The Republic of Thieves

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Getting you out,” Locke whispered. He glanced around the room, pondering anxiously. They were in a library, but the shelves and scroll-cases were bare. Not a single book in sight. No sharp objects, no levers, no tools. He examined the door, hoping for some sort of interior lock or bar he could throw, and was disappointed there as well.

“I can’t get out of this chair,” said Sabetha, her voice low and urgent. “They could be back any moment. What’s that you’re holding?”

Locke suddenly remembered the vial he was clutching tightly in his right hand. Before he could think of anything else to do he moved it behind his back like a fool.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“I know why Chains sent you up here.” Sabetha closed her eyes as she spoke. “It’s okay. He and I talked about it before. It’s—”

“No. I’ll think of something. Help me.”

“It’s going to be all right. Give it to me.”

“I can’t.” Locke held up his hands, pleading. “Help me get you out of that chair.”

“Locke,” said Sabetha, and the sound of her speaking his name at last was like a hammer-blow to his heart. “You swore to do what I said. Come hell or Eldren-fire. Did you mean it?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “But you’ll die.”

“There’s no other way.” She held out one of her hands.

“No.” He rubbed at his eyes, feeling tears starting again.

“Then what are you loyal to, Locke?”

A coldness gnawed at the pit of Locke’s stomach. Every failure he’d experienced in his few short years, every time he’d been caught or foiled, every time he’d ever made a mistake, been punished, gone hungry—all those moments churned up and relived at once couldn’t have equaled the bitter weight of the defeat that settled in his gut now.

He placed the glass vial in her hand, and for a moment their fingers met, warmth against warmth. She gave his hand a little squeeze, and Locke gasped, letting the vial out of his grip. Her fingers curled around it, and now there was no taking it back.

“Go,” she whispered.

He stared at her, unable to believe he’d actually done it, and then finally turned away. It was just three steps to the window, but his feet felt distant and numb. He braced one hand on the windowsill, more to steady himself than to escape.

A loud click echoed in the room, and the door began to swing open.

Locke heaved himself over the sill, scrambled to plant his feet in the vines that clung to the house’s brick exterior, and prayed to drop down fast enough to escape notice, or at least get a head start—

“Locke, wait!” came a deep and familiar voice.

Locke clung precariously to the windowsill and strained to lift his head enough to glance back into the room. The door was wide open, and standing there was Father Chains.

“No,” whispered Locke, suddenly realizing what the whole point of the night’s exercise really was. But that meant— That meant Sabetha wouldn’t have to—

He was so startled he lost his grip, and with a sharp cry he fell backward into the air above the darkened garden.

8

“TOLD YOU he wasn’t dead.” It was one of the Sanzas, his voice coming out of the darkness. “Like a physiker, I am. Ought to charge you a fee for my opinion.”

“Sure.” The other Sanza now, speaking close to Locke’s right ear. “Hope you like getting paid in kicks to the head.”

Locke opened his eyes and found himself on a table in a well-lit room, a room that had the same strange lack of opulence as the library Sabetha had been chained up in. There were the table and a few chairs, but no tapestries, no decorations, no sense that anyone actually lived here. Locke winced, took a deep breath, and sat bolt upright. His back and his head ached dully.

“Easy, boy.” Chains was at his side in an instant. “You took quite a tumble. If only you weren’t so damnably quick on your feet, I might have convinced—”

Chains reached out to gently push him back down, and Locke swatted his hands away.

“You lied,” he growled.

“Forgive me,” said Chains, very softly. “There was still one thing we needed to know about you, Locke.”

“You lied!” The depth of Locke’s rage came as a shock; he couldn’t remember feeling anything like it even for tormentors like Gregor and Veslin—and he’d killed them, hadn’t he? “None of it was real!”

“Be reasonable,” said Chains. “It’s a bit risky to stage a kidnapping using actual agents of the duke.”

“No,” said Locke. “It was wrong. It was wrong! It wasn’t like they really would have done! I might have gotten her out!”

“You can’t fight grown men,” said Chains. “You did the very best you could in a bad situation.”

“IT WAS WRONG!” Locke forced himself to concentrate, to articulate what his gut was telling him. “They would … real guards might have done it differently. Not chained her down. This was all made for me. All made so I had no choice!”

“Yes,” said Chains. “It was a game you couldn’t win. A situation that finds us all, sooner or later.”

“No,” said Locke, feeling his anger warm him from his head to his toes. “It was all wrong!”

“He did it to us too, once,” said Calo, grabbing his right arm. “Gods, we wanted to die, it was so bad.”

“He did it to all of us,” said Sabetha, and Locke whirled at the sound of her voice. She was standing in a corner, arms folded, studying him with a combination of interest and unease. “He’s right. We had to know if you could do it.”

“And you did superbly,” said Chains. “You did better than we could have—”

“It wasn’t fair,” shouted Locke. “It wasn’t a fair test! There was no way to win!”

“That’s life,” said Chains. “That’s your one sure inheritance as flesh and blood. Nobody wins all the time, Locke.”

Locke shook himself free from Calo’s grasp and stood on the table, so that he actually had to look down to meet Chains eye to eye.

Gods, he’d thought Sabetha was gone once, and he’d rejoiced to find her alive. Then he’d been sent to kill her. That was the rage, he realized, burning like a coal behind his heart. For a few terrible minutes Chains had made him believe that he would have to lose her all over again. Narrowed his world to one awful choice and made him feel helpless.

“I will never lose again.” He nodded slowly to himself, as though his words were the long-sought solution to some mathematical puzzle. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, not caring if he was heard across the length and breadth of the Razona.

“Do you hear me? I WILL NEVER LOSE AGAIN!”

CHAPTER TWO: THE BUSINESS