The Republic of Thieves

“You could manage it, somehow.” Locke studied the cage more closely. Although the table was ringed by gauze curtains, these were presently pulled up to the ceiling and tied in place. The cage was composed of thin bars laid in a grid with spaces about an inch on a side, through which Locke had a view of northeastern Karthain under the gold-red lines of fading sunset. “They punish criminals back home with a contraption like this.”

“Well, in Karthain criminals pay for the privilege of being hoisted,” said Sabetha. “I was told that the Oversight was actually inspired by the Palace of Patience. Something about how the west gentles and perfects the ways of the east.”

“I’ve been out here for several years, and I don’t feel gentled or perfected,” said Locke.

“Indeed, you haven’t even offered to pour the wine yet,” said Sabetha with mock disdain.

“Oh, damn,” said Locke, stumbling back to his feet. There was a bottle of something airing on the table next to a trio of glasses. He did his duty gracefully, filling two glasses and offering one to her with an exaggerated bow.

“Better, but you forgot some of us,” she said, pointing to the empty glass.

“Hmmm?” Proximity to Sabetha was like sand in the gears of his mind. He imagined that he could literally feel them straining to turn as he stared at the empty glass, and then came a warm rush of shame. “Hell and castration,” he muttered as he poured again, and then: “A glass poured to air for absent friends. May the Crooked Warden bless his crooked servants. Chains, Calo, Galdo, and Bug—”

“May they laugh forever in better worlds than this,” said Sabetha, touching Locke’s glass. They both took small sips. It was a good vintage, mellow and strong, tasting of plums and bitter oranges. Locke sat on his cushion again, and they shared an awkward pause.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to give things a melancholy turn.”

“I know.” Locke sipped his wine again, reasoning that if it was drugged all of his hopes and assumptions were useless anyway. The miniature arsenal in his coat suddenly struck him as comical. “So, uh, do you like the flower I brought you?”

“The invisible flower? The hypothetical flower?”

Locke arched his eyebrows and tapped the right side of his coat. Sabetha looked down, hurriedly patted her own jacket, and pulled out an unfurled stemless rose, dark purple petals limned with crimson on their tips.

“Oh, you clever little weasel,” she said. “While you poured the wine.”

“And you were watching the bottle rather than the beau,” said Locke with a theatrical sigh. “It’s fine. My pride’s had all the stiffness trampled out of it already. I hope you like the color, though. Karthani hothouse. It had a stem, but that made it too awkward to carry or palm.”

“I don’t mind at all.” She set the rose carefully in the middle of the table. “Assuming it doesn’t explode or put me to sleep or anything.”

“I’ve forsworn vengeance on that score,” said Locke. “But we do need to talk about that, so we might as well get it over with.”

“What’s to talk about?”

“Kidnapping,” said Locke. “Assault. Exile. Alchemy. Dirty tricks of that nature, aimed at you or me or Jean.”

“We learned a dozen ways to incapacitate someone before we were ten,” said Sabetha. “It’s perfectly routine for us. I agreed to a truce tonight—”

“We should extend the truce permanently,” said Locke. “Mutual immunity from direct personal attack. If we’re going to have this fight, let’s have it mind to mind, plan to plan, and not need to sleep under our beds because we’re afraid of waking up on a ship the next day.”

“I’m not afraid of waking up on a ship.”

“Push your luck, gorgeous, and eventually luck pushes back. I might be dim enough to have dinner with you in a metal cage, but consider Jean. If he’s free to make his own moves he’ll squash your little army like boiled goose liver and you’ll be on your way to Talisham in a box.”

“Fearsome as that, is he?”

“Tell me again how many people you detailed to catch him while you were busy drugging me.”

“And if the Bondsmagi interpret this as collusion—”

“It’s nothing of the sort. Hell, this only increases our entertainment value for our jackass masters. They want us to run this affair in our accustomed style. Skulduggery, not skull-crackery. And you can’t tell me it wouldn’t tickle your own pride.”

“Just to be clear, you’re suggesting that I should discard an approach which has already brought me one considerable success, and continue the fight at a level more suited to the restraints of your own, well, inadequacy, and I should do this because it’ll make me feel the warm glow of virtue?”

“I suppose if you discard the lovely emotional resonance of my suggestion and pin me down on cold hard meaning—”

“How strange. You sound rather like a confidence trickster. But I’ve no objection to ending a little game while I’m one-up on you,” she said with a thin smile. “Truce as discussed, strictly limited to you and Jean and myself, so we can have more time to worry about the proper contest. Will you drink to it?”

“Full glass is an empty promise,” said Locke. Their glasses rang as they brought them together, and then they both gulped their wine to the last drop.

“Doubles or dishonor,” said Sabetha, speedily refilling the wine. Again they raced one another to the bottoms of their glasses, and when they finished her laugh seemed genuine enough to make Locke feel like a fresh wind had blown across whatever was smoldering in his heart.

“You have no idea,” he said, as the warm cloud of wine-haze steadily rose from his chest to his head, “how much aggravation I really am willing to put up with to hear that laugh again.”

“Oh, shit,” she said, rolling her eyes without banishing her smile. “Straight from business to skirt- chasing.”

“You’re the one plying me with wine!”

“Any woman of sense does prefer her men drunk and tractable.”

“And now you’re speaking of me possessively. Gods, keep doing that.”

“This is a far cry from the dusty mess that stormed my inn and accused me of cruelly tugging his heartstrings.”

“You try four days in the saddle without preparation and see what kind of mood it leaves you in.”

Their conversation was interrupted as an iron plank slid out from the tower and locked into place beside their cage. A waiter appeared and opened a door in the brass gridwork, through which he made several trips to deliver fresh wine and starter courses on gilded platters.

“I hope you don’t mind that I ordered for you,” said Sabetha.

“I’m at your mercy,” said Locke, whose stomach now grumbled achingly to life. Fortunately, Sabetha seemed sensitive to the awkwardness of his new appetite. She ravaged their dishes with indelicate gusto that matched his own.

There were the underwater mushrooms of the Amathel, translucent and steamed to the texture of gossamer, paired with coal-black truffles in malt and mustard sauce. There were cool buttercream cheeses and crackling, caustic golden peppers. Spicy fried bread with sweet onions was drizzled with tart yellow yogurt, a variation on a dish Locke recognized from the cuisine of Syrune. Each of these courses was bookended with wine and more wine. Though Locke felt his own wits softening, he was heartened to see the deepening blush on Sabetha’s cheeks and the way her smiles grew steadily wider and easier as the evening wore on.

Purple twilight became full dark of night, and Karthain a sea of half-shadowed shapes suspended between blackness and alchemical sparks.

The main course was a turtle crafted to life size from glazed particolored breads. The top of the starchy creature’s shell was paper-thin, and when punched through with a serving ladle it proved to contain a lake of turtle and oyster ragout. The turtle came under enthusiastic siege from both ends of the table.

“Have you ever had a chance to look out over the Isas Scholastica before?” said Sabetha, recovering some measure of ladylike delicacy by dabbing at her chin with a silk cloth. “That’s it down behind me, just across the