The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Lynch, Scott Page 0,46
on the pallets; robes in questionable states of cleanliness hung from wall hooks.
“This is a necessary nonsense.” Chains gestured to and fro as he led Locke into the room closest to the curtained door, as though showing off a palace. “Occasionally, we play host to a tutor or a traveling priest of Perelandro’s order, and they have to see what they expect.”
Chains’ own sleeping pallet (for Locke saw that the wall-manacles in the other room could surely reach none of the other sleeping chambers back here) was set atop a block of solid stone, a sort of heavy shelf jutting from the wall. Chains reached under the stale blankets, turned something that made a metallic clacking noise, and lifted his bed up as though it were a coffin lid; the blankets turned out to be on some sort of wooden panel with hinges set into the stone. An inviting golden light spilled from within the stone block, along with the spicy smells of high-class Camorri cooking. Locke knew that aroma only from the way it drifted out of the Alcegrante district or down from certain inns and houses.
“In you go!” Chains gestured once again, and Locke peeked over the lip of the stone block. A sturdy wooden ladder led down a square shaft just slightly wider than Chains’ shoulders; it ended about twenty feet below, on a polished wood floor. “Don’t gawk, climb!”
Locke obeyed. The rungs of the ladder were wide and rough and very narrowly spaced; he had no trouble moving down it, and when he stepped off he was in a tall passage that might have been torn out of the duke’s own tower. The floor was indeed polished wood, long straight golden-brown boards that creaked pleasantly beneath his feet. The arched ceiling and the walls were entirely covered with a thick milky golden glass that shone faintly, like a rainy-season sun peeking out from behind heavy clouds. The illumination came from everywhere and nowhere; the wall scintillated. With a series of thumps and grunts and jingles (for Locke saw that he now carried the day’s donated coins in a small burlap sack) Chains came down and hopped to the floor beside him. He gave a quick tug to a rope tied to the ladder, and the false bed-pallet fell back down and locked itself above.
“There. Isn’t this much nicer?”
“Yeah.” Locke ran one hand down the flawless surface of one of the walls. The glass was noticeably cooler than the air. “It’s Elderglass, isn’t it?”
“Sure as hell isn’t plaster.” Chains shooed Locke along the passage to the left, where it turned a corner. “The whole temple cellar is surrounded by the stuff. Sealed in it. The temple above was actually built to settle into it, hundreds of years ago. There’s not a break in it, as far as I can tell, except for one or two little tunnels that lead out to other interesting places. It’s flood-tight, and never lets in a drop from below even when the water’s waist-deep in the streets. And it keeps out rats and roaches and suckle-spiders and all that crap, so long as we mind our comings and goings.”
The clatter of metal pans and the low giggle of the Sanza brothers reached them from around the corner just before they turned it, entering into a comfortably appointed kitchen with tall wooden cabinets and a long witchwood table, surrounded by high-backed chairs. Locke actually rubbed his eyes when he saw their black velvet cushions, and the varnished gold leaf that gilded their every surface.
Calo and Galdo were working at a brick cooking shelf, shuffling pans and banging knives over a huge white alchemical hearthslab. Locke had seen smaller blocks of this stone, which gave off a smokeless heat when water was splashed atop it, but this one must have weighed as much as Father Chains. As Locke watched, Calo (Galdo?) held a pan in the air and poured water from a glass pitcher onto the sizzling slab; the great uprush of steam carried a deep bouquet of sweet cooking smells, and Locke felt saliva spilling down the back of his mouth.
In the air over the witchwood table, a striking chandelier blazed; Locke would, in later years, come to recognize it as an armillary sphere, fashioned from glass with an axis of solid gold. At its heart shone an alchemical globe with the white-bronze light of the sun; surrounding this were the concentric glass rings that marked the orbits and processions of the world