the handsome ones.”
“I confess that I wasn’t aware we shared that complication.”
“Now, now, don’t be hard on yourself. Physically, you’re quite my match. It’s my scholarly gifts you lack. And my easy fearlessness. And my gift for women.”
“If you mean the ease with which you drop coins when you’re off a-cunting, you’re right. You’re a one-man charity ball for the whores of Camorr.”
“Now that,” said Calo, “was genuinely unkind.”
“You’re right.” The twins smoked in silence for a few seconds. “I’m sorry. Some of the savor’s out of it tonight. The little bastard has my stomach twisted in knots. You saw—”
“Extra foot patrols. Pissed off. Yeah, heard the whistles. I’m real curious about what he did and why he did it.”
“He must’ve had his reasons. If it really was a good first touch, he gave it to us. I hope he’s well enough for us to beat the piss out of him.”
Stray shapes hurried past in the backlit mist; there was very little Elderglass on the Old Citadel island, so most of the dying glow poured through from a distance. The sound of a horse’s hooves on cobbles was coming from the south, and getting louder.
At that moment, Locke was no doubt skulking near the Palace of Patience, eyeballing the patrols coming and going across the Black Bridge, making sure that they carried no small, familiar prisoners. Or small, familiar bodies. Jean would be off at another rendezvous point, pacing and cracking his knuckles. Bug would never return straight to the Temple of Perelandro, nor would he go near the Tumblehome. The older Gentlemen Bastards would sit their vigils for him out in the city and the steam.
Wooden wheels clattered and an annoyed animal whinnied; the sound of the horse-drawn cart came to a creaking halt not twenty feet from the Sanza brothers, shrouded in the mist. “Avendando?” A loud but uncertain voice spoke the name. Calo and Galdo leapt to their feet as one—“Avendando” was their private recognition signal for an unplanned rendezvous.
“Here!” Calo cried, dropping his thin cigarette and forgetting to step on it. A man materialized out of the mist, bald and bearded, with the heavy arms of a working artisan and the rounded middle of moderate prosperity.
“I dunno exactly how this works,” the man said, “but if one of you is Avendando, I was told I’d have ten solons for delivering this here cask to this, ah, doorway.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the cart.
“Cask. Indeed.” Galdo fumbled with a coin purse, heart racing. “What’s, ahhh, in this cask?”
“Ain’t wine,” said the stranger. “Ain’t a very polite lad, neither. But ten silvers is what he promised.”
“Of course.” Galdo counted rapidly, slapping bright silver disks down into the man’s open palm. “Ten for the cask. One more for forgetting all about this, hmmm?”
“Holy hell, my memory must be cacked out, because I can’t remember what you’re paying me for.”
“Good man.” Galdo slipped his purse back under his nightcloak and ran to help Calo, who had mounted the cart and was standing over a wooden cask of moderate size. The cork stopper that would ordinarily be set into the top of the barrel was gone, leaving a small dark air-hole. Calo rapped sharply on the cask three times; three faint taps came right back. With grins on their faces, the Sanza twins muscled the cask down off the cart and nodded farewell to the driver. The man remounted his cart and soon vanished into the night, whistling, his pockets jingling with more than twenty times the value of the empty cask.
“Well,” Calo said when they’d rolled the cask back to the shelter of their doorway, “this vintage is probably a little young and rough for decanting.”
“Put it in the cellar for fifty or sixty years?”
“I was thinking we might just pour it in the river.”
“Really?” Galdo drummed his fingers on the cask. “What’s the river ever done to deserve that?”
There was a series of noises from inside the cask that sounded vaguely like some sort of protest. Calo and Galdo leaned down by the air-hole together.
“Now, Bug,” Calo began, “I’m sure you have a perfectly good explanation for why you’re in there, and why we’re out here worrying ourselves sick over you.”
“It’s a magnificent explanation, really.” Bug’s voice was hoarse and echoed faintly. “You’re going to love it. But first tell me how the game went!”
“It was a thing of beauty,” said Galdo.
“Three weeks, tops, and we’re going to own this don down to his wife’s