The Republic of Thieves

world.”

“On your honor,” said Locke, “on your promises to one another, on your souls, you must swear not to scream or shout. I’m deadly serious. Your lives are at stake.”

“Save the drama for the stage, and for after noon,” yawned Chantal. “What’s this about?”

Locke swallowed the dry air of his suddenly spitless mouth and nodded. The human wall in front of the shrouded corpse broke up; Jean and the Sanzas pushed through the company and took up a new guard position at the door. When they were in place, Locke uncovered the baron’s body in one smooth motion.

There was dead, ghastly silence, an all-devouring vacuum of dread. Moncraine’s face did things that Locke would have sworn were beyond the powers of even a veteran actor.

Donker stumbled into a far corner of the room, braced himself against the wall, and threw up.

“What have you done?” whispered Moncraine. “My gods, gods of my mother, you’ve fucking killed us. You fucking little Camorri murderers—”

“It was an accident,” said Jenora, wringing her hands together so hard that Locke could hear her knuckles cracking.

“An accident? What, what, he … stabbed himself in the gods-damned heart?”

“He was drunk,” said Sabetha. “He tried to rape Jenora, and she defended herself.”

“You defended yourself?” Moncraine peered slack-jawed at Jenora, as though she’d just then appeared out of thin air. “You witless cunt, you’ve done for us all. You should have enjoyed it as best you could and let him stumble on his way!”

Sabetha glared, Chantal blinked as though she’d been slapped, and Jenora took an angry step forward. Curiously enough, the fist that slammed into Moncraine’s jaw half a second later belonged to Sylvanus.

“You forget yourself,” the old man barked. “You who might have killed the useless boor weeks ago, if you’d had anything but empty air in your hands! You faithless fucking peacock!”

Sylvanus moved past Jasmer, who was holding a hand to his jaw and staring wide-eyed at the old man. Sylvanus gathered spit with a phlegmy rumbling noise, then spat a pinkish gob on the dead baron’s breast.

“So it’s our death lying here before us,” he said. “So what? There’s few advantages to being a friend of Sylvanus Olivios Andrassus, but at least there’s this. If you say you had to do it, Jenora, I believe you. If you killed the miserable shit to keep your honor, I’m proud of you for it.”

Jenora seized the old man in a hug. Sylvanus sighed reflectively and patted her on the back.

“Jenora,” said Moncraine. “I’m … I’m sorry. Andrassus is right. I did forget myself. Gods know I’ve got no business talking about restraint in the face of … provocation. But now we’ve got to scatter. We’ve got two or three hours, at best. There’s hundreds of people expecting us to be at the Pearl by midafternoon.”

“I can’t run,” gasped Donker, rising from his misery and wiping his mouth on a tunic sleeve. “I can’t leave Espara! This is madness! I’m not even … let’s explain ourselves, let’s say it was all an accident, they’ll understand!”

Locke took a deep, steadying breath. Donker was the one he’d been afraid of; with him it all came down to how much he truly cherished his cousin.

“They won’t understand a damned thing,” growled Bert. “They’ve got a heap of foreigners, players, and nightskins to punish at will.”

“Djunkhar, Bert’s right. They don’t have to care if anyone’s innocent,” said Locke. “So nobody’s running or confessing. We have a plan, and you’re all going to swear an oath by it if you want to be free and alive at the end of the day.”

“Not me. I’m leaving,” said Jasmer. “Dressed as a priest, dressed as a horse, dressed as the fucking countess if I must. There’s ways out of the city that aren’t past guarded gates, and unless your plan involves a Bondsmage, I’m for them—”

“Then we’ll have two corpses to lie about instead of one,” said Sabetha.

Calo and Galdo reached into their tunic sleeves, taking care to be as obvious as possible.

“You puppies do love to give the fucking orders,” said Moncraine. “This is madness and fantasy! We don’t play games with this corpse. We run from it as fast as we still can!”

“You bloody coward, Jasmer,” said Jenora. “Give them a chance! Who pried you out of gaol?”

“The gods,” said Jasmer. “They’re all perverts and I seem to be their present amusement.”

“Enough! This is singua solus now,” said Locke. “It means ‘one fate.’ Does everyone understand?”

Moncraine only glared. Chantal, Bert, and Sylvanus nodded. Donker shook his head, and Alondo spoke: “I, uh, have to confess I don’t.”

“It works like this,” said Locke. “Everyone here is now party to murder and treason. Congratulations! There’s no backing gently out of it. So we go straight on through this business with our heads held high, or we hang. We swear ourselves to the plan, we tell the exact same lies, and we take the truth to our graves.”

“And if anyone reneges,” said Sylvanus, slowly and grimly, “should anyone think to confess after all, and trade the rest of us for some advantage, we swear to vengeance. The rest of us vow to get them, whatever it takes.”

“Mercy of the Twelve,” sobbed Donker, “I just wanted to have some fun onstage, just once.”

“Fun must be paid for, Cousin.” Alondo took him by the shoulders and steadied him. “It seems the price has gone up for us. Let’s show the gods we’ve got some nerve, eh?”

“How can you be so calm?”

“I’m not. I’m too scared to piss straight,” said Alondo. “But if the Camorri have a plan it’s far more than I’ve got, and I’ll cling to it.”

“The plan is simple,” said Sabetha, “though it’ll take some nerve. The first thing you need to realize is that we’re still doing the play tonight.”

Their reactions were as Locke expected: panic, shouting, blasphemy, and threats, more panic.

“THIRTEEN GODS,” shouted Calo, silencing the tumult. “There’s one way out and no way back. If we don’t go onstage like nothing’s wrong, we can’t escape. You’re in our hands now, and we’re your only chance!”

“We piss excellence and shit happy endings,” said Galdo. “Trust us and live. Listen to Lucaza again.”

Locke spoke quickly now, succinctly, and was viciously dismissive to questions and complaints. He outlined the plan in every detail, just as they’d conjured it the night before, with a few twists he’d thought up during his long vigil. When he was finished, everyone except Sylvanus looked as though they’d aged five years.

“This is even worse than before!” said Donker.

“Unfortunately, you can see that you’re indispensable,” said Locke. “You might have signed on to get killed onstage, but you’ll get killed for real if you don’t play along.”

“What … what the hell do we do with the body?” said Chantal.

“We burn it,” said Sabetha. “Make it look like an accident. We have a plan, for after the play. We roast him just enough to hide the real cause of death, but not enough to prevent identification.”

“And the money?” said Jasmer, his voice dry and tense. “We won’t get a second show with a dead patron. Even if we’re absolved from paying damages to all the vendors, we’re in the hole. Deep.”

“That’s my last bit of good news,” said Locke. “We have copies of the baron’s signatures, plus his signet ring. We collect all the money from the first show; then we come back here. We have you, Jasmer, sign a false receipt from the baron for everything he’s owed, just as if he’d taken it first, as was his right. Verena will forge his signature. Then he dies in a fire, the money goes quietly into our pockets, and we act like we have no idea what the hell Boulidazi did with it before he died.”

“We collect the money?” said Moncraine.

“Of course,” said Locke. “We figured Jenora could take charge of it—”

“We can’t collect the money,” said Moncraine. “It’s one of the things Boulidazi and I were arguing about last night before he got too drunk to think! He’s got someone coming in on his orders to handle all the coin!”

“What?” said Locke and Sabetha in unison.

“Just what I said, you fucking know-it-all infants. Boulidazi might be coffin meat, but he’s got a hireling already assigned to collect the money for him. None of us here will be allowed to touch a copper of it!”