by Scott Lynch
The night was dark and full of rain, and none of the gang were particularly eager to make their way back onto the creaking exterior stairs that staggered down the north side of the tower. Hissing rain rattled the window shutters, and the wind made an eerie rising-and-falling sigh as it passed over the gaps and crevices in the old tower. The Gentlemen Bastards sat on floor cushions in the light of paper lanterns and nursed the last of their beer, the pale sweet sort that most Camorr natives preferred to the bitter Verrari dark. The air was stuffy, but at least tolerably dry.
Locke had given them the whole story over dinner.
“Well,” said Galdo, “this is the damnedest damn thing that ever dammed things up for us.”
“I say again,” said Jean, “that we should pull an early blow-off on the Don Salvara game and get ready to ride out a storm. This Gray King business is getting scary, and we can’t have our attention diverted if Locke’s going to be mixed up at the middle of things.”
“Where do we cut ourselves off?” asked Calo.
“We cut ourselves off now,” said Jean. “Now, or after we get one more note out of the don. No later.”
“Mmmm.” Locke stared down at the dregs in the bottom of his tin cup. “We’ve worked hard for this one. I’m confident we can run it for another five or ten thousand crowns, at least. Maybe not the twenty-five thousand we were hoping to squeeze out of Salvara, but enough to make ourselves proud. I got the crap kicked out of me, and Bug jumped off a building for this money, you know.”
“And got rolled two miles inside a bloody barrel!”
“Now, Bug,” said Galdo, “it’s not as though the nasty old barrel jumped you in an alley and forced you to crawl inside it. And I concur with Jean. I said it this afternoon, Locke. Even if you won’t seriously consider using them, can we at least make some arrangements to get you under cover in a hurry? Maybe even out of town?”
“I still can’t believe I’m hearing a Sanza counsel caution,” Locke said with a grin. “I thought we were richer and cleverer than everyone else.”
“You’ll hear it again and again when there’s a chance you’ll get your throat slit, Locke.” Calo picked up his brother’s argument. “I’ve changed my mind about the Gray King, that’s for damn sure. Maybe the lone lunatic does have it over the three thousand of us. You might be one of his targets. And if Barsavi wants you even tighter with his inner circle, it invites further trouble.”
“Can we set aside talk of slitting throats, just for a moment?” Locke rose and turned toward the shuttered seaward window. He pretended to stare out of it with his hands folded behind his back. “Who are we, after all? I admit I was almost ready to jump into the gods-damned bay when the capa sprang this on me. But I’ve had time to think, so get this straight—we’ve got the old fox dead to rights. We’ve got him in the palms of our hands. Honestly, boys. We’re so good at what we do that he’s asking the Thorn of fucking Camorr to marry his daughter. We’re so far in the clear it’s comical.”
“Nonetheless,” said Jean, “it’s a complication that could mess up our arrangements forever, not an accomplishment we can crow about.”
“Of course we can crow about it, Jean. I’m going to crow about it right now. Don’t you see? This is nothing we don’t do every day. It’s a plain old Gentlemen Bastards sort of job—only we’ll have Nazca working with me to pull it off as well. We can’t lose. I’m no more likely to marry her than I am to be named Duke Nicovante’s heir tomorrow morning.”
“Do you have a plan?” Jean’s eyes said he was curious but wary.
“Not even remotely. I don’t have the first damned clue what we’re going to do. But all my best plans start just like this.” Locke tipped the last of his beer down his throat and tossed the tin cup against the wall. “I’ve had my beer and I’ve had my apricot tarts, and I say the hell with them both, Gray King and Capa Barsavi. Nobody’s going to scare us out of our Don Salvara game, and nobody’s going to hitch me and Nazca against our will. We’ll do what we always do—wait for an opening, take it, and fucking well win.”
“Uh … well.” Jean sighed. “Will you at least let us take a few precautions? And will you watch yourself, coming and going?”
“Naturally, Jean, naturally. You grab us some places on likely ships; spend whatever you have to. I don’t care where they’re going as long as it’s not Jerem. We can lose ourselves anywhere for a few weeks and creep back when we please. Calo, Galdo, you get out to the Viscount’s Gate tomorrow. Leave some considerations for the boys in yellow so we can get out of the city at an awkward hour if we need to. Don’t be shy with the silver and gold.”
“What can I do?” asked Bug.
“You can watch our backs. Keep your eyes wide open. Skulk around the temple. Spot me anyone out of place, anyone who lingers too long. If anyone is trying to keep an eye on us, I guarantee we will go to ground and vanish like piss into the ocean. Until then, trust me. I promise to do most of my moving around as Lukas Fehrwight for the next few days; I can swap in some cheaper disguises, too.”
“Then I suppose that’s that,” Jean said quietly.
“Jean, I can be your garrista or I can just be the fellow who buys beer and tarts when everyone else mysteriously misplaces their purses.” Locke eyed the gathering with an exaggerated scowl. “I can’t be both; it’s one or the other.”
“I’m nervous,” said Jean, “because I don’t like having as little information as I fear we do. I share Nazca’s suspicions. The Gray King has something up his sleeves, something we don’t understand. Our game is very delicate and our situation is very … fluid.”
“I know. But I follow my gut, and my gut says that we meet this one head-on with smiles on our faces. Look,” said Locke, “the more we do this, the more I learn about what I think Chains was really training us for. And this is it. He wasn’t training us for a calm and orderly world where we could pick and choose when we needed to be clever. He was training us for a situation that was fucked up on all sides. Well, we’re in it, and I say we’re equal to it. I don’t need to be reminded that we’re up to our heads in dark water. I just want you boys to remember that we’re the gods-damned sharks.”
“Right on,” cried Bug. “I knew there was a reason I let you lead this gang!”
“Well, I can’t argue with the manifest wisdom of the boy that jumps off temple roofs. But I trust my points are noted,” said Jean.
“Very noted,” said Locke. “Received, recognized, and duly considered with the utmost gravity. Sealed, notarized, and firmly imprinted upon my rational essence.”
“Gods, you really are cheerful about this, aren’t you? You only play vocabulary games when you feel genuinely sunny about the world.” Jean sighed, but couldn’t keep the slightest hint of a smile from tugging at the corners of his lips.
“If you do end up in danger, Locke,” said Calo, “you must understand that we will ignore the orders of our garrista, and we’ll bludgeon our friend on the back of his thick skull and smuggle him out of Camorr in a box. I have just the bludgeon for the job.”
“And I have a box,” said Galdo. “Been hoping for an excuse to use it for years, really.”
“Also noted,” said Locke, “with thanks. But by the grace of the Crooked Warden, I choose to trust us. I choose to trust Chains’ judgment. I choose to keep doing what we do best. Tomorrow, I’ve got some work to do as Fehrwight, and then I’ll go see Nazca again the day after. The capa will be expecting it, and I’m sure she’ll have some ideas of her own by then.”
Locke thought once again of his last glimpse of her, that wink as the two great doors of dark wood slammed shut between them. Maintaining her father’s secrets was Nazca’s entire life. Did it mean something for her, to have one of her own that she could keep from him?
INTERLUDE
The Boy Who Cried for a Corpse
1
Father Chains gave Locke no respite from his education on the day after the visit to the Last Mistake. With his head still pounding f
rom a brown-sugar rum headache, Locke began to learn about the priesthood of Perelandro and the priesthood of the Benefactor. There were hand signs and ritual intonations; methods of greeting and meanings behind robe decorations. On his fourth day in Chains’ care, Locke began to sit the steps as one of the “Initiates of Perelandro,” clad in white and trying to look suitably humble and pathetic.
As the weeks passed, the breadth of Chains’ instruction expanded. Locke did two hours of reading and scribing each day; his pen-scratchings grew smoother step by halting step until the Sanza brothers announced that he no longer wrote “like a dog with an arrow in its brain.” Locke was moved enough by their praise to dust their sleeping pallets with red pepper. The Sanzas were distraught when their attempted retaliation was foiled by the utter paranoia Locke still carried with him from his experiences in Shades’ Hill and the Catchfire plague; it was simply impossible to sneak up on him or catch him sleeping.
“The brothers have never before met their match in mischief,” said Chains as he and Locke sat the steps one particularly slow day. “Now they’re wary of you. When they start coming to you for advice, well … that’s when you’ll know that you have them tamed.”
Locke had smiled and said nothing; just that morning Calo had offered to give Locke extra help with his sums if the smallest Gentleman Bastard would only tell the twins how he kept spotting their little booby traps and rendering them harmless.
Locke revealed precious few of his survival tricks, but he did accept the help of both Sanzas in his study of arithmetic. His only reward for each accomplishment was a more complex problem from Chains. At the same time, he began his education in spoken Vadran; Chains would issue simple commands in the language, and once Locke was reasonably familiar with the tongue Chains often forbade the three boys to speak anything else for hours at a time. Even their dinner conversation was conducted in the harsh and illogical language of the north. To Locke, it often seemed impossible to say anything in Vadran that didn’t sound angry.
“You won’t hear this among the Right People, much, but you’ll hear it on the docks and among the merchants, that’s for damn sure,” said Chains. “And when you hear someone speaking it, don’t ever let on that you know it unless you absolutely have to. You’d be surprised how arrogant some of those northern types are when it comes to their speech. Just play dumb, and you never know what they might let slip.”
There was more instruction in the culinary arts; Chains had Locke slaving away at the cooking hearth every other night, with Calo and Galdo vigorously henpecking him in tandem. “This is vicce alo apona, the fifth Beautiful Art of Camorr,” said Chains. “Guild chefs learn all eight styles better than they learn the uses of their own cocks, but you’ll just get the basics for now. Mind you, our basics piss on everyone else’s best. Only Karthain and Emberlain come close; most Vadrans wouldn’t know fine cuisine from rat shit in lamp oil. Now, this is Pinch-of-Gold Pepper, and this is Jereshti olive oil, and just behind them I keep dried cinnamon-lemon rind.…”
Locke stewed octopus and boiled potatoes; he sliced pears and apples and alchemical hybrid fruit that oozed honey-scented liquor. He spiced and seasoned and bit his tongue in furious concentration. He was frequently the architect of gruesome messes that were hauled out behind the temple and fed to the goat. But as he improved at everything else required of him, he improved steadily at the hearth; soon the Sanzas ceased to tease him and began to trust him as an assistant with their own delicate creations.
One night about half a year after his arrival at the House of Perelandro, Locke and the Sanzas collaborated on a stuffed platter of infant sharks; this was vicce enta merre, the first Beautiful Art, the cuisine of sea-creatures. Calo gutted the soft-skinned little sharks and stuffed them with red and yellow peppers, which had in turn been stuffed with sausage and blood-cheese by Locke. The tiny staring eyes of the creatures were replaced with black olives. Once the little teeth were plucked out, their mouths were stuffed with glazed carrots and rice, and their fins and tails were cut off to be boiled in soup. “Ahhh,” said Chains when the elaborate meal was settling in four appreciative gullets, “now that was genuinely excellent, boys. But while you’re cleaning up and scouring the dishes, I only want to hear you speaking Vadran.…”
And so it went; Locke was schooled further in the art of setting a table and waiting on individuals of high station. He learned how to hold out a chair and how to pour tea and wine; he and the Sanzas conducted elaborate dinner-table rituals with the gravity of physikers cutting open a patient. There were lessons in clothing: the tying of cravats, the buckling of shoes, the wearing of expensive affectations such as hose. In fact, there was a dizzying variety of instruction in virtually every sphere of human accomplishment except thievery.
As the first anniversary of Locke’s arrival at the temple loomed, that changed.
“I owe some favors, boys,” said Chains one night as they all hunkered down in the lifeless rooftop garden. This was where he preferred to discuss all the weightier matters of their life together, at least when it wasn’t raining. “Favors I can’t put off when certain people come calling.”
“Like the Capa?” asked Locke.
“Not this time.” Chains took a long drag on his habitual after-dinner smoke. “This time I owe the black alchemists. You know about them, right?”
Calo and Galdo nodded, but hesitantly; Locke shook his head.
“Well,” said Chains, “there’s a right and proper Guild of Alchemists, but they’re very choosy about the sort of person they let in, and the sort of work they let them do. Black alchemists are sort of the reason the guild has such strict rules. They do business in false shop fronts, with people like us. Drugs, poisons, what have you. The Capa owns them, same as he owns us, but nobody really leans on them directly. They’re, ah, not the sort of people you want to upset.
“Jessaline d’Aubart is probably the best of the lot. I, uh, I had occasion to get poisoned once. She took care of it for me. So I owe her, and she’s finally called in the favor. What she wants is a corpse.”
“Beggar’s Barrow,” said Calo.
“And a shovel,” said Galdo.
“No, she needs a fresh corpse. Still warm and juicy, as it were. See, the Guilds of Alchemists and Physikers are entitled to a certain number of fresh corpses each year by ducal charter. Straight off the gallows, for cutting open and poking around. The black alchemists don’t receive any such courtesy, and Jessaline has some theories she wants to put to the test. So I’ve decided you boys are going to work together on your first real job. I want you to find a corpse, fresher than morning bread. Get your hands on it without attracting undue attention, and bring it here so I can hand it off to Jessaline.”
“Steal a corpse? This won’t be any fun,” said Galdo.
“Think of it as a valuable test of your skills,” said Chains.
“Are we likely to steal many corpses in the future?” asked Calo.
“It’s not a test of your corpse-plucking abilities, you cheeky little nitwit,” Chains said amiably. “I mean to see how you all work together on something more serious than our dinner. I’ll consider setting you up with anything you ask for, but I’m not giving you hints. You get to figure this one out on your own.”
“Anything we ask for?” said Locke.
“Within reason,” said Chains. “And let me emphasize that you can’t make the corpse yourself. You have to find it honestly dead by someone else’s doing.”
So forceful was Chains’ voice when he said this that the Sanza brothers stared warily at Locke for a few seconds, then gave each other a look with eyebrows arched.
“When,” said Locke, “does this lady want it by?”
“She’d be very pleased to have it in the next week or two.”
Locke nodded, then stared down at his hands for a few seconds. “Calo, Galdo,” he said, “will you sit the steps tomorrow so I can think about this?”
“Yes,” they said without hesitation, and Father Chai
ns didn’t miss the note of hope in their voices. He would remember that moment ever after; the night the Sanzas conceded that Locke would be the brains of their operation. The night they were relieved to have him as the brains of their operation.
“Honestly dead,” said Locke, “and not killed by us and not even stiff yet. Right. I know we can do it. It’ll be easy. I just don’t know why or how yet.”
“Your confidence heartens me,” said Chains. “But I want you to remember that you’re on a very short leash. If a tavern should happen to burn down or a riot should happen to break out around you, I’ll throw you off this roof with lead ingots tied around your neck.”
Calo and Galdo stared at Locke once again.
“Short leash. Right. But don’t worry,” said Locke. “I’m not as reckless as I was. You know, when I was little.”
2
THE NEXT day, Locke walked the length of the Temple District on his own for the very first time, hooded in a clean white robe of Perelandro’s order with silver embroidery on the sleeves, waist-high to virtually everyone around him. He was astonished at the courtesy given to the robe (a courtesy, he clearly understood, that in many cases only partially devolved on the poor fool wearing the robe).
Most Camorri regarded the Order of Perelandro with a mixture of cynicism and guilty pity. The unabashed charity of the god and his priesthood just didn’t speak to the rough heart of the city’s character. Yet the reputation of Father Chains as a colorful freak of piety paid certain dividends. Men who surely joked about the simpering of the Beggar God’s white-robed priests with their friends nonetheless threw coins into Chains’ kettle, eyes averted, when they passed his temple. It turned out they also let a little robed initiate pass on the street without harassment; groups parted fluidly and merchants nodded almost politely as Locke went on his way.