by Scott Lynch
“Three nights hence,” said Locke, still feeling the warm press of her lips against his skin. “Three nights. All right. Just try and stop me.”
“I can’t. I seem to have promised to fight clean.” She drew a pair of leather gloves from her jacket and pulled them on.
“Can I at least walk you to your carriage?”
“Mmmmm … don’t think so,” she said mischievously. “I try to live by a cardinal rule of our shared profession, namely, ‘always leave a sucker wanting more.’ ”
She reached under the table and pulled out a coil of demi-silk rope previously hidden there. Locke watched, puzzled, as she conjured a slender metal pick in her other hand and applied it to the mechanism of the waiter’s door. It opened in seconds.
“Hey, wait a minute—”
“It was in case you tried anything tricky. Whether I would have used it to escape or hang you can remain an open question.”
“Are you serious?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said with a grin. “But I’m definitely sincere. Thanks for the flower. I left you a little something in exchange.”
Then she was gone. The rope was anchored to a point on the cage beneath the table; Sabetha kicked it out the door and rappelled into the night, without a harness, sliding down on the friction of boots and gloves with her gown billowing like the petals of a wind-whipped flower.
“Gods damn,” whispered Locke as he watched her land safely and vanish far below. After a moment her last words finally squeezed past the film of wine clinging to his brain, and he frantically patted himself down. A piece of paper was in his left jacket pocket. A note? A love letter?
He unfolded it in haste, and discovered the bill for dinner.
9
“MOVE! MOVE! For your life, move!”
Doormen scattered from a snorting pair of barely controlled horses dragging a rickety dray tended by a single wild-eyed driver. The back of the vehicle was loaded with sacks and barrels, one of which had bled an expanding trail of gray smoke all the way down the street. With a lurching crash, the dray broke a wheel against the curb and toppled, spilling its contents in a pile before the front doors of the Sign of the Black Iris.
“It’s alchemy!” The driver, a slender, white-bearded fellow in a voluminous rat-chewed coat, leapt to the ground as smoke billowed past him. Sparks leapt and flickered amidst the spilled cargo, and he unyoked his frantic animals. “Heaps of alchemy! Fetch water and sand, or run for your gods-damned lives!”
Patrons, servants, and guards poured out of the inn to investigate the commotion, only to reel back in dismay as smoke boiled past them into the building. Crackling noises rose ominously within the haze, and fires of eerie colors burst to life. The driver of the crashed dray led his horses across the street, where he found several boys in Black Iris livery watching the unfolding disaster.
“Here,” he shouted, thrusting the reins into one boy’s hands. “Watch my animals! I’ll be right back!”
The bearded man scuttled across the street and into the billowing murk. Green smoke, red smoke, and mustard-yellow smoke uncoiled from the spreading fire, tendrils wafting like sinister serpents of the air. The new hazes bore nauseating odors of garlic, brimstone, and mortified flesh. The entire street side of the Sign of the Black Iris was subsumed in a picturesque alchemical nightmare.
More or less hidden in the rising smoke, through which the masked afternoon sun shone dimly bronze, the driver darted down an alley beside the inn. He threw his coat and hat behind a pile of empty crates, then yanked away his baggy trousers and boots to reveal black hose and polished shoes. The beard was the last to go. Freshly peeled like a human fruit, smooth-cheeked and well-dressed, Locke Lamora strolled casually out the end of the smoky alley and into the court behind the inn.
“Master Lazari. Good-oof-afternoon!”
Sabetha rolled off the lowest eave on the Sign of the Black Iris’ rear side, landed hard, recovered gracefully, and offered a half-curtsy from about ten feet away. Three of her security folk followed her, landed awkwardly, and spread out in an arc around Locke. The window they’d spilled out of remained open, its shutters swaying in the soft breeze.
“Oh, hello, Mistress Gallante,” said Locke cheerfully. “Having problems with your inn?”
“Nothing that can’t be corrected with a little assistance, I’m sure.”
“I do wish I could help,” said Locke. “I just happened to be nearby. Ahhhh! I remember now! You’re having some sort of big Black Iris party meeting today, aren’t you? My condolences! The smoke, the flames … I can only imagine the consternation.”
“I’m sure you’ve imagined it in detail.” Sabetha moved close enough to lower her voice. “Bearded peasant goes in one end of an alley, clean-shaven gentleman comes out the other? Really?”
“It’s a classic!”
“It’s got cobwebs on it. Might have fooled someone who hadn’t seen you do it before. Now, do you want to come with me gracefully or on the shoulders of my friends?”
“I remind you, darling, my person is inviolate.”
“Don’t call me that when we’ve got our working faces on. And nobody’s person is getting violated. But you can’t think I’m going to let you stroll away while a cart full of alchemical crap burns on my doorstep.”
“Of course I can. It’s all perfectly harmless,” said Locke. “Oh, it might smell awful, and some of it reacts badly with water, and there’s just no telling what’s what until you experiment, but give it a few hours, then air your inn out for a day or two. There won’t be any lingering issues.”
“All the same, I think you should sit in a little room and be bored until I’ve got the mess under control.”
“Now, now,” said Locke, “you must credit me with the foresight to have a backup plan in case you decided to take it like this.”
“And of course, you must expect me to have one of my own in case you wanted to play hard to get,” she said.
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Well.” She ran a finger lightly up and down one of the lapels of his jacket. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“YOU! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”
The shout echoed down the courtyard as a trio of surcoated constables appeared out of the drifting smoke. The leader, a man with a wheat-colored beard and the aesthetic qualities of a lard slab, touched Locke on the shoulder with a wooden baton.
“As a constable of Karthain, sir, I must formally detain you,” he said.
“How dreadful.” Locke feigned a yawn. “What’s the charge?”
“You resemble a suspect wanted for questioning in a confidential matter. You’ll have to come with us.”
“Alas.” Locke allowed the constables to gather loosely around him, and doffed an imaginary hat to Sabetha as he backed away with them. “Verena, I wish I could continue our conversation, but it seems the deficiencies of my character have become a matter of official concern. Best of luck dealing with your little … conflagration.”
Just before the smoke cloud swallowed him again, Locke rapidly gestured in code: Looking forward to tomorrow night.
Her response was a gesture, though not one originating in the private signals of the Gentlemen Bastards. Still, Locke felt reassured by the fact that she smiled as she delivered it.
The street before the Sign of the Black Iris was a reeking mess. Well-dressed men and women with black flowers pinned to their jackets sought escape, while well-meaning people with buckets of water tripped over one another and tumbled around like billiard balls. The alchemical fires burned merrily on, a partial rainbow of sorcerous lights within the miasma. Locke’s “captors” walked with him for about a block before detouring into an empty, windowless court.
“Beautifully timed, Sergeant,” said Locke, producing three leather purses of equal size. “Worthy of applause.”
“We take pride in the conduct of our civic duty,” said the bearded man. He and his cohorts accepted the purses with wide grins; each ha
d earned three months’ wages for the few minutes spent loitering nearby in case of Locke’s need. It was downright pleasant, thought Locke, to be treading the old familiar realms of avarice after dealing with the eerie malleability of the “adjusted” Deep Roots people.
“Now, none of that stuff is really dangerous, right?” said the sergeant, one bushy eyebrow raised.
“Harmless as baby spit,” said Locke. “As long as nobody’s dim enough to shove their hand into a fire.”
Satisfied, the constables took their leave. Locke had only a few minutes to wait before Jean came strolling down the avenue from the direction of the smoke, several empty sacks flung over his shoulder.
“How’d it go up top?” said Locke as the two of them fell into step together.
“Perfection and then some,” said Jean. “They were all so distracted, bothering to sneak might have been a waste of time. That’s thirty-seven snakes down the cold chimneys.”
“Magnificently childish, though I say it myself.” Locke scratched at his chin to remove a few stubborn flecks of beard adhesive. “Hopefully that’ll keep them uneasy for a few days.”
“And if she responds with more of the same?”
“I arranged to have city work gangs do some unnecessary mucking with the cobblestones around Josten’s for the next few days. No carriages can get closer than twenty yards. Our friends will grumble, but that should keep loads of mischief at a distance.”
As they walked, Locke noticed for the first time that banners had started to appear, hanging from balconies and windows. Here and there were a few brave greens, but in this neighborhood the majority were black. Citizen interest was climbing; half the allotted six weeks was nearly gone. Annoying pranks were a fine gambit, but now it was time to begin truly curbing some of Sabetha’s capabilities.
“Those spies keeping watch on our place …” said Locke. “Fancy a little hospitality visit once the sun goes down?”
10
THEIR SECOND night of upper-story work went as smoothly as the first. They swept the block surrounding Josten’s Comprehensive just after midnight, creeping silently through rooftop gardens and over well-tended slate roofs, using chimneys and parapets for cover.
Not everyone they crossed paths with was in Sabetha’s pay. A drunk woman, huddled in the corner of her terrace, was sobbing over a small painting and didn’t notice them slip past. Two lithe young men wrapped in one another’s arms a few gardens over were similarly absorbed. Locke crept past their cast-off clothes, close enough to sift them for purses, but pangs of sympathy stilled the impulse. Doing mischief to happy lovers might invite a cruel justice to trample his own hopes.
Their first legitimate target was taken unawares, and his possessions made his job plain. He wore a mottled gray-brown cloak ideal for blending into city shadows, carried a spyglass, and the remains of a cold meal were spread beside his hiding place. In an instant, Jean flung him down on his stomach and crouched atop him, wrenching the poor fellow’s arms behind his back. Locke knelt at the man’s head, bemused at how familiar he and Jean were becoming with the old Threatening Voice/Silent Brawn act.
“You try to cry out,” whispered Locke, “and we’ll rip your arms off. Shove one down your throat and one up your ass so you’ll look like meat on a spit. How many of you are watching Josten’s?”
“I don’t know,” hissed the man.
Locke gave him a shove on the back of the head, bouncing his face off the roof tiles. Hard, but not too hard.
“It’s not worth it,” said Locke. “Your employer doesn’t expect life-or-death loyalty, surely. But we will hurt you to send a message.”
“There’s one more,” spat their captive. “One that I know of. Maybe more. Look out past this parapet. Four rows down, roof of the apothecary shop. He’s there somewhere. I swear that’s all I can tell you.”
“Good enough,” said Locke. He pulled his dagger and slashed the man’s cloak into strips. When Sabetha’s agent was gagged and thoroughly trussed, Locke gave him a pat on the back. “Now, don’t fret. Once we’ve finished clearing out all your friends, we’ll tip one of them off and you’ll be collected. Shouldn’t be more than a few hours. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The second agent was crouched atop the apothecary shop as indicated, but he was a touch more alert and met them with a drawn cosh. What followed was a proper scrum, with Locke clinging to the man’s legs while Jean attempted to wrestle and disarm him, hampered by the need to avoid killing him. Such was the fellow’s fighting spirit that they ultimately had to pummel him unconscious before they could have a word.
As they neared the end of their circuit around the neighborhood, perhaps ten minutes later, they found a third and likely final observer, fortunately no more on guard than the first.
“All your friends are dealt with,” said Jean cheerfully as he dangled the man over the back-alley side of the building by his jacket collar. “Trussed up like festival chickens.”
“Great gods, mate, it’s nothing personal,” sobbed the man as he stared into the shadows four stories below. “We’re just doing our bloody job!”
“Find another job,” said Locke. “This is us being very, very cordial. Next time we catch spies lurking in this neighborhood, we cripple them. This isn’t Karthain right now, it’s the sovereign state of Fuck Off and Go Home.”
“But—”
“Take a good look at that alley,” said Locke. “Imagine what those cold, hard stones will feel like when we throw you off this roof. You come round here again, you’d best have wings. Now, your comrades are tied up in their usual spots. Fetch them and run hard.”
“Couldn’t we discuss—”
“Get the dogshit out of your ears, you witless corpse-fart,” growled Jean. “Do you want to do as you’re told, or do you want to kiss that pavement?”
It turned out he wanted to do as he was told.
11
“HAVE YOU ever thought about how badly Chains fucked us all up?”
“Gods above!” Locke narrowly avoided choking on his beer. “How tipsy are you?”
“Not at all.” Sabetha held her own glass rock-steady for several moments to support the assertion.
“I understand your frustration with the way some things played out,” said Locke. “You know I listened to you.”
“I do.”
“And you know I think you had some points. But Chains was a generous man. A generous and caring man, whatever his faults.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. He wanted a family, very desperately. You’ve realized that?”
“Of course. I never thought of it as a defect.”
“I often think he wanted a family more than he wanted a gang.”
“Again—”
“A conscience is a deadweight in our profession.” She stared into the amber depths of her half-full glass. “Make no mistake, he shackled each of us with one. Even Calo and Galdo, rest their souls. For all that they did most of their thinking with their cocks and the rest with their balls, even they wound up with essentially kindly dispositions. Chains got us all in the end, good and hard.”
Their second dinner, the night following the alchemical “disaster” at the Sign of the Black Iris, was held aboard the Merry Drifter, a flat-topped dining barge complete with gardens and lacquered privacy screens. The barge had floated gently through the heart of Karthain, beneath the strange music of the Elderglass bridges, before finally laying anchor in the Amathel just off the Ponta Corbessa. As the sky had darkened and the alchemical globes flicked to life, little boats had ferried other diners to and from shore, but Locke and Sabetha had held their choice table at the barge’s stern all the while.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from someone who came out of Shades’ Hill,” said Locke. “Is that what you would have preferred? Getting beaten and starved? Maybe buggered here and there when it suited him?”
“Of course not—”
“Sabetha, you know how much I respect you, but if y
ou can’t see what a gods-damned paradise we lucked into when Chains picked us, you need to set that beer down this instant.”
“I don’t regret the comforts or the education. He was a faultless provider. Except in one respect … he trained a gentle streak into us and let us pretend it would never cost us.”
“You think we should have been more cruel? Ready to turn on each other like sharks in blood, like every other gods-damned gang around us? I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but that wasn’t weakness he bred into us. It was loyalty. And loyalty’s a hell of a weapon.”
“You have the luxury of thinking so.”
“Oh, not this again. The Jean situation, right? Straight and simple, gorgeous, don’t you dare sit there and hit me with self-righteous envy for a friendship I kept and you walked away from.”
She set her beer down and stared coldly at him. Then, just as Locke’s heart started to sink in expectation of another one of their habitual misunderstandings, the chill thawed, and she attempted a smile. She whistled, mimicking the sound of an arrow in flight, and clutched at an imaginary shaft just above her heart.
“I’m sorry,” they both said, in Sanza-esque unison, and chuckled.
“You’re dwelling on something,” said Locke, reaching across the table to rest his free hand on hers. “Let it go. Just be here. Just be Sabetha, having dinner, floating on the Amathel. Let the world end at the sides of this barge.”
“I am dwelling on something.”
“Well, don’t take such a poisonous view of our upbringing. Come on. We lie for a living; it’s not healthy for us to lie to ourselves.”
“What do we do BUT lie to ourselves, Locke? Aren’t we supposed to be rich? Aren’t we supposed to be in command of our lives, free to go when and where we please, with all the honest simpletons of the world throwing coins at our feet? Here we are, halfway around the world, working for the gods-damned Bondsmagi just to stay alive.”
