Authors: Scott Lynch
The sixth floor of the Sinspire was quiet. Locke and Selendri were alone, with four
of Requin’s uniformed attendants waiting about twenty feet away. It was still too
early in the evening for this level’s rarefied crowd to have finished their slow,
carousing migration up through the livelier levels.
At the heart of the sixth floor was a tall sculpture within a cylinder of transparent
Elderglass. Though the glass could not be worked by human arts, there were literally
millions of cast-off fragments and shaped pieces scattered around the world, some
of which could be conveniently fitted to human use. There were Elderglass scavenging
guilds in several cities, capable of filling special needs in exchange for exorbitant
fees.
Within the cylinder was something Locke could only describe as a
copperfall
—it was a sculpture of a rocky waterfall, taller than a man, in which the rocks were
shaped entirely from silver volani coins, and the “water” was a constant heavy stream
of copper centira, thousands upon thousands of them. The clatter within the soundproof
glass enclosure must have been tremendous, but for those on the outside the show proceeded
in absolute silence. Some mechanism in the floor was catching the stream of coins
and recirculating it up the back of the silver “rocks.” It was eccentric and hypnotic.… Locke
had never before known anyone to decorate a room with a literal pile of money.
“Master? You presume that I have one.”
“You know I mean Requin.”
“He would be the first to correct your presumption. Violently.”
“A private audience would give us a chance to clear up several misunderstandings,
then.”
“Oh, Requin will certainly speak to you—
very
privately.” Selendri snapped the fingers of her right hand twice and the four attendants
converged on Locke. Selendri pointed up; two of them took firm hold of his arms, and
together they began to lead him up the stairs. Selendri followed a few steps behind.
The seventh floor was dominated by another sculpture within an even
wider Elderglass enclosure. This one seemed to be a circle of volcanic islands, again
built from silver volani, floating in a sea of solid-gold solari. Each of the silver
peaks had a stream of gold coins bubbling from its top, to fall back down into the
churning, gleaming “ocean.” Requin’s guards maintained a pace too vigorous for Locke
to catch many more details of the sculpture or the room; they passed another pair
of uniformed attendants beside the stairwell and continued up.
At the heart of the eighth floor was a third spectacle within glass, the largest yet.
Locke blinked several times and suppressed an appreciative chuckle.
It was a stylized sculpture of Tal Verrar, silver islands nestled in a sea of gold
coins. Standing over the model city, bestriding it like a god, was a life-sized marble
sculpture of a man Locke recognized immediately. The statue, like the man, had prominent
curving cheekbones that lent the narrow face a sense of mirth—plus a round protruding
chin, wide eyes, and large ears that seemed to have been jammed into the head at right
angles. Requin, whose features bore a fair resemblance to a marionette put together
in haste by a somewhat irate puppeteer.
The statue’s hands were held outward at the waist, spread forward, and from the flaring
stone cuffs around them two solid streams of gold coins were continually gushing onto
the city below.
Locke, staring, only avoided tripping over his own feet because the attendants holding
him chose that moment to tighten their grip. Atop the eighth-floor stairs was a pair
of lacquered wooden doors. Selendri strode past Locke and the attendants. To the left
of the door was a small silver panel in the wall; Selendri slid her brass hand into
it, let it settle into some sort of mechanism, and then gave it a half-turn to the
left. There was a clatter of clockwork devices within the wall, and the doors cracked
open.
“Search him,” she said as she vanished through the doors without turning around.
Locke was rapidly stripped of his coat; he was then poked, prodded, sifted, and patted
down more thoroughly than he’d been during his last visit to a brothel. His sleeve-stiletto
(a perfectly ordinary thing for a man of consequence to carry) was confiscated, his
purse was shaken out, his shoes were slipped off, and one attendant even ran his hands
through Locke’s hair. When this process was finished, Locke (shoeless, coatless, and
somewhat disheveled) was given a less-than-gentle shove toward the doors Selendri
had vanished through.
Past them was a dark space not much larger than a wardrobe closet.
A winding black iron staircase, wide enough for one person, rose up from the floor
toward a square of soft yellow light. Locke padded up the stairs and emerged into
Requin’s office.
This place took up the whole of the ninth floor of the Sinspire; an area against the
far wall, curtained off with silk drapes, probably served as a bedroom. There was
a balcony door on the right-hand wall, covered by a sliding mesh screen. Locke could
see a wide, darkened sweep of Tal Verrar through it, so he presumed it looked east.
Every other wall of the office, as he’d heard, was liberally decorated with oil paintings—nearly
twenty of them around the visible periphery of the room, in elaborate frames of gilded
wood—masterworks of the late Therin Throne years, when nearly every noble at the emperor’s
court had kept a painter or sculptor on the leash of patronage, showing them off like
pets. Locke hadn’t the training to tell one from another by sight, but rumor had it
that there were two Morestras and a Ventathis on Requin’s walls. Those two artists—along
with all their sketches, books of theory, and apprentices—had died centuries before,
in the firestorm that had consumed the imperial city of Therim Pel.
Selendri stood beside a wide wooden desk the color of a fine coffee, cluttered with
books and papers and miniature clockwork devices. A chair was pushed out behind it,
and Locke could see the remnants of a dinner—some sort of fish on a white iron plate,
paired with a half-empty bottle of pale golden wine.
Selendri touched her flesh hand to her brass simulacrum, and there was a clicking
noise. The hand folded apart like the petals of a gleaming flower. The fingers locked
into place along the wrist and revealed a pair of blackened-steel blades, six inches
long, previously concealed at the heart of the hand. Selendri waved these like a claw
and gestured for Locke to stand before the desk, facing it.
“Master Kosta.” The voice came from somewhere behind him, within the silk-curtained
enclosure. “What a pleasure! Selendri tells me you’ve expressed an interest in getting
killed
.”
“Hardly, sir. All I told your assistant was that I had been cheating steadily, along
with my partner, at the games we’ve been playing in your Sinspire. For nearly the
last two years.”
“Every game,” said Selendri. “You said every single game.”
“Ah, well,” said Locke with a shrug, “it just sounded more dramatic that way. It was
more like
nearly
every game.”
“This man is a clown,” whispered Selendri.
“Oh, no,” said Locke. “Well, maybe occasionally. But not now.”
Locke heard footsteps moving toward his back across the room’s hardwood floor. “You’re
here on a bet,” said Requin, much closer.
“Not in the way that you mean, no.”
Requin stepped around Locke and stood before him, hands behind his back, peering at
Locke very intently. The man was a virtual twin of his statue on the floor below;
perhaps a few pounds heavier, with the bristling curls of steel-gray hair atop his
head receding more sharply. His narrow frock coat was crushed black velvet, and his
hands were covered with brown leather gloves. He wore optics, and Locke was surprised
to see that the glimmer he had taken for reflected light the night before was actually
imbued within the glass. They glowed a translucent orange, giving a demonic cast to
the wide eyes behind them. Some fresh, expensive alchemy Locke had never heard of,
no doubt.
“Did you drink anything unusual tonight, Master Kosta? An unfamiliar wine, perhaps?”
“Unless the water of Tal Verrar itself intoxicates, I’m as dry as baked sand.”
Requin moved behind his desk, picked up a small silver fork, speared a white morsel
of fish, and pointed at Locke with it.
“So, if I’m to believe you, you’ve been successfully cheating here for two years,
and aside from the sheer impossibility of that claim, now you just want to give yourself
up to me. Case of conscience?”
“Not even remotely.”
“An earnest wish for an elaborate suicide?”
“I aim to leave this office alive.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t necessarily be dead until you hit the cobblestones nine stories
below.”
“Perhaps I can convince you I’m worth more to you intact.”
Requin chewed his fish before speaking again.
“Just how have you been cheating, Master Kosta?”
“Fast-fingers work, mostly.”
“Really? I can tell a cardsharp’s fingers at a glance. Let’s see that right hand of
yours.” Requin held out his gloved left hand, and Locke hesitantly put his own forward,
as though they might shake.
Requin snatched Locke’s right hand above the wrist and slammed it down atop his desk—but
rather than the sharp rap Locke expected, his hand tipped aside some sort of disguised
panel and slid into an aperture just beneath the surface of the desk. There was a
loud
clack
of clockwork, and a cold pressure pinched his wrist. Locke jerked back, but the desk
had
swallowed his hand like the unyielding maw of a beast. Selendri’s twin steel claws
turned casually toward him, and he froze.
“There now. Hands, hands, hands. They get their owners into such trouble, Master Kosta.
Selendri and I are two who would know.” Requin turned to the wall behind his desk
and slid back a lacquered wood panel, revealing a long, shallow shelf set into the
wall.
Within were dozens of sealed glass jars, each holding something dark and withered.
Dead spiders? No, Locke corrected himself—human hands. Severed, dried, and stored
as trophies, with rings still gleaming on many of their curled and desiccated fingers.
“Before we proceed to the inevitable, that’s what we usually do,” Requin said in a
lightly conversational tone. “Right hand, ta-ta. I’ve got it down to a pretty process.
Used to have carpets in here, but the damn blood made for
such
a mess.”
“Very prudent of you.” Locke felt a single bead of sweat start its slow slide down
his forehead. “I am as awed and chastised as you no doubt hoped. Might I have my hand
back?”
“In its original condition? I doubt it. But answer some questions, and we’ll see.
Now, fast-fingers work, you say. But forgive me—my attendants are extremely adept
at spotting cardsharps.”
“I’m sure your attendants mean well.” Locke knelt down before the desk, the most comfortable
position possible, and smiled. “But I can fingerdance a live cat into a standard deck
of fifty-six, and slip it back out at leisure. Other players might complain about
the noise, but they’d never spot the source.”
“Set a live cat on my desk, then.”
“It was, ah, a colorful figure of speech. Live cats, unfortunately, aren’t in fashion
as evening accessories for gentlemen of Tal Verrar this season.”
“Pity. But hardly a surprise. I’ve had quite a few dead men kneeling where you are
now, offering colorful figures of speech and little else.”
Locke sighed. “Your boys removed my coat and my shoes, and if they’d patted me down
any more thoroughly they would have been fingering my liver. But what’s this?”
He shook out his left sleeve, and held up his left hand to show that a deck of cards
had somehow fallen into it.
Selendri shoved her blades toward Locke’s throat, but Requin waved her back with a
smile on his face. “He can hardly kill me with a pack of cards, darling. Not bad,
Master Kosta.”
“Now,” said Locke, “let’s see.” He held his arm straight out to the side, with the
deck held firmly upright between his thumb and all four fingers. A
twist of the wrist, a flick of his thumb, and the deck was cut. He began to flex and
splay his fingers, steadily increasing his tempo until they moved like a spider taking
fencing lessons. Cut and shuffle, cut and shuffle—he sliced the deck apart and slid
it back together no fewer than a dozen times. Then, with one smooth flourish, he slapped
it down on the desk and spread it in a long arc, displacing several of Requin’s knickknacks.
“Pick one,” said Locke. “Any one you like. Look at it, but don’t show it to me.”
Requin did as instructed. While he peeked at the card he’d drawn, Locke gathered the
rest of the deck with a reverse slide across Requin’s desktop; he shuffled and cut
once more, then split the deck and left half on top of the desk. “Go ahead and place
your chosen card atop that half of the deck. Remember it, now.”
When Requin returned the card, Locke slapped the other half of the deck down on top
of it. Taking the full deck in his left hand, he did his one-handed cut-and-shuffle
another five times. Then, he slid the top card from the deck—the four of Chalices—onto
Requin’s desk and smiled. “This, master of the Sinspire, is your card.”
“No,” said Requin with a smirk.
“Shit.” Locke flicked out the next card from the top, the Sigil of the Sun. “Aha—I
knew it was around there, somewhere.”
“No,” said Requin.
“Damn me,” said Locke, and he rapidly went through the next half dozen from the top
of the deck. “Eight of Spires? Three of Spires? Three of Chalices? Sigil of the Twelve
Gods? Five of Sabers? Shit. Mistress of Flowers?” Requin shook his head for each one.
“Huh. Excuse me.” Locke set the deck of cards down on Requin’s desk, then fumbled
at the clasp of his right sleeve with his left hand. After a few seconds, he slid
the sleeve back above his elbow and reset the clasp. Suddenly, there was another deck
of cards in his left hand.