and all her celestial cousins, including the three moons; at the outermost edges were a hundred dangling stars that looked like spatters of molten glass somehow frozen at the very instant of their outward explosions. The light ran and glimmered and burned along every facet of the chandelier, yet there was something wrong about it. It was as if the Elderglass ceilings and walls were somehow drawing the light out of the alchemical sun; leavening it, weakening it, redistributing it along the full length and breadth of all the Elderglass in this uncanny cellar.
“Welcome to our real home, our little temple to the Benefactor.” Chains tossed his bag of coins down on the table. “Our patron has always sort of danced upon the notion that austerity and piety go hand in hand; down here, we show our appreciation for things by appreciating, if you get me. Boys! Look who survived his interview!”
“We never doubted,” said one twin.
“For even a second,” said the other.
“But now can we hear what he did to get himself kicked out of Shades’ Hill?” The question, spoken in near-perfect unison, had the ring of repeated ritual.
“When you’re older.” Chains raised his eyebrows at Locke and shook his head, ensuring the boy could see the gesture clearly. “Much older. Locke, I don’t expect that you know how to set a table?”
When Locke shook his head, Chains led him over to a tall cabinet just to the left of the cooking hearth. Inside were stacks of white porcelain plates; Chains held one up so Locke could see the hand-painted heraldic design (a mailed fist clutching an arrow and a grapevine) and the bright gold gilding on the rim.
“Borrowed,” said Chains, “on a rather permanent basis from Doña Isabella Manechezzo, the old dowager aunt of our own Duke Nicovante. She died childless and rarely gave parties, so it wasn’t as though she was using them all. You see how some of our acts that might seem purely cruel and larcenous to outsiders are actually sort of convenient, if you look at them in the right way? That’s the hand of the Benefactor at work, or so we like to think. It’s not as though we could tell the difference if he didn’t want us to.”
Chains handed the plate to Locke (who clutched at it with greatly exaggerated care and peered very closely at the gold rim) and ran his right hand lovingly over the surface of the witchwood table. “Now this, this used to be the property of Marius Cordo, a master merchant of Tal Verrar. He had it in the great cabin of a triple-decker galley. Huge! Eighty-six oars. I was a bit upset with him, so I lifted it, his chairs, his carpets and tapestries, and all of his clothes. Right off the ship. I left his money; I was making a point. I dumped everything but the table into the Sea of Brass.
“And that!” Chains lifted a finger in the direction of the celestial chandelier. “That was being shipped overland from Ashmere in a guarded wagon convoy for the old Don Leviana. Somehow, in transit, it transformed itself into a box of straw.” Chains took three more plates out of the cabinet and set them in Locke’s arms. “Damn, I was fairly good back when I actually worked for a living.”
“Urk,” said Locke, under the weight of the fine dinnerware.
“Oh, yeah.” Chains gestured to the chair at the head of the table. “Put one there for me. One for yourself on my left. Two for Calo and Galdo on my right. If you were my servant, what I’d tell you to lay out is a casual setting. Can you say that for me?”
“A casual setting.”
“Right. This is how the high and mighty eat when it’s just close blood and maybe a friend or two.” Chains let the set of his eyes and the tone of his voice suggest that he expected this lesson to be retained, and he began to introduce Locke to the intricacies of glasses, linen napkins, and silver eating utensils.
“What kind of knife is this?” Locke held a rounded buttering utensil up for Chains’ inspection. “It’s all wrong. You couldn’t kill anyone with this.”
“Well, not very easily, I’ll grant you that, my boy.” Chains guided Locke in the placement of the butter knife and assorted small dishes and bowls. “But when the quality get together to dine, it’s impolite to knock anybody off with anything but poison. That thing is for scooping butter,