The Gentleman Bastard Series (74 page)

“Sculptures?” Doña Vorchenza stared down at him curiously. “A gentleman left four gold-and-glass sculptures as a gift for the duke.” She looked over at Stephen. “I’m sure the duke’s security men have looked into them, and approved them. I wouldn’t know; I’m just consulting in this affair as a favor to some of my peers.”

“So I’ve been told by my superiors,” said Reynart.

“Oh, quit that,” said Locke. “You’re the Spider. I’m the Thorn of Camorr. Did you meet with Capa Raza? Did you meet a Bondsmage, styling himself the Falconer? Did they speak to you about the sculptures?”

Don and Doña Salvara were staring at Doña Vorchenza; the old woman stuttered and coughed.

“Whoops,” said Locke. “You hadn’t told Sofia and Lorenzo, had you? Playing the old friend-of-a-friend angle? Sorry. But I need to talk to you as the Spider. When Falselight comes, everyone in Raven’s Reach is
fucked
.”

“I knew it,” said Sofia. “I knew it!” She grabbed her husband by the arm and squeezed hard enough to make him wince. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“I’m still not so sure,” said Lorenzo.

“No,” said Doña Vorchenza, sighing. “Sofia has the truth of the matter. I
am
the duke’s Spider. Having said that, if it gets beyond this room, throats will be cut.”

Conté looked at her with surprise and a strange sort of approval in his eyes; Locke stumbled back to his feet.

“As for the matter of the sculptures,” said Doña Vorchenza, “I did clear them personally. They
are
a gift to the duke.”

“They’re a plot,” said Locke. “They’re a trap. Just open one up and you’ll see! Capa Raza means to ruin every man, woman, and child in this tower; it’ll be worse than murder.”

“Capa Raza,” said Doña Vorchenza, “was a perfect gentleman; he was almost too demure to accept my invitation to briefly join us this evening. This is another one of your fabulations, intended to bring you some advantage.”

“Oh, shit yes,” said Locke. “I marched back here
after
escaping and had myself cleverly tied up and hauled in here by the whole gods-damned Nightglass Company, on purpose. Now I’ve got you right where I
fucking
want you. Those sculptures are full of Wraithstone, Vorchenza!
Wraithstone
.”

“Wraithstone?” said Doña Sofia, aghast. “How can you know?”

“He doesn’t,” said Doña Vorchenza. “He’s lying. The sculptures are harmless.”

“Open one up,” said Locke. “There’s an easy remedy for this argument. Please, open one up. They catch fire at Falselight.”

“Those sculptures,” said Vorchenza, “are ducal property worth thousands of crowns. They will not be damaged on some mad whim of a known criminal.”

“Thousands of crowns,” said Locke, “versus hundreds of lives. Every peer in Camorr is going to be a drooling moron, do you understand? Can you imagine those children in that garden with white eyes like a Gentled horse? That’s what we’ll all be,” he shouted. “
Gentled
. That shit will
eat our fucking souls
.”

“Can it really hurt to check?” asked Reynart.

Locke looked up at Reynart with gratitude on his face. “No, it can’t, Reynart. Please do.”

Doña Vorchenza massaged her temples. “This is quite out of hand,” she said. “Stephen, throw this man somewhere secure until after the feast. A room without windows, please.”

“Doña Vorchenza,” said Locke, “what does the name Avram Anatolius mean to you?”

Her eyes were cold. “I couldn’t begin to say,” she said. “What do you imagine it means to you?”

“Capa Barsavi murdered Avram Anatolius twenty-two years ago,” said Locke. “And you knew about it. You knew he was a threat to the Secret Peace.”

“I can’t see what relevance this has to anything,” said Doña Vorchenza. “You will be silent now, or I’ll have you silenced.”

“Anatolius had a son,” said Locke with desperate haste, as Stephen took a step toward him. “A surviving son, Doña Vorchenza. Luciano Anatolius. Luciano
is
Capa Raza. Luciano took revenge on Barsavi for the murder of his parents and his siblings—now he means to have revenge on you as well! You and all your peers.”

“No,” said Doña Vorchenza, touching her head again. “No, that’s not right. I enjoyed the time I spent with Capa Raza. I can’t imagine he would do anything like this.”

“The Falconer,” said Locke. “Do you recall the Falconer?”

“Raza’s associate,” said Vorchenza distantly. “I … I enjoyed my time with him, as well. A quiet and polite young man.”

“He did something to you, Doña Vorchenza,” said Locke. “I’ve seen him do it, right before my eyes. Did he speak your true name? Did he write something on a piece of parchment?”

“I … I … cannot … this is …” Doña Vorchenza cringed; the wrinkles of her face bent inward, as though she were in pain. “I must invite Capa Raza … It would be impolite not to invite him to the … to the feast.…” She slumped against her chair and screamed.

Lorenzo and Sofia rushed to her aid; Reynart picked Locke up by the front of his vest and slammed him against the north wall, hard. Locke’s feet dangled a foot off the ground.

“What did you
do
to her?” bellowed Reynart.

“Nothing,” gasped Locke. “A Bondsmage cast a spell over her! Think, man—is she being rational about the sculptures? The bastard did something to her mind.”

“Stephen,” said Doña Vorchenza in a hoarse voice, “put the Thorn down. He’s right. He’s right.… Raza and the Falconer … It’s like I’d forgotten, somehow. I wasn’t going to accept Raza’s request.… Then the Falconer did something at the desk, and I …”

She stood up once more, assisted by Sofia. “Luciano Anatolius, you said. Capa Raza is Avram Anatolius’ son? How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I tied that Bondsmage to the floor just an hour or two ago,” said Locke as Reynart let him slide back down the wall. “I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he’d confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized.”

Everyone in the room stared at him.

“I called him an asshole, too,” said Locke. “He didn’t like that.”

“It’s worse than death, to slay a Bondsmage,” said Doña Vorchenza.

“He’s not dead. He’s just very gods-damned sorry.”

Doña Vorchenza shook her head. “Stephen, the sculptures. There’s one on this floor, isn’t there? Beside the bar?”

“Yes,” said Reynart, moving for the door. “What else do you know about them, Thorn?”

“They’ve got alchemical fuses,” said Locke. “And clay pots of fire-oil. At Falselight, that fire-oil goes up; this whole tower fills with Wraithstone smoke. And Anatolius sails away, laughing his head off.”

“This Luciano Anatolius,” said Sofia, “is he the one we met on the stairs?”

“One and the same,” said Locke. “Luciano Anatolius, also known as Capa Raza, also known as the Gray King.”

“If these things are alchemical,” said Sofia, “I’d better be the one to have a look at them.”

“If it’s going to be dangerous, I’m going as well,” said Lorenzo.

“And me,” said Conté.

“Great! We can all go! It’ll be fun!” Locke waved his tied hands at the door. “But hurry it up, for fuck’s sake.”

Conté took him by the arm and pushed him along at the rear of the procession; Reynart and Vorchenza led their way out past the startled blackjackets. Reynart beckoned for them to follow. They left the hallway and returned to the main gallery.

“On the other side of the bar, by the glasses,” said Locke. “Behind one of the velvet ropes, I think.”

The crowd of red-faced revelers parted as the strange procession swept through the gallery. Reynart strode up to the blackjacket standing beside the glittering pyramid of wineglasses. “This end of the bar is temporarily closed. Make it so,” he said. Turning to his other soldiers, he said, “Cordon this area off fifteen or twenty feet back. Don’t let anyone else get close, in the name of the duke.”

Doña Sofia ducked under the velvet rope and crouched beside the sculpted pyramid, which was about three feet tall. The soft lights continued to flash and shift behind the glass windows set into its faces.

“Captain Reynart,” she said, “you had a pair of gloves at your belt, I seem to recall. May I borrow them?”

Reynart passed her a pair of black leather gloves, and she slipped them on. “It’s rarely wise to take too much for granted. Contact poisons are child’s play,” she said absently, and ran her fingers across the surface of the sculpture while peering at it closely. She shifted position several times, her frown deepening with each new examination.

“I can’t see any breach in the casing,” she said, standing up again. “Not so much as a seam; the workmanship is very good. If the device is intended to issue forth smoke, I can’t imagine how the smoke would escape.” She tapped a gloved finger against one of the glass windows.

“Unless …” She tapped the window again. “This is what we call ornamental glass; it’s thin and fragile. It’s not commonly used in sculpture, and we never use it in the laboratory, because it can’t take heat.…”

Her head whirled toward Locke; her almond-blonde ringlets spun like a halo. “Did you say there were pots of fire-oil in this device?”

“So I heard,” he replied, “from a man very eager not to lose his tongue.”

“That might be it,” she said. “Fire-oil could generate a great deal of heat inside a metal enclosure. It would shatter the glass—shatter the glass and let out the smoke! Captain, draw your rapier, please. I should like to use it.”

Concealing any qualms he might have had, Reynart drew his rapier and carefully passed it to her, hilt first. She examined the silver butt of the weapon, nodded, and used it to smash in the glass. It broke with a high-pitched tinkle. She reversed the rapier and used the blade to sweep away the jagged fragments from around the edges of the window, then passed it back to Reynart. There were mutters and exclamations from the watching crowd, who were barely being kept in check by Reynart’s thin arc of apologetic blackjackets.

“Careful, Sofia,” said Don Lorenzo.

“Don’t teach a sailor to shit in the ocean,” she muttered as she peered into the window, which was about eight inches wide at its base, tapering slightly toward the top. She reached in with one gloved hand and touched one of the shifting alchemical lights; she twisted her wrist and drew it out.

“Not even attached to anything,” she said as she set it on the ground beside her. “Oh, gods,” she whispered when she peeked back into the window without the light in her way. Her hand came up to her mouth and she stumbled back to her feet, shaking.

Doña Vorchenza stepped up directly beside her. “Well?”

“It’s Wraithstone,” said Doña Salvara with disgust. “The whole thing is full of it. I can see it in there—so much of it I can smell the powder.” She shuddered, as some people might when a large spider scuttles across their path. “There’s enough in just this one sculpture to do for the whole tower. Your Capa Raza wanted to be thorough.”

Doña Vorchenza stared out through the glass at the vista north of Camorr; the sky was noticeably darker than it had been even when Locke had been dragged past the bar for his second visit with Doña Vorchenza. “Sofia,” said the Countess Amberglass, “what can you do about these things? Can you prevent their ignition?”

“I don’t believe so,” said Doña Salvara. “I couldn’t see the alchemical fuses; they must be under the Wraithstone. And it’s also possible they might ignite if they’re interfered with. Trying to disable it might be as bad as letting it burn in the first place.”

“We need to get them out of the tower,” said Reynart.

“No,” said Sofia. “Wraithstone smoke rises; it’s lighter than the air around us. I doubt we can get them far enough away by Falselight. If they go off at the bottom of Raven’s Reach, we’ll still be standing in the column of smoke as it rises. The best thing to do would be to drown them; Wraithstone is rendered impotent by the admixture of water, after a few minutes.
The fire-oil would still burn, but the white smoke wouldn’t rise. If only we could fling them into the Angevine!”

“We can’t,” said Vorchenza, “but we can drop them into the Sky Garden’s cistern; it’s ten feet deep and fifteen feet wide. Will that do?”

“Yes! Now we just need to get them up there.”

“Stephen—,” said Doña Vorchenza, but Captain Reynart was already in motion.

“My lords and ladies,” Reynart bellowed at the top of his voice. “Your assistance is urgently required, in the name of Duke Nicovante. Nightglass, to me; I require a clear path to the stairs, my lords and ladies. With all apologies, I will not be gentle with anyone in our way.”

“We need to fetch these damn things off the galleries and haul them up to the Sky Garden,” said Reynart. He grabbed one of his men by the shoulder. “Run up to the embarkation terrace and find Lieutenant Razelin. Tell him to clear the Sky Garden, on my authority. Tell him I don’t want a single child up there five minutes from now. He’ll know what to do. Act now, apologize later.”

“Free my hands,” said Locke. “Those things are heavy; I’m not terribly strong, but I can help.”

Doña Vorchenza looked at him curiously. “Why did you come back to warn us, Master Thorn? Why
didn’t
you simply make good on your escape?”

“I’m a thief, Doña Vorchenza,” he said quietly. “I’m a thief, and maybe even a murderer, but this is too much. Besides, I mean to kill Raza. If he wanted it, I had to foil it. Simple as that.” He held out his hands, and she nodded slowly.

“You can help, but we must speak afterward.”

“Yes, we must—hopefully without needles this time,” said Locke. “Conté, be a friend and get rid of these ropes.”

The lean bodyguard slashed through Locke’s bonds with one of his knives. “If you try to fuck around,” he growled, “I’ll put you in the cistern and have them drop the sculptures on top of you.”

Locke, Conté, Reynart, Don Salvara, and several blackjackets knelt to lift the sculpture; Sofia watched for a second or two, frowning, and then shoved her way in beside her husband to take part of his edge.

“I shall find the duke,” said Vorchenza. “I shall see that he’s notified of what’s going on.” She hurried away across the gallery.