Master Eccari.” Don Salvara bowed correctly but casually, then stepped forward to shake the newcomer’s hand; this signaled his permission to deduct any superfluous bowing and scraping from the conversation. “You, ah, you know Master Fehrwight, then?”
“Lukas and I go well back, m’lord.” Without turning his back on Don Salvara, he fussily brushed a bit of dried muck from the shoulders of Locke’s black coat. “I work out of Meraggio’s, mostly, handling customs and license work for our friends in the north. Lukas is one of bel Auster’s best and brightest.”
“Hardly.” Locke coughed and smiled shyly. “Evante takes all the more interesting laws and regulations of your state, and reduces them to plain Therin. He was my salvation on several previous ventures. I seem to have a talent for finding snares in Camorr, and a talent for finding good Camorri to slip me out of them.”
“Few clients would describe what I do in such generous terms. But what’s this mud, and these bruises? You said something of a fight?”
“Yes. Your city has some very, ah, enterprising thieves. Don Salvara and his man have just driven a pair of them off. I fear Graumann and I were getting the worst of the affair.”
Galdo stepped over to Jean and gave him a friendly pat on the back; Jean’s wince was fantastic theater. “My compliments, m’lord Salvara! Lukas is what you might call a good vintage, even if he’s not wise enough to take off those silly winter wools. I’m most deeply obligated to you for what you’ve done, and I’m at—”
“Hardly, sir, hardly.” Don Salvara held up one hand and hitched the other in his sword-belt. “I did what my position demanded, no more. And I have too many promises of obligation being thrown at me already this afternoon.”
Don Lorenzo and “Master Eccari” fenced pleasantries for a few moments thereafter; Galdo eventually let himself be skewered with the politest possible version of “Thanks, but piss off.”
“Well,” he said at last, “this has been a wonderful surprise, but I’m afraid I have a client waiting, and clearly, m’lord Salvara, you and Lukas have business that I shouldn’t intrude upon. With your permission…?”
“Of course, of course. A pleasure, Master Eccari.”
“Entirely mine, I assure you, m’lord. Lukas, if you get a spare hour, you know where to find me. And should my poor skills be of any use to your affairs, you know I’ll come running….”
“Of course, Evante.” Locke grasped Galdo’s right hand in both of his and shook enthusiastically. “I suspect we may have need of you sooner rather than later.” He laid a finger alongside his nose; Galdo nodded, and then there was a general exchange of bows and handshakes and the other courtesies of disentanglement. As Galdo hurried away, he left a few hand signals in his wake, disguised as adjustments to his hat: I know nothing about Bug. Going to look around.
Don Salvara stared after him thoughtfully for a few seconds, then turned back to Locke as their small party resumed its journey toward the Tumblehome. They made small talk for a while. Locke had little trouble, as Fehrwight, letting his pleasure at seeing “Eccari” slip. Soon he was projecting a very real downcast mood, which he claimed to be an incipient headache from the attempted strangling. Don Salvara and Conté left the two Gentlemen Bastards in front of the Tumblehome’s street-side citrus gardens, with admonitions to rest soundly that night and let all business wait for the morrow.
No sooner were Locke and Jean safely alone in their suite (the harness full of “precious” goods thrown back over Jean’s shoulders) than they were exploding out of their muddy finery and donning new disguises so they could hurry off to their own rendezvous points to wait for word of Bug, if any was forthcoming.
This time, the swift dark shape that flitted silently from rooftop to rooftop in their wake went entirely unnoticed.
8
FADING FALSELIGHT. The Hangman’s Wind and the swampwater mist glued clothes to skin and rapidly congealed Calo and Galdo’s tobacco smoke around them, half cloaking them in a cataract of grayness. The twins sat, hooded and sweating, in the locked doorway of a fairly well-kept pawnshop on the northern tip of the Old Citadel district. The shop was shuttered and barred for the evening; the keeper’s family was obviously drinking something with a merry kick two floors above them.
“It was a good first touch,” said Calo.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“Our best yet. Hard to work all those disguises, what with us being