The Lies of Locke Lamora (26 page)

“Not just clever and lucky, Locke. I agree there are limits to both. So what does he have up his sleeves? What does he know? Or
who
? If we are not betrayed, then it must be that we are overmatched. And I am reasonably certain that we are not yet betrayed.”

“Not yet?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, Locke. Business could go on after a fashion with Papa and myself cooped up here. But if he won’t let Anjais and Pachero out to run the city, the whole regime will go to hell. The
garristas
might think it prudent for some of the Barsavis to stay here; they’ll think it cowardice for
all
of us to hide. And they won’t just talk behind our backs; they’ll actively court another capa. Maybe a pack of new capas. Or maybe the Gray King.”

“So, naturally, your brothers will never let him trap them here.”

“Depends on how mad and crazy the old man gets. But even if they stay free to roam, that’s only the lesser part of the problem solved. We are, again, overmatched. Three thousand knives at our command, and the ghost still has the twist on us.”

“What do you suspect? Sorcery?”

“I suspect everything. They say the Gray King can kill a man with just a touch. They say that blades won’t cut him. I suspect the gods themselves. And so my brothers think I’m crazy.

“When they look at the situation all they see is a regular war. They think we can just outlast it, lock the old man and the baby sister up and wait until we know where to hit back. But
I
don’t see that. I see a cat with his paw over a mouse’s tail. And if the cat’s claws haven’t come out yet,
it’s not because of anything the mouse has done
. Don’t you get it?”

“Nazca, I know you’re agitated. I’ll listen. I’m a stone. You can yell at me all you like. But what can I do for you? I’m just a thief, I’m your father’s
littlest
thief. If there’s a gang smaller than mine I’ll go play cards in a wolf shark’s mouth. I—”

“I need you to start helping me calm Papa down, Locke. I need him back to something resembling his normal self so I can get him to take my points seriously. That’s why I’m asking you to go in there and take pains to please him.
Especially
please him. Show him a loyal
garrista
who does whatever he’s told, the moment he’s told. When he starts to lay reasonable plans for the future again, I’ll know he’s coming back to a state of mind I can deal with.”

“Interesting,” said Locke. “And, uh, daunting.”

“Papa used to say someday I’d appreciate having a gracious man to order around. Believe me, Locke, I do. So…here we are.”

At the end of the short passage was another set of heavy wooden doors, nearly identical to the ones that led back to the reception hall. These doors, however, were barred and locked with an elaborate Verrari clockwork device attached to crossbars of polished iron. A dozen keyholes were visible in the lockbox at the center of the doors; Nazca withdrew two keys that hung on a chain around her neck and briefly put her body between Locke and the doors, so he couldn’t see the apertures she chose. There was a cascading series of clicks and the noise of machinery within the doors; one by one the hidden bolts unshot themselves and the gleaming crossbars slid open until the doors finally cracked open in the middle.

Another scream, loud and vivid without the closed door to muffle it, sounded from the room beyond.

“It’s worse than it sounds,” said Nazca.

“I know what Sage does for your father, Nazca.”

“Knowing’s one thing. Usually Sage just does one or two at a time. Papa’s got the bastard working wholesale today.”

“I’VE MADE it clear that I don’t enjoy this,” said Capa Barsavi, “so why do you force me to
persist
?”

The dark-haired young man was secured to a wooden rack. He hung upside down with metal shackles around his legs, with his arms tied downward at their maximum extension. The Capa’s heavy fist slammed into the prisoner’s side just beneath his armpit; the sound was like a hammer slapping meat. Droplets of sweat flew and the prisoner screamed, writhing against his restraints.

“Why do you
insult
me like this, Federico?” Another punch to the same spot, with the heavy old man’s first two knuckles cruelly extended. “Why won’t you even have the
courtesy
to give me a convincing lie?” Capa Barsavi lashed Federico’s throat with the flat of one hand; the prisoner gasped for breath, snorting wetly as blood and spit and sweat ran down into his nose.

The heart of the Floating Grave was something like an opulent ballroom with curving sides. Warm amber light came from glass globes suspended on silver chains. Stairs ran to overhead galleries, and from these galleries to the silk-canopied deck of the old hulk. A small raised platform against the far wall held the broad wooden chair from which Barsavi usually received visitors. The room was tastefully decorated in a restrained and regal fashion, and today it stank of fear and sweat and soiled breeches.

The frame that held Federico folded downward from the ceiling; an entire semicircle of the things could be pulled down at need, for Barsavi occasionally did this sort of business in a volume that rewarded the standardization of procedures. Six were now empty and spattered with blood; only two still held prisoners.

The capa looked up as Locke and Nazca entered; he nodded slightly and gestured for them to wait against the wall. Old Barsavi remained bullish, but he wore his years in plain view. He was rounder and softer now, his three braided gray beards backed by three wobbly chins. Dark circles cupped his eyes, and his cheeks were the unhealthy sort of red that came out of a bottle. Flushed with exertion, he had thrown off his overcoat and was working in his silk undertunic.

Standing nearby with folded arms were Anjais and Pachero Barsavi, Nazca’s older brothers. Anjais was like a miniature version of the Capa, minus thirty years and two beards, while Pachero was more of a kind with Nazca, tall and slender and curly-haired. Both of the brothers wore optics, for whatever eye trouble the old Madam Barsavi had borne had been passed to all three of her surviving children.

Leaning against the far wall were two women. They were not slender. Their bare, tanned arms were corded with muscle and crisscrossed with scars, and while they radiated an air of almost feral good health they were well past the girlishness of early youth. Cheryn and Raiza Berangias, identical twins, and the greatest
contrarequialla
the city of Camorr had ever known. Performing only as a pair, they had given the Shifting Revel almost a hundred performances against sharks, devilfish, death-lanterns, and other predators of the Iron Sea.

For nearly five years, they had been Capa Barsavi’s personal bodyguards and executioners. Their long, wild manes of smoke-black hair were tied back under nets of silver that jangled with sharks’ teeth. One tooth, it was said, for every man or woman the Berangias twins had killed in Barsavi’s service.

Last but certainly not least alarming in this exclusive gathering was Sage Kindness, a round-headed man of moderate height and middle years. His short-cropped hair was the butter yellow of certain Therin families from the westerly cities of Karthain and Lashain; his eyes always seemed to be wet with emotion, though his expression never changed. He was perhaps the most even-tempered man in Camorr—he could pull fingernails with the mellow disinterest of a man polishing boots. Capa Barsavi was a very capable torturer, but when he found himself stymied the Sage never disappointed him.

“He doesn’t know anything!” The last prisoner, as yet untouched, hollered at the top of his voice as Barsavi slapped Federico around some more. “Capa, Your Honor, please, none of us know anything! Gods! None of us remember!”

Barsavi stalked across the wooden floor and shut the second prisoner up by giving his windpipe a long, cruel squeeze. “Were the questions addressed to you? Are you eager to get involved in the proceedings? You were quiet enough when I sent your other six friends down into the water. Why do you cry for this one?”

“Please,” the man sobbed, sucking in air as Barsavi lightened his grip just enough to permit speech, “please, there’s no point. You must believe us, Capa Barsavi, please. We’d have told you anything you wanted if only we knew. We don’t remember! We just don’t—”

The Capa silenced him with a vicious cuff across the face. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the frightened sobbing and gasping of the two prisoners.

“I must believe you? I must do
nothing
, Julien. You give me bullshit, and tell me it’s steamed beef? So many of you, and you can’t even come up with a decent story. A serious attempt to lie would still piss me off, but I could
understand
it. Instead you cry that you
don’t remember
. You, the eight most powerful men in the Full Crowns, after Tesso himself. His chosen. His friends, his bodyguards, his loyal
pezon
. And you cry like babies to me about how you don’t remember where any of you were last night, when Tesso just happened to
die
.”

“But that’s just how it is, Capa Barsavi, please, it’s—”

“I ask you again, were you drinking last night?”

“No, not at all!”

“Were you smoking anything? All of you, together?”

“No, nothing like that. Certainly not…not together.”

“Gaze, then? A little something from Jerem’s pervert alchemists? A little bliss from a powder?”

“Tesso never permitted—”

“Well then.” Barsavi drove a fist into Julien’s solar plexus, almost casually. While the man gasped in pain, Barsavi turned away and held up his arms with theatrical joviality. “Since we’ve eliminated every
possible earthly explanation
for such dereliction of duty, short of sorcery or divine intervention…Oh, forgive me. You weren’t enchanted by the gods themselves, were you? They’re hard to miss.”

Julien writhed against his bonds, red-faced, shaking his head. “Please…”

“No gods, then. Didn’t think so. I was saying…well, I was saying that your little game is boring the hell out of me. Kindness.”

The round-headed man lowered his chin to his chest and stood with his palms out, facing upward, as though he were about to receive a gift.

“I want something creative. If Federico won’t talk, let’s give Julien one last chance to find his tongue.”

Federico began screaming before Barsavi had even finished speaking—the high, sobbing wail of the conscious damned. Locke found himself clenching his teeth to keep himself from shaking. So many meetings with slaughter as a backdrop…The gods could be perverse.

Sage Kindness moved to a small table to the side of the room, on which there was a pile of small glasses and a heavy cloth sack with a drawstring. Kindness threw several glasses into the sack and began banging it against the table; the sound of breaking, jangling glass wasn’t audible beneath Federico’s wild hollering, but Locke could imagine it easily enough. After a few moments, Kindness seemed satisfied, and walked slowly over to Federico.

“Don’t, don’t, no, don’t don’t
please no no…”

With one hand holding the desperate young man’s head still, Kindness rapidly drew the bag up over the top of his head, over his face, all the way to Federico’s neck, where he cinched the drawstring tight. The bag muffled Federico’s screams, which had become high and wordless again. Kindness then began to knead the bag, gently at first, almost tenderly; the torturer’s long fingers pushed the jagged contents of the sack up and around Federico’s face. Red stains began to appear on the surface of the bag; Kindness manipulated the contents of the sack like a sculptor giving form to his clay. Federico’s throat mercifully gave out just then, and for the next few moments the man choked out nothing more than a few hoarse moans. Locke prayed silently that he had already fled beyond pain to the temporary refuge of madness.

Kindness increased the vigor with which he massaged the cloth. He pressed now where Federico’s eyes would be, and on the nose, and the mouth, and the chin. The bag grew wetter and redder until at last Federico’s twitching stopped altogether. When Kindness took his hands off the bag they looked as though he’d been pulping tomatoes. Smiling sadly, he let his red hands drip red trails on the wood, and he walked over to Julien, staring intently, saying nothing.

“Surely,” said Capa Barsavi, “if I’ve convinced you of
anything
by this point, it must be the depth of my resolve. Will you not speak?”

“Please, Capa Barsavi,” whispered Julien, “there’s no need for this. I have nothing I can tell you. Ask me anything, anything at all. What happened last night is a blank. I don’t remember. I would tell you, please, gods, please believe me, I would tell you anything. We are loyal
pezon
, the most loyal you have!”

“I sincerely hope not.” Barsavi seemed to come to a decision; he gestured to the Berangias sisters and pointed at Julien. The dark-haired ladies worked quickly and silently, undoing the knots that held him to the wooden frame while leaving the ones that bound him from ankles to neck. They cradled the shivering man effortlessly, one at his shoulders and one at his feet.

“Loyal? Please. We are grown men, Julien. Refusing to tell me the truth of what happened last night is not a loyal act. You’ve let me down, so I give like for like.” On the far left side of the great hall a man-sized wooden floor panel had been slid aside; barely a yard down was the dark surface of the water beneath the Grave. The floor around the opening was wet with blood. “I shall let
you
down.”

Julien screamed one last time as the Berangias sisters heaved him into the opening, headfirst; he hit the water with a splash and didn’t come back up. It was the capa’s habit to keep something nasty down beneath the Grave at all times, constrained there by heavy nets of wire-reinforced rope that surrounded the underside of the galleon like a sieve.

“Kindness, you are dismissed. Boys, when I call you back you can get some people in here to clean up, but for now go wait on deck. Raiza, Cheryn—please go with them.”

Moving slowly, Capa Barsavi walked to his plain, comfortable old chair and settled into it. He was breathing heavily and quivering all the more for his effort not to show it. A brass wine goblet with the capacity of a large soup tureen was set out on the little table beside his chair; the capa took a deep draught and seemed to brood over the fumes for a few moments, his eyes closed. At last he came back to life and beckoned for Locke and Nazca to step forward.