The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,76

affairs, but now he began to wonder. Might he be on someone’s list? Did he have some unguessed value to Barsavi that the Gray King might want to end with a crossbow bolt? How many others were between him and that bolt?

“Damn,” said Jean, “as if things needed to get more complicated.”

“Maybe we should take care of… current business.” Galdo had shifted against the side of the gondola and was looking around as he spoke. “And then maybe we should get lost for a while. See Tal Verrar, or Talisham… or at least get you out, Locke.”

“Nonsense.” Locke spat over the side of the boat. “Sorry, Galdo. I know it seems like wisdom, but do the sums. The capa would never forgive our running out in his desperate hour. He’d rescind the distance and put us under the thumb of the most graceless pig-hearted motherfucker he could find. We can’t run as long as he stays. Hell, Nazca would break my knees with a mallet before anyone else did anything.”

“You have my sympathy, boys.” Vitale shifted his pole from hand to hand, using precise shoves to warp the gondola around a chunk of debris too large to ignore. “Canal work ain’t easy, but at least nobody wants me dead for more’n the usual reasons. Did you want me to leave you at the Grave or at the quay?”

“We need to see Harza,” said Locke.

“Oh, he’s sure to be in a rare mood today.” Vitale began poling hard for the northern edge of the Waste, where a few stone docks jutted out before a row of shops and rooming houses. “The quay it is, then.”

4

THE PAWNSHOP of No-Hope Harza was one of the major landmarks of the reign of Capa Barsavi. While there were many shops that paid slightly more and a great many with less surly proprietors, there were no others located a bare stone’s throw from the very seat of the capa’s power. Right People cashing in their creatively acquired loot with Harza could be sure that their presence would be reported to Barsavi. It never hurt to reinforce the impression that one was an active, responsible thief.

“Oh, of course,” said the old Vadran as Jean held the barred and armored door open for the other four Gentlemen Bastards. “Figures only the least important garristas would dare show their faces on a day like this. Come in, my ill-looking sons of Camorri bitches. Rub your oily Therin fingers on my lovely merchandise. Drip water on my beautiful floors.”

Harza’s shop was always closed up like a coffin, rain or shine. Dusty canvas sheets were drawn over the narrow, barred windows; and the place smelled of silver polish, mildew, stale incense, and old sweat. Harza himself was a snow-skinned old man with wide, watery eyes; every seam and wrinkle on his face seemed to be steadily sliding toward the ground, as though he’d been shaped by a slightly drunk god who’d pressed the mortal clay just a little too far down. No-Hope had earned his moniker with his firm policy against extending credit or loaning coin; Calo had once remarked that if he ever took an arrow in the skull he’d sit around and wait for it to fall out on its own before he’d pay a physiker for so much as a gauze scrap.

In the right-hand corner of the shop a burly, bored-looking young man with cheap brass on all of his fingers and greasy ringlets hanging in his eyes shifted his position on the tall wooden stool he occupied. An iron-studded club swung from a loop at his belt, and he nodded slowly at the visitors, unsmiling, as though they were too stupid to comprehend his function.

“Locke Lamora,” said Harza. “Perfume bottles and ladies’ smallclothes. Tableware and drinking goblets. Scraped and dented metal I can’t sell to anyone with any class ever again. You breakers and second-story boys think you’re so clever. You’d steal shit from a dog’s asshole if you had the right sort of bag to bring it home with you.”

“Funny you should say that, Harza, because this bag here”—Locke plucked the burlap sack from Bug’s hands and held it up—“happens to contain—”

“Something other than dogshit; I can hear it jingling. Give over and let’s see if you accidentally brought in anything worth buying.”

Harza’s nostrils flared as he opened the sack and slid it along a leather pad atop his shop counter, gently spilling the contents. The appraisal of stolen goods seemed to be the only form