Authors: Scott Lynch
“I know she was, and didn’t she put on airs about it, too.”
“But that’s all Windows for you, eh? Ain’t they all like that? Well, here’s something
they won’t like. Proves they’s as mortal as we is. They fuck up just the same.”
“Been a right messy month. That poor sod what got the busted head … that little shit
we used to kick the chompers out of … now her.”
Locke felt a cold tautness in his guts.
“Who?” he said.
Veslin paused in mid-sentence and stared at Locke, as though startled that the little
creatures of Streets had the power of speech.
“Who what, you little ass-tickler?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Wouldn’t you like to fucking know.”
“WHO?”
Locke’s hands had formed themselves into fists of their own accord, and his heart
pounded as he yelled again at the top of his lungs, “WHO?”
Veslin only had to kick him once to knock him down. Locke saw it coming, saw the bully’s
foot rising toward his face, growing impossibly in size, and still he couldn’t avoid
it. Floor and ceiling reversed themselves, and when Locke could see again, he was
on his back with
Veslin’s heel on his chest. Warm coppery blood was trickling down the back of his
throat.
“Where does he get off, talking to us like that?” said Veslin mildly.
“Dunno. Fuckin’ sad, it is,” said Gregor.
“Please,” said Locke. “Tell me—”
“Tell you what? What right you got to know anything?” Veslin knelt on Locke’s chest,
rifled through his clothes, and came up with the things he’d managed to clutch that
day. Two purses, a silver necklace, a handkerchief, and some wooden tubes of Jereshti
cosmetics. “Know what, Gregor? I don’t think I remember Lamora here coming home with
anything tonight.”
“Nor me, Ves.”
“Yeah. How’s that for sad, you little piss-pants? You want dinner, you can eat your
own shit.”
Locke was too used to the sort of laughter that now rose in the tunnel to pay any
attention to it. He tried to get up and was kicked in the throat for his trouble.
“I just want to know,” he gasped, “what happened—”
“Why do you care?”
“Please … please …”
“Well, if you’re gonna be civil about it.” Veslin dropped Locke’s takings into a dirty
cloth sack. “Windows had themselves a bad night.”
“Cocked up proper, they did,” said Gregor.
“Got pinched hitting a big house. Not all of ’em got clear. Lost one in a canal.”
“Who?”
“Beth. Drowned, she did.”
“You’re lying,” whispered Locke. “YOU’RE LYING!”
Veslin kicked him in the side of his stomach and Locke writhed. “Who says … who says
she’s—”
“I fuckin’ say.”
“Who told you?”
“I got a letter from the duke, you fuckin’ half-wit. The master, that’s who! Beth
drowned last night. She ain’t coming back to the Hill. You sweet on her or something?
That’s a laugh.”
“Go to hell,” whispered Locke. “You go to—”
Veslin cut him off with another hard kick to the exact same spot.
“Gregor,” he said, “we got a real problem here. This one ain’t right in the head.
Forgot what he can and can’t say to the likes of us.”
“I got just the thing for it, Ves.” Gregor kicked Locke between the legs. Locke’s
mouth opened, but nothing came out except a dry hiss of agony.
“Give it to the little shit-smear.” Veslin grinned as he and Gregor began to work
Locke over with hard kicks, carefully aimed. “You like that, Lamora? You like what
you get, you put on airs with us?”
Only the Thiefmaker’s proscription of outright murder among his orphans saved Locke’s
life. No doubt the boys would have pulped him if their own necks wouldn’t have been
the price of their amusement, and as it was they nearly went too far.
It was two days before Locke could move well enough to work again, and in that interval,
lacking friends to tend him, he was tormented by hunger and thirst. But he took no
satisfaction in his recovery, and no joy in his return to work.
He was back to playing dead, back to hiding in corners, back to rule one and rule
two. He was all alone in the Hill once again.
I CANNOT tell you now;
When the wind’s drive and whirl
Blow me along no longer
,
And the wind’s a whisper at last—
Maybe I’ll tell you then—
some other time
.
—Carl Sandburg
from “The Great Hunt”
WEAK SUNLIGHT AGAINST
his eyelids drew him out of sleep. The brightness intruded, grew, made him blink
groggily. A window was open, letting in mild afternoon air and a freshwater smell.
Not Camorr. Sound of waves lapping against a sand beach. Not Camorr at all.
He was tangled in his sheets again, light-headed. The roof of his mouth felt like
sun-dried leather. Chapped lips peeled apart as he croaked, “What are you …”
“Shhhh. I didn’t mean to wake you. The room needed some air.” A dark blur on the left,
more or less Jean’s height. The floor creaked as the shape moved about. Soft rustle
of fabric, snap of a coin purse, clink of metal. Locke pushed himself up on his elbows,
prepared for the dizziness. It came on punctually.
“I was dreaming about her,” he muttered. “The times that we … when we first met.”
“Her?”
“Her. You know.”
“Ah. The canonical
her
.” Jean knelt beside the bed and held out a
cup of water, which Locke took in his shaking left hand and sipped at gratefully.
The world was slowly coming into focus.
“So vivid,” said Locke. “Thought I could touch her. Tell her … how sorry I am.”
“That’s the best you can manage? Dreaming of a woman like
that
, and all you can think to do with your time is apologize?”
“Hardly under my control—”
“They’re your dreams. Take the reins.”
“I was just a little boy, for the gods’ sakes.”
“If she pops up again move it forward ten or fifteen years. I want to see some blushing
and stammering next time you wake up.”
“Going somewhere?”
“Out for a bit. Making my rounds.”
“Jean, there’s no point. Quit torturing yourself.”
“Finished?” Jean took the empty cup from him.
“Not nearly. I—”
“Won’t be gone long.” Jean set the cup on the table and gave the lapels of his coat
a perfunctory brushing as he moved to the door. “Get some more rest.”
“You don’t bloody listen to reason, do you?”
“You know what they say about imitation and flattery.”
The door slid shut and Jean was gone, out into the streets of Lashain.
LASHAIN WAS
famous as a city where anything could be bought and anything could be left behind.
By the grace of the
regio
, the city’s highest and thinnest order of nobility (where a title that could be traced
back more than two generations qualified one for the old guard), just about anyone
with cash in hand and enough of a pulse to maintain semiconsciousness could have their
blood transmuted to a reasonable facsimile of blue.
From every corner of the Therin world they came—merchants and criminals, mercenary
captains and pirates, gamblers and adventurers and exiles. As commoners they entered
the chrysalis of a countinghouse, shed vast quantities of precious metal, and as newborn
peers of
Lashain they emerged into daylight. The
regio
minted demibarons, barons, viscounts, counts, and even the occasional marquis, with
styles largely of their own invention. Honors were taken from a list and cost extra;
“Defender of the Twelvefold Faith” was quite popular. There were also half a dozen
meaningless orders of knighthood that looked marvelous on a coat lapel.
Because of the novelty of this purchased respectability to those who brokered it for
themselves, Lashain was the most violently manners-conscious city Jean Tannen had
ever visited. Lacking centuries of aristocratic descent to assure them of their worth,
the neophytes of Lashain overcompensated with ceremony. Their rules of precedence
were like alchemical formulae, and dinner parties killed more of them each year than
fevers and accidents combined. It seemed that little could be more thrilling for those
who’d just bought their family names than to risk them (not to mention their mortal
flesh) over minor insults.
The record, as far as Jean had heard, was three days from countinghouse to dueling
green to funeral cart. The
regio
, of course, offered no refunds to relations of the deceased.
As a result of this nonsense, it was difficult for those without titles, regardless
of the color of their coin, to gain ready access to the city’s best physikers. They
were made such status symbols by their noble clients that they rarely had to scamper
after gold from other sources.
The taste of autumn was in the cool wind blowing off the Amathel, the Lake of Jewels—the
freshwater sea that rolled to the horizon north of Lashain. Jean was conservatively
dressed by local standards, in a brown velvet frock coat and silks worth no more than,
say, three months’ wages for an average tradesman. This marked him instantly as someone’s
man and suited his current task. No gentleman of consequence did his own waiting at
a physiker’s garden gate.
Scholar Erkemar Zodesti was regarded as the finest physiker in Lashain, a prodigy
with the bone saw and the alchemist’s crucible. He’d also shown complete disinterest,
for three days straight, in Jean’s requests for a consultation.
Today Jean once again approached the iron-barred gate at the rear of Zodesti’s garden,
from behind which an elderly servant peered at
him with reptilian insolence. In Jean’s outstretched hand was a parchment envelope
and a square of white card, just like the three days previous. Jean was getting testy.
The servant reached between the bars without a word and took everything Jean offered.
The envelope, containing the customary gratuity of (far too many) silver coins, vanished
into the servant’s coat. The old man read or pretended to read the white card, raised
his eyebrows at Jean, and walked away.
The card said exactly what it always did—
Contempla va cora frata eminenza
. “Consider the request of an eminent friend,” in the Throne Therin that was the polite
affectation for this sort of gesture. Rather than giving an aristocrat’s name, this
message meant that someone powerful wished to pay anonymously to have someone else
examined. This was a common means of bringing wealth to bear on the problem of, say,
a pregnant mistress, without directly compromising the identity of anyone important.
Jean passed the long minutes of his wait by examining the physiker’s house. It was
a good solid place, about the size of a smaller Alcegrante mansion back in Camorr.
Newer, though, and done up in a mock Tal Verrar style that labored to proclaim the
importance of its inhabitants. The roof was tiled with slats of volcanic glass, and
the windows bordered with decorative carvings that would have better suited a temple.
From the heart of the garden itself, closed off from view by a ten-foot stone wall,
Jean could hear the sounds of a lively party. Clinking glasses, shrieks of laughter,
and behind it all the hum of a nine-stringed viol and a few other instruments.
“I regret to inform your master that the scholar is presently unable to accommodate
his request for a consultation.” The servant reappeared behind the iron gate with
empty hands. The envelope, a token of earnestness, was of course gone. Whether into
the hands of Zodesti or this servant, Jean couldn’t say.
“Perhaps you might tell me when it would be more convenient for the scholar to receive
my master’s petition,” said Jean, “the middle of the afternoon for half a week now
being obviously unsuitable.”
“I couldn’t say.” The servant yawned. “The scholar is consumed with work.”
“With work.” Jean fumed as the sound of applause drifted from the garden party. “Indeed.
My master has a case which requires the greatest possible skill and discretion—”
“Your master could rely upon the scholar’s discretion at all times,” said the servant.
“Unfortunately, his skill is urgently required elsewhere at the moment.”
“Gods damn you, man!” Jean’s self-control evaporated. “This is important!”
“I will not be spoken to in a vulgar fashion. Good day.”
Jean considered reaching through the iron bars and seizing the old man by the throat,
but that would have been counterproductive. He wore no fighting leathers under his
finery, and his decorative shoes would be worse than bare feet in a scuffle. Despite
the pair of hatchets tucked away under his coat, he wasn’t equipped to storm even
a garden party by choice.
“The scholar risks giving offense to a citizen of considerable importance,” growled
Jean.
“The scholar
is
giving offense, you simple fellow.” The old man chuckled. “I tell you plainly, he
has little interest in the sort of business arranged in this fashion. I don’t believe
a single citizen of quality is so unfamiliar with the scholar that they need fear
to be received by the front door.”
“I’ll call again tomorrow,” said Jean, straining to keep his composure. “Perhaps I
might name a sum that will penetrate even your master’s indifference.”
“You are to be commended for your persistence, if not for your perception. Tomorrow
you must do as your master bids. For now, I have already said good day.”
“Good day,” growled Jean. “May the gods cherish the house wherein such kindness dwells.”
He bowed stiffly and left.
There was nothing else to be done at the moment, in this gods-damned city where even
throwing envelopes of coins was no guarantee of attracting attention to a problem.
As he stomped back to his hired carriage, Jean cursed Maxilan Stragos for the thousandth
time. The bastard had lied about so much. Why, in the end, had the damned poison been
the one thing he’d chosen to tell the truth about?