Authors: Scott Lynch
Locke spit blood into Tesso’s face. “I don’t have to fight you and I don’t have to
run.” He grinned wildly. “I just have to keep you here … until Jean gets back.”
Tesso gasped and looked around. Out, on the Shifting Market one small cockleshell
boat was heading straight toward them. The plump shape of Jean Tannen was clearly
visible within it, hauling rapidly on the oars.
“Oh, shit. You little
bastard
. Let me go, let me go, let me go!”
Tesso punctuated this with a series of punches. Soon enough Locke was bleeding from
his nose, his lips, his ears, and somewhere under his hair. Tesso was pounding him
but good, yet he continued to cling madly to the older boy. His head was whirling
with the combination of pain and triumph; Locke actually started laughing, high and
gleeful and perhaps a little bit mad.
“I don’t have to fight or run,” he cackled. “I changed the rules of the game. I just
have to keep you here … asshole. Here … until … Jean gets back.”
“Gods
dammit
,” Tesso hissed, and he redoubled his assault on Locke, punching and spitting and
biting.
“Keep hitting,” Locke sputtered. “You just keep hitting. I can take it all day. You
just keep … hitting me … until …
Jean gets back
!”
“Nature never deceives us;
it is always we who deceive ourselves.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
From
Émile ou De l’éducation
AT HALF PAST the tenth hour of the evening on Duke’s Day, as low dark clouds fell
in above Camorr, blotting out the stars and the moons, Doña Sofia Salvara was being
hoisted up into the sky to have a late tea with Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza, dowager
countess of Amberglass, at the top of the great lady’s Elderglass tower.
The passenger cage rattled and swayed, and Sofia clung to the black iron bars for
support. The sweaty Hangman’s Wing fluttered at her hooded coat as she stared south.
All of the city lay spread beneath her, black and gray from horizon to horizon, suffused
with the glow of fire and alchemy. This was a point of quiet pride for her every time
she had the chance to take in this view from one of the Five Towers. The Eldren had
built glass wonders for men to claim; engineers had crafted buildings of stone and
wood in the Eldren ruins to make the cities their own; Bondsmagi pretended to the
powers the Eldren must have once held. But it was alchemy that drove back the darkness
every evening; alchemy that lit the commonest home and the tallest tower alike, cleaner
and safer than natural fire. It was her art that tamed the night.
At last, her long ascent ended; the cage rattled to a halt beside an embarkation platform
four-fifths of the way up Amberglass’ full height. The wind sighed mournfully in the
strange fluted arches at the peak of the
tower. Two footmen in cream-white waistcoats and immaculate white gloves and breeches
helped her out of the cage, as they might have assisted her from a carriage down on
the ground. Once she was safely on the platform, the two men bowed from the waist.
“M’lady Salvara,” said the one on the left, “my mistress bids you welcome to Amberglass.”
“Most kind,” said Doña Sofia.
“If it would please you to wait on the terrace, she will join you momentarily.”
The same footman led the way past a half dozen servants in similar livery, who stood
panting beside the elaborate arrangement of gears, levers, and chains they worked
to haul the cargo cage up and down. They, too, bowed as she passed; she favored them
with a smile and an acknowledging wave. It never hurt to be pleasant to the servants
in charge of
that
particular operation.
Doña Vorchenza’s terrace was a wide crescent of transparent Elderglass jutting out
from the north face of her tower, surrounded by brass safety rails. Doña Sofia looked
straight down, as she had always been warned not to do, and as she always did. It
seemed that she and the footman walked on thin air forty stories above the stone courtyards
and storage buildings at the base of the tower; alchemical lamps were specks of light,
and carriages were black squares smaller than one of her nails.
On her left, visible through a series of tall arched windows whose sills were on a
level with her waist, were dimly lit apartments and parlors within the tower itself.
Doña Vorchenza had very few living relatives, and no children; she was effectively
the last of a once-powerful clan, and there was little doubt (among the grasping,
ambitious nobles of the Alcegrante slopes, at least) that Amberglass would pass to
some new family upon her death. Most of her tower was dark and quiet, most of its
opulence packed away in closets and chests.
The old lady still knew how to host a late-night tea, however. At the far northwestern
corner of her transparent terrace, with a commanding view of the lightless countryside
to the north of the city, a silk awning fluttered in the Hangman’s Wind. Tall alchemical
lanterns in cages of gold-gilded brass hung from the four corners of the awning, shedding
warm light on the little table and the two high-backed chairs arranged therein.
The footman placed a thin black cushion upon the right-hand chair and pulled it out
for her; with a swish of skirts she settled into it and nodded her thanks. The man
bowed and strolled away, taking up a watch
at a point that was politely out of earshot but within easy beckoning distance.
Sofia did not have long to wait for her hostess; a few minutes after her arrival,
old Doña Vorchenza appeared out of a wooden door on the tower’s north wall.
Age has a way of exaggerating the physical traits of those who live to feel its strains;
the round tend to grow rounder, and the slim tend to waste away. Time had narrowed
Angiavesta Vorchenza. She was not so much withered as collapsed, a spindly living
caricature like a wooden idol animated by the sorcery of sheer willpower. Seventy
was a fading memory for her, yet she still moved about without an escort on her arm
or a cane in her hands. She dressed eccentrically in a black velvet frock coat with
fur collars and cuffs. Eschewing the cascading petticoats the ladies of her era had
favored, she actually wore black pantaloons and silver slippers. Her white hair was
pulled back and fixed with lacquered pins; her dark eyes were bright behind her half-moon
optics.
“Sofia,” she said as she stepped daintily beneath the awning, “what a pleasure it
is to have you up here again. It’s been months, my dear girl, months. No, do sit;
pulling out my own chair holds no terrors for me. Ah. Tell me, how is Lorenzo? And
surely we must speak of your garden.”
“Lorenzo and I are well, considered solely in ourselves. And the garden thrives, Doña
Vorchenza. Thank you for asking.”
“Considered solely in yourselves? Then there is something else? Something, dare I
pry, external?”
A night tea, in Camorr, was a womanly tradition when one wished to seek the advice
of another, or simply make use of a sympathetic ear while expressing regrets or complaints—most
frequently concerning men.
“You may pry, Doña Vorchenza, by all means. And yes, yes, ‘external’ is a very proper
term for it.”
“But it’s not Lorenzo?”
“Oh, no. Lorenzo is satisfactory in every possible respect.” Sofia sighed and glanced
down at the illusion of empty air beneath her feet and her chair. “It’s … both of
us that may be in need of advice.”
“Advice,” chuckled Doña Vorchenza. “The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting
one’s mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you’re a nag.
Give it at seventy and you’re a sage.”
“Doña Vorchenza,” said Sofia, “you have been of great help to me before. I couldn’t
think … well, there was no one else I was comfortable speaking to about this matter,
for the time being.”
“Indeed? Well, dear girl, I’m eager to be of whatever help I can. But here’s our tea—come,
let us indulge ourselves for a few moments.”
One of Doña Vorchenza’s jacketed attendants wheeled a silver-domed cart toward them
and slid it into place beside the little table. When he whisked the dome away, Sofia
saw that the cart held a gleaming silver tea service and a subtlety—a perfect culinary
replica of Amberglass Tower, barely nine inches high, complete with minuscule specks
of alchemical light dotting its turrets. The little glass globes were not much larger
than raisins.
“You see how little real work I give to my poor chef,” said Doña Vorchenza, cackling.
“He suffers in the service of such a plain and simple palate; he takes his revenge
with these surprises. I cannot order a softboiled egg, but that he finds a dancing
chicken to lay it directly on my plate. Tell me, Gilles, is that edifice truly edible?”
“So I am assured, my lady Vorchenza, save for the tiny lights. The tower itself is
spice cake; the turrets and terraces are jellied fruit. The buildings and carriages
at the base of the tower are mostly chocolate; the heart of the tower is an apple
brandy cream, and the windows—”
“Thank you, Gilles, that will do for an architectural synopsis. But spit out the lights
when we’re finished, you say?”
“It would be more decorous, m’lady,” said the servant, a round, delicate-featured
man with shoulder-length black ringlets, “to let me remove them for you prior to consumption.…”
“Decorous? Gilles, you would deny us the fun of spitting them over the side of the
terrace like little girls. I’ll thank you not to touch them. The tea?”
“Your will, Doña Vorchenza,” he said smoothly. “Tea of Light.” He lifted a silver
teapot and poured a steaming line of pale brownish liquid into a tea glass; Doña Vorchenza’s
etched glasses were shaped like large tulip buds with silver bases. As the tea settled
into the container, it began to glow faintly, shedding an inviting orange radiance.
“Oh, very pretty,” said Doña Sofia. “I’ve heard of it.… Verrari, is it?”
“Lashani.” Doña Vorchenza took the glass from Gilles and cradled it in both hands.
“Quite the latest thing. Their tea masters are mad with the competitive spirit. This
time next year we’ll have something even stranger to one-up one another with. But
forgive me, my dear—I do hope you’re not averse to drinking the products of your art
as well as working with them in your garden?”
“Not at all,” Sofia replied as the servant set her own glass before her and
bowed. She took the cup into her hands and took a deep breath; the tea smelled of
mingled vanilla and orange blossoms. When she sipped, the flavors ran warmly on her
tongue and the scented steam rose into her nostrils. Gilles vanished back into the
tower itself while the ladies commenced drinking. For a few moments they enjoyed their
tea in appreciative silence, and for a few moments Sofia was almost content.
“Now we shall see,” said Doña Vorchenza as she set her half-empty glass down before
her, “if it continues to glow when it comes out the other side.”
Doña Salvara giggled despite herself, and the lines on her hostess’ lean face drew
upward as she smiled. “Now, what did you want to ask me about, my dear?”
“Doña Vorchenza,” Sofia began, then hesitated. “It is … it is commonly thought that
you have some, ah, means to communicate with the … the duke’s secret constabulary.”
“The duke has a secret constabulary?” Doña Vorchenza placed a hand against her breast
in an expression of polite disbelief.
“The Midnighters, Doña Vorchenza, the Midnighters, and their leader—”
“The duke’s Spider. Yes, yes. Forgive me, dear girl, I do know of what you speak.
But this idea you have … ‘Commonly thought,’ you say? Many things are
commonly
thought, but perhaps not commonly thought
all the way through
.”
“It is very curious,” said Sofia Salvara, “that when the doñas come to you with problems,
on more than one occasion, their problems have … reached the ear of the Spider. Or
seemed to, since the duke’s men became involved in assisting with those problems.”
“Oh, my dear Sofia. When gossip comes to me I pass it on in packets and parcels. I
drop a word or two in the right ear, and the gossip acquires a life of its own. Sooner
or later it must reach the notice of someone who will take action.”
“Doña Vorchenza,” said Sofia, “I hope I can say without intending or giving offense
that you are dissembling.”
“I hope I can say without disappointing you, dear girl, that you have a very slender
basis for making that suggestion.”
“Doña Vorchenza.” Sofia clutched at her edge of the table so hard that several of
her finger joints popped. “Lorenzo and I are being robbed.”
“Robbed? Whatever do you mean?”
“And we have Midnighters involved. They’ve … made the most
extraordinary claims, and made requests of us. But … Doña Vorchenza, there must be
some way to confirm that they are what they say they are.”
“You say
Midnighters
are robbing you?”
“No,” said Sofia, biting her upper lip. “No, it’s not the Midnighters themselves.
They are … supposedly watching the situation and waiting for a chance to act. But
something … something is just wrong. Or they are not telling us everything they perhaps
should.”
“My dear Sofia,” said Doña Vorchenza. “My poor troubled girl, you must tell me exactly
what has happened, and leave out not one detail.”
“It is … difficult, Doña Vorchenza. The situation is rather … embarrassing. And complicated.”
“We are all alone up here on my terrace, my dear. You have done all the hard work
already, in coming over to see me. Now you must tell me
everything
. Then I’ll see to it that this particular bit of gossip speeds on its way to the
right ear, I promise you.”
Sofia took another small sip of tea, cleared her throat, and hunched down in her seat
to look Doña Vorchenza directly in the eyes.