The Lies of Locke Lamora (53 page)

THEY HAD TO steal another little boat, Locke having so profligately disposed of their first. On any other night, he would have had a good laugh.

And so would Bug, and Calo, and Galdo, he told himself.

Locke and Jean drifted south between the Narrows and the Mara Camorrazza, hunched over in old cloaks from the floor of the Wardrobe, locked away from the rest of the city in the mist. The soft flickering lights and murmuring voices in the distance seemed to Locke as artifacts of an alien life he’d left long ago, not elements of the city he’d lived in for as long as he could remember.

“I am such a fool,” he muttered. He lay along a gunwale, aching, feeling the dry heaves rise up again from the battered pit of his stomach.

“If you say that one more time,” said Jean, “I will throw you into the water and row the boat over your head.”

“I should have let us run.”

“Perhaps,” said Jean. “But perhaps not everything miserable that happens to us stems directly from one of your choices, brother. Perhaps bad tidings come regardless of what we do. Perhaps if we’d run, that Bondsmage would have hunted us down upon the road, and scattered our bones somewhere between here and Talisham.”

“And yet…”

“We live,” said Jean forcefully. “We live and we may avenge them. You had the right idea when you did for that Gray King’s man back in the burrow. The questions now are
why
, and
what next
? Quit acting like you’ve been breathing Wraithstone smoke. I need your wits, Locke. I need the Thorn of Camorr.”

“Let me know when you find him. He’s a fucking fairy tale.”

“No, he’s sitting here in this boat with me. If you’re not him now, you must
become
him. The Thorn is the man who can beat the Gray King. I can’t do it alone; I know that much. Why would the Gray King do this to us? What does it bring him? Think, damn it!”

“Too much to guess at,” said Locke. His voice regained a bit of its vigor as he pondered. “But…narrow the question. Consider the means. We saw one of his men beneath the temple; I saw another man when I was taken for the first time. So we know he had at least two working for him, in addition to the Bondsmage.”

“Right. Does he strike you as a sloppy operator?”

“No.” Locke rubbed his hands together. “No, everything he did seemed to me to be as intricate as Verrari clockwork.”

“Yet he sent only one man down into the burrow.”

“Yes—the Sanzas were already dead, I was thought to be dead, you walked into another trap set by the Bondsmage, and it would have been a crossbow quarrel for Bug. Deftly done. Quick and cruel.”

“But why not send two men? Why not three? To bury us so viciously, why not be
absolutely
sure of the issue?” Jean gave the water a few gentle strokes to hold their position against the current. “I cannot believe he suddenly became lazy, at the very culmination of his scheme.”

“Perhaps,” said Locke, “perhaps…he needed what other men he had elsewhere, very badly. Perhaps one was all he could spare.” Locke gasped and slammed his right fist into the open palm of his left hand. “Perhaps we weren’t the culmination of his scheme after all.”

“What, then?”

“Not what,
who.
” Locke sat up and groaned, his head swimming. “Who has he been attacking all these months? Jean, Barsavi believes the Gray King to be dead. So now what will
he
do tonight?”

“He…he’ll throw a revel. Just like he used to do on the Day of Changes. He’ll celebrate.”

“At the Floating Grave,” said Locke. “He’ll throw the doors open, haul in casks—gods, real ones this time. He’ll summon his whole court. All the Right People, drunk three deep along the causeway and the wharfs of the Wooden Waste. Just like the good old days.”

“So the Gray King faked his own death to lure Barsavi into throwing a revel?”

“It’s not the revel,” said Locke. “It’s…it’s the people. All the Right People. That’s it; gods, that’s it! Barsavi will appear before his people tonight for the first time in months. Do you understand? All the gangs, all the
garristas
will witness anything that happens there.”

“Which does what for the Gray King?”

“The fucker has a flair for the dramatic. I’d say Barsavi’s in a heap of shit. Row, Jean. Get me down to the Cauldron right now. I can cross to the Waste myself. I need to be at the Floating Grave, with haste.”

“Have you lost your mind? If the Gray King and his men are still prowling, they’ll kill you for sure. And if Barsavi sees you, you’re supposed to be nearly dead of a stomach flux! You
are
nearly dead of more than that!”

“They won’t see Locke Lamora,” said Locke, fumbling with some of the items he’d managed to salvage from the Masque Box. He held a false beard up to his chin and grinned. “My hair’s going to be gray for a few days, since the removal salve is burning up as we speak. I’ll throw on some soot and put up the hood, and I’ll be just another skinny nobody with bruises all over his face, come looking for some free wine from the Capa.”

“You should rest; you’ve had your life damn near pounded out of you. You’re a complete mess.”

“I ache in places I didn’t previously realize I owned,” said Locke, gingerly applying adhesive paste to his chin with his fingers. “But it can’t be helped. This is all the disguise gear we have left; we’ve got no money, no wardrobe, no more temple, no more friends. And
you
only have a few hours, at best, to go to ground and find us a place to stay before the Gray King’s men realize one of their number is missing.”

“But still—”

“I’m half your size, Jean. You can’t pamper me now. I can go unseen; you’ll be obvious as the rising sun. My suggestion is that you find a hovel in Ashfall, clear out the rats, and leave some of our signs in the area. Just scrawl soot on the walls. I’ll find you when I’m done.”

“But—”

“Jean, you wanted the Thorn of Camorr. Well, you’ve got him.” Locke jammed the false beard onto his chin and pressed until the adhesive ceased tingling, letting him know that it was dry. “Take me to the Cauldron and let me off. For Calo, Galdo, and Bug, if not for me! Something’s about to happen at the Floating Grave, and I need to see what it is. Everything that bastard has done to us comes down to the next few hours—if it isn’t happening already.”

IT COULD be said, with several levels of truthful meaning, that Vencarlo Barsavi outdid himself with the celebration for his victory over the murderer of his daughter.

The Floating Grave was thrown open. The guards remained at their posts, but discipline slackened agreeably. Huge alchemical lanterns were hauled up under the silk awnings on the topmost decks of the harbor-locked galleon; they lit up the Wooden Waste beneath the dark sky and shone like beacons through the fog.

Runners were sent out to the Last Mistake for food and wine. The tavern was rapidly emptied of all its edibles, most of its casks, and every single one of its patrons. They streamed toward the Wooden Waste, drunk or sober, united in curious expectation.

The guards on the quay eyed the guests pouring in but did little else. Men and women without obvious weapons concealed beneath their clothes were passed through without so much as a cursory search. Flush with victory, the capa had decided to be magnanimous in more ways than one. This was to Locke’s benefit; hooded and bearded and thoroughly begrimed, he slipped in with a huge crowd of Cauldron cutthroats making their rowdy way across the walkway to Barsavi’s galleon, lit like a pleasure galley from some romantic tale of the pashas of the Bronze Sea.

The Floating Grave was packed with men and women. Capa Barsavi sat on his raised chair, surrounded by all of his inner circle: his red-faced, shouting sons; his most powerful surviving
garristas
; his quiet, watchful Berangias twins. Locke had to push and shove and utter curses to make his way into the heart of the fortress. He nudged himself into a corner near the main doors to the ballroom and watched the affair from this position, aching and uncomfortable but grateful just to be able to claim a vantage point.

The balconies were spilling over with toughs from all the gangs in Camorr—the rowdiness was growing by the minute. The heat was incredible, and the smell; Locke felt pressed against the wall by the weight of odors. Wet wool and sweated-through cotton, wine and wine breath, hair oils and leather.

It was just past the first hour of the morning when Barsavi suddenly rose from his chair and held up a single hand.

Attentiveness spread outward like a wave. Right People nudged one another into silence and pointed to the capa. It took less than a minute for the echoing chaos of the celebration to peter down to a soft murmur. Barsavi nodded appreciatively.

“I trust we’re enjoying ourselves?”

There was a general outburst of cheers, applause, and foot-stomping. Locke privately wondered how wise that really was in a ship of any sort. He was careful to applaud along with the crowd.

“Feels marvelous to be out from under a cloud, doesn’t it?”

Another cheer; Locke scratched at his temporary beard, now damp with sweat. There was a sudden sharp pain in his stomach, right where one of the younger Barsavis had given him particular consideration with a fist. The heat and the smell were triggering strange tickly feelings of nausea in the back of his throat, and he’d had enough of that particular sensation to last the rest of his life. Sourly, he coughed into his hands and prayed for just a few more hours of strength.

One of the Berangias sisters stepped over beside the capa, her shark’s-teeth bangles shining in the light of the hall’s chandeliers, and whispered into his ear. He listened for a few seconds, and then he smiled.

“Cheryn,” he shouted, “proposes that I allow her and her sister to entertain us. Shall I?”

The answering cheer was twice as forceful (and twice as genuine, to Locke’s ears) as anything yet heard. The wooden walls reverberated with it, and Locke flinched.

“Let’s have a teeth show, then!”

All was chaos for the next few minutes. Dozens of Barsavi’s people pushed revelers back, clearing an area at the center of the floor about ten yards on a side. Revelers were pressed up the stairs until the balconies creaked beneath their weight; observation holes were cranked open so those on the top deck could peer down at the proceedings. Locke was pushed back into his corner more firmly than ever.

Men with hooked poles drew up the wooden panels of the floor, revealing the dark water of Camorr Bay. A thrill of anticipation and alarm passed through the crowd at the thought of what might be swimming down there.
The unquiet spirits of eight Full Crowns, for one thing,
thought Locke.

As the final panels in the center of the opening square were removed, almost everyone present could see the little support platforms on which they’d rested, not one wider than a man’s hand-spread. They were spaced about five feet apart. Barsavi’s arena for his own private teeth shows—a challenge for any
contrarequialla
, even a pair as experienced as the Berangias sisters.

Cheryn and Raiza, old hands at teasing a crowd, were stripping out of their leather doublets, bracers, and collars. They took their graceful time while the capa’s subjects hooted approval, hoisted cups and glasses, and in some cases even shouted unlikely propositions.

Anjais hurried forward with a little packet of alchemical powders in his hands. He dumped this into the water, then took a prudent step back. This was the “summons”—a potent mix of substances that would rouse the shark’s ire and maintain it for the duration of the contest. Blood in the water could attract and enrage a shark, but the summons would make it utterly drunk with the urge to attack—to leap, thrash, and roll at the women jumping back and forth across their little platforms.

The Berangias sisters stepped forward to nearly the edge of the artificial pool, holding their traditional weapons: the pick-head axes and the short javelins. Anjais and Pachero stood behind them and just to their left; the Capa remained standing by his chair, clapping his hands and grinning broadly.

A black fin broke the surface of the pool; a tail thrashed. There was a brief splash of water, and the electric atmosphere of the crowd intensified. Locke could feel it washing over him—lust and fear entwined, a powerful, animalistic sensation. The crowd had backed off about two yards from any edge of the pool, but still some in the front ranks were shaking nervously, and a few were trying to push their way farther back through the crowd, to the delight and derision of those around them.

In truth, the shark couldn’t have been longer than five or six feet; some of those used at the Shifting Revel reached twice that length. Still, a fish like that could easily maim on the leap, and if it dragged a person down into the water with it, well, raw size would mean little in such an uneven contest.

The Berangias sisters threw up their arms, then turned as one to the capa. The sister on the right—Raiza? Cheryn? Locke had never learned the trick of telling them apart…. And at the thought his heart ached for the Sanzas. Playing deftly to the crowd, Barsavi put up his hands and looked around at his court. When they cheered him on, he stepped down between the ladies and received a kiss on the cheek from each of them.

The water stirred just before the three of them; a sleek black shadow swept past the edge of the pool, then dove down into the lightless depths. Locke could feel five hundred hearts skip a beat, and the breath in five hundred throats catch. His own concentration seemed to peak, and he caught every detail of that moment as though it were frozen before him, from the eager smile on Barsavi’s round red face to the rippling reflection of chandelier light on the water.

“Camorr!” cried the Berangias sister to the capa’s right. Again, the noise of the crowd died, this time as though one gigantic windpipe had been slit. Five hundred pairs of eyes were fixed on the capa and his bodyguards.

“We dedicate this death,” she continued, “to Capa Vencarlo Barsavi, our lord and patron!”

“Well does he deserve it,” said the other.

The shark exploded out of the pool immediately before them—a sleek dark devilish thing, with black lidless eyes and white teeth gaping. A ten-foot fountain of water rose up with it, and it half somersaulted in midair, falling forward, falling…