The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,71

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. “Your first pezon! Of course, both of your brothers are going to want some just as soon as they hear about this.”

5

THE TRIP home was a muggy, misty blur to Locke; he clung to the neck of his Gentled goat while Chains led them back north toward the Temple District, frequently cackling to himself.

“Oh, my boy,” he muttered. “My dear, dear charming sot of a boy. It was all bullshit, you realize.”

“What?”

“The shark’s tooth. Capa Barsavi had a Bondsmage enchant that thing for him in Karthain years ago. Nobody can swallow it without cutting themselves. He’s been carrying it around ever since; all those years he spent studying Throne Therin theater have given him a substantial fetish for the dramatic.”

“So it wasn’t… like, fate, or the gods, or anything like that?”

“It was just a shark’s tooth with a tiny bit of sorcery. A good trick, I have to admit.” Chains rubbed his own cheek in sympathy and remembrance. “No, Locke, you don’t belong to Barsavi. He’s good enough for what he is—a powerful ally to have on your side, and a man that you must appear to obey at all times. But he certainly doesn’t own you. In the end, neither do I.”

“So I don’t have to…”

“Obey the Secret Peace? Be a good little pezon? Only for pretend, Locke. Only to keep the wolves from the door. Unless your eyes and ears have been stitched shut with rawhide these past two days, by now you must have realized that I intend you and Calo and Galdo and Sabetha to be nothing less,” Chains confided through a feral grin, “than a fucking ballista bolt right through the heart of Vencarlo’s precious Secret Peace.”

II

Complication

“I can add colours to the chameleon,

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages

And set the murderous Machiavel to school.”

King Henry VI, Part III

Chapter Four

At The Court of Capa Barsavi

1

“NINETEEN THOUSAND,” SAID Bug, “nine hundred and twenty. That’s all of it. Can I please kill myself now?”

“What? I’d have thought you’d be enthusiastic about helping us tally the loot, Bug.” Jean sat cross-legged in the middle of the dining area in the glass cellar beneath the House of Perelandro; the table and chairs had been moved away to make room for a vast quantity of gold coins, stacked into little glittering mounds that circled Jean and Bug, nearly walling them in completely.

“You didn’t tell me you’d be hauling it home in tyrins.”

“Well, white iron is dear. Nobody’s going to hand out five thousand crowns in it, and nobody’s going to be dumb enough to carry it around like that. Meraggio’s makes all of its big payouts in tyrins.”

There was a rattling noise from the entrance passage to the cellar; then Locke appeared around the corner, dressed as Lukas Fehrwight. He whipped