Текст книги "The Republic of Thieves"

Автор книги: Scott Lynch

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“You get used to it, Tam,” Beth said softly. “Honor them, now. Brace up.”

On the bridge platform the Masters of the Ropes tightened nooses around the necks of the condemned. The hanging ropes were about as long as each prisoner was tall, and lashed to ringbolts just behind each prisoner’s feet. There were no clever mechanisms in the hanging platform, no fancy tricks. This wasn’t Tal Verrar. Here in the east, prisoners were simply heaved over the edge.

“Jerevin Tavasti,” shouted the herald, consulting a parchment. “Arson, conspiracy to receive stolen goods, assault upon a duke’s officer! Malina Contada, counterfeiting and attendant misuse of His Grace the Duke’s name and image. Caio Vespasi, burglary, malicious mummery, arson, and horse theft! Lorio Vespasi, conspiracy to receive stolen goods.”

So much for the adults; the herald moved on to the three children. Tam sobbed, and Beth whispered, “Shhhh, now.” Locke noted that Beth was coldly calm, and he tried to imitate her air of disinterest. Eyes just so, chin up, mouth just shy of a frown. Surely, if she glanced at him during the ceremony, she’d notice and approve .…

“Mariabella, no surname,” yelled the herald. “Theft and wanton disobedience! Zilda, no surname. Theft and wanton disobedience!”

The Masters were tying extra weights to the legs of this last trio of prisoners, since their own slight bodies might not provide for a swift enough conclusion at the ends of their plunges.

“Lars, no surname. Theft and wanton disobedience.”

“Zilda was kind to me,” whispered Tam, his voice breaking.

“The gods know it,” said Beth. “Hush now.”

“For crimes of the body you shall suffer death of the body,” continued the herald. “You will be suspended above running water and hanged there by the necks until dead, your unquiet spirits to be carried forth upon the water to the Iron Sea, where they may do no further harm to any soul or habitation of the duke’s domain. May the gods receive your souls mercifully, in good time.” The herald lowered his scroll and faced the prisoners. “In the duke’s name I give you justice.”

Drums rolled. One of the Masters of the Ropes drew a sword, in case any of the prisoners fought their handlers. Locke had seen a hanging before, and he knew the condemned only got one chance at whatever dignity was left to them.

Today the drops ran smooth. The drumroll crashed to silence. Each pair of hooded yellowjackets stepped forward and shoved their prisoner off the edge of the hanging platform.

Tam flinched away, as Locke had thought he might, but even he was unprepared for No-Teeth’s reaction when the seven ropes jerked taut with snapping noises that might have been hemp, or necks, or both.

“Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Each scream was longer and louder than the last. Beth clamped a hand over No-Teeth’s mouth and struggled with him. Over the water, four large bodies and three smaller ones swung like pendulums in arcs that quickly grew smaller and smaller.

Locke’s heart pounded. Everyone nearby had to be staring at them. He heard chuckling and disapproving comments. The more attention they drew to themselves, the harder it would be to go about their real business.

“Shhh,” said Beth, straining to keep No-Teeth under control. “Quiet, damn you. Quiet!”

“What’s the matter, girl?”

Locke was dismayed to see that a pair of yellowjackets had parted the crowd just behind them. Gods, that was worse than anything! What if they were prowling for Shades’ Hill orphans? What if they asked hard questions? He curbed an impulse to leap for the water below and froze in place, eyes wide.

Beth kept an arm locked over No-Teeth’s face yet managed to somehow squirm around and bow her head to the constables.

“My little brother,” she gasped out, “he’s never seen a hanging before. We don’t mean to cause a fuss. I’ve shut him up.”

No-Teeth ceased his struggles, but he began to sob. The yellowjacket who’d spoken, a middle-aged man with a face full of scars, looked down at him with distaste.

“You four come here alone?”

“Mother sent us,” said Beth. “Wanted the boys to see a hanging. See the rewards of idleness and bad company.”

“A right-thinking woman. Nothing like a good hanging to scare the mischief out of a sprat.” The man frowned. “Why ain’t she here with you?”

“Oh, she loves a hanging, does Mother,” said Beth. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper: “But, um, she’s got the flux. Bad. All day she’s been sitting on her—”

“Ah. Well then.” The yellowjacket coughed. “Gods send her good health. You’d best not bring thisone back to a Penance Day ceremony for a while.”

“I agree, sir.” Beth bowed again. “Mother’ll scratch his hide for this.”

“On your way then, girl. Don’t need no more of a scene.”

“Of course, sir.”

The constables moved away into the crowd, which was itself coming back to life. Beth slid off the stone wall, rather gracelessly, because No-Teeth and Tam came with her. The former was still held tightly, and the latter refused to let go of her other arm. He hadn’t cried out like No-Teeth, but Locke saw that his eyes brimmed with tears and he was even more pale-looking than before. Locke ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, which had gone dry under the scrutiny of the yellowjackets.

“Come now,” said Beth. “Away from here. We’ve seen all there is to see.”

8

ANOTHER PASSAGE through the forest of coats, legs, and bellies. Locke, feeling excitement rise again, gently clung to the back of Beth’s tunic to avoid losing her, and he was both pleased and disappointed when she didn’t react at all. Beth led them back into the green shadows of the Mara Camorrazza, where quiet solitude reigned not forty yards from a crowd of hundreds, and once they were safely ensconced in a concealed nook she pushed Tam and No-Teeth to the ground.

“What if another bunch from the Hill saw that? Gods!”

“Sorry,” moaned No-Teeth. “But they … but they … they got kill—”

“People die when they get hanged. It’s why they hang them!” Beth wrung the front of her tunic with both hands, then took a deep breath. “Recover yourselves. Now. Each of you must lift a purse, or something, before we go back.”

No-Teeth broke into a new fit of sobs, rolled over on his side, and chewed his knuckles. Tam, sounding more weary than Locke would have imagined possible, said, “I can’t, Beth. I’m sorry. I’ll get caught. I just can’t.”

“You’ll go without supper tonight.”

“Fine,” said Tam. “Take me back, please.”

“Damn it.” Beth rubbed her eyes. “I need to bring you back with something to show for it or I’ll be in just as much trouble as you, understand?”

“You’re in Windows,” muttered Tam. “You got no worries.”

“If only,” said Beth. “You two need to pull yourselves together—”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!”

Locke sensed a glorious opportunity. Beth had saved them from trouble on the embankment, and here was an ideal moment for him to do the same. Smiling at the thought of her reaction, he stood as tall as he could manage and cleared his throat.

“Tam, don’t be a louse,” said Beth, completely ignoring Locke. “You willclutch something, or work a tease so someone else can clutch. I’ll not give you another choice—”

“Excuse me,” said Locke, hesitantly.

“What do you want?”

“They can each have one of mine,” said Locke.

“What?” Beth turned to him. “What are you talking about?”

From under his tunic, Locke produced two leather purses and a fine silk handkerchief, only mildly stained.

“Three pieces,” he said. “Three of us. Just say we all clutched one and we can go home now.”

“Where in all the hellsdid you—”

“In the crowd,” said Locke. “You had No-Teeth … you were paying so much attention to him, you must not have seen.”

“I didn’t tell you to lift anything yet!”

“Well, you didn’t tell me not to.”

“But that’s—”

“I can’t put them back,” said Locke, far more petulantly than he’d intended.

“Don’t snap at me! Oh, for the gods’ sake, don’t sulk,” said Beth. She knelt and put her hands on Locke’s shoulders, and at her touch and close regard he found himself suddenly trembling uncontrollably. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Locke. “Nothing.”

“Gods, what a strange little boy you are.” She glanced again at Tam and No-Teeth. “A pack of disasters, the three of you. Two that won’t work. One that works without orders. I suppose we’ve got no choice.”

Beth took the purses and the handkerchief from Locke. Her fingers brushed his, and he trembled. Beth’s eyes narrowed.

“Hit your head earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Who pushed you?”

“I just fell.”

“Of courseyou did.”

“Honest!”

“Seems to be troubling you. Or maybe you’re ill. You’re shaking.”

“I’m … I’m fine.”

“Have it your way.” Beth closed her eyes and massaged them with her fingertips. “I guess you’ve saved me a hell of a lot of trouble. Do you want me to … look, is there someone bothering you that you want to stop?”

Locke was startled. An older child, thisolder child, of all people, and a member of Windows, was offering him protection? Could she do that? Could she put Veslin and Gregor in their place?

No. Locke forced his eyes away from Beth’s utterly fascinating face to bring himself back down to earth. There would always be other Veslins, other Gregors. And what if they resented him all the more for her interference? She was Windows; he was Streets. Their days and nights were reversed. He’d never seen her before today; what sort of protection could he possibly get from her? He would keep playing dead. Avoid calling attention to himself. Rule one, and rule two. As always.

“I just fell,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“Well,” she replied, a little coldly. “As you wish.”

Locke opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying desperately to imagine something he might say to charm this alien creature. Too late. She turned away and heaved Tam and No-Teeth to their feet.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, “but you two idiots owe your supper to the arsonist of the Narrows here. Do you understand just how much hell we’ll all catch if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone?”

“I do,” said Tam.

“I’d be very put out to catch any at all,” Beth continued. “Any at all! You hear me, No-Teeth?”

The poor wretch nodded, then sucked his knuckles again.

“Back to the Hill, then.” Beth tugged at her kerchief and adjusted her cap. “I’ll keep the things and pass them to the master myself. Not a word about this. To anyone.”

She kept her now-customary grip on No-Teeth all the way back to the graveyard. Tam dogged her heels, looking exhausted but relieved. Locke followed at the rear, scheming to the fullest extent of his totally inadequate experience. What had he said or done wrong? What had he misjudged? Why wasn’t she delighted with him for saving her so much trouble?

She said nothing to him for the rest of the trip home. Then, before he could find an excuse to speak to her again once there, she was gone, vanished into the tunnels that led to the private domain of the Windows crew, where he could not follow.

He sulked that night, eating little of the supper his nimble fingers had earned, fuming not at Beth but at himself for somehow driving her away.

9

DAYS PASSED, longer days than any Locke had ever known, now that he had something to preoccupy him beyond the brief excitement of daily crimes and the constant chores of survival.

Beth would not leave his thoughts. He dreamed of her, and how the hair spilling out from beneath her cap had caught the light filtering down through the interlaced greenery of the Mara Camorrazza. Strangely, in his dreams, that hair was purely red from edge to root, untouched by dye or disguise. The price for these visions was that he would wake to cold, hard disappointment and lie there in the dark, wrestling with mysterious emotions that had never troubled him before.

He would have to see her again. Somehow.

At first he nurtured a hope that his relegation to a crew of troublemakers might be permanent, that Beth might be their minder on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, the Thiefmaker seemed to have no such plans. Locke slowly realized that if he was ever going to get another chance to impress her, he’d have to stick his neck out.

It was hard to break the routines he’d established for himself, to say nothing of those expected of someone in his lowly position. Yet he began to wander more often throughout the vaults and tunnels of his home, anxious for a glimpse of Beth, exposing himself to abuse and ridicule from bored older children. He played dead. He didn’t react. Rule one and rule two. It almost felt good, earning bruises for a genuine purpose.

The lesser orphans of Streets (that is, nearly all of them) slept en masse on the floor of crèche-like side vaults, several dozen to a room. When his dreams woke him up at night Locke would now try to stay awake, to strain his ears to hear past the murmuring and rustling of those around him, to detect the coming and going of the Windows crew on their secretive errands.

Before he’d always slept securely in the heart of his snoring fellows, or against a nice comforting wall. Now he risked positions at the outer edge of the huddled mass, where he could catch glimpses of people in the tunnels. Every shadow that passed and every step he heard might be hers, after all.

His successes were few. He saw her at evening meals several times, but she never spoke to him. Indeed, if she noticed him at all, she did a superb job of not showing it. And for Locke to try and speak to her on his own initiative, with her surrounded by her Windows friends, and they by the older bullies from Streets … no presumption could have been more fatal. So he did his feeble best to skulk and spy on her, relishing the fluttering of his stomach whenever he caught so much as a half-second glimpse. Those glimpses and those sensations paid for many days of frustrated longing.

More days, more weeks passed in the hazy forever now of childhood time. Those bright brief moments he’d spent in Beth’s presence, actually speaking to her and being spoken to, were polished and re-polished in Locke’s memory until his very life might have begun on that day.

At some point that spring, Tam died. Locke heard the mutterings. The boy was caught trying to lift a purse, and his would-be victim smashed his skull with a walking stick. This sort of thing wasn’t uncommon. If the man had witnesses to the attempted theft he’d probably lose a finger on his weaker hand. If nobody backed his story, he’d hang. Camorr was civilized, after all; there were acceptable and unacceptable times for killing children.

No-Teeth went soon after that, crushed under a wagon wheel in broad daylight. Locke wondered if it wasn’t all for the best. He and Tam had been miserable in the Hill, and maybe the gods could find something better to do with them. It wasn’t Locke’s concern anyway. He had his own obsession to pursue.

A few days after No-Teeth got it, Locke came home from a long, wet afternoon of work in the North Corner district, casing and robbing vendor stalls at the well-to-do markets there. He shook the rain from his makeshift cloak, which was the same awful-smelling scrap of leather than served him as a blanket each night. Then he went to meet the crowd of oldsters, led by Veslin and Gregor, who shook down the smaller children each day as they came in with their takings.

Usually they spent most of their energy taunting and threatening Locke’s fellows, but today they were talking excitedly about something else. Locke caught snatches of the conversation as he waited his turn to be abused.

“ … right unhappy he is about it … one of the big earners.”

“I know she was, and didn’t she put on airs about it, too.”

“But that’s all Windows for you, eh? Ain’t they all like that? Well here’s something they won’t like. Proves they’s as mortal as we is. They fuck up just the same.”

“Been a right messy month. That poor sod what got the busted head … that little shit we used to kick the chompers out of … now her.”

Locke felt a cold tautness in his guts.

“Who?” he said.

Veslin paused in mid-sentence and stared at Locke, as though startled that the little creatures of Streets had the power of speech.

“Who what, you little ass-tickler?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to fucking know.”

“WHO?”

Locke’s hands had formed themselves into fists of their own accord, and his heart pounded as he yelled again at the top of his lungs, “WHO?”

Veslin only had to kick him once to knock him down. Locke saw it coming, saw the bully’s foot rising toward his face, growing impossibly in size, and still he couldn’t avoid it. Floor and ceiling reversed themselves, and when Locke could see again, he was on his back with Veslin’s heel on his chest. Warm coppery blood was trickling down the back of his throat.

“Where does he get off, talking to us like that?” said Veslin mildly.

“Dunno. Fuckin’ sad, it is,” said Gregor.

“Please,” said Locke. “Tell me—”

“Tell you what? What right you got to know anything?” Veslin knelt on Locke’s chest, rifled through his clothes, and came up with the things he’d managed to clutch that day. Two purses, a silver necklace, a handkerchief, and some wooden tubes of Jereshti cosmetics. “Know what, Gregor? I don’t think I remember Lamora here coming home with anything tonight.”

“Nor me, Ves.”

“Yeah. How’s that for sad, you little piss-pants? You want dinner, you can eat your own shit.”

Locke was too used to the sort of laughter that now rose in the tunnel to pay any attention to it. He tried to get up and was kicked in the throat for his trouble.

“I just want to know,” he gasped, “what happened—”

“Why do you care?”

“Please … please …”

“Well, if you’re gonna be civil about it.” Veslin dropped Locke’s takings into a dirty cloth sack. “Windows had themselves a bad night.”

“Cocked up proper, they did,” said Gregor.

“Got pinched hitting a big house. Not all of ’em got clear. Lost one in a canal.”

“Who?”

“Beth. Drowned, she did.”

“You’re lying,” whispered Locke. “YOU’RE LYING!”

Veslin kicked him in the side of his stomach and Locke writhed. “Who says … who says she’s—”

“I fuckin’ say.”

“Who told you?”

“I got a letter from the duke, you fuckin’ half-wit. The master, that’s who! Beth drowned last night. She ain’t coming back to the Hill. You sweet on her or something? That’s a laugh.”

“Go to hell,” whispered Locke. “You go to—”

Veslin cut him off with another hard kick to the exact same spot.

“Gregor,” he said, “we got a real problem here. This one ain’t right in the head. Forgot what he can and can’t say to the likes of us.”

“I got just the thing for it, Ves.” Gregor kicked Locke between the legs. Locke’s mouth opened, but nothing came out except a dry hiss of agony.

“Give it to the little shit-smear.” Veslin grinned as he and Gregor began to work Locke over with hard kicks, carefully aimed. “You like that, Lamora? You like what you get, you put on airs with us?”

Only the Thiefmaker’s proscription of outright murder among his orphans saved Locke’s life. No doubt the boys would have pulped him if their own necks wouldn’t have been the price of their amusement, and as it was they nearly went too far.

It was two days before Locke could move well enough to work again, and in that interval, lacking friends to tend him, he was tormented by hunger and thirst. But he took no satisfaction in his recovery, and no joy in his return to work.

He was back to playing dead, back to hiding in corners, back to rule one and rule two. He was all alone in the Hill once again.

I

HER SHADOW

“I CANNOT tell you now;

When the wind’s drive and whirl

Blow me along no longer,

And the wind’s a whisper at last—

Maybe I’ll tell you then

some other time.”

—Carl Sandburg

from “The Great Hunt”

CHAPTER ONE

THINGS GET WORSE

1

WEAK SUNLIGHT AGAINST his eyelids drew him out of sleep. The brightness intruded, grew, made him blink groggily. A window was open, letting in mild afternoon air and a freshwater smell. Not Camorr. Sound of waves lapping against a sand beach. Not Camorr at all.

He was tangled in his sheets again, lightheaded. The roof of his mouth felt like sun-dried leather. Chapped lips peeled apart as he croaked, “What are you …”

“Shhhh. I didn’t mean to wake you. The room needed some air.” A dark blur on the left, more or less Jean’s height. The floor creaked as the shape moved about. Soft rustle of fabric, snap of a coin purse, clink of metal. Locke pushed himself up on his elbows, prepared for the dizziness. It came on punctually.

“I was dreaming about her,” he muttered. “The times that we … when we first met.”

“Her?”

“Her. You know.”

“Ah. The canonical her.” Jean knelt beside the bed and held out a cup of water, which Locke took in his shaking left hand and sipped at gratefully. The world was slowly coming into focus.

“So vivid,” said Locke. “Thought I could touch her. Tell her … how sorry I am.”

“That’s the best you can manage? Dreaming of a woman like that, and all you can think to do with your time is apologize?”

“Hardly under my control—”

“They’re your dreams. Take the reins.”

“I was just a little boy, for the gods’ sakes.”

“If she pops up again move it forward ten or fifteen years. I want to see some blushing and stammering next time you wake up.”

“Going somewhere?”

“Out for a bit. Making my rounds.”

“Jean, there’s no point. Quit torturing yourself.”

“Finished?” Jean took the empty cup from him.

“Not nearly. I—”

“Won’t be gone long.” Jean set the cup on the table and gave the lapels of his coat a perfunctory brushing as he moved to the door. “Get some more rest.”

“You don’t bloody listen to reason, do you?”

“You know what they say about imitation and flattery.”

The door slid shut and Jean was gone, out into the streets of Lashain.

2

LASHAIN WAS famous as a city where anything could be bought and anything could be left behind. By the grace of the regio, the city’s highest and thinnest order of nobility (where a title that could be traced back more than two generations qualified one for the old guard), just about anyone with cash in hand and enough of a pulse to maintain semiconsciousness could have their blood transmuted to a reasonable facsimile of blue.

From every corner of the Therin world they came—merchants and criminals, mercenary captains and pirates, gamblers and adventurers and exiles. As commoners they entered the chrysalis of a countinghouse, shed vast quantities of precious metal, and as newborn peers of Lashain they emerged into daylight. The regiominted demibarons, barons, viscounts, counts, and even the occasional marquis, with styles largely of their own invention. Honors were taken from a list and cost extra; “Defender of the Twelvefold Faith” was quite popular. There were also half a dozen meaningless orders of knighthood that looked marvelous on a coat lapel.

Because of the novelty of this purchased respectability to those who brokered it for themselves, Lashain was the most violently manners-conscious city Jean Tannen had ever visited. Lacking centuries of aristocratic descent to assure them of their worth, the neophytes of Lashain overcompensated with ceremony. Their rules of precedence were like alchemical formulae, and dinner parties killed more of them each year than fevers and accidents combined. It seemed that little could be more thrilling for those who’d just bought their family names than to risk them (not to mention their mortal flesh) over minor insults.

The record, as far as Jean had heard, was three days from counting-house to dueling green to funeral cart. The regio,of course, offered no refunds to relations of the deceased.

As a result of this nonsense, it was difficult for those without titles, regardless of the color of their coin, to gain ready access to the city’s best physikers. They were made such status symbols by their noble clients that they rarely had to scamper after gold from other sources.

The taste of autumn was in the cool wind blowing off the Amathel, the Lake of Jewels—the freshwater sea that rolled to the horizon north of Lashain. Jean was conservatively dressed by local standards, in a brown velvet frock coat and silks worth no more than, say, three months’ wages for an average tradesman. This marked him instantly as someone’s man and suited his current task. No gentleman of consequence did his own waiting at a physiker’s garden gate.

Scholar Erkemar Zodesti was regarded as the finest physiker in Lashain, a prodigy with the bone saw and the alchemist’s crucible. He’d also shown complete disinterest, for three days straight, in Jean’s requests for a consultation.

Today Jean once again approached the iron-barred gate at the rear of Zodesti’s garden, from behind which an elderly servant peered at him with reptilian insolence. In Jean’s outstretched hand was a parchment envelope and a square of white card, just like the three days previous. Jean was getting testy.

The servant reached between the bars without a word and took everything Jean offered. The envelope, containing the customary gratuity of (far too many) silver coins, vanished into the servant’s coat. The old man read or pretended to read the white card, raised his eyebrows at Jean, and walked away.

The card said exactly what it always did– Contempla va cora frata eminenza. “Consider the request of an eminent friend,” in the Throne Therin that was the polite affectation for this sort of gesture. Rather than giving an aristocrat’s name, this message meant that someone powerful wished to pay anonymously to have someone else examined. This was a common means of bringing wealth to bear on the problem of, say, a pregnant mistress, without directly compromising the identity of anyone important.

Jean passed the long minutes of his wait by examining the physiker’s house. It was a good solid place, about the size of a smaller Alcegrante mansion back in Camorr. Newer, though, and done up in a mock Tal Verrar style that labored to proclaim the importance of its inhabitants. The roof was tiled with slats of volcanic glass, and the windows bordered with decorative carvings that would have better suited a temple.

From the heart of the garden itself, closed off from view by a ten-foot stone wall, Jean could hear the sounds of a lively party. Clinking glasses, shrieks of laughter, and behind it all the hum of a nine-stringed viol and a few other instruments.

“I regret to inform your master that the scholar is presently unable to accommodate his request for a consultation.” The servant reappeared behind the iron gate with empty hands. The envelope, a token of earnestness, was of course gone. Whether into the hands of Zodesti or this servant, Jean couldn’t say.

“Perhaps you might tell me when it would be more convenient for the scholar to receive my master’s request,” said Jean, “the middle of the afternoon for half a week now being obviously unsuitable.”

“I couldn’t say.” The servant yawned. “The scholar is consumed with work.”

“With work.” Jean fumed as the sound of applause drifted from the garden party. “Indeed. My master has a case which requires the greatest possible skill and discretion—”

“Your master could rely upon the scholar’s discretion at all times,” said the servant. “Unfortunately, his skill is urgently required elsewhere at the moment.”

“Gods damn you, man!” Jean’s self-control evaporated. “This is important!”

“I will not be spoken to in a vulgar fashion. Good day.”

Jean considered reaching through the iron bars and seizing the old man by the throat, but that would have been counter-productive. He wore no fighting leathers under his finery, and his decorative shoes would be worse than bare feet in a scuffle. Despite the pair of hatchets tucked away under his coat, he wasn’t equipped to storm even a garden party by choice.

“The scholar risks giving offense to a citizen of considerable importance,” growled Jean.

“The scholar isgiving offense, you simple fellow.” The old man chuckled. “I tell you plainly, he has little interest in the sort of business arranged in this fashion. I don’t believe a single citizen of quality is so unfamiliar with the scholar that they need fear to be received by the front door.”

“I’ll call again tomorrow,” said Jean, straining to keep his composure. “Perhaps I might name a sum that will penetrate even your master’s indifference.”

“You are to be commended for your persistence, if not for your perception. Tomorrow you must do as your master bids. For now, I have already said good day.”

“Good day,” growled Jean. “May the gods cherish the house wherein such kindness dwells.” He bowed stiffly and left.

There was nothing else to be done at the moment, in this gods-damned city where even throwing envelopes of coins was no guarantee of attracting attention to a problem.

As he stomped back to his hired carriage, Jean cursed Maxilan Stragos for the thousandth time. The bastard had lied about so much. Why, in the end, had the damned poison been the one thing he’d chosen to tell the truth about?

3

HOME FOR the time being was a rented suite in the Villa Suvela, an unadorned but scrupulously clean rooming house favored by travelers who came to Lashain to take the waters of the Amathel. Those waters were said to cure rheumatism, though Jean had yet to see a bather emerge leaping and dancing. The rooming house overlooked a black sand beach on the city’s northeast shore, and the other lodgers kept to themselves.

“The bastard,” said Jean as he threw open the door to the suite’s inner apartment. “The motherless Lashani reptile. The greedy son of a piss-bucket and a bad fart.”

“My keen grasp of subtle nuance tells me you may be frustrated,” said Locke. He was sitting up, and he looked fully awake.

“We’ve been snobbed off again,” said Jean, frowning. Despite the fresh air from the window the inner apartment still smelled of old sweat and fresh blood. “Zodesti won’t come. Not today, at least.”

“To hell with him then, Jean.”

“He’s the only physiker of repute I haven’t got to yet. Some of the others were difficult, but he’s being impossible.”

“I’ve been pinched and bled by every gods-damned lunatic in this city who ever shoved a bolus down a throat,” said Locke. “One more hardly signifies.”