The Republic of Thieves #1

Chapter THREE


BLOOD AND BREATH AND WATER

1

THE SKY ABOVE the harbor of Lashain was capped with writhing clouds the color of coal slime, sealing off any speck of light from stars or moons. Jean remained at Locke’s side as Patience’s attendants carried his cot down from the carriage and through the soft spattering rain, toward the docks and a dozen anchored ships whose yards creaked and swayed in the wind.

While there were Lashani guards and functionaries of various sorts milling about, none of them seemed to want anything to do with the business of the procession around Locke. They carried him to the edge of a stone pier, where a longboat waited with a red lamp hung at its bow.

Patience’s attendants set the cot down across the middle of several rowing benches, then took up oars. Jean sat at Locke’s feet, while Patience settled alone at the bow. Beyond her Jean could see low black waves like shudders in the water. To Jean, who had grown accustomed to the smell of salt water and its residues, there seemed something strangely lacking in the fresher odors of the Amathel.

Their destination was a brig floating a few hundred yards out, at the northern mouth of the harbor. Its stern lanterns cast a silvery light across the name painted above its great cabin windows, Sky-Reacher. From what Jean could see of her she looked like a newer vessel. As they came under her lee Jean saw men and women rigging a crane with a sling at the ship’s waist.

“Ahhh,” said Locke weakly. “The indignity. Patience, can’t you just float me up there or something?”

“I could bend my will to a lot of mundane tricks.” She glanced back without smiling. “I think you’d rather have me rested for what’s going to happen.”

The crane’s harness was a simple loop of reinforced leather, with a few strands of rope hanging loose. Using these, Jean lashed Locke into the harness, then waved to the people above. Hanging like a puppet, Locke rose out of the boat, knocked against the side of the brig once or twice, and was hauled safely into the ship’s waist by several pairs of hands.

Jean pulled himself up the boarding net and arrived on deck as Locke was being untied. Jean nudged Patience’s people aside, pulled Locke out of the harness himself, and held him up while the harness went back down for Patience. Jean took a moment to examine the Sky-Reacher.

His first impressions from the water were reinforced. She was a young ship, sweet-smelling and tautly rigged. But he saw very few people on deck—just four, all working the crane. Also, it was an unnaturally silent vessel. The noises of wind and water and wood were all there, but the human elements, the scuttling and coughing and murmuring and snoring belowdecks, were missing.

“Thank you,” said Patience as the harness brought her up to the deck. She stepped lightly out of the leather loop and patted Locke on the shoulder. “Easy part’s done. We’ll be down to business soon.”

Her attendants came up the side, unpacked the folding cot once more, and helped Jean settle Locke into it.

“Make for open water,” said Patience. “Take our guests to the great cabin.”

“The boat, Archedama?” The speaker was a stout gray-bearded man wearing an oilcloak with the hood down, evidently content to let the rain slide off his bald head. His right eye socket was a disquieting mass of scar tissue and shadowed hollow.

“Leave it,” said Patience. “I’ve cut things rather fine.”

“Far be it from me to remind the Archedama that I suggested as much last night, and the night—”

“Yes, Coldmarrow,” said Patience, “far be it from you.”

“Your most voluntary abject, madam.” The man turned, cleared his throat, and bellowed, “Put us out! North-northeast, keep her steady!”

“North-northeast, keep her steady, aye,” said a bored-sounding woman who detached herself from the group breaking down the crane.

“Are we going to take on more crew?” said Jean.

“What ever for?” said Patience.

“Well, it’s just … the wind’s out of the north-northeast. You’re going to be tacking like mad to make headway, and as near as I can see, you’ve only got seven or eight people to work the ship. That’s barely enough to mind her in harbor—”

“Tacking,” said the man called Coldmarrow, “what a quaint notion. Help us get your friend into the stern cabin, Camorri.”

Jean did so. Sky-Reacher’s aft compartment wasn’t flush with the main deck; Locke had to be carried down a narrow passage with treacherous steps. Whatever the ship had been constructed for, it wasn’t the easy movement of invalids.

The cabin was about the same size as the one Locke and Jean had possessed on the Red Messenger, but far less cluttered—no weapons hung on the bulkheads, no charts or clothes were strewn about, no cushions or hammocks. A table formed from planks laid over sea-chests was in the center of the room, lit by soft yellow lanterns. The shutters were thrown tight over the stern windows. Most strikingly, the place had a deeply unlived-in smell, an aroma of cinnamon and cedar oils and other things people threw into wardrobes to drive out staleness.

While Jean helped Locke onto the table, Coldmarrow somehow produced a blanket of thin gray wool and handed it over. Jean wiped the rain from Locke’s face, then covered him up.

“Better,” whispered Locke, “moderately, mildly, wretchedly better. And … what the—”

A small dark shape detached itself from the shadows in a corner of the cabin, padded forward, and leapt up onto Locke’s chest.

“Gods, Jean, I’m hallucinating,” said Locke. “I’m actually hallucinating.”

“No, you’re not.” Jean stroked the silky black cat that was supposed to be long gone from their lives. Regal was exactly as Jean remembered, down to the white spot at his throat. “I see the little bastard too.”

“He can’t be here,” muttered Locke. The cat circled his head, purring loudly. “It’s impossible.”

“What a myopic view you have on the splendors of coincidence,” said Patience, coming down the steps. “It was one of my agents that purchased your old yacht. It lay briefly alongside the Sky-Reacher a few weeks ago, and this little miscreant took the opportunity to change residences.”

“I don’t get it,” said Locke, gently tugging at the scruff of Regal’s neck. “I never even liked cats all that much.”

“Surely you realize,” said Patience, “that cats are no great respecters of human opinion.”

“Kin to Bondsmagi, perhaps?” said Jean. “So what do we do now?”

“Now,” said Patience, “we speak plainly. What’s going to happen, Jean, will be hard for you to watch. Possibly too hard. Some … ungifted cannot bear close proximity to our workings. If you wish to go into the middle deck, you’ll find hammocks and other accommodations—”

“I’m staying,” said Jean. “For the whole damn thing. That’s not negotiable.”

“Be resolved, then, but hear me. No matter what happens, or seems to happen, you cannot interfere. You cannot interrupt. It could be fatal, and not just for Locke.”

“I’ll behave,” said Jean. “I’ll bite my damn knuckles off if I have to.”

“Forgive me for reminding you that I know the nature of your temper—”

“Look,” said Jean, “if I get out of hand, just speak my gods-damned name and make me calm down. I know you can do it.”

“It may come to that,” said Patience. “So long as you know what to expect if you cause trouble. Speaking of which, remove our little friend and take him forward.”

“Off you go, kid.” Jean plucked Regal up before the cat realized he’d been targeted for transportation. The smooth bundle of fur yawned and nestled into the crook of Jean’s right elbow.

Jean carried his passenger to the main deck, where he was surprised to find the vessel already moving under topsails, although he’d heard no shouting or struggling from above to get them down. He ran up the stairs leading to the quarterdeck, from which he could see the rain-blurred lights of Lashain already dwindling behind the dark shapes bobbing in her harbor. The boat they’d abandoned was barely visible, a tiny silhouetted slat on the waves.

The woman who’d been at the crane was now at the helm, just abaft the mainmast where it marked the forward boundary of the quarterdeck. Her face was only half-visible within the hood of her cloak, but she seemed lost in thought, and Jean was startled to see that she wasn’t actually touching the wheel. Her left hand was raised and slightly cupped, and from time to time she would spread her fingers and move it forward, as though pushing some unseen object.

Lightning broke overhead, and by the sudden flash Jean could see the other members of the crew scattered across the deck, also cloaked and hooded, standing at silent attention with their hands similarly raised.

As thunder rolled across the Amathel, Jean walked over to stand beside the woman at the wheel.

“Excuse me,” he said, “can you talk? What’s our current heading?”

“North … northeast,” said the woman dreamily, not moving to face him when she spoke. “Straight on for Karthain.”

“But that’s dead into the wind!”

“We’re using … a private wind.”

“F*ck me sideways,” Jean muttered. “I, uh, I need somewhere to stow this cat.”

“Main deck hatch … to the middle hold.”

Jean carried his fuzzy comrade to the ship’s waist and found an access hatch, which he slid open. A narrow ladder led six or seven feet down to a dimly lit space, where Jean could see straw on the floor and pallets of some soft material.

“Perelandro’s balls, little guy,” whispered Jean, “what ever gave me the idea I could get the best of people who make their own f*cking weather?”

“Mrrrrwwwww,” said the cat.

“You’re right. I am desperate. And stupid.” Jean let Regal go, and the cat landed lightly on a pallet in the semi-darkness below. “Keep your head down, puss. I think shit’s about to break weird all over the place.”

2

“CLOSE THE door firmly,” said Coldmarrow when Jean returned.

“Bolt it?”

“No. Just keep the weather out where it belongs.”

Patience was pouring pale yellow liquid from a leather skin into a clay cup as Jean came down the steps.

“Well, Jean,” said Locke, “if nothing else, at least I get a drink before I go.”

“What’s that?” said Jean.

“Several somethings for the pain,” said Patience.

“So Locke’s going to sleep through this?”

“Oh no,” said Patience. “No, he won’t be able to sleep an instant, I’m afraid.”

She held the cup to Locke’s lips, and with her assistance he managed to gulp the contents down.

“Agggggh,” he said, shaking his head. “Tastes like a dead fishmonger’s piss, siphoned out of his guts a week after the funeral.”

“It is a rather functional concoction,” allowed Patience. “Now relax. You’ll feel it take hold swiftly.”

“Ohhh,” sighed Locke, “you’re not wrong.”

Coldmarrow set a bucket of water beside the table. He then pulled Locke’s tunic off, exposing the pale skin and old scars of his upper body. It was obvious that vigor had fled from every slack strand of muscle. Coldmarrow dampened a cloth and carefully cleaned Locke’s chest, arms, and face. Patience folded and resettled the gray blanket over his lower half.

“Now,” said Patience, “certain requirements.” She retrieved an ornamented witchwood box from a corner of the cabin. At a wave from her hand, it unlocked itself and slid open, revealing several nested trays of small objects, rather like a physiker’s kit.

Patience took a slim silver knife out of the box. With this, she sliced off several lengths of Locke’s damp hair, and placed them in a clay bowl held out by Coldmarrow. As the bearded man moved, his sleeves fell back far enough for Jean to see that he had four rings on his left wrist.

“Just a few deductions,” said Patience. “The outermost flourishes. Surely he could use the trimming.”

Coldmarrow held another bowl under Locke’s right hand as Patience whittled slivers from his nails. Locke murmured, rolled his head back, and sighed.

“Blood, too,” said Patience, “what little he can spare.” She pricked two of Locke’s fingers with the blade, eliciting no response from him. Jean, however, grew more and more anxious as Coldmarrow collected red drops in a third bowl.

“I hope you’re not planning to keep any of that, after this … thing is finished,” said Jean.

“Jean, please,” said Patience. “He’ll be lucky to be alive after this thing is finished.”

“We won’t do anything untoward,” said Coldmarrow. “Your friend is a valuable asset.”

“Is he now?” growled Jean. “An asset? An asset’s something you can put on a shelf or write down on a ledger, you spooky bastard. Don’t talk about him like—”

“Jean,” said Patience sharply. “Command yourself or be commanded.”

“Hey, I’m calm. Placid as pipe-smoke,” said Jean, folding his arms. “Just look at how placid I can be. What’s that you’re doing now?”

“The last thing I need,” said Patience, “is a wisp of breath.” She held a ceramic jar at Locke’s mouth for some time, then capped it and set it aside.

“Fascinating, I’m sure,” said Locke groggily. “Now get this shit out of me.”

“I can’t just will it so,” said Patience. “Life is far more easily destroyed than mended. Magic doesn’t change that. In fact, you shouldn’t think of this as a healing at all.”

“Well, what the hell is it?” said Jean.

“Misdirection,” said Patience. “Imagine the poison as a spark smoldering in wood. If the spark becomes flame, Locke dies. We need to make it expend itself somewhere else, destroy something else. Once that power is drawn from it, the spark goes out.”

Jean watched uneasily for the next quarter of an hour as Patience and Coldmarrow used a strange-smelling black ink to paint an intricate network of lines across Locke’s face and arms and chest. Although Locke muttered from time to time, he didn’t appear to be in any greater discomfort than before.

While the ink dried, Coldmarrow fetched a tall iron candelabrum, which he set between the table and the shuttered stern windows. Patience produced three white candles from her box.

“Wax tapers, made in Camorr,” she said. “Along with an iron candle-stand, also from Camorr. All of it stolen, to establish a more powerful sympathy with your unfortunate friend.”

She rolled one candle back and forth in her hands, and its surface blurred and shimmered. Coldmarrow used Patience’s silver knife to transfer Locke’s blood and hair and nail-trimmings to the surface of the wax. There, rather than running messily down the sides as Jean would have expected, the “certain requirements” vanished smoothly into the candle.

“Effigy, I name you,” said Patience. “Blood-bearer, I create you. Shadow of a soul, deceiving vessel, I give you the flesh of a living man and not his heart-name. You are him, and not him.”

She placed the taper in the candelabrum. Then she and Coldmarrow repeated the process exactly with the two remaining candles.

“Now,” said Patience softly, “you must be still.”

“I’m not exactly f*ckin’ dancing,” said Locke.

Coldmarrow picked up a coil of rope. He and Patience used this to bind Locke to the table by a dozen loops of cord between his waist and his ankles.

“One thing,” said Locke as they finished. “Before you begin, I’d like a moment alone with Jean. We’re … adherents of a god you might not want to be associated with.”

“We can respect your mysteries,” said Patience. “But don’t dawdle, and don’t disturb any of the preparations.”

She and Coldmarrow withdrew from the cabin, closing the door behind them, and Jean knelt at Locke’s side.

“That slop Patience gave me made things fuzzy for a moment, but I think I’ve got some wits back,” said Locke, “So—have I ever looked more ridiculous?”

“Have you ever looked not ridiculous?”

“F*ck you,” said Locke, smiling. “That end-likt-ge-whatever—”

“Endliktgelaben.”

“Yeah, that Endliktgelaben shit you brought up … were you just trying to piss me off, or were you serious?”

“Well … I was trying to piss you off.” Jean grimaced. “But did I mean it? I suppose. Am I right about it? I don’t know. I really hope not. But you are one gods-damned miserable brat when you decide to feel guilty about everything. I’d like that read into the record.”

“I have to tell you, Jean … I don’t really want to die. Maybe that makes me some kind of chickenshit. I meant what I said about the magi; I’d sooner piss in their faces than take gold from their hands, but all the same, I don’t want to die … I don’t!”

“Easy there,” said Jean. “Easy. All you have to do to prove it is not die.”

“Give me your left hand.”

The two of them touched hands, palm to palm. Locke cleared his throat.

“Crooked Warden,” he said, “Unnamed Thirteenth, your servant calls. I know I’m a man of so many faults that listing them here would only detain us.” Locke coughed and wiped fresh blood from his mouth. “But I meant what I said … I don’t want to die, not without a real fight, not like this. So if you could just find it in your heart to tip that scale for me one more time— Hell, if not for me, do it for Jean. Maybe his credit’s better than mine.”

“This we pray with hopeful hearts,” said Jean. He rose to his feet again. “Still scared?”

“Shitless.”

“Less chance you’ll make a mess on the table, then.”

“Bastard.” Locke closed his eyes. “Call them back. Let’s get on with this.”

3

JEAN WATCHED, moments later, as Patience and Coldmarrow took up positions on either side of Locke.

“Unlock the dreamsteel,” said Patience.

Coldmarrow reached down the front of his tunic and pulled out a silvery pendant on a chain. At his whisper of command, pendant and chain alike turned to brightly rippling liquid, which ran in a stream down his fingers, coalescing in a ball that quivered in his cupped hand.

“Quicksilver?” said Jean.

“Hardly,” said Patience. “Quicksilver poisons the wits of those who handle it. Dreamsteel is something of ours. It shapes itself to our thoughts, and it’s harmless as water … mostly.”

The magi spread their arms over the table. Slender threads of dreamsteel sprouted from the shimmering mass in Coldmarrow’s hand and slid forward, falling through the gaps between his fingers. They landed on Locke’s chest, not with careless splashing but with uncanny solidity. Though the stuff ran like water, the flow was slow and dreamlike.

The thin silvery streams conformed to the black lines painted across Locke’s upper body. Steadily, sinuously, the threads of liquid metal crept across the design, into every curve and whorl. When at last the delicate work was complete and the final speck of dreamsteel fell from Coldmarrow’s hand, every line on Locke’s skin had been precisely covered with a minuscule layer of rippling silver.

“This will feel rather strange,” said Patience.

She and Coldmarrow clenched their fists, and instantly the complex tracery of dreamsteel leapt up in a thousand places, exploding off Locke’s skin. Locke arched his back, only to be pressed gently back down by the hands of the magi. The dreamsteel settled as a forest of needles.

Like the victim of a mauling by some metallic porcupine, Locke now had countless hair-thin silver shafts embedded bloodlessly in his skin, running along the painted lines.

“Cold,” said Locke. “’That’s awfully damn cold!”

“The dreamsteel is where it needs to be,” said Patience. She picked up the jar she had used to catch Locke’s exhaled breath and approached the candelabrum.

“Effigy, I kindle you,” she said, opening the jar and wafting it past the three candles. “Breath-sharer, I give you the wind of a living man but not his heart-name. You are him, and not him.”

She gestured with her right hand, and the wicks of the three candles burst into flickering white flame.

She then resumed her place at Locke’s side. She and Coldmarrow put their right hands together, fingertip to fingertip, over Locke’s chest. The silver thread that Patience had used earlier reappeared, and by deft movements Jean could barely follow the two magi bound their hands together in a cat’s cradle. Jean shuddered, remembering that the Falconer had wielded a silver thread of his own.

Patience and Coldmarrow then placed their free hands on Locke’s arms.

“Whatever happens now, Locke,” said Patience, “remember your shame and anger. Stay angry with me, if you must. Hate me and my son and all the magi of Karthain with everything you’ve got, or you won’t live to get up off this table.”

“Quit trying to scare me,” said Locke. “I’ll see you when this is over.”

“Crooked Warden,” murmured Jean to himself, “you’ve heard Locke’s plea, now hear mine. Gandolo, Wealth-Father, I was born to merchants and beg to be remembered. Venaportha, Lady With Two Faces, surely you’ve had some fun with us before. Give us a smile now. Perelandro, forgiving and merciful, we might not have served you truly, but we put your name on every set of lips in Camorr.

“Aza Guilla,” he whispered, feeling a nervous trickle of sweat slide down his forehead, “Lady Most Kind, I peeked up your skirts a little, but you know my heart was in the right place. Please have urgent business elsewhere tonight.”

There was an itch at the back of Jean’s neck; the same eerie sensation he had felt before in the presence of the Falconer, and when the magi had tormented him and Locke in the Night Market of Tal Verrar. Patience and Coldmarrow were deep in concentration.

“Ah,” gasped Locke. “Ah!”

A metallic taste grew in Jean’s mouth, and he gagged, only to discover that his throat had gone dry. The top of his mouth felt as raspy as paper. What had happened to his spit?”

“Hells,” said Locke, arching his back. “Oh, this is … this is worse than cold .…”

The timbers of the cabin bulkheads creaked, as though the ship were being tossed about, though all of Jean’s senses told him the Sky-Reacher was plodding along as slowly and smoothly as ever. Then the rattling began, faintly at first, but soon the yellow alchemical lanterns were shaking and the shadows in the room wobbled.

Locke moaned. Patience and Coldmarrow leaned forward, keeping his arms pinned, while their joined hands intricately wove and unwove the silver thread. The sight would have been mesmerizing in calm circumstances, but Jean was far from calm. His stomach roiled as though he had eaten rotten oysters and they were clamoring for release.

“Dammit,” Jean whispered, and bit on his knuckles just as he’d promised. The pain helped drive back the rising tide of nausea, but the atmosphere of the room was growing stranger. The lanterns rattled now like kettles on a high boil, and the white flames of the candles flared and danced to an unfelt breeze.

Locke moaned again, louder than before, and the thousand silvery points of light embedded in his upper body made eerie art as he strained at his ropes.

There was a sizzling sound, then a whip-like crack. The alchemical lanterns shattered, spraying glass across the cabin along with puffs of sulfurous-smelling vapor. Jean flinched, and the Bondsmagi reeled as lantern fragments rattled onto the floor around them.

“I’ve been poisoned a lot,” muttered Locke, for no apparent reason.

“Help,” hissed Coldmarrow in a strained voice.

“How? What do you need?” Jean was caught in another shuddering wave of nausea, and he clung to a bulkhead.

“Not … you.”

The cabin door burst open. One of the attendants who had carried Locke on the cot stomped down the stairs, discarding his wet cloak as he came. He put his hands against Coldmarrow’s back and settled his feet as though bracing the old man against a physical force. Shadows reeled wildly around the cabin as the candle flames whirled, and Jean’s nausea grew; he went down to his knees.

There was an uncanny vibration in the air, in the deck, in the bulkheads, in Jean’s bones. It felt as though he were leaning against a massive clockwork machine with all of its gears turning. Behind his eyes, the vibration grew past annoyance to pain. Jean imagined a maddened insect trapped inside his skull, biting and scrabbling and beating its wings against whatever it found in there. That was too much; bludgeoned by awful sensations, he tilted his head forward and threw up on the deck.

A thin dark line appeared beside the vomit as he finished—blood from his nose. He coughed out a string of profanities along with the acidic taste of his last meal, and though he couldn’t find the strength to heave himself to his feet, he did manage to tilt his head back far enough to see what happened next.

“This is your death, effigy. You are him,” cried Patience, her voice cracking, “and not him!”

There was a sound like marrow bones cracking, and the three candle flames surged into conflagrations large enough to swallow Jean’s hands. Then the flames turned black—black as the depths of night, an unnatural hue that caused actual pain to behold. Jean flinched away from the sight, his eyes gushing hot tears. The light of the black fires was pallid gray, and it washed the cabin with the tint of stagnant graveyard water.

Another shudder passed through the timbers of the ship, and the young Bondsmage at Coldmarrow’s back suddenly reeled away from the table, blood pouring from his nose. As he toppled, the woman who’d been on the quarterdeck came through the door, hands up to shield her eyes from the unearthly glare. She stumbled against a bulkhead but kept her feet, and began to chant rapidly in a harsh unknown language.

Who the hell is steering the ship? thought Jean, as the sickly gray light pulsed with a speed to match his own heartbeat and the very air seemed to thicken with a fever heat.

“Take this death. You are him,” gasped Coldmarrow, “and not him! This death is yours!”

There was a sound like nails on slate, and then Locke’s moans turned to screams—the loudest, longest screams Jean had ever heard.

4

PAIN WAS nothing new to Locke, but pain was an inadequate term for what happened when the two Bondsmagi pressed him down and squeezed him between their sorceries.

The room around him became a whirl of confusion—white light, rippling air. His eyes blurred with tears until even the faces of Patience and Coldmarrow bled at the edges like melting wax. Something shattered, and hot needles stung his scalp and forehead. He saw a strange swirl of yellow vapors, then gasped and moaned as the silver needles in his upper body suddenly came alive with heat, driving away all concern for his surroundings. It felt like a thousand coal-red flecks of ash were being driven into his pores.

Stabbed, he thought, clenching his teeth and swallowing a scream. This is nothing. I’ve been stabbed before. Stabbed in the shoulder. In the wrist. In the arm. Cut, smashed, clubbed, kicked … drowned … nearly drowned. Poisoned.

He cast his memory back across the long catalog of injuries, realizing with some deeper and still vaguely sensible part of his mind that counting inflictions of pain to take his mind off the infliction of pain was both very stupid and very funny.

“I’ve been poisoned a lot,” he said to himself, shuddering in a paroxysm born of the struggle between laughter and the hot-needle pain.

There was noise after that, the voices of the Bondsmagi, and Jean—then creaking, moaning, slamming, banging. It all went hazy while Locke fought for self-control. Then, after an unguessable interval, a voice penetrated his misery at last, and was more than a voice. It was a thought, shaped by Patience, whose touch he now instinctively recognized in the word-shapes that thrust themselves to the center of his awareness:

“You are him … and not him!”

Beneath the hornet-stings of the dreamsteel needles, something moved inside Locke, some pressure in his guts. The quality of the light and the air around him changed; the white glow of the candles turned black. Like a snake, the force inside him uncoiled and slid upward, under his ribs, behind his lungs, against his pulsating heart.

“F-f*ck,” he tried to say, so profoundly disquieted that no air moved past his lips. Then the thing inside him surged, frothed, ate—like tar heated instantly to a boil, scalding the surface of every organ and cavity between his nose and his groin. All of those never-thought-of crevices of the body, suddenly alive in his mind, and suddenly limned in pure volcanic agony.

Stop oh please oh please stop just let the pain end, he thought, so far gone that his previous resolution was forgotten beneath sheer animal pleading. Stop the pain stop the pain—

“You are him … and not him!” The thought-voice was a weak echo above the cresting tide of internal fire. Coldmarrow? Patience? Locke could no longer tell. His arms and legs were numb, dissolving into meaningless sensory fog beyond the hot core of his agony. The Bondsmagi and everything beyond them faded into haze. The table seemed to fall away beneath him; blackness rose like the coming of sleep. His eyelids fluttered shut, and at last the blessed numbness spread to his stomach and chest and arms, smothering the hell that had erupted there.

Let that be it. I don’t want to die, but gods, just let that be the last of the pain.

The outside world had gone silent, but there was still some noise in the darkness—his own noise. The faint throb of a heartbeat. The dry shudder of breath. Surely, if he were dead, all that business would have ended. There was a pressure on his chest. A sensation of weight—someone was pushing down on his heart, and the touch felt cold. Surprised at the amount of will it required, Locke forced his eyes partly open.

The hand above his heart was Bug’s, and the eyes staring down from the dead boy’s face were solid black.

“There is no last of the pain,” said Bug. “It always hurts. Always.”

Locke opened his mouth to scream, but no sound moved past his lips—just a barely perceptible dry hissing. He strained to move, but his limbs were lead. Even his neck refused to obey his commands.

This can’t be real, Locke tried to say, and the unspoken words echoed in his head.

“What’s real?” Bug’s skin was pale and strangely loose, as though the flesh behind it had collapsed inward. The curls had come out of his hair, and it hung limp and lifeless above his dead black eyes. A crossbow quarrel, crusted with dry blood, was still buried in his throat. The cabin was dark and empty; Bug seemed to be crouching above him, but the only weight Locke could feel was the cold pressure of the hand above his heart.

You’re not really here!

“We’re both here.” Bug fiddled with the quarrel as though it were an annoying neck-cloth. “You know why I’m still around? When you die, your sins are engraved on your eyes. Look closely.”

Unable to help himself, Locke stared up into the awful dark spheres, and saw that their blackness was not quite unbroken. It had a rough and layered quality, as though made up of a countless number of tiny black lines of script, all running together into a solid mass.

“I can’t see the way out of this place,” said Bug softly. “Can’t find the way to what’s next.”

You were twelve f*cking years old. How many sins could you have—

“Sins of omission. Sins of my teachers and my friends.” The chilling weight above Locke’s heart pressed down harder.

That’s bullshit, I know better, I’m a divine of the Crooked Warden!

“How’s that working out for you?” Bug wiped at the trails of blood running down his neck, and the blood came away on his pale fingertips as a brown powder. “Doesn’t seem to have done either of us much good.”

I’m a priest, I’d know how this works, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be! I’m a priest of the Unnamed Thirteenth!

“Well … I could tell you how far you’ll get trusting people when you don’t even know their real name.” Again the pressure on Locke’s chest grew.

I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. It’s just a dream.

“You’re dreaming. You’re dying. Maybe they’re the same thing.” The corners of Bug’s mouth twitched up briefly in a weak attempt at a smile. The sort of smile, thought Locke, that you give someone when you can see they’re in deep shit.

“Well, you’ve made all your decisions. Nothing left for you to do but see which one of us is right.”

Wait, wait, don’t—

The pain in Locke’s chest flared again, spreading sharply outward from his heart, and this time it was cold, deathly cold, an unbearable icy pressure that squeezed him like a vise. Darkness swept in behind it, and Locke’s awareness broke against it like a ship heaved onto rocks.
INTERLUDE


ORPHAN’S MOON

1

THEY LET HIM out of the darkness at last, and cool air touched his skin after an hour of stuffy helplessness.

It had been a rough trip to the site of the ritual, wherever it was. The men carrying him hadn’t had much difficulty with his relatively slight weight, but it seemed they’d gone down many stairs and through narrow, curving passages. Around and around in the dark he’d been hauled, listening to the grunts and whispers of the adults, and to the sound of his own breathing inside the scratchy wool sack that covered his head.

At last that hood was drawn away. Locke blinked in the dimness of a high barrel-vaulted room, faintly lit by pale globes tucked away in sconces. The walls and pillars were stone, and here and there Locke could see decorative paintings flaking with age. Water trickled somewhere nearby, but that was hardly unusual for a structure in lower Camorr. What was significant was that this was a human place, all blocks and mortar, without a shred of visible Elderglass.

Locke was on his back in the middle of the vaulted room, on a low slab. His hands and feet weren’t tied, but his freedom of movement was sharply curtailed when a man knelt and put a knife to his throat. Locke could feel the edge of the blade against his skin, and knew instantly that it was the not-fooling-around sort of edge.

“You are bound and compelled to silence in all ways, at all times, from now until the weighing of your soul, concerning what we do here this night,” said the man.

“I am bound and compelled,” said Locke.

“Who binds and compels you?”

“I bind and compel myself,” said Locke.

“To break this binding is to be condemned to die.”

“I would gladly be condemned for my failure.”

“Who would condemn you?”

“I would condemn myself.” Locke reached up with his right hand and placed it over the man’s knuckles. The stranger withdrew his hand, leaving Locke holding the knife at his own throat.

“Rise, little brother,” said the man.

Locke obeyed, and passed the knife back to the man, a long-haired, muscular garrista Locke knew by sight but not by name. The world Capa Barsavi ruled was a big place.

“Why have you come here tonight?”

“To be a thief among thieves,” said Locke.

“Then learn our sign.” The man held up his left hand, fingers slightly spread, and Locke mirrored the gesture, pressing his palm firmly against the garrista’s. “Left hand to left hand, skin to skin, will tell your brothers and sisters that you do not come holding weapons, that you do not shun their touch, that you do not place yourself above them. Go and wait.”

Locke bowed and moved into the shadow of a pillar. There was enough space, he calculated, for a few hundred people to fit down here. At the moment, there were just a few men and women visible. He’d been brought in early, it seemed, as one of the very first of the postulants to take the oath of secrecy. He watched, feeling the churn of excitement in his stomach, as more boys and girls were carried into the room, stripped of their hoods, and given the treatment he’d received. Calo … Galdo … Jean … one by one they joined him and watched the ongoing procession. Locke’s companions were uncharacteristically silent and serious. In fact, he’d have gone so far as to say that both Sanzas were actually nervous. He didn’t blame them.

The next hood yanked from a postulant’s head revealed Sabetha. Her lovely false-brown curls tumbled out in a cloud, and Locke bit the insides of his cheeks as the knife touched her throat. She took the oaths quickly and calmly, in a voice that had grown a shade huskier in the last season. She spared him a glance as she walked over to join the Gentlemen Bastards, and he hoped for a few seconds that she might choose to stand beside him. However, Calo and Galdo moved apart, offering her a place between them, and she accepted. Locke bit the insides of his cheeks again.

Together, the five of them watched more adults enter and more children about their own age pass under the oath-taking blade. There were some familiar faces in that stream.

First came Tesso Volanti from the Half-Crowns, with his night-black mane of oiled hair. He held Locke’s crew in high esteem despite (or probably because of) the fact that Jean Tannen had given him a thunderous ass-kicking a few summers previously. Then came Fat Saulus and Fatter Saulus from the Falselight Cutters … Whoreson Dominaldo … Amelie the Clutcher, who’d stolen enough to buy an apprenticeship with the Guilded Lilies … a couple boys and girls that must have come out of the Thiefmaker’s burrow around the time Locke had … and then, the very last initiate to have her hood yanked back, Nazca Belonna Jenavais Angeliza Barsavi, youngest child and only daughter of the absolute ruler of Camorr’s underworld.

After Nazca finished reciting her oaths, she removed a pair of optics from a leather pouch and slid them onto her nose. While nobody in their right mind would have laughed at her for doing so, Locke suspected that Nazca would have been unafraid to wear them in public even if she hadn’t been the Capa’s daughter.

Locke could see her older brothers, Pachero and Anjais, standing in the ranks of the older initiates, but her place was with the neophytes. Smiling, she walked over to Locke and gently pushed him out of his spot against the pillar.

“Hello, Lamora,” she whispered. “I need to stand next to an ugly little boy to make myself look better.”

She certainly did not, thought Locke. An inch taller than him, Nazca was much like Sabetha these days, closer to woman than girl. For some reason, she also had a soft spot for the Gentlemen Bastards. Locke had begun to suspect that the “little favors” Father Chains had once done for Capa Barsavi were not as little as he’d let on, and that Nazca was privy to at least some of the story. Not that she ever spoke of it.

“Good to see you here in the cheap seats with us, Nazca,” said Sabetha as she gracefully nudged Jean out of his position behind Locke. Locke’s spine tingled.

“No such thing on a night like this,” said Nazca. “Just thieves among thieves.”

“Women among boys,” said Sabetha with an exaggerated sigh.

“Pearls among swine,” said Nazca, and the two of them giggled. Locke’s cheeks burned.

It was early winter in the seventy-seventh year of Aza Guilla, the month of Marinel, the time of the empty sky. It was the night called the Orphan’s Moon, when Locke and all of his kind became, by ancient Therin custom, one year older.

It was the one night per year on which young thieves were fully initiated into the mysteries of the Crooked Warden, somewhere in the dark and crumbling depths of old Camorr.

It was, by Chains’ best guess, the night of Locke’s thirteenth birthday.

2

THE DAY’S activities had started with the procurement of an appropriate offering.

“Let’s toss the cake on that fellow right there,” said Jean. It was high afternoon, and he and Locke lay in wait in an alley just off the Avenue of Five Saints in the upper-class Fountain Bend district.

“He seems the type,” agreed Locke. He hefted the all-important package into his arms—a cube of flax-paper wrapped around a wooden frame, with a sturdy wooden base, the whole thing about two and a half feet on a side. “Where you coming from?”

“His right.”

“Let’s make his acquaintance.”

They went in opposite directions—Jean directly east onto the avenue, and Locke to the western end of the alley, so he could head north on the parallel Avenue of the Laurels and swing around the long way to intercept the chosen target.

The Fountain Bend was a nest of the quality; one could tell merely by counting the number of servants on the streets, and noting the character of the yellowjackets taking relaxed strolls around the gardens and avenues. Their harnesses were perfectly oiled, their boots shined, their coats and hats unweathered. Postings to an area like this came only to watch-folk with connections, and once they had the posting they took pains to make themselves decorative as well as functional, lest they be reassigned somewhere much livelier.

Winter in Camorr could be pleasant when the sky wasn’t pissing like an old man who’d lost command of his bladder. Today warm sun and cool breeze hit the skin at the same time, and it was easy to forget the thousand and one ways the city had of choking, stifling, reeking, and sweating. Locke hurried north for two blocks, then veered right, onto the Boulevard of the Emerald Footfall. Dressed as he was, in servant’s clothing, it was perfectly acceptable for him to scamper along with his awkward cargo at an undignified pace.

When the boulevard met the Avenue of Five Saints, Locke turned right again and immediately spotted his quarry. Locke had beaten him to the intersection by fifty yards, and so had plenty of time to slow down and get his act sorted. No more rushing about—on this street, he became the picture of caution, a dutiful young servant minding a delicate package at a sensible speed. Forty yards … thirty yards … and there was Jean, coming up behind the target.

At twenty yards, Locke veered slightly, making it clear that there could be no possible collision if he and the stranger continued on their present courses. Ten yards … Jean was nearly at the man’s elbow.

At five yards, Jean bumped into the target from behind, sending him sprawling in just the right direction, with just enough momentum, to smack squarely into Locke’s flax-paper package. Locke ensured that the fragile cube was snapped and crushed instantly, along with the fifteen pounds of spice cake and icing it contained. Much of it hit the cobbles with a sound like meat hitting a butcher’s counter, and the rest of it hit Locke, who artfully fell directly onto his ass.

“Oh gods,” he cried. “You’ve ruined me!”

“Why, I, I’ve—I don’t … damn!” sputtered the target, jumping back from the splattered cake and checking his clothing. He was a well-fed, round-shouldered sort in respectable dress, with a smooth leather ink-guard on his right jacket cuff that told of life lived behind a desk. “I was struck from behind!”

“Indeed you were,” said Jean, who was as well-dressed as the target, and as wide despite a threefold difference in age. Jean was carrying a half-dozen scroll cases. “I stumbled into you entirely by accident, sir, and I apologize. But the two of us together have smashed this poor servant’s cake.”

“Well, the fault is hardly mine.” The target carefully brushed a few stray pieces of icing off his breeches. “I was merely caught in the middle. Come now, boy, come now. It’s nothing to cry about.”

“Oh, but it is, sir,” said Locke, sniffling as artfully as he ever had in his Shades’ Hill days. “My master will have my skin for book-bindings!”

“Chin up, boy. Everyone takes a few lashes now and again. Are your hands clean?” The target held a hand out, grudgingly, and helped Locke back to his feet. “It’s only the merest cake.”

“It’s not just any cake,” sobbed Locke. “It’s my master’s birthday confection, ordered a month in advance. It’s a crown-cake from Zakasta’s. All kinds of alchemy and spices.”

“Zakasta’s,” said Jean with an admirable impression of awe. “Damn! This is awful luck.”

“That’s my pay for a year,” burbled Locke. “I don’t get to claim a man’s wages for two more to come. He’ll have it out of my hide and my pocket.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” said Jean soothingly. “We can’t get you a new cake, but we can at least give your master his crown back.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” The target rounded on Jean. “Who the devil are you to speak for me, boy?”

“Jothar Tathis,” said Jean, “solicitor’s apprentice.”

“Oh? Which solicitor?”

“Mistress Donatella Viricona,” said Jean with the hint of a smile. “Of Meraggio’s.”

“Ahhhh,” said the target, as though Jean had just pointed a loaded crossbow directly at his privates. Mistress Viricona was one of Camorr’s best-known litigators, a woman who served as the voice of several powerful noble families. Anyone who slung parchment for a living was bound to know her legend. “I see … but—”

“We owe this poor boy a crown,” said Jean. “Come, we can split the sum. I might have stumbled into you, but you certainly could have avoided him if you’d been more careful.”

Locke suppressed a grin that would have reached his temples if it hadn’t been checked.

“But—”

“Here, I carry enough as pocket-money.” Jean held out two gold tyrins on his right palm. “Surely it’s no hardship for you, either.”

“But—”

“What are you, a Verrari? Are you that much of a scrub that two tyrins is an imposition for you? If so, at least give me your name so I can let my mistress know who wouldn’t—”

“Fine,” said the man, holding his hands up toward Jean. “Fine! We’ll pay for the damn cake. Half and half.” He passed a pair of gold tyrins over to Locke, and watched as Jean did the same.

“Th-thank you, sirs,” said Locke with a quavering voice. “I’ll catch some hell for this, but not nearly what I would have had coming.”

“It’s only reasonable,” said Jean. “Gods go with you, both of you.”

“Yes, yes,” said the older man, scowling. “Be more careful next time you’re hauling a cake around, boy.” He hurried on his way without another word.

“Guilt is such a beautiful thing,” sighed Locke as he scooped up the toppled mess of the boxed cake—a horrid conglomeration of old flour, sawdust, and white plaster worth about a hundredth of what the unfortunate mark had handed over. “That’s a solid tyrin apiece for tonight.”

“Think Chains will be pleased?”

“Let’s hope it’s the Benefactor that ends up pleased,” said Locke with a grin. “I’ll just clear this mess up and find someplace to dump it so the yellowjackets don’t break my skull. Back home?”

“Yeah, roundabout way,” said Jean. “See you in half an hour.”

3

“SO THEN this fellow backs off like Jean’s started juggling live scorpions,” said Locke, just over half an hour later. “And Jean starts calling him a scrub, and a Verrari, and all kinds of things, and the poor bastard just handed over two gold coins like that.”

Locke snapped his fingers, and the Sanza twins applauded politely. Calo and Galdo sat side by side atop the table in the glass burrow’s kitchen, disdaining the use of anything so commonplace as chairs.

“And that’s your offering?” said Calo. “A tyrin apiece?”

“It’s a fair sum,” said Jean. “And we thought we put some effort into it. Artistic merit and all that.”

“Took us two hours to make the cake,” said Locke. “And you should have seen the acting. We could have been on stage. That man’s heart melted into a puddle, I was so sad and forlorn.”

“So it wasn’t acting at all, then,” said Galdo.

“Polish my dagger for me, Sanza,” said Locke, making an elaborate hand gesture that Camorri only used in public when they absolutely wanted to start a fight.

“Sure, I’ll get the smallest rag in the kitchen while you draw me a map to where it’s been hiding all these years.”

“Oh, be fair,” said Calo. “We can spot it easily enough whenever Sabetha’s in the room!”

“Like now?” said Sabetha as she appeared from around the corner of the burrow’s entrance tunnel.

The fact that Locke didn’t die instantly may be taken as proof that a human male can survive having every last warm drop of blood within his body rush instantly to the vicinity of his cheeks.

Sabetha had been exerting herself. Her face was flushed, several strands of her tightly queued hair had fallen out of place, and the open neckline of her cream-colored tunic revealed a sheen of sweat on her skin. Locke’s eyes would ordinarily have been fixed on her as though connected to the aforementioned tunic by invisible threads, but he pretended that something terribly important had just appeared in the empty far corner of the kitchen.

“And where do you two get off teasing Locke?” said Sabetha. “If either of you have any hair on your stones yet, you’ve been putting it there with a paintbrush.”

“You wound us deeply,” said Calo. “And good taste prevents us from being able to respond in kind.”

“However,” said Galdo, “if you were to ask around certain Guilded Lilies, you’d discover that your—”

“You’ve been visiting the Guilded Lilies?” said Jean.

“Ahhh,” said Calo with a cough, “that is to say, were we to visit the, ah, Guilded Lilies, hypothetically—”

“Hypothetically,” said Galdo. “Excellent word. Hypothetically.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just like you two to make someone else do all the work, isn’t it?” Sabetha rolled her eyes. “So what’s your offering, then?”

“Red wine,” said Calo. “Two dozen bottles. We borrowed them from that half-blind old bastard just off Ropelayer’s Way.”

“I went in dressed like a swell,” said Galdo, “and while I kept him busy around the shop, Calo was in and out the rear window, quiet as a spider.”

“It was too easy,” said Calo. “That poor fellow couldn’t tell a dog’s ass from a douche bucket if you gave him three tries.”

“Anyhow, Chains said they could be used for the toasting after the ceremony,” said Galdo. “Since the point is to get rid of the offerings anyway.”

“Nice,” said Jean, scratching at the faint dark fuzz on his heavy chin. “What have you been up to, Sabetha?”

“Yeah, what’s your offering?” said the twins in unison.

“It’s taken me most of the day,” said Sabetha, “and it hasn’t been easy, but I liked the look of these.” She brought three polished witchwood truncheons out from behind her back. One of them was new, one was moderately dented, and one looked as though it had been used to crack skulls for as long as any of the younger Gentlemen Bastards had been alive.

“Oh, you’re kidding,” said Galdo.

“No, you’re f*cking kidding,” said Calo.

“Your eyes do not deceive you,” said Sabetha, twirling the batons by their straps. “Several of Camorr’s famously vigilant city watchmen have indeed misplaced their convincing sticks.”

“Oh, gods,” said Locke, his guts roiling with a tangled mess of admiration and consternation. His self-satisfaction at squeezing half a crown out of the poor slob in the Fountain Bend vanished. “That’s … that’s a bloody work of art!”

“Why thank you,” said Sabetha, giving a mock bow to the room. “I have to admit, I only got two of them off belts. Third one was lying around in a watch station. I figured I had no business turning down that sort of temptation.”

“But why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?” said Locke. “Chasing the watch on your own—”

“Have you always told everyone else what you’re up to?” said Sabetha.

“But you could have used some top-eyes, or a distraction just in case,” said Locke.

“Well, you were busy. I saw you and Jean baking your little cake.”

“You’re showing off,” said Calo. “Hoping to make an impression?”

“You think there’ll be a choosing,” said Galdo, slyly.

“Chains said there’s a chance every year,” said Sabetha. “Might as well stand out. Haven’t you two ever thought about it?”

“The full priesthood?” Calo stuck out his tongue. “Not our style. Don’t get us wrong, we love the Crooked Warden, but the two of us …”

“Just because we like to drink doesn’t mean we want to run the tavern,” finished Calo.

“What about you, Jean?” said Sabetha.

“Interesting question.” Jean took his optics off and wiped them against a tunic sleeve as he spoke. “I’d be surprised if the Crooked Warden wanted someone like me as a divine. My parents took oath to Gandolo. I like to think I’m welcome where the gods have put me, but I don’t believe I’m meant for anything like a priesthood.”

“And you, Locke?” Sabetha asked quietly.

“I, uh, guess I haven’t really thought about it.” That was a lie. Locke had always been fascinated by the hints Chains dropped about the secretive structure of the Crooked Warden’s priesthood, but he wasn’t sure what Sabetha wanted to hear from him. “I, ah, take it you have?”

“I have.” There was that smile of hers, a smile that was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “I want it. I want to know what Chains smirks about all the time. And I want to win it. I want to be the best—”

She was interrupted by an echoing clang from the entrance tunnel. That could only be Chains returning to the burrow from the various preparations the night would require. He rounded the corner and smiled when he saw them all gathered.

“Good, good,” he muttered. “Sanzas, the wine is being carried in by some people who’ll be less busy than yourselves. Everyone else, I trust you have your offerings?” He looked pleased at the nods he received. Locke caught the twinkle of unusual excitement in his eyes despite the dark circles beneath them. “Excellent. Then let’s have some dinner before we leave.”

“Will we need to dress up or bathe for this?” asked Sabetha.

“Oh no, my dear, no. Ours is a pragmatic sort of temple. Besides, it’s no use in trying to prettify yourselves, since you’re going to have sacks thrown over your heads. Try to act surprised. That’s the only little secret I’ll be giving away in advance.”

4

A HUSH ran through the assembled thieves as several men and women, using a collapsible wooden frame, hung curtains over the door the postulants had been carried through. Other than a few vents in the ceiling, that door was the only entrance to the room Locke could see. Guards took up positions by the curtains—serious bruisers in long leather coats, with cudgels and axes ready. Chains had explained that their purpose was to ensure the privacy of the ritual. Other guards would be out there somewhere, an entire network, lurking along every route an outsider could use to spy upon or disrupt the Orphan’s Moon rites.

There were about ten dozen people in the vault. That was a scant fraction of the people in Camorr whose lives were supposed to be ruled by the god with the hidden name, but that, according to Chains, was the nature of devotion. It was easy to mutter prayers and curses in the heat of the moment, and less convenient to skulk around in the middle of nowhere on the one night a year the dedicated actually came together.

“This is the temple of the church without temples,” said a woman in a hooded gray cloak as she stepped into the middle of the vaulted chamber. “This is the ceremony of the order without ceremonies.”

“Father of our fortunes, we consecrate this hall to your purpose; to be joined to your grace and to receive your mysteries.” This was Chains, his voice rich and resonant. He took his place by the woman’s side, wearing a similar robe. “We are thieves among thieves; our lot is shared. We are keepers of signs and passwords, here without malice or guile.”

“This is our calling and our craft, which you from love have given us.” The third speaker was the garrista who’d sworn the postulants to secrecy, now robed in gray. “Father of Shadows, who teaches us to take what we would dare to take, receive our devotions.”

“You have taught us that good fortune may be seized and shared,” said the female priest.

“Thieves prosper,” chanted the crowd.

“You have taught us the virtue and the necessity of our arts,” said Father Chains.

“The rich remember.”

“You have given us the darkness to be our shield,” said the third priest. “And taught us the blessing of fellowship.”

“We are thieves among thieves.”

“Blessed are the quick and the daring,” said Chains, moving to the front of the hall, where a block of stone had been covered with a black silk drape. “Blessed are the patient and the watchful. Blessed is the one who aids a thief, hides a thief, revenges a thief, and remembers a thief, for they shall inherit the night.”

“Inherit the night,” chanted the crowd solemnly.

“We are gathered in peace, in the eyes of our Benefactor, the Thirteenth Prince of Earth and Heaven, whose name is guarded.” The female priest spoke now, and took a place by Chains’ left hand. “This is the night he claims for his remembrance, the Orphan’s Moon.”

“Are there any among us who would swear a solemn covenant with this temple, and take the oath of joining?” said the third priest.

This was the crucial moment. Any thief, anyone even remotely connected to an unlawful existence, was welcome in this company, so long as they took the oath of secrecy. But those taking the next step, the oath of joining, would proclaim their choice of the Unnamed Thirteenth as their heavenly patron. They would certainly not be turning their backs on the other gods of the Therin pantheon, but to their patron they would owe their deepest prayers and best offerings for as long as they lived. Even children studying to become priests didn’t take formal oaths of joining until their early teens, and many people never took them at all, preferring to cultivate a loose devotion to all gods rather than a more formal obligation to one.

Nazca was the first to step forward, and behind her in a self-conscious rush came everyone else. Once the postulants had arranged themselves with as much dignity as they could manage, Chains held up his hands.

“This decision, once made, cannot be unmade. The gods are jealous of promises and will not suffer this oath to be cast aside. Be therefore sober and solemnly resolved, or stand aside. There is no shame in not being ready at this time.”

None of the postulants backed down. Chains clapped three times, and the sound echoed around the vault.

“Hail the Crooked Warden,” said the three priests in unison.

“STOP!”

A new voice boomed from the back of the chamber, and from behind the crowd of watchers came a trio of men in black robes and masks, followed by a woman in a red dress. They stormed down the aisle in the center of the vault, shoving the postulants aside, and formed a line between them and the altar.

“STOP AT ONCE!” The speaker was a man whose mask was a stylized bronze sun, with carved rays spreading from a sinister, unsmiling face. He seized Oretta, a scar-covered girl with a reputation as a knife fighter, and dragged her forward. “The Sun commands you now! I burn away shadows, banish night, make your sins plain! Honest men rise as I rise, and sleep as I set! I am lord and father of all propriety. Who are you to defy me?”

“A thief among thieves,” said Oretta.

“Take my curse. The night shall be your day, the pale moons your sun.”

“I take your curse as a blessing of my heavenly patron,” said Oretta.

“Does this one speak for you all?”

“She does,” yelled the crowd of postulants. The Sun threw Oretta to the ground, not gently, and turned his back on them all.

“Now hear the words of Justice,” said the woman in the red dress, which was short and slashed. She wore a velvet mask like those used by the duke’s magistrates to conceal their identities. Justice pulled Nazca forward by her shoulders and forced her to kneel. “All things I weigh, but gold counts dearest, and you have none. All names I read, but those with titles please me best, and you descend from common dirt. Who are you to defy me?”

“A thief among thieves,” said Nazca.

“Take my curse. All who serve me shall be vigilant to your faults, blind to your virtues, and deaf to your pleading.”

“I take your curse as a blessing of my heavenly patron,” said Nazca.

“Does this one speak for you all?”

“She does!”

Justice flung Nazca into the crowd and turned her back.

“I am the Hired Man,” said a man in a brown leather mask. A shield and truncheon were slung over the back of his robe. He grabbed Jean. “I bar every door, I guard every wall. I wear the leash of better men. I fill the gutters with your blood to earn my bread. Your cries are my music. Who are you to defy me?”

“A thief among thieves,” said Jean.

“Take my curse. I shall hound you by sun or stars. I shall use you and incite you to betray your brothers and sisters.”

“I take your curse as a blessing of my heavenly patron,” said Jean.

“Do you?” The man shook Jean fiercely. “Does this one speak for you all?”

“He does!”

The Hired Man released Jean, laughed, and turned his back. Locke nudged several other postulants aside to be the first to help Jean back to his feet.

“I am Judgment,” said the last of the newcomers, a man whose black mask was without ornament. He wielded a hangman’s noose. With this, he caught Tesso Volanti around the neck and yanked him forward. The boy grimaced, clutched at the rope, and fought for balance. “Hear me well. I am mercy refused. I am expedience. I am a signature on a piece of parchment. And that is how you die—by clerks, by stamps, by seals in wax. I am cheap, I am easy, I am always hungry. Who are you to defy me?”

“A thief among thieves,” gasped Tesso.

“And will they all hang with you, for fellowship, and split death into equal shares like loot?”

“I am not caught yet,” growled the boy.

“Take my curse. I shall wait for you.”

“I take your curse as a blessing of my heavenly patron,” said Tesso.

“Does this fool speak for you all?”

“He does!”

“You were all born to hang.” The man released Tesso from his noose and turned away. Volanti stumbled backward and was caught by Calo and Galdo.

“Depart, phantoms!” shouted Chains. “Go with empty hands! Tell your masters how slight a dread we bear for thee, and how deep a scorn!”

The four costumed antagonists marched back down the aisle, until they vanished from Locke’s sight somewhere behind the crowd near the chamber door.

“Now face your oath,” said Chains.

The female priest set a leather-bound book on the altar, and the male priest set a metal basin next to it. Chains pointed at Locke. Tense with excitement, Locke stepped up to the altar.

“What are you called?”

“Locke Lamora.”

“Are you a true and willing servant of our thirteenth god, whose name is guarded?”

“I am.”

“Do you consecrate thought, word, and deed to his service, from now until the weighing of your soul?”

“I do.”

“Will you seal this oath with blood?”

“I will seal it with blood on a token of my craft.”

Chains handed Locke a ceremonial blade of blackened steel.

“What is the token?”

“A coin of gold, stolen with my own hands,” said Locke. He used the knife to prick his left thumb, then squeezed blood onto the gold tyrin he’d scored from the cake business. He set the coin in the basin and passed the blade back to Chains.

“This is the law of men,” said Chains, pointing at the leather-bound tome, “which tells you that you must not steal. What is this law to you?”

“Words on paper,” said Locke.

“You renounce and spurn this law?”

“With all my soul.” Locke leaned forward and spat on the book.

“May the shadows know you for their own, brother.” Chains touched a cool, gleaming coin to Locke’s forehead. “I bless you with silver, which is the light of moons and stars.”

“I bless you with the dust of cobblestones, on which you tread,” said the female priest, brushing a streak of grime onto Locke’s right cheek.

“I bless you with the waters of Camorr, which bring the wealth you hope to steal,” said the third priest, touching wet fingers to Locke’s left cheek.

And so it was done—the oath of joining, without a fumble or a missed cadence. Warm with pride, Locke rejoined the other boys and girls, though he stood just a few feet apart from them.

The ritual continued. Nazca next, then Jean, then Tesso, then Sabetha. There was a general murmur of appreciation when she revealed her offering of stolen truncheons. After that, things went smoothly until one of the Sanzas was beckoned forth, and they stepped up to the altar together.

“One at a time, boys,” said Chains.

“We’re doing it together,” said Calo.

“We figure the Crooked Warden wouldn’t want us any other way,” said Calo. The twins joined hands.

“Well then!” Chains grinned. “It’s your problem if he doesn’t, lads. What are you called?”

“Calo Giacomo Petruzzo Sanza.”

“Galdo Castellano Molitani Sanza.”

“Are you true and willing servants of our Thirteenth God, whose name is guarded?”

“We are!”

“Do you consecrate thought, word, and deed to his service, from now until the weighing of your souls?”

“We do!”

Once the Sanzas were finished, the remaining postulants took their oaths without further complication. Chains addressed the assembly while his fellow priests carried away the offering-filled basin. They would give its contents to the dark waters of the Iron Sea later that night.

“One thing, then, remains. The possibility of a choosing. We priests of the Crooked Warden are few in number, and few are called to join our ranks. Consider carefully whether you would offer yourselves for the third and final oath, the oath of service. Let those who would not desire this join their fellows at the sides of the chamber. Let those who would stand for choosing remain where they are.”

The crowd of postulants cleared out rapidly. Some hesitated, but most had looks of perfect contentment on their faces, including Jean and the Sanzas. Locke pondered silently … did he truly want this? Did it feel right? Weren’t there supposed to be signs, omens, some sort of guidance one way or another? Maybe it would be best just to step aside—

He suddenly realized that the only person still standing on the floor beside him was Sabetha.

There was no hesitation in her manner—arms folded, chin slightly up, she stood as though ready to physically fight anyone who questioned her feelings. She was staring sideways at Locke, expectantly.

Was this the sign? What would she think of him if he turned away from this chance? The thought of failing to match Sabetha’s courage while standing right in front of her was like a knife in his guts. He squared his shoulders and nodded at Chains.

“Two bold souls,” said Chains quietly. “Kneel and bow your heads in silence. We three shall pray for guidance.”

Locke went down to his knees, folded his hands, and closed his eyes. Crooked Warden, don’t let me make some sort of awful mistake in front of Sabetha, he thought; then realized that praying on the matter of his own problems at a moment like this might well be blasphemous. Shit, was his next thought, and that of course was even worse.

He struggled to keep his mind respectfully blank, and listened to the murmur of adult voices. Chains and his peers conferred privately for some time. At last Locke heard footsteps approaching.

“One will be chosen,” said the female priest, “and must answer directly. The chance, if refused, will never be offered again.”

“Small things guide us in this,” said the long-haired garrista. “Signs from the past. The evidence of your deeds. Subtle omens.”

“But the Benefactor doesn’t make difficult decisions for us,” said the woman. “We pray that our choice will serve his interests, and thus our own.”

“Locke Lamora,” said Father Chains softly, setting his hands on Locke’s shoulders. “You are called to the service of the thirteenth Prince of Earth and Heaven, whose name is guarded. How do you answer his call?”

Wide-eyed with shock, Locke glanced at Chains, and then at Sabetha. “I … ,” he whispered, then cleared his throat and spoke more clearly. “I … I must. I do.”

Cheers broke out in the vault, but the look on Sabetha’s face at that instant cut coldly through Locke’s excitement. It was a look he knew only too well, a look he’d practiced himself—the game face, the perfect blank, a neutral mask meant to hide hotter emotions.

Given her earlier attitude, Locke had no difficulty guessing what those hotter emotions must be.