The Gentleman Bastard Series (193 page)

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

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

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

Coldmarrow’s knees popped as he stood.

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

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

“Trying to fill a hole,” said Patience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shall I have the cabin cleared?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then you did imagine the whole mess.”

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

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

“Easy for you to be glib.”

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

“We see certain truths manifested in limited forms for our own apprehension,” said Locke. “We don’t see the life after life as it truly is, because in our eyes it conforms to our mechanics of nature.”

“Straight out of elementary theology, just as I learned it. Several times,” said Jean. “Anyway, since when are you a connoisseur of revelation? Have you ever, at any point in your life since you became a priest, been struck by the light of heavenly clarity, by dreams and visions, by omens, or anything that made you quake in your breeches and say, ‘Holy shit, the gods have spoken!’ ”

“You
know
I would have told you if I had,” said Locke. “Besides, that’s not how things work, not as we’re taught in our order.”

“You think any sect isn’t told the exact same thing, Locke? Or do you honestly believe that there’s a temple of divines out there somewhere constantly getting thumped on the head by bolts of white-hot truth while the rest of you are left to stumble around on intuition?”

“Broadening the discussion, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. After so many years, so many scrapes, so much blood, why would you suddenly start having true revelations from beyond the grave
now
?”

“I can’t know. I can’t presume to speak for the gods.”

“But that’s precisely what you’re doing. Listen, if you walk into a whorehouse and find yourself getting sucked off, it’s because you put some money on the counter, not because the gods transported a pair of lips to your cock.”

“That’s … a really incredible metaphor, Jean, but I think I could use some help translating it.”

“What I’m saying is, we have a duty to accept on faith, but
also
a duty to weigh and judge. Once you insist that some mundane thing was actually the miraculous hand of the gods, why not treat everything that way? When you start finding messages from the heavens in your breakfast sausages, you’ve thrown aside your responsibility to use your head. If the gods
wanted
credulous idiots for priests, why wouldn’t they make you that way when you were chosen?”

“This didn’t happen while I was eating breakfast, for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah, it happened while you were
this far
from death.” Jean held up his thumb and forefinger, squeezed tightly together. “Sick, exhausted, drugged, and under the tender care of our favorite people in the world. I’d find it strange if you
didn’t
have a nightmare or two.”

“It was so vivid, though. And he was so—”

“You said he was cold and vengeful. Does that sound like Bug? And do you really think he’d still be there, wherever you imagined him, hovering around years after he died just to frighten you for half a minute?”

Locke stuffed more biscuit into his mouth and chewed agitatedly.

“I
refuse
to believe,” said Jean, “that we live in a world where the Lady of the Long Silence would let a boy’s spirit wander unquiet for years in order to scare someone else! Bug’s long gone, Locke. It was just a nightmare.”

“I sure as hell hope so,” said Locke.

“Worry about something else,” said Jean. “I mean it, now. The magi came through on their end of our deal. We’ll be expected to make ourselves useful next.”

“Some convalescence,” said Locke.

“I am glad as hell to see you up and moping on your own two feet again. I need you, brother. Not lying in bed, useless as a piece of pickled dogshit.”

“I’m gonna remember all of this tender sympathy next time you’re ill,” said Locke.

“I tenderly and sympathetically didn’t heave you off a cliff.”

“Fair enough,” said Locke. He turned around and glanced across the lantern-lit reaches of the deck. “You know, I think my wits might be less congealed. I’ve just noticed that there’s nobody in charge of this ship.”

Jean glanced around. None of the magi were visible anywhere else on deck. The ship’s wheel was still, as though restrained by ghostly pressure.

“Gods,” said Jean. “Who the hell’s doing that?”

“I am,” said Patience, appearing at their side. She held a steaming mug of tea and gazed out across the jewel-dotted depths.

“Gah!” Locke slid away from her. “My nerves are scraped raw. Must you do that?”

Patience sipped her tea with an air of satisfaction.

“Have it your way,” said Locke. “What happened to all of your little acolytes?”

“Everyone’s shaken from the ritual. I’ve sent them down for some rest.”

“You’re not shaken?”

“Nearly to pieces,” she said.

“Yet you’re moving this ship against the wind. Alone. While talking to us.”

“I am. Nonetheless, I’d wager that you’re still going to misplace your tone of respect whenever you speak to me.”

“Lady, you knew I was poison when you picked me up,” said Locke.

“And how are you now?”

“Tired. Damned tired. Feels like someone poured sand in my joints. But there’s nothing eating at my insides … not like before. I’m hungry as all hell, but it’s not …
evil
. Not anymore.”

“And your wits?”

“They’ll serve,” said Locke. “Besides, Jean’s here to catch me when I fall.”

“I’ve had the great cabin cleaned for you. There’s a wardrobe with a set of slops. They’ll keep you warm until we reach Karthain and throw you to the tailors.”

“We can’t wait,” said Locke. “Patience, are we in any danger of running aground or something if we ask you a few questions?”

“There’s nothing to run aground on for a hundred miles yet. But are you sure you don’t want to rest?”

“I’ll collapse soon enough. I can feel it. I don’t want to waste another lucid moment if I can help it,” said Locke. “You remember what you promised us in Lashain? Answers, I mean.”

“Of course,” she said. “So long as you recall the limitation I set.”

“I’ll try not to get too personal.”

“Good,” said Patience. “Then I’ll try not to waste a great deal of effort by setting you on fire if my temper runs short.”

3

“WHY DO you people serve?” said Locke. “Why take contracts? Why
Bonds
magi?”

“Why work on a fishing boat?” Patience breathed the steam from her tea. “Why stomp grapes into wine? Why steal from gullible nobles?”

“You need money that badly?”

“As a tool, certainly. Its application is simple and universally effective.”

“And that’s it?”

“Isn’t that good enough for your own life?”

“It just seems—”

“It seems,” said Patience, “that what you really want to ask is why we care about money at all when we could take anything we please.”

“Yes,” said Locke.

“What makes you think we would behave like that?”

“Despite your sudden interest in my welfare, you’re scheming, skull-fucking bastards,” said Locke, “and your consciences are shriveled like an old man’s balls. Start with Therim Pel. You did burn an entire city off the map.”

“Any few hundred people sufficiently motivated could have destroyed Therim Pel. Sorcery wasn’t the only means that would have sufficed.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Locke. “Let’s allow that maybe all you theoretically needed were some gardening tools and a little creativity; what you actually did was
rain fire from the fucking sky
. If your lot couldn’t rule the world with
that
 …”

“Are you smarter than a pig, Locke?”

“On occasion,” said Locke. “There are contrary opinions.”

“Are you more dangerous than a cow? A chicken? A sheep?”

“Let’s be generous and say yes.”

“Then why don’t you go to the nearest farm, put a crown on your head, and proclaim yourself emperor of the animals?”

“Uh … because—”

“The thought of doing anything so ridiculous never crossed your mind?”

“I suppose.”

“Yet you wouldn’t deny that you have the power to do it, anytime you like, with
no
chance of meaningful resistance from your new subjects?”

“Ahhh—”

“Still not an attractive proposition, is it?” said Patience.

“So that’s really it?” said Jean. “Any half-witted bandit living on bird shit in the hinterlands would make himself emperor if he could, but you people, who actually
can
do it at will, are such paragons of reason—”