The Gentleman Bastard Series (102 page)

She kicked him once to roll him over onto his back, then planted a foot on his chest to pin him down. She’d caught one of his blades, and he watched in a daze as she bent forward to put it to use. His hands were numb, traitorously slow, and he felt an unbearable itching sensation on his unprotected neck as his own stiletto dipped toward it.

Locke didn’t hear Jean’s hatchet sink into her back, but he saw its effect and guessed the cause. The woman jerked upright, arched backward, and let the stiletto slip. It clattered against the ground just beside Locke’s face, and he flinched. His assailant sank down to her knees just beside him, breathing in swift shallow gasps, and then twisted away. He could see one of Jean’s Wicked Sisters buried in a spreading dark stain on her lower back, just to the right of her spine.

Jean stepped over Locke, reached down, and yanked the hatchet from the woman’s back. She gasped, fell forward, and was viciously yanked back upright by Jean, who stood behind her and placed the blade of his hatchet against her throat.

“Lo … Leo! Leocanto. Are you all right?”

“With this much pain,” Locke gasped, “I know I can’t be dead.”

“Good enough.” Jean applied more force to the hatchet, which he was holding just behind its head, like a barber wielding a beard-scraper. “Start talking. I can help you die without further pain, or I can even help you live. You’re no simple bandit. Who put you here?”

“My back,” sobbed the woman, her voice trembling and utterly without threat. “Please, please, it hurts.”

“It’s supposed to. Who put you here? Who hired you?”

“Gold,” said Locke, coughing. “White iron. We can pay you. Double. Just give us a name.”

“Oh, gods, it hurts …”

Jean seized her by the hair with his free hand and pulled; she cried out and straightened up. Locke blinked as he saw what appeared to be a dark feathered shape burst out of her chest; the wet thud of the crossbow quarrel’s impact didn’t register until a split second later. Jean leapt back, dumbfounded, and dropped the woman to the ground. A moment later, he looked past Locke and gestured threateningly with his hatchet.

“You!”

“At your service, Master de Ferra.”

Locke craned his head back far enough to catch an upside-down glimpse of the woman who’d stolen them off the street and delivered them to the archon a few nights before. Her dark hair fluttered freely behind her in the breeze. She wore a tight black jacket over a gray waistcoat and a gray skirt, and held a discharged crossbow in her left hand. She was walking toward them at a leisurely pace, from the direction they’d come. Locke groaned and rolled over until she was right side up.

Beside him, the beggar-
chassoneur
gave one last wet cough and died.

“Gods
damn
it,” cried Jean, “I was about to get some answers from her!”

“No, you weren’t,” said the archon’s agent. “Take a look at her right hand.”

Locke, climbing shakily to his feet, and Jean both did so; a slender knife with a curved blade glistened there by the faint light of the moons and the few dockside lamps.

“I was assigned to watch over you two,” the woman said as she stepped up beside Locke, beaming contentedly.

“Fine fucking job,” said Jean, rubbing his ribs with his left hand.

“You seemed to be doing well enough until the end.” She looked down at the little knife and nodded. “Look, this knife has an extra groove right alongside the cutting edge. That usually means something nasty on the blade. She was buying time to slip it out and stick you with it.”

“I know what a groove along the blade means,” mumbled Jean petulantly. “Do you know who the hell these two work for?”

“I have some theories, yes.”

“And would you mind sharing them?” asked Locke.

“If I were given orders to that effect,” she said sweetly.

“Gods damn all Verrari, and give them more sores on their privates than hairs on their heads,” muttered Locke.

“I was born in Vel Virazzo,” said the woman.

“Do you have a name?” asked Jean.

“Lots. All of them lovely and none of them true,” she replied. “You two can call me Merrain.”

“Merrain. Ow.” Locke winced and massaged his left forearm with his right hand. Jean set a hand on his shoulder.

“Anything broken, Leo?

“Not much. Perhaps my dignity and my previous presumptions of divine benevolence.” Locke sighed. “We’ve seen people following us for the past few nights, Merrain. I suppose we must have seen you.”

“I doubt it. You gentlemen should collect your things and start walking. Same direction you were moving before. There’ll be constables here soon enough, and the constables don’t take orders from my employer.”

Locke retrieved his wet stilettos and wiped them on the trousers of the man he’d killed before returning them to his sleeves. Now that the anger of the fight had run cold, Locke felt his gorge rising at the sight of the corpse, and he scuttled away as fast as he could.

Jean gathered up his coat and slipped his hatchet into it. Soon enough the three of them were walking along, Merrain in the middle with her elbows linked in theirs.

“My employer,” she said after a few moments, “wished me to watch over you tonight, and when convenient show you down to a boat.”

“Wonderful,” said Locke. “Another private conversation.”

“I can’t say. But if I were to conjecture, I’d guess that he’s found a job for the pair of you.”

Jean spared a quick glance for the two bodies lying in the darkness far behind them, and he coughed into his clenched fist. “Splendid,” he growled. “This place has been so dull and uncomplicated so far.”

REMINISCENCE

The Amusement War

1

Six days north up the coast road from Tal Verrar, the demi-city of Salon Corbeau lies within an unusually verdant cleft in the black seaside rocks. More than a private estate, not quite a functional village, the demi-city clings to its peculiar life in the smoldering shadow of Mount Azar.

In the time of the Therin Throne Azar exploded to life, burying three living villages and ten thousand souls in a matter of minutes. These days it seems content merely to rumble and brood, sending twisting charcoal plumes out to sea, and flights of ravens wheel without concern beneath the tired old volcano’s smoke. Here begin the hot, dusty plains called the Adra Morcala, inhabited by few and loved by none. They roll like a cracked dry sea all the way to the southern boundaries of Balinel, most westerly and desolate canton of the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows.

Locke Lamora rode into Salon Corbeau on the ninth day of Aurim, in the Seventy-eighth Year of Nara. A mild westerly winter. A fruitful year (and more) had passed since he and Jean had first set foot in Tal Verrar, and in the armored strongbox at the rear of Locke’s rented carriage rattled a thousand gold solari, stolen at billiards from a certain Lord Landreval of Espara who was unusually sensitive to lemons.

The little harbor that served the demi-city was thick with small craft—yachts and pleasure-barges and coasting galleys with square silk sails. Farther out, upon the open sea a galleon and a sloop rode at anchor, each flying the pennant of Lashain under family crests and colors Locke didn’t
recognize. The breeze was slight and the sun was pale, more silver than gold behind the hazy exhalations of the mountain.

“Welcome to Salon Corbeau,” said a footman in livery of black and olive green, with a tall hat of pressed black felt. “How are you styled, and how must you be announced?”

A liveried woman placed a wooden block beneath the open door to Locke’s carriage and he stepped out, bracing his hands in the small of his back and stretching with relief before hopping to the ground. He wore a drooping black moustache beneath black-rimmed optics and slick black hair; his heavy black coat was tight in the chest and shoulders but flared out from waist to knees, fluttering behind him like a cape. He had eschewed the more refined hose and shoes for gray pantaloons tucked into knee-high field boots, dull black beneath a faint layer of road dust.

“I am Mordavi Fehrwight, a merchant of Emberlain,” he said. “I doubt that I shall require announcement, as I have no title of any consequence.”

“Very good, Master Fehrwight,” said the footman smoothly. “The Lady Saljesca appreciates your visit to Salon Corbeau and earnestly wishes you good fortune in your affairs.”

Appreciates your visit
, noted Locke, rather than
would be most pleased to receive your audience
. Countess Vira Saljesca of Lashain was the absolute ruler of Salon Corbeau; the demi-city was built on one of her estates. Equally distant from Balinel, Tal Verrar, and Lashain, just out of convenient rulership by any of them, Salon Corbeau was more or less an autonomous resort state for the wealthy of the Brass Coast.

In addition to the constant arrival of carriages along the coast roads and pleasure-vessels from the sea, Salon Corbeau attracted one other noteworthy form of traffic, which Locke had meditated on in a melancholy fashion during his journey.

Ragged groups of peasants, urban poor and rural wretches alike, trudged wearily along the dusty roads to Lady Saljesca’s domain. They came in intermittent but ceaseless streams, flowing to the strange private city beneath the dark heights of the mountain.

Locke imagined that he already knew exactly what they were coming for, but his next few days in Salon Corbeau would prove that understanding to be woefully incomplete.

2

LOCKE HAD originally expected that a sea voyage to Lashain or even Issara might be necessary to secure the final pieces of his Sinspire scheme, but conversation with several wealthier Verrari had convinced him that Salon Corbeau might have exactly what he needed.

Picture a seaside valley carved from night-dark stone, perhaps three hundred yards in length and a hundred wide. Its little harbor lies on its western side, with a crescent beach of fine black sand. At its eastern end, an underground stream pours out of a fissure in the rocks, rushing down a stepped arrangement of stones. The headlands above this stream are commanded by Countess Saljesca’s residence, a stone manor house above two layers of crenellated walls—a minor fortress.

The valley walls of Salon Corbeau are perhaps twenty yards in height, and for nearly their full length they are terraced with gardens. Thick ferns, twisting vines, blossoming orchids, and fruit and olive trees flourish there, a healthy curtain of brown and green in vivid relief against the black, with little water ducts meandering throughout to keep Saljesca’s artificial paradise from growing thirsty.

In the very center of the valley is a circular stadium, and the gardens on both sides of this stone structure share the walls with several dozen sturdy buildings of polished stone and lacquered wood. A miniature city rests on stilts and platforms and terraces, charmingly enclosed by walkways and stairs at every level.

Locke strolled these walkways on the afternoon of his arrival, looking for his ultimate goal with a stately lack of haste—he expected to be here for many days, perhaps even weeks. Salon Corbeau, like the chance houses of Tal Verrar, drew the idle rich in large numbers. Locke walked among Verrari merchants and Lashani nobles, among scions of the western Marrows, past Nesse ladies-in-waiting (or perhaps more accurately, ladies-weighted-down, in more cloth-of-gold than Locke would have previously thought possible) and the landed families they served. Here and there he was sure he even spotted Camorri, olive-skinned and haughty, though thankfully none were important enough for him to recognize.

So many bodyguards, and so many bodies to guard! Rich bodies and faces; people who could afford proper alchemy and physik for their ailments. No weeping sores or sagging facial tumors, no crooked teeth lolling out of bleeding gums, no faces pinched by emaciation. The Sinspire crowd might be more exclusive, but these folk were even more refined, even more pampered. Hired musicians followed some of them, so that even little journeys
of thirty or forty yards need not threaten a second of boredom. Rich men and women were hemorrhaging money all around Locke, to the strains of music. Even a man like Mordavi Fehrwight might spend less to eat for a month than some of them would throw away just to be noticed at breakfast each day.

He’d come to Salon Corbeau because of these folk; not to rob them, for once, but to make use of their privileged existence. Where the rich nested like bright-feathered birds, the providers of the luxuries and services they relied upon followed. Salon Corbeau had a permanent community of tailors, clothiers, instrument makers, glassbenders, alchemists, caterers, entertainers, and carpenters. A small community, to be sure, but one of the highest reputation, fit for aristocratic patronage and priced accordingly.

Almost in the middle of Salon Corbeau’s south gallery, Locke found the shop he had come all this way to visit—a rather long, two-story stone building without windows along its walkway face. The wooden sign above the single door said:

M. BAUMONDAIN AND DAUGHTERS HOUSEHOLD DEVICES AND FINE FURNITURE BY APPOINTMENT

On the door of the Baumondain shop was a scrollwork decoration, the crest of the Saljesca family (as Locke had glimpsed on banners fluttering here and there, and on the cross-belts of Salon Corbeau’s guards), implying Lady Vira’s personal approval of the work that went on there. Meaningless to Locke, since he knew too little of Saljesca’s taste to judge it … but the Baumondain reputation stretched all the way to Tal Verrar.

He would send a messenger first thing in the morning, as was appropriate, and request an appointment to discuss the matter of some peculiar chairs he needed built.

3

AT THE second hour of the next afternoon a warm soft rain was falling; a weak and wispy thing that hung in the air more like damp gauze than falling water. Vague columns of mist swirled among the plants and atop the valley, and the walkways were for once clear of most of their well-heeled traffic. Gray clouds necklaced the tall black mountain to the northwest. Locke stood outside the door to the Baumondain shop with water dripping down the back of his neck and rapped sharply three times.