As he took the matched blades back from Jean, he chuckled. “How’s that for teeth lessons, eh, boy? Eh?”
Jean stared at him, puzzled.
“Haven’t you ever heard that one before? Your Capa Barsavi, he’s not from Camorr, originally. Taught at the Therin Collegium. So, when he drags someone in for a talking-to, that’s ‘etiquette lessons.’ And when he ties them up and makes them talk, that’s ‘singing lessons.’ And when he cuts their throats and throws them in the bay for the sharks…”
“Oh,” said Jean, “I guess that’d be teeth lessons. I get it.”
“Right. I didn’t make that one up, mind you. That’s your kind. I’d lay odds the big man knows about it, but nobody says anything like that to his face. That’s how it always is, be it cutthroats or soldiers. So…next lovely toy…”
Maranzalla handed Jean a pair of wooden-handled hatchets; these had curved metal blades on one side and round counterweights on the other.
“No fancy name for these skull-crackers. I wager you’ve seen a hatchet before. Your choice to use the blade or the ball; it’s possible to avoid killing a man with the ball, but if you hit hard enough it’s just as bad as the blade, so judge carefully when you’re not attacking a woundman.”
Almost immediately, Jean realized that he liked the feel of the hatchets in his hands. They were long enough to be more than a pocket weapon, like the gimp steel or the blackjacks most Right People carried as a matter of habit, yet they were small enough to move swiftly and use in tight spaces, and it seemed to him they could hide themselves rather neatly under a coat or vest.
He crouched; the knife-fighter’s crouch seemed natural with these things in his hands. Springing forward, he chopped at the woundman from both sides at once, embedding the hatchet blades in the dummy’s ribs. With an overhand slash to the woundman’s right arm, he made the whole thing shudder. He followed that cut with a backhanded stroke against the head, using a ball rather than a blade. For several minutes, he chopped and slashed at the woundman, his arms pistoning, a smile growing on his face.
“Hmmm. Not bad,” said Don Maranzalla. “Not bad at all for a total novice, I’ll grant you that. You seem very comfortable with them.”
On a whim, Jean turned and ran to one side of the courtyard, putting fifteen feet between himself and the woundman. The driving rain thrust fingers of gray down between him and the target, so he concentrated very hard-and then he lined up and threw, whipping one hatchet through the air with the full twisting force of his arm, hips, and upper body. The hatchet sank home, blade flat-on, in the woundman’s head, where it held fast in the layers of leather without so much as a quiver.
“Oh, my,” said Don Maranzalla. Lightning roiled the heavens yet again, and thunder echoed across the rooftop. “My, yes. Now there’s a foundation we can build upon.”
CHAPTER TEN. TEETH LESSONS
1
IN THE DARKNESS beneath the Echo Hole, Jean Tannen was moving even before the cask came crashing down into the black water, lit faintly from above by the red glow of Barsavi’s torches.
Beneath the ancient stone cube, there was a network of hanging rafters, built from black witchwood and lashed with Elderglass cords. The rafters were slimy with age and unmentionable growths, but they had surely held as long as the stones above had, and they retained their strength.
The waterfall that cascaded in from the roof terminated here in one of the swirling channels beneath the rafters. There was a veritable maze of the things; some were as smooth as glass, while others were as turbulent as whitewater rapids. A few wheels and even stranger devices turned slowly in the corners of the under-rafters. Jean had briefly appraised them by the light of a tiny alchemical ball when he’d settled himself in for a long wait. Bug, understandably unwilling to move too far from Jean’s company, had crouched on a rafter of his own about twenty feet to Jean’s left.
There were little shafts in the stone floor of the Echo Hole, square cuts about two inches wide, irregularly spaced and serving some unguessable function. Jean had positioned himself between one of these, knowing that it would be impossible to hear any of the activities above with the noise of the waterfall right in his ear.
His understanding of the situation above was imperfect-but as the long minutes rolled by, and the red light grew, and Capa Barsavi and Locke began speaking to one another, Jean’s uneasiness deepened into dread. There was shouting, cursing, the trample of booted feet on stone-cheers. Locke was taken. Where was the gods-damned Bondsmage?
Jean scuttled along his rafter, looking for the best way to cross to the waterfall. It would be a good five or six feet up from the rafters to the lip of the stone gash through which the waterfall poured, but if he stayed out of the falling water he could make it. Besides, it was the quickest way up-the only way up from within here. In the thin red light pouring down through the little holes in the floor, Jean signaled for Bug to stay put.
There was another outburst of cheering above, and then the capa’s voice, loud and clear through one of the peepholes: “Take this bastard and send him out to sea.”
Send him out to sea? Jean’s heart pounded. Had they already cut Locke’s throat? His eyes stung at the thought that the next thing he’d see was a limp body falling in the white stream of gushing water, a limp body dressed all in gray.
Then came the cask, a heavy dark object that plunged into the black canal at the base of the waterfall with a loud splash and a geyser of water. Jean blinked twice before he realized what he’d just seen. “Oh, gods,” he muttered. “Like for like! Barsavi had to be fucking poetic!”
Overhead there was more cheering, more stomping of feet. Barsavi was yelling something; his men were yelling in response. Then the faint lines of red light began to flicker; shadows passed before them, and they began to recede in the direction of the street door. Barsavi was moving, so Jean decided to take a risk.
There was another splash, audible even over the hiss and rumble of the waterfall. What the hell was that? Jean reached beneath his vest, drew out his light-globe, and shook it. A faint white star blossomed in the darkness. Clinging tightly to the wet rafter with his other hand, Jean tossed the globe down toward the channel in which the cask would have fallen, about forty feet to his right. It hit the water and settled, giving Jean enough light to discern the situation.
The little channel was about eight feet wide, stone-bordered, and the cask was bobbing heavily in it, three-quarters submerged.
Bug was thrashing about in that canal, visible only from the arms up. Jean’s light-globe had struck the water about three feet to the right of his head; Bug had jumped down into the water on his own.
Damn, but the boy seemed to be constitutionally incapable of remaining in high places for any length of time.
Jean looked around frantically; it would take him a few moments to work his way over to a point where he could splash down into the right channel without cracking his legs against one of the stone dividers.
“Bug,” Jean cried, judging that the ruckus above would cover his own voice. “Your light! Slip it out, now! Locke’s in that cask!”
Bug fumbled within his tunic, drew out a globe, and shook it. By the sudden flare of added white light Jean could clearly see the outline of the bobbing black cask. He judged the distance between himself and it, came to a decision, and reached for one of his hatchets with his free hand.
“Bug,” he yelled, “don’t try to get through the sides. Attack the flat top of the cask!”
“How?”
“Stay right where you are.” Jean leaned to his right, clinging to the rafter with his left arm. He raised the hatchet in his right hand, whispered a single “please” to whatever gods were listening, and let fly. The hatchet struck, quivering, in the dark wood of the cask; Bug flinched back, then splashed through the water to pry at the weapon.