Authors: Scott Lynch
“Is she in there?” whispered Locke.
“She is. That open window.”
“How do we get her out?”
“We don’t.”
“But … we’re here … you brought me here—”
“Locke.” Chains set a hand on Locke’s right shoulder. “She’s tied down in that room
up there. They have four men inside and two out front with the carriage. Duke’s men,
above every law. You and I can’t fight them.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
Chains reached inside his tunic, snapped the cord that held a small object around
his neck, and held the object out to Locke. It was a glass vial, about the size of
Locke’s smallest finger.
“Take this,” Chains said. “You’re small enough to climb the vines on that back wall,
reach the window, and then—”
“
No
.” The realization of what that vial meant made Locke want to throw up. “No, no, no!”
“Listen, boy, listen! Time is wasting. We can’t get her out. They’ll start asking
her questions soon. You know how they do that? Hot irons. Knives. When they’re finished
they’ll know everything about you, me, Calo, Galdo. What we do and where we work.
We’ll never be safe in Camorr again, and our own kind will be as hot for our blood
as the duke’s people.”
“No, she’s clever, she’ll—”
“We’re not made of iron, boy.” Chains grabbed Locke’s right hand, squeezed it firmly,
and placed the warm glass vial against his palm. “We’re flesh and blood, and if they
hurt us long enough we’ll say anything they want us to say.”
Chains gently bent Locke’s fingers in over the vial, then lifted his own hands away
slowly.
“She’ll know what to do,” he said.
“I can’t,” said Locke, fresh tears starting down his cheeks. “I can’t. Please.”
“Then they’ll torture her,” said Chains quietly. “You know she’ll fight them as long
as she can. So they’ll do it for hours. Maybe days. They’ll break her bones. They’ll
peel her skin. And you’re the
only one
who can get up to that window. You … trip over your tongue around her. You like her,
don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Locke, staring into the darkness, trying desperately to think of anything
bolder, cleverer, braver than climbing to that window and handing a beautiful girl
a vial with which she would kill herself.
He had nothing.
“Not fair,” he sobbed. “Not fair, not fair.”
“We can’t get her out, Locke.” The gentleness and sorrow in Chains’ voice caught Locke’s
attention in a way that scolding or commanding could not have. “What happens now is
up to you. If you can’t get to her, she’ll live. For a while. And she’ll be in hell.
But if you can get to that window … if you can just pass the vial to her …”
Locke nodded, and hated himself for nodding.
“Brave lad,” whispered Chains. “Don’t wait. Go. Fast and quiet as a breeze.”
It was no great feat to steal across thirty feet of dark garden, to find hand- and
footholds in the lush vines at the rear of the house, to scuttle upward. But the moments
it took felt like hours, and by the time Locke was poised beside the second-story
window he was shaking so badly that he was sure anyone in the house could hear it.
By the grace of the Crooked Warden there were no shouts of alarm, no windows slamming
open, no armed men charging into the garden. Ever so carefully, he set his eyes level
with the two-inch gap at the bottom of the open window, and moved his head to the
right just far enough to peek into the room.
Locke swallowed a sob when he saw Sabetha, seated in a heavy, high-backed chair, facing
away from him. Beside her, some sort of cabinet— No. It was a man in a long black
coat, a huge man. Locke ducked back out of sight. Gods, Chains was right about at
least one thing. They couldn’t fight a brute like that, with or without a house full
of other men to aid him.
“I’m not an enemy, you know.” The man had a deep, precise voice with the barest hint
of a strange accent. “We want so little from you. You must realize that your friends
can’t save you. Not from us.”
There was a long silence. The man sighed.
“You might think that we couldn’t do the things I suggested earlier. Not to a pretty
little girl. But you’re as good as hung now. Makes it easy on the conscience. Sooner
or later, you’ll talk. Even if you have to talk through your screams.
“I’ll, ah, leave you alone for a bit. Let you think. But think hard, girl. We’re only
patient as long as we have orders to be.”
There was a slamming sound, a heavy door being shut, and then a slight metallic clank;
the man had turned a key behind him.
Now it was time. Time to slip into the room, pass the vial over, and escape as quickly
as possible. And then Sabetha would kill herself, and Locke would … would …
“Fuck this,” he whispered to himself.
Locke pushed at the window, widening the opening at its bottom. Windows that slid
up and down were a relatively new and expensive development in Camorr, so rare that
even Locke knew they were special.
Whatever mechanism raised and lowered this one was well-oiled, and it rose with little
resistance. Sabetha turned her head toward the noise as Locke slid over the windowsill
and flopped inside. Her eyes were wide with surprise.
“Hi,” whispered Locke, less dramatically than he might have hoped. He stood up from
the inch-deep carpet and examined Sabetha’s chair. His heart sank. It was glossy hardwood,
taller than the window, and likely weighed more than he did. Furthermore, while Sabetha’s
arms were free, she was shackled at the ankles.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Getting you out,” Locke whispered. He glanced around the room, pondering anxiously.
They were in a library, but the shelves and scroll-cases were bare. Not a single book
in sight. No sharp objects, no levers, no tools. He examined the door, hoping for
some sort of interior lock or bar he could throw, and was disappointed there as well.
“I can’t get out of this chair,” said Sabetha, her voice low and urgent. “They could
be back any moment. What’s that you’re holding?”
Locke suddenly remembered the vial he was clutching tightly in his right hand. Before
he could think of anything else to do he moved it behind his back like a fool.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“I know why Chains sent you up here.” Sabetha closed her eyes as she spoke. “It’s
okay. He and I talked about it before. It’s—”
“No. I’ll think of something. Help me.”
“It’s going to be all right. Give it to me.”
“I can’t.” Locke held up his hands, pleading. “Help me get you out of that chair.”
“Locke,” said Sabetha, and the sound of her speaking his name at last was like a hammer-blow
to his heart. “You swore to do what I said. Come hell or Eldren-fire. Did you mean
it?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “But you’ll die.”
“There’s no other way.” She held out one of her hands.
“No.” He rubbed at his eyes, feeling tears starting again.
“Then what are you loyal to, Locke?”
A coldness gnawed at the pit of Locke’s stomach. Every failure he’d experienced in
his few short years, every time he’d been caught or foiled, every time he’d ever made
a mistake, been punished, gone
hungry—all those moments churned up and relived at once couldn’t have equaled the
bitter weight of the defeat that settled in his gut now.
He placed the glass vial in her hand, and for a moment their fingers met, warmth against
warmth. She gave his hand a little squeeze, and Locke gasped, letting the vial out
of his grip. Her fingers curled around it, and now there was no taking it back.
“Go,” she whispered.
He stared at her, unable to believe he’d actually done it, and then finally turned
away. It was just three steps to the window, but his feet felt distant and numb. He
braced one hand on the windowsill, more to steady himself than to escape.
A loud click echoed in the room, and the door began to swing open.
Locke heaved himself over the sill, scrambled to plant his feet in the vines that
clung to the house’s brick exterior, and prayed to drop down fast enough to escape
notice, or at least get a head start—
“Locke, wait!” came a deep and familiar voice.
Locke clung precariously to the windowsill and strained to lift his head enough to
glance back into the room. The door was wide open, and standing there was Father Chains.
“No,” whispered Locke, suddenly realizing what the whole point of the night’s exercise
really was. But that meant— That meant Sabetha wouldn’t have to—
He was so startled he lost his grip, and with a sharp cry he fell backward into the
air above the darkened garden.
“
TOLD YOU
he wasn’t dead.” It was one of the Sanzas, his voice coming out of the darkness.
“Like a physiker, I am. Ought to charge you a fee for my opinion.”
“Sure.” The other Sanza now, speaking close to Locke’s right ear. “Hope you like getting
paid in kicks to the head.”
Locke opened his eyes and found himself on a table in a well-lit room, a room that
had the same strange lack of opulence as the library Sabetha had been chained up in.
There were the table and a few chairs, but no tapestries, no decorations, no sense
that anyone actually lived
here. Locke winced, took a deep breath, and sat bolt upright. His back and his head
ached dully.
“Easy, boy.” Chains was at his side in an instant. “You took quite a tumble. If only
you weren’t so damnably quick on your feet, I might have convinced—”
Chains reached out to gently push him back down, and Locke swatted his hands away.
“You
lied
,” he growled.
“Forgive me,” said Chains, very softly. “There was still one thing we needed to know
about you, Locke.”
“You lied!” The depth of Locke’s rage came as a shock; he couldn’t remember feeling
anything like it even for tormentors like Gregor and Veslin—and he’d killed them,
hadn’t he? “None of it was real!”
“Be reasonable,” said Chains. “It’s a bit risky to stage a kidnapping using actual
agents of the duke.”
“No,” said Locke. “It was wrong. It was wrong! It wasn’t like they really would have
done! I might have gotten her out!”
“You can’t fight grown men,” said Chains. “You did the very best you could in a bad
situation.”
“IT WAS WRONG!” Locke forced himself to concentrate, to articulate what his gut was
telling him. “They would … real guards might have done it differently. Not chained
her down. This was all made for me. All made so I had no choice!”
“Yes,” said Chains. “It was a game you couldn’t win. A situation that finds us all,
sooner or later.”
“No,” said Locke, feeling his anger warm him from his head to his toes. “It was all
wrong!”
“He did it to us too, once,” said Calo, grabbing his right arm. “Gods, we wanted to
die, it was so bad.”
“He did it to
all
of us,” said Sabetha, and Locke whirled at the sound of her voice. She was standing
in a corner, arms folded, studying him with a combination of interest and unease.
“He’s right. We had to know if you could do it.”
“And you did superbly,” said Chains. “You did better than we could have—”
“It wasn’t fair,” shouted Locke. “It wasn’t a fair test! There was no way to win!”
“That’s life,” said Chains. “That’s your one sure inheritance as flesh and blood.
Nobody wins all the time, Locke.”
Locke shook himself free from Calo’s grasp and stood on the table, so that he actually
had to look down to meet Chains eye to eye.
Gods, he’d thought Sabetha was gone once, and he’d rejoiced to find her alive. Then
he’d been sent to
kill
her. That was the rage, he realized, burning like a coal behind his heart. For a
few terrible minutes Chains had made him believe that he would have to lose her all
over again. Narrowed his world to one awful choice and made him feel helpless.
“I will never lose again.” He nodded slowly to himself, as though his words were the
long-sought solution to some mathematical puzzle. Then he shouted at the top of his
lungs, not caring if he was heard across the length and breadth of the Razona.
“Do you hear me? I WILL NEVER LOSE AGAIN!”
“
MERCIFUL GODS
,”
SAID
Locke. To Jean’s eyes, he seemed genuinely taken aback. “Your actual flesh-and-blood
son? By, ah, traditional means?”
“I certainly didn’t brew him in a cauldron.”
“Well, come now,” said Locke, “as though we’d know one way or the other—”
“There are no means
but
traditional means for such an undertaking.”
“Damn,” said Locke. “And I thought this was an awkward conversation before.”
“The Falconer’s heart is still beating. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”
“You expect us to believe that?” said Jean. His defensive instincts, sharpened over
years of alternating triumphs and disasters, came hotly to life. Even if Patience
chose to pose no immediate threat, surely wheels were turning somewhere inside her
mind. “His friends would have killed us, but you can just wave the whole mess off
with a sad smile?”
“You two didn’t get along,” said Locke.
“Very mildly put,” said Patience. She looked down at her feet, a gesture that struck
Jean as totally outside her usual character. “Even before he earned his first ring …
the Falconer was my antagonist in all philosophies, magical or otherwise. If our positions
were reversed he certainly wouldn’t feel bound to vengeance on my account.”
Now Patience slowly raised her head until her dark eyes met Jean’s, and he was able
to really study them for the first time. Certain people had what Jean privately thought
of as
archer’s eyes
—a steady coolness, a detached precision. People with eyes like that could sort the
world around them into targets, pick their first shot before those nearby even knew
the time for talk had passed. Eyes like that had killers behind them, and Patience
for-fucking-sure had a pair.