Authors: Scott Lynch
“You can imagine,” said Chains, “just how surprised they were when they sat down at
their chairs on that beautiful carpet, and fifty of Barsavi’s men piled into the room
with crossbows, and shot those poor idiots so full of bolts that a porcupine in heat
would have taken any one of them home and fucked him. If there was a drop of blood
that wasn’t on the carpet, it was on the
ceiling
. You get my meaning?”
“So the carpet was ruined?”
“And then some. Barsavi knew how to
create
expectations, Locke, and how to use those expectations to mislead those who would
harm him. They figured his strange obsession was a guarantee of their lives. Turns
out there are just some enemies numerous enough and powerful enough to be worth losing
a damn carpet over.”
Chains pointed ahead of them and to the south.
“That’s the man waiting to talk to you about half a mile that way. I would strongly
recommend cultivating a civil tongue.”
THE LAST Mistake was a place where the underworld of Camorr bubbled to the surface;
a flat-out crook’s tavern, where Right People of every sort could drink and speak
freely of their business, where respectable citizens stood out like serpents in a
nursery and were quickly escorted out the door by mean-looking, thick-armed men with
very small imaginations.
Here entire gangs would come to drink and arrange jobs and just show themselves off.
In their cups, men would argue loudly about the best way to strangle someone from
behind, and the best sorts of poisons to use in wine or food. They would openly proclaim
the folly of the duke’s court, or his taxation schemes, or his diplomatic arrangements
with the other cities of the Iron Sea. They would refight entire battles with dice
and fragments of chicken bones as their armies, loudly announcing how
they
would have turned left when Duke Nicovante had gone right, how
they
would have
stood fast when the five thousand blackened iron spears of the Mad Count’s Rebellion
had come surging down Godsgate Hill toward them.
But not one of them, no matter how far doused in liquor or Gaze or the strange narcotic
powders of Jerem—no matter what feats of generalship or statecraft he credited himself
with the foresight to bring off—would dare suggest to Capa Vencarlo Barsavi that he
should ever change so much as a single button on his waistcoat.
THE BROKEN Tower is a landmark of Camorr, jutting ninety feet skyward at the very
northern tip of the Snare—that low and crowded district where sailors from a hundred
ports of call are passed from bar to alehouse to gaming den and back again on a nightly
basis. They are shaken through a sieve of tavern-keepers, whores, muggers, dicers,
cobble-cogs, and other low tricksters until their pockets are as empty as their heads
are heavy, and they can be dumped on ship to nurse their new hangovers and diseases.
They come in like the tide and go out like the tide, leaving nothing but a residue
of copper and silver (and occasionally blood) to mark their passing.
Although human arts are inadequate to the task of cracking Elderglass, the Broken
Tower was found in its current state when humans first settled Camorr, stealing in
among the ruins of an older civilization. Great gashes mar the alien glass and stone
of the tower’s upper stories; these discontinuities have been somewhat covered over
with wood and paint and other human materials. The sturdiness of the whole affair
is hardly in question, but the repairs are not beautiful, and the rooms for let on
the upper six floors are some of the least desirable in the city, as they are accessible
only by rank upon rank of narrow, twisting exterior stairs—a spindly wooden frame
that sways nauseatingly in high winds. Most of the residents are young bravos from
various gangs, to whom the insane accommodations are a strange badge of honor.
The Last Mistake fills the first floor at the wide base of the Broken Tower, and after
the fall of Falselight, it rarely has less than a hundred patrons in it at any given
time. Locke clung tightly to the back of Father Chains’ half-cloak as the older man
elbowed his way past the crowd at the door. The outward exhalation of the bar’s air
was full of smells Locke knew quite well: a hundred kinds of liquors and the breath
of the men and
women drinking them, sweat both stale and fresh, piss and vomit, spiced pomanders
and wet wool, the sharp bite of ginger and the acrid fog of tobacco.
“Can we trust that boy to watch our goat?” Locke cried above the din.
“Of course, of course.” Chains made some elaborate hand sign in greeting to a group
of men arm-wrestling just inside the bar’s main room; those not locked in bitter struggles
grinned and waved back. “First, it’s his job. Second, I paid well. Third, only a crazy
person would want to steal a Gentled goat.”
The Last Mistake was a sort of monument to the failure of human artifice at critical
moments. Its walls were covered in a bewildering variety of souvenirs, each one telling
a visual tale that ended with the phrase “not quite good enough.” Above the bar was
a full suit of armor, a square hole punched through at the left breast by a crossbow
quarrel. Broken swords and split helmets covered the walls, along with fragments of
oars, masts, spars, and tatters of sails. One of the bar’s proudest claims was that
it had secured a memento of every ship that had foundered within sight of Camorr in
the past seventy years.
Into this mess Father Chains dragged Locke Lamora, like a launch being towed at the
stern of a huge galleon. On the south wall of the bar was an elevated alcove, given
privacy by rows of partially drawn curtains. Men and women stood at attention here,
their hard eyes constantly sweeping across the crowd, their hands never far from the
weapons they carried openly and ostentatiously—daggers, darts, brass and wooden clubs,
short swords, hatchets, and even crossbows, ranging from slender alley-pieces to big
horse-murderers that looked (to Locke’s wide eyes) as though they could knock holes
in stone.
One of these guards stopped Father Chains, and the two exchanged a few whispered words;
another guard was dispatched into the curtained alcove while the first eyed Chains
warily. A few moments later the second guard reappeared and beckoned; thus it was
that Locke was led for the first time into the presence of Vencarlo Barsavi, Capa
of Camorr, who sat in a plain chair beside a plain table. Several minions stood against
the wall behind him, close enough to respond to a summons but far enough to be out
of earshot for quiet conversation.
Barsavi was a big man, as wide as Chains but obviously a bit younger. His oiled black
hair was pulled tight behind his neck, and his beards curved off his chin like three
braided whipcords of hair, one atop the other, neatly layered. These beards flew about
when Barsavi turned his
round head, and they looked quite thick enough to sting if they struck bare skin.
Barsavi was dressed in a coat, vest, breeches, and boots of some odd dark leather
that seemed unusually thick and stiff even to Locke’s untrained eyes; after a moment,
the boy realized it must be shark hide. The strangely uneven white buttons that dotted
his vest and his cuffs and held his layered red silk cravats in place … they were
human teeth.
Sitting on Barsavi’s lap, staring intently at Locke, was a girl about his own age,
with short tangled dark hair and a heart-shaped face. She, too, wore a curious outfit.
Her dress was white embroidered silk, fit for any noble’s daughter, while the little
boots that dangled beneath her hem were black leather, shod with iron, bearing sharpened
steel kicking-spikes at the heels and the toes.
“So this is the boy,” said Barsavi in a deep, slightly nasal voice with the pleasant
hint of a Verrari accent. “The industrious little boy who so confounded our dear Thiefmaker.”
“The very one, Your Honor, now happily confounding myself and my other wards.” Chains
reached behind himself and pushed Locke out from behind his legs. “May I present Locke
Lamora, late of Shades’ Hill, now an initiate of Perelandro?”
“Or
some
god, anyway, eh?” Barsavi chuckled and held out a small wooden box that had been
resting on the table near his arm. “It’s always nice to see you when your sight miraculously
returns, Chains. Have a smoke. They’re Jeremite blackroot, extra fine, just rolled
this week.”
“I can’t say no to that, Ven.” Chains accepted a tightly rolled sheaf of tobacco in
red paper; while the two men bent over a flickering taper to light up (Chains dropped
his little bag of coins on the table at the same time), the girl seemed to come to
some sort of decision about Locke.
“He’s a very
ugly
little boy, Father. He looks like a
skeleton
.”
Capa Barsavi coughed out his first few puffs of smoke, the corners of his mouth crinkling
upward. “And you’re a very inconsiderate little girl, my dear.” The Capa drew on his
sheaf once more and exhaled a straight stream of translucent smoke; the stuff was
pleasantly mellow and carried the slightest hint of burnt vanilla. “You must forgive
my daughter Nazca; I am helpless to deny her indulgences, and she has acquired the
manners of a pirate princess. Particularly now that we are all afraid to come near
her
deadly
new boots.”
“I am
never
unarmed,” said the little girl, kicking up her heels a few times to emphasize the
point.
“And poor Locke most certainly is not ugly, my darling; what he bears is clearly the
mark of Shades’ Hill. A month in Chains’ keeping and he’ll be as round and fit as
a catapult stone.”
“Hmmph.” The girl continued to stare down at him for a few seconds, then suddenly
looked up at her father, absently toying with one of his braided beards while she
did so. “Are you making him a
pezon
, Father?”
“Chains and I did have that in mind, sweetling, yes.”
“Hmmph. Then I want another brandy while you’re doing the ceremony.”
Capa Barsavi’s eyes narrowed; seams deepened by habitual suspicion drew in around
his flinty gray stare. “You’ve already had your two brandies for the night, darling;
your mother will murder me if I let you have another. Ask one of the men to get you
a beer.”
“But I prefer—”
“What you prefer, little tyrant, has nothing to do with what I am
telling
you. For the rest of the night, you can drink beer or air; the choice is entirely
yours.”
“Hmmph. I’ll have beer, then.” Barsavi reached out to lift her down, but she hopped
off his lap just ahead of his thick-fingered, heavily calloused hands. Her heels went
clack-clack-clack on the hardwood floor of the alcove as she ran to some minion to
give her order.
“And if just one more of my men gets kicked in the shin, darling, you’re going to
wear reed sandals for a month, I promise,” Barsavi shouted after her, then took another
drag of tobacco and turned back to Locke and Chains. “She’s a keg of fire-oil, that
one. Last week she refused to sleep at all unless we let her keep a little garrote
under her pillows. ‘Just like Daddy’s bodyguards,’ she said. I don’t think her brothers
yet realize that the next Capa Barsavi might wear summer dresses and bonnets.”
“I can see why you might have been amused by the Thiefmaker’s stories about our boy
here,” Chains said, clasping both of Locke’s shoulders as he spoke.
“Of course. I have become very hard to shock since my children grew above the tops
of my knees. But you’re not here to discuss them—you’ve brought me this little man
so he can take his first and last oath as a
pezon
. A few years early, it seems. Come here, Locke.”
Capa Barsavi reached out with his right hand and turned Locke’s head slightly upward
by the chin, staring down into Locke’s eyes as he spoke. “How old are you, Locke Lamora?
Six? Seven? Already responsible for a breach of the Peace, a burnt-down tavern, and
six or seven deaths.” The
Capa smirked. “I have assassins five times your age who should be so bold. Has Chains
told you the way it is, with my city and my laws?”
Locke nodded.
“You know that once you take this oath I can’t go easy on you, ever again. You’ve
had your time to be reckless. If Chains needs to put you down, he will. If I
tell
him to put you down, he
will
.”
Again, Locke nodded. Nazca returned to her father’s side, sipping from a tarred leather
ale-jack; she stared at Locke over the rim of this drinking vessel, which she had
to clutch in both hands.
Capa Barsavi snapped his fingers; one of the toadies in the background vanished through
a curtain. “Then I’m not going to bore you with any more threats, Locke. This night,
you’re a man. You will do a man’s work and suffer a man’s fate if you cross your brothers
and sisters. You will be one of us, one of the Right People; you’ll receive the words
and the signs, and you’ll use them discreetly. As Chains, your
garrista
, is sworn to me, so you are sworn to me, through him. I am your
garrista
above all
garristas
. I am the only duke of Camorr you will ever acknowledge. Bend your knee.”
Locke knelt before Barsavi; the Capa held out his left hand, palm down. He wore an
ornate ring of black pearl in a white iron setting; nestled inside the pearl by some
arcane process was a speck of red that had to be blood.
“Kiss the ring of the Capa of Camorr.”
Locke did so; the pearl was cool beneath his dry lips.
“Speak the name of the man to whom you have sworn your oath.”
“Capa Barsavi,” Locke whispered. At that moment, the capa’s underling returned to
the alcove and handed his master a small crystal tumbler filled with dull brown liquid.
“Now,” said Barsavi, “as has every one of my
pezon
, you will drink my toast.” From one of the pockets of his waistcoat the capa drew
a shark’s tooth, one slightly larger than the death-mark Locke wore around his neck.
Barsavi dropped the tooth into the tumbler and swirled it around a few times. He then
handed the tumbler to Locke. “It’s dark-sugar rum from the Sea of Brass. Drink the
entire thing, including the tooth. But don’t swallow the tooth, whatever you do. Keep
it in your mouth. Draw it out after all the liquor is gone. And try not to cut yourself.”