The Lies of Locke Lamora

Chapter SEVEN

OUT THE WINDOW

1

LOCKE OUTLINED HIS plan over a long, nervous lunch.

The Gentlemen Bastards sat at the dining table in their glass burrow, just after noon on Duke’s Day. Outside the sun was pouring down its usual afternoon punishment, but in the burrow it was cool, perhaps unnaturally so, even for an underground cellar. Chains had often speculated that the Elderglass did tricks with more than just light.

They had laid on a feast more befitting a festival than a midday meeting. There was stewed mutton with onions and ginger, stuffed eels in spiced wine sauce, and green-apple tarts baked by Jean (with a liberal dose of Austershalin brandy poured over the fruit). “I’ll bet even the duke’s own cook would have his balls skinned if he did this,” he’d said. “Makes each tart worth two or three crowns, by my reckoning.”

“What’ll they be worth,” said Bug, “once they’re eaten, and they come out the other end?”

“You’re welcome to take measurements,” said Calo. “Grab a scale.”

“And a scoop,” added Galdo.

The Sanzas spent the meal picking at a seasoned omelette topped with minced sheep’s kidneys—usually a favorite with the whole table. But today, though they all agreed it was their best effort in weeks—topping even the celebration of their first success in the Salvara game—the savor seemed to have evaporated. Only Bug ate with real vigor, and his attention was largely concentrated on Jean’s plate of tarts.

“Look at me,” he said with his mouth half-full. “I’m worth more with every bite!”

Quiet half-smiles met his clowning, and nothing more; the boy “harrumphed” in annoyance and banged his fists on the table. “Well, if none of you want to eat,” he said, “why don’t we get on with planning how we’re going to dodge the axe tonight?”

“Indeed,” said Jean.

“Too right,” added Calo.

“Yes,” said Galdo, “what’s the game and how do we play it?”

“Well.” Locke pushed his plate away, crumpled his cloth napkin, and threw it into the center of the table. “For starters, we need to use the damn Broken Tower rooms again. It seems the stairs aren’t through with us just yet.”

Jean nodded. “What will we do with the place?”

“That’s where you and I will be when Anjais comes looking to collect us, at the ninth hour. And that’s where we’ll stay, after he’s thoroughly convinced that we have a very honest reason for not going with him.”

“What reason would that be?” asked Calo.

“A very colorful one,” said Locke. “I need you and Galdo to pay a quick visit to Jessaline d’Aubart this afternoon. I need help from a black alchemist for this. Here’s what you tell her….”

2

THE ILLICIT apothecary shop of Jessaline d’Aubart and her daughter Janellaine was located above a scribe’s collective in the respectable Fountain Bend neighborhood. Calo and Galdo stepped onto the scribing floor at just past the second hour of the afternoon. Here, a dozen men and women were hunched over wide wooden boards, working quills and salt and charcoal sticks and drying sponges back and forth like automatons. A clever arrangement of mirrors and skylights let the natural light of day in to illuminate their work. There were few tradesfolk in Camorr more penny-conscious than journeymen scriveners.

At the rear of the first floor was a winding staircase, guarded by a tough-looking young woman who feigned boredom while fingering weapons beneath her brocaded brown coat. The Sanza twins established their bona fides with a combination of hand gestures and copper barons that made their way into the young woman’s coat pockets. She tugged on a bell-rope beside the stairs, then waved them up.

On the second floor there was a reception room, windowless, walls and floor alike paneled with a golden hardwood that retained a faint aroma of pine lacquer. A tall counter divided the room precisely in half; there were no chairs on the customer side, and nothing at all on display on the merchant’s side: just a single locked door.

Jessaline stood behind the counter—a striking woman in her midfifties, with a tumbling cascade of charcoal-colored hair and dark, wary eyes nestled in laugh-lines. Janellaine, half her age, stood to her mother’s right with a crossbow pointed just over Calo and Galdo’s heads. It was an indoor murder-piece, lightweight and low power, which almost certainly meant some hideous poison on the quarrel. Neither Sanza was particularly bothered; this was business as usual for a black alchemist.

“Madam d’Aubart and Miss d’Aubart,” said Calo, bowing from the waist, “your servants.”

“Not to mention,” said Galdo, “still very much available.”

“Master Sanza and Master Sanza,” said the elder d’Aubart, “pleased to see you.”

“Although we are,” said Janellaine, “still very much disinclined.”

“Perhaps you’d care to buy something, though?” Jessaline folded her hands on the counter and raised one eyebrow.

“As it happens, a friend of ours needs something special.” Calo fished a coin purse from under his waistcoat and held it in plain view without opening it.

“Special?”

“Or perhaps not so much special as specific. He’s got to get sick. Very sick.”

“Far be it from me to drive away business, my dears,” said the elder d’Aubart, “but three or four bottles of rum would do the trick at a fraction of the price for anything I could give you.”

“Ah, not that sort of sick,” said Galdo. “He’s got to be in a bad way, like to knocking on the Death Goddess’ bedchamber and asking if he can come in. And then he’s got to be able to recover his strength after playing ill for a while. A sort of mummer’s sick, if you will.”

“Hmmm,” said Janellaine. “I don’t know if we have anything that works quite like that, at least not on hand.”

“When,” said Jessaline, “would your friend require a solution by?”

“We were sort of hoping to walk out of here with one,” said Calo.

“We don’t brew miracles, my dears.” Jessaline drummed her fingers on her countertop. “Contrary to all common belief. We do prefer a bit of notice for something like this. Messing about with someone’s inside—fit to ill and then fit again in the span of a few hours…well, that’s delicate.”

“We’re not Bondsmagi,” added Janellaine.

“Praise the gods for that,” said Galdo, “but it’s very pressing.”

“Well,” sighed Jessaline, “perhaps we can bang something together. A bit on the crude, but it might do the trick.”

“Barrow-robber’s blossom,” said her daughter.

“Yes.” Jessaline nodded. “And Somnay pine, after.”

“I believe we’ve both in the shop,” Jannelaine said. “Shall I check?”

“Do, and hand over that alley-piece while you’re back there.”

Janellaine passed the crossbow to her mother, then unlocked the door at the rear of the room and disappeared, closing it behind her once again. Jessaline set the weapon gently down atop the counter, keeping one long-fingered hand on the tiller.

“You wound us, madam,” said Calo. “We’re harmless as kittens.”

“More so,” said Galdo. “Kittens have claws and piss on things indiscriminately.”

“It’s not just you, boys. It’s the city. Whole place is like to boil, what with Nazca getting clipped. Old Barsavi’s got to have some retribution in the works. Gods know who this Gray King is or what he wants, but I’m more worried by the day for what might come up my stairs.”

“It is a messy time,” said Calo.

Janellaine returned, with two small pouches in her hands. She locked the door behind her, passed the pouches to her mother, and picked up the crossbow once again.

“Well,” said the elder d’Aubart, “here’s what it is, then. Your friend takes this, the red pouch. It’s barrow-robber’s blossom, a sort of purple powder. In the red pouch, remember. Put it in water. It’s an emetic, if the word means anything to you.”

“Nothing pleasant,” said Galdo.

“Five minutes after he drinks it, he gets an ache in the belly. Ten minutes and he gets wobbly at the knees. Fifteen minutes and he starts vomiting up every meal he’s had for the past week. Won’t be pretty. Have buckets close at hand.”

“And it’ll look absolutely real?” asked Calo.

“Look? Sweetmeat, it’ll be as real as it gets. You ever see anyone feign vomiting?”

“Yes,” said the Sanzas in perfect unison.

“He does this thing with chewed-up oranges,” added Galdo.

“Well, your friend won’t be feigning this. Any physiker in Camorr would swear it was a real and natural distress. You can’t even see the barrow-robber’s blossom once it comes up; it dissolves quickly.”

“And then,” said Calo, “what about the other pouch?”

“This is Somnay pine bark. Crumble it and steep it in a tea. It’s the perfect counter for the purple blossom; it’ll cancel it right out. But the blossom will already have done its work; keep that in mind. The bark won’t put food back in his belly, or give back the vigor he loses while he’s retching his guts out. He’s going to be weak and sore for at least an evening or two.”

“Sounds wonderful,” said Calo, “by our own peculiar definition of wonderful. What do we owe you?”

“Three crowns, twenty solons,” said Jessaline. “And that’s only because you were old Chains’ boys. This isn’t much by way of alchemy, just refined and purified, but the powders are hard to get hold of.”

Calo counted out twenty gold tyrins from his purse and set them atop the counter in a vertical stack. “Here’s five crowns, then. With the understanding that this transaction is best forgotten by everyone involved.”

“Sanza,” said Jessaline d’Aubart without humor, “every purchase at my shop is forgotten, as far as the outside world is concerned.”

“Then this one,” said Calo, adding four more tyrins to the pile, “needs to stay extra forgotten.”

“Well, if you really want to reinforce the point…” She pulled a wooden scraper from beneath the counter and used it to pull the coins over the back edge, into what sounded like a leather bag. She was careful not to touch the coins themselves; black alchemists rarely got to be her age if they relaxed their paranoia toward all things touched, tasted, or smelled.

“You have our thanks,” said Galdo. “And that of our friend, as well.”

“Oh, don’t count on that,” Jessaline d’Aubart chuckled. “Give him the red pouch first, then see what a grateful frame of mind it puts him in.”

3

“GET ME a glass of water, Jean.” Locke stared out the canal-side window of the seventh-floor room, as the buildings of southern Camorr grew long black shadows toward the east. “It’s time to take my medicine. I’m guessing it’s close on twenty minutes to nine.”

“Already set,” said Jean, passing over a tin cup with a cloudy lavender residue swirling in it. “That stuff did dissolve in a blink, just like the Sanzas said.”

“Well,” he said, “here’s to deep pockets poorly guarded. Here’s to true alchemists, a strong stomach, a clumsy Gray King, and the luck of the Crooked Warden.”

“Here’s to living out the night,” said Jean, miming the clink of a cup against Locke’s own.

“Mmm.” Locke sipped hesitantly, then tilted the cup back and poured it down his throat in one smooth series of gulps. “Actually not bad at all. Tastes minty, very refreshing.”

“A worthy epitaph,” said Jean, taking the cup.

Locke stared out the window a while longer; the mesh was up, as the Duke’s Wind was still blowing in strongly from the sea and the insects weren’t yet biting. Across the Via Camorrazza the Arsenal District was mostly silent and motionless. With the Iron Sea city-states at relative peace, all the great saw-yards and warehouses and wet docks had little business. In a time of need they could build or service two dozen ships at once; now Locke could see only one skeletal hull rising within the yards.

Beyond that, the sea broke white against the base of the South Needle, an Elderglass-mortared stone breakwater nearly three-quarters of a mile in length. At its southernmost tip, a human-built watchtower stood out against the darkening sea; beyond that, the white blurs of sails could be seen beneath the red tendrils of clouds in the sky.

“Oh,” he said, “I do believe something’s happening.”

“Take a seat,” said Jean. “You’re supposed to get wobbly in just a bit.”

“Already happening. In fact…gods, I think I’m going to…”

So it began; a great wave of nausea bubbled up in Locke’s throat, and with it came everything he’d eaten for the past day. For a few long minutes he crouched on his knees, clutching a wooden bucket as devoutly as any man had ever prayed over an altar for intercession from the gods.

“Jean,” he gasped out during a brief lull between spasms of retching, “next time I conceive a plan like this, consider planting a hatchet in my skull.”

“Hardly efficacious.” Jean swapped a full bucket for an empty one and gave Locke a friendly pat on the back. “Dulling my nice sharp blades on a skull as thick as yours…”

One by one, Jean shuttered the windows. Falselight was just rising outside. “Ghastly as it is,” he said, “we need the smell to make an impression when Anjais shows up.”

Even once Locke’s stomach was thoroughly emptied, the dry heaving continued. He shuddered and shook and moaned, clutching at his guts. Jean hauled him bodily over to a sleeping pallet, where he looked down in genuine worry. “You’re pale and clammy,” he muttered. “Not bad at all. Very realistic.”

“Pretty, isn’t it? Gods,” whispered Locke, “how much longer?”

“Can’t rightly say,” said Jean. “They should be arriving down there right about now; give them a few minutes to get impatient with waiting around for us and come storming up here.”

During those few minutes, Locke became intimately acquainted with the idea of “a short eternity.” Finally, there came the creak of footsteps on the stairs, and a loud banging on the door.

“Lamora!” Anjais Barsavi’s voice. “Tannen! Open up or I’ll kick the damn door in!”

“Thank the gods,” croaked Locke as Jean rose to unbolt the door.

“We’ve been waiting out front of the Last Mistake! Are you coming or…Gods, what the hell happened in here?”

Anjais threw one arm up over his face as he stepped into the apartment and the smell of sickness. Jean pointed to Locke, writhing on the bed, moaning, half wrapped in a thin blanket despite the moist heat of the evening.

“He took ill just half an hour ago, maybe,” said Jean. “Losing his stomach all over the damn place. I don’t know what’s the matter.”

“Gods, he’s turning green.” Anjais took a few steps closer to Locke, staring in horrified sympathy. He was dressed for a fight, with a boiled leather cuirass, an unbuckled leather collar, and a pair of studded leather bracers tied over his hamlike forearms. Several men had accompanied him up the stairs, but none of them seemed in any hurry to follow him into the rooms.

“I had capon for lunch,” said Jean, “and he had fish rolls. That’s the last thing either of us ate, and I’m fine.”

“Iono’s piss. Fish rolls. Fresher than he bargained for, I’d wager.”

“Anjais,” Locke croaked, reaching out toward him with a shaking hand. “Don’t…don’t leave me. I can still go. I can still fight.”

“Gods, no.” Anjais shook his head emphatically. “You’re in a bad way, Lamora. I think you’d best see a physiker. Have you summoned one, Tannen?”

“I haven’t had a chance. I fetched out the buckets and I’ve been looking after him since it started.”

“Well, keep it up. Both of you stay. No, don’t get angry, Jean; he clearly can’t be left on his own. Stay and tend him. Fetch a physiker when you can.”

Anjais gave Locke two brief pats on his exposed shoulder.

“We’ll get the f*cker tonight, Locke. No worries. We’ll do him for good, and I’ll send someone to look in on you when we’re done. I’ll square this with Papa; he’ll understand.”

“Please…please, Jean can help me stand, I can still—”

“End of discussion. You can’t f*cking stand up; you’re sick as a fish dropped in a wine bottle.” Anjais backed toward the door and gave Locke a brief, sympathetic wave before he ducked out. “If I get my hands on the bastard personally, I’ll deck him once for you, Locke. Rest easy.”

Then the door slammed, and Locke and Jean were alone once again.

4

LONG MINUTES passed; Jean unshuttered the canal-side window and stared out into the glimmer of Falselight. He watched as Anjais and his men broke loose from the crowds below, then hurried across a Via Camorrazza catbridge and into the Arsenal District. Anjais didn’t look back even once, and soon enough he was swallowed up by shadows and distance.

“Long gone. Can I help you out of…,” Jean said, turning away from the window. Locke had already stumbled out of bed and was splashing water on the alchemical hearthstone, looking ten years older and twenty pounds thinner. That was alarming; Locke didn’t have twenty pounds to spare.

“Lovely. The least complicated, least important job of the night is done. Carry on, Gentlemen Bastards,” said Locke. His face was alight in the reflected glow of the simmering stone as he set a glazed jug of water atop it. Ten years older? More like twenty. “Now for the tea, gods bless it, and it had better be as good as the purple powder.”

Jean grimaced and grabbed the two vomit buckets Locke had used, then moved back to the window. Falselight was dying down now; the Hangman’s Wind was blowing up warm and strong, bringing a low ceiling of dark clouds with it, visible just past the Five Towers. The moons would be swallowed by those clouds tonight, at least for a few hours. Pinpricks of firelight were appearing across the city as though an unseen jeweler were setting his wares out on a field of black cloth.

“Jessaline’s little potion seems to have brought up every meal I’ve had in the past five years,” said Locke. “Nothing left to spit up but my naked soul. Make sure it isn’t floating around in one of those before you toss them, right?” His hands shook as he crumbled the dry Somnay pine bark right into the jug of water; he didn’t feel like messing about with proper tea-brewing.

“I think I see it,” Jean said. “Nasty, crooked little thing it is, too; you’re better off with it floating out to sea.”

Jean took a quick glance out the window to ensure that there were no canal boats drifting below in the path of a truly foul surprise, then simply flung the buckets, one after the other. They hit the gray water seventy-odd feet below with loud splashes, but Jean was certain nobody noticed or cared. Camorri were always throwing disgusting things into the Via Camorrazza.

Satisfied with his aim, Jean then slid the hidden closet open and pulled out their disguises—cheap traveler’s cloaks and a pair of broad-brimmed Tal Verrar caps fashioned from some ignoble leather with the greasy texture of sausage casings. He flung one brownish gray cloak over Locke’s shoulders; Locke clutched at it gratefully and shivered.

“You’ve got that motherly concern in your eyes, Jean. I must look like hammered shit.”

“Actually, you look like you were executed last week. I hate to ask, but are you sure you’re going to be up for this?”

“Whatever I am, it has to be sufficient.” Locke wrapped one end of his cloak around his right hand and picked up the jug of half-boiled tea. He sipped and swallowed, bark and all, reasoning that the best place for the stuff would be his empty stomach. “Ugh. It tastes like a kick in the gut feels. Have I pissed Jessaline off recently, too?”

His expression was picturesque, as though the skin of his face were trying to peel itself back and leap off his bones, but he continued to choke the near tea down anyway. Jean steadied him by placing both hands on his shoulders, privately afraid that another bout of vomiting might be more than Locke could handle.

After a few minutes, Locke set the empty jug down and sighed deeply.

“I can’t wait to have words with the Gray King when this shit is all finished,” Locke whispered. “There’s a few things I want to ask him. Philosophical questions. Like, ‘How does it feel to be dangled out a window by a rope tied around your balls, motherf*cker?’”

“Sounds more like physik than philosophy. But as you said, we have to wait for the Falconer to leave first.” Jean’s voice was steady and totally empty of emotion; the voice he always used when discussing a plan only loosely tethered to prudence and sanity. “Pity we can’t just blindside the bastard from an alley.”

“Couldn’t give him so much as a second to think, or we’d lose.”

“Anything less than twenty yards,” mused Jean. “One good throw with a Wicked Sister. Wouldn’t take but half a second.”

“But you and I both know,” Locke replied slowly, “that we can’t kill a Bondsmage. We wouldn’t live out the week. Karthain would make examples of us, plus Calo, Galdo, and Bug as well. Not very clever at all, that way out. A drawn-out suicide.”

Locke stared down at the fading glow of the hearthstone and rubbed his hands together.

“I wonder, Jean. I really wonder. Is this what other people feel like when we’re through with them? After we get the goods and pull the vanish and there’s nothing they can do about it?”

The light from the hearthstone sank several stages further before Jean answered.

“I thought we’d agreed long ago that they get what they deserve, Locke. Nothing more. This is a fantastically silly moment to start giving a shit.”

“Giving a shit?” Locke started, blinking as though he had just woken up. “No, don’t get me wrong. It’s just this sewn-up feeling. ‘No way out’ is for other people, not for the Gentlemen Bastards. I don’t like being trapped.”

At a sudden gesture from Locke, Jean pulled him to his feet. Jean wasn’t sure if the tea was any more responsible than the cloak, but Locke was no longer shivering.

“Too right,” Locke continued, his voice gaining strength. “Too right I don’t like it. Let’s get this shit job over with. We can have a good ponder on the subject of our favorite gray rat-f*cker and his pet mage after I’ve danced to their little tune.”

Jean grinned and cracked his knuckles, then ran a hand down the small of his back. The old familiar gesture, making sure that the Wicked Sisters were ready for a night out.

“You sure,” he said, “that you’re ready for the Vine Highway?”

“Ready as I can be, Jean. Hell, I weigh considerably less than I did before I drank that potion. Climbing down’ll be the easiest thing I do all night.”

5

THE TRELLIS ran up the full height of the Broken Tower, on the westward face of the structure, overlooking a narrow alley. The lattice of wood was threaded with tough old vines and built around the windows on each floor. Though something of a bitch to climb, it was the perfect way to avoid the few dozen familiar faces that were sure to be in the Last Mistake on any given night. The Gentlemen Bastards used the Vine Highway frequently.

The alley-side shutters banged open on the top floor of the Broken Tower; all the light inside Locke and Jean’s suite of rooms had been extinguished. A large dark shape slid out into the mass of trellised vines, and was shortly followed by a smaller shape. Clinging with white-knuckled determination, Locke gently eased the shutters closed above him, then willed his queasy stomach to quit complaining for the duration of the climb. The Hangman’s Wind, on its way out to the salty blackness of the Iron Sea, caught at his cap and cloak with invisible fingers that smelled of marshes and farmers’ fields.

Jean kept himself two or three feet under Locke, and they descended steadily, one foothold or handhold at a time. The windows on the sixth floor were shuttered and dark.

Thin slivers of amber light could be seen around the shutters on the fifth floor. Both climbers slowed without the need for words and willed themselves to be as quiet as possible; to be patches of gray invisible against deeper darkness, nothing more. They continued down.

The fifth-floor shutters flew outward as Jean was abreast with them on their left.

One hinged panel rebounded off his back, almost startling him out of his hold on the trellis. He curled his fingers tightly around wood and vine, and looked to his right. Locke stepped on his head in surprise, but quickly pulled himself back up.

“I know there’s no other way out, you miserable bitch!” hissed a man’s voice.

There was a loud thump, and then a shudder ran up and down the trellis; someone else had just gone out the window, and was scrabbling in the vines beside and just below them. A black-haired woman stuck her head out of the window, intent on yelling something in return, but when she caught sight of Jean through the cracks in her swinging shutter, she gasped. This in turn drew the attention of the man clinging just beneath her; a larger man even than Jean.

“What the hell is this shit?” he gasped. “What are you doing outside this window?”

“Amusing the gods, a*shole.” Jean kicked down and tried to nudge the newcomer further down the trellis, to no avail. “Kindly heave yourself down!”

“What are you doing outside this window, huh? You like to sneak a peek? You can sneak a peek of my fist, cocksucker!”

Grunting with exertion, he began to climb back upward, grabbing at Jean’s legs. Jean narrowly yanked himself out of the way, and the world reeled around him as he regained his balance. Black wall, black sky, wet black cobblestones fifty feet below. That was a bad fall, the kind that cracked men like eggs.

“All of you, get off my damned window now! Ferenz, for Morgante’s sake, leave them be and get down!” the woman hollered.

“Shit,” Locke muttered from a few feet above and to her left, his eloquence temporarily cowed into submission. “Madam, you’re complicating our night, so before we come in and complicate yours, kindly cork your bullshit bottle and close the gods-damned window!”

She looked up, aghast. “Two of you? All of you, get down, get down, get down!”

“Close your window, close your window, close your f*cking window!”

“I’ll kill both you shitsuckers,” huffed Ferenz. “Drop you both off this f*cking—”

There was a marrow-chillingly loud cracking noise, and the trellis shuddered beneath the hands of the three men clinging to it.

“Ah,” said Locke. “Ah, that figures. Thanks ever so much, Ferenz.”

Then there was a torrent of polysyllabic blasphemy from four mouths; exactly who said what would never be clearly recalled. Two careful men were apparently the trellis’ limit; under the weight of three careless flailers, it began to tear free of the stone wall with a series of creaks and pops.

Ferenz surrendered to gravity and common sense and began sliding downward at prodigious speed, burning his hands as he went, all but peeling the trellis off the wall above him. It finally gave way when he was about twenty feet above the ground, flipping over and dashing him down into the darkened alley, where he was promptly covered in falling vines and wood. His descent had snapped off a section of trellis at least thirty feet long, starting just beneath Jean’s dangling feet.

Wasting no time, Locke shimmied to his right and dropped down onto the window ledge, shoving the screaming woman back with the tip of one boot. Jean scrambled upward, for the shutter still blocked his direct access to the window, and as the section of trellis under his hands began to pull out of the wall, he gracelessly swung himself over the shutter and in through the window, taking Locke with him.

They wound up in a heap on the hardwood floor, tangled in cloaks.

“Get back out the f*cking window, now!” the woman screamed, punctuating each word with a swift kick to Jean’s back and ribs. Fortunately, she wasn’t wearing shoes.

“That would be stupid,” Locke said, from somewhere under his larger friend.

“Hey,” Jean said. “Hey! Hey!” He caught the woman’s foot and propelled her backward. She landed on her bed; it was the sort commonly called a “dangler”—a two-person hammock of strong but lightweight demi-silk, anchored to the ceiling at four points. She went sprawling across it, and both Locke and Jean suddenly noticed that she wasn’t wearing anything but her smallclothes. In the summer, a Camorri woman’s smallclothes are small indeed.

“Out, you bastards! Out, out! I—”

As Locke and Jean stumbled to their feet, the door on the wall opposite the window slammed open, and in stepped a broad-shouldered man with the slablike muscles of a stevedore or a smith. Vengeful satisfaction gleamed in his eyes, and the smell of hard liquor rolled off him, sour and acute even from ten paces away.

Locke wasted half a second wondering how Ferenz had gotten back upstairs so quickly, and another half second realizing that the man in the doorway wasn’t Ferenz.

He giggled, briefly but uncontrollably.

The night wind slammed the shutter against the open window behind him.

The woman made a noise somewhere in the back of her throat; a noise not unlike a cat falling down a deep, dark well.

“You filthy bitch,” the man said, his speech a thick slow drawl. “Filthy, filthy bitch. I jus’ knew it. Knew you weren’ alone.” He spat, then shook his head at Locke and Jean. “Two guys at once, too. Damn. Go figure. Guess it takes that many t’ replace me.

“Hope you boys had y’rselves a fun time with ’nother man’s woman,” he continued, drawing nine inches of blackened-steel stiletto from his left boot, “’cause now I’m gonna make you women.”

Jean spread his feet and moved his left hand under his cloak, ready to draw the Sisters. With his right hand, he nudged Locke a pace behind him.

“Hold it!” Locke cried, waving both of his hands. “I know what this looks like, but you’ve got the wrong idea, friend.” He pointed at the petrified woman clinging to the hanging bed. “She came before we came!”

“Gathis,” hissed the woman. “Gathis, these men attacked me! Get them! Save me!”

Gathis charged at Jean, growling. He held his knife out before him in the grip of an experienced fighter, but he was still drunk and he was still angry. Locke dodged out of the way as Jean caught Gathis by his wrist, stepped inside his reach, and sent him sprawling to the floor with a quick sweep of the legs.

There was an unappetizing snapping noise, and the blade fell from Gathis’ grip; Jean had retained a firm hold on his wrist, and then twisted as the man went down on his back. For a moment Gathis was too bewildered to cry out; then the pain broke through to his dulled senses and he roared.

Jean hoisted him up off the ground with one quick yank by the front of his tunic, and then he shoved Gathis with all his might into the stone wall to the left of the window. The big man’s head bounced off the hard surface and he stumbled forward; the blurred arc of Jean’s right fist met his jaw with a crack, abruptly canceling his forward momentum. He flopped to the ground, boneless as a sack of dough.

“Yes!” cried the woman. “Now throw him out the window!”

“For the love of the gods, madam,” snapped Locke. “Can you please pick one man in your bedroom to cheer for and stick with him?”

“If he’s found dead in the alley beneath your window,” said Jean. “I’ll come back and give you the same.”

“And if you tell anyone that we came through here,” added Locke, “you’ll only wish he’d come back and given you the same.”

“Gathis will remember,” she screeched. “He’ll certainly remember!”

“A big man like him? Please.” Jean made a show of arranging his cloak and redonning his hat. “He’ll say it was eight men and they all had clubs.”

Locke and Jean hurried out the door through which Gathis had entered, which led to the landing of the fifth-floor steps on the north side of the tower. With the trellis damaged, there was nothing else for it but to proceed quickly down on foot and pray to the Crooked Warden. Locke drew the door closed behind them, leaving the bewildered woman sprawled on her hanging bed with the unconscious Gathis curled up beside her window.

“The luck of the gods must certainly be with us,” said Locke as they hurried down the creaking steps. “At least we didn’t lose these stupid f*cking hats.”

A small dark shape hissed past them, wings fluttering, a sleek shadow visible as it swooped between them and the lights of the city.

“Well,” Locke added, “for better or worse, from this point on, I suppose we’re under the Falconer’s wing.”





INTERLUDE

Up the River

1

Jean was away at the House of Glass Roses the afternoon that Locke found out he was going to be sent up the Angevine to live on a farm for several months.

Hard rains were pounding Camorr that Idler’s Day, so Chains had taken Locke, Calo, and Galdo down into the dining room to teach them how to play Rich-Man, Beggar-Man, Soldier-Man, Duke—a card game that revolved around attempting to cheat one’s neighbor out of every last bent copper at his disposal. Naturally, the boys took to it quickly.

“Two, three, and five of Spires,” said Calo, “plus the Sigil of the Twelve.”

“Die screaming, half-wit,” said Galdo. “I’ve got a run of Chalices and the Sigil of the Sun.”

“Won’t do you any good, quarter-wit. Hand over your coins.”

“Actually,” said Father Chains, “a Sigil run beats a Sigil stand, Calo. Galdo would have you. Except—”

“Doesn’t anyone care what I’ve got in my hand?” asked Locke.

“Not particularly,” said Chains, “since nothing in the game tops a full Duke’s Hand.” He set his cards on the table and cracked his knuckles with great satisfaction.

“That’s cheating,” said Locke. “That’s six times in a row, and you’ve had the Duke’s Hand for two of them.”

“Of course I’m cheating,” said Chains. “Game’s no fun unless you cheat. When you figure out how I’m cheating, then I’ll know you’re starting to improve.”

“You shouldn’t have told us that,” said Calo.

“We’ll practice all week,” said Galdo.

“We’ll be robbing you blind,” said Locke, “by next Idler’s Day.”

“I don’t think so,” said Chains, chuckling, “since I’m sending you off on a three-month apprenticeship on Penance Day.”

“You’re what?”

“Remember last year, when I sent Calo off to Lashain to pretend to be an initiate in the Order of Gandolo? And Galdo went to Ashmere to slip into the Order of Sendovani? Well, your turn’s come. You’ll be going up the river to be a farmer for a few months.”

“A farmer?”

“Yes, you might have heard of them.” Chains gathered the cards from around the table and shuffled them. “They’re where our food comes from.”

“Yes, but…I don’t know anything about farming.”

“Of course not. You didn’t know how to cook, serve, dress like a gentleman, or speak Vadran when I bought you, either. So now you’re going to learn something else new.”

“Where?”

“Up the Angevine, seven or eight miles. Little place called Villa Senziano. It’s tenant farmers, mostly beholden to the duke or some of the minor swells from the Alcegrante. I’ll dress as a priest of Dama Elliza, and you’ll be my initiate, being sent off to work the earth as part of your service to the goddess. It’s what they do.”

“But I don’t know anything about the Order of Dama Elliza.”

“You won’t need to. The man you’ll be staying with understands that you’re one of my little bastards. The story’s just for everyone else.”

“What,” said Calo, “are we going to do in the meantime?”

“You’ll mind the temple. I’ll only be gone two days; the Eyeless Priest can be sick and locked away in his chambers. Don’t sit the steps while I’m away; people always get sympathetic if I’m out of sight for a bit, especially if I cough and hack when I return. You two and Jean can amuse yourselves as you see fit, so long as you don’t make a bloody mess of the place.”

“But by the time I get back,” said Locke, “I’ll be the worst card player in the temple.”

“Yes. Best wishes for a safe journey, Locke,” said Calo.

“Savor the country air,” said Galdo. “Stay as long as you like.”

2

THE FIVE Towers loomed over Camorr like the upstretched hand of a god; five irregular, soaring, Elderglass cylinders, dotted with turrets and spires and walkways and much curious evidence that the creatures that had designed them did not quite share the aesthetic sense of the humans who’d appropriated them.

Easternmost was Dawncatcher, four hundred feet high, its natural color a shimmery silver-red, like the reflection of a sunset sky in a still body of water. Behind it was Blackspear, slightly taller, made of an obsidian glass that shone with broken rainbows like a pool of oil. At the far side, as one might reckon by looking across the Five with Dawncatcher in the middle of one’s vision, was Westwatch, which shone with the soft violet of a tourmaline, shot through with veins of snow-white pearl. Beside it was stately Amberglass, with its elaborate flutings from which the wind would pull eerie melodies. In the middle, tallest and grandest of all, was Raven’s Reach, the palace of Duke Nicovante, which gleamed like molten silver and was crowned with the famous Sky Garden, whose lowest-hanging vine trailed in the air some six hundred feet above the ground.

A network of glassine cables (miles and miles of spun Elderglass cords had been found in the tunnels beneath Camorr, centuries before) threaded the roofs and turret tops of the Five Towers. Hanging baskets passed back and forth on these cables, drawn along by servants at huge clacking capstans. These baskets carried both passengers and cargo. Although many of the residents of lower Camorr proclaimed them mad, the nobles of the Five Families regarded the lurching, bobbing passage across the yawning empty spaces as a test of honor and courage.

Here and there, large cargo cages were being drawn up or lowered from jutting platforms on several of the towers. They reminded Locke, who stared up at all this with eyes that were not yet sated with such wonders, of the spider cages at the Palace of Patience.

He and Chains sat in a two-wheeled cart with a little walled space behind the seat, where Chains had stashed several parcels of goods under an old canvas tarp. Chains wore the loose brown robes with green and silver trim that marked a priest of Dama Elliza, Mother of Rains and Reaping. Locke wore a plain tunic and breeches, without shoes.

Chains had their two horses (un-Gentled, for Chains misliked using the white-eyed creatures outside city walls) trotting at a gentle pace up the winding cobbles of the Street of Seven Wheels, the heart of the Millfalls district. In truth, there were more than seven wheels spinning in the white froth of the Angevine; there were more in sight than Locke could count.

The Five Towers had been built on a plateau some sixty-odd feet above the lower city; the Alcegrante islands sloped up toward the base of this plateau. The Angevine came into Camorr at that height, just to the east of the Five, and fell down a crashing six-story waterfall nearly two hundred yards across. Wheels turned at the top of these falls, within a long glass-and-stone bridge topped with wooden mill-houses.

Wheels turned beneath the falls as well, jutting out into the river on both sides, making use of the rushing white flow to work everything from grinding stones to the bellows that blew air across the fires beneath brewers’ vats. It was a district choked with business-folk and laborers alike, with escorted nobles in gilded carriages rolling here and there to inspect their holdings or place orders.

They turned east at the tip of the Millfalls and crossed a wide low bridge into the Cenza Gate district, the means by which most northbound land traffic left the city. Here was a great mess, barely controlled by a small army of yellowjackets. Caravans of wagons were rolling into the city, their drivers at the mercy of the duke’s tax and customs agents, men and women marked by their tall black brimless caps and commonly referred to (when out of earshot) as “vexationers.”

Petty merchants were pitching everything from warm beer to cooked carrots; beggars were pleading countless improbable reasons for impoverishment and claiming lingering wounds from wars that had obviously ended long before they were born. Yellowjackets were driving the most persistent or malodorous off with their black lacquered sticks. It was not yet the tenth hour of the morning.

“You should see this place around noon,” said Chains, “especially during harvest time. And when it rains. Gods.”

Chains’ clerical vestments (and a silver solon passed over in a handshake) got them out of the city with little more than a “Good day, Your Holiness.” The Cenza Gate was fifteen yards wide, with huge ironwood doors almost as tall. The guardhouses on the wall were occupied, barracks-like, not just by the city watch but by the blackjackets, Camorr’s regular soldiers. They could be seen pacing here and there atop the wall, which was a good twenty feet thick.

North of Camorr proper was neighborhood after neighborhood of lightly built stone and wooden buildings, arranged in courts and squares more airy than those found on the islands of the city itself. Along the riverbank there were the beginnings of a marsh; to the north and the east were terraced hills, crisscrossed by the white lines of boundary stones set out to mark the property of the families that farmed them. The air took on divergent qualities depending on which way the chance breezes blew. It would smell of sea salt and wood smoke one minute, of manure and olive groves the next.

“Here beyond the walls,” said Chains, “is what many folks living outside the great cities would think of as cities; these little scatterings of wood and stone that probably don’t look like much to someone like you. Just as you haven’t really seen the country, most of them haven’t truly seen the city. So keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, and be mindful of differences until you’ve had a few days to acclimate yourself.”

“What’s the point of this trip, Chains, really?”

“You might one day have to pretend to be a person of very lowly station, Locke. If you learn something about being a farmer, you’ll probably learn something about being a teamster, a barge poleman, a village smith, a horse physiker, and maybe even a country bandit.”

The road north from Camorr was an old Therin Throne road: a raised stone expanse with shallow ditches at the sides. It was covered with a gravel of pebbles and iron filings, waste from the forges of the Coalsmoke district. Here and there the rains had fused or rusted the gravel into a reddish cement; the wheels clattered as they slid over these hard patches.

“A lot of blackjackets,” Chains said slowly, “come from the farms and villages north of Camorr. It’s what the dukes of Camorr do, when they need more men, and they can afford to wait a bit, without raising a general levy of the lowborn. It’s good wages, and there’s the promise of land for those that stay in service a full twenty-five years. Assuming they don’t get killed, of course. They come from the north, and mostly they go back to the north.”

“Is that why the blackjackets and the yellowjackets don’t like each other?”

“Heh.” Chains’ eyes twinkled. “Good guess. There’s some truth to it. Most of the yellowjackets are city boys that want to stay city boys. But on top of that, soldiers can be some of the cattiest, most clannish damn folk you’ll ever find outside of a highborn lady’s wardrobe. They’ll fight over anything; they’ll brawl over the colors of their hats and the shapes of their shoes. I know, believe me.”

“You pretended to be one once?”

“Thirteen gods, no. I was one.”

“A blackjacket?”

“Yes.” Chains sighed and settled back against the hard wooden seat of the horse cart. “Thirty years past, now. More than thirty. I was a pikeman for the old Duke Nicovante. Most of us from the village my age went; it was a bad time for wars. Duke needed fodder; we needed food and coin.”

“Which village?”

Chains favored him with a crooked smile. “Villa Senziano.”

“Oh.”

“Gods, it was a whole pile of us that went.” The horses and the cart rattled down the road for a few long moments before Chains continued. “There were three of us that came back. Or at least got out of it.”

“Only three?”

“That I know of.” Chains scratched at his beard. “One of them is the man I’m going to be leaving you with. Vandros. A good fellow; not book-smart but very wise in the everyday sense. He did his twenty-five years, and the duke gave him a spot of land as a tenancy.”

“Tenancy?”

“Most common folk outside the city don’t own their own land any more than city renters own their buildings. An old soldier with a tenancy gets a nice spot of land to farm until he dies; it’s a sort of allowance from the duke.” Chains chuckled. “Given in exchange for one’s youth and health.”

“You didn’t do the twenty-five, I’m guessing.”

“No.” Chains fiddled with his beard a bit more, an old nervous gesture. “Damn, I wish I could have a smoke. It’s a very frowned-on thing in the order of the Dama, mind you. No, I took sick after a battle. Something more than just the usual shits and sore feet. A wasting fever. I couldn’t march and I was like to die, so they left me behind…myself and many others. In the care of some itinerant priests of Perelandro.”

“But you didn’t die.”

“Clever lad,” said Chains, “to deduce that from such slender evidence after living with me for just three years.”

“And what happened?”

“A great many things,” said Chains. “And you know how it ends. I wound up in this cart, riding north and entertaining you.”

“Well, what happened to the third man from your village?”

“Him? Well,” said Chains, “he always had his head on right. He made banneret sergeant not long after I got laid up with the fever. At the Battle of Nessek, he helped young Nicovante hold the line together when old Nicovante took an arrow right between his eyes. He lived, got elevated, and served Nicovante in the next few wars that came their way.”

“And where is he?”

“At this very moment? How should I know? But,” said Chains, “later this afternoon, he’ll be giving Jean Tannen his usual afternoon weapons lesson at the House of Glass Roses.”

“Oh,” said Locke.

“Funny old world,” said Chains. “Three farmers became three soldiers; three soldiers became one farmer, one baron, and one thieving priest.”

“And now I’m to become a farmer, for a while.”

“Yes. Useful training indeed. But not just that.”

“What else?”

“Another test, my boy. Just another test.”

“Which is?”

“All these years, you’ve had me looking over you. You’ve had Calo and Galdo, and Jean, and Sabetha from time to time. You’ve gotten used to the temple as a home. But time’s a river, Locke, and we’ve always drifted farther down it than we think.” He smiled down at Locke with real affection. “I can’t stand watch on you forever, boy. Now we need to see what you can do when you’re off in a strange new place, all on your own.”