Authors: Scott Lynch
Locke stewed octopus and boiled potatoes; he sliced pears and apples and alchemical
hybrid fruit that oozed honey-scented liquor. He spiced and seasoned and bit his tongue
in furious concentration. He was frequently the architect of gruesome messes that
were hauled out behind the temple and fed to the goat. But as he improved at everything
else required of him, he improved steadily at the hearth; soon the Sanzas ceased to
tease him and began to trust him as an assistant with their own delicate creations.
One night about half a year after his arrival at the House of Perelandro, Locke and
the Sanzas collaborated on a stuffed platter of infant sharks; this was
vicce enta merre
, the first Beautiful Art, the cuisine of sea-creatures. Calo gutted the soft-skinned
little sharks and stuffed them with red and yellow peppers, which had in turn been
stuffed with sausage and blood-cheese by Locke. The tiny staring eyes of the creatures
were replaced with black olives. Once the little teeth were plucked out, their mouths
were stuffed with glazed carrots and rice, and their fins and tails were cut off to
be boiled in soup. “Ahhh,” said Chains when the elaborate meal was settling in four
appreciative gullets, “now that was genuinely excellent, boys. But while you’re cleaning
up and scouring the dishes, I only want to hear you speaking Vadran.…”
And so it went; Locke was schooled further in the art of setting a table and waiting
on individuals of high station. He learned how to hold out a chair and how to pour
tea and wine; he and the Sanzas conducted elaborate dinner-table rituals with the
gravity of physikers cutting open a patient. There were lessons in clothing: the tying
of cravats, the buckling of shoes, the wearing of expensive affectations such as hose.
In fact, there was a dizzying variety of instruction in virtually every sphere of
human accomplishment except thievery.
As the first anniversary of Locke’s arrival at the temple loomed, that changed.
“I owe some favors, boys,” said Chains one night as they all hunkered down in the
lifeless rooftop garden. This was where he preferred to discuss all the weightier
matters of their life together, at least when it wasn’t raining. “Favors I can’t put
off when certain people come calling.”
“Like the Capa?” asked Locke.
“Not this time.” Chains took a long drag on his habitual after-dinner smoke. “This
time I owe the black alchemists. You know about them, right?”
Calo and Galdo nodded, but hesitantly; Locke shook his head.
“Well,” said Chains, “there’s a right and proper Guild of Alchemists, but they’re
very choosy about the sort of person they let in, and the sort of work they let them
do. Black alchemists are sort of the reason the guild
has
such strict rules. They do business in false shop fronts, with people like us. Drugs,
poisons, what have you. The Capa owns them, same as he owns us, but nobody really
leans on them directly. They’re, ah, not the sort of people you want to upset.
“Jessaline d’Aubart is probably the best of the lot. I, uh, I had occasion
to get poisoned once. She took care of it for me. So I owe her, and she’s finally
called in the favor. What she wants is a
corpse
.”
“Beggar’s Barrow,” said Calo.
“And a shovel,” said Galdo.
“No, she needs a fresh corpse. Still warm and juicy, as it were. See, the Guilds of
Alchemists and Physikers are entitled to a certain number of fresh corpses each year
by ducal charter. Straight off the gallows, for cutting open and poking around. The
black alchemists don’t receive any such courtesy, and Jessaline has some theories
she wants to put to the test. So I’ve decided you boys are going to work together
on your first real job. I want you to find a corpse, fresher than morning bread. Get
your hands on it without attracting undue attention, and bring it here so I can hand
it off to Jessaline.”
“Steal a corpse? This won’t be any fun,” said Galdo.
“Think of it as a valuable test of your skills,” said Chains.
“Are we likely to steal many corpses in the future?” asked Calo.
“It’s not a test of your corpse-plucking abilities, you cheeky little nitwit,” Chains
said amiably. “I mean to see how you all
work together
on something more serious than our dinner. I’ll consider setting you up with anything
you ask for, but I’m not giving you hints. You get to figure this one out on your
own.”
“Anything we ask for?” said Locke.
“Within reason,” said Chains. “And let me emphasize that you can’t make the corpse
yourself. You have to find it honestly dead by
someone else’s
doing.”
So forceful was Chains’ voice when he said this that the Sanza brothers stared warily
at Locke for a few seconds, then gave each other a look with eyebrows arched.
“When,” said Locke, “does this lady want it by?”
“She’d be very pleased to have it in the next week or two.”
Locke nodded, then stared down at his hands for a few seconds. “Calo, Galdo,” he said,
“will you sit the steps tomorrow so I can think about this?”
“Yes,” they said without hesitation, and Father Chains didn’t miss the note of hope
in their voices. He would remember that moment ever after; the night the Sanzas conceded
that Locke would be the brains of their operation. The night they were
relieved
to have him as the brains of their operation.
“Honestly dead,” said Locke, “and not killed by us and not even stiff
yet. Right. I know we can do it. It’ll be easy. I just don’t know why or how yet.”
“Your confidence heartens me,” said Chains. “But I want you to remember that you’re
on a very short leash. If a tavern should happen to burn down or a riot should happen
to break out around you, I’ll throw you off this roof with lead ingots tied around
your neck.”
Calo and Galdo stared at Locke once again.
“Short leash. Right. But don’t worry,” said Locke. “I’m not as reckless as I was.
You know, when I was little.”
THE NEXT day, Locke walked the length of the Temple District on his own for the very
first time, hooded in a clean white robe of Perelandro’s order with silver embroidery
on the sleeves, waist-high to virtually everyone around him. He was astonished at
the courtesy given to the robe (a courtesy, he clearly understood, that in many cases
only partially devolved on the poor fool wearing the robe).
Most Camorri regarded the Order of Perelandro with a mixture of cynicism and guilty
pity. The unabashed charity of the god and his priesthood just didn’t speak to the
rough heart of the city’s character. Yet the reputation of Father Chains as a colorful
freak of piety paid certain dividends. Men who surely joked about the simpering of
the Beggar God’s white-robed priests with their friends nonetheless threw coins into
Chains’ kettle, eyes averted, when they passed his temple. It turned out they also
let a little robed initiate pass on the street without harassment; groups parted fluidly
and merchants nodded almost politely as Locke went on his way.
For the first time, he learned what a powerful thrill it was to go about in public
in an effective disguise.
The sun was creeping upward toward noon; the crowds were thick and the city was alive
with the echoes and murmurs of its masses. Locke padded intently to the southwest
corner of the Temple District, where a glass catbridge arched across the canal to
the island of the Old Citadel.
Catbridges were another legacy of the Eldren who’d ruled before the coming of men:
narrow glass arches no wider than an ordinary man’s hips, arranged in pairs over most
of Camorr’s canals and at several places along the Angevine River. Although they looked
smooth, their glimmering
surfaces were as rough as shark’s-hide leather; for those with a reasonable measure
of agility and confidence, they provided the only convenient means of crossing water
at many points. Traffic was always one-directional over each catbridge; ducal decree
clearly stated that anyone going the wrong direction could be shoved off by those
with the right-of-way.
As he scuttled across this bridge, pondering furiously, Locke recalled some of the
history lessons Chains had drilled into him. The Old Citadel district had once been
the home of the dukes of Camorr, centuries earlier, when all the city-states claimed
by the Therin people had knelt to a single throne in the imperial city of Therim Pel.
That line of Camorri nobility, in superstitious dread of the perfectly good glass
towers left behind by the Eldren, had erected a massive stone palace in the heart
of southern Camorr.
When one of Nicovante’s great-great-predecessors (on finer points of city lore such
as this, Locke’s undeniably prodigious knowledge dissolved in a haze of total indifference)
took up residence in the silver glass tower called Raven’s Reach, the old family fortress
had become the Palace of Patience; the heart of Camorr’s municipal justice, such as
it was. The yellowjackets and their officers were headquartered there, as were the
duke’s magistrates—twelve men and women who presided over their cases in scarlet robes
and velvet masks, their true identities never to be revealed to the general public.
Each was named for one of the months of the year—Justice Parthis, Justice Festal,
Justice Aurim, and so forth—though each one passed judgment year-round.
And there were dungeons, and there were the gallows on the Black Bridge that led to
the Palace gates, and there were
other things
. While the Secret Peace had greatly reduced the number of people who took the short,
sharp drop off the Black Bridge (and didn’t Duke Nicovante love to publicly pin that
on his own magnanimity), the duke’s servants had devised other punishments that were
spectacular in their cruel cleverness, if technically nonlethal.
The Palace was a great square heap of pitted black and gray stone, ten stories high;
the huge bricks that formed its walls had been arranged into simple mosaics that had
now weathered to a ghostly state. The rows of high arched windows that decorated every
other level of the tower were stained glass, with black and red designs predominating.
At night a light would burn ominously behind each one, dim red eyes in the darkness,
staring out in all directions. Those windows were never dark; the intended message
was clear.
There were four open-topped circular towers jutting out from each
corner of the Palace, seemingly hanging in air from the sixth or seventh level up.
On the sides of these hung black iron crow cages, in which prisoners singled out for
special mistreatment would be aired out for a few hours or even a few days, with their
feet dangling. Yet even these were seats in paradise compared to the spider cages,
a spectacle that became visible to Locke (between the backs and shoulders of adults)
as he stepped off the catbridge and into the crowds of the Old Citadel.
From the southeastern tower of the Palace of Patience there dangled a half dozen cages
on long steel chains, swaying gently in the wind like little spiders on cords of silk.
Two of these were moving, one slowly headed up and the other rapidly descending. Prisoners
condemned to the spider cages were not to be allowed a moment’s peace, so other prisoners
condemned to hard labor would toil at the huge capstans atop the tower, working in
shifts around the clock until a subject in a cage was deemed to be sufficiently unhinged
and contrite. Lurching and creaking and open to the elements on all sides, the cages
would go up and down ceaselessly. At night, one could frequently hear the occupants
pleading and screaming, even from a district or two away.
The Old Citadel wasn’t a very cosmopolitan district. Outside the Palace of Patience
there were canal docks and stables reserved for the yellowjackets, offices for the
duke’s tax collectors and scribes and other functionaries, and seedy little coffeehouses
where freelance solicitors and lawscribes would try to drum up work from the families
and friends of those being held in the Palace. A few pawnshops and other businesses
clung tenaciously to the northern part of the island, but for the most part they were
crowded out by the grimmer business of the duke’s government.
The district’s other major landmark was the Black Bridge that spanned the wide canal
between Old Citadel and the Mara Camorrazza: a tall arch of black human-set stone
adorned with red lamps that were fixed up with ceremonial black shrouds that could
be lowered with a few tugs on a rope. The hangings were conducted from a wooden platform
that jutted off the bridge’s south side. Supposedly, the unquiet shades of the condemned
would be carried out to sea if they died over running water. Some thought that they
would then be incarnated in the bodies of sharks, which explained why Camorr Bay had
such a problem with the creatures, and the idea was not entirely scoffed at. As far
as most Camorri were concerned, turnabout was fair play.
Locke stared at the Black Bridge for a good long while, exercising that capacity for
conniving that Chains had so forcefully repressed for many
long months. He was far too young for much self-analysis, but the process of scheming
gave him real pleasure, like a little ball of tingling warmth in the pit of his stomach.
He had no name for what he was doing, but in the collision of his whirling thoughts
a plan began to form, and the more he thought on it the more pleased he became with
himself. It was a fine thing that his white hood concealed his face from most passersby,
lest anyone should see an initiate of Perelandro staring fixedly at a gallows and
grinning wildly.
“I NEED the names of any men who are going to hang in the next week or two,” said
Locke, as he and Chains sat the temple steps the next day.
“If you were enterprising,” said Chains, “and you most certainly are, you could get
them yourself, and leave your poor fat old master in peace.”
“I would, but I need someone else to do it. It won’t work if I’m seen around the Palace
of Patience before the hangings.”