Authors: Scott Lynch
“Here beyond the walls,” said Chains, “is what many folks living outside the great
cities would think of as cities; these little scatterings of wood and stone that probably
don’t look like much to someone like you. Just as you haven’t really seen the country,
most of them haven’t truly seen the city. So keep your eyes open and your mouth shut,
and be mindful of differences until you’ve had a few days to acclimate yourself.”
“What’s the point of this trip, Chains, really?”
“You might one day have to pretend to be a person of very lowly station, Locke. If
you learn something about being a farmer, you’ll probably learn something about being
a teamster, a barge poleman, a village smith, a horse physiker, and maybe even a country
bandit.”
The road north from Camorr was an old Therin Throne road: a raised stone expanse with
shallow ditches at the sides. It was covered with a gravel of pebbles and iron filings,
waste from the forges of the Coalsmoke district. Here and there the rains had fused
or rusted the gravel into a reddish cement; the wheels clattered as they slid over
these hard patches.
“A lot of blackjackets,” Chains said slowly, “come from the farms and villages north
of Camorr. It’s what the dukes of Camorr do, when they need more men, and they can
afford to wait a bit, without raising a general levy of the lowborn. It’s good wages,
and there’s the promise of land for those that stay in service a full twenty-five
years. Assuming they don’t get killed, of course. They come from the north, and mostly
they go back to the north.”
“Is that why the blackjackets and the yellowjackets don’t like each other?”
“Heh.” Chains’ eyes twinkled. “Good guess. There’s some truth to it. Most of the yellowjackets
are city boys that want to stay city boys. But on top of that, soldiers can be some
of the cattiest, most clannish damn folk you’ll ever find outside of a highborn lady’s
wardrobe. They’ll fight over anything; they’ll brawl over the colors of their hats
and the shapes of their shoes. I know, believe me.”
“You pretended to be one once?”
“Thirteen gods, no. I
was
one.”
“A blackjacket?”
“Yes.” Chains sighed and settled back against the hard wooden seat of the horse cart.
“Thirty years past, now. More than thirty. I was a pikeman for the old Duke Nicovante.
Most of us from the village my age went; it was a bad time for wars. Duke needed fodder;
we needed food and coin.”
“Which village?”
Chains favored him with a crooked smile. “Villa Senziano.”
“Oh.”
“Gods, it was a whole pile of us that went.” The horses and the cart rattled down
the road for a few long moments before Chains continued. “There were three of us that
came back. Or at least got out of it.”
“Only three?”
“That I know of.” Chains scratched at his beard. “One of them is the man I’m going
to be leaving you with. Vandros. A good fellow; not book-smart but very wise in the
everyday sense. He did his twenty-five years, and the duke gave him a spot of land
as a tenancy.”
“Tenancy?”
“Most common folk outside the city don’t own their own land any more than city renters
own their buildings. An old soldier with a tenancy gets a nice spot of land to farm
until he dies; it’s a sort of allowance from the duke.” Chains chuckled. “Given in
exchange for one’s youth and health.”
“You didn’t do the twenty-five, I’m guessing.”
“No.” Chains fiddled with his beard a bit more, an old nervous gesture. “Damn, I wish
I could have a smoke. It’s a very frowned-on thing in the order of the Dama, mind
you. No, I took sick after a battle. Something more than just the usual shits and
sore feet. A wasting fever. I couldn’t march and I was like to die, so they left me
behind … myself and many others. In the care of some itinerant priests of Perelandro.”
“But you didn’t die.”
“Clever lad,” said Chains, “to deduce that from such slender evidence after living
with me for just three years.”
“And what happened?”
“A great many things,” said Chains. “And you know how it ends. I wound up in this
cart, riding north and entertaining you.”
“Well, what happened to the third man from your village?”
“Him? Well,” said Chains, “he always had his head on right. He made banneret sergeant
not long after I got laid up with the fever. At the Battle of Nessek, he helped young
Nicovante hold the line together when old
Nicovante took an arrow right between his eyes. He lived, got elevated, and served
Nicovante in the next few wars that came their way.”
“And where is he?”
“At this very moment? How should I know? But,” said Chains, “later this afternoon,
he’ll be giving Jean Tannen his usual afternoon weapons lesson at the House of Glass
Roses.”
“
Oh
,” said Locke.
“Funny old world,” said Chains. “Three farmers became three soldiers; three soldiers
became one farmer, one baron, and one thieving priest.”
“And now I’m to become a farmer, for a while.”
“Yes. Useful training indeed. But not just that.”
“What else?”
“Another test, my boy. Just another test.”
“Which is?”
“All these years, you’ve had me looking over you. You’ve had Calo and Galdo, and Jean,
and Sabetha from time to time. You’ve gotten used to the temple as a home. But time’s
a river, Locke, and we’ve always drifted farther down it than we think.” He smiled
down at Locke with real affection. “I can’t stand watch on you forever, boy. Now we
need to see what you can do when you’re off in a strange new place, all on your own.”
IT BEGAN LIKE this—with the slow, steady beat of mourning drums and the slow cadence
of marchers moving north from the Floating Grave, red torches smoldering in their
hands, a double line of bloodred light stretched out beneath the low dark clouds.
At its heart was Vencarlo Barsavi, Capa of Camorr, with a son at either hand. Before
him was a covered casket draped in black silk and cloth of gold, carried at either
side by six pallbearers—one for each of the twelve Therin gods—dressed in black cloaks
and black masks. At Barsavi’s back was a huge wooden cask on a cart pulled by another
six men, with a black-shrouded priestess of the Nameless Thirteenth close behind.
The drums echoed against stone walls; against stone streets and bridges and canals;
the torches cast reflections of fire in every window and shred of Elderglass they
passed. Folk looked on in apprehension, if they looked on at all; some bolted their
doors and drew shutters over their windows as the funeral procession passed. This
is how things are done in Camorr, for the rich and the powerful; the slow mournful
march to the Hill of Whispers, the interment, the ceremony, and then the wild, tearful
celebration afterward. A toast on behalf of the departed; a bittersweet revel for
those not yet taken for judgment by Aza Guilla, Lady of the Long Silence. The funeral
cask is what fuels this tradition.
The lines of marchers left the Wooden Waste just after the tenth hour of the evening
and marched into the Cauldron, where no urchin or drunkard dared to get in their way,
where gangs of cutthroats and Gaze addicts stood in silent attention as their master
and his court walked past.
Through Coalsmoke they marched, and then north into the Quiet, as silvery mist rose
warm and clinging from the canals around them. Not a single yellowjacket crossed their
path; not one constable even caught sight of the procession—arrangements had been
made to keep them busy elsewhere that night. The east belonged to Barsavi and his
long lines of torches, and the farther north he went the more honest families bolted
their doors and doused their lights and prayed that the business of the marchers lay
far away from them.
Had there been many staring eyes, they might have noticed that the procession had
already failed to turn toward the Hill of Whispers; that it had instead gone north
and snaked toward the western tip of the Rustwater district, where the great abandoned
structure called the Echo Hole loomed in the darkness and the fog.
A curious observer might have wondered at the sheer size of the procession—more than
a hundred men and women—and at their accoutrements. Only the pallbearers were dressed
for a funeral. The torchbearers were dressed for
war
, in armor of boiled leather with blackened studs, in collars and helmets and bracers
and gloves, with knives and clubs and axes and bucklers at their belts. They were
the cream of Barsavi’s gangs, the hardest of the Right People—cold-eyed men and women
with murders to their names. They were from all of his districts and all of his gangs—the
Red Hands and the Rum Hounds, the Gray Faces and the Arsenal Boys, the Canal Jumpers
and the Black Twists, the Catchfire Barons and a dozen others.
The most interesting thing about the procession, however, was something no casual
observer could know.
The fact was, Nazca Barsavi’s body still lay in her old chambers in the Floating Grave,
sealed away under silk sheets, alchemically impregnated to keep the rot of death from
setting in too quickly. Locke Lamora and a dozen other priests of the Nameless Thirteenth,
the Crooked Warden, had said prayers for her the previous night and placed her within
a circle of sacred candles, there to lie until her father finished his business this
evening, which had nothing to do with the Hill of Whispers. The coffin that was draped
in funeral silks was empty.
“I AM the Gray King,” said Locke Lamora. “I am the Gray King, gods damn his eyes,
I
am
the Gray King.”
“A little lower,” said Jean Tannen, struggling with one of the gray cuffs of Locke’s
coat, “and a little scratchier. Give it a hint of Tal Verrar. You said he had an accent.”
“I am the Gray King,” said Locke, “and I’ll be smiling out the other side of my head
when the Gentlemen Bastards are through with me.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said Calo, who was streaking Locke’s hair with a foul-scented alchemical
paste that was steadily turning it charcoal gray. “I like that one. Just different
enough to be noticed.”
Locke stood stock-still as a tailor’s mannequin, surrounded by Calo, Galdo, and Jean,
who worked on him with clothes, cosmetics, and threaded needles. Bug leaned up against
one wall of their little enclosure, keeping his eyes and ears alert for interlopers.
The Gentlemen Bastards were hidden away in an abandoned storefront in the fog-choked
Rustwater district, just a few blocks north of the Echo Hole. Rustwater was a dead
island, ill-favored and barely inhabited. A city that had thrown off its old prejudices
about the structures of the Eldren still held Rustwater in an unequivocal dread. It
was said that the black shapes that moved in the Rustwater lagoon were nothing as
pleasant as mere man-eating sharks but something
worse
, something
older
. Whatever the truth of those rumors, it was a conveniently deserted place for Barsavi
and the Gray King to play out their strange affair. Locke privately suspected that
he’d been taken somewhere in this neighborhood on the night the Gray King had first
interrupted his life.
They were working every trick of their masquerade art to fashion Locke into the Gray
King. Already his hair was gray, his clothes were gray, he was dressed in heavy padded
boots that added two inches to his height, and he had a drooping gray moustache firmly
affixed above his lips.
“It looks good,” said Bug, an approving note in his voice.
“Damn showy, but Bug’s right,” said Jean. “Now that I’ve got this stupid coat cinched
in to your proper size, you do look rather striking.”
“Pity this isn’t one of our games,” said Galdo. “I’d be enjoying myself. Lean forward
for some wrinkles, Locke.”
Working very carefully, Galdo painted Locke’s face with a warm, waxy substance that
pinched his skin as it went on; in seconds it dried and tightened, and in just a few
moments Locke had a complete network of crow’s-feet,
laugh-lines, and forehead wrinkles. He looked to be in his midforties, at the very
least. The disguise would have done very well in the bright light of day; at night,
it would be impenetrable.
“Virtuoso,” said Jean, “relatively speaking, for such short notice and the conditions
we have in which to put it all together.”
Locke flipped his hood up and pulled on his gray leather gloves. “I am the Gray King,”
he said, his voice low, mimicking the odd accent of the real Gray King.
“I bloody well believe it,” said Bug.
“Well, let’s get on with everything, then.” Locke moved his jaw up and down, feeling
the false wrinkle-skin stretch back and forth as he did so. “Galdo, hand me my stilettos,
would you? I think I’ll want one in my boot and one in my sleeve.”
Lamora
, came a cold whisper, the Falconer’s voice. Locke tensed, then realized that the
noise hadn’t come from the air.
“What is it?” asked Jean.
“It’s the Falconer,” said Locke. “He’s … he’s doing that damn thing …”
Barsavi will soon be at hand. You and your friends must be in place, ere long
.
“We have an impatient Bondsmage,” said Locke. “Quickly now. Bug, you know the game,
and you know where to put yourself?”
“I’ve got it down cold,” said Bug, grinning. “Don’t even have a temple roof to jump
off this time, so don’t worry about anything.”
“Jean, you’re comfortable with your place?”
“Not really, but there’s none better.” Jean cracked his knuckles. “I’ll be in sight
of Bug, down beneath the floor. If the whole thing goes to shit, you just remember
to throw yourself down the damn waterfall. I’ll cover your back, the sharp and bloody
way.”
“Calo, Galdo.” Locke whirled to face the twins, who had hurriedly packed away all
the tools and substances used to dress Locke up for the evening. “Are we good to move
at the temple?”