The Lies of Locke Lamora (20 page)

A moment of fortunate stillness fell upon them as Calo tied the horses to a weathered wooden post beside the garden wall; not a soul was in sight. Calo stroked his horse’s thin mane.

“Hoist a glass or two in memory of us if we don’t come back, love.”

Locke put his back against the base of the wall and cupped his hands. Calo set a foot in this makeshift stirrup and leapt upward, propelled by the mingled strength of his legs and Locke’s arms. When he’d hoisted himself quietly and carefully atop the wall, he reached back down with both arms to hoist Locke up. The Sanza twin was as wiry as Locke was slender, and the operation went smoothly. In seconds they were both down in the wet, fragrant darkness of the garden, crouched motionless, listening.

The doors on the ground floor were all protected from within by intricate clockwork failsafes and steel bars—they simply could not be picked. But the rooftop…well, those who weren’t yet important enough to live with the constant threat of assassination often placed an inordinate degree of faith in high walls.

The two thieves went up the north face of the manor house, slowly and carefully, wedging hands and feet firmly into chinks in the warm, slick stone. The first and second floors were dark and quiet; the light on the third floor was on the opposite side of the building. Hearts hammering with excitement, they hauled themselves up until they were just beneath the parapet of the roof, where they paused for a long interval, straining to catch at any sound from within the manor that would hint at discovery.

The moons were stuffed away behind gauzy gray clouds; on their left the city was an arc of blurred jewel-lights shining through mist, and above them the impossible heights of the Five Towers stood like black shadows before the sky. The threads of light that burned on their parapets and in their windows enhanced rather than reduced their aura of menace. Staring up at them from near the ground was a sure recipe for vertigo.

Locke was the first over the parapet. Peering intently by the faint light falling from above, he planted his feet on a white-tiled pathway in the center of the roof and kept them there. He was surrounded on either side by the dark shapes of bushes, blossoms, small trees, and vines—the roof was rich with the scent of vegetation and night soil. The street-level garden was a mundane affair, if well tended;
this
was the Doña Sofia’s private botanical preserve.

Most alchemical botanists, in Locke’s experience, were enthusiasts of bizarre poisons. He made sure his hood and cloak were cinched tight around him, and pulled his black neck-cloth up over his lower face.

Soft-stepping along the white path, Locke and Calo threaded their way through Sofia’s garden, more carefully than if they had been walking between streams of lamp oil with their cloaks on fire. At the garden’s center was a roof hatch with a simple tumbler lock; Calo listened carefully at this door for two minutes with his favorite picks poised in his hands. Charming the lock took less than ten seconds.

The fourth floor: Doña Sofia’s workshop, a place where the two intruders wanted even less to stumble or linger than they had in her garden. Quiet as guilty husbands coming home from a late night of drinking, they stole through the dark rooms of laboratory apparatus and potted plants, scampering for the narrow stone stairs that led downward to a side passage on the third floor.

The operations of the Salvara household were well known to the Gentlemen Bastards; the don and doña kept their private chambers on the third floor, across the hall from the don’s study. The second floor was the solar, a reception and dining hall that went mostly disused when the couple had no friends over to entertain. The first floor held the kitchen, several parlors, and the servants’ quarters. In addition to Conté, the Salvaras kept a pair of middle-aged housekeepers, a cook, and a young boy who served as a messenger and scullion. All of them would be asleep on the first floor; none of them posed even a fraction of the threat that Conté did.

This was the part of the scheme that couldn’t be planned with any precision—they had to locate the old soldier and deal with him before they could have their intended conversation with Don Salvara.

Footsteps echoed from somewhere else on the floor; Locke, in the lead, crouched low and peeked around the left-hand corner. It turned out he was looking down the long passage that divided the third floor in half lengthwise; Don Salvara had left the door to his study open and was vanishing into the bedchamber. That door he closed firmly behind him—and a moment later the sound of a metal lock echoed down the hall.

“Serendipity,” whispered Locke. “I suspect he’ll be busy for quite some time in there. Light’s still on in his study, so we know he’s coming back out…. Let’s get the hard part over with.”

Locke and Calo slipped down the hallway, sweating now, but barely letting their heavy cloaks flutter as they moved. The long passage was tastefully decorated with hanging tapestries and shallow wall sconces in which tiny glow-glasses shed no more light than that of smoldering coals. Behind the heavy doors to the Salvaras’ chambers, someone laughed.

The stairwell at the far end of the passage was wide and circular; steps of white marble inset with mosaic-tile maps of Camorr spiralled down into the solar. Here Calo grabbed Locke by one sleeve, put a finger to his lips, and jerked his head downward.

“Listen,” he murmured.

Clang, clang…footsteps…clang, clang.

This sequence of noises was repeated several times, growing slightly louder each time. Locke grinned at Calo. Someone was pacing the solar, methodically checking the locks and the iron bars guarding each window. At this time of the night, there was only one man in the house who’d be doing such a thing.

Calo knelt beside the balustrade, just to the left of the top of the staircase. Anyone coming up the spiral stairs would have to pass directly beneath this position. He reached inside his cloak and took out a folded leather sack and a length of narrow-gauge rope woven from black silk; he then began to thread the silk line through and around the sack in some arcane fashion that Locke couldn’t follow. Locke knelt just behind Calo and kept one eye on the long passage they’d come down—a reappearance of the don was hardly likely yet, but the Benefactor was said to make colorful examples of incautious thieves.

Conté’s light, steady footsteps echoed on the staircase beneath them.

In a fair fight, the don’s man would almost certainly paint the walls with Locke and Calo’s blood, so it stood to reason that this fight would have to be as unfair as possible. At the moment the top of Conté’s bald head appeared beneath him, Calo reached out between the balustrade posts and let his crimper’s hood drop.

A crimper’s hood, for those who’ve never had the occasion to be kidnapped and sold into slavery in one of the cities on the Iron Sea, looks a bit like a tent as it flutters quickly downward, borne by weights sewn into its bottom edges. Air pushes its flaps outward just before it drops down around its target’s head and settles on his shoulders. Conté gave a startled jerk as Calo yanked the black silk cord, instantly cinching the hood closed around his neck.

Anyone with any real presence of mind could probably reach up and fumble such a hood loose in a matter of seconds, which is why the interior is inevitably painted with large amounts of some sweet-scented fuming narcotic, purchased from a black apothecary. Knowing the nature of the man they were attempting to subdue, Locke and Calo had spent nearly thirty crowns on the stuff Conté was breathing just now, and Locke fervently wished him much joy of it.

One panic-breath inside the airtight hood; that would be enough to drop any ordinary person in his or her tracks. But as Locke flew down the stairs to catch Conté’s body, he saw that the man was still somehow upright, clawing at the hood—disoriented and weakened, most definitely, but still awake. A quick rap on the solar plexus—that would open his mouth and speed the drug on its way. Locke stepped in to deliver the blow, wrapping one hand around Conté’s neck just beneath the crimper’s hood. This nearly blew the entire game.

Conté’s arms flashed up and broke Locke’s lackadaisical choke hold before it even began; the man’s left arm snaked out to entangle Locke’s right, and then Conté
punched
him—once, twice, three times; vicious jabs in his
own
stomach and solar plexus. With his guts an exploding constellation of pain, Locke sank down against his would-be victim, struggling for balance. Conté brought his right knee up in a blow that should have knocked Locke’s teeth out of his ears at high speed, but the drug was finally, thankfully smothering the old soldier’s will to be ornery. The knee barely grazed Locke’s chin; instead, the booted foot attached to it caught him in the groin and knocked him backward. His head bounced against the hard marble of the stairs, somewhat cushioned by the cloth of his hood; Locke lay there, gasping for breath, still hanging awkwardly by one of the hooded man’s arms.

Calo appeared at that instant, having dropped the line that cinched his crimper’s hood and dashed down the stairs. He slipped one foot behind Conté’s increasingly wobbly legs and pushed the man down the stairs, holding him by the front of his doublet to keep the fall relatively quiet. Once Conté was head-down and prone, Calo punched him rather mercilessly between the legs—once, then again when the man’s legs twitched feebly, and then again, which yielded no response. The hood had finally done its work. With Conté temporarily disposed of, Calo turned to Locke and tried to help him to a sitting position, but Locke waved him off.

“What sort of state are you in?” Calo whispered.

“As though I’m with child, and the little bastard is trying to cut his way out with an axe.” Chest heaving, Locke tore his black mask down off his face, lest he vomit inside it and create an unconcealable mess.

While Locke gulped deep breaths and tried to control his shuddering, Calo crouched back down beside Conté and tore the hood off, briskly waving away the sickly-sweet aroma of the leather bag’s contents. He carefully folded the hood up, slipped it into his cloak, and then dragged Conté up a few steps.

“Calo.” Locke coughed. “My disguise—damaged?”

“Not that I can see. Looks like he didn’t do anything that shows, provided you can walk without a slouch. Stay here a moment.”

Calo slipped down to the foot of the stairs and took a peek around the darkened solar; soft city light fell through the barred windows, faintly illuminating a long table and a number of glass cases on the walls, holding plates and unidentifiable knickknacks. Not another soul was in sight, and not a sound could be heard from below.

When Calo returned, Locke had pushed himself up on his knees and hands; Conté slumbered beside him with a look of comical bliss on his craggy face.

“Oh, he’s not going to keep that expression when he wakes up.” Calo waved a pair of thin, leather-padded brass knuckles at Locke, then made them vanish up his sleeyes with a graceful flourish. “I had my footpad’s little friends on when I knocked him around that last time.”

“Well, I for one have no expressions of sympathy to spare, since he kicked my balls hard enough to make them permanent residents of my lungs.” Locke tried to push himself up off his hands and failed; Calo caught him under his right arm and eased him up until he was kneeling, shakily, on his knees alone.

“You’ve got your breath back, at least. Can you actually walk?”

“I can stumble, I think. I’ll be hunched over for a while. Give me a few minutes and I think I can pretend nothing’s wrong. At least until we’re out of here.”

Calo assisted Locke back up the stairs to the third floor. Leaving Locke there to keep watch, he then began to quietly, slowly drag Conté up the same way. The don’s man didn’t actually weigh all that much.

Embarrassed, and eager to make himself useful again, Locke pulled two lengths of tough cord out of his own cloak and bound Conté’s feet and hands with them; he folded a handkerchief three times and used it as a gag. Locke pulled Conté’s knives out of their sheaths and passed them to Calo, who stashed them within his cloak.

The don’s study door still hung open, shedding warm light into the passage; the bedchamber doors remained locked tight.

“I pray you both may be gifted with a demand and an endurance well beyond your usual expectations, m’lord and lady,” whispered Calo. “Your household thieves would appreciate a short break before continuing with their duties for the evening.”

Calo grasped Conté beneath his arms, and Locke, slouched in obvious pain, nonetheless grabbed the man’s feet when Calo began to drag him all by himself. With tedious stealth, they retraced their steps and deposited the unconscious bodyguard around the far bend in the corridor, just beside the stairs leading back up to the fourth-floor laboratories.

The don’s study was a most welcome sight when they finally stole in a few minutes later. Locke settled into a deeply cushioned leather armchair on the left-hand wall, while Calo took up a standing guard position. More laughter could be heard, faintly, from across the hall.

“We could be here quite a while,” said Calo.

“The gods are merciful.” Locke stared at the don’s tall glass-fronted liquor cabinet—one even more impressive than the collection his pleasure barge carried. “I’d pour us a draught or six, but I don’t think it would be in character.”

They waited ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Locke breathed steadily and deeply, and concentrated on ignoring the throbbing ache that seemed to fill his guts from top to bottom. Yet when the two thieves heard the door across the hallway unbolting, Locke leapt to his feet, standing tall, pretending that his balls didn’t feel like clay jugs dropped onto cobblestones from a great height. He cinched his black mask back on and willed a wave of perfect arrogance to claim him from the inside out.

As Father Chains had once said, the best disguises were those that were poured out of the heart rather than painted on the face.

Calo kissed the back of his left hand through his own mask and winked.

Don Lorenzo Salvara walked into his study whistling, lightly dressed and completely unarmed.