Authors: Scott Lynch
Such was the custom with every note that was sealed in blue with nothing but the stylized
sigil of a spider for its credentials.
“No, this is my heart. Strike. Strike. Now here.
Strike
.”
Cold gray water poured down on the House of Glass Roses; Camorr’s winter rain, pooled
an inch deep beneath the feet of Jean Tannen and Don Maranzalla. Water ran in rivulets
and threads down the face of every rose in the garden; it ran in small rivers into
Jean Tannen’s eyes as he struck out with his rapier again and again at the stuffed
leather target the Don held on the end of a stick, little larger than a big man’s
fist.
“Strike, here. And here. No, too low. That’s the liver. Kill me now, not a minute
from now. I might have another thrust left in me. Up!
Up
at the heart, under the ribs. Better.”
Gray-white light exploded within the swirling clouds overhead, rippling like fire
glimpsed through smoke. The thunder came a moment later, booming and reverberating,
the sound of the gods throwing a tantrum. Jean could barely imagine what it must be
like atop the Five Towers, now just a series of hazy gray columns lost in the sky
behind Don Maranzalla’s right shoulder.
“Enough, Jean, enough. You’re passing fair with a pigsticker; I want you to be familiar
with it at need. But it’s time to see what else you have a flair for.” Don Maranzalla,
who was wrapped up inside a much-abused brown oilcloak, splashed through the water
to a large wooden box. “You
won’t be able to haul a long blade around, in your circles. Fetch me the woundman.”
Jean hurried through the twisting glass maze, toward the small room that led back
down into the tower. He respected the roses still—only a fool would not—but he was
quite used to their presence now. They no longer seemed to loom and flash at him like
hungry things; they were just an obstacle to keep one’s fingers away from.
The woundman, stashed in the little dry room at the top of the staircase, was a padded
leather dummy in the shape of a man’s head, torso, and arms, standing upon an iron
pole. Bearing this awkwardly over his right shoulder, Jean stepped back out in the
driving rain and returned to the center of the Garden Without Fragrance. The woundman
scraped the glass walls several times, but the roses had no taste for empty leather
flesh.
Don Maranzalla had opened the wooden chest and was rummaging around in it; Jean set
the woundman up in the center of the courtyard. The metal rod slid into a hole bored
down through the stone and locked there with a twist, briefly pushing up a little
fountain of water.
“Here’s something ugly,” said the don, swinging a four-foot length of chain wrapped
in very fine leather—likely kid. “It’s called a bailiff’s lash; wrapped up so it doesn’t
rattle. If you look close, it’s got little hooks at either end, so you can hitch it
around your waist like a belt. Easy to conceal under heavier clothes … though you
might eventually need one a bit longer, to fit around yourself.” The don stepped forward
confidently and let one end of the padded chain whip toward the woundman’s head; it
rebounded off the leather with a loud, wet whack.
Jean amused himself for a few minutes by laying into the woundman while Don Maranzalla
watched. Mumbling to himself, the don then took the padded chain away and offered
Jean a pair of matched blades. They were about a foot long, one-sided, with broad
and curving cutting edges. The hilts were attached to heavy handguards, which were
studded with small brass spikes.
“Nasty little bitches, these things. Generally known as thieves’ teeth. No subtlety
to them; you can stab, hack, or just plain punch. Those little brass nubs can scrape
a man’s face off, and those guards’ll stop most anything short of a charging bull.
Have at it.”
Jean’s showing with the blades was even better than his outing with the lash; Maranzalla
clapped approvingly. “That’s right, up through the stomach, under the ribs. Put a
foot of steel there and tickle a man’s heart with it, and you’ve just won the argument,
son.”
As he took the matched blades back from Jean, he chuckled. “How’s that for teeth lessons,
eh, boy? Eh?”
Jean stared at him, puzzled.
“Haven’t you ever heard that one before? Your Capa Barsavi, he’s not from Camorr,
originally. Taught at the Therin Collegium. So, when he drags someone in for a talking-to,
that’s ‘etiquette lessons.’ And when he ties them up and makes them talk, that’s ‘singing
lessons.’ And when he cuts their throats and throws them in the bay for the sharks …”
“Oh,” said Jean, “I guess that’d be teeth lessons. I get it.”
“Right. I didn’t make that one up, mind you. That’s your kind. I’d lay odds the big
man knows about it, but nobody says anything like that to his face. That’s how it
always is, be it cutthroats or soldiers. So … next lovely toy …”
Maranzalla handed Jean a pair of wooden-handled hatchets; these had curved metal blades
on one side and round counterweights on the other.
“No fancy name for these skull-crackers. I wager you’ve seen a hatchet before. Your
choice to use the blade or the ball; it’s possible to avoid killing a man with the
ball, but if you hit hard enough it’s just as bad as the blade, so judge carefully
when you’re not attacking a woundman.”
Almost immediately, Jean realized that he
liked
the feel of the hatchets in his hands. They were long enough to be more than a pocket
weapon, like the gimp steel or the blackjacks most Right People carried as a matter
of habit, yet they were small enough to move swiftly and use in tight spaces, and
it seemed to him they could hide themselves rather neatly under a coat or vest.
He crouched; the knife-fighter’s crouch seemed natural with these things in his hands.
Springing forward, he chopped at the woundman from both sides at once, embedding the
hatchet blades in the dummy’s ribs. With an overhand slash to the woundman’s right
arm, he made the whole thing shudder. He followed that cut with a backhanded stroke
against the head, using a ball rather than a blade. For several minutes, he chopped
and slashed at the woundman, his arms pistoning, a smile growing on his face.
“Hmmm. Not bad,” said Don Maranzalla. “Not bad at all for a total novice, I’ll grant
you that. You seem very comfortable with them.”
On a whim, Jean turned and ran to one side of the courtyard, putting fifteen feet
between himself and the woundman. The driving rain thrust fingers of gray down between
him and the target, so he concentrated very hard—and then he lined up and threw, whipping
one hatchet through the
air with the full twisting force of his arm, hips, and upper body. The hatchet sank
home, blade flat-on, in the woundman’s head, where it held fast in the layers of leather
without so much as a quiver.
“Oh, my,” said Don Maranzalla. Lightning roiled the heavens yet again, and thunder
echoed across the rooftop. “My, yes. Now
there’s
a foundation we can build upon.”
IN THE DARKNESS beneath the Echo Hole, Jean Tannen was moving even before the cask
came crashing down into the black water, lit faintly from above by the red glow of
Barsavi’s torches.
Beneath the ancient stone cube, there was a network of hanging rafters, built from
black witchwood and lashed with Elderglass cords. The rafters were slimy with age
and unmentionable growths, but they had surely held as long as the stones above had,
and they retained their strength.
The waterfall that cascaded in from the roof terminated here in one of the swirling
channels beneath the rafters. There was a veritable maze of the things; some were
as smooth as glass, while others were as turbulent as whitewater rapids. A few wheels
and even stranger devices turned slowly in the corners of the under-rafters. Jean
had briefly appraised them by the light of a tiny alchemical ball when he’d settled
himself in for a long wait. Bug, understandably unwilling to move too far from Jean’s
company, had crouched on a rafter of his own about twenty feet to Jean’s left.
There were little shafts in the stone floor of the Echo Hole, square cuts about two
inches wide, irregularly spaced and serving some unguessable function. Jean had positioned
himself between one of these, knowing that it would be impossible to hear any of the
activities above with the noise of the waterfall right in his ear.
His understanding of the situation above was imperfect—but as the long minutes rolled
by, and the red light grew, and Capa Barsavi and Locke began speaking to one another,
Jean’s uneasiness deepened into dread. There was shouting, cursing, the trample of
booted feet on stone—cheers. Locke was taken. Where was the gods-damned Bondsmage?
Jean scuttled along his rafter, looking for the best way to cross to the waterfall.
It would be a good five or six feet up from the rafters to the lip of the stone gash
through which the waterfall poured, but if he stayed out of the falling water he could
make it. Besides, it was the quickest way up—the
only
way up from within here. In the thin red light pouring down through the little holes
in the floor, Jean signaled for Bug to stay put.
There was another outburst of cheering above, and then the capa’s voice, loud and
clear through one of the peepholes: “Take this bastard and send him out to sea.”
Send him out to sea?
Jean’s heart pounded. Had they already cut Locke’s throat? His eyes stung at the
thought that the next thing he’d see was a limp body falling in the white stream of
gushing water, a limp body dressed all in gray.
Then came the cask, a heavy dark object that plunged into the black canal at the base
of the waterfall with a loud splash and a geyser of water. Jean blinked twice before
he realized what he’d just seen. “Oh, gods,” he muttered. “Like for like! Barsavi
had to be fucking poetic!”
Overhead there was more cheering, more stomping of feet. Barsavi was yelling something;
his men were yelling in response. Then the faint lines of red light began to flicker;
shadows passed before them, and they began to recede in the direction of the street
door. Barsavi was moving, so Jean decided to take a risk.
There was another splash, audible even over the hiss and rumble of the waterfall.
What the hell was that? Jean reached beneath his vest, drew out his light-globe, and
shook it. A faint white star blossomed in the darkness. Clinging tightly to the wet
rafter with his other hand, Jean tossed the globe down toward the channel in which
the cask would have fallen, about forty feet to his right. It hit the water and settled,
giving Jean enough light to discern the situation.
The little channel was about eight feet wide, stone-bordered, and the cask was bobbing
heavily in it, three-quarters submerged.
Bug was thrashing about in that canal, visible only from the arms up. Jean’s light-globe
had struck the water about three feet to the right of his head; Bug had jumped down
into the water on his own.
Damn, but the boy seemed to be constitutionally incapable of remaining in high places
for any length of time.
Jean looked around frantically; it would take him a few moments to work his way over
to a point where he could splash down into the right channel without cracking his
legs against one of the stone dividers.
“Bug,” Jean cried, judging that the ruckus above would cover his own voice. “Your
light! Slip it out, now! Locke’s in that cask!”
Bug fumbled within his tunic, drew out a globe, and shook it. By the sudden flare
of added white light Jean could clearly see the outline of the bobbing black cask.
He judged the distance between himself and it, came to a decision, and reached for
one of his hatchets with his free hand.
“Bug,” he yelled, “don’t try to get through the sides. Attack the flat top of the
cask!”
“How?”
“Stay right where you are.” Jean leaned to his right, clinging to the rafter with
his left arm. He raised the hatchet in his right hand, whispered a single “please”
to whatever gods were listening, and let fly. The hatchet struck, quivering, in the
dark wood of the cask; Bug flinched back, then splashed through the water to pry at
the weapon.
Jean began sliding his bulk along the rafter, but more dark motion in the corner of
his eye brought him up short. He peered down into the shadows on his left. Something
was moving across the surface of one of the other waterways in the damned maze. Several
somethings—black scuttling shapes the size of dogs. Their bristling legs spread wide
when they slipped just beneath the surface of the dark water, then drew in to propel
them up and over stone just as easily.…
“Fuck me,” he muttered. “Fuck me, that’s not possible.”
Salt devils, despite their horrific size and aspect, were timid creatures. The huge
spiders crouched in crevices on the rocky coasts to the southwest of Camorr, preying
on fish and gulls, occasionally falling prey to sharks or devilfish if they ventured
too far from shore. Sailors flung stones and arrows at them with superstitious dread.
Only a fool would approach one, with their fangs the length of a grown man’s fingers
and their venom, which might not always bring death but could make a man fervently
pray for it. Yet salt devils were quite content to flee from humans; they were ambush
hunters, solitary, incapable of tolerating one another at close quarters. Jean had
scared himself witless in his early years reading the observations of scholars and
naturalists concerning the creatures.
Yet here was an entire pack of the damn things, leg to leg like hounds, scrabbling
across stone and water alike toward Bug and the cask.
“Bug,” Jean screamed. “Bug!”
BUG HAD heard even less of the goings-on upstairs than Jean, yet when the cask had
splashed down into darkness, he’d realized immediately that it hadn’t been dropped
down idly. Having placed himself directly over the canal that flowed from the waterfall,
he’d simply let himself drop the fifteen feet down into the rushing water.