The Republic of Thieves

“Is he now?” growled Jean. “An asset? An asset’s something you can put on a shelf or write down on a ledger, you spooky bastard. Don’t talk about him like—”

“Jean,” said Patience sharply. “Command yourself or be commanded.”

“Hey, I’m calm. Placid as pipe-smoke,” said Jean, folding his arms. “Just look at how placid I can be. What’s that you’re doing now?”

“The last thing I need,” said Patience, “is a wisp of breath.” She held a ceramic jar at Locke’s mouth for some time, then capped it and set it aside.

“Fascinating, I’m sure,” said Locke groggily. “Now get this shit out of me.”

“I can’t just will it so,” said Patience. “Life is far more easily destroyed than mended. Magic doesn’t change that. In fact, you shouldn’t think of this as a healing at all.”

“Well, what the hell is it?” said Jean.

“Misdirection,” said Patience. “Imagine the poison as a spark smoldering in wood. If the spark becomes flame, Locke dies. We need to make it expend itself somewhere else, destroy something else. Once that power is drawn from it, the spark goes out.”

Jean watched uneasily for the next quarter of an hour as Patience and Coldmarrow used a strange- smelling black ink to paint an intricate network of lines across Locke’s face and arms and chest. Although Locke muttered from time to time, he didn’t appear to be in any greater discomfort than before.

While the ink dried, Coldmarrow fetched a tall iron candelabrum, which he set between the table and the shuttered stern windows. Patience produced three white candles from her box.

“Wax tapers, made in Camorr,” she said. “Along with an iron candle-stand, also from Camorr. All of it stolen, to establish a more powerful sympathy with your unfortunate friend.”

She rolled one candle back and forth in her hands, and its surface blurred and shimmered. Coldmarrow used Patience’s silver knife to transfer Locke’s blood and hair and nail-trimmings to the surface of the wax. There, rather than running messily down the sides as Jean would have expected, the “certain requirements” vanished smoothly into the candle.

“Effigy, I name you,” said Patience. “Blood-bearer, I create you. Shadow of a soul, deceiving vessel, I give you the flesh of a living man and not his heart-name. You are him, and not him.”

She placed the taper in the candelabrum. Then she and Coldmarrow repeated the process exactly with the two remaining candles.

“Now,” said Patience softly, “you must be still.”

“I’m not exactly fuckin’ dancing,” said Locke.

Coldmarrow picked up a coil of rope. He and Patience used this to bind Locke to the table by a dozen loops of cord between his waist and his ankles.

“One thing,” said Locke as they finished. “Before you begin, I’d like a moment alone with Jean. We’re … adherents of a god you might not want to be associated with.”

“We can respect your mysteries,” said Patience. “But don’t dawdle, and don’t disturb any of the preparations.”

She and Coldmarrow withdrew from the cabin, closing the door behind them, and Jean knelt at Locke’s side.

“That slop Patience gave me made things fuzzy for a moment, but I think I’ve got some wits back,” said Locke. “So—have I ever looked more ridiculous?”

“Have you ever looked not ridiculous?”

“Fuck you,” said Locke, smiling. “That end-likt-ge-whatever—”

“Endliktgelaben.”

“Yeah, that Endliktgelaben shit you brought up … were you just trying to piss me off, or were you serious?”

“Well … I was trying to piss you off.” Jean grimaced. “But did I mean it? I suppose. Am I right about it? I don’t know. I really hope not. But you are one gods-damned miserable brat when you decide to feel guilty about everything. I’d like that read into the record.”

“I have to tell you, Jean … I don’t really want to die. Maybe that makes me some kind of chickenshit. I meant what I said about the magi; I’d sooner piss in their faces than take gold from their hands, but all the same, I don’t want to die … I don’t!”

“Easy there,” said Jean. “Easy. All you have to do to prove it is not die.”

“Give me your left hand.”

The two of them touched hands, palm to palm. Locke cleared his throat.

“Crooked Warden,” he said, “Unnamed Thirteenth, your servant calls. I know I’m a man of so many faults that listing them here would only detain us.” Locke coughed and wiped fresh blood from his mouth. “But I meant what I said … I don’t want to die, not without a real fight, not like this. So if you could just find it in your heart to tip that scale for me one more time— Hell, if not for me, do it for Jean. Maybe his credit’s better than mine.”

“This we pray with hopeful hearts,” said Jean. He rose to his feet again. “Still scared?”

“Shitless.”

“Less chance you’ll make a mess on the table, then.”

“Bastard.” Locke closed his eyes. “Call them back. Let’s get on with this.”

3

JEAN WATCHED, moments later, as Patience and Coldmarrow took up positions on either side of Locke.

“Unlock the dreamsteel,” said Patience.

Coldmarrow reached down the front of his tunic and pulled out a silvery pendant on a chain. At his whisper of command, pendant and chain alike turned to brightly rippling liquid, which ran in a stream down his fingers, coalescing in a ball that quivered in his cupped hand.

“Quicksilver?” said Jean.

“Hardly,” said Patience. “Quicksilver poisons the wits of those who handle it. Dreamsteel is something of ours. It shapes itself to our thoughts, and it’s harmless as water … mostly.”

The magi spread their arms over the table. Slender threads of dreamsteel sprouted from the shimmering mass in Coldmarrow’s hand and slid forward, falling through the gaps between his fingers. They landed on Locke’s chest, not with careless splashing but with uncanny solidity. Though the stuff ran like water, the flow was slow and dreamlike.

The thin silvery streams conformed to the black lines painted across Locke’s upper body. Steadily, sinuously, the threads of liquid metal crept across the design, into every curve and whorl. When at last the delicate work was complete and the final speck of dreamsteel fell from Coldmarrow’s hand, every line on Locke’s skin had been precisely covered with a minuscule layer of rippling silver.

“This will feel rather strange,” said Patience.

She and Coldmarrow clenched their fists, and instantly the complex tracery of dreamsteel leapt up in a thousand places, exploding off Locke’s skin. Locke arched his back, only to be pressed gently back down by the hands of the magi. The dreamsteel settled as a forest of needles.

Like the victim of a mauling by some metallic porcupine, Locke now had countless hair-thin silver shafts embedded bloodlessly in his skin, running along the painted lines.

“Cold,” said Locke. “ ’That’s awfully damn cold!”

“The dreamsteel is where it needs to be,” said Patience. She picked up the jar she had used to catch Locke’s exhaled breath and approached the candelabrum.

“Effigy, I kindle you,” she said, opening the jar and wafting it past the three candles. “Breath-sharer, I give you the wind of a living man but not his heart-name. You are him, and not him.”

She gestured with her right hand, and the wicks of the three candles burst into flickering white flame.

She then resumed her place at Locke’s side. She and Coldmarrow put their right hands together, fingertip