The Gentleman Bastard Series (38 page)

“Crooked Warden,” said Locke to thin air, “if I’m pissing you off for some reason, you don’t need to go to such elaborate lengths to chastise me. And if I’m not pissing you off, well, I pray that you still find me amusing.” He flexed the fingers of his injured arm, wincing, then took up his wineglass and the bottle one more time.

“A glass poured to air for an absent friend,” he said as he filled it with dark red wine—a Nacozza retsina that had actually come from Don Salvara’s upriver vineyards. A gift to Lukas Fehrwight as he stepped off the don’s pleasure barge so many days earlier … or not so many days earlier. It felt like a lifetime.

“We miss Nazca Barsavi already, and we wish her well. She was a fair
garrista
and she tried to help her
pezon
out of an untenable situation for them both. She deserved better. Piss on me all you like, but do what you can for her. I beg this as your servant.”

“If you wish to measure a man’s true penitence,” said the Falconer, “observe him when he believes himself to be dining alone.”

The front door was just closing behind the Bondsmage; Locke had not seen or heard it open. For that matter, it had been bolted. The Falconer was without his bird, and dressed in the same wide-skirted gray coat with silver-buttoned scarlet cuffs Locke had seen the night before. A gray velvet cap was tilted back atop his head, adorned with a single feather under a silver pin, easily identified as having come from Vestris.

“I for one have never been a very penitent man,” he continued. “Nor have I ever been overly fond of stairs.”

“My heart is overcome with sorrow for your hardship,” said Locke. “Where’s your hawk?”

“Circling.”

Locke was suddenly acutely aware of the open windows, such a comfort just a moment earlier. The mesh wouldn’t keep Vestris out if the hawk decided to be unruly.

“I’d hoped that your master might come along with you.”

“My
client
,” said the Bondsmage, “is otherwise occupied. I speak for him, and I will bear your words to him. Assuming you have any worth hearing.”

“I always have words,” said Locke. “Words like ‘complete lunatic.’ And ‘fucking idiot.’ Did it ever occur to you or your
client
that the one
certain
way to ensure that a Camorri would never negotiate with you with
any
good faith would be to
kill someone of his blood
?”

“Heavens,” said the Falconer. “This is ill news indeed. And here the Gray King was
so certain
Barsavi would interpret his daughter’s murder as a friendly gesture.” The sorcerer’s eyebrows rose. “I say, did you want to tell him yourself, or shall I rush off right now with your revelation?”

“Very funny, you half-copper cocksucker. While I agreed under duress to prance around dressed as your master, you must admit that sending the capa’s only daughter back to him
in a vat of piss
does complicate my fucking job.”

“A pity,” said the Bondsmage, “but the task remains, as does the duress.”

“Barsavi wants me by his side at this meeting, Falconer. He made the request this morning. Maybe I might have slipped out of it before, but now? Nazca’s murder has put me in a hell of a squeeze.”

“You’re the Thorn of Camorr. I would be, personally, very disappointed if you couldn’t find a way past this difficulty. Barsavi’s summons is a request; my client’s is a requirement.”

“Your client isn’t telling me everything he should.”

“You may safely presume that he knows his own business better than you do.” The Falconer began to idly wind a slender thread back and forth between the fingers of his right hand; it had an odd silver sheen.

“Gods dammit,” Locke hissed, “maybe I
don’t
care what happens to the capa, but Nazca was my friend. Duress I can accept; gleeful malice I cannot. You fuckers didn’t
need
to do what you did to her!”

The Falconer splayed his fingers and the thread gleamed, woven into a sort of cat’s cradle. He began to move his fingers slowly, tightening some threads and loosening others, as deftly as the Sanzas moved coins across the backs of their hands.

“I cannot tell you,” said the sorcerer, “what a weight it is upon my conscience to learn that we might lose your gracious
acceptance
.”

Then the Falconer hissed a
word
, a single syllable in a language Locke didn’t understand. The very sound was harsh and unnerving; it echoed in the room as though heard from a distance.

The wood shutters behind Locke slammed closed, and he jumped out of his chair.

One by one, the other windows banged shut and their little clasps clicked, moved by an unseen hand. The Falconer shifted his fingers yet again; light gleamed on the web within his hands, and Locke gasped—his knees suddenly ached as though they’d been kicked from the sides, sharply.

“This is the second time,” said the Bondsmage, “that you have been flippant with me. I fail to find it amusing. So I will reinforce my client’s instructions, and I shall take my time doing so.”

Locke gritted his teeth; tears sprang unbidden to his eyes as the pain in his legs intensified, throbbed, spread. It now felt as though a cold flame were playing against his knee sockets from the inside. Unable to support his own weight, he tottered forward. One hand clutched helplessly at his legs while the other tried to hold him up against the table. He glared at the Bondsmage and tried to speak, but found that the muscles of his neck began spasming as he did.

“You are
property
, Lamora. You belong to the Gray King. He cares not that Nazca Barsavi was your friend; it was her ill fortune to be born to the father the gods gave her.”

The spasming spread down Locke’s spine, across his arms, and down his legs, where it met the freezing, gnawing pain already at work there in a hideous fusion. He fell onto his back, gasping, his face a rictus mask, his hands curved in the air above his head like claws.

“You look like an insect thrown into a fire. And this is the merest exercise of my art. The things I could
do
to you if I were to stitch your true name into cloth or scribe it on parchment … ‘Lamora’ is obviously not your given name; it’s Throne Therin for ‘shadow.’ But your first name, now that … that would be just enough to master you, if I wished to make use of it.”

The Falconer’s fingers flew back and forth, blurring in Locke’s vision, shifting and stretching those silver threads, and the tempo of Locke’s torment rose in direct proportion to the motion of that gleaming design. His heels were slapping against the floor; his teeth were rattling in his jaw; it seemed to him that someone was trying to cut the bones out of his thighs with icicles. Again and again he tried to suck in enough air to scream, but his lungs would not move. His throat was packed with thorns, and the world was growing black and red at the edges.…

Release itself was a shock. He lay on the ground, bonelessly, still feeling the ghosts of pain throbbing across his body. Warm tears slid down his cheeks.

“You’re not a particularly intelligent man, Lamora. An intelligent man would never
deliberately
waste my time. An intelligent man would grasp the nuances of the situation without the need for … repetition.”

Another motion of blurred silver in the corner of Locke’s vision, and new pain erupted in his chest, like a blossom of fire surrounding his heart. He could feel it there, burning the very core of his being. It seemed to him that he could actually smell the crisping flesh within his lungs, and feel the air in his throat warming until it was as hot as that of a bread oven. Locke groaned, writhed, threw his head back, and finally screamed.

“I need you,” said the Falconer, “but I will have you meek and grateful for my forbearance. Your friends are another matter. Shall I do this to Bug, while you watch? Shall I do it to the Sanzas?”

“No … please, no,” Locke cried out, curled in agony, his hands clutching at his left breast. He found himself tearing at his tunic, like an animal mad with pain. “Not them!”

“Why not? They are immaterial to my client. They are
expendable
.”

The burning pain abated, once again shocking Locke with its absence. He huddled on his side, breathing raggedly, unable to believe that heat so fierce could vanish so swiftly.

“One more sharp word,” said the Bondsmage, “one more flippant remark, one more demand, one more scrap of anything less than
total abjection
, and
they
will pay the price for your pride.” He lifted the glass of
retsina from the table and sipped at it. He then snapped the fingers of his other hand and the liquid in the glass vanished in an instant, boiled away without a speck of flame. “Are we now free from misunderstanding?”

“Yes,” said Locke, “perfectly. Yes. Please don’t harm them. I’ll do whatever I must.”

“Of course you will. Now, I’ve brought the components of the costume you’ll be wearing at the Echo Hole. You’ll find them just outside your door. They’re appropriately theatrical. I won’t presume to tell you how to make ready with your mummery; be in position across from the Echo Hole at half past ten on the night of the meeting. I shall guide you from there, and direct you in what to say.”

“Barsavi,” Locke coughed out. “Barsavi … will mean to kill me.”

“Do you doubt that I could continue punishing you here, at my leisure, until you were mad with pain?”

“No … no.”

“Then do not doubt that I can protect you from whatever nonsense the capa might wish to employ.”

“How do you … how do you mean … to direct me?”

I do not need the air
, came the voice of the Bondsmage, echoing in Locke’s head with shocking force,
to carry forth my instructions. When you require prompting in your meeting with Barsavi, I shall supply it. When you must make a demand or accept a demand, I shall let you know how to proceed. Is this clear?

“Yes. Perfectly clear. Th-thank you.”

“You should be grateful for what my client and I have done on your behalf. Many men wait years for a chance to ingratiate themselves with Capa Barsavi. Your chance has been served forth to you like a fine meal. Are we not generous?”

“Yes … certainly.”

“Just so. I suggest you now find some means to extricate yourself from the duty he asks of you. This will leave you free to concentrate on the duty we require. We wouldn’t want your attention divided at a critical moment.”

4

THE LAST Mistake was half-empty, a phenomenon Locke had never before witnessed. Conversation was muted; eyes were cold and hard; entire gangs were conspicuous by their absence. Men and women alike wore
heavier clothing than the season required; more half-cloaks and coats and layered vests. It was easier to conceal weapons that way.

“So what the hell happened to you?”

Jean helped Locke sit down; he’d gotten them a small table in a side cranny of the tavern, with a clear view of the doors. Locke settled into his chair, a slight echo of the Falconer’s phantom pains still haunting his joints and his neck muscles.

“The Falconer,” Locke said in a low voice, “had several opinions he wished to express, and apparently I’m not as charming as I think I am.” He idly fingered his torn tunic and sighed. “Beer now. Bitch later.”

Jean slid over a clay mug of warm Camorri ale, and Locke drank half of it down in two gulps. “Well,” he said after wiping his mouth, “I suppose it was worth it just to say what I said to him. I don’t believe Bondsmagi are used to being insulted.”

“Did you accomplish anything?”

“No.” Locke drank the remaining half of his ale and turned the mug upside down before setting it on the tabletop. “Not a gods-damned thing. I did get the shit tortured out of myself, though, which was informational, from a certain point of view.”

“That fucker.” Jean’s hands balled into fists. “I could do so much to him, without killing him. I very much hope I get to try.”

“Save it for the Gray King,” muttered Locke. “My thoughts are that if we survive what’s coming on Duke’s Day night, he won’t be able to keep the Falconer on retainer forever. When the Bondsmage leaves …”

“We talk to the Gray King again. With knives.”

“Too right. We follow him if we have to. We’ve been needing something to do with all of our money.
Here’s
something. Whenever that bastard can’t pay his mage anymore, we’ll show him just
how much
we like being knocked around like handballs. Even if we have to follow him down the Iron Sea and around the Cape of Nessek and all the way to Balinel on the Sea of Brass.”

“Now there’s a plan. And what are you going to do tonight?”

“Tonight?” Locke grunted. “I’m going to take Calo’s advice. I’m going to stroll over to the Guilded Lilies and get my brains wenched out. They can put them back in in the morning when they’re through with me; I understand there’s an extra fee involved, but I’ll pay it.”

“I must be going mad,” said Jean. “It’s been four
years
, and all this time you’ve been—”

“I’m frustrated and I need a break. And she’s a thousand miles away and I guess I’m human after all, gods damn it. Don’t wait up.”

“I’ll walk with you,” said Jean. “It’s not wise to be out alone on a night like this. The city’s in a mood, now that word of Nazca’s got around.”

“Not wise?” Locke laughed. “I’m the safest man in Camorr, Jean. I know for a fact I’m the only one that absolutely nobody out there wants to kill yet. Not until they finish pulling my strings.”

5

“THIS ISN’T working,” he said, less than two hours later. “I’m sorry, it’s … not your fault.”

The room was warm and dark and exceedingly pleasant, ventilated by the soft swish of a wooden fan flapping back and forth in a concealed shaft. Waterwheels churned outside the ornate House of the Guilded Lilies at the northern tip of the Snare, driving belts and chains to operate many mechanisms of comfort.

Locke lay on a wide bed with soft feather mattresses covered in silk sheets and overhung with a silk canopy. He sprawled naked in the soft red light of a misted alchemical globe, little stronger than scarlet moonlight, and admired the soft curves of the woman who was running her hands along the insides of his thighs. She smelled like mulled apple wine and cinnamon musk, and her curves were indeed admirable. Yet he was nothing resembling aroused.