Authors: Scott Lynch
The next sound in the room was that of a Sinspire attendant hitting the wall, with
the impression of one of Jean’s fists reddening an entire side of his face.
Selendri acted with remarkable speed, but Locke was ready for her; not to fight, but
simply to duck and weave, and to stay away from that bladed hand of hers. He vaulted
over the desk, scattering papers, and laughed as the two of them feinted from side
to side, dancing to see who would stumble past its protective bulk first.
“You die, then, Kosta,” she said.
“Oh, and you were planning to spare us. Please. By the way—Leocanto Kosta’s not real,
either. So many little things you just
do not know
, eh?”
Behind them, Jean grappled with the second attendant. Jean slammed his forehead into
the man’s face, breaking his nose, and the man fell to his knees, burbling. Jean stepped
behind him and drove his elbow down on the back of the man’s neck with all of his
upper body behind it. Involved as he was in avoiding Selendri, Locke winced at the
noise the attendant’s skull made as it struck the floor.
A moment later, Jean loomed behind Selendri, blood from the attendant’s broken nose
streaming down his face. She slashed with her blades, but Jean’s anger had him in
a rare, vicious form. He caught her brass forearm, folded her in half with a punch
to the stomach, whirled her around, and held her by the arms. She writhed and fought
for breath.
“This is a nice office,” said Jean quietly, as though he’d just shaken hands with
Selendri and her attendants rather than beaten the hell out of them. Locke frowned,
but went on with the scheme—time was of the essence.
“Watch closely, Selendri, because I can only do this trick once,” he said, producing
his deck of fraudulent playing cards and shuffling them theatrically. “Is there a
liquor in the house? A very strong liquor, the sort that brings tears to a man’s eyes
and fire to his throat?” He feigned surprise at the presence of a brandy bottle on
the shelf behind Requin’s desk, next to a silver bowl filled with flowers.
Locke seized the bowl, tossed the flowers on the floor, and set the empty container
atop the desk. He then opened the brandy bottle and poured the brown liquor into the
bowl, to a depth of about three fingers.
“Now, as you can see, I hold nothing in my hands save this perfectly normal, perfectly
ordinary deck of perfectly unremarkable playing cards. Or
do
I?” He gave the deck one last shuffle and then dropped it into the bowl. The alchemical
cards softened, distended, and began to bubble and foam. Their pictures and symbols
dissolved, first into a color-streaked white mess, then into an oily gray goo. Locke
found a rounded buttering knife on a small plate at a corner of the desk, and he used
it to vigorously stir the gray goo until all traces of the playing cards had vanished.
“What the hell are you doing?” Selendri asked.
“Making alchemical cement,” said Locke. “Little wafers of resin, painted to look like
cards, formulated to react with strong liquor. Sweet gods above, you do
not
want to know what this cost me. Hell, I had no choice but to come rob you after I
had it made.”
“What do you intend—”
“As I know from vivid personal experience,” said Locke, “this shit dries harder than
steel.” He ran over to the spot on the wall where the climbing closet would emerge,
and he began to slather the gray goo all over the faint cracks that marked its door.
“So once I paint it all over this lovely concealed entrance, and then pour it into
the lock of the main door, why—in about a minute, Requin’s going to need a battering
ram if he wants to see his office again this evening.”
Selendri tried to scream for help, but the damage to her throat was too much; it was
a loud and eerie sound, but it didn’t carry downstairs with the force she needed.
Locke scampered down the iron stairs, closed the main doors to Requin’s office, and
hurriedly sealed the locking mechanism within a glob of already-firming cement.
“And now,” he said when he returned to the center of the office, “the next curiosity
of the evening, concerning this
lovely
suite of chairs with which I furnished our esteemed host. It turns out that I do
know what the Talathri Baroque is after all, and that there
is
a reason why someone in his right mind would build such a nice thing out of a wood
as fundamentally weak as shear-crescent.”
Locke seized one of the chairs. He tore the seat cushion and its underlying panel
off with his bare hands, exposing a shallow chamber within the seat packed tight with
tools and equipment—knives, a leather climbing belt, clips and descenders, and assorted
other implements. He shook these out onto the ground with a clatter, and then hoisted
the chair above his head, grinning.
“It makes ’em so much easier to smash.”
And that he did, bringing the chair down hard on Requin’s floor. It shattered at all
the joints, but didn’t fly apart, because its splintered chunks were held together
by something threaded through the hollow cavities within its legs and back. Locke
fumbled with the wreckage for a few moments before successfully extracting several
long lengths of demi-silk line.
Locke took one of these, and with Jean’s help soon had Selendri tied into the chair
behind Requin’s desk. She kicked and spat and even tried to bite them, but it was
no use.
Once she was secured, Locke picked a knife out of the pile of tools on
the ground while Jean got to work smashing the other three chairs and extracting their
hidden contents. As Locke approached Selendri with the blade in his hand, she gave
him a contemptuous stare.
“I can’t tell you anything meaningful,” she said. “The vault is at the base of the
tower, and you’ve just sealed yourselves up here. So frighten me all you like, Kosta,
but I have no idea what you think you’re doing.”
“Oh, you think this is for you?” Locke smiled. “Selendri. I thought we knew each other
better than that. As for the vault, who the hell said anything about it?”
“Your work to find a way in—”
“I lied, Selendri. I’ve been known to do that. You think I was really experimenting
on clockwork locks and keeping notes for Maxilan Stragos? Like hell. I was sipping
brandies on your first and second floors, trying to pull myself back together after
I nearly got cut to pieces. Your vault’s fucking impenetrable, sweetheart. I never
wanted to go anywhere near it.”
Locke glanced around, pretending to notice the room for the very first time.
“Requin sure does keep a lot of really expensive paintings on his walls, though, doesn’t
he?”
With a grin that felt even larger than it was, Locke stepped up to the closest one
and began, ever so carefully, to cut it out of its surrounding frame.
LOCKE AND Jean threw themselves backward from Requin’s balcony ten minutes later,
demi-silk lines leading from their leather belts to the perfect anchor-noose knots
they’d tied on the railing. There hadn’t been enough room in the chairs for belay
lines, but sometimes you couldn’t get anywhere in life without taking little risks.
Locke hollered as they slid rapidly down through the night air, past balcony after
balcony, window after window of bored, satisfied, incurious, or jaded gamers. His
glee had temporarily wrestled his sorrow down. He and Jean fell for twenty seconds,
using their iron descenders to avoid a headlong plummet, and for those twenty seconds
all was right with the world, Crooked Warden be praised. Ten of Requin’s prized paintings—lovingly
trimmed from their frames, rolled up, and stuffed into oilcloth carrying tubes—were
slung over his shoulder. He’d had to leave two on the wall, for lack of carrying cases,
but once again space in the chairs had been limited.
After Locke had conceived the idea of going after Requin’s fairly well-known
art collection, he’d nosed around for a potential buyer among the antiquities and
diversions merchants of several cities. The price he’d eventually been offered for
his hypothetical acquisition of “the art objects” had been gratifying, to say the
least.
Their slide ended on the stones of Requin’s courtyard, where the ends of their lines
hung three inches above the ground. Their landing disturbed several drunk couples
strolling the perimeter of the yard. No sooner were they shrugging out of their lines
and harnesses than they heard the rush of heavily booted feet and the clatter of arms
and armor. A squad of eight Eyes ran toward them from the street side of the Sinspire.
“Stand where you are,” the Eye in the lead bellowed. “As an officer of archon and
Council, I place you under arrest for crimes against Tal Verrar. Raise your hands
and offer no struggle, or no quarter will be given.”
THE LONG, shallow-draft boat drew up against the archon’s private landing, and Locke
found his heart hammering. Now came the delicate part, the ever-so-delicate part.
He and Jean were thrust from the boat by the Eyes surrounding them. Their hands were
tied behind their backs, and they’d been relieved of their paintings. Those were carried,
very carefully, by the last of the arresting Eyes to step off the boat.
The arresting officer stepped up to the Eye in command of the landing and saluted.
“We’re to take the prisoners to see the Protector immediately, Sword-prefect.”
“I know,” said the landing officer, an unmistakable note of satisfaction in his voice.
“Well done, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir. The gardens?”
“Yes.”
Locke and Jean were marched through the Mon Magisteria, through empty hallways and
past silent ballrooms, through the smells of weapon oil and dusty corners. At last
they emerged into the archon’s gardens.
Their feet crunched on the gravel of the path as they made their way through the deeply
scented night, past the faint glow of silver creeper and the stuttering luminescence
of lantern beetles.
Maxilan Stragos sat waiting for them near his boathouse, on a chair brought out for
the occasion. With him were Merrain and—oh, how Locke’s heart quickened—the bald alchemist,
as well as two more Eyes. The arresting Eyes, led by their sergeant, saluted the archon.
“On their knees,” said Stragos casually, and Locke and Jean were forced down to the
gravel before him. Locke winced, and tried to take in the details of the scene. Merrain
wore a long-sleeved tunic and a dark skirt; from his angle Locke could see that her
boots weren’t courtly fripperies, but black, flat-soled field boots, good for running
and fighting. Interesting. Stragos’ alchemist stood with a large gray satchel, looking
nervous. Locke’s pulse quickened once again at the thought of what might be in that
bag.
“Stragos,” said Locke, pretending that he didn’t know exactly what was on the archon’s
mind, “another garden party? Your armored jackasses can untie us now; I doubt there
are agents of the Priori lurking in the trees.”
“I have sometimes wondered to myself,” said Stragos, “precisely what it would take
to humble you.” He beckoned the Eye at his right side forward. “I have regretfully
concluded that it’s probably impossible.”
The Eye kicked Locke in the chest, knocking him backward. Gravel slid beneath him
as he tried to squirm away; the Eye reached down and yanked him back up by his tunic
collar.
“Do you see my alchemist? Here, as you requested?” said Stragos.
“Yes,” said Locke.
“That’s what you get. All you will
ever
get. I have kept my word. Enjoy your useless glimpse.”
“Stragos, you bastard, we still have work to do for—”
“I think not,” said the archon. “I think your work is already done. And at long last,
I think I can see precisely why you so aggravated the Bondsmagi that they passed you
into my care.”
“Stragos, if we don’t get back to the
Poison Orchid
—”
“My spotters have reported a ship answering that description anchored to the north
of the city. I’ll be out to fetch her soon enough, with half the galleys in my fleet.
And then I’ll have another pirate to parade through the streets, and a crew to drop
into the Midden Deep one by one while all of Tal Verrar cheers me on.”
“But we—”
“You have given me what I need,” said Stragos, “if not in the manner in which you
intended. Sergeant, did you encounter any difficulty in securing these prisoners from
the Sinspire?”
“Requin refused to allow us entry to the structure, Protector.”
“Requin refused to allow you entry to the structure,” said Stragos, clearly savoring
each word. “Thereby treating an informal tradition as though it had any precedence
over my legal authority. Thereby giving me cause to send my troops in platoons, and
do what the bought-and-paid-for constables won’t—throw that bastard in a box, until
we find out just how
long he’s willing to stay quiet about the activities of his good friends the Priori.
Now I have my fighting chance. There’s no need for you two to cause further violence
in my waters.”
“Stragos, you motherfucker—”
“In fact,” said the archon, “there’s no need for you two, at all.”
“We had a deal!”
“And I would have kept to it, had you not scorned me in the one matter which could
brook no disobedience!” Stragos rose from his chair, shaking with anger. “My instructions
were to leave the men and women at Windward Rock alive!
Alive
!”
“But we—,” began Locke, absolutely mystified. “We used the witfrost, and we did leave
them—”
“With their throats cut,” said Stragos. “Only the two on the roof lived; I presume
you were too lazy to climb up and finish them off.”
“We didn’t—”
“Who else was raiding my island that night, Kosta? It’s not exactly a shrine for pilgrims,
is it? If you didn’t do it, you allowed the prisoners to do it. Either way, the fault
is yours.”
“Stragos, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”