Authors: Scott Lynch
He was now dressed in a tightly buttoned black coat in the Emberlain style, almost
form-fitted from his shoulders down to his ribs, then flaring out widely at the waist.
Two black leather belts with polished silver buckles circled his stomach; three ruffled
layers of black silk cravats poured out of his collar and fluttered in the hot breeze.
He wore embroidered gray hose over thick-heeled sharkskin shoes with black ribbon
tongues that sprang somewhat ludicrously outward and hung over his feet with the drooping
curl of hothouse flowers. Sweat was already beading on his forehead like little diamonds—Camorr’s
summer did not reward the intrusion of fashions from a more northerly climate.
“My name,” said Locke Lamora, “is
Lukas Fehrwight
.” The voice was clipped and precise, scrubbed of Locke’s natural inflections. He
layered the hint of a harsh Vadran accent atop a slight mangling of his native Camorri
dialect like a barkeep mixing liquors. “I am wearing clothes that will be full of
sweat in several minutes. I am dumb enough to walk around Camorr without a blade of
any sort. Also,” he said with a hint of ponderous regret, “I am entirely
fictional
.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Master Fehrwight,” said Calo, “but at least we’ve got
your boat and your horse ready for your grand excursion.”
Locke stepped carefully down toward the edge of the barge, swaying at the hips like
a man newly off a ship and not yet used to surfaces that didn’t tilt beneath his feet.
His spine was arrow-straight, his movements nearly prissy. He wore the mannerisms
of Lukas Fehrwight like a set of invisible clothes.
“My attendant will be along any moment,” Locke/Fehrwight said as he/they stepped aboard
the barge. “His name is
Graumann
, and he too suffers from a slight case of being imaginary.”
“Merciful gods,” said Calo, “it must be catching.”
Down the cobbled ramp came Jean, treading heavily under the weight of one hundred
and twenty pounds of creaking horse’s harness, the embroidered leather packs crammed
full of goods and strapped tightly shut. Jean now wore a white silk shirt, straining
tight against his belly and already translucent in places with sweat, under an open
black vest and a white neckerchief. His hair was parted in the middle and held in
stasis by some thick black oil; never picturesque, it now resembled two pads of wool
arched over his forehead like a tenement roof.
“We’re behind schedule, Graumann.” Locke clasped his hands behind his back. “Do hurry
up and let the poor horse do its job.”
Jean heaved his mess over the Gentled horse’s back, to no visible reaction from the
animal. He then bent down and fastened the harness securely under the horse’s stomach.
Bug passed the steering pole to Calo, then slipped the barge’s rope from the mooring
post, and they were off once again.
“Wouldn’t it be damned amusing,” said Calo, “if Don Salvara picked today to dodge
out on his little ritual?”
“Don’t worry,” said Locke, briefly dropping the voice if not the posture of Lukas
Fehrwight. “He’s quite devoted to his mother’s memory. A conscience can be as good
as a water-clock, when it comes to keeping some appointments.”
“From your lips to the gods’ ears.” Calo worked the pole with cheerful ease. “And
no skin off my balls if you’re wrong. You’re the one wearing a ten-pound black felt
coat in the middle of Parthis.”
They made headway up the Angevine and came abreast with the western edge of the Temple
District on their right, passing beneath a wide glass arch as they did so. Standing
atop the middle of this bridge was a lean, dark-haired man with looks and a nose to
match Calo’s.
As Calo poled the barge underneath the arch some fifty feet below, Galdo Sanza casually
let a half-eaten red apple fall from his hands. The
fruit hit the water with a quiet little splash just a yard or two behind his brother.
“Salvara’s at the temple!” Bug said.
“Sublime.” Locke spread his hands and grinned. “Didn’t I tell you he suffered from
an impeccable sense of maternal devotion?”
“I’m so pleased that you only choose victims of the highest moral quality,” said Calo.
“The wrong sort might set a bad example for Bug.”
At a public dock jutting from the northwestern shore of the Temple District, just
under the heights of the city’s vast new House of Iono (Father of Storms, Lord of
the Grasping Waters), Jean tied them up in record time and led Impediment—looking
every bit the part of a wealthy merchant’s packhorse—up off the barge.
Locke followed with Fehrwight’s nervous dignity on full display; all the banter was
now banked down like coals under a cookfire. Bug darted off into the crowds, eager
to take up his watch position over the alley junction where Don Salvara’s ambitions
would soon be sorely tempted. Calo spotted Galdo just stepping off the glass bridge,
and casually moved toward him. Both twins were unconsciously fingering the weapons
concealed beneath their baggy shirts.
By the time the Sanza brothers fell into step beside one another and began moving
toward the rendezvous at the Temple of Fortunate Waters, Locke and Jean were already
a block away, approaching from another direction. The game was afoot.
For the fourth time in as many years, in quiet defiance of the most inviolate law
of Camorr’s underworld, the Gentlemen Bastards were drawing a bead on one of the most
powerful men in the city. They were headed for a meeting that might eventually divest
Don Lorenzo Salvara of nearly half his worldly wealth; now everything depended on
the Don being punctual.
BUG WAS in a perfect position to spot the foot patrol before anyone else did, which
was according to the plan. The foot patrol itself was also in the plan, after a fashion.
It meant the plan was blown.
“You’re going to be top-eyes on this game, Bug,” Locke had explained. “We’re deliberately
making first touch on Salvara on the most deserted street in the Temple District.
A spotter on the ground would be obvious a mile away, but a boy two stories up is
another matter.”
“What am I spotting for?”
“Whatever shows up. Duke Nicovante and the Nightglass Company. The king of the Seven
Marrows. A little old lady with a dung-wagon. If we get interlopers, you just make
the signal. Maybe you can distract common folk. If it’s the watch, well—we can either
play innocent or run like hell.”
And here were six men in mustard-yellow tabards and well-oiled fighting harness, with
batons and blades clattering ominously against their doubled waistbelts, strolling
up from the south just a few dozen paces away from the Temple of Fortunate Waters.
Their path would take them right past the mouth of the all-important alley. Even if
Bug warned the others in time for them to hide Calo’s rope, Locke and Jean would still
be covered in mud and the twins would still be (purposely) dressed like stage-show
bandits, complete with neckerchiefs over their faces. No chance to play innocent;
if Bug gave the signal, it was run-like-hell time.
Bug thought as fast as he ever had in his life, while his heart beat so rapidly it
felt like someone was fluttering the pages of a book against the back of his lungs.
He had to force himself to stay cool, stay observant, look for an opening. What was
it Locke was always saying?
Catalog!
He needed to catalog his options.
His options stank. Twelve years old, crouched twenty feet up in the periphery of the
wildly overgrown rooftop garden of a disused temple, with no long-range weapons and
no other suitable distractions available. Don Salvara was still paying his respects
to his mother’s gods within the Temple of Fortunate Waters, and the only people in
sight were his fellow Gentlemen Bastards and the sweat-soaked patrol about to ruin
their day.
But.
Twenty feet down and six feet to Bug’s right, against the wall of the crumbling structure
on which he squatted, there was a rubbish pile. It looked like mold-eaten burlap sacks
and a mixed assortment of brown muck.
The prudent thing to do would be to signal the others and let them scurry; Calo and
Galdo were old hands at playing hard-to-get with the yellowjackets, and they could
just come back and restart the game again next week. Maybe. Or maybe a screwed-up
game today would alarm someone, and lead to more foot patrols in the coming weeks.
Maybe word would get around that the Temple District wasn’t as quiet as it should
be. Maybe Capa Barsavi, beset by problems as he was, would take an interest in the
unauthorized disturbance, and turn his own screws. And then Don
Salvara’s money might as well be on the bloody
moons
, for all that the Gentlemen Bastards could get their hands on it.
No, prudence was out. Bug had to
win
. The presence of that rubbish pile made a great and glorious stupidity very possible.
He was in the air before another thought crossed his mind. Arms out, falling backward,
staring up into the hot near-noon sky with the confident assurance of all twelve of
his years that death and injury were things reserved solely for people that weren’t
Bug. He screamed as he fell, in wild exaltation, just to be sure that he had the foot
patrol’s unwavering attention.
He could feel the great vast shadow of the ground
looming
up beneath him, in the last half second of his fall, and at that instant his eyes
caught a dark shape cutting through the air just above the Temple of Fortunate Waters.
A sleek and beautiful shape, heavy, a bird? A gull of some sort? Camorr had no other
birds that size—certainly none that moved like crossbow bolts, and—
Impact with the semiyielding surface of the rubbish heap walloped the air out of his
lungs with a wet
hoooosh
and snapped his head forward. Sharp chin bounced off slender chest; his teeth punched
bloody holes in his tongue, and the warm taste of salt filled his mouth. He screamed
again, reflexively, and spat blood. His view of the sky spun first left then right,
as though the world were trying on strange new angles for his approval.
Booted feet running on cobblestones; the creak and rattle of weapons in harness. A
ruddy middle-aged face with two drooping sweat-slicked moustaches inserted itself
between Bug and the sky.
“Perelandro’s balls, boy!” The watchman looked as bewildered as he did worried. “What
the hell were you doing, screwing around up there? You’re lucky you landed where you
did.”
There were enthusiastic murmurs of agreement from the yellowjacketed squad crowding
in behind the first man; Bug could smell their sweat and their harness oil, as well
as the rotten stench of the stuff that had broken his fall. Well, when you jumped
into a streetside pile of brown glop in Camorr, you knew going in that it wouldn’t
smell like rosewater. Bug shook his head to clear the white sparks dancing behind
his eyes, and twitched his legs to be sure they would serve. Nothing appeared to be
broken, thank the gods. He would reevaluate his own claims on immortality when all
of this was over.
“Watch-sergeant,” Bug hissed thickly, letting more blood spill out over his lips (damn,
his tongue burned with pain). “Watch-sergeant …”
“Yes?” The man’s eyes were going wider. “Can you move your arms and legs, boy? What
can you feel?”
Bug reached up with his hands, casually, not entirely feigning shakiness, and clutched
at the watch-sergeant’s harness as though to steady himself.
“Watch-sergeant,” Bug said a few seconds later, “your purse is much lighter than it
should be. Out whoring last night, were we?”
He shook the little leather pouch just under the watch-sergeant’s dark moustaches,
and the larcenous part of his soul (which was, let us be honest, its majority) glowed
warmly at the sheer befuddlement that blossomed in the man’s eyes. For a split second,
the pain of Bug’s imperfect landing in the rubbish heap was forgotten. Then his other
hand came up, as if by magic, and his Orphan’s Twist hit the watch-sergeant right
between the eyes.
An Orphan’s Twist, or a “little red keeper,” was a weighted sack like a miniature
cosh, kept hidden in clothes (but never against naked skin). It was traditionally
packed full of ground shavings from a dozen of Camorr’s more popular hot peppers,
and a few nasty castoffs from certain black alchemists’ shops. No use against a real
threat, but just the thing for another street urchin. Or a certain sort of adult with
wandering hands.
Or an unprotected face, at spitting distance.
Bug was already rolling to his left, so the spray of fine rust-colored powder that
erupted from his Twist missed him by inches. The watch-sergeant was not so lucky;
it was a solid hit, scattering the hellish-hot stuff up his nose, down his mouth,
and straight into his eyes. He choked out a string of truly amazing wet bellows and
fell backward, clawing at his cheeks. Bug was already up and moving with the giddy
elasticity of youth; even his bitterly aching tongue was temporarily forgotten in
the allconsuming need to run like hell.
Now he definitely had the foot patrol’s undivided attention. They were shouting and
leaping after him as his little feet pounded the cobbles and he sucked in deep stinging
gulps of humid air. He’d done his part to keep the game alive. It could now go on
without him while he gave the duke’s constables their afternoon exercise.
A particularly fast-thinking watchman fumbled his whistle into his mouth and blew
it raggedly while still running—three short bursts, a pause, then three more.
Watchman down
. Oh, shit. That would bring every yellowjacket in half the city at a dead run, weapons
out. That would bring
crossbows
. It was suddenly deadly important that Bug slip the squad at his
heels before other squads started sending spotters up onto roofs. His anticipation
of a merry chase vanished. He had perhaps a minute and a half to get to one of his
usual cozy-holes and pull a vanish.
Suddenly, his tongue hurt very badly indeed.