Red Seas Under Red Skies (28 page)

“Damn it,” said Jean, “why not let us finish our affair with Requin? It won't take more than a few weeks. Then we can do whatever you like, without distraction.”

“I've thought about it,” said Stragos, “but no. Postpone it. I want you to have something to look forward to after you complete my mission. And I don't have a few weeks to wait. I need you at sea in a month. Six weeks at the very latest.”

“A
month
to go from gratefully ignorant landlubbers to fucking professional pirates?” said Jean. “Gods.”

“It will be a busy month,” said Stragos.

Locke groaned.

“Are you up for the task? Or shall I simply deny you your antidote and give you a prison cell from which to observe the results?”

“Just see to it that that fucking antidote is ready and waiting each time we come back,” said Locke. “And give a serious
ponder
to just how much money would best send us away happy when this affair is concluded. I'm guessing that you're likely to be the underestimating type in that regard, so I'd think
big
.”

“Rewards proportional to results, Lamora. That and your lives. When the red flag is seen again in my city's waters, and the Priori are begging me to save them, you may turn your thoughts to the matter of reward. Then and no sooner. Understood?”

Lying
, Locke signaled to Jean, sure it was unnecessary but equally sure Jean would appreciate a bit of cheek. “Your will then, I suppose. If the gods are kind we'll poke a stick into whatever hornets' nest is left to be stirred up down in the Ghostwinds. After all, we have no choice, do we?”

“As it should be,” said Stragos.

“You know, Locke,” said Jean in a lightly conversational tone of voice, “I like to imagine that there are thieves out there who only ever get caught up in perfectly ordinary, uncomplicated escapades. We should consider finding some and asking them what their secret is, one of these days.”

“It's probably as simple as staying the hell away from assholes like this,” said Locke, gesturing at the archon.

4

A SQUAD
of Eyes was waiting beside the boathouse when the little craft completed its circuit of the artificial river.

“Here,” said Stragos after one of his soldiers took the oar from him. He removed two glass vials from his pockets and held one out to each Camorri thief. “Your first stay of execution. The poison's had time to work its way into you. I don't want to have to worry about you for the next few weeks.”

Locke and Jean complied, each gagging as they drank. “Tastes like chalk,” said Locke, wiping his mouth.

“If only it were that inexpensive,” said the archon. “Now give the vials back. Caps, too.”

Locke sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope you'd forget that part.”

The two thieves were being hauled back toward the Mon Magisteria as Stragos lashed the boat to the piling once again.

Stragos stood up, stretched, and felt the old familiar creaks, the twinges in his hips and knees and wrists. Damn rheumatism…by rights he was still outrunning his age, still ahead of most men nearing threescore years, but he knew deep in his heart that there would never be any way of running fast enough. Sooner or later, the Lady of the Long Silence would call a dance for Maxilan Stragos, whether or not his work here was done.

Merrain was waiting in the shadows of the unlit side of the boathouse, still and quiet as a hunting spider until she stepped out beside him. Long practice enabled him to avoid flinching.

“My thanks for saving those two, Merrain. You've been very useful to me, these past few weeks.”

“Just as I was instructed to be,” she said. “But are you sure they really suit the needs of this plan of yours?”

“They're at every disadvantage in this city, my dear.” Stragos squinted at the blurry forms of Locke, Jean, and their escorts as they disappeared into the garden. “The Bondsmagi sewed them up for us, and we have them second-guessing their every step. I don't believe those two are used to being controlled. Out on their own, I know they'll perform as required.”

“Your reports give you that much confidence?”

“Not merely my reports,” said Stragos. “Requin certainly hasn't killed them yet, has he?”

“I suppose not.”

“They'll serve,” said Stragos. “I know their hearts. As the days go by, the resentment will fade and the novelty will gain on them. They'll be enjoying themselves soon enough. And when they start to enjoy themselves…I honestly think they can do it. If they live. It's for damn sure I've no other agents suitable to the task.”

“Then I may report to my masters that the plan is under way?”

“Yes, I suppose this commits us. You may do just that.” Stragos eyed the shadowed shape of the slender woman beside him and sighed. “Let them know that everything begins in a month or so. I hope for their sake they're ready for the consequences.”

“
Nobody's
ready for the consequences,” said Merrain. “It's going to mean more blood than anyone's seen in two hundred years. All we can do is hope that by setting things off we can ensure that
others
reap most of the trouble. By your leave, Archon, I'd like to go compose my messages to them now.”

“Of course,” said Stragos. “Send my regards along with your report, and my prayers that we might continue to prosper…together.”

LAST REMINISCENCE

By Their Own Rope

1

“Oh, this is a
wonderful
spot to fling ourselves to our deaths from,” said Locke.

Six months had passed since his return from Salon Corbeau; the suite of four exquisitely crafted chairs was safely locked away in a private storage room at the Villa Candessa. Tal Verrar's version of late winter held the region in the grip of temperatures so brisk that folk had to engage in actual labor to break a sweat.

About an hour's hard ride north of Tal Verrar, just past the village of Vo Sarmara and its surrounding fields, a scrubby forest of gnarled witchwood and amberthorn trees rose beside a wide, rocky vale. The walls of this vale were the grayish color of corpse-flesh, giving the place the look of a giant wound in the earth. The thin olive-colored grass abandoned the struggle for life about ten feet from the edge of the cliffs above this vale, where Locke and Jean stood contemplating the sheer hundred-foot drop to the gravel floor far below.

“I suppose we should've kept more in practice with this,” said Jean, starting to shrug his way out of the half dozen coils of rope draped from his right shoulder to his left hip. “But then, I don't recall many opportunities to put it to use in the past few years.”

“Most places in Camorr, we could just hand-over-hand it, up and down,” said Locke. “I don't think you were even with us that night we used ropes, to get up Lady de Marre's tower at that horrible old estate of hers…. Calo and Galdo and I nearly got pecked to bloody shreds by pigeons working that one. Must've been five, six years ago.”

“Oh, I was with you, remember? On the ground, keeping watch. I saw the bit with the pigeons. Hard to play sentry when you're pissing yourself laughing.”

“Wasn't funny at all from up top. Beaky little bastards were vicious!”

“The Death of a Thousand Pecks,” said Jean. “You would have been legends, dying so gruesomely. I'd have written a book on the man-eating pigeons of Camorr and joined the Therin Collegium. Gone respectable. Bug and I would've built a memorial statue to the Sanzas, with a nice plaque.”

“What about me?”

“Footnote on the plaque. Space permitting.”

“Hand over some rope or I'll show you the edge of the cliff,
space permitting
.”

Jean tossed a coil to Locke, who plucked it out of the air and walked back toward the edge of the forest, about thirty feet from the cliff. The rope was tightly woven demi-silk, much lighter than hemp and
much
more expensive. At the rim of the forest, Locke selected a tall old witchwood, about as broad around as Jean's shoulders. He pulled a goodly length of his line free, passed it around the tree trunk, and stared at the slightly frayed end for a few seconds, trying to rekindle his memories of knot-tying.

As his fingers slipped into hesitant motion, he took a quick glance around at the melancholy state of the world. A stiff wind was blowing from the northwest, and the sky was one vast cataract of wet-looking haze. Their hired carriage was parked at the far end of the woods, perhaps three hundred yards away. He and Jean had set the driver up with a clay jug of beer and a splendid basket lunch from the Villa Candessa, promising to be gone for a few hours at most.

“Jean,” muttered Locke as the bigger man stepped up beside him, “this is a proper anchor-noose, right?”

“Certainly looks like it.” Jean hefted the elaborate knot that secured the rope in a bight around the tree and nodded. He took the working end of the rope and added an additional half-hitch for safety. “There. Just right.”

He and Locke worked together for a few minutes, repeating the anchor-noose knot with three further lengths of rope, until the old witchwood tree seemed thoroughly decorated with taut demi-silk. Their spare coils of rope were set aside. The two men then slipped out of their long frock coats and their vests, revealing heavy leather belts studded with iron rings at their waists.

The belts weren't quite like the custom climbing harnesses treasured by the more responsible burglars of Camorr; these were actually nautical in origin, used by those happy sailors whose ship owners cared enough to spend a bit of money to preserve their health. The belts had been available on the cheap, and had spared Locke and Jean the need to suss out a contact in Tal Verrar's underworld who could make a pair to order…but remember the transaction. There were a few things Requin would be better off not knowing until the chance came to finally spring the game on him.

“Right, then. Here's your descender.” Jean passed Locke a fairly heavy bit of iron, a figure eight with one side larger than the other, with a thick bar right down the middle. He also kept one for himself; he'd had them knocked up by a blacksmith in Tal Verrar's Istrian Crescent a few weeks earlier. “Let's get you rigged up first. Main line, then belay.”

Locke clipped his descender into one of his harness rings and threaded it through with one of the demi-silk lines leading back to the tree. The other end of this line was left free and tossed toward the cliff. A second line was lashed tight to a harness ring above Locke's opposite hip. Many Camorri thieves on working jobs “danced naked,” without the added safety of a belay line in case their primary rope broke, but for today's practice session Locke and Jean were in firm agreement that they were going to play it safe and boring.

It took a few minutes to rig Jean up in a similar fashion; soon enough they were each attached to the tree by two lines, like a pair of human puppets. The two thieves wore little save their tunics, breeches, field boots, and leather gloves, though Jean did pause to slip his reading optics on.

“Now then,” he said. “Seems a fine day for abseiling. Care to do the honors before we kiss solid earth farewell?”

“Crooked Warden,” said Locke, “men are stupid. Protect us from ourselves. If you can't, let it be quick and painless.”

“Well said.” Jean took a deep breath. “Crazy part on three?”

“On three.”

Each of them took up their coiled main line and tossed the free end over the cliff; the two ropes went over and uncoiled with a soft hiss.

“One,” said Locke.

“Two,” said Jean.

“Three,” they said together. Then they ran for the cliff and threw themselves off, whooping as they went.

For one brief moment Locke's stomach and the misty gray sky seemed to be turning a somersault in unison. Then his line was taut and the cliff face was rushing toward him just a little too eagerly for his taste. Like a human pendulum, he swung in, raised his legs, and hit the rock wall about eight feet beneath the rim, keeping his knees bent to absorb the shock of impact. That much, at least, he remembered very well. Jean hit with a heavier
whoomp
about two feet below him.

“Heh,” said Locke, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, loud enough to match the whisper of the wind. “There's got to be an easier way to test whether or not we have an honest rope-weaver, Jean.”

“Whew!” Jean shifted his feet slightly, keeping a hold on his line with both hands. The use of the descenders made it easy for them to apply enough friction to the rope to slow or stop at will. The little devices were a marked improvement on what they'd been taught as boys. While they could still no doubt slide down a rope using their own bodies for friction, as they once had, it was easy to abrade a certain protruding portion of the male anatomy with that approach if one was careless or unlucky.

For a few moments they simply hung there, feet against the cliffside, enjoying their new vantage point as the vaporous clouds rolled by overhead. The ropes waving in the air beneath them only hung down about half the distance to the ground, but they didn't intend to get there today anyway. There would be plenty of time to work up to longer drops, in future practice sessions.

“You know,” said Locke, “this is the only part of the plan, I must admit, that I wasn't terribly sure of. It's so much easier to contemplate abseiling from a height like this than it is to actually run off a cliff with just two lengths of rope between you and Aza Guilla.”

“Ropes and cliffs are no problem,” said Jean. “What we need to watch out for up here are your carnivorous pigeons.”

“Oh, bend over and bite your own ass.”

“I'm serious. I'm terrified. I'll keep a sharp lookout, lest the last thing we feel in this life should be that
terrible swift pecking
—”

“Jean, your belay line must be weighing you down. Here, let me cut it for you….”

They kicked and shoved good-naturedly against one another for a few minutes, Locke scrambling around and trying to use his agility to balance out Jean's far greater strength and mass. Strength and mass seemed to be winning the day, however, so in a fit of self-preservation he suggested they actually practice descending.

“Sure,” said Jean, “let's go down five or six feet, nice and smooth, and stop on my mark, shall we?”

Each of them gripped his taut main line and released a bit of tension on his descender. Slowly, smoothly, they slipped down a good two yards, and Jean cried, “Hold!”

“Not bad,” said Locke. “The knack seems to come back quick, doesn't it?”

“I suppose. I was never really keen on this after I got back from my little holiday at Revelation House. This was more your thing, and the Sanzas', than mine. And, ah, Sabetha's, of course.”

“Yeah,” said Locke, wistfully. “Yeah, she was so mad…so mad and so lovely. I used to love watching her climb. She didn't like ropes. She'd…take her boots off, and let her hair out, and wouldn't even wear gloves, sometimes. Just her breeches and her blouse…and I would just…”

“Sit there hypnotized,” said Jean. “Struck dumb. Hey, my eyes worked back then too, Locke.”

“Heh. I suppose it must have been obvious. Gods.” Locke stared at Jean and laughed nervously. “Gods, I'm actually bringing her up myself. I don't believe it.” His expression turned shrewd. “Are we all right with each other, Jean? Back to being comfortable, I mean?”

“Hell, we're hanging together eighty feet above a messy death, aren't we? I don't do that with people I don't like.”

“That's good to hear.”

“And yeah, I'd say we're—”

“Gentlemen! Hello down there!”

The voice was Verrari, with a rough rustic edge. Locke and Jean glanced up in surprise and saw a man standing at the edge of the cliff, arms akimbo, silhouetted against the churning sky. He wore a threadbare cloak with the hood thrown up.

“Er, hello up there,” said Locke.

“Fine day for a bit of sport, ain't it?”

“That's exactly what we thought,” cried Jean.

“A fine day indeed, beggin' your pardons, sirs. And a fine set o' coats and vests you've gone and left up here. I like them very much, exceptin' that there ain't no purses in the pockets.”

“Of course not, we're not stu—Hey, come on now. Kindly don't mess with our things,” said Jean. As if by some unspoken signal, he and Locke reached out to brace themselves against the cliff, finding hand- and footholds as quickly as they could.

“Why not? They're such fine things, sirs, I just can't help but feel sort of drawn to them, like.”

“If you'll just wait right there,” said Locke, preparing to begin climbing, “one of us should be up in a few minutes, and I'm sure we can discuss this civilly.”

“I'm also sort of drawn to the idea of keepin' you two down there, if it's all the same to you, gents.” The man moved slightly, and a hatchet appeared in his right hand. “It's a mighty fine pair of choppers you've left up here with your coats, too. Damned fine. Ain't never seen the like.”

“That's very polite of you to say,” yelled Locke.

“Oh, sweet jumping fuck,” muttered Jean.

“I might point out, however,” continued Locke, “that our man at the carriage is due to check on us soon, and he'll have his crossbow with him.”

“Oh, you mean the unconscious fellow I like jacked over the head with a rock, sir? Sorry to report that he was drunk.”

“I don't believe you. We didn't give him that much beer!”

“Beggin' pardon, but he weren't all that much
man
, gents. Skinny fellow, if you savvy. As it is, he's sleepin' now. And he didn't have no crossbow anyway. I checked.”

“Well, I hope you don't blame us for trying,” said Locke.

“I don't, not one little bit. Good try. Very creditable, like. But I'm sort of interested, if you don't mind, in the wheres-abouts of your purses.”

“Safely down here with us,” said Locke. “We might be convinced to surrender them, but you'll have to help haul us up if you want them.”

“Now on that subject,” said the stranger, “you an' I have a sort of difference in outlook, like. Since I know you've got 'em, now, I think it's easier to just chop you down and collect 'em at my ease.”

“Unless you're a much better rock climber than you look,” said Jean, “it's one hell of a climb down and back for the sake of our little purses!”

“And they are little,” said Locke. “Our rock-climbing purses. Specially made not to weigh us down. Hardly hold anything!”

“I think we probably got different ideas of what
anythin'
is. And I wouldn't have to climb,” said the stranger. “There's easier ways down to that valley floor, if you know where to go.”

“Ah, don't be foolish,” said Jean. “These ropes are demi-silk. It'll take you some time to cut through them. Longer than it will take for us to climb back up, surely.”

“Probably,” said the man in the cloak. “But I'm still up here if you do, ain't I? I can just crack you over the edge and make your skulls into soup bowls, like. See if I don't!”

“But if we stay down here, we'll die anyway, so we might as well come up and die fighting,” said Locke.