The Quantum Thief

‘I have been thinking too,’ she says. ‘I think the thing I like best about you is that you drive the elders up the wall. It’s fun to watch. And not having any entanglement between us, no strings. And being with someone who is a little slow, like you.’ She sticks her tongue out at him and brushes a lock of hair off his forehead. ‘Dim but pretty.’

Isidore takes a short, sharp breath.

‘I’m kidding about that last part,’ Pixil says. ‘Sort of.’

They sit still for a while, side by side.

‘See, this wasn’t hard,’ Pixil says. ‘We should have done this ages ago.’ She looks at Isidore. ‘Are you sad?’

Isidore nods. ‘A little bit.’

She hugs him, hard. The armour plates press into Isidore’s chest painfully, but he hugs her back anyway.

‘All right,’ she says and gets up in a clatter of metal. ‘There are monsters I need to go and kill. And you have a thief to catch, or so I hear.’

‘Yes, about that.’

‘Uh huh?’

‘Remember when you said that you could tell me who the Gentleman was? Were you kidding about that too?’

‘I never kid,’ Pixil says, brandishing her sword, ‘about matters of love and war.’

Isidore walks to the edge of the Dust District and sends a co-memory to the tzaddik. I know who you are, it says. Then he sits on a deck chair in a small square, just near the boundary where the colony begins, where stone becomes diamond.

He closes his eyes and listens to the water. He lets his mind drift with the sound. And suddenly, he feels like the water, flowing over a rock, feeling the shape that has been eluding him. It unfolds in his head like a giant snowflake. And it makes him angry.

There is a gust of wind. He opens his eyes. The Gentleman steps from a heat ripple. For a moment, her foglet aura is visible in the spray of water from the fountain. Her mask glitters in the sun.

‘This had better be important,’ she says. ‘I am very busy.’

Isidore smiles. ‘Mme Raymonde, I apologise. But there are things I need to talk to you about.’

The silver mask melts into the freckled face of a red-haired woman as she locks them within a tight gevulot contract. She looks tired. ‘All right,’ she says, folding her arms. Her real voice is like the ringing of a bell, deep and musical. ‘I’m listening. How did you—’

‘I cheated,’ Isidore says. ‘I called in a favour.’

‘Pixil, of course. That girl could never keep her mouth shut. I was counting on the fact that you would be too proud to ever ask.’

‘There are things more important than pride,’ Isidore says. ‘Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think.’

‘I take it we are not here to admire your cleverness. Nor, apparently, to hear thanks for saving your mind. You are welcome, by the way.’ Her voice is cold, and she does not meet his gaze.

‘No,’ he says. ‘We are here to solve a mystery. But I need your help for that.’

‘Wait.’ She passes him a co-memory. He accepts it, and suddenly remembers a pungent smell that makes him think of the rotten food that his father once left in his studio.

‘What was that?’ he asks.

‘Something that the whole Oubliette will have soon,’ she says. ‘Continue.’

‘I’ve been thinking about the word cryptarch ever since you mentioned it,’ Isidore says. ‘They manipulate the exomemory, am I right?’

‘Yes. We know how it works now: they have a master key of some sort that lets them read anyone who has been a Quiet.’

‘And you fight them.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have been working with the thief. Jean le Flambeur. Whoever he really is.’

She looks surprised, but nods. ‘Yes. But—’

‘I’ll come to that. What he did to Unruh was obtaining evidence, wasn’t it? Comparing his mind before and after the resurrection system, to see if it had been changed. You got him to do your dirty work for you. An offworld criminal.’

Raymonde covers her mouth with a fist. ‘Yes, yes we did. But you don’t understand—’

‘Make me understand,’ Isidore says. ‘Because I know what he wants. And I can make sure he never gets it. I can let everyone know what you did. So much for trust in the tzaddikim then.’

‘Trust,’ she says. ‘It’s not about trust anymore. It’s about justice. We can beat them. We finally have a weapon to beat them. All those cases we worked on, gogol pirates, offworld tech – it was all them. And they have done worse things, things we don’t even know about. Every decision of the Voice. It’s not the Revolution dream. We are still slaves.’

She walks to the steps and stands over Isidore. ‘It is still a game to you. No wonder you got along with the zoku girl so well. Wake up. Yes, you won, you beat me; you worked it out. But the rest of us, we have bigger things to do. Not just another case, but justice, for everyone.’

Her eyes are hard. ‘You have never had to fight. You have always been protected. I started to work with you to show you that—’ She bites her lip.

‘To show me what?’ Isidore asks. ‘What did you want to show me, mother?’

She still looks like a complete stranger to him. The memories she denied him remain closed.