Authors: Scott Lynch
“Really?” Galdo drummed his fingers on the cask. “What’s the river ever done to deserve
that?”
There was a series of noises from inside the cask that sounded vaguely like some sort
of protest. Calo and Galdo leaned down by the air-hole together.
“Now, Bug,” Calo began, “I’m sure you have a perfectly good explanation for why you’re
in there, and why we’re out here worrying ourselves sick over you.”
“It’s a magnificent explanation, really.” Bug’s voice was hoarse and echoed faintly.
“You’re going to love it. But first tell me how the game went!”
“It was a thing of beauty,” said Galdo.
“Three weeks, tops, and we’re going to own this don down to his wife’s last set of
silk smallclothes,” added Calo.
The boy groaned with obvious relief. “Great. Well, what happened was, there was this
pack of yellowjackets heading right for you. What I did to distract them pissed them
off pretty fierce, so, um, I ran for this cooper’s that I know in Old Citadel. He
does business with some of the wine places upriver, so he’s got this yard of barrels
just sitting around. Well, I just sort of invited myself in, jumped in one, and told
him that if I could stay there until he delivered me here after Falselight, there’d
be eight solons in it for him.”
“Eight?” Calo scratched his chin. “The cheeky bastard just asked for ten, and got
eleven.”
“Yeah, well, that’s okay.” Bug coughed. “I got bored sitting around the cask-yard
so I lifted his purse. Had about two solons worth of copper in it. So we got some
back.”
“I was going to say something sympathetic about you lying around inside a cask for
half the day,” said Galdo, “but that was a
damn
silly thing to do.”
“Oh, come on!” Bug sounded genuinely stung. “He thought I was in the cask the whole
time, so why would he suspect me? And you just gave him a load of money, so why would
he suspect you? It’s perfect! Locke would appreciate it.”
“Bug,” Calo said, “Locke is like a brother to us, and our love for him has no bounds.
But the four most fatal words in the Therin language are ‘Locke would appreciate it.’ ”
“Rivaled only by ‘Locke taught me a new trick,’ ” added Galdo.
“The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games—”
“—is Locke Lamora—”
“—because we think the gods are saving him up for a really big death. Something with
knives and hot irons—”
“—and fifty thousand cheering spectators.”
The brothers cleared their throats in unison.
“Well,” Bug said finally, “I did it and I got away with it. Can we go home now?”
“Home,” Calo mused. “Sure. Locke and Jean are going to sob over you like grandmothers
when they find out you’re alive, so let’s not keep them waiting.”
“No need to get out; your legs are probably cramped up,” said Galdo.
“They are!” Bug squeaked. “But you two really don’t need to carry me all that way.…”
“You’ve never been more right about anything in your entire life, Bug!” Galdo took
up position at one side of the cask and nodded at Calo. Whistling in unison, the two
brothers began rolling the cask along the cobbles, steering for the Temple District,
not necessarily by the fastest or smoothest route available.
“It was an accident,” Locke said at last. “They were both accidents.”
“Excuse me? I must not have heard you.” Father Chains’ eyes narrowed in the faint
red glow of Locke’s tiny ceramic lamp. “I could have sworn you just said, ‘Toss me
over the parapet. I’m a useless little cuss and I’m ready to die at this very moment.’ ”
Chains had moved their conversation up to the roof of the temple, where they sat comfortably
beneath high parapets meant to be threaded with decorative plants. The long-lost hanging
gardens of the House of Perelandro were a small but important aspect of the sacrificial
tragedy of the Eyeless Priest; one more bit of stage-setting to draw sympathy, measured
in coins.
The clouds had roiled in overhead, palely reflecting the particolored glimmers of
night-lit Camorr, obscuring the moons and the stars. The Hangman’s Wind was little
more than a damp pressure that nudged the sluggish air around Chains and Locke as
the boy struggled to clarify himself.
“No! I meant to hurt them, but that’s all. I didn’t know … I didn’t know those things
would happen.”
“Well, that I can
almost
believe.” Chains tapped the index finger of his right hand against his left palm,
the Camorri marketplace gesture for
get
on with it
. “So take me all the way. That ‘almost’ is a major problem for you. Make me understand,
starting with the first boy.”
“Veslin,” Locke whispered. “And Gregor, but Veslin first.”
“Veslin indeed,” Chains said. “Poor soul, got a superfluous orifice carved into his
neck by none other than your old master. He had to go buy one of those lovely shark’s
teeth from the Capa, and that one got
used
. So … why?”
“In the hill, some of the older boys and girls stopped going out to work.” Locke wove
his fingers tightly together and stared down at them as though they might sprout answers.
“They would just take things when we came back each day. Shake us down. Make our reports
to the master for us, leave things out sometimes.”
Chains nodded. “Privileges of age, size, and ass-kissing. If you survive this conversation,
you’ll find that it’s just the same in most of the big gangs.
Most
.”
“And there was one boy. Veslin. He’d do more. He’d kick us, punch us, take our clothes.
Make us do things. Lots of times he’d
lie
to the master about what we’d brought in. He’d give some of our things to the older
girls in Windows, and all of us in Streets would get less food—especially the teasers.”
Locke’s small hands pulled apart and curled slowly into fists as he spoke. “And if
we tried to tell the master, he just laughed, like he knew about it and thought it
was funny! And after we told, Veslin would … Veslin would just get worse.”
Chains nodded, then tapped his index finger against his palm once more.
“I thought about it. I thought about it a
lot
. None of us could fight him. He was too big. None of us had any big friends in the
hill. And if we ganged up on Veslin, his big friends would all come after us.
“Veslin went out each day with some of his friends. We saw them while we were working;
they wouldn’t mess with our jobs, but they would watch us, you know? And Veslin would
say things.” Locke’s thin-lipped scowl would have been comical on a less dirty, less
emaciated, less hollow-eyed boy; as it was, he looked like a slender wall-gargoyle,
working himself up for a pounce. “Say things when we came back. About how we were
clumsy, or lazy, and not taking enough. And he would push us more, and hit us more,
and cheat us more. I thought and I thought and I
thought
about what to do.”
“And the idea,” said Chains, “the fateful idea. It was all yours?”
“Yes.” The boy nodded vigorously. “All mine. I was alone when I had
the idea. I saw some yellowjackets on patrol, and I thought … I thought about their
sticks, and their swords. And I thought, what if
they
beat up Veslin? What if
they
had some reason not to like him?”
Locke paused for breath. “And I thought more, but I couldn’t work it. I didn’t know
how. But then I thought, what if they weren’t angry with Veslin? What if I used them
as an excuse to make the
master
angry with Veslin?”
Chains nodded sagely. “And where did you get the white iron coin?”
Locke sighed. “Streets. All of us who didn’t like Veslin stole extra. We watched and
we clutched and we worked hard. It took weeks. It took
forever
! I wanted white iron. I finally got one from a fat man dressed all in black wool.
Funny coats and ties.”
“A Vadran.” Chains seemed bemused. “Probably a merchant come down to do some business.
Too proud to dress for the weather at first, and sometimes too cheap to see a tailor
in town. So, you got a white iron coin. A full crown.”
“Everyone wanted to see it. Everyone wanted to touch it. I let them; then I made them
be quiet. I made them promise not to talk about it. I told them it was how we were
going to get Veslin.”
“So what did you do with your coin?”
“Put it in a purse, a little leather purse. The kind we clutched all the time. And
hid it out in the city so it wouldn’t get taken from us. A place we knew about, where
nobody big could get to. And I made sure that Veslin and his friends were out of the
hill, and I got the coin, and I went back in early one day. I gave up coppers and
bread to the older girls on the door, but the coin was in my shoe.” Here Locke paused
and fiddled with his little lamp, making the red glow waver on his face.
“I put it in Veslin’s room. The one where he and Gregor slept—one of the nice dry
tombs. Center of the hill. I found a loose stone and hid the purse there, and when
I was sure nobody had seen me, I asked to see the master. I said that some of us had
seen Veslin at one of the yellowjacket stations. That he’d taken money from them.
That he’d shown it to us, and said that if we told on him he’d sell us to the yellowjackets.”
“Amazing.” Chains scratched his beard. “You know you don’t mumble and stutter quite
so much when you’re explaining how you fucked someone over?”
Locke blinked, then turned his chin up and stared hard at Chains. The older man laughed.
“Wasn’t a criticism, son, and I didn’t mean to dam the flow. Keep the story coming.
How did you know your old master would
take offense at this? Did the yellowjackets ever offer you or your friends money?”
“No,” Locke said. “No, but I knew the master gave
them
money. For favors; for information. We saw him putting coins in purses, sometimes.
So I figured, maybe I could work it the other way.”
“Ah.” Chains reached within the folds of his robe and withdrew a flat leather wallet,
the color of baked bricks in the light of Locke’s lamp. From this he withdrew a scrap
of paper, onto which he shook a dark powder from another corner of the wallet. This
object he rapidly folded end over end until it was a tight cylinder, and with courtly
grace he lit one end by holding it in the lamp’s flame. Soon he was sending ghostly
gray swirls of smoke up to join the ghostly gray clouds; the stuff smelled like burning
pine tar.
“Forgive me,” Chains said, shifting his bulk to his right so his direct exhalations
would miss the boy by a few feet. “Two smokes a night is all I let myself have; the
rough stuff before dinner, and the smooth stuff after. Makes everything taste better.”
“So I’m staying for dinner?”
“Oh-ho, my cheeky little opportunist. Let’s say the situation remains fluid. You go
ahead and finish your story. You tipped your old master that Veslin was working as
an auxiliary member of the famed Camorr constabulary. He must have thrown quite a
fit.”
“He said he’d kill me if I was lying.” Locke scuttled to his own right, even farther
from the smoke. “But I said he’d hid the coin in his room. His and Gregor’s. So … he
tore it apart. I hid the coin real well, but he found it. He was supposed to.”
“Mmmm. What did you expect to happen then?”
“I didn’t know they’d get killed!” Chains couldn’t hear any real grief in that soft
and passionate little voice, but there seemed to be real puzzlement, real aggravation.
“I wanted him to beat Veslin. I thought maybe he’d do him up in front of all of us.
We ate together, most nights. The whole hill. Fuck-ups had to do tricks, or serve
and clean everything, sometimes get held down for caning. Drink ginger oil. I thought
he’d get those things. Maybe all those things.”
“Well.” Chains held an inhalation of smoke for a particularly long moment, as though
the tobacco could fill him with insight, and looked away from Locke. When he finally
exhaled, he did so in little puffs, forming wobbly crescents that fluttered a few
feet and faded into the general haze. He harrumphed and turned back to the boy. “Well,
you certainly learned
the value of good intentions, didn’t you? Caning. Cleaning and serving. Heh. Poor
Veslin got cleaned and served, all right. How did your old master do it?”
“He was gone for a few hours, and when he came back, he waited. In Veslin’s room.
When Veslin and Gregor came back that night, there were older boys nearby. So they
couldn’t go anywhere. And then … the master just killed them. Both. Cut Veslin’s throat,
and … some of the others said he looked at Gregor for a while, and he didn’t say anything,
and then he just …” Locke made the same sort of jabbing motion with two fingers that
Chains had made at him earlier. “He did Gregor, too.”
“Of course he did! Poor Gregor. Gregor Foss, wasn’t it? One of those lucky little
orphans old enough to remember his last name, not unlike yourself. Of
course
your old master did him, too. He and Veslin were best friends, right? Two draughts
from the same bottle. It was an elementary assumption that one would know that the
other was hiding a fortune under a rock.” Chains sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Elementary.
So, now that you’ve told your part, would you like me to point out where you fucked
everything up? And to let you know why most of your little friends in Streets that
helped you pluck that white iron coin are going to be dead before morning?”
IDLER’S DAY, THE eleventh hour of the morning, at the Shifting Revel. The sun was
once again the baleful white of a diamond in a fire, burning an arc across the empty
sky and pouring down heat that could be felt against the skin. Locke stood beneath
the silk awning atop Don Salvara’s pleasure barge, dressed in the clothes and mannerisms
of Lukas Fehrwight, and stared out at the gathering Revel.
There was a troupe of rope dancers perched atop a platform boat to his left; four
of them, standing in a diamond pattern about fifteen feet apart. Great lengths of
brightly colored silk rope stretched amongst the dancers, around their arms and chests
and necks. It seemed that each dancer was working four or five strands simultaneously.
These strands formed an ever-shifting cat’s cradle between the dancers, and suspended
in this web by clever hitches were all manner of small objects: swords, knives, overcoats,
boots, glass statuettes, sparkling knickknacks. All these objects were slowly but
gradually moving in various directions as the dancers twirled arms and shifted hips,
slipping old knots loose and forming newer, tighter ones with impossibly smooth gestures.