Authors: Scott Lynch
“I … that is … I fear to say too much of my business.…”
“Yet your business here is plain,” said Don Salvara, now positively cheerful, “and
have you not repeatedly stated that you are indebted to me, Master Fehrwight? Despite
my assurances to the contrary, have you not refused those assurances? Do you withdraw
your promise of obligation
now
?”
“I … with the best will in the world, my lord … damn.” Fehrwight sighed and clenched
his fists. “I am ashamed, Don Lorenzo. I must now either forswear my obligation to
the man who saved my life or forswear my promise to the House of bel Auster to keep
its business as private as possible.”
“You must do neither,” said the Don. “And perhaps I can
aid
you directly in the pursuit of your master’s business. Do you not see? If Don Jacobo
does not know of your presence here, what obligation do you have to him? Clearly,
you are set here upon business. A plan, a scheme, a proposal of some sort. You’re
here to
initiate
something, or else you’d have your connections already in place. Don’t be angry with
yourself; this is all plain logic. Is it not true?”
Fehrwight looked down and nodded reluctantly.
“Then here it is! Although I am not as wealthy as Don Jacobo, I am a man of substantial
means; and we are in complementary lines of business, are we not? Attend me tomorrow,
on my barge, at the Shifting Revel. Make your proposal to
me
; let us discuss it thoroughly.” There was a wicked gleam in Don Salvara’s eyes; it
could be seen despite the brightness of the sun overhead. “As you are indebted to
me, repay this obligation by agreeing only to attend. Then, free of obligation, let
us discuss business to our mutual advantage. Do you not see that I have a vested interest
in taking whatever opportunity you present away from Jacobo, even if he never learns
of it?
Especially
if he never learns of it! And am I not bold enough for your tastes? I swear your
face grows longer as though by sorcery. What’s wrong?”
“It is not you, Don Lorenzo. It is merely that the Hands Beneath are suddenly too
generous once more. We have a saying—that undeserved good fortune always conceals
a snare.”
“Don’t worry, Master Fehrwight. If it’s really business that you want to discuss,
never doubt that there will be hard work and bitter troubles enough waiting for us
down the road. Are we in agreement, then? Will you dine with me tomorrow morning,
take in the Shifting Revel, and discuss your proposal with me?”
Fehrwight swallowed, looked Don Salvara in the eyes, and nodded firmly. “There is
great sense in what you propose. And perhaps great opportunity for both of us. I will
accept your hospitality, and I will tell you everything. Tomorrow, as you say. It
cannot come soon enough for me.”
“It has been my pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master Fehrwight.” Don Salvara
inclined his head. “May we help your friend up
out of the muck, and see you to your inn to ensure you have no further difficulties?”
“Your company would be most pleasing, if only you would wait and look after poor Graumann
and our cargo long enough for me to finish my offering within the temple.” Locke removed
a small leather pack from the horse’s jumble of goods and containers. “The offering
will be more substantial than I had planned. But then, my masters understand that
prayers of thanks are an unavoidable expense in our line of business.”
THE JOURNEY back to the Tumblehome was slow, with Jean putting on an excellent show
of misery, grogginess, and confusion. If the sight of two mud-splattered, overdressed
outlanders and three horses escorted by a don struck anyone as unusual, they kept
their comments to themselves and reserved their stares for Don Salvara’s back. Along
the way, they passed Calo, now walking about casually in the plain garb of a laborer.
He flashed rapid and subtle hand signals; with no sign of Bug, he would take up position
at one of their prearranged rendezvous sites. And he would pray.
“Lukas! Surely it can’t be. I say, Lukas Fehrwight!”
As Calo vanished into the crowd, Galdo appeared just as suddenly, dressed in the bright
silks and cottons of a prosperous Camorri merchant; his slashed and ruffled coat alone
was probably worth as much as the barge the Gentlemen Bastards had poled up the river
that morning. There was nothing now about him to remind the don or his man of the
alley cutthroats; unmasked, with his hair slicked back under a small round cap, Galdo
was the very picture of physical and fiscal respectability. He twirled a little lacquered
cane and stepped toward Don Lorenzo’s odd little party, smiling broadly.
“Why—Evante!” Locke-as-Fehrwight stopped and stared in mock astonishment, then held
out a hand for a vigorous shake from the newcomer. “What a pleasant surprise!”
“Quite, Lukas, quite—but what the hell’s happened to you? And to you, Graumann? You
look as though you just lost a fight!”
“Ah, we did.” Locke looked down and rubbed his eyes. “Evante, it has been a very peculiar
morning. Grau and I might not even be alive if not for our rather extraordinary guide,
here.” Pulling Galdo toward him, Locke
held a hand out toward the don. “My Lord Salvara, may I introduce to you Evante Eccari,
a solicitor of your Razona district? Evante, this is Don Lorenzo Salvara. Of the Nacozza
Vineyards, if you still pay attention to those properties.”
“Twelve gods!” Galdo swept his hat off and bowed deeply at the waist. “A don. I should
have recognized you immediately, m’lord. A thousand pardons. Evante Eccari, entirely
at your service.”
“A pleasure, Master Eccari.” Don Salvara bowed correctly but casually, then stepped
forward to shake the newcomer’s hand; this signaled his permission to deduct any superfluous
bowing and scraping from the conversation. “You, ah, you know Master Fehrwight, then?”
“Lukas and I go well back, m’lord.” Without turning his back on Don Salvara, he fussily
brushed a bit of dried muck from the shoulders of Locke’s black coat. “I work out
of Meraggio’s, mostly, handling customs and license work for our friends in the north.
Lukas is one of bel Auster’s best and brightest.”
“Hardly.” Locke coughed and smiled shyly. “Evante takes all the more interesting laws
and regulations of your state, and reduces them to plain Therin. He was my salvation
on several previous ventures. I seem to have a talent for finding snares in Camorr,
and a talent for finding good Camorri to slip me out of them.”
“Few clients would describe what I do in such generous terms. But what’s this mud,
and these bruises? You said something of a fight?”
“Yes. Your city has some very, ah, enterprising thieves. Don Salvara and his man have
just driven a pair of them off. I fear Graumann and I were getting the worst of the
affair.”
Galdo stepped over to Jean and gave him a friendly pat on the back; Jean’s wince was
fantastic theater. “My compliments, m’lord Salvara! Lukas is what you might call a
good vintage, even if he’s not wise enough to take off those silly winter wools. I’m
most deeply obligated to you for what you’ve done, and I’m at—”
“Hardly, sir, hardly.” Don Salvara held up one hand and hitched the other in his sword-belt.
“I did what my position demanded, no more. And I have too many promises of obligation
being thrown at me already this afternoon.”
Don Lorenzo and “Master Eccari” fenced pleasantries for a few moments thereafter;
Galdo eventually let himself be skewered with the politest possible version of “Thanks,
but piss off.”
“Well,” he said at last, “this has been a wonderful surprise, but I’m afraid I have
a client waiting, and clearly, m’lord Salvara, you and Lukas have business that I
shouldn’t intrude upon. With your permission …?”
“Of course, of course. A pleasure, Master Eccari.”
“Entirely mine, I assure you, m’lord. Lukas, if you get a spare hour, you know where
to find me. And should my poor skills be of any use to your affairs, you know I’ll
come running.…”
“Of course, Evante.” Locke grasped Galdo’s right hand in both of his and shook enthusiastically.
“I suspect we may have need of you sooner rather than later.” He laid a finger alongside
his nose; Galdo nodded, and then there was a general exchange of bows and handshakes
and the other courtesies of disentanglement. As Galdo hurried away, he left a few
hand signals in his wake, disguised as adjustments to his hat:
I know nothing about Bug. Going to look around
.
Don Salvara stared after him thoughtfully for a few seconds, then turned back to Locke
as their small party resumed its journey toward the Tumblehome. They made small talk
for a while. Locke had little trouble, as Fehrwight, letting his pleasure at seeing
“Eccari” slip. Soon he was projecting a very real downcast mood, which he claimed
to be an incipient headache from the attempted strangling. Don Salvara and Conté left
the two Gentlemen Bastards in front of the Tumblehome’s street-side citrus gardens,
with admonitions to rest soundly that night and let all business wait for the morrow.
No sooner were Locke and Jean safely alone in their suite (the harness full of “precious”
goods thrown back over Jean’s shoulders) than they were exploding out of their muddy
finery and donning new disguises so they could hurry off to their own rendezvous points
to wait for word of Bug, if any was forthcoming.
This time, the swift dark shape that flitted silently from rooftop to rooftop in their
wake went entirely unnoticed.
FADING FALSELIGHT. The Hangman’s Wind and the swampwater mist glued clothes to skin
and rapidly congealed Calo and Galdo’s tobacco smoke around them, half cloaking them
in a cataract of grayness. The twins sat, hooded and sweating, in the locked doorway
of a fairly well-kept pawnshop on the northern tip of the Old Citadel district. The
shop was
shuttered and barred for the evening; the keeper’s family was obviously drinking something
with a merry kick two floors above them.
“It was a good first touch,” said Calo.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“Our best yet. Hard to work all those disguises, what with us being the handsome ones.”
“I confess that I wasn’t aware we shared that complication.”
“Now, now, don’t be hard on yourself. Physically, you’re quite my match. It’s my scholarly
gifts you lack. And my easy fearlessness. And my gift for women.”
“If you mean the ease with which you drop coins when you’re off a-cunting, you’re
right. You’re a one-man charity ball for the whores of Camorr.”
“Now that,” said Calo, “was genuinely unkind.”
“You’re right.” The twins smoked in silence for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. Some of
the savor’s out of it tonight. The little bastard has my stomach twisted in knots.
You saw—”
“Extra foot patrols. Pissed off. Yeah, heard the whistles. I’m real curious about
what he did and why he did it.”
“He must’ve had his reasons. If it really
was
a good first touch, he gave it to us. I hope he’s well enough for us to beat the
piss out of him.”
Stray shapes hurried past in the backlit mist; there was very little Elderglass on
the Old Citadel island, so most of the dying glow poured through from a distance.
The sound of a horse’s hooves on cobbles was coming from the south, and getting louder.
At that moment, Locke was no doubt skulking near the Palace of Patience, eyeballing
the patrols coming and going across the Black Bridge, making sure that they carried
no small, familiar prisoners. Or small, familiar bodies. Jean would be off at another
rendezvous point, pacing and cracking his knuckles. Bug would never return straight
to the Temple of Perelandro, nor would he go near the Tumblehome. The older Gentlemen
Bastards would sit their vigils for him out in the city and the steam.
Wooden wheels clattered and an annoyed animal whinnied; the sound of the horse-drawn
cart came to a creaking halt not twenty feet from the Sanza brothers, shrouded in
the mist. “Avendando?” A loud but uncertain voice spoke the name. Calo and Galdo leapt
to their feet as one—“Avendando” was their private recognition signal for an unplanned
rendezvous.
“Here!” Calo cried, dropping his thin cigarette and forgetting to step
on it. A man materialized out of the mist, bald and bearded, with the heavy arms of
a working artisan and the rounded middle of moderate prosperity.
“I dunno exactly how this works,” the man said, “but if one of you is Avendando, I
was told I’d have ten solons for delivering this here cask to this, ah, doorway.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the cart.
“Cask. Indeed.” Galdo fumbled with a coin purse, heart racing. “What’s, ahhh, in this
cask?”
“Ain’t wine,” said the stranger. “Ain’t a very polite lad, neither. But ten silvers
is what he promised.”
“Of course.” Galdo counted rapidly, slapping bright silver disks down into the man’s
open palm. “Ten for the cask. One more for forgetting all about this, hmmm?”
“Holy hell, my memory must be cacked out, because I can’t remember what you’re paying
me for.”
“Good man.” Galdo slipped his purse back under his nightcloak and ran to help Calo,
who had mounted the cart and was standing over a wooden cask of moderate size. The
cork stopper that would ordinarily be set into the top of the barrel was gone, leaving
a small dark air-hole. Calo rapped sharply on the cask three times; three faint taps
came right back. With grins on their faces, the Sanza twins muscled the cask down
off the cart and nodded farewell to the driver. The man remounted his cart and soon
vanished into the night, whistling, his pockets jingling with more than twenty times
the value of the empty cask.
“Well,” Calo said when they’d rolled the cask back to the shelter of their doorway,
“this vintage is probably a little young and rough for decanting.”
“Put it in the cellar for fifty or sixty years?”
“I was thinking we might just pour it in the river.”