by Scott Lynch
He advanced confidently to the attack, knowing that Locke had never once so much as kept up with him in a fight. Locke met him head-on, shaking the left sleeve of his coat strangely. That sleeve was actually five feet longer than usual, courtesy of Jean Tannen’s alterations; Locke had kept it cleverly folded against his side to conceal its true nature as Tesso approached.
Although Locke had few gifts as a fighter, he could be startlingly fast, and the cuff of his sleeve had a small lead weight sewn into it to aid him in casting it. He flung it forth, wrapping it around Tesso’s chest beneath the taller boy’s arms. The lead weight carried it around as it stretched taut, and Locke caught it in his left hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tesso huffed. He clouted Locke just above his right eye; Locke flinched but ignored the pain. He slipped the extended sleeve into a loop of cloth that hung out of his coat’s left pocket, folded it back over itself, and pulled another cord just below it. The network of knotted cords that Jean had sewn inside his coat’s lining cinched tight; now the boys were chest to chest, and nothing short of a knife could free Tesso from the loop of thick cloth that tied them together.
Locke wrapped his arms around Tesso’s abdomen for good measure, and then wrapped his spindly legs around Tesso’s legs, just above the taller boy’s knees. Tesso shoved and slapped at Locke, struggling to part the two of them. Failing, he began punching Locke in the teeth and on the top of his head—heavy blows that left Locke seeing flashes of light.
“What the hell is this, Lamora?” Tesso grunted with the effort of supporting Locke’s weight in addition to his own. Finally, as Locke had hoped and expected, he threw himself forward. Locke landed on his back in the gravel, with Tesso atop him. The air burst out of Locke’s lungs, and the whole world seemed to shudder. “This is ridiculous. You can’t fight me. And now you can’t run! Give up, Lamora!”
Locke spit blood into Tesso’s face. “I don’t have to fight you and I don’t have to run.” He grinned wildly. “I just have to keep you here … until Jean gets back.”
Tesso gasped and looked around. Out, on the Shifting Market one small cockleshell boat was heading straight toward them. The plump shape of Jean Tannen was clearly visible within it, hauling rapidly on the oars.
“Oh, shit. You little bastard. Let me go, let me go, let me go!”
Tesso punctuated this with a series of punches. Soon enough Locke was bleeding from his nose, his lips, his ears, and somewhere under his hair. Tesso was pounding him but good, yet he continued to cling madly to the older boy. His head was whirling with the combination of pain and triumph; Locke actually started laughing, high and gleeful and perhaps a little bit mad.
“I don’t have to fight or run,” he cackled. “I changed the rules of the game. I just have to keep you here … asshole. Here … until … Jean gets back.”
“Gods dammit,” Tesso hissed, and he redoubled his assault on Locke, punching and spitting and biting.
“Keep hitting,” Locke sputtered. “You just keep hitting. I can take it all day. You just keep … hitting me … until … Jean gets back!”
III
REVELATION
“Nature never deceives us;
it is always we who deceive ourselves.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
From Émile ou De l’éducation
CHAPTER NINE
A CURIOUS TALE FOR COUNTESS AMBERGLASS
1
AT HALF PAST the tenth hour of the evening on Duke’s Day, as low dark clouds fell in above Camorr, blotting out the stars and the moons, Doña Sofia Salvara was being hoisted up into the sky to have a late tea with Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza, dowager countess of Amberglass, at the top of the great lady’s Elderglass tower.
The passenger cage rattled and swayed, and Sofia clung to the black iron bars for support. The sweaty Hangman’s Wing fluttered at her hooded coat as she stared south. All of the city lay spread beneath her, black and gray from horizon to horizon, suffused with the glow of fire and alchemy. This was a point of quiet pride for her every time she had the chance to take in this view from one of the Five Towers. The Eldren had built glass wonders for men to claim; engineers had crafted buildings of stone and wood in the Eldren ruins to make the cities their own; Bondsmagi pretended to the powers the Eldren must have once held. But it was alchemy that drove back the darkness every evening; alchemy that lit the commonest home and the tallest tower alike, cleaner and safer than natural fire. It was her art that tamed the night.
At last, her long ascent ended; the cage rattled to a halt beside an embarkation platform four-fifths of the way up Amberglass’ full height. The wind sighed mournfully in the strange fluted arches at the peak of the tower. Two footmen in cream-white waistcoats and immaculate white gloves and breeches helped her out of the cage, as they might have assisted her from a carriage down on the ground. Once she was safely on the platform, the two men bowed from the waist.
“M’lady Salvara,” said the one on the left, “my mistress bids you welcome to Amberglass.”
“Most kind,” said Doña Sofia.
“If it would please you to wait on the terrace, she will join you momentarily.”
The same footman led the way past a half dozen servants in similar livery, who stood panting beside the elaborate arrangement of gears, levers, and chains they worked to haul the cargo cage up and down. They, too, bowed as she passed; she favored them with a smile and an acknowledging wave. It never hurt to be pleasant to the servants in charge of that particular operation.
Doña Vorchenza’s terrace was a wide crescent of transparent Elderglass jutting out from the north face of her tower, surrounded by brass safety rails. Doña Sofia looked straight down, as she had always been warned not to do, and as she always did. It seemed that she and the footman walked on thin air forty stories above the stone courtyards and storage buildings at the base of the tower; alchemical lamps were specks of light, and carriages were black squares smaller than one of her nails.
On her left, visible through a series of tall arched windows whose sills were on a level with her waist, were dimly lit apartments and parlors within the tower itself. Doña Vorchenza had very few living relatives, and no children; she was effectively the last of a once-powerful clan, and there was little doubt (among the grasping, ambitious nobles of the Alcegrante slopes, at least) that Amberglass would pass to some new family upon her death. Most of her tower was dark and quiet, most of its opulence packed away in closets and chests.
The old lady still knew how to host a late-night tea, however. At the far northwestern corner of her transparent terrace, with a commanding view of the lightless countryside to the north of the city, a silk awning fluttered in the Hangman’s Wind. Tall alchemical lanterns in cages of gold-gilded brass hung from the four corners of the awning, shedding warm light on the little table and the two high-backed chairs arranged therein.
The footman placed a thin black cushion upon the right-hand chair and pulled it out for her; with a swish of skirts she settled into it and nodded her thanks. The man bowed and strolled away, taking up a watch at a point that was politely out of earshot but within easy beckoning distance.
Sofia did not have long to wait for her hostess; a few minutes after her arrival, old Doña Vorchenza appeared out of a wooden door on the tower’s north wall.
Age has a way of exaggerating the physical traits of those who live to feel its strains; the round tend to grow rounder, and the slim tend to waste away. Time had narrowed Angiavesta Vorchenza. She was not so much withered as collapsed, a spindly living caricature like a wooden idol animated by the sorcery of sheer willpower. Seventy was a fading memory for her, yet she still moved about without an escort on her arm or a cane in her hands. She dressed eccentrically in a black velvet frock coat with fur collars and cuffs. Eschewing the cascading petticoats the ladies of her era had favored, she actually wore black pantaloons and silver slippers. Her white hair was pulled back and fixed with lacquered pins; her dark
eyes were bright behind her half-moon optics.
“Sofia,” she said as she stepped daintily beneath the awning, “what a pleasure it is to have you up here again. It’s been months, my dear girl, months. No, do sit; pulling out my own chair holds no terrors for me. Ah. Tell me, how is Lorenzo? And surely we must speak of your garden.”
“Lorenzo and I are well, considered solely in ourselves. And the garden thrives, Doña Vorchenza. Thank you for asking.”
“Considered solely in yourselves? Then there is something else? Something, dare I pry, external?”
A night tea, in Camorr, was a womanly tradition when one wished to seek the advice of another, or simply make use of a sympathetic ear while expressing regrets or complaints—most frequently concerning men.
“You may pry, Doña Vorchenza, by all means. And yes, yes, ‘external’ is a very proper term for it.”
“But it’s not Lorenzo?”
“Oh, no. Lorenzo is satisfactory in every possible respect.” Sofia sighed and glanced down at the illusion of empty air beneath her feet and her chair. “It’s … both of us that may be in need of advice.”
“Advice,” chuckled Doña Vorchenza. “The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one’s mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you’re a nag. Give it at seventy and you’re a sage.”
“Doña Vorchenza,” said Sofia, “you have been of great help to me before. I couldn’t think … well, there was no one else I was comfortable speaking to about this matter, for the time being.”
“Indeed? Well, dear girl, I’m eager to be of whatever help I can. But here’s our tea—come, let us indulge ourselves for a few moments.”
One of Doña Vorchenza’s jacketed attendants wheeled a silver-domed cart toward them and slid it into place beside the little table. When he whisked the dome away, Sofia saw that the cart held a gleaming silver tea service and a subtlety—a perfect culinary replica of Amberglass Tower, barely nine inches high, complete with minuscule specks of alchemical light dotting its turrets. The little glass globes were not much larger than raisins.
“You see how little real work I give to my poor chef,” said Doña Vorchenza, cackling. “He suffers in the service of such a plain and simple palate; he takes his revenge with these surprises. I cannot order a softboiled egg, but that he finds a dancing chicken to lay it directly on my plate. Tell me, Gilles, is that edifice truly edible?”
“So I am assured, my lady Vorchenza, save for the tiny lights. The tower itself is spice cake; the turrets and terraces are jellied fruit. The buildings and carriages at the base of the tower are mostly chocolate; the heart of the tower is an apple brandy cream, and the windows—”
“Thank you, Gilles, that will do for an architectural synopsis. But spit out the lights when we’re finished, you say?”
“It would be more decorous, m’lady,” said the servant, a round, delicate-featured man with shoulder-length black ringlets, “to let me remove them for you prior to consumption.…”
“Decorous? Gilles, you would deny us the fun of spitting them over the side of the terrace like little girls. I’ll thank you not to touch them. The tea?”
“Your will, Doña Vorchenza,” he said smoothly. “Tea of Light.” He lifted a silver teapot and poured a steaming line of pale brownish liquid into a tea glass; Doña Vorchenza’s etched glasses were shaped like large tulip buds with silver bases. As the tea settled into the container, it began to glow faintly, shedding an inviting orange radiance.
“Oh, very pretty,” said Doña Sofia. “I’ve heard of it.… Verrari, is it?”
“Lashani.” Doña Vorchenza took the glass from Gilles and cradled it in both hands. “Quite the latest thing. Their tea masters are mad with the competitive spirit. This time next year we’ll have something even stranger to one-up one another with. But forgive me, my dear—I do hope you’re not averse to drinking the products of your art as well as working with them in your garden?”
“Not at all,” Sofia replied as the servant set her own glass before her and bowed. She took the cup into her hands and took a deep breath; the tea smelled of mingled vanilla and orange blossoms. When she sipped, the flavors ran warmly on her tongue and the scented steam rose into her nostrils. Gilles vanished back into the tower itself while the ladies commenced drinking. For a few moments they enjoyed their tea in appreciative silence, and for a few moments Sofia was almost content.
“Now we shall see,” said Doña Vorchenza as she set her half-empty glass down before her, “if it continues to glow when it comes out the other side.”
Doña Salvara giggled despite herself, and the lines on her hostess’ lean face drew upward as she smiled. “Now, what did you want to ask me about, my dear?”
“Doña Vorchenza,” Sofia began, then hesitated. “It is … it is commonly thought that you have some, ah, means to communicate with the … the duke’s secret constabulary.”
“The duke has a secret constabulary?” Doña Vorchenza placed a hand against her breast in an expression of polite disbelief.
“The Midnighters, Doña Vorchenza, the Midnighters, and their leader—”
“The duke’s Spider. Yes, yes. Forgive me, dear girl, I do know of what you speak. But this idea you have … ‘Commonly thought,’ you say? Many things are commonly thought, but perhaps not commonly thought all the way through.”
“It is very curious,” said Sofia Salvara, “that when the doñas come to you with problems, on more than one occasion, their problems have … reached the ear of the Spider. Or seemed to, since the duke’s men became involved in assisting with those problems.”
“Oh, my dear Sofia. When gossip comes to me I pass it on in packets and parcels. I drop a word or two in the right ear, and the gossip acquires a life of its own. Sooner or later it must reach the notice of someone who will take action.”
“Doña Vorchenza,” said Sofia, “I hope I can say without intending or giving offense that you are dissembling.”
“I hope I can say without disappointing you, dear girl, that you have a very slender basis for making that suggestion.”
“Doña Vorchenza.” Sofia clutched at her edge of the table so hard that several of her finger joints popped. “Lorenzo and I are being robbed.”
“Robbed? Whatever do you mean?”
“And we have Midnighters involved. They’ve … made the most extraordinary claims, and made requests of us. But … Doña Vorchenza, there must be some way to confirm that they are what they say they are.”
“You say Midnighters are robbing you?”
“No,” said Sofia, biting her upper lip. “No, it’s not the Midnighters themselves. They are … supposedly watching the situation and waiting for a chance to act. But something … something is just wrong. Or they are not telling us everything they perhaps should.”
“My dear Sofia,” said Doña Vorchenza. “My poor troubled girl, you must tell me exactly what has happened, and leave out not one detail.”
“It is … difficult, Doña Vorchenza. The situation is rather … embarrassing. And complicated.”
“We are all alone up here on my terrace, my dear. You have done all the hard work already, in coming over to see me. Now you must tell me everything. Then I’ll see to it that this particular bit of gossip speeds on its way to the right ear, I promise you.”
Sofia took another small sip of tea, cleared her throat, and hunched down in her seat to look Doña Vorchenza directly in the eyes.
“Surely,” she began, “you’ve heard of Austershalin brandy, Doña Vorchenza?”
“More than heard of, my dear. I may even have a few bottles hidden away in my wine cabinets.”
“And you know how it is made? The secrets surrounding it?”
“Oh, I believe I understand the essence of the Austershalin mystique. The fussy black-coated vintners of Emberlain are, shall we say, well served by the stories surrounding their wares.”
“Then you can understand, Doña Vorchenza, how Lorenzo and I
reacted as we did when the following opportunity supposedly fell into our laps by an act of the gods.…”
2
THE CAGE containing Doña Salvara creaked and rattled toward the ground, growing ever smaller and fading into the background gray of the courtyard. Doña Vorchenza stood by the brass rails of the embarkation platform, staring into the night for many minutes, while her team of attendants pulled at the machinery of the capstan. Gilles wheeled the silver cart with the near-empty pot of tea and the half-eaten Amberglass cake past her, and she turned to him.
“No,” she said. “Send the cake up to the solarium. That’s where we’ll be.”
“Who, m’lady?”
“Reynart.” She was already striding back toward the door to her terrace-side apartments; her slippered feet made an echoing slap-slap-slap against the walkway. “Find Reynart. I don’t care what he’s doing. Find him and send him up to me, the moment you’ve seen to the cake.”
Inside the suite of apartments, through a locked door, up a curving stairway … Doña Vorchenza cursed under her breath. Her knees, her feet, her ankles. “Damn venerability,” she muttered. “I piss on the gods for the gift of rheumatism.” Her breathing was ragged. She undid the buttons on the front of her fur-trimmed coat as she continued to mount the steps.
At the top—the very peak of the inner tower—there was a heavy oaken door reinforced with iron joints and bands. She pulled forth a key that hung around her right wrist on a silk cord. This she inserted into the silver lockbox above the crystal knob while carefully pressing a certain decorative brass plate in a wall sconce. A series of clicks echoed within the walls and the door fell open, inward.
Forgetting the brass plate would be a poor idea; she’d specified a rather excessive pull for the concealed crossbow trap, when she’d had it installed three decades earlier.
This was the solarium, then, another eight stories up from the level of the terrace. The room took up the full diameter of the tower at its apex, fifty feet from edge to edge. The floor was thickly carpeted. A long curving brass-railed gallery, with stairs at either end, spread across the northern half of the space. This gallery held a row of tall witchwood shelves divided into thousands upon thousands of cubbyholes and compartments. The transparent hemispherical ceiling dome revealed the low clouds like a bubbling lake of smoke. Doña Vorchenza tapped alchemical globes to bring them to life as she mounted the stairs to her file gallery.