by Scott Lynch
“Cask. Indeed.” Galdo fumbled with a coin purse, heart racing. “What’s, ahhh, in this cask?”
“Ain’t wine,” said the stranger. “Ain’t a very polite lad, neither. But ten silvers is what he promised.”
“Of course.” Galdo counted rapidly, slapping bright silver disks down into the man’s open palm. “Ten for the cask. One more for forgetting all about this, hmmm?”
“Holy hell, my memory must be cacked out, because I can’t remember what you’re paying me for.”
“Good man.” Galdo slipped his purse back under his nightcloak and ran to help Calo, who had mounted the cart and was standing over a wooden cask of moderate size. The cork stopper that would ordinarily be set into the top of the barrel was gone, leaving a small dark air-hole. Calo rapped sharply on the cask three times; three faint taps came right back. With grins on their faces, the Sanza twins muscled the cask down off the cart and nodded farewell to the driver. The man remounted his cart and soon vanished into the night, whistling, his pockets jingling with more than twenty times the value of the empty cask.
“Well,” Calo said when they’d rolled the cask back to the shelter of their doorway, “this vintage is probably a little young and rough for decanting.”
“Put it in the cellar for fifty or sixty years?”
“I was thinking we might just pour it in the river.”
“Really?” Galdo drummed his fingers on the cask. “What’s the river ever done to deserve that?”
There was a series of noises from inside the cask that sounded vaguely like some sort of protest. Calo and Galdo leaned down by the air-hole together.
“Now, Bug,” Calo began, “I’m sure you have a perfectly good explanation for why you’re in there, and why we’re out here worrying ourselves sick over you.”
“It’s a magnificent explanation, really.” Bug’s voice was hoarse and echoed faintly. “You’re going to love it. But first tell me how the game went!”
“It was a thing of beauty,” said Galdo.
“Three weeks, tops, and we’re going to own this don down to his wife’s last set of silk smallclothes,” added Calo.
The boy groaned with obvious relief. “Great. Well, what happened was, there was this pack of yellowjackets heading right for you. What I did to distract them pissed them off pretty fierce, so, um, I ran for this cooper’s that I know in Old Citadel. He does business with some of the wine places upriver, so he’s got this yard of barrels just sitting around. Well, I just sort of invited myself in, jumped in one, and told him that if I could stay there until he delivered me here after Falselight, there’d be eight solons in it for him.”
“Eight?” Calo scratched his chin. “The cheeky bastard just asked for ten, and got eleven.”
“Yeah, well, that’s okay.” Bug coughed. “I got bored sitting around the cask-yard so I lifted his purse. Had about two solons worth of copper in it. So we got some back.”
“I was going to say something sympathetic about you lying around inside a cask for half the day,” said Galdo, “but that was a damn silly thing to do.”
“Oh, come on!” Bug sounded genuinely stung. “He thought I was in the cask the whole time, so why would he suspect me? And you just gave him a load of money, so why would he suspect you? It’s perfect! Locke would appreciate it.”
“Bug,” Calo said, “Locke is like a brother to us, and our love for him has no bounds. But the four most fatal words in the Therin language are ‘Locke would appreciate it.’”
“Rivaled only by ‘Locke taught me a new trick,’” added Galdo.
“The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games-”
“-is Locke Lamora-”
“-because we think the gods are saving him up for a really big death. Something with knives and hot irons-”
“-and fifty thousand cheering spectators.”
The brothers cleared their throats in unison.
“Well,” Bug said finally, “I did it and I got away with it. Can we go home now?”
“Home,” Calo mused. “Sure. Locke and Jean are going to sob over you like grandmothers when they find out you’re alive, so let’s not keep them waiting.”
“No need to get out; your legs are probably cramped up,” said Galdo.
“They are!” Bug squeaked. “But you two really don’t need to carry me all that way…”
“You’ve never been more right about anything in your entire life, Bug!” Galdo took up position at one side of the cask and nodded at Calo. Whistling in unison, the two brothers began rolling the cask along the cobbles, steering for the Temple District, not necessarily by the fastest or smoothest route available.
INTERLUDE
Locke Explains
“It was an accident,” Locke said at last. “They were both accidents.”
“Excuse me? I must not have heard you.” Father Chains’ eyes narrowed in the faint red glow of Locke’s tiny ceramic lamp. “I could have sworn you just said, ‘Toss me over the parapet. I’m a useless little cuss and I’m ready to die at this very moment.’”
Chains had moved their conversation up to the roof of the temple, where they sat comfortably beneath high parapets meant to be threaded with decorative plants. The long-lost hanging gardens of the House of Perelandro were a small but important aspect of the sacrificial tragedy of the Eyeless Priest; one more bit of stage-setting to draw sympathy, measured in coins.
The clouds had roiled in overhead, palely reflecting the particolored glimmers of night-lit Camorr, obscuring the moons and the stars. The Hangman’s Wind was little more than a damp pressure that nudged the sluggish air around Chains and Locke as the boy struggled to clarify himself.
“No! I meant to hurt them, but that’s all. I didn’t know…I didn’t know those things would happen.”
“Well, that I can almost believe.” Chains tapped the index finger of his right hand against his left palm, the Camorri marketplace gesture for get on with it. “So take me all the way. That ‘almost’ is a major problem for you. Make me understand, starting with the first boy.”
“Veslin,” Locke whispered. “And Gregor, but Veslin first.”
“Veslin indeed,” Chains said. “Poor soul, got a superfluous orifice carved into his neck by none other than your old master. He had to go buy one of those lovely shark’s teeth from the Capa, and that one got used. So…why?”
“In the hill, some of the older boys and girls stopped going out to work.” Locke wove his fingers tightly together and stared down at them as though they might sprout answers. “They would just take things when we came back each day. Shake us down. Make our reports to the master for us, leave things out sometimes.”
Chains nodded. “Privileges of age, size, and ass-kissing. If you survive this conversation, you’ll find that it’s just the same in most of the big gangs. Most.”
“And there was one boy. Veslin. He’d do more. He’d kick us, punch us, take our clothes. Make us do things. Lots of times he’d lie to the master about what we’d brought in. He’d give some of our things to the older girls in Windows, and all of us in Streets would get less food-especially the teasers.” Locke’s small hands pulled apart and curled slowly into fists as he spoke. “And if we tried to tell the master, he just laughed, like he knew about it and thought it was funny! And after we told, Veslin would…Veslin would just get worse.”
Chains nodded, then tapped his index finger against his palm once more.
“I thought about it. I thought about it a lot. None of us could fight him. He was too big. None of us had any big friends in the hill. And if we ganged up on Veslin, his big friends would all come after us.
“Veslin went out each day with some of his friends. We saw them while we were working; they wouldn’t mess with our jobs, but they would watch us, you know? And Veslin would say things.” Locke’s thin-lipped scowl would have been comical on a less dirty, less emaciated, less hollow-eyed boy; as it was, he looked like a slender wall-gargoyle, working himself up for a pounc
e. “Say things when we came back. About how we were clumsy, or lazy, and not taking enough. And he would push us more, and hit us more, and cheat us more. I thought and I thought and I thought about what to do.”
“And the idea,” said Chains, “the fateful idea. It was all yours?”
“Yes.” The boy nodded vigorously. “All mine. I was alone when I had the idea. I saw some yellowjackets on patrol, and I thought…I thought about their sticks, and their swords. And I thought, what if they beat up Veslin? What if they had some reason not to like him?”
Locke paused for breath. “And I thought more, but I couldn’t work it. I didn’t know how. But then I thought, what if they weren’t angry with Veslin? What if I used them as an excuse to make the master angry with Veslin?”
Chains nodded sagely. “And where did you get the white iron coin?”
Locke sighed. “Streets. All of us who didn’t like Veslin stole extra. We watched and we clutched and we worked hard. It took weeks. It took forever! I wanted white iron. I finally got one from a fat man dressed all in black wool. Funny coats and ties.”
“A Vadran.” Chains seemed bemused. “Probably a merchant come down to do some business. Too proud to dress for the weather at first, and sometimes too cheap to see a tailor in town. So, you got a white iron coin. A full crown.”
“Everyone wanted to see it. Everyone wanted to touch it. I let them; then I made them be quiet. I made them promise not to talk about it. I told them it was how we were going to get Veslin.”
“So what did you do with your coin?”
“Put it in a purse, a little leather purse. The kind we clutched all the time. And hid it out in the city so it wouldn’t get taken from us. A place we knew about, where nobody big could get to. And I made sure that Veslin and his friends were out of the hill, and I got the coin, and I went back in early one day. I gave up coppers and bread to the older girls on the door, but the coin was in my shoe.” Here Locke paused and fiddled with his little lamp, making the red glow waver on his face.
“I put it in Veslin’s room. The one where he and Gregor slept-one of the nice dry tombs. Center of the hill. I found a loose stone and hid the purse there, and when I was sure nobody had seen me, I asked to see the master. I said that some of us had seen Veslin at one of the yellowjacket stations. That he’d taken money from them. That he’d shown it to us, and said that if we told on him he’d sell us to the yellowjackets.”
“Amazing.” Chains scratched his beard. “You know you don’t mumble and stutter quite so much when you’re explaining how you fucked someone over?”
Locke blinked, then turned his chin up and stared hard at Chains. The older man laughed. “Wasn’t a criticism, son, and I didn’t mean to dam the flow. Keep the story coming. How did you know your old master would take offense at this? Did the yellowjackets ever offer you or your friends money?”
“No,” Locke said. “No, but I knew the master gave them money. For favors; for information. We saw him putting coins in purses, sometimes. So I figured, maybe I could work it the other way.”
“Ah.” Chains reached within the folds of his robe and withdrew a flat leather wallet, the color of baked bricks in the light of Locke’s lamp. From this he withdrew a scrap of paper, onto which he shook a dark powder from another corner of the wallet. This object he rapidly folded end over end until it was a tight cylinder, and with courtly grace he lit one end by holding it in the lamp’s flame. Soon he was sending ghostly gray swirls of smoke up to join the ghostly gray clouds; the stuff smelled like burning pine tar.
“Forgive me,” Chains said, shifting his bulk to his right so his direct exhalations would miss the boy by a few feet. “Two smokes a night is all I let myself have; the rough stuff before dinner, and the smooth stuff after. Makes everything taste better.”
“So I’m staying for dinner?”
“Oh-ho, my cheeky little opportunist. Let’s say the situation remains fluid. You go ahead and finish your story. You tipped your old master that Veslin was working as an auxiliary member of the famed Camorr constabulary. He must have thrown quite a fit.”
“He said he’d kill me if I was lying.” Locke scuttled to his own right, even farther from the smoke. “But I said he’d hid the coin in his room. His and Gregor’s. So…he tore it apart. I hid the coin real well, but he found it. He was supposed to.”
“Mmmm. What did you expect to happen then?”
“I didn’t know they’d get killed!” Chains couldn’t hear any real grief in that soft and passionate little voice, but there seemed to be real puzzlement, real aggravation. “I wanted him to beat Veslin. I thought maybe he’d do him up in front of all of us. We ate together, most nights. The whole hill. Fuck-ups had to do tricks, or serve and clean everything, sometimes get held down for caning. Drink ginger oil. I thought he’d get those things. Maybe all those things.”
“Well.” Chains held an inhalation of smoke for a particularly long moment, as though the tobacco could fill him with insight, and looked away from Locke. When he finally exhaled, he did so in little puffs, forming wobbly crescents that fluttered a few feet and faded into the general haze. He harrumphed and turned back to the boy. “Well, you certainly learned the value of good intentions, didn’t you? Caning. Cleaning and serving. Heh. Poor Veslin got cleaned and served, all right. How did your old master do it?”
“He was gone for a few hours, and when he came back, he waited. In Veslin’s room. When Veslin and Gregor came back that night, there were older boys nearby. So they couldn’t go anywhere. And then…the master just killed them. Both. Cut Veslin’s throat, and…some of the others said he looked at Gregor for a while, and he didn’t say anything, and then he just…” Locke made the same sort of jabbing motion with two fingers that Chains had made at him earlier. “He did Gregor, too.”
“Of course he did! Poor Gregor. Gregor Foss, wasn’t it? One of those lucky little orphans old enough to remember his last name, not unlike yourself. Of course your old master did him, too. He and Veslin were best friends, right? Two draughts from the same bottle. It was an elementary assumption that one would know that the other was hiding a fortune under a rock.” Chains sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Elementary. So, now that you’ve told your part, would you like me to point out where you fucked everything up? And to let you know why most of your little friends in Streets that helped you pluck that white iron coin are going to be dead before morning?”
CHAPTER TWO. SECOND TOUCH AT THE TEETH SHOW
1
IDLER’S DAY, THE eleventh hour of the morning, at the Shifting Revel. The sun was once again the baleful white of a diamond in a fire, burning an arc across the empty sky and pouring down heat that could be felt against the skin. Locke stood beneath the silk awning atop Don Salvara’s pleasure barge, dressed in the clothes and mannerisms of Lukas Fehrwight, and stared out at the gathering Revel.
There was a troupe of rope dancers perched atop a platform boat to his left; four of them, standing in a diamond pattern about fifteen feet apart. Great lengths of brightly colored silk rope stretched amongst the dancers, around their arms and chests and necks. It seemed that each dancer was working four or five strands simultaneously. These strands formed an ever-shifting cat’s cradle between the dancers, and suspended in this web by clever hitches were all manner of small objects: swords, knives, overcoats, boots, glass statuettes, sparkling knickknacks. All these objects were slowly but gradually moving in various directions as the dancers twirled arms and shifted hips, slipping old knots loose and forming newer, tighter ones with impossibly smooth gestures.
It was a minor wonder on a busy river of wonders, not the least of which was Don and Doña Salvara’s barge. While many nobles hauled trees to and from their orchards on the water, Locke’s hosts were the first to go one step further. Their pleasure barge was a permanent floating orchard in miniature. Perhaps fifty paces long and twenty wide, it was a double-hulled wooden rectangle stuffed with soil to support a dozen oak and olive trees. Their trunks we
re a uniform night-black, and their rustling cascades of leaves were unnatural emerald, bright as lacquer-an outward testimony to the subtle science of alchemical botany.
Wide circular stairs crisscrossed with patches of leafy shade wound up several of these trees, leading to the don’s silk-topped observation box, comfortably perched within the branches to give the occupants an unobstructed forward view. On each side of this supremely ostentatious sliver of floating forest were twenty hired rowers, seated on outrigger-like structures that kept the top-heavy central portion of the yacht from plunging sideways.
The box could easily hold twenty; this morning it held only Locke and Jean, the don and the doña, and the ever-watchful Conté, currently tending a liquor cabinet so elaborate it might have been mistaken for an apothecary’s lab. Locke returned his gaze to the rope dancers, feeling a strange kinship with them. They weren’t the only ones with ample opportunity to screw up a delicate public act this morning.
“Master Fehrwight, your clothes!” Doña Sofia Salvara shared the forward rail of the observation box with him, her hands scant inches from his. “You would look so very fine in one of your Emberlain winters, but why must you suffer them in our summer? You shall sweat yourself as red as a rose! Might you not take something off?”
“I…my lady, I am, I assure you…most comfortable.” Thirteen gods, she was actually flirting with him. And the little smile that crept on and off her husband’s face told Locke that the Salvaras had planned this in advance. A little close feminine attention to fluster the awkward master merchant; perfectly staged and perfectly common. A game before the game, so to speak. “I find that whatever discomfort these clothes bring me in your…very interesting climate only serves to, to goad me. Into concentrating. Keeps me alert, you see. A better, ah, man of business.”
Jean, standing a few paces behind the two of them, bit his tongue. Throwing blondes at Locke Lamora was not unlike throwing lettuce at sharks, and the Doña Sofia was very blonde; one of those gorgeous Therin rarities with skin like burnt amber and hair the color of almond butter. Her eyes were deep and steady, her curves artfully not concealed by a dark orange summer dress with a cream-white underskirt barely showing at the hem. Well, it was just the Salvaras’ luck to run up against a thief with the most peculiar damned taste in women. Jean could admire the doña for them both; his limited role today (and his “injuries”) would give him little else to do.