by Scott Lynch
“Good gods,” said Locke, pretending to notice the wine for the first time, “you thoroughly artless fuck-stains didn’t actually drink any of that, did you?”
He swept his hat off and used it to knock the wineglasses of the men across from him into their laps.
“You bastard!” said one.
“Why I … I …” sputtered the other.
“But then, maybe it’s not drugged after all.” Locke grabbed the bottle and took a long swig. “Wouldn’t need to be, for Karthani. Milk-sucking pants-pissers could get drunk off the smell of an empty bottle!”
“I’ll … fetch the landlord!” said the man across from him on the left, retrieving his empty glass from his lap.
“Frightening,” said Locke. “Savage as a kitten on a tit. Say, did you ever hear the one about the rich Karthani and the Karthani who knew who his mother was? Shit, wait, I said Karthani, didn’t I? Told the damn thing wrong.”
“Leave,” said the man on his right. “Leave! Now!”
“Hey, how does a Karthani find out his wife is having her monthly flow? He crawls into his son’s bed and the boy’s cock is already wet. Ha! Oh, have you heard the one about the Karthani who claimed he could count to five—”
The man on Locke’s right pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. Locke grabbed him by the lapel. The man halted, glowering. Locke didn’t have the strength to drag him back down if he decided to fight, but the crucial insult of the uninvited touch was already given.
“Where are you off to?” said Locke. “I haven’t finished my sensitive cultural exchange.”
“Remove your hand from my coat, you obnoxious—”
“Or else what?”
“We take this to the master of the house.”
“I am the master of the house,” said Locke. “And you already know it. You’ve been sent here to watch for my coming. See the hefty gentleman ten yards behind me? He’s the other one you’re looking for. Take a long, careful look, children. I don’t doubt that your mistress expects a detailed report.”
The man jerked away.
“Come now,” said Locke reasonably, taking another swig from the wine bottle. “No men with any quantity of self-respect could have borne the abuse I’ve just given you. If you were gentlemen you’d have called me out, and if you were roughs you’d have punched me in the teeth. The fact is, you’ve been paid a tidy sum to sit here spying on me, and you were all confused as hell about what to do when I pissed on your dignity.”
The two men across the table started to rise, and Locke gestured sharply for them to remain seated.
“Don’t do anything stupid now, sirs. There’s no retrieving your situation. Lift one finger in an unkind act, and I guarantee it’ll take six months for your bones to knit. I’ll also have fifty witnesses swearing you had it coming.”
“What do you want with us?” muttered the man on the right.
“Haul your pathetic carcasses out the door. Be quick and polite. If I ever see you within shouting distance of Josten’s again, you’ll wake up in an alley with all your teeth shoved up your ass. That goes for your absent friend, too.”
Locke put his hat back on, stood up, and strolled casually away. He spared a smile for Jean, who raised his coffee cup in salute—the scrape of chairs against the floor behind him told Locke that the men were departing in haste. He and Jean watched them leave.
“You really are a vulgar little cuss when the spirit moves you,” said Jean.
“I’ve got worse,” said Locke. “Stored on some high shelf in my mind like an alchemist’s poisons. Got most of it from Calo and Galdo.”
“Well, you were venomous enough for our obvious friends.”
“Yes. Obvious. A fine thing to chase out the conspicuous spies. Now all we have to worry about are the capable ones.”
9
LOCKE DESTROYED an excellent luncheon for six—Jean contented himself with a small corner of the feast, and came away grateful for not losing any limbs—then dozed fitfully in their suite of rooms, alternating naps in a lounging chair with episodes of furious pacing.
As the sun set and the tiny fragments of sky visible around the window curtains turned black, men from Morenna’s delivered the beginnings of the promised wardrobe. Locke and Jean examined the new coats, vests, and breeches for concealed needles or alchemical dusts before hanging them in the massive rosewood armoires provided with the rooms.
At the eighth hour of the evening maids and porters appeared with tubs of steaming water. Locke tested each tub with a finger and, when his flesh didn’t peel from his bones, allowed that they might just be safe for their intended use.
By the time Nikoros knocked forty minutes later, the two Gentlemen Bastards were cleaned up and comfortably ensconced in clothes that fit perfectly.
“Gentlemen,” said Nikoros, who had substantially upgraded his own clothes, “I’ve brought you some useful things, I hope.”
He passed a leather portfolio to Locke, who flipped it open and found at least a hundred pages inside. Some were covered with dense scribbling that was surely Nikoros’, others with flawless script that surely wasn’t.
“Deep Roots party financial reports,” said Nikoros. “Important membership lists, plans and minutes from the last election, lists of properties and agents, matching lists for what we know of the Black Iris, copies of the city election laws—”
“Splendid,” said Locke. “And you took all the steps I discussed earlier?”
“My scribe’s still working, but everything else is seen to. If the earth should open up and swallow my offices, I swear I won’t be losing anything irreplaceable.”
“Good,” said Locke. “Want a drink? We’ve got a liquor cabi— No, wait, I haven’t examined the bottles yet, sorry.”
“I’m sure anything provided by Josten is perfectly safe,” said Nikoros, raising his eyebrows.
“It’s not Josten’s faithfulness I worry about.”
“Well, let me assure you that we don’t throw parties in Karthain for the purpose of staying dry.” He reached inside his coat and drew out two ornate silver lapel badges attached to green ribbons; an identical ornament was on his own left breast, though his was gold. “As for that, I mustn’t forget your colors.”
“The official Deep Roots plumage?” said Jean, extending a hand for his pin.
“Yes. For the party tonight, Committee members wear gold pins, Konseil members wear jade, privileged others wear silver. These will mark you as men to respect, but not men who need to be followed around and remarked upon, if you don’t wish it.”
“Good,” said Locke, decorating his lapel. “Now that we’re properly garnished, let’s serve ourselves up to the family.”
10
THE ENTIRE character of Josten’s main room had changed for the evening. The number of attendants at the street doors had doubled, and their uniforms were far more impressive. Dark green banners hung from the rafters and down the varnished pillars. Carriages could be heard coming and going constantly, and Locke caught a glimpse of several more attendants outside, holding their hands up to a party of well-dressed men without green ribbons. Clearly the party was a closed affair.… Were the men on the pavement legitimately uninformed late diners, or some sort of opposition mischief? There was no time to investigate.
A string quintet was bowing away pleasantly in one of the upper galleries, and all the visible fireplaces had huge kettles for tea and coffee bubbling before them. Curtained tables held thousands of glass bottles, and enough decanters, flutes, pitchers, and tumblers to blind every eye in the city with the force of their reflected light. Locke blinked several times and turned his attention to the men and women flowing into the room.
“This is already well more than a hundred and fifty,” he said.
“These things happen,” said Nikoros, giggling energetically as though at some private joke. “We plan with s-such restraint, but there’s so many people we can’t afford to offend!”
Locke peered at h
im. Nikoros had changed, somehow, in the few minutes between their room and the party. He was sweating profusely, his cheeks were flushed, his eyes darted around like little creatures trapped behind glass panes. Yet he wasn’t nervous; he was beatific. Gods!
Their straight-arrow trade insurer, their liaison to the Deep Roots upper crust, was a taker of Akkadris dust. Locke smelled the sharp pine-like odor of the stuff. Damn! Akkadris, Muse-of-Fire, the poet killer. Liquor soothed and loosened wits, but dust did the opposite, lighting fires in the mind until the dusthead shook with excitement for no discernible reason. It was an expensive and incrementally suicidal habit.
“Nikoros,” said Locke, grabbing one of his lapels, “you and I need to have a very frank discussion about—”
“Via Lupa! Via Lupa, dear boy!” A ponderous old man with a face like a seamed pink pudding bore down on them, witchwood cane tapping the floor excitedly. The man’s white eyebrows fluttered like wisps of smoke, and his lapel badge was polished jade. “Nikoros of the wolves, so called for his profit margins. Ha!”
“G-good evening, Your Honor!” Nikoros used the interruption to extricate himself from Locke’s grasp. “Oh! Gentlemen, may I present Firstson Epitalus, Konseil member for Isas Thedra for forty-five years. Some would call him the, ah, f-figurehead on our political vessel.”
“So I’m a figurehead, am I? A helpless woman splashing about without the good sense to cover my tits? Do I need to send a friend along to require an explanation of that remark, young fellow?”
“Leave the poor boy alone, First. It’s quite clear that you do have the good sense to cover your tits.” A lean, grizzled woman took Epitalus by the arm in a friendly fashion. She looked a lived-in sixty to Locke, though she had lively eyes and a mischievous smile. She, too, wore a jade badge, and as she and Epitalus burst into laughter Nikoros joined in nervously, louder than either of them.
“And allow me to also present … ah—”
It was only a momentary lapse, but the woman seized upon it eagerly.
“Oh, say the name, Nikoros, it won’t burn your tongue.”
“Ahem. Yes, ahem: Damned Superstition Dexa, Konseil member for Isas Mellia and head, ah, head of the Deep Roots Committee.”
“Damned Superstition?” said Locke, smiling despite himself.
“Which it is,” said Dexa, “though you’ll note I play firmly by the rules anyway. Hypocrisy and caution are such affectionate cousins.”
“Your Honors,” said Nikoros, “please, please allow me the p-pleasure of introducing Masters Lazari and Callas.”
Bows, handshakes, nods, and endearments were exchanged with the speed of a melee, and once all the appropriate strokes had been made, Their Honors immediately relapsed into informality.
“So you’re the gentlemen that we’ve discussed so often recently,” said Dexa. “I understand you smoked some vipers out of our midst this very afternoon.”
“Hardly vipers, Your Honor. Just a few turds our opposition threw into the road to see if we were minding our feet,” said Locke.
“Well, keep it up,” said Epitalus. “We have such confidence in you, my lads, such confidence.”
Locke nodded, and felt a flutter in his guts. These people certainly hadn’t read a single note on the fictional exploits of Lazari and Callas. Their warmth and enthusiasm had been installed by the spells of the Bondsmagi. Would it last forever, or dissolve like some passing fancy once the election was over? Could it dissolve before then, by accident? An unnerving thought.
Nikoros managed to herd their little group toward the gleaming mountains of liquor. While his heart-to-heart with Nikoros had been postponed by the circumstances, Locke did feel more comfortable once he’d secured a drink. A glass in the hand seemed as much a uniform requirement as a green ribbon on the chest for this affair.
Epitalus and Dexa soon went off to tend to the business of being important. Nikoros whirled Locke and Jean around the room several times, making introductions, pointing out prodigies and curiosities, Committee members, friends, cousins, cousins of friends, and friends of cousins.
Locke had once been used to mingling with the aristocracy of Camorr, and while the upper crust of Karthain lacked for nothing in terms of wit and pomp, there seemed to be a distinct difference in character that ran deeper than mere variations of habit between east and west. It took half an hour of conversation for him to finally apprehend the nature of the contrast—the Karthani gentry lacked the martial quality that was omnipresent in the well-to-do of most other city-states.
There were no obvious battle scars, no missing arms within pinned-up jacket sleeves, no men and women with the measured step of old campaigners or the swagger of equestrians. Locke recalled that the army of Karthain had been disbanded when the magi took up their residence. For four centuries, the ominous Presence had been the city’s sole (and entirely sufficient) protection against outside interference.
Introductions and pleasantries continued. “Now, who’s that fellow over there?” said Locke, sipping at his second Austershalin brandy and water. “The one with the odd little hat.”
“The natty-hatted gentleman? Damn … his name escapes me at the moment.” Nikoros took a generous gulp of wine as though it might help; whatever aid it rendered was not instantaneous. “Sorry. But I do know his particular friend, the one at his shoulder. One of our district organizers. Firstson Cholmond. Always claims to be writing a book.”
“What sort?” said Jean.
“History. A grand historical study of the city of Karthain.”
“Gods grant him a paralyzing carriage accident,” said Jean.
“I sympathize. Most historians have always struck me as perpetrators of tedium,” said Nikoros. “He swears that his book is different. Still—”
Whatever Nikoros might have said next was lost in a general uproar. Firstson Epitalus had ascended to one of the upper galleries, and he was waving for something resembling order from the crowd, which had by now soaked up a good fraction of its own weight in liquor.
“Good evening, good evening, good evening!” yelled Epitalus. “Good evening!” And then, as though anyone in the audience might conceivably remain unenlightened as to the quality or time of day: “Good evening!”
The string quintet ceased its humming and twanging, and the general acclamation sank to a tipsy murmur.
“Welcome, dear hearts and cavaliers, devoted friends, to the seventy-ninth season of elections in our Republic of Karthain! Take a moment, I pray, to reflect with pity on how few of us remain who can remember the first.…”
Good-natured laughter rippled across the crowd.
“Even those of you still moist behind the ears should be able to recall our heroic efforts of five years past, which, despite furious opposition, preserved our strong minority of nine seats on the Konseil!”
Curiously raucous cheers echoed across the hall for some time. Locke winced. Strong minority? Was he missing out on some bit of Karthani drollery, or were they really that incapable of admitting they’d lost?
“And so, surely, the burden of defending their old gains rests heavily on our foes, and must render them eminently vulnerable to what’s coming their way this time!”
This was answered with full-throated yells, the clinking of glasses, applause, and the sound of at least one thin-blooded reveler succumbing to the influence of complimentary liquor. Fortunately, his tumble from a balcony was interrupted by a crowd of soft-bodied folks, who were deep enough in their cups to take no offense at his sudden arrival. Waiters discreetly removed the poor fellow while Epitalus went on.
“Might I beg you, therefore, to raise a glass in toast to our dear opposition, the overconfident lads and lasses across the city? What shall we wish them, eh? Confusion? Frustration?”
“They’re already confused,” yelled Damned Superstition Dexa from somewhere near the front of the crowd, “so let it be frustration!”
“Frustration to the Black Iris,” boomed Epitalus, raising his glass. The cry was ech
oed from every corner of the crowd, and then with one vast gulp several hundred people were in pressing need of a refill. Waiters wielding bottles in both hands waded into the fray. When Epitalus had received a fresh supply of wine, he raised his glass again.
“Karthain! Gods bless our great jewel of the west!”
This toast, too, was echoed enthusiastically, but in its wake Locke witnessed something curious. A fair number of the people around him touched their left hands to their eyes, bowed their heads, and whispered, “Bless the Presence.”
“Gods grant us all the blessing of a long-awaited victory,” said Epitalus, “as they have granted me the honor of your very kind attention. I’ll not detain you a moment longer! We have plenty of work to do in the coming six weeks, but tonight is for pleasure, and I must insist that you all pursue it vigorously!”
Epitalus descended from the elevated gallery to a round of applause that shook the rafters. The musicians started up again.
“What do you think of the old boy?” said Jean.
“He’s got a strangely sunny view of ten years of defeat,” said Locke, “but if I get killed in the next six weeks, I want him to speak at my funeral.”
“Not to piss on the good cheer,” said Jean in a much lower voice, “but did you notice that our friend Nikoros—”
“Yeah,” sighed Locke. “We’ll straighten him out later.”
The mass of well-dressed Firstsons, Secondsons, Thirddaughters, and the like returned to its previous knots of conversation and besieged the silver platters of food which were now being uncovered at the back of the hall. Performance alchemists in bright silk costumes emerged from the kitchens, some to mix drinks, others already juggling heatless fire or conjuring glowing steam in rainbows of color.
“My compliments, Nikoros,” said Locke. “Your party seems to be a smashing success. Something tells me we’re not going to be getting any bloody work done before noon tomorrow, though.”
“Oh, Josten’s your man for that,” said Nikoros. “He, ah, he mixes a hangover remedy that’ll knock the f-fumes right out of your brain! Alchemy ain’t in it. So I think we can help ourselves to another glass or two with a clear—”