Authors: Scott Lynch
“Why, yes,” said Don Lorenzo.
“Your servant, my lord and lady. My name is Stephen Reynart; Doña Vorchenza, I believe,
should have mentioned me to you.”
“Oh, of course!” Doña Sofia held out her hand; Reynart bent at the waist with his
right foot forward, took her hand, and kissed the air just
above it. “So pleased to make your acquaintance at last, Captain Reynart. And how
is dear Doña Vorchenza this afternoon?”
“She is
knitting
, my lady,” said Reynart, with a smirk that told of some private joke. “She has commandeered
one of the duke’s sitting rooms for herself; you know how she feels about large, noisy
gatherings.”
“I must, of course, find her,” said Sofia. “I should love to see her.”
“I’m sure the feeling will be mutual, my lady. But may I presume? Is this Master Fehrwight,
the merchant of Emberlain I was told you would be bringing?” Reynart bowed again,
just the neck this time, and in heavily accented Vadran he said, “May the Marrows
run sweet and the seas run calm, Master Fehrwight.”
“May the Hands Beneath the Waves carry you to good fortune,” Locke replied in his
own much smoother Vadran, genuinely surprised. He switched back to Therin for the
sake of politeness. “One of my countrymen, Captain Reynart? In the service of the
duke of Camorr? How fascinating!”
“I am most definitely of the Vadran blood,” said Reynart, “but my parents died when
I was an infant, on a trading mission to this city. I was adopted and raised by Doña
Vorchenza, the countess of Amberglass—the bright golden tower over there. She had
no children of her own. Although I cannot inherit her title and her properties, I
have been allowed to serve in the duke’s Nightglass Company.”
“Astonishing! I must say, you look exceedingly formidable—the image of the kings of
the Marrows themselves. I’d wager the duke is only too pleased to have you in his
service.”
“I hope with all my heart for that to be true, Master Fehrwight. But come; I’m holding
you up. I beg pardon, my lord and lady Salvara; I am hardly a worthy topic of conversation.
Let me show you into the tower, by your leave.”
“By all means,” said Sofia. She leaned close to Locke’s ear and whispered, “Doña Vorchenza
is a dear old thing, something like a grandmother to all of us Alcegrante ladies.
She is the arbiter of all our gossip, you might say. She is not well—she is more and
more distant with every passing month—but she is still very close to us. I hope you
will have the chance to make her acquaintance.”
“I shall look forward to it, my lady Salvara.”
Reynart ushered them into the tower of Raven’s Reach itself, and the sight that met
Locke’s eyes drew an unwilling gasp from his mouth.
From the outside, Raven’s Reach was opaque silver. From the inside, at least on the
levels he could see, it was nearly transparent. A smoky haze seemed to live within
the glass, cutting out the glare of the sun, reducing it to a plain white circle overhead
that the naked eye could easily bear to regard. But in all other ways it let in the
view as though it were not there at all. The hilly countryside and the wide Angevine
lay to the north, while all the islands of the lower city lay spread like illustrations
on a map to the south. Locke could even make out the thin black shapes of ships’ masts
bobbing past the southern edge of the city. His stomach fluttered with the thrill
of vertigo.
On the level of the tower just above them, the Sky Garden began; there were said to
be a hundred tons of rich earth in the pots and troughs atop that roof. Vines cascaded
down the sides; well-tended bushes and fullsized trees sprouted from the apex of the
tower—a little round forest in miniature. In the branches of one of those trees, facing
south to the Iron Sea, was a wooden chair that was regarded as the very highest point
in Camorr any sane person could reach. The Sky Garden would be full of children; it
was where all the youngest nobles would be released to amuse themselves while their
parents tended to the business of the court beneath their feet.
The floor they stood on did not cover the full hundred-foot width of the tower; it
was a hemisphere, covering only the north half of the tower’s diameter. Locke grasped
a rail at the southern edge of the floor and looked down; there were four other hemispherical
galleries beneath them, each about twenty feet below the one above, and each one full
of men and women. The vertigo threatened to swallow him again. Staring down at least
eighty feet to “ground,” with the transparent side of the tower and that mind-twisting
southern view spread out before him, he felt almost as though the world were tilting
on its axis. The hand of Don Salvara on his shoulder brought him back to the present.
“You’ve got Raven’s Reach disease, Lukas,” the don laughed. “You’re clutching that
rail like a lover. Come have some refreshments; your eyes will sort out the views
in time, and it will all come to seem perfectly normal.”
“Oh, my lord Salvara, if only that should prove to be the case! But I would be glad
to visit the banquet tables.”
The don led him through the press of silks and cottons and cashmeres and rare furs,
nodding here and waving there. Sofia had vanished, along with Reynart.
The banquet tables (or perhaps these were merely the appetizer tables; the light afternoon
refreshments at a feast like this could rival the main course from any lesser occasion)
were laid out with silver-trimmed linen cloths, fifty feet from end to end. Guild
Chefs—the masters of the Eight Beautiful Arts of Camorr—stood at attention in their
cream-yellow ceremonial robes and black scholars’ caps with hanging gold cords behind
their ears. Each chef, male or female, had intricate black tattoos on each of the
four fingers of their hands; every design representing mastery of one of the Eight
Gourmet Forms.
At one end of the banquet table were desserts (the Fifth Beautiful Art): cherry cream
cakes encased in shells of gold leaf that were intended to be eaten; cinnamon tarts
painstakingly assembled with honey-paste glue into the shape of sailing vessels, a
whole fleet of little ships with white marzipan sails and raisins for crewmen. There
were hollowed-out pears, their cores replaced with cylinders of river-melon fruit
or brandy creams; there were shaved river-melons, their green exteriors scraped down
to reveal the pink flesh inside. Every exposed pink face bore a relief sculpture of
the crest of Camorr, and alchemical globes set within the melons made them glow with
an inviting pink light.
At the other end of the table were meats. Each one of the silver platters held a
phantasmavola
: an Impossible Dish, an imaginary animal formed by joining the halves of two separate
creatures during preparation and cooking. Locke saw a roast boar with the head of
a salmon, resting on a pile of black caviar. Nearby there was a pig’s head, complete
with a marsh apple in its mouth, with a roast capon for a body. The whole affair was
covered in brown caramel sauce and figs, and Locke gave in to the growling sensation
at the bottom of his stomach. He let one of the chefs slice him a fair portion of
the pig/capon, which he ate from a silver dish with a little silver fork; it came
apart in his mouth with the texture of butter, and the flavors set his head whirling.
He hadn’t tasted anything so magnificent in weeks, and he knew that it would have
taken all of his powers, with the help of the Sanza brothers at their peak, to prepare
something so fine in his old glass cellar. But that thought stole some of the savor
from his meal, and he finished quickly.
The bullock’s head with the body of a squid, he was happy to avoid.
At the center of the banquet tables was the crowning glory (of this particular level,
at least). It was a massively unsubtle subtlety, eight feet in length: an edible sculpture
of the city of Camorr. The islands were baked sweetbread on little raised metal platforms;
the channels between those
platforms ran deep with some blue liquor that was being ladled out in cups by a chef
at the right side of the diorama. Each major bridge in the city was represented by
a crystallized-sugar replica; each major Elderglass landmark was given a tiny analog,
from the Broken Tower in the south to the House of Glass Roses to the Five Towers
overlooking everything. Locke peered very closely. There was even a tiny frosted chocolate
galleon little bigger than an almond, floating on a brown pudding Wooden Waste.
“How are you faring, Lukas?”
Don Salvara was beside him again, wineglass in hand; a black-coated attendant plucked
Locke’s used dish from his fingers the moment he turned to speak to the don.
“I am overwhelmed,” said Locke, without much exaggeration. “I had no idea what to
expect. By the Marrows, perhaps it is well that I had no preconceptions. The court
of the king of the Marrows must be like this; I can think of nowhere else that would
possibly compare.”
“You honor our city with your kind thoughts,” said Lorenzo. “I’m
very
pleased you decided to join us; I’ve just been around chatting with a few of my peers.
I’ll have a serious talk with one of them in about an hour; I think he’ll be good
for about three thousand crowns. I hate to say it, but he’s rather malleable, and
he’s very fond of me.”
“Lukas,” cried Doña Sofia as she reappeared with Reynart at her heels, “is Lorenzo
showing you around properly?”
“My lady Salvara, I am quite astounded by the spectacle of this feast; I daresay your
husband could leave me sitting in a corner with my thumb in my mouth, and I would
be adequately entertained all evening.”
“I would do no such thing, of course,” laughed Don Salvara. “I was just off speaking
to Don Bellarigio, love; he’s here with that sculptor he’s been patronizing these
past few months, that Lashani fellow with the one eye.”
A team of liveried attendants walked past, four men carrying something heavy on a
wooden bier between them. The object was a gold-and-glass sculpture of some sort—a
gleaming pyramid crested with the arms of Camorr; it must have had alchemical lamps
within it, for the glass glowed a lovely shade of orange. As Locke watched, the color
shifted to green, and then to blue, and then to white, and back to orange again.
“Oh, how lovely!” Doña Sofia was clearly enamored with all things alchemical. “The
shifting hues! Oh, those adjustments must be precise; how I would love to see inside!
Tell me, can Don Bellarigio’s Lashani sculpt me one of
those
?”
Three more teams of men hauled three more sculptures past; each one shifted through
a slightly different pattern of changing colors.
“I don’t know,” said Reynart. “Those are gifts for the duke, from one of our … more
unusual guests. They’ve been cleared with my superiors; they certainly do look lovely.”
Locke turned back to the banquet table and suddenly found himself six feet away from
Giancana Meraggio, who had an orchid at his breast, a silver plate of fruit in one
hand, and a gorgeous young woman in a red gown on the other. Meraggio’s gaze passed
over Locke, then whirled back; those penetrating eyes fixed on him, and on the clothes
he wore. The master money-changer opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it,
and then opened it again.
“Sir,” said Meraggio in a cold voice, “I beg your pardon, but—”
“Why, Master Meraggio!” Don Salvara stepped up beside him. At the sight of a don,
Meraggio shut his mouth once again and bowed politely, from the waist, though not
very deeply.
“Don Salvara,” said Meraggio, “and the lovely Doña Sofia. What a pleasure to see you
both! Greetings to you as well, Captain Reynart.” He dismissed the tall Vadran from
his consideration with a shift of his head and peered at Locke again.
“Master Meraggio,” said Locke. “Why, what a fortunate coincidence! It is a pleasure
to meet you at last; I have looked for you at your countinghouse, many times, and
I am afraid I have never had a chance to pay my proper respects.”
“Indeed? Why, I was just about to ask … who might you be, sir?”
“Master Meraggio,” said Don Salvara, “allow me to present Lukas Fehrwight, merchant
of Emberlain, servant of the House of bel Auster. He has come down to discuss the
import of a certain quantity of small beer; I’d like to see how those Emberlain ales
fare against our native best. Lukas, this is the honorable Giancana Meraggio, master
of the countinghouse that bears his name, known by many as the Duke of White Iron,
for very good reason. All finance whirls around him like the constellations in the
sky.”
“Your servant, sir,” said Locke.
“Of Emberlain? Of the House of bel Auster?”
“Why yes,” said Doña Sofia, “he’s here at the feast as our special guest.”
“Master Meraggio,” said Locke, “I hope I do not presume too much, but do you find
the cut of my coat pleasing? And the fabric?”
“A singular question,” said Meraggio, scowling, “for both seem strangely familiar.”
“And well they should,” said Locke. “On the advice of the Salvaras, I secured for
myself a single suit of clothes cut in your Camorri style. I requested of the tailor
that he select a cut that was especially favored by the best-known taste in the entire
city. And who should he name but
yourself
, sir; this suit of clothes is fashioned after your
very own preferences
! I hope you will not find me forward if I say that I find it most excellently comfortable.”
“Oh, no,” said Meraggio, looking terribly confused. “Oh, no. Not too forward at all—very
flattering, sir, very flattering. I, um … I do not feel entirely well; the heat, you
see. I believe I shall avail myself of some of the punch from that subtlety. It was
a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master Fehrwight. If you will excuse me, Doña
Sofia, Don Lorenzo.”
Meraggio moved off, peering back over his shoulder at Locke and then shaking his head.
Oh, Crooked Warden
, thought Locke,
you’re one funny son of a bitch, aren’t you?