The Republic of Thieves #1

Chapter TWO


THE BUSINESS

1

“MERCIFUL GODS,” SAID Locke. To Jean’s eyes, he seemed genuinely taken aback. “Your actual flesh-and-blood son? By, ah, traditional means?”

“I certainly didn’t brew him in a cauldron.”

“Well, come now,” said Locke, “as though we’d know one way or the other—”

“There are no means but traditional means for such an undertaking.”

“Damn,” said Locke. “And I thought this was an awkward conversation before.”

“The Falconer’s heart is still beating. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

“You expect us to believe that?” said Jean. His defensive instincts, sharpened over years of alternating triumphs and disasters, came hotly to life. Even if Patience chose to pose no immediate threat, surely wheels were turning somewhere inside her mind. “His friends would have killed us, but you can just wave the whole mess off with a sad smile?”

“You two didn’t get along,” said Locke.

“Very mildly put,” said Patience. She looked down at her feet, a gesture that struck Jean as totally outside her usual character. “Even before he earned his first ring … the Falconer was my antagonist in all philosophies, magical or otherwise. If our positions were reversed he certainly wouldn’t feel bound to vengeance on my account.”

Now Patience slowly raised her head until her dark eyes met Jean’s, and he was able to really study them for the first time. Certain people had what Jean privately thought of as archer’s eyes—a steady coolness, a detached precision. People with eyes like that could sort the world around them into targets, pick their first shot before those nearby even knew the time for talk had passed. Eyes like that had killers behind them, and Patience for-f*cking-sure had a pair.

“He and I live with the consequences of the decisions we made before he took the contract in Camorr,” she said, her voice firm. “Whether or not I choose to explain those decisions is my business.”

“Fair enough,” said Jean, taking an instinctive half-step back and raising his hands.

“Indeed. Take it easy.” Locke stifled a cough. “Well, you could murder us, yet supposedly you don’t want to. Your son pickled his own mind, but you say you don’t really give a shit. So what’s the story, Patience? Why are you in Lashain, lending me your cloak?”

“I’ve come to offer the two of you a job.”

“A job?” Locke laughed, then broke into more painful-sounding coughs. “A job? I hope you need someone to line a casket for you, you poor Karthani witch, because that’s the only job I’m presently qualified for.”

“Until you finally lose the strength for sarcasm, Locke, I wouldn’t hire any mourners.”

“I’m on my way.” Locke pounded on his chest a few times. “Believe me, I’ve ducked out of paying this bill before, but this time I’m pretty sure the house is going to make me settle. You should have tried, I don’t know, not f*cking revealing my plans to the gods-damned Archon of Tal Verrar so he could f*cking well poison me! Maybe then my schedule for the immediate future would be a tad more … open.”

“I can remove the poison from your body.”

Nobody spoke for several seconds. Jean was dumbstruck, Locke merely scowled, and Patience let the words hang in the empty air without further adornment. The timbers of the roof creaked faintly at the touch of the wind.

“Bullshit,” Locke muttered at last.

“You keep presuming that my powers are infinite where they concern your discomfort. Why not credit me with an equivalent capacity to render aid?” Patience folded her arms. “Surely some of the black alchemists you consulted must have passed on hints …”

“I’m not talking about your damned sorcery. I mean, I see the game now. It’s bullshit. Act one, those Lashani bastards trash the place. Act two, a mysterious savior appears out of the night, and we buy whatever you’re selling. You arranged this whole mess.”

“I had nothing to do with Cortessa. Jean brought the Lashani down on your heads when he mishandled the physiker yesterday.”

“What an eminently reasonable excuse! Good gods, woman, who the hell do you think you’re talking to here?” Locke erupted into a coughing fit, and just as quickly brought it under control by evident force of will. “I ought to know a setup when it lands right on top of my head!”

“Locke, calm down.” Jean felt his heartbeat all the way to the base of his throat. “Think about this for a moment.” It had to be a trick, a plan, a scheme of some sort, but by all the gods, what was that against the total certainty of death? Jean sent a silent plea to the Crooked Warden to give Locke just a few moments of lucid reason.

“I have no money,” said Locke. “No resources. No treasure. And I’m too sick now to even stand up. That leaves me just one single thing you can still take.”

“We need to consider—”

“You want my name, don’t you?” Locke’s voice was hoarse and teasing. He sounded triumphant at having something to fuel a real argument; evidently the god of thieves had no common sense available for lending at the moment. “You knock everything out from under me, then show up at the last minute, waving a reprieve. And all you’d need is my real name, right? Oh, you want leverage, that’s for sure. You haven’t forgiven anyone for what happened to the Falconer.”

“You’re dying,” said Patience. “Do you really think I’d take these pains just to turn the screws on you? Gods be gracious, how much more pressure could I possibly apply?”

“I believe you’d do anything, if you wanted your hooks in me bad enough.” Locke wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and Jean could see that his spit was blood-tinged. “I know a thing or two about revenge, and you have powers I can only dream of. So I must believe you’d do anything.”

“Why bother when I could have your real name any time I wanted it?”

“Now that’s so much arrogant bull—”

“It would simply be a question,” Patience continued, “of how long you could watch Jean Tannen suffer before you would beg for the privilege of telling me.”

“You’re no different than the Falconer,” said Locke. “Same f*cking—”

“Locke,” said Jean, very loudly.

“—attitude toward … yeah?”

“Kindly shut the hell up,” said Jean, enunciating every word as though teaching the phrase to a small child for the first time. Locke’s slack-jawed stare was gratifying.

“She’s right,” continued Jean, unable to keep a growing excitement out of his voice. “If your true name was all she wanted, why not torture me? I’m compromised, I’m bloody helpless. It would be quick and simple. So why aren’t I screaming right now?”

“Because if these people were any good at ‘quick and simple’ the Falconer would have killed us back in Camorr.”

“No, dammit. Think harder.”

“Because you have such a sweet and innocent face?”

“Because if she doesn’t want your real name the easy way—”

“Then she has some other motive. Sweet dancing donkey shit, Jean!” Locke rolled back toward Patience, but closed his eyes and rubbed at them. “She wants me to stick my own head in the noose, of my own free will. Get it? She wants me to step off the cliff. Cut my own wrists so she can gloat … humiliate—” Locke broke into another severe coughing fit, and Jean sat down on the bed and pounded gently on his back. The rhythmic movement did nothing good for Jean’s collection of fresh aches and bruises, but it calmed Locke rapidly.

“What we’re discussing,” said Patience, “is employment, not compulsion. Credit me with enough wit to recall the fate of Luciano Anatolius and Maxilan Stragos. Coercing you two never seems to work. We’re willing to trade service for service.”

“Patience,” said Jean, “can you really get rid of this poison? Can you do it without using his real name?”

“If we hurry, yes.”

“If you’re lying,” said Jean, “if you’re leaving anything out, I’ll try to kill you again. Understand? I’ll give it everything I have, even if it forces you slay me on the spot.”

Patience nodded.

“Then let’s talk business.”

“Let’s not,” snarled Locke. “Let’s show this bitch to the door and refuse to be puppets.”

“Shut up.” Jean pushed firmly down on Locke’s shoulders, foiling his attempt to roll out of bed. “Tell us about this job.”

Locke drew in a rasping breath to spew some more damn fool craziness. Jean, with the reflexes that kept him alive when blades were drawn, clamped a hand over Locke’s mouth before he could speak and pushed his head back down against his pillow. “I can’t agree to anything on Locke’s behalf, but I want us to hear your proposal. Tell us what the job is.”

“It’s political,” said Patience.

“Mmmmph mmph,” said Locke, struggling in vain against Jean’s arm. “Mmmph fckhnnng fmmmph!”

“He wants to hear more,” said Jean. “He says he’s very excited to hear the whole thing.”

2

“I NEED an election adjusted.”

“How adjusted?”

“As a cautious estimate?” Patience turned to the window and stared out into the rain. “I need it rigged from top to bottom.”

“Government affairs are a bit beyond our experience,” said Jean.

“Nonsense. You’ll feel right at home. What is government but theft by consent? You’ll be moving in a society of kindred spirits.”

“What sort of election are we supposed to be mucking about with here?”

“Every five years,” said Patience, “the citizens of Karthain elect an assembly, the Konseil. Nineteen representatives for nineteen city districts. This dignified mess runs the city, and I need a majority of their seats to go to the faction of my preference.”

“This is what you want us for?” Locke finally slipped Jean’s hand aside and managed to speak. “My dead ass! With your powers, you’d have to be out of your gods-damned minds to … settle for anything Jean and I could pull off! You could wiggle your fingers and make them elect cats and dogs, for f*ck’s sake.”

“No,” said Patience. “In public, the magi stand completely aloof from the government of the city. In private, we are forbidden to use any of our arts. Not on the poorest citizen of Karthain, not for a single vote.”

“You won’t use your sorcery on the people of Karthain?” said Jean. “Not at all?”

“Oh, Karthain is our city, through and through. We’ve adjusted everything to suit our needs, and that includes the inhabitants. It’s this contest we can’t touch. The election itself.”

“Seems awkward as all hell. Why the limitation?”

“You’ve seen some of our arts. You opposed the Falconer. You survived Tal Verrar.”

“In a manner of speaking,” muttered Locke.

“Imagine a society of men and women where those powers are universal,” said Patience. “Imagine … sitting down to dinner with four hundred people, each of whom has a loaded crossbow set beside their wineglass. Some very strict rules will have to be enforced if anyone wants to live long enough to see the last course.”

“I think I get it,” said Jean. “You have some sort of rule about not shitting where you eat?”

“Magi must never work magic against one another,” said Patience. “We’re as human as you are, as complicated, as insecure, as driven to argument. The only difference is that any one of us, out of the mildest irritation, could make someone evaporate into smoke with a gesture.

“We don’t duel,” she continued. “We don’t so much as tease one another with our arts. We forcefully separate ourselves from any situation where our crossed purposes might tempt us to do so.”

“Situations like this election,” said Jean.

“Yes. We do need to control the Konseil, one way or another. Once the election is over, the new government becomes a general tool. We adjust its members by consensual design. But during the contest itself, when our blood is up, we need to keep our arts entirely out of the situation. We need to be pure spectators.”

Patience raised both of her hands, palms up, as though presenting two invisible objects for weighing.

“There are two major factions among my people. Two major parties in Karthani politics. We battle by proxy. Each side is allowed to choose agents. Enterprising individuals, never magi. We set them loose to fight on our behalf. In the past we’ve favored orators, political organizers, demagogues. This time, I’ve convinced my people to hire someone with a more unusual portfolio of achievement.”

“Why?” said Jean.

“Some people play handball,” said Patience, smiling. “Some people play Catch-the-Duke. This is our sport. The election diverts much of the frustration our factions come to feel for one another, and brings prestige to the side that backs the winner. It’s become a highly anticipated tradition.”

“I’ve imagined you people must run the show in Karthain,” said Locke. “I just never would have suspected this. What a joke on all the poor saps lining up to vote every five years.”

“They get an orderly city regardless of the winner,” said Patience. “In Karthain, nobody empties the treasury and vanishes. Nobody holds grand masques every night while the streets fill with night soil and dead animals. We see to that.”

“Would a city of puppets really give a damn if you didn’t?” said Locke, wheezing. He cleared his throat. “You want us to work fraud in the service of order and public sanitation. What a thought!”

“Isn’t theft theft? Aren’t lies lies? Isn’t this exactly the sort of opportunity you’d spend years chasing if it was your own idea? Besides, the job serves you as much as anyone. Accepting it will save your life.”

“How long would you need us?” said Locke.

“The election is in six weeks.”

“What about resources? Clothes, money, lodging—”

“We have complete identities prepared for you, all possible comforts, and a large pool of funds to dispose of on business.”

“Only business?” said Locke.

“You’ll be treated luxuriously for six weeks. What more could you want?”

“Perelandro’s balls, a little incentive to win would be nice.”

“Incentive? Life itself isn’t sufficient? You’ll be well-dressed, you’ll recover your health, and you’ll be in a greatly improved position from which to resume your … career. If you win, our gratitude might easily extend so far as comfortable transportation to the city of your choice.”

“And if we lose?”

“You can’t expect us to reward failure. You’ll still be free to leave, but you’ll do it on foot.”

“I can only speak for myself,” said Locke, and Jean’s heart sank. “I meant what I said. I have no idea what your full powers are. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust this situation, and I have no reasonable chance to catch you if you’re lying. If you’re not sincere, this is a trap, and if you are sincere it’s some kind of bizarre pity-f*ck.”

“And all the years you might have had coming? All the things you have yet to do?”

“Spare me. You’re not my mother. If Jean will take the job, you won’t find a better man anywhere. He can do anything I could, and he’s better at keeping himself in one piece. Thanks for coming all this way to entertain me, but leave me alone.”

“Hold on—,” Jean began.

“I’m disappointed,” said Patience. “I would have thought you had at least one more thing to live for. Can you honestly say you’ve never hoped for any chance of a reunion   with Sabetha, somewhere out there in the—”

“You go f*ck yourself,” snarled Locke. “I don’t care what you think you know. That’s one subject you don’t get to presume … anything about.”

“As you like.” Patience flexed her right hand and Jean noticed the gleam of silver thread woven between the fingers. “It seems I’ve wasted our time. Shall I expect you in Karthain when your friend is dead, Jean?”

“Hold!” said Jean. “Patience, please, give us time to talk. In private.”

Patience nodded curtly and moved the knuckles of her right hand. Light shifted on the silvery gleam of her cat’s cradle. Jean blinked, and in that instant thread and woman alike vanished into thin air.

“Great,” said Jean. “F*cking magnificent. I think you’ve finally managed to really piss her off.”

“Nice to know I still have the knack,” said Locke.

“Are you really, truly out of your gods-damned mind? She could save your life.”

“She could do a lot of things.”

“Take the chance, Locke.”

“She’s up to something.”

“What a revelation! What an amazing deduction! I’m sorry, remind me again what your other options are?”

“She wants something from me, damn it, more than she’s letting on! But she’s already got everything she can take from you, right? You said it yourself. If she’s out to get you, she’ll get you. But if she does right by you, then you’ll be in a strong position to move on.”

“It works that way for both of us.”

“I won’t be that witch’s toy,” said Locke. “Not for all the money in Karthain. She’s not human. None of them are.”

Jean glared coldly at Locke. He lay under Patience’s cloak, his wild aspect incongruous next to the fine oilcloth. A cornered animal, preparing to die, huddled under delicate material worth several years of a skilled laborer’s life. The whites of his eyes were turning pink.

“Patience was right,” Jean said quietly. “She has wasted our time. You’ll die choking on your own blood. Today, tomorrow. Doesn’t matter. And you’ll be so happy with yourself. Because somehow dying has become an achievement.”

“Jean, wait—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” The resentments and frustrations of the past few weeks seemed to boil up as Jean spoke. The old familiar temper, snapping like a rope frayed down to a single strand, the rage like a hot pressure under his skin, pulsing from his skull to his fingertips. Only it was worse than usual, because there was nothing he could hit. Zodesti, Cortessa—Jean would have snapped their bones like badly fired pottery. Patience, even—he would have gone for her throat, dared her sorcery. But with Locke he was limited to words, so he weighted them with scorn and let fly. “What the hell have I done but wait? Wait on the boat to see if you got sick. Wait here, week after week, watching you get worse. Day and night, chasing any hope this f*cking city could offer, while you—”

“Jean, I am telling you, every instinct I have says this is a setup.”

“No shit. And since we know they mean to use us, why can’t we use them as well, for everything we can get out of the deal?”

“Give me up, Jean. Let me go and their fun vanishes. Then they’ll have that much less reason to play you false.”

“Oh, marvelous. F*cking masterful. You’ll be dead and they’ll be inconvenienced. Maybe even mildly disappointed. What a worthy trade! Like slashing your throat just before your opponent can take a piece in Catch-the-Duke.”

“But—”

“Shut it. Just shut it. You know, when you’re healthy, you’ll laugh the gods right in their faces. But when you’re convalescing, sweet hell, you are a miserable bastard.”

“I’ve always admitted—”

“No. You’ve never admitted this. You don’t stand still, Locke. I played along in Tal Verrar when we talked about retiring on our money, but that was bullshit and we both knew it. You don’t retire. You don’t even take holidays. You move from scheme to scheme, jumping around like a spider on a hot skillet. And when you’re forced to stand still, when you don’t have a thousand things going on to keep you distracted from your own thoughts, you actually want to die. I see that now. I’m so gods-damned slow and stupid I see it for the first time!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You and I, in the boat, after we torched the glass burrow. After we killed Bug’s murderer. Do you remember what we talked about? What you were like? And Vel Virazzo. You tried to finish the Gray King’s work by drowning yourself in wine. Now this. You’re not just cranky when you’re ill, Locke, you have the … look, it’s called Endliktgelaben. It’s a High Vadran word. I learned about it when I was studying as an initiate of Aza Guilla. It means, ah, death-love, death-desire. It’s hard to translate. It means you have moods where you absolutely want to destroy yourself. Not as some self-pitying idle notion, either. As a certainty!”

“For Perelandro’s sake, Jean, I wouldn’t want this if I had a f*cking choice!”

“You don’t want it up here,” said Jean, pointing to his own head. “You want it somewhere deeper, so deep you can’t recognize it. You think you’ve got some logical, noble excuse for showing Patience the door. But it’s really that darkness inside, trying to f*ck you over once and for all. Something has you so scared you’re seeing everything backwards.”

“What is it, then? If you’re so smart, what is it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Patience can read thoughts like a book, but I sure as hell can’t. However, I can tell you what the hell I’m scared of—being alone. Being the very last one of us standing, all because you’re a selfish, stubborn coward.”

“Not fair,” wheezed Locke.

“No, it isn’t. A lot of good people have died to bring you this far. You keep this shit up and you’ll be seeing them soon. What are you going to tell Calo and Galdo and Bug? Chains? Nazca?” Jean leaned over and all but whispered his next words down at Locke. “What are you going to tell the woman I loved? The woman who burned so you could have the slightest chance in hell of even being here in the first place?”

All the faint color left in Locke’s face had drained out; he moved his lips but seemed unable to convince any words to get that far past his throat.

“If I can get up and live with that every gods-damned day, then so can you, you son of a bitch.” Jean stepped away from the bed. “I’ll be outside. Make your choice.”

“Jean … call her back.”

“Are you just humoring me?

“No. Please. Call Patience back.”

“Are you ashamed?”

“Yes! Yes, how couldn’t I be, you ass?”

“And you’ll do it? Whatever it takes, whatever Patience requires to keep you alive?”

“Get her back in the room. Get her back! By the gods, I need her to fix me so I can punch your guts into soup.”

“That’s the spirit. Patience!” Jean yelled, turning toward the apartment’s door. “Patience! Are you—”

“Of course.”

Jean whirled. She was already in the room, standing behind him.

“I didn’t say I was going far,” she said, cutting off his question before it was spoken. “You’ll both do it?”

“Yes, we’ll—”

“There are going to be some conditions,” interrupted Locke.

“Dammit, Locke,” said Jean.

“Trust me.” Locke coughed and shifted his gaze from Jean to Patience. “First, I want it clear that our obligation to you begins and ends with this election. That’s our side of the bargain in full. No hidden surprises. No snake-bite double-dealing bondsmage bullshit.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Patience.

“You heard me.” Locke’s voice was still hoarse, but to Jean it seemed infused with genuine strength. Or anger, which was as good for the time being. “I don’t want one of you people popping out of my ass five years from now and implying that I’m still on the hook for having my life spared. I want to hear it from you, right to our faces. Once this is done, we don’t owe you shit.”

“What a high art you’ve made of insolence,” said Patience. “If that’s the game you feel you have to play, so be it. Service for service and a clean severance, just as I said.”

“Good. I want another privilege, too.”

“Our side of the bargain is already exceptionally generous.”

“Who do you think you’re haggling with, a f*cking pie vendor? If you’d rather lose your election—”

“State your request.”

“Answers. I want the answer to any question I ask, when I ask, to the best of your ability. I don’t want you to wave your hands and give me any bullshit about how great and terrible and incomprehensible everything is.”

“What questions?”

“Anything. Magic, Karthain, yourself, Falconer. Anything that comes to mind. I’m tired of the gods-damned shadow dance you people call conversation. If I’m going to work for you, I want you to explain some things.”

Patience considered this for some time.

“I have a private life and a professional life,” she said at last. “I may be prepared to discuss the latter. If you fail to respect the former, you will earn … consequences.”

“Good enough.” Locke wiped his mouth on his tunic sleeve, adding new blood to old stains. “Okay, Jean, do you still want the job?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Locke. “I do too. You’ve hired us, Patience. Now do your thing. Get this shit out of me.”

“I can’t work here,” said Patience. “We’ll need to move, and quickly. A ship is waiting at the docks to take us across the Amathel; everything I need is on board.”

“Alright,” said Jean. “I’ll go out and call a—”

Patience snapped her fingers, and the outer door fell open. A carriage was waiting on the street outside, its yellow lamps glowing softly in the drizzle, its quartet of horses standing in silent readiness.

“Aren’t you theatrical as hell,” said Locke.

“We’ve lost enough time taming your pride, Locke. We need every moment we can steal back if you’re going to survive what comes next.”

“Hold it,” said Jean, “What do you mean, ‘survive what comes next’?”

“It’s partly my fault. I waited to approach you. I should have done it before you had a chance to start kidnapping physikers. Now Locke’s condition is worse than precarious, and this would be hard enough for someone in perfect health.”

“But you—”

“Stand down, Jean, it’s the same hard sell we use,” said Locke. “Astonishing promises first, important disclaimers second. Just get on with it, Patience. Do your worst. I’m pissed off enough to take any sorcery you can throw at me.”

“Jean must have said something very interesting to shame you into finding your courage again.” Patience clapped her hands, and two tall men strode in through the front door. They wore broad-brimmed hats and long black leather coats, and carried a folding litter between them. “Keep that shame burning if you want to live.”

Patience touched Locke briefly on the forehead, and then she beckoned her coachmen over to roll him onto the litter. Jean watched warily but let them handle the work alone, as they seemed steady and careful enough.

“The only thing I can promise with absolute certainty,” said Patience as she watched this delicate process, “is that what I need to do when we reach the ship will be one of the worst things that’s ever happened to you.”
INTERLUDE


THE BOY WHO CHASED RED DRESSES

1

“YOU’RE STILL ANGRY with me,” said Chains.

It wasn’t a question. Locke’s attitude would have been plain to someone with the empathy of a shithouse brick.

A day had passed since the affair of Sabetha’s “capture,” and while Locke had rapidly shrugged off the effects of his fall into the garden, he’d been snappish and sullen since returning to the Temple of Perelandro. He’d flat-out refused to help prepare dinner or eat it, and after a brief, awkward attempt at a meal Chains had finally dragged him up to the temple roof.

They sat there now, under the dying aura of Falselight, the hour when every visible inch of Elderglass in Camorr threw off enough supernatural radiance to bring on a second sunset. Every bridge and avenue and tower was limned in eerie light, and beneath the steel-blue sky the city was a dark tapestry knit with ten thousand glowing stitches.

The parapets of the temple’s untended rooftop garden shielded Locke and Chains from prying eyes. They sat a few paces apart amidst the shards of broken pottery, staring at one another. Chains was taking unusually frequent drags on his sheaf of rolled tobacco, the red embers flaring with each indrawn breath.

“Look at me,” he muttered. “You’ve got me smoking the Anacasti Black. My holiday blend. Of course you’re still angry with me. You’re about seven years old and your view of the world is this wide.” Chains held up the thumb and the forefinger of his left hand, and the distance between them was not generous. This, at last, drew Locke out of his silence.

“What happened wasn’t fair!”

“Fair? You mean to claim with a straight face that you buy into that heresy, my boy?” Chains took a last long puff on his dying cigar and flicked the remnants into the darkness. “Everyone in Catchfire dropped dead except for you and your fellow wolf cubs. In Shades’ Hill, you avoided death for at least two grandiose mistakes that would have gotten a grown man’s balls peeled like grapes, and you still want to talk about—”

“No,” said Locke, his look of self-righteous annoyance instantly changing to one of startled embarrassment, as though he’d been accused of wetting his breeches. “No, no, I didn’t say those things were fair. I know life’s not fair. But I thought … I thought … you were.”

“Ah,” said Chains, “well, now. I’ve always thought of myself as fair to a fault. Look, what are you more upset about, the fact that I lied about what had to happen to Sabetha or the fact that the contest I rigged wasn’t, ah, as open to improvisation as you might have wished?”

“I don’t know. Both! All of it!”

“Locke, you may be too young for formal rhetoric, but you’ve got to at least try to pick your problems apart and explain them piece by piece. Now, here’s another important question. Are you comfortable at this temple?”

“Yes!”

“You eat well and sleep soundly. Your clothes are clean, you have many diversions, and you even get to bathe every week.”

“Yes. Yes, I like it a lot, it’s all worth having to bathe, even!”

“Hmmm,” said Chains. “You live long enough for your stones to drop, then tell me if bathing is really such a hardship when the young women around you have bosoms that are more than theoretical.”

“What? When my what?”

“Never mind. That subject will be sufficiently confusing in its own good time. So, you like it here. You’re comfortable, you’re protected. Have I behaved badly? Treated you as you were treated in Shades’ Hill?”

“Well, no … no, not like that at all.”

“Yet none of that buys me any consideration in the matter of last night? Not one speck of trust? One tiny instant of the benefit of the doubt?”

“I, uh, well, it’s not … uh, crap.” Locke made a desperate grab for eloquence and came up with empty hands as usual. “I don’t mean … it’s not that I don’t appreciate—”

“Easy, Locke, easy. Just because you’ve been uncouth doesn’t mean you might not have a point. But hear me now—this is a small home we live in. The temple might seem marvelous compared to living and sleeping in heaps of dozens, but believe me—walls squeeze the people who live inside them, sooner or later.”

“They don’t bother me,” said Locke quickly.

“It’s not so much the walls, though, Locke, it’s the people. This will be your home for many years to come, gods willing, and you and Sabetha and the Sanzas are going to be as close as family. You’ll strike sparks off one another. I can’t have you shoving your thumb up your ass and doing your best impression of a brick wall every time you get annoyed. Crooked Warden help us, we’ve got to be ready and willing to talk, or we’re all going to wake up with cut throats sooner or later.”

“I’m … I’m sorry.”

“Don’t hang your head like a kicked puppy. Just keep it in mind. If you’re going to live here, staying civil is as much a duty as sitting the steps or washing dishes. Now, while I bask in the glow of another moral sermon delivered with the precision of a master fencer, hold your applause and let’s get back to last night. You’re upset because the situation was contrived to give you only one real means of resolving it, short of curling up into a little ball and crying yourself into a stupor.”

“Yes! It wasn’t like it would have been, if they’d been real guards. If they weren’t, you know, watching for me.”

“You’re right. If those men had been real agents of the duke, some of them might have been incompetent, or open to bribery, and they might not have taken their duty to guard a little girl very seriously. Correct?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Of course, if they’d been real agents of the duke, they might also have taken her somewhere truly impregnable, like the Palace of Patience. And instead of six there might have been twelve, or twenty, or the entire Nightglass company, prowling the streets looking to have an urgent personal conversation with you.” Chains leaned forward and poked Locke’s forehead. “That’s how luck works, lad. You can bitch all you like about how things could have been more favorable for you, but rest assured things can always be worse. Always. Understood?”

“I think so,” said Locke, with the neutral tone of a student gingerly accepting a master’s assurances on something far beyond personal verification, like the number of angels that could play handball on the edge of a rose petal.

“Well, if I can even get you thinking about it, that’s a victory of sorts, at your age. No offense.” Chains cracked his knuckles before continuing. “You, after all, have publicly vowed to never lose again, which is about as likely as me learning to crap gold bars on command.”

“But—”

“Let it be. I know your temperament, lad, and I’m too wise to try and give it more than a few sharp nudges at a time. So, the other thing. You’re upset that I lied about what needed to be done with Sabetha.”

“Well, yeah.”

“You feel something for her.”

“I … I don’t, um …”

“Quit it. This is important. You do feel something for her. There’s more to this than a little wounded pride. Can you tell me about it?”

Slowly, grudgingly, feeling as though he might be about to get up and run away, Locke somehow found the will to give Chains the barest sketch of his first encounter with Sabetha, and of her later disappearance.

“Hells,” said Chains quietly when the tale was finished. The sky and the city beneath it had darkened while Locke had stumbled through his explanation. “I can see why you snapped, having that rug pulled out from under you twice. Forgive me, Locke, I honestly didn’t know you’d grown feelings for her in Shades’ Hill.”

“It’s okay,” mumbled Locke.

“You have a crush, I think.”

“Do I?” Locke had a vague idea of what that word meant, and somehow it didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem enough.

“It’s not meant to belittle your feelings, lad. A crush can come on hot and sharp like an illness. I know exactly what it’s like. Years to go before your body will even be ready for, ah, what comes between men and women, but a crush doesn’t care. It’s got a power all its own. That’s the bad news.”

“What’s the good news?”

“Crushes fade. Sure as you and I are sitting here now. They’re like sparks thrown from a fire—hot and bright for a moment, then gone.”

Locke frowned, not at all sure he wanted to be released from his feelings for Sabetha. They were a bundle of mysteries, and every attempt to unravel them in his own mind seemed to send a pleasant warm shiver to every nerve in his body.

“Heh. You don’t believe me, or you don’t want to. Fair enough. But you’re going to be living with Sabetha day in and day out any time one of you isn’t away for training. My guess is, she’ll be like a sister to you in a few years. Familiarity has a way of filing the sharp edges off our feelings for other people. You’ll see.”

2

TIME PASSED, days and months chaining together into years, and Jean Tannen joined the Gentlemen Bastards. In the summer of the seventy-seventh Year of Perelandro, two years after Jean’s arrival, a rare dry spell came over the city-state of Camorr, and the Angevine ran ten feet below its usual height. The canals went gray and turgid, thickening like blood in the veins of a ripening corpse.

Canal trees, those glorious affectations that usually roamed and twirled on the city’s currents with their long float-threaded roots drinking the filth around them, now bobbed in sullen masses, confined to the river and the Floating Market. Their silk-bright leaves dulled and their branches drooped; their roots hung slack in the water like the tentacles of dead sea-monsters. Day after day the Temple District was shrouded in layers of smoke, as every denomination burned anything that came to mind in sacrifices pleading for a hard, cleansing rain that wouldn’t come.

In the Cauldron and the Dregs, where the lowest of the low slept ten to a room in windowless houses, the usual steady flow of murders became a torrent. The Duke’s corpse-hunters, paid as they were by the head, whistled while they fished putrefying former citizens out of barrels and cesspits. The city’s professional criminals, more conscientious than its impulsive killers, did their part for Camorr’s air by throwing the remains of their victims into the harbor by night, where the predators of the Iron Sea quietly made the offerings vanish.

In this atmosphere, in the hot summer evening heavy with smoke and the stink of a hundred distinct putrefactions, the temple roof was out of the question for meetings, so Father Chains let his five young wards gather in the dank coolness of the glass burrow’s kitchen. Their recent meals, by Chains’ orders, had been lukewarm affairs, with anything cooked brought in from stalls near the Floating Market.

They had come together that week, as a complete set, for the first time in half a year. Chains’ interwoven programs of training had taken on the complexity of an acrobat’s plate-spinning act as his young wards were shuffled back and forth between apprenticeships in assorted temples and trades, learning their habits, jargon, rituals, and trivia. These excursions were arranged by the Eyeless Priest via a remarkable network of contacts, extending well beyond Camorr and the criminal fraternity, and they were largely paid for out of the small fortune that the citizens of Camorr had charitably donated over the years.

Time had begun to work its more obvious changes on the young Gentlemen Bastards. Calo and Galdo were dealing with a growth spurt that had given their usual grace a humbling dose of awkwardness, and their voices were starting to veer wildly. Jean Tannen was still on the cherubic side, but his shoulders were broadening, and from scuffles like the Half-Crown War he had acquired the confident air of someone well versed in the art of introducing faces to cobblestones.

Given these evident signs of physical progress around him, Locke was secretly displeased with his own condition. His voice had yet to drop, and while he was larger than he’d ever been, all this did was maintain him in the same ratio as before, a medium child surrounded on all sides by the taller and the wider. And while he knew the other boys depended upon him to be the heart and brains of their combined operations, it was a cold comfort whenever Sabetha came home.

Sabetha (who, if she objected to being the only Gentle-lady Bastard, had never said so out loud) was freshly returned from weeks of immersive training as a court scrivener’s apprentice, and bore new signs of physical progress herself. She was still taller than Locke, and the natural color of her tightly plaited hair remained hidden by a brown alchemical wash. But her slender figure seemed to be pressing outward, ever so slightly, against the front of her thin chemise, and her movements around the glass burrow had revealed the hints of other emerging curves to Locke’s vigilant eyes.

Her natural poise had grown in direct proportion to her years, and while Locke held firm sway over the three other boys, she was a separate power, neither belittling his status in the gang nor overtly acknowledging it. There was a seriousness to her that Locke found deeply compelling, possibly because it was unique among the five of them. She had embarked upon a sort of miniature adulthood and skipped the wild facetiousness that defined, for example, the Sanzas. It seemed to Locke that she was more eager than the rest of them to get to wherever their training was taking them.

“Young lady,” said Father Chains as he entered the kitchen, “and young gentlemen, such as you are. Thank you for your prompt attention to my summons, a courtesy which I shall now repay by setting you on a path to frustration and acrimony. I have decided that you five do not fight amongst yourselves nearly enough.”

“Begging your pardon,” said Sabetha, “but if you’ll look more closely at Calo and Galdo you’ll see that’s not the case.”

“Ah, that’s merely communication,” said Chains. “Just as you and I speak by forming words, the natural, private discourse of the Sanza twins appears to consist entirely of farts and savage beatings. What I want is all five of you facing off against one another.”

“You want us to start … hitting each other?” said Locke.

“Oh, I volunteer to hit Sabetha,” said Calo, “and I volunteer to be hit by Locke!”

“I would also volunteer to be hit by Locke,” said Galdo.

“Quiet, you turnip-brained alley apes,” said Chains. “I don’t want you boxing with one another. Not necessarily. No, I’ve given you all a great many tasks that have pitted you against the world, as individuals and as a group, and for the most part you’ve trounced my expectations. I think the time has come to pry you out of your comfortable little union   and see how you fare in competition against one another.”

“What sort of competition?” said Jean.

“Highly amusing competition,” said Chains, raising his eyebrows. “From the perspective of the old man who gets to sit back and watch. It’s been three or four years of steady training for most of you, and I want to see what happens when each of you tries to pit your zest for criminal enterprise against an opponent with a similar education.”

“So, uh, just to be clear,” said Calo, “none of us are going to be fighting Jean?”

“Not unless you’re inconceivably stupid.”

“Right,” said Calo. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m going to keep you all here for the rest of the summer,” said Chains. “A break from your apprenticeships. We can enjoy the marvelous weather together, and you can chase each other across the city. Starting with—” He lifted a finger and pointed it at Locke. “You. Aaaaaaand …” He slowly shifted his finger until it was pointed at Sabetha. “You!”

“Um, meaning what, exactly?” said Locke. Butterflies instantly came to life in his stomach, and the little bastards were heavily armed.

“A bit of elementary stalking and evasion, on Coin-Kisser’s Row. Tomorrow at noon.”

“Surrounded by hundreds of people,” said Sabetha coolly.

“Quite right, my dear. It’s easy enough to follow someone when you’ve got the whole night to hide in. I think you’re ready for something less forgiving. You’ll begin at the very southern end of Coin-Kisser’s Row, carrying a handbag with an open top. Inside the bag will be four small rolls of silk, each a different color. Easily visible from ten or twenty feet away. You’ll take a leisurely stroll up the full length of the district.

“Somewhere in your wake will be Locke, wearing a jacket with a certain number of brass buttons, also easily counted from a fairly narrow distance. The game is simple. Locke wins if he can tell me the colors of the silk. Sabetha wins if she crosses the Goldenreach Bridge from Coin-Kisser’s Row to Twosilver Green without revealing the colors. She can also win if Locke is clumsy enough for her to count the number of buttons on his coat. Each of you wishing to report to me will have only one chance to be accurate, so you can’t simply keep guessing until you get it right.”

“Hold on,” said Locke. “I get one way to win and she gets two?”

“Perhaps you can try burning down the Goldenreach Bridge,” Sabetha said sweetly.

“Yes, she gets two,” said Chains, “and fortunately for Camorr, the bridge is made of stone. Sabetha has a package to guard, and must, as I have said, move at a leisurely pace, with dignity. No running or climbing. Locke, you’ll be expected to cause no scenes, but your freedom of movement will be less restricted.”

“Ah.”

“You’re not to physically touch one another. You may not simply cover up the silk or the buttons. You may not have your opponent harmed or restrained in any fashion. And neither of you may call upon any of the other Gentlemen Bastards for help.”

“Where do we get to be, then?” said Galdo.

“Safely at home,” said Chains, “sitting the steps in my place.”

“Oh, balls to that, we want to see what happens!”

“One thing the contest does not need,” said Chains, “is a chorus of gawkers stumbling along for the duration. I’ll be nearby, watching everything, and I promise to give you a very lively account upon my return. Now—” He produced two small leather bags and tossed them to Locke and Sabetha. “Your operating funds.”

Locke opened his bag and counted ten silver Solons.

“You’ve got all night to think about what you’re doing,” said Chains. “You may come and go as you please. Don’t feel compelled to buy anything, but if you do, the coins I’ve given you are your absolute limit.”

“What’s this all for?” said Locke.

“To put you on the spot, and thereby—”

“I think,” said Sabetha, “he meant to ask, what’s in it for the winner?”

“Ah,” said Chains. “Of course. Well, other than acquiring a vast sense of personal satisfaction, the winner will hand their dinner chores over to the loser for three nights. How’s that?”

Locke watched Sabetha, and when she nodded once, he did the same. The girl already seemed to be lost in thought, and Locke felt a touch of apprehension beneath his rising excitement. He had every confidence in his own skills, as they had fetched him everything from coin-purses to corpses without much difficulty, but the full extent of Sabetha’s abilities was unknown to him. Her absences from the temple had been lengthier than those of any of the boys, and out there in the wider world she could have learned an infinite variety of nasty surprises.

3

SABETHA EXCUSED herself a few minutes later and vanished into the night, off to make whatever arrangements she thought were necessary. Locke followed in haste, throwing on the white robes of an initiate of Perelandro, but by the time he reached the hot, smoky air of the Temple District’s central plaza, she had long since vanished into the shadows. Might she be waiting out there, watching, hoping to follow him and learn what he was up to? The thought gave him a brief pause, but the unhappy fact was that he had no concrete plans at all, so it really didn’t matter whether or not she dogged his heels all night.

Lacking any better ideas, he decided to tour Coin-Kisser’s Row and refresh his memory of the district’s landmarks.

He hurried along with a brisk step, fingers interlaced within the sleeves of his robe, pondering. He trusted his clerical guise to shield him from inconvenience and harm (for he was keeping to better neighborhoods), and so he remained caught up in the whirl of his own thoughts as his feet carried him down the full length of Coin-Kisser’s Row, then back up again.

The great counting-houses were shuttered for the night, the bars and coffee shops all but empty, and the reeking canal had little of its usual drunken pleasure traffic. Locke stared at the monuments, the bridges, and the long deserted plazas, but no fresh inspiration fell out of the sky. When he returned home, somewhat discouraged, Sabetha had not yet returned.

He fell asleep still waiting to hear her come back down the glass tunnel from the temple above.

4

COIN-KISSER’S ROW at noon lay sweltering beneath the molten bronze sun, but the upper classes of Camorr had fortunes and appearances to maintain. The empty plazas of the previous night had become a lively pageant of overdressed crowds, which Locke and Sabetha now prepared to join.

“I give you the field,” said Chains, “upon which you two shall fight your mighty battle, wherein one shall stand tall, and the other shall end up with the dishes.” Chains was ascending the unforgiving heights of fashion in a black velvet coat and pearl-studded doublet, with three silver-buckled belts taut against his belly. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat over a curly brown wig, and he had enough sweat running down his face to refill at least one of the city’s canals.

Locke was dressed far more comfortably, in a simple white doublet, black breeches, and respectable shoes. Chains was holding Locke’s jacket, with its telltale number of buttons, until Sabetha was sent on her way. For her part, Sabetha wore a linen dress and a simple jacket, both of a darkish red that was nearly the color of cinnamon. Her hair and face were concealed beneath a four-cornered hat with hanging gray veils—a fashion that had come rapidly back into vogue in the heat and foulness of recent weeks. Chains had carefully studied and approved these clothes. Locke and Sabetha could pass for servants dressed moderately, or rich children dressed lazily, and would be able to pursue their game without suspicion or interference so long as they behaved.

“Well, daylight’s burning,” said Chains, kneeling and pulling the two children toward him. “Are you ready?”

“Of course,” said Sabetha. Locke merely nodded.

“Young lady first,” said Chains. “Twenty-second head start, then uncover your satchel as we discussed. I’ll be moving along in the crowd beside you, looming over your performance like a merciless god. Cheating will be dealt with in a thoroughly memorable fashion. Go, go, go.”

Chains held fast to Locke’s upper right arm as Sabetha moved off into the crowd. After a few moments, Chains spun Locke around, lifted his arms, and slipped the coat onto him. Locke ran his fingers up and down the right lapel, counting six buttons.

“I stretch forth my arm and cast you into the air.” Chains gave Locke a little shove. “Now hunt, and let’s see whether you’re a hawk or a parakeet.”

Locke allowed the push to carry him into the flow of the crowd. His initial position seemed good. Sabetha was about thirty yards away, headed north, and her cinnamon dress was hard to miss. Furthermore, Locke couldn’t help but notice that the patrons of Coin-Kisser’s Row formed an ideal crowd for this sort of work, tending to move together in small, self-aware clusters rather than as a more sprawling chaos. He would be chasing Sabetha down narrow avenues that would temporarily open and close around her, and even if she made good time she wasn’t likely to be able to hide in the blink of an eye.

Still, Locke was as uneasy as he was excited, feeling much more parakeet than hawk. He had no plan beyond trusting to skill and circumstance, while Sabetha could have arranged anything .… Or had she merely snuck off into the night for a few empty hours to make him think that she could have arranged anything? “Gah,” he muttered in disgust, at least wise enough to recognize the danger of second-guessing himself into a panic before she even made her move.

The first few minutes of the chase were uneventful, though tense. Locke managed to close the distance by a few strides, no mean feat considering Sabetha’s longer legs. As he moved, the peculiar chatter of the Row enfolded him on all sides. Men and women blathered about trade syndicates, ships departing or expected back, interest rates, scandals, weather. It wasn’t all that different from the conversation of one of the lower districts, in fact, save for more references to things like compound interest rates. There was no shortage of talk about handball and who was f*cking whom.

Locke hurried on through the din. If Sabetha noticed him creeping up on her, she didn’t speed up. Perhaps she couldn’t, not while staying “dignified,” though she did sidestep here and there, gradually moving herself farther and farther away from the canal side of the district and closer to the steps of the countinghouses, on Locke’s left.

Locke could see her satchel from time to time, hanging casually from her right shoulder, and it seemed that with perfectly innocent little gestures she was managing to keep it mostly forward of her right hip, conveniently out of sight. Was that the game, then? Without using his arms or hands to directly conceal his row of brass buttons, Locke began making sure that his various twists and turns in the crowd were always made with his left shoulder turned forward.

If Chains (occasionally visible as a large lurking shape somewhere to Locke’s right) had any objection to this sort of mild rules-bending, he wasn’t yet leaping out of the crowd to end the contest. Squinting, Locke spared a few seconds to glance around for unexpected hazards, then returned his gaze to Sabetha just in time to catch her causing a commotion.

With smooth falseness that was readily apparent to Locke’s practiced eye, Sabetha “tripped” into a huge merchant, rebounding lightly off the massive silk-clad hemispheres of his posterior. As the man whirled around Sabetha was already turning in profile to Locke—curtseying in apology, concealing her satchel on the far side of her body, and no doubt peering straight at Locke from under her veils. Forewarned, he turned in unison with her, the other way, giving her a fine view of his buttonless left side as he pretended to scan to his right for something terribly important. Perfect stalemate.

Locke was just too far away to hear what Sabetha said to the fat merchant, but her words brought rapid satisfaction, and she was hurrying off to the north again before he’d even finished turning back to his own business. Locke followed instantly, flush with much more than the day’s stifling heat. He realized they’d covered nearly half the southern district of Coin-Kisser’s Row; a quarter of the field was already used up. Even worse, he realized that Sabetha was indulging him if she even bothered trying to count his buttons. All she really had to do was keep him stymied until she could dash across the final bridge to Twosilver Green.

She continued veering to the left, closer and closer to a tall countinghouse, a many-gabled structure fronted by square columns carved with dozens of different representations of round-bellied Gandolo, Filler of Vaults, god of commerce. Sabetha moved up the building’s steps and ducked behind one of those pillars.

Another trap to try and eyeball his jacket? Tautly alert, carefully keeping his precious buttons turned away from Sabetha’s last known position, he hurried toward the pillars. Might she be attempting to reach the inside of the countinghouse? No, there she was—

Two of her! Two identical figures in cinnamon-colored dresses and long dark veils, with little bags slung over their right shoulders, stepped back out into the sunlight.

“She couldn’t have,” Locke whispered. Yet clearly she had. During the night, while he’d been fretting up and down the dark streets, she’d arranged help and a set of matching costumes. Sabetha and her double strolled away from the carvings of the fat god, headed north toward the Bridge of the Seven Lanterns, the halfway point of their little contest. For all the opportunities he’d already seized in his short life to dwell upon Sabetha’s every feature, both of the girls looked exactly alike to him.

“Tricky,” said Locke under his breath. There had to be some difference, if he could only spot it. The bags were probably his best chance; surely they would be the hardest elements of the costumes to synchronize.

“Blood for rain!” boomed a deep voice as Locke reentered the crowd. Bearing down on him came a procession of men in black-and-gray robes. Their mantles bore emblems of crossed hammers and trowels, marking them as divines of Morgante, the City Father, the god of order, hierarchies, and harsh consequences. While none of the Therin gods were ever called enemies, Morgante and his followers were undeniably the least hospitable to the semi-heresy of the Nameless Thirteenth. Morgante ruled executioners, constables, and judges, and no thief would willingly set foot in one of his temples.

The black-robed procession, a dozen strong, was pushing along an open-topped wagon holding an iron cage. A slender man was chained upright inside it, his body covered with wet red gouges. Behind the cage stood a priest holding a wooden switch topped with a claw-like blade about the size of a finger.

“Blood for rain!” hollered the leader of the priests once again, and initiates behind him held baskets out to the passing crowd. It was a mobile sacrifice, then. For every coin tossed into a basket, the caged prisoner would receive another painful but carefully measured slash. That man would be a resident of the Palace of Patience, worming his way out of something harsh (judicial amputation, most likely) by offering his body up for a few weeks of cruel use. Locke had no further thoughts to spare the poor fellow, for the two girls in dark red dresses were vanishing around the far left side of the procession. He ducked wide around the opposite side, just in case another ambush was in the offing.

The girls weren’t troubling themselves; they were headed straight for the Bridge of Seven Lanterns, and were close enough that Locke dared not close the gap. While the bridge was wide enough for two wagons to pass without grinding wheel-rims, it was narrow indeed compared to the plaza, with nowhere to duck and dodge if the girls tried anything clever. Locke matched their pace and trailed them like a kite, fading back to a distance of about thirty yards. Halfway to the end of the contest, and he hadn’t actually gained a foot!

The Bridge of Seven Lanterns was plain solid stone, no unnerving toy left over from the long-vanished Eldren. Its parapets were low, and as Locke moved step by step up the gentle arch he was offered a fine view of dozens of boats moving sluggishly on the canal below—a view he ignored, focused as he was on the slender red shapes of his two rivals. There was no wagon traffic at the moment, and while Locke watched, the dress-wearers separated, moving to opposite sides of the bridge. There they paused, each one turning her body as though she were gazing out over the water.

“Hell shit damn,” muttered Locke, trying for the first time in his life to emulate the lengthy chains of profanity woven by the few adult role models he’d ever had. “Pissing shit monkeys.” What was the game now? Stall him indefinitely and let the sun cook them all? Looking for inspiration, he glanced around, and then back the way he’d come.

A third girl in a cinnamon-red dress and gray veil was walking straight toward him, not twenty yards behind, just at the point where the cobbles of the plaza met the bridge embankment. Locke’s stomach performed a flip that would have been the highlight of any court acrobat’s career.

He turned away from the newcomer, trying not to look too startled. Crooked Warden, he’d been stupid not to check the whole area where Sabetha had picked up her first decoy. And now, yes, his eyes weren’t merely playing tricks—the two girls in front of him were slowly, calmly, demurely edging in his direction. He was trapped on a bridge at the center of a collapsing triangle of red dresses. Unless he ran like mad, which would signal to Chains and Sabetha alike that he’d broken character and given up, one of the girls would surely manage to count his buttons.

Sweet gods, Sabetha had outwitted him before he’d even woken up that morning.

“Not done yet,” he muttered, desperately scanning the area for any distraction he could seize. “Not yet, not yet.” His vague frustration had flared up into a sweat-soaked terror of losing—no, not merely losing, but failing by such an astounding degree in his first contest against a girl he would have swallowed hot iron nails to impress. This wouldn’t just embarrass him, it would convince Sabetha that he was a little boy of no account. Forever.

As it happened, it wasn’t fresh and subtle inspiration that saved him—it was his old teaser’s reflexes, the unsociably crude methods he’d used to create street incidents back in his Shades’ Hill days. Barely realizing what he was doing, he flung himself down on his knees against the nearest parapet, with his brass buttons scant inches from the stone. With every ounce of energy he possessed, he pretended to throw up.

“Hooouk,” he coughed, a minor prelude to a disgusting symphony, “hggggk … hoooo-gggghhhhkkk … HNNNNNN-BLAAAAAARGH!” The noises were fine, as convincing as he’d ever conjured, and he pushed hard against the parapet with one shaking arm. That was always a great touch; adults fell hard for it. Those that were repulsed would back off an extra three feet, and those that were sympathetic would all but tremble.

He stole quick glances around while he moaned, shuddered, and retched. Adult passersby were swinging wide around him, in the typical fashion of the rich and busy; there was no profit in attending to someone else’s sick servant or messenger boy. As for his red-dressed nemeses, they had all halted, wavering like veiled apparitions. Approaching him now would be suspicious and dangerous, while standing there like statues would rapidly invite needless attention. Locke wondered what they would do, knowing he had merely succeeded in restoring a stalemate, but that was certainly better than letting their trap snap him up.

“Just keep retching,” he whispered, and did so. As far as plans went, it was perhaps the worst he’d ever conceived, but it now it was up to someone else to make the next move.

“What goes?” A woman’s voice, brimming with authority. “Explain yourself, boy.”

That someone else was, as it turned out, wearing the mustard-colored jacket of the city watch.

“Lost your grip on breakfast, eh?” The guardswoman nudged Locke with the tip of a boot. “Look, just move along and be sick at the end of the bridge.”

“Help me,” whispered Locke.

“Can’t stand on your own?” The woman’s leather fighting harness creaked as she crouched beside him, and her belt-slung baton tapped the ground. “Give it a minute—”

“I’m not really sick!” Locke beckoned to her with one hand, concealing the gesture from everyone else with his body. “Bend down, please. I’m in danger.”

“What the hell are you on about?” She looked wary, but did come closer.

“Don’t react. Don’t hold this up.” In an instant, Locke had his little purse of silver coins, thus far unspent, transferred from his right hand to her left. He pushed the woman’s fingers gently closed over the bag. “That’s ten solons. My master is a rich man. Help me, and he’ll know your name.”

“Gods be gracious,” the woman whispered. Locke knew that bag of silver represented several months of her pay. Would she bend for it? “What’s going on?”

“I’m in danger,” Locke muttered. “I’m being followed. A man wants the messages I carry for my master. Back on the plaza south of here, he tried to grab me twice.”

“I’ll take you to my watch station, then.”

“No, there’s no need. Just get me to the north side of this bridge. Pick me up and carry me, like I’m being arrested. If he sees that, he won’t wait around. He’ll go tell his masters the watch has me, and once we’ve gone a little ways, you can just let me go.”

“Let you go?”

“Sure, just set me down, let me off with a warning, talk to me sternly.”

“That’d look damned irregular.”

“You’re the watch. You can do what you like and nobody’s going to say anything!”

“I still don’t know .…”

“Look, you’re not breaking any law. You’re just lending me a hand.” Locke knew he nearly had her. She had already taken his coin; now it was a matter of notching the promised reward up a bit. “Get me off this bridge and my master will double what I’ve given you. Easily.”

The guardswoman seemed to consider this for a few seconds, then rose from her crouch and seized him by the back of his jacket. “You’re not sick,” she yelled. “You’re just making a gods-damned scene!”

“No, please,” cried Locke, praying that he was, in fact, witnessing a purchased performance and not a sudden change of heart. The guardswoman lifted him, tucked him under her left arm, and marched north. Some of the well-dressed onlookers chuckled, but they all moved out of the way as Locke’s improvised transportation carried him away from the scene of his near-humiliation.

He kicked and struggled to keep up his end of the presumed deception. Some of his squirming was only too real, as the woman’s baton handle kept jabbing him in the ribs, spoiling what was an otherwise surprisingly comfortable ride. At least he was being carried with his all-important buttons facing the guardswoman’s side.

Locke scanned his tilted field of vision and saw, to his delight, that the two red dresses in front of him had darted far to the left and were keeping their distance from him and his temporarily tame yellowjacket. Would Sabetha believe he’d really been seized against his will? Probably not, but now she’d have to sort out a new plan of attack with her accomplices, whoever they were.

His own plans were developing speedily as he pretended to fight back against his captor. Once he’d gotten well ahead of the girls, he could cut off their progress to the final choke point, Goldenreach Bridge. And while his ultimate position there would find him once again outnumbered three to one, at least he would have more time to play spot-the-real-Sabetha.

Kicking, snarling, and shaking his fists, Locke was carried at last down the opposite side of the bridge, onto the northern plaza. Here the real powers of Coin-Kisser’s Row were situated, houses like Meraggio’s and Bonaduretta’s, whose webs of coin and credit reached out across the continent.

“Don’t make me knock your teeth in,” his guardswoman growled down at him as a particularly large group of onlookers moved past. Locke could have applauded her theatrical sense; yellowjacket or not, the woman had good instincts. Now, all they had to do was find a decent spot to set him down, and he was as good as—

“Oh, Constable, Constable, please wait!” Locke heard the soft sound of running feet even before he heard Sabetha’s voice, and he squirmed madly, trying to spot her before she arrived. Too late—she was at the guardswoman’s other side, veil flipped back over her four-cornered hat. She was holding out a small dark pouch in her right hand. “You dropped this, Constable!”

“Dropped what?” The woman turned to face Sabetha, swinging Locke into position to look directly at her. Her cheeks were flushed red and, inexplicably, she was letting her open satchel just hang there. Locke stared open-mouthed at the four tidy little rolls of silk tucked therein—red, green, black, and blue.

“You must be mistaken, girl.”

“Not at all. I saw it myself. I’m sure this is yours.” Sabetha pressed the little pouch into the constable’s free hand, precisely as Locke had just moments earlier, and in so doing she moved closer and lowered her voice. “That’s four solons. Please, please let my little brother go.”

“What?” The constable sounded thoroughly mystified, but Locke noticed that she slipped the pouch into her coat with smooth reflexes. He was beginning to suspect that this yellowjacket had some prior experience with making offerings disappear.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to cause a scene,” said Sabetha, letting a note of desperate worry break into her voice. “He’s not supposed to be out on his own. He’s not quite right in the head.”

“Hey,” said Locke, suddenly realizing that knowledge of the silk colors wouldn’t mean much if he let the situation spin further out of his control. What the hell was Sabetha doing? “Wait just a minute—”

“He’s a total idiot,” Sabetha whispered, squeezing the constable’s free hand. “It’s just not safe for him to be out without an escort! He makes up stories, you see. Please … let me take him home.”

“I don’t … I just … now, look here—”

One or more wheels was clearly about to fly off the previously smooth-running engine of the guardswoman’s thought processes, and Locke cringed. Suddenly a wide, dark shape insinuated itself between Locke’s constable and the cinnamon-red figure of Sabetha, gently pushing the girl aside.

“Ahhhhhhhhh, Madam Constable, I am so utterly delighted to see that you’ve retrieved the two parcels I misplaced,” said Chains. “You are a jewel of efficiency, excellent woman, a gift from the heavens. I beg leave to shake your hand.”

For the third time in the span of a few minutes, a tiny parcel of coins slipped into the palm of the now utterly dumbstruck watchwoman. This exchange was faster and smoother by far than either of those effected by the children; Locke only saw it because he was being held in just the right position to catch a tiny glimpse of something dark nestled in Chains’ hand.

“Um … well, sir, I …”

Chains leaned over and whispered a few quick sentences in her ear. Even before he finished, the woman gently lowered Locke to the ground. Not knowing what else to do, he moved over to stand beside Sabetha, adopting a much-practiced facial expression meant to radiate absolute harmlessness.

“Ahhh,” said the constable. Chains’ new offering joined the previous two inside her coat.

“Indeed,” said Chains, beaming. “Blessings of the Twelve, and fair rains follow you, dear constable. These two will trouble you no further.”

Chains gave a cheery wave (which was just as cheerfully returned by the guardswoman), then turned and pushed Locke and Sabetha toward the east bank of the plaza, where stairs led down to a wide landing for the hiring of passenger boats.

“What happened to your little accomplices?” whispered Chains.

“Told them to get lost when I went after that yellowjacket,” said Sabetha.

“Good. Now, shut up and behave while I get us a boat. We’d best be anywhere but here.”

All of the nearby gondolas were departing or passing by, save for one bobbing at the quay, about to be boarded by a middle-aged man of business who was fishing in a coin purse. Chains stepped smoothly past him and gave the pole-man a peculiar sort of wave.

“I say,” said Chains, “sorry to be late. We’re in such a desperate hurry to reach a friend of a friend, and I just knew that this would be the right sort of boat.”

“The rightest sort of right, sir.” The pole-man was young and skinny, tanned brown as horse droppings, and he wore a sandy-colored beard down to the middle of his stained blue tunic. Charms of silver and ivory were woven into that beard, so many that the man actually chimed as he moved his head about. “Sir, I’m apologetic as hell, but this is the gentleman I’ve been waiting for.”

“Waiting for?” The man looked up from his coin-counting, startled. “But you only just pulled up!”

“Nonetheless, I got a previous engagement, and this is it. Now, I do beg pardon—”

“No, no, this is my boat!”

“It pains me to correct you,” said Chains, rendering his appropriation of the gondola final by ushering Sabetha into it. “Nonetheless, I must point out that the boat is actually the property of the young man with the pole.”

“Which it is, already and unfortunately, at this time engaged,” said that man.

“Why … you brazen, disrespectful little pack of dockside shits! I was here first! Don’t you dare take that boat, boy!”

Locke had been following Sabetha, and the middle-aged man reached down and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. Equally swiftly, Chains backhanded the man so hard that he immediately let go and stumbled back two paces, nearly falling into the canal.

“Touch either of my children again,” said Chains in a tone of voice unlike anything Locke had ever heard, “and I’ll break you into so many f*cking pieces not a whore in the city will ever be able to figure out which wrinkled scrap to suck.”

“Dog,” yelled the man of business, holding a hand up to his bleeding lips. “F*cking scoundrel! I’ll have your name, sir, your name and a place where my man can find you. I’ll have you out for this, just you—”

Chains threw an arm around the man’s neck. Wrenching the unfortunate fellow toward him, Chains whispered harshly into his ear—again, just a few sentences. Chains then shoved him away, and Locke was astonished to see how pale the man’s face had become.

“I … uh, I … understand,” said the man. He seemed to be having difficulty making his voice work properly. “My, uh, apologies, deepest apologies. I’ll just—”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“Quite!”

The man took Chains’ advice, with haste, and Chains helped Locke into the boat. Locke sat on a bench at the bow directly beside Sabetha, feeling a warmth in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the sun when his leg brushed hers. As Chains settled onto the bench in front of the two children, the pole-man nudged the gondola away from the quay stones and out into the calm, slimy water of the canal.

At that moment, Locke was as much in awe of Chains as he was of his proximity to Sabetha. Charming yellowjackets, commandeering boats, and making wealthy men piss themselves—all of that, bribes notwithstanding, with just a few whispered words here and there. Who and what did Chains know? What was his actual place in Capa Barsavi’s hierarchy?

“Where to?” said the pole-man.

“Temple District, Venaportha’s landing,” said Chains.

“What’s your outfit?”

“Gentlemen Bastards.”

“Right, heard of you. Seem to be doing well for yourselves, mixing with the quality.”

“We do well enough. You one of Gap-Tooth’s lads?”

“Spot on, brother. Call ourselves the Clever Enoughs, out of the west Narrows. Some of us have what you’d call gainful employment, spotting likely marks on the canals. Business ain’t but shit lately.”

“Here’s a picture of the duke for a smooth ride.” Chains slapped a gold tyrin down on the bench behind him.

“I’ll drink your health tonight, friend, no f*ckin’ lie.”

Chains let the pole-man get on with his work, and turned back to Locke and Sabetha, leaning close to them. He folded his hands and said quietly, “Now, what the hell did I just see on Coin-Kisser’s Row? Can either of you translate the f*ck-wittery into some sort of vaguely logical account?”

“He’s got six buttons,” said Sabetha.

“Redgreenblackblue,” spat Locke.

“Oh no,” said Chains. “Contest’s over. I declare a tie. No slithering to victory on a technicality.”

“Well, I had to try,” said Sabetha.

“That might have been the lesson,” muttered Locke.

“It’s not over until it’s really, really over,” said Sabetha. “Or something. You know.”

“My prize students,” sighed Chains. “Sometimes a contest to chase one another up and down a crowded plaza really is just a contest to chase one another up and down a crowded plaza. Let’s start with you, Locke. What was your plan?”

“Uhhh …”

“You know, believe it or not, ‘the gods will provide’ is not a f*cking plan, lad. You’ve got one hell of a talent for improvisation, but when that lets you down it lets you down hard. You’ve got to have a next move in mind, like in Catch-the-Duke. Remember how you managed that affair with the corpse? I know you can do better than you just did.”

“But—”

“Sabetha’s turn. Near as I could tell, you had him. You were the one in the rear, the one that came out after he chased the first two north, right?”

“Yeah,” said Sabetha, warily.

“Where’d you get the decoys?”

“Girls I used to know in Windows. They’re seconds in a couple of the bigger gangs now. We lifted the dresses and went over the plan last night.”

“Ah,” said Chains. “There’s that charming notion I was just discussing, Locke. A stratagem. What did your friends have in their bags?”

“Colored wool,” said Sabetha. “Best we could do.”

“Not bad. Yet all you could manage was a tie with young Master Planless here. You had him in a fine bind, and then … what, exactly?”

“Well, he pretended to be sick. Then that yellowjacket came along and collared him, and I … I thought it was more important than anything else to go after him and get him loose.”

“Get me loose?” Locke sputtered in surprise. “What do you mean, get me loose? I passed that woman ten solons to get her to pick me up and carry me north!”

“I thought she’d grabbed you for real!” Sabetha’s soft brown eyes darkened, and the color rose in her cheeks. “You little ass, I thought I was rescuing you!”

“But … why?”

“There was nothing on the ground when I followed behind you!” Sabetha pulled her hat and veil off, and angrily yanked out the lacquered pins in her hair. “I didn’t see any sick-up on the bridge, so I thought that had tipped the yellowjacket to the fact that you were bullshitting!”

“You thought I got collared for real because I threw up wrong?”

“I know what sort of mess you could make back when you were a street teaser.” Sabetha shook her hair out—alchemically adjusted or not, it was a sight that made Locke’s heart punch the front of his rib cage. “I didn’t see any mess like that, so I assumed you got pinched! I gave that woman all the money I had left!”

“Look, I might have … I might have stuck my finger down my throat when I was little, but … I’m not gonna do that all the time!”

“That’s not the point!” Sabetha folded her arms and looked away. They were moving east now, across the long curving canal north of the Videnza, and in the distance beyond Sabetha Locke could see the dark, blocky shape of the Palace of Patience rising above slate roofs. “You knew you were losing, you had no plan, so you pitched a fit and made a mess of everything! You weren’t even trying to win; you were just sloppy. And I was sloppy to fall for it!”

“I was afraid this might happen, sooner or later,” said Chains in a musing tone of voice. “I’ve been thinking that we need a more elaborate sort of sign language, more than what we flash back and forth with the other Right People. Some sort of private code, so we can keep one another on the same page when we’re running a scheme.”

“No, Sabetha, look,” said Locke, hardly hearing Chains. “You weren’t sloppy, you were brilliant, you deserved to win—”

“That’s right,” she said. “But you didn’t lose, so I didn’t win.”

“Look, I concede. I give it to you. I’ll do all your kitchen chores for three days, just like—”

“I don’t want a damned concession! I won’t take your pity as a coin.”

“It’s not … it’s not pity, honest! I just … you thought you were really rescuing me, I owe you! I want your chores, it would be a pleasure. It would be my, my privilege.”

She didn’t turn back toward him, but she stared at him out of the corner of her eye for a long, silent moment. Chains said nothing; he had gone still as a stone.

“Sloppy idiot,” Sabetha muttered at last. “You’re trying to be charming. Well, I do not choose to be charmed by you, Locke Lamora.”

She shuffled herself on the bench and gripped the gunwale of the gondola with both hands, so that her back was completely toward him.

“Not today, at any rate,” she said softly.

Sabetha’s anger stung Locke like a swallowed wasp, but that pain was subsumed by a warmer, more powerful sensation that seemed to swell his skull until he was sure it was about to crack like an egg.

For all her seeming indifference, for all her impenetrability and frustration, she’d cared enough about him to throw the contest aside the instant she’d thought he was in real danger.

Across the rest of that seemingly endless, miserably hot summer of the seventy-seventh Year of Perelandro, he clung to that realization like a talisman.
INTERSECT (I)


FUEL

IN THE NO-TIME no-space of thought, conspiracy could have no witnesses. The old man’s mind reached out across one hundred and twenty miles of air and water. Child’s play for the wearer of four rings. His counterpart answered immediately.

It’s done, then?

The Camorri have accepted her terms. As I told you they would.

We never doubted. It’s not as though she wants for persuasiveness.

We’re moving now.

Is Lamora that ill?

The Archedama put this off too long. A genuine mistake.

And not her first. If Lamora dies?

Your exemplar would crush Tannen alone. He’s formidable, but he already carries a weight of mourning.

Could you not … assist Lamora to an early exit?

I told you I won’t go that far. Not right under her eyes! My life still means something to me.

Of course, brother. It was an unworthy suggestion. Forgive me.

Besides, she didn’t choose Lamora just to boil your blood. There’s something about him you don’t understand yet.

Why are you dropping hints instead of information?

I can’t risk letting this loose. Not this. Be assured, this is deeper than the five-year game, and Patience means for you to know it all soon enough.

Now THAT worries me.

It shouldn’t. Just play the game. If we manage to save Lamora, your exemplar will have a busy six weeks.

Our reception is already prepared.

Good. Look after yourself, then. We’ll be in Karthain tomorrow, whatever happens.

From start to finish, the conversation spanned three heartbeats.