Red Seas Under Red Skies (9 page)

“Huh.” Jean opened the door, slipped out into the hall, and turned once before leaving for good. “I take some of it back,” he said. “You might still be a lying, cheating, low-down, greedy, grasping, conniving, pocket-picking son of a bitch.”

“Thanks,” said Locke.

7

A DRIZZLE
was pattering softly around them as they walked out through Vel Virazzo's north gate a few hours later. Sunrise was a watery line of yellow on the eastern horizon, under scudding charcoal clouds. Purple-jacketed soldiers stared down in revulsion from atop the city's fifteen-foot wall; the heavy wooden door of the small sally-port slammed shut behind them as though it too was glad to be quit of them.

Locke and Jean were both dressed in tattered cloaks, and wrapped in bandagelike fragments from a dozen torn-up sheets and pieces of clothing. A thin coating of boiled apple mash, still warm, soaked through some of the “bandages” on their arms and chests, and was plastered liberally over their faces. Sloshing around wearing a layer of the stuff under cloth was disgusting, but there was no better disguise to be had in all the world.

Slipskin was a painful, incurable disease, and those afflicted with it were even less tolerated than lepers. Had Locke and Jean approached from outside Vel Virazzo's walls, they never would have been let in. As it was, the guards had no interest in how they'd entered the city in the first place; they'd nearly stumbled over themselves in their haste to see them gone.

The outer city was an unhappy-looking place: a few blocks of crumbling one- and two-story buildings, decorated here and there with the makeshift windmill towers favored in these parts for driving bellows over forges and ovens. Smoke sketched a few curling gray lines in the wet air overhead, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Beyond the city, where the cobbles of the old Therin Throne road became a wet dirt track, Locke could see scrubland, interrupted here and there by rocky clefts and piles of debris.

Their coins—and all of their other small goods worth transporting—were tucked into a little bag tied under Jean's clothes, where no guardsman would dare search, not even if a superior stood behind him with a drawn sword and ordered it on pain of death.

“Gods,” Locke muttered as they trudged along beside the road, “I'm getting too tired to think straight. I really have let myself slouch out of condition.”

“Well,” said Jean, “you're going to get some exercise these next few days, whether you like it or not. How're the wounds?”

“They itch,” said Locke. “This damn mush does them little good, I suspect. Still, it's not as bad as it was. A few hours of motion seems to have had some benefit.”

“Wise in the ways of all such things is Jean Tannen,” said Jean. “Wiser by far than most; especially most named Lamora.”

“Shut your fat, ugly, inarguably wiser face,” said Locke. “Mmmm. Look at those idiots scamper away from us.”

“Would you do otherwise, if you saw a pair of real slipskinners by the side of the road?”

“Eh. I suppose not. Damn these aching feet, too.”

“Let's get a mile or two outside town, then find a place to rest. Once we've put some leagues under our heels, we can ditch this mush and pose as respectable travelers again. Any idea where you want to strike out for?”

“I should've thought it was obvious,” said Locke. “These little towns are for pikers. We're after gold and white iron, not clipped coppers. Let's make for Tal Verrar. Something's bound to present itself there.”

“Mmm. Tal Verrar. Well, it is close.”

“Camorri have a long and glorious history of kicking the piss out of our poor Verrari cousins, so I say, on to Tal Verrar,” said Locke. “And glory.” They walked on a ways under the tickling mist of the morning drizzle. “And baths.”

CHAPTER TWO

REQUIN

1

THOUGH LOCKE SAW
that Jean remained as unsettled by their experience in the Night Market as he was, they spoke no further of the matter. There was a job to be done, and they were up at the crack of dusk the next day.

The close of the working day for honest men and women in Tal Verrar was just the beginning of theirs. It had been strange at first, getting used to the rhythm of a city where the sun simply fell beneath the horizon like a quiescent murder victim each night, without the glow of Falselight to mark its passing. But Tal Verrar had been built to different tastes or needs than Camorr, and its Elderglass simply mirrored the sky, raising no light of its own.

Their suite at the Villa Candessa was high-ceilinged and opulent; at five silver volani a night nothing less was to be expected. Their fourth-floor window overlooked a cobbled courtyard in which carriages, studded with lanterns and outriding mercenary guards, came and went with echoing clatters.

“Bondsmagi,” muttered Jean as he tied on his neck-cloths before a looking glass. “I'll never hire one of the bastards to do so much as heat my tea, not if I live to be richer than the duke of Camorr.”

“Now there's a thought,” said Locke, who was already dressed and sipping coffee. A full day of sleep had done wonders for his head. “If we were richer than the duke of Camorr, we could hire a whole pack of them and give them instructions to go lose themselves on a desolate fucking island somewhere.”

“Mmm. I don't think the gods made any islands desolate enough for my tastes.”

Jean finished his neck-cloths with one hand and reached for his breakfast with the other. One of the odder services the Villa Candessa provided for its long-term guests was its “likeness cakes”—little frosted simulacra fashioned after the guests by the inn's Camorr-trained pastry sculptor. On a silver tray beside the looking glass, a little sweetbread Locke (with raisin eyes and almond-butter blond hair) sat beside a rounder Jean with dark chocolate hair and beard. The baked Jean's legs were already missing.

A few moments later, Jean was brushing the last buttery crumbs from the front of his coat. “Alas, poor Locke and Jean.”

“They died of consumption,” said Locke.

“I do wish I could be there to see it when you talk to Requin and Selendri, you know.”

“Hmmm. Can I trust you to still be in Tal Verrar by the time I get finished?” He tried to leaven the question with a smile, only partially succeeding.

“You know I won't go anywhere,” said Jean. “I'm still not sure it's wise. But you know I won't.”

“I do. I'm sorry.” He finished his coffee and set the cup down. “And my chat with Requin isn't going to be that terribly interesting.”

“Nonsense. I heard a smirk in your voice. Other people smirk when their work is finished; you grin like an idiot just before yours really begins.”

“Smirking? I'm as slack-cheeked as a corpse. I'm just looking forward to being done with it. Tedious business. I anticipate a dull meeting.”

“Dull meeting, my ass. Not after you walk straight up to the lady with the brass bloody hand and say, ‘Excuse me, madam, but…'”

2

“I HAVE
been cheating,” said Locke. “Steadily. At every single game I've played since my partner and I first came to the Sinspire, two years ago.”

Receiving a piercing stare from Selendri was a curious thing; her left eye was nothing but a dark hollow, half-covered with a translucent awning that had once been a lid. Her single good eye did the work of two, and damned if it wasn't unnerving.

“Are you deaf, madam? Every single one. Cheating. All the way up and down this precious Sinspire, cheating floor after floor, taking your other guests for a very merry ride.”

“I wonder,” she said in her slow, witchy whisper, “if you truly understand what it means to say that to me, Master Kosta. Are you drunk?”

“I'm as sober as a suckling infant.”

“Is this something you've been put up to?”

“I am completely serious,” said Locke. “And it's your master I would speak to about my motivations. Privately.”

The sixth floor of the Sinspire was quiet. Locke and Selendri were alone, with four of Requin's uniformed attendants waiting about twenty feet away. It was still too early in the evening for this level's rarefied crowd to have finished their slow, carousing migration up through the livelier levels.

At the heart of the sixth floor was a tall sculpture within a cylinder of transparent Elderglass. Though the glass could not be worked by human arts, there were literally millions of cast-off fragments and shaped pieces scattered around the world, some of which could be conveniently fitted to human use. There were Elderglass scavenging guilds in several cities, capable of filling special needs in exchange for exorbitant fees.

Within the cylinder was something Locke could only describe as a
copperfall
—it was a sculpture of a rocky waterfall, taller than a man, in which the rocks were shaped entirely from silver volani coins, and the “water” was a constant heavy stream of copper centira, thousands upon thousands of them. The clatter within the soundproof glass enclosure must have been tremendous, but for those on the outside the show proceeded in absolute silence. Some mechanism in the floor was catching the stream of coins and recirculating it up the back of the silver “rocks.” It was eccentric and hypnotic…. Locke had never before known anyone to decorate a room with a literal pile of money.

“Master? You presume that I have one.”

“You know I mean Requin.”

“He would be the first to correct your presumption. Violently.”

“A private audience would give us a chance to clear up several misunderstandings, then.”

“Oh, Requin will certainly speak to you—
very
privately.” Selendri snapped the fingers of her right hand twice and the four attendants converged on Locke. Selendri pointed up; two of them took firm hold of his arms, and together they began to lead him up the stairs. Selendri followed a few steps behind.

The seventh floor was dominated by another sculpture within an even wider Elderglass enclosure. This one seemed to be a circle of volcanic islands, again built from silver volani, floating in a sea of solid-gold solari. Each of the silver peaks had a stream of gold coins bubbling from its top, to fall back down into the churning, gleaming “ocean.” Requin's guards maintained a pace too vigorous for Locke to catch many more details of the sculpture or the room; they passed another pair of uniformed attendants beside the stairwell and continued up.

At the heart of the eighth floor was a third spectacle within glass, the largest yet. Locke blinked several times and suppressed an appreciative chuckle.

It was a stylized sculpture of Tal Verrar, silver islands nestled in a sea of gold coins. Standing over the model city, bestriding it like a god, was a life-sized marble sculpture of a man Locke recognized immediately. The statue, like the man, had prominent curving cheekbones that lent the narrow face a sense of mirth—plus a round protruding chin, wide eyes, and large ears that seemed to have been jammed into the head at right angles. Requin, whose features bore a fair resemblance to a marionette put together in haste by a somewhat irate puppeteer.

The statue's hands were held outward at the waist, spread forward, and from the flaring stone cuffs around them two solid streams of gold coins were continually gushing onto the city below.

Locke, staring, only avoided tripping over his own feet because the attendants holding him chose that moment to tighten their grip. Atop the eighth-floor stairs was a pair of lacquered wooden doors. Selendri strode past Locke and the attendants. To the left of the door was a small silver panel in the wall; Selendri slid her brass hand into it, let it settle into some sort of mechanism, and then gave it a half-turn to the left. There was a clatter of clockwork devices within the wall, and the doors cracked open.

“Search him,” she said as she vanished through the doors without turning around.

Locke was rapidly stripped of his coat; he was then poked, prodded, sifted, and patted down more thoroughly than he'd been during his last visit to a brothel. His sleeve-stiletto (a perfectly ordinary thing for a man of consequence to carry) was confiscated, his purse was shaken out, his shoes were slipped off, and one attendant even ran his hands through Locke's hair. When this process was finished, Locke (shoeless, coatless, and somewhat disheveled) was given a less-than-gentle shove toward the doors Selendri had vanished through.

Past them was a dark space not much larger than a wardrobe closet. A winding black iron staircase, wide enough for one person, rose up from the floor toward a square of soft yellow light. Locke padded up the stairs and emerged into Requin's office.

This place took up the whole of the ninth floor of the Sinspire; an area against the far wall, curtained off with silk drapes, probably served as a bedroom. There was a balcony door on the right-hand wall, covered by a sliding mesh screen. Locke could see a wide, darkened sweep of Tal Verrar through it, so he presumed it looked east.

Every other wall of the office, as he'd heard, was liberally decorated with oil paintings—nearly twenty of them around the visible periphery of the room, in elaborate frames of gilded wood—masterworks of the late Therin Throne years, when nearly every noble at the emperor's court had kept a painter or sculptor on the leash of patronage, showing them off like pets. Locke hadn't the training to tell one from another by sight, but rumor had it that there were two Morestras and a Ventathis on Requin's walls. Those two artists—along with all their sketches, books of theory, and apprentices—had died centuries before, in the firestorm that had consumed the imperial city of Therim Pel.

Selendri stood beside a wide wooden desk the color of a fine coffee, cluttered with books and papers and miniature clockwork devices. A chair was pushed out behind it, and Locke could see the remnants of a dinner—some sort of fish on a white iron plate, paired with a half-empty bottle of pale golden wine.

Selendri touched her flesh hand to her brass simulacrum, and there was a clicking noise. The hand folded apart like the petals of a gleaming flower. The fingers locked into place along the wrist and revealed a pair of blackened-steel blades, six inches long, previously concealed at the heart of the hand. Selendri waved these like a claw and gestured for Locke to stand before the desk, facing it.

“Master Kosta.” The voice came from somewhere behind him, within the silk-curtained enclosure. “What a pleasure! Selendri tells me you've expressed an interest in getting
killed
.”

“Hardly, sir. All I told your assistant was that I had been cheating steadily, along with my partner, at the games we've been playing in your Sinspire. For nearly the last two years.”

“Every game,” said Selendri. “You said every single game.”

“Ah, well,” said Locke with a shrug, “it just sounded more dramatic that way. It was more like
nearly
every game.”

“This man is a clown,” whispered Selendri.

“Oh, no,” said Locke. “Well, maybe occasionally. But not now.”

Locke heard footsteps moving toward his back across the room's hardwood floor. “You're here on a bet,” said Requin, much closer.

“Not in the way that you mean, no.”

Requin stepped around Locke and stood before him, hands behind his back, peering at Locke very intently. The man was a virtual twin of his statue on the floor below; perhaps a few pounds heavier, with the bristling curls of steel-gray hair atop his head receding more sharply. His narrow frock coat was crushed black velvet, and his hands were covered with brown leather gloves. He wore optics, and Locke was surprised to see that the glimmer he had taken for reflected light the night before was actually imbued within the glass. They glowed a translucent orange, giving a demonic cast to the wide eyes behind them. Some fresh, expensive alchemy Locke had never heard of, no doubt.

“Did you drink anything unusual tonight, Master Kosta? An unfamiliar wine, perhaps?”

“Unless the water of Tal Verrar itself intoxicates, I'm as dry as baked sand.”

Requin moved behind his desk, picked up a small silver fork, speared a white morsel of fish, and pointed at Locke with it.

“So, if I'm to believe you, you've been successfully cheating here for two years, and aside from the sheer impossibility of that claim, now you just want to give yourself up to me. Case of conscience?”

“Not even remotely.”

“An earnest wish for an elaborate suicide?”

“I aim to leave this office alive.”

“Oh, you wouldn't necessarily be dead until you hit the cobblestones nine stories below.”

“Perhaps I can convince you I'm worth more to you intact.”

Requin chewed his fish before speaking again.

“Just how have you been cheating, Master Kosta?”

“Fast-fingers work, mostly.”

“Really? I can tell a cardsharp's fingers at a glance. Let's see that right hand of yours.” Requin held out his gloved left hand, and Locke hesitantly put his own forward, as though they might shake.

Requin snatched Locke's right hand above the wrist and slammed it down atop his desk—but rather than the sharp rap Locke expected, his hand tipped aside some sort of disguised panel and slid into an aperture just beneath the surface of the desk. There was a loud
clack
of clockwork, and a cold pressure pinched his wrist. Locke jerked back, but the desk had swallowed his hand like the unyielding maw of a beast. Selendri's twin steel claws turned casually toward him, and he froze.

“There now. Hands, hands, hands. They get their owners into such trouble, Master Kosta. Selendri and I are two who would know.” Requin turned to the wall behind his desk and slid back a lacquered wood panel, revealing a long, shallow shelf set into the wall.