The Gentleman Bastard Series (86 page)

There was a chorus of mutterings and a healthy number of boys shaking their heads, however reluctantly.

“Good.” The extortion went smoothly after that; Jean wound up with a satisfying collection of coins, surely enough to keep him and Locke ensconced at their inn for another week. “I’m off, then. Rest easy and work well tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow, at the second hour of the afternoon. We can start talking about how things are going to be now that I’m the new boss of the Brass Coves.”

3

NATURALLY, THEY all armed themselves, and at the second hour of the afternoon the next day they were waiting in ambush for Jean.

To their surprise, he strolled into the old tannery with a Vel Virazzo constable at his side. The woman was tall and muscular, dressed in a plum-purple coat reinforced with a lining of fine iron chain; she had brass epaulettes on her shoulders, and long brown hair pulled back in a tight swordswoman’s tail with brass rings. Four more constables took up a position just outside the door; they wore similar coats, but also carried long lacquered sticks and heavy wooden shields slung over their backs.

“Hello, lads,” said Jean. All around the room, daggers, stilettos, broken bottles, and sticks were disappearing from sight. “I’m sure some of you recognize Prefect Levasto and her men.”

“Boys,” said the prefect offhandedly, hooking her thumbs into her leather sword-belt. Alone of all the constables, she carried a cutlass in a plain black sheath.

“Prefect Levasto,” said Jean, “is a wise woman, and she leads wise men. They happen to enjoy money, which I am now providing as a consideration for the hardship and tedium of their duties. If anything should chance to happen to me, why, they would lose a new source of the very thing they enjoy.”

“It would be heartbreaking,” said the prefect.

“And it would have consequences,” said Jean.

The prefect set one of her boots on an empty wine bottle and applied
steady pressure until it shattered beneath her heel. “Heartbreaking,” she repeated with a sigh.

“I’m sure you’re all bright lads,” said Jean. “I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed the prefect’s visit.”

“Shouldn’t like to have to repeat it,” said Levasto with a grin. She turned slowly and ambled back out the door. The sound of her squad marching away soon receded into the distance.

The Brass Coves looked down at Jean glumly. The four boys closest to the door, with their hands behind their backs, were the ones wearing livid black and green bruises from before.

“Why the fuck are you doing this to us?” grumbled one of them.

“I’m not your enemy, boys. Believe it or not, I think you’ll really come to appreciate what I can do for you. Now shut up and listen.

“First,” said Jean, raising his voice so everyone could hear, “I’d like to say that it’s rather sad, how long you’ve been around without getting the city watch on the take. They were so
eager
for it when I made the offer. Like sad, neglected little puppies.”

Jean was wearing a long black vest over a stained white tunic. He reached up beneath his back, under the vest, with his right hand.

“But,” he continued, “at least the fact that your first thought was to kill me shows some spirit. Let’s see those toys again. Come on, show ’em off.”

Sheepishly, the boys drew out their weapons once again, and Jean inspected them with a sweep of his head. “Mmmm. Gimp steel, broken bottles, little sticks, a hammer … Boys, the trouble with this setup is that you think those are threats. They’re not. They’re insults.”

He started moving while the last few words were still coming out of his mouth; his left hand slid up beneath his vest beside his right. Both of his arms came out and up in a blur, and then he grunted as he let fly with both of his hatchets, overhand.

There was a pair of half-full wineskins hanging on pegs on the far wall; each one exploded in a gout of cheap Verrari red that spattered several boys nearby. Jean’s hatchets had impaled the wineskins dead center, and stuck in the wood behind them without quivering.

“That was a threat,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “And that’s why
you
now work for
me
. Anyone else really want to dispute that at this point?”

The boys standing closest to the wineskins edged backward as Jean stepped over and wrenched his hatchets out of the wall. “Didn’t think so. But don’t take it amiss,” Jean continued. “It works in your favor, too. A boss needs to protect what’s his if he’s going to stay the boss. If anyone other
than
me
tries to shove you around, let me know. I’ll pay them a visit. That’s my job.”

The next day, the Brass Coves grudgingly lined up to pay their taxes. The last boy in line, as he dropped his copper coins into Jean’s hands, muttered, “You said you’d help if someone else gave us the business. Some of the Coves got kicked around this morning by the Black Sleeves, from over on the north side.”

Jean nodded sagely and slipped his takings into his coat pocket.

The next night, after making inquiries, he sauntered into a north-side dive called the Sign of the Brimming Cup. The only thing the tavern was brimming with was thugs, a good seven or eight of them, all with dirty black cloths tied around the arms of their jackets and tunics. They were the only customers, and they looked up with suspicion as he closed the door behind him and carefully slid home the wooden bolt.

“Good evening!” He smiled and cracked his knuckles. “I’m curious. Who’s the biggest, meanest motherfucker in the Black Sleeves?”

The day after that, he collected his taxes from the Brass Coves with the bruised knuckles of his right hand wrapped in a poultice. For the first time, most of the boys paid enthusiastically. A few even started to call him “Tav.”

4

BUT LOCKE did not exercise his wounds, as he’d promised.

Locke’s thin supply of coins was parceled out for wine; his poison of choice was a particularly cheap local slop. More purple than red, with a bouquet like turpentine, its scent soon saturated the room he shared with Jean at the Silver Lantern. Locke took it constantly “for the pain”; Jean remarked one evening that his pain must be increasing as the days went on, for the empty skins and bottles were multiplying proportionally. They quarreled—or more accurately rekindled their ongoing quarrel—and Jean stomped off into the night, for neither the first nor the last time.

Those first few days in Vel Virazzo, Locke would totter down the steps to the common room some nights, where he would play a few desultory hands of cards with some of the locals. He conned them mirthlessly with whatever fast-fingers tricks he could manage with just one good hand. Soon enough they began to shun his games and his bad attitude, and he retreated back to the third floor, to drink alone in silence. Food and cleanliness remained afterthoughts. Jean tried to get a dog-leech in to examine Locke’s wounds, but Locke drove the man out with a string of invective
that made Jean (whose speech could be colorful enough to strike fire from damp tinder) blush.

“Of your friend, I can find no trace,” said the man. “He seems to have been eaten by one of the thin hairless apes from the Okanti isles; all it does is screech at me. What became of the last leech to take a look at him?”

“We left him in Talisham,” said Jean. “I’m afraid my friend’s attitude moved him to bring an early end to his own sea voyage.”

“Well, I might have done the same. I waive my fee, in profound sympathy. Keep your silver—you shall need it for wine. Or poison.”

More and more, Jean found himself spending time with the Brass Coves for no better reason than to avoid Locke. A week passed, then another. “Tavrin Callas” was becoming a known and solidly respected figure in Vel Virazzo’s crooked fraternity. Jean’s arguments with Locke became more circular, more frustrating, more pointless. Jean instinctively recognized the downward arc of terminal self-pity, but had never dreamed that he’d have to drag Locke, of all people, out of it. He avoided the problem by training the Coves.

At first, he passed on just a few hints—how to use simple hand signals around strangers, how to set distractions before picking pockets, how to tell real gems from paste and avoid stealing the latter. Inevitably, he began to receive respectful entreaties to “show them a thing or two” of the tricks he’d used to pound four Coves into the ground. First in line with these requests were the four who’d been pounded.

A week after that, the alchemy was fully under way. Half a dozen boys were rolling around in the dust of the tannery floor while Jean coached them on all the essentials—leverage, initiative, situational awareness. He began to demonstrate the tricks, both merciful and cruel, that had kept him alive over half a lifetime spent making his points with his fists and hatchets.

Under Jean’s influence, the boys began to take more of an interest in the state of their old tannery. He explicitly encouraged them to start viewing it as a headquarters, which demanded certain comforts. Alchemical lanterns appeared hanging from the rafters. Fresh oilpaper was nailed up over the broken windows, and new planks and straw were raised up to the roof to plug holes. The boys stole cushions, cheap tapestries, and portable shelves.

“Find me a hearthstone,” said Jean. “Steal me a big one, and I’ll teach you poor little bastards how to cook, too. You can’t beat Camorr for chefs; even the thieves are chefs back there. I had years of training.”

He stared around at the increasingly well-maintained tannery, at the
increasingly eager band of young thieves living in it, and he spoke wistfully to himself. “We all did.”

He’d tried to interest Locke in the project of the Brass Coves, but had been rebuffed. That night he tried again, explaining about their ever-increasing nightly take, their headquarters, the tips and training he was giving them. Locke stared at him for a long time, sitting on the bed with a chipped glass half-full of purple wine in his hands.

“Well,” he said at last. “Well, I can see you’ve found your replacements, haven’t you?”

Jean was too startled to say anything. Locke drained his glass and continued, his voice flat and humorless.

“That was certainly quick. Quicker than I expected. A new gang, a new burrow. Not a glass one, but you can probably fix that if you look around long enough. So here you are, playing Father Chains, lighting a fire under that kettle of happy horse-shit all over again.”

Jean exploded across the room and slapped the empty glass out of Locke’s hand; it shattered against the wall and showered half the room with glittering fragments, but Locke didn’t even blink. Instead, he leaned back against his sweat-stained pillows and sighed.

“Got any twins yet? How about a new Sabetha? A new
me
?”

“To
hell
with you!” Jean clenched his fists until he could feel the warm, slick blood seeping out beneath his nails. “To hell with you, Locke! I didn’t save your gods-damned life so you could sulk in this gods-damned hovel and pretend you’re the man who invented grief. You’re not that gods-damned special!”

“Why
did
you save me then, Saint Jean?”

“Of all the stupid fucking questions—”

“Why?”
Locke heaved himself up off the bed and shook his fists at Jean; the effect would have been comical, but all the murder in the world was in his eyes. “I told you to
leave
me! Am I supposed to be grateful for this? This bloody room?”

“I didn’t make this room your whole world, Locke. You did.”

“
This
is what I was rescued for? Three weeks sick at sea, and now Vel Virazzo, asshole of Tal Verrar? It’s the joke of the gods, and I’m the punch-line. Dying with the Gray King was better. I told you to fucking leave me there!

“And I miss them,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “Gods, I miss them. It’s my fault they’re dead. I can’t … I can’t stand it.…”

“Don’t you dare,” growled Jean.

He shoved Locke in the chest, forcefully. Locke fell backward across his
bed and hit the wall of the room hard enough to rattle the window shutters.

“Don’t you dare use them as an excuse for what you’re doing to yourself! Don’t you fucking
dare
.”

Without another word, Jean spun on his heels, walked out the door, and slammed it behind him.

5

LOCKE SANK down against the bed, put his face in his hands, and listened to the creak of Jean’s footsteps recede from the hall outside.

To his surprise, that creak returned a few minutes later, growing steadily louder. Jean threw the door open, face grim, and marched directly over to Locke with a tall wooden bucket of water in his hands. Without warning, he threw this all over Locke, who gasped in surprise and fell backward against the wall again. He shook his head like a dog and pushed his sopping hair out of his eyes.

“Jean, are you out of your fucking—”

“You needed a bath,” Jean interrupted. “You were covered in self-pity.”

He threw the bucket down and moved around the room, plucking up any bottle or wineskin that still contained liquid. He was finished before Locke realized what he was doing; he then swiped Locke’s coin purse from the room’s little table and tossed a thin leather package down in its place.

“Hey, Jean, Jean, you can’t—that’s mine!”

“Used to be ‘ours,’ ” said Jean coldly. “I liked that better.”

When Locke tried to jump up from the bed again, Jean pushed him back down effortlessly. He then stormed out once more, and pulled the door shut behind him. There was a curious clicking noise, and then nothing—not even a creak on the floorboards. Jean was waiting right outside the door.

Snarling, Locke moved across the room and tried to pull the door open, but it held fast in its frame. He frowned in puzzlement and rattled it a few more times. The bolt was on this side, and it wasn’t shot.

“It’s a curious fact,” Jean said through the door, “that the rooms of the Silver Lantern can be locked from the outside with a special key only the innkeeper has. In case he wants to keep an unruly guest at bay while he calls for the watch, you see.”

“Jean, open this fucking door!”