The Quantum Thief

‘Where are you going?’ Lin shouts.

‘To find somebody with a sword,’ Isidore says.

The zoku colony is strangely forbidding this time. The glass cathedral’s points, edges and protrusions look sharp. Isidore stands at the gates, trying to decide what to do.

‘Hello?’ he says. But nothing happens. How is this supposed to work again? Just think, Pixil said.

He touches the cold surface of the door and imagines Pixil’s face. His fingers tingle. The reply is sudden and violent, much harsher than ever with the entanglement ring.

Go away. It comes with a sensation that is like a physical blow, a stinging slap on the cheek.

‘Pixil.’

I don’t want to talk to you right now.

‘Pixil, can we meet? It’s important.’

Important things have an expiry date. Like me. I have things to do.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Things have been a little insane. Can you let me in or come out and meet me? It won’t take long, I promise.’

I’m supposed to go on a raid in twenty minutes. I’ll give you ten. Now get out of the way.

‘What?’

Get out of the way!

Something big comes through the door. The surface shimmers and ripples. Pixil is astride a massive black creature, like a six-legged horse but larger, covered in gold and silver plates, with bloodshot eyes and white, sharp teeth. She is wearing elaborate armour with wide shoulderplates like a samurai’s, and a ferocious mask pushed up to her forehead. A sword hangs at her side.

The creature snorts and snaps at Isidore, sending him scrambling backwards. He backs up against a pillar. Pixil dismounts and pats the creature’s neck. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘You have met Cyndra already.’

The epic mount lets out a bellow that stinks of rotting meat and rings in Isidore’s eardrums.

‘I know we are in a hurry,’ Pixil tells the creature, ‘but you don’t have to eat him. I can handle him all by myself.’ It turns around and vanishes through the doors.

‘Sorry about that,’ Pixil says. ‘Cyndra wanted to come along to tell you what she thought of you.’

‘I see,’ Isidore says. His knees feel weak, and he sits down on the steps. Pixil crouches down next to him, armour clinking.

‘So, what is this about?’ she asks.

‘I have been thinking,’ Isidore says.

‘Really?’

He gives her a reproachful look.

‘I’m allowed to tease you,’ she says. ‘That’s how these things work.’

‘All right.’ He swallows. It is difficult to say the words. They are jagged, awkwardly shaped things in his mouth. He remembers reading about Demosthenes, the great orator who practised speaking while chewing on small rocks. He bites down on them and speaks.

‘It’s not going to work. Us,’ he says, and pauses for a moment. She says nothing.

‘I’ve been with you because you are different,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t read you. I couldn’t understand you. It was fun for a while. But it was never going to be any different.

‘And I never put you first. You were always just … the other thing. The distracting voice in my head. And I don’t want to think of you like that. You deserve better.’

She looks at him, face grim, but then he realises it is just mock seriousness. ‘That’s what you came to tell me? That’s what it took you all this time to figure out? All by yourself?’

‘Actually,’ he says, ‘Sherlock helped.’ She gives him a curious look. ‘Never mind.’

Pixil sits down next to Isidore, rests her sword on one of the steps and leans on it.

‘I have been thinking too,’ she says. ‘I think the thing I like best about you is that you drive the elders up the wall. It’s fun to watch. And not having any entanglement between us, no strings. And being with someone who is a little slow, like you.’ She sticks her tongue out at him and brushes a lock of hair off his forehead. ‘Dim but pretty.’

Isidore takes a short, sharp breath.

‘I’m kidding about that last part,’ Pixil says. ‘Sort of.’

They sit still for a while, side by side.

‘See, this wasn’t hard,’ Pixil says. ‘We should have done this ages ago.’ She looks at Isidore. ‘Are you sad?’

Isidore nods. ‘A little bit.’

She hugs him, hard. The armour plates press into Isidore’s chest painfully, but he hugs her back anyway.

‘All right,’ she says and gets up in a clatter of metal. ‘There are monsters I need to go and kill. And you have a thief to catch, or so I hear.’

‘Yes, about that.’

‘Uh huh?’

‘Remember when you said that you could tell me who the Gentleman was? Were you kidding about that too?’

‘I never kid,’ Pixil says, brandishing her sword, ‘about matters of love and war.’

Isidore walks to the edge of the Dust District and sends a co-memory to the tzaddik. I know who you are, it says. Then he sits on a deck chair in a small square, just near the boundary where the colony begins, where stone becomes diamond.

He closes his eyes and listens to the water. He lets his mind drift with the sound. And suddenly, he feels like the water, flowing over a rock, feeling the shape that has been eluding him. It unfolds in his head like a giant snowflake. And it makes him angry.

There is a gust of wind. He opens his eyes. The Gentleman steps from a heat ripple. For a moment, her foglet aura is visible in the spray of water from the fountain. Her mask glitters in the sun.

‘This had better be important,’ she says. ‘I am very busy.’

Isidore smiles. ‘Mme Raymonde, I apologise. But there are things I need to talk to you about.’

The silver mask melts into the freckled face of a red-haired woman as she locks them within a tight gevulot contract. She looks tired. ‘All right,’ she says, folding her arms. Her real voice is like the ringing of a bell, deep and musical. ‘I’m listening. How did you—’

‘I cheated,’ Isidore says. ‘I called in a favour.’

‘Pixil, of course. That girl could never keep her mouth shut. I was counting on the fact that you would be too proud to ever ask.’

‘There are things more important than pride,’ Isidore says. ‘Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think.’

‘I take it we are not here to admire your cleverness. Nor, apparently, to hear thanks for saving your mind. You are welcome, by the way.’ Her voice is cold, and she does not meet his gaze.

‘No,’ he says. ‘We are here to solve a mystery. But I need your help for that.’

‘Wait.’ She passes him a co-memory. He accepts it, and suddenly remembers a pungent smell that makes him think of the rotten food that his father once left in his studio.

‘What was that?’ he asks.

‘Something that the whole Oubliette will have soon,’ she says. ‘Continue.’

‘I’ve been thinking about the word cryptarch ever since you mentioned it,’ Isidore says. ‘They manipulate the exomemory, am I right?’

‘Yes. We know how it works now: they have a master key of some sort that lets them read anyone who has been a Quiet.’

‘And you fight them.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have been working with the thief. Jean le Flambeur. Whoever he really is.’

She looks surprised, but nods. ‘Yes. But—’