“You talk the way you perform card tricks, Master Kosta. Far too smoothly. I fear you may be even better at hiding things with words than you are with your hands. If you must know, it’s your possible usefulness against your employer—and that alone—that preserves my consent for letting you live.”
“I don’t want to be your enemy, Selendri. I don’t even want to be trouble.”
“Words are cheap. Cheap and meaningless.”
“I can’t…” Judicious pause again. Locke was as careful as a master sculptor placing crow’s-feet around the edges of a stone statue’s eye. “Look, maybe I am glib. I can’t speak otherwise, Selendri.” Repeated use of her proper name, a compulsion, almost a spell. More intimate and effective than titles. “I am who I am.”
“And you wonder that I distrust you for it?”
“I wonder more if there’s anything that you don’t distrust.”
“Distrust everyone,” she said, “and you can never be betrayed. Opposed, but never betrayed.”
“Hmmm.” Locke bit his tongue and thought rapidly. “But you don’t distrust him, do you, Selendri?”
“That’s no gods-damned business of yours, Master Kosta.”
There was a loud rattle from the ceiling of the climbing closet. The room gave a last heavy shudder, and then fell still.
“Forgive me, again,” said Locke. “Not the sixth floor, of course. The ninth?”
“The ninth.”
In a second she would push past him and open the door. They had one last moment alone in the intimate darkness. He weighed his options, hefted his last conversational dart. Something risky, but potentially disquieting.
“I used to think much less of him, you know. Before I found out that he was wise enough to really love you.” Another pause, and he lowered his voice to the barest edge of audibility. “I think you must be the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”
He counted his own heartbeats in the darkness until she responded.
“What a pretty presumption,” she whispered, and there was acid beneath her words. There was a click, and a line of yellow light split the blackness, stinging his eyes. She gave him a firm push with her artificial hand, against the door that opened out into the lamplit heart of Requin’s office.
Well, let her roll his words over in her thoughts for a while. Let her give him the signals that would tell him how to proceed. He had no specific goal in mind; it would be enough to keep her uncertain, simply less inclined to stick a knife in his back. And if some small part of him felt sour at twisting her emotions (gods damn it, that part of him had rarely spoken up before!), well—he reminded himself that he could do as he pleased and feel as he pleased while he was Leocanto Kosta. Leocanto Kosta wasn’t real.
He stepped out of the climbing closet, unsure if he was any more convinced by himself than Selendri was.
3
“MASTER KOSTA! My mysterious new associate. What a busy man you’ve been.”
Requin’s office was as cluttered as it had been on Locke’s last visit. Locke was gratified to see his decks of cards stacked haphazardly at various points on and near Requin’s desk. The climbing closet opened out of a wall niche between two paintings, a niche Locke certainly hadn’t noticed on his previous visit.
Requin was standing gazing out through the mesh screen that covered the door to his balcony, wearing a heavy maroon frock coat with black lapels. He scratched at his chin with one gloved hand and glanced sideways at Locke.
“Actually,” said Locke, “Jerome and I have had a quiet few days. As I believe I promised you.”
“I don’t mean just these past few days. I’ve been making those inquiries into your past two years in Tal Verrar.”
“As I’d hoped. Enlightening?”
“Most educational. Let’s be direct. Your associate tried to shake down Azura Gallardine for information concerning my vault. Something more than a year ago. You know who she is?”
Selendri was pacing the room to Locke’s left, slowly, watching him over her right shoulder.
“Of course. One of the high muck-a-shits of the Artificers’ Guild. I told Jerome where to find her.”
“And how did you know that she’d had a hand in the design of my vault?”
“It’s amazing, how much you can learn by buying drinks in artificer bars and pretending that every story you hear is incredibly fascinating.”
“I see.”
“The old bitch didn’t tell him anything, though.”
“She wouldn’t have. And she would have been content at that; she didn’t even tell me about the inquiry he’d made. But I put out the question a few nights ago, and it turns out that a beer-seller on my list of reliable eyes once saw someone answering your associate’s description fall out of the sky.”
“Yes. Jerome said the guildmistress had a unique method of interrupting conversations.”
“Well, Selendri had an uninterrupted conversation with her yesterday evening. She was enticed to remember everything she could about Jerome’s visit.”
“Enticed?”
“Financially, Master Kosta.”
“Ah.”
“I have also come to understand that you made inquiries with some of my gangs over in the Silver Marina. Starting around the time Jerome visited Guildmistress Gallardine.”
“Yes. I spoke to an older fellow named Drava, and a woman named…what was it…”
“Armania Cantazzi.”
“Yes, that was her. Thank you. Gorgeous woman; I tried to get past business and get a bit friendlier with her, but she didn’t seem to appreciate my charms.”
“Armania wouldn’t have; she prefers the company of other women.”
“Now there’s a relief. I thought I was losing my touch.”
“You were curious about shipping, the sort customs officials never get to hear about. You discussed a few terms with my people and never followed up. Why?”
“Jerome and I agreed, upon reflection, that securing shipping from outside Tal Verrar would be wisest. We could then simply hire a few small barges to move whatever we stole from you, and avoid the more complicated dealings involved in getting a lighter.”
“If I were planning to rob myself, I suppose I would agree. Now, the matter of alchemists. I have reliable information placing you at several over the past year. Reputable and otherwise.”
“Of course. I conducted a few experiments with fire oils and acids, on secondhand clockwork mechanisms. I thought it might save some tedious lock-picking.”
“Did these experiments bear fruit?”
“I’d share that information with an employer,” said Locke, grinning.
“Mmmm. Leave that for now. But it does indeed appear that you’ve been up to something. So many disparate activities that do add up to support your story. There’s just one thing more.”
“Which is?”
“I’m curious. How was old Maxilan doing when you saw him three nights ago?”
Locke was suddenly aware that Selendri was no longer pacing. She had placed herself just a few steps directly behind him, unmoving. Crooked Warden, give me a golden line of bullshit and the wisdom to know when to stop spinning it, he thought.
“Uh, well, he’s a prick.”
“That’s no secret. Any child on the street could tell me that. But you admit you were at the Mon Magisteria?”
“I was. I had a private audience with Stragos. Incidentally, he’s under the impression that his agents among your gangs are undetected.”
“As per my intentions. But you do get around, Leocanto. Just what would the archon of Tal Verrar want with you and Jerome? In the middle of the night, no less? On the very night we had such an interesting conversation ourselves?”
Locke sighed to buy himself a few seconds to think. “I can tell you,” he said when he’d hesitated as long as was prudent, “but I doubt you’re going to like it.”
“Of course I won’t like it. Let’s have it anyway.”
Locke sighed. Headfirst into a lie, or headfirst out the window.
“Stragos is the one who’s been paying Jerome and myself. The fronts we’ve been dealing with are his agents. He’s the man who’s so keen to see your vault looking like a larder after a banquet. He thought it was time to crack the whip on us.”
Faint lines appeared on Requin’s face as he ground his teeth together, and he put his hands behind his back. “You heard that from his own mouth?”
“Yes.”