Red Seas Under Red Skies (18 page)

She punctuated the sentence with a deep intake of smoke from her pipe and a raising of both her eyebrows.

“I believe he's killed eight so far,” she finished.

“Ah,” said Locke. “Well…if I had to choose, I'd be inclined to favor the boy. Call me an optimist.”

“I do.” She let two long streams of smoke fall out of her nose like faint gray waterfalls, and she smiled. “I would take the wasps. Shall we call it a wager? Two hundred solari from me, one hundred apiece from each of you?”

“I'm as fond of a small wager as the next man, but let's ask the next man—Jerome?”

“If it's your pleasure, madam, our coin purses are yours to command.”

“What a font of gracious untruths you two are.” She beckoned one of Requin's attendants, and the three of them pledged their credit with the house for markers. They received four short wooden sticks engraved with ten rings apiece. The attendant recorded their names on a tablet and moved on; the tempo of the betting around the room was still rising.

In the cage, two more murderously annoyed insects wriggled out of their enclosures and took wing toward the young man.

“Did I mention,” said Durenna as she set her pair of markers down atop her little table, “that the death of nearby wasps seems to excite the others to a higher state of frenzy? That boy's opponents will get angrier and angrier as the fight goes on.”

The pair currently free in the enclosure seemed angry enough; the boy was dancing a lively jig to keep them away from his back and flanks. “Fascinating,” said Jean, working a series of specific hand gestures into his mannerisms as he craned his neck to watch the duel. There were a few creative uses of fairly limited signals in Jean's message, but Locke eventually sorted the gist of it out:

Do we really have to stay to watch this with her?

He was about to answer when a familiar hard weight fell on his left shoulder.

“Master Kosta,” said Selendri before Locke had even finished turning. “One of the Priori wishes to speak to you on the sixth floor. A small matter. Something concerning…card tricks. He said you'd understand.”

“Madam,” said Locke, “I, ah, would be only too happy to attend. Can you let him know that I'll be with him shortly?”

“Better,” she said with a half-smile that didn't move the devastated side of her face at all. “I can escort you myself, to greatly speed your passage.”

Locke smiled as though that were exactly what he would have wished, and he turned back to Madam Durenna with his hands spread out before him.

“You
do
move in interesting circles, Master Kosta. Best hurry; Jerome can tend your wager, and share a drink with me.”

“A most unlooked-for pleasure,” said Jean, already beckoning an attendant to order that drink.

Selendri didn't waste another moment; she turned and stepped into the crowd, setting course for the stairs on the far side of the circular room. She moved quickly, with her brass hand cradled in her flesh hand before her like an offering, and the throng parted almost miraculously. Locke hurried along in her wake, keeping just ahead of the crowd as it closed up again behind him like some colony of scuttling creatures briefly disturbed in its chores. Glasses clinked, ragged layers of smoke twirled in the air, and wasps buzzed.

Up the stairs to the third floor; again the well-dressed masses melted away before Requin's majordomo. On the south side of the third floor was a service area filled with attendants bustling about shelves of liquor bottles. At the rear of the service room was a narrow wooden door with a brass wall-plate beside it. Selendri slid her artificial hand into this plate, and the door cracked open on a dark space barely larger than a coffin. She stepped in first, put her back against the wall of the enclosure, and beckoned him in.

“The climbing closet,” she said. “Much easier than the stairs and the crowds.”

It was a tight fit; Jean would have been unable to share the compartment with her. Locke was crammed in against her left side, and he could feel the heavy weight of her brass hand against his upper back. She reached past him with her other hand and drew the compartment closed. They were locked in warm darkness, and Locke became intensely aware of their smells—his fresh sweat and her feminine musk, and something in her hair, like the smoke from a burning pine log. Woodsy, tingly, not at all unpleasant.

“Well,” he said softly, “this is where I'd have an accident, right? If I had an accident coming?”

“It wouldn't be an accident, Master Kosta.” She spoke softly as well, as though it was some rule of the enclosure. “But no, you're not to have it on the way up.”

She moved, and he heard the clicking of some mechanism from the wall on her right. A moment later, the walls of the compartment shuddered, and a faint creaking noise grew above them.

“You dislike me,” Locke said on a whim. There was a brief silence.

“I've known many traitors,” she said at last, “but perhaps none so glib.”

“Only those who initiate treachery are traitors,” said Locke, injecting a hurt tone into his voice. “What I desire is redress for a grievance.”

“You would have your rationalizations,” she whispered.

“I've offended you somehow.”

“Call it whatever you like.”

Locke concentrated furiously on the tone of his next few words. In darkness, facing away from her, his voice would be detached from all the cues of his face and his mannerisms. It would never have a more effective theater of use. Like an alchemist, he mingled long-practiced deceptions into the desired emotional compound—regret, abashedness, longing.

“If I have offended you, madam—I would unsay what I said, or undo what I did.” The briefest hesitation, just the thing for conveying sincerity. The trustiest tool in his verbal kit. “I would do it the moment you told me how, if you only gave me the chance.”

She shuffled ever so slightly against him; the brass hand pressed harder for a heartbeat. Locke closed his eyes and willed his ears, his skin, and his pure animal instincts to pluck whatever slightest clue they could out of the darkness. Would she scorn pity, or did she crave it? He could feel the shuddering beat of his own heart, hear the faint pulse in his own temples.

“There is nothing to unsay or undo,” she replied, faintly.

“I almost wish that there were. So that I could put you at ease.”

“You cannot.” She sighed. “You could not.”

“And you won't even let me try?”

“You talk the way you perform card tricks, Master Kosta. Far too smoothly. I fear you may be even better at hiding things with words than you are with your hands. If you must know, it's your possible usefulness against your employer—and that alone—that preserves my consent for letting you live.”

“I don't want to be your enemy, Selendri. I don't even want to be trouble.”

“Words are cheap. Cheap and meaningless.”

“I can't…” Judicious pause again. Locke was as careful as a master sculptor placing crow's-feet around the edges of a stone statue's eye. “Look, maybe I am glib. I can't speak otherwise, Selendri.” Repeated use of her proper name, a compulsion, almost a spell. More intimate and effective than titles. “I am who I am.”

“And you wonder that I distrust you for it?”

“I wonder more if there's anything that you
don't
distrust.”

“Distrust everyone,” she said, “and you can never be betrayed. Opposed, but never betrayed.”

“Hmmm.” Locke bit his tongue and thought rapidly. “But you don't distrust
him
, do you, Selendri?”

“That's no gods-damned business of yours, Master Kosta.”

There was a loud rattle from the ceiling of the climbing closet. The room gave a last heavy shudder, and then fell still.

“Forgive me, again,” said Locke. “Not the sixth floor, of course. The ninth?”

“The ninth.”

In a second she would push past him and open the door. They had one last moment alone in the intimate darkness. He weighed his options, hefted his last conversational dart. Something risky, but potentially disquieting.

“I used to think much less of him, you know. Before I found out that he was wise enough to really love you.” Another pause, and he lowered his voice to the barest edge of audibility. “I think you must be the bravest woman I've ever met.”

He counted his own heartbeats in the darkness until she responded.

“What a pretty presumption,” she whispered, and there was acid beneath her words. There was a click, and a line of yellow light split the blackness, stinging his eyes. She gave him a firm push with her artificial hand, against the door that opened out into the lamplit heart of Requin's office.

Well, let her roll his words over in her thoughts for a while. Let her give him the signals that would tell him how to proceed. He had no specific goal in mind; it would be enough to keep her uncertain, simply less inclined to stick a knife in his back. And if some small part of him felt sour at twisting her emotions (gods damn it, that part of him had rarely spoken up before!), well—he reminded himself that he could do as he pleased and feel as he pleased while he was Leocanto Kosta. Leocanto Kosta wasn't real.

He stepped out of the climbing closet, unsure if he was any more convinced by himself than Selendri was.

3

“MASTER KOSTA!
My mysterious new associate. What a busy man you've been.”

Requin's office was as cluttered as it had been on Locke's last visit. Locke was gratified to see his decks of cards stacked haphazardly at various points on and near Requin's desk. The climbing closet opened out of a wall niche between two paintings, a niche Locke certainly hadn't noticed on his previous visit.

Requin was standing gazing out through the mesh screen that covered the door to his balcony, wearing a heavy maroon frock coat with black lapels. He scratched at his chin with one gloved hand and glanced sideways at Locke.

“Actually,” said Locke, “Jerome and I have had a quiet few days. As I believe I promised you.”

“I don't mean just these past few days. I've been making those inquiries into your past two years in Tal Verrar.”

“As I'd hoped. Enlightening?”

“Most educational. Let's be direct. Your associate tried to shake down Azura Gallardine for information concerning my vault. Something more than a year ago. You know who she is?”

Selendri was pacing the room to Locke's left, slowly, watching him over her right shoulder.

“Of course. One of the high muck-a-shits of the Artificers' Guild. I told Jerome where to find her.”

“And how did you know that she'd had a hand in the design of my vault?”

“It's amazing, how much you can learn by buying drinks in artificer bars and pretending that every story you hear is incredibly fascinating.”

“I see.”

“The old bitch didn't tell him anything, though.”

“She wouldn't have. And she would have been content at that; she didn't even tell me about the inquiry he'd made. But I put out the question a few nights ago, and it turns out that a beer-seller on my list of reliable eyes once saw someone answering your associate's description fall out of the sky.”

“Yes. Jerome said the guildmistress had a unique method of interrupting conversations.”

“Well, Selendri had an uninterrupted conversation with her yesterday evening. She was enticed to remember everything she could about Jerome's visit.”

“Enticed?”

“Financially, Master Kosta.”

“Ah.”

“I have also come to understand that you made inquiries with some of my gangs over in the Silver Marina. Starting around the time Jerome visited Guildmistress Gallardine.”

“Yes. I spoke to an older fellow named Drava, and a woman named…what was it…”

“Armania Cantazzi.”

“Yes, that was her. Thank you. Gorgeous woman; I tried to get past business and get a bit friendlier with her, but she didn't seem to appreciate my charms.”

“Armania wouldn't have; she prefers the company of other women.”

“Now there's a relief. I thought I was losing my touch.”

“You were curious about shipping, the sort customs officials never get to hear about. You discussed a few terms with my people and never followed up. Why?”

“Jerome and I agreed, upon reflection, that securing shipping from outside Tal Verrar would be wisest. We could then simply hire a few small barges to move whatever we stole from you, and avoid the more complicated dealings involved in getting a lighter.”

“If I were planning to rob myself, I suppose I would agree. Now, the matter of alchemists. I have reliable information placing you at several over the past year. Reputable and otherwise.”

“Of course. I conducted a few experiments with fire oils and acids, on secondhand clockwork mechanisms. I thought it might save some tedious lock-picking.”

“Did these experiments bear fruit?”

“I'd share that information with an employer,” said Locke, grinning.

“Mmmm. Leave that for now. But it does indeed appear that you've been up to something. So many disparate activities that do add up to support your story. There's just one thing more.”

“Which is?”

“I'm curious. How
was
old Maxilan doing when you saw him three nights ago?”

Locke was suddenly aware that Selendri was no longer pacing. She had placed herself just a few steps directly behind him, unmoving. Crooked Warden, give me a golden line of bullshit and the wisdom to know when to stop spinning it, he thought.

“Uh, well, he's a prick.”

“That's no secret. Any child on the street could tell me that. But you admit you were at the Mon Magisteria?”

“I was. I had a private audience with Stragos. Incidentally, he's under the impression that his agents among your gangs are undetected.”