by Scott Lynch
“Gods, Jean, I’m hallucinating,” said Locke. “I’m actually hallucinating.”
“No, you’re not.” Jean stroked the silky black cat that was supposed to be long gone from their lives. Regal was exactly as Jean remembered, down to the white spot at his throat. “I see the little bastard too.”
“He can’t be here,” muttered Locke. The cat circled his head, purring loudly. “It’s impossible.”
“What a myopic view you have on the splendors of coincidence,” said Patience, coming down the steps. “It was one of my agents that purchased your old yacht. It lay briefly alongside the Sky-Reacher a few weeks ago, and this little miscreant took the opportunity to change residences.”
“I don’t get it,” said Locke, gently tugging at the scruff of Regal’s neck. “I never even liked cats all that much.”
“Surely you realize,” said Patience, “that cats are no great respecters of human opinion.”
“Kin to Bondsmagi, perhaps?” said Jean. “So what do we do now?”
“Now,” said Patience, “we speak plainly. What’s going to happen, Jean, will be hard for you to watch. Possibly too hard. Some … ungifted cannot bear close proximity to our workings. If you wish to go into the middle deck, you’ll find hammocks and other accommodations—”
“I’m staying,” said Jean. “For the whole damn thing. That’s not negotiable.”
“Be resolved, then, but hear me. No matter what happens, or seems to happen, you cannot interfere. You cannot interrupt. It could be fatal, and not just for Locke.”
“I’ll behave,” said Jean. “I’ll bite my damn knuckles off if I have to.”
“Forgive me for reminding you that I know the nature of your temper—”
“Look,” said Jean, “if I get out of hand, just speak my gods-damned name and make me calm down. I know you can do it.”
“It may come to that,” said Patience. “So long as you know what to expect if you cause trouble. Speaking of which, remove our little friend and take him forward.”
“Off you go, kid.” Jean plucked Regal up before the cat realized he’d been targeted for transportation. The smooth bundle of fur yawned and nestled into the crook of Jean’s right elbow.
Jean carried his passenger to the main deck, where he was surprised to find the vessel already moving under topsails, although he’d heard no shouting or struggling from above to get them down. He ran up the stairs leading to the quarterdeck, from which he could see the rain-blurred lights of Lashain already dwindling behind the dark shapes bobbing in her harbor. The boat they’d abandoned was barely visible, a tiny silhouetted slat on the waves.
The woman who’d been at the crane was now at the helm, just abaft the mainmast where it marked the forward boundary of the quarterdeck. Her face was only half-visible within the hood of her cloak, but she seemed lost in thought, and Jean was startled to see that she wasn’t actually touching the wheel. Her left hand was raised and slightly cupped, and from time to time she would spread her fingers and move it forward, as though pushing some unseen object.
Lightning broke overhead, and by the sudden flash Jean could see the other members of the crew scattered across the deck, also cloaked and hooded, standing at silent attention with their hands similarly raised.
As thunder rolled across the Amathel, Jean walked over to stand beside the woman at the wheel.
“Excuse me,” he said, “can you talk? What’s our current heading?”
“North … northeast,” said the woman dreamily, not moving to face him when she spoke. “Straight on for Karthain.”
“But that’s dead into the wind!”
“We’re using … a private wind.”
“Fuck me sideways,” Jean muttered. “I, uh, I need somewhere to stow this cat.”
“Main deck hatch … to the middle hold.”
Jean carried his fuzzy comrade to the ship’s waist and found an access hatch, which he slid open. A narrow ladder led six or seven feet down to a dimly lit space, where Jean could see straw on the floor and pallets of some soft material.
“Perelandro’s balls, little guy,” whispered Jean, “what ever gave me the idea I could get the best of people who make their own fucking weather?”
“Mrrrrwwwww,” said the cat.
“You’re right. I am desperate. And stupid.” Jean let Regal go, and the cat landed lightly on a pallet in the semi-darkness below. “Keep your head down, puss. I think shit’s about to break weird all over the place.”
2
“CLOSE THE door firmly,” said Coldmarrow when Jean returned.
“Bolt it?”
“No. Just keep the weather out where it belongs.”
Patience was pouring pale yellow liquid from a leather skin into a clay cup as Jean came down the steps.
“Well, Jean,” said Locke, “if nothing else, at least I get a drink before I go.”
“What’s that?” said Jean.
“Several somethings for the pain,” said Patience.
“So Locke’s going to sleep through this?”
“Oh no,” said Patience. “No, he won’t be able to sleep an instant, I’m afraid.”
She held the cup to Locke’s lips, and with her assistance he managed to gulp the contents down.
“Agggggh,” he said, shaking his head. “Tastes like a dead fishmonger’s piss, siphoned out of his guts a week after the funeral.”
“It is a rather functional concoction,” allowed Patience. “Now relax. You’ll feel it take hold swiftly.”
“Ohhh,” sighed Locke, “you’re not wrong.”
Coldmarrow set a bucket of water beside the table. He then pulled Locke’s tunic off, exposing the pale skin and old scars of his upper body. It was obvious that vigor had fled from every slack strand of muscle. Coldmarrow dampened a cloth and carefully cleaned Locke’s chest, arms, and face. Patience folded and resettled the gray blanket over his lower half.
“Now,” said Patience, “certain requirements.” She retrieved an ornamented witchwood box from a corner of the cabin. At a wave from her hand, it unlocked itself and slid open, revealing nested trays of small objects, rather like a physiker’s kit.
Patience took a slim silver knife out of the box. With this, she sliced off several lengths of Locke’s damp hair, and placed them in a clay bowl held out by Coldmarrow. As the bearded man moved, his sleeves fell back far enough for Jean to see that he had four rings on his left wrist.
“Just a few deductions,” said Patience. “The outermost flourishes. Surely he could use the trimming.”
Coldmarrow held another bowl under Locke’s right hand as Patience whittled slivers from his nails. Locke murmured, rolled his head back, and sighed.
“Blood, too,” said Patience, “what little he can spare.” She pricked two of Locke’s fingers with the blade, eliciting no response from him. Jean, however, grew more and more anxious as Coldmarrow collected red drops in a third bowl.
“I hope you’re not planning to keep any of that, after this … thing is finished,” said Jean.
“Jean, please,” said Patience. “He’ll be lucky to be alive after this thing is finished.”
“We won’t do anything untoward,” said Coldmarrow. “Your friend is a valuable asset.”
“Is he now?” growled Jean. “An asset? An asset’s something you can put on a shelf or write down on a ledger, you spooky bastard. Don’t talk about him like—”
“Jean,” said Patience sharply. “Command yourself or be commanded.”
“Hey, I’m calm. Placid as pipe-smoke,” said Jean, folding his arms. “Just look at how placid I can be. What’s that you’re doing now?”
“The last thing I need,” said Patience, “is a wisp of breath.” She held a ceramic jar at Locke’s mouth for some time, then capped it and set it aside.
“Fascinating, I’m sure,” said Locke groggily. “Now get this shit out of me.”
“I can’t just will it so,” said Patience. “Life is far more easily destroyed than mended. Magic doesn’
t change that. In fact, you shouldn’t think of this as a healing at all.”
“Well, what the hell is it?” said Jean.
“Misdirection,” said Patience. “Imagine the poison as a spark smoldering in wood. If the spark becomes flame, Locke dies. We need to make it expend itself somewhere else, destroy something else. Once that power is drawn from it, the spark goes out.”
Jean watched uneasily for the next quarter of an hour as Patience and Coldmarrow used a strange-smelling black ink to paint an intricate network of lines across Locke’s face and arms and chest. Although Locke muttered from time to time, he didn’t appear to be in any greater discomfort than before.
While the ink dried, Coldmarrow fetched a tall iron candelabrum, which he set between the table and the shuttered stern windows. Patience produced three white candles from her box.
“Wax tapers, made in Camorr,” she said. “Along with an iron candle-stand, also from Camorr. All of it stolen, to establish a more powerful sympathy with your unfortunate friend.”
She rolled one candle back and forth in her hands, and its surface blurred and shimmered. Coldmarrow used Patience’s silver knife to transfer Locke’s blood and hair and nail-trimmings to the surface of the wax. There, rather than running messily down the sides as Jean would have expected, the “certain requirements” vanished smoothly into the candle.
“Effigy, I name you,” said Patience. “Blood-bearer, I create you. Shadow of a soul, deceiving vessel, I give you the flesh of a living man and not his heart-name. You are him, and not him.”
She placed the taper in the candelabrum. Then she and Coldmarrow repeated the process exactly with the two remaining candles.
“Now,” said Patience softly, “you must be still.”
“I’m not exactly fuckin’ dancing,” said Locke.
Coldmarrow picked up a coil of rope. He and Patience used this to bind Locke to the table by a dozen loops of cord between his waist and his ankles.
“One thing,” said Locke as they finished. “Before you begin, I’d like a moment alone with Jean. We’re … adherents of a god you might not want to be associated with.”
“We can respect your mysteries,” said Patience. “But don’t dawdle, and don’t disturb any of the preparations.”
She and Coldmarrow withdrew from the cabin, closing the door behind them, and Jean knelt at Locke’s side.
“That slop Patience gave me made things fuzzy for a moment, but I think I’ve got some wits back,” said Locke. “So—have I ever looked more ridiculous?”
“Have you ever looked not ridiculous?”
“Fuck you,” said Locke, smiling. “That end-likt-ge-whatever—”
“Endliktgelaben.”
“Yeah, that Endliktgelaben shit you brought up … were you just trying to piss me off, or were you serious?”
“Well … I was trying to piss you off.” Jean grimaced. “But did I mean it? I suppose. Am I right about it? I don’t know. I really hope not. But you are one gods-damned miserable brat when you decide to feel guilty about everything. I’d like that read into the record.”
“I have to tell you, Jean … I don’t really want to die. Maybe that makes me some kind of chickenshit. I meant what I said about the magi; I’d sooner piss in their faces than take gold from their hands, but all the same, I don’t want to die … I don’t!”
“Easy there,” said Jean. “Easy. All you have to do to prove it is not die.”
“Give me your left hand.”
The two of them touched hands, palm to palm. Locke cleared his throat.
“Crooked Warden,” he said, “Unnamed Thirteenth, your servant calls. I know I’m a man of so many faults that listing them here would only detain us.” Locke coughed and wiped fresh blood from his mouth. “But I meant what I said … I don’t want to die, not without a real fight, not like this. So if you could just find it in your heart to tip that scale for me one more time— Hell, if not for me, do it for Jean. Maybe his credit’s better than mine.”
“This we pray with hopeful hearts,” said Jean. He rose to his feet again. “Still scared?”
“Shitless.”
“Less chance you’ll make a mess on the table, then.”
“Bastard.” Locke closed his eyes. “Call them back. Let’s get on with this.”
3
JEAN WATCHED, moments later, as Patience and Coldmarrow took up positions on either side of Locke.
“Unlock the dreamsteel,” said Patience.
Coldmarrow reached down the front of his tunic and pulled out a silvery pendant on a chain. At his whisper of command, pendant and chain alike turned to brightly rippling liquid, which ran in a stream down his fingers, coalescing in a ball that quivered in his cupped hand.
“Quicksilver?” said Jean.
“Hardly,” said Patience. “Quicksilver poisons the wits of those who handle it. Dreamsteel is something of ours. It shapes itself to our thoughts, and it’s harmless as water … mostly.”
The magi spread their arms over the table. Slender threads of dreamsteel sprouted from the shimmering mass in Coldmarrow’s hand and slid forward, falling through the gaps between his fingers. They landed on Locke’s chest, not with careless splashing but with uncanny solidity. Though the stuff ran like water, the flow was slow and dreamlike.
The thin silvery streams conformed to the black lines painted across Locke’s upper body. Steadily, sinuously, the threads of liquid metal crept across the design, into every curve and whorl. When at last the delicate work was complete and the final speck of dreamsteel fell from Coldmarrow’s hand, every line on Locke’s skin had been precisely covered with a minuscule layer of rippling silver.
“This will feel rather strange,” said Patience.
She and Coldmarrow clenched their fists, and instantly the complex tracery of dreamsteel leapt up in a thousand places, exploding off Locke’s skin. Locke arched his back, only to be pressed gently back down by the hands of the magi. The dreamsteel settled as a forest of needles.
Like the victim of a mauling by some metallic porcupine, Locke now had countless hair-thin silver shafts embedded bloodlessly in his skin, running along the painted lines.
“Cold,” said Locke. “ ’That’s awfully damn cold!”
“The dreamsteel is where it needs to be,” said Patience. She picked up the jar she had used to catch Locke’s exhaled breath and approached the candelabrum.
“Effigy, I kindle you,” she said, opening the jar and wafting it past the three candles. “Breath-sharer, I give you the wind of a living man but not his heart-name. You are him, and not him.”
She gestured with her right hand, and the wicks of the three candles burst into flickering white flame.
She then resumed her place at Locke’s side. She and Coldmarrow put their right hands together, fingertip to fingertip, over Locke’s chest. The silver thread that Patience had used earlier reappeared, and by deft movements Jean could barely follow the two magi bound their hands together in a cat’s cradle. Jean shuddered, remembering that the Falconer had wielded a silver thread of his own.
Patience and Coldmarrow then placed their free hands on Locke’s arms.
“Whatever happens now, Locke,” said Patience, “remember your shame and anger. Stay angry with me, if you must. Hate me and my son and all the magi of Karthain with everything you’ve got, or you won’t live to get up off this table.”
“Quit trying to scare me,” said Locke. “I’ll see you when this is over.”
“Crooked Warden,” murmured Jean to himself, “you’ve heard Locke’s plea, now hear mine. Gandolo, Wealth-Father, I was born to merchants and beg to be remembered. Venaportha, Lady With Two Faces, surely you’ve had some fun with us before. Give us a smile now. Perelandro, forgiving and merciful, we might not have served you truly, but we put your name on every set of lips in Camorr.
“Aza Guilla,” he whispered, feeling a nervous trickle of sweat slide down his forehead, “Lady Most Kind, I peeked up your skirts a little,
but you know my heart was in the right place. Please have urgent business elsewhere tonight.”
There was an itch at the back of Jean’s neck; the same eerie sensation he had felt before in the presence of the Falconer, and when the magi had tormented him and Locke in the Night Market of Tal Verrar. Patience and Coldmarrow were deep in concentration.
“Ah,” gasped Locke. “Ah!”
A metallic taste grew in Jean’s mouth, and he gagged, only to discover that his throat had gone dry. The top of his mouth felt as raspy as paper. What had happened to his spit?
“Hells,” said Locke, arching his back. “Oh, this is … this is worse than cold.…”
The timbers of the cabin bulkheads creaked, as though the ship were being tossed about, though all of Jean’s senses told him the Sky-Reacher was plodding along as slowly and smoothly as ever. Then the rattling began, faintly at first, but soon the yellow alchemical lanterns were shaking and the shadows in the room wobbled.
Locke moaned. Patience and Coldmarrow leaned forward, keeping Locke’s arms pinned, while their joined hands intricately wove and unwove the silver thread. The sight would have been mesmerizing in calm circumstances, but Jean was far from calm. His stomach roiled as though he had eaten rotten oysters and they were clamoring for release.
“Dammit,” Jean whispered, and bit on his knuckles just as he’d promised. The pain helped drive back the rising tide of nausea, but the atmosphere of the room was growing stranger. The lanterns rattled now like kettles on a high boil, and the white flames of the candles flared and danced to an unfelt breeze.
Locke moaned again, louder than before, and the thousand silvery points of light embedded in his upper body made eerie art as he strained at his ropes.
There was a sizzling sound, then a whip-like crack. The alchemical lanterns shattered, spraying glass across the cabin along with puffs of sulfurous-smelling vapor. Jean flinched, and the Bondsmagi reeled as lantern fragments rattled onto the floor around them.
“I’ve been poisoned a lot,” muttered Locke, for no apparent reason.
“Help,” hissed Coldmarrow in a strained voice.