by Scott Lynch
“True. There is no way to cheat the carousel or the cards, at least not here in your spire. But when one cannot cheat the game, one must cheat the players. Do you know what bela paranella is?”
“A soporific. Expensive alchemy.”
“Yes. Colorless, tasteless, and doubly effective when taken with liquor. Jerome and I were dusting our fingers with it before we handled our cards during each hand last night. Madam Corvaleur has a well-known habit of eating and licking her fingers while playing. Sooner or later, she was bound to take in enough of the drug to pass out.”
“Well!” Requin looked genuinely taken aback. “Selendri, do you know anything about this?”
“I can vouch for Corvaleur’s habits, at least,” she whispered. “It seemed to be her preferred method of irritating her opponents.”
“That it did,” said Locke. “It was quite a pleasure to see her do herself in.”
“I’ll grant your story is remotely plausible,” said Requin. “I had been…curious about Izmila’s strange incapacity.”
“Indeed. The woman’s built like an Elderglass boathouse. Jerome and I had more empty vials than her side did; what she’d had wouldn’t have gotten her eyelashes alone drunk, if not for the powder.”
“Perhaps. But let’s discuss other games. What of Blind Alliances?”
A game of Blind Alliances was played at a circular table with tall, specially designed barriers before each player’s hands so that everyone but the person directly across from them (their partner) could see at least some of their cards. Each silent participant set his or her right foot atop the left foot of the person on their right, all around the table, so no player could tap signals to a partner below the table. Partners therefore had to play by instinct and desperate inference, cut off from each other’s sight, voice, and touch.
“A child’s stratagem. Jerome and I had special boots constructed, with iron-shod toes beneath the leather. We could slide our feet carefully out the backs of them, and the iron would continue to provide the sensation of a full boot to the person beside us. We could tap entire books to one another with the code we’ve got. Have you ever known anyone to dominate that game as thoroughly as we did?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I can show you the boots.”
“Well. You did seem to have an extraordinary run of luck…. But what about billiards? You scored a rather famous victory against Lord Landreval. How could you have finessed that? My house provides all the balls, the sticks, and the handling.”
“Yes, so naturally those three things couldn’t be fiddled. I paid Lord Landreval’s consulting physiker ten solari for insight into his medical complaints. Turns out he’s allergic to lemons. Jerome and I rubbed our necks, cheeks, and hands with sliced lemons each night before we played him, and used other oils to mostly cover up the scent. Half an hour in our presence and he’d be so puffed up he could barely see. I’m not sure he ever realized what the problem was.”
“You say you won a thousand solari with a few slices of lemon? Nonsense.”
“Of course you’re right. I asked politely if he’d lend me a thousand solari, and he offered to let us publicly humiliate him at his favorite game out of the kindness of his heart.”
“Hmmmph.”
“How often did Landreval lose before he met Jerome and myself? Once in fifty games?”
“Lemons. I’ll be damned.”
“Yes. When you can’t cheat the game, you’d best find a means to cheat the player. Given information and preparation, there’s not a player in your spire Jerome and I can’t dance along like a finger-puppet. Hell, someone with my talents who knew enough about me could probably string me right along, too.”
“It’s a good story, Master Kosta.” Requin reached across his desk and took a sip of his wine. “I suppose I can charitably believe at least some of what you claim. I suspected that you and your friend were no more merchant speculators than I am, but at my tower you may claim to be a duke or a three-headed dragon provided you have solid credit. You certainly did before you stepped into my office this evening. Which brings us only to the most important question of all—why the hell are you telling me this?”
“I needed your attention.”
“You already had it.”
“I needed more than that. I needed you to understand my skills and my inclinations.”
“And now you have that as well, inasmuch as I accept your story. What exactly do you think that gets you?”
“A chance that what I’m going to say next will actually sink in.”
“Oh?”
“I’m not really here to take your guests for a few thousand solari here and a few thousand solari there, Requin. It’s been fun, but it’s secondary to my actual goal.”
Locke spread his hands and smiled apologetically.
“I’ve been hired to break into your vault, just as soon as I find a way to haul everything in it from right out under your nose.”
3
REQUIN BLINKED.
“Impossible!”
“Inevitable.”
“This isn’t legerdemain or lemons we’re talking about now, Master Kosta. Explain yourself.”
“My feet are beginning to hurt,” said Locke. “And my throat is somewhat dry.”
Requin stared at him, then shrugged. “Selendri. A chair for Master Kosta. And a glass.”
Frowning, Selendri turned and took a finely wrought dark wood chair with a thin leather cushion from its place on the wall. She placed it behind Locke, and he settled into it with a smile on his face. She then bustled about behind him for a few moments, and returned with a crystal goblet, which she passed to Requin. He picked up the wine bottle and poured a generous stream of red liquid into the goblet. Red liquid? Locke blinked—and then relaxed. Kameleona, the shifting wine, of course. One of the hundreds of Tal Verrar’s famous alchemical vintages. Requin passed him the goblet, then sat down atop his desk with his arms folded.
“To your health,” said Requin. “It needs all the assistance it can get.”
Locke took a long sip of the warm wine and allowed himself a few seconds of contemplation. He marveled at the way the taste of apricots transmuted to the sharper flavor of slightly tart apple in midswallow. That sip had been worth twenty volani, if his knowledge of the liquor market was still accurate. He gave a genuinely appreciative nod to Requin, who waved a hand nonchalantly.
“It cannot have escaped your attention, Master Kosta, that my vault is the most secure in Tal Verrar—the single most redundantly protected space in the entire city, in fact, not excepting the private chambers of the archon himself.” Requin tugged at the skintight leather of his right glove with the fingers of his left hand. “Or that it is encased within a structure of pristine Elderglass, and accessible only through several layers of metallurgical and clockwork artifice that are, if I may be permitted to stroke my own breechclout, peerless. Or that half the Priori council regards it so highly that they entrust much of their personal fortunes to it.”
“Of course,” said Locke. “I congratulate you on a very flattering clientele. But your vault doors are guarded by gears, and gears are shaped by men. What one man locks another will sooner or later unlock.”
“I say again, impossible.”
“And I correct you again. Difficult. ‘Difficult’ and ‘impossible’ are cousins often mistaken for one another, with very little in common.”
“You have more chance of giving birth to a live hippopotamus,” said Requin, “than the best thief alive has of making it past the cordon drawn around my vault. But this is silly—we could sit here all night contrasting cock-lengths. I say mine is five feet long, you say yours is six, and shoots fire upon command. Let’s hurry back to significant conversation. You admit that cheating the mechanisms of my games is out of the question. My vault is the most secure of all mechanisms; am I therefore the flesh and blood you were presuming to fool?”
“It’s possible this conversation represents me gi
ving up that hope.”
“What does cheating my guests have to do with plotting entry into my vault?”
“Originally,” said Locke, “we gamed merely to blend in and cover our observance of your operations. Time passed and we made no progress. The cheating was a lark to make the games more interesting.”
“My house bores you?”
“Jerome and I are thieves. We’ve been sharping cards and lifting goods east and west, here to Camorr and back again, for years. Spinning carousels with the well-heeled is only amusing for so long, and we weren’t getting far with our job, so we had to stay amused somehow.”
“Job. Yes, you said you were hired to come here. Elaborate.”
“My partner and I were sent here as the point men of something very elaborate. Someone out there wants your vault emptied. Not merely penetrated, but pillaged. Plucked and left behind like an empty honeycomb.”
“Someone?”
“Someone. I haven’t the faintest notion who; Jerome and I are dealt with through fronts. All of our efforts to penetrate them have been in vain. Our employer is as anonymous to us now as he was two years ago.”
“Do you frequently work for anonymous employers, Master Kosta?”
“Only the ones that pay me large piles of good, cold metal. And I can assure you—this one has been paying us very well.”
Requin sat down behind his desk, removed his optics, and rubbed his eyes with his gloved hands. “What’s this new game, Master Kosta? Why favor me with all of this?”
“I tire of our employer. I tire of Jerome’s company. I find Tal Verrar much to my taste, and I wish to arrange a new situation for myself.”
“You wish to turn your coat?”
“If you must put it that way, yes.”
“What do you suggest I have to gain from this?”
“First, a means to work against my current employer. Jerome and I aren’t the only agents set against you. Our job is the vault, and nothing else. All the information we gather on your operations is being passed to someone else. They’re waiting for us to come up with a means to crack your money-box, and then they’ve got further plans for you.”
“Go on.”
“The other benefit would be mutual. I want a job. I’m tired of running from city to city chasing after work. I want to settle in Tal Verrar, find a home, maybe a woman. After I help you deal with my current employer, I want to work for you, here.”
“As an entertainer, perhaps?”
“You need a floor boss, Requin. Tell me truly, are you as complacent about your security as you were before I came up your stairs? I know how to cheat every single game that can be cheated here, and if I weren’t sharper than your attendants I’d already be dead. Who better to keep your guests playing fairly?”
“Your request is…logical. Your willingness to shrug off your employer isn’t. Don’t you fear their retribution?”
“Not if I can help you put us both beyond it. Identification is the problem. Once identified, any man or woman in the world can be dealt with. You have every gang in Tal Verrar under your thumb, and you have the ear of the Priori. Surely you could make the arrangements if we could come up with names.”
“And your partner, Master de Ferra?”
“We’ve worked well together,” said Locke. “But we quarreled, not long ago, over an intensely personal matter. He believes his insult is forgiven; I assure you it is anything but. I want to be quits with him when our current employer is dealt with. I want him to know before he dies that I’ve had the best of him. If possible, I’d like to kill him myself. That and the job are my only requests.”
“Mmm. What do you think of all this, Selendri?”
“Some mysteries are better off with their throats slit,” she whispered.
“You might fear that I’m trying to displace you,” said Locke. “I assure you, when I said floor boss I meant floor boss. I don’t want your job.”
“And you could never have it, Master Kosta, even if you did want it.” Requin ran his fingers down Selendri’s right forearm and squeezed her undamaged hand. “I admire your boldness only to a point.”
“Forgive me, both of you. I had no intention of presuming too much. Selendri, for what it’s worth, I agree with you. In your position, getting rid of me might seem like wisdom. Mysteries are dangerous to people in our profession. I am no longer pleased with the mystery of my employment. I want a more predictable life. What I ask and what I offer are straightforward.”
“And in return,” said Requin, “I receive possible insight into an alleged threat against a vault I have enhanced by my own design to be impenetrable.”
“A few minutes ago, you expressed the same confidence concerning your attendants and their ability to spot cardsharps.”
“Have you penetrated my vault security as thoroughly as you say you’ve danced around my attendants, Master Kosta? Have you penetrated it at all?”
“All I need is time,” said Locke. “Give it to me and a way will make itself plain, sooner or later. I’m not giving up because it’s too hard; I’m giving up because it pleases me. But don’t just take my word on my sincerity; look into the activities of Jerome and myself. Make inquiries about everything we’ve been doing in your city for the past two years. We have made some progress that might open your eyes.”
“I shall,” said Requin. “And in the meantime, what am I to do with you?”
“Nothing extraordinary,” said Locke. “Make your inquiries. Keep your eyes on Jerome and myself. Continue to let us play at your spire—I promise to play more fairly, at least for the coming few days. Allow me to think on my plans and gather whatever information I can about my anonymous employer.”
“Let you walk out of here, unscathed? Why not hold you somewhere secure, while I exercise my curiosity about your background?”
“If you take me seriously enough to consider any part of my offer,” said Locke, “then you must take the possible threat of my employer seriously as well. Any tip-off to them that I’ve been compromised, and Jerome and I might be cast loose. So much for your opportunity.”
“So much for your usefulness, you mean. I am to take a great deal on faith, from a man offering to betray and kill his business partner.”
“You hold my purse, as surely as your desk held my hand. All the coin I have in Tal Verrar, I keep here with your Sinspire. You may look for my name at any countinghouse in the city, and you will not find it. I give you that leverage over me, willingly.”
“A man with a grudge, a genuine grudge, might piss on all the white iron in the world for one chance at his real target, Master Kosta. I have been that target too many times to forget this.”
“I am not crass,” said Locke, taking back one of his decks of cards from Requin’s desktop. He shuffled it a few times without looking at it. “Jerome insulted me without good cause. Pay me well and treat me well, and I will never give you any reason for displeasure.”
Locke whisked the top card off his desk, flipped it, and set it down faceup beside the remnants of Requin’s dinner. It was the Master of Spires.
“I deliberately choose to throw in with you, if you’ll have me. Place a bet, Master Requin. The odds are favorable.”
Requin pulled his optics out of his coat pocket and slipped them back on. He seemed to brood over the card; nothing was said by anyone for some time. Locke sipped quietly from his glass of wine, which had turned pale blue and now tasted of juniper.
“Why,” said Requin at last, “all other considerations aside, should I allow you to violate the cardinal rule of my spire on your own initiative and suffer nothing in exchange?”
“Only because I imagine that cheaters are ordinarily discovered by your attendants while other guests are watching,” said Locke, attempting to sound as sincere and contrite as possible. “Nobody knows about my confession, outside this office. Selendri didn’t even tell your attendants why they were hauling me up here.”
Requin sighed, then drew a gold solari from within h
is scarlet coat and set it down atop Locke’s Master of Spires.
“I shall hold fast with a small wager for now,” said Requin. “Do anything unusual or alarming, and you will not survive long enough to reconsider. At the slightest hint that anything you’ve told me has been a lie, I will have molten glass poured down your throat.”
“Uh…that seems fair.”
“How much money do you currently have on the ledger here?”
“Just over three thousand solari.”
“Two thousand of that is no longer yours. It will remain on the ledger so Master de Ferra doesn’t get suspicious, but I’m going to issue instructions that it is not to be released to you. Consider it a reminder that my rules are not to be broken on anyone’s recognition but my own.”
“Ouch. I suppose I should be grateful. I mean, I am. Thank you.”
“You walk on eggshells with me, Master Kosta. Step delicately.”
“Then I may go? And I may think of myself as in your service?”
“You may go. And you may consider yourself on my sufferance. We will speak again when I know more about your recent past. Selendri will accompany you back down to the first floor. Get out of my sight.”
With an air of faint disappointment, Selendri folded the brass fingers of her artificial hand up, until it was whole once again and the blades were hidden. She gestured toward the stairs with that hand, and with the look in her good eye she told him precisely how much patience she had to spare for him if Requin’s should start to wane.
4
JEAN TANNEN sat reading in a private booth at the Gilded Cloister, a club on the second tier of the Savrola, just a few blocks down from the Villa Candessa. The Cloister was a labyrinth of dark wood enclosures, well padded with leather and quilting, for the benefit of diners wishing an unusual degree of solitude. The waitstaff, in their leather aprons and drooping red caps, were forbidden to speak, answering all customer requests with either a nod or a shake of the head.
Jean’s dinner, smoked rock eel in caramel brandy sauce, lay chopped into fragments and scattered like debris from a battle. He was making his way slowly through dessert, a cluster of marzipan dragonflies with crystallized sugar wings that glimmered by the steady glow of the booth’s candles. He was absorbed in a leather-bound copy of Lucarno’s Tragedy of the Ten Honest Turncoats, and he didn’t notice Locke until the smaller man was already seated across from him in the booth.