Authors: Scott Lynch
Most striking was the character of the city’s Elderglass. Its bridges over the wide
Karvanu (which poured down five separate white-foaming falls before it reached the
heart of the city) were not solid arches, but rather suspension bridges made of thousands
of panels of milky black Elderglass, connected by countless finger-thick lengths of
glass cable to supporting towers like spindly caricatures of human temple spires.
The first bridge they crossed had a disconcerting amount of sway and bounce—just a
few inches of give, to be sure, but any bounce at all was of immediate interest to
someone high over water in a carriage.
“Never fear,” said Nikoros, noticing the matching expressions on Locke’s and Jean’s
faces. “You’ll be used to this in no time. It’s Elderglass! Nothing we do could so
much as fray a cable.”
Jean stared at the other huge bridges spanning the Karvanu. They looked like the work
of mad giant spiders, or harps designed for hands the size of palaces. He also noticed,
for the first time, a strangely tuneful humming and creaking that he assumed was the
music of the cables.
“Welcome to the Isas Salvierro,” said Nikoros when the carriage halted a few minutes
later, blessedly back on unyielding stone. “A business district, one of the pumping
hearts of the city. My office is just north of here.”
The small group bustled out of the carriage and into Morenna Clothiers, where they
found a wide shop floor surrounded by a raised second-floor gallery. Seconddaughter
Morenna locked the door behind them.
“These aren’t our usual hours,” she said. “You’re an emergency case.”
There was a strong smell of coffee wafting throughout the shop, and Jean’s mouth watered.
The walls of the lower room were layered with bolts of cloth in a hundred different
colors and textures, while several wooden racks of coats and jackets had been brought
out into the middle of the floor.
“Allow me to introduce Firstdaughter Morenna,” said Seconddaughter, pointing to a
taller, heavier blonde woman on the upper level, who was pulling a gleaming metallic
thread from a rattling clockwork spindle. “And of course our darling Thirddaughter.”
The youngest of the tailoring sisters was as petite as Seconddaughter, though her
hair was a shade darker and she alone of the three wore optics. She was absorbed in
trimming some unknown velvet bundle with a pair of blackened-iron shears, and she
gave the merest nod in greeting.
“Thimbles on, girls, it’s time for battle,” said Seconddaughter.
“My,” said Firstdaughter, who stepped away from her machine and descended to the first
floor. “Shipwreck, was it? You gentlemen look like you’ve been in the wars. Is Lashain
having some sort of difficulty?”
“Lashain is its old charming self, madam,” said Locke. “Our misfortune was personal.”
“You’ve come to the right place. We adore a challenge. And we adorn the challenged!
Second, have you taken their measurements?”
“Everything I could in decency.” Seconddaughter snatched up a slate, and with a squeaky
piece of chalk scribed two columns of numbers on it. She threw the slate to Firstdaughter.
“Save for breeches inseams. Could you be a dear?”
Firstdaughter conjured a measuring line in her free hand and advanced on Locke and
Jean without hesitation. “Now, gentlemen, our male apprentice is out sick, so you’ll
need to bear my scrutiny a moment. Take heart, there’s many a wife that won’t give
her husband this sort of attention for love or money.” Chuckling, she took rapid and
mostly professional measurements from crotch to ankles on both men, then added some
squiggles to the bottom of the slate.
“I assume that we’re replacing an entire wardrobe?” said Thirddaughter, setting her
velvet down.
“Yes,” said Locke. “These fine dishrags represent the sum of our current wardrobe.”
“You’ve the sound of an easterner,” said Thirddaughter. “Will you want the style to
which you’re accustomed, or something more—”
“Local,” said Jean. “Absolutely local. Fit us out like natives.”
“It will take several days,” said Seconddaughter, holding a swatch of something brown
up to Jean’s neck and frowning, “to deliver all the bespoke work, you understand,
and that’s with us chugging along like water-engines. But while we’re arranging that,
we can set you up with something respectable enough.”
“We don’t do boots, though,” said Firstdaughter, stripping Jean’s jacket and sending
his hatchets clattering to the floor. “Oh, dear. Will you be wanting somewhere to
tuck those?”
“Absolutely,” said Jean.
“We’ve got a thousand ways,” said First. She picked up the Wicked Sisters and set
them respectfully on a table. “But as I was saying, Nikoros, we haven’t turned cobblers
in the last few hours. Have you kept that in mind?”
“Of course,” said Nikoros. “This is but the first stop. I’ll have them set up like
royalty before lunch.”
The next half hour was a furious storm of fittings, removals, tests, measurements,
remeasurements, suggestions, countersuggestions, and sisterly arguments as Locke and
Jean were gradually peeled out of their slops and reskinned as fair approximations
of gentlemen. The creamy silk shirts were a little too big, the vests and breeches
taken in or let out with some haste. Locke’s long coat hung loose and Jean’s was tight
across the chest. Still, it was a drastic improvement, at least from the ankles up.
Now they could set foot in a countinghouse without provoking the guards into raising
weapons.
Once the immediate transmutation was accomplished, the three women took notes for
a more expansive wardrobe—evening coats, morning jackets, formal and informal waistcoats,
breeches in half a dozen styles, velvet doublets, fitted silk shirts, and all the
trimmings.
“Now, you said you’d be doing more, ah, entertaining, as it were,” said Thirddaughter
to Locke. “So I gather you’ll need a slightly wider selection of coats than your friend
Master Callas.”
“Entirely correct,” said Jean, rolling his arms around and enjoying
his restoration to a state of elegance, tight coat or no. “Besides, I’m the careful
one. I can make do with less. Give my friend a bit more of your attention.”
“As you will,” said Thirddaughter, gently but firmly grabbing Jean by his left cuff.
A long dangling thread had caught her attention; she had her shears out with a graceful
twirl and snipped it in the blink of an eye. “There. Squared away. I believe, then,
we’ll start with seven coats for Master Lazari, and give you four.”
“We’ll send them to your inn as we finish them,” said Firstdaughter, tallying figures
on a new slate. These figures had nothing to do with Locke’s and Jean’s measurements.
She passed the slate to Nikoros, and when he nodded curtly her pleasure was readily
apparent.
“Lovely,” said Locke. “Except we don’t know where we’re staying just yet.”
“The Deep Roots party does,” said Nikoros with a half-bow. “You’re in our bosom now,
sirs. You’ll want for nothing. Now, might I beg you to come along, just a few steps
up the lane? Those bare feet will never do for lunch or dinner.”
THE NEXT
two hours of the morning were spent, as Nikoros had prophesied, scuttling up and
down the streets of the Isas Salvierro in pursuit of boots, shoes, jewelry, and every
last detail that would help Locke and Jean pass as men of real account. Several of
the shops involved had not yet opened for regular business, but the force of Nikoros’
connections and pocketbook unlocked every door.
As their list of immediate needs grew shorter, Jean noticed that Locke was spending
more and more time eyeballing the alleys, windows, and rooftops around them.
Behavior very obvious
, he signaled.
Threat gods-damned serious
, was the reply.
And despite himself, despite personal experience that one of the least intelligent
things to do, when you fear being spied upon, is to crane your head in all directions
and advertise your suspicion, Jean did just that. As the carriage rattled toward Tivoli’s
countinghouse, he stole fretful glances out his window.
Sabetha. Gods below, he couldn’t imagine a more troublesome foe. Not only had he and
Locke set foot in a city where their presence was expected, she knew precisely how
they worked. That was true in reverse, to some extent, but all the same he felt like
they were just leaving the starting mark in a race that had been going on without
them for some time.
“Think she’ll hit us early?” said Jean.
“She’s hitting us as we speak,” muttered Locke. “We just don’t know where yet.”
“Gentlemen,” said Nikoros, who was working to keep the pile of parcels on the seat
next to him from toppling onto the compartment floor at every turn, “what’s troubling
you?”
“Our opposition,” said Locke. “The Black Iris people. Is there a woman that you know
of, a new woman, only recently arrived?”
“The redheaded woman, you mean?” said Nikoros. “Is she important?”
“She—” Locke seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say. “She’s our problem.
Don’t tell anyone we asked, but keep your ears open.”
“We haven’t identified her yet,” said Nikoros. “She’s not Karthani.”
“No,” said Locke. “She’s not. Do you have any idea where she is?”
“I could show you a few coffeehouses and taverns run by Black Iris members. Not to
mention the Sign of the Black Iris itself. They got their name from that place. If
I had to guess, I’d look for her there.”
“I’ll want a list of all those places,” said Locke. “Get me the name of every business,
every inn, every hole in the wall connected with the Iris people. Write them down.
I’ll have paper sent out to you while we’re in Tivoli’s.”
“I fancy I can give you something useful off the top of my head. Do you want something
more complete, later? I have membership lists, property lists …”
“I’ll want it all,” said Locke. “Make copies. Do you have a scribe you trust, really
trust?”
“I have a bonded scrivener I’ve used forever,” said Nikoros. “He votes Deep Roots.”
“Have the poor bastard cancel his life for a day or two,” said Locke.
“Pay him whatever he asks. I assume you can tug on the party’s purse strings at will?”
“Well, yes—”
“Good, because that teat is about to be milked. Have your scribe copy everything important.
Everything. Anything election-related goes to us. Anything personal goes to your countinghouse
vault.”
“But, why—”
“For the next month and a half, I expect you to behave as though your office is in
danger of burning down at any moment.”
“But surely they wouldn’t …”
“Nothing is off the table. Nothing! Got it?”
“If you insist.”
“Maybe we’ll have a meeting with the opposition sooner or later,” said Locke. “Set
some rules. Until then, a bad accident is a near-certainty. I know if I could get
at someone like you on the Black Iris side, turn their papers into ash, I’d be sorely
tempted.”
“I can give you names—”
“Write them down,” said Locke. “Write them all down. You’re going to be tasting ink
with your lunch, I’m afraid.”
TIVOLI
’
S COUNTINGHOUSE
was a classic of its type, a perfect cross between inviting extravagance and blatant
intimidation.
Locke admired the building. The narrow windows, like fortress embrasures, were girded
with iron bars, and the shelves beneath the windows were cement blocks studded with
broken glass. The exterior walls (all four of them, for the three-story building stood
alone on a hard-packed dirt courtyard) were painted with well-executed frescoes of
fat, infinitely content Gandolo blessing account books, scales, and stacks of coin.
The alchemical resin used to protect these images from the weather gave the walls
a faint gleam, and Locke knew from personal experience it also made them devilishly
hard to climb.
The interior smelled of mellow incense. Golden lanterns hung in niches, casting a
warm, inviting light except where pillars and drapes contrived to create equally inviting
pools of shadow. To either side
behind the main doors, guards sat on stools in gated alcoves, and a quick glance up
confirmed that there was a tastefully concealed portcullis ready to be dropped, if
not by the guards or bankers then by hidden watchers behind the walls.
There was no chance of robbing such a place on a whim, nor with anything less than
a dozen armed and ready types, and even that was more likely to earn a bloodbath than
a fortune. The shrine-like inviolability of houses like this was actually as necessary
to those in the criminal line as it was to any honest citizen. There was no point
in stealing well or wisely if the loot couldn’t be stashed somewhere safe.
“I see Nikoros in the carriage outside,” said a woman who emerged from behind a painted
screen. She was about forty, dark-skinned, with chestnut hair bound beneath a black
silk skullcap. Her right eye was clouded, and she wore a pair of optics from which
the corresponding lens had been removed. “You must be the political gentlemen.”
“Callas and Lazari,” said Jean.
“Singular Tivoli, gentlemen. Your servant.”
“Singular?” said Locke.
“More elegant than ‘Only Tivoli,’ I find, and far more sociable than ‘Solitary Tivoli.’
You have some documents?”
Locke handed over the papers they’d been given by Patience. Tivoli barely glanced
at them before she nodded.
“Private credit for three thousand each,” she said. “Scratched these up myself a few
days ago. Do you want to draw any of it?”
“Yes,” said Jean. “Can you give us fifty apiece?”
That was adequate pocket money, thought Locke. Half a pound of Karthani ducats each.
He turned the sum into Camorri crowns in his head, and idly reflected on what it could
get him: a small company of mercenaries for several months, half a dozen outstanding
horses, twice as many adequate ones, plain food and lodging for years … not that he’d
have any reason to buy such far-fetched things. Yet it would certainly procure an
excellent dinner. His stomach rumbled at the thought.