by Scott Lynch
“Jean, I will never stop feeling awful for what I put you through in Vel Virazzo. And I will never forget how long you stayed with me when you should have tied weights around my ankles and thrown me in the bay. Gods help me, I will never be better off without you. I don’t care how many Bondsmagi know your damned name.”
“I wish I could be sure you knew best about this.”
“This is our life,” said Locke. “This is our game, that we’ve put two years into. That’s our fortune, waiting for us to steal it at the Sinspire. That’s all our hopes for the future. So fuck Karthain. They want to kill us, we can’t stop them. So what else can we do? I won’t jump at shadows on account of those bastards. On with it! Both of us together.”
Most of the Night Market merchants had taken note of the intensity of Locke and Jean’s private conversation, and had avoided making further pitches. But one of the last merchants on the northern fringe of the Night Market was either less sensitive or more desperate for a sale, and called out to them.
“Carved amusements, gentlemen? Something for a woman or a child in your lives? Something artful from the City of Artifice?” The man had dozens of exotic little toys on an upturned crate. His long, ragged brown coat was lined on the inside with quilted patches in a multitude of garish colors—orange, purple, cloth-of-silver, mustard yellow. He dangled the painted wood figure of a spear-carrying soldier by four cords from his left hand, and with little gestures of his fingers he made the figure thrust at an imaginary enemy. “A marionette? A little puppet, for memory of Tal Verrar?”
Jean stared at him for a few seconds before responding. “For memory of Tal Verrar,” he said quietly, “I would want anything, beg pardon, before I would want a puppet.”
Locke and Jean said nothing else to each other. With an ache around his heart to match the one growing in his head, Locke followed the bigger man out of the Great Gallery and into the Savrola, eager to be back behind high walls and locked doors, for what little it might prove to be worth.
REMINISCENCE
The Capa of Vel Virazzo
1
Locke Lamora had arrived in Vel Virazzo nearly two years earlier, wanting to die, and Jean Tannen had been inclined to let him have his wish.
Vel Virazzo is a deepwater port about a hundred miles southeast of Tal Verrar, carved out of the high rocky cliffs that dominate the mainland coast on the Sea of Brass. A city of eight or nine thousand souls, it has long been a sullen tributary of the Verrari, ruled by a governor appointed directly by the archon.
A line of narrow Elderglass spires rises two hundred feet out of the water just offshore, one more Eldren artifact of inscrutable function on a coast thick with abandoned wonders. The glass pylons have fifteen-foot platforms atop them and are now used as lighthouses, manned by petty convicts. Boats will leave them to climb up the knotted rope ladders that hang down the pylons. That accomplished, they winch up their provisions and settle in for a few weeks of exile, tending red alchemical lamps the size of small huts. Not all of them come back down right in the head, or live to come back down at all.
Two years before that fateful game of Carousel Hazard, a heavy galleon swept in toward Vel Virazzo under the red glow of those offshore lights. The hands atop the galleon’s yardarms waved, half in pity and half in jest, at the lonely figures atop the pylons. The sun had been swallowed by thick clouds on the western horizon, and a soft, dying light rippled across the water beneath the first stars of evening.
A warm wet breeze was blowing from shore to sea, and little threads of mist seemed to be leaking out of the gray rocks to either side of the old port town. The galleon’s yellowed canvas topsails were close-reefed as she prepared to lay to about half a mile offshore. A little harbormaster’s skiff scudded out to meet the galleon, green and white lanterns bobbing in its bow to the rhythm of the eight heaving oarsmen.
“What vessel?” The harbormaster stood up beside her bow lanterns and shouted through a speaking trumpet from thirty yards away.
“Golden Gain; Tal Verrar,” came the return shout from the galleon’s waist.
“Do you wish to put in?”
“No! Passengers only, coming off by boat.”
The lower stern cabin of the Golden Gain smelled strongly of sweat and illness. Jean Tannen was newly returned from the upper deck, and had lost some of his tolerance for the odor, which lent further edge to his bad mood. He flung a patched blue tunic at Locke and folded his arms.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said, “we’re here. We’re getting off this bloody ship and back onto good solid stone. Put the bloody tunic on; they’re lowering a boat.”
Locke shook the tunic out with his right hand and frowned. He was sitting on the edge of a bunk, dressed only in his breeches, and was thinner and dirtier than Jean had ever seen him. His ribs stood out beneath his pale skin like the hull timbers of an unfinished ship. His hair was dark with grease, long and unkempt on every side, and a fine thistle of beard fringed his face.
His upper left arm was crisscrossed with the glistening red lines of barely sealed wounds; there was a scabbed puncture on his left forearm, and beneath that a dirty cloth brace was wound around his wrist. His left hand was a mess of fading bruises. A discolored bandage partially covered an ugly-looking injury on his left shoulder, a scant few inches above his heart. Their three weeks at sea had done much to reduce the swelling of Locke’s cheeks, lips, and broken nose, but he still looked as though he’d tried to kiss a kicking mule. Repeatedly.
“Can I get a hand, then?”
“No, you can do it for yourself. You should’ve been exercising this past week, getting ready. I can’t always be here to hover about like your fairy fucking nursemaid.”
“Well, let me shove a gods-damn rapier through your shoulder and wiggle it for you, and then let’s see how keen you are to exercise.”
“I took my cuts, you sobbing piss-wallow, and I did exercise ’em.” Jean lifted his own tunic; above the substantially reduced curve of his once-prodigious belly was the fresh, livid scar of a long slash across his ribs. “I don’t care how much it hurts; you have to move around, or they heal tight like a caulk-seal and then you’re really in the shit.”
“So you keep telling me.” Locke threw the shirt down on the deck beside his bare feet. “But unless that tunic animates itself, or you do the honors, it seems I go to the boat like this.”
“Sun’s going down. Summer or not, it’s going to be cool out there. But if you want to be an idiot, I guess you do go like that.”
“You’re a son of a bitch, Jean.”
“If you were healthy, I’d rebreak your nose for that, you self-pitying little—”
“Gentlemen?” A crew-woman’s muffled voice came through the door, followed by a loud knock. “Captain’s compliments, and the boat is ready.”
“Thank you,” yelled Jean. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Why did I bother saving your life, again? I could’ve brought the Gray King’s corpse. Would’ve been better fucking company.”
“Please,” said Locke forcefully, gesturing with his good arm. “We can meet in the middle. I’ll pull with my good arm and you handle the bad side. Get me off this ship and I’ll get to exercising.”
“Can’t come soon enough,” said Jean, and after another moment’s hesitation he bent down for the tunic.
2
JEAN’S TOLERANCE rose for a few days with their release from the wet, smelly, heaving world of the galleon; even for paying customers, long-distance sea transit still had more in common with a prison sentence than a vacation.
With their handful of silver volani (converted from Camorri solons at an extortionate rate by the first mate of the Golden Gain, who’d argued that it was still preferable to the numismatic mugging they’d get from the town’s moneychangers), he and Locke secured a third-floor room at the Silver Lantern, a sagging old inn on the waterfront.
Jean immediately set about securing a source of income. If Camorr’s underworld had been a de
ep lake, Vel Virazzo’s was a stagnant pond. He had little trouble sussing out the major dockside gangs and the relationships between them. There was little organization in Vel Virazzo, and no boss-of-bosses to screw things up. A few nights of drinking in all the right dives, and he knew exactly who to approach.
They called themselves the Brass Coves, and they skulked about in an abandoned tannery down on the city’s eastern docks, where the sea lapped against the pilings of rotting piers that had seen no legitimate use in twenty years. By night, they were an active crew of sneak-thieves, muggers, and coat-charmers. By day, they slept, diced, and drank away most of their profits. Jean kicked in their door (though it hung loosely in its frame, and wasn’t locked) at the second hour of the afternoon on a bright, sunny day.
There were an even dozen of them in the old tannery, young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-odd. Standard membership for a local-trouble sort of gang. Those who weren’t awake were slapped back to consciousness by their associates as Jean strolled into the center of the tannery floor.
“Good afternoon!” He gave a slight bow, from the neck, then spread his arms wide. “Who’s the biggest, meanest motherfucker here? Who’s the best bruiser in the Brass Coves?”
After a few seconds of silence and surprised stares, a relatively stocky young man with a crooked nose and a shaved head leapt down onto the dusty floor from an open staircase. The boy walked up to Jean and smirked.
“You’re lookin’ at him.”
Jean nodded, smiled, then whipped both of his arms around so that his cupped hands cracked against both of the boy’s ears. He staggered, and Jean took a firm hold of his head, lacing his fingers tightly behind the rear arch of his skull. He pulled the tough’s head sharply downward and fed him a knee—once, twice, three times. As the boy’s face met Jean’s kneecap for the last time, Jean let go, and the tough sprawled backward on the tannery floor, senseless as a side of cold, salted meat.
“Wrong,” said Jean, not even breathing heavily. “I’m the meanest motherfucker here. I’m the biggest bruiser in the Brass Coves.”
“You ain’t in the Brass Coves, asshole,” shouted another boy, who nonetheless had a look of awed disquiet on his face.
“Let’s kill this piece of shit!”
A third boy, wearing a tattered four-cornered cap and a set of handmade necklaces threaded with small bones, darted toward Jean with a stiletto drawn back in his right hand. When the thrust came, Jean stepped back, caught the boy by the wrist, and yanked him forward into a backfist from his other hand. While the boy spat blood and tried to blink tears of pain from his eyes, Jean kicked him in the groin, then swept his legs out from under him. The boy’s stiletto appeared in Jean’s left hand as if by magic, and he twirled it slowly.
“Surely you boys can do simple sums,” he said. “One plus one equals don’t fuck with me.”
The boy who’d charged at him with the knife sobbed, then threw up.
“Let’s talk taxes.” Jean walked around the periphery of the tannery floor, kicking over a few empty wine bottles; there were dozens of them scattered around. “Looks like you boys pull in enough coin to eat and drink; that’s good. I’ll have forty percent of it; cold metal. I don’t want goods. You’ll pay your taxes every other day, starting today. Cough up your purses and turn out your pockets.”
“Fuck that!”
Jean stalked toward the boy who’d spoken; the youth was standing against the far wall of the tannery with his arms crossed. “Don’t like it? Hit me, then.”
“Uh …”
“You don’t think that’s fair? You mug people for a living, right? Make a fist, son.”
“Uh …”
Jean grabbed him, spun him around, took hold of him by his neck and by the top of his breeches, and rammed him headfirst into the thick wood of the tannery’s outer wall several times. The boy hit the ground with a thud when Jean let go; he was unable to fight back when Jean patted down his tunic and came up with a small leather purse.
“Added penalty,” said Jean, “for damaging the wall of my tannery with your head.” He emptied the purse into his own, then tossed it back down beside the boy. “Now, all of you get down here and line up. Line up! Four-tenths isn’t much. Be honest; you can guess what I’ll do if I find out that you’re not.”
“Who the hell are you?”
The first boy to approach Jean with coins in his hand offered up the question along with the money.
“You can call me—”
As Jean began to speak, the boy conjured a dagger in his other hand, dropped the coins, and lunged. The bigger man shoved the boy’s extended arm to the outside, bent nearly in half, and slammed his right shoulder into the boy’s stomach. He then lifted the boy effortlessly on his shoulder and dropped him over his back, so that the boy struck the floor of the tannery nearly facefirst. He ended up writhing in pain beside the last Cove who’d pulled a blade on Jean.
“… Callas. Tavrin Callas, actually.” Jean smiled. “That was a good thought, coming at me while I was talking. That at least I can respect.” Jean shuffled backward several paces to block the door. “But it seems to me that the subtle philosophical concept I’m attempting to descant upon may be going over your heads. Do I really have to kick all your asses before you take the hint?”
There was a chorus of mutterings and a healthy number of boys shaking their heads, however reluctantly.
“Good.” The extortion went smoothly after that; Jean wound up with a satisfying collection of coins, surely enough to keep him and Locke ensconced at their inn for another week. “I’m off, then. Rest easy and work well tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow, at the second hour of the afternoon. We can start talking about how things are going to be now that I’m the new boss of the Brass Coves.”
3
NATURALLY, THEY all armed themselves, and at the second hour of the afternoon the next day they were waiting in ambush for Jean.
To their surprise, he strolled into the old tannery with a Vel Virazzo constable at his side. The woman was tall and muscular, dressed in a plum-purple coat reinforced with a lining of fine iron chain; she had brass epaulettes on her shoulders, and long brown hair pulled back in a tight swordswoman’s tail with brass rings. Four more constables took up a position just outside the door; they wore similar coats, but also carried long lacquered sticks and heavy wooden shields slung over their backs.
“Hello, lads,” said Jean. All around the room, daggers, stilettos, broken bottles, and sticks were disappearing from sight. “I’m sure some of you recognize Prefect Levasto and her men.”
“Boys,” said the prefect offhandedly, hooking her thumbs into her leather sword-belt. Alone of all the constables, she carried a cutlass in a plain black sheath.
“Prefect Levasto,” said Jean, “is a wise woman, and she leads wise men. They happen to enjoy money, which I am now providing as a consideration for the hardship and tedium of their duties. If anything should chance to happen to me, why, they would lose a new source of the very thing they enjoy.”
“It would be heartbreaking,” said the prefect.
“And it would have consequences,” said Jean.
The prefect set one of her boots on an empty wine bottle and applied steady pressure until it shattered beneath her heel. “Heartbreaking,” she repeated with a sigh.
“I’m sure you’re all bright lads,” said Jean. “I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed the prefect’s visit.”
“Shouldn’t like to have to repeat it,” said Levasto with a grin. She turned slowly and ambled back out the door. The sound of her squad marching away soon receded into the distance.
The Brass Coves looked down at Jean glumly. The four boys closest to the door, with their hands behind their backs, were the ones wearing livid black and green bruises from before.
“Why the fuck are you doing this to us?” grumbled one of them.
“I’m not your enemy, boys. Believe it or not, I think you’ll really come to appreciate what I can do for y
ou. Now shut up and listen.
“First,” said Jean, raising his voice so everyone could hear, “I’d like to say that it’s rather sad, how long you’ve been around without getting the city watch on the take. They were so eager for it when I made the offer. Like sad, neglected little puppies.”
Jean was wearing a long black vest over a stained white tunic. He reached up beneath his back, under the vest, with his right hand.
“But,” he continued, “at least the fact that your first thought was to kill me shows some spirit. Let’s see those toys again. Come on, show ’em off.”
Sheepishly, the boys drew out their weapons once again, and Jean inspected them with a sweep of his head. “Mmmm. Gimp steel, broken bottles, little sticks, a hammer … Boys, the trouble with this setup is that you think those are threats. They’re not. They’re insults.”
He started moving while the last few words were still coming out of his mouth; his left hand slid up beneath his vest beside his right. Both of his arms came out and up in a blur, and then he grunted as he let fly with both of his hatchets, overhand.
There was a pair of half-full wineskins hanging on pegs on the far wall; each one exploded in a gout of cheap Verrari red that spattered several boys nearby. Jean’s hatchets had impaled the wineskins dead center, and stuck in the wood behind them without quivering.
“That was a threat,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “And that’s why you now work for me. Anyone else really want to dispute that at this point?”
The boys standing closest to the wineskins edged backward as Jean stepped over and wrenched his hatchets out of the wall. “Didn’t think so. But don’t take it amiss,” Jean continued. “It works in your favor, too. A boss needs to protect what’s his if he’s going to stay the boss. If anyone other than me tries to shove you around, let me know. I’ll pay them a visit. That’s my job.”
The next day, the Brass Coves grudgingly lined up to pay their taxes. The last boy in line, as he dropped his copper coins into Jean’s hands, muttered, “You said you’d help if someone else gave us the business. Some of the Coves got kicked around this morning by the Black Sleeves, from over on the north side.”
