“Right on,” cried Bug. “I knew there was a reason I let you lead this gang!”
“Well, I can’t argue with the manifest wisdom of the boy that jumps off temple roofs. But I trust my points are noted,” said Jean.
“Very noted,” said Locke. “Received, recognized, and duly considered with the utmost gravity. Sealed, notarized, and firmly imprinted upon my rational essence.”
“Gods, you really are cheerful about this, aren’t you? You only play vocabulary games when you feel genuinely sunny about the world.” Jean sighed, but couldn’t keep the slightest hint of a smile from tugging at the corners of his lips.
“If you do end up in danger, Locke,” said Calo, “you must understand that we will ignore the orders of our garrista, and we’ll bludgeon our friend on the back of his thick skull and smuggle him out of Camorr in a box. I have just the bludgeon for the job.”
“And I have a box,” said Galdo. “Been hoping for an excuse to use it for years, really.”
“Also noted,” said Locke, “with thanks. But by the grace of the Crooked Warden, I choose to trust us. I choose to trust Chains’ judgment. I choose to keep doing what we do best. Tomorrow, I’ve got some work to do as Fehrwight, and then I’ll go see Nazca again the day after. The capa will be expecting it, and I’m sure she’ll have some ideas of her own by then.”
Locke thought once again of his last glimpse of her, that wink as the two great doors of dark wood slammed shut between them. Maintaining her father’s secrets was Nazca’s entire life. Did it mean something for her, to have one of her own that she could keep from him?
INTERLUDE
The Boy Who Cried for a Corpse
1
Father Chains gave Locke no respite from his education on the day after the visit to the Last Mistake. With his head still pounding from a brown-sugar rum headache, Locke began to learn about the priesthood of Perelandro and the priesthood of the Benefactor. There were hand signs and ritual intonations; methods of greeting and meanings behind robe decorations. On his fourth day in Chains’ care, Locke began to sit the steps as one of the “Initiates of Perelandro,” clad in white and trying to look suitably humble and pathetic.
As the weeks passed, the breadth of Chains’ instruction expanded. Locke did two hours of reading and scribing each day; his pen-scratchings grew smoother step by halting step until the Sanza brothers announced that he no longer wrote “like a dog with an arrow in its brain.” Locke was moved enough by their praise to dust their sleeping pallets with red pepper. The Sanzas were distraught when their attempted retaliation was foiled by the utter paranoia Locke still carried with him from his experiences in Shades’ Hill and the Catchfire plague; it was simply impossible to sneak up on him or catch him sleeping.
“The brothers have never before met their match in mischief,” said Chains as he and Locke sat the steps one particularly slow day. “Now they’re wary of you. When they start coming to you for advice, well…that’s when you’ll know that you have them tamed.”
Locke had smiled and said nothing; just that morning Calo had offered to give Locke extra help with his sums if the smallest Gentleman Bastard would only tell the twins how he kept spotting their little booby traps and rendering them harmless.
Locke revealed precious few of his survival tricks, but he did accept the help of both Sanzas in his study of arithmetic. His only reward for each accomplishment was a more complex problem from Chains. At the same time, he began his education in spoken Vadran; Chains would issue simple commands in the language, and once Locke was reasonably familiar with the tongue Chains often forbade the three boys to speak anything else for hours at a time. Even their dinner conversation was conducted in the harsh and illogical language of the north. To Locke, it often seemed impossible to say anything in Vadran that didn’t sound angry.
“You won’t hear this among the Right People, much, but you’ll hear it on the docks and among the merchants, that’s for damn sure,” said Chains. “And when you hear someone speaking it, don’t ever let on that you know it unless you absolutely have to. You’d be surprised how arrogant some of those northern types are when it comes to their speech. Just play dumb, and you never know what they might let slip.”
There was more instruction in the culinary arts; Chains had Locke slaving away at the cooking hearth every other night, with Calo and Galdo vigorously henpecking him in tandem. “This is vicce alo apona, the fifth Beautiful Art of Camorr,” said Chains. “Guild chefs learn all eight styles better than they learn the uses of their own cocks, but you’ll just get the basics for now. Mind you, our basics piss on everyone else’s best. Only Karthain and Emberlain come close; most Vadrans wouldn’t know fine cuisine from rat shit in lamp oil. Now, this is Pinch-of-Gold Pepper, and this is Jereshti olive oil, and just behind them I keep dried cinnamon-lemon rind…”
Locke stewed octopus and boiled potatoes; he sliced pears and apples and alchemical hybrid fruit that oozed honey-scented liquor. He spiced and seasoned and bit his tongue in furious concentration. He was frequently the architect of gruesome messes that were hauled out behind the temple and fed to the goat. But as he improved at everything else required of him, he improved steadily at the hearth; soon the Sanzas ceased to tease him and began to trust him as an assistant with their own delicate creations.
One night about half a year after his arrival at the House of Perelandro, Locke and the Sanzas collaborated on a stuffed platter of infant sharks; this was vicce enta merre, the first Beautiful Art, the cuisine of sea-creatures. Calo gutted the soft-skinned little sharks and stuffed them with red and yellow peppers, which had in turn been stuffed with sausage and blood-cheese by Locke. The tiny staring eyes of the creatures were replaced with black olives. Once the little teeth were plucked out, their mouths were stuffed with glazed carrots and rice, and their fins and tails were cut off to be boiled in soup. “Ahhh,” said Chains when the elaborate meal was settling in four appreciative gullets, “now that was genuinely excellent, boys. But while you’re cleaning up and scouring the dishes, I only want to hear you speaking Vadran…”
And so it went; Locke was schooled further in the art of setting a table and waiting on individuals of high station. He learned how to hold out a chair and how to pour tea and wine; he and the Sanzas conducted elaborate dinner-table rituals with the gravity of physikers cutting open a patient. There were lessons in clothing: the tying of cravats, the buckling of shoes, the wearing of expensive affectations such as hose. In fact, there was a dizzying variety of instruction in virtually every sphere of human accomplishment except thievery.
As the first anniversary of Locke’s arrival at the temple loomed, that changed.
“I owe some favors, boys,” said Chains one night as they all hunkered down in the lifeless rooftop garden. This was where he preferred to discuss all the weightier matters of their life together, at least when it wasn’t raining. “Favors I can’t put off when certain people come calling.”
“Like the Capa?” asked Locke.
“Not this time.” Chains took a long drag on his habitual after-dinner smoke. “This time I owe the black alchemists. You know about them, right?”
Calo and Galdo nodded, but hesitantly; Locke shook his head.
“Well,” said Chains, “there’s a right and proper Guild of Alchemists, but they’re very choosy about the sort of person they let in, and the sort of work they let them do. Black alchemists are sort of the reason the guild has such strict rules. They do business in false shop fronts, with people like us. Drugs, poisons, what have you. The Capa owns them, same as he owns us, but nobody really leans on them directly. They’re, ah, not the sort of people you want to upset.