Red Seas Under Red Skies (15 page)

“Will we?” spat Locke.

“Oh, it's well within your power to leave the city—and if you do, you will both die rather slow and miserable deaths before another season passes. And that would disappoint us all.”

“You could be bluffing,” said Jean.

“Yes, yes, but if you're rational men, a bluff would hold you as surely as a real poison, would it not? But come now, Tannen. I have the resources
not
to bluff.”

“And what's to keep us from running after we've received the antidote?”

“The poison is latent, Lamora. It slumbers within the body for many, many months, if not years. I will dole out your antidote at intervals so long as you please me.”

“And what guarantee do we have that you'll continue to give us the antidote once we've done whatever task you'd set us to?”

“You have none.”

“And no better alternatives.”

“Of course not.”

Locke closed his eyes and gently massaged them with the knuckles of his index fingers. “Your alleged poison. Will it interfere with our daily lives in any way? Will it complicate matters of judgment, agility, or health?”

“Not at all,” said Stragos. “You won't notice a thing until the time for the antidote is well past, and then you'll notice a great deal all at once. Until then, your affairs will be unimpeded.”

“But you have
already
impeded our affairs,” said Jean. “We're at a very delicate point in our dealings with Requin.”

“He gave us strict orders,” said Locke, “to do nothing suspicious while he sniffs around our recent activities. Disappearing from the streets in the care of the archon's people would
probably
qualify as suspicious.”

“Already taken into consideration,” said the archon. “Most of the people who pulled you two off the street are in one of Requin's gangs. He just doesn't know they work for me. They'll report seeing you out and about, even if others do not.”

“Are you confident that Requin is blind to their true loyalty?”

“Gods bless your amusing insolence, Lamora, but I'm not going to justify my every order to you. You'll accept them like my other soldiers, and if you must trust, trust in the judgment that has kept me seated as archon for fifteen years.”

“It's our lives under Requin's thumb if you're wrong, Stragos.”

“It's your lives under
my
thumb, regardless.”

“Requin is no fool!”

“Then why are you attempting to steal from him?”

“We flatter ourselves,” said Jean, “that we're—”

“I'll tell you why,” Stragos interrupted. He closed his file and folded his hands atop it. “You're not just greedy. You two have an unhealthy lust for excitement. The contemplation of long odds must positively get you drunk. Or else why choose the life you have, when you could have obviously succeeded as thieves of a more mundane stripe, within the limits allowed by that Barsavi?”

“If you think that little pile of papers gives you enough knowledge to presume so much—”

“You two are risk-takers. Exceptional, professional risk-takers. I have just the risk for you to take. You might even enjoy it.”

“That might have been true,” said Locke, “before you told us about the cider.”

“Obviously I know that what I've done will give you cause to bear me malice. Appreciate my position. I've done this to you because I respect your abilities. I
can't
afford to have you in my service without controls. You're a lever and a fulcrum, you two, looking for a city to turn upside down.”

“Why the hell couldn't you just hire us?”

“How would money be sufficient leverage for two men who can conjure it as easily as you?”

“So the fact that you're screwing us like a Jeremite cot doxy is really a very sweet compliment?” said Jean. “You fucking—”

“Calm down, Tannen,” said Stragos.

“Why should he?” Locke straightened his sweat-rumpled tunic and began tying his wrinkled neck-cloths back on in an agitated huff. “You poison us, lay a mysterious task at our feet, and offer no pay. You complicate our lives as Kosta and de Ferra, and you expect to summon us at your leisure when you condescend to reveal this chore. Gods. What about expenses, should we incur them?”

“You shall have any funds and material you require to operate in my service. And before you get excited, remember that you'll account for every last centira properly.”

“Oh, splendid. And what other perquisites does this job of yours entail? Complimentary luncheon at the barracks of your Eyes? Convalescent beds when Requin cuts our balls off and has them sewn into our eye sockets?”

“I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this—”

“
Get
accustomed to it,” snapped Locke, rising out of his chair and beginning to dust off his coat. “I have a counterproposal, one I urge you to entertain quite seriously.”

“Oh?”

“Forget about this, Stragos.” Locke drew on his coat, shook his shoulders to settle it properly, and gripped it by the lapels. “Forget about this whole ridiculous scheme. Give us enough antidote, if there is one, to settle us for the time being. Or let us know what it is and we'll have our own alchemist see to it, with our own funds. Send us back to Requin, for whom you profess no love, and let us get on with robbing him. Bother us no further, and we'll return the favor.”

“What could that possibly gain me?”

“My point is more that it would allow you to keep everything you have now.”

“My dear Lamora,” laughed Stragos with a soft, dry sound like an echo inside a coffin, “your bluster may be sufficient to convince some sponge-spined Camorri mongrel don to hand over his coin purse. It might even be enough to see you through the task I have in mind. But you're mine now, and the Bondsmagi were rather clear on how you might be humbled.”

“Oh? How's that, then?”

“Threaten me one more time and I shall have Jean returned to the sweltering room for the rest of the night. You may wait, chained outside in perfect comfort, imagining what it must be like for him. And the reverse, Jean, should
you
decide to wax rebellious.”

Locke clenched his jaw and looked down at his feet. Jean sighed, reached over, and patted him on the arm. Locke nodded very slightly.

“Good.” Stragos smiled without warmth. “Just as I respect your abilities, I respect your loyalty to one another. I respect it enough to use it, for good and for ill. So you
will
want to come at my summons, and accept the task I have for you…. It's when I
refuse
to see you that you will begin to have cause for concern.”

“So be it,” said Locke. “But I want you to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“That I offered to let this go,” said Locke. “That I offered to simply walk away.”

“Gods, but you
do
think highly of yourself, don't you, Master Lamora?”

“Just highly enough. No higher than the Bondsmagi, I'd say.”

“Are you suggesting that Karthain fears you, Master Lamora? Please. If that were so, they would have killed you already. No. They don't fear you—they want to see you
punished
. Giving you over to me to suit my own purposes seems to accomplish that in their eyes. I daresay you've good reason to bear them malice.”

“Indeed,” said Locke.

“Consider for a moment,” said Stragos, “the possibility that I might not like them any more than you do. And that while I might use them, out of necessity, and freely accept windfalls they send in my direction…your service on my behalf might actually come to work against them. Doesn't that intrigue you?”

“Nothing you say can be taken in good faith.” Locke glowered.

“Ahhh. That's where you're wrong, Lamora. With the benefit of time, you'll see how little need I have to lie about anything. Now, this audience is over. Reflect on your situation, and don't do anything rash. You may remove yourselves from the Mon Magisteria and return when summoned.”

“Wait,” said Locke. “Just—”

The archon rose, tucked the file under his arm, turned, and left the room through the same door he'd used to enter. It swung shut immediately behind him with the clatter of steel mechanisms.

“Hell,” said Jean.

“I'm sorry,” muttered Locke. “I was
so
keen to come to Tal fucking Verrar.”

“It's not your fault. We were both eager to hop in bed with the wench; it's just shit luck she turned out to have the clap.”

The main doors to the office creaked open, revealing a dozen Eyes waiting in the hall beyond.

Locke stared at the Eyes for several seconds, then grinned and cleared his throat. “Oh, good. Your master has left strict instructions placing you at our disposal. We're to have a boat, eight rowers, a hot meal, five hundred solari, six women who know how to give a proper massage, and—”

One thing Locke would say for the Eyes was that when they seized him and Jean to “escort” them from the Mon Magisteria, they were firm without being needlessly cruel. Their clubs remained at their belts, and there were a minimal number of body blows to soften the resolve of their prisoners. All in all, a very efficient bunch to be manhandled by.

5

THEY WERE
rowed back to the lower docks of the Savrola in a long gig with a covered gallery. It was nearly dawn, and a watery orange light was coming up over the landside of Tal Verrar, peeking over the islands and making their seaward faces seem darker by contrast. Surrounded by the archon's oarsmen and watched by four Eyes with crossbows, Locke and Jean said nothing.

Their exit was quick; the boat simply drew up to the edge of one deserted quay and Locke and Jean hopped out. One of the archon's soldiers threw a leather sack out onto the stones at their feet, and then the gig was backing away, and the whole damnable episode was over. Locke felt a strange daze and he rubbed his eyes, which felt dry within their sockets.

“Gods,” said Jean. “We must look as though we've been mugged.”

“We have been.” Locke reached down, picked up the sack, and examined its contents—Jean's two hatchets and their assortment of daggers. He grunted. “Magi. Gods-damned
Bondsmagi
!”

“This must be what they had in mind.”

“I hope it's
all
they have in mind.”

“They're not all-knowing, Locke. They must have weaknesses.”

“Must they really? And do you know what they are? Might one of them be allergic to exotic foods, or suffer poor relations with his mother? Some good that does us, when they're well beyond dagger reach! Crooked Warden, why don't dog's assholes like Stragos ever want to simply hire us for money? I'd be
happy
to work for fair pay.”

“No, you wouldn't.”

“Feh.”

“Quit scowling and think for a moment. You heard Stragos' report. The Bondsmagi knew about the preparations we've made for going after Requin's vault, but they didn't know the
whole
story. The important part.”

“Right…but what need would there be for them to tell Stragos everything?”

“None, of course, but also…they knew where we were operating from in Camorr, but he didn't mention our history. Stragos spoke of Barsavi, but not Chains. Perhaps because Chains died before the Falconer ever came to Camorr and started observing us? I don't think the Bondsmagi can read our thoughts, Locke. I think they're magnificent spies, but they're not infallible. We still have some secrets.”

“Hmmm. Forgive me if I find that a cold comfort, Jean. You know who waxes philosophical about the tiniest weaknesses of enemies? The
powerless
.”

“You seem resigned to that without much of a—”

“I'm not resigned, Jean. I'm angry. We need to cease being powerless as soon as possible.”

“Right. So where do we start?”

“Well, I'm going to go back to the inn. I'm going to pour a gallon of cold water down my throat. I'm going to get into bed, put a pillow over my head, and stay there until sunset.”

“I approve.”

“Good. Then we'll both be well rested when it comes time to get up and find a black alchemist. I want a second opinion on latent poisons. I want to know everything there is to know about the subject, and whether there are any antidotes we can start trying.”

“Agreed.”

“After that, we can add one more small item to our agenda for this Tal Verrar holiday of ours.”

“Kick the archon in the teeth?”

“Gods yes,” said Locke, smacking a fist into an open palm. “Whether or not we finish the Requin job first. Whether or not there really is a poison! I'm going to take his whole bloody palace and shove it so far up his ass he'll have stone towers for tonsils!”

“Any plans to that effect?”

“No idea. I've no idea whatsoever. I'll
reflect
on it, that's for damn sure. But as for not being rash, well, no promises.”

Jean grunted. The two of them turned and began to plod along the quay, toward the stone steps that would lead laboriously to the island's upper tier. Locke rubbed his stomach and felt his skin crawling…felt
violated
somehow, knowing that something lethal might be slipping unfelt into the darkest crevices of his own body, waiting to do mischief.

On their right the sun was a burning bronze medallion coming up over the city's horizon, perched there like one of the archon's faceless soldiers, gazing steadily down upon them.

REMINISCENCE

The Lady of the Glass Pylon

1

Azura Gallardine was not an easy woman to speak to. To be sure, hers was a well-known title (second mistress of the Great Guild of Artificers, Reckoners, and Minutiary Artisans), and her address was common knowledge (the intersection of Glassbender Street and the Avenue of the Cog-Scrapers, West Cantezzo, Fourth Tier, Artificers' Crescent), but anyone approaching that home had to walk forty feet off the main pedestrian thoroughfare.

Those forty feet were one
hell
of a thing to contemplate.

Six months had passed since Locke and Jean had come to Tal Verrar; the personalities of Leocanto Kosta and Jerome de Ferra had evolved from bare sketches to comfortable second skins. Summer had been dying when they'd clattered down the road toward the city for the first time, but now the hard, dry winds of winter had given way to the turbulent breezes of early spring. It was the month of Saris, in the seventy-eighth year of Nara, the Plaguebringer, Mistress of Ubiquitous Maladies.

Jean rode in a padded chair at the stern of a hired luxury scull, a low, sleek craft crewed by six rowers. It sliced across the choppy waters of Tal Verrar's main anchorage like an insect in haste, ducking and weaving between larger vessels in accordance with the shouted directions of a teenage girl perched in its bow.

It was a windy day, with the milky light of the sun pouring down without warmth from behind high veils of clouds. Tal Verrar's anchorage was crowded with cargo lighters, barges, small boats, and the great ships of a dozen nations. A squadron of galleons from Emberlain and Parlay rode low in the water with the aquamarine-and-gold banners of the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows fluttering at their sterns. A few hundred yards away, Jean could see a brig flying the white flag of Lashain, and beyond that a galley with the banner of the Marrows over the smaller pennant of the Canton of Balinel, which was just a few hundred miles north up the coast from Tal Verrar.

Jean's scull was rounding the southern tip of the Merchants' Crescent, one of three sickle-shaped islands that surrounded the Castellana at the city's center like the encompassing petals of a flower. His destination was the Artificers' Crescent, home of the men and women who had raised the art of clockwork mechanics from an eccentric hobby to a vibrant industry. Verrari clockwork was more delicate, more subtle, more durable—more
anything
, as required—than that fashioned by all but a handful of masters anywhere else in the known world.

Strangely, the more familiar Jean grew with Tal Verrar, the odder the place seemed to him. Every city built on Eldren ruins acquired its own unique character, in many cases shaped directly by the nature of those ruins. Camorri lived on islands separated by nothing more than canals, or at most the Angevine River, and their existence was shoulder-to-shoulder compared to the great wealth of space Tal Verrar had to offer. The hundred-odd thousand souls on Tal Verrar's seaward islands made full use of that space, dividing themselves into tribes with unusual precision.

In the west, the poor clung to spots in the Portable Quarter, where those willing to tolerate constant rearrangement of all their belongings by hard sea-weather could at least live free of rent. In the east, they crowded the Istrian District and provided labor for the tiered gardens of the Blackhands Crescent. There they grew luxury crops they could not afford, on plots of alchemically enriched soil they could never own.

Tal Verrar had only one graveyard, the ancient Midden of Souls, which took up most of the city's eastern island, opposite the Blackhands Crescent. The Midden had six tiers, studded with memorial stones, sculptures, and mausoleums like miniature mansions. The dead were as strictly sifted in death as they'd been in life, with each successive tier claiming a better class of corpse. It was a morbid mirror of the Golden Steps across the bay.

The Midden itself was almost as large as the entire city of Vel Virazzo, and it sported its own strange society—priests and priestesses of Aza Guilla, gangs of mourners-for-hire (all of whom would loudly proclaim their ceremonial specialties or particular theatrical flourishes to anyone within shouting distance), mausoleum sculptors, and the oddest of all, the Midden Vigilants. The Vigilants were criminals convicted of grave robbery. In place of execution, they were locked into steel masks and clanking scale armor and forced to patrol the Midden of Souls as part of a sullen constabulary. Each would be freed only when another grave robber was captured to take his or her place. Some would have to wait years.

Tal Verrar had no hangings, no beheadings, and none of the fights between convicted criminals and wild animals that were popular virtually everywhere else. In Tal Verrar those convicted of capital crimes simply vanished, along with most of the city's garbage, into the Midden Deep. This was an open square pit, forty feet on a side, located to the north of the Midden of Souls. Its Elderglass walls plunged into absolute darkness, giving no hint as to how far down they truly went. Popular lore held that it was bottomless, and criminals prodded off the execution planks usually went screaming and pleading. The worst rumor about the place, of course, was that those thrown down into the Deep did
not
die…but somehow continued falling. Forever.

“Hard larboard!” cried the girl at the bow of the scull. The rowers on Jean's left yanked their oars out of the water and the ones on the right pulled hard, sliding the craft just out of the way of a cargo galley crammed with fairly alarmed cattle. A man at the side rail of the galley shook his fist down at the scull as it passed, perhaps ten feet beneath the level of his boots.

“Get the shit out of your eyes, you undergrown cunt!”

“Go back to pleasuring your cattle, you soft-dicked cur!”

“You bitch! You cheeky bitch! Heave-to and I'll show you who's soft-dicked! Begging your pardon, gracious sir.”

Seated in his thronelike chair, dressed in a velvet frock coat with enough gold fripperies to sparkle even in the weak light of an overcast day, Jean looked very much a man of consequence. It was important for the man on the galley to ensure that his verbal salvoes were accurately received; while they were an accepted part of life on the harbor in Tal Verrar, the moneyed class were always treated as though they were somehow levitating above the water, entirely independent of the vessels and laborers carrying them. Jean waved nonchalantly.

“I don't need to get any closer to know it's soft, lard-cock!” The girl made a rude gesture with both hands. “I can see how disappointed your fucking cows are from here!”

With that, the scull was out of range of any audible reply; the galley fell away to the stern, and the southwestern edge of the Artificers' Crescent grew before them.

“For that,” said Jean, “an extra silver volani for everyone here.”

As the increasingly cheerful girl and her enthusiastic team pulled him steadily toward the docks of the Artificers' Crescent, Jean's eyes were drawn by a tumult on the water a few hundred yards to his left. A cargo lighter flagged with some sort of Verrari guild banner Jean didn't recognize was surrounded by at least a dozen smaller craft. Men and women from the boats were trying to clamber aboard the cargo lighter while the outnumbered crew of the larger vessel attempted to fend them off with oars and a water pump. A boat full of constables seemed to be approaching, but was still several minutes off.

“Now, what the hell's that?” Jean yelled to the girl.

“What? Where? Oh, that. That's the Quill Pen Rebellion, up to business as usual.”

“Quill Pen Rebellion?”

“The Guild of Scribes. That cargo boat's flying a Guild of Letter-Pressers' flag. It must be carrying a printing press from the Artificers' Crescent. You ever seen a press?”

“Heard of them. For the first time just a few months ago, in fact.”

“The scribes don't like 'em. Think they'll put their trade out of business. So they've been running ambushes when the Letter-Pressers try to get one across the bay. There must be six or seven of those new presses on the bottom of the water by now. Plus a few bodies. It's a big fat weeping mess, you ask me.”

“I'm inclined to agree.”

“Well, hopefully they won't come up with anything that can replace a good team of honest rowers. Here's your dock, sir, quite a bit ahead of schedule if I'm correct. You want us to wait around?”

“By all means,” said Jean. “Amusing help is so hard to find. I expect I won't be but an hour.”

“At your service, then, Master de Ferra.”

2

THE CRESCENT
was not exclusive to the Great Guild of Artificers, though it was where the majority of them chose to settle, and where their private halls and clubs loomed on virtually every street corner, and where they were most tolerated in their habit of leaving incomprehensible and occasionally hazardous devices out in plain sight.

Jean made his way up the steep steps of the Avenue of the Brass Cockatrice, past candle merchants and blade sharpeners and veniparsifers (mystics who claimed to be able to read the full sweep of someone's destiny from the pattern of blood vessels visible on their hands and forearms). At the top of the avenue he dodged away from a slim young woman in a four-cornered hat and sun veil walking a
valcona
on a reinforced leather leash.
Valcona
were flightless attack birds, larger than hunting hounds. With their vestigial wings folded back along their stout bodies, they hopped about on claws that could tear out fist-sized chunks of human flesh. They bonded like affectionate babies to one person and were perfectly happy to kill anyone else in the entire world, at any time.

“Good killer bird,” muttered Jean. “Pretty threat to life and limb. What a lovely little girl or boy or thing you are.”

The creature chirruped a little warning at him and scampered after its mistress.

Huffing and sweating, Jean made his way up another set of switchback stairs and made an irritated mental note that a few hours of training would do his spreading gut some good. Jerome de Ferra was a man who viewed exercise solely as a means of getting from bed to the gambling tables and back again. Forty feet, sixty feet, eighty feet…up from the waterfront, up the second and third tiers of the island, up to the fourth and topmost, where the eccentric influence of the Artificers was at its strongest.

The shops and houses on the fourth tier of the Crescent were provided with water by an extremely elaborate network of aqueducts. Some of them were the stones and pillars of the Therin Throne era, while some were merely leather chutes supported by wooden struts. Waterwheels, windmills, gears, counterweights, and pendulums swung everywhere Jean looked. Rearranging the water supply was a game the Artificers played amongst themselves; the only rule was that nobody's supply was to be cut off at the point of final delivery. Every few days, a new offshoot of some duct or a new pumping apparatus would appear, stealing water from an older duct or pumping apparatus. A few days later another artificer would divert water through another new channel and the battle would continue. Tropical storms would invariably litter the streets of the Crescent with cogs and mechanisms and ductwork, and the artificers would invariably rebuild their water channels twice as strangely as before.

Glassbender Street ran the full length of the topmost tier. Jean turned to his left and hurried along the cobbles. The strange smells of glassmaking wafted out at him from shop fronts; through open doors he could see artisans spinning glowing orange shapes at the ends of long poles. A small crowd of alchemists' assistants brushed past him, hogging the street. They wore the trademark red skullcaps of their profession and displayed the chemical burns along their hands and faces that were their badges of pride.

He passed the Avenue of the Cog-Scrapers, where a small crowd of laborers were seated before their shops, cleaning and polishing pieces of metal. Some were under the direct scrutiny of impatient artificers, who grumbled unhelpful directions and stamped their feet nervously. This intersection was the southwestern end of the fourth tier; there was nowhere else to go except down—or out along the forty-foot walk to the home of Azura Gallardine.

At the cul-de-sac end to Glassbender Street was an arc of shop fronts with one gap like a tooth knocked out of a smile. Jutting beyond this gap was an Elderglass pylon, anchored to the stone of the fourth tier for some unfathomable Eldren reason. The pylon was about a foot and a half wide, flat-topped, and forty feet long. It speared out into the empty air, fifteen yards above the rooftops of a winding street down on the third tier.

The house of Azura Gallardine was perched at the far end of that pylon like a three-story bird's nest on the tip of a branch. The second mistress of the Great Guild of Artificers had discovered an ideal means of assuring her privacy—only those with very serious business, or very sincere need of her skills, would be mad enough to scamper out along the pylon that led to her front door.

Jean swallowed, rubbed his hands together, and said a brief prayer to the Crooked Warden before stepping out onto the Elderglass. “It can't be that hard,” he muttered. “I've been through worse. It's just a short little walk. No need to look down. I'm as steady as a laden galleon.”

With his hands held out at his sides for balance, he began to make his way carefully across the pylon. It was curious, how the breeze seemed to pick up as he crossed, and how the sky seemed suddenly wider above him…. He fixed his eyes firmly on the door before him, and (unbeknownst to himself) ceased to breathe until his hands were planted firmly on that door. He gasped in a deep breath and wiped his brow, which had sprung an embarrassing quantity of sweat.

Azura Gallardine's house was solidly crafted from white stone blocks. It had a high peaked roof crowned with a squeaking windmill and a large leather rain-collection bladder in a wooden frame. The door was decorated with relief carvings of gears and other clockwork mechanisms, and beside it a brass plate was set into the stone. Jean pressed the plate, and heard a gong echoing within the house. Smoke from cookfires below curled up past him while he stood there waiting for some response.