Authors: Scott Lynch
“Oh, tsk. How could I be properly mysterious and alluring if I wasn’t calmly waiting
for you when the door opened?”
“
You
could manage it, somehow.” Locke studied the cage more closely. Although the table
was ringed by gauze curtains, these were presently pulled up to the ceiling and tied
in place. The cage was composed of thin bars laid in a grid with spaces about an inch
on a side, through which Locke had a view of northeastern Karthain under the gold-red
lines of fading sunset. “They punish criminals back home with a contraption like this.”
“Well, in Karthain criminals pay for the privilege of being hoisted,” said Sabetha.
“I was told that the Oversight was actually inspired by the Palace of Patience. Something
about how the west gentles and perfects the ways of the east.”
“I’ve been out here for several years, and I don’t feel gentled or perfected,” said
Locke.
“Indeed, you haven’t even offered to pour the wine yet,” said Sabetha with mock disdain.
“Oh, damn,” said Locke, stumbling back to his feet. There was a bottle of something
airing on the table next to a trio of glasses. He did his duty gracefully, filling
two glasses and offering one to her with an exaggerated bow.
“Better, but you forgot some of us,” she said, pointing to the empty glass.
“Hmmm?” Proximity to Sabetha was like sand in the gears of his mind. He imagined that
he could literally feel them straining to turn as he stared at the empty glass, and
then came a warm rush of shame. “Hell and castration,” he muttered as he poured again,
and then: “A glass poured to air for absent friends. May the Crooked Warden bless
his crooked servants. Chains, Calo, Galdo, and Bug—”
“May they laugh forever in better worlds than this,” said Sabetha, touching Locke’s
glass. They both took small sips. It was a good vintage, mellow and strong, tasting
of plums and bitter oranges. Locke sat on his cushion again, and they shared an awkward
pause.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to give things a melancholy turn.”
“I know.” Locke sipped his wine again, reasoning that if it was drugged all of his
hopes and assumptions were useless anyway. The miniature arsenal in his coat suddenly
struck him as comical. “So, uh, do you like the flower I brought you?”
“The invisible flower? The hypothetical flower?”
Locke arched his eyebrows and tapped the right side of his coat. Sabetha looked down,
hurriedly patted her own jacket, and pulled out an unfurled stemless rose, dark purple
petals limned with crimson on their tips.
“Oh, you clever little weasel,” she said. “While you poured the wine.”
“And you were watching the bottle rather than the
beau
,” said Locke with a theatrical sigh. “It’s fine. My pride’s had all the stiffness
trampled out of it already. I hope you like the color, though. Karthani hothouse.
It had a stem, but that made it too awkward to carry or palm.”
“I don’t mind at all.” She set the rose carefully in the middle of the table. “Assuming
it doesn’t explode or put me to sleep or anything.”
“I’ve forsworn vengeance on that score,” said Locke. “But we do need to talk about
that, so we might as well get it over with.”
“What’s to talk about?”
“Kidnapping,” said Locke. “Assault. Exile. Alchemy. Dirty tricks of that nature, aimed
at you or me or Jean.”
“We learned a dozen ways to incapacitate someone before we were ten,” said Sabetha.
“It’s perfectly routine for us. I agreed to a truce tonight—”
“We should extend the truce permanently,” said Locke. “Mutual immunity from direct
personal attack. If we’re going to have this fight, let’s have it mind to mind, plan
to plan, and not need to sleep under our beds because we’re afraid of waking up on
a ship the next day.”
“
I’m
not afraid of waking up on a ship.”
“Push your luck, gorgeous, and eventually luck pushes back. I might be dim enough
to have dinner with you in a metal cage, but consider Jean. If he’s free to make his
own moves he’ll squash your little army like boiled goose liver and you’ll be on your
way to Talisham in a box.”
“Fearsome as that, is he?”
“Tell me again how many people you detailed to catch him while you were busy drugging
me.”
“And if the Bondsmagi interpret this as collusion—”
“It’s nothing of the sort. Hell, this only increases our entertainment value for our
jackass masters. They
want
us to run this affair in our accustomed style. Skulduggery, not skull-crackery. And
you can’t tell me it wouldn’t tickle your own pride.”
“Just to be clear, you’re suggesting that I should discard an approach which has already
brought me one considerable success, and continue the fight at a level more suited
to the restraints of your own, well, inadequacy, and I should do this because it’ll
make me feel the warm glow of virtue?”
“I suppose if you discard the lovely emotional resonance of my suggestion and pin
me down on cold hard meaning—”
“How strange. You sound rather like a confidence trickster. But I’ve no objection
to ending a little game while I’m one-up on you,” she said with a thin smile. “Truce
as discussed,
strictly
limited to you and
Jean and myself, so we can have more time to worry about the proper contest. Will
you drink to it?”
“Full glass is an empty promise,” said Locke. Their glasses rang as they brought them
together, and then they both gulped their wine to the last drop.
“Doubles or dishonor,” said Sabetha, speedily refilling the wine. Again they raced
one another to the bottoms of their glasses, and when they finished her laugh seemed
genuine enough to make Locke feel like a fresh wind had blown across whatever was
smoldering in his heart.
“You have no idea,” he said, as the warm cloud of wine-haze steadily rose from his
chest to his head, “how much aggravation I really am willing to put up with to hear
that laugh again.”
“Oh, shit,” she said, rolling her eyes without banishing her smile. “Straight from
business to skirt-chasing.”
“You’re the one plying me with wine!”
“Any woman of sense does prefer her men drunk and tractable.”
“And now you’re speaking of me possessively. Gods, keep doing that.”
“This is a far cry from the dusty mess that stormed my inn and accused me of cruelly
tugging his heartstrings.”
“You try four days in the saddle without preparation and see what kind of mood it
leaves you in.”
Their conversation was interrupted as an iron plank slid out from the tower and locked
into place beside their cage. A waiter appeared and opened a door in the brass gridwork,
through which he made several trips to deliver fresh wine and starter courses on gilded
platters.
“I hope you don’t mind that I ordered for you,” said Sabetha.
“I’m at your mercy,” said Locke, whose stomach now grumbled achingly to life. Fortunately,
Sabetha seemed sensitive to the awkwardness of his new appetite. She ravaged their
dishes with indelicate gusto that matched his own.
There were the underwater mushrooms of the Amathel, translucent and steamed to the
texture of gossamer, paired with coal-black truffles in malt and mustard sauce. There
were cool buttercream
cheeses and crackling, caustic golden peppers. Spicy fried bread with sweet onions
was drizzled with tart yellow yogurt, a variation on a dish Locke recognized from
the cuisine of Syrune. Each of these courses was bookended with wine and more wine.
Though Locke felt his own wits softening, he was heartened to see the deepening blush
on Sabetha’s cheeks and the way her smiles grew steadily wider and easier as the evening
wore on.
Purple twilight became full dark of night, and Karthain a sea of half-shadowed shapes
suspended between blackness and alchemical sparks.
The main course was a turtle crafted to life size from glazed particolored breads.
The top of the starchy creature’s shell was paper-thin, and when punched through with
a serving ladle it proved to contain a lake of turtle and oyster ragout. The turtle
came under enthusiastic siege from both ends of the table.
“Have you ever had a chance to look out over the Isas Scholastica before?” said Sabetha,
recovering some measure of ladylike delicacy by dabbing at her chin with a silk cloth.
“That’s it down behind me, just across the canal. Isle of Scholars. Home of the magi,
or so they claim.”
“Claim? No, I’ve never had a chance to see it. I can’t see much now, between the darkness
and the wine.”
“They don’t seem to frown on people building towers around the edges of their little
sanctuary. I’ve been sightseeing up a few. I say
claim
because I’m not sure I believe they all live happily together like Collegium students
in rooms. I think they’re all over the place … I think the Isas Scholastica is just
where they want everyone looking.”
“All those parks and buildings and so forth down there are just a sham?”
“No, I’m pretty sure they
use
the place, just not as a sole residence.” She took a final long draught of wine and
pushed her glass aside. “Though I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one down there. Not
one.”
“What, would they wear signs or something? Funny hats? They’re easy enough to spot
when you can see their wrists and their manners, but at a distance they must look
like other people.”
“I’ve seen servants,” said Sabetha. “People driving carts, off-loading things, but
those wouldn’t be Bondsmagi, surely. I’ve never seen anyone strolling the Isas Scholastica
at leisure, or giving orders, or simply
talking to anyone else. No guards, no masters and mistresses, only servants. If they’re
down there, they conceal themselves. Even from eyes that are hundreds of yards away.”
“They’re odd people,” said Locke, staring into the pale orange dregs of his own wine.
“And I say that as a fully qualified professional odd person of the first degree.
I wish they weren’t such arrogant pricks, but I suppose odd people will keep odd habits.”
“I wonder,” said Sabetha. “Do you … do you feel that your … handlers have been entirely
candid with you concerning their motives for this contest of theirs?”
“Hells, no,” said Locke. “But that was an easy question. Perhaps you’ve not met my
side of the magi family. Why, do you think that yours are—”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly, staring out into the night. “They’ve delivered all
the tools they said they would. They seem happy with my work, and I think their promises
of consequences are certainly sincere. But their secrecy, their misdirection, it’s
just so habitual.…”
“You’re
really
not used to feeling like a piece on a game board,” said Locke.
“No,” she said, and then she brought her brief moment of wistfulness to an end by
sticking her tongue out at him. “I haven’t had all the opportunities you have to get
acclimated to the sensation.”
“Oh ho! Serpent in a dress. Well, if only I wasn’t too much the gentleman to flay
your spirit with a witty and cutting retort, madam, you’d be … thoroughly … um, wittily
retorted at this very instant.”
“If you were any sort of actual gentleman you’d be no fun to have dinner with.”
“You admit you’re having fun?”
“I admit it’s much as I feared.” She looked down at the table for a moment before
continuing. “Your presence is … steadily less of a chore and more of a comfort.”
“Well,” said Locke, chuckling, “aren’t I always delighted to be not quite the burden
you were expecting!”
“Dessert?”
“Would you forgive me if I begged off?” Locke patted his stomach, which had mercifully
reached the sheer physical limit of its gluttony. “I’m stuffed like a grain bag.”
“Good. You’re still too bloody thin.”
The waiter cleared their dishes and left a slate with a folded note pinned to it.
Sabetha picked it up and glanced at it idly.
“What’s that?”
“Itemized bill,” she said. “They actually bring it to the table here. It’s all the
rage. Lets those that can read show it off in public.”
“Strange,” said Locke. “But that’s the west for you. So what now, Mistress Gallante?
A walk, a carriage ride, maybe an—”
“Now we rest on our laurels.” She rose from the table and stretched, revealing how
precisely her gown and jacket were fitted to her curves. “Look, it’s not that I haven’t
appreciated the break, but some things … just have to go slow.”
“Slow,” said Locke, knowing he was failing miserably to conceal his disappointment.
“Of course.”
“Slow,” she repeated. “We’ve got five years and more of sharp edges to file down.
I might be willing to work at it, but I don’t think I can do it in one night.”
“I see.”
“Oh, don’t give me that drowning-puppy look.” She touched his waist and gave him a
kiss on the cheek that was not quite passionate but a shade longer than merely polite.
“Let’s do this again. Three nights hence. I’ll pick some other interesting place.”
“Three nights hence,” said Locke, still feeling the warm press of her lips against
his skin. “Three nights. All right. Just try and stop me.”
“I can’t. I seem to have promised to fight clean.” She drew a pair of leather gloves
from her jacket and pulled them on.
“Can I at least walk you to your carriage?”
“Mmmmm … don’t think so,” she said mischievously. “I try to live by a cardinal rule
of our shared profession, namely, ‘always leave a sucker wanting more.’ ”
She reached under the table and pulled out a coil of demi-silk rope previously hidden
there. Locke watched, puzzled, as she conjured a slender metal pick in her other hand
and applied it to the mechanism of the waiter’s door. It opened in seconds.
“Hey, wait a minute—”
“It was in case you tried anything tricky. Whether I would have used it to escape
or hang you can remain an open question.”
“Are you serious?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said with a grin. “But I’m definitely
sincere
. Thanks for the flower. I left you a little something in exchange.”