“Because we’re constantly inches from a horrible bloody death, you mean.” “Right. The good times.” “This plan might take a year,” said Jean, slowly. “Maybe two.”
“For a game this interesting, I’m willing to spend a year or two. You have any other pressing engagements?”
Jean shook his head, passed the collected cards to Locke and went back to his sheaf of notes, a deeply thoughtful expression on his face. Locke slowly traced the outline of the deck of cards with the fingers of his left hand, which felt slightly less useful than a crab claw. He could feel the still-fresh scars itching beneath his cotton tunic — scars so extensive it looked as though most of his left side had been sewn together from rag parts. Gods damn it, he was ready to be healed now. He was ready to have his old careless agility back. He imagined that he felt like a man of twice his years.
He tried another one-handed shuffle, and the deck fell apart in his hands. At least it hadn’t shot apart in all directions. Was that improvement? He and Jean were silent for several minutes.
Eventually, the carriage rattled around a final small hill and suddenly Locke was looking across a green checkerboard landscape, sloping downward to sea-cliffs perhaps five or six miles distant. Specks of grey and white and black dotted the landscape, thickening toward the horizon, where the landside of Tal Verrar crowded against the cliffedges. The coastal section of the city seemed pressed down beneath the rain; great silvery curtains were sweeping past behind it, blotting out the islands of Tal Verrar proper. Lightning crackled blue and white in the distance, and soft peals of thunder rolled toward them across the fields. “We’re here,” said Locke.
“Landside,” said Jean without looking up. “Alight as well find an inn when we get there; we’ll be hard-pressed to find a boat to the islands in weather like this.” “Who shall we be, when we get there?”
Jean looked up and chewed his lip before taking the bait of their old game. “Let’s be something other than Camorri for a while. Camorr’s brought us nothing good of late.” “Talishani?”
“Sounds good to me.” Jean adjusted his voice slightly, adopting the faint but characteristic accent of the city of Talisham. “Anonymous Unknown of Talisham, and his associate Unknown Anonymous, also of Talisham.” “What names did we leave on the books at Meraggio” s?”
“Well, Lukas Fehrwight and Evante Eccari are right out. Even if those accounts haven’t been confiscated by the state, they’ll be watched. You trust the Spider not to get a burr up her arse if she finds out we’re active in Tal Verrar?”
“No,” said Locke. “I seem to recall… Jerome de Ferra, Leocanto Kosta and Milo Voralin.”
“I opened the Milo Voralin account myself. He’s supposed to be Vadran. I think we might leave him in reserve.” “And that’s all we have left? Three useful accounts?” “Sadly, yes. But it’s more than most thieves get. I’ll be Jerome.”
“I suppose I’ll be Leocanto, then. What are we doing in Tal Verrar, Jerome?”
“We’re… hired men for a Lashani countess. She’s thinking of buying a summer home in Tal Verrar and we’re there to hunt one down for her.”
“Hmmm. That might be good for a few months, but after we’ve looked at all the available properties, then what? And there’s lots of actual work involved if we don’t want everyone to know right away that we’re lying through our teeth. What if we call ourselves… merchant-speculators?”
“Merchant-speculators. That’s good. It doesn’t have to mean a damn thing.”
“Exactly. If we spend all our time lounging around the chance-houses cutting cards, well, we’re just passing time waiting for market conditions to ripen.” “Or we’re so good at our jobs we hardly need to work at all.”
“Our lines write themselves. How did we meet, and how long have we been together?”
“We met five years ago.” Jean scratched his beard. “On a sea voyage. We became business partners out of sheer boredom. Since then we’ve been inseparable.” “Except that my plan calls for me to be plotting your death.” “Yes, but I don’t know that, do I? Boon companion! I suspect nothing.” “Chump! I can hardly wait to see you get yours.”
“And the loot? Assuming we do manage to work our way into Requin’s confidence, and we do manage to call the dance properly, and we do manage to get out of his city with everything intact… we haven’t really talked about what comes after that.”
“We’ll be old thieves, Jean.” Locke squinted and tried to pick out details of the rain-swept landscape as the carriage made its final turn down the long, straight road into Tal Verrar. “Old thieves of seven-and-twenty, or perhaps eight-and-twenty, when we finish this. I don’t know. How would you feel about becoming a viscount?”
“Lashain,” Jean mused. “Buy a pair of titles, you mean? Settle there for good?”
“Not sure if I’d go that far. But last I heard, poor titles were running about ten thousand solari, and better ones fifteen to twenty. It” d give us a home and some clout. We could do whatever we wanted from there. Plot more games. Grow old in comfort.” “Retirement?”
“We can’t run around false-facing for ever, Jean. I dunk we both realize that. Sooner or later we’ll need to favour another style of crime. Let’s tease a nice big score out of this place and then sink it into something useful. Build something again. Whatever comes after… well, we can charm that lock when we come to it.”
“Viscount Anonymous Unknown of Lashain — and his neighbour, Viscount Unknown Anonymous. There are worse fates, I suppose.” “There certainly are — Jerome. So are you with me?”
“Of course, Leocanto. You know that. Maybe another two years of honest thieving will leave me ready to retire. I could get back into silks and shipping, like mother and father — perhaps look up some of their old contacts, if I can remember them right.”
“I think Tal Verrar will be good for us,” said Locke. “It’s a pristine city. We’ve never worked out of it and it’s never seen our like. Nobody knows us, nobody expects us. We’ll have total freedom of movement.”
The carriage clattered along under the rain, jostling against patches where the weathered stones of the Therin Throne Road had been washed clean of their protective layers of dirt. Lightning lit the sky in the distance but the grey veil swirled thick between land and sea, and the great mass of Tal Verrar was hidden from their eyes as they rode down into it for the first time.
“You’re almost certainly right, Locke. I think we do need a game.” Jean set his notes on his lap and cracked his knuckles. “Gods, but it’ll be good to be out and around. It’ll be good to be the predators again.”
CHAPTER THREE
Warm Hospitality
1
The chamber was a rough brick cube about eight feet on a side. It was completely dark, and an arid sauna heat was radiating from the walls, which were too hot to touch for more than a few seconds. Locke and Jean had been sweltering inside it for only the gods knew how long — probably hours.
“Agh.” Locke’s voice was cracked. He and Jean were seated back to back in the blackness, leaning against one another for support, with their folded coats beneath them. Locke beat his heels against the stones of the floor, not for the first time. “Gods damn it!” Locke yelled. “Let us out. You” ve made your point!” “What point,” rasped Jean, “could that possibly be?” “I don’t know.” Locke coughed. “I don’t care. Whatever it is, they” ve damn well made it, don’t you think?”
2
The removal of their hoods had been a relief, for about two heartbeats.
First had come an interminable interval spent stumbling around in stifling darkness, pulled and prodded along by captors who seemed to be in some haste. Next, there was indeed a boat ride; Locke could smell the warm salt mists rising off the city’s harbour, while the deck swayed gently beneath him and oars creaked rhythmically in their locks.
Eventually, that too came to an end; the boat rocked as someone rose and moved about. The oars were drawn in and an unfamili
ar voice called for poles. A few moments later, the boat bumped against something and strong hands again hoisted Locke to his feet. When he’d been helped from the boat to a firm stone surface, the hood was suddenly whisked off his head. He looked around, blinked at the sudden light and said: “Oh, shit.” At the heart of Tal Verrar, between the three crescent islands of the Great Guilds, lay the Castellana, fortified estate of the Dukes of Tal Verrar centuries earlier. Now that the city had dispensed with titled nobility, the mansion-covered Castellana was home to a new breed of well-heeled gentry — the Priori councillors, the independently rich and those guildmasters whose social positions required the most ostentations displays of spending power.
At the very heart of the Castellana, guarded by a moat of empty air like a circular Elderglass canyon, was the Mon Magisteria, the palace of the Archon — a towering human achievement springing upward from alien grandeur. An elegant stone weed growing in a glass garden.
Locke and Jean had been brought to a point directly beneath it. Locke guessed that they stood within the hollow space that separated the Mon Magisteria from the surrounding island; a million-faceted cavern of darkened Elderglass soared upward around them, and the open air of the upper island lay fifty or sixty feet above their heads. The channel that the boat had travelled through wound away to his left, and the sound of the lapping water was drowned out by a distant rumbling noise with no visible cause.
There was a wide stone landing at the base of the Mon Magisterial private island, with several boats tied up alongside it, including an enclosed ceremonial barge with silk awnings and gilded woodwork Soft blue alchemical lamps in iron posts filled the space with fight, and behind those posts a dozen soldiers stood at attention. Even if a quick glance upward hadn’t told Locke the identity of their captor, those soldiers would have revealed everything.
They wore dark-blue doublets and breeches, with black leather bracers, vests and boots all chased with raised designs in gleaming brass. Blue hoods were drawn up around the backs of their heads and their faces were covered with featureless oval masks of polished bronze. Grids of tiny pinholes permitted them to see and breathe, but from a distance every impression of humanity was erased — the soldiers were faceless sculptures brought to fife. The Eyes of the Archon.
“Here you are then, Master Kosta, Master de Ferra.” The woman who’d waylaid Locke and Jean stepped up onto the landing between them and took them by the elbows, smiling as though they were out for a night on the town. “Is this not a more private place for a conversation?” “What,” said Jean, “have we done to warrant our transport here?”
“I’m the wrong person to ask,” said the woman as she pushed them gently forward. “My job is to retrieve, and deliver.”
She released Locke and Jean just before the front rank of the Archon’s soldiers. Their own disquieted expressions were reflected back at them in a dozen gleaming bronze masks.
“And sometimes,” said the woman as she returned to the boat, “when guests don’t come back out again, my job is to forget that I ever saw them at all.”
The Eyes of the Archon moved without apparent signal; Locke and Jean were enveloped and secured by several soldiers apiece. One of them spoke — another woman, her voice echoing ominously. “We will go up. You must not struggle and you must not speak.” “Or what?” said Locke.
The Eye who’d spoken stepped over to Jean without hesitation and punched him in the stomach. The big man exhaled in surprise and grimaced, while the female Eye turned back to Locke. “If either of you causes any trouble, I’m instructed to punish the other one. Do I make myself clear?” Locke ground his teeth together and nodded.
A wide set of switchback stairs led upward from the landing; the glass underfoot was rough as brick. Flight by flight the Archon’s soldiers led Locke and Jean up past gleaming walls, until the moist night breeze of the city was on their faces once again.
They emerged within the perimeter defined by the glass chasm. A guardhouse stood just on their side of the thirty-foot gap, beside a drawbridge currently hauled straight up into the air and set inside a heavy wood frame. Locke presumed that was the usual means of entrance to the Archon’s domain.
The Mon Magisteria was a ducal fortress in the true Therin Throne style, easily fifteen storeys high at its peak and three or four times as wide. Layer after layer of crenellated battlements rose up, formed from flat black stones that absorbed the fountains of light thrown up by dozens of lanterns burning on the castle’s grounds. Columned aqueducts circled the walls and towers at every level, and decorative streams of water cascaded down from sculptures of dragons and sea monsters set at the fortress’s corners.
The Eyes of the Archon led Locke and Jean toward the front of the palace, down a wide path dusted with white gravel. There were lush green lawns on either side of the path, set behind decorative stone i borders that made the lawns resemble islands. More blue-robed and black-armoured guards in bronze masks stood unmoving along the path, holding up blackened-steel halberds with alchemical lights built into their wooden shafts.
Where most castles would have a front gate the Mon Magisteria had a rushing waterfall wider than the path on which they stood; this was the source of the noise Locke had heard echoing at the boat landing below. Multiple torrents of water crashed out of huge, dark apertures set in a line running straight up the castle wall. These joined and fell into a churning moat at the very base of the structure, a moat even wider than the glass-sided canyon that cut the castle grounds off from the rest of the Castellana.
A bridge, slightly arched, vanished into the pounding white waterfall about halfway over the moat. Warm mist wafted up around them as their party approached the near end of this bridge, which Locke could now see had some sort of niche cut into it, running right along its centre for its full visible length. Beside the bridge was an iron pull-chain hanging from the top of a narrow stone pillar. The Eye officer reached up for this and gave it three swift tugs.
A moment later there came a metallic rattling noise from the direction of the bridge. A dark shape loomed within the waterfall, grew and then burst out toward them with mist and water exploding off its roof. It was a long box of iron-ribbed wood, fifteen feet high and as wide as the bridge. Rumbling, it slid along the track carved into the bridge until it halted with a squeal of metal-on-metal just before them. Doors popped open toward them, pushed from the inside by two attendants in dark-blue coats with silver-braid trim.
Locke and Jean were ushered into the roomy conveyance, which had windows set into the end facing the castle. Through them, Locke could see nothing but rushing water. The waterfall pounded off the roof; the noise was like being in a carriage during a heavy storm.
When Locke and Jean and all the Eyes had stepped into the box, the attendants drew the doors closed. One of them pulled a chain set into the right-hand wall, and with a lurching rumble the box was drawn back to where it had come from. The waterfall pounded off the roof; the noise was like being in a carriage during a heavy storm. As they passed through it, Locke guessed that it was fifteen to twenty feet wide. An unprotected man would never be able to pass beneath it without being knocked into the moat, which he supposed was precisely the point. That, and it was a hell of a way to show off.
They soon pushed through the other side of the falls. Locke could see tliat they were being drawn into a huge hemispherical hall, with a curved far wall and a ceiling about thirty feet high. Alchemical chandeliers shed light on the hall, silver and white and gold, so that the place gleamed like a treasure vault through the distortion of the water-covered windows. When the conveyor box ground to a halt, the attendants manipulated unseen latches to crack open the forward windows like a pair of giant doors.
Locke and Jean were prodded out of the box, but more gently than before. The stones at their feet were slick with water, and they followed the example of the guards in treading carefully. The waterfall roared at their backs for a moment longer, and then two huge doors slammed together behind the
conveyor box and the deafening noise became a dull echo.
Some sort of water engine could be seen in a wall niche to Locke’s left. Several men and women stood before gleaming cylinders of brass, working levers attached to mechanical contrivances whose functions were well beyond Locke’s capability to guess. Heavy iron chains disappeared into dark holes in the floor just beside the track the huge wooden box rode along. Jean, too, cocked his head for a closer look at this curiosity, but once past the danger of the slick stones, the soldiers” brief spate of tolerance passed and they shoved the two thieves along at a good clip once again.
Through the entrance hall, wide and grand enough to host several balls at once, they passed at speed. The hall had no windows open to the outside, but rather artificial panoramas of stained glass, lit from behind. Each window showed a stylized view of what would be seen through a real hole cut in the stone — white buildings and mansions, dark skies, the tiers of islands across the harbour, dozens of sails in the main anchorage.
Locke and Jean were escorted down a side hall, up a flight of steps and down another hall, past blue-coated guards standing stiffly at attention. Was it Locke’s imagination, or did something more than ordinary respect creep into their faces when the bronze masks of the Eyes swept past them? There was no more time to ponder, for they were suddenly halted before their evident destination. In a corridor full of wooden doorways, they stood before one made of metal.
An Eye stepped forward, unlocked the door and pushed it open. The room beyond was small and dark. Soldiers rapidly undid the bonds around Locke and Jean’s wrists, and then the two of them were shoved forward into the little room.
“Hey, wait just a damn—” said Locke, but the door slammed shut behind them and the sudden blackness was absolute.
“Perelandro,” said Jean. He and Locke spent a few seconds stumbling into one another before they managed to regain some balance and dignity. “How on earth did we attract the attention of these bloody arseholes?”
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