Authors: Scott Lynch
“Mmmm.” Locke held his empty wine flute out for just a second; Conté plucked it out
of his fingers with the grace of a swordsman disarming an opponent. When the don’s
manservant stepped toward the liquor cabinet, Locke cleared his throat. “No need to
refill that particular glass just yet, Conté. Too kind, too kind. But with your permission,
my lord and lady Salvara, I should like to offer a pair of gifts. One as a matter
of simple hospitality. The other as a … well, you’ll see. Graumann?”
Locke snapped his fingers, and Jean nodded. The heavyset man moved over to a wooden
table just beside the liquor cabinet and picked up two heavy leather satchels, each
of which had iron-reinforced corners and small iron locks sewn into their covers.
Jean set these down where the Salvaras could easily see them, and then stepped back
so Locke could unseal the satchels with a delicate key of carved ivory. From the first
satchel, he withdrew a cask of pale aromatic wood, perhaps one foot in height and
half that in diameter, which he then held out for Don Salvara’s examination. A plain
black brand on the surface of the cask read:
Brandvin Austershalin 502
Don Lorenzo’s breath hissed in between his teeth; perhaps his nostrils even flared,
though Locke kept the face of Lukas Fehrwight politely neutral. “Twelve gods, a 502.
Lukas, if I seemed to be teasing you for your refusal to part with your goods, please
accept my deepest—”
“You needn’t apologize, my lord.” Locke held up a hand and mimicked the don’s gesture
for shooing words down out of the air. “For your bold intervention on my behalf, Don
Salvara, and for your excellent hospitality this morning, fair doña, please accept
this minor ornament for your cellars.”
“Minor!” The don took the cask and cradled it as though it were an infant not five
minutes born. “I … I have a 506 and a pair of 504s. I don’t know of anyone in Camorr
that has a 502, except probably the duke.”
“Well,” said Locke, “my masters have kept a few on hand, ever since the word got out
that it was a particularly good blend. We use them to … break the ice, in matters
of grave business importance.” In truth, that cask represented an investment of nearly
eight hundred full crowns and a sea trip up the coast to Ashmere, where Locke and
Jean had contrived to win it from an eccentric minor noble in a rigged card game.
Most of the money had actually gone to evade or buy off the assassins the old man
had later sent after his property; the 502 vintage had become almost too precious
to drink.
“What a grand gesture, Master Fehrwight!” Doña Sofia slipped a hand through the crook
of her husband’s elbow and gave him a possessive grin. “Lorenzo, love, you should
try to rescue strangers from Emberlain more often. They’re so charming!”
Locke coughed and shuffled his feet. “Ahh, hardly, my lady. Now, Don Salvara—”
“Please, do call me Lorenzo.”
“Ah, Don Lorenzo, what I have to show you next relates rather directly to my reason
for coming here.” From the second satchel, he drew out a similar cask, but this one
was marked only with a stylized ‘A’ within a circle of vines.
“This,” said Locke, “is a sample drawn from last year’s distillation. The 559.”
Don Salvara dropped the cask of 502.
The doña, with girlish agility, shot out her right foot to hook the cask in midair
and let it down to the deck with a slight thump rather than a splintering crash. Unbalanced,
she did manage to drop her ginger scald; the glass vanished over the side and was
soon twenty feet underwater. The Salvaras steadied one another, and the don picked
his cask of 502 back up, his hands shaking.
“Lukas,” he said, “surely—surely you must be
kidding
.”
LOCKE DIDN’T find it particularly easy to eat lunch while watching a dozen swimming
men being pulled apart by a Jereshti devilfish, but he decided that his master merchant
of Emberlain had probably seen worse, in his many imaginary sea voyages, and he kept
his true feelings far from his face.
Noon was well past; the Penance Bouts were over, and the Revel-masters had moved on
to the Judicial Forfeitures. This was a polite way of saying that the men in the water
were murderers, rapists, slavers, and arsonists selected to be colorfully executed
for the amusement of the Revel crowds. Technically speaking, they were armed and would
receive lesser sentences if they could somehow contrive to slay whatever beast they
were matched against, but the beasts were always as nasty as their weapons were laughable,
so mostly they were just executed.
The devilfish’s tentacles were twelve feet long—the same length as its undulating
gray-and-black striped body. The creature was confined within a sixty-foot circle
of cages and platforms, along with a number of screaming, flailing, water-treading
men—most of whom had long since dropped their slender little daggers into the water.
Nervous guards armed with crossbows and pikes patrolled the platform, shoving prisoners
back into the water if they tried to scramble out. Occasionally, the devilfish would
roll over in the churning red waters and Locke would catch a glimpse of one lidless
black eye the size of a soup bowl—not unlike the bowl currently held in his hands.
“More, Master Fehrwight?” Conté hovered nearby with the silver tureen of chilled soup
cradled in his hands; white-fleshed Iron Sea prawns floated in a heavy red tomato
base seasoned with peppers and onions. Don and Doña Salvara were a peculiar sort of
droll.
“No, Conté, most kind, but I’m well satisfied for the time being.” Locke set his soup
bowl down beside the broached cask of “559” (actually a bottle
of lowly fifty-crown 550 liberally mixed with the roughest overpriced rum Jean had
been able to get his hands on) and took a sip of the amber liquor from his snifter.
Even mixed with crap, the counterfeit was delicious. Graumann stood attentively behind
Locke’s hosts, who were seated opposite Locke at the intimate little table of oiled
silverwood. Doña Sofia toyed unself-consciously with a subtlety of gelled orange slices,
paper-thin and arranged in whorls to form edible tulip blossoms. Don Lorenzo stared
down at the snifter of brandy in his hands, his eyes still wide.
“It seems almost … sacrilegious!” Despite this sentiment, the don took a deep gulp
of the stuff, satisfaction well evident in the lines of his face. In the distance
behind him, something that might have been a severed torso flew up into the air and
came back down with a splash; the crowd roared approval.
Austershalin brandy was famously aged for a minimum of seven years after distillation
and blending; it was impossible for outsiders to get their hands on a cask any sooner
than that. The House of bel Auster’s factors were forbidden even to speak of the batches
that were not yet on sale; the location of the vintner’s aging-houses was a secret
that was reportedly guarded by assassination when necessary. Don Lorenzo had been
struck stupid when Locke had casually offered up a cask of 559; he had nearly thrown
up when Locke had just as casually opened the seal and suggested they share it with
lunch.
“It is.” Locke chuckled. “The brandy
is
the religion of my House. So many rules, so many rituals, so many penalties!” No
longer smiling, he drew a quick finger across his throat. “It’s possible we’re the
only people in history to have an unaged sample with a lunch of soup. I thought you
might enjoy it.”
“I am!” The don swirled the liquor in his glass and stared at it, as though hypnotized
by the soft caramel-colored translucence. “And I’m dead curious about what sort of
scheme you’ve got up your sleeve, Lukas.”
“Well.” Locke swirled his own drink theatrically. “There have been three invasions
of Emberlain in the past two hundred and fifty years. Let’s be frank; the succession
rites of the Kingdom of the Marrows always involve armies and blood before they involve
blessings and banquets. When the Grafs quarrel, the Austershalin mountains are our
only landward barrier, and the site of heavy fighting. This fighting inevitably spills
down the eastern slopes of the mountains. Right through the vineyards of the House
of bel Auster. How could it be different this time? Thousands of men and horses coming
over the passes. Trampling the vineyards. Sacking
everything in sight. It might even be worse, now that we have fire-oil. Our vineyards
could be ashes half a year from now.”
“You can’t exactly pack your vineyards up and take them with you if you … jump ship,”
said Don Lorenzo.
“No.” Locke sighed. “It’s the Austershalin soils, in part, that make Austershalin
brandy. If we lose those vineyards, it will be just as it was before—an interruption
in growth and distillation. Ten, twenty, maybe even thirty years. Or more. And it
gets worse. Our position is terrible. The Graf can’t let Emberlain’s ports and revenue
go if the Marrows are coming to civil war. He and his allies will storm the place
as fast as possible. They’ll likely put the Black Table to the sword, impound their
goods and properties, nationalize their funds. The House of bel Auster won’t be spared.
“At the moment, the Black Table is acting quietly but firmly. Grau and I sailed five
days ago, just twelve hours before we knew the port would be sealed off. No Emberlain-flagged
ships are being allowed out; they’re all being docked and secured for ‘repairs’ or
‘quarantine.’ Nobles still loyal to the Graf are under house arrest by now, their
guards disarmed. Our funds, in various lending houses of Emberlain, have been temporarily
frozen. All the Black Table merchant houses have consented to do this to one another.
It makes it impossible for any house to flee en masse, with its gold and its goods.
Currently, Grau and I are operating on our local credit line, established at Meraggio’s
years ago. My House … well, we simply didn’t keep our funds outside Emberlain. Just
a bit here and there for emergencies.”
Locke watched the Salvaras very closely for their reaction; his news from Emberlain
was as fresh and specific as possible, but the don might have sources of intelligence
the Gentlemen Bastards hadn’t spotted in their weeks of surveillance and preparation.
The parts about the Black Table and the impending civil war were solid, educated speculation;
the part about a sudden port closure and house arrests was pure homespun bullshit.
In Locke’s estimation, the real mess in Emberlain wouldn’t start for a few months.
If the don was wise to this, the game might be blown. Conté might be trying to pin
Locke to the table with his daggers in just a few seconds. And then Jean would pull
out the hatchets he had concealed down the back of his vest, and everyone in the little
group beneath the silk awning would get very, very uncomfortable.
But the Salvaras said nothing; they merely continued to stare at him with eyes that
plainly invited him to go on. Emboldened, he continued: “This situation is unbearable.
We will neither be hostages to a cause that
we barely profess, nor victims for the Graf’s vengeance upon his inevitable return.
We choose a … somewhat risky alternative. One that would require substantial aid from
a noble of Camorr. You, Don Salvara, if it is within your means.”
The don and his wife had clasped hands under the table; he waved his hand at Locke
excitedly.
“We can surrender our funds. By taking no steps to secure them, we buy ourselves more
time to act. And we are quite confident that replacing those funds will merely be
a matter of time and effort. We can even abandon”—Locke gritted his teeth—“we can
even abandon our vineyards. We will completely burn them ourselves, leaving nothing
to anyone else. After all, we enhance the soil ourselves, alchemically. And the secret
of that enhancement is kept only in the hearts of our Planting Masters.”
“The Austershalin Process,” Sofia breathed, betrayed by her own rising excitement.
“Of course, you’ve heard of it. Well, there are only three Planting Masters at any
given time. And the Process is complex enough to defy soil examination—even by someone
with talents such as yours, my lady. Many of the compounds our alchemists use are
inert, and intended only to confuse the matter. So that’s that.
“The one thing we
cannot
abandon is our stock of aging blends; the last six years, batched in their casks.
And certain rare vintages and special experiments. We store the Austershalin in thirty-two
gallon casks; there are nearly six
thousand
such casks in our possession. We have to get them out of Emberlain. We have to do
it in the next few weeks, before the Black Table imposes harsher control measures
and before the Graf begins laying siege to his canton. And now our ships are under
guard, and all of our funds are untouchable.”
“You want … you want to get all of these casks out of Emberlain? All of them?” The
don actually gulped.
“As many as possible,” said Locke.
“And for this you would involve us how?” Doña Sofia was fidgeting.
“Emberlain-flagged ships can no longer leave port, nor enter if they wish to escape
again. But—a small flotilla of
Camorr
-flagged ships, with Camorri crews, financed by a Camorri noble …” Locke set his glass
of brandy down and spread both his hands in the air.
“You wish me to provide … a naval expedition?”
“Two or three of your larger galleons should do it. We’re looking at a thousand tons
of cargo—casks and brandy alike. Minimal crew, say fifty
or sixty men a ship. We can take our pick of the docks and get sober, trustworthy
captains. Six or seven days beating north, plus however long it takes to scratch the
crews and ships together. I guess less than a week. Do you concur?”
“A week … yes, but … you’re asking me to finance
all
of this?”
“In exchange for a most handsome recompense, I assure you.”
“Provided everything goes well, yes, and we’ll come to the matter of recompense in
a moment. But just the rapid acqusition of two galleons, good captains, and very reliable
crews—”