The Republic of Thieves

1

IT WAS COOL and dark in the Elderglass burrow of the Gentlemen Bastards, and far quieter than usual, when Locke awoke with the certain knowledge that someone was staring at him. He caught his breath for an instant, then mimicked the deep, slow breathing of sleep. He squinted and scanned the gray darkness of the room, wondering where everyone was.

Down the hall from the kitchen there were four rooms, or, more appropriately, four cells. They had dark curtains for doors. One belonged to Chains, another to Sabetha, the third to the Sanzas, and the fourth to Locke and Jean. Jean should have been on his cot against the opposite wall, just past their little shelf of books and scrolls, but there was no sound from that direction.

Locke listened, straining to hear over the thudding of his pulse. There was a whisper of bare skin against the floor, and a flutter of cloth. He sat up, left hand outstretched, only to find another warm set of fingers entwined around his, and a palm in the middle of his chest pushing him back down.

“Shhhh,” said Sabetha, sliding onto the cot.

“Wha … where is everyone?”

“Gone for the moment,” she whispered into his ear. Her breath was warm against his cheek. “We don’t have much time, but we do have some.”

She took his hands and guided them to the smooth, taut muscles of her stomach. Then she slid them upwards until he was cupping her breasts—she’d come into the room without a tunic.

One thing the bodies of sixteen-year-old boys (and that was more or less what Locke was) don’t do is respond mildly to provocation. In an instant he was achingly hard against the thin fabric of his breeches, and he exhaled in mingled shock and delight. Sabetha brushed aside his blanket and slid her left hand down between his legs. Locke arched his back and uttered a noise that was far from dignified. Luckily, Sabetha giggled, seeming to find it endearing.

“Mmmm,” she whispered. “I do feel appreciated.” She pressed down firmly but gently and began to squeeze him to the rhythm of their breathing, which was growing steadily louder. At the same time, she slid his other hand down from her breast, down her stomach, down to her legs. She was wearing a linen breechclout, the sort that could be undone with just a tug in the right place. She pressed his hand between her thighs, against the intriguing heat just behind the fabric. He caressed her there, and for a few incredible moments they were completely caught up in this half-sharing, half-duel, their responses to one another becoming less controlled with every ragged breath, and it was delicious suspense to wonder who would snap first.

“You’re driving me mad,” he whispered. The heat from her skin was so intense he imagined he could see it as a ghost-image in the dark. She leaned forward, and her breath tickled his cheeks again; he drew in the scents of her hair and sweat and perfume and laughed with pleasure.

“Why are we still wearing clothes?” she said, and they rolled apart to amend the situation, fumbling, struggling, giggling. Only now the soft heat of her skin was fading, and the gray shadows of the room loomed more deeply around them, and then Locke was kicking out, spasming in a full-body reflex as she slipped from his grasp like a breath of wind.

That cruelest of landlords, cold morning reality, finished evicting the warm fantasy that had briefly taken up residence in his skull. Muttering and swearing, Locke fought against his tangled blanket, felt his cot tipping away from the wall, and failed in every particular to brace himself for his meeting with the floor. There are three distinct points of impact no romantically excited teenage boy ever hopes to slam against a hard surface. Locke managed to land on all three.

His outflung right hand failed to do anything useful, but it did snatch the opaque cover from his cot-side alchemical globe, bathing the cell in soft golden light for him to gasp and writhe by. A carelessly stacked pile of books toppled loudly to the floor, then took several similar piles with it in a fratricidal cascade.

“Gods below,” muttered Jean, rolling away from the light. Jean was definitely in his proper place, and their cell was once again the cluttered mess of daily life rather than the dark private stage of Locke’s dream.

“Arrrrrrrrrrrgh,” said Locke. It didn’t help much, so he tried again. “Arrrrrrrrrrr—”

“You know,” said Jean, yawning irritably, “you should burn some offerings in thanks for the fact that you don’t actually talk in your sleep.”

“… rrrrrrgh. What the hell do you mean?”

“Sabetha’s got really sharp ears.”

“Nnngh.”

“I mean, it’s pretty gods-damned obvious you’re not dreaming about calligraphy over there.”

There was a loud knock on the wall just outside their cell, and then the curtain was swept aside to reveal Calo Sanza, long hair hanging in his eyes, working his way into a pair of breeches.

“Good morning, sunshines! What’s with all the noise?”

“Someone took a tumble,” muttered Jean.

“What’s so hard about sleeping on a cot like a normal person, ya fuckin’ spastic dog?”

“Kiss my ass, Sanza,” Locke gasped.

“Heyyyyyyyyy, EVERYBODY!” Calo pounded on the wall as he shouted. “I know we’ve got half an hour yet to sleep, but Locke thinks we should all be up right now! Find your happy faces, Gentlefucker Bastards, it’s a bright new day and we get to start it EARLY!”

“Calo, what the hell is wrong with you?” hollered Sabetha, somewhere down the hall.

Locke put his forehead against the floor and moaned. It was the height of the endless steaming summer of the seventy-eighth Year of Preva, Lady of the Red Madness, and everything was absolutely screwed up to hell.

2

SABETHA DARTED in, parried Locke’s attempt at a guard, and smacked the outside of his left knee with her chestnut wood baton.

“Ow,” he said, hopping up and down while the sting faded. Locke wiped his forehead, lined up again in the duelist’s stance, and touched the tip of his baton to Sabetha’s. They were using the sanctuary of the Temple of Perelandro as a practice room, under Jean’s watchful eye.

“High diamond, low square,” said Jean. “Go!”

This was more an exercise in speed and precision than actual fighting technique. They slammed their batons together in the patterns demanded by Jean, and after the final contact they were free to swipe at one another, scoring touches against arms or legs.

Clack! Clack! Clack! The sound of their batons echoed across the stone-walled chamber.

Clack! Clack! Clack!

Clack! Clack! Thump!

“Yeow,” said Locke, shaking his left wrist, where a fresh red welt was rising.

“You’re faster than this, Locke.” Sabetha returned to her starting position. “Something distracting you this morning?”

Sabetha wore a loose white tunic and black silk knee-breeches that left nothing about her lithely-muscled legs to the imagination. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair pulled tightly back with linen cord. If she’d heard anything specific about the disturbance he’d kicked off to start the day, at least she wasn’t saying much.

“More than one something?” she said. “Any of them attached to me?”

So much for the lukewarm comfort of uncertainty.

“You know I’m attached to you,” said Locke, trying to sound cheerful as they touched batons again.

“Or might like to be, hmmm?”

“Middle square,” yelled Jean, “middle square, middle diamond! Go!”

They wove their pattern of strikes and counterstrikes, rattling their batons off one another until the end of the sequence, when Sabetha flicked Locke’s weapon down and smacked a painful crease into his right biceps. Sabetha’s only commentary on this victory was to idly twirl her baton while Locke rubbed at his arm.

“Hold it,” said Jean. “We’ll try a new exercise. Locke, stand there with your hands at your sides. Sabetha, you just hit him until you get tired. Be sure to concentrate on his head so he won’t feel anything.”

“Very funny.” Locke lined up again. “I’m ready for another.”

He was nothing of the sort. At the end of the next pattern, Sabetha slapped him on the right biceps again. And again, following the pattern after that, with precision that was obviously deliberate.

“You know, most days you can at least manage to hit back,” she said. “Want to give it up as a bad job?”

“Of course not,” said Locke, trying to be subtle about wiping the nascent tears from the corners of his eyes. “Barely getting started.”

“Have it your way.” She lined up again, and Locke couldn’t miss the coldness of her poise. Ah, gods. When Sabetha felt she was being trifled with, she had a way of radiating the same calm, chilly regard that Locke imagined might pass from executioner to condemned victim. He knew all too well what it meant to be the object of that regard.

“High diamond,” said Jean warily, apprehending the change in Sabetha’s mood. “Middle square, low cross. Go.”

They flew through the patterns with furious speed, Sabetha setting the pace and Locke straining to match her. The instant the last stroke of the formal exercise was made, Locke flew into a guard position that would have deflected any blow aimed at his much-abused right biceps. Sabetha, however, was actually aiming for a point just above his heart, and the hotly stinging slap nearly knocked him over.

“Gods above,” said Jean, stepping between them. “You know the rules, Sabetha. No cuts at anything but arms or legs.”

“Are there rules in a tavern brawl or an alley fight?”

“This isn’t a damned alley fight. It’s just an exercise for building vigor!”

“Doesn’t seem to be working for one of us.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“What’s gotten into you, Jean? Are you going to stand in front of him for the rest of his life?”

“Hey, hey,” said Locke, stepping around Jean and attempting to hide a considerable amount of pain behind a disingenuous smile.

“All’s well, Jean.”

“All’s not well,” said Jean. “Someone is taking this far too seriously.”

“Stand aside, Jean,” said Sabetha. “If he wants to stick his hand in a fire, he can learn to pull it out himself.”

“He is right here, thank you very much, and he is fine,” said Locke. “It’s fine, Jean. Let’s have another pattern.”

“Sabetha needs to calm down.”

“Aren’t I calm?” said Sabetha. “Locke can have quarter anytime he asks for it.”

“I don’t choose to yield just yet,” said Locke, with what he hoped was a charming, devil-may-care sort of grin. Sabetha’s countenance only darkened in response. “However, if you’re concerned about me, you can back off to any degree you prefer.”

“Oh, no.” Sabetha was anything but calm. “No, no, no. I don’t withdraw. You yield! Deliberately. Or we keep going until you can’t stand up.”

“That might take a while,” said Locke. “Let’s see if you have the patience—”

“Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you’ve lost isn’t the same as winning?”

“Sort of depends on how long one keeps refusing, doesn’t it?”

Sabetha scowled, an expression that cut Locke more deeply than any baton-lash. Staring fixedly at him, she took her baton in both hands, snapped it over her knee, and bounced the pieces off the floor.

“Forgive me, gentlemen,” she said. “I seem to be unable to conform to the intended spirit of this exercise.”

She turned and left. When she’d vanished into the rear hall of the temple, Locke let out a dejected sigh.

“Gods,” he said. “What the hell is going on between us? What happened, just now?”

“She has a cruel streak, that one,” said Jean.

“No more than any of us!” said Locke, more hotly than he might have intended. “Well, we’ve got some … philosophical differences, to be sure.”

“She’s a perfectionist.” Jean picked up the broken halves of Sabetha’s baton. “And you’re a real idiot from time to time.”

“What did I do, besides fail to be a master baton duelist?” Locke massaged some of the tender reminders Sabetha had left him of her superior technique. “I didn’t train with Don Maranzalla.”

“Neither did she.”

“Well, come on, how does that make me an idiot?”

“You’re no Sanza,” said Jean, “but you can certainly be one sharp stab in the ass. Look, you’d have stood here and let her slap you into paste just for the sake of being in the same room with her. I know it. You know it. She knows it.”

“Well, uh—”

“It’s not endearing, Locke. You don’t court a girl by inviting her to abuse you from sunrise to sunset.”

“Really? That sounds an awful lot like courtship in every story I’ve ever read—”

“I mean literally abused, as in getting pounded into bird shit with a wooden stick. It’s not charming or impressive. It just makes you look silly.”

“Well, she doesn’t like it when I beat her at anything. She’s certainly not going to respect me if I give up! So just what the hell can I do?”

“No idea. Maybe I see some things clearer than you because I’m not bloody infatuated, but what to actually do with the pair of you, gods know.”

“You’re a deep well of reassurance.”

“On the bright side,” said Jean, “I’m sure you’re higher in her esteem right now than the Sanzas.”

“Sweet gods, that’s sickly praise.” Locke leaned against a wall and stretched. “Speaking of Sanzas, did you see Chains’ face when we woke him up this morning?”

“I wish I hadn’t. He’s going to break those two over his knee like Sabetha’s stick.”

“Where do you think he stomped off to?”

“No idea. I’ve never seen him leave angry before the sun was even up.”

“What in all the hells is going on with us?” said Locke. “This whole summer has been one long exercise in getting everything wrong.”

“Chains muttered to me a few nights ago,” said Jean, fiddling with the broken baton. “Something about awkward years. Said he might have to do something about us being all pent up together.”

“Hope that doesn’t mean more apprenticeships. I’m really not in the mood to go learn another temple’s rituals and then pretend to kill myself.”

“No idea what it means, but—”

“Hey, you two!” Galdo Sanza appeared out of the rear corridor, the spitting image of Calo, save for the fact that his skull was shaven clean of every last speck of hair. “Tubby and the training dummy! Chains is back, wants us in the kitchen with a quickness. And what’d you do to Sabetha this time?”

“I exist,” said Locke. “Some days that’s enough.”

“You should make some friends at the Guilded Lilies, mate,” said Galdo. “Why fall on your face trying to tame a horse when you can have a dozen that are already saddled?”

“So now you like to fuck horses,” said Jean. “Bravo, baldy.”

“Laugh all you will, we’re in demand over there,” said Galdo. “Favorite guests. Command performances.”

“I’m sure you’re popular,” said Jean with a yawn. “Who doesn’t like getting paid for fast, easy work?”

“I’ll say a prayer for you next time I’m having it with two at once,” said Galdo. “Maybe the gods will hear me and let your stones drop. But, seriously, Chains came in the river entrance, and I think we’re all about to die.”

“Well, hurrah,” said Locke. “When the weather’s like this, who honestly wants to live?”

3

THE FATHER Chains waiting in the glass burrow’s kitchen wasn’t wearing any of his usual guises or props. No canes or staves to lean on, no robes, no look of sly benevolence on that craggy, bearded face. He was dressed to be out and about in the city, heavily sweated with exertion, and all the furrows in his forehead seemed to meet in an ominous valley above his fierce dark eyes. Locke was unsettled; he’d rarely seen Chains glower like that at an enemy or a stranger, let alone at his apprentices.

Locke noticed that everyone else was keeping a certain instinctive distance from Chains. Sabetha sat on a counter, well away from anyone, arms folded. The Sanzas sat near one another more out of old habit than present warmth. Their appearances were divergent; Calo with his long, oiled, well-tended tresses and Galdo, scraped smooth as a prizefighter. The twins shared no jokes, no gestures, no small talk.

“I suppose it’s only fair to begin,” said Chains, “by apologizing for having failed you all.”

“Um,” said Locke, stepping forward, “how have you failed us, exactly?”

“My mentorship. My responsibility to not allow our happy home to turn into a seething pit of mutual aggravation … which it has.” Chains coughed, as though he’d irritated his throat merely by bringing such words out. “I thought I might ease up on the regimen of previous summers. Fewer lessons, fewer errands, fewer tests. I hoped that without constraints, you might blossom. Instead you’ve rooted yourselves deep without flowering.”

“Hold on,” said Calo, “it hasn’t been such an unwelcome break, has it? And we’ve been training. Jean’s seen to it that we’ve kept up with battering one another about.”

“That’s hardly your principal form of exercise these days,” said Chains. “I’ve heard things from the Lilies. You two spend more time in bed than invalids. Certainly more than you spend planning or practicing our work.”

“So we haven’t run a game on anyone for a few weeks,” said Calo. “Is the fuckin’ Eldren-fire falling? Who gives a damn if we take some ease? What should we be doing, sir, learning more Vadran? More dances? A seventeenth way to hold knives and forks?”

“You snot-nosed grand duke of insolence,” said Chains, growing louder with each word, “you ignorant, wet-eared, copper-chasing shit-barge puppy! Do you have any idea what you’ve been given? What you’ve worked for? What you are?”

“What I am is tired of being yelled at—”

“Ten years under my roof,” said Chains, looming over Calo like an ambulatory mountain, suffused with moral indignation, “ten years under my protection, eating at my table, nurtured by my hand and coin. Have I beaten you, buggered you, put you out in the rain?”

“No,” said Calo, cringing. “No, of course not—”

“Then you can stand one gods-damned rebuke without flapping your jaw.”

“Of course,” said Calo, most meekly. “Sorry.”

“You’re educated thieves,” said Chains. “No matter how you might think it profits you to feign otherwise, you are not ordinary. You can pass for servants, farmers, merchants, nobles; you have the poise and manners for any station. If I hadn’t let you grow so callow, you might realize what an unprecedented personal freedom you all possess.”

Locke reflexively opened his mouth to deliver some smooth assuagement, but the merest half-second flick of Chains’ glare was more than enough to keep him mute.

“What do you think this is all for?” said Chains. “What do you suppose it’s all been in aid of? So you can laze around and work the occasional petty theft? Drink and whore and dice with the other Right People until you get called out or hung? Have you seen what happens to our kind? How many of your bright-eyed little chums will live to see twenty-five? If they scrape thirty they’re gods-damned elders. You think they have money tucked away? Villas in the country? Thieves may prosper night by night, but there’s nothing for them when the lean times come, do you understand?”

“But there’s garristas,” said Galdo, “and the Capa, and a lot of older types at the Floating Grave—”

“Indeed,” said Chains. “Capas and garristas don’t go hungry, because they can take scraps from the mouths of their brothers and sisters. And how do you suppose you get to grow old in the Capa’s service? You guard his doors with an alley-piece, like a constable on the beat. You watch your friends hang, and die in the gutters, and get called up for teeth lessons because they said the wrong thing in their cups or held back a few silvers one fucking time. You put your head down and shut up, forever. That’s what earns you some gray hair.

“No justice,” he continued sourly. “No true fellowship. Vows in darkness, that’s all, valid until the first time someone goes hungry or needs a few coins. Why do you think I’ve raised you to wink at the Secret Peace? We’re like a sick dog that gnaws its own entrails, the Right People are. But you’ve got a chance to live in real trust and fellowship, to be thieves as the gods intended, scourging the swells and living true to yourselves. I’ll be damned before I’ll let you forget what a gift you’ve been given in one another.”

No smart remark ever made could stand before the gale of this sort of chastisement. Locke noted that he wasn’t the only one with a sudden overwhelming compulsion to stare at the floor.

“And so, I need to apologize for my own failure.” Chains drew a folded letter from his coat. “For allowing us to reach this pretty state of affairs, falling out with one another and forgetting ourselves. It’s a bad time for all of you. You’re confused bundles of nerves and passion, cooped up down here where you can do maximum damage to your mutual regard. You’ve certainly been disagreeable company for me. I’ve decided I need a vacation.”

“Well, then,” said Jean, “where will you be going?”

“Going? Drinking, I suppose. Perhaps I’ll go see old Maranzalla. And I’ve a mind to hunt down some chamber music. But forgive me if I’ve been unclear. I require a vacation from all of you, but I’m not leaving Camorr. You five will be making a journey to Espara. I’ve arranged work there to keep you busy for several months.”

“Espara?” said Locke.

“Yes. Isn’t it exciting?” The room was quiet. “I thought that might be your response. Look, I tucked a pin into my jacket for this very moment.”

Chains drew a silver pin from one of his lapels and tossed it into the air. It hit the floor with the faintest chiming clatter.

“One of those expressions I’ve always wanted to put to the test,” said Chains. “But seriously, you’re out. All of you. Evicted. There’s a wagon caravan leaving from the Cenza Gate on Duke’s Day. You’ve got two days to make yourselves part of it. After that, it’s a week and a half to Espara.”

“But,” said Calo, “what if we don’t want to go to bloody Espara?”

“Then leave, and don’t come back to this temple,” said Chains. “Forfeit everything. In fact, leave Camorr. I won’t want to see you again, anywhere.”

“What’s in Espara that’s so important?” said Sabetha.

“Your partnership. It’s past time it was put to a real test, far beyond my reach. Take all your years of training and make something of them. False-face together, rely upon one another, and come back alive. Prove that we haven’t been wasting our time down here. Prove it to me … and prove it to yourselves.”

Chains held up the folded letter.

“You’re going to Espara to enjoy a career on the stage.”

4

“AFTER MY soldiering ended,” continued Chains, “and before I came back to Camorr, I indulged in several vices, not the least of which was acting. I fell in with a troupe in Espara run by the single unluckiest thick-skulled son of a bitch that ever crawled out of a womb. Jasmer Moncraine. I saved his life by design and he saved mine by accident. We’ve kept in touch across the years.”

“Oh gods,” said Sabetha, “you’re sending us in payment of a debt!”

“No, no. Jasmer and I are square. The favor is mutual. I need the five of you occupied elsewhere. Jasmer has desperate need of players, and an equally desperate need to avoid paying them.”

“So it is questionable circumstances, then.”

“Oh, never doubt. I get the impression from his letters that he’s one mistake away from being chained up for debt. I’d appreciate you preventing that. He wants to do Lucarno’s Republic of Thieves. Your story will be that you’re a band of up-and-coming thespians from Camorr; I sent a letter ahead of you telling him how to play the angles right. The rest is entirely up to you.”

“Do you have a copy of the letter for us?” said Locke.

“Nah.”

“Well, then, what should we do about—”

Chains tossed a jingling bag at Locke’s head. Locke barely managed to pluck it out of the air before it struck his nose.

“Oh, look, a bag of money. That’s all the help you’ll be getting from me, my boy.”

“But … aliases, travel arrangements—”

“Your problem, not mine.”

“We don’t know anything about the stage!”

“You know about costumes, makeup, elocution, and deportment. Everything else, you can learn once you get there.”

“But—”

“Look,” said Chains. “I don’t want to spend the rest of the day interrupting your questions, so I’m going to temporarily forget how to make words come out of my mouth. I’ll be nursing a chilled bottle of Vadran white over at the Tumblehome until further notice. Remember the caravan. Two days. You can be part of it, or you can leave the Gentlemen Bastards. Your time is henceforth your own.”

He left the kitchen in a state of extreme self-satisfaction. A few moments later, Locke heard the creak and slam of the burrow’s concealed riverside exit. Locke and his cohorts traded a sincere set of bewildered looks.

“Well, this is a fist-fuck and a flaming oil bath,” said Calo.

“Is there anyone here,” said Locke quietly, “who’d rather leave the gang than go to Espara?”

“There’d better not be,” said Galdo.

“The billiard ball’s right for once,” said Calo. “It’s not as though I’m enthusiastic about this, but anyone who wants to leave can do it headfirst off the temple roof.”

“Good,” said Locke. “Then we need to talk. Get some ink and parchment.”

“Count the money,” said Sabetha.

“I’ll fetch some wine,” said Jean. “Strong wine.”

5

THEY WERE far from comfortable together. The Sanzas sat on opposite sides of the table, and Sabetha leaned against a chair pushed away from everyone else. Yet they all seemed to grasp the urgency of their situation; over the course of two bottles of Verrari lemon wine they hashed out mostly civil arguments and scratched up lists of supplies and responsibilities.

“Right, then,” said Locke when his glass was empty and his notepages full. “Sabetha will try to scare up any portions of The Republic of Thieves from the shops and scribes, so we can all have a look at it on the road.”

“I’ve got some other Lucarno plays I’ll pack,” said Jean. “And some Mercallor Mentezzo dross I’m not so fond of, but we should all study them and pick up some lines.”

“Jean and I will find a wagon and get us in with a caravan master,” said Locke. He passed one of his lists over to Galdo. “The Sanzas will pack the common goods and supplies.”

“We need aliases,” said Sabetha. “We can smooth out our stories on the way, but we should have our game names ready to use.”

“Who do you want to be, then?” said Jean.

“Hmmmm. Call me … Verena. Verena Gallante.”

“Lucaza,” said Locke. “I’ll be Lucaza … de Barra.”

“Must you?” said Sabetha.

“Must I what?”

“You always have to choose an alias that starts with ‘L,’ and Jean nearly always goes for a ‘J.’ ”

“Keeps things simple,” said Jean. “And now, just because you’ve said that, I’ll be … Jovanno. Hell, Locke and I can be first cousins. I’ll be Jovanno de Barra.”

“False names are fun,” said Calo. “Call me Beefwit Smallcock.”

“These are aliases, not biographical sketches,” said Galdo.

“Fine, then,” said Calo. “Lend me a hand. There’s a masculine form of Sabetha, isn’t there?”

“Sabazzo,” said Galdo, snapping his fingers.

“Yeah, Sabazzo. I’ll be Sabazzo.”

“Like hell you will,” said Sabetha.

“Hey, I know,” said Galdo. “I’ll be Jean. You can call yourself Locke.”

“You two will crap splinters for a month after I make you eat this table,” said Jean.

“Well, if you put it like that,” said Calo. “Why don’t we use our middle names? I’ll be Giacomo, and you can be Castellano.”

“Might work,” said Galdo grudgingly. “Need a last name.”

“Asino!” said Calo. “It’s Throne Therin for ‘donkey.’ ”

“Gods lend me strength,” said Sabetha.

6

“MASTER DE Barra,” said Anatoly Vireska two nights later, looking up with a smile that put every gap in his teeth on display, like archery ports in a crumbling fortress wall. The rangy, middle-aged Vadran caravan master gave the Gentlemen Bastards’ wagon a friendly thump as Jean brought their team of four horses to a halt. “And company. You picked a good time to show up.”

“I’ve seen this place when it’s busy.” Locke glanced backward at the Millfalls District and the Street of Seven Wheels, which lay under the strange particolored haze of fading Falselight. Traffic on the cobbled road itself was sparse, since few business travelers came or went from the Cenza Gate as darkness was falling. “Figured we might get a jump on the chaos.”

“Just so. Pull up anywhere in the commons beneath the wall. Now, if you want more than half-assed shelter, there’s the Andrazi stable down the lane to the right, and the Umbolo stable just yonder, the one with all the mules. Andrazi tips me a few coppers a week to point people her way, but I wouldn’t take the money if I didn’t think her place was the better bargain, hey?”

“Duly noted,” said Jean.

“Want me to send a boy around to help with your horses? I could have my outfitter check your packing, too.”

“I’m sure we’re fine, thanks,” said Locke.

“Glad to hear it. Just so we’re clear, though, my guards don’t stand to duty until we line up all our ducklings tomorrow morning. As long as we’re behind walls, your security is your own business. Given that you’re bedding down twenty yards from a watch barracks, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

“Nor shall we.” Jean waved farewell, and convinced the horses to take them into the shadow of Camorr’s walls. Rickety overhanging panels topped about a hundred yards’ worth of barren common space in the lee of the wall, where those unwilling or unable to pay for service at the commercial stables could pull in. Sabetha, Calo, and Galdo piled out of the back of the open-topped wagon as it rolled to a stop.

“One quarter of a mile down, a mere two hundred to go,” said Locke. The humid air was heavy with the smells of old hay, animal sweat, and droppings. Other travelers were lighting lanterns, laying out bedrolls, and starting cooking fires; there were at least a dozen wagon parties stopped beside the wall. Locke wondered idly how many of them were bound for Espara as part of Vireska’s caravan.

“Let’s get you fixed up for the night, boys.” Jean hopped down from the wagon and gave a reassuring pat to the flank of the nearest cart-horse. Jean had spent several months in the role of a teamster’s apprentice two years earlier, and had assumed responsibility for driving and tending their animals without complaint. The team represented a significant portion of the money Chains had given them, but could be resold in Espara to flesh out their temporarily thinned finances.

“Sweep beneath the wagon, would you, Giacomo?” said Galdo. “Don’t want turds for pillows.”

“Sweep it your fuckin’ self, Castellano,” said Calo. “Nobody put you in charge.”

“Mind yourself,” whispered Sabetha, grabbing Calo by the arm. “We’ve got ten days on the road ahead of us. Do they have to be a miserable trial for no good reason?”

“I’m not his damn valet,” said Calo.

“That’s right.” Locke stepped between the Sanzas, thinking quickly. “None of us are. We’ll share sweeping duties, all of us. Calo starts tonight—”

“I’m Giacomo.”

“Right, sorry. Giacomo starts tonight. Other brother when we stop tomorrow. I’ll take the night after that, and so on. A fair rotation. Good enough?”

“I can live with it,” muttered Calo. “I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. Just won’t have him putting on airs.”

Locke ground his teeth together. The Sanzas had spent the last several months steadily discarding their old habits of synchronicity in action and appearance. They took pains to distinguish themselves from one another, and their differences in grooming were the merest outward flourishes of the phenomenon. Locke would never have begrudged the twins an individualistic phase, but their timing was awkward as hell, and their ongoing spats were like fresh wood heaped on an already rising fire.

“Look,” said Locke, realizing that the gang’s mechanisms of fellowship needed oiling rather badly, “with so many taverns close at hand, I don’t see any need for us to torture ourselves with boiled beef and bag water. I’ll fetch us something more pleasing.”

“We have the coin for that sort of luxury?” said Sabetha.

“I might have cut a purse or two while I was out this morning. Just for the sake of, ah, financial flexibility.” Locke shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. “You want to come with?”

“You need me to?”

“Well … I’d like you to.”

“Hmmm.”

She stared at him for a few seconds, during which Locke experienced the curious sensation of his heart apparently sinking several inches deeper into his chest. Then she shrugged.

“I suppose.”

They left Jean with the horses, Galdo watching their supplies, and Calo gingerly cleaning the ground beneath the wagon. There was a well-lit tavern at the end of the lane beside the wall, just past the Andrazi stable, and by unspoken mutual consent they headed toward it in the gathering darkness. Locke stole a glance at Sabetha as they walked.

Her tightly bound hair was further packed beneath a close-fitting linen cap, and all of her clothing was long and loose, disguising her curves. It was the sort of dress a prudent, mild, and unassertive young woman would choose for the road, and as such it suited Sabetha not at all. Still, she wore it as well as anyone could, as far as Locke’s eyes were concerned.

“I was, ah, hoping I could talk to you,” he said.

“Easily done,” said Sabetha. “Open your mouth and let words come out.”

“I— Look, can you not … can you please not be glib with me?”

“Requesting miracles now, are we?” Sabetha looked down and kicked a stone out of her path. “Look, I’m sorry. Contemplating ten days stuck together on the road. And the brothers being … you know. The whole thing has me feeling like a hedgehog, rolled up with my spikes out. Can’t help myself.”

“Oh, a hedgehog is absolutely the last thing I would ever compare you to,” said Locke with a laugh.

“Interesting,” said Sabetha, “that I mention my own feelings, and you seem to think that what I’m after is reassurance concerning your perceptions.”

“But …” Locke felt another knot in his chest. Conversations with Sabetha always seemed to call his attention to malfunctioning internal mysteries he hadn’t previously known he possessed. “Look, come on, do you have to dissect everything I say, pin it up like an anatomist, and sift through it?”

“First I’m too glib, now I’m cutting too fine. Surely you should be pleased to be receiving such close attention to what you’re actually saying?”

“You know,” said Locke, feeling his hands shake nervously with the thought of what he was about to put in the open, “you know that when I’m around you I find it very easy to shove my foot into my mouth. Sometimes both feet. And you do see it.”

“Mmmmm,” she said.

“More than that. You make use of the advantage.”

“I do.” She looked at him strangely. “You fancy me.”

“That,” said Locke, feeling thunderstruck, “that is … really … not how I would have …”

“Not as grand in plain speech as it is up here?” She tapped her forehead.

“Sabetha, I … I value your good opinion more than anything in the world. It kills me not to have it. It kills me not to know whether I have it. We’ve lived together all these years, and still there’s this fog between us. I don’t know what I did to put it there, but I would throw myself under a cart to lift it, believe me.”

“Why do you assume it’s something you’ve done, and something you can undo at will? I’m not some arithmetic problem just waiting for you to show your work properly, Locke. Did you ever think that I might … gods, you’ve got me stumbling now. That I might be actively contributing to this … to our awkwardness?”

“Actively contributing?”

“Yes, as though I might have warm-blooded motives of my own, being as I’m not an oil painting, or some other decorative object of desire—”

“Do you like me?” said Locke, shocked at himself for blurting the question out. It was an invitation to have his heart laid out and smashed on an anvil, and there were a thousand things she could say that would do the hammer’s work. “At all? Do I ever please you with my company? Am I at least preferable to an empty room?”

“There are times when the empty room is a sore temptation.”

“But—”

“Of course I like you,” she said, raising her hands as though to touch him reassuringly. She didn’t complete the gesture. “You can be clever, and enterprising, and charming, though rarely all three at once. And … I do sometimes admire you, if it helps you to hear it.”

“It means everything to hear it,” he said, feeling the tightness in his chest turn to buoyant warmth. “It’s worth a thousand embarrassments, just to hear it. Because … because I feel the same way. About you.”

“You don’t feel the same way about me,” she said.

“Oh, but I do,” he said. “Without qualifying remarks, even.”

“That’s—”

“Hey there!”

A polished club came down on Locke’s shoulder, a gentle tap, yet impossible to ignore. The club was attached to a heavyset man in the leather harness and mustard-yellow coat of the city watch, attended by a younger comrade carrying a lantern on a pole.

“You’re in the middle of a lane,” said the big yellowjacket, “not a bloody drawing-room. Move it elsewhere.”

“Oh, of course, sir,” said Locke in one of his better respectable-citizen voices (this constable, not being agitated, didn’t require the use of Locke’s very best). He and Sabetha moved off the lane and into the shadows beneath the wall, where fireflies sketched pale green arcs against the darkness.

“No one thinks of anyone else without qualifying remarks,” said Sabetha. “I love Chains dearly, and still he and I have … disappointed one another. I’ll always be fond of the Sanzas, but right now I wish they’d go away for a year. And you—”

“I’ve frustrated you, I know.”

“And I’ve returned the favor.” She did touch him now, gently, on his upper left arm, and it took most of his self-control not to jump out of his shoes. “Nobody admires anyone else without qualification. If they do they’re after an image, not a person.”

“Well,” said Locke, “in that case, I harbor a great many resentments, reservations, and suspicions about you. Does that please you better?”

“You’re trying to be charming again,” she said softly, “but I choose not to be charmed, Locke Lamora. Not with things as they stand.”

“Can I make amends for whatever I’ve done to frustrate you?”

“That’s … complicated.”

“I like to think that I take hints as well as anyone,” said Locke. “Why not throw some at my head?”

“Going to be a lot of time to kill between here and Espara, I suppose.”

“Can we … speak again tomorrow night? After we’ve stopped?”

“The gentleman requests the favor of a personal engagement, tomorrow evening?”

“At the lady’s pleasure, before the dancing and iced wine, immediately following the grand sweep beneath the wagon for stray horseshit.”

“I may consent.”

“Then life is worth living.”

“Don’t be a dunce,” she said. “We should do our business at the tavern and get back before the Sanzas try to sneak off to the Guilded Lilies one last time.”

They came away from the tavern with cold boiled chicken, olives, black bread, and two skins of yellow wine with a flavor somewhere between turpentine and wasp piss. Simple as it was, the meal was ducal indulgence compared to the salted meat and hardtack waiting in crates on the back of their wagon. They ate in silence, distracted by the sight of the Five Towers shining in the oncoming night, and by hungry insects.

Jean volunteered to sit first watch (no Camorri ever born, least of all one who’d made it out of Shades’ Hill, would blithely trust to providence even in the literal shadow of a city watch barracks). After acknowledging this noble sacrifice, the other four curled up beneath the wagon, sweaty and mosquito-plagued, to bed down.

It occurred to Locke that this was technically the first time he and Sabetha had ever slept together in any sense of the term, even if they were separated by nothing less than a complete pair of Sanza twins.

“We crawl before we walk,” he sighed to himself. “We walk before we run.”

“Hey,” whispered Galdo, who was curled against his back, “you don’t fart in your sleep, do you?”

“How would you be able to detect a fart over your natural odor, Sanza?”

“For shame,” said Galdo. “There’s no Sanzas here, remember? I’m an Asino.”

“Oh yes,” said Locke with a yawn. “Yes, you certainly are.”

1

“SABETHA’S IN KARTHAIN,” said Locke.

“She could hardly do the job from elsewhere,” said Patience.

“Sabetha. My Sabetha—”

“I marvel at such a confident assertion of possession.”

“Our Sabetha, then. The Sabetha. How do you people know so gods-damned much about my life? How did you find her?”

“I didn’t,” said Patience. “Nor do I know how it was done. All I know is that her instructions and resources will mirror your own.”

“Except she has a head start,” said Jean, easing Locke back into his chair. The expression on Locke’s face was that of a prizefighter who’d just received a proper thunderbolt to the chin.

“And she’s working alone,” said Patience, “whereas you two have one another. So one might hope that her positional advantage will be purely temporary. Or is she really that much of a tiger, to set you both quaking?”

“I’m not quaking,” said Locke quietly. “It’s just … so gods-damned unexpected.”

“You’ve always hoped for a reunion, haven’t you?”

“On my own terms,” said Locke. “Does she know that it’s us she’s up against? Did she know before she took the job?”

“Yes,” said Patience.

“Your opposition, they didn’t do anything to her?”

“As far as I’m aware, she required no compulsion.”

“This is hard to take,” said Locke. “Gentlemen Bastards, well, we trained against one another, and we’ve quarreled, obviously, but we’ve never, ah, never actually opposed one another, not for real.”

“Given that she’s completely removed herself from your company for so many years now,” said Patience, “how can you believe that she still considers herself part of your gang?”

“Thank you for that, Patience,” growled Jean. “Do you have anything else for us? If not, I think we need to—”

“Yes, I’m sure you do. The cabin is yours.”

She withdrew. Locke put his head in his hands and sighed.

“I don’t expect life to make sense,” he said after a few moments, “but it would certainly be pleasant if it would stop kicking us in the balls.”

“Don’t you want to see her again?”

“Of course I want to see her again!” said Locke. “I always meant to find her. I meant to do it in Camorr; I meant to do it after we’d made a big score in Tal Verrar. I just— You know how it’s all gone. She’s not going to be impressed.”

“Maybe she wants to see you,” said Jean. “Maybe she leapt at the chance when the Bondsmagi approached her. Maybe she’d already tried to hunt us down.”

“Gods, what if she did? I wonder what she made of the mess we left behind in Camorr. I just can’t believe … working against her. Those bastards!”

“Hey, we’re just supposed to fix an election,” said Jean. “Nobody’s going to hurt her, least of all us.”

“I hope,” said Locke, brightening. “I hope … damn, I have no idea what to hope.” He spent a few minutes nibbling at his food in a nervous daze, while Jean sipped his warm red plonk.

“I do know this,” Locke said at last. “On the business side of things, we’re already in the shit.”

“Up to our elbows,” said Jean.

“Given a choice, I would have grudged her a ten-minute head start, let alone a few days.”

“Makes me think back to when Chains used to play you two off one another,” said Jean. “All those arguments … all those stalemates. Then more arguments.”

“Don’t think I don’t remember.” Locke tapped a piece of biscuit distractedly against the table. “Well, hell. It’s been five years. Maybe she’s learned to lose gracefully. Maybe she’s out of practice.”

“Maybe trained monkeys will climb out of my ass and pour me a glass of Austershalin brandy,” said Jean.

2

DAWN OVER the Amathel, the next morning. A hazy golden-orange ribbon rose from the eastern horizon, and the calm dark waters mirrored the cobalt sky. A dozen fishing boats were moving past the Sky-Reacher in a swarm, their triangular white wakes giving the small craft the appearance of arrowheads passing in dreamlike slow motion. Karthain itself was coming up to larboard, not half a mile away.

From the quarterdeck, Jean could see the clean white terraces of the city, bulwarked with thick rows of olive and cypress and witchwood trees, misted with a silver morning fog that gave him an unexpected pang for Camorr. A blocky stone lighthouse dominated the city’s waterfront, though at the moment its great golden lanterns were banked down so that their glow was no more than a warm aura crowning the tower.

Locke leaned against the taffrail, staring at the approaching city, eating cold beef and hard white cheese he’d piled awkwardly into his right hand. Locke had paced the great cabin most of the night, unable or unwilling to sleep, settling into his hammock only to rest his unsteady legs.

“How do you feel?” Patience, wrapped in a long coat and shawl, chose not to appear out of thin air, but approached them on foot.

“Ill-used,” said Locke.

“At least you’re alive to feel that way.”

“No need to drop hints. You’ll get your command performance out of us, never worry about that.”

“I wasn’t worried,” she said sweetly. “Here comes our dock detail.”

“Dock detail?” Jean glanced past Patience and saw a long, low double-banked boat rowed by twenty people approaching behind the last of the fishing boats.

“To bring the Sky-Reacher in,” said Patience, “and mind her lines and sails and other tedious articles.”

“Not in the mood to wiggle your fingers and square everything away?” said Locke.

“One of the few things that we agree upon, exceptionalists and conservatives alike, is that our arts don’t exist for the sake of swabbing decks.”

The dock detail came aboard at the ship’s waist, a very ordinary-looking pack of sailors. Patience beckoned for Locke and Jean to follow her as two of the newcomers took the wheel.

“I do assume you’re carrying your hatchets, Jean? And all of the documents I gave you?”

“Of course.”

“Then you shouldn’t mind going ashore immediately.”

She led them to the Sky-Reacher’s larboard waist, where Jean could see four sailors still waiting in the boat. It was an easy trip down the boarding net, just seven or eight feet. Even Locke made it without mishap, and then Patience, who evidently required a hoist only when gravity wasn’t on her side.

“Some of your people are waiting on the pier,” she said as she settled onto a rowing bench. “They’re all sensible of the urgency of the situation.”

“Our people?” said Locke.

“As of now, they’re entirely your people. The arrangement of their affairs is in your hands.”

“And they’ll just do as we say? To what extent?”

“To a reasonable extent, Locke. Nobody will fling themselves into the lake at your whim, but you two are now the de facto heads of the Deep Roots party’s election apparatus. Functionaries will take your orders. Candidates will kiss your boots.”

The sailors pushed them away from the Sky-Reacher and pulled for the lantern-lit waterfront.

“This is the Ponta Corbessa,” said Patience, gesturing ahead. “The city wharf. I take it neither of you knows much about this place?”

“Our former plan was to avoid Karthain, uh, forever,” said Jean.

“Your new associates will acquaint you with everything. Give it a few days and you’ll be very comfortable, I’m sure.”

“Hrm,” said Locke.

“Speaking of comfort, there is one last thing I should mention.”

“And that is?” said Locke.

“You will of course be free to communicate with Sabetha in whatever fashion she allows, but collusion will not be acceptable. You are opponents. You will oppose and be opposed, without quarter. We’re paying you to see a contest. Disappoint us in that regard and I can assure you, not getting paid will be the least of your worries.”

“Give the threats a rest,” said Locke. “You’ll get your gods-damned contest.”

The longboat drew up against a stone quay. Jean clambered out of the boat and heaved Locke up after him, then grudgingly offered his arm to Patience. She took it with a nod.

They were in the shadow of the lighthouse now, on a stretch of cobbled waterfront backed by warehouses and shuttered shops. A sparse forest of masts rose behind the buildings—probably some sort of lagoon, Jean thought, where ships could rest in safety. The area was strangely deserted, save for a small group of people standing beside a carriage.

“Patience,” said Jean, “what should we— Ah, hell!”

Patience had vanished. The sailors in the longboat pushed off without a word and headed back toward the Sky-Reacher.

“Bitch knows how to make an exit,” said Locke. He popped the last of his meat and cheese into his mouth and wiped his hands on his tunic.

“Excuse me!” A heavyset young man in a gray brocade coat broke from the group at the carriage. “You must be Masters Callas and Lazari!”

“We must,” said Jean, flashing a friendly smile. “Pray give us a moment.”

“Oh,” said the man, who possessed the true Karthani accent, which was something like the speech of a Lashani after a few strong drinks. “Of course.”

“Now,” said Jean quietly, turning to Locke, “who are we?”

“A pair of rats about to stick their noses into a big fucking trap.”

“Characters, you git. Lazari and Callas. We should settle the particulars before we start talking to people.”

“Ah, right.” Locke scratched his chin. “We’ve got no time to practice Karthani accents, so to hell with hiding that we’re from out of town.”

“Less work suits me,” said Jean.

“Good. Then we need to decide who’s the iron fist and who’s the velvet glove.”

“Sounds like something you should be hiring a couple of strumpets to help you with.”

“I’d hit you if I thought it would do any good, Jean. You know what I mean.”

“Right. Let’s be obvious. Me brute, you weasel.”

“Agreed. You brute, me charming mastermind. But there’s no sense in setting things too taut before we even know who we’re dealing with. Be a brute that plays nice until provoked.”

“So we’re not actually playing characters at all, then?”

“Well, hell.” Locke cracked his knuckles and shrugged. “It’s one less detail for us to muck up. Anyway, Patience said these people would eat out of our hands. Let’s put that to the test.”

“Now, then,” said Jean, turning back to the heavyset young man. “Start talking again.”

“I’m delighted to see you alive and well, gentlemen!” The stranger came closer, and Jean noted his round, ruddy features, the look of a man eager to please and be pleased. And yet his eyes, behind slender optics, were shrewd and measuring. His hair had failed to retain any sort of hold on the areas forward of his ears, but he had a thick and well-tended plait that hung, black as a raven’s wing, to the small of his back. “When we heard about the wreck, we were distraught. The Amathel is lately so mild, it’s hard to credit—”

“Wreck,” said Locke. “Ah, yes, the wreck! Yes. The terrible, convenient wreck. What else could compel us to be here without decent clothing or purses? Well, I’m afraid everything happened in such a terrible rush, but I’m told that we survived.”

“Ha! Splendid. Fear nothing, gentlemen, I’m here to mend your situation in every particular. My name is Nikoros.”

“Sebastian Lazari.” Locke extended his hand. Nikoros shook it with a look of surprise on his face.

“Tavrin Callas,” said Jean. Nikoros’ grip was dry and firm.

“Well, I say, thank you, gentlemen, thank you! What an unexpected mark of confidence. I take it very kindly.”

“Mark of confidence?” said Locke. “Forgive us, Nikoros. We’re new to Karthain. I’m not sure we understand what we’ve done.”

“Oh,” said Nikoros. “Damned stupid of me. I apologize. It’s just that … well, you’ll probably think us such a pack of credulous ninnies, but I assure you … it’s tradition. Here in Karthain we’re close, extremely close, with our given names. On account of, you know, the Presence.”

It was easy enough for Jean to hear the capital “P” as Nikoros pronounced the word.

“You mean,” he said, “the Bonds—”

“Yes, the magi of the Isas Scholastica. When we speak of ‘the Presence,’ well—we’re just being polite. We’re quite used to them, really. They’re not the objects of, ah, curiosity they might be elsewhere. In fact, I can assure you they look almost like ordinary people. You’d be amazed!”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Locke. “Well, this is useful stuff. I take it we should withhold our given names when we’re introduced to Karthani?”

“Well, yes. It’s the hoariest old superstition, but it’s been our custom since the fall of the old Throne. Most of us use birth-order titles or nicknames. I’m called Nikoros Via Lupa, since my office is on the Avenue of the Wolves. But plain Nikoros suits as well.”

“We’re obliged to you,” said Jean. “Now, what is it that you do, exactly?”

“I’m a trade insurer. Ships and caravans. But, ah, more relevantly, I’m on the Deep Roots party standing committee. I’m sort of a shepherd for party business.”

“You have real authority over party affairs?”

“Oh, quite. Funds and operations, with some latitude. But, ah, when it comes to that, gentlemen, my most important duty is to carry out your instructions. Once I’ve helped you settle in, of course.”

“And you understand the nature of our employment,” said Locke. “The real nature of it, that is.”

“Oh, oh, quite.” Nikoros tapped the side of his nose with a finger several times and smiled. “Those of us at the top understand that half the fight is, well, unconventional. We’re all for it! After all, the Black Iris are out to do the same to us. We think they might even bring in specialists like yourselves.”

“Be assured they have,” said Locke. “How long have you been involved with all this?”

“Party business, you mean? Oh, ten years or so. It’s the biggest thing going, socially. More fun than billiards. I worked with our, ah, specialist last election. We pulled off nine seats, and nearly won! We have such hopes, this time around.”

“Well,” said Jean, “the sooner we’re settled in, the sooner we can nourish those hopes.”

“Right! To the carriage. We’ll get you two wrapped up in something more suitable.” He beckoned, and a slender blonde woman in a black velvet jacket met them halfway as they moved toward the carriage. “Allow me to present Seconddaughter Morenna, Morenna Clothiers.”

“Your servant.” She curtsied, and a brass-weighted measuring line appeared in her hands as swiftly as an assassin’s knife. “It seems you have a sartorial emergency.”

“Yes,” said Locke. “Circumstance has flung us down and danced upon us.”

“Clothes first,” said Nikoros as he hustled Locke and Jean into the enclosed carriage box, “then we’ll see to your funds.” Morenna came last. Nikoros drew the door shut and pounded on the underside of the carriage roof. As it rattled off, Morenna seized the collar of Locke’s slop jacket and pulled him firmly to a hunched-over standing position.

“I beg your deepest pardon,” she muttered, plying her measuring line around his neck and shoulders. “We usually keep a fellow on hand at the shop to take the measurements of our gentlemen customers, but he’s taken ill. I assure you that I make these intrusions as impersonally as a physiker.”

“It would never occur to me to be offended,” said Locke in a dazed voice.

“Marvelous. If you’ll excuse me, sir, we’ll just need to have your jacket off.” She somehow managed to fold, wrench, and twirl Locke within the confined space, removing his jacket at last and causing a small rain of twice-baked ship’s biscuits to patter around the carriage interior. “Oh my, I had no idea—”

“Not your fault,” said Locke with an embarrassed cough. “I, uh, like to feed birds.”

Under his arms, around his chest, along the outside of his legs—Morenna took measurements from Locke with the speed of a fencer scoring touches. Soon it was Jean’s turn.

“Same thing, sir,” she muttered while she fussed with his coat.

“There’s no need—If you’ll give me a moment—” said Jean, but it was too late.

“Heavens,” said Morenna as she pulled his hatchets out of their makeshift hiding place at the small of his back. “These have seen some use.”

“I’ve had to settle the occasional misunderstanding.”

“Do you prefer to carry them tucked away like this under a coat or jacket?”

“There’s nowhere better.”

“Then I can show you several rigs that could be stitched into your coats. We’ve got leather harness, cloth straps, metal rings, all reliable and discreet. Tuck a whole arsenal into your breeches and waistcoats, if you like.”

“You’re my new favorite tailor,” said Jean, contentedly submitting to the darting play of the measuring line while the carriage rolled along.

3

THEIR JOURNEY took about ten minutes, while the sun rose and painted the walls and alleys around them with warm light. Jean took advantage of his window seat to form several impressions of Karthain along the way.

The first was that it was a city of tiered heights. As they moved inward from the waterfront, past the ship-filled lagoon, he saw that the more northerly sections of the city rose, hills and terraces alike, to a sort of plateau that must have been several hundred feet above the Ponta Corbessa. Nothing so extreme as Tal Verrar’s precipitous drops, but it did seem as though the gods or the Eldren had tilted the city about forty-five degrees toward the water after originally laying it out.

Furthermore, it seemed to be an unusually well-tended place. Perhaps Nikoros had chosen a route that would best flatter his city? Whatever the case, Jean couldn’t fail to note the swept streets, the clean white stone of the newer houses, the neatly trimmed trees, the smooth bubbling of every fountain and waterfall, or the decorative enamel mosaics on the cable cars sliding between the taller buildings.

Most striking was the character of the city’s Elderglass. Its bridges over the wide Karvanu (which poured down five separate white-foaming falls before it reached the heart of the city) were not solid arches, but rather suspension bridges made of thousands of panels of milky black Elderglass, connected by countless finger-thick lengths of glass cable to supporting towers like spindly caricatures of human temple spires.

The first bridge they crossed had a disconcerting amount of sway and bounce—just a few inches of give, to be sure, but any bounce at all was of immediate interest to someone high over water in a carriage.

“Never fear,” said Nikoros, noticing the matching expressions on Locke’s and Jean’s faces. “You’ll be used to this in no time. It’s Elderglass! Nothing we do could so much as fray a cable.”

Jean stared at the other huge bridges spanning the Karvanu. They looked like the work of mad giant spiders, or harps designed for hands the size of palaces. He also noticed, for the first time, a strangely tuneful humming and creaking that he assumed was the music of the cables.

“Welcome to the Isas Salvierro,” said Nikoros when the carriage halted a few minutes later, blessedly back on unyielding stone. “A business district, one of the pumping hearts of the city. My office is just north of here.”

The small group bustled out of the carriage and into Morenna Clothiers, where they found a wide shop floor surrounded by a raised second-floor gallery. Seconddaughter Morenna locked the door behind them.

“These aren’t our usual hours,” she said. “You’re an emergency case.”

There was a strong smell of coffee wafting throughout the shop, and Jean’s mouth watered. The walls of the lower room were layered with bolts of cloth in a hundred different colors and textures, while several wooden racks of coats and jackets had been brought out into the middle of the floor.

“Allow me to introduce Firstdaughter Morenna,” said Seconddaughter, pointing to a taller, heavier blonde woman on the upper level, who was pulling a gleaming metallic thread from a rattling clockwork spindle. “And of course our darling Thirddaughter.”

The youngest of the tailoring sisters was as petite as Seconddaughter, though her hair was a shade darker and she alone of the three wore optics. She was absorbed in trimming some unknown velvet bundle with a pair of blackened-iron shears, and she gave the merest nod in greeting.

“Thimbles on, girls, it’s time for battle,” said Seconddaughter.

“My,” said Firstdaughter, who stepped away from her machine and descended to the first floor. “Shipwreck, was it? You gentlemen look like you’ve been in the wars. Is Lashain having some sort of difficulty?”

“Lashain is its old charming self, madam,” said Locke. “Our misfortune was personal.”

“You’ve come to the right place. We adore a challenge. And we adorn the challenged! Second, have you taken their measurements?”

“Everything I could in decency.” Seconddaughter snatched up a slate, and with a squeaky piece of chalk scribed two columns of numbers on it. She threw the slate to Firstdaughter. “Save for breeches inseams. Could you be a dear?”

Firstdaughter conjured a measuring line in her free hand and advanced on Locke and Jean without hesitation. “Now, gentlemen, our male apprentice is out sick, so you’ll need to bear my scrutiny a moment. Take heart, there’s many a wife that won’t give her husband this sort of attention for love or money.” Chuckling, she took rapid and mostly professional measurements from crotch to ankles on both men, then added some squiggles to the bottom of the slate.

“I assume that we’re replacing an entire wardrobe?” said Thirddaughter, setting her velvet down.

“Yes,” said Locke. “These fine dishrags represent the sum of our current wardrobe.”

“You’ve the sound of an easterner,” said Thirddaughter. “Will you want the style to which you’re accustomed, or something more—”

“Local,” said Jean. “Absolutely local. Fit us out like natives.”

“It will take several days,” said Seconddaughter, holding a swatch of something brown up to Jean’s neck and frowning, “to deliver all the bespoke work, you understand, and that’s with us chugging along like water-engines. But while we’re arranging that, we can set you up with something respectable enough.”

“We don’t do boots, though,” said Firstdaughter, stripping Jean’s jacket and sending his hatchets clattering to the floor. “Oh, dear. Will you be wanting somewhere to tuck those?”

“Absolutely,” said Jean.

“We’ve got a thousand ways,” said First. She picked up the Wicked Sisters and set them respectfully on a table. “But as I was saying, Nikoros, we haven’t turned cobblers in the last few hours. Have you kept that in mind?”

“Of course,” said Nikoros. “This is but the first stop. I’ll have them set up like royalty before lunch.”

The next half hour was a furious storm of fittings, removals, tests, measurements, remeasurements, suggestions, countersuggestions, and sisterly arguments as Locke and Jean were gradually peeled out of their slops and reskinned as fair approximations of gentlemen. The creamy silk shirts were a little too big, the vests and breeches taken in or let out with some haste. Locke’s long coat hung loose and Jean’s was tight across the chest. Still, it was a drastic improvement, at least from the ankles up. Now they could set foot in a countinghouse without provoking the guards into raising weapons.

Once the immediate transmutation was accomplished, the three women took notes for a more expansive wardrobe—evening coats, morning jackets, formal and informal waistcoats, breeches in half a dozen styles, velvet doublets, fitted silk shirts, and all the trimmings.

“Now, you said you’d be doing more, ah, entertaining, as it were,” said Thirddaughter to Locke. “So I gather you’ll need a slightly wider selection of coats than your friend Master Callas.”

“Entirely correct,” said Jean, rolling his arms around and enjoying his restoration to a state of elegance, tight coat or no. “Besides, I’m the careful one. I can make do with less. Give my friend a bit more of your attention.”

“As you will,” said Thirddaughter, gently but firmly grabbing Jean by his left cuff. A long dangling thread had caught her attention; she had her shears out with a graceful twirl and snipped it in the blink of an eye. “There. Squared away. I believe, then, we’ll start with seven coats for Master Lazari, and give you four.”

“We’ll send them to your inn as we finish them,” said Firstdaughter, tallying figures on a new slate. These figures had nothing to do with Locke’s and Jean’s measurements. She passed the slate to Nikoros, and when he nodded curtly her pleasure was readily apparent.

“Lovely,” said Locke. “Except we don’t know where we’re staying just yet.”

“The Deep Roots party does,” said Nikoros with a half-bow. “You’re in our bosom now, sirs. You’ll want for nothing. Now, might I beg you to come along, just a few steps up the lane? Those bare feet will never do for lunch or dinner.”

4

THE NEXT two hours of the morning were spent, as Nikoros had prophesied, scuttling up and down the streets of the Isas Salvierro in pursuit of boots, shoes, jewelry, and every last detail that would help Locke and Jean pass as men of real account. Several of the shops involved had not yet opened for regular business, but the force of Nikoros’ connections and pocketbook unlocked every door.

As their list of immediate needs grew shorter, Jean noticed that Locke was spending more and more time eyeballing the alleys, windows, and rooftops around them.

Behavior very obvious, he signaled.

Threat gods-damned serious, was the reply.

And despite himself, despite personal experience that one of the least intelligent things to do, when you fear being spied upon, is to crane your head in all directions and advertise your suspicion, Jean did just that. As the carriage rattled toward Tivoli’s countinghouse, he stole fretful glances out his window.

Sabetha. Gods below, he couldn’t imagine a more troublesome foe. Not only had he and Locke set foot in a city where their presence was expected, she knew precisely how they worked. That was true in reverse, to some extent, but all the same he felt like they were just leaving the starting mark in a race that had been going on without them for some time.

“Think she’ll hit us early?” said Jean.

“She’s hitting us as we speak,” muttered Locke. “We just don’t know where yet.”

“Gentlemen,” said Nikoros, who was working to keep the pile of parcels on the seat next to him from toppling onto the compartment floor at every turn, “what’s troubling you?”

“Our opposition,” said Locke. “The Black Iris people. Is there a woman that you know of, a new woman, only recently arrived?”

“The redheaded woman, you mean?” said Nikoros. “Is she important?”

“She—” Locke seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say. “She’s our problem. Don’t tell anyone we asked, but keep your ears open.”

“We haven’t identified her yet,” said Nikoros. “She’s not Karthani.”

“No,” said Locke. “She’s not. Do you have any idea where she is?”

“I could show you a few coffeehouses and taverns run by Black Iris members. Not to mention the Sign of the Black Iris itself. They got their name from that place. If I had to guess, I’d look for her there.”

“I’ll want a list of all those places,” said Locke. “Get me the name of every business, every inn, every hole in the wall connected with the Iris people. Write them down. I’ll have paper sent out to you while we’re in Tivoli’s.”

“I fancy I can give you something useful off the top of my head. Do you want something more complete, later? I have membership lists, property lists …”

“I’ll want it all,” said Locke. “Make copies. Do you have a scribe you trust, really trust?”

“I have a bonded scrivener I’ve used forever,” said Nikoros. “He votes Deep Roots.”

“Have the poor bastard cancel his life for a day or two,” said Locke. “Pay him whatever he asks. I assume you can tug on the party’s purse strings at will?”

“Well, yes—”

“Good, because that teat is about to be milked. Have your scribe copy everything important. Everything. Anything election-related goes to us. Anything personal goes to your countinghouse vault.”

“But, why—”

“For the next month and a half, I expect you to behave as though your office is in danger of burning down at any moment.”

“But surely they wouldn’t …”

“Nothing is off the table. Nothing! Got it?”

“If you insist.”

“Maybe we’ll have a meeting with the opposition sooner or later,” said Locke. “Set some rules. Until then, a bad accident is a near-certainty. I know if I could get at someone like you on the Black Iris side, turn their papers into ash, I’d be sorely tempted.”

“I can give you names—”

“Write them down,” said Locke. “Write them all down. You’re going to be tasting ink with your lunch, I’m afraid.”

5

TIVOLI’S COUNTINGHOUSE was a classic of its type, a perfect cross between inviting extravagance and blatant intimidation.

Locke admired the building. The narrow windows, like fortress embrasures, were girded with iron bars, and the shelves beneath the windows were cement blocks studded with broken glass. The exterior walls (all four of them, for the three-story building stood alone on a hard-packed dirt courtyard) were painted with well-executed frescoes of fat, infinitely content Gandolo blessing account books, scales, and stacks of coin. The alchemical resin used to protect these images from the weather gave the walls a faint gleam, and Locke knew from personal experience it also made them devilishly hard to climb.

The interior smelled of mellow incense. Golden lanterns hung in niches, casting a warm, inviting light except where pillars and drapes contrived to create equally inviting pools of shadow. To either side behind the main doors, guards sat on stools in gated alcoves, and a quick glance up confirmed that there was a tastefully concealed portcullis ready to be dropped, if not by the guards or bankers then by hidden watchers behind the walls.

There was no chance of robbing such a place on a whim, nor with anything less than a dozen armed and ready types, and even that was more likely to earn a bloodbath than a fortune. The shrine-like inviolability of houses like this was actually as necessary to those in the criminal line as it was to any honest citizen. There was no point in stealing well or wisely if the loot couldn’t be stashed somewhere safe.

“I see Nikoros in the carriage outside,” said a woman who emerged from behind a painted screen. She was about forty, dark-skinned, with chestnut hair bound beneath a black silk skullcap. Her right eye was clouded, and she wore a pair of optics from which the corresponding lens had been removed. “You must be the political gentlemen.”

“Callas and Lazari,” said Jean.

“Singular Tivoli, gentlemen. Your servant.”

“Singular?” said Locke.

“More elegant than ‘Only Tivoli,’ I find, and far more sociable than ‘Solitary Tivoli.’ You have some documents?”

Locke handed over the papers they’d been given by Patience. Tivoli barely glanced at them before she nodded.

“Private credit for three thousand each,” she said. “Scratched these up myself a few days ago. Do you want to draw any of it?”

“Yes,” said Jean. “Can you give us fifty apiece?”

That was adequate pocket money, thought Locke. Half a pound of Karthani ducats each. He turned the sum into Camorri crowns in his head, and idly reflected on what it could get him: a small company of mercenaries for several months, half a dozen outstanding horses, twice as many adequate ones, plain food and lodging for years … not that he’d have any reason to buy such far-fetched things. Yet it would certainly procure an excellent dinner. His stomach rumbled at the thought.

“Might I offer you gentlemen some refreshment while the matter is tended to?” Tivoli glanced at Locke. Were her ears that sharp? “Dark ale? Wine? Pastries?”

“Yes,” said Locke, resenting his weakness but unable to master it. “Yes, anything solid, that would be ne … nice.” Gods above, he’d almost said “necessary.”

“Also,” said Jean, “could we trouble you to have paper, ink, and quills sent out to our carriage? Nikoros has some scribbling to do.”

Tivoli settled Locke and Jean in one of the alcoves, on chairs that would have been at home in the suite of false furniture they’d given to Requin. An attendant brought a tray of flaky brown pastries in the western style, filled with cheese and minced mushrooms. They were the richest thing Locke had eaten in weeks. Jean and Tivoli took small cups of dark ale, and watched in joint bemusement as Locke removed the pastries from existence, rank by rank.

“I’m sorry,” he said around a mouthful of food. “I’ve been ill. My stomach might as well have been locked up on another continent.” He knew he was being less than polite, but the alternative was to gnaw on more ship’s biscuits, which he had transferred to an inner pocket of his new coat.

“Think nothing of it,” said Tivoli. “Manners that would keep you starving are no manners worth respecting. Shall I call for more?”

Locke nodded, and in moments the surviving pastries received reinforcements. These were followed by an attendant carrying a wooden board with a neatly gridded surface, on which low stacks of gold and silver coins had been set out. Jean divided this money into two new leather purses while Locke continued eating.

“Now,” said Tivoli, “I trust there’s little more to say about your personal funds. The other matter we need to touch upon is a certain sum left in my care with strict instructions that it remain unrecorded. Before we discuss its handling, I must ask that you make absolutely no reference to my name in connection with this sum, at any time, save in the utmost privacy between yourselves. Certainly never in writing.”

“I assure you, madam, that in all matters of discretion not involving food, we make etiquette tutors look like slobbering barbarians,” said Jean.

“Excellent,” she said, rising from her chair. “Then let me acquaint you with the hundred thousand ducats I’m not holding on your behalf.”

6

THE UNRECORDED sum lay in a windowless cell off an underground hallway guarded by clockwork doors that must have weighed half a ton apiece. A stack of iron-bound chests was set against an interior wall, and Tivoli pushed one open to reveal gleaming contents.

“About seven hundred and fifty pounds of gold,” she said. “I can turn a fair percentage of it into silver without much notice, whenever you require.”

“I … yes, that may indeed be necessary before we’re finished,” said Locke. He felt a strange tug at his heart. He’d taken the vast fortune of the Gentlemen Bastards for granted for so long, and now here was another, set out for his disposal, as though the first had never been lost.

“Is there anyone besides yourselves,” said Tivoli, “that you would wish to have access to these funds?”

“Absolutely not,” said Jean.

“And that’s never to be countermanded,” added Locke. “Ever. No one else will come on our behalf. Anyone who says otherwise will be lying. Any evidence they produce should be torn up and stuffed down their breeches.”

“We have, from long practice, developed many efficient means of dealing with mischief-makers,” said Tivoli.

“May my associate and I speak privately?” said Locke.

“Of course.” Tivoli stepped out of the cell and pushed the door half-closed. “This door will open from your side at just a touch of the silver lever. Take as long as you require.”

When the door had clattered all the way shut, Jean closed the open chest and sat upon it. “Your guts doing tumbling exercises like mine?”

“I’d never have credited it,” said Locke, running his fingers over the cool wood of another strongbox. “All those years we spent stealing bigger and bigger sums. The money was like a painted backdrop for me. Now that we’ve had a couple fortunes yanked out from under us, though …”

“Yeah,” said Jean. “It seems dearer, somehow. This Tivoli—how far do you suppose we can trust her?”

“I think we can afford to assume the best in her case,” said Locke. “Patience sent us here. Probably means that Sabetha can’t touch our funds at their source, and that hers are equally beyond our reach. This is ammunition for the game. You’d want it kept safe for proper use if you were the magi, wouldn’t you?”

“You’ve saved me some explaining.” The voice was deep, cultured, with a languid Karthani accent, and it came from right behind Locke. He whirled.

A man leaned against the door; he was about Locke’s age and height, wearing a long coat the color of dried rose petals. His hair and short beard were icy blond. Gloves, breeches, boots, and neck-scarf were all black, without ornament.

“Gods,” said Locke, regaining control of himself. “I would have opened the door for a knock.”

“I didn’t choose to wait,” said the man.

“Well, I don’t need to ask to see the rings on your wrist,” said Locke. “Who are you, then? With Patience, or against?”

“With. I’ve come for a private word on behalf of all of us you stand to disappoint.”

“We’ve been at work in your interest for about four hours now,” said Locke. “Surely you could wait a day or two before coming it the total asshole? What do you think, Jean?”

“Jean is occupied,” said the stranger.

Locke turned to see Jean with his eyes unfocused and mouth slightly open. Save for the faint rise and fall of his chest, he might have been a well-dressed statue.

“Gods’ truth,” said Locke, turning back to the stranger. “I don’t care who you are, I am tired of talking to you fucking people under circumstances like—”

Before he finished his sentence, he threw a punch. Without betraying any surprise or concern, the mage caught Locke’s fist in one of his gloved hands and struck back, straight to Locke’s midsection. The strength bled from his legs and he went down gasping. The mage retained his hold on Locke’s hand and used it to wrench him around, until he was on his knees facing away from his antagonist.

“Just breathe through the pain,” said the mage, casually. “Even for you, that was arrogant. You’re no threat to anyone in your condition.”

“T-t-Tivoli,” Locke gasped. “Tivoli!”

“Grow up.” The mage knelt behind him, put his left hand on Locke’s jaw, and set the other in a choking hold. Locke kicked and struggled, but the man effortlessly maintained control of Locke’s head and tightened the grip. “She can’t hear you, either.”

“Patience,” hissed Locke. “Patience … will … nggghk …”

“This conversation is never going to be any concern of hers. She isn’t hovering over you like a little cloud. She has people like me to do that for her.”

“Ngggh … ygggh … fghkingggh … bastarrrgh!”

“Yes,” said the mage, loosening his choke at last. Locke coughed and sucked air into his burning lungs. “Yes, I do want for manners, don’t I? And you’re such a gentle saint-like fellow yourself. Are you ready to listen?”

Locke, relieved to be breathing again and deeply ashamed of his weakened state, said nothing.

“The message is this,” continued the mage, taking silence for acquiescence. “We want the contest to be genuine. We want to see you work for six weeks. If you make peace with that woman and contrive some sort of dumb-show—”

“Patience already warned me,” coughed Locke. “Gods above, you must’ve known that, you tedious piece of shit!”

“It’s one thing to be told, it’s another thing to understand. You’ve got a real entanglement with the woman on the other side. We’d have to be idiots not to allow that you might be tempted.”

“I’ve already promised—”

“Your promises aren’t worth a dead man’s spit, Camorri. So here’s something tangible. Make any arrangement with your redheaded friend to fix this contest, in either direction, and we’ll kill her.”

“You son of a— You can’t—”

“Of course we can. Just as soon as the election is over. We’ll take our time while you watch.”

“The other mages—”

“You think they give a damn about her? The Falconer’s friends? They hired her to vex you. Once the five-year game is over, they’ll be no protection.”

Locke attempted to stumble to his feet, and after a moment the mage yanked him up by the back of his coat. Locke turned, glared, and made a show of dusting himself off.

“It’s no use giving me the evil eye, Lamora. Take the warning to heart. You should be flattered that we understand how useless half-measures are with you.”

“Flattered,” said Locke. “Oh, yeah. Flattered. That’s exactly the word that was on the tip of my tongue. Thanks.”

“The woman is a hostage to your good behavior. You don’t get another reminder. And don’t bother telling Patience about this, either. You’d suffer for it.”

“That all?”

“That’s all the conversation I have in me, friend.”

“Then wake Jean up.”

“He’ll stop daydreaming once I’ve gone.”

“Too chickenshit to say this sort of thing in front of him?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you,” said the mage, “that the last thing your partner needs is another one of my kind proving just how helpless he is while he’s awake to bear the disgrace?”

“I …”

“I’m not without my sympathies, Lamora. They just don’t necessarily reside with you. Now mind the job we hired you for.”

With a wave of his hand he was gone. Locke swung his arms around the empty air where the mage had been standing, then patted the nearby wall, then checked to make sure the door was still tightly closed. He gave a grunt of disgusted resignation and massaged his neck.

“Locke? Did you say something?”

Jean was back on his feet, looking hale.

“Uh, no, Jean, I’m sorry. I just … uh, coughed.”

“Are you all right?” Jean peered at him over the rims of his optics. “You’re sweating like mad. Did something happen?”

“It’s just … nothing.” Gods above, the red-coated bastard was right. Jean didn’t need another reminder of how casually the magi could make a puppet of him. With Locke barely started on the path to recovery, he needed all of Jean’s confidence and energy, without distraction. “I’m sure it’s just all this walking about. I’ll get used to it again soon enough.”

“Well, then, let’s have Nikoros take us to our lodgings,” said Jean. “We’ve got clothes; we’re in funds. Let’s see to your comfort before we start the good fight on behalf of Patience and her cohorts.”

“Right,” said Locke, reaching for the lever that would open the cell door. “Last people in the world I’d want to disappoint.”

7

“NIKOROS, WHO the hell votes in this place, anyway?” asked Locke as the carriage bobbed and weaved its way across one of the Elderglass suspension bridges, headed northwest for somewhere Nikoros had called the Palanta District.

“Well, there’s, uh, three ways to earn the right. You can show title to property worth at least sixty ducats. You can serve in the constabulary for twenty-five years. Or you can be enfranchised for a lump sum of one hundred and fifty, at any time except the actual day of an election.”

“Hmmm,” said Locke. “Sounds like an eminently corruptible process. That might be useful. So how many people in Karthain, and how many can vote?”

“About seventy thousand in the city,” said Nikoros, who was sitting awkwardly indeed, protecting the stack of parcels with one hand and gently waving a still-drying sheet of parchment with the other. “Five thousand with voting rights, more or less. I’ll have more precise figures as the election goes on.”

“That’s what, about two hundred and fifty voters per Konseil seat?” said Jean. “Or am I wrong?”

“Close enough. You’re allowed to choose one of the two final candidates in whatever district you live in. Ballots are in writing and you’ve got to be able to sign your name, too.”

“So, as far as voting goes, we’re not really looking at one big fight, but nineteen smaller ones.”

“Indeed. I, ah, if I may, I believe this list is dry—”

Jean took it. He scanned the columns of chicken-scratch handwriting (no wonder Nikoros had a long-standing relationship with a trustworthy scribe), a short list of businesses, and a longer list of names. “These people make the Black Iris party tick?”

“Our counterparts, yes. They call themselves the Trust. We always refer to ourselves as the Committee.”

“When can we meet this Committee?” said Jean.

“Well, actually, I had hoped you wouldn’t mind a bit of a get-together this evening. Just the Committee and select Deep Roots supporters—”

“How many?”

“Not above a hundred and fifty.”

“Gods below,” said Locke. “I suppose we’ll have to do it sooner or later, though. Where did you want to hold this mess?”

“At your lodgings. Josten’s Comprehensive Accommodations. I’m eager for you to see it. It’s the best place in the city, our temple for Deep Roots affairs.”

A temple it could have been, given its size. They pulled up before Josten’s just as the sun was reaching its mild zenith in a sky that was gradually graying over with clouds. Porters scrambled from the building’s shaded front entrance and took packages under Nikoros’ direction. Jean hopped out of the carriage before Locke did, and studied the structure.

It was a sprawling, gabled, three-story affair with at least nine visible chimneys and several dozen windows. A dozen carriages could have lined up before it with room to spare.

“Hell of an inn,” said Locke as his shoes hit the cobbles.

“Not just an inn,” said Nikoros. “A fine dining establishment, a complete bar, a coffeehouse. Paradise on earth for merchants and traders with party sympathies. A quarter of the city’s commerce gets hashed out here.”

The interior lived up to Nikoros’ enthusiasm. At least five dozen men and women drank and conversed at long tables amidst solid, darkly varnished wooden pillars. An entire clothier’s shop worth of hats and coats hung from nearly every surface, and waiters in black jackets and breeches bustled about with the haste of siege engineers preparing an attack. To Jean’s eye the place looked like Meraggio’s turned inside-out, with the dining and drinking made a centerpiece of business affairs rather than a concealed luxury.

“Up there,” said Nikoros, gesturing toward raised galleries with polished brass rails, “you’ll find the reserved sections. One for the biggest syndicates, the ones I write for. Another for the scribes and solicitors; they pay the house a ransom to stay close to the action. And there’s a gallery for Deep Roots business.”

Jean sensed a number of eyes upon him, and although Nikoros drew waves and nods from onlookers, it was obvious that the two Gentlemen Bastards had become objects of curiosity merely by walking in with him. Jean sighed inwardly, thinking that a back-door entrance might have been wiser, but the die was cast. If Sabetha hadn’t already known they were loose on the streets of Karthain, it was inconceivable that at least one person here wasn’t in her employ, watching for their arrival.

Behind the well-furnished bar on the far side of the room was a tall black man, thin as a hat rack, wearing a more expensive version of the waiter’s uniform under a billowing white cravat and leather apron. The instant he caught sight of Nikoros, he set down the ledger he was reading and crossed the room, dodging waiters.

“Welcome, sirs, welcome, to Josten’s Comprehensive, the Hall Inclusive!” The man bowed at the waist before Locke and Jean. “Diligence Josten, gentlemen, master of the house. You’re expected. How can I make your life easier?”

“I’d do public murder for a cup of coffee,” said Jean.

“You’ve come to the only house in Karthain with coffee worth murdering for. We have seven distinct blends, from the aromatic Syresti dry to the thick—”

“I’ll take the kind I don’t have to think about.”

“The very best kind of all.” Josten snapped his fingers, and a nearby waiter hurried off. “Now, your rooms. They’re in the west wing, second floor, a pair of joined suites, and I’ll have your things—”

“Yes, yes,” said Locke. “Forgive me, I require a moment.” He grabbed Jean and Nikoros by their lapels and dragged them into a private huddle.

“This innkeeper,” whispered Locke, “how far can we trust him, Nikoros?”

“He’s been Deep Roots since this place was three bricks and some postholes in the mud. Gods above, Lazari, he’s as likely to turn as I am.”

“What makes you think we trust you?”

“I … I—”

“Take a breath, I’m kidding.” Locke patted Nikoros on the back and smiled. “If you’re wrong, of course, we’re buggered as all hell. Josten! My dear fellow. Yes, have our junk sent to our rooms, I’m sure they’re perfect, with just the right number of walls and ceilings. I’ll count them later. You know why we’re here?”

“Why, to help us kick the Black Iris in the teeth for a change. And to enjoy your coffee.”

A waiter appeared at Jean’s side, offering a steaming mug on a brass tray. Jean took it and swallowed half of it in one gulp, shuddering with pleasure as the heat cascaded down his battle-hardened gullet.

“Oh yes,” he said. “That’s the stuff. Sweet liquid death. With just a hint of ginger.”

“Okanti beans,” said Josten. “My family once grew them on the home islands, before we came north.”

“Feeling human again?” said Locke.

“This brew could make a dead eunuch piss lightning,” said Jean. He tossed back the second half of the cup. “You want to go up and rest?”

“Gods, no,” said Locke. “Time is precious, security’s nonexistent, and our collective ass is hanging in the wind just begging a certain someone to put an arrow right between the cheeks. Josten, I’ve got to make cruel use of you, I’m afraid.”

“Name any requirement. I’ll meet it eye to eye.”

“Good man, but you’ll learn soon enough not to say that sort of thing to me until I’ve finished speaking. And then you’ll probably learn not to say nice things at all. Your waiters, porters, and the like, have you hired any new ones in the last week?”

“Five or six.”

“Get their names on paper. Get that paper to Master Callas here.” Locke jerked a thumb at Jean. “Instruct your most trusted employees to watch your newest hirelings at all times. Don’t do anything, but get full reports of their activities. On paper.”

“And get that paper to Master Callas?”

“Right you are. Next, consider every door in the entire structure that you routinely keep locked. Excepting the guest rooms, of course. Have all the locks changed, every last one. Do it tomorrow, during business hours. Nikoros will reimburse you from party funds.”

“I—” said Nikoros.

“Nikoros, your job this afternoon is to say yes to anything that comes out of my mouth. The more you rehearse this, the sooner it’ll become a smooth mechanical process allowing no time for painful reflection. Can you practice for me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a natural. Anyway, Josten, get locksmiths down here tomorrow even if you have to promise them a month’s pay. Make sure your fresh hirelings don’t get new keys. Arrange to make it look like the locksmiths have simply run out. Tell them they’ll get theirs in a few days. We’ll see if any of them do anything interesting as a result. Clear so far?”

Josten nodded and tapped his right temple with one finger.

“Next, get a metalsmith to bang up some simple neck chains for all of your employees. Dignified but cheap. Gilded iron, nothing anyone would want to pawn. This is important. We don’t want some enterprising spy throwing together an outfit to mimic one of your waiters so they can lurk about. Anyone on duty wears a chain. Anyone working without a chain gets hauled in back for an impolite conversation. Nobody takes their chain with them when they leave, or they’re fired. Got it? Chains get handed in to you and your most trusted associates, and donned again when it’s time to start a new shift.

“Once you’ve seen to that, announce to all of your employees that you’re doubling their wages until the day after the election. Nikoros will reimburse you out of party funds.”

“Er … yes,” said Nikoros.

“Mention also,” said Locke, “the importance of preserving a secure house during the election, and that anyone reporting anything genuinely unusual or out of place will be compensated for their trouble. If a spider farts in a wine cellar, I want you to hear about it.”

Josten’s eyes had widened, but he nodded as before.

“What else …? Physical security! We need brutes. Say half a dozen. Reliable types, patient, ready for a scrap but not slobbering to start one. No idiots. And some women we can blend in with the crowd. Handy things, pretty girls with knives under their skirts. Where can we get some?”

“The Court of Dust,” said Nikoros. “The caravan staging and receiving posts. There’s always guards for hire. Not exactly Collegium scholars, mind you.”

“Just so long as they don’t suck their thumbs in polite company,” said Locke. “See to it tomorrow, Nikoros, and take Master Callas with you. He can sort cream from crap. Clean up the new recruits, get them decent clothes, and put them up here for the duration. Pay for the rooms out of party funds. Also—make it clear that anyone brought on as muscle answers directly to me or Callas. They take no orders from anyone else without our permission.”

“Uh, sure,” said Nikoros.

“Now, Nikoros, you have an office full of papers to preserve. Run off and get your scribe working. Take the steps we discussed earlier. What time are you parading us around?”

“Ninth hour of the evening.”

“Good, good, shit. Wait. Will everyone in attendance know that Callas and I are running the show?”

“No, no, only the members of the Committee. We did hire you, remember.”

“Ah,” said Locke. “That’s fine. You carry on with getting the hell out of here, and we’ll see you tonight.”

Nikoros nodded, shook hands with Josten, and went out the front door.

“What else …?” Locke turned back to Josten. “Rooms. Yes. The rooms adjacent to our suite, and across from it, are not to be let. Keep them vacant. Have Nikoros pay you the full six weeks’ rent for them out of party funds. But give the keys for the empty rooms to me, right?”

“Easily done.”

Jean studied Locke carefully. This rapid transition to a state of wide-eyed energetic scheming was something he’d seen many times before. However, there was a nervous, feverish quality to Locke’s mood that made Jean bite his lip with concern.

“What else …?”

“Luncheon, perhaps?” Jean interrupted as gracefully as he could. “Food, wine, coffee? A few minutes to sit down and catch your breath in private?”

“Food, yes. Coffee and wine are a ghastly mix. One or the other, I don’t care which. Not both.”

“As for food, sir—” said Josten.

“Put anything on my plate short of a live scorpion and I’ll eat it. And … and …” Locke snapped his fingers. “I know what I’ve forgotten! Josten, have you had any new customers in the past few days? Particularly new customers, never seen before, ones that spend a great deal of time sitting around?”

“Well, now that you mention it.… Don’t stare at them, but on your right, far side of the room, the third table from the rear wall, under the painting of the lady with the exceptional boso … necklace.”

“I see,” said Locke. “Yes, that is an extraordinary place to hang a necklace. Three men?”

“First started coming three days ago. They eat and drink, more than enough to keep their spot. But they keep it for hours at a time, and they come and go in shifts, sometimes. There’s a fourth fellow not there right now.”

“Do they have rooms?”

“No. And they don’t do business with the regular crowd. Sometimes they play cards, but mostly … well, I don’t know what they do. Nothing offensive.”

“Would you call them gentlemen? In their manner of dress, in their self-regard?”

“Well, they’re not penniless. But I wouldn’t go so far as gentlemen.”

“Hirelings,” said Locke, removing some of the more obvious pieces of jewelry Nikoros had secured for him and stuffing them into a coat pocket. “Valets. Professional men of convenience, unless I miss my guess. I’m a little overdressed for this, but I think I can compensate by toning down my manners.”

“Overdressed for what?” said Jean.

“Insulting complete strangers,” said Locke, loosening his neck-cloth. “Got to mind the delicate social nuances when you inform some poor fellow that he’s a dumb motherfucker.”

8

“HANG ON,” said Jean. “If you’re looking to start a fight, I’m—”

“I thought about that,” said Locke. “You’re likely to scare them. I need them to feel insulted and not threatened. That makes it my job.”

“Well, would you like me to intervene before you get your teeth punched out, or is that part of your scheme?”

“If I’m right,” said Locke, “you won’t need to. If I’m wrong, I grant you full license to indulge in an ‘I told you so’ when I’m conscious again, with an option for a ‘you stupid bastard’ if you choose.”

“I’ll claim that privilege.” The quick-moving waiter appeared with a second cup of coffee for Jean. He seized it and slapped a pair of copper coins down in its place. The waiter bowed.

“Josten,” said Locke, “if it turns out I’m about to do something knavish to honest customers, we’ll compensate you.”

“Going to be a damned interesting six weeks,” muttered Josten.

Locke took a deep breath, cracked his knuckles, and walked over to the table at which the three strangers sat. Jean stayed some distance behind, minding his cup of coffee. His presence there was a comfort, familiar as a shadow.

“Good afternoon,” said Locke. “Lazari is my name. I trust I’m intruding.”

“I’m sorry,” said the man closest to Locke, “but we were—”

“I’m afraid I don’t care,” said Locke. He slid into an unclaimed chair and appraised the strangers: young, clean, well-groomed, not quite expensively dressed. They were sharing a bottle of white wine and a pitcher of water.

“We were having a private discussion!” said the man on Locke’s right.

“Ah, but I’m here to do you two a service.” Locke gestured at the two men sitting across from him. “Concerning the fellow I’m sitting next to. Word around the bar is that he can only get it up when he’s on top of another fellow he’s taken by force or subterfuge.”

“What the hell is this?” hissed the man on the right.

“Phrased less delicately,” said Locke, “if you continue to associate with this well-known deceiver, he’s going to tie you down, do you somewhere very untidy until you bleed, and not bother to untie you after.”

“This is unseemly,” said one of the men across the table. “Unseemly, and if you don’t withdraw immediately—”

“I’d be more worried about your friend not withdrawing immediately,” said Locke. “He’s not known for being quick.”

“What’s the meaning of this infantile interruption?” The man on Locke’s right pounded on the table, just strongly enough to rattle the bottle and glasses.

“Good gods,” said Locke, pretending to notice the wine for the first time, “you thoroughly artless fuck-stains didn’t actually drink any of that, did you?”

He swept his hat off and used it to knock the wineglasses of the men across from him into their laps.

“You bastard!” said one.

“Why I … I …” sputtered the other.

“But then, maybe it’s not drugged after all.” Locke grabbed the bottle and took a long swig. “Wouldn’t need to be, for Karthani. Milk-sucking pants-pissers could get drunk off the smell of an empty bottle!”

“I’ll … fetch the landlord!” said the man across from him on the left, retrieving his empty glass from his lap.

“Frightening,” said Locke. “Savage as a kitten on a tit. Say, did you ever hear the one about the rich Karthani and the Karthani who knew who his mother was? Shit, wait, I said Karthani, didn’t I? Told the damn thing wrong.”

“Leave,” said the man on his right. “Leave! Now!”

“Hey, how does a Karthani find out his wife is having her monthly flow? He crawls into his son’s bed and the boy’s cock is already wet. Ha! Oh, have you heard the one about the Karthani who claimed he could count to five—”

The man on Locke’s right pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. Locke grabbed him by the lapel. The man halted, glowering. Locke didn’t have the strength to drag him back down if he decided to fight, but the crucial insult of the uninvited touch was already given.

“Where are you off to?” said Locke. “I haven’t finished my sensitive cultural exchange.”

“Remove your hand from my coat, you obnoxious—”

“Or else what?”

“We take this to the master of the house.”

“I am the master of the house,” said Locke. “And you already know it. You’ve been sent here to watch for my coming. See the hefty gentleman ten yards behind me? He’s the other one you’re looking for. Take a long, careful look, children. I don’t doubt that your mistress expects a detailed report.”

The man jerked away.

“Come now,” said Locke reasonably, taking another swig from the wine bottle. “No men with any quantity of self-respect could have borne the abuse I’ve just given you. If you were gentlemen you’d have called me out, and if you were roughs you’d have punched me in the teeth. The fact is, you’ve been paid a tidy sum to sit here spying on me, and you were all confused as hell about what to do when I pissed on your dignity.”

The two men across the table started to rise, and Locke gestured sharply for them to remain seated.

“Don’t do anything stupid now, sirs. There’s no retrieving your situation. Lift one finger in an unkind act, and I guarantee it’ll take six months for your bones to knit. I’ll also have fifty witnesses swearing you had it coming.”

“What do you want with us?” muttered the man on the right.

“Haul your pathetic carcasses out the door. Be quick and polite. If I ever see you within shouting distance of Josten’s again, you’ll wake up in an alley with all your teeth shoved up your ass. That goes for your absent friend, too.”

Locke put his hat back on, stood up, and strolled casually away. He spared a smile for Jean, who raised his coffee cup in salute—the scrape of chairs against the floor behind him told Locke that the men were departing in haste. He and Jean watched them leave.

“You really are a vulgar little cuss when the spirit moves you,” said Jean.

“I’ve got worse,” said Locke. “Stored on some high shelf in my mind like an alchemist’s poisons. Got most of it from Calo and Galdo.”

“Well, you were venomous enough for our obvious friends.”

“Yes. Obvious. A fine thing to chase out the conspicuous spies. Now all we have to worry about are the capable ones.”

9

LOCKE DESTROYED an excellent luncheon for six—Jean contented himself with a small corner of the feast, and came away grateful for not losing any limbs—then dozed fitfully in their suite of rooms, alternating naps in a lounging chair with episodes of furious pacing.

As the sun set and the tiny fragments of sky visible around the window curtains turned black, men from Morenna’s delivered the beginnings of the promised wardrobe. Locke and Jean examined the new coats, vests, and breeches for concealed needles or alchemical dusts before hanging them in the massive rosewood armoires provided with the rooms.

At the eighth hour of the evening maids and porters appeared with tubs of steaming water. Locke tested each tub with a finger and, when his flesh didn’t peel from his bones, allowed that they might just be safe for their intended use.

By the time Nikoros knocked forty minutes later, the two Gentlemen Bastards were cleaned up and comfortably ensconced in clothes that fit perfectly.

“Gentlemen,” said Nikoros, who had substantially upgraded his own clothes, “I’ve brought you some useful things, I hope.”

He passed a leather portfolio to Locke, who flipped it open and found at least a hundred pages inside. Some were covered with dense scribbling that was surely Nikoros’, others with flawless script that surely wasn’t.

“Deep Roots party financial reports,” said Nikoros. “Important membership lists, plans and minutes from the last election, lists of properties and agents, matching lists for what we know of the Black Iris, copies of the city election laws—”

“Splendid,” said Locke. “And you took all the steps I discussed earlier?”

“My scribe’s still working, but everything else is seen to. If the earth should open up and swallow my offices, I swear I won’t be losing anything irreplaceable.”

“Good,” said Locke. “Want a drink? We’ve got a liquor cabi— No, wait, I haven’t examined the bottles yet, sorry.”

“I’m sure anything provided by Josten is perfectly safe,” said Nikoros, raising his eyebrows.

“It’s not Josten’s faithfulness I worry about.”

“Well, let me assure you that we don’t throw parties in Karthain for the purpose of staying dry.” He reached inside his coat and drew out two ornate silver lapel badges attached to green ribbons; an identical ornament was on his own left breast, though his was gold. “As for that, I mustn’t forget your colors.”

“The official Deep Roots plumage?” said Jean, extending a hand for his pin.

“Yes. For the party tonight, Committee members wear gold pins, Konseil members wear jade, privileged others wear silver. These will mark you as men to respect, but not men who need to be followed around and remarked upon, if you don’t wish it.”

“Good,” said Locke, decorating his lapel. “Now that we’re properly garnished, let’s serve ourselves up to the family.”

10

THE ENTIRE character of Josten’s main room had changed for the evening. The number of attendants at the street doors had doubled, and their uniforms were far more impressive. Dark green banners hung from the rafters and down the varnished pillars. Carriages could be heard coming and going constantly, and Locke caught a glimpse of several more attendants outside, holding their hands up to a party of well-dressed men without green ribbons. Clearly the party was a closed affair.… Were the men on the pavement legitimately uninformed late diners, or some sort of opposition mischief? There was no time to investigate.

A string quintet was bowing away pleasantly in one of the upper galleries, and all the visible fireplaces had huge kettles for tea and coffee bubbling before them. Curtained tables held thousands of glass bottles, and enough decanters, flutes, pitchers, and tumblers to blind every eye in the city with the force of their reflected light. Locke blinked several times and turned his attention to the men and women flowing into the room.

“This is already well more than a hundred and fifty,” he said.

“These things happen,” said Nikoros, giggling energetically as though at some private joke. “We plan with s-such restraint, but there’s so many people we can’t afford to offend!”

Locke peered at him. Nikoros had changed, somehow, in the few minutes between their room and the party. He was sweating profusely, his cheeks were flushed, his eyes darted around like little creatures trapped behind glass panes. Yet he wasn’t nervous; he was beatific. Gods!

Their straight-arrow trade insurer, their liaison to the Deep Roots upper crust, was a taker of Akkadris dust. Locke smelled the sharp pine-like odor of the stuff. Damn! Akkadris, Muse-of-Fire, the poet killer. Liquor soothed and loosened wits, but dust did the opposite, lighting fires in the mind until the dusthead shook with excitement for no discernible reason. It was an expensive and incrementally suicidal habit.

“Nikoros,” said Locke, grabbing one of his lapels, “you and I need to have a very frank discussion about—”

“Via Lupa! Via Lupa, dear boy!” A ponderous old man with a face like a seamed pink pudding bore down on them, witchwood cane tapping the floor excitedly. The man’s white eyebrows fluttered like wisps of smoke, and his lapel badge was polished jade. “Nikoros of the wolves, so called for his profit margins. Ha!”

“G-good evening, Your Honor!” Nikoros used the interruption to extricate himself from Locke’s grasp. “Oh! Gentlemen, may I present Firstson Epitalus, Konseil member for Isas Thedra for forty-five years. Some would call him the, ah, f-figurehead on our political vessel.”

“So I’m a figurehead, am I? A helpless woman splashing about without the good sense to cover my tits? Do I need to send a friend along to require an explanation of that remark, young fellow?”

“Leave the poor boy alone, First. It’s quite clear that you do have the good sense to cover your tits.” A lean, grizzled woman took Epitalus by the arm in a friendly fashion. She looked a lived-in sixty to Locke, though she had lively eyes and a mischievous smile. She, too, wore a jade badge, and as she and Epitalus burst into laughter Nikoros joined in nervously, louder than either of them.

“And allow me to also present … ah—”

It was only a momentary lapse, but the woman seized upon it eagerly.

“Oh, say the name, Nikoros, it won’t burn your tongue.”

“Ahem. Yes, ahem: Damned Superstition Dexa, Konseil member for Isas Mellia and head, ah, head of the Deep Roots Committee.”

“Damned Superstition?” said Locke, smiling despite himself.

“Which it is,” said Dexa, “though you’ll note I play firmly by the rules anyway. Hypocrisy and caution are such affectionate cousins.”

“Your Honors,” said Nikoros, “please, please allow me the p-pleasure of introducing Masters Lazari and Callas.”

Bows, handshakes, nods, and endearments were exchanged with the speed of a melee, and once all the appropriate strokes had been made, Their Honors immediately relapsed into informality.

“So you’re the gentlemen that we’ve discussed so often recently,” said Dexa. “I understand you smoked some vipers out of our midst this very afternoon.”

“Hardly vipers, Your Honor. Just a few turds our opposition threw into the road to see if we were minding our feet,” said Locke.

“Well, keep it up,” said Epitalus. “We have such confidence in you, my lads, such confidence.”

Locke nodded, and felt a flutter in his guts. These people certainly hadn’t read a single note on the fictional exploits of Lazari and Callas. Their warmth and enthusiasm had been installed by the spells of the Bondsmagi. Would it last forever, or dissolve like some passing fancy once the election was over? Could it dissolve before then, by accident? An unnerving thought.

Nikoros managed to herd their little group toward the gleaming mountains of liquor. While his heart-to-heart with Nikoros had been postponed by the circumstances, Locke did feel more comfortable once he’d secured a drink. A glass in the hand seemed as much a uniform requirement as a green ribbon on the chest for this affair.

Epitalus and Dexa soon went off to tend to the business of being important. Nikoros whirled Locke and Jean around the room several times, making introductions, pointing out prodigies and curiosities, Committee members, friends, cousins, cousins of friends, and friends of cousins.

Locke had once been used to mingling with the aristocracy of Camorr, and while the upper crust of Karthain lacked for nothing in terms of wit and pomp, there seemed to be a distinct difference in character that ran deeper than mere variations of habit between east and west. It took half an hour of conversation for him to finally apprehend the nature of the contrast—the Karthani gentry lacked the martial quality that was omnipresent in the well-to-do of most other city-states.

There were no obvious battle scars, no missing arms within pinned-up jacket sleeves, no men and women with the measured step of old campaigners or the swagger of equestrians. Locke recalled that the army of Karthain had been disbanded when the magi took up their residence. For four centuries, the ominous Presence had been the city’s sole (and entirely sufficient) protection against outside interference.

Introductions and pleasantries continued. “Now, who’s that fellow over there?” said Locke, sipping at his second Austershalin brandy and water. “The one with the odd little hat.”

“The natty-hatted gentleman? Damn … his name escapes me at the moment.” Nikoros took a generous gulp of wine as though it might help; whatever aid it rendered was not instantaneous. “Sorry. But I do know his particular friend, the one at his shoulder. One of our district organizers. Firstson Cholmond. Always claims to be writing a book.”

“What sort?” said Jean.

“History. A grand historical study of the city of Karthain.”

“Gods grant him a paralyzing carriage accident,” said Jean.

“I sympathize. Most historians have always struck me as perpetrators of tedium,” said Nikoros. “He swears that his book is different. Still—”

Whatever Nikoros might have said next was lost in a general uproar. Firstson Epitalus had ascended to one of the upper galleries, and he was waving for something resembling order from the crowd, which had by now soaked up a good fraction of its own weight in liquor.

“Good evening, good evening, good evening!” yelled Epitalus. “Good evening!” And then, as though anyone in the audience might conceivably remain unenlightened as to the quality or time of day: “Good evening!”

The string quintet ceased its humming and twanging, and the general acclamation sank to a tipsy murmur.

“Welcome, dear hearts and cavaliers, devoted friends, to the seventy-ninth season of elections in our Republic of Karthain! Take a moment, I pray, to reflect with pity on how few of us remain who can remember the first.…”

Good-natured laughter rippled across the crowd.

“Even those of you still moist behind the ears should be able to recall our heroic efforts of five years past, which, despite furious opposition, preserved our strong minority of nine seats on the Konseil!”

Curiously raucous cheers echoed across the hall for some time. Locke winced. Strong minority? Was he missing out on some bit of Karthani drollery, or were they really that incapable of admitting they’d lost?

“And so, surely, the burden of defending their old gains rests heavily on our foes, and must render them eminently vulnerable to what’s coming their way this time!”

This was answered with full-throated yells, the clinking of glasses, applause, and the sound of at least one thin-blooded reveler succumbing to the influence of complimentary liquor. Fortunately, his tumble from a balcony was interrupted by a crowd of soft-bodied folks, who were deep enough in their cups to take no offense at his sudden arrival. Waiters discreetly removed the poor fellow while Epitalus went on.

“Might I beg you, therefore, to raise a glass in toast to our dear opposition, the overconfident lads and lasses across the city? What shall we wish them, eh? Confusion? Frustration?”

“They’re already confused,” yelled Damned Superstition Dexa from somewhere near the front of the crowd, “so let it be frustration!”

“Frustration to the Black Iris,” boomed Epitalus, raising his glass. The cry was echoed from every corner of the crowd, and then with one vast gulp several hundred people were in pressing need of a refill. Waiters wielding bottles in both hands waded into the fray. When Epitalus had received a fresh supply of wine, he raised his glass again.

“Karthain! Gods bless our great jewel of the west!”

This toast, too, was echoed enthusiastically, but in its wake Locke witnessed something curious. A fair number of the people around him touched their left hands to their eyes, bowed their heads, and whispered, “Bless the Presence.”

“Gods grant us all the blessing of a long-awaited victory,” said Epitalus, “as they have granted me the honor of your very kind attention. I’ll not detain you a moment longer! We have plenty of work to do in the coming six weeks, but tonight is for pleasure, and I must insist that you all pursue it vigorously!”

Epitalus descended from the elevated gallery to a round of applause that shook the rafters. The musicians started up again.

“What do you think of the old boy?” said Jean.

“He’s got a strangely sunny view of ten years of defeat,” said Locke, “but if I get killed in the next six weeks, I want him to speak at my funeral.”

“Not to piss on the good cheer,” said Jean in a much lower voice, “but did you notice that our friend Nikoros—”

“Yeah,” sighed Locke. “We’ll straighten him out later.”

The mass of well-dressed Firstsons, Secondsons, Thirddaughters, and the like returned to its previous knots of conversation and besieged the silver platters of food which were now being uncovered at the back of the hall. Performance alchemists in bright silk costumes emerged from the kitchens, some to mix drinks, others already juggling heatless fire or conjuring glowing steam in rainbows of color.

“My compliments, Nikoros,” said Locke. “Your party seems to be a smashing success. Something tells me we’re not going to be getting any bloody work done before noon tomorrow, though.”

“Oh, Josten’s your man for that,” said Nikoros. “He, ah, he mixes a hangover remedy that’ll knock the f-fumes right out of your brain! Alchemy ain’t in it. So I think we can help ourselves to another glass or two with a clear—”

It was then that Locke noticed a new murmur from the crowd near the main doors, not the low purr of drunken contentment, but a spreading signal of unease. Men and women with green ribbons parted like clouds before a rising sun, and out of the gap came a stout, curly-haired man in a pale blue coat and matching four-cornered hat. He carried a polished wooden staff about three feet long, topped with a silver figurine of a rampant lion. A tipstaff if Locke had ever seen one.

“Herald Vidalos,” said Nikoros warmly. “D-dear fellow, have you come at a fine time! You must, must take a little something against the chill! Help yourself.”

“Deepest regrets, Nikoros.” The man called Vidalos had a curiously gentle voice, and it was obvious that he was in some discomfort. “I’m afraid I’ve come on the business of the Magistrates’ Court.”

“Oh?” Nikoros stiffened. “Well, ah, perhaps I can, I can help you keep it discreet. Who do you need to see?”

“Diligence Josten.”

By now a wide circle of the floor had cleared around Vidalos. Josten pushed his way through the crowd and stepped into the open.

“What news, Vidalos?”

“Nothing that gives me any pleasure.” Vidalos touched his staff gently to Josten’s left shoulder. “Diligence Josten, I serve you before witnesses with a warrant from the Magistrates’ Court of Karthain.”

He withdrew the staff and handed the innkeeper a scroll sealed inside a case. While Josten broke the seal and unrolled the contents, Locke casually moved to stand beside him.

“What’s the trouble?” he whispered.

“By the Ten fucking Holy Names,” said Josten, running his eyes down the neat, numerous paragraphs on the scroll. “This can’t be right. All of my fees are properly paid—”

“Your license for the dispensation of ardent spirits is in arrears,” said Vidalos. “There’s no record at the Magistrates’ Court of the fee having been received for this year.”

“But … but I did pay it. I certainly did!”

“Josten, sir, I desire to believe you with all my soul, but it’s my charge to execute this warrant, and execute it I must, or it’s my hide they’ll have off on Penance Day.”

“Well, we can settle the business about the records later,” said Josten. “Just tell me what I owe and I’ll pay it right now.”

“I’m forbidden to take fees or penalties in hand, sir,” said Vidalos. “As you well know. You’ll have to go to the next Public Proceedings at the Magistrates’ Court.”

“But … that’s three days from now. Until then—”

“Until then,” said Vidalos quietly, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disperse this party. After that it’s your choice, whether we seal your doors or remove your liquor. It’s only a few days, sir.”

“Only a few days?” hissed Josten, incredulous.

“Oh, Sabetha,” Locke muttered to himself. “You gods-damned artist. Hello to you, too.”

INTERLUDE: BASTARDS ABROAD

1

“FOURTHSON VIDALOS,” SAID Josten. “Would that your parents had stopped at their third! How many nights have you spent leaning against my bar, eh? How many times have I brought you in out of the rain for a glass? You two-faced son of a—”

“For the gods’ sakes,” said Vidalos, “do you think I wanted this? It’s my duty!”

“In front of half the Konseil and the entire Deep Roots—”

“Josten,” said Locke, stepping between the innkeeper and Vidalos, “let’s talk. Herald, how do you do? I’m Lazari, an advisor.”

“Whose advisor?”

“Everyone’s advisor. I’m a solicitor from Lashain, retained in a broad capacity. I require a moment in private with Master Josten, to discuss his options.”

“I don’t see that he has any,” said Vidalos.

“Do you have orders to refuse us a few minutes for reflection?” said Locke.

“Of course not.”

“Then I’ll thank you not to enforce orders you haven’t been given.” Locke put an arm firmly around Josten’s shoulders, turned the sputtering innkeeper away from the herald, and whispered, “Josten, one thing. Are you absolutely certain your license is truly paid up?”

“I have a signed receipt in my papers. I could fetch it now and shove it up this powder-blue pimp’s ass! Until tonight, I would’ve called the bastard a good friend, on my honor. I never would’ve thought—”

“Don’t think,” said Locke. “I’m paid to do that for you. Herald Vidalos isn’t your enemy. It’s whoever summoned him to work and gave him a warrant that somehow urgently needed to be served at half past the tenth hour of the evening, do you follow?”

“Ah,” said Josten. “Ahhhhhhh.”

“We shouldn’t abuse the poor bastard whose boots are on the pavement,” said Locke. “Our troubles come from higher offices. Nikoros, get over here! Look at this seal and signature.”

“Capability Peralis,” said Nikoros. Sweat ran down his forehead in glistening lines. “Second Clerk, Magistrates’ Court. I’ve heard of her.”

“She wouldn’t need an actual magistrate to sign this?” said Locke.

“No,” said Nikoros, “magistrates only sign off on, uh, arrests.”

“And this,” said Locke, “is just a little sting in the ass. Is she Black Iris? Or any of her superiors?”

“Not according to my lists,” said Nikoros. “Most of the people at the court make a point of not, uh, not declaring for either party.”

“Well, someone got her to perform a favor.” Locke suddenly became aware that most of the party, rank on tipsy rank, were watching closely to see if their mountain of fine liquor was really to be severed from them on the word of a single nervous functionary. “I don’t suppose Konseil members can just order Vidalos to make himself scarce?”

“Magistrates are, ah, co-equal with the Konseil,” said Nikoros. “Their heralds don’t have t-to take orders from anyone else.”

“Well, our drunk friends are going to hang this poor bastard from the rafters if I let this go through.” Locke turned back to Herald Vidalos, grinning broadly. “Everything seems to be perfectly in order!”

“It gives me little satisfaction,” said Vidalos.

“I’d have thought you’d be happy,” said Locke, “since there’s absolutely no need for you to shut down the party.”

“Having delivered the warrant,” said Vidalos, “it pains me to report that I’m bound to carry out my directions therein; I have to observe that Master Josten has ended this affair and sealed his doors to new customers.”

“Begging your pardon, but you’re not allowed to do anything of the sort,” said Locke. “That’s premature restraint of trade, which is forbidden under the Articles of Karthain. Whoever signed this warrant should have known that Josten is entitled, by law, to verification of these charges before a magistrate—”

“But—”

“Prior to interruption of commerce!” continued Locke. “Look, this is fairly basic stuff from that amendment business about, what—twenty years ago.”

“I … really?” Vidalos’ face lost some of its plum color. “Are you quite sure? I’m not entirely familiar with that. And I have served a number of similar—”

“I’m fully bonded for practice in Karthain. Imposition of penalty without proper verification of these charges would expose you to censure for negligence, the penalties for which could be … well, of course you know what they could be. Let’s not dwell on them.”

“Um …” said Vidalos. “Uh, of course.”

“So, you’ve served your warrant in front of the most credible body of witnesses the city could hope to produce. I accept the warrant on Josten’s behalf and formally request a magistrate’s verification of its charges. Since we can’t possibly have that until at least tomorrow morning, the party must continue.”

“Ha! That’s served you out,” shouted someone within the crowd. “Shuffle off, tipstaff!”

“None of that!” yelled Locke. “For shame! This man is a good friend to this house, given the awful task of serving this warrant against his will. And did he flinch? No! Obedient to duty, he stepped into the lion’s den!”

“Hear him,” cried Firstson Epitalus. Whether he realized the stupidity of needlessly making an enemy of Vidalos or merely wished his own voice to ring loudest in any acclamation, Locke blessed him. “Karthain should be proud to have such an honest and fearless fellow in its service!”

People immediately followed Epitalus’ lead. Catcalls that had barely started up were replaced with a rising swell of applause.

“I regret my harsh words,” said Diligence Josten, propelled toward Vidalos by a subtle elbow from Locke, and fully taking the hint. “Give me your pardon, and have a glass with us.”

“Oh, but …” Vidalos seemed pleased, relieved, and embarrassed all at once. “I’m on duty—”

“Surely not,” said Josten. “The warrant is served, so your duties are finished.”

“Well, if you put it that way—”

Josten and several accomplices enfolded the herald into the crowd and shuffled him toward the liquor supply.

“Oh, thank the gods,” muttered Nikoros. “I had no idea you’d picked up such a knowledge of Karthani law, Lazari.”

“I haven’t,” said Locke. “When the sky’s falling, I take shelter under bullshit. Someone’s going to figure that out soon enough tomorrow.”

“Then there’s no such statute?”

“Fake as a man with three cocks.”

“Really? Damn! It sounded so r-reasonable. Lying to an officer of the court is an offense they could—”

“That’s not worth worrying about. If pressed I’ll use the never-fail universal apology.”

“What’s the n-never-fail universal apology?”

“ ‘I was badly misinformed, I deeply regret the error, go fuck yourself with this bag of money.’ But it shouldn’t come to that. First thing tomorrow, we need to reach this Capability Peralis. If Josten’s papers are magically found to have been ‘misplaced,’ then the whole affair dries up before it can call further attention to itself.”

“And if she won’t roll over for us?” said Jean, who’d been hovering nearby.

“We get someone else. First Clerk, maybe, or an actual magistrate. We’re buying ourselves a little corner of the Magistrates’ Court tomorrow, come hell or Eldren-fire. When do the courts open?”

“Ninth hour of the morning.”

“Be outside our door at eight.”

“Oh, uh—”

“At eight,” said Locke, reducing his voice to a cold whisper. “So don’t stuff any more of that shit down your throat tonight.”

“Oh, I, uh, I don’t have any idea what you—”

“Yes. You do. I don’t care if you’re totally out of your head on Akkadris, I’ll put a damn leash around your neck and drag you by it. We’re all going together to put this fire out before it spreads.”

2

“NIKOROS,” MUTTERED Locke, bleary-eyed and fog-brained, as he swung the apartment door open in response to a frenzied pounding. “What the hell are you about, man? It can’t be anywhere near eight yet.”

“It’s just after five.” Nikoros looked as though he’d been boot-stomped by a gang of hangover fairies. His hair was undone, his clothes haphazard, and the bags under his eyes could have been used for coin pouches. “They’ve got my office, Lazari. Just like you said.”

“What?” Locke blinked the glue from his eyes and ushered Nikoros inside. “Someone burned your office down?”

“No, it’s not arson.” Nikoros nodded to Jean, who’d come in through the connecting door from his side of the suite. Jean wore a black silk dressing gown and was carrying his hatchets casually in his right hand. “The Master Ratfinder’s office cordoned off my whole bloody building for a suckle-spider infestation. Sheer luck I wasn’t there when they showed up, otherwise I’d be getting an alchemical bath in quarantine.”

“Your scribe?”

“He dodged them too. Almost everything was copied or removed in time, but now they’ll be fumigating with brimstone for three days. Can’t use the place until they’re done.”

“I don’t suppose you’d ever seen so much as one hair on a suckle-spider’s ass?”

“The building’s two years old! Clean as an infant’s soul.”

“Another how-do-you-do from our friends across town. How many people work for this ratfinder?”

“A dozen or so. Alchemists, sewer-stalkers, corpse-hunters. They handle all things pestilent and sanitary.”

“How are they regarded?”

“Master Bilezzo’s a hero! Hells, I mostly think so, too. Keeps the city damned clean, compared to a lot of other places. Forty years without a plague in Karthain, not even cholera. People notice that sort of thing.”

“This is touchy, then,” said Jean. “We can’t be heavy-handed dealing with this or it’ll snap right back at us. Sa … someone in the opposition keeps choosing delicate instruments to poke us with.”

“We need some delicate instruments of our own,” said Locke. “We’re not going to have any time to deal with the election if we have to run around pissing on these distractions.”

“Do you think you can get my office back?”

“Hmmm.” Locke scratched his stubble. “No. Look, Nikoros, no offense, but if we’ve got you and your files, we don’t need your office. Let them smoke it out. Our job as far as this Master Bilezzo is concerned is to make sure Josten’s isn’t closed down for similar treatment.”

“Very well,” said Nikoros. “But I, uh, my rooms—I suppose I’ll have to board here for a few days.”

“That might not be a bad thing. This place is our castle, and the siege has started. Speaking of which, after we deal with the Magistrates’ Court, get me some actual solicitors. Trustworthy sorts. I presume the party has a few?”

“Of course.”

“Have them join the menagerie here, in the best suites Josten has left. Next time someone walks in with writs or warrants or gods know what, I want real paper-pushers on hand to spin authentic nonsense.”

“We seem to be off to a bad start,” said Nikoros.

“We are.”

“And I must apologize … for my, uh, you know. It’s just an occasional thing, you understand. Keeps me working through the long nights. I can … stop, if you—”

“Do. Throw that shit away. We need you steady and reliable. Dustheads are neither.”

“I’m not a dusthead—”

“Save it. I’ve seen more dustheads, gazers, pissers, burners, and stonelickers than you can imagine. I’ve even crawled into a bottle myself, once or twice. Don’t try to placate me; just do us all a favor and stay off it. Get pickled on booze like an ordinary Deep Roots man.”

“I can … as you say. I can do it.”

“And don’t sweat our situation. By tonight, we’ll be walled in with brutes and solicitors, most of the locks will be changed, Josten will secure his staff.… You’ll feel better once our basic defenses are in place. Now get a room, get what sleep you can. Master Callas and I will fetch you at eight. And hey. Tell whoever’s on duty we want enough coffee to kill a horse.”

When the coffee came a few minutes later, the maid delivering it wore a gleaming brass chain around her neck.

“That was quick work on Josten’s part,” said Jean, pouring two steaming cups. “The chains, I mean. You don’t believe it’ll keep out real mischief, though? Wouldn’t stop either of us, I should think.”

“It’s not meant to,” said Locke. “It’s a simple obstacle for the witless and unlucky. The less time we have to waste on idiots, the more we can devote to everything else Sabetha does.”

3

IT WAS a cool, mist-haunted morning. Water trickled down every window, and the pavements were slick. A few minutes before eight, Locke and Jean hustled Nikoros, who looked as though sleep had been scarce, into a carriage. Locke gnawed indelicately at half a loaf of bread stuffed with cold meat from the party. This breakfast was disposed of by the time they made their first stop of the morning, at Tivoli’s, to reinforce the coins in their purses with a few hundred comrades.

Next, they rattled north to the Casta Gravina, the old citadel of Karthain, whose interior walls and gates had been knocked down years before to make more room for a government that didn’t have to fear anything so mundane as a hostile army at its doorstep. The plazas and gardens were so beautifully laid out that the fog might have been just one more decoration, artfully conjured and shaped by crews of overambitious groundskeepers.

“Magistrates’ Court,” said Nikoros, leading the way out of the carriage. “I know the place. If you want to make any money in my business, you’ll end up party or witness in your share of lawsuits.”

Locke and Jean followed him across a circular plaza, into the clammy silver mist that opened a few paces ahead of them and swallowed their carriage an equal distance behind. The fog echoed faintly with the sounds of the city coming to life—doors opening, horses and wheels clattering, people shouting to one another.

“Clerks’ office is just over here,” said Nikoros.

“OOF!” A woman came out of the fog to Locke’s left before he could react. She collided with Locke, steadied herself against him, and was then snatched away rather ignominiously by Jean.

“Gods above!” she cried. The voice was creaky, middle-aged, Karthani.

“It’s fine, Master Callas, it’s fine,” said Locke. He patted his purse and papers, verifying their undisturbed state. The collision might or might not be innocent, but the woman seemed to be no pickpocket.

“A thousand apologies. You startled us, madam,” said Jean, releasing the woman. She was a few inches shorter than Locke, broad and heavy, dressed in a dull but expensive fashion. Her gray-dusted brown hair was pinned up under an elegant four-cornered cap, and her face was lined with whatever cares had chased her through life. Locke prayed silently that they hadn’t just upset one of the very clerks they might want to suborn.

“It’s you who startled me, looming out of the fog like a pack of highwaymen!”

“I wouldn’t call it looming, madam. Some of us simply aren’t built for looming,” said Locke.

“You, perhaps not, but I could plant your big friend in the street to shade the roof of my house.” She readjusted her coat with a sharp tug and went on her way, scowling. “Good day, oafs.”

“Nikoros,” said Jean, “was that anyone important?”

“Never seen her before.”

“Well, let’s get inside before we trip over someone we can’t afford to offend,” said Locke.

The office of the clerks wasn’t particularly large, but it was comfortably appointed. The purgatory of quiet halls and empty chairs outside the clerical chambers looked like a decent place to fall asleep in. Capability Peralis, a round and attractive woman on the kinder side of forty, was scratching away at papers behind her desk when Locke, Jean, and Nikoros entered her chamber.

“I’m sorry,” she said, irritably tossing thick dark ringlets out of her eyes as she looked up. “No appointments before half ten. Where’s the hall secretary?”

“The secretary has been taken advantage of by my excessive natural and financial charms,” said Locke, who’d been charming to the tune of a month’s salary. “I’m sure you can sympathize.”

Locke settled smoothly into one of the chairs before Peralis’ desk, and Jean casually drew the door shut. Nikoros stood off to one side and pretended to admire the walls.

“I’ve no idea who you think you are, sir—”

“Last night,” said Locke, “a warrant was signed and sent out from this office, a warrant concerning Josten’s Comprehensive Accommodations.”

“If you’re Josten’s counsel, you know bloody well when Public Proceedings are held!”

“What I know,” said Locke, “is that some miracle caused the records for the payment of Josten’s ardent spirits license, which is perfectly sound, to be misplaced. I’d like that miracle reversed. I do understand that miracles are expensive.”

Sighing inwardly at the artlessness of this approach (there was no time to waste on subtlety), Locke swept a hand across the desktop, leaving a comet-like trail of gold coins.

“Is that meant to impress me?” said Peralis softly, fiercely. Oh, her version of Offended Honest Public Functionary deserved applause! “Attempted bribery of a civic official. You’ll shed your boldness when you’re chained to an interrogation cell wall.”

“Good gods, that’s lovely,” said Locke. “I’m really sorry that I simply don’t have time to play this game with you. That’s your annual salary right there on the desktop. I propose to give you six more payments just like it, one per week until this election is over. All I ask is that no further complications to Deep Roots party business be specially conjured by you or your staff. Nothing more.”

“Well,” she said, dropping her façade of outrage, “what if another benefactor is willing to provide additional funds in a contrary direction?”

“Notify us,” said Locke. “We’ll match anything you’re offered. I don’t even want you to take action against that other benefactor; merely refrain from taking action against us. Make up excuses. Imply that you’re under scrutiny, that further accommodations are temporarily impossible. Surely you can see it’s a sweet arrangement where you’re concerned.”

“It’s not without its temptations,” she mused.

“Quit being coy. Just say yes and earn a fortune.”

“Well, then—yes.”

“I have your word this warrant concerning Josten is a misunderstanding, and the record in question is going to be found, by the happiest happenstance, as soon as I leave this office?”

“You may safely consider the matter settled.”

“Good. If it remains settled next week, I’ll call again with more decorations for your desk. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a tight schedule of pushing boulders up hills.”

“You know,” said Nikoros quietly as they left the Second Clerk’s office, “not to criticize, but if no particular tact is required in these matters, I’ve a hundred Deep Roots men and women who can make these calls in their official capacities—”

“No,” said Locke. “When it comes to just laying out money, leave our official friends out of it. Save them for areas in which their authority is needed. There’s no point in blunting our tools in the wrong applications.”

“Well,” said Nikoros, “you’re damned impossible to argue with, Master Lazari.”

“Not impossible,” said Jean placidly. “About as intractable as a tortoise with its ass on fire, though.”

“If we’re going to catch up to the opposition,” said Locke, “we’ve got to step boldly at every—”

“There he is! There’s the man who stole my purse!” cried a familiar voice as Locke emerged once again onto the fog-shrouded plaza.

The middle-aged woman stood there, flanked by two men in pale blue coats reminiscent of the one worn by Vidalos. These men wore studded leather vests beneath them, however, and had clubs hanging from their belts.

Gods. So it hadn’t been an innocent collision after all.

“Your pardon, sir,” said one of the guards, stepping forward, “but I must ask to see your pockets.”

“A black silk purse,” said the woman, “with the initials ‘G.B.’ in red in one of the corners. Seven ducats in it. Or at least there were!”

Locke patted himself down hurriedly. Yes, there was a slender new weight in the lower left inside pocket of his rather excellent new coat. He hadn’t noticed the addition; he’d been so satisfied with verifying that nothing had been removed. Stupid, clumsy, amateurish—

“I say,” he sputtered, “this is an intolerable accusation! How dare you, madam, how dare you! And how dare you, sir, suggest that a gentleman might be turned upside-down and shaken like a common cutpurse!”

“Be reasonable, sir,” said the guard. “The lady has a precise description of what was taken, and surely proving that you don’t have it is worth a moment of your time—”

“It is a liberty beyond comprehension! This is Karthain, not the lawless wilds!” Into his furious gesticulations, Locke worked a number of quick hand signals for Jean’s benefit. “I take great … I take the most … I take take take … arrrrrggggggggh!”

Locke spasmed and sputtered. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he stumbled forward moaning, clutching at the approaching guard. Alarmed, the man reached for his club. While Nikoros watched in mute bewilderment, Jean sprang between Locke and the guard.

“For pity’s sake!” Jean hissed. “Don’t pull that cudgel, he’s having a fit!”

“Nnnnnggggggggghhhhh,” said Locke, spraying flecks of spittle and waving his head about furiously.

“He’s cursed,” said the other guard, making a gesture against evil with both of his hands. “He’s got a spirit influence on him!”

“He’s not cursed, you damned simpleton, it’s an illness,” said Jean. “Whenever his emotions run high, there’s a chance he’ll have a fit, and I dare say you, madam, have brought him to this state!”

In a manner that seemed perfectly accidental and natural (Jean’s interference was nothing less than expert), Locke broke away from Jean and the guard. Lurching like a marionette whose puppeteer was dying of some convulsive poison, he tumbled sobbing against the woman, who shrieked and pushed him away. Locke wound up on his back with Jean crouching protectively over him as he babbled, twitched, and kicked at the air.

“Stand back,” said Jean. “Give him some air. The fit will pass. In a moment he’ll be calm.”

Locke, taking the hint, gradually reduced the severity of his symptoms until he was only gently shuddering and mumbling.

“If you really must render such low treatment to a gentleman,” said Jean, “I suggest you examine his pockets now, while he’s not entirely himself.”

The guard Locke had initially stumbled against knelt down beside him and, carefully, as though Locke might leap back up at any moment, went through Locke’s coat.

“Private papers and a purse not matching your description,” he said, standing up. “Madam, I’m afraid it’s just not there.”

“He must have discarded it inside,” she cried. “Search the building!”

“Now, this is beyond all propriety,” said Jean. “My friend is a gentleman and a solicitor, and you insult him with these ridiculous accusations!”

“He’s a pickpocket,” said the woman. “He ran into me to steal my purse!”

“This man is a convulsive,” Jean bellowed. “He has fits half a dozen times a day! What the hell kind of pickpocket do you think he’d make? Twitching and trembling and falling over? Gods!”

“Madam,” said the guard standing over Locke, “he doesn’t have your purse, and you must admit a gentleman with, ah, twitching fever hardly seems a likely cutpurse.”

“Check his friend,” she said. “Check the big one.”

“I’ll gladly hand my coat over,” said Jean, slowly and coldly, pretending to come to a realization. “Yet I must insist that you do the same, madam.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” said Jean. “I understand what’s going on now. I marvel that I didn’t grasp it before. There is a pickpocket at work, sirs, but one wearing a lady’s dress rather than a gentleman’s breeches.”

“You foreign slime!” shouted the woman.

“Constables, no doubt you’ve been in the company of this woman since she approached you with her complaint. I’d check, if I were you, to make sure of your own purses.”

The guards patted themselves down, and the one standing over Locke gasped.

“My coin bag!” he said. “It was right here in my belt!”

“You may examine me at length,” said Jean, extending his arms with his empty palms up. “But I must insist that your more fruitful course of action would be to examine my accuser.”

The guard nearest the woman put a hand on her shoulder, mumbled apologies, and gingerly sifted her coat pockets while she screeched and struggled. After a moment, he held up a small leather coin bag and a black silk purse.

“Stitched with the initials ‘G.B.’!” he said.

“But it was missing!” she cried. “It was nowhere to be found!”

“What about my coin bag, eh?” The first guard snatched the leather purse from his partner and shook it at her. “What’s this doing in your pocket?”

“I’m bloody confused,” muttered the other guard.

“You’re meant to be,” said Jean. “Forgive me for saying so. I’ve seen this act before. Our harmless-looking friend here has been plucking purses. Clearly she meant to frame my friend for her deeds, even while plying her trade on you, sirs. Thus, when you and any other victims discovered your light pockets, you’d have a culprit already in hand, ready to soak up all the blame. I can only imagine she tried and failed to plant her purse on my friend. Perhaps age is catching up with you, madam?”

“Lying bastard,” she shouted, trying and failing to fight off the firm grip of a guard. “Lying, thieving, pocket-picking foreigner!”

“Right, you,” said the first guard, taking her other arm. “I don’t like being taken advantage of. Gentlemen, would you like to come inside with us and register your complaint as well?”

“Actually,” said Jean, “I’d like to get my friend home, if not to a physiker. I daresay this woman’s in enough trouble for having lifted your purse. I can be content with that.”

“And if you should need anything else from us,” said Nikoros, handing one of the guards a small white card, “I’m Nikoros Via Lupa, Isas Salvierro. These men are my guests.”

“Very good, sir,” said the first guard, pocketing Nikoros’ card. “Sorry for the trouble. I hope the gentleman recovers.”

“Time and fresh lake air,” said Jean, swinging Locke up and supporting him under his right arm.

“Time’s the one thing he doesn’t have,” yelled the woman as the guards dragged her toward the court offices. “And you two know it! You know it! Be seeing you, gentlemen!”

Once all three men were safely ensconced in their carriage and it was clattering away down the street, Locke returned to life and burst out laughing. “Thank you, Nikoros,” he said, wiping flecks of spittle from his chin. “That last note of respectability at the end was just what the scene needed to bring everything back down to earth.”

“I bloody well rejoice to hear it,” said Nikoros, “but what the hell just happened?”

“That woman slipped a purse into my coat when she stumbled into me. Obviously she meant to get me snared for pickpocketing,” said Locke. “I checked to see if anything was missing, but like a dolt I didn’t think to feel around for unexpected gifts. She nearly had me.”

“Who was she?”

“No idea,” said Locke. “She works for our counterpart, obviously. And she’s a jewel.… Anyone who can live to that age charming coats for a living knows their business. We’ll see her again.”

“She’ll be in a cold dark cell.”

“Oh, she’ll slip those idiots in about five minutes,” said Jean. “There’ll be arrangements. Trust us.”

“I’m ashamed to admit that I actually thought for a moment that you, uh, were genuinely ill, Lazari,” said Nikoros.

“We didn’t have any time to warn you. Pitching a fit’s a crude bit of theater, but it’s surprising how often it works.”

“How did you guess she’d lifted that guard’s purse?”

“I didn’t guess,” said Locke with an indulgent chuckle. “I borrowed it when I stumbled against him.”

“Then he passed it on to our lady friend, along with her own purse, when he stumbled against her,” said Jean.

“Gods above,” said Nikoros.

“And don’t think she didn’t realize it,” added Jean. “But there’s only so many ways you can arrange to bump tits with strangers before it starts to look fishy.”

“Ain’t we clever?” said Locke, idly examining his own pockets again. “And I’m pretty sure I still have … everything. Holy hells!”

There was a folded piece of parchment, sealed with wax, in his left inner pocket. He drew it out and stared at it.

“This wasn’t in my pocket when I came out the door,” he said. “She … she stuck me with it while I was slipping her the two purses!”

Jean gave a low whistle as Locke popped the seal and flipped the parchment open in haste. He read the contents aloud:

Messrs. Lazari and Callas

Sirs—

I trust you will excuse the unorthodox means by which this letter finds its way into your hands. Karthani post-masters, enterprising as they are, rarely deliver directly to the interior pocket of a gentleman’s coat. I present my compliments, and desire that you should call upon me at the seventh hour of this evening, at the Sign of the Black Iris, in the Vel Vespala.

Your most affectionate servant—

“Verena Gallante,” said Locke in a harsh whisper. His heart seemed to expand and fill his entire chest with its beating. “She wants to … she wants to see … oh, gods—”

He looked out the window, craning his neck furiously to see behind them, into the swirling silvery fog, where of course there was nothing meaningful to be found.

“What is it?” said Nikoros.

“That was no middle-aged stranger,” said Locke. “That was her.”

“Who?”

“The opposition,” said Locke, settling back into his seat, feeling dazed. “Our counterpart. The woman we spoke of.”

“Verena Gallante?”

“It seems that’s her present alias.”

“Oh my,” said Jean. “The initials on the silk purse … now, that was cheeky.”

“Only if we weren’t too dense to notice it right away,” said Locke.

“I fail to see how ‘Verena Gallante’ yields ‘G.B.’,” said Nikoros.

“A private matter,” said Locke. “I have … we have a history with this woman.”

“What must we do now?” said Nikoros.

“Now,” said Locke, “you can direct our driver to wherever this Master Ratfinder keeps his office, and after we’ve persuaded him to quit being a nuisance, you and Master Callas can go scrounge up the brutes we discussed yesterday.”

“And what about you?”

“I, well …” said Locke, running one hand over his stubble, “I’ll need to go find a barber.”

4

THEIR UNANNOUNCED appointment with Master Ratfinder Bilezzo took less time than their protracted encounter at the court offices. After the initial exchange of greetings and the sudden appearance of a pile of ducats on Bilezzo’s desk, it rapidly became clear to Locke and Jean that Bilezzo was a fatuous, contrary, self-satisfied fellow who was deeply amused at the chance to have a bit of harmless mischief with his far-ranging civic powers.

The two Gentlemen Bastards decided to correct his attitude in a traditional Camorri fashion. Locke doubled the amount of his proposed bribe while Jean picked Bilezzo up by his lapels, scraped the ceiling with his head, and cheerfully offered to nail his tongue to the back of a carriage and whip the horses around the city.

No middle-aged civil servant in a comfortable position could easily refuse such entreaties, and they parted with a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Bilezzo’s men would continue (for appearance’s sake) to carry out the pointless fumigation of Nikoros’ building, Locke would conjure piles of gold to ensure it didn’t happen there again, or anywhere else of value to the Deep Roots party, and Jean would spare Bilezzo the unwanted carriage ride.

Nikoros came away from the meeting having learned several new words, as well as some novel hyphenations of familiar ones, and a fascinating twist to the art of negotiation that his education had previously neglected.

5

LOCKE RETURNED alone to Josten’s just before the second hour of the afternoon with the autumn air cool against his freshly shaved face, chewing on the last of the half-dozen sweet cakes he’d picked up for lunch.

The place was in a fine state of near-pandemonium, with locksmiths performing surgery on at least three visible doors, while the customary crowd of businessfolk bustled about eating, shouting, negotiating, or simply trying to maintain airs of importance. At the same time, the ordinary and legitimate business of the Deep Roots party went on. Locke and Jean had agreed that there was no need for them to oversee every last detail of the Committee’s business, lest they go mad while driving everyone around them mad into the bargain.

Unusual events and setbacks, however, were very much their business, and Locke hadn’t taken five steps past the front doors before a small pack of Nikoros’ messengers and assistants descended on him waving scraps of paper. Locke flipped through them as he walked through the crowd and made his way up toward the party’s private gallery.

Constables had detained several important party supporters for public drunkenness. A district organizer had dumped his life’s savings into a bag and fled the city just before dawn for reasons unknown. A candidate for the seat in the Isas Vadrasta was going to fight a duel tomorrow, and there was no quality replacement if he ended up full of holes. Locke sighed. Casualty reports, by all the gods, like some captain on a battlefield! Sabetha’s hand could be in any of it, or none of it. No doubt the lists of complications would only get longer as the weeks wore on.

“Here’s Master Lazari now,” said Jean as Locke ascended the final step to the private gallery. Jean and Nikoros were standing before a group of eight men. Most of them looked capable to Locke’s eye—city bruisers, obvious ex-constables, and a few with the deep tans and weather-worn faces of caravan guards. They all nodded or muttered greetings.

“We’ve got a lead on some women, too,” said Jean, whispering into Locke’s ear. “Bodyguards. Nikoros found them; he’ll bring them in tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Locke. He waved the slips of paper at Jean. “Seen these?”

“If those are the notes on today’s pains in the ass, yes. You got anything to tell our new friends?”

“We want you content,” said Locke, addressing the men. “We want you to feel that you’re being treated fairly. If you’re not, bring it to us. If anyone threatens you, or makes you an offer—you know the sort of thing I’m talking about—bring it to us. Quietly. I guarantee we’ll come up with a better deal.”

There was no point in mentioning consequences or making threats; gods, no. Doing that in public was a sure sign of insecurity. Threats, when needed, would be a private affair. If these men had real quality they would appreciate not being treated like idiots.

“Go find Josten,” said Jean. “Have yourselves a bite. I’ll have shift assignments once you’ve eaten.”

As the men left the gallery, Jean turned to Locke. “Where’d you go to get your shave, back to Lashain?”

“I didn’t mean to be out so long. I, uh, just thought I’d have my driver take me around some of the Black Iris places Nikoros listed for us. See if there was anything interesting going on.”

“You were looking for her, weren’t you?”

“Uh … yes. Didn’t spot her on any street, though.” Locke ran a hand over his chin for the twentieth time. “How does it look?”

“What?”

“The shave.”

“Like a shave. Fine.”

“You sure?”

“For Perelandro’s sake. You got peach fuzz scraped off with a razor; you didn’t commission a bust of yourself in marble.”

Locke crumpled the notes he’d been handed and put them in a coat pocket. “Well, look, if you’ve got the new bruisers in hand and you’ve already heard the news, I’m, uh, going up to the room … to get ready.”

“You’ve got at least four hours before we have to leave.”

“Yeah, but if I don’t start my nervous pacing now, I’ll never have it all done in time.”

6

“HOW’S IT look?”

Almost precisely four hours later, Locke was standing before a full-length mirror in their suite, showing off a slight variation in the tying of his black neck-cloth.

“It looks like clothing,” said Jean, who’d been dressed for the better part of an hour and was now lounging in a high-backed chair, ominously juggling a hatchet in one hand.

“Too prissy? Too eastern?”

“You do realize you’ve pushed that damn thing around at least a dozen times now?”

“Just doesn’t seem right.”

“You do realize that you didn’t even own any of these outfits until yesterday? Why are you fretting about the deeper meaning of clothes that are newer than some of the crap digesting in that meager gut of yours?”

“Because,” said Locke, “I can’t help myself, and I know I can’t help myself, and it doesn’t help, you get it?”

“I do get it,” said Jean softly. “All too well. But I can’t be of service by patting you on the back for being nervous. You’ve got to stick your chin out and call yourself ready sometime.”

“Nervous,” said Locke. “I wish I was nervous! Nervous is when armed people try to kill me. This is something else. Gods, it’s been five years. She could … I just … I don’t even …” He closed his eyes and leaned against the mirror’s frame.

“You might as well practice finishing your sentences,” said Jean. “I hear that women find it irresistible.”

“Five years,” said Locke. He looked up, and the haunted expression in the mirror seemed like a self-accusation. “I’m going to have to tell her about Calo and Galdo.”

“She may already know.”

“I doubt it,” said Locke. “She was playing with us this morning. I just don’t think … that she would have done so. I wouldn’t have, in her place.”

“Five years apart, and you imagine that the two of you match moods so closely? Did you even do that when you were together?”

“Well—”

“You and I are lucky to be alive to even see her,” said Jean. “Remember that. As for what happened while she was gone, it was as much her decision to leave as it was ours to stay.”

“I know,” said Locke. “In my head. The message hasn’t reached my gut just yet. There seems to be a tiny man in there attacking me with feathers. Now … jewelry. I should—”

“Gods above,” said Jean, rising from his chair. “Do you think she’s going to fling herself out a window if your shoes have too many buckles?”

“Her fashion sense might have grown more extreme since we last met.”

“Quit making such a yammering twit out of yourself. Find your way to the door.”

Step by step out of the room, into the main hall, past the bar and the tables full of Nikoros’ people with their lists and plans and dull assignments. Gods, he was really on his way! His knees seemed to be made of wet cotton; his pulse was like the sound of the ocean in his ears.

New solicitors watched from the Deep Roots gallery; new bruisers studied him from the front doors; new chains gleamed around the necks of all the waiters. So many cordons of security drawn tight against every possibility, and here he and Jean were planning a social call to the heart of Sabetha’s power.

Out loud he would have been careful to say, ‘the opposition’ or ‘his counterpart,’ but in the privacy of his own thoughts there was no hiding from her.

Nikoros met them and saw them to the door. “You were right about the guards and solicitors,” he whispered. “I do feel better!”

“Uh … good, good,” said Locke, ashamed at his own distraction.

“Now that we have some security,” said Jean, immediately taking the weight of confidence and authority that Locke had let slip, “it’s time we started reaching out and handing our friends some difficulties of their own. Think on it for us, would you? Weaknesses we can exploit, fast and easy ones.”

“My pleasure,” said Nikoros. “You know, two days in, this has already been more interesting than anything that happened last time. I’ll wait up for you, shall I? I’d love to find out what sort of woman our, ah, opposition is.”

“So would we,” said Jean.

7

THE CARRIAGE ride through the wet curtains of evening fog was no help for Locke’s nerves, but as the minutes passed he mastered himself well enough, he thought, to be able to handle simple sentences and walking.

The Vel Vespala, the Evening Terrace, was one of Karthain’s more fashionable quarters, its plazas dotted with taverns, chance houses, coffee bars, and bordellos. All of these places were so many blurry amber and aquamarine lights in the mist as Locke and Jean’s carriage pulled up before the Sign of the Black Iris, the place Nikoros and his friends referred to as the Enemy Tavern.

“Well, then,” said Locke. “So here we—”

“I’m not taking a quarter of an hour to get out of the carriage,” said Jean. “It’s out the door on your feet or out the window on your head. Think fast.”

Locke managed the former.

The Sign of the Black Iris was a comfortably appointed place, not as large as Josten’s Comprehensive but perhaps slightly more luxurious, the wood paneling a touch richer, the marble of the exterior facings a trifle shinier. No doubt the rivalry between the two inns kept the pockets of many Karthani craftsfolk admirably lined.

Locke’s nervous distraction abated as his old street instincts kicked to life. The porter at the door was nothing special, but the two men at the rear of the darkened foyer were interesting. They were not at ease in their fine clothes, and what a coincidence that two lean fellows with such scars and crooked noses should be passing the time together! Muscle for sure. Sabetha, too, had set alley hounds to guard her lair.

“Ahh, sirs.” Another sort of creature entirely entered the foyer to greet them. This man was silver-haired, thin as a scabbard, with a drooping black flower pinned to the right lapel of his coat. “Firstson Vordratha. I’m Mistress Gallante’s confidential secretary. You gentlemen do move at a relaxed pace. She’s been expecting the two of you for some time now, yes, some time indeed.”

“I would point out,” said Jean, gesturing to a mechanical clock on the foyer wall, “that it’s not yet five minutes to seven.”

“Of course. I made no reflection upon the accuracy of the clock, mmmm?” The lines at the edges of Vordratha’s mouth moved up a fraction of an inch. So he was that sort of fellow, supercilious and needling, unable to resist amusing himself with lame little digs. Locke’s concentration came into even sharper focus as the urge rose to slam Vordratha’s head against the door. “Come now, she wishes to see you directly. In private.”

Locke and Jean followed him up to a hallway on the second floor. They brushed past a surprising number of men and women for a direct route to a private audience … ah, but of course, they were all studying Locke and Jean while feigning indifference. Stealing a glimpse of faces and builds and manners in case the two of them ever attempted another visit without an invitation. It was flattering, really.

At the end of the hall, Vordratha held a door open. The space beyond was dim, lit by the golden glow of small lamps on a number of tables. A private dining space, with high windows looking out into the evening fog.

A woman stood alone at the far end of the room, her long hair unbound, a cascade of dark copper falling to the middle of her back. She turned slowly, and before Locke knew what was happening he and Jean were through the door, the door fell closed with a click, and Sabetha was coming toward them down the shadowed passage between the rows of lamplight.

8

SHE WORE a velvet jacket the color of blood, a shade darker than her hair. Her outfit had the dash of a riding habit, narrowing to emphasize her slender waist, and beneath the long dark skirt she wore seasoned leather boots. A scarf, white as dove’s feathers, was wrapped tightly around her neck. Other than a single lapel iris matching that of Vordratha, she had no ornaments but contrast—the harmony of skin, scarf, hair, and coat. She’d made an artist’s palette of herself, emphasizing a beauty that had bloomed in the five years they’d been apart.

Locke stepped out in front of Jean and removed his leather gloves with shaking hands. Five years of dreaming and planning for this moment deserted him in an instant, leaving him with nothing but a halfwit’s hypnotized stare and the air in his throat.

“H-hello,” he said.

“Hello, Locke.”

“Yes. Sabetha. Hello. Uh.”

“Meant to say something grander and wittier, didn’t you?”

“Well …” The sound of her voice, her ordinary voice, unaffected, undisguised, unaccented, was like a glass of brandy gulped on an empty stomach. “Whatever it was it seems to have business elsewhere.”

“It’ll come back to you when you least expect it.” She smiled. “Write it down then and have it sent to me. I’ll give it a favorable hearing.”

They were just a few feet apart now, and in her face he could see time’s peculiar alchemy—every line was where it ought to be, but all the softness and reediness of the girl was gone. Her figure and features were fuller. Her eyes had changed, moving from a lively hazel to a truer, darker brown, a shade that was faintly reflected in her hair.

“Take my hands,” she said, and gently redirected his fingers when he tried to entwine them with hers. Palm against palm they stood while she returned his stare; her touch was soft and dry. For a moment of pure anticipation Locke thought she might pull him into an embrace, but she maintained the respectable distance between them. “You’re too gods-damned thin,” she said, losing some of her dominating composure.

“I’ve been ill.”

“They told me you were poisoned.”

“Who’s they?”

“You know,” she said. “And you’ve been out of the sun. Your Vadran is showing.”

“We both seem to have gone back to our roots.”

“Ah, the hair?”

“No, the backs of your knees. Of course the hair.”

“It’s strange. I’ve been every shade of black, brown, and blonde these past few years, so I can disguise myself best now by going back to what’s natural. Does it please you?”

“You know it distracts the hell out of me.” Locke felt himself blushing. “Puts me at the most severe disadvantage.”

“I know,” she said, again allowing a touch of a smile. “Perhaps I wanted us on familiar ground for the evening.”

She released his hands, gave a playful half-bow, and moved around him.

“Hello, Jean,” she said. “You’ve lost at the belly and gained at the shoulders, I think.”

“Hello, Sabetha.” He extended his left hand. “You’ve gained a great deal and lost nothing I can see.”

“Dear heart.” She met his hand with her own, and her eyebrows rose when he took her by the forearm and shook politely. “What’s this? Five years apart and suddenly I’m just a business associate?”

Locke bit the inside of his lip as she put her arms around Jean and set her head against the lapels of his jacket. After the tiniest pause, Jean returned the embrace, his own arms easily folding around her and overlapping in the middle of her back.

“I’ll just need a moment to make sure everything’s still in my pockets,” he said as they parted. She laughed.

“What, you don’t think I’m serious?” Jean examined his jacket carefully. He didn’t bother grinning to lighten the moment.

“Ahh,” Sabetha said, stepping away from both of them and folding her hands in front of her. “So how long did it take you to figure it out?”

“About a minute,” said Locke.

“Not bad.”

“A minute too long. The initials on that purse were cheeky as hell. But that getup was excellent.”

“You liked it? Good. It wasn’t easy, taking a few inches off my regular height.”

“One of the hardest things in false-facing,” said Locke with a nod. “You were showing off.”

“No more than you, before we were done. Still feigning illness in public.”

“It worked,” said Locke. “After a fashion. But you’d seen it before; surely that’s why you weren’t caught too off guard.”

“That,” she said, “and you two should remember I can still read most of your hand signals.”

Locke exchanged a glance with Jean; the fact that he hadn’t been alone in neglecting this point was little comfort.

“You get that one for free,” she said.

“So why’d you do it?” said Locke.

“I wanted to see you both,” she said, glancing away. “I found that I was impatient. But I wasn’t ready for … for this, just yet.”

“We might have been a little late for this appointment if they’d thrown us in a hole,” said Jean.

“Tsk,” she said. “You’re insulting us all. As if you couldn’t have clever-dicked your way clear of those imbeciles before lunch. After all, your friend Josten still has his ardent spirits license. Clearly you two haven’t forgotten how to stay on your toes.”

“That was cute,” said Locke.

“As was your riposte. It’s a wonder to me, how many people are so willing to believe the best of the laws that they live under.”

“They haven’t had our advantages. Anyway, you shouldn’t have sent a fat, good-natured fellow for that sort of work,” said Locke. “You should have arranged to put the warrant in the hands of some shriveled tent-peg like your Vordratha.”

“Isn’t he a treasure? Such a smirking dry bitch of a man. He can’t have spent more than a minute with you, and you’d crawl over broken glass to kick him in the precious bits, I’d wager.”

“Point me to the glass,” muttered Jean.

“Perhaps … once he’s given me a good six weeks of work.” She tossed her hair back and matched gazes with Jean. “Jean, may I ask you to … allow Locke and myself a few moments alone? I told Vordratha to have a chair set up just outside the door.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

“Don’t sit in it, then.”

Jean’s only response was to clear his throat.

“May I beg to point out,” said Sabetha, “that the last reasonable chance you had to be cautious was when you stepped out of your carriage? I could have twenty armed people crouched in the next room. If I did, why would I bother to ask for privacy?”

“Well,” said Jean with a sigh. “I suppose I can feign civility with the best of them.”

He was gone in a moment. The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Locke and Sabetha alone with four feet of darkened floor between them.

“Have I offended him?” said Sabetha.

“No.”

“He seemed pleased to see me for a moment, and now he’s sour.”

“Jean had … Jean met someone. And lost her, in the worst way. So don’t think … it’s just that he can’t be terribly at ease, concerning the matters that lie between me and you.”

“What matters could you be referring to?”

“Please don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Invite me to name my troubles as though they were somehow unknown to you.”

“The device you’re mistaking me for is called a mirror, Locke. I don’t reflect your feelings as well as you seem to imagine, so I’m afraid you may have to name them for everyone’s benefit.”

“Five years, Sabetha! Five years!”

“I can count! And so what? I’m not leaping into your arms? I’m not tearing your clothes off under one of these tables? You may have noticed that I passed those five years without crawling back to Camorr in search of you. Nor did I find you exactly dogging my heels!”

“I meant … I meant to—”

“You meant,” she said. “There’s a worthless coin, Locke. The past isn’t something we can negotiate. I might not have come back for you, but you certainly didn’t strike out after me.”

“There were difficulties.”

“Oh,” she said, “so you’re the man whose life develops complications! I’ve so longed to meet you; the rest of us here in this world have it much too easy, I’m afraid.”

“Calo and Galdo are dead,” said Locke.

Sabetha leaned back against the nearest table, folded her arms, and stared out the windows for some time. “I had my suspicions,” she said at last.

“When Jean and I came alone to Karthain?”

“I passed through Camorr about a year ago,” she said. “I thought it best not to announce myself. It’s like it was in the old days, before Barsavi. Thirty capas and no Secret Peace. I heard some confusing things … You’d been cast out by Barsavi’s usurper, and no one had seen you since the mess.”

“The hammer came down on everyone,” said Locke. “Capa Raza used us, then betrayed us. We were all meant to die, but they only got the Sanzas. The Sanzas, and a younger friend.… We had a new apprentice. You’d have liked him.”

“Well,” she said, “whoever he was, you certainly did him a grand turn as a garrista, didn’t you?”

“I’d have died, Sabetha, I’d have died if it would have saved them! I didn’t have a fucking chance. And some help you were, wherever the hell you’d gone off to—”

“How could I stay?” she said. “How could I help you pretend to keep house? You wanted everything the same—same glass burrow, same temple, same schemes, and now I learn that you even started taking apprentices. Boys, of course.”

“Of all the damned unfair—”

“Roots are for vegetables, Locke, not criminals. Chains had enough blind spots of his own, thank you very much. The last thing I ever could have done was prance along hand in hand to your pale imitation!

“I might have been able to live with you as a partner,” she continued. “As priest, garrista, father figure, no. Not for an instant! Gods, that fucking pile of money Chains left us was the biggest curse he could have dreamed up if he’d spent his whole life planning it. I wish he’d thrown it into the sea. I wish we’d burned that temple ourselves.”

“We did burn it ourselves,” said Locke. “And I did throw the money in the sea.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had the whole mess of it sunk in Camorr’s Old Harbor. As Calo and Galdo’s death-offering.”

“It’s really all gone?”

“To the sharks and the gods, every last copper.”

“Thank you for that,” she whispered, and she reached out to set the back of her right hand against his cheek.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, reached up, and felt the heat surge in his blood when she didn’t draw away from the pressure of his hand on hers.

“For losing everything?” he said.

“For the Sanzas.”

“Ah.”

“You’ve grown some lines since I saw you last,” she said.

“It was a bad poisoning,” said Locke. “And it wasn’t my first.”

“I can’t imagine how anyone as charming and easy to get along with as yourself could ever incite someone to poison you,” she said. “I am sorry about Calo and Galdo. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help. For what it’s worth.”

“I suppose I’m sorry I was such a shitty garrista,” said Locke.

“Maybe in a better life I could have stayed to watch these lines grow on you. Perhaps put them there myself,” she said with a thin smile. “But it’s not as though I didn’t arm you with the clearest possible expression of my feelings before I chose to go.”

“Frankly, sometimes, I was surprised you stayed with us as long as you did.”

“I didn’t nerve myself up to leave overnight.” She lowered her hand and slipped it out of his grasp. “When Chains died, you thought you had to preserve everything the way it had been. Freeze our lives in amber. Maybe that was your way of mourning. It couldn’t be mine.”

“Well, I, uh … did trace you as far as Ashmere,” Locke said. “I never told anyone but Jean. I had someone up there that owed me a favor. After that …”

“Come here,” she said, pulling out the nearest chair. “Sit down. We’re pacing like servants.”

“Is that the chair with the trapdoor beneath it?”

“Oh, don’t be an ass. Choose any one you like.”

Locke pulled a chair away from a table on his side of the aisle and set it down next to the one Sabetha had offered. He gestured for her to go first, and when she was seated he eased into his, facing the door to the room. They were not quite facing one another, but turned inward at an angle with their knees almost touching.

“I did what I’d planned,” said Sabetha. “I circulated in the Kingdom of the Marrows. Started in Emberlain and moved west, hitting rich bachelors and the occasional married lord with a wandering eye.”

“Did they come up with a legendary name for you?”

“I’m sure they came up with a lot of names for me.” She smirked. “But once I was in the thick of things I decided it was better to stay anonymous than to build a myth.”

“You know I didn’t start that Thorn of Camorr bullshit—”

“Peace, Locke, it wasn’t a rebuke.”

“So why’d you leave the Marrows? Get bored?”

“The Marrows are getting dangerous. Emberlain means to break from the rest of them. All the cantons are buckling on their swords. It seemed a good time to be elsewhere.”

“I’ve been hearing this for years,” said Locke. “Emberlain is always about to secede. The king is always about to fall over in his tracks. I even used this nonsense as the basis for a scheme. Hells, I fully expect the peace in the Marrows to outlive me.”

“Then you must be planning to die in the next month or two,” she said. “Trust someone who’s been up there, Locke. The old king is heirless and out of his wits. It’s an open secret that he’s ordered his privy council to choose his successor when he finally dies.”

“How does that guarantee a war?”

“It means that there are about ten noble families that would get a vote, and a hundred that wouldn’t. Do you think they won’t prefer to just pull steel and get to work? They’ll be hip-deep in corpses once they start really trading opinions.”

“I see. So, you were dodging that, and you got a job offer for a sojourn here in Karthain?”

“I was leaving Vintila,” she said. “One moment I was alone in my carriage; the next I was having a conversation with a Bondsmage.”

“I know what that’s like.” Locke took a deep breath before asking the next question. “And … they told you about Jean and me before you took the job? That you’d be set against us, I mean.”

“I was told.”

“Before—”

“Yes, before. And I agreed to the job anyway. Do you want a moment to think very, very hard before proceeding on this point?”

“I … You’re right, I have no cause to say anything.”

“We’re not enemies, Locke; we’re rivals. Surely we’re both accustomed to the situation. And tell me, how would you have answered if our positions were reversed?”

“If I hadn’t said yes, I’d be dead.”

“Well, if I hadn’t said yes, I’d still be somewhere in the Marrows with Graf kul Daros’ agents one step behind me. I have to confess I didn’t manage to get out with as much money or anonymity as I might have hoped. In fact, I’ve … understated the mess I left behind me. I’m sorry.”

“Jean and I … weren’t coming off one of our more lucrative exploits, either.”

“So neither of us had any sensible reason to refuse this engagement.” Sabetha leaned forward. “The magi offered to get me out. To erase my tracks, help me disappear in complete safety. That was their end of the bargain. And for my part, the chance to see you and Jean again was agreeable.”

“Agreeable?”

“No doubt you find it a mild term. But this conversation’s too young to go back on our steps just yet. I’ve given you my facts; now give me yours. Tell me what happened in Camorr.”

“Ah. Well.” Locke found himself trying to scratch at the stubble that was no longer present on his chin. “We had a scheme going. A good one, that would have added a fair sum to that pile of treasure you detested.”

“This was when the Gray King was abroad in the city?”

“Gray King, Capa Raza, same man. Yes, we were chosen for the dubious honor of assisting the bastard in his war against the Barsavis. He had a Bondsmage working for him.”

“My … principals told me about him,” said Sabetha.

“The murdering shit-stain was no credit to your principals, whatever they think. Anyhow, he must have spied us out along with the money in our vault. I’ve had a long time to think about the situation, and it’s the only explanation that makes sense.

“We did our job,” he continued, “and then it turned out that the Gray King coveted our good fortune. He had a lot of bills to pay. So we got the chop. It was—”

Every fiber of his being, already unhinged by his more recent illness, revolted at the recollection of those moments drowning in a cask of warm, soupy filth.

“… it was a near thing.”

“Did any of the Barsavis survive?”

“None. Nazca was murdered to put her father’s nerves on edge. With our help, the Gray King tricked Barsavi into thinking he’d avenged her. He threw a party at the Floating Grave, and that’s where he and his sons were taken apart. Hell of a spectacle. Remember the Berangias sisters?”

“How could I forget?”

“They were in on it. Turns out they were actually the sisters of the Gray King. They served Barsavi all those years, waiting for the moment to strike.”

“Gods, what happened to them?”

“Jean happened.”

“And this Gray King?”

“Ah.” Locke cleared his throat. “He was my affair. We crossed swords.”

“Now, to that I must admit some pleasant surprise,” said Sabetha, and Locke felt a fresh warmth around his heart at the sparkle of interest in her eyes. “Did you finally start paying attention to your bladework?”

“Ah, don’t be misled. I’m afraid he opened me up like a physiker. I had to trick him into letting me sheath a dagger in his back.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “I’m pleased you killed him. Still a pity you never amended your clumsiness with long steel.”

“Well, Sabetha, unlike some, I’m afraid I’ve just never had it in me to instantly presume a flawless expertise in every last sphere of human endeavor.”

“There was nothing instant about it. You might have thrown yourself into training as vigorously as I did, if you hadn’t lived with the expectation of having Jean Tannen at your back for the rest of your life.”

“No. Gods damn it, I would gladly listen to you berate me until the sun comes up, but not on this subject. Jean isn’t some dog I tricked into a leash. He’s my true and particular friend. He’s still your true and particular friend, though both of you may need some time to recall it.”

“Forgive me,” she said. “I had your best interests at heart.”

“For someone whose primary insistence in life has always been that she must be taken true and unalloyed, unbending to the whims of those around her, you have a curious interest in the correction of my condition!”

“Ouch,” she said softly.

“Fuck.” Locke slammed his fists down on his legs. “Forgive me. I know you mean well—”

“No, you’re right,” she said. “I’m an extraordinarily accomplished hypocrite. Anything that displeased you is unsaid. Please go on with your story.”

“Ahhh … all right. Well. Not much more to say about Camorr. We took ship for Vel Virazzo the night the Gray King died. Oh! I met the Spider.”

“What? How did that happen?”

“When the Gray King business reached its conclusion, the duke’s people had no choice but to get involved. After an initial misunderstanding, the Spider and I worked together. Very briefly.”

“Sweet gods, were you pardoned for your crimes?”

“Oh, hells, no. Once the Gray King was dead, Jean and I bolted like rabbits.”

“And did you learn the actual identity of the Spider?”

“Yes, she and I had words on several occasions.”

“So it was a woman! As I’d always thought.”

“How did you know?”

“All those years of rumors,” said Sabetha, “and the one detail that emerged with absolute clarity from the fog was that the Spider was a man. Everyone was certain. Now, if this person could maintain total control over every other shred of their identity, why was such a fundamental truth allowed to slip? It had to be misdirection.”

“Heh. So it was.”

“And who was she, then?”

“Ahhh,” said Locke. “I see I’ve got something that genuinely intrigues you. I think I’ll hold on to it for a while.”

“Oh? I’ll remember this, Master Lamora. On that you have my word. So you took ship. What next?”

Warmed to the subject, Locke spent about ten minutes summarizing the two years spent in and around Tal Verrar—the nature of the scheme for Requin’s Sinspire, the interference of Maxilan Stragos, the time in the Ghostwinds, the battles at sea, the loss of Ezri, the loss of nearly everything.

“Incredible,” Sabetha said when he drew his story to a close. “I’d heard about the trouble in Tal Verrar. You caused all that. You brought the gods-damned Archon down! You silly, stupid, lucky little wretches!”

“And for our genius, we left Tal Verrar without Jean’s love, without a fortune, and without an antidote.”

“I’m sorry for all of that. Especially for Jean.”

“I’d say something comforting, like how he’ll get over it in time, but I know he won’t.” Locke paused, and lowered his voice. “I know I didn’t.”

“Ah,” said Sabetha. It was a completely noncommittal noise. “And here we are, then.”

“Here we are,” said Locke. “Stories told.”

“I have … instructions from my principals,” she said. “We’re not forbidden from talking to one another, but in the matter of the election … Look, we’ve got to fight it out to the last. Sincerely. All of our tricks, all of our skills. The consequences for holding back would be severe. So severe, I could never—”

“I understand,” he said. “I have similar directions from my … uh, principals.”

“Gods, I wish we could talk all night.”

“Then why don’t we?”

“Because I didn’t expect to get this much honesty out of you.” She rose. “And if I don’t do what I really brought you here for, I might lose my nerve.”

“Wait, what do you mean—”

She answered him by pulling him out of the chair and into her arms. Reflexively, he fought back for a moment, but the intensity of the embrace subdued him.

“I am glad you’re alive,” she whispered. “Please believe me, whatever else happens, I’m so glad to see you.”

“I can’t believe I have two reasons to be grateful to the Bondsmagi,” said Locke. Gods, she was warm and strong, and her scent so instantly familiar beneath the slightest sweet-apple scent of perfume. He ran a hand through the gentle curls of her hair and sighed. “Assholes. I’d work for free for any chance to be near you. They’re offering a fortune, and I’d throw it in the Amathel for this. I—”

“Locke,” she whispered. “Indulge me.”

“Oh?”

“Kiss me.”

“With every—”

“No, not like that. My preferred way. You know what I mean. From back when we were—”

“Ahhh,” he said, laughing. “Your servant, madam.”

Sabetha had always had a peculiar ticklish weakness, something he’d discovered by accident when they’d first become lovers so many years before. He gently placed his left hand beneath her chin and tilted her head back, then planted his lips high up the side of her neck, beneath her ear.

The way she moved in his arms instantly folded his better judgment up and hid it away in a deep, dark place.

“So this is what you really brought me here for?”

“Keep going,” she said breathlessly, “and we’ll find out.”

He kissed her several more times, and when he felt he’d teased her enough, ran his tongue up and down those same few inches of warm skin. She actually gasped, and clutched him more tightly still.

“Oh, dear,” he said, laughing and smacking his lips. He swallowed several times to clear a curious dry taste from his tongue. “Your perfume. I seem to have removed some of it. I hope it wasn’t expensive.”

“A special formulation, just for you,” she whispered. She continued to cling to him, digging her hands into his shoulders, and for one more moment Locke was at peace with the entire world.

The numbness began at the edge of his tongue, and in a few seconds it spread, tingling, around his mouth and up to the tip of his nose.

“No,” he whispered, hit as hard by shock as he was by whatever he’d just swallowed. He tried to pull away, but she was too strong for him; his limbs were already taking on a curious foggy dissociation. “No, no … Jnnnn … Jnnnn!”

“Shhhhhh,” Sabetha whispered, no longer shuddering, no longer breathless with shared anticipation. “A special formulation. Throat and voice go first. Just relax. Jean can’t hear you.”

“Whhhh … whhhhy?”

“Forgive me,” she said. She cradled him as his legs turned to jelly. She knelt slowly, bringing him down with her, laying him across her knees. “I wasn’t sure whether I’d really do it or not. If it’s any consolation, your story about Tal Verrar was the convincer. You’re not as good as I am, Locke, but you’re too damn good to let you run around fighting fairly. I have to beat you, for both our sakes.”

“Nnngh—”

“Don’t talk. Just listen; you don’t have much time left. There’s a second reason. I can see now how ill you’ve been, and how you’ll have to push yourself to keep up with me. I can’t let you do it, Locke. I can’t watch you do it. You’ll kill yourself trying to best me, and you can’t ask me to permit that. Not when I could stop it. I once cared for you a great deal. I care for you now. Remember that.”

She kissed him gently on the forehead, and he barely felt it.

“Remember that, and forgive me.”

9

“NNNNGH,” SAID Locke, coming up from layers of blackness that seemed draped over him like burial shrouds. “Nnngh—Sab … no, please!”

He gasped, with the disbelieving gratitude of someone finally fighting back to wakefulness after an interminable nightmare of suffocation. He smelled his own sweat, and the familiar odors of wet wood and fresh lake air.

His eyes slid grudgingly open. He was lying on his back in yet another ship’s great cabin, this one more luxuriously appointed than any he’d ever seen, even Zamira Drakasha’s. Soft orange alchemical globes cast the fixtures and finery in an inviting light. Gulls cried somewhere nearby, and the world creaked gently around him.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” muttered Locke, reveling in the full recovery of his powers of speech. He sat up, and instantly became aware of the fierce gnawing hunger in his belly. “Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid—”

“You can’t blame yourself,” said Jean.

Locke turned to see him sitting against the opposite wall on a hanging bed furnished with embroidered sheets. Jean had fresh bruises on his bare forearms and around his eyes.

“Gods,” said Locke. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Remember how she joked about twenty armed people in the next room?” said Jean with a sigh. He set down the book he’d been reading. “There were twenty armed men in the next room.”

“Fuck me sideways with hot peppers and a pinch of salt,” said Locke. “How long have I been out?”

“Half a day.”

“Where are we?”

“On the Amathel, headed west. Bound for the sea.”

“Are you kidding?”

Jean pointed at something behind Locke, and Locke turned. The rear windows of the cabin, which were open to let in a view of a gray morning over blue water, were girded with a network of thick iron bars on their outer surface. The gaps in the bars were too small for even Locke to contemplate wiggling through.

“She’s put us on quite a luxurious prison ship,” said Jean. “We’re the only passengers. And we’re chartered for a nice, slow voyage out to sea and around the continent.”

“Are you fucking kidding?”

“If all goes as she planned, we’ll get back to Karthain a week or two after all the votes have been counted.”

INTERSECT (II): TINDER

I HAVE TO tell you, we’re not terribly impressed with your boys so far.

We thought they did very well, up to their meeting with your exemplar.

It’s that meeting with our exemplar that inspires a certain lack of foreboding on our part.

They’ll be back soon enough.

They’re headed out to sea in irons.

You know who else thought lightly of them, once? The Falconer.

Very amusing.

Interesting things are going to be happening around Lamora, my friend. Just keep your attention focused very closely on him at all times.

INTERLUDE: THE MONCRAINE COMPANY

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: COUNTERMOVE