The Republic of Thieves

“Come now,” said Jean. “No falling asleep.”

“Mmmmph,” Locke mumbled. He moved his jaw a few times, started to chew, and opened his eyes once more. “Whhhgh hgggh fgggh igh hhhhgh,” he muttered. “Hgggh.”

“Swallow,” said Jean.

“Mmmmph.” Locke obeyed, then gestured for the water.

Jean eased Locke onto his elbows and held the pitcher to his lips. Coldmarrow continued to wipe the ink and dreamsteel away, but Locke took no notice. He gulped water in undignified slurps until the pitcher was empty.

“More,” said Locke, turning his attention to the food. The mage with the lantern set it down, took the pitcher, and hurried out.

The stuff on the tray was simple fare—baked ham, rough dark bread, some sort of rice with gravy. Locke attacked it as if it were the first food the gods had ever conjured on earth. Jean held a plate for him while Locke pushed the bread around with shaking hands, scooped everything else into his mouth, and barely paused to chew. By the time the water pitcher returned, he was on his second plate.

“Mmmm,” he mumbled, and a number of other monosyllables of limited philosophical utility. His eyes were bright, but they had a dazed look. His awareness seemed to have narrowed to the plate and pitcher. Coldmarrow finished cleaning him off, and Patience stretched a hand out above his legs. The rope that had bound him to the table unknotted itself and leapt into her grasp, coiling itself neatly.

The first tray of food—enough to feed four or five hungry people—was soon gone. When the attending mage brought a second, Locke attacked it without slowing. Patience watched him alertly. Coldmarrow, meanwhile, tended to the young magi who had collapsed during the ritual.

“They alive?” said Jean, at last finding a residue of courtesy if nothing more. “What happened to them?”

“Ever tried to lift a weight that was too heavy?” Coldmarrow brushed his fingers against the forehead of the unconscious young woman. “They’ll be fine, and wiser for the experience. Young minds are brittle. Oldsters, now, we’ve had some disappointments. We’ve set aside the notion that we’re the center of the universe, so our minds bend with strain instead of meeting it head-on.”

Coldmarrow’s knees popped as he stood.

“There,” he said, “on top of all our other services this evening, some philosophy.”

“Jean,” Locke muttered, “Jean, where the hell … what am I doing?”

“Trying to fill a hole,” said Patience.

“Well, was I …? I seem to have lost myself just now. I feel gods-damned strange.”

Jean put a hand on Locke’s shoulder and frowned. “You’re getting warmer,” he said. He set his palm against Locke’s forehead and felt a fever-heat.

“Certainly doesn’t feel like it on my side of things,” said Locke. Shivering, he reached for the blanket on his legs. Jean grabbed it for him and draped it across his shoulders.

“You back to your senses, then?” asked Jean.

“Am I? You tell me. I just … I’ve never felt so hungry. Ever. Hell, I’d still be eating, but I think I’m out of room. I don’t know what came over me.”

“It will come over you again,” said Patience.

“Oh, lovely. Well, this may be a stupid question,” said Locke, “but did it work?”

“If it hadn’t, you’d have died twenty minutes ago,” said Patience.

“So it’s out of me,” muttered Locke, staring down at his hands. “Gods. What a mess. I feel … I don’t know. Other than the hundred tons I just shoved into my stomach, I can’t tell if I’m actually feeling any better.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell feeling better,” said Jean.

“I’m cold. Hands and feet are numb. Feels like I’ve aged a hundred years.” Locke slid off the table, drawing the blanket more tightly around himself. “I think I can stand up, though!”

He demonstrated the questionable optimism of this pronouncement by falling on his face.

“Damn,” he muttered as Jean picked him up. “Sure you can’t do anything about this, Patience?”

“Master Lamora, you full-blooded ingrate, haven’t I worked enough miracles on your behalf for one night?”

“Purely as a business investment,” said Locke. “But I suppose I should thank you nonetheless.”

“Yes, nonetheless. As for your strength, everything now falls to nature. You need food and rest, like any other convalescent.”

“Well,” said Locke, “uh, if it’s no trouble, I’d like to speak alone with Jean.”

“Shall I have the cabin cleared?”

“No.” Locke stared at the unconscious young magi for a moment. “No, let your apprentices or whatever sleep off their hangovers. A walk on deck will do me some good.”

“They do have names,” said Patience. “You’ll be working for us; you might as well accept that. They’re called—”

“Stop,” said Locke. “I’m bloody grateful for what you’ve done here, but you’re not hauling me to Karthain to be anyone’s friend. Forgive me if I don’t feel cordial.”

“I suppose I should take your restoration to boorishness as a credit to my arts,” said Patience with a sigh. “I’ll give instructions to have more food and water set out for you.”

“I doubt I could eat another bite,” said Locke.

“Oh, wait a few minutes,” said Patience. “I’ve been with child. Rely on my assurance that you’ll be ruled by your belly for some time to come.”

2

“I TELL you, Jean, he was there. He was there looking down at me, closer than you are right now.”

Locke and Jean leaned against the Sky-Reacher’s taffrail, watching the soft play of the ghost-lights that gave the Lake of Jewels its name. They gleamed in the black depths, specks of cold ruby fire and soft diamond white, like submerged stars, far out of human reach. Their nature was unknown. Some said they were the souls of the thousand mutineers drowned by the mad emperor Orixanos. Others swore they must be Eldren treasures. In Lashain, Jean had even read a pamphlet in which a Therin Collegium scholar argued that the lights were glowing fish, imbued with the alchemical traces that had spilled into the lake in the decades since the perfection of light-globes.

Whatever they were, they were a pretty enough distraction, rippling faintly beneath the ship’s wake. Smears of gray at the horizon hinted the approach of dawn, but a low ceiling of dark clouds still occluded the sky.

Locke was shaky and feverish, wearing his blanket like a shawl. In between sentences, he munched nervously at a piece of dried ship’s biscuit from the small pile he carried wrapped in a towel.

“Given what was happening to you, Locke, I think the safest bet by far would be that you imagined it.”

“He spoke to me in his own voice,” said Locke, shuddering. Jean gave him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder, but Locke went on. “And his eyes … his eyes … did you ever hear anything like that, at the temples you entered? About a person’s sins being engraved on their eyes?”

“No,” said Jean, “but then, you’d know more inner ritual of at least one temple than I would. Is it treading on any of your vows to ask if you—”

“No, no,” said Locke. “It’s nothing I ever learned in the order of the Thirteenth.”

“Then you did imagine the whole mess.”

“Why the hell would I imagine something like that?”

“Because you’re a gods-damned guilt-obsessed idiot?”

“Easy for you to be glib.”

“I’m not. Look, do you really think the life beyond life is such a farce that people wander around in spirit with their bodies mutilated? You think souls have two eyes in their heads? Or need them?”