The Gentleman Bastard Series 3-Book Bundle: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, The Republic of Thieves (48 page)

Locke scowled. “Preference,” in the parlance of the Right People, meant that the Gentlemen
Bastards would proclaim the Half-Crowns the better, tougher gang; make way for them
on the street and tolerate whatever abuse the Half-Crowns saw fit to heap upon them.

“I’m Locke Lamora,” said Locke as he rose slowly to his feet, “and excepting the capa,
the Gentlemen Bastards bend the knee to nobody.”

“Really?” Tesso feigned shock. “Even with six on three? It’s soft talk, if no’s your
answer.”

“You must not hear very well,” said Calo, as he and his brother stood up in unison.
“He said you get our preference when you pick the peas out of our shit and suck on
’em for dinner.”

“Now that was uncalled-for,” said Tesso, “so I’m gonna make some noise with your skulls.”

Even before he’d finished speaking, the Half-Crowns were moving forward, and it was
six on three at the end of the pier. Locke was the smallest child involved, even counting
the girls, and while he went into the melee with his little fists swinging, he caught
mostly air and was quickly knocked down. One older girl sat on his back, while another
kicked alley grit into his face.

The first boy to reach for Calo got a knee in the groin and went down moaning; right
behind him came Tesso, with a hard right that sent Calo
backward. Galdo tackled Tesso around the waist, howling, and they hit the ground scrabbling
for leverage. “Soft talk” meant no weapons, and no blows that could kill or cripple,
but just about anything else was on the table. The Sanzas were capable brawlers, but
even if Locke had been able to hold up his end of the fight the numbers would have
told against them. In the end, after a few minutes of wrestling and swearing and kicking,
the three Gentlemen Bastards were dumped in the middle of the alley, dusty and battered.

“Right, lads. Preferences, is it? Let’s hear ’em.”

“Go fold yourself in half,” said Locke, “and lick your ass.”

“Oh, that’s the wrong answer, short-wit,” said Tesso, and while one of his boys pinned
Locke’s arms, the leader of the Half-Crowns patted Locke down for coins. “Hmm. Nothing.
Well then, sweetmeats, we’ll be looking for you again tomorrow. And the next day.
And the next. Until you bend the knee, we’ll watch you and we’ll make your lives miserable.
Mark my words, Locke Lamora.”

The Half-Crowns strolled off laughing, a few nursing bruises and sprains, but not
nearly as many as they’d inflicted. The Sanzas arose groaning and helped Locke to
his feet. Warily, they limped back to the House of Perelandro together and slipped
into the glass burrow through a drainage culvert equipped with a secret door.

“You’re not going to believe what happened,” said Locke as he and the Sanzas entered
the dining room. Chains sat at the witchwood table, peering down at a collection of
parchments, carefully scribing on one with a fine-cut quill. Forging customs papers
was a sort of hobby, one he practiced the way some men kept gardens or bred hounds.
He had a leather portfolio full of them, and he occasionally made good silver selling
them.

“Mmmm,” said Chains, “you got your asses walloped by a pack of Half-Crowns.”

“How did you know?”

“Stopped by the Last Mistake last night. Heard about it from the Full Crowns. Told
me their seconds might be sweeping the neighborhoods, looking for other juvies to
push around.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I figured if you were being adequately cautious, they’d never be able to get the
better of you. Looks like your attention was somewhere else.”

“They said they wanted our preferences.”

“Yeah,” said Chains. “It’s a juvie game. Most of the seconds don’t get to pull real
jobs just yet, so they train themselves up by pushing other
seconds around. You should be proud of yourselves; you finally got noticed. Now you’ve
got a little war until one of you cries mercy. Soft talk only, mind you.”

“So,” Locke said slowly, “what should we do?”

Chains reached over and grabbed Locke’s fist, then mimed swinging it into Calo’s jaw.
“Repeat as necessary,” said Chains, “until your problems are spitting up teeth.”

“We
tried
that. And they jumped us while Jean was away. And you know I’m not much good at that
sort of thing.”

“Sure I do. So next time, make sure you’ve got Jean with you. And use that devious
little brain of yours.” Chains began melting a cylinder of sealing wax over a small
candle. “But I don’t want to see anything too elaborate, Locke. Don’t pull the watch
or the temples or the duke’s army or anyone else into it. Try and make it look like
you’re just the pack of ordinary sneak-thieves I tell everyone you are.”

“Oh, great.” Locke folded his arms while Calo and Galdo washed one another’s bruised
faces with wet cloths. “So it’s just another bloody
test
.”

“What a clever boy,” muttered Chains, pouring liquid wax into a tiny silver vessel.
“Of
course
it is. And I’ll personally be very upset if those little shits aren’t begging and
pleading to give you
their
preference before midsummer.”

THE NEXT day, Locke and the Sanza brothers sat on the very same pier at the very same
time. All over the Shifting Market, merchants were hauling down canvas tarps and furling
canopies, for the rains that had drenched the city all night and half the morning
were long gone.

“I must be seeing things,” came the voice of Tesso Volanti, “because I can’t imagine
that you shit-wits would really be sitting there right where we beat the trouser gravy
out of you just yesterday.”

“Why not,” said Locke, “since we’re closer to our turf than yours, and you’re going
to be using your balls for tonsils in about two minutes?”

The three Gentlemen Bastards arose; facing them were the same halfdozen Half-Crowns,
with eager smiles on their faces.

“I see you’re none better at sums than you were when we left you,” said Tesso, cracking
his knuckles.

“Funny you should say that,” said Locke, “since the sums have changed.” He pointed
past the Half-Crowns. Tesso warily shifted his head
to look behind him, but when he saw Jean Tannen standing in the alley behind his gang,
he laughed.

“Still in our favor, I’d say.” He strolled toward Jean, who simply looked at him with
a bland smile on his round face. “What’s this? A fat red bastard. I can see your glass
eyes in your vest pocket. What do you think you’re doing, fatty?”

“My name’s Jean Tannen, and I’m the ambush.”

Long months of training with Don Maranzalla had left Jean looking little different
than when he’d first begun, but Locke and the Sanzas knew that a sort of alchemy had
taken place
beneath
his soft exterior. Tesso stepped within his reach, grinning, and Jean’s arms lashed
out like the brass pistons in a Verrari water-engine.

Tesso reeled backward, arms and legs wobbling like a marionette caught in a high wind.
His head bowed forward; then he simply collapsed in a heap, his eyes rolling back
in their sockets.

A minor sort of hell broke loose in the alley. Three Half-Crown boys charged Locke
and the Sanzas; the two girls approached Jean warily. One of them tried to dash a
handful of alley gravel in his face. He sidestepped, caught her arm, and swung her
easily into one of the alley’s stone walls. One of Don Maranzalla’s lessons: let walls
and streets do the work for you when you fight with empty hands. As she bounced backward,
Jean clothes-lined her with a swift hook from his right arm and sent her face-first
to the gravel.

“It’s
not
polite to hit girls,” said her companion, circling him.

“It’s even less polite to hit my friends,” said Jean.

She replied by pivoting on her left heel and snapping a swift kick at his throat;
he recognized the art called
chasson
, a sort of foot-boxing imported from Tal Verrar. He deflected the kick with the palm
of his right hand, and she whirled into a second, using the momentum from her first
to send her left leg whirling up and around. But Jean was moving past it before she
struck. Her thigh rather than her foot slapped into his side, and he snaked his left
arm around it. While she flailed for balance, he let her have a vicious kidney punch,
and then he hooked her right leg out from beneath her, sending her to the gravel on
her back, where she lay writhing in pain.

“Ladies,” said Jean, “you must accept my deepest apologies.”

Locke, as usual, was getting the worst of his encounter, until Jean grabbed his opponent
by the shoulder and spun him around. Jean wrapped his heavy arms around the boy’s
waist and planted a head-butt in
the boy’s solar plexus. No sooner did the Half-Crown gasp in pain than Jean straightened
up, cracking the boy’s chin against the back of his head. The boy fell backward, dazed,
and at that point the issue was decided. Calo and Galdo had been evenly matched with
their opponents; when Jean suddenly loomed before them (with Locke at his side doing
his best to look dangerous), the Half-Crowns scrambled back and put their hands in
the air.

“Well, Tesso,” said Locke when the curly-haired boy arose a few minutes later, bloody-nosed
and wobbly, “will you be giving over your preference now, or shall I let Jean beat
on you some more?”

“I admit it was well done,” said Tesso as his gang limped into a semicircle behind
him, “but I’d call us even at one and one. You’ll see us again soon.”

SO THE battle went, as the days lengthened and spring turned into summer. Chains excused
the boys from sitting the steps with him after the first hour of the afternoon, and
they began roaming the north of Camorr, hunting Half-Crowns with vigor.

Tesso responded by unleashing the full strength of his little band. The Full Crowns
were the largest real gang in Camorr, and their seconds had a comparable pool of recruits,
some of them fresh from Shades’ Hill. Even with the weight of numbers, however, the
prowess of Jean Tannen was hard to answer, and so the nature of the battle changed.

The Full Crowns split into smaller groups, attempting to isolate and ambush the Gentlemen
Bastards when they weren’t together. For the most part, Locke kept his gang close
at hand, but sometimes individual errands were unavoidable. Locke was beaten fairly
badly on several occasions; he came to Jean one afternoon nursing a split lip and
a pair of bruised shins.

“Look,” he said, “it’s been a few days since we had any piece of Tesso. So here’s
what we’re going to do. I’m going to lurk just south of the market tomorrow and look
like I’m up to something. You’re going to hide a long way off, two or three hundred
yards maybe. Somewhere they can’t possibly spot you.”

“I’ll never get to you in time,” said Jean.

“The point isn’t to get to me before I get beaten,” said Locke. “The point is, when
you
do
get there, you pound the crap out of him. You beat
him so hard they’ll hear the screaming in Talisham. Smack him around like you’ve never
smacked him before.”

“With pleasure,” said Jean, “but it won’t happen. They’ll only run away when they
see me coming, as always. The one thing I can’t do is keep up with them on foot.”

“Just you leave that to me,” said Locke, “and fetch your sewing kit. There’s something
I need you to do for me.”

SO IT was that Locke Lamora lurked in an alley on an overcast day, very near to the
place where the whole affair with the Half-Crowns had started. The Shifting Market
was doing a brisk business, as folk attempted to get their shopping done before the
sky started pouring down rain. Out there somewhere, watching Locke with comfortable
anonymity from a little cockleshell boat, was Jean Tannen.

Locke only had to lurk conspicuously for half an hour before Tesso found him.

“Lamora,” he said. “I thought you’d know better by now. I don’t see any of your friends
in the neighborhood.”

“Tesso. Hello.” Locke yawned. “I think today’s the day you’ll be giving over your
preference to me.”

“In a pig’s fucking eye,” said the older boy. “You know I don’t even need help to
knock you flat. What I think I’m going to do is take your clothes when I’m done and
throw them in a canal. That’ll be right humorous. Hell, the longer you put off bending
the knee, the more fun I can have with you.”

He advanced confidently to the attack, knowing that Locke had never once so much as
kept up with him in a fight. Locke met him head-on, shaking the left sleeve of his
coat strangely. That sleeve was actually five feet longer than usual, courtesy of
Jean Tannen’s alterations; Locke had kept it cleverly folded against his side to conceal
its true nature as Tesso approached.

Although Locke had few gifts as a fighter, he could be startlingly fast, and the cuff
of his sleeve had a small lead weight sewn into it to aid him in casting it. He flung
it forth, wrapping it around Tesso’s chest beneath the taller boy’s arms. The lead
weight carried it around as it stretched taut, and Locke caught it in his left hand.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tesso huffed. He clouted Locke just above
his right eye; Locke flinched but ignored the pain. He slipped the extended sleeve
into a loop of cloth that hung out of his coat’s left pocket, folded it back over
itself, and pulled another cord just below it. The network of knotted cords that Jean
had sewn inside his coat’s lining cinched tight; now the boys were chest to chest,
and nothing short of a knife could free Tesso from the loop of thick cloth that tied
them together.

Locke wrapped his arms around Tesso’s abdomen for good measure, and then wrapped his
spindly legs around Tesso’s legs, just above the taller boy’s knees. Tesso shoved
and slapped at Locke, struggling to part the two of them. Failing, he began punching
Locke in the teeth and on the top of his head—heavy blows that left Locke seeing flashes
of light.

“What the hell
is
this, Lamora?” Tesso grunted with the effort of supporting Locke’s weight in addition
to his own. Finally, as Locke had hoped and expected, he threw himself forward. Locke
landed on his back in the gravel, with Tesso atop him. The air burst out of Locke’s
lungs, and the whole world seemed to shudder. “This is ridiculous. You can’t fight
me. And now you can’t run! Give up, Lamora!”