Authors: Scott Lynch
“Right. Does he strike you as a sloppy operator?”
“No.” Locke rubbed his hands together. “No, everything he did seemed to me to be as
intricate as Verrari clockwork.”
“Yet he sent only one man down into the burrow.”
“Yes—the Sanzas were already dead, I was thought to be dead, you walked into another
trap set by the Bondsmage, and it would have been a crossbow quarrel for Bug. Deftly
done. Quick and cruel.”
“But why not send two men? Why not three? To bury us so viciously, why not be
absolutely
sure of the issue?” Jean gave the water a few gentle strokes to hold their position
against the current. “I cannot believe he suddenly became lazy, at the very culmination
of his scheme.”
“Perhaps,” said Locke, “perhaps … he needed what other men he had elsewhere, very
badly. Perhaps one was all he could spare.” Locke gasped and slammed his right fist
into the open palm of his left hand. “Perhaps we weren’t the culmination of his scheme
after all.”
“What, then?”
“Not what,
who
.” Locke sat up and groaned, his head swimming. “Who has he been attacking all these
months? Jean, Barsavi believes the Gray King to be dead. So now what will
he
do tonight?”
“He … he’ll throw a revel. Just like he used to do on the Day of Changes. He’ll celebrate.”
“At the Floating Grave,” said Locke. “He’ll throw the doors open, haul
in casks—gods, real ones this time. He’ll summon his whole court. All the Right People,
drunk three deep along the causeway and the wharfs of the Wooden Waste. Just like
the good old days.”
“So the Gray King faked his own death to lure Barsavi into throwing a revel?”
“It’s not the revel,” said Locke. “It’s … it’s the people. All the Right People. That’s
it; gods, that’s it! Barsavi will appear before his people tonight for the first time
in months. Do you understand? All the gangs, all the
garristas
will witness anything that happens there.”
“Which does what for the Gray King?”
“The fucker has a flair for the dramatic. I’d say Barsavi’s in a heap of shit. Row,
Jean. Get me down to the Cauldron right now. I can cross to the Waste myself. I need
to be at the Floating Grave, with haste.”
“Have you lost your mind? If the Gray King and his men are still prowling, they’ll
kill you for sure. And if Barsavi sees you, you’re supposed to be nearly dead of a
stomach flux! You
are
nearly dead of more than that!”
“They won’t see Locke Lamora,” said Locke, fumbling with some of the items he’d managed
to salvage from the Masque Box. He held a false beard up to his chin and grinned.
“My hair’s going to be gray for a few days, since the removal salve is burning up
as we speak. I’ll throw on some soot and put up the hood, and I’ll be just another
skinny nobody with bruises all over his face, come looking for some free wine from
the Capa.”
“You should rest; you’ve had your life damn near pounded out of you. You’re a complete
mess.”
“I ache in places I didn’t previously realize I owned,” said Locke, gingerly applying
adhesive paste to his chin with his fingers. “But it can’t be helped. This is all
the disguise gear we have left; we’ve got no money, no wardrobe, no more temple, no
more friends. And
you
only have a few hours, at best, to go to ground and find us a place to stay before
the Gray King’s men realize one of their number is missing.”
“But still—”
“I’m half your size, Jean. You can’t pamper me now. I can go unseen; you’ll be obvious
as the rising sun. My suggestion is that you find a hovel in Ashfall, clear out the
rats, and leave some of our signs in the area. Just scrawl soot on the walls. I’ll
find you when I’m done.”
“But—”
“Jean, you wanted the Thorn of Camorr. Well, you’ve got him.” Locke jammed the false
beard onto his chin and pressed until the adhesive ceased
tingling, letting him know that it was dry. “Take me to the Cauldron and let me off.
For Calo, Galdo, and Bug, if not for me! Something’s about to happen at the Floating
Grave, and I need to see what it is. Everything that bastard has done to us comes
down to the next few hours—if it isn’t happening already.”
IT COULD be said, with several levels of truthful meaning, that Vencarlo Barsavi outdid
himself with the celebration for his victory over the murderer of his daughter.
The Floating Grave was thrown open. The guards remained at their posts, but discipline
slackened agreeably. Huge alchemical lanterns were hauled up under the silk awnings
on the topmost decks of the harbor-locked galleon; they lit up the Wooden Waste beneath
the dark sky and shone like beacons through the fog.
Runners were sent out to the Last Mistake for food and wine. The tavern was rapidly
emptied of all its edibles, most of its casks, and every single one of its patrons.
They streamed toward the Wooden Waste, drunk or sober, united in curious expectation.
The guards on the quay eyed the guests pouring in but did little else. Men and women
without obvious weapons concealed beneath their clothes were passed through without
so much as a cursory search. Flush with victory, the capa had decided to be magnanimous
in more ways than one. This was to Locke’s benefit; hooded and bearded and thoroughly
begrimed, he slipped in with a huge crowd of Cauldron cutthroats making their rowdy
way across the walkway to Barsavi’s galleon, lit like a pleasure galley from some
romantic tale of the pashas of the Bronze Sea.
The Floating Grave was packed with men and women. Capa Barsavi sat on his raised chair,
surrounded by all of his inner circle: his red-faced, shouting sons; his most powerful
surviving
garristas
; his quiet, watchful Berangias twins. Locke had to push and shove and utter curses
to make his way into the heart of the fortress. He nudged himself into a corner near
the main doors to the ballroom and watched the affair from this position, aching and
uncomfortable but grateful just to be able to claim a vantage point.
The balconies were spilling over with toughs from all the gangs in Camorr—the rowdiness
was growing by the minute. The heat was
incredible, and the smell; Locke felt pressed against the wall by the weight of odors.
Wet wool and sweated-through cotton, wine and wine breath, hair oils and leather.
It was just past the first hour of the morning when Barsavi suddenly rose from his
chair and held up a single hand.
Attentiveness spread outward like a wave. Right People nudged one another into silence
and pointed to the capa. It took less than a minute for the echoing chaos of the celebration
to peter down to a soft murmur. Barsavi nodded appreciatively.
“I trust we’re enjoying ourselves?”
There was a general outburst of cheers, applause, and foot-stomping. Locke privately
wondered how wise that really was in a ship of any sort. He was careful to applaud
along with the crowd.
“Feels marvelous to be out from under a cloud, doesn’t it?”
Another cheer; Locke scratched at his temporary beard, now damp with sweat. There
was a sudden sharp pain in his stomach, right where one of the younger Barsavis had
given him particular consideration with a fist. The heat and the smell were triggering
strange tickly feelings of nausea in the back of his throat, and he’d had enough of
that particular sensation to last the rest of his life. Sourly, he coughed into his
hands and prayed for just a few more hours of strength.
One of the Berangias sisters stepped over beside the capa, her shark’s-teeth bangles
shining in the light of the hall’s chandeliers, and whispered into his ear. He listened
for a few seconds, and then he smiled.
“Cheryn,” he shouted, “proposes that I allow her and her sister to entertain us. Shall
I?”
The answering cheer was twice as forceful (and twice as genuine, to Locke’s ears)
as anything yet heard. The wooden walls reverberated with it, and Locke flinched.
“Let’s have a teeth show, then!”
All was chaos for the next few minutes. Dozens of Barsavi’s people pushed revelers
back, clearing an area at the center of the floor about ten yards on a side. Revelers
were pressed up the stairs until the balconies creaked beneath their weight; observation
holes were cranked open so those on the top deck could peer down at the proceedings.
Locke was pushed back into his corner more firmly than ever.
Men with hooked poles drew up the wooden panels of the floor, revealing the dark water
of Camorr Bay. A thrill of anticipation and alarm passed through the crowd at the
thought of what might be swimming
down there.
The unquiet spirits of eight Full Crowns, for one thing
, thought Locke.
As the final panels in the center of the opening square were removed, almost everyone
present could see the little support platforms on which they’d rested, not one wider
than a man’s hand-spread. They were spaced about five feet apart. Barsavi’s arena
for his own private teeth shows—a challenge for any
contrarequialla
, even a pair as experienced as the Berangias sisters.
Cheryn and Raiza, old hands at teasing a crowd, were stripping out of their leather
doublets, bracers, and collars. They took their graceful time while the capa’s subjects
hooted approval, hoisted cups and glasses, and in some cases even shouted unlikely
propositions.
Anjais hurried forward with a little packet of alchemical powders in his hands. He
dumped this into the water, then took a prudent step back. This was the “summons”—a
potent mix of substances that would rouse the shark’s ire and maintain it for the
duration of the contest. Blood in the water could attract and enrage a shark, but
the summons would make it utterly drunk with the urge to attack—to leap, thrash, and
roll at the women jumping back and forth across their little platforms.
The Berangias sisters stepped forward to nearly the edge of the artificial pool, holding
their traditional weapons: the pick-head axes and the short javelins. Anjais and Pachero
stood behind them and just to their left; the Capa remained standing by his chair,
clapping his hands and grinning broadly.
A black fin broke the surface of the pool; a tail thrashed. There was a brief splash
of water, and the electric atmosphere of the crowd intensified. Locke could feel it
washing over him—lust and fear entwined, a powerful, animalistic sensation. The crowd
had backed off about two yards from any edge of the pool, but still some in the front
ranks were shaking nervously, and a few were trying to push their way farther back
through the crowd, to the delight and derision of those around them.
In truth, the shark couldn’t have been longer than five or six feet; some of those
used at the Shifting Revel reached twice that length. Still, a fish like that could
easily maim on the leap, and if it dragged a person down into the water with it, well,
raw size would mean little in such an uneven contest.
The Berangias sisters threw up their arms, then turned as one to the capa. The sister
on the right—Raiza? Cheryn? Locke had never learned the trick of telling them apart.… And
at the thought his heart ached for
the Sanzas. Playing deftly to the crowd, Barsavi put up his hands and looked around
at his court. When they cheered him on, he stepped down between the ladies and received
a kiss on the cheek from each of them.
The water stirred just before the three of them; a sleek black shadow swept past the
edge of the pool, then dove down into the lightless depths. Locke could feel five
hundred hearts skip a beat, and the breath in five hundred throats catch. His own
concentration seemed to peak, and he caught every detail of that moment as though
it were frozen before him, from the eager smile on Barsavi’s round red face to the
rippling reflection of chandelier light on the water.
“Camorr!” cried the Berangias sister to the capa’s right. Again, the noise of the
crowd died, this time as though one gigantic windpipe had been slit. Five hundred
pairs of eyes were fixed on the capa and his bodyguards.
“We dedicate this death,” she continued, “to Capa Vencarlo Barsavi, our lord and patron!”
“Well does he deserve it,” said the other.
The shark exploded out of the pool immediately before them—a sleek dark devilish thing,
with black lidless eyes and white teeth gaping. A ten-foot fountain of water rose
up with it, and it half somersaulted in midair, falling forward, falling …
Directly atop Capa Barsavi.
Barsavi put up his arms to shield himself; the shark came down with its mouth wide
open around one of them. The fish’s muscle-heavy body slammed hard against the wood
floor, yanking Barsavi down with it. Those implacable jaws squeezed tight, and the
capa screamed as blood gushed from just beneath his right shoulder, running out across
the floor and down the shark’s blunt snout.
His sons dashed forward to his aid. The Berangias sister to the right looked down
at the shark, shifted her weight fluidly to a fighting stance, raised her gleaming
axe, and whirled with all the strength of her upper body behind the blow.
Her blade smashed Pachero Barsavi’s head just above his left ear; the tall man’s optics
flew off and he staggered forward, his skull caved in, dead before his knees hit the
deck.
The crowd screamed and surged, and Locke prayed to the Benefactor to preserve him
long enough to make sense of whatever happened next.
Anjais gaped at his struggling father and his falling brother. Before he could utter
a single word the other Berangias stepped up behind him,
reached around to press her javelin shaft up beneath his chin, and buried the spike
of her axe in the back of his head. He spat blood and toppled forward, unmoving.
The shark writhed and tore at the capa’s right arm, while he screamed and beat at
its snout until his left hand was scraped bloody by the creature’s abrasive skin.
With a final sickening wrench, the shark tore his right arm completely off and slid
backward into the water, leaving a broad red streak on the wooden deck behind it.
Barsavi rolled away, spraying blood from the stump of his arm, staring at the bodies
of his sons in uncomprehending terror. He tried to stumble up.