The Lies of Locke Lamora (39 page)

Chains pretended to wipe the blood from his ember-tipped “blade,” then took another drag. “That’s that. Put it in your hat and wear it to town, Locke. We need to face our shortcomings head-on. The old saying for a gang is ‘Lies go out, but the truth stays home.’” He forced twin streams of smoke from his nostrils, and cheered up visibly as the tails of gray vapor swirled around his head. “Now quit acting like there’s a fucking naked woman on your shoes, will you?”

Locke did grin at that, weakly, but he also looked up and nodded.

“Now, you,” Chains said, turning to regard Jean. “We all know you’ve got the sort of temper that cracks skulls when it’s off the leash. We’ve got a properly evil brain in Locke here, a fantastic liar. Calo and Galdo are silver at all trades and gold at none. Sabetha’s the born queen of all the charmers that ever lived. But what we
don’t
have yet is a plain old bruiser. I think it could be you, a stand-up brawler to keep your friends out of trouble. A real rabid-dog bastard with steel in your hand. Care to give it a go?”

Jean’s eyes were immediately drawn down to the fascinating spectacle of his own feet. “Um, well, if you think that would be good, I can try….”

“Jean, I’ve seen you angry.”

“I’ve
felt
you angry,” said Locke, grinning.

“And give me some credit for being five times your fucking age, Jean. You don’t smolder and you don’t make threats; you just go cold, and then you make things
happen
. Some folks are made for hard situations.” He drew smoke from his sheaf once again, and flicked white ashes to the stones beneath his feet. “I think you have the knack for smacking brains out of heads. That’s neither good nor bad in itself, but it’s something we can use.”

Jean seemed to think this over for a few moments, but Locke and Chains could both see the decision already made in his eyes. They had gone hard and hungry under his black tangle of hair, and his nod was just a formality.

“Good, good! Thought you’d like the idea, so I took the liberty of making arrangements.” He produced a black leather wallet from one of the pockets of his coat and handed it over to Jean. “Half past noon tomorrow, you’re expected at the House of Glass Roses.”

Locke and Jean both widened their eyes at the mention of Camorr’s best-known and most exclusive school of arms. Jean flipped the sigil-wallet open. Inside was a flat token, a stylized rose in frosted glass, fused directly onto the inner surface of the leather. With this, Jean could pass north over the Angevine and past the guardposts to the Alcegrante islands. It placed him under the direct protection of Don Tomsa Maranzalla, Master of the House of Glass Roses.

“That rose will get you over the river and up among the swells, but don’t fuck around once you’re up there. Do what you’re told; go straight there and come straight back. You go four times a week from now on. And for
all
our sakes, tame that mess on top of your head. Use fire and a poleaxe if you have to.” Chains took a final drag of evergreen-scented smoke from his rapidly disappearing sheaf, then flicked the butt up and over the roof wall. His last exhalation of the night sailed over the heads of the two boys, a wobbly but otherwise fully formed ring.

“Fuck me! An omen.” Chains reached after the drifting ring as though he could pluck it back for examination. “Either this scheme is fated to work out, or the gods are pleased with me for engineering your demise, Jean Tannen. I love a win-win proposition. Now don’t you two have work to do?”

IN THE House of Glass Roses, there was a hungry garden.

The place was Camorr in microcosm; a thing of the Eldren, left behind for men to puzzle over—a dangerous treasure discarded like a toy. The Elderglass that mortared its stones rendered it proof against all human arts, much like the Five Towers and a dozen other structures scattered over the islands of the city. The men and women who lived in these places were squatters in glory, and the House of Glass Roses was the most glorious, dangerous place on the Alcegrante slopes. That Don Maranzalla held it was a sign of his high and lasting favor with the duke.

Just before the midpoint of the noon hour the next day, Jean Tannen stood at the door of Don Maranzalla’s tower: five cylindrical stories of gray stone and silver glass, a hulking fastness that made the lovely villas around it look like an architect’s scale models. Great waves of white heat beat down from the cloudless sky, and the air was heavy with the slightly beery breath of a city river boiling under long hours of sun. A frosted glass window was set into the stone beside the tower’s huge lacquered oaken doors, behind which the vague outline of a face could be discerned. Jean’s approach had been noted.

He’d gone north over the Angevine on a glass catbridge no wider than his hips, clinging to the guide ropes with sweaty hands for all six hundred feet of the crossing. There were no large bridges to the south bank of the Isla Zantara, second most easterly of the Alcegrante isles. Ferry rides were a copper half-baron. For those too poor to ride, that left the ecstatic terror of the catbridges. Jean had never been aloft on one before, and the sight of more experienced men and women ignoring the ropes as they crossed at speed had turned his bowels to ice water. The feel of hard pavement beneath his shoes had been a blessed relief when it came again.

The sweat-soaked yellowjackets on duty at the Isla Zantara gatehouse had let Jean pass far more quickly than he’d thought possible, and he’d seen the mirth drain from their ruddy faces the moment they recognized the sigil he carried. Their directions after that had been terse; was it pity that tinged their voices, or fear?

“We’ll look for you, boy,” one of them suddenly called after him as he started up the clean white stones of the street, “if you come back down the hill again!”

Mingled pity
and
fear, then. Had Jean really been enthusiastic for this adventure as recently as the night before?

The creak and rattle of counterweights heralded the appearance of a dark crack between the twin doors before him. A second later, the portals swung wide with slow majesty, muscled outward by a pair of men in bloodred waistcoats and sashes, and Jean saw that each door was half a foot of solid wood backed with iron bands. A wave of scents washed out over him: humid stone and old sweat, roasting meat and cinnamon incense. Smells of prosperity and security, of life within walls.

Jean held his wallet up to the men who’d opened the door, and one of them waved a hand impatiently. “You’re expected. Enter as a guest of Don Maranzalla and respect his house as you would your own.”

Against the left-hand wall of the opulent foyer, a pair of curlicue staircases in black iron wound upward; Jean followed the man around and up one set of narrow steps, self-consciously trying to keep his sweating and gasping under control. The tower doors were pulled shut beneath them with an echoing slam.

They wound their way up past three floors of glittering glass and ancient stone, decorated with thick red carpets and innumerable stained tapestries that Jean recognized as battle flags. Don Maranzalla had served as the duke’s personal swordmaster and the commander of his blackjackets for a quarter of a century. These bloody scraps of cloth were all that remained of countless companies of men fate had thrown against Nicovante and Maranzalla in fights that were now legend: the Iron Sea Wars, the Mad Count’s Rebellion, the Thousand-Day War against Tal Verrar.

At last, the winding stair brought them up into a small dim room, barely larger than a closet, lit by the gentle red glow of a paper lantern. The man placed one hand on a brass knob and turned to look down at Jean.

“This is the Garden Without Fragrance,” he said. “Step with care, and touch nothing as you love life.” Then he pushed the door to the roof open, letting in a sight so bright and astounding that Jean rocked backward on his heels.

The House of Glass Roses was more than twice as wide as it was tall, so the roof must have been at least one hundred feet in diameter, walled in on all sides. For a frightful moment, Jean thought he stood before a blazing, hundred-hued alchemical fire. All the stories and rumors had done nothing to prepare him for the sight of this place beneath the full light of a white summer sun; it seemed as though liquid diamond pulsed through a million delicate veins and scintillated on a million facets and edges. Here was an entire rose garden, wall after wall of perfect petals and stems and thorns, silent and scentless and alive with reflected fire—for it was all carved from Elderglass, a hundred thousand blossoms perfect down to the tiniest thorn. Dazzled, Jean stumbled forward and stretched out a hand to steady himself. When he forced his eyes closed the darkness was alive with afterimages like flashes of heat lightning.

Don Maranzalla’s man caught him by the shoulders, gently but firmly.

“It can be overwhelming at first. Your eyes will adjust in a few moments, but mark my words well, and by the gods, touch
nothing
.”

As Jean’s eyes recovered from the initial shock of the garden, he began to see past the dazzling glare. Each wall of roses was actually transparent; the nearest was just two paces away. And it was flawless—as flawless as the rumors claimed—as though the Eldren had frozen every blossom and every bush in an instant of summer’s fullest perfection. Yet there were patches of genuine color here and there in the hearts of the sculptures, swirled masses of reddish brown translucence, like clouds of rust-colored smoke frozen in ice.

These clouds of color were human blood.

Every petal, leaf, and thorn was sharper than any razor; the merest touch would open human skin like paper, and the roses would drink, or so the stories said, siphoning blood deep inside the network of glass stems and vines. Presumably, if enough lives were fed to the garden every blossom and every wall would someday turn a rich, rusty red. Some rumors had it that the garden merely drank what was spilled upon it; others claimed that the roses would actually draw blood forth from a wound, and could drain a man white from any cut, no matter how small.

It would take intense concentration to walk through these paths; most were only two or three paces wide, and a moment of distraction could be deadly. It said much about Don Maranzalla that he thought of his garden as the ideal place to teach young men how to fight. For the first time, Jean felt a sense of dreadful awe at the creatures who’d vanished from Camorr a thousand years before his birth. How many other alien surprises had they left behind for men to stumble over? What could drive away beings powerful enough to craft something like this? The answer did not bear thinking of.

Maranzalla’s man released his grip on Jean’s shoulders and reentered the dim room at the apex of the stairs; the room, as Jean now saw, jutted out of the tower’s wall like a gardener’s shack. “The don will be waiting at the center of the garden,” he said.

Then he pulled the door shut after him, and Jean seemed alone on the roof, with the naked sun overhead and the walls of thirsty glass before him.

Yet he wasn’t alone; there was noise coming from the heart of the glass garden, the whickering skirl of steel against steel, low grunts of exertion, a few terse commands in a deep voice rich with authority. Just a few minutes earlier, Jean would have sworn that the catbridge crossing was the most frightening thing he’d ever done, but now that he faced the Garden Without Fragrance, he would have gladly gone back to the midpoint of that slender arch fifty feet above the Angevine and danced on it without guide ropes.

Still, the black wallet clutched in his right hand drew his mind to the fact that Father Chains had thought him
right
for whatever awaited him in this garden. Despite their scintillating danger, the roses were inanimate and unthinking; how could he have the heart of a killer if he feared to walk among them? Shame drove him forward, step by sliding step, and he threaded the twisting paths of the garden with exquisite care, sweat sliding down his face and stinging his eyes.

“I am a Gentleman Bastard,” he muttered to himself.

It was the longest thirty feet of his brief life, that passage between the cold and waiting walls of roses.

He didn’t allow them a single taste of him.

At the center of the garden was a circular courtyard about thirty feet wide; here, two boys roughly Jean’s age were circling one another, rapiers flicking and darting. Another half dozen boys watched uneasily, along with a tall man of late middle age. This man had shoulder-length hair and drooping moustaches the color of cold campfire ashes. His face was like sanded leather, and though he wore a gentleman’s doublet in the same vivid red as the attendants downstairs, he wore it over weather-stained soldier’s breeches and tattered field boots.

There wasn’t a boy at the lesson who didn’t put his master’s clothes to shame. These were sons of the
quality
, in brocade jackets and tailored breeches, silk tunics and polished imitations of swordsman’s boots; each one also wore a white leather buff coat and silver-studded bracers of the same material; just the thing for warding off thrusts from training weapons. Jean felt naked the instant he stepped into the clearing, and only the threat of the glass roses kept him from leaping back into concealment.

One of the duelists was surprised to see Jean emerge from the garden, and his opponent made good use of that split second of inattention; he deftly thrust his rapier into the meat of the first boy’s upper arm, punching through the leather. The skewered boy let out an unbecoming holler and dropped his blade.

“My lord Maranzalla!” One of the boys in the crowd spoke up, and there was more oil in his voice than there was on a blade put away for storage. “Lorenzo was
clearly
distracted by the boy who just came out of the garden! That was not a fair strike.”

Every boy in the clearing turned to regard Jean, and it was impossible to guess what soonest ignited their naked disdain: his laborer’s clothing, his pearlike physique, his lack of weapons and armor? Only the boy with a spreading circle of blood on his tunic sleeve failed to stare at him with open loathing; he had other problems. The gray-haired man cleared his throat, then spoke in the deep voice Jean had heard earlier. He seemed amused.