“What the hell are you?” said Jean.
“There are four of us,” said the woman. “In an ideal world, the wisest and most powerful of the fifth-circles. If nothing else, we do get to live in the biggest houses.”
“You rule the Bondsmagi,” said Locke, incredulously.
“Rule is too strong a term. We do occasionally manage to avert total chaos.”
“You have a name?”
“Patience.”
“What, you have some rule against telling us now?”
“No, it’s what I’m called. Patience.”
“No shit? Your peers must think pretty highly of you.”
“It doesn’t mean anything, any more than a girl named Violet needs to be purple. It’s a title. Archedama Patience. So, have we decided that nobody’s going to be murdering anyone here?”
“I suppose that depends on what you want to talk about,” said Jean.
“The pair of you,” said Patience. “I’ve been minding your business for some time now. Starting with the fragments I could pull out of the Falconer’s memories. Our agents retrieved his possessions from Camorr after he was … crippled. Among them a knife formerly belonging to one of the Anatolius sisters.”
“A knife with my blood on it,” interrupted Jean.
“From that we had your trail easily enough.”
“And from that you fucked up our lives.”
“I need you to understand,” said Patience, “just how littleyou understand. I saved your lives in Tal Verrar.”
“Funny, I don’t recall seeing you there,” said Jean.
“The Falconer has friends,” said Patience. “Cohorts, followers, tools. For all of his flaws he was very popular. You saw their parlor tricks in the Night Market, but that was all I permitted. Without my intervention, they would have killed you.”
“You can call that mess ‘parlor tricks,’ ” said Jean. “That interference in Tal Verrar still made a hell of a problem for us.”
“Better than death, surely,” said Patience. “And kinder by far than I might have been, given the circumstances.”
“Circumstances?”
“The Falconer was arrogant, vicious, misguided. He was acting in obedience to a contract, which we consider a sacred obligation, but I won’t deny that he amplified the brutality of the affair beyond what was called for.”
“He was going to help turn hundreds of people into empty shells. Into gods-damned furniture. That wasn’t brutal enough?” said Jean.
“They were part of the contract. You and your friends were not.”
“Well, if this is some sort of apology, go to hell,” said Locke, coughing. “I don’t care what a humane old witch you think you are, and I don’t care how or why the Falconer went wrong in the head. If I’d had more time I would have used every second of it to bleed him. All he got was the thinnest shred of what he really deserved.”
“That’s more true than you know, Locke. Oh, so much truer than you know.” Patience folded her hands together and sighed. “And no one comprehends it quite as well as I do. After all, the Falconer is my son.”
INTERLUDE
THE UNDROWNED GIRL
1
THE WORLD BROADENED for Locke Lamora in the summer of the seventy-seventh year of Sendovani, the summer after Beth vanished, the summer he was sold out of the Thiefmaker’s care and into that of Father Chains, the famous Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro. Suddenly his old worries and pains were gone, though they were replaced by a fresh set of bafflements on a daily basis.
“And what if a priest or priestess of another order should walk by?” asked Chains, adjusting the hooded white robe the Sanza twins had just thrown over Locke’s head.
“I make the sign of our, um, joined service.” Locke enfolded his left hand within his right and bowed his head until it nearly touched his thumbs. “And I don’t speak unless spoken to.”
“Good. And if you cross paths with an initiate of another order?”
“I give the blessing for troubles to stay behind them.” Locke held out his right hand, palm up, and swept it up as though he was pushing something over his left shoulder.
“And?”
“Um, I greet if greeted … and say nothing otherwise?”
“What if you meet an initiate of Perelandro?”
“Always greet?”
“You missed something.”
“Um. Oh yeah. Sign of joined service. Always greet. Speak, ah, cordially with initiates and shut my mouth for anyone, um, higher.”
“What about the alternate signals for when it’s raining on a Penance Day?” said one of the Sanza twins.
“Um …” Locke coughed nervously into his hands. “I don’t … I’m not sure …”
“There isno alternate signal for when it’s raining on a Penance Day. Or any other day,” muttered Chains. “Well, now you look the part. And I think we can trust you with exterior ritual. Not bad for four days of learning. Most initiates get a few months before they’re trusted to count above ten without taking their shoes off.”
Chains stood and adjusted his own white robe. He and his boys were in the sanctuary of the Temple of Perelandro, a dank cave of a room that proclaimed not only the humility of Perelandro’s followers but their apparent indifference to the smell of mildew.
“Now then,” said Chains, “twit dexter and twit sinister—fetch my namesakes.”
Calo and Galdo scrambled to the wall where their master’s purely ceremonial fetters lay, joined to a huge iron bolt in the stone. They raced one another to drag the chains across the floor and snap the manacles on the big man.
“Aha,” said the first to finish, “you’re slower than an underwater fart!”
“Funny,” said the second. “Hey, what’s that on your chin?”
“Huh?”
“Looks like a fist!”
In an instant the space in front of Locke was filled with a mad whirl of Sanza limbs, and for the hundredth time in his few days as Chains’ ward, Locke lost track of which brother was which. The twins giggled madly as they wrestled with one another, then howled in unison as Chains reached out with calm precision and caught them each by an ear.
“You two savants,” he said, “can go put your own robes on, and carry the kettle out after Locke and I take our places.”
“You said we weren’t going to sit the steps today!” said one of the brothers.
“You’re not. I’m just not in the mood to carry the kettle. After you bring it out, you can go downstairs and mind your chores.”
“Chores?”
“Remember those customs papers I said I was forging up last night? They weren’t customs papers, they were arithmetic problems. A couple pages for each of you. There’s charcoal, ink, and parchment in the kitchen. Show your work.”
“Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.” The sound of simultaneously disappointed Sanza brothers was curiously tuneful. Locke had already heard the twins practicing their singing voices, which were quite good, and by accident or design they often harmonized.
“Now, get the door, Locke.” Chains tied on the last and most important part of his costume: the blindfold precisely adjusted to suggest his total helplessness while still allowing him to avoid tripping over the hem of his robe. “The sun is up, and all that money out there won’t steal itself.”
Locke worked the mechanism concealed behind one of the room’s moldering tapestries, and there was a faint rumble within the temple walls. A vertical line of burning gold appeared on the eastern wall as the doors creaked apart, and the sanctuary was quickly flooded with warm morning light. Chains held out a hand, and Locke ran over to take it.
“Ready?”
“If you say I am,” whispered Locke.
Hand in hand, the imaginary Eyeless Priest and his newest imaginary initiate walked out of their imaginary stone prison, into a morning heat so fierce that Locke could smell it baking up from the city’s stones and taste it on his tongue.