The Republic of Thieves #2

2

SHE COMPOUNDED his dreadful sense of shock by laughing.

“I’m serious as cold steel,” she said with a faintly catlike grin. “You’ve made quite an amusing leap to the wrong conclusion, however. I assure you that the Falconer is my one and only child.”

“Gods,” said Locke, gasping with relief. “So what the hell are you on about?”

“I said your memory was immutable and true. But it’s nothing to do with your mother’s trade. In fact, it’s nothing to do with your mother at all. It’s me you remember.”

“And how in all the hells is that even possible?”

“There was once an extraordinarily gifted mage of my order, the youngest archedon in centuries. He earned his fifth ring when he was half my present age, and took on the office of Providence. He was my mentor, my very true friend. He was also blessed in love. His wife was Karthani, a stunning woman with a kind of beauty very rare among the Therin people. They were enchanted with one another. She died … far too young.

“It was an accident,” continued Patience, hesitantly, as though it pained her to produce each word. “A balcony collapse. I’ve told you that our arts have limitless capacity to cause harm, and scarcely any power to undo it. We can transmute; we can cleanse. Your poisoning was an alien condition that we could separate from your body. But against shattered bones and spilled blood, we’re helpless. We are ordinary. Ordinary as you.”

She glared at Locke with something like real anger.

“Yes,” she said, more slowly. “Ordinary as you are right now. The tragedy caused a terrible change in my friend. He made a grievous error of judgment.

“He became obsessed with fetching his wife back. Harsh experience teaches us that we cannot master death. Still, he fell into the trap of grief and self-regard. He convinced himself that such mastery was simply a matter of will and knowledge. Will that none had ever before mustered. Knowledge that none had ever revealed. He began to experiment with the most forbidden folly in all our arts—interference with the spirit after death. Transition of the spirit into new flesh. Do you know what a horror he would have conjured even if he’d been successful?”

“The gods would never allow such a thing,” whispered Locke, not sure he believed it but certain he wanted to. The image of Bug’s dead black sin-graven eyes flashed in his memory.

“For once I agree with you,” said Patience wryly. “But the gods are cruel. They don’t so much forbid this ambition as punish it. Life recoils from necromancy, like the inflammation of flesh from a venomous sting. The working of it produces malaise, sickness. It can’t be hidden. Eventually he was discovered, but the confrontation was badly handled. He managed to escape.”

Patience pushed her hood back. Sabetha seemed as rooted in place as Locke was, spellbound by the tale, barely breathing.

“Before his elevation to archedon, he’d used a gray name from Throne Therin. He called himself Pel Acanthus, White Amaranth. The unwithering flower of legend. It was only natural that after his madness and betrayal, we called him—”

“No,” whispered Locke. The strength went out of his legs. Sabetha wasn’t fast enough to catch him before his knees hit the floor.

“ … Lamor Acanthus,” said Patience. “Black Amaranth. I see the name means something to you.”

“You can’t possibly know that name,” said Locke, his voice barely a croak. Even to his ears the denial sounded pathetic and childish. “You can’t.”

“I can,” said Patience, not gently. “Pel Acanthus was my friend, Lamor Acanthus my shame. Those names mean a great deal to me. They mean even more to you because they’re who you are.”

“What are you doing to him?” said Sabetha. Locke clung to her, shaking. His chest felt as though it was being squeezed in iron bands.

“Ending the mysteries,” said Patience, softening her tone. “Providing the answers. This man was once Lamor Acanthus of Karthain, once Archedon Providence of my order. Once a mage even more powerful than myself.”

She held up her left arm and let the robe sleeve fall away to reveal her five tattooed rings.

“I am not a gods-damned mage,” said Locke, hoarsely.

“Not anymore,” said Patience.

“You’re making this shit up!” said Locke, enunciating each word, willing them into some sort of emotional talisman. “So you know a … a name. I admit that I’m astonished. But I am … I don’t know how old I am, exactly, but I can’t be yet thirty. Thirty! This man you’re talking about would be older than you!”

“Originally,” said Patience. “And in a manner of speaking you still are.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Twenty-three years ago, an orphan with no past appeared in the aftermath of a deadly plague. Didn’t I just tell you what happens when our most forbidden art is practiced? A dreadful backlash against life itself. Sickness. The Black Whisper that came out of nowhere. Lamor Acanthus was in Camorr, hidden away in the hovels of Catchfire. That’s where you continued your studies, using the poor and the forgotten as your subjects.”

“Oh, bullshit—”

“We know,” said Patience. “There was a sorcerous event in Camorr before the plague erupted. Several members of my order were near enough to feel it. When the quarantine was lifted, our people were there in force. We sifted Catchfire house by house, until we found our answer. Magical apparatus. The papers and diaries of Lamor Acanthus, along with his body, plainly identifiable by the tattooed rings. And so we thought the matter was ended, horribly, but ultimately for the better.

“Years passed. Then came the unpleasant business involving my son. It brought you to our attention. You and Jean were carefully examined. Particularly Jean, since our possession of his red name made things so much easier. Imagine the intensity of our surprise when he told us that his closest friend, a Camorri orphan, had confessed to the secret name of Lamor Acanthus.”

“You … told Jean your true name?” said Sabetha. Locke desperately insisted to himself that he was only imagining the hurt beneath her surprise.

“I, uh, well … shit.” His wits, smashed to paste, couldn’t seem to make the heroic effort required to rouse themselves. “I always meant to tell you. I just—”

“He told Jean a true name,” said Patience. “But there’s still another, isn’t there? You’ve got gray names under gray names, Locke. Lamor Acanthus no more gives me the key to you than Locke Lamora or Leocanto Kosta or Sebastian Lazari does. Beneath it all is another name, the one my mentor would never have shared with another mage. So I don’t know what it is … perhaps you don’t even remember it. But you and I both know it’s there.”

“I’m not what you say I am.” Locke slumped in Sabetha’s arms, despondent. “I was born in Camorr.”

“Your body was. Don’t you see? Lamor Acanthus succeeded, after a fashion. That’s why the outbreak of plague was so sudden, so virulent. You tore your own spirit from its old body. You stole a new one. A second youth, a new wealth of years to spend honing your powers. But that’s not how it worked out .… Your memories were fragmented, your personality burnt away. You locked yourself into a body that didn’t have the gift you used to put yourself there. It took more than twenty years for us to see both pieces of the puzzle, but surely you can’t deny that they fit together smoothly.”

“I can,” said Locke. “I sure as hell can deny it!”

“Why do you think I’ve confided in you?” Patience sighed with the quiet exasperation of a teacher drilling a particularly slow pupil. “Told you what I have of magic, shown you what I have of the magi? Did you think I was just being chatty? Did you really believe you were so very special? I do need you in your capacity as my exemplar for the five-year game. But I also used that to justify bringing you here, to give us more time to study you. To give myself time to make this approach.”

“This is some cruel f*cking game of yours,” said Locke.

“You’re still one of us, after a fashion,” said Patience. “You have obligations to us, and we to you. One of those obligations is the truth. If the two of you hadn’t rekindled your private affair, I could have postponed this. As it stands, you both have the right to know, and I had the responsibility to tell you.” Patience gently touched one of Sabetha’s arms. “I know the reason, you see, why he’s dreamed of redheaded women all of his—”

“Stop!” Sabetha jerked away from Patience, stood up, and backed away from Locke as well. “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear anymore!”

“Don’t tell me you believe her!” said Locke.

“Coincidence piles on coincidence until the evidence becomes too strong to ignore,” said Patience.

“Stuff it,” growled Sabetha. “I don’t … I don’t know what the hell to think about this, Locke, I just—”

“You do believe it.” Shock turned in an instant to hot anger. Confused and reeling, Locke was primed to lash out at any target he could find. Before he knew what he was doing, he chose the wrong one. “All the things we’ve done, all the time we’ve spent rebuilding this … and you believe her!”

“You told me you named yourself after a sailor,” she said, unsteadily. “Did you believe that? Do you … believe it now? How can you be sure that you weren’t just filling some hole, or having it filled by someone else’s—”

“How can you even think this?” Anger flared on top of anger, hot and sharp as a knife just pulled from flame. “You left me! You manipulated me, you f*cking drugged me, and I still came back. But one story from this f*cking Karthani witch and you’re looking at me like I just fell out of the gods-damned sky! Wait, no, shit—”

His remorse and better judgment arrived, late as usual, like party guests riding in just after the social disaster of the season has already erupted. Sabetha’s cheeks darkened, and she opened her mouth several times, but in the end she said nothing. She turned with all the awful, decisive grace of womanly anger, threw the balcony doors open with a slam, and vanished into the darkened house.

Locke stared after her, dumbfounded, dully listening to the drumbeat rhythm of the pulse in his temples. A moment later he leapt to his feet, grabbed the silver bucket containing the chilled wine, and flung it with a snarl against the oak cooking table. Ingredients flew, glass shattered, and ice and wine alike splashed into the brazier, where they raised a soft cloud of hissing steam.

“Thanks for your even-handed f*cking presentation, Patience.” He kicked a fragment of broken glass and watched it skitter off the edge of the balcony. “Thanks for all your kind efforts on my behalf, you … you—”

“My responsibility was to tell you the truth, not wrap you in swaddling clothes.” She raised her hood again, half-veiling her face in shadow. “Nor protect you from your own badly-aimed temper. Take it from someone who was courted into a happy marriage, Master Lamora. Your style of wooing couldn’t be more perfectly designed to deliver you to a solitary life.”

“Go light yourself on fire,” said Locke, suddenly regretting that he’d smashed the only bottle of liquor he’d thought to set out on the balcony.

“We’ll speak more of this later,” said Patience. “And once the election is finished, we’ll discuss arrangements for the future.”

“I don’t believe a thing you’ve said,” Locke whispered, knowing how little conviction was in his voice.

“You refused to believe that I preserved your life in Tal Verrar for reasons of conscience. Now I give you the self-interested motive you previously insisted upon, and you refuse to believe it as well. Are you really that arrogant, that logic is as optional as a fashion accessory for you? You can certainly choose to believe that we’d entrust a normal man with even the fragments of guarded truth I’ve shown you. Or you can open your eyes. Accept that we’ve given you a chance to solve the mysteries of your past. Perhaps even a chance to redeem yourself for a terrible crime. A crime whose first victim’s stolen body you will wear like a mask until the day you die.”

Locke said nothing, staring at the mess he’d made of the ingredients for the feast he’d been happily planning to cook not a quarter of an hour earlier.

“Brood all you like,” said Patience. “Sulk all night. You’ve an uncanny talent for it, haven’t you? But in the morning, we expect that you’ll be sober, and focused, and working furiously on our behalf. My more enthusiastic young peers imagine that their colorful threats to you have escaped my notice. But now I suspect you understand how little value I place on Jean Tannen for his own sake, and how … discretionary my protection of him might be. Jean’s continued safety is entirely dependent on your discipline and inspiration.”

Patience turned and slowly strolled away into the house.

“Gods save him,” she called over her shoulder.

She left Locke standing alone on the balcony, and didn’t bother closing the doors behind her.