Authors: Scott Lynch
Jean exploded across the room and slapped the empty glass out of Locke’s hand; it
shattered against the wall and showered half the room with glittering fragments, but
Locke didn’t even blink. Instead, he leaned back against his sweat-stained pillows
and sighed.
“Got any twins yet? How about a new Sabetha? A new
me
?”
“To
hell
with you!” Jean clenched his fists until he could feel the warm, slick blood seeping
out beneath his nails. “To hell with you, Locke! I didn’t save your gods-damned life
so you could sulk in this gods-damned hovel and pretend you’re the man who invented
grief. You’re not that gods-damned special!”
“Why
did
you save me then, Saint Jean?”
“Of all the stupid fucking questions—”
“Why?”
Locke heaved himself up off the bed and shook his fists at Jean; the effect would
have been comical, but all the murder in the world was in his eyes. “I told you to
leave
me! Am I supposed to be grateful for this? This bloody room?”
“I didn’t make this room your whole world, Locke. You did.”
“
This
is what I was rescued for? Three weeks sick at sea, and now Vel Virazzo, asshole
of Tal Verrar? It’s the joke of the gods, and I’m the punch-line. Dying with the Gray
King was better. I told you to fucking leave me there!
“And I miss them,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “Gods, I miss them. It’s my
fault they’re dead. I can’t … I can’t stand it.…”
“Don’t you dare,” growled Jean.
He shoved Locke in the chest, forcefully. Locke fell backward across his
bed and hit the wall of the room hard enough to rattle the window shutters.
“Don’t you dare use them as an excuse for what you’re doing to yourself! Don’t you
fucking
dare
.”
Without another word, Jean spun on his heels, walked out the door, and slammed it
behind him.
LOCKE SANK down against the bed, put his face in his hands, and listened to the creak
of Jean’s footsteps recede from the hall outside.
To his surprise, that creak returned a few minutes later, growing steadily louder.
Jean threw the door open, face grim, and marched directly over to Locke with a tall
wooden bucket of water in his hands. Without warning, he threw this all over Locke,
who gasped in surprise and fell backward against the wall again. He shook his head
like a dog and pushed his sopping hair out of his eyes.
“Jean, are you out of your fucking—”
“You needed a bath,” Jean interrupted. “You were covered in self-pity.”
He threw the bucket down and moved around the room, plucking up any bottle or wineskin
that still contained liquid. He was finished before Locke realized what he was doing;
he then swiped Locke’s coin purse from the room’s little table and tossed a thin leather
package down in its place.
“Hey, Jean, Jean, you can’t—that’s mine!”
“Used to be ‘ours,’ ” said Jean coldly. “I liked that better.”
When Locke tried to jump up from the bed again, Jean pushed him back down effortlessly.
He then stormed out once more, and pulled the door shut behind him. There was a curious
clicking noise, and then nothing—not even a creak on the floorboards. Jean was waiting
right outside the door.
Snarling, Locke moved across the room and tried to pull the door open, but it held
fast in its frame. He frowned in puzzlement and rattled it a few more times. The bolt
was on this side, and it wasn’t shot.
“It’s a curious fact,” Jean said through the door, “that the rooms of the Silver Lantern
can be locked from the outside with a special key only the innkeeper has. In case
he wants to keep an unruly guest at bay while he calls for the watch, you see.”
“Jean, open this fucking door!”
“No. You open it.”
“I can’t! You told me yourself you’ve got the special key!”
“The Locke Lamora I used to know would
spit
on you,” said Jean. “Priest of the Crooked Warden.
Garrista
of the Gentlemen Bastards. Student of Father Chains. Brother to Calo, Galdo, and
Bug! Tell me, what would
Sabetha
think of you?”
“You … you bastard! Open this door!”
“Look at yourself, Locke. You’re a fucking disgrace. Open it yourself.”
“You. Have. The. Godsdamnedmotherfuckingkey.”
“You know how to charm a lock, right? I left you some picks on the table. You want
your wine back, you work the bloody door yourself.”
“You son of a
bitch
!”
“My mother was a saint,” said Jean. “The sweetest jewel Camorr ever produced. The
city didn’t deserve her. I can wait out here all night, you know. It’ll be easy. I’ve
got all your wine and all
your
money.”
“Gaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Locke snatched the little leather wallet off the table; he wiggled the fingers of
his good right hand and regarded his left hand more dubiously; the broken wrist was
mending, but it ached constantly.
He bent over the lock mechanism by the door, scowled, and went to work. He was surprised
at how quickly the muscles of his back began to protest his uncomfortable posture.
He stopped long enough to pull the room’s chair over so he could sit on it while he
worked.
As his picks rattled around inside the lock and he bit his tongue in concentration,
he heard the heavy creak of movement outside the door and a series of loud thumps.
“Jean?”
“Still here, Locke,” came Jean’s voice, now cheerful. “Gods, you’re taking your sweet
time. Oh, I’m sorry—have you even started yet?”
“When I get this door open, you’re dead, Jean!”
“When you get that door open? I look forward to many long years of life, then.”
Locke redoubled his concentration, falling back into the rhythm he’d learned over
so many painstaking hours as a boy—moving the picks slightly, feeling for sensations.
That damn creaking and thumping had started up on the other side of the door again!
What was Jean playing at now? Locke closed his eyes and tried to block the sound out
of his mind … tried to let his world narrow down to the message of the picks against
his fingers.
The mechanism clicked open. Locke stumbled up from his chair, jubilant and furious,
and yanked the door open.
Jean had vanished, and the narrow corridor outside the room was
packed wall to wall with wooden crates and barrels—an impassable barrier about three
feet from Locke’s face.
“Jean, what the
hell
is this?”
“I’m sorry, Locke.” Jean was obviously standing directly behind his makeshift wall.
“I borrowed a few things from the keeper’s larder, and got a few of the boys you cheated
at cards last week to help me carry it all up here.”
Locke gave the wall a good shove, but it didn’t budge; Jean was probably putting his
full weight against it. There was a faint chorus of laughter from somewhere on the
other side, probably down in the common room. Locke ground his teeth together and
beat the flat of his good hand against a barrel.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Jean? You’re making a gods-damned scene!”
“Not really. Last week I told the keeper you were a Camorri don traveling incognito,
trying to recover from a bout of madness. Just now I set an awful lot of silver on
his bar. You do remember silver, don’t you? How we used to steal it from people, back
when you were pleasant company?”
“This has ceased to amuse me, Jean! Give me back my gods-damned wine!”
“Gods-damned, it is. And I’m afraid that if you want it, you’re going to have to climb
out your window.”
Locke took a step back and stared at the makeshift wall, dumbfounded.
“Jean, you can’t be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
“Go to hell. Go to hell! I can’t climb out a bloody window. My wrist—”
“You fought the Gray King with one arm nearly cut off. You climbed out a window five
hundred feet up in Raven’s Reach. And here you are, three stories off the ground,
helpless as a kitten in a grease barrel. Crybaby. Pissant.”
“You are deliberately trying to provoke me!”
“No shit,” said Jean. “Sharp as a cudgel, you are.”
Locke stomped back into the room, fuming. He stared at the shuttered window, bit his
tongue, and stormed back to Jean’s wall.
“Please let me out,” he said, as evenly as he could manage. “Your point is driven
home.”
“I’d drive it home with a blackened steel pike if I had one,” said Jean. “Why are
you talking to me when you should be climbing out the window?”
“Gods
damn
you!”
Back to the room; Locke paced furiously. He swung his arms about tentatively; the
cuts on his left arm ached, and the deep wound on his shoulder still twinged cruelly.
His battered left wrist felt as though it
might
almost serve. Pain or no pain … he curled his left-hand fingers into a fist, stared
down at them, and then looked up at the window with narrowed eyes.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I’ll show you a thing or three, you son of a bloody silk merchant.”
Locke tore his bedding apart, knotting sheet-ends to blankets, inviting twinges from
his injuries. The pain only seemed to drive him on faster. He tightened his last knot,
threw open the shutters, and tossed his makeshift rope out the window. He tied the
end in his hands to his bed frame. It wasn’t a terribly sturdy piece of furniture,
but then, he didn’t weigh all that much.
Out the window he went.
Vel Virazzo was an old, low city; Locke’s impressions as he swung there, three stories
above the faintly misted street, came in flashes. Flat-topped, sagging buildings of
stone and plaster … reefed sails on black masts in the harbor … white moonlight gleaming
on dark water … red lights burning atop glass pylons, in a line receding out toward
the horizon. Locke shut his eyes, clung to his sheets, and bit his tongue to avoid
throwing up.
It seemed easiest to simply let himself slide downward; he did so in fits and starts,
letting his palms grow warm against the sheets and blankets before stopping. Down
ten feet … twenty … he balanced precariously on the top sill of the inn’s common-room
window and gasped in a few deep breaths before continuing. Warm as the night was,
he was getting chilly from the soaking he’d received.
The last end of the last sheet ended about six feet off the ground; Locke slid down
as far as he could, then let himself drop. His heels slapped against the cobblestones,
and he found that Jean Tannen was already waiting for him, with a cheap gray cloak
in his hands. Before Locke could move, Jean flung the cloak around his shoulders.
“You son of a bitch,” cried Locke, pulling the cloak around himself with both hands.
“You snake-souled, dirty-minded
son of a bitch
! I hope a shark tries to suck your cock!”
“Why, Master Lamora, look at you,” said Jean. “Charming a lock, climbing out a window.
Almost as though you used to be a thief.”
“I was pulling off hanging offenses when you were still teeth-on-tits in your mother’s
arms!”
“And I’ve been pulling off hanging offenses while you’ve been sulking in your room,
drinking away your skills.”
“I’m the best thief in Vel Virazzo,” growled Locke, “drunk or sober, awake or asleep,
and you damn well know it.”
“I might have believed that once,” said Jean. “But that was a man I knew in Camorr,
and he hasn’t been with me for some time.”
“Gods
damn
your ugly face,” yelled Locke as he stepped up to Jean and punched him in the stomach.
More surprised than hurt, Jean gave him a solid shove. Locke flew backward, cloak
whirling as he tried to keep his balance—until he collided with a man who’d been coming
down the street.
“Mind your fucking step!” The stranger, a middle-aged man in a long orange coat and
the prim clothes of a clerk or a lawscribe, wrestled for a few seconds with Locke,
who clutched at him for support.
“A thousand pardons,” said Locke, “A thousand pardons, sir. My friend and I were merely
having a discussion; the fault is all mine.”
“I daresay it is,” said the stranger, at last succeeding in prying Locke from his
coat lapels and thrusting him away. “You have breath like a wine cask! Bloody Camorri.”
Locke watched until the man was a good twenty or thirty yards down the street, then
whirled back toward Jean, dangling a little black leather purse in the air before
him. It jingled with a healthy supply of heavy coins.
“Ha! What do you say to that, hmmm?”
“I say it was bloody child’s play. Doesn’t mean a gods-damned thing.”
“Child’s play? Die screaming, Jean, that was—”
“You’re mangy,” said Jean. “You’re dirtier than a Shades’ Hill orphan. You’ve lost
weight, though where from is a great mystery. You haven’t been exercising your wounds
or letting anyone tend to them for you. You’ve been hiding in a room, letting your
condition slip away, and you’ve been drunk for two straight weeks. You’re not what
you were, and it’s your own damn fault.”
“So.” Locke scowled at Jean, slipped the purse into a tunic pocket, and straightened
the cloak on his shoulders. “You require a demonstration. Fine. Get back inside and
take down your silly wall, and wait for me in the room. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“I—”
But Locke had already thrown up the hood of his cloak, turned, and begun to stride
down the street, into the warm Vel Virazzo night.
JEAN CLEARED the barrier from the third-floor hallway, left a few more coins (from
Locke’s purse) with the bemused innkeeper, and bustled about
the room, allowing some of the smell of drunken enclosure to evaporate out the open
window. Upon reflection, he went down to the bar and came back with a glass decanter
of water.
Jean was pacing, worriedly, when Locke burst back in about four hours later, just
past the third hour of the morning. He set a huge wicker basket down on the table,
threw off his cloak, grabbed the bucket Jean had used to douse him, and noisily threw
up in it.