3
IN THE center of the Shifting Revel, a great many tall iron cages had been sunk into the water. Some of these served to support wooden slats on which performers, victims, fighters, and attendants could stand; a few particularly heavy cages restrained dark shapes that circled ominously under the translucent gray water. Platform boats were rowed around at a steady clip, showing off rope dancers, knife throwers, acrobats, jugglers, strongmen, and other curiosities; the excited shouts of barkers with long brass speaking trumpets echoed flatly off the water.
First up at any Revel were the Penance Bouts, where petty offenders from the Palace of Patience could volunteer for mismatch combat in exchange for reduced sentences or slightly improved living conditions. At present, a hugely muscled nichavezzo (“punishing hand”), one of the duke’s own household guard, was handing out the beatings. The soldier was armored in black leather, with a gleaming steel breastplate and a steel helmet crested with the freshly severed fin of a giant flying fish. Scales and spines scintillated as the soldier stepped back and forth under the bright sun, striking out seemingly at leisure with an iron-shod staff.
The nichavezzo stood on a platform that was small but rock-steady; a series of circular wooden flats surrounded him, separated by an arm’s-length span of water. These wobbly, unstable platforms were occupied by about two dozen slender, grimy prisoners, each armed with a small wooden cudgel. A concerted rush might have overwhelmed their armored tormentor, but this lot seemed to lack the temperament for cooperation. Approaching the nichavezzo singly or in little groups, they were being dropped, one after another, with skull-rattling blows. Little boats circled to fish out unconscious prisoners before they slipped under the water forever; the duke, in his mercy, did not allow Penance Bouts to be deliberately lethal.
“Mmmm.” Locke held his empty wine flute out for just a second; Conté plucked it out of his fingers with the grace of a swordsman disarming an opponent. When the don’s manservant stepped toward the liquor cabinet, Locke cleared his throat. “No need to refill that particular glass just yet, Conté. Too kind, too kind. But with your permission, my lord and lady Salvara, I should like to offer a pair of gifts. One as a matter of simple hospitality. The other as a…well, you’ll see. Graumann?”
Locke snapped his fingers, and Jean nodded. The heavyset man moved over to a wooden table just beside the liquor cabinet and picked up two heavy leather satchels, each of which had iron-reinforced corners and small iron locks sewn into their covers. Jean set these down where the Salvaras could easily see them, and then stepped back so Locke could unseal the satchels with a delicate key of carved ivory. From the first satchel, he withdrew a cask of pale aromatic wood, perhaps one foot in height and half that in diameter, which he then held out for Don Salvara’s examination. A plain black brand on the surface of the cask read:
B randvin A ustershalin 502
Don Lorenzo’s breath hissed in between his teeth; perhaps his nostrils even flared, though Locke kept the face of Lukas Fehrwight politely neutral. “Twelve gods, a 502. Lukas, if I seemed to be teasing you for your refusal to part with your goods, please accept my deepest—”
“You needn’t apologize, my lord.” Locke held up a hand and mimicked the don’s gesture for shooing words down out of the air. “For your bold intervention on my behalf, Don Salvara, and for your excellent hospitality this morning, fair do?a, please accept this minor ornament for your cellars.”
“Minor!” The don took the cask and cradled it as though it were an infant not five minutes born. “I…I have a 506 and a pair of 504s. I don’t know of anyone in Camorr that has a 502, except probably the duke.”
“Well,” said Locke, “my masters have kept a few on hand, ever since the word got out that it was a particularly good blend. We use them to…break the ice, in matters of grave business importance.” In truth, that cask represented an investment of nearly eight hundred full crowns and a sea trip up the coast to Ashmere, where Locke and Jean had contrived to win it from an eccentric minor noble in a rigged card game. Most of the money had actually gone to evade or buy off the assassins the old man had later sent after his property; the 502 vintage had become almost too precious to drink.
“What a grand gesture, Master Fehrwight!” Do?a Sofia slipped a hand through the crook of her husband’s elbow and gave him a possessive grin. “Lorenzo, love, you should try to rescue strangers from Emberlain more often. They’re so charming!”
Locke coughed and shuffled his feet. “Ahh, hardly, my lady. Now, Don Salvara—”
“Please, do call me Lorenzo.”
“Ah, Don Lorenzo, what I have to show you next relates rather directly to my reason for coming here.” From the second satchel, he drew out a similar cask, but this one was marked only with a stylized ‘A’ within a circle of vines.
“This,” said Locke, “is a sample drawn from last year’s distillation. The 559.”
Don Salvara dropped the cask of 502.
The do?a, with girlish agility, shot out her right foot to hook the cask in midair and let it down to the deck with a slight thump rather than a splintering crash. Unbalanced, she did manage to drop her ginger scald; the glass vanished over the side and was soon twenty feet underwater. The Salvaras steadied one another, and the don picked his cask of 502 back up, his hands shaking.
“Lukas,” he said, “surely—surely you must be kidding.”