“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.”
2
“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’staffrail, 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 needthem?”
“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 knowI 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 alsoa 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 wantedcredulous 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 farfrom 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 word. I’d find it strange if you didn’thave 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 refuseto 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.”