The Quantum Thief

Pixil touches the gate. Honey-coloured daylight pours out. ‘The right thing,’ she says. Then she steps through, pulling Isidore in after her.

20 TWO THIEVES AND A DETECTIVE

The darkness rebuilds us. For a moment, I feel like I’m being sketched by a pen, feeling returning to my flesh and skin and limbs, one by one. And then I can see again.

A cat stares at me. It is standing on its hind legs, wearing boots and a hat. A tiny sword hangs from a broad belt. Its eyes look glassy and dead, and I realise they are glass, glinting golden and bright. Then the cat moves jerkily, takes off its hat and bows with mechanical flourish.

‘Good afternoon, master,’ it says with a whirring, high-pitched voice. ‘Welcome back.’

We are in the grand gallery of a palace. Paintings hang on the gilded walls, and crystal chandeliers glitter in the ceiling. There are wide windows opening to an Italian terrace, with golden, late afternoon sunlight pouring in, giving everything an amber glow. I am on the same level as the cat, hunched on the floor. A small mercy, my leg is no longer a stump. Like le Roi, I’m dressed in a costume of some ancient courtier, with coattails, brass buttons, ridiculously tight hose and a ruffled shirt. But it is to him that the cat is bowing. And he still holds the revolver in his hand.

I tense to leap, but he is faster. He strikes me across the face with the butt of the gun, and bizarrely, the pain is more real here than in the real world. I feel the metal digging into my flesh and cheekbone, and I almost pass out. My mouth fills with blood.

Le Roi gives me a nudge with his foot. ‘Take this creature away,’ he says. ‘And find me something to wear.’

The cat bows again and claps its paws together. The tap is barely audible, but there are distant foosteps, and a door opens.

I struggle up to a sitting position and spit blood at le Roi’s feet. ‘Bastard,’ I say. ‘I was prepared for you. There are traps here you don’t know about. You’ll see.’

‘Now, that is a pathetic attempt, not worthy of either of us,’ says le Roi. ‘Be grateful that I find it amusing to keep you around. As a distant memory, perhaps.’

He gestures with the gun, and strong, unyielding hands lift me off the floor and start dragging me away. Wax figures: a man in an early twentieth-century suit, with a thick moustache, and a woman I don’t recognise, dressed as a maid. Both have glass eyes and yellow, clumsily sculpted wax faces. I try to struggle, but I am no match for their mechanical strength.

‘Let me go!’ I shout. ‘He is not your master, I am!’ But clearly, the gun grants le Roi more authority than I can muster here. ‘Bastard!’ I shout. ‘Come back and fight!’

The creatures drag me down a corridor with open doors. There seem to be hundreds of them: inside, silent wax figures enact scenes in slow motion. They strike a chord: a young man in a prison cell, reading a book. A dark tent, with a woman sitting in a corner, humming to herself, preparing food over a pitiful fire. I glimpse a wax-faced nude Raymonde, playing the piano with slow, clumsy fingers. They are all dead and mechanical, and suddenly I realise what a distant memory could mean.

But it is not until they take me to the workshop, with the moulds and the pool of hot wax and the sharp instrument that I start screaming.

There is a discontinuity. When it ends, Isidore is still holding Pixil’s hand. He blinks. The air smells of dust and wax. They are in what looks like a torturer’s workshop, but with high, ornate windows opening to a garden. The thief is strapped to a long table, with fairy tale creatures looming above him: a wolf in the clothes of a woman, a moustached man and a maid in costumes from ancient Earth history. They are holding sharp, curving knives in paws and waxy hands.

Pixil leaps forward. Her sword comes out of its scabbard with a zing and slices left and right, through wax and brass. A furry head flies into the air; cogs and metal spill out of the back of the man’s pierced cranium. The wax creatures fall to the floor in pieces. Then she places the tip of the blade gently on the thief’s throat.

‘Don’t move,’ she says. ‘This is a Realmspace sword. As you can see, it adapts to this place quite nicely.’

‘I was just going to say thank you,’ the thief wheezes. Then he grins at Isidore. ‘M. Beautrelet. Delighted to see you here. We have met before. Jean le Flambeur, at your service. But – obviously – your lady friend has the, uh, advantage of me.’

‘What is happening here?’ Isidore asks.

‘The cryptarch – le Roi – controls this place, I’m sorry to say.’ He blinks. ‘But how did you get here? Of course, your zoku ring,’ he says. ‘It is amazing how useful kleptomaniac habits can be, sometimes – watch out!’

Isidore turns. He catches a glimpse of a furry creature, darting across the floor. ‘Catch it!’ the thief shouts. ‘It has your ring!’

Here they come, Perhonen says. I can’t hold them anymore.