The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Lynch, Scott Page 0,173

know it will be so. I ask you, garristas, who will bend the knee and kiss my ring as your capa?”

“The Rum Hounds,” shouted a short, slender woman at the front of the crowd on the ballroom floor.

“The Falselight Cutters,” cried another man. “The Falselight Cutters say aye!”

That doesn’t make any gods-damned sense, thought Locke. The Gray King murdered their old garristas. Are they playing some sort of game with him?

“The Wise Mongrels!”

“The Catchfire Barons.”

“The Black Eyes.”

“The Full Crowns,” came another voice, and an echoing chorus of affirmations. “The Full Crowns stand with Capa Raza!”

Suddenly Locke wanted to laugh out loud. He put a fist to his mouth and turned the noise into a stifled cough. It was suddenly obvious. The Gray King hadn’t just been knocking off Barsavi’s most loyal garristas. He must have been cutting deals with their subordinates, beforehand.

Gods, there had been more Gray King’s men in the room out of costume than in…waiting for the evening’s real show to commence.

A half dozen men and women stepped forward and knelt before Raza at the edge of the pool, wherein the shark hadn’t shown so much as a fin since forcibly relieving Barsavi of his arm.

The damned Bondsmage certainly has a way with animals, Locke thought, with mixed anger and jealousy. He found himself feeling very small indeed before each display of the Falconer’s arts.

One by one the garristas knelt and made their obeisance to the Capa, kissing his ring and saying “Capa Raza” with real enthusiasm. Five more stepped forward to kneel directly afterward, apparently giving in to the direction they felt events to be slipping. Locke calculated rapidly. With just the pledges he’d already received, Raza could now call three or four hundred Right People his own. His overt powers of enforcement had increased substantially.

“Then we are introduced,” said Raza to the entire crowd. “We are met, and you know my intentions. You are free to return to your business.”

The Falconer made a few gestures with his free hand. The clockwork mechanisms within the doors to the hall clattered in reverse, and the doors clicked open.

“I give the undecided three nights,” Capa Raza shouted. “Three nights to come to me here and bend the knee, and swear to me as they did to Barsavi. I devoutly wish to be lenient—but I warn you, now is not the time to anger me. You have seen my work; you know I have resources Barsavi lacked. You know I can be merciless when I am moved to displeasure. If you are not content serving beneath me, if you think it might be wiser or more exciting to oppose me, I will make one suggestion: pack what fortune you have and leave the city by the landward gates. If you wish to part ways, no harm will come to you from my people. For three nights, I give you my leave and my parole.

“After that,” he said, lowering his voice, “I will make what examples I must. Go now, and speak to your pezon. Speak to your friends, and to other garristas. Tell them what I have said; tell them I wait to receive their pledges.”

Some of the crowd began to disperse out the doors; others, wiser perhaps, began to line up before Capa Raza. The former Gray King took each pledge at the bloody heart of a circle of corpses.

Locke waited for several minutes until the press had lessened, until the solid torrent of hot, smelly humanity had decreased to a few thick streams, and then he moved toward the entrance. His feet felt as heavy as his head; fatigue seemed to be catching up with him.

There were corpses here and there on the floor—Barsavi’s guards, the loyal ones. Locke could see them now as the crowds continued to thin. Just beside the tall doors to the hall lay Bernell, who’d grown old in Capa Barsavi’s service. His throat was slashed; he lay in a pool of his own blood, and his fighting knives remained in their sheaths. He’d not had time to pull them.

Locke sighed. He paused for a moment in the doorway and stared back at Capa Raza and the Falconer. The Bondsmage seemed to stare right back at him, and for the tiniest instant Locke’s heart raced, but the sorcerer said nothing and did nothing. He merely continued to stand watch over the ritual as Capa Raza’s new subjects kissed his ring. Vestris yawned, snapping her beak briefly open, as though the affairs of the unwinged