Authors: Scott Lynch
“My apologies,” he muttered when he finished. He was flushed and breathing heavily,
as wet as he’d been when he’d left, but now with warm sweat. “The wine has not entirely
left my head … and my wind has all but deserted me.”
Jean passed him the decanter, and Locke slurped from it as shamelessly as a horse
at a trough. Jean helped him into the chair. Locke said nothing for a few seconds,
then suddenly seemed to notice Jean’s hand on his shoulder, and he recoiled. “Here
we are, then,” he gasped. “See what happens when you provoke me? I think we’re going
to have to flee the city.”
“What the—what have you done?”
Locke tore the lid from his basket; it was the sort commonly used by merchants to
haul small loads of goods to and from a street market. A prodigious assortment of
odds and ends lay inside, and Locke began to list them off as he pulled them out and
showed them to Jean.
“What’s this? Why, it’s a pile of purses … one-two-three
-four
of them, all plucked from sober gentlemen in open streets. Here’s a knife, two bottles
of wine, a pewter ale mug—dented a bit, but still good metal. A brooch, three gold
pins, two earrings—
earrings
, Master Tannen, plucked from
ears
, and I’d like to see you try that. Here’s a little bolt of nice silk, a box of sweetmeats,
two loaves of bread—the crusty kind with all the spices baked in that you like so
much. And now, specially for the edification of a certain pessimistic, peace-breaking
son of a bitch who shall remain nameless …”
Locke held up a glittering necklace, a braided band of gold and silver supporting
a heavy gold pendant, studded with sapphires in the stylized pattern of a floral blossom.
The little phalanx of stones flashed like blue fire even by the light of the room’s
single soft lantern.
“That’s a sweet piece,” said Jean, briefly forgetting to be aggravated. “You didn’t
snatch that off a street.”
“No,” said Locke, before taking another deep draught of the warm water in the decanter.
“I got it from the neck of the governor’s mistress.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“In the governor’s manor.”
“Of all the—”
“In the governor’s bed.”
“Damned lunatic!”
“With the governor sleeping next to her.”
The night quiet was broken by the high, distant trill of a whistle, the traditional
swarming noise of city watches everywhere. Several other whistles joined in a few
moments later.
“It is possible,” said Locke with a sheepish grin, “that I have been slightly too
bold.”
Jean sat down on the bed and ran both of his hands through his hair. “Locke, I’ve
spent the past few weeks making a name for Tavrin Callas as the biggest, brightest
thing to come along in this city’s sad little pack of Right People for ages! When
the watch starts asking questions, someone’s going to point me out … and someone’s
going to mention all the time I spend here, and the time I spend with you … and if
we try to fence a piece of metal like that in a place this small …”
“As I said, I think we’re going to have to flee the city.”
“Flee the city?” Jean jumped up and pointed an accusatory finger at Locke. “You’ve
screwed up weeks of work! I’ve been training the Coves—signals, tricks, teasing, fighting,
the whole bit! I was going to … I was going to start teaching them how to cook!”
“Oooh, this is serious. I take it the marriage proposal wasn’t far behind?”
“Dammit, this
is
serious! I’ve been
building
something! I’ve been out working while you’ve been sobbing and sulking and pissing
your time away in here.”
“You’re the one who lit a fire under me because he wanted to see me dance. Now I’ve
danced, and I believe I’ve made my point. Will you be apologizing?”
“Apologizing? You’re the one who’s been an insufferable little shit! Letting you live
is apology enough! All my work …”
“Capa of Vel Virazzo? Is that how you saw yourself, Jean? Another Barsavi?”
“Another
anything
,” said Jean. “There’s worse things to be—Capa Lamora, for example, Lord of One Smelly
Room. I won’t be a bloody knockabout, Locke. I am an honest working thief and I’ll
do what I have to, to keep a roof over our heads!”
“So let’s go somewhere and get back to something really lucrative,” said Locke. “You
want honest crooked work? Fine. Let’s go hook a big fish just like we used to in Camorr.
You wanted to see me steal, let’s go out and
steal
!”
“But Tavrin Callas …”
“Has died before,” said Locke. “Seeker into Aza Guilla’s mysteries, right? Let him
seek again.”
“Dammit.” Jean stepped over to the window and took a peek out; there was still whistling
coming from several directions. “It might take a few days to arrange a berth on a
ship, and we won’t get out by land with what you’ve stolen—they’ll be checking everyone
at the gates, probably for a week or two to come.”
“Jean,” said Locke, “now you’re disappointing
me
. Gates? Ships? Please. This is
us
we’re talking about. We could smuggle a live cow past every constable in this city,
at high noon. Without clothes.”
“Locke? Locke
Lamora
?” Jean rubbed his eyes with exaggerated motions. “Why, where have you been all these
weeks? Here I thought I’d been rooming with a miserable self-absorbed asshole who—”
“Right,” said Locke. “Fine. Ha. Yeah, maybe I deserved that kick in the face. But
I’m serious, getting us out is as easy as a bit of cooking. Get down to the innkeeper.
Wake him up and throw some more silver at him—there’s plenty in those purses. I’m
a mad Camorri don, right? Tell him I’ve got a mad whim. Get me some more dirty cloth,
some apples, a hearthstone, and a black iron pot full of water.”
“Apples?” Jean scratched his beard. “Apples? You mean … the apple mash trick?”
“Just so,” said Locke. “Get me that stuff, and I’ll get boiling, and we can be out
of here by dawn.”
“Huh.” Jean opened the door, slipped out into the hall, and turned once before leaving
for good. “I take some of it back,” he said. “You might still be a lying, cheating,
low-down, greedy, grasping, conniving, pocket-picking son of a bitch.”
“Thanks,” said Locke.
A DRIZZLE was pattering softly around them as they walked out through Vel Virazzo’s
north gate a few hours later. Sunrise was a watery line of yellow on the eastern horizon,
under scudding charcoal clouds. Purple-jacketed soldiers stared down in revulsion
from atop the city’s fifteen-foot wall; the heavy wooden door of the small sally-port
slammed shut behind them as though it too was glad to be quit of them.
Locke and Jean were both dressed in tattered cloaks, and wrapped in bandagelike fragments
from a dozen torn-up sheets and pieces of clothing.
A thin coating of boiled apple mash, still warm, soaked through some of the “bandages”
on their arms and chests, and was plastered liberally over their faces. Sloshing around
wearing a layer of the stuff under cloth was disgusting, but there was no better disguise
to be had in all the world.
Slipskin was a painful, incurable disease, and those afflicted with it were even less
tolerated than lepers. Had Locke and Jean approached from outside Vel Virazzo’s walls,
they never would have been let in. As it was, the guards had no interest in how they’d
entered the city in the first place; they’d nearly stumbled over themselves in their
haste to see them gone.
The outer city was an unhappy-looking place: a few blocks of crumbling one- and two-story
buildings, decorated here and there with the makeshift windmill towers favored in
these parts for driving bellows over forges and ovens. Smoke sketched a few curling
gray lines in the wet air overhead, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Beyond the
city, where the cobbles of the old Therin Throne road became a wet dirt track, Locke
could see scrubland, interrupted here and there by rocky clefts and piles of debris.
Their coins—and all of their other small goods worth transporting—were tucked into
a little bag tied under Jean’s clothes, where no guardsman would dare search, not
even if a superior stood behind him with a drawn sword and ordered it on pain of death.
“Gods,” Locke muttered as they trudged along beside the road, “I’m getting too tired
to think straight. I really have let myself slouch out of condition.”
“Well,” said Jean, “you’re going to get some exercise these next few days, whether
you like it or not. How’re the wounds?”
“They itch,” said Locke. “This damn mush does them little good, I suspect. Still,
it’s not as bad as it was. A few hours of motion seems to have had some benefit.”
“Wise in the ways of all such things is Jean Tannen,” said Jean. “Wiser by far than
most; especially most named Lamora.”
“Shut your fat, ugly, inarguably wiser face,” said Locke. “Mmmm. Look at those idiots
scamper away from us.”
“Would you do otherwise, if you saw a pair of real slipskinners by the side of the
road?”
“Eh. I suppose not. Damn these aching feet, too.”
“Let’s get a mile or two outside town, then find a place to rest. Once we’ve put some
leagues under our heels, we can ditch this mush and pose as respectable travelers
again. Any idea where you want to strike out for?”
“I should’ve thought it was obvious,” said Locke. “These little towns are
for pikers. We’re after gold and white iron, not clipped coppers. Let’s make for Tal
Verrar. Something’s bound to present itself there.”
“Mmm. Tal Verrar. Well, it is close.”
“Camorri have a long and glorious history of kicking the piss out of our poor Verrari
cousins, so I say, on to Tal Verrar,” said Locke. “And glory.” They walked on a ways
under the tickling mist of the morning drizzle. “And baths.”
THOUGH LOCKE SAW that Jean remained as unsettled by their experience in the Night
Market as he was, they spoke no further of the matter. There was a job to be done,
and they were up at the crack of dusk the next day.
The close of the working day for honest men and women in Tal Verrar was just the beginning
of theirs. It had been strange at first, getting used to the rhythm of a city where
the sun simply fell beneath the horizon like a quiescent murder victim each night,
without the glow of Falselight to mark its passing. But Tal Verrar had been built
to different tastes or needs than Camorr, and its Elderglass simply mirrored the sky,
raising no light of its own.
Their suite at the Villa Candessa was high-ceilinged and opulent; at five silver volani
a night nothing less was to be expected. Their fourth-floor window overlooked a cobbled
courtyard in which carriages, studded with lanterns and outriding mercenary guards,
came and went with echoing clatters.
“Bondsmagi,” muttered Jean as he tied on his neck-cloths before a looking glass. “I’ll
never hire one of the bastards to do so much as heat my tea, not if I live to be richer
than the duke of Camorr.”
“Now there’s a thought,” said Locke, who was already dressed and sipping coffee. A
full day of sleep had done wonders for his head. “If we were richer than the duke
of Camorr, we could hire a whole pack of them and
give them instructions to go lose themselves on a desolate fucking island somewhere.”
“Mmm. I don’t think the gods made any islands desolate enough for my tastes.”
Jean finished his neck-cloths with one hand and reached for his breakfast with the
other. One of the odder services the Villa Candessa provided for its long-term guests
was its “likeness cakes”—little frosted simulacra fashioned after the guests by the
inn’s Camorr-trained pastry sculptor. On a silver tray beside the looking glass, a
little sweetbread Locke (with raisin eyes and almond-butter blond hair) sat beside
a rounder Jean with dark chocolate hair and beard. The baked Jean’s legs were already
missing.
A few moments later, Jean was brushing the last buttery crumbs from the front of his
coat. “Alas, poor Locke and Jean.”
“They died of consumption,” said Locke.
“I do wish I could be there to see it when you talk to Requin and Selendri, you know.”
“Hmmm. Can I trust you to still be in Tal Verrar by the time I get finished?” He tried
to leaven the question with a smile, only partially succeeding.
“You know I won’t go anywhere,” said Jean. “I’m still not sure it’s wise. But you
know I won’t.”
“I do. I’m sorry.” He finished his coffee and set the cup down. “And my chat with
Requin isn’t going to be that terribly interesting.”
“Nonsense. I heard a smirk in your voice. Other people smirk when their work is finished;
you grin like an idiot just before yours really begins.”
“Smirking? I’m as slack-cheeked as a corpse. I’m just looking forward to being done
with it. Tedious business. I anticipate a dull meeting.”
“Dull meeting, my ass. Not after you walk straight up to the lady with the brass bloody
hand and say, ‘Excuse me, madam, but …’ ”
“I HAVE been cheating,” said Locke. “Steadily. At every single game I’ve played since
my partner and I first came to the Sinspire, two years ago.”
Receiving a piercing stare from Selendri was a curious thing; her left eye was nothing
but a dark hollow, half-covered with a translucent awning that had once been a lid.
Her single good eye did the work of two, and damned if it wasn’t unnerving.
“Are you deaf, madam? Every single one. Cheating. All the way up and
down this precious Sinspire, cheating floor after floor, taking your other guests
for a very merry ride.”
“I wonder,” she said in her slow, witchy whisper, “if you truly understand what it
means to say that to me, Master Kosta. Are you drunk?”
“I’m as sober as a suckling infant.”
“Is this something you’ve been put up to?”
“I am completely serious,” said Locke. “And it’s your master I would speak to about
my motivations. Privately.”