3
THE LAST Mistake was a place where the underworld of Camorr bubbled to the surface; a flat-out crook’s tavern, where Right People of every sort could drink and speak freely of their business, where respectable citizens stood out like serpents in a nursery and were quickly escorted out the door by mean-looking, thick-armed men with very small imaginations.
Here entire gangs would come to drink and arrange jobs and just show themselves off. In their cups, men would argue loudly about the best way to strangle someone from behind, and the best sorts of poisons to use in wine or food. They would openly proclaim the folly of the duke’s court, or his taxation schemes, or his diplomatic arrangements with the other cities of the Iron Sea. They would refight entire battles with dice and fragments of chicken bones as their armies, loudly announcing how they would have turned left when Duke Nicovante had gone right, how they would have stood fast when the five thousand blackened iron spears of the Mad Count’s Rebellion had come surging down Godsgate Hill toward them.
But not one of them, no matter how far doused in liquor or Gaze or the strange narcotic powders of Jerem—no matter what feats of generalship or statecraft he credited himself with the foresight to bring off—would dare suggest to Capa Vencarlo Barsavi that he should ever change so much as a single button on his waistcoat.
4
THE BROKEN Tower is a landmark of Camorr, jutting ninety feet skyward at the very northern tip of the Snare—that low and crowded district where sailors from a hundred ports of call are passed from bar to alehouse to gaming den and back again on a nightly basis. They are shaken through a sieve of tavern-keepers, whores, muggers, dicers, cobble-cogs, and other low tricksters until their pockets are as empty as their heads are heavy, and they can be dumped on ship to nurse their new hangovers and diseases. They come in like the tide and go out like the tide, leaving nothing but a residue of copper and silver (and occasionally blood) to mark their passing.
Although human arts are inadequate to the task of cracking Elderglass, the Broken Tower was found in its current state when humans first settled Camorr, stealing in among the ruins of an older civilization. Great gashes mar the alien glass and stone of the tower’s upper stories; these discontinuities have been somewhat covered over with wood and paint and other human materials. The sturdiness of the whole affair is hardly in question, but the repairs are not beautiful, and the rooms for let on the upper six floors are some of the least desirable in the city, as they are accessible only by rank upon rank of narrow, twisting exterior stairs—a spindly wooden frame that sways nauseatingly in high winds. Most of the residents are young bravos from various gangs, to whom the insane accommodations are a strange badge of honor.
The Last Mistake fills the first floor at the wide base of the Broken Tower, and after the fall of Falselight, it rarely has less than a hundred patrons in it at any given time. Locke clung tightly to the back of Father Chains’ half-cloak as the older man elbowed his way past the crowd at the door. The outward exhalation of the bar’s air was full of smells Locke knew quite well: a hundred kinds of liquors and the breath of the men and women drinking them, sweat both stale and fresh, piss and vomit, spiced pomanders and wet wool, the sharp bite of ginger and the acrid fog of tobacco.
“Can we trust that boy to watch our goat?” Locke cried above the din.
“Of course, of course.” Chains made some elaborate hand sign in greeting to a group of men arm-wrestling just inside the bar’s main room; those not locked in bitter struggles grinned and waved back. “First, it’s his job. Second, I paid well. Third, only a crazy person would want to steal a Gentled goat.”
The Last Mistake was a sort of monument to the failure of human artifice at critical moments. Its walls were covered in a bewildering variety of souvenirs, each one telling a visual tale that ended with the phrase “not quite good enough.” Above the bar was a full suit of armor, a square hole punched through at the left breast by a crossbow quarrel. Broken swords and split helmets covered the walls, along with fragments of oars, masts, spars, and tatters of sails. One of the bar’s proudest claims was that it had secured a memento of every ship that had foundered within sight of Camorr in the past seventy years.
Into this mess Father Chains dragged Locke Lamora, like a launch being towed at the stern of a huge galleon. On the south wall of the bar was an elevated alcove, given privacy by rows of partially drawn curtains. Men and women stood at attention here, their hard eyes constantly sweeping across the crowd, their hands never far from the weapons they carried openly and ostentatiously—daggers, darts, brass and wooden clubs, short swords, hatchets, and even crossbows, ranging from slender alley-pieces to big horse-murderers that looked (to Locke’s wide eyes) as though they could knock holes in stone.
One of these guards stopped Father Chains, and the two exchanged a few whispered words; another guard was dispatched into the curtained alcove while the first eyed Chains warily. A few moments later the second guard reappeared and beckoned; thus it was that Locke was led for the first time into the presence of Vencarlo Barsavi, Capa of Camorr, who sat in a plain chair beside a plain table. Several minions stood against the wall behind him, close enough to respond to a summons but far enough to be out of earshot for quiet conversation.
Barsavi was a big man, as wide as Chains but obviously a bit younger. His oiled black hair was pulled tight behind his neck, and his beards curved off his chin like three braided whipcords of hair, one atop the other, neatly layered. These beards flew about when Barsavi turned his round head, and they looked quite thick enough to sting if they struck bare skin.
Barsavi was dressed in a coat, vest, breeches, and boots of some odd dark leather that seemed unusually thick and stiff even to Locke’s untrained eyes; after a moment, the boy realized it must be shark hide. The strangely uneven white buttons that dotted his vest and his cuffs and held his layered red silk cravats in place…they were human teeth.
Sitting on Barsavi’s lap, staring intently at Locke, was a girl about his own age, with short tangled dark hair and a heart-shaped face. She, too, wore a curious outfit. Her dress was white embroidered silk, fit for any noble’s daughter, while the little boots that dangled beneath her hem were black leather, shod with iron, bearing sharpened steel kicking-spikes at the heels and the toes.
“So this is the boy,” said Barsavi in a deep, slightly nasal voice with the pleasant hint of a Verrari accent. “The industrious little boy who so confounded our dear Thiefmaker.”
“The very one, Your Honor, now happily confounding myself and my other wards.” Chains reached behind himself and pushed Locke out from behind his legs. “May I present Locke Lamora, late of Shades’ Hill, now an initiate of Perelandro?”
“Or some god, anyway, eh?” Barsavi chuckled and held out a small wooden box that had been resting on the table near his arm. “It’s always nice to see you when your sight miraculously returns, Chains. Have a smoke. They’re Jeremite blackroot, extra fine, just rolled this week.”
“I can’t say no to that, Ven.” Chains accepted a tightly rolled sheaf of tobacco in red paper; while the two men bent over a flickering taper to light up (Chains dropped his little bag of coins on the table at the same time), the girl seemed to come to some sort of decision about Locke.
“He’s a very ugly little boy, Father. He looks like a skeleton.”
Capa Barsavi coughed out his first few puffs of smoke, the corners of his mouth crinkling upward. “And you’re a very inconsiderate little girl, my dear.” The Capa drew on his sheaf once more and exhaled a straight stream of translucent smoke; the stuff was pleasantly mellow and carried the slightest hint of burnt vanilla. “You must forgive my daughter Nazca; I am helpless to deny her indulgences, and she has acquired the manners of a pirate princess. Particularly now that we are all afraid to come near her deadly new boots.”
“I am never unarmed,” said the little girl, kicking up her heels a few times to emphasize the point.
“And poor Locke most certainly is not ugly, my darling; what he bears is clearly the mark of Shades’ Hill. A month in Chains’ keeping and he’ll be as round and fit as a catapult stone.”
“Hmmph.” The girl continued to stare down at him for a few seconds, then suddenly looked up at her father, absently toying with one of his braided beards while she did so. “Are you making him a pezon, Father?”
“Chains and I did have that in mind, sweetling, yes.”
“Hmmph. Then I want another brandy while you’re doing the ceremony.”
Capa Barsavi’s eyes narrowed; seams deepened by habitual suspicion drew in around his flinty gray stare. “You’ve already had your two brandies for the night, darling; your mother will murder me if I let you have another. Ask one of the men to get you a beer.”
“But I prefer—”
“What you prefer, little tyrant, has nothing to do with what I am telling you. For the rest of the night, you can drink beer or air; the choice is entirely yours.”