“No,” said Do?a Vorchenza, sighing. “Sofia has the truth of the matter. I am the duke’s Spider. Having said that, if it gets beyond this room, throats will be cut.”
Conté looked at her with surprise and a strange sort of approval in his eyes; Locke stumbled back to his feet.
“As for the matter of the sculptures,” said Do?a Vorchenza, “I did clear them personally. They are a gift to the duke.”
“They’re a plot,” said Locke. “They’re a trap. Just open one up and you’ll see! Capa Raza means to ruin every man, woman, and child in this tower; it’ll be worse than murder.”
“Capa Raza,” said Do?a Vorchenza, “was a perfect gentleman; he was almost too demure to accept my invitation to briefly join us this evening. This is another one of your fabulations, intended to bring you some advantage.”
“Oh, shit yes,” said Locke. “I marched back here after escaping and had myself cleverly tied up and hauled in here by the whole gods-damned Nightglass Company, on purpose. Now I’ve got you right where I fucking want you. Those sculptures are full of Wraithstone, Vorchenza! Wraithstone.”
“Wraithstone?” said Do?a Sofia, aghast. “How can you know?”
“He doesn’t,” said Do?a Vorchenza. “He’s lying. The sculptures are harmless.”
“Open one up,” said Locke. “There’s an easy remedy for this argument. Please, open one up. They catch fire at Falselight.”
“Those sculptures,” said Vorchenza, “are ducal property worth thousands of crowns. They will not be damaged on some mad whim of a known criminal.”
“Thousands of crowns,” said Locke, “versus hundreds of lives. Every peer in Camorr is going to be a drooling moron, do you understand? Can you imagine those children in that garden with white eyes like a Gentled horse? That’s what we’ll all be,” he shouted. “Gentled. That shit will eat our fucking souls.”
“Can it really hurt to check?” asked Reynart.
Locke looked up at Reynart with gratitude on his face. “No, it can’t, Reynart. Please do.”
Do?a Vorchenza massaged her temples. “This is quite out of hand,” she said. “Stephen, throw this man somewhere secure until after the feast. A room without windows, please.”
“Do?a Vorchenza,” said Locke, “what does the name Avram Anatolius mean to you?”
Her eyes were cold. “I couldn’t begin to say,” she said. “What do you imagine it means to you?”
“Capa Barsavi murdered Avram Anatolius twenty-two years ago,” said Locke. “And you knew about it. You knew he was a threat to the Secret Peace.”
“I can’t see what relevance this has to anything,” said Do?a Vorchenza.
“You will be silent now, or I’ll have you silenced.”
“Anatolius had a son,” said Locke with desperate haste, as Stephen took a step toward him. “A surviving son, Do?a Vorchenza. Luciano Anatolius. Luciano is Capa Raza. Luciano took revenge on Barsavi for the murder of his parents and his siblings—now he means to have revenge on you as well! You and all your peers.”
“No,” said Do?a Vorchenza, touching her head again. “No, that’s not right. I enjoyed the time I spent with Capa Raza. I can’t imagine he would do anything like this.”
“The Falconer,” said Locke. “Do you recall the Falconer?”
“Raza’s associate,” said Vorchenza distantly. “I…I enjoyed my time with him, as well. A quiet and polite young man.”
“He did something to you, Do?a Vorchenza,” said Locke. “I’ve seen him do it, right before my eyes. Did he speak your true name? Did he write something on a piece of parchment?”
“I…I…cannot…this is…” Do?a Vorchenza cringed; the wrinkles of her face bent inward, as though she were in pain. “I must invite Capa Raza…It would be impolite not to invite him to the…to the feast….” She slumped against her chair and screamed.
Lorenzo and Sofia rushed to her aid; Reynart picked Locke up by the front of his vest and slammed him against the north wall, hard. Locke’s feet dangled a foot off the ground.
“What did you do to her?” bellowed Reynart.
“Nothing,” gasped Locke. “A Bondsmage cast a spell over her! Think, man—is she being rational about the sculptures? The bastard did something to her mind.”
“Stephen,” said Do?a Vorchenza in a hoarse voice, “put the Thorn down. He’s right. He’s right…. Raza and the Falconer…It’s like I’d forgotten, somehow. I wasn’t going to accept Raza’s request…. Then the Falconer did something at the desk, and I…”
She stood up once more, assisted by Sofia. “Luciano Anatolius, you said. Capa Raza is Avram Anatolius’ son? How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I tied that Bondsmage to the floor just an hour or two ago,” said Locke as Reynart let him slide back down the wall. “I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he’d confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized.”
Everyone in the room stared at him.
“I called him an asshole, too,” said Locke. “He didn’t like that.”
“It’s worse than death, to slay a Bondsmage,” said Do?a Vorchenza.
“He’s not dead. He’s just very gods-damned sorry.”
Do?a Vorchenza shook her head. “Stephen, the sculptures. There’s one on this floor, isn’t there? Beside the bar?”
“Yes,” said Reynart, moving for the door. “What else do you know about them, Thorn?”
“They’ve got alchemical fuses,” said Locke. “And clay pots of fire-oil. At Falselight, that fire-oil goes up; this whole tower fills with Wraithstone smoke. And Anatolius sails away, laughing his head off.”
“This Luciano Anatolius,” said Sofia, “is he the one we met on the stairs?”
“One and the same,” said Locke. “Luciano Anatolius, also known as Capa Raza, also known as the Gray King.”
“If these things are alchemical,” said Sofia, “I’d better be the one to have a look at them.”
“If it’s going to be dangerous, I’m going as well,” said Lorenzo.
“And me,” said Conté.
“Great! We can all go! It’ll be fun!” Locke waved his tied hands at the door. “But hurry it up, for fuck’s sake.”
Conté took him by the arm and pushed him along at the rear of the procession; Reynart and Vorchenza led their way out past the startled blackjackets. Reynart beckoned for them to follow. They left the hallway and returned to the main gallery.
“On the other side of the bar, by the glasses,” said Locke. “Behind one of the velvet ropes, I think.”
The crowd of red-faced revelers parted as the strange procession swept through the gallery. Reynart strode up to the blackjacket standing beside the glittering pyramid of wineglasses. “This end of the bar is temporarily closed. Make it so,” he said. Turning to his other soldiers, he said, “Cordon this area off fifteen or twenty feet back. Don’t let anyone else get close, in the name of the duke.”
Do?a Sofia ducked under the velvet rope and crouched beside the sculpted pyramid, which was about three feet tall. The soft lights continued to flash and shift behind the glass windows set into its faces.
“Captain Reynart,” she said, “you had a pair of gloves at your belt, I seem to recall. May I borrow them?”
Reynart passed her a pair of black leather gloves, and she slipped them on. “It’s rarely wise to take too much for granted. Contact poisons are child’s play,” she said absently, and ran her fingers across the surface of the sculpture while peering at it closely. She shifted position several times, her frown deepening with each new examination.
“I can’t see any breach in the casing,” she said, standing up again. “Not so much as a seam; the workmanship is very good. If the device is intended to issue forth smoke, I can’t imagine how the smoke would escape.” She tapped a gloved finger against one of the glass windows.
“Unless…” She tapped the window again. “This is what we call ornamental glass; it’s thin and fragile. It’s not commonly used in sculpture, and we never use it in the laboratory, because it can’t take heat….”
Her head whirled toward Locke; her almond-blonde ringlets spun like a halo. “Did you say there were pots of fire-oil in this device?”
“So I heard,” he replied, “from a man very eager not to lose his tongue.”
“That might be it,” she said. “Fire-oil could generate a great deal of heat inside a metal enclosure. It would shatter the glass—shatter the glass and let out the smoke! Captain, draw your rapier, please. I should like to use it.”
Concealing any qualms he might have had, Reynart drew his rapier and carefully passed it to her, hilt first. She examined the silver butt of the weapon, nodded, and used it to smash in the glass. It broke with a high-pitched tinkle. She reversed the rapier and used the blade to sweep away the jagged fragments from around the edges of the window, then passed it back to Reynart. There were mutters and exclamations from the watching crowd, who were barely being kept in check by Reynart’s thin arc of apologetic blackjackets.
“Careful, Sofia,” said Don Lorenzo.