The Republic of Thieves

promised Locke she would wake them eventually and pack them off to a proper room. She and Sylvanus then sat together, working on a ribbon-wrapped bottle of some expensive brandy whose existence had never previously been mentioned to the thirsty ingrates pounding her bar for service.

Sabetha was clear and to the point, without words. She found Locke bound up in his thoughts in the main room and dispelled them with a hand on his shoulder. She glanced at the stairs by way of a question, and when he nodded, her smile made him feel something even the cheers of eight hundred strangers hadn’t been able to.

They commandeered an empty chamber. Sabetha used the room’s only chair to wedge the door shut and admired her handiwork with grim satisfaction.

They were tired, the smell of smoke was nestled deep in their hair, and the last thing they needed was more sweat without a bath, but neither of them cared. They were at home in the darkness in a way that only the survivors of places like Shades’ Hill could understand, and alive to one another’s lips and hands as they had never been before. They were still shy, still awkward and unschooled. But if their first night together had been confusing and incomplete, their second … ah, their second taught them why people keep trying. 

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE END OF OLD DREAMS

1

THE SMELL OF her, the taste of her. Locke awoke in darkness, still awash in those things. His sweat, their sweat, had cooled and dried on his skin, and the bed … he ran his hands over her side of it and found it empty, the blanket thrown back.

He remembered where he was. The upper room of Sabetha’s house off the Court of Dust, the one with the expensively luxurious mattress and the Lashani silk sheets. He couldn’t have been asleep for long.

There was someone in the darkness, watching him, and he knew in an instant it wasn’t Sabetha, knew with every fiber of his intuition who it must be, standing by the faint gray cracks of light at the window.

“What have you done?” he whispered.

“We spoke,” said Patience. “I showed her something.”

Soft silver light filled the room—the cold alchemical globes, in response to a mere gesture of Patience’s. Locke saw her hands moving as his eyes adjusted, saw that she wore a heavy traveler’s cloak with the hood thrown back.

“Where’s Jean?”

“Downstairs, where you left him,” said Patience. “He’ll awaken soon. Do you want to get dressed, or are you comfortable speaking like this?”

The cold Locke felt had little to do with the mere fact that he was naked. He slid from the bed, not caring that he concealed nothing from Patience, and dressed in what he could only hope, ludicrously, was somehow an insolent fashion. He donned trousers and tunic like armor, threw a simple dark jacket on as though it could keep Patience and her words out.

Locke saw that there was something leaning against the wall behind Patience, a flat rectangular object about three feet high, covered in a gray cloth.

“She tried to write you a note,” said Patience. “It was … beyond her. She left half an hour ago.”

“What did you do to her, Patience?”

“I did nothing.” Her dark eyes caught him, seemed to pierce him. Those hunter’s eyes. “To my arts, Sabetha Belacoros is a puppet waiting for a hand, but it would have been meaningless, had I done anything. She had to choose. I gave her information that led to a choice.”

“You utter bitch—”

“I also saved your life tonight,” she said. “For the second and last time. This is our final conversation, Locke Lamora, if that’s what you still choose to call yourself. I’ve come to render all dues and finish my business with you.”

“Do you want to kill me yourself, at last?”

“Certainly not.”

“And … you mean to keep your word? Money and transportation to see us on our way?”

“There’s no money and no transportation,” said Patience, laughing without humor. “You’ll receive nothing else from us. Your countinghouse contacts will no longer recognize you, and your Deep Roots associates already think of Sebastian Lazari as a gray ghost of a memory. Wherever you gentlemen choose to go next, I suspect you have a long walk ahead of you.”

“Why are you doing this to us?” said Locke.

“The Falconer,” she said.

“So revenge was the game after all,” said Locke. “Well, a creature like the Falconer deserved every second of hurt I ever gave him, and fuck you if you expect me to think otherwise!”

“You can’t understand what you took from him,” said Patience, her words hot and thick with scorn. “Your flesh is inert; magic is nothing more than the sound of the wind to you. You can never feel it, feel the words leaving you like fire, like arrows from a bowstring! To know that power welling beneath you and bearing you like a feather on a wind. You think I’m selfish for this? Cruel? It’s less than you deserve! Killing him would have been mercy. I’ve killed magi. But you stole his hands and his voice. You took the tools of magic from him and smashed him like a priceless work of art. You stole his destiny. The archedama Patience could forgive you. The mother and the mage cannot.”

“I refer you to my former statement,” said Locke, his voice trembling.

A heavy tread sounded on the stairs. Jean burst into the room, slamming the door aside without knocking.

“I don’t understand,” he panted. “I was just … You fucking did something to me again, didn’t you?”

“A brief slumber,” said Patience. “I wanted time with Sabetha, and then with Locke. But you might as well hear everything else I have to say.”

“Where’s Sabetha?” said Jean.

“Alive,” said Patience. “And fled, of her own accord.”

“Why do I—?”

“You’ve got nothing more I want, Jean Tannen,” said Patience. “Interrupt me again and Locke leaves Karthain alone.”

Jean balled his fists but remained silent.

“I’m leaving Karthain too,” said Patience. “Myself and all my kind. Tonight ends the last of the Five-Year Games, and our centuries of life here. Whenever the Karthani find the nerve to enter the Isas Scholastica, they’ll find our buildings empty, our tunnels collapsed, our libraries and treasures vanished. We are removing all trace of ourselves from Karthain down to the dust under our beds.”

“Why on the gods’ earth would you do such a thing?” said Locke.

“Karthain is the old dream,” said Patience. “It’s served its purpose. We have gathered strength, honed our skills, and collected the wealth we need to do what we must. There will be no more contracts. No more Bondsmagi. We are retiring from the public life of this world. Never again can we allow such an institution as this to arise.”

“That … that danger you spoke of?” said Locke, unnerved and startled by the magnitude of the changes Patience’s words implied.

“There are things moving and dreaming in the darkness,” said Patience. “We refuse to risk any further chance of waking them up. Yet human magic must survive, so we must learn how to make it as quiet as possible.”