The Republic of Thieves (11 page)

“It’s popular with the swells,” said Chains, and Locke realized he was speaking for his benefit. “All the dancers form a circle, and the dancing master calls out partners. The chosen couple dances in the
main, in the center of everything, and if they screw it up, well … penalties. Teasing. Romantic frustration, I would imagine.”

Locke was only half-listening, his eyes and thoughts lost in the dance. In Galdo he recognized the nervous quickness of a fellow orphan, the grace born of need that separated the living in Shades’ Hill from the likes of No-Teeth. Yet Sabetha had that and something more; not just speed but fluidity. Her knees and elbows seemed to vanish as she danced, and to Locke’s eyes she became all curves, whirls, effortless circles. Her cheeks turned red with exertion, and the golden glow of the chandelier lightened her brown hair until Locke, hypnotized, could almost imagine it red as well.…

Chains clapped three times, ending the dance if not Locke’s spell. If Sabetha knew she was being stared at, she was either too polite or too disdainful to stare back.

“I can see that’s a fountain of gold I didn’t shit out in vain,” said Chains. “Well done, girl. Even having Galdo for a partner didn’t seem to hold you back.”

“Does it ever?” Sabetha smiled, still acting as though Locke wasn’t in the room, and drifted back toward the table where Galdo and Chains had been playing their game. She glanced over the board for a few seconds, then said, “You’re doomed, Sanza.”

“In a donkey’s dick I am!”

“Actually, I’ve got him in three moves,” said Chains, settling back down into his chair with a smile. “But I was going to spin it out for a while longer.”

While Galdo fretted over his position on the board, he and Calo and Sabetha fell into an animated conversation with Chains on subjects of which Locke was ignorant—dances, noble customs, people he’d never heard of, cities that were only names to him. Chains grew more and more boisterous until, after a few minutes, he gestured to Calo.

“Fetch us down something sweet,” he said. “We’ll have a toast to Sabetha’s return.”

“Lashani Black Sherry? I’ve always wanted to try it.” Calo opened a cabinet and carefully withdrew a greenish glass bottle that was full of something ink-dark. “Gods, it looks so disgusting!”

“Spoken like the midwife who delivered the pair of you,” said Chains. “Bring glasses for all of us, and for the toasting.”

The four children gathered around the table while Chains arranged the glasses and opened the bottle. Locke strategically placed the Sanzas between himself and Sabetha, giving him a better angle to continue staring at her. Chains then filled a glass to the brim with the sherry, which rippled black and gold in the chandelier light.

“This glass for the patron and protector, the Crooked Warden, our Father of Necessary Pretexts.” Chains carefully pushed the glass aside from the others. “Tonight he gives us the return of our friend, his servant Sabetha.” Chains raised his left hand to his lips and blew into his palm. “My words. My breath. These things bind my promise. A hundred gold pieces, duly stolen from honest men and women, to be cast into the sea in the dark of the Orphan’s Moon. We are grateful for Sabetha’s safety.”

The Orphan’s Moon, Locke knew, came once a year, in late winter, when the world’s largest two moons were in their dark phases together. At the Midsummer-mark, commoners who knew their dates of birth legally turned a year older. The Orphan’s Moon meant the same thing for those, like him, whose precise ages were mysteries.

Now Chains filled glasses and passed them out. Locke was surprised to see that while the other children received quarter-glasses of the alarmingly dark sherry, his own was mostly full. Chains grinned at him and raised his glass.

“Deep pockets poorly guarded,” he said.

“Watchmen asleep at their posts,” said Sabetha.

“The city to nurture us and the night to hide us,” said Calo.

“Friends to help spend the loot!” As soon as Galdo finished the toast Locke had already heard many times since coming to the Gentlemen Bastards, five glasses went up to five sets of lips. Locke kept both hands on his for fear of spilling it.

The black sherry hit Locke’s throat with a blast of sweet flavors—cream, honey, raspberries, and many others he had no hope of naming. Warm prickly vapors seemed to slide up into his nose and waft behind his eyes, until it felt like he was being tickled from inside his own skull by dozens of feathers at once. Knowing how ill-mannered it
would be to make a mess of a solemn toast, he bent every ounce of his will to gulping the full glass down.

“Waugh,” he said as soon as he was finished. It was a cross between a polite cough and the last gasp of a dying bird. He pounded on his chest. “Waugh, waugh, waugggggh!”

“Concur,” said Galdo in a harsh whisper. “Love it.”

“All the outward virtues of liquid shit,” said Chains, musing on his empty glass, “and a taste like pure joy pissed out by happy angels. Mind you, it doesn’t signify in the world at large. Don’t drink anything else that looks like this unless you want a swift release from mortal concerns.”

“I wonder,” said Locke, “don’t they ever make wine-colored wine in other cities?” He stared down into his own glass, which, like the fingers holding it, was beginning to blur around the edges.

“Some things are much more interesting when alchemists get their hands on them,” said Chains. “Your head, for example. Black sherry is renowned for kicking like a mule.”

“Yesh, renowned,” said Locke, grinning stupidly. His belly was warm, his head seemed not to weigh an ounce, and his intentions were disconnected from his actual movements by a heartbeat interval. He was aware that, if not already drunk, he was headed for it like a dart thrown at a wall.

“Now, Locke,” said Chains, his voice seeming to come from a distance, “I’ve a few things to discuss with these three. Perhaps you’d like to get to bed early tonight.”

A sharp pang pierced the bubble of warm contentment that had all but swallowed him. Go to bed early? Leave the company of Sabetha, whose blurry loveliness he was fixating on, barely managing to grudge himself the time required to blink every now and then?

“Um,” he said. “Wha?”

“It wasn’t a request, Locke,” said Chains gently. “You’ve a busy evening tomorrow, I can assure you, and you need all the sleep you can get.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You’ll see.” Chains rose, moved around the table, and carefully took Locke’s empty glass from his hand. Locke looked down in surprise, having forgotten that he’d been holding it. “Off you go.”

A tiny part of Locke’s mind, the cold wariness that had been his sentry in Shades’ Hill, realized Chains had long planned to send him, happily befuddled, to an early rest. Even through his wine-induced haze, that stung. He’d been feeling more and more at home, but no sooner had Sabetha walked through the door than it was Streets and Windows all over again, and he was packed off to some dark corner without the privileges enjoyed by the older children.

“I,” he muttered, taking his eyes off Sabetha for the first time in several minutes, but directing his voice at her. “I will. But … I’m g-glad you’re here.” He felt the urge to say something else, something weighty and witty that would turn that beautiful head of hers and fix her attention to him, a mirror of his own. But even drunk he knew he was more likely to pull rubies out of his ass than he was to speak as older people spoke, with words that were somehow careful and powerful and right. “Sabetha,” he half mumbled.

“Thanks,” she said, looking at the table.

“I mean, I knew … you knew I meant you, Sabetha … sorry. I just … I’m glad you’re not drowned, you know.”

More than anything, at that moment, he just wanted to hear her say his name, call him anything but “him” or “the Lamora Boy.” Acknowledge his existence … their partnership in Chains’ gang … gods, he would exile himself to bed early every night if he could just hear his name come out from between those thin lips of hers.

“Good night,” she said.

LOCKE WOKE
the next day feeling as though the contents of his skull had been popped out and replaced upside-down.

“Here,” said one of the Sanzas, who happened to be sitting next to Locke’s cot with a book on his lap. The Sanza (Locke, muddled as he was, could not quite identify which one) passed over a wooden cup of water. It was lukewarm but clean, and Locke gulped it down without delicacy, marveling at how parched he felt.

“What time is it?” he croaked when he was finished.

“Must be past noon.”

“Noon? But … my chores …”

“No real work today.” The Sanza stretched and yawned. “No arithmetic. No Catch-the-Duke. No languages. No dancing.”

“No sitting the steps,” yelled the other Sanza from the next room. “No swordplay. No knots and ropes. No coins.”

“No music,” said the Sanza with the book. “No manners. No history. No bloody heraldry.”

“What are we doing, then?”

“Calo and I are to make sure you can stand up straight,” said the Sanza with the book. “Nail you to a plank if we have to.”

“And when that’s done, you’re to do all the dishes.”

“Sabetha …” Locke rubbed his eyes and rolled off his cot. “She’s really one of us?”

“Course she is,” said the Sanza with the book.

“Is she … here right now?”

“Nah. Out with Chains. Looking into things for tonight.”

“What’s tonight?”

“Dunno. All’s we know is the afternoon; and the afternoon, far as you’re concerned, is dishes.”

THOUGH ENERGETIC
enough when set a task, Calo and Galdo were virtuosos of laziness when left to their own devices. Between subtle interference and overt clowning, they managed to stretch the half hour Locke would ordinarily have needed to tend the dishes into nearly three hours. By the time the secret door to the temple above banged shut behind the returning Father Chains, Locke’s fingers were wrinkled and bleached from the alchemical polish he’d been using on the silver.

“Ah,” said Chains. “Good, good. You look more or less among the living. Feeling spry?”

“I suppose,” said Locke.

“We’ve a job tonight. Housebreaking. Windows work, and most of it on your little shoulders.” Chains patted his broad belly and smirked. “I parted ways with climbing and scampering some time ago.”

“Windows work?” said Locke, the drudgery of his long afternoon
in the kitchen instantly forgotten. “I … I’d love to. But I thought you, um, didn’t do that sort of thing.”

“For its own sake, not usually. But I need to find some things out about you, Locke.”

“Oh, good.” Locke felt his excitement cool slightly. “Another test. When do they stop?”

“When you’re buried, my boy.” Chains knelt and gave Locke a friendly squeeze on the back of his neck. “When you’re under the dirt and colder than a fish’s tits. That’s when it stops. Now listen.

“I’ve got a tip from a friend at Meraggio’s.” Chains bustled about the kitchen, snatching up chalk and one of the slates the children used for their lessons. He sketched on it rapidly. “Seems a certain olive merchant is looking to marry his useless son to a noble wife. To sweeten the deal sufficiently, he’ll need to put his family splendids back into circulation.”

“What’s that mean?” said Locke.

“Means he needs to sell his jewels and things,” said Calo.

“Sharp lad. About an hour ago, the merchant’s man left the countinghouse with a lot of nice old things in a bag. He’s staying at a townhouse in the Razona; just him and two guards. The old man and a bigger retinue are coming in from his estate tomorrow. So tonight we have a bit of an opportunity.”

“Why us?” Locke’s excitement was tempered with genuine puzzlement. “If he’s only got two guards, anyone who wanted to could go in there with a gang.”

“Never in life,” said Chains, chuckling. “Barsavi won’t have it. The Razona’s a quiet district where doors don’t get kicked in. That’s the Peace. Anybody breaks it, they’re liable to have their precious bits cut off and stitched to their eyeballs. So instead of sending in brutes through the door, we send a quiet type through the window.”

Chains turned the slate toward Calo, Galdo, and Locke. The top half was taken up by a rough diagram of houses and their surrounding streets and alleys. Beneath that was a sketch of a necklace, with large ovoid shapes dangling from a thick central collar. Chains tapped one of his fingers against this sketch.

“One piece,” he said. “That’s all we’re after. One from twenty or so,
and they won’t have time to put up much of a fuss about it. A gold necklace with nine hanging emeralds. Pop out the stones, send them nine different directions, and melt down the gold. Untraceable profit.”

“How do we do it?” asked Locke.

“Well, that’s half the fun.” Chains scratched at his chin. “You said yourself, it’s a test. You’ll be working with Sabetha, since she’s had more experience at this sort of thing. Calo and Galdo will be your top-eyes; that is, watching the area to cover your ass. I’ll be on the ground nearby, but I won’t be directly involved. My crooked little wonders get to sort the rest out for themselves.”

Locke’s heart raced. Test or not, a chance to work together with Sabetha on something exciting? The gods loved him!

“Where is she now?”

“Here.” Chains pointed to a square sketched on the upper portion of the slate. “On the Via Selaine. Four-story house with a rooftop garden. That’s our target. She’ll be nearby until dark; at first moonrise she’ll meet you in this alley.” Chains ran his finger up and down a set of chalk lines, blurring them. “Once the Sanzas are in position to keep an eye on the street, the rest is up to you and Sabetha.”

“That’s it, then?”

“That’s it. And remember, I want one emerald necklace. I don’t need two, or the deed to the townhouse, or the bloody crown jewels of Camorr. Tonight’s definitely a night for you to underachieve.”

FULL CAMORRI
night at last, after a twilight spent nervously fidgeting in an alley, waiting for Sabetha to make contact. Now Locke was with her, up on the roof of the house next door to their target, crouched among the old wooden frames and empty pots of a long-untended garden. It was just past second moonrise, and the wide-open sky was on fire with stars, ten thousand flickering white eyes staring down at Locke, as though eager to see him get to work.