Authors: Scott Lynch
“Um … what do you steal with, Father Chains?”
The bearded priest tapped two fingers against the side of his head, then grinned widely.
“Brains and a big mouth, my boy, brains and a big mouth. I planted my ass here thirteen
years ago, and the pious suckers of Camorr have been feeding me coins ever since.
Plus I’m famous from Emberlain to Tal Verrar, which is pleasant, though mostly I like
the cold coinage.”
“Isn’t it uncomfortable?” Locke asked, looking around at the sad innards of the temple.
“Living here, never going out?”
Chains chuckled. “This shabby little backstage is no more the full extent of my temple
than your old home was really a graveyard. We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora.
Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false
face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.”
“Then … you’re like … teasers.”
“Perhaps, in the sense that a barrel of fire-oil is akin to a pinch of red pepper.
And that’s why I paid for you, my boy, though you lack the good sense the gods gave
a carrot. You lie like a floor tapestry. You’re more crooked than an acrobat’s spine.
I could really make something of you, if I decided I could trust you.”
His searching eyes rested once more on Locke, and the boy guessed that he was supposed
to say something.
“I’d like that,” he whispered. “What do I do?”
“You can start by talking. I want to hear about what you did at Shades’ Hill; the
shit you pulled to get your former master angry at you.”
“But … you said you already knew everything.”
“I do. But I want to hear it from you, plain and clear, and I want it right the first
time, with no backtracking or parts left out. If you try to conceal anything that
I know you should be mentioning, I’ll have no choice but to consider you a worthless
waste of my trust—and you’re already wearing my response around your neck.”
“Then where,” said Locke with only a slight catch in his voice, “do I start?”
“We can begin with your most recent transgressions. There’s one law that the brothers
and sisters of Shades’ Hill must never break, but your former master told me that
you broke it twice and thought you were clever enough to get away with it.”
Locke’s cheeks turned bright red, and he stared down at his fingers.
“Tell me, Locke. The Thiefmaker said you arranged the murders of two other Shades’
Hill boys, and that he didn’t pick up on your involvement until the second was already
done.” Chains steepled his fingers before his face and gazed calmly at the boy with
the death-mark around his neck. “I want to know why you killed them, and I want to
know how you killed them, and I want to hear it from your own lips.
Right now
.”
“Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile
And cry ‘Content’ to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.”
King Henry VI
, Part III
LOCKE LAMORA’S RULE of thumb was this: a good confidence game took three months to
plan, three weeks to rehearse, and three seconds to win or lose the victim’s trust
forever. This time around, he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.
Locke was on his knees, and Calo, standing behind him, had a hemp rope coiled three
times around his neck. The rough stuff
looked
impressive, and it would leave Locke’s throat a very credible shade of red. No genuine
Camorri assassin old enough to waddle in a straight line would garrote with anything
but silk or wire, of course (the better to crease the victim’s windpipe). Yet if Don
Lorenzo Salvara could tell a fake strangling from the real thing in the blink of an
eye at thirty paces, they’d badly misjudged the man they planned to rob and the whole
game would be shot anyway.
“Can you see him yet? Or Bug’s signal?” Locke hissed his question as lightly as he
could, then made a few impressive gurgling sounds.
“No signal. No Don Salvara. Can you breathe?”
“Fine, just fine,” Locke whispered, “but shake me some more. That’s the convincer.”
They were in the dead-end alley beside the old Temple of Fortunate Waters; the temple’s
prayer waterfalls could be heard gushing somewhere
behind the high plaster wall. Locke clutched once again at the harmless coils of rope
circling his neck and spared a glance for the horse staring at him from just a few
paces away, laden down with a rich-looking cargo of merchant’s packs. The poor dumb
animal was Gentled; there was neither curiosity nor fear behind the milk-white shells
of its unblinking eyes. It wouldn’t have cared even had the strangling been real.
Precious seconds passed; the sun was high and bright in a sky scalded free of clouds,
and the grime of the alley clung like wet cement to the legs of Locke’s breeches.
Nearby, Jean Tannen lay in the same moist muck while Galdo pretended (mostly) to kick
his ribs in. He’d been merrily kicking away for at least a minute, just as long as
his twin brother had supposedly been strangling Locke.
Don Salvara was supposed to pass the mouth of the alley at any second and, ideally,
rush in to rescue Locke and Jean from their “assailants.” At this rate, he would end
up rescuing them from boredom.
“Gods,” Calo whispered, bending his mouth to Locke’s ear as though he might be hissing
some demand, “where the hell is that damn Salvara? And where’s Bug? We can’t keep
this shit up all day; other people
do
walk by the mouth of this damned alley!”
“Keep strangling me,” Locke whispered. “Just think of twenty thousand full crowns
and keep strangling me. I can choke all day if I have to.”
EVERYTHING HAD gone beautifully that morning in the run-up to the game itself, even
allowing for the natural prickliness of a young thief finally allowed a part in his
first big score.
“Of course I know where I’m supposed to be when the action starts,” Bug whined. “I’ve
spent more time perched up on that temple roof than I did in my mother’s gods-damned
womb!”
Jean Tannen let his right hand trail in the warm water of the canal while he took
another bite of the sour marsh apple held in his left. The forward gunwale of the
flat-bottomed barge was a choice spot for relaxation in the watered-wine light of
early morning, allowing all sixteen stone of Jean’s frame to sprawl comfortably—keg
belly, heavy arms, bandy legs, and all. The only other person (and the one doing all
of the work) in the empty barge was Bug: a lanky, mop-headed twelve-year-old braced
against the steering pole at the stern.
“Your mother was in an understandable hurry to get rid of you, Bug.”
Jean’s voice was soft and even and wildly incongruous. He spoke like a teacher of
music or a copier of scrolls. “We’re not. So indulge me once more with proof of your
penetrating comprehension of our game.”
“Dammit,” Bug replied, giving the barge another push against the gentle current of
the seaward-flowing canal. “You and Locke and Calo and Galdo are down in the alley
between Fortunate Waters and the gardens for the Temple of Nara, right? I’m up on
the roof of the temple across the way.”
“Go on,” Jean said around a mouthful of marsh apple. “Where’s Don Salvara?”
Other barges, heavily laden with everything from ale casks to bleating cows, were
slipping past the two of them on the clay-colored water of the canal. Bug was poling
them north along Camorr’s main commercial waterway, the Via Camorrazza, toward the
Shifting Market, and the city was lurching into life around them.
The leaning gray tenements of water-slick stone were spitting their inhabitants out
into the sunlight and the rising summer warmth. The month was Parthis, meaning that
the night-sweat of condensation already boiling off the buildings as a soupy mist
would be greatly missed by the cloudless white heat of early afternoon.
“He’s coming out of the Temple of Fortunate Waters, like he does every Penance Day
right around noon. He’s got two horses and one man with him, if we’re lucky.”
“A curious ritual,” Jean said. “Why would he do a thing like that?”
“Deathbed promise to his mother.” Bug drove his pole down into the canal, struggled
against it for a moment, and managed to shove them along once more. “She kept the
Vadran religion after she married the old Don Salvara. So he leaves an offering at
the Vadran temple once a week and gets home as fast as he can so nobody pays too much
attention to him. Dammit, Jean, I already know this shit. Why would I be here if you
didn’t trust me? And why am
I
the one who gets to push this stupid barge all the way to the market?”
“Oh, you can stop poling the barge any time you can beat me hand to hand three falls
out of five.” Jean grinned, showing two rows of crooked brawler’s teeth in a face
that looked as though someone had set it on an anvil and tried to pound it into a
more pleasing shape. “Besides, you’re an apprentice in a proud trade, learning under
the finest and most demanding masters it has to offer. Getting all the shit-work is
excellent for your moral education.”
“You haven’t given me any bloody moral education.”
“Yes. Well, that’s probably because Locke and I have been dodging our own for most
of our lives now. As for why we’re going over the plan again, let me remind you that
one good screwup will make the fate of those poor bastards look sunny in comparison
to what we’ll get.”
Jean pointed at one of the city’s slop wagons, halted on a canal-side boulevard to
receive a long dark stream of night soil from the upper window of a public alehouse.
These wagons were crewed by petty criminals whose offenses were too meager to justify
continual incarceration in the Palace of Patience. Shackled to their wagons and huddled
in the alleged protection of long leather ponchos, they were let out each morning
to enjoy what sun they could when they weren’t cursing the dubious accuracy with which
several thousand Camorri emptied their chamber pots.
“I won’t screw it up, Jean.” Bug shook his thoughts like an empty coin purse, searching
desperately for something to say that would make him sound as calm and assured as
he imagined Jean and all the older Gentlemen Bastards always were—but the mouth of
most twelve-year-olds far outpaces the mind. “I just won’t, I bloody
won’t
, I promise.”
“Good lad,” Jean said. “Glad to hear it. But just
what
is it that you won’t screw up?”
Bug sighed. “I make the signal when Salvara’s on his way out of the Temple of Fortunate
Waters. I keep an eye out for anyone else trying to walk past the alley, especially
the city watch. If anybody tries it, I jump down from the temple roof with a longsword
and cut their bloody heads off where they stand.”
“You what?”
“I said I distract them any way I can. You going deaf, Jean?”
A line of tall countinghouses slid past on their left, each displaying lacquered woodwork,
silk awnings, marble facades, and other ostentatious touches along the waterfront.
There were deep roots of money and power sunk into that row of three- and four-story
buildings. Coin-Kisser’s Row was the oldest and goldest financial district on the
continent. The place was as steeped in influence and elaborate rituals as the glass
heights of the Five Towers, in which the duke and the Grand Families sequestered themselves
from the city they ruled.
“Move us up against the bank just under the bridges, Bug.” Jean gestured vaguely with
his apple. “His Nibs will be waiting to come aboard.”
Two Elderglass arches bridged the Via Camorrazza right in the middle of Coin-Kisser’s
Row—a high and narrow catbridge for foot traffic and a lower, wider one for wagons.
The seamless brilliance of the alien glass
looked like nothing so much as liquid diamond, gently arched by giant hands and left
to harden over the canal. On the right bank was the Fauria, a crowded island of multitiered
stone apartments and rooftop gardens. Wooden wheels churned white against the stone
embankment, drawing canal water up into a network of troughs and viaducts that crisscrossed
over the Fauria’s streets at every level.
Bug slid the barge over to a rickety quay just beneath the catbridge; from the faint
and slender shadow of this arch a man jumped down to the quay, dressed (as Bug and
Jean were) in oil-stained leather breeches and a rough cotton shirt. His next nonchalant
leap took him into the barge, which barely rocked at his arrival.
“Salutations to you, Master Jean Tannen, and profuse congratulations on the fortuitous
timing of your arrival!” said the newcomer.
“Ah, well, felicitations to you in respect of the superlative grace of your entry
into our very humble boat, Master Lamora.” Jean punctuated this statement by popping
the remains of his apple into his mouth, stem and all, and producing a wet crunching
noise.
“Creeping shits, man.” Locke Lamora stuck out his tongue. “Must you do that? You know
the black alchemists make fish poison from the seeds of those damn things.”
“Lucky me,” said Jean after swallowing the last bit of masticated pulp, “not being
a fish.”
Locke was a medium man in every respect—medium height, medium build, medium-dark hair
cropped short above a face that was neither handsome nor memorable. He looked like
a proper Therin, though perhaps a bit less olive and ruddy than Jean or Bug; in another
light he might have passed for a very tan Vadran. His bright gray eyes alone had any
sense of distinction; he was a man the gods might have shaped deliberately to be overlooked.
He settled down against the left-hand gunwale and crossed his legs.
“Hello to you as well, Bug! I knew we could count on you to take pity on your elders
and let them rest in the sun while you do the hard work with the pole.”
“Jean’s a lazy old bastard is what it is,” Bug said. “And if I don’t pole the barge,
he’ll knock my teeth out the back of my head.”