“You’ve grown your hair out since I last had the misfortune of seeing you. Good call. You should let it hang in your face more, though. Idiocy like yours shouldn’t be so visible.
“You know what, old man?”
“Probably, but go ahead.”
“Kerf’s balls but you are an annoying prick.”
“Don’t be crude.”
“I heard you say ‘fuck’ the last time I was here.”
“It’s not crude when old people swear. It’s charmingly eccentric.”
Behind him, his acolyte Jessep rolled his eyes hard enough that I almost heard them squeaking in their sockets.
“I’m not going to play this game with you. I don’t have the time or the patience.” I dug an emerald out of my pocket and put it on the desk in front of him. “That’s for the services of your acolyte there, for three days. And for you to stay the hells away from me.”
“Oh, you can have the pimple mill for as long as you like, if you swear not to break him. But I am the high priest of this temple, you simpleton, and I go where I like and say what I like. Now, I’m going to ask a question and you’re going to answer it, or you can take that jewel and stick it in any of your orifices that you so choose.”
Despite myself I let out a deep and necessary sigh. “What’s your question, then?”
“Why do you want to know about avatars? And don’t fucking lie. I can smell a lie like a fart in a closed carriage.”
“Because I am one, now.”
“Whose?”
“That’s two questions.”
“Aw, boo hoo. Call the watch.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Jessep, throw this trash out.”
Jessep looked at me, focusing on my more prominent scars. Then he looked at my waist. Then back at me.
“I’m vastly underqualified for such a task, master,” he concluded.
“Gorm on a stick. You’re fired, boy.”
“You already fired me, master. Months ago.”
“Well fuck me if I wasn’t spot on, then, you useless numpty.” He turned back to me. “Tell me or fuck off, girl.”
“Kalara. Formerly known as the Knife That Parts the Night. Sometimes referred to as Chuckles.”
He sat back in his chair, looking slightly stunned. “Lagna’s reward. I knew you were stupid, but fuck me. That’s breath-taking idiocy, that is.”
“Don’t you have a nap to take or something?”
“I’m going to tell you I told you so, because that’s just who I am: The last time I saw you I told you the Eightfold was as crazy as a plateful of hair and dangerous as fuck. I fucking told you the Blades were trouble, you nitwit. And then you go and get hitched to one? I have never in my long, long life met anyone as daft as you.”
“Thank you. Thanks so much.” I started to get out of my chair, but he reached over his desk and grabbed my wrist with a twig-like hand. I could have broken his grip, easily. But I might also have broken bits of him while I was at it, he was so physically fragile.
“I’m also going to give you a small piece of advice. I’ve learned over a long, long, long life that when it comes to getting tangled up with Powers, the only way out is through. Do you understand my meaning?”
“If you mean I can’t outrun the shitstorm, then yeah, I figured that out.”
“No, that’s not what I mean, shitbrain. Of course it’s too late for you. Now it’s about everyone else. I mean you must decide where the lines are drawn, and then you keep to them, whatever comes. Whatever the cost. Because if you do not, you will be well and truly lost, for all time, and fuck knows how many you might drag down with you.”
He was a fragile old coot, but his gaze was steely and unblinking. I nodded, and he let me go. Then he stood up, slowly and painfully.
“Jessep, help this dumbfuck learn just how much trouble she’s in.”
“Are you going for a nap, then, master?”
“How the hells am I supposed to sleep after this? I’m going out to get pickled.”
IT DIDN’T TAKE THREE days. There was enough material that I could have spent weeks wading through it all. I didn’t have weeks, and I didn’t want to be around the old bastard any longer than I had to. So I had Jessep identify the most important, most useful books, and then when he went to relieve himself, I stole them.
What? I’m a thief. And anyway, I left a note promising to return them. The ‘if I survive’ part was silent.
It was midmorning when I exited Lagna’s temple, which meant it was nearly lunch time, which in turn meant it was close enough to afternoon for a drink. That’s just logic. I walked down the steps and crossed the street, then walked down the short block to Crow street. I whistled up a hack and kneed a dirty bastard who tried to pick my pocket while I waited, hands full of freshly pilfered books. He stumbled off into the crowd, hunched over and groaning.
Gods, I would miss Lucernis.
Eventually a hack stopped. I opened the door with difficulty, let the books tumble to the floorboards and climbed in after.
I didn’t see him until I’d got the door closed and the carriage started rolling. Sneaky fuck. He wasn’t blurry shadows, this time, either – he appeared to be just as much flesh and blood as I was. That included the sewn-together lips, sadly.
“We still have not finished our conversation,” said Bath, somehow, through the stitches.
“Kerf’s weeping prick! Don’t do that.”
“It is considered bad form for an avatar to swear by another god. Or to take any god’s name in vain, for that matter.”
“Well, Chuckles doesn’t have a cock as far as I’m aware, and if she doesn’t like it, she can suck the one I also don’t have.”
He grimaced. It was horrifying. “I’m not sure even I can tease out the logic in what you just said.”
“What do you want, Bath?”
He sighed, and looked out the grimy window. “I wanted to tell you that you were right.”
“Well of course I was. What about, specifically?”
“Lyra.”
Oh, yes. Mour’s avatar. The reason I’d called him a shitloaf.
“I’ve blamed her for Mour’s destruction, you see. If she had not asked for Mour’s intercession during the Cataclysm, Mour would still exist.”
“And an entire city would have been destroyed.”
He looked back at me, and his face was solemn. “Listen carefully, Amra Thetys. You are an avatar, now, inextricably bound up in the affairs of the gods, whether you like it or not. You can no longer think and act as a mundane mortal.”
“Are you saying that the life of one goddess is worth more than the lives of hundreds of thousands of mortals?”
“In a very real way, yes I am.”
“Well thanks for letting me know how you feel.”
“You understand so little, and yet you are so sure of yourself. When a mortal dies, their soul, their essence continues in one form or another. Even those unfortunates devoured by demonkind will re-emerge, eventually. They can never be truly destroyed. But when a god perishes, Amra, it is with finality. It is truly the end. You equate life with existence. You must expand your understanding. Your old notions of how the world works will no longer suffice.”
“You expect me to think like a god? I’m sorry, but that’s just not in me, Bath.”
“I expect nothing of you, Amra. You are not my avatar, after all.”
“Then what do you want? You said I was right, and then pointed out all the ways you think I was wrong.”
He sighed. “Mour chose to accede to Lyra’s petition. That is what our conversation made me face. My... grudge against the avatar was born of the pain of loss. It was not equitable. And it tarnishes Mour’s sacrifice.”
“Well I’m real glad I could help you get to that place in your heart, Bath. I know that sounds like sarcasm, but I mean it. Now, does that mean you’re going to help me?”
He smiled. I wished he hadn’t. “It is not my place to interfer
e in the affairs of the elevated.”
“Well thanks for nothing then, I guess.”
“Of course, I do not always know my place. Safe travels to you, Amra Thetys.”
He disappeared. On the cracked leather seat that he had just occupied was a folded scrap of paper. I took it and unfolded it, and in spidery letters was a single word: IMRIA
“Well, thanks, I guess,” I said to the air. “But you really could have been more specific.”
THIRTY-ONE
“SPLITTING UP WAS A terrible idea,” Holgren told me as we left Lucernis’s harbor, bound for Imris-port. We were standing at the taffrail, with the captain’s permission. He was an amiable sort, by which I mean he was passed out in his cabin, and the first mate was indifferent so long as we did not get in the way.
“Don’t look at me. It was your idea.” But honestly, I couldn’t see how having him with me would have helped. Visini would almost certainly have manipulated him as well, perhaps into an early grave. Scratch perhaps.
“Well anyway, let’s never do that again.”
“You know I’m fine with that, lover.”
He was looking out to sea, but I was looking back at Lucernis.
“I’ve never been exiled before,” I said. “I wonder if we’ll ever see it again.”
He put his arm around my shoulders. “I’m fairly certain you aren’t welcome in Bellaria anymore as well, though I don’t know how formal they’ve made it.”
“They can make it as formal as they like in Bellaria. I’d pay money never to return. But this is different.”
He gave my shoulder a squeeze, a gentle one since my stitches were still in. “I won’t lie and tell you that you get used to it. But I will say that, as exiles go, this one isn’t so bad.”
“There’re good ones?”
“Well, no. But there are certainly worse ones. When I was banished from Fel Radoth, my likeness and crimes were posted in every ward and district. It was all very thorough and public.”
“I bet you could go back now, though. The eye patch is a surprisingly good disguise.”
He grunted. “How you feel about Bellaria is not dissimilar to my own feelings for Fel Radoth. You couldn’t pay me enough to return. Though my banishment stung at the time, and badly.”
I watched Lucernis recede until the ship was far enough away that even the squabbling, greedy seagulls stopped trailing the ship and turned back to port.
“Visini tinkered with my mind, my memories,” I told him. This was the first time we’d really had a chance to speak at length. We’d been housed separately if comfortably in the tower. “She made me believe the plan was for you to suddenly appear and end her, as soon as she revealed herself. I know that was bullshit, now, but I still don’t know what the real plan was.”
He grunted, then chuckled.
“What?”
“I’ll tell you, but you’re going to be disappointed.”
“Spill it, you.”
“We spent weeks discussing it, Greytooth, you, and I. Analyzing what the Philosophers had tried in the past, and why they had failed. We came to the conclusion that only you can destroy the Blades, because of your connection to Abanon and her mysterious plan. We also came to the conclusion that there is no way to know what must be done to destroy a particular Blade. Your role was to trigger Visini’s trap, get her to expose herself, and then, somehow, find a way to destroy her.”
“Kerf’s hairy ears, that was a shitty plan. And I agreed to it?”
He nodded. “My role was simply to watch over you, and appear and interfere if any situation seemed likely to conclude with you being dead. A role I failed at, spectacularly, since Visini blinded me to your whereabouts as soon as you stepped off your ship.”
He put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. “I wanted to come to Lucernis the moment that happened, but Greytooth dissuaded me. He said that was likely exactly what The Blade That Binds and Blinds wanted. I knew he was right, though it was difficult to admit. I may have spoken to him using a few harsh words.”
“I’m sure he forgave you.”
“He threatened to beat me about the head until sense leaked back in.”
“See? Forgiveness!”
“Of a sort, I suppose. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the taffrail.
“Where are we going?”
“I’ve just recently been released from prison. A man has needs.”
“We were locked up for two days.”
“Your point being?”
I winked and smiled. “Who said I had a point?
The End
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Well. It’s, uh, been a while since we least heard from Amra and Hogren. According to Amazon, the first publication of Thief Who Wasn’t There was on June 5th, 2015, so at the time of this writing, it’s been four years and two days. That’s a long time to wait for a sequel. Not GRRM long, not Patrick Rothfuss long, but long. Too long. And for that I’d like to apologize and explain a bit.
When I finished Amra #4, my youngest was still a baby. I’d entered Mark Lawrence’s first ever Self Published Fantasy Blog-Off (the SPFBO) with Amra #1, and just been offered a contract with Ragnarok Publications. I’d already put Amra #4 up for pre-order when the offer was made, and so a grand total of 32 people, if I remember right, got the book before I had to take it down so that Ragnarok could issue their own versions of the series.
If memory serves, that was only supposed to take about four months. In reality it took more than a year for Amra #4 to come out.
Anyway, money was tight for us then. I mean, really, really tight. I was teaching English as a Second Language at the time in Vietnam, but they’d just put in place a new law that you had to have a degree to do so. I had a decade of experience, but no degree. I worked under the table for a while, because family’s gotta eat, but it wasn’t a sustainable situation. So I ended up moving to Cambodia for a time, where I could work legally, and at the same time worked like hell to finish up my Bachelor’s.
Long story short, Amra and Holgren’s next misadventure got put on the backburner, since I knew it wouldn’t be published by Ragnarok in any reasonable time frame and thus would pay for neither diapers nor formula. Then, by the time I left Ragnarok, it had moved from the back burner to the closet.
But I never stopped hearing it bumping around in there. Amra isn’t the kind of character who waits patiently for attention. Occasionally I would make a note, some bit of business, a scrap of conversation or some Amra-ism that came to me. But I didn’t have a book, or even the seed of a book, beyond the fact that Amra needed to start being proactive about all the Bad Things who wanted to do her harm. Basically, I had a title and not much more. When the time finally came to get focused on making this book a reality, it ended up being a far rougher ride than anything I’ve ever written before.
It has taken me roughly two years to get this book out. I’ve written and then discarded more words for it than you now hold in your hand – four previous versions went onto the scrap pile. Sometimes I had to stop, because I was completely lost and devoid of confidence. I wrote Prayers in Steel, An Unclean Strength and The Last God in the gap between Amra #4 and this book, because those books were much, much clearer in my mind and ready to go. I’ve also got another untitled and unreleased book that’s quite different from all my others done. Well, I say “done,” but it still needs lots of work. But it’s a complete story.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I’m super late with The Thief Who Went to War, and I’m super sorry, but I swear I wasn’t being lazy.
I hope you’ll judge it worth the wait.
mm
r: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
The Thief Who Went to War Page 20
