The Gentleman Bastard Series (18 page)

Calo would have said something else, but an almond roll bounced off the bridge of his nose and he flinched in surprise. Another roll hit Galdo in the forehead; one arced into Jean’s lap, and Locke managed to throw up a hand in time to swat down the one intended for him.

“Honestly!” Bug clutched still more rolls in his outstretched hands, and he pointed them like loaded crossbows. “Is this what I get to look forward to when I grow up? I thought we were celebrating being richer and cleverer than everyone else!”

Locke looked at the boy for just a moment, then reached out and took the full sampling-glass from Jean, a smile breaking out as he did so. “Bug’s right. Let’s cut the shit and have dinner.” He raised the glass as high as he could toward the light of the chandelier. “To us—richer and cleverer than everyone else!”

“Richer and cleverer than everyone else!”
came the echoing chorus.

“We toast absent friends who helped to bring us to where we are now. We do miss them.” Locke set the little glass to his lips and took a minuscule sip before he set it back down.

“And we love them still,” he added quietly.

3

“THE THORN of Camorr … is a particularly ridiculous rumor that floats around the dining parlor when some of the more excitable dons don’t water their wine quite thoroughly enough.”

“The Thorn of Camorr,” said the scarred man pleasantly, “walked off your pleasure barge earlier this evening with a signed note for five thousand of your white iron crowns.”

“Who? Lukas Fehrwight?”

“None other.”

“Lukas Fehrwight is a
Vadran
. My mother was Vadran; I know the tongue! Lukas is Old Emberlain all the way through. He covers himself in wool and flinches back six feet any time a woman blinks at him!” Don Lorenzo pulled his optics off in irritation and set them on his desk. “The man would bet the lives of his own children against the price he could get
for barrels of herring guts on any given morning. I’ve dealt with his kind too many times to count. That man is no Camorri, and he is
no mythical thief
!”

“My lord. You are four and twenty, yes?”

“For the time being. Is that quite relevant?”

“You have no doubt known many merchants in the years since your mother and father passed away, may they have the peace of the Long Silence. Many merchants, and many of them Vadrans, correct?”

“Quite correct.”

“And if a man, a very clever man, wished you to think him a merchant … Well, what would he dress up and present himself as? A fisherman? A mercenary archer?”

“I don’t grasp your meaning.”

“I mean, m’lord Salvara, that your own expectations have been used against you. You have a keen sense for men of business, surely. You’ve grown your family fortune several times over in your brief time handling it. Therefore, a man who wished to snare you in some scheme could do nothing wiser than to act the consummate man of business. To deliberately manifest all of your expectations. To show you exactly what you expected and desired to see.”

“It seems to me that if I accept your argument,” the don said slowly, “then the self-evident truth of any legitimate thing could be taken as grounds for its falseness. I say Lukas Fehrwight is a merchant of Emberlain because he shows the signs of being so; you say those same signs are what prove him counterfeit. I need more sensible evidence than this.”

“Let me digress, then, m’lord, and ask another question.” The scarred man drew his hands within the black folds of his cloak and stared down at the young nobleman. “If you were a thief who preyed
exclusively
on the nobility of our Serene Duchy of Camorr, how would you hide your actions?”

“Exclusively? Your Thorn of Camorr again. There can’t be any such thief. There are arrangements … the Secret Peace. Other thieves would take care of the matter as soon as any man dared breach the Peace.”

“And if our thief could evade capture? If our thief could conceal his identity from his fellows?”

“If. If. They say the Thorn of Camorr steals from the rich”—Don Salvara placed a hand on his own chest—“and gives every last copper to the poor. But have you heard of any bags of gold being dumped in the street in Catchfire lately? Any charcoal-burners or knackers suddenly
walking around in silk waistcoats and embroidered boots? Please. The Thorn is a commoner’s ale-tale. Master swordsman, romancer of ladies, a ghost who walks through walls. Ridiculous.”

“Your doors are locked and all your windows are barred, yet here we are in your study, m’lord.”

“Granted. But you’re men of flesh and blood.”

“So it’s said. We’re getting off the subject. Our thief, m’lord, would trust
you and your peers
to keep his activities concealed
for
him. Hypothetically speaking, if Lukas Fehrwight
were
the Thorn of Camorr, and you
knew
that he had strolled off with a small fortune from your coffers, what would you do? Would you rouse the watch? Cry for aid openly in the court of His Grace? Speak of the matter in front of Don Paleri Jacobo?”

“I … I … that’s an interesting point. I wonder—”

“Would you want the entire city to know that you’d been taken in? That you’d been tricked? Would men of business ever trust your judgment again? Would your reputation ever
truly
recover?”

“I suppose it would be a very … difficult thing.”

The scarred man’s right hand reappeared, gloveless and pale against the darkness of the cloak, one finger pointing outward. “Her ladyship the Doña Rosalina de Marre lost ten thousand crowns four years ago, in exchange for titles to upriver orchards that don’t exist.” A second finger curled outward. “Don and Doña Feluccia lost twice as much two years ago. They thought they were financing a coup in Talisham that would have made the city a family estate.”

“Last year,” the scarred man said as a third finger unfolded, “Don Javarriz paid fifteen thousand full crowns to a soothsayer who claimed to be able to restore the old man’s firstborn son to life.” The man’s little finger snapped out, and he waved his extended hand at Don Lorenzo. “Now, we have the Don and Doña Salvara involved in a secret business deal that is both tempting and convenient. Tell me, have you ever heard of the troubles of the lords and ladies I have named?”

“No.”

“Doña de Marre visits your wife in her garden twice weekly. They discuss alchemical botany together. You’ve played cards with the sons of Don Javarriz many times. And yet this is all a surprise to you?”

“Yes, quite, I assure you!”

“It was a surprise to His Grace, as well. My master has spent four years attempting to follow the slender threads of evidence connecting these crimes, m’lord. A fortune the size of your own vanished into thin air, and
it took ducal orders to pry open the lips of the wronged parties. Because their pride
compelled
their silence.”

Don Lorenzo stared at the surface of his desk for a long moment.

“Fehrwight has a suite at the Tumblehome. He has a manservant, superior clothes, hundred-crown optics. He has … proprietary secrets of the House of bel Auster.” Don Salvara looked up at the scarred man as though presenting a difficult problem to a demanding tutor. “Things that no thief could have!”

“Would fine clothes be beyond the means of a man with more than forty
thousand
stolen crowns at his command? And his cask of unaged brandy—how would
you
or
I
or any other man outside the House of bel Auster know what it should look like? Or what it should taste like? It’s a simple fraud.”

“He was recognized on the street by a solicitor, one of the Razona lawscribes who sticks to the walls at Meraggio’s!”

“Of course he was, because he began building the identity of Lukas Fehrwight long ago, probably before he ever met Doña de Marre. He has a very real account at Meraggio’s, opened with real money five years ago. He has every outward flourish that a man in his position should bear, but Lukas Fehrwight is a ghost. A
lie
. A stage role performed for a very select private audience. I have tracked him for months.”

“We are sensible people, Sofia and I. Surely … surely we would have seen something out of place.”

“Out of place? The entire affair has been out of place! M’lord Salvara, I implore you, hear me carefully. You are a financier of fine liquors. You say a prayer to your mother’s shade each week at a Vadran temple. What a fascinating coincidence that you should chance upon a needy Vadran who happens to be a dealer in the same field, eh?”

“Where else but the Temple of Fortunate Waters would a Vadran pray while visiting Camorr?”

“Nowhere, of course. But look at the coincidences piling heavily upon one another. A Vadran liquor merchant, in need of rescue, and he just so happens to be on his way to visit Don Jacobo? Your blood enemy? A man that everyone knows you would
crush
by any means the duke hadn’t forbidden you?”

“Were you … observing us when I first met him?”

“Yes, very carefully. We saw you and your man approach that alley to rescue a man you thought to be in danger. We—”

“
Thought?
He was being strangled!”

“Was he? The men in those masks were his
accomplices
, m’lord. The fight was staged. It was a means to introduce you to the imaginary merchant and his imaginary opportunity. Everything you value was used to bait the trap! Your sympathies for Vadrans, your sense of duty, your courage, your interest in fine liquors, your desire to best Don Jacobo. And can it be a coincidence that Fehrwight’s scheme must be secret? That it runs on an extremely short and demanding schedule? That it just
happens
to feed your every known ambition?”

The don stared at the far wall of his study, tapping his fingers against his desk at a gradually increasing tempo. “This is quite a shock,” he said at last, in a small voice without any fight left in it.

“Forgive me for that, my Lord Salvara. The truth is unfortunate. Of course the Thorn of Camorr isn’t ten feet tall. Of course he can’t walk through walls. But he is a very real thief; he is posing as a Vadran named Lukas Fehrwight, and he
does
have five thousand crowns of your money, with an eye for twenty thousand more.”

“I must send men to Meraggio’s, so he can’t exchange my note in the morning,” said Don Lorenzo.

“Respectfully, my lord, you must do nothing of the sort. My instructions are clear. We don’t just want the Thorn, we want his accomplices. His contacts. His sources of information. His entire network of thieves and spies. We have him in the open, now, and we can follow him as he goes about his business. One hint that his game is unmasked, and he will bolt. The opportunity we have may never present itself again. His Grace Duke Nicovante is quite adamant that everyone involved in these crimes must be identified and taken. Toward that end, your absolute cooperation is requested and required, in the duke’s name.”

“What am I to do, then?”

“Continue to act as though you are entirely taken in by Fehrwight’s story. Let him exchange the note. Let him taste some success. And when he returns to you asking for more money …”

“Yes?”

“Why, give it to him, my lord. Give him everything he asks.”

4

ONCE THE dinner dishes were cleared away, and a tipsy Bug was given the task of setting them a-sparkle with warm water and white sand (“Excellent for your moral education!” Jean had cried as he’d heaped up the
porcelain and crystal), Locke and Calo withdrew to the burrow’s wardrobe to begin preparations for the third and most critical touch of the Don Salvara game.

The Elderglass cellar beneath the House of Perelandro was divided into three areas; one of them was the kitchen, another was split into sleeping quarters with wooden partitions, and the third was referred to as the Wardrobe.

Long clothes-racks stretched across every wall of the Wardrobe, holding hundreds of pieces of costuming organized by origin, by season, by cut, by size, and by social class. There were sackcloth robes, laborer’s tunics, and butcher’s aprons with dried bloodstains. There were cloaks of winter weight and summer weight, cheaply woven and finely tailored, unadorned or decorated with everything up to precious metal trim and peacock feathers. There were robes and accessories for most of the Therin priestly orders—Perelandro, Morgante, Nara, Sendovani, Iono, and so forth. There were silk blouses and cunningly armored doublets, gloves and ties and cravats, enough canes and walking sticks to outfit a mercenary company of hobbled old men.

Chains had started this collection more than twenty years before, and his students had added to it with the wealth gained from years of schemes. Very little worn by the Gentlemen Bastards went to waste; even the foulest-smelling sweat-soaked summer garments were washed and dusted with alchemical pomanders and hung carefully. They could always be fouled up again, if needed.

A man-height looking glass dominated the heart of the Wardrobe; another, much smaller glass hung from a sort of pulley system on the ceiling, so that it could be moved around and positioned as necessary. Locke stood before the larger mirror dressed in matching doublet and breeches of midnight velvet; his hose was the scarlet of blood in sunset waters, and his simple Camorri tie was a near match.

“Is this bloody melodrama really such a good idea?” Calo was dressed quite similarly, though his hose and his accents were gray; he pulled his tunic sleeves back above his elbows and fastened them there with black pearl clips.

“It’s a fine idea,” Locke said, adjusting his tie. “We’re Midnighters. We’re full of ourselves. What sort of self-respecting spy would break into a manor house in darkest night wearing green, or orange, or white?”

“The sort that walked up and knocked at the door would.”

“I appreciate that, but I still don’t want to change the plan. Don
Salvara’s had a busy day. He’ll be wide open for a nice shock at the end of it. Can’t shock him quite the same in lavender and carmine.”

“Well, certainly not in the way you’re thinking, no.”