Authors: Scott Lynch
Just under seventeen thousand crowns in half a week; the Don Salvara game was well
ahead of their original plans, which had called for a two-week span between first
touch and final blow-off. Locke was certain he could get one more touch out of the
don in perfect safety, push the total up over twenty-two or maybe twenty-three thousand,
and then pull a vanish. Go to ground, take it easy for a few weeks, stay alert and
let the Gray King mess sort itself out.
And then, as a bonus miracle, somehow convince Capa Barsavi to disengage him from
Nazca, and do so without twisting the old man’s breeches. Locke sighed.
When Falselight died and true night fell, the glow never seemed to simply fade so
much as
recede
, as though it were being drawn back within the glass, a loan reclaimed by a jealous
creditor. Shadows widened and blackened until finally the whole park was swallowed
by them from below. Emerald lanterns flickered to life here and there in the trees,
their light soft and eerie and strangely relaxing. They offered just enough illumination
to see the crushed stone paths that wound their way through the walls of trees and
hedges. Locke felt as though the spring of tension within him was unwinding itself
ever so slightly; he listened to the muted crunch of his own footsteps on gravel,
and for a few moments he was surprised to find himself possessed by something perilously
close to contentment.
He was alive, he was rich, he had made the decision not to skulk and cringe from the
troubles that gnawed at his Gentlemen Bastards. And for
one brief moment, in the middle of eighty-eight thousand people and all the heaving,
stinking, ever-flowing noise and commerce and machinery of their city, he was alone
with the gently swaying trees of Twosilver Green.
Alone.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and the old cold fear, the constant companion
of anyone raised on the streets, was suddenly alive within him. It was a summer night
in Twosilver Green, the safest open park in the city, patrolled at any given time
by two or three squads of yellowjackets with their night-lanterns waving on poles.
Filled, sometimes to the point of comedy, with the strolling sons and daughters of
the wealthy classes, holding hands and swatting insects and seeking the privacy of
nooks and shadows.
Locke gazed quickly up and down the curving paths around him; he was
truly
alone. There was no sound in the park but for the sighing of the leaves and the buzzing
of the insects; no voices or footsteps that he could hear. He twisted his right forearm,
and a thin stiletto of blackened steel fell from his coat sleeve into his palm, pommel-down.
He carried it straight against his arm, rendering it invisible from any distance,
and hurried toward the southern gate of the park.
A mist was rising, seeping up as though the grass were pouring gray vapors into the
night; Locke shivered despite the warm, heavy air. A mist was perfectly natural, wasn’t
it? The whole city was blanketed in the stuff two nights out of three; a man could
lose track of the end of his own nose in it sometimes. But why—
The southern gate of the park. He was standing before the southern gate of the park,
staring out across an empty cobbled lane, at a mist-shrouded bridge. That bridge was
the Eldren Arch, its red lanterns soft and ominous in the fog.
The Eldren Arch leading north to the Isla Durona.
He’d gotten turned around. How was that possible? His heart was beating so fast, and
then—
Doña Sofia
. That cunning, cunning bitch. She’d done something to him … slipped him some alchemical
mischief on the parchment. The ink? The wax? Was it a poison, drawing some cloud around
his senses before it did its work? Was it some other drug, intended to make him ill?
Petty, perfectly deniable revenge to sate her for the time being? He fumbled for the
parchment, missing his inner coat pocket, aware that he was moving a bit too slowly
and clumsily for the confusion to be entirely in his imagination.
There were men moving under the trees.
One to his left, another to his right … The Eldren Arch was gone; he was back at the
heart of the curving paths, staring out into a darkness cut only by the emerald light
of the lanterns. He gasped, crouched, brought up the stiletto, head swimming. The
men were cloaked; they were on either side; there was the sound of footsteps on gravel,
not his own. The dark shape of crossbows, the backlit shapes of the men … His head
whirled.
“Master Thorn,” said a man’s voice, muffled and distant, “we require an hour of your
attention.”
“Crooked Warden.” Locke gasped, and then even the faint colors of the trees seemed
to drain from his vision, and the whole night went black.
WHEN HE came to, he was already sitting up. It was a curious sensation. He’d awoken
before from blackness brought on by injuries and by drugs, but this was different.
It was as though someone had simply set the mechanisms of his consciousness moving
again, like a scholar opening the spigot on a Verrari water-clock.
He was in the common room of a tavern, seated on a chair at a table by himself. He
could see the bar, and the hearth, and the other tables, but the place was dank and
empty, smelling of mold and dust. A flickering orange light came from behind him—an
oil lantern. The windows were greasy and misted over, turning the light back upon
itself; he couldn’t see anything of the outside through them.
“There’s a crossbow at your back,” said a voice just a few feet behind him, a pleasantly
cultured man’s voice, definitely Camorri but somewhat off in a few of the pronunciations.
A native who’d spent time elsewhere? The voice was entirely unknown to him. “Master
Thorn.”
Icicles seemed to grow in Locke’s spine. He racked his brains furiously for recall
of those last few seconds in the park.… Hadn’t one of the men there called him that,
as well? He gulped. “Why do you call me that? My name is Lukas Fehrwight. I’m a citizen
of Emberlain working for the House of bel Auster.”
“I could believe that, Master Thorn. Your accent is convincing, and your willingness
to suffer that black wool is nothing short of heroic. Don Lorenzo and Doña Sofia certainly
believed in Lukas Fehrwight, until you yourself disabused them of the notion.”
It isn’t Barsavi
, Locke thought desperately. It couldn’t be Barsavi.… Barsavi would be conducting
this conversation himself, if he knew. He
would be conducting it at the heart of the Floating Grave, with every Gentleman Bastard
tied to a post and every knife in Sage Kindness’ bag sharpened and gleaming.
“My name
is
Lukas Fehrwight,” Locke insisted. “I don’t understand what you want or what I’m doing
here. Have you done anything to Graumann? Is he safe?”
“Jean Tannen is perfectly safe,” said the man. “As you well know. How I would have
loved to see it up close, when you strolled into Don Salvara’s office with that silly
sigil-wallet under your black cloak. Destroying his confidence in Lukas Fehrwight
just as a father gently tells his children there’s really no such thing as the Blessed
Bringer! You’re an artist, Master Thorn.”
“I have already told you, my name is
Lukas
, Lukas Fehrwight, and—”
“If you tell me that your name is Lukas Fehrwight one more time, I’m going to put
a bolt through the back of your upper left arm. I wouldn’t mean to kill you, just
to complicate your life. A nice big hole, maybe a broken bone. Ruin that fine suit
of yours, perhaps get blood all over that lovely parchment. Wouldn’t the clerks at
Meraggio’s
love
to hear an explanation for that? Promissory notes are so much more attention-getting
when they’re covered in gore.”
Locke said nothing for quite a long while.
“Now that won’t do either, Locke. Surely you must have realized I can’t be one of
Barsavi’s men.”
Thirteen
, Locke thought.
Where the hell did I make a mistake
? If the man was speaking truthfully, if he didn’t work for Capa Barsavi, there was
only one other possibility. The real Spider. The real Midnighters. Had Locke’s use
of the pretend sigil-wallet been reported? Had that counterfeiter in Talisham decided
to try for a bit of extra profit by dropping a word with the duke’s secret constables?
It seemed the likeliest explanation.
“Turn around. Slowly.”
Locke stood up and did so, and bit his tongue to avoid crying out in surprise.
The man seated at the table before him could have been anywhere between thirty and
fifty; he was lean and rangy and gray at the temples. The mark of Camorr was upon
his face; he bore the sun-darkened olive skin, the high temples and cheekbones, the
sharp nose.
He wore a gray leather doublet over a gray silk tunic; his cloak and mantle were gray,
as was the hood that was swept back behind his head.
His hands, folded neatly before him, were covered with thin gray swordsman’s gloves,
kid leather that was weathered and creased with use. The man had hunter’s eyes, cold
and steady and measuring. The orange light of the lantern was reflected in their dark
pupils. For a second it seemed to Locke that he was seeing not a reflection but a
revelation; that the dark fire burned
behind
the man’s eyes. Locke shivered despite himself.… All that gray …
“
You
,” he whispered, dropping the accent of Lukas Fehrwight.
“None other,” said the Gray King. “I disdain these clothes as something of a theatrical
touch, but it’s a necessary one. Of all the men in Camorr, surely
you
understand these things, Master Thorn.”
“I have no idea why you keep calling me that,” said Locke, shifting his footing as
unobtrusively as he could, feeling the comforting weight of his second stiletto in
the other sleeve of his coat. “And I don’t see this crossbow you mentioned.”
“I said it was at your back.” The Gray King gestured at the far wall with a thin,
bemused smile. Warily, Locke turned his head—
There was a man standing against the wall of the tavern, standing right in the spot
Locke had been staring at until the previous moment. A cloaked and hooded man, broad-shouldered,
leaning lazily against the wall with a loaded alley-piece in the crook of his arm,
the quarrel pointed casually at Locke’s chest.
“I …” Locke turned back, but the Gray King was no longer seated at the table. He was
standing a dozen feet away, to Locke’s left, behind the disused bar. The lantern on
the table hadn’t moved, and Locke could see that the man was grinning. “This isn’t
possible.”
“Of course it is, Master Thorn. Think it through. The number of possibilities is actually
vanishingly
small.”
The Gray King waved his left hand in an arc, as though wiping a window; Locke glanced
back at the wall and saw that the crossbowman had disappeared once again.
“Well, fuck me,” said Locke. “You’re a Bondsmage.”
“No,” said the Gray King, “I’m a man without that advantage, no different than yourself.
But I
employ
a Bondsmage.” He pointed to the table where he’d previously been sitting.
There, without any sudden movement or jump in Locke’s perception, sat a slender man
surely not yet out of his twenties. His chin and cheeks were peach-fuzzed, and his
hairline was already in rapid retreat to the back
of his head. His eyes were alight with amusement, and Locke immediately saw in him
the sort of casual presumption of authority that most congenital bluebloods wore like
a second skin.
He was dressed in an extremely well-tailored gray coat with flaring red silk cuffs;
the bare skin of his left wrist bore three tattooed black lines. On his right hand
was a heavy leather gauntlet, and perched atop this, staring at Locke as though he
were nothing more than a field mouse with delusions of grandeur, was the fiercest
hunting hawk Locke had ever seen. The bird of prey stared directly at him, its eyes
pinpoints of black within gold on either side of a curved beak that looked dagger-sharp.
Its brown-and-gray wings were folded back sleekly, and its talons—what was wrong with
its talons? Its rear claws were huge, distended, oddly lengthened.
“My associate, the Falconer,” said the Gray King. “A Bondsmage of Karthain.
My
Bondsmage. The key to a great many things. And now that we’ve been introduced, let
us speak of what I expect you to do for me.”
“THEY ARE not to be fucked with,” Chains had told him once, many years before.
“Why not?” Locke was twelve or thirteen at the time, about as cocksure as he’d ever
be in life, which was saying something.
“I see you’ve been neglecting your history again. I’ll assign you more reading shortly.”
Chains sighed. “The Bondsmagi of Karthain are the only sorcerers on the continent,
because they permit no one else to study their art. Outsiders they find must join
them or be slain.”
“And none resist? Nobody fights back or hides from them?”
“Of course they do, here and there. But what can two or five or ten sorcerers in hiding
do against four hundred with a city-state at their command? What the Bondsmagi do
to outsiders and renegades … They make Capa Barsavi look like a priest of Perelandro.
They are utterly jealous, utterly ruthless, and utterly without competition. They
have achieved their desired monopoly. No one will shelter sorcerers against the will
of the Bondsmagi, no one. Not even the King of the Seven Marrows.”
“Curious,” said Locke, “that they would still call themselves Bondsmagi, then.”
“It’s false modesty. I think it amuses them. They set such ridiculous prices for their
services, it’s less like mercenary work to them and more like a cruel joke at the
expense of their clients.”
“Ridiculous prices?”
“A novice would cost you five hundred crowns a day. A more experienced spellbinder
might cost you a
thousand
. They mark their rank with tattoos around their wrists. The more black circles you
see, the more polite you become.”