The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Lynch, Scott Page 0,137

At the Battle of Nessek, he helped young Nicovante hold the line together when old Nicovante took an arrow right between his eyes. He lived, got elevated, and served Nicovante in the next few wars that came their way.”

“And where is he?”

“At this very moment? How should I know? But,” said Chains, “later this afternoon, he’ll be giving Jean Tannen his usual afternoon weapons lesson at the House of Glass Roses.”

“Oh,” said Locke.

“Funny old world,” said Chains. “Three farmers became three soldiers; three soldiers became one farmer, one baron, and one thieving priest.”

“And now I’m to become a farmer, for a while.”

“Yes. Useful training indeed. But not just that.”

“What else?”

“Another test, my boy. Just another test.”

“Which is?”

“All these years, you’ve had me looking over you. You’ve had Calo and Galdo, and Jean, and Sabetha from time to time. You’ve gotten used to the temple as a home. But time’s a river, Locke, and we’ve always drifted farther down it than we think.” He smiled down at Locke with real affection. “I can’t stand watch on you forever, boy. Now we need to see what you can do when you’re off in a strange new place, all on your own.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE FUNERAL CASK

1

IT BEGAN LIKE this—with the slow, steady beat of mourning drums and the slow cadence of marchers moving north from the Floating Grave, red torches smoldering in their hands, a double line of bloodred light stretched out beneath the low dark clouds.

At its heart was Vencarlo Barsavi, Capa of Camorr, with a son at either hand. Before him was a covered casket draped in black silk and cloth of gold, carried at either side by six pallbearers—one for each of the twelve Therin gods—dressed in black cloaks and black masks. At Barsavi’s back was a huge wooden cask on a cart pulled by another six men, with a black-shrouded priestess of the Nameless Thirteenth close behind.

The drums echoed against stone walls; against stone streets and bridges and canals; the torches cast reflections of fire in every window and shred of Elderglass they passed. Folk looked on in apprehension, if they looked on at all; some bolted their doors and drew shutters over their windows as the funeral procession passed. This is how things are done in Camorr, for the rich and the powerful; the slow mournful march to the Hill of Whispers, the interment, the ceremony, and then the wild, tearful celebration afterward. A toast on behalf of the departed; a bittersweet revel for those not yet taken for judgment by Aza Guilla, Lady of the Long Silence. The funeral cask is what fuels this tradition.

The lines of marchers left the Wooden Waste just after the tenth hour of the evening and marched into the Cauldron, where no urchin or drunkard dared to get in their way, where gangs of cutthroats and Gaze addicts stood in silent attention as their master and his court walked past.

Through Coalsmoke they marched, and then north into the Quiet, as silvery mist rose warm and clinging from the canals around them. Not a single yellowjacket crossed their path; not one constable even caught sight of the procession—arrangements had been made to keep them busy elsewhere that night. The east belonged to Barsavi and his long lines of torches, and the farther north he went the more honest families bolted their doors and doused their lights and prayed that the business of the marchers lay far away from them.

Had there been many staring eyes, they might have noticed that the procession had already failed to turn toward the Hill of Whispers; that it had instead gone north and snaked toward the western tip of the Rust-water district, where the great abandoned structure called the Echo Hole loomed in the darkness and the fog.

A curious observer might have wondered at the sheer size of the procession—more than a hundred men and women—and at their accoutrements. Only the pallbearers were dressed for a funeral. The torchbearers were dressed for war, in armor of boiled leather with blackened studs, in collars and helmets and bracers and gloves, with knives and clubs and axes and bucklers at their belts. They were the cream of Barsavi’s gangs, the hardest of the Right People—cold-eyed men and women with murders to their names. They were from all of his districts and all of his gangs—the Red Hands and the Rum Hounds, the Gray Faces and the Arsenal Boys, the Canal Jumpers and the Black Twists, the Catchfire Barons and a dozen