The Gentleman Bastard Series (50 page)

As he took the matched blades back from Jean, he chuckled. “How’s that for teeth lessons, eh, boy? Eh?”

Jean stared at him, puzzled.

“Haven’t you ever heard that one before? Your Capa Barsavi, he’s not from Camorr, originally. Taught at the Therin Collegium. So, when he drags someone in for a talking-to, that’s ‘etiquette lessons.’ And when he ties them up and makes them talk, that’s ‘singing lessons.’ And when he cuts their throats and throws them in the bay for the sharks …”

“Oh,” said Jean, “I guess that’d be teeth lessons. I get it.”

“Right. I didn’t make that one up, mind you. That’s your kind. I’d lay odds the big man knows about it, but nobody says anything like that to his face. That’s how it always is, be it cutthroats or soldiers. So … next lovely toy …”

Maranzalla handed Jean a pair of wooden-handled hatchets; these had curved metal blades on one side and round counterweights on the other.

“No fancy name for these skull-crackers. I wager you’ve seen a hatchet before. Your choice to use the blade or the ball; it’s possible to avoid killing a man with the ball, but if you hit hard enough it’s just as bad as the blade, so judge carefully when you’re not attacking a woundman.”

Almost immediately, Jean realized that he
liked
the feel of the hatchets in his hands. They were long enough to be more than a pocket weapon, like the gimp steel or the blackjacks most Right People carried as a matter of habit, yet they were small enough to move swiftly and use in tight spaces, and it seemed to him they could hide themselves rather neatly under a coat or vest.

He crouched; the knife-fighter’s crouch seemed natural with these things in his hands. Springing forward, he chopped at the woundman from both sides at once, embedding the hatchet blades in the dummy’s ribs. With an overhand slash to the woundman’s right arm, he made the whole thing shudder. He followed that cut with a backhanded stroke against the head, using a ball rather than a blade. For several minutes, he chopped and slashed at the woundman, his arms pistoning, a smile growing on his face.

“Hmmm. Not bad,” said Don Maranzalla. “Not bad at all for a total novice, I’ll grant you that. You seem very comfortable with them.”

On a whim, Jean turned and ran to one side of the courtyard, putting fifteen feet between himself and the woundman. The driving rain thrust fingers of gray down between him and the target, so he concentrated very hard—and then he lined up and threw, whipping one hatchet through the
air with the full twisting force of his arm, hips, and upper body. The hatchet sank home, blade flat-on, in the woundman’s head, where it held fast in the layers of leather without so much as a quiver.

“Oh, my,” said Don Maranzalla. Lightning roiled the heavens yet again, and thunder echoed across the rooftop. “My, yes. Now
there’s
a foundation we can build upon.”

CHAPTER TEN

TEETH LESSONS

1

IN THE DARKNESS beneath the Echo Hole, Jean Tannen was moving even before the cask came crashing down into the black water, lit faintly from above by the red glow of Barsavi’s torches.

Beneath the ancient stone cube, there was a network of hanging rafters, built from black witchwood and lashed with Elderglass cords. The rafters were slimy with age and unmentionable growths, but they had surely held as long as the stones above had, and they retained their strength.

The waterfall that cascaded in from the roof terminated here in one of the swirling channels beneath the rafters. There was a veritable maze of the things; some were as smooth as glass, while others were as turbulent as whitewater rapids. A few wheels and even stranger devices turned slowly in the corners of the under-rafters. Jean had briefly appraised them by the light of a tiny alchemical ball when he’d settled himself in for a long wait. Bug, understandably unwilling to move too far from Jean’s company, had crouched on a rafter of his own about twenty feet to Jean’s left.

There were little shafts in the stone floor of the Echo Hole, square cuts about two inches wide, irregularly spaced and serving some unguessable function. Jean had positioned himself between one of these, knowing that it would be impossible to hear any of the activities above with the noise of the waterfall right in his ear.

His understanding of the situation above was imperfect—but as the long minutes rolled by, and the red light grew, and Capa Barsavi and Locke began speaking to one another, Jean’s uneasiness deepened into dread. There was shouting, cursing, the trample of booted feet on stone—cheers. Locke was taken. Where was the gods-damned Bondsmage?

Jean scuttled along his rafter, looking for the best way to cross to the waterfall. It would be a good five or six feet up from the rafters to the lip of the stone gash through which the waterfall poured, but if he stayed out of the falling water he could make it. Besides, it was the quickest way up—the
only
way up from within here. In the thin red light pouring down through the little holes in the floor, Jean signaled for Bug to stay put.

There was another outburst of cheering above, and then the capa’s voice, loud and clear through one of the peepholes: “Take this bastard and send him out to sea.”

Send him out to sea?
Jean’s heart pounded. Had they already cut Locke’s throat? His eyes stung at the thought that the next thing he’d see was a limp body falling in the white stream of gushing water, a limp body dressed all in gray.

Then came the cask, a heavy dark object that plunged into the black canal at the base of the waterfall with a loud splash and a geyser of water. Jean blinked twice before he realized what he’d just seen. “Oh, gods,” he muttered. “Like for like! Barsavi had to be fucking poetic!”

Overhead there was more cheering, more stomping of feet. Barsavi was yelling something; his men were yelling in response. Then the faint lines of red light began to flicker; shadows passed before them, and they began to recede in the direction of the street door. Barsavi was moving, so Jean decided to take a risk.

There was another splash, audible even over the hiss and rumble of the waterfall. What the hell was that? Jean reached beneath his vest, drew out his light-globe, and shook it. A faint white star blossomed in the darkness. Clinging tightly to the wet rafter with his other hand, Jean tossed the globe down toward the channel in which the cask would have fallen, about forty feet to his right. It hit the water and settled, giving Jean enough light to discern the situation.

The little channel was about eight feet wide, stone-bordered, and the cask was bobbing heavily in it, three-quarters submerged.

Bug was thrashing about in that canal, visible only from the arms up. Jean’s light-globe had struck the water about three feet to the right of his head; Bug had jumped down into the water on his own.

Damn, but the boy seemed to be constitutionally incapable of remaining in high places for any length of time.

Jean looked around frantically; it would take him a few moments to work his way over to a point where he could splash down into the right channel without cracking his legs against one of the stone dividers.

“Bug,” Jean cried, judging that the ruckus above would cover his own voice. “Your light! Slip it out, now! Locke’s in that cask!”

Bug fumbled within his tunic, drew out a globe, and shook it. By the sudden flare of added white light Jean could clearly see the outline of the bobbing black cask. He judged the distance between himself and it, came to a decision, and reached for one of his hatchets with his free hand.

“Bug,” he yelled, “don’t try to get through the sides. Attack the flat top of the cask!”

“How?”

“Stay right where you are.” Jean leaned to his right, clinging to the rafter with his left arm. He raised the hatchet in his right hand, whispered a single “please” to whatever gods were listening, and let fly. The hatchet struck, quivering, in the dark wood of the cask; Bug flinched back, then splashed through the water to pry at the weapon.

Jean began sliding his bulk along the rafter, but more dark motion in the corner of his eye brought him up short. He peered down into the shadows on his left. Something was moving across the surface of one of the other waterways in the damned maze. Several somethings—black scuttling shapes the size of dogs. Their bristling legs spread wide when they slipped just beneath the surface of the dark water, then drew in to propel them up and over stone just as easily.…

“Fuck me,” he muttered. “Fuck me, that’s not possible.”

Salt devils, despite their horrific size and aspect, were timid creatures. The huge spiders crouched in crevices on the rocky coasts to the southwest of Camorr, preying on fish and gulls, occasionally falling prey to sharks or devilfish if they ventured too far from shore. Sailors flung stones and arrows at them with superstitious dread.

Only a fool would approach one, with their fangs the length of a grown man’s fingers and their venom, which might not always bring death but could make a man fervently pray for it. Yet salt devils were quite content to flee from humans; they were ambush hunters, solitary, incapable of tolerating one another at close quarters. Jean had scared himself witless in his early years reading the observations of scholars and naturalists concerning the creatures.

Yet here was an entire pack of the damn things, leg to leg like hounds, scrabbling across stone and water alike toward Bug and the cask.

“Bug,” Jean screamed. “Bug!”

2

BUG HAD heard even less of the goings-on upstairs than Jean, yet when the cask had splashed down into darkness, he’d realized immediately that it hadn’t been dropped down idly. Having placed himself directly over the canal that flowed from the waterfall, he’d simply let himself drop the fifteen feet down into the rushing water.

He’d tucked his legs and hit like a catapult stone, ass-first. Although his head had plunged under with the momentum of his drop, he quickly found that he could plant his feet; the canal was only about four feet deep.

Now, with Jean’s hatchet gripped in one hand, he chopped frantically at the flat barrel-top before him. He’d set his own light-glass on the stone walkway beside the canal, as there was enough working light coming from Jean’s beneath the surface of the water.

“Bug,” the big man yelled, his voice suddenly loud with real alarm. “Bug!”

The boy turned to his right and caught a glimpse of what was moving out of the far shadows toward him. A shudder of pure revulsion passed up and down his spine, and he looked around frantically to make sure the threat was approaching from only one direction.

“Bug, get out of the water! Get up on the stones!”

“What about Locke?”

“He doesn’t want to come out of that cask right this fucking second,” Jean hollered. “Trust me!”

As Bug scrambled up out of the rippling, alchemically lit water, the cask began once again bobbing toward the south end of the building, where the canal exited to gods knew where. Too desperate to think clearly about his own safety, Jean scrambled out along the crossbeam, feet sliding in the muck of the ages, and ran in the direction of the waterfall with his arms windmilling crazily for balance. A few seconds later he arrested his forward momentum by wrapping his arms around a vertical beam; his feet slipped briefly out from beneath him, but he clung tightly to his perch. His mad dash had brought him to a point beside the waterfall; now he flung himself forward into the air, carefully drawing his legs into his chest. He hit the
water with a splash as great as that caused by the cask and bumped the canal bottom.

He came up sputtering, second hatchet already in hand. Bug was crouched on the stone lip beside the canal, waving his alchemical globe at the spiders. Jean saw that the salt devils were about fifteen feet away from the boy, across the water and moving more warily, but still approaching. Their carapaces were mottled black and gray; their multiple eyes the color of deepest night, starred with eerie reflections of Bug’s light. Their hairy pedipalps waved in the air before their faces, and their hard black fangs twitched.

Four of the damn things. Jean heaved his bulk up out of the canal on Bug’s side, spitting water. He fancied that he saw some of those inhuman black eyes turn to regard him.

“Jean,” Bug moaned. “Jean, those things look pissed off.”

“It’s not natural,” said Jean as he ran to Bug’s side; the boy tossed him his other hatchet and he caught it in the air. The spiders had closed to ten feet, just across the water; he and Bug seemed hemmed in by thirty-two unblinking black eyes, thirty-two twitching legs with jagged dark hairs. “Not natural at all; salt devils don’t act like this.”

“Oh, good.” Bug held the alchemical globe out at arm’s length as though he could conceal himself entirely behind it. “You discuss it with them.”

“I’m sure we can communicate. I speak fluent hatchet.”

No sooner were these words out of Jean’s mouth than the spiders moved in eerie unison, forward into the water with four splashes. The cask had now drifted a few feet to Jean and Bug’s right; one black shape actually passed beneath it. Multiple black legs speared upward out of the water, flailing for purchase; Bug cried out in mingled disgust and horror. Jean lunged forward, striking out with each hatchet in rapid downward strokes. Two spider limbs opened with stomach-turning cracking noises, spurting dark blue blood. Jean leapt backward.

The two uninjured spiders pulled themselves up out of the water a few seconds ahead of their wounded brethren and rushed Jean, their barbed feet rasping against the wet stone blocks beneath them. Realizing he would be dangerously overbalanced if he attempted to swing on both at once, Jean opted for a more disgusting plan of action.

The Wicked Sister in his right hand arced downward viciously, splitting the rightmost salt devil’s head between its symmetrical rows of black eyes. Its legs spasmed in its death reflex, and Bug actually dropped his
alchemical globe, so quickly did he leap backward. Jean used the momentum of his right-hand swing to raise his left leg up off the ground; the left-hand spider reared up with its fangs spread just as he brought his boot heel down on what he supposed was its face. Its eyes cracked like jellied fruit, and Jean shoved downward with all his might, feeling as though he was stomping on a sack of wet leathers.