Markos lay upon the stones, his arms at full extension, with the ball touching but not quite crossing the chalked line. Gervain pushed aside the crowding players, stared down at Markos for a few seconds, and then said, “Not across the line. No point.”
The riot and the celebration that broke out afterward were indistinguishable from one another. Some say the yellowjackets killed a dozen men while battling it back; others say it was closer to a hundred. At least three of the city’s capas died in a little war that broke out over reneged bets, and Markos vowed never to speak to Gervain again. The two had fished together on the same boat since boyhood; now the Cauldron as a whole warned Gervain’s entire family that their lives wouldn’t be worth sausage casings if any one of them set foot in that district, ever again.
Twenty years passed, thirty, thirty-five. The first Duke Nicovante rose to eminence in the city. Markos and Gervain saw nothing of one another during this time. Gervain traveled to Jeresh for many years, where he rowed galleys and hunted devilfish for pay. Eventually, homesick, he took passage for Camorr. At the dockside, he was astounded to see a man stepping off a little fishing boat-a man weathered and gray and bearded just like himself, but certainly none other than his old friend Markos.
“Markos,” he cried. “Markos, from the Cauldron! Markos! The gods are kind! Surely you remember me?”
Markos turned to regard the traveler who stood before him; he stared for a few seconds. Then, without warning, he drew a long-bladed fisherman’s knife from his belt and buried it, up to the hilt, in Gervain’s stomach. As Gervain stared downward in shock, Markos gave him a shove sideways, and the former handball Justice fell into the water of Camorr Bay, never to surface again.
“Not across the line, my ass,” Markos spat.
Verrari, Karthani, and Lashani nod knowingly when they hear this story. They assume it to be apocryphal, but it confirms something they claim to know in their hearts-that Camorri are all gods-damned crazy.
Camorri, on the other hand, regard it as a valuable reminder against procrastinating in matters of revenge-or, if one cannot take satisfaction immediately, on the virtue of having a long memory.
CHAPTER ELEVEN. AT THE COURT OF CAPA RAZA
1
THEY HAD TO steal another little boat, Locke having so profligately disposed of their first. On any other night, he would have had a good laugh.
And so would Bug, and Calo, and Galdo, he told himself.
Locke and Jean drifted south between the Narrows and the Mara Camorrazza, hunched over in old cloaks from the floor of the Wardrobe, locked away from the rest of the city in the mist. The soft flickering lights and murmuring voices in the distance seemed to Locke as artifacts of an alien life he’d left long ago, not elements of the city he’d lived in for as long as he could remember.
“I am such a fool,” he muttered. He lay along a gunwale, aching, feeling the dry heaves rise up again from the battered pit of his stomach.
“If you say that one more time,” said Jean, “I will throw you into the water and row the boat over your head.”
“I should have let us run.”
“Perhaps,” said Jean. “But perhaps not everything miserable that happens to us stems directly from one of your choices, brother. Perhaps bad tidings come regardless of what we do. Perhaps if we’d run, that Bondsmage would have hunted us down upon the road, and scattered our bones somewhere between here and Talisham.”
“And yet…”
“We live,” said Jean forcefully. “We live and we may avenge them. You had the right idea when you did for that Gray King’s man back in the burrow. The questions now are why, and what next? Quit acting like you’ve been breathing Wraithstone smoke. I need your wits, Locke. I need the Thorn of Camorr.”
“Let me know when you find him. He’s a fucking fairy tale.”
“No, he’s sitting here in this boat with me. If you’re not him now, you must become him. The Thorn is the man who can beat the Gray King. I can’t do it alone; I know that much. Why would the Gray King do this to us? What does it bring him? Think, damn it!”
“Too much to guess at,” said Locke. His voice regained a bit of its vigor as he pondered. “But…narrow the question. Consider the means. We saw one of his men beneath the temple; I saw another man when I was taken for the first time. So we know he had at least two working for him, in addition to the Bondsmage.”
“Right. Does he strike you as a sloppy operator?”
“No.” Locke rubbed his hands together. “No, everything he did seemed to me to be as intricate as Verrari clockwork.”
“Yet he sent only one man down into the burrow.”
“Yes-the Sanzas were already dead, I was thought to be dead, you walked into another trap set by the Bondsmage, and it would have been a crossbow quarrel for Bug. Deftly done. Quick and cruel.”
“But why not send two men? Why not three? To bury us so viciously, why not be absolutely sure of the issue?” Jean gave the water a few gentle strokes to hold their position against the current. “I cannot believe he suddenly became lazy, at the very culmination of his scheme.”
“Perhaps,” said Locke, “perhaps…he needed what other men he had elsewhere, very badly. Perhaps one was all he could spare.” Locke gasped and slammed his right fist into the open palm of his left hand. “Perhaps we weren’t the culmination of his scheme after all.”
“What, then?”
“Not what, who.” Locke sat up and groaned, his head swimming. “Who has he been attacking all these months? Jean, Barsavi believes the Gray King to be dead. So now what will he do tonight?”
“He…he’ll throw a revel. Just like he used to do on the Day of Changes. He’ll celebrate.”
“At the Floating Grave,” said Locke. “He’ll throw the doors open, haul in casks-gods, real ones this time. He’ll summon his whole court. All the Right People, drunk three deep along the causeway and the wharfs of the Wooden Waste. Just like the good old days.”
“So the Gray King faked his own death to lure Barsavi into throwing a revel?”
“It’s not the revel,” said Locke. “It’s…it’s the people. All the Right People. That’s it; gods, that’s it! Barsavi will appear before his people tonight for the first time in months. Do you understand? All the gangs, all the garristas will witness anything that happens there.”
“Which does what for the Gray King?”
“The fucker has a flair for the dramatic. I’d say Barsavi’s in a heap of shit. Row, Jean. Get me down to the Cauldron right now. I can cross to the Waste myself. I need to be at the Floating Grave, with haste.”
“Have you lost your mind? If the Gray King and his men are still prowling, they’ll kill you for sure. And if Barsavi sees you, you’re supposed to be nearly dead of a stomach flux! You are nearly dead of more than that!”
“They won’t see Locke Lamora,” said Locke, fumbling with some of the items he’d managed to salvage from the Masque Box. He held a false beard up to his chin and grinned. “My hair’s going to be gray for a few days, since the removal salve is burning up as we speak. I’ll throw on some soot and put up the hood, and I’ll be just another skinny nobody with bruises all over his face, come looking for some free wine from the Capa.”
“You should rest; you’ve had your life damn near pounded out of you. You’re a complete mess.”
“I ache in places I didn’t previously realize I owned,” said Locke, gingerly applying adhesive paste to his chin with his fingers. “But it can’t be helped. This is all the disguise gear we have left; we’ve got no money, no wardrobe, no more temple, no more friends. And you only have a few hours, at best, to go to ground and find us a place to stay before the Gray King’s men realize one of their number is missing.”