The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,72
his false optics off, loosened his cravats, and shrugged out of his wool coat, letting it fall unceremoniously to the floor. His face was flushed, and he was waving a piece of folded parchment affixed with a blue wax seal.
“Seventy-five hundred more, my boys! I told him we’d found four likely galleons, but that we were already having cash flow problems—bribes to be paid, crews to be called back and sobered up, officers to be placated, other cargo-shippers to be chased off… And he just handed it right over, smiling all the while. Gods. I should’ve thought this scam up five years ago. We don’t even have to bother setting up fake ships and paperwork and so forth, because Salvara knows the Fehrwight part of the game is a lie. There’s nothing for us to do except relax and count the money.”
“If it’s so relaxing, why don’t you count it, then?” Bug jumped to his feet and leaned backward until his back and his neck made a series of little popping noises.
“I’d be happy to, Bug.” Locke took a bottle of red wine out of a wooden cupboard and poured himself half a glass, then watered it from a brass pitcher of lukewarm rainwater until it was a soft pink. “And tomorrow you can play Lukas Fehrwight. I’m sure Don Salvara would never notice any difference. Is it all here?”
“Five thousand crowns delivered as twenty thousand tyrins,” said Jean, “less eighty for clerking fees and guards and a rented dray to haul it from Meraggio’s.”
The Gentlemen Bastards used a simple substitution scheme for hauling large quantities of valuables to their hideout at the House of Perelandro. At a series of quick stops, strongboxes of coins would vanish from one wagon and barrels marked as common food or drink would roll off on another. Even a decrepit little temple needed a steady infusion of basic supplies.
“Well,” said Locke, “let me get rid of poor Master Fehrwight’s clothes and I’ll give you a hand dumping it all in the vault.”
There were actually three vaults tucked away at the rear of the cellar, behind the sleeping quarters. Two of them were wide Elderglass-coated shafts that went down about ten feet; their original purpose was unknown. With simple wooden doors mounted on hinges set atop them, they resembled nothing so much as miniature grain-storage towers sunk into the earth and filled to a substantial depth with coins of every sort.
Silver and gold in large quantities went into the vaults; narrow wooden shelves around the periphery of the vault room held small bags or piles of more readily useful currency. There were cheap purses of copper barons, fine leather wallets with tight rolls of silver solons, and small bowls of clipped half-copper bits, all of them set out for the rapid taking for any scam or need one of the gang might face. There were even little stacks of foreign coinage; marks from the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows, solari from Tal Verrar, and so forth.
Even back in the days of Father Chains there had been no locks on these vaults or on the room that held them. This was not merely because the Gentlemen Bastards trusted one another (and they did), nor because the existence of their luxurious cellar was a closely guarded secret (and it certainly was). The primary reason was one of practicality—not one of them, Calo or Galdo or Locke or Jean or Bug, had anything they could conceivably do with their steadily growing pile of precious metal.
Outside of Capa Barsavi, they had to be the wealthiest thieves in Camorr; the little parchment ledger set aside on one of the shelves would list more than forty-three thousand full crowns when Don Salvara’s second note was turned into cold coin. They were as wealthy as the man they were currently robbing, and far wealthier than many of his peers.
Yet so far as anyone knew, the Gentlemen Bastards were an unassuming gang of ordinary sneak thieves; competent and discreet enough, steady earners, but hardly shooting stars. They could live comfortably for ten crowns apiece each year, and to spend much more than that would invite the most unwelcome scrutiny imaginable, from every authority in Camorr, legal or otherwise.
In four years, they’d brought off three huge scores and were currently working on their fourth; for four years, the vast majority of the money had simply been counted and thrown down into the darkness of the vaults.
The truth was, Chains had trained them superbly for