Red Seas Under Red Skies (17 page)

“I can't say that I—”

At that moment, the guildmistress yanked on one of the leather cords that hung down from her ceiling.

The first notion Jean had that the floor had opened up beneath his feet was when the view of Tal Verrar suddenly seemed to move up toward the ceiling; his senses conferred hastily on just what this meant, and were stumped for a split second until his stomach weighed in with nauseous confirmation that the
view
wasn't doing the moving.

He plunged through the floor and struck a hard square platform suspended just beneath Gallardine's house by iron chains at the corners. His first thought was that it must be some sort of lift—and then it began to plummet toward the street forty-odd feet below.

The chains rattled and the sudden breeze washed over him; he fell prone and clung to the platform with white-knuckled alarm. Roofs and carts and cobblestones rushed up toward him and he braced himself for the sharp pain of impact—but it didn't come. The platform was slowing down with impossible smoothness: sure death slowed to possible injury and then to mere embarrassment. The descent ended a bare few feet above the street, when the chains on Jean's left stayed taut while the others went slack. The platform tilted with a lurch and dumped him in a heap on the cobbles.

He sat up and sucked in a grateful breath; the street was spinning slightly around him. He looked up and saw that the chain platform was rapidly ascending back to its former position. A split second before it drew home into the underside of Gallardine's floor, something small and shiny tumbled out of the trap door above it. Jean managed to flinch away and cover his face just before glass shards and liquor from the exploding bottle of brandy mix sprayed over him.

He wiped a good few solari worth of White Plum Austershalin out of his hair as he stumbled to his feet, wide-eyed and cursing.

“A fine afternoon to you, sir. But wait, don't tell me. Let me guess. Proposal not accepted by the guildmistress?”

Jean, befuddled, found a smiling beer seller not five feet to his right, leaning against the wall of a closed and unmarked two-story building. The man was a tanned scarecrow with a broad-brimmed leather hat that drooped with age until it nearly touched his bony shoulders. He drummed the fingers of one hand on a large wheeled cask, to which several wooden mugs were attached by long chains.

“Um, something like that,” said Jean. A hatchet slipped out of his coat and clattered against the cobblestones. Red-faced, he bent, retrieved it, and made it vanish again.

“You might call this self-serving, and I'd certainly be the first to agree with you, sir. But you look to me like a man in need of a drink. A drink that won't bust open against the cobbles and damn near break your skull, that is.”

“Do I? What have you got?”

“Burgle, sir. Presuming you've heard of it, it's a Verrari specialty, and if you've had it in Talisham you haven't had it at all. Nothing at all against Talishani, of course. Why, I've got family in Talisham, you know.”

Burgle was a thick dark beer usually flavored with a few drops of almond oil. It had a kick comparable to many wines. Jean nodded. “A full mug, if you please.”

The beer seller opened the tap on his cask and filled one of the chained mugs with liquid that looked almost black. He passed this to Jean with one hand and tipped his cap with the other.

“She does it a few times a week, you know.”

Jean quaffed the warm beer and let the yeasty, nutty flavor flow down the back of his throat. “A few times a week?”

“She's a mite impatient with some of her visitors. Doesn't wait to terminate conversation with all the usual niceties. But then you knew that already.”

“Mmm-hmmm. This is pretty tolerable stuff.”

“Thank you kindly, sir. One centira the full mug…thank you, thank you kindly. I do a brisk business with folks falling out of Madam Gallardine's floor. I usually try to stake this spot out just in case it rains a customer or two. I'm very sorry you didn't find satisfaction in your meeting with her.”

“Satisfaction? Well, she might have gotten rid of me before I expected, but I think I did what I set out to do.” Jean poured the last of the beer down his throat, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and passed the mug back. “I'm really just planting a seed for the future, is all.”

CHAPTER FOUR

BLIND ALLIANCES

1

“MASTER KOSTA,
please be reasonable. Why would I be holding anything back from you? If I had a treatment to suggest, it would mean a fair bit more gold in my pocket, now wouldn't it?”

Pale Therese, the consulting poisoner, kept a rather comfortable parlor in which to discuss confidential business with her clients. Locke and Jean were seated cross-legged on soft, wide cushions, holding (but not sipping from) little porcelain cups of thick Jereshti coffee. Pale Therese—a serious, ice-eyed Vadran of about thirty—had hair the color of new sail canvas that bobbed against the collar of her black velvet coat as she paced the room across from her guests. Her bodyguard, a well-dressed Verrari woman with a basket-hilted rapier and a lacquered wooden club hanging from her belt, lounged against the wall beside the room's single locked door, silent and watchful.

“Of course,” said Locke. “I beg your pardon, madam, if I'm a bit out of sorts. I hope you can appreciate
our
situation…
possibly
poisoned, with no means to tell in the first place, let alone begin securing an antidote.”

“Yes, Master Kosta. It's certainly an anxious position you're in.”

“This is the second time I've been poisoned for coercive purposes. I was lucky enough to escape the first.”

“Pity it's such an effective means of keeping someone on a chain, isn't it?”

“You needn't sound so satisfied, madam.”

“Oh, come now, Master Kosta. You mustn't think me unsympathetic.” Pale Therese held up her left hand, showing off a collection of rings and alchemical scars, and Locke was surprised to see that the fourth finger of that hand was missing. “A careless accident, when I was an apprentice, working with something unforgiving. I had ten heartbeats to choose—my finger or my life. Fortunately there was a heavy knife very close at hand. I know what it means to taste the fruits of my art, gentlemen. I know what it is to feel sickly and anxious and desperate, waiting to see what happens next.”

“Of course,” said Jean. “Forgive my partner. It's just…well, the artistry of our apparent poisoning surely left us hoping for some equally miraculous solution.”

“As a rule of thumb, it's always easier to poison than it is to cure.” Therese idly rubbed the stump of her missing finger, a gesture that looked like an old familiar tic. “Antidotes are delicate things; in many cases, they're poisons in their own right. There is no panacea, no cure-all, no cleansing that can blunt every venom known to my trade. And since the substance you describe does indeed seem to be proprietary, I'd sooner just cut your throats than attempt random antidote treatments. They could prolong your misery, or even enhance the effect of the substance already within you.”

Jean cupped his chin in one hand and gazed around the parlor. Therese had decorated one wall with a shrine to fat, sly Gandolo, Lord of Coin and Commerce, heavenly father of business transactions. On the opposite wall was a shrine to veiled Aza Guilla, Lady of the Long Silence, Goddess of Death. “But you said there are known substances that linger on like the one we're supposed to be afflicted with. Might they not narrow the field of worthwhile treatments?”

“There are such substances, yes. Twilight rose essence sleeps in the body for several months and deadens the nerves if the subject doesn't take a regular antidote. Witherwhite steals the nourishment from all food and drink; the victims can gorge themselves all they like and still waste away to nothing.
Anuella
dust makes the victim bleed out through their skin weeks after they breathe it…. But don't you see the problem? Three lingering poisons, three very different means of causing harm. An antidote for, say, a poison of the blood might well kill you if your poison works by some other means.”

“Damn,” said Locke. “All right, then. I feel silly bringing this up, but Jerome, you said there was one more possibility….”

“Bezoars,” said Jean. “I read a great deal about them as a child.”

“Bezoars are, sadly, a myth.” Therese folded her hands in front of her and sighed. “Just a fairy story, like the Ten Honest Turncoats, the Heart-Eating Sword, the Clarion Horn of Therim Pel, and all that wonderful nonsense. I'm sure I read the same books, Master de Ferra. I'm sorry. In order to extract magic stones from the stomachs of dragons, we'd have to have living dragons somewhere, wouldn't we?”

“They do seem to be in short supply.”

“If it's miraculous and expensive you're looking for,” said Therese, “there is one more course of action I could suggest.”

“Anything…,” said Locke.

“The Bondsmagi of Karthain. I have credible reports that they
do
have means to halt poisonings that we alchemists cannot. For those who can afford their fees, of course.”

“…except that,” muttered Locke.

“Well,” said Therese with a certain resigned finality. “Though it aids neither my pocketbook nor my conscience to set you back on the street without a solution, I fear I can do little else, given how thin our information is. You are absolutely confident the poisoning happened but recently?”

“Last night, madam, was the very first opportunity our…tormentor ever had.”

“Then take what little comfort I can give. Stay useful to this individual and you probably have weeks or months of safety ahead. In that time, some lucky stroke may bring you more information on the substance in question. Watch and listen keenly for whatever clues you may. Return with more solid information for me, and I will instruct my people to take you in at any hour, night or day, to see what I might do.”

“That's quite gracious of you, madam,” said Locke.

“Poor gentlemen! I offer you my best prayers for good fortune. I know you shall live for some time with a weight on your shoulders…and should you eventually find no solution forthcoming, I can always offer you my
other
services. Turnabout, as they say, is fair play.”

“You're our kind of businesswoman,” said Jean, rising to his feet. He set down his little cup of coffee, and beside it placed a gold solari coin. “We appreciate your time and hospitality.”

“No trouble, Master de Ferra. Are you ready to go out, then?”

Locke stood up and adjusted his long coat. He and Jean nodded in unison.

“Very well, then. Valista will see you back out the way you came. Apologies once again for the blindfolds, but…some precautions are for your benefit as well as mine.”

The actual location of Pale Therese's parlor was a secret, tucked away somewhere amongst the hundreds of respectable businesses, coffeehouses, taverns, and homes in the wooden warrens of the Emerald Galleries, where sunlight and moonlight alike filtered down a soothing sea green through the mushrooming, intersecting Elderglass domes that roofed the district. Therese's guards led prospective clients to her, blindfolded, along a lengthy series of passageways. The armed young woman stood away from the door, a pair of blindfolds in hand.

“We understand completely,” said Locke. “And never fear. We're becoming quite accustomed to being led around by our noses in the dark.”

2

LOCKE AND
Jean skulked about the Savrola for two nights after that, keeping their eyes on every rooftop and every alley, but neither Bondsmagi nor agents of the archon came forward and conveniently announced themselves. They
were
being followed and observed by several teams of men and women; that much was clear. Locke's guess was that these were Requin's people, given instructions to let just enough of their activities slip to keep him and Jean on their toes.

On the third night, they decided they might as well return to the Sinspire and put on their brave faces. Decked out in several hundred solari worth of finery apiece, they walked up the red velvet carpet and placed silver volani in the hands of the door-guards while a sizable crowd of well-dressed nobodies stood nearby hoping for a glimmer of social mercy.

Locke's practiced eye picked out the ringers among them; men and women with worse teeth, leaner faces, and warier eyes than the rest of the crowd, dressed in evening clothes that didn't look precisely tailored, or wearing the wrong accessories, or the wrong colors. Requin's Right People, out for a night at his Sinspire as a reward for some job well done. They'd be let in in good time, but not allowed past the second floor. Their presence was just one more component of the tower's mystique; a chance for the great and good to mingle with the dirty and dangerous.

“Masters Kosta and de Ferra,” said one of the doormen, “welcome back.”

When the wide doors swung open toward Locke and Jean, a wave of noise and heat and smells washed out over them into the night—the familiar exhalation of decadence.

The first floor was merely crowded, but the second floor was a wall-to-wall sea of flesh and fine clothes. The crowd began on the stairs, and Locke and Jean had to use elbows and threats to make their way up into the mess.

“What in Perelandro's name is going on?” Locke asked of a man pressed against him. The man turned, grinning excitedly.

“It's a cage spectacle!”

In the center of the second floor was a brass cage that could be lowered from the ceiling, locking into apertures in the floor to create a sturdy cube about twenty feet on a side. Tonight the cage was also covered with a very fine mesh—no, Locke corrected himself, two layers of mesh, one inside the cage and one outside. A lucky minority of the Sinspire patrons in the room were watching from elevated tables along the outer walls; it was standing-room only for at least a hundred others.

Locke and Jean made their way through the crowd counterclockwise, attempting to get close enough to see what the spectacle was. The excited murmur of conversation surrounded them, more frantic than Locke had ever heard it within these walls. But as he and Jean approached the cage, he suddenly realized that not all of the noise was coming from the crowd.

Something the size of a sparrow beat its wings against the mesh and buzzed angrily, a low thrumming sound that sent a shiver of pure animal dread up Locke's spine. “That's a fucking stiletto wasp,” he whispered to Jean, who nodded vigorously in agreement.

Locke had never been unfortunate enough to encounter one of the insects personally. They were the bane of several large tropical islands a few thousand miles to the east, far past Jerem and Jeresh and the lands detailed on most Therin maps. Years before, Jean had found a gruesome account of the creatures in one of his natural philosophy books and read it aloud to the other Gentlemen Bastards, ruining their sleep for several nights.

They were called stiletto wasps on account of descriptions the rare survivors gave of being stung by them. They were as heavy as songbirds, bright red in color, and their stinging abdomens were longer than a grown man's middle finger. Possession of a stiletto wasp queen in any Therin city-state was punishable by death, lest the things should ever gain a foothold on Therin soil. Their hives were said to be the size of houses.

A young man ducked and wove inside the cage, dressed in nothing more protective than a silk tunic, cotton breeches, and short boots. Thick leather gauntlets were his weapons as well as his only armor; they were wedded to bracers buckled around his forearms, and he kept his hands up before his face like a boxer. With gloves like that a man could certainly contemplate swatting or crushing a stiletto wasp—but he would have to be very quick and very sure of himself.

On a table at the opposite side of the cage sat a heavy wooden cabinet fronted with dozens of mesh-covered cells, a few of which were already open. The rest, judging by the noise, were crammed full of highly agitated stiletto wasps just waiting to be released.

“Master Kosta! Master de Ferra!”

The shout carried across the noisy crowd but even so was hard to pinpoint. Locke had to look around several times before he could spot the source—Maracosa Durenna, waving to him and Jean from her place at one of the tables against a far wall.

Her black hair was pulled back into a sort of fantail around a gleaming silver ornament, and she was smoking from a curved silver pipe almost as long as her arm. Bands of white iron and jade slid against one another on her left wrist as she beckoned Locke and Jean across the room. They raised eyebrows at each other but pushed their way through the crowd toward her, and were soon standing beside her table.

“Where have you been these past few nights? Izmila has been indisposed, but I've been cruising the waters with other games in mind.”

“Our apologies, Madam Durenna,” said Jean. “Matters of business have kept us elsewhere. We occasionally consult on a freelance basis for very…demanding clients.”

“There was a brief trip over water,” added Locke.

“Negotiations concerning futures in pear cider,” said Jean.

“We came highly recommended by former associates,” said Locke.

“Pear cider futures? What a romantic and dangerous sort of trade you two must ply. And are you as accomplished at stake-placing in futures as you are at Carousel Hazard?”

“It stands to reason,” said Jean, “or else we wouldn't have the funds to play Carousel Hazard.”

“Well then, how about a demonstration? The cage duel. Which participant do you believe to have a happier prospect for the future?”

In the cage, the free stiletto wasp darted toward the young man, who swatted it out of the air and crushed it beneath one of his boots with an audible juicy crack. Most of the crowd cheered.

“Apparently, it's too late for our opinion to matter one way or the other,” said Locke. “Or is there more to the show?”

“The show's only just started, Master Kosta. That hive has one hundred and twenty cells. There's a clockwork device opening the doors, mostly at random. He might get one at a time; he might get six. Eye-catching, isn't it? He can't leave the cage until he's got one hundred and twenty wasps dead at his feet, or…”