by Scott Lynch
“Ready?”
“If you say I am,” whispered Locke.
Hand in hand, the imaginary Eyeless Priest and his newest imaginary initiate walked out of their imaginary stone prison, into a morning heat so fierce that Locke could smell it baking up from the city’s stones and taste it on his tongue.
For the first of a thousand times, they went out together to rob passersby, as surely as if they were muggers, armed with nothing more than a few words and an empty copper kettle.
2
IN HIS first few months with Father Chains, Locke began to unlearn the city of Camorr he’d once known and discover something entirely different in its place. As a Shades’ Hill boy, he’d known daylight in flashes, exploring the upper world and then running back to the graveyard’s familiar darkness like a diver surfacing before his breath ran out. The Hill was full of dangers, but they were known dangers, while the city above was full of infinite mysteries.
Now the sun, which had once seemed to him like a great eye burning down in judgment, did nothing but make his head warm as he sat the temple steps in his little white robe. A happier boy might have been bored by the long hours of begging, but Locke had learned patience in the surest way possible—by hiding for his own survival. Spending half a night hugging the same shadow was nothing extraordinary to him, and he luxuriated in the idea of lazing around while people actually brought money to him.
He studied the rhythms of daily life in the Temple District. When nobody was near enough to eavesdrop, Chains would quietly answer Locke’s questions, and slowly the great mass of Camorri revealed themselves to him. What had once been a sea of mystifying details resolved bit by bit until Locke could identify the priests of the twelve orders, sort the very rich from the merely wealthy, and make a dozen other useful distinctions.
It still made his heart jump to see a patrol of yellowjackets walking past the temple steps, but their polite indifference was a pure delight. Some of them even saluted. It amazed Locke that the thin cotton robe he wore could provide him with such armor against a power that had previously seemed so arbitrary and absolute.
Constables. Saluting him! Gods above.
Inside the temple, down in the secret burrow that lay beneath its façade of poverty, further transmutations were under way. Locke ate well for the first time ever, sampling all the cuisines of Camorr under Chains’ enthusiastic direction. Although he started as an inept hindrance to the more experienced Sanzas, he quickly learned how to shake weevils out of flour, how to slice meats, and how to tell a filleting knife from an eel-fork.
“Bless us all,” said Chains one night, patting Locke on the belly. “You’re not the ragged little corpse that came to us all those weeks ago. Food and sunlight have worked an act of necromancy. You’re still small, but now you look like you could stand up to a moderate breeze.”
“Excellent,” said one of the Sanzas. “Soon he’ll be fat, and we can butcher him like all the others for a Penance Day roast.”
“What my brother means to say,” said the other twin, “is that all the others died of purely natural causes, and you have nothing to fear from us. Now have some more bread.”
Life in the care of Father Chains offered Locke more comfort than Shades’ Hill ever had. He had plenty to eat, new clothes, and a cot of his own to sleep on. Nothing more dangerous than the attempted pranks of the Sanza twins menaced him each night. Yet strangely enough Locke would never have called this new life easier than the one he’d left.
Within days of his arrival he’d been trained as an “initiate of Perelandro,” and the lessons only grew more intense from there. Chains was nothing like the Thiefmaker—he didn’t allow Calo and Galdo to actually terrorize Locke, and he didn’t punish failure by pulling out a butcher’s cleaver. But Chains could be disappointed. Oh, yes. On the steps of the temple he could marshal his mysterious powers to sway passersby, to plead logically or sermonize furiously until they parted with hard-earned coins, and in his tutelage he focused those same powers on Locke until it seemed that Chains’ disappointment was a rebuke worse than a beating.
It was a strange new set of affairs, to be sure. Locke feared what Chains might do if provoked (the leather pouch Locke was forced to wear around his neck, with the shark’s tooth inside, was an inescapable reminder), but he didn’t actually fear Chains himself. The big bearded man seemed so genuinely pleased when Locke got his lessons right, seemed to give off waves of approval that warmed like sunlight. With his two extremes of mood, sharp disappointment and bright satisfaction, Chains drove all of his boys on through their constant tests.
There were the obvious matters of Locke’s daily training—he learned to cook, to dress, to keep himself reasonably clean. He learned more about the order of Perelandro and his fictional place within it. He learned about the meanings of flags on carriages and coats of arms on guards’ tabards, about the history of the Temple District, about its landmarks.
Most difficult of all, at first, he learned to read and write. Two hours a day were spent at this, before and after sitting the steps. He began with fragmentary knowledge of the thirty letters of the Therin alphabet, and he could do simple sums when he had counters in front of him, like coins. But Chains had him reciting and scribing his letters until they danced in his dreams, and from there he moved to puzzling out small words, then bigger ones, then full sentences.
Chains began leaving written instructions for him each morning, and Locke wasn’t allowed to break his fast until he’d deciphered them. Around the time short paragraphs ceased to be his match in a battle of wits, Locke found himself up against arithmetic with slates and chalk. Arriving at the answers in his head was no longer sufficient.
“Twenty-six less twelve,” said Chains one night in early autumn. It was an unusually pleasant time in Camorr, with warm days and mild nights that neither drenched nor scalded the city. Chains was absorbed in a game of Catch-the-Duke against Galdo, alternately moving his pieces and giving mathematical problems to Locke. The three of them sat at the kitchen table, beneath the golden light of Chains’ fabulous alchemical chandelier, while Calo sat on a nearby counter plucking at a sad little instrument called a road-man’s harp.
“Um …” Locke scribbled on his slate, being careful to show his work properly. “Fourteen.”
“Well done,” said Chains. “Add twenty-one and thirteen.”
“Now go forth,” said Galdo, pushing one of his pieces along the squares of the game board. “Go forth and die for King Galdo.”
“Sooner rather than later,” said Chains, countering the move immediately.
“Since you two are at war,” said Calo, “how do you like this?”
He began to pluck a tune on his simplified harp, and in a soft, high voice he sang:
“From fair old Camorr to far Godsgate Hill,
Three thousand bold men marched to war.
A full hundred score are lying there still,
In red soil they claimed for Camorr.”
Galdo cleared his throat as he fiddled with his pieces on the board, and when his twin continued he joined in. Barely a heartbeat passed before the Sanzas found their eerie, note-perfect harmony:
“From fair old Camorr to far Godsgate Hill,
Went a duke who would not be a slave.
His Grace in his grave is lying there still,
In red soil he claimed for the brave.
“From fair old Camorr to far Godsgate Hill,
Is a hundred hard leagues overland.
But our host slain of old is lying there still,
In soil made red by their stand!”
“Commendable playing,” muttered Chains, “wasted on a nothing of a song shat out by soft-handed fops to justify an old man’s folly.”
“Everyone sings it in the taverns,” said Calo.
“They’re supposed to. It’s artless doggerel meant to dress up the stink of a pointless slaughter. But I was briefly a part of those three thousand men, and nearly everyone I knew in those days
is lying there still. Kindly sing something more cheerful.”
Calo bit the inside of his cheek, retuned his harp, and then began again:
“Said the reeve to the maid who was fresh to the farm
‘Let me show you the beasts of the yard!’
Here’s a cow that gives milk, and a pig that’s for ham
Here’s a cur and a goat and a lamb;
Here’s a horse tall and proud, and a well-trained old hawk,
But the thing you should see is this excellent cock!”
“Where could you possibly have learned that?” shouted Chains. Calo broke up in a fit of giggles, but Galdo picked up the song with a deadpan expression on his face:
“Oh, some cocks rise early and some cocks stand tall,
But the cock now in question works hardest of all!
And they say hard’s a virtue, in a cock’s line of work
So what say you, lovely, will you give it a—”
There was the unmistakable echoing slam of the burrow’s secret entrance, in the Elderglass-lined tunnel beside the kitchen, being thrown shut by someone who didn’t care that they were overheard. Chains rolled to his feet. Calo and Galdo ran behind him, putting themselves in easy reach of the kitchen’s knives. Locke stood up on his chair, arithmetic slate held up like a shield.
The instant he saw who it was coming around the corner, the slate slipped from his fingers and clattered against the floor.
“My dear,” cried Chains, “you’ve come back to us early!”
She was, if anything, taller even than Locke remembered, and her hair was well-dyed a uniform shade of light brown. But it was her. It was undeniably Beth.
3
“YOU CAN’T be here,” said Locke. “You’re dead!”
“I certainly can be here. I live here.” Beth dropped the brown leather bag she was carrying and unbound her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders. “Who might you be?”
“I … um … you don’t know?”
“Should I?”
Locke’s astonishment merged with a sour disappointment. While the gears of his mind turned furiously to conjure a reply, she studied him. Her eyes widened.
“Oh, gods. The Lamora boy, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Chains.
“Bought him as well, have you?”
“I’ve paid more for some of my lunches, but yes, I’ve taken him from your old master.” Chains ruffled Beth’s hair with fatherly affection, and she kissed the back of his hand.
“But you were dead,” insisted Locke. “They said you’d drowned!”
“Yeah,” she said, mildly.
“But why?”
“Our Sabetha has a complicated past,” said Chains. “When I took her out of Shades’ Hill, I arranged a bit of theater to cover the trail.”
Beth. Sabetha. They’d mentioned Sabetha at least a dozen times since he’d come to live here. Locke suddenly felt like an idiot for not connecting the two names before … but then, he’d thought she was dead, hadn’t he? Beneath his astonishment, his embarrassment, his frustration, a warmth was rising in the pit of his stomach. Beth was alive … and she lived here!
“Well, where have … where did you go?” Locke asked.
“For training,” said Sabetha.
“And how was it?” asked Chains.
“Mistress Sibella said that I wasn’t as vulgar and clumsy as most of the Camorri she teaches.”
“So you … are, um—” said Locke.
“High praise, coming from that gilded prune,” said Chains, ignoring Locke. “Let’s see if she was on the mark. Galdo, take Sabetha’s side for a four-step. Complar entant.”
“Must I?”
“Good question. Must I continue feeding you?”
Galdo hurried out from behind Chains and gave Sabetha a bow so exaggerated his nose nearly brushed the floor. “Enchanted, demoiselle. May I beg the pleasure of a dance? My patron won’t feed me anymore if I don’t pretend to enjoy this crap.”
“What a bold little monkey you are,” said the girl. The two of them moved into the widest clear area of the room, between the table and the counters.
“Calo,” said Chains, “if you would.”
“Yes, yes, I have it.” Calo fiddled with his harp for a moment before he began to pluck out a fast, rhythmic tune, more complex than the ditties he’d been playing before.
Galdo and Sabetha moved in unison, slowly at first but gaining confidence and speed as the tune went on. Locke watched, baffled but fascinated, as they danced in a manner that was more controlled than anything he’d ever seen in a tavern or a back alley. The key to the dance seemed to be that they would strike the ground with their heels forcefully, four taps between each major movement of the arms. They joined hands, twirled, unjoined, switched places, and all the while kept up a near-perfect rhythm with their feet.
“It’s popular with the swells,” said Chains, and Locke realized he was speaking for his benefit. “All the dancers form a circle, and the dancing master calls out partners. The chosen couple dances in the main, in the center of everything, and if they screw it up, well … penalties. Teasing. Romantic frustration, I would imagine.”
Locke was only half-listening, his eyes and thoughts lost in the dance. In Galdo he recognized the nervous quickness of a fellow orphan, the grace born of need that separated the living in Shades’ Hill from the likes of No-Teeth. Yet Sabetha had that and something more; not just speed but fluidity. Her knees and elbows seemed to vanish as she danced, and to Locke’s eyes she became all curves, whirls, effortless circles. Her cheeks turned red with exertion, and the golden glow of the chandelier lightened her brown hair until Locke, hypnotized, could almost imagine it red as well.…
Chains clapped three times, ending the dance if not Locke’s spell. If Sabetha knew she was being stared at, she was either too polite or too disdainful to stare back.
“I can see that’s a fountain of gold I didn’t shit out in vain,” said Chains. “Well done, girl. Even having Galdo for a partner didn’t seem to hold you back.”
“Does it ever?” Sabetha smiled, still acting as though Locke wasn’t in the room, and drifted back toward the table where Galdo and Chains had been playing their game. She glanced over the board for a few seconds, then said, “You’re doomed, Sanza.”
“In a donkey’s dick I am!”
“Actually, I’ve got him in three moves,” said Chains, settling back down into his chair with a smile. “But I was going to spin it out for a while longer.”
While Galdo fretted over his position on the board, he and Calo and Sabetha fell into an animated conversation with Chains on subjects of which Locke was ignorant—dances, noble customs, people he’d never heard of, cities that were only names to him. Chains grew more and more boisterous until, after a few minutes, he gestured to Calo.
“Fetch us down something sweet,” he said. “We’ll have a toast to Sabetha’s return.”
“Lashani Black Sherry? I’ve always wanted to try it.” Calo opened a cabinet and carefully withdrew a greenish glass bottle that was full of something ink-dark. “Gods, it looks so disgusting!”
“Spoken like the midwife who delivered the pair of you,” said Chains. “Bring glasses for all of us, and for the toasting.”
The four children gathered around the table while Chains arranged the glasses and opened the bottle. Locke strategically placed the Sanzas between himself and Sabetha, giving him a better angle to continue staring at her. Chains then filled a glass to the brim with the sherry, which rippled black and gold in the chandelier light.
“This glass for the patron and protector, the Crooked Warden, our Father of Necessary Pretexts.” Chains carefully pushed the glass aside from the others. “Tonight he gives us the return of our friend, his servant Sabetha.” Chains raised his left hand to his lips and blew into his palm. “My words. My breath. These things bind my promise. A hundred gold pieces, duly stolen from honest men and women, to be cast into the sea in the dark of the Orphan’
s Moon. We are grateful for Sabetha’s safety.”
The Orphan’s Moon, Locke knew, came once a year, in late winter, when the world’s largest two moons were in their dark phases together. At the Midsummer-mark, commoners who knew their dates of birth legally turned a year older. The Orphan’s Moon meant the same thing for those, like him, whose precise ages were mysteries.
Now Chains filled glasses and passed them out. Locke was surprised to see that while the other children received quarter-glasses of the alarmingly dark sherry, his own was mostly full. Chains grinned at him and raised his glass.
“Deep pockets poorly guarded,” he said.
“Watchmen asleep at their posts,” said Sabetha.
“The city to nurture us and the night to hide us,” said Calo.
“Friends to help spend the loot!” As soon as Galdo finished the toast Locke had already heard many times since coming to the Gentlemen Bastards, five glasses went up to five sets of lips. Locke kept both hands on his for fear of spilling it.
The black sherry hit Locke’s throat with a blast of sweet flavors—cream, honey, raspberries, and many others he had no hope of naming. Warm prickly vapors seemed to slide up into his nose and waft behind his eyes, until it felt like he was being tickled from inside his own skull by dozens of feathers at once. Knowing how ill-mannered it would be to make a mess of a solemn toast, he bent every ounce of his will to gulping the full glass down.
“Waugh,” he said as soon as he was finished. It was a cross between a polite cough and the last gasp of a dying bird. He pounded on his chest. “Waugh, waugh, waugggggh!”
“Concur,” said Galdo in a harsh whisper. “Love it.”
“All the outward virtues of liquid shit,” said Chains, musing on his empty glass, “and a taste like pure joy pissed out by happy angels. Mind you, it doesn’t signify in the world at large. Don’t drink anything else that looks like this unless you want a swift release from mortal concerns.”
