The Gentleman Bastard Series (43 page)

“Hope you boys had y’rselves a fun time with ’nother man’s woman,” he continued, drawing nine inches of blackened-steel stiletto from his left boot, “ ’cause now I’m gonna make
you
women.”

Jean spread his feet and moved his left hand under his cloak, ready to draw the Sisters. With his right hand, he nudged Locke a pace behind him.

“Hold it!” Locke cried, waving both of his hands. “I know what this looks like, but you’ve got the wrong idea, friend.” He pointed at the petrified woman clinging to the hanging bed. “She came
before
we came!”

“Gathis,” hissed the woman. “Gathis, these men
attacked
me! Get them!
Save
me!”

Gathis charged at Jean, growling. He held his knife out before him in the grip of an experienced fighter, but he was still drunk and he was still angry. Locke dodged out of the way as Jean caught Gathis by his wrist, stepped inside his reach, and sent him sprawling to the floor with a quick sweep of the legs.

There was an unappetizing snapping noise, and the blade fell from Gathis’ grip; Jean had retained a firm hold on his wrist, and then
twisted
as the man went down on his back. For a moment Gathis was too bewildered to cry out; then the pain broke through to his dulled senses and he roared.

Jean hoisted him up off the ground with one quick yank by the front of his tunic, and then he shoved Gathis with all his might into the stone wall to the left of the window. The big man’s head bounced off the hard surface and he stumbled forward; the blurred arc of Jean’s right fist met his jaw with a crack, abruptly canceling his forward momentum. He flopped to the ground, boneless as a sack of dough.

“Yes!” cried the woman. “Now throw him out the window!”

“For the love of the
gods
, madam,” snapped Locke. “Can you please pick one man in your bedroom to cheer for and
stick
with him?”

“If he’s found dead in the alley beneath your window,” said Jean. “I’ll come back and give you the same.”

“And if you tell anyone that we came through here,” added Locke, “you’ll only
wish
he’d come back and given you the same.”

“Gathis will remember,” she screeched. “He’ll certainly remember!”

“A big man like him? Please.” Jean made a show of arranging his cloak and redonning his hat. “He’ll say it was eight men and they all had clubs.”

Locke and Jean hurried out the door through which Gathis had entered, which led to the landing of the fifth-floor steps on the north side of the tower. With the trellis damaged, there was nothing else for it but to proceed quickly down on foot and pray to the Crooked Warden. Locke drew the door closed behind them, leaving the bewildered woman
sprawled on her hanging bed with the unconscious Gathis curled up beside her window.

“The luck of the gods must certainly be with us,” said Locke as they hurried down the creaking steps. “At least we didn’t lose these stupid fucking hats.”

A small dark shape hissed past them, wings fluttering, a sleek shadow visible as it swooped between them and the lights of the city.

“Well,” Locke added, “for better or worse, from this point on, I suppose we’re under the Falconer’s wing.”

INTERLUDE

Up the River

1

Jean was away at the House of Glass Roses the afternoon that Locke found out he was going to be sent up the Angevine to live on a farm for several months.

Hard rains were pounding Camorr that Idler’s Day, so Chains had taken Locke, Calo, and Galdo down into the dining room to teach them how to play Rich-Man, Beggar-Man, Soldier-Man, Duke—a card game that revolved around attempting to cheat one’s neighbor out of every last bent copper at his disposal. Naturally, the boys took to it quickly.

“Two, three, and five of Spires,” said Calo, “plus the Sigil of the Twelve.”

“Die screaming, half-wit,” said Galdo. “I’ve got a run of Chalices and the Sigil of the Sun.”

“Won’t do
you
any good, quarter-wit. Hand over your coins.”

“Actually,” said Father Chains, “a Sigil run beats a Sigil stand, Calo. Galdo would have you. Except—”

“Doesn’t anyone care what I’ve got in my hand?” asked Locke.

“Not particularly,” said Chains, “since nothing in the game tops a full Duke’s Hand.” He set his cards on the table and cracked his knuckles with great satisfaction.

“That’s cheating,” said Locke. “That’s six times in a row, and you’ve had the Duke’s Hand for two of them.”

“Of course I’m cheating,” said Chains. “Game’s no fun unless you cheat. When you figure out
how
I’m cheating, then I’ll know you’re starting to improve.”

“You shouldn’t have told us that,” said Calo.

“We’ll practice all week,” said Galdo.

“We’ll be robbing you blind,” said Locke, “by next Idler’s Day.”

“I don’t think so,” said Chains, chuckling, “since I’m sending you off on a three-month apprenticeship on Penance Day.”

“You’re what?”

“Remember last year, when I sent Calo off to Lashain to pretend to be an initiate in the Order of Gandolo? And Galdo went to Ashmere to slip into the Order of Sendovani? Well, your turn’s come. You’ll be going up the river to be a farmer for a few months.”

“A
farmer
?”

“Yes, you might have heard of them.” Chains gathered the cards from around the table and shuffled them. “They’re where our food comes from.”

“Yes, but … I don’t know anything about farming.”

“Of course not. You didn’t know how to cook, serve, dress like a gentleman, or speak Vadran when I bought you, either. So now you’re going to learn something else new.”

“Where?”

“Up the Angevine, seven or eight miles. Little place called Villa Senziano. It’s tenant farmers, mostly beholden to the duke or some of the minor swells from the Alcegrante. I’ll dress as a priest of Dama Elliza, and you’ll be my initiate, being sent off to work the earth as part of your service to the goddess. It’s what they do.”

“But I don’t know anything about the Order of Dama Elliza.”

“You won’t need to. The man you’ll be staying with understands that you’re one of my little bastards. The story’s just for everyone else.”

“What,” said Calo, “are we going to do in the meantime?”

“You’ll mind the temple. I’ll only be gone two days; the Eyeless Priest can be sick and locked away in his chambers. Don’t sit the steps while I’m away; people always get sympathetic if I’m out of sight for a bit, especially if I cough and hack when I return. You two and Jean can amuse yourselves as you see fit, so long as you don’t make a bloody mess of the place.”

“But by the time I get back,” said Locke, “I’ll be the worst card player in the temple.”

“Yes. Best wishes for a safe journey, Locke,” said Calo.

“Savor the country air,” said Galdo. “Stay as long as you like.”

2

THE FIVE Towers loomed over Camorr like the upstretched hand of a god; five irregular, soaring, Elderglass cylinders, dotted with turrets and spires and walkways and much curious evidence that the creatures that had designed them did not quite share the aesthetic sense of the humans who’d appropriated them.

Easternmost was Dawncatcher, four hundred feet high, its natural color a shimmery silver-red, like the reflection of a sunset sky in a still body of water. Behind it was Blackspear, slightly taller, made of an obsidian glass that shone with broken rainbows like a pool of oil. At the far side, as one might reckon by looking across the Five with Dawncatcher in the middle of one’s vision, was Westwatch, which shone with the soft violet of a tourmaline, shot through with veins of snow-white pearl. Beside it was stately Amberglass, with its elaborate flutings from which the wind would pull eerie melodies. In the middle, tallest and grandest of all, was Raven’s Reach, the palace of Duke Nicovante, which gleamed like molten silver and was crowned with the famous Sky Garden, whose lowest-hanging vine trailed in the air some six hundred feet above the ground.

A network of glassine cables (miles and miles of spun Elderglass cords had been found in the tunnels beneath Camorr, centuries before) threaded the roofs and turret tops of the Five Towers. Hanging baskets passed back and forth on these cables, drawn along by servants at huge clacking capstans. These baskets carried both passengers and cargo. Although many of the residents of lower Camorr proclaimed them mad, the nobles of the Five Families regarded the lurching, bobbing passage across the yawning empty spaces as a test of honor and courage.

Here and there, large cargo cages were being drawn up or lowered from jutting platforms on several of the towers. They reminded Locke, who stared up at all this with eyes that were not yet sated with such wonders, of the spider cages at the Palace of Patience.

He and Chains sat in a two-wheeled cart with a little walled space behind the seat, where Chains had stashed several parcels of goods under an old canvas tarp. Chains wore the loose brown robes with green and silver trim that marked a priest of Dama Elliza, Mother of Rains and Reaping. Locke wore a plain tunic and breeches, without shoes.

Chains had their two horses (un-Gentled, for Chains misliked using the white-eyed creatures outside city walls) trotting at a gentle pace up the winding cobbles of the Street of Seven Wheels, the heart of the Millfalls
district. In truth, there were more than seven wheels spinning in the white froth of the Angevine; there were more in sight than Locke could count.

The Five Towers had been built on a plateau some sixty-odd feet above the lower city; the Alcegrante islands sloped up toward the base of this plateau. The Angevine came into Camorr at that height, just to the east of the Five, and fell down a crashing six-story waterfall nearly two hundred yards across. Wheels turned at the top of these falls, within a long glass-and-stone bridge topped with wooden mill-houses.

Wheels turned beneath the falls as well, jutting out into the river on both sides, making use of the rushing white flow to work everything from grinding stones to the bellows that blew air across the fires beneath brewers’ vats. It was a district choked with business-folk and laborers alike, with escorted nobles in gilded carriages rolling here and there to inspect their holdings or place orders.

They turned east at the tip of the Millfalls and crossed a wide low bridge into the Cenza Gate district, the means by which most northbound land traffic left the city. Here was a great mess, barely controlled by a small army of yellowjackets. Caravans of wagons were rolling into the city, their drivers at the mercy of the duke’s tax and customs agents, men and women marked by their tall black brimless caps and commonly referred to (when out of earshot) as “vexationers.”

Petty merchants were pitching everything from warm beer to cooked carrots; beggars were pleading countless improbable reasons for impoverishment and claiming lingering wounds from wars that had obviously ended long before they were born. Yellowjackets were driving the most persistent or malodorous off with their black lacquered sticks. It was not yet the tenth hour of the morning.

“You should see this place around noon,” said Chains, “especially during harvest time. And when it rains. Gods.”

Chains’ clerical vestments (and a silver solon passed over in a handshake) got them out of the city with little more than a “Good day, Your Holiness.” The Cenza Gate was fifteen yards wide, with huge ironwood doors almost as tall. The guardhouses on the wall were occupied, barrackslike, not just by the city watch but by the blackjackets, Camorr’s regular soldiers. They could be seen pacing here and there atop the wall, which was a good twenty feet thick.

North of Camorr proper was neighborhood after neighborhood of lightly built stone and wooden buildings, arranged in courts and squares more airy than those found on the islands of the city itself. Along the
riverbank there were the beginnings of a marsh; to the north and the east were terraced hills, crisscrossed by the white lines of boundary stones set out to mark the property of the families that farmed them. The air took on divergent qualities depending on which way the chance breezes blew. It would smell of sea salt and wood smoke one minute, of manure and olive groves the next.

“Here beyond the walls,” said Chains, “is what many folks living outside the great cities would think of as cities; these little scatterings of wood and stone that probably don’t look like much to someone like you. Just as you haven’t really seen the country, most of them haven’t truly seen the city. So keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, and be mindful of differences until you’ve had a few days to acclimate yourself.”

“What’s the point of this trip, Chains, really?”

“You might one day have to pretend to be a person of very lowly station, Locke. If you learn something about being a farmer, you’ll probably learn something about being a teamster, a barge poleman, a village smith, a horse physiker, and maybe even a country bandit.”

The road north from Camorr was an old Therin Throne road: a raised stone expanse with shallow ditches at the sides. It was covered with a gravel of pebbles and iron filings, waste from the forges of the Coalsmoke district. Here and there the rains had fused or rusted the gravel into a reddish cement; the wheels clattered as they slid over these hard patches.

“A lot of blackjackets,” Chains said slowly, “come from the farms and villages north of Camorr. It’s what the dukes of Camorr do, when they need more men, and they can afford to wait a bit, without raising a general levy of the lowborn. It’s good wages, and there’s the promise of land for those that stay in service a full twenty-five years. Assuming they don’t get killed, of course. They come from the north, and mostly they go back to the north.”

“Is that why the blackjackets and the yellowjackets don’t like each other?”

“Heh.” Chains’ eyes twinkled. “Good guess. There’s some truth to it. Most of the yellowjackets are city boys that want to stay city boys. But on top of that, soldiers can be some of the cattiest, most clannish damn folk you’ll ever find outside of a highborn lady’s wardrobe. They’ll fight over anything; they’ll brawl over the colors of their hats and the shapes of their shoes. I know, believe me.”