Red Seas Under Red Skies (4 page)

The younger man whirled first, his face a mask of terror; he threw out his right hand and let fly. A sharp twang sounded across the green. His opponent didn't even jerk back as the bolt hissed through the air beside his head, missing by at least the width of a hand.

The red-jacketed old man completed his own turn more slowly, his eyes bright and his mouth set into a scowl. His younger opponent stared at him for several seconds, as though trying to will his bolt to come flying back like a trained bird. He shuddered, lowered his crossbow, and then threw it down to the grass. With his hands on his hips, he stood waiting, breathing in deep and noisy gulps.

His opponent regarded him briefly, then snorted. “Be fucked,” he said, and he raised his crossbow in both hands. His shot was perfect; there was a wet crack and the younger duelist toppled with a feathered bolt dead in the center of his chest. He fell onto his back, clawing at his coat and tunic, spitting up dark blood. Half a dozen spectators rushed toward him, while one young woman in a silver evening gown fell to her knees and screamed.

“We'll get back just in time for dinner,” said the older duelist to nobody in particular. He tossed his own crossbow carelessly to the ground behind him and stomped off toward one of the nearby chance houses, with his second at his side.

“Sweet fucking Perelandro,” said Locke, forgetting Leocanto Kosta for a moment and thinking out loud. “What a way to manage things.”

“You don't approve, sir?” A lovely young woman in a black silk dress regarded Locke with disconcertingly penetrating eyes. She couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen. “I understand that some differences of opinion need to be settled with steel,” said Jean, butting in, appearing to recognize that Locke was still a bit too tipsy for his own good. “But standing before a crossbow bolt seems foolish. Blades strike me as a more honest test of skill.”

“Rapiers are tedious; all that back and forth, and rarely a killing strike right away,” said the young woman. “Bolts are fast, clean, and merciful. You can hack at someone all night with a rapier and fail to kill them.”

“I am quite compelled to agree with you,” muttered Locke.

The woman raised an eyebrow but said nothing; a moment later she was gone, vanishing into the dispersing crowd.

The contented murmur of the night—the laughter and chatter of the small clusters of men and women making time beneath the stars—had died briefly while the duel took place, but now it rose up once again. The woman in the silver dress beat her fists against the grass, sobbing, while the crowd around the fallen duelist seemed to sag in unison. The bolt's work was clearly done.

“Fast, clean, and merciful,” said Locke softly. “Idiots.”

Jean sighed. “Neither of us has any right to offer that sort of observation, since ‘gods-damned idiots' is likely to be inscribed on our grave-markers.”

“I've had reasons for doing what I've done, and so did you.”

“I'm sure those duelists felt the same way.”

“Let's get the hell out of here,” said Locke. “Let's walk off the fumes in my head and get back to the inn. Gods, I feel old and sour. I see things like this and I wonder if I was that bloody stupid when I was that boy's age.”

“You were worse,” said Jean. “Until quite recently. Probably still are.”

5

LOCKE'S MELANCHOLY
slowly evaporated, along with more of his alcoholic haze, as they made their way down and across the Golden Steps, north by northeast to the Great Gallery. The Eldren craftsmen (Craftswomen? Crafts-
things
?) responsible for Tal Verrar had covered the entire district with an open-sided Elderglass roof that sloped downward from its peak atop the sixth tier and plunged into the sea at the western island's base, leaving at least thirty feet of space beneath it at all points in between. Strange twisted glass columns rose up at irregular intervals, looking like leafless climbing vines carved from ice. The glass ceiling of the Gallery was easily a thousand yards from end to end the long way.

Beyond the Great Gallery, on the lower layers of the island, was the Portable Quarter—open-faced tiers on which the miserably destitute were allowed to set up squatters' huts and whatever shelters they could construct from castoff materials. The trouble was that any forceful wind from the north, especially in the rainy winter, would completely rearrange the place.

Perversely, the district above and immediately southeast of the Portable Quarter, the Savrola, was a pricey expatriate's enclave, full of foreigners with money to waste. All the best inns were there, including the one Locke and Jean were currently using for their well-heeled alternate identities. The Savrola was sealed off from the Portable Quarter by high stone walls, and heavily patrolled by Verrari constables and private mercenaries.

By day, the Great Gallery was the marketplace of Tal Verrar. A thousand merchants set up their stalls beneath it every morning, and there was room for five thousand more, should the city ever grow so vast. Visitors rooming in the Savrola who didn't travel by boat were forced, by cunning coincidence, to walk across the full breadth of the market to travel to or from the Golden Steps.

An east wind was up, blowing out from the mainland, across the glass islands and into the Gallery. Locke and Jean's footsteps echoed in the darkness of the vast hollow space; soft lamps on some of the glass pillars made irregular islands of light. Scraps of trash blew past their feet, and wisps of wood smoke from unseen fires. Some merchants kept family members sleeping in particularly desirable stall locations all night…and of course there were always vagrants from the Portable Quarter, seeking privacy in the shadows of the empty Gallery. Patrols stomped through the Gallery tiers several times each night, but there were none in sight at the moment.

“What a strange wasteland this place becomes after dark,” said Jean. “I can't decide if I mislike it or if it enchants me.”

“You'd probably be less inclined to enchantment if you didn't have a pair of hatchets stuffed up the back of your coat.”

“Mmm.”

They walked on for another few minutes. Locke rubbed his stomach and muttered to himself.

“Jean—are you hungry, by chance?”

“I usually am. Need some more ballast for that liquor?”

“I think it might be a good idea. Damn that carousel. Another losing hand and I might have proposed marriage to that gods-damned smoking dragoness. Or just fallen out of my chair.”

“Well, let's raid the Night Market.”

On the topmost tier of the Great Gallery, toward the northeastern end of the covered district, Locke could see the flickering light of barrel fires and lanterns, and the shadowy shapes of several people. Commerce never truly ground to a halt in Tal Verrar; with thousands of people coming and going from the Golden Steps, there was enough coin floating around for a few dozen nocturnal stall-keepers to stake out a spot just after sunset every evening. The Night Market could be a great convenience, and it was invariably more eccentric than its daytime counterpart.

As Locke and Jean strolled toward the bazaar with the night breeze blowing against them, they had a fine view of the inner harbor with its dark forest of ships' masts. Beyond that, the rest of the city's islands lay sensibly sleeping, dotted here and there with specks of light rather than the profligate glow of the Golden Steps. At the heart of the city, the three crescent islands of the Great Guilds (Alchemists, Artificers, and Merchants) curled around the base of the high, rocky Castellana like slumbering beasts. And atop the Castellana, like a looming stone hill planted in a field of mansions, was the dim outline of the Mon Magisteria, the fortress of the archon.

Tal Verrar was supposedly ruled by the Priori, but in reality a significant degree of power rested in the man who resided in that palace, the city's master of arms. The office of the archon had been created following Tal Verrar's early disgraces in the Thousand-Day War against Camorr, to take command of the army and navy out of the hands of the bickering merchant councils. But the trouble with creating military dictators, Locke reflected, was getting rid of them after the immediate crisis was past. The first archon had “declined” retirement, and his successor was, if anything, even more interested in interfering with civic affairs. Outside guarded bastions of frivolity like the Golden Steps and expatriate havens like the Savrola, the disagreements between archon and Priori kept the city on edge.

“Gentlemen!” came a voice from their left, breaking into Locke's chain of thought. “Honored sirs. A walk across the Great Gallery cannot possibly be complete without refreshment.” Locke and Jean had reached the fringes of the Night Market; there were no other customers in sight, and the faces of at least a dozen merchants stared keenly out at them from within their little circles of fire or lamplight.

The first Verrari to throw his pitch against the gates of their good judgment was a one-armed man getting on in years, with long white hair braided down to his waist. He waved a wooden ladle at them, indicating four small casks set atop a portable counter not unlike a flat-topped wheelbarrow.

“What's your fare?”

“Delicacies from the table of Iono himself, the sweetest taste the sea has to offer. Sharks' eyes in brine; all fresh plucked. Crisp the shells, soft the humors, sweet the juices.”

“Sharks' eyes? Gods, no.” Locke grimaced. “Have you more common flesh? Liver? Gills? A gill pie would be welcome.”

“Gills? Sir, gills have none of the virtues of the eyes; it is the eyes that tone the muscles, prevent cholera, and firm up a man's mechanisms for certain, ah, marital duties.”

“I have no need of any mechanism-firming in that respect,” said Locke. “And I'm afraid my stomach is too unsettled for the splendor of sharks' eyes at just the moment.”

“A pity, sir. For your sake, I wish I had some bit of gill to offer you, but it's the eyes that I get, and little else. Yet I do have several types—scythe sharks, wolf sharks, blue widower….”

“We must pass, friend,” said Jean as he and Locke walked on.

“Fruit, worthy masters?” The next merchant along was a slender young woman comfortably ensconced in a cream-colored frock coat several sizes too large for her; she also wore a four-cornered hat with a small alchemical globe dangling on a chain, hanging down just above her left shoulder. She stood watch over a number of woven baskets. “Alchemical fruit, fresh hybrids. Have you ever seen the Sofia Orange of Camorr? It makes its own liquor, very sweet and powerful.”

“We are…acquainted,” said Locke. “And more liquor is not what I had in mind. Anything to recommend for an unsettled stomach?”

“Pears, sir. The world would have no unsettled stomachs if only we were all wise enough to eat several every day.”

She took up one basket, about half-full, and held it up before him. Locke sifted through the pears, which seemed firm and fresh enough, and drew out three. “Five centira,” said the fruit seller.

“A full volani?” Locke feigned outrage. “Not if the archon's favorite whore held them between her legs and wiggled for me. One centira is too much for the lot.”

“One centira wouldn't buy you the stems. At least I won't lose money for four.”

“It would be an act of supreme pity,” said Locke, “for me to give you two. Fortunately for you I'm brimming with largesse; the bounty is yours.”

“Two would be an insult to the men and women who grew those, in the hot glass gardens of the Blackhands Crescent. But surely we can meet at three?”

“Three,” said Locke with a smile. “I have never been robbed in Tal Verrar before, but I'm just hungry enough to allow you the honor.” He passed two of the pears to Jean without looking while fumbling in one of his coat pockets for copper. When he tossed three coins to the fruit seller, she nodded.

“A good evening to you, Master Lamora.”

Locke froze and fixed his eyes on her. “I beg your pardon?”

“A good evening to you, is all I said, worthy master.”

“You didn't…”

“Didn't what?”

“Ah, nothing.” Locke sighed nervously. “I had a bit much to drink, is all. A fair evening to you, as well.”

He and Jean strolled away, and Locke took a tentative bite of his pear. It was in a fine state, neither too firm and dry nor too ripe and sticky. “Jean,” he said between bites, “did you hear what she said to me, just now?”

“I'm afraid I heard nothing but the death cry of this unfortunate pear. Listen closely: ‘Noooo, don't eat me, please, nooo….'” Jean had already reduced his first pear to its core; as Locke watched, he popped this into his mouth, crunched it loudly, and swallowed it all but for the stem, which he flicked away.

“Thirteen gods,” said Locke, “
must
you do that?”

“I like the cores,” said Jean sulkily. “All the little crunchy bits.”

“
Goats
eat the gods-damned crunchy bits.”

“You're not my mother.”

“Well, true. Your mother would be ugly. Oh, don't give me that look. Go on, eat your other core; it's got a nice juicy pear wrapped around it.”

“What did the woman say?”

“She said…oh, gods, she said nothing. I'm tipsy, is all.”

“Alchemical lanterns, sirs?” A bearded man held his arm out toward them; at least half a dozen little lanterns in ornamental gilt frames hung from it. “A pair of well-dressed gentlemen should not be without light; only scrubs scuttle about in darkness with no way to see! You'll find no better lanterns in all the Gallery, not by night or day.”

Jean waved the man off while he and Locke finished their pears. Locke carelessly tossed his core over his shoulder, while Jean popped his into his mouth, taking pains to ensure that Locke was watching when he did.

“Mmmmmm,” he muttered with a half-full mouth, “ambrosial. But you'll never know, you and all your fellow culinary cowards.”