Back to the room; Locke paced furiously. He swung his arms about tentatively; the cuts on his left arm ached, and the deep wound on his shoulder still twinged cruelly. His battered left wrist felt as though it might almost serve. Pain or no pain…he curled his left-hand fingers into a fist, stared down at them, and then looked up at the window with narrowed eyes.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I’ll show you a thing or three, you son of a bloody silk merchant.”
Locke tore his bedding apart, knotting sheet-ends to blankets, inviting twinges from his injuries. The pain only seemed to drive him on faster. He tightened his last knot, threw open the shutters, and tossed his makeshift rope out the window. He tied the end in his hands to his bed frame. It wasn’t a terribly sturdy piece of furniture, but then, he didn’t weigh all that much.
Out the window he went.
Vel Virazzo was an old, low city; Locke’s impressions as he swung there, three stories above the faintly misted street, came in flashes. Flat-topped, sagging buildings of stone and plaster…reefed sails on black masts in the harbor…white moonlight gleaming on dark water…red lights burning atop glass pylons, in a line receding out toward the horizon. Locke shut his eyes, clung to his sheets, and bit his tongue to avoid throwing up.
It seemed easiest to simply let himself slide downward; he did so in fits and starts, letting his palms grow warm against the sheets and blankets before stopping. Down ten feet…twenty…he balanced precariously on the top sill of the inn’s common-room window and gasped in a few deep breaths before continuing. Warm as the night was, he was getting chilly from the soaking he’d received.
The last end of the last sheet ended about six feet off the ground; Locke slid down as far as he could, then let himself drop. His heels slapped against the cobblestones, and he found that Jean Tannen was already waiting for him, with a cheap gray cloak in his hands. Before Locke could move, Jean flung the cloak around his shoulders.
“You son of a bitch,” cried Locke, pulling the cloak around himself with both hands. “You snake-souled, dirty-minded son of a bitch! I hope a shark tries to suck your cock!”
“Why, Master Lamora, look at you,” said Jean. “Charming a lock, climbing out a window. Almost as though you used to be a thief.”
“I was pulling off hanging offenses when you were still teeth-on-tits in your mother’s arms!”
“And I’ve been pulling off hanging offenses while you’ve been sulking in your room, drinking away your skills.”
“I’m the best thief in Vel Virazzo,” growled Locke, “drunk or sober, awake or asleep, and you damn well know it.”
“I might have believed that once,” said Jean. “But that was a man I knew in Camorr, and he hasn’t been with me for some time.”
“Gods damn your ugly face,” yelled Locke as he stepped up to Jean and punched him in the stomach. More surprised than hurt, Jean gave him a solid shove. Locke flew backward, cloak whirling as he tried to keep his balance—until he collided with a man who’d been coming down the street.
“Mind your fucking step!” The stranger, a middle-aged man in a long orange coat and the prim clothes of a clerk or a lawscribe, wrestled for a few seconds with Locke, who clutched at him for support.
“A thousand pardons,” said Locke, “A thousand pardons, sir. My friend and I were merely having a discussion; the fault is all mine.”
“I daresay it is,” said the stranger, at last succeeding in prying Locke from his coat lapels and thrusting him away. “You have breath like a wine cask! Bloody Camorri.”
Locke watched until the man was a good twenty or thirty yards down the street, then whirled back toward Jean, dangling a little black leather purse in the air before him. It jingled with a healthy supply of heavy coins.
“Ha! What do you say to that, hmmm?”
“I say it was bloody child’s play. Doesn’t mean a gods-damned thing.”
“Child’s play? Die screaming, Jean, that was—”
“You’re mangy,” said Jean. “You’re dirtier than a Shades’ Hill orphan. You’ve lost weight, though where from is a great mystery. You haven’t been exercising your wounds or letting anyone tend to them for you. You’ve been hiding in a room, letting your condition slip away, and you’ve been drunk for two straight weeks. You’re not what you were, and it’s your own damn fault.”
“So.” Locke scowled at Jean, slipped the purse into a tunic pocket, and straightened the cloak on his shoulders. “You require a demonstration. Fine. Get back inside and take down your silly wall, and wait for me in the room. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“I—”
But Locke had already thrown up the hood of his cloak, turned, and begun to stride down the street, into the warm Vel Virazzo night.