The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Lynch, Scott Page 0,53
some of the more excitable dons don’t water their wine quite thoroughly enough.”
“The Thorn of Camorr,” said the scarred man pleasantly, “walked off your pleasure barge earlier this evening with a signed note for five thousand of your white iron crowns.”
“Who? Lukas Fehrwight?”
“None other.”
“Lukas Fehrwight is a Vadran. My mother was Vadran; I know the tongue! Lukas is Old Emberlain all the way through. He covers himself in wool and flinches back six feet any time a woman blinks at him!” Don Lorenzo pulled his optics off in irritation and set them on his desk. “The man would bet the lives of his own children against the price he could get for barrels of herring guts on any given morning. I’ve dealt with his kind too many times to count. That man is no Camorri, and he is no mythical thief!”
“My lord. You are four and twenty, yes?”
“For the time being. Is that quite relevant?”
“You have no doubt known many merchants in the years since your mother and father passed away, may they have the peace of the Long Silence. Many merchants, and many of them Vadrans, correct?”
“Quite correct.”
“And if a man, a very clever man, wished you to think him a merchant…Well, what would he dress up and present himself as? A fisherman? A mercenary archer?”
“I don’t grasp your meaning.”
“I mean, m’lord Salvara, that your own expectations have been used against you. You have a keen sense for men of business, surely. You’ve grown your family fortune several times over in your brief time handling it. Therefore, a man who wished to snare you in some scheme could do nothing wiser than to act the consummate man of business. To deliberately manifest all of your expectations. To show you exactly what you expected and desired to see.”
“It seems to me that if I accept your argument,” the don said slowly, “then the self-evident truth of any legitimate thing could be taken as grounds for its falseness. I say Lukas Fehrwight is a merchant of Emberlain because he shows the signs of being so; you say those same signs are what prove him counterfeit. I need more sensible evidence than this.”
“Let me digress, then, m’lord, and ask another question.” The scarred man drew his hands within the black folds of his cloak and stared down at the young nobleman. “If you were a thief who preyed exclusively on the nobility of our Serene Duchy of Camorr, how would you hide your actions?”
“Exclusively? Your Thorn of Camorr again. There can’t be any such thief. There are arrangements…the Secret Peace. Other thieves would take care of the matter as soon as any man dared breach the Peace.”
“And if our thief could evade capture? If our thief could conceal his identity from his fellows?”
“If. If. They say the Thorn of Camorr steals from the rich”—Don Salvara placed a hand on his own chest—“and gives every last copper to the poor. But have you heard of any bags of gold being dumped in the street in Catchfire lately? Any charcoal-burners or knackers suddenly walking around in silk waistcoats and embroidered boots? Please. The Thorn is a commoner’s ale-tale. Master swordsman, romancer of ladies, a ghost who walks through walls. Ridiculous.”
“Your doors are locked and all your windows are barred, yet here we are in your study, m’lord.”
“Granted. But you’re men of flesh and blood.”
“So it’s said. We’re getting off the subject. Our thief, m’lord, would trust you and your peers to keep his activities concealed for him. Hypothetically speaking, if Lukas Fehrwight were the Thorn of Camorr, and you knew that he had strolled off with a small fortune from your coffers, what would you do? Would you rouse the watch? Cry for aid openly in the court of His Grace? Speak of the matter in front of Don Paleri Jacobo?”
“I…I…that’s an interesting point. I wonder—”
“Would you want the entire city to know that you’d been taken in? That you’d been tricked? Would men of business ever trust your judgment again? Would your reputation ever truly recover?”
“I suppose it would be a very…difficult thing.”
The scarred man’s right hand reappeared, gloveless and pale against the darkness of the cloak, one finger pointing outward. “Her ladyship the Doña Rosalina de Marre lost ten thousand crowns four years ago, in exchange for titles to upriver orchards that don’t exist.” A second finger curled outward. “Don and Doña Feluccia lost twice as much two years ago. They thought they were financing a coup in Talisham that would have