Authors: Scott Lynch
And then he punched Locke in the stomach again, to a murmur of widespread amusement.
Locke’s knees buckled beneath him, and his attendants hoisted him again, holding him
upright, as bolts of pain radiated from his abdomen.
“One of your men,” said Barsavi, “strolled into my Floating Grave this very morning.”
A little chill crept down Locke’s spine.
“Seems I’m not the only one you pissed off when you sent my Nazca back to me the way
you did,” said Barsavi, leering. “Seems that some of your men
didn’t
sign on with your merry little crew for that sort of gods-damned
desecration
. So your man and I, we had ourselves a talk. And we fixed a price. And then he told
me all sorts of
fascinating
things about that spell of yours. And that story about you being able to kill men
with a touch? Oh, he
told
me it was bullshit.”
Sewn up
, said a little voice at the back of Locke’s head that most certainly was
not
the Falconer.
Sewn up, sewn up
. Of course the Falconer hadn’t been distracted, or taken by any of Barsavi’s men.
Neat as a gods-damned hanging
.
“But I was only willing to trust the fellow so far,” Barsavi said. “So I
made a deal with Eymon, whom I’m sure you don’t recognize. Eymon is dying. He has
the cold consumption, the tumors in his stomach and his back. The sort no physiker
can cure. He’s got maybe two months, maybe less.” The capa clapped Eymon on the back
as proudly as if the skinny man were his own flesh and blood.
“So I said, ‘Why don’t you step up and grab the filthy little bastard, Eymon? If he
really can kill with a touch, well, you’ll go quick and easy. And if he can’t …’ ”
Barsavi grinned, his red cheeks wrinkling grotesquely. “Well, then.”
“A thousand full crowns,” said Eymon, giggling.
“For starters,” added Barsavi. “A promise I intend to keep. A promise I intend to
expand
. I told Eymon he’d die in his own villa, with gems and silks and half a dozen ladies
of his choice from the Guilded Lilies to keep him company. I will
invent
pleasures for him. He’ll die like a fucking
duke
, because tonight I name him the bravest man in Camorr.”
There was a general roar of approval; men and women applauded, and fists banged on
armor and shields.
“Quite the opposite,” Barsavi whispered, “of a sneaking, cowardly piece of shit who
would murder my only daughter. Who wouldn’t even do it with his own
hands
. Who’d let some fucking hireling work a twisted magic on her. A
poisoner
.” Barsavi spat in Locke’s face; the warm spittle trickled down his cheek. “Your man
told me, of course, that your Bondsmage had set his spell and left your service last
night; that you were so very
confident
, you didn’t want to keep paying him. Well, I for one applaud your sense of
economy
.”
Barsavi gestured to Anjais and Pachero; grim-faced, the two men stepped forward. They
slipped their optics off and put them in vest pockets; an ominous gesture conducted
in unconscious unison. Locke opened his mouth to say something—and then the realization
of exactly
how
sewn up he was struck him cold.
He could proclaim his true identity, have the capa tear off his false moustache and
rub away the wrinkles, spill the entire story—but what would it gain him? He would
never be believed.
He’d already displayed a Bondsmage’s protection
. If he confessed to being Locke Lamora, the hundred men and women here would be after
Jean and Bug and the Sanzas next.
If he was going to save them, he had to play the Gray King until the capa was finished
with him, and then he would pray for a quick and easy
death. Let Locke Lamora just vanish one night; let his friends slip away to whatever
better fate awaited them. Blinking back hot tears, he summoned up a grin, looked at
the two Barsavi sons, and said, “By all means, you fucking curs, let’s see if you
can do any better than your father.”
Anjais and Pachero knew how to strike a man with the intent to kill, but just now
they had no such intent. They bruised his ribs, knuckle-punched his arms, kicked his
thighs, slapped his head from side to side, and punched him in the neck until every
breath was a chore. At last, Anjais had him hoisted back up, and took hold of his
chin so that the two of them were looking eye to eye.
“By the way,” said Anjais, “
this
is from Locke Lamora.”
Anjais balanced Locke’s chin on one finger and walloped him with his other hand. White-hot
pain shot through Locke’s neck, and in the red-tinted darkness around him he saw stars.
He spat blood, coughed, and licked his sore, swollen lips.
“Now,” said Barsavi, “I’ll have a father’s justice for Nazca’s death.”
He clapped his hands three times.
Behind him, there was an audible noise of men cursing, and heavy footfalls banging
against the stone steps. Through the door came eight more men, carrying a large wooden
cask—a cask the size of the one Nazca Barsavi had been returned to her father in.
The funeral cask. The crowd around Barsavi and his sons parted eagerly to let the
cask haulers through. They set it on the ground beside the capa, and inside it Locke
heard the slosh of liquid.
Oh, thirteen gods
, he thought.
“Can’t be cut, can’t be pierced,” said the capa, as though he were musing out loud.
“But you can certainly be bruised. And you certainly need to breathe.”
Two of the capa’s men popped the lid on the cask open, and Locke was dragged over
to it. The eye-watering stench of horse urine spilled out into the air, and he gagged,
sobbing.
“Look at the Gray King cry,” whispered Barsavi. “Look at the Gray King sob. A sight
I will treasure to the last hour of my
dying day
!” His voice rose. “Did Nazca sob? Did my daughter cry, as you gave her her death?
Somehow I don’t think so.”
The capa was shouting now. “Take a last look! He gets what Nazca got; he dies as she
died, but by
my hand
!”
Barsavi seized Locke by the hair and tilted his face toward the barrel;
for one brief irrational moment, Locke was grateful that there was nothing in his
stomach to throw up. The dry retching still brought spasms of pain to his much-abused
stomach muscles.
“With one small touch,” said the capa, actually gulping back sobs of exhilaration.
“With one small touch, you son of a bitch. No poison for
you
. No quick way out before I put you in. You get to taste it, the whole time. All the
while as you
drown
in it.”
And then he hefted Locke by the mantle, grunting. His men joined in, and together
they hoisted him up over the rim, and then down he plunged face-first, down into thick,
lukewarm filth that blotted out the noise of the world around him, down into darkness
that burned his eyes and his cuts and swallowed him whole.
BARSAVI’S MEN slammed the lid back onto the barrel; several of them hammered it down
with mallets and axe-butts until it was cinched tight. The capa gave the top of the
barrel a thump with his fist and smiled broadly. Tears were still running down his
cheeks.
“Somehow I don’t think the poor fucker did as well as he hoped with our negotiations!”
The men and women around him whooped and hollered, arms in the air, torches waving
and casting wild shadows on the walls.
“Take this bastard and send him out to sea,” said the capa, gesturing toward the waterfall.
A dozen pairs of eager hands grabbed at the barrel. Laughing and joking, a crowd of
the capa’s people hoisted it and carried it over to the northwestern corner of the
Echo Hole, where water poured in from the ceiling and vanished into blackness through
a fissure about eight feet wide. “One,” said the leader, “two …” And on the cusp of
“three,” they flung the barrel down into darkness. It struck water somewhere beneath
them with a splash; then they threw up their arms and began cheering once again.
“Tonight,” cried Barsavi, “Duke Nicovante sleeps safe in his bed, locked away in his
glass tower! Tonight the Gray King sleeps in
piss
, in a tomb that I have made for him! Tonight is my night! Who rules Camorr?”
“Barsavi!”
came the response from every throat in the Echo Hole, reverberating around the alien-set
stones of the structure, and the capa was surrounded by a sea of noise, laughter,
applause.
“Tonight,” he yelled, “send messengers to every corner of
my
domains!
Send runners to the Last Mistake! Send runners to Catchfire! Wake the Cauldron and
the Narrows and the Dregs and all the Snare! Tonight, I throw open my doors! The Right
People of Camorr will come to the Floating Grave as my guests! Tonight, we’ll have
such a revel that the honest folk will bar their doors, that the yellowjackets will
cringe in their barracks, that the gods themselves will look down and cry, ‘
What is that fucking racket?
’ ”
“Barsavi! Barsavi! Barsavi!”
his people chanted.
“Tonight,” he said at last, “we will celebrate. Tonight Camorr has seen the last of
kings.”
As time went by, Locke and the other Gentlemen Bastards were occasionally set free
to roam at leisure, dressed in ordinary clothing. Locke and Jean were getting on near
twelve; the Sanzas were visibly slightly older. It was more difficult to keep them
cooped up beneath the House of Perelandro all the time, when they weren’t sitting
the steps or away on Father Chains’ “apprenticeships.”
Slowly but steadily, Chains was sending his boys out to be initiated in all the great
temples of the other eleven Therin gods. One of them would enter a temple under a
false name, sped along by whatever strings Chains could pull and whatever palms he
could slip coins into. Once there, the young Gentleman Bastard would inevitably please
his superiors with his scribing, his theological knowledge, his discipline, and his
sincerity. Advancement came quickly, as fast as it could be had; soon the newcomer
would receive training in what was called “interior ritual”: the phrases and activities
that priests only shared among themselves and their initiates.
They were not quite secrets, these things—to any priest of a Therin order, the thought
of someone being audacious enough to offend the gods by falsely seeking initiation
was utterly alien. Even those who knew of the slightly heretical idea of the Thirteenth,
and even the minority who actually
believed in him, failed to imagine that anyone would
want
to do what Chains and his boys were doing.
Invariably, after several months of excellent accomplishments, each sterling young
initiate would die in a sudden accident. Calo favored “drowning,” for he could hold
his breath a very long time, and he enjoyed swimming underwater. Galdo preferred to
simply disappear, preferably during a storm or some other dramatic event. Locke constructed
elaborate little mummeries that took weeks to plan. On one occasion, he vanished from
the Order of Nara (Plague Mistress, Lady of Ubiquitous Maladies) by leaving his initiate’s
robe, torn apart and splashed with rabbit’s blood, wrapped around his copy-work and
a few letters in an alley behind the temple.
Thus enlightened, each boy would return and teach the others of what he had seen and
heard. “The point,” said Chains, “is not to make you all candidates for the High Conclave
of the Twelve, but to allow you to throw on whatever robes and masks are required
and pass as a priest for any short period of need. When you’re a priest, people tend
to see the robe rather than the man.”
But there was no apprenticeship under way at the moment; Jean was drilling at the
House of Glass Roses, and the other boys waited for him on the southern edge of the
Shifting Market, on a crumbling stone pier at the end of a short alley. It was a warm
spring day, breezy and fresh, with the sky half-occluded by crescents of gray and
white clouds sweeping in from the northwest, heralding storms.
Locke and Calo and Galdo were watching the results of a collision between a chicken-seller’s
boat and a transporter of cats. Several cages had flown open when the small boats
cracked against one another, and now agitated merchants were stepping warily back
and forth as the battle between birds and felines progressed. A few chickens had escaped
into the water and were flapping uselessly in little circles, squawking, for nature
had conspired to make them even worse at swimming than they were at flying.
“Well,” said a voice behind them. “Have a look at this. These little wasters seem
very likely.”
Locke and the Sanzas turned around as one to see a half dozen boys and girls their
own age standing behind them, spread out across the alley. They were dressed much
as the Gentlemen Bastards were, in unassuming clothes of common cut. Their apparent
leader had a thick, dark mane of
curly black hair, pulled behind him and tied with a black silk ribbon—quite a mark
of distinction for an urchin.
“Are you friends of the friends, lads? Are you the right sort of people?” The leader
of the newcomers stood with his hands on his hips; behind him, a short girl made several
hand gestures used for common identification by Capa Barsavi’s subjects.
“We are friends of the friends,” said Locke.
“The rightest sort of right,” added Galdo, making the appropriate countergestures.
“Good lads. We’re the seconds to the Full Crowns, in the Narrows. Call ourselves Half-Crowns.
What’s your allegiance?”
“Gentlemen Bastards,” said Locke. “Temple District.”
“Who’re you seconds to?”
“We’re not seconds to anyone,” said Galdo. “It’s just the Gentlemen Bastards, one
and all.”
“Savvy,” said the leader of the Half-Crowns, with a friendly grin. “I’m Tesso Volanti.
This is my crew. We’re here to take your coin. Unless you want to kneel and give us
your preference.”