The Republic of Thieves

That’s why the outbreak of plague was so sudden, so virulent. You tore your own spirit from its old body. You stole a new one. A second youth, a new wealth of years to spend honing your powers. But that’s not how it worked out.… Your memories were fragmented, your personality burnt away. You locked yourself into a body that didn’t have the gift you used to put yourself there. It took more than twenty years for us to see both pieces of the puzzle, but surely you can’t deny that they fit together smoothly.”

“I can,” said Locke. “I sure as hell can deny it!”

“Why do you think I’ve confided in you?” Patience sighed with the quiet exasperation of a teacher drilling a particularly slow pupil. “Told you what I have of magic, shown you what I have of the magi? Did you think I was just being chatty? Did you really believe you were so very special? I do need you in your capacity as my exemplar for the five-year game. But I also used that to justify bringing you here, to give us more time to study you. To give myself time to make this approach.”

“This is some cruel fucking game of yours,” said Locke.

“You’re still one of us, after a fashion,” said Patience. “You have obligations to us, and we to you. One of those obligations is the truth. If the two of you hadn’t rekindled your private affair, I could have postponed this. As it stands, you both have the right to know, and I had the responsibility to tell you.” Patience gently touched one of Sabetha’s arms. “I know the reason, you see, why he’s dreamed of redheaded women all of his—”

“Stop!” Sabetha jerked away from Patience, stood up, and backed away from Locke as well. “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear any more!”

“Don’t tell me you believe her!” said Locke.

“Coincidence piles on coincidence until the evidence becomes too strong to ignore,” said Patience.

“Stuff it,” growled Sabetha. “I don’t … I don’t know what the hell to think about this, Locke, I just—”

“You do believe it.” Shock turned in an instant to hot anger. Confused and reeling, Locke was primed to lash out at any target he could find. Before he knew what he was doing, he chose the wrong one. “All the things we’ve done, all the time we’ve spent rebuilding this … and you believe her!”

“You told me you named yourself after a sailor,” she said, unsteadily. “Did you believe that? Do you … believe it now? How can you be sure that you weren’t just filling some hole, or having it filled by someone else’s —”

“How can you even think this?” Anger flared on top of anger, hot and sharp as a knife just pulled from flame. “You left me! You manipulated me, you fucking drugged me, and I still came back. But one story from this fucking Karthani witch and you’re looking at me like I just fell out of the gods-damned sky! Wait, no, shit—”

His remorse and better judgment arrived, late as usual, like party guests riding in just after the social disaster of the season has already erupted. Sabetha’s cheeks darkened, and she opened her mouth several times, but in the end she said nothing. She turned with all the awful, decisive grace of womanly anger, threw the balcony doors open with a slam, and vanished into the darkened house.

Locke stared after her, dumbfounded, dully listening to the drumbeat rhythm of the pulse in his temples. A moment later he leapt to his feet, grabbed the silver bucket containing the chilled wine, and flung it with a snarl against the oak cooking table. Ingredients flew, glass shattered, and ice and wine alike splashed into the brazier, where they raised a soft cloud of hissing steam.

“Thanks for your evenhanded fucking presentation, Patience.” He kicked a fragment of broken glass and watched it skitter off the edge of the balcony. “Thanks for all your kind efforts on my behalf, you … you—”

“My responsibility was to tell you the truth, not wrap you in swaddling clothes.” She raised her hood again, half-veiling her face in shadow. “Nor protect you from your own badly aimed temper. Take it from someone who was courted into a happy marriage, Master Lamora. Your style of wooing couldn’t be more perfectly designed to deliver you to a solitary life.”

“Go light yourself on fire,” said Locke, suddenly regretting that he’d smashed the only bottle of liquor he’d thought to set out on the balcony.

“We’ll speak more of this later,” said Patience. “And once the election is finished, we’ll discuss arrangements for the future.”

“I don’t believe a thing you’ve said,” Locke whispered, knowing how little conviction was in his voice.

“You refused to believe that I preserved your life in Tal Verrar for reasons of conscience. Now I give you the self-interested motive you previously insisted upon, and you refuse to believe it as well. Are you really that arrogant, that logic is as optional as a fashion accessory for you? You can certainly choose to believe that we’d entrust a normal man with even the fragments of guarded truth I’ve shown you. Or you can open your eyes. Accept that we’ve given you a chance to solve the mysteries of your past. Perhaps even a chance to redeem yourself for a terrible crime. A crime whose first victim’s stolen body you will wear like a mask until the day you die.”

Locke said nothing, staring at the mess he’d made of the ingredients for the feast he’d been happily planning to cook not a quarter of an hour earlier.

“Brood all you like,” said Patience. “Sulk all night. You’ve an uncanny talent for it, haven’t you? But in the morning, we expect that you’ll be sober, and focused, and working furiously on our behalf. My more enthusiastic young peers imagine that their colorful threats to you have escaped my notice. But now I suspect you understand how little value I place on Jean Tannen for his own sake, and how … discretionary my protection of him might be. Jean’s continued safety is entirely dependent on your discipline and inspiration.”

Patience turned and slowly strolled away into the house.

“Gods save him,” she called over her shoulder.

She left Locke standing alone on the balcony, and didn’t bother closing the doors behind her.

INTERSECT (III): SPARK

THE OLD MAN quietly withdrew the observation spell he’d woven around Archedama Patience, the most complex work of his life, and breathed a long sigh of relief. The strain of spying, and of conveying the results of that spying in thought to his contact on the other side of the city, had tested him sorely.

This can’t be true! He could feel the fury behind the thoughts that hammered him from that contact now. Archedama Foresight was powerful, and her anger came on like the pressure of a rising headache. I’ve heard NOTHING of this! Have the other three gone MAD?

Please calm down, Archedama. I’ve had a difficult evening. They’re not mad … but they have gone too far. You see now why I had to tell you.

How has this been concealed from me?

Patience claimed the right to examine the two Camorri after the Falconer’s mutilation. I never would have known what she’d discovered if I hadn’t been there in person for Jean Tannen’s interrogation. We took him in Tal Verrar, months before the Falconer’s friends were allowed to toy with them. Only Patience, Temperance, and myself have known what Tannen told us. That’s how the secret was kept.

Lamor Acanthus returned! The matter is so huge, I can scarcely begin to ponder it. This question belongs to us all! I’ll break it wide open in the Sky Chamber!

NO! The old man felt beads of sweat sliding down his cheeks and brow. The intensity of their communication was far beyond the usual light touch of mind-speech. Patience and Temperance have too much support in the chamber. Providence will take their side in any argument. You know as well as I that the Falconer’s removal leaves you short of commanding Speakers. Your followers are dedicated, but your numbers are too few to broach this matter without preparation.

If Lamor Acanthus removed his spirit into another body, even an ungifted body, then he achieved something no other mage in history ever has.

In disgrace and disaster!

Yes. All the more reason we must examine him collectively, research his processes exhaustively. The mind and power of one man were not enough to overcome the difficulties. But what could the minds and powers of a hundred magi do? Or all of us, all four hundred? That’s how this MUST be approached!