Authors: Scott Lynch
He’d tucked his legs and hit like a catapult stone, ass-first. Although his head had
plunged under with the momentum of his drop, he quickly found that he could plant
his feet; the canal was only about four feet deep.
Now, with Jean’s hatchet gripped in one hand, he chopped frantically at the flat barrel-top
before him. He’d set his own light-glass on the stone walkway beside the canal, as
there was enough working light coming from Jean’s beneath the surface of the water.
“Bug,” the big man yelled, his voice suddenly loud with real alarm. “Bug!”
The boy turned to his right and caught a glimpse of what was moving out of the far
shadows toward him. A shudder of pure revulsion passed up and down his spine, and
he looked around frantically to make sure the threat was approaching from only one
direction.
“Bug, get out of the water! Get up on the stones!”
“What about Locke?”
“He doesn’t want to come out of that cask right this fucking second,” Jean hollered.
“Trust me!”
As Bug scrambled up out of the rippling, alchemically lit water, the cask began once
again bobbing toward the south end of the building, where the canal exited to gods
knew where. Too desperate to think clearly about his own safety, Jean scrambled out
along the crossbeam, feet sliding in the muck of the ages, and ran in the direction
of the waterfall with his arms windmilling crazily for balance. A few seconds later
he arrested his forward momentum by wrapping his arms around a vertical beam; his
feet slipped briefly out from beneath him, but he clung tightly to his perch. His
mad dash had brought him to a point beside the waterfall; now he flung himself forward
into the air, carefully drawing his legs into his chest. He hit the
water with a splash as great as that caused by the cask and bumped the canal bottom.
He came up sputtering, second hatchet already in hand. Bug was crouched on the stone
lip beside the canal, waving his alchemical globe at the spiders. Jean saw that the
salt devils were about fifteen feet away from the boy, across the water and moving
more warily, but still approaching. Their carapaces were mottled black and gray; their
multiple eyes the color of deepest night, starred with eerie reflections of Bug’s
light. Their hairy pedipalps waved in the air before their faces, and their hard black
fangs twitched.
Four of the damn things. Jean heaved his bulk up out of the canal on Bug’s side, spitting
water. He fancied that he saw some of those inhuman black eyes turn to regard him.
“Jean,” Bug moaned. “Jean, those things look pissed off.”
“It’s not natural,” said Jean as he ran to Bug’s side; the boy tossed him his other
hatchet and he caught it in the air. The spiders had closed to ten feet, just across
the water; he and Bug seemed hemmed in by thirty-two unblinking black eyes, thirty-two
twitching legs with jagged dark hairs. “Not natural at all; salt devils don’t act
like this.”
“Oh, good.” Bug held the alchemical globe out at arm’s length as though he could conceal
himself entirely behind it. “You discuss it with them.”
“I’m sure we can communicate. I speak fluent hatchet.”
No sooner were these words out of Jean’s mouth than the spiders moved in eerie unison,
forward into the water with four splashes. The cask had now drifted a few feet to
Jean and Bug’s right; one black shape actually passed beneath it. Multiple black legs
speared upward out of the water, flailing for purchase; Bug cried out in mingled disgust
and horror. Jean lunged forward, striking out with each hatchet in rapid downward
strokes. Two spider limbs opened with stomach-turning cracking noises, spurting dark
blue blood. Jean leapt backward.
The two uninjured spiders pulled themselves up out of the water a few seconds ahead
of their wounded brethren and rushed Jean, their barbed feet rasping against the wet
stone blocks beneath them. Realizing he would be dangerously overbalanced if he attempted
to swing on both at once, Jean opted for a more disgusting plan of action.
The Wicked Sister in his right hand arced downward viciously, splitting the rightmost
salt devil’s head between its symmetrical rows of black eyes. Its legs spasmed in
its death reflex, and Bug actually dropped his
alchemical globe, so quickly did he leap backward. Jean used the momentum of his right-hand
swing to raise his left leg up off the ground; the left-hand spider reared up with
its fangs spread just as he brought his boot heel down on what he supposed was its
face. Its eyes cracked like jellied fruit, and Jean shoved downward with all his might,
feeling as though he was stomping on a sack of wet leathers.
Warm blood soaked his boot as he pulled it free, and now the wounded spiders were
scuttling up right behind their fallen counterparts, hissing and clicking in anger.
One shoved its way in front of the other and lunged at Jean, legs wide, head up to
bare its curving fangs. Jean brought both the Sisters down in a hammer blow, blade
sides reversed, smashing the spider’s head down into the wet stones and stopping it
in its tracks. Ichor spurted; Jean felt it spattering his neck and forehead, and did
his best to ignore it.
One damn monster left. Incensed at the delay they’d caused him, Jean bellowed and
leapt into the air. Arms spread, he landed with both of his feet in the middle of
the last creature’s carapace. It exploded wetly beneath him, folding the flailing
legs up at an unnatural angle. They beat their last few pulses of life against his
legs as he ground in his heels, growling.
“Gah!” cried Bug, who’d gotten a good soaking from something blue and previously circulating
through a salt devil; Jean didn’t waste a second in tossing the boy one of his gore-soaked
Sisters before jumping down into the water once again. The cask had floated about
ten feet farther south; Jean splashed frantically toward it and secured it with his
left hand. Then he began to piston his right arm up and down, hacking at the wood
of the barrel’s cover with his hatchet.
“Bug,” he cried, “kindly make sure there aren’t any more of those damn things creeping
up on us!”
There was a splash behind Jean as Bug hopped back into the waterway. A few seconds
later the boy came up beside the cask and steadied it with his own thin arms. “None
that I can see, Jean. Hurry.”
“I am”—crack, crack, crack—“fucking hurrying.” His hatchet blade bit through the wood
at last; horse urine poured out into the water and Bug gagged. Working furiously,
Jean widened the hole, then managed to pry off the end of the cask entirely. A wave
of the foul yellow-slick stuff swept out across his chest. Tossing his hatchet away
without a further thought, he reached inside and tugged out the motionless body of
Locke Lamora.
Jean checked him frantically for cuts, slashes, or raised purple welts; his neck seemed
to be quite intact.
Jean heaved Locke rather ungently up onto the stone walkway beside the dead spiders,
some parts of which were still twitching, then pushed himself up out of the water
to crouch beside Locke. He wrenched off Locke’s mantle and cloak; Bug appeared at
his side just in time to yank them away and toss them in the water. Jean tore open
Locke’s gray vest and began thumping on his chest.
“Bug,” he gasped. “Bug! Get up here and push his legs in for me. His warm humors are
all snuffed out. Let’s get a rhythm going and maybe we can rekindle them. Gods, if
he lives I swear I’ll get ten books on physik and memorize every single one.”
Bug clambered out of the water and began pumping Locke’s legs, moving them in and
out one at a time, while Jean alternately pressed on Locke’s stomach, pounded on his
chest, and slapped him on the cheeks. “Come on, gods damn it,” Jean muttered. “Be
stubborn, you skinny little—”
Locke’s back arched convulsively, and harsh wet coughing noises exploded out of his
throat; his hands scrabbled weakly at the stone, and he rolled over onto his left
side. Jean sat back and sighed with relief, oblivious to the puddle of spider blood
he’d settled into.
Locke vomited into the water, retched and shuddered, then vomited again. Bug knelt
beside him, steadying him by the shoulders. For several minutes, Locke lay there shaking,
breathing heavily and coughing.
“Oh, gods,” he said at last in a small hoarse voice. “Oh, gods. My eyes. I can barely
see. Is that water?”
“Yes, running water.” Jean reached over and took one of Locke’s arms.
“Then get me in there. Thirteen gods, get this foulness
off
me.”
Locke rolled into the canal with a splash before Jean or Bug could even move to assist
him; he dunked his head beneath the dark stream several times, then began tearing
off his remaining clothes, until he was wearing nothing but a white undertunic and
his gray breeches.
“Better?” asked Jean.
“I suppose I must be.” Locke retched again. “My eyes sting, my nose and throat burn,
my chest hurts, I’ve got a pounding black headache the size of Therim Pel, I got slapped
around by the entire Barsavi family, I’m covered in horse piss, and it looks like
the Gray King just did something pretty clever at our expense.” He set his head against
the edge of the stone pathway and coughed a few more times. When he raised his head
again, he noticed the spider carcasses for the first time and jerked backward. “Ugh.
Gods. Looks like there’s things I’ve missed, too.”
“Salt devils,” said Jean. “A whole pack of them, working together. They came on looking
for a fight. Suicidal, like.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Locke.
“One thing could explain it,” Jean replied.
“A conspiracy of the gods,” Locke muttered. “Oh.
Sorcery
.”
“Yes, that bloody Bondsmage. If he can tame a scorpion hawk, he could—”
“But what if it’s just this place?” interrupted Bug. “You’ve heard the stories.”
“No need to fret about stories,” said Locke, “when there’s a live mage known to have
it in for us. Jean’s right. I didn’t get stuffed in that barrel as a criticism of
my playacting, and those biting bitches weren’t here for a rest holiday. You were
both meant to be dead as well, or if not dead—”
“Scared off,” said Jean. “Distracted. The better for you to drown.”
“Seems plausible.” Locke rubbed at his stinging eyes once again. “Amazing how every
time I think my tolerance for this affair has reached a final low, I find something
new to hate. Calo and Galdo … we need to get to them.”
“They could be in a world of shit,” agreed Jean.
“They already are, but we’ll face it better once we’re back together.”
Locke attempted to heave himself up out of the water and failed. Jean reached down
and pulled him up by the collar of his tunic. Locke nodded his thanks and slowly stood
up, shaking. “I’m afraid my strength seems to have fled. I’m sorry, Jean.”
“Don’t be. You’ve taken a hell of a lot of abuse tonight. I’m just pleased we broke
you out of that thing before it was too late.”
“I’m indebted to the pair of you, believe me. That was … It would have been …” Locke
shuddered and coughed again. “It was pretty gods-damned awful.”
“I can only suppose,” said Jean. “Shall we go?”
“With all haste. Back out the way you two came in, quietly. Barsavi’s crowd may still
be in the area. And keep your eyes open for, ah, birds.”
“Too right. We came in through a sort of crawlway, western canal-side.” Jean slapped
his forehead and looked around. “Damn me, I’ve mislaid the Sisters.”
“Never fear,” said Bug, holding them up. “I figured you’d want them back, so I kept
a watch on them.”
“Much obliged, Bug,” said Jean. “I’m of a mind to use them on some people before this
night is done.”
RUSTWATER WAS as dead as ever when they snuck out the crawlway and scrabbled up onto
the canal bank just to the west of the Echo Hole. Barsavi’s procession had vanished.
And although the three Gentlemen Bastards crouched low and scanned the occulted sky
for any hint of a swooping hawk, they caught not a glimpse.
“Let’s make for Coalsmoke,” said Locke. “Past Beggar’s Barrow. We can steal a boat
and slip home through the culvert.” The drainage culvert on the south side of the
Temple District, just beneath the House of Perelandro, had a concealed slide mechanism
within the cage that covered it from the outside. The Gentlemen Bastards could open
it at will to come and go quietly.
“Good idea,” said Jean. “I’m not comfortable being about on the streets and bridges.”
They crept south, grateful for the low, warm mists that swirled around them. Jean
had his hatchets out and was moving his head from side to side, watchful as a cat
on a swaying clothesline. He led them over a bridge, with Locke constantly stumbling
and falling behind, then down the southeastern shore of the Quiet. Here the lightless
black heap of Beggar’s Barrow loomed in the mists to their left, and the wet stink
of pauper’s graves filled the air.
“Not a watchman,” whispered Locke. “Not a Shades’ Hill boy or girl. Not a soul. Even
for this neighborhood, that’s damn peculiar.”
“Has anything about tonight been right yet?” Jean set as rapid a pace as he could,
and they soon crossed another bridge, south into Coalsmoke. Locke labored to keep
up, clutching his aching stomach and ribs. Bug brought up their rear, constantly peering
over his shoulder.
On the northeastern edge of Coalsmoke there was a line of weathered docks, sagging
stairs, and crumbling stone quays. All the larger, nicer boats and barges were locked
and chained, but a few small cockleshells bobbed here and there, secured by nothing
more than rope. In a city full of such little boats, no sane thief would bother stealing
one—most of the time.
They clambered into the first one that chanced to have an oar; Locke collapsed at
the stern, while Bug took up the oar and Jean cast off the rope.
“Thank you, Bug.” Jean squeezed himself down into the wet bottom of the little wooden
craft; all three of them made for a tight fit. “I’ll trade off with you in just a
bit.”