The Gentleman Bastard Series (52 page)

Poison? A trap of some sort? An alchemical trick left behind in the room? Why wasn’t he affected? Did he feel so miserable already that the symptoms hadn’t caught his attention yet? He glanced frantically around the room, and his eyes seized on a dark object that lay between the sprawled Sanza twins.

A hand—a severed human hand, gray and dried and leathery. It lay with its palm toward the ceiling and its fingers curled tightly inward. A black thread had been used to sew a name into the dead skin of the palm; the script was crude but nonetheless clear, for it was outlined with the faintest hint of pale blue fire:

JEAN TANNEN

The things I could do to you if I were to stitch your true name
. The words of the Falconer returned unbidden to Locke’s memory; Jean groaned again, his back arched in pain, and Locke reached down toward the severed hand. A dozen plans whirled in his head—chop it to bits with a hatchet, scald it on the alchemical hearthslab, throw it in the river … He had little knowledge of practical sorcery, but surely something was better than nothing.

New footsteps crunched on the broken glass in the kitchen.

“Don’t move, boy. I don’t think your fat friend can help you at the moment. That’s it, just sit right there.”

Locke slid one of Jean’s hatchets off the ground, placed it in his left hand, and stepped to the Wardrobe door.

A man was standing at the lip of the entrance hall—a complete stranger to Locke’s eyes. He wore a long brownish red oilcloak with the hood thrown back, revealing long stringy black hair and drooping black moustaches. He held a crossbow in his right hand, almost casually, pointed at Bug. His eyes widened when Locke appeared in the Wardrobe doorway.

“This ain’t right,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“You’re the Gray King’s man,” said Locke. His left hand was up against the back of the wall beside the door, as though he were holding himself up, concealing the hatchet.

“
A
Gray King’s man. He’s got a few.”

“I will give you any price you name,” said Locke. “Tell me where he is, what he’s doing, and how I can avoid the Bondsmage.”

“You can’t. I’ll give you that one for free. And any price I name? You got no such pull.”

“I have forty-five thousand full crowns.”

“You did,” said the crossbowman, amiably enough. “You don’t anymore.”

“One bolt,” said Locke. “Two of us.” Jean groaned from the floor behind him. “The situation bears thinking on.”

“You don’t look so well, and the boy don’t look like much. I said
don’t move
, boy.”

“One bolt won’t be enough,” said Bug, his eyes cold with an anger Locke had never before seen in him. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with.”

“One bolt,” repeated Locke. “It was for Bug, wasn’t it? If I weren’t here, you’d have shot him first thing. Then done for Jean. A commendable arrangement. But now there’s two of us, and you’re still armed for one.”

“Easy, gents,” said the Gray King’s man. “I don’t see either of you eager for a hole in the face.”

“You don’t know what you’re up against. What we’ve done.” Bug flicked his wrist, slightly, and something fell into it from his sleeve. Locke only barely caught the motion—what was that thing?
An Orphan’s Twist?
Oh, gods … that wouldn’t do any good against a crossbow quarrel.…

“Bug …,” he muttered.

“Tell him, Locke. Tell him he doesn’t know who he’s
fucking with
. Tell him he doesn’t know what he’s going to get! We can take him.”

“First one of you moves an inch, I let fly.” The crossbowman backed off a stride, braced his weapon with his left arm, and swung his aim back and forth between Locke and Bug.

“Bug, don’t.…”

“We can take him, Locke. You and I. He can’t stop both of us. Hell, I bet he can’t stop
either
of us.”

“Bug, listen.…”

“Listen to your friend, boy.” The intruder was sweating nervously behind his weapon.

“I’m a Gentleman Bastard,” said Bug, slowly and angrily. “Nobody messes with us. Nobody gets the best of us. You’re going to
pay
!”

Bug sprang upward from the floor, raising the hand that held the Orphan’s Twist, a look of absolute burning determination on his face. The crossbow snapped, and the whip-crack of its unleashed cord echoed sharply from the enclosed glass walls of the kitchen.

The bolt that was meant to catch Bug between the eyes took him in the neck instead.

He jerked back as though stung by an insect; his knees buckled only halfway into his leap, and he spun backward, his useless little Orphan’s Twist arcing out of his hands as he fell.

The Gray King’s man threw down his crossbow and reached for a blade at his belt, but Locke was preceded out the doorway by the hatchet he’d concealed, flung with all of his rage. Jean could have split the man’s head with the blade; Locke barely managed to crack him hard with the ball side of the weapon. But it was enough. The ball caught him just beneath his right eye and he flinched backward, crying out in pain.

Locke scooped up the crossbow and fell upon the intruder, howling. He swung the butt-stock of the weapon into the man’s face, and the man’s nose broke with a spray of blood. He fell backward, his head cracking against the Elderglass of the passage wall. As he slid down, he raised his hands before him in an attempt to ward off Locke’s next blow. Locke smashed his fingers with the crossbow; the screams of the two men mingled and echoed in the enclosed space.

Locke ended the affair by slamming one curved end of the bow into the man’s temple. The assassin’s head spun, blood spattered against the glass, and he sagged into the passage corner, motionless.

Locke threw down the crossbow, turned on his heel, and ran to Bug.

The bolt had pierced the boy’s neck to the right of his windpipe, toward the outer edge of his neck, where it was buried up to its rounded feathers in a spreading pool of dark blood. Locke knelt and cradled Bug’s head in his hands, feeling the tip of the crossbow quarrel on the back of Bug’s neck. Slick warmth poured out over Locke’s hands; he could feel it coursing out with every ragged breath the boy took. Bug’s eyes were wide, and they fixed on him.

“Forgive me,” Locke mumbled through his tears. “Gods damn me, Bug, this is my fault. We could have run. We should have. My pride … you and Calo and Galdo. That bolt should have been me.”

“Your pride,” the boy whispered. “Justified. Gentleman … Bastard.”

Locke pressed his fingers against Bug’s wound, imagining he could somehow dam the flow of blood, but the boy cried out, and Locke withdrew his shaking fingers.

“Justified,” Bug spat. Blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. “Am I … not a second. Not … apprentice. Real Gentleman Bastard.”

“You were never a second, Bug. You were never an apprentice.” Locke sobbed, tried to brush the boy’s hair back, and was aghast at the bloody handprint he left on Bug’s pale forehead. “You brave little idiot. You brave, stupid little bastard. This is my fault, Bug, please … please say this is all my fault.”

“No,” whispered Bug. “Oh gods … hurts … hurts so much …”

The boy said nothing more. His breathing came to one last ragged halt while Locke held him.

Locke stared upward. It seemed to him that the alien glass ceiling that had shed warm light on his life for so many long years now took a knowing pleasure in showing him nothing but dark red: the reflection of the floor on which he sat with the motionless body of Bug, still bleeding in his arms.

He might have stayed there, locked in a reverie of grief for the gods only knew how long—but Jean groaned loudly in the next room.

Locke remembered himself, shuddered, and set Bug’s head down as gently as he could. He stumbled to his feet and lifted Jean’s hatchet up off the ground once more. His motions were slow and unsteady as he walked back into the Wardrobe, raised the hatchet above his head, and brought it down with all the force he could muster on the sorcerous hand that lay between the bodies of Calo and Galdo.

The faint blue fire dimmed as the hatchet blade bit down into the desiccated flesh; Jean gasped loudly behind him, which Locke took as an encouraging sign. Methodically, maliciously, he hacked the hand into smaller pieces. He chopped at leathery skin and brittle bones until the black threads that had spelled Jean’s name were separated and the blue glow faded entirely.

He stood staring down at the Sanzas until he heard Jean moving behind him.

“Oh, Bug. Oh, gods damn it.” The big man stumbled to his feet and groaned. “Forgive me, Locke. I just couldn’t … I couldn’t move!”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Locke spoke as though the sound of his own voice pained him. “It was a trap. It had your name on it, that thing the mage left for us. They guessed you’d be coming back.”

“A … a severed hand? A human hand, with my name stitched into it?”

“Yes.”

“A Hanged Man’s Grasp,” said Jean, staring at the fragments of flesh, and at the bodies of the Sanzas. “I … read about them, when I was younger. Seems they work.”

“Neatly removing you from the situation,” said Locke, coldly. “So one assassin hiding up above could come down, kill Bug, and finish you.”

“Just one?”

“Just one.” Locke sighed. “Jean. In the temple rooms up above. Our lamp oil … please fetch it down.”

“Lamp oil?”

“All of it,” said Locke. “Hurry.”

Jean paused in the kitchen, knelt, and slid Bug’s eyes closed with his left hand. He buried his face in his hands and shook, making no noise. Then he stumbled back to his feet, wiping away tears, and ran off to carry out Locke’s request.

Locke walked slowly back into the kitchen, dragging the body of Calo Sanza with him. He placed the corpse beside the table, folded its arms across its chest, knelt, and kissed its forehead.

The man in the corner moaned and moved his head. Locke kicked him once in the face, then returned to the Wardrobe for Galdo’s body. In short order, he had the Sanzas laid out neatly in the middle of the ransacked kitchen, with Bug beside them. Unable to bear the glassy stare of his dead friends’ eyes, Locke covered them with silk tablecloths from a smashed cabinet.

“I promise you a death-offering, brothers,” Locke whispered when he’d finished. “I promise you an offering that will make the gods themselves take notice. An offering that will make the shades of all the dukes and capas of Camorr feel like paupers. An offering in blood and gold and fire. This I swear by Aza Guilla who gathers us, and by Perelandro who sheltered us, and by the Crooked Warden who places his finger on the scale when our souls are weighed. This I swear to Chains, who kept us safe. I beg your forgiveness that I failed to do the same.”

Locke forced himself to stand up and return to work.

A few old garments had been thrown into the Wardrobe corners; Locke gathered them up, along with a few components from the spilled Masque Box: a handful of false moustaches, a bit of false beard, and some stage adhesive. These he threw into the entrance corridor to the burrow; then he peeked into the vault. As he’d suspected, it was utterly empty. Not a single
coin remained in any well or on any shelf. No doubt the sacks loaded onto the wagon earlier had vanished as well.

From the sleeping quarters at the back of the burrow, he gathered sheets and blankets, then parchment, books, and scrolls. He threw these into a heap atop the dining room table. At last, he stood over the Gray King’s assassin, his hands and clothes covered in blood, and waited for Jean to return.

6

“WAKE UP,” said Locke. “I know you can hear me.”

The Gray King’s assassin blinked, spat blood, and tried to push himself even farther back into the corner with his feet.

Locke stared down at him. It was a curious reversal of the natural way of things. The assassin was well muscled, a head taller than Locke, and Locke was particularly unimposing after the events of this night. But everything frightening about him was concentrated in his eyes, and they bore down on the assassin with a bright, hard hatred.

Jean stood a few paces behind him, a bag over his shoulder, his hatchets tucked into his belt.

“Do you want to live?” asked Locke.

The assassin said nothing.

“It was a simple question, and I won’t repeat it again.
Do you want to live?
”

“I … yes,” the man said softly.

“Then it pleases me to deny you your preference.” Locke knelt beside him, reached beneath his own undertunic, and drew forth a little leather pouch that hung by a cord around his neck.

“Once,” said Locke, “when I was old enough to understand what I’d done, I was ashamed to be a murderer. Even after I’d paid the debt, I still wore this. All these years, to remind me.”

He pulled the pouch forward, snapping the cord. He opened it and removed a single small white shark’s tooth. He grabbed the assassin’s right hand, placed the pouch and the tooth on his palm, and then squeezed the man’s broken fingers together around them. The assassin writhed and screamed. Locke punched him.

“But now,” he said, “now, I’ll be a murderer once again. I will set myself to slay until every last Gray King’s man is gone. You hear me, cocksucker? I will have the Bondsmage and I will have the Gray King, and if all
the powers of Camorr and Karthain and Hell itself oppose me, it will be
nothing
—nothing but a longer trail of corpses between me and your master.”

“You’re mad,” the assassin whispered. “You’ll never beat the Gray King.”

“I’ll do more than that. Whatever he’s planning, I will
unmake
it. Whatever he desires, I will
destroy
it. Every reason you came down here to murder my friends will evaporate. Every Gray King’s man will die for nothing, starting with you.”

Jean Tannen stepped forward and grabbed the assassin with one hand, hauling him to his knees. Jean dragged him into the kitchen, oblivious to the man’s pleas for mercy. The assassin was flung against the table, beside the three covered bodies and the pile of cloth and paper, and he became aware of the cloying smell of lamp oil.