The Republic of Thieves

  “Well, I’m sure as hell feeling better,” said Jean.

  “I’m cold. Hands and feet are numb. Feels like I’ve aged a hundred years.” Locke slid off the table, drawing the blanket more tightly around himself. “I think I can stand up, though!”

  He demonstrated the questionable optimism of this pronouncement by falling on his face.

  “Damn,” he muttered as Jean picked him up. “Sure you can’t do anything about this, Patience?”

  “Master Lamora, you full-blooded ingrate, haven’t I worked enough miracles on your behalf for one night?”

  “Purely as a business investment,” said Locke. “But I suppose I should thank you nonetheless.”

  “Yes, nonetheless. As for your strength, everything now falls to nature. You need food and rest, like any other convalescent.”

  “Well,” said Locke, “uh, if it’s no trouble, I’d like to speak alone with Jean.”

  “Shall I have the cabin cleared?”

  “No.” Locke stared at the unconscious young magi for a moment. “No, let your apprentices or whatever sleep off their hangovers. A walk on deck will do me some good.”

  “They do have names,” said Patience. “You’ll be working for us; you might as well accept that. They’re called—”

  “Stop,” said Locke. “I’m bloody grateful for what you’ve done here, but you’re not hauling me to Karthain to be anyone’s friend. Forgive me if I don’t feel cordial.”

  “I suppose I should take your restoration to boorishness as a credit to my arts,” said Patience with a sigh. “I’ll give instructions to have more food and water set out for you.”

  “I doubt I could eat another bite,” said Locke.

  “Oh, wait a few minutes,” said Patience. “I’ve been with child. Rely on my assurance that you’ll be ruled by your belly for some time to come.”

  2

  “I TELL you, Jean, he was there. He was there looking down at me, closer than you are right now.”

  Locke and Jean leaned against the Sky-Reacher’s taffrail, watching the soft play of the ghost-lights that gave the Lake of Jewels its name. They gleamed in the black depths, specks of cold ruby fire and soft diamond white, like submerged stars, far out of human reach. Their nature was unknown. Some said they were the souls of the thousand mutineers drowned by the mad emperor Orixanos. Others swore they must be Eldren treasures. In Lashain, Jean had even read a pamphlet in which a Therin Collegium scholar argued that the lights were glowing fish, imbued with the alchemical traces that had spilled into the lake in the decades since the perfection of light-globes.

  Whatever they were, they were a pretty enough distraction, rippling faintly beneath the ship’s wake. Smears of gray at the horizon hinted the approach of dawn, but a low ceiling of dark clouds still occluded the sky.

  Locke was shaky and feverish, wearing his blanket like a shawl. In between sentences, he munched nervously at a piece of dried ship’s biscuit from the small pile he carried wrapped in a towel.

  “Given what was happening to you, Locke, I think the safest bet by far would be that you imagined it.”

  “He spoke to me in his own voice,” said Locke, shuddering. Jean gave him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder, but Locke went on. “And his eyes … his eyes … did you ever hear anything like that, at the temples you entered? About a person’s sins being engraved on their eyes?”

  “No,” said Jean, “but then, you’d know more inner ritual of at least one temple than I would. Is it treading on any of your vows to ask if you—”

  “No, no,” said Locke. “It’s nothing I ever learned in the order of the Thirteenth.”

  “Then you did imagine the whole mess.”

  “Why the hell would I imagine something like that?”

  “Because you’re a gods-damned guilt-obsessed idiot?”

  “Easy for you to be glib.”

  “I’m not. Look, do you really think the life beyond life is such a farce that people wander around in spirit with their bodies mutilated? You think souls have two eyes in their heads? Or need them?”

  “We see certain truths manifested in limited forms for our own apprehension,” said Locke. “We don’t see the life after life as it truly is, because in our eyes it conforms to our mechanics of nature.”

  “Straight out of elementary theology, just as I learned it. Several times,” said Jean. “Anyway, since when are you a connoisseur of revelation? Have you ever, at any point in your life since you became a priest, been struck by the light of heavenly clarity, by dreams and visions, by omens, or anything that made you quake in your breeches and say, ‘Holy shit, the gods have spoken!’ ”

  “You know I would have told you if I had,” said Locke. “Besides, that’s not how things work, not as we’re taught in our order.”

  “You think any sect isn’t told the exact same thing, Locke? Or do you honestly believe that there’s a temple of divines out there somewhere constantly getting thumped on the head by bolts of white-hot truth while the rest of you are left to stumble around on intuition?”

  “Broadening the discussion, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all. After so many years, so many scrapes, so much blood, why would you suddenly start having true revelations from beyond the grave now?”

  “I can’t know. I can’t presume to speak for the gods.”

  “But that’s precisely what you’re doing. Listen, if you walk into a whorehouse and find yourself getting sucked off, it’s because you put some money on the counter, not because the gods transported a pair of lips to your cock.”

  “That’s … a really incredible metaphor, Jean, but I think I could use some help translating it.”

  “What I’m saying is, we have a duty to accept on faith, but also a duty to weigh and judge. Once you insist that some mundane thing was actually the miraculous hand of the gods, why not treat everything that way? When you start finding messages from the heavens in your breakfast sausages, you’ve thrown aside your responsibility to use your head. If the gods wanted credulous idiots for priests, why wouldn’t they make you that way when you were chosen?”

  “This didn’t happen while I was eating breakfast, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Yeah, it happened while you were this far from death.” Jean held up his thumb and forefinger, squeezed tightly together. “Sick, exhausted, drugged, and under the tender care of our favorite people in the world. I’d find it strange if you didn’t have a nightmare or two.”

  “It was so vivid, though. And he was so—”

  “You said he was cold and vengeful. Does that sound like Bug? And do you really think he’d still be there, wherever you imagined him, hovering around years after he died just to frighten you for half a minute?”

  Locke stuffed more biscuit into his mouth and chewed agitatedly.

  “I refuse to believe,” said Jean, “that we live in a world where the Lady of the Long Silence would let a boy’s spirit wander unquiet for years in order to scare someone else! Bug’s long gone, Locke. It was just a nightmare.”

  “I sure as hell hope so,” said Locke.

  “Worry about something else,” said Jean. “I mean it, now. The magi came through on their end of our deal. We’ll be expected to make ourselves useful next.”

  “Some convalescence,” said Locke.

  “I am glad as hell to see you up and moping on your own two feet again. I need you, brother. Not lying in bed, useless as a piece of pickled dogshit.”

  “I’m gonna remember all of this tender sympathy next time you’re ill,” said Locke.

  “I tenderly and sympathetically didn’t heave you off a cliff.”

  “Fair enough,” said Locke. He turned around and glanced across the lantern-lit reaches of the deck. “You know, I think my wits might be less congealed. I’ve just noticed that there’s nobody in charge of this ship.”

  Jean glanced around. None of the magi were visible anywhere else on deck. The ship’s wheel was still, as though restrained by ghostly pressure
.

  “Gods,” said Jean. “Who the hell’s doing that?”

  “I am,” said Patience, appearing at their side. She held a steaming mug of tea and gazed out across the jewel-dotted depths.

  “Gah!” Locke slid away from her. “My nerves are scraped raw. Must you do that?”

  Patience sipped her tea with an air of satisfaction.

  “Have it your way,” said Locke. “What happened to all of your little acolytes?”

  “Everyone’s shaken from the ritual. I’ve sent them down for some rest.”

  “You’re not shaken?”

  “Nearly to pieces,” she said.

  “Yet you’re moving this ship against the wind. Alone. While talking to us.”

  “I am. Nonetheless, I’d wager that you’re still going to misplace your tone of respect whenever you speak to me.”

  “Lady, you knew I was poison when you picked me up,” said Locke.

  “And how are you now?”

  “Tired. Damned tired. Feels like someone poured sand in my joints. But there’s nothing eating at my insides … not like before. I’m hungry as all hell, but it’s not … evil. Not anymore.”

  “And your wits?”

  “They’ll serve,” said Locke. “Besides, Jean’s here to catch me when I fall.”

  “I’ve had the great cabin cleaned for you. There’s a wardrobe with a set of slops. They’ll keep you warm until we reach Karthain and throw you to the tailors.”

  “We can’t wait,” said Locke. “Patience, are we in any danger of running aground or something if we ask you a few questions?”

  “There’s nothing to run aground on for a hundred miles yet. But are you sure you don’t want to rest?”

  “I’ll collapse soon enough. I can feel it. I don’t want to waste another lucid moment if I can help it,” said Locke. “You remember what you promised us in Lashain? Answers, I mean.”

  “Of course,” she said. “So long as you recall the limitation I set.”

  “I’ll try not to get too personal.”

  “Good,” said Patience. “Then I’ll try not to waste a great deal of effort by setting you on fire if my temper runs short.”

  3

  “WHY DO you people serve?” said Locke. “Why take contracts? Why Bondsmagi?”

  “Why work on a fishing boat?” Patience breathed the steam from her tea. “Why stomp grapes into wine? Why steal from gullible nobles?”

  “You need money that badly?”

  “As a tool, certainly. Its application is simple and universally effective.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Isn’t that good enough for your own life?”

  “It just seems—”

  “It seems,” said Patience, “that what you really want to ask is why we care about money at all when we could take anything we please.”

  “Yes,” said Locke.

  “What makes you think we would behave like that?”

  “Despite your sudden interest in my welfare, you’re scheming, skull-fucking bastards,” said Locke, “and your consciences are shriveled like an old man’s balls. Start with Therim Pel. You did burn an entire city off the map.”

  “Any few hundred people sufficiently motivated could have destroyed Therim Pel. Sorcery wasn’t the only means that would have sufficed.”

  “Easy for you to say,” said Locke. “Let’s allow that maybe all you theoretically needed were some gardening tools and a little creativity; what you actually did was rain fire from the fucking sky. If your lot couldn’t rule the world with that …”

  “Are you smarter than a pig, Locke?”

  “On occasion,” said Locke. “There are contrary opinions.”

  “Are you more dangerous than a cow? A chicken? A sheep?”

  “Let’s be generous and say yes.”

  “Then why don’t you go to the nearest farm, put a crown on your head, and proclaim yourself emperor of the animals?”

  “Uh … because—”

  “The thought of doing anything so ridiculous never crossed your mind?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Yet you wouldn’t deny that you have the power to do it, anytime you like, with no chance of meaningful resistance from your new subjects?”

  “Ahhh—”

  “Still not an attractive proposition, is it?” said Patience.

  “So that’s really it?” said Jean. “Any half-witted bandit living on bird shit in the hinterlands would make himself emperor if he could, but you people, who actually can do it at will, are such paragons of reason—”

  “Why sit in a farmyard with a crown on your head when you can buy all the ham you like down at the market?”

  “You’ve banished ambition completely?” said Jean.

  “We’re ambitious to the bone, Jean. Our training doesn’t give the meek room to breathe. However, most of us find it starkly ludicrous that the height of all possible ambition, to the ungifted, must be to drape oneself in crowns and robes.”

  “Most?” said Locke.

  “Most,” said Patience. “I did mention that we’ve had a schism over the years. You might not be surprised to hear that it concerns you.” She crooked two fingers on her left hand at Locke and Jean. “The ungifted. What to do with you. Keep to ourselves or put the world on its knees? Nobility would no longer be a matter of patents and lineages. It would be a self-evident question of sorcerous skill. You would be enslaved without restraint to a power you could never possess, not with all the time or money or learning in the world. Would you like to live in such an empire?”

  “Of course not,” said Locke.

  “Well, I have no desire to build it. Our arts have given us perfect independence. Our wealth has made that freedom luxurious. Most of us recognize this.”

  “You keep using that word,” said Locke. “ ‘Most.’ ”

  “There are exceptionalists within our ranks. Mages that look upon your kind as ready-made abjects. They’ve always been a minority, held firmly in check by those of us with a more conservative and practical philosophy, but they have never been so few as to be laughed off. These are the two factions I spoke of earlier. The exceptionalists tend to be young, gifted, and aggressive. My son was popular with them, before you crossed his path in Camorr.”

  “Great,” said Locke. “So those assholes that came and paid us a visit in Tal Verrar, on your sufferance, don’t even have to leave the comforts of home for another go at us! Brilliant.”

  “I gave them that outlet to leaven their frustration,” said Patience. “If I had commanded absolute safety for you, they would have disobeyed and murdered you. After that, I would have had no answer to their insubordination short of civil war. The peace of my society balances at all times on points like this. You two are just the most recent splinter under everyone’s nails.”

  “What will your insubordinate friends do when we get to Karthain? Give us hugs, buy us beer, pat us on our heads?” said Jean.

  “They won’t trouble you,” said Patience. “You’re part of the five-year game now, protected by its rules. If they harm you outright, they call down harsh retribution. However, if their chosen agents outmaneuver you, then they steal a significant amount of prestige from my faction. They need you to be pieces on the board as much as I do.”

  “What if we win?” said Jean. “What will they do afterward?”

  “If you do manage to win, you can naturally expect the goodwill of myself and my friends to shelter under.”

  “So we’re working for the kindhearted, moral side of your little guild, is that what we should understand?” said Locke.

  “Kindhearted? Don’t be ridiculous,” said Patience. “But you’re a fool if you can’t believe that we’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on the moral questions of our unique position. The fact that you’re even here, alive and well, testifies to that reflection.”

  “And yet you hire yourselves out to overthrow kingdoms and kill people.”

  “We do,” said Patience. ??
?Human beings are afflicted with short memories. They need to be reminded that they have valid reasons for holding us in awe. That’s why, after very careful consideration, we still allow magi to accept black contracts.”

  “Define ‘careful consideration,’ ” said Locke.

  “Any request for services involving death or kidnapping is scrutinized,” said Patience. “Black work needs to be authorized by a majority of my peers. Even once that’s done, there needs to be at least one mage willing to accept the task.”

  Patience cupped her left hand, and a silver light flashed behind her fingers. “You curious men,” she said. “I offer you the answers to damn near anything, secrets thousands of people have died trying to uncover, and you want to learn how we go about paying our bills.”

  “We’re not done pestering you,” said Locke. “What are you doing there?”

  “Remembering.” The silver glow faded, and a slender spike of dreamsteel appeared, cradled against the first two fingers of her hand. “You’re bold enough in your questions. Are you bold enough for a direct answer?”

  “What’s the proposal?” said Locke, nibbling half-consciously at a biscuit.

  “Walk in my memories. See through my eyes. I’ll show you something relevant, if you’ve got the strength to handle it.”

  Locke swallowed in a hurry. “Is this going to be as much fun as the last ritual?”

  “Magic’s not for the timid. I won’t offer again.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Lean forward.”

  Locke did so, and Patience held the silver spike toward his face. It narrowed, twisted, and poured itself through the air, directly into Locke’s left eye.

  He gasped. The biscuits tumbled from his hand as the dreamsteel spread in a pool across his eye, turning it into a rippling mirror. A moment later droplets of silver appeared in his right eye, thickening and spreading.

  “What the hell?” Jean was torn between the urge to slap Patience aside and the sternness of her earlier warning not to interfere with her sorcery.