The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,19
had dark liquor-colored skin and hair like an inky slice of night; the tautness of the flesh around his dark eyes was broken only by a fine network of laugh-lines (though anyone who knew the Sanza twins would more readily describe them as smirk-lines). An improbably sharp and hooked nose preceded his good looks like a dagger held at guard position.
Once he had made the barge fast to a mooring post, Calo tossed to Locke a heavy iron key attached to a long tassel of braided red and black silk. At a quality rooming house like the Tumblehome, each private suite’s door was guarded by a clockwork lockbox (removable only by some cunning means known to the owners) that could be swapped out from a niche in the door. Each rented room received a random new box and its attendant key. With hundreds of such identical-looking boxes stored behind the polished counter in the reception hall, the inn could pretty much guarantee that copying keys for later break-ins was a practical waste of a thief’s time.
This courtesy would also give Locke and Jean guaranteed privacy for the rapid transformation that was about to take place.
“Wonderful!” Locke leaped up onto the quay as spryly as he had entered the boat; Jean passed the steering pole back to Bug, then made the barge shudder with his own leap. “Let’s go on in and fetch out our guests from Emberlain.”
As Locke and Jean padded up the steps toward the Tumblehome, Calo motioned for Bug to give him a hand with the horse. The white-eyed creature was utterly without fear or personal initiative, but that same lack of self-preservation instincts might lead it to damage the barge very easily. After a few minutes of careful pushing and pulling, they had it positioned in the center of the barge, as calm as a statue that just happened to have lungs.
“Lovely creature,” said Calo. “I’ve named him Impediment. You could use him as a table. Or a flying buttress.”
“Gentled animals give me the bloody creeps.”
“Whereas,” said Calo, “they give me the fucking creeps. But tenderfoots and softies prefer Gentled packhorses, and that’s our master merchant of Emberlain in a nutshell.”
Several more minutes passed, and Calo and Bug stood in amiable silence under the punishing sun, looking the part of an unremarkable barge crew waiting to receive a passenger of consequence from the bosom of the Tumblehome Inn. Soon enough, that passenger descended the stairs and coughed twice to get their attention.
It was Locke, of course, but changed. His hair was slicked back with rose oil, the bones of his face seemed to shadow slightly deeper hollows in his cheeks, and his eyes were half concealed behind a pair of optics rimmed with black pearl and flashing silver in the sun.
He was now dressed in a tightly buttoned black coat in the Emberlain style, almost form-fitted from his shoulders down to his ribs, then flaring out widely at the waist. Two black leather belts with polished silver buckles circled his stomach; three ruffled layers of black silk cravats poured out of his collar and fluttered in the hot breeze. He wore embroidered gray hose over thick-heeled sharkskin shoes with black ribbon tongues that sprang somewhat ludicrously outward and hung over his feet with the drooping curl of hothouse flowers. Sweat was already beading on his forehead like little diamonds—Camorr’s summer did not reward the intrusion of fashions from a more northerly climate.
“My name,” said Locke Lamora, “is Lukas Fehrwight.” The voice was clipped and precise, scrubbed of Locke’s natural inflections. He layered the hint of a harsh Vadran accent atop a slight mangling of his native Camorri dialect like a barkeep mixing liquors. “I am wearing clothes that will be full of sweat in several minutes. I am dumb enough to walk around Camorr without a blade of any sort. Also,” he said with a hint of ponderous regret, “I am entirely fictional.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Master Fehrwight,” said Calo, “but at least we’ve got your boat and your horse ready for your grand excursion.”
Locke stepped carefully down toward the edge of the barge, swaying at the hips like a man newly off a ship and not yet used to surfaces that didn’t tilt beneath his feet. His spine was arrow-straight, his movements nearly prissy. He wore the mannerisms of Lukas Fehrwight like a set of invisible clothes.
“My attendant will be along any moment,” Locke/Fehrwight said as he/they stepped aboard the barge. “His name is