The Republic of Thieves (19 page)

“I say,” said Chains, “sorry to be late. We’re in such a desperate hurry to reach a friend of a friend, and I just knew that this would be the right sort of boat.”

“The rightest sort of right, sir.” The pole-man was young and skinny, tanned brown as horse droppings, and he wore a sandy-colored beard down to the middle of his stained blue tunic. Charms of silver and ivory were woven into that beard, so many that the man actually chimed as he moved his head about. “Sir, I’m apologetic as hell, but this is the gentleman I’ve been waiting for.”

“Waiting for?” The man looked up from his coin-counting, startled. “But you only just pulled up!”

“Nonetheless, I got a previous engagement, and this is it. Now, I do beg pardon—”

“No, no, this is my boat!”

“It pains me to correct you,” said Chains, rendering his appropriation of the gondola final by ushering Sabetha into it. “Nonetheless, I must point out that the boat is actually the property of the young man with the pole.”

“Which it is, already and unfortunately, at this time engaged,” said that man.

“Why … you brazen, disrespectful little pack of dockside shits! I was here first! Don’t you dare take that boat, boy!”

Locke had been following Sabetha, and the middle-aged man reached down and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. Equally swiftly, Chains backhanded the man so hard that he immediately let go and stumbled back two paces, nearly falling into the canal.

“Touch either of my children again,” said Chains in a tone of voice unlike anything Locke had ever heard, “and I’ll break you into so many fucking pieces not a whore in the city will
ever
be able to figure out which wrinkled scrap to suck.”

“Dog,” yelled the man of business, holding a hand up to his bleeding lips. “Fucking scoundrel! I’ll have your name, sir, your name and a place where my man can find you. I’ll have you out for this, just you—”

Chains threw an arm around the man’s neck. Wrenching the unfortunate fellow toward him, Chains whispered harshly into his ear—again, just a few sentences. Chains then shoved him away, and Locke was astonished to see how pale the man’s face had become.

“I … uh, I … understand,” said the man. He seemed to be having difficulty making his voice work properly. “My, uh, apologies, deepest apologies. I’ll just—”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“Quite!”

The man took Chains’ advice, with haste, and Chains helped Locke into the boat. Locke sat on a bench at the bow directly beside Sabetha, feeling a warmth in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the sun when his leg brushed hers. As Chains settled onto the bench in front of the two children, the pole-man nudged the gondola away from the quay stones and out into the calm, slimy water of the canal.

At that moment, Locke was as much in awe of Chains as he was of his proximity to Sabetha. Charming yellowjackets, commandeering boats, and making wealthy men piss themselves—all of that, bribes notwithstanding, with just a few whispered words here and there. Who and what did Chains know? What was his actual place in Capa Barsavi’s hierarchy?

“Where to?” said the pole-man.

“Temple District, Venaportha’s landing,” said Chains.

“What’s your outfit?”

“Gentlemen Bastards.”

“Right, heard of you. Seem to be doing well for yourselves, mixing with the quality.”

“We do well enough. You one of Gap-Tooth’s lads?”

“Spot on, brother. Call ourselves the Clever Enoughs, out of the west Narrows. Some of us have what you’d call gainful employment, spotting likely marks on the canals. Business ain’t but shit lately.”

“Here’s a picture of the duke for a smooth ride.” Chains slapped a gold tyrin down on the bench behind him.

“I’ll drink your health tonight, friend, no fuckin’ lie.”

Chains let the pole-man get on with his work, and turned back to Locke and Sabetha, leaning close to them. He folded his hands and
said quietly, “Now, what the hell did I just see on Coin-Kisser’s Row? Can either of you translate the fuck-wittery into some sort of vaguely logical account?”

“He’s got six buttons,” said Sabetha.

“Redgreenblack
blue
,” spat Locke.

“Oh no,” said Chains. “Contest’s over. I declare a tie. No slithering to victory on a technicality.”

“Well, I had to try,” said Sabetha.

“That might have been the lesson,” muttered Locke.

“It’s not over until it’s really, really over,” said Sabetha. “Or something. You know.”

“My prize students,” sighed Chains. “Sometimes a contest to chase one another up and down a crowded plaza really
is
just a contest to chase one another up and down a crowded plaza. Let’s start with you, Locke. What was your plan?”

“Uhhh …”

“You know, believe it or not, ‘the gods will provide’ is not a fucking plan, lad. You’ve got one hell of a talent for improvisation, but when that lets you down it lets you down
hard
. You’ve got to have a next move in mind, like in Catch-the-Duke. Remember how you managed that affair with the corpse? I
know
you can do better than you just did.”

“But—”

“Sabetha’s turn. Near as I could tell, you had him. You were the one in the rear, the one that came out after he chased the first two north, right?”

“Yeah,” said Sabetha, warily.

“Where’d you get the decoys?”

“Girls I used to know in Windows. They’re seconds in a couple of the bigger gangs now. We lifted the dresses and went over the plan last night.”

“Ah,” said Chains. “There’s that charming notion I was just discussing, Locke. A
stratagem
. What did your friends have in their bags?”

“Colored wool,” said Sabetha. “Best we could do.”

“Not bad. Yet all you could manage was a tie with young Master Planless here. You had him in a fine bind, and then … what, exactly?”

“Well, he pretended to be sick. Then that yellowjacket came along and collared him, and I … I thought it was more important than anything else to go after him and get him loose.”

“Get me loose?” Locke sputtered in surprise. “What do you mean, get me loose? I passed that woman ten solons to get her to pick me up and carry me north!”

“I thought she’d grabbed you for real!” Sabetha’s soft brown eyes darkened, and the color rose in her cheeks. “You little ass, I thought I was
rescuing
you!”

“But … why?”

“There was nothing on the ground when I followed behind you!” Sabetha pulled her hat and veil off, and angrily yanked out the lacquered pins in her hair. “I didn’t see any sick-up on the bridge, so I thought that had tipped the yellowjacket to the fact that you were bullshitting!”

“You thought I got collared for real because I
threw up wrong
?”

“I know what sort of mess you could make back when you were a street teaser.” Sabetha shook her hair out—alchemically adjusted or not, it was a sight that made Locke’s heart punch the front of his rib cage. “I didn’t see any mess like that, so I assumed you got pinched! I gave that woman all the money I had left!”

“Look, I might have … I might have stuck my finger down my throat when I was
little
, but … I’m not gonna do that
all
the time!”

“That’s not the point!” Sabetha folded her arms and looked away. They were moving east now, across the long curving canal north of the Videnza, and in the distance beyond Sabetha Locke could see the dark, blocky shape of the Palace of Patience rising above slate roofs. “You knew you were losing, you had no plan, so you pitched a fit and made a mess of everything! You weren’t even trying to win; you were just
sloppy
. And
I
was sloppy to fall for it!”

“I was afraid this might happen, sooner or later,” said Chains in a musing tone of voice. “I’ve been thinking that we need a more elaborate sort of sign language, more than what we flash back and forth with the other Right People. Some sort of private code, so we can keep one another on the same page when we’re running a scheme.”

“No, Sabetha, look,” said Locke, hardly hearing Chains. “You weren’t sloppy, you were brilliant, you deserved to win—”

“That’s right,” she said. “But you didn’t lose, so I
didn’t
win.”

“Look, I concede. I give it to you. I’ll do all your kitchen chores for three days, just like—”

“I don’t want a damned
concession
! I won’t take your pity as a coin.”

“It’s not … it’s not pity, honest! I just … you thought you were really rescuing me. I owe you! I
want
your chores, it would be a pleasure. It would be my, my
privilege
.”

She didn’t turn back toward him, but she stared at him out of the corner of her eye for a long, silent moment. Chains said nothing; he had gone still as a stone.

“Sloppy idiot,” Sabetha muttered at last. “You’re trying to be charming. Well, I do not choose to be charmed by you, Locke Lamora.”

She shuffled herself on the bench and gripped the gunwale of the gondola with both hands, so that her back was completely toward him.

“Not today, at any rate,” she said softly.

Sabetha’s anger stung Locke like a swallowed wasp, but that pain was subsumed by a warmer, more powerful sensation that seemed to swell his skull until he was sure it was about to crack like an egg.

For all her seeming indifference, for all her impenetrability and frustration, she’d cared enough about him to throw the contest aside the instant she’d thought he was in real danger.

Across the rest of that seemingly endless, miserably hot summer of the seventy-seventh Year of Perelandro, he clung to that realization like a talisman.

IN THE NO-TIME
no-space of thought, conspiracy could have no witnesses. The old man’s mind reached out across one hundred and twenty miles of air and water. Child’s play for the wearer of four rings. His counterpart answered immediately.

It’s done, then?

The Camorri have accepted her terms. As I told you they would
.

We never doubted. It’s not as though she wants for persuasiveness
.

We’re moving now
.

Is Lamora that ill?

The archedama put this off too long. A genuine mistake
.

And not her first. If Lamora dies?

Your exemplar would crush Tannen alone. He’s formidable, but he already carries a weight of mourning
.

Could you not … assist Lamora to an early exit?

I told you I won’t go that far. Not right under her eyes! My life still means something to me
.

Of course, brother. It was an unworthy suggestion. Forgive me
.

Besides, she didn’t choose Lamora just to boil your blood. There’s something about him you don’t understand yet
.

Why are you dropping hints instead of information?

I can’t risk letting this loose. Not this. Be assured, this is deeper than the five-year game, and Patience means for you to know it all soon enough
.

Now, THAT worries me
.

It shouldn’t. Just play the game. If we manage to save Lamora, your exemplar will have a busy six weeks
.

Our reception is already prepared
.

Good. Look after yourself, then. We’ll be in Karthain tomorrow, whatever happens
.

From start to finish, the conversation spanned three heartbeats.

THE SKY ABOVE
the harbor of Lashain was capped with writhing clouds the color of coal slime, sealing off any speck of light from stars or moons. Jean remained at Locke’s side as Patience’s attendants carried his cot down from the carriage and through the soft spattering rain, toward the docks and a dozen anchored ships whose yards creaked and swayed in the wind.

While there were Lashani guards and functionaries of various sorts milling about, none of them seemed to want anything to do with the business of the procession around Locke. They carried him to the edge of a stone pier, where a longboat waited with a red lamp hung at its bow.

Patience’s attendants set the cot down across the middle of several rowing benches, then took up oars. Jean sat at Locke’s feet, while Patience settled alone at the bow. Beyond her Jean could see low black waves like shudders in the water. To Jean, who had grown accustomed to the smell of salt water and its residues, there seemed something strangely lacking in the fresher odors of the Amathel.

Their destination was a brig floating a few hundred yards out, at
the northern mouth of the harbor. Its stern lanterns cast a silvery light across the name painted above its great cabin windows,
Sky-Reacher
. From what Jean could see of her she looked like a newer vessel. As they came under her lee Jean saw men and women rigging a crane with a sling at the ship’s waist.

“Ahhh,” said Locke weakly. “The indignity. Patience, can’t you just float me up there or something?”

“I could bend my will to a lot of mundane tricks.” She glanced back without smiling. “I think you’d rather have me rested for what’s going to happen.”

The crane’s harness was a simple loop of reinforced leather, with a few strands of rope hanging loose. Using these, Jean lashed Locke into the harness, then waved to the people above. Hanging like a puppet, Locke rose out of the boat, knocked against the side of the brig once or twice, and was hauled safely into the ship’s waist by several pairs of hands.

Jean pulled himself up the boarding net and arrived on deck as Locke was being untied. Jean nudged Patience’s people aside, pulled Locke out of the harness himself, and held him up while the harness went back down for Patience. Jean took a moment to examine the
Sky-Reacher
.

His first impressions from the water were reinforced. She was a young ship, sweet-smelling and tautly rigged. But he saw very few people on deck—just four, all working the crane. Also, it was an unnaturally silent vessel. The noises of wind and water and wood were all there, but the human elements, the scuttling and coughing and murmuring and snoring belowdecks, were missing.