The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,8

the bone-chilling sound that called out the duke’s Ghouls—the Quarantine Guard.

The participants in Locke’s smash-and-grab adventure threaded their way through the growing crowds of confused and panicked Narrows dwellers, and scuttled home indirectly through the Mara Camorrazza or the Coalsmoke district.

They returned with the largest haul of goods and food in the memory of the Shades’ Hill orphans, and a larger pile of copper half-barons than Locke had hoped for. He hadn’t known that men who played at dice or cards kept money out in plain view, for in Shades’ Hill such games were the exclusive domain of the oldest and most popular orphans, and he was neither.

For a few hours, the Thiefmaker was merely bemused.

But that night, panicked drunks set fire to the Elderglass Vine, and hundreds tried to flee the Narrows when the city watch was unable to locate the boy who’d first triggered the panic. Riot drums beat until dawn, bridges were blocked, and Duke Nicovante’s archers took to the canals around the Narrows in flat-bottomed boats, with arrows to last all night and then some.

The next morning found the Thiefmaker once again in private conversation with his littlest plague orphan.

“The problem with you, Locke fucking Lamora, is that you are not circumspect. Do you know what circumspect means?”

Locke shook his head.

“Let me put it like this. That tavern had an owner. That owner worked for Capa Barsavi, the big man himself, just like I do. Now, that tavern owner paid the Capa, just like I do, to avoid accidents. Thanks to you, he’s had one hell of an accident—even though he was paying his money and didn’t have an accident forthcoming. So, if you follow me, inciting a pack of drunk fucking animals to burn that place to the ground with a fake plague scare was the opposite of a circumspect means of operation. So now can you venture a guess as to what the word means?”

Locke knew a good time to nod vigorously when he heard it.

“Unlike the last time you tried to send me to an early grave, this one I can’t buy my way out of, and thank the gods I don’t need to, because the mess is huge. The yellowjackets clubbed down two hundred people last night before they all figured out that nobody had the Whisper. The duke called out his fucking regulars and was about to give the Narrows a good scrubbing with fire-oil. Now, the only reason—and I mean the only reason—that you’re not floating in a shark’s stomach with a very surprised expression on your face is that the Elderglass Vine is just a pile of ashes; nobody knows anything was stolen from it before it became that pile of ashes. Nobody except us.

“So, we’re all going to agree that nobody in this hill knows anything about what happened, and you are going to relearn some of that reticence I talked about when you first arrived here. You remember reticence, right?”

Locke nodded.

“I just want nice, neat little jobs from you, Lamora. I want a purse here, a sausage there. I want you to swallow your ambition, shit it out like a bad meal, and be a circumspect little teaser for about the next thousand years. Can you do that for me? Don’t rob any more yellowjackets. Don’t burn any more taverns. Don’t start any more fucking riots. Just pretend to be a coarse-witted little cutpurse like your brothers and sisters. Clear?”

Again, Locke nodded, doing his best to look rueful.

“Good. And now,” the Thiefmaker said as he produced his nearly full flask of ginger oil, “we’re going to engage in some reinforcement of my admonishments.”

And, for a time (once Locke recovered his powers of speech and unlabored breathing), everything was serene.

But the Seventy-seventh Year of Morgante became the Seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani, and though Locke succeeded in hiding his actions from the Thiefmaker for a time, on one more specific occasion he again failed spectacularly to be circumspect.

When the Thiefmaker realized what the boy had done, he went to see the Capa of Camorr and secured permission for one little death. Only as an afterthought did he go to see the Eyeless Priest, intent not on mercy but on one last chance for a slim profit.

7

THE SKY was a fading red, and nothing remained of the day save for a line of molten gold slowly lowering on the western horizon. Locke Lamora trailed in the long shadow of the Thiefmaker, who was leading him to the Temple of Perelandro