Authors: Scott Lynch
“Wrong,” said Jean, not even breathing heavily. “
I’m
the meanest motherfucker here.
I’m
the biggest bruiser in the Brass Coves.”
“You ain’t in the Brass Coves, asshole,” shouted another boy, who nonetheless had
a look of awed disquiet on his face.
“Let’s kill this piece of shit!”
A third boy, wearing a tattered four-cornered cap and a set of handmade necklaces
threaded with small bones, darted toward Jean with a stiletto drawn back in his right
hand. When the thrust came, Jean stepped back, caught the boy by the wrist, and yanked
him forward into a backfist from his other hand. While the boy spat blood and tried
to blink tears of pain from his eyes, Jean kicked him in the groin, then swept his
legs out from under him. The boy’s stiletto appeared in Jean’s left hand as if by
magic, and he twirled it slowly.
“Surely you boys can do simple sums,” he said. “One plus one equals
don’t fuck with me
.”
The boy who’d charged at him with the knife sobbed, then threw up.
“Let’s talk taxes.” Jean walked around the periphery of the tannery floor, kicking
over a few empty wine bottles; there were dozens of them scattered around. “Looks
like you boys pull in enough coin to eat and drink; that’s good. I’ll have forty percent
of it; cold metal. I don’t want goods. You’ll pay your taxes every other day, starting
today. Cough up your purses and turn out your pockets.”
“Fuck that!”
Jean stalked toward the boy who’d spoken; the youth was standing against the far wall
of the tannery with his arms crossed. “Don’t like it? Hit me, then.”
“Uh …”
“You don’t think that’s fair? You mug people for a living, right? Make a fist, son.”
“Uh …”
Jean grabbed him, spun him around, took hold of him by his neck and by the top of
his breeches, and rammed him headfirst into the thick wood of the tannery’s outer
wall several times. The boy hit the ground with a thud when Jean let go; he was unable
to fight back when Jean patted down his tunic and came up with a small leather purse.
“Added penalty,” said Jean, “for damaging the wall of my tannery with your head.”
He emptied the purse into his own, then tossed it back down beside the boy. “Now,
all of you get down here and line up. Line up! Four-tenths isn’t much. Be honest;
you can guess what I’ll do if I find out that you’re not.”
“Who the hell
are
you?”
The first boy to approach Jean with coins in his hand offered up the question along
with the money.
“You can call me—”
As Jean began to speak, the boy conjured a dagger in his other hand, dropped the coins,
and lunged. The bigger man shoved the boy’s extended arm to the outside, bent nearly
in half, and slammed his right shoulder into the boy’s stomach. He then lifted the
boy effortlessly on his shoulder and dropped him over his back, so that the boy struck
the floor of the tannery nearly facefirst. He ended up writhing in pain beside the
last Cove who’d pulled a blade on Jean.
“… Callas. Tavrin Callas, actually.” Jean smiled. “That was a good thought,
coming at me while I was talking. That at least I can respect.” Jean shuffled backward
several paces to block the door. “But it seems to me that the subtle philosophical
concept I’m attempting to descant upon may be going over your heads. Do I really have
to kick all your asses before you take the hint?”
There was a chorus of mutterings and a healthy number of boys shaking their heads,
however reluctantly.
“Good.” The extortion went smoothly after that; Jean wound up with a satisfying collection
of coins, surely enough to keep him and Locke ensconced at their inn for another week.
“I’m off, then. Rest easy and work well tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow, at the second
hour of the afternoon. We can start talking about how things are going to be now that
I’m the new boss of the Brass Coves.”
NATURALLY, THEY all armed themselves, and at the second hour of the afternoon the
next day they were waiting in ambush for Jean.
To their surprise, he strolled into the old tannery with a Vel Virazzo constable at
his side. The woman was tall and muscular, dressed in a plum-purple coat reinforced
with a lining of fine iron chain; she had brass epaulettes on her shoulders, and long
brown hair pulled back in a tight swordswoman’s tail with brass rings. Four more constables
took up a position just outside the door; they wore similar coats, but also carried
long lacquered sticks and heavy wooden shields slung over their backs.
“Hello, lads,” said Jean. All around the room, daggers, stilettos, broken bottles,
and sticks were disappearing from sight. “I’m sure some of you recognize Prefect Levasto
and her men.”
“Boys,” said the prefect offhandedly, hooking her thumbs into her leather sword-belt.
Alone of all the constables, she carried a cutlass in a plain black sheath.
“Prefect Levasto,” said Jean, “is a wise woman, and she leads wise men. They happen
to enjoy money, which I am now providing as a consideration for the hardship and tedium
of their duties. If anything should chance to happen to me, why, they would lose a
new source of the very thing they enjoy.”
“It would be heartbreaking,” said the prefect.
“And it would have consequences,” said Jean.
The prefect set one of her boots on an empty wine bottle and applied
steady pressure until it shattered beneath her heel. “Heartbreaking,” she repeated
with a sigh.
“I’m sure you’re all bright lads,” said Jean. “I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed the prefect’s
visit.”
“Shouldn’t like to have to repeat it,” said Levasto with a grin. She turned slowly
and ambled back out the door. The sound of her squad marching away soon receded into
the distance.
The Brass Coves looked down at Jean glumly. The four boys closest to the door, with
their hands behind their backs, were the ones wearing livid black and green bruises
from before.
“Why the fuck are you doing this to us?” grumbled one of them.
“I’m not your enemy, boys. Believe it or not, I think you’ll really come to appreciate
what I can do for you. Now shut up and listen.
“First,” said Jean, raising his voice so everyone could hear, “I’d like to say that
it’s rather sad, how long you’ve been around without getting the city watch on the
take. They were so
eager
for it when I made the offer. Like sad, neglected little puppies.”
Jean was wearing a long black vest over a stained white tunic. He reached up beneath
his back, under the vest, with his right hand.
“But,” he continued, “at least the fact that your first thought was to kill me shows
some spirit. Let’s see those toys again. Come on, show ’em off.”
Sheepishly, the boys drew out their weapons once again, and Jean inspected them with
a sweep of his head. “Mmmm. Gimp steel, broken bottles, little sticks, a hammer … Boys,
the trouble with this setup is that you think those are threats. They’re not. They’re
insults.”
He started moving while the last few words were still coming out of his mouth; his
left hand slid up beneath his vest beside his right. Both of his arms came out and
up in a blur, and then he grunted as he let fly with both of his hatchets, overhand.
There was a pair of half-full wineskins hanging on pegs on the far wall; each one
exploded in a gout of cheap Verrari red that spattered several boys nearby. Jean’s
hatchets had impaled the wineskins dead center, and stuck in the wood behind them
without quivering.
“That was a threat,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “And that’s why
you
now work for
me
. Anyone else really want to dispute that at this point?”
The boys standing closest to the wineskins edged backward as Jean stepped over and
wrenched his hatchets out of the wall. “Didn’t think so. But don’t take it amiss,”
Jean continued. “It works in your favor, too. A boss needs to protect what’s his if
he’s going to stay the boss. If anyone other
than
me
tries to shove you around, let me know. I’ll pay them a visit. That’s my job.”
The next day, the Brass Coves grudgingly lined up to pay their taxes. The last boy
in line, as he dropped his copper coins into Jean’s hands, muttered, “You said you’d
help if someone else gave us the business. Some of the Coves got kicked around this
morning by the Black Sleeves, from over on the north side.”
Jean nodded sagely and slipped his takings into his coat pocket.
The next night, after making inquiries, he sauntered into a north-side dive called
the Sign of the Brimming Cup. The only thing the tavern was brimming with was thugs,
a good seven or eight of them, all with dirty black cloths tied around the arms of
their jackets and tunics. They were the only customers, and they looked up with suspicion
as he closed the door behind him and carefully slid home the wooden bolt.
“Good evening!” He smiled and cracked his knuckles. “I’m curious. Who’s the biggest,
meanest motherfucker in the Black Sleeves?”
The day after that, he collected his taxes from the Brass Coves with the bruised knuckles
of his right hand wrapped in a poultice. For the first time, most of the boys paid
enthusiastically. A few even started to call him “Tav.”
BUT LOCKE did not exercise his wounds, as he’d promised.
Locke’s thin supply of coins was parceled out for wine; his poison of choice was a
particularly cheap local slop. More purple than red, with a bouquet like turpentine,
its scent soon saturated the room he shared with Jean at the Silver Lantern. Locke
took it constantly “for the pain”; Jean remarked one evening that his pain must be
increasing as the days went on, for the empty skins and bottles were multiplying proportionally.
They quarreled—or more accurately rekindled their ongoing quarrel—and Jean stomped
off into the night, for neither the first nor the last time.
Those first few days in Vel Virazzo, Locke would totter down the steps to the common
room some nights, where he would play a few desultory hands of cards with some of
the locals. He conned them mirthlessly with whatever fast-fingers tricks he could
manage with just one good hand. Soon enough they began to shun his games and his bad
attitude, and he retreated back to the third floor, to drink alone in silence. Food
and cleanliness remained afterthoughts. Jean tried to get a dog-leech in to examine
Locke’s wounds, but Locke drove the man out with a string of invective
that made Jean (whose speech could be colorful enough to strike fire from damp tinder)
blush.
“Of your friend, I can find no trace,” said the man. “He seems to have been eaten
by one of the thin hairless apes from the Okanti isles; all it does is screech at
me. What became of the last leech to take a look at him?”
“We left him in Talisham,” said Jean. “I’m afraid my friend’s attitude moved him to
bring an early end to his own sea voyage.”
“Well, I might have done the same. I waive my fee, in profound sympathy. Keep your
silver—you shall need it for wine. Or poison.”
More and more, Jean found himself spending time with the Brass Coves for no better
reason than to avoid Locke. A week passed, then another. “Tavrin Callas” was becoming
a known and solidly respected figure in Vel Virazzo’s crooked fraternity. Jean’s arguments
with Locke became more circular, more frustrating, more pointless. Jean instinctively
recognized the downward arc of terminal self-pity, but had never dreamed that he’d
have to drag Locke, of all people, out of it. He avoided the problem by training the
Coves.
At first, he passed on just a few hints—how to use simple hand signals around strangers,
how to set distractions before picking pockets, how to tell real gems from paste and
avoid stealing the latter. Inevitably, he began to receive respectful entreaties to
“show them a thing or two” of the tricks he’d used to pound four Coves into the ground.
First in line with these requests were the four who’d been pounded.
A week after that, the alchemy was fully under way. Half a dozen boys were rolling
around in the dust of the tannery floor while Jean coached them on all the essentials—leverage,
initiative, situational awareness. He began to demonstrate the tricks, both merciful
and cruel, that had kept him alive over half a lifetime spent making his points with
his fists and hatchets.
Under Jean’s influence, the boys began to take more of an interest in the state of
their old tannery. He explicitly encouraged them to start viewing it as a headquarters,
which demanded certain comforts. Alchemical lanterns appeared hanging from the rafters.
Fresh oilpaper was nailed up over the broken windows, and new planks and straw were
raised up to the roof to plug holes. The boys stole cushions, cheap tapestries, and
portable shelves.
“Find me a hearthstone,” said Jean. “Steal me a big one, and I’ll teach you poor little
bastards how to cook, too. You can’t beat Camorr for chefs; even the thieves are chefs
back there. I had years of training.”
He stared around at the increasingly well-maintained tannery, at the
increasingly eager band of young thieves living in it, and he spoke wistfully to himself.
“We all did.”
He’d tried to interest Locke in the project of the Brass Coves, but had been rebuffed.
That night he tried again, explaining about their ever-increasing nightly take, their
headquarters, the tips and training he was giving them. Locke stared at him for a
long time, sitting on the bed with a chipped glass half-full of purple wine in his
hands.
“Well,” he said at last. “Well, I can see you’ve found your replacements, haven’t
you?”
Jean was too startled to say anything. Locke drained his glass and continued, his
voice flat and humorless.
“That was certainly quick. Quicker than I expected. A new gang, a new burrow. Not
a glass one, but you can probably fix that if you look around long enough. So here
you are, playing Father Chains, lighting a fire under that kettle of happy horse-shit
all over again.”