The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Lynch, Scott Page 0,162

door that led to the Wardrobe. He didn’t say anything or make any noise, but the Wicked Sisters fell out of his hands and clattered against the floor tiles.

The Wardrobe, too, had been ransacked. All the rows of fine clothing and costume garments, all the hats and cravats and breeches and hose, all the waistcoats and vests and thousands of crowns worth of accessories—all of it was gone. The mirrors were smashed; the Masque Box was overturned, its contents strewn and broken across the floor.

Calo and Galdo lay beside it, on their backs, staring upward in the semidarkness. Their throats were slashed from ear to ear, a pair of smooth gashes—identical twin wounds.

5

JEAN FELL forward onto his knees.

Bug tried to squeeze past Locke, and Locke shoved him back into the kitchen with all the feeble strength he could muster, saying, “No, Bug, don’t…” But it was already too late. The boy sat down hard against the edge of the witchwood table and broke into sobs.

Gods, Locke thought as he stumbled past Jean into the Wardrobe. Gods, I have been a fool. We should have packed up and run.

“Locke…,” Jean whispered, and then he sprawled forward onto the ground, shaking and shuddering as though he were having some sort of fit.

“Jean! Gods, what now?” Locke crouched beside the bigger man and placed a hand beneath his round, heavy chin. Jean’s pulse was pounding wildly. He looked up at Locke with wide eyes, his mouth opening and closing, failing to spit out words. Locke’s mind raced.

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