“Rotten fruit,” the little boy in the Black warmaster’s box yelled, and so it was; an elderly woman with a white tabard was thrown against the stadium wall and pelted with apples, pears, and tomatoes by four of the Demons. They knocked her off her feet and continued the barrage until the woman was a shuddering heap, curled up beneath her frail arms for protection, and great spatters of sour pulp and juice were dripping from the wall behind her.
The white player’s retaliation was swift. She took a stocky young man in black colors and for once reserved the choice of default to herself. “We must keep our hostess’ stadium clean. Take him to the wall with the fruit stains,” she shouted, “and let him clean it with his tongue!”
The crowd broke into wild applause at that; the man on the arena floor was pushed up to the wall by the chief Demon. “Start licking, scum!”
His first efforts were halfhearted. Another Demon produced a whip that ended in seven knotted cords and lashed the man across the shoulders, knocking him into the wall hard enough to bloody his nose. “Earn your fucking pay, worm,” screamed the Demon, whipping him once again. “Haven’t you ever had a lady tell you to get down and use your tongue before?”
The man ran his tongue desperately up and down the wall, gagging every few seconds, which would bring another crack of the Demon’s whip. The man was a bleeding, retching nervous wreck by the time he was finally hauled from the arena floor.
So it went, all morning long.
“Gods, why do they bear it? Why do they take this?” Locke stood in the free gallery, alone, staring out at the wealthy and powerful, at their guards and servants, and at the thinning ranks of the living pieces in the game beneath them. He brooded, sweating in his heavy black garments.
Here were the richest and freest people in the Therin world, those with positions and money but no political duties to constrict them, gathered together to do what law and custom forbade beyond Saljesca’s private fiefdom—to humiliate and brutalize their lessers however they saw fit, for their own gleeful amusement. The arena and the Amusement War itself were obviously just frames. Means to an end.
There was no order to it, no justice. Gladiators and prisoners fighting before a crowd were there for a reason, risking their lives for glory or paying the price for having been caught. Men and women hung from a gibbets because the Crooked Warden had only so much help to give to the foolish, the slow, and the unlucky. But this was wanton.
Locke felt his anger growing like a chancre in his guts.
They had no idea who he was or what he was really capable of. No idea what the Thorn of Camorr could do to them, unleashed on Salon Corbeau, with Jean to aid him! Given months to plan and observe, the Gentlemen Bastards could take the place apart, find ways to cheat the Amusement War, surely—rob the participants, rob the Lady Saljesca, embarrass and humiliate the bastards, blacken the demi-city’s reputation so thoroughly that nobody would ever want to visit again.
But…
“Crooked Warden,” Locke whispered, “why now? Why show me this now?”
Jean was waiting for him back in Tal Verrar, and they were already neck-deep in a game that had taken a year to put together. Jean didn’t know anything about what really went on at Salon Corbeau. He would be expecting Locke to return in short order with a set of chairs, so the two of them could carry on with the plan they’d agreed to, a plan that was already desperately delicate.
“Gods damn it,” said Locke. “Gods damn it all to hell.”
5
CAMORR, YEARS before. The wet, seeping mists enclosed Locke and Father Chains in curtains of midnight gray as the old man led the boy back home from his first meeting with Capa Vencarlo Barsavi. Locke, drunk and sweat-soaked, clung to the back of his Gentled goat for dear life.
“…you don’t belong to Barsavi,” Chains said. “He’s good enough for what he is, a good ally to have on your side, and a man that you must appear to obey at all times. But he certainly doesn’t own you. In the end, neither do I.”
“So I don’t have to—”
“Obey the Secret Peace? Be a good little pezon? Only for pretend, Locke. Only to keep the wolves from the door. Unless your eyes and ears have been stitched shut with rawhide these past two days, by now you must have realized that I intend you and Calo and Galdo and Sabetha to be nothing less,” Chains confided through a feral grin, “than a fucking ballista bolt right through the heart of Vencarlo’s precious Secret Peace.”
“Uh…” Locke collected his thoughts for several moments. “Why?”
“Heh. It’s…complicated. It has to do with what I am, and what I hope you’ll someday be. A priest in the sworn service of the Crooked Warden.”
“Is the Capa doing something wrong?”
“Well,” said Chains, “well, lad, now there’s a question. Is he doing right by the Right People? Gods, yes—the Secret Peace tames the city watch, calms everyone down, gets less of us hung.
“Still, every priesthood has what we call mandates: laws handed down by the gods themselves to those who serve them. In most temples, these are complex, messy, annoying things. In the priesthood of the Benefactor, things are easy. We only have two. The first one is thieves prosper. Simple as that. We’re ordered to aid one another, hide one another, make peace whenever possible, and see to it that our kind flourishes, by hook or by crook. Barsavi’s got that mandate covered, never doubt that.
“But the second mandate,” said Chains, lowering his voice and glancing around into the fog to make doubly sure that they were not overheard, “is this—the rich remember.”
“Remember what?”
“That they’re not invincible. That locks can be picked and treasures can be stolen. Nara, Mistress of Ubiquitous Maladies, may Her hand be stayed, sends disease among men so that men will never forget that they are not gods. We’re sort of like that, for the rich and powerful. We’re the stone in their shoe, the thorn in their side, a little bit of reciprocity this side of divine judgment. That’s our second mandate, and it’s as important as the first.”
“And…the Secret Peace protects the nobles, and so you don’t like it?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it.” Chains mulled his next few words over before he let them out. “Barsavi’s not a priest of the Thirteenth. He’s not sworn to the mandates like I am; he’s got to be practical. And while I can accept that, I can’t just let it go. It’s my divine duty to see that the blue bloods with their pretty titles get a little bit of what life hands the rest of us as a matter of routine—a nice, sharp jab in the ass every now and again.”
“And, Barsavi…doesn’t need to know about this?”
“Bleeding shits, no. As I see it, if Barsavi takes care of thieves prosper and I look after the rich remember, this’ll be one holy, holy city in the eyes of the Crooked Warden.”