“That went about as well as we could have hoped,” said Lyonis, sitting inside the carriage with them. “How good are those fake uniforms?” asked Locke.
“Fake? You misunderstand. The uniforms weren’t the hard part; our sympathizers in Stragos’s forces supplied us with these some time ago. It’s the masks that are damned difficult. One per Eye, no spares; they keep them like family heirlooms. And they spend so much time looking at them that even a close copy would be noticed.” Cordo held up his mask and grinned. “After tonight, hopefully we’ll never see the damned things again. Now what the hell is in those oilcloth tubes?” “A gift from Requin,” said Locke. “Unrelated personal business.” “You know Requin well?”
“We share a taste for the art of the late Therin Throne period,” said Locke, smiling. “In fact, we’ve even exchanged some pieces of work recently.”
10
As Lyonis knocked the Archon to the ground, the other false Eyes tore their masks off and took action. Locke and Jean slid out of the purely decorative knots at their wrists in less than a second.
One of Lyonis’s men underestimated the skills of the real Eye he faced; he fell to his knees with most of his left side sliced open. Two more Priori pretenders closed in and harried the Eye until his guard slipped; they knocked him down and stabbed him several times. The other tried to run and fetch aid, but was slain before he could take five steps.
Merrain and the alchemist looked around, the alchemist far more nervously than Merrain, but two of Lyonis’s people put them at swordpoint.
“Well, Stragos,” said Lyonis, hauling the Archon back to his knees, “warmest regards from the House of Cordo.” He raised his arm, sword reversed to strike, and grinned.
Jean grabbed him from behind, threw him to the ground and stood over him, seething. “The deal, Cordo!”
“Yeah,” said Lyonis, still smiling where he lay on the ground, “well, it’s like this. You” ve done us quite a service, but we don’t feel comfortable having loose ends running around. And there are now seven of us, and two of—”
“You amateur double-crossers,” said Locke. “You make us professionals cringe. You think you’re so fucking clever. I saw this coming about a hundred miles away, so I had a mutual friend offer an opinion on the subject.”
Locke reached into his boot and pulled out a slightly crumpled, moderately sweaty half-sheet of parchment, folded into quarters. Locke passed this to Lyonis and smiled, knowing as the Priori unfolded it that he would read: / — would take it as a personal affront if the bearers of this note were to be harmed or hindered in any way, engaged as they are upon an errand of mutual benefit. The extension of every courtesy to them will be noted and returned as though a courtesy to myself They bear my full and absolute trust. R All, of course, above Requin’s personal seal.
“I know that you yourself are not fond of his chance-house,” said Locke. “But you must admit that the same is not generally true among the Priori, and many of your peers keep a great deal of money in his vault—”
“Enough. I take your point.” Cordo rose to his feet and all but threw the letter back at Locke. “What do you ask?”
“I only want two things,” said Locke. “The Archon and his alchemist. What you do with this gods-damned city is entirely your business.” “The Archon must—”
“You were about to gut him like a fish. He’s my business now. Just know that whatever happens to him won’t be an inconvenience for you.”
The sound of shouting arose from the other side of the gardens. No, Locke corrected himself— the other side of the fortress. “What the hell is that?” he asked.
“We have sympathizers at the Mon Magisterial gate,” said Cordo. “We’re bringing people in to prevent anyone from leaving. They must be making their presence known.” “If you try to storm—”
“We’re not storming the Mon Magisteria. Just sealing it off. Once the troops inside comprehend the new situation, we’re confident they’ll accept the authority of the councils.”
“You” d better hope that’s the case across Tal Verrar,” said Locke. “But enough of this shit. Hey, Stragos, let’s go and have a chat with your pet alchemist.”
Jean hoisted the Archon — still clearly in shock — to his feet, and began to haul him over to where Merrain and the alchemist were standing under guard.
“You,” said Locke, pointing at the bald man, “are about to start explaining a hell of a lot of things, if you know what’s good for you.” The alchemist shook his head. “Oh, but I… I—”
“Pay close attention,” said Locke. “This is the end of the Archonate, understand? The whole institution will be sunk in the harbour once and for all tonight. After this, Maxilan Stragos won’t have the power to buy a cup of warm piss for all the gold in Tal Verrar. That will leave you with nobody to go crawling to as you spend the rest of your short, miserable life answering to the two men you fucking poisoned. Do you have a permanent antidote?”
“I… I carry an antidote for every poison I use in the Archon’s service, yes. Just in case.” “Xandrin, don’t—” said Stragos. Jean punched him in the stomach. “Oh, no. Do, Xandrin, do,” said Locke.
The bald man reached into his satchel and held up a glass vial full of transparent liquid. “One dose is what I carry. This is enough for one man — do not split it. This will cleanse the substance from the humours and channels of the body.”
Locke took the vial from him, his hand trembling. “And this… how much will it cost to have another alchemist make more?”
“It’s impossible, said Xandrin. “I designed the antidote to defy reactive analysis. Any sample subjected to alchemical scrutiny will be ruined. The poison and its antidote are my proprietary formulation—” “Notes,” said Locke. “Recipes, whatever you call the damn things.” “In my head,” said Xandrin. “Paper is a poor keeper of secrets.”
“Well then,” said Locke, “until you cook us up another dose, it looks like you’re fucking well coming with us. Do you like the sea?”
11
Merrain made her decision then. If the antidote couldn’t be duplicated, and she could knock the vial to the ground… the troublesome anomalies Kosta and de Ferra were as good as dead. That would leave only Stragos and Xandrin.
If they were dealt with, all those with any direct knowledge of the fact that she served a master beyond Tal Verrar would be silenced.
She moved her right arm slightly, dropping the hilt of her poisoned dagger into her hand, and took a deep breath.
Merrain moved so fast that the false Eye standing to her side never even had the chance to raise his sword. Her sideways stab, not preceded by any telltale glance or lunge, took him in the side of the neck. She slid the blade sideways as she withdrew, tearing whatever she could in case the poison took a few extra seconds to do its work.
12
Merrain’s first victim had just uttered a gasp of surprise when she moved again, slashing across the back of Xandrin’s neck with a knife she’d produced from nowhere. Locke stared for a split second, startled; he counted himself fast, but if she’d been aiming for him he realized that he never would have seen the blow coming in time.
As Xandrin cried out and stumbled forward, Merrain kicked at Locke, a fast attack rather than a solid one. She caught his arm and the vial flew from his fingers; Locke barely had time to yell, “Shit!” before he was diving after it, heedless of the gravel he was about to skin himself against or anything else Merrain might care to do to him. He plucked the still-intact vial off the ground, uttered a whisper of thanks and was then knocked aside as Jean rushed past, arms extended.
As he hit the ground with the vial clutched to his chest, Locke saw Merrain wind up and hurl her knife; Jean struck her at the moment of release, so that rather than impaling Stragos through the neck or chest as she’d clearly intended, she bounced her blade off the gravel at his feet. The Archon flinched away from the weapon nonetheless.
Merrain, improbably, put up an effective str
uggle against Jean; she freed one arm from his grasp somehow and elbowed him in the ribs. Lithe and no doubt desperate as all hell, she kicked his left foot, broke his grip and tried to stumble away. Jean retained enough of a hold on her tunic to tear off her left sleeve all the way to the shoulder; thrown off-balance as it gave way, he fell to the ground.
Locke caught a flash of an elaborate, dark tattoo against the pale skin of Merrain’s upper arm — something like a grapevine entwined around.-..I. _„a sword. Then she was off like a crossbow bolt, darting into the night, away from Jean and the false Eyes who chased her in vain for a few dozen steps before giving up and swearing loudly.
“Well, what the— Oh, hell,” said Locke, noticing for the first time that the false Eye Merrain had stabbed, along with Xandrin, was writhing on the ground with rivulets of foaming saliva trickling from the corners of his mouth. “Oh, shit, shit, hell,” Locke shouted, bending helplessly over the dying alchemist. The convulsions ceased in just a few seconds, and Locke stared down at the single vial of antidote in his hands, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “No,” said Jean from behind him. “Oh, gods, why did she do that?” “I don’t know,” said Locke. “What the hell do we do?” “We… shit. Damned if I know that, either.” “You should—”
“Nobody’s doing anything,” said Locke. “I’ll keep this safe. Once this is over, we’ll sit down with it, have dinner, talk it over. We’ll come up with something.” “You can—”
“Time to go,” said Locke, as firmly as he could. “Get what we came here for and go, before things get more complicated.” Before troops loyal to the Archon notice that he’s having a bad night. Before Lyonisfinds out that Requin is actually hunting for us as we speak. Before some other gods-damned surprise crawls out of the ground to bite us on the arse. “Cordo,” he shouted, “where’s that bag you promised?”
Lyonis gestured to one of his surviving false Eyes, and the woman passed a heavy burlap sack to Locke. Locke shook it out — it was wider than he was, and nearly six feet long.
“Well, Maxilan,” he said, “I offered you the chance to forget all of this, and let us go, and keep what you had, but you had to be a fucking arsehole, didn’t you?”
“Kosta,” said Stragos, at least rediscovering his voice, “I… I can give you—”
“You can’t give me a gods-damned thing.” Stragos appeared to be thinking of making an attempt for Merrain’s dagger, so Locke gave it a hard kick. It skittered across the gravel and into the darkness of the gardens. “Those of us in our profession, those who hold with the Crooked Warden, have a little tradition we follow when someone close to us dies. In this case, someone who got killed as a result of this mad rucking scheme of yours.” “Kosta, don’t throw away what I can offer—”
“We call it a death-offering,” said Locke. “Means we steal something of value, proportional to the life we lost. Except in this case I don’t think there’s anything in the world that qualifies. But we’re doing our best.” Jean stepped up beside him and cracked his knuckles.
“Ezri Delmastro,” he said, very quietly, “I give you the Archon of Tal Verrar.”
He punched Stragos so hard that the Archon’s feet left the gravel. In a moment, he was stuffing the unconscious old man into the burlap sack. Another moment, and the sack was tied off and slung over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
“Well, Lyonis,” said Locke, “best of luck with your revolution, or whatever the hell it is. We’re sneaking out of here before things have a chance to get any more interesting on us.” “And Stragos—” “You’ll never see him again,” said Locke. “Good enough, then. Are you leaving the city?” “Not half fast enough for our gods-damned taste.” Jean dumped him on the quarterdeck, under the eyes of Zamira and all the surviving crew. It had been a long and arduous trip back — first to retrieve their backpacks from Cordo’s little boat, and then to dutifully retrieve Drakasha’s ship’s boat, and then to row nearly out to sea — but it had all been worth it. The entire night had been worth it, Locke decided, just to see the expression on Stragos’s face when he found “Zamira standing over him.
“Dr… r… akasha,” he mumbled, then spat one of his teeth onto the deck. Blood ran in several streams down his chin.
“Maxilan Stragos, former Archon of Tal Verrar,” she said. ” “Final Archon of Tal Verrar. Last time I saw you my perspective was somewhat different.” “As was… mine.” He sighed. “What now?”
“There are too many debts riding on your carcass to buy them off with death,” said Zamira. “We thought long and hard about this. We’ve decided that we’re going to try to keep you around for as long as we possibly can.”
She snapped her fingers and Jabril stepped forward, carrying a mass of sturdy, if slightly rusted, iron chains and cuffs in his arms. He dropped them on the deck next to Stragos and laughed as the old man jumped. The hands of other crewfolk seized him, and he began to sob in disbelief as his legs and arms were clamped, and as the chains were draped around him.
“You’re going in the orlop, Stragos. You’re going into the dark. And we’re going to treat it as a special privilege to carry you around with us wherever we go. In any weather, in any sea, in any heat. We’re going to haul you a mighty long way. You and your irons. Long after your clothes fall off, I guarantee you’ll still have those to wear.” “Drakasha, please—”
“Throw him as far down as we’ve got,” she said, and half a dozen crewfolk began carrying him toward a main-deck hatch. “Chain him to the bulkhead. Then let him get cosy.” “Drakasha,” he screamed, “you can’t! You can’t! I’ll go mad!”
“I know,” she said. “And you’ll scream. Gods, how you’ll wail down there. But that’s okay. We can always do with a bit of music at sea.”
Then he was carried below the Poison Orchid’s deck, to the rest of his life.
“Well,” said Drakasha, turning to Locke and Jean. “You two delivered. I’ll be damned, but you got what you wanted.”
“No, Captain,” said Jean. “We got what we went after, mostly. But we didn’t get what we wanted. Not by a long gods-damned shot.” “I’m sorry, Jerome,” she said.
“I hope nobody ever calls me that again,” said Jean. “The name is Jean.”
“Locke and Jean,” she said. “All right, then. Can I take you two somewhere?”
“Vel Virazzo, if you don’t mind,” said Locke. “We’ve got some business to transact.” “And then you’ll be rich men?” “We’ll be in funds, yes. Do you want some, for your—”
“No,” she said. “You went into Tal Verrar and did the stealing. Keep it. We’ve got swag enough from Salon Corbeau, and so few ways to split it now. We’ll be fine. So what will you do after that?” “We had a plan,” said Locke. “Remember what you told me at the rail that night? If someone tries to draw lines around your ship, just… set more sail?” Drakasha nodded. “I suppose you could say we’re going to give it a try,” said Locke. “Will you need anything else, then?”
“Well,” said Locke, “for safety’s sake, given our past history… perhaps you” d lend us a small sack and give us something small but rather important?” They met the next day, at Requin’s invitation, in what could only be described as the wreckage of his office. The main door was smashed off its hinges, the suite of chairs still lay broken across the floor and of course almost all of the paintings on the walls had been sliced out of their frames. Requin seemed to derive a perverse pleasure in seating the seven Priori on fine chairs in the midst of the chaos and pretending that all was perfectly normal. Selendri paced the room behind the guests.
“Has everything gone more smoothly for you ladies and gentlemen since last night?” asked Requin.
“Fighting’s ended in the Sword Marina,“said Jacantha Tiga, youngest of the Inner Seven. “The navy is on the leash.”
“The Mon Magisteria is ours,” said Lyonis Cordo, standing in for his father. “All of Stragos’s captains are in custody, except for two captains of intelligence—”
“We can’t have another fucking Ravelle incident,” said a middle-aged Priori.
“I” ve got people working on that issue myself,” said Requin. “They won’t go to ground within the city, I can promise that much.”
“The Ambassadors from Talisham, Espara and the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows have publicly expressed confidence in the leadership of the councils,” said Tiga.
“I know,” said Requin, smiling. “I forgave them some rather substantial debts last night and suggested that they might make themselves useful to the new regime. Now, what about the Eyes?”
“About half of them are alive and in custody,” said Cordo. “The rest are dead, with just a few thought to be trying to stir up resistance.” “They won’t get far,” said Tiga. “Loyalty to the old Archonate won’t t! buy food or beer. I expect they’ll turn up dead here and there once they annoy the regulars too much.”
“We’ll have the rest quietly disposed of over the next few days,” said Cordo.
“Now, I wonder,” said Requin, “if that’s really so very wise. The Eyes of the Archon represent a significant pool of highly trained and committed people. Surely there’s got to be a better use for them than filling graves.” “They were loyal to Stragos alone—”
“Or perhaps to Tal Verrar, were you to ask them.” Requin placed a hand over his heart. “My patriotic duty compels me to point this out.”
Cordo snorted. “They were his shock troops, his bodyguards, his torturers. They” re useless to us, even if not actively seditious.”
“Perhaps, for all of his vaunted military understanding, our dear departed Archon employed the Eyes inefficiently,” said Requin. “Perhaps the business with the faceless masks was too much. They might have been better off in plainclothes, as an enhancement to his intelligence apparatus, rather than terrorizing people as his enforcers.”
“Maybe for his sake,” said Tiga. “Had he done so, that intelligence apparatus might have foiled our move against him yesterday. It was a close thing.”
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