Текст книги "The Republic of Thieves"

Автор книги: Scott Lynch

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Also by Scott Lynch

THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA

RED SEAS UNDER RED SKIES

This is an uncorrected eBook file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book.

The Republic of Thievesis a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Scott Lynch

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

[LoC CiP data]

ISBN: 978-0-553-80469-0

eBook ISBN: 978-0-553-90558-8

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

www.delreybooks.com

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Edition

For Jason McCray,

one man who in his time

has played many parts.

<~TK~map>

CONTENTS

COVER

EBOOK INFORMATION

BY SCOTT LYNCH

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

MAP

PROLOGUE   THE MINDER

PART I HER SHADOW

CHAPTER ONE   THINGS GET WORSE

INTERLUDE   THE UNDROWNED GIRL

CHAPTER TWO   THE BUSINESS

INTERLUDE   THE BOY WHO CHASED RED DRESSES

INTERSECT (I)   FUEL

CHAPTER THREE   BLOOD AND BREATH AND WATER

INTERLUDE   ORPHAN’S MOON

CHAPTER FOUR   ACROSS THE AMATHEL

PART II  CROSS-PURPOSES

INTERLUDE   STRIKING SPARKS

CHAPTER FIVE   THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: STARTING POSITION

INTERLUDE   BASTARDS ABROAD

CHAPTER SIX   THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: CHANGE OF VENUE

INTERSECT (II)   TINDER

INTERLUDE   THE MONCRAINE COMPANY

CHAPTER SEVEN   THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: COUNTERMOVE

INTERLUDE   AURIN AND AMADINE

PART III  FATAL HONESTY

CHAPTER EIGHT   THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: INFINITE VARIATION

INTERLUDE   HAPPENINGS IN BEDCHAMBERS

CHAPTER NINE   THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: REASONABLE DOUBT

INTERSECT (III)   SPARK

INTERLUDE   AN INCONVENIENT PATRON

CHAPTER TEN   THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: FINAL APPROACHES

INTERLUDE   DEATH-MASKS

CHAPTER ELEVEN   THE FIVE-YEAR GAME: RETURNS

INTERSECT (IV)   IGNITION

LAST INTERLUDE   THIEVES PROSPER

CHAPTER TWELVE   THE END OF OLD DREAMS

EPILOGUE   WINGS

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

THE MINDER

1

PLACE TEN DOZEN hungry orphan thieves in a dank burrow of vaults and tunnels beneath what used to be a graveyard, put them under the supervision of one partly crippled old man, and you will soon find that governing them becomes a delicate business.

The Thiefmaker, skulking eminence of the orphan kingdom beneath Shades’ Hill in old Camorr, was not yet so decrepit that any of his grimy little wards could hope to stand alone against him. Nonetheless, he was alert to the doom that lurked in the clutching hands and wolfish impulses of a mob—a mob that he, through his training, was striving to make more predatory still with each passing day. The veneer of order that his life depended on was insubstantial as damp paper at the best of times.

His presence itself could enforce absolute obedience in a certain radius, of course. Wherever his voice could carry and his own senses seize upon misbehavior, his orphans were tame. But to keep his ragged company in line when he was drunk or asleep or hobbling around the city on business, it was essential that he make them eager partners in their own subjugation.

He molded most of the biggest, oldest boys and girls in Shades’ Hill into a sort of honor guard, granting them shoddy privileges and stray scraps of near-respect. More importantly, he worked hard to keep every single one of them in constant deadly terror of himself. No failure was ever met with anything but pain or the promise of pain, and the seriously insubordinate had a way of vanishing. Nobody had any illusions that they had gone to a better place.

So he ensured that his chosen few, steeped in fear, had no outlet save to vent their frustrations (and thus enforce equivalent fear) upon the next oldest and largest set of children. These in turn would oppress the next weakest class of victim. Step by step the misery was shared out, and the Thiefmaker’s authority would cascade like a geological pressure out to the meekest edges of his orphan mass.

It was an admirable system, considered in itself, unless of course you happened to be part of that outer edge—the small, the eccentric, the friendless. In their case, life in Shades’ Hill was like a boot to the face at every hour of every day.

Locke Lamora was five or six or seven years old. Nobody knew for certain, or cared to know. He was unusually small, undeniably eccentric, and perpetually friendless. Even when he shuffled along inside a great smelly mass of orphans, one among dozens, he walked alone and he damn well knew it.

2

MEETING TIME. A bad time under the Hill. The shifting stream of orphans surrounded Locke like an unfamiliar forest, concealing trouble everywhere.

The first rule to surviving in this state was to avoid attention. As the murmuring army of orphans headed toward the great vault at the center of Shades’ Hill, where the Thiefmaker had called them, Locke flicked his glance left and right. The trick was to spot known bullies at a safe distance without making actual eye contact (nothing worse, the mistake of mistakes) and then, ever so casually, move to place neutral children between himself and each threat until it passed.

The second rule was to avoid responding when the first rule proved insufficient, as it too often did.

The crowd parted behind him. Like all prey animals, Locke had a honed instinct for approaching harm. He had enough time to wince preemptively, and then came the blow, sharp and hard, right between his shoulder blades. Locke smacked into the tunnel wall and barely managed to stay on his feet.

Familiar laughter followed the blow. It was Gregor Foss, years older and two stone heavier, as far beyond Locke’s powers of reprisal as the duke of Camorr.

“Gods, Lamora, what a weak and clumsy little cuss you are.” Gregor put a hand on the back of Locke’s head and pushed him along, still in full contact with the moist dirt wall, until his forehead bounced painfully off one of the old wooden tunnel supports. “Got no strength to stay on your own feet. Hell, if you tried to bugger a cockroach, the roach’d spin you round and do you up the ass instead.”

Everyone nearby laughed, a few from genuine amusement, the rest from fear of being seen not laughing. Locke kept stumbling forward, seething but silent, as though it were a perfectly natural state of affairs to have a face covered with dirt and a throbbing bump on the forehead. Gregor shoved him once more, but without vigor, then snorted and pushed ahead through the crowd.

Play dead. Pretend not to care. That was the way to keep a few moments of humiliation from becoming hours or days of pain; to keep bruises from becoming broken bones or worse.

The river of orphans was flowing to a rare grand gathering, nearly all the Hill, and in the main vault the air was already heavier and staler than usual. The Thiefmaker sat in his high-backed chair, his head barely visible above the press of children, while his oldest subjects carved paths through the crowd to take their accustomed places near him. Locke sought a far wall and pressed up against it, doing his best impression of a shadow. There, with the welcome comfort of a guarded back, he touched his forehead and indulged in a momentary pout. His fingers were slippery with blood when he took them away.

After a few moments, the influx of orphans trickled to a halt, and the Thiefmaker cleared his throat.

It was a Penance Day in the seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani, a hanging day, and outside the dingy caves below Shades’ Hill the duke of Camorr’s people were knotting nooses under a bright spring sky.

3

“IT’S LAMENTABLE business,” said the Thiefmaker. “That’s what it is. To have some of our own brothers and sisters snatched into the unforgiving arms of the duke’s justice. Damned deplorable that they were slackards enough to get caught! Alas. As I have always been at pains to remind you, loves, ours is a delicate trade, not at all appreciated by those we practice upon.”

Locke wiped the dirt from his face. It was likely that his tunic sleeve deposited more grime than it removed, but the ritual of putting himself in order was calming. While he tended to himself the master of the Hill spoke on.

“Sad day, my loves, a proper tragedy. But when the milk’s gone bad you might as well look forward to cheese, hmm? Oh yes! Opportunity! It’s unseasonal fine hanging weather out there. That means crowds with spending purses, and their eyes are going to be fixed on the spectacle, aren’t they?”

With two crooked fingers (broken of old, and badly healed) he did a pantomime of a man stepping off an edge and plunging forward. At the end of the plunge the fingers kicked spasmodically and some of the older children giggled. Someone in the middle of the orphan army sobbed, but the Thiefmaker paid them no heed.

“You’re all going out to watch the hangings in groups,” he said. “Let this put fear into your hearts, loves! Indiscretion, clumsiness, want of confidence—today you’ll see their only possible reward. To live the life the gods have given you, you must clutch wisely, then run. Run like the hounds of hell on a sinner’s scent! That’s how we dodge the noose. Today you’ll have a last look at some friends who could not.

“And before you return,” he said, lowering his voice, “each of you will do them one better. Fetch back a nice bit of coin or flash, at all hazards. Empty hands get empty bellies.”

“Has we gots to?”

The voice was a desperate whine. Locke identified the source as Tam, a fresh catch, a lowest-of-the-low teaser who’d barely begun to learn the Shades’ Hill life. He must have been the one sobbing, too.

“Tam, my lamb, you gotsto do nothing,” said the Thiefmaker in a voice like moldy velvet. He reached out and sifted through the crowd of orphans, parting them like dirty stalks of wheat until his hand rested on Tam’s shaven scalp. “But then, neither do I if you don’t work, right? By all means, remove yourself from this grand excursion. A limitless supply of cold graveyard dirt awaits you for supper.”

“But … can’t I, like, do something else?”

“Why, you could polish my good silver tea service, if only I had one.” The Thiefmaker knelt, vanishing briefly from Locke’s sight. “Tam, this is the job I got, so it’s the job you’re gonna do, right? Good lad. Stout lad. Why the little rivers from the eyes? Is it just ’cause there’s the hangings involved?”

“They—they was our friends.”

“Which means only—”

“Tam, you little piss-rag, stuff your whining up your stupid ass!”

The Thiefmaker whirled, and the new speaker recoiled from a slap to the side of his head. There was a ripple in the close-packed orphans as the unfortunate target stumbled backward and was returned to his feet by shoves from his tittering friends. Locke couldn’t suppress a smile. It always warmed his heart to see a bullying oldster knocked around.

“Veslin,” said the Thiefmaker with dangerous good cheer, “do you enjoy being interrupted?”

“N-no … no, sir.”

“How pleased I am to find us of a like mind on the subject.”

“Of … course. Apologies, sir.”

The Thiefmaker’s eyes returned to Tam, and his smile, which had evaporated like steam in sunlight a moment before, leapt back into place.

“As I was saying about our friends, our lamented friends. It’s a shame. But isn’t it a grand show they’re putting on for us as they dangle? A ripe plum of a crowd they’re summoning up? What sort of friends would we be if we refused to work such an opportunity? Good ones? Bold ones?”

“No, sir,” mumbled Tam.

“Indeed. Neither good nor bold. So we’re going to seize this chance, right? And we’re going to do them the honor of not looking away when they drop, aren’t we?”

“If … if you say so, sir.”

“I do say so.” The Thiefmaker gave Tam a perfunctory pat on the shoulder. “Get to it. Drops start at high noon; the Masters of the Ropes are the only punctual creatures in this bloody city. Be late to your places and you’ll have to work ten times as hard, I promise you. Minders! Call your teasers and clutchers. Keep our fresher brothers and sisters on short leashes.”

As the orphans dispersed and the older children called the names of their assigned partners and subordinates, the Thiefmaker dragged Veslin over to one of the enclosure’s dirt walls for a private word.

Locke snickered, and wondered who he’d be partnered with for the day’s adventure. Outside the Hill there were pockets to be picked, tricks to be played, bold larceny to be done. Though he realized his sheer enthusiasm for theft was part of what had made him a curiosity and an outcast, he had no more self-restraint in that regard than he had wings on his back.

This half-life of abuse beneath Shades’ Hill was just something he had to endure between those bright moments when he could be at work, heart pounding, running fast and hard for safety with someone else’s valuables clutched in his hands. As far as his five or six or seven years had taught him, ripping people off was the greatest feeling in the whole world, and the only real freedom he had.

4

“THINK YOU can improve upon my leadership now, boy?” Despite his limited grip, the Thiefmaker still had the arms of a grown man, and he pinned Veslin against the dirt wall like a carpenter about to nail up a decoration. “Think I need your wit and wisdom when I’m talking out loud?”

“No, your honor! Forgive me!”

“Veslin, jewel, don’t I always?” With a falsely casual gesture, the Thiefmaker brushed aside one lapel of his threadbare coat and revealed the handle of the butcher’s cleaver he kept hanging from his belt. The faintest hint of blade gleamed in the darkness behind it. “I forgive. I remind. Are you reminded, boy? Most thoroughlyreminded?”

“Indeed, sir, yes. Please …”

“Marvelous.” The Thiefmaker released Veslin, and allowed his coat to fall over his weapon once again. “What a happy conclusion for us both, then.”

“Thank you, sir. Sorry. It’s just … Tam’s been whining all gods-damned morning. He’s never seen anyone get the rope.”

“Once upon a time it was new to us all,” sighed the Thiefmaker. “Let the boy cry, so long as he plucks a purse. If he won’t, hunger’s a marvelous instructor. Still, I’m putting him and a couple other problems into a group for special oversight.”

“Problems?”

“Tam, for his delicacy. And No-Teeth.”

“Gods,” said Veslin.

“Yes, yes, the speck-brained little turd is so dim he couldn’t shit in his hands if they were stitched to his asshole. Nonetheless, him. Tam. And one more.”

The Thiefmaker cast a significant glance at a far corner, where a sullen little boy leaned with his arms folded across his chest, watching other orphans form their assigned packs.

“Lamora,” whispered Veslin.

“Special oversight.” The Thiefmaker chewed nervously at the nails of his left hand. “There’s good money to be squeezed out of that one, if he’s got someone keeping him sensible and discreet.”

“He nearly burnt up half the bloody city, sir.”

“Only the Narrows, which mightn’t have been missed. And he took hard punishment for that without a flinch. I consider the matter closed. What he needs is a responsible sort to keep him in check.”

Veslin was unable to conceal his expression of disgust, and the Thiefmaker smirked.

“Not you, lad. I need you and your little ape Gregor on distraction detail. Someone else gets made, you cover for ’em. And get back to me straightaway if anyone gets taken.”

“Grateful, sir, very grateful.”

“You should be. Sobbing Tam … witless No-Teeth … and one of hell’s own devils in knee-breeches. I need a bright candle to watch that crew. Go wake me up one of the Windows bunch.”

“Oh.” Veslin bit his cheek. The Windows crew, so-called because they specialized in traditional burglary, were the true elite among the orphans of Shades’ Hill. They were spared most chores, habitually worked in darkness, and were allowed to sleep well past noon. “They won’t like that.”

“I don’t give a damn what they like. They don’t have a job this evening anyway. Get me a sharp one.” The Thiefmaker spat out a gnawed crescent of dirty fingernail and wiped his fingers on his coat. “Hell, fetch me Sabetha.”

5

“LAMORA!”

The summons came at last, and from the Thiefmaker himself. Locke padded warily across the dirt floor to where the master of the Hill sat whispering instructions to a taller child whose back was turned to Locke.

Waiting before the Thiefmaker were two other boys. One was Tam. The other was No-Teeth, a hapless twit whose beatings at the hands of older children had eventually given him his nickname. A sense of foreboding scuttled into Locke’s gut.

“Here we are, then,” said the Thiefmaker. “Three bold and likely lads. You’ll be working together on a special detail, under special authority. Meet your minder.”

The taller child turned.

She was dirty, as they all were, and though it was hard to tell by the pale silver light of the vault’s alchemical lanterns, she looked a little tired. She wore scuffed brown breeches, a long baggy tunic that at some distant remove had been white, and a leather flat cap over a tight kerchief, so that not a strand of her hair was visible.

Yet she was undeniably a she. For the first time in Locke’s life some unpracticed animal sense crept dimly to life to alert him to this fact. The Hill was full of girls, but never before had Locke dwelt on the thought of agirl. He sucked in a breath and realized that he could feel a nervous tingling at the tips of his fingers.

She had the advantage of at least a year and a good half-foot on him, and even tired she had that unfeigned natural poise which, in certain girls, makes young boys feel like something on the order of an insect beneath a heel. Locke had neither the eloquence nor the experience to grapple with the situation in anything resembling those terms. All he knew was that near her, of all the girls he’d seen in Shades’ Hill, he felt touched by something mysterious and much vaster than himself.

He felt like jumping up and down. He felt like throwing up.

Suddenly he resented the presence of Tam and No-Teeth, resented the implication of the word “minder,” and yearned to be doing something, anything, to impress this girl. His cheeks burned at the thought of how the bump on his forehead must look, and at being teamed up with two useless, sobbing clods.

“This is Beth,” said the Thiefmaker. “She’s got your keeping today, lads. Take what she says as though it came from me. Steady hands, level heads. No slacking and no gods-damned capers. Last thing we need is you getting ambitious.” It was impossible to miss the icy glance the Thiefmaker spared for Locke as he uttered this last part.

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Beth with nothing resembling actual gratitude. She pushed Tam and No-Teeth toward one of the vault exits. “You two, wait at the entrance. I need to have a private word with your friend here.”

Locke was startled. A word with him? Had she guessed that he knew his way around clutching and teasing, that he was nothing like the other two? Beth glanced around, then put her hands on his shoulders and knelt. Some nervous animal in Locke’s guts turned somersaults as her gaze came level with his. The old compunction about refusing eye contact was not merely set aside, but vaporized from his mind.

Two things happened then.

First, he fell in love—though it would be years before he realized what the feeling was called and how thoroughly it was going to complicate his life.

Second, shespoke directly to him for the first time, and he would remember her words with a clarity that would jar his heart long after the other incidents of that time had faded to a haze of half-truths in his memory:

“You’re the Lamora boy, right?”

He nodded eagerly.

“Well, look here, you little shit. I’ve heard all about you, so just shut your mouth and keep those reckless hands in your pockets. I swear to all the gods, if you give me one hint of trouble, I will heave you off a bridge and it will looklike a bloody accident.”

6

IT WAS an unwelcome thing, to suddenly feel half an inch tall.

Locke dazedly followed Beth, Tam, and No-Teeth out of the darkness of the Shades’ Hill vaults and into the late-morning sunshine. His eyes stung, and the daylight was only part of it. What had he done (and who had told her about it?) to earn the scorn of the one person he now wanted to impress more than any other in the world?

Pondering, his thoughts wandered uneasily to his surroundings. Out here in the ever-changing open there was so much to see, so much to hear. His survival instincts gradually took hold. The back of his mind was all for Beth, but he forced his eyes to the present situation.

Camorr today was bright and busy, making the most of its reprieve from the hard gray rains of spring. Windows were thrown open. The more prosperous crowds had molted, shedding their oilcloaks and cowls in favor of summery dress. The poor stayed wrapped in the same reek-soaked dross they wore in all seasons. Like the Shades’ Hill crowd, they had to keep their clothes on their backs or risk losing them to rag-pickers.

As the four orphans crossed the canal bridge from Shades’ Hill to the Narrows (it was a source of mingled pride and incredulity to Locke that the Thiefmaker was so convinced that one little scheme of his could have burnt this wholeneighborhood down), Locke saw at least three boats of corpse-fishers using hooks to pluck bloated bodies from under wharves and dock pilings. Those would sometimes go ignored for days in cool, foul weather.

Beth led the three boys through the Narrows, dodging up stone stairs and across rickety wooden foot-bridges, avoiding the most cramped and twisted alleys where drunks, stray dogs, and less obvious dangers were sure to lurk. Tam and Locke stayed right behind her, but No-Teeth was constantly veering off or slowing down. By the time they left the Narrows and crossed to the overgrown garden passages of the Mara Camorrazza, the city’s ancient strolling park, Beth was dragging No-Teeth by his collar.

“Damn your pimple of a brain,” she said. “Keep to my heels and quit making trouble!”

“Not making trouble,” muttered No-Teeth.

“You want to cock this up and go hungry tonight? You want to give some brute like Veslin an excuse to pry out any teeth he hasn’t got to yet?”

“Nooooooo.” No-Teeth stretched the word out with a bored yawn, looked around as though noticing the world for the first time, then jerked free of Beth’s grip. “I want to wear your hat,” he said, pointing at her leather cap.

Locke swallowed nervously. He’d seen No-Teeth pitch these sudden, unreasonable fits before. There was something not quite right in the boy’s head. He frequently suffered for calling attention to himself inside the Hill, where distinctiveness without strength meant pain.

“You can’t,” said Beth. “Mind yourself.”

“I want to. I want to!” No-Teeth actually stomped the ground and balled his fists. “I promise I’ll behave. Give me your hat!”

“You’ll behave because I say so!”

No-Teeth’s response was to lunge and snatch the leather cap off Beth’s head. He yanked it so hard that her kerchief came as well, and an untidy spray of reddish-brown curls tumbled to her shoulders. Locke’s jaw fell.

There was something so indefinably lovely, so right, about seeing that hair free in the sunlight that he momentarily forgot that his enchantment was expressly one-way, and that this was anything but convenient for their task. As Locke stared he noticed that only the lower portion of her hair was actually brown. Above the ears it was rusty red. She’d had it colored once, and it had grown out since.

Beth was even faster than No-Teeth once her shock wore off, and before he could do anything with her cap it was back in her hands. She slapped him viciously across the face with it.

“Ow!”

Not placated, she hit him again, and he cringed backward. Locke recovered his wits and assumed the vacant expression used inside the Hill by the uninvolved when someone nearby was getting thrashed.

“Stop! Stop!” No-Teeth sobbed.

“If you evertouch this cap again,” Beth whispered, shaking him by his collar, “I swear to Aza Guilla who numbers the dead that I will deliver you straight to her. You stupidlittle ass!”

“I promise! I promise!”

She released him with a scowl, and with a few deft movements made her red curls vanish again beneath the tightly drawn kerchief. When the leather cap came down to seal them in, Locke felt a pang of disappointment.

“You’re lucky nobody else saw,” said Beth, shoving No-Teeth forward. “Gods love you, you little slug, you’re just lucky nobody else saw. Quick, now. At my heel, you two.”

Locke and Tam followed her without a word, as close as nervous ducklings fixed on a mother’s tail feathers.

Locke shook with excitement. He’d been horrified at the incompetence of his assigned partners, but now he wondered if their problems could do anything but make him look better in Beth’s eyes. Oh yes. Let them whine, let them throw fits, let them go home with nothing in their hands. Hell, let them tip off the city watch and get chased through the streets to the sounds of whistles and baying dogs. She’d have to prefer anything to that, including him.

7

THEY EMERGED at last from the Mara Camorrazza into a whirl of noise and confusion.

It was indeed unseasonably fine hanging weather, and the normally dreary neighborhood around the Old Citadel, the duke’s seat of justice, bustled like a carnival. Common folk were thick on the cobblestones, while here and there the carriages of the wealthy rattled through the mess with hired guards trotting alongside passing out threats and shoves as they went. In some ways, Locke already knew, the world outside the Hill was much like the world within.

The four orphans formed a human chain to thread their way through the tumult. Locke held fast to Tam, who clung in turn to Beth. She was so unwilling to lose sight of No-Teeth that she thrust him before them all like a battering ram. From his perspective Locke glimpsed few adult faces; the world became an endless procession of belts, bellies, coattails and carriage wheels. They made their way west by equal parts luck and perseverance, toward the Via Justica, the canal that had been used for hangings for half a thousand years.

At the edge of the canal embankment a low stone wall prevented a direct plunge to the water seven or eight feet below. This barrier was crumbling but still solid enough for children to sit upon. Beth never once loosened her grip on No-Teeth as she helped Locke and Tam up out of the press of the crowd. Locke scrambled to sit next to Beth, but it was Tam that squeezed up against her, leaving Locke no means to move him without causing a scene. He tried to conceal his annoyance by adopting a purposeful expression and looking around.

From here, at least, Locke had a better view of the affair. There were crowds on both sides of the canal and vendors hawking bread, sausages, ale, and souvenirs from boats. They used baskets attached to poles to collect their coins and deliver goods to those standing above.

Locke could make out groups of small shapes dodging through the forest of coats and legs—fellow Shades’ Hill orphans at work. He could also see the dark yellow jackets of the city watch, moving through the crowd in squads with shields slung over their backs. Disaster was possible if these opposing elements met and mixed like bad alchemy, but as yet there were no shouts, no watch-whistles, no signs of anything amiss.

Traffic had been stopped over the Black Bridge. The lamps that dotted the looming stone arch were covered with black shrouds, and a small crowd of priests, prisoners, guards, and ducal officials stood behind the execution platform that jutted from the bridge’s side. Two boats of yellowjackets had anchored in the canal on either side of the bridge to keep the water beneath the dropping prisoners clear.

“Don’t we has to do our business?” said No-Teeth. “Don’t we has to get a purse, or a ring, or something—”

Beth, who’d taken her hands off him for all of half a minute, now seized him again and whispered harshly, “Keep your mouth shut about that while we’re in the crowd. Mouth shut! We’re going to sit here and be mindful. We’ll work after the hanging.”

Tam shuddered and looked more miserable than ever. Locke sighed, confused and impatient. It was sad that some of their Shades’ Hill fellows had to hang, but then it was sad they’d been caught by the yellowjackets in the first place. People died everywhere in Camorr, in alleys and canals and public houses, in fires, in plagues that scythed down whole neighborhoods. Tam was an orphan too; hadn’t he realized all this? Dying seemed nearly as ordinary to Locke as eating supper or making water, and he was unable to make himself feel bad that it was happening to anyone he’d barely known.

As for that, it looked to be happening soon. A steady drumbeat rose from the bridge, echoing off water and stone, and gradually the excited murmur of the crowds dropped off. Not even divine services could make Camorri so respectfully attentive as a public neck-snapping.

“Loyal citizens of Camorr! Now comes noon, this seventeenth instant, this month of Tirastim in our seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani.” These words were shouted from atop the Black Bridge by a huge-bellied herald in silk-and-sable plumage. “These felons have been found guilty of capital crimes against the law and customs of Camorr. By the authority of his grace, Duke Nicovante, and by the seals of his honorable magistrates of the Red Chamber, they are here brought to receive justice.”

There was movement beside him on the bridge. Seven prisoners were hauled forward, each by a pair of scarlet-hooded constables. Locke saw that Tam was anxiously biting his knuckles. Beth’s arm appeared around Tam’s shoulder, and Locke ground his teeth together. He was doing his job, behaving, refusing to make a spectacle of himself, and Tamwas the one that received Beth’s tenderness?