“Begging your pardon, brother.” The apparent leader of the Red Hands put one arm up against the door. “Big man wants to see Locke Lamora right this very moment, and he don’t care what state he’s in, and he won’t let us take no for an answer.”
INTERLUDE
Jean Tannen
1
In the year that followed Locke grew, but not as much as he would have liked. Although it was difficult to guess his true age with any hope of accuracy, it was obvious that he was more than a little runty for it.
“You missed a few meals, in your very early years,” Chains told him. “You’ve done much better since you came here, to be sure, but I suspect you’ll always be a bit on the…medium side.”
“Always?”
“Don’t be too upset.” Chains put his hands on his own round belly and chuckled. “A little man can slip out of a pinch that a greater man might find inescapable.”
There was further schooling. More sums, more history, more maps, more languages. Once Locke and the Sanzas had a firm grasp of conversational Vadran, Chains began having them instructed in the art of accents. A few hours each week were spent in the company of an old Vadran sail-mender who would chide them for their “fumble-mouthed mangling” of the northern tongue while he drove his long, wicked needles through yard upon yard of folded canvas. They would chat about any subject on the old man’s mind, and he would fastidiously correct every consonant that was too short and every vowel that was too long. He would also get steadily more red-faced and belligerent as each session went on, for Chains paid him in wine for his services.
There were trials-some trivial and some quite harsh. Chains tested his boys constantly, almost ruthlessly, but when he was finished with each new conundrum he always took them to the temple roof to explain what he’d wanted, what the hardships signified. His openness after the fact made his games easier to bear, and they had the added effect of uniting Locke, Calo, and Galdo against the world around them. The more Chains tightened the screws, the closer the boys grew, the more smoothly they worked together, the less they had to say out loud to set a plan in motion.
The coming of Jean Tannen changed all that.
It was the month of Saris in the Seventy-seventh Year of Iono, the end of an unusually dry and cool autumn. Storms had lashed the Iron Sea but spared Camorr, by some trick of the winds or the gods, and the nights were finer than any in Locke’s living memory. He was sitting the steps with Father Chains, flexing his fingers, eagerly awaiting the rise of Falselight, when he spotted the Thiefmaker walking across the square toward the House of Perelandro.
Two years had removed some of the dread Locke had once felt toward his former master, but there was no denying that the skinny old fellow retained a certain grotesque magnetism. The Thiefmaker’s spindly fingers spread as he bowed from the waist, and his eyes lit up when they seized on Locke.
“My dear, bedeviling little boy, what a pleasure it is to see you leading a productive life in the Order of Perelandro.”
“He owes his success to your early discipline, of course.” Chains’ smile spread beneath his blindfold. “It’s what helped to make him the resolute and morally upright youth he is today.”
“Upright?” The Thiefmaker squinted at Locke, feigning concentration. “I’d be hard-pressed to say he’s grown an inch. But no matter. I’ve brought you the boy we discussed, the one from the North Corner. Step forward, Jean. You can’t hide behind me any more than you could hide under a copper coin.”
There was indeed a boy standing behind the Thiefmaker; when the old man shooed him out into plain view, Locke saw that he was about his own age, perhaps ten, and in every other respect his opposite. The new boy was fat, red-faced, shaped like a dirty pear with a greasy mop of black hair atop his head. His eyes were wide and shocked; he clenched and unclenched his soft hands nervously.
“Ahhh,” said Chains, “ahhh. I can’t see him, but then, the qualities the Lord of the Overlooked desires in his servants cannot be seen by any man. Are you penitent, my boy? Are you sincere? Are you as upright as those our charitable celestial master has already taken into his fold?”
He gave Locke a pat on the back, manacles and chains rattling. Locke, for his part, stared at the newcomer and said nothing.
“I hope so, sir,” said Jean, in a voice that was soft and haunted.
“Well,” said the Thiefmaker, “hope is what we all build lives for ourselves upon, is it not? The good Father Chains is your master now, boy. I leave you to his care.”
“Not mine, but that of the higher Power I serve,” said Chains. “Oh, before you leave, I just happened to find this purse sitting on my temple steps earlier today.” He held out a fat little leather bag, stuffed with coins, and waved it in the Thiefmaker’s general direction. “Is it yours, by chance?”
“Why, so it is! So it is!” The Thiefmaker plucked the purse from Chains’ hands and made it vanish into the pockets of his weather-eaten coat. “What a fortunate coincidence that is.” He bowed once more, turned, and began to walk back in the direction of Shades’ Hill, whistling tunelessly.
Chains arose, rubbed his legs, and clapped his hands. “Let us call an end to our public duties for the day. Jean, this is Locke Lamora, one of my initiates. Please help him carry this kettle in to the sanctuary. Careful, it’s heavy.”
The thin boy and the fat boy heaved the kettle up the steps and into the damp sanctuary; the Eyeless Priest groped along his chains, gathering the slack and dragging it with him until he was safely inside. Locke worked the wall mechanism to slide the temple doors shut, and Chains settled himself down in the middle of the sanctuary floor.
“The kindly gentleman,” said Chains, “who delivered you into my care said that you could speak, read, and write in three languages.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jean, gazing around him in trepidation. “Therin, Vadran, and Issavrai.”
“Very good. And you can do complex sums? Ledger-balancing?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Then you can help me count the day’s takings. But first, come over here and give me your hand. That’s it. Let us see if you have any of the gifts necessary to become an initiate of this temple, Jean Tannen.”
“What…what must I do?”
“Simply place your hands on my blindfold… No, stand easy. Close your eyes. Concentrate. Let whatever virtuous thoughts you have within you bubble to the surface…”
2
“I DON’T like him,” said Locke. “I don’t like him at all.”
He and Chains were preparing the breakfast meal early the next morning; Locke was simmering up a soup from sliced onions and irregular little brown cubes of reduced beef stock, while Chains was attempting to crack the wax seal on a honey crock. His bare fingers and nails having failed, he was hacking at it with a stiletto and muttering to himself.
“Don’t like him at all? That’s rather silly,” said Chains, his voice distant, “since he’s not yet been here a single day.”
“He’s fat. He’s soft. He’s not one of us.”
“He most certainly is. We showed him the temple and the burrow; he took oath as my pezon. I’ll go see the capa with him in just a day or two.”