The Republic of Thieves

4

FOOTSTEPS ECHOING on marble. Faint murmur of conversation in an unknown language. No, not a murmur. Not a noise at all. A soft tickle of thoughts from a dozen strangers, brushing against an awareness that Jean hadn’t previously known he’d possessed. A flutter like moth wings against the front of his mind. The sensation is frightening. He tries to halt, is startled to discover that the vaporous mass of his body refuses his commands.

Ah, but these aren’t your memories. The voice of Patience, inside his head. You’re a passenger. Try to relax, and it will grow easier soon enough.

“I don’t weigh anything,” Jean says. The words come from his lips like the weakest half-exhalation of a man with dead stones for lungs. Squeezing them out takes every ounce of will he can muster.

It’s my body you’re wearing. I’m leaving some things hazy for your peace of mind. You’re here for a study in culture, not anatomy.

Warm light on his face, falling from above. His thoughts are buoyed from below by a sensation of power, a cloud of ghostly whispers he can’t seem to grab meaningful hold of. He rides atop these like a boat bobbing on a deep ocean.

My mind. My deeper memories, which are quite irrelevant, thank you. Concentrate. I’ll make you privy to my strongest, most deliberate thoughts from the moments I’m revealing.

Jean tries to relax, tries to open himself to this experience, and the impressions tumble in, piece by piece, faster and faster. He is struck by a disorienting jumble of information—names, places, descriptions, and, threaded through it all, the thoughts and sigils of many other magi:

Isas Scholastica
                       Isle of Scholars
—Archedama, it’s not like you to keep us waiting—
    (private citadel of the magi of Karthain)
—is it because—
    … feeling of resigned annoyance …
      —Falconer—
                 (damn that obvious and inevitable question)
  … sound of footsteps on smooth marble …
—can well understand—
    His presence has nothing to do with my tardiness.
—would feel the same in your place—
    As if I’d hide from my duties because of him.
(gods above, did I earn five rings by being meek?)

There is a plain wooden door before Jean, the door to the Sky Chamber, the seat of what passes for government among the magi of Karthain. The door will not open by touch. Anyone attempting to turn the handle will stand dumbfounded as their hand fails again and again to find it, plainly visible though it is. Jean feels a flutter of power as he/Patience sends his/her sigil against the door. At this invisible caress, the door falls open. 

—pardon, did not mean to offend—
  … the warm air of the Sky Chamber, already packed with …
    I will not take the wall to my own son!
             —no need to get annoyed, I was merely—
… there he sits, waiting.
      (watching, watching, like his damned bird)

The Sky Chamber is a vault of illusion that would make the artificers of Tal Verrar weak-kneed with envy. It is the first object of free-standing, honest-to-the-gods sorcery that Jean has ever seen. The room is circular, fifty yards in diameter, and Jean knows from Patience’s penumbra of knowledge that the domed ceiling is actually twenty feet beneath the ground. Nonetheless, across the great glass sweep of that dome is a counterfeit sky, like a painting brought to life, perfect in every detail. It shows a stately early evening, with the sun hidden away behind gold-rimmed clouds.

The magi await Patience in high-backed chairs, arranged in rising tiers like the Congress of Lords from the old empire—a congress long since banished to ashes by the men and women who emulate them. They wear identical hooded robes, a soft dark red, the color of roses in shadow. This is their ceremonial dress. Gray or brown robes might have been more neutral, more restful, but the progenitors of the order didn’t want their inheritors to grow too restful in their deliberations.

One man sits in the foremost rank of chairs, directly across from Jean/Patience as the door slides shut behind him/her. Perched on one robed arm, statue-still, is a hawk that Jean recognizes instantly. He has looked directly into its cold, deadly eyes before, as well as those of its master. 

(watching, watching, like his damned bird)

A bombardment of questions and greetings and sigils comes on like a crashing wave, then steadily fades. Order is called for, and relative silence descends, a relief to Jean. And then:

Mother.

The greeting comes a moment too late to be polite. It is sharp and clear as only the thoughts of a blood relative can be. Behind it is an emotional grace note, artfully subdued—the wide bright sky, a sensation of soaring, a feeling of wind against the face. The absolute freedom of high flight.

The sigil of the Falconer.

Speaker, she/Jean replies.

Must we be such prisoners of formality, Mother?

This is a formal occasion.

Surely we’re alone in our thoughts.

You and I are never alone.

And yet we’re never together. How is it we can both mean the exact same thing by those statements?

Don’t wax clever with me, Speaker. Now isn’t the time for your games—This is as much your game as it is mine—I WILL NOT BE INTERRUPTED.

There is strength behind that last thought, a pulse of mental muscle the younger mage cannot yet match. A vulgar way to punctuate a conversation, but the Falconer takes the point. He bows his head a fraction of a degree, and Vestris, his scorpion hawk, does the same.

At the center of the Sky Chamber is a reflecting pool of dreamsteel, its surface a perfect unrippled mirror. Four chairs surround it; three are occupied. The magi have little care for the ungifted custom of setting the