Authors: Scott Lynch
“You puppies do love to give the fucking orders,” said Moncraine. “This is madness
and fantasy! We don’t play
games
with this corpse. We run from it as fast as we still can!”
“You bloody coward, Jasmer,” said Jenora. “Give them a chance! Who pried you out of
gaol?”
“The gods,” said Jasmer. “They’re all perverts and I seem to be their present amusement.”
“Enough! This is
singua solus
now,” said Locke. “It means ‘one fate.’ Does everyone understand?”
Moncraine only glared. Chantal, Bert, and Sylvanus nodded. Donker shook his head,
and Alondo spoke: “I, uh, have to confess I don’t.”
“It works like this,” said Locke. “Everyone here is now party to murder and treason.
Congratulations! There’s no backing gently out of it. So we go straight on through
this business with our heads held high, or we hang. We swear ourselves to the plan,
we tell the exact same lies, and we take the truth to our graves.”
“And if anyone reneges,” said Sylvanus, slowly and grimly, “should anyone think to
confess after all, and trade the rest of us for some advantage, we swear to vengeance.
The rest of us vow to get them, whatever it takes.”
“Mercy of the Twelve,” sobbed Donker, “I just wanted to have some fun onstage, just
once.”
“Fun must be paid for, Cousin.” Alondo took him by the shoulders and steadied him.
“It seems the price has gone up for us. Let’s show the gods we’ve got some nerve,
eh?”
“How can you be so calm?”
“I’m not. I’m too scared to piss straight,” said Alondo. “But if the Camorri have
a plan it’s far more than I’ve got, and I’ll cling to it.”
“The plan is simple,” said Sabetha, “though it’ll take some nerve. The first thing
you need to realize is that we’re still doing the play tonight.”
Their reactions were as Locke expected: panic, shouting, blasphemy, and threats, more
panic.
“THIRTEEN GODS,” shouted Calo, silencing the tumult. “There’s one way out and no way
back. If we don’t go onstage like nothing’s wrong, we can’t escape. You’re in our
hands now, and we’re your only chance!”
“We piss excellence and shit happy endings,” said Galdo. “Trust us and live. Listen
to Lucaza again.”
Locke spoke quickly now, succinctly, and was viciously dismissive to questions and
complaints. He outlined the plan in every detail, just as they’d conjured it the night
before, with a few twists he’d thought up during his long vigil. When he was finished,
everyone except Sylvanus looked as though they’d aged five years.
“This is even worse than before!” said Donker.
“Unfortunately, you can see that you’re indispensable,” said Locke. “You might have
signed on to get killed onstage, but you’ll get killed for real if you don’t play
along.”
“What … what the hell do we do with the body?” said Chantal.
“We burn it,” said Sabetha. “Make it look like an accident. We have a plan, for after
the play. We roast him just enough to hide the real cause of death, but not enough
to prevent identification.”
“And the money?” said Jasmer, his voice dry and tense. “We won’t get a second show
with a dead patron. Even if we’re absolved from paying damages to all the vendors,
we’re in the hole. Deep.”
“That’s my last bit of good news,” said Locke. “We have copies of the baron’s signatures,
plus his signet ring. We collect all the money from the first show; then we come back
here. We have you, Jasmer, sign a false receipt from the baron for everything he’s
owed, just as if he’d taken it first, as was his right. Verena will forge his signature.
Then
he
dies in a fire, the money goes quietly into
our
pockets, and we act like we have no idea what the hell Boulidazi did with it before
he died.”
“We collect the money?” said Moncraine.
“Of course,” said Locke. “We figured Jenora could take charge of it—”
“We
can’t
collect the money,” said Moncraine. “It’s one of the things Boulidazi and I were
arguing about last night before he got too drunk to think! He’s got someone coming
in on his orders to handle all the coin!”
“What?” said Locke and Sabetha in unison.
“Just what I said, you fucking know-it-all infants. Boulidazi might be coffin meat,
but he’s got a hireling already assigned to collect the money for him. None of us
here will be allowed to touch a copper of it!”
“
YOU
’
RE AS WELCOME
as a scorpion in a nursery,” said Vordratha, meeting Locke with a glare and a wall
of well-dressed toughs at his back. As was becoming routine, Locke had been halted
before making it halfway across the entry hall of the Sign of the Black Iris.
“I need to see her,” panted Locke. His flight across the city had not been dignified
or subtle; he’d stolen a horse to make it possible, and bluecoats were probably scouring
the Vel Verda as he spoke.
“Why, you’re the very last person in Karthain who’d be allowed to do so.” Vordratha’s
smirk split his lean face like a sword wound. “Her orders were explicit and vehement.”
“Look, I know our last encounter was—”
“Unpleasant.” Vordratha gestured. Before Locke could turn to run, the Black Iris guards
had him pinioned.
“Remember, Master Vordratha, that you’d as good as confessed your intentions to have
us beaten and left in an alley,” said Locke. “So if our conversational options were
narrowed you’ve only yourself to blame!”
“The mistress of the house specifically desires not to see you.” Vordratha
leaned in close; his breath was like a hint of old spilled wine. “And while I am charged
not to harm you, I’d argue that I’m not responsible for anything that happens between
your leaving my custody and hitting the pavement.”
Vordratha’s guards pushed Locke outside and heaved him in an impressive arc that terminated
in a bone-jarring impact with the cobblestones. His feelings warred bitterly over
his next move, pride and desire against prudence and street-reflexes, the latter winning
out only when he realized how perilously close he was to carriage traffic and how
many witnesses were on hand to see him get crushed by it. Groaning, he crawled back
to the curb.
His stolen horse was gone, and the Black Iris stable boys leered at him knowingly.
It was a long, painful walk to a neighborhood where a coach would deign to pick him
up.
“…
AND THAT
’
S
the whole gods-damned mess,” said Locke, his fingers knotted around a glass that
had once contained a throat-scorching quantity of brandy. “I found a ride, came straight
back, and here we are.”
It was past midnight. Locke had returned, sequestered Jean in their suite, and with
the help of large plates of food and a bottle of Josten’s most expensive distilled
spirits he’d unrolled the whole tale.
“Do you really need me to tell you that the bitch was lying?” said Jean.
“I know she was lying,” said Locke. “There have to be lies mixed in somewhere. It’s
the parts that might be true that concern me.”
“Why not assume it was ALL lies?” Jean ran his fingers rapidly over his temples, attempting
to massage away the dull pain still radiating from his plastered nose. “Bow-to-stern
bullshit! Gods damn it, this is what you and I do to people. We talk them into corners
where they can’t tell truth from nonsense.”
“She knows my name. My actual name. The one I—”
“Yes,” said Jean. “And I know who told her.”
“But I only ever—”
“That’s right.” Disgust burned like bile at the back of Jean’s throat,
and he tapped his own chest with both hands. “They said they opened me like a book
in Tal Verrar and took everything they wanted. Therefore,
I
must have given them that name. Think! The rest of Patience’s story was most likely
built around it.”
“That leaves the question of the third name.”
“The one Patience claims is deeper than the one you gave me? Is it even there?”
Locke rubbed his shadow-cupped eyes. “I don’t … I don’t know. It’s not a name at all.
Just a feeling, maybe.”
“About what I expected,” said Jean. “Do you
really
remember ever having that feeling, before tonight? It strikes me as a ready-made
bluff. I have all manner of strange unsorted feelings in my heart and head; we
all
must. She didn’t give you half a particle of telling evidence! All she did was plant
a doubt that you could gnaw on forever, if you let yourself.”
“If I let myself.” Locke tossed his glass aside. “All my life I’ve wondered where
the hell I came from. Now I’ve got possibilities like an arrow to the gut, and I absolutely
do
not
have time to fuss over them.”
“Possibilities,” sighed Jean. “In faith, now, even if they were true answers, would
you really want this particular bunch? I realize it’s easy for me to say … knowing
when and where I was born—”
“I know where I’m from,” said Locke. “I’m from Camorr. I’m from Camorr! Even if everything
she said was true, that’s all I give a barrel of dry rat shit about. That and Sabetha.”
Locke stood, the lines of his face grimly set. “That, and Sabetha, and beating the
hell out of her in this idiotic election. Now—”
Someone knocked at the door, loudly and urgently.
LOCKE WATCHED
as Jean unbolted it with customary caution. There stood Nikoros, unshaven, his eyes
like fried eggs and hair looking as though it had been caught in the spokes of a wagon
wheel. He held a piece of parchment in a shaking hand.
“This just came in,” he muttered. “Specifically for Master Lazari, from a Black Iris
courier at the AHHHHHHH—”
This exclamation erupted out of him as Locke darted forward and
seized the letter. He snapped it open, noting the quick familiar strokes of Sabetha’s
script:
I wish I could write your name above and sign my own below, but we both know what
a poor idea that would be.
I know my refusal to see you must have been painful, and for that I apologize, but
I believe I was only right. My heart is sick with this strangeness and these puzzles.
I can barely tame words to make whole thoughts and I suspect you could hardly be accused
of being at your best, either. I don’t know what I would do were you in arm’s reach;
what I might ask, what I might demand for comfort’s sake. The only certainty is that
the terms of our employment are not relaxed, and we are both in the severest danger
if we tread carelessly. Were we together, at this moment, I don’t imagine we could
possibly tread otherwise.
I don’t understand what happened this evening. I know only that it scares me. It scares
me that your handler, for any reason, has taken such an interest in telling us so
much. It scares me that there are things in motion around you that would appear to
tie us both to such secrets and obligations.
It scares me that there may be something still hidden even from yourself, some elemental
part of you that might yet tumble like a broken wall, and I am haunted by the thought
that when next I find you looking at me it might not be with the eyes I remember,
but with those of a stranger.
Forgive me. I know that you would be made as anxious by my silence as by my honesty,
and so I have chosen honesty.
I have let feelings I once thought buried come back with real power over me, and now
I find myself in desperate need of detachment and clear thoughts. Please don’t try
to return to the Sign of the Black Iris in person. Please don’t come looking for me.
I need you to be my opponent now more than I need you to be my lover or even my friend.
In this I speak for us both.
“Ah, damn everything,” Locke muttered, crumpling the parchment and stuffing it into
a jacket pocket. “Gods damn everything.” He
collapsed back into his chair, brows knit, and let his gaze wander aimlessly over
the wall. The most awkward sort of silence settled over the room, until Jean cleared
his throat.
“Well, ah, Nikoros. You look like you’ve been thrashed by devils,” he said. “What’s
going on?”
“Business, sir, business. So much of it. And I … I … forgive me, I’m going without …
the substance we’ve discussed.”
“You’re weaning yourself from that wretched dust.” Jean clapped Nikoros by the shoulders,
a gesture that made the smaller man wobble like aspic. “Good! You were murdering yourself,
you know.”
“The way my head feels, I half wish I’d succeeded,” said Nikoros.
Locke’s curiosity drew him back to the present, and he studied Nikoros. The Karthani
was on the come-down from black alchemy for sure; Locke had seen it a hundred times.
The misery would shake Nikoros for days like a cat playing with a toy. It might be
wise to cut the poor fellow’s duties … or even to chain him to a wall.
Hells
, Locke thought,
if I get any more twisted out of my own skin they might have to shackle me next to
him
.
“Lazari,” said Jean, “now, if that letter’s what I think it is … Is it, shall we say,
a finality? Or just an interruption?”
“It’s a knife to the guts,” said Locke. “But I suppose … well, I suppose I can view
it as more an interruption.”
“Good,” said Jean. “Good!”
“I suppose,” muttered Locke. Then, feeling an old familiar heat stirring in his breast:
“Yes, I really do suppose! By the gods, I need noise and mischief. I need fuss and
fuckery until I can’t see straight! Nikoros! What have you been doing all night?”
“Uh, well, I just came back from surveying the big mess,” said Nikoros. “Big and getting
worse. Not just for us, I mean. For the whole city.”
“I’m losing my ability to tell one mess from another around here,” said Locke.
“Oh! I mean at the north gate, sirs, and the Court of Dust. All the refugees out of
the north.”
“Oh. OH! Gods, the bloody war,” said Locke. “I’d half forgotten. What kind of refugees?”
“At this point, the sort with money, mostly. The ones that fled before
the fighting gets anywhere near. And their guards, servants, and the like. All stacking
up at inns until they can plead for residence—”