zodesti, with a meaty forearm wrapped around the physiker’s throat and his blade held up so the young woman could see it. “Cry out for help and I will use this, madam. I would hate to have an injury to the scholar resting upon your conscience.”

“I … I … ,” she said.

“Babble all you like, so long as you don’t scream. As for you—” Jean squeezed the man’s windpipe to demonstrate his strength, and the physiker gasped. “I’ve tried to be civil. I would have paid well. But now I’ll teach you a new way of doing business. Do you have a kit you would bring to a case of poisoning? Materials you’d need for a consultation?”

“Yes,” choked Zodesti. “In my study.”

“We’re going to calmly walk into your house, all of us. On your feet, Loran. You have a carriage and driver on the grounds, Scholar?”

“Yes,” said Zodesti.

“Inside, then, as though nothing is amiss. If any of you give me any trouble, by the gods, I’ll start practicing throat surgery.”

7

THE TICKLISH part was getting them all into Zodesti’s study, past the curious eyes of a cook and a kitchen-boy. But none of Jean’s hostages caused a scene, and soon enough the study door was between them and any interference. Jean shot the bolt, smiled, and said, “Loran, would you—”

At that moment, the old man found the courage for a last desperate struggle. Foul as his temper was, Jean didn’t truly have the heart to stab the poor idiot, and smashed the edge of his knife hand into Loran’s jaw instead. The servant hit the floor senseless. Zodesti darted to a desk in the corner and had a drawer open before Jean collared him and flung him down beside Loran. Jean glanced into the drawer and laughed.

“Going to fight me off with a letter-opener? Take a seat, both of you.” Jean indicated a pair of armchairs against the rear wall. While Zodesti and his companion sat there, wide-eyed as pupils awaiting punishment from a tutor, Jean cut down one of the drapes that hung beside the study’s shuttered window. He slashed it into strips and tossed them to Zodesti.

“I don’t quite understand—”

“Your young friend offers a problem,” said Jean. “Meaning no particular offense to you, madam, but one hostage is difficult enough to handle, let alone two. Particularly when they’re clumsy amateur hostages, unused to their roles and expectations. So we’ll leave you in that fine big closet over there, where you won’t be found too late or too soon.”

“How dare you,” said the young woman. “I’ll have you know that my uncle is—”

“Time is precious and my knife is sharp,” said Jean. “When some servant finally opens that closet, do they find you alive or dead?”

“Alive,” she gulped.

“Gag her, Scholar,” said Jean. “Then tie some good, firm knots. I’ll check them myself when you’re done. After she’s secure, do the same for old Loran.”

As Zodesti worked to tie up his pursava partner (if that was indeed the limit of their partnership), Jean tore down another drape and cut it into more strips. His eyes wandered to the room’s glass-fronted cabinets. They contained a collection of books, glass vessels, herbal samples, alchemical powders, and bizarre surgical instruments. Jean was heartened; if Zodesti’s esoterica reflected his actual ability, he might just have an answer after all.

8

“THIS WILL do,” said Jean.

“Michel,” said Zodesti, leaning out the window on his side of the carriage, “pull up here.”

The carriage rattled to a halt, and the driver hopped down to open the door. Jean, knife half-concealed by the wide cuff of his coat, gestured for Zodesti to step out first. The scholar did, carrying a leather bag and a bundle of clothing.

A light rain had begun to fall, for which Jean was grateful. It would drive bystanders from the streets, and the overcast sky gave the city the look of twilight rather than midafternoon. A kidnapper could ask for no more.

Jean had ordered the halt about two blocks from the Villa Suvela, in front of an alley that would lead there by twists and turns with a dozen other possible destinations branching off along the way.

“The scholar will require several hours,” said Jean, passing a folded slip of parchment to the driver. “Wait at this address until we meet you again.”

The address on the parchment was a coffeehouse in Lashain’s mercantile district, a half-mile distant. The driver frowned.

“Is this well with you, sir? You’ll miss dinner—”

“It’s fine, Michel,” said Zodesti with a hint of exasperation. “Just follow directions.”

“Of course, sir.”

Once the carriage had clattered down the street, Jean pulled Zodesti into the alley and said, “You may live through this yet. Get dressed as we discussed.”

The pile of clothing included a battered hat and a rain-stained cloak, both belonging to Loran, who was a fair match in size for his master. Zodesti threw the cloak on, and Jean pulled a strip of slashed drapery from his pocket.

“What the hell is this, now?” said Zodesti.

“Did you really imagine I’d go to all this trouble and let you see where I’m taking you? I thought you’d prefer blindfolded to unconscious.”

Zodesti stood still as Jean blindfolded him, pulled up the cloak’s hood, and pushed the hat down on top of it. It was a good effect. From more than a few feet away, the blindfold would be concealed by the hat or lost in the shadows of the hood.

From Zodesti’s medical bag, Jean withdrew a bottle of wine. He pulled the cork (Jean had found the bottle in Zodesti’s study, half empty), splashed some on the physiker, poured the rest on the ground, and pressed the empty bottle into Zodesti’s right hand. From the smell that wafted up around them, Jean guessed he’d just wasted a very valuable kameleona.

“Now,” said Jean, “you’re my drunk friend, being escorted to safety. Keep your head down.” Jean pressed Zodesti’s bag into the physiker’s left hand. “I’ve got my arms around you to keep you from stumbling, and my knife closer than you’d like.”

“You’ll boil alive for this, you son of a bitch.”

“Let’s keep my mother out of this. Mind your feet.”

It took about ten minutes for them to stumble to the rooming house together. There were no complications. The few people out in the rain had better things to pay attention to than a pair of drunks, it seemed.

Once safely inside their suite, Jean locked the front doors, shoved Zodesti into a chair, and said, “Now we’re well away from anyone else. If you try to escape, or raise your voice, or call attention to yourself in any way, I’ll hurt you. Badly.”

“Stop threatening me and show me your damned patient.”

“In a moment.” Jean opened the doors to the inner apartment, saw that Locke was awake, and quickly gestured in their private sign language:

Don’t use any names.

“What am I,” muttered Locke, “an idiot? I knew he wasn’t coming back here of his own free will.”

“How—”

“You wore your fighting boots and left your dress shoes by the wardrobe. And all of your weapons are missing.”

“Ah.” Jean tore off Zodesti’s blindfold and disguise. “Make yourself comfortable and get to work.”

The physiker hefted his satchel and, sparing a hateful glance for Jean, moved to Locke’s bedside. He stared at Locke for a few moments, then pulled a wooden chair over and sat down.

“I smell wine,” said Locke. “Kameleona, I think. I don’t suppose you’ve brought any with you?”

“Only what your friend bathed me with,” said Zodesti. He snapped his fingers a few times in front of Locke’s eyes, then took his pulse from both wrists. “My, you are in a sad state. You believe you’ve been poisoned?”

“No,” said Locke with a cough. “I fell down some f*cking stairs. What’s it look like?”

“Can’t you ever be polite to any of your physikers?” said Jean.

“You’re the one who bloody well kidnapped him.”

“Since I appear to have no choice,” said Zodesti, “I’m going to give you a thorough examination. This may cause some discomfort, but don’t complain. I won’t be listening.”

Zodesti’s first examination took a quarter of an hour. Ignoring Locke’s grumbling, he poked and prodded at his joints and limbs, working from the top of his arms to his feet.

“You’re losing sensation in your extremities,” said Zodesti at last.

“How the hell can you tell?”

“I just stuck a lancet into each of your large toes.”

“You poked holes in my feet?”

“I’m adding teardrops to a river, given the blood you’re losing elsewhere.” Zodesti fumbled in his bag, removed a silk case, and from this extracted a pair of optics with oversized lenses. Wearing them, he pulled Locke’s lips back and examined his gums and teeth.

“Ahm naht a fckhng horth,” said Locke.

“Quiet.” Zodesti held the clean portion of one of Locke’s discarded bandages to his gums for several seconds, pulled it away, and frowned at it.

“Your gums are seeping blood. And I see your fingernails are trim,” said Zodesti.

“What of it?”

“Were they trimmed on a Penance Day?”

“How the hell should I remember?”

“Trimming the nails on any day but a Penance Day weakens the blood. Tell me, when you were first taken with your symptoms, did you think to swallow an amethyst?”

“Why would I have had one close at hand?”

“Your pig-ignorance of basic medicine is your own misfortune. You sound like an easterner, though, so I can’t say I’m surprised.”

The rest of the physiker’s work took an hour, with Zodesti performing increasingly esoteric tests and Jean hovering behind him, alert for any sign of treachery. Finally, Zodesti sighed and rose to his feet, wiping his bloody hands on Locke’s sheets.

“You have the unfortunate distinction,” said Zodesti, “of being poisoned by a substance beyond my experience. Given the fact that I have a Master’s Ring in alchemy from the Therin Collegium—”

“Gods damn your jewelry,” said Jean. “Can you do anything?”

“In the early stages of the poisoning, who could have said? But now …” Zodesti shrugged.

“You maggot!” Jean grabbed Zodesti by his lapels, whirled, and slammed him against the wall beside Locke’s bed. “You arrogant little fraud! You’re the best this city has? DO SOMETHING!”

“I can’t,” said Zodesti with a new firmness in his voice. “Think whatever you like, do whatever you like. He is beyond my powers of intervention. I daresay that puts him beyond anyone’s.”

“Let him go,” said Locke.

“There must be something—”

“Let him go!” Locke retched, spat up more blood, and broke into a coughing fit. Jean released Zodesti, and the physiker slid away, glaring.

“Shortly after the poison was administered,” said the physiker, “I could have tried a purgative. Or filled his stomach with milk and parchment pulp. Or bled him to thin out the venom. But this thing has been with him for too long now.

“Even with known poisons,” he continued, returning his instruments to his bag, “there comes a point where the harm to organs or humors cannot be reversed. Antidotes don’t restore dead flesh. And with this, an unknown poison? His blood is pouring out of him. I can’t just put it back.”

“Gods damn it,” whispered Jean.

“The question is no longer if but when,” said Zodesti. “Look, you ugly bastard, despite the way you brought me into this mess, I’ve given him my full and fair attention.”

“I see.” Jean slowly walked over to the linen table, took up a clay cup, and filled it with water from the jug. “Do you have anything with you that can bring about a strong sleep? In case his pain should worsen?”

“Of course.” Zodesti removed a small paper pouch from his bag. “Have him take this in water or wine and he won’t be able to keep his eyes open.”

“Now wait just a damn minute,” said Locke.

“Give it here,” said Jean. He took the packet, poured its contents into the water, and shook the cup several times. “How long will it last?”

“Hours.”

“Good.” Jean passed the cup to Zodesti and gestured at it with a dagger. “Drink up.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you running off to the first constable you can find as soon as I dump you on the street.”

“Don’t think I would be so foolish as to try and run from you—”

“Don’t think I give a damn. Drink the whole thing or I’ll break your arms.”

Zodesti quickly gulped the contents of the cup. “How I’m going to laugh when they catch you, you son of a bitch.” He tossed the cup down carelessly on Locke’s bed and sat with his back against the wall. “All the justices of Lashain are my patients. Your friend’s too sick to run. If he’s still alive when they catch you they’ll draw and quarter him just to give you something to watch while you wait for your own exe … execution .…”

A few seconds later his head rolled forward and he began snoring.

“Think he’s pretending?” said Locke.

Jean shoved the tip of his dagger into the calf of Zodesti’s outstretched right leg. The physiker didn’t stir.

“I hate to say that I told you so,” said Locke, settling back against his cushions and folding his hands in front of him. “Wait, no I don’t. I could use a bottle of wine, and don’t add any water this—”

“I’ll get Malcor,” said Jean. “I’ll have him stay the night. Constant attention.”

“Damn it, Jean, wake up.” Locke coughed and pounded on his chest. “What a reversal this is, eh? I wanted to die in Vel Virazzo and you pulled me back to my senses. Now I really am dying and you’re bereft of yours.”

“There’s—”

“No more physikers, Jean. No more alchemists, no more dog-leeches. No more rocks to pry up looking for miracles.”

“How can you just lie there like a fish washed up on shore, with no fight at all?”

“I suppose I could flop around a bit, if you thought it would help.”

“The Gray King sliced you like a veal cutlet and you came back from that, twice as aggravating as ever.”

“Sword cuts. If they don’t turn green, you can expect to heal. It’s the nature of things. With black alchemy, who the hell knows?”

“I’ll give you wine, but I want you to take it with two parts water, like Malcor said. And I want you to eat tonight, everything you can. Keep your strength up—”

“I’ll eat, but only to give the wine some ballast. There’s no other point to it, Jean. There’s no cure forthcoming.”

“If you can’t be cured, you’ll have to endure. Outlast it, until it breaks like a fever.”

“The poison’s more likely to last than I am.” Locke coughed and dabbed at his mouth with one of his sheets. “Jean, you’ve called down some trouble by stealing this little weasel out of his house. Surely you can see that.”

“I was very careful.”

“You know better! He’ll remember your face, and Lashain’s not so very big. Look, take the money that’s left. Take it and get out of town tonight. You can slip into a dozen trades at will, you speak four languages, you’ll be wealthy again in—”

“Incomprehensible babble.” Jean sat on the edge of the bed and gently pushed Locke’s sweat-slick hair out of his eyes. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“Jean, I know you. You’ll kill half a city block when your blood’s up, but you’ll never slit the throat of a sleeping man who’s done us no real harm. That means constables will kick our doors down sooner or later. Please don’t be here when they do.”

“You brought this upon yourself when you cheated that antidote into my glass. The consequences are yours to—”

“Like hell. You would have robbed me of that choice, too! Gods, all this maneuvering for moral advantage! You’d think we were married.” Locke coughed and arched his back. “The gods must truly have it in for you, to make you my nurse,” he said quietly. “Not once but twice, now.”

“Hell, they made me your nurse when I was ten years old. You can knock down kingdoms on a whim. What you need is someone to make sure you don’t get hit by a carriage each time you cross the street.”

“That’s all over now, though. And it might have been kinder for you if I had been hit by a carriage—”

“You see this?” Jean took the tightly bound lock of dark, curly hair out of his coat pocket and held it up. “You see this, you bloody bastard? You know where it came from. I’m done losing. Do you f*cking hear me? I am done losing. Spare me your precious self-pity, because this isn’t a stage and I didn’t pay two coppers to cry my eyes out over anyone’s death speech. You don’t f*cking get one, understand? I don’t care if you cough up buckets of blood. Buckets I can carry. I don’t care if you howl like a dog for months. You’re going to eat and drink and keep fighting.”

“Well,” said Locke after a few moments had passed in silence. He smiled wryly. “If you are going to be an intractable son of a bitch, why don’t you uncork that wine so we can start with the part about drinking?”

9

JEAN LEFT Zodesti in an alley about three blocks west of the Villa Suvela, taking care to conceal him well and cover his bag with trash. He wouldn’t be at all pleased when he awoke, but at least he’d be alive.

Locke’s condition changed little that night; he slept in fits and starts, sipped wine, grudgingly chewed cold beef and soft bread, and continued bleeding. Jean fell asleep sitting up and managed to spill ale over a useless treatise on poisons. Most of their nights had been like this, recently.

The rain kept up well into the next night, enfolding the city in murk. Just before the unseen sundown Jean went out to fetch fresh supplies. There was a merchants’ inn not ten minutes from the Villa Suvela that was used to dealing in necessities at odd hours.

When Jean came back, the front door was completely unmarked. He had no reason to suspect that anything was amiss, until he glanced down in the entry and saw the great mess of water that had recently been brought across the threshold.

Movement on both sides—too many attackers, too prepared. A basket of food and wine was no weapon at all. Jean went down under a press of bodies. With desperate strength he smashed a nose, kicked a foot, tried to claw out the space he needed to pull and use his hatchets—

“Enough,” said a commanding voice. Jean looked up. The door to the inner apartment was open, and there were men standing over Locke’s bed.

“No!” Jean yelled, ceasing his fight. Four men seized him and dragged him into the inner room, where he counted at least five more visible opponents. One of them grabbed a towel from the linens table and held it up to his bleeding nose.

“I’m sorry,” said Locke, hoarsely. “They came right after you left—”

“Quiet.” The speaker was a rugged man about Locke and Jean’s age, with a brawler’s scarred jaw and a nose that looked like it had been used to break a hard fall. His hair was scraped down to stubble, and he wore quality fighting leathers under a long black coat. Had Jean been thinking straight, he would have realized that the consequences of Zodesti’s abduction might come back to them from directions other than the Lashani constabulary. “How’s your head, Leone?”

“Broge my fuggin node,” said the man holding a towel to his face.

“Builds character.” The man in the black coat picked up a chair, set it down in front of Jean, then kicked him in the stomach, good and fast, barely giving him time to flinch before the pain hit. Jean groaned, and the four men holding him bore down on him with all of their weight, lest he try anything stupid.

“Wait,” coughed Locke. “Please—”

“If I have to say ‘quiet’ again,” said the black-coated man, “I’ll cut your f*cking tongue out and pin it to the wall. Now shut up.” He sat down in the chair and smiled. “My name is Cortessa.”

“Whispers,” said Jean. This was much worse than the constabulary. Whispers Cortessa was a top power in the Lashani underworld.

“So they call me. I presume you’re Andolini.”

That was the name Jean had given when renting their rooms, and he nodded.

“If it’s real I’m the king of the Seven Marrows,” said Cortessa. “But nobody cares. Can you tell me why I’m here?”

“You ran out of sheep to f*ck and went looking for some action?”

“Gods, I love Camorri. Constitutionally incapable of doing things the easy way.” Cortessa slapped Jean hard enough to make his eyes water. “Try again. Why am I here?”

“You heard,” Jean gasped, “that we’d finally discovered the cure for being born with a face like a stray dog’s ass.”

“No. If that were true you would have used it.” Cortessa’s next blow was no slap, but a back-handed bruise-maker. Jean blinked as the room swam around him.

“Now, I would love to sit here and paint the floor with your blood. Leone would probably love it even more. But I think I can save us all a lot of time.” Cortessa beckoned, and one of the men standing over Locke’s bed lifted a club. “What does your friend lose first? A knee? A few toes? I can be creative.”

“No. Please.” Jean would have bent his head to Cortessa’s feet if he hadn’t been restrained. “I’m the one you want. I won’t waste any more of your time. Please.”

“You’re the one I want, suddenly? Why would I want you?”

“Something about a physiker, I’d guess.”

“There we are. That wasn’t so hard after all.” Cortessa cracked his knuckles. “What did you think might happen when someone like Zodesti came home from the shit you pulled yesterday?”

“Certainly would have been nice if he’d never said anything at all.”

“Don’t be simple. Now, I know you’re a friend of the friends. I hear things. When you first came to Lashain you knew your business. Kept the peace, made your gifts, behaved. You clearly understand how things work in our world. So do you think Zodesti ran up and down the streets, screaming that he’d been stolen away like a child? Or do you think he sent a few private messages to people who know people?”

“Shit,” said Jean.

“Yeah. So, I got the job and I thought to myself … wasn’t there a big man looking for alchemists and dog-leeches just last week? What might they have to say about him? Oh? A bad poisoning? A man bleeding to death in bed at the Villa Suvela?” Cortessa spread his arms and smiled beatifically. “Some problems just solve themselves.”

“How can I make amends?” said Jean.

“You can’t.” Cortessa stood up, laughing.

“Please don’t do anything to my friend. He had nothing to do with the physiker. Do whatever you like with me. I’ll cooperate. Just—”

“My, you’ve gone from hard to soft, big man. You’ll cooperate? Of course you’ll f*cking cooperate, you’ve got four of my men sitting on you.”

“There’s money,” said Jean. “Money, or I could work for you—”

“You’ve got nothing I want,” said Cortessa. “And that’s your problem. But I have a serious problem of my own.”

“Oh?”

“Ordinarily, this is the part where we’d make soup out of your balls and watch you drink it. Ordinarily. But we have what you might call a conflict of interest. On the one hand, you’re an outlander and you touched a Lashani with all the right friends. That says we f*cking kill you.

“On the other hand, it’s plain you are or were some sort of connected man in Camorr. Big Barsavi might not be with us anymore, gods rest his crooked soul, but nobody in their right mind wants to f*ck with the capas. You could be somebody’s cousin. Who knows? A year or two from now, maybe someone comes looking for you. Asks around town. Whoops! Someone tells them to look on the bottom of the lake. And who gets sent back to Camorr in a box to pay the debt? Yours truly. That says we don’t f*cking kill you.”

“Like I said, I have some money,” said Jean. “If that can help.”

“It’s not your money anymore. But what does help is that your friend here is already dying … and from the looks of it, he’ll be pretty damn glad to go.”

“Look, if you’ll just let him stay, he needs rest—”

“I know. That’s why I’m kicking your asses out of Lashain.” Cortessa waved his hands at his people. “Strip the place. All the food, all the wine. Blankets, bandages, money. Take the wood out of the fireplace. Throw the water out of the jug. Pass word to the innkeeper that these two f*cks are under the interdict.”

“Please,” said Jean. “Please—”

“Shut up. You can keep your clothes and your weapons. I won’t send you out completely naked. But I want you gone. By sunrise, you’re out of the city or Zodesti gets to cut your ears off himself. Your friend can find somewhere else to die.” Cortessa gave Locke a pat on the leg. “Think fondly of me in hell, you poor bastard.”

“You might not be long in getting there yourself,” said Locke. “I’ll have a big hug waiting for you.”

Cortessa’s people ransacked the suite. They carefully piled Jean’s weapons on the floor; everything else was taken or smashed. Locke was left on the empty bed in his bloodstained breeches and tunic. Jean’s private purse and the one that had contained their general funds were both emptied. A few moments later, one of Cortessa’s men stuffed the empty purses into his pockets as well.

“Oh,” said Cortessa to Jean as the tumult was winding down, “one thing more. Leone gets a minute alone with you in the corner. For his nose.”

“Bleth you, bothss,” muttered Leone, gingerly poking at the swollen bruises that had spread to his lips.

“And you get to take it, outlander. Lift so much as a finger and I’ll have your friend gutted.” Cortessa patted Jean on the cheek and turned to leave. “Sunrise. Get the f*ck out of Lashain. Or our next conversation takes place in Scholar Zodesti’s cellar.”

10

“JEAN,” WHISPERED Locke as soon as the last of Cortessa’s bruisers had left. “Jean! Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Jean was huddled where the linens table had been before Cortessa’s men removed it. Leone had been straightforward but enthusiastic, and Jean felt as though he’d been thrown down a rocky hillside. “I’m just … enjoying the floor. It was kind enough to catch me when I fell.”

“Jean, listen. I took some of the money when we got here on the boat .… I hid it. Loosened a floorboard under the bed.”

“I know you did. I unloosened it. Took it back.”

“You eel! I wanted you to have something to get away with when you—”

“I knew you’d try it, Locke. There weren’t many hiding places available within stumbling distance of the bed.”

“Argh!”

“Argh, yourself.” Jean heaved himself over on his back and stared at the ceiling, breathing shallowly. Nothing felt broken, but his ribs and everything attached to them were lined up to file complaints. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll go out and find some blankets for you. I can get a cart. Maybe a boat. Get you out of here somehow, before the dawn. We’ve got a lot of darkness to use.”

“Jean, you’ll be watched until you leave. They’re not going to let you—” Locke coughed several times. “—steal anything big. And I’m not going to let you carry me.”

“Not let me carry you? What are you going to fend me off with, sarcasm?”

“You should have had a few thousand solari to work with, Jean. Could have gone anywhere … done anything with it.”

“I did exactly what I wanted to do with it. Now, you go with me. Or I stay here to die with you.”

“There’s no reasoning with you.”

“You’re such a paragon of compromise yourself. Pig-brained gods-damned egotist.”

“This isn’t a fair contest. You have more energy for big words than I do.” Locke laughed. “Gods, look at us. Can you believe they even took our firewood?”

“Very little surprises me these days.” Jean slowly stood up, wincing all the way. “So, inventory. No money. Clothes on our backs. Mostly my back. Some weapons. No firewood. Since I doubt we’ll be allowed to lift anything in the city, looks like I’ll have to do some highway work.”

“How do you plan on halting carriages?”

“I’ll throw you in the road and hope they stop.”

“Criminal genius. Will they be stopping out of heartfelt sympathy?”

“Revulsion, more likely.”

There was a knock at the front door.

Locke and Jean glanced at one another uneasily, and Jean picked up a dagger from the small pile of weapons that had been left to him.

“Maybe they’re back for the bed,” said Locke.

“Why would they bother knocking?”

Jean kept most of his body behind the door as he opened it, and he tucked the dagger just out of sight behind his back.

It wasn’t Cortessa, or a dog-leech, or even the master of the Villa Suvela, as Jean had expected. It was a woman, dressed in a richly embroidered oilcloak streaming with water. She held an alchemical globe in her hands, and by its pale light Jean could see that she was not young.

Jean scanned the curb behind her. No carriage, no litter, no escort of any sort—just misty darkness and the patter of the rain. A local? A fellow guest of the Villa Suvela?

“I, uh … can I be of assistance, madam?”

“I believe we can be of assistance to one another. If I might come in?” She had a soft and lovely voice, with something very close to a Lashani accent. Close, but not exact.

“We are … that is, I’m sorry, but we have some difficulty at the moment. My friend is ill.”

“I know they took your furniture.”

“You do?”

“And I know that you and your friend didn’t have much else to begin with.”

“Madam, you seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

“And you seem to have me out in the rain.”

“Um.” Jean shuffled the dagger and made it vanish up his tunic sleeve. “Well, my friend, as I said, is gravely ill. You should be aware—”

“I don’t mind.” She entered the instant Jean’s resolution wavered, and gracefully got out of the way as he closed the door behind her. “After all, poison is only contagious at dinner parties.”

“How the hell … are you a physiker?”

“Hardly.”

“Are you with Cortessa?”

The woman only laughed at that, and threw back the hood of her oilcloak. She was about fifty, the well-tended sort of fifty that only wealth could make possible, and her hair was the color of dry autumn wheat with currents of silver at the temples. She had a squarish face, with disconcertingly wide, dark eyes.

“Here, take this.” She tossed the alchemical globe to Jean, who caught it by reflex. “I know they took your lights, too.”

“Um, thank you, but—”

“My, my.” The woman unclasped her cloak and spun it off her shoulders as she strolled into the inner apartment. Her coat and skirts were richly brocaded with silver threads, and puffs of silver lace from beneath her cuffs half-covered her hands. She glanced at Locke. “Ill would seem to be an understatement.”

“Forgive me for not getting up,” said Locke. “And for not offering you a seat. And not being dressed. And for not … giving a damn.”

“Down to the last dregs of your charm, I see.”

“Down to the last dregs of my everything. Who are you, then?”

The woman shook out her oilcloak, then threw it over Locke like a blanket.

“Th-thank you.”

“It’s difficult to have a serious conversation with someone whose dignity is compromised, Locke.”

The next sound in the room was that of Jean slamming home the bolt on the front door. In an instant he returned to the inner apartment, knife in hand. He tossed the light-globe onto the bed, where Locke prevented it from bouncing onto the floor.

“In faith,” said Jean, “my patience for mysterious shit went out that door with the money and the furniture. So you explain how you know that name, and I won’t have to feel guilty for—”

“I doubt you’d survive what would happen if you acted on that impulse, Jean Tannen. I know your pride wouldn’t. Put your blade away.”

“Like hell!”

“Poor Gentlemen Bastards,” said the woman softly. “So far from home. But always in our sight.”

“No,” said Jean in a disbelieving whisper.

“Oh, gods,” said Locke. He coughed and closed his eyes. “It’s you. I suspected you’d kick our door down sooner or later.”

“You sound disappointed.” The woman frowned. “As though you’d just failed to avoid an awkward social call. Would you really find death preferable to a little conversation, Locke?”

“Little conversations with Bondsmagi never end well.”

“You’re the reason we’re here,” growled Jean. “You and your games in Tal Verrar. Your damned letters!”

“Not entirely,” said the woman.

“You didn’t scare us in the Night Market.” Jean’s grip tightened on the hilt of his blade, and the pain of his recent beating was entirely forgotten. “You don’t f*cking scare us now!”

“Then you don’t know us at all.”

“I think I do. And I don’t give a damn about your gods-damned rules!”

He was already in motion, and her back was to him. She had no chance to speak or gesture with her hands; his left arm went around her neck and he slammed the dagger home as hard as he could, directly between her shoulder blades.

11

THE WOMAN’S flesh was warm and solid beneath Jean’s arm one moment, and in the next his blade bit empty air.

Jean had faced many fast opponents in his life, but never one that dissolved instantly at his touch. That wasn’t human speed; it was sorcery.

His chance was gone.

He inhaled sharply, and a cold shudder ran down his back, the old familiar sensation of a misstep made and a blow about to fall. His pulse beat like a drum inside his skull, and he waited for the pain of whatever reprisal was coming—

“Oh yes,” said their visitor mildly from somewhere behind him. “That would have been very clever of me, Jean Tannen. Leaving myself at the mercy of a strong man and his grudges.”

Jean turned slowly, and saw that the woman was now standing about six feet to his left, by the window where the linens table had once been.

“I hold your true name like a caged bird,” she said. “Your hands and eyes will deceive you if you try to harm me.”

“Gods,” said Jean, suddenly overcome by a vast sense of weary frustration. “Must you play with your food?” He sat down on the edge of Locke’s bed and threw his knife at the floor, where it stuck quivering in the wood. “Just kill me like a f*cking normal person. I won’t be your toy.”

“What will you be?”

“I’ll stand still and be boring. Get it over with.”

“Why do you keep assuming I’m here to kill you?”

“If not kill, then something worse.”

“I have no intention of murdering either of you. Ever.” The woman folded her hands in front of her chest. “What more proof do you need than the fact that you’re still alive? Could you have stopped me?”

“You’re not gods,” said Locke, weakly. “You might have us at your mercy, but we’ve had one of you at ours before.”

“Is that meant to be some poor cousin to a threat? A reminder that you just happened to be present when the Falconer’s terrible judgment finally got the best of him?”

“How is dear Falconer these days?” asked Locke.

“Well kept. In Karthain.” The woman sighed. “As he was when agents of Camorr brought him home. Witless and comatose.”

“He didn’t seem to react well to pain,” said Jean.

“And you imagine it was your torture that drove him mad?”

“Can’t have been our conversation,” said Locke.

“His real problem is self-inflicted. You see, we can deaden our minds to any suffering of the flesh. But that art requires caution. It’s extremely dangerous to use it in haste.”

“I’m delighted to hear that,” said Locke. “You’re saying that when he tried to escape the pain—”

“His mind jailed itself, in a haze of his own making,” said the woman. “And so we’ve been unable to correct his condition.”

“Marvelous,” said Locke. “I don’t really care how or why it happened, I’m still glad that it did. In fact I encourage the rest of you to use that power in haste.”

“You do many of us an injustice,” said the woman.

“Bitch, if I had the power I’d pull your heart out of your chest and use it for a handball,” said Locke, coughing. “I’d do it to all of you. You people kill anyone you like and f*ck with the lives of those that treat you fairly for it.”

“Despising us must be rather like staring into a mirror, then.”

“I despise you,” said Locke, straining to heave himself up, “for Calo and Galdo, and for Bug, and for Nazca and Ezri, and for all the time we … wasted in …Tal Verrar.” Red-faced and shuddering, he fell back to the empty bed.

“You’re murderers and thieves,” said the woman. “You leave a trail of confusion and outrage wherever you go. You’ve brought down at least one government, and prevented the destruction of another for sentimental reasons. Can you really keep a straight face when you damn us for doing as we please?”

“We can,” said Jean. “And I can take the matter of Ezri very personally.”

“Would you even have met the woman if we hadn’t intervened in your affairs? Would you have gone to sea?”

“That’s not for any of us to say—”

“So we own your misfortunes entirely, yet receive no credit for happier accidents.”

“I—”

“We’ve interfered here and there, Jean, but you’re flattering yourself if you imagine that we’ve drawn such an intricate design around you. The woman died in battle, and we had nothing to do with that. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Are you capable of feeling sorry for anything?”

The woman came toward Jean, reaching out with her left hand, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to fling himself away. He rose to his feet and stared fiercely down at her as she set warm fingers gently against his cheek.

“Time is precious,” she said. “I lift my ban upon you, Jean Tannen. This is my real flesh against yours. I might be able to stop you if you try to harm me, but now the matter is much less certain. So what will you do? Must we fight now, or can we talk?”

Jean shook; the urge to take her at her word, to smash her down, was rising hot and red within him. He would have to strike as fast as he ever had in his life, as hard as muscle and sinew could allow. Break her skull, throttle her, bear her down beneath his full weight, and pray to the gods he did enough damage to postpone whatever word or gesture she would utter in return.

They stood there for a long, tense moment, perfectly still, with her dark eyes meeting his unblinkingly. Then his right hand darted up and closed around her left wrist, savagely tight. He could feel thin bones under thin skin, and he knew that one good sharp twist—

The woman flinched. Real fear shone out from the depths of those eyes, the briefest flash before her vast self-possession rolled in again like resurging waters to drown her human weakness. But it had been there, genuine as the flesh beneath his fingers. Jean loosened his grip, closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I don’t think you’re lying.”

“This is very important,” she whispered.

Jean kept his right hand where it was, and reached up with his left to push back the silver lace that sprouted from her jacket cuff. Black rings were tattooed around her wrist, precise lines on pale skin.

“Five rings,” said Locke. “All I ever heard was that more is better. Just how many can one of you people have, anyway?”

“This many,” said the woman with a hint of a smirk.

Jean released her arm and took a step back. She held her left hand up beside her head and stroked the tattoos gently with the fingers of her other hand. The blackness became silver, rippling silver, as though she wore bracelets of liquid moonlight.

As he stared at the eerie glow, Jean felt a cold itch behind his eyes, and a hard pressure against the fingertips of his right hand. Reeling, he saw images flash in his mind—fold upon fold of pale silk, needles punching in and out of delicate lace, the rough edge of a cloth unraveling into threads—the pressure on his fingers was an actual needle, moving up and down, in an endless steady dance across the cloth .…

“Oh,” he muttered, putting a hand to his forehead as the sensations receded. “What the hell was that?”

“Me,” said the woman. “In a manner of speaking. Have you ever recalled someone by the scent of their tobacco, or a perfume, or the feel of their skin? Deep memories without words?”

“Yeah,” said Locke, massaging his temples. Jean guessed that he’d somehow shared the brief vision.

“In my society, we speak mind to mind. We … announce ourselves using such impressions. We construct images of certain memories or passions. We call them sigils.” She hitched her laced sleeve back up over her wrist, where the black rings had entirely lost their ghostly gleam, and smiled. “Now that I’ve shared mine with you, you’re less likely to jump out of your skin if I ever need to speak mind to mind, rather than voice to ear.”

“What the hell are you?” said Jean.

“There are four of us,” said the woman. “In an ideal world, the wisest and most powerful of the fifth-circles. If nothing else, we do get to live in the biggest houses.”

“You rule the Bondsmagi,” said Locke, incredulously.

“Rule is too strong a term. We do occasionally manage to avert total chaos.”

“You have a name?”

“Patience.”

“What, you have some rule against telling us now?”

“No, it’s what I’m called. Patience.”

“No shit? Your peers must think pretty highly of you.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, any more than a girl named Violet needs to be purple. It’s a title. Archedama Patience. So, have we decided that nobody’s going to be murdering anyone here?”

“I suppose that depends on what you want to talk about,” said Jean.

“The pair of you,” said Patience. “I’ve been minding your business for some time now. Starting with the fragments I could pull out of the Falconer’s memories. Our agents retrieved his possessions from Camorr after he was … crippled. Among them a knife formerly belonging to one of the Anatolius sisters.”

“A knife with my blood on it,” interrupted Jean.

“From that we had your trail easily enough.”

“And from that you f*cked up our lives.”

“I need you to understand,” said Patience, “just how little you understand. I saved your lives in Tal Verrar.”

“Funny, I don’t recall seeing you there,” said Jean.

“The Falconer has friends,” said Patience. “Cohorts, followers, tools. For all of his flaws he was very popular. You saw their parlor tricks in the Night Market, but that was all I permitted. Without my intervention, they would have killed you.”

“You can call that mess ‘parlor tricks,’ ” said Jean. “That interference in Tal Verrar still made a hell of a problem for us.”

“Better than death, surely,” said Patience. “And kinder by far than I might have been, given the circumstances.”

“Circumstances?”

“The Falconer was arrogant, vicious, misguided. He was acting in obedience to a contract, which we consider a sacred obligation, but I won’t deny that he amplified the brutality of the affair beyond what was called for.”

“He was going to help turn hundreds of people into empty shells. Into gods-damned furniture. That wasn’t brutal enough?” said Jean.

“They were part of the contract. You and your friends were not.”

“Well, if this is some sort of apology, go to hell,” said Locke, coughing. “I don’t care what a humane old witch you think you are, and I don’t care how or why the Falconer went wrong in the head. If I’d had more time I would have used every second of it to bleed him. All he got was the thinnest shred of what he really deserved.”

“That’s more true than you know, Locke. Oh, so much truer than you know.” Patience folded her hands together and sighed. “And no one comprehends it quite as well as I do. After all, the Falconer is my son.”
INTERLUDE


THE UNDROWNED GIRL

1

THE WORLD BROADENED for Locke Lamora in the summer of the seventy-seventh year of Sendovani, the summer after Beth vanished, the summer he was sold out of the Thiefmaker’s care and into that of Father Chains, the famous Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro. Suddenly his old worries and pains were gone, though they were replaced by a fresh set of bafflements on a daily basis.

“And what if a priest or priestess of another order should walk by?” asked Chains, adjusting the hooded white robe the Sanza twins had just thrown over Locke’s head.

“I make the sign of our, um, joined service.” Locke enfolded his left hand within his right and bowed his head until it nearly touched his thumbs. “And I don’t speak unless spoken to.”

“Good. And if you cross paths with an initiate of another order?”

“I give the blessing for troubles to stay behind them.” Locke held out his right hand, palm up, and swept it up as though he was pushing something over his left shoulder.

“And?”

“Um, I greet if greeted … and say nothing otherwise?”

“What if you meet an initiate of Perelandro?”

“Always greet?”

“You missed something.”

“Um. Oh yeah. Sign of joined service. Always greet. Speak, ah, cordially with initiates and shut my mouth for anyone, um, higher.”

“What about the alternate signals for when it’s raining on a Penance Day?” said one of the Sanza twins.

“Um …” Locke coughed nervously into his hands. “I don’t … I’m not sure …”

“There is no alternate signal for when it’s raining on a Penance Day. Or any other day,” muttered Chains. “Well, now you look the part. And I think we can trust you with exterior ritual. Not bad for four days of learning. Most initiates get a few months before they’re trusted to count above ten without taking their shoes off.”

Chains stood and adjusted his own white robe. He and his boys were in the sanctuary of the Temple of Perelandro, a dank cave of a room that proclaimed not only the humility of Perelandro’s followers but their apparent indifference to the smell of mildew.

“Now then,” said Chains, “twit dexter and twit sinister—fetch my namesakes.”

Calo and Galdo scrambled to the wall where their master’s purely ceremonial fetters lay, joined to a huge iron bolt in the stone. They raced one another to drag the chains across the floor and snap the manacles on the big man.

“Aha,” said the first to finish, “you’re slower than an underwater fart!”

“Funny,” said the second. “Hey, what’s that on your chin?”

“Huh?”

“Looks like a fist!”

In an instant the space in front of Locke was filled with a mad whirl of Sanza limbs, and for the hundredth time in his few days as Chains’ ward, Locke lost track of which brother was which. The twins giggled madly as they wrestled with one another, then howled in unison as Chains reached out with calm precision and caught them each by an ear.

“You two savants,” he said, “can go put your own robes on, and carry the kettle out after Locke and I take our places.”

“You said we weren’t going to sit the steps today!” said one of the brothers.

“You’re not. I’m just not in the mood to carry the kettle. After you bring it out, you can go downstairs and mind your chores.”

“Chores?”

“Remember those customs papers I said I was forging up last night? They weren’t customs papers, they were arithmetic problems. A couple pages for each of you. There’s charcoal, ink, and parchment in the kitchen. Show your work.”

“Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.” The sound of simultaneously disappointed Sanza brothers was curiously tuneful. Locke had already heard the twins practicing their singing voices, which were quite good, and by accident or design they often harmonized.

“Now, get the door, Locke.” Chains tied on the last and most important part of his costume: the blindfold precisely adjusted to suggest his total helplessness while still allowing him to avoid tripping over the hem of his robe. “The sun is up, and all that money out there won’t steal itself.”

Locke worked the mechanism concealed behind one of the room’s moldering tapestries, and there was a faint rumble within the temple walls. A vertical line of burning gold appeared on the eastern wall as the doors creaked apart, and the sanctuary was quickly flooded with warm morning light. Chains held out a hand, and Locke ran over to take it.

“Ready?”

“If you say I am,” whispered Locke.

Hand in hand, the imaginary Eyeless Priest and his newest imaginary initiate walked out of their imaginary stone prison, into a morning heat so fierce that Locke could smell it baking up from the city’s stones and taste it on his tongue.

For the first of a thousand times, they went out together to rob passersby, as surely as if they were muggers, armed with nothing more than a few words and an empty copper kettle.

2

IN HIS first few months with Father Chains, Locke began to unlearn the city of Camorr he’d once known and discover something entirely different in its place. As a Shades’ Hill boy, he’d known daylight in flashes, exploring the upper world and then running back to the graveyard’s familiar darkness like a diver surfacing before his breath ran out. The Hill was full of dangers, but they were known dangers, while the city above was full of infinite mysteries.

Now the sun, which had once seemed to him like a great eye burning down in judgment, did nothing but make his head warm as he sat the temple steps in his little white robe. A happier boy might have been bored by the long hours of begging, but Locke had learned patience in the surest way possible—by hiding for his own survival. Spending half a night hugging the same shadow was nothing extraordinary to him, and he luxuriated in the idea of lazing around while people actually brought money to him.

He studied the rhythms of daily life in the Temple District. When nobody was near enough to eavesdrop, Chains would quietly answer Locke’s questions, and slowly the great mass of Camorri revealed themselves to him. What had once been a sea of mystifying details resolved bit by bit until Locke could identify the priests of the twelve orders, sort the very rich from the merely wealthy, and make a dozen other useful distinctions.

It still made his heart jump to see a patrol of yellowjackets walking past the temple steps, but their polite indifference was a pure delight. Some of them even saluted. It amazed Locke that the thin cotton robe he wore could provide him with such armor against a power that had previously seemed so arbitrary and absolute.

Constables. Saluting him! Gods above.

Inside the temple, down in the secret burrow that lay beneath its fa?ade of poverty, further transmutations were underway. Locke ate well for the first time ever, sampling all the cuisines of Camorr under Chains’ enthusiastic direction. Although he started as an inept hindrance to the more experienced Sanzas, he quickly learned how to shake weevils out of flour, how to slice meats, and how to tell a filleting knife from an eel-fork.

“Bless us all,” said Chains one night, patting Locke on the belly. “You’re not the ragged little corpse that came to us all those weeks ago. Food and sunlight have worked an act of necromancy. You’re still small, but now you look like you could stand up to a moderate breeze.”

“Excellent,” said one of the Sanzas. “Soon he’ll be fat, and we can butcher him like all the others for a Penance Day roast.”

“What my brother means to say,” said the other twin, “is that all the others died of purely natural causes, and you have nothing to fear from us. Now have some more bread.”

Life in the care of Father Chains offered Locke more comfort than Shades’ Hill ever had. He had plenty to eat, new clothes, and a cot of his own to sleep on. Nothing more dangerous than the attempted pranks of the Sanza twins menaced him each night. Yet strangely enough Locke would never have called this new life easier than the one he’d left.

Within days of his arrival he’d been trained as an “initiate of Perelandro,” and the lessons only grew more intense from there. Chains was nothing like the Thiefmaker—he didn’t allow Calo and Galdo to actually terrorize Locke, and he didn’t punish failure by pulling out a butcher’s cleaver. But Chains could be disappointed. Oh, yes. On the steps of the temple he could marshal his mysterious powers to sway passersby, to plead logically or sermonize furiously until they parted with hard-earned coins, and in his tutelage he focused those same powers on Locke until it seemed that Chains’ disappointment was a rebuke worse than a beating.

It was a strange new set of affairs, to be sure. Locke feared what Chains might do if provoked (the leather pouch Locke was forced to wear around his neck, with the shark’s tooth inside, was an inescapable reminder), but he didn’t actually fear Chains himself. The big bearded man seemed so genuinely pleased when Locke got his lessons right, seemed to give off waves of approval that warmed like sunlight. With his two extremes of mood, sharp disappointment and bright satisfaction, Chains drove all of his boys on through their constant tests.

There were the obvious matters of Locke’s daily training—he learned to cook, to dress, to keep himself reasonably clean. He learned more about the order of Perelandro and his fictional place within it. He learned about the meanings of flags on carriages and coats of arms on guards’ tabards, about the history of the Temple District, about its landmarks.

Most difficult of all, at first, he learned to read and write. Two hours a day were spent at this, before and after sitting the steps. He began with fragmentary knowledge of the thirty letters of the Therin alphabet, and he could do simple sums when he had counters in front of him, like coins. But Chains had him reciting and scribing his letters until they danced in his dreams, and from there he moved to puzzling out small words, then bigger ones, then full sentences.

Chains began leaving written instructions for him each morning, and Locke wasn’t allowed to break his fast until he’d deciphered them. Around the time short paragraphs ceased to be his match in a battle of wits, Locke found himself up against arithmetic with slates and chalk. Arriving at the answers in his head was no longer sufficient.

“Twenty-six less twelve,” said Chains one night in early autumn. It was an unusually pleasant time in Camorr, with warm days and mild nights that neither drenched nor scalded the city. Chains was absorbed in a game of Catch-the-Duke against Galdo, alternately moving his pieces and giving mathematical problems to Locke. The three of them sat at the kitchen table, beneath the golden light of Chains’ fabulous alchemical chandelier, while Calo sat on a nearby counter plucking at a sad little instrument called a road-man’s harp.

“Um …” Locke scribbled on his slate, being careful to show his work properly. “Fourteen.”

“Well done,” said Chains. “Add twenty-one and thirteen.”

“Now go forth,” said Galdo, pushing one of his pieces along the squares of the game board. “Go forth and die for King Galdo.”

“Sooner rather than later,” said Chains, countering the move immediately.

“Since you two are at war,” said Calo, “how do you like this?”

He began to pluck a tune on his simplified harp, and in a soft, high voice he sang:

“From fair old Camorr to far Godsgate Hill,

Three thousand bold men marched to war.

A full hundred score are lying there still,

In red soil they claimed for Camorr.”

Galdo cleared his throat as he fiddled with his pieces on the board, and when his twin continued he joined in. Barely a heartbeat passed before the Sanzas found their eerie, note-perfect harmony:

“From fair old Camorr to far Godsgate Hill,

Went a duke who would not be a slave.

His Grace in his grave is lying there still,

In red soil he claimed for the brave.

“From fair old Camorr to far Godsgate Hill,

Is a hundred hard leagues overland.

But our host slain of old is lying there still,

In soil made red by their stand!”

“Commendable playing,” muttered Chains, “wasted on a nothing of a song shat out by perfumed fops to justify an old man’s folly.”

“Everyone sings it in the taverns,” said Calo.

“They’re supposed to. It’s artless doggerel meant to dress up the stink of a pointless slaughter. But I was briefly a part of those three thousand men, and nearly everyone I knew in those days is lying there still. Kindly sing something more cheerful.”

Calo bit the inside of his cheek, retuned his harp, and then began again:

“Said the reeve to the maid who was fresh to the farm

‘Let me show you the beasts of the yard!’

Here’s a cow that gives milk, and a pig that’s for ham

Here’s a cur and a goat and a lamb;

Here’s a horse tall and proud, and a well-trained old hawk,

But the thing you should see is this excellent cock!”

“Where could you possibly have learned that?” shouted Chains. Calo broke up in a fit of giggles, but Galdo picked up the song with a deadpan expression on his face:

“Oh, some cocks rise early and some cocks stand tall,

But the cock now in question works hardest of all!

And they say hard’s a virtue, in a cock’s line of work

So what say you, lovely, will you give it a—”

There was the unmistakable echoing slam of the burrow’s secret entrance, in the Elderglass-lined tunnel beside the kitchen, being thrown shut by someone who didn’t care that they were overheard. Chains rolled to his feet. Calo and Galdo ran behind him, putting themselves in easy reach of the kitchen’s knives. Locke stood up on his chair, arithmetic slate held up like a shield.

The instant he saw who it was coming around the corner, the slate slipped from his fingers and clattered against the floor.

“My dear,” cried Chains, “you’ve come back to us early!”

She was, if anything, taller even than Locke remembered, and her hair was well-dyed a uniform shade of light brown. But it was her. It was undeniably Beth.

3

“YOU CAN’T be here,” said Locke. “You’re dead!”

“I certainly can be here. I live here.” Beth dropped the brown leather bag she was carrying and unbound her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders. “Who might you be?”

“I … um … you don’t know?”

“Should I?”

Locke’s astonishment merged with a sour disappointment. While the gears of his mind turned furiously to conjure a reply, she studied him. Her eyes widened.

“Oh, gods. The Lamora boy, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Chains.

“Bought him as well, have you?”

“I’ve paid more for some of my lunches, but yes, I’ve taken him from your old master.” Chains ruffled Beth’s hair with fatherly affection, and she kissed the back of hand.

“But you were dead,” insisted Locke. “They said you’d drowned!”

“Yeah,” she said, mildly.

“But why?”

“Our Sabetha has a complicated past,” said Chains. “When I took her out of Shades’ Hill, I arranged a bit of theater to cover the trail.”

Beth. Sabetha. They’d mentioned Sabetha at least a dozen times since he’d come to live here. Locke suddenly felt like an idiot for not connecting the two names before … but then, he’d thought she was dead, hadn’t he? Beneath his astonishment, his embarrassment, his frustration, a warmth was rising in the pit of his stomach. Beth was alive … and she lived here!

“Well, where have … where did you go?” Locke asked.

“For training,” said Sabetha.

“And how was it?” asked Chains.

“Mistress Sibella said that I wasn’t as vulgar and clumsy as most of the Camorri she teaches.”

“So you … are, um—,” said Locke.

“High praise, coming from that gilded prune,” said Chains, ignoring Locke. “Let’s see if she was on the mark. Galdo, take Sabetha’s side for a four-step. Complar entant.”

“Must I?”

“Good question. Must I continue feeding you?”

Galdo hurried out from behind Chains and gave Sabetha a bow so exaggerated his nose nearly brushed the floor. “Enchanted, demoiselle. May I beg the pleasure of a dance? My patron won’t feed me anymore if I don’t pretend to enjoy this crap.”

“What a bold little monkey you are,” said the girl. The two of them moved into the widest clear area of the room, between the table and the counters.

“Calo,” said Chains, “if you would.”

“Yes, yes, I have it.” Calo fiddled with his harp for a moment before he began to pluck out a fast, rhythmic tune, more complex than the ditties he’d been playing before.

Galdo and Sabetha moved in unison, slowly at first but gaining confidence and speed as the tune went on. Locke watched, baffled but fascinated, as they danced in a manner that was more controlled than anything he’d ever seen in a tavern or a back alley. The key to the dance seemed to be that they would strike the ground with their heels forcefully, four taps between each major movement of the arms. They joined hands, twirled, unjoined, switched places, and all the while kept up a near-perfect rhythm with their feet.

“It’s popular with the swells,” said Chains, and Locke realized he was speaking for his benefit. “All the dancers form a circle, and the dancing master calls out partners. The chosen couple dances in the main, in the center of everything, and if they screw it up, well … penalties. Teasing. Romantic frustration, I would imagine.”

Locke was only half-listening, his eyes and thoughts lost in the dance. In Galdo he recognized the nervous quickness of a fellow orphan, the grace born of need that separated the living in Shades’ Hill from the likes of No-Teeth. Yet Sabetha had that and something more; not just speed but fluidity. Her knees and elbows seemed to vanish as she danced, and to Locke’s eyes she became all curves, whirls, effortless circles. Her cheeks turned red with exertion, and the golden glow of the chandelier lightened her brown hair until Locke, hypnotized, could almost imagine it red as well .…

Chains clapped three times, ending the dance if not Locke’s spell. If Sabetha knew she was being stared at she was either too polite or too disdainful to stare back.

“I can see that’s a fountain of gold I didn’t shit out in vain,” said Chains. “Well done, girl. Even having Galdo for a partner didn’t seem to hold you back.”

“Does it ever?” Sabetha smiled, still acting as though Locke wasn’t in the room, and drifted back toward the table where Galdo and Chains had been playing their game. She glanced over the board for a few seconds, then said, “You’re doomed, Sanza.”

“In a donkey’s dick I am!”

“Actually, I’ve got him in three moves,” said Chains, settling back down into his chair with a smile. “But I was going to spin it out for a while longer.”

While Galdo fretted over his position on the board, he and Calo and Sabetha fell into an animated conversation with Chains on subjects of which Locke was ignorant—dances, noble customs, people he’d never heard of, cities that were only names to him. Chains grew more and more boisterous until, after a few minutes, he gestured to Calo.

“Fetch us down something sweet,” he said. “We’ll have a toast to Sabetha’s return.”

“Lashani Black Sherry? I’ve always wanted to try it.” Calo opened a cabinet and carefully withdrew a greenish glass bottle that was full of something ink-dark. “Gods, it looks so disgusting!”

“Spoken like the midwife who delivered the pair of you,” said Chains. “Bring glasses for all of us, and for the toasting.”

The four children gathered around the table while Chains arranged the glasses and opened the bottle. Locke strategically placed the Sanzas between himself and Sabetha, giving him a better angle to continue staring at her. Chains then filled a glass to the brim with the sherry, which rippled black and gold in the chandelier light.

“This glass for the patron and protector, the Crooked Warden, our Father of Necessary Pretexts.” Chains carefully pushed the glass aside from the others. “Tonight he gives us the return of our friend, his servant Sabetha.” Chains raised his left hand to his lips and blew into his palm. “My words. My breath. These things bind my promise. A hundred gold pieces, duly stolen from honest men and women, to be cast into the sea in the dark of the Orphan’s Moon. We are grateful for Sabetha’s safety.”

The Orphan’s Moon, Locke knew, came once a year, in late winter, when the world’s largest two moons were in their dark phases together. At the Midsummer-mark, commoners who knew their dates of birth legally turned a year older. The Orphan’s Moon meant the same thing for those, like him, whose precise ages were mysteries.

Now Chains filled glasses and passed them out. Locke was surprised to see that while the other children received quarter-glasses of the alarmingly dark sherry, his own was mostly full. Chains grinned at him and raised his glass.

“Deep pockets poorly guarded,” he said.

“Watchmen asleep at their post,” said Sabetha.

“The city to nurture us and the night to hide us,” said Calo.

“Friends to help spend the loot!” As soon as Galdo finished the toast Locke had already heard many times since coming to the Gentlemen Bastards, five glasses went up to five sets of lips. Locke kept both hands on his for fear of spilling it.

The black sherry hit Locke’s throat with a blast of sweet flavors—cream, honey, raspberries, and many others he had no hope of naming. Warm prickly vapors seemed to slide up into his nose and waft behind his eyes, until it felt like he was being tickled from inside his own skull by dozens of feathers at once. Knowing how ill-mannered it would be to make a mess of a solemn toast, he bent every ounce of his will to gulping the full glass down.

“Waugh,” he said as soon as he was finished. It was a cross between a polite cough and the last gasp of a dying bird. He pounded on his chest. “Waugh, waugh, waugggggh!”

“Concur,” said Galdo in a harsh whisper. “Love it.”

“All the outward virtues of liquid shit,” said Chains, musing on his empty glass, “and a taste like pure joy pissed out by happy angels. Mind you, it doesn’t signify in the world at large. Don’t drink anything else that looks like this unless you want a swift release from mortal concerns.”

“I wonder,” said Locke, “don’t they ever make wine-colored wine in other cities?” He stared down into his own glass, which, like the fingers holding it, was beginning to blur around the edges.

“Some things are much more interesting when alchemists get their hands on them,” said Chains. “Your head, for example. Black sherry is renowned for kicking like a mule.”

“Yesh, renowned,” said Locke, grinning stupidly. His belly was warm, his head seemed not to weigh an ounce, and his intentions were disconnected from his actual movements by a heartbeat interval. He was aware that, if not already drunk, he was headed for it like a dart thrown at a wall.

“Now, Locke,” said Chains, his voice seeming to come from a distance, “I’ve a few things to discuss with these three. Perhaps you’d like to get to bed early tonight.”

A sharp pang pierced the bubble of warm contentment that had all but swallowed him. Go to bed early? Leave the company of Sabetha, whose blurry loveliness he was fixating on, barely managing to grudge himself the time required to blink every now and then?

“Um,” he said. “Wha?”

“It wasn’t a request, Locke,” said Chains gently. “You’ve a busy evening tomorrow, I can assure you, and you need all the sleep you can get.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You’ll see.” Chains rose, moved around the table, and carefully took Locke’s empty glass from his hand. Locke looked down in surprise, having forgotten that he’d been holding it. “Off you go.”

A tiny part of Locke’s mind, the cold wariness that had been his sentry in Shades’ Hill, realized Chains had long planned to send him, happily befuddled, to an early rest. Even through his wine-induced haze, that stung. He’d been feeling more and more at home, but no sooner had Sabetha walked through the door than it was Streets and Windows all over again, and he was packed off to some dark corner without the privileges enjoyed by the older children.

“I,” he muttered, taking his eyes of Sabetha for the first time in several minutes, but directing his voice at her. “I will. But … I’m g-glad you’re here.” He felt the urge to say something else, something weighty and witty that would turn that beautiful head of hers and fix her attention to him, a mirror of his own. But even drunk he knew he was more likely to pull rubies out of his ass than he was to speak as older people spoke, with words that were somehow careful and powerful and right. “Sabetha,” he half mumbled.

“Thanks,” she said, looking at the table.

“I mean, I knew … you knew I meant you, Sabetha … sorry. I just … I’m glad you’re not drowned, you know.”

More than anything, at that moment, he just wanted to hear her say his name, call him anything but “him” or “the Lamora Boy.” Acknowledge his existence … their partnership in Chains’ gang … gods, he would exile himself to bed early every night if he could just hear his name come out from between those thin lips of hers.

“Good night,” she said.

4

LOCKE WOKE the next day feeling as though the contents of his skull had been popped out and replaced upside-down.

“Here,” said one of the Sanzas, who happened to be sitting next to Locke’s cot with a book on his lap. The Sanza (Locke, muddled as he was, could not quite identify which one) passed over a wooden cup of water. It was lukewarm but clean, and Locke gulped it down without delicacy, marveling at how parched he felt.

“What time is it?” he croaked when he was finished.

“Must be past noon.”

“Noon? But … my chores …”

“No real work today.” The Sanza stretched and yawned. “No arithmetic. No Catch-the-Duke. No languages. No dancing.”

“No sitting the steps,” yelled the other Sanza from the next room. “No swordplay. No knots and ropes. No coins.”

“No music,” said the Sanza with the book. “No manners. No history. No bloody heraldry.”

“What are we doing, then?”

“Calo and I are to make sure you can stand up straight,” said the Sanza with the book. “Nail you to a plank if we have to.”

“And when that’s done, you’re to do all the dishes.”

“Sabetha …” Locke rubbed his eyes and rolled off his cot. “She’s really one of us?”

“Course she is,” said the Sanza with the book.

“Is she … here right now?”

“Nah. Out with Chains. Looking into things for tonight.”

“What’s tonight?”

“Dunno. All’s we know is the afternoon, and the afternoon, far as you’re concerned, is dishes.”

5

THOUGH ENERGETIC enough when set a task, Calo and Galdo were virtuosos of laziness when left to their own devices. Between subtle interference and overt clowning, they managed to stretch the half-hour Locke would ordinarily have needed to tend the dishes into nearly three hours. By the time the secret door to the temple above banged shut behind the returning Father Chains, Locke’s fingers were wrinkled and bleached from the alchemical polish he’d been using on the silver.

“Ah,” said Chains. “Good, good. You look more or less among the living. Feeling spry?”

“I suppose,” said Locke.

“We’ve a job tonight. Housebreaking. Windows work, and most of it on your little shoulders.” Chains patted his broad belly and smirked. “I parted ways with climbing and scampering some time ago.”

“Windows work?” said Locke, the drudgery of his long afternoon in the kitchen instantly forgotten. “I … I’d love to. But I thought you, um, didn’t do that sort of thing.”

“For its own sake, not usually. But I need to find some things out about you, Locke.”

“Oh, good.” Locke felt his excitement cool slightly. “Another test. When do they stop?”

“When you’re buried, my boy.” Chains knelt and gave Locke a friendly squeeze on the back of his neck. “When you’re under the dirt and colder than a fish’s tits. That’s when it stops. Now listen.

“I’ve got a tip from a friend at Meraggio’s.” Chains bustled about the kitchen, snatching up chalk and one of the slates the children used for their lessons. He sketched on it rapidly. “Seems a certain olive merchant is looking to marry his useless son to a noble wife. To sweeten the deal sufficiently, he’ll need to put his family splendids back into circulation.”

“What’s that mean?” said Locke.

“Means he needs to sell his jewels and things,” said Calo.

“Sharp lad. About an hour ago, the merchant’s man left the counting house with a lot of nice old things in a bag. He’s staying at a townhouse in the Razona; just him and two guards. The old man and a bigger retinue are coming in from his estate tomorrow. So tonight we have a bit of an opportunity.”

“Why us?” Locke’s excitement was tempered with genuine puzzlement. “If he’s only got two guards, anyone who wanted to could go in there with a gang.”

“Never in life,” said Chains, chuckling. “Barsavi won’t have it. The Razona’s a quiet district where doors don’t get kicked in. That’s the Peace. Anybody breaks it, they’re liable to have their precious bits cut off and stitched to their eyeballs. So instead of sending in brutes through the door, we send a quiet type through the window.”

Chains turned the slate toward Calo, Galdo, and Locke. The top half was taken up by a rough diagram of houses and their surrounding streets and alleys. Beneath that was a sketch of a necklace, with large ovoid shapes dangling from a thick central collar. Chains tapped one of his fingers against this sketch.

“One piece,” he said. “That’s all we’re after. One from twenty or so, and they won’t have time to put up much of a fuss about it. A gold necklace with nine hanging emeralds. Pop out the stones, send them nine different directions, and melt down the gold. Untraceable profit.”

“How do we do it?” asked Locke.

“Well, that’s half the fun.” Chains scratched at his chin. “You said yourself, it’s a test. You’ll be working with Sabetha, since she’s had more experience at this sort of thing. Calo and Galdo will be your top-eyes; that is, watching the area to cover your ass. I’ll be on the ground nearby, but I won’t be directly involved. My crooked little wonders get to sort the rest out for themselves.”

Locke’s heart raced. Test or not, a chance to work together with Sabetha, on something exciting? The gods loved him!

“Where is she now?”

“Here.” Chains pointed to a square sketched on the upper portion of the slate. “On the Via Selaine. Four-story house with a rooftop garden. That’s our target. She’ll be nearby until dark; at first moonrise she’ll meet you in this alley.” Chains ran his finger up and down a set of chalk lines, blurring them. “Once the Sanzas are in position to keep an eye on the street, the rest is up to you and Sabetha.”

“That’s it, then?”

“That’s it. And remember, I want one emerald necklace. I don’t need two, or the deed to the townhouse, or the bloody crown jewels of Camorr. Tonight’s definitely a night for you to underachieve.”

6

FULL CAMORRI night at last, after a twilight spent nervously fidgeting in an alley, waiting for Sabetha to make contact. Now Locke was with her, up on the roof of the house next door to their target, crouched among the old wooden frames and empty pots of a long-untended garden. It was just past second moonrise, and the wide-open sky was on fire with stars, ten thousand flickering white eyes staring down at Locke, as though eager to see him get to work.

Three feet away, a low dark shape against the stone parapet, lay Sabetha. Her only words to him at their meeting had been “Shut up, keep close, and stay quiet.” He’d done that, following her up the alley wall of the house they now sat upon, using windowsills and deep decorative carvings to haul himself up with little effort. Since then his urge to speak with her had been overruled by his terror of annoying her, and so he fancied that he’d done a fine imitation of a corpse from the moment they’d arrived. When she finally did speak, her soft voice actually startled him.

“I think they’ve gone to sleep at last.”

“Wh-what? Who?”

“The three old women who live here.” Sabetha set her head against the stones of the rooftop and listened for several moments. “They sleep on the second floor, but it never hurts to be careful.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“Never worked a roof before. Isn’t that the case, boy?” Sabetha moved slightly, and so quietly that Locke couldn’t hear a single ruffle of her dark tunic and trousers. She peeked over the parapet for no more than the span of a few heartbeats, then crouched back down.

“I, um, no. Not like this.”

“Well, think you can confine yourself to stealing just what we’ve been sent for? Or should I have the yellowjackets rouse out bucket-lines in case you burn the Razona down?”

“I—I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll be careful.”

“Whatever I say?” Her face was in silvery-gray shadow, but her eyes caught the starlight as she turned to him, so he could see them clearly. “You mean it?”

“Oh, yes.” Locke nodded several times. “On my heart. Come hell or Eldren-fire.”

“Good. You might not f*ck this up, then.” She gestured toward the parapet. “Move slow. Raise up just high enough to get your eyes over the edge. Take a good look.”

Locke peeked out over the southern parapet of the townhouse; their target house with its thick rooftop garden was to his right, and four stories below him was a clean stretch of cobbled road washed with moonlight. The Razona seemed a gentle, quiet place—no drunks sprawled in gutters, no tavern doors banging constantly open and closed, no yellowjackets moving in squads with truncheons drawn and shields out. Dozens of alchemical globes burned at street level, behind windows and above doors, like bunches of fiery fruit. Only the alleys and rooftops seemed wrapped in anything like real darkness.

“You see Calo and Galdo?” asked Sabetha.

“No.”

“Good. That means they’re where they should be. If something goes wrong—if a squad of yellowjackets shows up in the street, let’s say—those two will start hollering ‘The master wants more wine, the master wants more wine.’ ”

“What then?”

“They run, and we do likewise.” Sabetha crawled over beside him, and Locke felt his breath catch in his throat. Her next words were spoken into his ear. “First rule of roof work is, know how you’re getting down. Do you?”

“Um, same way we came?”

“Too slow. Too risky. Climbing down at speed is more dangerous than going up, especially at night.” She pointed to a thin gray line in the middle of the roof, a line that Locke’s eyes followed to a mess of pots and broken trellises. “I anchored that line when I came up. Demi-silk, should get us down to five feet off the ground. If we need to run, throw it over the edge, slide down as fast as you can, and leave it behind. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Now, look across here.” She nudged his head up above the parapet again, and pointed at an alley across the street. “That’s the escape route. You’ll have to cross the road, but one of the Sanzas should be in cover there watching for you. Chains is another block or two past that. If it all goes to hell, find a Sanza. Understand?”

“Yeah. But what if we don’t get caught?”

“Same plan, boy. We just do it slower. Ready?”

“Sure. Whenever you say. How do we, um, get across?”

“Fire plank.” Sabetha crawled toward the parapet facing their target house, beckoning for him to follow. She gently tapped a long wooden board that rested snug against the stone wall. “In case the place burns up beneath you, you swing it across to the neighbors and hope they like you.”

Working quietly and slowly, the two children lifted the fifteen-foot plank to the edge of the parapet and swiveled it out over the alley, Sabetha guiding it while Locke put his full weight on the inner edge. He felt uneasily like a catapult stone about to fly if the other end should fall, but after a few chancy moments Sabetha had the far end of the plank settled on the parapet of their target house. She hopped gracefully atop it, then got down on her hands and knees.

“One at a time,” she whispered. “Stay low and don’t hurry.”

Across she went, while Locke’s heart raced with the familiar excitement of a crime about to get under way. The farm-field smell of the Hangman’s Wind filled the air, and a warm breeze caught at Locke’s hair. To the northeast loomed the impossibly tall shadows of the Five Towers, with their crowns of silver and gold lanterns, warm artificial constellations mingling with the cold and real stars.

Now came Locke’s turn. The board would have been unnervingly narrow for an adult, but someone Locke’s size could turn around on it without bothering to stand up. He went over with ease, rolled off the edge of the plank, and crouched amid the wet smells of a living garden. Dark boughs of leaves rustled above him, and he almost jumped when Sabetha reached out of the shadows and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“No noise,” she whispered. “I’ll go in after the necklace. You watch the roof. Make sure the plank stays right where we need it.”

“Wh-what if something happens?”

“Pound the floor three times. If something happens that you can see before I do, won’t be anything for us to do but flee anyway. Don’t ever use my name if you call out.”

“I won’t. Good … um, good luck—”

But she was already gone, and a moment later he heard a faint set of clicks. Somewhere in the garden, Sabetha was picking a lock. A moment later she had it, and the hinges of a door creaked ever so faintly.

Locke stood guard at the plank for many long minutes, constantly glancing around, although he admitted to himself that a dozen grown men could have been hiding in the darkness of the vines and leaves around him. Occasionally he popped above the parapet and glanced back across the narrow bridge. The other rooftop remained reassuringly empty.

Locke was just settling back down from his fourth or fifth peek across the way when he heard a commotion beneath his feet. He knelt down and placed one ear against the warm stone; it was a murmur. One person talking, then another. A rising chorus of adult voices. Then the shouting began.

“Oh, shit,” Locke whispered.

There was a series of thumps from the direction Sabetha had gone, then the loud bang of a door being thrown open. She flew out of the shadows at him, grabbed him by the arms, and heaved him onto the plank.

“Go, go, go,” she said, breathlessly. “Fast as you can.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just go, gods damn it! I’ll steady the plank.”

Locke scuttled across the fifteen feet to safety as fast as he’d ever moved in his life, so fast that he tumbled off the parapet on arrival and tucked into an ungainly roll to avoid landing teeth-first. He popped up, head spinning, and whirled back toward Sabetha.

“Come on,” he cried. “Come on!”

“The rope,” she hissed. “Get down the f*cking rope!”

“I’ll s-steady the plank for you now.” Locke clamped his hands onto it, gritted his teeth, and braced himself, knowing with some part of his mind just how ridiculous a display of such feeble strength must look. Why was she not coming?

“THE ROPE,” she yelled. “GO!”

Locke looked up just in time to see tall dark shapes burst out of the garden behind her. Adults. Their arms were reaching for her, but she wasn’t trying to escape; she wasn’t even turning toward them. Instead her hands were on the plank, and she was—

“No,” Locke screamed. “NO!”

Sabetha was seized from behind and hoisted into the air, but as she went up she managed to swivel her end of the plank just off the parapet and push it into empty space. Locke felt the terrible sensation of that weight tipping and plummeting into the alley, far too much for him to hold back. His end of the plank leapt up and cracked against his chin, knocking him backward, and as he was landing on his posterior he heard the echoing crash of the plank hitting the ground four stories below.

“GO,” yelled Sabetha one more time. Her shout ended in a muffled cry, and Locke spat blood as he clambered back to his feet.

“The other roof!” A new voice, a man. “Get down to the street!”

Locke wanted to stay, to keep Sabetha in sight, to do something for her, but his feet, ever faster than his wits, were already carrying him away. He snatched at the rope as he stumbled along, threw it over the opposite parapet, and without hesitation he flung himself over the edge. The stones flew past, and the pressure of the rope against his palm rapidly grew into a hot, searing pain. He yowled and let go of the rope just as he reached the bottom, all but flinging himself the last five feet to land gracelessly in a heap.

Nothing seemed broken. His chin ached, his palms felt as though they’d been skinned with a dull axe, and his head was still spinning, but at least nothing seemed broken. He stumbled into a run. As his bare feet slapped against the cobbles of the road the door to the target house burst open, revealing two men outlined in golden light. An instant later they were after him with a shout.

Locke sprinted into the darkness of the alley, willing his legs to rise and fall like water-engine pistons. He knew that he would need every inch of the lead he already had if he hoped to escape. Vague black shapes loomed out of the shadows like something from a nightmare, only transforming into normal objects as he ran past—empty barrels, piles of refuse, broken wagons.

Behind him came the slap-slap-slap of booted feet. Locke sucked in his breath in short, sharp gasps and prayed he wouldn’t run across a broken pot or bottle. Bare feet were better for climbing, but in a dead run someone with shoes had every advantage. The men were getting closer—

Something slammed into Locke so forcefully that his first thought was that he’d struck a wall. His breath exploded out of him, and his next impression was a confused sense of movement. Someone grabbed him by his tunic and threw him down; someone else leapt out of the darkness and sprinted in the direction he’d been headed. Someone about his size or a little bigger .…

“Shhhh,” whispered one of the Sanzas, directly into his ear. “Play dead.”

Locke was lying with his cheek against wet stone, staring at a narrow opening into a brick-walled passage. He realized he’d been yanked into a smaller alley branching off the one he’d tried to escape down. The Sanza restraining him pulled something heavy, damp, and fetid down around them, leaving only the thinnest space exposed for them to see out of. A split second later Locke’s two pursuers pounded past, huffing and swearing. They continued after the shape that had taken Locke’s place and didn’t spare a glance for the two boys huddled under cover a few feet away.

“Calo will give ’em a good chase, then get back to us once they’re slipped,” said the Sanza after a few seconds.

“Galdo,” said Locke. “They got her. They got Beth.”

“We know.” Galdo pushed aside their camouflage. It looked like an ancient leather coat, gnawed by animals and covered in every possible foulness an alley could cultivate. “When we heard the shouting we ran for it and got in position to grab you. Quick and quiet now.”

Galdo hoisted Locke to his feet, turned, and padded down the branch alley.

“They got her,” repeated Locke, suddenly aware that his cheeks were hot with tears. “They got her, we have to do something, we have to—”

“I bloody well know.” Galdo seized him by the hand and pulled him along. “Chains will tell us what to do. Come on.”

As Sabetha had promised, Chains wasn’t far. Galdo pulled Locke west, toward the docks, to the rows of cheaper warehouses beside the canal that marked the farthest boundary of the Razona. Chains was waiting there, in plain clothes and a long brown coat, inside an empty warehouse that smelled of rot and camphor. When the two boys stumbled in the door, Chains shook a weak light from an alchemical globe and hurried over to them.

“It went wrong,” said Galdo.

“They got her,” said Locke, not caring that he was bawling. “They got her, I’m sorry, they just, they just got her.” Locke threw himself at Father Chains, and the man, without hesitation, scooped him up and held him, patting his back until his racking sobs quieted down.

“There, boy, there,” said Chains. “You’re with us now. All’s well. Who got her? Can you tell me?”

“I don’t know … men in the house.”

“Not yellowjackets?”

“I don’t … I don’t think so. I’m sorry, I couldn’t … I tried to think of something, but—”

“There was nothing you could have done,” said Chains firmly. He set Locke down and used a coat sleeve to dry his cheeks. “You managed to get away, and that was enough.”

“We didn’t g-get … the necklace—”

“F*ck the necklace.” Chains turned to the Sanza who’d brought Locke in. “Where’s Galdo?”

“I’m Galdo.”

“Where’s—”

“Calo’s ditching a couple of men that chased us.”

“What kind of men? Uniforms? Weapons?”

“I don’t think they were mustard. They might’ve been with the old guy you wanted us to rob.”

“Hell’s flaming shits.” Chains grabbed up his walking stick (an affectation for his disguise, but a fine way to have a weapon close at hand), then produced a dagger in a leather sheath that he tossed to Galdo. “Stay here. Douse the light and hide yourselves. Try not to stab Calo if he returns before I do.”

“Where are you going?” asked Locke.

“To find out who we’re dealing with.”

Chains went out the door with a speed that put the lie to his frequent claims of advancing infirmity. Galdo picked up the tiny alchemical light and tossed it to Locke, who concealed it within his closed hands. Alone in the darkness, the two boys settled down to wait for whatever came next.

7

CHAINS RETURNED a brief fraction of an hour later, with an ashen-faced Calo in tow. Locke uncovered the light as they entered the warehouse and ran toward them.

“Where is she?” he asked.

Chains stared at the three boys and sighed. “I need the smallest,” he said quietly.

“Me?”

“Of course you, Locke.” Chains reached out and grabbed both Sanza brothers. He knelt beside them and whispered instructions that were too brief and quiet for Locke to catch. Calo and Galdo seemed to recoil.

“Gods damn it, boys,” said Chains. “You know we’ve got no choice. Get back home. Stay together.”

They ran out of the warehouse without another word. Chains rose and turned to Locke.

“Come,” he said. “Time is no friend of ours this evening.”

“Where are we going?” Locke scampered to keep up.

“Not far. A house a block north of where you were.”

“Is it … should we really be going back that way?”

“Perfectly safe now that you’re with me.” True to his word, Chains had turned east, on a street rather than an alley, and was walking briskly toward the neighborhood Locke had just fled.

“Who’s got her? The yellowjackets?”

“No. They’d have taken her to a watch station, not a private residence.”

“The, um, men we tried to rob?”

“No. Worse than that.” Locke couldn’t see Chains’ face, but he imagined that he could hear his scowl in every word he spoke. “Agents of the duke. His secret police. Commanded by the man with no name.”

“No name?”

“They call him the Spider. His people get work that’s too delicate for the yellowjackets. They’re spies, assassins, false-facers. Dangerous folk, as dangerous as any of the Right People.”

“Why were they at the house?”

“Bad luck is much too comforting a possibility. I believe my information about the necklace was a poisoned tip.”

“But then … holy shit, but that means we have an informer!”

“It is a vile sin for that word to come lightly off the lips of our kind.” Chains whirled, and Locke stumbled backward in surprise. Chains’ face was grimmer than Locke had ever seen it, and he waved a finger to emphasize his words. “It’s the worst thing one Right Person can say or think of another. Before you accuse, you’d damn well better know. Drop that word carelessly and you’d best be armed, understand?

“Y-yes. Sorry.”

“My man at Meraggio’s is solid.” Chains turned, and with Locke at his heels hurried down the street again. “My children are beyond reproach, all of you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. That means the information itself was bait for a trap. They probably didn’t even know who’d bite. They set a line and waited for a fish.”

“Why would they care?”

“It’s in their interest,” grumbled Chains. “Thieves with contacts at Meraggio’s, thieves willing to work in a nice quiet place like the Razona … that sort of person merits scrutiny. Or stepping on.”

Locke held onto Chains’ sleeve as they threaded their way back into the quality neighborhoods, where the peace and calm seemed utterly surreal to Locke, given the disturbance he and Sabetha had raised so recently. At last Chains guided Locke into the low, well-kept gardens behind a row of three-story homes. He pointed to the next house over, and the two of them crouched behind a crumbling stone wall to observe the scene.

Half-visible past the edge of the house was a carriage without livery, guarded by at least two men. The lights in the house were on, but all the windows, save one, were covered by curtains behind thick mosaic glass. The lone exception was on the rear wall, where an orange glow was coming from under a second-story window that had been cracked open.

“Is she in there?” whispered Locke.

“She is. That open window.”

“How do we get her out?”

“We don’t.”

“But … we’re here … you brought me here—”

“Locke.” Chains set a hand on Locke’s right shoulder. “She’s tied down in that room up there. They have four men inside and two out front with the carriage. Duke’s men, above every law. You and I can’t fight them.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

Chains reached inside his tunic, snapped the cord that held a small object around his neck, and held the object out to Locke. It was a glass vial, about the size of Locke’s smallest finger.

“Take this,” Chains said. “You’re small enough to climb the vines on that back wall, reach the window, and then—”

“No.” The realization of what that vial meant made Locke want to throw up. “No, no, no!”

“Listen, boy, listen! Time is wasting. We can’t get her out. They’ll start asking her questions soon. You know how they do that? Hot irons. Knives. When they’re finished they’ll know everything about you, me, Calo, Galdo. What we do and where we work. We’ll never be safe in Camorr again, and our own kind will be as hot for our blood as the duke’s people.”

“No, she’s clever, she’ll—”

“We’re not made of iron, boy.” Chains grabbed Locke’s right hand, squeezed it firmly, and placed the warm glass vial against his palm. “We’re flesh and blood, and if they hurt us long enough we’ll say anything they want us to say.”

Chains gently bent Locke’s fingers in over the vial, then lifted his own hands away slowly.

“She’ll know what to do,” he said.

“I can’t,” said Locke, fresh tears starting down his cheeks. “I can’t. Please.”

“Then they’ll torture her,” said Chains quietly. “You know she’ll fight them as long as she can. So they’ll do it for hours. Maybe days. They’ll break her bones. They’ll peel her skin. And you’re the only one who can get up to that window. You … trip over your tongue around her. You like her, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Locke, staring into the darkness, trying desperately to think of anything bolder, cleverer, braver than climbing to that window and handing a beautiful girl a vial with which she would kill herself.

He had nothing.

“Not fair,” he sobbed. “Not fair, not fair.”

“We can’t get her out, Locke.” The gentleness and sorrow in Chains’ voice caught Locke’s attention in a way that scolding or commanding could not have. “What happens now is up to you. If you can’t get to her, she’ll live. For a while. And she’ll be in hell. But if you can get to that window … if you can just pass the vial to her …”

Locke nodded, and hated himself for nodding.

“Brave lad,” whispered Chains. “Don’t wait. Go. Fast and quiet as a breeze.”

It was no great feat to steal across thirty feet of dark garden, to find hand and footholds in the lush vines at the rear of the house, to scuttle upward. But the moments it took felt like hours, and by the time Locke was poised beside the second-story window he was shaking so badly that he was sure anyone in the house could hear it.

By the grace of the Crooked Warden there were no shouts of alarm, no windows slamming open, no armed men charging into the garden. Ever so carefully, he set his eyes level with the two-inch gap at the bottom of the open window, and moved his head to the right just far enough to peek into the room.

Locke swallowed a sob when he saw Sabetha, seated in a heavy, high-backed chair, facing away from him. Beside her, the some sort of cabinet—No. It was a man in a long black coat, a huge man. Locke ducked back out of sight. Gods, Chains was right about at least one thing. They couldn’t fight a brute like that, with or without a house full of other men to aid him.

“I’m not an enemy, you know.” The man had a deep, precise voice with the barest hint of a strange accent. “We want so little from you. You must realize that your friends can’t save you. Not from us.”

There was a long silence. The man sighed.

“You might think that we couldn’t do the things I suggested earlier. Not to a pretty little girl. But you’re as good as hung now. Makes it easy on the conscience. Sooner or later, you’ll talk. Even if you have to talk through your screams.

“I’ll, ah, leave you alone for a bit. Let you think. But think hard, girl. We’re only patient as long as we have orders to be.”

There was a slamming sound, a heavy door being shut, and then a slight metallic clank; the man had turned a key behind him.

Now it was time. Time to slip into the room, pass the vial over, and escape as quickly as possible. And then Sabetha would kill herself, and Locke would … would …

“F*ck this,” he whispered to himself.

Locke pushed at the window, widening the opening at its bottom. Windows that slid up and down were a relatively new and expensive development in Camorr, so rare that even Locke knew they were special. Whatever mechanism raised and lowered this one was well-oiled, and it rose with little resistance. Sabetha turned her head toward the noise as Locke slid over the windowsill and flopped inside. Her eyes were wide with surprise.

“Hi,” whispered Locke, less dramatically than he might have hoped. He stood up from the inch-deep carpet and examined Sabetha’s chair. His heart sank. It was glossy hardwood, taller than the window, and likely weighed more than he did. Furthermore, while Sabetha’s arms were free, she was shackled at the ankles.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Getting you out,” Locke whispered. He glanced around the room, pondering anxiously. They were in a library, but the shelves and scroll-cases were bare. Not a single book in sight. No sharp objects, no levers, no tools. He examined the door, hoping for some sort of interior lock or bar he could throw, and was disappointed there as well.

“I can’t get out of this chair,” said Sabetha, her voice low and urgent. “They could be back any moment. What’s that you’re holding?”

Locke suddenly remembered the vial he was clutching tightly in his right hand. Before he could think of anything else to do he moved it behind his back like a fool.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“I know why Chains sent you up here.” Sabetha closed her eyes as she spoke. “It’s okay. He and I talked about it before. It’s—”

“No. I’ll think of something. Help me.”

“It’s going to be all right. Give it to me.”

“I can’t.” Locke held up his hands, pleading. “Help me get you out of that chair.”

“Locke,” said Sabetha, and the sound of her speaking his name at last was like a hammer-blow to his heart. “You swore to do what I said. Come hell or Eldren-fire. Did you mean it?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “But you’ll die.”

“There’s no other way.” She held out one of her hands.

“No.” He rubbed at his eyes, feeling tears starting again.

“Then what are you loyal to, Locke?”

A coldness gnawed at the pit of Locke’s stomach. Every failure he’d experienced in his few short years, every time he’d been caught or foiled, every time he’d ever made a mistake, been punished, gone hungry—all those moments churned up and relived at once couldn’t have equaled the bitter weight of the defeat that settled in his gut now.

He placed the glass vial in her hand, and for a moment their fingers met, warmth against warmth. She gave his hand a little squeeze, and Locke gasped, letting the vial out of his grip. Her fingers curled around it, and now there was no taking it back.

“Go,” she whispered.

He stared at her, unable to believe he’d actually done it, and then finally turned away. It was just three steps to the window, but his feet felt distant and numb. He braced one hand on the windowsill, more to steady himself than to escape.

A loud click echoed in the room, and the door began to swing open.

Locke heaved himself over the sill, scrambled to plant his feet in the vines that clung to the house’s brick exterior, and prayed to drop down fast enough to escape notice, or at least get a head start—

“Locke, wait!” came a deep and familiar voice.

Locke clung precariously to the windowsill and strained to lift his head enough to glance back into the room. The door was wide open, and standing there was Father Chains.

“No,” whispered Locke, suddenly realizing what the whole point of the night’s exercise really was. But that meant— That meant Sabetha wouldn’t have to—

He was so startled he lost his grip, and with a sharp cry he fell backward into the air above the darkened garden.

8

“TOLD YOU he wasn’t dead.” It was one of the Sanzas, his voice coming out of the darkness. “Like a physiker, I am. Ought to charge you a fee for my opinion.”

“Sure.” The other Sanza now, speaking close to Locke’s right ear. “Hope you like getting paid in kicks to the head.”

Locke opened his eyes and found himself on a table in a well-lit room, a room that had the same strange lack of opulence as the library Sabetha had been chained up in. There was the table and a few chairs, but no tapestries, no decorations, no sense that anyone actually lived here. Locke winced, took a deep breath, and sat bolt upright. His back and his head ached dully.

“Easy, boy.” Chains was at his side in an instant. “You took quite a tumble. If only you weren’t so damnably quick on your feet, I might have convinced—”

Chains reached out to gently push him back down, and Locke swatted his hands away.

“You lied,” he growled.

“Forgive me,” said Chains, very softly. “There was still one thing we needed to know about you, Locke.”

“You lied!” The depth of Locke’s rage came as a shock; he couldn’t remember feeling anything like it even for tormentors like Gregor and Veslin—and he’d killed them, hadn’t he? “None of it was real!”

“Be reasonable,” said Chains. “It’s a bit risky to stage a kidnapping using actual agents of the duke.”

“No,” said Locke. “It was wrong. It was wrong! It wasn’t like they really would have done! I might have gotten her out!”

“You can’t fight grown men,” said Chains. “You did the very best you could in a bad situation.”

“IT WAS WRONG!” Locke forced himself to concentrate, to articulate what his gut was telling him. “They would … real guards might have done differently. Not chained her down. This was all made for me. All made so I had no choice!”

“Yes,” said Chains. “It was a game you couldn’t win. A situation that finds us all, sooner or later.”

“No,” said Locke, feeling his anger warm him from his head to his toes. “It was all wrong!”

“He did it to us too, once,” said Calo, grabbing his right arm. “Gods, we wanted to die, it was so bad.”

“He did it to all of us,” said Sabetha, and Locke whirled at the sound of her voice. She was standing in a corner, arms folded, studying him with a combination of interest and unease. “He’s right. We had to know if you could do it.”

“And you did superbly,” said Chains. “You did better than we could have—”

“It wasn’t fair,” shouted Locke. “It wasn’t a fair test! There was no way to win!”

“That’s life,” said Chains. “That’s your one sure inheritance as flesh and blood. Nobody wins all the time, Locke.”

Locke shook himself free from Calo’s grasp and stood on the table, so that he actually had to look down to meet Chains eye to eye.

Gods, he’d thought Sabetha was gone once, and he’d rejoiced to find her alive. Then he’d been sent to kill her. That was the rage, he realized, burning like a coal behind his heart. For a few terrible minutes Chains had made him believe that he would have to lose her all over again. Narrowed his world to one awful choice and made him feel helpless.

“I will never lose again.” He nodded slowly to himself, as though his words were the long-sought solution to some mathematical puzzle. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, not caring if he was heard across the length and breadth of the Razona.

“Do you hear me? I WILL NEVER LOSE AGAIN!”