Authors: Scott Lynch
“I suspect that drink has made you impulsive.”
“Drink makes me see funny; the gods made me impulsive.”
“You there,” came a voice from the street in front of them. “Hold it!”
Locke tensed. “I beg your pardon?”
A young, harried-looking Verrari man with long black hair was holding his hands out,
palms facing toward Locke and Jean. A small, well-dressed crowd seemed to have gathered
beside him, at the edge of a trim lawn that Locke recognized as the dueling green.
“Hold it, sirs, I beg of you,” said the young man. “I’m afraid it’s an affair, and
there may be a bolt flying past. Might I beg of you to wait but a moment?”
“Oh.
Oh
.” Locke and Jean relaxed simultaneously. If someone was dueling with crossbows, it
was common courtesy as well as good sense to wait beside the dueling ground until
the shots were taken. That way, neither participant would be distracted by movement
in the background, or accidentally bury a bolt in a passerby.
The dueling green was about forty yards long and half as wide, lit at each of its
four corners by a soft white lantern hanging in a black iron frame. Two duelists stood
in the center of the green with their seconds,
each man casting four pale gray shadows in a crisscross pattern. Locke had little
personal inclination to watch, but he reminded himself that he was supposed to be
Leocanto Kosta, a man of worldly indifference to strangers punching holes in one another.
He and Jean squeezed into the crowd of spectators as unobtrusively as possible; a
similar crowd had formed on the other side of the green.
One of the duelists was a very young man, dressed in fine loose gentleman’s clothing
of a fashionable cut; he wore optics, and his hair hung to his shoulders in well-tended
ringlets.
His red-jacketed opponent was a great deal older, a bit hunched over and weathered.
He looked active and determined enough to pose a threat, however. Each man held a
lightweight crossbow—what Camorri thieves would call an alley-piece.
“Gentlemen,” said the younger duelist’s second. “Please. Can there be no accommodation?”
“If the Lashani gentleman will withdraw his imprecation,” added the younger duelist.
His voice was high and nervous. “I would be eminently satisfied, with the merest recognition—”
“No, there
cannot
,” said the man standing beside the older duelist. “His Lordship is not in the habit
of tendering apologies for mere statements of obvious fact.”
“… with the
merest recognition
,” continued the young duelist, desperately, “that the incident was an unfortunate
misunderstanding, and that it need not—”
“Were he to condescend to speak to you again,” said the older duelist’s second, “his
Lordship would no doubt also note that you wail like a
bitch
, and would inquire as to whether you’re equally capable of biting like one.”
The younger duelist stood speechless for a few seconds, then gestured rudely toward
the older men with his free hand.
“I am forced,” said his second, “I am, ah, forced … to allow that there may be no
accommodation. Let the gentlemen stand … back-to-back.”
The two opponents walked toward each other—the older man marched with vigor while
the younger still stepped hesitantly—and turned their backs to each other.
“You shall have ten paces,” said the younger man’s second, with bitter resignation.
“Wait then, and on my signal, you may turn and loose.”
Slowly he counted out the steps; slowly the two opponents walked away from each other.
The younger man was shaking very badly indeed. Locke felt a ball of unaccustomed tension
growing in his own stomach. Since
when had he become such a damned softhearted fellow? Just because he preferred not
to watch didn’t mean he should be afraid to do so … yet the feeling in his stomach
paid no heed to the thoughts in his head.
“… nine … ten. Stand fast,” said the young duelist’s second. “Stand fast.…
Turn and loose!
”
The younger man whirled first, his face a mask of terror; he threw out his right hand
and let fly. A sharp twang sounded across the green. His opponent didn’t even jerk
back as the bolt hissed through the air beside his head, missing by at least the width
of a hand.
The red-jacketed old man completed his own turn more slowly, his eyes bright and his
mouth set into a scowl. His younger opponent stared at him for several seconds, as
though trying to will his bolt to come flying back like a trained bird. He shuddered,
lowered his crossbow, and then threw it down to the grass. With his hands on his hips,
he stood waiting, breathing in deep and noisy gulps.
His opponent regarded him briefly, then snorted. “Be fucked,” he said, and he raised
his crossbow in both hands. His shot was perfect; there was a wet crack and the younger
duelist toppled with a feathered bolt dead in the center of his chest. He fell onto
his back, clawing at his coat and tunic, spitting up dark blood. Half a dozen spectators
rushed toward him, while one young woman in a silver evening gown fell to her knees
and screamed.
“We’ll get back just in time for dinner,” said the older duelist to nobody in particular.
He tossed his own crossbow carelessly to the ground behind him and stomped off toward
one of the nearby chance houses, with his second at his side.
“Sweet fucking Perelandro,” said Locke, forgetting Leocanto Kosta for a moment and
thinking out loud. “What a way to manage things.”
“You don’t approve, sir?” A lovely young woman in a black silk dress regarded Locke
with disconcertingly penetrating eyes. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or
nineteen. “I understand that some differences of opinion need to be settled with steel,”
said Jean, butting in, appearing to recognize that Locke was still a bit too tipsy
for his own good. “But standing before a crossbow bolt seems foolish. Blades strike
me as a more honest test of skill.”
“Rapiers are tedious; all that back and forth, and rarely a killing strike right away,”
said the young woman. “Bolts are fast, clean, and merciful. You can hack at someone
all night with a rapier and fail to kill them.”
“I am quite compelled to agree with you,” muttered Locke.
The woman raised an eyebrow but said nothing; a moment later she was gone, vanishing
into the dispersing crowd.
The contented murmur of the night—the laughter and chatter of the small clusters of
men and women making time beneath the stars—had died briefly while the duel took place,
but now it rose up once again. The woman in the silver dress beat her fists against
the grass, sobbing, while the crowd around the fallen duelist seemed to sag in unison.
The bolt’s work was clearly done.
“Fast, clean, and merciful,” said Locke softly. “Idiots.”
Jean sighed. “Neither of us has any right to offer that sort of observation, since
‘gods-damned idiots’ is likely to be inscribed on our gravemarkers.”
“I’ve had reasons for doing what I’ve done, and so did you.”
“I’m sure those duelists felt the same way.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Locke. “Let’s walk off the fumes in my head
and get back to the inn. Gods, I feel old and sour. I see things like this and I wonder
if I was that bloody stupid when I was that boy’s age.”
“You were worse,” said Jean. “Until quite recently. Probably still are.”
LOCKE’S MELANCHOLY slowly evaporated, along with more of his alcoholic haze, as they
made their way down and across the Golden Steps, north by northeast to the Great Gallery.
The Eldren craftsmen (Craftswomen? Crafts-
things
?) responsible for Tal Verrar had covered the entire district with an open-sided Elderglass
roof that sloped downward from its peak atop the sixth tier and plunged into the sea
at the western island’s base, leaving at least thirty feet of space beneath it at
all points in between. Strange twisted glass columns rose up at irregular intervals,
looking like leafless climbing vines carved from ice. The glass ceiling of the Gallery
was easily a thousand yards from end to end the long way.
Beyond the Great Gallery, on the lower layers of the island, was the Portable Quarter—open-faced
tiers on which the miserably destitute were allowed to set up squatters’ huts and
whatever shelters they could construct from castoff materials. The trouble was that
any forceful wind from the north, especially in the rainy winter, would completely
rearrange the place.
Perversely, the district above and immediately southeast of the Portable Quarter,
the Savrola, was a pricey expatriate’s enclave, full of foreigners with money to waste.
All the best inns were there, including the one Locke and Jean were currently using
for their well-heeled alternate identities. The Savrola was sealed off from the Portable
Quarter by high stone walls, and heavily patrolled by Verrari constables and private
mercenaries.
By day, the Great Gallery was the marketplace of Tal Verrar. A thousand merchants
set up their stalls beneath it every morning, and there was room for five thousand
more, should the city ever grow so vast. Visitors rooming in the Savrola who didn’t
travel by boat were forced, by cunning coincidence, to walk across the full breadth
of the market to travel to or from the Golden Steps.
An east wind was up, blowing out from the mainland, across the glass islands and into
the Gallery. Locke and Jean’s footsteps echoed in the darkness of the vast hollow
space; soft lamps on some of the glass pillars made irregular islands of light. Scraps
of trash blew past their feet, and wisps of wood smoke from unseen fires. Some merchants
kept family members sleeping in particularly desirable stall locations all night … and
of course there were always vagrants from the Portable Quarter, seeking privacy in
the shadows of the empty Gallery. Patrols stomped through the Gallery tiers several
times each night, but there were none in sight at the moment.
“What a strange wasteland this place becomes after dark,” said Jean. “I can’t decide
if I mislike it or if it enchants me.”
“You’d probably be less inclined to enchantment if you didn’t have a pair of hatchets
stuffed up the back of your coat.”
“Mmm.”
They walked on for another few minutes. Locke rubbed his stomach and muttered to himself.
“Jean—are you hungry, by chance?”
“I usually am. Need some more ballast for that liquor?”
“I think it might be a good idea. Damn that carousel. Another losing hand and I might
have proposed marriage to that gods-damned smoking dragoness. Or just fallen out of
my chair.”
“Well, let’s raid the Night Market.”
On the topmost tier of the Great Gallery, toward the northeastern end of the covered
district, Locke could see the flickering light of barrel fires and lanterns, and the
shadowy shapes of several people. Commerce never truly ground to a halt in Tal Verrar;
with thousands of people coming and going from the Golden Steps, there was enough
coin floating around for a few dozen nocturnal stall-keepers to stake out a spot just
after sunset every evening. The Night Market could be a great convenience, and it
was invariably more eccentric than its daytime counterpart.
As Locke and Jean strolled toward the bazaar with the night breeze blowing against
them, they had a fine view of the inner harbor with its dark forest of ships’ masts.
Beyond that, the rest of the city’s islands lay sensibly sleeping, dotted here and
there with specks of light rather than the profligate
glow of the Golden Steps. At the heart of the city, the three crescent islands of
the Great Guilds (Alchemists, Artificers, and Merchants) curled around the base of
the high, rocky Castellana like slumbering beasts. And atop the Castellana, like a
looming stone hill planted in a field of mansions, was the dim outline of the Mon
Magisteria, the fortress of the archon.
Tal Verrar was supposedly ruled by the Priori, but in reality a significant degree
of power rested in the man who resided in that palace, the city’s master of arms.
The office of the archon had been created following Tal Verrar’s early disgraces in
the Thousand-Day War against Camorr, to take command of the army and navy out of the
hands of the bickering merchant councils. But the trouble with creating military dictators,
Locke reflected, was getting rid of them after the immediate crisis was past. The
first archon had “declined” retirement, and his successor was, if anything, even more
interested in interfering with civic affairs. Outside guarded bastions of frivolity
like the Golden Steps and expatriate havens like the Savrola, the disagreements between
archon and Priori kept the city on edge.
“Gentlemen!” came a voice from their left, breaking into Locke’s chain of thought.
“Honored sirs. A walk across the Great Gallery cannot possibly be complete without
refreshment.” Locke and Jean had reached the fringes of the Night Market; there were
no other customers in sight, and the faces of at least a dozen merchants stared keenly
out at them from within their little circles of fire or lamplight.
The first Verrari to throw his pitch against the gates of their good judgment was
a one-armed man getting on in years, with long white hair braided down to his waist.
He waved a wooden ladle at them, indicating four small casks set atop a portable counter
not unlike a flat-topped wheelbarrow.
“What’s your fare?”
“Delicacies from the table of Iono himself, the sweetest taste the sea has to offer.
Sharks’ eyes in brine; all fresh plucked. Crisp the shells, soft the humors, sweet
the juices.”
“Sharks’ eyes? Gods, no.” Locke grimaced. “Have you more common flesh? Liver? Gills?
A gill pie would be welcome.”
“Gills? Sir, gills have none of the virtues of the eyes; it is the eyes that tone
the muscles, prevent cholera, and firm up a man’s mechanisms for certain, ah, marital
duties.”
“I have no need of any mechanism-firming in that respect,” said Locke. “And I’m afraid
my stomach is too unsettled for the splendor of sharks’ eyes at just the moment.”