The Republic of Thieves

shifty than I realized.”

“My neck agrees.” With the threat of Boulidazi temporarily quelled, Locke’s thoughts returned to the conversation the baron had interrupted. “And, uh, look, you and I have had—”

“Nothing,” hissed Sabetha. “Evidently I was wrong to say what I did, and wrong to feel those things in the first place.”

“That’s bullshit!” Barely feeling the ache across his throat for the new sting of her words, Locke shocked himself by grabbing her arm and pulling her back out onto the balcony. “I tripped over something. I don’t know what it is, but you owe me an explanation. After everything we just said to one another, I will not let you push me aside just because you’re pitching a fit!”

“I am not pitching a fit!”

“You make the Sanzas look like bloody diplomats when you do this. I’ll run after Boulidazi and pick another fight with him before I’ll let this rest. What set you off?”

“You cannot be so wholly ignorant … Do you know what they pay for red-haired girls in Jerem? Do you know what they do to us if we’re pristine? The Thiefmaker did—and it’s so awful it was too much for his conscience. Understand? That ghoul would tongue-fuck a dead rat if there was silver in it for him, but selling redheads was too vile. He’s the one that taught me to keep my hair dyed and wrapped.”

“I’ve heard about these things, but I never, I never thought of you—”

“First they cut,” said Sabetha. “Right out of a girl’s sex. What they call the sweetness, the little hill. You’ve been around Calo and Galdo long enough, you must have heard a dozen names for it. Then, while the wound is gushing, they bring in the old bastard with the rotting cock or the festering sores or whatever he wants miraculously cured, and he does his business. ‘Blood of the blood-haired child,’ is what they call it.”

“Sabetha—”

“And then, even though most of the miracle is already used up, they bring in the next hundred men that want a go at the bloody hole, because it still brings good luck. In fact, it’s especially good luck if you’re the one riding her when she finally dies!”

“Gods.”

“Yes. May they all spend ten thousand years drinking salted shit in the deepest hell there is.” Sabetha slumped against the rear wall of the balcony and stared at their discarded wine cups and scripts. “Damn. I am pitching a fit.”

“You have some cause!”

She gave a sharp, self-disgusted sort of laugh.

“How was I supposed to know all this the first time I ever laid eyes on you?” said Locke. “I remember that first glimpse as though it happened yesterday. But that’s not the only thing I think about … if it really bothers you that much—”

“My hair doesn’t bother me,” she said forcefully. “It’s the stupid bastards who’d put me in chains on account of that nonsense about it. I’ve had to mind this every day of my life since I went to Shades’ Hill. Every day! All the hours I’ve wasted peering at my hair in a glass, slopping it with alchemy … someday I’ll be old enough that it won’t matter anymore. Someday not soon enough.”

“What about before Shades’ Hill?”

“Nothing before the Hill matters,” she said quietly. “I was protected. Then I was an orphan. Leave it at that.”

“As you prefer.” Slowly, hesitantly, he leaned against the wall beside her. Stars were just beginning to pierce the bruise-colored sky above them, and the faint, familiar whispers of evening were rising—the hum of insects, the clatter of wagons, the din of eating and laughter and argument.

“I’m sorry, Locke,” she said after a few moments had passed. “It’s stupid and unfair to be so upset with you. I’ve insulted you.”

“Absolutely not.” He put one hand on her arm and was encouraged to find her resuming the habit of not flinching away. “I’m glad you told me. Your problems should be our problems, and your worries should be our worries. You realize how rarely you bother to explain yourself?”

“Now, that’s a load—”

“A load of straight truth! You could give inscrutability lessons to the gods-damned Eldren. You know, it’s sort of frightening how you’re actually starting to make sense.”

“Is that meant to be complimentary?”

“Maybe toward both of us,” said Locke. Her weather-like mood swings, the brief seasons of warmth followed by withdrawal and frustration, her urge to control everything in her life with such precision and forethought; behavior that had mystified Locke for years suddenly had a context. “I honestly don’t care what color your hair is as long as you’re under it somewhere.”

“You forgive me for being … unreasonable?”

“Haven’t you forgiven me for the same thing?”

“We may find ourselves once again in serious danger of a happy understanding,” she said, and the way her smile reached her eyes made Locke’s pulse race. Suddenly they seemed to be competing to see who could bring their lips closer to the other’s without appearing to do so—

The sound of a rapid, careless tread echoed from within the passage, and they sprang apart in instinctive unison. The passage door slammed open, and Alondo Razi stumbled out, red-cheeked and sweaty.

“Alondo,” said Sabetha with plainly exaggerated sweetness, “would you consider yourself at peace with the gods?”

“I’m sorry,” he panted, his voice slurred. “I don’t mean to barge in on you, but I can’t find Jovanno. It’s the Asino brothers. Need help—”

“Don’t tell me they started a fight,” said Locke, straining to banish the sudden mental image of a Sanza insulting Lord Boulidazi, and all the intersections of flesh and steel that might result.

“No, gods, no! Sylvanus bet that they couldn’t chug the Ash Bastard. Nobody can chug the Ash Bastard. So they tried, and got what was coming. Ha!”

Locke seized Alondo by the sweat-stained collar of his tunic and briefly forgot that the Esparan had half a decade of growth on him. “Razi,” he growled, “what the cock-blistering hell is an Ash Bastard?”

“Come down,” said the unsteady young actor. “Best see for yourself.”

Locke and Sabetha followed him to the common room, where they found the company and the evening ale-swillers even more scattered and dissipated than usual. Calo and Galdo were lying on their sides, artfully symmetrical, in the middle of a slick black-red puddle. The smell in the air was somewhere between wet animal fur and an unwashed torture chamber, but all the non-Sanza onlookers were quivering with mirth. Mistress Gloriano was the only exception.

“I said take it out to the yard! Idiots! Pink-skinned Therin infants!” She noticed Locke and Sabetha, and encompassed them with her glower. “What kind of fool tries the Ash Bastard indoors?”

“What the hell are you people talking about?” said Locke. He knelt beside Calo. The twins were alive, though they were liquored out of their wits and had clearly lost a fight with those potent joint antagonists, vomit and gravity.

“The Ash Bastard,” said Jasmer, who was leaning against a nearly comatose Sylvanus, “is that ghastly spittoon.”

Locke glanced where Jasmer pointed, and saw a tar-colored cask about two feet long resting sideways on the floor. The stuff spilling from it looked like campfire ashes after a hard rain.

“It’s a quaint ritual of the house,” smirked Jasmer.

“Performed in the yard!” bellowed Mistress Gloriano.

“True enough. But the gist of it, dear Lucaza, is that the Bastard collects tobacco ash and spit for weeks, when people remember not to use the floor. We test the mettle of brash young pickle-wits like your friends there by challenging them to chug the Bastard, which means we fill it to the brim with a hideous black juniper wine Mistress Gloriano imports directly from hell. We swirl it around and make them drink the slurry.”

“That’s idiotic,” said Sabetha, who was making sure Galdo still had a pulse.

“Completely,” laughed Jasmer. “No one in the history of the company has ever chugged the Ash Bastard