The Gentleman Bastard Series 3-Book Bundle: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, The Republic of Thieves (24 page)

Locke’s nose smarted from the stinging aroma of hard liquor that wafted from the tumbler,
and his stomach lurched, but he ground his jaws together and stared down at the slightly
distorted shape of the tooth within the rum. Silently praying to his new Benefactor
to save him from
embarrassment, he dashed the contents of the glass into his mouth, tooth and all.

Swallowing was not as easy as he’d hoped—he held the tooth against the roof of his
mouth with his tongue, gingerly, feeling its sharp points scrape against the back
of his upper front teeth. The liquor burned; he began to swallow in small gulps that
soon turned into wheezing coughs. After a few interminable seconds, he shuddered and
sucked down the last of the rum, relieved that he had held the tooth carefully in
place—

It twisted in his mouth.
Twisted
, physically, as though wrenched by an unseen hand, and scored a burning slash across
the inside of his left cheek. Locke cried out, coughed, and spat up the tooth—it lay
there in his open palm, flecked with spit and blood.

“Ahhhhh,” said Capa Barsavi as he plucked the tooth up and slipped it back into his
waistcoat, blood and all. “So you see—you are bound by an oath of blood to my service.
My tooth has tasted of your life, and your life is mine. So let us not be strangers,
Locke Lamora. Let us be capa and
pezon
, as the Crooked Warden intended.”

At a gesture from Barsavi Locke stumbled to his feet, already inwardly cursing the
now-familiar sensation of liquor rapidly going to his head. His stomach was empty
from the day’s hangover; the room was already swaying a bit around him. When he set
eyes on Nazca once again, he saw that she was smiling at him above her ale-jack, with
the air of smarmy tolerance the older children in Shades’ Hill had once shown to him
and his compatriots in Streets.

Before he knew what he was doing, Locke bent his knee to her as well.

“If you’re the next Capa Barsavi,” he said rapidly, “I should swear to serve you,
too. I do. Madam. Madam Nazca. I mean … Madam Barsavi.”

The girl took a step back. “I already
have
servants, boy. I have
assassins
. My father has a hundred gangs and two thousand knives!”

“Nazca Belonna Jenavais Angeliza de Barsavi!” her father thundered. “Now it seems
you only grasp the value of
strong
men as servants. In time, you will come to see the value of
gracious
ones as well. You shame me.”

Nonplussed, the girl glanced back and forth between Locke and her father several times.
Her cheeks slowly turned red. After a few more moments of pouting consideration, she
stiffly held out her ale-jack to Locke.

“You may have some of my beer.”

Locke responded as though this were the deepest honor ever conferred upon him, realizing
(though hardly in so many words) all the while that the liquor was somehow running
a sort of rump parliament in his brain
that had overruled his usual cautious social interactions—especially with girls. Her
beer was bitter dark stuff, slightly salted—she drank like a Verrari. Locke took two
sips to be polite, then handed it back to her, bowing in a rather noodle-necked fashion
as he did so. She was too flustered to say anything in return, so she merely nodded.

“Ha! Excellent!” Capa Barsavi chomped on his slender cigar in mirth. “Your first
pezon
! Of course, both of your brothers are going to want some just as soon as they hear
about this.”

THE TRIP home was a muggy, misty blur to Locke; he clung to the neck of his Gentled
goat while Chains led them back north toward the Temple District, frequently cackling
to himself.

“Oh, my boy,” he muttered. “My dear, dear charming sot of a boy. It was all bullshit,
you realize.”

“What?”

“The shark’s tooth. Capa Barsavi had a Bondsmage enchant that thing for him in Karthain
years ago.
Nobody
can swallow it without cutting themselves. He’s been carrying it around ever since;
all those years he spent studying Throne Therin theater have given him a substantial
fetish for the dramatic.”

“So it wasn’t … like, fate, or the gods, or anything like that?”

“It was just a shark’s tooth with a tiny bit of sorcery. A good trick, I have to admit.”
Chains rubbed his own cheek in sympathy and remembrance. “No, Locke, you don’t belong
to Barsavi. He’s good enough for what he is—a powerful ally to have on your side,
and a man that you must appear to obey at all times. But he certainly doesn’t own
you. In the end, neither do I.”

“So I don’t have to …”

“Obey the Secret Peace? Be a good little
pezon
? Only for pretend, Locke. Only to keep the wolves from the door. Unless your eyes
and ears have been stitched shut with rawhide these past two days, by now you must
have realized that I intend you and Calo and Galdo and Sabetha to be nothing less,”
Chains confided through a feral grin, “than a fucking ballista bolt
right through
the heart of Vencarlo’s precious Secret Peace.”

“NINETEEN THOUSAND,” SAID Bug, “nine hundred and twenty. That’s all of it. Can I please
kill
myself now?”

“What? I’d have thought you’d be enthusiastic about helping us tally the loot, Bug.”
Jean sat cross-legged in the middle of the dining area in the glass cellar beneath
the House of Perelandro; the table and chairs had been moved away to make room for
a vast quantity of gold coins, stacked into little glittering mounds that circled
Jean and Bug, nearly walling them in completely.

“You didn’t tell me you’d be hauling it home in tyrins.”

“Well, white iron is dear. Nobody’s going to hand out five thousand crowns in it,
and nobody’s going to be dumb enough to carry it around like that. Meraggio’s makes
all of its big payouts in tyrins.”

There was a rattling noise from the entrance passage to the cellar; then Locke appeared
around the corner, dressed as Lukas Fehrwight. He whipped his false optics off, loosened
his cravats, and shrugged out of his wool coat, letting it fall unceremoniously to
the floor. His face was flushed, and he was waving a piece of folded parchment affixed
with a blue wax seal.

“Seventy-five hundred more, my boys! I told him we’d found four likely galleons, but
that we were already having cash flow problems—bribes
to be paid, crews to be called back and sobered up, officers to be placated, other
cargo-shippers to be chased off … And he just handed it right over, smiling all the
while. Gods. I should’ve thought this scam up five years ago. We don’t even have to
bother setting up fake ships and paperwork and so forth, because Salvara
knows
the Fehrwight part of the game is a lie. There’s nothing for us to do except relax
and count the money.”

“If it’s so relaxing, why don’t
you
count it, then?” Bug jumped to his feet and leaned backward until his back and his
neck made a series of little popping noises.

“I’d be happy to, Bug.” Locke took a bottle of red wine out of a wooden cupboard and
poured himself half a glass, then watered it from a brass pitcher of lukewarm rainwater
until it was a soft pink. “And tomorrow you can play Lukas Fehrwight. I’m sure Don
Salvara would never notice any difference. Is it all here?”

“Five thousand crowns delivered as twenty thousand tyrins,” said Jean, “less eighty
for clerking fees and guards and a rented dray to haul it from Meraggio’s.”

The Gentlemen Bastards used a simple substitution scheme for hauling large quantities
of valuables to their hideout at the House of Perelandro. At a series of quick stops,
strongboxes of coins would vanish from one wagon and barrels marked as common food
or drink would roll off on another. Even a decrepit little temple needed a steady
infusion of basic supplies.

“Well,” said Locke, “let me get rid of poor Master Fehrwight’s clothes and I’ll give
you a hand dumping it all in the vault.”

There were actually three vaults tucked away at the rear of the cellar, behind the
sleeping quarters. Two of them were wide Elderglass-coated shafts that went down about
ten feet; their original purpose was unknown. With simple wooden doors mounted on
hinges set atop them, they resembled nothing so much as miniature grain-storage towers
sunk into the earth and filled to a substantial depth with coins of every sort.

Silver and gold in large quantities went into the vaults; narrow wooden shelves around
the periphery of the vault room held small bags or piles of more readily useful currency.
There were cheap purses of copper barons, fine leather wallets with tight rolls of
silver solons, and small bowls of clipped half-copper bits, all of them set out for
the rapid taking for any scam or need one of the gang might face. There were even
little stacks of foreign coinage; marks from the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows, solari
from Tal Verrar, and so forth.

Even back in the days of Father Chains there had been no locks on these vaults or
on the room that held them. This was not merely because the Gentlemen Bastards trusted
one another (and they did), nor because the existence of their luxurious cellar was
a closely guarded secret (and it certainly was). The primary reason was one of practicality—not
one of them, Calo or Galdo or Locke or Jean or Bug, had anything they could conceivably
do with their steadily growing pile of precious metal.

Outside of Capa Barsavi, they had to be the wealthiest thieves in Camorr; the little
parchment ledger set aside on one of the shelves would list more than forty-three
thousand
full crowns when Don Salvara’s second note was turned into cold coin. They were as
wealthy as the man they were currently robbing, and far wealthier than many of his
peers.

Yet so far as anyone knew, the Gentlemen Bastards were an unassuming gang of ordinary
sneak thieves; competent and discreet enough, steady earners, but hardly shooting
stars. They could live comfortably for ten crowns apiece each year, and to spend much
more than that would invite the most unwelcome scrutiny imaginable, from every authority
in Camorr, legal or otherwise.

In four years, they’d brought off three huge scores and were currently working on
their fourth; for four years, the vast majority of the money had simply been counted
and thrown down into the darkness of the vaults.

The truth was, Chains had trained them superbly for the task of relieving Camorr’s
nobility of the burden of some of its accumulated wealth, but had perhaps neglected
to discuss the possible uses of the sums involved. Other than financing further theft,
the Gentlemen Bastards really had no idea what they were eventually going to do with
it all.

Their tithe to Capa Barsavi averaged about a crown a week.

“REJOICE!” CRIED Calo as he appeared in the kitchen, just as Locke and Jean were moving
the dining table back to its customary position. “The Sanza brothers are returned!”

“I do wonder,” said Jean, “if that particular combination of words has ever been uttered
by anyone, before now.”

“Only in the chambers of unattached young ladies across the city,” said Galdo as he
set a small burlap sack down on the table. Locke shook it open and perused the contents—a
few lockets set with semiprecious stones, a set of moderately well-crafted silver
forks and knives, and an assortment
of rings ranging from cheap engraved copper to one made of threaded gold and platinum,
set with flecks of obsidian and diamond.

“Oh, very nice,” said Locke. “Very likely. Jean, would you pick out a few more bits
from the Bullshit Box, and get me … twenty solons, right?”

“Twenty’s good and proper.”

While Locke gestured for Calo and Galdo to help him set chairs back in place around
the dining table, Jean walked back to the vault room, where there was a tall, narrow
wooden chest tucked against the left-hand wall. He threw back the lid on its creaky
hinges and began rummaging inside, a thoughtful expression on his face.

The Bullshit Box was filled to a depth of about two feet with a glittering pile of
jewelry, knickknacks, household items, and decorative gewgaws. There were crystal
statues, mirrors in carved ivory frames, necklaces and rings, candleholders in five
kinds of precious metal. There were even a few bottles of drugs and alchemical draughts,
wrapped in felt to cushion them and marked with little paper labels.

Since the Gentlemen Bastards could hardly tell the Capa about the true nature of their
operations, and since they had neither the time nor the inclination to actually break
into houses and clamber down chimneys, the Bullshit Box was one of the pillars of
their ongoing deception. They topped it off once or twice a year, going on buying
sprees in the pawnshops and markets of Talisham or Ashmere, where they could get whatever
they needed openly. They supplemented it only slightly and carefully with goods picked
up in Camorr, usually things stolen on a whim by the Sanzas or secured by Bug as part
of his continuing education.

Jean selected a pair of silver wine goblets, a pair of gold-framed optics inside a
fine leather case, and one of the little wrapped bottles. Clutching all of this carefully
in one hand, he then counted twenty small silver coins off a shelf, kicked the Bullshit
Box shut, and hurried back out to the dining room. Bug had rejoined the group and
was ostentatiously walking a solon across the knuckles of his right hand; he’d mastered
the trick only weeks previously, after long months of watching the Sanzas, who could
each do both hands at once, reversing directions in perfect unison.

“Let us say,” said Jean, “that we have had a somewhat slothful week. Nobody expects
much from second-story men when the nights are wet like this anyway; we might look
out of place if we haul in too much. Surely His Honor will understand.”