of black pearl in a white iron setting; nestled inside the pearl by some arcane process was a speck of red that had to be blood.
“Kiss the ring of the Capa of Camorr.”
Locke did so; the pearl was cool beneath his dry lips.
“Speak the name of the man to whom you have sworn your oath.”
“Capa Barsavi,” Locke whispered. At that moment, the capa’s underling returned to the alcove and handed his master a small crystal tumbler filled with dull brown liquid.
“Now,” said Barsavi, “as has every one of my pezon, you will drink my toast.” From one of the pockets of his waistcoat the capa drew a shark’s tooth, one slightly larger than the death-mark Locke wore around his neck. Barsavi dropped the tooth into the tumbler and swirled it around a few times. He then handed the tumbler to Locke. “It’s dark-sugar rum from the Sea of Brass. Drink the entire thing, including the tooth. But don’t swallow the tooth, whatever you do. Keep it in your mouth. Draw it out after all the liquor is gone. And try not to cut yourself.”
Locke’s nose smarted from the stinging aroma of hard liquor that wafted from the tumbler, and his stomach lurched, but he ground his jaws together and stared down at the slightly distorted shape of the tooth within the rum. Silently praying to his new Benefactor to save him from embarrassment, he dashed the contents of the glass into his mouth, tooth and all.
Swallowing was not as easy as he’d hoped—he held the tooth against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, gingerly, feeling its sharp points scrape against the back of his upper front teeth. The liquor burned; he began to swallow in small gulps that soon turned into wheezing coughs. After a few interminable seconds, he shuddered and sucked down the last of the rum, relieved that he had held the tooth carefully in place—
It twisted in his mouth. Twisted, physically, as though wrenched by an unseen hand, and scored a burning slash across the inside of his left cheek. Locke cried out, coughed, and spat up the tooth—it lay there in his open palm, flecked with spit and blood.
“Ahhhhh,” said Capa Barsavi as he plucked the tooth up and slipped it back into his waistcoat, blood and all. “So you see—you are bound by an oath of blood to my service. My tooth has tasted of your life, and your life is mine. So let us not be strangers, Locke Lamora. Let us be capa and pezon, as the Crooked Warden intended.”
At a gesture from Barsavi Locke stumbled to his feet, already inwardly cursing the now-familiar sensation of liquor rapidly going to his head. His stomach was empty from the day’s hangover; the room was already swaying a bit around him. When he set eyes on Nazca once again, he saw that she was smiling at him above her ale-jack, with the air of smarmy tolerance the older children in Shades’ Hill had once shown to him and his compatriots in Streets.
Before he knew what he was doing, Locke bent his knee to her as well.
“If you’re the next Capa Barsavi,” he said rapidly, “I should swear to serve you, too. I do. Madam. Madam Nazca. I mean…Madam Barsavi.”
The girl took a step back. “I already have servants, boy. I have assassins. My father has a hundred gangs and two thousand knives!”
“Nazca Belonna Jenavais Angeliza de Barsavi!” her father thundered. “Now it seems you only grasp the value of strong men as servants. In time, you will come to see the value of gracious ones as well. You shame me.”
Nonplussed, the girl glanced back and forth between Locke and her father several times. Her cheeks slowly turned red. After a few more moments of pouting consideration, she stiffly held out her ale-jack to Locke.
“You may have some of my beer.”
Locke responded as though this were the deepest honor ever conferred upon him, realizing (though hardly in so many words) all the while that the liquor was somehow running a sort of rump parliament in his brain that had overruled his usual cautious social interactions—especially with girls. Her beer was bitter dark stuff, slightly salted—she drank like a Verrari. Locke took two sips to be polite, then handed it back to her, bowing in a rather noodle-necked fashion as he did so. She was too flustered to say anything in return, so she merely nodded.
“Ha! Excellent!” Capa Barsavi chomped on his slender cigar in mirth.