Authors: Scott Lynch
The fourth floor: Doña Sofia’s workshop, a place where the two intruders wanted even
less to stumble or linger than they had in her garden. Quiet as guilty husbands coming
home from a late night of drinking, they stole through the dark rooms of laboratory
apparatus and potted plants, scampering for the narrow stone stairs that led downward
to a side passage on the third floor.
The operations of the Salvara household were well known to the
Gentlemen Bastards; the don and doña kept their private chambers on the third floor,
across the hall from the don’s study. The second floor was the solar, a reception
and dining hall that went mostly disused when the couple had no friends over to entertain.
The first floor held the kitchen, several parlors, and the servants’ quarters. In
addition to Conté, the Salvaras kept a pair of middle-aged housekeepers, a cook, and
a young boy who served as a messenger and scullion. All of them would be asleep on
the first floor; none of them posed even a fraction of the threat that Conté did.
This was the part of the scheme that couldn’t be planned with any precision—they had
to locate the old soldier and deal with him before they could have their intended
conversation with Don Salvara.
Footsteps echoed from somewhere else on the floor; Locke, in the lead, crouched low
and peeked around the left-hand corner. It turned out he was looking down the long
passage that divided the third floor in half lengthwise; Don Salvara had left the
door to his study open and was vanishing into the bedchamber. That door he closed
firmly behind him—and a moment later the sound of a metal lock echoed down the hall.
“Serendipity,” whispered Locke. “I suspect he’ll be busy for quite some time in there.
Light’s still on in his study, so we know he’s coming back out.… Let’s get the hard
part over with.”
Locke and Calo slipped down the hallway, sweating now, but barely letting their heavy
cloaks flutter as they moved. The long passage was tastefully decorated with hanging
tapestries and shallow wall sconces in which tiny glow-glasses shed no more light
than that of smoldering coals. Behind the heavy doors to the Salvaras’ chambers, someone
laughed.
The stairwell at the far end of the passage was wide and circular; steps of white
marble inset with mosaic-tile maps of Camorr spiralled down into the solar. Here Calo
grabbed Locke by one sleeve, put a finger to his lips, and jerked his head downward.
“Listen,” he murmured.
Clang, clang … footsteps … clang, clang.
This sequence of noises was repeated several times, growing slightly louder each time.
Locke grinned at Calo. Someone was pacing the solar, methodically checking the locks
and the iron bars guarding each window. At this time of the night, there was only
one man in the house who’d be doing such a thing.
Calo knelt beside the balustrade, just to the left of the top of the staircase. Anyone
coming up the spiral stairs would have to pass directly beneath this position. He
reached inside his cloak and took out a folded
leather sack and a length of narrow-gauge rope woven from black silk; he then began
to thread the silk line through and around the sack in some arcane fashion that Locke
couldn’t follow. Locke knelt just behind Calo and kept one eye on the long passage
they’d come down—a reappearance of the don was hardly likely yet, but the Benefactor
was said to make colorful examples of incautious thieves.
Conté’s light, steady footsteps echoed on the staircase beneath them.
In a fair fight, the don’s man would almost certainly paint the walls with Locke and
Calo’s blood, so it stood to reason that this fight would have to be as unfair as
possible. At the moment the top of Conté’s bald head appeared beneath him, Calo reached
out between the balustrade posts and let his crimper’s hood drop.
A crimper’s hood, for those who’ve never had the occasion to be kidnapped and sold
into slavery in one of the cities on the Iron Sea, looks a bit like a tent as it flutters
quickly downward, borne by weights sewn into its bottom edges. Air pushes its flaps
outward just before it drops down around its target’s head and settles on his shoulders.
Conté gave a startled jerk as Calo yanked the black silk cord, instantly cinching
the hood closed around his neck.
Anyone with any real presence of mind could probably reach up and fumble such a hood
loose in a matter of seconds, which is why the interior is inevitably painted with
large amounts of some sweet-scented fuming narcotic, purchased from a black apothecary.
Knowing the nature of the man they were attempting to subdue, Locke and Calo had spent
nearly thirty crowns on the stuff Conté was breathing just now, and Locke fervently
wished him much joy of it.
One panic-breath inside the airtight hood; that would be enough to drop any ordinary
person in his or her tracks. But as Locke flew down the stairs to catch Conté’s body,
he saw that the man was still somehow upright, clawing at the hood—disoriented and
weakened, most definitely, but still awake. A quick rap on the solar plexus—that would
open his mouth and speed the drug on its way. Locke stepped in to deliver the blow,
wrapping one hand around Conté’s neck just beneath the crimper’s hood. This nearly
blew the entire game.
Conté’s arms flashed up and broke Locke’s lackadaisical choke hold before it even
began; the man’s left arm snaked out to entangle Locke’s right, and then Conté
punched
him—once, twice, three times; vicious jabs in his
own
stomach and solar plexus. With his guts an exploding constellation of pain, Locke
sank down against his would-be victim, struggling for
balance. Conté brought his right knee up in a blow that should have knocked Locke’s
teeth out of his ears at high speed, but the drug was finally, thankfully smothering
the old soldier’s will to be ornery. The knee barely grazed Locke’s chin; instead,
the booted foot attached to it caught him in the groin and knocked him backward. His
head bounced against the hard marble of the stairs, somewhat cushioned by the cloth
of his hood; Locke lay there, gasping for breath, still hanging awkwardly by one of
the hooded man’s arms.
Calo appeared at that instant, having dropped the line that cinched his crimper’s
hood and dashed down the stairs. He slipped one foot behind Conté’s increasingly wobbly
legs and pushed the man down the stairs, holding him by the front of his doublet to
keep the fall relatively quiet. Once Conté was head-down and prone, Calo punched him
rather mercilessly between the legs—once, then again when the man’s legs twitched
feebly, and then again, which yielded no response. The hood had finally done its work.
With Conté temporarily disposed of, Calo turned to Locke and tried to help him to
a sitting position, but Locke waved him off.
“What sort of state are you in?” Calo whispered.
“As though I’m with child, and the little bastard is trying to cut his way out with
an axe.” Chest heaving, Locke tore his black mask down off his face, lest he vomit
inside it and create an unconcealable mess.
While Locke gulped deep breaths and tried to control his shuddering, Calo crouched
back down beside Conté and tore the hood off, briskly waving away the sickly-sweet
aroma of the leather bag’s contents. He carefully folded the hood up, slipped it into
his cloak, and then dragged Conté up a few steps.
“Calo.” Locke coughed. “My disguise—damaged?”
“Not that I can see. Looks like he didn’t do anything that shows, provided you can
walk without a slouch. Stay here a moment.”
Calo slipped down to the foot of the stairs and took a peek around the darkened solar;
soft city light fell through the barred windows, faintly illuminating a long table
and a number of glass cases on the walls, holding plates and unidentifiable knickknacks.
Not another soul was in sight, and not a sound could be heard from below.
When Calo returned, Locke had pushed himself up on his knees and hands; Conté slumbered
beside him with a look of comical bliss on his craggy face.
“Oh, he’s not going to keep that expression when he wakes up.” Calo waved a pair of
thin, leather-padded brass knuckles at Locke, then made
them vanish up his sleeves with a graceful flourish. “I had my footpad’s little friends
on when I knocked him around that last time.”
“Well, I for one have no expressions of sympathy to spare, since he kicked my balls
hard enough to make them permanent residents of my lungs.” Locke tried to push himself
up off his hands and failed; Calo caught him under his right arm and eased him up
until he was kneeling, shakily, on his knees alone.
“You’ve got your breath back, at least. Can you actually walk?”
“I can stumble, I think. I’ll be hunched over for a while. Give me a few minutes and
I think I can pretend nothing’s wrong. At least until we’re out of here.”
Calo assisted Locke back up the stairs to the third floor. Leaving Locke there to
keep watch, he then began to quietly, slowly drag Conté up the same way. The don’s
man didn’t actually weigh all that much.
Embarrassed, and eager to make himself useful again, Locke pulled two lengths of tough
cord out of his own cloak and bound Conté’s feet and hands with them; he folded a
handkerchief three times and used it as a gag. Locke pulled Conté’s knives out of
their sheaths and passed them to Calo, who stashed them within his cloak.
The don’s study door still hung open, shedding warm light into the passage; the bedchamber
doors remained locked tight.
“I pray you both may be gifted with a demand and an endurance well beyond your usual
expectations, m’lord and lady,” whispered Calo. “Your household thieves would appreciate
a short break before continuing with their duties for the evening.”
Calo grasped Conté beneath his arms, and Locke, slouched in obvious pain, nonetheless
grabbed the man’s feet when Calo began to drag him all by himself. With tedious stealth,
they retraced their steps and deposited the unconscious bodyguard around the far bend
in the corridor, just beside the stairs leading back up to the fourth-floor laboratories.
The don’s study was a most welcome sight when they finally stole in a few minutes
later. Locke settled into a deeply cushioned leather armchair on the left-hand wall,
while Calo took up a standing guard position. More laughter could be heard, faintly,
from across the hall.
“We could be here quite a while,” said Calo.
“The gods are merciful.” Locke stared at the don’s tall glass-fronted liquor cabinet—one
even more impressive than the collection his pleasure barge carried. “I’d pour us
a draught or six, but I don’t think it would be in character.”
They waited ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Locke breathed steadily and deeply, and
concentrated on ignoring the throbbing ache that seemed to fill his guts from top
to bottom. Yet when the two thieves heard the door across the hallway unbolting, Locke
leapt to his feet, standing tall, pretending that his balls didn’t feel like clay
jugs dropped onto cobblestones from a great height. He cinched his black mask back
on and willed a wave of perfect arrogance to claim him from the inside out.
As Father Chains had once said, the best disguises were those that were poured out
of the heart rather than painted on the face.
Calo kissed the back of his left hand through his own mask and winked.
Don Lorenzo Salvara walked into his study whistling, lightly dressed and completely
unarmed.
“Close the door,” said Locke, and his voice was steady, rich with the absolute presumption
of command. “Have a seat, m’lord, and don’t bother calling for your man. He is … indisposed.”
AN HOUR past midnight, two men left the Alcegrante district via the Eldren Arch. They
wore black cloaks and had black horses; one of them rode with a leisurely air, while
the other led his horse on foot, walking in a curiously bowlegged fashion.
“Un-fucking-believable,” said Calo. “It really did work out just as you planned. It’s
a pity we can’t brag about this to anyone. Our biggest score ever, and all we had
to do was tell our mark
exactly
what we were doing to him.”
“And get kicked around a bit,” muttered Locke.
“Yeah, sorry about that. What a beast that man was, eh? Take comfort that he’ll feel
the same way when he opens his eyes again.”
“How very comforting. If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the
trouble of pressing grapes.”
“By the Crooked Warden, I never heard such self-pity dripping from the mouth of a
wealthy man. Cheer up! Richer and cleverer than everyone else, right?”
“Richer and cleverer and walking funny, yes.”
The pair of thieves made their way south through Twosilver Green, toward the first
of the stops where they would gradually lose their horses and shed their black clothes,
until they were finally heading back to the
Temple District dressed as common laborers. They nodded companionably at patrols of
yellowjackets, stomping about in the mist with lanterns swaying on pike-poles to light
their way. Not once were they given any reason to glance up.
The fluttering shadow that trailed them on their way through the streets and alleys
was quieter than a small child’s breath; swift and graceful, it swooped from rooftop
to rooftop in their wake, following their actions with absolute single-mindedness.
When they slipped back into the Temple District, it beat its wings and rose into the
darkness in a lazy spiraling circle, until it was up above the mists of Camorr and
lost against the gray haze of the low-hanging clouds.
Locke’s first experience with the mirror wine of Tal Verrar had even more of an effect
on the boy’s malnourished body than Chains had expected. Locke spent most of the next
day tossing and turning on his cot, his head pounding and his eyes unable to bear
anything but the most gentle spark of light.
“It’s a fever,” Locke muttered into his sweat-soaked blanket.