3
“CAMORR,” SHOUTED the Gray King, “the reign of the Barsavi family is at an end!”
His people had taken firm control of the crowd; there were perhaps two dozen of them, in addition to the Berangias sisters and the Falconer. The fingers of the mage’s left hand curled and twisted and flexed, and he muttered under his breath as he gazed around the room. Whatever spell he was weaving did its part to calm the crowd, but no doubt the three black rings visible on his exposed wrist arrested the attention of the revelers as well.
“In fact,” said the Gray King, “the Barsavi family is at an end. No more sons or daughters, Vencarlo. I wanted you to know, before you died, that I had wiped the disease of your loins from the face of the world.
“In the past,” he shouted, “you have known me as the Gray King. Well, now I am out of the shadows. That name is not to be spoken again. Henceforth, you may call me…Capa Raza.”
Raza, thought Locke. Throne Therin for “vengeance.” Not subtle.
Very little about the Gray King, he was learning to his sorrow, actually was.
Capa Raza, as he now styled himself, bent over Barsavi, who was weak with blood loss, whimpering in pain. Raza reached down and pried the capa’s signature ring from his remaining hand. He held this up for all the crowd to behold, then slid it onto the fourth finger of his own left hand.
“Vencarlo,” said Capa Raza, “I have waited so many years to see you like this. Now your children are dead, and your office is passed to me, along with your fortress and your treasure. Every legacy you thought to leave to someone of your name is in my hands. I have erased you from history itself. Does that suit your fancy, scholar? Like an errant chalk mark upon a slate. I have wiped you clean away.
“Do you remember the slow death of your wife? How she trusted your Berangias sisters to the very end? How they would bring her meals to her? She didn’t die of stomach tumors. It was black alchemy. I wanted to do something to whet my appetite, during the long years I spent building this death for you.” Capa Raza grinned with demonic mirth. “Lingered in pain, didn’t she? Well, it wasn’t an act of the gods, Vencarlo. Like everyone else you loved, she died because of you.”
“Why?” Barsavi’s voice was weak and small.
Capa Raza knelt beside him, cradled his head almost tenderly, and whispered in his ear for several long moments. Barsavi stared up at him when he was finished, jaw slack, eyes wide with disbelief, and Raza nodded slowly.
He yanked Barsavi’s head up and backward by his beards. A stiletto fell into his other hand from within his sleeve, and he rammed it into the underside of Vencarlo Barsavi’s exposed chins, all the way to the hilt. Barsavi kicked weakly, just once.
Capa Raza stood up, withdrawing the blade. The Berangias sisters grabbed their former master by his lapels and slid him into the dark water of the bay, which received his body as readily as it had taken his victims and his enemies, over all the long years of his rule.
“One capa rules Camorr,” said Raza, “and now it is me. Now it is me!” He raised the bloody stiletto over his head and gazed around the room, as though inviting disagreement. When none came forth, he continued.
“It is not my intention merely to remove Barsavi, but to replace him. My reasons are my own. So now there is business between myself and all the rest of you, all the Right People.” He gazed slowly around the room, his arms folded before him, his chin thrust out like a conquering general in an old bronze sculpture.
“You must hear my words, and then come to a decision.”
4
“NOTHING THAT you have achieved shall be taken from you,” he continued. “Nothing that you have worked or suffered for will be revoked. I admire the arrangements Barsavi built, as much as I hated the man who built them. So this is my word.
“All remains as it was. All garristas and their gangs will control the same territories; they will pay the same tribute, on the same day, once a week. The Secret Peace remains. As it was death to breach under Barsavi’s rule, so shall it be death under mine.
“I claim all of Barsavi’s offices and powers. I claim all of his dues. In justice, I must therefore claim his debts and his responsibilities. If any man can show that he was owed by Barsavi, he will now be owed the same by Capa Raza. First among them is Eymon Danzier…. Step forward, Eymon.”
There was a murmur and a ripple in the crowd to Capa Raza’s right; after a few moments, the skinny man Locke remembered very well from the Echo Hole was pushed forward, obviously terrified. His bony knees all but knocked together.
“Eymon, be at ease.” Raza held out his left hand, palm down, fingers splayed, as Barsavi had once done for every single person watching. “Kneel to me and name me your capa.”
Shaking, Eymon dropped to one knee, took Raza’s hand, and kissed the ring. His lips came away wet with Barsavi’s blood. “Capa Raza,” he said, in an almost pleading tone.
“You did a very brave thing at the Echo Hole, Eymon. A thing few men would have done in your place. Barsavi was right to promise you much for it, and I will make good on that promise. You will have a thousand crowns, and a suite of rooms, and such comforts that men with many long years of life ahead of them will pray to the gods to put them in your place.”
“I…I…” Tears were actually pouring out of the man’s eyes. “I wasn’t sure what you would…thank you, Capa Raza. Thank you.”
“I wish you much pleasure, for the service you have given me.”
“Then…it wasn’t…it wasn’t you, at the Echo Hole, if I may ask, Capa Raza.”
“Oh, no, Eymon.” Raza laughed, a deep and pleasant sound. “No, that was but an illusion.”
In the far corner of the Floating Grave’s ballroom, that particular illusion fumed silently to himself, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Tonight you have seen me with blood on my hands,” Raza shouted, “and you have seen them open in what I hope will be seen as true generosity. I am not a difficult man to get along with; I want us to prosper together. Serve me as you served Barsavi, and I know it will be so. I ask you, garristas, who will bend the knee and kiss my ring as your capa?”
“The Rum Hounds,” shouted a short, slender woman at the front of the crowd on the ballroom floor.
“The Falselight Cutters,” cried another man. “The Falselight Cutters say aye!”
That doesn’t make any gods-damned sense, thought Locke. The Gray King murdered their old garristas. Are they playing some sort of game with him?
“The Wise Mongrels!”
“The Catchfire Barons.”
“The Black Eyes.”
“The Full Crowns,” came another voice, and an echoing chorus of affirmations. “The Full Crowns stand with Capa Raza!”
Suddenly Locke wanted to laugh out loud. He put a fist to his mouth and turned the noise into a stifled cough. It was suddenly obvious. The Gray King hadn’t just been knocking off Barsavi’s most loyal garristas. He must have been cutting deals with their subordinates, beforehand.
Gods, there had been more Gray King’s men in the room out of costume than in…waiting for the evening’s real show to commence.
A half dozen men and women stepped forward and knelt before Raza at the edge of the pool, wherein the shark hadn’t shown so much as a fin since forcibly relieving Barsavi of his arm.
The damned Bondsmage certainly has a way with animals, Locke thought, with mixed anger and jealousy. He found himself feeling very small indeed before each display of the Falconer’s arts.
One by one the garristas knelt and made their obeisance to the Capa, kissing his ring and saying “Capa Raza” with real enthusiasm. Five more stepped forward to kneel directly afterward, apparently giving in to the direction they felt events to be slipping. Locke calculated rapidly. With just the pledges he’d already received, Raza could now call three or four hundred Right People his own. His overt powers of enforcement had increased substantially.
“Then we are introduced,” said Raza to the entire crowd. “We are met, and you know my intentions. You are free to return to your business.”
The Falconer made a few gestures with his free hand. The clockwork mechanisms within the doors to the hall clattered in reverse, and the doors clicked open.
“I give the undecided three nights,” Capa Raza shouted. “Three nights to come to me here and bend the knee, and swear to me as they did to Barsavi. I devoutly wish to be lenient—but I warn you, now is not the time to anger me. You have seen my work; you know I have resources Barsavi lacked. You know I can be merciless when I am moved to displeasure. If you are not content serving beneath me, if you think it might be wiser or more exciting to oppose me, I will make one suggestion: pack what fortune you have and leave the city by the landward gates. If you wish to part ways, no harm will come to you from my people. For three nights, I give you my leave and my parole.
“After that,” he said, lowering his voice, “I will make what examples I must. Go now, and speak to your pezon. Speak to your friends, and to other garristas. Tell them what I have said; tell them I wait to receive their pledges.”
Some of the crowd began to disperse out the doors; others, wiser perhaps, began to line up before Capa Raza. The former Gray King took each pledge at the bloody heart of a circle of corpses.
Locke waited for several minutes until the press had lessened, until the solid torrent of hot, smelly humanity had decreased to a few thick streams, and then he moved toward the entrance. His feet felt as heavy as his head; fatigue seemed to be catching up with him.
There were corpses here and there on the floor—Barsavi’s guards, the loyal ones. Locke could see them now as the crowds continued to thin. Just beside the tall doors to the hall lay Bernell, who’d grown old in Capa Barsavi’s service. His throat was slashed; he lay in a pool of his own blood, and his fighting knives remained in their sheaths. He’d not had time to pull them.
Locke sighed. He paused for a moment in the doorway and stared back at Capa Raza and the Falconer. The Bondsmage seemed to stare right back at him, and for the tiniest instant Locke’s heart raced, but the sorcerer said nothing and did nothing. He merely continued to stand watch over the ritual as Capa Raza’s new subjects kissed his ring. Vestris yawned, snapping her beak briefly open, as though the affairs of the unwinged bored her terribly. Locke hurried out.
All the guards who watched the revelers as they left the galleon and filed up the walkway toward the quay were Raza’s men; they hadn’t bothered to move the bodies that lay on the ground at their feet. Some merely stared coldly; others nodded companionably. Locke recognized more than a few of them.
“Three nights, ladies and gents, three nights,” said one. “Tell your friends. You’re Capa Raza’s now. No need to be alarmed; just do as you’ve always done.”
So now we have some answers, thought Locke. Forgive me again, Nazca. I couldn’t have done anything even if I’d had the courage to try.
He clutched his aching stomach as he shambled along, head down. No guard spared a second glance for the skinny, bearded, dirty old beggar; there were a thousand in Camorr just like him, a thousand interchangeable losers, hopeless and penniless at the very bottom of the many levels of misery the underworld had to offer.
Now to hide. And to plan.
“Please yourself with what you’ve stolen tonight, you son of a bitch,” Locke whispered to himself when he’d made his way past the last of Raza’s guards. “Please yourself very well. I want to see the loss in your eyes when I put the fucking dagger in your heart.”