“And you seem to have me out in the rain.”
“Um.” Jean shuffled the dagger and made it vanish up his tunic sleeve. “Well, my friend, as I said, is gravely ill. You should be aware—”
“I don’t mind.” She entered the instant Jean’s resolution wavered, and gracefully got out of the way as he closed the door behind her. “After all, poison is only contagious at dinner parties.”
“How the hell … are you a physiker?”
“Hardly.”
“Are you with Cortessa?”
The woman only laughed at that, and threw back the hood of her oilcloak. She was about fifty, the well-tended sort of fifty that only wealth could make possible, and her hair was the color of dry autumn wheat with currents of silver at the temples. She had a squarish face, with disconcertingly wide, dark eyes.
“Here, take this.” She tossed the alchemical globe to Jean, who caught it by reflex. “I know they took your lights, too.”
“Um, thank you, but—”
“My, my.” The woman unclasped her cloak and spun it off her shoulders as she strolled into the inner apartment. Her coat and skirts were richly brocaded with silver threads, and puffs of silver lace from beneath her cuffs half-covered her hands. She glanced at Locke. “Ill would seem to be an understatement.”
“Forgive me for not getting up,” said Locke. “And for not offering you a seat. And not being dressed. And for not … giving a damn.”
“Down to the last dregs of your charm, I see.”
“Down to the last dregs of my everything. Who are you, then?”
The woman shook out her oilcloak, then threw it over Locke like a blanket.
“Th-thank you.”
“It’s difficult to have a serious conversation with someone whose dignity is compromised, Locke.”
The next sound in the room was that of Jean slamming home the bolt on the front door. In an instant he returned to the inner apartment, knife in hand. He tossed the light-globe onto the bed, where Locke prevented it from bouncing onto the floor.
“In faith,” said Jean, “my patience for mysterious shit went out that door with the money and the furniture. So you explain how you know that name, and I won’t have to feel guilty for—”
“I doubt you’d survive what would happen if you acted on that impulse, Jean Tannen. I know your pride wouldn’t. Put your blade away.”
“Like hell!”
“Poor Gentlemen Bastards,” said the woman softly. “So far from home. But always in our sight.”
“No,” said Jean in a disbelieving whisper.
“Oh, gods,” said Locke. He coughed and closed his eyes. “It’s you. I suspected you’d kick our door down sooner or later.”
“You sound disappointed.” The woman frowned. “As though you’d just failed to avoid an awkward social call. Would you really find death preferable to a little conversation, Locke?”
“Little conversations with Bondsmagi never end well.”
“You’re the reason we’re here,” growled Jean. “You and your games in Tal Verrar. Your damned letters!”
“Not entirely,” said the woman.
“You didn’t scare us in the Night Market.” Jean’s grip tightened on the hilt of his blade, and the pain of his recent beating was entirely forgotten. “You don’t fucking scare us now!”
“Then you don’t know us at all.”
“I think I do. And I don’t give a damn about your gods-damned rules!”
He was already in motion, and her back was to him. She had no chance to speak or gesture with her hands; his left arm went around her neck and he slammed the dagger home as hard as he could, directly between her shoulder blades.
11
THE WOMAN’S flesh was warm and solid beneath Jean’s arm one moment, and in the next his blade bit empty air.
Jean had faced many fast opponents in his life, but never one that dissolved instantly at his touch. That wasn’t human speed; it was sorcery.
His chance was gone.
He inhaled sharply, and a cold shudder ran down his back, the old familiar sensation of a misstep made and a blow about to fall. His pulse beat like a drum inside his skull, and he waited for the pain of whatever reprisal was coming—
“Oh yes,” said their visitor mildly from somewhere behind him. “That would have been very clever of me, Jean Tannen. Leaving myself at the mercy of a strong man and his grudges.”
Jean turned slowly, and saw that the woman was now standing about six feet to his left, by the window where the linens table had once been.
“I hold your true name like a caged bird,” she said. “Your hands and eyes will deceive you if you try to harm me.”
“Gods,” said Jean, suddenly overcome by a vast sense of weary frustration. “Must you play with your food?” He sat down on the edge of Locke’s bed and threw his knife at the floor, where it stuck quivering in the wood. “Just kill me like a fucking normal person. I won’t be your toy.”
“What will you be?”
“I’ll stand still and be boring. Get it over with.”
“Why do you keep assuming I’m here to kill you?”
“If not kill, then something worse.”
“I have no intention of murdering either of you. Ever.” The woman folded her hands in front of her chest. “What more proof do you need than the fact that you’re still alive? Could you have stopped me?”
“You’re not gods,” said Locke, weakly. “You might have us at your mercy, but we’ve had one of you at ours before.”
“Is that meant to be some poor cousin to a threat? A reminder that you just happened to be present when the Falconer’s terrible judgment finally got the best of him?”
“How is dear Falconer these days?” asked Locke.
“Well kept. In Karthain.” The woman sighed. “As he was when agents of Camorr brought him home. Witless and comatose.”
“He didn’t seem to react well to pain,” said Jean.
“And you imagine it was your torture that drove him mad?”
“Can’t have been our conversation,” said Locke.
“His real problem is self-inflicted. You see, we can deaden our minds to any suffering of the flesh. But that art requires caution. It’s extremely dangerous to use it in haste.”
“I’m delighted to hear that,” said Locke. “You’re saying that when he tried to escape the pain—”
“His mind jailed itself, in a haze of his own making,” said the woman. “And so we’ve been unable to correct his condition.”
“Marvelous,” said Locke. “I don’t really care how or why it happened, I’m still glad that it did. In fact I encourage the rest of you to use that power in haste.”
“You do many of us an injustice,” said the woman.
“Bitch, if I had the power I’d pull your heart out of your chest and use it for a handball,” said Locke, coughing. “I’d do it to all of you. You people kill anyone you like and fuck with the lives of those that treat you fairly for it.”
“Despising us must be rather like staring into a mirror, then.”
“I despise you,” said Locke, straining to heave himself up, “for Calo and Galdo, and for Bug, and for Nazca and Ezri, and for all the time we … wasted in … Tal Verrar.” Red-faced and shuddering, he fell back to the empty bed.
“You’re murderers and thieves,” said the woman. “You leave a trail of confusion and outrage wherever you go. You’ve brought down at least one government, and prevented the destruction of another for sentimental reasons. Can you really keep a straight face when you damn us for doing as we please?”
“We can,” said Jean. “And I can take the matter of Ezri very personally.”