by Scott Lynch
Conté’s light, steady footsteps echoed on the staircase beneath them.
In a fair fight, the don’s man would almost certainly paint the walls with Locke and Calo’s blood, so it stood to reason that this fight would have to be as unfair as possible. At the moment the top of Conté’s bald head appeared beneath him, Calo reached out between the balustrade posts and let his crimper’s hood drop.
A crimper’s hood, for those who’ve never had the occasion to be kidnapped and sold into slavery in one of the cities on the Iron Sea, looks a bit like a tent as it flutters quickly downward, borne by weights sewn into its bottom edges. Air pushes its flaps outward just before it drops down around its target’s head and settles on his shoulders. Conté gave a startled jerk as Calo yanked the black silk cord, instantly cinching the hood closed around his neck.
Anyone with any real presence of mind could probably reach up and fumble such a hood loose in a matter of seconds, which is why the interior is inevitably painted with large amounts of some sweet-scented fuming narcotic, purchased from a black apothecary. Knowing the nature of the man they were attempting to subdue, Locke and Calo had spent nearly thirty crowns on the stuff Conté was breathing just now, and Locke fervently wished him much joy of it.
One panic-breath inside the airtight hood; that would be enough to drop any ordinary person in his or her tracks. But as Locke flew down the stairs to catch Conté’s body, he saw that the man was still somehow upright, clawing at the hood—disoriented and weakened, most definitely, but still awake. A quick rap on the solar plexus—that would open his mouth and speed the drug on its way. Locke stepped in to deliver the blow, wrapping one hand around Conté’s neck just beneath the crimper’s hood. This nearly blew the entire game.
Conté’s arms flashed up and broke Locke’s lackadaisical choke hold before it even began; the man’s left arm snaked out to entangle Locke’s right, and then Conté punched him—once, twice, three times; vicious jabs in his own stomach and solar plexus. With his guts an exploding constellation of pain, Locke sank down against his would-be victim, struggling for balance. Conté brought his right knee up in a blow that should have knocked Locke’s teeth out of his ears at high speed, but the drug was finally, thankfully smothering the old soldier’s will to be ornery. The knee barely grazed Locke’s chin; instead, the booted foot attached to it caught him in the groin and knocked him backward. His head bounced against the hard marble of the stairs, somewhat cushioned by the cloth of his hood; Locke lay there, gasping for breath, still hanging awkwardly by one of the hooded man’s arms.
Calo appeared at that instant, having dropped the line that cinched his crimper’s hood and dashed down the stairs. He slipped one foot behind Conté’s increasingly wobbly legs and pushed the man down the stairs, holding him by the front of his doublet to keep the fall relatively quiet. Once Conté was head-down and prone, Calo punched him rather mercilessly between the legs—once, then again when the man’s legs twitched feebly, and then again, which yielded no response. The hood had finally done its work. With Conté temporarily disposed of, Calo turned to Locke and tried to help him to a sitting position, but Locke waved him off.
“What sort of state are you in?” Calo whispered.
“As though I’m with child, and the little bastard is trying to cut his way out with an axe.” Chest heaving, Locke tore his black mask down off his face, lest he vomit inside it and create an unconcealable mess.
While Locke gulped deep breaths and tried to control his shuddering, Calo crouched back down beside Conté and tore the hood off, briskly waving away the sickly-sweet aroma of the leather bag’s contents. He carefully folded the hood up, slipped it into his cloak, and then dragged Conté up a few steps.
“Calo.” Locke coughed. “My disguise—damaged?”
“Not that I can see. Looks like he didn’t do anything that shows, provided you can walk without a slouch. Stay here a moment.”
Calo slipped down to the foot of the stairs and took a peek around the darkened solar; soft city light fell through the barred windows, faintly illuminating a long table and a number of glass cases on the walls, holding plates and unidentifiable knickknacks. Not another soul was in sight, and not a sound could be heard from below.
When Calo returned, Locke had pushed himself up on his knees and hands; Conté slumbered beside him with a look of comical bliss on his craggy face.
“Oh, he’s not going to keep that expression when he wakes up.” Calo waved a pair of thin, leather-padded brass knuckles at Locke, then made them vanish up his sleeves with a graceful flourish. “I had my footpad’s little friends on when I knocked him around that last time.”
“Well, I for one have no expressions of sympathy to spare, since he kicked my balls hard enough to make them permanent residents of my lungs.” Locke tried to push himself up off his hands and failed; Calo caught him under his right arm and eased him up until he was kneeling, shakily, on his knees alone.
“You’ve got your breath back, at least. Can you actually walk?”
“I can stumble, I think. I’ll be hunched over for a while. Give me a few minutes and I think I can pretend nothing’s wrong. At least until we’re out of here.”
Calo assisted Locke back up the stairs to the third floor. Leaving Locke there to keep watch, he then began to quietly, slowly drag Conté up the same way. The don’s man didn’t actually weigh all that much.
Embarrassed, and eager to make himself useful again, Locke pulled two lengths of tough cord out of his own cloak and bound Conté’s feet and hands with them; he folded a handkerchief three times and used it as a gag. Locke pulled Conté’s knives out of their sheaths and passed them to Calo, who stashed them within his cloak.
The don’s study door still hung open, shedding warm light into the passage; the bedchamber doors remained locked tight.
“I pray you both may be gifted with a demand and an endurance well beyond your usual expectations, m’lord and lady,” whispered Calo. “Your household thieves would appreciate a short break before continuing with their duties for the evening.”
Calo grasped Conté beneath his arms, and Locke, slouched in obvious pain, nonetheless grabbed the man’s feet when Calo began to drag him all by himself. With tedious stealth, they retraced their steps and deposited the unconscious bodyguard around the far bend in the corridor, just beside the stairs leading back up to the fourth-floor laboratories.
The don’s study was a most welcome sight when they finally stole in a few minutes later. Locke settled into a deeply cushioned leather armchair on the left-hand wall, while Calo took up a standing guard position. More laughter could be heard, faintly, from across the hall.
“We could be here quite a while,” said Calo.
“The gods are merciful.” Locke stared at the don’s tall glass-fronted liquor cabinet—one even more impressive than the collection his pleasure barge carried. “I’d pour us a draught or six, but I don’t think it would be in character.”
They waited ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Locke breathed steadily and deeply, and concentrated on ignoring the throbbing ache that seemed to fill his guts from top to bottom. Yet when the two thieves heard the door across the hallway unbolting, Locke leapt to his feet, standing tall, pretending that his balls didn’t feel like clay jugs dropped onto cobblestones from a great height. He cinched his black mask back on and willed a wave of perfect arrogance to claim him from the inside out.
As Father Chains had once said, the best disguises were those that were poured out of the heart rather than painted on the face.
Calo kissed the back of his left hand through his own mask and winked.
Don Lorenzo Salvara walked into his study whistling, lightly dressed and completely unarmed.
“Close the door,” said Locke, and his voice was steady, rich with the absolute presumption of command. “Have a seat, m’lord, and don’t bother calling for your man. He is … indisposed.”
7
AN HOUR past midnight, two men left
the Alcegrante district via the Eldren Arch. They wore black cloaks and had black horses; one of them rode with a leisurely air, while the other led his horse on foot, walking in a curiously bowlegged fashion.
“Un-fucking-believable,” said Calo. “It really did work out just as you planned. It’s a pity we can’t brag about this to anyone. Our biggest score ever, and all we had to do was tell our mark exactly what we were doing to him.”
“And get kicked around a bit,” muttered Locke.
“Yeah, sorry about that. What a beast that man was, eh? Take comfort that he’ll feel the same way when he opens his eyes again.”
“How very comforting. If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.”
“By the Crooked Warden, I never heard such self-pity dripping from the mouth of a wealthy man. Cheer up! Richer and cleverer than everyone else, right?”
“Richer and cleverer and walking funny, yes.”
The pair of thieves made their way south through Twosilver Green, toward the first of the stops where they would gradually lose their horses and shed their black clothes, until they were finally heading back to the Temple District dressed as common laborers. They nodded companionably at patrols of yellowjackets, stomping about in the mist with lanterns swaying on pike-poles to light their way. Not once were they given any reason to glance up.
The fluttering shadow that trailed them on their way through the streets and alleys was quieter than a small child’s breath; swift and graceful, it swooped from rooftop to rooftop in their wake, following their actions with absolute single-mindedness. When they slipped back into the Temple District, it beat its wings and rose into the darkness in a lazy spiraling circle, until it was up above the mists of Camorr and lost against the gray haze of the low-hanging clouds.
INTERLUDE
The Last Mistake
1
Locke’s first experience with the mirror wine of Tal Verrar had even more of an effect on the boy’s malnourished body than Chains had expected. Locke spent most of the next day tossing and turning on his cot, his head pounding and his eyes unable to bear anything but the most gentle spark of light.
“It’s a fever,” Locke muttered into his sweat-soaked blanket.
“It’s a hangover.” Chains ran a hand through the boy’s hair and patted his back. “My fault, really. The Sanza twins are natural liquor sponges. I shouldn’t have let you live up to their standard on your first night with us. No work for you today.”
“Liquor does this? Even after you’re sober?”
“A cruel joke, isn’t it? The gods put a price tag on everything, it seems. Unless you’re drinking Austershalin brandy.”
“Auffershallow?”
“Austershalin. From Emberlain. Among its many other virtues, it doesn’t cause a hangover. Some sort of alchemical component in the vineyard soil. Expensive stuff.”
Falselight came after many hours of half-sleep, and Locke found himself able to walk once again, though the brain within his skull felt like it was attempting to dig a hole down through his neck and escape. Chains insisted that they would still be visiting Capa Barsavi (“The only people who break appointments with him are the ones that live in glass towers and have their pictures on coins, and even they think twice”), though he consented to allow Locke a more comfortable means of transportation.
It turned out that the House of Perelandro had a small stable tucked around the back, and in this smelly little stall there lived a Gentled goat. “He’s got no name,” Chains said as he set Locke atop the creature’s back. “I just couldn’t bring myself to give him one, since he wouldn’t answer to it anyway.”
Locke had never developed the instinctive revulsion most boys and girls felt for Gentled animals; he’d already seen too much ugliness in his life to care about the occasional empty stare from a docile, milky-eyed creature.
There is a substance called Wraithstone, a chalky white material found in certain remote mountain caverns. The stuff doesn’t occur naturally; it is found only in conjunction with glass-lined tunnels presumably abandoned by the Eldren—the same unsettling race that built Camorr, ages past. In its solid state, Wraithstone is tasteless, nearly odorless, and inert. It must be burned to activate its unique properties.
Physikers have begun to identify the various means and channels by which poisons attack the bodies of the living; this one stills the heart, while this one thins the blood, and still others damage the stomach or the intestines. Wraithstone smoke poisons nothing physical; what it does is burn out personality itself. Ambition, stubbornness, pluck, spirit, drive—all of these things fade with just a few breaths of the arcane haze. Accidental exposure to small amounts can leave a man listless for weeks; anything more than that and the effect will be permanent. Victims remain alive but entirely unconcerned by anything. They don’t respond to their names, or to their friends, or to mortal danger. They can be prodded into eating or excreting or carrying something, and little else. The pale white sheen that fills their eyes is an outward expression of the emptiness that takes hold in their hearts and minds.
Once, in the time of the Therin Throne, the process was used to punish criminals, but it has been centuries since any civilized Therin city-state allowed the use of Wraithstone on men and women. A society that still hangs children for petty theft and feeds prisoners to sea-creatures finds the results too disquieting to bear.
Gentling, therefore, is reserved for animals—mostly beasts of burden intended for urban service. The cramped confines of a hazard-rich city like Camorr are ideally suited to the process. Gentled ponies may be trusted never to throw the children of the wealthy. Gentled horses and mules may be trusted never to kick their handlers or dump expensive cargoes into a canal. A burlap sack with a bit of the white stone and a slow-smoldering match is placed over an animal’s muzzle, and the human handlers retreat to fresh air. A few minutes later the creature’s eyes are the color of new milk, and it will never do anything on its own initiative again.
But Locke had a throbbing headache, and he was just getting used to the idea that he was a murderer and a resident of a private glass fairyland, and the eerily mechanical behavior of his goat didn’t bother him at all.
“This temple will be exactly where I left it when I return later this evening,” said Father Chains as he finished dressing for his venture outside; the Eyeless Priest had vanished entirely, to be replaced by a hale man of middle years and moderate means. His beard and his hair had been touched up with some sort of brown dye; his vest and cheap cotton-lined half-cloak hung loosely over a cream-colored shirt with no ties or cravats.
“Exactly where you left it,” said one of the Sanzas.
“And not burned down or anything,” said the other.
“If you boys can burn down stone and Elderglass, the gods have higher aspirations for you than a place as my apprentices. Do behave. I’m taking Locke to get his, ahh …”
Chains glanced sideways at the Lamora boy. He then mimed taking a drink, and held his jaw afterward as though in pain.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh,” said Calo and Galdo in pitch-perfect unison.
“Indeed.” Chains settled a little round leather cap on his head and took the reins of Locke’s goat. “Wait up for us. This should be interesting, to say the least.”
2
“THIS CAPA Barsavi,” Locke said as Chains led the nameless goat across one of the narrow glass arches between the Fauria and Coin-Kisser’s Row, “my old master told me about him, I think.”
“You’re quite right. That time you got the Elderglass Vine burned down, I believe.”
“Ah. You know about that.”
“Well, once your old master started telling me about you, he just sort of … didn’t shut up for several hours.”
“If I’m your pezon, are you Barsavi’s pezon?”
“That’s a plain, neat description of our relationship, yes. All the Right People are Barsavi’s soldiers. His eyes, his ears, his agents, his subjects
. His pezon. Barsavi is … a particular sort of friend. I did some things for him, back when he was coming to power. We rose together, you might say—I got special consideration and he got the, ah, entire city.”
“Special consideration?”
It was as pleasant a night for a stroll as Camorr ever produced during the summer. A hard rain had fallen not an hour before, and the fresh mist that spread its tendrils around buildings like the grasping hands of spectral giants was slightly cooler than usual, and its odor wasn’t yet saturated with the redolence of silt and dead fish and human waste. Other people were few and far between on Coin-Kisser’s Row after Falselight, so Locke and Chains spoke fairly freely.
“I’ve got the distance. Which means—well, there are a hundred gangs in Camorr, Locke. A hundred and more. Certainly I can’t remember them all. Some of them are too new or too unruly for Capa Barsavi to trust them as well as he might. So he keeps a close eye on them—insists on frequent reports, plants men in them, reins their actions in tightly. Those of us that don’t suffer such scrutiny”—Chains pointed to himself, then to Locke—“are sort of presumed to be doing things honestly until proven otherwise. We follow his rules and pay him a cut of our take, and he thinks he can more or less trust us to get it right. No audits, no spies, no bullshit. ‘The distance.’ It’s a privilege worth paying for.”
Chains stuck a hand in one of his cloak pockets; there was the pleasing jingle of coins. “I’ve got a little show of respect for him right here, in fact. Two-tenths of this week’s take from the charity kettle of Perelandro.”