by Scott Lynch
“I can’t run,” gasped Donker, rising from his misery and wiping his mouth on a tunic sleeve. “I can’t leave Espara! This is madness! I’m not even … let’s explain ourselves, let’s say it was all an accident, they’ll understand!”
Locke took a deep, steadying breath. Donker was the one he’d been afraid of; with him it all came down to how much he truly cherished his cousin.
“They won’t understand a damned thing,” growled Bert. “They’ve got a heap of foreigners, players, and nightskins to punish at will.”
“Djunkhar, Bert’s right. They don’t have to care if anyone’s innocent,” said Locke. “So nobody’s running or confessing. We have a plan, and you’re all going to swear an oath by it if you want to be free and alive at the end of the day.”
“Not me. I’m leaving,” said Jasmer. “Dressed as a priest, dressed as a horse, dressed as the fucking countess if I must. There’s ways out of the city that aren’t past guarded gates, and unless your plan involves a Bondsmage, I’m for them—”
“Then we’ll have two corpses to lie about instead of one,” said Sabetha.
Calo and Galdo reached into their tunic sleeves, taking care to be as obvious as possible.
“You puppies do love to give the fucking orders,” said Moncraine. “This is madness and fantasy! We don’t play games with this corpse. We run from it as fast as we still can!”
“You bloody coward, Jasmer,” said Jenora. “Give them a chance! Who pried you out of gaol?”
“The gods,” said Jasmer. “They’re all perverts and I seem to be their present amusement.”
“Enough! This is singua solus now,” said Locke. “It means ‘one fate.’ Does everyone understand?”
Moncraine only glared. Chantal, Bert, and Sylvanus nodded. Donker shook his head, and Alondo spoke: “I, uh, have to confess I don’t.”
“It works like this,” said Locke. “Everyone here is now party to murder and treason. Congratulations! There’s no backing gently out of it. So we go straight on through this business with our heads held high, or we hang. We swear ourselves to the plan, we tell the exact same lies, and we take the truth to our graves.”
“And if anyone reneges,” said Sylvanus, slowly and grimly, “should anyone think to confess after all, and trade the rest of us for some advantage, we swear to vengeance. The rest of us vow to get them, whatever it takes.”
“Mercy of the Twelve,” sobbed Donker, “I just wanted to have some fun onstage, just once.”
“Fun must be paid for, Cousin.” Alondo took him by the shoulders and steadied him. “It seems the price has gone up for us. Let’s show the gods we’ve got some nerve, eh?”
“How can you be so calm?”
“I’m not. I’m too scared to piss straight,” said Alondo. “But if the Camorri have a plan it’s far more than I’ve got, and I’ll cling to it.”
“The plan is simple,” said Sabetha, “though it’ll take some nerve. The first thing you need to realize is that we’re still doing the play tonight.”
Their reactions were as Locke expected: panic, shouting, blasphemy, and threats, more panic.
“THIRTEEN GODS,” shouted Calo, silencing the tumult. “There’s one way out and no way back. If we don’t go onstage like nothing’s wrong, we can’t escape. You’re in our hands now, and we’re your only chance!”
“We piss excellence and shit happy endings,” said Galdo. “Trust us and live. Listen to Lucaza again.”
Locke spoke quickly now, succinctly, and was viciously dismissive to questions and complaints. He outlined the plan in every detail, just as they’d conjured it the night before, with a few twists he’d thought up during his long vigil. When he was finished, everyone except Sylvanus looked as though they’d aged five years.
“This is even worse than before!” said Donker.
“Unfortunately, you can see that you’re indispensable,” said Locke. “You might have signed on to get killed onstage, but you’ll get killed for real if you don’t play along.”
“What … what the hell do we do with the body?” said Chantal.
“We burn it,” said Sabetha. “Make it look like an accident. We have a plan, for after the play. We roast him just enough to hide the real cause of death, but not enough to prevent identification.”
“And the money?” said Jasmer, his voice dry and tense. “We won’t get a second show with a dead patron. Even if we’re absolved from paying damages to all the vendors, we’re in the hole. Deep.”
“That’s my last bit of good news,” said Locke. “We have copies of the baron’s signatures, plus his signet ring. We collect all the money from the first show; then we come back here. We have you, Jasmer, sign a false receipt from the baron for everything he’s owed, just as if he’d taken it first, as was his right. Verena will forge his signature. Then he dies in a fire, the money goes quietly into our pockets, and we act like we have no idea what the hell Boulidazi did with it before he died.”
“We collect the money?” said Moncraine.
“Of course,” said Locke. “We figured Jenora could take charge of it—”
“We can’t collect the money,” said Moncraine. “It’s one of the things Boulidazi and I were arguing about last night before he got too drunk to think! He’s got someone coming in on his orders to handle all the coin!”
“What?” said Locke and Sabetha in unison.
“Just what I said, you fucking know-it-all infants. Boulidazi might be coffin meat, but he’s got a hireling already assigned to collect the money for him. None of us here will be allowed to touch a copper of it!”
CHAPTER TEN: THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: FINAL APPROACHES
1
“YOU’RE AS WELCOME as a scorpion in a nursery,” said Vordratha, meeting Locke with a glare and a wall of well-dressed toughs at his back. As was becoming routine, Locke had been halted before making it halfway across the entry hall of the Sign of the Black Iris.
“I need to see her,” panted Locke. His flight across the city had not been dignified or subtle; he’d stolen a horse to make it possible, and bluecoats were probably scouring the Vel Verda as he spoke.
“Why, you’re the very last person in Karthain who’d be allowed to do so.” Vordratha’s smirk split his lean face like a sword wound. “Her orders were explicit and vehement.”
“Look, I know our last encounter was—”
“Unpleasant.” Vordratha gestured. Before Locke could turn to run, the Black Iris guards had him pinioned.
“Remember, Master Vordratha, that you’d as good as confessed your intentions to have us beaten and left in an alley,” said Locke. “So if our conversational options were narrowed you’ve only yourself to blame!”
“The mistress of the house specifically desires not to see you.” Vordratha leaned in close; his breath was like a hint of old spilled wine. “And while I am charged not to harm you, I’d argue that I’m not responsible for anything that happens between your leaving my custody and hitting the pavement.”
Vordratha’s guards pushed Locke outside and heaved him in an impressive arc that terminated in a bone-jarring impact with the cobblestones. His feelings warred bitterly over his next move, pride and desire against prudence and street-reflexes, the latter winning out only when he realized how perilously close he was to carriage traffic and how many witnesses were on hand to see him get crushed by it. Groaning, he crawled back to the curb.
His stolen horse was gone, and the Black Iris stable boys leered at him knowingly. It was a long, painful walk to a neighborhood where a coach would deign to pick him up.
2
“… AND THAT’S the whole gods-damned mess,” said Locke, his fingers knotted around a glass that had once contained a throat-scorching quantity of brandy. “I found a ride, came straight back, and here we are.”
It was past midnight. Locke had returned, sequestered Jean in their suite, and with the help of large plates of food and a bottle of Josten’s most expensive distilled spirits he’d unro
lled the whole tale.
“Do you really need me to tell you that the bitch was lying?” said Jean.
“I know she was lying,” said Locke. “There have to be lies mixed in somewhere. It’s the parts that might be true that concern me.”
“Why not assume it was ALL lies?” Jean ran his fingers rapidly over his temples, attempting to massage away the dull pain still radiating from his plastered nose. “Bow-to-stern bullshit! Gods damn it, this is what you and I do to people. We talk them into corners where they can’t tell truth from nonsense.”
“She knows my name. My actual name. The one I—”
“Yes,” said Jean. “And I know who told her.”
“But I only ever—”
“That’s right.” Disgust burned like bile at the back of Jean’s throat, and he tapped his own chest with both hands. “They said they opened me like a book in Tal Verrar and took everything they wanted. Therefore, I must have given them that name. Think! The rest of Patience’s story was most likely built around it.”
“That leaves the question of the third name.”
“The one Patience claims is deeper than the one you gave me? Is it even there?”
Locke rubbed his shadow-cupped eyes. “I don’t … I don’t know. It’s not a name at all. Just a feeling, maybe.”
“About what I expected,” said Jean. “Do you really remember ever having that feeling, before tonight? It strikes me as a ready-made bluff. I have all manner of strange unsorted feelings in my heart and head; we all must. She didn’t give you half a particle of telling evidence! All she did was plant a doubt that you could gnaw on forever, if you let yourself.”
“If I let myself.” Locke tossed his glass aside. “All my life I’ve wondered where the hell I came from. Now I’ve got possibilities like an arrow to the gut, and I absolutely do not have time to fuss over them.”
“Possibilities,” sighed Jean. “In faith, now, even if they were true answers, would you really want this particular bunch? I realize it’s easy for me to say … knowing when and where I was born—”
“I know where I’m from,” said Locke. “I’m from Camorr. I’m from Camorr! Even if everything she said was true, that’s all I give a barrel of dry rat shit about. That and Sabetha.” Locke stood, the lines of his face grimly set. “That, and Sabetha, and beating the hell out of her in this idiotic election. Now—”
Someone knocked at the door, loudly and urgently.
3
LOCKE WATCHED as Jean unbolted it with customary caution. There stood Nikoros, unshaven, his eyes like fried eggs and hair looking as though it had been caught in the spokes of a wagon wheel. He held a piece of parchment in a shaking hand.
“This just came in,” he muttered. “Specifically for Master Lazari, from a Black Iris courier at the AHHHHHHH—”
This exclamation erupted out of him as Locke darted forward and seized the letter. He snapped it open, noting the quick familiar strokes of Sabetha’s script:
I wish I could write your name above and sign my own below, but we both know what a poor idea that would be.
I know my refusal to see you must have been painful, and for that I apologize, but I believe I was only right. My heart is sick with this strangeness and these puzzles. I can barely tame words to make whole thoughts and I suspect you could hardly be accused of being at your best, either. I don’t know what I would do were you in arm’s reach; what I might ask, what I might demand for comfort’s sake. The only certainty is that the terms of our employment are not relaxed, and we are both in the severest danger if we tread carelessly. Were we together, at this moment, I don’t imagine we could possibly tread otherwise.
I don’t understand what happened this evening. I know only that it scares me. It scares me that your handler, for any reason, has taken such an interest in telling us so much. It scares me that there are things in motion around you that would appear to tie us both to such secrets and obligations.
It scares me that there may be something still hidden even from yourself, some elemental part of you that might yet tumble like a broken wall, and I am haunted by the thought that when next I find you looking at me it might not be with the eyes I remember, but with those of a stranger.
Forgive me. I know that you would be made as anxious by my silence as by my honesty, and so I have chosen honesty.
I have let feelings I once thought buried come back with real power over me, and now I find myself in desperate need of detachment and clear thoughts. Please don’t try to return to the Sign of the Black Iris in person. Please don’t come looking for me. I need you to be my opponent now more than I need you to be my lover or even my friend. In this I speak for us both.
“Ah, damn everything,” Locke muttered, crumpling the parchment and stuffing it into a jacket pocket. “Gods damn everything.” He collapsed back into his chair, brows knit, and let his gaze wander aimlessly over the wall. The most awkward sort of silence settled over the room, until Jean cleared his throat.
“Well, ah, Nikoros. You look like you’ve been thrashed by devils,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Business, sir, business. So much of it. And I … I … forgive me, I’m going without … the substance we’ve discussed.”
“You’re weaning yourself from that wretched dust.” Jean clapped Nikoros by the shoulders, a gesture that made the smaller man wobble like aspic. “Good! You were murdering yourself, you know.”
“The way my head feels, I half wish I’d succeeded,” said Nikoros.
Locke’s curiosity drew him back to the present, and he studied Nikoros. The Karthani was on the come-down from black alchemy for sure; Locke had seen it a hundred times. The misery would shake Nikoros for days like a cat playing with a toy. It might be wise to cut the poor fellow’s duties … or even to chain him to a wall.
Hells, Locke thought, if I get any more twisted out of my own skin they might have to shackle me next to him.
“Lazari,” said Jean, “now, if that letter’s what I think it is … Is it, shall we say, a finality? Or just an interruption?”
“It’s a knife to the guts,” said Locke. “But I suppose … well, I suppose I can view it as more an interruption.”
“Good,” said Jean. “Good!”
“I suppose,” muttered Locke. Then, feeling an old familiar heat stirring in his breast: “Yes, I really do suppose! By the gods, I need noise and mischief. I need fuss and fuckery until I can’t see straight! Nikoros! What have you been doing all night?”
“Uh, well, I just came back from surveying the big mess,” said Nikoros. “Big and getting worse. Not just for us, I mean. For the whole city.”
“I’m losing my ability to tell one mess from another around here,” said Locke.
“Oh! I mean at the north gate, sirs, and the Court of Dust. All the refugees out of the north.”
“Oh. OH! Gods, the bloody war,” said Locke. “I’d half forgotten. What kind of refugees?”
“At this point, the sort with money, mostly. The ones that fled before the fighting gets anywhere near. And their guards, servants, and the like. All stacking up at inns until they can plead for residence—”
“Refugees with money, you say,” interrupted Jean. “Looking for new homes. Which is to say, potential voters in need of immediate assistance.”
“Hells yes,” shouted Locke. “Horses, Nikoros! Three of them, now! Have a scribe and a solicitor follow us. We scoop up anyone who can pay for enfranchisement; then we find them permanent accommodations in districts where we most need the votes!”
“And they’ll be Deep Roots for life,” said Jean with a grin. “Or at least the next couple of weeks, which is all we give a damn about.”
“I, uh … I will come, sirs, I just …” Nikoros gulped and wrung his hands together. “I need a few minutes of privacy, first, if I might. I’ll, uh, meet you downstairs.”
4
THE NIGHT was cool. They rode through pale wisps of fog coiling off cobblestones like unquiet spirits,
past black banners and green banners fluttering limply from balconies, through stately quiet until they reached the Court of Dust. There they found the mess Nikoros had promised.
Bluecoats were out in force, and Locke saw at once how nervous they were, how unaccustomed they must be to real surprises. Wagons were lined up haphazardly, horses snorting and flicking their tails while teamsters and stable attendants haggled. Lamps were lit in every inn and tavern bordering the court; knots of conversation and argument stood out everywhere in the uneasy crowds.
“Where the hells are we meant to go, then?” shouted a long-coated carriage hand at a tired-looking hostler. His Therin was fair, but his accent was obvious. “All these taverns are full up, now you tell me this bloody Josten’s place is closed off for your damn—”
“Your pardon, my good man,” said Locke, reining in beside the fracas. “If you have persons of quality seeking accommodations, I can be of immediate assistance.”
“Really? Who the devils might you be, then?”
“Lazari is my name. Doctor Sebastian Lazari.” Locke flashed a grin, then shifted to his excellent Vadran. “Your masters or mistresses have all my sympathies for the circumstances of their displacement, but they’ll soon find they’re not without friends here in Karthain.”
“Oh, bless the waters deep and shallow,” answered the carriage hand in the same tongue. “I serve the honorable Irina Varosz of Stovak. We’ve been five days on the road since—”
“You’re all but home,” said Locke. “Josten’s is the place for you. Josten’s Comprehensive. I can arrange chambers; pay no heed to what you’ve been told. My man Nikoros will handle the details.”
Nikoros, barely in control of his skittish horse, approached at the snap of Locke’s fingers.