this subject and throw its gods-damned corpse in the bay?”
“Sorry,” Calo said after a few seconds and a well-aimed glare from Jean. “Sorry. Look, you know we mean well. We’re both sorry if we push. But she’s in Parlay and we’re in Camorr, and it’s obvious you—”
Calo would have said something else, but an almond roll bounced off the bridge of his nose and he flinched in surprise. Another roll hit Galdo in the forehead; one arced into Jean’s lap, and Locke managed to throw up a hand in time to swat down the one intended for him.
“Honestly!” Bug clutched still more rolls in his outstretched hands, and he pointed them like loaded crossbows. “Is this what I get to look forward to when I grow up? I thought we were celebrating being richer and cleverer than everyone else!”
Locke looked at the boy for just a moment, then reached out and took the full sampling-glass from Jean, a smile breaking out as he did so. “Bug’s right. Let’s cut the shit and have dinner.” He raised the glass as high as he could toward the light of the chandelier. “To us—richer and cleverer than everyone else!”
“Richer and cleverer than everyone else!” came the echoing chorus.
“We toast absent friends who helped to bring us to where we are now. We do miss them.” Locke set the little glass to his lips and took a minuscule sip before he set it back down.
“And we love them still,” he added quietly.
3
“THE THORN of Camorr… is a particularly ridiculous rumor that floats around the dining parlor when 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