Authors: Scott Lynch
“Espara,” said Anatoly Vireska. “Right where I left it. No more stops for rest, my
young friends. Before the sun sets you’ll be in the city looking for your actor fellows.”
“Well done, caravan master,” said Locke, who had the reins while Jean was snoring
gently under the tarp at the rear of the wagon. “Not what I’d call a scenic tour,
but you’ve brought us through without a scratch.”
“When the crop of bandits is thin, it’s a restful little walk. Now it’s back to dodging
carriages, breathing smoke, and paying rent for the beds you sleep in, eh?”
“Gods be praised,” said Locke.
“City creatures are the strangest of all,” said Vireska with a friendly shake of his
head. He moved off to visit the rest of the wagons.
All the Gentlemen Bastards, more or less as footsore, ass-sore, unwashed, and drained
of blood as Sabetha had predicted, had given up on walking this morning. Calo and
Galdo leaned against each other, watching the landscape roll by at its strolling pace,
while Sabetha was absorbed in the copy of
The Republic of Thieves
she’d picked up before they’d left Camorr.
“Is the play any good?” said Galdo.
“I think so,” said Sabetha, “except the final act has been torn out of this folio,
and half the pages have stains blotting out some of the lines. I keep imagining that
every scene ends with the characters hurling cups of coffee at one another.”
“Sounds like my kind of play,” said Calo.
“Are there any decent roles?” said Galdo.
“They’re all decent,” said Sabetha. “Better than decent. I think they’re very romantic.
We should have names like this, like all the heroes in these plays, all the famous
bandits and sorcerers and emperors.”
“Most people could give half a dry shit for having an emperor’s name,” said Galdo.
“It’s the wealth and power they’d want.”
“What I mean,” said Sabetha, “is that we should have aliases like out of the old stories.
Big, grand titles like the Ten Honest Turncoats, you know? Red Jessa, the Duke of
Knaves. Amadine, the Queen of Shadows.”
“I think Verena Gallante’s a fine alias,” said Locke.
“No, I mean
big
and
important
, and
uncommon
. Not something you get called to your face. The sort of alias that people whisper
when something unbelievable happens. ‘Oh, gods, this can only be the work of the Duke
of Knaves!’ ”
“Heavens,” said Galdo in a deep, dramatic voice, “only one man living could have squeezed
forth such a gleaming brown jewel—this is the work of Squatting Calo, the Midnight
Shitter!”
“You two want for imagination,” said Sabetha.
“Not at all,” said Galdo. “The lower the enterprise, the hotter the fire of our invention
burns.”
“Are you going a bit stir-crazy, Sabetha?” said Locke, secretly pleased to hear the
energy in her voice after so many days of brooding tedium.
“Maybe I am. I’ve been stuck in this wagon counting Sanza farts for a week; maybe
I’m due a little flight of fancy. I mean, wouldn’t it be grand, to have a legend that
grew while you were alive to enjoy it? To sit in a tavern and hear all the people
around you speaking of what you’d done, with no notion that you were among them as
flesh and blood?”
“I can sit in a tavern and be ignored anytime I please,” muttered Calo.
“I want to see the Kingdom of the Marrows someday,” said Sabetha. “Game my way from
city to city … on the arms of nobles, emptying their pockets as I go, charming them
witless. I’d be like a force
of nature. They’d come up with some elegant title for their shared affliction. ‘It
was
her
… it was … it was the Rose.’ ”
Sabetha rolled this off her tongue, obviously savoring it.
“The
Rose of the Marrows
, they’ll say. ‘The Rose of the Marrows has been my ruin!’ And they’ll tear their
hair out explaining everything to their wives and bankers, while I ride on to the
next city.”
“Are we all going to need stupid nicknames, then?” said Calo. “We could be … the Shrubs
of the North.”
“The Weeds of Vintila,” said Galdo.
“And if you’re a rose,” said Calo, “Locke’s going to need something as well.”
“He can be a tulip,” said Galdo. “Delicate little tulip.”
“Nah, if she’s the rose, he can be her thorn.” Calo snapped his fingers. “The
Thorn of Camorr
! Now, that’s got some shine to it!”
“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” said Locke.
“We can do it as soon as we get home,” said Calo. “Disguise ourselves. Drop hints
in bars. Tell stories here and there. Give us a month and everyone will be talking
about the Thorn of Camorr. Even the ones that don’t know shit will just tell more
lies, so they can sound like they’re clued in on the latest.”
“If you ever do anything like that,” said Locke, “I swear to all the gods, I will
murder you.”
JUST AFTER
the fourth hour of the afternoon, with the faintest warm drizzle sweating out of
the graying sky, their wagon rolled through the mud beneath the stone arch of the
Jalaan River Gate on the east side of Espara. Jean was back at the reins, and he bade
their horses to halt for a squad of armed men in cloaks.
“What goes, Vireska?” said the evident leader, one of those graceful hulking types,
the sort that gave every impression of being able to dance a minuet despite possession
of a belly fit for carving into ham steaks. “We could set a water-clock by you. Dull
trip, eh?”
“Just the way it ought to be,” said the caravan master as he shook hands with the
watchman. The gratuity that instantly vanished into
the heavy fellow’s pocket was generous; Vireska had discussed it back in Camorr and
collected an equal portion from each wagon owner. “Now, when you’re poking through
everything, watch-sergeant, just be especially delicate with the drugs and the hidden
weapons, eh?”
“I promise not to keep you more than ten hours this time,” laughed the big Esparan.
His men made an extremely cursory examination of the wagons, clearly more for the
benefit of anyone watching than for the enforcement of the city’s customs laws.
“Welcome,” said one of the guards to Sabetha, who’d once again donned all her more
modest clothing. “First time in Espara?”
“Actually, yes,” she said.
“Might we help you find anything?” said the big watch-sergeant, edging in next to
his man.
“Oh, that would be so
very
kind of you,” she said, bubbling with girlish charm. Locke bit his tongue to stifle
a snicker. “We’re looking for a man called Jasmer Moncraine. The Moncraine Company,
the actors.”
“Why?” said the watch-sergeant. “You creditors?”
All the men behind him burst into laughter.
“Ah, no,” she said. “We’re players, from Camorr, come to join his troupe.”
“They got theaters in Camorr, miss?” said one of the guards. “I thought you was all
more about, like, sharks bitin’ women in half.”
“I’d like to see that,” mumbled another watchman.
“There
is
an awful lot of that where we come from,” said Sabetha. “In fact, we spend more time
touring than at home. Moncraine’s engaging us for the rest of the summer.”
“Well,” said the watch-sergeant, “in that case, best of luck. You can find some of
the Moncraine Company at, uh, what’s that place with the olive tree torn out of its
courtyard?”
“Gloriano’s Rooms,” said another guard.
“Right, right. Gloriano’s,” said the sergeant. “Look, you follow this lane straight
down to the Temple of Venaportha, and just past it turn left, hear? Take that lane
across the river, you’re in a place we call Solace Hill. Gloriano’s Rooms would be
on your right. If you find gravestones on three sides, you’ve gone too far.”
“We’re obliged to you,” said Locke, while nursing a faint premonition
that that might not, in the grand scheme of things, turn out to be entirely true.
They parted company with Vireska’s caravan and made their way into Espara, hewing
to the watch-sergeant’s directions. It seemed to Locke that they all perked up considerably
at finding themselves back in the familiar world of high stone walls, rain-dampened
smoke, junk-strewn alleys, and people crammed elbow-to-elbow on the dry portions of
the boulevards.
“Three cheers for a proper ale,” said Galdo wistfully. “In a proper tavern, that doesn’t
have a fucking palisade built round it to keep out the bloody bog monster.”
“I think this is Solace Hill,” said Jean, as they entered a neighborhood that seemed
to regress further from prosperity with every turn of the wagon wheels. The buildings
grew lower, the windows became dirtier, and the lights grew fewer. “Look, that’s a
graveyard, this Gloriano’s has to be close.”
They found it not a block down, the best-lit structure for some distance in any direction,
though the illumination was perhaps unwise given the things it revealed about the
condition of walls and roofs. A pair of city watchmen, looking soaked behind the misty
glow of their lanterns, were standing in the turn to the inn-yard and impeding the
passage of the Gentlemen Bastards’ wagon.
“Is there a problem, Constables?” called Jean.
“You don’t actually mean to turn in here?” said one of the men warily, as though he
suspected himself the butt of a joke.
“I think we do,” said Jean.
“But this is the way to Gloriano’s inn-yard,” said the constable, even more warily.
“Pleased to hear it.”
“You delivering something?”
“Just ourselves,” said Jean.
“Gods above, you mean it,” said the constable. “I could tell you ain’t from here,
even if I never heard your voice.” He and his companion stepped out of the way with
exaggerated courtesy and walked on, shaking their heads.
Locke first heard the shouting as Jean brought them in under a sloping canvas awning
that was more holes than fabric, next to a dark
stable that contained only one horse. The animal looked at them as though in hope
of rescue.
“What the hells is that noise?” said Sabetha.
It wasn’t any sort of row that Locke recognized. Fisticuffs, theft, murder, domestic
quarrel—all of those things had familiar rhythms and notes, sounds he could have identified
in a second. This was something stranger, and it seemed to be coming from just around
the right-hand corner of the building.
“Jean, Sabetha, come quietly with me,” he said. “Sanzas, mind the horses. If they
have any brains they might try to bolt.”
It didn’t occur to him until his boots hit the mud that he’d again done precisely
what Sabetha had railed against: presumed leadership without hesitation. But damn
it, this wasn’t a time for putting his life under a magnifying lens; it was a time
for making sure they weren’t all about to be murdered.
“I shall break you, joint by joint,” bellowed a man with a deep, attention-seizing
voice, “and drink your screams like a fine wine, and burn in brighter ecstasy with
every … fading … whimper from your coward’s throat!”
“Holy shit,” said Locke. “No, wait. That’s … that’s from a play.”
“
Catalinus, Last Prince of Amor Peth
,” whispered Jean.
Side by side, Locke, Jean, and Sabetha moved carefully around the corner. They found
themselves facing a courtyard, the interior of three double-storied wings of the inn,
with a vast ugly hole in the middle where something had been torn out of the ground.
A man and a woman sat off to one side, out of the light, watching a third man, who
stood on the edge of the muddy hole with a bottle in either hand. This man was a prodigious
physical specimen, surpassing Father Chains in girth and breadth, with a rain-slick
crown of white hair pasted down around his creased face. He wore a loose gray robe
and nothing else.
“I shall grind your bones to
powder
,” he hollered, transfixing the three Gentlemen Bastards with his gleaming eyes. “And
with that dust I’ll make cement for paving stones, and for a hundred years to come
you’ll have no rest beneath the crush of strange wheels and the tramp of strange boots!
Drunkards will make their unclean water upon you,
and I shall laugh to think of it, Catalinus! I shall laugh until I die, and
I
shall die whole in body, wholly revenged upon thee!”
He flung forth his arms, perhaps intentionally, perhaps at random, and when he seemed
to realize that he still held bottles in his hands he drank from them.
“Excuse me,” said Locke. Thunder rumbled overhead. The rain grew heavier. “We’re,
ah, looking for the Moncraine Company.”
“Moncraine,” yelled the white-haired man, dropping one of his bottles and waving his
arms to keep his balance at the edge of the hole. “Moncraine!”
“Are you Jasmer Moncraine?” said Jean.
“I, Jasmer Moncraine?” The man leapt down into the hole, which was about thigh-deep,
raising a dark splash of water. He scrambled up the other side and came toward them,
now thoroughly be-mucked from the waist down. “I am Sylvanus Olivios Andrassus, the
greatest actor in a thousand miles, in a thousand
years
! Jasmer Moncraine wishes … on his best day … that he was worth a single drop … OF
MY PISS!”
Sylvanus Olivios Andrassus shambled forward, and put his empty hand on Jean’s shoulder.
“Stupid boy,” he said. “I need you to let me have … five royals … just until Penance
Day. Oh, gods …”
He went down to one knee and threw up. Jean’s reflexes were sharp enough to save everything
except one of his shoes.
“Fuck
me
!” said Jean.
“Oh no, I assure you, that is quite out of the question,” said Sylvanus. He attempted
several times to stumble back to his feet, then once again noticed the remaining bottle
in his hand, and began to suckle at it contentedly.
“Look, sorry about this,” said the woman who’d been watching, as she emerged from
the shadows. She was tall, dark-skinned, and wearing a shawl over her hair. Her fellow
spectator was a thin young Therin man just a few years older than the Gentlemen Bastards.
“Sylvanus has what you might call rare ambition in the field of self-degradation.”