Authors: Scott Lynch
“Swallow,” said Jean.
“Mmmmph.” Locke obeyed, then gestured for the water.
Jean eased Locke onto his elbows and held the pitcher to his lips. Coldmarrow continued
to wipe the ink and dreamsteel away, but Locke took no notice. He gulped water in
undignified slurps until the pitcher was empty.
“More,” said Locke, turning his attention to the food. The mage with the lantern set
it down, took the pitcher, and hurried out.
The stuff on the tray was simple fare—baked ham, rough dark bread, some sort of rice
with gravy. Locke attacked it as if it were the first food the gods had ever conjured
on earth. Jean held a plate for him while Locke pushed the bread around with shaking
hands, scooped everything else into his mouth, and barely paused to chew. By the time
the water pitcher returned, he was on his second plate.
“Mmmm,” he mumbled, and a number of other monosyllables of limited philosophical utility.
His eyes were bright, but they had a dazed look. His awareness seemed to have narrowed
to the plate and
pitcher. Coldmarrow finished cleaning him off, and Patience stretched a hand out above
his legs. The rope that had bound him to the table unknotted itself and leapt into
her grasp, coiling itself neatly.
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.”
“
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.”
“
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.”