Locke bit the inside of his lip as she put her arms around Jean and set her head against the lapels of his jacket. After the tiniest pause, Jean returned the embrace, his own arms easily folding around her and overlapping in the middle of her back.

“I’ll just need a moment to make sure everything’s still in my pockets,” he said as they parted. She laughed.

“What, you don’t think I’m serious?” Jean examined his jacket carefully. He didn’t bother grinning to lighten the moment.

“Ahh,” Sabetha said, stepping away from both of them and folding her hands in front of her. “So how long did it take you to figure it out?”

“About a minute,” said Locke.

“Not bad.”

“A minute too long. The initials on that purse were cheeky as hell. But that getup was excellent.”

“You liked it? Good. It wasn’t easy, taking a few inches off my regular height.”

“One of the hardest things in false-facing,” said Locke with a nod. “You were showing off.”

“No more than you, before we were done. Still feigning illness in public.”

“It worked,” said Locke. “After a fashion. But you’d seen it before; surely that’s why you weren’t caught too off-guard.”

“That,” she said, “and you two should remember I can still read most of your hand signals.”

Locke exchanged a glance with Jean; the fact that he hadn’t been alone in neglecting this point was little comfort.

“You get that one for free,” she said.

“So why’d you do it?” said Locke.

“I wanted to see you both,” she said, glancing away. “I found that I was impatient. But I wasn’t ready for … for this, just yet.”

“We might have been a little late for this appointment if they’d thrown us in a hole,” said Jean.

“Tsk,” she said. “You’re insulting us all. As if you couldn’t have clever-dicked your way clear of those imbeciles before lunch. After all, your friend Josten still has his ardent spirits license. Clearly you two haven’t forgotten how to stay on your toes.”

“That was cute,” said Locke.

“As was your riposte. It’s a wonder to me, how many people are so willing to believe the best of the laws that they live under.”

“They haven’t had our advantages. Anyway, you shouldn’t have sent a fat, good-natured fellow for that sort of work,” said Locke. “You should have arranged to put the warrant in the hands of some shriveled tent-peg like your Vordratha.”

“Isn’t he a treasure? Such a smirking dry bitch of a man. He can’t have spent more than a minute with you, and you’d crawl over broken glass to kick him in the precious bits, I’d wager.”

“Point me to the glass,” muttered Jean.

“Perhaps … once he’s given me a good six weeks of work.” She tossed her hair back and matched gazes with Jean. “Jean, may I ask you to … allow Locke and myself a few moments alone? I told Vordratha to have a chair set up just outside the door.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

“Don’t sit in it, then.”

Jean’s only response was to clear his throat.

“May I beg to point out,” said Sabetha, “that the last reasonable chance you had to be cautious was when you stepped out of your carriage? I could have twenty armed men crouched in the next room. If I did, why would I bother to ask for privacy?”

“Well,” said Jean with a sigh. “I suppose I can feign civility with the best of them.”

He was gone in a moment. The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Locke and Sabetha alone with four feet of darkened floor between them.

“Have I offended him?” said Sabetha.

“No.”

“He seemed pleased to see me for a moment, and now he’s sour.”

“Jean had … Jean met someone. And lost her, in the worst way. So don’t think … it’s just that he can’t be terribly at ease, concerning the matters that lie between me and you.”

“What matters could you be referring to?”

“Please don’tdo that.”

“Do what?”

“Invite me to name my troubles as though they were somehow unknown to you.”

“The device you’re mistaking me for is called a mirror, Locke. I don’t reflect your feelings as well as you seem to imagine, so I’m afraid you may have to name them for everyone’s benefit.”

“Five years, Sabetha! Five years!”

“I can count! And so what? I’m not leaping into your arms? I’m not tearing your clothes off under one of these tables? You may have noticed that I passed those five years without crawling back to Camorr in search of you. Nor did I find youexactly dogging my heels!”

“I meant … I meant to—”

“You meant,” she said. “There’s a worthless coin, Locke. The past isn’t something we can negotiate. I might not have come back for you, but you certainly didn’t strike out after me.”

“There were difficulties.”

“Oh,” she said, “so you’rethe man whose life develops complications! I’ve so longed to meet you; the rest of us here in this world have it much too easy, I’m afraid.”

“Calo and Galdo are dead,” said Locke.

Sabetha leaned back against the nearest table, folded her arms, and stared out the windows for some time. “I had my suspicions,” she said at last.

“When Jean and I came alone to Karthain?”

“I passed through Camorr about a year ago,” she said. “I thought it best not to announce myself. It’s like it was in the old days, before Barsavi. Thirty capas and no Secret Peace. I heard some confusing things … You’d been cast out by Barsavi’s usurper, and no one had seen you since the mess.”

“The hammer came down on everyone,” said Locke. “Capa Raza used us, then betrayed us. We were all meant to die, but they only got the Sanzas. The Sanzas, and a younger friend .… We had a new apprentice. You’d have liked him.”

“Well,” she said, “whoever he was, you certainly did him a grand turn as a garrista, didn’t you?”

“I’d have died, Sabetha, I’d have diedif it would have saved them! I didn’t have a fucking chance. And some help you were, wherever the hell you’d gone off to—”

“How could I stay?” she said. “How could I help you pretend to keep house? You wanted everything the same—same glass burrow, same temple, same schemes, and now I learn that you even started taking apprentices. Boys, of course.”

“Of all the damned unfair—”

“Roots are for vegetables, Locke, not criminals. Chains had enough blind spots of his own, thank you very much. The last thing I ever could have done was prance along hand in hand to your pale imitation!

“I might have been able to live with you as a partner,” she continued. “As priest, garrista, father figure, no. Not for an instant! Gods, that fucking pile of money Chains left us was the biggest curse he could have dreamed up if he’d spent his whole life planning it. I wish he’d thrown it into the sea. I wish we’d burned that temple ourselves.”

“We did burn it ourselves,” said Locke. “And I didthrow the money in the sea.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had the whole mess of it sunk in Camorr’s Old Harbor. As Calo and Galdo’s death-offering.”

“It’s really all gone?”

“To the sharks and the gods, every last copper.”

“Thank you for that,” she whispered, and she reached out to set the back of her right hand against his cheek.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, reached up, and felt the heat surge in his blood when she didn’t draw away from the pressure of his hand on hers.

“For losing everything?” he said

“For the Sanzas.”

“Ah.”

“You’ve grown some lines since I saw you last,” she said.

“It was a bad poisoning,” said Locke. “And it wasn’t my first.”

“I can’t imagine how anyone as charming and easy to get along with as yourself could ever incite someone to poison you,” she said. “I amsorry about Calo and Galdo. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help. For what it’s worth.”

“I suppose I’m sorry I was such a shitty garrista,” said Locke.

“Maybe in a better life I could have stayed to watch these lines grow on you. Perhaps put them there myself,” she said with a thin smile. “But it’s not as though I didn’t arm you with the clearest possible expression of my feelings before I chose to go.”