“There’s no running from these assholes, not if they’re serious.”
“Yes, but—”
“Fuck Karthain.” Locke clenched his fists. “You know, I think I understand? I think I understand how the Gray King could feel the way he did. I’ve never even been there, but if I could smash Karthain, burn the fucking place, make the sea swallow it…I’d do it. Gods help me, I’d do it.”
Jean suddenly came to a complete stop.
“There’s…another problem, Locke. Gods forgive me.”
“What?”
“Even if you stay…I shouldn’t. I’m the one who should be gone, as far from you as possible.”
“What the fuck nonsense is this?”
“They know my name!” Jean grabbed Locke by his shoulders, and Locke winced; that stone-hard grip didn’t agree with the old wound beneath his left clavicle. Jean immediately realized his mistake and loosened his fingers, but his voice remained urgent. “My real name, and they can use it. They can make me a puppet, like these poor people. I’m a threat to you every moment I’m around you.”
“I don’t bloody well care that they know your name! Are you mad?”
“No, but you’re still drunk, and you’re not thinking straight.”
“I certainly am! Do you want to leave?”
“No! Gods, no, of course not! But I’m—”
“Shutting up right this second if you know what’s good for you.”
“You need to understand that you’re in danger!”
“Of course I’m in danger. I’m mortal. Jean, gods love you, I will not fucking send you away, and I will not let you send yourself away! We lost Calo, Galdo, and Bug. If I send you away, I lose the last friend I have in the world. Who wins then, Jean? Who’s protected then?”
Jean’s shoulders slumped, and Locke suddenly felt the beginning of the transition from fading inebriation to pounding headache. He groaned.
“Jean, I will never stop feeling awful for what I put you through in Vel Virazzo. And I will never forget how long you stayed with me when you should have tied weights around my ankles and thrown me in the bay. Gods help me, I will never be better off without you. I don’t care how many Bondsmagi know your damned name.”
“I wish I could be sure you knew best about this.”
“This is our life,” said Locke. “This is our game, that we’ve put two years into. That’s our fortune, waiting for us to steal it at the Sinspire. That’s all our hopes for the future. So fuck Karthain. They want to kill us, we can’t stop them. So what else can we do? I won’t jump at shadows on account of those bastards. On with it! Both of us together.”
Most of the Night Market merchants had taken note of the intensity of Locke and Jean’s private conversation, and had avoided making further pitches. But one of the last merchants on the northern fringe of the Night Market was either less sensitive or more desperate for a sale, and called out to them.
“Carved amusements, gentlemen? Something for a woman or a child in your lives? Something artful from the City of Artifice?” The man had dozens of exotic little toys on an upturned crate. His long, ragged brown coat was lined on the inside with quilted patches in a multitude of garish colors—orange, purple, cloth-of-silver, mustard yellow. He dangled the painted wood figure of a spear-carrying soldier by four cords from his left hand, and with little gestures of his fingers he made the figure thrust at an imaginary enemy. “A marionette? A little puppet, for memory of Tal Verrar?”
Jean stared at him for a few seconds before responding. “For memory of Tal Verrar,” he said quietly, “I would want anything, beg pardon, before I would want a puppet.”
Locke and Jean said nothing else to each other. With an ache around his heart to match the one growing in his head, Locke followed the bigger man out of the Great Gallery and into the Savrola, eager to be back behind high walls and locked doors, for what little it might prove to be worth.