Authors: Scott Lynch
“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—”
“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:
Isas Scholastica
Isle of Scholars
—Archedama, it’s not like you to keep us waiting—
(private citadel of the magi of Karthain)
—is it because—
… feeling of resigned annoyance …
—Falconer—
(damn that obvious and inevitable question)
… sound of footsteps on smooth marble …
—can well understand—
His presence has nothing to do with my tardiness
.
—would feel the same in your place—
As if I’d hide from my duties because of him
.
(gods above, did I earn five rings by being meek?)
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.
—pardon, did not mean to offend—
… the warm air of the Sky Chamber, already packed with …
I will not take the wall to my own son!
—no need to get annoyed, I was merely—
… there he sits, waiting.
(watching, watching, like his damned bird)
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.
(watching, watching, like his damned bird)
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.