The Gentleman Bastard Series (208 page)

“Village not worth your attention?” said Locke with a sigh.

“Just the opposite,” said Galdo. “We thought we’d fetch a few pieces of silver. Some of these smelly hillside mudfuckers are playing cards at what passes for their tavern.”

“Shouldn’t take much of the old Camorr flash to dazzle ’em,” said Calo, making a small rock appear and disappear from the palm of his hand. “Could roll off in the morning owning half this bloody place.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” said Sabetha.

“What are they gonna do,” said Galdo, “declare war? Look, if we come back in a few months and find out that a hundred swamp country yokels have knocked over the Five Towers, we’ll write a sincere apology.”

“And we only need a few coins anyway,” said Calo, throwing back the tarp over their supplies. “To buy in. After that, we’ll be taking donations, not giving ’em.”

“Hold on,” said Locke. “Since when are you two criminals?”

“Since …” Calo squinted and pretended to calculate. “Sometime between first leaving Mother and hitting the ground between her legs, I imagine.”

“Head first,” added Galdo.

“I know the
Sanzas
are as crooked as a snake in a clockwork snake-bending
machine,” said Locke, “but the
Asino
brothers are actors, not cardsharps.”

“You know how actors make a living between engagements?” said Calo. “Believe me, some of them are flash fucking cardsharps. I learned some of my best stuff from—”

“What I mean,” said Locke, “is that we should all just be actors, and
only
actors. I’ve been thinking about this. No games of opportunity on the way. No more picked pockets. We should draw a line between the people we are in Camorr and the people we are in Espara. When we go home, anyone thinking to follow us back to our real lives should find
nothing
. No hints, no trail.”

“Seems … sensible,” said Galdo.

“And it starts here,” said Locke. “It means we don’t do anything to make ourselves memorable. You really think your yokel friends will simply let you clean them out and send us on our merry way tomorrow morning? Someone’s going to get
cut
, Sanzas. Everyone in this village will be after your skins, and our guards won’t save you. They have to work this route week in and week out. They need these people.”

“He’s right,” said Calo. “I knew it was a dumb fuckin’ plan, you bald degenerate.”

“It was
your
idea, you greedy turd-polisher!”

“Well, at any rate,” said Calo to Locke. “We ain’t following through on it.”

“Then why not start boiling dinner? Or better yet, if you really want to drop a coin in the village, see if you can hunt down some meat that doesn’t come in the form of a brick.”

The Sanzas received this suggestion with enthusiasm, and vanished once again down the winding track to what passed for Tresanconne’s high street. Locke and Sabetha faced one another in their absence, and Locke detected a sudden coolness in her demeanor.

“That right there,” she said, “would be one of the obstacles I mentioned.”

“What?”

“You really didn’t notice?”

“Notice
what
? What am I meant to realize?”

“Think about it,” she said. She crossed her arms again, this time
with her shoulders hunched forward. A protective, unwelcoming gesture. “I’m serious. I’ll give you a moment. Think about it.”

“Think about
what
?”

“Years ago,” said Sabetha, “I was the oldest child in a small gang. I was sent away by my master to train in dancing and manners. When I returned, I found that a younger child had taken my place.”

“But—I hardly—”

“Calo and Galdo, who once treated me as a goddess on earth, had transferred their allegiance to the small newcomer. In time, he got himself a third ally, another boy.”

“That is purest— Why, Jean is devoted to you, as a friend.”

“But not as a
particular
friend,” she said. “Not as he is to you.”

“Is that your obstacle?” Locke felt as though a heavy object had just spun out of the darkness and cracked him on the head. “My friendship with Jean? Does it make you jealous?”

“You listen about as well as you observe,” said Sabetha. “Haven’t you ever noticed that suggestions from me are treated as suggestions, while suggestions from you are taken as a sacred warrant? Even if those suggestions are
identical
?”

“I think you’re being very unfair,” said Locke weakly.

“You saw it just now! I couldn’t dissuade the Sanzas from drinking arsenic on the strength of mere common sense, but they trip over themselves to take your directions. This is
your
gang, Locke—it has been since you arrived, and with Chains’ blessing. You’ve been shaped and groomed as
garrista
for when he’s gone. And as … well, as a priest. His replacement.”

“But I … I had no notion, or intention—”

“Of course not. You haven’t really questioned
anything
since your arrival. You’ve assumed a position of primacy, which is easy to take for granted … until you’re quietly shuffled out of it. After that, I find the matter never quite leaves one’s thoughts.”

“But—I have been worked and tested as sorely as you,” said Locke, fighting to keep his voice down. “As sorely as anyone! Do you remember how long it took me to pay
this
off?” He reached down the front of his tunic and pulled out his shark’s tooth, ensconced in its little leather bag. “Gods above, I could have a city house and a carriage for the
money I poured into this damn thing. And I served as many apprenticeships as—”

“I’m not talking about your
training
, Locke, I know what Chains has done to us all. I’m talking about the way you accepted everything as you accept your own skin. Something natural and undeserving of reflection. Well, let me assure you that the only woman in a house of men has frequent cause for reflection.”

“This is a complete surprise to me,” said Locke.

“I know,” she said softly. “That’s a problem.”

She stared up at the sky, where one of the moons was emerging from behind a low haze of clouds, and Locke had no idea how to begin responding to her.

“A week to go,” she said at last. “A long, slow week of all the pleasures I named earlier. We’re going to be tired, sore, smelly, and bitten half to death by the time we reach Espara. I would … I want to talk to you again, Locke, but I can’t bring myself to make it a subject of hopeful anticipation night after night under these circumstances. Neither of us will be at our best.”

“And this merits our best,” he said grudgingly.

“I think it does. So can we keep it simple while we’re traveling? Eyes on the ground, asses in our seats, and all of these … matters tabled until a later date?”

“You think it’s fair to dump this in my lap and then request a conversational truce?”

“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” she said. “Just necessary.”

“Well, then. If nothing else, it seems I’ll have a lot of time to ruminate on an explanation for you—”

“An explanation? You think what I want out of you is some sort of
defense
? Surely you can see that I’ve explained you already. What comes next is—”

“Yes?”

“I won’t say. I think I need
you
to tell
me
.”

“All you have to do is—”

“No,” she said sharply. “I’ve told you everything you need to know to figure out what comes next. If my words really are like smoldering coals, Locke, then let these ones smolder. Sift them, and bring me an answer sometime after we reach Espara. Bring me a
good
answer.”

3

ESPARA, FORMERLY a seat of prestige only one step below Therim Pel itself, had descended from its imperial years the way some men and women descend into middle-aged lethargy, discarding the vigor and ambition of youth like a suit of clothes that can no longer be wriggled into.

Locke caught his first glimpse of the place just after noon on the tenth day, when the caravan turned the bend between two ruin-studded hills and entered the familiar, irregular green-and-brown whorls of a farming landscape. On the southern horizon lay the faint shapes of towers under curling gray smears of smoke.

“Espara,” said Anatoly Vireska. “Right where I left it. No more stops for rest, my young friends. Before the sun sets you’ll be in the city looking for your actor fellows.”

“Well done, caravan master,” said Locke, who had the reins while Jean was snoring gently under the tarp at the rear of the wagon. “Not what I’d call a scenic tour, but you’ve brought us through without a scratch.”

“When the crop of bandits is thin, it’s a restful little walk. Now it’s back to dodging carriages, breathing smoke, and paying rent for the beds you sleep in, eh?”

“Gods be praised,” said Locke.

“City creatures are the strangest of all,” said Vireska with a friendly shake of his head. He moved off to visit the rest of the wagons.

All the Gentlemen Bastards, more or less as footsore, ass-sore, unwashed, and drained of blood as Sabetha had predicted, had given up on walking this morning. Calo and Galdo leaned against each other, watching the landscape roll by at its strolling pace, while Sabetha was absorbed in the copy of
The Republic of Thieves
she’d picked up before they’d left Camorr.

“Is the play any good?” said Galdo.

“I think so,” said Sabetha, “except the final act has been torn out of this folio, and half the pages have stains blotting out some of the lines. I keep imagining that every scene ends with the characters hurling cups of coffee at one another.”

“Sounds like my kind of play,” said Calo.

“Are there any decent roles?” said Galdo.

“They’re all decent,” said Sabetha. “Better than decent. I think they’re very romantic. We should have names like this, like all the heroes in these plays, all the famous bandits and sorcerers and emperors.”

“Most people could give half a dry shit for having an emperor’s name,” said Galdo. “It’s the wealth and power they’d want.”

“What I mean,” said Sabetha, “is that we should have aliases like out of the old stories. Big, grand titles like the Ten Honest Turncoats, you know? Red Jessa, the Duke of Knaves. Amadine, the Queen of Shadows.”

“I think Verena Gallante’s a fine alias,” said Locke.

“No, I mean
big
and
important
, and
uncommon
. Not something you get called to your face. The sort of alias that people whisper when something unbelievable happens. ‘Oh, gods, this can only be the work of the Duke of Knaves!’ ”

“Heavens,” said Galdo in a deep, dramatic voice, “only one man living could have squeezed forth such a gleaming brown jewel—this is the work of Squatting Calo, the Midnight Shitter!”

“You two want for imagination,” said Sabetha.

“Not at all,” said Galdo. “The lower the enterprise, the hotter the fire of our invention burns.”

“Are you going a bit stir-crazy, Sabetha?” said Locke, secretly pleased to hear the energy in her voice after so many days of brooding tedium.

“Maybe I am. I’ve been stuck in this wagon counting Sanza farts for a week; maybe I’m due a little flight of fancy. I mean, wouldn’t it be grand, to have a legend that grew while you were alive to enjoy it? To sit in a tavern and hear all the people around you speaking of what you’d done, with no notion that you were among them as flesh and blood?”

“I can sit in a tavern and be ignored anytime I please,” muttered Calo.

“I want to see the Kingdom of the Marrows someday,” said Sabetha. “Game my way from city to city … on the arms of nobles, emptying their pockets as I go, charming them witless. I’d be like a force
of nature. They’d come up with some elegant title for their shared affliction. ‘It was
her
 … it was … it was the Rose.’ ”

Sabetha rolled this off her tongue, obviously savoring it.

“The
Rose of the Marrows
, they’ll say. ‘The Rose of the Marrows has been my ruin!’ And they’ll tear their hair out explaining everything to their wives and bankers, while I ride on to the next city.”

“Are we all going to need stupid nicknames, then?” said Calo. “We could be … the Shrubs of the North.”

“The Weeds of Vintila,” said Galdo.

“And if you’re a rose,” said Calo, “Locke’s going to need something as well.”

“He can be a tulip,” said Galdo. “Delicate little tulip.”

“Nah, if she’s the rose, he can be her thorn.” Calo snapped his fingers. “The
Thorn of Camorr
! Now, that’s got some shine to it!”

“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” said Locke.

“We can do it as soon as we get home,” said Calo. “Disguise ourselves. Drop hints in bars. Tell stories here and there. Give us a month and everyone will be talking about the Thorn of Camorr. Even the ones that don’t know shit will just tell more lies, so they can sound like they’re clued in on the latest.”

“If you ever do anything like that,” said Locke, “I swear to all the gods, I will murder you.”

4

JUST AFTER the fourth hour of the afternoon, with the faintest warm drizzle sweating out of the graying sky, their wagon rolled through the mud beneath the stone arch of the Jalaan River Gate on the east side of Espara. Jean was back at the reins, and he bade their horses to halt for a squad of armed men in cloaks.

“What goes, Vireska?” said the evident leader, one of those graceful hulking types, the sort that gave every impression of being able to dance a minuet despite possession of a belly fit for carving into ham steaks. “We could set a water-clock by you. Dull trip, eh?”

“Just the way it ought to be,” said the caravan master as he shook hands with the watchman. The gratuity that instantly vanished into
the heavy fellow’s pocket was generous; Vireska had discussed it back in Camorr and collected an equal portion from each wagon owner. “Now, when you’re poking through everything, watch-sergeant, just be especially delicate with the drugs and the hidden weapons, eh?”

“I promise not to keep you more than ten hours this time,” laughed the big Esparan. His men made an extremely cursory examination of the wagons, clearly more for the benefit of anyone watching than for the enforcement of the city’s customs laws.