In the Lantern Quarter, there are three things everyone knows.

The lanterns are never extinguished.

The rooftops are faster than the streets.

And if something small and shiny has gone missing, check Pockets.

The last rule is somewhat unfair. Sometimes Pockets takes things that are neither small nor shiny.

Pockets is a raccoon.

He is round, cheerful, magnificently striped, and the proud owner of a little blue vest containing more pockets than any creature reasonably requires. Locke made the vest for him. This remains one of Locke's greatest regrets.

For Pockets believes a pocket exists for one purpose. To contain things. Whose things they are is, in Pockets' opinion, a separate and considerably less interesting question.

Locke, meanwhile, is a Rogue. A very good one.

He can cross a tiled roof without disturbing a sleeping pigeon. He can open seven kinds of locks with a single pick. He knows which floorboards creak, which windows stick, and which alleyways connect despite every map insisting otherwise.

He can disappear into a crowd, climb a wall without a ladder, and once escaped a locked room using nothing but a bootlace, a teaspoon and an extremely annoyed goose.

Locke does not discuss the goose.

At night, when the moon rises above the crooked towers, Locke and Pockets travel across the rooftops of the Lantern Quarter.

Locke carries his lockpicks. Pockets carries everything else. Buttons. Bent coins. Bits of ribbon. A brass bell with no clapper. Three blue marbles. Half a buckle. Several keys belonging to locks no one has seen in years. And spoons. An unreasonable number of spoons.

"Pockets."

The raccoon looked up. Locke held out his paw. Pockets blinked.

"The spoon."

Pockets glanced toward his vest.

"The spoon you acquired from the baker." Pockets slowly produced a spoon.

"The other one." Another spoon appeared. Locke stared. Pockets smiled.

"Both."

Pockets reluctantly surrendered them.

"You cannot simply take things because you find them interesting."

Pockets pointed toward Locke's collection of lockpicks.

"Those are tools."

Pockets pointed toward the spoons. Locke opened his mouth. Then, closed it.

"That is different."

Pockets appeared unconvinced.

One evening, the Lantern Quarter awoke to an unusual problem. The great clock at the center of the Quarter had stopped. This was more serious than it sounds. The Clocktower did more than tell time.

Every evening, precisely as the sun disappeared beyond the western roofs, its great golden mechanism sent a pulse of magic through hundreds of lanterns suspended above the streets.

One by one, they awakened. Gold spilled across bridges. Windows glittered. Alleys that twisted beneath the city filled with warm light. The Lantern Quarter became what it had always been. A city of stars built upon stone.

But that evening, the clock did not strike. The lanterns remained dark. People gathered beneath the tower. Clockmakers arrived carrying boxes of tools. City officials arrived carrying clipboards.

No one found the problem.

"The mechanism is jammed somewhere inside the upper tower," the oldest clockmaker finally announced.

"Then go inside," someone said.

"We cannot."

The clockmaker pointed upward.

Years earlier, part of the tower's inner staircase had collapsed. The upper mechanism could only be reached through a maintenance door near the clock face. The door had not been opened in decades. Its key had been lost.

A Mage stepped forward.

"I can break the lock."

The clockmaker nearly fainted.

"The lock is bound to the tower!"

"Ah."

"Break it and you may destroy the clock."

Everyone looked upward. The tower rose above them, narrow and crooked, its stone walls disappearing into the darkening sky.

Someone would have to climb the outside. Someone would have to reach the maintenance ledge. And someone would have to open a lock no one had touched in half a century.

Locke smiled. Finally. A sensible problem.

Minutes later, he was climbing.

He moved across chimneys, drainpipes and narrow stone ledges as easily as another cat might cross a kitchen floor. Pockets followed. Less gracefully.

Locke leapt silently onto an awning. Pockets landed inside a flowerpot. Locke climbed a drainpipe. Pockets attempted the same route, slid six feet downward and accidentally stole someone's sock from a clothesline.

"Leave it."

Pockets tucked the sock into his vest.

"Pockets."

The sock disappeared deeper. Locke sighed and continued climbing.

At last, they reached the maintenance ledge. The lock was enormous. Locke knelt before it.

"Beautiful."

Pockets sat beside him.

Locke selected a pick. Too narrow. Another. Too short. A third. Wrong shape. His smile disappeared.

The lock was ancient, built around a strange star-shaped mechanism unlike anything he had encountered before.

Locke tried again. Nothing. Below them, the Lantern Quarter grew darker. He tried another pick. Then another.

Nothing.

For the first time in many years, Locke found himself staring at a lock he could not open.

Pockets tugged his cloak. 

"Not now."

Tug.

"Pockets."

Tug.

Locke turned. The raccoon was holding a bent piece of metal.

"No."

Pockets offered it again.

"That is rubbish."

Pockets frowned.

Locke returned to the lock.

Click.

Nothing.

Scrape.

Nothing.

Pockets tugged again. Locke sighed.

"What?"

The raccoon held up the bent metal. It was the broken half of an old buckle. Locke had seen Pockets carrying it for months. He had repeatedly attempted to throw it away. Pockets had repeatedly rescued it.

Locke looked at the buckle. Then at the lock. Then back at the buckle.

"No."

Pockets nodded enthusiastically.

"Absolutely not."

Pockets shoved it into his paw.

Locke stared at it.

The metal was broad where his picks were narrow. Curved where they were straight. One broken edge ended in an odd little hook. Locke slowly looked toward the star-shaped mechanism.

"Hmm."

Pockets beamed. Locke inserted the buckle. It fit. Not perfectly. But enough. He twisted. Something moved.

Locke froze. Pockets froze.

He turned the buckle slightly farther.

Click.

The ancient door swung open.

Pockets threw both paws into the air.

Locke stared at the broken buckle.

"Do not become insufferable."

Inside, the clock mechanism filled nearly the entire tower. Great brass gears climbed through the darkness. Chains hung between enormous wheels. Springs thicker than Locke's tail curled behind iron plates.