“Jessaline d’Aubart is probably the best of the lot. I, uh, I had occasion to get poisoned once. She took care of it for me. So I owe her, and she’s finally called in the favor. What she wants is a corpse.”
“Beggar’s Barrow,” said Calo.
“And a shovel,” said Galdo.
“No, she needs a fresh corpse. Still warm and juicy, as it were. See, the Guilds of Alchemists and Physikers are entitled to a certain number of fresh corpses each year by ducal charter. Straight off the gallows, for cutting open and poking around. The black alchemists don’t receive any such courtesy, and Jessaline has some theories she wants to put to the test. So I’ve decided you boys are going to work together on your first real job. I want you to find a corpse, fresher than morning bread. Get your hands on it without attracting undue attention, and bring it here so I can hand it off to Jessaline.”
“Steal a corpse? This won’t be any fun,” said Galdo.
“Think of it as a valuable test of your skills,” said Chains.
“Are we likely to steal many corpses in the future?” asked Calo.
“It’s not a test of your corpse-plucking abilities, you cheeky little nitwit,” Chains said amiably. “I mean to see how you all work together on something more serious than our dinner. I’ll consider setting you up with anything you ask for, but I’m not giving you hints. You get to figure this one out on your own.”
“Anything we ask for?” said Locke.
“Within reason,” said Chains. “And let me emphasize that you can’t make the corpse yourself. You have to find it honestly dead by someone else’s doing.”
So forceful was Chains’ voice when he said this that the Sanza brothers stared warily at Locke for a few seconds, then gave each other a look with eyebrows arched.
“When,” said Locke, “does this lady want it by?”
“She’d be very pleased to have it in the next week or two.”
Locke nodded, then stared down at his hands for a few seconds. “Calo, Galdo,” he said, “will you sit the steps tomorrow so I can think about this?”
“Yes,” they said without hesitation, and Father Chains didn’t miss the note of hope in their voices. He would remember that moment ever after; the night the Sanzas conceded that Locke would be the brains of their operation. The night they were relieved to have him as the brains of their operation.
“Honestly dead,” said Locke, “and not killed by us and not even stiff yet. Right. I know we can do it. It’ll be easy. I just don’t know why or how yet.”
“Your confidence heartens me,” said Chains. “But I want you to remember that you’re on a very short leash. If a tavern should happen to burn down or a riot should happen to break out around you, I’ll throw you off this roof with lead ingots tied around your neck.”
Calo and Galdo stared at Locke once again.
“Short leash. Right. But don’t worry,” said Locke. “I’m not as reckless as I was. You know, when I was little.”
2
THE NEXT day, Locke walked the length of the Temple District on his own for the very first time, hooded in a clean white robe of Perelandro’s order with silver embroidery on the sleeves, waist-high to virtually everyone around him. He was astonished at the courtesy given to the robe (a courtesy, he clearly understood, that in many cases only partially devolved on the poor fool wearing the robe).
Most Camorri regarded the Order of Perelandro with a mixture of cynicism and guilty pity. The unabashed charity of the god and his priesthood just didn’t speak to the rough heart of the city’s character. Yet the reputation of Father Chains as a colorful freak of piety paid certain dividends. Men who surely joked about the simpering of the Beggar God’s white-robed priests with their friends nonetheless threw coins into Chains’ kettle, eyes averted, when they passed his temple. It turned out they also let a little robed initiate pass on the street without harassment; groups parted fluidly and merchants nodded almost politely as Locke went on his way.
For the first time, he learned what a powerful thrill it was to go about in public in an effective disguise.
The sun was creeping upward toward noon; the crowds were thick and the city was alive with the echoes and murmurs of its masses. Locke padded intently to the southwest corner of the Temple District, where a glass catbridge arched across the canal to the island of the Old Citadel.
Catbridges were another legacy of the Eldren who’d ruled before the coming of men: narrow glass arches no wider than an ordinary man’s hips, arranged in pairs over most of Camorr’s canals and at several places along the Angevine River. Although they looked smooth, their glimmering surfaces were as rough as shark’s-hide leather; for those with a reasonable measure of agility and confidence, they provided the only convenient means of crossing water at many points. Traffic was always one-directional over each catbridge; ducal decree clearly stated that anyone going the wrong direction could be shoved off by those with the right-of-way.
As he scuttled across this bridge, pondering furiously, Locke recalled some of the history lessons Chains had drilled into him. The Old Citadel district had once been the home of the dukes of Camorr, centuries earlier, when all the city-states claimed by the Therin people had knelt to a single throne in the imperial city of Therim Pel. That line of Camorri nobility, in superstitious dread of the perfectly good glass towers left behind by the Eldren, had erected a massive stone palace in the heart of southern Camorr.
When one of Nicovante’s great-great-predecessors (on finer points of city lore such as this, Locke’s undeniably prodigious knowledge dissolved in a haze of total indifference) took up residence in the silver glass tower called Raven’s Reach, the old family fortress had become the Palace of Patience; the heart of Camorr’s municipal justice, such as it was. The yellowjackets and their officers were headquartered there, as were the duke’s magistrates-twelve men and women who presided over their cases in scarlet robes and velvet masks, their true identities never to be revealed to the general public. Each was named for one of the months of the year-Justice Parthis, Justice Festal, Justice Aurim, and so forth-though each one passed judgment year-round.
And there were dungeons, and there were the gallows on the Black Bridge that led to the Palace gates, and there were other things. While the Secret Peace had greatly reduced the number of people who took the short, sharp drop off the Black Bridge (and didn’t Duke Nicovante love to publicly pin that on his own magnanimity), the duke’s servants had devised other punishments that were spectacular in their cruel cleverness, if technically nonlethal.
The Palace was a great square heap of pitted black and gray stone, ten stories high; the huge bricks that formed its walls had been arranged into simple mosaics that had now weathered to a ghostly state. The rows of high arched windows that decorated every other level of the tower were stained glass, with black and red designs predominating. At night a light would burn ominously behind each one, dim red eyes in the darkness, staring out in all directions. Those windows were never dark; the intended message was clear.
There were four open-topped circular towers jutting out from each corner of the Palace, seemingly hanging in air from the sixth or seventh level up. On the sides of these hung black iron crow cages, in which prisoners singled out for special mistreatment would be aired out for a few hours or even a few days, with their feet dangling. Yet even these were seats in paradise compared to the spider cages, a spectacle that became visible to Locke (between the backs and shoulders of adults) as he stepped off the catbridge and into the crowds of the Old Citadel.