The Lotus Thief novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Lacquer Box
Ton slips into the imperial bath chamber at midday to steal the Nam Kwan map and finds Crown Prince Bua already in the water. Bua catches his wrist and calls the guard.
Midday was the safest hour in the imperial palace.
The guards ate then. The ministers slept. The corridors smelled of rice steam and hot stone.
Ton had counted the patrols for six days.
Two men on the east wall. One at the well. Nobody on the bath-house roof.
He came over that roof with his sandals tied to his sash.
The tiles were hot enough to sting through his socks.
Below him the bath chamber breathed steam up through a vent, and the steam smelled of sandalwood and lime.
The lacquer box sat on a shelf behind the steam, where the prince's attendants left it.
Everyone in the city knew the story. The map to Nam Kwan lived in that box.
Nobody knew Ton knew it.
He had heard it from a drunk map-seller in the lower town, who had heard it from a maid, who had heard it from a eunuch who had once carried that box across the courtyard.
Six people in the palace knew where the box sat. Now seven.
Ton dropped into the chamber and landed soft on the wet tiles.
Steam rolled over the pool and hid the far wall.
He crossed to the shelf and lifted the box down.
It was warm from the room and heavier than it looked.
The lacquer was chipped at one corner, old, dark red under the dust.
"Put that down."
The voice came from the water.
Ton turned.
A man stood chest-deep in the pool, steam beading on his shoulders.
Black hair swept back, wet. Water running down a high collarbone.
The prince.
Bua.
Ton had seen him once, at a distance, riding through the gate with his father's guard.
He looked different without the coat. Younger. Harder to look away from.
"You're the one from the west market," Bua said. "The herb stall."
"I sell roots, Your Highness."
"You sell roots with a knife in your sleeve and a lockpick in your hair."
Ton's hand went up to his hair before he could stop it.
The pick was there, tucked under the knot.
Bua waded to the pool's edge without hurrying.
Water slid off his chest and off his arms.
"You came over the roof. The door's bolted from the inside."
"I didn't want to disturb you."
"Six days," Bua said. "You've been walking the outer wall for six days. My captain noticed on the second."
Ton set the box down on the shelf, slow, the way you set down something you might need again.
"Then your captain's better than mine."
"My captain is better than most."
Bua climbed out of the pool.
He didn't reach for a robe. He stood there dripping on the tiles, water pooling around his feet.
The steam thinned between them.
"Open it," Bua said.
"What?"
"The box. Open it."
Ton lifted the lid.
Inside was a folded cloth map, old, the ink gone brown, and a ring of brass keys that didn't belong to any door in the palace.
Bua looked at the map for a long moment.
Then he looked at Ton.
"Who sent you?"
"Nobody."
"Everyone who comes over my roof was sent."
Ton closed the lid.
"I have a sister. She coughs blood in the night. The physicians in the lower town want silver I don't have."
"And the map to a lake in a forest pays for that?"
"The map is worth more than the cure."
Bua's mouth moved, not quite a smile.
"So you're a thief with a reason. That's worse."
He crossed the tiles and stopped close enough that Ton felt the heat off his skin.
"Give me your wrist."
"Why?"
"Because I'm going to hold it while I call the guard, and I'd rather not have to chase you wet."
Ton's hand moved before his mind did.
He had the pick out of his hair and against the prince's throat in half a breath.
Bua didn't step back.
He stood there with the point of it under his jaw and the water still running down his neck.
"Faster than my captain," he said. "Still not fast enough."
His hand closed around Ton's wrist.
The grip was warm and absolute, thumb on the bone, fingers on the pulse.
Ton could have pulled. He had pulled out of worse.
He didn't.
He stood in the steam with his arm caught and his own heartbeat loud under the prince's thumb.
The pick pressed a small white line into Bua's throat.
Neither of them looked away.
"I could cut you," Ton said.
"You could try."
"I've done it before."
"To men who were asleep."
Ton said nothing.
Bua's thumb moved once along the inside of his wrist, slow, like he was reading something written there.
"You're shaking," Bua said.
"It's the steam."
"It's not the steam."
Somewhere past the wall a bell rang for the noon change of guard.
Ton heard the sandals before he saw anyone.
Two of them, coming down the corridor, unhurried.
Bua heard them too. His eyes didn't move off Ton's face.
"GUARD," Bua shouted, and his voice carried out over the pool and through the door and into the corridor beyond.
The sandals broke into a run.
Ton's wrist stayed in his hand.
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