The Gentleman Bastard Series (46 page)

Barsavi gestured to Anjais and Pachero; grim-faced, the two men stepped forward. They slipped their optics off and put them in vest pockets; an ominous gesture conducted in unconscious unison. Locke opened his mouth to say something—and then the realization of exactly
how
sewn up he was struck him cold.

He could proclaim his true identity, have the capa tear off his false moustache and rub away the wrinkles, spill the entire story—but what would it gain him? He would never be believed.
He’d already displayed a Bondsmage’s protection
. If he confessed to being Locke Lamora, the hundred men and women here would be after Jean and Bug and the Sanzas next.

If he was going to save them, he had to play the Gray King until the capa was finished with him, and then he would pray for a quick and easy
death. Let Locke Lamora just vanish one night; let his friends slip away to whatever better fate awaited them. Blinking back hot tears, he summoned up a grin, looked at the two Barsavi sons, and said, “By all means, you fucking curs, let’s see if you can do any better than your father.”

Anjais and Pachero knew how to strike a man with the intent to kill, but just now they had no such intent. They bruised his ribs, knuckle-punched his arms, kicked his thighs, slapped his head from side to side, and punched him in the neck until every breath was a chore. At last, Anjais had him hoisted back up, and took hold of his chin so that the two of them were looking eye to eye.

“By the way,” said Anjais, “
this
is from Locke Lamora.”

Anjais balanced Locke’s chin on one finger and walloped him with his other hand. White-hot pain shot through Locke’s neck, and in the red-tinted darkness around him he saw stars. He spat blood, coughed, and licked his sore, swollen lips.

“Now,” said Barsavi, “I’ll have a father’s justice for Nazca’s death.”

He clapped his hands three times.

Behind him, there was an audible noise of men cursing, and heavy footfalls banging against the stone steps. Through the door came eight more men, carrying a large wooden cask—a cask the size of the one Nazca Barsavi had been returned to her father in. The funeral cask. The crowd around Barsavi and his sons parted eagerly to let the cask haulers through. They set it on the ground beside the capa, and inside it Locke heard the slosh of liquid.

Oh, thirteen gods
, he thought.

“Can’t be cut, can’t be pierced,” said the capa, as though he were musing out loud. “But you can certainly be bruised. And you certainly need to breathe.”

Two of the capa’s men popped the lid on the cask open, and Locke was dragged over to it. The eye-watering stench of horse urine spilled out into the air, and he gagged, sobbing.

“Look at the Gray King cry,” whispered Barsavi. “Look at the Gray King sob. A sight I will treasure to the last hour of my
dying day
!” His voice rose. “Did Nazca sob? Did my daughter cry, as you gave her her death? Somehow I don’t think so.”

The capa was shouting now. “Take a last look! He gets what Nazca got; he dies as she died, but by
my hand
!”

Barsavi seized Locke by the hair and tilted his face toward the barrel;
for one brief irrational moment, Locke was grateful that there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. The dry retching still brought spasms of pain to his much-abused stomach muscles.

“With one small touch,” said the capa, actually gulping back sobs of exhilaration. “With one small touch, you son of a bitch. No poison for
you
. No quick way out before I put you in. You get to taste it, the whole time. All the while as you
drown
in it.”

And then he hefted Locke by the mantle, grunting. His men joined in, and together they hoisted him up over the rim, and then down he plunged face-first, down into thick, lukewarm filth that blotted out the noise of the world around him, down into darkness that burned his eyes and his cuts and swallowed him whole.

5

BARSAVI’S MEN slammed the lid back onto the barrel; several of them hammered it down with mallets and axe-butts until it was cinched tight. The capa gave the top of the barrel a thump with his fist and smiled broadly. Tears were still running down his cheeks.

“Somehow I don’t think the poor fucker did as well as he hoped with our negotiations!”

The men and women around him whooped and hollered, arms in the air, torches waving and casting wild shadows on the walls.

“Take this bastard and send him out to sea,” said the capa, gesturing toward the waterfall.

A dozen pairs of eager hands grabbed at the barrel. Laughing and joking, a crowd of the capa’s people hoisted it and carried it over to the northwestern corner of the Echo Hole, where water poured in from the ceiling and vanished into blackness through a fissure about eight feet wide. “One,” said the leader, “two …” And on the cusp of “three,” they flung the barrel down into darkness. It struck water somewhere beneath them with a splash; then they threw up their arms and began cheering once again.

“Tonight,” cried Barsavi, “Duke Nicovante sleeps safe in his bed, locked away in his glass tower! Tonight the Gray King sleeps in
piss
, in a tomb that I have made for him! Tonight is my night! Who rules Camorr?”

“Barsavi!”
came the response from every throat in the Echo Hole, reverberating around the alien-set stones of the structure, and the capa was surrounded by a sea of noise, laughter, applause.

“Tonight,” he yelled, “send messengers to every corner of
my
domains!
Send runners to the Last Mistake! Send runners to Catchfire! Wake the Cauldron and the Narrows and the Dregs and all the Snare! Tonight, I throw open my doors! The Right People of Camorr will come to the Floating Grave as my guests! Tonight, we’ll have such a revel that the honest folk will bar their doors, that the yellowjackets will cringe in their barracks, that the gods themselves will look down and cry, ‘
What is that fucking racket?
’ ”

“Barsavi! Barsavi! Barsavi!”
his people chanted.

“Tonight,” he said at last, “we will celebrate. Tonight Camorr has seen the last of kings.”

INTERLUDE

The Half-Crown War

1

As time went by, Locke and the other Gentlemen Bastards were occasionally set free to roam at leisure, dressed in ordinary clothing. Locke and Jean were getting on near twelve; the Sanzas were visibly slightly older. It was more difficult to keep them cooped up beneath the House of Perelandro all the time, when they weren’t sitting the steps or away on Father Chains’ “apprenticeships.”

Slowly but steadily, Chains was sending his boys out to be initiated in all the great temples of the other eleven Therin gods. One of them would enter a temple under a false name, sped along by whatever strings Chains could pull and whatever palms he could slip coins into. Once there, the young Gentleman Bastard would inevitably please his superiors with his scribing, his theological knowledge, his discipline, and his sincerity. Advancement came quickly, as fast as it could be had; soon the newcomer would receive training in what was called “interior ritual”: the phrases and activities that priests only shared among themselves and their initiates.

They were not quite secrets, these things—to any priest of a Therin order, the thought of someone being audacious enough to offend the gods by falsely seeking initiation was utterly alien. Even those who knew of the slightly heretical idea of the Thirteenth, and even the minority who actually
believed in him, failed to imagine that anyone would
want
to do what Chains and his boys were doing.

Invariably, after several months of excellent accomplishments, each sterling young initiate would die in a sudden accident. Calo favored “drowning,” for he could hold his breath a very long time, and he enjoyed swimming underwater. Galdo preferred to simply disappear, preferably during a storm or some other dramatic event. Locke constructed elaborate little mummeries that took weeks to plan. On one occasion, he vanished from the Order of Nara (Plague Mistress, Lady of Ubiquitous Maladies) by leaving his initiate’s robe, torn apart and splashed with rabbit’s blood, wrapped around his copy-work and a few letters in an alley behind the temple.

Thus enlightened, each boy would return and teach the others of what he had seen and heard. “The point,” said Chains, “is not to make you all candidates for the High Conclave of the Twelve, but to allow you to throw on whatever robes and masks are required and pass as a priest for any short period of need. When you’re a priest, people tend to see the robe rather than the man.”

But there was no apprenticeship under way at the moment; Jean was drilling at the House of Glass Roses, and the other boys waited for him on the southern edge of the Shifting Market, on a crumbling stone pier at the end of a short alley. It was a warm spring day, breezy and fresh, with the sky half-occluded by crescents of gray and white clouds sweeping in from the northwest, heralding storms.

Locke and Calo and Galdo were watching the results of a collision between a chicken-seller’s boat and a transporter of cats. Several cages had flown open when the small boats cracked against one another, and now agitated merchants were stepping warily back and forth as the battle between birds and felines progressed. A few chickens had escaped into the water and were flapping uselessly in little circles, squawking, for nature had conspired to make them even worse at swimming than they were at flying.

“Well,” said a voice behind them. “Have a look at this. These little wasters seem very likely.”

Locke and the Sanzas turned around as one to see a half dozen boys and girls their own age standing behind them, spread out across the alley. They were dressed much as the Gentlemen Bastards were, in unassuming clothes of common cut. Their apparent leader had a thick, dark mane of
curly black hair, pulled behind him and tied with a black silk ribbon—quite a mark of distinction for an urchin.

“Are you friends of the friends, lads? Are you the right sort of people?” The leader of the newcomers stood with his hands on his hips; behind him, a short girl made several hand gestures used for common identification by Capa Barsavi’s subjects.

“We are friends of the friends,” said Locke.

“The rightest sort of right,” added Galdo, making the appropriate countergestures.

“Good lads. We’re the seconds to the Full Crowns, in the Narrows. Call ourselves Half-Crowns. What’s your allegiance?”

“Gentlemen Bastards,” said Locke. “Temple District.”

“Who’re you seconds to?”

“We’re not seconds to anyone,” said Galdo. “It’s just the Gentlemen Bastards, one and all.”

“Savvy,” said the leader of the Half-Crowns, with a friendly grin. “I’m Tesso Volanti. This is my crew. We’re here to take your coin. Unless you want to kneel and give us your preference.”

Locke scowled. “Preference,” in the parlance of the Right People, meant that the Gentlemen Bastards would proclaim the Half-Crowns the better, tougher gang; make way for them on the street and tolerate whatever abuse the Half-Crowns saw fit to heap upon them.

“I’m Locke Lamora,” said Locke as he rose slowly to his feet, “and excepting the capa, the Gentlemen Bastards bend the knee to nobody.”

“Really?” Tesso feigned shock. “Even with six on three? It’s soft talk, if no’s your answer.”

“You must not hear very well,” said Calo, as he and his brother stood up in unison. “He said you get our preference when you pick the peas out of our shit and suck on ’em for dinner.”

“Now that was uncalled-for,” said Tesso, “so I’m gonna make some noise with your skulls.”

Even before he’d finished speaking, the Half-Crowns were moving forward, and it was six on three at the end of the pier. Locke was the smallest child involved, even counting the girls, and while he went into the melee with his little fists swinging, he caught mostly air and was quickly knocked down. One older girl sat on his back, while another kicked alley grit into his face.

The first boy to reach for Calo got a knee in the groin and went down moaning; right behind him came Tesso, with a hard right that sent Calo
backward. Galdo tackled Tesso around the waist, howling, and they hit the ground scrabbling for leverage. “Soft talk” meant no weapons, and no blows that could kill or cripple, but just about anything else was on the table. The Sanzas were capable brawlers, but even if Locke had been able to hold up his end of the fight the numbers would have told against them. In the end, after a few minutes of wrestling and swearing and kicking, the three Gentlemen Bastards were dumped in the middle of the alley, dusty and battered.

“Right, lads. Preferences, is it? Let’s hear ’em.”

“Go fold yourself in half,” said Locke, “and lick your ass.”

“Oh, that’s the wrong answer, short-wit,” said Tesso, and while one of his boys pinned Locke’s arms, the leader of the Half-Crowns patted Locke down for coins. “Hmm. Nothing. Well then, sweetmeats, we’ll be looking for you again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Until you bend the knee, we’ll watch you and we’ll make your lives miserable. Mark my words, Locke Lamora.”

The Half-Crowns strolled off laughing, a few nursing bruises and sprains, but not nearly as many as they’d inflicted. The Sanzas arose groaning and helped Locke to his feet. Warily, they limped back to the House of Perelandro together and slipped into the glass burrow through a drainage culvert equipped with a secret door.

“You’re not going to believe what happened,” said Locke as he and the Sanzas entered the dining room. Chains sat at the witchwood table, peering down at a collection of parchments, carefully scribing on one with a fine-cut quill. Forging customs papers was a sort of hobby, one he practiced the way some men kept gardens or bred hounds. He had a leather portfolio full of them, and he occasionally made good silver selling them.

“Mmmm,” said Chains, “you got your asses walloped by a pack of Half-Crowns.”

“How did you know?”

“Stopped by the Last Mistake last night. Heard about it from the Full Crowns. Told me their seconds might be sweeping the neighborhoods, looking for other juvies to push around.”