by Scott Lynch
“Will you wear it first, to show me its workings?”
“Why, the clasp is simple, gracious Amadine. Give me your hand, I shall anoint it.”
“I would see this treasure on your wrist, ere it touches mine. Or has your deep regard run shallow?”
“This beauty is not meant for such an unworthy display!”
“Unworthy indeed.” At a gesture from Sabetha, Chantal seized Bertrand and feigned holding a blade to his neck.
“Ladies, please, how have I offended?”
“Your face is a parchment,” said Sabetha, “with treason there written plain. You dread the bauble’s touch, and the venom of its coiled needle!” She mimed snatching the bracelet and unfolding it for all to see. “You think us dullards, that by this infant’s stratagem you might have my life? My spies advised me of your falseness.”
“I swear that when I stole the bracelet, I knew not what lay within!”
“Stole? Should I not know a thief by every scar and callus of the trade? I have them all, Valedon, familiar as children. Your hands are dough and your sinews slack. This bracelet you had as a gift from your masters.”
Calo and Galdo did their best impression of a general outcry in the crowd, and seized Bertrand by the arms.
“I see now my deception was foredoomed,” he whispered. “Clasp the bracelet to my wrist and let justice be done.”
“Hasty dispatch is mercy undeserved. You’ll have your bracelet back, miscarried murderer, after reflection. Bind him! Heat a crucible, and therein cast this scorpion bauble. Past his traitor’s lips, pour the molten slurry of his instrument. Aye, gild his guts with melted treasure, then leave him on the street for his masters to ponder.”
“I beg you—”
The last plea of the unfortunate Valedon was drowned out by the noise of Calo once again throwing up. Bert and Chantal hopped backward, minding their feet, while Galdo put a hand to his mouth and went pale.
“Ha,” shouted Boulidazi. “Ha! I think one of your twins has something to feel guilty about, Moncraine.”
“Very sorry, my lord,” moaned Calo.
“Perhaps you should try living virtuously for a few days, my friends.” Boulidazi rose and stretched. “Well done, despite the sudden ending. Indeed! Especially you ladies. By the gods, I think we’ve got something here. In fact, I’m going to join you at the Pearl for the rest of your rehearsals.”
The sudden pain between Locke’s temples was a match for the expression on Moncraine’s face.
4
“WE’LL FIND our chance to be alone,” Sabetha whispered to him more than once in the days that followed, but such chances seemed to deliberately fling themselves out of the way as the rehearsals wore on.
The Old Pearl was a testament to the generosity of the long-dead count who’d left it to the city. Though hardly a patch on the Eldren notion of longevity, the theater had been built to be taken for granted for centuries. Its walls and raised galleries were white marble, now weathered a mellow gray, and its stage was built from alchemically lacquered hardwood that might last nearly as long.
The circular courtyard was open to the sky, and though awning poles were in place to offer potential shelter from sun and rain, the awnings themselves were absent. According to Jenora, such comforts for the groundling crowd, like sanitary ditches, were one of the “free” theater’s hidden expenses that the countess had no interest in bearing herself.
There was no denying that the place was far more suitable than Mistress Gloriano’s inn-yard. The Pearl had a surplus of dignity to lend, even to their more ragged rehearsals, and what might have seemed silly pantomime twenty feet from a stable was somehow ennobled in the shadow of silent marble galleries.
Still, every new advantage seemed to come with a complication for a sibling. Each day began too early, with hungover company members packing unfinished costumes, props, and sundries into the wagon provided by the Camorri. The walk to the Pearl was two miles, and at the close of each day’s rehearsal they would have to stuff everything back into their wagon and reverse the journey. They were permitted to rehearse at the Pearl, not reside there, and the city watch would turn them out like vagabonds if they showed any sign of spending a night. Precious hours were therefore gnawed away by travel.
Although Locke and Sabetha avoided the worst of the debauches that were a nightly ritual (Mistress Gloriano, for all her loud moralizing, seemed incapable of refusing service to any drunkard who could still manage to roll a coin in her direction), there was little freedom or leisure to be found at the inn. For one thing, there was the simple press of time, and sleep was a precious commodity after long rehearsals and tedious trudging. For another, there was Boulidazi.
True to his word, the young baron became a company fixture, “disguised” in common clothing, and while Locke went to bed each night more exhausted than he’d been since his months as a farmer, Boulidazi seemed to have the stamina of ten mules. Word got around, somehow, that the Moncraine Company had come back to life with a slumming lord at the heart of its court, so opportunists, curiosity-seekers, and unemployed actors joined the taproom mess every evening, driving Moncraine to distraction.
Boulidazi, however, was never distracted. His eyes were fixed on Sabetha.
5
“CALAMAXES, OLD counsel,” said Sylvanus Olivios Andrassus, squatting on a folding stool in character as His Paramount Majesty Salerius II, Emperor of All Therins. “Not a bright day passes but you find some cloud to throw before Our sun.”
“Majesty.” Jasmer sketched a bow, expressing more tolerance than awe. “It is of sons I wish to speak. Princely Aurin has reached a hungry age, and wants employment.”
“Employment? He’s heir to Our throne, that’s his trade.”
“He wants distinction, Majesty. A blade unblooded and waiting to be drawn, is Aurin.”
“You take liberties, spell-sayer. Say you that birth to the blood royal sufficeth not to mark his merit?”
“Your pardon, Sovereign. By my soul, Aurin is worthy heir to worthy line. I say only that he longs to match attainment to inheritance, as the father did, and stir this stately court with new triumph.”
“He,” mused Sylvanus, “and dear ambitious Ferrin.”
“Rightly and loyally ambitious,” said Jasmer. “Have you not been served in your own course by friends and generals?”
“And sorcerers.”
“Majesty.”
“Well, it’s no fault of Ours that foes of old are lately grown so feeble!”
“Those foes would say otherwise, Majesty. You have been the architect of their sorrows.”
“Well, well. Some serpents flatter, ere they bite. So now let’s have your fangs.”
“Majesty, there is a discontent in Therim Pel that gnaws, as vermin at a house’s timbers. The matter of the thieves.”
“Gods above! Have We not seen your spells in battle wrought, and men scythed dead like harvest grain? Have We not seen thunder and lightning leashed to your whim? Now you tell Us to cringe from vagabonds.”
“Not cringe, Majesty, never cringe. But attend, for here’s a sickness that’s catching. Word I have of gatherings in great numbers, of boldness unbecoming, of deliberate contempt for your imperial throne.”
“All thieves scorn the law, else they would not be thieves. Why cry this stale revelation?”
“Majesty, they make society beneath bright Therim Pel and name a sovereign for their counterfeit court!”
“In jest. We too much dignify this nonsense with Our consideration.”
“Majesty, please, if you suffer scorn from base pretenders, how can it not breed by example in higher stations? I grant that you may laugh in private—”
“You grant?”
“Pardon, Majesty. I submit. I counsel most earnestly. Rightly should you think this insolence trivial, but rightly for the sake of hard-won peace should you crush it in its womb! Lest it spread to those whose spirits are more matched to your own.”
“Slay wastrels
now or courtiers later, you say? Who, then, would be this sovereign of thieves, and how are they grown so fearsome that your own agencies cannot weed them?”
“A woman, majesty, a woman of worthy temper, whose thralls call her Queen of Shadows. She guards well against my simpler servants. One of them was slain last night and left on a street, as warning and challenge.”
“And what of spells?” Sylvanus let the word hang heavy in the air for a moment. “By Our command, could you not slay her at leisure, swift as a cold wind?”
“By your command,” said Jasmer, grudgingly, “she could die this instant, yet thus would I murder opportunity.”
“What, then, do you submit and counsel earnestly?”
“Let Aurin and Ferrin be your instruments, Majesty. Their faces are little-known to the lawless. Let them enter this thieves’ warren, and win this woman to their confidence, and execute judgment on her.”
“The dust is not yet settled from the corpse of your former agent, and you would put my son in his place?”
“Peace, Majesty. Has not princely Aurin wondrous skill at arms? Is not Ferrin iron-strong as suits his name? I am the soul of prudence with your issue, and would set my arts and eyes upon him from afar, though he’ll know it not. He could not be safer in his own chambers … and he might do much good.”
“Strange conceit, to make an emperor’s son an assassin.”
“To make it known the coming lion has some fox to him, matches subtlety to strength, and dares personal return for personal insult!”
“Aurin desires this?” said Sylvanus softly.
“He burns for a test, Majesty. The gracious gods have put one before us. I would set him to it.”
“Long have you served Us, best and brightest of Our magi, sharpest wit and quickest counsel. Yet should this go bad for Aurin, know for a certainty you will share his doom, though it took all the magi of the empire to bind you.”
“Sovereign, if my counsel from its design so wretchedly strayed I would not wish to live.”
“Then make preparation to guard with watchful spell, and We shall see it done. Bring Aurin and Ferrin before Us.”
Locke crept out from the shade of the stage pillars and into the heat. The Pearl’s western galleries wore shadows like masks, but the middle of the stage was at the mercy of the late-afternoon sun. Alondo came from the opposite side, met him in front of Jasmer and Sylvanus, and together they continued the scene.
Scene by scene, day after day, the drama unfolded in fits and starts, as though capricious gods were toying with the lives of Salerius II and his court. Skipping forward, reversing time, shifting parts and places, demanding repetition of certain moments until every participant was ready to throw punches, Jasmer Moncraine conjured the rough shape of the story and then started to carve fine.
For Locke the days became rhythmic frustration, as he and Sabetha were herded by Boulidazi, as he dutifully applied himself to becoming a character he didn’t want to play. It was not unlike inhabiting a role as Chains had taught him, and in other circumstances it might have been fascinating. Yet each time he watched Alondo take Sabetha by the hand, or shoulder, or practice stage-kisses and embraces, he learned anew how slowly time could crawl when there was some misery to dwell on.
“You don’t seem yourself, Lucaza,” said Boulidazi softly as the company trudged home one dusty evening. Low style or not, Boulidazi and his men never went so far as to be without horses, and the baron hopped down now, leading his animal by the bridle to walk beside Locke. “You tripped over some lines you should have cold.”
“It’s … not the lines, my lord.” So annoyed was Locke, so tired of rehearsal and the cloudless Esparan sky, that he was confiding in Boulidazi before he could help himself. “I expected to be Aurin.” He stretched this confidence out with a minor lie, lest Boulidazi should suspect him of desiring more proximity to Sabetha. “I, uh, read and studied Aurin on the journey here. I practiced him. He’s got all the better lines. I’m just … not at ease as Ferrin.”
“You and I share some tastes, I think,” said Boulidazi, grinning that damned insolent grin of his.
Only one that matters, thought Locke, and fought down a fresh vision of a career as a murderer of aristocrats.
“I don’t think you’re a Ferrin either,” Boulidazi continued. “He should be older than Aurin, bigger, the more confident of the two. That Alondo is more suited to the part, if you’ll pardon the reflection. I’m sure if he’d been offered the choice, he’d rather have your birth and money than a few more inches of height and muscle, eh?”
“Quite,” muttered Locke.
“Chin up, noble cousin. Face forward.” Boulidazi glanced casually around to ensure nobody important was within earshot. “Luck’s a changing thing. Just look at your man Jovanno, eh? Hooked that fine smoke-skin seamstress, gods know how. Hardly the sort of thing you’d want to give the family name to, but tight and wet where it counts. And she must be hot for it, sure as hell.”
“Jovanno’s got some qualities that aren’t plain to the eye,” said Locke, forcing a bantering tone.
“Carrying a proper sword, is he? Those well-fed types do tend to crowd their breeches, or so I hear. Well, anyway … how’s our Verena doing?”
“You can’t have missed her onstage.” Indeed, she was doing well, the most effortlessly natural of the Gentlemen Bastards as a thespian and by far the most pleasing to the eye and the romantic sensitivities. Even Chantal’s skepticism had given way, first to tolerance and then to open respect.
“Naturally. I meant the down hours, the nights and mornings. Surely she can’t find Gloriano’s quite the thing, even as a lark. Gods know I enjoy my rolling in the muck, but I don’t sleep there, eh? She might well wish a respite … even just for a night. A proper meal, a bath, silk sheets. I’ve many rooms at the house sitting empty. You could make the suggestion.”
“I could.”
“And I could have a word with old Moncraine about a change in roles for you.”
“Well, now, my lord, that would hardly … that is, I’m not sure Moncraine is open to persuasion on the matter.”
“You’ve got some liberal notions for a Camorri, my friend. I don’t persuade; I command. Except, of course, in pursuit of fair hand and heart.” Boulidazi chuckled, but turned serious in an instant. “So you’ll speak to her, then?”
“I’ll do whatever can be done.” Which was nothing, Locke thought to himself, absolutely nothing. Sabetha would never let herself be procured on the sly for Boulidazi’s pleasure, but the baron hardly knew that. And if he could swap Locke into the role of Aurin! A warm feeling of unexpected satisfaction grew in Locke’s gut. “Cousin Verena is very particular about her comforts, my lord. I’m sure she’s quite ready to, ah, call at your house a second time.”
“You would do me such a service, Lucaza.” Boulidazi’s slap on Locke’s back was hard and careless, but Locke bore it like the gentle anointing of a priest. “She needn’t fear indiscretion, either coming or going. My men have handled this sort of thing before.”
No doubt, thought Locke.
6
“IT’S NOT that I mind reusing so much of your old mess,” said Jean the next morning, driving an iron needle through a pad of salvaged canvas. “I’m just curious as to why you’re so averse to pinching a little more money out of our esteemed patron for new stuff.”
“Because he’d give back two pinches for our one,” said Jenora, who was picking through a pile of seedy costume lace. The two were comfortably seated in the shade behind the Pearl’s stage, surrounded by their usual jumble of clothes and props. By a process of steady cannibalism, they were turning the dusty remains of all the troupe’s previous productions into suitable and perhaps even ambitious trimmings for this one. At present they were making phantasma.
It was traditional in Therin theater for the players of dead characters to dress up as phantasma, in pale death-masks and robes, to silently haunt the rest of the production as ghostly onlookers.
“Now, our lord and master ain’t the one who’s keeping track, but some creature of his damn well is, down to the last bent copper. I’ve seen the papers. We can have all we like to make the production grand, sure, but if we spend past what we’re apt to take in from the crowds, there won’t be profits enough to cover us plain-blood sorts after Boulidazi gets his.”
“But you said you had some sort of precedence as original stakeholders—”
“Oh, we’re guaranteed a cut of profits; it’s just that profits have a way of magically turning into something else before that cut gets made. Boulidazi gets security on his expenses under Esparan law. The rest of us divide the leavings. So you see, if we tap our noble patron for too many pretty expensive things, we only piss our own portion away.”
“Savvy,” said Jean. Camorr lacked that particular privilege for business-minded nobles; no doubt the wealth of its lenders and money-changers gave them teeth that Espara’s commoners had yet to grow. “I can see why you’re so keen to economize.”
“A bit of pain to the wrists and elbows might save us the pain of a sharp stick in the purse when this is all—”
Uncharacteristic noises from the stage snapped Jean and Jenora out of their habitual prop-making reverie. Jasmer Moncraine had stomped across the stage with Boulidazi close behind, interrupting whatever scene was being rehearsed. Jean had seen them all so many times by now he’d learned to ignore them, but there was no ignoring this.
“You’ve no right to interfere with my artistic decisions,” yelled Moncraine.
“None of your decisions are privileged by our arrangement, artistic or otherwise,” said Boulidazi.