Authors: Scott Lynch
The results hit the floor in many different parts of the room. The Falconer calls
the loose dreamsteel back to him, forming a necklace with it. He’ll need to secure
more, somehow, to craft another functional
hand. Still, what he has should be more than enough to give him back his wild sky.
THERE IS
a narrow window beside the bookshelf. A gesture from the Falconer and the glass becomes
sand, sliding out of the frame, blowing away into the blackly overcast night. Another
gesture and the frame hinges rust; the Falconer pulls it out of the wall and lets
it clatter to the floor.
He sees that he is somewhere in the Ponta Corbessa, just a block or two north of the
docks. He sends his awareness forth, softly and subtly, well aware that none of the
magi still abroad in the city will show him an instant’s mercy if he is located. It
takes only moments to find what he wants, one of the fan-tailed carrion crows of the
North Amathel, sly sociable birds with sharp eyes, sharp beaks, and sharp talons.
The Falconer takes the first crow gently and launches it into the night, using a slim
thread of awareness, suppressing his delight at the sensation of soaring. A moment
or two reaffirms his affinity for the work, and he extends his control to the half-dozen
other crows roosting nearby.
The Falconer’s purloined murder circles over the Ponta Corbessa, hunting both for
other crows and a glimpse of a certain cloaked woman. She must still be somewhere
in Karthain, and he’ll know her at any distance, so long as she isn’t hidden away
under a deep spell.
Seven crows becomes thirty. The Falconer directs them with the precision of a dancing
master, sending more and more of his awareness out into the feathered cloud, seeing
not through individual pairs of eyes but as a thrilling gestalt, a whirling composite
of dark streets, rooftops, rattling carriages, and hurrying people.
Thirty crows becomes sixty. Sixty becomes ninety. They unwind in orderly spirals,
north and west, search tirelessly.
It doesn’t take long to find her, at the western edge of the Ponta Corbessa. She is
walking alone, toward some rendezvous, and the Falconer recognizes her beyond all
possibility of doubt. Blood calls to blood.
His flights of crows, black against the black sky, converge and circle silently, three
hundred feet up. In moments he has gathered one hundred and fifty, the most living
creatures of any sort he has ever controlled at once. His mind is on fire with the
thrill of power; now he has to be quick and certain, before Patience can bring her
formidable skills into play, before any other magi can notice what’s going on.
One crow flutters and falls out of the night. The rest follow a heartbeat later.
Patience is on the pavement beside a warehouse, just passing under a swaying orange
alchemical lamp. The first crow shoots past her hood from behind, brushing it, squawking
and cawing all the way.
She whirls to see where it came from. The next dozen birds fly directly into her face.
Eyes, nose, cheeks, lips—there is no time to be merciful. The ball of sorcery-maddened
crows pecks and claws at anything soft, anything vulnerable. Patience barely has time
to scream before she is blind and on her back, flailing as more crows pour out of
the sky like a black cloud given flesh.
She remembers her sorcery, and half manages a spell. A dozen birds flash into cinders,
but a dozen more take their place, seeking neck and forehead, wrists and fingers.
The Falconer presses Patience down to the pavement, the writhing flock a pure extension
of his will, a crushing dark hand. Grinning madly, he channels a thought-sending to
her, hurling his sigil against her shattered mental defenses, and then:
Is this weakness, Mother?
You never understood my talents
.
The truth is, they never made me weak
.
THE TRUTH IS THAT THEY GAVE ME WINGS
.
The beaks and claws of the carrion birds are driven by human intelligence; in moments
they have opened Patience’s wrists, pulped her hands, peeled the skin from her neck,
torn out her eyes and tongue. She is helpless long before she dies.
The Falconer disperses his clouds of winged minions and sags against the window frame,
gasping for breath. He has expended so much of himself.… He needs food. He must tear
the house apart for
anything useful. He needs clothing, money, boots.… He must be away as soon as he’s
eaten, away from this nest of his enemies, away to recover himself.
“The time of quiet, Mother?” He hums the words softly to himself, savoring the eerie
sensation of the dreamsteel vibrating in his throat. “Oh, I think the last fucking
thing your friends are going to enjoy is a
time of quiet
.”
Hobbling uneasily, laughing to himself, he moves carefully down the stairs. First
food, then clothes. Then to gather strength for the work ahead.
The long, bloody work ahead.
For Jason McCray,
one man who in his time
has played many parts.
I’m grateful to Simon Spanton for recommending Antony Sher’s autobiographical
Year of the King
, a book that didn’t so much directly influence
The Republic of Thieves
as whet my appetite to portray the players of the Moncraine Company from several
angles I hadn’t previously considered. I hope that I may plead to enthusiasts of the
theater, as I did to enthusiasts of all things nautical with
Red Seas Under Red Skies
, to remember that I have not sought to accurately re-create any particular tradition
of troupe or performance from our own world, but to arrange selected elements of those
traditions in a shape I found amusing.
I’m grateful again to Simon Spanton and Anne Groell for their long-suffering patience
and support during a troublesome time; to my brilliant Sarah, who found something
broken and helped put it back together; to Lou Anders, Jonathan Strahan, and Gareth-Michael
Skarka, who coaxed work out of me when I badly needed to feel capable of it, and lastly
to that person whose long correspondence kept me crawling forward in hope during the
lowest, darkest point of my life: Thank you.
This concludes the third volume in the Gentleman Bastard sequence, which will continue
with
The Thorn of Emberlain
.
SL
New Richmond, Wisconsin, 2008 –
Brookfield, Massachusetts, 2013
By Scott Lynch
THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA
RED SEAS UNDER RED SKIES
THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES
Scott Lynch is the author of
The Lies of Locke Lamora
,
Red Seas Under Red Skies
, and
The Republic of Thieves
. He lives in Wisconsin and frequently visits Massachusetts, the home of his partner,
SF/F writer Elizabeth Bear. He moonlights as a paid-on-call firefighter for the city
he resides in.