Red Seas Under Red Skies (16 page)

He was about to press the plate again when the door creaked open. A short, scowling woman appeared in the gap between the door and its frame, staring up at him. She had to be on the downside of sixty, Jean thought—her reddish skin was lined like the joints of an aged leather garment. She was heavyset, with a vaguely froglike bulge of flesh at her throat and jowly features drooping like sculptor's putty from her high cheekbones. Her white hair was tightly braided with alternating rings of brass and black iron, and most of the visible flesh on her hands, forearms, and neck was covered in elaborate, slightly faded tattoos.

Jean set his right foot before his left and bowed at a forty-five-degree angle, with his left hand flung out and his right tucked beneath his stomach. He was about to start conjuring verbal flowers when Guildmistress Gallardine seized him by his collar and dragged him into her house.

“Ow! Madam, please! Allow me to introduce myself!”

“You're too fat and well dressed to be an apprentice after patronage,” she replied, “so you must be here to beg a favor, and when your kind says hello, it tends to take a while. No, shut up.”

Her house smelled like oil, sweat, stone dust, and heated metal. The interior was one tall hollow, the strangest cluttered conglomeration Jean had ever seen. There were man-sized arched windows on the right-hand and left-hand walls, but every other inch of wall space was taken up with a sort of scaffolding that supported a hundred wooden shelves crammed with tools, materials, and junk. At the top of the scaffolding, set atop a makeshift floor of planks, Jean could see a sleeping pallet and a desk beneath a pair of hanging alchemical lamps. Ladders and leather cords hung down in several places; books and scrolls and half-empty corked bottles covered most of the floor.

“If I've come at a bad time…”

“It's usually a bad time, Young Master Interloper. A client with an interesting request is about the only thing that ever changes that. So what's it to be?”

“Guildmistress Gallardine, everyone I've asked has sworn that the most subtle, most accomplished, most imitated artificer in all of Tal Verrar is none other than y—”

“Quit bathing me with your flattery, boy,” said the old woman, waving her hands. “Look around you. Gears and levers, weights and chains. You don't need to lick them with pretty words to make them work—nor me.”

“As you wish,” said Jean, straightening up and reaching within his coat. “I couldn't live with myself if I didn't extend one small courtesy, however.”

From within his coat he brought forth a small package wrapped in cloth-of-silver. The neat corners of the wrapping were drawn together beneath a red wax seal, stamped into a curled disc of shaved gold.

Jean's informants had all mentioned Gallardine's single human failing: a taste for presents as strong as her distaste for flattery and interruptions. She knitted her eyebrows, but did manage a ghost of an anticipatory smile as she took the package in her tattooed hands.

“Well,” she said, “well, we must all certainly be able to live with ourselves….”

She popped the disc seal and pried the cloth-of silver apart with the eagerness of a little girl. The package contained a brass-stoppered rectangular bottle filled with milky white liquid. She sucked in her breath when she read the label.

“White Plum Austershalin,” she whispered. “Twelve gods. Who
have
you been speaking to?”

Brandy mixes were a Tal Verrar peculiarity; fine brandies from elsewhere (in this case, the peerless Austershalin of Emberlain) were mixed with local liquor from rare alchemical fruits (and there were none rarer than the heavenly white plum), then bottled and aged to produce cordials that could blast the tongue into numbness with the richness of their flavor. The bottle held perhaps two glasses of White Plum Austershalin, and it was worth forty-five solari.

“A few knowledgeable souls,” said Jean, “who said you might appreciate a modest draught.”

“This is hardly modest, Master…”

“De Ferra. Jerome de Ferra, at your service.”

“Quite the opposite, Master de Ferra. What did you want me to do for you?”

“Well—if you'd really prefer to get to the nub of the matter, I don't have a specific need just yet. What I have are…questions.”

“About what?”

“Vaults.”

Guildmistress Gallardine cradled her brandy mix like a new baby and said, “Vaults, Master de Ferra? Simple storage vaults, with mechanical conveniences, or
secure
vaults, with mechanical defenses?”

“My taste, madam, runs more toward the latter.”

“What is it you wish to guard?”

“Nothing,” said Jean. “It is more a matter of something I wish to
un-
guard.”

“Are you locked out of a vault? Needing someone to loosen it up a bit for you?”

“Yes, madam. It's just…”

“Just what?”

Jean licked his lips again and smiled. “I had heard, well, credible rumors that you might be amenable to the sort of work I might suggest.”

She fixed him with a knowing stare. “Are you implying that you don't necessarily
own
the vault that you're locked out of?”

“Heh. Not necessarily, no.”

She paced around the floor of her house, stepping over books and bottles and mechanical devices.

“The law of the Great Guild,” she said at last, “forbids any one of us from directly interfering with the work of another, save by invitation, or at the need of the state.” There was another pause. “However…it's not unknown for advice to be given, schematics to be examined…in the interest of advancing the craft, you understand. It's a form of testing to destruction. It's how we critique one another, as it were.”

“Advice would be all that I ask,” said Jean. “I don't even need a locksmith; I just need information to
arm
a locksmith.”

“There are few who could better arm such a one than myself. Before we discuss the matter of compensation, tell me—do you know the designer of the vault you've got your eyes on?”

“I do.”

“And it is?”

“Azura Gallardine.”

The guildmistress took a step away from him, as though a forked tongue had suddenly flicked out between his lips.

“Help you circumvent my own work? Are you mad?”

“I had hoped,” said Jean, “that the identity of the vault owner might be one that wouldn't raise any particular pangs of sympathy.”

“Who and where?”

“Requin. The Sinspire.”

“Twelve gods, you
are
mad!” Gallardine glanced around as though checking the room for spies before she continued. “That certainly
does
raise pangs of sympathy! Sympathy for myself!”

“My pockets are deep, Guildmistress. Surely there must be a sum which would alleviate your qualms?”

“There is no sum in this world,” said the old woman, “large enough to convince me to give you what you ask for. Your accent, Master de Ferra…I believe I place it. You're from Talisham, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“And Requin—you've studied him, have you?”

“Thoroughly, of course.”

“Nonsense. If you'd studied him thoroughly, you wouldn't be here. Let me tell you a little something about Requin, you poor rich Talishani simpleton. Do you know that woman of his, Selendri? The one with the brass hand?”

“I've heard that he keeps no other close to him.”

“And that's all you know?”

“Ah, more or less.”

“Until several years ago,” said Gallardine, “it was Requin's custom to host a grand masque at the Sinspire each Day of Changes. A mad revel, in thousand-solari costumes, of which his were always the grandest. Well, one year he and that beautiful young woman of his decided to switch costumes and masks. On a whim.

“An assassin,” she continued, “had dusted the inside of Requin's costume with something devilish. The blackest sort of alchemy, a kind of
aqua regia
for human flesh. It was just a powder…it needed sweat and warmth to bring it to life. And so that woman wore it for nearly half an hour, until she'd just begun to sweat and enjoy herself. And that's when she started to
scream
.

“I wasn't there. But there were artificers of my acquaintance in the crowd, and they say she screamed and screamed until her voice broke. Until there was nothing coming from her throat but a hiss, and still she kept trying to scream. Only one side of the costume was doused with the stuff…a perverse gesture. Her skin bubbled and ran like hot tar. Her flesh
steamed
, Master de Ferra. No one had the courage to touch her, except Requin. He cut her costume off, demanded water, worked over her feverishly. He wiped her burning skin clean with his jacket, with scraps of cloth, with his bare hands. He was so badly burned himself that he wears gloves to this day, to hide his own scars.”

“Astonishing,” said Jean.

“He saved her life,” said Gallardine, “what was left of it to save. Surely you've seen her face. One eye evaporated, like a grape in a bonfire. Her toes required amputation. Her fingers were burnt twigs, her hand a blistered waste. It had to go as well. They had to cut off a
breast
, Master de Ferra. I assure you, you can have no conception of quite what that means—it would mean much to me now, and it has been many long years since I was last thought comely.

“When she was abed, Requin passed the word to all of his gangs, all of his thieves, all of his contacts, all of his friends among the rich and the powerful. He offered a thousand solari, no questions asked, for anyone who could give him the identity of the would-be poisoner. But there was quite a bit of fear concerning this particular assassin, and Requin was not nearly as respected then as he is now. He received no answer. The next night, he offered five thousand solari, no questions asked, and still received no answer. The third night, he repeated his offer, for ten thousand solari, fruitlessly. On the fourth night, he offered twenty thousand…and not one person came forward.

“And so the murders started the very next night. At random. Among the thieves, among the alchemists, among the servants of the Priori. Anyone who might have access to useful information. One a night, silent work, absolutely professional. Each victim had his or her skin peeled off with a knife, on their left side. As a reminder.

“And so his gangs, and his gamblers, and his associates begged him to stop. ‘Find me an assassin,' he told them, ‘and I will.' And they pleaded, and they made their inquiries, and came back with nothing. So he began to kill two people per night. He began to kill wives, husbands, children, friends. One of his gangs rebelled, and they were found dead the next morning. All of them. He tightened his grip on his gangs and purged them of the weak-hearted. He killed and killed and killed, until the entire city was in a frenzy to turn over every rock, to kick in every door for him. Until nothing could be worse than to keep disappointing him. At last, a man was brought before him who satisfied his questions.

“Requin,” said Gallardine with a long dry sigh, “set that man inside a wooden frame, chained there, on his left side. The frame was filled with alchemical cement, which was allowed to harden. The frame was tipped up—so you see, the man was half sealed into a stone wall, all along his left side, from his feet to the top of his head. He was tipped up and left standing in Requin's vault to die. Requin would go in himself and force water down the man's throat each day. His trapped limbs rotted, festered, made him sick. He died slowly, starving and gangrenous, sealed into the most perfectly hideous physical torture I have ever heard of in all my long years.

“So you will forgive me,” she said, taking Jean gently by the arm and leading him toward the left-hand window, “if Requin is one client with whom I intend to maintain absolute faith until the Lady Most Kind sweeps my soul out of this old sack of bones.”

“But surely, there's no need for him to know?”

“And just as surely, Master de Ferra, there is the fact that I would never chance it. Never.”

“But surely, a small consideration—”

“Have you heard,” interrupted Gallardine, “of what happens to those caught cheating at his tower, Master de Ferra? He collects their hands, and then he drops them onto a stone courtyard and bills their families or business partners to have the bodies cleaned up. And what about the last man who started a fight inside the Sinspire, and drew blood? Requin had him tied to a table. His kneecaps were cut out by a dog-leech, and red ants were poured into the wounds. The kneecaps were lashed back down with twine. That man
begged
to have his throat slit. His request was not granted.

“Requin is a power unto himself. The archon can't touch him for fear of aggravating the Priori, and the Priori find him far too useful to turn on him. Since Selendri nearly died, he's become an artist of cruelty the likes of which this city has never seen. There is
no mortal reward
that I would consider worth provoking that man.”

“I take all that very seriously, madam. So can we not carefully minimize your involvement? Settle for a basic schematic of the vault mechanisms, the most general overview? The sort of thing that could never be specifically tied to you?”

“You haven't really been listening.” She shook her head and gestured toward the left-hand window of her house. “Let me ask you something else, Master de Ferra. Can you see the view of Tal Verrar out this window?”

Jean stepped forward to gaze out through the pane of glass. The view was southward, over the western tip of the Artificers' Crescent, across the anchorage and the glimmering silver-white water to the Sword Marina. There the archon's navy rode at anchor, protected by high walls and catapults.

“It's a…very lovely view,” he said.

“Isn't it? Now, you must consider this my final statement on the matter. Do you know anything of counterweights?”