by Scott Lynch
“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.”
5
BUT ONE can only get so far on thoughts of vengeance alone. The sharp pains in his stomach started up again about halfway through his slow, lonely walk to the Ashfall district.
His stomach ached and churned and growled. The night seemed to turn darker around him, and the narrow, fog-softened city horizons tilted strangely, as though he were drunk. Locke staggered and clutched at his chest, sweating and mumbling.
“Damned Gazer,” said a voice from the darkness. “Probably chasing dragons and rainbows and the lost treasure of Camorr.” Laughter followed this, and Locke stumbled on, anxious to avoid becoming a target for mischief. He’d never felt such weariness. It was as though his vigor had burned down to a pile of embers within him, fading and cooling and graying with every passing second.
Ashfall, never hospitable, was a hellish conglomeration of shadow-shapes to Locke’s decreasing concentration. He was breathing heavily, and sweating rivers. It felt as though someone were steadily packing more and more dry cotton in behind his eyeballs. His feet grew heavier and heavier; he urged them forward, one scraping step after another, on into the darkness and the jagged looming shadows of collapsed buildings. Unseen things skittered in the night; unseen watchers murmured at his passing.
“What the…gods, I…must…Jean,” he mumbled as he tripped against a man-sized chunk of fallen masonry and sprawled in the dusty shadows behind it. The place smelled of limestone and cookfires and urine. He lacked the strength to push himself back up.
“Jean,” he gasped, one last time; then he fell forward onto his face, unconscious even before his head struck the ground.
6
THE LIGHTS became visible in the third hour of the morning, perhaps a mile out to sea due south of the Dregs, where a nucleus of greater darkness slid low against the water, tacking slowly and gracelessly. The ship’s ghostly white sails flapped in the breezes as it made its way toward the Old Harbor; the bored watch in the three-story tower at the tip of the South Needle were the first to spot it.
“Right sloppy sailor, that one,” said the younger watchman, looking-glass in hand.
“Probably Verrari,” muttered the senior, who was methodically torturing a piece of ivory with a slender carving knife. He wanted it to come out like a sculpted terrace he’d seen at the Temple of Iono, alive with lovely relief and fantastical representations of drowned men taken by the Lord of the Grasping Waters. What he seemed to be producing more closely resembled a lump of white dogshit, life-size. “Sooner trust a sailing ship to a blind drunkard with no hands than a Verrari.”
Nothing else the vessel did warranted much attention until the lights suddenly appeared, and their deep yellow glow could be seen rippling on the dark surface of the water.
“Yellow lights, sergeant,” said the younger watchman. “Yellow lights.”
“What?” The older man set down his piece of ivory, plucked the spyglass from the younger man’s hands, and gave the incoming ship a good long stare. “Shit. Yellow it is.”
“A plague ship,” whispered the other watchman. “I’ve never seen one.”
“Either it’s a plague ship, or some bum-fancier from Jerem who don’t know proper colors for harbor lights.” He slid the spyglass casing shut and stepped over to a brass cylinder, mounted sideways on the rim of the watch station’s western wall, pointed toward the softly lit towers on the shore of the Arsenal District. “Ring the bell, boy. Ring the damn bell.”
The younger watchman reached over the other side of the little tower’s parapet to grasp a rope that dangled there. He began ringing the station’s heavy brass bell, a steady repetition of two pulls: ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding.
Flickering blue light flashed out from one of the Arsenal towers. The watch-sergeant worked the knob on the brass cylinder, turning the shutters that concealed the light of the unusually powerful alchemical globe within the cylinder. There was a list of simple messages he could flash to the Arsenal stations; they would flash it in turn to other ready sets of eyes. With luck, it might reach the Palace of Patience, or even Raven’s Reach, within two minutes.
Some time did pass; the plague ship grew larger and more distinct.
“Come on, half-wits,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Rouse yourselves. Quit pulling that damn bell, boy. I think we’ve been heard.”
Echoing across the mist-shrouded city came the high whistles of the Quarantine Guard. This noise was joined in short order by the rattle of drums: a night-muster of yellowjackets. Bright white lights flared to life in the towers of the Arsenal, and the watch-sergeant could see the tiny black shapes of men running along the waterfront.
“Oh, now we’ll see something,” he muttered. More lights appeared to the northeast; little towers dotted the South Needle and the Dregs, overlooking the Old Harbor, where Camorr set its plague anchorage by law and custom. Each little tower held a stone-throwing engine that could reach out across the water with fifty-pound loads of rock or fire-oil. The plague anchorage was one hundred and fifty yards south of the Dregs, directly over sixty fathoms of water, well within the throwing arcs of a dozen engines that could sink or burn anything afloat in minutes.
A galley was sliding out of the Arsenal gate, between the brightly lit towers-one of the swift little patrol vessels called “gulls,” for the winglike sweep of their oars. A gull carri
ed twenty oars on a side, rowed by eighty paid men; on its deck it carried forty swordsmen, forty archers, and a pair of the heavy bolt-throwers called scorpia. It had no provisions for cargo and only one mast with a simple, furled sail. It was meant to do just one thing-close with any ship that threatened the city of Camorr and kill every man aboard, if its warnings were not heeded.
Smaller boats were putting out from the northern edge of the South Needle; harbor pilots and crews of yellowjackets, with red and white lanterns blazing at their prows.
On the opposite side of the long breakwater, the gull was just getting up to speed; the rows of graceful oars dipped and cut white froth in the black sea. A trail of rippling wake grew behind the galley; a drumbeat could be heard echoing across the water, along with the shouts of orders.
“Close, close,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Going to be close. That poor bastard don’t sail well; might have to get a stone across the bows before she slows up.”
A few small dark shapes could be seen moving against the pale billow of the plague ship’s sails; too few, it seemed, to work them properly. Yet as the vessel slid into Old Harbor, it began to show signs of slowing down. Its topsails were drawn up, albeit in a laggardly and lubberly fashion. The remaining sails were braced so as to spill the ship’s wind. They slackened, and with the creak of rope pulleys and the muted shouts of orders, they too began to draw up toward the yards.
“Oh, she’s got fine lines,” mused the watch-sergeant. “Fine lines.”
“That’s not a galleon,” said the younger watchman.
“Looks like one of those flush-deckers they were supposed to be building up in Emberlain; frigate-fashion, I think they call it.”
The plague ship wasn’t black from the darkness alone; it was lacquered black, and ornamented from bow to stern with witchwood filigree. There were no weapons to be seen.
“Crazy northerners. Even their ships have to be black. But she does look damn fine; fast, I’ll bet. What a heap of shit to fall into; now she’ll be stuck at quarantine for weeks. Poor bastards’ll be lucky to live.”
The gull rounded the point of the South Needle, oars biting hard into the water. By the galley’s running lamps, the two watchmen could see that the scorpia were loaded and fully manned; that the archers stood on their raised platforms with longbows in hand, fidgeting nervously.
A few minutes later the gull pulled abreast with the black ship, which had drifted in to a point about four hundred yards offshore. An officer strode out onto the gull’s long bow spar, and put a speaking trumpet to his mouth.
“What vessel?”
“Satisfaction; Emberlain,” came a return shout.
“Last port of call?”
“Jerem!”
“Ain’t that pretty,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Poor bastards might have anything.”
“What is your cargo?” asked the officer on the gull.
“Ship’s provisions only; we were to take cargo in Ashmere.”
“Complement?”
“Sixty-eight; twenty now dead.”
“You fly the plague lights in real need, then?”
“Yes, for the love of the gods. We don’t know what it is… The men are burning with fever. The captain is dead and the physiker died yesterday! We beg assistance.”
“You may have a plague anchorage,” shouted the Camorri officer. “You must not approach our shore closer than one hundred and fifty yards, or you will be sunk. Any boats put out will be sunk or burned. Any man who attempts to swim to shore will be shot down-assuming he makes it past the sharks.”
“Please, send us a physiker. Send us alchemists, for the love of the gods!”
“You may not throw corpses overboard,” continued the officer. “You must keep them on board. Any packages or objects somehow conveyed to shore from your vessel will be burnt without examination. Any attempt to make such conveyance will be grounds for burning or sinking. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but please, is there nothing else you can do?”
“You may have priests on shore, and you may have freshwater and charitable provisions sent forth by rope from the dockside-these ropes to be sent out by boat from shore, and to be cut after use if necessary.”
“And nothing else?”
“You may not approach our shore, on pain of attack, but you may turn and leave at will. May Aza Guilla and Iono aid you in your time of need; I pray mercy for you, and wish you a swift deliverance in the name of Duke Nicovante of Camorr.”
A few minutes later the sleek black ship settled into its plague anchorage with furled sails, yellow lights gleaming above the black water of the Old Harbor, and there it rocked, gently, as the city slept in silver mists.
INTERLUDE
The Lady of the Long Silence
1
Jean Tannen entered the service of the Death Goddess about half a year after Locke returned from his sojourn in the priesthood of Nara, with the usual instructions to learn what he could and then return home in five or six months. He used the assumed name Tavrin Callas, and he traveled south from Camorr for more than a week to reach the great temple of Aza Guilla known as Revelation House.
Unlike the other eleven (or twelve) orders of Therin clergy, the servants of Aza Guilla began their initiation in only one place. The coastal highlands that rose south of Talisham ended at vast, straight white cliffs that fell three or four hundred feet to the crashing waves of the Iron Sea. Revelation House was carved from one of these cliffs, facing out to sea, on a scale that recalled the work of the Eldren but was accomplished-gradually and painstakingly, in an ongoing process-solely with human arts.
Picture a number of deep rectangular galleries, dug straight back into the cliff, connected solely by exterior means. To get anywhere in Revelation House, one had to venture outside, onto the walkways, stairs, and carved stone ladders, regardless of the weather or the time of day. Safety rails were unknown to Revelation House; initiates and teachers alike scuttled along in light or darkness, in rain or bright clear skies, with no barrier between themselves and a plunge to the sea save their own confidence and good fortune.
Twelve tall excised columns to the west of Revelation House held brass bells at the top; these open-faced rock tubes, about six feet deep and seventy feet high, had slender hand- and footholds carved into their rear walls. At dawn and dusk, initiates were expected to climb them and ensure that each bell was rung twelve times, once for each god in the pantheon. The carillon was always somewhat ragged; when Jean thought he could get away with it, he rang his own bell thirteen times.
Three initiates plunged to their deaths attempting to perform this ritual before Jean had passed his first month at the temple. This number struck him as surprisingly low, given how many of the devotional duties of Aza Guilla’s new servants (not to mention the architecture of their home) were clearly designed to encourage premature meetings with the Death Goddess.
“We are concerned here with death considered in two aspects: Death the Transition and Death Everlasting,” said one of their lecturers, an elderly priestess with three braided silver collars at the neck of her black robe. “Death Everlasting is the realm of the Lady Most Kind; it is a mystery not intended for penetration or comprehension from our side of the Lady’s shroud. Death the Transition, therefore, is the sole means by which we may achieve a greater understanding of her dark majesty.
“Your time here in Revelation House will bring you close to Death the Transition on many occasions, and it is a certainty that some of you will pass beyond before you finish your initiation. This may be achieved through inattentiveness, lassitude, ill fortune, or the inscrutable will of the Lady Most Kind herself. As initiates of the Lady, you will be exposed to Death the Transition and its consequences for the rest of your lives. You must grow accustomed to it. It is natural for living flesh to recoil from the presence of death, and from thoughts of death. Your discipline must overcome what is natural.”
2
AS WITH most Therin temple
s, initiates of the First Inner Mystery were mostly expected to train their scribing, sums, and rhetoric to the point that they could enter higher levels of study without distracting more advanced initiates. Jean, with his advantages in age and training, was inducted into the Second Inner Mystery a bare month and a half after arrival.
“Henceforth,” said the priest conducting the ceremony, “you will conceal your faces. You will have no features of boy or girl, man or woman. The priesthood of the Lady Most Kind has only one face, and that face is inscrutable. We must not be seen as individuals, as fellow men and women. The office of the Death Goddess’ servants must disquiet if those we minister to are to compose their thoughts to her properly.”
The Sorrowful Visage was the silver mask of the order of Aza Guilla; for initiates, it bore a crude resemblance to a human face, with a rough indentation for the nose and holes for the eyes and mouth. For full priests, it was a slightly ovoid hemisphere of fine silver mesh. Jean donned his Sorrowful Visage, eager to get to work cataloguing more secrets of the order, only to discover that his duties were little changed from his month as an initiate of the First Inner Mystery. He still carried messages and scribed scrolls, swept floors and scoured the kitchens, still scurried up and down the precarious rock ladders beneath the Bells of the Twelve, with the unfriendly sea crashing far below and the wind tugging at his robes.
