The Gentleman Bastard Series (242 page)

What you suggest could still be construed as a coup
.

Only a little one
. The old man smiled wryly, and passed the sensation on in his thoughts.
And only for a little while. Our very future is at stake. If we let the five-year game play itself out, let Patience and her supporters stay distracted, then … then with my guidance you can move instantly, decisively. The very night it ends. If we take the other arch-magi into custody, we demonstrate power. If we then release them unharmed, we demonstrate good intentions. Then, and only then, do I believe the circumstances will be right for us to confront the mess that Patience has made, and the secrets she’s unearthed
.

The night of the election, then
.

Yes. The night of the election
.

If you really can serve as our eyes, I promise you I’ll find capable hands to do the work
.

Archedama Foresight was gone from his mind without a further sentiment, as was her way. Relieved, he rubbed his hands together to calm their shaking.

It was done, then. It was as it must be, and for the good of all his kind, he reminded himself. He’d had a long and comfortable life on account of his rings. Surely if anyone could bear the strain and the burden of what was to come, it was him.

The air of the silent room suddenly seemed to chill against his skin. Coldmarrow decided that he needed a drink very, very badly.

INTERLUDE

AN INCONVENIENT PATRON

1

“JOVANNO,” SAID LOCKE. “Did you—”

“It was me,” said Jenora, hoarsely. “He tried … he tried …”

“He tried to tear her gods-damned clothes off,” said Jean, putting his arms around Jenora. “He was on the ground before I got here.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him, but … he’s drunk,” said Jenora. “He put his hands on my neck. He was choking me.…”

Locke crouched warily over Boulidazi and slid the baron’s knife from its sheath. The heaving, bleeding man made no effort to stop him. Locke had seen bloody lung-cuts before, from duels at Capa Barsavi’s court. This was near-certain death, but it wouldn’t be quick. Boulidazi could have the strength to do them real harm for some time yet. So why wasn’t he fighting back now? His gaze was distant, his pupils unnaturally wide. Blood bubbled around the makeshift weapon still jutting from his chest, and this seemed to be causing him startled bemusement, not mortal panic.

“He’s not just drunk,” said Locke. “It must be whatever you gave him.”

“Shit,” said Sabetha, slumping against the door. “This is all my fault.”

“The hell are you talking about?” said Jean.

“Boulidazi’s drink,” said Calo. “We put something in it. To keep him away from … Verena and Lucaza.”

“Shit,” repeated Sabetha, and the look on her face was too much for Locke to bear.

“Here now,” he said, “half this gods-damned company has been drunk for weeks. The twins have been out of their minds on anything that comes in a bottle or a cask. When did they ever try to rape anyone?” Locke jabbed a finger at Boulidazi. “This is
his
fucking fault, nobody else’s!”

“He’s right,” said Calo, setting a hand on Jenora’s wrist. “You did a Camorri thing. You did the
right
thing.”

“The
right thing
?” Jenora brushed Calo off and took Jean’s hands. “I’ve hung myself. I’ve spilled noble blood.”

“It’s not murder yet,” said Galdo.

“It doesn’t matter if he lives or dies,” said Jenora. “They’ll kill me for this. They’ll kill as many of us as they can, but me for sure.”

“It was clear self-defense,” growled Jean. “We’ll get a dozen witnesses. We’ll get the whole damn company; we’ll rehearse the story perfectly—”

“And they’ll kill her,” said Sabetha. “She’s right. It won’t matter if we have a hundred witnesses, Jovanno. She’s a nightskin commoner and we’re foreign players, and now we’re all party to wiping out the last heir of an Esparan noble house. If we get caught they’ll grind us into paste and plow us into the fields.”

“As my brother pointed out,” said Galdo, “we don’t have a corpse yet.”

“Yes we do,” said Locke quietly. His hands moved with a decisive steadiness that surprised his head. He removed Boulidazi’s dirty waist sash and gagged the baron with it. The wounded man struggled for air, but still didn’t seem to grasp what was happening to him.

“Gods, what are you doing?” said Jenora.

“What’s required,” said Locke, coldly exhilarated as his oldest reflexes, his Camorri instincts, shoved aside his muddled feelings of
forbearance and pity. “If he breathes a word of this to anyone we’re doomed.”

“Oh, gods,” whispered Jenora.

“I’ll be happy to do it,” said Jean.

“No,” said Locke. He’d demanded this necessity; Chains would expect him to not pass the burden. His hands trembled as he unbuckled the baron’s thin leather belt and wound it around his hands. Then the thought of Jean, Sabetha, and the Sanzas dangling from an Esparan gibbet flashed into his mind, and his hands were as steady as temple stones. He slipped the belt over Boulidazi’s neck.

“Wait!” said Sabetha. She knelt in front of Boulidazi, who must now look tragically ridiculous, Locke realized, with the shears buried in his chest, his own sash gagging him, and a slender teenager applying a belt to his windpipe. “You can’t crimp his neck.”

“Watch me,” said Locke through gritted teeth.

“A man can be stabbed for a lot of reasons,” said Sabetha. “But if he’s pricked
and
strangled, it won’t look accidental.”

Her movements were tender as she grasped the shears. Her eyes were pitiless as the night ocean.

“Just hold him for me,” she whispered.

Locke unwound his hands from the belt and grabbed Boulidazi by his thick upper arms. Sabetha gave Jenora’s shears a hard shove, upward and inward. Boulidazi groaned and jerked in Locke’s arms, but without real force. Even at the moment of his death, he was locked away from the reality of it.

Boulidazi slumped, his legs jerking more and more feebly until at last he was still. Sabetha settled back on her knees, exhaled unsteadily, and held out her blood-slick right hand as though unsure how to clean it. Locke loosened the baron’s sash and passed it to her, then eased Boulidazi’s dead weight to the ground. If they could handle him carefully, Locke thought they could keep most of the blood within him, or at least upon him.

Jenora put her face against one of Jean’s arms.

“Now we can make this look like anything,” said Sabetha. “Argument, crime of passion, anything. We put him somewhere plausible and build a fable. All we’ve got to do is figure out what. And, ah, do it in the next couple of—”

Someone pounded on the door to the room.

Locke fought to keep control of himself; at the first noise it had felt like his skin was attempting to leap off his body. A quick glance around the room showed that nobody else had a firm grip on their nerves, either.

“M’lord Boulidazi?” The muffled voice belonged to Brego, the baron’s bodyguard and errand-hound. “M’lord, are you in there? Is all well?”

Locke stared at the door, which Sabetha had moved away from in order to finish off Boulidazi. Calo and Galdo were the closest to it, but even they were three or four paces away. The door was not bolted; if Brego decided to open it, even a crack, he’d be looking directly at Boulidazi’s corpse.

2

SABETHA MOVED like an arrow leaving a bowstring, and the very first thing she did was tear her tunic off.

Locke’s jaw hadn’t finished dropping before Sabetha was at the door, landing ghost-light on her bare feet.

“Oh, Brego,” she said, panting. “Oh, just a moment!”

She gestured at Boulidazi’s corpse. Calo and Galdo sprang forward to help Locke, and in seconds they managed to push the baron’s body under the bed. Jean slid a blanket partly over the room’s alchemical lamp, dimming it. A moment later Calo, Galdo, and Locke squeezed up against the wall just behind Sabetha, out of the visual arc of the door, provided it wasn’t opened all the way.

Sabetha tousled her hair with one precise head-toss, then cracked the door open to give Brego an unexpectedly fine view of a preoccupied young woman. Her tunic was pressed to her chest with one hand to cover an artful minimum of bosom.

“Why, Brego,” she said, mimicking perfect breathlessness, “you dutiful fellow, you!”

“Why, Mistress Verena, I … my lord, is he—”

“He’s busy, Brego.” She giggled. “He’s
very
busy and will be that way for some time. You can wait downstairs, I think. He’s in the
best
possible hands.”

She didn’t give him time to say anything else, but with a lascivious little wave she slid the door shut and bolted it.

A few agonizing seconds passed, and then Locke could hear Brego’s boot-steps as he moved away down the corridor. Sabetha threw her tunic back on, sank down against the door, and sighed with relief.

“We’re all gonna have gray fuckin’ hair by the time the sun comes up,” said Galdo. He and Calo had both been holding daggers at the ready; now they hid the slender bits of blackened steel again. The air in the room suddenly seemed dense with the smells of blood and nervous sweat.

“Can we get the hell out of here now?” said Jenora.

“Where do you want to go?” said Jean.

“Camorr!” she whispered. “For the gods’ sakes, I know you can do … something! I know you’re not really just actors.”

“Calm down, Jenora.” Locke stared at one of Boulidazi’s boots, sticking out incongruously from beneath the bed. “You’re not exactly inconspicuous. How would people not notice you sneaking off hours before we’re supposed to deliver the play? How could we keep you hidden on the road?”

“A ship, then.”

“If you run,” said Sabetha, “you’ll tear a hole in whatever story we invent to explain what’s happened. And you’ll leave your aunt to take all the trouble! If we can’t make the tale neat and obvious, the countess’ people will be right back to rounding up scapegoats.”

“Even if you manage to make it neat and obvious,” said Jenora, “we’re all crushed. We’re liable, remember? To the ditch-tenders, the confectioners, the alemongers, the cushion-renters. Without the play, we’ll be so far in default to all of ’em we might as well go turn ourselves in at the Weeping Tower now.”

“What about acts of the gods?” said Calo. “Surely you wouldn’t be liable if a hurricane blew in. Or the Old Pearl collapsed.”

“Of course not,” said Jenora. “But whatever powers you have, I doubt they extend that far.”

“Not that far, no,” said Calo. “But the stage is made of wood.”

“A fire! Nice one!” said Galdo. “The two of us could handle it. In, out, like shadows. Wouldn’t take two hours.”

“The stage timbers are alchemically petrified,” said Jenora. “They
won’t just catch fire. You’d need a dozen cartloads of wood, like engineering a bloody siege.”

“So we can’t destroy the Pearl,” said Sabetha.

“And we can’t run,” said Jean. “It’d invite all kinds of trouble, and it’s not likely any of us would make it home.”

“And if we stay but don’t do the play, we all get thrown into chains for debt,” said Locke. “Debt at the very least.”

“So there’s only one sensible course of action,” said Sabetha.

“Grow wings?” said Calo.

“We have to pretend everything’s normal.” Sabetha counted off items using her fingers as she spoke. “We have to get Brego out of the damned building so we can have some room to move. We have to do the play—”

“You’re cracked!” said Jenora.

“… and once we’ve done it,
then
we let the world in on the fact that Boulidazi’s dead, in circumstances that don’t incriminate anyone we care about.”

“What are we going to do with the son-of-a-bitch’s corpse?” Galdo kicked the nearest boot for emphasis. “You know what it’ll smell like if we treat it as a keepsake until tomorrow night.”

“And it’s gonna be ass-ugly,” said Calo. “Any dullard will see the wound’s not fresh.”

“
That’s
where fire comes in,” said Locke. “We can burn him! Cook him until nobody can tell whether he died an hour or a week ago.”

“How can we control it?” said Jean. “If we burn him beyond recognition …”

“No worries.” Locke held up the knife he’d taken from Boulidazi, the same one the baron had set against his cheek. Its blade was all business, but the hilt was set with black garnets and a delicate white iron cloisonné. “This and all his other baubles will make his identity very plain.”

“Where are we hiding it … I mean, him?” said Jenora.

“No, you mean
it
,” said Jean, smiling grimly.

“For the smell … I suppose I have pomanders and some rose dust we can douse the body with.” Jenora was still far from settled, but her resolve seemed to be strengthening. “That should help it keep. For a day, at least.”

“Good thought,” said Calo. “As for where, I suppose it’s too easy just to keep him shoved under this bed?”

“Out of the gods-damned question!”

“We could have Sylvanus sit on it all night,” said Locke. “He wouldn’t notice a damn thing until he’d sobered up again. Alas, everyone else would. Let’s hide him with the props and costumes.”

“Let’s hide him
as
a prop,” said Sabetha. “We’ve got a play full of corpses. Cover him in something suitable, throw a mask on him, and as far as anyone knows, he’s just scenery! That way we can keep him with us—”

“… and not have to worry about anyone finding him while we’re away at the Pearl!” said Locke. “Yeah. That leaves one last problem.… He’s got a pile of gentlemen and retainers expecting to share his company at the play.”

“Hate to add turds to the shit-feast,” said Calo, “but that’s
not
the last problem. What do we tell the rest of the troupe about this?”

“
Why
do we tell the rest of the troupe about this?” said Jenora.

“I’m not best pleased to say it, but we’ve got to bring them in,” said Sabetha. “They’ll be everywhere, in and amongst the props and costumes. If we don’t have their cooperation, we’re sunk.”