The Gentleman Bastard Series (32 page)

“Of course. I quite understand. Conté can show you out.”

The gruff, weathered man-at-arms was paler than usual, and it seemed to Locke that there was a slight but obvious hitch in his stride. Yes—the poor fellow was clearly favoring a certain badly bruised portion of his anatomy. Locke’s stomach turned in unconscious sympathy at his own memory of that night.

“I say, Conté,” he began politely, “are you feeling quite well? You seem … forgive me for saying so … troubled this past day or two.”

“I’m well for the most part, Master Fehrwight.” There was a slight hardening of the lines at the edges of the man’s mouth. “Perhaps a bit under the weather.”

“Nothing serious?”

“A minor ague, perhaps. They happen, this time of year.”

“Ah. One of the tricks of your climate. I’ve not yet felt such a thing, myself.”

“Well,” said Conté, with an absolute lack of expression on his face, “mind yourself then, Master Fehrwight. Camorr can be a very dangerous place in the most
unlooked-for
ways.”

Oh-ho-HO
, Locke thought. So they’d let him in on the secret, as well. And the man had a proud streak at least as wide as Sofia’s, to drop even the slightest hint of a threat. Worth noting, that.

“I’m the very soul of caution, my dear Conté.” Locke tucked the promissory note within his black waistcoat and adjusted his cascading cravats as they approached the front door of the Salvara manor. “I keep my chambers very well illuminated, to ward off miasmas, and I wear copper rings after Falselight. Just the thing for your hot-and-cold fevers. I would wager that a few days at sea will put you right.”

“No doubt,” said Conté. “The voyage. I do look forward to the … voyage.”

“Then we are of one mind!” Locke waited for the don’s man to open the wide glass-and-iron door for him, and as he stepped out into the moist air of Falselight, he nodded stiffly but affably. “I shall pray for your health tomorrow, my good fellow.”

“Too kind, Master Fehrwight.” The ex-soldier had set one hand on the hilt of one of his knives, perhaps unconsciously. “I shall most assuredly offer prayers concerning
yours
.”

2

LOCKE BEGAN walking south at a leisurely pace, crossing from the Isla Durona to Twosilver Green as he and Calo had just a few nights previously. The Hangman’s Wind was stronger than usual, and as he walked through the park in the washed-out light of the city’s glowing Elderglass, the hiss and rustle of leaves was like the sighing of vast creatures hiding in the greenery all around him.

Just under seventeen thousand crowns in half a week; the Don Salvara game was well ahead of their original plans, which had called for a two-week span between first touch and final blow-off. Locke was certain he could get one more touch out of the don in perfect safety, push the total up over twenty-two or maybe twenty-three thousand, and then pull a vanish. Go to ground, take it easy for a few weeks, stay alert and let the Gray King mess sort itself out.

And then, as a bonus miracle, somehow convince Capa Barsavi to disengage him from Nazca, and do so without twisting the old man’s breeches. Locke sighed.

When Falselight died and true night fell, the glow never seemed to simply fade so much as
recede
, as though it were being drawn back within the glass, a loan reclaimed by a jealous creditor. Shadows widened and blackened until finally the whole park was swallowed by them from below. Emerald lanterns flickered to life here and there in the trees, their light soft and eerie and strangely relaxing. They offered just enough illumination to see the crushed stone paths that wound their way through the walls of trees and hedges. Locke felt as though the spring of tension within him was unwinding itself ever so slightly; he listened to the muted crunch of his own footsteps on gravel, and for a few moments he was surprised to find himself possessed by something perilously close to contentment.

He was alive, he was rich, he had made the decision not to skulk and cringe from the troubles that gnawed at his Gentlemen Bastards. And for
one brief moment, in the middle of eighty-eight thousand people and all the heaving, stinking, ever-flowing noise and commerce and machinery of their city, he was alone with the gently swaying trees of Twosilver Green.

Alone.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and the old cold fear, the constant companion of anyone raised on the streets, was suddenly alive within him. It was a summer night in Twosilver Green, the safest open park in the city, patrolled at any given time by two or three squads of yellowjackets with their night-lanterns waving on poles. Filled, sometimes to the point of comedy, with the strolling sons and daughters of the wealthy classes, holding hands and swatting insects and seeking the privacy of nooks and shadows.

Locke gazed quickly up and down the curving paths around him; he was
truly
alone. There was no sound in the park but for the sighing of the leaves and the buzzing of the insects; no voices or footsteps that he could hear. He twisted his right forearm, and a thin stiletto of blackened steel fell from his coat sleeve into his palm, pommel-down. He carried it straight against his arm, rendering it invisible from any distance, and hurried toward the southern gate of the park.

A mist was rising, seeping up as though the grass were pouring gray vapors into the night; Locke shivered despite the warm, heavy air. A mist was perfectly natural, wasn’t it? The whole city was blanketed in the stuff two nights out of three; a man could lose track of the end of his own nose in it sometimes. But why—

The southern gate of the park. He was standing before the southern gate of the park, staring out across an empty cobbled lane, at a mist-shrouded bridge. That bridge was the Eldren Arch, its red lanterns soft and ominous in the fog.

The Eldren Arch leading north to the Isla Durona.

He’d gotten turned around. How was that possible? His heart was beating so fast, and then—
Doña Sofia
. That cunning, cunning bitch. She’d done something to him … slipped him some alchemical mischief on the parchment. The ink? The wax? Was it a poison, drawing some cloud around his senses before it did its work? Was it some other drug, intended to make him ill? Petty, perfectly deniable revenge to sate her for the time being? He fumbled for the parchment, missing his inner coat pocket, aware that he was moving a bit too slowly and clumsily for the confusion to be entirely in his imagination.

There were men moving under the trees.

One to his left, another to his right … The Eldren Arch was gone; he was back at the heart of the curving paths, staring out into a darkness cut only by the emerald light of the lanterns. He gasped, crouched, brought up the stiletto, head swimming. The men were cloaked; they were on either side; there was the sound of footsteps on gravel, not his own. The dark shape of crossbows, the backlit shapes of the men … His head whirled.

“Master Thorn,” said a man’s voice, muffled and distant, “we require an hour of your attention.”

“Crooked Warden.” Locke gasped, and then even the faint colors of the trees seemed to drain from his vision, and the whole night went black.

3

WHEN HE came to, he was already sitting up. It was a curious sensation. He’d awoken before from blackness brought on by injuries and by drugs, but this was different. It was as though someone had simply set the mechanisms of his consciousness moving again, like a scholar opening the spigot on a Verrari water-clock.

He was in the common room of a tavern, seated on a chair at a table by himself. He could see the bar, and the hearth, and the other tables, but the place was dank and empty, smelling of mold and dust. A flickering orange light came from behind him—an oil lantern. The windows were greasy and misted over, turning the light back upon itself; he couldn’t see anything of the outside through them.

“There’s a crossbow at your back,” said a voice just a few feet behind him, a pleasantly cultured man’s voice, definitely Camorri but somewhat off in a few of the pronunciations. A native who’d spent time elsewhere? The voice was entirely unknown to him. “Master Thorn.”

Icicles seemed to grow in Locke’s spine. He racked his brains furiously for recall of those last few seconds in the park.… Hadn’t one of the men there called him that, as well? He gulped. “Why do you call me that? My name is Lukas Fehrwight. I’m a citizen of Emberlain working for the House of bel Auster.”

“I could believe that, Master Thorn. Your accent is convincing, and your willingness to suffer that black wool is nothing short of heroic. Don Lorenzo and Doña Sofia certainly believed in Lukas Fehrwight, until you yourself disabused them of the notion.”

It isn’t Barsavi
, Locke thought desperately. It couldn’t be Barsavi.… Barsavi would be conducting this conversation himself, if he knew. He
would be conducting it at the heart of the Floating Grave, with every Gentleman Bastard tied to a post and every knife in Sage Kindness’ bag sharpened and gleaming.

“My name
is
Lukas Fehrwight,” Locke insisted. “I don’t understand what you want or what I’m doing here. Have you done anything to Graumann? Is he safe?”

“Jean Tannen is perfectly safe,” said the man. “As you well know. How I would have loved to see it up close, when you strolled into Don Salvara’s office with that silly sigil-wallet under your black cloak. Destroying his confidence in Lukas Fehrwight just as a father gently tells his children there’s really no such thing as the Blessed Bringer! You’re an artist, Master Thorn.”

“I have already told you, my name is
Lukas
, Lukas Fehrwight, and—”

“If you tell me that your name is Lukas Fehrwight one more time, I’m going to put a bolt through the back of your upper left arm. I wouldn’t mean to kill you, just to complicate your life. A nice big hole, maybe a broken bone. Ruin that fine suit of yours, perhaps get blood all over that lovely parchment. Wouldn’t the clerks at Meraggio’s
love
to hear an explanation for that? Promissory notes are so much more attention-getting when they’re covered in gore.”

Locke said nothing for quite a long while.

“Now that won’t do either, Locke. Surely you must have realized I can’t be one of Barsavi’s men.”

Thirteen
, Locke thought.
Where the hell did I make a mistake
? If the man was speaking truthfully, if he didn’t work for Capa Barsavi, there was only one other possibility. The real Spider. The real Midnighters. Had Locke’s use of the pretend sigil-wallet been reported? Had that counterfeiter in Talisham decided to try for a bit of extra profit by dropping a word with the duke’s secret constables? It seemed the likeliest explanation.

“Turn around. Slowly.”

Locke stood up and did so, and bit his tongue to avoid crying out in surprise.

The man seated at the table before him could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty; he was lean and rangy and gray at the temples. The mark of Camorr was upon his face; he bore the sun-darkened olive skin, the high temples and cheekbones, the sharp nose.

He wore a gray leather doublet over a gray silk tunic; his cloak and mantle were gray, as was the hood that was swept back behind his head.
His hands, folded neatly before him, were covered with thin gray swordsman’s gloves, kid leather that was weathered and creased with use. The man had hunter’s eyes, cold and steady and measuring. The orange light of the lantern was reflected in their dark pupils. For a second it seemed to Locke that he was seeing not a reflection but a revelation; that the dark fire burned
behind
the man’s eyes. Locke shivered despite himself.… All that gray …

“
You
,” he whispered, dropping the accent of Lukas Fehrwight.

“None other,” said the Gray King. “I disdain these clothes as something of a theatrical touch, but it’s a necessary one. Of all the men in Camorr, surely
you
understand these things, Master Thorn.”

“I have no idea why you keep calling me that,” said Locke, shifting his footing as unobtrusively as he could, feeling the comforting weight of his second stiletto in the other sleeve of his coat. “And I don’t see this crossbow you mentioned.”

“I said it was at your back.” The Gray King gestured at the far wall with a thin, bemused smile. Warily, Locke turned his head—

There was a man standing against the wall of the tavern, standing right in the spot Locke had been staring at until the previous moment. A cloaked and hooded man, broad-shouldered, leaning lazily against the wall with a loaded alley-piece in the crook of his arm, the quarrel pointed casually at Locke’s chest.

“I …” Locke turned back, but the Gray King was no longer seated at the table. He was standing a dozen feet away, to Locke’s left, behind the disused bar. The lantern on the table hadn’t moved, and Locke could see that the man was grinning. “This isn’t possible.”

“Of course it is, Master Thorn. Think it through. The number of possibilities is actually
vanishingly
small.”

The Gray King waved his left hand in an arc, as though wiping a window; Locke glanced back at the wall and saw that the crossbowman had disappeared once again.

“Well, fuck me,” said Locke. “You’re a Bondsmage.”

“No,” said the Gray King, “I’m a man without that advantage, no different than yourself. But I
employ
a Bondsmage.” He pointed to the table where he’d previously been sitting.

There, without any sudden movement or jump in Locke’s perception, sat a slender man surely not yet out of his twenties. His chin and cheeks were peach-fuzzed, and his hairline was already in rapid retreat to the back
of his head. His eyes were alight with amusement, and Locke immediately saw in him the sort of casual presumption of authority that most congenital bluebloods wore like a second skin.

He was dressed in an extremely well-tailored gray coat with flaring red silk cuffs; the bare skin of his left wrist bore three tattooed black lines. On his right hand was a heavy leather gauntlet, and perched atop this, staring at Locke as though he were nothing more than a field mouse with delusions of grandeur, was the fiercest hunting hawk Locke had ever seen. The bird of prey stared directly at him, its eyes pinpoints of black within gold on either side of a curved beak that looked dagger-sharp. Its brown-and-gray wings were folded back sleekly, and its talons—what was wrong with its talons? Its rear claws were huge, distended, oddly lengthened.