The Lies of Locke Lamora

Chapter ONE

THE DON SALVARA GAME

1

LOCKE LAMORA’S RULE of thumb was this: a good confidence game took three months to plan, three weeks to rehearse, and three seconds to win or lose the victim’s trust forever. This time around, he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.

Locke was on his knees, and Calo, standing behind him, had a hemp rope coiled three times around his neck. The rough stuff looked impressive, and it would leave Locke’s throat a very credible shade of red. No genuine Camorri assassin old enough to waddle in a straight line would garrote with anything but silk or wire, of course (the better to crease the victim’s windpipe). Yet if Don Lorenzo Salvara could tell a fake strangling from the real thing in the blink of an eye at thirty paces, they’d badly misjudged the man they planned to rob and the whole game would be shot anyway.

“Can you see him yet? Or Bug’s signal?” Locke hissed his question as lightly as he could, then made a few impressive gurgling sounds.

“No signal. No Don Salvara. Can you breathe?”

“Fine, just fine,” Locke whispered, “but shake me some more. That’s the convincer.”

They were in the dead-end alley beside the old Temple of Fortunate Waters; the temple’s prayer waterfalls could be heard gushing somewhere behind the high plaster wall. Locke clutched once again at the harmless coils of rope circling his neck and spared a glance for the horse staring at him from just a few paces away, laden down with a rich-looking cargo of merchant’s packs. The poor dumb animal was Gentled; there was neither curiosity nor fear behind the milk-white shells of its unblinking eyes. It wouldn’t have cared even had the strangling been real.

Precious seconds passed; the sun was high and bright in a sky scalded free of clouds, and the grime of the alley clung like wet cement to the legs of Locke’s breeches. Nearby, Jean Tannen lay in the same moist muck while Galdo pretended (mostly) to kick his ribs in. He’d been merrily kicking away for at least a minute, just as long as his twin brother had supposedly been strangling Locke.

Don Salvara was supposed to pass the mouth of the alley at any second and, ideally, rush in to rescue Locke and Jean from their “assailants.” At this rate, he would end up rescuing them from boredom.

“Gods,” Calo whispered, bending his mouth to Locke’s ear as though he might be hissing some demand, “where the hell is that damn Salvara? And where’s Bug? We can’t keep this shit up all day; other people do walk by the mouth of this damned alley!”

“Keep strangling me,” Locke whispered. “Just think of twenty thousand full crowns and keep strangling me. I can choke all day if I have to.”

2

EVERYTHING HAD gone beautifully that morning in the run-up to the game itself, even allowing for the natural prickliness of a young thief finally allowed a part in his first big score.

“Of course I know where I’m supposed to be when the action starts,” Bug whined. “I’ve spent more time perched up on that temple roof than I did in my mother’s gods-damned womb!”

Jean Tannen let his right hand trail in the warm water of the canal while he took another bite of the sour marsh apple held in his left. The forward gunwale of the flat-bottomed barge was a choice spot for relaxation in the watered-wine light of early morning, allowing all sixteen stone of Jean’s frame to sprawl comfortably—keg belly, heavy arms, bandy legs, and all. The only other person (and the one doing all of the work) in the empty barge was Bug: a lanky, mop-headed twelve-year-old braced against the steering pole at the stern.

“Your mother was in an understandable hurry to get rid of you, Bug.” Jean’s voice was soft and even and wildly incongruous. He spoke like a teacher of music or a copier of scrolls. “We’re not. So indulge me once more with proof of your penetrating comprehension of our game.”

“Dammit,” Bug replied, giving the barge another push against the gentle current of the seaward-flowing canal. “You and Locke and Calo and Galdo are down in the alley between Fortunate Waters and the gardens for the Temple of Nara, right? I’m up on the roof of the temple across the way.”

“Go on,” Jean said around a mouthful of marsh apple. “Where’s Don Salvara?”

Other barges, heavily laden with everything from ale casks to bleating cows, were slipping past the two of them on the clay-colored water of the canal. Bug was poling them north along Camorr’s main commercial waterway, the Via Camorrazza, toward the Shifting Market, and the city was lurching into life around them.

The leaning gray tenements of water-slick stone were spitting their inhabitants out into the sunlight and the rising summer warmth. The month was Parthis, meaning that the night-sweat of condensation already boiling off the buildings as a soupy mist would be greatly missed by the cloudless white heat of early afternoon.

“He’s coming out of the Temple of Fortunate Waters, like he does every Penance Day right around noon. He’s got two horses and one man with him, if we’re lucky.”

“A curious ritual,” Jean said. “Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Deathbed promise to his mother.” Bug drove his pole down into the canal, struggled against it for a moment, and managed to shove them along once more. “She kept the Vadran religion after she married the old Don Salvara. So he leaves an offering at the Vadran temple once a week and gets home as fast as he can so nobody pays too much attention to him. Dammit, Jean, I already know this shit. Why would I be here if you didn’t trust me? And why am I the one who gets to push this stupid barge all the way to the market?”

“Oh, you can stop poling the barge any time you can beat me hand to hand three falls out of five.” Jean grinned, showing two rows of crooked brawler’s teeth in a face that looked as though someone had set it on an anvil and tried to pound it into a more pleasing shape. “Besides, you’re an apprentice in a proud trade, learning under the finest and most demanding masters it has to offer. Getting all the shit-work is excellent for your moral education.”

“You haven’t given me any bloody moral education.”

“Yes. Well, that’s probably because Locke and I have been dodging our own for most of our lives now. As for why we’re going over the plan again, let me remind you that one good screwup will make the fate of those poor bastards look sunny in comparison to what we’ll get.”

Jean pointed at one of the city’s slop wagons, halted on a canal-side boulevard to receive a long dark stream of night soil from the upper window of a public alehouse. These wagons were crewed by petty criminals whose offenses were too meager to justify continual incarceration in the Palace of Patience. Shackled to their wagons and huddled in the alleged protection of long leather ponchos, they were let out each morning to enjoy what sun they could when they weren’t cursing the dubious accuracy with which several thousand Camorri emptied their chamber pots.

“I won’t screw it up, Jean.” Bug shook his thoughts like an empty coin purse, searching desperately for something to say that would make him sound as calm and assured as he imagined Jean and all the older Gentlemen Bastards always were—but the mouth of most twelve-year-olds far outpaces the mind. “I just won’t, I bloody won’t, I promise.”

“Good lad,” Jean said. “Glad to hear it. But just what is it that you won’t screw up?”

Bug sighed. “I make the signal when Salvara’s on his way out of the Temple of Fortunate Waters. I keep an eye out for anyone else trying to walk past the alley, especially the city watch. If anybody tries it, I jump down from the temple roof with a longsword and cut their bloody heads off where they stand.”

“You what?”

“I said I distract them any way I can. You going deaf, Jean?”

A line of tall countinghouses slid past on their left, each displaying lacquered woodwork, silk awnings, marble facades, and other ostentatious touches along the waterfront. There were deep roots of money and power sunk into that row of three- and four-story buildings. Coin-Kisser’s Row was the oldest and goldest financial district on the continent. The place was as steeped in influence and elaborate rituals as the glass heights of the Five Towers, in which the duke and the Grand Families sequestered themselves from the city they ruled.

“Move us up against the bank just under the bridges, Bug.” Jean gestured vaguely with his apple. “His Nibs will be waiting to come aboard.”

Two Elderglass arches bridged the Via Camorrazza right in the middle of Coin-Kisser’s Row—a high and narrow catbridge for foot traffic and a lower, wider one for wagons. The seamless brilliance of the alien glass looked like nothing so much as liquid diamond, gently arched by giant hands and left to harden over the canal. On the right bank was the Fauria, a crowded island of multitiered stone apartments and rooftop gardens. Wooden wheels churned white against the stone embankment, drawing canal water up into a network of troughs and viaducts that crisscrossed over the Fauria’s streets at every level.

Bug slid the barge over to a rickety quay just beneath the catbridge; from the faint and slender shadow of this arch a man jumped down to the quay, dressed (as Bug and Jean were) in oil-stained leather breeches and a rough cotton shirt. His next nonchalant leap took him into the barge, which barely rocked at his arrival.

“Salutations to you, Master Jean Tannen, and profuse congratulations on the fortuitous timing of your arrival!” said the newcomer.

“Ah, well, felicitations to you in respect of the superlative grace of your entry into our very humble boat, Master Lamora.” Jean punctuated this statement by popping the remains of his apple into his mouth, stem and all, and producing a wet crunching noise.

“Creeping shits, man.” Locke Lamora stuck out his tongue. “Must you do that? You know the black alchemists make fish poison from the seeds of those damn things.”

“Lucky me,” said Jean after swallowing the last bit of masticated pulp, “not being a fish.”

Locke was a medium man in every respect—medium height, medium build, medium-dark hair cropped short above a face that was neither handsome nor memorable. He looked like a proper Therin, though perhaps a bit less olive and ruddy than Jean or Bug; in another light he might have passed for a very tan Vadran. His bright gray eyes alone had any sense of distinction; he was a man the gods might have shaped deliberately to be overlooked. He settled down against the left-hand gunwale and crossed his legs.

“Hello to you as well, Bug! I knew we could count on you to take pity on your elders and let them rest in the sun while you do the hard work with the pole.”

“Jean’s a lazy old bastard is what it is,” Bug said. “And if I don’t pole the barge, he’ll knock my teeth out the back of my head.”

“Jean is the gentlest soul in Camorr, and you wound him with your accusations,” said Locke. “Now he’ll be up all night crying.”

“I would have been up all night anyway,” Jean added, “crying from the ache of rheumatism and lighting candles to ward off evil vapors.”

“Which is not to say that our bones don’t creak by day, my cruel apprentice.” Locke massaged his kneecaps. “We’re at least twice your age—which is prodigious for our profession.”

“The Daughters of Aza Guilla have tried to perform a corpse-blessing on me six times this week,” said Jean. “You’re lucky Locke and I are still spry enough to take you with us when we run a game.”

To anyone beyond hearing range, Locke and Jean and Bug might have looked like the crew of a for-hire barge, slacking their way toward a cargo pickup at the junction of the Via Camorrazza and the Angevine River. As Bug poled them closer and closer to the Shifting Market, the water was getting thicker with such barges, and with sleek black cockleshell boats, and battered watercraft of every description, not all of them doing a good job of staying afloat or under control.

“Speaking of our game,” said Locke, “how is our eager young apprentice’s understanding of his place in the scheme of things?”

“I’ve been reciting it to Jean all morning,” said Bug.

“And the conclusion is?”

“I’ve got it down cold!” Bug heaved at the pole with all of his strength, driving them between a pair of high-walled floating gardens with inches to spare on either side. The scents of jasmine and oranges drifted down over them as their barge slipped beneath the protruding branches of one of the gardens; a wary attendant peeked over one garden-boat’s wall, staff in hand to fend them off if necessary. The big barges were probably hauling transplants to some noble’s orchard upriver.

“Down cold, and I won’t screw it up. I promise! I know my place, and I know the signals. I won’t screw it up!”

3

CALO WAS shaking Locke with real vigor, and Locke’s performance as his victim was a virtuoso one, but still the moments dragged by. They were all trapped in their pantomime like figures out of the richly inventive hells of Therin theology: a pair of thieves destined to spend all eternity stuck in an alley, mugging victims that never passed out or gave up their money.

“Are you as alarmed as I am?” Calo whispered.

“Just stay in character,” Locke hissed. “You can pray and strangle at the same time.”

There was a high-pitched scream from their right, echoing across the cobbles and walls of the Temple District. It was followed by shouts and the creaking tread of men in battle harness—but these sounds moved away from the mouth of the alley, not toward it.

“That sounded like Bug,” said Locke.

“I hope he’s just arranging a distraction,” said Calo, his grip on the rope momentarily slackening. At that instant, a dark shape darted across the gap of sky between the alley’s high walls, its fluttering shadow briefly falling over them as it passed.

“Now what the hell was that, then?” Calo asked.

Off to their right, someone screamed again.

4

BUG HAD poled himself, Locke, and Jean from the Via Camorrazza into the Shifting Market right on schedule, just as the vast Elderglass wind chime atop Westwatch was unlashed to catch the breeze blowing in from the sea and ring out the eleventh hour of the morning.

The Shifting Market was a lake of relatively placid water at the very heart of Camorr, perhaps half a mile in circumference, protected from the rushing flow of the Angevine and the surrounding canals by a series of stone breakwaters. The only real current in the market was human-made, as hundreds upon hundreds of floating merchants slowly and warily followed one another counterclockwise in their boats, jostling for prized positions against the flat-topped breakwaters, which were crowded with buyers and sightseers on foot.

City watchmen in their mustard-yellow tabards commanded sleek black cutters—each rowed by a dozen shackled prisoners from the Palace of Patience—using long poles and harsh language to maintain several rough channels through the drifting chaos of the market. Through these channels passed the pleasure barges of the nobility, and heavily laden freight barges, and empty ones like that containing the three Gentlemen Bastards, who shopped with their eyes as they sliced through a sea of hope and avarice.

In just a few lengths of Bug’s poling, they passed a family of trinket dealers in ill-kept brown cockleshells, a spice merchant with his wares on a triangular rack in the middle of an awkward circular raft of the sort called a vertola, and a Canal Tree bobbing and swaying on the leather-bladder pontoon raft that supported its roots. These roots trailed in the water, drinking up the piss and effluvia of the busy city; the canopy of rustling emerald leaves cast thousands of punctuated shadows down on the Gentlemen Bastards as they passed, along with the perfume of citrus. The tree (an alchemical hybrid that grew both limes and lemons) was tended by a middle-aged woman and three small children, who scuttled around in the branches throwing down fruit in response to orders from passing boats.

Above the watercraft of the Shifting Market rose a field of flags and pennants and billowing silk standards, all competing through gaudy colors and symbols to impress their messages on watchful buyers. There were flags adorned with the crude outlines of fish or fowl or both; flags adorned with ale mugs and wine bottles and loaves of bread, boots and trousers and threaded tailors’ needles, fruits and kitchen instruments and carpenters’ tools and a hundred other goods and services. Here and there, small clusters of chicken-flagged boats or shoe-flagged rafts were locked in close combat, their owners loudly proclaiming the superiority of their respective goods or inferring the bastardy of one another’s children, while the watch-boats stood off at a mindful distance, in case anyone should sink or commence a boarding action.

“It’s a pain sometimes, this pretending to be poor.” Locke gazed around in reverie, the sort Bug would have been indulging in if the boy hadn’t been concentrating on avoiding collision. A barge packed with dozens of yowling housecats in wooden slat cages cut their wake, flagged with a blue pennant on which an artfully rendered dead mouse bled rich scarlet threads through a gaping hole in its throat. “There’s just something about this place. I could almost convince myself that I really did have a pressing need for a pound of fish, some bowstrings, old shoes, and a new shovel.”

“Fortunately for our credibility,” said Jean, “we’re coming up on the next major landmark on our way to a fat pile of Don Salvara’s money.” He pointed past the northeastern breakwater of the market, beyond which a row of prosperous-looking waterfront inns and taverns stood between the market and the Temple District.

“Right as always, Jean. Greed before imagination. Keep us on track.” Locke added an enthusiastic but superfluous finger to the direction Jean was already pointing. “Bug! Get us out onto the river, then veer right. One of the twins is going to be waiting for us at the Tumblehome, third inn down on the south bank.”

Bug pushed them north, straining to reach the bottom of the market’s basin—which was easily half again as deep as the surrounding canals—with each thrust. They evaded overzealous purveyors of grapefruits and sausage rolls and alchemical light-sticks, and Locke and Jean amused themselves with a favorite game, trying to spot the little pickpockets among the crowds on the breakwaters. The inattention of Camorr’s busy thousands still managed to feed the doddering old Thiefmaker in his dank warren under Shades’ Hill, nearly twenty years since Locke or Jean had last set foot inside the place.

Once they escaped from the market and onto the river itself, Bug and Jean wordlessly switched places. The fast waters of the Angevine would be better matched against Jean’s muscle, and Bug would need to rest his arms for his part in the game to come. As Bug collapsed in Jean’s former place at the bow, Locke produced a cinnamon-lemon apparently from thin air and tossed it to the boy. Bug ate it in six bites, dry skin and all, masticating the reddish yellow pulp as grotesquely as possible between his bright, crooked teeth. He grinned.

“They don’t make fish poison from those things, right?”

“No,” Locke said. “They only make fish poison from things that Jean eats.”

Jean harrumphed. “A little fish poison puts hair on your chest. Excepting if you’re a fish.”

Jean kept them nearly against the southern bank of the Angevine, clear of the depths where the pole couldn’t reach. Shafts of hot, pearl-white light flashed down on them as Eldgerglass bridges passed directly between their barge and the still-rising sun. The river was two hundred yards wide, sweating its wetness up into the air along with the smell of fish and silt.

To the north, rippling under the heat-haze, were the orderly slopes of the Alcegrante islands, home to the city’s greater commoners and minor nobles. It was a place of walled gardens, elaborate water sculptures, and white stone villas, well off-limits to anyone dressed as Locke and Jean and Bug were. With the sun approaching its zenith, the vast shadows of the Five Towers had withdrawn into the Upper City and were currently nothing more than a rosy stained-glass glow that spilled just over the northern edges of the Alcegrante.

“Gods, I love this place,” Locke said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. “Sometimes I think this whole city was put here simply because the gods must adore crime. Pickpockets rob the common folk, merchants rob anyone they can dupe, Capa Barsavi robs the robbers and the common folk, the lesser nobles rob nearly everyone, and Duke Nicovante occasionally runs off with his army and robs the shit out of Tal Verrar or Jerem, not to mention what he does to his own nobles and his common folk.”

“So that makes us robbers of robbers,” said Bug, “who pretend to be robbers working for a robber of other robbers.”

“Yes, we do sort of screw the pretty picture up, don’t we?” Locke thought for a few seconds, clicking his tongue against the insides of his cheeks. “Think of what we do as, ah, a sort of secret tax on nobles with more money than prudence. Hey! Here we are.”

Beneath the Tumblehome Inn was a wide and well-kept quay with half a dozen mooring posts, none of them currently occupied. The smooth gray embankment was about ten feet high here; broad stone steps led up to street level, as did a cobbled ramp for cargo and horses. Calo Sanza was waiting for them at the edge of the quay, dressed only slightly better than his fellows, with a Gentled horse standing placidly behind him. Locke waved.

“What’s the news?” Locke cried. Jean’s poling was skilled and graceful; the quay was twenty yards away, then ten, and then they were sliding up alongside it with a gentle scraping noise.

“Galdo got all the stuff packed into the room—it’s the Bowsprit Suite on the first floor,” Calo whispered in response, bending down to Locke and Bug as he picked up the barge’s mooring rope.

Calo had dark liquor-colored skin and hair like an inky slice of night; the tautness of the flesh around his dark eyes was broken only by a fine network of laugh-lines (though anyone who knew the Sanza twins would more readily describe them as smirk-lines). An improbably sharp and hooked nose preceded his good looks like a dagger held at guard position.

Once he had made the barge fast to a mooring post, Calo tossed to Locke a heavy iron key attached to a long tassel of braided red and black silk. At a quality rooming house like the Tumblehome, each private suite’s door was guarded by a clockwork lockbox (removable only by some cunning means known to the owners) that could be swapped out from a niche in the door. Each rented room received a random new box and its attendant key. With hundreds of such identical-looking boxes stored behind the polished counter in the reception hall, the inn could pretty much guarantee that copying keys for later break-ins was a practical waste of a thief’s time.

This courtesy would also give Locke and Jean guaranteed privacy for the rapid transformation that was about to take place.

“Wonderful!” Locke leaped up onto the quay as spryly as he had entered the boat; Jean passed the steering pole back to Bug, then made the barge shudder with his own leap. “Let’s go on in and fetch out our guests from Emberlain.”

As Locke and Jean padded up the steps toward the Tumblehome, Calo motioned for Bug to give him a hand with the horse. The white-eyed creature was utterly without fear or personal initiative, but that same lack of self-preservation instincts might lead it to damage the barge very easily. After a few minutes of careful pushing and pulling, they had it positioned in the center of the barge, as calm as a statue that just happened to have lungs.

“Lovely creature,” said Calo. “I’ve named him Impediment. You could use him as a table. Or a flying buttress.”

“Gentled animals give me the bloody creeps.”

“Whereas,” said Calo, “they give me the f*cking creeps. But tenderfoots and softies prefer Gentled packhorses, and that’s our master merchant of Emberlain in a nutshell.”

Several more minutes passed, and Calo and Bug stood in amiable silence under the punishing sun, looking the part of an unremarkable barge crew waiting to receive a passenger of consequence from the bosom of the Tumblehome Inn. Soon enough, that passenger descended the stairs and coughed twice to get their attention.

It was Locke, of course, but changed. His hair was slicked back with rose oil, the bones of his face seemed to shadow slightly deeper hollows in his cheeks, and his eyes were half concealed behind a pair of optics rimmed with black pearl and flashing silver in the sun.

He was now dressed in a tightly buttoned black coat in the Emberlain style, almost form-fitted from his shoulders down to his ribs, then flaring out widely at the waist. Two black leather belts with polished silver buckles circled his stomach; three ruffled layers of black silk cravats poured out of his collar and fluttered in the hot breeze. He wore embroidered gray hose over thick-heeled sharkskin shoes with black ribbon tongues that sprang somewhat ludicrously outward and hung over his feet with the drooping curl of hothouse flowers. Sweat was already beading on his forehead like little diamonds—Camorr’s summer did not reward the intrusion of fashions from a more northerly climate.

“My name,” said Locke Lamora, “is Lukas Fehrwight.” The voice was clipped and precise, scrubbed of Locke’s natural inflections. He layered the hint of a harsh Vadran accent atop a slight mangling of his native Camorri dialect like a barkeep mixing liquors. “I am wearing clothes that will be full of sweat in several minutes. I am dumb enough to walk around Camorr without a blade of any sort. Also,” he said with a hint of ponderous regret, “I am entirely fictional.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Master Fehrwight,” said Calo, “but at least we’ve got your boat and your horse ready for your grand excursion.”

Locke stepped carefully down toward the edge of the barge, swaying at the hips like a man newly off a ship and not yet used to surfaces that didn’t tilt beneath his feet. His spine was arrow-straight, his movements nearly prissy. He wore the mannerisms of Lukas Fehrwight like a set of invisible clothes.

“My attendant will be along any moment,” Locke/Fehrwight said as he/they stepped aboard the barge. “His name is Graumann, and he too suffers from a slight case of being imaginary.”

“Merciful gods,” said Calo, “it must be catching.”

Down the cobbled ramp came Jean, treading heavily under the weight of one hundred and twenty pounds of creaking horse’s harness, the embroidered leather packs crammed full of goods and strapped tightly shut. Jean now wore a white silk shirt, straining tight against his belly and already translucent in places with sweat, under an open black vest and a white neckerchief. His hair was parted in the middle and held in stasis by some thick black oil; never picturesque, it now resembled two pads of wool arched over his forehead like a tenement roof.

“We’re behind schedule, Graumann.” Locke clasped his hands behind his back. “Do hurry up and let the poor horse do its job.”

Jean heaved his mess over the Gentled horse’s back, to no visible reaction from the animal. He then bent down and fastened the harness securely under the horse’s stomach. Bug passed the steering pole to Calo, then slipped the barge’s rope from the mooring post, and they were off once again.

“Wouldn’t it be damned amusing,” said Calo, “if Don Salvara picked today to dodge out on his little ritual?”

“Don’t worry,” said Locke, briefly dropping the voice if not the posture of Lukas Fehrwight. “He’s quite devoted to his mother’s memory. A conscience can be as good as a water-clock, when it comes to keeping some appointments.”

“From your lips to the gods’ ears.” Calo worked the pole with cheerful ease. “And no skin off my balls if you’re wrong. You’re the one wearing a ten-pound black felt coat in the middle of Parthis.”

They made headway up the Angevine and came abreast with the western edge of the Temple District on their right, passing beneath a wide glass arch as they did so. Standing atop the middle of this bridge was a lean, dark-haired man with looks and a nose to match Calo’s.

As Calo poled the barge underneath the arch some fifty feet below, Galdo Sanza casually let a half-eaten red apple fall from his hands. The fruit hit the water with a quiet little splash just a yard or two behind his brother.

“Salvara’s at the temple!” Bug said.

“Sublime.” Locke spread his hands and grinned. “Didn’t I tell you he suffered from an impeccable sense of maternal devotion?”

“I’m so pleased that you only choose victims of the highest moral quality,” said Calo. “The wrong sort might set a bad example for Bug.”

At a public dock jutting from the northwestern shore of the Temple District, just under the heights of the city’s vast new House of Iono (Father of Storms, Lord of the Grasping Waters), Jean tied them up in record time and led Impediment—looking every bit the part of a wealthy merchant’s packhorse—up off the barge.

Locke followed with Fehrwight’s nervous dignity on full display; all the banter was now banked down like coals under a cookfire. Bug darted off into the crowds, eager to take up his watch position over the alley junction where Don Salvara’s ambitions would soon be sorely tempted. Calo spotted Galdo just stepping off the glass bridge, and casually moved toward him. Both twins were unconsciously fingering the weapons concealed beneath their baggy shirts.

By the time the Sanza brothers fell into step beside one another and began moving toward the rendezvous at the Temple of Fortunate Waters, Locke and Jean were already a block away, approaching from another direction. The game was afoot.

For the fourth time in as many years, in quiet defiance of the most inviolate law of Camorr’s underworld, the Gentlemen Bastards were drawing a bead on one of the most powerful men in the city. They were headed for a meeting that might eventually divest Don Lorenzo Salvara of nearly half his worldly wealth; now everything depended on the Don being punctual.

5

BUG WAS in a perfect position to spot the foot patrol before anyone else did, which was according to the plan. The foot patrol itself was also in the plan, after a fashion. It meant the plan was blown.

“You’re going to be top-eyes on this game, Bug,” Locke had explained. “We’re deliberately making first touch on Salvara on the most deserted street in the Temple District. A spotter on the ground would be obvious a mile away, but a boy two stories up is another matter.”

“What am I spotting for?”

“Whatever shows up. Duke Nicovante and the Nightglass Company. The king of the Seven Marrows. A little old lady with a dung-wagon. If we get interlopers, you just make the signal. Maybe you can distract common folk. If it’s the watch, well—we can either play innocent or run like hell.”

And here were six men in mustard-yellow tabards and well-oiled fighting harness, with batons and blades clattering ominously against their doubled waistbelts, strolling up from the south just a few dozen paces away from the Temple of Fortunate Waters. Their path would take them right past the mouth of the all-important alley. Even if Bug warned the others in time for them to hide Calo’s rope, Locke and Jean would still be covered in mud and the twins would still be (purposely) dressed like stage-show bandits, complete with neckerchiefs over their faces. No chance to play innocent; if Bug gave the signal, it was run-like-hell time.

Bug thought as fast as he ever had in his life, while his heart beat so rapidly it felt like someone was fluttering the pages of a book against the back of his lungs. He had to force himself to stay cool, stay observant, look for an opening. What was it Locke was always saying? Catalog! He needed to catalog his options.

His options stank. Twelve years old, crouched twenty feet up in the periphery of the wildly overgrown rooftop garden of a disused temple, with no long-range weapons and no other suitable distractions available. Don Salvara was still paying his respects to his mother’s gods within the Temple of Fortunate Waters, and the only people in sight were his fellow Gentlemen Bastards and the sweat-soaked patrol about to ruin their day.

But.

Twenty feet down and six feet to Bug’s right, against the wall of the crumbling structure on which he squatted, there was a rubbish pile. It looked like mold-eaten burlap sacks and a mixed assortment of brown muck.

The prudent thing to do would be to signal the others and let them scurry; Calo and Galdo were old hands at playing hard-to-get with the yellowjackets, and they could just come back and restart the game again next week. Maybe. Or maybe a screwed-up game today would alarm someone, and lead to more foot patrols in the coming weeks. Maybe word would get around that the Temple District wasn’t as quiet as it should be. Maybe Capa Barsavi, beset by problems as he was, would take an interest in the unauthorized disturbance, and turn his own screws. And then Don Salvara’s money might as well be on the bloody moons, for all that the Gentlemen Bastards could get their hands on it.

No, prudence was out. Bug had to win. The presence of that rubbish pile made a great and glorious stupidity very possible.

He was in the air before another thought crossed his mind. Arms out, falling backward, staring up into the hot near-noon sky with the confident assurance of all twelve of his years that death and injury were things reserved solely for people that weren’t Bug. He screamed as he fell, in wild exaltation, just to be sure that he had the foot patrol’s unwavering attention.

He could feel the great vast shadow of the ground looming up beneath him, in the last half second of his fall, and at that instant his eyes caught a dark shape cutting through the air just above the Temple of Fortunate Waters. A sleek and beautiful shape, heavy, a bird? A gull of some sort? Camorr had no other birds that size—certainly none that moved like crossbow bolts, and—

Impact with the semiyielding surface of the rubbish heap walloped the air out of his lungs with a wet hoooosh and snapped his head forward. Sharp chin bounced off slender chest; his teeth punched bloody holes in his tongue, and the warm taste of salt filled his mouth. He screamed again, reflexively, and spat blood. His view of the sky spun first left then right, as though the world were trying on strange new angles for his approval.

Booted feet running on cobblestones; the creak and rattle of weapons in harness. A ruddy middle-aged face with two drooping sweat-slicked moustaches inserted itself between Bug and the sky.

“Perelandro’s balls, boy!” The watchman looked as bewildered as he did worried. “What the hell were you doing, screwing around up there? You’re lucky you landed where you did.”

There were enthusiastic murmurs of agreement from the yellow-jacketed squad crowding in behind the first man; Bug could smell their sweat and their harness oil, as well as the rotten stench of the stuff that had broken his fall. Well, when you jumped into a streetside pile of brown glop in Camorr, you knew going in that it wouldn’t smell like rosewater. Bug shook his head to clear the white sparks dancing behind his eyes, and twitched his legs to be sure they would serve. Nothing appeared to be broken, thank the gods. He would reevaluate his own claims on immortality when all of this was over.

“Watch-sergeant,” Bug hissed thickly, letting more blood spill out over his lips (damn, his tongue burned with pain). “Watch-sergeant…”

“Yes?” The man’s eyes were going wider. “Can you move your arms and legs, boy? What can you feel?”

Bug reached up with his hands, casually, not entirely feigning shakiness, and clutched at the watch-sergeant’s harness as though to steady himself.

“Watch-sergeant,” Bug said a few seconds later, “your purse is much lighter than it should be. Out whoring last night, were we?”

He shook the little leather pouch just under the watch-sergeant’s dark moustaches, and the larcenous part of his soul (which was, let us be honest, its majority) glowed warmly at the sheer befuddlement that blossomed in the man’s eyes. For a split second, the pain of Bug’s imperfect landing in the rubbish heap was forgotten. Then his other hand came up, as if by magic, and his Orphan’s Twist hit the watch-sergeant right between the eyes.

An Orphan’s Twist, or a “little red keeper,” was a weighted sack like a miniature cosh, kept hidden in clothes (but never against naked skin). It was traditionally packed full of ground shavings from a dozen of Camorr’s more popular hot peppers, and a few nasty castoffs from certain black alchemists’ shops. No use against a real threat, but just the thing for another street urchin. Or a certain sort of adult with wandering hands.

Or an unprotected face, at spitting distance.

Bug was already rolling to his left, so the spray of fine rust-colored powder that erupted from his Twist missed him by inches. The watch-sergeant was not so lucky; it was a solid hit, scattering the hellish-hot stuff up his nose, down his mouth, and straight into his eyes. He choked out a string of truly amazing wet bellows and fell backward, clawing at his cheeks. Bug was already up and moving with the giddy elasticity of youth; even his bitterly aching tongue was temporarily forgotten in the all-consuming need to run like hell.

Now he definitely had the foot patrol’s undivided attention. They were shouting and leaping after him as his little feet pounded the cobbles and he sucked in deep stinging gulps of humid air. He’d done his part to keep the game alive. It could now go on without him while he gave the duke’s constables their afternoon exercise.

A particularly fast-thinking watchman fumbled his whistle into his mouth and blew it raggedly while still running—three short bursts, a pause, then three more. Watchman down. Oh, shit. That would bring every yellowjacket in half the city at a dead run, weapons out. That would bring crossbows. It was suddenly deadly important that Bug slip the squad at his heels before other squads started sending spotters up onto roofs. His anticipation of a merry chase vanished. He had perhaps a minute and a half to get to one of his usual cozy-holes and pull a vanish.

Suddenly, his tongue hurt very badly indeed.

6

DON LORENZO Salvara stepped out of the temple portico into the stark bright dampness of high Camorri noon, little imagining the education a certain boy thief was receiving in the concept of too clever by half just across the district. The trilling of watch-whistles sounded faintly. Salvara narrowed his eyes and peered with some curiosity at the distant figure of a lone city watchman, stumbling across the cobbles and occasionally bouncing off walls, clutching his head as though afraid it was going to float off his neck and up into the sky.

“Can you believe it, m’lord?” Conté had already brought the horses around from the temple’s unobtrusive little stabling grotto. “Drunk as a baby in a beer barrel, and not a heartbeat past noon. F*cking pissant lot of softies, these new goldenrods.” Conté was a sun-wrinkled man of middle years with the waistline of a professional dancer and the arms of a professional oarsman; the manner in which he served the young don was obvious even without a glance at the pair of thigh-length stilettos hanging from his crossed leather belts.

“Hardly up to your old standards, eh?” The don, on the other hand, was a well-favored young man of the classic Camorri blood, black-haired, with skin like shadowed honey. His face was heavy and soft with curves, though his body was slender, and only his eyes gave any hint that he wasn’t a polite young collegium undergraduate masquerading as a noble. Behind his fashionable rimless optics, the don had eyes like an impatient archer hungry for targets. Conté snorted.

“In my day, at least we knew that getting shit-faced was an indoor hobby.” Conté passed the don the reins of his mount, a sleek gray mare little bigger than a pony, well trained but certainly not Gentled. Just the thing for short trots around a city still more friendly to boats (or acrobats, as Doña Salvara often complained) than to horses. The stumbling watchman vanished around a distant corner, vaguely in the direction of the urgent whistling. As it seemed to be coming no closer, Salvara shrugged inwardly and led his horse out into the street.

Here the day’s second curiosity burst upon them in all of its glory. As the don and his man turned to their right, they gained a full view of the high-walled alley beside the Temple of Fortunate Waters—and in this alley two finely dressed men were clearly getting their lives walloped out of them by a pair of bravos.

Salvara froze and stared in wonder—masked thugs in the Temple District? Masked thugs strangling a man dressed all in black, in the tight, heavy, miserably inappropriate fashion of a Vadran? And, Merciful Twelve, a Gentled packhorse was simply standing there taking it all in.

After a handful of seconds lost to sheer amazement, the don let his own horse’s reins go and ran toward the mouth of the alley. He didn’t need to glance sideways to know that Conté was barely a stride behind him, knives out.

“You!” The don’s voice was reasonably confident, though high with excitement. “Unhand these men and stand clear!”

The closest footpad snapped his head around; his dark eyes widened above his improvised mask when he saw the don and Conté approaching. The thug shifted his red-faced victim so that the man’s body was between himself and the would-be interlopers.

“No need to trouble yourself with this business, my lord,” the footpad said. “Just a bit of a disagreement. Private matter.”

“Then perhaps you should have conducted it somewhere less public.”

The footpad sounded quite exasperated. “What, the duke give you this alley to be your estate? Take another step and I break this poor bastard’s neck.”

“You just do that.” Don Salvara settled his hand suggestively on the pommel of his basket-hilted rapier. “My man and I appear to command the only way out of this alley. I’m sure you’ll still feel quite pleased at having killed that man when you’ve got three feet of steel in your throat.”

The first footpad didn’t release his hold on the coiled loops of rope that were holding up his barely conscious victim, but he began to back off warily toward the dead end, dragging the black-clad man clumsily with him. His fellow thug stood away from the prone form of the man he’d been savagely kicking. A meaningful look flashed between the two masked bandits.

“My friends, do not be stupid.” Salvara slid his rapier halfway out of its scabbard; sunlight blazed white on finest Camorri steel, and Conté crouched forward on the balls of his feet, shifting to the predatory stance of a knife-fighter born and trained.

Without another word, the first footpad flung his victim straight at Conté and the don; while the unfortunate black-clad fellow gasped and clutched at his rescuers, the two masked thugs bolted for the wall at the rear of the alley. Conté sidestepped the heaving, shuddering Vadran and dashed after them, but the assailants were spry as well as cunning. A slim rope hung down the wall, barely visible, and knotted at regular intervals. The two thugs scrambled up this and all but dove over the top of the wall; Conté and his blades were two seconds too late. The weighted far end of the rope flew back over the wall and landed with a splat in the crusted muck at his feet.

“F*cking useless slugabed bastards!” The don’s man slid his stilettos back into his belt with easy familiarity and bent down to the heavyset body lying unmoving in the muck. The eerie white stare of the Gentled packhorse seemed to follow him as he pressed fingers to the fat man’s neck, seeking a pulse. “Watchmen stumbling drunk in broad daylight, and look what happens in the bloody Temple District while they screw around…”

“Oh, thank the Marrows,” choked out the black-clad man as he uncoiled the rope from his neck and flung it to the ground. Don Salvara could now see that his clothes were very fine, despite their spattering of muck and their unseasonable weight—excellently cut, form-tailored, and ornamented with expensive subtlety rather than opulent flash. “Thank the Salt and thank the Sweet. Thank the Hands Beneath the Waters those bastards attacked us right beside this place of power, where the currents brought you to our aid.”

The man’s Therin was precise, though heavily accented, and his voice was unsurprisingly hoarse. He massaged his abraded throat, blinked, and began to pat the muck around him with his free hand, as though looking for something.

“I believe I can help you again,” said Don Salvara in his best Vadran, which was as precise—and as heavily accented—as the stranger’s Therin. Salvara picked a pair of pearl-rimmed optics out of the muck (noting their light weight and sturdy construction—a superior and very expensive pair indeed) and wiped them off on the sleeve of his own loose scarlet coat before handing them to the man.

“And you speak Vadran!” The stranger spoke in that tongue now, with the clipped, excitable diction of Emberlain. He slid the optics back over his eyes and blinked up at his rescuer. “A complete miracle now, far more than I have any right to pray for. Oh! Graumann!”

The black-clad Vadran scrambled unsteadily to his feet and stumbled over to his companion. Conté had managed to roll the portly stranger over in the slime; he now lay on his back with his great muck-slick chest rising and falling steadily.

“He lives, obviously.” Conté slid his hands along the poor fellow’s rib cage and stomach. “I don’t believe he has anything broken or ruptured, though he’ll likely be green with bruises for weeks. Green as pondwater, then black as night, or I don’t know shit from custard tarts.”

The slender, well-dressed Vadran let out a long sigh of relief. “Custard tarts. Indeed. The Marrows are most generous. Graumann is my attendant, my secretary, my diligent right hand. Alas, he has no skill at arms, but then I am myself plainly embarrassed in that regard.” The stranger now spoke Therin again, and he turned to stare at Don Salvara with wide eyes. “Just as plainly I do you discourtesy, for you must be one of the dons of Camorr.” He bowed low—lower even than etiquette would require of a landed foreigner greeting a peer of the Serene Duchy of Camorr, almost until he was in danger of pitching forward on his chin.

“I am Lukas Fehrwight, servant to the House of bel Auster, of the Canton of Emberlain and the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. I am entirely at your service and grateful beyond words for what you have done for me today.”

“I am Lorenzo, Don Salvara, and this is my man Conté, and it is we who are entirely at your service, without obligation.” The don bowed at exactly the correct angle, with his right hand held out as an invitation to shake. “I am in a sense responsible for Camorr’s hospitality, and what befell you here was not hospitality. It was upon my honor to come to your aid.”

Fehrwight grasped the don’s proffered arm just above the wrist and shook. If Fehrwight’s grasp was weak, the don was willing to charitably ascribe it to his near strangling. Fehrwight then lowered his own forehead until it gently touched the back of the don’s hand, and their physical courtesies were settled. “I beg to differ; you have here a sworn man, quite competent by his looks. You could have satisfied honor by sending him to our aid, yet you came yourself, ready to fight. From where I stood, it seemed he ran to keep up with you. And I assure you, my viewpoint for this affair was uncomfortable but excellent.”

The don waved his hand gently as though words could be swatted out of the air. “I’m just sorry they got away, Master Fehrwight. It is unlikely that I can give you true justice. For that, Camorr again apologizes.”

Fehrwight knelt down beside Graumann and brushed the big man’s sweat-slick dark hair back from his forehead. “Justice? I am lucky to be alive. I was blessed with a safe journey here and with your aid. I am alive to continue my mission, and that is justice enough.” The slender man looked up at Salvara again. “Are you not Don Salvara of the Nacozza Vineyards? Is not the Doña Sofia, the famous botanical alchemist, your wife?”

“I have that honor, and I have that pleasure,” said the don. “And do you not serve the House of bel Auster? Do you not deal with the, ah…”

“Yes, oh yes, I serve that House of bel Auster; my business is the sale and transport of the substance you’re thinking of. It is curious, so very curious. The Marrows toy with me; the Hands Beneath must wish me to drop dead of sheer wonder. That you should save my life here, that you should speak Vadran, that we should share a common business interest…It is uncanny.”

“I, too, find it extraordinary, but hardly displeasing.” Don Salvara gazed around the alley thoughtfully. “My mother was Vadran, which is why I speak the language enthusiastically, if poorly. Were you followed here? That rope over the wall bespeaks preparation, and the Temple District…Well, it’s usually as safe as the duke’s own reading room.”

“We arrived this morning,” said Fehrwight. “After we secured our rooms—at the Inn of the Tumblehome, you know of it, I’m sure—we came straight here to give thanks and drown the offerings for our safe passage from Emberlain. I did not see where those men came from.” Fehrwight mused for a moment. “Though I believe that one of them threw that rope over the wall after knocking Graumann down. They were cautious, but not waiting in ambush for us.”

Salvara grunted, and turned his attention to the blank stare of the Gentled horse. “Curious. Do you always bring horses and goods to the temple to make your offerings? If those packs are as full as they look, I can see why thugs might have been tempted.”

“Ordinarily, such things would be under lock and key at our inn.” Fehrwight gave Graumann two friendly pats on the shoulder and rose again. “But for this cargo, and for this mission, I must keep them with me at all times. And I fear that must have made us a tempting target. It is a conundrum.” Fehrwight scratched his chin slowly, several times. “I am in your debt already, Don Lorenzo, and hesitant to ask aid of you once again. Yet this relates to the mission I am charged with, for my time in Camorr. As you are a don, do you know of a certain Don Jacobo?”

Don Salvara’s eyes fixed firmly on Fehrwight; one corner of his mouth turned infinitesimally downward. “Yes,” he said, and nothing more, after the silence had stretched a few moments.

“This Don Jacobo…It is said that he is a man of wealth. Extreme wealth, even for a don.”

“That is…true.”

“It is said that he is adventurous. Bold, even. That he has—how do you say it?—an eye for strange opportunities. A toleration of risk.”

“That is one way of describing his character, perhaps.”

Fehrwight licked his lips. “Don Lorenzo…it is important…if these things are true—would you, could you, through your status as a peer of Camorr…assist me in securing an appointment with Don Jacobo? I am ashamed to ask, but I would be more ashamed to forswear my mission for the House of bel Auster.”

Don Salvara smiled without the slightest hint of humor, and turned his head for several seconds, as though to gaze down at Graumann, lying quietly in the muck. Conté had stood up and was staring directly at his don, eyes wide.

“Master Fehrwight,” said the don at last, “are you not aware that Paleri Jacobo is perhaps my greatest living enemy? That the two of us have fought to the blood, twice, and only on the orders of Duke Nicovante himself do we not settle our affair for all time?”

“Oh,” said Fehrwight, with the tone and facial expression of a man who has just dropped a torch in a hogshead cask of lamp oil. “How awkward. How stupid of me. I have done business in Camorr several times, but I did not…I have insulted you. I have asked too much.”

“Hardly.” Salvara’s tone grew warm again; he began to drum the fingers of his right hand against the hilt of his rapier. “But you’re here on a mission for the House of bel Auster. You carry a cargo that you refuse to let out of your sight. You clearly have your plan fixed upon Don Jacobo in some fashion…though you still need to gain a formal audience with him. So, to be clear, he doesn’t know you’re here, or that you plan on seeking him out, does he?”

“I…that is…I fear to say too much of my business….”

“Yet your business here is plain,” said Don Salvara, now positively cheerful, “and have you not repeatedly stated that you are indebted to me, Master Fehrwight? Despite my assurances to the contrary, have you not refused those assurances? Do you withdraw your promise of obligation now?”

“I…with the best will in the world, my lord…damn.” Fehrwight sighed and clenched his fists. “I am ashamed, Don Lorenzo. I must now either forswear my obligation to the man who saved my life or forswear my promise to the House of bel Auster to keep its business as private as possible.”

“You must do neither,” said the Don. “And perhaps I can aid you directly in the pursuit of your master’s business. Do you not see? If Don Jacobo does not know of your presence here, what obligation do you have to him? Clearly, you are set here upon business. A plan, a scheme, a proposal of some sort. You’re here to initiate something, or else you’d have your connections already in place. Don’t be angry with yourself; this is all plain logic. Is it not true?”

Fehrwight looked down and nodded reluctantly.

“Then here it is! Although I am not as wealthy as Don Jacobo, I am a man of substantial means; and we are in complementary lines of business, are we not? Attend me tomorrow, on my barge, at the Shifting Revel. Make your proposal to me; let us discuss it thoroughly.” There was a wicked gleam in Don Salvara’s eyes; it could be seen despite the brightness of the sun overhead. “As you are indebted to me, repay this obligation by agreeing only to attend. Then, free of obligation, let us discuss business to our mutual advantage. Do you not see that I have a vested interest in taking whatever opportunity you present away from Jacobo, even if he never learns of it? Especially if he never learns of it! And am I not bold enough for your tastes? I swear your face grows longer as though by sorcery. What’s wrong?”

“It is not you, Don Lorenzo. It is merely that the Hands Beneath are suddenly too generous once more. We have a saying—that undeserved good fortune always conceals a snare.”

“Don’t worry, Master Fehrwight. If it’s really business that you want to discuss, never doubt that there will be hard work and bitter troubles enough waiting for us down the road. Are we in agreement, then? Will you dine with me tomorrow morning, take in the Shifting Revel, and discuss your proposal with me?”

Fehrwight swallowed, looked Don Salvara in the eyes, and nodded firmly. “There is great sense in what you propose. And perhaps great opportunity for both of us. I will accept your hospitality, and I will tell you everything. Tomorrow, as you say. It cannot come soon enough for me.”

“It has been my pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master Fehrwight.” Don Salvara inclined his head. “May we help your friend up out of the muck, and see you to your inn to ensure you have no further difficulties?”

“Your company would be most pleasing, if only you would wait and look after poor Graumann and our cargo long enough for me to finish my offering within the temple.” Locke removed a small leather pack from the horse’s jumble of goods and containers. “The offering will be more substantial than I had planned. But then, my masters understand that prayers of thanks are an unavoidable expense in our line of business.”

7

THE JOURNEY back to the Tumblehome was slow, with Jean putting on an excellent show of misery, grogginess, and confusion. If the sight of two mud-splattered, overdressed outlanders and three horses escorted by a don struck anyone as unusual, they kept their comments to themselves and reserved their stares for Don Salvara’s back. Along the way, they passed Calo, now walking about casually in the plain garb of a laborer. He flashed rapid and subtle hand signals; with no sign of Bug, he would take up position at one of their prearranged rendezvous sites. And he would pray.

“Lukas! Surely it can’t be. I say, Lukas Fehrwight!”

As Calo vanished into the crowd, Galdo appeared just as suddenly, dressed in the bright silks and cottons of a prosperous Camorri merchant; his slashed and ruffled coat alone was probably worth as much as the barge the Gentlemen Bastards had poled up the river that morning. There was nothing now about him to remind the don or his man of the alley cutthroats; unmasked, with his hair slicked back under a small round cap, Galdo was the very picture of physical and fiscal respectability. He twirled a little lacquered cane and stepped toward Don Lorenzo’s odd little party, smiling broadly.

“Why—Evante!” Locke-as-Fehrwight stopped and stared in mock astonishment, then held out a hand for a vigorous shake from the newcomer. “What a pleasant surprise!”

“Quite, Lukas, quite—but what the hell’s happened to you? And to you, Graumann? You look as though you just lost a fight!”

“Ah, we did.” Locke looked down and rubbed his eyes. “Evante, it has been a very peculiar morning. Grau and I might not even be alive if not for our rather extraordinary guide, here.” Pulling Galdo toward him, Locke held a hand out toward the don. “My Lord Salvara, may I introduce to you Evante Eccari, a solicitor of your Razona district? Evante, this is Don Lorenzo Salvara. Of the Nacozza Vineyards, if you still pay attention to those properties.”

“Twelve gods!” Galdo swept his hat off and bowed deeply at the waist. “A don. I should have recognized you immediately, m’lord. A thousand pardons. Evante Eccari, entirely at your service.”

“A pleasure, Master Eccari.” Don Salvara bowed correctly but casually, then stepped forward to shake the newcomer’s hand; this signaled his permission to deduct any superfluous bowing and scraping from the conversation. “You, ah, you know Master Fehrwight, then?”

“Lukas and I go well back, m’lord.” Without turning his back on Don Salvara, he fussily brushed a bit of dried muck from the shoulders of Locke’s black coat. “I work out of Meraggio’s, mostly, handling customs and license work for our friends in the north. Lukas is one of bel Auster’s best and brightest.”

“Hardly.” Locke coughed and smiled shyly. “Evante takes all the more interesting laws and regulations of your state, and reduces them to plain Therin. He was my salvation on several previous ventures. I seem to have a talent for finding snares in Camorr, and a talent for finding good Camorri to slip me out of them.”

“Few clients would describe what I do in such generous terms. But what’s this mud, and these bruises? You said something of a fight?”

“Yes. Your city has some very, ah, enterprising thieves. Don Salvara and his man have just driven a pair of them off. I fear Graumann and I were getting the worst of the affair.”

Galdo stepped over to Jean and gave him a friendly pat on the back; Jean’s wince was fantastic theater. “My compliments, m’lord Salvara! Lukas is what you might call a good vintage, even if he’s not wise enough to take off those silly winter wools. I’m most deeply obligated to you for what you’ve done, and I’m at—”

“Hardly, sir, hardly.” Don Salvara held up one hand and hitched the other in his sword-belt. “I did what my position demanded, no more. And I have too many promises of obligation being thrown at me already this afternoon.”

Don Lorenzo and “Master Eccari” fenced pleasantries for a few moments thereafter; Galdo eventually let himself be skewered with the politest possible version of “Thanks, but piss off.”

“Well,” he said at last, “this has been a wonderful surprise, but I’m afraid I have a client waiting, and clearly, m’lord Salvara, you and Lukas have business that I shouldn’t intrude upon. With your permission…?”

“Of course, of course. A pleasure, Master Eccari.”

“Entirely mine, I assure you, m’lord. Lukas, if you get a spare hour, you know where to find me. And should my poor skills be of any use to your affairs, you know I’ll come running….”

“Of course, Evante.” Locke grasped Galdo’s right hand in both of his and shook enthusiastically. “I suspect we may have need of you sooner rather than later.” He laid a finger alongside his nose; Galdo nodded, and then there was a general exchange of bows and handshakes and the other courtesies of disentanglement. As Galdo hurried away, he left a few hand signals in his wake, disguised as adjustments to his hat: I know nothing about Bug. Going to look around.

Don Salvara stared after him thoughtfully for a few seconds, then turned back to Locke as their small party resumed its journey toward the Tumblehome. They made small talk for a while. Locke had little trouble, as Fehrwight, letting his pleasure at seeing “Eccari” slip. Soon he was projecting a very real downcast mood, which he claimed to be an incipient headache from the attempted strangling. Don Salvara and Conté left the two Gentlemen Bastards in front of the Tumblehome’s street-side citrus gardens, with admonitions to rest soundly that night and let all business wait for the morrow.

No sooner were Locke and Jean safely alone in their suite (the harness full of “precious” goods thrown back over Jean’s shoulders) than they were exploding out of their muddy finery and donning new disguises so they could hurry off to their own rendezvous points to wait for word of Bug, if any was forthcoming.

This time, the swift dark shape that flitted silently from rooftop to rooftop in their wake went entirely unnoticed.

8

FADING FALSELIGHT. The Hangman’s Wind and the swampwater mist glued clothes to skin and rapidly congealed Calo and Galdo’s tobacco smoke around them, half cloaking them in a cataract of grayness. The twins sat, hooded and sweating, in the locked doorway of a fairly well-kept pawnshop on the northern tip of the Old Citadel district. The shop was shuttered and barred for the evening; the keeper’s family was obviously drinking something with a merry kick two floors above them.

“It was a good first touch,” said Calo.

“It was, wasn’t it?”

“Our best yet. Hard to work all those disguises, what with us being the handsome ones.”

“I confess that I wasn’t aware we shared that complication.”

“Now, now, don’t be hard on yourself. Physically, you’re quite my match. It’s my scholarly gifts you lack. And my easy fearlessness. And my gift for women.”

“If you mean the ease with which you drop coins when you’re off a-cunting, you’re right. You’re a one-man charity ball for the whores of Camorr.”

“Now that,” said Calo, “was genuinely unkind.”

“You’re right.” The twins smoked in silence for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. Some of the savor’s out of it tonight. The little bastard has my stomach twisted in knots. You saw—”

“Extra foot patrols. Pissed off. Yeah, heard the whistles. I’m real curious about what he did and why he did it.”

“He must’ve had his reasons. If it really was a good first touch, he gave it to us. I hope he’s well enough for us to beat the piss out of him.”

Stray shapes hurried past in the backlit mist; there was very little Elderglass on the Old Citadel island, so most of the dying glow poured through from a distance. The sound of a horse’s hooves on cobbles was coming from the south, and getting louder.

At that moment, Locke was no doubt skulking near the Palace of Patience, eyeballing the patrols coming and going across the Black Bridge, making sure that they carried no small, familiar prisoners. Or small, familiar bodies. Jean would be off at another rendezvous point, pacing and cracking his knuckles. Bug would never return straight to the Temple of Perelandro, nor would he go near the Tumblehome. The older Gentlemen Bastards would sit their vigils for him out in the city and the steam.

Wooden wheels clattered and an annoyed animal whinnied; the sound of the horse-drawn cart came to a creaking halt not twenty feet from the Sanza brothers, shrouded in the mist. “Avendando?” A loud but uncertain voice spoke the name. Calo and Galdo leapt to their feet as one—“Avendando” was their private recognition signal for an unplanned rendezvous.

“Here!” Calo cried, dropping his thin cigarette and forgetting to step on it. A man materialized out of the mist, bald and bearded, with the heavy arms of a working artisan and the rounded middle of moderate prosperity.

“I dunno exactly how this works,” the man said, “but if one of you is Avendando, I was told I’d have ten solons for delivering this here cask to this, ah, doorway.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the cart.

“Cask. Indeed.” Galdo fumbled with a coin purse, heart racing. “What’s, ahhh, in this cask?”

“Ain’t wine,” said the stranger. “Ain’t a very polite lad, neither. But ten silvers is what he promised.”

“Of course.” Galdo counted rapidly, slapping bright silver disks down into the man’s open palm. “Ten for the cask. One more for forgetting all about this, hmmm?”

“Holy hell, my memory must be cacked out, because I can’t remember what you’re paying me for.”

“Good man.” Galdo slipped his purse back under his nightcloak and ran to help Calo, who had mounted the cart and was standing over a wooden cask of moderate size. The cork stopper that would ordinarily be set into the top of the barrel was gone, leaving a small dark air-hole. Calo rapped sharply on the cask three times; three faint taps came right back. With grins on their faces, the Sanza twins muscled the cask down off the cart and nodded farewell to the driver. The man remounted his cart and soon vanished into the night, whistling, his pockets jingling with more than twenty times the value of the empty cask.

“Well,” Calo said when they’d rolled the cask back to the shelter of their doorway, “this vintage is probably a little young and rough for decanting.”

“Put it in the cellar for fifty or sixty years?”

“I was thinking we might just pour it in the river.”

“Really?” Galdo drummed his fingers on the cask. “What’s the river ever done to deserve that?”

There was a series of noises from inside the cask that sounded vaguely like some sort of protest. Calo and Galdo leaned down by the air-hole together.

“Now, Bug,” Calo began, “I’m sure you have a perfectly good explanation for why you’re in there, and why we’re out here worrying ourselves sick over you.”

“It’s a magnificent explanation, really.” Bug’s voice was hoarse and echoed faintly. “You’re going to love it. But first tell me how the game went!”

“It was a thing of beauty,” said Galdo.

“Three weeks, tops, and we’re going to own this don down to his wife’s last set of silk smallclothes,” added Calo.

The boy groaned with obvious relief. “Great. Well, what happened was, there was this pack of yellowjackets heading right for you. What I did to distract them pissed them off pretty fierce, so, um, I ran for this cooper’s that I know in Old Citadel. He does business with some of the wine places upriver, so he’s got this yard of barrels just sitting around. Well, I just sort of invited myself in, jumped in one, and told him that if I could stay there until he delivered me here after Falselight, there’d be eight solons in it for him.”

“Eight?” Calo scratched his chin. “The cheeky bastard just asked for ten, and got eleven.”

“Yeah, well, that’s okay.” Bug coughed. “I got bored sitting around the cask-yard so I lifted his purse. Had about two solons worth of copper in it. So we got some back.”

“I was going to say something sympathetic about you lying around inside a cask for half the day,” said Galdo, “but that was a damn silly thing to do.”

“Oh, come on!” Bug sounded genuinely stung. “He thought I was in the cask the whole time, so why would he suspect me? And you just gave him a load of money, so why would he suspect you? It’s perfect! Locke would appreciate it.”

“Bug,” Calo said, “Locke is like a brother to us, and our love for him has no bounds. But the four most fatal words in the Therin language are ‘Locke would appreciate it.’”

“Rivaled only by ‘Locke taught me a new trick,’” added Galdo.

“The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games—”

“—is Locke Lamora—”

“—because we think the gods are saving him up for a really big death. Something with knives and hot irons—”

“—and fifty thousand cheering spectators.”

The brothers cleared their throats in unison.

“Well,” Bug said finally, “I did it and I got away with it. Can we go home now?”

“Home,” Calo mused. “Sure. Locke and Jean are going to sob over you like grandmothers when they find out you’re alive, so let’s not keep them waiting.”

“No need to get out; your legs are probably cramped up,” said Galdo.

“They are!” Bug squeaked. “But you two really don’t need to carry me all that way….”

“You’ve never been more right about anything in your entire life, Bug!” Galdo took up position at one side of the cask and nodded at Calo. Whistling in unison, the two brothers began rolling the cask along the cobbles, steering for the Temple District, not necessarily by the fastest or smoothest route available.





INTERLUDE

Locke Explains



“It was an accident,” Locke said at last. “They were both accidents.”

“Excuse me? I must not have heard you.” Father Chains’ eyes narrowed in the faint red glow of Locke’s tiny ceramic lamp. “I could have sworn you just said, ‘Toss me over the parapet. I’m a useless little cuss and I’m ready to die at this very moment.’”

Chains had moved their conversation up to the roof of the temple, where they sat comfortably beneath high parapets meant to be threaded with decorative plants. The long-lost hanging gardens of the House of Perelandro were a small but important aspect of the sacrificial tragedy of the Eyeless Priest; one more bit of stage-setting to draw sympathy, measured in coins.

The clouds had roiled in overhead, palely reflecting the particolored glimmers of night-lit Camorr, obscuring the moons and the stars. The Hangman’s Wind was little more than a damp pressure that nudged the sluggish air around Chains and Locke as the boy struggled to clarify himself.

“No! I meant to hurt them, but that’s all. I didn’t know…I didn’t know those things would happen.”

“Well, that I can almost believe.” Chains tapped the index finger of his right hand against his left palm, the Camorri marketplace gesture for get on with it. “So take me all the way. That ‘almost’ is a major problem for you. Make me understand, starting with the first boy.”

“Veslin,” Locke whispered. “And Gregor, but Veslin first.”

“Veslin indeed,” Chains said. “Poor soul, got a superfluous orifice carved into his neck by none other than your old master. He had to go buy one of those lovely shark’s teeth from the Capa, and that one got used. So…why?”

“In the hill, some of the older boys and girls stopped going out to work.” Locke wove his fingers tightly together and stared down at them as though they might sprout answers. “They would just take things when we came back each day. Shake us down. Make our reports to the master for us, leave things out sometimes.”

Chains nodded. “Privileges of age, size, and ass-kissing. If you survive this conversation, you’ll find that it’s just the same in most of the big gangs. Most.”

“And there was one boy. Veslin. He’d do more. He’d kick us, punch us, take our clothes. Make us do things. Lots of times he’d lie to the master about what we’d brought in. He’d give some of our things to the older girls in Windows, and all of us in Streets would get less food—especially the teasers.” Locke’s small hands pulled apart and curled slowly into fists as he spoke. “And if we tried to tell the master, he just laughed, like he knew about it and thought it was funny! And after we told, Veslin would…Veslin would just get worse.”

Chains nodded, then tapped his index finger against his palm once more.

“I thought about it. I thought about it a lot. None of us could fight him. He was too big. None of us had any big friends in the hill. And if we ganged up on Veslin, his big friends would all come after us.

“Veslin went out each day with some of his friends. We saw them while we were working; they wouldn’t mess with our jobs, but they would watch us, you know? And Veslin would say things.” Locke’s thin-lipped scowl would have been comical on a less dirty, less emaciated, less hollow-eyed boy; as it was, he looked like a slender wall-gargoyle, working himself up for a pounce. “Say things when we came back. About how we were clumsy, or lazy, and not taking enough. And he would push us more, and hit us more, and cheat us more. I thought and I thought and I thought about what to do.”

“And the idea,” said Chains, “the fateful idea. It was all yours?”

“Yes.” The boy nodded vigorously. “All mine. I was alone when I had the idea. I saw some yellowjackets on patrol, and I thought…I thought about their sticks, and their swords. And I thought, what if they beat up Veslin? What if they had some reason not to like him?”

Locke paused for breath. “And I thought more, but I couldn’t work it. I didn’t know how. But then I thought, what if they weren’t angry with Veslin? What if I used them as an excuse to make the master angry with Veslin?”

Chains nodded sagely. “And where did you get the white iron coin?”

Locke sighed. “Streets. All of us who didn’t like Veslin stole extra. We watched and we clutched and we worked hard. It took weeks. It took forever! I wanted white iron. I finally got one from a fat man dressed all in black wool. Funny coats and ties.”

“A Vadran.” Chains seemed bemused. “Probably a merchant come down to do some business. Too proud to dress for the weather at first, and sometimes too cheap to see a tailor in town. So, you got a white iron coin. A full crown.”

“Everyone wanted to see it. Everyone wanted to touch it. I let them; then I made them be quiet. I made them promise not to talk about it. I told them it was how we were going to get Veslin.”

“So what did you do with your coin?”

“Put it in a purse, a little leather purse. The kind we clutched all the time. And hid it out in the city so it wouldn’t get taken from us. A place we knew about, where nobody big could get to. And I made sure that Veslin and his friends were out of the hill, and I got the coin, and I went back in early one day. I gave up coppers and bread to the older girls on the door, but the coin was in my shoe.” Here Locke paused and fiddled with his little lamp, making the red glow waver on his face.

“I put it in Veslin’s room. The one where he and Gregor slept—one of the nice dry tombs. Center of the hill. I found a loose stone and hid the purse there, and when I was sure nobody had seen me, I asked to see the master. I said that some of us had seen Veslin at one of the yellowjacket stations. That he’d taken money from them. That he’d shown it to us, and said that if we told on him he’d sell us to the yellowjackets.”

“Amazing.” Chains scratched his beard. “You know you don’t mumble and stutter quite so much when you’re explaining how you f*cked someone over?”

Locke blinked, then turned his chin up and stared hard at Chains. The older man laughed. “Wasn’t a criticism, son, and I didn’t mean to dam the flow. Keep the story coming. How did you know your old master would take offense at this? Did the yellowjackets ever offer you or your friends money?”

“No,” Locke said. “No, but I knew the master gave them money. For favors; for information. We saw him putting coins in purses, sometimes. So I figured, maybe I could work it the other way.”

“Ah.” Chains reached within the folds of his robe and withdrew a flat leather wallet, the color of baked bricks in the light of Locke’s lamp. From this he withdrew a scrap of paper, onto which he shook a dark powder from another corner of the wallet. This object he rapidly folded end over end until it was a tight cylinder, and with courtly grace he lit one end by holding it in the lamp’s flame. Soon he was sending ghostly gray swirls of smoke up to join the ghostly gray clouds; the stuff smelled like burning pine tar.

“Forgive me,” Chains said, shifting his bulk to his right so his direct exhalations would miss the boy by a few feet. “Two smokes a night is all I let myself have; the rough stuff before dinner, and the smooth stuff after. Makes everything taste better.”

“So I’m staying for dinner?”

“Oh-ho, my cheeky little opportunist. Let’s say the situation remains fluid. You go ahead and finish your story. You tipped your old master that Veslin was working as an auxiliary member of the famed Camorr constabulary. He must have thrown quite a fit.”

“He said he’d kill me if I was lying.” Locke scuttled to his own right, even farther from the smoke. “But I said he’d hid the coin in his room. His and Gregor’s. So…he tore it apart. I hid the coin real well, but he found it. He was supposed to.”

“Mmmm. What did you expect to happen then?”

“I didn’t know they’d get killed!” Chains couldn’t hear any real grief in that soft and passionate little voice, but there seemed to be real puzzlement, real aggravation. “I wanted him to beat Veslin. I thought maybe he’d do him up in front of all of us. We ate together, most nights. The whole hill. F*ck-ups had to do tricks, or serve and clean everything, sometimes get held down for caning. Drink ginger oil. I thought he’d get those things. Maybe all those things.”

“Well.” Chains held an inhalation of smoke for a particularly long moment, as though the tobacco could fill him with insight, and looked away from Locke. When he finally exhaled, he did so in little puffs, forming wobbly crescents that fluttered a few feet and faded into the general haze. He harrumphed and turned back to the boy. “Well, you certainly learned the value of good intentions, didn’t you? Caning. Cleaning and serving. Heh. Poor Veslin got cleaned and served, all right. How did your old master do it?”

“He was gone for a few hours, and when he came back, he waited. In Veslin’s room. When Veslin and Gregor came back that night, there were older boys nearby. So they couldn’t go anywhere. And then…the master just killed them. Both. Cut Veslin’s throat, and…some of the others said he looked at Gregor for a while, and he didn’t say anything, and then he just…” Locke made the same sort of jabbing motion with two fingers that Chains had made at him earlier. “He did Gregor, too.”

“Of course he did! Poor Gregor. Gregor Foss, wasn’t it? One of those lucky little orphans old enough to remember his last name, not unlike yourself. Of course your old master did him, too. He and Veslin were best friends, right? Two draughts from the same bottle. It was an elementary assumption that one would know that the other was hiding a fortune under a rock.” Chains sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Elementary. So, now that you’ve told your part, would you like me to point out where you f*cked everything up? And to let you know why most of your little friends in Streets that helped you pluck that white iron coin are going to be dead before morning?”