The Gentleman Bastard Series (176 page)

“Builds character.” The man in the black coat picked up a chair, set it down in front of Jean, then kicked him in the stomach, good and fast, barely giving him time to flinch before the pain hit. Jean groaned, and the four men holding him bore down on him with all of their weight, lest he try anything stupid.

“Wait,” coughed Locke. “Please—”

“If I have to say ‘quiet’ again,” said the black-coated man, “I’ll cut your fucking tongue out and pin it to the wall. Now shut up.” He sat down in the chair and smiled. “My name is Cortessa.”

“Whispers,” said Jean. This was much worse than the constabulary. Whispers Cortessa was a top power in the Lashani underworld.

“So they call me. I presume you’re Andolini.”

That was the name Jean had given when renting their rooms, and he nodded.

“If it’s real I’m the king of the Seven Marrows,” said Cortessa. “But nobody cares. Can you tell me why I’m here?”

“You ran out of sheep to fuck and went looking for some action?”

“Gods, I love Camorri. Constitutionally incapable of doing things the easy way.” Cortessa slapped Jean hard enough to make his eyes water. “Try again. Why am I here?”

“You heard,” Jean gasped, “that we’d finally discovered the cure for being born with a face like a stray dog’s ass.”

“No. If that were true you would have used it.” Cortessa’s next blow was no slap, but a backhanded bruise-maker. Jean blinked as the room swam around him.

“Now, I would
love
to sit here and paint the floor with your blood. Leone would probably love it even more. But I think I can save us all a lot of time.” Cortessa beckoned, and one of the men standing over
Locke’s bed lifted a club. “What does your friend lose first? A knee? A few toes? I can be creative.”

“
No
. Please.” Jean would have bent his head to Cortessa’s feet if he hadn’t been restrained. “I’m the one you want. I won’t waste any more of your time. Please.”

“You’re the one I want, suddenly? Why would I want you?”

“Something about a physiker, I’d guess.”

“There we are. That wasn’t so hard after all.” Cortessa cracked his knuckles. “What did you think might happen when someone like Zodesti came home from the shit you pulled yesterday?”

“Certainly would have been nice if he’d never said anything at all.”

“Don’t be simple. Now, I know you’re a friend of the friends. I hear things. When you first came to Lashain you knew your business. Kept the peace, made your gifts,
behaved
. You clearly understand how things work in our world. So do you think Zodesti ran up and down the streets, screaming that he’d been stolen away like a child? Or do you think he sent a few private messages to people who know people?”

“Shit,” said Jean.

“Yeah. So, I got the job and I thought to myself … wasn’t there a big man looking for alchemists and dog-leeches just last week? What might they have to say about him? Oh? A bad poisoning? A man bleeding to death in bed at the Villa Suvela?” Cortessa spread his arms and smiled beatifically. “Some problems just solve themselves.”

“How can I make amends?” said Jean.

“You can’t.” Cortessa stood up, laughing.

“Please don’t do anything to my friend. He had nothing to do with the physiker. Do whatever you like with me. I’ll cooperate. Just—”

“My, you’ve gone from hard to soft, big man. You’ll cooperate? Of course you’ll fucking cooperate, you’ve got four of my men sitting on you.”

“There’s money,” said Jean. “Money, or I could work for you—”

“You’ve got nothing I want,” said Cortessa. “And that’s your problem. But I have a serious problem of my own.”

“Oh?”

“Ordinarily, this is the part where we’d make soup out of your balls and watch you drink it. Ordinarily. But we have what you might call a
conflict of interest
. On the one hand, you’re an outlander and you touched a Lashani with all the right friends. That says we fucking kill you.

“On the other hand, it’s plain you are or were some sort of connected man in Camorr. Big Barsavi might not be with us anymore, gods rest his crooked soul, but nobody in their right mind wants to fuck with the capas. You could be somebody’s cousin. Who knows? A year or two from now, maybe someone comes looking for you. Asks around town. Whoops! Someone tells them to look on the bottom of the lake. And who gets sent back to Camorr in a box to pay the debt? Yours truly. That says we
don’t
fucking kill you.”

“Like I said, I have some money,” said Jean. “If that can help.”

“It’s not your money anymore. But what does help is that your friend here is already dying … and from the looks of it, he’ll be pretty damn glad to go.”

“Look, if you’ll just let him stay, he needs rest—”

“I know. That’s why I’m kicking your asses out of Lashain.” Cortessa waved his hands at his people. “Strip the place. All the food, all the wine. Blankets, bandages, money. Take the wood out of the fireplace. Throw the water out of the jug. Pass word to the innkeeper that these two fucks are under the interdict.”

“Please,” said Jean. “Please—”

“Shut up. You can keep your clothes and your weapons. I won’t send you out completely naked. But I want you gone. By sunrise, you’re out of the city or Zodesti gets to cut your ears off himself. Your friend can find somewhere else to die.” Cortessa gave Locke a pat on the leg. “Think fondly of me in hell, you poor bastard.”

“You might not be long in getting there yourself,” said Locke. “I’ll have a big hug waiting for you.”

Cortessa’s people ransacked the suite. They carefully piled Jean’s weapons on the floor; everything else was taken or smashed. Locke was left on the empty bed in his bloodstained breeches and tunic. Jean’s private purse and the one that had contained their general funds were both emptied. A few moments later, one of Cortessa’s men stuffed the empty purses into his pockets as well.

“Oh,” said Cortessa to Jean as the tumult was winding down, “one thing more. Leone gets a minute alone with you in the corner. For his nose.”

“Bleth you, bothss,” muttered Leone, gingerly poking at the swollen bruises that had spread to his lips.

“And you get to take it, outlander. Lift so much as a finger and I’ll have your friend gutted.” Cortessa patted Jean on the cheek and turned to leave. “Sunrise. Get the fuck out of Lashain. Or our next conversation takes place in Scholar Zodesti’s cellar.”

10

“JEAN,” WHISPERED Locke as soon as the last of Cortessa’s bruisers had left. “Jean! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Jean was huddled where the linens table had been before Cortessa’s men removed it. Leone had been straightforward but enthusiastic, and Jean felt as though he’d been thrown down a rocky hillside. “I’m just … enjoying the floor. It was kind enough to catch me when I fell.”

“Jean, listen. I took some of the money when we got here on the boat.… I hid it. Loosened a floorboard under the bed.”

“I know you did. I unloosened it. Took it back.”

“You eel! I wanted you to have something to get away with when you—”

“I knew you’d try it, Locke. There weren’t many hiding places available within stumbling distance of the bed.”

“Argh!”

“Argh, yourself.” Jean heaved himself over on his back and stared at the ceiling, breathing shallowly. Nothing felt broken, but his ribs and everything attached to them were lined up to file complaints. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll go out and find some blankets for you. I can get a cart. Maybe a boat. Get you out of here somehow, before the dawn. We’ve got a lot of darkness to use.”

“Jean, you’ll be watched until you leave. They’re not going to let you”—Locke coughed several times—“steal anything big. And I’m not going to let you carry me.”

“Not let me carry you? What are you going to fend me off with, sarcasm?”

“You should have had a few thousand solari to work with, Jean. Could have gone anywhere … done anything with it.”

“I did exactly what I wanted to do with it. Now, you go with me. Or I stay here to die with you.”

“There’s no reasoning with you.”

“You’re such a paragon of compromise yourself. Pig-brained gods-damned egotist.”

“This isn’t a fair contest. You have more energy for big words than I do.” Locke laughed. “Gods, look at us. Can you believe they even took our firewood?”

“Very little surprises me these days.” Jean slowly stood up, wincing all the way. “So, inventory. No money. Clothes on our backs. Mostly
my
back. Some weapons. No firewood. Since I doubt we’ll be allowed to lift anything in the city, looks like I’ll have to do some highway work.”

“How do you plan on halting carriages?”

“I’ll throw you in the road and hope they stop.”

“Criminal genius. Will they be stopping out of heartfelt sympathy?”

“Revulsion, more likely.”

There was a knock at the front door.

Locke and Jean glanced at one another uneasily, and Jean picked up a dagger from the small pile of weapons that had been left to him.

“Maybe they’re back for the bed,” said Locke.

“Why would
they
bother knocking?”

Jean kept most of his body behind the door as he opened it, and he tucked the dagger just out of sight behind his back.

It wasn’t Cortessa, or a dog-leech, or even the master of the Villa Suvela, as Jean had expected. It was a woman, dressed in a richly embroidered oilcloak streaming with water. She held an alchemical globe in her hands, and by its pale light Jean could see that she was not young.

Jean scanned the curb behind her. No carriage, no litter, no escort of any sort—just misty darkness and the patter of the rain. A local? A fellow guest of the Villa Suvela?

“I, uh … can I be of assistance, madam?”

“I believe we can be of assistance to one another. If I might come in?” She had a soft and lovely voice, with something very close to a Lashani accent. Close, but not exact.

“We are … that is, I’m sorry, but we have some difficulty at the moment. My friend is ill.”

“I know they took your furniture.”

“You do?”

“And I know that you and your friend didn’t have much else to begin with.”

“Madam, you seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

“And you seem to have me out in the rain.”

“Um.” Jean shuffled the dagger and made it vanish up his tunic sleeve. “Well, my friend, as I said, is gravely ill. You should be aware—”

“I don’t mind.” She entered the instant Jean’s resolution wavered, and gracefully got out of the way as he closed the door behind her. “After all, poison is only contagious at dinner parties.”

“How the hell … are you a physiker?”

“Hardly.”

“Are you with Cortessa?”

The woman only laughed at that, and threw back the hood of her oilcloak. She was about fifty, the well-tended sort of fifty that only wealth could make possible, and her hair was the color of dry autumn wheat with currents of silver at the temples. She had a squarish face, with disconcertingly wide, dark eyes.

“Here, take this.” She tossed the alchemical globe to Jean, who caught it by reflex. “I know they took your lights, too.”

“Um, thank you, but—”

“My, my.” The woman unclasped her cloak and spun it off her shoulders as she strolled into the inner apartment. Her coat and skirts were richly brocaded with silver threads, and puffs of silver lace from beneath her cuffs half-covered her hands. She glanced at Locke. “Ill would seem to be an understatement.”

“Forgive me for not getting up,” said Locke. “And for not offering you a seat. And not being dressed. And for not … giving a damn.”

“Down to the last dregs of your charm, I see.”

“Down to the last dregs of my everything. Who are you, then?”

The woman shook out her oilcloak, then threw it over Locke like a blanket.

“Th-thank you.”

“It’s difficult to have a serious conversation with someone whose dignity is compromised, Locke.”

The next sound in the room was that of Jean slamming home the bolt on the front door. In an instant he returned to the inner apartment, knife in hand. He tossed the light-globe onto the bed, where Locke prevented it from bouncing onto the floor.

“In faith,” said Jean, “my patience for mysterious shit went out that door with the money and the furniture. So you explain how you know that name, and I won’t have to feel guilty for—”

“I doubt you’d survive what would happen if you acted on that impulse, Jean Tannen. I know your pride wouldn’t. Put your blade away.”

“Like hell!”

“Poor Gentlemen Bastards,” said the woman softly. “So far from home. But always in our sight.”

“
No
,” said Jean in a disbelieving whisper.

“Oh, gods,” said Locke. He coughed and closed his eyes. “It’s you. I suspected you’d kick our door down sooner or later.”

“You sound disappointed.” The woman frowned. “As though you’d just failed to avoid an awkward social call. Would you really find death preferable to a little conversation, Locke?”

“Little conversations with Bondsmagi never end well.”

“You’re the reason we’re here,” growled Jean. “You and your games in Tal Verrar. Your damned letters!”

“Not entirely,” said the woman.

“You didn’t scare us in the Night Market.” Jean’s grip tightened on the hilt of his blade, and the pain of his recent beating was entirely forgotten. “You don’t fucking scare us now!”

“Then you don’t know us at all.”

“I think I do. And I don’t give a damn about your gods-damned
rules
!”

He was already in motion, and her back was to him. She had no chance to speak or gesture with her hands; his left arm went around her neck and he slammed the dagger home as hard as he could, directly between her shoulder blades.

11

THE WOMAN’S flesh was warm and solid beneath Jean’s arm one moment, and in the next his blade bit empty air.

Jean had faced many fast opponents in his life, but never one that dissolved instantly at his touch. That wasn’t human speed; it was sorcery.

His chance was gone.

He inhaled sharply, and a cold shudder ran down his back, the old familiar sensation of a misstep made and a blow about to fall. His pulse beat like a drum inside his skull, and he waited for the pain of whatever reprisal was coming—