Authors: Scott Lynch
The woman was waiting for them in the shadows on Locke’s left.
She matched pace with him as he and Jean moved down the street. One of Locke’s sleeve-stilettos
fell into the palm of his hand before he could control the reflex, but she stayed
a full yard away, with her hands folded behind her back. She was youngish, short and
slender with dark hair pulled back into a long tail. She wore a vaguely fashionable
dark coat and a four-cornered hat with a long gray silk scarf that trailed behind
her like a ship’s pennant as she walked.
“Leocanto Kosta,” she said in a pleasant, even voice. “I know you and your friend
are armed. Let’s not be difficult.”
“I beg your pardon, madam?”
“Move that blade in your hand, and it’s a shaft through the neck for you. Tell your
friend to keep his hatchets under his coat. Let’s just keep walking.”
Jean began to move his left hand beneath his coat; Locke caught him with his right
hand and swiftly shook his head. They were not alone on the street; people hurried
here and there on business or pleasure, but some of them were staring at him and Jean.
Some of them were standing in alleys and shadows, wearing unseasonably heavy cloaks,
unmoving.
“Shit,” Jean muttered. “Rooftops.”
Locke glanced up briefly. Across the street, atop the three- and fourstory stone buildings,
he could see the silhouettes of at least two men moving slowly along with them, carrying
thin, curved objects in their hands. Longbows.
“You appear to have us at a disadvantage, madam,” said Locke, slipping his stiletto
into a coat pocket and showing her his empty hand. “To what do we owe the pleasure
of your attention?”
“Someone wants to have a conversation with you.”
“Clearly they knew where to find us. Why not simply join us for dinner?”
“Conversation should be private, don’t you think?”
“Did a man in a rather tall tower send you?”
She smiled but said nothing. A moment later, she gestured ahead of them. “At the next
corner, take a left. You’ll see an open door, first building on your right. Go there.
Follow directions.”
Sure enough, the promised open door was waiting just past the next crossroads, a rectangle
of yellow light casting a pale twin across the ground. The woman went in first. Locke,
conscious of the presence of at least four or five nearby lurkers in addition to the
rooftop archers, sighed and passed Jean a quick hand signal—
easy, easy
.
The place looked like a shop, disused but otherwise in good repair. There were six
more people inside the room, men and women in silver-banded leather doublets with
their backs up against the walls. Four of them held loaded crossbows, which neatly
quashed any thoughts of resistance Locke might have been teasing around inside his
head. Even Jean couldn’t balance those odds.
One of the crossbowmen quietly closed the door, and the woman who’d led Locke and
Jean in turned. The front of her coat fell open and Locke could see that she, too,
was wearing reinforced leather armor. She held out her hands.
“Weapons,” she said, politely but firmly. “Smartly, now.”
When Locke and Jean glanced at each other, she laughed.
“Don’t be dense, gentlemen. If we wanted you dead you’d already be pinned to the wall.
I’ll take good care of your property for you.”
Slowly, resignedly, Locke shook his two stilettos out of his coat, and Jean followed
suit with his matched pair of hatchets and no fewer than three daggers of his own.
“I do like men who travel prepared,” said the woman. She passed their weapons to one
of the men behind her and drew two lightweight cloth hoods out of her coat. She tossed
one to Locke and one to Jean.
“On over your heads, please. Then we can get on with our business.”
“Why?” Jean sniffed at his hood suspiciously, and Locke followed suit. The cloth seemed
to be clean.
“For your own protection. Do you really want your faces out in the open if we drag
you through the streets under guard?”
“I suppose not,” said Locke. Frowning, he slipped the hood on and found that it put
him in total darkness.
There was a sound of footsteps and the swirl of moving coats. Strong hands seized
Locke’s arms and forced them together behind his back. A moment later, he felt something
being woven tightly around his wrists. There was a louder tumult and a number of irritated
grunts from beside him; presumably they had ganged up on Jean in heavy numbers.
“There,” came the voice of the woman, now behind Locke. “Now, step lively. Don’t worry
about falling over—you’ll be assisted.”
By “assisted” she clearly meant that they’d be seized and carried along by the arms.
Locke felt hands close around his biceps, and he cleared his throat.
“Where are we going?”
“For a boat ride, Master Kosta,” said the woman. “Don’t ask any more questions, because
I won’t answer them. Let’s be on our way.”
There was a creak as the door was thrown open once again, and a brief whirling sensation
as he was pushed around and reoriented by the people holding him. Then they were moving
back out into the muggy Verrari night, and Locke could feel heavy beads of sweat begin
to slide their ticklish paths down his forehead.
“Shit,” said Locke as the deck of cards exploded outward from his sore left hand.
Jean flinched back from the blizzard of paper that fluttered around the compartment
of the carriage.
“Try again,” said Jean. “Perhaps the eighteenth time’s the charm.”
“I used to be so damned good at this one-handed shuffle.” Locke began plucking up
cards and reorganizing them into a neat pile. “I bet I could do it better than Calo
and Galdo, even. Damn, my hand aches.”
“Well, I know I pushed you to exercise,” said Jean, “but you were a little out of
practice even before you got hurt. Give it time.”
A hard rain was falling around the jouncing black luxury carriage as it threaded its
way along the old Therin Throne road through the foothills just east of the Tal Verrar
coast. A hunched middle-aged woman worked the reins of the six-horse team from her
open box atop the cabin, with the cowl of her oilcloak pulled forward to protect the
smoldering bowl of her pipe. Two outrider guards huddled in misery on the rear footboard,
secured by wide leather straps around their waists.
Jean was peering over a sheaf of notes, flipping parchment pages back and forth, muttering
to himself. The rain was beating hard against the right side of the closed cabin,
but they were able to keep the left-hand window open, with its mesh screens and leather
shutters drawn back to admit muggy air that smelled of manured fields and salt marshes.
A little yellow alchemical globe on the padded seat beside Jean provided reading light.
They were two weeks out from Vel Virazzo, a good hundred miles to the
northwest, and well past the need to paint themselves up with apple mash to move freely.
“Here’s what all my sources say,” said Jean when Locke had finished recovering all
of his cards. “Requin’s somewhere in his forties. Native Verrari, but he speaks a
bit of Vadran and supposedly he’s a genius at Throne Therin. He’s an art collector,
mad about the painters and sculptors from the very last years of the empire. Nobody
knows what he did prior to twenty years ago. Apparently he won the Sinspire on a bet
and threw the previous owner out a window.”
“And he’s tight with the Priori?”
“Most of them, it seems.”
“Any idea how much he keeps in his vaults?”
“Conservative estimate,” said Jean, “at least enough to pay out any debts the house
might incur. He could never allow himself to be embarrassed in that respect—so let’s
say fifty thousand solari, at least. Plus his personal fortune, plus the combined
goods and fortunes of a great many people. He doesn’t pay interest like the best countinghouses,
but he doesn’t keep transaction ledgers for the taxmen, either. Supposedly he has
one book, hidden gods know where, amended only by his own hand. This is mostly hearsay,
of course.”
“That fifty thousand doesn’t cover anything but the house’s operating funds, right?
So how much do you presume the
total
contents of his vault would be worth?”
“It’s pure entrail-reading, without the entrails, even, but … three hundred thousand?
Three hundred fifty?”
“Seems reasonable.”
“Yes, well, the details on the vault itself are much more solid. Apparently, Requin
doesn’t mind letting some of the facts get out. Thinks it dissuades thieves.”
“They always do, don’t they?”
“In this case, they may be onto something. Listen. The Sinspire is nearly sixty yards
high, one thick Elderglass cylinder. You know about those; you tried to jump off one
about two months ago. Goes down another hundred feet or so into a glass hill. It’s
got one door at street level, and exactly one door into the vault beneath the tower.
One. No secrets, no side entrances. The ground is pristine Elderglass; no tunneling
through it, not in a thousand years.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Requin’s got at least four attendants on each floor at any given time, plus dozens
of table minders, card dealers, and waiters. There’s a lounge on
the third floor where he keeps more out of sight. So figure, at a minimum, fifty or
sixty loyal workers on duty with another twenty to thirty he can call out. Lots of
nasty brutes, too. He likes to recruit from ex-soldiers, mercenaries, city thieves,
and such. He gives cushy positions to his Right People for jobs well done, and he
pays them like he was their doting mother. Plus, there are stories of dealers getting
a year’s wages in tips from lucky blue bloods in just a night or two. Bribery won’t
be likely to work on anyone.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“He’s got three layers of vault doors, all of them iron-shod witchwood, three or four
inches thick. Last set of doors is supposedly backed with blackened steel, so even
if you had a week to chop through the other two, you’d never get past the third. All
of them have clockwork mechanisms, the best and most expensive Verrari stuff, private
designs from masters of the Artificers’ Guild. The standing orders are, not one set
of doors opens unless he’s there himself to see it; he watches every deposit and every
withdrawal. Opens the doors a couple times per day at most. Behind the first set of
doors are four to eight guards, in rooms with cots, food, and water. They can hold
out there for a week, under siege.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“The inner sets of doors don’t open except for a key he keeps around his neck. The
outer doors won’t open except for a key he always gives to his majordomo. So you’d
need them both to get anywhere.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“And the traps … they’re demented, or at least the rumors are. Pressure plates, counterweights,
crossbows in the walls and ceilings. Contact poisons, sprays of acid, chambers full
of venomous serpents or spiders … One fellow even said that there’s a chamber before
the last door that fills up with a cloud of powdered strangler’s orchid petals, and
while you’re choking to death on that, a bit of twist-match falls out and lights the
whole mess on fire, so then you burn to a crisp. Insult to injury.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon, attended by fifty naked
women armed with poisoned spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin’s service. All
redheads.”
“You’re just making that up, Jean.”
“I wanted to see if you were listening. But what I’m saying is, I don’t care if he’s
got a million solari in there, packed in bags for easy hauling. I’m inclined to the
idea that this vault might not be breakable, not unless you’ve got three hundred soldiers,
six or seven wagons, and a team of master clockwork artificers you’re not telling
me about.”
“Right.”
“
Do
you have three hundred soldiers, six or seven wagons, and a team of master clockwork
artificers you’re not telling me about?”
“No, I’ve got you, me, the contents of our coin purses, this carriage, and a deck
of cards.” He attempted a complicated manipulation of the cards, and they erupted
out of his hand yet again, scattering against the opposite seat. “Fuck me with a poleax!”
“Then if I might persist, Lord of Legerdemain, perhaps there’s some other target in
Tal Verrar we might consider—”
“I’m not sure that’d be wise. Tal Verrar’s got no twit-riddled aristocracy for us
to fool around with. The archon’s a military tyrant on a long leash—he can bend the
laws as he sees fit, so I’d rather not yank his breechclout. The Priori council is
all merchants from common stock, and they’ll be damned hard to cheat. There’s plenty
of likely subjects for small-time games, but if we want a big game, Requin’s the best
one to hit. He’s got what we want, right there for the taking.”
“Yet his vault …”
“Let me tell you,” said Locke, “exactly what we’re going to do about his vault.”
Locke spoke for a few minutes while he put his deck of cards together, outlining the
barest details of his scheme. Jean’s eyebrows strained upward, attempting to take
to the air above his head.
“… so that’s that. Now what do you say, Jean?”
“I’ll be damned. That might just work. If …”
“If?”
“Are you sure you remember how to work a climbing harness? I’m a bit rusty myself.”
“We’ll have quite a while to practice, won’t we?”
“Hopefully. Hmmm. And we’ll need a carpenter. One outside Tal Verrar itself, obviously.”
“We can go looking into that as well, once we’ve got a bit of coin back in our pockets.”
Jean sighed, and all the banter went out of him like wine from a punctured skin. “I
suppose … that just leaves … damn.”
“What?”
“I, ah … well, hell. Are you going to break down on me again? Are you going to stay
reliable?”
“Stay
reliable
? Jean, you can … Damn it, look for yourself! What have I been doing? Exercising,
planning—and apologizing all the damn time!