The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,164

the hatchet he’d concealed, flung with all of his rage. Jean could have split the man’s head with the blade; Locke barely managed to crack him hard with the ball side of the weapon. But it was enough. The ball caught him just beneath his right eye and he flinched backward, crying out in pain.

Locke scooped up the crossbow and fell upon the intruder, howling. He swung the butt-stock of the weapon into the man’s face, and the man’s nose broke with a spray of blood. He fell backward, his head cracking against the Elderglass of the passage wall. As he slid down, he raised his hands before him in an attempt to ward off Locke’s next blow. Locke smashed his fingers with the crossbow; the screams of the two men mingled and echoed in the enclosed space.

Locke ended the affair by slamming one curved end of the bow into the man’s temple. The assassin’s head spun, blood spattered against the glass, and he sagged into the passage corner, motionless.

Locke threw down the crossbow, turned on his heel, and ran to Bug.

The bolt had pierced the boy’s neck to the right of his windpipe, toward the outer edge of his neck, where it was buried up to its rounded feathers in a spreading pool of dark blood. Locke knelt and cradled Bug’s head in his hands, feeling the tip of the crossbow quarrel on the back of Bug’s neck. Slick warmth poured out over Locke’s hands; he could feel it coursing out with every ragged breath the boy took. Bug’s eyes were wide, and they fixed on him.

“Forgive me,” Locke mumbled through his tears. “Gods damn me, Bug, this is my fault. We could have run. We should have. My pride… you and Calo and Galdo. That bolt should have been me.”

“Your pride,” the boy whispered. “Justified. Gentleman… Bastard.”

Locke pressed his fingers against Bug’s wound, imagining he could somehow dam the flow of blood, but the boy cried out, and Locke withdrew his shaking fingers.

“Justified,” Bug spat. Blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. “Am I… not a second. Not… apprentice. Real Gentleman Bastard.”

“You were never a second, Bug. You were never an apprentice.” Locke sobbed, tried to brush the boy’s hair back, and was aghast at the bloody handprint he left on Bug’s pale forehead. “You brave little idiot. You brave, stupid little bastard. This is my fault, Bug, please… please say this is all my fault.”

“No,” whispered Bug. “Oh gods… hurts… hurts so much…”

The boy said nothing more. His breathing came to one last ragged halt while Locke held him.

Locke stared upward. It seemed to him that the alien glass ceiling that had shed warm light on his life for so many long years now took a knowing pleasure in showing him nothing but dark red: the reflection of the floor on which he sat with the motionless body of Bug, still bleeding in his arms.

He might have stayed there, locked in a reverie of grief for the gods only knew how long—but Jean groaned loudly in the next room.

Locke remembered himself, shuddered, and set Bug’s head down as gently as he could. He stumbled to his feet and lifted Jean’s hatchet up off the ground once more. His motions were slow and unsteady as he walked back into the Wardrobe, raised the hatchet above his head, and brought it down with all the force he could muster on the sorcerous hand that lay between the bodies of Calo and Galdo.

The faint blue fire dimmed as the hatchet blade bit down into the desiccated flesh; Jean gasped loudly behind him, which Locke took as an encouraging sign. Methodically, maliciously, he hacked the hand into smaller pieces. He chopped at leathery skin and brittle bones until the black threads that had spelled Jean’s name were separated and the blue glow faded entirely.

He stood staring down at the Sanzas until he heard Jean moving behind him.

“Oh, Bug. Oh, gods damn it.” The big man stumbled to his feet and groaned. “Forgive me, Locke. I just couldn’t… I couldn’t move!”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Locke spoke as though the sound of his own voice pained him. “It was a trap. It had your name on it, that thing the mage left for us. They guessed you’d be coming back.”

“A… a severed hand? A human hand, with my name stitched into it?”

“Yes.”

“A Hanged Man’s Grasp,” said Jean, staring at the fragments of flesh, and at the bodies of the Sanzas. “I…