The Lies of Locke Lamora

Chapter FIFTEEN

SPIDERBITE

1

“CAN YOU ASSURE me,” said Ibelius, “that you will take better care for yourself than you did previously, or that your friend Jean has taken for himself, this past week?”

“Master Ibelius,” said Locke, “you are our physiker, not our mother. And as I have already told you a dozen times this afternoon, I am entirely prepared—body and mind—for this affair at Raven’s Reach. I am the soul of caution.”

“La, sir, if that is the case, I should hope never to meet the soul of recklessness.”

“Ibelius,” groaned Jean, “let him alone; you are henpecking him without having the decency to marry him first.”

Jean sat upon the sleeping pallet, haggard and rather scruffy; the darkness of the hairs thickening on his face only emphasized his own unnatural pallor. His injuries had been a close thing. A great wad of cloth was tied around his naked chest, and similar bandages wrapped his leg beneath his breeches and his upper right arm.

“These physikers are handy things,” said Locke, adjusting his (formerly Meraggio’s) coat cuffs, “but I think next time we should pay a bit extra for the silent version, Jean.”

“And then you may dress your own wounds, sir, and apply your own poultices—though I daresay it would be quicker and easier for the pair of you to simply dig your own graves and take your ease in them until your inevitable transition to a more quiet state of affairs!”

“Master Ibelius,” said Locke, grasping the old man by the arms, “Jean and I are more grateful than we can say for your aid; I suspect that we would both be dead without your intervention. I mean to repay you for the time you’ve endured with us here in this hovel; I expect to come into a few thousand crowns in very short order. Some of it is yours; you shall have a new life far from here with very full pockets. And the rest will be used to put Capa Raza under the earth; take heart. Look what Jean has already done to his sisters.”

“A feat I’m in no condition to perform again,” said Jean. “Take care of yourself, Locke; I won’t be able to come running to the rescue if something goes awry tonight.”

“Though I have no doubt you would try,” muttered Ibelius.

“Don’t worry, Jean. It’ll be nothing but a routine evening with the duke and his entire f*cking court, assembled in a glass tower six hundred feet in the air. What could possibly go wrong?”

“That sarcasm sounds halfhearted,” said Jean. “You’re really looking forward to this, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am, Jean. Chains would be beside himself with glee if he were alive; I’m going to play Lukas Fehrwight in front of the gods-damned duke, not to mention all the other peers of our acquaintance. The de Marres, the Feluccias, old Javarriz…Glory to the Crooked Warden, it’s going to be fantastic f*cking fun. Assuming I’m on top of my game. And then…money in our pockets. And then revenge.”

“When are you expected at the Salvara manor?”

“Third hour of the afternoon, which means I’ve no more time to dawdle. Jean, Ibelius…how do I look?”

“I would hardly recognize the man we laid on that sickbed not so many days ago,” said Ibelius. “I’ll confess, you’ve a surprising degree of professional skill; I’d never conceived of such a thing as this false-facing of yours.”

“That’s to our advantage, Master Ibelius,” said Jean. “Very few have. You look ready for the evening, Master Fehrwight. Now, you’re going to take the long way round to the Isla Durona, right?”

“Gods, yes. I’m only mad to a certain measure. I’ll go north through the graveyards and up through the Quiet; I expect I won’t see a soul once I’m out of Ashfall.”

As he spoke, he draped himself with the oilcloak Jean had brought back from his encounter with the Berangias sisters, despite the sweltering heat. It would conceal his fine garments from sight until he reached the Hill of Whispers. A man dressed in evening best might attract too much attention from some of the lurkers in the dark places of Ashfall.

“I’m for Raven’s Reach, then,” said Locke. “Until much later, Jean; rest up. Master Ibelius, favor Jean with your motherly attention; I hope to return with very good news.”

“I shall be grateful if you return at all,” said Ibelius.

2

MIDSUMMER-MARK; the Day of Changes, the seventeenth of Parthis in the Seventy-eighth Year of Aza Guilla, as the Therin Calendar would have it. On the Day of Changes, the city of Camorr went mad.

A Shifting Revel commanded the wide circular pond of the market, but this one was smaller and more ragged than the formal monthly Revels. The centerpiece of this one was a floating handball court made from a number of flat-topped barges lashed together. Teams of commoners had selected colors from out of a barrel; now randomly matched, they were mauling one another drunkenly as a crowd composed entirely of commoners cheered. When a team scored, a small boat with a beer keg lashed amidships would pull alongside the playing court and ladle out a drink for every man on that team. Naturally, the matches got wilder and dirtier as they progressed; quite a few players were flung into the water, there to be fished out by a crew of diligent yellowjackets who wouldn’t otherwise dream of interfering.

Commoners ruled the streets of lower Camorr on the Day of Changes. They held wandering picnics, hauling ale barrels and wine bags around with them. Streams of celebrants would cross paths, jostle, join, and split; a gods’-eye view of the affair would have shown disorderly men and women circulating through the city streets like blood through the vessels of an inebriated man.

In the Snare, business was bountiful. The celebration sucked in sailors and visitors from foreign shores like a tidal pool drawing downward; a few hours of Camorri hospitality and the guest revelers were unlikely to be able to tell their asses from their eardrums. There would be few ships setting out from port the next day; few would have the able manpower necessary to raise so much as a flag pennant, let alone a sail.

In the Cauldron and the Narrows and the Dregs, Capa Raza’s people celebrated their new ruler’s largesse. By his order, dozens upon dozens of casks of cheap red wine had been rolled out in dog-carts. Those gangs that were too poor or too lazy to journey to the crossroads of wickedness that was the Snare drank themselves silly on their own doorsteps. Raza’s garristas passed through the neighborhoods he claimed as his own with baskets of bread, passing them out to anyone who asked for them. It turned out that each loaf had either a copper piece or a silver piece baked into it, and when these hidden gifts were revealed (by means of a few unlucky broken teeth), not a single loaf of bread was safe from depredation south of the Temple District.

Raza’s Floating Grave was open for visitors; several of his garristas and their gangs amused themselves with a game of cards that grew to epic size; at its height, forty-five men and women were bickering and shuffling and drinking and screaming at one another on the floor above the dark waters of the Waste—the waters that had eaten Capa Barsavi and his entire family.

Raza was nowhere to be seen; Raza had business in the north that evening, and he told none outside his close circle of original servants that he would be at the duke’s court, looking down on them from the tower of Raven’s Reach.

In the Temple District, the Day of Changes was celebrated in a more restrained fashion. Each temple’s full complement of priests and initiates traded places with another in an ever-shifting cycle. The black-robes of Aza Guilla’s house conducted a stately ritual on the steps of Iono’s temple; the servants of the Father of Grasping Waters did likewise at theirs. Dama Elliza and Azri, Morgante and Nara, Gandolo and Sendovani; all the delegations of the divine burned candles and sang to the sky before a different altar, then moved on a few minutes later. A few extra benedictions were offered at the burnt-out House of Perelandro, where a single old man in the white robes of the Lord of the Overlooked, recently summoned from Ashmere, pondered the mess of a temple that had been thrust into his care. He had no idea how to begin composing his report to the chief divine of Perelandro on the destruction he’d found in an Elderglass cellar—the existence of which he’d not been informed of before his journey.

In the North Corner and Fountain Bend, well-to-do young couples made for Twosilver Green, where it was thought to be good luck to make love on the eve of the Midsummer-mark. It was said that any union consummated there before Falselight would bring the couple whatever they most desired in a child. This was a pleasant bonus, if true, but for the time being most of the men and women hidden away among the crushed-stone paths and rustling walls of greenery desired only one another.

On the waters of Old Harbor, the frigate Satisfaction floated at anchor, yellow flags flying atop its masts, yellow lanterns shining even by day. A dozen figures moved on its deck, surreptitiously going about the business of preparing the ship for night action. Crossbows were racked at the masts, and canvas tarps flung over them. Antiboarding nets were hauled out below the rails on the ship’s upper deck and set there for rapid rigging, out of sight. Buckets of sand were set out to smother flames; if the shore engines let fly, some of them would surely hurl alchemical fire, against which water would be worse than useless.

In the darkened holds beneath the ship’s upper deck, another three dozen men and women ate a large meal, to have their stomachs full when the time for action came. There wasn’t an invalid among them; not so much as an ague fever.

At the foot of Raven’s Reach, home and palace of Duke Nicovante of Camorr, a hundred carriages were parked in a spiraling fashion around the tower’s base. Four hundred liveried drivers and guards milled about, enjoying refreshments brought to them by scampering men and women in the duke’s colors. They would be there waiting all night for the descent of their lords and ladies. The Day of Changes was the only day of the year when nearly every peer of Camorr—every lesser noble from the Alcegrante islands and every last member of the Five Families in their glass towers—would be crammed together in one place, to drink and feast and scheme and intrigue and offer compliments and insults while the duke gazed down on them with his rheumy eyes. Each year the coming generation of Camorr’s rulers watched the old guard gray a bit more before their eyes; each year their bows and curtsies grew slightly more exaggerated. Each year the whispers behind their hands grew more poisonous. Nicovante had, perhaps, ruled too long.

There were six chain elevators serving Raven’s Reach; they rose and fell, rose and fell. With each new cage that creaked open at the top of the tower, a new flurry of people in colored coats and elaborate dresses was disgorged onto the embarkation terrace to mingle with the chattering flood of nobles and flatterers, power brokers and pretenders, merchants and idlers and drunkards and courtly predators. The sun beat down on this gathering with all of its power; the lords and ladies of Camorr seemed to be standing on a lake of molten silver, at the top of a pillar of white fire.

The air rippled with waves of heat as the iron cage holding Locke Lamora and the Salvaras swung, clattering, into the locking mechanisms at the edge of the duke’s terrace.

3

“HOLY MARROWS,” said Locke, “but I have never seen the like. I have never been this high in the air; by the Hands Beneath the Waters, I have never been this high in society! My lord and lady Salvara, pardon me if I cling to you both like a drowning man.”

“Sofia and I have been coming here since we were children,” said Lorenzo. “Every year, on this day. It’s only overwhelming the first ten or eleven times you see it, believe me.”

“I shall have to take you at your word, my lord.”

Attendants in black and silver livery, with rows of polished silver buttons gleaming in the sunlight, held the cage door open for them as Locke followed the Salvaras onto the embarkation terrace. A squad of blackjackets marched past, in full ceremonial dress, with rapiers carried over their shoulders in silver-chased scabbards. The soldiers wore tall black fur hats with medallions bearing the crest of the Duchy of Camorr just above their eyes. Locke winced to think at how those must have felt, marching back and forth beneath the sun’s merciless consideration for hours on end. His own clothes were working up a healthy sweat, but he and his hosts had the option of moving inside the tower at will.

“Don Lorenzo and Doña Sofia? My lord and lady Salvara?”

The man who approached them from the edge of the crowd was very tall and wide-shouldered; he stood a full head above most of the Camorri present, and his angular features and singularly fair hair were the mark of the oldest, purest sort of Vadran blood. This man had roots in the far northeast, in Astrath or Vintila, the heartlands of the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. Curiously, he was dressed in Nightglass Company black, with a captain’s silver collar pips, and his voice was pure upper-class Camorr without the hint of any other accent.

“Why, yes,” said Don Lorenzo.

“Your servant, my lord and lady. My name is Stephen Reynart; Doña Vorchenza, I believe, should have mentioned me to you.”

“Oh, of course!” Doña Sofia held out her hand; Reynart bent at the waist with his right foot forward, took her hand, and kissed the air just above it. “So pleased to make your acquaintance at last, Captain Reynart. And how is dear Doña Vorchenza this afternoon?”

“She is knitting, my lady,” said Reynart, with a smirk that told of some private joke. “She has commandeered one of the duke’s sitting rooms for herself; you know how she feels about large, noisy gatherings.”

“I must, of course, find her,” said Sofia. “I should love to see her.”

“I’m sure the feeling will be mutual, my lady. But may I presume? Is this Master Fehrwight, the merchant of Emberlain I was told you would be bringing?” Reynart bowed again, just the neck this time, and in heavily accented Vadran he said, “May the Marrows run sweet and the seas run calm, Master Fehrwight.”

“May the Hands Beneath the Waves carry you to good fortune,” Locke replied in his own much smoother Vadran, genuinely surprised. He switched back to Therin for the sake of politeness. “One of my countrymen, Captain Reynart? In the service of the duke of Camorr? How fascinating!”

“I am most definitely of the Vadran blood,” said Reynart, “but my parents died when I was an infant, on a trading mission to this city. I was adopted and raised by Doña Vorchenza, the countess of Amberglass—the bright golden tower over there. She had no children of her own. Although I cannot inherit her title and her properties, I have been allowed to serve in the duke’s Nightglass Company.”

“Astonishing! I must say, you look exceedingly formidable—the image of the kings of the Marrows themselves. I’d wager the duke is only too pleased to have you in his service.”

“I hope with all my heart for that to be true, Master Fehrwight. But come; I’m holding you up. I beg pardon, my lord and lady Salvara; I am hardly a worthy topic of conversation. Let me show you into the tower, by your leave.”

“By all means,” said Sofia. She leaned close to Locke’s ear and whispered, “Doña Vorchenza is a dear old thing, something like a grandmother to all of us Alcegrante ladies. She is the arbiter of all our gossip, you might say. She is not well—she is more and more distant with every passing month—but she is still very close to us. I hope you will have the chance to make her acquaintance.”

“I shall look forward to it, my lady Salvara.”

Reynart ushered them into the tower of Raven’s Reach itself, and the sight that met Locke’s eyes drew an unwilling gasp from his mouth.

From the outside, Raven’s Reach was opaque silver. From the inside, at least on the levels he could see, it was nearly transparent. A smoky haze seemed to live within the glass, cutting out the glare of the sun, reducing it to a plain white circle overhead that the naked eye could easily bear to regard. But in all other ways it let in the view as though it were not there at all. The hilly countryside and the wide Angevine lay to the north, while all the islands of the lower city lay spread like illustrations on a map to the south. Locke could even make out the thin black shapes of ships’ masts bobbing past the southern edge of the city. His stomach fluttered with the thrill of vertigo.

On the level of the tower just above them, the Sky Garden began; there were said to be a hundred tons of rich earth in the pots and troughs atop that roof. Vines cascaded down the sides; well-tended bushes and full-sized trees sprouted from the apex of the tower—a little round forest in miniature. In the branches of one of those trees, facing south to the Iron Sea, was a wooden chair that was regarded as the very highest point in Camorr any sane person could reach. The Sky Garden would be full of children; it was where all the youngest nobles would be released to amuse themselves while their parents tended to the business of the court beneath their feet.

The floor they stood on did not cover the full hundred-foot width of the tower; it was a hemisphere, covering only the north half of the tower’s diameter. Locke grasped a rail at the southern edge of the floor and looked down; there were four other hemispherical galleries beneath them, each about twenty feet below the one above, and each one full of men and women. The vertigo threatened to swallow him again. Staring down at least eighty feet to “ground,” with the transparent side of the tower and that mind-twisting southern view spread out before him, he felt almost as though the world were tilting on its axis. The hand of Don Salvara on his shoulder brought him back to the present.

“You’ve got Raven’s Reach disease, Lukas,” the don laughed. “You’re clutching that rail like a lover. Come have some refreshments; your eyes will sort out the views in time, and it will all come to seem perfectly normal.”

“Oh, my lord Salvara, if only that should prove to be the case! But I would be glad to visit the banquet tables.”

The don led him through the press of silks and cottons and cashmeres and rare furs, nodding here and waving there. Sofia had vanished, along with Reynart.

The banquet tables (or perhaps these were merely the appetizer tables; the light afternoon refreshments at a feast like this could rival the main course from any lesser occasion) were laid out with silver-trimmed linen cloths, fifty feet from end to end. Guild Chefs—the masters of the Eight Beautiful Arts of Camorr—stood at attention in their cream-yellow ceremonial robes and black scholars’ caps with hanging gold cords behind their ears. Each chef, male or female, had intricate black tattoos on each of the four fingers of their hands; every design representing mastery of one of the Eight Gourmet Forms.

At one end of the banquet table were desserts (the Fifth Beautiful Art): cherry cream cakes encased in shells of gold leaf that were intended to be eaten; cinnamon tarts painstakingly assembled with honey-paste glue into the shape of sailing vessels, a whole fleet of little ships with white marzipan sails and raisins for crewmen. There were hollowed-out pears, their cores replaced with cylinders of river-melon fruit or brandy creams; there were shaved river-melons, their green exteriors scraped down to reveal the pink flesh inside. Every exposed pink face bore a relief sculpture of the crest of Camorr, and alchemical globes set within the melons made them glow with an inviting pink light.

At the other end of the table were meats. Each one of the silver platters held a phantasmavola: an Impossible Dish, an imaginary animal formed by joining the halves of two separate creatures during preparation and cooking. Locke saw a roast boar with the head of a salmon, resting on a pile of black caviar. Nearby there was a pig’s head, complete with a marsh apple in its mouth, with a roast capon for a body. The whole affair was covered in brown caramel sauce and figs, and Locke gave in to the growling sensation at the bottom of his stomach. He let one of the chefs slice him a fair portion of the pig/capon, which he ate from a silver dish with a little silver fork; it came apart in his mouth with the texture of butter, and the flavors set his head whirling. He hadn’t tasted anything so magnificent in weeks, and he knew that it would have taken all of his powers, with the help of the Sanza brothers at their peak, to prepare something so fine in his old glass cellar. But that thought stole some of the savor from his meal, and he finished quickly.

The bullock’s head with the body of a squid, he was happy to avoid.

At the center of the banquet tables was the crowning glory (of this particular level, at least). It was a massively unsubtle subtlety, eight feet in length: an edible sculpture of the city of Camorr. The islands were baked sweetbread on little raised metal platforms; the channels between those platforms ran deep with some blue liquor that was being ladled out in cups by a chef at the right side of the diorama. Each major bridge in the city was represented by a crystallized-sugar replica; each major Elderglass landmark was given a tiny analog, from the Broken Tower in the south to the House of Glass Roses to the Five Towers overlooking everything. Locke peered very closely. There was even a tiny frosted chocolate galleon little bigger than an almond, floating on a brown pudding Wooden Waste.

“How are you faring, Lukas?”

Don Salvara was beside him again, wineglass in hand; a black-coated attendant plucked Locke’s used dish from his fingers the moment he turned to speak to the don.

“I am overwhelmed,” said Locke, without much exaggeration. “I had no idea what to expect. By the Marrows, perhaps it is well that I had no preconceptions. The court of the king of the Marrows must be like this; I can think of nowhere else that would possibly compare.”

“You honor our city with your kind thoughts,” said Lorenzo. “I’m very pleased you decided to join us; I’ve just been around chatting with a few of my peers. I’ll have a serious talk with one of them in about an hour; I think he’ll be good for about three thousand crowns. I hate to say it, but he’s rather malleable, and he’s very fond of me.”

“Lukas,” cried Doña Sofia as she reappeared with Reynart at her heels, “is Lorenzo showing you around properly?”

“My lady Salvara, I am quite astounded by the spectacle of this feast; I daresay your husband could leave me sitting in a corner with my thumb in my mouth, and I would be adequately entertained all evening.”

“I would do no such thing, of course,” laughed Don Salvara. “I was just off speaking to Don Bellarigio, love; he’s here with that sculptor he’s been patronizing these past few months, that Lashani fellow with the one eye.”

A team of liveried attendants walked past, four men carrying something heavy on a wooden bier between them. The object was a gold-and-glass sculpture of some sort—a gleaming pyramid crested with the arms of Camorr; it must have had alchemical lamps within it, for the glass glowed a lovely shade of orange. As Locke watched, the color shifted to green, and then to blue, and then to white, and back to orange again.

“Oh, how lovely!” Doña Sofia was clearly enamored with all things alchemical. “The shifting hues! Oh, those adjustments must be precise; how I would love to see inside! Tell me, can Don Bellarigio’s Lashani sculpt me one of those?”

Three more teams of men hauled three more sculptures past; each one shifted through a slightly different pattern of changing colors.

“I don’t know,” said Reynart. “Those are gifts for the duke, from one of our…more unusual guests. They’ve been cleared with my superiors; they certainly do look lovely.”

Locke turned back to the banquet table and suddenly found himself six feet away from Giancana Meraggio, who had an orchid at his breast, a silver plate of fruit in one hand, and a gorgeous young woman in a red gown on the other. Meraggio’s gaze passed over Locke, then whirled back; those penetrating eyes fixed on him, and on the clothes he wore. The master money-changer opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, and then opened it again.

“Sir,” said Meraggio in a cold voice, “I beg your pardon, but—”

“Why, Master Meraggio!” Don Salvara stepped up beside him. At the sight of a don, Meraggio shut his mouth once again and bowed politely, from the waist, though not very deeply.

“Don Salvara,” said Meraggio, “and the lovely Doña Sofia. What a pleasure to see you both! Greetings to you as well, Captain Reynart.” He dismissed the tall Vadran from his consideration with a shift of his head and peered at Locke again.

“Master Meraggio,” said Locke. “Why, what a fortunate coincidence! It is a pleasure to meet you at last; I have looked for you at your countinghouse, many times, and I am afraid I have never had a chance to pay my proper respects.”

“Indeed? Why, I was just about to ask…who might you be, sir?”

“Master Meraggio,” said Don Salvara, “allow me to present Lukas Fehrwight, merchant of Emberlain, servant of the House of bel Auster. He has come down to discuss the import of a certain quantity of small beer; I’d like to see how those Emberlain ales fare against our native best. Lukas, this is the honorable Giancana Meraggio, master of the countinghouse that bears his name, known by many as the Duke of White Iron, for very good reason. All finance whirls around him like the constellations in the sky.”

“Your servant, sir,” said Locke.

“Of Emberlain? Of the House of bel Auster?”

“Why yes,” said Doña Sofia, “he’s here at the feast as our special guest.”

“Master Meraggio,” said Locke, “I hope I do not presume too much, but do you find the cut of my coat pleasing? And the fabric?”

“A singular question,” said Meraggio, scowling, “for both seem strangely familiar.”

“And well they should,” said Locke. “On the advice of the Salvaras, I secured for myself a single suit of clothes cut in your Camorri style. I requested of the tailor that he select a cut that was especially favored by the best-known taste in the entire city. And who should he name but yourself, sir; this suit of clothes is fashioned after your very own preferences! I hope you will not find me forward if I say that I find it most excellently comfortable.”

“Oh, no,” said Meraggio, looking terribly confused. “Oh, no. Not too forward at all—very flattering, sir, very flattering. I, um…I do not feel entirely well; the heat, you see. I believe I shall avail myself of some of the punch from that subtlety. It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master Fehrwight. If you will excuse me, Doña Sofia, Don Lorenzo.”

Meraggio moved off, peering back over his shoulder at Locke and then shaking his head. Oh, Crooked Warden, thought Locke, you’re one funny son of a bitch, aren’t you?

“Lukas,” said Doña Sofia, “have you had enough food for the time being?”

“I believe I shall keep rather well, my lady.”

“Good! Why not hunt down Doña Vorchenza with me; she’s hiding down on one of the other galleries, hunched over her knitting. If she’s lucid today, you’ll love her, I guarantee it.”

“Doña Vorchenza,” said Reynart, “is in the northernmost apartment of the western gallery, two floors down. Do you know the place I speak of?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sofia. “What do you say, Lukas? Let us pay our respects; Lorenzo can circulate and work on the important affairs he should be looking into.”

“The matter has not slipped my mind, darling,” said Don Lorenzo with mock irritation. “Master Fehrwight, I for my part hope the old doña is speaking Therin this evening; you may find yourself being introduced to the equivalent of a stone statue. Or perhaps she merely behaves that way when I’m in the room.”

“I wish I could say that it was entirely an affectation, my lord Salvara,” said Reynart. “I should circulate for a while and try to look as though I’m actually on duty. Give my affection to Doña Vorchenza, my lady Sofia.”

“Of course, Captain. Are you coming, Lukas?”

The doña led him to one of the wide Elderglass staircases with lacquered wooden banisters. Softly glowing alchemical lamps in ornate casings gleamed at the foot of the stairs; they would be lovely after dark. The layout of the floor was the same as that of the one above; there was another fifty-foot banquet table crowded with delicacies and wonders, and one of the strangely beautiful glass-and-gold pyramids had been set down beside it. Curious, thought Locke.

“My lady Salvara,” he said, smiling and pointing, “perhaps a few attendants could be convinced to borrow one of those sculptures when we leave, and you could have your peek inside?”

“Oh, Lukas. If only—but one does not repay the duke’s hospitality by borrowing his decorative fixtures on a whim. Come, we need to go down to the next level. Lukas? Lukas, what’s the matter?”

Locke had frozen, looking straight at the staircase that led down to the level below. Someone was just coming up that staircase—a lean and fit-looking man in a gray coat, gray gloves, and gray breeches. His vest and four-cornered hat were black, his neck-cloths were rich scarlet, and on his left hand he wore a very familiar ring, over the leather of his glove; Barsavi’s ring, the black pearl of the Capa of Camorr.

Locke Lamora matched gazes with Capa Raza, his heart beating like a war galley’s drum. The lord of Camorr’s underworld halted, dumbfounded; sheer bewilderment fluttered across his face—a look that made mirth rise up from the bottom of Locke’s soul. Then for the briefest second there was hatred; Raza ground his teeth together and the lines of his face tautened. Finally he seemed to have control of himself. He twirled a gold-capped swagger stick of lacquered black witchwood, stuck it beneath his left arm, and strolled casually toward Locke and Doña Sofia.

4

“SURELY,” SAID Capa Raza, “surely, you must be a doña of Camorr; I do not believe I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance, gracious lady.” He swept off his hat and bent from the waist at the ideal angle, right foot out before his left.

“I am Doña Sofia Salvara, of the Isla Durona,” she said. She held out her hand; he took it and kissed the air above it.

“Your servant, my lady Salvara. I am Luciano Anatolius; charmed, my lady, quite charmed. And your companion? Have we met?”

“I do not believe so, sir,” said Locke. “You look strangely familiar, but I’m sure I would recall if we had met before.”

“Master Anatolius, this is Lukas Fehrwight, a merchant of Emberlain, of the House of bel Auster,” said Sofia. “My personal guest here at the duke’s feast.”

“A merchant of Emberlain? Greetings to you, sir; why, you must be very resourceful, to make it all the way up here, into such rarefied circles.”

“I do what I must, sir, I do what I must. I have some unusually good friends in Camorr; they often bring me unexpected advantages.”

“I don’t doubt it. The House of bel Auster, you say? The famous liquor merchants? How grand; I’m as fond of a good draught as the next man. In fact, I prefer to make all of my purchases by the cask.”

“Indeed, sir?” Locke smiled. “Why, that is the specialty of my firm; a great many wonderful and surprising things come out of our casks. We pride ourselves on always giving satisfaction—on always delivering full value for value received. Like for like, if you take my meaning.”

“I do,” said Capa Raza, with a grim smile of his own. “An admirable business practice; one near to my own heart.”

“But surely,” said Locke, “I remember now why you must be familiar, Master Anatolius. Do you not have a sister? Perhaps a pair of them? I seem to recall having met them, at some occasion—the resemblance seems very striking.”

“No,” said Capa Raza, scowling, “I’m afraid you’re very much mistaken; I have no sisters. Doña Sofia, Master Fehrwight, it has been a distinct pleasure making your acquaintance, but I fear I have pressing business elsewhere; I wish you both much pleasure at the feast this evening.”

Locke held out his hand and put on an innocent friendly smile. “It is always a pleasure to make new acquaintances, Master Anatolius. Perhaps we shall see each other again?”

Capa Raza glared down at Locke’s outstretched hand, then seemed to remember himself; he could hardly refuse such a courtesy without causing a great stir. His strong hand clasped Locke’s forearm, and Locke returned the gesture. The fingers of Locke’s other hand twitched; if only his stiletto had not been inconveniently hidden in a boot, he would now be tempted beyond all rational thought. “You are very good, Master Fehrwight,” said Capa Raza with a placid face, “but I very much doubt it.”

“If I have learned anything about this city, Master Anatolius,” said Locke, “I have learned that it is quite full of surprises. A very good evening to you.”

“And to you,” said Raza, “merchant of Emberlain.”

He moved quickly away into the crowd; Locke watched him all the way. Raza turned once and their eyes locked yet again, and then the Capa was gone, up the stairs to the next level, gray coat fluttering in his wake.

“Lukas,” said Doña Sofia, “did I miss something?”

“Miss something?” Locke gave her another innocent Fehrwight smile. “I don’t believe so, my lady. It is just that that man greatly resembled someone I once knew.”

“A friend from Emberlain?”

“Oh no,” said Locke. “Not a friend. And the man in question is dead—he is very, very dead.” Aware that he was clenching his teeth, he let ease return to his countenance. “Shall we go find your Doña Vorchenza, my lady?”

“Why, yes,” said Sofia. “Yes, let’s be about it. Do follow me.”

She led him down the stairs Raza had come up, down to yet another gallery packed rim to rim with the quality: “blue bloods and gold bloods,” as Father Chains might have put it. Instead of a banquet table, this level held a bar—forty feet of polished witchwood staffed by two dozen men and women in the duke’s livery. Behind them, on tables and shelves, rose thousands upon thousands of glass bottles. Alchemical lamps had been placed behind them, and they bathed the gallery in cascading ribbons of color. Huge pyramids of wineglasses and beer glasses were set off to the sides of the bar, cordoned off behind velvet ropes; one unprofessional gesture would send hundreds of crowns worth of fine crystal crashing to the floor. Blackjackets stood at stiff attention beside the glass-pyramids, as an added assurance. And speaking of pyramids—another one of the lovely pyramid sculptures had been set out here, a few feet to the right of the bar, behind one of the velvet ropes.

Doña Sofia led him to the west, past the bar and the long line of nobles waiting to take in the liquid courage of their choice; some of them were already obviously impaired in the fine art of standing up straight. On the western wall of the gallery there was a heavy witchwood door bearing the silver seal of Duke Nicovante’s personal arms. Doña Sofia pushed this door open and led him into a curving hallway lit by the soft silver glow of alchemical lanterns. There were three doors in this hall, and Doña Sofia brought him to the one at the far end, near what Locke supposed was the northern wall of the tower.

“Now,” said Doña Sofia with a smirk, “it will either be Doña Vorchenza, or it will be a pair of young people doing something they should not….”

She slid the door open and peeked inside, and then tugged on Locke’s sleeve. “It’s quite all right,” she whispered. “It’s her.”

Locke and Sofia were looking into a nearly square chamber with a slightly curved outer wall; unlike the public galleries, the Elderglass surface in this part of the tower was opaque. A single window was on the northern wall, its wooden shade cracked open to let in the sunlight and the warm air of the late afternoon.

There was a single tall-backed wooden chair in the room, and it held a single hunchbacked old lady; she was bent over a pair of glittering needles, utterly fixated on the unidentifiable object that was flowing into her lap from her efforts. A few rolls of black wool yarn lay at her feet. She was eccentrically dressed, in a man’s black coat and a pair of dark purple pantaloons such as cavalry officers traditionally wore; her little black slippers curved up at the ends like something from a fairy story. Her eyes seemed to be clear behind her half-moon optics, but they didn’t look up from her knitting when Doña Sofia led Locke into the center of the room.

“Doña Vorchenza?” Sofia cleared her throat and raised her voice.

“Doña Vorchenza? It’s Sofia, my lady…. I’ve brought someone for you to meet.”

Snick-snick, went Doña Vorchenza’s needles, snick-snick. But those eyes did not look up.

“Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza,” said Sofia to Locke, “dowager countess of Amberglass. She, ah…she comes and goes.” Sofia sighed. “Might I beg you to stay here with her for just a moment? I’m going to the bar; she often takes white wine. Perhaps a glass of it will bring her back to us.”

“Of course, Doña Sofia,” said Locke cheerfully. “I would be very honored to wait on the countess. Fetch her whatever you feel proper.”

“Can I bring you anything, Lukas?”

“Oh, no, you are too kind, my lady. I shall have something later, perhaps.”

Sofia nodded and withdrew from the room, closing the door with a click behind her. Locke paced for a few moments, hands behind his back.

Snick-snick, went the needles, snick-snick. Locke raised an eyebrow. The object flowing forth from those needles remained a perfect mystery. Perhaps it wasn’t yet near completion. He sighed, paced a bit more, and turned to stare out the window.

The green-and-brown hills spread out to the curving horizon north of the city; Locke could see the brown lines of roads, and the particolored roofs of small buildings, and the gray-blue of the Angevine, all fading into heat-haze and distance. The sun suffused everything in hot white light; there wasn’t a cloud to be seen.

There was a sudden vicious stabbing pain at the back of his neck, on the left side.

Locke whirled and slapped a hand to the site of the pain; there was a bit of wetness beneath his fingers. Doña Angiavesta Vorchenza, dowager countess of Amberglass, stood before him, drawing back the knitting needle she had just plunged into the back of his neck. Now her eyes were lively behind those half-moon optics, and a smile broke out of the network of lines on her lean face.

“Gaaaaaaaaaaaah-owwwwww!” He rubbed at the back of his neck and maintained his Vadran accent only with the greatest difficulty. “What the hell was that?”

“Grief-willow, Master Thorn,” said Doña Vorchenza. “The poison of the grief-willow tree, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. You have but a few minutes to live…and now I should very much like to spend them speaking to you.”

5

“YOU…YOU…”

“Stabbed you in the neck. Yes, well, I must confess it gave me pleasure, dear boy. What can I say? You have led us on a trying chase.”

“But…but…Doña Vorchenza, I do not understand. How have I given offense?”

“You may abandon the Vadran accent. It’s excellent, but I’m afraid you won’t be able to smile and bluff your way out of this one, Master Thorn.”

Locke sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Doña Vorchenza, if that needle was really poisoned, why the hell should I bother telling you anything?”

“Now that’s a sensible question.” She reached down the front of her tunic and drew out a little glass vial, capped with silver. “In exchange for your cooperation, I’m prepared to offer you the antidote. You will, of course, come peacefully with me. You’re hundreds of feet in the air, and every one of my Midnighters is currently here, dressed as staff. You’d be rather ignominiously treated if you tried to run so much as ten feet past that hallway.”

“Your…Midnighters…You mean—you must be f*cking kidding. You’re the Spider?”

“Yes,” she said, “and by the gods, it feels good to finally fling that in the face of someone who can appreciate it.”

“But,” said Locke, “the Spider is…or at least I thought the Spider was—”

“A man? You and all the rest of this city, Master Thorn. I have always found the presumptions of others to be the best possible disguise—haven’t you?”

“Hmmm.” Locke chuckled morosely. A tingling numbness was spreading around the wound; it definitely wasn’t just his imagination. “Hanged by my own rope, Doña Vorchenza.”

“You must be brilliant, Master Thorn,” said Doña Vorchenza. “I shall give you that; to do what you’ve done, to keep my people guessing these past few years…Gods, I wish I didn’t have to put you in a crow’s cage. Perhaps a deal could be arranged, once you’ve had a few years to think it over. It must be very new, and very odd, to finally have someone spring such a trap on you.”

“Oh, no.” Locke sighed and put his face in his hands. “Oh, Doña Vorchenza, I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but the list of people that haven’t outsmarted me seems to be getting smaller all the f*cking time.”

“Well,” said Doña Vorchenza, “that can’t be pleasant. But come, you must be feeling rather strange by now; you must be unsteady on your feet. Just say yes. Give me the location of the funds you’ve stolen, and perhaps those years in the Palace of Patience can be mitigated. Give me the names of your accomplices, and I’m sure an accommodation can be reached.”

“Doña Vorchenza,” said Locke forcefully, “I have no accomplices, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t tell you who they were.”

“What about Graumann?”

“Graumann is a hireling,” said Locke. “He thinks I’m really a merchant of Emberlain.”

“And those so-called bandits in the alley beside the Temple of Fortunate Waters?”

“Hirelings, long since fled back to Talisham.”

“And the false Midnighters, the ones who visited the Salvaras?”

“Homunculi,” said Locke. “They crawl out of my ass every full moon; they’ve been a problem for years.”

“Oh, Master Thorn…grief-willow will still that tongue of yours rather permanently. You don’t have to speak your secrets now; just surrender so I can give you this vial, and we can continue this conversation in more pleasant surroundings.”

Locke stared at Doña Vorchenza for several long seconds; he locked his gaze with those ancient eyes of hers and saw the obvious satisfaction in them, and his right hand curled into a fist of its own accord. Perhaps Doña Vorchenza was so used to her aura of privilege she forgot their disparity in ages; perhaps she’d simply never conceived that a man of apparent refinement, even a criminal, could do what Locke did next.

He punched her square in the teeth, a whirling right that would have been comical had he thrown it against a younger, sturdier woman. But it snapped Doña Vorchenza’s head back; her eyes rolled up and she buckled at the knees. Locke caught her as she toppled, carefully plucking the vial from her fingers while he did so. He heaved her back into her chair, then uncapped the vial and poured its contents down his throat. The warm fluid tasted like citrus; he gulped it eagerly and threw the vial aside. Then, working with the utmost haste, he took off his coat and used it to tie Doña Vorchenza into her chair, knotting the sleeves several times behind her back.

Her head lolled forward and she groaned; Locke gave her a pat on the shoulder. On an impulse, he ran his hands quickly (and as politely as possible) through her waistcoat; he grunted in satisfaction when he turned up a little silk purse, jingling with coins. “Not what I was hoping for,” he said, “but we’ll call it fair payment for a gods-damned needle in the neck, hmmm?”

Locke stood up and paced for a few moments. He turned back to Doña Vorchenza, knelt before her, and said, “My lady, it wounds me to have to treat someone such as yourself so crudely; the truth is, I admire you very much and at any other time I’d be very curious to hear just where I f*cked up and tipped you off. But you must admit, I’d have to be crazy to go with you; the Palace of Patience simply does not suit. So thank you for the very interesting afternoon, and give my regards to Don and Doña Salvara.”

With that, he pushed the wooden shutter as wide as it would go and stepped out the window.

The exterior of Raven’s Reach, considered up close, was actually covered with irregularities, with little indentations and ledges, circling the tower at virtually every level. Locke slipped out onto a slender ledge about six inches wide; he pressed his stomach up against the warm glass of the tower and waited for the pounding of the blood within his temples to cease sounding like a pummeling from a heavy man’s fists. It didn’t, and he sighed.

“I am the king idiot,” he muttered, “of all the world’s f*cking idiots.”

The warm wind pushed at his back as he inched to his right; the ledge grew wider a few moments later, and he found an indentation in which to place his hand. Confident that he was in no immediate danger of falling, Locke glanced downward over his shoulder, and immediately regretted it.

Seeing Camorr spread out behind glass offered a layer of insulation between the viewer and the vista; out here, it seemed as though the whole world fell away in a vast arc. He wasn’t six hundred feet in the air, he was a thousand, ten thousand, a million—some incomprehensible number of feet that only the gods were fit to dare. He squeezed his eyes shut and clutched at the glass wall as though he could pour himself into it, like mortar into stones. The pork and capon in his stomach made enthusiastic inquiries about coming up in a nauseous torrent; his throat seemed to be on the verge of granting the request.

Gods, he thought, I wonder if I’m on one of the transparent sections of the tower? I must look pretty f*cking funny.

There was a creaking noise from overhead; he looked up and gasped.

One of the elevator cages was coming down toward him; it would be in line with him on the face of the tower, and it would pass by about three feet from the wall he was clinging to.

It was empty.

“Crooked Warden,” Locke whispered, “I’ll do this, but the only thing I ask, the only thing, is that when this is done, you make me f*cking forget. Steal this memory out of my head. And I will never climb more than three feet off the ground as long as I draw breath. Praise be.”

The cage creaked down; it was ten feet above him, then five feet, and then its bottom was even with his eyes. Breathing in deep, ragged, panicky gasps, Locke turned himself around on the tower, so that his back was against the glass. The sky and the world beneath his feet both seemed too big to fit into his eyes; gods, he didn’t want to think about them. The cage was sliding past; its bars were right there, three feet away over fifty-some stories of empty air.

He screamed, and pushed himself off the glass wall of the tower. When he hit the blackened iron sidebars of the cage, he clung as desperately as any cat ever clung to a tree branch; the cage swayed back and forth, and Locke did his best to ignore the incredible things that did to the sky and the horizon. The cage door; he had to slip the cage door. They closed tight but didn’t have elaborate locks.

Working with hands that shivered as though the air were freezing, Locke slipped the bolt on the cage’s door and let it fall open. He then swung himself gingerly around the corner, from the exterior to the interior, and with one last burst of dreadful vertigo reached out and slammed the door shut behind him. He sat down on the floor of the cage, gasping in deep breaths, shaky with relief and the aftereffects of the poison.

“Well,” he muttered, “that was f*cking hideous.”

Another elevator cage full of noble guests drew upward, twenty feet to his right; the men and women in the cage looked at him very curiously, and he waved.

He half dreaded that the cage would lurch to a halt before it reached the ground and start to draw back up; he decided if it did that he would take his chances with the Palace of Patience. But the cage continued all the way down; Vorchenza must still be tied to her chair, out of the action. Locke was on his feet when the cage settled against the ground; the liveried men who opened the door peered in at him with wide eyes.

“Excuse me,” said one of them, “but were you…did you…were you in this cage when it left the embarkation platform?”

“Of course,” said Locke. “That shape you saw, darting out from the tower? Bird. Biggest gods-damned bird you ever saw. Scared the piss right out of me, let me tell you. I say, are any of these carriages for hire?”

“Go to the outer row,” said the footman, “and look for the ones with the white flags and lanterns.”

“Much obliged.” Locke rapidly perused the contents of Doña Vorchenza’s coin purse; there was a very satisfactory quantity of gold and silver inside. He tossed a solon apiece to the liveried men beside the cage as he stepped out. “It was a bird, right?”

“Yes, sir,” said the other man with a tip of his black cap. “Biggest gods-damned bird we ever saw.”

6

THE HIRED carriage left him at the Hill of Whispers; he paid very well—the “forget you made this run” sort of well—and then he walked south through Ashfall on his own. It was perhaps the sixth hour of the evening when he returned to the hovel, bursting through the curtained door, yelling as he came—

“Jean, we have one hell of a f*cking problem—”

The Falconer stood in the center of the little room, smirking at Locke, his hand folded before him. Locke took in the tableau in a split second: Ibelius lay motionless against the far wall, and Jean lay slumped at the Bondsmage’s feet, writhing in pain.

Vestris perched upon her master’s shoulder; she fixed him with those black-and-gold eyes, then opened her beak and screeched triumphantly. Locke winced at the noise.

“Oh yes, Master Lamora,” said the Falconer. “Yes, I’d say you do have one hell of a f*cking problem.”





INTERLUDE

The Throne in Ashes



Therim Pel was once called the Jewel of the Eldren; it was the largest and grandest of the cities that the lost race of ancients left to the men who claimed their lands long after their disappearance.

Therim Pel sat at the headwaters of the Angevine River, where they poured in a white torrent from the mountains; it sat beneath their craggy majesty and was surrounded by rich fields for two days’ ride by fast horse in any other direction. In the autumn, those fields would be swaying with stalks of amber—a bounty fit for the seat of an empire, which Therim Pel was.

All the cities of the south knelt before the Therin Throne. The engineers of the empire built tens of thousands of miles of roads to weave those cities together. The empire’s generals manned them with patrols to put bandits down, and maintained garrisons at smaller towns and villages to ensure that commerce and letters could flow, without interruption, from one end of the empire to the other—from the Iron Sea to the Sea of Brass.

Karthain and Lashain, Nessek and Talisham, Espara and Ashmere, Iridain and Camorr, Balinel and Issara—all those mighty city-states were ruled by dukes who took their crowns of silver from the hands of the emperor himself. The few dukes who remain in present times may wield great power, but they are self-declared; the high lineages dating back to the time of the Therin Throne have long been severed.

The Therin Throne entered into decline when the Vadrans appeared from the north. A raiding sea-people, they took the Throne protectorates on the northern half of the continent; they named the seven great rivers that flowed to the northern sea their Seven Holy Marrows, and they discouraged the Throne’s efforts to reclaim its territory by smashing every army it sent north. Weakened, the Therin Throne could not sustain the effort, and so it was diminished. Diminished, but not broken.

It took the Bondsmagi of Karthain to do that.

The Bondsmagi were newly formed in the city of Karthain; they were beginning to expand the reach of their unique and deadly guild to other cities, and they showed little sign of catering to the angry demands of the emperor in Therim Pel. He insisted that they halt their activities, and they are said to have replied with a short letter listing the prices for which His August Majesty could hire their services. The emperor sent in his own royal circle of sorcerers; they were slain without exception. The emperor then raised his legions and marched on Karthain, vowing to slay every sorcerer who claimed the title of Bondsmage.

The emperor’s declaration of war was a test of resolve for the new guild’s rules. For anyone who dared to harm a Bondsmage, they had publicly vowed reciprocity that would be awful to behold.

During his march to Karthain, the emperor’s soldiers managed to kill about a dozen.

Four hundred Bondsmagi met the emperor’s legions just to the east of Karthain; the sorcerers condescended to offer a pitched battle. In less than two hours, one-third of the emperor’s forces were slaughtered. Strange mists boiled up from the ground to mislead their maneuvers; illusions and phantasms tormented them. Flights of arrows halted in the air and fell to the ground, or were hurled back upon the archers who had loosed them. Comrade turned upon comrade, maddened and misled by sorcery that could chain a man’s actions as though he were a marionette. The emperor himself was hacked to pieces by his personal guard. It is said that no piece larger than a finger remained to be burned on a pyre afterward. The empire was soundly defeated—its surviving generals routed, their remaining soldiers scampering like message-runners for Therim Pel.

But the affair did not end there. The Bondsmagi in conclave decided to enforce their rules, and to enforce them in such a fashion that the entire world would shudder at the thought of crossing them, for as long as men might have memories.

They worked their retribution on the city of Therim Pel.

The firestorm they conjured was unnatural. Four hundred magi, working in concert, kindled something at the heart of the empire that historians still fear to describe. It is said that the flames were as white as the hearts of the stars themselves; that the column of black smoke rose so high it could be seen from the deep Iron Sea, far east of Camorr, and as far north as Vintila, capital of the young Kingdom of the Seven Marrows.

Even this hideous conjuring could not touch Elderglass; those structures in the city built by Eldren arts survived unscathed. But everything else the fire touched, it ate; wood and stone and metal, mortar and paper and living things. All the city’s buildings and all the city’s culture and all the city’s population who could not flee before the magi began their work were burnt into a desert of gray ashes—a desert that settled a foot deep across a black scar baked into the ground.

Those ashes swirled in the hot wind at the foot of the one human-crafted object the magi willingly preserved: the throne of the empire. That chair remains there to this day, in the haunted city of Therim Pel, surrounded by a field of ashes that time and rains have turned into a sort of black concrete. Nothing grows in Therim Pel anymore; no sensible man or woman will set foot within that black monument to the resolve of the Bondsmagi of Karthain.

It was they who broke the Therin Throne with that unearthly fire; they who cast the city-states of the south into hundreds of years of warring and feuding while the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows grew powerful in the north.

It is that image that comes to mind when most men think to cross a Bondsmage—the image of an empty chair standing alone in a dry sea of desolation.