Purple twilight became full dark of night, and Karthain a sea of half-shadowed shapes suspended between blackness and alchemical sparks.
The main course was a turtle crafted to life size from glazed parti-colored breads. The top of the starchy creature’s shell was paper-thin, and when punched through with a serving ladle it proved to contain a lake of turtle and oyster ragout. The turtle came under enthusiastic siege from both ends of the table.
“Have you ever had a chance to look out over the Isas Scholastica before?” said Sabetha, recovering some measure of ladylike delicacy by dabbing at her chin with a silk cloth. “That’s it down behind me, just across the canal. Isle of Scholars. Home of the magi, or so they claim.”
“Claim? No, I’ve never had a chance to see it. I can’t see much now, between the darkness and the wine.”
“They don’t seem to frown on people building towers around the edges of their little sanctuary. I’ve been sightseeing up a few. I say claimbecause I’m not sure I believe they all live happily together like Collegium students in rooms. I think they’re all over the place … I think the Isas Scholastica is just where they want everyone looking.”
“All those parks and buildings and so forth down there are just a sham?”
“No, I’m pretty sure they usethe place, just not as a sole residence.” She took a final long draught of wine and pushed her glass aside. “Though I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one down there. Not one.”
“What, would they wear signs or something? Funny hats? They’re easy enough to spot when you can see their wrists and their manners, but at a distance they must look like other people.”
“I’ve seen servants,” said Sabetha. “People driving carts, offloading things, but those wouldn’t be Bondsmagi, surely. I’ve never seen anyone strolling the Isas Scholastica at leisure, or giving orders, or simply talking to anyone else. No guards, no masters and mistresses, only servants. If they’re down there, they conceal themselves. Even from eyes that are hundreds of yards away.”
“They’re odd people,” said Locke, staring into the pale orange dregs of his own wine. “And I say that as a fully qualified professional odd person of the first degree. I wish they weren’t such arrogant pricks, but I suppose odd people will keep odd habits.”
“I wonder,” said Sabetha. “Do you … do you feel that your … handlers have been entirely candid with you concerning their motives for this contest of theirs?”
“Hells, no,” said Locke. “But that was an easy question. Perhaps you’ve not met my side of the magi family. Why, do you think that yours are—”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly, staring out into the night. “They’ve delivered all the tools they said they would. They seem happy with my work, and I think their promises of consequences are certainly sincere. But their secrecy, their misdirection, it’s just so habitual .…”
“You’re reallynot used to feeling like a piece on a game board,” said Locke.
“No,” she said, and then she brought her brief moment of wistfulness to an end by sticking her tongue out at him. “I haven’t had all the opportunities you have to get acclimated to the sensation.”
“Oh ho! Serpent in a dress. Well, if only I wasn’t too much the gentleman to flay your spirit with a witty and cutting retort, madam, you’d be … thoroughly … um, wittily retorted at this very instant.”
“If you were any sort of actual gentleman you’d be no fun to have dinner with.”
“You admit you’re having fun?”
“I admit it’s much as I feared.” She looked down at the table for a moment before continuing. “Your presence is … steadily less of a chore and more of a comfort.”
“Well,” said Locke, chuckling, “aren’t I always delighted to be not quite the burden you were expecting!”
“Dessert?”
“Would you forgive me if I begged off?” Locke patted his stomach, which had mercifully reached the sheer physical limit of its gluttony. “I’m stuffed like a grain bag.”
“Good. You’re still too bloody thin.”
The waiter cleared their dishes and left a slate with a folded note pinned to it. Sabetha picked it up and glanced at it idly.
“What’s that?”
“Itemized bill,” she said. “They actually bring it to the table here. It’s all the rage. Lets those that can read show it off in public.”
“Strange,” said Locke. “But that’s the west for you. So what now, Mistress Gallante? A walk, a carriage ride, maybe an—”
“Now we rest on our laurels.” She rose from the table and stretched, revealing how precisely her gown and jacket were fitted to her curves. “Look, it’s not that I haven’t appreciated the break, but some things … just have to go slow.”
“Slow,” said Locke, knowing he was failing miserably to conceal his disappointment. “Of course.”
“Slow,” she repeated. “We’ve got five years and more of sharp edges to file down. I might be willing to work at it, but I don’t think I can do it in one night.”
“I see.”
“Oh, don’t give me that drowning-puppy look.” She touched his waist and gave him a kiss on the cheek that was not quite passionate but a shade longer than merely polite. “Let’s do this again. Three nights hence. I’ll pick some other interesting place.”
“Three nights hence,” said Locke, still feeling the warm press of her lips against his skin. “Three nights. All right. Just try and stop me.”
“I can’t. I seem to have promised to fight clean.” She drew a pair of leather gloves from her jacket and pulled them on.
“Can I at least walk you to your carriage?”
“Mmmmm … don’t think so,” she said mischievously. “I try to live by a cardinal rule of our shared profession, namely, ‘always leave a sucker wanting more.’ ”
She reached under the table and pulled out a coil of demi-silk rope previously hidden there. Locke watched, puzzled, as she conjured a slender metal pick in her other hand and applied it to the mechanism of the waiter’s door. It opened in seconds.
“Hey, wait a minute—”
“It was in case you tried anything tricky. Whether I would have used it to escape or hang you can remain an open question.”
“Are you serious?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said with a grin. “But I’m definitely sincere. Thanks for the flower. I left you a little something in exchange.”
Then she was gone. The rope was anchored to a point on the cage beneath the table; Sabetha kicked it out the door and rappelled into the night, without a harness, sliding down on the friction of boots and gloves with her gown billowing like the petals of a wind-whipped flower.
“Gods damn,” whispered Locke as he watched her land safely and vanish far below. After a moment her last words finally squeezed past the film of wine clinging to his brain, and he frantically patted himself down. A piece of paper was in his left jacket pocket. A note? A love letter?
He unfolded it in haste, and discovered the bill for dinner.
9
“MOVE! MOVE! For your life, move!”
Doormen scattered from a snorting pair of barely controlled horses dragging a rickety dray tended by a single wild-eyed driver. The back of the vehicle was loaded with sacks and barrels, one of which had bled an expanding trail of gray smoke all the way down the street. With a lurching crash, the dray broke a wheel against the curb and toppled, spilling its contents in a pile before the front doors of the Sign of the Black Iris.
“It’s alchemy!” The driver, a slender, white-bearded fellow in a voluminous rat-chewed coat, leapt to the ground as smoke billowed past him. Sparks leapt and flickered amidst the spilled cargo, and he unyoked his frantic animals. “Heaps of alchemy! Fetch water and sand, or run for your gods-damned lives!”