The Republic of Thieves

  “You weren’t so bad yourself,” said Jean. “But for the grace of the gods, we might still be cruising the Amathel.”

  “So what have we done?” said Sabetha, her voice full of honest wonderment. “What have we done? I suppose I won the election, but … I’m not sure if winning it for about thirty seconds is winning it at all.”

  “Just as I’m not sure that nudging a victory into a tie is really the same as winning for our side,” said Locke. “Nor is it quite losing. A pretty mess, isn’t it? One for the drunkards and philosophers.”

  “I wonder what the magi are going to say.”

  “I hope they argue about it from now until the sun grows cold,” said Locke. “We did our bit, we fought sincerely, we perverted the final results just enough to eternally confuse anyone watching—what more could they possibly want?”

  “I suppose we find out now,” said Jean.

  “Did … Patience give you any instructions or hints about what to do once the ballots were counted?” said Sabetha. “Not a word,” said Locke.

  “Then why don’t we all get the hell out of here and let our employers find us in their own time?” Sabetha tossed back the last of her brandy. “I’ve got a safe house just off the Court of Dust. Rented it for a month, had firewood, linens, and wine laid in. I’d say it’s as comfortable a place as any to rest and figure out what we’re going to … do next.” She ran her fingers lightly over Locke’s left arm.

  “Any plan to sneak us out of here without getting swept up in a brawl?” said Jean.

  “New skins.” Sabetha produced a scalpel-thin dagger from somewhere in a jacket sleeve and used it to slit one of three paper parcels stacked beneath the chamber’s unnerving fresco. “Much as I hate to take this dress off display, I thought we’d find our exit that much easier if we dressed like the enemy.”

  4

  AT THE tenth hour of the evening, a trio of bluecoats pushed through the curious crowds at the main entrance to the Karthenium; a slender watchman and a sturdy watchman, led by a woman with sergeant’s pins on her lapels. They disposed of the last few people standing in their way with a combination of shoves and ominous mutterings about official business.

  Locke and Jean followed Sabetha about fifty yards west, to a branching side court where a carriage waited. The night had darkened considerably, and as he opened the carriage door Locke’s eye was caught by an orange glare somewhere to the south.

  “Looks like a fire,” he said. The conflagration rippled, gilding the shadowy buildings of what must have been the Palanta District with its light.

  “Damned big one,” said Jean. “I hope it’s nothing to do with the election. Maybe these Karthani play harder than I ever gave them credit for.”

  “Come on, you two, let’s not linger long enough to get noticed by anyone who might outrank us,” said Sabetha.

  They all clambered into the carriage together. The driver, obedient to whatever orders Sabetha had given her earlier, shook the reins, and they were off, leaving the results of their tampering with Karthain’s electoral process behind them. Genuine bluecoats were still arriving in force, truncheons and shields drawn, as the carriage rattled over the paving stones, away from the Karthenium.

  INTERSECT (IV)

  IGNITION

  “THE FIRST MAGISTRATE has just read the final district report,” says one of the young men, his voice dreamy, his eyes unfocused. Coldmarrow knows from long experience that the more tenuous and subtle mind-to-mind connections are the most demanding to sustain. Any damned fool can blaze their thoughts into the night for magi far and wide to receive like buzzing insects. The intelligence network now flashing thoughts across the city is straining itself to be utterly silent.

  “The last district is Black Iris …” whispers the young mage.

  “Black Iris victory,” says someone else. “By the skin of their teeth.”

  “It seems that Patience’s vaunted Camorri were no match for ours,” smirks Archedama Foresight. She wears a leather hood and mantle, a dark linen mask, a mail-reinforced cuirass. Like all the men and women in the second-floor solar of Coldmarrow’s Palanta District house, she is dressed for a fight. “We’ll deal with them last, after all the other satisfactions of the evening have been dispensed with.”

  “Necessities, let us rather say,” coughs Coldmarrow, taking deep, steady breaths to help rule his anxiety. The air is close, and it smells of all these magi, their robes and leathers, the wine on their breaths, the oils in their hair, their nervous, excited sweat.

  “Why not both?” says the archedama.

  “There’s a disturbance at the Karthenium,” whispers the young man who has been reporting on the election. “Someone … Lovaris of the Bursadi District. Some sort of announcement. He may be … ha! He may be switching sides!”

  “Damn,” says Archedama Foresight. “But it seems to me that there’s no time like the present. All our targets must be absorbed in the distraction.”

  “Oh, they are,” chuckles Coldmarrow. “It couldn’t be working better. Are your people in their proper positions?”

  “All of them,” says Foresight.

  “Then here’s to necessity,” says Coldmarrow, his mouth suddenly dry. “And to the future of all our kind.”

  Coldmarrow speaks a word.

  The word becomes fire.

  A spark flashes in the dark heart of a jar of fire-oil, one of a hundred, tightly sealed, placed in the space beneath the floor of the room a month before. This jar is half-full, containing just enough air for the flame to breathe the vapors of the oil. The explosion is white-hot, shattering the clay vessels, sucking air and oil into the roaring, all-devouring blast.

  Not even magi can move faster than this, or protect themselves with so little warning. The floor moves beneath Coldmarrow’s feet, then comes sharp dark heat, stunning pressure, and sudden silence. Coldmarrow dies taking fourteen magi with him, including Archedama Foresight. He has no time to feel either regret or satisfaction; it will simply have to be enough.

  The war lasts nine minutes. It is utterly one-sided, the only possible war magi can wage with any hope of total victory against others trained in the same traditions, to the same standards.

  Archedama Foresight’s people discover that their own ambush is stillborn, their positions ready-made traps. They have always been outnumbered by the larger faction of magi they derided as meek, and now those opponents apply their numbers to disproving the slander.

  No quarter is given, no fair fight allowed. Strength is brought against weakness. Across rooftops, within lamp-lit gardens, inside the halls of the Isas Scholastica and the private homes of sorcerers, the assault is quick and silent and absolute.

  As the tipsy, confused politicians of Karthain clamber over one another in a comical brawl at the heart of the Karthenium, seventy magi die in the dark places of the city, taking only a handful of their killers with them.

  Navigator finds Patience alone in the Sky Chamber, staring at the bowl of the artificial heavens, currently mirroring the actual sky over Karthain, the rolling dark clouds summoned to lock the light of moons and stars away. Shadow has been drawn over the city like a cloak, to better hide the evidence.

  “It’s over,” says Patience. She speaks real words to the air; the silver threads of thought-speech have unraveled unpleasantly across Karthain; cries of pain and betrayal, cries for help that will never come, and Patience has hardened her mind against most of the noise. “Now we have to live with ourselves.”

  “Tell our troubles to the shades of Therim Pel,” says the one-armed woman. She wipes a tear from her cheek.

  “We are each one in a thousand thousand,” says Patience. “We have destroyed some of the rarest and most precious things in the world tonight. Our distant inheritors may curse us for what we’ve done.”

  “We already deserve their curses, Archedama.”

  “So long as there’s still a world left for them to curse us in. Come now; help me do it.”

  The two
women bow their heads, move their hands in perfect concert, and speak words of unweaving that tear at their throats like desert air. The beautiful conjured heavens of the Sky Chamber fade like the memory of a dream, until there is nothing but a dome of plain white stones, grayed with the patina of old smoke.

  “Do you wish to see your son now?” says Navigator.

  “No,” says Patience, suddenly feeling every one of her years, suddenly wishing for the touch and the laugh of a man who was taken by the Amathel half her lifetime ago. “I’ll speak to Lamora first. But for now I want to be alone for a while.”

  Navigator nods and quietly withdraws, leaving Patience alone in the silent vastness of a room that will never be used again.

  One final duty remains at the end of this long campaign, and Patience does not yet have the heart to face it.

  LAST INTERLUDE

  THIEVES PROSPER

  1

  THE REMAINS OF Gennaro Boulidazi, last of his line, were taken away under his family colors. An apoplectic Brego did most of the work, after being rebuked for his panic and disbelief by Baroness Ezrintaim. She did, however, graciously assign a number of constables to serve as an honor guard.

  It was the middle of the night before all the constables and soldiers decamped from within Gloriano’s Rooms, chasing off the small crowd of locals and curiosity-seekers as they went. Baroness Ezrintaim left only a small guard posted outside, their orders to preserve the peace for the “nobles” spending their last night in Espara within.

  Jean and Jenora went off together early, to spend that night as they saw fit. The Sanzas, seemingly reluctant to let one another out of their sight, claimed a corner of the main room and drank with Alondo and Donker—not the boisterous drinking of celebration but the quiet ritual of people relieved to still have throats to pour their ale down.

  Bert and Chantal fell asleep on one another, wrapped up together in an old cloak. Mistress Gloriano promised Locke she would wake them eventually and pack them off to a proper room. She and Sylvanus then sat together, working on a ribbon-wrapped bottle of some expensive brandy whose existence had never previously been mentioned to the thirsty ingrates pounding her bar for service.

  Sabetha was clear and to the point, without words. She found Locke bound up in his thoughts in the main room and dispelled them with a hand on his shoulder. She glanced at the stairs by way of a question, and when he nodded, her smile made him feel something even the cheers of eight hundred strangers hadn’t been able to.

  They commandeered an empty chamber. Sabetha used the room’s only chair to wedge the door shut and admired her handiwork with grim satisfaction.

  They were tired, the smell of smoke was nestled deep in their hair, and the last thing they needed was more sweat without a bath, but neither of them cared. They were at home in the darkness in a way that only the survivors of places like Shades’ Hill could understand, and alive to one another’s lips and hands as they had never been before. They were still shy, still awkward and unschooled. But if their first night together had been confusing and incomplete, their second … ah, their second taught them why people keep trying.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE END OF OLD DREAMS

  1

  THE SMELL OF her, the taste of her. Locke awoke in darkness, still awash in those things. His sweat, their sweat, had cooled and dried on his skin, and the bed … he ran his hands over her side of it and found it empty, the blanket thrown back.

  He remembered where he was. The upper room of Sabetha’s house off the Court of Dust, the one with the expensively luxurious mattress and the Lashani silk sheets. He couldn’t have been asleep for long.

  There was someone in the darkness, watching him, and he knew in an instant it wasn’t Sabetha, knew with every fiber of his intuition who it must be, standing by the faint gray cracks of light at the window.

  “What have you done?” he whispered.

  “We spoke,” said Patience. “I showed her something.”

  Soft silver light filled the room—the cold alchemical globes, in response to a mere gesture of Patience’s. Locke saw her hands moving as his eyes adjusted, saw that she wore a heavy traveler’s cloak with the hood thrown back.

  “Where’s Jean?”

  “Downstairs, where you left him,” said Patience. “He’ll awaken soon. Do you want to get dressed, or are you comfortable speaking like this?”

  The cold Locke felt had little to do with the mere fact that he was naked. He slid from the bed, not caring that he concealed nothing from Patience, and dressed in what he could only hope, ludicrously, was somehow an insolent fashion. He donned trousers and tunic like armor, threw a simple dark jacket on as though it could keep Patience and her words out.

  Locke saw that there was something leaning against the wall behind Patience, a flat rectangular object about three feet high, covered in a gray cloth.

  “She tried to write you a note,” said Patience. “It was … beyond her. She left half an hour ago.”

  “What did you do to her, Patience?”

  “I did nothing.” Her dark eyes caught him, seemed to pierce him. Those hunter’s eyes. “To my arts, Sabetha Belacoros is a puppet waiting for a hand, but it would have been meaningless, had I done anything. She had to choose. I gave her information that led to a choice.”

  “You utter bitch—”

  “I also saved your life tonight,” she said. “For the second and last time. This is our final conversation, Locke Lamora, if that’s what you still choose to call yourself. I’ve come to render all dues and finish my business with you.”

  “Do you want to kill me yourself, at last?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And … you mean to keep your word? Money and transportation to see us on our way?”

  “There’s no money and no transportation,” said Patience, laughing without humor. “You’ll receive nothing else from us. Your countinghouse contacts will no longer recognize you, and your Deep Roots associates already think of Sebastian Lazari as a gray ghost of a memory. Wherever you gentlemen choose to go next, I suspect you have a long walk ahead of you.”

  “Why are you doing this to us?” said Locke.

  “The Falconer,” she said.

  “So revenge was the game after all,” said Locke. “Well, a creature like the Falconer deserved every second of hurt I ever gave him, and fuck you if you expect me to think otherwise!”

  “You can’t understand what you took from him,” said Patience, her words hot and thick with scorn. “Your flesh is inert; magic is nothing more than the sound of the wind to you. You can never feel it, feel the words leaving you like fire, like arrows from a bowstring! To know that power welling beneath you and bearing you like a feather on a wind. You think I’m selfish for this? Cruel? It’s less than you deserve! Killing him would have been mercy. I’ve killed magi. But you stole his hands and his voice. You took the tools of magic from him and smashed him like a priceless work of art. You stole his destiny. The archedama Patience could forgive you. The mother and the mage cannot.”

  “I refer you to my former statement,” said Locke, his voice trembling.

  A heavy tread sounded on the stairs. Jean burst into the room, slamming the door aside without knocking.

  “I don’t understand,” he panted. “I was just … You fucking did something to me again, didn’t you?”

  “A brief slumber,” said Patience. “I wanted time with Sabetha, and then with Locke. But you might as well hear everything else I have to say.”

  “Where’s Sabetha?” said Jean.

  “Alive,” said Patience. “And fled, of her own accord.”

  “Why do I—?”

  “You’ve got nothing more I want, Jean Tannen,” said Patience. “Interrupt me again and Locke leaves Karthain alone.”

  Jean balled his fists but remained silent.

  “I’m leaving Karthain too,” said Patience. “Myself and all my kind. Tonight ends the last of the Five-Year Games, and our centuries
of life here. Whenever the Karthani find the nerve to enter the Isas Scholastica, they’ll find our buildings empty, our tunnels collapsed, our libraries and treasures vanished. We are removing all trace of ourselves from Karthain down to the dust under our beds.”

  “Why on the gods’ earth would you do such a thing?” said Locke.

  “Karthain is the old dream,” said Patience. “It’s served its purpose. We have gathered strength, honed our skills, and collected the wealth we need to do what we must. There will be no more contracts. No more Bondsmagi. We are retiring from the public life of this world. Never again can we allow such an institution as this to arise.”

  “That … that danger you spoke of?” said Locke, unnerved and startled by the magnitude of the changes Patience’s words implied.

  “There are things moving and dreaming in the darkness,” said Patience. “We refuse to risk any further chance of waking them up. Yet human magic must survive, so we must learn how to make it as quiet as possible.”

  “Why run us through this damned election?” said Locke. “Gods, why not just put us in a room and tell us this shit and save us all so much trouble?”

  “Wise members of my order a century ago,” said Patience, “foresaw our direction beyond a shadow of a doubt. We used our contracts to enrich ourselves, but they also made us arrogant. They fueled the impulse to dominate, to see our powers as limitless and the world as our clay.

  “These wise men and women knew that a crisis would break, a time for blood, and the only way to win would be to achieve surprise. They envisioned a disruption of our ordinary lives so profound and yet so routine that it could conceal preparations for a fight when the time came. The Five-Year Games became a regular part of our society, a pageant and a release. But a few of us were always trusted with the original intention of the games, and the knowledge that we might have to employ it.”