The Republic of Thieves (26 page)

“Why sit in a farmyard with a crown on your head when you can buy all the ham you like down at the market?”

“You’ve banished ambition completely?” said Jean.

“We’re ambitious to the bone, Jean. Our training doesn’t give the meek room to
breathe
. However, most of us find it starkly ludicrous that the height of all possible ambition, to the ungifted, must be to drape oneself in crowns and robes.”

“Most?” said Locke.

“Most,” said Patience. “I did mention that we’ve had a schism over the years. You might not be surprised to hear that it concerns
you
.” She crooked two fingers on her left hand at Locke and Jean. “The ungifted. What to do with you. Keep to ourselves or put the world on its knees? Nobility would no longer be a matter of patents and lineages. It would be a self-evident question of sorcerous skill. You would be enslaved without restraint to a power you could never possess, not with all the time or money or learning in the world. Would you
like
to live in such an empire?”

“Of course not,” said Locke.

“Well, I have no desire to build it. Our arts have given us perfect independence. Our wealth has made that freedom luxurious.
Most
of us recognize this.”

“You keep using that word,” said Locke. “ ‘Most.’ ”

“There
are
exceptionalists within our ranks. Mages that look upon your kind as ready-made abjects. They’ve always been a minority, held firmly in check by those of us with a more conservative and practical philosophy, but they have never been so few as to be laughed off. These are the two factions I spoke of earlier. The exceptionalists tend to be young, gifted, and aggressive. My son was popular with them, before you crossed his path in Camorr.”

“Great,” said Locke. “So those assholes that came and paid us a
visit in Tal Verrar, on
your
sufferance, don’t even have to leave the comforts of home for another go at us! Brilliant.”

“I gave them that outlet to leaven their frustration,” said Patience. “If I had commanded absolute safety for you, they would have disobeyed and murdered you. After that, I would have had no answer to their insubordination short of civil war. The peace of my society balances at all times on points like this. You two are just the most recent splinter under everyone’s nails.”

“What will your insubordinate friends do when we get to Karthain? Give us hugs, buy us beer, pat us on our heads?” said Jean.

“They won’t trouble you,” said Patience. “You’re part of the five-year game now, protected by its rules. If they harm you outright, they call down harsh retribution. However, if their chosen agents outmaneuver you, then they steal a
significant
amount of prestige from my faction. They need you to be pieces on the board as much as I do.”

“What if we win?” said Jean. “What will they do afterward?”

“If you do manage to win, you can naturally expect the goodwill of myself and my friends to shelter under.”

“So we’re working for the kindhearted, moral side of your little guild, is that what we should understand?” said Locke.

“Kindhearted? Don’t be ridiculous,” said Patience. “But you’re a fool if you can’t believe that we’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on the moral questions of our unique position. The fact that you’re even here, alive and well, testifies to that reflection.”

“And yet you hire yourselves out to overthrow kingdoms and kill people.”

“We do,” said Patience. “Human beings are afflicted with short memories. They need to be reminded that they have valid reasons for holding us in awe. That’s why, after very careful consideration, we still allow magi to accept black contracts.”

“Define ‘careful consideration,’ ” said Locke.

“Any request for services involving death or kidnapping is scrutinized,” said Patience. “Black work needs to be authorized by a majority of my peers. Even once that’s done, there needs to be at least one mage willing to accept the task.”

Patience cupped her left hand, and a silver light flashed behind her
fingers. “You curious men,” she said. “I offer you the answers to damn near anything, secrets thousands of people have died trying to uncover, and you want to learn how we go about paying our bills.”

“We’re not done pestering you,” said Locke. “What are you doing there?”

“Remembering.” The silver glow faded, and a slender spike of dreamsteel appeared, cradled against the first two fingers of her hand. “You’re bold enough in your questions. Are you bold enough for a direct answer?”

“What’s the proposal?” said Locke, nibbling half-consciously at a biscuit.

“Walk in my memories. See through my eyes. I’ll show you something relevant, if you’ve got the strength to handle it.”

Locke swallowed in a hurry. “Is this going to be as much fun as the last ritual?”

“Magic’s not for the timid. I won’t offer again.”

“What do I do?”

“Lean forward.”

Locke did so, and Patience held the silver spike toward his face. It narrowed, twisted, and poured itself through the air, directly into Locke’s left eye.

He gasped. The biscuits tumbled from his hand as the dreamsteel spread in a pool across his eye, turning it into a rippling mirror. A moment later droplets of silver appeared in his right eye, thickening and spreading.

“What the hell?” Jean was torn between the urge to slap Patience aside and the sternness of her earlier warning not to interfere with her sorcery.

“Jean … wait …” whispered Locke. He stood transfixed, tied to Patience’s hand by a silver strand, his eyes gleaming. The trance lasted perhaps fifteen seconds, and then the dreamsteel withdrew. Locke wobbled and clutched the taffrail, blinking furiously.

“Holy hells,” he said. “What a sensation.”

“What happened?” said Jean.

“She was … I don’t know, exactly. But I think you’ll want to see this.”

Patience turned to Jean, extending the hand with the silver needle.
Jean leaned forward and fought to avoid flinching as the narrow silver point came toward him. It brushed his open eye like a breath of cold air, and the world around him changed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mother
.

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

The sigil of the Falconer.

Speaker
, she/Jean replies.

Must we be such prisoners of formality, Mother?

This is a formal occasion
.

Surely we’re alone in our thoughts
.

You and I are never alone
.

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

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

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

At the center of the Sky Chamber is a reflecting pool of dreamsteel, its surface a perfect unrippled mirror. Four chairs surround it; three are occupied. The magi have little care for the ungifted custom of setting the highest-ranked to gaze upon their inferiors. When so much business is transacted in thought, physical directions begin to lose even symbolic meaning.

Jean/Patience takes the open seat, and reaches out to the other three arch-magi. It’s as easy as joining flesh-and-blood hands. Archedons and archedamas pool energies, crafting a joined sigil, an ideogram that fills the room for an instant with the thought-shape of four names:

The names are meaningless, traditional, having nothing to do with the personal qualities of their holders. The fused sigil proclaims the commencement of formal business. The light in the chamber dims in response; the early-evening sky is replaced by a bowl of predawn violet with a warm line of tawny gold at the horizon. Archedon Temperance, seniormost of the four, sends forth:

There is a twist, a wrench in Jean’s perceptions. Patience, the here-and-now Patience, adjusts her memories, shifts them to a context he can better understand. The thought-voices of the magi take on the quality of speech.

“We remain divided on whether or not the consequences of this proposal exceed the allowances of our guiding Mandates—first, the question of self-harm. Second, the question of common detriment.”

Temperance is a lean man of seventy, with brown skin the texture of wind-whipped tree bark. His hair is gray, and his clouding eyes are
milky agates in deep, dark sockets. Yet his mind remains vigorous; he has worn five rings for half his life.

“With respect, Archedon, I would call on the assembly to also consider the question of higher morality.” This from a pale woman in the first row of seats. Her left arm is missing, and a fold of robe hangs pinned at that shoulder like a mantle. She stands, and with her other hand sweeps her hood back, revealing thin blonde hair woven tightly under a silver mesh cap. This gesture is the privilege of a Speaker, announcing her intention to take the floor and attempt to influence the current discussion.