The Lies of Locke Lamora (34 page)

“Must he?” Calo scratched a stubbly chin. “How far do you figure we can get if we run like hell?”

“From the Gray King, who knows?” Locke sighed. “From the Bondsmage, not far enough, ever.”

“So we just sit back,” said Jean, “and let him pull your strings, like a marionette onstage.”

“I was rather taken,” said Locke, “with the whole idea of him not telling Capa Barsavi about our confidence games, yes.”

“This whole thing is mad,” said Galdo. “You said you saw three rings on this Falconer’s wrist?”

“The one that didn’t have the damn scorpion hawk, yeah.”

“Three rings,” Jean muttered. “It
is
mad. To keep one of those people in service…. It must be two months now since the first stories of the Gray King appeared. Since the first
garrista
got it…. Who was it, again?”

“Gil the Cutter, from the Rum Hounds,” said Calo.

“The coin involved has to be…ludicrous. I doubt the
duke
could keep a Bondsmage of rank on for this long. So who the fuck is this Gray King, and how is he
paying
for this?”

“Immaterial,” said Locke. “Three nights hence, or two and a half now that the sun’s coming up, there’ll be two Gray Kings, and I’ll be one of them.”

“Thirteen,” said Jean. He put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes with his palms.

“So that’s the bad news. Capa Barsavi wants me to marry his daughter and now the Gray King wants me to impersonate him at a secret meeting with Capa Barsavi.” Locke grinned. “The good news is I didn’t get any blood on that new promissory note for four thousand crowns.”

“I’ll kill him,” said Bug. “Get me poisoned quarrels and an alley-piece and I’ll drill him in the eyes.”

“Bug,” said Locke, “that makes leaping off a temple roof sound reasonable by comparison.”

“But who would ever expect it?” Bug, sitting beneath one of the room’s eastern windows, turned his head to stare out it for a few moments, as he had been intermittently doing all night. “Look, everyone knows that one of
you
four could kill them. But nobody would
expect
me! Total surprise. One shot in the face, no more Gray King!”

“Assuming the Falconer allowed your crossbow bolts to hit his client,” said Locke, “he would probably cook us where we stood right after that. Also, I very much doubt that fucking bird is going to be fluttering around this tower where we can see it.”

“You never know,” said Bug. “I think I saw it before, when we made first touch on Don Salvara.”

“I’m pretty sure I did, too.” Calo was knuckle-walking a solon on his left hand, without looking at it. “While I was strangling you, Locke. Something flew overhead. Damn big and fast for a wren or a sparrow.”

“So,” said Jean, “he really has been watching us and he really knows all there is to know about us. Knuckling under might be wiser for the time being, but we’ve got to have
some
contingencies we can cook up.”

“Should we call off the Don Salvara game
now
?” asked Bug, meekly.

“Hmmm? No.” Locke shook his head vigorously. “There’s absolutely no reason, for the time being.”

“How,” said Galdo, “do you figure that?”

“The reason we discussed shortening the game was to keep our heads down and try to avoid getting killed by the Gray King. Now we can be pretty
damn
sure that won’t happen, at least not for three days. So the Salvara game stays in play.”

“For three days, yes. Until the Gray King has no further use for you.” Jean spat. “Next step in whatever the plans are: ‘Thanks for your cooperation, here’s a complimentary knife in the back for
all
of you.’”

“It’s a possibility,” said Locke. “So what we do is this: Jean, you scuttle around today after you’ve had some sleep. Cancel those arrangements for sea travel. If we need to run, waiting for a ship to put out will take too long. Likewise, drop more gold at the Viscount’s Gate. If we go out, we go out by land, and I want that gate swinging wider and faster than a whorehouse door.

“Calo, Galdo, you find us a wagon. Stash it behind the temple; set it up with tarps and rope for fast packing. Get us food and drink for the road. Simple stuff, sturdy stuff. Spare cloaks. Plain clothing. You know what to do. If any Right People spot you at work, maybe drop a hint that we’re after a fat score in the next few days. Barsavi would like that, if it gets back to him.

“Bug, tomorrow you and I are going to go through the vault. We’ll bring up every coin in there, and we’re going to pack them in canvas sacks, for easy transport. If we have to run, I want to be able to throw the whole mess on the back of our wagon in just a few minutes.”

“Makes sense,” said Bug.

“So, Sanzas, you stick together,” said Locke. “Bug, you’re with me. Nobody goes it alone, for any length of time, except Jean. You’re the least likely to get troubled, if the Gray King’s got anything less than an army hidden in the city.”

“Oh, you know me.” Jean reached behind his neck, down behind the loose leather vest he wore over his simple cotton tunic. He withdrew a pair of matching hatchets, each a foot and a half in length, with leather-wrapped handles and straight black blades that narrowed like scalpels. These were balanced with balls of blackened steel, each as wide around as a silver solon. The Wicked Sisters—Jean’s weapons of choice. “I never travel alone. It’s always the three of us.”

“Right, then.” Locke yawned. “If we need any other bright ideas, we can conjure them when we wake up. Let’s set something heavy against the door, shut the windows, and start snoring.”

The Gentlemen Bastards had just stumbled to their feet to begin putting this sensible plan into action when Jean held up one hand for silence. The stairs outside the door on the north wall of the chamber were creaking under the weight of many feet. A moment later, someone was banging on the door itself.

“Lamora,” came a loud male voice, “open up! Capa’s business!”

Jean slipped his hatchets into one hand and put that hand behind his back, then stood against the north wall, a few feet to the right of the door. Calo and Galdo reached under their shirts for their daggers, Galdo pushing Bug back behind him as they did so. Locke stood in the center of the room, remembering that his stilettos were still wrapped up in his Fehrwight coat.

“What’s the price of a loaf,” he shouted, “at the Shifting Market?”

“One copper flat, but the loaves ain’t dry,” came the response. Locke untensed just a bit—that was this week’s proper greeting and countersign, and if they’d been coming to haul him off for anything bloody, well, they’d have simply kicked in the door. Signaling with his hands for everyone to stay calm, he drew out the bolt and slid the front door open just wide enough to peek out.

There were four men on the platform outside his door, seventy feet in the air above the Last Mistake. The sky was the color of murky canal water behind them, with just a few twinkling stars vanishing slowly here and there. They were hard-looking men, standing ready and easy like trained fighters, wearing leather tunics, leather collars, and red cloth bandannas under black leather caps. Red Hands—the gang Barsavi turned to when he needed muscle work and he needed it fast.

“Begging your pardon, brother.” The apparent leader of the Red Hands put one arm up against the door. “Big man wants to see Locke Lamora right this very moment, and he don’t care what state he’s in, and he won’t let us take no for an answer.”

Jean Tannen

IN THE year that followed Locke grew, but not as much as he would have liked. Although it was difficult to guess his true age with any hope of accuracy, it was obvious that he was more than a little runty for it.

“You missed a few meals, in your very early years,” Chains told him. “You’ve done much better since you came here, to be sure, but I suspect you’ll always be a bit on the…medium side.”

“Always?”

“Don’t be too upset.” Chains put his hands on his own round belly and chuckled. “A little man can slip out of a pinch that a greater man might find inescapable.”

There was further schooling. More sums, more history, more maps, more languages. Once Locke and the Sanzas had a firm grasp of conversational Vadran, Chains began having them instructed in the art of accents. A few hours each week were spent in the company of an old Vadran sail-mender who would chide them for their “fumble-mouthed mangling” of the northern tongue while he drove his long, wicked needles through yard upon yard of folded canvas. They would chat about any subject on the old man’s mind, and he would fastidiously correct every consonant that was too short and every vowel that was too long. He would also get steadily more red-faced and belligerent as each session went on, for Chains paid him in wine for his services.

There were trials—some trivial and some quite harsh. Chains tested his boys constantly, almost ruthlessly, but when he was finished with each new conundrum he always took them to the temple roof to explain what he’d wanted, what the hardships signified. His openness after the fact made his games easier to bear, and they had the added effect of uniting Locke, Calo, and Galdo against the world around them. The more Chains tightened the screws, the closer the boys grew, the more smoothly they worked together, the less they had to say out loud to set a plan in motion.

The coming of Jean Tannen changed all that.

It was the month of Saris in the Seventy-seventh Year of Iono, the end of an unusually dry and cool autumn. Storms had lashed the Iron Sea but spared Camorr, by some trick of the winds or the gods, and the nights were finer than any in Locke’s living memory. He was sitting the steps with Father Chains, flexing his fingers, eagerly awaiting the rise of Falselight, when he spotted the Thiefmaker walking across the square toward the House of Perelandro.

Two years had removed some of the dread Locke had once felt toward his former master, but there was no denying that the skinny old fellow retained a certain grotesque magnetism. The Thiefmaker’s spindly fingers spread as he bowed from the waist, and his eyes lit up when they seized on Locke.

“My dear, bedeviling little boy, what a
pleasure
it is to see you leading a productive life in the Order of Perelandro.”

“He owes his success to your early discipline, of course.” Chains’ smile spread beneath his blindfold. “It’s what helped to make him the resolute and morally upright youth he is today.”

“Upright?” The Thiefmaker squinted at Locke, feigning concentration. “I’d be hard-pressed to say he’s grown an inch. But no matter. I’ve brought you the boy we discussed, the one from the North Corner. Step forward, Jean.
You
can’t hide behind
me
any more than you could hide under a copper coin.”

There was indeed a boy standing behind the Thiefmaker; when the old man shooed him out into plain view, Locke saw that he was about his own age, perhaps ten, and in every other respect his opposite. The new boy was fat, red-faced, shaped like a dirty pear with a greasy mop of black hair atop his head. His eyes were wide and shocked; he clenched and unclenched his soft hands nervously.

“Ahhh,” said Chains, “ahhh. I can’t see him, but then, the qualities the Lord of the Overlooked desires in his servants cannot be seen by any man. Are you
penitent
, my boy? Are you sincere? Are you as upright as those our charitable celestial master has
already
taken into his fold?”

He gave Locke a pat on the back, manacles and chains rattling. Locke, for his part, stared at the newcomer and said nothing.

“I hope so, sir,” said Jean, in a voice that was soft and haunted.

“Well,” said the Thiefmaker, “hope is what we all build lives for ourselves upon, is it not? The good Father Chains is your master now, boy. I leave you to his care.”

“Not mine, but that of the higher Power I serve,” said Chains. “Oh, before you leave, I just
happened
to find this purse sitting on my temple steps earlier today.” He held out a fat little leather bag, stuffed with coins, and waved it in the Thiefmaker’s general direction. “Is it yours, by chance?”

“Why, so it is! So it is!” The Thiefmaker plucked the purse from Chains’ hands and made it vanish into the pockets of his weather-eaten coat. “What a fortunate coincidence that is.” He bowed once more, turned, and began to walk back in the direction of Shades’ Hill, whistling tunelessly.

Chains arose, rubbed his legs, and clapped his hands. “Let us call an end to our public duties for the day. Jean, this is Locke Lamora, one of my initiates. Please help him carry this kettle in to the sanctuary. Careful, it’s heavy.”

The thin boy and the fat boy heaved the kettle up the steps and into the damp sanctuary; the Eyeless Priest groped along his chains, gathering the slack and dragging it with him until he was safely inside. Locke worked the wall mechanism to slide the temple doors shut, and Chains settled himself down in the middle of the sanctuary floor.

“The kindly gentleman,” said Chains, “who delivered you into my care said that you could speak, read, and write in three languages.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jean, gazing around him in trepidation. “Therin, Vadran, and Issavrai.”

“Very good. And you can do complex sums? Ledger-balancing?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Then you can help me count the day’s takings. But first, come over here and give me your hand. That’s it. Let us see if you have any of the gifts necessary to become an initiate of this temple, Jean Tannen.”

“What…what must I do?”

“Simply place your hands on my blindfold…. No, stand easy. Close your eyes. Concentrate. Let whatever virtuous thoughts you have within you bubble to the surface….”

“I DON’T like him,” said Locke. “I don’t like him at all.”

He and Chains were preparing the breakfast meal early the next morning; Locke was simmering up a soup from sliced onions and irregular little brown cubes of reduced beef stock, while Chains was attempting to crack the wax seal on a honey crock. His bare fingers and nails having failed, he was hacking at it with a stiletto and muttering to himself.