“Why do you assume it’s something you’vedone, and something you can undo at will? I’m not some arithmetic problem just waiting for you to show your work properly, Locke. Did you ever think that I might … gods, you’ve got me stumbling now. That I might be actively contributing to this … to our awkwardness?”
“Actively contributing?”
“Yes, as though I might have warm-blooded motives of my own, being as I’m not an oil painting, or some other decorative object of desire—”
“Do you like me?” said Locke, shocked at himself for blurting the question out. It was an invitation to have his heart laid out and smashed on an anvil, and there were a thousand things she could say that would do the hammer’s work. “At all? Do I ever please you with my company? Am I at least preferable to an empty room?”
“There are times when the empty room is a sore temptation.”
“But—”
“Of course I likeyou,” she said, raising her hands as though to touch him reassuringly. She didn’t complete the gesture. “You can be clever, and enterprising, and charming, though rarely all three at once. And … I do sometimes admire you, if it helps you to hear it.”
“It means everything to hear it,” he said, feeling the tightness in his chest turn to buoyant warmth. “It’s worth a thousand embarrassments, just to hear it. Because … because I feel the same way. About you.”
“You don’t feel the same way about me,” she said.
“Oh, but I do,” he said. “Without qualifying remarks, even.”
“That’s—”
“Hey there!”
A polished club came down on Locke’s shoulder, a gentle tap, yet impossible to ignore. The club was attached to a heavyset man in the leather harness and mustard-yellow coat of the city watch, attended by a younger comrade carrying a lantern on a pole.
“You’re in the middle of a lane,” said the big yellowjacket, “not a bloody drawing-room. Move it elsewhere.”
“Oh, of course, sir,” said Locke in one of his better respectable-citizen voices (this constable, not being agitated, didn’t require the use of Locke’s very best). He and Sabetha moved off the lane and into the shadows beneath the wall, where fireflies sketched pale green arcs against the darkness.
“No one thinks of anyone else without qualifying remarks,” said Sabetha. “I love Chains dearly, and still he and I have … disappointed one another. I’ll always be fond of the Sanzas, but right now I wish they’d go away for a year. And you—”
“I’ve frustrated you, I know.”
“And I’ve returned the favor.” She did touch him now, gently, on his upper left arm, and it took most of his self-control not to jump out of his shoes. “Nobody admires anyone else without qualification. If they do they’re after an image, not a person.”
“Well,” said Locke, “in that case, I harbor a great many resentments, reservations, and suspicions about you. Does that please you better?”
“You’re trying to be charming again,” she said softly, “but I choose not to be charmed, Locke Lamora. Not with things as they stand.”
“Can I make amends for whatever I’ve done to frustrate you?”
“That’s … complicated.”
“I like to think that I take hints as well as anyone,” said Locke. “Why not throw some at my head?”
“Going to be a lot of time to kill between here and Espara, I suppose.”
“Can we … speak again tomorrow night? After we’ve stopped?”
“The gentleman requests the favor of a personal engagement, tomorrow evening?”
“At the lady’s pleasure, before the dancing and iced wine, immediately following the grand sweep beneath the wagon for stray horseshit.”
“I may consent.”
“Then life is worth living.”
“Don’t be a dunce,” she said. “We should do our business at the tavern and get back before the Sanzas try to sneak off to the Guilded Lilies one last time.”
They came away from the tavern with cold boiled chicken, olives, black bread, and two skins of yellow wine with a flavor somewhere between turpentine and wasp piss. Simple as it was, the meal was ducal indulgence compared to the salted meat and hardtack waiting in crates on the back of their wagon. They ate in silence, distracted by the sight of the Five Towers shining in the oncoming night, and by hungry insects.
Jean volunteered to sit first watch (no Camorri ever born, least of all one who’d made it out of Shades’ Hill, would blithely trust to providence even in the literal shadow of a city watch barracks). After acknowledging this noble sacrifice, the other four curled up beneath the wagon, sweaty and mosquito-plagued, to bed down.
It occurred to Locke that this was technically the first time he and Sabetha had ever slept together in any sense of the term, even if they were separated by nothing less than a complete pair of Sanza twins.
“We crawl before we walk,” he sighed to himself. “We walk before we run.”
“Hey,” whispered Galdo, who was curled against his back, “you don’t fart in your sleep, do you?”
“How would you be able to detect a fart over your natural odor, Sanza?”
“For shame,” said Galdo. “There’s no Sanzas here, remember? I’m an Asino.”
“Oh yes,” said Locke with a yawn. “Yes, you certainly are.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: STARTING POSITION
1
“SABETHA’S IN KARTHAIN,” said Locke.
“She could hardly do the job from elsewhere,” said Patience.
“Sabetha. My Sabetha—”
“I marvel at such a confident assertion of possession.”
“ OurSabetha, then. TheSabetha. How do you people know so gods-damned much about my life? How did you find her?”
“I didn’t,” said Patience. “Nor do I know how it was done. All I know is that her instructions and resources will mirror your own.”
“Except she has a head start,” said Jean, easing Locke back into his chair. The expression on Locke’s face was that of a prize fighter who’d just received a proper thunderbolt to the chin.
“And she’s working alone,” said Patience, “whereas you two have one another. So one might hope that her positional advantage will be purely temporary. Or is she really that much of a tiger, to set you both quaking?”
“I’m not quaking,” said Locke quietly. “It’s just … so gods-damned unexpected.”
“You’ve always hoped for a reunion, haven’t you?”
“On my own terms,” said Locke. “Does she know that it’s us she’s up against? Did she know before she took the job?”
“Yes,” said Patience.
“Your opposition, they didn’t do anything to her?”
“As far as I’m aware, she required no compulsion.”
“This is hard to take,” said Locke. “Gentlemen Bastards, well, we trained against one another, and we’ve quarreled, obviously, but we’ve never, ah, never actually opposed one another, not for real.”
“Given that she’s completely removed herself from your company for so many years now,” said Patience, “how can you believe that she still considers herself part of your gang?”
“ Thank youfor that, Patience,” growled Jean. “Do you have anything else for us? If not, I think we need to—”
“Yes, I’m sure you do. The cabin is yours.”
She withdrew. Locke put his head in his hands and sighed.
“I don’t expect life to make sense,” he said after a few moments, “but it would certainly be pleasant if it would stop kicking us in the balls.”
“Don’t you want to see her again?”