The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,211

rise, and he gestured for her to stay seated.

“No, no; don’t trouble yourself on our account. We can find our way back down your lovely tower on our own; pray return to whatever you were doing before I interrupted.”

“It was hardly an interruption,” said Doña Vorchenza. “I shall see you, then, on the Day of Changes? You will accept the invitation?”

“Yes,” said Capa Raza. He turned and favored her with a smile before he stepped out through the solarium door. “I gladly accept your invitation. And I shall see you on the Day of Changes, at Raven’s Reach.”

Interlude

The Daughters of Camorr

The first true revolution in Camorr’s criminal affairs came long before Capa Barsavi. It predated his rise by nearly fifty years, in fact, and it came about entirely as the result of a certain lack of self-control on the part of a pimp called Rude Trevor Vargas.

Rude Trevor had a great many other nicknames, most of them used privately in his little stable of whores. To say that he was an intemperate, murderous lunatic would wound the feelings of most intemperate, murderous lunatics. As was often the case, he was a greater danger to his own whores than the marks they plied for coppers and silvers. The only protection he really offered them was protection from his own fists, which could be had by giving him all but a tiny fraction of the money they worked for.

One night, a particularly put-upon whore found herself unwilling to participate in his preferred evening diversion, which was to take his pleasure from her mouth while pulling on her hair until she screamed in pain. Her bodice dagger was out before she realized it; she planted it just to the left of Trevor’s manhood, in the joint of his thigh, and slashed to his right. There was an awful lot of blood, not to mention screaming, but Trevor’s attempts to first fight back and then to flee were greatly hampered by the speed with which his life was gushing out between his legs. His (former) whore pulled him to the ground and sat on his back to keep him from crawling out of the room. His strength ebbed, and he died in very short order, mourned by exactly no one.

The next night, Trevor’s capa sent another man around to take over Trevor’s duties. The women in Trevor’s old stable welcomed him with smiling faces, and offered him a chance to try out their services for free. Because he had a small pile of broken bricks where most people kept their brains, he accepted. When he was neatly undressed and separated from his weapons, he was stabbed to death from several directions at once. That really caught the attention of Trevor’s old capa. The next night, he sent five or six men to straighten the situation out.

But a curious thing had happened. Another two or three packs of whores had gotten rid of their pimps; a growing nucleus of women claimed a warehouse in the northern Snare as their headquarters. The capa’s men found not six or seven frightened whores, as they’d been told, but nearly two dozen angry women, who’d seen fit to arm themselves using all the coin they could muster.

Crossbows are quite an equalizer, especially at close range, with the advantage of surprise. Those five or six men were never seen again.

So the war began in earnest. Those capas who had lost pimps and whores attempted to correct the situation, while with every passing day the number of women joining the rebellion grew. They hired several other gangs to serve as their own protection; they established houses of pleasure to their own standards, and began to work out of them. The service they offered, in comfortable and well-appointed chambers, was greatly superior to that which could be had from the gangs of whores still run by men, and prospective customers began to weigh in with their coin on the side of the ladies.

There was a great deal of blood. Dozens of whores were brutally murdered, and several of their bordellos were burnt to the ground. But for every lady of the night that fell, some capa’s man would get the same. The ladies gave like for like as viciously as any capa in Camorr’s history. Less than a year after Rude Trevor’s death, the last few pimps clinging brutally to their livelihood were convinced (convinced to death, in most cases) to give up their fight. An uneasy truce fell into place between