The Gentleman Bastard Series (23 page)

“He’s a very
ugly
little boy, Father. He looks like a
skeleton
.”

Capa Barsavi coughed out his first few puffs of smoke, the corners of his mouth crinkling upward. “And you’re a very inconsiderate little girl, my dear.” The Capa drew on his sheaf once more and exhaled a straight stream of translucent smoke; the stuff was pleasantly mellow and carried the slightest hint of burnt vanilla. “You must forgive my daughter Nazca; I am helpless to deny her indulgences, and she has acquired the manners of a pirate princess. Particularly now that we are all afraid to come near her
deadly
new boots.”

“I am
never
unarmed,” said the little girl, kicking up her heels a few times to emphasize the point.

“And poor Locke most certainly is not ugly, my darling; what he bears is clearly the mark of Shades’ Hill. A month in Chains’ keeping and he’ll be as round and fit as a catapult stone.”

“Hmmph.” The girl continued to stare down at him for a few seconds, then suddenly looked up at her father, absently toying with one of his braided beards while she did so. “Are you making him a
pezon
, Father?”

“Chains and I did have that in mind, sweetling, yes.”

“Hmmph. Then I want another brandy while you’re doing the ceremony.”

Capa Barsavi’s eyes narrowed; seams deepened by habitual suspicion drew in around his flinty gray stare. “You’ve already had your two brandies for the night, darling; your mother will murder me if I let you have another. Ask one of the men to get you a beer.”

“But I prefer—”

“What you prefer, little tyrant, has nothing to do with what I am
telling
you. For the rest of the night, you can drink beer or air; the choice is entirely yours.”

“Hmmph. I’ll have beer, then.” Barsavi reached out to lift her down, but she hopped off his lap just ahead of his thick-fingered, heavily calloused hands. Her heels went clack-clack-clack on the hardwood floor of the alcove as she ran to some minion to give her order.

“And if just one more of my men gets kicked in the shin, darling, you’re going to wear reed sandals for a month, I promise,” Barsavi shouted after her, then took another drag of tobacco and turned back to Locke and Chains. “She’s a keg of fire-oil, that one. Last week she refused to sleep at all unless we let her keep a little garrote under her pillows. ‘Just like Daddy’s bodyguards,’ she said. I don’t think her brothers yet realize that the next Capa Barsavi might wear summer dresses and bonnets.”

“I can see why you might have been amused by the Thiefmaker’s stories about our boy here,” Chains said, clasping both of Locke’s shoulders as he spoke.

“Of course. I have become very hard to shock since my children grew above the tops of my knees. But you’re not here to discuss them—you’ve brought me this little man so he can take his first and last oath as a
pezon
. A few years early, it seems. Come here, Locke.”

Capa Barsavi reached out with his right hand and turned Locke’s head slightly upward by the chin, staring down into Locke’s eyes as he spoke. “How old are you, Locke Lamora? Six? Seven? Already responsible for a breach of the Peace, a burnt-down tavern, and six or seven deaths.” The
Capa smirked. “I have assassins five times your age who should be so bold. Has Chains told you the way it is, with my city and my laws?”

Locke nodded.

“You know that once you take this oath I can’t go easy on you, ever again. You’ve had your time to be reckless. If Chains needs to put you down, he will. If I
tell
him to put you down, he
will
.”

Again, Locke nodded. Nazca returned to her father’s side, sipping from a tarred leather ale-jack; she stared at Locke over the rim of this drinking vessel, which she had to clutch in both hands.

Capa Barsavi snapped his fingers; one of the toadies in the background vanished through a curtain. “Then I’m not going to bore you with any more threats, Locke. This night, you’re a man. You will do a man’s work and suffer a man’s fate if you cross your brothers and sisters. You will be one of us, one of the Right People; you’ll receive the words and the signs, and you’ll use them discreetly. As Chains, your
garrista
, is sworn to me, so you are sworn to me, through him. I am your
garrista
above all
garristas
. I am the only duke of Camorr you will ever acknowledge. Bend your knee.”

Locke knelt before Barsavi; the Capa held out his left hand, palm down. He wore an ornate ring of black pearl in a white iron setting; nestled inside the pearl by some arcane process was a speck of red that had to be blood.

“Kiss the ring of the Capa of Camorr.”

Locke did so; the pearl was cool beneath his dry lips.

“Speak the name of the man to whom you have sworn your oath.”

“Capa Barsavi,” Locke whispered. At that moment, the capa’s underling returned to the alcove and handed his master a small crystal tumbler filled with dull brown liquid.

“Now,” said Barsavi, “as has every one of my
pezon
, you will drink my toast.” From one of the pockets of his waistcoat the capa drew a shark’s tooth, one slightly larger than the death-mark Locke wore around his neck. Barsavi dropped the tooth into the tumbler and swirled it around a few times. He then handed the tumbler to Locke. “It’s dark-sugar rum from the Sea of Brass. Drink the entire thing, including the tooth. But don’t swallow the tooth, whatever you do. Keep it in your mouth. Draw it out after all the liquor is gone. And try not to cut yourself.”

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.”

5

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.”

II

COMPLICATION

“I can add colours to the chameleon,

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

And set the murderous Machiavel to school.”

King Henry VI
, Part III

CHAPTER FOUR

AT THE COURT OF CAPA BARSAVI

1

“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.