4
LOCKE DIDN’T find it particularly easy to eat lunch while watching a dozen swimming men being pulled apart by a Jereshti devilfish, but he decided that his master merchant of Emberlain had probably seen worse, in his many imaginary sea voyages, and he kept his true feelings far from his face.
Noon was well past; the Penance Bouts were over, and the Revel-masters had moved on to the Judicial Forfeitures. This was a polite way of saying that the men in the water were murderers, rapists, slavers, and arsonists selected to be colorfully executed for the amusement of the Revel crowds. Technically speaking, they were armed and would receive lesser sentences if they could somehow contrive to slay whatever beast they were matched against, but the beasts were always as nasty as their weapons were laughable, so mostly they were just executed.
The devilfish’s tentacles were twelve feet long—the same length as its undulating gray-and-black striped body. The creature was confined within a sixty-foot circle of cages and platforms, along with a number of screaming, flailing, water-treading men—most of whom had long since dropped their slender little daggers into the water. Nervous guards armed with crossbows and pikes patrolled the platform, shoving prisoners back into the water if they tried to scramble out. Occasionally, the devilfish would roll over in the churning red waters and Locke would catch a glimpse of one lidless black eye the size of a soup bowl—not unlike the bowl currently held in his hands.
“More, Master Fehrwight?” Conté hovered nearby with the silver tureen of chilled soup cradled in his hands; white-fleshed Iron Sea prawns floated in a heavy red tomato base seasoned with peppers and onions. Don and Do?a Salvara were a peculiar sort of droll.
“No, Conté, most kind, but I’m well satisfied for the time being.” Locke set his soup bowl down beside the broached cask of “559” (actually a bottle of lowly fifty-crown 550 liberally mixed with the roughest overpriced rum Jean had been able to get his hands on) and took a sip of the amber liquor from his snifter. Even mixed with crap, the counterfeit was delicious. Graumann stood attentively behind Locke’s hosts, who were seated opposite Locke at the intimate little table of oiled silverwood. Do?a Sofia toyed unself-consciously with a subtlety of gelled orange slices, paper-thin and arranged in whorls to form edible tulip blossoms. Don Lorenzo stared down at the snifter of brandy in his hands, his eyes still wide.
“It seems almost…sacrilegious!” Despite this sentiment, the don took a deep gulp of the stuff, satisfaction well evident in the lines of his face. In the distance behind him, something that might have been a severed torso flew up into the air and came back down with a splash; the crowd roared approval.
Austershalin brandy was famously aged for a minimum of seven years after distillation and blending; it was impossible for outsiders to get their hands on a cask any sooner than that. The House of bel Auster’s factors were forbidden even to speak of the batches that were not yet on sale; the location of the vintner’s aging-houses was a secret that was reportedly guarded by assassination when necessary. Don Lorenzo had been struck stupid when Locke had casually offered up a cask of 559; he had nearly thrown up when Locke had just as casually opened the seal and suggested they share it with lunch.
“It is.” Locke chuckled. “The brandy is the religion of my House. So many rules, so many rituals, so many penalties!” No longer smiling, he drew a quick finger across his throat. “It’s possible we’re the only people in history to have an unaged sample with a lunch of soup. I thought you might enjoy it.”
“I am!” The don swirled the liquor in his glass and stared at it, as though hypnotized by the soft caramel-colored translucence. “And I’m dead curious about what sort of scheme you’ve got up your sleeve, Lukas.”
“Well.” Locke swirled his own drink theatrically. “There have been three invasions of Emberlain in the past two hundred and fifty years. Let’s be frank; the succession rites of the Kingdom of the Marrows always involve armies and blood before they involve blessings and banquets. When the Grafs quarrel, the Austershalin mountains are our only landward barrier, and the site of heavy fighting. This fighting inevitably spills down the eastern slopes of the mountains. Right through the vineyards of the House of bel Auster. How could it be different this time? Thousands of men and horses coming over the passes. Trampling the vineyards. Sacking everything in sight. It might even be worse, now that we have fire-oil. Our vineyards could be ashes half a year from now.”
“You can’t exactly pack your vineyards up and take them with you if you…jump ship,” said Don Lorenzo.
“No.” Locke sighed. “It’s the Austershalin soils, in part, that make Austershalin brandy. If we lose those vineyards, it will be just as it was before—an interruption in growth and distillation. Ten, twenty, maybe even thirty years. Or more. And it gets worse. Our position is terrible. The Graf can’t let Emberlain’s ports and revenue go if the Marrows are coming to civil war. He and his allies will storm the place as fast as possible. They’ll likely put the Black Table to the sword, impound their goods and properties, nationalize their funds. The House of bel Auster won’t be spared.
“At the moment, the Black Table is acting quietly but firmly. Grau and I sailed five days ago, just twelve hours before we knew the port would be sealed off. No Emberlain-flagged ships are being allowed out; they’re all being docked and secured for ‘repairs’ or ‘quarantine.’ Nobles still loyal to the Graf are under house arrest by now, their guards disarmed. Our funds, in various lending houses of Emberlain, have been temporarily frozen. All the Black Table merchant houses have consented to do this to one another. It makes it impossible for any house to flee en masse, with its gold and its goods. Currently, Grau and I are operating on our local credit line, established at Meraggio’s years ago. My House…well, we simply didn’t keep our funds outside Emberlain. Just a bit here and there for emergencies.”
Locke watched the Salvaras very closely for their reaction; his news from Emberlain was as fresh and specific as possible, but the don might have sources of intelligence the Gentlemen Bastards hadn’t spotted in their weeks of surveillance and preparation. The parts about the Black Table and the impending civil war were solid, educated speculation; the part about a sudden port closure and house arrests was pure homespun bullshit. In Locke’s estimation, the real mess in Emberlain wouldn’t start for a few months. If the don was wise to this, the game might be blown. Conté might be trying to pin Locke to the table with his daggers in just a few seconds. And then Jean would pull out the hatchets he had concealed down the back of his vest, and everyone in the little group beneath the silk awning would get very, very uncomfortable.
But the Salvaras said nothing; they merely continued to stare at him with eyes that plainly invited him to go on. Emboldened, he continued: “This situation is unbearable. We will neither be hostages to a cause that we barely profess, nor victims for the Graf’s vengeance upon his inevitable return. We choose a…somewhat risky alternative. One that would require substantial aid from a noble of Camorr. You, Don Salvara, if it is within your means.”
The don and his wife had clasped hands under the table; he waved his hand at Locke excitedly.
“We can surrender our funds. By taking no steps to secure them, we buy ourselves more time to act. And we are quite confident that replacing those funds will merely be a matter of time and effort. We can even abandon”—Locke gritted his teeth—“we can even abandon our vineyards. We will completely burn them ourselves, leaving nothing to anyone else. After all, we enhance the soil ourselves, alchemically. And the secret of that enhancement is kept only in the hearts of our Planting Masters.”
“The Austershalin Process,” Sofia breathed, betrayed by her own rising excitement.
“Of course, you’ve heard of it. Well, there are only three Planting Masters at any given time. And the Process is complex enough to defy soil examination—even by someone with talents such as yours, my lady. Many of the compounds our alchemists use are inert, and intended only to confuse the matter. So that’s that.
“The one thing we cannot abandon is our stock of aging blends; the last six years, batched in their casks. And certain rare vintages and special experiments. We store the Austershalin in thirty-two gallon casks; there are nearly six thousand such casks in our possession. We have to get them out of Emberlain. We have to do it in the next few weeks, before the Black Table imposes harsher control measures and before the Graf begins laying siege to his canton. And now our ships are under guard, and all of our funds are untouchable.”
“You want…you want to get all of these casks out of Emberlain? All of them?” The don actually gulped.
“As many as possible,” said Locke.
“And for this you would involve us how?” Do?a Sofia was fidgeting.